The AI Marketer's Playbook
The AI Marketer's Playbook is an actionable podcast focusing on AI and marketing. Each episode covers AI strategies, tools, and trends that are changing marketing. Listen to interviews with industry experts, analyze case studies, and get practical tips. This podcast is for anyone looking to leverage AI in marketing to improve results.
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The AI Marketer's Playbook
44 | Patrick Spychalski on Building AI Systems for Revenue Growth
Can AI really replace entire sales workflows? Patrick Spychalski, co-founder of The Kiln, thinks so—and he's building the tools to do it. In this episode, Patrick breaks down how his team uses tools like Clay, N8N, and AI agents to power sales processes at scale. From hyper-personalized cold emails to real-time CRM cleanup, Kiln is creating the infrastructure for AI-native go-to-market teams.
Patrick also shares insights on how enterprise sales is changing and what skillsets future salespeople must develop to stay relevant.
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Hello and welcome back to the AI Market Playbook, where we cover actionable frameworks to help you leverage AI and marketing strategies in your business. I'm Audrey Chair, your host, and today I have with me Patrick Spychalski, the co-founder of Clint, a GTM. Automation agency that's redefining how sales teams operate. Now, Patrick and his team have helped generate hundreds of millions in pipeline using AI driven systems from CRM enrichment and inbound education to internal sales enablement and process automation. They are building the actual infrastructure for the future of revenue teams. I am excited to have you, Patrick. Welcome to the show.
Patrick Spychalski:I really appreciate you having me and, uh, pump to be here.
Audrey Chia:Awesome. Could you tell us more about your background? Did you start your journey in s sales and when did AI come into the picture?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, absolutely. So I have a bit of an unconventional background relative to a lot of other agency owners. I actually started in organic growth, so I was doing like SEO and a lot of like the free organic marketing strategies, uh, for B2B companies. And I had my own little consultancy where I would do this. It was just kind of a freelance gig where I would. Bring on, uh, a few different clients at a time and do SSEO for them. One of those clients was a company called Clay. Um, I was actually referred to Clay by a friend who was at, at the time, the head of marketing at Clay. And, um, he was like, Hey, I would love some of your help with this company. Um, at the moment they were, at the time that I joined, they were a very like, budding early stage company and um, I was like, yeah, I'll totally give it a go. Um, as I started doing content for them, I quickly realized that. Clay was an incredible tool. Um, and it had just integrated AI within the tool. About two months past me joining, so Chachi PT had released in around November of 2022. I had joined two months prior, and when it did release along with their API, clay integrated it within the tool. And so, um, once that happened, clay took off really heavily, um, as well as the use cases the tool would allow for. And so I actually came into my role, um, and. Started my company with no sales background initially, and, um, eventually just ended up joining, um, joining Clay as a, a part-time team member. And eventually from there, started the kiln after, uh, after a few months of working at Clay, uh, as essentially just approached Varun, who's their co-founder, was like, Hey, um, there's a lot here. There's a lot that can be done in automation. Uh, I would like to start an agency that uses this tool and kind of spread the good word of it. And, and here we are.
Audrey Chia:And just out of curiosity, you had no sales background, so how do you pick up all these new skill sets like sales and AI are two big things, right?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, totally. Um, it was honestly just a lot of tinkering. So like the, I started using Clay to actually try to find more clients for my marketing agency at the time. And so, um, I realized, okay, like if I write a good enough email and I use personalizations that are written by ai, I. And I do so in a thoughtful way. I can get people to respond to my messages. And so I was running these high scale campaigns in Clay with really no experience other than just what I had read online or YouTube videos I had watched and I played around with the tool enough and I started just running experiments and a bunch of them didn't work. Eventually, some did work and I realized, okay, this is kind of the, the structure of a message I should be sending. This is how my offer should be formed. And so it was a combination of a lot of tinkering and then just a lot of watching, like YouTube videos, LinkedIn videos, and just like seeing what other people were doing in the space. Wow.
Audrey Chia:What was that first experience like using AI and seeing the power of it? What was that moment like for you?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, it was pretty mind blowing. Um, the, the first time I ever did it was when, uh, clay integrated it within its own tool and I realized that if, if I was able to prompt an AI properly to write a snippet of an email for me, then I could effectively, um, scale my cold email campaigns to be. Super personalized, and I could send these campaigns at like 5, 10, 20, a hundred times the, the level of a, an individual sales team member that's writing these by hand. So I realized like, okay, if I can prompt this AI properly, I can have it write an email just as I would write one manually and I can send those emails at a much higher scale. So it was just a pretty, it was a pretty massive unlock. Like the, I think I just got excited due to the value that's associated with that. Like if you can. You can have an AI write an email just like a sales team member would. Suddenly, one sales team member can have the output of 10 or 20, which makes it. Pretty powerful. So I freaked out, obviously, and, and that led to me starting the agency.
Audrey Chia:Absolutely. I think you mentioned something about personalization, right? And you mentioned this a couple of times, um, even in the, you know, past few minutes of conversation. What I've seen is that I. Most people are not fully utilizing the power of personalization and with ai, that makes it so much easier. What do you think makes an email that is personalized versus unpersonalized different? And for example, what are some examples of that personalization you would make using AI for these emails?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, so I think personalization's a pretty heavy buzzword in a way. Like everyone just kind of uses that as a, um. Like a way to describe their emails being different or better than others. Um, but I actually think personalization is only valuable in certain circumstances. So for example, um, I don't think just saying like, Hey, I saw you went to like, you know, duke University. I also went to Duke University, is like, that's that valuable of a personalization. Like maybe it'll get somebody to respond if they like their school a lot. I think the personalizations that add value are ultimately the ones that, um, connect the value prop that you're conveying to the prospect to, um, your, to, to something related to their company. So for example, like if you were, you know, trying to optimize, if you were like a site speed optimization agency for example, and you reached out to somebody and said, Hey, I saw your site speed is really bad. Like suddenly they now have a problem individually connected to them that they are facing, that you can eventually solve. And so that's often how I gauge personalization in emails is, is this actually adding value to somebody? Um, if it's not, it's probably not worth my time. Um, and of course the, the deeper and the more nuanced the personalization, oftentimes the better. Um,'cause I can then use that of course, to, to show I've done my research. So like, you know, um, back in the day you, you used to be able to send an email that says like, Hey, congrats on the fundraising. If they raise like a series A or something now it's really not that effective to do. So you have to go a little bit deeper. Um,'cause that's kind of been played out almost like that level of personalization. So. Yeah, I think it's an interesting problem and it's really tough to, you know, immediately gauge whether personalization will work or not.
Audrey Chia:Yeah, but I think those are very interesting points, right? You mentioned that adding value through that personalization is important and you shouldn't just, you know, find something in common just for the sake of, because it doesn't add value to the prospect. I would also like to. So talk a little bit about like, you know, the big picture of like sales and marketing, right? Everything is shifting with ai. Um, as a copywriter and marketer myself, I have seen such big disruption in workflows and companies operating processes. How would you describe, you know, in your opinion, the current shift in AI with sales teams?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, so I think in the beginning, AI was almost like. A cool gimmick that you could use and like, obviously there was value in the things you could do with it in sales. Like for the, the example I just gave, which is like, you know, copying the output of, of one sales team member to, to become, you know, that of thousands. I think what we're seeing now is more advanced models that allow for deeper research for salespeople. Um, a lot of the workflows we're building on now are actually not automating the outbound itself, but automating the research that sales team members are doing. And so doing like a really, uh, thoughtful. In depth, deep dive on a specific prospect, um, using an AI model that will return data that's super valuable to your company that you can then use to dictate messaging. And so I think there'll be two major shifts in AI in the sales space, in the coming, you know, year or two. The first one is the depth of the models. It's ability to find really nuanced information on company and companies and action upon it for you. Um, and the second thing is the sort of things you can build. With AI in a completely automated way. So for example, uh, you can now, you can now prompt, you know, something like Cursor or Windsurf or or al to create an entire software for you. Using plain English that wasn't possible before, it can now happen. So the ability for sales team members to like spin up a mockup of their, their software for you, it is now infinitely easier. And so I think actually this whole AI shift will just add a lot of value to prospects. Um, it'll make it. More enticing for people to receive messages and, and read them and respond to them because of the value associated with them due to the effect that you can automate previously. Very difficult things with ai. So like for the example that I just mentioned, creating an entirely bespoke software for a prospect probably would've taken hours to do previously, and it now takes maybe a few minutes if you've already built a system to do it. So
Audrey Chia:you think that companies that are not adopting ai, they're gonna fall behind.
Patrick Spychalski:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're not doing it in some capacity, I'm not saying everybody should just, you know, replace all of their systems with AI immediately. I think there are many situations in which that, that wouldn't be helpful. Um, but I think there's, I, I really haven't come across a company yet where it hasn't helped'em in some sense, right? Like where it wouldn't create some efficiency in their organization somewhere. Right? Like, I have a lot of people be like, well, I don't know if I should be using AI in my outbound. And I'm like, maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn't. There are many cases in which both could be argued. Um, but you could, again, you could automate the research of the prospects. You could automate the routing or the lead scoring of the prospects. You could automate the responses to the prospect's response to your message. Like, there are so many things you can do to create efficiencies. I just have a hard time believing that if you're not using ai, you're not falling behind in some sense.
Audrey Chia:Absolutely. And what are perhaps some maybe tangible results that you have seen with your clients, right? Because I know you have generated millions in pipeline for them. What are some things that people can look at and be like, wow, that really works, and I have the results to prove?
Patrick Spychalski:I think there are kind of two main metrics that we look at when we're building systems for clients. The first one would be pipeline generated, which is a very obvious one for sales teams. The second one would probably be time saved for these teams. So for example, um, if you're creating a system that can save a sales team member three hours a day of research. Suddenly that sales team member is infinitely more efficient. Let's say they work eight hours a day, three hours of that is now saved. You're making them vastly more efficient, more than twice as efficient as they previously were, um, with their time. So like you've just freed up three hours a day. And then if you extrapolate that to a hundred, 200 salespeople for some of these larger enterprise organizations we work with, suddenly you're saving hundreds of hours of time. Per day or per week. Um, so that's the more time efficiency thing. Like you're just saving time for team members to go do the things that they actually should be doing, the higher leverage work and for the pipeline generated one. Um, I can give a few examples. We had one client that, um, hadn't gotten a positive response in like two years, and they were a big company. They, I think they were like two or$3 billion in revenue, uh, around eight to 9,000 people at the company. And, um, we completely over overthrew their entire. Outbound mechanism with new systems using clay and AI based outbound sequencing tools and generated, I mean, they're still a client of ours, but probably around like a hundred to 200 million in pipeline for them. Um, wow. So it's been a really solid result. And then on, on the efficiency side, we have one client that currently has 200 SDRs or BDRs in their team, and we've been able to save them, uh, as I mentioned, like two to three hours of research time per day. Um, and with 200 BDRs in their team. Extrapolate that a lot. Obviously the, the BDRs are significantly more efficient and that just, you know, indirectly, uh, affects pipeline ultimately every sales team's optimizing for pipeline. So like, you know, either you're doing it indirectly with a cool automation further back in the funnel, or you're doing it by like literally automating the thing that drives pipeline directly. So, yeah. Yeah, there's a couple examples.
Audrey Chia:Wow. And it seems like the people you are working with, right, they are enterprises at a much bigger level. A lot of the other AI. First consultants I worked with, they tend to work with SMEs who are about a bit more nimble and agile. Um, two questions for you. How did you manage to persuade such a big organization to take that risk, especially when you know they already have a legacy, um, kind of workflow, right? And take taking on AI is so different. And number two, that you also use your own code email outreach to reach out to these prospects for that.
Patrick Spychalski:Great question. Uh, both of them, of course. So the answer to the first question, um, we really try to ease enterprises into the systems that we build. So when we pitch a company, we very rarely, if ever say, we're going to completely change your entire system. You know, like your entire go-to-market system, your entire outreach or inbound or, or, or CRM system, um,'cause it, it just scares them off. Like they're very risk adverse. Like these big companies do not want to change a bunch of things. Um, the, the kind of, the heuristic I always use is, is these enterprise companies would much rather do a thing that creates, let's say like one unit of efficiency. Uh, with a 100% chance of doing so, then build something that creates two units of efficiency with a 90% chance of doing so. So like they want something that's certain. Um, and so we build the things that we know are certain and we know can create efficiencies and that's what we pitch to them. And then obviously once we're in the door and they realize the power of some of these systems and they see the results of them, it's a lot easier to pitch some of these like higher level things. Um, and second question about using outreach internally, funnily enough. We don't use it very often because all of our leads have been inbound to date. So we've been postings a lot of content. We've had, uh, essentially exclusively inbound leads and we haven't, and we're, we've generally been at capacity, at least the past six months we had been at capacity or near capacity. And so, uh, as a result, we haven't actually wanted to do a ton of outbound. With that being said, um, you know, I anticipate we'll have to do it at some point. So, um, you know, hopefully we can bring the same results. We're bringing our clients to ourselves internally.
Audrey Chia:Wow. I think it's very interesting that you see a lot of the leads are inbound, right? Um, is it from LinkedIn content? Are you building your brand on different platforms? What are some channels that you're currently leveraging? I.
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, totally. So there's a few different ways that we get, we've gotten leads inbound historically. Uh, the first one of course is content. So posting content on LinkedIn. Uh, I used to run Clay's, YouTube and now have a YouTube channel of my own. And so leads come in through both of those channels. Additionally, we often have clients, uh, or at least, you know, historically had clients that have been pumped with the work that we've done for them. And oftentimes, you know, somebody asks that client like, Hey, you know, who would you recommend for a clay agency? Or would you recommend for an automation agency? Um, we've come up in cases there, um, and we've also partnered pretty closely with Clay in, in doing work, uh, both serving some of their main enterprise clients as well as just helping them internally with. Um, some work like data tests and other things. And so, um, we of course have like, uh, agency partners that have also referred us some clients. So it's been a bit of a mixed bag. Um, but ultimately our goal is just to get our name out there and con continue in consistently good work in hopes of bringing in clients that way. But yeah, of course, like, you know, um. To a certain scale, you'll need outbound. And I, you know, anticipate that that'll be the case at some point. But, uh, you know, hope, we're hoping to obviously have as many inbound leads as we can.
Audrey Chia:Yeah. And it's very powerful that now that you've already, you know, fixed that inbound channel. Right. Um, and once you double down outbound, I'm sure the growth will be exponential. Let's also talk a bit about that changing role in sales. Right? Right now you have teams that are perhaps. 10 people in size and you can streamline it to perhaps just one person who is AI powered. Let's talk a bit about what do you think that future sales role is gonna look like?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, so I actually think the entire go-to market organization is going to fundamentally change as a result of AI systems. Um, and it's happening slowly in some companies, and even in some clients we work in, we've seen like a, a massive shift in the way in which they hire for go-to market. But I anticipate being this, being widespread across all industries eventually. So, um, the, the system previously was usually had ahead of sales. Maybe a head of rev ops and you had a bunch of AEs and you had a bunch of BDRs who would of course pass leads off to those AEs to serve. Um, I think down the line, you're only gonna need a few different people. Um, so you're gonna need a head of sales to orchestrate, like, you know, of course all the, the go to market motions you're creating, you're gonna need a good a g like a GTM engineer, like a head GTM engineer to somebody who creates these AI based automations and knows AI tools really well. Who can build systems that can automate. Essentially anything you would need to do in sales. And then you need somebody to kind of in tandem build things with that go to market strategist in a day-to-day. So like somebody who is more of like a creative campaign director or somebody who's who, who essentially has a creative side of sales. Um, associated with them. So I think you really just need a leader, somebody who's really creative and somebody who's good at engineering with AI tools. And I think that kind of trio will ultimately be like the crux of most go-to-market organizations. Um, I think oftentimes the main issue a lot of these companies are facing is really just like knowing what tools to use and in which way to use them. Um, like that's really like half the questions we get as an agency. And so if you can fill those gaps, I think. The rest of it's relatively simple because you just have a head of sales with an idea and then you have a go-to-market engineer translating that idea into something that can be automated,
Audrey Chia:do you think that a lot of salespeople will lose their jobs in the coming, actually right now, since brands are already, you know, adopting AI at scale, and it seems like a lot of the current skill sets are being made less, you know. Um, it's a bit less, more redundant right now, right?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm really not one of those people that, uh, remains optimistic for people who are currently in, in jobs that are being automated. I think people will lose their jobs. I think there will be a lot of lost jobs in the near future. Um, I anticipate like there being a massive, uh, shift in the job market where a ton of people who were previously SDRs or BDRs or AEs, especially the ones that are, are kind of at the top of their game. Having a hard time finding, uh, a role in, in the relatively near future, maybe like the medium term. Um, and of course the way, the antidote to that, the way I would suggest people who are potentially in those roles who are gonna get, you know, automated away, um, you know, stay in their role or stay in an adjacent role is to learn the tooling. That will ultimately replace them. Um, like um, there are many cases in which Clay could replace maybe an an SDR in some function, depending on what the SDR is doing. Um, I would recommend the SDR learns clay'cause suddenly they become very valuable. Um, and they'll actually get paid more than they were at their SDR job as a result of learning tools like clay. Um, and there's plenty of room and a massive demand for these people, like the GTM engineers can't get hired fast enough. I mean, companies are offering very. Healthy salary is like a hundred to 350 KA year for these GTM engineers. So if you can learn how to do that some suddenly your SDR role is actually making, uh, you're actually making more than your previous role as a result of learning these tools.
Audrey Chia:Absolutely. And I think this is the, the AI advantage that people can seize right now, right? So there's this window where. Companies are starting to a adopt ai, but it's still not fully widely adopted yet, which means that you have an opportunity to be one of those leads to then drive that change. Um, or like what, Patrick, you said, um, be at risk of being left behind, but what are some human skillsets that you think AI can not replace? Um, right now?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, totally. So one that comes to mind immediately is just conversation. Um, no one ever wants to talk to a robot. I mean, like, there have been studies on this, especially with like, uh. You know, AI becoming like, oftentimes customer support for companies like people have, even without even knowing that it is AI proven and, and stated that they do not like talking to robots on, on phone calls. So there's a lot of just human elements that can't, I think, be replaced. Um, and oftentimes those are gonna be the things that maintain, uh, maintain, let's say like, uh, an evergreen state while AI. You know, continues to automate more and more functions of a sales role. Like I don't think getting on sales calls is getting automated anytime soon. If you can get on a sales call face to face and talk to somebody like I. You know, it's, it's gonna be kind of a dark day if that ever gets automated. Like you can get on a call and there it's like an AI talking to you and you can't tell. That'll be freaky. But the whole point is, I think anything that has kind of a human touch to it, um, will likely not be automated. It's tough because these AI models are getting better and better. So suddenly things that people were like, oh, that won't get automated away are like video generation. Or like really deep critical thinking or deep research, like those are suddenly gone. You know, those are, those can be done by an AI model now. So it, it, it's, the list is getting smaller and smaller at the very least.
Audrey Chia:But I think one thing that you mentioned is then leaning into the human aspect. Um, making sure that you are the ones, uh, that's having the relationships and the conversations with your clients, but then also doubling down on picking up new skill sets. Um, like learning how to use clay. I think that would make you a supercharge sales person, uh, that's ready for the future. So, Patrick, I know we talked. A lot about Clay, but for our listeners who don't know what Clay is and what you do, can you walk us through what is the platform and what exactly, um, your company does?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, absolutely. So Clay is a pretty complicated tool to try to describe, but from a high level, it is a tool that both allows you to create workflows for sales teams. So it's a really good workflow tool. It's also a very good enrichment tool. And so one of the main value props of clay is you can get better data on companies at scale or people at scale than you could in any other tool, essentially. So you can find really any data point as niche as you can find, as long as it's publicly available online. You can probably find it with clay using a combination of enrichments and AI agents. So that's what makes it super helpful. It's also an incredible workflow tool, as mentioned before, so you can create these. Robust workflows using the data you found in clay via the enrichments to create these really powerful workflows. So you can automate inbound lead processing, lead scoring, lead routing, you can automate outreach, um, you can automate like research at a very deep level for a bunch of prospects at a time. So it's just kind of a way to, on a mass enrich and. You know, action upon data. Um, and of course the use cases kind of grow by the day as they add new integrations, but that is essentially a description of clay. And, and to describe our agency in short, is we're an automation agency that uses tools like Clay. Obviously we're a very clay heavy agency, um, to create workflows for like this for companies. Uh, ult ultimately, um, Clay's really hard to use. Like it's, it's tough. Sometimes months to learn, uh, in its entirety. And a lot of companies don't have bandwidth to do that, and they don't have time to do that. And so, um, we're just a services agency that helps companies both come up with ways to use clay creatively and then implement them for, for larger, like mid, mid-market to enterprise companies. I.
Audrey Chia:That's super powerful, right? I mean, being able to leverage a platform like that and build out your own workflows can definitely help. What is a company's experience before, you know, working you guys and after, so talk us through like the traditional sales approach versus what you guys are doing right now with the AI powered enablement.
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, so especially as we moved up market to these, like mid-market to enterprise companies, we've seen the majority of these companies are using pretty archaic tooling often. You know, not to name names, but to name names, like, like ZoomInfo, sometimes like six Sense and like, uh, manual sequencers like outreach, which of course do have their own use cases and, you know, um. I have obviously been super successful companies in their own right, but they often have this very traditional tech stack and a very basic approach to doing outreach that no longer works. And so, um, while we do a lot of things in go to market, besides outreach, the most basic one to describe is like, these companies have really. Outdated outbound tooling and they, the outbound's not working. They're getting like 10% open rates and they don't really know what to do. And, um, so it, it, it becomes more of a, just like we've heard AI works, we don't know how to use it, but we know our tooling's really out of date and we're trying to find a solution to it, which is often why they end up coming to us. Um, and that can be in really any system in go to market. Like for example, sometimes they're like, our inbound leads are literally everywhere. We don't know how to collect them or aggregate them or enrich them or score them or send them to, to sales team members. Um, or they're like, our CRM is a complete brick. Like we're spending a million dollars a year on our CRM and it's doing literally nothing for us. So there's a lot of problems companies can be facing. Um, ultimately our goal is just to get them to. Like a working system that does not have to be interfered with very much as quickly as possible. Um, so like automating things that usually required manual work before. So for example, if you have a CRM with a million records in it, um, going through and de-duping and enriching and getting rid of records in your CRM previously was like just a horrible chore. Like it would take, you know, hundreds of man hours to do. Um, it can now be done in probably. If you wanted to work at it all day, like a day in clay. So it's just, um, and, and it can be done in an evergreen manner in the sense that we set it up one time and it, it, it works forever. So it's just creating these systems that can continuously run for our clients that they don't have to manage very much. Obviously teaching'em how to manage them if they need to. Um, and allowing them to get kind of just achieve like a general like ease, like sigh of relief with any of these like, very messy systems they have. Um, and allow of'em to just be creative better.
Audrey Chia:Yeah. And it's interesting that it, it's interesting that you shared how companies are moving from very ancient systems to suddenly an AI super church system. And it seems like a lot of the, um, older CRMs are a lot more outdated. Do you think there is a reason why the gap is so huge and it seems a lot of bigger in sales compared to other industries?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, it's a great question and I really don't have too much of an answer other than I think a lot of salespeople are stuck in their ways, um, like in a lot of other roles. I feel like people aren't too, like stubborn, maybe stubborn is maybe not the best word, but like, they're just like, they're willing to try new things if it improves or creates efficiencies and the thing they're doing. A lot of salespeople, especially in older industries, are just kind of like, I've been doing this for 30 years. It's been working the whole time. Why would I change things even though like. There's a thing right in front of them that could just make that, you know, process significantly better or faster, or they don't have to, you know, it's a point where they don't have to do it themselves anymore. So, um, I think probably just either not being, not knowing or being aware of these things that exist now, or just seeing them and being like, the thing I'm already doing is working to some extent. Why, why try to fix it?
Audrey Chia:Mm-hmm. Do you also see that there is a lot of resistance to adopting AI in the sales world?
Patrick Spychalski:Absolutely. Yeah, I mean like the amount of, and, and it's, it's tough sometimes, especially in these bigger companies.'cause like there will be some people that are bought in and then there'll be other people that are like completely not bought in. And so you have to kind of be like, let me just try this thing. If it doesn't work, we won't do it. But like, just give it a go. Um, but yeah, I've seen a ton of pushback and it makes sense. I mean, I think the biggest concern we see from people is. Will this thing effectively do the same job that we were doing manually at the same level of quality? Like will the outreach be as good as our outreach was? Will, will the scoring system that we were doing manually for leads, will that be as good when we automate it? Um. Will the nuances of our CRM be picked up by these automations you're creating? And it's almost like a lot of doubt because especially in the early days, AI probably couldn't do a lot of those things to the same quality or same level of quality. So, um, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the, the pushback is in, in a sense, warranted, and there should be pushback because there are often times, I mean, it's happened in our agency, we've seen it happen in a ton of other businesses where like, AI doesn't do the job it's supposed to do, where like you create an automation and it doesn't have the same level of quality. So like. I think it's something you should be tracking pretty heavily. Um, you shouldn't just be throwing AI at everything and, and thinking it solves the problem. Um, oftentimes it creates more than it, it solves.
Audrey Chia:Even understanding AI's limitations, but also understanding how fast it has progressed will give you a much clearer idea of where your company's at and how AI can actually help you or not. So if you were to speak to a business leader right now who is on the fence and thinking whether they should adopt ai, what would you tell them?
Patrick Spychalski:I to go watch a bunch of videos that either I or others have created that show how powerful AI can be. I think there's no better way to sell people than to show them specifically how a thing could improve their life. Um, you could talk about it all day, but like, I'm biased, like I'm obviously gonna be a fan of clay, right. I'm obviously gonna be a fan of AI and automation, so like. To show them, I think is the best thing to do. And so I would just say, go watch these videos. If you're still not sold after watching them, then you know, so be it. Fair enough. Um, but, uh, it's, you know, it's tough. I think ultimately it's, it's a decision of, um, it's an individual decision. I think some people will adopt it later than others, but eventually, you know, it's, it's hard to ignore the, the wave, um, especially when everybody else in your industry's riding it.
Audrey Chia:So if a business owner watches your video and is like, oh, this is interesting, but they're completely lost, like, how do I get started? What is the usual process, um, that you take a business owner through? Because even implementing a new workflow and relooking at the current workflow, those are big asks.
Patrick Spychalski:Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I mean, easily, one of the biggest flaws of any of the videos or content I've created is I don't do a good job at all of explaining these things. I build, I just show the things I've built and like I'm like, look at this, you know, but like going back to square one is super important. Um, I recommend people watch a lot of the basic university content. So for example, clay has a university where you can go check out like the very basic building blocks of the tool and understand how it works. From, from a fundamental standpoint. Um, on top of that, I would just recommend people go and tinker with these tools, like with no real goal. Um, that's what I did with Clay. It's what I've been doing with new automation tools like N eight to n that I'm super interested in. It's just like, go in there and play around. Like allow yourself to be curious for a few hours and, and see how far it gets you in building something. Even if you have like a vague goal. Just like start toying around with the tools and I think it'll give you a better. Concept of how they work. I think one of the biggest battles is just knowing what tools to use and what to use'em for. So like if you can narrow it down to a few that you, that seem viable and understand from a basic standpoint how they work, I think it gets you a long way,
Audrey Chia:essentially. What are some other tools you're interested in or currently, you know, leveraging for your business?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, totally. So the first one that I just mentioned was N8N. Um, it's another workflow tool. I think it is incredible. It's, it's just, you can build really anything. Uh, I said this in a video recently, but if someone held a gun in my head and said, you can have one workflow tool for the rest of your life, it would be N8n. Um, I truly think it is. Like it blows my mind every time I use it. Um, another one that I recommend checking out is, uh, AI for anybody who's in sales. It's an incredible lead sourcing tool. Um. In short, I think the value it adds is you can just prompt it to go find whatever specific leads you want. So you can say Heya like, I want to go find companies that are based in California that do logging, that have recently had a lawsuit filed against them, and it will go find that exact list of leads for you. Um. Using incredibly powerful AI agents. So it just, it's kind of like it removes the constraints of lead sourcing that were caused by like, the old system with like Apollo or ZoomInfo, where you could just use like basic filters, right? So, um, that's another one. Uh, another one I check recommend checking out. Maybe not a specific tool, but I'll check out cps, like model context protocol, um, on top of APIs. So like, for example. We use CPS to create dashboards of the campaigns that we're making. So instead of having to create a custom software that, uh, you know, it contains a custom dashboard that we had to code, like spin up using code, you can just like, uh, use an MCP, which is just a way to talk to a, a piece of text. API. Um, and it allows you to essentially use plain text to build a dashboard. So I can say, Hey, instantly build a dashboard quickly of the past 20 campaigns I've run in their performance, and compare them and then gimme an analysis of them. And it's almost like you're training, um, uh, like chat GPT on the stuff. From your technology, whether it's like instantly for a sequencing tool or like, you can even do it with your bank. Like if you, if you wanted to have really in-depth financial analysis, you could just connect your bank's API to an MCP and ask it questions and it can return them to you. So super powerful. Um, we'd recommend checking that out as well.
Audrey Chia:And, um, I think a lot of these tools are very powerful, but also take time to learn and master and people need to want to have the desire and also have the commitment to figure these out or, you know, work with someone who already knows how to. But what about AI agents? Patrick? I know it's like a hot topic right now and in sales there are many sills, um, you know. Founders talking about AI agents, what do you think of it and what do you think the future of AI agents could be like in this, you know, space?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah. I think, um, well first say like what I think about them, I think they're. Really powerful if you can build them correctly. Um, for example, an N eight N, which I recommend everyone checks out. You can train AI agents on your own data to go take action on things. So for example, when I get on a sales call with somebody, I immediately have an automation triggered that uses the transcript to go write a statement of work for that prospect using previous statements of work that I've trained the AI on. And so you can, if you have enough connection to other APIs and pieces of tech, you can create. Or have agents do so many things for you. I mean, it's essentially like having a, a low level employee, maybe at this point, a medium level employee in your pocket and, and for fractions of a cent per task. Um, and I think, uh, to speak to the future of these AI agents, um, it's really going to be a matter of how good the models can get. Um, I think there's of course going to be some sort of like logarithmic log logarithmic progression of these AI models where like eventually they'll, they're gonna get less and less. Powerful to a certain extent, like you need more compute or they just re reach a certain threshold of power. Um, but as, as long as they continue progressing, these AI agents can get better and better, and they're already incredible if you connect them to the right tech, I mean, they can really act and make high level assumptions like a person would. Um, which again, I, I think all of this does feel somewhat dystopian and scary at times, but like there are many cases in which it's just super helpful, um, and can save you a ton of money as a business. So definitely recommend it.
Audrey Chia:Wow. Yeah. I, I, I think this is gonna be very exciting times for us and with the speed at which AI is evolving. It's important to keep up as much as you can. I think the most important thing for me is to be open to learning, to growing and to taking action. Um, and not just sit and wait to see what happens. Because by that time that happens, everyone else around you might have already moved on. Right? So you want to also, at least. Have that openness to learning, uh, which is why it's so important to upscale yourself. Now, Patrick, just, you know, for the last five minutes, I would love to talk a bit more about your personal journey as a founder. I know that before this clay agency, you also ran your own, um, marketing agency, and before that you are also doing a lot of other stuff. Tell us more about this, you know, desire or fire in your heart to build things.
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, totally. So, um, I think it started with my dad. Like he always owned his own business and I would just see him all the time when I was a kid, which I thought was awesome because oftentimes, like a lot of parents are gone at work and my dad just worked from home'cause he ran his own business. And I always thought that was incredible as a young person. So, um. When I was younger, I'd always wanted to start a business, and I kind of followed suit with that. I just started a bunch of like very small businesses, like I would sell clothing to friends. Um, eventually started a kind of like the small marketing consultancy. And so it kind of, it was always something I wanted to do. I was always obsessed with it. I was always watching YouTube videos and entrepreneurship and listening to podcasts about entrepreneurship and, um, just kind of like, I, I maybe like subconsciously training my brain to think in that way. Um, and of course I had an incredible mentor for my dad who was able to just. Teach me about all the things he did to start his own business, to the point where it was successful enough to like, you know, provide for us. So, um, yeah, I think that was pretty, a pretty massive step for me. Um, and then, you know, eventually when the, when the Clay agency thing came up, it just felt natural because I was either gonna, you know, continue being an employee at a company or, you know, go start my own thing. And I just always felt more comfortable and it just felt like, it almost like felt like I couldn't. Like keep a job, like I felt like I needed to start something of my own. It just felt more comforting to me, even though it was a riskier play for like, from like a objective standpoint. It just felt like, it almost felt like a comfort zone for me to, to, to start a business. So yeah, it always just felt kind of natural in a sense, I guess,
Audrey Chia:in what was perhaps, you know, the one key lesson you've learned along this journey, like the biggest lesson you have learned.
Patrick Spychalski:It's, it sounds so stupid, but there's probably two that both sound stupid. The first one is that there really aren't like any shortcuts. Um, I feel like when I first got into entrepreneurship, I would just watch so many YouTube videos on like, the fastest way to make$10,000 and like, you know, all of those like thumbnails that just promise like you'll make money easily and quickly. Um, I think. Like if easy and quick are even like words in your vocabulary as an entrepreneur, you should probably get them out. It's just not gonna work. Um, the second big lesson I learned is that like you should pretty much completely and obsessively optimize for providing as much value to your customers as possible. And I think the rest kind of comes after that. And I think once you stray from that objective. Oftentimes, um, you run into more difficulty. So I think that was one thing our agency did right in the beginning is I didn't focus on getting 50 clients. I focus on getting five and crushing it for them as well as I possibly could. Um, and I think that's, that can be kind of extrapolated across business as a whole. Just like if you just obsess over the person you're providing value for, whether it's the quality of your product or the quality of your service, oftentimes it, it get no gets noticed, or at least it has a higher likelihood of doing so in my opinion.
Audrey Chia:Definitely. And from what you have shared in this conversation, you've really emphasized a lot on providing that value, right? Whether it's putting content out there or like helping your clients achieve those results. Um, and I think that what, that's what makes a business different for people who are trying to start their own business or trying to go into the AI space. Do you have a piece of advice for them?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah. So, uh, maybe I'll start with the AI space, or maybe I'll start with the business one, if people are just trying to start their own business in general. Um, again, I mean I'm by no means do you know, a, uh, billion dollar founder over here, so, you know, take my advice with a grain of salt. But I would say oftentimes it's worth making the mental commitment that like this is going to probably take a while and it's probably going to take a majority of my time and I'm probably gonna have to sacrifice a lot of things that I previously loved having, um, in order to make this work. Um. I, I just feel like I al, I often, like in the beginning days, just didn't even ha, I didn't even conceive of the idea that I had to work like 15 hours a day sometimes to make this thing work. Like, it felt like I almost like it was under the assumption that I could do this for a few hours a day and make it work. And I think that was a really bad mentality to have. So I would say just like, I mean really, at least from what I've seen. A lot of it's just like banging your head against the wall long enough and like staying, uh, focused on one thing, like not pivoting constantly, not trying to start a bunch of new things simultaneously. Like I think things seemed to end up working out when I was just focusing on one thing obsessively for a long time and trying to provide value to people, um, for people trying to get in the AI space specifically. The biggest roadblock I see people running into is just like not allowing the learning curve to happen. Um, it's, it's kind of like learning anything. It's like if you're trying to learn guitar or like a new language or something, it's like. It seems great in theory. You're like, I'd love to learn Spanish. Like that sounds like a great thing to have in my, you know, arsenal of as a person. But then you, you try it and maybe you start learning like the basic words and you're like, oh, I'm getting momentum here. But there's always a point where you get stuck. Um, and I feel like that point is often the inflection point. Um, and you kinda have to make like a conscious decision. Like I'm going to just kind of deal with this sucking for a while with the idea that eventually. Like, in order to get over this hump, I have to go kind of through the sucky period. Um, so, and that, that's totally the case with AI and clay too. Like, people will play around with clay for a while. It becomes interesting until it doesn't become interesting, and then suddenly you're stuck. So I'd say just, just yeah, to your point, be really curious, um, and like allow the learning curve to happen. Um, and I think past that, you know. You'll hopefully find some success.
Audrey Chia:I love that. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, Patrick. So where can people find you and who should reach out to you?
Patrick Spychalski:Yeah, um, if you're interested in AI or automation or clay at all, feel free to reach out to me. Obviously, you know, even if you're not like at a VIN market or enterprise company, I mean, totally down the chat. Uh, always like meeting new people and riffing on this stuff. And, uh, you can find me on, on LinkedIn, just my name on LinkedIn is generally where I've been the most active. So feel free to reach out and, uh, yeah, again, of course appreciate you having me a ton. It.
Audrey Chia:Thank you so much and thank you folks for tuning in. Don't forget to hit the bell for more actionable AI and more hitting insights. We'll see you next week. Take care.