S13 Bonus: Automating Local Lead Growth: High-Intent Prospecting & AI Verification with David Moore, Founder & CEO of Stalex.ai

0:01 [SPEAKER_00]: The AI will lie to you. [SPEAKER_00]: We had often times where we were like, oh my gosh, we're done, and it lied. [SPEAKER_00]: And for the first month of us creating that MVP, we kept getting so excited, so hopeful. [SPEAKER_00]: And then my brother would look back and you'd be like, no, there's so much more work to be done. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like a kid sitting in the back of the car, like are we there yet, are we there yet?

0:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually we got fed up as any young creator does and we go no we're building a system where this just will not happen It's not a possibility My name is David Moran. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the co-founder at Stolix This is code story [SPEAKER_01]: A podcast bringing you interviews with tech visionaries. [SPEAKER_01]: Six months moonlighting goes. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm lost in all the backgrounds. [SPEAKER_01]: Who share what it takes to change an industry? [SPEAKER_02]: I don't exactly know what to do.

0:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It's the same goes to get right. [SPEAKER_03]: Who built the teams that have their back company, is it's that teams help each other achieve this proud of our team. [SPEAKER_01]: Keeping scalability top of mind, all that infrastructure was that they didn't even fighting it as we grew up. [SPEAKER_01]: Total waste of time. [SPEAKER_03]: The stories you don't read in the headlines. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not an easy thing to achieve, to get yourself interested to try to begin to ride the ups and downs of the start-up line need to really want it.

1:21 [SPEAKER_01]: Not just about technology. [SPEAKER_01]: All this and more on code the story. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your host Noah Labpart, and today how David Moore is scoring you business leads for your industry, locked and loaded the moment it lands.

1:42 [SPEAKER_01]: David Moore started day trading when he was 16 along with his brother. [SPEAKER_01]: By the age of 19, he had a 7-figure portfolio indicating some solid success. [SPEAKER_01]: He disemangel investing and then moved into entrepreneurship starting a few companies. [SPEAKER_01]: But eventually got into a sales role that led to his current venture. [SPEAKER_01]: But outside of tech, he loves music and in particular is really enjoying 15th century classical. [SPEAKER_01]: He has a lazy French bulldog, enjoys Italian food, and finds himself either reading Octavian literature, or his Bible.

2:17 [SPEAKER_01]: David got into a sales job for a friend of his, and in doing so, built some tools using AI to help in the business. [SPEAKER_01]: When he shared these ideas, he eventually was replaced by an offshore resource. [SPEAKER_01]: Then, he and his brother took off to build their own thing, a solution to help your business score leads.

2:37 [SPEAKER_01]: This is the creation story of Stolex.

2:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So Stolex is a name, again, just being straight to my head. [SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea where it came from. [SPEAKER_00]: I have no idea what it means, but it just stuck to me like white on right. [SPEAKER_00]: I had the idea actually, a year before we even came to the conclusion of what solids would look like. [SPEAKER_00]: We were actually working on creating, I guess, a crude term of it would be a Jarvis system, but like a daily planner kind of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And we were formed and operating under the same moniker.

3:14 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, obviously, nothing came of that. [SPEAKER_00]: We learned a lot of lessons, but we never had to actually file any papers because we weren't selling anything. [SPEAKER_00]: Now we are an exclusive B2B lead pipeline as well as a very custom CRM system that not only allows scoring but individual customization and prompting for what you're selling how you're selling and who you're selling to. [SPEAKER_00]: And then on top of that how we got into the creation of it was yeah, I mean we had [SPEAKER_00]: The name from previous years and the idea came to me via a friend who offered me a job, cold calling.

3:53 [SPEAKER_00]: I interviewed crushed it, got a sales position, got offered an extra 10% on commission if I were to refuse using my own callers. [SPEAKER_00]: So I started digging deep into what I could grab where I could grab it, how much information I could get, how I could tailor it as specifically as possible. [SPEAKER_00]: actually found a few very good personal connections that helped us in the long run to get a very individualized account of all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: But I will say, man, I built it so that my buddy could barely use Google would be thriving with me as well, getting his extra commission percentage.

4:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I eventually pitched my own boss and he was very interested and thank God a week later he actually [SPEAKER_00]: took the conversation and it goes, huh, I need to get this somewhere cheaper and it brings a partner in from Bangladesh with a similar product. [SPEAKER_00]: Not at any competitive scale to where we are now, but he definitely had me beat on my crand drawing. [SPEAKER_00]: It was an HTML file that I was just going to use internally. [SPEAKER_00]: I go to my brother, all angry, puffing and puffing and my brother's eye can't sing as praises and stuff.

4:57 [SPEAKER_00]: The kids are super genius this year's life.

5:05 [SPEAKER_00]: straight up and I give him everything from the project that I was working on for that previous month and a half and ever since then he's just been putting his blood sweat and tears work in 18 hours a day trying to get this to be the best product that we could deliver to market.

5:23 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about the NVP and maybe that's the version you created while you were in the sales job or maybe it's the version that your brother took and brought to life. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious about both of those really but whatever stories you want to tell me, I'm curious about how long it took to build, what sort of tools you're using to bring it to life, all the things they're doing. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm a stubborn man, and because of that, I was only using cloth at the beginning, with no infrastructure, no get-hub, no obsidian database, nothing.

5:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So the transfer of files and information was hectic to save at least, but I was working with purely cloth, and again, just a very crude HTML terminal. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember ideating specifically that I wanted it to look something like how my old trading platforms look like because that's something familiar to me. [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember specifically that was way too overwhelming for my buddy. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was a very big note on where we went after my brother took the MVP.

6:23 [SPEAKER_00]: and again, man, using tertiary tools and as well as making custom toolings through cloud code and my brother, he's super charged. [SPEAKER_00]: I, a little bit of tuning horn here. [SPEAKER_00]: My brother got it so that we're able to basically do 30 times the amount of work in get our burn down, especially on fable, about 90%. [SPEAKER_00]: So I only used, I wanna say 15% of my fable usage.

6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: and filled out a context window on four prompts. [SPEAKER_00]: But we got three weeks of work done within that one day. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, man, there's a lot of creative things that you can do. [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, a lot of our stuff is internal and proprietary, so I can't divulge all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: But this guy's the limit. [SPEAKER_00]: It really is. [SPEAKER_00]: The technology is here. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to stay on that MVP, the MVP process for a second, and I've heard a couple of what you said, but maybe choose the biggest decision you had to make in that early version about how you were going to shape the product.

7:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's using AI to build it or that's building in such a way that helped out your buddy understand it a little bit better, either either one there, but there's got to be some good stories about how you made those decisions, and then how you cope with them.

7:42 [SPEAKER_00]: With the MVP specifically, Christian built it, directing the AI agents and that's what we just divulged. [SPEAKER_00]: But I can't read the code, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So that whole emphasis of me with the grand drawing, I don't know the SQ light, I don't know Python like it's very crude understanding from my end. [SPEAKER_00]: So I wasn't even going to enter that realm. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's when Christian stepped in and he thought of this genius process, which I can share. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's pretty simple.

8:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a system of checks and balances. [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that we had to get into that was because the AI will lie to you. [SPEAKER_00]: And we had oftentimes where we were like, oh my gosh, we're done. [SPEAKER_00]: And it lied. [SPEAKER_00]: And for the first month of us creating that MVP, we kept getting so excited, so hopeful. [SPEAKER_00]: And then my brother would look back and

8:35 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like a kid sitting in the back of the car, like, are we there yet, are we there yet? [UNKNOWN]: Ha ha ha ha ha. [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually we got fed up as any young creator does and we go, no, we're building a system where this just will not happen. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a possibility. [SPEAKER_00]: So through all of those checks and balances, and man, I got to say there's probably 20 of them at now. [SPEAKER_00]: They're by now. [SPEAKER_00]: They've been stacking up to the roof, but thank God they have because without them, [SPEAKER_00]: We wouldn't be able to push a product that we could verify, right?

9:05 [SPEAKER_00]: We wouldn't be able to bring anything to market with confidence. [SPEAKER_00]: So through that system in that series of checks and balances and through learning and a lot of mistakes and especially men like you asked a story. [SPEAKER_00]: My buddy, he looked at my original MVP and he can't even use Google. [SPEAKER_00]: I made it to look like a trading terminal a deal desk almost. [SPEAKER_00]: It was like he was looking at hyperglyphs. [SPEAKER_00]: It's like me trying to read code.

9:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And he was looking at me. [SPEAKER_00]: He was like, dude, I understand that this is the tool that's going to help us make money. [SPEAKER_00]: But if I can't even look at the thing, like you got to help me out. [SPEAKER_00]: He's basically asking for a lifeline. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was another huge cornerstone of our design point, especially we were coming at. [SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of competitors, we started to notice that you just can't [SPEAKER_00]: Shift through anything.

9:58 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a headache. [SPEAKER_00]: I need a Tylenol after using some of their platforms and unfortunately I have had to use some of their platforms in the past selling So that was a huge turning point for the MVP checks in balances where a huge turning point for the MVP and Honestly the constraints is the reason the company even is able to work [SPEAKER_00]: So funny enough with that, again, it was just Christian directing his AI agents and a lot of trial and error to build the proper checks and balances.

10:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Let's move forward then. [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious about how you're going about building your roadmap. [SPEAKER_01]: How do you decide that? [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, this is the next most important thing to build or to address with Stolicks. [SPEAKER_00]: a large part of the road map was just, how does this benefit my buddy? [SPEAKER_00]: It was never us thinking about how does this benefit sacks fifth, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We're not selling to the big guys. [SPEAKER_00]: The big guys are already set on their CRM.

10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to offboard and onboard to somebody else. [SPEAKER_00]: We're building this for the little guy. [SPEAKER_00]: We're building this for David versus Goliath. [SPEAKER_00]: And what's the biggest point about David is he literally can't do anything properly without [SPEAKER_00]: being imbued or helped and straight up we can't imbue anybody so we're trying to help as much as we can we made it so your grandma could sell on this thing if she really wanted to and i'm very proud of that fact because now my buddy took a look at it and it was like [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know how to explain it, it was like it was like a kid riding a bike without the training wheels and you just see him go straight down the hill and he's assuming you're not even worried about the kid crashing your family and he's just going to go fly and that was my proudest point of our road map and waiting everything in between that.

11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's just been such a smooth process compared to any other company I've been a part of, any other process I've been a part of. [SPEAKER_00]: It's no other explanation, but God had his hand working here.

12:00 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious about how you're going to build your team. [SPEAKER_01]: I notes you in Christian right now, but how do you go about how are you going to go about building your team and what are you going to look for in those people to indicate that they're the winning horses to join you? [SPEAKER_00]: That's actually a very good question man, and we've been looking into bringing other young driven men on board. [SPEAKER_00]: either learning how to do what I'm doing to have fallback or learning what Christians doing to have fallback.

12:25 [SPEAKER_00]: The main thing that we're really looking for is somebody who's hungry, man. [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody who's driven is somebody who really knows where they're standing and they know where they need to go. [SPEAKER_00]: and the beautiful part about that is 99% of the people in that position. [SPEAKER_00]: They're outspoken. [SPEAKER_00]: They're already in front of your face. [SPEAKER_00]: They're obnoxious about it and they're usually guys our age. [SPEAKER_00]: The connections that we've been making just over the past few years, we're now looking back and we're mediating and thinking, okay, this guy would be really good with data.

12:56 [SPEAKER_00]: This guy would be really good handling the back end. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to need people who are on call on staff. [SPEAKER_00]: And do we want to be those people on term? [SPEAKER_00]: No, we want to help sell this product as much as we can, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So the beautiful part about how we built it is that... [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that we have to teach you how to do it, it's we have to teach you how to read the ability to copy the whole functionality and system again using obsidian shout out those guys they were a note taking app for 13 years and now they're basically a brain to brain exchange of any AI [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're doing what we're doing, a lot of those proprietary toolings and systems are very useful to be put into a neurological map that you can just send in five minutes.

13:46 [SPEAKER_00]: It really just requires rather than, okay, you gotta be hungry and you gotta do a majority of the work. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of our internal systems are already doing its own work. [SPEAKER_00]: So the beauty of it is we have a feast, do you wanna bring a plate? [SPEAKER_00]: And that's been the analogy I've been given those young guys and a lot of them are excited about it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's gonna be more of separating the wheat from the chaff more than anything.

14:18 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious about scale. [SPEAKER_01]: How are you approaching scale right now? [SPEAKER_01]: I know you mentioned not going after the big guys and this is for the the folks that are needing maybe smaller to medium size businesses. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious about how you're thinking about scale right now and maybe in the future and also if there's been interesting areas where you've had to fight that scale as you've grown. [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, with the fighting scale, I want to address it straight up.

14:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The constraint was never traffic. [SPEAKER_00]: It's our whole thing of it's just me and my brother. [SPEAKER_00]: We definitely are looking forward to onboarding people, knowing what they're, knowing what we're knowing, and to take this thing even further than we could have ever thought, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Because we went through the school of hard knocks, right? [SPEAKER_00]: There's got to be a lot of hungry people out there. [SPEAKER_00]: who not only know hard knocks, but also have a C.S.

15:10 [SPEAKER_00]: degree that may be very interested on coming on the team. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a big thing about it is it's automated for most traffic already. [SPEAKER_00]: We have the scale that we want. [SPEAKER_00]: Data-wise, we have everything operating cleanly, we've debugged to the end-degree. [SPEAKER_00]: So the scale on the sales side of things is just how many people can we tell about this cool thing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a worry of, oh man, maybe this doesn't fit. [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's if you sell business to business and you don't already have a CRM.

15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: and your sick of competitors selling all the leads to everybody at the same time with poor quality, then where you're guys. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's the beautiful thing. [SPEAKER_00]: It's got its own legs. [SPEAKER_00]: The scale is gonna grow itself, other than just the constraint of Christian and I.

16:12 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you mentioned being proud of what you're able to accomplish with your buddy. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give space for a full answer there. [SPEAKER_01]: What are you most proud of with Stolics?

16:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm so proud that we thought of [SPEAKER_00]: not the lowest rank, not the weakest link, but the guy who's just now getting into the game. [SPEAKER_00]: The guy who he has no time to learn a brand new system, he has no time to learn a brand new syntax. [SPEAKER_00]: Looking at a terminal all day would drive him mad, right? [SPEAKER_00]: We built it for ourselves, because that's exactly who we are. [SPEAKER_00]: We couldn't sit there and just, oh man, here's a blank slate of data.

16:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Here you go, go get them, champ. [SPEAKER_00]: Or the worst part is, go find your own leads. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what my boss was saying at that previous company said, go find your own leads, do your own enrichment. [SPEAKER_00]: And God bless man, my buddy was getting five leads out of time using chat GPT, and then he would Google them all, one by one. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just sitting over there, man, if we have the technology to be doing this, and more, and we have the connections to be doing this and more, why don't we use it?

17:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So, my proudest thing is, yeah, man, we built it for the little guy, we built it for the dude with no context who has a great idea somewhere else and needs to sell it to another business, wants to sell it to another business.

17:38 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, David, let's flip the script a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me about a mistake he made and how you and your team responded to it.

17:46 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of them, and again, pertaining to building those rules. [SPEAKER_00]: We had a review rule that caught a bug, and the fix for it broke something even worse, and then it made the system print the opposite of the truth to an operator when we were doing a test run. [SPEAKER_00]: huge fire just started from one branch going down and it only got caught because of the rules that we learned previously that a fix gets reviewed again from scratch as if we were like brand new code. [SPEAKER_00]: So if we didn't have those things in place that God again it would have been a mess and potentially could have burned the whole code base down to where we would have to do a full revert.

18:27 [SPEAKER_00]: That would have been a full day at least if not weeks worth of work gone. [SPEAKER_00]: Big mistakes were learned along the way, but they were always put out, man. [SPEAKER_00]: They were, it was always peaceable. [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't nuclear and severity. [SPEAKER_00]: It was always like, oh, the trash cans on fire. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's put that out.

18:47 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's look forward then. [SPEAKER_01]: This will be fun. [SPEAKER_01]: Stylix is young. [SPEAKER_01]: What does a future look based on? [SPEAKER_01]: What you want to do with the company and the product? [SPEAKER_01]: Where you want to take it? [SPEAKER_01]: Where the industry is going? [SPEAKER_01]: All of things. [SPEAKER_00]: We want to be everybody's first option when they have a business idea that's business to business. [SPEAKER_00]: We want to be the same conversation that Google is, that zoom is that whatever you want, right?

19:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever you want to call it, we want to be a home-name brand for the next generation of whiz kids that have good ideas. [SPEAKER_00]: Because the infrastructure before us, [SPEAKER_00]: is not built for them. [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, it is built for the rep who's 40 years old and he's been calling for 20 years on the same old system so he's a pro. [SPEAKER_00]: It rewards time in the game rather than rewarding good ideas. [SPEAKER_00]: A good idea, and I've personally been a victim of this, a good idea, will die if you don't know how to go sell it.

19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: And unfortunately, the infrastructure before us just, again, it's hieroglyphics, man. [SPEAKER_00]: especially to my generation. [SPEAKER_00]: So the future for us, we're praying and we're hoping that the future looks very bright. [SPEAKER_00]: And that if anybody ever, anywhere nationwide and hopefully globally, has an idea, we want to be the guys that help you so business to business. [SPEAKER_00]: And the whole exclusivity clause sticks along the whole time. [SPEAKER_00]: All the way, it's what makes us, it's one of our largest competitive edges.

20:26 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, David, let's wish to you who influences the way that you work. [SPEAKER_01]: Name a person or many persons or something. [SPEAKER_01]: You look up to him, why? [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, my mother and my father, my late father, just both entrepreneurs through and through, puzzlers through and through, absolute warriors and Christ's name, man. [SPEAKER_00]: And again, God, dude, I could not do it without the relationship that I've had with God and only from my failures have I fostered that.

20:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Or it has he even fostered that. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't really get any claim to it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a larger point to Roblobs and Fires. [SPEAKER_00]: Man, they're never once was. [SPEAKER_00]: There's been so much peace ability and I've learned so much from my mother and my father's mistakes being entrepreneurs through and through. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've learned from my own mistakes and my brother's mistakes being entrepreneurs through and through. [SPEAKER_00]: That I was so well prepared this time around.

21:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It really just is I'm lying down and green pastures and my cup is overflowing, man. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay David, last question, so you're getting on a plane, and you're sitting next to a young entrepreneur who's built the next big thing. [SPEAKER_01]: They're jazzed about it. [SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait to show it off the world and can't wait to show it off to you right there on the plane. [SPEAKER_01]: What advice do you give that person having gone down this road a bit? [SPEAKER_00]: funny ass that I was literally just talking to one of my buddies who it felt like we were just sitting on a plane catching up after a few years.

21:48 [SPEAKER_00]: He started to get into day trading after I put him on the years ago and he never looked back, he's been making great money and he goes, hey man, like I'm making this good money, I got a good job. [SPEAKER_00]: When is it time to move to Dallas or should

22:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He was me. [SPEAKER_00]: I was him right and I learned a lot of lessons from that and God bless him and I told him But if I were back in my shoes Doing what you're doing right now in the position you are right now. [SPEAKER_00]: I would say first of all There is no rush to up size [SPEAKER_00]: it will happen when it meets the happen. [SPEAKER_00]: There's no rush to be lonely. [SPEAKER_00]: The money is a very isolating thing and the moment you chase success into other areas of life, especially geographically.

22:40 [SPEAKER_00]: You've got a whole new start, good or bad. [SPEAKER_00]: And if your money is emphasizing bad character traits within yourself, [SPEAKER_00]: That's just gonna shoot you in the foot long term, even if you have a good idea. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you're making good money. [SPEAKER_00]: And then I told them on top of that, make sure that you have consistency. [SPEAKER_00]: It's great that you're making money here and there. [SPEAKER_00]: Day trading. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a hot streak, and that's what you got to call it, man.

23:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of different businesses where, again, I got another buddy. [SPEAKER_00]: He's in car sales now. [SPEAKER_00]: And I told him, you're gonna be commission-based. [SPEAKER_00]: 100% you're gonna have hot streaks. [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna have cold streaks. [SPEAKER_00]: It's okay, this is the learning process, this is the refinement, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And the biggest thing to emphasize if I was next to a stranger on the plane is stand firm in what you know and be hopeful that tomorrow is going to be awesome, because that's all you got to worry about is today.

23:38 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're killing it today every day, then there's no problems ever, and if problems do arise again instead of being nuclear, there's just a fire in the trash can. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's fantastic advice. [SPEAKER_01]: They would thank you for being on the show today, and thank you for telling the creation story of Stolix. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much for having me know, God bless you. [SPEAKER_01]: And this concludes another chapter of Coat Story.

24:10 [SPEAKER_01]: code story is hosted and produced by no-alapart. [SPEAKER_01]: Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, or the podcasting app at your choice. [SPEAKER_01]: And when you get a chance, leave us a review. [SPEAKER_01]: Both things help us out tremendously.

24:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And thanks again for listening.