Kenneth Lo
With score, you can go into the website, and it's nationwide, and you know, you could find mentor within your geographic area, or you can go, hey, I want to go to New York City because I want to talk about capital raising or something like that. So it's nationwide, and you can find expertise. If
Evan Palmer
Thanks for tuning in today, and please welcome my guest, Kenneth Lo How are you doing?
Kenneth Lo
Hi, Evan, how are you?
Evan Palmer
Kenneth Lo is the co founder of Zenbiz. He's an AI strategist, data analyst, Digital Marketer, and a mentor with score, and that's what really was bringing us together today. So again, thanks for jumping on. Score is an acronym for service corps of Retired Executives. So Kenneth, you're not retired, but probably the name is, has a little bit of a legacy element to it at this point, as it was founded in 1964 a non profit, as a help to businesses and entrepreneurs. So Kenneth, tell me about your involvement with score. How'd you get started with that.
Kenneth Lo
It started out about four or five years ago, in the thick of the pandemic, I was working at a private equity firm in financial district, very close to chance pyramid in San Francisco, and I was still commuting because I love my wife to death, but I just couldn't handle all of the quality time together in our home. So I insisted on doing the commute, and I was very much to the only person in the office. It was like 10,000 20,000 square feet. And then I just stumbled across this ad on volunteer match.org go to one of those websites, and I signed up for it. The idea was to help the local, small, medium sized businesses that, as you could imagine, everyone was hurting. Oh yeah, my favorite restaurant, very close to North Beach in Chinatown, I would just go check up on them, and, you know, they were just dropping like flies. And then that's when I decided I want to help as much as I could. I was running the back office at a private equity firm, so I knew little something about like digital marketing, CRM and things like that. So I would like to kind of bring in my expertise and to help whoever wanted to raise their hands,
Evan Palmer
Gosh. You know when you were talking about the pandemic in San Francisco, I had this image pop into my head. There were coyotes in the park in North Beach, and it was, I remember seeing footage of them. I was like, Wow, just because there's no, no people around anymore, right? So the animals started moving in. Wow. What a time that was. And, yeah, it was time where a lot of people were kind of re evaluating what they were doing. I was in that camp as well, deciding what basket did I want to throw the eggs in. So, so you were coming over from you said private equity firm.
Kenneth Lo
It was a private equity that focused on early stage venture funds. So it was a fund of funds, so they have long standing relationships, allocation in all these like venture firms, which, even if you have the powder, you can just, like, knock on the door, ring the doorbell, and say, Hey, I have a check for you. It doesn't quite work like that. And so I got a chance to get into that industry. Little opaque. It's funny, my ex co worker's cousin or something, was studying an MBA in Ivy League school, and they were using this textbook about capital investment. And in the textbook, they talk about that fund of funds, private equity firm. There's not a huge industry. It's very opaque. So there's not like something you learned from a school or something. So I had a really good opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the back office from a private equity firm. Wow, that's cool.
Evan Palmer
And clicking over to score, I really wanted to have someone like yourself to come on and speak about the services that score offers, because the folks listening, probably a lot of them, are in a position to utilize those services. What does score have to offer the new business or small business?
Kenneth Lo
It's like a whole spectrum when you go. To the website is really comprehensive. You got resource guides, cheat sheets, BMC, business model, Canvas, links, numbers to call. But I think the most helpful is to find some hands on guidance. And if you have the resources, you can go up Co Op, McKinsey and Bing and Boston Consulting. I work for some of those firms, and they say, Hey, you know, I got a retainer. I would like to retain you to help us with some white glove surfaces and maybe implementation, if you if you have a big budget, but with score, you can go into the website, and it's nationwide, and you know, you could find mentors within your geographic area. Or you can go, hey, I want to go to New York City because I want to talk about capital raising or something like that. So it's nationwide, and you can find expertise. For example, I'm looking for some AI boosted digital marketing help. You know there will be a handful of mentors that have listed in their CRM into the mentoring profile, and then you can see their bio, you can see what kind of companies they have evolved with, and then you can just book an appointment. I think that is the best kept secret,
Evan Palmer
yeah. And so just to reiterate what you said, SCORE is nationwide. It is we're both here in the San Francisco Bay area, but score is nationwide. And you can find that website at SCORE.org, that's where that lives.
Evan Palmer
So talking about mentorship, how involved would a mentor get with an entrepreneur? It's a very
Kenneth Lo
good question. Evan, so as involved as the entrepreneur is willing to go, okay, but there's one thing. There's as a principle, we don't do the implementation. We are mentors, right? We don't do the things for you. We'll give you homework, we'll give you people to call, we'll give you websites to do, cheat sheets to fill out, but you can say, oh, mentor, could you please help me build this website? Right? That's what we don't do. I think there's the biggest distinguisher. We're not consultants, fair enough.
Evan Palmer
Yeah, that's still such a great resource to take advantage of everyone. Do you ever get into or do mentors with score ever get into having ideas bounced off them, where you have somebody contact score and say, I've got this idea. I'm, you know, halfway through a business plan? Can I get some input?
Kenneth Lo
Absolutely, that is the bread and butter. But to go one step beyond, I guess below and beyond, there are times you have to go beyond and say, okay, good, you have done 27% of the work, and you might get a little stuck. So the mentors most likely have some prior experience. Many of them were either executives from bigger corporations or they own businesses. They exited and they are either financially independent or they are just happily retired, one of those situations, and so they got a lot of real world experience. And for example, if you specifically look for retail, like a consumer goods retail, you know, it's very niche. You need the subject matter expertise, and these people have done it. But better yet, they have a Rolodex, yes. And if you get this good bonding with the mentors, you know, I haven't seen any mentor to say, No, I'm not going to share my Rolex with you. And it's also, there's a little network of us, because I don't know nothing about CPA or book online or anything accounting related gap. I think it's the gap. I just jump over it, right? Yep, but there are people who do that for a living. As a matter of fact, there's a good friend of mine who used to be a content for the IRS. So,
Evan Palmer
yeah, I would imagine that you have a lot of access to information, right? Someone in your position,
Kenneth Lo
it is so wonderful. And, you know, it's, it's funny, it sounds like we're just giving and giving and giving, but the mentors ourselves are learning, like, new things. Like, you know, we get blind spots. Like, yeah, I'm in one industry, doing one things. I may not be aware what's happening, maybe in some corners or different sides of the country, or whatever it might be. You know, there's a lot of things. It's really like a
Kenneth Lo
mutual discovery for all of us.
Evan Palmer
Yeah, that makes, that makes sense. I mean, I learned something every time I talk to somebody on on this podcast. So probably magnified because you you go into so much more depth with people. Yeah? Yeah, that's amazing, yeah.
Kenneth Lo
And the relationship too, is ongoing. It it goes for as long as the mentees are willing to go.
Evan Palmer
Now, is there a cost involved, or is this all free?
Kenneth Lo
Yes, that is a cost. Okay, is your time and your investment? Is your commitment? That's the only thing we ask of okay, but otherwise, there's no financial exchange of any kind. That's amazing. We are a SBA subsidiary, so we get some government funding, but a lot of is running from the nonprofit. So we get funding from the headquarter out of Virginia, I think Northern Virginia, and we also have different revenue models too. Like we have workshops, we have annual galas, we have different fundraising events. We've got corporate sponsorships. Those are the main ways to get the revenue, but like in terms of serving the community, the cost is really the emotional and the sweat equity
Evan Palmer
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Evan Palmer
fill in the blank.
Kenneth Lo
Right now is exciting time, because we have this big nationwide initiative, but the back end is a Salesforce database, all for the mentors have our own profiles, and then you got some drop down. And then there's also a free text area where you can put in your expertise. So there is some qualitative and quantitative data in there. Now, in terms of the website, it gets improved quite often. Think last time I checked, is a free text box you put in the keyword, which is, you know, if, in terms of, again, consumer goods or retail, or AI, or whatever it is, it is a pretty good match, because the back end is a Salesforce database, okay,
Evan Palmer
all right, yeah, that's some great information about an organization that is here to serve us all, which is fantastic. And we had talked previously, and after finding that out, I found out a little bit about you, and you've got a fantastic story, because you started, you were just talking about working in private equity and such and and then you became the co founder of zenbiz. What was that transition like? Yes,
Kenneth Lo
it's funny. So I cut my teeth in Big Four consulting. So when I make fun of them, it's because I came from that era, that mentality. And then I was realizing also the frameworks that I was using to scale large corporations, billion dollar financial companies, could also be adapted for entrepreneur.
Evan Palmer
Okay, it can be scaled, scale down. Really, forever, optimal. There we go. There we go, nice, temporarily scaled
Kenneth Lo
on, just so that you can rank
Evan Palmer
great when you say big four, what does that refer to?
Kenneth Lo
So used to be big six or Big Eight or whatever. And then there was a lot of regulations happening. So the Arthur Andersen became Accenture, PwC, Pricewaterhouse. It used to be Pricewaterhouse. Cooper. So anyway, so there were a number of them. Right as I became more of age, the numbers changing. So the big four is like. Bearing point or KPMG, Accenture, Arthur Andersen, Pricewaterhouse and Deloitte, so I that was my first job out of college.
Evan Palmer
Yeah. So the big
Kenneth Lo
guys, the big guy, yes. And so what inspired you to jump from that into founding a company of your own? Well, because being in San Francisco, you go to a blue bottle, you go to a any fields coffee, or you go to any anywhere, you know, you can help over here, you know, some ideas, some pitching, some kind of fundraising, some kind of, some kind of events going on around you, right? So it's all around us. It's very fascinating. And I get to become friends with many of them. You know, we kind of in the ecosystem, yeah, and most of them, whether they're successful or not, they are buried in a chaos of their own business. And I think I have something to offer. And this also coincide with what the birth of chat GPT three five. Now it's been around for a while. AI has been around for decades, if not centuries, but when it became accessible was chat GPT three five, which was about two years ago. Wow. So I was using that to help with my day to day at the private equity firm, I was doing a lot of massage data analytics, and it was really manual, you know, a lot of like Excel, once you get past a number of roads, it just crash on you without any kind of warning, and then you lose all of your good work. And not that chat. GPT could change all of that, but it was the brainstorming. It was the strategizing that you could get out of it and say, What if I don't want to use Excel, then it would list out, oh, you could use Python, you could use BigQuery, you can use a bunch of stuff, and half of them were bad suggestions because they are theoretical, especially in the early days. Just to be fair, now we're like, two or three years into this. This is a lot more mature now. So I saw the power of it, and the last movement, it was the.com I was too young. I was still, like, running around like a pimple face kid. I wasn't able to capitalize on that. So I wanted to not only help my people, I also want to help myself. So I took this plunge head
Evan Palmer
first. Okay? And you definitely have a specialty for digital marketing as well. So I imagine that you got heavily into that, because I, you know, I've been to the Zen biz site, and it seems like that's a big part
Evan Palmer
of the business. Is that true?
Kenneth Lo
It is true. And it's funny, because I was running this back office. I was specializing in doing CRM and ELP and data massage and data analytics. And so I thought I would just waltz into any VC and say, Hey, hello. I have this to offer you. Let's do business. Well, it didn't quite materialize. Evan, it didn't quite turn out like that. And there was a lot of things that just call the funnel, the tofu, the top of the funnel, the mofo, the middle of the funnel, the bottom of the funnel, the Bofu. I say, what vegetarian? I like my steak. So what does that mean? That means I have to kind of get into it, right? You know, I have to do this business development myself. And it was like, I have some people, my team to support me. But it was a lot of it is up to you. So I started doing that. Got deep into marketing, the whole marketing funnel.
Evan Palmer
And so where does AI marry up with small business? Where can like, since you're deep into this, you're the perfect person to ask, yeah, if I'm starting out in the business, I've got my core discipline, okay, whatever that product or services that I'm providing, and that's kind of the love of my life to do whatever that is for me. Okay? And then you've got all of the other things, all of the other distractions that a business is great for. When you are looking at a business and a business owner, how would you recommend that they utilize AI so that it can help them with stuff they don't know without getting the way of stuff they do know? Let
Kenneth Lo
me spin it just a tiny bit. So imagine you are slightly bigger now. You got more resources. You can hire some help, one consultant, you kind of have an idea, you know that your tofu is kind of weak tofu, meaning top of the funnel, meaning the lead generations is a bottleneck. Assume you know that much to ask that question, yeah. And now you know where to find this. Consultant that is reasonably priced, that knows your business, that can help you assuming those things already in place. Okay, we're gonna go back and challenge those assumptions. I love it.
Evan Palmer
Great. I like where this is going. Yeah, yeah, because you're talking about what is critical for every business, which is really awareness. Yes, you know you've got your thing, but now you got to let the world know you're there. Yes, and that's, that's top of the funnel, as we say in marketing, yes, please go on. This is great.
Kenneth Lo
So assuming those things are in place, you have really good health tailwind, and you feel blessed, and you're going you find your good consultant, you have this meeting in a coffee shop or whatever, right? And you're like, hey, my lead generation is hurting. I'm not able to bring in enough leads. And then, you know, the person is going to ask, okay, what is the conversion ratio and all that stuff. And then you get that blank look, is, it is like, what's tofu? What was that? I'm a vegetarian. No, no, no. We go into that kind of back and forth a little bit, right? And a half an hour in, and the clock is ticking, by the way, because they get paid by the hour, you finally get to the good stuff. You're finally starting to attack the pain points. Maybe there's no awareness. What? How do people find you? Are you going out on LinkedIn, doing events? Are you going on podcasts talking about your business. Are you going to score to find a marketing expert to help you? Right now, you're getting into the good stuff. Then some strategies will be formulated, and some advice is better than the other, right? So some trial and error, you finally find a winning strategy, and what do you have to do front work this time the roll over sleeves and do implement, measure and iterate. So I would say this is the norm. That is a paradigm, probably since, you know, the past 20 years, pretty common. But what if you can just have your own boardroom. I'm talking about your CFO, your COO, your CRO Chief Revenue Officer, your CMO, your chief marketing officer, and whatever you can dream of all in one room, and you can just talk or chat and ask them, what if scenario questions.
Kenneth Lo
Can have this meeting 24/7 365,
Kenneth Lo
unless open AI is having an issue like the past two days.
Kenneth Lo
So you have access to this kind of knowledge at your fingertips around the clock anywhere between zero to 200 bucks a month. Wow. So that is the life changing part of this thing that is
Evan Palmer
so amazing, and what a great visualization of what AI can do and how to put it to work in a very important role for you right away. So I am familiar with chat, GPT, what other AI tools are out there, and how do they compare to each other? I'm going to ask for your opinion on this. So do you have some favorites for the entrepreneur? Yes. So
Kenneth Lo
there's a saying I think it came from the photography world that the best camera is not the fanciest one, it's the one you have in your back pocket. What does that mean? Well, there are so many large language models, right? Let's name some famous one. Open AI has chat. GPT on topic has called Google has German eye, plus some other ones, deep sea, I'm sure you've heard of that one. You know, the past couple of months has been rocking the world in the list goes on right, but I think that one day open, AI will release something that's class leading tomorrow on tropic is going to release something just as good. So I think they're almost right up there now. So don't over analyze if, for example, I think Comcast or XFINITY, whatever the name is. I think they were giving away perplexity plus, which is like 10 bucks, 15 bucks a month for free for one year. I think that happened, uh, beginning of this year. And so I hopped on it because I'm a, I'm a XFINITY customer, so I use that, and I also use Google workspace for my productivity. So all the Gmail, Google Drive and all of that. So I came to Gemini, but I've been using GPT since pretty much the first day they started charging. So I've been sponsoring them for 20 bucks a month,
Evan Palmer
doing your part to advance the technology.
Evan Palmer
Speaking of that, I mean, is there a big difference? Is there like a noticeable difference? Between a free version, which I use, and the paid version. So
Kenneth Lo
the limitations come in a couple ways. They have different language models. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna make fun of open AI. They have terrible names, terrible they started recently released 4.1 but there was after 4.5 and 4.5 you can only use using API. But anyway, it's insane. It's worse than naming iPhone. IPhones are not very creative, but you get the point. So the more advanced models usually have what reasoning they will think about it before they respond. So there is this thing is more technical. It's called Zero shot. Basically you ask a question, it knows how to respond right away. It's basically retrieving the index every content that has indexed, so called training data and then just giving you basically a search. But the more advanced models, and the most famous one is made by deep seek, right the past couple of months, is like it can reason. It can think about this is actually what Evan is asking me I should be thinking about. Evan is a marketer, loves music, lives in, you know, North Bay, think about all that stuff before opening his mouth. And
Evan Palmer
that's what the paid versions tend to offer, that the free versions don't a little bit more advanced
Evan Palmer
reasoning, more
Kenneth Lo
advanced, more quickly, more closer to the release, and as also, they throttle you, for example, the lower model or the free model, you might be able to use the reasoning model just for like, five or 10 or 20 prompts, and it becomes really good as you're getting into the rabbit hole. As you get in the rim of the rabbit hole. I'm sorry you cut off.
Kenneth Lo
They're doing this premium model extremely well, my friend, yes,
Evan Palmer
yes, as they should.
Evan Palmer
Kenneth, if, if people want to get a hold of you and talk to you about zenbiz, how do they get a hold of you?
Speaker 1
Kennethlo.me, is going to take you to my bio page, and you can see all my social feeds. You can see my my funny stories, backstory, some some pictures there. And then you can also see my business.
Kenneth Lo
We
Evan Palmer
have so much more to talk about. We're out of time for this episode, though, but Kenneth, thank you so much for introducing us to [email protected] and we'll put all of these links in the show notes, as usual, and Kenneth can't thank you enough. I look forward to the next time we talk.
Kenneth Lo
I thank you so much. This has been really fun. Evan,
Evan Palmer
all right, that's it for the show. Thanks so much for being here and listen. Life is calling you. Get out and live it, and most importantly, believe in yourself. See you soon. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
