“AI Isn’t Taking Our Jobs, It’s Creating New Ones”—Nathan Strum on Building a Human-First Future

Cut The Tie Podcast with Nathan Strum

What if artificial intelligence didn’t replace people—but helped them grow? In this episode of Cut The Tie, Thomas Helfrich sits down with Nathan Strum, CEO of Abby Connect, to talk about how a twenty-year-old live receptionist company is redefining success by blending human connection with AI innovation.

From cutting the tie to “doing everything for everyone” to leading his team through one of the biggest technological shifts in business, Nathan shares how focus, courage, and empathy drive sustainable growth. His approach proves that AI doesn’t have to eliminate jobs—it can elevate people into new, higher-value roles.

About Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum is the CEO of Abby Connect, a Las Vegas–based company helping small businesses capture every opportunity through a hybrid of live and AI receptionists. Under Nathan’s leadership, Abby Connect has become one of the most trusted names in client communication, known for balancing technology with a people-first philosophy. He’s passionate about building cultures where employees rise, clients feel heard, and innovation serves humans—not the other way around.

In this episode, Thomas and Nathan discuss:

• Why AI isn’t taking jobs—it’s transforming them
  Nathan explains how new technology is upskilling employees and opening career paths that didn’t exist before.
• Cutting the tie to “doing everything for everyone”
  How Abby Connect learned to focus on its best customers and say no to distractions that dilute value.
• Listening to clients the right way
  The difference between gathering feedback and asking the questions that actually drive business growth.
• Turning a service company into a product company
  The challenge of shifting from live services to software while staying true to the company’s human DNA.
• The tie he’s still cutting: building less to build better
  Why focus and simplicity matter most when developing new AI tools and customer solutions.

Key Takeaways

• AI creates more jobs than it replaces
  The future belongs to businesses that use technology to empower people, not eliminate them.
• Success is when your people feel successful
  Leadership is measured by how much you elevate others.
• You can’t please everyone
  Focus on the customers who align with your strengths and values.
• Fail fast, fail forward
  Every mistake is a data point for growth.
• Stop listening to influencers—start trusting yourself
  Your best business instincts come from experience, not noise.

Connect with Nathan Strum

🌐 Website: https://www.abby.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanstrum

Connect with Thomas Helfrich

🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelfrich
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cutthetie
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfich
🌐 Website: https://www.cutthetie.com
📧 Email: t@instantlyrelevant.com
🚀 https://www.instantlyrelevant.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Nathan Strum And Abby Connect
• 1:37 Why Build An AI Receptionist
• 3:35 Design Choices And Call Experience
• 4:35 Real Use Cases And Hybrid Models
• 5:57 Cutting The Tie To Doing Everything
• 8:12 Getting Useful Customer Feedback
• 10:05 Courage, ROI, And Narrow AI
• 13:00 New Jobs And Upskilling With AI
• 15:05 Lessons, Fail Forward, And Books
• 16:50 Moving From Services To Product
• 19:10 Focus Beats Feature Bloat
• 20:41 Free Trial And How To Reach Abby

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I am your host, Thomas Helfrick, on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever is holding you back from success. And as I always say, you have to define that success yourself, otherwise you're chasing someone else's dream. Today I'm joined by Nathan Strum. Or is it Strum? Which is the right way to say that? Strum.

unknown: 0:18

Strum.

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

It's a good marketing technique to repeat your name, Nathan Strum. And then they know how to spell it.

SPEAKER_02: 0:24

I should change my name to Abby.

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

Abby. You can do that. You can you can in this you could be whoever you want. Abby Strum. Take a moment, uh Nathan, introduce yourself, uh, where you're from, and uh what it is you do.

SPEAKER_02: 0:37

Sure. Well, I'm Nathan Strum. I'm the CEO of Abby Connect, and we help small businesses who are missing phone calls, uh, missing opportunities by providing a human receptionist and an AI receptionist. And we've been known for uh 20 years now as uh one of the leaders in the live receptionist space. And about two years ago, we decided to develop an AI receptionist to add to our mix of products. And uh we are in Las Vegas and that's us.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

I get the original one, right? The receptionist pick up the phone anywhere, uh, which is great if you've never, you know, if you if you're a phone-based, having someone pick up the phone is so important to getting business because if you don't pick up, they just call the next person on the list. It's over. Uh uh, what was the biggest driver on the AI side? I'm curious just to dive in on that because that can be hit or miss. I guess it's a risk for the company to try it, but but what was your guys' you know, use case driver?

SPEAKER_02: 1:36

Sure. Yeah. So we started this as kind of a research project a couple years ago. Um, you know, I went to the dev team and I said, hey, you know, the technology is blown up. Uh the ChatGPT, obviously, and and Gemini and all the big ones. Let's see if we can do this. Let's see if we can create something that is as good as our human receptionist service. If not, that's fine. We're not going to go to market with something that's subpar. You know, we've got our name made for us in this industry. We do not want to jeopardize that. Um and what they came up with completely shocked me. And uh, I was really excited to bring it to a beta test and hear all the feedback from the clients that tried it for three or four months. And we've gone to market uh as of June 1st, and we're seeing some great results. But our message is not to do away from with the humans. Um, you know, don't take all the human chops. We still have our live human reception service, and we see this as a hybrid solution. And we have clients using it in multitude of different ways.

SPEAKER_00: 2:45

I I believe in AI solution when it's combined with automation technologies or uh, you know context. What I like about it, it can create some contextual. Are you asking me this effectively? Yes. Yeah, okay, cool. Like if it can do that without actually asking you, it can say, hey, it sounds like you're doing this. Here'd be my reply. It basically replaces India. Yeah, take what you do and tries to align up the top meeting message based on what you're asking. And A and I can do that instantly. And they don't do the just don't do the pretend clicking sounds. That's horrible. Just can you get that off? If you have that, don't do it. But I I think it's actually a really valid use case where people come in with like a not an IVR, but just an AI, you know, with a much higher level. So I can get you to the right person and let's do it as fast as possible. I think it's a really good use case. I don't know how you how are you or actually how are you using it from yours? Is it kind of like that or or shock me? How did you how'd you do it?

SPEAKER_01: 3:36

We have the clicking noise.

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

And this interview's over. Uh guys, think for another moment. Uh make it an option. Do you want to hear the clicking rule?

SPEAKER_02: 3:46

It was it is an option. Um, and the reason why we added it during beta was because the people were speaking over the the receptionist. So as the technology improves and that delay shrinks, which it's it's gotten very good, uh the the need for it will go away. But it is an option, and I am being uh I guess I didn't understand.

SPEAKER_00: 4:06

I I'm one who doesn't jump on over the thing. I can see people just like ignoring it. I usually start cussing, and I think that's usually when I get a personal rule with how are you doing today, sir? I'm like, you don't pull an ask that question.

SPEAKER_02: 4:18

You would be surprised at what we've heard what we hear.

SPEAKER_00: 4:21

Um, I'm I'm one of them. I guarantee it. I I cannot stand it anyway. I'm sure your guys' stuff is great. All right. So, but what was the use case? Do you do it to get to a human faster? Is that the or do you try to do like a one-touch solve with that AI?

SPEAKER_02: 4:35

Good question. Great question. There's mo many different use cases. Um, so we have a lot of clients who are trying to cut cost, and so they're migrating away from the human receptionist and using this as their full-time solution. We have some clients that want the human during the day and want the AI receptionist for for nighttime answering. But we're seeing a lot of people that want our human receptionists to do something that we can't do. And one of the ties that we cut uh very early on in our journey was trying to do everything for everybody. And this was, you know, one of the big lessons we learned, I would say 15 years ago, was we were doing scheduling for everybody. And some of the clients we had to log into their remote desktop computer and use this old antiquated scheduling system that really took weeks to train on, and our clients are paying us a couple hundred dollars a month. So the ROI for us isn't there, the ROI for them isn't there. There's a lot of mistakes being made. We couldn't be experts at it, and so we cut that tie.

SPEAKER_00: 5:44

Well, now what scheduling too, right? It's like just use the link. Like no, no human needs to do it for the most part now, right? Like it can just be like just pick time to work for you.

SPEAKER_02: 5:55

You'd be surprised. I I love using the link. I I would much rather do that, but you'd be surprised there's still a lot of people that want to call in um and speak to a human or speak to an AI receptionist.

SPEAKER_00: 6:08

Well, I let's start with you. How do you how do you define success?

SPEAKER_02: 6:12

I define success based off of the people that work at Abbey feeling successful. So early on in my career, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And uh I was very focused on products. I was very focused on the systems that made the company profitable. And what I realized at some point was what makes me feel very good and very inspired is seeing other people succeed. Part of the DNA of Abby is 99% of the people that started here started as a receptionist. And so we've seen people go from receptionist to supervisor to manager to customer service manager to our VP of operations, for example. Um, and it's been very inspirational to see that.

SPEAKER_00: 7:00

I like it, it's like a selfless uh definition up. So talk about your journey to getting getting there and what you know the metaphoric tie was that you had to do or your company had to do, or you had to do for your company to achieve that success.

SPEAKER_02: 7:13

Sure. Well, we've cut many ties and learned many lessons throughout the years. And I think one of them that I was discussing uh in the last question is trying to do everything for everybody and um, you know, trying to capture all markets and all customers. And uh we had to cut that out. We had to focus in on what we're good at and the customers that we most please and start listening to the clo customers that are happy and start not listening to the customers that aren't happy and focusing our area there. So that was one tie that we kept that was uh very important to us.

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

How did you go about doing that? Because I think the how is where it meets you know, rubber meets the road kind of thing, right? So how how did you go about discovering that and then uh I don't say webonizing it, but maybe you know implementing that I like that term. Um well, webonize includes war, but like sometimes, well, you gotta it's a war to get it done.

SPEAKER_02: 8:09

So yeah. I would say listening to our clients. So that's really been our shortcut to success, our weapon is speaking to our clients as much as possible at every medium possible, whether it's over the phone and onboarding, at, you know, when they cancel with us at trade shows, emails, surveys, every opportunity we get, we want to c talk to a customer.

SPEAKER_00: 8:39

I I think I mean it's but is it also asking them the right questions? I mean, did you have to come up with like a normalized way to do that? Hey, if you're in person, you got to capture these three things and making sure your teams knew that because I what I find is you can give you lots of great conversations, but no valuable feedback if you don't do it systematically. Did you experience something similar? Did you plan for that?

SPEAKER_02: 8:58

We experienced it and we are are still experiencing it. And I just had this conversation this morning where we want to realign some of the questions that we ask uh when clients cancel services to get different answers and get more effective answers that can help us and insights that lead to actual changes in the company that lead to growth. So I I think that's a very good point that you're making, not just to ask the question, but ask the right question and to keep changing the questions you ask based off of where you are in your business.

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

Yeah, that's super critical, right? Because otherwise you're getting data you don't really, it's it's not useful. Uh then you then you have to like you know operationalize that through your your organization and stuff too. So uh lots to do is you know, there's a lot of people and management skills. And but uh what's been the effect since doing you know, cutting back, focusing on a tighter group? Uh did that, you know, AI really I'm gonna leave the question here. AI works much better on narrow new use cases and less so on general uh at this point, and they'll probably be for the you know, us Gen Xers, our our career, it'll still be that way. But uh, you know. Did it help that? Did it help initiate the courage to take on the AI with it? Just maybe talk about the impact with yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02: 10:11

Yeah, it we it did take courage to take it on, especially in this industry, you know, that's very human-based and very service-based. But I I think for me, the aha moment came when I realized, as you're alluding to, AI is not a magic solution. It's not gonna do everything. And my big aha moment is it's not gonna take all of our jobs. And that's my message right now that I'm I'm speaking about is that AI is not gonna steal all of our jobs. What it's gonna do is it's gonna provide new jobs for us, and it's gonna be a very good opportunity to upskill your employees. Um, so you know, getting back to the to the question, implementing implementing AI should be like any ROI conversation in your business. You know, find a use case, implement it, measure it, iterate on it, and then drop it if there's no ROI, or continue if there is. That's the way we look at this tool.

SPEAKER_00: 11:10

It's uh, you know, I black people know this, but I consulted in the intelligent automation AI space 10 years prior to becoming an entrepreneur. So let's go back like 14 years. Uh and I will say for a long time, I've been hearing the robots are coming. It was really obvious to me that these are these are tools to enable humans to go faster. And in every case in history, technology has always done an initial disruption and a hundred X job creation after. Yep. And it'll be the same thing here. You know, like the the simple example is horses went away. All the people who service to horses and go like, what do I do? Well, you go build cars now, right? And and so, you know, now horses are very expensive, and they're, you know, so there'll be a whole thing with that too. So it'll happen again. Uh, and you're right, like, you know, it's how you use the technology uh as well. And I I I cannot stress that to people enough. My GPT almost never hallucinates because I can I know my space for building growth, right? It just it because you if you do it right, it doesn't hallucinate. And same thing if you can build a system for you know customer service related and you know the space, it's gonna be pretty good around that.

SPEAKER_02: 12:14

Yeah, that's true. I don't know if you saw Sam Altman on his brother's podcast or heard this anywhere, but he said something that I thought was pretty insightful and timely for for the medium he was speaking. And he said, you know, 30, 40, whatever years ago, there was no such thing as a podcaster. And and and now the technology has enabled and created a new job. And that's exactly what we're gonna see with AI. And that's that is what we are seeing at Abby. And that's one of the things that's really exciting for us is an entry-level receptionist coming in at one level and then learning these these skills, these technology skills, and being promoted into a technology role and making more money because of it. And so we're providing a lot of career pathing right now for that.

SPEAKER_00: 13:01

I I think it'll be a big piece too with companies that as they realize the profits and from productivity of these technologies combined with say automation. And you know, a lot of them will take it as profit and shares and as they should. But the ones who invest back into their good people will, I think, help multiplier because then they'll have the innovation front and the creative front and then the front line of the human element that still exists. Because you're not selling to machine, you're ultimately selling to another human. Those are the ones I think that really take the next level. Let's say it that well for the next generation. So uh sounds like you do.

SPEAKER_02: 13:35

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 13:36

Sideways compliment, I think. If you could go back anywhere in your timeline, uh, you know, when would you go back and what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_02: 13:46

I knew that question was coming and I thought about it, and I don't think I would go back. I really I really don't because and I know this is probably not a unique answer, but it is my answer. It's made me who I am today. And there's been hard lessons, and I don't think that we would be where we're at without learning those lessons. And I also love the phrase fail forward and fail as fast as possible and as many times as possible. And that's how I learned there. I didn't go to an entrepreneur school, I went to a family business, and that's where I learned learned everything that I know.

SPEAKER_00: 14:25

Yeah. I listen, that's a great answer because it it it it truly is things that happened for me, even though when they feel like they're happening to you. And if you navigate through it, you've done what you needed to do to get there. So I uh it's a beautiful answer. Uh is there a book you think though? Uh let's maybe target the book specifically, maybe towards if you're if you're a customer that you can service that they don't know. So like an ideal customer, like maybe describe who they are, but uh and not from like a shameless plug thing, but like what book should they read before they go down the path? Or what you know materials should they be looking at before they go down the path of call center or customer service base or even AI interactive? Yeah. I don't know. You can say go to our website, read our blog. I'm fine with that answer too. That'd be a good one.

SPEAKER_02: 15:11

Uh no, I'm I'm I'm being coy. One of the lessons I've learned in my my career is not to be uh shy by saying I don't know. Um, you know, I there's a lot of different books that I love and that I take inspiration from. One of them is The Why by uh Simon uh Sunak. I think that that's a very inspirational book to me. But as far as your question of um an ideal customer and what they could read, I I like to learn as much as I can about AI right now and how to use that in your business and how to take bite-sized pieces. So I'm reading a lot of you know, a lot of the news blogs and whatnot, and uh that's where I get my inspiration.

SPEAKER_00: 15:55

Yeah, it's it's uh it's not like eating an elephant bite by bite, it's a you know herd of elephants. Yeah. So you gotta tell you gotta eat a little piece from one at a time, not get trampled by the rest. Uh for sure. Uh there was maybe a question I should have asked you today though, and I didn't.

SPEAKER_02: 16:10

What would that question have been uh is is this the creative question? Have I made it that far?

SPEAKER_01: 16:20

Yeah, it could be creative.

SPEAKER_02: 16:23

Um the question that you have not asked me so far. You didn't ask me what advice I have for um your listeners. And if you were to ask me that question, I would have answered it by saying to stop listening to people like me. To what? Stop listening to people like me.

SPEAKER_00: 16:50

Really you gotta give me a why on that one.

SPEAKER_02: 16:53

Sure, sure. Listen, I I think sometimes we listen too much to who we think are the influencers. And I would just really uh hone in on your internal voice, what speaks to you, what makes you tick, and let that become the best version of yourself. And that's that would be my advice.

SPEAKER_00: 17:15

I think they could still listen to you. I think they could probably grab a thing or two from you. I'm gonna give you more credits than that. Very, very nicely sound spoken. The guy who doesn't speak, you should listen to. I found that like when you're in meetings and business, the one who's not talking in the room but's at the table, yeah, the one that you were like, hey, what do you think? The introspective, it's not the ADHD or blowing it all out. Um I I do have a question though, for in your curry business though, do you have uh a tie, so to speak, that you're struggling to cut right now? Like a you're you're you're trying to get over. It's just like I cannot seem to get my head around this or want to do this.

SPEAKER_02: 17:53

Yeah, I do. We're transitioning into a product-led company right now. So we're very good at the service side of our business, and now we're focused on the product side of our business, the AI receptionist, and how that fits into the entire ecosystem of you know our clients' business. We want to we want to build everything. Everything. There's so many great things to build. And I could take, you know, Nvidia type of money and invest into this business and build all kinds of great tools, but we can't do that. And we have to cut the tie of of trying to do everything in our product and trying to build everything and prioritize everything and just focus on one thing at a time by listening to the client, what is the most important to them, implement it, iterate over it, and then move to the next.

SPEAKER_00: 18:47

Yeah, it well, in in is going to a product is a different beast. And you know, the advice I've heard over and over and over is just build what people want and nothing more. Like that's how you know Instagram was a bunch of stuff, and the only thing people care about was the photo sharing. And the CEO is like, well, you know what? Let's go and just do that and only that and make that cool. So that move became you know a billion-dollar exit, right? Uh, and I and I think that comes back to not falling in love with your idea, yeah. What you think it should be, and just mean what is the feature you need that we can solve? And then what's the next one and test it? So I agree with you that the methodical approach of less is more works. Uh, because you know one of my complaints of like a HubSpot or something, it's just it's too much now. Can you just just do CRM and be nothing more? And like simple to keep it I don't have all the other shit going.

SPEAKER_02: 19:38

HubSpot is a partner, great company, love them. Can't say anything bad about them.

SPEAKER_00: 19:44

I I I would say that I'm not saying bad, I think they built too big of a platform if they took on investment. Say it that way.

SPEAKER_02: 19:50

I agree. It's it's for some uh uh people, but not everybody.

unknown: 19:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 19:56

I guess my point of that is when you when you have a company that you're building a product, and depending on how much money you've raised to hit the valuations, you will get very uh wide in what your offerings are to justify them, as opposed to when you're a business like yours that's trying to solve for a very pointed thing. I believe the product is easier to build because you don't have to you're servicing your client and not an industrial.

SPEAKER_02: 20:19

That's a great point. Absolutely. I love the way you you articulate her.

SPEAKER_00: 20:24

Yeah, and I think you'll be successful because of it, as Marvel lean to because you know, certain services that can be repeated, that can be applied to technology are a very good candidate for automation and context. So very nicely done. Uh shameless plug time for you though, who should get a hold of you? Where do you want them to do it?

SPEAKER_02: 20:39

Well, anybody that uses phones in their business. And if you go to abbey.com, we offer a free trial on our AI receptionist. Um, and if you'd love to talk to us about how to blend and how to use a hybrid solution, pick up the phone and call us. Our web, our phone numbers are on our website, abbey.com.

unknown: 20:57

Cool.

SPEAKER_00: 20:57

Nathan, thanks so much for coming on today. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02: 20:59

Yeah, thank you. Great conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 21:01

Listen, everybody who's uh got to this point in the show, thank you for listening. Get out there, go cut a tie to whatever it is holding you back. And uh but cut your cut your tie, but do it on your own terms of success, not on somebody else's. Thanks for listening.