Transcript

Nicole Smith
Welcome to take control with Nicole. As business owners, we experience firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Nicole Smith
Hello, I’m Nicole Smith, COO, Operations Specialist and Systems Designer from The Artisans Business Solutions and welcome to Take Control with Nicole. Today I’m speaking with the amazing Justin Smith all about automations, when to avoid them, and how they can really support your business to grow when they are designed beautifully. First of all, let’s introduce Justin. Justin is a business and process and automation guru. So, you can imagine already how excited I am about this conversation. Justin helps businesses to get simplicity in their operational processes, then automate them to eliminate admin and double entry and all that busy work. The combination of clarity and less effort for the same or better result often triggers a scale up in businesses that Justin supports and works with. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And coming on the podcast today. I mentioned before we’ve pressed record, I’ve been stalking you a little bit for the longest time as soon as I discovered, ah, well, my favorite tool ClickUp. You popped into the world. So, welcome. Hello.

Justin Smith
Hello. Thank you.

Nicole Smith
It’s, I’m excited about this conversation. Because obviously we play in the same and similar spaces. And whenever I have an opportunity to connect with other people like us, the brains just when we get excited and, oh, just buckle in people, who knows where this conversation is gonna go excited. Let’s start about you. How did you come to join and start in the world of processes and automations?

Justin Smith
Yeah, so way back when I was a project manager, and we were using a tool at the time was Trailer, and it just wasn’t doing what we needed. And I was all about trying to improve processes and make things run better. And so I kind of dove in and just researched every single tool I could find, put it all in a report and presented it to my bosses. And at the time, they basically said no, I’m not interested. And so I said, that’s fine. I’m going to leave and go help people with this. Because I figured out the time ClickUp on top, they were like barely known at that point, kind of like I had assembled the whole report, and then just stumbled upon ClickUp right at the very end. And so I got into freelancing and helping people out with different tools, and then ended up going okay, no, forget all these, I’m just gonna focus on Clickup. And because it’s at the time, I could tell that the way they were doing, it the data structure was just better. And I knew it was going to go somewhere. So focused on that got really good, put out some really great training, and then ended up getting hired by them as product manager. So a couple of the features that you see in in ClickUp, I built them.

Nicole Smith
Can you tell us which ones?

Justin Smith
So particularly the Resource Management view. And the timeline view.

Nicole Smith
Yes, sorry. Ah funny, because I’m not funny. I think funny a lot. I don’t know why I said that, natural thing, you say that. I’m growing my team at the moment. And that is a really key view that we’re using, and I was actually doing some extra bits of training and things on there the other day, it’s Thank you. Well, thank you very much, for me to you.

Justin Smith
Thank you. Thank you. And I will say as well, there are definitely things that it doesn’t do that we all kind of wish it did. And that’s also my fault. So..

Nicole Smith
Hey, we got to start somewhere, right? I think with any good solution, which we know and we try to educate our communities that there’s no one tool that’s going to do all the fabulous things for us. That’s why we’re here talking about automations. Actually, ping, there we go. But it’s really interesting. So many posts out on Facebook, it’s like, oh, I need this thing to do this, this, this, this, this, this this. And I’m like, okay, so you’re asking it to do accounting, you’re asking it to do project management you’re asking to, to do marketing, which, which is

Nicole Smith
that we can really start to design these tools in a way that can connect. Yeah, exactly. Well, let’s jump in. Let’s talk about automation. Let’s not beat around the bush because I love it and obviously you love it. So, as a business. Do you want to tell us a bit maybe around why you love automation so much. And then we could go into how it can really be utilized in a business. From any stage. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Smith
So, I really didn’t enter into automation, thinking it was the best thing ever. I just had projects where I was committed to delivering a certain result for my clients, which was usually around operational efficiency, saving time was having things run better. And I was like, okay, how do I, how do I make this work? And I kept getting led to basically, okay, this bit, this bit, this bit needs to just happen right there. We shouldn’t be wasting time there. And so okay, how do we make that happen? And I started out in Zapier, as many people do, and that had some capabilities. But as I kind of wanted more and more and more, I kind of went towards a more powerful tool and started building up my, what I could do. And for a long time, I was sort of doing Clickup Consulting. And then eventually I was like, well, I guess I shouldn’t teach people like how I’m making Clickup do more that it should, like I’m, it has certain capabilities, and I’m doing things outside of that. And people are kind of confused as to how I’m doing it. I might as well teach. And so as I often do, I put together a training video and said, look, this is what make it is, this is what, that’s the tool that I use for automation. Here’s what you can do with it, here’s how it can help you. And then it’s kind of took off from there. So yeah, more leads from there.

Nicole Smith
But maybe we should, actually just in case, because I’ve realized we’ve just dived in. We all know, we know what automations are because we live and breathe it, we love a trigger with an action. But maybe it’s a good opportunity to talk about what an automation is at its basis, we could then put some building blocks on it to give an example of more sophisticated one, but also maybe touch on Zapier and Make and because I know many of the sort of smaller businesses and maybe, maybe not smaller business, it’s not even that it’s maybe not as much logical technical ability, go to Zapier because it’s a really easy building block tool versus Make. So yeah, let’s let’s chat.

Justin Smith
Yeah. So, first of all, I’ll say I tend to use automation and integration interchangeably, because in my mind, an integration is just an automation that goes from one platform to another, which is what we do as well. So, a lot of platforms, they’re kind of willing to give and receive information. But the developers haven’t built a way of doing that to another platform. And so what we use the tool in the middle that knows how to connect one side and knows how to connect the other and can kind of join that information together. So Zapier was by the first market, and they have a very linear structure, like step 12345, they tried to make it really easy, and they more or less succeeded Make as another tool does the exact same thing for a very long time it had a massive issue with the learning curve was huge, because they just had no good training. Now I actually believe that I’ve significantly solved that there’s some really good training out there now. And so the learning curve is much smaller, I’m at the edge of recommending people just go straight to make. If you’re willing to spend a little bit of time learning it, it’s actually not that much harder than Zapier. Zapier has started to frustrate me quite a lot just with how much less it can do. And that platform can be a little bit annoying. It’s not my favorite anymore, although props to them for being first to market and really opening up the space.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, look, I’m definitely on that fence as well. Because you get to a point you’re like, Oh, come on, just let me do. And then you go to Make, it’s

Nicole Smith
Yeah, look, I’m definitely on that fence as well. Because you get to a point you’re like, Oh, come on, just let me do. And then you go to Make, it’s, like you know it, when you first go in there, Make you particular it can be really daunting. And you’re right, you know, when I first started playing it to actually really understand it, you did have to have that sort of in depth in understanding of logic driven design. Whereas now, you’ve obviously got some great training, we’re going to put all these links, FYI people in the show notes, because if you are interested in automations, which I know many of the people that will be listening and seeing this post out and on social’s will be go and pop over and have a look. Zapier is fabulous. But Make if you’re ready to like really elevate that way and what you can do, hop over and have a look at it. Because I think it’s it’s a great tool.

Justin Smith
And the very best training for Make, if I do say so myself is a little bit secret and hidden. So, you actually won’t find it if you’re just searching normally. But there is, I know because I did it. And it’s it’s great. We step through it really slowly, really carefully and really completely from a really beginner level. So it is out there.

Nicole Smith
Oh, might have to get some secret access to that. Fun. Okay, so we’ve spoken about automation, what it is, the systems, let’s talk about practical applications. So what’s an example of how you support your businesses, maybe at a sort of intro level? On Yeah, yeah. Because if we go to quickly, we’ll love it.

Justin Smith
Yep. So I think I’m a little bit unique or different in that I do two things together, and they harmonize. And so one thing is the workflow design, which has really nothing to do with automation at all, mostly, but it’s more like just mean what you do getting things, processes aligned, getting things sorted out, tidy, systemized. Simple. And then the automation, which I mentioned, you did this way.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. And it’s when it works, well, it’s just like, oh, it’s glorious. Sit back, press a button and all the things happen. And your clients are like, what, what is this magic and you’re like, Yeah, fabulous. Enjoy it.

Justin Smith
And I think the great thing about what we do is clients don’t need to come to us with like, exact like specs of what they need. But it’s like, look, this is the outcome I want. And then we’ll build the workflow for him like, Okay, here’s how you get the outcome, and then also automate it. And so, it’s just a really easy entry for most clients to be like, this is my business, this is what I want to have happen. Yeah, please do it.

Nicole Smith
That’s a real misconception, isn’t it that people assume that they need to have it all sorted, before they can engage someone like us. Whereas actually, the best, some of the best results come from when you actually don’t over engineer it from a business side. You have the concept of, start and endpoint, and you allow the creativity because I really look at what we do as a creative design process. You know, we’re pulling in all these threads of information, looking at all the tools we’re using, who in the business is using it, what is that experience we’re wanting to build internally and externally, as well, and as a business owner, to make sure it’s all seamless. And when we are part of. you know, integrated into that process design. It’s just amazing what can occur. Beautiful, fabulous things.

Justin Smith
And that’s wonderful, because it’s extremely unlikely that AI will ever be able to do it. It’s also very difficult to outsource because you need the two together, if you only have one or the other. Either you have a beautiful workflow. And I’ve seen lots of these beautiful workflows that haven’t got automation in mind. And so, they haven’t been built compatible. Or you have someone who can do awesome automations. But you’re going to need to basically tell them every step of the way, because you just need to give the spec sheets so detailed. Whereas when it’s the two together, so much easier.

Nicole Smith
It makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Like you know, I just think about stories I hear clients coming. Now, I engaged such and such, and it just wasn’t what I expected. And that’s right, because it was one or the other. And there are beautiful experts in all different spaces, but the synergies of bringing them all together under one house. Yes. Obviously, I love it, that’s why I started this business. And you do too. So yep. Oh, how fun. Okay, so I’m a business, I’m about to look at automation. What do I need to think about? Before I even go into Make or Zapier, whichever you’ve decided after you’ve done the training?

Justin Smith
Yeah, so I guess I separate things into two categories. So, one is like the personal automation or team automation, it’s all about time saving, it’s the little helpful things that just save a bit of time, they’re kind of they feel good, they’re fun, they’re pretty light. And if it’s for yourself, it could mean that you spend more time at the beach, or it could mean you spend more time in your zone of genius, kind of doing what really matters. If it’s across a team, then you can start to get some real multiplicative effects. Like if you’ve got 20 people saving 5% of the time each, that’s the same as hiring another staff member. But at like fraction of the cost, it’s not going to cost you 50 to $100,000. So that’s one side, the other side, I would call more like process automation. So, that’s where we, it’s not, it’s not specifically about helping individual people in the business. It’s about being like, what is the actual marketing or delivery process of the business. And let’s automate that, and then figure out how people kind of, or what the remaining human run elements are. So, it’s kinda like, it’s a deeper, it’s more of like going in and replacing the backbone. Rather than just kind of adding things to the outside. Weird metaphor.

Nicole Smith
But that makes sense, though, right? Because let’s talk about building a backbone house, I talk about how building a house right, you can have your structures there. And if you keep adding stuff on to it, all of a sudden, the design has gone, it just looks like you’ve been putting probably like my kitchen wall with all the kids drawings from school, a bit like that. Not really planned out, a bit messy, intention designed with love course, lots of blue tac, but when you actually look at it, and pull away the covers, and think about the core threads going through it and come into there, and then think about the designs, it’s a much more smooth experience. Less up and downs, less bumps, less possibility for things to be a bit, a bit clunky, right.

Justin Smith
And I find that when we do the work of kind of getting down to that. And it requires a fair bit of like workflow design, getting things simpler, it doesn’t work if it’s if it’s unclear or messy. So, it takes a bit of work to get down to it. But once we do that, and then automate it, it’s basically the same work as scaling. It’s basically scale-readiness. And so once that’s done, and then the automations are in place, the amount of like, your work, your time or team time that’s required to achieve the same outcomes is a lot less. And so then the profit is higher, and then it’s just really easy to start to grow. They’re kind of like the when you call that a cost to profit ratio. Once that gets really good, like scaling is almost inevitable.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, it’s interesting isn’t, I’ve been in a few businesses where, like in the employed space, where I was brought in to basically make things better, and they were already well on successful businesses, you know, been in the industry for years, and it just felt so hard, they’re working day in day out, because they hadn’t had that investment of time earlier on, to be able to set these things up. And I think that’s a really good thing to think about. For people who are out there listening, wherever you are, in your journey, it’s, you have this opportunity to start to put these things into place earlier, gain those experiences of how automations and effective process design can actually support you. So, as you’re growing, you just come click back in, oh, we need to have a review, pop in, add new things, we’ve got new people, etc. So instead of getting to a point where it’s like hair pulling out, you’re already setting yourself up from quite early on. Do you find that with your people, too?

Justin Smith
Yeah, yep, I will say I work best with companies who have kind of hit a size where they know what they’re doing, they’ve kind of got the process going. With a really small companies, usually we’ll just do the time saving automations. And that’s fine. But we kind of don’t expect, I mean, if their processes are horrific, we might save like 50% of the time, but usually it’s kind of more incremental. Whereas when we do the more deeper process automation, that can be exponential, you know, 2 3 or it enables them to scale and grow. But usually we don’t look at that until they have like maybe at least a small team going. Yeah, it allows for a little bit more. That’s where the benefits are more visible. Yeah, yep. And there’s usually a process has been more defined. Because when we do it ourselves, we just have a large arrowhead. We don’t need a process. It’s not until we have to try and keep someone else from like, god dammit, now I need to how the hell, how do I help? How do I get them to do it as well as I do it. And that’s a whole exercise in itself.

Nicole Smith
Well, that’s what we’ve been going through over this, you know, engaged a team of humans, and they’re all a fabulous people. And I realized that as much as I had been helping other businesses to get their stuff all organized, I’m like, oh, so Nicole’s holding the IP still, it’s over here in her brain, we got to shift that out. So, that’s been the last sort of six months of just getting out of my brain, reviewing our internal ways of working. And it’s feeling so much easier. Much easier, you know, so good. Now, we’ve spoken about why we should do it.

Nicole Smith
You raised a good point around a discussion point of why we shouldn’t do it, or where are those potential opportunities that it may not be the right solution to go into? And we’re talking about all of it? Well, all of that, but automation in particular?

Justin Smith
Yeah. So usually, there’s two negative outcomes that can happen from automation. One is it’s just a distraction. If it’s not right for you, and you spend a bunch of time on it, it’s just wasting your time. And the other one is if you do automate something, but it’s done, like it’s either automated poorly, or the process wasn’t very good to begin with, I think it’s Tim Ferriss has a great quote about automating inefficiencies, just helps you be inefficient much faster. So, typically, because I help people with the workflow, I’m usually not too stressed about that. But what I do look at is like, Okay, are you a physical business or a digital business, if you’re a physical business, you need robots that are very expensive, I can’t help you with that. You need to at least be running some sort of admin online, where I can kind of save you some time, there’s a big difference between a business that has a clear process or multiple, versus ones that are either not at that stage yet. Or just by necessity, too bespoke to even custom like to standardize anything. A little bit rare, but I do come across them occasionally. And then it’s a question of, okay, how much admin are you doing right now, if you’re doing 10 minutes of admin a week, and I save up to 50% of that, that’s not much value. But the ones who are really kind of got a heavy load, like, okay, I can help you a lot here. So, I start to look at, to what degree is automation going to help you because there is a, it takes some effort to set up, there’s like a base cost? Yeah.

Nicole Smith
Hey, they’re just interrupting this episode to share with you a guide that you are going to want to explore. Are you a ClickUp user at the moment? Or have you been sitting on the fence and hearing me talk about it each and every week? And just wondering, what is the next step to tech? Well, I’ve created a guide that’s going to support you on your journey to really design your ClickUp spaces, be able to create those and then connect them into the way that your business operates each and every day. My community have told me that this guide has been a game changer in the way that they really look at their ClickUp workspaces, and operate each and every day. And you can access it as well. So pop on over to my website, the artisans.com.au backslash freebies, and access the action takers guide to ClickUp, how fabulous that you know, you’re ready to evolve your ClickUp journey. You’re ready to move from where you are right now, to where you have all always known you want to be. Reach out, let me know. I love to hear all about your journey in ClickUp. So, I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, that’s right. And do you work a lot with custom databases at all?

Justin Smith
Not tons. I just haven’t come across them and my clients, I love the idea. I love databases. Don’t talk, okay.

Nicole Smith
I’m working with a client at the moment. Like I digress, people, so it’s ready. My background was I was the in between human between the business and the IT teams, be that day-to-day support, or be that database design and development. And so I used to love that role being right in the middle, they’re translating, and so one of their clients at the moment in the corporate space, I’m right back in there. And I’m loving it. However, you realize some of the limitations with some of these really big custom built systems, and one of them was reporting that we’ve come across. So yeah, it’s really interesting when, as a sort of a smaller, in the smallest space SME space using tools that are primarily cloud based and scaled to working with a more custom database, the limitations that you can attract or jump into when it comes to efficiencies. You can do it, but it costs a lot of money to do it.

Justin Smith
Yeah. Yeah, I often end up whenever I can I run through this with them as well. But I’m particularly more custom ones. It’s all about, do they have an API? Can I extract the data, process it elsewhere, and then put it back in, or put it somewhere else? As long as I can extract it? I’m usually pretty comfortable. Sometimes I do run into that I like, like, software’s that I can’t extract data from I’m like, well, yeah, I can’t really help you with that, like, whatever their features are internally fine. But if I can process it elsewhere, I’m reasonably comfortable doing that, rather than, like, it’s a bit of a hack. It’s a bit of a cheat, to take, just like pull the data out, put it in a spreadsheet, deal with it there, make some beautiful reports, and then show them, I sometimes try and push it back into the software just so it looks pretty, like so for example, ClickUp dashboards, but I do just cheat by just just doing it elsewhere.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I’ve been playing in spreadsheets for the last couple of months, just exporting these reports from like raw data that isn’t even raw data. It’s built to be a PDF document, and 1000s of lines of data, like, yeah, 10s of 1000s, and then all merged and centered. And so you have to like click on merge and center, and then go and like, make 10 coffees, because it takes that long. Anyway, we totally digress. But I guess the point of the story here is that there are ways to be able to shape these experiences for you, even when there are potential limitations of the native software elements. Yeah, you mentioned something, ClickUp dashboards. Actually, before we go there, can you explain to people API because people would know have heard of that, but they may not have connected with what it is?

Justin Smith
Yeah, it’s basically just the language that software is used to talk to external things. Okay. So, you can either ask her for information or send commands, and it’s just how it, it’s like the wall with which it transfers information in and outside of itself.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. Because people chuck that around all the time. And I do I always wonder, I’m like, does people actually know what that means? They go, now you do, educated, ClickUp dashboards. Are you happy to have a chat about those? Let’s go. Tell me about like, Why do you love them? What how do you use them?

Justin Smith
Controversial. Okay, so I, I use dashboards, I also use views a lot. I don’t do everything in dashboards. Dashboards are good for certain things. Also, it’s not very well understood how they actually work, particularly with historical reporting. So, if you’re using ClickUp, this will be good to know, ClickUp takes a snapshot of your workspace every single day. And that’s how it does historical recordings. So, when you do something, a line graph or a bar graph over time, it’s looking at how the state was in in each of those days, and those states are saved, you can’t edit them, you can’t. You can filter. But the filter does not apply to each of those days. It only applies to today. So, if you filter on a task within a certain status, it’ll give you the history of the tasks that are currently in that status, regardless of what status they’re in the past. So, you cannot report on how many tasks were in X status over the last three months. That doesn’t exist. So, there are really good things you can do really easily ClickUp dashboards are easy, but there are limitations to what you can’t do.

Nicole Smith
Like live live, is that more live data, right?

Justin Smith
Yeah, okay. And they look okay, so filters are where dashboards are at. If you’re going to make good dashboards, you’re gonna use good filters, because the actual like, cards themselves are like pretty basic. But by combining clever filters, you can expand their capability by like, 10.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, we use them, not a lot. To be honest, we’re just starting to really dive into them, as my team is growing as well. And as our clients are investigating them and wanting them more, so we’re playing a lot more in there. But it’s interesting that you say that snapshot in time, because, again, taking it out of Flickr, talking about what I’m doing with this mountain of data. And that custom database is that the reporting is limited to reporting as at date of running. And when you’re looking at mountains of data over a period of 2 3 4 weeks, and we’re wanting date specific entries, you know, a lot of very a lot of limitations there. So, anyway, designed to report and made suggestions, what we need there. But that’s a really valid point to know. Because data is only as good as A what you put it in as and when you’re looking at it from a reflective point of view those filters and those settings and understanding what is the actual data that is coming up in that summary? That’s probably something you’re not I didn’t know that. So, that’s probably something a lot of people don’t realize.

Justin Smith
Yeah. And it’s okay, so there are some limitations on ClickUp dashboards. But also dashboard plus automation basically removes those limitations. Because with automations, we have the ability to create our own snapshots. And therefore we have completely different data. And we can run completely different reports using the same tools. Yeah. So, that that report of like, it’s actually a client of mine, they’re in real estate. And I like how many contracts have we signed per week for the last three months? Now, obviously, I can’t, we don’t have that data captured. So, it’s from today, once I set the automation going, but we’re now capturing that information. So, in three months’ time, they’ll be able to go back and have that report.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. And will you put that back into ClickUp? Yeah. Yeah. Had the dashboard. Yeah. See, isn’t that and that’s, that’s a great example, right? Because we do think zap right Zapier step, step, step, step in and out, but we don’t actually think it, out, location, filter, back in.

Nicole Smith
You know, that’s just shows you the level I Make, I guess has that visual appearance of it, but Zapier’s just like a long list down, but you can actually see the pathway that is possible.

Justin Smith
Yeah. Yeah, I get excited. Because Okay, so Make can do a couple of things. It can do splitting pathways, which is really important for having multiple different things happening. It also has this concept of aggregation and integration. So, you can separate things out, do an action to each part, and then put them back together again. Yeah. And I think I took that not to its limit, but to a significant extreme, I’ll tell you this one, I did a ClickUp to Xero, well, I can’t accounting in QuickBooks actually, automation. And so what I did was for each task, we looked at each task within that each sub task within that the time tracked, divided by the people, divided by individual instances, divided by which department those people were in, and what their hourly rate is. Then we filter that for the ones that have already been billed, grab the ones that hadn’t been billed, sum them up by department, or sorry, multiply them by their hourly rate first, then sum them by department, then push them through to QuickBooks as an, a line item per parent task with the descriptions of the sub tasks on it, when you what it was for, and then broken out. And they’ve got like a feature in QuickBooks where you can like have sub items broken out by department for their reporting.

Nicole Smith
Stop it. Oh my God, that’s amazing. Well I know where I’m gonna be sending my people because that level like that is like up their level of audit. Like, I love the logic and the can see that pass. That’s a work of art. That is excited a while but it felt good. That was a template. Definitely. Oh, yeah, I know. Because that’s something that I’ve talked to my clients about, they’ve never been ready to dive into. So, I might just send them over your way. Because you’ve got that nailed. That sounds amazing.

Justin Smith
That was a fun one.

Nicole Smith
It’s just that they’re always getting all geeky now. So well, not not even apologizing. Because this is such an exciting world where it’s now open to anybody. Right? Whereas before, it was really limited to corporate businesses with high budgets with like, core development teams, like that’s where it was limited to. And now it’s just these tools that are available to anyone, and fabulous training done by yourself, being able to guide us along the journey. How amazing is that?

Justin Smith
I looked into some other softwares because Makes it so not the only one. It is my favorite. By looking at some of the more enterprise ones. It was more like, yeah, $25,000 and they will talk to you, and then you pay monthly. You’re like Holy Dooley.

Nicole Smith
I think it’s a really good awareness point as well as the value on working with people like us, that it’s not just I’m gonna give you a pretty chart, right? There’s a lot of brain work that happens in these discovery and design phases that, you know, it is really, we’re developing.

Justin Smith
Like, I’m not a developer in the IT scope, like I don’t do code, but I wish code is amazing. Do you code? You a coder? My answer is typically no. Although that’s kind of changing as I’m doing more and more API calls. But technically, no, no, I don’t know any coding languages. HTML and CSS.

Nicole Smith
Yeah, I um, I used to work in, so I used to work for Macquarie Bank, and then one of the trade floors in London there in the in the IT team. So like, I worked alongside these glorious people. And I remember one guy in particular, he had a keyboard that had no, it was just empty, it was just a keyboard. And like, no letters, no symbols. And just like the speed at the lines of code, do digital lives are da de da da de. And I was just in awe, I’d just be like, what language are we speaking here Jeeva?

Nicole Smith
Like, this, that the other like, Python, cool. Okay. All right. Yep. Cool. Cool. Cool. C++? Yep, I can talk the lingo. Let’s go. That I just, I mean, awe of of that. It’s just amazing. And I think that’s probably I’ve always been in that IT space. So I think that’s why I’ve naturally gravitated to these roles. And then that talking the both sides and seeing that there is so much possibility, then just black and white. Like look a little bit closer.

Justin Smith
Yeah.

Nicole Smith
All right. Ah, so good. Okay. So we’ve done our automations. They’re in place. Yeah. What do we have to do to maintain them to like, make sure that they’re healthy and still doing the things?

Justin Smith
Yeah, it’s really interesting question. So, there’s two, there’s two main ones that I look for one is obviously errors that come up. So, we figure out why that happened. The second one is actually usually training the team like, hey, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish. Here’s what should happen. If it doesn’t tell us, because sometimes the automation will run successfully, and produce a result that’s different to what we expected. Yeah. And so usually what happens over time, it’s, I use the word maintenance, but it’s a little bit, it’s almost like continuous improvement. Yeah. So, it’s a little bit of like, okay, great, this unexpected thing happened, I put in unexpected information, we need to adjust for that. So, that in the future that will run fine. It’s not doing what we want. Cool. Obviously, we didn’t like the, you know, there’s always misunderstanding and like, okay, I thought you meant something else. Obviously, you don’t cool, we’ll fix that. But then there’s the thing of like, how can we make a little bit better, actually be better if it did this. And usually what happens when I talk to someone, initially, they’ll be like, this is what we want to have happen. Great. We’ll build that. And then once they see it working, they’re like, oh, that’s possible. Well, what about this? What about that? What about that, and so as much as possible, actually, I prefer to create partnerships with companies and just stay with them for kind of extended period. And then they can just chuck me thing. And we’ve kind of layer by layer, build it up. And so some, some of my clients now have some serious automation systems. Like it’s really, they’ve really built things out. And it’s great.

Nicole Smith
I really resonate with that model you’re talking about, they’re building those partnerships. It’s funny, I last night, actually just finalized my virtual COO offer, which is like a high touch point offer. And I did a question like Q&A, at the end, creating a partnership, because it really is when we work really closely with businesses. I remember I’d work with them, and then we’d end and I’d be like, that’s sad. Like, there’s so much more than they weren’t obviously energetically ready for it. And also not the size, which you were talking about before. Yeah. Makes the Difference, doesn’t it? Because there’s just so much possibility. Yeah, yeah, continuous improvement is words that we use all the time over here. And one of the ones that we also when we’re training, I just click up, we predominantly do a lot of ClickUp builds as well. So, we love it over here, those maintaining the internal automations. So, like if they’re, for instance, a basic one, they’ve got a task template that’s connected to an automation, what’s that process of how where and all those sorts of things and you’re right, when we connect those processes and those training elements with the team, they’ve got those skills to just continually develop those internal ones, those basic automations and then contact someone like yourself or like me to build it out a little bit more. But that moment of, ah, that’s possible. Yeah, it is. It is. I want it now. No, we got like, focus people. It’s so much. It’s just, the sky’s endless, you know, it’s limitless when you’re getting in there. Yeah. So good. Anything else you want to leave us with or share from an automation point of view or just a general process design, fabulousness space. Before we jump in? I’ve got three questions we ask all our fab guests?

Justin Smith
I’m sure there’s more. Nothing’s particularly jumping out at me right now. No.

Nicole Smith
Yeah. All good. Well, I’ve loved this conversation. So, I know that everyone else will, or might just be us geeking away. And we’ll have part two and other time on more odd more in depth. automations. Okay, thank you. Let’s go. I asked my guests. All three questions. So you’re ready to Yeah. Well, I’m really interested actually, to know your answers today. So okay, what is your go to app that creates easing your day?

Justin Smith
I think I have to say Make here. I will throw the the honorable recommendation to ClickUp. Yeah, sure. I work my, work from most of the day.

Nicole Smith
Beautiful. Love it. I do love ClickUp. Looking at my ClickUp doc right now, I so got, okay. Online, paper, hybrid to-do lists lover?

Justin Smith
Yeah, I’m fully online. Yeah, although I do respect. I do respect paper. I totally know, like the physical act of writing great for the brain. But in the end of the day, I just don’t think it’s, it’s not a team tool. It’s a personal tool. And so you have to be, if it’s right, like if, if your use case is personal thing, great. Oftentimes, the use cases, I work with our team ones. And also, I’m terrible at carrying paper, I always have my phone. So…

Nicole Smith
I actually think that was the most succinct explanation of, paper is a real personal activity, which it is, isn’t it? Because you’re thinking about journaling, or, you know, brain mapping or things where you are drawing, think about my kids artwork, again, you know, it is a real personal activity. So, that’s a audio snippet that will be popping out there.

Nicole Smith
Okay, final question. What would you do if you created more space in your world?

Justin Smith
Yeah. Okay. Down to there’s actually pretty clear. So, a lot of what I do whenever I am not working, is learning and growing, lot of courses. And I really, so I value personal growth, and I value helping other people with that. So, I’m actually doing a coaching course, at the moment, kind of going into the, like automation for solving problems on like, the digital work-front, like, okay, how do I solve problems in life and with emotions and that kind of thing? So, that’s kind of where it’s at. For me, it’s personal growth, mostly.

Nicole Smith
Amazing. And they, aren’t they intertwined, though? Whenever we’re in business, I know that I always lean into personal development as well. I’m actually working with the leadership coach at the moment as my transition through the business stuff. And that was self awareness of some of the diagnostics that we’ve done. I’m like, oh, yeah, that makes so much sense. Like, I totally can see now where I am and why that thing’s happening or why it’s not happening. Yeah, being able to support people, in their own journeys is just a really a powerful, powerful tool. So fabulous. So amazing. Well, thanks so much for joining me, this has been, I knew it was going to be a fabulous. How can we not to? Getting on a zoom call, but tell us where can we find you?

Justin Smith
Okay, so I’m a little bit old school, I’m not on basically any social’s. But my website is work management dot tools. It’s the new.tools and domain name. And there’s a contact page there. Or you can just email me directly at justin@workmanagement.tools. Either way, I’ll get it and I will respond.

Nicole Smith
Amazing. And your training library have these? Is that over on YouTube? Or is it all around the places or where is it?

Justin Smith
Okay, there’s three good places. One is YouTube, it’s got a lot of more beginner stuff. One of them is I’ve got like a teachable site for training basic ClickUp stuff, actually basic and advanced. Email me about that one, it’s, it’s annoying to find. And the third one is the somewhat secret one. So, Make themselves contacted me and asked me to do a whole series of training. But it was specifically for their partners, so people who provide Make Services. And so it goes from Xero to anything. And it’s free for anyone and anyone can access it. But it’s only advertised to partners. And so most people don’t know about it, but it is I you know, obviously some confidence here, but I think it’s the best training out there for make. So if you want that, all you need to do is have a Make account and go to the right link. The link is partnertraining.make.com. I’m sure we’ll put that in the show notes. But that’s where it’s at.

Nicole Smith
I’m excited to go and have a squiz at that to be fair, and for my team as well. Because being able to upskill our people who are supporting us in the business is so important and being able to have those resource libraries at a click of a button. Amazing, so fabulous.

Justin Smith
There’s also some sort of certification training in there that has some really fun and interesting problems to solve with Make, that the Make team did a good job of that. Shout out to Daniel Zrust, and the Make team who did those.

Nicole Smith
Oh, I’m excited about that. Ah stuff. Oh, how exciting. Okay, all of that. How’s it going in the shownotes. And if you want to give us a shout out and tell us how much you love Make or ClickUp, because you know, we’re all about it, come and let us know coz it’s so much fun. I love learning, can’t help it. It’s fabulous to get in there and click the buttons, but be able to have a SOP are a video that can guide you through the steps. There’s just something about it. We love documentation and training over this side, too. So, haven’t quite gotten on to the whole YouTube thing. But we’re doing some other fun things. So amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you today.

Justin Smith
Thank you for having me.

Nicole Smith
You’re welcome. Well, we’re gonna wrap it up. So everyone out there, have a fabulous rest of your day and enjoy creating clever systems for your business bye now. Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on socials yet? If not, please come on over. Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at The Artisan Solutions. So, I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week. And until next time see you then.