Susan
More to marketing. Welcome to more to marketing. The podcaster explores marketing, product and everything in between. I’m your host for today, Susan, and we are talking about no code revolution. Now. What is this? It’s how to automate. Business without coding. I find this a really interesting topic. I’ve always been a bit scared of coding myself and how much. Involved. So today I’ve brought on a really special guest. I’m thrilled to be able to bring here right now, Michael Greenberg, a pioneering voice in digital transformation and automation. As the founder of Third Brain Digital, Michael has dedicated his career to helping businesses streamline operations and maximise efficiencies. Through cutting edge tools including AI and no code technology. With a passion for enabling businesses to do more while spending less, Michael has a wealth of experience in leveraging no code solutions to drive impactful changes without the need for a traditional programming capability coming in, which is amazing. So today he’ll be sharing his insights on the no code. Revolution and how businesses can actually automate their processes. And it’s not that scary and be able to unlock some new levels of productivity and growth. So welcome Michael.
Michael
Thanks for having me on today.
Susan
I’m so excited to have you. Please tell me a bit more about your journey and about how you came about with this gap in market that you saw for the no code revolution.
Michael
Yeah, absolutely. So I think this really all came about. Because over the past few years, I’ve been. Working in marketing operations and in business operations, deploying different technology solutions to business problems. And along the way I realised that sort of the biggest thing everyone got wrong. Was. They weren’t stepping back and figuring out what was actually possible today. So. That wasn’t something you could sell someone. And about two years ago, this thing called ChatGPT took the world by storm. And that that gave people a reason to actually listen. And so it comes down to this. You know that AI can help you cut costs and improve efficiency, but you don’t know where to start. And so we’ve developed a framework. For doing that and then using no code tools and other off the shelf technology in order to. Automate. And build consistency in your business.
Susan
I love that it’s. About the consistency, because it’s one of the things that. At being an human, we make mistakes, or we may change things and not realise the impact of it. So having a tool that helps you with that consistency, I I really can see how that can help with the productivity and also with potential cost cuttings and other efficiencies as well.
Michael
Yep. And that’s sort of. The way I like to think about it. That’s the starting point. We have to document the way something is done so that way we can figure out what parts we can automate, what parts we can hand off to AI, what tools we have to put together in what ways. That allows us to build consistency through documentation. And then when we put everything together and integrate it, we can build more clarity because people are doing things the same way we can measure them the same way and that lets us build more error detection and stuff like that. And then finally. We see that automation sort of snowball. As you start to automate these little 5 minute copy paste tasks, that sort of stuff. And that turns into new capacity for your team. And ultimately, cash in your pocket.
Susan
I think one of the the scary things for a lot of team members. When it comes to thinking about automation, they forget about the new capacity. They may have to do things that they’ve put off for so long, so they haven’t had the time to do it, or the luxury to do it. They have that fear factor that goes in going and being replaced. They’re not seeing it as like a third arm for themselves. That in some ways they can control and train how they want to do things their way, but it gets automated for them. Have you experienced that a lot?
Michael
Ohh yeah, I’ve actually got a little like talk that I call flow charts without fear how to document processes without people thinking they’re getting fired and. It really just comes down to. Showing them the proof. And taking it slow to actually understand what they do and explaining how they can’t be replaced. Think that last one really makes the biggest difference. It’s like ohh. A human has to do that. You have to be the one to do that. Nobody else understands that thing except you. We don’t mention.
Susan
OK.
Michael
That once they’ve done that 1000 times in the new system, we can train an. AI to replace? Them.
Susan
Don’t say that. Definitely don’t share that.
Michael
Part right, that part, that part just goes to the C. Yeah.
Susan
Well, you also want to make sure that your business has that human element to it as well, because humans love to still interact with humans, no matter how frustrating it may be in some cases, but we do prefer the human interactions and that seems to be the majority of people do feel that way and majority of situations.
Michael
Ohh yeah, and in general we just don’t recommend like AI solutions for customer facing roles. There’s a lot of legal questions that come with that sort of thing and. There is too much error potential when. For a thousand 2000 bucks a month, you can have a human sit in front of that, and that’s totally worth it.
Susan
Now with the no code revolution, what are some of the big game changing pieces that you’ve seen? So you’ve mentioned ChatGPT myself, I love right? Sonic is one of my favourite tools. What? What other?
Susan
No codes. Have you seen come in that have really made a difference to the everyday person like me who is definitely not a programmer?
Michael
Yeah. So I think the. The biggest in the game right now is a company called Zapier. And they are sort of the. The first stop for automation they are I think the easiest platform to get started with. They have the most options in terms of tools they integrate with. And they are rapidly developing their tech now as sort of the races on. Yeah, so to speak. The the next level up, sort of the slightly more advanced and I think a little easier to use for some of the more fancy or complex stuff is a make.com.
Michael
And so I first started using make because they were really the automation platform of choice for click up, but I’ve since found that I prefer make for most of my automation needs. I just like the interface a little more.
Susan
That does make a difference if you’re using it all the time.
Michael
Oh yeah, it’s it’s got much more of like, a workflow where you can see sort of how everything goes instead of step by step like Zapier.
Susan
Yeah, I I I personally prefer more workflow views because if it also has that other layer of how it connects the timings and any of those other visuals that help you know where the journey is going, I think that is more useful because then it’s got more detail in there as well. And you can actually see what will impact what.
Michael
Yep.
Susan
In a better view, that’s my personal view anyway.
Michael
Ohh same that’s that’s why I prefer bake.
Susan
That’s one of the things my team can talk to you about. One day’s flow charts. I love them, but they need to have that added layer of detail.
Michael
Yep, where we use flow charts and colour coding and swim lanes and all sorts of stuff when we’re putting them together to make sure we effectively communicate what we want.
Susan
Definitely it. And I love that your first step is the documentation of the human process, because starting there, then you can actually see what’s where you could automate. Because a lot of businesses will probably don’t know where to even start, they’ll be thinking, wow, this is just so. Thing I I don’t even know where to to begin, so having that starting place with the documentation I think is core because not only then do you understand your business a bit better, you understand the processes and how they interconnect. And then you can. I’m assuming you’re saying start small, so start with some of those smaller 5 minute ones where you can say 5 minutes here or there and then build it out. Is that how you’ve seen them start?
Michael
No, not not really. So at least with us, we are generally leading some sort of transformation. So there’s like a business goal. We are trying to unlock by doing this work.
What?
Michael
And so we come in and we’ll do generally like a company or department level audit and say, OK, we know your whole sales and marketing and customer support team.
Home.
Michael
That like whole chain of the customer journey is only at a level 2. And we have this five level framework where level 1 is everything’s in data silos and level 5 is fully AI automation. And most people are at like level 2 or level 2 1/2 and then sometimes Level 3, which is a unified data layer and so. We’re going to map everything out and then we’re going to say hey. We need to get sales, marketing and all of your customer data. Anyone who touches that chain, we need to get everything to Level 3 in there. So that way we have a full picture of the customer on hand. And then that’s going to allow us to use AI to send thousands of outreach every month, and that’s going to allow us to move our sales team offshore and that’s going to allow us to unlock all these other things.
Susan
Yeah, I I I can see how that is very powerful using as part of the transformation of the business to their next step. So the big step change that they’re looking at doing, which is consolidating costs, improving efficiencies, making sure their processes. Are really secure and locked down and most importantly, the data being sure that data is centralised. I find that a lot of companies still have a lot of these centralised data sources where they haven’t actually got a centralised pool which I find. And. I I don’t know these days. It’s so easy to have one data set. I don’t know why that so many companies have still got the more low for the place because it makes more sense and it’s usually cheaper and safer to have it all together and you can put it into categories and security it down. So I’m I’m still so surprised that so many people. Lack doing that. How would you go about making sure that people came on the journey and felt safe? So you talked about bringing them in and talking about your your fantastic flow chart. Discussion that you can do, but how else do you go about talking to even the C suites? Make sure they understand how important no code could be for them and the benefits. That they could see.
Michael
Yeah. So. C-Suite doesn’t care about no code. That’s like. That’s the start and end of it. At the end of the day. An executive cares about automation. They care about work done. They care about ohh. It cost a 10th the amount to build this type of project. Now because we can use some no code tool to do it instead of hiring a developer. But they don’t care about like the change in product design. And that’s really what no code is, is it’s just like ohh there’s a lot of things that you never needed to be able to touch if you weren’t a developer and now you can touch a lot of those things with like a drag and drop interface. And so. Like the executive, they don’t really care that that happened. They care about the secondary effects. And so for them it’s not. Oh, Zapier is going to allow us to do no code automation. It’s oh, we use Zapier to automate our customer onboarding. So now. We don’t have to spend a day in putting everything every time.
Susan
And I suppose it’s the only thing they really now care about is that new capacity they’ve unlocked and what they can do with it.
Michael
Exactly. If they can take on another 2 customers without having to hire somebody, that can be a, you know, massive gain.
Susan
Exactly. I love that. Now I know we’ve spoken about a whole pile of different things where even like I don’t know a lot about this. That’s why I’ve got you here. I’m loving this conversation. But what are some other misconceptions about no code that you’ve encountered, particularly like the the scepticism? I never say that word around it. Are you able to debug a little bit of that and share some of those misconceptions?
Michael
Yeah, I think they breakdown into two categories. 1 is that you don’t need to know anything about technology or coding in order to use no code well. And fundamentally, like the technology hasn’t changed. It’s just the interface has changed that we interact with it with. And so a coder using no code tools is more effective than somebody who knows nothing about code. Having an engineers mindset or having a process mindset understanding what an API is. These are all things that allow you to use the existing tools better. And so that’s like Part 1 is that yes. Anyone can pick them up and use them, but to get like everything out of them, you still kind of need to. Know how to code. And then the other sort of the other side is that they aren’t useful at all. It’s very common that like coders will say, oh, no codes, useless. There’s no, you know, you can just write a script that does that. Yeah, if you know how to code, you can do that if you know how to ask Claude or Cat ChatGPT, you can do that, but Claude and ChatGPT can’t deploy that code for you, and so you’re still gonna end up at a back at a no code solution to copy paste the code wherever you need to put it. And. They’re really useful for allowing more people to be able to do this sort of work.
Susan
I think also that entry level as well where you might not have gone to some kind of university. Or institution to learn coding, but you can get some hands on experience and Start learning. From the bottom up. So I think that’s and I think that’s where if you’ve got the mindset more of the engineer about the behind the scenes, how that helps you as well. So even though many of us are beginners, it’s a starting point. And then if we open our minds up to.
Michael
Absolutely.
Susan
How? It could be and learning from. Engineers and other people who are a lot smarter when it comes to that type of thought wave, we can all grow together to make it even more important and more useful for our businesses.
Michael
Yep. I would, I would even say, like I’ve seen a lot of success with. People who are coming from, like executive assistant to virtual assistant backgrounds, often had to pick up a little bit of these tools along the way, and then they are able to take that on much more quickly than somebody who’s doesn’t have that process or a systems mindset.
Susan
What other kind of success stories have you seen implementing the NO code automation with the businesses you’ve helped? Or other case studies you’ve heard of?
Michael
Yeah. So. Just as a like rule of thumb, when you implement an automation, it generally takes between 9 and 15 months for that automation to start producing a positive return on investment. So like most automations, we build return. In that 10 to 15%. A month. Uh. So that’s like. That’s general rule now. In specific, we have. Seeding like big examples where somebody might be doing meeting notes or listening to like podcast transcripts for content creation, and we can cut that out and that might save somebody hours. We’ve taken like data entry, taking receipts and then putting them into a spreadsheet. And we might take that from, oh, somebody has to read every receipt to, oh, you just take a photo and you upload it to Google Drive and then an AI pulls it all out and enters it. And that might save somebody, you know, six hours every day. And so those are like the extreme examples. But on average it’s. So you don’t have to copy paste anymore. I like to talk about it as getting out of copy paste hell. That’s like the big win.
Susan
And particularly if you forget to actually copy the next one and you’ve copied the last one and you don’t realise you’ve done that mistake, you missed the whole line. It’s human error. It’s it’s really that. Removing that element of human error that can really distract a lot of your data processing.
Michael
Ohh yeah, and that’s like, you know, nobody has perfectly clean data in their CRM because. They’ve never had anyone actually keep it up to date.
Susan
Yeah, I I completely agree. And I think that the other layer with automation and having your own agent potentially is. But over time, once you train them because they are trainable and you can then get them to go out and saw some of this and then put it for you and inform you when they’ve done it. So I’ve I’ve seen some of those which look absolutely amazing, no idea where to start, but they look fantastic. Be able to help businesses. To be able to achieve certain goals like I can really see that working well for sales channels.
Michael
Yeah, I think we’re probably again going back to that, like don’t know customer facing kind of stuff what most.
Susan
Ohh yeah, I’m thinking more like scraping kind of kind of things and getting info for you.
Michael
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like scraping tools, that sort of thing. Very useful. Even now we see it. Uh. Lead response process is a really popular 1, so somebody submits a form that then gets enriched by scraping some other sources and allows them to write a personalised response and they have it take like 5 to 10 minutes. So it looks like a human took a little time and researched all that immediately and then sent it. And it’s a it’s just a really good way to convert those leads that are coming in inbound.
Susan
I think as I mentioned, I love right Sonic and one of the things I love about that particular tool is. Blog writing and being able to have. I actually prefer this one to ChatGPT because I find that it’s more rich in putting more academic research within it that’s accurate and makes complete sense within the context of what you’re creating as well. Plus, it’s now starting to do. A little bit more. When you’re talking about web searching to bring in more rich information too. So I find that 1A. Really good source of. Saving me and other people I know a huge amount of time to write articles instead of spending six hours researching and writing a really good rich blog.
Susan
We’re now able to do it in a tiny fraction of the time and just spend time humanising it to our own tones.
Michael
Yeah, absolutely. Have you used a perplexity?
Susan
No, I haven’t used that one.
Michael
Really great research tool.
Susan
I’ve written that one down. I’ll check that one out too. Thanks for the tip.
Michael
Yeah.
Susan
Now one of the the biggest concerns I did mention it earlier when it comes to automation and no code companies need to really address security and data compliance issues, particularly when you have a richer amount of customer data and all the different codes and practises that come in around the world. What have you seen about this and how should people? Approach it as well.
Michael
Yeah. I think you have to choose your technology to match the level of data security you need. I. AM. That. Is normally a step people skip over.
Susan
Yeah, I find.
Michael
Like going back to the audit thing where so we got to map out how everything’s done and where all the data goes. It’s like, oh. People don’t often realise where data is actually going and passing through, and that’s that’s a big part of what we do. Where ohh if you’re in the US and you manage like financial data, you might need SoC 2 compliance and if you are doing health information you need HIPAA compliance and there might only be one platform. That does the. Thing you want that also has that compliance certification.
Susan
Yes. And I think I agree with you. I think that’s something that is missed, I think also. People forget that if they put information into open source. Tools like ChatGPT that aren’t locked down, that there may be data concerns that happen there. Are you able to describe a bit more about why people shouldn’t be putting certain information that might be IP sensitive into open source tools like ChatGPT. That’s just one example I know.
Michael
Yeah. So I just want to clarify a little bit of terminology, an open source tool generally means the code is open and ChatGPT is specifically not open source. OK, so like an open source tool, you could self host and you would use that to prevent this exact problem. Where you would own all the data because you would be hosting it yourself, you would have the servers, whereas ChatGPT you don’t have the servers, it is closed source and in that case like they will sell you an enterprise plan for.
Susan
I think.
Michael
How at $2000 a month or whatever. And then at that plan, they will not use your data for any other purposes and they have a little on their pro plan. You can hit the button where it says, hey, don’t use my data for training. But. Those are the sorts of things that you need to actually choose and like consciously make those decisions in order to lock your data down.
Susan
So it’s the opposite. Way around that I thought it was. That’s good to know. Because.
Michael
Yeah, it’s open. AI is closed source. They they went the opposite direction of where they started.
Susan
Ohh no wonder I got confused. See it’s so easy to get these terminologies wrong when they’ve changed how they originally positioned themselves and that’s what you thought they still were. So thank you for clarifying.
Michael
That’s exactly so right now, like Facebook Meta with their llama models, is actually the open source leader in most cases.
Susan
Interesting.
Michael
So like llama, you can download right off the Internet and then you can go post it on your own computer.
Susan
I think that’s the most important thing for everyone to realise is hosting means owning, which means therefore your data. Is going to be safer. Yep. So I think that’s my my clear take out there for sure. Thank you for clarifying. So I’m so glad I got you here.
Michael
Absolutely.
Susan
Now. What is your final tip of advice for someone starting out after they’ve done all their documentation? What would be your key? Three things that you would tell someone to do?
Michael
Start with data automation. So it really goes back to getting out of getting out of copy Paste Hill.
You want to.
Michael
Focus on these things where you’re not necessarily losing time to like big thinking and creative work. You’re losing the time to little manual tasks because you want to streamline the workflow.
Michael
And then once you’ve streamlined the workflow. You can go back over and build some more complex systems, but like when we come in, we have a whole team we can say ohh, we’re going to go do this whole thing at once. You’re not in that position and so you need to focus first on the things where you can make small wins and build moment. Print them and smooth out your own workflow and then you can come back through and be like Oh well, if I combine this API with this automation and send it through ChatGPT in this way then that creates this other thing and that saves us six hours. That’s not apparent right off the bat.
Susan
And starting with the data means then you know your data. Is going to have high quality.
Michael
Exactly.
Susan
So then you know anything. You build off. It should be accurate to.
Michael
Saves you a lot of time in.
Susan
The long run. Oh, yeah, I can. I can. Totally appreciate that. And what would be what would be your next step that you’d do straight after that? So would it be so you’ve you’ve sorted out some of your more mundane tasks that you can remove that copy and paste hell.
Excellent.
Susan
What would be the next ones you’d look at? Would it be going focusing on the sales and marketing channels or would you look more operations?
Michael
So that’s a business specific question.
Susan
So the businesses.
Michael
And really, in every case this is.
Susan
Then need to decide.
Michael
Business specific. If we go in and we see ohh, this is where the biggest opportunity is. That’s where we’re going to focus first. And often that is in some sort of customer focused thing because that’s where we make monies from our customers. But sometimes that’s ohh accounting just never has their numbers done on time. And so we’re always blind going into the next month, let’s fix accounting. So we have some clarity.
Susan
And that’s where I could see it being very powerful is helping you do those more complicated forecasts. That some businesses may not have the resources or time to do it could be set up to start with and then it can just not control it, but it can update it for you so you can actually then do better modelling as well.
Michael
Yeah, sure.
Susan
There’s there’s so many things that you can do once you’ve set up all these no codes and have the data right to start with. I’m really excited. I know you’re excited about this, but what excites you most about the ability for no code?
Michael
UM. I think there’s a lot of people who are intimidated, intimidated by the idea of writing code, who understand how to communicate product ideas well enough that some machine can build them, or that they’ll be able to build them themselves. And so we’re just going to see so much more software created.
Susan
I do and I think that interface is the key, isn’t it? Making it so it’s almost like a I don’t know, using word that you can more easily find things and it feels natural and not so foreign. Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Well, I’ve got one final question. I ask all my guests. What brand? Any brand in the world best represents you and why?
Michael
Oh. I’m going to go with Costco. Nice, great value.
Susan
Tell me more. I need to know more.
Michael
I I think I I am a great value buy.
Susan
You definitely are with all your knowledge that you’ve got and everything that you share. You are amazing. Thank you. But I put you more premium than Costco.
Michael
Uh, I I think cost goes pretty high up there, but I I understand it the premium end of the warehouse market is not uh, not the premium of the overall.
Susan
Thank you so much. I’m gonna do a quick wrap up. So we’ve been so lucky today to be able to talk to an absolute expert in no code and automation how to actually bring it about to business because he’s done that for many, many, many, many businesses and seen the changes himself. So some of the things that I really got out of today. Is that it’s not. Don’t be afraid of starting and looking at the journey of no code and how automation can help you or your business. Because it really is just stepping back, looking at your business as a whole, documenting all the processes and seeing where, even if you’re thinking about more the lean 6 Sigma type of way of looking at it, where can you get efficiencies, where can you reduce that wastage? What can you do that can help your team to get more time? Back in their day to do those tasks that are more meaningful for your business and start with getting rid of some of those more mundane. Boring repeat processes that are like copy and paste that you can actually start streamlining them. So with that documentation of all the processes, you can then look and see when your capacity can be opened up by bringing in some small steps or if you can, a big transformation project we can transform all your business at the one time. Now some of the fantastic benefits of using no code and automation. I love that it can do error detection apart from the whole saving time, opening capacity, cost, efficiencies, all of those fantastic things. It really does help with that error detection in all different facets of your business. So imagine your risk assessment being reduced or your financial books looking even cleaner because you know there’s no errors in there and they can actually forecast it even easier. Or you for five or ten years, or whatever it might be. That’s where the magic can really come in. And as part of your documentation. It also helps. You audit what your business is doing and seeing where the opportunities can lie too. Is it the sales area? Is it marketing? Is it HR? Is it finance? That’s a business decision. But at the same time when you’re auditing, check out where your data is. Really it should be in one centralised location, because that’s where the key is to truly successful no code and automation is having a centralised source of data. If you don’t have that to start with, it’s not going to be the best experience because you’re gonna have to keep going back and trying to figure **** out. And that’s not good for anyone. So data together, making sure it’s one source will make your life easier. I can’t stress that enough. Now there are many tools out there that you can utilise some of the ones we heard about today in zappiachatgptmake.com, even perplexity. These are all different tools that you can look at and see what makes sense. But always look at your data to choose a platform or tools to see what fits your business purpose and see if you need to host it yourself or you’re happy to be out in a closed source, not an open source. We learned that today so that it can help you and your business. Now there are many misconceptions out there. About how hard this may be. But really, it’s about having a mindset similar or at least open to the thought of how processes are done by engineers or product managers in that process steps. Because if you’re open to those type of thoughts or a new way of thinking with your mindset, you’re going to be more successful in using these codes tools. The no code tools. Because of just how it’s inherently built from that tech, but made to be user friendly with the new interface. So anyone can use them, which is fantastic. But if you do have that natural mindset of systems. Or engineering, you’re going to be a. Little bit more. Successful and then something everyone can learn overtime as well, because let’s face it, we always need to learn new technologies and this gives us an opportunity to do one that will help everyone in different ways. Now how can? This automation and no code help you and your business. Some stats we heard about is it can actually help you by 5 to 10% every month to open capabilities and capacities. That’s huge. There could be a whole new project, a whole new revenue stream, a whole new whatever it’s worth. Exploring. But remember, automation and no code isn’t something that happens overnight. Well, the process might that they’re reaping the rewards over time can take up to 9 to 15 months, so make sure you plan that as well as part of your processing. But if you’re staying this from scratch. Let’s First off, get that data right and let’s try and remove all this copy and paste from hell. Start with some of those processes that are manual, tedious and can be easily streamlined, and then when you add in other chunkier types of programmes and projects that are built off that data, you’re more likely to have. Exists because the data will be nice and clean and therefore you won’t have that error issue coming through. Have I missed anything, Michael?
Michael
I think that’s everything. Great summary.
Susan
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciated it. Is there any final thing that you’d like everyone to remember before you jump off?
Michael
Keep automating.
Susan
So true. Thank you again, Michael. And don’t forget everyone. You can follow Michael on LinkedIn if you need a transformation project done with no code and automation. His team is available. So do reach out and let him know. I’ll Add all his details to the show notes. Don’t forget also to add more to marketing to your playlist so you don’t miss out on future fabulous. Guests. More to marketing.
