Paying Job Boards Or Letting AI Do It

We’re trying to hire outside sales reps across Southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio, and the “nobody wants to work” problem hits different when you’re the one posting the job. We lay out what cold calling looks like right now, why job boards feel like pay-to-play, and why we’re testing AI agents to keep MetroTrade growing for our members. 
• why we’re hiring and why we can’t cover every city ourselves 
• what MetroTrade feels like for members and why local relationships matter in B2B barter 
• why cold calling burns out fast and why “email me” becomes the new default 
• how we broke the territory into seven districts and why reps need to live locally 
• why overseas and out-of-state applicants do not work for outside sales coverage 
• what we learned about the legal and practical limits of internships 
• the real monthly cost of sponsored job ads on major platforms 
• the math on W-2 salaries plus overhead versus 1099 commission roles 
• why an AI sales agent helps with scraping, lists, and fourth follow-ups 
• how we want to integrate AI with our CRM to track touches and avoid duplicates 
Maybe let me know, you know, comments or whatever, write in. 
What do y’all do out there? Be good or be good at it. 

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Transcript

Welcome, Sponsors, And Giveaways

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Trading Post Podcast, where we unlock the secrets of business-to-business trade, dive into powerful networking strategies, and share my exciting journey of using a podcast to market my business instead of relying on SEO. I'm your host, Trader Stew. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the trading post. Of course, I'm your host, TraderStew. And to get right into it, real quick, actually, real quick, thank you for the uh Renaissance Festival for sponsoring the show again this year. I got more tickets coming to me this year, y'all, so stay tuned for the giveaways. I haven't got them in the mail yet, but they are coming. So yeah, thank you again. And Metro Trading Association, of course, for the time. I'm on, you know, the hour right now. No, I'm not. I'm actually, it's uh an hour before I get started. I always do that. I always try and come in an hour early once a week and do a recording. But either way, thanks for Metro Trading. Of course, I am the sales and marketing manager for MetroTrade. So, and then yeah, so let's get right into it because I am hiring and I I am now understanding what all of my I call them my business owners, but all the members that are in MetroTrade, and there's over a thousand of them. And you know, we talk a lot the phone and email and texting. They have my personal cell phone. Like we're a we're like a family, right? So it's like think of think of it as a if you haven't been a part of a bar B2B barter yet, it's kind of like a chamber of commerce, maybe, or B and I, I always call it, but without the meetings. So it's like the big if you're living in a big city, like a big city feel or appeal with a small town feel, you know, that's kind of how I always say it too, because you get to know everybody. And I miss the days when I was I grew up in Frankemouth, and you know, all the shop owners knew you, the business owners knew you because you went to school with their kids, or they knew my grandpa because he owned, you know, Satos, things like that. But I you so you get that feeling. Anyway, I'm hiring, and I thought I could handle it all, you know, and I'm quite frankly, just can't be everywhere all at one time from Flint down to Toledo at five bucks a gallon, or whatever it is right now, you know, just

Why I Need To Hire

SPEAKER_00 2:20

to get into work and back. It's I think it's seven bucks, yeah, figured round trip or something like that. But and that's just to working back, and I'm close, you know, it's 19 miles one way. So let alone running around pounding the pavement, driving to Flint and Toledo and all that stuff. So, and all the way to the thumb. Anyway, so I was like, Well, my members are kind of getting impatient because I'm bringing a lot of folks in here in Metro Detroit because it's where I live, and it's just there's tens of thousands of businesses here. I mean, you can throw them out at the wall and invite 40 people in, and you know, several are gonna want to be members. I mean, it's just it's a no-brainer. So it's hard for me to venture out and leave. And I've tried calling and cold calling, and it's just a huge time suck. And you know, if you ever had to hit the phones and cold call, it's not sustainable, not for anybody with, you know, it's I don't know how people do it for a living, how long the burnout is. I'm pretty sure it's fast, but it's not something you can do a career on, you know, and I've been doing it for a while, and I think a lot longer than most would. And I'm just done, I'm burned out. So now, and besides that, business owners are too busy to come to the phone right now. They're wearing, you know, all the different hats, how we say it. You know, they're they're the bookkeeper, they're the owner, they're the CEO, CFO, COO, the teller, the barista, you know, if they're a coffee shop, the Panini maker, running the drive-thru, running the running the till, doing customer service, manager work. They don't got time to talk to me over the phone. And I know that. So email really has been the best way. They always just say email me, you know, and a lot of times they get back with me, you know, so it works. And but I I saw I figured I need to hire in seven districts. And I used, of course, my AI program to help me break down the state of Michigan or Southeast Michigan and Ohio into seven reasonable areas with enough businesses to keep one or two reps on, you know, per at a time. So I know there's a revolving doorage sales. So, you know, Flint's one, uh Detroit North is one, Detroit South is another, and then you got Brighton, and then say East Port Huron or whatever, right? And then St. Clair Air Shores, and then you got Toledo and maybe Perrysburg, whatever. So there's seven reps, right? So, and I and you could figure seven, maybe even times two, 14. I need reps in those areas to make any kind of reasonable impact, right? So, and we're a small business, so I was like, Well, they're I got clear, I got the all clear from the business owner to try doing a 1099 outside sales rep situation. And now I know what people mean when nobody wants to work. All my business owners tell me they don't nobody wants to work, dude. Nobody shows up. And if they do show up for an interview, I don't get a call back. And if they come in for the interview and they get a call back, and they come in or they're said you know, ready for their first day of work, they don't come in for the first day of work to do paperwork, dude. So I'm like, really? So I'm now I get it, I'm doing it and I'm in it. So I've had, and by the way, oh, I don't want to digress too much. I'm kind of all over the board right now, but so I've had the job out, I think, for two weeks, and I've got you know what it is? I've got a ton of people that live in other areas that wanna that wanna do it, that want to be a member, you know, a 1099 employee. However, what I found out was is nobody lives in the areas that want to work the areas, and I know it doesn't work. You have to live in the city of which you sell, it's just easier. You know the businesses, you know what's going on, you know the lingo, you can talk more shop, you know, you get the flyers and the

Cold Calling Burnout And Email Wins

SPEAKER_00 6:10

mail, the advertisements, the pamphlets to call and invite those business owners to be a member. So people that are wanting to be an employee are in Bangladesh, per like Pakistan, uh, where else? I forgot what the other one was. There's uh they're all over the place. Or, you know, they live in California or Chicago or New York or whatever. And I'm like, I'm sorry, you just you have to live in the town that you sell because the cold-calling thing, this isn't this doesn't work. And I've been doing it, I'm really good at it, and I understand trade better than most people or anybody, probably even in the industry. And I can talk to business, talk to lingo, I can summarize things, I can modify how to talk to folks depending on what industry or business that they're in. So I know, like a you know, say a college student won't be able to do that, and I understand that. There's just no way I've been in it since 2013, right? So, and that's the thing. I thought I was gonna be able to hire interns, and I'm getting a ton of college folks that want to intern. And I'm like, cool, we can do that. So I looked it up, and legally I can't do that because you're supposed to shadow people or they shadow you. You're supposed to give them like a, I don't know, like a document, like a thing to follow, like a lesson plan almost for interns. I didn't know it was that in depth. I just thought that they filled envelopes, you know, like the horror stories you hear. But no, it's much more involved than that. So legally, I can't say I can't hire interns. So that went my pool, we just went away. And what's sad is that I guess it'd be a paid internship, but the colleges are not only expensive nowadays, you can't work yourself through it. Now they make you want to intern or have required interning to where I can't they have to work for free or low pay. I think minimum wage is the is what Michigan is or whatever, but and they gotta be W2 employee, so it just doesn't work. I'm like, well, how about this? I do the outside sales rep 1089, and they get you know all the commissions, right? And I've had two people call me back. One is losing his job doing warehouse management. I don't know what's happening. He says it's getting downsized. Another one is

Mapping Seven Sales Territories

SPEAKER_00 8:35

a girl in Toledo that wants to be an intern and she might hybrid it this job with something else because the benefit of this job to a young person is they get all the business cards. You're gonna go around and talk to every business owner in town or whatever. And if you're in business, entrepreneurship, whatever, after college, you have you're gonna, by the end of the summer, you're gonna have a wad of business cards that you're gonna have in your hip pocket that you could call on, you know, and then use that for like, hey, I was in your shop, you know, whatever last summer, blah, blah, blah. This one I'm doing now, et cetera. And I know that works because I did it for this job. I was with ADT Security Small Business Department, and when I hired into this job, I had the ground floor running and I signed up all kinds of people in Flint because they already all knew me, already had the relationships built, you know. So it's the same thing, but I don't know if so. I was watching YouTube's about this problem I have where nobody wants to work economy. And I just really don't think it should apply to this position because I'm open about it. You know, this is like maybe not a career, this is a stepping stone. This is something to maybe add on or put on your a rider to what if you're already selling a business to business product. And maybe you sign up your own company, and if the person can't afford your product on cash, perhaps you guys can do a trade for it and then use it through mental trade because not everyone can trade you know swap seeds one for one, right? So that's why in a industries like ours exist for that. And here's the other problem that I'm having issues with that I'm struggling. I'd rather hire folks. I really wanted, I had back in the day in 2014, 15 era, 16, maybe it was. I think I don't know. I think 15, I ended up having to leave. But I had a great sales team, man. I had seven, I think it was I counted seven reps back then, and it was it was awesome. We had fun, like I rode with the folks, you know, or they rode with me. Monday morning meetings were you know, music, and we had you know fruit and donuts and coffee, and it was fun. And if you can't you I still have relationships with those folks that you know were under me. So I I wanted that again. That was a good commodity thing, and it's just I don't know if it's just COVID changed it all in 2020, but it things are different now, and and not only that, I honestly don't remember how we found those reps before because I don't think we paid for job ads back then. It seems weird to me that we're in a time when people are ranting on YouTube that they're broke, they can't afford groceries, they can't afford gas in their car, they can't afford this and that, right? And then I there's a job offers out there, and I have it on all the free sites. I have it on every free site I could possibly think of. And I've gotten two, I got my third resume over the weekend, and of people that actually are you know that can work in the areas of which they're in. And uh it's not like I'm asking for a lot, I'm just not I'm not just asking for one town or one city, I'm asking for Southeast Michigan, Northwest Ohio.

Remote Applicants Do Not Fit

SPEAKER_00 12:00

So it's not like, oh, it's impossible, but it's expensive to post jobs nowadays if you want any kind of maybe real traffic, and even then, I don't know what the traffic increase will be like. And it and maybe let me know, you know, comments or whatever, right in. But how that works for you. I haven't posted on no, even Craigslist, you got to pay $35 per city per month, right? Indeed, I have it on there, but it doesn't get any you know uh traffic unless you pay for it, and those are five bucks a day. So let's just say $150 a month for indeed. If you want to like it's kind of say sponsor it, LinkedIn. Yep, I'm on LinkedIn. I have my banner on my face, whatever that says I'm hiring. I did the job ad, but they want you to sponsor it seven to ten dollars a day. And then what else? Zip recruiter. I thought that was free. It is for seven days as a trial, and then it's thirty dollars, I think it is, a day. Uh oh, this says 16 to 24 a day. So figure 300 to $720 per month per job. Okay, it's and I think that's per city to narrow it down. You got monster bundles are 300 to 450 a month. Career builder, 400 plus a month, Facebook and meta jobs. Uh, I haven't done that one yet, but I guess there's a I haven't tried that one. Is that no? This is not free. This says 10 to 75 per month, it looks like I think. And then there's niche specific, it says, but and by niche, I was trying to do like hire a veteran. What else is there? Oh, the spouse uh veteran spouse jobs, hire a vet, career, not career builder. Uh, what's the other one? Vetjobs.com, I think it is. Anyway, because I'm a veteran, and I thought this would be a good job for vets because it worked out really good for me. And you know, where we I mean, we're talking hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month to post a job to sponsor it, to get traffic, maybe, and that's not even a promise for more applicants. And those are just applicants, you know. And I even tried, I did Michigan Works, that's free. I'm still waiting for the two, I guess they're I don't know, subsidiaries, is that what you call it, or the accessory departments

Why Interns Are Not Simple

SPEAKER_00 14:35

that for like one, there's one I think for vets, and there's the other one for disabled Americans, ADA or whatever it is. So because uh you could be, I mean, you don't gotta be able to walk walk or whatever. You don't have you don't have to see, you can you don't have to hear. I mean, if you're I don't know, you know, you can do prospecting in so many different ways that I would love to hire, you know, if I could, the anybody with a disability, and why not? And uh we had an appointment setter that I think he had autism or something like that, and he was awesome. I mean, he was just cranking the phones. This is 10 years ago, but and I still talk to him, you know, and great, great guy. And and he hyper focused in on it, man. And on cold calling, he was good. He was a part of appointment setter, best we ever had. And anyway, but anyway, so what do I do? Okay, and so not only that, so I know you're saying the comments are gonna come in, I guess, whatever, eh? But why don't you just hire a W-2 employee, pay somebody a salary? Okay, yeah. Let's do the math on that one real quick. Let's just say a rep is I think back in the day we're hiring at 30 grand salary plus commission, and it's probably more now. I don't know what it is, what it would be right now because I'm sales marketing manager, so I'm a different deal. But even if you did just stay at 30 times seven, that's uh seven for 210 a year plus commissions, plus you know, 401k match, plus insurance, plus you know, all the stuff, right? It's very expensive to hire folks. Or for 50 bucks a month, I can get an AI agent to do all my outbound prospecting for me and maybe make the phones ring, or send me emails back, or have it do like kind of like a sales funnel where it, you know, you can just apply online, which we have that availability. Anyways, but it's you know, people might not know about it, so you just take them to the applicant apply online thing. So that's that's kind of where I'm headed. I'm actually beta testing uh trial right now to see how well it does for me, where it just sends out emails that I went through and thought that looked good with my AI agent. And I don't know. If that works, then that'll be it. That is the way. I don't I'd really like to have some folks on board though to talk to. And but if that doesn't happen, then you know, unfortunately, you're gonna have to be another person that's an AI, you know, not replacing employees with AI because I'm trying, I'm trying to hire. But it

The Real Cost Of Job Ads

SPEAKER_00 17:25

if you're not applying, then what do you what's one to do? I have to have I have to satisfy my members that want other members to trade with. So if this is the post 2020 era economy, then I think that either you're gonna be an adopter or an adopter or a slight or I guess adapter of AI, and you're gonna be behind it, controlling it and steering it, hopefully long enough to where it can kind of make you some money before it bucks you off, or you're just gonna be in a in it and be done and get laid off immediately, and you're just done until you adapt for something else. But you know, I really thought that this job would be good for the gig economy, and because everyone's like the gig economy is dying, you know. You if you're an Uber driver, or I see I always thought that people would do in DoorDash or Uber Eats or what's the other ones? Doesn't matter, you know what I'm saying? You're in and out of restaurants all day. So talk to the you'd probably get a rapport, I would think, with the employees or the manager or the owner, and so you could talk to them about signing up for Metro Trade and collect a few hundred bucks too on commish, right? So I just kind of think I'm not giving up, but I'm also not paying for it. I just remember the days back in the day when you just hung hung there's a a now hiring sign in the shop window and they flipped it around and now hiring or apply now or whatever. And you walked in, you talked to the owner, you shook hands, handed them a resume. You even then, by not, you just did a job application, and that was it. And you're hired, you know, those days are gone, man. And it's sad. I wish they come back. Maybe they will. Maybe we'll all get burned out with AI, I guess. But as for right now, I gotta adapt and adopt and use it. I already use it every day, all day to, you know, do different emailings to write for me, even give me show notes for this here podcast, you know, bullet points. I mean, still talking my own language, but at least I have somewhere to go, you know, different segments and things of that nature. But I'd like to start playing with the AI programs, and I'm I'm having one of our programmer that does our CRM to see if I can integrate our an AI agent into our CRM to update it, you know, where they'll say,

W2 Math Versus 1099 Reality

SPEAKER_00 20:05

like, emailed this person and then on this day, and then that way it doesn't replicate it and keep sending emails to the same business. I don't know. That's I don't I don't mean rant. I guess it became a rant, but it's more of like I wanted to give you an idea of what it's coming from from somebody that's trying to hire. You you don't hear this side of it very often. All you hear is the ranting on the other side of it, uh, maybe on YouTube or whatever, maybe even podcasts, but you know, they say almost in third person, too. You got a a YouTuber who's just like the talking head, which I kind of hate those. Well, they just have their face in the like the lower right-hand corner and they just play somebody else's video, and then they collect the commissions on that. I just I I think they're just I don't know. They use your popularity to generate money off of somebody else's videos. And I I get it, I'm all for you know, the open market and uh things like that. But anyway, and they then they I don't mind it if they give their two cents, then they play a clip and then they talk about it. But you know, and the ones that do are like kind of the same thing, you know, the gig economy is gone or it's too expensive, or they made six bucks an hour driving before they even subtracted their cost for gas and wear and tear on the vehicle or whatever, right? So in the end, you know, and I know that AI isn't gonna close the deal for me. I wish it would, but it will do what a lot of salespeople hate doing, and that's scraping data. You build lists, you send that third and fourth follow up, which usually, by the way, never gets done. I figure out what the stat is, but most you know, follow ups never get past the second one, maybe the third. And I think they said 47%. Or whatever the sales happen after the fourth follow-up. And that could be a phone call, an email, text, right? Or whatever. And a voice or whatever. So I guess

Betting On AI Prospecting And CRM

SPEAKER_00 22:10

I'll just step in and do all that grunt work for them and become seven different salespeople or 14 and in all the different territories, the seven districts, and go from there and see what happens. Why not? I got nothing to lose, but you know, very little time, really. Once you program the AI agent, it goes off from there. And what's amazing is I use uh perplexity. So my AI agent is actually programming other AI systems because it knows me, it knows what what I do, knows what trade is. So I have it is plug in to the other AI agents' forms, and now you got it's amazing. I mean, it's scary, but amazing. I love it. I'm like, I'm into it. And if you if any kind of corporation is hearing this, yeah, I can be bought out. I don't mind saying it. Yep, you can pay me off, and I will, you know, talk for you, I guess. But that's not gonna happen. I'm not nearly a big enough channel, so don't worry about that. It's not gonna happen. But obviously, I was military, so I can be bought out anyway. But yeah, that's it. I just wanted to kind of give my two cents on my view or effort I'm trying to hire and how hard it's going and how easy AI is going for me. So that's it. What do y'all do out there? Be good or be good at it.