[AI & Agency Series] AI-Powered Lead Generation and Automation for Agencies With Ken McLoud

Ken McLoud is the Founder of Laconic Technology, a technology company focused on helping businesses harness the power of artificial intelligence and custom software to streamline operations, boost efficiency, and unlock growth. Drawing on his experience in AI engineering and strategic consulting, he partners with clients to design solutions that integrate smoothly with existing systems and deliver measurable business results. Prior to founding Laconic Technology, Ken worked as a Design Engineer at Ruger Firearms, where he leveraged his technical expertise to develop innovative products.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:34] Ken McLoud talks about the role of AI-powered lead magnets for businesses
• [7:16] Using AI to deliver personalized, actionable business reports for agency owners
• [9:19] Automating complex business decisions using AI in industries like logistics and freight
• [13:35] How AI tools can reduce human error and improve decision-making in day-to-day operations
• [21:36] Security and privacy considerations when using AI tools for business automation
• [25:31] The growing impact of agentic AI tools on business automation and data analysis

In this episode…

The world of AI-powered tools is evolving rapidly, offering businesses unprecedented opportunities to streamline processes and amplify results. But how can agencies specifically leverage these innovations to boost their lead generation and automation efforts? Can AI truly replace traditional methods, or does it simply enhance them?

As a leading expert in AI technology, Ken McLoud explains how AI is transforming businesses by automating tasks that were once time-consuming and manual. He highlights the rise of AI-powered lead magnets as one of the most impactful applications, where agencies can automate the process of attracting potential clients. By using AI to analyze websites, run audits, and generate detailed reports, agencies can both engage users and identify new opportunities with greater precision. The power of these tools lies in their ability to scale processes that were previously bottlenecked by human limitations, enabling agencies to capture more leads with less effort.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Ken McLoud, Founder of Laconic Technology, to talk about AI-powered lead generation and automation for agencies. They discuss how AI is revolutionizing lead generation, the role of AI in solving complex business problems, and how AI-powered lead magnets can increase client engagement. Ken also shares his thoughts on the future of agentic tools and automation.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Ken McLoud on LinkedIn
• Laconic Technology
• Volume Nine GEO Scorecard
• Smart Agency Masterclass Podcast with Jason Swenk
• Agency Mastery 360
• Coolmore Logistics
• Claude Code
• Claude Cowork
• OpenClaw
• Cole-TAC
• obvious.ai
• Zo Computer
• Automation Anywhere
• Wispr Flow
• Fathom
• fireflies.ai
• Otter.ai
• Krisp

Special mentions:

• Jason Swenk on LinkedIn
• Darby Copenhaver on LinkedIn
• Dustin Coleman on LinkedIn

Related episode:

• “[SaaS Series] The Rise of Voice AI and Next Generation WordPress Automation With Arto Minasyan” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “We make business problems disappear for growing entrepreneurs by building custom AI software.”
• “Let the bot handle making the day-to-day decisions.”
• “There’s a whole suite of products built around Anthropic’s Claude model that are just absolutely killing it.”
• “So the real innovation here is around that agentic harness.”
• “So now what you essentially have is an extremely low-cost expert data analyst.”

Action steps:

1. Leverage AI-powered tools for lead generation: Automating lead generation helps businesses quickly identify high-quality prospects and increase conversion rates.
2. Integrate AI to automate repetitive tasks: Reducing manual tasks frees up valuable time for employees, allowing them to focus on higher-value work.
3. Use AI to analyze website performance: AI can provide detailed insights into technical SEO issues, improving site optimization and user experience.
4. Implement AI-driven business decision-making: AI helps capture complex decision logic, enabling businesses to make faster, more consistent, and data-driven decisions.
5. Continuously evaluate AI tools for scalability: Ensuring that AI tools scale with your business growth allows for long-term efficiency and flexibility as demands evolve.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, I am the Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Thanks for tuning in to this special best of episode, where we’ll take a look back at some of our favorite moments from previous conversations. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help B2B businesses give to and connect to their dream 200 relationships and partnerships. We do this in two ways.

Number one, we are an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast for ROI. We do the strategy, accountability and full execution and production. Number two, we are also an easy button for your company’s corporate gifting. We make gifting and staying top of mind to your clients, partners and prospects. Simple and seamless and affordable. Some companies even send gifts to staff from a culture perspective. All you have to do is give us the list of people you want to follow up and keep in touch with, and we do everything else from there. From gift selection to the card to your branding on the box.

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If you have thought about starting a podcast or gifting, do it. If you have questions, email us at [email protected] or go to Rise25.com to learn more. Now let’s look back at some of our favorite moments from past conversations.

Hey, it’s Jeremy Weisz, I’m here with Ken McLoud of Laconic Tech, and we’re going to show his website in a second before we get into it. This is the top resources, top great people, great resources episode. So Ken is an expert at different software AI. So we’re going to geek out on tech, software, apps, tools, whatever he uses. I’ll share some of the stuff I’m using and what I like, and we’ll go from there before we dig into those tool software. Ken, just talk about your company and what you do.

Ken McLoud: 02:33 

Yeah. So Laconic Tech. We make business problems disappear for growing entrepreneurs by building custom AI software.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:41

That’s hot right now. So what are some of your favorite AI tools software out there?

Ken McLoud: 02:47

Yeah. So in preparation for this call, I was thinking through a list of our recent most successful projects, and I see that they break down into three kind of clear categories. The first one that we’ve been doing a lot of lately is AI powered lead magnets. So I can give you a great example for this one that we just finished for an agency out of Denver called V9 Digital. You can check it out yourself if you’d like at geo.v9digital.com. How this works is that brings you to a landing page where you put in your email.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:27

I’m going to put it on. I’m going to bring it up here in a second.

Ken McLoud: 03:29

Yeah. So you put in your email.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:29

You go here and your website URL. Yeah. Yep. So geo.v9digital com and it goes to the grader. Yeah. So talk about it.

Ken McLoud: 03:31

Yep. So what goes on here is you put in your email and your website URL after this page. It’ll also give you the option of putting sort of the URL for an SEO resource in there. This would be something like a blog post that performs really well for you, or a big how to guide that sort of thing. Then it will use a number of different AI tools in order to crawl those URLs that you’ve given it, and call on a bunch of other resources to evaluate things like page load speed and how the various LLMs from the different providers like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, how they view your brand in this website.

It’ll also go through and check a bunch of technical metrics that the V9 team knows are really important for performing well, and this new world of geo rather than SEO. Then it will give you a kind of quick report on how your website does on these metrics. And also you’ll be emailed a more detailed, in-depth report on sort of what you’re doing well, on where your opportunities are to improve. And then obviously, if you need help.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:03 

I just found this out, Ken, as you were talking over here, I didn’t know what I was going to show, but I like how it says tell me a dad joke while I wait. That’s cool.

Ken McLoud: 05:03

So this was 100% the V9 team.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:09

Okay. It was hard getting my addiction though.

Ken McLoud: 05:16

They have a rather impressive database of dad jokes that they play to the back end of this thing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:14 

My daughters do not want me having more dad jokes in my arsenal. I’ll tell you that. But anyways, keep going because it’s interesting. You know, I just put it in here. It’s analyzing.

Spinning. I like, you know, the bar and everything like that. So anyways keep talking.

Ken McLoud: 05:28

Yep. But so this is really cool from both ends. Both from a user perspective. It’s an entirely automated tool. You don’t have to schedule a call with anybody to go through an audit. You’ll get a really in-depth report about what you’re doing well and where your improvement opportunities are. And then it’s obviously a big win for V9, too, because they get to identify a bunch of new people who are interested in their services and establish their expertise in this space.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:55

I think, you know, let’s see, can we? I think that’s a new tagline on your website, right? You know, AI is changing the game. I should be like, we create AI powered lead magnets. I know you do more than that. Okay, so what is this is thinking lead magnets. I don’t know if there’s any other lead magnet examples you want to give, or we can go to the next category.

Ken McLoud: 06:19

Yeah. I mean, another great one is one that I’ve done for Jason Swenk. So this would be at, one second. Let me confirm the URL.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:28

And by the way, I forgot to give a shout out to Jason Swenk and Darby because they introduced us. So thank you. And Jason has a great podcast as well, which I’ve listened to over 300 episodes of. So check, check his out.

Ken McLoud: 06:44

So this one is at survey.agencymastery360.com if you want to pull it up. Okay. And this one, this one is a slightly different take on it. So rather than grading your website, how this one works is you go through a seven question.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:04

It’s survey or questionnaire?

Ken McLoud: 07:05

Sorry. What was that?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:06

Survey dot what was it?

Ken McLoud: 07:07

AgencyMastery360.com.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:11

Got it. survey.agencymastery360.com. Okay, cool. Yep. I’ll pull this up.

Ken McLoud: 07:16 

So yeah, how this one works is you’ll go through a seven question multiple choice questionnaire. Then it will send your answers to these seven questions off to an AI, along with essentially a small book that Jason and his team have written on their philosophy for how to help agency owners grow their business and kind of step back from the day to day nitty gritty operations so that they can think more strategically.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:50

Money for 30 days. It stalls or dies. It lives. Yeah. Cool.

Ken McLoud: 07:55

And then, similarly to the V9 tool, when you get to the end of this, it will give you a customized report based on Jason and his team’s philosophy on where they think you ought to be focusing next to grow your agency.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:08

Yeah.

Ken McLoud: 08:10

And that’ll show up right in your inbox. And then, of course, if you’re looking for somebody to help you with that growth, they’d love to help you out.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:18 

Okay. Awesome. It’s analyzing my results. I’m getting a, I’m in a bunch of lead magnets right now, which would be great. So everyone could go there and fill it out. In that case, as an agency owner in the geo example that’s probably coming up here. Oh, here it is. So this I put in inspired Insider in here inspired Inside.com, which were I if you’re listening to the episode, if you’re on the website just to see what that would show. So we won’t go through all this, but they’ll be sending my full report and I’ll look at it. My reputation is 12%. That’s terrible. But discoverability.

Ken McLoud: 08:59 

Who have you been hanging around with Jeremy?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:01

I, I have no idea. Okay, cool. So that’s another AI part. Lead magnet with Jason’s. What’s next?

Ken McLoud: 09:11

Yep. So the second category that we’ve been doing really well with is this category where there’s a whole list of business problems, where the kind of rules for how you would make decisions on this business problem are vague, subjective and frequently changing. So that’s the sort of thing that up until recently has been very hard to write software around. Right. 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:41

So it’s like, so we have AI powered lead magnets. The next category would be business problems.

Ken McLoud: 09:45

Yep.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:46

Okay.

Ken McLoud: 09:47

Well, I think all these are business problems. This one is specifically about capturing business logic in English language rather than in code.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:57

Got it.

Ken McLoud: 09:57

Okay, so. So when things are kind of vague, subjective and or frequently changing, that’s the sort of thing that’s really hard to write an if-then statement for in order to, you know, capture and automate that behavior with traditional code. Yeah. But the huge benefit we’ve got out of these AI systems is if you can take those rules and write them out, sort of like an SOP document, like you were going to give this SOP document to a bright intern in order to have them make these business decisions. If we can get that far, then we can bundle up all the information needed to make the decision along with that SOP document and send it off to an LLM in order to make the decision. And that obviously enables scale, right. 

So now in any of the places where we’re having problems getting enough volume through with the amount of people that we have, that’s huge scale potential. So to get a little more concrete on an example here, one of my clients having fantastic success with these systems is Coolmore Logistics. Actually there’s John right there on the lower left. Coolmore Logistics out of Memphis, Tennessee.

So they’re a trucking brokerage where, so essentially their business is they specialize in kind of urgent freight. And they’re picking up loads that need to be delivered quickly usually. And then they’re finding trucks that are available to deliver those loads. They also have some trucks of their own. And then they make the spread between, you know, what the person was willing to pay and what the truck driver needs in order to actually deliver it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:47

Yeah.

Ken McLoud: 11:48

So they have several customers who sort of need to move a lot of freight every day and allow them to see all of the jobs where freight needs to be moved, you know, so it’ll be a truckload of this stuff from Dallas to Jacksonville, and then they can bid on any of that that they’d like. But as you can imagine, the way this business works, some of those will wind up being profitable. If you can pick up a truck cheaply and some will not be. But the trouble is, this is exactly that situation I was just talking about, where the logic is kind of subjective and frequently changing. 

So if you can imagine this huge snowstorm we had blow through the whole eastern half of the country a week and a half ago, like just completely turned their whole world upside down. You also have seasonal stuff like certain harvest seasons or big weather events and storms that mess this stuff up. So the way their system works is they have what is effectively an SOP document for which of these jobs to bid on and how to calculate what to bid. That’s further informed by the ability to call some APIs and get some more kind of objective hard number data there. And then it handles bidding on all of those jobs for them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:14

They had like a thought process. And here’s what we look at. And they really have to think through and get it all on paper so that you can be like, I can create this automatic bidder that encapsulates all of your thinking into that.

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