S1. Ep30 - Getting Started with AI and Automations: 3 Simple Steps for Any Business

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe and I hope you

Noel: enjoy this episode.

Katie: Hello, welcome back to another episode. Hi, hello, I'm Katie and as always I've got Noel. here with me. Hey, Noel.

Noel: Hello. Noel.

Katie: Question for you.

Noel: Dear. Not a good start.

Katie: Did you know that 39% of businesses aren't even thinking about using AI or automations yet? Crazy stat.

Noel: And yes, I didn't have to that.

Katie: So that stat came from a U-Gov survey.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: So that's almost four in ten businesses or... I feel like I'm missing out on this opportunity to, like, save time, money, energy.

Noel: Definitely, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? When you think it's like, you know, four in every 10, I haven't even considered, it's just crazy. I mean, for me, I think everyone does. But then, you know, kind of ingrained in it all. So, yeah, kind of lose sight of the big picture sometimes. Yeah.

Katie: So in this episode, we're actually going to be breaking down some of the, reasons why businesses hold back, how to overcome some of those barriers and the first steps that you can start to implement AI and automations, you know, without feeling the overwhelm or even having to spend like thousands. Like any, anything that really we mentioned on this podcast, it doesn't involve you spending thousands and thousands on software or anything like that right now?

Noel: That's correct, yeah. Most of the things that we talk about, they also have a lot of free plans as well. You know, if you just want to dip in, have a go. Then, you know, I mean, obviously, make.com have a great free plan, of course.

Katie: Which is also what we talk about a lot. So, yeah,

Noel: there's all kinds of tools. And any time that I ever train or teach any of this sort of stuff, then I always make sure that there's free plans available. So anyone can give it a go. If they decide it's great and then decide to buy a subscription somewhere, then that's up to them. Yeah.

Katie: Okay. So let me share a few more stats. So this is all from the U-Gov survey that was done by ANS. 39% of businesses aren't even considering AI. 88% of businesses aren't even considering AI. in AI or automations at a forward level.

Noel: It's a crazy stat. Crazy stat.

Katie: This tells me that a lot of businesses are behind the curve. Yes.

Noel: You see, I think most of them probably don't understand the technicalities or maybe think that this is beyond them or too complicated. To even think about getting started, that's probably one of the things. I'm sure you might have a stat for that in the minute. Maybe.

Katie: who knows what other stats I have up my sleeve.

Noel: Yeah, it's kind of a common thing that I come across when I talk to businesses and they go, yeah, but what can I automate in my business? I'm like, what was up to you to kind of figure out what you do? And, you know, I can't, I can never answer that question for people.

Katie: Yeah,

Noel: but we're going to help people with that, you know,

Katie: further on in this podcast episode, we're going to be discussing that. So for me, like this whole buzz around AI automations is very much the buzz that we had around social media back in the day.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: And I feel like the people who are willing to start using AI and automations and experiment now will gain a competitive advantage. What are your thoughts on that, Noel?

Noel: Yeah, definitely, yes. they'll definitely have a leg up because, you know, although technology is moving along a very quick pace right now, so like in six months' time, it could be completely different to what it is today and I expect that it would be the case. But let's see you incorporate something today, you know, you're only, you've only just got to keep up and, you know, continually update, you know, the way it's in two years' time and you come in afresh, you're like, well, now I've got to learn everything from scratch, whereas somebody that's started now is, you know, they've got that knowledge that they've built up over that time and they're you know always one step ahead of everyone else so yeah never too late always get in there now

Katie: yeah yeah i agree with that and i don't feel like it is going to be like a pass and trend i feel like it's very much going to be like almost like the foundations for business operations and like customer services you know those type of roles, you know, for the future. Yeah,

Noel: absolutely, yeah.

Katie: Okay, are you ready for some more stats?

Noel: Oh, I might, but yeah, why not?

Katie: Okay, so this was then broken down these stats. So from this you gov survey, why people aren't using like AI and automations into their business. So 35% of people said that they had no staff or they lacked skills, which we understand. Like, you know, I feel like, I feel like many businesses think they need this huge, like, AI automations team, you know, someone really technical, this expert to be part of their team. I personally don't think they do. What are your thoughts not?

Noel: I guess initially no, but it's never, like long term, yes, you should be probably looking to, you know, if you've already got a team to start training and bringing in those people with those skills so you can maintain it going forward. You know, initially you could get away with like a consultant to come in and, you know, help you get started, get ahead of the curve and then, yeah, and then look to train after. Yeah.

Katie: And I feel like if you're not someone with a team, it is maybe just you. Maybe it's just you. assistant, I would just like maybe start with yourself and, you know, learn those basic AI skills.

Noel: Yes.

Katie: You know, invest in training rather than hiring this expert that either isn't like affordable or it's not possible.

Noel: Yes. I would say there's being in this world, there is a lot of people that will overcharge for these services. So you kind of got to be careful for that as well. Yeah. I've seen lots of youngish people that have got no business experience selling these sort of things for tens of thousands of dollars.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: And they're like really simple automations and they're not really worth that. Yes, you'll eventually get a return of investment on that. But it'll be a lot longer before you get to that point. So yeah.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: I can remember

Katie: having this conversation with someone we met at an event and they had told us how much they had spent on a AI agent getting built and I think both like both of us like when he when he told us the price like our eyes actually popped out of our heads you know like the cartoon yeah kind of like popped right out and then back in

Noel: yeah I think the look at our face I guess he wished the floor would have just swallowed him up yeah yeah that was a that was a silly amount of money wasn't it it didn't even work either did it if I remember rightly what he was So it didn't work properly anyway, not what he wanted.

Katie: It didn't work properly. And I think, as well, they charged him quite an obscene amount of money for like a monthly retainer after they had built it. Yes.

Noel: Yeah, that was crazy money. Yeah.

Katie: So I think it's really important, actually, if you do want something built for you, actually, you know, these things shouldn't be costing you thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds.

Noel: Yes. Yeah. I guess it all kind of also depends on like the scope of work. So if you're asking for a hell of a lot to be done, then yes, it will be expensive. But yeah, if you're asking for something simple, you know, it shouldn't be all that much.

Katie: But then again, something simple is relative, isn't it, to different people? So an AI agent you is very simple. But for someone who's just starting out, it feels very overwhelming.

Noel: Yes, definitely. Yeah. I agree with it.

Katie: But as well, like we always say on this podcast as well, like just start using tools that don't require any code, you know, things, you know, that you can implement as well. So no's favorite make.com, not sponsored to talk about make, but it's an old's

Noel: platform.

Katie: But yeah, and there's other things out there that a lot of other people that will be familiar with like Zapier, many chats. And, you know, you can even use, you know, Claude and chat GPT and things like that.

Noel: Yeah, you can get quite a long way with, like, a custom GPT or using, like, the projects with either Claude or chat GPT. They can, you know, it's just getting in and using that because there's a crazy amount of people, isn't there, in the UK, that've never even used an LLM or a chat model.

Katie: Yeah, you told me this stuff. Was it today? And you were like, 53%. Yeah.

Noel: Of

Katie: people in the UK have not used to LLM.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Right.

Noel: That's crazy. Yeah. Well, really, there's only 600 million users on chat GBT. So in the grand world scheme of things, yeah, that's still not that many. That number's probably gone up by now, but yeah. It was a little old.

Katie: Yeah. I think my mum's probably one of those people.

Noel: Yeah. For that, from where that stat came from, that was all people of working age. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was all the way from like 18 to retirement age, is where it was at. Okay. Yeah. But a lot of, I think it was 88% of people that were between the ages of 1824 had used it. So obviously, lots of essays for school and dissertations for university have been used.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Using CHAPT to do the research or whatever.

Katie: Yeah. Well, it's well, like a lot of people. people use that instead of Google now.

Noel: Yeah, definitely, yeah.

Katie: So, again, that's like, you know, why the AI SEO is really important as well, because the, you know, especially if you've got a younger target market, then, you know, a lot of these people aren't using Google anymore. They're finding all the answers out on something like chat jeep2.

Noel: Yeah. They haven't got time to go Googling. No.

Katie: No. I know. I know. I don't really tend to use Dr. Google anymore. I now use Dr.

Noel: Chachyp2. That's sometimes worse.

Katie: But he makes it very clear. I'm not a doctor and I'm like, I know you're not.

Noel: Yeah. You should see one. Wow. Well,

Katie: I knew it was that easy. I wouldn't be asking you, Dr. Chachupit. Okay. So our next stat, which we've, we've kind of talked about, but 30% of people said the reason why they're not using AI and automations in their businesses is due to high costs. So I think, like, you know, what we talked about just now, people imagine that AI and these automations cost, you know, thousands and thousands of pounds. But like we said, there are low-cost tools. There's even free tools that you can start using for, you know, a very affordable price. And I think as well, like, people try and like do everything, don't know, at once and you know Noel you've said this I don't know how many times but it's like start with start with one thing something that's going to maybe give you like a you know some time back or some you know some of your energy back some money back just one area um you know that you are able to maybe you know measure the return of investment on it and and then go from there but I know like no you've built out tools for people and although you know they've had to pay for you know like the chat bought for example that you built out yes it costs them money but it saved them like 10 hours or

Noel: yeah about 10 hours of support a week

Katie: yeah which if you think for how much how much do they, you know, maybe pay someone per hour or, you know, what could they be doing with that time instead? Like, that's the return on investment straight away, isn't it?

Noel: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because I used to work as part of that team as well. And it was like, well, if we build this and then that's doing that work, we could use our time to do something else that could help your customers.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: We can forget about that. That can do its own thing. And if there is anything that somebody asks it that it can't answer, then that was only like a couple of percent at the time that would happen. Then, you know, they can engage with everyone within that membership and get answers that way. Yeah. Yeah, they freed up a hell of a lot of times so we could do cool stuff, which is nice.

Katie: Yeah, really great.

Noel: Awesome.

Katie: Okay. And I think this might be my last stat.

Noel: Really?

Katie: So apparently 25% of people were uncertain about ROI, so return of investment when it came to using AI and automations within their business. Yeah. So, yeah, like we always say, start small, start with something measurable, start with something low risk, yeah, and then track, you know, that maybe the time saved or the money that you have. saved and I feel like you'll get a really clear idea of the ROI on that automation.

Noel: Yeah. I think a lot of people that would sell automation services aren't very clear with like cost. That cost is always like something they never talk about publicly. It's not like you can go on say HubSpot and then say, well, this is going to cost me $50 a month. You know that. You see the price. That's what you pay. So yeah, there is a, it's a bit. tricky to work out, but we created a calculator on our website which can help you to figure out the ROI for any sort of project. You can input all over your own numbers. I think we supplied some rough numbers if you were getting a third party in to do that, just generic numbers, but you can put in your own hourly numbers in there if you've already worked that out and things like, and then you can then see the full breakdown of even how long it's going to take until you hit that break-even point. If it's going to be like in two years time, maybe it's not really worth it.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: But if it's going to be like next week, then well, yeah, that's probably quite good to do.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Yeah. So we'll put the link for that calculator in our show notes, but yeah, it's on our website, which is makeautomations.a.I. Okay. And actually, I just thought of a really good example of ROI on another project that, make automations, which is my Nolz agency, worked on. I'll let you talk about it. No, I think you know the one that I'm talking about.

Noel: Okay, over to you. So this was kind of like a brand agency, and they had thousands of people signed up to their database. But whenever someone came to them and said, well, hey, you know, we would like influencers to promote X product. He would then, him and his team would then have to go through that database and filter it and then go through each account and then go, right, well, that account could be a good fit. Let's have a look. I know, it's been deleted. Right, well, next one. Are they active? Not really. They're not meeting our criteria. So there was a lot of manual effort that he was doing and his team was doing. So this had no AI in it either, which is crazy. But we built out this automation and pretty much all of what it did initially was to go through his entire database and get all of the live stats for the last month for every single person on there and also highlight all the accounts that had been deleted or were incorrect URLs and things that so we cleared out all of the all the errors and things out in these data set and yeah that was saving his team I don't know it probably 10 15 hours you know maybe even more than that depending on how many influencers a brand would want you know that's saved them all that time. And then we even had an automation in there. So let's say there was a particular influencer they wanted to approach for this. They could just click a button and go, right, get all the stats for that person. And they would just draw all that live data into their database. And they go, right, well, actually this person does actually meet the criteria anymore. So we can't put them forward. So we'd have to go off and then find another one they work with. But it's just a click of a button that was done in a couple of seconds.

Katie: Yeah, because to try and do that manually must have been absolutely. exhausting.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Must have taken them so long. Yes.

Noel: Yeah. And all of the data that people were putting in from the form. So they would say like their follow account was like between 10 and 25K. And it was just like a drop-down list. It was never an exact number. But these were numbers that were being put in like two years ago. So that account could be allowed for like 1 million followers. So they didn't really know all of that information either. So where they were filtering, they were probably missing the golden nugget. influences that were in there, they just couldn't see it. But yeah, with all that information, they were just like, wow, okay. Yeah, this is, they're completely, right, completely changed their business.

Katie: Yeah. That's awesome.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Awesome. Amazing. Okay. So let's help people start using AI and automations today with their

Noel: business.

Katie: So how do you get started? We're going to give you a three-step plan. So the first one is, like, identify those tasks that you are doing on repeat. So, Noel, do you want to give us an example of what some of those might be?

Noel: It could be anything where you're, let's say you're creating, like, reports, but you're doing the same thing every single time. You've got to do five a day or whatever. You know, it's those sort of tasks that are just, although they're probably quite easy to do, they're probably, when you add it all up over a week, they're probably taken a lot of time. So it's finding those really repetitive tasks. I mean, you might already find them really frustrating and annoying anyway. So there's probably any tasks that fall into that category probably look at automated those first.

Katie: Yeah. But it could be anything from like data entry to social media posting, following up with clients.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Yeah, anything like that. So just anything where you are repeating or like copying and past. in things.

Noel: Yes. Well, yeah, we'll give those control V and C keys arrest. Yeah. Okay.

Katie: So step two would be to pick your tools. So obviously, Noel, you love mick.com.

Noel: I do, yes. But there are other tools available, of course.

Katie: Other tools are available.

Noel: Yes, but yeah, it's kind of like looking at the tools that you have in your business as well. So are you using, you know, things like Slack or or do you have like zero as your accounting software? You know, it's understanding everything that you use and then figuring out which platform for automations is probably going to be best for use. With Mink, they've got like 2,000 apps that are already in there that you can just start using today. That's fine. Appia's probably got about the same. There's others, N-A-N probably doesn't have anywhere near as many, so that's harder to learn. But yeah, it's just figuring out, what you use and where you can then go and automate them in an easier way.

Katie: But there's also things as well like, you know, many chats and like calendly and, you know, it doesn't have to be like things like Sapio or make. It could just be other simple software.

Noel: Yes, absolutely. It doesn't matter what you use to automate.

Katie: Yeah, okay. So, yeah, we're not trying to use as well every single, like, tool. Like, just start with, like, maybe one, you know, one, one, one automation, one workflow and and see where it takes you.

Noel: Absolutely.

Katie: Yeah. Okay. And then obviously, you're setting that up. But what we want you to do is obviously measure, if you can, the ROI. So is it time saved? Is it money? Is it hours freed up? Is it, you know, a faster client response? Is it, you know, less? errors because it's, you know, not maybe a human doing it, it's AI doing it. Yeah, okay. Is there anything you wanted to add to that, no, anything that you feel like I've missed?

Noel: So I guess within our school community, we do go into these step by steps and a lot more detail, don't it?

Katie: So much detail. Like, we literally hold your hand through the whole process. Yeah.

Noel: So, yeah, there are extra bits like you should really start understanding like the basics of prompt engineering. yeah because if you're in i mean not every automation needs AI but when you do you need to learn and figure out how to use that in a way so your automations work right first time every time that's that's the main aim so yeah yeah we've also got some other bits about compliance and things that so i think actually one of the other big barriers for people or businesses not adopting um i i can't remember the exact stat now i think it was in the 20 to 30 percent range um was basically because they were unsure about the security and privacy of the data. So, yeah, we go through all of that. And we've been through that on an earlier podcast episode as well.

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: But yeah, most people don't understand that the API, when you use it in automations with AI, is actually very secure. These companies don't access that information. They don't see it. And yeah, if they did, they'd be sued into a non-existence by some very big corporations.

Katie: Yeah. And we always recommend as well, Lucy Wheeler's legal AI toolkit, which is absolutely fantastic. Nolan, I learned so much from going through that. It's, you know, at a reasonable price as well. Obviously, it can go on business expenses. But I'm not giving you financial advice. I just like to, you know, put that disclaimer on.

Noel: A financial advisor.

Katie: I'm not a financial advisor. But I do really rate Lucy's legal AI toolkit, and she's constantly updating it as well. So, you know, when new things come in, she's updating it, and that's included in the price. So you're not having to, you know, pay for more and more updates. Like, that is the only cost, you know, you would have to purchase to

Noel: able to

Katie: get access to those updates. but there are so many things that we were like we hadn't thought about that and you know that's that's actually a really interesting point and we need to make sure that actually you know we we need to have that really clear or you know like watertight and yeah or even like the terms and conditions on your website as well like make sure they they are up to date as well for um like AI so yeah really really important. Yeah, like Noel said, we do have a episode on all of that. So we'll put Lucy's AI legal toolkit below. We'll also put the episode that we did with Lucy as well, the link with that below as well. But yes, if this has inspired you to start putting in automations and AI into your business then oh we are very excited and obviously we would love to hear from you if you feel like you need a little bit more handholding someone that you can ask questions to you know on a frequent basis and you know have a bit more community support then we would absolutely love to welcome you into the AI business club which is our membership over on the school platform and we will drop the link for that below as well so you can check it out and if you've got any questions about anything that we've discussed in this podcast episode, then just reach out to us. We're both on LinkedIn or you can come and find us on Instagram as well. And we will catch you next time for another episode very soon. Take care.