Garik Tate Futurist and business owner on how to increase small business value and sellability by using AI in your Exit Planning.

[00:00:00] Welcome into the Small Business Banta Podcast.

[00:00:03] Really pleased to welcome in Garic Tate.

[00:00:05] How are you going Garic?

[00:00:06] I'm doing well Michael.

[00:00:07] Garic is an AI futurist, an investor,

[00:00:12] an AI strategy consultant.

[00:00:14] He's got a decade of entrepreneurial experience.

[00:00:17] So he's founded and led successful companies

[00:00:21] in software development, outsourcing and your extra planning, how AI is going to change, add to track from small business across the globe, and then your experiences as a founder and an exodus. So can you give us a little bit about the work you do and who Garak Tade is to kick us off? Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for having, Michael, I've been looking forward to this

[00:01:41] conversation for a while. So my background, I feel like just very, very fortunate,

[00:02:42] advertising and have never really looked back AI is

[00:02:47] Probably my biggest passion in the world. So just seems to captured

[00:02:53] Everybody's imagination and you know create all these opportunities and all these fears So we're looking forward to yeah to digging down that but you you run three businesses. What are those three businesses Garak?

[00:03:00] Yeah, so we have a software time, but you're there with a purpose, and that purpose is to help stop the end of the world. So thought it was a good name for a company that's really about building people up, expanding potential and growing people to start new businesses, which is a lot of that EQ stuff broadly speaking, both with your clients and also with the staff that you work with over there. And I think that's perhaps a missing element of outsourcing generally where it hasn't perhaps worked

[00:05:42] or hasn't gone as efficiently as it can 100 years ago before, you know, literally we measure cars on horsepower. How many horses could could drag this and Humans were the same way we were putting ours our bodies and our physical prowess into certain positions that sure We can do that because we're the most versatile most adaptable, you know best tool for most jobs

[00:07:05] But we're not optimized for that and it's the same thing I think with with intelligence is right now

[00:07:07] just like electricity and and and the staff or the team you have that are on the ground doing the stuff you've outsourced can also use AI and outsourced further, you know, and focus on their best use of their time. So, you know, it's all about finding that level where you're spending, you know, whoever's time on the best possible use of that time. Yeah, yeah. And look, it still remains that the Holy Grail for a lot of owners to build a successful business and make money as you go, but also to leave it in a place where ideally, it's got value you can sell it to do whatever you might want to do. Or as I like to contemplate

[00:10:44] it. So now there are good answers to that. There are lots of good answers that question, but it's a hard question to ask because you are discounting future earnings,

[00:10:48] factoring an opportunity cost. And if you're going to be making enough money and your opportunity

[00:10:52] cost is very low because you're freed up, you're not selling a job, you're selling an asset.

[00:10:58] Well, there's a strong argument that it's worth keeping. And so this process, I think of running

[00:11:05] it like you're going to sell it, even if you don inefficient and so they need some more resources and instead of hiring full-time staff member or three software development, that's one answer and one is in the VA side. Are we talking more on the VA side? Oh, look, yes, let's do that. And we'll come back to technology.

[00:13:43] Got it.

[00:13:44] So on the VA side, I would if you read from the EMITH or you read from Traction, the EOS, or from Work the System by Sam Carpenter. You read all these books about creating systems and processes and operations. But it's either never felt like the right time

[00:15:00] or you've just been a little bit too overwhelmed

[00:15:02] or it's not quite applicable.

[00:15:03] You need someone coming from the outside

[00:15:05] who can kind of put their foot down. and yourselves on, are there, is there low hanging fruit where a knowledge worker or solopreneur or a thought leader can really get some traction pretty quickly based on how it's worked with others? Yeah, absolutely. So there's, if I'm breaking down the constellation of the space

[00:16:24] to be playing, we have our VA company, we have our software through is we create a whiteboard diagram of every single process in their company in the spine of fulfillment. So all the way from prospecting to sales to onboarding fulfillment. And we try to detail out from sale and you went and talked to a business broker or an exit planner and they assessed the business, I would too. So okay, I understand where you've

[00:19:00] been but where's the business game because that's what a buyer's buying and so you've got time.

[00:20:08] I'm a huge fan of Eli Goldrat's work around the theory of constraints, which is you want to remove the biggest constraints inside of your business.

[00:20:12] If you remove constraints that are upstream from that, you don't make the problem better,

[00:20:15] you make it worse because that just overwhelms even more the point of constraint.

[00:20:20] So adjusting your capacity, and this is obviously a lot more applicable to businesses that have industries where you see these opportunities more real, more significant right now? I think the theory of constraints applies to just about anything. But generally speaking with our skillset, if we're supporting the prescription list and we're stepping into support in some of

[00:21:40] the constraint removal, it definitely applies more to remote businesses or internet-based money on the table by not digitizing and improving some of their customer experience points. So I do think that this applies to a wide breadth of companies, even not remote companies, but remote companies truly will have more prescription points that we can attack throughout

[00:23:01] the entire cycle.

[00:23:02] But you don't.

[00:23:03] So everything at it, you go in, you know, this, I like's contracts or large capital equipment. But if you can show a buyer that we're engaging, we've got a list involved is, what's it worth if you were to sell it tomorrow? And it starts to open up the question,

[00:25:41] or what could it be worth and is it sellable and what's going to implement BOS systems or, you know, EOS systems or EMIS systems, et cetera. But, you know, a huge part of it is getting the right people. And so recruitment is a big constraint inside of our VA company. And so we decided to do this process internally, going through every step of the recruitment process.

[00:27:02] And on the far side of it, it was,

[00:27:05] we were able to create an output of very,

[00:28:24] very high quality with just the stuff you have access to on the input side.

[00:29:23] in Australia at least that still don't have a website. And so that's an opportunity,

[00:29:29] but it's also, you can see how someone is

[00:29:33] AI on top of that.

[00:29:36] And they're doing what they wanna do.

[00:29:41] They're largely the business, if it's been around,

[00:29:44] it's producing enough revenue to keep them going. like creating something that's real, keeps folks from being bamboozled of like, well, we're 10x your business and just add AI and blockchain, everything will be solved. It would be amazing if like, let's make it more practical. Yeah, and you and I both probably, I've certainly heavily used LinkedIn

[00:31:02] and it's just a cesspool of 10xs dashboard or create a financial data room for them to sell. I think there are some overlap and some potential future opportunities for us to be giving support and value in that area, but that's not our current focus. But there's a heavily overlap in the sense of, you need to be able to use the finances

[00:32:23] to both predict

[00:33:27] that would be needed. But yeah, look, it doesn't need to be like that. But I think, you know, it's when you link business strategy with, you know, operations and finance, you know, you,

[00:33:32] you know, you then got, you can see you understand why you're making the investment. And what

[00:33:38] we are talking about investment here. What are some of the AI tools, apps, services that you think

[00:34:44] that anybody can pick up without having to to learn code. So I'm a huge fan of those tools.

[00:34:55] So that could be driven by, I know I've got a problem in my business, I don't have a,

[00:35:06] on my website, like a really detailed survey before. I think there is a valuable answer. What I encourage business owners to do is, A, decide how much you wanna master this tool, versus how much do you want your team to master this tool? I think there's a golden opportunity for a lot of business owners that are maybe thinking about selling, thinking about moving on,

[00:36:20] and they're deciding how do I empower the team

[00:36:22] to run the company without me?

[00:36:24] And also wondering how do I add in last mile upgrades

[00:36:27] like AI or automation? cost five years ago or that's what I think is the really so log all those problems as don't think of them as you know constraints or impossibles think of them now as with AI you or some of that are probably the best tools that will be involved in the solution, depending on its particulars, are I encourage business owners and their teams to check out Chagibiti Playground. So this is not the Chagibiti UI.

[00:39:00] This is if you go to OpenAI, I think forward slash Playground,

[00:39:03] you'll come across a user interface that You can type in the chat, you can be T. You know, I need a function that does XYZ, and it'll give it to you. So we use just straight up spreadsheets, and also on notion databases. We're a big fan of notion. If we used error table, probably I would be saying the same about error table, that those are two good tools that can act as a good database,

[00:40:20] if you don't wanna use a spreadsheet,

[00:40:21] or spreadsheets just aren't a good solution for some reason.

[00:40:23] And that will give you from a chat bot on your website, maybe they send you an email, maybe they engage with your scorecard, there's a lot. However they do it, they can be captured digitally.

[00:41:41] You can use Zapier to automatically detect

[00:41:44] when somebody does that and then send the data you collect to then write a drafted letter indicating the next step. So for instance, somebody goes to your website, they fill in their name and email and says, hey, I wanna know more about XYZ. And then they say a little about themselves, you can send all that data to ChagiePT for it to create a custom message to them.

[00:43:02] And then automatically just throw that into your Gmail inbox as a draft

[00:43:05] where the first half of the draft

[00:43:07] is ChagiePT's suggested message to them frame. And I know there'll be some owners that will think, well, you know, I can, I can kind of manage all that. And you probably can. But the point is, if you want to grow the value of your business, you can have to scale, grow sales, and you're going to have less time to do all this. And that's, that's where that investment now, over the next six, 12, 18, 24 months will pay off, because

[00:45:24] So the five points are, let me make sure I get them all right.

[00:45:27] It's prospecting onboarding customer service.

[00:45:32] So you can think of all three of those as AI tools to solve customer interactions at

[00:45:37] different parts of the funnel.

[00:45:39] Prospecting for prospects onboarding once they become customers and

[00:45:42] the customer service for the long term.

[00:45:44] So there's three departments right there.

[00:45:46] Two other departments are staff training, there's demonstrated growth and future growth potential. So it's through focusing on that front end, getting more customers to spend more money. Something you said on another podcast was about where you see AI is not going to,

[00:48:23] from a, I don't know whose perspective you. So, if it's individuals, let's say it's an individual that's worried about their job, they're scared about, their job is going to be taken away. Well, the thing that I encourage them to keep in mind is that, you're not going to be replaced by AI, you're going to be replaced by somebody using AI to become 10 times more effective,

[00:48:28] right? I'll give an example of this. When we rolled out the ATM machines, at least in America, a lot of people thought the bank tellers were going to become largely obsolete because the 80% of what the bank tellers were doing was automated by ATMs. So the obvious answer is we only need one fifth number. So we're good.

[00:49:41] And so a lot of bank tellers were panicking.

[00:49:43] But we didn't, that didn't happen.

[00:49:45] Instead, what happened is actually the number of bank tellers went up.

[00:49:47] It didn't go down. That's the first thing I say to employees. To business owners, I have a different sort of set of principles that I used to think it through, but that's why I say for the employee side. Talk about it from a business sign and perspective then.. So a lot of things right now, there's a lot of money we've made I think in the next five to ten years, but things will become cheaper. But on the far end of that, we're going to be adding so much more value and we're going to be providing so is to go away and think about the time and cost to deal with happening faster and a lot cheaper, but it's no less monumental. Is there's a new wave of technology that's going to white collar workers that there's a big disruption? And so we've been here before as a civilization. Some businesses, they adapt, they adapt the

[00:55:02] new tools and new technologies and some businesses so intrigues you, but also relate that

[00:56:20] to your experience with your family growing up in love with concepts and being really drawn to paradoxes being really drawn to when you hear two smart people that feel like they're not in the same conversation their own their own bubbles, you know one futurist is talking about the end of the world and one futurist talking about like utopia like Like where the fuck is that going?

[00:57:42] Right. I'm really drawn to those

[00:58:43] to a single fungible icon. So then as a business, you're providing

[00:58:45] some sort of value in exchange for that.

[00:58:47] There's a ways to hack that.

[00:58:48] Like there are black hat, bad agents

[00:58:50] that can hack that system.

[00:58:52] But I think we've done remarkably well,

[00:58:55] at least when you compare to previous,

[00:58:59] other non-capitalist systems.

[00:59:04] So I think we're doing, we got to be grateful

[00:59:06] and respectful of what we And, and so,

[01:00:26] to have a look into the, have a look into the future, this will have opportunities. Yeah. and it's G-A-R-I-K-T-A-T-E. But we'll put that in information with the show. I love that you've been on the ground over the 10 years, just at a personal level, what are you enjoying life where you live? And it's a long way from Northwest America.

[01:01:43] Yep, it's tropical.

[01:01:44] I remember as long as I remember,

[01:01:46] I wanted to be somewhere where the water was warm,