AI for Growth: Lessons from Leaders Jason Kraus

Megan Driscoll: Welcome to AI for Growth Lessons from Leaders. ⁓ Today I have with me Jason Krause. Really happy to have you the show, Jason. for being here.

Jason Kraus: Great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Megan Driscoll: Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your business?

Jason Kraus: Sure. Yeah, my name is Jason Krauss. I'm the founder and CEO of Prepare for VC. My background's in the venture capital space and as an entrepreneur as well, starting several financial technology companies.

Started Prepare for VC to really bridge the gap between what investors were looking for and what I had seen on the investment world for what they were looking for when they were meeting founders and how founders approached and even got in the room with the right investors in the first place. So we started on the consulting and coaching side, expanded into cohort programs, accelerator incubator style cohorts that we've run since 2020 and then our most recent addition is a platform called Compass that has AI generated insights and road mapping tools for early stage founders to figure out out of the 500 things that are on your plate which one to focus on next.

Megan Driscoll: love that. So we're going to talk about Compass because that's related to our show. But before we do that, I just want to say, I think the gap is there. I think you identified a real gap in the space between wanting to sell your company and even knowing how to do it.

I remember when I was looking to sell my company, so I sold my firm to a private equity firm in 2017. And I went to a banker. a broker, a banker broker, and I got the name from that, from a couple VC companies that were larger than, than they were interested in me. There's people that I knew who worked there and I asked like, who should I go to?

And they kind of like gave me a couple ideas and then I interviewed a few of them and I chose one. One of the things that was so amazing about working with a banker, ⁓ and I'm interested in your thoughts on that, like middle person too, was they put together, it's almost like a real estate sheet, you know, like. Jason Kraus: Yep. Megan Driscoll: This is all the beautiful things about your home.

It's exactly the same way about your business. But I remember reading it and being like, wow, my company's awesome. Like the way in which they like shine me up like a shiny penny, you know, it just, they, they just looked at my business in a, in a way that I hadn't really looked at it. They presented it in a way that I had never presented it before.

I had presented my business for clients, potential clients, never for potential investors. And those are two totally different things. So what's your thought on using a banker and then, and like that process of, could I have done that myself? Could I have skipped the banker broker?

Jason Kraus: Yeah, I think it's always helpful to have that outside perspective. There's different approaches if it's, you know, even just mentors, advisors, investment bankers, consultant, like there's a lot of different avenues you can go down. But I think that out or the inside perspective is, you know, all the things that haven't been done yet and they're in front of you and it's easy to focus on those when somebody else coming in. ⁓ looks at all the pieces you've actually accomplished and how this compares to other startups or companies in your sector.

And even, you know, on a simple example, one of the companies we had worked with just pitched at a conference in front of a bunch of investors. And I talked to the founder afterwards and she was saying like, ⁓ I forgot this and this. then, you know, she went over and talked to the investors and three out of four of them booked a meeting with her. It's not always like what you miss.

It's, know, nobody knows what else was in your plan to like say afterwards. It's, you know, what are the highlights that people are going to remember from talking to you? Megan Driscoll: Yeah, that's really cool. I remember going at it alone and feeling very, and I will also say too that I think that, ⁓ I'm gonna get like a little bit on my soapbox about this, but for female leaders, I think in particular there are less of us out there that have businesses that are big enough to sell.

there are very, by and large, there are very few women who get private equity funding. I mean, it's just like a fact. ⁓ And so we don't, And I think mostly it's because we don't have the same kind of like network that men do. ⁓ so it, you know, and that's kind of that network is kind of like how you get information about who you should work with and what does the VC process look like?

And is my company big enough? And what does EVTA mean? And what is the size of the company that needs to, to how much profit do I need to be able to sell all of those things? I think, I think it is harder for female founders.

And so this, this resource that you're talking about with your company, I think it would be really. I mean, again, talking just about a niche for you, you want to do some lead gen. I'll help you with some lead gen to get in front of some female founders because they're the ones that need your support the most, think. But I'm not saying it's not helpful for anybody.

But OK, so let's talk about Compass because you had a business. You wrote a book, I think, as well about this topic. So you knew your space. You knew what you were doing.

Why what was the impetus for developing this kind of like AI generated online tool? Jason Kraus: Yeah, it's always been ⁓ expanding or the Prepare for VC pathway has been expanding ⁓ the amount of people and the ability to support them in the right ways. you know, it started ⁓ actually like our COO jokes that the first few years were Jason has a service. It was just me going out individually.

⁓ you know, working directly with founders on their everything from pitch decks and presentations to getting their financials ready and, ⁓ you know, going in and setting up meetings with investors and really just, it was kind of my way of consulting and working directly with these entrepreneurs. And then, you know, as our team grew, ⁓ that's where kind of the second phase for us was how do we, you know, You know, keep working with the individual companies we're working with and now have additional support from other team members, but also how do we do more group programming?

And so that's where our breakthrough program came in was we said, you know, we can design a curriculum where we can work with up to 10 companies at a time. Still keep it relatively small and get that personal connection, but you know, have a space where. They're learning from us, they're learning from other mentors in our network and ⁓ also from each other, like other founders going through the same thing at the same time. And so that first.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah, which is also really helpful. It is really, really helpful to people who are going through it, right? I say like selling your business. mean, this is, mean, it is like having a colonoscopy for your business.

Like it is like the same thing. Like you are put through the ringer, I felt, the sale process, you know, and that's after the process of you identify the person, you identify the organization that the VC firm that you've chosen that's going to move forward with you. And then they put you through due diligence and you're like, ⁓ you know. So it is helpful to have.

I mean, I had to do a personality testing ⁓ on myself and several of my partners. It was crazy. I was like, wow, okay, what's going to happen if you don't like me? Yeah, so they...

Jason Kraus: ⁓ interesting. Yeah, I know. think that's becoming even more common. Especially, mean, especially even on the earlier side, is, you know, most investors are, I'd say, especially now, you know, know, if there's not a competitor in your space, there's going to be at some point soon.

And so it's really investing in the founders and the teams and as the people that are going to make it happen. yeah, you know, the personality assessments and just showing that you're, you know, you're a strong leader, you're a coachable founder, you, you know, know how to take in feedback and adapt to the market. Those are all like crucial things that investors are looking for. And that's partly, you know, outside of the, the presentation and how, you know, the business topics we focus on.

We also like work in those more ⁓ softer power skills into our programming as well. And because that is an essential piece of pitching. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, think that's, yeah, I'm interested in your, like, if you can give me, again, this is not really talking about Compass, but I want to get to Compass. We're going to get there.

Because I like the, you know, ultimately this podcast is for small businesses who are growing and who are looking for ways in which they can utilize AI. And so having an idea about something where you want to expand, adding, like adding an AI platform, which is really what you did, you know, I think is something that would really help other businesses. So I do want to talk about Compass, but. I do think that small businesses ⁓ who are growing and doing well really could benefit from maybe like a top three things that investors are looking for.

⁓ I think I'll give you mine and then you tell me whether or not you think that's right. ⁓ So I think leadership, I think the who's at the head and what is the head's plan, right? Like is the head looking to just get out of the business and leave ⁓ or is the head of the company someone that's gonna really keep driving value, right? If they've been driving value and then what kind of a team is assembled beneath and how well do they get along with one another and how well do they work together?

Not get along with each other, but work together as a team and the longevity of their experience, right? Has everybody been there for six or are these people that have been there for several years grinding and making things happen? Number two, think, is stickiness. So how sticky are those clients?

⁓ And so the recurring revenue piece, ⁓ or even if it's not necessarily recurring revenue, but you can show you have repeat customers, things like that. So you can kind of like. get a little bit of a runway with regard to revenue and how that's going to look and feel good about the stickiness of it. ⁓ And then number three is ⁓ EBITDA.

Are you profitable enough that we can take the debt risk on it? So those are my top three. What do you think? Jason Kraus: Yeah, no, I like it.

Yeah. The team and especially, ⁓ I mean, it's always interesting as you're building out the team too, because you want different perspectives and people to have, ⁓ you know, strengths that are, are strengths in different areas that together as a team, you fill all the gaps, but you also want a little bit of overlap where, you know, if you're in a sales, a sales conversation and there's another opportunity that comes up, there's somebody else you. feel comfortable and confident that can take that for you.

so like some overlap, but yeah, different strengths from the team kind of coming together and making the perfect group to lead the business. And yeah, definitely on the last piece, think the investors have to be excited about the business, the people behind it, ⁓ but they also have to be excited about the deal itself. Megan Driscoll: Depth. Yeah.

Jason Kraus: that they're coming in at the right spot. It's a right risk reward level for them. And they see the growth potential in the future. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, cool, great.

⁓ I am now. ⁓ Forging into the world. So my, non-compete has ended. So now I'm entering ⁓ board seat world.

So I'll be sitting on, I'm on one board already, but I'm just taking another board seat too, which is like really exciting for me because I get to actually help companies that were at my stage or earlier, you know, and kind of see them through this sort of growth prospect, because my company went from about like 30 million in revenue to 150 million revenue after I was purchased by the private equity firm. So we kind of exploded in growth really right after. I sold, which was kind of amazing and so fun.

So now I get to kind of like help companies do that next launch too, which is super exciting. ⁓ Okay, let's talk about Compass. So you wanted to expand your services and offer something on an AI platform. How did you go about doing it?

What did you actually, we had to have an idea about what you wanted to achieve, obviously. So you had to have a work plan, a workflow. Jason Kraus: Right. That's a minute.

Yeah, so our ⁓ first step was actually, it was something we call Chart My Course. And this was ⁓ basically even, know, prospects we were talking to that were, you know, founders, as well as we built, you know, more in depth for companies that we're actually like working with and engaged with. We started just by using a chat GPT, like custom GPT we built analyzing like information on the ventures and then creating a presentation version that we would send and say you know this is our basically due diligence analysis and a roadmap for what you should focus on over the next 30, 60, 90 days and we sent it to the founders and that was our like kind of basically manual version one using some chat GPT tools ⁓ and then we actually created the system on, we use Lovable as an AI coding platform, plugged into SuperBase as a, yeah, it's great.

Now as a database and, you know, we store everything on GitHub so we could actually use, you know, and get advice from some development firms that we work with. Yeah, we partnered up with a firm called TLM and they actually helped like kind of expand from that. Megan Driscoll: I like love of all. Jason Kraus: second version to a third version we're on now.

⁓ really it was just, you know, kind of our first. Megan Driscoll: So you just went to lovable and you basically, just like the nut symbols. Jason Kraus: Yeah, yeah, we went to Lovable. said, you know, this is our we had put together some like Google Doc documentation we had been working on as a team on, you know, really what we actually wanted to build and create.

And so our first piece of the platform was really an assessment tool that takes a combination of your business metrics and your personality and ⁓ You know what your goals as a founder are you looking to sell? you looking to stay with us for the next 20 years? Are you looking to, ⁓ you know, and do you want this to be more venture scale, angel scale or like bootstrapped business and really analyze, you know, does the way you're building it match up with your goals for the company and what else do you need to get in place?

⁓ in order to make this happen. It is. Yeah, it's. Megan Driscoll: So it's kind of like a choose your own adventure a little bit.

Like I go in as a founder and say, this is the, it's going to start asking me questions and I'm going to sort of respond in real time with regard to like how I think I want to build my company or how I've built it already. And it's going to guide me through, is it just going to give me information back or is it going to give me like a, you're not on track? Well, tell me I'm doing something wrong. Jason Kraus: Mm.

It's gonna give you scoring on... Sure. Yeah, it'll give you scoring on a few different categories. You know, the overall progress compared to similar companies.

Also self-efficacy and situational awareness. that's, you know, do you really, do you understand like where you are in the journey, like who you need to turn to and, you know, ⁓ what's coming up? Like are there... a lot of unknowns ahead or do you know, you know, there might still be things that are on the, that you need to figure out, but you know, you know, this is going to happen after this happens.

And like, how much of that do you actually have in place? So, you know, Megan Driscoll: So you basically, and did you use some of this, right? Because when you're coding this, you have to give a direction as to like, if they say this, right? It's kind of like, choose your own adventure.

So did you use information? Did you actually go through all the different scenarios of where this could go when you mapped this whole thing out before you got to Lovable? You had kind of like the tree branches of how this could go. Jason Kraus: Yeah, so we had ⁓ where it can go.

then also we have ⁓ a combination of Gemini and OpenAI plugin that reviews everybody's responses and also generates custom analysis based on what they put in as well. Megan Driscoll: Okay, cool. So you're actually in real time pulling from AI as well. So it's like you've generated this and then it's in real time assessing and not just from your perspective, but it's assessing it on like, it's the world is also contributing to the answer of where they go and choose your own adventure.

Cool. Jason Kraus: Yeah, it's comparing it to other things actually. Right. ⁓ And yeah, the piece we had ⁓ support, you know, a lot of that we built, you know, we built on our own with vibe coding.

And then we, our partner TLM came in and helped us build out really ⁓ another piece we call Astra, which is, you know, after you're in the system, ⁓ any email or the first channel is email. It'll end up on like WhatsApp and other channels too, but. any kind of follow-up conversations you have with this email agent, get logged into your profile and help build out your ⁓ next steps and what you've already accomplished and adjust the game plan and roadmap for the founders. Megan Driscoll: So you can, once you start, not, it's not just a, it's an iterative process.

You can continue to go back in and update and basically, you now have like a profile and you're kind of building like a little bit of a plan. It sounds like that you can then change, go back in and say, well, this just happened. Jason Kraus: Exactly. Yeah, it's a plan that gets adjusted based on what's working and what's not working.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah, cool, and it's all AI generated for the most part. Jason Kraus: it is some things where kind of, I'd say like human and the, you know, we, ⁓ we review the generation and make sure, ⁓ make sure it's right. And, know, when, ⁓ and then send it off, but you know, we're working towards, ⁓ or once we're confident enough that it can do it on its own, you know, then we just have it do it on its own. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, that's great.

And are you charging for that? Jason Kraus: not for the entry to the platform. ⁓ we're building in more of a credit model where you can get a certain number of interactions for free and, and then upgrade for more, you know, usage from there. Megan Driscoll: Cool.

Are you going to use it on the back end so that the people who are entering their information can then be picked up by private equity firms? Like, would they be able to get access to the system to see some of these businesses? Jason Kraus: ⁓ It's something we're exploring, like, you know, one information and, we're going to work with the founders in the system too on, you know, what pieces, because we don't want to make everything of the, all of their profiles available, but, you know, what pieces can we share as a signal of it's going to be a good match in both directions between the founder and the investor groups.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah, that's really cool. ⁓ And then can you talk a little bit about, because I think people have a lot of really great ideas about how to utilize, how they think they want to expand their business using AI, right? And this is the perfect use. case model, like this is perfect.

You had an idea, it's something that can be generated, you're taking a lot of your time off of your plate where somebody has to individually work with everybody, this is something that they can do on their own. So I can see a lot of value for you if this takes off as well. What did this cost you though? So I know the first piece you were kind of doing yourself with Loveable and then you kind of got to a place where it was like, I could use some help.

At the end of the day, what do you think, when this is like kind of like checked box done, give me the timeframe it took you to do this and give me the cost you think associated with it. Jason Kraus: Yeah, definitely a lot cheaper than it would have cost a few years ago. We started with, I mean, $100 a month lovable plan, then we moved up, but actually got some credits there too. But yeah, mean, we're on the, even on the up to like $500 a month plan, can really, that's as much credits as we actually need to, you know.

Megan Driscoll: for sure. would ever need. Jason Kraus: do everything. And yeah, the other thing, know, super base is like $20 a month.

And so really, you know, a lot of it, you can do at, you know, what probably used to cost $10,000 for an MVP, but you know, up to 50,000. You know, you can make that good of a version for, I don't know, maybe. Megan Driscoll: Thousands. Yep.

Jason Kraus: several thousand dollars instead of, yeah. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, cool. So you think if someone were to, and I agree with you actually, and this is what I think blows people's minds, like you could create, you could actually create a program to save time, right? So let's say you're doing something repetitively all the time and it's something your clients, you do with them every single, it's part of your process, right?

It's what you do. You could build that for like thousand dollars yourself and you never have to do it again. Like all that time is completely saved. And then you could expand and offer, like in your case, an entirely separate service, right?

And if you do the math out on that and you think you can, know, what, like, that's ultimately what it is. What's going to be the ROI on this? Am going to be able to cover my costs? And if you can do that for like under $5,000, but in the first year, you know, you've got like $20,000 of the sales associated with that.

It's kind of a no brainer. mean, you never, three, two years ago, I don't think you could build anything for $5,000. And I think today you can build a pretty robust program. Without a lot of knowledge, tell me a little bit about how did you feel?

⁓ I think people get scared with lovable and with like just any sort of like coding. How did you feel about like, did you have people that were like really into it and good with it? Or did you feel like you were a novice and were able to do it yourselves anyway? Jason Kraus: See you ⁓ we used like...

chat GBT and some of Claude as well to basically like ask you know whenever we got stuck on something ⁓ what you know what the best prompt to put into lovable to fix things were and ⁓ you know I'd say there were more bugs early on but then it got even you know it got good at fixing those and so you know ⁓ Megan Driscoll: Yeah. Jason Kraus: It's helpful to have people review or have the code and have, know, well, the biggest thing too is like also just having that test community you can go to and say, Hey, we're just launching this product.

did that in a startup grind community that I'm a part of and you know, just sent it out and people gave feedback and said, what's working, what's not working. And you know, then we went and fixed the things that weren't working. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, that's great. I think that's really important too to be able to have like a safe space, right?

To try it out and let people kind of go through it and see if there's any value to it. I think that's And most business owners have a safe space where they can go, a small group of clients who are willing to do something to kind of give you some feedback, which I think is great. ⁓ But I think that's the piece that's really great about this and what I emphasize with business owners when they want to do something like this is just try it. know, start with, like, Lovable is a great place to start.

And then like you said, that iterative process of app you know, asking chat GPT, how would you build this? What do I need to do specifically in lovable? Like give me the step-by-step instructions for how I can build this tool. And then you go to lovable and you put it in there and you get an output and then you take the output and you put it back in the GPT and say, OK, we've missed a couple of things here.

What's next? And I think that iterative process, I think people are, it's daunting when people aren't familiar with it. But I think they have to just get over that and just start working with some of these platforms and see how it goes. Because I do think it's much more intuitive than you would think.

It sounds like it's techie, but it's really not that techie. Jason Kraus: It is, and I think the thing that outside expertise has helped the most on is basically if you just keep prompting and lovable, it's going to create a ton of features and then it's going in and really narrowing that back to do we need to have all these features and what should the actual flow be? How do we make it simpler and easier for people to get through a system? so that's where...

Megan Driscoll: that you're actually cutting back on features. Yeah. Jason Kraus: Yeah, it's helpful to have other people help cut back and say, well, it should start here and end up here and make it simple. But it's easy to go in and get started building everything today.

Megan Driscoll: Yeah, yeah, I think that's cool. And I think, too, one of the things I think is, you know, we emphasize in the show for founders or, you know, really anybody is just taking a step back and saying, what are you really trying to accomplish? Like, what's the workflow? Right.

And like, because we try to solve lots of problems and sometimes solving a problem creates a new problem. If you haven't really mapped out like how something is supposed to go or you want it to go, oftentimes you can get caught. So I think that piece that you're talking about with regard to like, you know, really laying it out. ⁓ So do me a favor, so how can people find you?

Where are you sitting in the world where someone can go and find your company and get in touch with you if they need to? Jason Kraus: Sure. Yeah, so for our company, it's prepare for with the number four VC for venture capital.com.

prepare for VC. Yep. We list our Compass on there and it's also just compass.prepareforvc.

com. And then personally, I have a site, jasonkrauss.me, or I'm happy to connect with people on LinkedIn as well. Megan Driscoll: Prepare for VC.

com. Perfect. And the Compass program, you said it's free right now, so if the founders wanted to go in and actually just get a little bit of an assessment. Jason Kraus: Yeah, it's free to take your first assessment and get your results and emails it to you afterwards as well.

And ⁓ then, you know, we come in and see how else we can support you on your journey ahead as well. Megan Driscoll: That's amazing. I have one last question for you before we go, because I was just thinking about this. I have been saying this, and I now know it to be true.

But I have been saying I'm really concerned about small businesses and their ability to survive the next couple of years as AI has taken over. I couldn't articulate what exactly I was worried about. knew that this, I've been anxious about it, right? Because I'm like a small business proponent.

I'm like, go small business. I shop local and all that stuff. Super concerned. And then I had a conversation with sort of a leading expert.

She's actually going to be on my show. She was doing large language models like in the nineties, like she's like before her time. And she now exclusively works with companies like Nike and, ⁓ and Adidas and all these like Pepsi, all these big companies to basically retool how they're doing their business from the inside out, because they aren't companies that can just fold. Right.

And she said something to me yesterday when we were talking about a preparation call for our podcast that she thinks. between 75 % and 90 % of small businesses are going to fail in the next three years. And her reason for this thought is that they have been built on a non-AI model. They've been built like a business that's been around forever.

And they can't, unless they fully... dismantle the way of their thinking of how a business should grow unless they completely forget it all and start rebuilding right now their company using AI, that there's no way they'll survive. Because she was saying like, have 50, I started a company last week and I today have 50 people working for me, AI generated employees. You can't compete with me.

There's no chance. I will always be ahead of you. And that what was going to happen is it going to be a bloodbath for small companies. And then in the interim, these companies will start with AI in mind.

Like they'll begin their business with AI. And those are the ones that will really survive. And we'll see like a huge resurgence and an amazing, you know, amazing companies coming out of the woodwork in the next like five or six or seven years. What do you think about that assessment?

Jason Kraus: It's interesting. I mean, I was seeing more, ⁓ more effect or more, ⁓ I don't know, disruption, whatever you want to call it, and the size of the businesses rather than, ⁓ you know, the business is completely failing. Like I would say, you know, if you can run, yeah, downsizing or even, ⁓ I mean, my take is I think there's going to be a lot more companies overall and even, you know, probably more small, medium businesses that can. Megan Driscoll: Like downsizing.

Jason Kraus: operate with, you know, 10 to 50 employees instead of that used to be a hundred to 500 employees. And, you know, now they can get, um, as they still need, or at this stage, they still need like somebody in each of the departments running it and managing, know, managing all the marketing AI, managing all the, um, financial tools and technologies, but you know, you don't necessarily need, um, 20 people in each department. So, you know. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, so you just see general downsizing, not complete obliteration.

Jason Kraus: Yeah, and I think the, if you are, well, if you are, I mean, the thing that's always been an advantage for small businesses and startups is it's easier or there's less hurdles you have to run through if you want to, you know, implement new technology or make a pivot and change. So, you know, if you have two co-founders or, know, you have a few Megan Driscoll: Yeah, like she went nuclear. She's going nuclear. Jason Kraus: team members that are running everything and making the decisions.

It's a lot easier than taking something to a board and, you know, taking it to multiple places for approval. so if you can move quickly, ⁓ you know, lean into that and ⁓ be a tech forward, small business. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, I agree. I'm trying very hard to get companies to really embrace AI, particularly as it relates to generating sales, ⁓ AI sales agents, AI marketing, implementing lead gen, that kind of thing, because it's super, super important for small companies to get ahead of the game.

Everyone else is doing it. They need to be doing it themselves. And it's not that expensive and it's not that hard. Jason Kraus: Yeah, that's where I feel like, ⁓ that's been more of a personality challenge, or in terms of, it's hard, feel, or even personally, to get over the hurdle of, ⁓ this tool is gonna go out and pretend to be me and reach out to other people.

⁓ So, what if it says something I don't agree with? I mean, I think just... figuring out what works and doesn't work for you and knowing there's a lot of tools and technologies out there. Now it's at a point where every day they're better than they were before and a lot of them are great at just finding the right, starting the right conversations, bringing the right people in and they can still, if you want to do a face-to-face meeting.

Megan Driscoll: ⁓ yeah. Jason Kraus: you can have them like set up Zooms for you and have a conversation. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, I mean, that's what I do basically. So what I do is I call it like a company in a box kind of, because I do a combination of like, so I, the avatar, who's your customer, right?

We identify that and then we find 5,000 of them basically. And I have like 70 or 80 % open rates on my emails because I do a ton of AI scrubbing on the backend. And essentially what we do is we create sort of a campaign that goes out and it's speaking as if they work for you and it's speaking like a real person and we write it really humanly and it comes across in their inbox and people open it and respond. And then we.

actually use AI to directly go and then schedule Zoom meetings with clients. And then everything gets put into a CRM. And so after 90 days, you walk away with a fully automated CRM with 5,000 people in it that's basically communicating with those people on an ongoing basis in whatever fashion, a newsletter, once a week, twice a week, however you want to communicate with them. ⁓ And it's forever, basically kind of working on the backend.

So that's kind of what I do. ⁓ so many companies that I Jason Kraus: Yeah. Megan Driscoll: communicate with small businesses don't have really strong or even any CRM, you know, and so ⁓ it really baffles me because it is such an easy tool that has just been made so much better with AI that ⁓ yeah, it's just like such a great amazing tool for your business. So that's what I do.

Jason Kraus: No, that's amazing. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, well it was great talking to you. Thanks for the really interesting conversation. I think founders are gonna find this really helpful too.

And I will send people to your Compass program, which I think that sounds really, that Compass tool, I think it sounds really cool. Jason Kraus: Appreciate it. Yeah, excited to share with your audience and looking forward to meeting the founders. Megan Driscoll: Yeah, sounds good.

Thanks so much. Jason Kraus: Thank you.