What AI Agents Actually Mean for Your Trade Business (No Tech Mumbo Jumbo)

Andy
If you just responded with a, ah, that doesn’t have anything to do with me as a trade business owner, then I want you to think again. AI agents are gonna be the key to saving you heaps of time and prevent plenty of headaches, all at a super affordable price.

Ange
Now don’t worry, we are not about to bombard you with high level jargon or futuristic hype. We are here to keep it real and focus on the everyday stuff that matters most to you, a trade business owner. 

Andy
We’ll also share what’s coming so you won’t be left behind. Like the dinosaurs, who said the internet was a fad back in the day. 

Ange
Oh boy. Weren’t they wrong? 

Andy
Oh, yeah. Today we’re discussing what AI agents are and why it’s important for you to stay across these trade specific updates to keep you in the know, stay put my friend. You are gonna want to hear this one. 

You are listening to The Tradie Show. This is the podcast for trade, business and contracting bosses like you who wanna lead with confidence, make more profit, and create a better lifestyle.

Ange
We’re your hosts, Andy and Angela Smith, husband & wife team, and co-founders of Lifestyle Tradie. Are you ready to have some fun? 

Andy
Hell yeah!

Ange
Hey, I’m Angela Smith, founder of Lifestyle Tradie and I know exactly what it feels like to be in your shoes. You didn’t plan on running the office, chasing payments, handling the marketing, and keeping the whole thing afloat while life keeps racing on. But here you are making it happen in your trade business, even when it feels like a lot. That’s why Andy and I created Stress-Free Tradie. It’s a one day live event for tradies and their partners who are ready to stop feeling like they’re holding it all together with duct tape, we’ll show you how to get on top of your cash flow, attract the right customers, and build a business that doesn’t swallow your life whole. Tickets are free, but spots are limited. Head to lifestyletradie.com.au/events. See when we are in a city near you and book your seats. We’d love to see you there. 

Andy
All right. It’s time to kick things off with some Hell yeah wins from some of our amazing Lifestyle Tradie members. Hell yeah! These are the legends who’ve been smashing it in their business, proving that small changes can lead to massive results, and hopefully these give you some inspo on what you can do in your business. Ange, what do we have this week? 

Ange
Got some great hell yes to share today, Andy. First up, a big shout out to Damien, who’s a plumber in Queensland and he says, getting away from work for two weeks without a single call from the crew and cruising down the slopes of Japan with another Lifestyle Tradie member.

Andy
Oh, hell yeah! That is absolutely incredible. And I can’t wait to be there very soon. So who’s up next? Ange? 

Ange
Next up is Brad who runs an appliance service and repair business in South Australia. And he writes, we had an out of the Blue Tech call this week that wants to come across to us. We weren’t openly looking, but having him may open a few doors for us.

Andy
Hell yeah! And how good is that? And that is what’s happening now. Some of our best members have tradies going to them wanting to work. What else have we got? 

Ange
So Rob, who runs an electrical business in Western Australia, he shares. Highest revenue month since we started in business. Very happy considering it was also a short month and a long weekend thrown in there too.

Andy
Hell yeah, mate. You are absolutely crushing it over there. Well done.

Ange
And short and sweet, Hell yeah. From a couple who run an electrical company in Queensland and they write. Profit is at 50% net for the month. 

Andy
Woah, wow, that definitely deserves a hell yeah! And that’s what we’re all talking about here, helping tradies like you take control, make changes, and see the winds rolling.

Alright, let’s rewind the clock a bit. Remember when having a mobile phone was a big deal and using it for anything other than calls or texts seemed like science fiction, tradespeople, us included, were out quoting jobs on paper, lugging diaries around entering data with a pencil on a ledger for all of our bookkeeping. And it wasn’t really that long ago, right? 

Ange
Oh, Andy. I think we’re showing our age.

Andy
Well, maybe it was a long time ago actually. 

Ange
So these days we use smartphones for nearly everything. Banking, job management, you name it. Yet back when the internet first showed up, plenty of people called it our fad. So, fast forward to now, and we can’t imagine life without it, let alone run a trade business. 

Andy
And it’s the same story with AI. We’ve seen it develop step by step, like going from those old dial up modems to the lightning fast internet we have today. We’re in the early wave of AI turning into something seriously sexy. 

Ange
So to set the scene. Let me share with you where we’re up to in terms of AI development worldwide. Experts are currently talking about these three stages of AI development. First, you’ve got artificial narrow intelligence. We’ll call this ANI, think chatGPT, where it’s designed to perform specific tasks. It does one thing really well, such as helping you write emails or analyzing data. It’s AI but it’s narrow in scope. 

Andy
Then there’s AGI short for artificial general intelligence. That’s when AI starts acting more like a human across many tasks, not just one. We’re just moving into this space now where AI bots can be given a set of instructions such as booking flights and can take over your computer and start communicating with the websites necessary to make this happen. 

Ange
So a side note. The acronyms aren’t the big deal here. The main thing is understanding AI’s evolving super fast, but a version of this general intelligence, the AGI, has been released in the US version of chatGPT. 

Andy
Yes. It’s called ChatGPT operator. You know how with the standard chatGPT, you can say something like this: Hey, chatty, find me all available flights from Sydney to Melbourne this Friday in the morning. Give me a list of 10 flights available, please.

Ange
I love how you call it chatty.

Andy
Oh, I’m up with it. I’m up with it. Now with chatGPT operator, you can now say. Great. Please book me that 7:00 AM seat with Virgin. Make it a window seat, please, and it actually does it for you.

Ange
I absolutely love this. It’s quite incredible to see the AI taking over your screen. You see the mouse moving around and everything while it’s making the booking. 

Andy
And if it gets stuck on something like needing credit card details or a password, for example. It just prompts you to take over so you can enter the details, but soon they’ll figure out how to bypass all that with encrypted passwords and stuff. It’s really cool. 

Ange
Yeah, so cool. Imagine chatty being able to do tasks like booking jobs or ordering materials. All this is still in early stages, but soon we’ll be using them as assistance all throughout our life. 

Andy
I can’t wait for when I walk through the front door at the end of the day and our AI agent will greet us over our home speakers. Hello Andy. Welcome home. It’s been a hot day today, so I’ve set the air conditioning to a comfortable 22 degrees. Andy, I can see your heart rate to be up. Yes. It’s because of the way you’re speaking to me. Oh, no. I’ve also started the diffuser with some beautiful lavender essential oil to help you relax. Would you like me to start dinner? 

Ange
Oh, start dinner. 

Andy
Oh, love that. How good? 

Ange
Yes, please take over the cooking. That’d be so good. That reminds me of one of my all time favorite cartoons. The Jetsons. Do you remember Rosie? That robot made? We’re going to get ourselves one of them. 

Andy
That would be pretty cool. Well, Ange, you never know. AI is on the move and we may have a rosy before you know it. 

Ange
So hey, development of robots that help people in the home is actually already in development. But I do think it’s a way off yet. 

Andy
This brings me to what experts say is the next stage of AI and that’s ASI, otherwise known as artificial super intelligence. Alright, let’s talk a little bit more in depth about these AI agents. So what exactly is an AI agent? 

Ange
Great question. So put simply an AI agent is software that doesn’t just wait around for you to tell it what to do. It can anticipate what you need. It learns, it manages tasks, and it can even action the tasks.

Andy
Instead of you logging in every night to chase invoices or schedule next week’s job, an AI agent could handle most of that for you. 

Ange
Yeah. Think of it like having a digital assistant who never sleeps and is always on call, but without the hourly wage or the sick days.

Andy
We’re not talking about robots running down the street, swinging a hammer in their hand and being on site. We’re talking about tasks that eat up your time, like quoting, sorting emails, or following up with customers, booking jobs, and taking phone calls. It’s the behind the scenes admin stuff. That can be a major time suck though.

Ange
But it is super important to get right. Seeing every trade business is made up of two sides, being on the tools with billable time and the admin work completed in the office. Plus, there’s different levels of AI agents from the simple GPTs that are programmed something similar to an app, to these advanced agents doing really complex workflows. 

Andy
You might be sitting there, maybe driving and you might be thinking to yourself, do I really need this? And the answer is maybe not right this second, but it is changing at a stupid rate or not. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on because tradies are already implementing this technology and seeing interesting results. 

Ange
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve had some of our Lifestyle Tradie members using AI to take after hours calls. Speaking from experience, there is nothing worse than getting woken up at 2:00 AM in the morning by someone simply asking you for the price of a job.

Andy
Yeah. I don’t miss that part of being a maintenance plumber. That is for sure. You’re either paying a fortune for someone to man the phone all night, or you’re stuck answering the calls during dinner with the family, or you’re being woken up at all hours of the night to talk about jobs that potentially may be emergency or not.

Ange
Which means it’s not just you who is woken up, the rest of the family are too. We were all affected. 

Andy
Yeah. Talk about a heart starter when you’re in your deepest sleep and the ringtone is so loud and you jolt up out of bed. 

Ange
Yeah. Tell me about it. 

Andy
The reality is a lot of tradies just let calls go through to voicemail, which to me is a lost opportunity. And that’s why we had some businesses in our community test out AI receptionists that answer the phone outside of normal hours.

Ange
Yeah. So trialing this new technology has been a game changer. 

Andy
The improvements I’ve seen with this technology is literally happening by the day, for example, the voices are becoming really natural with good inclination and tone. Plus they have even a great Aussie accent.

Ange
Yeah, I agree. But what I love most is how quick the AI agent is learning to respond to curly questions. And the pauses between responses are realistic. 

Andy
I guess the biggest pushback you are always gonna get is that people just wanna speak to a real person, but I think we can be forgiven for not wanting to answer every call in the middle of the night, right? 

Ange
Yeah, exactly. Times are changing. I think of it like the self-service checkouts at the supermarket. I don’t always like going to them, and sometimes I just want to have a real person serve me and put the groceries in the bag for me, but as time goes on, we’re way more accepting of the self-serve checkouts. 

Andy
And it’s happening at the service stations now too. 

Ange
Yeah, actually, I have noticed them. People are becoming more accepting of automating certain roles, and I think it will be the same with these AI agents or receptionists.

Andy
So like we said, we’ve been trialing one in particular through our CRM. Which is a customer relationship manager. How do you think it’s going? Ange?

Ange
Well, great so far. It answered after an hour calls. It recorded crucial details and sent messages for staff to check in the morning. Soon with what’s happening with these agents, I’m sure we’ll have them booking appointments straight into the job management software. And for all the jobs it didn’t get, it meant that these guys weren’t working in the night for calls that they wouldn’t have attended to immediately anyway. 

Andy
How do you know they wouldn’t have gone to the job? 

Ange
Well, because it was programmed with a specific message stating their emergency call out fee.

Andy
Clever. 

Ange
Yeah. So this plumber in particular wasn’t keen on getting out of bed if people don’t wanna pay that fee. So essentially it weeded out the tire kickers and he got a good night’s sleep. 

Andy
Oh. Imagine waking up in the morning feeling fresh, no more waking up, feeling exhausted because you’ve answered five phone calls throughout the night from shift workers simply asking for a price or wanting to book a job for next week.

Ange
Yeah, exactly. Or this is a stepping stone to what’s coming. It might feel futuristic right now. But in a few years, actually, maybe in a few months we’ll look back and wonder how we did business without it. 

Andy
AI isn’t here to replace you, it’s just another tool, like your favorite bit of gear in the van. 

Ange
Yeah, some things AI does better, like sifting through data or auto scheduling, but it can’t, for instance, build a genuine rapport with your customers. Or bring that personal touch that sets your business apart.

Andy
That’s a big one. Your customers choose you because of the quality of your work and the trust built with a human. AI doesn’t replace that handshake or the friendly chat you have with Mrs. Jones, who’s been a loyal customer for years. It’s there to take some grunt work off your plate so you can focus on the relationships and growing the business.

Ange
Exactly. So the real danger is pretending AI doesn’t exist, like bearing your head in the sand, so to speak. Because if your competitors start using these tools to save time and cut costs, they’ll be able to quote faster or deliver better customer service. Then you are on the back foot. 

Andy
We’re not saying dive in headfirst. If you’re still unsure, start small. Maybe trial an AI driven booking system or a chat bot on your website. The idea is to see if it helps you and your business not to force something that doesn’t fit.

Ange
If you haven’t already started using ChatGPT or other AI powered software, then it’s a good idea to try it out. We actually have a guy that is super comprehensive on how to use chatGPT and AI. It’s really specific to trade business and I highly recommend you download it. We have some AI experts in our business that really know how to get the best out of this stuff, so we’ll pop the link to download that in the show notes, or just check out the free resources page on our website, lifestyletradie.com.au.

Andy
At the end of the day, AI’s not going anywhere. In fact, it’s coming faster now than ever, and you don’t wanna be left behind. 

Ange
In saying all this, Andy. I think it’s really important we don’t lose sight of what makes a family run trade business so special, especially when we’re talking about AI. 

Andy
People do buy from people they like and they trust. They wanna know there’s a real human on the other end who cares about their leaking tap or wiring issue. AI can streamline these things behind the scenes, but it’s your personal touch that keeps the customers coming back. 

Ange
That’s right. And AI can help with quotes and scheduling, but it can’t replace the moment you see your kid’s face light up when you finally get a weekend off. Or the sense of pride you feel when a customer refers their friends to you because of your genuine service. So our advice is simple. Just stay open to new technology.

Andy
Don’t bury your head in the sand and hope it goes away because it won’t. Think about small practical ways it could save you time or money. Maybe it’s automating a few emails or using a booking systems that’s AI enabled. But I do wanna point out something really important here, Ange. 

Ange
What’s that, Andy?

Andy
Well, I’m telling you to implement this stuff, but I want to couple it with a word of caution. Plugging AI technology into a broken business will not get you the results you want. As they say, you can’t polish a dirt. 

Ange
So eloquent, Andy. 

Andy
My point is this, you’ve gotta get your business model right first because you can’t plug in AI to a broken business. 

Ange
I couldn’t agree more. And of course, that’s where we help tradies here at Lifestyle Tradie. The thing is AI is not gonna wait for anyone. You’ve got to get your business model right and you’ve got to start implementing artificial intelligence. Otherwise, you are going to be left behind. 

Andy
You don’t have to tackle this alone. Sometimes, just taking that first step is all it takes to shift your business in a better direction. Be ready to harness the tools that can give you back your time.

It’s Tradie Dilemma time. And this is our Q&A segment where you let us know what you’re having trouble with in your business. And we will give you our best advice. 

Ange
Okay, so today we have a question from Sam who runs a plumbing business in New South Wales and he writes, Hey, Andy and Ange. I’ve been running my plumbing business for about six years now, and I’m struggling to find and keep good staff. Every time I think I’ve got a solid team, someone quits and I’m back to square one. I don’t have the time to be constantly hiring and training new people. How do I attract decent tradies who actually want to stick around? 

Andy
Yeah, that is a great question, but I, I do believe there’s probably fundamental things in your business you’re doing wrong. And the first thing is how do you find them? Well, most people these days are doing the same old stuff that hasn’t really worked for years. So there’s new ways of hiring people now. The other one is how much are you paying them? There’s no doubt about it. There’s been a huge raise in hourly rates of the tradies going around. Like we are hearing now in Sydney, 50, $60 an hour plus van, phone, commissions, right? So. If you are a business that is struggling to make good profit, then you’re actually struggling to pay your staff, you know the money they deserve. Now at Dr. Drip, we’re never the best payers, but we’ll ride up there at the top. We had good culture, a good team, and we paid very, very well. So it wasn’t really worth anyone leaving to go to another business. My staff only left to go out on their own. So think about that. How is your business tracking? Can you afford to pay top dollar? If not, why? Why aren’t you making the profit that you need to be able to market the right way, get the right staff, and keep them long term?

Ange
Sam, I wanna add one extra thing, which is having a look internally at yourself. I would say tradies want to work with a really strong leader. Someone who’s going to incorporate them into the business and they can see their future long term staying with this company. So when, once you adjust a tradie, you need to now learn how to manage people and how to lead a business and showcase that vision that they belong to. So I would suggest actually taking stock, I suppose, of where you currently are in your business. And how you paint the picture with that team that could make a massive difference as to why they stick around with you long term. 

Andy
Thanks for writing and sharing that dilemma, Sam. And I totally understand where you’re at. 

Ange
Remember, if you have a question or dilemma in your business, then reach out to us and let us know what we can help you with. 

Andy
Subscribe to The Tradie Show, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Rate and write us a review or for more information about Lifestyle Tradie, head to lifestyletradie.com.au.