The Quest to Clone Yourself Through Technology

I share my journey exploring AI tools to automate cold calling and appointment setting for business development while maintaining personal connection with clients. The quest to multiply my sales efforts across multiple counties without hiring additional staff has led to testing innovative solutions that could revolutionize how small businesses approach growth.

• The continuing importance of cold calling for business development despite networking efforts
• Testing Callin.io AI appointment setting system that integrates with Google Calendar
• How AI can pre-qualify prospects and automatically schedule appointments 
• Technical challenges and programming considerations when implementing AI calling systems
• Potential cost savings of $30 for 3.5 hours of call time versus hiring staff
• The ultimate goal of expanding business reach across s

“Whistles In The West” was written, recorded, and produced by Durracell, exclusively for use with Trader Stu’s platform, always rocking the cowboy hat. The track is protected under U.S. Copyright rights to use have been granted specifically to Trader Stu for content and promotional use related to his brand and media presence.

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The thoughts and views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and do not reflect the official policy or position of Metro Trading Association. Although the host is an employee of Metro Trading, this podcast is intended to educate entrepreneurs on the benefits of professional trading, regardless of their location. Additionally, the host reviews various pieces of camping gear due to the association of trade, barter, and prepping.

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Chapters

• 0:48 Memorial Day Camping Adventures
• 4:24 Cold Calling and Business Growth
• 9:21 Using AI for Appointment Setting
• 19:01 Coffee Maker Review
• 26:16 Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Well, all right, happy Memorial Day everybody, or post-Memorial Day. I took the day off yesterday and did not do my recording. So here I am on Tuesday heck, a bad boy and not doing it proper. But you know what? Oh well, we went camping this weekend and we got cold man down to 40 degrees at night and froze our tails off. My toddler was fine, however. He slept like pretty well. We sacrificed our heat for him and I was gonna.

Speaker 1: 0:57

I didn't know this, but the tents these days they all are like mesh on top, so you don't get that condensation, wet feeling. When you wake up in the morning that's dripping up from the ceiling like they used to have. You know, back in the day, I haven't like tent camped like that in a while. And I got this new tent and, sure enough, even with the rain fly, you know it doesn't matter the heat just left right out the top, we had two space heaters running. I don't know how cold it was in the tent, maybe in the 50s or 60s. Uh, probably not 60s, probably 50s in there. So it wasn't, like you know, hypothermic, it was just slightly uncomfortable. So, but lesson learned we, that tent is for, uh, summer, I guess, and then the other one that we have is for when it's cold spring and fall. We have we have two and, uh, I was actually on the phone on memorial day on monday to see if they had any sales for trailers.

Speaker 1: 1:53

I was looking to see about buying one because I was like, well, there goes that. Because, uh, I had promised myself I would never tent camp again after I got out of the military and did all my deployments and actually last year was the first time we went and I didn't even shower. I refused to do the public showers because I got just burned out with that from all the deployments I had, and then it actually ended up annoying me not showering because it's just like, you know, you're outside all day, you go to the pool, you got chlorine on you, so you know. We did one or two trips and I was just like, okay, uh, nope, that didn't work. I don't like going to bed feeling like that. So here we are again, uh, camping. I showered, I gotta tell you what. We went outdoor adventures and that was probably one of the best showers I ever had. Man, the pressure was awesome and, uh, they did a great job in there and the bathrooms are clean and whatever. So uh, still wear the shower shoes, of course, though, but uh, um, but yeah, no, it wasn't that bad. So, other than the coolness and the fact that it takes a couple hours to set up, with a toddler it's kind of a lot. But uh, that's why we're looking at getting a just a little trailer, basically a mobile bathroom with a bed in it, and I don't even need the kitchen because I like cooking outside anyways.

Speaker 1: 3:10

But uh, the one we're looking at is that little coleman. It's like 10 grand, brand new, uh, the 13b, and it's got the queen bed, bunk beds, a little bathroom, uh, because the wife hates the spiders, but she said she didn't even see any spiders this weekend. So well, it was cold out yet too, though, of course so, and then, um, yeah, little, it's got a little one burner induction, no propane. It runs off a 30 amp power, so I can get a little I know it's a little inverter generators, I'm sure it'll power it. And then, uh, or, of course, you plug in everything's 30 amp at the campground. So I like that. Everything's electric, no gas, and you don't have to worry about filling up propane tanks and running out of propane and all that stuff. So at any rate, well, I have to go look at it, except for the size, but anyway, let's get to it.

Speaker 1: 4:00

This episode brought to you by the Michigan Renaissance Festival Check them out this summer, slash fall. And, of course, the Metro Trading Association, which is where I work. That's what feeds me and enables me to make podcasts, and the whole reason for making a podcast in the first place was before Metro Trading Association. If you're into growing your business, barter and trade man, that's where it's at right. And then, of course, networking with kids it's my own little side gig I did for you ever want to network and you got kids and you can't network after hours because you have the kids.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Well, here you go. If you're in the area, stop by. Uh, we're at the jungle java in clinton township, off a hall road there, and we meet first thursday every month and network with the kids and bringing the kids let play basketball, run through the tunnels while the adults watch, talk, chit-chat, trade business cards, etc. So far, so good. It's been about a half dozen to a dozen folk or so showing up every month. Every time we meet, it grows by a couple more people. The kids love it. Actually, the kids are what makes the parents come from what I've been told. The kids count down how many days left, you know, until they can go to jungle Java again. So it's been working out all right. Let's get to it.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Today I wanted to talk a bit about AI and how to leverage that for your business. If you're in the business that's me, and I think most people probably are in the beginning of their quest or if you're in sales in general, you're doing this all the time anyways, and that is the dreaded cold calling. Yes, you have to cold call to drum up business. You have to hit the phones, hit the streets, door knock. You can't just live off of networking. At least I can't, because you know the volume is just not there. I still do it, but it's a supplement to cold calling.

Speaker 1: 6:03

So you know, with me being the only rep in the company, back in the day I guess they had seven or ten reps in, like you know, I think eight brokers or something like that they said back in the 90s. But nowadays, you know, it's as you all know it's hard enough to get people to show up to a job that people want to do, let alone, you know, you get the hustle in the sales world and it's just a high turnover and always has been. You know, I've been in sales my whole life and that's always been a revolving door. So with me being well versed in trade, um, being in it for 10 years, you know I'd like to try and expand myself and and multiply myself by seven is my ideal goal and I want to hit all the counties in Eastern Michigan, here, southeast Michigan and then Toledo. Ohio is where we are too. You know, and I live in Metro Detroit and Metro Detroit is huge, it's a big area.

Speaker 1: 7:03

So I focus on the north slash, east, maybe northeast corridor of Metro Detroit and you know people, our members are asking me to venture out to Genesee County, which is in Flint area, and that's where I used to live. Actually, that's how I got started in this job. The owner, mike, asked it was a chamber event and we struck up a conversation and said, hey, I can take off the genesee county chunk for you and run that and get that all spun up, and so that's what I did. But now, you know, genesee county is like an hour and hour and 10 minutes hour and 15 minutes away from me, so it's a good hike, to roll up there and even to call up there. It's you know to do that Because I am pretty well planted in the area down here in Rochester, clinton Township area, southeast, you know, macomb County.

Speaker 1: 7:56

So my idea was to multiply myself into Genesee County, macomb, oakland County, down River, detroit, east side, maybe west sideon area, toledo, you know, it's like seven right there, I think I just named up and uh, and just have ai like a calling feature, set me some appointments, you know, because that's all I really need is someone just to pre-qualify businesses and see what their interest is in joining a group like ours. And we used to have a appointment scheduler back when I was here in 2003, 2004. His name was Kevin and this guy would just hit the phones all day, all day, dude. He would crank them and we'd give him a pamphlet of numbers and he would just sit there and he'd crank them and get it done and set appointments for us. So I would like to do that without having to pay somebody, or have the company do that without having to pay somebody, because you know they're going to be a turnover. There's a little bit of a training time and what we do, how it works and all that thing you know of the nature. So if I can program a computer, hey, here we are right.

Speaker 1: 9:12

So I bought uh, well, bought, I guess, leased or bought credits for it's colinio. It's called c-a-l-l-i-n-d or dot io, so, and I don't know if I'll post a link in the description, it doesn't really matter. So I'll get I'm not exactly sponsored by them anyways, and actually I thought about trying to cancel it. I bought credits and then realized that I had this, I guess the wrong perception in my head of what this was going to do for me and I thought it'd be more of a conversational style, I guess, smarter like, than a prompt system. But really what's happening is it's robo-dialing and I don't know, I haven't got an appointment yet for it.

Speaker 1: 9:59

But I also didn't do more than 22 numbers and the 22 numbers that I had to program, for some reason it didn't call properly. Oh yeah, that's right. For some reason it didn't call properly. Oh yeah, that's right. I didn't have a one in the field for the area code or the you know the extension, I guess one. That's what the help feature said. So make sure you do that if you buy it, make sure you have, like you know one, two, one, four, two, four, four, zero, zero, zero, zero, you know. So I just had the two, four, eight area code only and it didn't like that.

Speaker 1: 10:30

So I am tweaking it a bit. There is a knowledge base that you can use with this thing to where I can upload all of my sales literature, the flyers, the brochures, whatever right so and then it draws from that, it reads it and then it draws from that. It's really cool. Actually, the problem is is that when you do that kind of a feature, it's very generic and it seems like not intuitive. So there's another feature on there where you can program it and tell it what you want it to do.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So and the example is like you are a ai, you know robot, your job is to pre or pre-qualify prospects and get a call back with the senior agent and you know set up a time and date. It's really cool because I set it all up last week and I tested it and you connect it to another feature called make I think it's called make or make it and when you do that, you tie your Google Calendar in there and then when you set an appointment, it sets it for you automatically in that appointment over the phone. So it'll say, hey, whatever, you know prompt the. Are you the owner? Blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 11:59

You can even make us say names, you know. You say, hey, are you Tom from whatever? Whatever, yep, yep. And then, okay, well, you know we have a senior agent. He's pretty busy but he's scheduling appointments. Would it be okay if he called you back about you know trade? And they'll say either yes or no. So let's just say they say yes and they say, okay, great, what? Uh, time and day works for you. And I'll say, how about? Uh, wednesday at three? And then it says, okay, I'll set your scheduled. Uh, someone will call you wednesday at three. And then it hangs up, dude, and it does it. And I got a thing in my google calendar uh, appointment, wednesday at three. It gives you the phone number to call and the name. It's awesome.

Speaker 1: 13:36

Now I just need to get it to shorten it down a little bit, because you know people don't have patience for these things, right? So I'm trying to get it to say, hey, I know I'm a robot, it's annoying, but you know, I don't know, I can I'm an AI, maybe something like that and just kind of be forthright with it and just say you know Stu's the only only agent in the area right now can he call you about trade, because you know members are looking for like. Usually, when I call, it's like members looking for likes, to say, a locksmith. So then I go in a tizzy databases, which is like a feature on our library, and it gives you all the databases that are, you know, networked for for the. We call it the database, the a to z, the. I don't even call it but LLC, that's what it is, my register for that. So there's that, and but yeah, so I I have high hopes for it.

Speaker 1: 14:35

I hope it works, and, uh, even if it can schedule me an extra appointment a day, you know, just to like, I guess five a week is good, um, just to have it. But the problem is you got to auto, you got to load the numbers into it, and so it calls think up to 50 or 52 per pop. And the amazing thing is, though, is it does that in seconds. You know, I think you can set it up, for I did. 12 minutes was the longest I let it talk for, and you buy so many minutes for 30 bucks you get, I think it's, three and a half hours is what it calculates out to of talk time, and so then, yeah, if it rings, they don't answer, they don't charge you and it charges by the second instead of by the minute. So it doesn't round up apparently. And yeah, so far, you know, I have high hopes and hope it works. But I'm slightly pessimistic about it because I just don't think it's gonna be that easy. But if it is, I'll take it, you know.

Speaker 1: 15:40

But yeah, the best way that I drum up business I know people hate it it's it's cold calling. It's just you get a bunch of numbers and you say, hey, you know, are you looking to expand some business? Do you? Can you take on some more business? You want to join our group? And well, you know we trade, exchange referrals and you know it's not like it's a hard sale.

Speaker 1: 16:02

I asked for no money up front. We don't get paid until they get paid the application fees 400 bucks but I can usually wave that out to a little bit like 90 days out or year out or sometimes, depending on how bad they're needed. If I can get a business right away, you know, I can try and waive that fee. But uh, it's not. Even then, if you pay the 400 bucks, you can spend that money right away. So it's not like you're really out. You can spend that in trade and then, if I don't get you the business within the first year, boom, you get your money back, minus whatever you spent, of course, but it's kind of like a win-win situation.

Speaker 1: 16:39

So, um, yeah, so, and then the other one was uh, what air? I think it's called open air or air open or something like that, and that is another ai feature I was looking at getting. And if you guys have any ideas or thoughts on this AI thing, let me know, because I'm in the market and I had thought about paying people on Fiverr to make my cold calls for me. I did have a Fiverr rep give me a call list, which ended up being stupid. I could have just done whatever he did for free. I think it was only $5 or $10, though, so it's not like I was out a whole bunch of money. But some guy in pakistan and he, uh, I guess, went through linkedin and then found the names and numbers and the business owner's name and then just gave them to me. You know an excel file, so that wasn't so bad, but I, like I said I can do that anyways. It saved me time, but an effort. Um, honestly, though, I don't think I got any new members off of that call list, so, and, like I said, it was five bucks and not a big deal.

Speaker 1: 17:45

I can usually tell by um, certain things if I know that a number is going to be a good call generally, and then just by how long they've been in business, what they do, how much business I have for them and things like that. So there's that, but yeah, I don't know, we'll find out. All this may be in vain, anyways, because today is May 27th and supposedly there's going to be a big event today that is going to mark, you know, some world thing. I guess, I don't know. I guess russia hit ukraine with 330 drones and everyone's ticked off about it, so maybe that was it, I don't know, but, uh, yesterday it was 300, so I can't exactly say that was a huge event.

Speaker 1: 18:31

But whatever, um, I am always looking out for, kind of I like the fear-mongering thing, I guess, uh, you know, for the prepping and camping and trailers and all that stuff. I'm, you know, I was in the air force and I was in survival school, so, uh, there's a little part of me that says I'd like to kind of try and use that again one day. So anyway, maybe it's with AI, maybe it's not, maybe AI will make me do that, maybe it's the whatever. So you know what I promised I would in my review of this coffee maker that I bought, and I wish I was sponsored by GE. I really do ge, I really do uh. But, and when you use a product that is just stellar in performance and uh and delivers, you gotta spread the word man. So I'm gonna go ahead and talk about this ge profile thing real quick and just kind of give them a little bit of credit where credit is due, because they they nailed it with this thing.

Speaker 1: 19:30

So I had a really cool under counter or under cabinet mounted where it's suspended in there, uh, black and decker, uh, from the 80s or 90s, whatever it was. I bought on ebay. It was a new, used or new, new, old, I guess they call it brand new in the box. But you know, from some warehouse probably a new deli, I don't know and uh, it's sort of leaking on me. I mean, the thing is old, it's probably what, 30 years old, as it was sitting in a box. But, um, you can't buy them like that. No more, you can't buy under cabinet mounted coffee makers to get to give you your counter space back, right?

Speaker 1: 20:07

So I was like what the heck, I'll try it. You know, it was like I, what the heck, I'll try it. You know, it was like I don't know $100, $135 or something like that for this thing and I used it, like I use it every day, twice a day, you know. So it owes me nothing, I guess. So then, after that, it started leaking. Then I went to pour over. I used to do French press, now I'm back to pour over, did pour over and it just ended up being a thing where I got impatient with it and it kept overflowing on me and the beans kept spilling onto the countertop because I overfilled it and I got these new filters, blah, blah, blah, right. So I was like, all right, I'm done with this thing.

Speaker 1: 20:47

So then my wife talked me into why don't you just buy a nice coffee maker? My god man, you drink coffee every day. You go to bed so you can have coffee sooner, right? I literally wake up. The reason I wake up is for coffee. Sometimes it's like my gig man, so she's like you enjoy coffee, so just buy a nice one. Like oh man, I don't want to spend, like you know they're, if you already go to sir lot table or whatever it's called. They have three, four thousand dollar coffee makers and I'm just like see, my, my benefit is I don't like cream, I don't like the sugar.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Like sugar is okay, but it can be too much and then I miss the bitterness. So I don't like cream, creamer, froth, foam flavorings, I don't like flavored coffee. So when I had a keurig, I didn't use the Keurig for what its intended purposes was to try a new flavor. Every morning I bought the same thing because it is like black, pure black coffee. That's it. And my favorite, of course, is Kona, which is wicked expensive, but I digress, yeah. So I Asked perplexity AI and I said hey, I, what's a coffee maker I want to be able to like.

Speaker 1: 21:58

Oh, by the way, the feature of the turn on and brew feature, I don't. It doesn't work for me because I don't sleep. So having it start every morning at 6 am, I never utilized it. I would do it, but inevitably I'll be up at 4 o'clock in the morning, so I would just bypass the feature and turn it on anyways, you know. And then, when it was on, I forgot about it because, whatever, it's the weekend and maybe I got to sleep in or left the house and went and did chores outside and I forgot about it. You know what I mean. So I just never used it.

Speaker 1: 22:35

So I wanted something I could turn on with my phone, with an app, and that way I could wake up in bed, turn over, hit it, turn it on, and then I got coffee by the time I get downstairs. And then I wanted something that can do. I like the fact that you can do a single brew without having to use pods. That's neat. And then also the reusable baskets. But I don't like that because I think that makes a huge mess. So, even though they're reusable mesh baskets, I end up using the filters anyways, just to help with the cleanup effort. And then, what else? Baskets I end up using the filters anyways, just to help with the cleanup effort.

Speaker 1: 23:01

And then, um, what else I forgot? Oh, and it had to have a grinder built in, like a burr grinder, right, okay. And so the ai turned me on to, in two or three different searches, the same one for that fit my exact needs, which is the ge profile man, the profile dude, they it. It's got this thing. I never heard of this. The SCA, the something cup of association, it's a gold standard coffee group that, I guess, certifies coffee makers for their ideal standards, and so it's called gold and the style of coffee that you drink there's like light, gold, medium, dark and then very dark or something like that. So I was like okay, cool. So I tried it and this thing is phenomenal, dude, best cup of coffee ever had. I'm still playing with it.

Speaker 1: 23:57

Like there's six different grinder settings with the burr grinder and I can't really find the difference. What you got to do is line them all up, do all six shots, taste them and then have your comparison all up front. But over the course of the week that I'm trying to adjust the settings I can't find I forget about yesterday, man, I don't know where to taste it. I thought about writing it down, but I'm no connoisseur anyway. Then you can adjust like the grind time by like negative two seconds or plus two seconds, and then you can adjust the bloom time, which is, I think, zero up to 30 seconds, which is the bloom time with if you don't know if you have fresh ground beans. If you, once you squirt or spray a little water on the beans, they fluff up because the carbon dioxide is escaping from the beans. Then they settle back down again. So you can adjust that time, the bloom time, and I think the gold standard, from what I read, was, uh, 20 seconds. There's no like. For some reason you can't adjust that. Um, on the gold, it's just everything's all locked in. So, but I want to know where I was starting with when I want to play with it, like what do I like, you know, with the bloom time of gold? I think it's 20 seconds. And then where do I want to adjust it, you know? And then, um, god, there's another one strength settings, oh, brew temperature, I think, all the way down to 185 to 203, I think is the highest this thing can do, and a gold standard is 200.

Speaker 1: 25:24

I'm talking a lot about a coffee maker that, uh, that I'm not even sponsored by, but I gotta tell you, if you're into coffee, get this profile thing and start messing with it. It's fun. I gotta get off this whole gold thing and start playing more and the bloom time. I did once and then, like I said, I gotta have it all in front of me, though. All and then where do you start with? You start with a grind, like size, I think, first, and then the brew time, then the bloom time, then the strength. I mean it's very overwhelming. So I just like that. There's that gold standard that is supposed to be the best coffee temperature, time, grind, all of that. All you know like that that the standard is. So, anyway, that's where I'm at with this whole coffee maker. I went on for seven minutes about a coffee maker and I'm getting paid for it, but, uh, if you skip through, you made it cool, if not. Now you know all about this ge profile and that you should try it.

Speaker 1: 26:20

$400, though Be careful, I think it was $380. If you want the stainless steel one, you've got to get it on Amazon. It's an Amazon exclusive, but the one is black, so I got the Amazon $380. $402, I mean with tax and all that stuff. So $400 and a coffee maker. But you know what? I drink half a pot a day, so I love it. Uh, again, check out michigan renaissance festival. Uh, I'll be giving away tickets, hopefully soon, and then we will go from there. All right, whatever you do, be good or be good at it.