Alisha Esmail has built two very different businesses, and the thread running through both of them is the same. Trust and loyalty. And paying close attention to the people already in your world.

That lesson did not come easily. It arrived as an email, at the dinner table, from one of Road Coffee's biggest clients.

Subject line: we have decided to go in a different direction.

Alisha had no idea it was coming. That moment became the seed of everything she has built since, including Latch AI, a client retention platform designed to catch the quiet signals that a client is drifting before they ever say goodbye.

We talked about silent churn, the clients who do not fire you, they just quietly stop renewing. No angry email. No complaint. They simply disappear. And by the time you notice, the relationship is already gone.

One of Alisha's beta clients had over $650,000 in missed opportunities sitting on the table in a single quarter. They had no idea.

Alisha also introduced me to a phrase I loved: ice cream moments. The small, unexpected gestures that take a client from their head to their heart. We had a genuinely fun disagreement about referrals along the way too.

If you run a service business, this conversation will make you look at your client list very differently.

Key Takeaways

• Silent churn is the most expensive problem most businesses do not know they have. Clients drift first — the signals are there if you are paying attention.
• Slower response times, less engagement, and going quiet are early warning signs a relationship is cooling. You do not need technology to notice — you need to be present.
• As AI drives down the cost of services, the relationship you have with existing clients will become your most durable competitive edge.
• Clients are the heroes of the journey. Build your systems around serving them, not selling to them.
• Ice cream moments matter. Small, thoughtful gestures are often more powerful than any formal retention program.

You can reach Alisha at: [email protected]

Or on LinkedIn at: linkedin.com/in/alisha-esmail

In appreciation for being here, I have some gifts for you:

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by checking this presentation page - you won’t regret it.

AND … Don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn and be eligible for my complimentary LinkedIn profile audit – I do one each month for a lucky listener!

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to this week's

episode of Relationships Rule. What if your biggest revenue

leak had nothing to do with sales? Well, today I'm talking

with Alicia Esmail, a Canadian entrepreneur who built a company

called Road Coffee into a national brand grounded in

direct trade and social impact, and has just launched a new

product, Lach AI, a client retention platform designed to

catch those quiet signals that a client is slipping, is slipping

away before they ever say goodbye. Alicia believes that as

AI drives down the cost of services, the only thing that

will truly set a business apart is how well it takes care of the

people already in its world, and that's a message that fits

perfectly here on relationships rule. So I want to get started.

Welcome to the show, Alicia.

Thanks for having me.

And this time, I don't think I said your last

name properly, but maybe I did. Esmail is that okay? Good. All

right. I think I asked you about the etymology of it last time,

and then when I was doing some notes on here, I spelled it

wrong because I was thinking of Ishmael instead of Smail. So who

knows? I don't know. Names are interesting, but welcome to the

show. And I was quite impressed with what you had done at at an

early age. I mean, you went around the world and you created

this company. Now you have had two very different businesses:

Road Coffee, which you built on direct trade with farmers around

the world, and now Lach AI built on data and retention systems.

What's the thread that connects them for you?

That's the golden question right now. For me,

believe it or not, it comes back to relationships. So with Road,

what we were finding is I was in one of the most saturated

markets in the world, right? Like you're in a coffee-centric

city, you know. There's so many options, right? I don't even

drink it, by the way.

I think I knew that. Yeah,

but it's all about let's go for coffee,

right? And that's yeah, for sure.

That's right. And and so the thing I realized is

if I wanted to build a successful company in one of the

most saturated markets. I needed to become a retention expert,

and I needed to learn on a whole new level how to manage client

relationships and serve your clients well long term. And I

learned that the hard way by actually getting that terrifying

email from one of our biggest clients at the time. We we were

already pretty established, had lots of wins, had already won

number of awards, and was sitting at the dinner table with

my family. And I got that email, and the subject line was "We've

decided to go in a different direction, and I was completely

blindsided. I didn't see it coming. I had lots of

relationships with people at the company too, so it was, it was

really shocking. I had to excuse myself from the table, and I

just kept reading it again and again, scratching my head, being

like, "I thought everything was good.

Yeah, yeah.

Turns out it wasn't.

Wow! And they were silent about it. That's

that's the other thing we talk about. That right until they

weren't right. It's funny. I before I forget, because I know

I will. I get emails from this gentleman that was on my podcast

last year, maybe think the beginning of last year, and he

used to work for the Disney Corporation, and he worked for

them for many years, and he was in charge of building their new

restaurants in all the different theme parks and so on. And

wherever you work in the Disney family, you are you know

ensconced in ensconced in their culture, and of course they have

that you know the biggest culture of all for customer

experience, right? Which leads to customer retention because

everyone takes their family there, and then the kids take

their kids there. And if you're a Disney family, you're a Disney

family. Well, he writes these customer service newsletters

that are really interesting to me because I love the idea of

customer service and good and bad, and he just did one the

other day about a company, and I don't know how many states

they're in in the U.S. But when we were in Calif, it's long

story, but not really. But okay, we were in California a couple

of years ago with my family and my daughter. One of my daughters

said, "Mom, we have to go get takeout from this company, this

fried chicken, because it's supposedly the best around. And

I said, like, they're all the same, but sure, let's do it,

right? So it was fried chicken. I mean, but it has a special

sauce, and this company's name is Kane Raising Cain, C-A-I-N.

Have you heard of it?

I've heard of it. I have heard it's incredible.

Okay, fried chicken.

Okay, but it's not just the fried chicken. So

this was the company that Vance, my friend, my past call podcast

guest Vance Morris, he was writing about that day, and he

said that they chose to be focused on one thing, not you

know Happy Meals and burgers and and all the different things

that are offered. But basically, it's one thing: the fried

chicken and their special sauce. And he said, one of the things

that they do is when an order comes up from the kitchen, and

the the person's waiting at the takeout for it, they say order

up for Janice or order up for Bill or whatever name you've

given them. So the customer hears their name, not just

number 60-five or whatever. And that one little thing was a huge

difference when you're talking about doing things right, you

know. So anyway, it just made me think of that. the The article

is interesting because he goes into more details, but but it's

just it's always the little things that count, and and

relationships are formed based on these things in in in you

know companies, right? So let's just talk about that silent

churn. I like that word because I think a lot of people in in my

audience don't even realize it's happening to them either. What

does it actually look like when a client starts to drift?

You can see it if you're paying close attention

and you know what to look for. But some of this, what we call

silent signals are slower response times. You know, maybe

they were responding within 24 hours, and now it's 48 hours.

Now it's five days.

Responding to what?

It could be responding to an email,

responding to deliverables. You know, I I always say feedback is

a gift, even if you don't want to hear it.

Yeah,

because it's when people start going quiet, you

need to be worried. So that's one of them. Another another

couple that I like to throw out there is the depth of

engagement. Like, are they pushing back? Are they asking

questions? Are they concerned? Again, concern is not

necessarily a bad thing. It means they care,

yeah.

But as soon as they're just like, "Yep, sounds

good, yeah, sure. That's when you got to be, you know,

yeah, a

little more engaged and figure out what's

going on.

So I think you've said that most businesses are

obsessed with top of funnel growth, while their existing

clients slip away on notice. So, why do you think that is, and

what makes acquisition so much more appealing than retention?

Because we all do that. We're always looking for the new

people, right?

I think it goes back to the heart of business,

heart of entrepreneurship. It's always the new, new, right?

That's the sexy thing. We want the next exciting thing, and

we've always been, you know, culturally really bad at being

consistent, right? Like, what's that one thing we do incredibly

well? Well, that's boring after time, right? Yeah,

for entrepreneurs, definitely,

right? Because we're all ADD. Yeah, that's

right for entrepreneurs. That's why we

have other amazing people around us who can help us be

consistent. So I think that's part of it, and then the other

part is there's also a business that needs to be built, right?

So driving revenue is really important. It's one of the

number one things, or else you don't have a business. You have

a glorified hobby, so it's it's not a bad thing that we're

focused on top of funnel. The challenges we're only focused on

top of funnel and then delivery, and we had about our current

clients.

Yeah, things fall away by the wayside. That's

true. So you just mentioned off air, or no, you mentioned it at

the beginning about the email you got at the dinner dinner

table. Was this one of your clients that? that had or no,

this is this happened to one of your clients that that you

proved you had they had $650,000 walking out the door in a single

quarter through neglected follow up. That's right, right. It was

one of your beta clients. When you showed them that number,

what was their reaction?

They were shocked that there was that much

opportunity on the table. They had no idea. So same thing,

right? They were like, "How do we get more revenue? How do we

grow?

Yeah,

and they're spending a fair bit amount of

money on ads and marketing.

Yeah,

for new when there's so much opportunity

sitting right there. And and we actually ran an analysis

recently to see how the work's been going together, and in the

first three weeks we were able to help them capture $6,000

already.

Okay, all right. Well, I'm going to come back to

that in a minute. I want to know one more thing before we go into

Lach AI things. When you when you were building Road Coffee,

you were working. Not in the Western world, you so to speak,

right? You were working in places like Costa Rica, Peru,

Nepal, and you had to. Well, first of all, I am curious how

how did this how did you decide to do this?

Yeah, well, my background's in international

development, so

oh, okay,

from a young age, like I've spent my entire career

working on an international stage with people in different

cultures, and it was when I was leading teams, we'd be gone for

three to four months at a time, and I was always passionate

about coffee. So I naturally found myself on coffee and tea

farms in my free time. Oh, get to know farmers and their

families, and you know, drink tea with their grandmas, play

soccer with their kids, and I started to learn from them how

the supply chain worked from their side of the world.

Ah,

and I just started to see some really big

disconnects and some injustices, and how you know they were often

taken advantage of by unnecessary middlemen, and then

I'd come home to the West. You know, the first thing I do is

what, like everybody else, spend five bucks on a coffee in the

airport.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was that gap that that just started to

bother me over time, and I moved back to Canada and to try and do

something about it.

That's that's quite interesting, actually,

because to have the first to have the experience of the

importance of relationships, but then to have the the vision of

how you were going to put all this together, I'm I'm pretty

impressed. So you found that relationships built on real

trust, not transactions, were the way to go. And I mean,

that's

exactly it.

Yeah, and you can usually, I think, when with a

first interaction with somebody or a individual or a company,

you can sort of see through it when they don't really care

about you. It's all about them, and it's all about the result

that they want. So when you were building your company, your

first company, did that experience? Did you put that

into practice right away? How you think about client

relationships in a you know service business context?

I did at first, and then I think I lost my way a

bit because I was a young entrepreneur. I was also

learning how to build a business at the same time, right? So

everything was new and everything was hard. So the

first thing that started to go once there was way too much on

my plate was some of the reasons that got me there in the first

place, and it wasn't until I got that wake up call from our

largest client at the time, where I had to give my head a

shake and be like, "Wait, wait! I need to bring this all back to

the values that this company is actually based out of, and not

just with the farmers, but then our clients. And and and that's

when it really hit me. Like, clients are the heroes of the

journey, you know. Not just in my first coffee company, but in

every company. Because without clients, you don't have a

business again. That's right. A glorified hobby.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And I

remember back when I was first dealing with my network

marketing business, which is send out cards, and and I still

use it today. It's a tool that I use to stay connected to people

in a different way than an email or a text message, so that it

lands in a tangible card that they receive in the mail, which

always takes people from their head to their heart, always,

right? And they have, and so I remember the statistic of, and I

don't know where it came from to this day. Now I can't remember,

but you know you've heard it probably over and over. 60-8% of

clients leave because they're they feel disconnected, they

feel unappreciated, right, and and often quietly, but the world

has changed so much that if, when they left before, they tell

a few people, and that would trigger that person's trusted

friends to say, "Oh, I'm not going to that restaurant because

Janice said it's horrible" or whatever. But now, if they

leave, they tell it's on the internet, it's on social media,

and so you're-it's dead, right, in the water. So it's a

different animal now, but it really

is. I can actually love to say something

to that. So I think the challenge is-is a lot of

businesses aren't equipped or paying attention on how to

handle things when that happens, because no one's going to knock

it out of the park 100% of the time, right? Humans are humans,

and they're going to make mistakes at some point. The

challenge is now that everything is so public and on display.

What I see a lot of. Is is client blaming and client

shaming actually, and oh really? Yeah, and what I mean by that is

like you'll see, you know, let's say a client has a bad

experience, they post something on on Facebook, yeah, right, and

and it gets a bunch of traction, and other people are commenting,

and instead of the business the business taking a posture, a

humble posture of being apologetic, asking for feedback,

taking it offline to try to solve it, or maybe putting out a

statement and saying, "You know what? We made a mistake. They

just click back, and they blame the client. Look, well, it's not

our fault. They get defensive, and it's it goes back to the

harder relationships is like, would you do that to someone

standing in front of you? Right.

I mean, but that's the the the point there,

though. Too is that they should have done that at in the

beginning. Like, I can I've got so many stories where, usually

in a in a restaurant that this happened to me in a in in

Earl's, and you probably know Earl's restaurants, which is a

family-owned business, and it's the oodles of them. And I, I

loved that restaurant chain. My daughter worked there, and she

learned a lot when she worked there. In early days of

management, they taught her a lot. And I remember going into

Earl's one time, and more recently, like last few years,

and something didn't go right or something, and the man, the

server said to me, "Well, what would you like me to do about

it? In that kind of tone, and I'm like, "Seriously, you're

asking me what I want you to do about it? You know, like the

back, the the hairs on the back of my neck go up because of the

the attitude in his voice, and so you know that's when it makes

it worse, and it can't get better because you go away and

you tell the story after they haven't recovered properly, and

that's the key is the recovery, right? It's not the mistake;

it's the recovery. Anyway, I could talk for hours about

customer service, but let's talk about. Let's tell my audience

about your new business, Lach AI. I'll let you. I'll let you.

I'll let you include. Give us a little synopsis of it and how it

works.

So, Lach AI is an AI native retention engine.

Okay, now slow

down because that that makes it all too fast for

me. It is a AI

native retention engine. So when I say AI native,

what I mean is not just an AI layer on top of an

infrastructure that already existed.

Okay,

that's what most companies are doing right now.

They're just adding AI to whatever their company is, the

problem with that is is it it can't leverage AI in the way AI

is meant to be leveraged, and that's when you also end up with

a lot of AI schlop or you know products that maybe aren't as

good as as you know you maybe thought they would be.

Okay,

yeah, that's what AI native means. It's AI in

nature. It's agentic. It's working behind the scenes, and

it's outcome focused. It's not like a chatbot that you just

talk to and it tells you things. And the retention side, it's

really, it's it's not necessarily the AI that makes it

incredibly special. The AI is just takes the solution and

elevates it above other solutions, because at the end of

the day, if your solution sucks, AI is not going to make it

better. Right, right, right. So what what we what I did is I

took the system I call it my retention ladder system at Road

that I built for road and figured out, and then I built AI

around it, and I actually built it for my first company first to

make sure it worked, and it does a number of things. So it

detects client drift, right? What we talked about-that's one

of the first things. Then it scores each client continuously,

and that means: Are they at risk? Are they slipping? Are

they stable, or are they expansion ready? And we separate

expansion ready from from stable because just because they're in

a good spot and they're stable doesn't mean it's the right time

to ask for an upsell, an upgrade, or a referral ask. So

be keeping an eye on how how every client of yours is doing,

and then we go into.

Can we stop for a second? So, or or if you want to

say this after, that's fine. But my thought goes to well, based

on what?

Yeah. So based on the data that's already there.

So right now, client data typically exists and it's

fragmented across a multiple platforms. Right, so it could be

your CRM, it could be your email, your calendar, any type

of ticketing system, an invoice system. We we're working with a

number of integrations right now. I could sit here and

probably name name 100 but that would bore your audience. So we

we connect these tools that you're already using. We pull

the data, we run it through our latch system that's looking for

all these things, and it's it's it's multi layered, right? So

it's like the best practices across the board in any

business. Then the second layer is vertical specific, right?

Because our clinic clients need to be focused on different

things than the agencies and coaches we work with. And then

the third layer is specific to that company. So when we onboard

a company, there's special things that make them special,

and we want Lach to include that in its operating system for

them.

Okay, that makes sense. So, so okay, I was

talking to a friend about this before earlier this afternoon

about I can see how how to phrase this because okay, I'm

always talking about it's important to build relationships

that people know, like and trust you, and through those

relationships, which take time to build and to maintain, which

is where your system comes in to keep on top of you know where

are they with the with their clients, and and what what

should I be offering them now based on the information that

they have? So I think in terms of finding out more about them,

I think of talking to them more regularly, sending them

appreciation notes, showing them that not asking for anything,

but just showing that just showing up in their mailbox or

wherever. Okay, so that my name is top of mind, so that they

remember me, if you know whatever. But when I think of

your system, like other systems, excuse me, I think of it being

what shall I create to send them in an email? And when I'm

thinking about more and more emails going out, I feel like

it's not customer centric. It's it's it's out. It's the the the

vendor centric. We've got this to offer you, where we've got

that to offer you. So I don't know if I'm making sense, but

how much does it take into consideration because you build

messages and things like that, right, within the system. So,

how much does it take into consideration that you're

showing that you appreciate them and that you care, or is it

just, hey, you might be ready for this next thing?

Yeah, that's a great question, and not

really. It was around and about, but I just

needed to get the sense of it, yeah,

yeah, absolutely. It's a it's a good question and

it's important, and it's actually the next stage of of

the of the latter, which are the safe plays. And so when we do

write a safe play, it's it's not actually to get something out of

them. I would I would say our system is customer centric,

client centric.

Okay,

because clients are the heroes of the journey,

and it's about what the client needs and serving them. So the

message might be if they're at risk. The message might be

something to to help meet a need that wasn't met or a deliverable

that maybe they're not happy about if they're quiet. Right?

It's it's to engage them, not to necessarily sell them something.

Okay, and then you know if it's an even if it's like an overdue

invoice, a lot of times people they don't disengage just when

something's wrong. They disengage because they're busy

or something came up or you you know like a lot of times if I

didn't book back in with my dentist it's because I didn't

get that reminder text or email yeah because I hate

going to the dentist so it's up to them yeah

but if they you know message you you're like oh

yeah okay I should book in right yeah

yeah yeah

so it's kind of something it's very similar to

that and on the on the expansion ready, I think there's actually

a myth around and a fear around being scared to ask people

because nine out of 10 times when you ask someone to refer

you, they're gonna give you a referral. If they like working

with you, they want to see you win. They want to be in you want

to be in business so that they can keep working with you, and

it it's okay to ask them for a referral. That's something I had

to learn and get over my own fear around. And I think a lot

of times we're just scared to do that, but it's actually it's

it's a fun way to include them in your business too. And you

can even make it so that they. As well, a lot of times when I I

get referrals through people, I will buy them a gift, or if I

know they like a certain bottle of wine or a restaurant, I'll

get them a gift card because they're part of the journey too.

Of course, but let's talk about that for a

minute because I I don't think I feel the same way. I I once

interviewed this woman, and this is all she teaches. Is I forget

what she calls it, but it's her referral philosophy, I guess.

And that is that you don't ask for referrals; you earn them.

And if you have a a good relationship with somebody that

that totally knows, likes, and trusts you. They will refer you

any time, all the time, as long as you as it's a good fit for

that, right? Like that they are the right. They come across the

right people that need your services, right? Because not all

relationships are reciprocal that way. Sometimes you have to

let the law of reciprocity do its job. Like you may come

across people in your business that need a new LinkedIn

profile, and you've you you've done some work with me, so you

kindly send them my way because you trust that I will do a you

know I'll look after them, and if I come across not as likely

because I maybe because I forget you don't just work with big

companies you work with smaller and health and wellness you

mentioned the dentist companies that maybe could take a look at

what you're doing I'd be happy to but but the point is, I don't

know about asking. I think it's very important to look after the

people that refer you, right? Usually, the people that refer

don't expect anything in return because that's just who they

are. But you know, some people have referral programs and those

kinds of things, but I, I, and once in a while, don't get me

wrong, it's okay to ask if it feels appropriate. But generally

speaking, I think you have to show up in people's lives and

you have to earn that trust so that they will refer you.

And that's exactly why we only ask when

they're in the purple. That's why we don't ask in the green

and the yellow or the red? They have to be in a very specific

space in their customer journey. But I, I would, I think this is

something we definitely see differently. I think the ask is

really important. You don't ask for what you don't get. You

don't get in life what you don't ask for. And

I generally agree with that. I've said that many

times. If you don't ask, you don't get. So yes, I guess I

won't completely say we're completely on opposite sides

because I think there are times, as I said, that I that I will

ask if it seems appropriate, but not gen not all the time.

Sometimes it just you know the right people come, you know it

comes your way. I don't know, but it's good. It's good to have

differences as well.

Absolutely, yeah,

absolutely. Okay, so what should a service

business owner be paying attention to right now without

any technology at all that would tell them that a client

relationship is starting to cool.

A service business,

yeah, or can they?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah,

of course they can do it manually. It's just

more work, right? Yeah. So yeah, a service business should be

looking at frequency of purchases, like how when's the

last time someone booked in?

Yeah.

You know, like we just finished accounting season,

right? So I'm sure a lot of accountants lost 10, 20% of

their business book just because they weren't paying attention,

right?

Yeah. And then

they're like, wait, you know, Joe Smith never

ended up sending us his stuff, right? So if you're paying

attention to that ahead of time, and I've already talked to a

number of accountants in this season who have shared their.

Oh, that's great! So

that's good market for you right now. That's

excellent. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's frequency of purchasing

engagement again. Like, are they getting back to you? Another one

is. Is and this is a sneaky one, but the like, do they engage

with your your content online in another way? So like now we do

live in a digital age, like you said, and if your company is

putting out any type of posts, and if someone used to like

comment on your stuff and like be pretty engaged online and

like now isn't anymore, that's like another really interesting

sign. That's a little more subtle though.

Yes, because probably you're not sitting on

the internet or on social media all the time, and so you miss it

for until until. So you say, oh wait, I haven't heard from so

and so, or I missed them. Yeah, so as an entrepreneur, would you

see that solopreneurs or small, you know, two to five business

comp, you know what I mean, company people companies would

be able to use your service.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. So some of our current

clients are small teams that are starting to scale, and they like

we're in the age now, in the age of AI. You don't need large

teams to scale a company necessarily. Like that's

starting. That's going to become a way of the past. I think. I

think we're going to see a lot of instead of instead of like

extra large enterprise companies, we're going to see a

lot more small medium businesses. Yeah, because

they're going

to use AI employees as well as real

humans. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And so I think there's going to

create more space for you know different jobs to pop up as

well, but I I am a big believer in supporting small medium

businesses.

Great, yeah, that's that's good. I think

that's what we were just talking about. I'm looking at my next

question. You've described your tension as the only sustainable

differentiator as AI makes services cheaper and cheaper.

That's a bold claim. Make the case for it.

Yeah, absolutely happy to. I believe we're in a

war on clients, just like we've been in a war on talent for a

number of years. Right? It's it's getting harder and harder

to find really good employees, skilled employees, and and we're

we're entering a war on clients, and I'm starting to see it pop

up already. Right now, you can spin up a solution overnight

from like a software product that you love. You know, a lot

of people are making their own CRMs; they're making their own

version of the app they're already using, so they can cut

down on costs. The challenge is that's not always good because

it doesn't work as good as the way people actually designed it.

Because AI doesn't solve the problem, you still need to solve

the problem properly and then use AI to accelerate it. the The

trick with this, though, is because people are going to go

into different industries, because a lot of industries are

about to get decimated. The competition is going to go up

across every industry, not just the ones with technical, but

even healthcare and the human

competition.

Yeah, absolutely. As if it isn't

bad enough now.

Yeah. So why should someone stay with you

instead of going with someone else? That's already hard and

competitive. It's about to 10x Wow. And so being able to keep

your clients is one of the best strategies as we enter this

phase of AI.

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? It's

scary though too, and if you're

think about it, right? Like people buy from

people when they're relationship based. I know, so it makes

sense.

I know. So in this new world that we're in,

and if you're expanding your company, have you experienced

lately hiring people, and and when you hire them or go to hire

them, do you ask them about their comfort zone with AI? I

mean, does that become like a number one question? Or

oh yeah, absolutely. Before before we

even interview, they have to do a test project with as part of

their application, and part of that test project is working

with AI to see how comfortable they are, their appetite is for

it. You know, like it's it's well, it's hard because we're

also an AI company. Yeah. But I think what I'm as I'm talking to

my peers and a lot of other people, even in service-based

industries that use very little tech, it's starting to become a

very common question in the interview process.

Yeah, I'm sure. So I just want to clarify

something. So your your system does not hook up to LinkedIn,

does

it? No, and there's a reason for that.

Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. So LinkedIn, amongst a couple other

the social media platforms, are very tight when it comes to AI

and bots specifically. Now Lach isn't a bot; it's it's an

agentic system, right? It's different. But you

called you called it when I first asked you. You

called it a dash. Dashboard.

Yeah, yeah, we have a dashboard.

Okay, we

do have a dashboard, but yeah, LinkedIn

has is pretty tight guidelines. Well, we we don't connect to

LinkedIn. We're also not like a outreach sales tool, right? Like

our focus is internal and health. Helping keep the clients

you already have.

So it's and do you work with a lot of like

medical practices? Is that one of your target markets? Is that

what you said?

Yeah, we work with a number of clinics across

the country already.

Oh, that's good. The thing

therapist clinics as well. Okay,

I want to pitch in there for that because you

mentioned the dentist, and I and it seems as though a lot of

dentists they must get pitched all the time with different, you

know, programs to use, and everything seems to be quite

automated today when it comes to the dentist. But it's all around

my experience with my dentist is it's all around them. It's like

you know, if you don't tell us you're not coming, you pay $100

If you don't tell us the day before, and then when you book

your appointment, you get six God knows how many reminders.

Yeah, you know, and that drives me crazy. I would much rather

see a dental office, for example, a family dentistry, or

you know where they've got everybody in the family coming

and all of that. That they send you a birthday card, or they

send you your kids something when it's their birthday, or you

do something to show that you care about your patients,

absolutely. I call those ice cream moments.

There you go. I love that ice cream moments. But

they don't do that in all these programs. It's all about them.

It's all about the dentist's office, right?

That's why Lach has a real opportunity here.

Yeah. So, so do you see your company having the

having the a piece of it giving them ideas of showing them

showing appreciation.

Yeah, you bet. So what we're already doing is, you

know, if someone gets married or they have a life event like a

kid or you know something that is a noteworthy noteworthy

event, we call it life events. Yeah, we want to make sure Lach

captures that and helps action something for them. So even if

it's like you know, like a $20 online gift. Oh yeah, it doesn't

matter

so much what it's not the

dollar amount, but

no, it's what connects to the people around

your business, right? Around the service that you're providing,

yeah, that's good. I I spoke to a fellow in Vancouver who has a

very successful business. I think he does like executive

coaching or something like that. But he told me that, and he's

all about retention and appreciation. And he told me

that he his team members are allowed to spend up to $300 per

client, or whatever it is that they're allowed to do when

something happens. They have that that needs to be looked.

You know, they've heard that somebody's mom died, or that so

and so had a baby, or whatever, they need to do something about

it immediately, and they don't have to ask.

I love that. That's fantastic. Yeah.

So I thought that was really cool, and they try to

make it something special, right? Like if you heard that

this woman, he told me the story about this woman that talked

about loving orchids, and he made sure that he went and found

a beautiful orchid to send to her, so it's not just the gift;

it's the thought that's right behind it that's like amazing.

Anyway, this is fun. I could talk about this stuff all day.

So, one last question: If someone listening today runs a

small business service business and they want to start treating

retention as a real strategy, not just a nice idea. Where do

you ask them to tell them to begin?

I start at watching the signals because

each step builds on top of each other. So if you're like like

you pointed out, it's not always the right time to ask for a

referral or an upsell. If you're doing that, but you're not doing

the other three, it's going to fall on deaf ears, and you're

just going to end up frustrating your customers. So you got to

start with the drift detection, understanding where your clients

are at with the health scoring. If you can get that locked in,

everything else becomes easier and is going to move your

business forward.

Lots to think about. That's great. Thank you

for being here, Alicia.

Thanks for having me. The

idea that your next best client might already

be in your world and that the relationship just needs a little

more attention is something I think we can all act on, whether

or not we ever use a single piece of technology. However, I

encourage you to check out. It's called Your Latch. What's it

called? Your latch. com right, and check out Alicia's product

and see see what you think. I I really appreciated your story. I

really was in awe of someone who so young was being able to bring

that all together, and. And bring it to my family at

relationships rules. So thank you to everyone for listening.

If this conversation is something that sparked you,

share it with someone who needs to hear it. And until next time,

keep nurturing those relationships because that's

where the real business gets done. So thank you so much.