Ep. 30: AI Tools for AEC: A Practical Guide to Getting Started

Ready to stop wondering which AI tool to use and start leveraging a clear strategy for success?

In the second part of our conversation with Kristin Kautz, FSMPS, CPSM, a leading AI Strategist for the AEC industry, we provide a practical framework to cut through the noise. Kristin challenges the common fear of AI by showing you how to lead with purpose, not tasks, and provides a clear, three-step process for adopting AI tools in your firm.

Learn how to define your 𝘄𝗵𝘆 (your firm's challenges), identify your 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 (the type of AI solution you need), and choose your 𝗵𝗼𝘄 (your best path to implementation). 

This episode is packed with powerful, real-world examples that demonstrate how to make AI a no-brainer investment, yielding a massive return in productivity.

Gain the confidence to make smart AI decisions and accelerate your firm's growth. 

𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲:

 ▪️  Motion App: https://get.usemotion.com/0mqppzcegopd 

 ▪️  Joist AI: https://www.joist.ai/ 

 ▪️  OpenAsset: https://openasset.com/blog/meet-shred-ai/ 

 ▪️  Fyxer AI: https://fyxer.ai?r=kristin51&src=REFERRAL&location=DASHBOARD&promo=REF

 ▪️  Covenant Global (for Copilot in Microsoft 365): https://covenant.global/ For inquiries, contact Melissa Swann

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 Kristin Kautz, FSMPS, CPSM:

 ▪️  Kristin’s Calendar: https://lnkd.in/eHjn7G9a

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to AEC Groundbreaking Growth
• 1:12 Overcoming Fear and Finding Your Purpose
• 6:55 The Role of Leaders in Strategic Partnerships
• 10:17 How to Get Started with AI
• 17:16 Finding the Right AI Solution
• 28:54 Case Study: A Personal AI Solution
• 35:52 The Importance of Personal Investment
• 44:31 Closing Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:25] Emily Lawrence: Hi everyone, and welcome back to AEC Groundbreaking Growth, the podcast where we talk with leaders and change makers who are shaping the future of the AEC industry. I'm your host, Emily Lawrence, here with my co-host, Jen Knox, and today we are on our second part of our special two-part conversation with someone who's not only been ahead of her curve, but is helping define where the curve goes next in AEC with AI.

[00:00:55] Jen Knox: Yeah. Kristin Kautz, partner at JAM Idea Agency, is back. We're so excited. Today is gonna, like Emily said, be focused on AI tools, this time. We heard about Kristin's story and how she found her way into AEC and AI. So, have a start off question for you, Kristin, how do you even start to think about how to leverage an AI tool within your job?

[00:01:19] Kristin Kautz: I love this question also from the last time. Just so you know, I've learned we cannot speak over each other, and I don't mean rudely speak over each other, but like the conversation I have to wait for, I can't get too excited and like jump the gun. So I'm gonna really try hard to do that. Okay?

So first of all, how do we think about AI? Um, and we'll get into the steps and how you get started. But for the two of you, I am like, this is new to y'all as well. This was not in our previous conversation. I have really been grappling with the reasons why people can't get started. Okay. It's even when I lay out the first steps or whatever, there's something that's stopping us.

So, recently did a seminar, my co-speaker asked the audience of 150 people who likes change. You know, and like no one raised their hand. So we know that's true. We know that's a foundational trait for humans that we just don't like change. Although I'm kind of excited about change, maybe I'm just the weirdo, but we don't like change.

But in our industry, the reason why firms or people don't move forward, I think there's two reasons. One, It's inertia. So the way it's always been done, we're comfortable, we're content. It's worked before. No one really understands that AI is not like just a normal technology. So there's that inertia.

The second part I wanna talk about, which goes to the thinking, aspect of your question, is fear. I am not afraid of AI. I am a techno optimist. I'm like, come on in. You know, I mean, I use it every day. But I am painfully aware that there are people who are really afraid of it, and it doesn't matter your age.

We may have covered that in the last podcast. It does not matter your age. You could be an older generation and afraid of it. You could be a younger generation. Everyone thinks the young generation is just all about technology. But I have spoken in front of audiences where the young people in the room, like the color just drains from their face, and they're like, it's going to be the downfall of humanity, and I'm just like, oh my God. Just like, let's take a pause. Okay.

So, with the question about how you think about AI. I want everyone, this is a cheerleading question and a rah rah and a little woowoo, but I need you to come to the starting line. With a purpose. I mean, a real purpose for you individually.

So I'll look at the two of you. Okay. And here's the example, like, right? Yeah. Um, because I was having this conversation yesterday, and my friend was like, nobody knows what their purpose is. And I'm like, yeah, we need to find our purpose before we can even really think about AI, which is strange and therapeutic, and anyway, maybe that's not my role, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

Okay. So I need you to think about your purpose, and here's why. Because if you are afraid of AI, I believe that then you are looking at your role in your firm, or your profession, in a way that has to do with tasks. So I'll just give you an example.

If someone in accounting is afraid that AI is gonna take their job, so they don't wanna use it, they don't even wanna champion it because it's going to take their job, then that person in accounting is thinking of their role in a series of tasks like, I have to send emails, I have to go nag project managers to do their invoicing.

I have to go nag people for receipts, or I have to go try and collect money. These tasks that person is listing, absolutely 100% can be done by AI right now. 100%. So they should be afraid. I mean, I'm gonna say that they should be afraid if they look at their role as a series of tasks, because AI can take manual tasks off your plate, right now, this is not even open for debate.

I would try to have that person think about their role. Higher purpose. That person needs to know and understand that their role is to keep their company financially sound. They need to move money from clients to employees.

They make lives possible. They make living and having, life possible. So again, as woo woo as that sounds or frufru if you think about your role that way. Then AI can't take your role because you have a bigger purpose.

So my purpose, workwise obviously, is to move people in firms forward with AI. Now, if I define that in tasks, like, oh, I send emails, or I do recordings, or, AI can take a lot of that stuff off the plate for me, but my purpose is bigger, so I don't care how I deliver that purpose. It could be with people, it could be with, I mean, I'm just, it could be with a typewriter, you know?

[00:06:01] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:01] Kristin Kautz: It could be with a calculator, it could be with a pen and paper. None of those things that I use are gonna take away my purpose. They're gonna help me do those tasks. So does that make sense?

[00:06:14] Emily Lawrence: Yes.

[00:06:14] Jen Knox: A hundred percent.

[00:06:15] Emily Lawrence: I love that.

[00:06:16] Kristin Kautz: Okay, so I feel very strongly when I look at rooms now. I need, I've always, okay.

I also think about AI in a visual way. I've told you I'm a visual thinker, so my current, is a marathon, right? So I need people to figure out their purpose to get to the starting line. That's the starting line for me, is that you have a purpose.

[00:06:37] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:37] Kristin Kautz: And I really think a lot of us just go into a job, and we collect our paycheck, and we complain about it, and then we wait for Fridays.

You know? And like it's just a series of tasks that we go through. But I need people to find their purpose in order to think bigger about AI.

[00:06:51] Jen Knox: Yeah, and I love the way you frame that, Kristin, because as leaders in organizations too, we should be thinking about our roles, the roles below us, and what the purpose of them are.

Right? How are those people a strategic partner to one another? To your point, project accounting isn't about the tasks that they complete, but they can be a strategic partner in managing cash flow for the organization, ensuring that cash to your point, gets from clients the whole way through to families of our employees.

So how are you a strategic partner? What's the purpose? Um. I love that. It's a feel-good way to start the conversation around AI, I think.

[00:07:34] Kristin Kautz: Yeah. That's a great point because in the past, there are lots of problems in the AEC world, but I think, some of them are how we look at, and I'll I say the quiet parts out loud, sorry.

But we look at billable, technical people, as more important or something. And then marketing and support services, and strategic support services, marketing, accounting, HR, IT, they are somehow lesser. I don't understand it, but across the board, you as yourself need to think of your purpose and your leadership.

Firms need to start thinking of people with purpose. Instead of how to do more tasks because we could move straight. This might be a third conversation about business, but we could move into, if tasks are gonna be done faster, then how can we charge for them and make money? And so we are actually going to be moving into a value-based pricing and fee.

And so you have to think of your people as value and purpose and then charge for that. Not charge for tasks as well. So it wraps up with everybody. Yeah.

[00:08:39] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:40] Kristin Kautz: We could just end here. This might be too much for people to take in at the moment. So like, it's huge to think about, and it has to be done.

[00:08:48] Jen Knox: Yeah,

[00:08:48] Kristin Kautz: It has to.

[00:08:49] Emily Lawrence: Yeah. I think, that's something that the younger generation, and we have talked a lot about that, that it's like this purpose-driven, right? Like they don't wanna come into a company, they're gonna connect with the purpose, and they want to be guided to find their purpose within their work.

There's ups and downs, there's highs and lows in any job, any function. There's things you like, things you don't like. Um. But having that purpose that you can come back to every single day, or at least every single week at some point during the day or week.

[00:09:22] Kristin Kautz: Yeah, it's very, it's very grounding. And so, like I said, um, again, visual.

So thinking of this journey of AI as a marathon, I've used this analogy many times. Again, get to the starting line with your purpose. But as you start to run this, and I, it's a Mobius strip, so it goes like this as well, but you can always ground yourself in your purpose. So even if you get lost on the Mobius strip or you have no idea where your competitors are, or you feel like you're falling behind, and you don't know what the root is anymore, and you're overwhelmed, you just ground yourself in the purpose.

[00:09:55] Emily Lawrence: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that.

[00:09:57] Kristin Kautz: So thank you for letting me answer that question, 'cause I've been dealing with this in my head for about three or four weeks now, and it's become crystal clear that I have to start with this.

[00:10:08] Emily Lawrence: That was an inspiring answer, I think. Yeah, many people will connect with that for sure.

Um, so we talked a little bit about the way that you think about AI, and I wanna move into picking the right solution. How do you actually make the step into AI?

[00:10:29] Kristin Kautz: When we talk about AI, people always ask me, what's your favorite tool?

You know, like, what's the tool you recommend? And I'm like, okay, we have to stop. And I am very much aligned with other people in our industry. There's not many of us talking about this, but the few that are, we're all aligned, which makes me feel really good that it's solid advice. We don't start with the tool.

We don't start with the AI. Everybody knows we need AI. It's not just a want, it's a need. We need AI, and AI needs us. So it's a symbiotic relationship, but you have to start with the challenges that you have every day. Okay? There's no reason to create a challenge or, a vague or unrealistic use case, and then go find a solution for that.

We're gonna look at what you do during your day. This is how you start. You find your why, basically, what do you need it for? So you look at the challenges or just the regular things that you do during your day. So, I say people can get out a pen and paper. They could take notes on their phone.

They could dictate to AI if they wanted to. And just start to list all the things that you actually do during your day. And then once we have that, um, and you could do those if, even if your days are different, it's not like, Hmm, I recorded a podcast with Kristin. It's like, recorded a podcast, had to get the notes ready from our previous meeting, things like that.

Just write down those general tasks. They are tasks, I get it, but we're writing those things down 'cause that's what AI can help you with. So we start there and finding the very specific use cases for people, and then having the AI that can either get that off your plate, help you do it faster, more efficient, more productive, even more pleasant is pleasantly a word.

Even make you happier doing that thing, right? Mm-hmm. So we're gonna find AI that can do that. So that's the first one. The first thing is you start with why you need it. Not that you just need it. Yeah.

[00:12:32] Jen Knox: Yeah. And that why is gonna look different for everyone in the organization, right? So, do you suggest that firms do this on a person-by-person basis, a departmental basis, to say, Hey, this is where we're struggling, or our pain points throughout the day. How do you find the why in a firm?

[00:12:54] Kristin Kautz: So for a firm, that's a great question. So, um, usually have three sides, and the first one is just for individuals, right?

You figure out what you're doing, what do you do during your day? What do you hate to do during your day? Hey, it's too strong a word for everybody. 'cause there's other things we hate, but if it's too strong a word, things that you dislike, what do you not like to do during your day? Because there's AI that can get that off your plate, for sure.

And then what are the things you really like to do during your day? Because there's AI that can bump you up to super you, make you do that better. But also, if you get those other things off your plate, you have more time to do the things that you like to do. So that's one. So that's individuals, right?

Start with yourself first of all, and then you can extrapolate out to your team, a smaller team, and get together and figure out what your team does on a daily or weekly basis. And if you're, maybe your pain point or your use case lines up with your peers use case.

Okay. So that's how you can start to block out the tech stack, if you will, for your team. And then for firms, this is a great question. And again, I say the quiet parts out loud. We look at the stuff that we have been pushing down the road. I'm not gonna say for months, I'm gonna say for years and decades. Okay.

Decades. If your firm and I, not if it's your firm, has been kicking something down the road that they don't want to deal with, they don't have enough time, they're like, we'll just get to it. They know it's important, but because it's so big for them to tackle, they can't do it. I would start there, and I would also start with your strategic plan.

So Jen, you mentioned Strategery. Sorry, that's George Bush strategy. I'm from Texas. I have to, every time somebody says strategy, I'm like a strategery. So, um, sorry. Anyway, you look at your strategic plan. So AI in and of itself is not a strategy, right? You can't just say AI and then like move on to something else.

AI is gonna be woven throughout your strategic plan to help you achieve those goals that you have in your strategic plan. 100%.

So for yourself. You just look at what you do during your day for your team, what are some of those pain points? And usually for teams as well, it really is about boosting quality without more time or, and or lessen your time, but not at the expense of quality. Right? So you want to save time, but also have higher quality. You don't want either one of those to, you don't want quality to dip, right? That's not our goal at all. And then firms look at your strategic plan first, and then think about those really big issues in a meeting where y'all just.

Are ignoring it.

[00:15:31] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love that ignoring frame point and viewpoint of how we can leverage AI. We can't tell you how many times we go into a client's organization and are working on strategic planning.

[00:15:45] Kristin Kautz: Yeah.

[00:15:45] Jen Knox: And one of their initiatives has been the same initiative they've had for 15 years.

And to your point, they may make little progress on it here and there, but then the year after a strategic plan is built, oftentimes the focus on it wanes.

[00:15:58] Kristin Kautz: Yeah.

[00:15:58] Jen Knox: So looking at those things that they've pushed off I think is a great way to think about AI and leveraging it. So.

[00:16:04] Kristin Kautz: Yeah. So that's the answer to that question, how you think about it for individuals, teams, and a firm.

[00:16:10] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:11] Kristin Kautz: I'm gonna say it right now. If anybody's still, like, people hopefully are still listening. We haven't even talked about an AI tool yet. I mean, so. At this point as well, people like when I walk people and clients through in my consulting, 'cause that's what I do.

I move them through first steps. We don't even get to an AI use case until the third step.

[00:16:33] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:33] Kristin Kautz: So, some of this groundwork, which is also very hard for people to understand, you are laying a foundation for a true foundation for success. I can give you use cases of when people just go, you know, let AI start.

And they give people, AI Copilot, is one of them. And if they just let, they're paying for it. They let people have it, there's no training, there's no understanding, there's no use case behind it. It's a disaster, and it doesn't have to be this way. AI is magic. It is amazing. And so my point is we were talking about this the whole time so far, and we're setting up the real foundation for success.

[00:17:12] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:13] Emily Lawrence: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:13] Kristin Kautz: Yeah. Before we even get to a tool.

[00:17:17] Emily Lawrence: Well, I think that groundwork is really important. And then jumping into, once you've identified those tasks, your purpose, would it be time to maybe jump into use case?

[00:17:26] Kristin Kautz: Yeah.

[00:17:26] Emily Lawrence: And some tools and..

[00:17:28] Kristin Kautz: Perfect. Okay, let's just talk about people in general.

So we have our list of, things that we do during our day. Everybody in the world has the same options, right? This is not, oh, somebody else has a better thing defined than I do. That's not the case. Everyone has the same tools. All right, and this is not gonna be, again, this might be another seminar we can have, right?

Uh, a little AI 101. When you have your list of use cases or your tasks that you do during your day, you can also block some of those out if they are a process. Right. So they don't have to just be; this task is siloed, this task is siloed.

You may have things that stack together into a process. So just know that. So process can also be an AI use case, like if a couple things can be an AI use case. All right? So right now, you can find AI, you can find assistance or GPTs, you can find agents, and you can find automations. So, um, and I'm looking at both of your faces.

Uh, this is, again, not gonna be a 101, but there's, AI out there. Assistance are GPTs or things that you can build or somebody else has built that does a process for you. This is super basic. Just as a process for you, an agent is something that you can build that will go off and do something for you on its own and then come back to you.

Okay, and then the third, automation, everybody's probably already heard about the automations, like it triggers, there's a trigger, it does something. There's a second trigger, it does something, and then there's a third trigger, and it can go on. It can have a hundred triggers if you want. In the realm of AI, each of those things that it does is an AI application, right?

So it's not just a fills out a field in a form and then gets triggered to do something, that trigger itself is AI. Alright? So there's AI, Assistance or GPT, agents, and automation. Those are four separate things, if you will. They're talked about differently. And I was reading something this morning about how people, in the world who are smarter than me are even having a hard time explaining the definition of agent.

But, my definition is that it goes off and it does something for you. You give it instructions, it can go give itself additional instructions to fulfill your original request, and then comes back to you. And that is absolutely possible. Okay? So there's that, but then when you figure out if you just need whatever type of solution you need in that way. That's your what? So you have a WHY, is your, you know, your challenge, you're trying to solve. Your WHAT is AI, agent, assistant, or automation. And then, your HOW. Okay, and this is where, again, everybody has the same options. One, you can find the solution in an enterprise vendor that you already have. So that is a big software system that you or your firm are already using and already paying for? That could be Microsoft, that could be Google Suites, that could be Autodesk, that could be Deltek. It could be Unanet, it could be BST. It could be OpenAsset, right? So any of these big vendors that you're already paying, they are all, I'm not gonna say they're not all in, right? But they are all starting to implement AI solutions within their software. So whatever your use case is, it may be percolating over here in a thing that your firm is already spending big money on. So let's look at the tools that we already have, right?

[00:21:09] Emily Lawrence: Question within that. So, within Microsoft, people that don't even know where to start, right?

[00:21:16] Kristin Kautz: Yeah.

[00:21:16] Emily Lawrence: Most of us have Microsoft, or like you said, Google, but would it just be like a Google search, or just an internet search of what tools, what AI tools does Microsoft have? Like how would you even dive into that?

Okay because we're on this, on this podcast together. I'm gonna say I, this is not lip service. I think y'all know me well enough by now. It's not lip service. When y'all send this out or when you post it, you can post my email address. I'll give you my link to get on my calendar.

So I'm offering this, if you get your list together, and then we start to talk about it. And what those solutions could be. I'll walk you through the AI that I know about that can handle that list for you. So there's one. But, there, Microsoft, first of all, again, Copilot and Microsoft 365, which is the official name, not that great. I would say people are actually disappointed with it at the moment. It's going to get there, but it's not super great at the moment.

However, my point is that these big companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI as well, they just launched their academy like a month and a half ago or so.

Anyway, they have really good training. So if you have your use cases right, and you're like, I wonder, and if your company is gonna turn on Copilot and Microsoft 365 for you, go get trained. I think their training modules are like two to three minutes a piece. I mean, if you can't find two to three minutes to use magic, like there's something, we have a problem. Uh, sorry. We have a problem. But there's some training out there available for sure. So, what I also tell people, that if they have these use cases and they have these big vendors, that the onus is on us to call our customer service reps and say, do you have AI? What does it do?

And I wanna be trained on it. So you can call your reps and say, I've got this use case. I'm wondering if it can do this. And then, and ask them like, we should not be shy. We're paying these companies tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, individually as firms, you should call them up and say, here's my problem.

Can you solve it?

[00:23:26] Jen Knox: Yeah. We forget that because these organizations are so huge, right?

Yeah. We would expect that from a small vendor, a medium-sized vendor, they'd come in training, right? Et cetera. Do the same with these big guys. I mean, they, they've got the support, they have the staff there to do it.

But to your point, the onus is on the individual, on the firm to reach out and, inquire about the services. So.

[00:23:47] Kristin Kautz: It really is. And it's unfortunate because I think so many, well, I don't think, I know that so many of the big vendors are really behind.

[00:23:55] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:55] Kristin Kautz: Like they were caught off guard.

They also know that we are beholden to them because we are already so invested for decades with these vendors. I think our industry is ripe, really ripe for massive disruption. There are gonna be firms out there that um, companies, AI companies that are gonna completely disrupt our industry.

And so, for the big firms out there, you need to, the big vendors, you need to get your act together. Because you will lose it. You are not too big to fail. Again, I'm from Houston, Enron, you are not too big to fail.

[00:24:29] Jen Knox: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stories.

[00:24:30] Kristin Kautz: Okay, so the answer to your question, Emily, one, call your vendors, tell them what your use cases are, see if they're doing anything.

Um, if they're not, you know, I'm not shocked, right? So I'm not saying that they're gonna give you an answer. I'm just saying they may be percolating something, right? Okay. Or you can call me, right? We'll walk through your stuff and see what you've got. All right. That's one enterprise vendor you're already paying for.

Um, two off the shelf. So there are, again, I don't even know what the word is, past, you know, gajillion, gajillion. I mean, there are that many applications, programs, extensions, companies out there that have provided, the exact solution that you are looking for to your use case. I mean. Exactly, so off the shelf, most subscriptions have something free that you can test.

Then you can buy a, almost all of them have a monthly subscription that you can test out. Just buy it, you know, month to month. And then if you really love it, you can buy the annual subscription. But I would go look at your use case and then see if somebody else has already built that custom solution for you.

Okay. And then if your follow-up question is how do we find those things, again, you can call me, right? I also have a notion site that you can sort through, I think it has 6,000 tools on it right now. Then I know that there are other people out there that also have places where they, host their tools as well for free.

So I would just start with those three or four databases that I can recommend, and you have your use case. You go in, you just search for your use case and see what pops up, and go test it out. Right? Go try it out. That's that. So there's always gonna be something out there that somebody has probably built that is perfect for your use case.

Then the last one is, which is more scary to people 'cause they're like, uh, I can't do that. You can build it yourself. You can currently build your own AI; there's no code solutions out there. You can build your own agents, you can build your own assistance or GPTs, and you can build your own automation.

There are no code tools out there where you can build your own. And if anybody on the podcast is like, I don't like, again, this is not a, this is not a workshop. We're not gonna show you how to do it. You can. So I will give you a really good example. I was sitting on a Zoom call with the president of a firm.

He's a client and he is wonderful. I was talking about building your own GPT just in ChatGPT, and he was like, I can't do that. I don't know what you're talking about. And I literally said. Do you have an extra 20 minutes on this call? And he was like, of course. And I opened up my computer and I shared my screen and we built his first assistant together, and he is a president of an AEC company and he is on their AI committee obviously, and he is already doing videos and showing his own employees how to build them.

I don't know what to tell you, you just don't know what you don't know. And I'm gonna use my hands. Hopefully, everybody can see me. So this is not like previous technology. If you can carve out 20 minutes, you know, 30 minutes. To learn this, your return is huge. Previously, when think of people think about technology, they're like, oh, it's just something else I have to learn.

It's just gonna be more cumbersome. It's not really gonna do what it says. So your learning of old technology was like this, and your return was nothing. You know, we are not like that anymore. It's, you put this much effort in, you get this much return out. Your return, I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, your return is gonna be a thousandfold. So you can build your own, I promise you. And again, I am offering, if you just wanna see it, I have free GPT classes, whatever, you just let me know. And again, my mission and my purpose is to move everyone forward. I will not gatekeep. Everything I've got you can have.

So, um, that's your third. So find your purpose, then you find your why, which are your use cases. You stack those out. Figure out if it's an individual solution, and then enterprise you're already paying for, off the shelf, or you can build it yourself.

[00:28:54] Jen Knox: Love it. And so I've got the process now in my mind.

Yeah. Would you be able to walk us through maybe a case study, right? Like your last one you did or something that was really helpful for you, you had a problem, identified what the challenge was, what the, why, how, et cetera. Just to give our listeners a little bit of a whole story.

[00:29:15] Kristin Kautz: Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So my best example of this, um, because it was like an aha moment for me. I mean, ChatGPT has been a, I cannot believe it, almost three years now. Okay. This is beyond, yeah. It's just, okay. So, it took me, and I think I'm smart, it took me about two years to really, really start out everything I was doing.

With an AI first mindset, because it's just this huge change. So I now think about everything I do in the context of AI. Do I have it? Have I already bought it? Is it off the shelf? Or can I build something that can do this thing for me? I mean, that is how I think. But here's the example. So beginning of last year, so it's been almost two years that I've had it.

Uh, my calendar, this is an example for everybody. My calendar became unmanageable. So as a consultant, I wrangle people into meetings, right? And when I write those first steps for companies, I do interviews with people. So sometimes that's 15 people or 20 people to interview. And I was trying, believe it or not, I was trying to do it by hand.

You know, like literally just like, you know. Emails back and forth, and I was like, I cannot do this anymore. I was like, Kristin, you're an idiot. Like, where's the AI for this? And so I have been using a calendar called Motion App for the past two years. People have probably heard about it. It's, it's out, you know, it's not shy.

It's out there promoting itself for sure. Worth every penny for me. It was the first one that I really, I just bought an instant year-long subscription to and immediately started saving me, six hours a week. it was just a done deal. So what Motion App does is it has a link that you can send to people to get on your calendar, so much like Calendly.

Calendly was out there as well. But what I really love about it, too, is I'm a constant list maker. Tasks, right? I'm writing them in my phone, on paper, on my computer, like everywhere a napkin. And I was like, I have to get a handle on this, too. And so within Motion you can schedule things.

So, like a meeting, like we're doing today, a hard deadline with a time attached to it. So events are like these anchors. But if you start to put your to-do list into the AI, and you give it the parameters of how long you think it's gonna take and when your real deadline is. It will start to move things around on your calendar so that you never miss it, if that makes sense.

So if I know that I have something that I have to do by Friday and I start filling my calendar up with meetings, it will keep moving that thing around until it finds the place where it can fit in. And so for, and I struggle with this again because we're, hmm. What's the word? We're content or we're just habitualize to using the processes that we've always used before.

Which don't work. So I know that when I get up in the morning, I don't have to worry about sorting through pieces of paper or notes on my phone or anything like that. If I really just follow my calendar, 'cause everything's in my calendar, tasks included, I will get everything I need to done.

[00:32:25] Jen Knox: That's nice. I'll say, I would like that. Yeah, you, yeah.

[00:32:28] Kristin Kautz: So that's, and again, I mean, you can tell it to go away. You can, and it's gonna warn you it's gonna be in red and be like, you're about to miss your deadline. And I'm like, I don't care. I'm gonna just move it someplace else, you know?

But. In the most part, if I really just follow that, that is the process that stays grounded for what I need to get done. And then, I think we also talked about, so thinking about money, right? Because AI, you have to spend money, but what is, what are you getting back? So I talked about the return on, you know, you learn it, you get a huge return, you can spend a little bit of money, and also get a massive return.

So I think one of our questions was this equation of how do you find value in it? So for me, again, that was, it's like a 200, I'm now making this up. I think it's probably 250 or something a year. and some people are like, Ooh, that's a lot. I get it. Because all these tools start to add up.

But this tool literally saves me five hours a week. For sure, like 100%. I know it's true. And so when you do the math that way, it's a no-brainer because I will say that my billable rate is higher than whatever that cost is. Your billable rate is higher, and we all have purpose and value. So marketing has a billable rate.

Our billable rates are higher accounting, HR, technical people for sure. So when I talk to even firms about bigger AI solutions and what they're gonna spend, and again, I'm making this up completely, but if I were to say, if we found a use case for a firm and I'm like, we found a tool and we found the right solution, and it was $200,000 a year.

Okay? And they're like, RUP dripper, right? You know, just putting on the brakes. But the equation is what are you spending, and what's your return on investment? How are you tracking that? It can be hours saved, it can be higher quality quantity. Utilization, productivity, whatever you wanna do for your metrics, that's the value you're gonna get back.

So if I told you that we're gonna spend $200,000, but we're gonna get back two hours a week for people, just two hours, that's no big deal. It's 5%, right? Two hours a week. What does that look like in terms of revenue, business development, client satisfaction? If you're using those two hours to provide better client service, if you're using those two hours to actually bill a client on work.

That's the equation you wanna look at. I ran through this exercise with somebody, and it was like, you spend $200,000, but those two hours a week, just for her technical people, not even her support strategy, support services, was gonna make her, I think, like $3 million. So it's a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer.

So, again, I know we're kind of all over the place here, but I wanna make sure that everyone understands too, that I currently spend probably $3,500 a year on AI, and everyone's like, that's a lot. It's an absolute lot. Mm. Some of it is really just me going, I just wanna test it out and try it, whatever.

But something like Motion is 100%. It's non-negotiable for me. So that's just an example of a calendar. Do we have time to talk about one more?

[00:35:44] Jen Knox: Yeah, go for it.

[00:35:45] Emily Lawrence: Yeah.

[00:35:46] Kristin Kautz: You sure? Do you have any questions about that?

[00:35:49] Jen Knox: No.

[00:35:49] Emily Lawrence: I mean, no, it sounds, yeah,

[00:35:52] Kristin Kautz: I'm also gonna preface on top of the money thing as well that, and this is just me and my, you know, pep talk.

I want people to also think about what they're willing to invest in AI, and that means your time. It means maybe getting a mentor or hiring talent like me or somebody else to help walk you through it. It's also what you would pay for the AI, right? So I want you to think like even the two of you, I want you to think about what you would spend to move you forward in this new world. Because I have people who are like, well, my firm is waiting, you know, so then I can't, you know, I don't know what to do. I can't use it. And I'm like, you are in control of your own life. You go figure it out. If your firm is holding you back, that is not an excuse.

Yeah. Like that is just a challenge to overcome. And you're like, get out of my way then, because you cannot not use AI.

[00:36:46] Jen Knox: Yeah, it's one of those, I think, essential skill sets for the future. And

[00:36:50] Kristin Kautz: 100%

[00:36:50] Jen Knox: to your point, if a firm wasn't gonna invest in your professional development to maintain your license.

[00:36:56] Kristin Kautz: Right.

[00:36:56] Jen Knox: You know, it's not like you'd sit around and not renew your license. You would have to go do that on your own.

[00:37:01] Kristin Kautz: Yeah.

[00:37:01] Jen Knox: Same with, AI skill sets as well.

[00:37:03] Kristin Kautz: It's insane when people are like, well, I guess I can't, I mean, I've heard it, I've heard all of it, and I'm just like, you've gotta even do it for yourself or you have to get out because they won't be around this firm will not be around.

Okay. So. How are you investing in yourself? I don't want you to wait for your firm. I want you to figure out what you're gonna spend on yourself. The time and what you're, you know, what not, what you're gonna spend on yourself, what you're gonna invest in yourself. Like you were spending money to invest in yourself.

Okay, so that's that. Uh, where was I? Okay, another example. So that was just one on a calendar, 'cause I think everybody has calendar problems. Oh, also for email, just so you know, there's ways 'cause people are like email and how you sort your emails, et cetera, et cetera. I tried SaneBox last year.

S-A-N-E-B-O-X. Awesome, awesome product. And I've now moved to Fyxer 'cause I'm just trying different products at the time, so I don't have a recommendation one over the other, but the one I'm trying right now is Fyxer, F-Y-X-E-R AI. Um, it also has a note recording or meeting recording attached to it. So it's more expensive than SaneBox.

I think it's double or triple the price, but it has other features. Okay, so that's one of case people have an email as a use case. 'cause everybody hates their email. So the other one I would talk about is for example, in our industry, like everybody. Hates proposals proposal. The proposal process is broken, right?

People who do them don't like to do them. Technical people don't like to do them. I don't even think the clients like to them, et cetera, right? So if you think about that, if you have your use case and you're like, I need help with proposals, and you could break that down into other tasks too.

Whether that's writing, image or infographic generation, just Grammarly or for spell check, or better whatever. You could break that down, too. But just as proposals, just making proposals, searching for information. That's a part of this. So, off of your enterprise solutions, if you, and I don't recommend firms just do this automatically, but if you are in the Microsoft world.

And you wanna turn Copilot onto your assets, not just onto the programs, right? So you can turn Copilot on for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Teams, et cetera. You can also turn Copilot on to your assets. So marketing people, we just wanna look for our information. You can actually do that. I would highly recommend you hire a third-party vendor to help you walk through that privacy, security, you know, process.

Get your data clean and filed correctly. I would recommend Covenant Global, that's a company, they partner with Microsoft, but you can do that, right? So if your proposals and you have an enterprise solution that's like a Microsoft, or a BST or something like that, off the shelf, there are many, many products out there.

Joist is one that I highly recommend. They were built for our industry. So if you want to fix that. There's that solution out there, you can go find, OpenAsset just released their own proposal module within their software as well. So, an open AI and not open AI. OpenAsset could also be considered a vendor, you know, an enterprise vendor-grade solution if you already have that.

So if you have a proposal and you already have OpenAsset. And go get that feature you know already from OpenAsset. And if you want it off the shelf, Joist AI, highly recommend. And then build it yourself. 100%. We can build your own assistance, or GPTs, or agents to go help you with that 100%. You can throw all of your proposals into a little GPT, and you can, I use my hands, you can start to talk to it and get new information.

So I built one for a client. She is an engineer for wastewater and water. I've been in the industry for a long time, but please don't try to fill my brain with what a wastewater engine does. Okay. So anyway, but I said, what are your latest greatest 20 proposals, 'cause she's like, I just need help writing new approaches and new scopes, and finding my resume, and writing a new bio. And so we put her 20 proposals into a GPT and now she can just ask questions of that knowledge base and generate new information for proposals in an instant. In an instant, something that used to take her and go looking for where those proposals were, searching through those documents or having to ask marketing, to go open the InDesign file and find that information, and then send it back to her.

It's now instantaneous. Right? So that's just one example. And then also in the proposal process, for example, an example of an agent, is here in Texas, we have Texas, in general, their R-F-Q-R-F-P listing service is called, ESBD. There's a name for it. Anyway, so I had a client who said, I can't get AI to go search that for me.

And I was like, well, then you're probably using the wrong AI, right? So remember, there's AI, assistance, agents, and automation. So she was just trying to get a regular ChatGPT or Claude or something to go look through this thing. Which they cannot do. But I built an agent to go out with the keywords I needed to go look through this database, right?

And it took it about 40 minutes. I don't care 'cause I'm not doing it. So it went out to go look for it. And then on top of it, it didn't just stop there because ESBD is referenced in other RFQ databases, it on its own, went out to all those other RFQ databases, looked through those for my keywords, and came back to me and said, here are the three RFQs that I found that you can submit on.

So give me a break, people, right? If you are still looking through those places by hand, this is it.

[00:42:47] Emily Lawrence: Hi, you're Kristin.

Yeah.

[00:42:50] Kristin Kautz: So I was talking to a friend yesterday and she was, she, I mean, she know like we're very good friends, and she was like, I just don't have time. And I was like, I don't know how to find time for you, but the minute you find it, you will be forever changed.

You will never think about how you spend your time. The same, I will never spend my time. Ever in my life, I, this is, I'm just gonna date myself, eliminating a pixel on a picture, like it's this, it's gone. Going through or looking, scavenging websites for RFQs that's spending hours on that.

It's gone. It's gone. So if you're still doing it, you've got a beeper on your hip, you're using a fax machine, and a horse and buggy.

[00:43:35] Jen Knox: Mm-hmm. And I think it's not even just, it's just the future opportunities you're holding yourself away from.

[00:43:41] Kristin Kautz: Oh my gosh. Like it's 100%.

[00:43:43] Jen Knox: Yeah.

[00:43:43] Emily Lawrence: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:43:45] Kristin Kautz: Yeah. So hopefully, those are some good examples.

Like those are just, again, your use cases are gonna be different than my use cases, but hopefully that got you thinking about the possibilities. Yeah.

[00:43:59] Emily Lawrence: Yeah. Kristin, I think even just for Jen and I, and I know for all of our listeners here, incredibly useful. Good. The things that you are doing, your purpose in the industry, you are moving it forward.

So thank you so much for coming on here and talking to everyone. For those listening, we will drop the links of everything Kristin mentioned in the description here. It is such a joy to talk with you, Kristin. Any final thoughts that you have or anything you wanna leave people with?

[00:44:31] Kristin Kautz: Find your purpose?

Meet me at the starting line. Give me a call.

[00:44:35] Emily Lawrence: All right. Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:44:39] Kristin Kautz: Thank you. I really appreciate it. Later. Bye.