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Real business owners. Real bottlenecks. Fixed on camera.
Each week Paul sits down with a guest who's stuck — in manual work, disconnected tools, or processes their business has outgrown. They diagnose it live, map the fix, and start building. No theory, no fluff, no generic AI takes. Just the exact solution Paul would build for a paying client, handed over for free on camera.
Every episode is a case study your ICP can't stop watching — because it's their business on the screen.
PAUL KORTMAN
(00:00):
No, my company is too unique. What we do is so special.
OKANA GRAHAM
(00:04):
Yes, you might be unique, but fundamentally it's just moving something from one place to the other when something happens.
CARLOS GALINDO
(00:13):
It can seem impossible to automate or augmentate anything.
PAUL KORTMAN
(00:19):
Three experts here, three opinions, one problem. Every business has inefficient processes, limited hours, and technology that really isn't pulling its weight. This is Connex the Dots, where real problems meet real solutions used by real businesses. So I'm Paul Kortman. Let's connect some dots. Hey, welcome back to Connex the Dots. Every prospect who walks in says very similar to the exact same thing, "My business is different. It's unique. We do things our own way. You can't just hand me some template." And then in the same breath, they send me their software list and expect me to automate the entire world's operation off of it. So Google Docs, Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, et cetera, et cetera. So what is your actual workflow? Are you actually too unique for this or is it too simple or are you just hoping I say yes without doing the actual work? So Okana, we'll start off with you.
(01:30):
Have you had clients say, "Oh, I don't need any automation," or the flip of that, "This automation should just be really simple. Just turn it on," right?
OKANA GRAHAM
(01:41):
Well, a little bit of both. Sometimes they don't know what they don't know, and then I started speaking and then I'll say, "Hey, you can do this." Or I would say, "I use it in this way," and then it turns on a little light bulb for them to say, "Hey, oh, I could do this." And then they're off to the races. What about you, Carlos?
CARLOS GALINDO
(02:01):
Actually, I was thinking about couple times where across a team, there's some people bring over the automation idea or the automation concept into the business, and some team members can be reluctant to even approach the implementation of automation. So yeah, it's definitely something that happens.
PAUL KORTMAN
(02:30):
It's funny. You would think that we get a normal deviation or normal kind of spread of this, but I find people are either in one of three camps, the camp of they're realistic, they understand, we just need some help in getting this built for us, or they're in camp on the far one side where it's just like, why can't we just turn this on? I mean, everybody uses this platform and they use that platform. Can't we just turn on sync? And then I have the third audience who's like, no, no, we have to have a human here doing all of this because it's so special and in this situation we have to do it that way and in this situation we have to do it this way. And so we need that person to be able to validate and verify every single time this runs.
OKANA GRAHAM
(03:25):
They might not even understand what they're trying to achieve. So they might have an idea in their head and they'll say, oh, sync this with that, but they don't know 20 different things that could possibly happen in the backend. For example, our good friends of two way sync, when you say, hey, to sync this with this, then let that run. And then you consume 10,000 operations on a platform or something because you might start saying, Hey, why is this taking so long? I'm like, okay, I have to handle this scenario in case this happens, in case that happens, in case this happens. And then before you know it, we're working for 10 hours.
PAUL KORTMAN
(04:09):
So what would you say to a client or a company or somebody listening right now if they said, no, my company is too unique. What we do is so special, our workflows, our business processes, it's so unique every time we get a phone call, every time we have an email, every time we have an order, it's so unique. There's so many variables at play. What would be your answer to them?
OKANA GRAHAM
(04:38):
I would say yes, you might be unique, but fundamentally it's just moving something from one place to the other when something happens. So you in your normal business procedures, you're doing something when something happens, and that's a very basic understanding of what an automation is. So we just have to key in on, okay, when are we allowed to do this in your business or when does this happen? So we just break it down to that basic level of moving data from this location to the other at a particular time. We find what that time is according to your business practice.
CARLOS GALINDO
(05:19):
Right. Yeah. I think also when that kind of sentiment or that kind of response or - Hesitation? Yeah, when that hesitation is there, I think sometimes it's useful to frame this kind of work, not as just automation to where maybe the person with that opinion is thinking about, oh, automation means that nobody nor me nor anyone's going to do nothing and then things are going to happen. But to frame it into a smaller things that can agilize their processes or just augment the capabilities the company or the organization has, a lot of it is moving data or triggering events in one place and having them show up in another place.
OKANA GRAHAM
(06:20):
For me personally, when I'm working with clients, the unique thing is your internal terminology. So there might be certain basic concepts that are understood, but then you might have a particular name for something that another company calls something else. I just need to understand that as long as I can get that basic understanding of, okay, you function in this way, that's the name that you call that thing, but in the backend and, oh, that's just this, then I can work with that because again, it's just basically moving information from one place to the other. How do we trigger? Is it going to be automated? Is it going to be a push of a button? And even if you are okay with that, because it might be a case where they might want everything to be automated without them initiating it manually. It depends on what they're okay with.
(07:11):
But what might be unique though is the software you're using because we all know there are some software that are easier to play with, especially with the authentication.
PAUL KORTMAN
(07:22):
It's funny how you say play with because sometimes we talk about moving data and this and that and that sort of thing. And I know we are trying to be as generic as possible because this applies to every business, but I'm going to get really specific on a prospect that I was talking with a couple of days ago. They had a segment of their client list that they invoiced from QuickBooks and a segment of their client list that they invoiced from JobTread. So if you're not familiar with JobTread, it's basically just a project management software for construction and it has invoicing in it, yet their actual bookkeeping is done in QuickBooks and JobTread has a sync to QuickBooks, so it pushes all the invoices to QuickBooks. However, they have some clients where they want to send the invoice from QuickBooks and some clients that they want to send it from JobTread and they were like, "Oh, this is too impossible to figure out." It's actually fairly simple when you get down to it.
(08:29):
I'm keeping this as simple as possible for today's topic, but when it came down to it, it's like we have an old client list, they have stored credit cards and that sort of thing in QuickBooks, and so we still need to send them the QuickBooks invoice, but we don't like the formatting of it. We don't like how it looks, et cetera. And so we're moving all of our new projects and new clients are getting the JobTread invoice because it's just so much simpler for us. And I was like, "Perfect, that's easy. It's a defined list, and so we can set up an automation that if..." And I'm going to use some faux code in here, but basically if client ID equals this, then do it over at QuickBooks. Otherwise, if client ID doesn't exist in this list, do it at JobTread. And so that's an automation.
(09:23):
And I saw Okana nodding his head. It's like that's an automation that we could build without problems of like, okay, here's a defined
OKANA GRAHAM
(09:30):
List.
PAUL KORTMAN
(09:31):
If it's this, do this. If it's not, do that.
OKANA GRAHAM
(09:34):
I'm wondering why we would do it with the ID rather not like a tag, like a custom field on each. So on QuickBooks, if there's a field that says invoice on QuickBooks and if it doesn't exist, then invoice on the other. So it's just a tag on one field in QuickBooks, that way it's just an if else and it's done that way. So we wouldn't have to keep track of IDs because we probably... Where would we keep track of the IDs? Would it be in an external list? So if we just did a tag on QuickBooks, we run an automation, populate what we necessarily need to, and then from then on, it's just an if else. But that's just me design thinking a different way.
PAUL KORTMAN
(10:22):
So I'm going to break the third wall here and be like, "Audience, did you just realize what just happened? I had one idea on how to solve this and Okana's like," Here's a better way. Let me design that in a better way. "And the thing that I brought to the table was the client had defined it as a limited list of clients that they were keeping on an old system. And Okana was like," Well, what if you want to add another client to that at some point in time in the future? Instead of having to go and modify the list, you just add a tag in QuickBooks and now they are invoiced through QuickBooks. "And that's the kind of fun that we have here at Connex of just bantering back and forth and like," Oh, I hate this phrase, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.
(11:09):
And so don't ask me why. Well, yeah. Okay, I'll go into it. But the reason why is I was working for a nonprofit who was focused on no kill animal shelters, and so they're very, very loving to animals. And so you don't use that illustration. And I said it six times in one pitch that there's more than one way to skin a cat. And they were just like, "We love cats. We love dogs and you lost because you did that." And it's like, oh. So anyways,
(11:41):
But the concept is still there of you can do this in multiple different ways and we can make it easier and better for the human. We're always trying to figure out what that automation is that makes it as easy as possible for them instead of, okay, now you have to go to this list over here and modify that. You have to find out what the client ID is in QuickBooks and hard code it into this list. And if you put two commas in there or you didn't put a comma in the right place, now the automation will break for every invoice moving forward. So Okana's right and he has a much better design than what I came up with. I'm sure we can kick it over to Carlos and he'll be like, "You guys are both wrong. Here's a better way to do it."
CARLOS GALINDO
(12:27):
No, actually this got me thinking back to the framing of some clients or users have about automation or this kind of work where a lot of the times it can be just a lack of ideation or a lack of knowledge about certain things. Just in this case, for instance, sometimes the clients may come with that idea of their processes being too unique, so it cannot be automated because maybe for them, what they think as automation may be limited to a specific type of process, but clients having a clear view of basic concepts like, okay, things like look up lists that we can have. You can use spreadsheets to keep track of different types of records or of files or data to then be able to cross reference and do this kind of thing. Or as you were saying, concepts like a if else kind of logic to where some clients maybe may think, oh, every single invoice needs to be processed with the same thing because this or that without having the tools to think about this kind of thing where, but if you have your client list here, then there could be some logic that checks if this, then that, that kind of thing.
(14:03):
Or even things like naming conventions across a team where yeah, it's too unique because everyone comes up with some name for files every single time and only the person that does it knows where things are, that kind of thing. But yeah, I think sometimes just even stepping back from automation in terms of this trigger something and then that happens. But basically what I'm trying to get at is that maybe sometimes to get to automate this kind of super unique business process, et cetera, these things have to be in place so that then it's not that unique and then there's opportunity for automating process or augmenting.
PAUL KORTMAN
(14:56):
I'm going to throw Carlos a curve ball here and do this on the fly here. Because a client came to me and said this, so this isn't that hypothetical or a prospect I should say. So for those of you listening, Carlos and Okana, they work with clients, I work with prospects. And so they talk to me and then if they are happy, then they talk to one of these two guys. But when this prospect was talking to me, they were talking about they have
(15:25):
This information that their project managers post on WhatsApp every week. And based on that, they then issue invoices for that project. So every Monday there's an update, here's what was accomplished last week, here's the status and all of this sort of stuff. And then based on that, an invoice would be generated manually for that project from somebody else, the accounting department or whatever. Now it was actually the CEO who did that because he was managing all the client relationships. And you had said earlier in the conversation, start with the small things so that you can prime the pump for an automation. So the setup here, multiple project managers on Mondays writing in plain text, free text in a WhatsApp group this, and you know there can be all kinds of typos and weird things and how would you even generate line items from freeform text?
(16:30):
Where would you go with this, Carlos?
CARLOS GALINDO
(16:32):
Well, upon review of what the team is currently doing, because individual contributors can get into their own kind of style of... I'm thinking of this case of messaging or of posting the invoice details, but figuring out the tags that can be used to start standardizing that as in basically getting the team and it's getting multiple people to do this thing consistently. I would keep it as minimal as possible. But for instance, if any more messages other than the invoices are being sent to this channel, then I would start with probably either stopping that or creating a dedicated WhatsApp channel for the invoices where every individual message should be an invoice and probably work up from there to start using keywords like date, items, price, as simple
PAUL KORTMAN
(17:46):
As that. Okana, what would you do on this?
OKANA GRAHAM
(17:48):
Well, I had a similar scenario where a client wanted to respond to inquiries about orders from an email that does receive other emails. So I ended up using... It's on an iPaaS, so I used AI to... So I did a couple filters on the incoming email. So it filter out emails from internal persons and then send it to an AI step to evaluate whether or not this is an actual inquiry from a customer. And then I then get a Boolean back and then I send that. If it is actually an inquiry, then I use an agent to request that information. So I sanitize information and then query that information from the connected app. And so far it has been working, but that's sort of a simple scenario because they'll normally receive emails like, "Hey, what's the status of this order? Or how long would it take?" So the first step would be to evaluate the sentiment, so to speak, from the email.
(19:04):
Before it even gets to that, it does a bit of filtering to get some of the noise out. But I would do something similar. So trigger an email in WhatsApp, determine if it's a actual invoicable item, and then do a lookup. And then maybe if it cannot determine for a high probability, maybe send a message just for confirmation with a button to say what it is and then re-trigger the automation. But that's getting all the way into the details.
PAUL KORTMAN
(19:37):
Three experts here, three opinions, one problem. My potential solution that I pitched to this client was what if those project managers on Mondays filled out a form and that form posted the message to WhatsApp so that the group was informed as the status of the project, but because it's a form, we can ask specific questions and we can trigger the automation based on the form submission, not trying to guess as to which message in WhatsApp was invoiceable. So coming back to the original question that we asked, is your business too unique to automate? As you've kind of seen us walk through a couple of different scenarios here, there are multiple ways to solve it, to break it down to a smaller problem that then we can automate certain aspects of it. That's kind of my pitch and my thought and my idea there, but any other closing thoughts or examples from you guys?
(20:44):
I'll put this question out there. Have you met a business or a workflow process that is too unique to automate?
OKANA GRAHAM
(20:53):
No, I haven't. It's just still how complete can we go given their stack and their tools? How complete can we go on the automation? Is it 100%? There might be some things that might not be, but then we can do fundamentally almost anything as long as we have access to the data.
CARLOS GALINDO
(21:14):
Yep. And actually that WhatsApp example, I think illustrates the, "Oh, my business is too unique. It can’t be automated." And at the end of it, it comes to, "Have you heard of forms?" So I think a lot of the times it can be that where basically the person with that idea basically just knows the tools they've been using. And given those tools, it can seem impossible to automate or augmentate anything. But a lot of times I think it's a matter of just bringing up ideas of, as you say, a lot of these different ways of doing the same thing and just until you can land on something that they can adopt or some compromise on part of the process. And yeah, I think I'm going to take that with me. Have you heard about forms?
PAUL KORTMAN
(22:21):
Yes. So folks, bespoke doesn't mean impossible. It just means you haven't found the right pattern yet. Maybe it's forms. Maybe there's another tool in there. Subscribe, and if you've got a question of your own, hit me up on LinkedIn. We might turn it into an episode. So if you're listening to this and you want to understand more about how to practically improve the efficiencies inside your business, check out our other episodes. That's what they're here for. But if you're ready to start, reach out. We offer a no cost consultation and I'd be happy to help you.