How Contractors Can Automate Their Business Without Losing Control

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Service Business Mastery for Skilled Trades: HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Home Service

Episode: How Contractors Can Automate Their Business Without Losing Control

Host: Tersh Blissett (Skilled Trades Syndicate)

Guest: Ari Meisel

Date: January 21, 2026

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Main Theme and Purpose

This episode explores how contractors and owners in the home service trades—HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and related fields—can harness automation, AI, and well-designed systems to streamline their businesses without sacrificing control or the human elements that drive long-term success. Ari Meisel (author of "The Replaceable Founder" and expert on productivity systems) shares mindset shifts, actionable strategies, and practical advice for adopting automation while making humans more valuable—and life simpler—for owners and their teams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Mindset Shift: From Heroic Hustle to Replaceable Founder

[04:30–13:46]

• Ari’s Story: Ari shares his journey from working excessive hours in construction (and accruing $3 million in debt) to being forced by a Crohn’s disease diagnosis to reinvent his life and business.
  • “If you could only work an hour a day, what would you do? More importantly, what wouldn’t you do—and who or what is going to do it for you?” ([06:51] Ari Meisel)
• This led to his methodology: Optimize, Automate, Outsource—emphasizing making every part of the business replaceable by a process or another person, so the business survives and thrives without owner dependency.
• Ego vs. Systems: Owners struggle with “no one can do it like me.” Ari reframes replaceable as a positive:
  • “I don’t want to replace people. I want to make people replaceable.” ([09:21] Ari Meisel)
• Build Legacy, Not Bottlenecks: The best entrepreneurs build the business, not just keep “baking the bread.” Founders should focus on values, communication, and empowering others, not heroic day-to-day firefighting.
  • “You’re not supposed to be baking the bread, you’re supposed to be building the bakery.” ([12:21] Ari Meisel)

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2. Automation 101: Start Small, Start Repetitive

[00:00]/[51:31–54:20]

• The best candidates for automation are tasks you do every single time. Listen for the word “every”—that’s your automation goldmine.
  • “If it’s repetitive, you can probably automate all of it. If not all, then definitely some of it. And those tiny things add up to hours and hours.” ([00:00] & [52:05] Ari Meisel)
• Don’t jump straight into automating complex processes. Begin with one- or two-minute tasks that happen often.
• Focus not only on tasks but also on automating simple decisions (like “do we serve this zip code?”) to reduce cognitive load and bottlenecks.

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3. Optimize Before Automate: Don’t Polish a Bad Process

[15:36–24:10]

• Sequence matters: Optimize → Automate → Outsource.
• Most teams jump to adding more people or try to automate before optimizing (often automating an unnecessary or inefficient process).
  • “You can’t make a process more efficient by putting more resources behind it. More does not necessarily make it efficient.” ([15:45] Ari Meisel)
• The root cause analysis method (the “Five Whys” from Mitsubishi) is essential for determining why something is being done before automating.
• Beware the shiny app syndrome—new tools won’t solve unclear problems.

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4. Retaining the Human Element

[22:24–24:23]

• A critique of automation is losing the “human touch.” Ari counters:
  • “All this stuff allows me to enhance the human element, because I’m not dealing with the mundane B.S. that would get in the way.” ([22:24] Ari Meisel)
• The right automation frees owners and managers to spend more energy on meaningful work with people: client conversations, leadership, and creative problem-solving.

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5. Differentiating Productivity vs. Effectiveness

[15:00–21:48]

• Many founders conflate “busy” with “productive,” wearing busyness as a badge of honor.
  • “A lot of the overwhelm is because people don’t know what’s causing the overwhelm. Human beings are really good at just digging faster… sometimes you have to stop and look up and ask, ‘Am I even heading in the right direction?’” ([19:01] Ari Meisel)
• Ari recommends shifting the focus from mere efficiency (doing things faster) to true effectiveness (doing the right things that drive results and mission).

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6. Asynchronous Communication: Freedom for Leaders and Teams

[27:01–35:11]

• Ari is a major advocate for asynchronous communication (one-way, non-immediate tools like Voxer, Carbon Voice, or email when used properly), allowing teams to communicate across time zones and energy cycles without unnecessary meetings or interruptions.
  • “I can coach three dozen people on different continents completely asynchronously. I used to max out at ten with synchronous calls.” ([27:28] Ari Meisel)
  • “Asynchronous is the opposite of what we’re doing now. I send a message; they listen when they want. It’s a new world.” ([27:28] Ari Meisel)
• This builds true work–life integration (not elusive “balance”). People contribute at times and in modes that fit their productivity and personal needs.

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7. App Fatigue & Tool Suitcase: Avoid Overbuilding

[41:17–44:29]

• Ari loves apps, but cautions against constantly swapping tools and overwhelming teams.
  • “Don’t find a tool to fix a problem you don’t have. Figure out why you’re doing something—then look for a tool to fix your actual problem.” ([44:29] Ari Meisel)
• For major tools (Trello, Slack, Gmail, Carbon Voice), he’s stuck with the same basics for over a decade, only shifting when the benefit is truly substantial.

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8. The External Brain: Capturing Ideas & Tasks

[49:21–50:26]

• The human brain is a great idea generator, but a bad storage device for follow-up. Create an “external brain” using simple tools (screenshots, Alexa, Trello, voice notes).
  • “Never rely on your brain for remembering. The best entrepreneurs are always capturing—voice is great for that.” ([49:21] Ari Meisel)
• Review and sort these captured ideas regularly for delegation, further automation, or action.

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9. Getting Started with Automation in the Trades

[51:31–54:20]

• Start small! Look for the “every” in your workflow. Pick low-hanging fruit (one- or two-minute tasks).
• Don’t obsess over the initial time investment—automation and optimization skills compound over time and pay off in newer ways.
• Often, automating simple decisions makes the business run more smoothly than focusing on tasks alone.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You’re not supposed to be baking the bread, you’re supposed to be building the bakery."
  — Ari Meisel ([12:21])

• “I don’t want to replace people. I want to make people replaceable.”
  — Ari Meisel ([09:21])

• “Anytime you hear the word ‘every’…that’s your signal it’s a repetitive task and a goldmine for automation.”
  — Ari Meisel ([00:00]/[51:31])

• “If you haven’t optimized the process first, automating just means you’re automating a pile of crap.”
  — Tersh Blissett ([23:55])

• “Don’t find a tool to fix a problem you don’t have.”
  — Ari Meisel ([44:29])

• “Automation and optimization is a muscle. That skill is transferable—you’ll use it again.”
  — Ari Meisel ([52:05])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–00:39 – What to automate: look for the word “every”
• 04:30–06:14 – Ari’s backstory, construction, and health crisis leading to radical productivity
• 06:14–06:51 – The “one hour per day” question and its business implications
• 09:21 – “I don’t want to replace people. I want to make people replaceable.”
• 12:21 – Bakery parable & building legacy businesses
• 15:36–16:48 – Why “Optimize, Automate, Outsource” in that order
• 17:56 – Why “busy” is not a badge of honor
• 19:01 – Most overwhelm comes from not knowing what is truly overwhelming you
• 22:24 – Humanizing work through automation
• 27:01–31:34 – Asynchronous communication as a productivity superpower
• 41:17 – App fatigue, tool selection discipline
• 49:21 – The concept of building an “external brain”

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Overall Takeaways

• For service business owners, true freedom and growth come not from “hustling harder,” but from building a business that runs without daily dependency on the owner.
• Start your automation journey with small, repeatable tasks; don’t leap to complex processes first.
• Never automate before optimizing!
• Focus on systematizing decisions as much as tasks.
• Make use of asynchronous communication for more effective, less intrusive team management and coaching.
• Avoid app overload; choose tools deliberately in response to real, underlying problems.
• Offload your mental clutter by using simple capture systems (“external brain”).
• Lastly: automation is a transferable skill. Invest now and reap compounding rewards.

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Connect with Ari Meisel

• TalkToAri.com for direct, asynchronous coaching contact
• Platforms: TikTok, LinkedIn, "letsdoing.com" email list

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This summary captures the essence and actionable wisdom of the conversation, making it a valuable resource for any contractor or service business owner looking to automate and accelerate their growth without giving up control or humanity.

Transcript

[Ari Meisel]

Automation and optimization is a muscle. So there's two things to think about. One is the word every. I've said you've heard me say this before. Anytime you hear the word every. Like every time we get a new job, every time a customer complains, every time they see a new review on Google, the word every tells you that this is repeatable. It's repetitive, rather. So if it's repetitive, you probably can automate all of it. And if you can't do all of it, I guarantee you can do some of it. That's a replacer. And those are the small things. And those are the things that might take place one or two minutes every time, but they're adding up to, you know, hours and hours. And then the other one is think less sometimes about automating tasks and more about automating decisions.

[Tersh Blissett]

Today's episode is brought to you by one of our show partners, upfrog.

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[Tersh Blissett]

Learn more@upfrogio. I want to give a huge shout out to Marketstorm for sponsoring today's episode.

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[Tersh Blissett]

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[Tersh Blissett]

To chat with a team about how they can help you grow your business, visit marketstorm AI hello everyone out there in podcast world. Hope you're having a wonderful day. You're listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Tersh Blissett and Josh, my co host is not with us today but I have the world famous Ari Meisel on the on the podcast today. He's been a longtime mentor of ours and if you paid attention to anything that Josh and I have talked about, especially pertaining to less doing or optimize, Automate and delegate, it came from this fellow here and that we learned a ton of information from Ari. We've gone and done in personing events with him and used his coaching services. There's so many things that I've learned from Ari from a distance. And even, like, I thought I had some amazing ideas. And the first time that we talked to Ari, he was like, oh, no, you should try it this way. And I was like, oh, actually that's a great idea. And it was. It was email automation. Because I don't know if you remember this, Ari, but when we first spoke, and it's been a couple years ago now, I think they. I was talking about, I have an autoresponder set up for my email, saying, hey, I only check my email twice a day. So I'm going to, you know, basically setting up the expectations of the recipient that I'm not that, hey, this is asynchronous conversation. But I didn't know that that's what I was trying to say until later on. But the way that I said it, you were like, yeah, but that's not reality, is it? Like, you do check your email more than twice a day. Right? And I was like, guilty. Yes. And so then if you do immediately respond to them, then they're like, oh, you're a liar, or you're not going. You're not actually doing this asynchronously. You're doing it like you're responding immediately. Yep. And so I actually ultimately got rid of that process of that autoresponder on my emails and then actually started setting up the unsubscribe automation. Do you remember that, Ari? The. Yeah. And then I actually, I made a mistake on it and I think I've heard you talk about this mistake also. You cannot send just because it says unsubscribe. You can't get rid of it completely because my wife was sending me emails, she was forwarding me things that had unsubscribe in the comments or in the section in the body of it, and then I was. It was immediately being forwarded to spam or somewhere else. And next thing you know, I'm not getting any emails from my wife. And she's like, why are you ignoring all my emails? I was like, oh, crap, what did I do? So with that being said, that's a long intro. Ari is a. A mentor of mine and there's so much that I could say about Ari, but I think it would be best if you share a little bit about yourself, Ari, and. And kind of how you've gotten to where you're at right now in life.

[Ari Meisel]

I'm settling in. I'm a little bit flustered at the moment just because I was telling Trish before. I. Not just a pretty Face I. My background is in construction and I've worked in almost every trade that I can think of and just had to deal with an issue with an injector pump in my house because I have a 14 year old boy who doesn't understand about flushing wipes. Okay. And it just exploded on me, basically covered head to toe in cold, dirty water. And it's like the only. The only saving grace for me is it's only his bathroom. So in my head it's like, it's only my son. It's my son. It's only him.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Ari Meisel]

That was not how I was planning on getting cleaned up after like 10 minutes before this event. So, yeah, I did fix it though. Good.

[Tersh Blissett]

Fun there, that, that.

[Ari Meisel]

We got her immediately.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah. Well, so I have a set. We have a septic tank, and my house was built in 1983. And so we've had multiple times where, like, we've had a drain fill issue. We've had, you know, backed up septic tank. And it always happens at the most inconvenient time. Like every time it happens, it's like, hey, dad, there's an emergency going on. Like, I'm in the middle of something right now.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. Anyway, the way I got here before that is. So as I said, I actually was working in construction when I got out of college. I did this big redevelopment project in upstate New York in a place called Binghamton, and rehab these old warehouse buildings from the 1860s into loft, high end loft living. And essentially the deal was if you work on this job, you got to teach me your trade. So I spent three years, like learning and doing pretty much every trade there is.

[Tersh Blissett]

Wow.

[Ari Meisel]

Particularly good at masonry, which when you're doing that in a really cold climate, I feel like those, those, those guys are the ones that they need to study in terms of, like, they will never die. I remember one day I was laying brick and it was eight below. And you're like, you laid three bricks and then you go over to the jet heater to like, get your fingers work. It's crazy. Good times, but, you know, not particularly good on my body. I was working crazy amount of hours. I was under a lot of stress. Not to mention the $3 million of debt that I racked up by the time I was 23. And my body basically broke in the form of Crohn's disease. So I got diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which is a chronic inflammatory condition that affects the digestive tract. It is extremely painful and debilitating, and it is Considered to be incurable. It's a lifelong diagnosis. That's what I thought though. After a couple years of getting well, after several months of getting sicker and sicker and getting put on a lot of meds, I started to try to turn things around. I got really into the biohacking, movement and tracking and experimentation, all sorts of stuff, and started to get better. And what I realized very quickly, or sorry, what I was made to realize very quickly was that I had gone from working 18 hours a day to barely being able to do an hour of work on a day because I was just so weak and unmotivated. So that extreme restriction on my time is what led to everything since then. That the, and that question is something I ask a lot of myself and of coaching clients and people is what would you do if you could only work an hour a day? And what's interesting about that is it's very different than saying like, what would you do if you had to leave the office an hour early? Right. That's like, well, I skipped lunch or whatever. Sure. If you could only work an hour a day, then the question at that point really becomes what? Not what would you do? But wouldn't, wouldn't you do? And if the things you wouldn't do still need to get done, then who or what is going to do them for you? So that is where Optimize, Automate and Outsource came from and built from there. And ultimately after about two years, I was able to get off all my meds and have not had, I have not taken medicine and I've been pain free. And actually there have been doctors who have said like, this is, that's impossible what I did. Yeah. And I still credit about 80% of that to creating a new system of productivity to deal with the stress that I was experiencing at the time. And so that evolved into coaching and speaking and books and all that kind of stuff and eventually became more of a business focused methodology that I called the replaceable founder is to make everybody in the business as replaceable as possible so that the business can operate without you. Whether you want to be.

[Tersh Blissett]

What do you say to people whenever they're like, yeah, but I don't, I don't want to be replaced. Or they, there's like an ego or it's like, ah, like you can't replace me. I'm the person who came up with all this stuff.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. So yes I can, first of all. And I see and because I've done it many, many, many times for that exact question. But it's a good inter. It's a good distinction, because I don't want to replace people. I want to make people replaceable.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yes.

[Ari Meisel]

There's a very subtle but important difference. Right. If you're making yourself replaceable, that means you're putting systems and processes in place that make it so that the business can operate without you. If you so choose to not only not be there for some reason, but, hey, go somewhere else and learn something new that you can then contribute back into the business. Being replaced is very different. And that's not the goal. It happens, but that is not the goal. Yeah. And ultimately, if you can't do that, then you don't really have a business. You just own your own job.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yes, that's.

[Ari Meisel]

That's.

[Tersh Blissett]

That's exactly what I was getting at. Because there's so many times where us as contractors will not get out of a truck. Like, so we're H Vac or plumber, and, like, we started our own plumbing company, and it's like, all right, well, you got to get out a truck in order to grow the business. And then the next thing you know, you're like, well, I can't get out of truck because I'm doing all the sales, or I can't get out of truck because, like, nobody knows how to do what this. The way that I do type of thing. What's your thought on that? Like, obviously, you have to do it if you want to grow the business or scale the business or. I mean, you have to put people in place inside the office, but kind of riff off of that. And. And these aren't even questions that I have for you. These are just things that I know that you talk on all the time.

[Ari Meisel]

There is a big ego element to that. Right. This idea of, like, only I can do it and. Or only I can do it this way. And here's the thing that doesn't apply to me, that doesn't apply to anybody listening. There are. There are very few. And I'm actually struggling to even think of an example of any one person that is truly the best in the world that the thing may do. I'm sure it exists. I'm sure there are people that, you know, objectively could say, like, there is no one better than this person. And it's probably in something that's very, very, very niche. Yeah. The person that knows everything about a particular Egyptian leader. Yeah, yeah. 2,000 years ago, like that person. Yeah. Nobody knows more than that person. Okay, great. But for things like trades, for things like coaching and what I do, there are a lot of other people that teach productivity and they do a great job at it and there's people that benefit from it. But fortunately it's one of those markets where there's so many people that need it that there's solo place. For me, that's not the thing that makes you unique. Being really good at that thing that you do. The thing that makes you unique ultimately is your perspective. Right. And your ability to really communicate in your vision. And so communication is how you communicate to clients. And it doesn't mean sales. It really means like the message that you put out, the legacy that you create, the values that you imbue into the people that work with you so that there's a legacy there. There are well over a thousand businesses that have been around for, for hundreds of years in the world, and there's a few that have been around for over a thousand years. I just did a video the other day on a bakery. The founder of this bakery died 795 years ago. Wow. And the bakery is still operating.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Ari Meisel]

Right. So. And the interesting sort of message there was like, as the entrepreneur, you really, you're not supposed to be baking the bread, you're supposed to be building the bakery.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Ari Meisel]

So that's.

[Tersh Blissett]

I loved, I messaged you a while back about this. I love this series that you've been doing on like TikTok and of these old businesses and how are they still in business? And it's you, you make an amazing point there. Like, if we're going to make a generational business that's going to last, you know, the generations, removing us from the bottleneck is, is one of the biggest, like that's, that's a big hurdle to, to overcome. I mean, ego is a massive part of it. But you know, having those processes and procedures in place and then not like, I think that what for me, when I was receiving 300 phone calls a day, it was like just ridiculous. It was overwhelming. But it was also a, a sense of pride, like, hey, they can't do it without me. Like, this is my ego talking right now. And you know, a hundred percent, like once I figured out, hey, I'm holding the whole company back right now, like, this is like, there's no reason for this nonsense and we're more chit chatting than they were doing anything else. Like, you don't really need to be calling me for all this nonsense. And I had to implement processes to do away with that so that I could actually grow the businesses.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. And it's really hard for people to accept that. Like, hey, maybe I'm, I'm not that important and I'm not. And, but, but that, again, that's not our role. Right. That's not where we're supposed to be. You. And so there's a big difference between most entrepreneurs are getting pulled and the really great entrepreneurs, the really great business owners are pushing. Ooh, right. So you're getting those phone calls all day long. Right? That's being pulled. And that feels good. Right? Because it's like, oh, this person needs me. All right, this. And it's like, I feel this at home in my life. You know, I have five children, right. So there is always somebody asking me for something. I have a very demanding family and fortunately, like, I have the energy and I have a stamina to be able to deal with a lot of that stuff. But I always definitely, I definitely have that thing sometimes where it's like, dad, can you get me this? And it's like, yeah, but then also, like, I'm glad that they want me to do it. Like, it, you know, it's, it's conflicting. It's really hard. This becomes a whole other issue because there's an ROI attached to it. Like, it's a very, very different justification. So it's a lot easier than basically like, oh, no, this person needs me. This person needs me. That person needs me. It's like, no, they don't actually need you. They need an outcome.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Ari Meisel]

Why is provided.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah. So let's transition a little bit into like productivity and systems and the, the whole thought process behind productivity versus effectiveness and the. What? Like, I guess I want to ask, like, what's the evolution in that you've seen in your own thinking and thought process away from like automation and efficiency and more to like effectiveness and the outcomes?

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. So that speaks to sort of what I was just talking about, which is that we're trying to figure out what an outcome is a lot of times.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Ari Meisel]

So the reason that my system is optimized, automate, outsource, is that order is very important because most people do it backwards a lot, don't automate at all because they're just not even aware of what's possible. Now that's less of a situation. I feel like a lot more people know that you can automate things. The knee jerk reaction for most people when they get overwhelmed is, I just need to hire more bodies. I need more bodies. And you can't make a process more efficient by putting more resources into it. You can do it by putting the right resources into it. But more does not necessarily make it more efficient. In many cases it doesn't. And a lot of times you'll have people. I see this all the time where people come to me like, hey, I want to automate this thing. It's like, well, why? You know, And a lot of times there's not really a good answer. It's just like, well, because we're spending so much time doing it. It's like, well, why are you doing it? It's like, well, because we've always been doing it. It's like, why?

[Tersh Blissett]

And so do you find that there's a. There's a certain amount of whys you need to ask before you get to it, to the. The real reason?

[Ari Meisel]

Five. Five. Okay.

[Tersh Blissett]

Because I've, I've heard that before, but I don't know.

[Ari Meisel]

There's actually a methodology called the five wise, which comes from Mitsubishi. It's like a hundred years old. And essentially it was a way of creating or identifying a root cause analysis of a problem. So you have a problem, you state the problem. They say, why did that happen? Okay, now why did that thing. Why did the Y happen? And then why did the Y to the Y and keep going? And oftentimes people are able to sort of solve their own problems that way. And you can back it up. So, you know, the, the thing wasn't delivered on time. Whatever. The, you know, the client gets a proposal. Why? Well, because, you know, the, the printer was not working. Why? Well, because it was out of ink. Why? Because we don't have an ordering process. So, you know what I mean? You can back it up quite that much. So the. But it's a lot of why. And the problem is, is that a lot of times you ask that why? And they, they, they don't. They don't answer. Yeah. My favorite is when people talk about who they are. Right. So get this whole time. How you been? Oh, man, she's so busy. So busy. It's like, cool. Okay. With what?

[Tersh Blissett]

I'm just trying, like, I'm so. I'm so guilty like that.

[Ari Meisel]

For years.

[Tersh Blissett]

That was my response. And the immediate response that a lot of people give is, well, busy's good. And it's not good. Like, yeah, good problem to have. Yeah. And we hear that all the time. And in reality, like, I have. As soon as busy comes to my brain, I immediately stop and I'll pause and I'm like, what can I use instead of that word? Because it's, it's kind of just our go to small talk word, you know, and in reality, it's like, have I been productive? Have I been, you know, busy doing the right things? Have I, have I actually paid attention to where I'm busy and figured out how to make myself less busy? Because, man, burnout's real. And it's a badge of honor, like you see on social media, where people are like, hustle, hustle, hustle, and not really talking about the negative effects of burnout and how long it takes to recover from.

[Ari Meisel]

Well, and, and it's a guarantee. That's the thing. So a lot of the, a lot of the overwhelm is because, well, truthfully, a lot of the overwhelm is because people don't know what's causing overwhelm. Yeah, right. So they're just getting stung from every different direction. They're getting pulled from every direction. And human beings are really good at just digging faster, you know, like that's, that's the most obvious thing for us. Like just push harder, just get through it. And sometimes, sometimes you have to do that. But it gets really easy to sort of get into this rut where you're doing that. And then you just don't stop to like, look up and be like, am I even heading in the right direction?

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, yeah, 100%. No, I agree with you 100%.

[Ari Meisel]

So the, the idea of like doing the right thing is not an easy answer, you know. And so you take a business, a trade business, for example. You've got, sorry, you've got sales, obviously, which is a really big one. And some of that really depends on what revenue level you're at. Like I would say in general, when a company is in the 300,000 to million dollar revenue range, revenue is the most important thing. Like you could be focusing on. Like, that's, that's really, that's like a place where it's, it's okay if the boss has to jump in on calls and do stuff. I would say you still need to have a system and you still need to have the ability that things can keep moving if you're not there. But then at that point you really should become an accelerant rather than just, rather than like just the driving force. But once you get beyond that, then I would say customer service becomes a really big issue as well. And having retention and having people refer you and upsells and all those kinds of things, so those become a really big thing. And then in the middle there, we've got delivery. Right. So you have to be able to efficiently deliver your services. That one is usually the easy one. Right? Because knowing, you know, I know if I, there's, you know, a compressor went down on this H vac, it's going to take me two hours to replace. It's going to be this much. I've done this a thousand times. I know what that is. That's, that's a product more than a service at that point. It's all that stuff around it where we get really muddy and it gets really easy to sort of jump in and do that. And the other thing that's really interesting about that too is that now the way where social media is at content that I think people would have previously thought were just was not interesting or engaging is engaging and interesting to everybody now. Like, I can't tell you how many videos I have watched to the end of somebody replacing a circuit breaker in a house. And the POV can't really, you know, it's like, it's one of those things like, what's going to happen next? And I know what's happen next. They're going to strip the wires, they're going to, then they're going to put together and then they're going to staple them in. But like, what's going to happen next? So, and those are the things that like, fall by the wayside when people get busy. But those are the things that differentiate you ultimately and that you can refer to and that give you credibility and that make a business more predictable.

[Tersh Blissett]

Absolutely. So when it comes to the productivity from the effectiveness like in that con, in your content that you, you've been distinguishing the, the productivity like this, separating the two of them. And where do you feel like the founders miss most often the differentiation between the two and kind of what's the, what's the harm that happens by. Over productivity or automation and efficiency? And.

[Ari Meisel]

So it's, it's, it's funny because over the years, one of the biggest critiques, well, not critiques, but one of the biggest sort of negative focus questions that I get a lot of times is like, well, if you're doing all this optimization, you're doing all this automation and you're outsourcing it to other people. Like, aren't you removing a lot of the human element to what you're doing? Yeah, especially as someone who's, I'm a coach, like, that's an important element. And my response is always, for 15 years been the same thing, which is that it's the opposite, is that all that stuff allows me to enhance a Human element. Because I'm not thinking about or dealing with the mundane BS that would get in the way of that. Right. I don't have to be in a conversation with a client and be thinking about, you know, do I have to like write up notes for this afterwards? And then I'm at Senate invoice and stuff like that. Like, oh wait, that was a really good idea. I think I should make some content on that, like. And then you're gone. Yeah. All these systems, if you do them right, enhance that. But what a lot of people do is the opposite. They end up, you know, you have somebody who sees an ad for a service that will do auto calling, you know, a thousand people, and start selling. It's like you don't even have a sales script. So what are they selling? They're selling a generic service. Okay, great. So then when they get to you, they're going to expect a generic service because they don't know any better and they're going to be a terrible client and they're going to be pissed off and you're going to get two star reviews on Google. Right. So like we see that all the time. All the time. Because something looks shiny and you will. Yeah. I'm supposed to be making phone calls. Right. So why don't I just hire a service and do that? You can't do that until you have own process in place. Absolutely.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah. Because if you, if you have, if you haven't optimized the process yet, going to automate shit and you're going to get a big old pile of shit. It's what you're going to get if you haven't optimized the process prior to automating it.

[Ari Meisel]

And furthermore, like, it's not that you have to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel. There's a lot of people who have done these things. But you need a process, you know, you need a way of doing things and a reason for why you do them that way.

[Tersh Blissett]

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[Tersh Blissett]

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[Tersh Blissett]

Get a tech upgrade for your business at Get Sarah Tech Service Business mastery. When it comes to coaching, you mentioned that, that you do coaching and I love your style of coaching. And me too. I. You too. I the, the asynchronous, like the. We went to an event sometime a couple years back in Jersey and you asked the whole crowd like, hey, who knows what asynchronous communication is? And people are like, yeah, I think so. And, but it was kind of like this weird, like I'm pretty sure I'd know what you're talking about, but I don't know for sure. And then you kind of explained asynchronous conversations and how, how they actually work. And back then it was boxer, now it's carbon that you, I know that was one of your preference apps, but I love the idea. And, and that's how this is how email was supposed to be. Text messages were supposed to be asynchronous, but they've turned into the little green dot or the blue dots where you're like watching someone else type out their message, their response and then you're anticipating like you're sitting there waiting. You might as well just pick up the phone at that point and have the conversation. But can you explain asynchronous and why it's beneficial, especially in the coaching world side of things for you?

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. Well, so first of all, it's actually really easy to explain when I'm dealing, when I'm talking to people who have worked in the trader stuff because everyone remembers the Nextel push to talk on. Right. So carbon voice, which the app use is very, very similar in some ways, although you don't have to be there live to listen. That's the main difference. So asynchronous is the opposite of what Tersh and I are doing right now. Right. So this is synchronous. I can talk, he can nod like he's doing. I can, you know, we, we can feed off each other in that way.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yep.

[Ari Meisel]

Asynchronous to the opposite. I Send a message. And again, I use a tool called Carbon Voice. Anybody who wants is welcome to get in touch with me directly on there. You can go to talktori.com and they'll tell you how to do it. And I can send a voice message as long as I want, talk about whatever I want, and then they can hear it and listen to it whenever they want, including live. They can listen to it while I'm sending it, or they can listen to it later. And what that means is that I can have clients all around the world as I do, and I don't do any live calls. So I individually coach two to three dozen founders at a time in multiple time zones, and I don't have a single call on my schedule. Right. It's like an amazing new world. When I used to start, when I started coaching 15 years ago, you know, I maybe max out at 10 clients and 12 that have, you know, hour, hour and a half sessions with them each week. So it's really, it's a lot more convenient. But we're talking about confectioners, right? I truly believe that this is the most effective form of coaching that I ever have done because two main things, one, a client, let's say something, they would blow up with a, with a employee on a Thursday, right? And they're not going to talk to me till our appointment on Wednesday. So they have to carry that through the weekend. Other issues are come up. By the time they get to Wednesday, they don't even know what they wanted to talk about. They're just unload for 43 minutes and then it's like, well, we're out of time. Or they walk out of this meeting and they send me a carbon voice and they are cursing and yelling. I'm like, this was. And then I can hear it and digest it and listen to it again and listen to it at two times speed if I want to, and then two hours later give them that 92nd silver bullet. They need to get on with their day and move on to the next issue. So I'm spending less time and I'm being more surgical and giving them the answers they need to move things along. We can also deal with 15 issues in the time that we might have been able to deal with one. That's the first step. The second thing is that, and this was sort of unexpected when I started doing this, but when people are able to talk into basically a vacuum and you think about like podcasting, when if you're by yourself, you're not, you know, just talking to the microphone, you, you open up and you share things and you, you dig in a way that you just don't when there's somebody else there. And this certainly not a critique, right? But as I'm talking you're like, you smiled and you nodded, right? And so I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm on the right track. Like it's gonna, it's gonna unconsciously change the way that I say something or how I show up or do I speak? You know, is he getting bored? So let me speed this up, wrap this up. That doesn't happen. So I actually, I had a client send me a 45 minute long carbon voice message the other day. And one of the things that's great with carbon voice is that it automatically transcribes, does an AI summary, can do a bulleted summary and can pull out action items for me. So I did listen to the whole thing. But I don't have to be like 100% on it necessarily because I'm also checking the script, it's giving me the bullet points, all that kind of stuff. And then I can automatically create to do cards for myself in Trello and like, and it's just so much more effective that way. Plus there's an infinite record. Then like I can always go back and see what somebody said. There's built in AI so I could be like, did they talk about the thing? About the thing? You know, it'll tell me. So it's really this superior way of communicating in my opinion. And a third one too is that people are best at different times of day and different places, right? So I can't make content unless I'm out walking my dogs. Basically every one of my videos you'll see like I'm, I'm out moving around. I try to do something at my desk here and it's just, it's not. So I need to be moving, I need to be mobile and listen to stuff and then that's where ideas come, that's where I'm able to listen and really focus. And you know, you might have somebody at 11 o' clock at night, they really need to unload something and then I can get it. It's five in the morning when I get up and then I can go back and forth. So it's just, it's great. But also I use it for my sales. So anybody, like I said, can go to talktor.com they can send me a message, we can have a conversation and you g basically get to experience coaching with me before you even Sign up, because the platform is the pitch at that point.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, that. That is really interesting. And the great thing is, is as a lot of people don't realize how much they. Their circadian rhythm is diff. Like, different from other people. And like, you're productive at this time of day, and then Ari's productive at this time of day or is going to have a conversation. Better have a conversation at this time of day. And then what I found is that, like, my wife, she just does not sleep at all if she has something on her mind. And so you can just dump it right into the. Into carbon or into your notes or whatever, and then all of a sudden it's off your brain. Then you have a good, restful night's sleep. And it helps out a ton being able to do that and then not being worried. My biggest thing is, like, Slack messages. I have a screen that's just open with my slack for my team, and on the weekend, something might happen, and I'm like, hey, I need to send this message. And I try my best to make sure I schedule the send for Monday because I don't want to disturb people when. Because a lot of people, even though they're not supposed to tell them not to have Slack notifications turned on on the weekend, they will. And then all of a sudden they'll respond to something on a Sunday or whatever. And I'm like, I didn't want that. I wanted you to do this on Monday. And they're like, yeah, I know, but I want to take care of it right now.

[Ari Meisel]

And.

[Tersh Blissett]

Because then I put that burden on them, and a lot of people don't realize that you're. You're actually. Now you're burdening them. They have to remember to do it on Monday or whatever. But the. The having asynchronous, like, for real, legit asynchronous conversations is really good. But you. You have to train yourself to do it. Because I think we've trained ourselves to do the exact opposite. Like, if somebody sends me an email, I have to respond to it right now. Or if they send me a text message, I need to respond to it right now. And so it takes some intentionality for. For that. For sure.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. And part of that, too, is setting the expectations right. So my. My clients, like, they're. They're. I don't set an expected response time, so it's never, like, you'll hear back from me in 48 hours. Yeah, normally I'd say I could probably get back people, like, in less than Four hours. But I also gone on vacation for a week and not told anybody and didn't.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah. And it happens. And it's great that people don't have that expectation because then all of a sudden that's whenever they start getting upset, when they're like, hey, I thought you were going to call me back or message me back in 48 hours. And you're like, it's been 49 hours.

[Ari Meisel]

Well, right. And then the other thing too, which is really important about being able to communicate asynchronously is it's if you can do it anywhere, anytime, that plays into something that is a very important concept for me, which is a work life integration. Work life balance is total bullshit. That's not a concept that we actually can achieve because the whole idea of it makes no sense. It also sets up work and life as this diametrically opposed thing. A lot of us, a lot of us really like the work that we do. Exactly. Integration, work, life balance is like, oh, I don't take, you know, I don't take work calls after 5pm My phone's off. It's like, no, your, your brain is going to build still be like wondering. Let me just check. Yeah, integration is like, hey, I'm. I just dropped my kids off in front of the school gym so that they can go play their basketball game. While I'm going to park, I'm going to respond to three Carbon Voice messages and go sit down. So that's.

[Tersh Blissett]

I actually have another question that, that almost dives straight directly into. And as a. We talked earlier about the replaceable founder concept and being able to not necessarily replace yourself, but be replaceable. But how does, how does someone balance like deep personal responsibilities, the responsibility for their business with the idea of becoming replaceable?

[Ari Meisel]

What do you mean by personal responsibility?

[Tersh Blissett]

So like what you. Your task are each day like or your perceived task per. For the day.

[Ari Meisel]

So yeah, that. Well, should have dailies tasks, right? Like necessarily. Unless. Unless some of that is something you can do by carbon voice. Right. So like, I'll give you an example. So one of the things that we do in my. Well, I, I always have companies implement this when we can with a daily asynchronous standup. Right. So a lot of times you have standups, right? Start off the day like, these are the big clients, these are the big blockers. This is what I'm working on. We could do that asynchronously. Carbon Voice is a great way to do that. So one of this, one of the teams I'm dealing with right now. We got 12 people in three time zones. AM a message pops up into a group. Carbon voices hey everybody, it's time to check in. What are you working on today and what is your biggest obstacle? And within two, three hours, usually everybody's checked in. You hear everybody's voice, you know what's going on and you're good. So that could be a daily task, but you can do that from anywhere and really almost any time. So if we can remove the timing element from some of that stuff, then that's a big one. And that's sort of a, it's a bit of a mental exercise to be like, well this is something I have to do at my desk. It's like, well what if you couldn't, what if you couldn't do this? What if you could do this right after you drop your kids off of school and they get out of the car and you can do it on the way home? What if you do it then? So it's, it's not about balancing necessarily. It's figuring out a way to do the work in a way that works for you.

[Tersh Blissett]

How do you as the founder, like, if. So there's different mental types. Like there's people who are like very type A, hey, we gotta do this at, we have to have a 7:30 check in every single day and I need you to check in at 7:30 sharp or something like that. And then there's other people who are like man, I, I don't function until I get my coffee. Or like I'm not good at having a, like a thoughtful conversation until like the second half of the day. How do you coach a, a person that is, is maybe has that kind of thought process and like they're very rigid and they, they wake up at 5am and they have their coffee at 505 and they're ready to go at 5 15. And then the next person's like don't talk to me before 10.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. So it's, it's really the same answer. It's the asynchronous communication. Ultimately it does that. So I, I'm, I'm that first one. Right. So I'm, I worked out at 5:30 this morning and, and the second one. Great. So, you know, as long as the people in my world don't have their notifications turned on at 5:30 in the morning, then they don't have to worry about it. Right. So on my way to my workout, which was seven minutes away, I, so one of the things that I can do with Carbon Voice also. And I know I'm talking about Carbon Voice, but you can do this with a lot of tools. Yeah, I can send a message that becomes a task in Trello automatically. I can also send a message that becomes an email newsletter automatically. I can send a message that becomes multiple multimedia, multiple social media captions as well. So on my way to my workout, which is like a four minute drive, I recorded a blog post, two tasks for Trello and I responded to two clients very quickly, right? And then it's like, all right, now I get to go work out for 40 more minutes. I don't have to think about those things. I had the idea, now they're out of my head and they get like, that is.

[Tersh Blissett]

I love that thought process and I love the idea of that. Like, I've been set. I've been playing around with automations on my iPhone. So like I take a screenshot. If I take a screenshot of something and it analyzes it and it's like, hey, that was, you know, if it's garbage, then it puts in this folder review, throw in the trash. And then it also will, if it's like a screenshot of a conversation, then it'll actually put the whole conversation together and put it into a folder. And so like I'm playing around with some of these, these automation things because there's so many times where I like, I'll screenshot something to do later and then go back to my screenshots and have 10,000 screenshots and you're like, which one of these? And half of these are irrelevant, they need to be deleted. But I don't want to go through and delete the 87,000 photos that I have in there that are duplicates or whatever. And that just becomes a massive time suck in itself. I was going to ask you though, we're in a world right now that is like every time you turn around there's a new app for something else. You know what I mean? And when my team, like, my team on my H Vac, in my H Vac company, I'll say something about an app and they're like, here we go. He's about to introduce a new app that we got to all learn. And then in six months he's going to change it to a different app and you know, and then they're like, all right, Tersh, you got to chill out with this. Like, I literally have somebody on my team that's like, hey, this person tries out, like I, I bounce things off of that person, and they're like, that's cool, but the rest of the team is not gonna love that. And. And I had that. I have that realization about myself. So, like, I know Slack is where I gotta stay because people have learned it and there's so much integrations that can be done inside of Slack that I just. What would you say to that? To someone else who feels that way?

[Ari Meisel]

So I. I love apps. I love new technology. I keep track of thousands of things. I've got 34,000 notes and never note about, you know, stuff. I've captured a newer tool which is great for that, by the way. It's called MEM AI M E M. Like memory. I like to know about them. Yeah. But the truth is that for the most part, I've been using the same apps for probably over 10 years now. I've got Trello, Slack, Gmail, and now Carbon Voice. Like, for something for me to. And by the way, I was using Voxer for almost a decade, as you know, Carbon Voice came along and it was funny because the CEO reached out to me on LinkedIn and he's like, I'd love to talk to you about this app. And I sent him back my Carbon or my. My Voxer link. He was like. And I didn't. I didn't even pay attention. I was just like, here's. And he's like, well, he's like, I'd really like you to try my platform to see if you like it. And I didn't actually. And told him why. I gave him a whole bunch of suggestions and to his credit. So I have been a big boxer guy for a very long time, and I've. I've sort of the CEO multiple times. I have made a dozen or so suggestions of things over the years, and they've never implemented a single one. Okay. With Carbon, I gave him like three or four pieces of feedback. And like four days later, he's like, all right, I did. We did it all. Like, we try it now. And it was great. And so. And are continuing to do that. And now, full disclosure, like, I am an advisor of that company, but for something.

[Tersh Blissett]

Remember when you went from Voxer to Carbon, you were inside Voxer and said, hey, I got this new app. We're going to transition over to this. And it was no, like, there was not another message on Voxer. I was like, oh, shit, I got fine Carbon. I'm not going to be able to talk to Ari anymore.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. And the thing is. Well, so. Right. And to make that kind of switch like the app has to be 200% better than the other one and that just does not happen very often. So yeah, I use Trello for project management. I love it. There are a hundred things out there. ClickUp is is making very, very big mobs.

[Tersh Blissett]

But it's over overwhelming though to it.

[Ari Meisel]

I agree, I agree. And so it's actually interesting because right now I am looking at bringing on a fiber and a ClickUp like architect from Fiverr to that's what we did be set up correctly. But all that to say you have you seen an ad for pharmaceutical lately? Any medicines at some point, right. Ever?

[Tersh Blissett]

I don't, I, I, I do my best.

[Ari Meisel]

Sure.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah.

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah, right. So the problem is that it's like, hey, do you have you know like restless leg syndrome or like does one at your testicles lay lower than the other one? You know, it's like yeah, yeah, maybe so. And then you go to the doc, you're like, I want the Zarelta Nerelta thing with I just saw that's what it is. When you see an app like you shouldn't just be like oh there's this new app that looks so cool. I want to figure out a way to make my life work with it. It should be like I have this problem that I've identified is actually looked at why we have this thing. Like you know, we send invoices every day. Well why, why you do that? Well because, you know, we've always been using Quicken or whatever. It's like, well, half of your clients are paying with Zelle so why are you using, you know. Yeah, let's you figure out why you're doing it. Then you can look for a tool to fix your problem, but don't find a tool that fixes a problem you don't have.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, there's so many times I like when I'm talking to somebody about automation building out an automation for their company. They were like, well, what can I automate? Well, what problem do you have? Like, like what, what are we trying to solve here? Because like I have a list of a hundred different automations that we built out for one CRM or one fsm. But if none of those are problems that you have, then we're just automating to automate and there's we're not actually solving a problem and then there's no value in it. And so now it becomes another job, another task for somebody else to do that's not actually moving the needle any further along.

[Ari Meisel]

Correct. Tr.

[Tersh Blissett]

So oh, inside of Replaceable. You mentioned Evernote earlier and Inside Replaceable Founder, I believe that you mentioned a couple of those apps, at least in the audio version of it. It could be replaceable, might be less doing. I don't know, man. Honestly, I've listened to them all and I get them confused. I mix them up sometimes. But in one of your books, or there's a couple of apps and you're very adamant, like, hey, like, this isn't referral, this isn't affiliate marketing type stuff. I, I, this is just an app that I use. And some of those apps, how do you like there? There's some of them that are honestly just, they've fallen on the way by the wayside, and there's a couple of them where it's like, oh, man, this thing used to be pretty good, but now I'm, like, struggling because there's probably another app that keeps up with it. How are you dealing with that?

[Ari Meisel]

Do you have anything?

[Tersh Blissett]

Not Ralph's off my head? I, I did a while back, and it, it was actually, and it was whenever you were talking about getting a, a va and it was one of the VA companies, I don't even think they were in business anymore or something.

[Ari Meisel]

I don't know, virtual or something like that. Yeah. So Fancy Hands was a big one that I had recommended at the time, but their quality just got so, so bad at some point. Yeah, it happens. It happens a lot. And it's funny because when I wrote the first book, I had all these tools and apps in it, and then in the second version of the book, I tried to not do that because I wanted to be more timeless. And nowadays, like, the pace of app development and it's just so crazy. I mean, while we've been talking, I have something running in the background, building two apps for me right now, you know, which is, like, ridiculous. So I'm gonna get off this call, be able to beta test my app that I came up with, you know, before I got covered in my son's shit. Sorry. So the, actually, so I built a voice agent to be able to interact with Trello, so it can tell me what, what's, what's on a card, what's the latest update, and then I can update it with my voice. It's something that, that is cool. The more I think the future is voice in a lot of ways. Like, there's so much more that we can do with voice. One of the things now I think is a huge litmus test, right. Is how much AI and how good the AI is so like Evernote, which, you know, everyone knows me for writing about Evernote for so many years. Their AI sucks. Like, I haven't used Evernote in a long, long time, and it just doesn't work right. So now, for the most part, when I find new links and things like that, actually now I've been using MEM AI, which is really good, but otherwise, I've basically just been capturing them to a specific ChatGPT chat. Because again, it's not like, oh, I gotta remember to try out this app. It's more like, when the time comes that this problem may or may not arise, I want to know, like, an app that I had found that had some decent stuff to it. But even so, the other thing now with all the LLMs, is that you don't need to know in advance what it is because now you can be like, what's the best app to do this thing today? So I just got my first call client from ChatGPT last week. This guy signed up and I said, how'd you find out about me? And usually, I mean, the answer is like, oh, I've been following you stuff for a long time. I read your books and this like, that's. Bill said this guy was like. A couple weeks ago, my partner and I asked Chat, like, who would be a good coach to help us get through this particular phase in the business. And three people came up. You were one of them, and we liked your stuff. Like, cool. Okay, that's cool. So today, if I'm going to say, like, I use lovable.dev to build websites, but what's the best website AI builder today, it might be like, hey, you know, lovable is the best one you got right now. Or lovable is good, but you should try this, this and that. So Seth Godin, you know, the great marketing guy, a long time ago, he said, anything worth remembering is worth Googling. So, like, it's not. You know, there's certain things that we should be using our brain for and certain things that we shouldn't.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah. And so can you. Okay, so we are. We're out of time. But can you really hit. Hit quickly on external brain?

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. So the human brain is great for. For coming up with ideas, is really bad at holding onto them. So you need to have an external brain of some sort. You already gave an example, right? You do that screenshot. It tells you what's going on, and you can do something with that. So you need to have a way of capturing ideas anywhere. And every time you have one so screenshot on the phone is really one anytime I, you know, one of these Alexa. So right. So like I can say Alexa, add this thing to my to do list. It'll put it in. So all this stuff goes into a Trello card. It makes its own Trello card for me. And then at the end of the night, usually it's part of my like night routine. I can go through Trello and I can sort things like this is something that I want to send to a va, this is something I need to buy, this is something I want to read. This is a big project and you break down so on and so forth. So being capturing those ideas anywhere at any time and voice is a great way to do that. I can leave a carbon voice message and that turns into a Trello card, you know, so never, never. It's not that you shouldn't use your brain, but it's like you shouldn't be relying on that. And, and especially entrepreneurs, we have ideas all the time, all day.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah. Every time you run into an issue you're like, we should do this instead. And then you get back to the office and you're like, what was it that I was thinking about? We were dealing and, and so how long. So this is the, the thing that I get, this is the roadblock I get most often I'll do a presentation, I'll talk about all these amazing eyes and this, this automations that we've done and you know, we're doing 200,000 zaps a month and they're like, they're like how do I get started? Like, and how long did it take you to get the like. Well, we've been using Zapier for as long as Zapier has been around almost. And so like that's why we have so many because we literally were like, hey, this is a problem to solve it with this automation. And to the point where I don't remember majority of the automations that we do and I started building custom GPTs for the same reason. But what do you say to someone when they're just getting started with automations in general and they're like, hey.

[Ari Meisel]

How.

[Tersh Blissett]

Long is this going to take? Because you literally, you spoke about the checkbook and the bill pay, like this is the very first time that I ever met you in person. You said this has been a long time ago now. I think we both had a full set of hair. Had a hair then. But no, I'm just kidding. It's been a long time in my.

[Ari Meisel]

20 TV life that I have hair. Same.

[Tersh Blissett]

But honestly, people, you were talking about bill pay and how much time it saves. But then the roadblock is, well, how much time did it take to set up?

[Ari Meisel]

Yeah. So there's a few different ways to turn off and I'll try to make it quick. First one is you shouldn't be thinking about that necessarily. I mean, within reason. If it's going to take you three hours to save three minutes, don't do that. But automation and optimization is a muscle. So if you, if you spend some time automating something, even if that the ROI on that specific task might not be there, I promise you that that skill is transferable and it will come up later. Later, right. So while if you're spending time with Zapier and like, oh, now I have to go research how to use this tool and that tool, and at the end of the day I save 20 seconds, like, yeah, but now you know how to use this tool and that tool is Zapier. So something else might come up and you can really use that and be like, huh, what if I did that here? The thing is, is that don't start with some very, very big, complex project or process. Right. So don't start with like your customer onboarding or your hiring process. You could, but those are complex and you're not going to, you're going to spend a lot of time and not necessarily even know what you should be automating. Properly think of the really small tasks and there's two things to think about. One is the word every. I've said. You've heard me say this before. Anytime you hear the word every, like every time we get a new job, every time a customer complains, every time they see a new review on Google, the word every tells you that this is repeatable. It's repetitive, rather. So if it's repetitive, you probably can automate all of it. And if you can't do all of it, I guarantee you can do something of it. That's a really great place to start. And those are the small things, and those are the things that might take one or two minutes every time, but they're adding up to, you know, hours and hours. And then the other one is think less sometimes about automating tasks and more about automating decisions, because those are the things that really have a heavy cognitive load. So something really simple, you know, do we take jobs in this zip code? Yes or no? It's not like it's right over the line there. I mean, no, just settle. Okay, then change the line. But just those are the kinds of things where. Actually that's a really good example because that's kind of thing where somebody in the office has a process and they're like, ah, but it's so close. And then they call the boss like, hey, I just want to ask you if, like, maybe we can take this job. Boss isn't available. So now two hours later, the boss is like, oh, yeah, we can take that job. And they come back when the client's already gotten somebody else. Do it right, have a rule in place, automate those decisions. The things that would ordinarily require bandwidth and mental cognitive load that you just don't have.

[Tersh Blissett]

Yeah, that's. That's sums it up in, in right there. Mic drop. How can people connect with you to learn more, grow using?

[Ari Meisel]

Best way is talk to ari dot com. Just get on there and it explains how to get on carboys. And it's me. It's not a va. It's not automation. Asking a question. Tell me where you're at with the business. I love hearing about, I love helping people with that kind of stuff and I, I truly do mean that. Reach out.

[Tersh Blissett]

Absolutely. Cool, man. I appreciate it. As always. It's always fun talking to you and we could talk for Dave on this stuff. So if anybody has any questions at all, do not hesitate to reach out to Ari. He is a wealth of knowledge. Make sure you're following him on all, all the platforms. Tik Tok and, and LinkedIn. He does a lot of writing on LinkedIn as well. So with that being said, I hope you have a wonderful and safe week. Oh, don't forget to get on the email list too. And let's doing dot com. Let's doing dot com. All right, cool. Appreciate you, buddy. We'll see you later.

[Ari Meisel]

Thank you.

[Podcast Outro Narrator]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don't forget to subscribe to the show, leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit servicebusinessmastery.com to learn more.