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
AI Is A Butt-Kissing Employee And Other Lessons Learned | James Lang
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What happens when your packed calendar disappears overnight—and you're forced to figure out who you are without the chaos?
SUMMARY:
James Lang joins The Small Business Safari to share a candid story of hypergrowth, an unexpected business exit, and the personal reset that followed. After building in the fast-paced med-tech world, a shareholder power play forced James off the roller coaster and into an uncomfortable season of reflection. He opens up about the emotional impact of losing the identity tied to being a CEO, the health challenges that changed his perspective, and the lessons he learned about resilience when life refused to follow the plan.
We also dive deep into AI for small business owners, separating practical applications from the hype. James shares real-world examples of conversational AI, customer intake automation, insurance claim support, and operational tools that help teams work smarter—not replace people. If you're trying to understand where AI can genuinely improve your business and how to avoid expensive mistakes, this episode delivers a practical roadmap.
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheSmallBusinessSafari
💡 GOLD NUGGETS
• Why hypergrowth can become an addiction for business owners
• The unexpected shareholder move that ended a CEO chapter overnight
• Navigating the emotional crash after leaving a high-pressure leadership role
• How a health scare reshaped priorities and future goals
• Practical AI applications that save time and improve customer experiences
• Using AI intake systems to eliminate repetitive calls and wasted labor
• Why AI should increase team capacity, not replace great employees
• How to spot AI vendors who understand strategy versus those selling hype
• Building AI solutions that produce ROI without massive budgets
🔗 Guest Links
• Website: https://www.overlang.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-lang-94329271
🌍 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!
Basement Cold Open And Welcome
SPEAKER_04All sorts of things. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, I don't have anything on my calendar today. Suddenly, all those meetings I had lined up in the next few weeks, you know, I don't have to go. And which is exhilarating for about four days. Right. Yeah. And then you turn into an alcoholic and you no longer drink just in your basement. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thank you, James, for the call out. Uh sniper is sorry. Uh I got my bourbon in the air, boys. Go check us out on the YouTube. Thank you for the shout-out. We're in our basement drinking beer. Meatloaf, Bob!
SPEAKER_04See, we used to make fun of kids. Like, I was really into flight sim at one point. And there were these people that were into that who are more nerdy than I was, and take it on, they'd just be like, you know, yeah, you know, I gotta get the plane out back from the gate, or else you're gonna cause a gate delay or whatever. And so you'd you'd it's so weird. Like these kids would have these timetables. They try to like fly their plane on the computer uh based on like when the real flight was happening in in real life. And every once in a while you'd hear in the background, like, Mom, more hot pockets.
SPEAKER_01Meet love.
SPEAKER_02It's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls, and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your extent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there, and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in Adventure Team and let's take a ride through the safari.
Why Laughing Helps Us Learn
SPEAKER_01Alan, one of the greatest things about life is, oh, please tell me. Uh what? I can't remember. Guys, no, here's the greatest thing about life. We're always learning, man. Here's why we do it. We've been doing this thing now for so long. And I just had somebody come up to me the other day and said, Hey man, listen to your podcast. Instead of just going, Oh, thank you. I said, Can you tell me why? Not not being needy, right? Yeah. But I said, I said, no, I let me ask you that next question. Why? And he said, you know what, you guys make me laugh, and I learn something every time I listen to you guys. And um, you know, you say, Hey, if you can learn something, that's on you. I he goes, You're right. And um, but I he goes, you know, I it's a good time. You know, I drive around in my truck, I go in between appointments here in Atlanta. We got a lot of traffic. I'm like, I got it, man. Quit talking. Uh, because this is my show. No up kitty. I didn't say that. I kept going. I let him go. I didn't let him. I can't I really find that hard to believe. No, I did. I showed him up because I was like, hey, dude, whose show is this anyway? Don't try to steal my thunder. Huh? You're talking to Big Daddy. Guys, we got another great episode for you. Let's tee it up, let's have some fun, let's get going. But before we do that, you know, Alan? What? What's interesting in life? Well, what is interesting in life? What we have learned is I just rolled out my word of the year to my company, which was enema. It was uh actually close, it was ascend.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_01Not ascend.
SPEAKER_04Either way, you're making a deposit.
SPEAKER_01That's James Lang, bro. The bleachers coming in soon. We'll bring him in out of the green room, but that's why Johnny Carson let his people listen to the green room before they came out, make sure they were part of the show. James good at it. And we did Ascend and we did the Mount Everest theme, and we rolled it out to our technicians uh today. And what was interesting is I watched them, and it was a 17-minute video that my general manager Kirk put together. And I told him, I'm like, dude, that seems a little more that's like 16 and a half minutes too long for you. For well, for I thought for my technicians, but for me, of course. Yeah. So he said, Um, watch it. And I said, Hey, the one that we rolled out to our office staff had the dead bodies in it going up Mount Eperst. I said, Where are those? He goes, Oh, you guys told me those are too gruesome. I said, put those fuckers back in there. I said, That's what people remember. You work with us or you die. That's what I wanted people to know. No, that's not what it was, but you know, and that's the thing you learn. That's the word of the year, enema. Ascend. It's ascend.
SPEAKER_00Ascend.
SPEAKER_01It's not it's a sweet bay. So, guys, here we go. We're already getting started making this thing happen. We're drinking our bourbon on the small business safari. Don't forget to tap the app, tell people about us, go out there, rate, review us, follow. Because we're doing this, we're doing this for you. We're helping you out. We got a great sponsor. We're gonna get a couple more sponsors coming soon. That helps us a ton. But you know what? We're doing this, we're doing this to help everybody that give you all the information. We didn't have when we started our own businesses, and today we've got a great one. We got James Lang coming on over Lang Venture Partners. You know why I knew that? Because it was on his background. Ah, you like that? It did good. But you know what? Before we get on here, James, you got a really good story that and I uh and Alan's over there going, dude, you always leave in the green room. James, before we get into this, you were going 100 miles an hour. And James, we will get to talk at some point. Hang on, whose show is this? It's yours. Can you let James talk, please? All right, so it's it James, good signal language in, and we'll tell everybody what you're
Med Tech Hypergrowth And Shockwave Therapy
SPEAKER_01saying. You're going 100 miles an hour. Talk about the business you were in and what that 100 miles an hour felt like when you were in it in the rush.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's interesting. So you said we have to be be on your show or else we die. The guy in the green room with a gun, he said that either be funny or die. So, you know, there's some conflicting messages there, but I'm I'm very happy to be here. And yeah, no, this is gonna be fun. So uh, so yeah, thousand miles to zero.
SPEAKER_01We're not we're true, we'll be true crime soon. James, you kill everybody that we should do them.
SPEAKER_04Uh, not that I would admit to on camera, like come on, man. You know, you can tell theoretical stories though. Like, for example, did you know there's a satellite that covers the entire world every 24 hours? It looks for six foot long by two foot long holes and freshly dug uh areas, so it identifies places for police departments to look.
SPEAKER_01Are you serious? Yeah, serious. There you go. Chris is broken. You know what? I I thought James was that was that was a wreck. Obviously, I read the wrong bio on James because I was like, Where the hell did that come from? That's intense.
SPEAKER_04Well, I'm just a nervous. I just look into things, and you know, maybe I have a few bodies buried in my five foot by one foot grapes, but um so less it so we all learned something today.
SPEAKER_01If you're gonna bury somebody, don't do it in a six foot by two foot. Yeah, make it maybe three foot by two foot or six by six.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and preferably grow some like really rare plants, like a cacti on Scottsdale is a great way to go because they can't dig those up.
SPEAKER_01So, you know. Duly noted. Thank you, James. Dropping bombs. I am not gonna say that's a gold nugget because AI will pick that up and put that as a gold nugget. Come on, kill somebody, put it there. We're not doing that. So, Cindy, make sure we don't do that on that. James, I want to go back to that uh adrenaline rush of being in the med tech space that you were in because I felt like I was in a similar role before I left corporate America, but I'm just I tell everybody how that was going.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so there are some things I didn't tell you before the show that I were kind of fun. And so I still have some surprises for you. So one is in that med tech space, uh, so med tech is a broad term, right? It can mean a lot of things. Well, I like to say that I'm tangentially and maybe even directly in some cases responsible. No, we'll stick with indirectly, that's better. Uh, responsible for about 100,000 men in America getting interaction without Viagra. So, you know, people who use I don't know, Viagra, codenophil, those types of things. There's an alternative, which is wave therapy, which is using uh what's called LASWT. So it's low-intensity extracorpal shockwave therapy. Basically sounds like you're zapping your wiener, but you're not. You're just using really powerful sound waves, energy waves to trigger in the soft tissue of your body, angiogenesis, neurogenesis. So these things like basically your body overcompensates. It acts like it had like a big trauma injury. Anyways, they use this in sports medicine all the time. So when guys like terramussel or have some sort of injury, they'll use shock wave therapy, they'll put in this device that has basically a really heavy impact internally, uh, where is creating this energy wave that travels down a tip through a stainless steel, through the skin, into your soft tissue, creates that micro trauma and your body overcompensates and it heals faster. Turns out, if you do that below the belt for guys, it grows back that vascular network. So you're gonna increase blood flow, which is what Viagra does, anyways. All it's doing is temporarily expanding those vessels, allowing blood in. So uh it allows guys to basically get back to where they were in their teens. So that was our product. We did, gosh, we did 30 million in one year. Um, pretty experience. I mean, well, you know, I I got tired of being the guy that like people talk to and they're like, you have that creepy uncle in your family who comes up to you at the family, you know, gathering and it's like, hey, hey, are you the guy? You got you got a you got a sample? Yeah, you just mailing to me. It's like, dude, I did not want to think about your sex life with Aunt Velma. I'm good.
SPEAKER_01That that is the worst. Um, so seriously, do you have my uh mailing address?
SPEAKER_04No, yeah, I do actually. Um, and and I'm glad that we agreed to an exchange ahead of this podcast. So uh yeah, I can't wait to get my uh enema and ascend to a higher calling. But yeah, we'll do a even trade.
SPEAKER_01Really? So all right, obviously, wow, you talk about I did not know that one was coming either. Uh I know 100 miles an hour, just rocking it. You're you're going, you're going, you're going. And you said you got the exit opportunity, it sounds like, and and you took it. Uh, were you actively looking for the exit opportunity, or did it present itself?
SPEAKER_04No. So one of the challenges was in that moment where you're going a thousand miles an hour, one of the reasons you're going a thousand miles an hour is because in that company, as we kind of hockey sticked and we were building out, you had shareholders who are minor shareholders, and maybe some relatively like at the most 20% was what one person had in
Hostile Takeover And Sudden Exit
SPEAKER_04the company. Uh, this this group of shareholders kind of packed up together and they decided that they wanted to do a hostile takeover. So I woke up one morning to an email from a group of shareholders saying to me, as the chief operating officer, hey, you work for us now, give us the keys. And in that moment, you're like, okay, I've been managing all the bullshit drama in the uh in the boardroom and in it among the shareholders, keeping that from coming and trickling down into the team and causing morale issues. I've been doing that for a while. Now I'm dealing with something where either way, if who no matter which side of these this group I pick, I'm gonna end up in court dealing with a whole bunch of depositions. And why'd you give them the keys or why'd you lock them out, or whatever the case may be. So I said, you know what? I'm done. Um I'm got enough. I'm I'm exiting the roller coaster. So it wasn't a planned exit by any means. It was this moment of like, I'm about to get screwed, and I've already been screwed so many times at this job with the difficulties of building a startup and all the things that come with it, that you know, I'm just I'm done. I'm ready to exit, I'm ready to get off the roller coaster. So yeah, I left very unexpectedly. Um, and in that moment, you you go from, you know, the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, you're putting out fires, you're dealing with whatever drama, you're traveling to different conferences, you're doing different events, um, you know, going overseas, dealing with manufacturers, um, all sorts of things. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, I don't have anything on my calendar today. Suddenly, all those meetings I had lined up in the next few weeks, you know, I'll have to go. And which is exhilarating for about four days. Right. Yeah. And then you turn into an alcoholic and you no longer drink just in your basement.
SPEAKER_01Uh, yeah, it's thank you, James, for the call out. Uh, uh, I got my bourbon in the air, boys. Go check us out on the YouTube. Thank you for the shout-out. We're in our basement drinking beer. Meatloaf! Bom!
SPEAKER_04See, we used to make fun of kids. Like, I was really into flight sim at one point, and there were these people that were into that who are more nerdy than I was, and take it on, they'd just be like, you know, yeah, you know, I gotta get your plane out back from the gate, or else you're gonna cause a gate delay or whatever. And so you'd you it's so weird. Like these kids would have these timetables. They try to like fly their plane on the computer uh based on like when the real flight was happening in in real life. And every once in a while you hear in the background, like, mom, or hot pockets.
SPEAKER_01It's awesome. Yeah, great rappers. Love how you brought that in. All right, so do you did you said I access it, boom. Yes, it's not a glorious for at least uh until you get your gaming out of your system four days. Yeah, four days. So now what?
Health Scare After Leaving The Grind
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so that's the weird thing is like you you hit it's like a light switch. You know, suddenly the lights are off, cameras off, you know, you're doing your own thing. And obviously, you know, you're gonna start figuring out like what's my next chapter, what what am I gonna do next? So I was in Scottsdale at the time, uh, moved out to Denver to help a friend out uh who is facing a foreclosure. And I was like, well, like I don't have to be anywhere, you know, I can easily move and uh uh help out a friend, but also get close to Denver Med or Denver Tech Center, DTC, lots of opportunities there. So win-win. And uh after moving out here, I suddenly start having this really bad chest pain. And I thought, like, I'm having a heart attack. This is terrible. And it turns out that wasn't the thing. It turns out that when I was born prematurely uh at a naval base in Guam, they just didn't have the equipment, the tools, the things like surfactant that you need to help with uh you know lung development and kind of make up for that lost time in the womb. Uh, they didn't have that stuff there. And it was an 18-hour flight to Tripler. So it just wasn't gonna happen um in the time frame that was needed. Anyways, my point is this created kind of like a ticking time bomb for me that I didn't fully understand. I knew I had some abnormalities. I I would get pneumonias more often than other people, I'd wheeze more. My 23andme said I'm very unlikely to be an Olympic athlete, you know, things like that. Um, but you know, the all of a sudden the these chest pressures, yeah, um, start happening. And so I go in and it just so happens um national Jewish hospitals here in Denver, big fan of the Jews. Uh the funny ones are out in Hollywood, dealt with them a lot in LA. Turns out though the ones that don't have a sense of humor become doctors. And I've learned that because like half the jokes I make there when I go there do not land. Uh, but you know, I keep making them because I have no standards. And um, anyways, but it turns out National Jewish Hospital, one of the top respiratory research hospitals in the country. And so we literally create like a 3D, well, not we, they create a 3D scan of my uh chest and understand like what are what structurally is happening. So I learned that, you know, at first, like when you get hit with that information, you're like, okay, they're thinking lung transplants. So you're thinking, okay, the expiration data on my melt carton just got a lot sooner. And so, okay, cool. What do we need to do? And so we're ramping up, doing all the testing and everything. Turns out my lungs, the actual physical lungs themselves are great. Don't need a transplant. Great news. So, what's the issue? Well, it turns out my trachea, when I exhale, it's supposed to open up. Uh, when you exhale to let air out, mine collapses and causes friction or resistance. So combine that with the GI issues related to the same, you know, premature birth scenario. Um, you have both fluid and uh gases or or air that get trapped in the chest over time. And so basically, what I have in for for now is this this kind of wave cycle of pain. So imagine you have all these opportunities, you're talking to recruiters, you're near Denver Tech Center, it's like awesome. You know, I can basically walk in anywhere I want and have a pretty good job coming out of there and figure out the next chapter and not have to deal with a bunch of of broke dicks. So, you know, it was really an exciting time. And unfortunately, uh, you know, I wasn't able to take advantage of some of those opportunities, but that's when serendipitously, not only do I happen to live near a national Jewish hospital, but one of my best friends from Virginia Beach, where I grew up, we both made Eagle Scout together back in like 2009.
Eagle Scout Projects And Bureaucracy Lessons
SPEAKER_04Um, he happens to live out here, and we just crossed paths.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, hang on one minute, man. Oh, I did two props on Eagle Scout because uh uh Al and I both know somebody who's done this. Uh I probably not the same guy, uh, but we are very proud of people who do that. Um here at the in our uh town, uh little bulk, we're in a suburb of Atlanta. In fact, I think you gave an award to one of the Eagle Scouts. I probably did back when I used to be somebody. You were so what what was your project? What was your project?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, I did two. Um, so I did one and I didn't do the paperwork correctly. So I learned about bureaucracy at a young age, uh, because it turns out that you have to get your Eagle Scout project approved by the council first. So we did this improvement project to a path near the church where our troop met and put in a bench and stuff like that. Um, but again, you know, went to go like turn in my paperwork and say, hey, time for my Eagle Scout board review. And uh they suddenly go, you know, you don't quite qualify uh because you didn't sign this paperwork and didn't file this in a timely manner and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it's like, okay, great. Uh, way to be an a-hole. Uh, I guess I'll go do more good in the community. So I think you just got your merit badge and how to work with the government. Yeah, no, exactly. That's exactly what it was like. They were like, Did you fill it out in triplicate? Do you file your TPS report? Uh, you know, anyways, um, that's an office space reference for anyone that didn't counter.
SPEAKER_00I got that one. Anyways, a big fan for me.
SPEAKER_04Yes, love that show. And there's actually some relevance to what we'll talk about today. But um the the next project I did, there was a uh an Indian reservation about an hour and a half away from where I lived. And that every year, one of the struggles the the people would have on the reservation is, you know, they lived just far enough from civilization to where it wasn't worth the cost of gas to go work at the McDonald's that was closest to them. You know, so they're in this weird place where it's like if you go and work off the reservation, the only jobs available within a reasonable radius are minimum wage service type jobs. And if you add up the cost of gas and childcare, you're losing money by working there if you're if you're a parent, especially if you're a single parent. So there was this challenge of like, how do you help these people kind of build a system? Uh, they hadn't figured out how to build a casino yet, I guess. Um, but uh we we worked with them. And what we did was we raised money and we ended up buying school supplies for all of the youth uh on that reservation so that that was something, that was an expense the families didn't have to worry about, and everybody had what they needed to succeed in the classroom. Uh so that was our second project. And that one was way easier than building a path and installing a bench. You know, this was just going door to door and going, like, can you give money to Indians, please?
SPEAKER_01Uh, you know, it was really easy compared to the physical labor of uh building that another merit badge, a merit badge and how to uh win city council and then eventually try to run for uh state governor. Uh because we had a Brad Raffensburg on uh many episodes ago, but talking about this. Man, great stories. All right, James, let's get back to what are you doing today?
SPEAKER_04How yeah, so so yeah, let me weave it back together. So I talked about medical issue, figuring that out, now on palliative care, still have some limitations around what I can do, run into my best friend from high school. Uh and I didn't mean to short trick with that. I figured you were completely healthy and oh set to go again. So no, I told you I'm prematurely 80. I'm kicking it. So, you know, we're living life. Uh so keep fucking rocking, big boy. Let's keep going. You're gonna make this thing happen. I know, we're having
From Marketing Hustle To AI
SPEAKER_04fun. Um, so anyways, uh so run across my buddy Jeff, who the whole time I had been in the operations marketing side of the world, because I before I was at the med tech, I was a freelance writer, then did SEO content writing, then digital marketing for a bunch of lawyers, which I definitely did something horrible in a past life because you know, you do marketing for personal injury lawyers, there are a bunch of dicks. Then you go into the med tech space and you're fixing a bunch of broken dicks. So it's just you can't get away from it. But then uh got out here, and my buddy Jeff, the whole time had been on that saga, uh, he had been in the AI and big data space. So he works with like a company called Clara Analytics, which what they do is they have all of the uh infrastructure for holding all the data for these insurance companies that process claims. So not only are they able to like store all the data and make that efficient, so it's like petabytes and petabytes of data, but they're able to do actuarial analysis, they're able to cut down time on claims, they're able to use AI to actually predict how different claims will uh will play out, which is important for insurance companies because one of the challenges that people may not understand is when they have a claim that gets filed, they immediately set aside funds. Well, their AI will look at all the information around a claim and say, you know, you might need to set aside $5,000 for this claim, or maybe you need to set aside $500,000 for this claim. And it can be very deceiving when the claim comes in. Because one example was if Jeff was telling me the other day, this guy uh cut his finger and so files an insurance claim. They're like, okay, cool, it's just a cut finger, you know, $1,000 ER bill, whatever the case may be, we'll set that aside. Well, it turns out that this was such a disfigurement that this guy wasn't going to be able to go back to his manual trades, you know, his labor job. And so that meant that this, you know, what looked like a paper cut on. Paper turned out to be a life-changing, you know, d disabling uh issue. And so the AI actually caught it before the humans did at the insurance company and said, Hey, you need to set aside way more money than you're setting aside by default for this claim as it comes in the door. So, anyways, my point being, there's really great practical uses for AI. And every time my insurance premiums go up, I call and yell at Jeff.
SPEAKER_01But um the yeah, especially as a guy who has uh a lot of insurance. A lot of insurance, Alan. Did I mention a lot of insurance? You said the small paper cut. James, I uh have a remodeling and handy band company and I have 30 employees. And uh when you say paper cut and little cut across the finger, yeah, I actually started to wince. I'm like, oh god, here we go. Yup doesn't know what I do. Oh boy, this could be ugly. We do this for 18 years. Um, for those who keep track, guys, if you're out there doing this, my mod's under one. So uh that's a big thing, and we do a lot of training. We just had training again today while we're doing the pod in the morning, and we brought up safety yet again. And I ended with the mantra of training is this don't do stupid shit.
SPEAKER_04Or at least just don't get caught.
SPEAKER_01Well, because when you do do uh every time I brought I got myself hurt, I was either off my game or I was in a hurry, or I tried to use a tool I wasn't supposed to, aka wrench for a nail, uh aka sawzall for uh a circular saw. Uh I got a lot of AKAs, by the way. Uh, but yeah, so when you but you brought that up, I you're right. I think uh in today's world, AI can help um with with a lot of that pre-prevention, if you will, and uh identification.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it just it reduces the amount of time and amount of ingenuity needed for the average person at the average corporate clone to catch something, uh, or to understand um the information or gather the information to make a more informed decision. So uh so it's really kismet. Like Jeff and I grab drinks, we're catching up and we're comparing notes. And of course, my stories are more interesting. His mostly involve a bunch of silicon and data centers and I know exactly. You know, gosh, worst case scenario, they try to put a floppy disk in a USB drive, and like that's a bad day. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Uh but a coffee cup in a US and a CD player that you remember that when probably don't. Um the old days when the C D would come out and they talked about guys putting uh drinks in them as drink holders.
SPEAKER_04You ever remember back in the towers? So I used to work at Cox Cable in the retention department. That was another past life. Basically, I was the asshole that you'd talk to. Sorry if we're not allowed to curse, but uh, you can bleep it out, I guess. But yeah, perfect, got it. We're good. Um, so anyways, I I was the guy that you would call and uh try to cancel your cable, and I was the guy that tried to talk you out of it and explain why canceling your cable was a really bad idea. So uh huge, huge, uh, hugely popular in my community. But um we had this one guy who called in, he goes, uh, you know, I want to cancel my service. And I'm like, okay, no problem. We're trying to figure out like what's the issue. And one of the things we could do is we could upgrade your service. Like, you know, you have the bundles with back then it was phone, TV, internet. And um, you know, back then it was like, okay, well, you have an internet plan that's like really slow, it's our lowest end one. If you keep your TV service, I'll help you save a little bit money of money on your bundle, but I can also increase your speed speeds for you. And he goes, Well, but then how would I get my bathroom break? What? And he explains that he uses so he said, Well, you have to understand, I'm a retiree and I have a very structured day. And so when I wake up in the morning, I make my coffee, I open the CD drive, I put my cup of coffee on the CD or the coffee holder, and then I go to the bathroom. And by the time I'm back, my internet's up and running, my computer's up and running, everything's good to go. I have everything timed perfectly. My life is orchestrated. If you speed up my internet, it's gonna move faster, and I'm gonna have to like cut my bathroom break in half. And this guy couldn't get past it. Like he was convinced that like just because something was faster, he had to alter the rest of his life and his morning routine.
SPEAKER_01So, anyways, when you said the CD drive as the coffee cup holder, I remember that story because I've got I've got like a hundred more of these. Yep. You're like, I did I mention that I got into a B2C business and I had no idea uh about working with the general public. I had no idea. How'd that go? Um 18 years later, I'm still just baffled. I just had I got even more baffled yesterday on another one. And it's just you're looking at people, you're like, You can't, I can't help you. You are on the help, you're you're you know what? Where's that six foot two looking for the uh place people go down? Where I'm gonna start to build a grave. I mean, this chick was crazy, bro. I'm telling you, it was and she was off the rails. You're like, nope, this is not gonna work, man. And uh you can't help people like that, but uh, you talk about the James, let's get back to you and overlaying venture partners a little bit.
SPEAKER_04No, you're you're uh you're bringing back all sorts of memories because I also worked at Best Buy at one point. I think everybody should have to work in retail for a certain period of their life just to understand what it means to have to deal with the general public and be captive to whoever walks through that door. And so you'd have like the gamut of people that would walk through it would be, you know, y'all got that wifi. It's like um Wi-Fi? Like, are you talking about the internet? Yeah, the wifi. And it's like, okay, well, uh, yeah, let me walk over and let me show you how the net gear works and the uh Kisco is a great router, and you know, we'd have all sorts of fun with them. But um, but you can't help it. You have to work with who's coming through the door, and you have to figure out how to solve their problem and maybe have some fun along the way, but you still have to be able to provide good service because they're just gonna complain and go to corporate, or if you're a small business, there's gonna go all over your Yelp and all your Google reviews, and all of a sudden you got a nightmare from a social media standpoint. So yeah, it's really a captive audience. Um, anyways, circling it back over to the more recent.
Making Private AI Affordable For Owners
SPEAKER_04So Jeff and I were comparing notes, we're like, you know, what could we do if we combine all of our experiences together? And I said, well, you know, we can give Megatron a uh a better erection. Um, you know, we can figure out how to like use some really cool technology and really do cool stuff. But he's like, well, no, if we take AI and we take those quiz funnels that we use to really hockey stick our sales and direct it in the direct to consumer channel, and that's one thing you may you, I'm sure you've run into this on websites. You hit a website, it says, Hey, uh, take this quick quiz to see if our product's the right fit for you, and then enter your email to see the results. And so the reason marketers do that is now they're gathering information about you plus your email address, which means they can reach out to you without having to pay anyone else any money and then retarget you with what a web, an email flow that makes sense that kind of educates you across the finish line. It's a really effective marketing strategy. But um, you know, what I said to Jeff is like, what if we could take that strategy and make it conversational? So instead of me answering the same four questions or going through a multiple choice, you have a conversation with AI with a chatbot, basically. And so that was where we started. We were like, okay, uh, let's figure out how to do that. So we did. The problem was when we built out that system just using off-the-shelf AI tools and kind of stringing things together just to make a uh a rough uh uh beta launch, uh, it cost us $800 in compute to run the test traffic through that funnel. So it's it's like you would you would die by success because the amount of compute and tokens and things that you'd have to pay for to power the back end of this thing in the cloud, uh it just wasn't sustainable. So then we're like, okay, well, that sucks. That's not gonna work. So what do we do? And that's when we kind of went quiet for about six months and we started working on how do we allow people to take advantage of what these huge companies are doing, which is they have these integrated cloud AWS infrastructures that they own and they set up this their own AI system. So you have the engine inside of a wrapper. So you've got the kind of the motor of the AI, then you've got the knowledge base, which is a bunch of JSON files that uses for reference to understand uh context around what you're asking it, and then it connects into all of your data islands. So when you ask it a question, it goes to the knowledge base, says, Do I know this already? If not, it'll go to the different computers, different hard drives, different places, try to find the answer. But the point is, all of that happens on your infrastructure. So you're not sending data off to a third party that might be proprietary, you're connecting it into something that you own end to end. And so I was like, Well, that sounds really cool. Why don't more companies do that? And he goes, Well, it costs so much money to do that. I'm like, cool, but what if we made a version for the average business owner? And so that's what we did was we built out this system that we can spin up. And so when it comes to AI and technology, we we've really focused on how to solve some real problems rather than just theoretically sitting around and going, well, I think the market would like this. And wouldn't it be cool if we built this product? It's like, no, let's actually partner with business owners, see what they need. So that's one example of the AI side of things and having you know a tech wizard on the team and being able to do really cool things uh allowed us to build out. So that's one tool that we've been doing. But we call it venture partners because our goal is for the average business out there, if you're trying to figure something out, whether it's compliance, financial, operational, marketing, technology, all those things, we have a pretty diverse team of people who A, trust each other, but B, um, you know, have a long work history together and know that everyone knows their stuff on the team to be able to solve complex issues, whatever comes across the table, we can kind of be that business owner's best friend and be like, you know, I'd solve this.
SPEAKER_01All right, give me an example of one example uh of a problem we have that you guys have solved.
AI Intake Tool For Law Firms
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So one example is uh for law firms. So they deal with personal injury firms, especially. They deal with a ton of people calling in and saying, I was in a car accident and this happened, and the person wants to spend 45 minutes on the phone because it's very emotional and they're they're all jarred up and they're um they're explaining all these details. What people don't realize is personal injury firms, they often have conflicts with you know whoever else was in an accident. So, like if they had represented them in the past, or if they had a relationship with a trucking company that hit you, or whatever the case may be, there's all sorts of instances where they can be conflicted out, even though they want to help you, they legally cannot because they have a competing interest. So there's that, but there's also the challenge of did the accident occur in a geographic area that we're licensed to practice law in, or was the accident even something in an area of law that we, you know, cover that we handle? So all these different things mean that that 45-minute conversation that somebody wants to have is often for naught. You know, it's a waste of time and you've you've burnt that labor inside of your team, you know, someone sitting on the phone with this person for 45 minutes, only to discover you can't help them for whatever reason. And so what we did was we built out a tool that's kind of an intake tool. So people go onto these personal injury firms' websites, they chat in with the bot, say, here's what happened. The bot interviews them, has a conversation. This can also be done over voice. Um, and uh then from there creates the bot creates a brief and says, okay, and it does some basic, like very rudimentary checks to see if there's anything flagged right away. But if not, it then schedules a time for you to talk to an actual person in the very near future, like, hey, are you available today at two o'clock to talk to so-and-so? And so at that point, it not only understands all the stuff without having to have a human from the firm sit there and, you know, talk through it all, but then it also has a briefing of everything that was discussed so that the person doesn't have to reinvent the wheel when they get on the phone with the human from the firm. And then that person at the firm that's going to be able to handle that intake has a briefing of everything that was discussed. So they're able to more efficiently have that conversation and go from, you know, take a 45-minute conversation down to like five minutes of can we help you or not? And if we can, here's the best solution to help you. It just makes things more efficient. So it's not about, you know, AI is not necessarily about replacing jobs. It's about making those people who do those jobs that are very repetitive, handling those calls over and over again, making them 10 times more efficient so that you want to hire more people to do that job. And it makes the job more enjoyable than just sitting there and eating someone's details for 45 minutes, only discover you can't
Use AI To Grow Not Cut
SPEAKER_04help them.
SPEAKER_01Alan, you've heard me say this before. I you know, I attributed uh a uh quote to Elon Musk uh lazy owners, lazy business people will cut because of AI. Smart business owners will grow because of AI and increase the employee efficiency. So he's not advocating for cutting people, he's advocating for growing your business. And I I I 100% agree with this. I think this is the way to go. And so you guys are helping take big technology down to of course, you you pick on a uh a personal injury. So one of the things before we continue, I just want James to know, because I know we'll appreciate this humor. As a handyman, um, I have a uh billboard on a very small uh rural area of uh uh of uh Georgia, and it says, we bought this billboard so you didn't see another personal injury lawyer up here. Call us, the trusted toolbox for all your home needs. So uh hello. Not yet. You will. I haven't designed. We uh we talked about this, and it's gotten a long way.
SPEAKER_04You know, it's really affordable to do that too, because they have fractional billboards now, especially the digital ones, so you don't have to pay uh for an entire billboard 24-7. So we used to prank people at the office. We had these billboards near the office that would pop up, and so we'd find these really like like one of our so our marketing guy at work, he he would redone his his bathroom and he had a picture of he brought the toilet out to the the uh driveway, the old one, and he's sitting there and he just like has this pose like he's thinking about something, and someone took a picture of it, and it was like a joke. So we obviously hung that in the bathroom at the office, but on top of that, we also paid for one of those billboards for like
How To Spot AI Snake Oil
SPEAKER_04every 10 minutes for 20 seconds. It was a picture of Dan up there sitting on the toilet, just staring up at the sky, and it was right on the way to work. So you knew that people who knew Dan would see it. It was great.
SPEAKER_01That's beautiful. Yep. So, James, as you guys are growing this thing, you're working with your buddy. Uh let's talk about another success story. What's what's a big story you got? We're we're coming up in the end, we're and then we're gonna have people get the rapid fire.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um, you know, really the the focus right now, the success story to me, is we're building something that people that I know and trust and care about, you know, kind of what you might call your chosen family. And if you're a business owner, you you you know what this means. I mean, these are the people who really have made a positive impact on your business. And they're people who show up and actually give a darn and uh think about things two or three steps ahead before they do it and come up with, you know, some good ideas now and then. Um, you know, I've worked with such amazing people, and you can't succeed in business without a team around you. So my goal with Overlaying and kind of a success story that we're building is I'm bringing all these people along for the ride that um are really solid people who will not have to worry about, like, hey, do I have a job? Do I have the ability to, you know, not be replaced by AI because we have an AI component to what we do? Or do I have the ability to offer my expertise and get out from all the layers that might be between you and that next consulting gig? Let's build a team that works together that solves that. And it's a system that is able to outlive me. So it's something that at the end of the day, um, we're building something that's going to provide income and financial fruits for everyone involved in a way that's sustainable, that's you know, good people doing good things for other businesses. So that's the focus. And that to me is the ultimate success story of being able to build something for good people to actually securely take care of other people the right way rather than just a bunch of gimmicky, you know, quick AI flipper cells or, you know, whatever. I mean, people, all these guys that were like experts on Bitcoin last year and real estate the year before that. Now they're out there in the AI world. And it's like, ugh, you guys don't know what you're talking about. It's just terrible. But people buy from them because they like them.
SPEAKER_02Find somebody who knows what they're talking about with AI. Because you're right. I mean, yeah, every new thing that comes along, you've got these experts that show up and they're somebody who just decided to hang a, you know, hang out their shingle. And how do you sort the week from the chaff?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's actually easier than you might think. And it what I like to do is I like to sit down with people and have a conversation. And do you have the heart of a teacher? And do you actually understand the internal workings of what you're building? So if someone's coming to me and says, hey, I have this AI solution for you, it's perfect for your business. And what they're doing is just focusing on benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit, but they're not really able to talk about the underlying tech and how it happens, or they're not able to explain, hey, this is where you might not not want to use this technology because it doesn't really fit your use case or your team or how your organization operates. If you can't have those kinds of conversations and come away from a consultation feeling like you learned something beyond just about their product, but learned something about technology, learned something about AI, that's somebody who probably doesn't have the expertise or the skill set to right-size the solution. And on top of that, if they can't point to a team that they directly work with, if all they're doing is reselling some company's software or some company's technology, they're not going to have a direct relationship with the people on that team. They're not going to be able to get you on the team on a call with the actual solution engineers and be able to have a that in-depth conversation. So just avoid those people. Like they might be fun to hang out with and have a bourbon with, but they're not people who should be making really important decisions for your business from a technology standpoint.
SPEAKER_01We're still cool. We can still do bourbon. And we kind of know our stuff. All
Rapid Fire Books Peeves DIY Fail
SPEAKER_01right. James Lang, how can everybody uh find you? Let's go get it out there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So if you're a business owner and you're trying to figure out like how do I make all this technology make sense? How do I take my business to the next level? And you want to work with a bunch of people who have already done that uh in other in various spaces, you go to overlangov.com. Uh, that's the easiest way. And then the other option is just look me up on LinkedIn, James Lang L-A-N-G. Uh, get a lot of connections there. And I try to respond to every message. I get lots of messages, but I do eventually respond to all of them.
SPEAKER_01Guys, I'm hooked up with the two. Um, I have not actually going to try to go back and forth with you on LinkedIn, but I'm sure you will because you can tell you're a great guy. Everybody, overlang.com. Go check them out on LinkedIn. But James, we got we got to hit you with the final four questions. You ready? Okay, let's see. All right. Here we go. What's a book you would recommend to all of our audience? The small business team. We're the adventure team. We're trying to make it up that mountain, get to the top mountaintop, do what you did, get the big exit. Here we go. What's a book you would recommend?
SPEAKER_04So I would start with there's two. Uh The AI Driven Leader by Jeff Woods is a great book that teaches you how to use AI as a thought partner and and utilize it in a way that reduces the amount of time you spend gathering information, brainstorming ideas, thinking about how to systemize things without giving away your agency and your and your independent thought because you have to treat AI like a thought partner. It cannot replace you, it cannot make decisions for you. You have to be the one in control because AI is just a butt-kissing employee. It'll do whatever you want, it'll do whatever it thinks is going to make you happy. And that's not what you need in critical infrastructure. But if you use it the right way, you can gain new perspective. And uh, anyways, that's a great book to just get up to speed on AI.
SPEAKER_01You wanted uh you wanted something else, right? You want something like that.
SPEAKER_02AI is a butt-kissing employee could be the grave title for this. Uh oh, there we go. Skip it, you hit a butt-kissing employee.
SPEAKER_04All right, what's your other book? Yeah, so anything by Chris Voss. So he has a great book. I think it's called Never Split the Difference. But um Phenomenal guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So uh highly recommend. All right. Number two question. What's the favorite feature of your own home?
SPEAKER_04Of my own home?
SPEAKER_01The books.
SPEAKER_04Uh, it would probably be the fact that you know I can lock the door and you know, leave the world behind and not have a bunch of people run through it. Um I I I'm simple. I I just want to be left alone.
SPEAKER_01I want to be left alone. Yeah, Jake Flag, I want to be left alone, but I go on podcasts. Guys, he's getting out there clearly an introvert. Bullshit. The guy's a great talker, he's still a lot of fun. He thinks he's introverted, he really isn't. Gregarious introvert. That's our buddy right over here, Alan Wyatt. He goes, you know what? Introverts make the best friends. Um, that's why I hang with him.
SPEAKER_02Because I let you talk.
SPEAKER_01What? Shut up, Alan. Keep going. All right. So, what's one of the things that you're out there? You're the you're the customer, and we all love being customers. We talked about this a little bit, but Alan I are kind of customer service freaks. I mean, crazy about it. What's a customer service pet peeve of yours?
SPEAKER_04Oh gosh. Um, okay, so I've had to deal a lot with the medical space uh as a patient uh over the last few years, and uh I absolutely hate the fact that for some reason it seems like people who are learning English as their fifth language end up as the people that answer phone calls. Uh and you know, so when you're trying to like schedule appointments, figure out things, and it's like, oh my God, and and God help you if you need to talk to about billing and understanding why something was calculated some way, because not only do they not speak English, but they can't do math. So it's just it's a nightmare scenario. So that's that's my pet peeve. If you're gonna if you're gonna put somebody in a customer-facing role, they need to be able to actually efficiently help the person and not create just incredible amounts of time and energy suck on the other end for the customer.
SPEAKER_01Time and energy suck. Amen. Love that one. All right, all right, James. So I'm in the home repair business. I am a rottling business. I want a DIY nightmare story. You said I can do this myself, and wow, it went way worse than I thought.
SPEAKER_04Gosh, um there's so many. Uh so I I think back to okay, there's this project in our office. We were um we kept getting this alarm that our fire suppression system wasn't working properly. And so, okay, no big deal. We we called the fire department, they came out and looked at it and said, Oh no, it's just a problem with this one uh head on this one dispersal unit that if you replace that, the alarm will go off. And so, you know, it being LA, we had all sorts of uh you know, very expensive quotes come out that wanted to uh solve that issue for us. And so we said, no, I mean we can just buy the part and swap it out ourselves. Well, we end up flooding an office. So that was uh that was an unfortunate event. We have got it, Alan.
SPEAKER_01We got a flooding event. Let me stick it in a series of unfortunate events. You know what, James Lang, you brought the heat. You were very authentic. We always talk about that in business, right? If you're not authentic, you're not real, man. You gotta be authentic. That's how shit happens. You gotta make it happen. Be authentic, get up that mountain. Let's find out what's going on. Let's go figure out how to get up there, get in that rare fried air, let's go make it happen one step at a time. We gotta get out of here. We gotta go in because I'm money. Cheers, everybody.
Final Takeaways And Sign Off
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to this episode of the Small Business Safari. Remember, your positive attitude will help you achieve that higher altitude you're looking for in a wild world small business ownership. And until next time, make it a great day.
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