AI Announcer (00:05)
Good evening and welcome to Prompt This, the podcast crafted especially for business leaders who had it up to here with all the AI hype and are craving the genuine article. Join Clint and Greg as they cut through the cacophony, delivering sharp analysis and actionable playbooks for harnessing AI to ignite fresh ideas, scale your enterprise, and ensure you're not left in the dust. Now, without further ado, let's meet your hosts.
Greg (00:28)
Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Greg. My co-host, Clint and I started this podcast to explore how business leaders are using AI in the real world. We have so many friends and colleagues building with AI, we decided to bring them on one by one to share their stories. And that's prompt this.
Clint (00:48)
I'm Clint. I started a software company years ago where we delivered AI powered customer relationship management tools. After a great run with that company and breaking through the hundred million dollar mark in revenue, I figured it time for something new. The obvious answer was to get deeper into today's AI tech revolution, but I just didn't know much about all the great innovations happening right now.
So I teamed up with Greg and we started asking every business leader we could find what they were doing with AI, courting the conversations and turning them into this podcast.
Greg (01:21)
And again, I'm Greg. I'm having a great time being a podcast host diving into real world experiences of business leaders using AI and marketing and sales. After years of running record breaking sales teams leading with AI, it's amazing to hear what others are doing around the industry. So hey Clint, what'd you think of the voice on this one?
Clint (01:42)
You've got a new AI intro voice. That's cool. Way more realistic.
Greg (01:47)
Yeah, I'm starting to figure it out. Yeah, this copilot thing is pretty easy and, and, ⁓ the more I play with it, I'm starting to really tune it in.
Clint (01:55)
Now you shifted from a female voice to a male voice, so it's good to mix it up in there, absolutely. But are we going to try more?
Greg (02:02)
Yeah, don't
get too comfortable. There's going to be a new one next time. We still haven't nailed down our go-to voice yet.
Clint (02:11)
So, you know, looking back on today's interview, I certainly enjoyed learning from somebody I've known and respected for a long time. No doubt about that. But you know, Greg, there ⁓ was a definite surprise moment for me in there where our guest was sharing all the great things he's doing with AI inside of his business. But then he confessed to very unconventional approach in how he positions AI with his prospects.
Greg (02:38)
Yeah, definitely. I like the way his hands-on experience using AI has shaped his views, and it comes through loud and clear in this episode. So let's jump into the episode.
Clint (02:58)
Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Clint.
Greg (03:01)
And I'm Greg.
Clint (03:02)
And I'm pleased to have as our guest today, a guy I've known for a while, one of the smartest generalists I've ever met, Christian Vettra. He's the general manager of Technology Coast Partners, a technology consulting firm focused on AI, CRM, and ERP. And here's the most important part. He's a guy that gets stuff done.
Christian (03:25)
Clint, you're too kind. It's wonderful to be here, Greg. Clint, thanks for inviting me. I look forward to this for a week now, and I look forward to having a nice, conversation.
Clint (03:37)
Well, hey, let's get to know you a little bit better here, Christian. What's technology Coast Partners all about? What are you doing there?
Christian (03:43)
Yeah, so Technology Co's partner, what we do is we bridge the gap between ERP and CRM. So we're a bunch of domain experts. We've been in the business for quite a while, both on the ERP side and the CRM side. And our whole mission is to work with manufacturers and distributors and deliver both CRM and ERP. But beyond that, bridge the gap between the two so that sellers who typically use CRM can work with the production people and the finance people who typically use ERP, but work
seamlessly together. So that's kind of our mission.
Greg (04:16)
What got you into that space? How'd you pick that space?
Christian (04:19)
That started with Clint at Sugar. So obviously my whole career has been in CRM primarily, but when we got to Sugar, we started focusing in on some specific verticals. We started focusing in on manufacturing and ⁓ wholesale distribution. And I had started that also before we got to Sugar with our...
current integration company that I was working for before then, we focused in on manufacturing. So I came to Sugar with a little bit of manufacturing ⁓ background, some customers in manufacturing and kind of was in the ⁓ land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king or queen. I was good enough to lead up in manufacturing and then, know, then.
Clint (05:00)
Good enough.
Christian (05:07)
kept on doing that. And when I left Sugar, it's like, well, you know, I'm just going to keep doing this. I've already got a good start to CRM manufacturing. I joined up with an ERP company and that's been a lot of fun.
Clint (05:18)
That's one of things
that we found when we working together, Greg, was that ⁓ and I both saw that you got all this data in the company in the side of your CRM system. You got all this data in your company stuck in your ERP system. And the real magic is when you look at both together. And that's where AI comes into play. And so maybe that's a good segue to talk more about what you're doing with AI at your company, Christian.
Christian (05:42)
Yeah. So we're a small company. We're about 15 people in our company. So that means we all have to do a lot of different things. And we have as a generalist, you know, it's really helpful to have a sidekick that helps me do things and accelerate what I do as a generalist. And that's really, but everybody else in the company as well. So AI is a way for, I think a smaller company to level up and, and compete with bigger companies, have more resources, probably even be more nimble.
than some of the bigger companies because a small company can use AI tools probably quicker, can adopt them quicker than a larger company can, which has to go through a lot of red tape and security rules.
Greg (06:23)
We're finding the most common entry point with these small companies.
Christian (06:27)
Well, it starts, think, everybody starts with ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and the LLMs, but then it becomes, you where is it that we need to do things? where I probably, where I spend most of my time is actually on like video production. And I wasn't actually a video producer in any way, my, lot of, I'm taking responsibility for marketing in my company. And so a lot of it is deals with how do we, how do we get short form content and video and very easily consumable ways of explaining what we're doing out to people.
So I spent a lot of time on using things like Descript for editing, know, video conversations like this, using HeyGen to create explainers and demo videos. So that's, you know, it's probably the most kind of impactful on a day to day, aside from, you know, ChatGPT, which is my sidekick on my left hand screen here. And I use for pretty much everything all day.
Greg (07:20)
What tool do you think has wowed you the most?
Christian (07:23)
Hey Jen. ⁓
Greg (07:27)
I don't
Clint (07:29)
Every time I have this conversation, learn about a new company that the other person is saying, I love it. I haven't even heard of it yet.
Christian (07:36)
Tell us about HeyGen. Yeah, so my challenge is, ⁓ usually in traditional demonstrations of software, go out, you solicit a demo with somebody, spend half an hour, 45 minutes demonstrating software. Maybe you do a webinar and you spend a half an hour webinar or a 45 minute webinar, but it's too long. And I was comparing how much time I was asking from my customer with what I'm saying is my main message.
it towards the sales organizations that I'm selling to is I'm trying to help them save non-selling time, right? Eliminate non-selling time from my customers. So, you know, I got to shorten this. I got to shorten, I got to get the message out about this product faster. So to do that, I wanted to create a five minute demo. I figured I want to convey what I have to sell in five minutes, not three minutes, right? that's a lot. Yeah.
Clint (08:26)
I love it though.
Christian (08:28)
Yeah, like, but if three people or two people like us come together to demo software before you know it, an hour has gone by.
Clint (08:34)
Yeah.
Greg (08:35)
Now you're singing my tune here save selling time saves attention right there
Christian (08:41)
So that was my mission. It's like, I got to create a demo that does just as good a job as a half an hour demo in five minutes. So that means, okay, I'm have to learn to be a little bit of a movie director and create scenes and think about it and plan it all out and then compress it into five minutes. And Hey Jen, Hey Jen, let me do that. Let me pull in the video snippets.
create an AI personality, write the script, have the person speak the script in a natural way, really blows my mind.
Greg (09:11)
That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell you how many years spent time talking about, ⁓ you know, having one person be able to go the first mile, right? You got him take this sales call the first mile. can't take three people with you. And this has to be qualified before you bring the rest of the team. And now you got thing, you know, what are you're just describing right there is a, you know, solve that and more. I got five miles by now.
Christian (09:37)
The short form is the challenge. think that's the challenge for me, selling a product. It's a challenge for you, selling your podcast. How do you get somebody's attention in the three seconds they're willing to give you? how do you find them and ⁓ get that three seconds in front of them? So shortening the timeframes, being more effective in conveying information, that's something these tools are really, really good at. And that's what I'm trying to use them for.
Clint (10:04)
We used ChatGPT non-stop to come up with our focus and our key ⁓ messaging and branding and everything like that. It's a wonderful tool to help you just kind of cut through the noise and get right to the heart of what you're trying to say.
Christian (10:20)
Yeah, and I think one mistake I'm trying to avoid is just using the LLMs and the tools by themselves. Like, even whether it's myself or another human involved, is how do I get a human touch to it? for instance, know, ChatGPT and some of the tools, like Gemini can create amazing graphics.
But I don't want to load out the graphic by itself. It can create an article or a text, but you make a mistake if you load that text into a blog article by itself or into an email message by itself. So I do combine it with humans in the right degree to create something that's better, that's machine and human working together. That's better.
Greg (11:04)
How are you finding you? You said you have 15 people in the company. You know, I can tell you've got a deep interest in all of this. How are you finding the other people coming around with the tools that you have on board there?
Christian (11:17)
Not everybody has the same level of access. I have the luxury of plonking down $200 a month for a ChatGPT and not everybody can do that. I think everybody's using it to some extent, but not everybody has the same drive to press it to its purpose. I think that is the realm of the generalist, curious generalist with a lot of resources.
are so interested in it that maybe they spend too much time on learning these tools. But that's the nature of it. They're pressing the envelope. Here's something new, and I want to master it. I want to understand it. I want to use it.
Greg (11:57)
What tools have you worked with and disappointed you? Give a couple that you just threw out the window after giving it a good try.
Christian (12:10)
there's so many, there's so many sales tools have disappointed me. Like, you know, I've tried a bunch of like tools to get out messaging and send out emails. And, and what I've, what I'm finding is there's a whole crop of tools right now that all have, you know, leads list of 250 million leads and they all can help you identify your ICP and ideal persona. They all can create individual messages for every single one of those 250 million.
prospects if you ask them to and they can deliver emails from like hundreds of email boxes out there. So that's you know that the promise of that of having like a hundred virtual BDRs emailing personalized messages to everybody. That's that sounds amazing. But it's tough to get it to work. You know think there's too many people trying to do the same thing and and email scanning and security is blocking. So
The promise of that is tough, but it's being hyped incredibly out there. There's new companies out there that are trying to do it. I don't want to name any names, but I've seen a bunch of them and been disappointed with several of them and haven't really found something that really does a really solid job across the board where it's something, an area that should have vendors that do a good job, but I haven't seen any. Have you guys?
Clint (13:35)
You've
used those tools before, Greg, the automated SDR tools. What's your experience with them?
Greg (13:40)
I
you know, think he's hitting the nail on the head. you know, when I'm, uh, at the very beginning, you know, it was, was so different and groundbreaking and it did help you really, the reach got out there really, really, you know, really fast. And, you know, the lessons back then were, know, you know, before you go to scale, make sure, uh, you know, if your messaging is, is a junk, then you're going to, you're going to send junk out and scale, you know, now that we're really counting on, you know, the AI to.
create the messaging and to do that and get it out there. ⁓ think the landscape's getting clogged. And when I watch some of the leaders in my space that are, they're all singing the same message. know, there's still a highly, highly involved. Like many of the machines are doing it, but you are highly involved. And ⁓ so I think that's where we're at, you know? And I'm seeing that and just, know, Christian just, you know, back that up, that's for sure.
Clint (14:37)
I've heard the saying recently ⁓ that AI will simplify the complex, but also complicate the simple.
And I think I've run into that. You jump into video editing, like you said, and that's a whole realm that you probably knew nothing about before. You can get some videos going. But then when it comes to fine tuning the videos and getting it very precise, least my experience is that you've to drop out of the AI tool and just get hands on and do it yourself. Is that what you run into, Christian?
Christian (15:09)
There's some of that, I think. ⁓
Descript is a good one for where you can actually do the video editing completely in the tool. you have a linear format, something like this for instance, where you could actually edit the video by just editing the text. You're see if there's a segment where we all say something stupid, you just go in and block it out and delete it and the video gets edited, right? That's really, really cool. ⁓ But I did have conversations with some of our developers, like trying to push them to use some of the
development accelerators tools. you know, could we use some of these AI development tools for being more productive? And I got a real pushback.
You know, there, ends up, you end up, you end up coding things faster to start with. create something faster, but then you spend more time debugging it and, and, and getting it really working well. So the net effect is you spend the same or more time with the AI tool. So there's, there's some of that. So it's, know, even there, you can get started and do some basic things really, really fast, probably faster than a human by itself could. But then it's all the cleaning it up. You know, that takes a lot of time.
Greg (16:21)
When you're out there with customers, what are you finding? What are you using as your approach to making recommendations to AI that that would augment their business?
Christian (16:32)
Not very much really. And I kind of consider it still internal tools for us. We sell a few AI-based tools for ⁓ analyzing questions in ERP databases and such, but it is in its infancy. ⁓ The challenging questions that come up have to do with security very quickly.
So if you're in any kind of size company and you're talking about AI and LLMs and what it can do, security becomes a strong blocker, you know, so fast that we don't lead with it. We don't lead with it because we don't want the conversation necessarily to go in that direction. Not leading with AI, no. Wow. Yeah. We're finding that when we did lead with AI, the conversation goes into security very, very fast.
Clint (17:14)
You're not leading with AI?
guess there's a good point in there. Let me solve problems for you, as opposed to lead with, look at my cool new ⁓ piece of technology. People don't really care about the technology as much as they care about solving problems. I can see that. But that's an interesting point. You're kind of pushing AI into a little bit of the background,
Christian (17:47)
into
the background. People think of it as table stakes that the software products have some type of AI, but they're fairly cynical to actually what it does. And they're very concerned about the security aspect of it. But the type of conversations we have, again, like just like when Clint, you and I were selling CRM, you don't start talking about the tool. You don't push the tool and its capabilities before you know that both the organization and you understand the processes and the systems.
that you're playing with. And if AI comes in as an accelerator of that system, well, that's a good thing. But we don't lead with it.
Clint (18:27)
That's an amazing statement from a seasoned salesperson in today's world. Because everybody's, know, it's AI, AI, AI, and you'd think, I would have thought it would have heard different. you know, I guess knowing you, it's all about solving problems in the end. That's really the most important thing.
Christian (18:43)
That's
all the problems and like, you know, there's a lot of buzzwords. There's a lot of buzzwords. think, you you talk, you talk a fair amount about buzzwords, but to me, it's like one of my least favorite buzzwords is AI.
Greg (18:54)
Yeah. How you outperforming the AI that your competitors are throwing at these same targets.
Christian (19:03)
Maybe I'm not good enough at suspending the disbelief.
Clint (19:07)
Yeah, pragmatic. It's good to be pragmatic. Hey, let's zoom out a bit, right? When you look at all this innovation that's going on across the board and AI that's starting to change the way we work, mean, certainly you described that the way you work internally within your business, it's changing. How do you see that playing out? Like if you were to give some advice to a small business leader today,
What would you be telling them about how to approach AI, what to think about AI, and that sort of thing, the high level picture?
Christian (19:40)
I think it's all about doubling the productivity of each one of your workers by like, need the same type of people in the same type of roles. don't think AI in my horizon is replacing really any roles in the typical kind of white collar businesses that we have. But I think you'll double the productivity of everyone you do have if you do it right. think, you know, by basically having an AI wingman or wing woman on whatever, you know, desktop
your employees have, if you can effectively train them on how to use it, effectively select the right tools, help them have access to those tools that are relevant to your business, I think you're doubling productivity. Doubling productivity in the workforce in a short period of time is dramatic. I think it's happening very quickly.
Greg (20:36)
What have you found the effective ways of training them to use these tools are some people are naturally are curious and they'll figure them out. You get better and better and better, but there's others are probably tossing it aside saying, ⁓ it doesn't work for me.
Christian (20:50)
Yeah. As a small company, we have the luxury of being training by example. Like for instance, you know, we have, we have consultants who do data work and, and, ⁓ and analyze, ⁓ customer data files and try to find patterns in them and match them up to other things. And that, that has traditionally been really technical work, but showing them that you could actually put this into an LLM and do the analysis.
and have them help you do it. It's another tool like you might've used Excel in the past. Now you could use it in an LLM to do work. Just coming up with examples of where it can actually help you in your day to day. But there's just so many things that can be done in that manner. you can't go to school for it, right? This stuff is developing as we speak and the opportunities arise as we speak.
Clint (21:44)
You know, I keep going back to that comment you just made a minute ago about how you don't see humans being taken out of the seats that they're in right now. You need a human in each role in the company. You're just going to get more productivity out of it. So instead of having two people in a particular role, I think what I heard from you is you just need one person and give them ChatGPT and they'll do the work of two people. That's so kind of counter to this whole talk track out there of agentic AI and
and AI is going to take away jobs and everything like that. bring that home for me. Bring the reality back to me. What is it that you see happening with AI in the workplace over the next several years ahead?
Christian (22:25)
Well, think that several years ahead is incredibly long into the future at the pace of development today. But like if you take agentic AI today in a normal mortal business, right? ⁓ There's nothing useful. I don't see it doing very much useful things. I'm at a loss for coming up with how to use an agentic AI to do something useful for me. And I spend a lot of time trying to figure it out, like using ChatGPT.
operators and different agent. Like, do I need to automate an agent to go and check my mailbox to see if I don't have any emails I haven't responded to or the tasks I haven't done?
Clint (23:06)
Or just go look at your email.
Christian (23:09)
I don't have that problem. I'm on top of it, right? So, just don't have a specific problem. I would love to find an agent that could find me new customers and engage with them and speak to them and respond to their questions and set up appointments for me. But that's not happening yet. That's just not here yet. I've looked at a few of them.
Greg (23:31)
If we finally found the guy that can outperform AI faster than all of them. That's great. No, it's a really good perspective. You know, I could tell you spend a lot of time trying right. And, testing and looking at things and, and, uh, you know, you've got a real, uh, cerebral look at, know, how, how we're going to do this. And, um, I think you're, you know, this is a real honest, uh,
Clint (23:37)
That is Christian.
Greg (24:01)
assessment of where we're at, right?
Christian (24:05)
Well tell me, have you found something? Maybe I'm just stupid. Nope.
Clint (24:08)
I'm
exactly where you're at, 100 % where you're at. Been going through the same thing myself.
Christian (24:13)
I'm not going to go tell an agent to come up with my shopping list and go and send it to the supermarket and buy whatever chicken they have there. I want to pick my own chicken. Anyway, just haven't found the use cases for it. But maybe it's my lack of imagination or maybe it's because I don't run some huge insurance company that needs to process millions of claims.
there's this company, UiPath, that had this robotic automation tool that used to be able to automate some of those claims. Maybe those companies are able to use agents in a smarter, more scale type of environment than me, but for us a small business owner, I don't see it yet.
Clint (24:56)
I
just keep, I love your point. It makes people twice as efficient, but you still need the human in the loop. The human is sitting in the seat and driving the bus and the AI is your, maybe your navigator, your co-pilot, whatever you want to say. But in the end, yeah, in the end, the human is driving the bus.
Christian (25:12)
Yeah.
And I like that world.
Greg (25:17)
Well, it's been a great discussion. really has. Um, you know, if we wrapped this up, maybe we can go around the horn and, know, each give a summary statement, but, know, I'm hearing, uh, um, you know, unless your transactional levels are at scale and beyond, beyond what the human employment, uh, numbers that you have, uh, are there. AI is just like a side side, uh, side helper for you. It's a buddy.
Christian (25:45)
Accelerator.
Clint (25:47)
Same thing that technology has been doing for us forever. ⁓ I heard HeyGen and Dscript. I'm going to go dig into those. I'm going to go definitely look at HeyGen and Dscript and see what they're all about.
Christian (25:58)
Yeah, those are good. If I was to look at my tech stack, was glancing kind of, am I using? This is a final word. Just come up with something that's new and interesting. There's a great company out there called Guide. Guide with two D's, it's an Israeli company. And what they do is they make it easy to create documentation. you know, in my world, we have to create documentation for the projects we do. And this automates the process of creating documentation. That's a huge time saver.
And then in product management, there's a product out there now called a ChatPRD that yeah, I started using that for not creating products, creating solutions for our customers, which is pretty much the same as creating a product in some ways. And so that, that helps me organize kind of create effective ⁓ documentation of what it is that we're creating for our customers. So Guide and ChatPRD cool, cool tech stack things to check out.
Clint (26:34)
I've heard of that one.
Greg (27:03)
Okay, it's time for this week's AI Challenge. This is where we help get you more familiar with using AI around business and decisions.
Clint (27:13)
a pretty unique and different AI challenge for you this week. Just a few moments ago, Christian was sharing with us that he would never use AI to help him shop for chicken. Well, I think we should challenge that premise and actually walk through how would you use AI to shop for chicken.
Greg (27:32)
That's a really fun challenge, but what we found is that it does tie back to using AI to help you make market decisions, product selection, and really walk you through a process of making business decisions. So Clint, us a little bit more.
Clint (27:52)
Well, in the end, turning your grocery run into a strategy lab is a bit of a wild way to test how AI makes decisions. Flavors, ethics, and value aren't just dinner goals, though. They're business strategies in disguise. So today, our AI challenge is how to choose the right chicken for dinner, and you're going to learn how to become more expert at working with AI.
Check out the show notes below for the link to the article that will walk you through the steps involved. And have fun!
Greg (28:30)
All right, well, thank you for coming on today. Maybe you can, the audience, can tell us where we can find you and you seem to know so much about tools here. I'm sure we have some people that we're gonna wanna reach out to you and keep the discussion going.
Christian (28:46)
Easy to find, I'm on LinkedIn. My name is Christian Vetre. Our domain is TCPAmericas.com. And Greg, Clint, I thank you. Wish you good luck with this podcast. Wish you good luck finding your audience and connecting with them. ⁓
Clint (29:04)
You bet, man. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it, Christian.
Christian (29:06)
Bye guys.
AI Announcer (29:09)
Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining Clint and Greg on this fabulous journey today. Remember, you can find all the exciting Prompt This episodes and immerse yourself in our in-depth articles at www.promptthis.ai. And don't forget, hit that follow button below. We can't wait to have you back with us for more thrilling adventures.
