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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and I've always felt like the better questions you ask, the better answers that you will find.
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And I feel like, when it comes to AI, so many of us are asking kind of basic questions.
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We're asking AI to create content for us, we're asking for it for ideas and brainstorming and we're really leaning on it in that way, but today's guest and today's fellow entrepreneur is someone who views AI in a much more powerful way.
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I think we're all going to walk away from today's episodes with some big insights and some really big inspiration into how we can use AI in a way more powerful way to actually automate our workflows.
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Let me introduce you to today's guest.
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His name is Coltrane Kubo.
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Coltrane is a co-founder of Agentic, which is an AI automation agency helping small businesses and solopreneurs to save time by automating repetitive tasks and leveraging AI tools.
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The idea for Agentic was born from Coltrane's experience in growth marketing, where he used AI automation to optimize his latest role at a marketing agency and help free his team to focus on the high-impact strategic and creative work that they did best Before founding Agentic.
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Coltrane's entrepreneurial journey began with scaling a passion project website to over a million users a year.
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He's originally from Hawaii, but he went to school in Southern California, at UC San Diego.
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He currently lives in New York City.
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He draws from his diverse experiences in growth, marketing, sales and data-focused economics, and he now partners with clients to create and deploy innovative AI solutions in their businesses.
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This is someone that, the more I looked into the work that he does, it's so clear that he not only loves AI, but he's super creative in the way he deploys it, so I'm excited to learn from him.
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I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Coltrane Kubo.
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All right, coltrane, I am so very excited that you're here with us today.
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First things first.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thanks so much, Brian, and thank you for the great intro.
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Heck.
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Yes, it's easy to be excited, Coltrane.
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You and I didn't talk about this off the air, but we get so many emails from listeners and they all want to know about AI, so I'm excited that you're here with us.
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Before we jump straight into the good stuff, take us beyond the bio.
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I know that you've had that entrepreneurial spirit from a very young age.
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Who's Coltrane?
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How did you start doing all these cool things?
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Absolutely, brian.
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Well, I think it really all begins with a basic philosophy that I have, which is unconventional problem solving, really drawing from a diverse range of experiences.
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I mean, I grew up in Hawaii, but I also had the fortune to attend school in Switzerland for a couple of years.
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I started a business, even though I majored in econ, and I mean I think all of these experiences come together in a way that we each have something that unique that we can put out into the world.
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But, like, what I try to do really is kind of lean into like what I know best and what I've seen and try to get creative with it, and that's what I stand for.
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Yeah, I love that overview, Coltrane, unconventional problem solving.
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All right, I'm going to pick right there to kick things off, because I love the fact that, Coltrane, you have been watching the AI industry take shape.
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You've been seeing the way that so many businesses use it.
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Unfortunately, a lot of the ways that businesses don't use it that they could be and that they should be.
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Obviously, you also experienced that in your past job.
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So talk to us about the landscape.
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As you stood there looking at the overarching landscape of AI and how it's being used, what did your mind pay attention to?
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Where did your eyes look?
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And you said wait, hold on.
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There's a way for us to solve even more problems through this.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Well, it began by starting to scratch my own itch.
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So I was working at a marketing agency and we were spending hours every single day preparing the same types of reports, just for different clients, but we'd be looking into the same metrics and we'd be writing the same kind of lines, and I saw how much time we wasted each and every week just by doing this repetitive process.
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So I thought to myself, how could we actually focus on the work that matters?
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How can we do the creative things that only we as humans can do?
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And that train of thought brought me to AI and custom GPTs and really looking at ways that we could automate as a whole within the agency.
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And because of that, we managed to cut down our workload from hours each week of repetitive tasks to really minutes where we plug things in and play from there and so from there, I began to see so many more applications opening up with AI as the different GPTs were coming out, and it seemed like the thought process became much more human as time went on with them.
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I began just speaking with the GPTs themselves and asking like how can I improve my own process?
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How can I look at ways where my own individual strength can shine through and really create things, and that led me to then beginning to see AI as a tool for automation.
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I implemented it in my own website and from there into my own work schedule, into my emails, and really I'm trying to make AI a partner to augment my own strengths, and I can see that it's such a powerful tool for everyone else too, because it's really a partner in a way.
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Yeah, and I'm trying to just bring that to the rest of the world.
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Yeah, I want to jump to just bring that to the rest of the world.
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Yeah, I want to jump in there, coltrane, because one thing that really stands out to me about the way that you talk about AI is you're using verbs.
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So I hear you say you want to have AI help you automate tasks.
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A lot of people are simply just viewing it as obviously we throw that word around a lot without a lot of people understanding it of a large language model and we view it as something that we input words, we get words out and it can give us ideas for social media content.
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Talk to us about that, the actual verb, the doing, the automating that you're leaning on AI to help you with.
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Definitely so.
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As entrepreneurs and as contributors, we tend to have standard operating procedures that we do.
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So we take something from an input state and we end up putting it through a lot of processes, thinking, and get an output state.
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And the way that I think about automation and AI is that it's an element of intelligence that we can inject into this process and it can classify things for us, it can help us to expand on certain topics, it can be a research assistant and really just by thinking, maybe AI can serve as a low level intern.
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I mean, the tools have gotten so advanced now that that mindset is a bit outdated and we can do so many more things at a high level.
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But really just injecting that element of intelligence in, that's how you can really begin to think of AI as a verb and as a process.
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Yeah, I love that.
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Coltrane, I would love for you to introduce our listeners.
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A lot of people have heard the term of AI agent, for example, and we obviously talk about AI on a weekly basis here on this show, but probably a lot of people aren't very familiar with what is an AI agent.
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How do these things actually work?
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Because it's exciting hearing you talking about injecting AI into our calendar workflow, our email workflow.
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You talk about having it categorize things.
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What's an AI agent?
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Because a lot of us can't picture how this thing of AI that we use either in our browser or on our phones via an app, how it can actually go forth and become an agent for our businesses.
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Sure, that's a great question, brian, and I think the distinction needs to be made between automation and agents.
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So, to answer your first question, ai agents are really an overarching large language model that can control what automations are triggered.
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So say that you have an automation running which transfers data from one point to another and there's another automation that can draft something out.
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An agent can take a specific task that you're wanting to do and determine okay, this is what I should do.
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In case A, do this, in case B, do this and it can be handled conversationally.
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So you can think of agents as sort of like a small army going out on your behalf, deciding what tasks to do based on the applications that are programmed into it, and then executing on that and kind of helping you along the way to do all these things that you would be doing manually but, um, by itself yeah, it's so cool to hear that, especially culture, and one thing that I really appreciate about your journey up to this point and obviously the founding of your own business is that you do have that background from different arenas of business.
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One thing that I'm a sucker for good marketing, and so it stands out to me that you're not approaching AI just from a tech perspective.
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You're also approaching it from a business perspective and injecting your marketing expertise there as well.
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Talk to us about that approach, because it's easy for me to find founders and entrepreneurs who excel in AI from that tech perspective, but I want to hear about the importance of having that business background to support it.
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Absolutely.
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I think that that's one of our strongest points at Agentic.
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Both myself and my co-founder, anson, come from marketing backgrounds, but also business owner backgrounds, and I think being able to speak the language and see not just where AI can be plugged in, but seeing where it should be plugged in, where there's actually a tangible ROI for a business owner and something that would save them time and make their lives easier, is something that not all AI agencies focus on, but it's something that we really care about saving valuable time for real people.
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And just because of that like pulling from a diverse range of experiences, content, marketing, that sort of background I think we're able to be in a unique position to help people.
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Coltrane is that, as a podcaster, I get dozens of pitches in my email inbox every single day from agencies, from entrepreneurs, business owners who want to come on the show, of course, and so many of those pitches.
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Over the past two years in particular, I've seen that they are starting to inject AI.
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The trouble with that is everyone's starting to sound the same Coltrane, and I feel like that's one of the downfalls of AI.
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I like that because, as a business owner, I view it as my chance to stand out, because if I keep injecting me into things while everybody else sounds the same, then it's a really key differentiator.
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Talk to us about that importance of standing out.
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Even though all of us are obviously using AI in different ways, how can we still retain that level of personalization?
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Absolutely.
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So I think that everything that is done by AI should first be done manually.
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You should think about how you as a person are coming across to another person, whether that's outreach, whether that's a tool that you're building or anything else.
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That's, first and foremost, one of our key considerations.
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We work with a client who's a career coach and she connects with hundreds of people a day.
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She has an audience of over 100,000 across channels and what we're really trying to do is put her on a pedestal with this AI.
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So we're mimicking her tone, her style and really trying to make her audience feel closer to her through the use of these tools.
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So I think you highlight on a really key point.
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It's so important to lean into your humanity when leveraging these tools and you know, I think, like you do it brilliantly by, like, incorporating AI but not letting it replace you kind of in the process.
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Yeah, for sure.
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With that said, I do as a content creator.
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I also appreciate the ability of AI to help us a lot of times mimic humans, in fact, coltrane, one thing that we did it was last year, I believe episode I think it was 963, although us podcasters it's hard to remember episode numbers, but we had an AI created podcast episode and it was two hosts, both of whom are AI, talking amongst each other about entrepreneurship, about starting and growing your business.
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Now I've been on your YouTube channel and I've seen that you've done some really cool things in talking to AI and having it mimic.
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You Talk to us about some of those possibilities because even in those very human things such as you and I talking, of course we're two humans, but AI does have the ability to give us different perspectives because it can draw on so many of those things.
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Talk to us about some of that latest technology that people may not think about beyond.
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Just you know, conversing back and forth with ChatGPT.
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Absolutely Well.
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One of the hot topic issues is voice cloning and video cloning with AI, and this could be a great way for creators to really expand their presence if they don't have time to record.
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However, kind of going back to your original point about like seeing a multitude of perspectives and being able to converse with AI, I mean this is something that I started doing early on, but it doesn't seem to be something that everyone's using AI's like chat, gpt for, but like actually speaking to it, dictating your thoughts and then having it act as a certain role.
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So, for instance, you know, act like a business owner that has like these experiences and critique my ideas.
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But really just getting as much down on paper as you can and seeing your thoughts drafted out and then getting a large language model to react to it, I mean that's huge and I think it's only going to get better and better as the video avatar AIs are generated.
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It can speak to in a more human voice and really, at a certain point with the Turing test, it's going to be almost indiscernible when you're communicating with an AI versus a human, which you know scary, scary future, but like something to be aware of as the technology progresses.
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Yeah, for sure.
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I've experienced it even as a consumer.
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I mean the fact that Amazon, for example, has a lot of AI chatbots that can very quickly help you If a package is not delivered.
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It doesn't take a human to figure out what the resolutions are.
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Do you want me to ship another one out?
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Do you want me to issue a refund?
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It's so much easier and quicker to have AI on the other side that is actually empowered to do these business functions.
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With that said, part of what I love about what you guys are doing at Agentic is you're working on so many different types of projects and you guys love talking about it in the world because it's very cool work, such as personalized AI chatbots, dm responses, direct message response, automations on social media.
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How many of us get customer service related inquiries or potential lead inquiries?
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Talk to us about some of those applications because, coltrane, I think your real life business solutions are so cool and most people aren't going there just yet.
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Yeah, thanks so much, ryan.
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What we really try to do at Agentic is meet a business owner wherever they are at.
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So, for instance, we don't try to push a certain AI solution.
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We ask about the entire process where they're spending their time on repetitive tasks and where they could also use an AI tool to support and grow their presence.
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And so, because of that, we've been working on a whole multitude of projects.
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We did some supply chain forecasting, we built AI avatars, we did like AI outreach all across the board, because right now, we're just trying to create real business results and to just help people however we can.
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Yeah, with that said, Coltrane, I can't have you on here and not ask about your own personal use of AI, because I would imagine behind the scenes you guys internally are doing some cool things to empower your business.
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What are those internal use cases look like?
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Definitely so.
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We have AI for lead flow.
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First and foremost, we have a chatbot on our site that is more than just an order taker.
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It's actually plugged into an LLM so it can tell you about our company and if someone wants to get in touch with us, it can collect all of the information and then, on the back end of the automation, draft up an email that we could use to reach out almost instantly, just because that time to reply is so important.
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Additionally, we have custom GPTs that we use for polishing up the language.
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We're planning on doing a bit more AI content just to synthesize news, but not really replace ourselves.
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And then, on the non-AI side too, I feel like it's so important for real people to understand how to use AI in their lives to just augment and improve their processes.
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So I'd like to begin building out more around my channel AI for Gen Zers, ai for busy professionals, ai for young people coming up in this more uncertain future, how can they use AI to really get ahead and then also to lean into their humanity?
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So a lot of cool applications of AI.
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Yeah, I love that you brought that up, coltrane, admittedly because we're obviously so business focused here on this show is I don't often enough ask about the life implications of AI, which it's funny.
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Now that you've called that out, I'd say 50-50.
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My business life has improved thanks to AI, but also my personal life has improved.
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Give us some examples there.
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I'm very intrigued by your thoughts there, because I'm joining you in this and the fact that I think it should make all of our lives better, even my friends who are not entrepreneurs.
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I'm saying, hey, we use it for entrepreneurship.
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We're kind of pushing that change, but I think everybody should be using it.
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Definitely.
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I think, first and foremost as I mentioned before AI as a dialogue partner to refine your thoughts and then to also, you know, sharpen your thoughts, to still sharpen steel.
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So, asking AI to critique whatever you're saying to make it better, I think that's one of the most important ways that we can begin to better think about the use of this technology, to better think about the way that we spend our time as a process, using AI as a conversational partner there.
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Other applications of AI, though, are to expand your creativity from 0% to 60 to 80% much faster, and then we can spend the rest of our time as people with unique perspectives to really polish up exactly what we want to say.
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So, I mean, I think there are so many applications there and I'm just really excited.
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Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
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Coltrane, I'm going to put you on the spot here.
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It's a little bit of a change in direction.
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But last week here on the show, we had Shefali Mehta here on the podcast and her and I totally geeked out about economics, which is funny because neither of us really work in economics, so to speak.
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However, as a fellow economics major, I know how much it factors into the way that we see the world.
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I know that it's also a big part of your background and the way that you think.
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Talk to us about some of those early influences in the way that you think about business and the way that you think about scale and growth?
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Sure, definitely.
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Well, I think economics really comes down to understanding demand curves.
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So like what do people actually?
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That's a great question, brian.
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I have to think about that a little bit more.
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But I mean consumer behavior is a core part of economics and I think just thinking about that for the three years that I was at UC San Diego trying to understand what is product market fit there, what people actually will do based on whatever you offer them, I mean that's a big part of economics and I think just thinking about it as a principle that can be manipulated by different levers that we have as business owners really helped me along my journey.
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Yeah, I love the fact that you called that out, and especially because a lot of people are going to go straight to the stock market in the world of finances, but you jumped straight to and I so appreciate it, because listeners know we're not scripted here is that it is just on the fly conversation, and what I think about in your answer is that it's.
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It's the understanding of the way that things work, and you went straight to consumer behavior, and that's why I love the fact that behavioral economics is an entirely new field that's coming up and it really is understanding incentives, understanding what drives markets, and so it's cool to think about that.
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I also love the fact that simultaneously, you had a passion project website while you were in school.
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That grew rapidly.
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Talk to us about that, because it's so much fun to hear those beginning entrepreneurial building blocks, to share my experience, especially when COVID hit.
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That's when I doubled down on the site.
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But I mean, scouting gave me so much.
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It taught me to be a leader.
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I had some amazing friendships that I developed during my time as a scout and then also scouting for the first time in my life gave me that sense of self-reliance Like no matter.
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Whatever happens, I'm prepared to handle it.
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So I mean such a big impact on my life and I wanted to give back to the scouting community by creating a site to share scouting insights, because something like that that didn't exist Then during COVID, just because troops were being shut down and everything was moved online, scouts didn't really have anywhere to go.
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So I was getting more and more emails coming in saying, oh, can we have articles about this, Can we have help with this badge?
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And you know, it just seemed like the perfect mix between a calling but also a way to develop my marketing background, to tap into what people want to hear in content and to create.
00:20:43.661 --> 00:20:47.170
So really that was my first extremely successful venture.
00:20:47.170 --> 00:20:57.546
It grew into a site that gets well over a million visitors each year, and along the way I learned so much about scouting too.
00:20:57.546 --> 00:21:07.422
I could re-ruminate on the ideas and it was just an amazing experience and I'm excited to build on that too with AI tools and to come back to the scouting community in the future.
00:21:08.042 --> 00:21:09.827
Yeah, I think that's so cool, coltrane.
00:21:09.827 --> 00:21:15.042
I started my first business when I was 19, which was the summer after freshman year, and it's very similar to your story.
00:21:15.042 --> 00:21:24.757
I always loved soccer and I always loved writing, so I started writing about soccer on the internet and just started a soccer blog, and by junior year of college, we had three and a half million visitors a month coming to our website.
00:21:24.757 --> 00:21:30.429
And when people ask me about that journey, I chalk it up to the fact that I wasn't results-driven.
00:21:30.429 --> 00:21:36.583
I knew that I was gonna be in school for four years and I was paying a lot of money to do so and I was like I might as well be productive in some way.
00:21:36.583 --> 00:21:41.604
That's what I attribute a lot of that success to was the fact that I wasn't results-driven.
00:21:41.604 --> 00:21:45.663
I wasn't looking for a specific outcome, I was just doing it because I loved it.
00:21:49.914 --> 00:21:51.631
When you reflect on that part of your journey, where do you go?
00:21:51.631 --> 00:21:53.090
Because, coltrane, probably a lot of people are saying like do you make money with it?
00:21:53.090 --> 00:21:53.891
Are you going to make money with it?
00:21:53.891 --> 00:21:55.334
How are you going to monetize it?
00:21:55.334 --> 00:21:58.661
And, of course, there's a million things you figure out by doing it and by growing it.
00:21:58.661 --> 00:22:07.263
But what did that mindset look like for you, and how has it continued to serve you as you've understood what growth trajectories look like in the real world.
00:22:08.846 --> 00:22:10.289
Yeah, absolutely Great question.
00:22:10.289 --> 00:22:14.444
And, like you, I was really just tapped into giving.
00:22:14.444 --> 00:22:31.496
I enjoyed writing about it, I enjoyed reflecting on the experiences, but as I kind of entered the real world, so to speak, and the growth trajectories, I did see it as first and foremost, you know, a way to help Scouts, but then also a way to generate a passive income.
00:22:31.496 --> 00:22:46.055
I created a course for it, I do affiliates, there's ads on the site and you know from all of that, like I feel it's given me a lot of freedom to, you know, pursue more giving really.
00:22:46.055 --> 00:23:06.161
So like, once you have the basic necessities met, like I was able to start agentic and there were really just not focusing on pricing high at this point we're trying to get results and we're trying to help people, and that wouldn't be possible without, just like you know, the fortune that building this business has given me.
00:23:06.761 --> 00:23:08.044
Yes, so well said.
00:23:08.044 --> 00:23:09.306
It is that foundation.
00:23:09.306 --> 00:23:16.207
Not only did you experience those wins and that success and that growth trajectory, but you also gained the tangible skills.
00:23:16.207 --> 00:23:21.146
It's like a playground of gaining skills and experiences, so I absolutely love that as part of your story.
00:23:21.146 --> 00:23:26.175
Talk to me about the transition to agentic, because I love the fact that you've got a rare combination.
00:23:26.175 --> 00:23:32.588
Coltrane, you've worked in-house, you've worked at an agency, you've worked as a freelancer and now as an entrepreneur and business owner with Agentic.
00:23:32.588 --> 00:23:34.098
What are the differences there?
00:23:34.098 --> 00:23:37.336
Because I'm sure you picked up things that are great from each of those aspects.
00:23:37.336 --> 00:23:40.184
I'm sure that you learned about things you wanted to do differently.
00:23:40.184 --> 00:23:42.497
What's that entrepreneurial transition been like?
00:23:44.339 --> 00:23:44.881
Absolutely.
00:23:44.881 --> 00:23:48.826
I think the biggest transition is the people that you meet.
00:23:48.826 --> 00:23:59.586
As a business owner, I think you know I live in New York and it's so exciting to meet other founders that are working on interesting things and before I didn't really have too much to talk to them about.
00:23:59.586 --> 00:24:15.965
But now just building Agentic and having such a valuable skillset in AI to save people time, you know, increase revenue, I think that it's opened so many doors into like really enriching relationships with the people around.
00:24:15.965 --> 00:24:26.948
So, like in the beginning in business, I didn't think that relationships and network mattered too much, but now my mind has really done a 180 on that, so that's been the biggest change in my life so far.
00:24:27.515 --> 00:24:28.336
Yeah, I love that.
00:24:28.336 --> 00:24:45.077
Coltrane, I want to ask you about solopreneurs because a lot of people when they tune into podcasts like this or they watch YouTube videos and they hear brilliant entrepreneurs like you who have incredible businesses that help other businesses, they probably think I can't afford that or it's way too big for me and they probably help enterprise level clients.
00:24:45.077 --> 00:24:53.317
I so appreciate and obviously I'm biased in being the host of the show, but I so appreciate that you guys also love servicing and helping solopreneurs.
00:24:53.317 --> 00:25:01.185
What does that look like, bringing in this type of solution for one-person businesses who do have that potential for big growth?
00:25:01.185 --> 00:25:06.296
What is the solopreneurial level look like that these clients can tap into and say, wait, hold on.
00:25:06.296 --> 00:25:11.306
I didn't realize I could have resources that tangibly help me grow even faster.
00:25:12.688 --> 00:25:13.148
Definitely.
00:25:13.275 --> 00:25:21.746
Well, I love working with solopreneurs probably more than any size of business, just because they're the kind of individual that juggles a lot of roles.
00:25:22.414 --> 00:25:28.800
Um, they're spending like all of their effort, all of their time on, just like, the various needs of the business.
00:25:28.800 --> 00:25:41.506
So when you can step in and say, oh, this can be automated, oh, you can streamline your process here, there's so much leverage that is unlocked for them because you know they're scattering their attention that I mean it's a great avatar to focus on.
00:25:41.506 --> 00:25:52.509
And I think also, I'm trying to serve myself with agentic, in that we want to be the partner that I would have liked to have when I was scaling my business in the first place.
00:25:52.509 --> 00:26:06.144
You know someone that you can actually like delegate tasks to and who has an understanding of AI, so that, even if they're not the ones like building it, maybe it's just like a tool that they could use.
00:26:06.144 --> 00:26:11.239
I mean just like having that brought forward and saying, oh, maybe, like this will help with your workflow.
00:26:11.239 --> 00:26:17.843
We're trying to be that for solopreneurs and, just with our understanding, the business process helped accelerate their growth.
00:26:18.344 --> 00:26:24.978
Yeah, I love that, especially because you called out the very essence of being a solopreneur, which is wearing all of the hats, doing all of the things.
00:26:24.978 --> 00:26:31.087
You're doing marketing, you're doing selling, you're doing your web development, you're doing your actual fulfillment of client projects.
00:26:31.087 --> 00:26:32.250
You're doing all of these things.
00:26:32.250 --> 00:26:44.337
With that said, coltrane, what's it look like to go into a business and how do you assess the inventory of what's going on, what their processes are, where you should even begin to work on AI or work on automation?
00:26:44.337 --> 00:26:45.980
Is it within the marketing realm?
00:26:45.980 --> 00:26:47.403
Is it within the financial world?
00:26:47.403 --> 00:26:48.405
How many different?
00:26:48.405 --> 00:26:54.337
How do you make sense of all the different hats that we have to wear and all the different operational components of a business?
