Stair Guys: Inside the AI-Powered Growth of a Modern Construction Business
In this episode of The Build Up, Dan speaks with Scott Jones, founder of Stair Guys, about how he's using artificial intelligence to radically transform his construction business. With a team of just three people, Scott has managed to generate over 6,000 website visitors a month, attract 20–30 qualified leads each week, and replace the equivalent workload of more than three staff members using AI tools that cost under £500 a month.
What’s most surprising is that Stair Guys doesn't manufacture staircases—yet they rank among the top four staircase companies in the UK thanks entirely to AI-driven SEO and content strategies. Scott walks us through his complete AI toolkit, from creating blog content that genuinely ranks, to producing customer quotes and 3D renders in under a minute.
This conversation is essential for business owners, tradespeople, and marketers working in traditional sectors who want to grow without continually expanding their team. Scott shares his perspective that AI is the great leveller for small businesses, along with a refreshingly honest take on the learning curve, the mindset shift from chasing revenue to buying back time, and the privacy challenges that come with adopting AI tools.
From automating compliance documentation and building case studies from Zoom transcripts to training AI for tone of voice and quality control, this discussion shows how even a tiny team can compete with industry giants when they harness the right tools.
Whether you're excited about AI or deeply sceptical, this episode offers practical, down-to-earth insights into how AI is already revolutionising traditional industries like construction.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Build Up. This is the podcast for marketing in the construction industry.
Speaker:I'm Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We've been working with construction brands
Speaker:for a number of years. It's an exciting and rapidly evolving industry. And that's why we
Speaker:created a podcast dedicated to the weird and wonderful world of construction marketing.
Speaker:I'll be speaking to leading brands, other agencies, creatives, influencers and startups. This
Speaker:is the resource I wish we had when we first started out in the industry. Thank you for
Speaker:being here and welcome to The Buildup.
Speaker:Hello and welcome to the build up. I'm Dan, the creative director at dissident. We are
Speaker:a social first creative agency working with construction brands to create hard hitting
Speaker:content and social media marketing. And today I'm joined by Scott Jones, who's one of the
Speaker:co-founders of the Stair Guys co-founder, right? Founder. Founder, co-owner. we go. We're going
Speaker:to get that distinction clear. I'm really excited for this because I'm going to be geeking out
Speaker:about AI. And I came across yourself, Scott, because I put a post out there. And I was
Speaker:like, listen, who's using AI in their marketing, specifically in construction, an industry
Speaker:that's typically quite or. known to be kind of like adverse to technology and emerging
Speaker:tech and stuff like that. absolutely. So I was really excited to get you on because you were
Speaker:like, yes, I fucking love it. You know, we use it loads, not just in marketing, but in the
Speaker:business as a whole. So I'm really, really pleased to have you on. Thank you so much for
Speaker:coming. Thank you for having me. Before we dive in and get really nerdy, can you give us a
Speaker:bit of instructions to like who you are? Like, you know, the Stair guys, how you started
Speaker:out, things like that. Yeah. So Stair guys started for coming up to four years ago now. I've
Speaker:worked with Stairs, if you like, pretty much my whole working career, except for a little
Speaker:sabbatical at the beginning, which was windows and doors straight out of uni. Studied marketing,
Speaker:like we said earlier, at uni, specialized in charitable marketing. Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker:But came out the other end, sort of thinking that charitable marketing was load of bullshit,
Speaker:to be totally honest with you. So I did spend six months writing my thesis or dissertation
Speaker:or whatever you want to call it for a charity based in Hereford where I'm from. And was about
Speaker:give love gifts is basically what we ended up calling it. So if you've seen in the past.
Speaker:you can buy a chicken for someone in Kenya or a toilet for someone in Rwanda. that sort of
Speaker:thing. was the start of that. we started that. It went really well. But when I was doing all
Speaker:the book research at the beginning, when you actually had to do it by yourself, I realized
Speaker:where a lot of the charity's money goes. And it was about the bigger charities, about 30
Speaker:P in the pound was going to the causes that they support. Because of all the costs and
Speaker:all that. Yeah, exactly. I kind of fell out of the love. of the idea. I really wanted to
Speaker:go down that route. Giving back is a big thing for me personally and also for us as a business
Speaker:and any of the businesses I'm involved with. yeah, that was it. So anyway, back onto the
Speaker:stair guys. Started about four years ago. Saw a massive gap in the market. The staircase
Speaker:market generally for builders that sort of guys that listen to this has gone online. The personal
Speaker:touch has completely disappeared from it. So it's all about what your review is on TrustPilot.
Speaker:the quality of the product gradually just becomes all the same. And it's not great out there
Speaker:generally. I was like, right, so we can team up with little joiner shops or bigger joinery
Speaker:companies, however we work, to give people a personalized service, on site, measure, no
Speaker:drawing sign-offs, and go from there. When I started it, I did a couple of base financials
Speaker:just to make sure it was, I almost wanted to do them to scare the shit out of myself. I
Speaker:was like, this isn't going to be a good idea. It doesn't make sense. And all of a sudden,
Speaker:it's like, actually, do know what? With a bit of luck and a bit of fortune, we'd be OK. We
Speaker:had about three months runway at home. We'd just done our second litland, so I didn't go
Speaker:back to work after paternity leave the second time. And I was like, right, I've to make
Speaker:this work. Or I'm done with construction, because I just had enough of all of it. And yeah,
Speaker:here we are four years later. There's three of us, not just me. And yeah, we do probably
Speaker:source between 15 to 30 flights a week for people now. So yeah, we're too big for three people.
Speaker:but we have no intention of taking on any more people. Yeah, there's always that thing where
Speaker:you can get to a certain point, you go, OK, we're really busy now, but if I take on anyone
Speaker:else, the private goes boom. And this is a great segue into AI, because AI can be that
Speaker:kind of tool. We use AI as just a broad catch-all term for products and services and platforms
Speaker:where you can Essentially optimize all of the steps within your business and marketing in
Speaker:general to make everything way more efficient so that the idea is once you get to a certain
Speaker:point and that there's a consideration for another member of staff, whether that be for admin,
Speaker:AI is not taking the jobs of joiners at this stage. if you get so busy that you're like,
Speaker:can't even catch up with my emails. There's this space that I'd say, oh, I wonder what's
Speaker:available on the market in terms of what can help me with these kinds of things. And that's
Speaker:the stuff that I get really excited about. Within dissidents specifically, a bit like yourself,
Speaker:we're looking to do as much work as possible, as much good work as possible with as little
Speaker:people as possible. Retain profit, make sure that the jobs are safe, and work really efficiently
Speaker:rather than just every time it gets a bit busy, just hire a new member of staff to do whatever.
Speaker:And I don't know, I've never really looked into it. But I reckon for good or bad, for
Speaker:the world, AI probably represents at least one job in our agency. They're almost like
Speaker:the seventh member of staff, something like that. And we're only scratching the surface
Speaker:of what AI can do. So when it comes to AI, everyone's got their first dabble in it. I
Speaker:think for me, it was probably chat GPT, I'm not going to lie. What was your first dabble
Speaker:into AI? What was the first thing that sort of grabbed your attention? Yeah, it would have
Speaker:been GPT. So it would have been when that launched. I spend not so much these days, I've got the
Speaker:time. We spend a lot of time web through. So faffing around that kind of stuff, not so much
Speaker:the crypto side of things, but more about the privacy, the tech and the interest in that
Speaker:side of it. That's kind of where the AI boom started, just very quietly amongst a very small
Speaker:proportion of people who were interested in that tech in the first place. So I've kind
Speaker:of probably been interested in it for seven or eight years and just sort of grown with
Speaker:it, seen the things that have come. And it's as much of a hobby for me as it is any part
Speaker:of my business, because I just love playing with it. It's almost like grown up Lego. The
Speaker:stuff you can sort of faff around with the build now. I don't know you've used a website called
Speaker:lovable. No. So lovable is fun. You can build a website about three seconds. So the back
Speaker:end's atrocious. The front end's awesome. So you can just go, I want a website for dog collars
Speaker:from wherever or whatever the example is. And that's it. Done. With images. With content.
Speaker:Mad. Yeah. But every day that goes past now, something's been improved. So for me personally
Speaker:and for us as a business, we tend to change the programs we use. bi-weekly, if not monthly.
Speaker:There's a core one that we use pretty much for everything content-wise, because it's been
Speaker:trained, because it sends out what we need it to, to a degree. I mean, you can read into
Speaker:it, and the people who know they're looking at AI stuff will know it's AI stuff. But for
Speaker:the 98 % of the other people, that looks like genuine content written by a person, which
Speaker:is kind of what we're after, because we haven't got the time to sit down at the desk. and go,
Speaker:right, I really want to do this. We want to do that. So we want to take some pictures of
Speaker:stairs that we've done, edit them in another piece of software, make the light and right
Speaker:your big area of expertise, as right as it can be, not to the professional eye, obviously.
Speaker:And then from that, create LinkedIn, Instagram. And that's kind of it. We don't go much further
Speaker:with socials than that as a business. We've got bits and bobs on Facebook, but it's just
Speaker:shared from Instagram. And from that, also create SEO ranked blog content that we can put on
Speaker:the site. which is put in head of format and the keyword research is done whilst it's being
Speaker:written. So that in itself is two people's jobs for our business, which is kind of, it's kind
Speaker:of there. you've got, you've got a con, you've essentially got a content specialist and an
Speaker:SEO, um, you know, shit dropping everything. Uh, an SEO like expert, know, already kind
Speaker:of like as, as you're working, you've got those kinds of roles kind of covered within AI to
Speaker:some extent. Yeah. And the thing, the thing that we've we found fascinating for it as a
Speaker:business is we're tiny. Like I said, we're a team of three. There's this perception from
Speaker:the outside looking in that we're quite a big going concern, I guess, which is great. We
Speaker:never tell anyone that we're not, but equally we never tell anyone that we are. So you just
Speaker:kind of roll with the flow, let people have the perception they want to have. But we rank
Speaker:within the top four staircase manufacturers in the country online. in mind, we don't make
Speaker:anything. And that is because of that. Yeah, do you think in terms of getting to that point,
Speaker:do you think you could have, in terms of how much of a percentage AI has been utilized to
Speaker:get you to that point, could you put a number on that to think that 50 % of that is down
Speaker:to the fact that we've implemented AI or I would say in terms of the online presence, it's all
Speaker:down to AI. There will be a 5%, 10 % part there where we utilize services from things like
Speaker:Fiverr and things like that. for the integration at the back end of the links to make sure they're
Speaker:going in the right place. And they're sort of directed the right way. other than that,
Speaker:yeah, it's all down to that. So cool. By the way, we've not got Kealan Cam on today. He's
Speaker:going to be like a little silent kind of guy in the background purely because I keep looking
Speaker:at Kealan to get his reactions to stuff. And it's pointless. So. There he is in the background.
Speaker:It's insane the amount of stuff that you can do within AI to support the businesses. And
Speaker:I think a lot of people think of AI. When they think of AI, they think of chat GPT. They
Speaker:maybe think of image generation and stuff like that. But you and I know, I'm not an expert
Speaker:on AI at all. There's so many more services, models, and things that you can do. with AI
Speaker:that are really specific, things you can build yourself and stuff like that. Obviously, this
Speaker:is marketing podcast, so I want to dive into that in more detail. What areas of marketing,
Speaker:sorry, what areas of the business, before we go on to that, are you actually utilizing AI?
Speaker:You don't need to talk about the actual products and stuff, but if you broke it down into like
Speaker:biz dev, outreach leads, SEO and things like that. I would say all bar the physical side
Speaker:of measuring. Cool. be honest, in one way or another. yeah, it's something that gives us
Speaker:the time to do the things that we enjoy, which is being with the people. There's custom integrations
Speaker:built into our quoting software for 3D renders. I mean, we can have a quote put together about
Speaker:45 seconds. that is a bespoke staircase done by that Bosch sorted gone. And it doesn't cost
Speaker:much. It's the time. And that's what I put a lot of people off. I always say to people,
Speaker:because I don't proclaim to be an expert in any of it either. I'm a hobbyist. I'm a nerd.
Speaker:Yeah, 100%. Exactly that. it's, we'd never tell anyone what to do, but the best thing I always
Speaker:say to people now is play with it. Don't put it into your business. Don't. If you don't
Speaker:know what you're doing with it, there probably can be some massive balls ups in there somewhere.
Speaker:Because if you don't get used to checking something, it's going to... kind of spit out whatever
Speaker:he wants to, to a degree. So for argument's sake, if you're going to write a blog post,
Speaker:what you want to do is run it through whatever software you're doing, then run it through
Speaker:another piece of software, which is plagiarism based. And then also run it through another
Speaker:one, which can spell check it and tinker with anything that you needed to. So you can use
Speaker:three separate bits of software, all AI to go through the same thing, start to finish and
Speaker:you know you're fine. No one's going to sue you because you use their words. And if you
Speaker:have, they're kind of used in a slightly different way. So it's kind of tough shit really. And
Speaker:I imagine there's AI tools or I think there's a distinction between AI tools and they're
Speaker:like, if this then that like Zapier and stuff like that, where it's like, it's technically
Speaker:not maybe some elements AI, but essentially what it's doing is it's just organizing things
Speaker:and you know, if you press this button, then this happens and stuff like that. But I imagine
Speaker:there's things like Zapier and stuff where you could essentially go. Right, I'll put this
Speaker:through this particular thing, and it will automatically go down those sort of funnel stages. You don't
Speaker:even have to physically kind of like, OK, now I'm going to copy and paste that into this
Speaker:thing and try again. Imagine there's all sorts of stuff that you can do to optimize any process.
Speaker:And that's what I love about this. It's just optimization. And obviously, I'm more interested
Speaker:in the optimization than generation to some extent, like content generation and things,
Speaker:because I'm a We're a content agency, although there's elements like the podcast where we
Speaker:heavily use AI. yeah, for the most part, it's kind of making sure that my team are doing
Speaker:the things that they love to do more than admin boring stuff. Quoting is big one. We don't
Speaker:utilize AI at all really in quoting. I did think about a very, very simple thing the other
Speaker:day that essentially when I'm doing quotes, I'll just send the quotes. it broke down, videographer,
Speaker:day rate, production assistant, editing time, travel. Very, very basic stuff. And then what
Speaker:I want do is kind of have a system that I haven't already thought about this through the day,
Speaker:because I use this kind of thing and lots of other stuff, where I essentially just go, right,
Speaker:I'm just going to jump on the microphone and explain what we're going be doing on this particular
Speaker:production, what we intend to do. Included in what we're doing here is the setup, we're
Speaker:breaking down, we're bringing in lights, blah, blah. And then have AI kind of repurpose my
Speaker:ramblings into something that's essentially an introduction to this production of what
Speaker:we're to do for them. And that's something that typically I'd have to just write out.
Speaker:because I'm time poor, I just don't send the quote. It depends on how much I want the job.
Speaker:You want all of them, obviously. Yeah. There's some I want more than others, though. You know
Speaker:what I mean? The seven figure whatever's, know, we're prioritizing them. But I think it's fascinating.
Speaker:you're using it in almost all of your processes. Can you walk us through, like, specifically
Speaker:how you use AI in terms of your marketing and potentially that lead gen, stuff like that?
Speaker:We haven't really got a marketing strategy, to be brutally honest with you. We never have.
Speaker:Us neither. No, I mean, we really don't. mean, it's kind of chuck it on the wall and see
Speaker:what sticks is our approach because it's not costing us anything. Yes. And we, we're very
Speaker:unique in that we sort of touched on before. We haven't really got any deals or anything
Speaker:with anybody. Therefore we can just kind of do what we want. We can kind of piss off whoever
Speaker:we want, which is we, yeah, we, which we tend to not intentionally some of it is, but not
Speaker:all the time. Um, and just see what sticks and we tend to get I don't know 20 to 30 leads
Speaker:a week. we sell some of them because we can't, we can't process all of them without taking
Speaker:more people on, which is kind of where we are as a business at the minute that I, I just
Speaker:don't like people that much. It's kind of the brutal honesty part of it. So I love customers.
Speaker:I've managed people before and I just struggle with it. It's not, it's not my, not in my skillset.
Speaker:Yeah. When you get a core team that's like solid. I mean, all you want to do then is just
Speaker:optimize the work so we can generate as much revenue as you can with that core team, I guess.
Speaker:Yeah. Again, we're weird. I have this conversation with business owners a lot. Revenue doesn't
Speaker:drive me at all in the slightest. Time drives me. Like I I'm involved with three or four
Speaker:different things anyway. So the less I can spend on this, the more I can spend on that or whatever
Speaker:else I want to do, which is generally more fun than stairs. They're pretty boring, like I
Speaker:was saying before. mean, they're fucking boring. Let's be honest. They are staircases. They're
Speaker:important in people's houses. Don't get me wrong. They're certainly other. and they're great
Speaker:to be part of as a product. Pretty dull, know, grand scheme of things. Don't dream about stairs.
Speaker:Not anymore. They don't like 15 years ago, be fair. They're more nightmares these days. I
Speaker:don't know where I was going then, sorry. We were talking specifically about like, know,
Speaker:how you utilize AI within your marketing and like lead gen and you talk about the fact that
Speaker:you Yeah, a of leads coming in. I would say predominantly the marketing strategy is from
Speaker:the SEO stuff and the blog content on site. That's what drives the traffic there. Okay.
Speaker:We don't get a vast amount of leads through social media. I tend to see Instagram as a
Speaker:playground. Yes. Generally, it's just fun. Yeah. And it's a bit of a release. It's like a gallery.
Speaker:It really is. We use it in the same respect of the going slightly off topic of AI. you
Speaker:know, I put almost too much emphasis on Instagram because it's a platform that I enjoy the most,
Speaker:but it's where we get the least amount of work. it's a great opportunity to have that kind
Speaker:of like, here's all the case studies, here's all the work that we've done, here's a bit
Speaker:of personality. And you can see that all in a grid format, whereas LinkedIn, where we actually
Speaker:generate business, is like, you might see a post, you might go on someone's platform, you're
Speaker:scrolling, it's a lot of text, there's a lot of sharing stuff and things like that. So it's
Speaker:not quite as good for just being like, This is everything that dissident does. So I think
Speaker:that's pretty cool. So you're utilizing AI in your blog posts and your SEO content creation.
Speaker:SEO content, yes. It drives circa 6,000 hits a month to the website. Amazing. Generally,
Speaker:which we went heavy on the SEO stuff about two years ago after just, which I wasn't asked
Speaker:about it, to be honest. It wasn't an interest of mine, generally, then. Tried it. It takes
Speaker:six months for any of it to be. in any way noticeable black magic, isn't it? It is. Yeah.
Speaker:And it's one of those things when you, when you talk to people about that side of things,
Speaker:either into or away from AI, um, things like that do not happen like that. Yes. So you are
Speaker:paying, generally you're paying people who specialize in SEO a lot of money because they're incredibly
Speaker:good at what they do. And they also write really good copy in essence, but if you can take the
Speaker:copy away from them, that tends to be the most time consuming thing. And a lot of my using
Speaker:similar. programs. Yes, probably. They're not writing themselves anymore. No. That you are.
Speaker:And then if you can find people who do the links for you at the back end for, you know, like
Speaker:£3.49 a link on Fiverr because they're based in Bangladesh or something. But they're fantastic
Speaker:at what they do. Yes. That's always been a bit of a moral crisis to me, the Fiverr stuff,
Speaker:because you see what people are charging and it looks incredibly cheap. Yes. But then I
Speaker:guess you kind of put yourself in their footsteps. And if you go over there, it's a lot of money,
Speaker:but it doesn't make you feel any better. So we always tend to do something with Shriver
Speaker:and give like a 50 % tip as well. It's a tough one, isn't it? That, you know, you're always
Speaker:going to be beholden to a local currency, you know, pay rates and things like that. It's,
Speaker:it's, it's one of those kind of tough things where I think, you know, I don't, I don't think
Speaker:like the guys that doing digital marketing in these companies are in sweatshops, you know,
Speaker:think I don't think we should feel too bad about the fact that that's their going rate,
Speaker:you know, because we're not saying It's a tough one. Yeah, I haven't used Fiverr a great deal
Speaker:and when I have it's gone horribly wrong. really? I love it. I think it's more because I'm asking
Speaker:too much of it. I think the way that you're utilizing Fiverr I think actually sounds really,
Speaker:really sound. I think going down the roots of like, know, a lot of people use Fiverr like
Speaker:make me a logo and stuff. Yeah, you don't need it for that. You need, especially for big companies,
Speaker:big manufacturers like stay off Fiverr. But yeah, things like digital marketing, very specific
Speaker:expertise that if you tried to get that over here, it'd be $5,000 per go or whatever. And
Speaker:on Fiverr, it's a lot more affordable than Go4R. Exactly that, yeah. And it's just as weird
Speaker:of a crisis than, I guess, you could have the argument of, AI. You're sort of taking a job
Speaker:away from somebody. Someone will have that kind of thing. And it is a moral thing, a really
Speaker:good example of this. is we used to pay a guy, he's a good friend of mine, to write our case
Speaker:studies. So he's a really, really good copywriter. He knew our tone of voice. I would say I'm
Speaker:an OK copywriter, but he's much, much better. So I would have this case study. It's a campaign,
Speaker:a production, or whatever for a particular brand. Here's all the imagery and stuff like that.
Speaker:I need a case study. What I would do is obviously I'd have to explain what this case study was
Speaker:about. I inevitably have to write something or say something. So it went from writing
Speaker:things and giving you an overview of what that is. And then he would go and make some copy
Speaker:around that. I'd make some tweaks to that. And then that'd be That'd be the case study done.
Speaker:It went from that to recording myself talking about the case study so you could refer back
Speaker:to it again and again. And it was a little bit more casual because that was just easier for
Speaker:me to do. And again, same thing. He would write the case study. And I can't remember exactly,
Speaker:but let's say it was 400 quid a case study or something like that. Not an insignificant
Speaker:amount of money for a small business. And we were talking about, he's a geek for AI as
Speaker:well. We were talking about how AI is taking away jobs and how we feel about that and all
Speaker:this kind of thing. As a lot of new processes will do. Anything that gets optimized, someone
Speaker:loses a job. And I said, I'm not that concerned about it. And he was like, you don't pay
Speaker:me for case studies anymore because you use AI. That's a really good example of 450 quid
Speaker:that I used to make that I now don't because AI exists. how I use that AI now is I take
Speaker:examples of case studies that we've written in the past, explain the tone of voice, heavy
Speaker:prompting in chat GPT. to be like, this is exactly how I want case studies to be made.
Speaker:And then all I do is I essentially go on a Zoom call with myself, talk about the case study,
Speaker:take the transcription, chuck it into ChatGPT, and it generates a case study which is pretty
Speaker:damn close to all the other case studies that we've had in the past. So I guess there's a
Speaker:job gone. But the interesting thing is he's a big AI expert as well. So he's like a big
Speaker:advocate for it. And what a lot of these, mean, copywriting is probably the one that's been
Speaker:hit the most in marketing, right? 100%, yeah, yeah. So I think what copywriters are doing
Speaker:now is they're kind of utilizing AI to their advantage and stuff like that. I don't know
Speaker:how, but they're probably using some sort of generative sort of copy and then tweaking it.
Speaker:don't know. I don't know a great deal about what copywriters do. But it is a... a dilemma,
Speaker:a moral dilemma to some extent, it? Using AI, but from a business point of view, we're going
Speaker:to be like, well, I want to make sure that the staff that I have are safe. And therefore,
Speaker:to do that, we need to make as much profit as physically possible so that if we have a bad
Speaker:month, we can still pay everybody. And the answer to that is optimized processes using AI. 100%.
Speaker:Um, it's tough. It's, it's a similar kind of thing to, to using Fiverr. Some people go,
Speaker:Oh, it's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. So is AI. Um, think the thing with Fiverr is once you
Speaker:find a guy or a girl, you find a guy or a girl and they basically are part of the team anyway.
Speaker:Yes. And you just use them all the time. So there's like four people on there that we use
Speaker:not all the time, but when we need them, wouldn't go anywhere else. You know that, you know
Speaker:what they do. Uh, I mean, that's really, really good for press releases. If you ever get involved
Speaker:with them, there's really good people on there for that, especially if want to get a specific
Speaker:message out there sent to the right people. rather than it coming from you directly. So
Speaker:that, that works. Um, but the way I look at it with jobs as the stair guys, can't replace
Speaker:jobs that were never there in the first place. So I get the dilemma, but what, what it has
Speaker:done is it's got us to a point that we actually need more people. So without the AI, we wouldn't
Speaker:have got as big as we've got. We wouldn't need more people. And yeah, that's kind of where
Speaker:it's got us too. But I would say realistically, if we didn't utilize it, we'd be a team of
Speaker:six. Yes. So it's, it's, it's knocked the head count down by three. Yeah. And, and, know,
Speaker:uh, with the potential of struggling, you know, it's probably the same revenue just with a
Speaker:team of six, right? You know, it'd probably be less to be honest. Yeah. It probably, it
Speaker:probably would be, um, but yeah, I mean, so, so I dunno, we probably spend between five,
Speaker:somewhere around about 500 pound a month on relevant AI things, I guess they're all there,
Speaker:but I don't even know what it is anymore. But it's about that. If we had three people, you
Speaker:could just say that's about 90 grand before you take into account. pension, taxes, holidays.
Speaker:It doesn't sleep. It doesn't stop. Absolutely not. It's probably worth it. I couldn't even
Speaker:put a financial sum on it as to what it's worth to us as a business. Are there any other AI
Speaker:tools that you utilize within your marketing? You mentioned that you don't necessarily have
Speaker:a marketing strategy. And I sort of joke that we didn't have one either. But I have. And
Speaker:it was generated by AI. I can go on. a tangent on that because I actually asked, it was again,
Speaker:chat GPT, which again, you know, we sort of joked about the fact that it's almost like,
Speaker:like AI Junior, you know, for a lot of people, but it's a great jumping off point where I
Speaker:actually asked chat GPT to act as my marketing manager with several years experience. And
Speaker:I asked it to interview me to figure out what the marketing strategy was. So rather than
Speaker:just generate a marketing strategy, it was asking me questions relevant to the marketing strategy
Speaker:based on revenue goals, areas of interest, who our target market was and stuff like that.
Speaker:some extent, it was relatively successful in creating that marketing strategy, which is
Speaker:a strategy that would go, yep, I totally could have written that if I wanted to, but that
Speaker:took me an afternoon as opposed to a week. Yeah, I get it. Which is absolutely mad. Are there
Speaker:any other sort of like tips and tricks that you can or, you know, Utilizations of AI that
Speaker:you can recommend especially I think probably well across the gambit small businesses large
Speaker:businesses Do you think this is these are areas within marketing that you think you could you
Speaker:know, really utilize a I think for small businesses is the great leveler. Mm-hmm. I really do
Speaker:and I took my wife owns a small business as well and she's not into it as much different
Speaker:market, she's not construction or anything like that and It's like you need you need to do
Speaker:this because nobody else in your field does it, you will end up being at the front of your
Speaker:field, this that and the other. And it's the same thing for, you know, either small manufacturers
Speaker:or builders or joiners or whatever. And content creators, to be honest, you can spend 25 hours
Speaker:a week editing your own shit if you want to. And saying how good you are at doing it, that's
Speaker:fine. Or you can do it in 30 minutes. Might not be quite as clean, but you can spend time
Speaker:with your family again.
Speaker:like I say, the, the, the, generally the tip is play with it. Whatever it is. and never
Speaker:rely solely on one program ever. Just become curious because I do, it's got to a point now
Speaker:where it's become so mainstream kind of, if people don't get on board, it's like the mobile
Speaker:phone again. There will be a generation of people that get left behind and it's going
Speaker:to be really hard to play catch up with it personally and definitely business wise. Now's
Speaker:the time to really start playing and properly fucking about with it and trying to make it
Speaker:break. Not utilizing it in your business yet. You want, I mean, anyone who plays the, you
Speaker:want six, 12 months of faffing around with it in the background before you even let it anywhere
Speaker:near the thing that's most important to you. If your business is the most important thing
Speaker:you've got. But I mean, the generative stuff just, mean, something that we don't use, but
Speaker:I really like is something called Blaze. That rings a bell. Yeah. Blaze. Yeah. Yeah. That
Speaker:comes up quite, I feel like, I don't know whether we've got a subscription to it, but it definitely
Speaker:rings a bell. So that is basically content 101. Okay. So it... you, we used it, well, I used
Speaker:it for a bit. Didn't like it because it did everything that we do, but not all in the same
Speaker:place and didn't quite look right. But if you've never used AI and want somewhere to start,
Speaker:that is the thing. So hot tip blaze check it out. think it costs like 20 quid a month. It's
Speaker:not, it's not, it's 20 quid. So you put in there what you want. You can go, right. What I want
Speaker:is I want a YouTube script on that. I want a Facebook ad. want a Facebook post. want to
Speaker:like a YouTube, whatever this, that, the other. And it will come out the other end and it will
Speaker:give you a multitude of options on that specific topic. Sometimes we generated images as well
Speaker:for you to basically post directly to if you want to or copy it and paste it yourself. That's
Speaker:mad. I imagine the majority of small trades based businesses, they're not coming from
Speaker:a marketing background. They're not knowing how to write the best copy and hooks for ads
Speaker:and stuff like that. It's going to be a massive tool for people like that who are like, listen,
Speaker:I don't need this to be perfect. I need to be better than what I can do. It's more being,
Speaker:I guess, the most out there person within the areas they work. Because a lot of them are
Speaker:very, very small businesses in a very small location, generally, aren't they? So if you
Speaker:can be slightly different from the bloke down the road and get in front of more people that
Speaker:way online, especially, I'd say we don't use Facebook. I know it's still a big thing for
Speaker:construction, generates construction companies. So if you can get that in front of people,
Speaker:then I mean, you're going to be ahead. Facebook's a weird one at the moment, isn't it? Because
Speaker:you think we work with construction brands, manufacturers, who, you know, they're the people
Speaker:who are buying those are for the most part building trades, some DIY to some extent. And you think,
Speaker:okay, well, I follow the sort of breadcrumbs of Most of these small businesses, know, like,
Speaker:you know, and a small business can mean anything from, you know, up to, and it's like 10,000
Speaker:people or something to have to, like, it's like, it's like a really weird number. No, it's not,
Speaker:wouldn't be 10,000. It's something like 150 people under is still classed as like a small
Speaker:business. It's a big category. I consider small businesses to like four or five. Yeah, like
Speaker:less than 10. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, you know, local trades person, they've got a small business.
Speaker:And shit, what was I talking about, Kealan? Are you not even on the mic? What was I talking
Speaker:about, Scott? What was that? We went from Instagram to Facebook to, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Kealan,
Speaker:write that one down quick. So you follow this breadcrumb line of manufacturer, marketing
Speaker:to tradesperson. And for the most part, they're going to be self-employed small businesses.
Speaker:Best place for them to be, you'd think, is Facebook, because that's where their market is. about
Speaker:business pages on there, their marketing to the end user, which is homeowners and blah,
Speaker:blah. So it makes sense for them to be on Facebook. But for some reason, whenever we're sort of
Speaker:dabbling in Facebook for our brands, we're like, it's dead here. What's going on? They've got
Speaker:a audience base on Facebook. The numbers are still crazy on Facebook. You put a post out
Speaker:on there, it does nothing. I don't know how they can penalize people more on Facebook.
Speaker:You think they'd just be crazy numbers, but for the most part, we're a bit like you. just
Speaker:kind of auto-post to Facebook and leave it alone. think the only time you can get any real success
Speaker:on Facebook as a brand, a manufacturer, sorry, is with ads. Yeah, we do the occasional sort
Speaker:of boosted reel or whatever when it's a really nice thing that we've done. in the areas that
Speaker:I mean, that's the one good thing about matter. You can be so targeted with who you want to
Speaker:see that. I mean, to within like a square kilometer, it's insane. So we've basically got our target
Speaker:profile set up there. If there's something we have to think, do you why that looks smart?
Speaker:This will go down well there. Let's go. There always tends to be a lead or two from it, but
Speaker:I'd never run it all the time. No. Because it then kind of looks a bit disingenuous almost
Speaker:that you are needing to do it. Like I say, we don't get that much work from it anyway. I
Speaker:think, I think again, It's a bit weird for construction brands and also for perhaps service-based
Speaker:businesses. Still very much a usable and effective tool, but I think e-commerce brands, anyone
Speaker:that's selling anything online, it's still an amazing platform for those guys, which is cool.
Speaker:Can you give us any insights then into what other areas of AI that you really nerd out
Speaker:about? Not necessarily like... what you use, although it could be. just like in certain
Speaker:areas you think, oh, this would be, know, for anyone that's like either a small business
Speaker:or even like a large manufacturer, this is the kind of shit that we should be checking out.
Speaker:did do it more from a personal view than a business point of view. mean, I love the image generation
Speaker:stuff because that's come on leaps and bounds. Yeah, it used to be tasked, didn't it? I don't
Speaker:know. Again, it was all down to the prompts. I mean, it depends on when you start getting
Speaker:involved with it. You only really had mid-journey, which you used to have to use through Discord.
Speaker:Yes. And that was it. Is that not the case anymore? didn't have to use it. think it's still the
Speaker:case. Okay. So it's weird. It's not, it's not like it's not very accessible for your general.
Speaker:I imagine what your general trade is going to be like looking at this. What the fuck is this?
Speaker:It's a weird place as well. It's kind of like Craigslist on steroids. It's a bizarre place,
Speaker:but yeah, it's so that the only way you could do it. And you get some really cool shout out
Speaker:there, like really cool early doors and he got better and better and better. Um, and then
Speaker:Yeah, we use a multitude of things. I use a multitude of things just to fuck about with
Speaker:because I just find it fascinating. And how often they update it. mean, the updates can
Speaker:be like every 12 hours on some of the things. It's just moving at such a pace. well, I'm
Speaker:trying to think of the other programs that we've used like throughout doing it and that have
Speaker:been really helpful we don't use anymore and not because of any particular reason. Add creative
Speaker:AI was a really good one. Again, really inexpensive. you can do it. I think you can do it for free.
Speaker:I'm sure there's a free option for it where if you do social ads, if you do this, that
Speaker:we know, similar to what we're talking about outside with YouTube thumbnails. Yes. That's
Speaker:the sort of thing you can do on there really quickly. And they've got the old, this is
Speaker:what it's going to be out of a hundred score, which is all bullshit. But you can work,
Speaker:you can basically set your brand colors, put your logo in there and come up with your own
Speaker:images. Some texts with the text isn't great on it, but the images are really, really crisp
Speaker:and quite quite handy. That's quite a fun one to piss around with. imagine you can do A B
Speaker:testing on stuff like that as well, kind of where you can generate essentially two or three
Speaker:different ads. comes up with like 50. You can just keep on going. It's insane. That's the
Speaker:big thing. know, when we're trying to generate ads for ourselves and for the brands that we
Speaker:work with, you know, ideally you want to be doing A B testing, so you want to be testing
Speaker:not just a copy, but the creative that's on these particular ads, when we're at least two.
Speaker:It just takes time. You know, as we can go, well, here's the one that we want to, even
Speaker:better, if here's our design of this particular ad. This is what we've created on our own,
Speaker:and this is the copy that we want to have. And we've written all of that stuff. So that's
Speaker:all, you know, first-party stuff. Now can you generate, like, several versions of this so
Speaker:that we can test them? That's amazing, because otherwise you'd have to literally just go back
Speaker:to the designer and go, make me another one, make me another one, more copy. That's huge.
Speaker:We've even seen that with... We've seen this a lot with YouTube as well, where you can test,
Speaker:I think it's up to three or four, I'm not quite 100 % sure, thumbnails and titles for all of
Speaker:your videos. And it will disperse them and then very quickly pick the one that within the first
Speaker:X amount of time is performing the best and just picks that. That's mad. Having something
Speaker:that can generate that kind of stuff as opposed to making it yourself is huge. Because Keelan
Speaker:knows firsthand that YouTube thumbnails are a Bore like, aren't they? You think it's going
Speaker:to be dead easy? You it's something that's like a little extra little bit for the podcast.
Speaker:You're like, oh yeah, we'll do that. And then it takes like half a day. Oh yeah, I get it.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah. The thing is, I've never been au fait with Photoshop and things like that you'll
Speaker:use. Like Photoshop got my tits. Trying to play about with it. We had it for years. My partner's
Speaker:a textile designer, so she used it all the time when she was designing and stuff. It costs
Speaker:a fortune. And it's no better, in my opinion. I'm not a professional by the way. So No,
Speaker:not Canva. No, we don't use Canva. Don't knock Canva, it's decent. You leave Canva alone.
Speaker:We don't use Canva, but it's no different. I'll tell you after, there's an app you can
Speaker:get on your iPhone that costs a tenner, which I think is as good as Photoshop if you've
Speaker:got time to fuck about with it. It's one of those things. And Adobe are a bunch of twats
Speaker:as well. Sorry, I'll cut that bit out. We tried to cancel it and it was just a ball ache.
Speaker:We spent a fortune a month on Adobe. Yeah, so I've been having six people that need to
Speaker:use Adobe suite. I can imagine yeah And we were just looking into it kind of off-topic. We
Speaker:were looking into cinema 4d the other day, which is like 3d 3d design animation CGI that kind
Speaker:of stuff. Jesus Christ. It's just the cost just keep going up who knew creativity could be
Speaker:so expensive Have you got a tool that you've used over the time that you've been playing
Speaker:around with AI? There's just become indispensable, even if you don't use it necessarily now is
Speaker:that there like sort of one tool you think you know what, if I could only use one tool
Speaker:that you're allowed to share. give me a share anyways perplexity. What's that called perplexity
Speaker:perplexity.ai talk us through that. That is in essence it's chat GPT. But it's live to
Speaker:the second. Okay. So that's it. Wow. Yeah, yeah, I'll do. Yeah, it's insane. if, let's
Speaker:say, instance, to give an example of bring it back to marketing, a competitor brand brings
Speaker:out a new campaign, it's launched, amount of deliverables, website, blah, blah, blah. You
Speaker:could ask perplexity to go through all of that information that only got posted four hours
Speaker:ago or a day ago, whatever. Analyze what's worked and what's not for that kind of thing
Speaker:so you can do decent competitor analysis. Oh, competitor analysis is insane. It's absolutely
Speaker:quality and you can do it on social posts as well. Love that. It was the game, I've been
Speaker:using that for, I can't remember when it came out, a mate mine in Canada, he's a lot more
Speaker:involved in the AI stuff than I am and he was like, you have to look at this. It's fucking
Speaker:awesome. was like, all right, enough, I'll look at it. was like, yeah, fuck everything else.
Speaker:Yeah. we're all in on this. And that's the one thing I would never change from, even if something
Speaker:better came out, because we've trained it to the nth of a degree to what we need from it.
Speaker:It is no prompt. It's just a case. It's almost like asking someone in the office, buddy, can
Speaker:you just do this for me a Done. It's just sorted, but it takes weeks to get to where you want
Speaker:it. no different to chat GPT. It really isn't in terms of if you don't know what you're
Speaker:putting in, you do not know what you're going to get out. Yes. So you almost, I was talking
Speaker:to my wife about this the day, you almost have to talk to it like a piece of shit to get
Speaker:the response that you want. If you go into too much detail and try and be its friend, you're
Speaker:not going to get anywhere. Which I know sounds daft, but there is almost like, can you please
Speaker:do this for me? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no. This, this, this, that order, prioritize
Speaker:it, done. The shorter the prompts, the easier they are, the more you'll get. I was, you know,
Speaker:I speaking to, I was excited. I was speaking to a guy that's on my street. I met him in
Speaker:the supermarket yesterday and I was saying that we were doing a bit of AI stuff and he was
Speaker:like, I'm really into it. I really, think that's really cool. And he was like, he's been sort
Speaker:of banned from it within his work. Like they've taken chat, chat GBT away, I think for like,
Speaker:you know, sort of information sensitive reasons and stuff like that. you know, I was explaining
Speaker:to him very similarly, like you have to kind of, there's like, easy prompts that you can
Speaker:do that you're just like, hey, can you give me a marketing strategy for blah, And it will
Speaker:spit something out that's OK. But I'm like, you have to speak to it like a child, like
Speaker:you're teaching it for the first time, and set the scene, understand lots of different parameters.
Speaker:And there was the most difficult one for me. They took me ages to figure it out, and it
Speaker:shouldn't be that difficult. I mentioned earlier, I wanted ChatGPT to help me create my marketing
Speaker:strategy for Dissident for 2025. I kind of knew roughly what I wanted to do. I certainly knew
Speaker:the goals. And we're well within reason of being able to create our own marketing strategy.
Speaker:But I wanted to go a little bit more in depth than we would typically not being a full service
Speaker:marketing agency that has 60 page marketing documents and stuff like that. So like I said,
Speaker:I wanted it to ask me the questions. The most difficult bit for me was trying to figure
Speaker:out a prompt where every time it asked me a question, it didn't just generate the marketing
Speaker:strategy. I mean, it had to go through a process of asking me enough questions for it to get
Speaker:enough information and then go onto another topic. The way that I had to try and explain
Speaker:that to chat GPT was really difficult. But I think I managed to get through it. And one
Speaker:of the worst bits for me that I've always found challenging is there's not an undo button.
Speaker:in chat GPT. You know what mean? It's like, no, you've gone too far. Forget that you ever
Speaker:did that. Yeah. Is there not? No, you can't just know. Okay. So it's weird. So perplexity
Speaker:is an example. You can basically just say, forget what we just said. Forget the bit we've just
Speaker:done. Can I have it updated from where we were before this? Yes. Basically. And it would just
Speaker:end up getting to the point it was before. And then you can start again from below it. So
Speaker:you can just keep on. The way I always tend to work with any any AI program generally is
Speaker:start with a generic prompt of the idea of what I want. get the information back. So right,
Speaker:we need to nail into that. So I find it really helpful, which isn't market related, but it's
Speaker:business related with building regs. Because it changed a lot. And I haven't got all 900
Speaker:pages in the office of fucking staircase regulations about this thing. Then I go, right, I need
Speaker:to know about part K and I need to know about handrail height for argument's sake. I know
Speaker:it all anyway, but I just need to know that bang, right, three seconds, what's on the phone
Speaker:somebody. Yeah, this is what it needs to be. Love that. Yeah. Cause I mean, regs, regs is
Speaker:a name. isn't it? any trade, you're to come across a situation where you can do a job and
Speaker:break a ton of regulations just because you don't know. And it could be really small regulations,
Speaker:be big ones, obviously. You'd like to think that most trades know that the most basic ones.
Speaker:And a lot of it's going to be common sense. But they change, don't they? And if you're
Speaker:not up to date with these kinds of things, if you're not reading these manuals, which most
Speaker:trade is aren't or certainly don't want to. But if you can get some of that perplexity,
Speaker:like you say, it's to the minute or whatever, to the hour, you can kind of get to sort of
Speaker:scour that thing and say, okay, give me an information. And even if you weren't sure you could get
Speaker:them to point you to the reference. You could say that that's the other thing with it as
Speaker:well. So say, say if you do something, copy it off, put it on there. At the bottom of it,
Speaker:got a citation list pre-built in, you have to delete that. So again, what I'll always
Speaker:do is go through it. Have you fact check this? Whatever you're using do that doesn't mean
Speaker:it doesn't mean it's going to be a hundred percent accurate But you'd be surprised what
Speaker:changes when you simply ask any I program that yes Is this all correct? Have you fact-checked?
Speaker:Let me just check dot dot dot comes up again totally different. Mm-hmm. So I love that this
Speaker:What I'm finding with AI tools, especially as it gets more and more popular more and more
Speaker:companies are creating and developing AI tools on various models is you come across these
Speaker:little hidden gems. These are like, no one knows about this and it's really cool. Are
Speaker:there any that you can recommend to our audience of marketers and small business owners in construction?
Speaker:Any that you come across that you're like, I don't think anyone really knows about this,
Speaker:but it's actually really good, even if it does one small thing. I think reflexes would be
Speaker:one of them. I think because the whole market is fixated with the whole market, I would say
Speaker:maybe what, 2 % of the population get involved there. Of that. 98 % of them when they think
Speaker:AI think chat GPT. So I think anything outside of chat GPT is a gem because nobody else
Speaker:literally sways away from it. It's like chat GPT is okay. It's a good entry level thing.
Speaker:It's probably the most confusing out of all of them. Therefore, just go through it. Yeah,
Speaker:that would be the gem. mean, there's others. There's something called Sintra, which is
Speaker:quite good. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay for specific. they sell it as almost like an army
Speaker:of bots. So you've got a content thing. You've got to essentially they've got a cool little
Speaker:character. Yeah, that's it. So we utilize basically utilize one of them, just one no
Speaker:more for email. So they're set up on all of our emails. We get an email. All of us get
Speaker:an email from our own emails about having to have a seven every morning of this is what
Speaker:happened yesterday. I prioritized it for you. This is what you didn't get back to. This is
Speaker:what you need to do today. Yes. It's like, fuck me. That is just insane. Yeah. We haven't got
Speaker:the resources or the finances available to have. Tom and I probably could have a PA realistically
Speaker:each in all fairness. But that is a massive job, but it's just quite labor intensive for
Speaker:someone to keep on going through and checking this out and the other. And she goes, that's
Speaker:what you need to do. Here's a tick list. Mark it off when you're done. If you haven't done
Speaker:it, I'll remind you when you're tomorrow. Love that. Does it do anything like file your emails
Speaker:away and stuff like that as well? Have you got to that manually? I've not faffed around with
Speaker:it that much. Honestly, I only use it for that. And I just thought I've not dug into it far
Speaker:enough to look into what it actually does. I just love that bit the minute without tinkering
Speaker:with it. I clicked onto an ad the other day for something. It must have been, it must have
Speaker:heard my inner thoughts on email management because it is the biggest part of my day because
Speaker:Not only do I get a lot of emails come through. And saying that, I mean, I know people that
Speaker:get hundreds of emails a day, and it's all rubbish. And I have this thing of, I want to get back
Speaker:to inbox zero. That's my You reach out the same as me. So I use my emails almost like a to-do
Speaker:list as well as my to-do list. And so every day, I'm trying to get back to inbox zero.
Speaker:Or at least get it down so that I don't have to scroll. I've got like five or six It's single
Speaker:digits. Yeah, yeah, get it. And then, but so a lot of my time during the day, because I'm
Speaker:obsessed with this inbox zero thing, is just dragging emails to a folder that's that specific
Speaker:client or that podcast or whatever. Because all of my team, quite rightly so, CC me into
Speaker:every single email that's relevant to me. So if there's any communication going on with
Speaker:our bigger clients, I want to make sure I'm in every single. communication, even though
Speaker:I'm not writing the email. So I just get all of the back and forth from all our clients,
Speaker:because I like to keep it in the know. And I want to make sure that I can read those emails
Speaker:before I file them away. I know you can get kind of things where if an email comes through
Speaker:from an individual, it gets automatically filed, but like marked as unread. But that's too confusing
Speaker:to me, because I just use my inbox. So I came across this app, and I've completely forgotten
Speaker:what it's called now. because they've all got funny names. But that was essentially it would
Speaker:do a very similar thing, but it would also find all those emails away. I'm like, that's genius.
Speaker:I keep getting the ads for it. And I keep thinking, I wish it'd give me another ad so I can remember
Speaker:what it's called. I'll screen grab it or something. But that's massive because one of the biggest
Speaker:faffs of my day that requires zero skill is managing my inbox. And that's an incredible
Speaker:use of AI as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I'm just incredibly skeptical about I'm a massive
Speaker:privacy guy online-wise. Again, that just dates back to the Web3 stuff. And I'm really
Speaker:skeptical of a lot of it. So I do really tread carefully what does and doesn't have any of
Speaker:my stuff, because you never know mainly who it's going to get sold to more than anything
Speaker:else. Not that the AI is ever going to creep out your computer and come and get you the
Speaker:night. Do you know what mean? Yeah, I'm big on personal information and just being yours.
Speaker:Man, how do you even manage stuff like that? You know I mean? Like, you know, especially
Speaker:for the layman who's just like, is this legit? Is this safe? You know what I mean? Like, I've,
Speaker:there must be companies out there that can kind of look into the back and go, I would steer
Speaker:clear of this one or something like that. What you can do. I mean, you can, you have an AI
Speaker:to check an AI. Yeah. So if you're looking at something and you're using chat GPT or plexi
Speaker:or whatever, so right, here's this website, read their privacy notice and tell me exactly
Speaker:what they will and won't do or sell about me. And if you don't like it, get off there. You
Speaker:know, if it's only one party and all the things you're doing that you're semi comfortable
Speaker:or maybe a uncomfortable using, stick to one. But also a lot of people on that asked about
Speaker:their personal information. I am a bit funny like it. It's, it's a big deal to me. mean,
Speaker:um, this, uh, this There's places where can, there's places where passwords and information
Speaker:are stored where if someone got a hold of that, they could ruin my life. You know what I mean?
Speaker:I'm terrified of someone finding where that stuff is and how to access it. And I hate that
Speaker:kind of thing of like passwords, email, contact details, date of birth, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:Anytime someone rings me to do like a security check, if it's like my insurance brokers or
Speaker:something, asking me for my date of birth, I'm like, who wants to know? Who are you? Are you
Speaker:legit? Same as you. It's like, do know what? I'll ring you back in your office number. Yeah.
Speaker:Were you just ringing me? like, yeah, well, you've been such a dick. Oh, sorry. I'm really,
Speaker:really skeptical. And I'm like, are we turning into old people that are just like, no, we
Speaker:don't trust you. I've seen Watchdog. Yeah, yeah, that's it. So like Sintra, I acquired the idea
Speaker:of that from that perspective. I mean, I'll go in briefly into how I utilise AI in very
Speaker:like... specific ways that have helped my business. And hopefully that can help other businesses,
Speaker:especially in the construction sector. So I talked about the way that I create case
Speaker:studies. Super, super simple. Record yourself talking about that case study very casually
Speaker:to yourself on a Zoom call or a Teams call. Have that transcription somehow recorded and
Speaker:put into something like ChatGPT or Perplexity or something like that. And have it based
Speaker:on prompting it to make sure that it's getting your tone of voice right. All of the facts
Speaker:and figures. I had mine where I like to base my case studies into almost like a format of
Speaker:who is the client, what were they asking for, what will we expect them to deliver, blah,
Speaker:blah. The results and my final thoughts on the case study. So it formats it in that particular
Speaker:way. I'll spout out a load of nonsense. I've probably got some bullet points in front of
Speaker:me, but that's about it. And then it generates a written case study. And then all we've got
Speaker:to do is give it to our web designer. and they'll put it together with all of the content. One
Speaker:of the massive ones that I don't utilize that often, but I'm so glad it's there, is a little
Speaker:bot that sits inside all the meetings that I have on teams and stuff like FireFlight. FireFlight,
Speaker:yeah, we don't do that much, but I know it's something you're on about. It's brilliant
Speaker:because we're on lot of client calls, even pitches and stuff like We don't do loads and loads
Speaker:of pitches, but definitely lots of client calls where they're essentially... good, they could
Speaker:with the construction industry is a bit of a nightmare for not giving you giving us a good
Speaker:brief. There's some great companies out there that are giving really detailed briefs. But
Speaker:because it's old school, and that's why this podcast exists to kind of bring in trying to
Speaker:bring it into the modern day marketing into the modern day is, you know, the briefs on
Speaker:the back of a fag packet. Or it's just, you know, here's what I want. And there's so there's
Speaker:a couple of a couple of problems with that. If someone says I want a video that does this,
Speaker:or I want a campaign, I want blah, blah. And it's all word of mouth from the client. We've
Speaker:got nothing in writing to be like, well, you asked for this and we delivered it, but you're
Speaker:now saying that you didn't want that or whatever. Not that this is necessary. I think it has
Speaker:happened before, but certainly not recently. There used to be that thing where send me
Speaker:an email because I want the paper trail. Now I've got the paper trail. Because any time
Speaker:we're on a phone call or a meeting, it's being transcribed. I've got that for future reference.
Speaker:So there's that kind of safety element there where if you've had a conversation with a client
Speaker:or whatever and they say, no, you didn't. You said you were going to deliver it then. I'm
Speaker:like, oh, let me just check back on. Oh, no, I definitely said this. So you're lying or
Speaker:whatever. another massive benefit to it is I'm not that great at writing notes. Compared
Speaker:to Molly, who's creative operations manager, she's incredible at writing notes. She's just
Speaker:so detailed. So if I'm not on a meeting with her, I'm trying to do my best, but also I kind
Speaker:of get distracted. And I think I'm pretty much got ADHD. so they'll mention something like,
Speaker:that's really important thing. But I don't want to say stop there. Stop there, because that
Speaker:was a really important thing that you just skipped over practically. Sometimes I'll miss
Speaker:stuff. And it came up in a thing we were doing a pitch for some work. And it was being unveiled
Speaker:at a particular exhibition or an event or something. And I couldn't remember who was
Speaker:going to be at the event, who the target audience was. I couldn't remember whether it was like
Speaker:their customers, or it was like an internal thing of the whole company was getting together.
Speaker:And it was more of an internal thing. Honestly, couldn't remember. I remember her talking about
Speaker:it. But I I looked at my notes and I hadn't finished the note. It was four and it just
Speaker:went off. So I could look back on the transcripts. I could even hear them saying, you can play
Speaker:it back. exactly who it was for and that saved my bacon because it would have been embarrassing
Speaker:for me to go, remind me who this is for again. Why am I pitching for this work? So that's
Speaker:massive. Fireflies has been huge. mean, the only thing is you do have to be careful with
Speaker:stuff like this. You have to have like a bit of etiquette. I forget sometimes I'm a nightmare
Speaker:for it for being like, do you guys mind if my AI bot sits in here and records this? I appreciate
Speaker:that we might be talking about some quite... specific sensitive stuff. But I mean, that's
Speaker:been that's been huge for us. I love Fireflies for that. We could do a back and forth. Have
Speaker:you got any others? Any others that you think, well, this is interesting? People might find
Speaker:this Not so much programs. It's more the reasons that you can use it. sort of completely glossed
Speaker:over one of the rabbit holes I went down last year. So I'm big, I'm big into the environment
Speaker:and sustainability, especially with, ironically, with timber. Um, and I was chatting to a bloke
Speaker:last summer and he goes, if you look what's going on in China, was like, what do you mean
Speaker:what's going on in China? Have you seen all this timber stuff that's going on in China?
Speaker:was like, let's just put it in there and put it in there. Came out and I was like, fuck
Speaker:me. This, this is like, this is big. This is bad. So it's like 60 % of French oak now goes
Speaker:to be processed in China. Um, it's got to a point now where it's actually in places is
Speaker:cheaper to do it in. like Vietnam. even China now outsourcing stuff in timber. And then
Speaker:it was kind of linking Russia and China. Obviously you can't buy any Russian goods since the invasion
Speaker:of Ukraine, but the export market from Russia to China and timber has gone up by 334 % since.
Speaker:So was like, Lincoln, all these things, I wouldn't have been able to get to where I got to. It
Speaker:was sort of Christmas time. I had a meeting with a supplier and we're, we're going European.
Speaker:Yes. Everything. We can't do that. I do not want anything that comes out of Asia at all.
Speaker:Nothing against the continent or the people. Regulatory wise, I think there's going to
Speaker:be a lot of people that get deep shit for what's going on at the minute when it all comes out
Speaker:in the wash. So we wouldn't have been able to make a massive drastic change to our business
Speaker:operation like that as quickly as we did. It was just like, right, this is going on. We
Speaker:need to get the fuck out of here and refocus what we're doing, where we're getting from
Speaker:or where we're going to whatever. It's funny now, of the early part of this year watching
Speaker:others fall asleep, sort of, I don't know if they're seeing the same thing or what have
Speaker:you. And it's just like, wow, without an AI program, I heard something from a guy talking
Speaker:to him casually, looked into it. I wouldn't have been able to find half the stuff I found.
Speaker:No, it's almost like going back to university days of having to like cross-reference books
Speaker:and things that are online and stuff. bibliographies and all sort of stuff. like trying to find
Speaker:that information. I found this book, you know, all this kind of stuff. You can just go, AI,
Speaker:super quick, tell me about this information. Also, cite your resources. I can actually go
Speaker:and see if that's a primary resource or whatever and get that information. That is huge. And
Speaker:I've got coach that I speak with every other week. And I'll talk about some of the problems
Speaker:that we're going through. Not problems, but. Stuff that I have to go through with the business
Speaker:and I've got this idea. I'm not quite sure how to do I'm kind of putting this off a little
Speaker:bit blah blah blah. And it would just say if you ask chat GPT if you asked him whatever
Speaker:because you know I didn't. Well why don't you ask chat GPT. I've got this idea. I don't know
Speaker:whether I'll do it or not. I've got this idea for a sock. brand for the construction industry
Speaker:because I just I want to have a little stake in the construction fashion and work. But
Speaker:I don't want to. It's already quite saturated. I don't think anyone's thinking about socks
Speaker:a great deal. I'm quite nerdy about socks. was like, that could be a little infant for us.
Speaker:And I quite like to develop a sock that's great for the construction industry. And I don't
Speaker:know where to start. And he's like, you ask Jack GBT. And oh, shit. You can literally
Speaker:just ask, OK, I'm this person. I'm looking to do this. What are the first steps that I should
Speaker:be looking at when looking into where to source socks from? What are the first steps? What
Speaker:are the things I need to consider? Is this a viable business option? Given the fact that
Speaker:I probably want to sell them for this. I've probably not got a great market. Can you tell
Speaker:me about the market? And it's going to spit out a lot of information that it may not be
Speaker:massively accurate all the time. But it's going to give you a really good sort of jumping off
Speaker:point. A lot of people kind of forget that you can just ask it questions and not just be like,
Speaker:generate me this. It can just give you information. And especially, sounds great, that perplexity,
Speaker:right? It's like a little bit more up-to-date information. Yeah, you're not working on the
Speaker:internet from two years ago, basically. No. It's the big thing. I'm going to write that
Speaker:down. But you say it's worth paying for it. It's like $14.95 or something a month. Yeah.
Speaker:that the free version is fine. It's good to play about with to begin with, but pay for
Speaker:the extras because what you end up with, they have their own built engine, but you can use
Speaker:Claude, you can use ChatGPT. It's almost like a Google of AI. So you can use different models
Speaker:within it. it's really handy. But yeah, I think with it as well, you said about that market
Speaker:being saturated. I don't think any market's truly saturated if you do something differently
Speaker:anyway at the end of the day. It's not. I don't know. think a lot of construction. in general
Speaker:is it's either it tends to be price driven as opposed to value driven or whatever else driven.
Speaker:So that would be your sock idea that if you've got a quirky pair of socks and you know you
Speaker:can get a pair of socks for a fiver but they're seven pound fifty but they're different for
Speaker:argument's sake. Chances are people are going to seven pound fifty for Yeah. Yeah. That's
Speaker:it. I think that the socks thing I sort of thought well do you research into socks for the construction
Speaker:industry? There'll be brands that make clothes that also do socks, you know what mean? But
Speaker:they're not necessarily, they're almost like a rebrand of another sock, which is something
Speaker:I didn't want to do. I wanted to physically create a sock almost from scratch. Single one
Speaker:or pairs? Well, it depends on the market. We'll see. I don't know how many one-legged trades
Speaker:people are in, but I want to cater to those guys, obviously. Yeah, 100%. But yeah, it's
Speaker:an interesting thing. I wouldn't have, I've not got very far with it, but I wouldn't have
Speaker:got anywhere with it unless it had been like, right, what are the steps I need to look into?
Speaker:Where can I source this stuff from? Is it viable to source this from the UK or do need to go
Speaker:abroad? Stuff like that, you know? I'm a, do you know what? I'm a big believer in not asking
Speaker:AI that sort of thing. Oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you just got go with your gut
Speaker:sometimes. Yes. mean, especially with things like that, I mean, you're probably going to
Speaker:be outsourcing production anyway, so the cost to entry is going to be absolutely, like, negatively
Speaker:nothing. So you want to roll the dice and have a go. It costs you 500 quid. costs you 500
Speaker:quid. Well, the interesting thing was I was asking, like, chat GPT, what are the things
Speaker:that typically I should be asking myself in these scenarios? And also, I've never sourced
Speaker:anything from abroad like this on scale. I've never worked in the clothing industry and stuff
Speaker:like that. Where do I even begin? And they're like, well, OK, you can do a Google search,
Speaker:first of all. but there are brokers that you can go to for these kinds of things. I didn't
Speaker:even know that kind of stuff existed unless I'd sort of spoken to Jack DBT and it gave
Speaker:me bit of an insight and then it gave me like an inroad to actually starting to do my own
Speaker:research into that kind of stuff. And I think I'll make it happen at some stage. Why not?
Speaker:I'm looking at Ukraine weirdly. a manufacturer, I that'd be quite cool because they're going
Speaker:through a tough time. Yeah, lot of the clothing stuff from Memory Sensitive and from Portugal
Speaker:as well. Turkey, Portugal, China, And Bangladesh, maybe? Bangladesh, probably. yeah. You want
Speaker:to go to the place where your shipping is going be the least. And I guess the quality is going
Speaker:be OK. And you've got a lower minimum order value. Yeah, I mean, my first port of call,
Speaker:we've gone off topic massively. My first port of call was actually the UK. I wanted to first
Speaker:of see if it was the UK. I get that. No chance. We went through that last year. when we were
Speaker:going through this whole thing of sort of moving away from Asia. And it was the only thing we
Speaker:couldn't do from Europe is metal spindles. even if you get the made over here, the raw material
Speaker:is Chinese. you're spending, I think it was about 500 % more on the finished good to have
Speaker:them made over here as well. If the raw material is coming from there anyway, I'm going to have
Speaker:to get off my high horse here for the sake of the business. So yeah, it's difficult at times.
Speaker:It really is. It'd be in an ideal world. You'd have everything manufactured in the UK, and
Speaker:everything would be great. You'd be looking after the economy and blah, blah. But for a
Speaker:lot of businesses, it's just not viable. And that's just the world we live in. We're all
Speaker:in the same world. So you've got that, I guess. know what mean? Yeah. There's loads and loads
Speaker:of AI stuff that we could talk about. I think we've gone through quite a few different tools
Speaker:that I think would benefit the audience specifically. You think of any key. I know you're off camera
Speaker:and off mic today. think I'm trying to think of other ones that we use. mean, obviously
Speaker:we do the podcast stuff, but that's kind of more specific, isn't it?
Speaker:yeah yeah yeah it's the generation stuff about I don't really I don't really play too much
Speaker:with the image generation it's just fun yeah I mean cameras cameras even gonna you look
Speaker:fucking you love camera Keelan loves camera on record Keelan loves camera they've got their
Speaker:own sort of like image generation stuff what I'm looking for because you know we don't really
Speaker:need image generation in like the content that we make because it just doesn't really fit.
Speaker:It may do at some stage. And there's definitely elements of like the 3D animation stuff that
Speaker:we could definitely use AI for. But for our live action stuff, doesn't really, we've not
Speaker:found a way that it can fit into our sort of workflow. It's very bitty. It's what I found,
Speaker:especially from, you know, sort of photo to video or whatever. There's some really great
Speaker:ideas out there. They're not there yet. it's like then. They're not going to be ready next
Speaker:week either. It's almost like the next step beyond, think, that sort of things. We even
Speaker:played around the other day, we, with we had our good friend Liam the plumber doing a production
Speaker:with us. And he was doing a promo for a product that's only just launched. And he was kind
Speaker:of explaining it in a more sort of, a corporate way, but he was like going through all the
Speaker:details of the products and stuff like, this is the kind of stuff it can do. You can use
Speaker:it here. These are the loads. And basically, he'd got the load wrong. It wasn't his fault.
Speaker:was wrong on the script. But even at that point, it was because that was the information we
Speaker:had. And then a couple of weeks later, we got new information that actually it can hold a
Speaker:lot more. Great. And so we were like, can we change it? And I'm like, well, no. We filmed
Speaker:it like a week ago or something like that. And usually what we do is we just go, let's just
Speaker:cut it. Let's just cut that from the film, and we can put in a graphic or something. But it
Speaker:just didn't work. We couldn't make it work because he'd cut this information in such a way that
Speaker:if we tried to cut it out, the image wouldn't flow, it wouldn't work. So we started to
Speaker:do our research into voiceover for these kind of things where you can actually train, you
Speaker:can kind of ingest a load of his dialogue into an AI tool and it can generate his voice and
Speaker:you get to say whatever you want. And it was really, really close, like so close. The only
Speaker:problem is we couldn't get it to match his actual. If you played that, would go, that's Liam
Speaker:the plumber. I can't believe it. That's his voice. But then when you actually put that
Speaker:clip, the bit where we've changed what he said and put it into the film, it was just different
Speaker:enough that you would notice. that was a bit of a learning point for us. But what I would
Speaker:like to do from a creative agency's point of view, and this is more specific to us really,
Speaker:is we've never been really ever storyboarded anything. So we do work on these big projects,
Speaker:which are, you know, like tens of thousands of pounds of production. And there's a lot
Speaker:riding on it. What we want to do is be able to storyboard all of these different scenes
Speaker:and what we want to achieve and things like that. And typically what you do with storyboarding
Speaker:is you just draw it, you know. Doodle AI. Oh, is that right? Doodle AI. Something like
Speaker:that. I'll check on my phone when finished, but I'm sure it's something like that. It's
Speaker:purple and white. It costs like $40,000 for a lifetime subscription. So this was the thing.
Speaker:I've not found one yet, but it's something where we can go, OK, here's the scene. This is what's
Speaker:going on. Maybe give it some reference material. We're going to go to a close-up of this person,
Speaker:then we're going to go to a wide, then we're going to follow them in a car or something
Speaker:like that. It's going to generate all of these images that are kind of on brand for this particular
Speaker:production or something like that. So we can actually storyboard that out. That would be
Speaker:amazing because it's like, know, storyboarding is so expensive if you try and actually get
Speaker:a physical, you know, you know, that thing, like I is so cool because we don't use it for
Speaker:work. Again, this is just me being a little nerd in our big time. Found it. I was like
Speaker:$49 and I was like, fuck it. This looks like something I've never seen before. Let's just
Speaker:have a play. And I think it'd be really, good for educational purposes, to be honest. So
Speaker:it sets up. on exactly for storyboarding. it's whatever it is, nine by 16 widescreen in essence,
Speaker:and not the other way around, 16 by nine rather. Whichever way around it is. yeah, so it sets
Speaker:it up for storyboarding and you get X number of credits, whatever they are. So you've got
Speaker:stock images you can put in there, but then also, right, I want, I don't know, a giraffe
Speaker:riding a horse or whatever. And it'll come up with that, go on there and it will, as it's
Speaker:going, will draw it. But you don't have to have it drawn it but you literally got a person's
Speaker:hand just there going. yeah. It's, me and my kids had so much fun playing around with think
Speaker:I saw that. I've seen like people use that kind of thing. But yeah, essentially like just essentially
Speaker:getting all these different and ideally what I would have it do is actually generate like
Speaker:life like imagery. Even though it can be like a bit more artistic but it's got the lighting,
Speaker:it's got the color, it's got all that kind of stuff in there and then just kind of be like
Speaker:right kid this is the first thing it's a wide shot of a cafe someone's walking to the. to
Speaker:the door and then goes to a close up of them opening the door, that kind of thing. So within
Speaker:it, I'm pretty sure it depends on how deep the layers go on it. You can input a JPEG or a
Speaker:PNG and it creates a vector file from it basically. it can go, but I think it only goes 100 deep.
Speaker:So you might not get all the lighting looks that you want from it because it's limited
Speaker:that end. Better than, because at the moment what we do is just do a shot list. So we just
Speaker:go, we explain it. know, explain what we're going to do, but you got to use your imagination.
Speaker:I've got an idea in my head of what that looks like, but they're like a non creative or just
Speaker:even someone else on my team goes, what the fuck? Yeah, you get that. Yeah. So that'd be
Speaker:that. But on that note, what are the limitations you're finding in AI? they can, we're finding
Speaker:they can take you up to a certain point and then to cross over that sort of threshold is
Speaker:kind of like, the imagery is a bit weird or blah, blah, blah. What are the annoying little
Speaker:limitations that you're finding while using AI? I don't think there really are any. Image
Speaker:generation, probably yes. But if you know what you're after, but you're going there for a
Speaker:specific thing, you tend to get what you want, generally. So again, it's all just a case
Speaker:of start from something generic with a background idea, then prompt it down the roots of...
Speaker:There's one image created thing, which I'm never going to tell anybody about ever. It's
Speaker:fucking awesome. It's my, it's mine. We don't use it for work. No. So it's, but I've told
Speaker:a couple of people about it again, but in mind in Canada said it's not, it's not really launched
Speaker:yet officially. So it's, you can input a thing like logo people who do logos. They're fucked.
Speaker:Yeah. There's no two ways about it. It's yeah. You can just say you put destination and you
Speaker:kind of got an idea of what you want there. I'll show you after they're on it. So put it
Speaker:in there, put your thing in there. It'll come up four options. And from there, you can click
Speaker:on one of them and it will create another four options. Or you can click on a particular
Speaker:image and go, I want to change something in that. Change it. Oh, it comes to the other
Speaker:end. So you can have a logo done that looks incredibly professional in three or four minutes.
Speaker:You can imagine all the people, Kieran, are sorry, man. I keep referencing you. You're
Speaker:not even on the camera. The prompt's just like, make it pop. Make the logo bigger. like that.
Speaker:All the classic kind of graphic design phrases. That's cool. At what point, let's say in the
Speaker:AI programs and stuff that you're using, we don't have to go into too many specifics. At
Speaker:what point do you have to step in and put a human element into that, you think? Can you
Speaker:give us an example of just, OK, there's certain elements. For instance, blog posts, writing,
Speaker:are there points where have to just sort of, at what point do you go, now I need to take
Speaker:control? No, the only input I is at the beginning. So like I say, there's heavy reliance on it.
Speaker:blog post a good example of it. will be right. I want this based off this. Come up with it.
Speaker:Give me a quick, don't read it properly. I mean, you can get skim reading eyes as well. So you
Speaker:can, again, you can just AI to AI to AI and it's fine. So get that right. Set this out
Speaker:in a format that I want it in. I want H1, H2, H3 headers. have you. Make sure you've done
Speaker:keyword research on this particular part of the staircase market. Rank it for keywords
Speaker:and everything else. And then chuck it through. plagiarism one, chuck it through the copyright
Speaker:one, send it to the web guy and if you're gonna sit up and it's done. I'm gonna get Scott on
Speaker:my like WhatsApp like just like AI like we had something in the day and I was just like you
Speaker:know what I could really do with like another AI like nerd in my contacts just to be like
Speaker:Scott I'm trying to do this what do you recommend you know that that'd be amazing. To answer
Speaker:your question I probably If I allowed myself the time, I'd probably pay a lot more attention
Speaker:to it. But with what we're doing, it's for us. I think if we were doing it for other people,
Speaker:that's similar to you guys, there would have to be a human element involved because you
Speaker:are culpable and responsible for somebody else's work in essence. Whereas ours are blog posts
Speaker:generally that nobody's ever going to read. The only people that are going to read them
Speaker:are the bots from Google and Bing and wherever else. it almost doesn't need to make sense.
Speaker:generally, as long as the words are the right way and it gets picked up in the correct way
Speaker:for it to rank, that's kind of all that matters. I can appreciate that. It's essentially it's
Speaker:serving a purpose of boosting your rankings. It could be, ideally, it wouldn't be it could
Speaker:be complete nonsense. Yes, it never is complete nonsense. that when you when I've kind of skimmed
Speaker:over in the past, I mean, wording wise, that's a bit shaky. But equally, I'm really dyslexic.
Speaker:So even if I wanted to check my own work, and none of it makes fucking sense to me anyway.
Speaker:So it's kind of, it's almost been a godsend, all of that. I'm really glad all of it wasn't
Speaker:about when I did my studying, because I wouldn't have got half of what I got at university without,
Speaker:well, if I had AI, I wouldn't have learned anything. All I'd have done is just taken all the shortcuts
Speaker:I do now, basically. Do you know what I always find interesting when I speak to people like
Speaker:Scott is, But we're having this conversation now and you could totally be from another agency.
Speaker:The way that you communicate and the way that present yourself and stuff. And I've always
Speaker:said this about trades and the construction industry in general is that the two are so
Speaker:akin to each other, and creative agency, creative industry, sorry, and construction. I feel like
Speaker:it's the same use of the brain. It's all the same. sides and areas and stuff like you could
Speaker:totally be from another creative agency talking geeking out to me about AI from a creative
Speaker:and marketing perspective. I suspect because you've got a marketing background to some extent.
Speaker:Exactly. Yeah. And I don't proclaim to be a trades person either. No. Okay fair enough.
Speaker:work in construction though. Yeah I supply to trades people. Okay. But as well we've got
Speaker:trades people who work with us or for us. Yes. too whatever. But yeah I never I am not skilled
Speaker:enough. to call myself a trained person. And I am acutely aware of that as well. Anytime
Speaker:we pick up a drill, look, you can just tell. You can just tell we're creators. It's turned
Speaker:on the wrong way. Yeah, obviously. It's a nightmare.
Speaker:If you could invent an AI tool, let's say that there's an area of your business, especially
Speaker:an area of marketing, if you could fantasize, like, I'd like an AI tool that does this, and
Speaker:I can't quite find one that exists that does this perfectly yet. What would it be, do think?
Speaker:For me, it'd be a design tool. wouldn't be a market. Well, it kind of would be a marketing
Speaker:thing in the back end. It wouldn't be at the front end. it would be, right, I can go to
Speaker:site. I can take an iPad or whatever. device thing you want to use. can measure what I need
Speaker:to measure. I can type it all in and from that I have a technical drawing straight away and
Speaker:I have a 3D render straight away, which I can send straight. We've looked at it. We started
Speaker:faffing around with it, but I mean, I am not experienced enough to do the coding for it.
Speaker:the worst thing is if I, I can code to a basic level, incredibly basic. If I balled up any
Speaker:of the coding, would take someone longer to find the bug that I've made. than if they just
Speaker:did it from the get go. And we think it's probably going to cost somewhere between 50 and 75 grand.
Speaker:And we don't need it. That is just me being pure nerd on. That will save us so much more
Speaker:time. Imagine what we can do with that. But it's a big thing. We'd have to then get patents
Speaker:on it. And it just costs, like the copyright and so on and things. We've got a lot of things
Speaker:under copyright, under trademark as a business. And it's a ball ache. And it costs so much
Speaker:money. again, I take IP really seriously. Believe on oxygen how much I use AI. IP matters. If
Speaker:you come up with an idea, you fucking own that shit because someone will nick it off you.
Speaker:Yes, absolutely. And I think that's another thing that's lacking to go completely off topic.
Speaker:That's one thing that does massively lack in construction. Oh, really? I think so. IP does,
Speaker:yeah. From a building side, for sure. Yeah. I mean, all you have to do is look at relevant.
Speaker:battles between certain brands and stuff and just go, how has it got this far? Surely at
Speaker:some point, of one of whoever the parties are would have gone, what the are you doing? That's
Speaker:We were, we were at Big Wipes the other day. don't know. I'm sure I'm allowed to say this.
Speaker:We were doing some filming for those guys. We've been working with those guys for about
Speaker:six months now or longer. And they were showing me all of the copycats. of big wipes. I was
Speaker:I was astounded these companies are getting away with it. Because it's like, not just the
Speaker:fact that it's, you know, cleaning wipes is a cleaning wipe. know, big wipes didn't invent
Speaker:the cleaning wipe. They invented a good solution and a good product and great marketing. But
Speaker:there was like these like yellow tubs with a red lid and the branding was kind of the same.
Speaker:And it said like large wipes or something. And it was like, so on the nose. Yeah. I'm like,
Speaker:how are you, how are you expecting to get away with this? But apparently they do. That's mad.
Speaker:It's all you got to do is like look at the Aldi sort of thing. And you just think that, I mean,
Speaker:that is whatever it is. It's not getting away from it. And they get away with it. Sometimes
Speaker:they don't know the times. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's, but again, I just don't think that even
Speaker:big businesses don't take their IP seriously enough because people shouldn't be able to
Speaker:do it. But if they can, they haven't, it's not sealed up enough. So when's this due to go
Speaker:out? just out of interest. probably two months. Two months time from now. Oh, perfect. Right.
Speaker:So by that time, this will be finished. So at the moment, we're talking to the Institutional
Speaker:Property Office about, well, we've done it. It's all registered. in the journal about a
Speaker:thing called up and over handrail, which is a really specific type of handrail. Cool. Bear
Speaker:in mind, we don't make anything again. We've come up with this concept with one of our suppliers.
Speaker:And I've said, look, I'm going to trademark that. People have started to copycat it, which
Speaker:is fine. I don't mind people doing the design. Fucking get your own name. Yes. That drives
Speaker:me tits. It's like if you haven't got the imagination to call it something yourself, just don't do
Speaker:it. And these are the sort of companies who pay people like you in the nicest way that
Speaker:can be said. They're big, big companies. It's like, obviously the name means something to
Speaker:somebody. We started ranking for it as well because I'm really, sensitive over the rankings.
Speaker:It's like, so that is our thing. Do not nick our thing. Yes. Just don't. And you can have
Speaker:like a sort of, know, bomb proof kind of like this is ours. You can't touch it. You know,
Speaker:that's... So I've already got, I sort of said to my business partner, Tom, what we need to
Speaker:hope for is it's a two to three month process to go through with the IPO. And that's fine.
Speaker:Done it before, done it with a things. It's just, it's long and strenuous, but we've got
Speaker:cease and desist letters ready, spoken to lawyers and been like, look, where do we stand on this?
Speaker:Like, well, you've gone by the bollocks. But I don't want to sue anybody. It's just a case
Speaker:of come up with your own ideas. Yeah. Leave it alone. Copy the thing. Not an issue. It's
Speaker:a bit of wood cut a specific way, fixed a specific way. We cannot put a pattern on that. No. Not
Speaker:trying to. But call it something else. Yeah. So important. That's what saying with big whites
Speaker:as the example and whoever else, whatever else may be going on at the minute, you shouldn't,
Speaker:you're big enough to know that you shouldn't need to get it that far. mean, this is just
Speaker:me and it's just me and Tom basically going, that's ours. Back the fuck off. And this
Speaker:is how we're to do it. We're to do it under this category, this category, this category,
Speaker:this category. It's going to cost 500 quid, whatever it is. But if anyone ever goes after
Speaker:it then it's legal and that's it. Absolutely. That's another area that chat GPT on a slight
Speaker:tangent. And AI in general, I imagine a lot of people a lot of like, law firms, law firms
Speaker:isn't probably the right term, but you know, people who kind of draw out contracts and stuff
Speaker:like, I'm not sure how bombproof these things are. But, you know, we used to have a thing
Speaker:where, know, when we wanted to create a contract, we would have to pay someone Couple of grand.
Speaker:And every time I needed changing, we'd have to pay him a bit more. Here's a video. We're
Speaker:going to do the video production. You're going to give us X amount of money at this point.
Speaker:If you don't give us that, we're going to charge interest on this, blah, blah. All these different
Speaker:terms and all the things that we want to do to make sure that we can work with a company
Speaker:for 12 months for a lot of money. And so, so expensive. But now I can just like verbal diarrhea.
Speaker:at chat GPT and just go, these are all the things that we intend to do. These are the things
Speaker:that we expect back right as a contract on that and, you know, away you go. And it probably
Speaker:isn't going to be like super, super tight legally. But then I don't know any contracts that are
Speaker:really. You'd surprised. mean, again, perplexity is a brilliant thing. I've written and signed
Speaker:two contracts last month. Written off that. And I don't know if you use DocuSign. That's
Speaker:just not an AI thing. that is awesome as well. Just as a piece of tech. So wow. That saves
Speaker:sending so much shit out at the post office, actually going to see people. it's like, done,
Speaker:done, done. Because the thing we took to parliament on Wednesday last week, had seven, 16, 17 of
Speaker:the, I don't know, 16, just sort of lowball it, 16 of the biggest staircase manufacturers
Speaker:in the country supporting Amanda Martin's tool theft bill. And approached all of them. was
Speaker:like, look, this is what we're doing. Could really do your signature as a company rather
Speaker:than you as an individual. Is that okay? They're like, yeah, yeah, right. Send it all over.
Speaker:I'm like, what the fuck's this? It's like, well, this is the thing now that it's not a contract,
Speaker:but you can just put your name there. It will do your little squiggle. You can date it and
Speaker:it's done. And that just means you're part of it. like, how do you know about this shit?
Speaker:This isn't new tech. This is by no means is new. Yeah, we've been doing doctor's time for
Speaker:years now, but yeah, it's It's clever It's amazing. Yeah, yeah. But you sort of think like construction
Speaker:generally is miles behind. Joinery within construction is 10 years behind that again. Wow. We are
Speaker:by far and away the part of the industry that is so far behind anything else. It's a joke.
Speaker:Mad. Yeah. I feel like I'm AI'd out. It's exhausting. Is there any questions that I should have
Speaker:asked you? Is there any like, words of wisdom or anything that you think, oh, I wish I talked
Speaker:about this that I haven't asked you about? No, I don't think so. It was never really about
Speaker:work to me. It was about the tech, which is kind what we said in the first place. It was
Speaker:never about going, hi, we're the Stair guys, this, that, and the other. No, not really.
Speaker:It's just a nerdy out. Yeah, 100%. It's about, I think it's about kind of like empowering
Speaker:our audience. Construction. marketers, small business owners, founders, whatever, other
Speaker:agencies on like kind of what's available. re kind of help them reimagine what AI is and
Speaker:how it can be used to optimize the business. think the people who are going to benefit from
Speaker:this the most are the small business owners for sure. That's it. think the only piece of
Speaker:it wouldn't even be advice. would be the thing I'd say is, I think I've said it three or four
Speaker:times already, is play with it. Play with it, get used to it, have fun with it. Yeah. Don't
Speaker:implement it in your business straight away because it's a recipe for disaster if you
Speaker:do it in the wrong way. Get used to what you're doing. And the more you use it, the less it
Speaker:sounds like AI. you just copy something into whichever program you're using, it's going
Speaker:to come out and sound nothing like you. It's going to look disingenuous and you'll kind
Speaker:of fuck before you start it. just... Go on the basis of training something, whatever you
Speaker:choose. There's so many good things out there. It hasn't got to be Chad GBT. It hasn't got
Speaker:to be Plexig, it be whatever. Train something up, get it in a brand voice and go from there.
Speaker:Use Blaze. Genuinely, if you've got no experience, use Blaze. It's 25, 26 quid a month, whatever
Speaker:it is, use it for a month. If you don't enjoy it, cancel it, but just see what you can get
Speaker:out of it for 25 quid. It's not going to get any cheaper. Yeah, that's a hot take. Go check
Speaker:out Blaze. If you're unsure, check out Blaze first. Are you happy for it to be like a contact
Speaker:if anyone's got any questions about AI? We're both saying we're not necessarily experts.
Speaker:We're just nerds. But are you happy for people to be like, hey, what do you think about this
Speaker:and stuff like that? I mean, you can get me on LinkedIn. It's just Daniel Moore. can speak
Speaker:to us on Instagram, is what's the distant handle? Distant agency, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, just
Speaker:at distant agency. You'd think I'd know that. Where's the best place to contact? I'd go
Speaker:LinkedIn. Yeah, Instagram, you could get any one of three of us and we don't always pay
Speaker:that much attention to it. So yeah, it's just Scott Jones on, there's about 15,000 of us
Speaker:on there, it's the bold one. It's Scott, if you're down on LinkedIn, Scott Jones, this,
Speaker:this, guy, yeah, this guy, I think that's the biggest one. Scott, thank you so much. It's
Speaker:been an absolute pleasure. I'm honestly properly nerding out. And I think what we could probably
Speaker:do is do this again in the 12 months and see how it's progressed. Thanks for that. It's
Speaker:been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.
