April 8, 2025 • 37 mins
You’ve duct-taped your service business together with tools and automations. But now things are breaking, you’re chasing Zapier errors, and client delivery is starting to feel like a drag. What if the next step wasn’t hiring a team or flattening your services—but turning your system into the service?
In this episode, we're geeking out with Dylan Kinder, founder and CEO of DataCose, about how service-based businesses can scale by transforming parts of their delivery into software. We explore how to spot the signs that you’re ready to make that shift, where to start, and why automation and AI don’t have to mean less human work—just less draining work.
Whether you’re dreaming of fewer tabs, smoother client onboarding, or a more proactive delivery experience, Dylan brings a thoughtful, non-spammy approach to scaling with tech. We’re diving deep into internal vs. client-facing tools, the role of AI in small business, and how to avoid building a digital Frankenstein.
What You’ll Learn:
- The two biggest signals it’s time to turn part of your service into software
- Why internal automation is the best starting point
- How to think like an engineer (even if you're not one)
- The role of client portals in scaling calm service delivery
- Why AI should be used with human oversight—not instead of it
Connect with Dylan:
LinkedIn
DataCose
Connect with Susan:
LinkedIn
BlueSky
Work With Susan:
Explore how we can build calm systems together → https://beyondmargins.com/services
- (00:00) - Introduction: The Struggles of Scaling a Service Business
- (00:43) - Reimagining Service Delivery with Smart Systems
- (02:12) - Exploring Automation and AI with Dylan Kinder
- (03:06) - The Two Paths to Scaling a Service Business
- (10:28) - Real-World Examples of Successful Automation
- (24:33) - The Role of AI in Modern Service Businesses
- (34:35) - Conclusion: Building Margin and Calm with Technology
Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susan Boles (00:06):
You've built a thoughtful, high touch service
business. Your work getsresults, but the delivery, It's
getting heavy. Too many movingparts, too much manual
oversights, and way too manypings from Zapier. You want more
margin, more space in your day,more predictable service
delivery, and more capacity totake on great fit clients
(00:28):
without cloning yourself. Butmost of the advice on scaling
either points you towards hiringa big team or flattening your
services into a cookie cuttercourse.
And the AI advice out there?Well, it feels spammy. What if
the solution wasn't replacingyour service, but engineering it
differently? What if you couldtake what's already working and
(00:50):
build smart systems powered byautomation, software, or even AI
that made your service deliverysmoother, not more complicated.
Imagine this.
It's a Tuesday afternoon. You'reonboarding a new client, and
instead of juggling 12 tabs andrewriting the same email for the
fourth time this week, yourinternal system handles 80% of
(01:12):
it automatically. The clientgets exactly what they need on
time. Your team is calm, and youget to do the strategic human
parts of your service that youactually like doing. As a
service business owner, you'veprobably felt the tension
between doing work that's deeplyhuman and trying to scale that
work without sacrificing yoursanity or your standards.
(01:34):
And maybe you've built your fairshare of franken systems along
the way, duct taping toolstogether to get the job done.
But what if instead of trying toescape your client work, you
scaled through it? What if thesystem itself was the service?
Welcome to Calm as the New KPI,the podcast where we challenge
default business advice andbreak down the levers you can
(01:56):
pull to build a calmer businessthat actually works for you. I'm
your host, Susan Bowles.
And if that all sounds likemagic or maybe just wildly
unrealistic, today's episodewill give you a fresh
perspective. I'm talking withDylan Kinder, founder and CEO of
Datacoz, a custom developmentagency that helps service based
(02:19):
businesses scale by turningtheir service into a software.
We're geeking out about how toknow when your business might be
ready to turn parts of yourservice into software, the
difference between internalautomations and client facing
tools, and why you don't have tochoose between being a service
provider or being a softwarecompany. You could be both on
(02:41):
your own terms. This episode ispart of our series on scaling
your client business withoutditching clients, and we're
tackling two levers of thecalmer framework.
Business design by rethinkinghow you deliver your services
and using efficiency to createmargins by using software and
tech to create those margins andcalm in your day to day
(03:03):
business. We're told there areonly two ways to scale a service
business. Option one, hire,build a team, train them, build
layers of management, buildsystems to manage the systems,
and congratulations. You've justbuilt a mini agency or a full
blown company you don't actuallywanna run. Option two,
(03:25):
productize everything.
Strip your service down to theessentials. Turn it into a DIY
course, a playbook, or somekinds of hands off digital
product or group program. Butsuddenly, the thing that made
your service special, thenuance, the customization, the
expertise, that's gone. Butthat's the default. That if you
want to scale your revenue, youronly choices are to go big or go
(03:46):
flat.
And, honestly, that advice justdoesn't work for a lot of us
because maybe you don't want ateam of 10. And maybe your
clients don't want a self pacedcourse. Maybe you love
delivering your service. Youjust want it to be lighter,
easier, and less reliant on you.So what do you do when the
default path to scale doesn'tactually align with the business
you wanna build?
(04:07):
Well, that's the breaking point.It's the moment when those duct
tape systems start fallingapart, when client delivery
starts feeling like a drag, whenyour time is eaten up by
repetitive admin work that couldeasily be handled by, well,
literally anything or anyoneelse. It's the moment when you
start wondering, isn't there abetter way to do this? And
(04:29):
that's where tech enters thepicture. We have more access to
automation, AI, and customizabletools than ever before.
But honestly, it still feelscomplicated, intimidating, hard
to implement, easy to break, andyet it could be the thing that
helps you escape that falsechoice between go big or go one
to many. Because done right,tech can help you deliver
(04:51):
services that are still hightouch and human, just lighter.
We're going to take a quickbreak to hear from our sponsors
and then we'll be back withDylan getting nerdy about using
software and AI in your servicebusiness. So Dylan you help
(05:54):
service based businesses thinkabout their businesses as
machines. Can you break thatdown?
What does that actually mean orlook like to approach a service
business more like an engineer?
Dylan Kinder (06:08):
When I look at a business, I see all these
different functions. There aresales functions. There are
finance functions. There are ofcourse, delivery operation
functions. I think personally,I'm spending most of my time in
those operation functions,really trying to help automate
the great service that theseservice based businesses are
delivering and really start totry to think about how to
(06:29):
productize it through tech.
So right now people are involvedin many of the steps, but more
and more, and especially aswe'll probably get to later with
AI, more and more steps can behanded over to, to computers,
machines so that humans canfocus on what they're best at.
Very creative tasks, hightouchpoint, high value type
(06:50):
work.
Susan Boles (06:51):
So talk to me about what the common signals are that
a service business might beready to start thinking about
turning part of its service intoa software.
Dylan Kinder (07:02):
So there are typically two camps. The first
camp will be, they just can'tfind the tool that does
everything they need. And oftenwhat we'll see is businesses
will create a littleFrankenstein, digital
Frankenstein, and they'll usesome common tool. Maybe just for
an example, we could pick a CRMsuch as HubSpot or GoHighLevel.
(07:23):
You know, it's typically notCRMs are working with.
It's it's typically more likeorder management or task
management type platforms, but,but it could be any tool and
they can't quite get it to dowhat they need it to do. So
they're using Zapier, maybethey're making automations
within the platform. Maybethere's some custom code
integrations happening too. Butat the end of the day, it's
(07:46):
breaking. It's not agile.
It's not flexible enough. Andthe more that you build on top
of these tools, less stable thetools become as well. And I've
seen a lot of companies justalways getting pinged every day
by Zapier error, error, error,or by whatever tool they're
using. And I think that's likeone great signal that maybe you
should kind of take a step backand reassess the system,
(08:10):
especially over time, becauseit's so easy to just add a
bandaid quick fix, quick fix.That's what we have to do as
business owners every day too,right?
Just to keep things running. Buteventually there's a point you
have to kind of step back andreassess it and build the
correct machine. And the secondcamp would be that maybe the
signs aren't showing yet, butthese business owners just feel
(08:31):
like there has to be a betterway. Some business owners are a
little bit more tech inclinedthan others, and they just
really feel like they know theycould get more out of tech and
that drives them to kind oflook. So there may be a little
bit ahead of the others, butmaybe I guess it's a similar
thing.
They just don't feel like theyare where they are. We have some
clients who, for example,they're just always trying to
(08:52):
push the boundary. They'redefinitely not hitting
limitations. They're far aheadof their competitors, but they
always want more and they'realways pushing farther.
Susan Boles (09:00):
So in this hypothetical business that we're
talking about, if somebodywanted to head down the path of
using software to scale theirclient work without just
completely running away fromclient work, we're not talking
about replacing client work, butmaking that client delivery
easier. What are some of thefirst areas that you think they
(09:23):
should look at automating orproductizing? Or how do you
think about that?
Dylan Kinder (09:27):
Yeah, that's a really great question. I really
recommend starting actually withwhat's working because if you
already have a proven testedmanual system with very high
confidence that can be enhancedwith automation, with the right
tech, with the right tools. Sothose are, I think really quick
wins and they free up timestill. And then maybe the things
that aren't working as well,those identify processes that
(09:50):
should be kind of focused onbefore we even look at
automating them or creating sometech around them. So that's
maybe how I'd approach it.
Start with what's working. Is itstreamlined? Is it augmented
with tech to the point that itshould be? If not, let's go do
that. And then we can move on tothe rougher areas.
Now, sometimes there is just onearea that is so bad that
(10:13):
business owners just feel if wecould fix this, that it would
solve everything. And maybe it'sworth paying attention to those,
but very often businesses aren'tin this state of complete
collapse, hopefully. And we canjust start one by one on getting
things automated piece by piece.
Susan Boles (10:29):
Can you share maybe a real world example of a
service business that you'veseen successfully turn part of
their process or their deliveryinto a software and kind of talk
us through what that transitionlooked like for them?
Dylan Kinder (10:44):
Absolutely. Yeah. So maybe one of my favorite
examples is a third party DMVservice provider. And what they
were actually able to do wasinstead of manually moving
between their customers and theDMV, they created a portal that
both the DMV ended up in the endsigning into. We didn't know if
(11:05):
that'd be possible in thebeginning.
And then their customers alsosign into and through this
application that we built,they're able to work with each
other. Although both partiesdon't necessarily know that
they're working with this otherparty, you know, it's an
interface. They're working withthis third party provider. And
previously everything wasmanual, like thousands of emails
(11:28):
back and forth. It was, well,big, big, big task.
They had several team membersdedicated to facilitating that.
And now just one team member ishandling edge cases and keeping
the clients on this platformhappy.
Susan Boles (11:43):
Can you talk us through kind of the process they
had to go through to get frommanual process to app that
solved all the world's problemsfor them.
Dylan Kinder (11:55):
Yeah, absolutely. So it definitely didn't happen
overnight. Software as isbusiness is very iterative. We
have to experiment piece bypiece, see what works and what
doesn't work. And in the sameway, in the beginning, it didn't
even cross our mind that wecould potentially have the DMVs
just sign into and use thesetools themselves.
But in the end, we first justhad their team working on it
(12:17):
with their customers and thateliminated all this back and
forth email and it wasincredible. And then we had this
idea at some point, you know,maybe we can pull those DMV team
members onto the platform andthey could use it themselves.
And actually, you know, therewere some meetings with the
government to get this approvedand etcetera. And we weren't
quite sure, but it ended upworking out. So I would say, you
(12:39):
know, a lot of times you juststart by solving one problem.
And the main problem here was somany back and forth emails. They
knew that they could deliverthis service faster if they
didn't have, because actuallythe core pain point in this
example was that the customerswere submitting things wrong.
They weren't providing the rightinformation or enough
(13:00):
information. And they createdthis endless back and forth. But
if our first thought was that ifwe could build a solution that
prevented errors upfront, so itwould validate their
information, they submitted itor tried to submit it.
It would tell them this isn'tright. Please fix it. It avoided
this entire back and forth. Thatwas the core problem. And if we
just solved that problem, Ithink the solution would pay for
(13:22):
itself and be the client wouldbe super happy.
But as things go, we get funnyideas to take it a little bit
farther, a little bit farther,and the business completely
fundamentally changed in theend.
Susan Boles (13:36):
So if somebody who owned a service business is
thinking about this, whatpieces, what processes, what
pieces of information, whatshould they have built or
thought through before thinkingabout turning it into something
(13:58):
more automated or more softwarelike?
Dylan Kinder (14:01):
So I think first you should have a winning
process to begin with. So itdoesn't have to be perfect. No
process is perfect. Andsometimes I have a tendency also
as a business owner to reallywant everything to be perfect.
So it doesn't have to beperfect, but it has to work.
Right. Your, it has to be goodenough for your customers to get
that value they're paying youfor. And once you have that, I
(14:23):
definitely start looking toautomate it. And the, the first
places I'm looking, if I'm a nontechnical business owner, I'm
going to look at tools likeZapier. I'm going to look at the
no code, low code optionsavailable in the system itself
that I built on.
So if I'm using, you know, Asanaor ClickUp or HubSpot, all of
these platforms have some levelof no code automation, but at
(14:45):
the same time, I would recommendprobably hiring someone to help
you with this only because it'sa deep thing to get into. You're
busy running your business andyou don't have time to watch all
these tutorials, but if itinterests you and that's
something you enjoy doing, Ithink you should definitely do
that. But I would start there. Iwould start with what's winning
already and how can we make itmore automated, more
(15:06):
streamlined, remove me and myteam from this process.
Susan Boles (15:10):
That makes sense. How do you think about the
difference between building kindof internal automation? So
software designed to help yourbusiness run better for internal
purposes versus building clientfacing software to help you
deliver your service at scale?
Dylan Kinder (15:29):
I actually, I love this question and it's still
evolving the way I'm thinkingabout it and the way I'm talking
about it. And I often think thatlines are very blurred. Like
when does one piece of tech endand the next one begin? It's
really often unclear. I thinkthat starting with automating
things internally is a goodplace to do it because there's
(15:50):
much lower risk, right?
It's just your team who may beimpacted if something goes
wrong. But often once you startbuilding things internally, the
next natural step is to startpushing them out also externally
to your clients. I wouldrecommend probably starting
internally. Once you have somesuccess there, it's reliable
what you're building, then youcan very confidently start
(16:11):
building it outwards facing foryour clients.
Susan Boles (16:14):
So around the topic of internal and external tools
that we can develop, what's youropinion on client portals?
Dylan Kinder (16:21):
I think this is a very interesting space at the
moment with a lot of strongopinions on both sides. You have
one camp that I've talked tomany business owners. They say
their clients definitely don'twant another app they have to
sign into, or remember thepassword for. And I definitely
understand where they're comingfrom there. We have the other
side who's like all for it.
(16:41):
But I do truly believe, youknow, every time we've
implemented it, it's workedreally well. It's been re it can
take time to roll it out, but ittypically is well received.
Think given the choice, peopleprefer to have some sort of
self-service option, generallyspeaking. And we found even if
the clients refuse to sign inand use it, we see the internal
teams using it to more easilyfind the information that the
(17:05):
clients are asking them for viaemail, which again, it still is
very helpful and it solves aproblem. And I think when we
start to talk about theseinternal tools, these client
portals, we're alsofundamentally talking about this
underlying machine that is yourbusiness.
They're all so intertwined. It'shard to pull them apart when
you're digitizing theseproducts, these services, how
can you allow your customer todo more without having to
(17:28):
interact with you? Because Ithink that's the future people
are for better or worse movingtowards expecting. When you're a
small business provider, you'recompeting with giant companies
that have a ton of self-serviceservice options. Right?
So your customers are kind ofbeing primed whether they like
it overall or not to expecteverything fast.
Susan Boles (17:50):
Yeah. I have opinions on both sides of those,
but I think I agree with bothsides. Like I've had portals for
clients where they absolutelydon't log in on, they don't use
it. And it takes a lot oftraining when they ask you a one
off question and you're like,Hey, that answer's in the
portal. Here's the link.
Not going to answer yourquestion directly for you. I'm
(18:11):
going to try and train you. It'sthe same as if you go into a
business and you've switchedsystems and now employees in a
business have a self-serviceoption. There is a training
component of getting out of thehabit of individually answering
everybody else's questions oneoff and training people to self
(18:33):
serve. And I think there isdefinitely an element of
training people to self serve.
And also there are always goingto be people who refuse to read
your documentation, self serve,answer their own questions. They
just won't. But I do think froma business owner perspective,
having a portal that they haveaccess to, whether they're going
(18:56):
to use it or not, and theinternal team has access to can
be a really effective way ofusing technology to scale your
delivery, particularly aroundthings where you're giving like
status updates. So that's one ofmy favorite use cases is so
often we have these standingmeetings of let me update you on
the status of this project. Andit's just literally we're coming
(19:20):
here and I'm reading to you frommy project management system.
What is happening? Where I thinkin that case it does a really
good job of eliminatingunnecessary meeting to build
more margin in every Everybody'sbusy. Everybody has a lot of
commitments. Any time that wecan do communication in a more
(19:43):
proactive, more self serve way,I think the communication gets
better and it helps other both,you know, me delivering my
services and my clients have alittle bit more margin of time
because we're not getting on acall to say the things so that I
can report to you what I've doneor where the project stands. You
(20:06):
can go check that out.
If you have a question, it'savailable to you at any time.
Dylan Kinder (20:10):
Exactly. Yeah. And just to take it one step
farther, if you have thatinformation available in a
portal, it is so simple toautomate it into an email once a
week or once a month or howeveroften it needs to go out. And
they don't even have to go toyour portal if they don't want
to, they don't like it or theyjust forget that, you
Susan Boles (20:27):
know, people really do. That's one of my favorite
things about a lot of the, a lotof the like technology tools
that we're using for portals,things like project management
tools or the like are startingto allow you to like
automatically send notificationsat a specific point in time. And
I love that feature because it'sone of those touch points that
(20:48):
the information being receivedis valuable, but having it be a
like a live touch point is notvaluable.
Dylan Kinder (20:57):
Yeah. It's much more efficient for I think many
of us to review emails on ourown time when it makes sense for
our schedules.
Susan Boles (21:07):
Are there any places where you notice people
getting tripped up or makingmistakes when they start
dabbling in either the frontfacing or the behind the scenes?
Dylan Kinder (21:21):
Oh yeah. So they can create this Frankenstein
very easily, but don't be scaredof it. It's part of learning,
right? It's natural. It happensto everyone.
It happens to me at times aswell, because, you know, it can
be hard when there are all thesemoving parts of the business,
your team, your processes, yourclients understand a million
pieces. It can be hard to alwayskeep that bigger vision in
(21:42):
sight. And it's also can be hardfor devs to do that too. I think
if you hire technical people,they often focus quite deeply on
the topic at hand and maybeforget about side effects or
things like that. So I thinkit's common to have these
problems as you're building, butthe more that you do it, the
less of them that you'll see,the less severe there'll be as
(22:04):
well.
So I would really recommend notto get discouraged if you wake
up one day and realize thateverything you've built is, is a
mess. It's still better than howit was before. I'm sure. And it
can always be, you know,relooked at.
Susan Boles (22:19):
So on the topic of building a Frankenstein, I also
am a victim of that sometimes,especially I think when we're
trying to get really efficient,really automated in a lot of
different areas, you know, youmake one tweak someplace and
sometimes it's really hard toremember all of the different
places that affects that are orlike, you know, the downstream
(22:42):
effects of the change that youjust made and all the places
that you need to remember toupdate things. Do you have a
preferred way that you likedocumenting what you're building
so that you can go back to itand say, oh yeah, I changed
something here. Here's all theplaces that I need to remember
to go update now.
Dylan Kinder (23:01):
Yes. So there are a million ways to document what
you've built. You know, flowcharts, I personally really
prefer. And my experience, itworks really well with, with non
technical and technical users,having something visual. It
doesn't have to be complicated,definitely to overthink it.
And that alone is reallypowerful. So we have this kind
(23:22):
of concept in programming calledtechnical debt on encode rot.
This is when the code you'vewritten over time, it
deteriorates, it becomes unused,it becomes useless. And the same
thing will happen todocumentation. So that's why I'm
a really big fan of keepingdocumentation very light, very
high level, because the truth isyou can spend all the time in
(23:45):
the world and we're guilty ofthis before making the most
beautiful documentation.
It's it's out of date in a fewmonths because that's the
reality of business.
Susan Boles (23:53):
Yeah. I love that. It's something I also struggle
with because, know, sometimesyour brain moves faster than you
can document and there's so manydifferent places that can be
impacted. So like you, I likehaving, you know, a visual
representation of like, here'sthe intention, here's the tools
we're using to do this thing, golook there. And then trying to
(24:15):
do as much documentation insidetools where the things are
happening as possible.
Like, I really loved it whenZapier added the ability to like
do documentation inside Zaps wasso helpful.
Dylan Kinder (24:29):
Absolutely.
Susan Boles (24:33):
So AI is something that a lot of folks are talking
We're thinking about how wecould or should be using it as a
tool. What's your take on that?
Dylan Kinder (24:45):
Yeah, I think that everyone should definitely be
taking AI seriously, matter whatyou're doing in your business.
And if you're not using italready, I really recommend
using it every day. Relyingpersonally on AI more and more,
and my team is relying on itmore and more. And I think the
tech space is a little bit aheadof, of business at the moment,
which is also typical, But Ireally think this year
(25:08):
personally is pivotal for AI.And what I mean for that is I
think it's at the point wherenormal businesses, small
businesses, even one man teamswill start to one person teams
will start to really benefitfrom it.
Right? There's clear ROI thatyou can see. And maybe just to
tell you in the past, it took alot more data to get a good
(25:31):
result. It took a lot moreexperimentation, training, of
course, time, money, resources,and the result was less clear.
There's a chance it could work.
There's a chance it won't work.And then there's always the
scale of, will it be good enoughto justify this cost and who
determines good enough? So Ithink now good enough is
(25:52):
generally quite achievable. AndI would really recommend that
business owners use it forbrainstorming. Number one, if
they're not already doing it'san incredible brainstorming
buddy to have these largelanguage models.
Just expands the possibility ofideas that you can play with. So
if you're trying to think ofcontent topics to make maybe how
(26:14):
to approach tricky clientsituations, there are so many
use cases for, for these largelanguage models at the moment.
We're really starting to usethem more and more in parts of
the automation previously, wherewe had to put in a human input
or a human verification or humanoversight. These points now more
and more, we can ask AI toverify things, to check things
(26:37):
for us. And even if, even if westill need a human to do it, it
can do a pre verification.
So it can highlight even theparts that it suspects may be
wrong for us and just draw ourattention to those places. So
it's a really exciting time forAI.
Susan Boles (26:54):
How do you evaluate when building into AI makes
sense versus where it makessense to just stick with
something, a simpler automation?
Dylan Kinder (27:06):
I think it comes a little bit with intuition. The
more that you use it, the moreyou realize like its strengths
and its weaknesses. Right. I amnot a big fan of letting it
loose. I really still preferkeeping humans in the loop,
right.
At least for a verificationprocess, but it can do a lot of
very repetitive, tedious ormanual tasks, especially on
(27:27):
research, like gathering data,gathering information. And
that's where I'm really startingto see it shine. So for example,
a great solution recently thatwe've implemented, it can go to
different web pages about acompany, research it, pull pain
points that these businesses maybe facing based on their
website, their industry, verybasic, simple data, and that can
(27:51):
create like more tailored touchpoints or strategies to market
directly to them. And previouslythis was done manually. And as
you can imagine, it takes a tonof time to do that.
And now it's just very fast. Soit's a great researcher, a great
data gatherer, and I thinkthat's a very strong place for
it right now where you're goingto have very high success rates
(28:12):
when you try to implement it inthat category.
Susan Boles (28:16):
Yeah, I agree. I am using it a lot for not
necessarily like research, butvery specific solutions to
things. I know that there is ananswer to this thing. It's not
in the documentation forwhatever it is that I'm looking
at. Help me.
Dylan Kinder (28:33):
Absolutely.
Susan Boles (28:33):
And it's been very effective there. Yeah. What are
some of the mistakes that yousee people making when they
start trying to incorporate AI?You know, we're all saying this
is something we should learn,something we should be
incorporating. Where do peopleget tripped up though?
Dylan Kinder (28:49):
So I think it's very important to not build a
process where the AI has fullreign or control. I think, as I
mentioned earlier, it's veryimportant still to keep humans
in the loop, especially if it'ssomething that's going to be
pushed out to your clients, tothe external world, but it can
still compile, potential emailcopy that a human goes in and
(29:10):
refines. Right. Or at least at aminimum verifies that it's sane.
It makes sense.
When you're designing AI, youshould definitely think about it
with controls. Think about whatcan go wrong and design it in a
way where the human's still atthe end of the day, pressing the
buttons and approving whateverit's coming up with.
Susan Boles (29:27):
Agreed. And also please, if you're listening, do
not use this for cold emailingpeople. I don't know about you,
but I have gotten justcompletely inundated with cold
pitches in the last, I don'tknow, six weeks. It's just
completely ramped up, and itfeels like it's because people
are using AI to write somereally horrible, cold emails.
Dylan Kinder (29:51):
Yeah. I'm afraid that's also a case here. And I
think right now, you know, it'sstill in its infancy. It's
coming out. We're still tryingto figure out how to use it, how
it can work, what it can do.
But I definitely agree. We don'tneed more spam.
Susan Boles (30:03):
I think it's interesting because, you know,
like spam wasn't really a thingbefore we came up with email and
it took a while after emailexisted for people to realize
they could harness this tool tospam people. And it's
interesting because I think weare kind of seeing the same
thing happening with AI in thatoriginally the people that were
(30:27):
starting to use this were verytechnical people or people who
are very early adopters. And nowthat it's starting to get a
little bit more mass adoption,we are seeing it used to
perpetrate junk stuff. So what'syour favorite way to make your
(30:49):
own work calmer? We've beentalking a lot about technology,
but in your own work, what doyou lean on to help make your
own work calmer?
Dylan Kinder (30:56):
So I'm leaning a lot these days into, funny
enough automation and I'mexperimenting a lot with AI.
Maybe there's a reason I wasn'ttalking about AI a year ago with
my clients, maybe, you know,just, we were discussing it, the
future, what it could be, but Iwasn't taking it as a serious
solution just a year ago becauseI'm working primarily with,
(31:18):
absolutely. Yeah. And I'mworking primarily with small and
medium businesses. They don'thave like this, this huge budget
to run an experiment thatdoesn't work out.
In that same light, I want to bevery confident in whatever
recommendation I make about AI.And so I am personally right
now, very involved trying topush the limits with my own,
(31:40):
everything that I'm doing myselfin my business. And it doesn't
always make things calmer,unfortunately not yet, but some
things have gotten a lot easierand it's been really fun for me
to explore that. Just push thelimits what's possible at the
moment.
Susan Boles (31:56):
Yeah. One of my favorite pieces about new
technology is the ability tolearn and play around with it.
And I think I was relativelyearly to the automation space.
My business actually started asa no code software
implementation. So very earlydays where Zapier only did like
10% of the things that you weretrying to automate and
(32:21):
everything else you had toactually code API calls and that
kind of thing.
But one of my favorite thingsabout learning new technology is
just you get to play around withit and you get to see what you
can have this thing do and howpowerful it can be. I, like you,
am interested to see how itproceeds. I have some
reservations about the ethicalimplications of AI and the
(32:44):
impact on the climate ofhammering Chad GPT all day long.
But I think it has a lot ofreally interesting potential,
especially for really smallbusinesses where they don't have
the budget to hire a whole staffto do, you know, they're wearing
all of the hats. I think it's aninteresting direction that we're
(33:04):
heading and jury's still out.
Dylan Kinder (33:06):
Absolutely. You know, I am both delighted and
scared at the same time with alot of these solutions and and
things that the ways we'reseeing it be used and and how it
evolves. But I'm remainingoptimistic. I I hope it will be
a force for good in the end.
Susan Boles (33:23):
I liken it a little bit to how the previous
generations must have felt whenthe internet happened. I was too
young when the internet happenedto be scared by it. I was just
super excited. It was justinteresting and new and
exciting. And I was too young tounderstand that like this thing
(33:45):
was actually going to change theway we live in the world.
And it's interesting now to beold enough to see the
implications of AI in a way thatI didn't when the internet
happened. And sometimes it doesmake me feel like an old fart
because I'm like, this thing isgoing to change. It is going to
change how work happens. It'sgoing to change how we live in
the world. There are majorethical and environmental
(34:09):
implications of everybodyleaning on this technology.
I am old enough now to see thatlike, it's probably not all
gonna be good.
Dylan Kinder (34:19):
Yes. Yes, unfortunately. But I think
that's common with tech overtime. Hopefully humans will
remain on the good side overall.Right?
Susan Boles (34:35):
Whether you're looking at using a simple
automation tool like Zapier,building a full on custom
software, or just leaning intolearning how to effectively use
AI, technology can be a reallypowerful tool to help build
efficiency and margins in yourbusiness, and you can use those
margins to help your business becalmer. It starts with having a
(34:58):
solid process but once you havethat the sky is really the limit
on how you can utilize thesetools. You might just start with
creating a client portal wherethey can see the status of their
project without having to sendyou an email. For every client
that uses it, you probably savefive, ten minutes per email. But
let's say you wanna be proactiveabout this.
(35:19):
So instead of sending threeprogress emails and having a
live status meeting, you justuse the portal plus maybe an
automated email. Well, that'sprobably sixty to ninety minutes
per client that you're saving.And if you have 15 clients,
that's actually like fifteen totwenty hours that you just saved
yourself and them. That's likehalf a work week. And that's
(35:41):
just one area of your businessand one process.
When you start stackingautomated processes like that
together, that can have a reallymajor impact, not just on your
capacity and your time margins.So let's think about the actual
process behind this automation.We're really talking about just
updating the client on thestatus of their project. That
(36:02):
seems pretty straightforward.But in actuality, that's a whole
bunch of micro decisions, microactions that need to be taken.
And it's not just about the timeit takes. It's actually the
weight of those in your brain.You have to set a calendar
reminder or a repeating task toremind you to update the client.
You have to go update yourselfon the status of the project
(36:24):
first. So maybe you have to diginto your own project management
system to remind yourself ofwhere the project stands so you
know what to write in the email.
Then you have to draft an emailto the client with that
information. And it seemssimple, but even just having to
remember to do it carries aweight. Automated processes
aren't just great for savingtime. They lift the weight of
(36:47):
those decisions. They allow youto let go of having to remember
to do those things or having tocreate a system so that you do
remember.
That's where it feels calmer.You get both time and brain
space. If you're interested inexploring how software tools and
automation might help you buildsome margin in your business or
(37:08):
you wanna go ahead and set upsome of the systems we've been
talking about, I can help. Ifyou wanna find out more about
how we could work together, youcould check out my services
guide at the link in the shownotes or at
beyondmargins.com/services. Ithas all the details about how I
work, pricing, and the kinds ofproblems we can solve together.
Thanks for listening, and untilnext time, stay calm.
You've built a thoughtful, high touch service
business. Your work getsresults, but the delivery, It's
getting heavy. Too many movingparts, too much manual
oversights, and way too manypings from Zapier. You want more
margin, more space in your day,more predictable service
delivery, and more capacity totake on great fit clients
(00:28):
without cloning yourself. Butmost of the advice on scaling
either points you towards hiringa big team or flattening your
services into a cookie cuttercourse.
And the AI advice out there?Well, it feels spammy. What if
the solution wasn't replacingyour service, but engineering it
differently? What if you couldtake what's already working and
(00:50):
build smart systems powered byautomation, software, or even AI
that made your service deliverysmoother, not more complicated.
Imagine this.
It's a Tuesday afternoon. You'reonboarding a new client, and
instead of juggling 12 tabs andrewriting the same email for the
fourth time this week, yourinternal system handles 80% of
(01:12):
it automatically. The clientgets exactly what they need on
time. Your team is calm, and youget to do the strategic human
parts of your service that youactually like doing. As a
service business owner, you'veprobably felt the tension
between doing work that's deeplyhuman and trying to scale that
work without sacrificing yoursanity or your standards.
(01:34):
And maybe you've built your fairshare of franken systems along
the way, duct taping toolstogether to get the job done.
But what if instead of trying toescape your client work, you
scaled through it? What if thesystem itself was the service?
Welcome to Calm as the New KPI,the podcast where we challenge
default business advice andbreak down the levers you can
(01:56):
pull to build a calmer businessthat actually works for you. I'm
your host, Susan Bowles.
And if that all sounds likemagic or maybe just wildly
unrealistic, today's episodewill give you a fresh
perspective. I'm talking withDylan Kinder, founder and CEO of
Datacoz, a custom developmentagency that helps service based
(02:19):
businesses scale by turningtheir service into a software.
We're geeking out about how toknow when your business might be
ready to turn parts of yourservice into software, the
difference between internalautomations and client facing
tools, and why you don't have tochoose between being a service
provider or being a softwarecompany. You could be both on
(02:41):
your own terms. This episode ispart of our series on scaling
your client business withoutditching clients, and we're
tackling two levers of thecalmer framework.
Business design by rethinkinghow you deliver your services
and using efficiency to createmargins by using software and
tech to create those margins andcalm in your day to day
(03:03):
business. We're told there areonly two ways to scale a service
business. Option one, hire,build a team, train them, build
layers of management, buildsystems to manage the systems,
and congratulations. You've justbuilt a mini agency or a full
blown company you don't actuallywanna run. Option two,
(03:25):
productize everything.
Strip your service down to theessentials. Turn it into a DIY
course, a playbook, or somekinds of hands off digital
product or group program. Butsuddenly, the thing that made
your service special, thenuance, the customization, the
expertise, that's gone. Butthat's the default. That if you
want to scale your revenue, youronly choices are to go big or go
(03:46):
flat.
And, honestly, that advice justdoesn't work for a lot of us
because maybe you don't want ateam of 10. And maybe your
clients don't want a self pacedcourse. Maybe you love
delivering your service. Youjust want it to be lighter,
easier, and less reliant on you.So what do you do when the
default path to scale doesn'tactually align with the business
you wanna build?
(04:07):
Well, that's the breaking point.It's the moment when those duct
tape systems start fallingapart, when client delivery
starts feeling like a drag, whenyour time is eaten up by
repetitive admin work that couldeasily be handled by, well,
literally anything or anyoneelse. It's the moment when you
start wondering, isn't there abetter way to do this? And
(04:29):
that's where tech enters thepicture. We have more access to
automation, AI, and customizabletools than ever before.
But honestly, it still feelscomplicated, intimidating, hard
to implement, easy to break, andyet it could be the thing that
helps you escape that falsechoice between go big or go one
to many. Because done right,tech can help you deliver
(04:51):
services that are still hightouch and human, just lighter.
We're going to take a quickbreak to hear from our sponsors
and then we'll be back withDylan getting nerdy about using
software and AI in your servicebusiness. So Dylan you help
(05:54):
service based businesses thinkabout their businesses as
machines. Can you break thatdown?
What does that actually mean orlook like to approach a service
business more like an engineer?
Dylan Kinder (06:08):
When I look at a business, I see all these
different functions. There aresales functions. There are
finance functions. There are ofcourse, delivery operation
functions. I think personally,I'm spending most of my time in
those operation functions,really trying to help automate
the great service that theseservice based businesses are
delivering and really start totry to think about how to
(06:29):
productize it through tech.
So right now people are involvedin many of the steps, but more
and more, and especially aswe'll probably get to later with
AI, more and more steps can behanded over to, to computers,
machines so that humans canfocus on what they're best at.
Very creative tasks, hightouchpoint, high value type
(06:50):
work.
Susan Boles (06:51):
So talk to me about what the common signals are that
a service business might beready to start thinking about
turning part of its service intoa software.
Dylan Kinder (07:02):
So there are typically two camps. The first
camp will be, they just can'tfind the tool that does
everything they need. And oftenwhat we'll see is businesses
will create a littleFrankenstein, digital
Frankenstein, and they'll usesome common tool. Maybe just for
an example, we could pick a CRMsuch as HubSpot or GoHighLevel.
(07:23):
You know, it's typically notCRMs are working with.
It's it's typically more likeorder management or task
management type platforms, but,but it could be any tool and
they can't quite get it to dowhat they need it to do. So
they're using Zapier, maybethey're making automations
within the platform. Maybethere's some custom code
integrations happening too. Butat the end of the day, it's
(07:46):
breaking. It's not agile.
It's not flexible enough. Andthe more that you build on top
of these tools, less stable thetools become as well. And I've
seen a lot of companies justalways getting pinged every day
by Zapier error, error, error,or by whatever tool they're
using. And I think that's likeone great signal that maybe you
should kind of take a step backand reassess the system,
(08:10):
especially over time, becauseit's so easy to just add a
bandaid quick fix, quick fix.That's what we have to do as
business owners every day too,right?
Just to keep things running. Buteventually there's a point you
have to kind of step back andreassess it and build the
correct machine. And the secondcamp would be that maybe the
signs aren't showing yet, butthese business owners just feel
(08:31):
like there has to be a betterway. Some business owners are a
little bit more tech inclinedthan others, and they just
really feel like they know theycould get more out of tech and
that drives them to kind oflook. So there may be a little
bit ahead of the others, butmaybe I guess it's a similar
thing.
They just don't feel like theyare where they are. We have some
clients who, for example,they're just always trying to
(08:52):
push the boundary. They'redefinitely not hitting
limitations. They're far aheadof their competitors, but they
always want more and they'realways pushing farther.
Susan Boles (09:00):
So in this hypothetical business that we're
talking about, if somebodywanted to head down the path of
using software to scale theirclient work without just
completely running away fromclient work, we're not talking
about replacing client work, butmaking that client delivery
easier. What are some of thefirst areas that you think they
(09:23):
should look at automating orproductizing? Or how do you
think about that?
Dylan Kinder (09:27):
Yeah, that's a really great question. I really
recommend starting actually withwhat's working because if you
already have a proven testedmanual system with very high
confidence that can be enhancedwith automation, with the right
tech, with the right tools. Sothose are, I think really quick
wins and they free up timestill. And then maybe the things
that aren't working as well,those identify processes that
(09:50):
should be kind of focused onbefore we even look at
automating them or creating sometech around them. So that's
maybe how I'd approach it.
Start with what's working. Is itstreamlined? Is it augmented
with tech to the point that itshould be? If not, let's go do
that. And then we can move on tothe rougher areas.
Now, sometimes there is just onearea that is so bad that
(10:13):
business owners just feel if wecould fix this, that it would
solve everything. And maybe it'sworth paying attention to those,
but very often businesses aren'tin this state of complete
collapse, hopefully. And we canjust start one by one on getting
things automated piece by piece.
Susan Boles (10:29):
Can you share maybe a real world example of a
service business that you'veseen successfully turn part of
their process or their deliveryinto a software and kind of talk
us through what that transitionlooked like for them?
Dylan Kinder (10:44):
Absolutely. Yeah. So maybe one of my favorite
examples is a third party DMVservice provider. And what they
were actually able to do wasinstead of manually moving
between their customers and theDMV, they created a portal that
both the DMV ended up in the endsigning into. We didn't know if
(11:05):
that'd be possible in thebeginning.
And then their customers alsosign into and through this
application that we built,they're able to work with each
other. Although both partiesdon't necessarily know that
they're working with this otherparty, you know, it's an
interface. They're working withthis third party provider. And
previously everything wasmanual, like thousands of emails
(11:28):
back and forth. It was, well,big, big, big task.
They had several team membersdedicated to facilitating that.
And now just one team member ishandling edge cases and keeping
the clients on this platformhappy.
Susan Boles (11:43):
Can you talk us through kind of the process they
had to go through to get frommanual process to app that
solved all the world's problemsfor them.
Dylan Kinder (11:55):
Yeah, absolutely. So it definitely didn't happen
overnight. Software as isbusiness is very iterative. We
have to experiment piece bypiece, see what works and what
doesn't work. And in the sameway, in the beginning, it didn't
even cross our mind that wecould potentially have the DMVs
just sign into and use thesetools themselves.
But in the end, we first justhad their team working on it
(12:17):
with their customers and thateliminated all this back and
forth email and it wasincredible. And then we had this
idea at some point, you know,maybe we can pull those DMV team
members onto the platform andthey could use it themselves.
And actually, you know, therewere some meetings with the
government to get this approvedand etcetera. And we weren't
quite sure, but it ended upworking out. So I would say, you
(12:39):
know, a lot of times you juststart by solving one problem.
And the main problem here was somany back and forth emails. They
knew that they could deliverthis service faster if they
didn't have, because actuallythe core pain point in this
example was that the customerswere submitting things wrong.
They weren't providing the rightinformation or enough
(13:00):
information. And they createdthis endless back and forth. But
if our first thought was that ifwe could build a solution that
prevented errors upfront, so itwould validate their
information, they submitted itor tried to submit it.
It would tell them this isn'tright. Please fix it. It avoided
this entire back and forth. Thatwas the core problem. And if we
just solved that problem, Ithink the solution would pay for
(13:22):
itself and be the client wouldbe super happy.
But as things go, we get funnyideas to take it a little bit
farther, a little bit farther,and the business completely
fundamentally changed in theend.
Susan Boles (13:36):
So if somebody who owned a service business is
thinking about this, whatpieces, what processes, what
pieces of information, whatshould they have built or
thought through before thinkingabout turning it into something
(13:58):
more automated or more softwarelike?
Dylan Kinder (14:01):
So I think first you should have a winning
process to begin with. So itdoesn't have to be perfect. No
process is perfect. Andsometimes I have a tendency also
as a business owner to reallywant everything to be perfect.
So it doesn't have to beperfect, but it has to work.
Right. Your, it has to be goodenough for your customers to get
that value they're paying youfor. And once you have that, I
(14:23):
definitely start looking toautomate it. And the, the first
places I'm looking, if I'm a nontechnical business owner, I'm
going to look at tools likeZapier. I'm going to look at the
no code, low code optionsavailable in the system itself
that I built on.
So if I'm using, you know, Asanaor ClickUp or HubSpot, all of
these platforms have some levelof no code automation, but at
(14:45):
the same time, I would recommendprobably hiring someone to help
you with this only because it'sa deep thing to get into. You're
busy running your business andyou don't have time to watch all
these tutorials, but if itinterests you and that's
something you enjoy doing, Ithink you should definitely do
that. But I would start there. Iwould start with what's winning
already and how can we make itmore automated, more
(15:06):
streamlined, remove me and myteam from this process.
Susan Boles (15:10):
That makes sense. How do you think about the
difference between building kindof internal automation? So
software designed to help yourbusiness run better for internal
purposes versus building clientfacing software to help you
deliver your service at scale?
Dylan Kinder (15:29):
I actually, I love this question and it's still
evolving the way I'm thinkingabout it and the way I'm talking
about it. And I often think thatlines are very blurred. Like
when does one piece of tech endand the next one begin? It's
really often unclear. I thinkthat starting with automating
things internally is a goodplace to do it because there's
(15:50):
much lower risk, right?
It's just your team who may beimpacted if something goes
wrong. But often once you startbuilding things internally, the
next natural step is to startpushing them out also externally
to your clients. I wouldrecommend probably starting
internally. Once you have somesuccess there, it's reliable
what you're building, then youcan very confidently start
(16:11):
building it outwards facing foryour clients.
Susan Boles (16:14):
So around the topic of internal and external tools
that we can develop, what's youropinion on client portals?
Dylan Kinder (16:21):
I think this is a very interesting space at the
moment with a lot of strongopinions on both sides. You have
one camp that I've talked tomany business owners. They say
their clients definitely don'twant another app they have to
sign into, or remember thepassword for. And I definitely
understand where they're comingfrom there. We have the other
side who's like all for it.
(16:41):
But I do truly believe, youknow, every time we've
implemented it, it's workedreally well. It's been re it can
take time to roll it out, but ittypically is well received.
Think given the choice, peopleprefer to have some sort of
self-service option, generallyspeaking. And we found even if
the clients refuse to sign inand use it, we see the internal
teams using it to more easilyfind the information that the
(17:05):
clients are asking them for viaemail, which again, it still is
very helpful and it solves aproblem. And I think when we
start to talk about theseinternal tools, these client
portals, we're alsofundamentally talking about this
underlying machine that is yourbusiness.
They're all so intertwined. It'shard to pull them apart when
you're digitizing theseproducts, these services, how
can you allow your customer todo more without having to
(17:28):
interact with you? Because Ithink that's the future people
are for better or worse movingtowards expecting. When you're a
small business provider, you'recompeting with giant companies
that have a ton of self-serviceservice options. Right?
So your customers are kind ofbeing primed whether they like
it overall or not to expecteverything fast.
Susan Boles (17:50):
Yeah. I have opinions on both sides of those,
but I think I agree with bothsides. Like I've had portals for
clients where they absolutelydon't log in on, they don't use
it. And it takes a lot oftraining when they ask you a one
off question and you're like,Hey, that answer's in the
portal. Here's the link.
Not going to answer yourquestion directly for you. I'm
(18:11):
going to try and train you. It'sthe same as if you go into a
business and you've switchedsystems and now employees in a
business have a self-serviceoption. There is a training
component of getting out of thehabit of individually answering
everybody else's questions oneoff and training people to self
(18:33):
serve. And I think there isdefinitely an element of
training people to self serve.
And also there are always goingto be people who refuse to read
your documentation, self serve,answer their own questions. They
just won't. But I do think froma business owner perspective,
having a portal that they haveaccess to, whether they're going
(18:56):
to use it or not, and theinternal team has access to can
be a really effective way ofusing technology to scale your
delivery, particularly aroundthings where you're giving like
status updates. So that's one ofmy favorite use cases is so
often we have these standingmeetings of let me update you on
the status of this project. Andit's just literally we're coming
(19:20):
here and I'm reading to you frommy project management system.
What is happening? Where I thinkin that case it does a really
good job of eliminatingunnecessary meeting to build
more margin in every Everybody'sbusy. Everybody has a lot of
commitments. Any time that wecan do communication in a more
(19:43):
proactive, more self serve way,I think the communication gets
better and it helps other both,you know, me delivering my
services and my clients have alittle bit more margin of time
because we're not getting on acall to say the things so that I
can report to you what I've doneor where the project stands. You
(20:06):
can go check that out.
If you have a question, it'savailable to you at any time.
Dylan Kinder (20:10):
Exactly. Yeah. And just to take it one step
farther, if you have thatinformation available in a
portal, it is so simple toautomate it into an email once a
week or once a month or howeveroften it needs to go out. And
they don't even have to go toyour portal if they don't want
to, they don't like it or theyjust forget that, you
Susan Boles (20:27):
know, people really do. That's one of my favorite
things about a lot of the, a lotof the like technology tools
that we're using for portals,things like project management
tools or the like are startingto allow you to like
automatically send notificationsat a specific point in time. And
I love that feature because it'sone of those touch points that
(20:48):
the information being receivedis valuable, but having it be a
like a live touch point is notvaluable.
Dylan Kinder (20:57):
Yeah. It's much more efficient for I think many
of us to review emails on ourown time when it makes sense for
our schedules.
Susan Boles (21:07):
Are there any places where you notice people
getting tripped up or makingmistakes when they start
dabbling in either the frontfacing or the behind the scenes?
Dylan Kinder (21:21):
Oh yeah. So they can create this Frankenstein
very easily, but don't be scaredof it. It's part of learning,
right? It's natural. It happensto everyone.
It happens to me at times aswell, because, you know, it can
be hard when there are all thesemoving parts of the business,
your team, your processes, yourclients understand a million
pieces. It can be hard to alwayskeep that bigger vision in
(21:42):
sight. And it's also can be hardfor devs to do that too. I think
if you hire technical people,they often focus quite deeply on
the topic at hand and maybeforget about side effects or
things like that. So I thinkit's common to have these
problems as you're building, butthe more that you do it, the
less of them that you'll see,the less severe there'll be as
(22:04):
well.
So I would really recommend notto get discouraged if you wake
up one day and realize thateverything you've built is, is a
mess. It's still better than howit was before. I'm sure. And it
can always be, you know,relooked at.
Susan Boles (22:19):
So on the topic of building a Frankenstein, I also
am a victim of that sometimes,especially I think when we're
trying to get really efficient,really automated in a lot of
different areas, you know, youmake one tweak someplace and
sometimes it's really hard toremember all of the different
places that affects that are orlike, you know, the downstream
(22:42):
effects of the change that youjust made and all the places
that you need to remember toupdate things. Do you have a
preferred way that you likedocumenting what you're building
so that you can go back to itand say, oh yeah, I changed
something here. Here's all theplaces that I need to remember
to go update now.
Dylan Kinder (23:01):
Yes. So there are a million ways to document what
you've built. You know, flowcharts, I personally really
prefer. And my experience, itworks really well with, with non
technical and technical users,having something visual. It
doesn't have to be complicated,definitely to overthink it.
And that alone is reallypowerful. So we have this kind
(23:22):
of concept in programming calledtechnical debt on encode rot.
This is when the code you'vewritten over time, it
deteriorates, it becomes unused,it becomes useless. And the same
thing will happen todocumentation. So that's why I'm
a really big fan of keepingdocumentation very light, very
high level, because the truth isyou can spend all the time in
(23:45):
the world and we're guilty ofthis before making the most
beautiful documentation.
It's it's out of date in a fewmonths because that's the
reality of business.
Susan Boles (23:53):
Yeah. I love that. It's something I also struggle
with because, know, sometimesyour brain moves faster than you
can document and there's so manydifferent places that can be
impacted. So like you, I likehaving, you know, a visual
representation of like, here'sthe intention, here's the tools
we're using to do this thing, golook there. And then trying to
(24:15):
do as much documentation insidetools where the things are
happening as possible.
Like, I really loved it whenZapier added the ability to like
do documentation inside Zaps wasso helpful.
Dylan Kinder (24:29):
Absolutely.
Susan Boles (24:33):
So AI is something that a lot of folks are talking
We're thinking about how wecould or should be using it as a
tool. What's your take on that?
Dylan Kinder (24:45):
Yeah, I think that everyone should definitely be
taking AI seriously, matter whatyou're doing in your business.
And if you're not using italready, I really recommend
using it every day. Relyingpersonally on AI more and more,
and my team is relying on itmore and more. And I think the
tech space is a little bit aheadof, of business at the moment,
which is also typical, But Ireally think this year
(25:08):
personally is pivotal for AI.And what I mean for that is I
think it's at the point wherenormal businesses, small
businesses, even one man teamswill start to one person teams
will start to really benefitfrom it.
Right? There's clear ROI thatyou can see. And maybe just to
tell you in the past, it took alot more data to get a good
(25:31):
result. It took a lot moreexperimentation, training, of
course, time, money, resources,and the result was less clear.
There's a chance it could work.
There's a chance it won't work.And then there's always the
scale of, will it be good enoughto justify this cost and who
determines good enough? So Ithink now good enough is
(25:52):
generally quite achievable. AndI would really recommend that
business owners use it forbrainstorming. Number one, if
they're not already doing it'san incredible brainstorming
buddy to have these largelanguage models.
Just expands the possibility ofideas that you can play with. So
if you're trying to think ofcontent topics to make maybe how
(26:14):
to approach tricky clientsituations, there are so many
use cases for, for these largelanguage models at the moment.
We're really starting to usethem more and more in parts of
the automation previously, wherewe had to put in a human input
or a human verification or humanoversight. These points now more
and more, we can ask AI toverify things, to check things
(26:37):
for us. And even if, even if westill need a human to do it, it
can do a pre verification.
So it can highlight even theparts that it suspects may be
wrong for us and just draw ourattention to those places. So
it's a really exciting time forAI.
Susan Boles (26:54):
How do you evaluate when building into AI makes
sense versus where it makessense to just stick with
something, a simpler automation?
Dylan Kinder (27:06):
I think it comes a little bit with intuition. The
more that you use it, the moreyou realize like its strengths
and its weaknesses. Right. I amnot a big fan of letting it
loose. I really still preferkeeping humans in the loop,
right.
At least for a verificationprocess, but it can do a lot of
very repetitive, tedious ormanual tasks, especially on
(27:27):
research, like gathering data,gathering information. And
that's where I'm really startingto see it shine. So for example,
a great solution recently thatwe've implemented, it can go to
different web pages about acompany, research it, pull pain
points that these businesses maybe facing based on their
website, their industry, verybasic, simple data, and that can
(27:51):
create like more tailored touchpoints or strategies to market
directly to them. And previouslythis was done manually. And as
you can imagine, it takes a tonof time to do that.
And now it's just very fast. Soit's a great researcher, a great
data gatherer, and I thinkthat's a very strong place for
it right now where you're goingto have very high success rates
(28:12):
when you try to implement it inthat category.
Susan Boles (28:16):
Yeah, I agree. I am using it a lot for not
necessarily like research, butvery specific solutions to
things. I know that there is ananswer to this thing. It's not
in the documentation forwhatever it is that I'm looking
at. Help me.
Dylan Kinder (28:33):
Absolutely.
Susan Boles (28:33):
And it's been very effective there. Yeah. What are
some of the mistakes that yousee people making when they
start trying to incorporate AI?You know, we're all saying this
is something we should learn,something we should be
incorporating. Where do peopleget tripped up though?
Dylan Kinder (28:49):
So I think it's very important to not build a
process where the AI has fullreign or control. I think, as I
mentioned earlier, it's veryimportant still to keep humans
in the loop, especially if it'ssomething that's going to be
pushed out to your clients, tothe external world, but it can
still compile, potential emailcopy that a human goes in and
(29:10):
refines. Right. Or at least at aminimum verifies that it's sane.
It makes sense.
When you're designing AI, youshould definitely think about it
with controls. Think about whatcan go wrong and design it in a
way where the human's still atthe end of the day, pressing the
buttons and approving whateverit's coming up with.
Susan Boles (29:27):
Agreed. And also please, if you're listening, do
not use this for cold emailingpeople. I don't know about you,
but I have gotten justcompletely inundated with cold
pitches in the last, I don'tknow, six weeks. It's just
completely ramped up, and itfeels like it's because people
are using AI to write somereally horrible, cold emails.
Dylan Kinder (29:51):
Yeah. I'm afraid that's also a case here. And I
think right now, you know, it'sstill in its infancy. It's
coming out. We're still tryingto figure out how to use it, how
it can work, what it can do.
But I definitely agree. We don'tneed more spam.
Susan Boles (30:03):
I think it's interesting because, you know,
like spam wasn't really a thingbefore we came up with email and
it took a while after emailexisted for people to realize
they could harness this tool tospam people. And it's
interesting because I think weare kind of seeing the same
thing happening with AI in thatoriginally the people that were
(30:27):
starting to use this were verytechnical people or people who
are very early adopters. And nowthat it's starting to get a
little bit more mass adoption,we are seeing it used to
perpetrate junk stuff. So what'syour favorite way to make your
(30:49):
own work calmer? We've beentalking a lot about technology,
but in your own work, what doyou lean on to help make your
own work calmer?
Dylan Kinder (30:56):
So I'm leaning a lot these days into, funny
enough automation and I'mexperimenting a lot with AI.
Maybe there's a reason I wasn'ttalking about AI a year ago with
my clients, maybe, you know,just, we were discussing it, the
future, what it could be, but Iwasn't taking it as a serious
solution just a year ago becauseI'm working primarily with,
(31:18):
absolutely. Yeah. And I'mworking primarily with small and
medium businesses. They don'thave like this, this huge budget
to run an experiment thatdoesn't work out.
In that same light, I want to bevery confident in whatever
recommendation I make about AI.And so I am personally right
now, very involved trying topush the limits with my own,
(31:40):
everything that I'm doing myselfin my business. And it doesn't
always make things calmer,unfortunately not yet, but some
things have gotten a lot easierand it's been really fun for me
to explore that. Just push thelimits what's possible at the
moment.
Susan Boles (31:56):
Yeah. One of my favorite pieces about new
technology is the ability tolearn and play around with it.
And I think I was relativelyearly to the automation space.
My business actually started asa no code software
implementation. So very earlydays where Zapier only did like
10% of the things that you weretrying to automate and
(32:21):
everything else you had toactually code API calls and that
kind of thing.
But one of my favorite thingsabout learning new technology is
just you get to play around withit and you get to see what you
can have this thing do and howpowerful it can be. I, like you,
am interested to see how itproceeds. I have some
reservations about the ethicalimplications of AI and the
(32:44):
impact on the climate ofhammering Chad GPT all day long.
But I think it has a lot ofreally interesting potential,
especially for really smallbusinesses where they don't have
the budget to hire a whole staffto do, you know, they're wearing
all of the hats. I think it's aninteresting direction that we're
(33:04):
heading and jury's still out.
Dylan Kinder (33:06):
Absolutely. You know, I am both delighted and
scared at the same time with alot of these solutions and and
things that the ways we'reseeing it be used and and how it
evolves. But I'm remainingoptimistic. I I hope it will be
a force for good in the end.
Susan Boles (33:23):
I liken it a little bit to how the previous
generations must have felt whenthe internet happened. I was too
young when the internet happenedto be scared by it. I was just
super excited. It was justinteresting and new and
exciting. And I was too young tounderstand that like this thing
(33:45):
was actually going to change theway we live in the world.
And it's interesting now to beold enough to see the
implications of AI in a way thatI didn't when the internet
happened. And sometimes it doesmake me feel like an old fart
because I'm like, this thing isgoing to change. It is going to
change how work happens. It'sgoing to change how we live in
the world. There are majorethical and environmental
(34:09):
implications of everybodyleaning on this technology.
I am old enough now to see thatlike, it's probably not all
gonna be good.
Dylan Kinder (34:19):
Yes. Yes, unfortunately. But I think
that's common with tech overtime. Hopefully humans will
remain on the good side overall.Right?
Susan Boles (34:35):
Whether you're looking at using a simple
automation tool like Zapier,building a full on custom
software, or just leaning intolearning how to effectively use
AI, technology can be a reallypowerful tool to help build
efficiency and margins in yourbusiness, and you can use those
margins to help your business becalmer. It starts with having a
(34:58):
solid process but once you havethat the sky is really the limit
on how you can utilize thesetools. You might just start with
creating a client portal wherethey can see the status of their
project without having to sendyou an email. For every client
that uses it, you probably savefive, ten minutes per email. But
let's say you wanna be proactiveabout this.
(35:19):
So instead of sending threeprogress emails and having a
live status meeting, you justuse the portal plus maybe an
automated email. Well, that'sprobably sixty to ninety minutes
per client that you're saving.And if you have 15 clients,
that's actually like fifteen totwenty hours that you just saved
yourself and them. That's likehalf a work week. And that's
(35:41):
just one area of your businessand one process.
When you start stackingautomated processes like that
together, that can have a reallymajor impact, not just on your
capacity and your time margins.So let's think about the actual
process behind this automation.We're really talking about just
updating the client on thestatus of their project. That
(36:02):
seems pretty straightforward.But in actuality, that's a whole
bunch of micro decisions, microactions that need to be taken.
And it's not just about the timeit takes. It's actually the
weight of those in your brain.You have to set a calendar
reminder or a repeating task toremind you to update the client.
You have to go update yourselfon the status of the project
(36:24):
first. So maybe you have to diginto your own project management
system to remind yourself ofwhere the project stands so you
know what to write in the email.
Then you have to draft an emailto the client with that
information. And it seemssimple, but even just having to
remember to do it carries aweight. Automated processes
aren't just great for savingtime. They lift the weight of
(36:47):
those decisions. They allow youto let go of having to remember
to do those things or having tocreate a system so that you do
remember.
That's where it feels calmer.You get both time and brain
space. If you're interested inexploring how software tools and
automation might help you buildsome margin in your business or
(37:08):
you wanna go ahead and set upsome of the systems we've been
talking about, I can help. Ifyou wanna find out more about
how we could work together, youcould check out my services
guide at the link in the shownotes or at
beyondmargins.com/services. Ithas all the details about how I
work, pricing, and the kinds ofproblems we can solve together.
Thanks for listening, and untilnext time, stay calm.
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