Ep. 275: Automate First - An Honest Take on AI, Zapier, and Smarter Systems with Lindsey Mueller of Sound Painting Solutions

Speaker A: Welcome back to out of the Hourglass, the podcast for small business owners and leaders in the trades industry. Automation doesn't have to start with AI. It starts with a process you're just, quite frankly, fed up with. Lindsey Mueller, co owner of Sound Painting Solutions in Seattle and a longtime client of Nolan Consulting Group, has been building zapier workflows for over a decade. And. And her approach is refreshingly practical. Find what wastes time or creates errors and then eliminate it. Today, we're talking about Lindsey's Automation first mindset. How she uses AI as a coding and brainstorming tool without, uh, handing over the wheel, and what she'd tell any business owner ready to start simplifying their operations. Lindsay, welcome to the podcast. All right, can you tell our listeners who you are, what you do, and where you're from?

Speaker B: Okay. I'm Lindsey Mueller. I am with Sound Painting Solutions. We are in Seattle, Washington. We do interior painting, exterior painting, and we do carpentry to complement that as well. I am the office manager, which I'm sure we'll get into, but wear a ton of hats doing that. And I am actually from Tucson, Arizona. I was born in, uh, la, but grew up in Tucson.

Speaker A: So you're a West coast girl through and through?

Speaker B: Absolutely, yes, yes. Um, and when I was 19, I moved to Seattle. Jeff and I were dating long distance at the time. Um, Jeff is my husband, the other owner of Sound Painting. And yeah, we were both looking for a change. He was from Eugene, Oregon, so we both landed in Seattle. And he was kind of struggling with what he was going to do career wise. My plan was to go back to school for business. Um, and he ultimately decided that he was going to stick with painting. That's what he had been doing. He worked for his grandfather's company, his dad's company, and had a smaller company of his own as well. So I've kind of been by his side helping him with that in the beginning, just helping. But, um, went full time in 2016 when I graduated college.

Speaker A: Nice. And then you're basically like in what's like trial by fire in terms of, like, just you're going be, whether you go back to school for business or you're like, you're in a small business, you basically are. I can only imagine you've learned so much kind of as your time here has evolved.

Speaker B: Absolutely. It's been trial and error from day

Speaker A: one, but trial and error in good ways. Um, obviously your company has grown. Has grown so much. So, I mean, you're in your 14th year of business now. So. Yeah, the business looks so different from what it did when it first started.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, when we started, it was Jeff painting me helping out with the admin things. Um, and now we are over 30 employees. Uh, we'll be at about $4.5 million in revenue this year. M whole office team, two sales reps. So it took a while to get here, but we did it.

Speaker A: But you guys should. Yeah, and you guys should be very proud of the, you know, the company and the brand that you've built especially to do so in a place where you both weren't originally from. I mean, Jeff being from Eugene, you being from Tucson and la. I mean, to. You're basically transplants who've built a business in a new city. And that's no easy feat.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that part was tough. We leveraged what small network we had, which at the time we met through roller derby. So that was.

Speaker A: I'm so glad you brought this up. Cause I feel like we had to throw this fact in there. Okay, just give listeners just like a quick little, like, overview of roller derby. Just like, and what it is.

Speaker B: Ooh, roller derby. Okay. Well, it is played on quad skates, so, not inline skates. And you're on a flat track, like an oval track. And you have five players on each team. One player on each of those teams, I should say on the floor at a time, five from each team. One player from each of those teams is called the jammer. And their objective is to lap players from the other team. When you do a lap against another player, you earn a point. So that's how you earn points. And it's split up into like minute to two minute rounds called jams. And it's full contact. Wow, that's. That's the quickest crash course I can give you on it. I do not play anymore.

Speaker A: Okay. That was my next question. Are you and Jeff still playing?

Speaker B: No, no, I. I do love to skate for fun. Um, I just went out yesterday with a couple of my former teammates. We did a 17 and a half mile skate. So that was a hell of a way to start the season, but sure was.

Speaker A: You gotta be sore today.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: What an interesting way just to meet your partner. That's like. I feel like that's probably one of the more unique, um, stories I think I've heard. Just in terms of you find you meet people via different hobbies, of course. But roller derby is not, I think, the. One of the more common hobbies out there, per se.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. I would say it's very niche. Um, but for that reason, it is a small community. You kind of get to know everyone across the nation, even globally sometimes. So, yeah, we met each other living in completely different states and ended up dating and both moved to Seattle.

Speaker A: That's awesome. And then build a business together.

Speaker B: Yeah, here we go.

Speaker A: There's the story.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, as you mentioned, your role has changed so much. Obviously you're a co owner, you are an office manager, but you've worn many different hats over the last 13, 14 years. Um, how has your role evolved in that time frame to kind of be where you're sitting now?

Speaker B: I think it's evolved as the needs of the business have evolved. I, um, mentioned I went to school for business. I ultimately went for accounting within the broader business school. Um, so it evolved a lot in that direction. Um, but I think Jeff and I, we're lucky in that we have really complementary skill sets. So for him, he's really good with operation and with sales. That's kind of his domain. And I would say I'm better with like the numbers and the technology. So my job is just always evolved in that direction. So today kind of what I do is the tech side, the administrative side, the accounting side, of course, um, hr, the website. Yeah, A little bit of everything. Marketing, all the.

Speaker A: Yeah, all the things you sound like you work for a small business where you just. The hats, you take off one hat and you put on the next. You know, from morning to afternoon.

Speaker B: You know how it is.

Speaker A: Sure. Do how or what's, what's the most favorite part of your job right now? Like of all those things that you do currently, what do you love to do the most?

Speaker B: You know, probably the tech side, which is great. I know that's what we're going to get into talking about.

Speaker A: Yes, yes.

Speaker B: But, but yeah, I enjoy the technology side. Seeing how we can optimize our business, make our processes better and make our employees jobs easier in the office ultimately and the field as well, to the extent that we can. It's really rewarding to be able to do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it feels like it's a win win across the board. When efficiency is happening and your employees are happy, um, that's ultimately what we want and ultimately that, that is why we're here on this conversation today. And it's a big part of the conversation just, that's just happening across the industry and small business and really the world in general. Um, we're talking a little bit more today about like the automation first mindset with a little bit of AI mixed in. Um, and we'll kind of, we'll get, we'll get down to that. But when did the drive for automation kind of first begin for you? Because it wasn't really something that we talked about. I think even with like, and I'm talking automation in the way of like, digitally, um, that we're speaking to. Because I feel like it wasn't until maybe, I don't know, eight years ago, nine years ago, where that started to be more part of the conversation, at least with, with internally within Summit.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right. Because I, I went back and looked. So Zapier is probably one of the most well known automation tools. Right. That's what I started on. I'm on it to this day. So I was like, when did I create my account? It turns out just about 10 years ago, 11 years ago.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So I was on it pretty early, but started out, you know, really rudimentary, uh, as far as where that came from, I think, you know, starting out, the business is small, you don't have a lot of clients, but slowly you're growing, the complexity is growing. And that's a ton of manual data entry. Right. So it was really as simple as that. Like, oh my gosh, how do I get rid of this manual data entry? And even to this day, I would say anything that I end up automated comes from that place of like, exasperation. Like, this process sucks.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How do I make it better?

Speaker A: I don't want to do this anymore.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, obviously the data entry is like the first easy pain point that a lot of companies point to. Because if they're putting in the same data point across six different platforms, there's got to be a better way to do that. And obviously Zapier came to the table pretty early on and has been a major, uh, kind of solution for that. You know, fast forward to today. I can only imagine from when you started this account 10 years ago to your Zapier setup now, it looks a whole lot different.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, we're at the point now where pretty much all of the tech that we use has some kind of automation within it. Our tech stack is a little bit ridiculous. Not that I wouldn't like to slim it down, but it works because we've got it all connected.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So whether it's those native automations that sometimes they have or it's through Zapier, Um, so we basically went from the point where. All right, well, let's automate our input of customers. So customer inquiry to the website, get it in our CRM. Um, that's kind of how we started to now pretty much having automation across all parts of our business.

Speaker A: What in through the creation of this workflow. Whether it's a particular automation or just kind of the, the mindset itself. What challenges have been the most difficult to work through?

Speaker B: Yeah, the biggest challenges would probably be the limitations of the softwares themselves. Um, so depending on the API of the software that we're using or what capabilities that software has, sometimes you're limited on how much you can connect them to other software. So we have made some changes to the softwares that we use based on things like that.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, another challenge I would say is allowing room for errors in the process. Um because even though you're automating things sometimes the input isn't perfect. So I don't know for example, okay, what happens if an address comes through and it doesn't have a zip code but this program mandates that it has a zip code. Just silly things like that that you don't think of until you're getting those hang ups and those errors. So yeah, I would say between those two things is having the right tools for the job and kind of having like backup funnels and fail safes for abnormalities in the data or just errors that can take place when those errors

Speaker A: or I mean would you consider them like the zap breaking in a sense if it doesn't have a zip code and the one software requires it so it doesn't go through, is that considered like a break?

Speaker B: Kind of, yeah. I mean not fully in the sense that you have different automation runs. Right. And the ones that your input data is perfect, it's going to go through, it's going to be a successful run but then you'll have those ones that aren't. So you've got it partially broken at that point. Right? Like you should definitely fix it. Yeah, but it's not to the point that okay what you've built, it's actually not compatible. You need to completely fix it or it's not going to run at all.

Speaker A: So minor like minor things but it does require someone to go back in and make the fix.

Speaker B: Exactly, yeah.

Speaker A: Who does monitor that? Uh, are you the only one that's building out these automations right now or do you utilize anybody from the team?

Speaker B: Yeah, at this time it's pretty much just me. Uh, luckily I do enjoy doing it. Um, but the team will often let me know if something is broken or not working as expected. And with the way things are, we know that pretty quickly. It's just that as far as actually fixing it, uh, I would be the one to do that.

Speaker A: How do people know when things are breaking? Is it alerts that are coming through? Um, or is it just like a flag in the system? What's the flag that gets raised there?

Speaker B: Yeah, depending on what it is. The nice thing about Zapier and I imagine other platforms like make and things like that as well, you can have a branching error step. You have this step run. What should it do if it runs into an error? So we do have a lot of those set up that alert people. Or sometimes it's simple as, hey, I was trying to move this into that app and it didn't get moved over. Can you look into it for me? Just an expected thing that didn't happen. Sometimes it's like that.

Speaker A: Okay, has there been. You think about all of the automations that you've done. Is there one that you're most proud of or uh, has been the most impactful and maybe you're proud of it from that way. But like what, What? Yeah, what are you most proud of? That's. That's probably the right answer, right question.

Speaker B: Okay, well, I'm a little biased, but probably the invoicing ones because we used to do all of our invoicing manually. We'd use QuickBooks. Um, and we have a need for that just because our jobs, you know, we might send like one estimate in Paint Scout, for example, we also use Paint sc, but that could get broken down into different jobs. So there's some manual work there in breaking that down. But then it's not as simple as transferring that quote from pain Scout into QuickBooks. You know, there are other components to it as well. We collect deposits, all of those things. But I've now managed to completely automate that. So we basically get a perfect invoice when the job is done. And that eliminated some of those errors. Because you have someone creating so many invoices, at some point there's gonna be an error. And that was kind of the motivation for me. Like I don't wanna see another error on an invoice like ever again.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Cause that's the last place you want an error.

Speaker A: Right, right, right. And it's also like the last kind of experience that the customer has with you is getting kind of their final invoice and like, let's wrap this job up nicely. Yeah, that. Can you even think about like how many hours that process has saved Your company in a week. Is that quantifiable?

Speaker B: I would say at least um, multiple hours.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Because it's every day going on doing the deposit invoices, doing the final invoices. Um, the final invoices being the more complex of the two. Yeah, I would say for sure multiple hours and just having the confidence that it's correct. You know I always encourage double check it but I think we have it set up pretty well. It's correct.

Speaker A: That's good. Do you utilize like as you think about the other things that you want to do, the other automations, other kind of ways to make just your workflow more efficient? Um, do you utilize like a network of people? Do you um, brainstorm that with your team? How uh, what gets priority in terms of the next project for you to focus on?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm always asking for input from the team. I would say that's probably the big one but sometimes it's just things that I notice on my own or again if I see that hey there was this error that happened or somebody didn't do this correctly. Okay, well how can I eliminate that problem for that department or for that person? Um, but definitely feedback from the team and you know not everyone's going to think with that mindset of automating a task but just kind of picking their brain of what things they waste time on or what things that they like, don't like doing. Because I mean if you're getting rid of a task that someone doesn't like doing, you're doing them a big favor, totally making their job easier, better. So that's a big motivator as well

Speaker A: is when you have kind of picked the, kind of the next project. What is your um, process for kind of brainstorming how it's going to fit into the, you know, the full puzzle of the current automations that you already have.

Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of times I'll honestly just write it out so step by step. Um, and then I'll go into Zapier and try to recreate what I have written out.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And some, sometimes I'll use AI for some help, for some inspiration, some brainstorming but yeah it usually just starts writing

Speaker A: out the steps so starting simple like. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the AI component because um, you have a pretty honest take on, on AI. You, you, you said that you are a little bit of an AI skeptic and I'm, I, I want to unpack that because I feel like so many people are like go, go, go AI. It's great, it's the best. Everyone implement it. But you are doing so maybe in a little bit different way. So bring us into kind of your perspective of, of AI, if you don't mind.

Speaker B: Oh boy. Okay. Well I think AI, it has some pretty well known limitations, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: People talk about hallucinations, which is essentially when it doesn't know how to answer something which if you think about our small businesses and how unique they are, if it doesn't have all of the possible context it could ever have about your business, I think it's pretty easy for it to get things wrong. And often what it does when it gets things wrong is it make something up very confidently so you might not even realize that it's totally made up. Um, so that's just kind of my skepticism with it as far as allowing it to make any kind of decision. I think that I could get to the point of using it more, but definitely with human in the loop on a lot of those things.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you're not ready to hand over all your automations to AI quite yet. You want, you want the human check in there?

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: Yes it does. It brings up a good point about context and the, the importance of giving when you're using, utilizing these tools for brainstorming or a project helping you make a decision. It you probably most, in most cases folks aren't providing enough context to the prompt and, or challenging it enough. I mean the other thing that AI wants to do is please you. Right? I mean so it's often going to try to potentially give you the answer that you're maybe um, a little bit biased towards in a sense. And it's like how do I get it to tell me what I don't want to hear but maybe what the actual response should be?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's so true.

Speaker A: It's like the hard truth sometimes and like we have to, we always don't want to hear that but. And AI, unless we like really push forward is not going to give it to us.

Speaker B: Exactly. You do have to press it for that. I agree.

Speaker A: You do. When you do utilize AI tools, which ones are you using? What's your go to?

Speaker B: Uh, I've been using CLAUDE GPT for a while, but I'm using claude.

Speaker A: CLAUDE seems to be um, the winner amongst or in terms of favoritism amongst a lot of people that I talk to myself, myself included. And it's kind of wild how I feel like every month there is just something different that it can do for you. Um, do you find yourself when you do use Claude especially for the automation side. Are you ever tempted to see like, what else it could do for you outside of just like the brainstorming aspect?

Speaker B: A little bit, yeah. And one thing that I have used it for a lot that's been a game changer for the automations is Vibe coding. Because if you add code steps to your Zapier process, there's just a lot more that you can unlock in terms of logic and data extraction and all of that. Um, so. So it's been awesome for that. I would consider myself a pretty tech savvy person, but I don't know how to code, so AI can do that for me.

Speaker A: Yes, it can, and some mistakes.

Speaker B: So I have to test it every time.

Speaker A: For those of us who don't know what Vibe coding is, will you explain it to us?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So let's just say that I have a bunch of data coming into Zapier and I want the data to be extracted in a certain way. Maybe I want it to return an answer based on whether the data says this or the data says that. Well, you can accomplish all of that with Python code.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So I would essentially just tell Claude, hey, I want my data to be extracted this way. This is what the inputs are. Um, write me a Python code step for Zapier and it'll do that for you. And a lot of times what I'm doing is I'm feeding it like screenshots or direct copy and paste of the data. So again, context and it has all of that. And then I'll just run a test on it, make sure that it's getting all of it. And if it's not, sometimes it's just troubleshooting with it and arguing with it a little bit. Hey, this didn't turn out how I wanted. Fix it. Yeah, yeah, eventually it does tend to get it right.

Speaker A: Do better. Claude, come on. Now I get in arguments about with it on the simplest thing of it, like just having like the date wrong. I'm like, no, no, today is May 18th. Yesterday wasn't May 18th. And it comes back and it's like, okay, yes, today is May, or yesterday was May 18th. I'm like, no, you're not listening to me. So I think if it can, um, if it's as simple as like a date error, just think about like when you're doing complex things like Python coding, what the errors could potentially be. So then are you feeding that Python coding into Zapier and is that what you're doing here?

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker A: Wow. Okay. That's wild. So that is really kind of. Would you say that it is, um, taking your Zapier automations and like, kind of like next leveling what you're able to do in Zap because you're being able to utilize these AI tools?

Speaker B: Yeah, it definitely does. Because uh, if you have inputs that are coming in pretty predictably, then you can easily extract the data that you want out of that using Python. Because like Zapier for example, besides the code steps, they have a lot of like formatter steps, but it's just very limited on how you can input, um, output the data compared to what you could do with something like Python. And it can also consolidate like 10 of those formatter steps into one step and they do charge by the step. So the simpler your ZAP is the better.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah. Your plan is limited to so many steps.

Speaker A: Okay, so when you're doing this work in Claude that ultimately you'll be transitioning over into Zapier, Are you telling it that it's going to be used like for Zapier, like how. What's the prompt here outside of. Or what's the kind of additional details to the prompt outside of. Here's the input. This is the what, this is the output, this is what I'm looking to achieve.

Speaker B: Yeah, generally it's just pretty much that I have kind of an ongoing chat with it going, so it has the previous context of things that I've done and I can jump back to them if I need to fix something. Um, but yeah, I do let it know like, hey, this is for Zapier, this is what the inputs will be, this is what I want it to output. Um, and again I do like feed it screenshots or copy and paste of the data so it has all of that.

Speaker A: If you. This may be a scary thought, so don't panic with this question.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: If you had to like, if Zapier was to like shut down tomorrow, what would happen to your automations, your workflow, company process? Like, does that keep you up at night?

Speaker B: Um, I guess in this hypothetical scenario, am I allowed to switch to another automation software?

Speaker A: Yes, of course. Of course, yes. So that's part of the, I guess that's part of the question too, is how easy would it be to change course of what you're doing on Zapier into another software?

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: I can imagine. Just think about all the hours that you've done, not only learning Zapier, but building these automations. If Zapier was for some reason to fall off the Digital landscape tomorrow. What happens to sound painting solutions workflow?

Speaker B: Well, I would certainly move to another software solution. I know a lot of people make. Uh, I guess the real trouble would be if I actually lost all of the work that I had done and couldn't look at it as I were able to replicate it. I would hope that that's not a realistic scenario, but to be honest, I would just rebuild it in a new software. Um, and who knows, maybe I would improve it by rebuilding it. I do try to go in from time to time and make improvements to our existing ones, but yeah, I think that's what I would do.

Speaker A: So what I'm hearing is that it does not give you up at night, that you wouldn't panic. It would be okay. You would have a positive spin on it in terms of there's an opportunity to improve the current workflow in just a different platform.

Speaker B: Sure, sure. It doesn't keep me up at night. But to be clear, I would panic if I saw that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it would not be good. It would make for a really bad start to your day, your week, maybe the month ahead. Just because again, I can only imagine all that you've built, all that you've done, and the number of employees it impacts and, and also customers it impacts. I mean, customers receiving invoices like that. They're ultimately impacted by this workflow that you've created.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Well, let's hope. Let's just say Zapier gods out there just don't go away. I think about this a lot because of how much we all have just built our worlds into technology and the dependence on it. Um, it's so great. But we also know when like WI fi is down, a lot of times, like, our work is halted and.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, so it's like, how do we, how do we prepare to troubleshoot that? And we all don't. We don't have the answer, quite frankly.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I mean, even I'm recalling a few times in the last few months where AWS had some huge outages and like, yes, half of the, the software that we use, we just couldn't do anything with it.

Speaker A: So what. Yeah. In that moment, like, what happens in your office when AWS is. AWS is down for a couple hours. Um, obviously your production team can still be out in the field and painting and doing what they do, but the internal operations comes to a standstill.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, those things get put on hold. I know Zapier has been pretty good at, like, they hold the tasks and run them later. Um, but if that doesn't happen, I think it's important that you do have the processes in place at least like SOPs that people can refer to so that if some things need to be done manually, they know how to do them. Just in the worst case scenario. Yeah, but unfortunately I think when your softwares go dark, those things just get put on hold until they come back online.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're basically, you're handcuffed. Um, and it's just, I think it's just the nature of the world that we work in these days. Whether you're a painting contractor, you're a consulting and coaching firm, or your retail store, like you're impacted in all different ways. But the way we operate now has drastically changed because of the tools and automations that exist.

Speaker B: Definitely.

Speaker A: Is there an automation you haven't built yet, but you're. Or one that you're working on right now or like your dream list that if you had all the time in the world, what would you do?

Speaker B: Ooh, um, yeah. So I was thinking about this and I had aspirations to do it, um, like last slow season, but didn't quite get to it. I would like to automate postcard mailers and there is um, a website, I think a lot of people within Nolan use it. It's called SendGym.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: They actually do a zapier integration. I would love to build that out such that I'd have to figure out the targeting who the ideal recipient is. But as we finish a job or start a job, whatever it may be, um, getting a bunch of postcards sent out to that area, to those neighbors, um, just kind of getting back to the basics of physical mail, but doing it in like the easiest way possible. Um, that's, that's kind of the next big one on my list.

Speaker A: Okay. I would imagine. I mean the hardest part of that would, would be just the decision on the targeting. Only because the send gym is built in a way that has the configurations to be able to do the zaps. Um, and you have the tech skills to set that up. So it's more of the details of the. So what per se.

Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. Like what type of job, maybe what specific zip codes or neighborhoods. Um, if it's like a certain dollar hold dollar threshold, all of those things,

Speaker A: what, what has to happen, you know, for you to be able to prioritize that. Is it just like anything else? Just like the battling priorities of, of like of a week and all the things to get done?

Speaker B: Oh yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And also talking to the team about it and like bouncing ideas off of them. Like, hey, if we're to send out these postcards, you know, kind of how should we sequence that? What areas should be targeted, what time frame should they go out? And just things like that.

Speaker A: How long do you think it takes from when? Whether you think about like this particular zap, um, want per se, versus the things that you've built and maybe not, you know, not the most complicated, not the most simple. From selection of what you're going to work on, to brainstorming it with the team with AI, to building it, testing it, implementing it. What do you think that timeline is? Is it like a month? Is it a couple months? Is it a week?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think building it out, you know, that could potentially take the week. But as far as making sure it's really running smoothly, people are comfortable with it. I would probably give it the month because a lot of times what happens is I'm deploying it and then I'm actively making fixes to it as it runs because there are different scenarios, different data, something I didn't account for. Um, so it's just kind of constantly being tweaked.

Speaker A: Do you ever face any, uh, pushback from the team or implementation challenges on any of the things that you create?

Speaker B: Not really, no. I think, um, you know, because I try to get their feedback and understand what the tasks are that they're doing. I think they usually appreciate it. You know, unless it's like erroring out and not working, then obviously, um, they're going to want me to fix that as soon as possible and maybe get a little bit frustrated. But I wouldn't say I've experienced pushback on the process of getting those things done.

Speaker A: I guess it's probably different than deploying like a whole new software. That's a different experience. You're basically enhancing a workflow that already exists. When you're doing a zap like that, um, when you are deploying new software, um, and you're making it before you actually even deploy it, when you're making a decision on what you're going to add to this already maybe complex tech stack that you have is one of, um, the things that you're looking for to make sure that it has API integration or just easy zap, um, configurations is a necessity per se.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's definitely a huge one and I would say has motivated several of the software changes that we've made in the last five years or so.

Speaker A: I'd say it's probably also motivated a lot of softwares to change and make sure that they have open API configurations as well, so that they can be a part of the game or else they're going to be looked over.

Speaker B: Totally.

Speaker A: Um, one last question in this realm. Um, how do you learn? Do you utilize resources online? Do you have mentors you look up to in this space? Like how, how are you continuing to make yourself kind of more advanced in this space?

Speaker B: I would just say a lot of trial and error.

Speaker A: Fair.

Speaker B: Uh, that's not the most interesting answer, but, you know, having done it for 11 years, just a lot of trial and error.

Speaker A: So you're not afraid to break something?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: No. And the AI has taken it to the next level too, because, you know, beyond just like the basic brainstorming, sometimes I'll be asking it, hey, I really want to accomplish this particular thing, but I have no idea how to do it. And it'll give me some ideas, some feasible and some not, but I have been able to push past some of those walls with that.

Speaker A: That's good. I think that's, that's a good, a good use of a tool like Claude. Even if you're not someone who, who uses it on a regular basis and you're kind of just testing out, um, what AI can do for you, it often allowed it, you know, give it the problem that you're having trouble with and it can often kind of open up just different directions that you didn't even really consider.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker A: Can you imagine, you know, say 11 years ago, 10 years ago, when you launched your ZAP account, if like, AI was a factor then, like, would that have been overwhelming for you if you were trying to figure out the whole ZAP automation world in tandem with the, you know, the existence of this AI technology?

Speaker B: I've never really thought about that, but potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think even now it's a little bit overwhelming.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What can it do? What limitations does it have? Um, what direction is it going in? It's something new every day, like you alluded. Right. So, yeah, it would have been really overwhelming. And honestly, I can't imagine having grown up with it, I'm kind of glad that I didn't.

Speaker A: Me too.

Speaker B: Me too. M. Yeah. And I think getting back to the pitfalls of AI, I think as helpful as it is, sometimes it's a substitute for critical thought and problem solving.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And I think that that's not good because we don't, we don't want to lose that in ourselves. And I can't imagine being a student in school and avoiding that temptation to just solve every issue in that manner.

Speaker A: There's no way, I mean that would be, you would almost be trained like that's the default and that's not good. I mean even so funny down to um, one of my cousins was doing um, a full Ironman this weekend in Jacksonville, Florida and her sister was there to cheer her on and you know, brought poster board and marker and she sent to a group of us who you know, do a lot of racing, you know, with her on a regular basis. Before I go and lean on Gemini to help inspire me with some like good poster signs, I, I want to go to humans first and like give me your ideas. And I was like down just to like the simple act of like putting something on a sign. The immediate default is go to Gemini or writing a card, go to Gemini, go to Claude. Like we have the ability to come up with these words.

Speaker B: Right, Right. But it's, I get it, it's tempting, it's, it's really tempting to just ask AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think in a lot of cases where you're trying to move quick and um, make your workflow more productive, it does make sense. But we have to really remember that we can't lose our own sense of thought and critical thinking and creativity at the same time. It's a very fine line, um, or delicate balance per se to walk on. If you were to say to a listener here who um, maybe is new to this world, whether they're still embracing AI or they've done a few automations within their, within their company and they want to do more, but it's like where do I even start, start this process. What would you say to them if you were kind of face to face?

Speaker B: Yeah. Where to start? Um, think about the tasks that are fairly consistent, fairly linear but waste a lot of time or where you see a lot of errors and set up a zapier account or even before you set it up, take a look at some of the apps that you use on their site and you can see all of the things that it's capable of. I totally get it. It's not going to interest everyone to explore and do these things themselves and play around with it, but there are companies and consultants that do it as well. So that might be the first step. If that's what's holding you back is I don't wanna do all this myself, I have no interest in this, then yeah, there are people that you can hire that can help you out.

Speaker A: It's a great who not how moment.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Which um, is a great reminder. Cause I feel like a lot of times we often get, um, we put up barriers in front of us because we're the ones that don't want to do it or don't know how to do it. But we just need to figure out who is the right person to do it if it's not a matter of us being the one.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Lindsay, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you kind of bringing us um, into your world. And I would argue you're absolutely correct. You definitely were a bit more ah, ahead of the game in terms of activating your Zap account 10, 10 years ago. That's definitely ahead of I think a lot of our listeners. Um, but it also speaks to like this just being a space that you enjoy. And it's really cool when you can take technology that you're passionate about and bring it into um, a service based business and really kind of mesh the two so, so well. And for you and Jeff too, from a partnership perspective, like utilizing both of your strengths in a really effective way to build, build this company.

Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you so much, Molly. It's, it's been a lot of fun. Frustrating at times, but yes, definitely fulfilling and rewarding.

Speaker A: Well, keep doing what you're doing because uh, I mean it sounds like you've got a, um, lot of great things currently in play and can only imagine as like the world continues to evolve and tech continues to evolve, like what the opportunities are, um, just to become, you know, with the exception of like AI painting robots. Let's stay away from, let's stay away from there. Let's let like actual people, you know, do, do some of these, um, like really talented, talented, you know, craftsmanship. Uh, but yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty cool to witness but again with kind of the delicate balance of just like being aware of uh, the faults that can be per se.

Speaker B: Definitely.

Speaker A: Well, I always say until next time because there's always more conversations to be had. Um, and this podcast is one that will continue to ongo into the future. So maybe we'll check in a year or so and see how that Send gym is going and see what other automations that you've created, um, since this conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah, hold me accountable. That's great.

Speaker A: I will, I will check in this time next year maybe, um, May 18, 2027. Is send Jim in place? I imagine it's going to be. I, uh, I don't think that's. That will, that will be a project that you'll hold back on too long.

Speaker B: Yep, that's. That's my hope as well.

Speaker A: All right, Lindsay. Well, until next time, thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of out of the Hourglass. This podcast is recorded and produced by the team at Nolan Consulting Group, a nationwide coaching firm built specifically for leaders in the trades. If today's conversation sparked some ideas and you're curious about what coaching could look like for your business, we would love to connect. Visit nolancg.com to learn more. Have a question, comment, comment or idea for a future podcast episode? I want to hear it. Subscribe wherever you listen, and we'll see you next time.