553 Building AI Automations to Streamline Your Agency Operations with Kaitlyn Study

Hey there, before we start today's episode, I want to remind you that most agency owners have no idea that their state will literally help pay for professional development yours and your teams. On the AMI website, we have built a free state-by-state guide that shows you exactly how to tap into Workforce Development Grants so that your state dollars can fund training for you and your team. They will cover all kinds of programs, skill courses, workshops, tuition, instructor fees, and more when you're in good standing and apply before the training begins. So if you want your state to help underwrite your next professional development for you or your team, head over to the AMI website and under the Resources tab. You can find your state's options in under five minutes. It's absolutely worse the time and effort. It doesn't matter what kind of agency you run, traditional, digital, media-bine, web-dev-pr brand, whatever you're focused, you still need to run a profitable business. The build a better agency podcast presented by a white label IQ will expose you to the best practices that drive growth, client and employee retention, and profitability, bringing his 25 plus years of experience to both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan. Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super excited about this episode. One of the things I love about agency management institute and the people that we gather, the people, the agency owners and leaders that come into our community is how generous they are. One of the things we hear over and over at the summit and workshops and other places is that agency owners are surprised when they meet agency owners who are so willing to be gracious and share what they know and kind of are not the kind of people who kind of hide their answers when they're taking a test. They are super generous with being able to understand that there's plenty of blue sky for everybody. There's plenty of opportunity for everybody and they really embrace the AMI value that we all learn faster and better when we learn together. And today's guest is a great example of that. So I'll tell you a little bit more about her in a minute. It's also that sort of that same spirit of coming into the community and investing in and helping your agency brother in is one of the things that I love about our presenting sponsor white label IQ as well. So one of the things that they've done is they don't say they just believe in agencies. They actually put their money and their time where their mouth is. They've helped found a nonprofit organization called agency core, which is basically a research arm built to better understand agencies and share back what's really going on in our world. And because their whole business is supporting agencies with design, dev, and paid media, the insights that they're chasing and that they're learning about and that they're sharing with all of us are important to our business and theirs. So you know, in today's world things are moving so fast that white label recognizes that good information and good insight about what's happening in the industry is part of being a great partner. They want to know agencies better so they can serve them better and they share that knowledge through agency core. So if you haven't checked out agency core and the research, you absolutely should go do that. And you should also check out white label IQ at white label IQ dot com slash AMI to take advantage of a special offer they have for you. So in that same generous spirit is our guest for today. So Caitlin study owns an agency who has been part of the AMI network for quite a while. She's in one of our peer groups and in our peer groups, we share some of the innovative things that we're doing. And one of the things that Caitlin's been sharing for the last probably year and a half or two are all the automations she's built to make the operations of her agency better. And as I sort of delved into this, I realized that she's actually been doing this long before AI was a thing when it when you were just building sort of simple automations and now she of course is adding AI into the mix. So many of you enjoyed a webinar that Caitlin did back at the tail end of 2025 on automations and it was so popular that I knew I wanted to get her on the show and have the entire podcast audience meet her and learn from her. So I think you're going to find that this episode is inspiring. It's going to give you some great ideas, some ways to make your business more effective and more efficient. And I'm going to find out from Caitlin just how easy it is. So without further ado, please welcome her to the show. Caitlin, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Drew. You bet. So as our listeners may or may not know, you did a webinar for us late in 2025 that got rave reviews and I knew that I need you to get you on the show and get you in front of our bigger audience. So give everybody a little bit of background of who you are, the work you do, your agency. And really our conversation is going to be all around building AI automations for your agency. So maybe include in your introduction, sort of how that all started for you. Yeah. So I started my agency, South Street and Company in 2015. I worked for a local dermatology group right out of college and helped them double in size in the two and a half years that I was there. And then after he told me that I couldn't get a raise and I wasn't going to be able to move forward. I was like, all right, well, I think I need to look at some other options. I will find a different way to move forward. Yes, exactly. So my parents had always been advocates of being an entrepreneur. I applied to some jobs and they were like, won't you start your own thing? And I was like, I don't know if I want to do that. So I was introduced to somebody. They were my first client and started working mornings, nights and weekends and hit the ground running a little over. It took me a little over a year and then hit the ground running. So now it's been in March. It'll be, yeah, it'll be 11 years. So yeah, kind of crazy how time flies, right? So we focus on service based companies and more specifically attorneys and we do all digital marketing. So SEO, social media. And then the webinar that I did was kind of a, I guess like a side interest of mine. It's kind of something that I could get like do just like dive in deep in the time just passes by. And it's about AI and automations. So I started doing automations probably like maybe like around 2017, 2018 or so. And it what it came out of necessity because I hired someone and they were amazing. They're going to be my right hand lady. And then six weeks in she got a dream job offer at Universal Studios because we're headquartered in Orlando. And she's like, Hey, so I got this offer. It's my dream job. And I was like great for you, but I was like dang, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I was never a math or science person, which is why I'm in marketing. And I was like, I can't clone myself and a friend even though I wish I could. But a friend was like, well, why don't you look into this program? And so it was that year. And she was like, you can automate things. And I think I automated like the first thing was super simple. I just started with their free plan and automated like, Oh, if a blog post goes live, it goes to your social media queue. And then I started expanding into that more and more. And now I last year, one of my huge initiatives was we had a VA who was amazing, but then it just didn't work out because she had some things at home happen. And I was like, you know what? These are repetitive tasks. And I bet you I could look into automating them. And so that was my huge initiative last year. And so it kind of it had always been, I'd always been doing it, but it really took off last year. And then with the integration of AI, it's been just like skyrocketing. So at the end of the day, it sounds like it sort of was a hobby that turned into a pretty good business strategy. Yeah. Yeah, it was. It was something that I just kind of did. I mean, you know, as an agency owner in the very beginning, you're just like, you're wearing all the hats, you're going to the networking things, you're meeting all the people, you're, you know, driving 30 minutes for a prospect. And so this was what I would do at night to try to streamline everything and make everything more organized. And I think if I could get like a tick from anything, it would be disorganization or waste of time. So this helps with that a lot. Yeah. So we were, cash I guess together in our peer group in November. You were showing us some of the automations you did, which then triggered the webinar, which is sort of how we got here. But how many automations do you think you've built? And again, just for clarity, this is operational stuff inside the agency. I know you've done some stuff for clients too. But what we're talking about is really how to just run your agency more effectively and efficiently. How many do you think you've built? Well, I can tell you just this year, we've felt over 160 because I have an Asana board that keeps track of all of it. But before that, Right. Yes, of course, talking about efficiencies. Yeah, but before that, it was little things like, you know, if we hit time on a client through our software, it would send us slack notification. And in the beginning, it was just like little things too, but I also had another company that I sold that I built up some Instagram accounts. And it was really cool because it was all user generated content. And whenever somebody tagged us, I found a way to repurpose their content, have the caption, we had AI wasn't available. This was like a few years ago, but now what I would do is AI would create the caption. And then it would automatically add hashtags and tag the person. And that was completely automated. Like we wouldn't have had to do any human input. So it was like little things like that. Like, okay, I don't have time to do this. And we were posting like three times a day over the course of five accounts, but it's little things like that. How can I automate this? So I don't need probably like over 500. - That's crazy. So one of the things I think is interesting is as I have watched you over time, talk about this because we've been talking about this for a couple of years now. And you just keep getting, building the library and getting more sophisticated, but your brain sort of sees the opportunity to automate where I think a lot of people don't just naturally go there. So I'm curious for the listeners, if they are listening to you going, well, I would want an Instagram to do that thing or I would want if somebody tags me and LinkedIn for me to automatically have a comment or a whatever, but they don't even think about it. How would someone begin to kind of train their brain to start thinking about what they could automate? - Any repetitive task that you do daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly, that's something that you can automate. So another thing that we automated was when a lead comes in, it goes to a spreadsheet automatically and we track the lead source. So that happens that we did all that manually. I mean, all of these things that you could have like an executive assistant or a virtual assistant. And the other thing too is if you get into this, you need to explain to the team that this is not to replace them 'cause a lot of people are like, oh, I love my team. And I love my team too. And this is to enhance what they're doing so that they can focus on top level things. But anything that any little report, even I'll give you an example. So we have a virtual office in the mail forwards to us. Well, I set up an automation to where if they don't send me an email that they sent the mail 'cause sometimes they forget and we get checked so it's pretty essential that they're on time. If I don't get an email from them Friday by three, an automatic email is sent to them and it looks like I sent it. And so they're always on top of it or they reply to that. And I was like, holy cow, that saves, you know, it might not save like eons of time but I still have to like have a task on my list. Go to my email, write that email, check it off, send it to them. And then, but I don't have to do that anymore. It just happens for me. - Well, in some ways it's not only about the time but I think about the brain space of all these piddly little things that we have to remember every day to do or the things that we think about like, oh, I would let like the, you know, Instagram tagging. Like there are a lot of things that we wish, like we think, oh, that'd be great, but I don't have time. Like I can't imagine how many times the listeners on this podcast have either comes out of their mouth or in their brain. That would be awesome, but I don't have time. And if you could automate all the things you don't have time to do and they got done, that'd be pretty cool. - That would be, I mean, that's, I just got goosebumps when you said that 'cause that's literally what drives me. Like we don't have a big team. We have, right now we have four W2s and then we have probably five to six contractors. And, you know, we're not funded or anything. You know, we can't just add anyone to the payroll because we have to abide by Drew's numbers. - That's right, you do. - So, yeah. So if I can automate these little tasks to help my team work on top level items and more efficiently, then I'm gonna do it. - So people listening are going, this all sounds great, but I have no idea how to automate anything. How hard is it? - I don't have any development background. I'm not a coder. When I first started out, I built Wix websites 'cause it was drag and drop. So, and this was back, you know, if you, probably like 2017 when I started. So, if I can do it, you can do it. Anyone can do it. I would say the program to start with is Zapier. I believe they have a free plan, but I think where people kind of get into the weeds is they try to do complicated things. Just do a two step. Like, if my blog post on WordPress goes live, then it goes to my social scheduler. And all you need to do to set up these apps, and I'll describe Zapier real quick. I describe it as a grilled cheese. So, you have, let's just say WordPress and Buffer, which is a social scheduling tool. You have two platforms that don't normally talk to one another. Zapier is the cheese that connects them to make this amazing grilled cheese of connectivity and organization. So, just do something simple like that. The other thing that you can do is I take a deep dive down, TikTok or YouTube to see what other people are doing. And it's really intimidating at first to see, to like, I mean, you're basically teaching yourself a new language, almost like a new computer language. So, look and see what other people are doing and how they're doing it. And it's really Zapier makes it super, super easy. You just connect to the programs, and then they can tell you what you can and can't do. It just takes a little bit of adjustment, but it's not like coding. - So, is it kind of drag and drop or click and connect? I mean, is it that simple? - Yeah, so you have a trigger, which is the initial item. It's kind of like, if this happens, then this happens. So, in Zapier, it's called a trigger, and then you have actions. So, the trigger could be like going along with the WordPress example, new blog post goes live. Then it takes that and it puts it into your social scheduling platform as a draft. It could be as simple as that. - It's crazy, crazy. So, when you think about some of the, so you've the 500 plus automations that you've built, what do you think it's, how do you think it's changed your business and how do you think it's changed your team in terms of the way they think? - I think it's changed my business immensely because we don't have to focus on the little things because tasks happen when other things happen. I honestly, I don't know how I, you know, when you think back to when you first started your business, you're like, what the, how did I even do this? - Right, right. - That's kind of what I think about without these automations. Like how you just have to have almost perfect communication within your agency to make sure nothing falls to the cracks. So, I think that it's changed the agency because we can focus on higher level things. I will say a tiny downside of this is you can get to rely on the automations and if you don't spell something correctly and then the automation doesn't run, then that can be a downfall. So, there still has to be human intelligence in there to make sure everything's running. And then on the team side, I think it has enabled them to focus on higher level things. Like as an example, one thing that we did to enhance the accounts team is whenever there's a client meeting, we have an agenda drafted from our agenda template in their folder automatically. We also have a notification go into Slack within the client channel, telling the team that the meeting's coming up in three days to add any notes to it. And before that's, you know, talking about brain space, those are like all little things that don't take a lot of time, but it's like, holy cow, I've automated and taken these tasks off of my list. So all I have to do now is fill out the agenda in the folder and then make sure that the team adds anything additional to it. - Yeah, so it feels like a couple of things. Number one, it feels like fewer balls would be dropped 'cause you'd take in sort of the human error element out of it. And two, that, first of all, you've got everything is better documented, right? So if you have to go back and figure something out, you've got better documentation, but three, that your team to your point can really focus on the clients and the strategies and the creative and the things that we got into the business to do in the first place. But no one got into the business to remember, to update the social media posting schedule. No one, right? - Yes. - So is there a downsize to doing this? I mean, you've done it long enough now. I mean, you've been doing it. I mean, I wanna talk for a minute about how AI has changed it, but you've been automating your business for almost 10 years now. - Yeah. So other than on occasion, if you get lazy and you don't have some human checks and balances for you as you gave the example if you have a spelling error or something and it doesn't trigger an automation. Are there any other downsides that you've discovered in your business? I think a downside. Well, I kind of talked about this earlier, but letting the team know that they're not going to be replaced. That could be looked at as a downside and letting them know that this is going to enhance. The other thing could be the time. It's taken a lot of time to do this. If you look at the total time that it's saved, it's probably five times the time that I've put into it. But one downside that I've found is that I'm really hyped on an idea, but I don't talk to my team about it. Then my team, I've built it maybe halfway or so. Then my team's like, "Hey, by the way, this probably saves us 30 minutes a month." I'm like, "Oh, stab to the heart." Because I'm like, "This idea was so amazing." I was so pumped about it and they're like, "Yeah, I don't know that we need this." I'm like, "Why not? Of course we need this. We do need this." This is the new rocket ship. We need everything. A downside that I've found more recently that I've been doing more is that you need to communicate with your team because I didn't do that. We built out this really cool, awesome automation. They're like, "Yeah, I just think it's better for us to do it because of blah, blah, blah." There's still some things like AI isn't perfect as we all know. There are still things that I want to do that I don't have the capability because technology just isn't there or the API or whatever isn't available. I think that last one would be my biggest learning lesson most recently. When they say no, it's better for us to do it. Is there certain types of things, tasks, whatever that you've discovered after doing this for almost a decade that it really is better just let the humans do it? We were trying to. With AI, we were trying to automate blog posting. This is just one example. We had to look at. We have a keyword spreadsheet that we do research on and then it has to know the background of the client and the intricacies. One of our clients, you have to capitalize certain letters and their name and then they don't like it. If you use this, you have to use this phrase. With the automation, you can't necessarily. When you integrate chat GBT, you can't necessarily give it feedback. You would accustom GBT or just chat GBT platform itself. I found that that has been difficult and that is better to have a team member just write the content or use AI to build the formatting for it and then you just go in and figure the rest out. But things like Slack notifications, like following up with things, those are things that are really great to automate. Yeah. Yeah. A ton more questions, but let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and jump back in. One of the things that's really important to us at AMI is that we know our sponsors and we are actually genuinely happy to recommend them. And so over the past couple of years, I've seen more and more AMI agencies successfully build long-term remote teams with the help of NOLA job rack. I consistently hear good things from agencies working with him and his team and I'm comfortable introducing him to agency owners because he understands how agencies actually operate. That's why we are proud to partner with NOLA and job rack as a sponsor of this podcast. If hiring is on your radar at all, NOLA is put together a hiring playbook that is well worth reading. You can find it at jobrack.com/AMI. Again, jobrack.com/AMI to get some good words of advice from our friends at job rack. Hey, everybody. I know your anxious to get back to the show and so am I. But I want to remind you about the premier event for agency owners and leaders that is coming up right around the corner. And proud of many things we have done at agency management institute, but I'm probably most proud of the build a better agency summit. I knew there was a need, a hunger, for a conference, for real. Small to mid-sized agencies. I'm talking five people, ten people, a hundred people, two hundred people, where we can come together and we can learn together, we can share our own experiences, we can have killer keynote speakers, breakout speakers, over 30 different round tables you can participate in, where you're with a subject matter expert and other agency owners who are challenged with or interested in the same topic. And we have knocked it out of the park. Over 75% of the people who attend one year come back again in a subsequent year. So I know we're doing a lot, right? We would love to have you join us. Right over to agency management institute.com and in the upper left corner, there's a tab says, "BABA summit," you can register now and I promise you, you have never gone to a conference like this one. So please join us. All right. We are back with Kitlin's study and we are talking about automations to operationalize your agency. So again, we haven't even talked about client stuff, which we'll get to in a second. But one of the things you were talking about was, you know, that it's a rabbit hole that you go down and it takes a lot of time. Now would be a great time to tell everybody that you've built out a list. So you did this for the webinar and we'll share it again. So tell everybody a little bit about this resource and then everybody you'll find it, a link to it in the show notes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I was thinking, if I were to get started now and had no knowledge of automation, where what would help me and I think just getting into the mindset is the first thing. So I built out, I called it a giant list of automations you can use for your agency and I broke it up by different departments. So there's accounts team, billing, content team, dev team, HR, fun personal ones, programs and social media. So what I did was I put the automations that we've created and just put a sentence about them. And then the accounts team as an example would be a client meeting agenda set up reminder before the meeting. So we have automations that go out, I think maybe a week before like, hey, this client meeting is coming up, set up the agenda, link the reports meeting, add any wins to it, blah, blah, blah. And then client recap reminders too. So send the recap. We download the agenda as a PDF. So it's examples like that that I think can get people started on how they can use automations for their agency. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you for pulling that together. So before the break, we were talking and you've been automating your business long before AI was the common thing that it is today. So talk a little bit about the automations that you used to build and how they've changed with the advent of AI. Yeah. Well, now you used to only be able to go so far with automations like you would be capped at the capability of the actual program and what the action within the automation could do. Now you can get input and opinions based on data that you train AI on. So I'll give you an example of one that we created and we're looking to productize for other people because it's helped us. And all of these I created out of need. It was nothing. It was like, this is taking us way too much time. And then I was like, hold on a second. I think this could help other people. So the one one that we've created is a hiring bot. So when somebody applies on our website, they fill out the form. They add their resume. Then it goes into, we just use the sauna. So it goes into an a sauna board. And then we have AI look at it. And I've trained our AI on our job descriptions based on every single position. So the AI looks at their resume that they uploaded their questions that they've answered and any other items that I've outlined. And then it compares it with the job description. And then it gives it an a, b, c or d score before AI. We could have never done that. We could we automated it to where if they filled out the form on our website, it went to our careers page. But we manually looked at every single one. And holy cow, if you're like, nowadays, if you put a posting on LinkedIn, you get hundreds of applicants. And you know, 90% are not qualified in 10% are, but you have to still weave through that high percentage. So that, that's just one example. And then we also had if they, if the AI rates it in a, yeah, we didn't do b's. But if AI rates it in a, then it sends a question, it sends an email to them with a link to a questionnaire. And this all happens automatically. So it sends them an email and says, hey, Drew, thanks so much for applying to our account manager position. We'd love to get your feedback on this questionnaire. And that's just geared towards the position solely. Right. So what experience do you have? Have you worked for an agency? And then that's based on a grade. So it's out of 15 points. And if they get 10 or above, it sends us a task now. And this is where the human element comes in. Hey, this is somebody we want to schedule an interview with because I've put in response, proper responses or variations of the those proper responses. And then if it's 10 or below, it says, hey, we need to send them, like, thank you so much for filling this out, but we're not gonna move forward at this time. - Now all of that just happens in a blink. - Yeah, I put a delay in there, so it seems a little bit more real, you know? But yeah, essentially in a blink, yeah. But it's helped us so much, because when we hire people, I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, we have to do all of our other agency and client work, but it just took so much time. - Yeah, so fast forward a year from now, where do you think your agency will be at in terms of the automations? And like what's the dream automation that you can't build today, but you think you'll be able to build in the near future? (laughs) - I have an on hold list, and that means that it's not on hold because of us, it's on hold because of capabilities. - Yes, technology, right? - Yup, so the one thing that I can't automate right now is LinkedIn because it's against their policies. And so I, just, I'd LinkedIn is just like a black hole for me, like responding to messages, posting, responding to comments, and you can't automate, you can automate the posting, but you can't automate responding to your direct messages or to your comments, and that's what I hope. The other thing that blew my mind was, there's this guy on YouTube, and he created a digital avatar of himself, and he's very transparent about it. He's like, hi, I'm so-and-so, the digital avatar of Drew McLellan, and I'm here because Drew's helping his agency clients grow their business, and so he gives that intro, and then he dives into a topic, and it's just, it looks like you, and it's just him talking, and I'm like, oh my gosh, think about how many agency owners don't have time to record videos, hello, me, and how they could create a digital avatar of themselves, and educate people, and just be super transparent about it. Like, hey, I created this so that I could help my clients, but also educate you, and the content was amazing. It was so great. I mean, it didn't really look like AI, but you could kind of tell if you like had an inkling of an idea. - Right, right. - But I really hope that that's something that we can do too. - Yeah, yeah, that would be pretty cool. - Yeah. - Yeah. - As you look back, and I know you've done a pretty good job of sort of following the AMI model of, you shouldn't be doing client work all day as the agency owner. How much time do you think you spend on building these automations? - Right now, because we're trying to build them out, and productize them eventually, it's probably half of my time, but before, it was just like, oh, I have this idea, let's do it. Like, it's nothing that I needed to do immediately, but I also found someone that is helping me now to implement. So I'm kind of the idea person, and he's the facilitator. So that's helped a lot too, but I mean, up until April of last year, it was just me doing it, and it would be like, oh, and I didn't take a deep dive into it until like February time, and then I ended up finding him in April. And so it was when we let our VA go, and I was like, okay, who's gonna absorb all of these tasks? I don't have time to hire someone again, and I don't wanna train them. So that's kind of when we deep dove into it, but before it was just like, oh, I've seen this, I kind of wanna do it, let's try it. - Give me a sense of how long it takes to build an automation. Are we talking five hours? Are we talking five minutes? - So you know, you use the example of, we post a new blog post, and so it automatically gets queued up in our social media scheduling software. How long did it take to build to build an automation like that? - That one, well, I have AI added into that one now, but before if you just did this blog post, it goes to the social scheduler. I mean, if you're a new person, it would probably take you maybe 15 minutes, because you have to connect all of your accounts, and then just make sure everything's synced, and then make sure that the information goes there, goes over correctly, and then test it. But if you're using AI in it, that involves a more robust prompt, and so that's gonna take a little bit of time. So I've enhanced it by editing it to, if a blog post goes live, send it to AI, and I have it give an overview of the article, and then pull out one tip from it, and then add hashtags to the bottom with the link. So that would just take a little bit of time to write the prompt, and then it goes as a draft in our social scheduler. So I think maybe as a new person that might take you an hour, if you knew how to set everything up, but for somebody who knows what they're doing, and they've dove into it, and they know a little bit about it, it'd probably take maybe 10 minutes. - Yeah, that's crazy. So for you, as people are talking about AI changing agencies, and all of that, I'm curious what your outlook on the businesses with all of these technology and tools, how do you think your business will be different in a couple of years? - I think that, well, one of the other things that I built out to help us was, and I did my big idea on this, the delays on B. I had, we have a big idea when we meet. Yeah. And one of the biggest things is the delay to the lead that people have, so they don't get to the lead in a good amount of time. So we use high-level SRM, and I know you all do too. And there are built-in automations that you can build within high-level itself. So we completely migrated over to that, and what we were able to do is, and what we want to implement for clients this year and next year is once we get the lead. So our whole job is to get leads for the company. But then in a handful of meetings, we're like, "Hey, we got you X amount of leads." And they're like, and then we go through them and they're like, "Oh, I totally missed that one." And I'm like, "Oh, you know, dagger to the heart again." You're spending money with us. We want, we're getting you. We get you leads, right? Yeah. And then you're not following up with them or you're not following up promptly or they follow up once and that's it. Right. So we built out a whole workflow in high-level to follow up with leads, and it's an email, text, and a call-less voicemail system. So what, and I didn't even, this is like one of my deep dives that I went down in TikTok, and I found out that you can record an MP3 file, and then call someone without it ringing and leave a voicemail. And it's me. Of course, you can't customize it. You can't say, "Hi, Drew, I'm calling to reach out." It's just like, "Hey, this is Caitlin from South Street "and company blah, blah, blah." But that has been really amazing, and I really think that that's gonna set agencies apart in the future if they start thinking like that. Like, how can I just not get the lead, but how can I also help the client follow up with the lead from there? - Right, nurture the lead, stay in touch with the lead. But again, using technology instead of time to do that. - Yes. - So, talk a little bit about the tools. So you've mentioned Zapier, and you've mentioned ChatGPT. But do you have a toolbox of between automation tools, AI tools, the cheese and the grilled cheese sandwich tools? Is there a set of tools that are sort of your go-to? - Yeah, Zapier has just, that's where I started. I'm most familiar with that. The competitor to Zapier is make.com. So if anybody is interested in checking either one of those out, I would recommend either one of those. I'm not familiar with make.com, but I've heard good things about it. The other one that is very much more advanced, but you have a lot more freedom is N8N, and it's N, and then the number eight, and then another N.com. And that one is, I would say you would probably need to have a developer level understanding of it. It's not as user-friendly as Zapier or make.com. And also with Zapier and make.com, it'll tell you when something errors with N8N, you need to set up your own error logger for it. So there's just a lot more, it's a lot more freedom, but you also have to think about a lot of other little things that Zapier or make.com just have built in. - So give us an example of, when you say there's a lot more freedom, like what kind of freedom would N8N give you that Zapier or make.com not give you? - Yes, so with Zapier or make.com, you have limited actions and triggers that you can do. So the trigger is to start the event, the action is everything that happens after. So if your item isn't listed there, what you wanna do isn't listed there, you basically can't do it. - Okay. - With N8N, if you have access, and sometimes you can with an API access, but with N8N, you can build things out essentially more customized than you can. You really don't have guard rails. Like if you can think it, and if you have access to the program, you can most likely do it. So that just isn't available. in Zapier, but the plus side of that is it's very user friendly and it tells you exactly what you can and can't do. Right. Right. Okay. So those are your best recommendations for the cheese and the grilled cheese sandwich. Yes. What are the other tools that you're using on a regular basis? Yeah. So we're using ChatGPT as the primary AI, I guess the primary AI LLM within our automations. We have found though, this is just our preference that Claude is better when it comes to writing. Sure. So we do use Claude if we're writing anything. And then I'm testing out Gemini on some of the items as well, but ChatGPT is the one. It kind of like came out first and just hit the ground running. And so that's what I'm most familiar with, but we are we use G Suite. So I'm trying to migrate over to Gemini. And then the other programs that I'm using are just like, you know, normal agency programs like we're using Asana for all of our project management. We're using toggle for time tracking slack has a ton of really great integrations. So in G Suite. So those are the other programs. So really not an extensive toolbox of it's not like I have to learn 75 new programs. No, no, you just have to learn the learn the ins and outs of Zapier. And also something that I will say is if we're looking at a new program, I will see if it integrates with Zapier. And that's a decision making factor. Sure. Yeah, because I want it to easily integrate and I want it to do the things that I want it to do. And if it doesn't, I'm like, sorry, it doesn't integrate and you know, a sales guy was like, really? Because it won't integrate with this one program, you don't want to move forward. I'm like, yeah, this is part of our processes. And I don't want to do it. Right. Well, again, you're doing all of this to simplify the work. Yes. So it makes sense to sort of have, you know, bumpers in the bowling lanes. And we just don't, we don't go into the gutter. We just honor the bumpers. Yeah. Yes. So is there a reason why you haven't delegated the building of the automation to your team or have you now taught them how to build them? And is everybody building? No, not everyone is building them. There's one team member that I have helping me build them. And that has been going really well. I think that I don't really want my team to build them. To know how to fix them or know the gist of it. And I want them to come up with the ideas because I'm not really in the day to day anymore. So that's why when I found out that I built that giant, amazing automation rocket ship. And then they're like, hey, this takes like 30 minutes a month. And I don't think we need this. I was like, gah, Lee. So I want them to more so come up with the ideas and know if there's an error or something happens that they can go in and edit it. Yeah. Okay. So somebody who's listening has never built an automation. But it's like, okay, I'm starting to think about some of the repetitive tasks. Is there a category of repetitive tasks? Like, is there a, I know you put together a laundry list and that we're going to give everybody. But is there a category where you're like, man, if you start here and you can sort of feel the difference, you'll be hooked. And it will also get your brain thinking differently about what you could automate. Is there, is it a billing? Is it new business? Is it onboarding new employees? Like, where would you knowing everything that you know? What would have ignited the fire in you fastest? And giving you the best ROI right off the bat? Is there a category? I'm just thinking of where I got in the weeds and it was really in the operations of everything. So I think that that would be a really amazing place to start. But I'm also thinking like, we didn't even talk about yet any of the automations that I've created for myself personally. Like as an example, and this isn't just, this isn't just for the agency. Like you need to think as the agency owner, what are the things that I can do to make my life easier? Right. And that kind of like spurred this on because I was losing my right hand person. So kind of like operations organization. But also what can I do to help me? So I think thinking about the things that you do over and over. But one example is if I am meeting with someone out of office, I add a little drive time, 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after that meeting because I tend to overbook myself. And I'm like, oh, I have this podcast recording and then I have to be across town one minute later. Right. So I'm also an emoji person. So I put a little card in front of it and just put drive time to make it fun. But it's like, it's little things like that that you would have an executive. So let me just see if I'm understanding. So when you put something, when you get an invite from someone else that's going to take you out of the office, the automation you wrote adds 30 minutes on the front and back end of that calendar invite. So you actually can get to the meeting on time. Correct. And you have the time to get back to the office, slash home, before your next thing. Yes. So I think that's the way that I did that is if it's not a Zoom Google Meet or any of the other digital meetings, if it's an actual address, then that triggers the automation to put a 30 minute block before the meeting and a 30 minute block after. But just doing that has been monumental because I would have to do that manually. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, I have an hour to meet and I actually don't. I have 30 minutes. Right. You know, there's some preparation of like getting your shoes on or you know, grabbing a drink before you get your keys and all of that. So that that's also one thing that I feel like as an as agency owners, it could be just like a life enhancer to take that off of your list as something personal that you can say, okay, this is done. But yeah, but other things like I think it's been, I'll just call it like an agency life upgrade, like creating the agendas, creating the agenda template for my accounts team has been really amazing, notifying the team and slack if a client meeting is coming up. Also, one of the things that we've done to is automated our docu sign. So when a docu sign is completed, it sends me a notification that to review it and it has a link to the docu sign because it's uploaded in a Google Drive folder. It has a link for me to review it to see if I need to send an invoice. So that's been pretty essential for our billing purposes because if the accounts team doesn't communicate, then it's like, oh, dang, we didn't build this person for, you know, 15, or whatever, right? Yeah. And I mean, yeah, I don't want to be behind on that. Billing is important. Right. Right. Right. So when you think about that sort of upgrade to an agency owner's life, you talked about the calendar. What are some of the other things you built that kind of serve you the owner, but also probably have some tangential benefit to the team or clients or things like that. Yeah. Another one is I want to listen to all these podcasts, but I don't have enough time. So there's this AI podcast that I want to listen to and I just don't have enough time in the day. So what I did was I created an automation to where when the podcast goes live, AI summarizes it for me and pulls out key points and then records me a one minute podcast of those key points. And then I listen to that and I can share it with the team if it's relevant. So tell us the tools you use to make that automation. So I believe we do it off of YouTube. So when when a new YouTube video, because and the other thing to that I have to preface is if the podcast is over 30 minutes, it won't work. It's 30 minutes because it's just too much data for the AI. Yeah. So we do it off of YouTube and then we have AI review it. I'm not exactly sure what program we use to make the voice recording of the one minute snippet. But essentially it's YouTube videos posted review the summary of the podcast, then pull out key points, then record that into this key point podcast and then assign me an assana task. So it's probably five or six steps from there. So it's probably notice that there's a new publication of a video. Then chat GPT summarizes the transcript of the video and pulls out the key points and probably writes the script. And then it hands it off to whatever is going to record the voice. And then it sends it to you. Yes. And all of and in between every one of those steps is Zapier. Yeah. Yeah. Zapier is connecting everything. The other thing too is when I have the when I have the assana task created it links to the original video just in case I want to watch the whole thing. Yeah. Just in case I want to watch the whole thing. So with Zapier. When I was a kid, I don't know, I think you can still buy them. But when I was a kid, they had a bear full of monkeys. And you write in every plastic monkey had a hookdarm and. you could hook all these monkeys together and just make a big string of monkeys. Don't really know why that was a big deal, but it was. So is that your it sounds like I could have like a 12 layer grilled cheese sandwich. So I could have bread, Zapier, bread, Zapier, bread, Zapier. It's not just a if then this, but it could be if then this and then this and then this, right? Yes. Yeah. You can have, I mean, some of our automations are like are probably like 20 steps deep, like onboarding a client. That's 20 steps deep because when the trigger is when they're at it, when a new client is added into quick books, then they're added as a channel in our Slack. They're added as a client in our toggle or time tracking software. They're added in a sauna and attempt our main template is duplicated so we can customize that per client. But those are all things that took so much time. And you remember to do them all. Yes, I know. Yeah. So it's either create a checklist and do it all manually or look at Zapier and just say like add them to this, add them to this, add them to this and just build it all out from there. So essentially you have a whole line of monkeys connected to one another from your example. Yeah. It's crazy. If somebody's finding this overwhelming, because it's, it's, I mean, it's a whole different way of thinking like you said, it's almost like learning a new language. But they're also intrigued by it. Are there certain people or podcasts or places like where do you go? Or maybe maybe when you were more remedial than you are now, where do you go to like, are there a couple of people you follow or places where you're like, oh, I didn't know it could do that. Like where do you go to keep learning new things around this? Yeah. The Zapier blog is amazing. I subscribe to that and still do and read their articles that has been so helpful. I really think that short form content like TikTok, Reels, YouTube shorts are really great because it is overwhelming in the beginning. But once you get the hang of it, it is mind blowing what you can do. You're, I mean, if when people deep dive into this or at least look into it, it's just going to blow your mind. The things that you're like, holy cow, I was doing this manually and I don't have to anymore. So I think going and typing in like Zapier Automations, just on any social platform is really great. And I would you, I'd like, I love YouTube, but I almost think short form content is better because it's less overwhelming in the beginning. Right. And I also think people try to like just build a whole ship. And right now we're building a robot like we're building the ore of the robot. Just start small, start with one or two things and then see how that goes. But I would watch, I would watch some tutorials on, on how to do it. Like I'll give you an example. I bought an embroidery machine and I call her big Betty because she's, she's a hefty one. She's a six needle. And she's big. And this thing was delivered and I was like, oh my God, I didn't touch it for like three weeks because I was like, I don't even know where to start. Right. Like this thing is so overwhelming. I thread the needles. How do I? Yeah. Right. Yes. And then there's like, there's like a bobbin thread and I'm like, I didn't, where's that located? You know, I didn't even know where to look for these things. And then I, I took a course, just a one on one course out of like a local sewing studio here and the lady went through the whole machine and I was like, okay, this isn't, this isn't that bad. And so then I got home and I did my first one and it was okay, but I got through it. I wasn't like staring at big Betty like, oh girl, I don't know what to do with you. Right. Right. Right. And it's the same thing here. You're going to stare at it for a little bit. But once you get into people showing you, hey, okay, this is the first step. This is the second step. And other people have done what you want to do. And so just, right, that's a critical point, right? Right there. Yes. Somebody else has figured it out. Yes. And, and so you're building your or of your robot. Somebody's already built an or and they already know the wood to use. They already know the glue, the screws, you know, whatever's going to go into it. The sanding, they know everything already. So I would look and see like type in like intro to Zapier or how to set up a zap or how to set up an automation and just do that first. And then also look at the list of automations to start getting your mind thinking. The other thing that everyone's doing because Drew says is time tracking. Right. So you can look back at your time tracking and see what's taking up the most time. And what you're spending the most time on and that's a key trigger to say, Hey, I can probably automate some of this. All of it or most of it. Yeah. Yeah. This has been great. I'm excited to hear feedback after this episode of to hear what people are exploring and experimenting with because I think you've opened up a whole new opportunity. Like I'm in my head thinking, oh, I need to talk to this person on our team about that. Like I like we haven't really done this as well as we need to. And so I do think it is a mindset of, you know, just asking yourself, well, could that be automated? Right. And yeah. And then if so, how do I do that in as easy a way as possible? So it'll be exciting to see what people do. So I want to see what people do too. Because people and I mean, other, that's how I get my ideas. Other people inspire me. So I'm excited to hear what people do. Yeah. So this has been great. If people want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to learn more about the agency? Follow what you're up to connect with you in some way. I know LinkedIn. We know is not your favorite now. But I'll tell you, if you could automate in LinkedIn, that would be amazing. I wish when I, when they release that, I will be sending you an email and also popping some champagne over here too. Yeah. So our website is south street marketing dot com. So you can see more of what we're doing behind the scenes. We are looking at building out different automations to help other people just. It's helped us. So helping other people too. But then my direct email is Caitlin, K, A, I, T, L, Y, N at south street marketing dot com. So if you have questions, if you need help, I, you know, just let me know. Cause this is something that I, I, I call myself an automation nerd because I can just like nerd out on this all day long. And like I said, I get inspired by what other people are doing. So I'm happy to help or, you know, lend some thoughts on what's helped me. Yeah. That's awesome. And we'll put all those links in the show notes. So everybody can find them. So Caitlin, thanks for, thanks for being with us. Thanks for doing the webinar earlier back in 2025 and for being back with us and sharing this. I think it's, I think it's exciting and inspiring and hopefully people are fired up to give it a try. Yeah. I hope so. Thanks, Drew. You bet. All right, guys. So this wraps up another episode. As you know, I really love episodes that are action packed and Caitlin gave you a ton of things that you can do to experiment with this. And I would challenge all of you, even if you never do it again, just create one automation. Just try it. Just go to Zapier, create the free account and create one thing, even, even if you look at the preloaded list of of things on the front end, the triggers that are preloaded list on the back end of actions, just do that and see what happens. But begin to start thinking about some of the things we do, you know, one of the things we're seeing is that in most agencies, agency size that we're not, we're not adding bodies. We're doing the same volume of work. We're not adding bodies. Why? Because we're getting more efficient and effective. And this episode is all about how do you do that? How do you reduce the drag of repetitive tasks that keep your team from doing the things that they're really meant to do, which is be creative, be strategic, add value to the clients. You know, remembering to add a client in your Slack channel, really in the grand scheme of things, isn't about adding value. It's just a task and so why not follow Caitlin's example and automate some of these things? So that's your homework. Huge shout out again to our friends at White Label, the presenting sponsor of the podcast. You know, grateful we are to them. And as always, I want to remind you that I only get to do this every week because you keep coming back. So I'm super grateful that you listen and that you let me have smart people like Caitlin on the show to teach both of us, all of us new things. So thanks for listening. I'll be back next week and I hope you will too. All right. Have a great week. I'm back next week for another episode designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and other professional development opportunities at agency management institute.com. [Music]