Ken Cox doesn’t just talk about leadership—he builds systems that enable it. In this episode, Ken shares how a turbulent upbringing and early tech exposure shaped his leadership style. From hanging around small-town entrepreneurs to diving into the early days of the internet, Ken turned challenges into fuel. He opens up about his dyslexia and how technology gave him a voice, eventually becoming a champion for small businesses and digital empowerment.

Ken explains why he treats AI like employees—and why leadership in the AI era means creating systems that manage, train, and direct those “digital hires.” He urges leaders to stop fearing AI and start leading it. The result? Businesses that run smarter, faster, and leaner.

Whether it’s streamlining customer service or qualifying leads, Ken breaks down how focused AI tools can give business owners time to lead—not just manage chaos.

Want to learn more about Ken Cox's work? Check out his website at https://inlink.com/

Connect with Ken Cox on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kencox/

Key Points with Time Stamps

• 00:01:08 – Introducing Ken Cox: Entrepreneur, Podcast Host, and Author
• 00:02:06 – Dyslexia and the early role of tech in Ken’s life
• 00:03:35 – Small business mentors who shaped Ken’s leadership mindset
• 00:06:00 – Learning Unix, the internet, and building a digital foundation
• 00:10:24 – AI as a game-changer: Why Ken enrolled in an MIT program
• 00:11:01 – The internet saved Ken’s life—and now AI can do the same for others
• 00:14:12 – The best time to start a business is now
• 00:14:45 – Narrow AI models as digital employees
• 00:15:48 – Managing AI: Think like a leader, not a technician
• 00:17:20 – Defining AI agents and avoiding hallucination pitfalls
• 00:20:12 – Guardrails for AI: Leadership in digital management
• 00:24:46 – First step for business owners: Just start talking to AI
• 00:26:13 – AI handles low-level tasks so leaders can focus on strategy
• 00:27:09 – Helping human employees collaborate better with AI
• 00:28:12 – AI doesn’t replace leadership—it frees it

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;08;12
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Ken Cox. He is the founder of Inlink.com, Box STL, Hostirian and a few other companies. This guy has entrepreneurial ism just coursing through his veins. He's also the,

00;01;08;12 - 00;01;31;04
Craig Andrews
the host of the clicks and bricks podcast. And the author of the book Reclaimed Sobriety and Ken and I have been talking, and I don't know if I would have a great way to sum up all that we talked about, except that he is deeply passionate for American businesses, and he wants to see them succeed.

00;01;31;06 - 00;01;31;22
Craig Andrews
And,

00;01;31;22 - 00;01;34;06
Craig Andrews
he's like a he's like one of the,

00;01;34;06 - 00;01;41;16
Craig Andrews
you know, guardian on the internet. When people were still learning what the internet was. So, Ken, welcome.

00;01;41;18 - 00;01;43;26
Ken Cox
Thank you, Craig, for having me. I appreciate it.

00;01;43;28 - 00;01;51;04
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So I mean, that was one thing that that struck me was when I look, I mean, you go way back,

00;01;51;04 - 00;01;59;01
Craig Andrews
to the early days of the internet when, when, when would you say you first dip your toe in the waters?

00;01;59;03 - 00;02;01;21
Ken Cox
So I'm going to go way back to childhood.

00;02;01;21 - 00;02;02;20
Ken Cox
You know, I,

00;02;02;20 - 00;02;06;28
Ken Cox
I never knew my father. I'm not my my name is not Cox by birth.

00;02;06;28 - 00;02;22;28
Ken Cox
I was adopted by my stepfather. I'm wildly dyslexic. And my mother, for all of her crazy faults, was a champion for me as a young child. To make sure that I got the education in the way that I needed it, which was very rare in the early 80s.

00;02;22;28 - 00;02;32;28
Ken Cox
Right. But she was dead set on making sure that I got verbal tests, that I could use a keyboard in class and stuff like that. So I had my first brother,

00;02;32;28 - 00;02;43;14
Ken Cox
word processor at the age of like 5 or 6 years old. Step dad probably stole it for me, but I had it. And then, you know, we're talking Commodore 64, Amiga 1000.

00;02;43;17 - 00;02;44;22
Ken Cox
You know, all of these,

00;02;44;22 - 00;03;09;19
Ken Cox
technology at a very early age, because that was the way I could communicate with the world in a way that was palatable to me and the other. The rest of the world could understand. So, you know, I've been on a keyboard since the age of five years old. Wow. Fortunately for me, my mother leaves the the nightclub and bar industry when I'm like 10 or 12 years old and she gets a job at Washington University.

00;03;09;21 - 00;03;14;29
Ken Cox
Where is who's one of the pioneers for the internet? So we had access to our

00;03;14;29 - 00;03;35;09
Ken Cox
and our home. You know, this, you know, little house in Arnold, Missouri, town of like 20,000 people. You know, I had dial up at a pretty early age, but, you know, 1400 baud dial up and things like that. And I love the fact that I could get on the internet and communicate with other people.

00;03;35;11 - 00;03;43;25
Ken Cox
All of that, coupled with, you know, I lived in kind of a rough and tumble town and I would hang out with,

00;03;43;25 - 00;03;53;21
Ken Cox
got a lot of trouble at the age of 13. So I started hanging out with the small business owners in my town. The guy that owned the pool had spent a lot of time there because I could get out of trouble.

00;03;53;22 - 00;03;55;25
Ken Cox
He let me clean tables so that I could,

00;03;55;25 - 00;04;17;22
Ken Cox
get free pool and the pizza joint and the slot car track. You know, these are the guys that kind of mentored me through my later my teen years that weren't getting me in trouble. So I had this really cool kind of coupling of these small business owner mentors because my stepfather was, you know, he taught me how to sit on the porch and drink beer,

00;04;17;22 - 00;04;19;19
Ken Cox
and, you know, getting a little bit of trouble.

00;04;19;21 - 00;04;28;07
Ken Cox
But these guys showed me how to how to start businesses and run them and be part of a community. And then at home, I had all this technology. So,

00;04;28;07 - 00;04;36;04
Ken Cox
it was just this really crazy mix that I, you could I got to have in the, in the early, you know, early to late 80s.

00;04;36;04 - 00;04;38;04
Ken Cox
Wow. Fast forward to the 90s.

00;04;38;10 - 00;04;40;21
Ken Cox
You know, my career is kind of starts there.

00;04;40;23 - 00;04;48;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And let me clarify one thing. So when you say Washington College, you're talking about Saint Louis. You're not talking about Seattle or anything out there.

00;04;48;21 - 00;04;51;23
Ken Cox
Correct. Washington University, Saint Louis. Yeah.

00;04;51;23 - 00;05;01;08
Ken Cox
Primarily known for its medical school. Right. They're they're a top five med school. Or at least they were then. I've not paid attention since, but.

00;05;01;10 - 00;05;07;11
Craig Andrews
You know, I, I had been living in Japan off and on in the late 80s,

00;05;07;11 - 00;05;21;10
Craig Andrews
and early 90s. And I came back to the U.S. in 91 and went to university. And that's when I first found out about email. And for me, it was fascinating. And I, I had just come from,

00;05;21;10 - 00;05;27;22
Craig Andrews
paying a dollar or a minute call back to the U.S. and I saw that I was like, oh my goodness.

00;05;27;22 - 00;05;44;29
Craig Andrews
When the telecoms learn about this, they're going to try to shut it down, because all the money they were making, you know, for global communications, was that gig was about up. But it was just it blew my mind. I was like, this is I just I thought it was a gimmick. I was emailing my brother in law one time zone away.

00;05;44;29 - 00;05;51;18
Craig Andrews
I was trying to figure out if it was real time. I thought, no, they've got to be putting a delay in this. This is too good.

00;05;51;20 - 00;05;52;25
Ken Cox
What year was that?

00;05;52;28 - 00;05;54;10
Craig Andrews
That was 91.

00;05;54;13 - 00;05;58;08
Ken Cox
91 email. Wow. So you were pin mail?

00;05;58;11 - 00;06;02;02
Craig Andrews
So I was on this was at NC state, and we were on,

00;06;02;02 - 00;06;06;13
Craig Andrews
deck stations. Okay. And so I was, you know, the whole Unix.

00;06;06;13 - 00;06;08;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. The,

00;06;08;19 - 00;06;20;17
Craig Andrews
base, the other thing. So obviously all of this was new. And so one of the very, you know, your very first semester, you had to take a class on how to use a computer system on campus.

00;06;20;19 - 00;06;32;11
Craig Andrews
And they're teaching us Unix and, you know, all these different commands. And one of the commands I'm sure you're familiar with was the finger command. And they said, yeah, you can figure out where you're where your,

00;06;32;11 - 00;06;44;21
Craig Andrews
buddies are on campus. Just finger and then their, their email address. And I was like, oh that's cool. One of my I was in Raleigh, my brother in law worked at Will tell in Houston I thought, I wonder if that works on him.

00;06;44;21 - 00;07;01;11
Craig Andrews
So I finger and then his handle and I was like, oh, he's been at my his desk for the last 20 minutes. And periodically I would do that. And then one day I noticed I do it. I didn't get anything back. I tried it again. I didn't get anything back. And I emailed them. I said, hey, this feature doesn't work anymore.

00;07;01;14 - 00;07;06;19
Craig Andrews
He said, yeah, you set off our security alarms.

00;07;06;22 - 00;07;08;22
Ken Cox
Yes, absolutely.

00;07;08;22 - 00;07;14;05
Ken Cox
I, I've not thought about the finger command in a in a very, very long time.

00;07;14;05 - 00;07;22;18
Ken Cox
That we used to use and I still use today. Wall inside of the Unix command shell. Right. And Linux command shell. And it's, it's it can still be a ton of fun.

00;07;22;18 - 00;07;26;20
Ken Cox
You know, that's we used to use wall like, you know, pre Merck chant,

00;07;26;20 - 00;07;27;09
Ken Cox
Merck chat.

00;07;27;10 - 00;07;32;03
Ken Cox
Right. Which is, you know, I don't think even exists any longer term.

00;07;32;03 - 00;07;44;04
Craig Andrews
Remember what was there was something I was using, you know, probably ten years later and I still remembered the, commands for V and whatever, whatever ed or had, it was really close to VI.

00;07;44;10 - 00;07;44;25
Ken Cox
Right.

00;07;44;27 - 00;07;54;07
Craig Andrews
And you know, which I mean, this is like old school internet weird, not intuitive. You know, it's pure memorization, you know.

00;07;54;10 - 00;07;55;12
Ken Cox
Yes.

00;07;55;15 - 00;07;58;16
Craig Andrews
You know, zebra and a cat comes out.

00;07;58;18 - 00;08;01;29
Ken Cox
Dumbfounded at how we knew any of it. And,

00;08;01;29 - 00;08;03;27
Ken Cox
you know, it was just this collaboration,

00;08;03;27 - 00;08;13;01
Ken Cox
talking with the guy. I remember the first time I installed Red hat, and I called my buddy Joe. I'm like, what do I do? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, I just got this cursor on the screen.

00;08;13;01 - 00;08;19;29
Ken Cox
I don't know what to do. And he goes, oh, just start prepping for stuff, like, okay. And that, you know, that's where my Linux career kind of starts,

00;08;19;29 - 00;08;26;10
Ken Cox
which is just kind of weird, right? And then, you know, he's like, I'm like, what do I do next? It's like, if you need help with something, just type in, man.

00;08;26;16 - 00;08;40;15
Ken Cox
And that's the manual files and and start reading from there. And that's how, you know, we ended up learning all this stuff. It's just one command at a time. And, and going from there and then tying those together and growing it. So it's pretty wild.

00;08;40;17 - 00;09;04;03
Craig Andrews
Well and that's that story about the finger command. It shows how how primitive the internet was and how they hadn't even slightly thought about bad actors. You know, they I could sit there and tap into my, you know, and to this, you know, fortune 500 and fortune 1000 companies, computer system, you know, no sentries at the gate. They just let me right on in.

00;09;04;05 - 00;09;14;16
Ken Cox
The power of a young boy with dual modems that could ping led somebody and take them offline was intoxicating for me.

00;09;14;19 - 00;09;17;15
Ken Cox
But those days are over, right?

00;09;17;17 - 00;09;21;19
Craig Andrews
Well, and one of the things that fascinates me when you said that you're dyslexic,

00;09;21;19 - 00;09;29;15
Craig Andrews
you know, I'll tell you, somebody else is dyslexia is a guy named Brian Skidmore at one one 800. Got junk. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. He,

00;09;29;15 - 00;09;32;06
Craig Andrews
his dad was an attorney.

00;09;32;06 - 00;09;36;10
Craig Andrews
And, you know, you can imagine what it's like growing up. Son of an attorney.

00;09;36;12 - 00;09;54;19
Craig Andrews
You got to go to school, get the grades. You got to go to college. He dropped out of college almost immediately and buys a a beat up pickup truck for $1,600 and paints on the side with, like, a spray can of paint. Warhol. Your junk. Can you imagine how proud dad was? You know, back then.

00;09;54;21 - 00;09;55;15
Ken Cox
Right?

00;09;55;17 - 00;10;03;02
Craig Andrews
And you know, the guy builds the biggest junk business and it's just his brain didn't work in the school system.

00;10;03;04 - 00;10;05;19
Ken Cox
Yeah, the school system has never been for me.

00;10;05;19 - 00;10;07;29
Ken Cox
You know, I, I did graduate, I ended up,

00;10;07;29 - 00;10;24;01
Ken Cox
you know, doing some profound things, right? I, I did go to wash you. I learned HTML one at LSU. I transfer to Webster, ended up dropping out of school. But even still, you know, my latest time at school, I went to MIT for about two, two and a half years ago.

00;10;24;06 - 00;10;26;08
Ken Cox
I had to go through there. I for,

00;10;26;08 - 00;10;37;14
Ken Cox
small business program. Right as soon as like 3.0 GPT 33.5 comes out and I'm like, I have to learn what this is. This is game changing for the planet.

00;10;37;14 - 00;10;44;16
Ken Cox
Knew it instantly. So I found the MIT course and I went through their 16 week program to learn everything I possibly could about AI.

00;10;44;18 - 00;10;47;02
Ken Cox
And, you know, that's that's where I'm at today. And that's,

00;10;47;02 - 00;11;01;29
Ken Cox
I'm very, very excited to play on the internet for the next decade. And I think it's going to change even even more lives. The internet saved my life, right? I would be a bomb in jail. Who knows what would happen without the internet for me?

00;11;01;29 - 00;11;05;15
Ken Cox
And I is going to just help some.

00;11;05;15 - 00;11;12;13
Ken Cox
It's it's going to destroy a lot of people too, but it's going to help in ways that we don't even recognize yet.

00;11;12;15 - 00;11;16;25
Craig Andrews
You know, there's, it's a fascinating subject.

00;11;16;25 - 00;11;19;29
Craig Andrews
You know, my wife came up to me and said, hey, I need to learn.

00;11;19;29 - 00;11;34;17
Craig Andrews
I or I need to learn how to use ChatGPT. I'm like, do you know how to have a conversation? She's like, yeah, but in her mind, it's this big, intimidating thing. It's this new technology that only people with,

00;11;34;17 - 00;11;37;18
Craig Andrews
pocket protectors and greasy hair understand.

00;11;37;20 - 00;11;39;10
Ken Cox
Right.

00;11;39;12 - 00;11;41;09
Craig Andrews
And it's not. Yeah.

00;11;41;12 - 00;11;55;17
Ken Cox
I mean, at the, you know, like, understanding large language models versus natural language models and understanding vectors and things like that. Yes. That's challenging if you're going to build an AI infrastructure. But for the average person it's just common language.

00;11;55;20 - 00;12;00;10
Craig Andrews
Yeah. I said, hey, it's you can have a conversation, you can use ChatGPT.

00;12;00;13 - 00;12;01;23
Ken Cox
Absolutely.

00;12;01;25 - 00;12;03;11
Craig Andrews
And, you know, think of it as,

00;12;03;11 - 00;12;19;18
Craig Andrews
I mean, she's, you know, a mom. And so she's had little kids that, you know, you ask them a question, you get some convoluted answer. So you go back and you ask a few more questions. Right. And that's kind of where AI is. It's a little child that doesn't always give the best answers.

00;12;19;20 - 00;12;32;05
Ken Cox
But you can train AI and then but training it is just talking to it and telling it about yourself and telling it about your passions and your dreams and things that you want to accomplish. And if it knows those things, then it can output some, some pretty spectacular stuff for you.

00;12;32;08 - 00;12;33;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, I had,

00;12;33;21 - 00;12;49;20
Craig Andrews
ChatGPT asked me a couple weeks ago why I wanted to be called and I said I wouldn't be called Craig the Wise and Powerful. And the day it comes back and starts mocking me, I know that it will. It will achieves some level of sentience that,

00;12;49;20 - 00;12;52;21
Craig Andrews
that that maybe I need to worry about my job.

00;12;52;23 - 00;12;58;03
Ken Cox
Yeah. You know, and I to I took such a very fast leap. Right.

00;12;58;03 - 00;13;01;00
Ken Cox
You know, you've got a couple of technologies in the world today,

00;13;01;00 - 00;13;12;10
Ken Cox
you know, artificial intelligence. We've got virtual reality and augmented reality really coming to. And robotics, all those things today are just such a fun world to live in.

00;13;12;10 - 00;13;21;18
Ken Cox
With 3D printing and intelligence and production have been democratized in our planet.

00;13;21;20 - 00;13;38;24
Ken Cox
Anybody can do these things. Yeah. And, you know, I just I want people to know that. And I think the, you know, the, the, the playing field is being leveled. We've been living in a world of winner take most and not only in it, but also in mainstream America,

00;13;38;24 - 00;13;42;04
Ken Cox
with the large franchises and the, you know, takeovers.

00;13;42;07 - 00;14;04;02
Ken Cox
And, you know, I really love a world where a man and a woman or couple or whatever, they have a passion to do a thing and share it with the world, and they can do that and raise their families and, and, you know, achieve those goals. And I think that's what most people in the world want is just to have their thing that they've built, and they share it with the world.

00;14;04;04 - 00;14;12;22
Ken Cox
And I think that's a it's a it's never been a better time in America to start or run a business than, than 2025.

00;14;12;24 - 00;14;25;03
Craig Andrews
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think one of the hardest questions that businesses are struggling with is where does I belong in my business? Where does it not belong?

00;14;25;05 - 00;14;25;17
Ken Cox
Yes.

00;14;25;22 - 00;14;27;12
Craig Andrews
What's your take on that.

00;14;27;15 - 00;14;29;02
Ken Cox
My take on that is,

00;14;29;02 - 00;14;45;11
Ken Cox
narrow language models, which is just means that I've trained a, a large language model of big AI to do specific tasks. I think the dream of an employee that, you know, we all like these jack of all trade employees, you can do a whole lot of things and they can do them well.

00;14;45;13 - 00;14;51;16
Ken Cox
But when you really step back and you look at manufacturing and business as a whole and you understand combining,

00;14;51;16 - 00;15;02;17
Ken Cox
training an AI employee to do a very specific task, it can do it very well. Then you don't have to keep training it. You still have to manage it, though. It's not a set it and forget it thing.

00;15;02;21 - 00;15;22;29
Ken Cox
Right. These are start looking at AIS, your AI agents as AI employees. But you have to manage that. You have to keep up to date that. You have to feed them new information when your business changes, and you have to watch over them to make sure that sometimes, you know, I like to think of AI models like intelligent people.

00;15;22;29 - 00;15;48;01
Ken Cox
The more intelligence you give them, the more they hallucinate. The narrow that you can keep them and you get them back on their path, the less they're going to hallucinate. So you know, an AI employee for your receptionist, an AI employee for your website and AI, and play for your conversations, and then use tools like ChatGPT or anthropic for conversations and ideas and coaches and things like that.

00;15;48;04 - 00;15;57;24
Craig Andrews
Okay, we've got a couple of terms we need to explain. First is what's an agent? And second, what are you talking about with hallucination? What's that mean?

00;15;57;26 - 00;16;05;23
Ken Cox
So I'll give you an example of a company that we were working with, and he was actually upset with it at first, and then we kind of work through,

00;16;05;23 - 00;16;16;11
Ken Cox
we had an AI agent, which we like to call employees, that was answering the phone for that. Okay. And answer the phone. And the person was speaking English when it started.

00;16;16;11 - 00;16;17;21
Ken Cox
But then,

00;16;17;21 - 00;16;22;24
Ken Cox
the AI employee recognized a Spanish word,

00;16;22;24 - 00;16;42;16
Ken Cox
in the eye and said, hey, answered in Spanish. And now the person on the phone is like, oh, this. This agent knows Spanish. So he just starts talking in Spanish with this AI employee. And then over time, this AI employee starts kind of speaking a weird Tex-Mex kind of Spanish, more frequently.

00;16;42;16 - 00;17;04;00
Ken Cox
Right? Because it just kept happening. And so, you know, we had to really narrow its focus and say, hey. And then the business owner was like, you know, I don't know Spanish. I can't deal with this. I'm like, okay, well, we can just kick up another AI employee that is your Spanish support desk, right? And really trained it on that and then say, oh, and then we train it.

00;17;04;06 - 00;17;16;27
Ken Cox
Oh, do you need to speak Spanish? I'm going to transfer you to our Spanish speaking AI employee. Instead of having this one employee that has to know English and Spanish and then kind of hops back and forth between the two.

00;17;16;29 - 00;17;20;14
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So what is an agent?

00;17;20;16 - 00;17;26;26
Ken Cox
An agent is really just a, a set of tasks that the AI is going to do for you.

00;17;26;26 - 00;17;35;18
Ken Cox
If you're, if you're familiar with ChatGPT, which I hope most people are today, they've at least got in there and they played with it is every time you hit new chat that can be an agent.

00;17;35;18 - 00;17;37;17
Ken Cox
But today we can train them to do different stuff.

00;17;37;17 - 00;17;58;03
Ken Cox
Right? So if you have an AI agent or AI employee that that is answering the phone for you and it hears the word, you know, are you open today or what's your schedule? It can ask, would you like me to send you a link to our schedule, or would you like me to send you a link to sign up for services or our calendar, or different things like that?

00;17;58;03 - 00;18;18;06
Ken Cox
So today, agents and employees, I think they're interchangeable terms. I like thinking of employees more than agents. The agent kind of says, I know what I'm doing. I don't mess with that person. But employee, when you think about your AI agent as an employee, kind of changes the game a little bit and we recommend keeping them very narrow.

00;18;18;06 - 00;18;23;06
Ken Cox
Focus. This one answers the phone. This one answers your Google. This one might answer your Facebook

00;18;23;06 - 00;18;26;14
Ken Cox
reviews, right? And that kind of thing.

00;18;26;16 - 00;18;46;07
Craig Andrews
So it's almost like, you know, when you hire a, let's say, just a very junior employee and you give them a task list, hey, or like a standard operating procedure, hey, here are the parameters of the job. Any time you have questions, just pull this up. This will answer most of your questions. That's what you're doing with an AI.

00;18;46;07 - 00;18;50;11
Craig Andrews
You're giving it the scope saying this is your job. You go do it.

00;18;50;13 - 00;19;10;09
Ken Cox
Absolutely. And then you're you're being a little kinder to them than you are an employee because you have economies of scale there, right? If you have an employee answering the phone, say, let's say a local gym, right? You answer the phone, well, you want that employee to also answer your Google reviews, right? You want that employee to also,

00;19;10;09 - 00;19;14;27
Ken Cox
maybe do some social media management or maybe make some post on Facebook for you.

00;19;14;29 - 00;19;23;26
Ken Cox
Instead of having one employee that does all those things, you just train each individual agent to do those specific tasks. Got it.

00;19;23;29 - 00;19;26;29
Craig Andrews
So what's hallucination?

00;19;27;01 - 00;19;30;11
Ken Cox
Hallucination, in my opinion, is just when the AI,

00;19;30;11 - 00;19;35;02
Ken Cox
starts going off in random directions that you didn't want it to happen,

00;19;35;02 - 00;19;37;11
Ken Cox
or starts coming up with,

00;19;37;11 - 00;19;48;15
Ken Cox
you know, I like to use the a judge as, as an example here. Google Google's AI whenever you Google for something and say, hey, I need the the Chinese restaurant near me,

00;19;48;15 - 00;19;49;14
Ken Cox
Google is the judge.

00;19;49;14 - 00;20;01;03
Ken Cox
And it goes out and looks at all the Chinese restaurants and it takes the most reputable one. Well, if there's two that are equal, a AI tends to kind of mash those things together and come up with,

00;20;01;03 - 00;20;05;03
Ken Cox
with a singular answer that that may not be correct.

00;20;05;03 - 00;20;12;02
Ken Cox
We find that in the large language models more than the narrows, because we can tell it, you know, here's your scope of work, and you don't go outside of this.

00;20;12;02 - 00;20;17;21
Ken Cox
And if you start to go outside of it, bring it back to your scope of work as soon as possible.

00;20;17;23 - 00;20;23;21
Craig Andrews
Well, and I'll give you an example where I ran into what I would call a hallucination.

00;20;23;21 - 00;20;25;13
Craig Andrews
We took some we downloaded,

00;20;25;13 - 00;20;46;03
Craig Andrews
some CRM records, and we were looking for the traits that would most likely result into a deal. And I thought, hey, AI is great at this. And so I uploaded all these files into ChatGPT and I said, identify the trends that best predict the creation of a deal.

00;20;46;05 - 00;20;55;06
Craig Andrews
And it and it came back with some generic crap that I know it found on some blog on the internet, you know, well, you know, treat people kindly and, you know,

00;20;55;06 - 00;20;58;14
Craig Andrews
you know, keep a kitten at your desk or some crap like that. And,

00;20;58;14 - 00;21;07;24
Craig Andrews
I'm like. And so I'm like, well, who's the best sales rep? It started coming up with names that don't work for the company.

00;21;07;27 - 00;21;09;03
Ken Cox
Right.

00;21;09;06 - 00;21;15;09
Craig Andrews
And that's that for me, that to this day, that's where it really gets me nervous.

00;21;15;09 - 00;21;19;06
Craig Andrews
Because I wrote a, I wrote a GPT recently to,

00;21;19;06 - 00;21;34;15
Craig Andrews
to do lead research, you know, and, you know, and, you know, loaded the URL parameters. All you have to do is click on something in the CRM. It'll open up a GPT with all the, you know, what their name, their email address and their location and does research.

00;21;34;15 - 00;21;41;02
Craig Andrews
And sometimes it comes back with amazing stuff. Sometimes it comes back with crap that just made up right?

00;21;41;05 - 00;22;01;26
Ken Cox
And it doesn't know how to say, I don't know. Yeah, right. It says, hey, check my data, but it won't tell it you. I don't know the answer to that. Right. Unless you tell it. You know, this is your scope of knowledge and you only know within the scope of knowledge. And if you don't, if it's not in the scope of knowledge, your answer is, I'm sorry, I can't help you with that.

00;22;01;26 - 00;22;03;29
Ken Cox
I can transfer you to a human.

00;22;04;01 - 00;22;16;13
Craig Andrews
You know, that's an interesting thing. I could probably add a rule to the GPT saying you only grab information you can find on the internet. If you can't find the information, then you come back and say, sorry, I can't find anything.

00;22;16;15 - 00;22;19;08
Ken Cox
Right? This goes back to old school, I tell. Right,

00;22;19;08 - 00;22;41;04
Ken Cox
where you have your centrally managed database, this is your your central core set of data, your authoritative set of data. And that's where you have to tell your agent or employee, here's your here's your source of data that you're going to work from. If it's not in this source of data, you're going to try to transfer it to a human or tell it to go look into its own research.

00;22;41;06 - 00;22;47;22
Ken Cox
Yeah, right. And that's how you kind of stopgap those and put guardrails on your AI employees.

00;22;47;24 - 00;23;02;27
Craig Andrews
So I mean, what you're really talking about, it's it's like you hire somebody off the street, you know, you're not going to let them write company checks. You're not can give them the keys to the company Ferrari and say, hey, bring it back here, you know, clean and

00;23;02;27 - 00;23;03;26
Craig Andrews
dented, and.

00;23;03;26 - 00;23;07;01
Ken Cox
You definitely don't tell them. If you don't know the answer, just make something up.

00;23;07;04 - 00;23;07;28
Craig Andrews
Right.

00;23;08;01 - 00;23;17;26
Ken Cox
You don't tell him that. You tell them. If you don't know the answer, tell the client. I don't know that answer, but I can go get it for you. Or I can get you to the boss or whoever might know that answer.

00;23;17;26 - 00;23;28;03
Ken Cox
And I think, you know, just those guardrails are important and that, you know, it's once you get there, it makes a huge difference, right?

00;23;28;03 - 00;23;46;24
Ken Cox
Whenever I knew that we were going to knock something out of the park when I was talking with my wife and I'm like, no, just just treat it like an employee. Like how you would any other employee if it's answering the phone for if it makes a mistake, you tell it. But the difference is I don't have to reprimand my AI and have any emotional attachment to it at all.

00;23;47;01 - 00;23;51;01
Ken Cox
I don't have to change my language for them. I don't have to have, you know,

00;23;51;01 - 00;23;55;02
Ken Cox
Gary V talks about emotional intelligence all the time, which, you know, I struggle with.

00;23;55;02 - 00;23;57;10
Ken Cox
But I don't have to deal with it. With AI.

00;23;57;12 - 00;24;07;05
Craig Andrews
You don't have to give it the ten compliments before you come back and say, hey, you did all these things. Great. Well, you really screwed this up. You can just jump straight to it. Hey, you screwed this up. Don't do it again.

00;24;07;07 - 00;24;22;24
Ken Cox
Yeah, and you don't even have to say screwed up. You say don't. Do you know this is what happened? Don't do that. Or if this comes up, this is what you do. So it's a it's going back to the kind of the if then this mentality of programing.

00;24;22;24 - 00;24;26;01
Ken Cox
But you can do it in common language.

00;24;26;03 - 00;24;46;13
Craig Andrews
So what advice would you give to a business owner that's listening to this. And they're saying, you know, I keep hearing about AI. I know I need to do something. It intimidates me. What should they do before they go to bed tonight? What's one thing they should do before they go to bed tonight?

00;24;46;16 - 00;25;03;00
Ken Cox
Yeah. I'm not going to do a shameless plug here. I'm just going to say go to ChatGPT, get the free account or grok or any one of the ones that you, you know, if you're an X fan or just an internet fan, go to ChatGPT, get the free account and just start talking to it. Ask it questions,

00;25;03;00 - 00;25;12;26
Ken Cox
about the universe, about your life, about your religion, about your, you know, give it some scenarios about, you know, a relationship that you have and ask it for advice on how to improve it.

00;25;12;29 - 00;25;18;24
Ken Cox
Just talk with it back and forth and get comfortable with that without putting it into production.

00;25;18;24 - 00;25;39;07
Ken Cox
And I think what they'll find is that one, you know, talking with a person that has an IQ of 160 and a 200 will make you just more intelligence in general. If you have that conversation on a regular basis. I think if you spend, you know, 10 or 20 minutes a day here and there asking it questions, then then you'll come a very far away.

00;25;39;10 - 00;25;55;15
Ken Cox
And if you can just start one of them and start telling it about your business, right. High level stuff. I have this many clients. This is my average retail profit. This is, you know, all those things and just say, hey, you know, give me ten marketing ideas that I might be able to execute for a very low budget.

00;25;55;15 - 00;26;06;21
Ken Cox
And my business use it for ideas, right. And then get comfortable with that and then understand that, you know, there's companies out there like mine that will help you implement those,

00;26;06;21 - 00;26;09;03
Ken Cox
action items from AI employees in

00;26;09;03 - 00;26;13;10
Ken Cox
the real business. But if you're not comfortable with it, you got to get comfortable with it.

00;26;13;12 - 00;26;19;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah. All right. So let's let's wrap up with the shameless plug. What do you do. Who do you help.

00;26;19;24 - 00;26;40;02
Ken Cox
So if you want to go to link.com every Tuesday at 4 p.m., we do a free AI, employee training. So we show you how we set up AI employees to answer the phone. We create a fake company. We call it. We. You know, we let it make some mistakes, and then we go back in and we, you know, we update it so that we know the next time we call it.

00;26;40;02 - 00;26;51;14
Ken Cox
And it's just getting people comfortable with it. We showed how it does the Google review management and things like that. It's absolutely free and it's just an effort to make this whole process less intimidating,

00;26;51;14 - 00;27;09;02
Ken Cox
for the world, because it's really it's so powerful. And if you just start adopting AI employees in your business, then you can use the employee, the the real life human employees for more collaboration and different ways to grow your business.

00;27;09;05 - 00;27;24;29
Ken Cox
I'm not saying use AI to change your business. Train it to do the jobs that nobody really wants to do or low level jobs anyway. Answer the phone. Answer your Google reviews help you with your website content. You know, maybe a chat window on your on your website or something along those lines,

00;27;24;29 - 00;27;26;13
Ken Cox
or help you build a sales funnel.

00;27;26;14 - 00;27;29;17
Ken Cox
Right. The those are the things that we help people do,

00;27;29;17 - 00;27;31;00
Ken Cox
in their business today.

00;27;31;03 - 00;27;38;08
Craig Andrews
Okay. And when we were talking, I was really surprised by the variety of businesses that interlink,

00;27;38;08 - 00;27;40;26
Craig Andrews
helps. I mean, you were talking about,

00;27;40;26 - 00;27;45;12
Craig Andrews
shops that replace windshields. You were talking about Hvac companies.

00;27;45;12 - 00;27;49;29
Craig Andrews
I mean, you don't have to be a tech company.

00;27;50;02 - 00;27;50;28
Ken Cox
Yeah.

00;27;51;01 - 00;27;59;02
Craig Andrews
What's so. So, we've got some services in there. We have auto.

00;27;59;02 - 00;28;01;26
Ken Cox
Repair, some dates back. You know anybody,

00;28;01;26 - 00;28;10;27
Ken Cox
you know, you need a receptionist to answer the phone to communicate your hours of operations, send text messages for booking links.

00;28;10;27 - 00;28;12;15
Ken Cox
Qualify leads,

00;28;12;15 - 00;28;27;10
Ken Cox
collect information from the from the caller and get that over to a sales rep. Right. I mean, the the worst cent a business could do is get an inbound sales call and not have anybody to collect their data to get back to them or answer simple questions for them.

00;28;27;14 - 00;28;31;07
Ken Cox
And I is here ready to do that for you today.

00;28;31;10 - 00;28;43;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Because what happens when they call your when they call your office and they don't get somebody to talk to you, they go to the next name on the list. And the first person to answer the phone. When's the business? Right.

00;28;43;08 - 00;29;01;00
Ken Cox
And if you're open and honest about your AI agent answering the phone. Hi, my name is Sam. I, I'm h back repair a AIS agent here to answer any basic questions you have. If you ever need to talk to a human, just let me know and I get to transfer. People are wildly respectable to talk to that I.

00;29;01;03 - 00;29;02;00
Craig Andrews
Well.

00;29;02;02 - 00;29;12;03
Ken Cox
Don't try to trick them I it it's it's bad news to try to trick somebody. They can fight the I mean you can smell a dirty fish from a mile away and it's just tricky.

00;29;12;05 - 00;29;12;14
Craig Andrews
Well,

00;29;12;14 - 00;29;23;25
Craig Andrews
one of the things I like, what you said was telling them, hey, you can talk to a human at any point. Having that freedom, I was. I mean, just a quick anecdote. I was,

00;29;23;25 - 00;29;24;20
Craig Andrews
I was doing,

00;29;24;20 - 00;29;32;11
Craig Andrews
I put in a support ticket with a major CRM. I'm not going to say its name here, but it's a major CRM.

00;29;32;14 - 00;29;38;17
Craig Andrews
And it it wasn't doing something. When I put in a ticket, something's broken and,

00;29;38;17 - 00;29;53;20
Craig Andrews
it comes back and it gives all the stupid, obvious things to do. And it overlooks, a very important question. So I wrote back, I was like, you didn't even think to ask this. You responded immediately, why don't you come back with better questions or something like that?

00;29;53;22 - 00;30;02;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And it came back and apologized and then made the same recommendations. I'm like, get me to it. It was I was so frustrated. I said, get me to a human.

00;30;02;09 - 00;30;10;11
Ken Cox
You got to close that loop quickly, right? If it's either transferred to a human, which we can do with AI today, we can transfer it right to a cell phone if you want to,

00;30;10;11 - 00;30;22;02
Ken Cox
or say, hey, you know, I don't have anybody I don't have humans available right now, but I'll get a message out and then you can have that text your, you know, your whoever your support staff is, we can have it open a trouble ticket, send an email.

00;30;22;02 - 00;30;27;08
Ken Cox
You can do it. Have you know, you can train it to do all kinds of things. And it's super simple to do now.

00;30;27;10 - 00;30;30;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well can how can people reach you?

00;30;30;21 - 00;30;37;15
Ken Cox
The easiest way to get Ahold of us is just end linked comm. I end linked comm. Or if you want to learn more about me and my,

00;30;37;15 - 00;30;40;22
Ken Cox
weird philosophies on life, just Ken cox.com.

00;30;40;24 - 00;30;43;20
Craig Andrews
That's awesome. Hey, thanks for coming on Leaders and Legacies.

00;30;43;23 - 00;30;47;02
Ken Cox
Thank you so much, Greg. I appreciate it.

00;30;47;02 - 00;31;13;28
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;31;13;28 - 00;31;15;23
Craig Andrews
episode on social media.

00;31;15;25 - 00;31;39;05
Craig Andrews
Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend, or posted on the socials. If you know someone who would be a great guest, tag them on social media and let them know about the show, including the hashtag leaders and legacies. I love seeing your posts and suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss anything.

00;31;39;07 - 00;31;47;12
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me.

00;31;47;12 - 00;33;49;17
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.