Winning Hearts in the Age of AI: Mastering Automation Without Losing Authenticity | RR303

Scott, hello and welcome to this week's episode

of relationships ruled, where we explore the power of

relationships in building lasting business success in

today's world, automation and AI are transforming how we engage

with clients. But can we really build genuine relationships

while relying on technology. Well, my guest today, Sean. Why

not? Is an expert in blending automation with authenticity. As

the founder of blue cow marketing and a certified

automation specialist, Sean has spent over a decade helping

businesses streamline their marketing while strengthening

their client connections, and today, we'll explore how you can

leverage AI and automation to work smarter without losing the

personal touch that keeps your business thriving. Welcome,

welcome. Welcome to

the show. Sean Janice, thank you so much for

having me. You're very welcome.

I love that we met on a technical, automated

piece. We were on a webinar and and had a mutual connection and

started the and I loved what you were doing. You were doing a

presentation on this webinar about automation, and you don't

have that shirt on today, though. What does that one say?

And

this is another agency that I'm working at

building out for a financial smart person.

Sean has Sean's logo and branding is, is

automation dot, and he's got a different shirt on today. Says

enriched. So I'll be curious to hear about that as well. So Sean

is definitely, I don't know Sean. I think, I think, I hate

to say this, but I think tech guru, I think nerd, I think

someone who loves to, you know, get in there. And I, I do notice

that you have great equipment there. And you come from a

completely different world though you come from, weren't

you a DJ or something way back then?

Yeah, that was my my first kind of step into

entrepreneurship was, first of all being discovering the word

entrepreneurship and knowing what it meant, and then asking

the guidance counselor, and she explained to me, and I became

aware because I grew up in an entrepreneurial family without

ever knowing it. Oh, really, yeah, my grandfather was an

electronics engineer repairing TVs back when, before they were

disposable, like and you know, what was really interesting was

as a young boy, I would go with him when he would deliver these

TVs back to homes. And it wasn't just a transaction of, here's

your TV, thanks, here's your bill. We'd get invited in, and

people would know him, he would know them. We'd spend hours

there. And it was all about the relationship right to this to

this day, like even in business, that is a core foundational

element of of what I try to bring to businesses is getting

to know clients, getting to know their story, getting to know

them personally for that relationship side. So from

there, I became a DJ in high school, and then did that and

got into television production. I went to school for that as a

television producer, a technical producer, and started to doing

video production as a business and have evolved into, you know,

shooting aerial photos from a helicopter in minus 40 degree

temperatures in northern BC, to working for the Cancer Society,

to other jobs, website design and then automation for the last

13 plus years with my own Business.

Oh, I love how the story of your grandfather,

though, see, okay, so just to break that down in this in a

sense, I asked you a question that was really not on my list,

because we're talking about automation. We're talking about

but I wanted to break the ice a little bit. I wanted a little

bit of rapport building, and you just lit up when you talked

about your grandfather. So that's exactly what what you

were talking about. And what I love to do with my guest is to

have them speak about things that make them light up. So I

don't know if that just hit the hit the bullseye for me. Thank

you, and thank you for sharing that. But it also it's in your

blood. Obviously, the technology that electronics. I wonder what

your grandfather would say about he's probably, is he still

alive? No,

no. He passed away when I was really young, so

I don't have too many memories Other than this, yeah, but

he loved that. He's probably watching over you,

yeah, absolutely, exactly. So let's just dive in a little bit

to your philosophy around automating, because I'm one of

these people that needs your help, and I still haven't done

your assessment, but I promise I'm going to, because I'm too

much of a control freak, and it's really hard for me to let

go of things. And I know there's there's automation. So that can

just make things work ease more easily for me. And then there's

things that I can hand off to somebody else, right? So how

did, how does one decide, as a small business owner, how do I

start?

Well, it's a great question like, where do

you start with it? And you know, when you think of automation,

there are a lot of people that hear the term automation that

say, I need to automate. It automate when you start to dig

down as to like, why do you need to? They didn't cover, I don't

know, like, I'm just told I need to, right? So my philosophy

usually is figuring out, what do we actually have to automate,

like, is it something that is taking away time that you could

use in a better place, in your in your business? And you know,

I work with a great VA company that helps me a lot of client

projects, and their CEO, Christy, always says that

there's a mutual connection that's right, right? She's used

this term because I was on her podcast. There's really three

core areas of the things that you do in the day, you can

either automate, delegate or eliminate. That's right, that's

what you do in it. So it comes down to figuring out what it is

that you're doing, right? What is it that you're doing that is

taking that time away from you? So, you know, things like for

me, you know, getting transactions of all my my

payments that that clients have made, and things like that, so

that my bookkeeper can input it. Well, I would spend so many

times on the phone with them, going through transaction, my

transaction, and going into multiple systems. And I'm like,

there has to be a better way, right? So just putting a little

automation where it all puts it into one Excel sheet that they

get, and it pulls from all the sources. Was an automated task

that saved me hours and just organized it, so that made sense

to automate it. Now, if, if it was like I want to automate

every email that comes into my inbox and have it automatically

reply back to clients so that I don't have to talk to anyone,

that's a silly idea, right? Right? Because now you have

automation that is removing you from the relationship, right,

right? So automation should actually allow you to be more

present in the relationship, right? So another example,

meetings, right? We're in this world where zoom meetings just

like we're recording now have been, you know, common nature

now to do business this way, right? So I'm notoriously

horrible for taking notes. I'd have a notepad, even in physical

meetings, I would do the same thing, and I would leave with a

notepad. Nothing written on

it. Mine would have doodles on it. Mine would

have doodles on it, yeah, so then I'd

be forced at the end to be like, All right, what

did they say? What did I have to do? Or I'd be trying to think

and commit to memory during the meeting. So by bringing a

automatic note taker, automated piece into your business, it

allowed me to be present in the meeting, talk to the client, ask

the question, listen more than I spoke, because I knew there was

an automated piece that was taking all the notes. Was then

automatically going to put it into the contact record at the

end, it was going to give me a summary, it was going to email

it to the client, and this was all taken care of. Allowed me

now to use automation to build a stronger relationship.

I think you've just sold me on that, because I

keep fighting that one too. And the reason I was fighting it is

because I was thinking, great. So I have this note taker on the

screen on my Zoom call, and then it saves it in a file somewhere.

Now I've got to go read it, so now it's twice the thing, that's

what I'm thinking, right? But really, it reviews where you've

had the time to be focused on the meeting. It reviews what you

discussed. It probably summarizes it, I think you said,

and then action steps, if there are any, can, can be managed as

well. But it also allows me to, would allow me to, to go back

and and I know sometimes I, when I meet people, I have a process,

I think that I go through with, you know, new person I, you

know, I'll ask them for their address, I'll send them a card,

I'll write them, put them into my my address book, where I'll

make some notes. You know, has a son was a DJ, but, you know,

whatever I've did, right? But, but that's the extent of it. And

so by having that note taker, I might get way more, you know,

information, because I don't remember anything anymore. It's

just it's much harder. The older you get, the harder it is to

remember what you've said five minutes ago. So, so, yeah, I, I

hear that, and that sounds like a good place I could start

actually, yeah, it makes a lot of sense, you

know. And then when it comes to auditing those

tasks, you know, it's, it takes a little. Bit of time to remove

yourself from your business so you're not, you know, busy with

things coming in, but start to think of in your business. What

are all the things that you do? And write them down, right? You

can write them on you can do post it notes. You can write

them on a list, doing your phone, whatever works for you,

yeah. But the idea is be as as detailed as possible of all

these things, and then we put them into three different

buckets. Okay, the three buckets are, is this task non revenue

generating? So is it like sweeping the floor in the

office? Is it, you know, whatever is if doing this

doesn't directly connect me to making more money in the

business, then it goes in that bucket. The middle one is, does

it have potential? Right? So that's like recording your

podcast, you know, writing a blog, doing doing those type of

things while they will, if you keep doing them, generate

interest in business. You cannot dollar to dollar, directly,

posting

content that's absolutely your newsletter, all

of those things that take time, right?

So that's your potential one, and then there's

the revenue directly, revenue, so that's doing the work for the

client, meeting with the client, right? Your potential one in the

middle would be meeting with prospects, consults, those type

of things, right? So all those, so once we have those in those

three buckets, what we do is the non revenue ones, we either look

at, can we automate it or delegate it? Because you're

worth way more than, you know, an automated tool, monthly

subscription right there, so you pay, you know, $60 whatever the

price would be for a monthly tool that could automate it,

right? And if it can take two, three hours off your time, it's

well worth it. Or you get a VA, or somebody that is a lower rate

or entry level junior person to do these tasks for you, or you

eliminate it. I mean, if that's the other thing is, like, do I

really need to be doing that? The middle one is, we're going

to either delegate that or automate to make it more

efficient. So if it has the potential to generate revenue,

it would make sense if you could do it quicker or more effective,

more efficient in there. So, you know, writing, you know, doing a

podcast. Yes, you're going to do an interview, but then are you

going to, you know, normally, sit down and let's do it back

and write out notes. Well, you could, but you could take the

transcription, throw it into chat GBT and say, Okay, give me

notes. Pull out five quotes that Sean said that I can use for

social posts. Write me a blog like all those things. Shortens

the amount of time I had a financial advisor client who

spent six hours making all of her social content every week.

Got it down to just under an hour with using AI tools in

place. So using automation to enhance that or do it for you,

and then the revenue generating ones, you do not want to

delegate that Right, right? Because that is you. That is

your business. You're going to use your automation, your AI

tools to make you better at doing it, make you faster at

doing it, but also make you able to, you know, be more present in

those those times. So, you know, going into a meeting with a

client, if they sent you an email that's that talked about

some of the challenges they had, put it, copy it into a chatgpt

prompt and say, I received this email from the client. This is

who they are. This is, you know, how can I help? What's some

questions I could ask them? And it will give you some ideas. So

now you come into that meeting with really, like a, you know,

another person with you that's given you some advice, because

it is quite smart to be able to analyze and come up with ideas.

It's in there. So that's really how we start to audit those and

figure out what we're going to do.

Okay, so I know that you have a a market, a

marketing assessment that does that help? Does that help? Like,

if I because I haven't taken it yet, but I said, I'm going to

will that'll give me the will that be the exercise of going

through and listing my things.

Yeah, so the marketing, the marketing

assessment that I do is, is a fact, gathering tool that allows

me to really get a baseline for how I can make recommendations

and help people. You know, I've had prospects come through where

they've answered the text boxes with one word answers. Not a lot

of help I can provide with with that, right? So, like, like,

what's your sales process? I don't have one. Well, you do

have a sales process, right? I need to know more about it. So

the idea behind it is, really figure out, you know, what are

you struggling with? Where do you want to go in the business?

Why haven't you gotten there? Yeah, right. And then figure out

more the stuff like, are you running ads? Are you doing this

kind of thing? Now, I use tools to automate this process to help

me get to the point. Point where it makes sense for me to step

in, right? No, it's the same thing. You go to the dentist,

you go to the doctor, the nurse comes in, they prep you, they

get all the information, and then the doctor comes in at the

point, and basically it's like, here's what we need to do, or

here's the surgery, right? So how my process, just to be

transparent to your audience, is you fill out this form with all

these answers. It comes into my CRM system. There's a AI

integration in there that that takes all the answers you gave,

and I've programmed it with like for this question, I want to

know this for this, and it will then process it and formulate an

output that emails it to me. Now I could go a step further with

Zapier and connect it to chat GPT, but I just do it for this

way, and I have it set that, I copy and paste that into a

custom GPT that actually creates the base of the report, right?

That I put into Google Doc. And now I go into the report and I

read what it gave me, and then if I need to add my insight or

bit more, sometimes it's bang on. Sometimes it's, I'm like, I

don't really know what it's got. There I go, look at the

question, but I've cut my time down drastically, but allows me

to come in with things at a point that makes sense and I'm

not caught in the weeds of it, right? The same thing as having,

you know, a junior assistant or whatever, take all the stuff,

compile it, and hand it to you, right?

Well, I would imagine it also gives you the

idea of whether they're going to be a prospect, a B or C type of

client, right? That which way to go with them, and that kind of

thing too. So yeah, that makes total sense, although it sounds

way over my head, but there you go, but, but I have done some

work with you that has already made my life easier and and I

have to, I have to ask you, because there's so many people

today, so I do LinkedIn training, and you know, you like

to, You like to think of yourself. You always know more

than your client does. You usually right? You're You're the

exposed expert. I don't like that term, but, but you know

what I mean like and so they're looking to you to guide them, to

teach them, to show them the way. So I've always done it with

my client. I don't like done for you, because I just that's not

the way. I'm a teacher, so I like to teach. So when I do

that, it's come sometimes could be really laborious, trying to

pull the information out of the client to try to because I start

to get Ideas and Brainstorming right with them to create their

the big piece on the profile being the about section, and,

and, and usually I'm pretty happy with the results, but now

I have the opportunity, and I've honed it, and Now even more so

with your help to allow AI to help me with the client, build

it okay, and I just did it. I've done it two or three different

ways now, and I'm not sure what what you would say. So you and I

did yours, and we and I, and then you went away and and hone

that process more right for the custom GPT. But first, I want to

know your thoughts around you're the client. I say, Okay, let's

get chat to help us with this and, and, and, because I have

the questions set up, it will ask the questions it needs to

ask of the client to build it. You with me? Yes. Okay. How does

that feel when you're the client and you're paying for my

services and now I'm using chat? Does that make sense? Because

I'm really I've wanted to ask somebody this for a while.

Yeah, absolutely. And I can see both

sides of it. I mean, it's going to depend on the person from for

me, being in this space, when somebody says, I use it, I'm

like, let's high five. Like, for you, right? Like, like, what has

this allowed you to do in your life now that you would have

been stuck to the truth Exactly. But there are many people that

are like, Oh, okay, well, you're just using that generic

technology, and I'm going to get a generic output,

right, and I could do that myself. Yeah,

right. Yeah, right. So they think of that,

that side of it. So, I mean, I think when you look at it, that

it's, it's a process, and it's really just process. You've

trained it, right? That's why they say you got to train the

GPT is, you know, the questions to ask. You've seen what it

outputs, and you're like, Okay, well, I need to tweak a little

bit. Let's adjust this. Let's adjust that. It's really helping

you not start with a blank slate exactly like, you know. Rap does

have that, that writer's block, where it's like, I don't even

know where to start, and it doesn't mean that what it

outputs is, oh, that's what we have to use exactly. Because you

can always reiterate on it and, you know, copy what it what it

gives you, and put it in, or even go and start to modify it

yourself and use your own language, which

I've done, yeah, right. That's another piece.

Like you can tell chat what language not to use, what

language to use, or what tone to have. And a lot of people that

are just getting started with with llms, they don't know that,

right, right? Yeah, okay. And it's mainly

because most, I would say the majority of,

people that aren't in the tech world that hop on and use AI

give it very little to go on. Yes, they say, write me a bio,

or write me an email or write me a blog post on topic x, and

that's all they tell it. And what do they get? A very generic

run of the mill thing, because it doesn't have enough to go on,

right? It's the exact same thing as, you know, you hire somebody

to paint your house, and they show up and you're like, go

paint. Yes, where? What color like? You need to give it

parameters, right? Yeah. And the best part is, when it gives you

something back and you say, I don't really like that. Can you

redo it? It's not going to huff and puff inside throw a tantrum.

It's going to do what you want it to do and and you could just

test, and I would challenge somebody to have a conversation

where they they flip back and forth, just play with it, all

right, tell it to do something and then be like, actually

changed my mind. Like, let's, let's explain this. If you were

talking to a fourth grader, let's talk right, and see the

the vast abilities of this. Yeah,

that's a good idea. Um, I, I find that, since

I've been using it for that, that exercise, I will tell my

client, hey, do you want? How do you feel about we'll put it in

chat and, you know, and try get started this way. And they

usually say, Yeah, let's do it. So I do try to make them

understand, though, that I have it is more that's not set in

stone, and that it's just to get us started, and as best as

possible, I have, you know, put in information to help it

so. And can I add something to this? Yes, an

example I think people will understand, is if you've go, if

you ever gone to, like, a financial advisor, somebody's

gonna help me with your money. Yeah, they're gonna, well, how

much do you mean? And they're typing it into a software.

They're typing it into something. You don't stop them

Be like, whoa, whoa. Like, where's your abacus? Like, let's

get your Calc I want to see you do long division here and figure

this out on paper, because that's what I'm paying you for.

No, they have tools for this is just a tool Exactly,

exactly. And the biggest piece to come right back

around is that we don't we make sure that we're not losing the

relationship piece or the personal touch, that that's what

has to happen. I just, I have a client that he doesn't have a

lot of time, and I don't really know him very well. And we

started, we worked together for an hour, and we did all of the

small stuff on his profile, including his heading and headed

heading, and we talked about his banner, and I left the about

section for this next session that we're going to do, but in

the in the interim, I asked him some questions, which were

generated for me by chat, and now I've put it back into chat.

It's got out. It brought out an about section, and I've sent it

to him as a first draft, so we're going to come together and

work on it after that. And that saved me, but it also allowed me

to because he gave me who what the pain points were, who his

clients were, how he helps them, what's unique about him and what

he does for his clients. And so it just put it in a format that

you know could be an about section, so we'll see what he

says when I when I talk to him tomorrow. So, yeah, it's

interesting. Okay, we talked about that. We talked about

that.

Can you think of a couple of quick wins that you your clients

that have, that you have allowed your clients to have these aha

moments when you're working, you know, oh my god. Why didn't I

think I should have been doing this before? Can you share a

couple of those? If you have any?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for most.

And businesses. You know, the the fall off in growth happens

by a lack of follow up. You know, you you get an email, you

forget to respond to it gets lost in the inbound sorry, it

got lost in the inbox, lost the shuffle, right? And it's just

because you don't have a process in place. You know, that has

happened to me many times. I found great tools for that. I

have one that I use called hoop dot app right now, and it joins

my meetings, and it actually it monitors my email, it monitors

my slack, and it monitors my my Zoom calls the three core things

the way I communicate in business, and it pulls out all

the questions and tasks and puts it into a task manager for me.

So that's helped me with that. Now we talk about a client in

using automation, I have a client who is a counselor. He

has a counseling business, and he is an assessment that he has

developed. It's like 25 questions, and it helps people

to figure out where they rank within, you know, a certain five

different criterias of life. Now, up until the point that we

started to work together, it was just an online assessment, and

it basically said, in this category, you have a seven out

of 10. You have this right ranks, it that way, and then

from there, like, what do you do with that? Well, the problem is,

it's the follow up, right? It's like people like, well, that's

great, but how do I how do you coach me along the way? How do I

get those aha moments myself? So using automation, we were able

to run it into the CRM system we use, which is go high level,

which is integrated with AI as well, and it ranks those scores.

It scores them, and then it figures out what they're really

good at, what they're not so great at. And now the follow up

nurture for every single person, because it writes the email

specific to the person, the scores that are there, they get

a unique, custom follow up journey to them, because we're

we've layered in the ability for AI to read and know what it's

getting and what we want it to output and write it into email

and send it to people. So no longer do you have to paint

everybody at the same brush, right? The same nurtures and

same follow up, right? So when people feel that, like, yes,

like, this is to me, you know the right correspondence. Forget

the fact of people are like, well, AI wrote that. Well, yes,

it can have written it and it's okay. And I mean, the reality,

to think that a human business owner is sitting writing to

hundreds of people every single day at these long emails is

ludicrous to think of that. Right? These tools are in place,

but the follow up is what's key, right? It's you. You have to

send the right message to the right people the right time.

I've heard that term years ago, but what marketing is, and it

means that not everybody's ready to buy from you now, right? It

could be six months down the road. It'd be six years down the

road if you give up after four attempts, because that's all

you've manually been able to do you're missing a huge part of

the pie that way. So having that, it allowed him to do what

he wanted to do and provide by using automation and AI in the

mix. I

had somebody say to me yesterday about follow up.

We were talking about follow up. And he said, I don't know who he

was quoting. I can't remember, but he said, I think it was like

someone like Jim Rohn, or somebody like that, one of the

gurus of network marketing, because we were talking about

that. And he says, you follow up till they say no or they die,

right? That's basically it. And because that's that's a big one,

follow up is huge. And, and I, I'm have enemies in my head that

say you don't want to bug them, you don't want to bug them, but

you have to keep following up. If they've they haven't said no,

you know, like, because you're right. It takes people till it's

their time, till they're

the difference is so you say, when you said, I

don't want to bug them, yeah, I think people feel that they're

being bugged when you're reaching out saying, hey, book a

call with me. I can help you. I can help you. And they don't

actually help you yet, right? So we have an automatic sequence

that we recommend both most clients have, which we call it a

high value nurture. It's usually a base starting point for people

where it's an automatic email, or it could be text, depending

on what you want, that goes out every two weeks for an entire

year, right? So you've got, you know, you know, 26 pieces of of

content, right? So, you know, do you, and it doesn't have to be

your content all the time, because, right? Like, I don't

have 26 pieces of content. Well, you know, has there been a

story? Has there been an email? Is there a video? Is there

whatever? Is there a TED talk that you saw that's related? The

idea is, add value. We add value. We never ask in there. Or

in one of the emails, hey, book a call with me. Because we're

smart people. We know that if I receive an email from Janice

that's talking about, hey, here's a really cool thing that

I learned on LinkedIn that I think you could do with your

profile. And I'm in the mindset, I'm like, You know what? I would

love to have some help with LinkedIn? Am I going to think

of? Yeah, right. I'm not going to be like, Oh, I better go to

Google and start to look for somebody to help me. To help me.

I'm going to think of the the expert who has been helping me

all along. Right? So it's just a mindset shift to, how can we

just keep giving and giving and giving?

Yeah, but Okay, so, so what I'm hearing you say

is, when I think bugging them, I'm talking about like asking

you, you know, are you ready to make a decision yet? Right?

Because I do that as well, but I also, but I wouldn't do that as

often. It depends, you know, like you have to have a sense of

who the client is as well, or the prospect is. But I like this

idea. I mean, I do a newsletter every week. I try to do one

every week, and I'm and I do a podcast every week, and I send

out the podcast newsletter as well, or announcement, or

whatever you want to call it. And those are touch points,

right? And so, and in my newsletter, I really am giving

something of value each week. I'm giving a tip on LinkedIn,

and I'm giving a tip about staying connected, right? Some

kind of strategy or a tip or something I've wanted to share,

and I think that's what you're talking about, right? Yeah, but

I don't have it. I don't have it automated. And

to your point of the you know, let's say, in that

process of, you know, you meet with a potential client, you're

doing a proposal, and you send it off, and then there's, like,

crickets, you know, they don't, they don't respond back to you,

like, just checking in, just checking in. Like, that term,

just checking in. I hate that term, yeah. So one thing that I

started to do was, when I'm on that consult, I say, Okay, I'm

going to take a couple days to put a proposal together. I'm

going to send it to you by email, and then I'm going to

follow up in a couple days. How would you prefer I follow up

with you? And they're like, I've had people say, Don't bother

emailing me, because it's going to be in there. Like, actually

call me or send me a text, right? And so, so when I follow

up to by that text, I'm like, I haven't heard back from you, you

know, just wanted to see if you had a chance to review the

proposal and whatever, the response level is much higher,

because they've actually given me permission verbally to do

that follow up. Right? Exactly? Yeah. And the last one is, once

you get through a couple of those and you still don't get a

response. I don't know why this works, but I've sent an email

that says, Where do we go from here? Yes, what's our next step?

Yeah. Like, even if they've, like, where do we go from here?

Yeah. And that's all it was. And it was like a subject line, and

then the same thing in the body of the email, and that's all it

was. And people would respond, but, oh, I'm so sorry. I like,

right? That's a good one, and it's so weird, because you

wouldn't think that, yeah, but I've gotten responses from that

more than anything else.

I had a guest one time on my podcast who's a sales

guy, sales trainer, and he's written a few books on sales

training, and super nice guy and and I always forget his name

anyway. He always talks about the next step, and he's asking

the client to make that with him, that decision. And I think

that, you know, where do we go from here? Same thing. I love

it. The other thing you just mentioned that I try when I'm

when I'm formulating an email. I just wanted to say, just say it,

yeah, you don't have to say, I just want to check in, or just

want to, like, I just wanted to see where you are. How are you

doing with that? Or, you know, whatever I think, just say it. I

always start, and then I take that off. And how we've

programmed, or I have anyway, I think I don't know if it was

with you or myself with chat to not say in an email? I hope this

note finds you well, or something like that, or any

form, form of that, because same thing is just checking in. So I

have, I do have to ask you this question now, because I know

you're organized. I know you automate so many things. Do you

have a like a zero? You inbox,

you said zero. I'm like, Are you gonna say that

next? My inbox is never zero. I go through these phases where

I'm like, Okay, I've gone through a couple pages of it.

There's nothing of that's there. And I highlight select all

several 1000. Yeah, I don't go delete I go archive Google. I

can still search for them if they're archived, but if I

delete them, they're gone. And that kind of sense of hitting

zero, yes, is great, short lived, but it's great that's in

there. So I more so have used i. Like flags and labels in mind to

to do follow up. So if I'm reading through it and I'm like,

Okay, there's action that needs to be taken I need to do. I flag

this action needed, or review or waiting reply so that I have on

this the right side, these emails kind of sorted by that is

that outlook? But I'm using Google.

Oh, look. Oh, Google one. Okay, I don't know.

I'm on Mac mail, and it doesn't do all that stuff quite the

same. So it helps that way. And this hoop

app that I'm using is, yeah, what is it? Dot? What hoop dot

app? It doesn't record the meetings, it just pulls out all

the tasks that are in there and then puts it in a kanban format.

So then I can have move them over set deadlines, but I have

been amazed, because it pulls out things that clients are

asking or things that I have to do that I would have missed if I

was trying to read through emails.

So you've got that. And the note taker, well,

I

don't use the note taker anymore in the

meetings. I just use Zoom to record and then the transcript,

and then use chat GPT to do that. It was an extra

subscription that I didn't Yeah, but for people that are doing a

lot of consults and things, advisors, the I was fathom that

I was using, which was great, because you could go in and send

them the recording, you could ask it questions, and it would

then take it and find the answers from the recording. So

it did a whole bunch of stuff. I just for what I needed. I didn't

need it, yeah, I used it enough to know how to make it work.

There's so much this is so much fun. Um, so

where

I hope to see, sorry, yeah, come to my head,

where I hope to see AI in the meeting sense, come is being

able to have a an assistant that comes with you in the meetings,

this virtual assistant type thing. And you know the the

goals you want to get over the meeting, and you kind of ask,

tell it that, and it will listen and pop up suggestion questions

to you on your side, to be like, yes, ask about this. Ask about

this, because it's mostly far more intelligent and faster than

you could think of, yeah, definitely, right. So that would

be a fantastic thing to have. So just

before we go, Are we allowed? Am I allowed to ask

what enriched is all about? Which is the thing? Yes,

absolutely.

So I had a great it's through relationships. So I

have a client of 10 years who I was looking to build a program

for female financial advisors to do automation. She had a podcast

guest, she told her about what I was doing, and then made the

connection through LinkedIn. Since then, I've been to

Northern Ontario. Owen Sound last year with her and two other

guys from the US, and now we're building a marketing agency for

financial professionals, which is talking about building

relationships with your clients, not just selling products. So

we're calling it enriched life cycle marketing, or lifestyle

marketing. I

love it. And look at how Send Out Cards would fit

into that so beautifully, right? Yeah, I've had a lot of

financial planner clients use that product, mortgage brokers,

realtors, financial planners, they all need to stay in touch

so that they're top of mind, so that they can get referrals

without being asked, right? All of that good stuff, right? I

love the name. Very clever. Who came up with that?

Kim? Who's the brains behind the organization.

I

love it. That's great. Well, I wish you well

with that. And sounds like Kim might be someone when we're

ready to put her on podcast, because I love, oh, absolutely,

yeah, that's awesome. So some last words, a few your your best

business advice for my audience, off the top of your head,

don't lose, lose track of of the relationship. I

think the relationship in everything that you is far more

important. I know I've had a client that reached out and was

obviously doing some auditing of their systems and figuring out

what they were spending monthly on and they were using our

software, and they're basically like, well, you know, we'd like

to look at canceling and moving to something else. And, you

know, it was all about the relationship. And I said, You

know what, let's, let's reduce you 70% down on your feet,

because I just want you to keep like, oh, wow, it's moving.

That's, it's a bad thing, right? And she's like, wow. Like, I

love this relationship. Like, so when they say that, and they

feel it, it's not about the, you know, the dollars all the time,

right? Those will come. Money comes, money goes, but the

relationships stick

forever. Oh, my goodness, that's it, right

there. And what you just said, in so many ways, if you've had a

client for 10 years, and you've had clients for that long, then

we know it's about the relationship. That's amazing,

that's very special, right? Right? When? Yeah, very special.

Always

said, when I, when I grew a business, if I, if

I started to only know clients by their client number, I was

not in the place I wanted to be.

Yeah, no, I love that. I feel the same way. And

it's all about the people. It really is, and you're one of the

good ones. So thanks for being here, Sean, well, thank you.

Thank you for having me. You're very welcome, and I know that

I'll just just top it off by saying that technology is

changing so fast, but one thing remains the same, which we've

just agreed on, that relationships are still at the

heart of business success, and Sean has reminded us today that

AI and automation can be powerful tools, but they work

best when paired with authenticity and human

connection. So if you're ready to embrace smarter systems

without losing that personal touch, start small, stay

intentional, and let your values lead the way. And Sean, how can

they get in touch with you?

Blue owl marketing.ca, I'm CA, okay,

and everything is there under that.

Everything is there, everything there. We'll

have a conversation. There you go. And I encourage

you to reach out to Sean and find out more about

how he can help you with the kinds of things I was talking

about. Oh, my God, don't be that control freak. Let automation

help you. So until next time, keep building those connections

and remember to stay connected and be remembered. You.