Empowering Small Businesses with AI: Innovation, Marketing, and Digital Growth | Adam Nathan

Join us for a fascinating conversation with Adam Nathan, the innovative mind behind Blaze.ai, a game-changing AI-driven marketing tool crafted specifically for small businesses. Adam's journey from a family business background to spearheading his own venture is nothing short of inspiring. He opens up about how Blaze.ai empowers small business owners to navigate the digital landscape by simplifying content creation, scheduling, and posting, even if they lack marketing expertise. His insights reveal how AI is not just a tool but a transformative force leveling the playing field for entrepreneurs everywhere.

Our discussion takes you through the exhilarating but challenging path of building a successful small business. With anecdotes from his experiences with his previous venture, Almanac, Adam shares how finding the right product-market fit is crucial, and why persistence and customer feedback are more valuable than hefty financial resources. We delve into why a dedicated team with shared goals is essential, and how Adam's stints at giants like Apple and Lyft perfectly equipped him to embrace the entrepreneurial path with passion.

Explore how Blaze.ai is changing the game for small businesses, offering powerful marketing capabilities at an affordable price. Learn about Blaze.ai's mission to democratize marketing resources, enabling small businesses to compete with larger corporations. Adam walks us through Blaze.ai's innovative use of AI to create personalized, brand-consistent content, highlighting how even businesses without an established brand presence can benefit. Experience the excitement of discovering how AI can open new opportunities for growth in today's digital age, making a significant impact in the markets small businesses aim to conquer.

Adam Nathan: Founder & CEO, Blaze

Website: https://www.blaze.ai/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adampnathan/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Blaze-ai

#AdamNathan #BlazeAI #SmallBusinessMarketing #AIMarketing #ContentCreation #DigitalMarketing #SmallBusinessGrowth #AIForEntrepreneurs #StartupSuccess #MarketingInnovation #BusinessSuccess #SmallBusinessOwners #BusinessGrowthTips #BusinessStrategy #EntrepreneurshipTips #SmallBusinessPivots #BusinessPodcast #MichaelDMorrison #BOSS #BusinessOwnership #OklahomaCity 

Chapters

• 0:00 Small Business AI Marketing Tool
• 4:50 Building a Successful Small Business
• 13:14 Crafting a Unique Employer Value Proposition
• 18:59 Artificial Intelligence in Marketing Innovation
• 27:03 Empowering Small Businesses With AI

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business, pivots. I know that business owners can only say their name and their company like they can, so we're going to let you introduce yourself to our listeners today who you are, where you're from, your company and a little bit about you.

Speaker 2: 0:26

My name is Adam Nathan. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Blazeai. We're the number one AI marketing tool for small businesses and teams of one. We help small business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, creatives, consultants, agencies and so many more people who really, from the backbone of America, grow their businesses faster on the internet, and we do that by helping you produce social media content, blog posts, newsletters and websites all in your brand voice uh that get generated, edited, scheduled and posted automatically for you. So, uh, we help um a lot of folks that don't have the time or skills to do marketing, but need to do great marketing to grow um to uh get months worth of content out on the internet to grow awareness and needs and, ultimately, sales.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Wow. So we got some heavy information here, because most business owners don't have time. You mentioned that and then grow your business faster. So I think you got some ears perked. So let's introduce the show real quick and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, founder and CEO of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours. At businessownershipsimplifiedcom, let's start with your background a little bit so that our small business owners can relate. I know for a lot of our listeners they're stuck and it sounds like you've gotten unstuck. You found a way to help people faster, so let's start with your background.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Yeah, well, I'm originally from New York City, born and raised. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My brother is also a startup founder, my grandfather started an insurance company and we all grew up around my parents who run a small business together in the city. They've been working together for 30 or 40 years, so throughout my childhood I saw them really grow and scale their business across the United States successfully. But as the internet came about, they struggled to really move their business from the offline world into the online world and over the years, at family dinners, my brother and I would talk to my parents and encourage them to create more content for social media or build a website they still don't have one or email with our customers consistently, which we know is critical.

Speaker 2: 2:55

For you know, engaging folks, and for my brother and I, this, all this stuff is second nature. We both have worked at startups in the digital world for a long time, so for us we'd always say things like oh, it's so easy, it would just take you a couple minutes. But the reality is it's not easy to figure out how to grow your business online for many people. Most folks don't have the skills of professional marketers and they also don't have the time to learn them on their own or the resources to hire someone, and so, even though it's really important for people like my parents to use the internet to grow and that's a huge opportunity to make literally millions of dollars they didn't have the skills or time to really profit from the internet, and so I started Blaze to help people like my parents, and, obviously, the hundreds of millions of small business owners across the world, take advantage of the internet as a growth opportunity.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Wow, that takes a lot of time to create that content. Let's go back to the early days of your company and what that was like, because I know it's like a getting married or honeymoon at first, and then it turns into just I hate my business, I'm working so many hours. Did you go through anything like that or did you just blaze right away?

Speaker 2: 4:10

Well, I've before Blaze. I started two other companies before this, and Blaze is actually the second product that our team has built together. We built an initial product called Almanac, which was a collaboration tool for remote teams, and we sold to really large enterprises, big companies who had distributed workforces across the world. It was a pretty successful product and we had been working on that for four years and then started Blaze about a year ago with a lot of the same components that we had built for Almanac. Almanac was a document editor with things like file management, and so we were able to use a lot of the same code to build an entirely different product for a different type of customer. With Blaze, but certainly for the last, I've been working on Almanac and Blaze for five years.

Speaker 2: 4:57

Most of that time has been like eating glass, getting off the ground in early stages of the company. In startup land we call it trying to find product market fit, where you're trying to figure out how to build a product that meets an unserved need in the market, and I think that's much more art than science. It's a lot of iteration and it's mostly, you know, trying stuff and then listening to customers about why or why not they like the thing, why, or why not, they would pay for the thing and then continuing to try new stuff from there. But obviously, even if you're listening and learning along the way, you can still make wrong guesses a lot of the time. And finding product market fit requires so many things to be exactly in alignment how your customers, the specific attributes of the product that are different than the competition, how you market, what channels you pick to reach those customers, your pricing, your onboarding all that needs to be perfectly in alignment for things to start to really work.

Speaker 2: 5:56

And that takes time and I think some people are lucky to figure it out pretty quickly. But you know most uh entrepreneurs, small business owners, I know uh, you know it takes some years to become an overnight success and so, um, with blaze, we actually uh got product market fit probably within the first hours of launching the product. So we were really lucky to find, um you know, a sense of fit with our customers uh, really quickly. But I think you know, even that took me took me years of building muscles around, listening to customers and knowing exactly what to take from things that they say to get to the point where I'm able to do it quickly now. But yeah, I think you know, for most folks it's starting a business is not something that immediately works overnight. It takes a long time to get it right and I think the secret is just to keep going get it right, and I think the secret is just to keep going.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Yeah, that's, that's nice. What would you say contributed greatly to your success that you're experiencing today? Was it your team? Was it the knowledge, the experience? Kind of share some of that.

Speaker 2: 6:57

Yeah, well, I think, overall, it's just about persistence. I think you know there's no shame, obviously, in stopping to work on something, but I like this idea that, at least in startups, in tech startups, no startup dies mid-keystroke, meaning that it's not like in most cases, you just run out of money, the lights turn off as you're furiously writing code and that's why you die. Of course, some companies die because they run out of money, but most companies die because they run out of momentum and the people on the team get demoralized, they get tired. They'd rather work on something that's new and exciting. I think often, the key resource you're dealing with in early stages is momentum, is energy, is excitement. It's not actually cash. I think if you have momentum and you're running in the cash, you will often find more because you're so excited and motivated to find money. You're going to ask your friends, you'll get a loan, you'll figure it out. And I know lots of other people, conversely, who have a lot of money right now working at businesses that don't have product market fit, that are like zombie companies, and they basically failed even though they had millions of dollars in the bank. And so I think, early on, it's really about persistence and just putting one foot in front of the other and not staring down at your feet but really looking up and learning and listening along the way, and I think if you do that for long enough, you will eventually figure it out. You will succeed.

Speaker 2: 8:17

But I think you know, certainly I've worked with the same team here at Blaze for the last five years. We have a core group of folks my co-founder, our head of design, our head of engineering, our lead engineers who have been with the company for five years and we all work really really well together. Now we understand each other. We have the same long-term expectations and desires for what we want for ourselves, for each other, for our company. And that investment and that dedication, that kind of security, knowing like no one's going to leave, we're all in this for the same reasons, for the long haul, I think helps to build that sense of it, creates some comfort in the difficulty of like, yes, even if we haven't figured this out, even if some days are hard, we know that it's not going to fall apart. No one's just going to, um, leave each other, we're we're like, you know, the people on columbus's ship, yeah, going to find a new land where, uh, we're, like you know, the people on Columbus's ship going to find a new land, where we're in it for the long haul and no one's jumping off just when things get tough. So I think, yeah, a lot of it is about mentality.

Speaker 2: 9:13

And you know, certainly for me personally, I've worked in many big companies. Before I worked at Apple, I ran pricing at Lyft. I worked in, you know, big consulting firms. I worked at the White House. I worked at many big organizations. But for me, the job I do now, being a founder, is the best job I've ever had. It's the job I invest at.

Speaker 2: 9:32

I think my skills, my strengths as a person, as a professional, are most closely aligned with things you need to be good at in my job. And so I look at being a founder, being an entrepreneur, as my career and hopefully know, hopefully Blaze. I believe Blaze will be around for a very long time, but even if, for some reason, it ends or we sell the company or something happens, you know, I know that I will go do this again, probably several more times. And so I look at what I do as my career, not just a job. It's kind of like a calling for me, and so I think about being an entrepreneur as a 30-year project, and so learning along the way, getting better at my craft, is a motivation besides just the company being successful, because I know that, no matter what happens with Blaze, I'm not going to go work for somebody else ever again.

Speaker 2: 10:14

I love working for myself, I love having this kind of control and over my days. I love being good at the things I'm already good at, and so that helps, I think, get me through the tough days and knowing like, hey, there's nothing else I'd rather do, there's nothing else I can do except for this. So I better buck up. And you know, if it's a really bad day, shut the computer, go to sleep, wake up tomorrow and try again. And certainly there's been a lot of days like that.

Speaker 2: 10:45

But you know, I think, because I've made it through those days, we're now at the point where our company is growing, you know, 30% every single month. We've gone from from $0 in revenue last year to um $10 million, uh, in about 15 months. And so we're, we're going insanely fast. And I know that's, that's, that's yeah. If you look at just that, you're like, well, adam's a genius, you know, he's so good at what he does, but really it's just the years of practice before that have that have helped, that have trained me essentially, and the rest of our team, to take advantage of the opportunity that we have now.

Speaker 1: 11:19

One is the momentum, because I think sometimes business owners, we forget this isn't a job, and I love how you phrased that was it's not a job, and if we were to remember that at all times, the freedom that we have to explore, be creative and do our own thing is far outweighs a job in my opinion. But one of the things you mentioned was your team. So I know for a lot of small business owners listening, one of their biggest challenges is attracting and retaining good people for their team. Any insights, any ideas, tips you can add to that how you've done that.

Speaker 2: 11:57

The first thing I'd say is that I think too many folks think about compensation too narrowly, and so obviously you're hiring someone to do work for you, but the company in return provides value to the employee and there's, I think, five different types of compensation you can offer. There's cash, which most people focus on, obviously, but then there's equity, which some businesses can provide but some can, where you actually give someone a sense of actual ownership in the business through shares or options. There's benefits, so basically non-cash tools like healthcare is a traditional one, but there's also non-traditional benefits like innovative vacation policies or remote work, time off or stipends, lots of other things you can do to give people a sense of value beyond just cash or equity compensation. There's also professional growth and development, and so a lot of people value becoming better at what they do while they work for you, and that's something a company can give to folks that they value. And then, lastly, I think it's mission or impact, which is the sense that you're using your time well to benefit other people besides yourself, the sense that you're using your time well to benefit other people besides yourself. And so we look at compensation in those five areas and we try and maximize.

Speaker 2: 13:14

We've thought really intentionally about how do we craft our value proposition to find the right people for our company. And so our company is. You know, we have a really small team. We have 19 people on our team serving, you know, hundreds of thousands of users every day, and so we have a high ownership culture. Everybody does a lot of responsibility With a lot of trust. We don't have a lot of management, we don't have a lot of meetings, and so we need people who thrive under ownership, are highly, highly competent, so that they can do the job without a lot of feedback or guidance, and so we have a culture of excellence. We have very, very high standards for our work. We try to get a lot of feedback or guidance, and so we have a culture of excellence. We have very, very high standards for our work. We try and get a lot done in a short period of time, which means we need people who are able to manage themselves and really execute with minimal supervision. Obviously that's for our company, but many companies are different.

Speaker 2: 13:57

You can say you know, we have a culture where we need a bunch of people to do kind of rote tasks, and so we're going to design a value proposition for those folks, but for our company, that's who we need and so, for example, the way that we look at compensation is because we're a startup, we look at cash as something that we want to make sure that everyone can come to work every day being their best selves, and so we want people to be able to pay their rent or mortgage, go on vacation, make sure there's food on the table, obviously. But we don't look at cash as the main way we can provide compensation, because we're a startup, we're really early and so we pay 60% 70% of the market in terms of cash. But we really focus on we give 90% to 100% of the market on equity because we want our employees to feel like owners in the business. Because there's very few people, we want them to stay around for a long time. I want them to have the same incentives as me by thinking, okay, what's the best long-term thing for the company for me? And so we think equity is the place where we can align incentives there.

Speaker 2: 14:57

We also care a lot about professional growth and development because we know our people that come to work at Blaze are A players. Even though they're really good, they want to get better, they want to be pushed kind of like an elite athlete, and so that's something we really invest in here. We also because you can be saying, okay, well, we're looking. If you're listening to me, you're like, wow, they're looking for a needle in the haystack, that's right. And so we've broadened the Haystack to be anywhere in the world. We have a remote team, we're fully distributed. We have no offices, so we're able to find really, really good people in places like Northern Utah or Texas or Maine or Uruguay, where we basically get really, really great talent for a relatively cheaper cost than we would in San Francisco or New York City or LA, and that allows us to that remote benefit, which is great for a lot of folks, actually helps us find high quality talent for a cheap price.

Speaker 2: 15:49

Obviously, I'm talking as a tech startup. We're able to do a lot of this stuff that a brick and mortar business in a local community can't. But I think the same theory applies, which is, what are the skills and behaviors that you think will help create success in your business? What are the skills and behaviors that you think will help create success in your business? What are must-haves in terms of the type of people that you need? And then how do you think creatively about how to offer something to those types of people that would bring them uniquely into your company?

Speaker 2: 16:16

And I think a lot of companies think too much just about cash and not enough about okay, what are all the other things we can offer? I think, for example, if you're a local business, you know there may be a lot of like working parents in your town. Can you offer flexible work or remote work some days to access a certain part of the talent pool that may be underutilized, that you can even get for less cash than you could for somebody who could work full-time. Can you think about your mission or impact? If you really care about who you serve in your community, you think you're providing an essential good or service.

Speaker 2: 16:49

How do you really emphasize that, build that into your culture? For example, in all of our all hands, which is a company-wide meeting we have every Friday, it always starts with examples of ways that we've helped customers throughout the week. There's a channel, a Slack in our Slack where we share. We call it the love wall, where anytime a customer says a nice thing, posts a great review or we get great feedback in a call, we share a clip or share a screenshot, and so we really try and bring our customers into our culture, just into kind of the daily heartbeat of how we work, because we know that that makes people feel really good, it motivates them, it gives them a sense of compensation or rewards, even though it's not paying them.

Speaker 2: 17:29

And again, you know, I think a lot of people want meaning and purpose in what they do and they will actually take a job for less cash if they feel like, at the end of the day, they've done something good for the world. And so, again, these are all kind of creative levers that almost substitute for each other. And I think if a company is really clear on it starts with what do you need to do to be successful, what are the core behaviors or skills, what are the types of people that have those and what do those people care about? And most companies, I just don't think, have gone through that intentional strategic exercise of thinking about what will uniquely make our company succeed and how does that translate into a set of skills we look to hire in folks and how can we build a value proposition around that.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Out of all of that, you have clarity and most business owners. They've never taken the time to clearly define who they are, what they stand for, what they can offer, and they think of a paycheck, right. So that's, that is all good stuff. Let's talk. Let's talk about the company itself. So we have this thing called AI, which most people You're listening to Small Business Pivots.

Speaker 1: 18:35

This podcast is produced by my company, boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours. At businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. Let's talk about the company itself. So we have this thing called AI, which most people have heard about it. I say most because I just talked to a business owner. He's like I still don't understand what this does. So let's talk about AI itself and the benefit, where you think it's going, how it helps, and some people are kind of nervous and scared about it. So just since you're in that space, can you share that and then we'll talk about your company yeah, so you're right.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Where do you start explaining ai? How do I explain ai to like a late? A late person is that would that be helpful?

Speaker 2: 19:34

sure yeah, yeah, well, yeah, certainly, ai has been in the news a lot this year. Uh, and it can be confusing, you know ai is is just the kind of new frontier technology, just like anything else. Things like GPS used to be called AI 20 years ago, and so what we call AI today will soon, and is rapidly becoming commonplace. It's just a way to solve a problem with technology for folks. The AI we talk about today is largely a technology called LLMs, or large language models, and the way LLMs work is that, if you think about the way a lot of technology works before, llms is what I would call deterministic code, so it's like A plus B equals C, and so if you go to a website and you type something in um, it says if this, then that. So if you type in uh, you know I dog plus blue into a, into a visual studio, you know it will color the dog blue, that kind of thing, um, and so it's very, very logical way of getting stuff done. Uh, the way that lms work, though, is probabilistic, and so it's more like our human brains, where, if we look out into the world, our brain is saying, oh well, I can't see that thing in the distance, but it kind of looks like a house, and you know it's shaped like a house and it's colored like a house, so I think it's a house. And so the way our human brains work is is much more inference or probability based, and so it's.

Speaker 2: 21:00

Even if we don't know something to be true, we're kind of reasoning with the incomplete data. We have to figure something out based on our experience in the past, and so we have now built a technology that can do that, where we're able to say you know, if you say, hey, I want to write a blog post about blue dogs, the way an LLM will work is that it will read all the information on the Internet to find out anything anyone has ever written about blue dogs, and it will basically try and map what you've typed in into the prompt with all the information on the Internet to come up with a reason to answer. And so it's not as precise necessarily as deterministic code it's not A plus B equals C, but it's much more accurate most of the time, and so you get to an answer that actually sounds and feels much more human-like than what technology could do before. And so what we've done at Blaze is take that essential technology and combine it with information about your brand, and so in Blaze, you can create a brand kit where, if you give us even just your website or integrate your social account, like your Instagram or your Facebook page us even just your website or integrate your social account, like your Instagram or your Facebook page, we can read through all of the posts that you created, even all of your internal documents, to understand how you write, what types of visual content you typically do, like the vibes of your photos, your logo, your colors or your fonts, along with information about your products and services to create marketing content like other social media posts, newsletters, blogs that look and sound and feel like you.

Speaker 2: 22:27

And so, unlike going to chat GPT if anyone's tried that, which is basically using kind of generic information from the internet, what Blaze does is use specific information about your business to create content that is super personalized to you, and so we think about Blaze as basically like a virtual marketer on your team. It's not just automating parts of your process, but it actually replaces the person that you might hire to do social media content, or an agency that you spend a lot of money to work with or spending all that time on your own to try and figure out what good content looks like when you hire Blaze. It's basically like bringing someone on your team who's like an expert on social media but that also deeply understands your business.

Speaker 1: 23:10

What about those businesses that haven't quite figured it out? Does this help them? So I know that most business owners they've got so much on their plate they don't really have a branding guide or a style guide. How does this work for those?

Speaker 2: 23:20

Yeah, I'd say about a third of our customers have basically no presence in the channel that they want to invest in, so they don't have a website, or they don't have an Instagram account or Facebook account yet, or they don't have a blog. And yeah, when it comes to creating a brand kit, all you need is like a sentence or a paragraph of what you do. If you've texted your friend about hey, our business does this, or you've written something in a proposal, you can even use a document or just a single paragraph of copy to create a brand voice. We also have the ability to create a logo or a visual style from a set of templates, so you can describe the kind of brand you want and we can create one for you in the product and you can adjust it from there. Or if there's another brand out there that you like say a competitor, where you're like hey, I really like their photo style or I like their colors or their vibe, you can insert their website into our tool and we can create a brand for you based on those benchmarks that you like. And so it's definitely a tool design for even people that have done nothing yet on social media or on SEO or on their website, and we can help those folks.

Speaker 2: 24:20

But I'd say the other 70% of people and your listeners your listeners might fall into this category as well um, are doing some stuff today but, very admittedly, they don't like anything they're doing and, more importantly, it's not working.

Speaker 2: 24:32

And so you know they post on social media once a week or twice a week, but they think the content's bad, it's not converting at all.

Speaker 2: 24:39

You know no one's liking it or going or using it to go to the website, and that's where we can also really help. We have a feature in Blaze where you can create a month's or a quarter's worth of content. So it can create 30, 60, 90, 120 posts for Instagram just from a single prompt. So you can say, hey, I want to talk about pet food for the holidays and I want content for all of November and December, and Blaze can create the captions, the visual content. It will schedule it, it will post it for you, and that consistency of getting content out there, along with the high quality content that we know works, we've seen generates a ton of growth for our customers. We've had customers grow from zero to 10,000 Instagram followers in a couple months. We've had customers go from nothing to the first page of Google, and all that's basically the consistency of content, along with the quality that leads to actual growth in awareness and leads in sales for our customers.

Speaker 1: 25:33

That's amazing and, having come from the marketing world myself that's my educational background, I'm a business coach. Now, that could give them so much time back not having to worry about it. So how do all the algorithms because we hear about this from time to time where Google's changing this and that, and Facebook and LinkedIn? How does it work with them as far as their policies or their updates, whatever regulations I guess that you call it?

Speaker 2: 26:08

policies or their updates, whatever regulations I guess that you call it. Certainly, uh, google changes sometimes how its algorithms work and, yeah, linkedin or other platforms may change, um, you know how their feed prioritizes content. Um, spend time on our side, uh, updating the prompts so that, on the back end, how we basically take what you want and turn it into content to reflect the latest changes and we can see how the how our content, how how content that plays creates is performing, and so we can see kind of the efficacy of how our tool is working and make adjustments along the way. We also hear from customers all the time, so if content is not working, they'll say, hey, uh, you know, um, for example, linkedin just allowed you, uh users to attach a document or PDF to a post, and so now there's a ton of uh new content that's not just showing an image on LinkedIn, but it's actually leading to a document, and so, um, that's something a lot of our customers wanted, and so, um, we we heard about that last week. This week we added a feature.

Speaker 2: 27:03

We were super responsive about Blaze to what our customers are telling us, because our strategy is generally, if we build stuff that our customers want, they'll stay with us, they'll be happy with us, and that's how we grow our business. We generally, I'd say none of the stuff that we do is just a bright idea on our side. It almost always comes from customers who write in to us. I talk to two to three customers every single day on the phone just to see how the product's working for them and what we can do to improve it or make it even better for them. And all of that data both what we hear in the world about PopFriends but, even more importantly for us, what our customers are asking for guides how we get all the products.

Speaker 1: 27:42

That's just incredible, and so, for all of our listeners, I encourage you to explore this, because not only do you get branding consistency, you don't have to try to figure out the ongoing moving algorithms, and I mean the list just goes on. Plus, it's not even a fraction of the cost of having someone on your team. It's like pennies not even pennies compared to having one or two people that may not be experienced in all those areas. So this helps with Google and social media.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Yeah, so we do social media content Instagram, facebook, linkedin, twitter. We do video content for TikTok, youtube. We do SEO content, so that's blog posts that help you rank on Google. Newsletters and lifecycle emails, sales materials. If you have a service business where you need to email or text folks, we can create SMS messages or outbound emails and then also customer service copy, so email responses to typical complaints or issues your customers bring up help center documentation. So it's really the full lifecycle of everything you need to help grow your business.

Speaker 1: 28:51

That's amazing, amazing. Where do you see AI going? In your opinion, what's kind of the next thing we can look forward to?

Speaker 2: 29:03

That's a great question. You know there's amazing stuff coming out every day, but you know, we we at Blaze are really focused on really our customers more than the technology, and so we were basically, you know, the biggest and, I'd say, one of the only tools that serves small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and so I think for too long, the customers we serve have not had good enough tools that have helped them compete with larger competitors or even make the most of their own opportunities, and so we see AI doing usually leveling the playing field for these really small teams or teams of one that aren't professional marketers, don't have the time or skills to figure out how to do enough marketing or good enough marketing to grow their business. And what we already see happening is that AI is leveling the playing field for these businesses where now, even if you're a team of one, you can basically have an expert social media manager, an expert email marketer, an expert organic content lead to boost your SEO on your team for $35 a month, and so now, basically, this big thing that businesses couldn't do before, which is figure out how to grow, they now can do really cheaply, really efficiently, really quickly, and so I think we'll continue the technology will continue to make it easier and better and faster to make more social media content, more video content, better emails, fast, better websites. But already I think the game has changed for small businesses, where this thing that you had no ability to do before, which is, yeah, you can post to social media, but you couldn't figure out what is good content. Or yeah, I could send an email, but I couldn't figure out well, what should I write that converts users. Or yeah, I could build a website in Squarespace, but what should I put in the website that's good.

Speaker 2: 30:41

All of those unsolved problems are now solvable. They're all things that any small business owner can solve, and so I think the dynamics of business I think in this country, around the world are changing, where the businesses that win now won't be large businesses, but they'll be businesses that take advantage of this new technology, and I think you'll see really small businesses be able to make millions of dollars from the Internet in ways they couldn't before. And so it won't be necessarily just about what the technology is doing, but which businesses out there, even in a local market, take advantage of all these rapid changes to help grow their business faster.

Speaker 1: 31:14

Yeah, that's. The window of opportunity for small business owners has never been more open. If you will, I know for me, when I started my business decades ago, that we didn't have access to what the big boys and girls had. You know, the corporations, the enterprises and if you did, it cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to even get on the same playing field. And today this technology is. You're playing in the same same playground with the corporations and making some noise, if you will, and this, in my opinion, is good for those business owners that you know. If you're a service-based business with you know kind of employee staff, this still works for you too. You still got to get your brand out there, and so it's not just for the tech people or the solopreneurs, it's for everybody. It sounds like. And I did look at your pricing Listeners go. You can't get this kind of stuff for less money. It's very affordable. I love the website and all that it offers.

Speaker 2: 32:18

Yeah, making our products affordable is really important to us. There's many products out there that you know just do one part of what our product does. They just do LinkedIn posts, for example, or just do SEO that are, you know, hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars, even per month, and our products $35. And we, we we set that price attention intentionally because we want to make sure that the technology that we're building is accessible to as many small businesses and entrepreneurs as possible. We don't think it should cost you thousands of dollars to grow your business faster, and it's really cool to see the amount of growth in terms of sales or leads we produce for customers. And if you were to calculate the per lead price or the price per dollar that it costs you to generate that dollar With Blaze, it's like a cent or less than a cent, and so it can produce amazing efficiencies if you really lean into the technology and I know it kind of sounds scary AI and there's all these movies out there of like AI taking over the world.

Speaker 2: 33:15

You know, I think the thing to fear is not that AI is going to take your job or anything else, but that a company that knows how to use AI is going to take your customers, they're going to take your markets there, they're going to take your revenue, and I think it's just a big opportunity for lots of folks that have struggled with you know how do I get more customers? How do I get how to make more money to really get a leg up in their local market and make the most of the idea that they have?

Speaker 1: 33:44

Well, our purpose as a company and a podcast is to help businesses grow faster, and this is one of those tools they can use to do that. So I appreciate you sharing, and I bet a lot of our listeners have more questions or they want to follow you for more information. Where's the best place to find you and do that?

Speaker 2: 33:56

Yeah, so everything I talked about is available at blazeai. We have a ton of free resources. Early next year, we're launching a community where other small business owners will help. Other small business owners will be there too, but it's really a free resource for folks to get answers to questions around marketing and growth and customer service, and we'll have different communities for all different types of industries. We serve from real estate to financial advising, to fitness, to small local businesses on Main Street, and so we want anybody who is trying to figure out these questions on how to grow faster to be able to leverage information and community. Even if you don't pay for our products as a customer, we still want you to come and try and help yourself to make more money from the internet. So all that's available at blazeai very cool and listeners.

Speaker 1: 34:45

I encourage you. Another reason to explore this is because you're passionate about small business owners and a lot of businesses out there are not. They're just out there to make more money and you're really here to serve and help grow small businesses because, like you said, they're the backbone of our country. So grow small businesses Cause, like you said, they're the backbone of our country. So you've been a wealth of information and a blessing to many, and I always end our conversations with one question. If you were speaking in front of a large audience of small business owners in all seasons of life, business, different sizes, what's one thing that's applicable to all of them? It could be a quote, a book, just insight.

Speaker 2: 35:24

Yeah, I just tell people just keep going If you don't give up, you won't succeed. So yeah, I know it's hard and some days suck, but winning comes from not losing. Winning comes from just putting one foot in front of the other, and every great business hero or leader you see out there that you look up to has had those same tough days, probably even tougher, and the only reason they're where they are is because they didn't give up, and so neither should you.

Speaker 1: 35:54

Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you again, adam. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, boss. Our business is growing yours. Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom dot com. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at Michael at Michael D Morrison dot com. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.