Meeting Title: Uttam Kumaran and Brian Krantz Date: 2026-01-22 Meeting participants: Brian Krantz, Jessica
Transcript:
Them: Because at the end of the day, or whatever it is, I can go through all the drafts. And send it off. The other thing is, what I really would love to do is a lot of times people. This is a good one. So people email me and here’s my agency CRM on the right hand side. I have the email, but it really would be great. I’m always like copying the emails to pull up their stuff.
Me: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Them: In agency block. I would, which is my CRM, Sam. So I would love to, you know, like right here in my email, kind of like I have like a hybrid plug in. It’s kind of like all the information pulls in right into here. You know, learns everything about the client, like based on the activities and by the way, this is an open API and that would also, like, help me respond to emails a lot quicker.
Me: How important is it that this is happening in Gmail? Versus having something that’s like N. OS for plan Medicare, and then it go into Gmail, basically after you, like, draft a thing.
Them: That doesn’t necessarily need to be a plugin. I mean, I just, like, at the end of the day, I mean, if you could automate all my email.
Me: Okay? It needs to end up in Gmail one way or another as a draft. But saying this sort of ability to open something, get all this context, have basically a series of actions to take on the email and then being like, cool, draft it.
Them: That’s fine.
Me: It’s just going to be much easier as not a plugin, is what I’m trying to say.
Them: No, no, no, no. Of course I would love to do that. So. But, like. My. My question to you is, I guess we’re now focused on answering emails. Is this is using something like uj AI is that just totally Pee Wee?
Me: It’s just going to be too generic. It’s just going to be too generic for you.
Them: Right.
Me: What you mentioned last time is like you have a somewhat fixed amount of things that people ask you about and that you respond with.
Them: Right.
Me: So, Jace. And some of these tools, they’re built for everybody.
Them: But it doesn’t learn. It doesn’t learn.
Me: And so, yes, There may be a sense of that, but the level of customization to what you need, you’re never going to get from these tools. There is a reason why we do some of these things custom. And the thing is, it’s also because of how we use AI to build a lot of these things. It no longer takes, like, six months or a year to build this kind of simple piece of software to do this.
Them: Sure. Okay? So would you download all of my.
Me: The additional thing is, like, Jace is just like.
Them: Got it. We don’t need to talk about them.
Me: Yes. Okay.
Them: So what would you do? You would download all of my emails? Throw it into the computer, find all the naughty stuff that I did, put that on the side. And then everything that is business related, you would, you would train the, the.
Me: Yeah. So we’ll do two things, right? So let’s say you have plan, Medicare, Os com, or, like, the platform. Right.
Them: Right.
Me: Basically, one module in there is like email response. So in there, like Brian, you can log in. You’ll see your emails that came in. We can envision something where AI says, hey, this email, most likely, here’s the action you click into the email you can pull in the relevant context. You can basically select the type of response or the type of action. You click that and it’s like, great, it’s drafted. Right next.
Them: Can we do a step further? Could we just have a drafted.
Me: Yeah, you could. So this is where, like, depending on how in the loop, you need to be on the action. Yes.
Them: We’ll leave it on. Leave it in a draft mode for me, and then I would come back to you.
Me: Well, there may be some things that don’t. There may be some things that are so predictable, the response that, yes, there also are some things that maybe it’s like, hey, this is like, probably this is. This is like a level higher. For example, we commonly have, like, tiers of complexity. So for everything. That’s like the quick emails, where we can easily say this is complexity zero. All you need to do is draft it with certain inputs. Second layer is like, hey, actually, maybe we need some inputs from the user, and then maybe there’s a third one that’s even more complex. Right? So we’re going to triage all those email types that you get and then assign them certain types. Of ways to. For you to interact. So we’ll be going. Well, in order to identify that, yes, we’re going to go through all the emails and then basically run an analysis and categorize and then work with you to say what are the actions? Which ones of these need humans in the loop? At what points? Which ones? The moment email comes in, you can actually just run this loop automatically.
Them: Yeah. I mean, I would love to. Automatic would be. Would be the end goal.
Me: Over time, more of the complex ones will fall into that bucket. As we’re able to further. What I’m saying is that some of them, I think, are not going to be. I would be surprised.
Them: Right here. Let’s use this one. Patricia’s mom passed away. Brian. Well, actually, Patricia emailed me to tell me that she passed away ironically. But you were just. It would just draft, say, hey, I’m so sorry, you know, my condolences. Please call. I actually can’t cancel it. I have to write back. Please call the insurance company and, and cancel it. It would just. Be in a draft. Being a draft for me, that’s super simple.
Me: Yes. Yeah, that’s super simple. But are there other ones? That are not as simple. I guess that’s what that’s more of. My point is that there’s going to be some that we just have to do this categorization exercise with you. And we’ll go through all your emails and basically start to categorize and then build. Build a system for every email type.
Them: I need to go through and categorize them. Or download them and chat will say, hey, this is what we found.
Me: We’re going to do that. We’re going to do that. Come back with you. Like, hey, here’s the catego. Here are all the email types we found.
Them: Right.
Me: Let’s now work on what our goal workflow is. Some may be able to fully automate.
Them: Would you be able to. Would you be able to bring. Or I guess it would be. Would you be able to use the API of my CRM? Okay, so, like, bringing the API into my email would be moved because it’s already doing that.
Me: Think about it like this is something that this will be for like a big one time analysis. We’ll pull the API from Agency block, we’ll pull all of your relevant emails. We’ll then run this analysis to basically be like, categorize all these emails and give us a sense of what’s the 8020 here. If 80% of them fit into a bucket, that’s like, okay, these can just. Basically, immediate process and drafted. We’re in the money. And then we’ll just. We’ll start there, but it’s iterative.
Them: Right. O. Kay. I really want to do that. Okay. I really want to do that. I’m getting crushed with my emails. Okay. Right now, as we speak, only four came in. But, you know, I’m getting like 100 a day, and sometimes they’re my busy season. It could be 250 a day, and I would just want to be on the phone more. Okay, so that’s something I definitely want to do.
Me: Yeah. Now I remember from last time. Yeah, yeah. Okay?
Them: In terms of automated campaigns that you brought up. You know, I have Jessica. She’s on my team now. She’s running the company. I mean, she’s kind of just setting up these automated workflows. You know, in agency blocks. So I don’t know how yours would be any different than what she’s doing. So maybe you want to talk about that for a second?
Me: O. Kay. Yeah. I mean, one is like, I’m interested in like how she is coming up with these. So when you talk about email campaigns, one, it’s like, how is she coming up with the right email means to do.
Them: N.
Me: Like, is this with a goal in mind of, like,
Them: Yes.
Me: You know, but then does she have the data in order to actually, like, figure out what to execute? If so, then we’re happy with it. Then we should leave it out of our.
Them: I don’t think that’s a pain point right now. I think that’s, like, you know, it’s based on triggers.
Me: Okay? O. Kay.
Them: So it’s like, hey, you’re, you know, your plan. The policy status is marked active in our CRM, so it automatically triggers to send an email. So, like, I don’t think that that’s a pain point. And in terms of, like, coming up with these automatic workflows, that’s, we need an actual human like myself to say, hey, send an email five days after somebody’s plan is approved with reminders, or send them a dental email. So I don’t think that’s a pain point right now. The email is what else was on this was on this actual.
Me: Y. Eah. Cool. O. Kay. We had, like, proactive client engagement, basically, like, less of this. So these are what we call transactional notifications. Like, five days after this do this.
Them: Yeah.
Me: They’re not salesy and that they’re not, like, looking at us. They’re not looking at the CRM being like, okay, tell me who like, we should proactively reach out to today. Right.
Them: Yeah, interesting.
Me: Dad is like more on the sales side, it’s still somewhat like trigger based. Meaning, like, we’ll have an AI look through these, but then find people that are like, hey, actually, given Brian your criteria for what makes a client that maybe we should reach out to proactively. Give me all those and draft the emails.
Them: Now, let’s talk about proactively, in terms of clients, are we talking about? Because I have two. Two scenarios here. So one is I might get a recommendation from an advisor at UBS who’s like, hey, Let me. Let me just show you. Amer. Fries. So, like, here was one yesterday. I guess this would be automation. Let me just say something. Okay, so this will be a perfect one. So ashley at ameriprise, she introduces greg and serena Condemni for me, right? So I jump in here, I say, thanks for the introduction, Greg. Congratulations and your upcoming retirement. I give them a little calendar link. Okay, I’m doing that manually right now. So first of all, if you’re going to answer my emails, you’re going to automatically put the calendar link in there for me. Okay. Now, speaking of calendar link, are you going to be able to make it one time? Or you’re just going to. Is going to have to be a generic one.
Me: It’s going to be what? It could be whatever.
Them: Oh, it could be amazing, because I don’t want them to have access to my calendar and then abuse it every time there’s an issue. Okay, so. So one time. But. But. But the thing is, is now I do this. Okay, here’s. Here’s. Here’s another pain point. Okay? This contact that she introduced me to. Now someone needs to manually create that in my CRM, if you could. So this is something I would want. If you could create it from the email, a contact in my CRM. Okay, that kind of sounds like zap types type of stuff. Okay, that would be awesome. Okay?
Me: Yeah. So the difference is there’s a couple things. In way, this is different, a little bit different than Zap. One is like, the AI piece actually needs to infer some of the fields. Right. Like, and so zap. You’ll have to like, exactly map just the email, but it’ll be. It’ll hard. So what we’ll do is we’ll pass. AI say we need to create. This is the email. We need to create a new record in the CRM.
Them: Y.
Me: Basically infer as many fields as possible from this email. Right.
Them: Eah. Guys, I like this. I like this. Okay, so create something in my CRM. Okay, but here’s the. Here’s the thing. Now the part that. Where you started. Okay, I need to follow up. Okay. So now you know, for Greg. Okay, if we look into my CRM, you’re probably going to see that I had to create an activity manually. Okay. Activity. And I ended up closing it out because I’m not chasing anybody. Okay. But the. On my. It pops up on my dashboard that I need to follow. Up with him. Or I said to Thomas, who’s my assistant, you know, see if the appointment is made.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Right? So now I go back to Greg and I say, I sent him one last follow up. I just wanted to send you one last follow up. You’re saying, I mean, this. This is where the value is. I can get rid of my assistant in an ideal world. I don’t want to. I actually like him. A lot, but. But you’re saying, hey, it’s one less activity for him, and we could. This system will automatically say, hey, it’s time to follow up.
Me: Yeah. Yeah, here’s. Here’s an example. Like, for example, you would ask the AI Go through all the contacts.
Them: Which is what you want to.
Me: Look particularly at the ones with the latest, with the oldest follow ups. And infer whether there is a way for us to follow up here. If so, draft that email.
Them: Okay. I like.
Me: This basically, what. What you may or may not be having the folks already doing is because. But there’s two things. The reason why this can’t be automated is like, you do need to. It’s easy to automate. Give me all the ones that we haven’t had an activity with. Right. But taking that and then putting that into the email draft system and then wrapping that into something that runs every morning. Is the system. Here.
Them: No, I love that. And the other thing is also, it’s like what goes in the email or what the email may also needs to create notes. So, like, here, copy the email and I put it in the thread so that I could see. I could see what’s going on.
Me: Yes. Well, it will. The AI Will basically look through all activities and then draft.
Them: What else needs to create activities as well based on what it does. And he’s to say, hey, I drafted this email, we tried to follow up him for a third time, etc. Okay. So I mean, this is good to talk through it. So anything else on here? I mean, I. You went through it.
Me: Yeah. And then the last piece is like, so this second item here. Is basically the first of two things we talked about, which is, one is like, there’s this whole email triage process. Also like, as you start to document, like, ways to respond and these like sops, it’s just going to make it easier for anyone else to also start to use the system. And so that’s like.
Them: Yeah, no, no, of course, of course. And then forget about them.
Me: Yeah.
Them: Forget about my team of sales agents. We’re going to. We’re going to. We’re going to make me amazing so that I could be the only sales agent that’s. That’s actually the ideal scenario. Right? It’s just me on the phone talking to people, and then eventually phase two is. Getting me off the phone and having them talking to the robot itself. Right, but that’s a future for down the road. Okay, but whatever you do for me, we will do for them. I mean, that’s a good pain point. I guess what I should do. Before I come back to you, I want you to come. Back to me with a course for what we discussed to just make my email really flush.
Me: Ca. T. Y. Eah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Them: And make my system with cr talking back and forth, pulling in from the county, whatever it is, I think that’s a good place to start. So come back to me with a cost to do that just to. Just to what end? The amount of time that it would take.
Me: Ca. T. And again, just like to highlight once more, like, this is going to most likely be something that lives on its own page, like the system, like interacting with the system. Right. There will be, of course, things that like an email comes in.
Them: That’s fine.
Me: There’s no, like, need for an approval loop. But there also will be things where we will start to have humans in the loop on like, hey, this email came in here like some options. As we get better at that, we’ll learn from that and more things will drive straight to the draft automation.
Them: Not to throw a curveball here, but I was maybe moving over to Microsoft. Which I’m not happy about. Would this still work with a Microsoft product?
Me: Okay? Yeah. I mean, in terms of, like, moving over to, like, outlook.
Them: Yeah.
Me: Yeah, it doesn’t matter. I mean, for us, it doesn’t matter.
Them: Okay. I just wanted to double check that.
Me: It’s just like, yeah, it’s getting the API access and stuff is all, like, because basically they just need access as the emails come in. To then kick off processes. And then draft it back so it’s not a problem at all for our stuff.
Them: Is there anything that we’re missing? That or. This is a good start and then we continue. Like I said, what I’m going to do before, I might have already said it is I’m going to. Now that I’m. This is coming back to me. The stuff that I want to automate. I’m going to start to think about my pain points. And once I start listing out my pain points, I’ll have you solve those pain points for me. Is what. Is what we’re going to do.
Me: Yeah, no, I think that’s fair. I think if we start with the email thing, I want to give you the ability to also interact and, like, basically see the prompts that we’re running, update them easily. So, again, like, part of this is the system is you’ll be able to see the types of emails you’re getting what the processing step is. What’s the prompt we’re using? And then if you’re like, hey, I want to modify it to change it a certain way, you can go in and just do that. Right. So partly it removes the reliability on us, and it allows, because you have expertise, to, like, actually do a lot of it. Basically, what we’re doing is scaling what you’re doing in ChatGPT into, like, something that’s just way more malleable and hooking up it all the way from inputs from all of your systems, and it outputs all the way back to drafts. Like, again, we’re doing a similar drafts thing in my email already right now, so it’s not that. Yeah, I feel like that’s a good place to start and then, like.
Them: What else are you guys doing?
Me: That’s a good question. So on the data side, If I was to take that example that Jessica doing all the data around, what are the notifications to send? When should we send them? What makes a great plan? Medicare customer? What’s their LTV like? All the strategy and analytics around growth. Is, like, a big thing for us. So our business primarily started there. My background is in data analytics, and so we do that for a number of companies. Basically leveraging data and helping them measure. You know, measure growth, measure customer acquisition, measure ltv, and then dictate sort of strategy. On the business side. So that’s one piece on the AI side. I mean, where we have another client. Where they’re an Ecom agency. They have about 80 clients. We’re building them an internal, like, kind of operating system. They have several tools that they kind of, like, use replit to, like, kind of vibe code. And they’re like, hey, it’s working for us, but we need to have authentication. We need to make this something we scale to the whole business. That. That’s everything. They’re using it for creating marketing content. They’re using it for pulling data from their CRM to, like, ask questions over the data. And, like, they’re just coming back at us with a bunch of ideas, so really building, like, internal applications. Part of, like, where I could see the value there is like, you using natural language to ask questions over agency block. Like, hey, tell me about this person. Tell me about all the people that fit this criteria. Draft me an email for this. That’s probably already going to get enabled with some of the work that we do. But thinking more about, like, how do you move from interacting with the UI to, like, everything being done straight from, like, a chat interface?
Them: Right. Right. Okay. All right, let’s start with the email. There’s a lot that could be done. Because we could just. I guess I could just roll with ideas forever. But we should start with pain points.
Me: Yes.
Them: Come back to me with a, with a scope of work just for the email integration, and let’s go from there, and then hopefully we can kick something off and we could work on all the other. That’s in the back of my brain as well.
Me: Okay? Okay? Okay, perfect.
Them: There’s a lot in there because we also got to get rid of me as well. Like, it’s got to be 100% autonomous. My mom and dad have to speak to the robot. I’m done.
Me: No, it’s a good way also, because Evo is really great, because we can start to measure how many emails we’ll be able to set with no intervention. That’s a KPI. Right. So that’s One of the KPIs are driving is speed to reply. And emails without Brian intervention. Like, for me, those are the two things that, like, in all these things, we try to set, like, what is the metric so that we can measure that as we go. And, like, that’s what we’re attacking.
Them: Love it.
Me: And the faster we can reply to people and the faster, the less involved you are is like all revising towards.
Them: That’s all. I’m in. All right, cool. All right. Thanks, guys. Just want to respect everybody’s time. Really happy to catch up. I’m really excited to kick this off. My busy. Not until October again. So let’s try to get some. Let’s. Let’s try to get moving in. The next couple months.
Me: Thank you. Cool. Perfect. Thanks, brian.
Them: Thank you. Bye, guys. Bye.