Please do me a favor. Of course, your name is
easy. However, people might just be listening.
Tell me your first, your last name, the name
of your business and where you're located. Absolutely,
Javonca. Thank you so much for having me today.
My name is Ken Cox. I am the founder of InLink
.com and I'm based out of St. Louis, Missouri.
Thank you so much. All right. So InLink .com.
Tell me more. I want to hear it all. So, well,
all is a lot. i've been in the data center and
web hosting industry since 1999 and my entire
life i've been a fan of small and medium -sized
business main street america and as i get older
and i found really a passion to to help that
specific community my wife and i we own a local
gym together and we can see the impact that it
has on the community when i grew up having those
local business owners be mentors for me was um
literally a difference between life and death
um and prosperity versus you know um just despair
and i think that that is such an important aspect
of america to have yeah and i i it's not under
attack but it's definitely um you know more challenging
today to do that brick and mortar main street
business and i think it's really important so
we developed inlink to help that that specific
business make sure that they get on the maps
correctly make sure that their directory listings
are good make sure they've got a website make
sure they've got a calendar you know that whole
ecosystem of online tools on one platform one
place one throat to choke and have all the things
that you need to run your business um with your
online that couples with your brick and mortar
and that's where our concept of ai employees
comes comes out AI answering the phones and doing
your Google reviews and helping you with your
directory listings and all of those things. I
think it's harder to start up a brick and mortar
business today in a lot of aspects, but it's
also way more exciting if you can see the fact
that, oh, I can have this experience -based business
on Main Street and be here for the community,
but I can couple that with a brand that sells
merchandise online nationwide. I can sell my
product station when I think that concept of
Main Street America is what we have to see next.
I don't think that a world in America without
Main Street is a sad place to live in my head.
How you help is the fact that they can stay a
visionary, stay connected with the community,
stay completely involved. And InLink will link
all of that via... internet and allow that to
work while you get to do what you know how to
do and what you truly love am i am i there absolutely
i mean you're still gonna have to do some admin
stuff right but as the world changes um and it's
changing faster than that i've ever seen it change
and i've been through the dot -com bubble the
bitcoin craze like i've been through it all at
least you know for the last half a century so
and at the rate that it's growing at the rate
that it's moving right now It's really scary,
but it's also really profound if you can couple
these new technology with that brick and mortar
store. I really believe that we can have some
really amazing stuff. And yeah, it's not going
to be the same Main Street as it was 10 years
ago, for sure. It's not the same Main Street
today that it was five years ago. But, you know,
I really hope I think that there's people out
there sitting on their couch saying, man, I really
have this great concept and I want to execute
on it. The risk is there. And, you know, a restaurant,
it's a big risk. Right. But you can lower your
risk if you can do an experience and sell your
T -shirts online. Right. You can you can mitigate
those risks with your online persona and your
brick and mortar store. And it can be really,
really cool. Yeah. So for someone that's interested
in this, Ken, what does that look like? They
go to your website and then there's this conversation
with you. Yeah, so if they go to InLink, they
can sign up for our CRM really easy, right? There's
a 14 -day free trial. Or they can book and come
to our Tuesday webinars. We do Tuesday webinars
at 4 p .m. Central. And we just show you how
some of these AI tools work. Now, we start with
AI employees because that's the forefront of
the world today. But InLink's, you know, the
back end behind it has really every CRM tool
that you need. It's got your calendar. It's got
all of those things. And what we're here to do.
is to hopefully motivate you into saying, oh,
you know, it's not that challenging now that
if my website's at InLink and my calendar's at
InLink, I can now also use InLink to start selling
my merchandise or I can, you know, build a course
that shows how I built this business or how I
do something in that business. We really wanted
to take all the gatekeepers down for all the
different software packages that we've deployed
for customers over the past 25 years and give
it in one package that. Yes, it's robust. There's
a lot of moving parts in the EndLink CRM, but
we have 24 -hour support right there to chat
with you online, inside the application. You
can click the button. If you don't like the AI
support, you can click the next button, and we'll
jump on a Zoom call with you and help you do
all those things. So we really took a lot of
time on the support to make sure that we can
support the customers in multiple different modalities.
AI can do a lot of the work. It can do a lot
of the, hey, what's the settings for this? How
do I do this? How do I do that? But then when
you need a little bit more, we need real people
behind that. And that's the concept that we're
bringing to the table with EndLink is, you know,
we're a tech company. We're here for your tech
stack. We're here for your small business, online
persona. And we lean heavily on AI, but just
like your business, we're not going to abandon
the human element of that. There are always going
to be humans backing up the AI employees. And
I love that. I, of course, have had many, many,
many guests speaking about AI and utilizing it
to enhance the business and not necessarily to
take the people away from the business. So when
I now have this conversation, I truly love the
fact that we're just incorporating it and not
scaring people of saying that you will never
have another job because we got bot bots to do
bot bot things. Of course, there's some things
that will go away, but. Like you said, it's just
a really good way of being able to get assistance
so you can do other things. Yeah, we have at
least five years of a gap to fill of employment,
right? And that gap is falling in places that
AI can't help. Front desk employees are hard
to keep, right? It's transient labor, college
kids, all those things. And when I talk to a
business owner that has that kind of workflow
on their front desk staff, So it's, yeah, they're
here for three months and I got to find a new
person. I got to get them trained. And then,
you know, they're young, so they find a different
job. And it's this constant cycle of, and yeah,
you can get really good at training people and
be an HR firm, but, and you didn't start your
yoga studio to be an HR firm. You started your
yoga, so you could be, do all that stuff. So
get that AI employee trained once, manage them.
You know, they're going to have mistakes and
things like that. Put better guardrails on them.
My personal favorite thing about AI employees
is that when I'm correcting it, it's not emotional.
There's zero emotions when I said, hey, this
didn't happen the way we expected it to happen.
And this is how we're going to correct it. And
this is how we're going to move on. I don't have
to think about being overly nice or how am I
going to approach this specific person, right?
Because everybody's different. You know, there's
some people like, hey, don't do that again. Like,
OK, never again. There's other people that you
got to really nurture into saying, hey, this
was wrong and we've got to get this right. There's
none of that needed with AI. And that for me
has been a huge relieve and stress. Tell me about
your vision and moving forward, what that looks
like. My vision for the future is is amazing.
I believe that. you know, the, if you want to
call it the power manifestation or whatever you
want to call it, what you focus on is what you
get. And in a world with AI and everybody has
whatever intelligence they want to execute on
for me, it's commoditized already, right? AI
is free to $20 a month. Almost anybody can afford
it. I think that humans are going to have for
the very first time in history and American humans.
at that right there's still a large part of the
planet that's still behind the bell curve here
and living in horrible conditions but in america
we have the opportunity in other first world
countries to that humans can work on the things
that truly give them joy and create meaningful
lives around the things that give me joy if i'm
an artist if i'm a sculptor and i want to sculpt
i think we have a world that can that you can
make a living doing that and And before, I mean,
to get paid as a sculptor, you had to die first.
And then you would be paid. But now, you know,
if you want to be an artist, if you want to be
a boxing coach full time, if you want to be a
yoga person full time, all of those things are
possible. And what I'm begging the world to make
sure of is that some of those Main Street businesses
are still there because we have kids that need
those businesses. We have adults that need those
businesses. you know not everybody has a safe
place to go home to and they might need a safe
place to go to to kill an hour or two and and
being part of a community and i think that is
so important for our world um that i that you
know my my fight is to make sure that if you
want to do that that i'm here to support you
with that being said is that an app too ken Yeah.
So we have an app in the app store called the
connector. We've got our CRM, which is very,
very robust. We, you know, this year we've, we've
launched more than 400 new features. And we have
an amazing office product. So like, if you can
imagine your Google environment, but private
your domain name you're, you know, you're in
link drive and link sheets and link proposals,
all of those things in the office environment
is really nice too. And you're, you're hosting
with a privately held company that has a very.
high standard for data privacy and we never sell
your data we don't put ads in front of you inside
of our applications other than our own stuff
right but we don't sell your data we keep it
all segregated and make sure that it's private
to you and your business um you know as you're
you're using these these enormous companies to
transfer data and stuff like that um you're you're
losing a lot of your rights and and I don't think
that people really understand what that means
long -term. And the world doesn't understand
what it means long -term, but corporations are
going to have a much better persona of a human
than they've ever had before. If you can imagine
the iPad kids growing up and, you know, living
in a Google environment, they can probably have
the, you know, manipulation and coercion can
get really, really creative, really, really fast.
Yes. And I just don't like that. So we've made
a very strong stance that we don't sell our customers
data at all. No humans ever look at it unless
we're there to support you and building your
website or troubleshooting your email or something
like that. And how long has InLink been in the
flow of things? Yeah. So InLink is part of River
City Internet Group that we founded in 2001.
um data center provider we bought in link at
that time and it was an internet service provider
and the name has really just been sitting on
the shelf for a long time um and servicing some
office clients but not not in a large scale and
i've been running river city internet group and
i really because i deal mostly with mid to large
size companies with river city um i wanted something
that i could bring to the small business and
that's where endlink comes so we launched endlink
in january of this year it's been a it's been
a lot of fun it's been uh you know some ups and
downs for sure um but you know we've got some
really cool clients on there doing some really
cool stuff right now it's you know mostly um
younger kids that are And I say kids, but younger
folks that are trying to execute on a passion
and have all the tools under one suite for one
price, one throat to choke. If you have a problem,
you come to us. You know who the problem is,
right? There's no finger pointing. And then it's
been really nice. I like that. I like that. So
we went from a bigger scale down to a smaller
one to help us small business individuals. And
I tell you, one of the things that, I think a
lot of people as an entrepreneur just starting,
it's like, where do you keep all your stuff?
Who does all this? Again, when you're a visionary,
you just have these thoughts and you want to
execute all that other stuff, admin, CRMs, websites,
all that stuff. I think mine's been saying it's
been under construction for the last three weeks,
three months. I lied, three months. i i like
that thank you so much and then something i just
want to say real quick there and for founders
and and builders and people that want to execute
one of the things that we did was we took a lot
of the limits out so unlimited websites you want
a new website buy a new domain name right once
you're in there because you've got an idea or
you want to kick up a new funnel or something
similar to what you're doing but it doesn't quite
fit i wanted business owners to have that ability
to i mean it somewhat caters to their add um
be able to do those things but you know for me
i've had these resources since i was a young
man in my early 20s i've had a data center at
my disposal to try and do things um i think it's
important to be able to say oh i want a new website
i don't have to pay you know i just got to buy
the domain name i've got to pay for hosting again
and i and then you know we've got ai builders
and all that fun stuff too um but i think it's
important to once you're in that ecosystem to
you know, not nickel and dime you to death. It's
just not a great way to play in my mind. Ken,
it sounds like it's a one -stop shop for me.
I like it. I think it's a great idea. Now, I
can't do anything with it for myself, but I know
that it sounds like it's a lot easier than all
the things you have to buy in order to get, you
know, get a business together. So I really like
that. Ken, I am about to sidebar you real quick.
I am loving the background. I'm loving the mask.
I'm like, are you like a big kid? I am. You know,
it's important for me to stay sharp. And part
of that is to have fun things around and do fun
things. and execute on things that I enjoy. Thank
you for being here today. I'm really happy that
you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward. This is going to get
more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show. And thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.