What a personalized solution does to transform a lawn mower business and how you can take advantage of it.

The story of how we took Jim’s business from paper to AI driven parts ordering

I want you to meet Jim. He owns a lawn mower repair and resale business. And his workflow transformation is worth studying.

Jim was referred to me by another client of mine. I was told that he runs a lawn mower business and if I have experience with optimizing such hardware focused workflows. I told him the story of the flight school maintenance hangar.

At the time the problem set was similar, though at a much bigger scale. There were:

• Uncategorized parts

• Unorganized Inventory room

• No scanning or barcode system

• Paper notes to associate parts to airplanes

• Ineffective processes related to doing all this manually

The flight school stories always impress people, so naturally I share it. And yes it was quite an amazing project to take the maintenance hangar out of the stoneage. But honestly, airplane or lawn mower, the approach I take is exactly the same.

I told my client yes, let’s talk to Jim, I can do it, no question. When I met Jim on a video call just over a month ago I let him explain his business. It’s quite simple:

1. Buy a mower

2. Inspect the mower

3. Create a work order for the mower

4. Order the parts that are needed for the mower

5. Wait for the parts to arrive

6. Repair the mower

7. Sell the mower

Working with Jim is quite the joy, because he intuitively knows how my process works. He basically did the initial investigation of painpoints by himself. He knows what he wants optimized. Often that is not the case.

The Best Way To Know What To Optimize

When you want to optimize anything in your business, the single best place to start is stress. Think about everything that is causing you stress, is getting you upset or is frustrating. The thing about improving these aspects of your workflows is that it not only creates efficiency, but it saves you more energy.

Usually I guide my clients through identifying their paint points. It is totally ok not to know or understand that these daily painpoints do not have to be the status quo. Most of the time this is 85% of the job.

Jim had already done this though. Their process by doing everything on paper was causing lots of micro frustrations throughout the day.

• Papers were misfiled

• Mechanics couldn’t find notes of other people sometimes

• Mechanics wouldn’t write detailed notes by hand, because it took longer

• Specific Parts from the inventory couldn’t be associated with the actual mower

All of these individual things were making people edgy. And these little micro frustrations build up and create a work environment that can become stressful. This then leads to less effective execution on the repairs themselves and causes repairs to take longer.

It is always the same cause and effect relationship with all the people I have ever worked with. Follow the stresses and optimize for them first. Most of the time, this solves most problems.

Finding The Optimal Solution

The next step of course is finding the best solution. Here people often make the mistake and begin with software. That is the wrong approach in my opinion. Why force people to adapt to a software when you can find out who they are, how they work and then just design the software around them?

This is the magic of today's AI age. You can build personalized solutions that would have cost thousands of dollars even two years ago for a fraction of the cost. Even if AI itself isn’t used directly in your solution, it is used in making it.

So I advocate for tailoring solutions to your needs. Yes, this is the new way of doing things. In Jim’s case we had a clear task list to eliminate their frustrations as well as optimize their workflows

1. Build a digital inventory system

2. Track Mowers, Work Orders and Parts

3. Be able to scan QR codes to assign Parts

4. Build reminders related to Work Order status

5. Create custom dashboards to visualize everything user by user

When that is completed, use AI to learn to optimize the part ordering process by anticipating then which parts need to be ordered in advance to reduce down time. Then use AI to track inspection times and auto assign better completion time frames.

In the past that would have meant you needed to pay hundreds of dollars a month for a software solution, then teach your staff how to use it and then deal with all the quirks that do not fit your custom business model.

Now you can use AI to help you build it and accomplish the same thing for a one time cost of creating it and then a low monthly operating cost saving you thousands of dollars.

In this particular case we landed on Google AppSheets combined with machine learning and Gemini. Google AppSheets offers a perfect software platform on which one can build inventory systems. It has machine learning capabilities and since we’re already in the Google Universe it makes sense to use Gemini for the fancy stuff later.

How You Can Build Efficiency One Step At a Time

You can learn something from this little story. I am currently working on this solution. Within two weeks, we finished a fully functioning system that is now being used by the entire team. This type of turn around time is the norm in my world. Now we can measure the impact this has on Jim's business.

1.
When looking at your own business or your own work (this can be applied personally of course as well) focus on what is annoying you. You’d be crazy to automate away what you enjoy doing. Write those things down.

2.
When you’re thinking about how to automate something, or find solutions to make the process better, focus on how you want to work. Focus on what you like to do. Do not focus on existing software solutions. That is a thing of the past. Modularity and adaptability is the name of the game now.

3.
Let AI run a Deep Research prompt on your desired solution. You will be amazed at the level of detail you get. But don’t just ask it a single question ok? Provide details and context. I often chat with my personal AI assistant for 5 minutes or so with the goal of it building me a perfect prompt. Context and detail is key.

4.
If you do not know how to write scripts or code, no problem. Let the AI know that you only want no-code solutions. It will take that into consideration. And even if a script is needed, AI can write it for you. You just need to have a bit of curiosity to learn.

5.
Take it one workflow at a time. Jim’s story is unique because he trusted me right out of the gate, because of the personal referral and he knew his painpoints. But just do one thing at a time. Take small steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

6.
Watch the transformations and build on them. I would say that in 75% of all my solutions AI is only in the background. If a solution doesn’t require it, then do not use it. AI is great when it fits.

If you are stuck, or you do not have time, talk to someone like me. Find out what is possible. Many people are just there to help you on your path. I for one love if I can guide you and then you can do it yourself. Perfect, one more person on my list that I helped.