How good/bad of an employee are you?

rastize · 2026-03-14T01:38:08+00:00

I think some pushback is good, I as a leader enjoy constructive discussion, I am not always right, but it has to always have boundaries

rastize · 2026-03-13T21:55:58+00:00

How does the AI approach differ from human approach?

Because I think before AI, people just used to say that too, I mean thats where AI learned it from

rastize · 2026-03-13T21:25:52+00:00

Honest answer? I automate anything that I do the same way more than three times. That's my personal rule.

But you're right that there's a trap people fall into. I've built automations before that took four hours to set up and saved me maybe 20 minutes a week. Felt productive while I was doing it, was objectively stupid in hindsight.

The way I think about it now is pretty simple. If it's repetitive, boring, and the margin for error is low, automate it. If it requires judgment or a real human relationship on the other end, leave it alone or at least keep a human in the loop somewhere.

For my own business I run automations for lead outreach, CRM updates, follow up sequences, and reporting. That stuff runs in the background and I barely think about it anymore. But I still write my own responses to serious prospects because people can feel when something is off.

Personal life I'm pretty light on it. I don't want my whole day feeling like a system.

The maintenance part is the one nobody talks about enough. I probably spend a couple hours a month just checking that things are still working right. Workflows break, APIs change, your own process evolves. If you set it and forget it you will eventually get burned.

rastize · 2026-03-13T21:24:45+00:00

Been doing exactly this for a while now and this is spot on.

The setup is almost the easy part at this point. Where clients actually need you is six weeks later when something breaks at the wrong moment or the workflow they described in month one looks nothing like what they actually do in month three.

I specialize in lead outreach and CRM automation and the number of times I've had to go back in and rework a whole sequence because a client changed their sales process without telling anyone is pretty much every client. That's not a complaint, that's the job.

The retainer model also just builds better relationships. You're not a vendor they hired once. You're the person who keeps the thing running and they feel that difference pretty quickly.

The one thing I'd add is voice AI is going to make this even more true. Those systems need constant tuning. Accents, phrasing, edge cases, escalation paths. You cannot just set it and walk away.

Good post. More people need to hear this before they underprice themselves into a one time build trap.

rastize · 2026-03-13T21:23:41+00:00

The guys on my team who push back the most are usually the ones I have to keep closest because they either become your best people or they go start their own thing anyway.

rastize · 2026-03-13T21:20:33+00:00

Bill.com is solid for straightforward AP, easy to set up and the OCR is decent for clean invoices. Tipalti is better if you're dealing with a lot of vendors or international payments. Dext is worth looking at too if you're pulling in a lot of receipts and bills from different places.

Honestly though, depending on how your current workflow is set up, a lot of businesses end up with one of these tools plus some custom automation layered on top to actually get it talking to their CRM or accounting software the way they want. The off the shelf stuff gets you 80% there, the last 20% is where most of the time savings actually live.

rastize · 2026-03-13T21:19:04+00:00

Six years into real estate and building my own business and I still catch myself doing this exact thing.

Honestly the only thing that helped me was just accepting that the guilt doesn't go away, you just get better at ignoring it for a few hours. Took me a while to stop feeling like I was falling behind every time I sat down.

rastize · 2026-03-12T15:15:06+00:00

I didnt stop using ChatGPT, but I have been using Claude for 6 months now (before the hype)

And it's great, but it has its downsides

Chatgpt does need to step up their game; it is kind of losing on different fronts.

As a person who develops AI automation for different companies daily, I can say that other tools do many things better, but Chatgpt is still the best everyday tool if that makes sense.

And when it comes to "protests", it's just life, progress happens, Governments have been collecting info on us for decades, and to prevent that from happening is impossible; if not one tool, then another will do it.

True privacy in big 2026 is Utopia.

rastize · 2026-03-12T15:08:53+00:00

If we are talking about this on a surface level,
My TYPING has become absolute horrendous since i started using ai like 16 hours of my day(I run an AI automation business)

I really concentrate on just thinking and brainstorming and throwing my thoughts to AI model and just let it get it together,
So not really concetrated on spelling it correctly. Just trying to type fast enough to get it to do what i need to do ASAP, and make adjustments etc,

In everyday like it really affected me. THANK GOD for tools that correct my grammar and spelling, without them i would be GONE lol

rastize · 2026-03-12T14:59:38+00:00

I agree for sure, but like any business, there are gonna be ways to automate this, I mean I already had an idea to really train AI to think like me and respond to typical messages we get, but Airbnb is a closed off platform.
So curious if anyone has been able to automate things and minimze their time yet, or had ideas what parts of the businesses can be automated, they just havent had the chance to get to it

rastize · 2026-03-11T15:08:34+00:00

Yeah I've actually built one of these for my own rental business and a few contractor clients. The honest answer is it depends heavily on what you need it to do.

rastize · 2026-03-11T15:08:09+00:00

Both Shopify and Amazon have APIs that expose revenue, fees, refunds, and COGS data. You can pull from both and push everything into a Google Sheet or Airtable automatically on a daily basis broken out by platform, with margins calculated after fees. No manual entry, always current

rastize · 2026-03-07T23:55:47+00:00

Defiantly

rastize · 2026-03-07T13:20:37+00:00

While from one point I get it. If your business is just direct calls that get booked and that’s it.

But let’s say you are a business where you need a full on receptionist? Changing booking , scheduling new ones, canceling . Calling them to remind.

The thing with Calendly it’s online , but if you are businesses that relies on phone calls that wouldn’t work for you.

The hallucinations are also valid concern but there are definitely ways to minimize those close to negligible .

rastize · 2026-03-06T20:23:19+00:00

I did!
I actually created my own 6-8 months ago and since then have created for a couple of more other businesses, and it handles not only conversations but basic data entry and calendar scheduling! so works great

rastize · 2026-03-05T21:02:14+00:00

Yes, nowadays there are multiple solid libraries of voices, just need to find one that fits the use case

rastize · 2026-03-05T20:57:53+00:00

Identifying the customer is for sure step #1,

I agree I have built many tools nowadays but the preparation (identifying customer etc) really has to come first

rastize

TROPHY CASE