The Trading Post

How I'm using AI to dominate my follow-up game when nobody else is

• Trader Stu • Season 2 • Episode 4

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The Trading Post podcast explores how to leverage AI tools like Perplexity to transform business networking follow-ups and stand out from competitors who rarely capitalize on their business card collections. We demonstrate a systematic approach to turn networking connections into meaningful business relationships through strategic AI utilization.

• Using Perplexity AI to research businesses from collected business cards
• Creating personalized follow-up emails with AI that match your authentic speaking tone
• Building custom AI personas to streamline repetitive business explanations
• How AI is changing SEO and potentially reducing direct website traffic
• Strategies for using AI in cold email campaigns while avoiding spam flags
• Challenges of geographic coverage when networking across multiple metropolitan areas
• Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other tools to target businesses by location

Whatever you do, be good or be good at it.


“Whistles In The West” was written, recorded, and produced by Durracell, exclusively for use with Trader Stu’s platform, always rocking the cowboy hat. The track is protected under U.S. Copyright rights to use have been granted specifically to Trader Stu for content and promotional use related to his brand and media presence.

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The thoughts and views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and do not reflect the official policy or position of Metro Trading Association. Although the host is an employee of Metro Trading, this podcast is intended to educate entrepreneurs on the benefits of professional trading, regardless of their location. Additionally, the host reviews various pieces of camping gear due to the association of trade, barter, and prepping.

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Speaker 1:

Hello, welcome back to the Trading Post. I am your host Trader, stu, of course, and I wanted to talk to you real quick about I guess, not real quick or whatever I want to kind of get into it today about perplexity or, I guess, any AI really. I use Copilot and perplexity and honestly, the only reason why I use perplexity is because if you're an Xfinity member or user, you get these points for, I guess, paying a bill on time or using it. Anyway, they give you points to use and Perplexity was free through Xfinity. I guess it's a $20 value is what most people would pay for this, and so that's $240 a year. You know, that's a nice little perk, a little benefit there. At any rate, perplexity just kind of like combines or lets you use different ones all within it itself, so like there's a chat gpt version, there's the deep seek model, there's different models, I think five or six different models. I just use auto or perplexities model because it chooses the best model that like for you, I guess, depending on what search you put into the algorithm, and it knows, like I guess, where to go for it. I don't know, I don't really get. I've tried them all. All only thing I've noticed is that some take longer to give you a result than others, and I don't really notice any real difference in, I guess, the output and the result At any rate. So how am I using it for business-to-business sales is what I wanted to get into today, since this is kind of like it's not like. Yeah, it's networking, you know what it is. It's follow-up networking that most people don't do, and the reason why is because it takes so long to go through it all, and while my method still is slightly time-consuming or whatever, but you might as well utilize and do something with the business cards that you gather at the networking event from before right?

Speaker 1:

Oh and, by the way, I'm testing this out again. This time I'm in my car and there's road noise. I didn't get into a park. I'm actually waiting for a store to open right now. So I just thought I might knock out a quick podcast, because my credits are about to expire with the Buzzsprout, so I got 30 minutes left to use. I might as well use them up. So I'm going to knock it out and upload this on Tuesday Trade Tuesday is the idea anyway. So anyway, I digress. I don't know what this is going to sound like with the road noise or the air conditioning. It's warm enough out now we're at the air conditioning on, so whatever We'll see, we're at the air conditioning on, so whatever we'll see anyway, so let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So perplexity, how do I use it? Okay, and you'll, I know I'm one of the only ones that does this, because, guess what? Nobody else sends out the follow-up emails after the event other than most of the time, maybe one or two, maybe one or two, but mostly it's just me following up and maybe I don't have anything to offer. They don't care about me, and that's fine too. I don't really care. But, um, you know what I'm saying? Because I'm going to the uh networking groups and I'm not, of course, advertising the podcast, because there's nothing to do with anything. It's uh for for barter, for joining our barter group.

Speaker 1:

So what I do is is I got my stack of business cards and you'll hear everybody say this this is the number one complaint. Oh yeah, I go to these networking events. I'm like cool, I got this gold in my hand from the networking event and now I have the stack of cards and I have all this potential, and then guess what they do with it Nothing. They never follow up at all. It's like the number one complaint of networking and why someone might say that networking doesn't work Still got to follow up. You're not going to close a deal on site 9.99 times out of 10. So I go in their business card, boom, load it into our. We have our own CRM within the trade association that I go in their business card, boom loaded into our. We have our own CRM within the trade association that I'm in. Okay, it doesn't matter what you use the CRM, so load it up.

Speaker 1:

And then what I do is I copy and paste the website into Perplexity and I'll just say AI, because that Perplexity is a lot. So into AI, because that doesn't matter. And then just say my prompt is research this website. Within seven seconds it pulls up the summary of what they do, who they are, the about them, maybe when they got started, who the employees are, and it does it in paragraphs. It's really nice and it gives you just a little synopsis of that company. In a nutshell, perfect.

Speaker 1:

Then you follow up with now write them an email telling I'll just say now write them an email telling I would say Kathy, or whatever, that it was nice meeting her at the event on Friday and I don't know. If you want to do like a follow-up, say you know, hopefully we can work together. I'd like to see if I can send you some business through our trade group and then whatever, something like that whoever business you're dealing with or whatever business you are you know, insert follow-up prompt here and then a call to action. So basically, it was nice seeing you uh, tell that business that it was nice seeing their rep or owner or whatever that you know, and then follow up with them. So I follow the email, boom, you load it in, hit enter and it it gives you like a paragraph, maybe two paragraphs, of something you can just copy and paste in the email.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you gotta modify it. I've noticed that in the ai it'll say um, i't know, it changes like the verbiage around for you and me and I or whatever like that. So you just kind of read it. Don't just take it for granted that it nailed it and then copy and paste it, because it might not make you look very good and a little too obvious, I guess so, or it might sound too professional. I've noticed as well. I guess it sounds bad to say it like that. But I'm a chill, laid back, go with the flow kind of guy and I'm not that structured. I guess you could say so. I'll say it. Make it sound in the tone of how I talk on the Trading Post podcast. Boom, it'll load into how I'm talking in this and then change the persona of the email into a more tone, like I talk for real, and then we'll just copy and paste that.

Speaker 1:

I also do this, for if you're following me or we're connected on Alignable or LinkedIn, you'll see that when I load up the members right that sign up like new members, or if I'm trying to just advertise them, to advertise for them, I'll say, hey, you know, they joined the association and the announcements are the same. If you have a member and then you want to talk about them or whatever you're doing business with, and you want to put it on Facebook or have you insert social media contacts here, then you do the same thing. Do research on this website. Boom, it'll give it to you. And I always do it one at a time, because if you feed the AI too much of time, because if you feed the AI too much info at one time, it might kind of get lost in translation.

Speaker 1:

The one cool thing again, I kind of wish I was getting paid by Perplexity. I'm kind of plugging them here. The cool thing I don't know if the other ones do this or not, but what you can do with Perplexity is give it a I forgot what it's called but basically you can build your own personas and then load all that data into each category. So, within Perplexity, I have it built for Metro Trading Association, because that's my real job. And then I'll say I'll copy and paste the website into it. I'll say remember this? And then, um, you know a little bit about me. And then, uh, maybe who our target customers are, or whatever. Right, Boom loaded it in there and now you have this like category built within that app to where you don't have to be. You don't have to say Metro Trading Association is a trading slash, barter, exchange corporation that you know, business to business, trades goods and services between one another, blah, blah, blah. Right, you don't have to go through all that every time, because it knows that Sometimes in some of these apps it doesn't remember who or what you do or are, and now you have to start from scratch for every prompt. Okay, so then also, I'll also have another, another category for the trading post podcast. So I'm like you know, the trading post podcast is the based on a business of business networking group and talks about the advantages of using trade within business and networking and how.

Speaker 1:

The third one is basically the not pros and cons kind of like the ups and downs or the behind the scenes of using a podcast for advertising or marketing your business. Is what this podcast is all about Business, business, trade, networking and the behind the scenes of using a podcast for marketing your business. Because really, I mean, this is all business of business and if, according to you know, science or whatever, or the news or or AI, like I always talk about SEO, it's kind of like dying thing. The only thing that SEO is good for anymore is for AI to find keywords, perhaps maybe in within your websites or blogs or your YouTube channels or your podcast, to generate a response. For a reply for someone texting in a prompt right, because I don't know about you, but when I use it doesn't even matter Bing, chrome, any of them, now, it doesn't matter when you type in a search or a question. When you type in a search or a question, it'll give you the AI response at the top in a paragraph and 9.5 times out of 10, that's good enough for me.

Speaker 1:

I don't go anywhere else because it just took all the websites that I was going to go and click through individually and puts it into a nice little nugget, little nugget. So now all those websites are no longer getting foot traffic or foot traffic, click traffic, eyes on their websites to have research done, and then there's no opportunity pretty much anymore for someone to make a purchase because they tripped onto your website because they were doing a search. Ai is kind of taking over that. So unless someone's going to a website specifically to buy something, then that pretty much is out. And especially, even worse for a website is guys like me who skip the web search altogether and they just use AI.

Speaker 1:

I hardly ever open up Safari is what I use. I hardly ever open Safari anymore to do anything for research. I just click on the Perplexity app because it takes everything. It saves me so much time. I don't have to go through each website the top five or whatever and then read it and then search. Take the average, I guess, for what those five said and then that's my answer. I don't have to do that no more. It's a good thing and a bad thing. The only thing that it's bad for is people who can't keep up with it.

Speaker 1:

I think, as of right now and to be honest, I think that this is where I'm borrowing time of course, with AI, within a couple of years, it's going to be a completely different ballgame and even this information will be obsolete, right so. But in the meantime, this is the only way to survive and get by, I think, is you need to have a podcast in a business sense, not business to business, specifically business to consumer as well, but it puts your kind of like, the voice and your show, your business out there and gives information. And then AI I already see it do it. I'll ask questions within the app and you can see where it gets its information. You can see what websites it pulls from, at least on Perplexity, you can just see it go like it clicks through it. It's like you know it'll say maybe I'll ask it a question about the advantages of a business joining a barter group. Okay, it'll be like mentortradingassociationcom, the Trading Post podcast. It'll go through. Maybe back in the day I'll do a Wikipediaipedia search for, uh, how it used to be. You know barter and trade whatever. But back in the day, before it was digitized, in the early centuries, uh, when what was before money and blah blah, it'll pull all that up and then average it all out and then spit out what you were looking for. You can see it happen. So I know that the podcast is actually getting traffic by businesses searching for how to grow their business, because that's one of the episodes that I did is how can a business grow their business by using, you know, barter as a resource to do that and network resource to do that and network.

Speaker 1:

And speaking of that, ai has also helped me to kind of rephrase, not rephrase, restructure, what? When people ask me what do I do Now, instead of saying oh, we're a trade group, and then they'll inevitably ask me about stocks, I'm like no, I don't know anything about stocks. I wish I did. I did a little bit at one time, but not enough. It's not the business, it's not. I don't trade stocks Now. I trade stocks for business, I'm not trying to get you on my stock exchange or whatever. Or then I will say barter. And then inevitably someone says, oh well, I don't, I need cash, I don't, I need cash, I don't barter, I don't need anything, I'm all set. So then that conversation is now becomes a fight. Not a fight, but like a back and forth to get them off of exchanging goods for their goods. I'm not trying to barter with you like that. You know it's a credit, right. So now AI kind of helped me and this may sound good or bad, I don't know. I kind of like it, but it's uh, what.

Speaker 1:

What metro trade does, or what I do is that I'm a business of business, uh, referral trade trading group, or I think. What does it say? How do I gotta read it again a business, business, uh, trading. No, it's a referral trade exchange or business to business referral trade group, something like that. Anyway, I'm trying to still get off of the whole trade thing and then explain that later because it deters, it throws people off track, right. So unless you know, you know we're their own kind of like secret underground society is kind of what it seems like, cause everyone's like, oh, did you start it? And I'm like, no, it's just been around since 1978. So there's that Um, what else for perplexity?

Speaker 1:

Or AI, I guess I wanted to get into um, oh, yeah, uh, so email follow-ups and then, uh, the what was it? What was the other one? Ai follow-ups. And then the what was the other one? Ai follow-up emails and cold emails. That's what I want to talk about too. So let's just say you don't even have a business card to go after. I do a lot of cold emailing and not a lot anymore because I got flagged for having a spam domain. Once you go after, I've noticed, once you go over a certain amount of emails, or if you copy and paste and send the same thing to like whatever 15 or 20 more addresses right in a row, boom, they start getting Microsoft denied.

Speaker 1:

So I'll do this because I'll go to the ANZ database, not AI, it's through the library, it's free. It's like the old Reference USA you might remember if you've ever used Reference USA. But basically what you do is you go into, in my case, the library, click through the categories that you want. You can do a map-based search and then you can pull up by, like I said, category and distance. So then I can say, hey, looking for dentists, because our members are looking for dentists, right, look for dentists within these counties. Boom, it pulls up. You know 250 dentists, right, look for dentists within these counties. Boom, it pulls up. You know 250 dentists, right? So then I'll go through and make sure that the dentists that are not in our group because that's happened I'm like, oops, sorry, my bad, you know, I was just going through, so make sure they're not in my in. Already that's in that categories.

Speaker 1:

And then I'll just say, you know, I'll put in the prompt into AI, tell the dentist that we have an opening and a need, immediate need for a dentist in our association, and you know, I'm inviting you into our group. It's kind of like the deal. And then but once you do that too many times, you get hit. So now I don't know if you've ever tried this or not and I'd like to know your uh feedback on LinkedIn's uh sales navigator. I tried it, I'm going to sign up for it and see how it goes, but basically, uh, it lets you do 50 emails per month, I think it is, and try it that way, and it narrows down your search.

Speaker 1:

My problem is that I'm one guy and I'm trying to get memberships from basically Bay City, michigan, genesee County, michigan area, all the way down in Toledo, the whole thumb, southeast Michigan, and then even now I'm accidentally kind of getting people in Indiana signing up as well. So that's a huge territory, it's a huge swath and it's not even I don't want to say it's a territory, it's just like what we are right we got. Toledo is real big with Metro Trading Association. So Toledo, ohio, metro Detroit and then Genesee County, those are like the three hubs, but those are huge. Like I didn't know, metro Detroit went all the way over to Brighton, like up until a couple years ago I think it was. So it's a massive, massive area, which is why with competition, I mean there's not much competition with what I do, but around here in Metro Detroit when you drive, it's just business after business after business. It's absolutely incredible how much businesses are out here on the roads. You know. That's why trading associations are really only in metropolitan areas. I think there's a couple here and there across the country that are more.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if they're small town, but the whole deal is to get help people buy locally, right, because you're using a local currency and it helps reciprocate business within the local economy is what it's all about. But I sure can't drive all the way up to Flint every two or three days, all the way down to Toledo every two or three days Detroit every two or three days, right? So LinkedIn Navigator is supposed to help narrow that down so I can just do it by geographical area or county and then I can send the emails out that way, you know. And the other problem is is like, really it's hard to even do an in-person meetup, right? Uh, if they're up in saginaw it's an hour and 45 minutes one way. So most of my signups are through email. They'll sign up online or I'll do it over the phone. Anyway, all I'm getting at is that when you're doing the AI LinkedIn, you know you're gonna lineable. I'm trying to lineable, but that's kind of fizzled out for me a little bit, anyway, so that's it pretty much in a nutshell, as I wanted to get into that and what else we got here Alignable LinkedIn and AI. Yeah, that's good enough. I'll call it good for the day. Anyway. Oh, you know what? Real quick, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Let me know your opinions on selling gold right now. I don't know, let me know your opinions on selling gold right now. Gold has gone crazy. The market's like I think it's at $33,000, $33,000 right now it's over $3,000. I have some old gold that I'm probably just going to get rid of here. That's why I'm actually waiting for the store to open up and see what they'll offer me for the gold gold, because I don't wear it and it's just kind of like laying around and if it's worth anything, I'd rather have it get sold rather than whatever it gets lost or, you know, it just sits there. So let me know your idea on that.

Speaker 1:

If you guys are out there going to be selling gold or how you're dealing with what's going on in the economy, with the trade wars and that's it are, is the trade wars affecting you? That's the other thing too. Have you noticed any difference? Because I have not. I know they're saying that shelves are going to be empty here in a little bit and they're saying, probably delayed, until June, july. But as of right now, in the services industries, which is what I generally work with, I don't really see a big difference in anything right now. Maybe you have, maybe you're affected. All I see is people on the internet talking about it. But to be fair, I think a lot of the internet stuff is just, like you know, propaganda, right. So they're just like paid to say that times are bad or whatever. But as for me in Metro Detroit. I don't really know what's the difference. So all right, that's it. Whatever you do, be good or be good at it.