AI_ Saving businesses time and money #2 - Business Planning and Budgetting

Today, we're diving deep into how experimenting with AI can help businesses streamline their processes. From web agencies to painters and decorators, we'll show you how the right calculations and intelligent input can lead to significant profitability.

Martin [00:00:32]:
Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the latest Allegiant Web livestream. Today, I am joined by my colleague, Gill. Hi, Gill.

Gill [00:00:41]:
Hello, everybody. Hello, Martin.

Martin [00:00:43]:
Hi. And following on from the last one we did where we looked at, different a a way in which AI could actually help businesses. We're doing the second one in that series now Web Gill has done, an investigation into asking AI. How do I set up a web business, and how do I make money doing it? And so that's what we're gonna cover today. So I will, without any ado, hand you over to Gill.

Gill [00:01:11]:
Okay. Thank you. So one of the things that I was really interested in and as you as business owners will be interested in as well is how the heck do we you know what's the optimal set up for my business to be profitable? What I have to, you know, do, what I have to have in place, what don't I have in place already that I need to have in place. And I thought, oh, I wonder what the AI have got to say about this because, surely, setting up in business is a time honored tradition. Loads of people have done it throughout the centuries. There must be wisdom about the so. And of course we run a web, agency. So actually, I thought, well, let's let's see what what the heck do we need to do, Martin, to make this thing fly even further? So what I did was I went in and I tried a couple of chat chatbots.

Gill [00:02:05]:
Is that what we're calling? Chatbots. And I started with chat GPT.

Martin [00:02:10]:
You nailed that.

Gill [00:02:12]:
Nailed that. And then I run the same queries through Gemini, and then I had a little bit of a look at a Claude. The new one, SONNET. And so I thought, well, we haven't really talked about that, so it'd be quite interesting to see what it does with this as well. So, Martin, do you wanna share my screen for me? And I'll share. Now, guys, if you can't see this terribly well, down in the bottom right hand corner, if you mouse over the edge of the shared screen, there's 2 arrows that do one of those directions. And if you click on that, it makes it bigger.

Gill [00:02:47]:
I'm going to do that so I can see that, which means I can't see the chat. So, Martin, if you're be okay if, you pick up any questions that folks might have.

Martin [00:02:55]:
Sure would be.

Gill [00:02:56]:
So this is the question that I asked you. What's the best structure of, web design and development agency to make it profitable? Let me know the best rules for the staff, how many staff I would need, the average salary of the staff, and the average I would have to charge per website to make it happen. Suggest some details of how the workflows should be arranged and what the best marketing strategy should be. This agency is based in the UK in 2024. Now that was a huge ask for it. So there's a lot of moving parts in there. So what did do? It said oh, I'm trying to scroll down the sharing screen, but I can't do that. I have to I

Martin [00:03:37]:
do that every time.

Gill [00:03:38]:
Yeah. I'll have to actually go to the one that I can scroll. Right. So as you can see, it gave me a whole bunch of stuff about the organizational structure and the key roles and staffing. So it wants me to have a CEO, that's me, apparently I'm a visionary strategic planner and client relations person. I felt really good about myself after seeing that because that's how they describe me. I don't know.

Martin [00:04:04]:
Describe you like that as well by the way.

Gill [00:04:06]:
Thank you. That's very kind. So these Martin other rules that it Martin to bring up. It Martin to make me hyperventilate a little. I don't know I don't know how you feel when you look at them. So I need a project manager, a lead designer, 2 to 3 other designers, a lead developer, 2, 3 other developers, a content strategist writer, digital marketer, sales account manager, and an admin, a bleak HR person. That's a total of one0 to one2 employees. That's a lot.

Gill [00:04:38]:
I was thinking, oh my goodness. I I struggle with the the stuff that I have and certainly don't have that many. And they're they've put in helpfully some of the average salaries for each of these in the UK will obviously be different depending on where you're based in the world. But this is what they reckon in the UK it's gonna cost me to make this perfect company. And I I loved my wages. I thought they're gonna be great once I get that sorted. I can't wait for that. And then what I reckon was actually, I do quite Wise number of these Robson, so maybe I should have the salary for quite a number of them.

Gill [00:05:20]:
Yeah. Anyway, then I thought, right. Okay. We need all this money. Where are we gonna get this? What are we gonna do? We need something to be charging between $500 a website to get there. I don't know about you, Martin, but I would say that in the UK and my business, that is not the average range. What would you say?

Martin [00:05:44]:
Absolutely not. No. I mean, basic website, obviously, it depends. But, I mean, typically, you might be looking around, say, one500, for example, and going up from there. That's the basic website before we start talking about, you know, ecommerce and and those other bits and pieces. So, yeah, it's really interesting Web people go, well, why does a website cost x? So this is another way of of, kinda looking at it and going, well, here's one of the reasons.

Gill [00:06:09]:
Yeah. It is interesting, isn't it? And then it only gets better from there. So I I think, you know, either we are grossly undercharging or, you know, something's not quite right here. Anyway, carry on. So it's given some nice workflows about, initial consultation, the proposal, the kickoff, the design phase, development phase, content creation, some q and a's, and then launch and post launch support. So that's these are pretty standard, I would say, for, Web. Would you agree with that?

Martin [00:06:45]:
Yep. Yeah. I mean, that's that's the thing is that there's a lot of moving parts beside the actual building the site itself to make sure that what you build is something that's gonna be successful for the client that you're building it for.

Gill [00:06:58]:
Yep. So it's pretty well nailed there. And then marketing strategy, looking at your digital presence, your social media page. Now these are very Martin, and I love that they're Mike 2 bullet points. But, actually, each of these would take quite a long time to get. So you would want to you would have to drill into these individual things and get more detail, obviously, because these are, you know, getting your referrals. You know, I was speaking to a coaching client this morning about referrals, and and, actually, you know, 2 Gill points ain't gonna cover it by the time you talk through how they're gonna their whole process for for asking people for even Google referrals or Google reviews. Excuse me.

Gill [00:07:39]:
Sorry. So, yeah, and your email Martin. Yeah. Building. And I know you do this quite a lot, Martin. You do list building and stuff Mike that. So, anyway, that that was that was that. And then I thought, you've not answered the the how many websites I need to do to be profitable.

Gill [00:07:54]:
So I re asked the question. Then it got quite interesting because it took all the salaries that it decided that we were having, which I thought was good. And then it gave me a total of what the agency would have to bring in for those salaries. Then it made up some mythical other expenses, which I thought was quite good, and then gave me a total annual expenses. Then it calculated, based on those mythical website figures that it made up, what it was going to, do. So it was gonna give me some basic websites, some standard ones, and some average things. And then it made this lovely calculation to determine a breakeven point. Now it actually determines that we need 73.75.

Gill [00:08:45]:
That point 75 is really important Web to break even. But if you wanna profit, you're gonna have to move up a bit and go on to work out your desired profit, then the, the calculation adds the profit in, and then it becomes slightly increased, obviously, as you would expect. And we want 80 and a half websites. And I thought, oh my goodness. That's a lot of websites. But, anyway, that is what you would need to do or approximately 89. So that whole that whole and that's a 20% profit margin. So that's that's quite an interesting, thing to do, and I thought, actually, if you you could do that for any business, couldn't you? You could run that through what and you could feed it more and more real information.

Gill [00:09:35]:
So you could start putting like, changing things Mike, okay. I'm gonna take a one0% profit margin in year one. I I don't have premises. We work from home, so we can get rid of that expense. You know, you can start feeding it more and more realistic, things into the scenario until you get something that's actually really helpful.

Martin [00:09:57]:
I think that that's that's a really good 0.one of the things that, I noticed, like, last week when, we're looking at, deliveries and and it had estimated a miles per gallon without knowing, you know, what vehicles I had. Yeah. And I was able to say, actually, don't use that that Mike per gallon figure. Use this one because I know that for my particular business. Mhmm. Like you said, here, I mean, you could start putting in and saying, okay. Well, you've you've estimated these costs. I actually want you to change these costs and rerun it.

Martin [00:10:25]:
And the thing that's amazing is, you know, you tell it that, it reruns it, and it takes seconds to rework the whole scenario with your information and your figures in. And and just like you said there, Gill, I mean, we're talking about a web agency here, but we could be talking about a painter and decorator, you know, any other business you care care to name because it's basic, business and budgeting setup that it's doing, isn't it? So

Gill [00:10:50]:
Absolutely. So

Martin [00:10:51]:
helpful to give you an idea of of, you know, what you need to be thinking about.

Gill [00:10:56]:
Yeah. And I I yeah. I mean, number of Web, it could be number of widgets, number of, I don't know, Web boots, whatever it could be. 88 and a half welly boots. You don't you don't wanna be left with half or 89 welly boots. That would be really awkward.

Martin [00:11:13]:
It wouldn't be. And just just on the 89, like, you're talking for the websites there. You know? So, realistically, that's 2 websites per week, if we get rid of the fractions. So, in order for this mythical agency just to carry on surviving, they've got to complete 2 new websites every single week of the year, without without break. So it's Yeah. Yeah. And the same for welly boots, like you say, if that's what you would do.

Gill [00:11:42]:
Exactly. So that takes you back to the the mythical staff that it's it's it's picked out for you. You now you might know more about production of Web boots than me and and know that actually I I don't need 3 designers of Welly boots. I can do that with 2. Therefore, I I can make some cost savings there. And, again, you can come in and, you know, wangle that about, or you can you know, the other thing about this, this is based on, staff full time staff, but, actually, you could rework this if you're using, outsourcing or paper project type scenario. So, what do we call that? Fractional fractional outsourcing. So you're just getting these people in to do on a either on a project by project basis or, you know, part Mike or whatever.

Gill [00:12:30]:
So, again, you can adjust this, but it gives you a really good starting point, I thought, to to get going.

Martin [00:12:39]:
Yeah. Abs absolutely. So that's the chat GTP chat. Now you got me doing it now?

Gill [00:12:46]:
Chat GTP chat. Chat GTP. Yeah. Absolutely. And and, incidentally, that's the Martin. So that's the that's the paid version of it as well. So that that would be interesting. So I run the same exactly Mike queries through Gemini and, Claude or Claude or whatever you I think it's Claude, actually.

Gill [00:13:07]:
I'm gonna say it's I'm gonna say it's it's got a little bit of French hee haw hee hawing, and that's that's probably not something you're supposed to say. But anyway, the best so again, the Gemini has, done something very similar. Although Wise is it's broke up into a core team of 3 to 5 people, and it's decided that this is your core team. And, actually, I felt that this was much more realistic. Your designer, your front and your back end, and your project manager, I thought Wise a really good core team rather than, like, all of those other things, and then the optional as you grow. Again, I like that. They've it's it's as if it's as if it thought about it and thought, oh, you're not gonna get them when you start out. And then, you know, we get onto the sales manager and then an SEO specialist, which I thought was really good because, again, SEO is an is such an important part of of the stuff we do, isn't it?

Martin [00:14:03]:
Yes. I mean, you know, for for us as, web designers, it doesn't matter how wonderful everything else is. If if nobody can find your website, then, you know, you're not going to actually, make a profit out of your website, and that's what we're we're hoping to achieve. So and just one quick thing to say as well for just in case anyone doesn't know. So Gemini is, Google's product, as opposed to ChatGPT before, which you're looking Wise a open open AI product. So yeah.

Gill [00:14:32]:
Yep. Thanks for that. And the work the workflow in this, again, it's it's slightly different we laid out, but I like the way this is laid out because it could be applying to any, business because you most businesses, particularly service based businesses, you have an onboarding, you have a design and development or whatever you're doing with your clients, and then you have some quality assurance and launch or, you know, some kind of conclusion to what you've been doing with them. And then you might have an ongoing maintenance, which we have in Web, but you with other physical products, you might have maintenance or ancillary. You know, thinking about cars, you might sell them warranties or ongoing services or whatever. And then your marketing strategy Wise, again, it's build the online presence, develop client relationships. I I just kinda like the way they set that out. It felt a wee bit more, sensible to me.

Gill [00:15:32]:
However, I went on and asked it how many websites do I have to make to make it profitable? And it just did not wanna play. Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all answer to that. And it's just Gill me a big blurb about you would need to Mike into account all these things and so here's a very simplified example. You know? So it's not even a realistic example. It's just about showing you what profit margin looks like. I Wise a bit disappointed with that output from Gemini, to be honest. So there we go. That's that.

Martin [00:16:16]:
Yeah. It's interesting that what Gemini has given you is things to think about, which, if you weren't already aware of those things, would perhaps be helpful when you then went back to the chat GPT one and gone, thank you all very much for for the example figures you've given me. Now I've thought about something else because

Gill [00:16:35]:
I wanted

Martin [00:16:35]:
Gemini to help me think about it, and feed that back into the original model perhaps. So you can kinda use AAA combination to get to, you know, the answer that you really want. But Yes. Yeah.

Gill [00:16:47]:
Good point.

Martin [00:16:48]:
I I was doing a a session on, an AI yesterday for, for a talk, and we all agreed that the most difficult bit, you know, when you're starting anything is is having a blank piece of paper, whether you're writing, something or whether you're putting together a business plan, as as we are here. It's so much easier if you've got something that you then change as opposed to this blank piece of paper that you can't start. So at least these these things are, you know, getting past that blank piece of paper bit.

Gill [00:17:20]:
I think that's you know, what what you're saying is right, and what we used to do is, you know, we would go away and we would get the back of an envelope, and you would write things out and do a few calculations. And and, no. That's not work. You scroll scrub that out, try again. And and then the modern equivalent of that is if you were really fancy, you would have a a spreadsheet, and you might play around with the numbers a bit. But it doesn't take into account the the, you know, different thinking about the different rules and the different ways of of structuring things. So this, I mean, literally takes about, I don't know, 2 or 3 minutes max to run to type in and run everything, and then you can play around. You you know, within half an hour, an hour, you can have a really solid business plan, you know, going on and and and know if you're gonna do that.

Gill [00:18:07]:
What gives you decision making power very, very quickly, I think.

Martin [00:18:13]:
Yeah. And one of the things, you know, that that we always say is, of course, with these AI tools, yeah, they'll they'll produce something. If you understand what it's producing, so, you know, if you're a coder and you ask it for code, then you can see the code that comes up and you know whether it's good or bad code in simple terms. If you're doing business planning and you've never done any business planning before, irrespective of what comes out here, you Gill, of course, go to a business coach and and get them to put their human eye over it and go, well, that makes sense. That doesn't make sense. So all of these things are useful if you already have some knowledge or access to some knowledge and expertise in the area that you're running it for. I know some people are going, oh, that's so obvious, but I found, like, recently, you know, it's that you you can't do that thing where it's like, well, computer says this, so it must be right. And and always, I mean, I noticed, like, Gemini down here, they're all doing going, yeah, we might display inaccurate info, etcetera.

Martin [00:19:14]:
So these are a tool. They're not a replacement, not at the moment.

Gill [00:19:17]:
one00%. That's right. Okay. Let's have a look at Claude. Okay. So I actually quite like the interface. It makes the question look very different. So I quite like this interface that it uses.

Gill [00:19:30]:
So, again, when I run the exact same question with Claude, it gave me very similar actually to chat gpt. You know, it's it wants me to have 2 or 3 front end developers, one or 2 back ends, quality assurance, sales, and, digital marketing specialist. They didn't they didn't feel that SEO was quite so necessary. But that's that's interesting in itself, isn't it? Just the difference between them, the type of staff that they're suggesting. So I guess that's again, you need to look and and think, okay. Right. What what's actually appropriate to my business in in my context? And to do with your goals as Web. You know, my goal might never to be, you know, really to touch SEO, and that's Mike.

Gill [00:20:19]:
You know? Then I don't care about it, so you can but why would you not care about SEO as a website? Anyway but there we go. That was just a for example. Okay. So they Wilson were looking at the average between £5, 0one5one00 per website. Again, a little bit eye watering for where we are in the current economic climate, I would say. But, anyway, there we go. And then some workflow. You know, what's interesting is that it's actually attributed the workflow to the, role that it suggested.

Gill [00:21:00]:
I quite like that. I I would like to see more of that. I'd like to expand on that. So, I would probably spend some more time digging into that. Again, you know, the sales manager acquires the clients, and the project manager creates the the the the project. The project, you know, the UX designer creates the wireframes. I I really like the way it came up with that because, you know, that's, like, that gives you a real feel for who's doing what within the the process.

Martin [00:21:29]:
Yeah. And and like you said, I mean, you you can take because it's a chat interface, you know, you can say to it, yeah, number 7 above there. You don't even have to say project manager. You talk about number 7, tell me a bit more about it. Literally use those words and and you'll get, you know, a bit of a Gill down into into that bit. So I really like the ones that do a short summary Mike like this is done Mhmm. Giving you the option to go, okay. Tell me more about that point rather than there's one of them that gives you a lot of information right from the get go, and and you end up with this huge list, which is a little bit overwhelming.

Gill [00:22:04]:
Yeah. III agree with you. I think that's quite nice, isn't it? I I do like this interface, and it's gone on to the marketing strategy again, and it's got oh, it has got SEO strategies in here as well, so that's Mike. And to ensure profitability, aim for utilize 70% of billable staff. Oh, that's an interesting sort of figure to look at, which we didn't see in the other 2, by the way. It was it's telling you that you're you're looking to utilize 70 to 80% of billable errors for your staff. That is very interesting. I like that.

Gill [00:22:43]:
That gives you a real in house KPI to go for, doesn't it?

Martin [00:22:49]:
Yeah. I love the sentence at the bottom as well. Would you like me to elaborate on any specific aspect? It smells.

Gill [00:22:55]:
Yes. It's very smudgy. Yeah. III have to say that this is my first time using clothes, and I I really like it. I'm very impressed. Also, some of you might know, some of you might not, but it's it's also quite, one of the more ethical ones. They have Wise a strict background in keeping people safe. So you might find that some of your questions would be actually rejected if it deems your question to be a little bit risky or dodgy in any way.

Gill [00:23:27]:
So if you said, you know, how can I hack the Wise House? It's going to tell you, no. We're not going to. You should not do that. That's very naughty. You're, no, I'm not going to type that in because I don't really want the FBI or the CIA or whoever knocking, swinging and ropes through my windows. But do you know what I mean?

Martin [00:23:47]:
It would make us an exceptionally interesting livestream, but but possibly not. It yeah. So we're we're we're 20 odd minutes in. Just a quick question, Gill. You said the the chat gpt model you used was the paid model. Is this the free or the paid model of Claude?

Gill [00:24:02]:
This is the free one. So Claude's structured a little bit differently. So it gives you for the free one, as far as I understand, though, it's there's an a number of different versions of Claude, and I I haven't really quite got my head around it. As far as I can understand that it gives you if you select the the the version that you want, you get so many, searches if you Mike, for one of a better word. And, if you want more, you have to subscribe to the the pro version. So you can see, subscribe to the pro for 5 times more usage with 3.5 Sonnet. So I think you get everything pretty much that's in the pro, but you just can't do, you know, once you've done. So that's actually really good, isn't it?

Martin [00:24:50]:
It's it's a great way to, experiment and and try it out, isn't it, and see, you know, whether it works for you or not.

Gill [00:24:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. And just briefly to wrap up, it did it it also did the calculations a little bit as Web, and it said, you know, in line with what you said, Martin, it's talking about 4 to 5 websites per month to be comfortably profitable. And, yeah, it's obviously Gill you, you know, that's the provisos that, you know, if you do more high high costing ones, you get more profit, etcetera. So yeah. Yeah. So I really like that.

Gill [00:25:29]:
Don't really have time to do much more at the moment, but go away. Folks, try these things, plug in your details, and and see what it it comes up Wilson see if you can be inspired to if if run your business more efficiently, change it, change the structure of it, or, obviously, like Martin says, check out what you're getting before you completely change your whole business. Get to speak to some real advisers and ask some questions. Is this sensible?

Martin [00:26:02]:
Yeah. That's that's absolutely brilliant. That's fascinating, Gill, because in in true lifestyle, I haven't seen that presentation be before you did it. So, really, I find that super interesting. And and for everyone, you know, watching or or possibly listening along because we'll we'll stick the audio version on Spotify. Obviously, you can't see, the the stuff on audio, but, the point about what Gill's talking about, I think you can still be able to pick up. So there's a couple of things. The the the quality of the output is directly related to the quality of the input.

Martin [00:26:36]:
So knowing how to structure the prompts, yes, you can use just plain English, but there are certain things you can do to get to get better, output. Secondly, knowing exactly what to ask, how to ask it, and and then how to drill down. If you want help with any of that, if you just wanted, like, a a general chat to us because we're starting to look at this thing, when I say this thing, I mean, the use of AI to help businesses, on a more regular basis. So come and have a chat, about, you know, how you think you could use it. I know, I'm talking to businesses on a fairly regular basis now about how they're already using it, and if they're not using it, you know, ways that could help them. I know Gill's doing the same thing. So, hopefully, this this Wise stream has been useful for you. We've we've gone through it fairly quickly because we wanna keep it sub 30 minutes.

Martin [00:27:29]:
If you have any comments, we would love to see comments, particularly on on the YouTube channel. Helps us to know that what we're doing is useful, obviously it helps YouTube to share this to more people as well. Even a thumbs up like would be good, any comments on LinkedIn would be would be great as well. My profile, Gill's profile, Mike, our other director's profile as Web, or indeed the Allegiant Web page. But, yeah, please interact, and let us know whether this sort of stuff's good for you or not, And we will be back, with another one unless you all interact and say, for god's sake, go away.

Gill [00:28:05]:
They might?

Martin [00:28:06]:
They might. They might. And that would be useful to know. Gutting, but useful. So, I'll leave you with a with a little, end screen with a reminder of where you can get in contact with us. But thanks very much for, that. Thank you for everyone who, left comments as we go through. Yeah.

Martin [00:28:23]:
Again, I've managed to to not multitask and get those up on the screen. I promise I'll do it next time. But, yeah, thank you, Gill. Amazing stuff. Really useful. Thanks again.

Gill [00:28:35]:
Cheers. Bye.

Martin [00:28:37]:
Hey, guys. Before you go, don't forget to hit that subscribe button to make sure you don't miss another episode. Please leave us a like or a Devitt. It truly makes a difference when you leave reviews. And head over to allegiantweb.com/podcast, where you'll find a full transcript of the show, some key points, and quite a few other goodies for you. Let's build this thing together and really make a difference. Alright. Catch you on the next one.

Martin [00:29:02]:
Bye bye.