Latest / Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney / How AI will transform your sales process. With Joaquin Corrales

Transcript

How AI will transform your sales process. With Joaquin Corrales · Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney

• 0:00
  Things don't have to take a long time.
• 0:02
  Like sometimes we think because we are new at something that reaching this level that we want or doing this thing or whatever is just going to take a lot of time.
• 0:12
  And the only reason why is because we lack a lot of the experience that allows us to do the things that we need to do to get there a little bit quicker.
• 1:04
  I'm Becca Poundney, wedding business marketing expert, strategist, speaker and author.
• 1:09
  Over the last decade, I've combined my love of marketing with my knowledge of the wedding industry to help thousands of wedding pros and venues just like you learn new skills, strategize, get re energized and grow their businesses.
• 1:21
  Because after all, that's how you stay top of your game.
• 1:25
  Whether you're brand new into this industry or been here forever, I want to help.
• 1:29
  So grab a cup of tea or a cocktail, sit back and enjoy a brand new episode of my award winning podcast, Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow.
• 1:37
  Let's get going with today's episode.
• 1:43
  Today I'm chatting with Joaquin Corrales, venue owner and tech entrepreneur based in Miami.
• 1:48
  As owner of Gran Pariso Gardens, a high volume outdoor wedding venue, he realized that his team were losing couples because they were slow to get back to people.
• 1:56
  So he decided he needed to build the system to fix it.
• 1:59
  I'm really looking forward to finding out more.
• 2:01
  Joaquin, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:04
  Becca, how are you?
• 2:05
  I'm so happy to be here.
• 2:06
  Thanks for having me.
• 2:07
  It's such a pleasure.
• 2:08
  I'm really excited to chat.
• 2:10
  We've got lots of exciting things to talk about in today's episode and I'm going to grill you hard because to give everyone a little insight, we're going to be talking a lot about AI.
• 2:19
  And I know there's all sorts of thoughts on that from the people listening.
• 2:22
  So we're going to go deep into it today.
• 2:24
  But before we get there, I always like people to understand the person they're listening to on the podcast.
• 2:30
  So I want you to take me back to a day before you ever even entered the world of the wedding industry.
• 2:36
  What did you do?
• 2:37
  What was your career looking like?
• 2:39
  What's your background?
• 2:39
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:41
  So I'm originally Cuban.
• 2:43
  My family got here to the US So I live in Miami when I was just a little kid and kind of growing up, grew up kind of in a lower middle income kind of family.
• 2:52
  And my obsession as I was growing up for cars continued to grow as I got into middle school, to high school, into all these Things and really my, my only goal in life when I was 18 years old
• 3:03
  was to one day own a Lamborghini.
• 3:06
  And so what I did was pretty much work backwards from like, okay, people that have Lamborghinis, like what do their lives look like?
• 3:13
  Okay, they typically don't work a 9 to 5 job they typically work at, or they typically own their own business and all these things.
• 3:20
  And that slowly kind of pushed me towards pursuing a career in like software development where I thought, you know what people I would love to like build, like create a building, be an architect and build something huge.
• 3:33
  But I don't want to use like wood and screws and tools.
• 3:37
  So what if I could do that like on the Internet using like lines of code?
• 3:41
  So I pretty much went down, went into school for learning how to do software development.
• 3:46
  And long story short, I ended up not even graduating from school.
• 3:49
  I was always trying different businesses as I was in college here in Miami.
• 3:53
  And my first successes came from developing like mobile apps.
• 3:57
  So built a whole bunch of mobile apps on iPhone, on Android, on all these things.
• 4:02
  And this was way before like the current stage that we're in of AI where like anyone could program things.
• 4:07
  This was like actually reading books and writing code and doing all these things throughout the years.
• 4:12
  You know, I've been an entrepreneur for a little bit over 10 years.
• 4:14
  So many failures.
• 4:15
  Failures eventually lead us to some successes.
• 4:19
  And about four years ago I started investing a lot into real estate here in Miami where I live.
• 4:25
  And through that came this idea of like, hey, instead of buying a property and growing tomatoes on it or renting it on a 12 month lease or whatever, what if I could create an experience for people?
• 4:38
  What if I could create like this amazing venue where people can come and have the most important day of their lives?
• 4:43
  And so basically what I did was I started calling every single venue in the area and acting like I wanted to get married there.
• 4:50
  And I basically said, hey, look, I want to get married between these days.
• 4:54
  Like, are those available?
• 4:55
  What's your contract?
• 4:57
  What's the pricing?
• 4:57
  How does all of this work?
• 4:59
  And I started kind of like underwriting, like, okay, how much are these venues actually generating?
• 5:04
  What is their volume look like, how many bookings are they doing?
• 5:06
  How are they getting these bookings?
• 5:08
  Are they advertising?
• 5:09
  Are they posting on social, et cetera?
• 5:11
  And after a lot of that, I decided, you know what, I'm going to do this.
• 5:15
  I'm going to budget X amount of money, which we went like double over the amount of money that I expected to spend And I got into the industry, and a lot of my prior experience had to do with
• 5:25
  sales and advertising and customer acquisition and all those things.
• 5:30
  So my entire idea was, okay, I could use all those skills to be able to build a sales funnel where I can pay for clients, essentially.
• 5:38
  And we could talk a little bit about that.
• 5:39
  I know a lot of the listeners are, you know, they're in the.
• 5:41
  They're in the wedding industry themselves.
• 5:43
  Some are venues, some are not.
• 5:44
  But it really just follows the same principles of, like, how can we not make it be a game of chance?
• 5:49
  And how can we follow some principles to be able to turn more leads into tours, into clients and all these things?
• 5:56
  And today we do a little bit over a hundred events a year.
• 6:00
  I had a huge issue in that venue, which I built a tech company around it now, which we're in hundreds of venues around the US and the uk so we'll talk a little bit about that.
• 6:09
  But that's kind of how I got into the wedding industry.
• 6:12
  I have a question for you.
• 6:13
  Have you purchased the Lamborghini yet, or are you still on that trajectory?
• 6:16
  One day?
• 6:17
  I've had five of them, and there's one in the garage right now.
• 6:20
  Wow.
• 6:21
  Okay, so you hit the goal.
• 6:23
  You got the Lamborghini, so you must have a new big goal because you need something else to be working towards.
• 6:28
  Now.
• 6:28
  If you've already done the Lamborghini, if you're anything like me, I need to have the next thing there in the future.
• 6:33
  You know, it's funny because, like, as you're.
• 6:36
  As you're growing up, like, you have all these, like, material obsessions.
• 6:40
  And when you're an entrepreneur, you realize that the game is so hard that whatever pushes you forward, just cling onto that.
• 6:50
  No matter if people say you shouldn't be materialistic or whatever those things are, because you need any possible excuse to not give up.
• 6:57
  And when every single signal in front of you tells you to stop, this is going to suck, things don't look like they're working, et cetera.
• 7:04
  You need to cling on to whatever that is.
• 7:06
  For me, I think now, as I've gotten older and I've been able to build these businesses, and I've been able to build them in a way where a lot of the businesses that I run, like, they don't require
• 7:17
  a lot of my time.
• 7:18
  And I think that's something that's important too, especially in this wedding industry.
• 7:21
  Like, so many of the venues that I talk to and business owners that I talk to, they're entrepreneurs and they're business owners, but they really have like a high paying job and I think that that's okay if it's
• 7:32
  okay with them.
• 7:33
  But a lot of them, they want more and they want to be able to build something that allows them to go on a vacation and for their phone to not be ringing 24 hours or to be able to
• 7:42
  be generating revenue and bookings and everything without it being necessarily tied to them.
• 7:47
  So that's why I think there's so much advantage and you know, people listening to podcasts like this, using services like yours, and learning from people that have seen it so many times that they're able to see the pattern
• 7:57
  recognition necessary to do the things that can get you to where you want to be.
• 8:03
  I think for me the goal kind of what we're pursuing right now is just building something like big like building something one that I'm.
• 8:11
  That, that, that is a system that does not necessarily fully require my time, but building something that allows other people to win.
• 8:18
  When, when you build a business that allows a lot of people to win, then these people doing what's best for them is doing what's best for you.
• 8:27
  And so if you're able to do that, it's amazing because you're able to build something self sustaining and, and a system and a machine and all these things and even something that's sellable.
• 8:36
  Like we were actually approached probably like six months ago for to sell the venue actually.
• 8:43
  And part of why they even wanted to do that was because it wasn't something that was attached to the owner.
• 8:49
  Like I can be deleted from there and replaced with someone else and the business will still continue running.
• 8:53
  I said no, I'm not going to sell it.
• 8:55
  But yeah, so you know, that's kind of what the goal is right now.
• 8:58
  I love that.
• 8:58
  I love that.
• 8:59
  Now before we get into the tech stuff, I do want to talk a little bit about growing the venue because I think there's some interesting insights there for people to learn.
• 9:07
  So you came into this venue with this kind of sales marketing pipeline idea and I think that thing that you said about not leaving it to chance is the really important bit because I think a lot of people
• 9:18
  feel like their businesses are down to chance and just hoping that the phone rings.
• 9:22
  So what did you do?
• 9:23
  What did you implement in your business, in the venue to start generating those leads consistently?
• 9:28
  Yeah, so I think part of my, some of my earlier experience that I didn't tap into a little bit before was I wasn't always an entrepreneur.
• 9:34
  Like, I worked at some companies initially, and my role there was I would do development and I was in charge of like the business Intellig intelligence department.
• 9:42
  Basically, that's like fancy words for like, I would look at numbers all day and I tracked everything and all these things.
• 9:49
  So when it came into this, this venue world, I think the most important thing for me initially was I want to be able to track things.
• 9:56
  I want to set like a foundation where I could track what's happening here.
• 10:00
  Like, how many leads do we get, how many of those leads turn into a tour, how many of these tours turn into a booking, and how much.
• 10:07
  How can I affect that pipeline through using marketing dollars, let's say, and then creating systems to have to be efficient and to be able to extract as high of a return from all those things.
• 10:18
  And so I think that all of that experience is what allowed us to be so successful early on.
• 10:23
  We're literally in our first year, we did like over 70 events.
• 10:26
  Now we're doing over a hundred, which is millions of dollars a year in revenue.
• 10:30
  And of course, here in Miami, weddings are very expensive.
• 10:32
  So our average event size is about $30,000.
• 10:35
  But I think for us it's.
• 10:37
  For me, it was initially, okay, I want to be able to track everything, and then we just need to test everything.
• 10:44
  But the problem is that if you are just doing the testing part or if you are not giving leads the proper attention, or if the value exchange is not there, if any of those pieces are missing, then it's
• 10:56
  really hard for you to see success.
• 10:59
  So what I mean by the, by the value part, which I think is crucial, is, you know, everyone that transacts, no matter what it is, whether they're buying a pen or they're buying your service or they're buying your
• 11:08
  photography packages or whatever it is, it's all an exchange of value.
• 11:11
  They're looking at, okay, how much am I paying in exchange for what?
• 11:15
  For me, when I was starting off in the venue, it was about, okay, how do we price ourselves?
• 11:18
  I have no idea.
• 11:19
  Well, let me go look at what these competitors are charging in exchange for what.
• 11:23
  And then I can decide how I want to position myself.
• 11:26
  Don't want to position myself as like much cheaper.
• 11:28
  So they're getting a lot more value for the money to bring in these first bookings while we build up the brand, brand and build the content, etc to then be a little bit more on par with the market
• 11:38
  or even more expensive than the market.
• 11:40
  There's a lot of advantages to doing that too.
• 11:42
  And then what happens is if you're able to track these things, then you are not afraid to pay to acquire customers.
• 11:50
  Because if you knew for example, that every 100 leads you turn that into, I don't know, 20 tours and from these 20 tours you can convert 20% of them into an actual event worth X, Y and Z, then
• 12:04
  you know that the sales funnel is 100 leads, 20 tours and let's say four bookings.
• 12:10
  So then it just becomes a matter of okay, how can I one acquire these leads and how can I turn as many of them into a tour as possible, knowing my sales team or myself can offer them something
• 12:20
  that is of acceptable value for what they're getting.
• 12:23
  So that was kind of the idea today and it remains the idea forever.
• 12:26
  And it's something that you could apply to every business.
• 12:29
  And then, you know, we, we saw so many inefficiencies in there, which is where some of these other things later came, came about.
• 12:35
  Does that answer the question?
• 12:36
  Sorry, yeah, absolutely answers the question.
• 12:38
  I think you'd be amazed how many people I work with that just don't have any hold on those numbers.
• 12:43
  So I'll say things like what are your conversion rates from a call?
• 12:46
  And they don't even know that.
• 12:47
  So I think absolute basics, tracking those numbers, understanding your numbers.
• 12:52
  And like you said then it frees you up to be able to spend money on things because you, you know, you're going to get the return on investment or at least you're tracking where you are getting the return
• 12:59
  on investment and why you're not.
• 13:01
  So you did notice though that there were some issues which is where the next part of the business has come from.
• 13:07
  So you say that basically it wasn't that you didn't have the demand, you just weren't getting back to people quick enough.
• 13:13
  And something I talk about a lot at the moment is particularly Gen Z and how consumer culture is teaching us to have instant replies.
• 13:21
  So how was that kind of manifesting in the venue?
• 13:24
  Yeah, so the problems that we had initially was, you know, nowadays like you just mentioned, everyone is like doom scrolling on their phone all day.
• 13:31
  They have like tick tock and everyone just has like a shorter and shorter attention, attention span.
• 13:35
  So people just want what they want like immediately.
• 13:38
  So the issues that we had initially was like okay, we're generating leads, we're generating some interest, but by the time we get back to these people, they don't respond like they don't engage back with us, they raise their
• 13:49
  hand that they wanted more information.
• 13:50
  What's happening.
• 13:51
  Or, for example, you look at these directories like you have hitched, right?
• 13:55
  You have guides for brides.
• 13:56
  You have the Knot Wedding, Wire Wedding Pro.
• 13:59
  You have all these companies.
• 14:00
  And the way that some of these companies work is when you are getting nothing against them, but when.
• 14:06
  When you get a lead from them, another two or three venues sometimes are getting the lead as well.
• 14:12
  So what happens is if you're not able to have a conversation quickly with these people or follow up with them long enough, then there's so much money being left there on the table.
• 14:22
  And so the solution to grow our venue got to the point where it wasn't let's spend more on marketing and more on advertising and bring in more leads or whatever it is, is let's take the demand that we're
• 14:32
  already generating and just extract more value from it.
• 14:36
  And that came from, you know, just really sales 101 thinking, going back to first principles, but also, you know, checking the system on a Monday morning and we have 30 unread messages, or we have all these leads where
• 14:49
  I'm expecting my team to follow up, but they, unfortunately, they take, you know, weekends at 9pm off where I'm still online.
• 14:57
  So, you know, it's just building a system that is scalable and that allows us to provide the experience to the clients that they're really looking for.
• 15:04
  And that's in the form of having a conversation with them, being able to answer their questions, being able to follow up, being able to personalize the experience where they feel like they're just engaging with an extension of your
• 15:14
  team.
• 15:15
  And I thought, for us, what better way, what more of an advantage could we ask for than one having the venue that gets over a thousand leads a month to be able to build, and having the tech experience
• 15:27
  to be able to build the system that could do that?
• 15:30
  So that's kind of what started the entire idea behind venue, AI and like, all that stuff.
• 15:34
  Amazing.
• 15:34
  Now, I have a question about this, because I know that this already will have divided people in half.
• 15:39
  There'll be the half that are on my side of the fence, which is, consumer culture's changing.
• 15:43
  We need to get back to people quickly.
• 15:45
  And then the other half of people who say, well, these couples are just really unreasonable.
• 15:49
  They shouldn't expect me to reply late at night.
• 15:52
  So my question is, is do we think that we should be working for the couples, or do you think we as an industry have trained them wrong?
• 15:59
  Why do you think people are expecting.
• 16:00
  Expecting that instant response?
• 16:02
  And what do we say to the People that are still saying, well, it's the couple's problem, not mine.
• 16:06
  Yeah, you know, that's actually a good question.
• 16:08
  As an entrepreneur, you know, it's funny because you think of this idea of an entrepreneur and you're like, oh, like you're, you're your own business owner.
• 16:14
  Like you don't respond to anyone, like you're good.
• 16:16
  And it's actually like it's inverted.
• 16:18
  Like when you're a boss and an entrepreneur, like you work first for your employees, you need to make sure that they have a good work environment, they see a future there, they're happy so they can be happy with
• 16:28
  your client.
• 16:29
  And then second, you work for the client.
• 16:31
  And unfortunately, like this is just the way that business and the world works.
• 16:35
  Like, you have to give people a really positive experience.
• 16:38
  And sure, the idea of if they really wanted to, they would wait.
• 16:43
  Okay, sure, that holds some validity.
• 16:45
  But the reality is that they can love your venue an insane amount.
• 16:50
  But if some other venue is able to have a whole conversation with them, give them availability, give them pricing and book a viewing before you did, then now you can be option two or option three and they could
• 17:02
  walk into that viewing maybe even thinking, you know what, I like that other one a little bit better.
• 17:06
  But they walk in there and you know, the whole idea of a venue is just get them there so they could experience the place.
• 17:13
  You could walk them through everything, you could figure out what it is that they want, see if it's a fit or not.
• 17:17
  And there's so many leads and viewings of people that will stay in that property and will end up booking with them because of that kind of instant gratification and first experience.
• 17:28
  So, you know, it kind of goes both ways.
• 17:29
  The way that our system works is we just want to make sure that there's no stone left unturned if this lead was ever going to turn into anything we want to know.
• 17:38
  We want them to talk to us because they have a life and you know, they're doing things and they might inquire at the venue and then like their kid called them and then they just completely forgot.
• 17:46
  And then people, there's always like a sales cycle.
• 17:49
  This is where the data is so important too, of like, there's certain timelines of like you need to follow up with people this amount of times.
• 17:56
  And in a way that's multi channel in a way that's all these things to extract the opportunity.
• 18:01
  And then for us as a venue, like, we just want more results.
• 18:04
  So results are we want more Bookings and we want our clients to be happy.
• 18:09
  And we built this entire monster around this.
• 18:11
  That is, is so cool.
• 18:13
  We love it.
• 18:14
  It's so funny as well.
• 18:15
  When we talk about follow ups, I quite often talk about it on stage.
• 18:18
  Right?
• 18:18
  Well, you know, people in our industry talk about ghosting all of the time.
• 18:21
  People ghost us.
• 18:22
  Everyone, everyone hates us.
• 18:23
  People ghost us.
• 18:24
  And I always say to them, how many times have you ghosted your best friends when they've asked you to go for coffee or you know, let's meet, hey beggar, let's go meet up for lunch.
• 18:32
  And you're like, yeah, sure.
• 18:34
  And then never reply to them ever again.
• 18:35
  And I'm like, and if we're willing to do that to our best friends because we are so distracted by everything else.
• 18:40
  Of course, these couples that have no emotional interest in us whatsoever need reminding, they need that follow up.
• 18:47
  They need us to talk to them because otherwise life's moved on and they've done other things.
• 18:51
  So talk me through the tech that you created then because you obviously have this issue in your ven.
• 18:58
  You knew you wanted to solve it and you therefore set out to create what has now become venue AI.
• 19:02
  But specifically to start with, just for your venue, what did it do?
• 19:06
  What problems did it solve?
• 19:07
  How did it work?
• 19:08
  Yeah, yeah, so, so the first thing that is, that was the most important thing for us and remains the most important thing is the quality of conversation that these AI systems have with the end consumer.
• 19:20
  For us, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, our average event size is $30,000.
• 19:25
  Like people are spending a small fortune on.
• 19:29
  And we have other venues that we work with that are 50, 70, $100,000, just like we have others that are 5, 6, whatever, but these are high ticket clients.
• 19:37
  So for us, the most important thing was this thing cannot give wrong pricing, it cannot hallucinate, it cannot give wrong availability, it cannot, you know, if someone's coming in because they want to have a funeral there, like it
• 19:49
  can't be excited if they're asking, inquiring for an event that is of a certain type.
• 19:54
  So kind of all these things.
• 19:56
  And then for us at the beginning it was just a lot of trial and error, like basically building the system incognito, not actually sending messages to the clients, but running it through thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands
• 20:09
  of conversations.
• 20:10
  And really the whole idea was instead of having messages and leads scattered everywhere, some in our cell phone, some in the other coordinator cell phone, some in, you know, wedding wire hitch or one of these directories some in
• 20:23
  our email, et cetera.
• 20:25
  What if we can consolidate everything into one place, no matter where they came from?
• 20:29
  A phone call, an Instagram, D, Facebook messenger, doesn't matter.
• 20:33
  And so what that allowed us to do was every lead funnels into there.
• 20:36
  The system understands, okay, who is this person?
• 20:39
  What type of event, what do they want?
• 20:41
  Is the event far away?
• 20:43
  Is the event close?
• 20:44
  Maybe it's an event that's a year out versus three months.
• 20:47
  Do we have any promotions that may make sense for these people because it's such a short term event.
• 20:52
  How do we deal with this type of client?
• 20:55
  Do we, you know, is it a Saturday and peak season or is it a Wednesday and low season?
• 21:00
  And basically what the system does is the same thing that you and I would.
• 21:03
  It understands, okay, how, what do I need to tell this person to get them what it is that they need or to get the conversation moving down the pipeline?
• 21:10
  The typical pipeline in a venue is a lead comes in, we want to qualify them, we want to make sure they understand the value.
• 21:18
  They have all their questions answered, they know availability, they know all these things.
• 21:22
  And then we want to move that conversation into a viewing.
• 21:26
  And so basically we've built a system that is able to do all of that.
• 21:29
  The lead comes in.
• 21:30
  No matter the date and time the system engages them, it answers your question.
• 21:34
  The system is smart enough to know when it can't answer something and it will hand that off to the team.
• 21:38
  Maybe it's 9pm on a Sunday and someone's ready to book a viewing, the system will put that viewing into the salesperson's calendar, shoot them a message and let them know that the viewing is scheduled and that they will
• 21:48
  be reminded that the client will be reminded to make sure that they're basically showing up.
• 21:53
  So it basically allows a small team of salespeople or coordinators or solo venue owners that we work with a lot of them to have the cheapest employee that they will ever have that is on brand.
• 22:05
  It's following up a lot more than you and I would, right?
• 22:08
  If we're, if a client comes in and we follow up once and they're not responding, I'm sorry, but I'm kind of done.
• 22:15
  Like, I'm gonna go focus on the people that are responding.
• 22:17
  But it doesn't work like that and we all know it.
• 22:20
  Like, we know that we need to follow up with people and even if they don't respond, we should keep going.
• 22:24
  It's just not scalable and it's not the best use of Our time.
• 22:27
  So.
• 22:28
  So technology has allowed us to do that and the clients love us for it.
• 22:33
  We are actually filming a bunch of high quality case studies right now in some of our venue clients.
• 22:38
  And one of the ones that we just posted on our website, which happens to my venue all the time, is it's Mike.
• 22:44
  And Mike owns two venues in the Boston area that use venue AI.
• 22:47
  And he's saying how people show up to the venue, like asking for Sophia or asking for Mariana, and these people don't exist.
• 22:53
  It's literally the AI system.
• 22:55
  So that's huge validation for us of, okay, the quality of conversation.
• 23:00
  People really feel like they're talking to someone on the team.
• 23:04
  So, yeah.
• 23:04
  So practically, then essentially a lead comes in to the website, or Vitex, whatever it is, and no human really has to deal with it until the moment they come on the tour.
• 23:14
  Is that fair?
• 23:15
  So the lead comes in, they.
• 23:17
  They have their same 40 questions rehashed.
• 23:20
  They want availability, they want pricing, they want to change the day, they want to do all these things.
• 23:23
  The system sometimes can't handle something about maybe 10 to 12% of the time, the conversation will be escalated.
• 23:29
  So what does that mean?
• 23:30
  Someone's negotiating too much?
• 23:32
  Someone wants to go for a viewing today, but you don't have any slots on your calendar.
• 23:36
  Maybe they've already completed the viewing and now they're ready to move forward.
• 23:40
  So those are all examples as to why it would escalate.
• 23:43
  So escalating means you get a text message, hey, Becca, Joaquin needs help.
• 23:47
  Please come and step into the conversation as well as Joaquin gets a message, hey, I'm gonna loop in Becca so she could come in and basically help us out.
• 23:54
  And then, of course, the venue sees every message, every conversation is in front of them.
• 23:59
  They could take over at any time, etc.
• 24:01
  But yeah, that's kind of how that works.
• 24:03
  And then they come on the tour, and then from that point onwards, that's it.
• 24:06
  Your system is done with that, with that lead.
• 24:08
  So.
• 24:08
  So what happens?
• 24:09
  That's a good question.
• 24:10
  So what happens post tour is our system, we know as.
• 24:14
  As business owners that, you know, updating a CRM is like pulling teeth.
• 24:18
  Like, it's kind of annoying.
• 24:19
  And you have to open your system and put in information, whatever.
• 24:22
  So the way that we've solved that problem and venue AI actually integrates with all the top CRMs, whether it's Sonus or Triple Seed or Honeybook or whatever system the client uses, as long as they have an API, we
• 24:33
  integrate with it.
• 24:34
  So what we do is after the viewing, our system will shoot a text message to your coordinator.
• 24:39
  Hey, Becca, did Joaquin show up?
• 24:41
  And from your cell phone, you can do voice to text.
• 24:43
  Like if you're talking to your cousin or a coworker, you could be like, yeah, Joaquin did show up.
• 24:47
  I quoted him £20,000.
• 24:48
  He loved the chandeliers.
• 24:50
  He came with his fiance.
• 24:51
  Let's start following up tomorrow or let's start following up in a week or whatever it is.
• 24:54
  And what our system will do, it will write those notes in the conversation, it will send it to your CRM system, and then it will continue engaging with them, even post viewing.
• 25:03
  So it's pretty much at every stage of the pipeline, whether they're just an inquiry, maybe they scheduled a tour, let's get them there.
• 25:09
  Maybe they showed up to the tour.
• 25:10
  Now let's follow up a little bit further down.
• 25:13
  So it's engaging and giving people this experience, as if your entire job in life was just to cater to them.
• 25:19
  Yeah.
• 25:19
  Which they're going to love.
• 25:20
  Okay.
• 25:21
  I'm already hearing some people.
• 25:22
  This is going to have blown their mind and they're already going to have many questions.
• 25:25
  So I'm going to ask some of those questions on their behalf.
• 25:28
  First question then is, do we think speed is always good or.
• 25:31
  Because we're getting back to people so fast, therefore the couple knows it's automated.
• 25:35
  Is that ever putting people off or do you think we're just used to it these days?
• 25:38
  Yeah, I think that as more and more time passes like this will become more and more the norm.
• 25:44
  At the same time, the system's not hiding that it's AI like the system, you know, and that's the decision of the venue.
• 25:51
  We can introduce ourselves as AI.
• 25:53
  The reality is that as these systems keep getting better and better, it becomes more and more acceptable for people.
• 25:58
  And they.
• 25:58
  They would rather talk to an AI that's available now and knows everything than talk to an employee, which is going to take 2, 4 days, 2, 3 days to get back to them.
• 26:08
  And the chance maybe that employee gives them the wrong answer.
• 26:11
  Right.
• 26:11
  Because they have to then check with a manager or whatever it is.
• 26:13
  So people, I think, prefer instant gratification and talking to a system that will give them what they want immediately as opposed to waiting.
• 26:21
  Even though maybe they may think waiting is better, they're still going to engage with the automated system and it is still going to move the conversation along.
• 26:29
  And then, of course, whenever someone wants to.
• 26:30
  To talk to a real person, they can ask that.
• 26:33
  And then the system will just hand it off and escalate.
• 26:35
  But we have so much visibility of that, because I thought, hey, maybe that's going to be a problem as well.
• 26:40
  But we have so much visibility of hundreds and thousands of conversations that happen every month, and the percentage of time that people actually ask for a human is, like, surprisingly low.
• 26:53
  Even if the system engages as an AI or just as Sophia from Grandpariso Gardens or whatever.
• 27:01
  I think as well, from a consumer point of view, from my point of view, I only get annoyed by AI when the AI is bad.
• 27:08
  So when I'm talking to an AI agent and it's not giving me the answer, or it's sending me around in circles, or it's giving me information, that is not the question that I asked.
• 27:16
  That's when I get cross and say, give me a human.
• 27:19
  But actually, if it was giving me all of the information correctly, then I'm more than happy to deal with it, because like you said, it's quicker than sitting on hold and waiting to speak to a company.
• 27:27
  So I think maybe the issue is that.
• 27:30
  That we're frustrated by bad AI, and therefore, actually, when we.
• 27:34
  When we engage with good AI, we have a much better experience.
• 27:37
  And on that same thing, one of my big concerns with AI, and I've been talking about it a lot recently on podcasts, particularly in our industry, is people using AI in a lazy way or in a way that
• 27:47
  makes them devoid of personality.
• 27:49
  So how are you ensuring that you know, if there's two venues in the same market, both using your system, that they sound like them and they don't sound just like the same as each other?
• 28:00
  Yeah, that's a great question.
• 28:01
  So a lot of what we do is the way in which we're able to guarantee the quality of the output of the conversations of what the system is doing.
• 28:09
  And everything has a lot to do with how we onboard clients.
• 28:14
  So there's systems out there where they'll give you a username and password and pat you on the back and wish you luck, and that is typically a disaster for our system.
• 28:21
  Our onboarding is extremely white of.
• 28:24
  So what that means is you're assigned a customer success manager, and we learn everything about your venue.
• 28:28
  We look at example conversations that you've had with clients for as far back as you have that, and then we train the system on everything related to that.
• 28:37
  And then what we do is we run it against thousands of conversations.
• 28:41
  And when we're happy with it, which usually takes about a week, we present it back to the venue.
• 28:45
  So we Go through this multi step like onboarding process where because, because you see it in a lot of systems nowadays where you know, your calendly or your whatever, any system you're using is like, oh AI.
• 28:57
  We do AI now.
• 28:58
  And then their AI is just like, hey, I wrote you this email, I hope it's good.
• 29:01
  Like you press send though.
• 29:03
  I'm not pressing send.
• 29:04
  You do it right.
• 29:05
  And so those AI systems kind of suck for us.
• 29:07
  We wanted to do it differently where it's like we want to build enough confidence in you as a venue and a business owner.
• 29:12
  We want to show you enough proof and let you test this as much as you need to to so that you're confident with this thing being able to take actions and engage these clients.
• 29:22
  And this is the future of like AI.
• 29:24
  It's like everyone and you see it with these monster companies.
• 29:27
  Like Facebook the other day took out something called Muse.
• 29:30
  Like they invested, I don't know, a hundred billion dollars on providing people with like personal AI agents or whatever.
• 29:35
  The issue with these things is that they're all very generalized.
• 29:39
  And so for us, how we make it a good AI that doesn't piss people off and that doesn't suck suck is by really narrowing our focus.
• 29:46
  We get so many people on a daily basis that are like, hey, can I use this for like my plumbing business or can I use this for my whatever?
• 29:54
  And it's like the technology is that we've built is kind of similar in there, but that means that our product will be okay at a lot of things as opposed to really, really good for just venues.
• 30:08
  And that will give us a huge differentiator.
• 30:10
  The way that I explain it to people is that we got a rusty piece of steel like two years ago and every single day we polish it and by now it's very, very shiny.
• 30:21
  This thing has gone through every edge case, every random scenario, people trying to trick the system, pricing questions, whatever people throw at it like it's been through it.
• 30:29
  And so that gives ourselves and our venues the confidence of that it's going to be able to do what's in the best interest of the venue and for the client.
• 30:36
  I'd love to know your team's experience when you bought it into your venue.
• 30:39
  Because I think again a lot of things we see with systems is that a venue owner gets really excited and on board with an idea and then when they present it to their team or tell their team that
• 30:49
  it's coming into the venue, the team panic or feel threatened or it's different to what they used to.
• 30:55
  So I'd love to know your experience, what your team felt, how it was when you introduced it.
• 31:00
  Yeah, that's actually a really good point.
• 31:02
  So at the beginning everyone's a little bit hesitant of like, okay, we got the owner's new idea of the week or, or whatever it is.
• 31:08
  But the reality is that everyone at the company has the same goal.
• 31:13
  And the goal is how can we have more events, how can we deliver more experiences, how can we sell more, you know, add ons, how can we do all these things?
• 31:21
  Because if they do that, you know, we get to provide our amazing experience to these clients and everyone is incentivized for that.
• 31:28
  You know, they make commission and kind of all these things.
• 31:30
  Every job has parts of it that suck and parts of it that don't.
• 31:33
  You don't.
• 31:34
  Obviously getting a reply back from a client of like, hey, let's go, send me the contract or whatever.
• 31:38
  Great feeling.
• 31:39
  I would love to only experience that in the venue world.
• 31:44
  As a coordinator in their position, part of what sucks is wasting your time with people that are never going to turn into anything.
• 31:52
  And so what do you do?
• 31:54
  You eventually default to building some sort of mental filter of I'm going to respond quickly to you, but not to you.
• 32:01
  You, I'm going to follow up with you, but not you.
• 32:04
  Because when we did the tour, I didn't get signals that you were going to turn into a client or you don't, you don't look and feel like a client to me or whatever it is.
• 32:12
  And everyone falls into their own standard of what that is.
• 32:16
  So what this system has allowed us to do is to protect the time from these salespeople and these coordinators where they can do a lot more volume in terms of handling leads and processing events and they get to
• 32:27
  do less of a what sucks?
• 32:29
  And this isn't only in my venue.
• 32:30
  We hear this from all the other venues that work with us all the time as well.
• 32:34
  It's just a piece of the work environment improves because you're just doing less of the crappy parts.
• 32:40
  Like think about it, no one wants to follow up for the eighth time, you know, over three months with someone.
• 32:46
  But maybe they needed those three months because now they're looking for venues again and instead of having to go and look for a brand new venue all over again, and you've been engaging them in a very low, low,
• 32:58
  like not pushy way on brand etc, and now you're a potential option for them.
• 33:03
  So, so that's kind of how We've, we've navigated it and today, like, if I was to rip that out, honestly, it would make me nervous because we spend so much money on advertising and then I would fear and
• 33:13
  have to quote, unquote, maybe micromanage people a little bit of like, hey, are we following up with these people?
• 33:18
  Because we spent 20 grand this month on advertising versus just knowing that it's happening.
• 33:24
  And I guess now they're at a point where they can't imagine life without.
• 33:28
  Would be overwhelming to go back to their old systems.
• 33:30
  But I think just in general, change scares people.
• 33:33
  But you're right, because almost everyone in this industry doesn't want to do any of that stuff.
• 33:37
  They want to be at the weddings, they want to be doing the fun stuff.
• 33:40
  And so if you can find ways to release that pressure from your team, amazing.
• 33:45
  The other thing I think people struggle with is the idea of losing control.
• 33:49
  So they're scared of what if I give all control to, to the machines and they do the wrong thing, give the wrong information, make a mess of something, lose me a sale.
• 34:00
  Or just that feeling of I don't really know what's going on because they've been so good at micromanaging everything up till now.
• 34:06
  What do you say to that?
• 34:07
  Yeah, so I think that, you know, there's, there's a big component of this industry that is going to be very, very human.
• 34:15
  The, the thing is that you want to try to protect your time, you know, as an entrepreneur and a business owner.
• 34:21
  Like, you want to try as much as possible to not be doing like 10 or $15 an hour activities or even $20 an hour activities like how can I do the most important thing here?
• 34:32
  And maybe for you, that's being in a viewing and walking them through that sales presentation and doing what no one else can and maybe figuring out some sort of deal on the fly there based on what they're telling,
• 34:43
  telling you during the tour and so on.
• 34:45
  The issue and what happens is that everyone understands that the problem has to be solved.
• 34:50
  The problem is we need to get back to people quickly and follow up with them.
• 34:53
  The issue is that from a capital efficiency perspective, you just can't beat AI.
• 34:58
  You're just able to achieve that solution at such a cost effective route and at the same time you're able to use your time on the things that humans should be involved in, which is closing the deal and doing
• 35:09
  all these things and not the minor things, things that people don't, people don't care if an AI system tells them that April 3, 2027 is available or if you did, like how there's no way they won't be able
• 35:22
  to tell what's more human or not and how you're giving them whether a day is available or not.
• 35:26
  And sometimes that's what needs to be delivered to move that conversation along.
• 35:30
  Yeah, and I think as well the fear is of the mistakes.
• 35:33
  I mean, even as humans, we're always making mistakes.
• 35:35
  In fact, we probably make more mistakes.
• 35:37
  I was talking to someone about the driverless cars.
• 35:40
  Have you ever been in one of those driverless cars up in San Francisco?
• 35:42
  Oh no, but I see all the time the way here they call them like Waymos or something.
• 35:46
  Yeah, that's it.
• 35:47
  So I went in a Waymo in San Francisco.
• 35:49
  And so quite often I talk to people about my experience of the driverless car and they say, you're crazy.
• 35:54
  Why, why would you do that?
• 35:55
  I said, I've never felt safer because there was no human in control.
• 35:59
  There was no fast breaking, there was no swerving, there was no Uber driver involved.
• 36:03
  You know, it, it felt safe.
• 36:05
  And I think that's the thing we've got to get our head around with AI as well, is that it feels the more dangerous option.
• 36:11
  But often it's going to make less mistakes because it doesn't have the human element, just like the Waymo was.
• 36:17
  You know, the only accidents that they have in Waymos is when humans crash into the back of them because the system, the system is strong.
• 36:24
  And I think that's just a shift in the way we've got to think as human beings and as business owners.
• 36:30
  And we are in this, this massive change period at the moment.
• 36:34
  Now, for people listening who maybe haven't got any technology yet or maybe aren't a venue space, I'd love to.
• 36:40
  What you think some of the common mistakes just in general you think that businesses make when it comes to the follow up?
• 36:47
  Yeah, I mean, I think that the biggest, the first, biggest mistake is people that think that, that think, oh, if they're going to become a client, then they'll become a client no matter what.
• 36:58
  And that's a little bit of a lazy excuse to, you know, allow yourself to sleep at night with not doing any follow up at all.
• 37:05
  Like we, you know, know just look up any study out there, like it's been absolutely proven and just look internally at yourself where it's like, look, we are so busy all of the time.
• 37:16
  And I think the, the cool thing as well with these systems is that hey, you can opt out at any time here every email has a link at the bottom.
• 37:23
  You could even the systems are now smart enough where they people can reply, hey, I found a venue, our system will reply to them.
• 37:30
  Hey, no worries.
• 37:30
  Thank you so much for letting us know.
• 37:32
  If you don't mind, which venue did you go go with?
• 37:33
  And so now we're even building a data set of like which other company did you go with or competitor, whatever it is.
• 37:39
  So, so definitely the first mistake in follow up is one not doing it by just telling ourselves that if they were going to do it then they would do it anyways.
• 37:45
  And then I think the second thing that we see across the board is people not doing it in a multi channel format.
• 37:52
  And again that's hard to track and it's a little bit annoying and it's extra work but it works.
• 37:57
  There's so many people that rely on like email only.
• 38:01
  And you know, I don't know about your email inbox, but mine has an insane amount of email that I get all the time.
• 38:07
  Especially when you're doing like automations.
• 38:08
  We have so many venues that switch to our system from working with like go high level for example where people are using templated automations where they send everyone the same thing every two, three days.
• 38:19
  And what happens is that Gmail and Outlook and these email boxes, they realize that.
• 38:24
  So your emails go straight to the promotions tab, straight to the spam tab.
• 38:29
  And if email in general in an inbox has a low open rate, imagine in a spam tab or in a promotions tab, like no one is ever going to see that.
• 38:38
  So I think the two biggest things are, you know, doing it with enough consistency, doing it in a way that's multi channel and you know, just making sure that you're not just copy and pasting some template and sending
• 38:49
  it to everyone because that then has a lot lower engagement rate.
• 38:53
  The engagement rate that we have in our system is so high because of the personalization.
• 38:57
  I always tell people like look, even if you hired someone and you paid them £50,000 a year, £40,000 and all you did was tell them hey, sit down and just call these people, text them, follow up with them.
• 39:09
  Every employee, every investment in your business is calculated as a return, right?
• 39:14
  Like what are you, maybe that person is a salesperson and then the return is a little bit more obvious.
• 39:19
  Maybe they're in operations and they're just helping you fulfill what you just sold, you know, advertising tools, et cetera.
• 39:25
  So I think really it all comes down to just, just being able to track Things so that you can make better decisions.
• 39:31
  And our system helps with so much of that.
• 39:33
  Like, we show you your conversion rates, where your sales are coming from, where your bookings, your tours by channel, kind of all these things.
• 39:39
  So when you have the data, then you don't have to be smart or you don't have to take a risk.
• 39:43
  It's just numbers.
• 39:44
  Like, it's just there, you know?
• 39:46
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 39:47
  Now you're a smart guy.
• 39:48
  So while I've got you here, I want to talk to you a bit more about AI in general for people listening.
• 39:53
  Because I think especially for the small business owners listening to, everything's changed so fast and they're finding it hard to keep up.
• 40:01
  And I think something I've seen, particularly in the last three months, is more and more systems, random systems, people creating systems, making their own apps, vibe coding stuff is popping up left, right and center.
• 40:14
  And it's really difficult for the small business owner to determine what's good AI and what's something that's trying to make someone a quick bit of money.
• 40:23
  So have you got any tips for people when they're looking or when they're being pitch systems or when they're seeing these things being advertised on social media?
• 40:30
  How do they determine what's a good investment and what's not?
• 40:35
  Yeah, no, that's a great question.
• 40:36
  I think the biggest thing is, is just proof.
• 40:39
  Like, you need to see proof whether that's actually testing it yourself.
• 40:43
  We tell venue owners all the time, hey, look, how about this?
• 40:46
  Go to my venue's website and submit an inquiry and if it sucks, just block us and never talk to us again.
• 40:53
  And so I think for us, that is so telling to them of like, hey, you know what?
• 40:58
  We eat our own dog food here.
• 41:00
  Here.
• 41:00
  We don't just.
• 41:01
  We're not just selling this thing.
• 41:02
  We use it every single day.
• 41:04
  We actually built it inside of an actual venue.
• 41:06
  Whereas a lot of tools out there, either they're very generalized where they do everything, and then they have different marketing campaigns targeting different segments, but they really are a generalized tool.
• 41:17
  And you can figure that out very quickly when you test it, because it sucks.
• 41:21
  There's so many nuances to every single type of business that if you're not really focused, then there's no way it could be any good.
• 41:28
  So I think proof is the first thing.
• 41:29
  Thing.
• 41:30
  I think a big thing that we do as well is we offer like a crazy guarantee.
• 41:33
  We literally guarantee like 20% more tours over the next 90 days or you don't pay Anything.
• 41:39
  And what I like to tell people is like, look, obviously we want to make money.
• 41:42
  We're not in the business of refunding people.
• 41:45
  The only way we can offer this guarantees because we know what this thing has done on these 100 plus venues.
• 41:50
  And I think that resonates with people because it shows them that, like, hey, I'm willing to take all the risk here.
• 41:55
  Here I'll show you as much proof as you need to.
• 41:57
  You can talk to 20 of our clients that open their cell phones and their emails to us to, to talk about their experience with using it.
• 42:03
  So I think that's the biggest thing because that's hard to fake like, it's hard to fake like proof.
• 42:09
  You can say all the right words.
• 42:11
  Like finding the right words is not that difficult.
• 42:13
  But being able to point at 20, 30, 40 other people who love your things so much that they're willing to waste and spend their time in like promoting it, like without getting paid or like any of that.
• 42:25
  I think that's the biggest thing for sure.
• 42:28
  Yeah.
• 42:28
  And social proof in this trust economy is so important.
• 42:31
  But again, digging deeper and reaching out to these people, if you're not sure, because I've talked about it on the podcast before, but someone sent me a sales page for some system and I ran it through, even just
• 42:43
  through Claude, and it came out that the Images were called ChatGPT 1972 for the testimonials.
• 42:48
  So they'd literally faked their own testimonials using AI and they hadn't even changed, change this, you know, and so I think people are just getting really nervy about what to trust because things, that sometimes things are too good
• 43:00
  to be true and sometimes they're not.
• 43:02
  And I think, yeah, navigating that, looking at the social proof, hearing from people who've already used it and, and listening to trusted sources is definitely the way to go.
• 43:10
  Where do you think the industry is heading, so the wedding industry in particular?
• 43:15
  Over the next few years, with all of this growth in technology, I guess we don't know exactly where it's going to go.
• 43:20
  But where do you see it going over the next two to five years?
• 43:23
  I think that, I think that these directories will continue doing worse and worse because whereas so many people over the years would go on Google to find things, and these directories basically control Google because they have been around
• 43:37
  for a thousand years and they spend a hundred thousand dollars a day on advertising and they, they kind of resell that attention.
• 43:43
  I think nowadays more and more people are even Going to like AI are going to Claude, they're going to chat gbt, they're going to all these things to look for answers and to look, look for, for venues and
• 43:53
  businesses and do all these things.
• 43:55
  And I think, you know, having a little bit of a strategy for that, which is a combination of so many things.
• 43:59
  No one knows the exact answer, but it's definitely having good reviews.
• 44:04
  It's definitely, you know, having a website that has decent looking content and doing all those things.
• 44:09
  And I really think that in the future having an AI employee becomes synonymous with today's idea of like a CRM.
• 44:18
  Like today, every kind of business needs a CRM.
• 44:20
  Like you need somewhere to keep your stuff.
• 44:23
  A CRM, however, is a very pretty file cabinet.
• 44:28
  It will keep all your stuff there and it will keep it very neatly and you know what's going on.
• 44:33
  But what happens is every venue in the, in the future, every business has some sort of agent that can see everything.
• 44:41
  It can see all the bookings, it can see, you know, all the, all the viewings.
• 44:45
  It could connect all the dots and do this pattern recognition that we, we could possibly never.
• 44:51
  I think what a lot of successful people have is they just have very good pattern recognition.
• 44:55
  Like they can connect the dots between multiple things.
• 44:58
  And I think AI just makes that so much simpler for everyone.
• 45:02
  So being able to see trends in your business that allow you to make better decisions than the guy next door, maybe with pricing, maybe with whatever it is.
• 45:11
  And so I think for us we're betting heavily on that, at least in this space because everything will live in the system.
• 45:18
  And just like you can talk to ChatGPT and ask it about, I don't know, your bank statement that you threw in there or whatever.
• 45:25
  Like imagine being able to talk to Chad, GBT that has access to every single conversation, message, person, add on contract, anything that's gone through it.
• 45:36
  So I definitely think that the future looks like that where everyone just, just has one of these things.
• 45:40
  And again, it's really, it really comes down to value.
• 45:43
  Like we mentioned earlier, even talking about the, like every business in general, just the amount of value that you're able to offer for the dollar dollar compared to the other alternatives.
• 45:53
  Like it is just, it's, it makes it very attractive.
• 45:56
  Yeah, and I think it's an exciting time.
• 45:58
  It's a scary time in many ways, but I think it's an exciting time because it is changing so fast.
• 46:02
  And what was cool two years ago is, is just shifted so much.
• 46:06
  But again, like everything I think we have to look at the big players in the market, we have to look at where the Amazons and the Ubers are spending their time and their money because we know that the
• 46:16
  consumer will follow those same trajectories.
• 46:19
  So if Amazon and Uber and all of those other big companies are starting to make it super easy for us as consumers to buy things or to talk to buy things, then wedding couples will follow.
• 46:28
  Because like I always say, they don't see you as a different category to those big businesses, they just see you as another business and if they can get it easy for them, they want to get it easy from
• 46:37
  you.
• 46:37
  So yeah, I think it's, it's interesting.
• 46:39
  We'll have to have another conversation in a couple of years time and see where things have gone.
• 46:43
  Now before I let you go, we are both going to be in Las Vegas, Vegas very soon, which I'm very excited about at Wedding NBA.
• 46:52
  I think this is my fourth year there now and I'm taking to the stage.
• 46:56
  You're also going to be there exhibiting but you've never been before.
• 46:59
  So what are you most excited about?
• 47:01
  About coming to Las Vegas for Wedding NBA?
• 47:04
  Yes, I'm super excited.
• 47:05
  I've heard a lot of great things about it.
• 47:07
  I've never been.
• 47:07
  This year we decided to get like a decent sized booth.
• 47:11
  We're gonna like make it look amazing.
• 47:12
  It's gonna be awesome.
• 47:14
  And I think that the most what I'm most excited about other than you know, meeting new perspective venues is meeting like a lot of our current clients.
• 47:23
  Last year we were getting spammed through text, through email, through everywhere of like hey, where are you guys?
• 47:29
  Like you know, we're here at Wedding mba, whatever it is.
• 47:31
  And I think that you know, we spent so much time communicating with these people and meeting them through the Internet and you know, some of them are in completely other parts of the world like even yourself.
• 47:40
  So to be able to meet in person, I think there's, there's nothing like that.
• 47:44
  And so I'm really looking forward to, I'm really looking forward to meeting them and meeting a lot of new perspective people and talking about, about how you know, AI can help them create more of those personal connections.
• 47:55
  Because the whole idea really of our system is just get more people there so you can have that face to face connection with them because that's what's going to close the deal.
• 48:03
  But just doing the things that the pre qualification piece that could be a lot more systemized and automated.
• 48:09
  But yeah, super excited about that.
• 48:10
  It's going to Be so much fun.
• 48:11
  And for anyone listening, if you've never been out to Las Vegas for wedding MBA, I highly recommend it.
• 48:15
  It's like 5,000 wedding professional professionals in a room for a couple of days with incredible education, incredible exhibition areas and yeah, if you can get yourself along there, get to get and if you are going to be there,
• 48:26
  make sure you come to my talk.
• 48:28
  Make sure you go and see Joaquin at his exhibition stand for venue AI as well.
• 48:32
  And I'm going to be hanging out there a little bit over those two days as well and so do make sure you come and say hello and I'm sure he'll answer any of your AI related questions.
• 48:41
  Are you there to be challenged?
• 48:42
  Working you there to answer all of the questions that the people have?
• 48:45
  Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 48:46
  We can't wait.
• 48:47
  We're actually going to put something there so people could even test the AI system and all those things.
• 48:51
  We are super, super pumped.
• 48:53
  I want all of the skeptics, all of the believers, the non believers to go there and kind of take a look for themselves.
• 49:00
  It's going to be super fun.
• 49:01
  And if anyone's listening and hasn't got their ticket, don't forget if you use Becca as your coupon code at the checkout, I think it gives you a good discount.
• 49:07
  So do go and check that too.
• 49:09
  Well Keed, it's been so much fun.
• 49:11
  I cannot wait to be with you in Las Vegas in not very long now, in a few weeks time.
• 49:16
  I always end my podcast with the same question though.
• 49:18
  So I'm going to pose that to you now and it's this.
• 49:21
  What' one thing you personally wish you'd known sooner in business, I think that.
• 49:26
  And this is something that I spent a lot of time thinking about which is that like things don't have to take a long time.
• 49:33
  Like sometimes we think because we are new at something that reaching this level that we want or doing this thing or whatever is just going to take a lot of time.
• 49:43
  And the only reason why is because we lack a lot of the experience that allows us to do the things that we need to do to get there a little bit quicker.
• 49:52
  So that's why I think people listening to a podcast like this, using your services, looking at what's new out in the industry, our businesses different differentiating themselves, how are the people that are doing this at a high level,
• 50:03
  how are they doing that?
• 50:05
  And the only difference between them and you is the things that they're doing.
• 50:09
  Like literally that's it.
• 50:10
  It's the actions that they are taking.
• 50:12
  And so that's why I think, you know, people working with you, the fact that you have access to so much experience in all these venues and everything, when you go into a venue, really not to minimize, but all
• 50:22
  you're doing is you're telling them, hey, do this.
• 50:24
  Actually like, do this differently.
• 50:26
  Like you, I know that you think you've been doing it like this for such a long time, but actually the way to kind of do it is a little bit more like this.
• 50:33
  So it's just that.
• 50:34
  So I think for me, the way that that helps me is that knowing that I don't have all the answers and knowing that I don't have all the experience and all these different things, it's like seeking out, no
• 50:44
  matter at what level you're at, seeking out the people that are doing things, how you want to do them, or that have the experience or that have the pattern recognition recognition or all those things, because no matter how
• 50:53
  much you have to pay them or anything, like, it's just going to get you there so much faster.
• 50:59
  You could hit your head against the wall for the next five years and eventually be doing the right thing, or you could kind of cheat your way there and get the answers to the test now and just be
• 51:10
  in that direction much quicker.
• 51:12
  I hope that makes sense.
• 51:12
  That makes perfect sense.
• 51:14
  And I think the main takeaway from that as well is that you have to be a doer.
• 51:18
  I always think the people who get further in life are the people who go and learn.
• 51:21
  Take those, take that advice from everywhere and then actually action it.
• 51:25
  Have the confidence to go out there and do it rather than just sit there and thinking about doing it.
• 51:30
  So for sure there's a great message in there if people want to find out more about you, if they want to connect with you, chat with you, or find out more about the system.
• 51:38
  Tell us the best places, where do you hang out?
• 51:40
  And I'll put everything in the show notes.
• 51:42
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 51:43
  So you guys can find us@venue.AI.com we'll put that in the notes here.
• 51:47
  Well, and on LinkedIn.
• 51:49
  So I haven't been super active on LinkedIn over the years, but now I'm a little bit more active.
• 51:51
  Active.
• 51:52
  I'm also on Instagram.
• 51:53
  My, my at there is literally just my first name like Joaquin.
• 51:57
  But yeah, I would love for you guys to reach out.
• 51:58
  You know, if you guys think, if you want to talk a little bit more, no matter what business you're in, I would love to, to just meet more people in the industry and.
• 52:04
  And looking forward to connecting with you, Becca, and everyone else on at wedding MBA here coming up soon as well.
• 52:09
  Yeah, it's gonna be super fun.
• 52:11
  I cannot wait to get back to Las Vegas.
• 52:13
  It's.
• 52:14
  It's just a fun place to be.
• 52:16
  And being with so many other people in the industry, so many cool educators, so many other wedding professionals.
• 52:21
  You're gonna love it, Joaquin.
• 52:22
  And is going to love it, too.
• 52:25
  It's been so much fun.
• 52:26
  Thank you so much for going so deep into this subject, Joaquin.
• 52:30
  I'll see you soon.
• 52:31
  Thank you.
• 52:31
  Love that conversation.
• 52:32
  I know for some of you, that's going to have blown your mind to think so deeply about AI but that's the way that the world's going.
• 52:39
  And I want you to think about that driverless car example that I shared earlier and realize sometimes the thing you think is safest isn't necessarily safest.
• 52:47
  And sometimes we've got to look outside of the box and see that there may be a better way.
• 52:51
  So do go and check out the systems.
• 52:53
  If you're interested, reach out to the team there.
• 52:55
  And if you're going to be in Vegas, I can't wait to see you there.