[00:07] Jeff McLarty
Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner's Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half-baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way.
This isn't about a polished success story on the company About Us page; it's about the real story behind the business. The pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you'll sit down with the owners who've been in the trenches, build something meaningful, and live to tell the tale. Whether you're starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there's a seat at the owner's roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner's Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights.
[01:15] Jeff McLarty
Hello and welcome to Owner’s Roundtable. Today at the table is Matt McKeage, founder of Speaking is Code AI Consulting and StressMed Adaptive Mental Health Training for first responders. Today we'll be taking a bit of a different slant on the Owners Roundtable and turning to look into the future, with Matt's help, on what founding a business in the age of AI looks like. So pull up a chair and join Matt and I as we discuss his journey to earning a seat here at the Owners Roundtable.
[01:40] Jeff McLarty
All right, we're back here at the Owner's Roundtable with Matt McKeage. For the listeners that don't know you, Matt, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
[01:47] Matt McKeage
Yeah, my name is Matt McKeage. I was a paramedic for quite a long number of years. Got out of the profession, started to do more work in the mental health side for first responders.
ChatGPT came on the scene. Started working with AI, probably 2022. And with that, I realized it was going to change the world - how we communicate with things. So I just started working with that, developed a consulting company called Speaking is Code, where we help businesses understand and get educated about how AI works, how they can use it, especially when talk about thinking differently now in how we use AI, how we use prompting, understanding the tools, stuff like that.
I also co-founded a company called StressMed where we teach the neuroscience and physiology of psychological stress to professions like first responders, high stress professions, that they can better understand what the job does to them, how it changes their brain, and give them the tools to go forth and have a long, prosperous career.
[02:55] Jeff McLarty
That's awesome. So, your Stress Med business, is that an AI first business? Like, having your experience as a AI consultant, is that something you brought a lot of tools with as you started to build out the business?
[03:09] Matt McKeage
The way I look at AI is that it's a tool like Photoshop. If you have a design company, you don't have to put that you use Adobe, right? That you use Canva. Everyone knows that's a tool. If they see a nice poster, if they see some graphic details, they understand tools help make that.
And I think that's the same with AI. There's a lot of buzzwords with AI right now. So yeah, we're an AI company, we do this. But you'll notice the ones that really understand their market, they're not marketing it as “we use AI”. And I think that's going to be more relevant in the next couple of years with the outlook on what AI really is, what it can and can't do.
So yah, everything I do, I use some sort of AI. And sometimes I don't. It depends on what needs to be done. Is there a tool that helps me? Is there a framework I can use to really extract data or do something that's gonna take me a lot of time? Is it worth it? You gotta set yourself up and have those questions in your head of should we be using this? When do we use it? Is this the best option?
Always human in the loop.
[04:25] Jeff McLarty
So that's one of the things I really wanted to explore, is how AI is affecting what it means to build a business from scratch. Like the ability to set Claude up to all of a sudden have basically a staff that can do all kinds of different activities for you.
Do you think somebody starting a business is gonna be ready to use those tools?
[04:47] Matt McKeage
Yeah. I think it comes down to how much do you know about when to use what tool. I think the big thing is really fleshing out your idea, really fleshing out your segments. What do you actually do? Because once you have that, gives enough context for LLM to understand where you are. Where's your position? Here's how you do things. And it can think better for you.
But if you go straight to, I want to make a company - here's what it is, go look on Facebook. Who's selling the stuff? Yeah, it can give you a good general layout of things. But as you know, there's a lot more little steps to go into something like that.
It doesn't have to be overcomplicated, but all it is is looking for patterns and it's looking for the patterns you tell it to look for. So if you're not telling it to look for the right patterns, it's going to give you something very sloppish.
I've worked with people who literally have the same type of marketing. And you've probably seen it too, that it's very similar to their competitors because they've typed in some stuff they haven't done their due diligence. And now you realize you and your competitors are saying the same message.
So I think it's really understanding what tools you need. What are you doing repeatedly every day? Is it costing you time? Should this be something that Clutch or ChatGPT should be doing? Is the big thing, I think, for businesses starting.
[06:22] Jeff McLarty
Were there tools that took what you thought would have taken you a long time without an AI tool, to help move the new business along? Or what was kind of your first go-to that you started to explore, kind of that first problem you came across when you were trying to start a business?
[06:46] Matt McKeage
For me, it was knowledge transfer. So how do we take this academic to academic paper or something that's plagued us for years and not explaining it well? And how do we use AI to make it easy to understand for whoever is reading it, listening to it.
Tools like scrapers or MCPs that can connect other programs to, say, Claude or ChatGPT, whichever one you're using, is huge. Understanding what you need and what you don't need is huge.
I think, for new businesses starting up, asking the right questions and knowing how to formulate your questions, especially when it comes to like competitive research, market research. Understanding the frameworks, like what do you really need to know about a competitive analysis or what you need to know about market research.
When you really understand those or you have the frameworks to do it, that's when AI becomes super valuable. If you don't and you're just going to type in, I want to do this X program or build this product. Do a deep research and come back with all the listed competitors. Sayy in Canada. Cool. Should you probably give it more context and narrow it down to understand like exactly what you're looking for? Yeah. 100%.
[07:58] Jeff McLarty
I think that's one thing you really helped me understand is what context is as it relates to AI, like how to really flesh out what an AI needs to give you the results back that you need. And I think that's one of the things a lot of people struggle with, and will continue to be maybe the human in the loop piece, is what question are we trying to get an answer to?
And I think a lot of people struggle to use AI because they need almost that iteration with other people to figure out what exactly are we trying to accomplish here? Have you found a way that AI helps with that or is that just one of the key skills in being able to use an AI?
[08:47] Matt McKeage
There's a misconception of how much time this is going to save you, which is true, it will. Should you be able to understand the market, understand your competitors in one day? With the right tools you can and with the right frameworks. But if you aren't looking at every output, right? Say it goes, you're doing it right, you have your frameworks, and you are now looking at your competitive research.
It goes through thousands of websites. It comes back to you with something. Cool. Are you going to go to your next search or are you actually going to read that. Absorb it? Sit on it for a bit and be like, what does this mean? What does this mean to my goals? Or are you just going to put it through, do your next research, do the next one, synthesize it later?
And yeah, now you have this great, beautiful competitive analysis, market research, you really understand the industry. But is it to your business? Is it to your goals, what you were trying to do?
And I think that's where people get into trouble, because if you're not actually reading outputs and you're just going through and being like, okay, now this is great. I can give this to a consultant or for my pitch. They're gonna understand exactly what it is. It's like, yeah, in a sense, but do you really understand it?
Because it only takes one line or a couple of lines for it to skew the whole thing up. And you will only find out about it two days later when you're halfway through it. And you're like, where did that come from? And then you trace it back. You're like, oh, my whole search has been skewed because I didn't read this.
So, it can save you a lot of time, but you do have to read and still critically think. And that will never go away, hopefully.
[10:27] Jeff McLarty
So, given your experience, what's something that shouldn't be farmed out to AI?
[10:42] Matt McKeage
I think tools are changing so much, especially in like the healthcare field, mental health field. I still believe there’s a big premise for human connection.
So, I don't know if I really have an answer to that other than just an opinion, because you'll see some stuff, let's say like with mental health chatbots or stuff like that. We're in the age of trying everything. And, I think the big thing is standards and regulations. Is it done ethically? Do you report to a governing body? And if you do, what does that look like? Are you doing your research on is this ethical? All these things I think is what people need to look at.
It's changing so much with what can be done. I’ll say something today and like next week it changes and it's just that's how fast it's going.
[11:24] Jeff McLarty
Nobody’s really confident giving a speech on AI because they don't want to write it beforehand. You pretty much have to show up morning of, write the speech about what's going on. And then by the time you're done delivering it, you'd have to write a new one if you were to start again.
[11:53] Matt McKeage
100%. It's, yeah, developing so quickly and there's so many sub little niches that you can become an expert in. It's insane.
[12:03] Jeff McLarty
So if your friend told you they were starting a business tomorrow, what are the three tools you would tell them to go get and start with?
[12:11] Matt McKeage
I would ask what type of business? What are they trying to do? Because it's-it all is depending on context and, and what you need. Right now I use Claude for like my go-to and then for secondary, I use Gemini. You don't have to use both. And you can use ChatGPT. Everyone will have different opinions.
There's so many different tools out there and so much marketing of, you'll see it on social media, know, ChatGPT is dead. Claude just came out with this feature. And you get that FOMO. It's like, whatever works for you, use it.
Some have better skills in certain things than others. Uhh, but you won't know that until you start to play around with them and understand exactly what you need it for and how you use it. So starting out, I would try them all. Put the same prompts into each. I think you can try them all for free, to begin with anyways. And just see what kind of information output looks like in each.
Do a couple of content pieces. Do a couple of research pieces. See which one comes out better. Or fits you better. And some, you're just like, well they both did a really good job. So now you know. You can use both. Whether you want to pay for them, that's up to you. But it all depends on context.
Claude right now, I find it's deep research for, not only market research, but for competitive research I use it for, finding, uhh, regulation type things. That stuff like that, where it's very niche to my market and what I'm trying to do. It's super well done for that. There's tools like Manus, I think is run by Meta now. That's also very good. Good for making agents, stuff like that.
So yeah, it depends on what you're trying to build and your company and what you're good at, what you're not good at, stuff like that.
[13:45] Jeff McLarty
So basically what you're telling me is there was already a lot of stuff to sort through and now you got to sort through all these other tools. I mean, business never changes, it evolves, but it never changes.
[14:14] Matt McKeage
I think, don't worry about all the tools. When you slow down and you wanna research something, figure out how to research it. Figure out what you need, what framework do you need. Go from there. Just build it day by day. And you'll find the tools.
YouTube's a great thing for explaining the tools. Reddit also, Claude, OpenAI. They all have courses you can take that will explain everything. And they're easy to use courses. So yeah, don't get caught up in the rat race of, ah, now it's this one. Everything else is gonna die because of this. It's all marketing.
[14:52] Jeff McLarty
We've all had AI long enough now. I mean, you've been more experienced with it than some others, but a lot of people are starting to get over the shiny object syndrome and start to think about, what is this actually for?
I think a lot of people are struggling to figure that piece out given the huge amount of tools and basically skins over these LLMs that are available. How do you sort through what's a good tool and what's just another cheap wrapper?
[15:22] Matt McKeage
When you're looking for a solution or you're wondering, it's like, can I do this better? That's when I start to go look for tools.
Anything from a large company like Claude, ChatGPT, if it's for your business, it's probably the right realm you want to start looking for.
There's all these little agents or apps now that can be developed, and you can do a lifetime subscription, right? But if you don't know where that company is from, what are they doing? Is this just like someone in their basement, vibe coding this? They've set it up and then they're paying another company now to sell it, do the refunds and they walk away from it.
Because yeah, I've run into that. I've used some tools that have been like awesome, exactly what I need. And then over the next couple months, you start to realize what it actually is. Customer service is terrible. Yeah, it was a great deal for 70 bucks a month for a lifetime. But then you start to think, what did I buy? And what do they know now, right?
[16:27] Jeff McLarty
I think a lot of people are not as aware as they need to be about dumping all of their intellectual property into a free AI. And then they basically just hand it over everything that they've worked for years to accumulate.
Are there some simple steps people can take to at least know what questions they should be asking before they start using an AI in their business?
[16:51] Matt McKeage
Yeah, anytime you're doing something for free or it's pretty cheap, there's always a payoff for that. I think Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude - you can use it for free, but they train your data on it.
But if you go to any chat interface for one of these guys and you look at the bottom, after that little window where you type in your prompts, if it doesn't say “we do not use company's data while training”, that means they’re using it.
There's also, go to your settings. If you don't have certain settings clicked, your data can be shared. It can be shared with Google, especially with ChatGPT.
And honestly, the best thing about AI right now is, if someone's listening to this and they don't know where to go in their settings, just ChatGPT, it's like, hey, what are the settings that won't allow my stuff to be shared? Where do I go, right?
If it’s still too much and it's not clicking, be like, is there a video on YouTube for this? Can you find me the most highly rated one so I can watch it?
Do your due diligence. And that's something AI is great for. You can be like, this is the product I'm thinking of using. I'm using it because X.
Or even better, starting out it's like, here's what I do, here's my company. Here's where I'm struggling. I want to find a tool that is: A) secure. It's used by professionals or whatever your criteria is. Go and do deep research on it.
It's all the developing your questions, right? I'm like, is this secure? How secure do you need it to be for your business, right? Is this something that, if data is leaked, are you going to get in trouble? Right? Could this bankrupt you? So you need to do your diligence to understand exactly what type of criteria you're looking for.
[18:34] Jeff McLarty
I'm just waiting for the news story where somebody's dumped a bunch of information into a LLM thinking it was private, and then it just starts handing it out to public users as answers to questions when somebody searches that person or something.
[18:58] Matt McKeage
Well, it's definitely happened, right? Samsung did that.
Yeah, sky's the limit, stay within it. You're not gonna know until you know, right? And so like really do your due diligence and have those like SOPs in place and those policies of like, here's what you can do with this, here's what you can't do.
Because if you're not specific and you think it's common sense, it’s not. You're thinking of a problem. You're like, oh, I’ll just use this. Sometimes you're not having that foresight of like, hey, maybe you shouldn't be using that for this way, and you put in something and you're like, ah, shoot, I shouldn't have done that.
But if you don't have those conversations and you don't really think of like, here's what we can use this for. Here's what we can't use this for. Scary.
[19:45] Jeff McLarty
I think the biggest thing for me was figuring out like learning what context was and how to properly put guardrails on an AI to get what I wanted versus, you know, a two line prompt that would give you a bunch of text, but it wouldn't really give you what you needed to save you time and provide insight.
[20:05] Matt McKeage
And what did you find? How did you learn that?
[20:08] Jeff McLarty
Well, I talked to you a fair bit. And I mean, honestly, the thing that I've discovered is most helpful is asking the AI how I should prompt it, and then reading the prompt and making a few tweaks or having one AI build a prompt for another one, tell it which one you’re planning on giving the information to. But then actually reading it, not just copy and paste and drop it over, but look at the guardrails that it's imposing and whether or context it's including those prompts is correct.
And you can build some amazingly powerful business processes, if you can, 1: narrow down what you're trying to accomplish and, 2: figure out what is not acceptable. And I think I get better and better at it every day. There's still lots to learn and I enjoy talking to guys like you that have a lot more experience with that than I do.
I think, just like when we all started using Word and Excel, it took us a while to figure out how to use them, but then it became a standard tool of business that everybody knew how to use. And I feel like that's an ongoing process probably for the next few years. But.
[21:19] Matt McKeage
I'm going to ask you the same question you asked me. If someone was starting a business today, if I was starting a business today, what would you recommend I use AI for, or what tools would you recommend?
[21:22] Jeff McLarty
I mean, think Claude is a very powerful tool. I actually get this question a lot when I do workshops, especially for groups of new entrepreneurs is I typed it into chat, GPT, and it told me X. And the joke I always make is..well, I make two jokes. One is, an LLM is the world's best averaging machine. So if you want average results and average insight, you can give a one line prompt to a LLM and it'll give you the average of human intelligence, but that's not necessarily what good businesses are built on. So really it's about starting with a really good idea and then using tool to build it out.
And I think less so now than it used to be, but I also used to say an LLM is like your best friend and your best friend will lie to you to protect your feelings. So making sure that you're putting some guardrails on tools to make sure that you're getting the truth and not just getting sent down a rabbit hole of your own delusions, I think is important.
I've been thinking a lot about the most important thing with AI is starting with an original idea and knowing what output you're looking for and typing half an idea into a chat window and hoping that it's going to do all your thinking for you.
I think that's a good way to get in trouble with a business, where if you're not the one running the business, LLMs don't, at least at this point, don't fundamentally understand. Like if you ask: the car wash is a block from here, should I walk or should I take my car? Right? That old example. It sometimes misses really obvious things, and in a business that can really hurt you.
So I think there still is that, you said, human in the loop piece where you have that fundamental understanding. That's important. And that may change as these things get smarter and maybe border on sentience, you know, little T-100 scary from Terminator. What are your thoughts on that?
[23:35] Matt McKeage
No, I think it makes a lot of sense. I think you're what you do as a profession, you're thinking of these things and really how to use it in a business.
So right now, if I'm a brand new beginner, I'm going to say I want to start a pizza shop. If I was to tell you that, ok, so here's my business plan, here's everything. What I did was I went into ChatGPT. I asked it for a competitive search. I did one for Alberta. I did one for Canada. And then I did some market research of what was out there. I typed in a prompt of like K, what are the types of things are out there that do the same thing? What are they being priced at? Here’s the big players.
I show you all this stuff. Where will you likely see the gaps?
[24:26] Jeff McLarty
Well, is your pizza any good?
I think that's one place is where it's easy to get in trouble when you have access to all these tools is when you boil a business down, there has to be a core fundamental value that somebody wants. The rest is logistics of delivering that value. And if that value doesn't fundamentally exist at the core, you can do all the research and marketing and fancy promotional tricks you want.
What is the fundamental value you're providing to somebody? And I think that's where, I mean, the people portion of these things are.
What I'm trying to figure out is, what does this look like for a job description for a manager, for example, is a manager five years from now, not so much managing people, but managing the prompts for AIs that do the grunt work. And then, who’s deciding what the fundamental value proposition of the business is?
Is it, you know, our pizza is like what actually sets us apart and until they bring back floppy drives, you can't shove a piece of pizza into a computer and figure that out. I mean, that's obviously a bit of a facetious example, but I think that's where AIs are tools and not end solutions.
I mean, we used to do accounting by hand and we got QuickBooks and Sage and all of these other things that make it easier. But if you still don't understand how accounting should be done, no tool is going to save you from a big bill from the account at the end of the year when they have to fix all your mistakes.
[26:42] Matt McKeage
I think you said it perfect. Also too, you said something in there about, what does like a manager look like? Imagine you hire people, whether it's marketing, sales, and all the mundane processes that you've fleshed out over years is now there. That they can use their brain power to be more creative at their job. Because you're hiring smart people and you want them to look outside the box, see how things are changed. And, oh, what if we try this? Now you're giving them that power. When I think using tools like AI is done right.
There's more time to be like, how about every Friday we look at a new solution to this? Everything's working great, but can we do something better? Let's do that. You know, let's see how would this work? How do we test it? And I think that's going to be, I think people need to shift to that.
It's like, let your staff under the right guidance, tools, policies, use these tools. and let them be creative because that's why you hired them.
[27:12] Jeff McLarty
I think for me, one of the things I think a lot about is, it's easy to get caught up in all these tools and the power of the internet, amplified by AI in that there’s people on the other sides of all of these things. In every value exchange, there's two people. Somebody offering value and somebody accepting value. And I think that's an easy thing to lose when you have so many tools that you can use.
I get a lot of businesses pitched to me and a lot of people have ideas. And the first question I have is, well, have you talked to somebody you think might buy this? And 95 % of the time the answer is, well, no, I have this encyclopedia of research I've done, but I've never actually talked to somebody that I think might actually want what I'm offering. And that never fails to amaze me that anybody would ever start a business without actually talking to somebody who might want that value from them.
And when it comes to AI, That's the systemic risk I see is, we could theoretically produce what we need without a lot of involvement from people, although it'd be hard to really create value for other people when people aren't involved.
[28:27] Matt McKeage
I would reframe that problem and say, are we educating people enough? Are the right people with their knowledge educating new entrepreneurs on why that's important, what actual value looks like, or are we leaving them up to, and not all YouTubers and not all people out there selling courses are bad.
But it's the new, big thing of like create a course and hey, you want to get rich? I just made a $10,000 app with this, right? Let me show you how to do research and find a product. I think it comes down to education.
And with AI now, what tools can we build to get that education across? How do we use these tools to get the right information to who needs it at the right time?
[29:12] Jeff McLarty
The thing I wonder a lot about with AI-generated content and I'm starting to get people sending me proposals and different things that were clearly written by AI. And I started thinking, well, if you can't be bothered to write it, should I even be bothered to read it? But it does make me wonder. There used to be indications of whether or not somebody knew what they were doing, by, you could look at their website, something they sent you, or a brochure. And you could have an indication of how much experience they had. Now an AI can surface level polish a lot of things. And without actually reading it, you start to see, when you get into it a little bit, whether or not there is actually an expertise behind it.
How do you think that plays into businesses they're trying to start? Do you think it'll make it harder for customers to trust a brand image, for example? Because it could be totally AI generated and not any expertise behind it.
[30:09] Matt McKeage
I would ask, was that not the case, was it not the same problem just in a different way, without AI? Was there companies that were pitching, giving you the reports you needed and you're like, oh, this works, only to find out after you did your own due diligence. Oh, no, this doesn't work.
I think there's gonna be a lot more junk, but I think the way we communicate with and how we see information is going to change quite a bit.
If you are not putting into your prompts, you know, take away all the fluffy words, no dramatic, this isn't a sales pitch, like direct, concise, what is this? What problem are we going to solve? You're going to get that dramatic stuff you see on LinkedIn, the words that, you know, it's like “in a world where…”, or “this isn't just about…”
And so I think the way we're going to really talk about problems, talk about our businesses is going to shift dramatically. I think it's going to be used with AI 100%. But then what does that look like now with our information?
It's definitely going to change. And I think you have to update your, uh, your crap meter. It's super easy now to go away with a polished story, and make it very dramatic. And, people are catching onto that and they're going to be like, I don't even want to look at this. Like, where's the, where's the straight talk, nothing else.
[31:30] Jeff McLarty
I think it's gonna be interesting to see what polished and professional looks like in three years from now. Cause I'm thinking back on websites that you would have thought in 2004 were super polished and professional, and today would look like a high school kid built them.
And it'll be interesting to see what polished looks like after we all have these AI tools and learn to use them. What are the markers people are going to look for that somebody actually knows what they're doing, and they're not just using an LLM as brain for lack of a better word. Yeah.
[31:58] Matt McKeage
Well, that's it. If you think you can not hire a digital marketer, not hire people in their professions that actually know what they're doing, they know when to use things, how to use things, they know the strategic frameworks behind it. I don't see that changing for a while. Because what's going to happen is you're going to be like, I don't need to hire this person.
You're going to do it. It's going to have all this fancy words and it's going to sound really good. It's like, yeah, that's my business. And then once you lose a bunch of money, you're going to go to these guys and see what like a real professional does.
Whether they use AI or not, it doesn't matter, because it's a tool, right? And everyone's going to use it in different ways, but I think there's going to be a time where people are like, there's so much junk out there and everyone's doing it themselves, that they're going to start hiring people again. There's going to be a balance.
[32:49] Jeff McLarty
Yeah, I think you're right. First they'll try to get AI to do everything. And then they'll realize the value of the professional using a tool versus just buying the tool itself. Like you can buy an OBD sensor for a car, but unless you know how to use it, it's just an expensive paperweight.
I think that is going to change. But I also think there's going to be a trend towards almost labeling things as like human generated versus AI generated. Do think that's going to be an important part of marketing going forward, or?
[33:21] Matt McKeage
I think at the end of the day, no matter what's created, how it's created, does it give you value? That's all people are going to care about.
I'm prepared to eat my words, because it's all speculation. But, I think when it comes to art, it’ll be sought after, for definitely, human made art, whether it's a painting. Um, there's going to be other niches popping up with, this is what I made with AI and, oh, that's cool, like, I wonder how he made those prompts. And it's going to, you know, get into these, these sub niches of art and whole new cultures with that. Same with music.
I think there's so much AI generated stuff already on the web, and the models are just now regurgitating that. I think expertise is going to be a big thing.
Like you yourself, you have a bunch of knowledge based on your experience. You can teach about value proposition, change management, all these things. You have your own unique flair of how you see the world, and that's going to be super valuable.
Or for guys like me that work in the mental health space, can I align myself with the experts I think are going to make the biggest change? And how do we take that expertise and create something of value?
[34:40] Jeff McLarty
I think you're right about that. Well, I really appreciate you spending some time with us and sharing your expertise on AI. I think it's been an interesting discussion and I hope to have more of these in the future. So. Thanks, Matt.
[34:52] Matt McKeage
It's always a pleasure, sir. And yeah, talk soon.
[34:57] Jeff McLarty
Talk soon.
[35:03] Jeff McLarty
That's all for us here at the Owner's Roundtable. If you're looking for more support for your business or your own ownership journey, you can contact us at www.focalpointedmonton.com.
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Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner's Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half-baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way.
This isn't about a polished success story on the company About Us page; it's about the real story behind the business. The pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you'll sit down with the owners who've been in the trenches, build something meaningful, and live to tell the tale. Whether you're starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there's a seat at the owner's roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner's Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights.
[01:15] Jeff McLarty
Hello and welcome to Owner’s Roundtable. Today at the table is Matt McKeage, founder of Speaking is Code AI Consulting and StressMed Adaptive Mental Health Training for first responders. Today we'll be taking a bit of a different slant on the Owners Roundtable and turning to look into the future, with Matt's help, on what founding a business in the age of AI looks like. So pull up a chair and join Matt and I as we discuss his journey to earning a seat here at the Owners Roundtable.
[01:40] Jeff McLarty
All right, we're back here at the Owner's Roundtable with Matt McKeage. For the listeners that don't know you, Matt, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
[01:47] Matt McKeage
Yeah, my name is Matt McKeage. I was a paramedic for quite a long number of years. Got out of the profession, started to do more work in the mental health side for first responders.
ChatGPT came on the scene. Started working with AI, probably 2022. And with that, I realized it was going to change the world - how we communicate with things. So I just started working with that, developed a consulting company called Speaking is Code, where we help businesses understand and get educated about how AI works, how they can use it, especially when talk about thinking differently now in how we use AI, how we use prompting, understanding the tools, stuff like that.
I also co-founded a company called StressMed where we teach the neuroscience and physiology of psychological stress to professions like first responders, high stress professions, that they can better understand what the job does to them, how it changes their brain, and give them the tools to go forth and have a long, prosperous career.
[02:55] Jeff McLarty
That's awesome. So, your Stress Med business, is that an AI first business? Like, having your experience as a AI consultant, is that something you brought a lot of tools with as you started to build out the business?
[03:09] Matt McKeage
The way I look at AI is that it's a tool like Photoshop. If you have a design company, you don't have to put that you use Adobe, right? That you use Canva. Everyone knows that's a tool. If they see a nice poster, if they see some graphic details, they understand tools help make that.
And I think that's the same with AI. There's a lot of buzzwords with AI right now. So yeah, we're an AI company, we do this. But you'll notice the ones that really understand their market, they're not marketing it as “we use AI”. And I think that's going to be more relevant in the next couple of years with the outlook on what AI really is, what it can and can't do.
So yah, everything I do, I use some sort of AI. And sometimes I don't. It depends on what needs to be done. Is there a tool that helps me? Is there a framework I can use to really extract data or do something that's gonna take me a lot of time? Is it worth it? You gotta set yourself up and have those questions in your head of should we be using this? When do we use it? Is this the best option?
Always human in the loop.
[04:25] Jeff McLarty
So that's one of the things I really wanted to explore, is how AI is affecting what it means to build a business from scratch. Like the ability to set Claude up to all of a sudden have basically a staff that can do all kinds of different activities for you.
Do you think somebody starting a business is gonna be ready to use those tools?
[04:47] Matt McKeage
Yeah. I think it comes down to how much do you know about when to use what tool. I think the big thing is really fleshing out your idea, really fleshing out your segments. What do you actually do? Because once you have that, gives enough context for LLM to understand where you are. Where's your position? Here's how you do things. And it can think better for you.
But if you go straight to, I want to make a company - here's what it is, go look on Facebook. Who's selling the stuff? Yeah, it can give you a good general layout of things. But as you know, there's a lot more little steps to go into something like that.
It doesn't have to be overcomplicated, but all it is is looking for patterns and it's looking for the patterns you tell it to look for. So if you're not telling it to look for the right patterns, it's going to give you something very sloppish.
I've worked with people who literally have the same type of marketing. And you've probably seen it too, that it's very similar to their competitors because they've typed in some stuff they haven't done their due diligence. And now you realize you and your competitors are saying the same message.
So I think it's really understanding what tools you need. What are you doing repeatedly every day? Is it costing you time? Should this be something that Clutch or ChatGPT should be doing? Is the big thing, I think, for businesses starting.
[06:22] Jeff McLarty
Were there tools that took what you thought would have taken you a long time without an AI tool, to help move the new business along? Or what was kind of your first go-to that you started to explore, kind of that first problem you came across when you were trying to start a business?
[06:46] Matt McKeage
For me, it was knowledge transfer. So how do we take this academic to academic paper or something that's plagued us for years and not explaining it well? And how do we use AI to make it easy to understand for whoever is reading it, listening to it.
Tools like scrapers or MCPs that can connect other programs to, say, Claude or ChatGPT, whichever one you're using, is huge. Understanding what you need and what you don't need is huge.
I think, for new businesses starting up, asking the right questions and knowing how to formulate your questions, especially when it comes to like competitive research, market research. Understanding the frameworks, like what do you really need to know about a competitive analysis or what you need to know about market research.
When you really understand those or you have the frameworks to do it, that's when AI becomes super valuable. If you don't and you're just going to type in, I want to do this X program or build this product. Do a deep research and come back with all the listed competitors. Sayy in Canada. Cool. Should you probably give it more context and narrow it down to understand like exactly what you're looking for? Yeah. 100%.
[07:58] Jeff McLarty
I think that's one thing you really helped me understand is what context is as it relates to AI, like how to really flesh out what an AI needs to give you the results back that you need. And I think that's one of the things a lot of people struggle with, and will continue to be maybe the human in the loop piece, is what question are we trying to get an answer to?
And I think a lot of people struggle to use AI because they need almost that iteration with other people to figure out what exactly are we trying to accomplish here? Have you found a way that AI helps with that or is that just one of the key skills in being able to use an AI?
[08:47] Matt McKeage
There's a misconception of how much time this is going to save you, which is true, it will. Should you be able to understand the market, understand your competitors in one day? With the right tools you can and with the right frameworks. But if you aren't looking at every output, right? Say it goes, you're doing it right, you have your frameworks, and you are now looking at your competitive research.
It goes through thousands of websites. It comes back to you with something. Cool. Are you going to go to your next search or are you actually going to read that. Absorb it? Sit on it for a bit and be like, what does this mean? What does this mean to my goals? Or are you just going to put it through, do your next research, do the next one, synthesize it later?
And yeah, now you have this great, beautiful competitive analysis, market research, you really understand the industry. But is it to your business? Is it to your goals, what you were trying to do?
And I think that's where people get into trouble, because if you're not actually reading outputs and you're just going through and being like, okay, now this is great. I can give this to a consultant or for my pitch. They're gonna understand exactly what it is. It's like, yeah, in a sense, but do you really understand it?
Because it only takes one line or a couple of lines for it to skew the whole thing up. And you will only find out about it two days later when you're halfway through it. And you're like, where did that come from? And then you trace it back. You're like, oh, my whole search has been skewed because I didn't read this.
So, it can save you a lot of time, but you do have to read and still critically think. And that will never go away, hopefully.
[10:27] Jeff McLarty
So, given your experience, what's something that shouldn't be farmed out to AI?
[10:42] Matt McKeage
I think tools are changing so much, especially in like the healthcare field, mental health field. I still believe there’s a big premise for human connection.
So, I don't know if I really have an answer to that other than just an opinion, because you'll see some stuff, let's say like with mental health chatbots or stuff like that. We're in the age of trying everything. And, I think the big thing is standards and regulations. Is it done ethically? Do you report to a governing body? And if you do, what does that look like? Are you doing your research on is this ethical? All these things I think is what people need to look at.
It's changing so much with what can be done. I’ll say something today and like next week it changes and it's just that's how fast it's going.
[11:24] Jeff McLarty
Nobody’s really confident giving a speech on AI because they don't want to write it beforehand. You pretty much have to show up morning of, write the speech about what's going on. And then by the time you're done delivering it, you'd have to write a new one if you were to start again.
[11:53] Matt McKeage
100%. It's, yeah, developing so quickly and there's so many sub little niches that you can become an expert in. It's insane.
[12:03] Jeff McLarty
So if your friend told you they were starting a business tomorrow, what are the three tools you would tell them to go get and start with?
[12:11] Matt McKeage
I would ask what type of business? What are they trying to do? Because it's-it all is depending on context and, and what you need. Right now I use Claude for like my go-to and then for secondary, I use Gemini. You don't have to use both. And you can use ChatGPT. Everyone will have different opinions.
There's so many different tools out there and so much marketing of, you'll see it on social media, know, ChatGPT is dead. Claude just came out with this feature. And you get that FOMO. It's like, whatever works for you, use it.
Some have better skills in certain things than others. Uhh, but you won't know that until you start to play around with them and understand exactly what you need it for and how you use it. So starting out, I would try them all. Put the same prompts into each. I think you can try them all for free, to begin with anyways. And just see what kind of information output looks like in each.
Do a couple of content pieces. Do a couple of research pieces. See which one comes out better. Or fits you better. And some, you're just like, well they both did a really good job. So now you know. You can use both. Whether you want to pay for them, that's up to you. But it all depends on context.
Claude right now, I find it's deep research for, not only market research, but for competitive research I use it for, finding, uhh, regulation type things. That stuff like that, where it's very niche to my market and what I'm trying to do. It's super well done for that. There's tools like Manus, I think is run by Meta now. That's also very good. Good for making agents, stuff like that.
So yeah, it depends on what you're trying to build and your company and what you're good at, what you're not good at, stuff like that.
[13:45] Jeff McLarty
So basically what you're telling me is there was already a lot of stuff to sort through and now you got to sort through all these other tools. I mean, business never changes, it evolves, but it never changes.
[14:14] Matt McKeage
I think, don't worry about all the tools. When you slow down and you wanna research something, figure out how to research it. Figure out what you need, what framework do you need. Go from there. Just build it day by day. And you'll find the tools.
YouTube's a great thing for explaining the tools. Reddit also, Claude, OpenAI. They all have courses you can take that will explain everything. And they're easy to use courses. So yeah, don't get caught up in the rat race of, ah, now it's this one. Everything else is gonna die because of this. It's all marketing.
[14:52] Jeff McLarty
We've all had AI long enough now. I mean, you've been more experienced with it than some others, but a lot of people are starting to get over the shiny object syndrome and start to think about, what is this actually for?
I think a lot of people are struggling to figure that piece out given the huge amount of tools and basically skins over these LLMs that are available. How do you sort through what's a good tool and what's just another cheap wrapper?
[15:22] Matt McKeage
When you're looking for a solution or you're wondering, it's like, can I do this better? That's when I start to go look for tools.
Anything from a large company like Claude, ChatGPT, if it's for your business, it's probably the right realm you want to start looking for.
There's all these little agents or apps now that can be developed, and you can do a lifetime subscription, right? But if you don't know where that company is from, what are they doing? Is this just like someone in their basement, vibe coding this? They've set it up and then they're paying another company now to sell it, do the refunds and they walk away from it.
Because yeah, I've run into that. I've used some tools that have been like awesome, exactly what I need. And then over the next couple months, you start to realize what it actually is. Customer service is terrible. Yeah, it was a great deal for 70 bucks a month for a lifetime. But then you start to think, what did I buy? And what do they know now, right?
[16:27] Jeff McLarty
I think a lot of people are not as aware as they need to be about dumping all of their intellectual property into a free AI. And then they basically just hand it over everything that they've worked for years to accumulate.
Are there some simple steps people can take to at least know what questions they should be asking before they start using an AI in their business?
[16:51] Matt McKeage
Yeah, anytime you're doing something for free or it's pretty cheap, there's always a payoff for that. I think Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude - you can use it for free, but they train your data on it.
But if you go to any chat interface for one of these guys and you look at the bottom, after that little window where you type in your prompts, if it doesn't say “we do not use company's data while training”, that means they’re using it.
There's also, go to your settings. If you don't have certain settings clicked, your data can be shared. It can be shared with Google, especially with ChatGPT.
And honestly, the best thing about AI right now is, if someone's listening to this and they don't know where to go in their settings, just ChatGPT, it's like, hey, what are the settings that won't allow my stuff to be shared? Where do I go, right?
If it’s still too much and it's not clicking, be like, is there a video on YouTube for this? Can you find me the most highly rated one so I can watch it?
Do your due diligence. And that's something AI is great for. You can be like, this is the product I'm thinking of using. I'm using it because X.
Or even better, starting out it's like, here's what I do, here's my company. Here's where I'm struggling. I want to find a tool that is: A) secure. It's used by professionals or whatever your criteria is. Go and do deep research on it.
It's all the developing your questions, right? I'm like, is this secure? How secure do you need it to be for your business, right? Is this something that, if data is leaked, are you going to get in trouble? Right? Could this bankrupt you? So you need to do your diligence to understand exactly what type of criteria you're looking for.
[18:34] Jeff McLarty
I'm just waiting for the news story where somebody's dumped a bunch of information into a LLM thinking it was private, and then it just starts handing it out to public users as answers to questions when somebody searches that person or something.
[18:58] Matt McKeage
Well, it's definitely happened, right? Samsung did that.
Yeah, sky's the limit, stay within it. You're not gonna know until you know, right? And so like really do your due diligence and have those like SOPs in place and those policies of like, here's what you can do with this, here's what you can't do.
Because if you're not specific and you think it's common sense, it’s not. You're thinking of a problem. You're like, oh, I’ll just use this. Sometimes you're not having that foresight of like, hey, maybe you shouldn't be using that for this way, and you put in something and you're like, ah, shoot, I shouldn't have done that.
But if you don't have those conversations and you don't really think of like, here's what we can use this for. Here's what we can't use this for. Scary.
[19:45] Jeff McLarty
I think the biggest thing for me was figuring out like learning what context was and how to properly put guardrails on an AI to get what I wanted versus, you know, a two line prompt that would give you a bunch of text, but it wouldn't really give you what you needed to save you time and provide insight.
[20:05] Matt McKeage
And what did you find? How did you learn that?
[20:08] Jeff McLarty
Well, I talked to you a fair bit. And I mean, honestly, the thing that I've discovered is most helpful is asking the AI how I should prompt it, and then reading the prompt and making a few tweaks or having one AI build a prompt for another one, tell it which one you’re planning on giving the information to. But then actually reading it, not just copy and paste and drop it over, but look at the guardrails that it's imposing and whether or context it's including those prompts is correct.
And you can build some amazingly powerful business processes, if you can, 1: narrow down what you're trying to accomplish and, 2: figure out what is not acceptable. And I think I get better and better at it every day. There's still lots to learn and I enjoy talking to guys like you that have a lot more experience with that than I do.
I think, just like when we all started using Word and Excel, it took us a while to figure out how to use them, but then it became a standard tool of business that everybody knew how to use. And I feel like that's an ongoing process probably for the next few years. But.
[21:19] Matt McKeage
I'm going to ask you the same question you asked me. If someone was starting a business today, if I was starting a business today, what would you recommend I use AI for, or what tools would you recommend?
[21:22] Jeff McLarty
I mean, think Claude is a very powerful tool. I actually get this question a lot when I do workshops, especially for groups of new entrepreneurs is I typed it into chat, GPT, and it told me X. And the joke I always make is..well, I make two jokes. One is, an LLM is the world's best averaging machine. So if you want average results and average insight, you can give a one line prompt to a LLM and it'll give you the average of human intelligence, but that's not necessarily what good businesses are built on. So really it's about starting with a really good idea and then using tool to build it out.
And I think less so now than it used to be, but I also used to say an LLM is like your best friend and your best friend will lie to you to protect your feelings. So making sure that you're putting some guardrails on tools to make sure that you're getting the truth and not just getting sent down a rabbit hole of your own delusions, I think is important.
I've been thinking a lot about the most important thing with AI is starting with an original idea and knowing what output you're looking for and typing half an idea into a chat window and hoping that it's going to do all your thinking for you.
I think that's a good way to get in trouble with a business, where if you're not the one running the business, LLMs don't, at least at this point, don't fundamentally understand. Like if you ask: the car wash is a block from here, should I walk or should I take my car? Right? That old example. It sometimes misses really obvious things, and in a business that can really hurt you.
So I think there still is that, you said, human in the loop piece where you have that fundamental understanding. That's important. And that may change as these things get smarter and maybe border on sentience, you know, little T-100 scary from Terminator. What are your thoughts on that?
[23:35] Matt McKeage
No, I think it makes a lot of sense. I think you're what you do as a profession, you're thinking of these things and really how to use it in a business.
So right now, if I'm a brand new beginner, I'm going to say I want to start a pizza shop. If I was to tell you that, ok, so here's my business plan, here's everything. What I did was I went into ChatGPT. I asked it for a competitive search. I did one for Alberta. I did one for Canada. And then I did some market research of what was out there. I typed in a prompt of like K, what are the types of things are out there that do the same thing? What are they being priced at? Here’s the big players.
I show you all this stuff. Where will you likely see the gaps?
[24:26] Jeff McLarty
Well, is your pizza any good?
I think that's one place is where it's easy to get in trouble when you have access to all these tools is when you boil a business down, there has to be a core fundamental value that somebody wants. The rest is logistics of delivering that value. And if that value doesn't fundamentally exist at the core, you can do all the research and marketing and fancy promotional tricks you want.
What is the fundamental value you're providing to somebody? And I think that's where, I mean, the people portion of these things are.
What I'm trying to figure out is, what does this look like for a job description for a manager, for example, is a manager five years from now, not so much managing people, but managing the prompts for AIs that do the grunt work. And then, who’s deciding what the fundamental value proposition of the business is?
Is it, you know, our pizza is like what actually sets us apart and until they bring back floppy drives, you can't shove a piece of pizza into a computer and figure that out. I mean, that's obviously a bit of a facetious example, but I think that's where AIs are tools and not end solutions.
I mean, we used to do accounting by hand and we got QuickBooks and Sage and all of these other things that make it easier. But if you still don't understand how accounting should be done, no tool is going to save you from a big bill from the account at the end of the year when they have to fix all your mistakes.
[26:42] Matt McKeage
I think you said it perfect. Also too, you said something in there about, what does like a manager look like? Imagine you hire people, whether it's marketing, sales, and all the mundane processes that you've fleshed out over years is now there. That they can use their brain power to be more creative at their job. Because you're hiring smart people and you want them to look outside the box, see how things are changed. And, oh, what if we try this? Now you're giving them that power. When I think using tools like AI is done right.
There's more time to be like, how about every Friday we look at a new solution to this? Everything's working great, but can we do something better? Let's do that. You know, let's see how would this work? How do we test it? And I think that's going to be, I think people need to shift to that.
It's like, let your staff under the right guidance, tools, policies, use these tools. and let them be creative because that's why you hired them.
[27:12] Jeff McLarty
I think for me, one of the things I think a lot about is, it's easy to get caught up in all these tools and the power of the internet, amplified by AI in that there’s people on the other sides of all of these things. In every value exchange, there's two people. Somebody offering value and somebody accepting value. And I think that's an easy thing to lose when you have so many tools that you can use.
I get a lot of businesses pitched to me and a lot of people have ideas. And the first question I have is, well, have you talked to somebody you think might buy this? And 95 % of the time the answer is, well, no, I have this encyclopedia of research I've done, but I've never actually talked to somebody that I think might actually want what I'm offering. And that never fails to amaze me that anybody would ever start a business without actually talking to somebody who might want that value from them.
And when it comes to AI, That's the systemic risk I see is, we could theoretically produce what we need without a lot of involvement from people, although it'd be hard to really create value for other people when people aren't involved.
[28:27] Matt McKeage
I would reframe that problem and say, are we educating people enough? Are the right people with their knowledge educating new entrepreneurs on why that's important, what actual value looks like, or are we leaving them up to, and not all YouTubers and not all people out there selling courses are bad.
But it's the new, big thing of like create a course and hey, you want to get rich? I just made a $10,000 app with this, right? Let me show you how to do research and find a product. I think it comes down to education.
And with AI now, what tools can we build to get that education across? How do we use these tools to get the right information to who needs it at the right time?
[29:12] Jeff McLarty
The thing I wonder a lot about with AI-generated content and I'm starting to get people sending me proposals and different things that were clearly written by AI. And I started thinking, well, if you can't be bothered to write it, should I even be bothered to read it? But it does make me wonder. There used to be indications of whether or not somebody knew what they were doing, by, you could look at their website, something they sent you, or a brochure. And you could have an indication of how much experience they had. Now an AI can surface level polish a lot of things. And without actually reading it, you start to see, when you get into it a little bit, whether or not there is actually an expertise behind it.
How do you think that plays into businesses they're trying to start? Do you think it'll make it harder for customers to trust a brand image, for example? Because it could be totally AI generated and not any expertise behind it.
[30:09] Matt McKeage
I would ask, was that not the case, was it not the same problem just in a different way, without AI? Was there companies that were pitching, giving you the reports you needed and you're like, oh, this works, only to find out after you did your own due diligence. Oh, no, this doesn't work.
I think there's gonna be a lot more junk, but I think the way we communicate with and how we see information is going to change quite a bit.
If you are not putting into your prompts, you know, take away all the fluffy words, no dramatic, this isn't a sales pitch, like direct, concise, what is this? What problem are we going to solve? You're going to get that dramatic stuff you see on LinkedIn, the words that, you know, it's like “in a world where…”, or “this isn't just about…”
And so I think the way we're going to really talk about problems, talk about our businesses is going to shift dramatically. I think it's going to be used with AI 100%. But then what does that look like now with our information?
It's definitely going to change. And I think you have to update your, uh, your crap meter. It's super easy now to go away with a polished story, and make it very dramatic. And, people are catching onto that and they're going to be like, I don't even want to look at this. Like, where's the, where's the straight talk, nothing else.
[31:30] Jeff McLarty
I think it's gonna be interesting to see what polished and professional looks like in three years from now. Cause I'm thinking back on websites that you would have thought in 2004 were super polished and professional, and today would look like a high school kid built them.
And it'll be interesting to see what polished looks like after we all have these AI tools and learn to use them. What are the markers people are going to look for that somebody actually knows what they're doing, and they're not just using an LLM as brain for lack of a better word. Yeah.
[31:58] Matt McKeage
Well, that's it. If you think you can not hire a digital marketer, not hire people in their professions that actually know what they're doing, they know when to use things, how to use things, they know the strategic frameworks behind it. I don't see that changing for a while. Because what's going to happen is you're going to be like, I don't need to hire this person.
You're going to do it. It's going to have all this fancy words and it's going to sound really good. It's like, yeah, that's my business. And then once you lose a bunch of money, you're going to go to these guys and see what like a real professional does.
Whether they use AI or not, it doesn't matter, because it's a tool, right? And everyone's going to use it in different ways, but I think there's going to be a time where people are like, there's so much junk out there and everyone's doing it themselves, that they're going to start hiring people again. There's going to be a balance.
[32:49] Jeff McLarty
Yeah, I think you're right. First they'll try to get AI to do everything. And then they'll realize the value of the professional using a tool versus just buying the tool itself. Like you can buy an OBD sensor for a car, but unless you know how to use it, it's just an expensive paperweight.
I think that is going to change. But I also think there's going to be a trend towards almost labeling things as like human generated versus AI generated. Do think that's going to be an important part of marketing going forward, or?
[33:21] Matt McKeage
I think at the end of the day, no matter what's created, how it's created, does it give you value? That's all people are going to care about.
I'm prepared to eat my words, because it's all speculation. But, I think when it comes to art, it’ll be sought after, for definitely, human made art, whether it's a painting. Um, there's going to be other niches popping up with, this is what I made with AI and, oh, that's cool, like, I wonder how he made those prompts. And it's going to, you know, get into these, these sub niches of art and whole new cultures with that. Same with music.
I think there's so much AI generated stuff already on the web, and the models are just now regurgitating that. I think expertise is going to be a big thing.
Like you yourself, you have a bunch of knowledge based on your experience. You can teach about value proposition, change management, all these things. You have your own unique flair of how you see the world, and that's going to be super valuable.
Or for guys like me that work in the mental health space, can I align myself with the experts I think are going to make the biggest change? And how do we take that expertise and create something of value?
[34:40] Jeff McLarty
I think you're right about that. Well, I really appreciate you spending some time with us and sharing your expertise on AI. I think it's been an interesting discussion and I hope to have more of these in the future. So. Thanks, Matt.
[34:52] Matt McKeage
It's always a pleasure, sir. And yeah, talk soon.
[34:57] Jeff McLarty
Talk soon.
[35:03] Jeff McLarty
That's all for us here at the Owner's Roundtable. If you're looking for more support for your business or your own ownership journey, you can contact us at www.focalpointedmonton.com.
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