SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I'm your host, Thomas Helfrick, and I'm on this mission to help you own your own success by cutting the ties to whatever it is holding you back in life. Um I'm I'm really passionate as an entrepreneur myself that people do this because it's it's very disappointing as people kind of get to where they wanted to go in life and they realize that, oops, that wasn't what I really wanted. And there's lots of stuff to tell them back from it. So as we meet entrepreneurs like we are today with Ryan Miller. Ryan, how are you? I'm doing wonderful. Thanks for having me. You know, as we meet guys like you, we're gonna learn about your journey and who you are. So let's start with that. Who are you and what is it you do?

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

Thanks, Thomas. Uh, my name is Ryan Miller. I my background's in sales, and I about two years ago realized that I think I could automate uh the worst part of sales with AI. So I started an AI company. Um, we have a startup, uh, we do outreach, and it's all AI driven. Um, that also allowed me to leave my home in Florida and move to Florianopolis, Brazil. And so I live in Brazil right now. I'm an expat. And uh we are making huge advancements in in how outreach can be automated and how efficiency can be driven and um really changing the game of the effectiveness of outreach. So that's that's me in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21

I mean, that it I think it's cool you're doing the uh, you know, the live somewhere else, different cost basis, different experience in life. I think that's beautiful. Uh you know, lead generation is you know, we're in this, we're in the game to some degree with it, with consulting and some execution. It's it's competitive, but it's a weird way to say competitive because there are different variants. There's people who do like$30 a month fully automated, and it I don't know what that is and if it works. And then there's consultancies that charge tens of thousands. Uh where do you guys fall in the niche of this?

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

That's a great question. You know, uh, one thing I've learned over the past two years of doing outreach, um, and I was doing outreach far before it was automated. You know, I did outreach, I did cold calling, I didn't door knocking. Uh, if I had a dollar for every time a door has been slammed in my face, you know, uh, I'd have a lot of dollars. And um, I've come to realize that everyone these days, or a lot of those cheaper options, are using kind of the old IBM playbook. Um, it was IBM, it was Salesforce. It's the playbook of if we send out enough messages and get it in front of enough people, we're going to find those people that have enough pain that they will work with the first person that you know comes through their door. And that isn't a good strategy. I mean, it worked for them, um, but these days everyone is using that strategy. Everyone is spamming everyone. And I don't know about you, Thomas, but I get about a hundred messages per day in my LinkedIn with people shoving a pitch down my throat. And they all are saying the same things, and I ignore all of them. And so Zenith Project is trying to cut, break that mold, and I'm sure you guys are doing something similar with your outreach service. Um we reach out based on their posts. We try to personalize everything, everything. There's zero templating at Zenith Project. Everything is uh AI driven. So we use AI to help personalize it. Um, but then everything is human reviewed because if you don't have that human element and and keep a human layer in between your messaging and the person receiving that messaging, you're gonna go right into the the the spam bucket along with everyone else reaching out with that IBM strategy. Do you do you see something similar in your experience?

SPEAKER_01: 3:46

I I see a lot of mass emailing. I actually see a lot of over AI automation going on too. Uh we used in the tech. Uh I I I turned on the AI automation one day to see how the thing replied, and I forgot about it for like a week. And it came in and like, man, that thing made me sound like an expert in employer branding. I'm like, holy cow, I what is this? And I even just emailed the guy, I'm like, my AI took off here. Here's my calendar, like if you want to chat. And he's like, ah, okay. I was like, man, I have like the the technology doesn't sometimes give me the boundary to say, hey, limit your replies to two or three, but push them to this one thing, right? Like, like answer the call to action and say, hey, listen, why don't we just have a conversation? Like, just keep pushing people to my link. Like it, the some of the text out there. So I'm seeing this across the board. Um, I'm actually okay being AI automated out in the outreach when I see it, as long as the kind of message sequencing is fairly like clear. Like, listen, I'm just reaching out to people. This is what I do. If you want to find time, great. Otherwise, uh, here's some content I'll post. I'm cool with that message all day long. Yeah, all right, I'll jump in. If I have an interest, I'll jump with you. But but it's when it's like too personalized, or like like no one cares that much on a first it's like that doesn't work either.

SPEAKER_00: 4:57

So that's true. Um, we we've had to tone down sometimes the AI. Some of the things we see a lot is the AI is very enthusiastic, uh, and it will pull in all of the context that it knows about.

SPEAKER_01: 5:10

Um, and one of the things I get a pub before my speech recently you lost a child and have cancer, and and how we tell you how that relates to your post on nanoscience.

SPEAKER_00: 5:18

Like, I know. Well, and that that's the meme on LinkedIn. Whereas like, oh yeah, my my parents both died in a car crash. This is what it taught me about sales.

SPEAKER_01: 5:29

Like, that's that's not the kind of back up like four years, we were we were on OpenAI's beta before it was chat GPD, and we were turned this thing on for automated commenting. And and I looked at one of my comments one day and it said that my comment literally was my dad was also an NFL star and died in a plane crash. I'm like, my dad's alive and was an optometrist. Um, it was like, holy cow, like turn that thing off. But the funny thing is, I still see some kind of version of that in this current AI where it just try to like enthusiastically relate. Uh so talk about your strategy a little bit of how you're the reason I bring that up, not for just for humor context, but for what you guys do, uh is you know, you have you talking about your journey in sales a little bit, but tell me how you're solving that a bit because that that's that's the nuance, I think, where it happens, where it works, or it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00: 6:20

Yeah, and I'm happy to uh uh pull back the curtain a little bit. Uh everyone listening, feel free to steal this idea. Um, so what we realized is that AI is very good at accomplishing small goals. You know, it's you've probably all heard, you know, uh it's like a you know, a new intern. You can give it small tasks and it completes those rather well. And so the the concept is trying to break a sales conversation up into smaller tasks where the objection, objective is actually evolving throughout the conversation. So at the start of a sales conversation, a cold sales conversation on LinkedIn, you're gonna have a very different objective for the AI message generation than at the end. Because if you try and have the same objective throughout the conversation, it's just going to be falling back on the pitch, basically. It's gonna say, I know this is how I can get convinced people to set a meeting. I'm gonna send this messaging. That's not what you want to do. You wanna start by getting them in involved in the conversation, asking curiosity-driven questions, building rapport, and then pivot that to asking about their challenges and try and guide them to the subject that you want to talk about. So we have built a structure that actually feeds these evolving objectives to the AI. And we have another AI agent that's kind of managing that process where it's trying to understand in the conversation where it's at and where that other AI should go.

SPEAKER_01: 7:57

It it's interesting. Uh, it depends on your I think your ICP a bit, your ideal customer profile, because I don't want to have a back and forth conversation on it. I want someone just to get to it. Other people do. And and so I think some so how do you hand any of the contextual data for that? Because that's because I honestly, if you did that for me, I usually reply back, hey, you need to work on your sequencing. I have no interest in the five things you just sent me.

SPEAKER_00: 8:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 8:19

Just tell me what you do, and I'll tell you if I'm interested in it now. Like, like uh, talk to me about your kind of AI piece with that, because that that persona matters. Uh, because the person who does what you just described will never get me out on call, but the person who's very brief and probably will.

SPEAKER_00: 8:34

So no, and and you hit the nail on the head. Uh, one of the ways we built it was uh to be flexible for the client's needs in the sequencing length. So we can actually set up the sequence to be two messages. One nice, warm and fuzzy rapport-building message, and then a straight talk. Here's what I do well. This is how I can help you. What do you say? We hop on a call. About half of our clients use that to great success. But in sales, I'm you you're in sales as well. You know how important mirroring is. There are also some of your prospects that are gonna fall into that um, you know, the the isolated, what do you call it, um, the exclusionary category that actually do want to have the conversation and they don't want the direct pitch. They don't want to hear about it, they want to chat about what they're posting about or something before they get to, okay, now I'm ready to hear what you're all about. And so even for those clients that have the short cadence of sequence, um, it still helps to have the human oversight because the human can step in and say, you know, it doesn't feel like the the vibe in the room is a right to pitch, you know, our normal short straight pitch message already to spot in the conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

What one of the uh greatest connection requests automations ever ran was only this. All I wrote was ooh, oh like four O's and an H. Dun dun dun. Tell me more about company.

SPEAKER_00: 10:07

Ooh. Tell me about this. Tell me more about ABC Company.

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

Yeah, just tell me it's ooh, tell me more about this. Which gives them kind of interest. Like, oh, are they interested in me? What's going on? And so uh I've ran that one to effect. I've also, I'll tell you what, the other one I would tell people to take this is if you don't know, it's better to say nice to connect. Do you want the long or short version of me? Introduction. Yeah, and like that. It invites them to say no version or short version, cool. Quick reply, right? Long version, great. Um uh or do you want to pitch slap me or should I pitch slap you? Something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 10:45

Like like I think the place the place that would miss is that the the people that do appreciate rapport building pivoting to a sales conversation, but they wouldn't accept it if you offered it to them. Because if you said, Hey, do you want to have a quick, you know, three to five messages back and forth building rapport, and then I'll tell you about my company, they're gonna say, you know, I I don't want to go through that process.

SPEAKER_01: 11:10

Now, if you just there's a there's a group that would be like, Hey, do you want three to five messages of us rapport building, or would you rather just network for 10 minutes on a call? Yeah, that like something like yeah, like look at we can decide to disconnect if it if it doesn't make sense, though. That is effective. Now, also some that eliminates the serious side, to be fair.

SPEAKER_00: 11:29

The point is you can AI they can play your each way. That will get you meetings, but not necessarily qualified meetings. And that's another thing that we try and do is we try and not waste our clients' time because our clients' time is very valuable. Um, and so we don't want to just set them networking meetings that might go somewhere. We need to uncover in that situation, in that conversation, the fact that they need something from us and that we can provide it, we can solve that problem for them.

SPEAKER_01: 11:57

Now, this goes and that's a really good valid point. So in our ICP, our stuff is typically we use the podcast as uh as a top of the funnel for many. So I'm knowing their position and the fact that they're they have some level of success, we can help them. It's just they're gonna they need it or not. And that but we with the podcast in place, it it still helps because it is it is a there's a piece that they're gonna always have that conversation. And it's usually never wasted if my yeah, they'd still be a good guest. They have this. So it there's a lot of variables, I guess is my point that goes into this. Um, let's just take a pivot here for a minute for you. Just in your current business, what's kind of the biggest metaphoric tie that you're struggling with right now? I think to kind of cut, get over, get, you know, to go next level.

SPEAKER_00: 12:38

The biggest tie is honestly being a service company. Um, I do not want to be a service company anymore. I want to pivot into being a software company. And that will cut all sorts of ties because, you know, the valuation of software companies, the scalability, the, the ease of running, the requirement of staff. Um, and we are very close to that level. You know, you and I have had conversations, Thomas, before about white labeling my software for your agency, other agencies, and they using their labor as the copywriters, because that's kind of integral to the Zenith Project offering. You have that human in the loop, but other agencies can use Zenith Project software to get this massive level up uh with the AI suggesting 80% of the hental uh heavy mental uh gymnastics that you have to do to come up with very clever and strategic sales conversation messaging. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 13:41

Yeah. And I think so. I think the the we had talked about this a little offline. So you could be at just another lead gen company. Uh what you guys are developing specifically to me, and and I just kind of we're openly just kind of talking about the solution of this, what you're doing. I think what you could offer to other AI lead gen companies as a plug-in for theirs would be the better play. Because you're like, hey, we actually give you the contextual stuff beyond what's going to be in anything you're doing. So your stuff just works better, like a middle layer, if you will. Uh, and then that way you're not ever in trouble with any of the social media platforms for you're just taking data and you're doing something with it to give advice to somebody else trying to do something. That middle layer becomes definitely makes you more, you know, uh viable. And and people can like, you know, obviously, hey, listen, you know, it's eight dollars per user that you you have on yours, and now you you have these, you know, de-risk revenue micro all over, and they're just plugging in your stuff to make their stuff more effective. I think that there's a there's a market for that because some of the stuff we described is so nuance-based. Like, who's Thomas? Who's Ryan? Who wants this? What mood's he in? What's his post been? That they've been more about this or that. The the point is if you can get that nuance really narrowed down to what that person might like, that'd be humorous, are they not like all these things? What's their current intent? That that would be applicable against anybody's own version of their services of it of it. Anyway, so I I think as you look, you know, it's the pickaxe, right? For the gold rush, if you will. Uh there's uh rush, you know, I you and I talked about this too. Like, we're I'm pivoting more like I just want to verify companies can do what they say they can do because there's so many who can't. Yeah, you get burnt. And so like that, so you look at these pivots, but how do you feel about that? Like kind of being a you can have your own version of the thing, but like you can have technology that could be applied to all the Apollo data that's out there, all the seamless data that's out there. Yeah, I mean, like so so I got build is something more valuable than just lead gen.

SPEAKER_00: 15:34

I I'm a fan of vertical vertical integration, you know. I if if I can capture every part of the the the customer lifecycle, then we're gonna try because you know having all of that in one ecosystem is gonna be way more convenient for the client. Um plugging our software into something like Apollo is actually gonna be so easy, just because that's a an API feed between the databases. Um, and that is the vision for Zenith project, is it's going to basically be a CRM that you have all of your enriched data flow into, and then we do your LinkedIn, we do your email, we do your Facebook, we do your texting, and all of it has that human layer in it because AI isn't ready to automate yet. Like when I get an AI message and it's like two paragraphs of AI text, I don't read it and I'm offended by that person because they didn't read it either. I know they didn't read it, and they're expecting me to take five minutes to to to write their AI message. It's over.

SPEAKER_01: 16:41

I tell it drive me nuts too. Like this literally just happened before my meeting here. Like, I'm trying to meet somebody to help us with a client for employer branding, just what it is. And the person was like, Hey, I'll give you a call, or and I'm like, I never do phone calls. I didn't even anyway. And then I'm like, they're like, Why can't you call talk for two minutes? And I'm like, I'm about to go on a podcast. And they're like, that's sketchy. And I'm like, you want me to call you for a long-term partnership because you're in a car. I'm like, set up time, get with me face to face. It's like some people have this like sketchiness, this kind of like the they they they've like they read into what you do too much based on based on your initial interactions, right or wrong. This this person who did this, but I'm kind of like, you give a perspective. If you send an AI message initially, and it's clearly like so in depth and perfectly written, it it's a dehumanized without calling to the fact that it's been dehumanized. You're kind of like, oh, whatever. Like this is just yes, I'm not really important to you, is what you're communicating to me. Yes. And and honestly, like Ruby lowercase typos, I throw them all in there. Like, listen, I'm actually writing this shit. I'm not, but my AI writes me in typo format.

SPEAKER_00: 17:49

When I see one of my copywriters make uh a spelling mistake, I'm like, good, that doesn't look like AI, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 17:57

I use AI to say, listen, all lowercase uh use dot dot dot instead of dashes, uh, throw occasional text version typo in there. You are versus, you know, use the like write it like you did in text, like I wrote for my mobile phone.

SPEAKER_00: 18:11

That's good. I I also one of the biggest rules for my copywriters, and this is for everyone that's you editing AI text, is deletion is your friend with AI. AI will include context that the reader already knows and that isn't needed to be said explicitly. Um, and it will also just elaborate on things that need no elaboration. And so if you take a an eraser to AI text, it's gonna seem way more personal and human.

SPEAKER_01: 18:41

The uh the pros of AI sometimes, like, dude, just say what you have to say and be move on, like right. Yeah. Um but I will tell you no matter how you do it, AI is an incredibly effective tool for helping you with brevity. If you say, just give me brevity on this piece, it's still probably longer and more effective and less ums and ems and thems and the words that does it. Um talked about though. This this is just from the from the purposes of staying on brand or a podcast of cutting ties. You're you don't want to be a services company, shocker. Let's talk about that a little bit. There's a lot of people out there that are you know, it's it's how you get started typically as an entrepreneur. You start doing things yourself that you were gonna get paid for someone else paid you to do. Totally normal. Um tell me how you're making that move though. Like it's more than thing just to go to technology. Are you do you have mentors? Like, what actually happens for you to go from services to more of a SaaS?

SPEAKER_00: 19:36

Great question. Great question. My main mentor, uh, who you are familiar with, Lee Coulter, um, he has been pushing me to go software, the software route since the beginning, since I told him about my idea to create this AI driven outreach company. Um, so I definitely have out uh mentors in the software to service to software space. Um, the other thing. Is that proof of concept is really necessary when selling a software. You have to be able to show people that they can recreate the results that you created with the software. And if you haven't proven it out, then you can't show them anything. And so that's one of the reasons we've been a service company for the past year and a half. And now we have incredibly rich results and testimonials from our clients who have used our service when we were using our software and have seen great results from it. And so I can show that to agencies and say you can recreate these testimonials. You can be a franchise, basically, of Zenit's project. It's similar to how you know McDonald's is the corporation of McDonald's is not a restaurant company. They're a franchise company. Oh, they're a real estate company. Yeah, they are.

SPEAKER_01: 20:53

It's a real estate company that has things on it.

SPEAKER_00: 20:56

This is true. This is true. That's that's how Burger King actually figured out how to put their restaurants, is they just put them near McDonald's because McDonald's already did all the research on the real if you want to go figure out where to go buy houses or buy land, go find where the next quick trip is.

SPEAKER_01: 21:12

And for the next uh you see Walmart, 20 years from now, that place will have 20x to people around it. So go get go get a lot of five acres somewhere because someone's gonna want to go buy it for something because they they exactly it's like exactly and yeah, go ahead. You want a rehab, go find a Starbucks that's in a location. Like, why is that here? Because there's a degentrification coming to this area they already know about. And there you go.

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

They they've done all the research, they have the teams, they have the resources. Uh, believe them.

SPEAKER_01: 21:43

That's one of my favorite phrases. Sorry, Ryan, conscious time here. Just tell first of all, people where they should go to check you out, check out the product, uh, and and and you know, get a hold of you.

SPEAKER_00: 21:51

Absolutely. So zenithproject.co uh is our website. You can feel free to go read about us there. Um, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. My uh handle is Ryan Miller HQ. Um and my email is Ryan at zenithproject.co uh and you can reach me there. Uh those are great ways. All right.

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

Let's leave the listener with like uh just three pieces of advice. Something you should always do when leveraging AI and reach out, one and something you should never do, and then surprise me with the third.

SPEAKER_00: 22:26

Okay. So something you should always do with outreach of AI is read the message before you send it. And read read it, read it out loud. Repeat that. Yes, read the message before you send it. Because AI does hallucinate, and you might get into some pretty embarrassing situations with what AI says on your behalf. Um, or have someone read it for you, you know, like CF Ride. Yes, absolutely. Yes. Um, so something to never do with um AI outreach, I would say, is uh use out-of-the-box um Chat GPT messaging. Like put some thought into what prompting, what what iterations of the AI messaging you want to get to. Because if you use the generic, you know, if you use M dashes uh in your messaging, you're that is going to come across really bad to potential prospects. They're used about GDPT, right?

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

No matter how many times it's helped to stop doing that, it still puts them in there. I'm like, can you never use a dash again and leave all emojis dead forever? And it's like, yeah, here's emoji with a thumbs up.

SPEAKER_00: 23:35

I'm like, god damn it. The the M dash is, I don't know why AI likes it so much.

SPEAKER_01: 23:39

I think it's actually uh proper, proper uh grammar is why I've oh it was fun new phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00: 23:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:46

Someone who like uh what was a my co-founder, his wife is like a linguist or whatever, and she's like, that's actually the proper way to do it. No one ever does it. So now her her stuff looks GPT-ish. I'm like, well, you gotta quit doing it.

SPEAKER_00: 23:58

I know. I you I used N dashes, so there's three types of dashes there's n dashes and m-dashes. M-dashes are basically used in places of commas or to um you know split a sentence fragment out. Um, and they they're phenomenal. They're so nice to read. Uh they're they're wonderful to write if you know how to. They're kind of hard to, but um, but yeah, I I kind of miss using m-dashes, but I I don't I don't use them anymore. And I have all of my AI's programs to not use them.

SPEAKER_01: 24:30

All right. So okay, so one is to read it. What was the thing you should uh is that always do or never do?

SPEAKER_00: 24:35

Not do? Yeah. Yeah, the the thing you should always do is read it. The thing you should not do is use m-dashes uh or use out-of-the-box AI. You know, uh definitely develop your own AI. The third thing to uh surprise you. Um well, let's see. Does it have to be about AI or can it be about MI? I mean, it'd be cool if it was, but you know. Okay, let's let's think of an AI one really quick.

SPEAKER_01: 25:02

Give me like some maybe maybe a surprising thing you didn't know you could do with AI that you're some people most some of your customers are like, oh, I didn't know you could do that. Like, what would be an answer to that?

SPEAKER_00: 25:12

My my favorite use of AI is um reformatting massive sets of data. I this is kind of specific to me anyway, because I'm a data nerd, but you can put in massive amounts of data and ask it to reformat in a specific way, and it'll do it perfectly. Um, so you know, data reformatting or slight changes to massive amounts of text is something that AI does for breakfast.

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

Yeah, I I'll extend that. You know what I use AI for is I have it I export our transactions and our accounting and books and say, look at this, and what do you see? Like what what what do you see here? And what what's it cost to run this company and when did when should we hold reserves? It's amazing. So um uh listen, Ryan, thanks for so much coming on today. I appreciate it. Absolutely uh get a hold of Ryan, Ryan, give him your uh your place to go one more time if you don't mind. Zenithproject.co thanks Ryan for coming on today. I appreciate you. You too. Thanks, Thomas. Listen, everyone who's still listening, get out there, go cut a tie to whatever's holding you back. Make sure to follow the podcast, subscribe, and if you really liked it, do five stars, nothing less. Five and only five. That's all we accept. Okay, thanks for listening.