16: Using AI for Process Automation Solutions with Ed Axe

Welcome to Using AI at Work. Today we're incredibly fortunate to have Ed Axe, a pioneer when it comes to the use of AI powered automations to streamline business operations. I found Ed through the valuable information he shares on his social media channels. My team has actually used a lot of these in our own operations and this interview was exactly what I was hoping it would be. Full of actionable insights on the tactics of automating your workflows and processes. Ed, through his company, Axe Automation, is making it easy for businesses like yours to benefit from AI and automation in their operations. With immense gratitude for his presence, let's dive into a conversation with Ed and uncover how you can start using AI at work. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Very excited about our interview today with you, Ed. So, ladies and gentlemen, today our guest is Ed Axe of Axe Automation. I found Ed through the fantastic content that he's been putting out related to automating your business, leveraging AI in those automations. And we actually reached out, we were interested in becoming a client and that's how Ed and I started this relationship. So, Ed, as we get started, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what Axe Automation is up to?

Of course. First of all, thank you, Chris, for the invite. It's a pleasure to be here. So Axe Automation is an AI automation agency. So we help entrepreneurs, businesses from all sizes to automate their processes. So our goal is of course, to make companies more efficient and to automate manual and repetitive tasks. So we have been doing this for, as an agency for the past two years and we have helped more than 100 companies to become more efficient.

Fantastic. You know, most of the folks that are listening to this, we've got all strata of business is represented. However, a lot of the people that are listening to this episode, they're not power users. They're curious about getting involved. There might be some intimidation about technology barriers and things like that. When you're working with your clients, what are some of the typical challenges that you experience that are pretty universal for somebody getting started with this?

Yeah, I feel like the, the most common challenge is to understand more about their process. So, like, there are a lot of clients that they, they want to automate certain tasks in certain processes, but they don't understand those processes really well. So it's Hard for you to automate something that you don't understand. It's hard for you to automate something that you don't know what are, what is the perfect output out of that process. So that's why I always say that the first step to automate any process is to start on the offline. You start mapping out all the steps that you have to go through to each process. Start by creating an sop, start by documenting your process because then it gets much easier for you to understand how you can, of course, automate that and what apps you need to integrate and all these steps they need to go through for that process.

So I've done a lot of business consulting, been inside a lot of businesses and realized most of them don't have very well defined SOPs. Right. So is that the biggest challenge and working with a new client is just getting them to a baseline of having the SOPs documented?

Yes. And of course that's something that I also help them with, like I help them to build those SOPs, but because then of course, then my automation job is going to be a lot easier. So I help them especially to create at least a flowchart with each step of that process. Right. And where, in which app, in each tool you have to create certain tasks and steps there. So yes, I think that will be the biggest, the biggest challenge because then once you have everything documented, then it gets easier for you to understand where you should focus your time on in terms of building automations. Right. I think like that, that, because again, as I mentioned before, a lot of people, they want to start with the end, but you need to start with the process first and that's critical for you to build effective automations.

In my experience, most of the companies, they just want you to come in and fix stuff they don't want to have to do the stuff they don't want to do. And usually the stuff they don't want to do is documenting a process. Like, oh, that's. They don't see that as important. They're so trying to move so fast to scale. However, I 100% concur that without a clearly defined set of actions, you can't do your job. You can't take that and automate some or all of that process. So do you have, and I know you do, but how could somebody find your recommended methodology for documenting a process?

Yeah, so I have a couple of YouTuber videos about it. I have, of course I share a lot of content online, especially on Twitter and LinkedIn about it, but I Think like I have on the way that I, I follow my process when I started to work with a new client is during the onboarding call or even before that, I have certain questions that I ask about the process that we are, we are trying to automate. So for example, if we are trying to automate the sales and onboarding process for a given company, right. I'm, I ask them to walk me through everything that's happening from the moment that they get, for example, a call booked or an interesting lead to the moment that they are ready to start working with that new client. So what are all the steps that need to happen? So you have the call with the lead, then you need to update your CRM and maybe then you need to send a proposal. Then if the proposal is accepted, then you have to go and send a contract, you need to send an invoice. Like, just by understanding everything that needs to happen on that process, I already know everything that can be automated. So just if you are trying to automate or trying to map your process, just start with like from the beginning and start walking through like everything that needs to happen on that process. So I have to go to this place, I have to do this, I have to do that. Because then it gets easier for you to start understanding all these steps, right? So just by like walking through all these steps, then I already know like how I can build a flowchart and how can I automate every step of the way.

So for the clients who wanted to start the process of automating some of their internal workflows, is it better if they come to the table with a process or do you find that usually the processes that they present, you still need a lot of work?

I have both cases. Right. And of course that the companies that they need help figuring out what's possible or not to automate are the companies that usually we start to finding out more opportunities to automate. Right? Because then again, I act as their chief automation officer and in helping them to finding out those opportunities. And that's when we have to go through what I call it a strategy and audit call. It's where we ask them a bunch of questions to better understand more about the entire operations. Because what happens is that most of the time when they think about automation, they only think about building some zaps on zapier and that's it. But automation is so much more broad than that. And just by understanding more about the operation, I can start identifying all the opportunities that we have to automate. Right. So that's the first case. And of course we have clients that they already know what they want to build. Even you have clients that even have like, like their flowchart ready. And of course that's helpful because we can skip one step of that process. So we don't need that audit call because we can go straight to the, straight to the automation to build that for them.

So what I've found for anybody listening and you're interested in exploring automation, particularly with a vendor like Ed, what I've found is that if you do the legwork in advance and you document some of the processes or as many as you can, it makes the chief Automation officer, it makes their role a lot easier, they're able to start to get you results faster because they're not spending the time doing what you should have done, which is map out the process. And for those of you who are listening, Ed, this is one of the things that, that whenever I'm doing education because I know I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and process is not sexy, you know, for most entrepreneurs, they'd rather go out there and do the splashy marketing or whatever. So the easiest way for you listening, here's what seems to work for entrepreneurs. Sit down. Next time you're going to do something, a process, turn on loom and just narrate what you're doing, take that transcript, run that transcript through GPT or Claude or whatever the model is and say, please help me develop. I'm going to be working with an automations expert who needs to understand my process. You know, take this transcript and turn it into something that they could work with. So for those of you who are listening, that's the easiest way to, to kind of get started with process mapping and then turn that over to somebody like Ed. So Ed, do you tend to find a pattern of either the size of the company where they want to start automating, or just in general. Is there a place in particular where most companies say this is a painful area, we want to get this automated as soon as possible?

Yeah. I think like when you, when we talk about service businesses like agencies, for example, it's very common that they want to automate like, like the example that I gave you, like the sales and onboarding process. Right. Because usually, for example, we have agencies that for every new client that they are onboarding, they have to spend, I don't know, one or two hours just with the onboarding process. So they can't scale because they can't onboard many new clients at once. Right. So automating that part not only will make them more scalable, but also make sure that they are focusing their time on the deliverable side of the agency. Right. Which is of course what matters at the end. So I think that's one common area because, and especially with small agencies, because in small agencies usually the founder is the one that's doing all of that work manually, right? Is sending again, sending contracts, creating Google Drive folders, creating Slack channel, sending welcome emails. It's all being done manually by the founder. But the founder should be adding more value on the delivery side of the agency or even in the sales, like talking to a client. So that's why it's one of the first processes that we recommend that any agency or service businesses should automate. And then we have for example, extracting data and building dashboards, because that's another area that's very manual and repetitive. Right? So let's say that you have to build a weekly dashboard with all the KPIs that you need to update and then you have to send to your clients. Imagine that, doing that every week for every client. And the more clients you take, the more work you're going to have. Right. So again, those are like just some examples that are getting on the founder's way to really scale the company because they are very manual processes there.

So when you're evaluating these, how do you know where to start? If the client says, hey, we just need help but we don't have a clear path forward. Maybe they don't, they're not an agency or maybe they've got a wide open, you know, territory for you to work with. Are there typical areas that you recommend people look at to start with and what would qualify? What's the characteristics of that?

Yes, I always like to start with the most time consuming tasks and they are the most repetitive ones. So in my example with the dashboard, let's say that you have to do this process every week. So it's a repetitive and you are consuming one to two hours per employee every week. So it's costing you a lot of money. Right? So if it's very time consuming and if it's repetitive, those are the areas that you should focus on, on building automations. So you should start with those areas and then you can start thinking about other processes as well. But like those would be the top priority process that you should start thinking about automation, especially if you are, if you have to hire a lot of people to do that manual process. So I have a client that they were like hiring 10 or 15Vs just to do internal manual process and they were spending a lot of money. So this is crazy because again it's hard to scale any company where you have to hire more and more and more people to do a certain manual process internally. Again especially if it's a repetitive task.

Do you what's the typical result for clients once they start this process? Do you find that they end up needing to scale down their staff or do they apply that staff to different, maybe more human centric activities or what ends up being the outcome?

Typically yeah. So of course you have different type of clients but we have clients that they, they were able to of course to reduce their team and save like thousands and thousands of dollars every month due to automations. They have clients that they didn't have to reduce their team but they didn't have to hire more people in order to scale. So they kept the same team members as they had before. So they were kind of shifting their focus on more client facing activities and activities that were adding more value to their clients. So and again once like with example of the client onboarding there that I, that I mentioned before, if the agency were spending two hours to onboard every new client and now the automation is handling that and it's onboarding new clients in 10 seconds you get two hours free that you can focus on other areas of the, of the agency. So again with, especially with client facing activities, with client meetings with deliverables to like for example creating new campaigns and some other stuff. So again we have clients that they are very focused on cost effectiveness so they want to reduce their team. We have clients that they want to keep scaling so they know that with automation they don't need to keep hiring more and more people in order to scale. So again it's going to depend on the moment of the company that they are, they are renowned.

So just for everybody listening who's not familiar with this, you mentioned an example, you said it would take a two hour process down to 10 seconds. Is that realistic or is that exaggeration?

No, that's realistic and sometimes it's even less than 10 seconds. But anyways, not only that, like they don't have to worry about that process anymore. Yeah, they don't have to worry about oh I need to remember to create a. No, no, you don't need to, to remember anything. You don't need to worry about anything because the automation would take care of it. It's going to happen. So if you are on boarding the client, the client will be on board, the client will receive the contract, the invoice, everything will happen. So that's another thing that's important. So the founder, the entrepreneur, they don't have to worry about that anymore. So they can worry about other stuff on their company. And yeah, that's 100% realistic.

So for typical client that you bring on board, how long does it take? Let's say, hey, Ed, we're ready to start exploring automations in our business. How long does it take before they typically start to see a result that they can measure?

Of course it's going to depend on the complexity of that process, but usually on average is around from one to two weeks. So they can start having the first process up and running. So they can start and then that's the good thing about automation, Right? Because once the automation is up and running, you are cutting those hours immediately. Right. So it's right there in terms of time savings. So you don't have to, you don't need to say to wait a long period to start seeing those results there. Because with the client onboarding, if the automation is on, it's already going on board the client in under 10 seconds. So that's already going to happen. So on average, I would say around one to two weeks. And what usually happens, and it's very, very common, is that once we start building the first process for any given client, then they get so excited, then they want to start, okay, like, help me find other opportunities because I want to automate other stuff as well, because it's very tangible, the type of results they are seeing, it's right there. So that's why again, I'm very passionate about automation, of course. But that's why then after we have the first process up and running, it's very common that we start seeing other automation opportunities.

So from the employee side, you know, there's concerns in the marketplace, oh, AI is going to take my job. And I think that that has now evolved into an awareness that AI is not going to take my job, but somebody who knows how to use these tools will take my job. Right. So it's still the human in the loop. Do you experience resistance from internal teams when they hear, hey, somebody's going to come in and automate or AI or augment human in the loop with this process. We'll be back after a quick break. Do you want to start your own unsexy business offering a local service or a trade to your local community? Come check out the Owner Ops podcast. We bring on people like Sam, who has built a $22 million roofing company in five years. I've also brought on people like Brock, who generated $1.3 million of revenue in his first seven months installing septic systems. If you are looking to build your own local service or trade business, come check out the Owner Ops podcast. That's ownerops.com o w n r-ops.com.

So when I first started building automations for other clients as an agency, I thought that that would be a challenge right at first. But then when I started to interact with not only the founder, the CEO of the company, but also to other members of the team, I saw how excited they were that they didn't have to do that process manually anymore. So they are excited. So I, for example, so I won't have to keep copying data from one place to another anymore? No, it won't. Okay, that's awesome. So they get so excited. So it's very rare that we see this kind of barrier or challenge in any given client. So because again, their stuff, they don't want to keep doing that kind of manual process. They want to do like other type of work. Right. So they are, they also get really on board with everything that they would do there.

I love it. Yeah, that's. I can see that happening. So morale in the company wouldn't get suppressed, it would actually increase. People would be excited because they don't have to do the, the grunt work anymore. They don't have to do the stuff that was mindless. Right. They get to outsource that. That's an interesting perspective.

Yeah. And exactly. And I even, even like today I have, I have clients, I have other team members reaching out to me almost on a weekly basis with new processes that they want to automate from their day to day work. Right. So again, they are very involved on that process. So this is great.

Yep. Do you encourage these companies to upskill their own staff to understand how these automations are getting done or do you find that that's just a distraction from their, their actual job? Like I guess what I'm getting at is does it make sense to empower my team not just to think about, hey, let's call Ed because here's another process, but actually be the ones who are able to get into Zapier or make or in Aidan or whatever.

Yeah. I think that like there are two, two things here. Like the first one is everyone should be aware of, of the automations because they should know how to trigger them otherwise the automation can break. Right. So that's one important part and that's why for Example here, after we build every automation, we recorded Loom explaining them how they can trigger a certain automation in the right way. So they have to have for example, the email address in the right field before changing the status of the lead, for example. Right. Otherwise the automation can break or that the automation can't run. So that's why they should all be involved on that process. They should know how to better trigger every automation there. And of course I have some clients that after have the first automations up and running, they want at least one team member to know how to not necessarily build the automation, but at least maintain and optimize the automation on an ongoing basis. Right. And then of course I help them to train, but I would say that that's not very common. I think that as of course the team members, they usually are very kind of busy with other stuff. They don't want to spend their time to like keep learning those things. Because of course you have zapier, which is more simple, more easy to understand. But there are some other tools that they require more time to for you to start building, like at least some complex automations there. But we have some cases that the founders want us to train their employees, but it's not very common.

So I know that you guys do everything from very basic to very advanced, including robotic process automation and things like that. Can you, can you kind of explain what maybe a more complicated automation environment might look like for a business owner?

Yeah. So basically we have three different layers of automation, right? So the first layer being building any process on zapier or make for example, or any other automation too, because you have the apps connected there. So it's easier to connect two apps and to create an integration and automation there. The second layer being using APIs and webhooks. So let's say that you want to automate a process that using a tool that doesn't have connection to any automation tool. So you have to do that using API docs. So then of course it's a bit more complex, so requires a bit of code knowledge, so you can do that. And the third layer being using custom scripting, right? Which is basically creating a bot that's going to simulate human behavior. So let's say that you want to automate a process that involves a tool that doesn't have connection to any automation tool and doesn't have any API docs. So the only way to do that is by using custom scripting. And we usually, we do that with Python or JavaScript. So it's basically coding. So of of course that's more complex and requires code knowledge. So that's why when we are starting to work with a new client, we first need to understand the process because then we want to see, okay, what's the layer of automation that we're going to need to use to automate that process. And I would say that most of the time we combine them. So I call API endpoints using make and I trigger a customer script also using make. So I usually, I'd say that 90% of the time we combine different layers of automation here too. Of course because the goal is to build the automation in the most optimized way. So if you're gonna, if, if you're gonna automate 100 using customer scripting, it's gonna take a lot more time and it's more complex. So that's why we kind of combining those different pieces. And that's why I say that the entrepreneur, the company, they don't need to worry when of course when working with us, they don't need to worry about what's possible not to automate because there are a lot of things that are possible to automate and especially now with AI. So we first need to understand the process so then we can see, okay, what's the best way to automate that combining those different layers.

So the really the business owner or the team member just needs to come up with their wish list.

Exactly, they just need to come up with their wish list, considering again those time consuming tasks, those repetitive tasks. And of course once we have the list of priorities, then we can start exploring all the steps that is to happen in each process. So then we can say okay, like for this step when I need to use APIs for that step when I need to plug in a customer script, so then we can start structuring the entire system.

So not being an automations expert myself, I can think of a few examples and I know that once you probably start pulling the thread like you said, the teammates like hey, can we do this, can we do that? Can we do this? One of the use cases for our business that comes to mind is customer service. It's a very, for me and my business is very critical because I want to make sure that somebody, if they're entrusting us with their education or AI literacy, I don't want them to feel like that they don't have like instant access to the support that they need and those sorts of things. But outside of hiring an international staff that can be there to answer things 24, 7, the the only solution would be intelligent leveraging of AI. So is what would that look like? And customer service is a universal activity in, in small, medium, large businesses. What does that typically look like for? So let's say a customer service automation environment. How does that play out for you guys?

Yeah, so that's another very common process that a lot of clients that they have that need because as you, as you mentioned, every type of company needs to have some sort of customer service there. And usually it's a very time consuming process. So to automate that, we usually create an AI assistant that is trained on the company's data. Right. So usually we ask for the company to share with us any kind of document or FAQ or even like even using the company's website to have more information about the company, the services, the products. Then we create an assistant and we can even use the GPT assistant for that train on the company's data that's going to be able to reply to any customer questions based on that data. So it's a custom GPT for any company that we can, that we can use to automate that process of replying to customers using the company data. So that's a very, again, very common. And then once you have that, then you can start plugging in those different channels so you can have that AI assistant on your website. You can start getting questions from like Facebook, Instagram or other channels as well and to pass everything to that AI, to reply back to those, to those clients.

So you are saying that you can build an assistant using GPT assistants that can take in input from your Instagram feed and your Facebook channel and your LinkedIn and it can aggregate that and that one assistant can handle the responses for all of those channels, whether it's email, chatbot on the site, Facebook messenger, whatever.

Yes, yes, 100%. And again, because the more channels you have, the more time it's gonna demand you to reply to all of them. Right. So that's why we usually connect to all of those channels and pass every question through the same assistant here. So then of course we can reply back.

That's fascinating because being a customer centric business owner and I hope that most of you listeners are the same way, you're customer centric. If you've got multiple channels and you're, let's say you're really putting out the effort to educate your marketplace with content on all the different channels, you're going to miss something. If you're a human being, you're going to miss something. But if you've got this assistant. It's not. And it doesn't matter if it happens when you're sleeping or you're playing with the kids or having breakfast. That seems like a very powerful. What is the process timeline? I mean, obviously you and your team are experts. For an expert to come in and do that for a company, how long does that usually take?

Usually around from two to three weeks. And here it's really important that of course, as in any automation, any system that we build, but it's really important the testing phase, to make sure that all the answers are correct and then keep fine tuning the assistant according to the type of answer they want to get. Not only because, for example, I've just built a similar assistant to a company where not only we are replying with the company information, the service information, but we are also replying, for example, for clients that they want to book an appointment for a health clinic. Instead of just saying, okay, so you can go to the website and like go there and book the appointment, the assistant is replying with the, the link. So they can just click it and book it for that specific service that they want. Right. So we have a database, a separate database just for all the, the booking links for each service. So that company had more than 30 different services. So it's one link per service. So the assistant should be able to reply to the correct link. So that's why like the testing phase is really important to make sure that we are providing the customer with the right information with the right link for them.

I would imagine that, I know you work with clients of all sizes, but I would imagine that the smaller businesses probably haven't even benchmarked KPIs related to a process so that they can understand how much improvement like their experience obviously will be. Like, wow, I don't have to do that anymore. But as far as the actual measurable impact, do you guys do any part of that as benchmarking where they are so that you can come back and show them, hey, this is happening 33% faster or whatever.

Yes, a hundred percent. So when again when we are on that strategy and audit phase or the process, we, we estimate an ROI for, for automating that process because by, by understanding more about all the steps, everyone that that is involved on their process, we estimate how much time the company is spending on their process. And then after everything is done, we can have like the, then result in the roi, the real ROI out of it. Right? So, and that's really important so the company can start seeing like the importance of automation can start seeing the return on the investment that they are, they are making.

What I love about what you're doing is that when you're trying to sell something to, to the C suite, right. I found that arithmetic is not an opinion. If I can come in and I can say it's costing you blank, you work with this, it'll cost you blank minus. Or you'll make more, whatever. It's much easier for them to say yes. Right. They're not confused. They can see the numbers and they can see the impact and say I want that impact. Is that, do you find that there's, I guess people are reaching out to you because they know that there's a pain and they want to explore this already. But usually during that audit phase, when you share with them your ROIs, what's the reaction? Do they believe you?

Do they, of course at first they are a bit more skeptical, but then when we show them like how we can do that and even create and depending on the process, I even kind of share with them a demo or something like that so they can see it happening, then they can say, okay, like there is something here so we should try. And then especially like bigger companies, they want you first start with one process, right? Yeah. And then after seeing the results, they, and this again, this is very common. Then after seeing like the actual results, they want to start seeing and automating other, other processes as well. And especially for like, because the, the bigger the company, the more processes they have, the more manual processes that have and the more opportunities are there to automate and to reduce cost, time, etc. So the ROI for bigger companies, it gets a lot better or higher because then you have let's say five or ten people working every day on one certain process where you can shift their focus on another task in another department there. But yeah, and that's why I say, okay, are you skeptical? So, okay, let's start with one process. Let me show you how we can do that and then we can move on with the other ones. But it's like of course, again, I'm 100% biased, but I'm very passionate about AI automation and for me this is a no brainer that every company should start thinking about. And the way that I see, especially in the market with the of course competition getting worse and worse, like more companies are entering the market. I, I think like the companies with the best operational excellence are the ones that are going to thrive in the long term. Right. And again that's, and, and when you think about operational excellence, you think about doing more with less, doing processes faster, delivering better results. And with that AI and automation play a key role there.

So you know, and that's there is a distinction, AI and automation. And a lot of time I'll talk to small business owners and they just kind of lump it all into AI. Like any technological improvement that's are most of these automations tools. And you've been doing this for a few years. Were you doing this prior to the release of GPT 3.5 when kind of everybody was like wow, this is AI?

Yes, 100%. So I've been like prior to start AX Automation I've built my first startup on 2017. It was basically an AI assistant for HR departments for companies. So it was an assistant with AI for employees that wanted to ask any questions for the HR department or wanted to get a certain document, there's certain information from the company. So I kind of integrated with other systems using API. So that was in 2017. And of course I used AI back then, I used machine learning back then, but it was a very different AI than we have today. But even, even back then it was a game changer for companies. And not only I created that platform to sell to enterprise companies, but also as a solopreneur, as a first startup I started to learn about automation so I can, so I could automate my own tasks, my own processes internally. So that's when I started to learn more about automation. But I would say that today of course it's a lot easier for people to start learning as you, you share on your content, on your program, more about AI, how they can adapt AI at work. But also it's easier because you have those no code tools that you can start using. You can start building automations and AI very easily.

So this is a great comparison because you were an early adopter and user, successful user of AI back when it was still very data, very much a data environment like it was. You don't have to be a data scientist now to get benefit from AI. Right? So considering what it took to build that business in 2017 and the tools and availability that you have now, what's the comparison of building the business seven years ago versus building it today?

A product that took me several months to build, I could build that same product in, in few weeks. So that's the change, right? It's amazing. Again that's why I mentioned that you have access to so many great tools today. That's a lot easier for anyone to start. Not Only using AI, but start creating product as well as a way to build startups and companies.

I know because I've tried scaling businesses without defined processes and it gets chaotic. And some of you who are listening may be in the middle of this right now that you're stuck, you're at a ceiling. You'd like to scale your business but you can't see a way where you can scale the business without just a dumpster fire, without it just being a very big mess. So at what point we've got established businesses listening to this and we've got startup entrepreneur solopreneur listening to this. At what point is there ever a point where it's too soon to explore automation?

I wouldn't say too soon, but again, as I mentioned at the beginning it's important to understand what you are trying to do if you know that, okay, so you have this task that you want to automate and usually, sorry, just thinking about also like usually if you are just starting out, if you're just like building a company yourself, just like I did back then, you start by just integrating two apps, three apps and start automating very simple processes because the things that happens that you try to automate your entire operations, but if you are just starting out, your operation is going to change next week because you are still trying to see the best way to do that. So you shouldn't invest that much time on creating complex automations from the very first start, but at least just connecting a couple of apps. Let's say that you have your calendly link that you want to integrate with your CRM to add leads automatically. That's a very simple automation that you can build right now that's going to help you automate one task because that's not going to change very frequently. But other processes you still need to understand if that's the right process for you as you're just starting out.

That's great advice because even if you're an established business, if you haven't documented your process just by going through the process documentation, you'll probably go oh wait a minute, that step, we don't need to do that. You start to become aware of it when you're just getting started. You don't know what you don't know. So it'd probably be a bad idea to go and spend all your time architecting this huge automations just to realize that hey, once I've actually got more customers, there's a simpler way to do it, the faster way to do it, whatever the case might be.

Exactly.

I hear this quote, I started hearing it last year, that because of AI and automations and tech, that the, we'll be seeing the first one person billion dollar company.

Right.

You think, oh my gosh, how is that possible? But you start to see that, oh, if I can stack automations on top, certainly with the benefit of generative AI for strategy and product development, whatever. But on the automation side, the more that you can, I guess, keep simple, document, process and automate, it leaves all that time for you as a business person or a startup founder or whatever to focus on the things that AI can't do. The secret sauce, the authenticity, the, the, the genesis of the ideas that come from the visionary. So and that's what I find is that a lot of times if the, you know, there's, there's always the visionary and then there's the person who's in the business cleaning up after the visionary. Right. Because the visionary is making messes and going all over the place. I would imagine that the more you automate the business, the less opportunity there is for the, the entrepreneur leader to come in and screw things up. Right. It's, it's out of sight, it's out of mind, it's working. So that's a benefit that as a consultant for other businesses I find that very attractive. Anything to keep the visionary out of messing with the business is a good idea. Nice. So yeah, I'm very interested and again Ed, how I found you was the fantastic content that you put out there. Is there some specific pieces of content that you've created that you've gotten the best feedback from, where clients have been? Like that really helped me understand it or that really opened my eyes to what's possible.

Yeah. So there are some resources that I created with a, somewhat like a step by step guide on how to automate certain processes. So like go to this place, do this, do that. So it's, it's a very easy to follow guide so you can start building your first automation. So those are guides, resources that I have on my personal website and also there are a couple of videos on again the same way on how to build those processes that usually people like because of course especially the ones that don't have an expertise in those tools or anything related to that. So just a way so they can get started. It's just like they spark, right. So they can get started, build their first automation, their first zap and then take it from there and start building more, more complex.

I think that's great advice. If Somebody can have that one little, oh my gosh, I did it. And now, even if it's that one thing, I don't have to answer those emails anymore. I don't have to do this or that. I can see that spark because hell, I've got the spark, right? Like I've seen what's possible, especially after going through the content that you guys have provided. And it's extremely exciting and extremely empowering as a business owner to know that scaling doesn't have to be intimidating, like, oh man, gotta find the right people. There's going to be turnover, there's going to be dropped balls again. Automation doesn't sleep, automation doesn't make the mistakes as long as the humans, you know, reviewing the output and stuff like that. So with Axe Automation, do you guys do, obviously you create a lot of free content, but do you do courses or do you just do agency service?

We just do agency service. All, all content related resources that we create are free. Right. So everything that we provide is free as a matter of like education to like spread the word about the importance of AI and automation. And then we only, we focus more on the, on the agency side, on the providing that service to our clients.

Are you finding that the marketplace is now much more educated on what's possible and they're seeking you out, or do they, does the marketplace still need education on the power of automations?

Yeah, I think now it's becoming less of a taboo. I would say like they're, they're less skeptical about the power of automation, but they still need education. Right. Because I have clients that or lead that they reach out to me. I said, I want to add AI to my business. I say like, okay, but what are you trying to accomplish? Why sometimes AI is not even there. Sometimes they're thinking about automation. But as of course AI is a trend topic right now, they're thinking about AI. So I say, okay, what you're trying to build, what are we trying to do? And then we can say, okay, maybe this is AI, maybe no, this is like automation would do the work. Right. So they are more interested, but they still lack this kind of education. In terms what's possible or not, why is the difference between like AI and automation, what automation can or cannot do?

Yeah, that's a great distinction. So for those listening, you're going to hear, well, we've got, you know, we've, we brought AI into the business. Well, actually what Ed's saying is it may not even be AI, it may simply be an automation. Yes, they're getting benefit from the tool. Perhaps the automation has some AI built into it, but they're not necessarily like doing a full AI deployment. And as a business owner I can tell you that individually Automations or using AI certainly provide an impact together. Very powerful. Ed's talking about leveraging assistance that are powered by Chat GPT's brain. Right. But those are plugging into the automations, the customer service example that you shared where it's able to probably do the work of an entire customer service team. But I mean at pennies per operation, I would imagine even less than pennies per operation. There's one. I don't know if you've gotten into this Ed, but one of the technologies that's AI that's pretty fascinating to me is voice to voice, particularly the telephone. There's a few companies out there that they've shown some demos where they're doing a sales call and it's AI interacting with a human and conducting a transaction or providing the information. Are any of your clients leveraging that technology in their automations yet?

Yes. So I've built automation using voice AI for both for inbound and outbound calls. So for inbound, for example, the same way with customer service you can automate that using an AI voice that can not only reply to customers questions but can do some action, for example, book an appointment. So the AI agent can book an appointment just by answering the call. Right. And again that AI agent is trained on the company data and it's going to be able to reply to those questions and then of course going to be able to do the action that we need the AI to do and we can even clone for example someone's voice. So if we can even clone the founders, the founder of the company voice to use on the customer. So like it is possible and it's, it's, it's working really well.

Wow. Do you have like back of napkin kind of ballpark numbers of how these people are using it and the impact that it's had because chat GPT, like the text to text is, is mind blowing. But I mean the technology is advancing so fast that I get, I got a call the other day and it took me a few minutes and I do this all day long before I realized it was AI. So are the clients the ones that are using this ballpark, how is that impacting what they're doing? Is it more sales, fewer agents? What's the. Got any data?

Yes, it's definitely in terms of inbound calls is definitely fewer, fewer agents. You don't need to have any agents there. So a company that had like three, four, five people in the customer service department, they, they don't need, they don't need that team anymore because it's all either through the AI assistant via text or the AI agents via call, it's all automated. Right? And also like one point from what we were kind of explaining about like the difference between AI and automation. Of course, with ChatGPT, you are using AI, you are going to the website, the platform or the app and you are providing a prompt to get an output where you are still doing manual work, you are still doing some manual tasks to go there and to provide the input, to get the output, to copy that output and to paste somewhere else. While like when you combine AI automation, that's when you start really scaling your work because then you don't need to do that the automation would you provide the prompt and get the output and use the output somewhere else automatically without you having to worry about that and the customer service, it's a great example of that. Right? So you don't need to get like the customer question to use AI and to reply back. So it's all happening automatically when you combine AI and automation.

This is fascinating. I could talk about automations all day. A lot of my, the past decade of my life has been spent in frustration, working with clients because of the lack of process and hey guys, before we can run, we have to figure out how you do this stuff. And then it's been like this impediment to. Because clients, they want rapid results, right? I couldn't give that to them because they didn't have the foundations. Now with the technology and with your skill set, you're able to get massive transformation for at least certain departments or activities within a couple of weeks. And that's like, like the future's here. So, and thank you so much. I want people to plug into what you're doing because again, I've gotten so much value out of the relationship. Even though this is the only the second or third time we've spoken in person from your brand and from the content you've put out. I mean that if you're a listener and this stuff is fast is as fascinating to you as it is to me. There's plenty of people out there, but I can tell you that I trust what Ed is putting out. And after this call today, there's no question that this guy is thinking in automation, thinking in process, thinking in AI. And this is the type of person that you want supporting your Automation efforts in your company. What is the typical path or process for somebody to plug in with you guys? I know you've got LinkedIn and Twitter content, but where would you send somebody if they said, hey, I want to learn more about what you do?

Yeah, sure. So in terms of content, of course we provide a lot of free content on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. We have our own weekly newsletter as well. So if, but of course, if you want to get in touch, if you want to understand more about how we can help you, we have our website, X Automation Co, where you can book a call with us so we can understand more about the process. And that's why that kind of call is really important to us. Because as I was kind of explaining today, everything that we build is custom built because every process is different, right? So the kind of process that you have on your company is different from the other person. And the kind of tools that I use, they are different from the other companies. So that's why we really need to, to chat to understand about the process and see like what's the best way that we can help them.

So I'm a subscriber to your newsletter. I get. My Inbox has about 10,000 emails in it. Currently I just. Email is not my favorite channel. However, your email is one that when I do see it in my inbox, I do open it because the value, like the content that you deliver is consistently, it's actionable, it's applicable to my business and the businesses of the people that I serve and educate. So not just saying that because you were kind enough to be a guest on the podcast, for those of you listening, like there's, it's just like finding an AI tool. There's a million of them out there. Find one that works for you and then don't really worry about having to search anymore. I would suggest that, that the education on automations that Ed and his organization are probably that resource for you. If you plug into what he's doing and what he's showing you how to do and helping you understand this doesn't mean you got to do business with Ed. It's just the fact that you start thinking about things differently. That spark that Ed referenced earlier, you start to have the spark. And once you do one automation and it's actually working, you're like, oh my God, this, I got to do this everywhere. It becomes like, it's pretty.

There is no turning back.

I can say there's no turning back. Ed, thank you so much. I'm. This hour went by really fast. I'm excited to do stuff with you in the future. And like I said, I'm not kidding. I'm a subscriber to the newsletter and I read what you put out and it's fantastic stuff. So anything in closing that you want to share with anybody who's interested in exploring automations more?

Yeah, so I think what I can say that go after that spark. Once you start seeing the first the very first output from your first automation, there is no turning back. Once you start seeing that magic happening, you're going to start getting excited and start building more and more automation which will definitely benefit your company and your business scale. So go after that first part.

Awesome. And guys, if you're listening to this episode, check the show notes, all kinds of links from Ed and to his organization and his content will be in those show notes. Ed, thank you so much again. I appreciate it for sharing with the community about what's possible with automations and making this a lot less intimidating that maybe people thought before they got on this. So with that, thanks everybody. Thanks for tuning in to Using AI at Work. Don't forget to subscribe for more conversations about how to use AI at work and a special thank you to our sponsor, Chief AI Officer for empowering businesses with AI education and training. Visit their website for a free AI readiness assessment and AI strategy guide to help you get started using AI at work. That's www.chiefaiofficer.com. thanks to our producer Evan Desaunier for making this episode possible. Follow us on Twitter at the handle usingaiatwork and visit www.usingaiatwork.com for free resources to help you harness AI in your.