Luke Heka on Building Simple AI Systems That Don't Break

Kirsten Scott0:00
Morning guys. Thanks for jumping on with us. We are going to get straight into it because I know we've got a lot to get through today. We're joined by Luke Hecker. He's the founder of SellerAI, which is a leading AI agency in Australia. You've probably seen him and his team across all of the socials. They've been hosting workshops all across Australia, right?

Luke Heka0:21
Yeah, everywhere. Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast, and Brisbane as well.

Kirsten Scott0:24
Yeah, I'm actually joining one tomorrow, so I shall report back.

Luke Heka0:27
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott0:28
Now before we get into the questions, I am going to start off with a quick fire round of this sort that. Are you ready?

Luke Heka0:33
I'm ready to go.

Kirsten Scott0:34
Okay. Tea or coffee?

Luke Heka0:36
Coffee.

Kirsten Scott0:36
City or beach?

Luke Heka0:38
I'm a beach.

Kirsten Scott0:40
Same. Early mornings or late nights?

Luke Heka0:43
Really early mornings.

Kirsten Scott0:44
How early?

Luke Heka0:45
4 AM.

Kirsten Scott0:46
Okay. That's pretty early. Big team or lean team?

Luke Heka0:51
Lean team now.

Kirsten Scott0:52
Yeah. With AI. Yeah. Automation or delegation?

Luke Heka0:58
Automation.

Kirsten Scott1:00
ChatGPT or Claude?

Luke Heka1:02
Claude, every day.

Kirsten Scott1:02
I thought you might say that one. Couldn't even get chat out of my mouth. AI replacing jobs or creating better ones?

Luke Heka1:08
I'm all for creating better ones.

Kirsten Scott1:10
Love that. One thing you can't leave the house without?

Luke Heka1:14
Um, at the moment, my laptop.

Kirsten Scott1:16
Okay, not the phone?

Luke Heka1:18
Not the phone, no. My laptop comes first.

Kirsten Scott1:20
Interesting. Um, and one word to describe your founder journey so far?

Luke Heka1:24
Uh, Organized chaos, maybe.

Kirsten Scott1:27
That sounds about right. I'm pretty sure that's the same for a lot of these guys. Yeah. Okay. So for anyone joining us for the first time, can you take us back to the beginning of your journey and how you started SellerAI? And also just a little bit about what you're doing with these workshops at the moment.

Luke Heka1:41
Yeah, done. So welcome everybody. But yeah, just to give you a bit of an understanding of how I even got into AI and systems and operations. I always had like this love for systems and it wasn't actually a job back then. I didn't know that it was an actual job. So before before doing like AI systems and operations in businesses. I had many other businesses. I had a construction business and then I had about a 2-year period where I decided just to try everything. Construction business did really well and then all of the other ones in between that I just tried as many as I could. But throughout that process, I really figured out that the thing that I loved the most was systemizing businesses. And in my spare time, I was always in tech. I was always in like systems and helping people with their businesses. And, you know, one day one of my friends was like, you should just do this as a job. I didn't actually realise it was a job then. We all kind of went under the tier of like automation specialists. And as AI, you know, progressed and evolved over the last 5 years, you know, we called AI automation specialists. And then now we're like AI systems architects and like the names evolved over the years. But, you know, throughout the whole like AI journey in the past like 5 years, it's been a bit of a roller coaster. And right now we're probably seeing a lot of business owners out there that might be confused or not understanding where to go. It's perfectly fine. This whole like rollercoaster that we're on at the moment doesn't actually stop and it's been happening for a long time. So yeah, everyone's in it. It's just keep it calm and relaxed. You're not that far behind.

Kirsten Scott3:13
I love it. Okay. So for most founders using AI, what's actually getting results and what's not?

Luke Heka3:19
Look, there's a lot of, I guess, chaos out there at the moment. There's everyone's jumping on the AI and saying, hey, this is the tool to use. This is the actual, you know, tool to use. But what's actually getting results these days is getting, just keeping it really simple. I know that sounds like backwards advice compared to everybody out there at the moment because everyone's saying you need AI agents, you need automations. I think—

Kirsten Scott3:44
I feel like it's everywhere, like it's screaming at you.

Luke Heka3:46
If you get trapped in the algorithm of AI on your carousels or whatever it is on social media, you are in an absolute loop. I tend to jump off that, but I like what's working is really simple systems that are done really, really well that don't break. And what I mean by that is like, let's just say if it's an automation that just grabs your emails and maybe sorts them out or grabs your emails and grabs an invoice and puts it into Xero. Things like that are really, really simple with one or two steps that work that don't break all the time. I love those things.

Kirsten Scott4:20
Yeah, I love it. And I think like particularly with people starting to learn about AI, it's like one step at a time. And then as you get confident with it, you can probably evolve and change a few things.

Luke Heka4:30
Yeah, definitely.

Kirsten Scott4:31
Okay, so is AI replacing people? Is AI replacing people? And if so, how and what does it look like for our current teams?

Luke Heka4:38
Look, I look at the news and what everybody's saying out there. In certain business models, it's replacing a lot of people. If you look at these big tech companies, they're laying off people, you know, in massive, like, bunches. But that's not current for a lot of, like, actual service-based businesses is because most of them are overstretched at the moment. Most of them don't have an abundance of people that are there. And these tech companies are laying off people. Because coding's a lot easier these days and they can use these systems like Claude Code or Codex and they don't need the bandwidth that they did because of these platforms. So what's really happening at the moment is the best way to use AI in these things is actually teaching your team on how to use it. And that's where there's this big confusion where everybody's thinking that they're going to lay off everybody and they're going to implement these AI agents and they're going to be able to like, you know, cut their team in half. That is not the reality for probably 95% of people that would be on this call or listening to it. And yeah, that future's maybe a little bit further away than what we think.

Kirsten Scott5:38
Yeah, it's interesting that you say that. I'm hearing this a lot lately, particularly podcasts and everything else. One that sticks out for me, Emma Greig did one with an AI specialist probably about 6 episodes ago. And she said like, as the founder, you need to be upskilled in AI because if it's not from the top, how can you expect the rest of the team to implement it?

Luke Heka5:56
Yeah, and that's where, look, I've been in the AI space and seen a lot of like things come in and out and like trends and I've been on that roller coaster many times before. What's really happening now, because I'm more of like a, being like an AI agency, I've done builds for businesses over the last 5 years, but what's really happening now is there's this like gap that's been closed where before you needed someone who was like a developer to come in and like build an AI agent or an automation. Now these companies, especially things like Claude, are like closing that gap of how easy it is for the everyday person to jump on there and actually use it to build an agent, systems, automations, and you're definitely going to figure that out tomorrow, um, in this session. But that gap is closing right now. So even— we're just at this like real pivot mark at the moment where developers in that space have to pivot, and it's more so about training your team on how to use these tools rather than trying to integrate software developers or people into the business.

Kirsten Scott6:56
Yeah, I love that. And it's also way more cost-effective, way more cost-effective, and time-effective. Yeah, you send these— this work and requests off to agents, and sometimes they've got an abundance of clients that they can't always come back so quickly.

Luke Heka7:08
So even for me, I essentially like nearly kill off my business model over the last, like, in one week just because I knew it was turning and there was no, no need in the next, like, 6 months for AI automation agencies, I guess, essentially, and it's changed very, very quickly.

Kirsten Scott7:25
Yeah, that's so interesting. What are the biggest mistakes business owners make when trying to implement AI systems into their business?

Luke Heka7:32
Look, this is one that's probably not out there on the internet. And I'll share it with you. It's not what everybody thinks. And it's actually getting your team on board. Now I've been into 5,000+ businesses over the years. And the one thing that really catches not just myself, but business owners off is not educating your team into the actual, like what this is going to look like and enrolling them in the vision of AI and like what that looks like in the business, because a lot of founders are just starting AI and they're like, hey, they might get someone like an automation agency or they get these consultants in or they get people to come and, you know, start building these systems and they're scared. They don't want to share that. They think that this is, you know, coming to take their job. They might be losing things because there's all this like misinformation, I guess, out there around AI and what's going to happen in the business. So just for us, like, because what happens is a lot of these internal employees or key people in the business tend to gatekeep a lot of really important information because they don't want to share it and they don't want to, you know, let us know exactly what's going on. So for us, it's enrolling everybody in the same vision. It's enrolling everyone from right from the top down and be like, hey, this is the AI journey we're going to go on. I may not fully understand exactly where this will go, but everyone's, you know, and just explaining what that looks like for your team and as a business as well. I feel like if you get that one down pat, the rest is not as hard.

Kirsten Scott9:04
Yeah. And honestly, I think if you're giving your team that confidence and being completely clear with them, they're actually going to be able to innovate in their own roles using AI because they'll be confident with the tools as well.

Luke Heka9:15
Yeah. That, like, internal teams have stalled so many projects on us. Like, it was something that caught me off guard. Like, so I didn't know that I was going to have to teach business owners on how to, like, educate their team on AI and how to implement it.

Kirsten Scott9:28
Yeah. Okay. If you were running a small business with limited resources today, what are the first 3 workflows you would automate immediately? I need this.

Luke Heka9:37
You need this? Look, I feel like there's so many where you can start from and I'll just touch with this first. With AI, right, there's so many things you can automate and there's so many people saying this and that. I feel like a really easy one is invoicing and quoting in any kind of capacity, whether you're in the, you know, invoicing and getting those invoices into your accounting software so you can take care of the accounts payable section. That's just an annoying niche that's very repetitive in every business as well. I like that one.

Kirsten Scott10:11
It also doesn't move the business forward because you're not selling anything, you're not creating a product, you're literally just trying to like chase up money.

Luke Heka10:17
Yeah, and that's one that's like really just apparent everywhere. I also, it may not be an automation, but it's one, it's connecting up your, either your Codex or your Claude to your Meta ads, if you run any marketing campaigns or your Google ads, I feel like that just one connection piece, I would call that an automation, just allowing you to get real information on your marketing data instantly straight away. That's one. Ooh. And the last one would have to be, I really just feel like this is maybe in a stack, I guess, as I would call it. Is a really good CRM that you can connect to either Claude or ChatGPT or Codex or any of these platforms. Um, like something like GoHighLevel. I know there's a lot of like really big legacy CRMs out there. Not a lot of them connect to these platforms. And the reason why I like that is because you can use whether it's your Claude account or your Codex account to actually do tasks with inside that CRM. Um, so I guess your bandwidth of like what you can actually do in your day, whether it's like sending emails in there, reaching out to people, creating flows or whatever it is, just, you know, expands a lot. So that's a really good stack for me. I like those three.

Kirsten Scott11:33
I like it. Um, okay. So you've spoken about AI becoming a revenue engine, not just productivity tool. What does that actually look like in practice?

Luke Heka11:43
So for businesses, right, it's obviously AI is everywhere and everybody's, you know, we can integrate it into our business. As far as like being a productivity tool and what we can use it for, I guess to explain that question, how I see that question is more of like what I would use it for. And right now, if I see the biggest use case for content, like for AI is really marketing. It's been a bit of a hurdle for just about every business owner, marketing and content at the moment. I feel like those are two niches that AI is really starting to like make some really hot grounds in for a long time. You know, I had a lot of businesses reach out and be like, hey, can we automate content or create? And I was like, not really, because it's not right. It's not there yet. But from, yeah, just where everything's at right now, I feel like content and marketing on any platform is really good. And that's what I'd be using AI for to obviously drive a business forwards.

Kirsten Scott12:42
Yeah. Okay. That's great. Everyone's talking about AI and wanting to automate their whole business. What are the things you wouldn't use AI for?

Luke Heka12:50
Oh yeah. See, I'm in a different seat where I love automation. I love AI, but the things that I don't automate are the personal, like face-to-face interactions. Yeah. A lot of businesses come to me and like, I'll give you an example, like real estate's very early days came to me and they're wanting to like automate the whole business. And I'm like, look, that's just not what I do. I'm like, we have to break this down and have a look at, you know, where's a, like, where are those relationships made? Where are they? You know, how can you create more of those? So I'm more in the fact of like, automate things that AI does really well and the things that it doesn't, which is like meeting up with people, calling people, creating those relationships. That's exactly what I like to focus on as well. All the boring— it's boring stuff. The boring stuff works.

Kirsten Scott13:34
Interesting though, because like you're an AI agent, right? You'd think that you'd be pushing more like automation across the business, but I think it's important to understand like human touch and human taste will never replace like AI.

Luke Heka13:46
No way. No way. And that's, that's, that's where like right now I feel like everybody's getting like super confused and they think AI everything, AI everything. And a lot of business owners come to me and they've watched a bunch of YouTube videos and they've seen, you know, this AI agent can do this and that. And it doesn't really work like that. A really simple stack in a business that does like some simple things is better than 10 things that break 5 times a week. And that's what's happening at the moment. I feel like if I look at you know, under the hood of actual businesses are getting results with AI, which are, you know, in them all day, every day. So it's the ones that are keeping it super simple, not trying to overcomplicate it. They're really getting the results right now.

Kirsten Scott14:30
Yeah, I love that you say that because I think with anything, particularly with social media, there's almost like this like competition and people like driving it like whoever gets to AI faster is the ones that are going to be the most successful, but it's not necessarily the case.

Luke Heka14:43
I'd be looking at whatever team member it is or your role is especially and going, okay, it's like a 60-40 split. It's like 60% is just things that AI can actually do. And they're usually boring, repetitive tasks. 40% is usually the things that turn a business and make the business money. And you need to look at your whole team from the top down and go, okay, what is that 60-40 split like? And then once you've obviously implemented systems in there to take away that 60%, start teaching your team members and just changing their mindset around, you know, what that looks like for their role. Because I had this in a real estate in Mount Isa, and this was like maybe 4 years ago, and we built a bunch of systems and automations for them, and they rung us on like Monday, and like all the inspections were done and booked in, and they were asking like, you know, where's all the chats and like, what are we doing? I'm like, no, just go to the booking. Yeah. Like go to the, like go to the site. You don't have to do anything. Yeah. But where is it? Yeah. I'm like, no, you just have to look at the calendar and go there. And I just realised I was like, oh, he didn't tell told them that they didn't have to like go through everything. And that's where business owners will get called out in this space. It's like, yes, we can automate things, but, you know, training and educating your internal team what that 40% looks like. That's really the game.

Kirsten Scott16:03
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so the AI landscape is really hard to navigate right now. What's actually worth paying attention to and how do we shift from what's working and what's not?

Luke Heka16:13
Oh yeah. Right now I feel like it's a confusion of tools and every AI startup right now is saying that their AI tool is the best, which is, you know, great marketing. I love it. But if I'm looking at two platforms right now, it's Claude Code and it's Codex. Now there's a lot of confusion around this as well, where people feel like they think Claude is just Claude the desktop app, which it is. There's a little swipey bit at the top which says Claude Code. Now that's only just been there as of recent and had the same features. That and Codex are somewhat very similar. I like Claude Code, for example, but if I was to look at any software or any AI platform to use, I would use Claude Code right now. And the reason being is you can actually use everything else in there. For example, if I want to use ChatGPT or Codex or Nano Banana or Gemini, any of these other tools, if you set up your Claude code properly, you can use them all.

Kirsten Scott17:14
They plug in, right?

Luke Heka17:14
Yeah, they plug in.

Kirsten Scott17:15
I don't know anything about this. No, I do not. But like I heard there's like a marketplace and they all kind of like plug in. Yeah.

Luke Heka17:22
You can actually connect up all these platforms. Like I use all of them through my Claude code, but I think that's the biggest thing that people are getting confused. I think Claude, just like the chat and the coworker, is what Claude is, but Claude code is what we've been using for a very long time and been building systems and automations. Just to give you an example, which is why I pivoted into the workshops, was because we have a very specific Claude code setup. So someone would have a call like this where, you know, it would explain the problems and go over what automations they need. I would take this transcription and put it into my Claude code and get it to build it. So it would build out N8N automation, Zapier, or Make, or all like any kind of agent or system. What's happening right now now is that actual technology and the way that that's used is being put in business owners' hands, which is what I do in the workshop, which is why I just give it to business owners. So they don't need someone to build an automation or an agent for them. But Codex is a ChatGPT version of Claude Code. I think it's really good, but I do love Claude Code just because it's so much, it's ahead of the game.

Kirsten Scott18:29
Yeah, I love that. And it's so true. Like you need to educate people to understand how to use these properly because there is so much more than meets the eye.

Luke Heka18:36
And I'll just touch on that. As well, because this is like a very current topic that's going to be popular this week and over the next like 5 weeks is people battling it out between Codex and Claude Code and which one to use. And the AI bros on the internet will probably have this discussion with me. And really what it is, and this is where business owners get really confused because they use something like, let's say Manus or anything like that. And then Codex comes out next week and, and I call it the AI Ferris wheel where You're consistently on this loop and the most important thing you can do is just like keep it steady and be like, okay, great. Choose a platform, use it because if you're going to swap every month, there's always going to be a new update. Now, right now, Codex is really good. Claude Code could use some updates and some improvements, but you know, we're probably anywhere between 2 to 3 weeks to being, getting a whole new upgrade. So keep it steady, choose a platform, stick with it.

Kirsten Scott19:36
Commit to it.

Luke Heka19:36
Yeah, don't keep jumping around. That's, that's the thing, the mistake I see everybody making.

Kirsten Scott19:40
Yeah, that's great advice. Guys, we are going to move to the Q&A shortly. So if you have any questions, just pop it in the chat. Okay. So where do you still believe human connection matters most in business, even as AI becomes more advanced?

Luke Heka19:52
Yeah, I love this topic. And, you know, as much as AI, I love AI and I've been doing it for a long time now. The biggest pivot I feel like and will happen over the next, like, what's already happening now is face-to-face in-person events. I feel like The AI landscape on social media will get so bloated because of the ability, the output of— there's this theory called the dead space theory. Anyway, I won't bore you with it, but it's where everybody's, you know, AI is creating content on social media. So it'll become this dead space theory and people will really start to look for in-person, face-to-face human events. And as businesses, as brands, that's where the trust will be built. As where before it was done through personal brands and that's that's obviously still going to be there, but, and it's why yapping on content, like yapping content, what's real and what's not on online anymore. And, and that's why I say right now everyone's talking about AI content creation. It's as bad as it's ever going to be right now. That's as bad as it gets. It only gets better. There's no, it's not going backwards. So I feel like the biggest kind of leverage point in that space right now of like, you know, AI and humans is looking at your business model and going, how can I integrate it? Whether it's face-to-face events, in-person events, and, and that's going to be the next, like, it thing.

Kirsten Scott21:16
Yeah. I mean, I love that for us. Yeah.

Luke Heka21:18
It's a big movement.

Kirsten Scott21:20
Um, what does an AI-first business look like over the next 3 to 5 years and what businesses are going to get left behind? There's a couple. Be careful.

Luke Heka21:29
Yeah, no, no, I'll answer that in a couple of ways. So If I'm looking at a prediction of what the next like 3 to 5 years looks like in AI, I feel like one, it'll get so progressive. It's going to come down to like costing. So the AI models and who can afford what. So it will look like, let's say if you can afford $20,000 a month, $100,000 a month, that's going to depend on how much, you know, reach your AI agent or your system can actually get as well. So it's going to be like, how powerful is that system? It's just going to be like a, I guess a car, but a really expensive car, and however much you can afford per month is going to determine, you know, how good your AI system is. And I feel like that's where businesses are heading. It's going to come down to who has the best model and also local models as well. I'll call this very, very early. And what I mean by local models, it's just a, I guess it's an AI model that you own and run on a local computer. So it's not going out on the internet as well. I feel like those two things are really important to have a look at as AI becomes a lot more progressive in businesses. And then with actual like teams and what that looks like as well, I feel like we're going to have two things. One, stability in our internal core teams. Now, a lot of businesses have always had this like influx, you know, there's probably a 30% of influx of people. You have your core team, they stay there, they're consistent, but we have this influx of people in and out of a business, which is quite a big disturbance. I know, um, of watching businesses over the years implement these systems.

Kirsten Scott23:05
To retrain people, bring them in. Yeah.

Luke Heka23:07
I think the biggest win for me and what I've seen is the stability of your core team. That's underrated. No one talks about it at the moment because of the ability to like, they won't have to be as chaotic. If you look at your core team, they're usually very stretched. It's chaotic. It's stressed. If you bring in AI systems that I guess stabilise like their day-to-day work lives, they've got a lot more bandwidth. The money is coming in for the business and everything's a lot more stable. Those people will tend to stay and we won't rely on this influx of like rolling in and out staff, um, as well. And then the second one is what everyone's speaking about on the internet is more solo, uh, founders and people with very small teams, which is one. Um, and there's one here actually that I feel like is just a really cool point that to point out is I see it a lot right now because there's like early founders that are in this like very early days. Of starting a business, and then we've got founders that have been in business for, you know, 10, 20, 30 years, is understanding the competition at the moment. Because anyone that's starting a business now is used to starting, having a website today, having a CRM set up today, having all these flows. So that's like their competitive moat. And if you're in like that older bracket or better age bracket, you've got the human skills and using those as well. So that's where I see a lot of like, I guess, more better age founders trying to like go hard on the AI, but I'm like, Yes, use it as a tool, but use your competitive moat, which is your ability to talk to people, create relationships, meet and shake hands. A lot of the younger people coming to the business don't have that competitive moat at the moment. So yeah, it's learning how to, you know, use what you've got.

Kirsten Scott24:53
Yeah, I really love the fact that you mentioned the core team thing because I don't think a lot of people speak about that enough. Ultimately, as you're growing and scaling, it is your team that helps the business continue to grow. So it's really important to look after them.

Luke Heka25:05
Yeah, 100%.

Kirsten Scott25:06
Okay. And finally, for founders listening today who know they need to move faster with AI, but haven't fully committed yet, what's one practical step they could implement this week?

Luke Heka25:16
I think sitting down with your team, having a real conversation about how do we implement AI into the business, see who's using what tools and get everyone on the same platform. Now, I don't care if it's called Code, Codex, whatever it is, bring it in because a lot of business owners right now whether you know it or not, or you've had this conversation, they're all using some kind of AI and it's just absolutely scattered out everywhere. And it's very inconsistent, but if you're all working on the same ecosystem and the same platform, it's some, it grows a lot faster and you can move forward. So I feel like obviously I'm going to give two bits of advice. Cool. Have the conversation, pick a tool, use it. Right now, my bet is just Claude Code. It's very progressive, although there's all these other tools. It's an easy platform to stay on and they're always updating it as well. So you're not going to have to change platforms.

Kirsten Scott26:06
Yeah, that's great advice.

Luke Heka26:08
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott26:08
Okay guys, I can see a few questions coming through. The first one I have is Jessica Gat. She's still on here. Hello.

Luke Heka26:18
Hi.

Kirsten Scott26:18
Sorry. No, you're fine. Um, you mentioned, uh, using AI to go through emails, collect invoices for Xero. Which sounds like a dream. How, I don't expect you to explain it step by step right now, but how do I learn how to do stuff like that? Done.

Luke Heka26:36
I can actually explain it here right now. So what you would do is go on to Claude Code, get a Claude Code account, and then tell you, you literally just speak to your Claude Code and say, hey, I need to connect my Xero up to the MCP connector. And it will be able to walk you through that process. It will be a little bit of configuring and getting it set up, but essentially what's going to happen there is your Claude is going to be able to— they've got an official connection, Anthropic and Xero, that you can connect up your Claude account. So what will happen there is if you want to create an invoice, you can just talk to your Claude and be like, hey, create an actual invoice, and it will go through and create it, create a payroll, create whatever you want in there, and then And to stack on how you get that out of your emails, if you, same thing, you go on your Claude Code, not, not Coworker and not Chat and say, hey, I need to set up a routine task to pull any invoices that come through my emails and put them into Xero as a bill. Literally just speaking to it like that is it.

Kirsten Scott27:38
And so that will create the full automation for you that will continue, or do you have to keep going back and?

Luke Heka27:44
There's a couple of different ways. So, uh, at the moment, Claude Code has a thing called routines or managed agents, just to keep it super simple for the chat. There's a thing called routines and it's just an automation that runs the same time whenever you set it. So if you say, for me, I have this, I'll explain how mine works. I have it running 3 times a day on a routine task and it just runs through my emails 3 times a day, grabs any invoices and then puts them in my Xero as a bill But literally how we're, how we're speaking right now and explaining it, um, that's exactly what you need to do. Just talk to your Claude code like that.

Kirsten Scott28:22
A lot of people use the voice note on Claude as well. Whisper, I think it is. Yeah.

Luke Heka28:26
Whisper Flow is really good, um, as well. But the only thing that you'll have that will take up at least half an hour of your time there is connecting it up. But if you just know to ask Claude to connect it up to your MCP on your Xero, um, it should be able to walk you through that process.

Kirsten Scott28:41
Cool. Thank you so much.

Luke Heka28:43
That's all right.

Kirsten Scott28:44
Thanks, Jess. Steph Rose. Hello. My question was around how do you navigate risk and compliance when you're kind of looking holistically at the workflow and building for that, particularly any European clients or people that might work with GDPR regulations? Or even you mentioned specifically connecting like Cowork or Claude through to your CRM, which is obviously rife with PII. So how do you navigate that for businesses?

Luke Heka29:20
So this is where I was talking earlier on about like local models being hosted as well. And it definitely, it's, this is the confusing bit at the moment where everyone's having compliance issues because it's different in every state and country and it gets very confusing. I actually have a company I work with as well. And if you want to reach out to him, his name's Cristiano. He's from, it's called Empire Technologies. He actually navigates this for us because even me, those changing regulations that are happening at the moment are so vast and change like so regularly. It's very hard to keep on top of, but I'll just give you an example how we've been able to do that for like finance companies. That's where we have like a local hosted model. So none of that personal information and data is obviously going out to any of these like models that are on the internet or anything like that. That as well. There's a lot of different ways you can tackle it, but for me, I would just approach someone that's in that space because even for me, it's so hard to keep on top of. And whenever I'm building those, um, someone like Cristiano from Empire Technologies oversees that whole build for us because it changes. Like, from even— I've had it started to build, and the time I've got to the end of the build, it's like some compliance issues have changed. So that's my best advice on that, or you can always ask your Claude as well. Claude is actually very good at answering those security questions, I've noticed.

Kirsten Scott30:39
So interesting. Thank you.

Luke Heka30:42
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott30:43
Thanks, Steph. Uh, Connor.

Luke Heka30:48
Hey, uh, so I guess my question is more about the, uh, routines Claude covered, uh, primarily for service-based businesses. Uh, what would you say like their top 3 prone job or the routine, or that you've seen the most value delivered for? So I'll, I'll answer that in two parts. Just so everybody knows, there's two platforms in your Claude. There's Managed Agents, which is just like another platform by, from Claude, which you can just set up, I guess, like AI agents. It is on an API key. So just for everybody, that just means you will have to have a credit card on it and it charges you every time you use it. Uh, the routines task is inside your Claude and you can just set that. That runs off your Claude subscription, so you don't have to obviously pay for that on a credit card every time. It just comes off your account. And then to answer, what are my top 3? Emails is one, an easy one. I know everybody has emails. Um, Sorting through emails, you can build a routine that will go through and have a look through your emails every morning, scan and just pretty much sort them all out. That's actually something I have where it just goes through all my emails and categorises and puts them in certain folders and make sure that, you know, what's most important is kind of tagged. It's got all the right colours on it because if everyone's got a, you know, at least one or two inboxes that they manage, it gets quite chaotic. And on this, actually, this is a little tip I'll give you guys. Is if you can connect your Claude up to your emails, your Claude code, and get it to sort out all of your email accounts and put the right tags in the right folders. Because if you've had— manage a few different inboxes, which most people do, there's different folders, there's different tags and everything, and it looks very different across each one. That's just a little hack that I did a very long time ago that helped me out. So it's all the same colors, it's all the same folder tags in every single email inbox. The next one is definitely the invoicing as well. So the invoices coming in, putting them into my Xero, that's a really good routine that's just very consistent. Anything of, actually another one I have, anything that's like a hot lead or anything that might be coming from my inbox that's like a high priority, it just gets sent to my EA as well. I know these are like really simple things, but the things that actually slow me down.

Kirsten Scott33:14
Honestly, the most simple things that make it easier. Yeah.

Luke Heka33:17
Those are probably like really good items because if you're a business and there's like opportunity or money coming through that needs to either be pushed to you or to someone in your team so it can get handled like straight away. Um, because that's kind of like where those are the things that like let me down. It's like speed on certain items when people are trying to, um, get in touch with us like that as well. Um, yeah, those are really sick. I know those are simple, but I love the simple stuff.

Kirsten Scott33:42
Yeah.

Luke Heka33:43
Anything for like, um, like cold outreach or anything like that? Any sort of automation as well. I'll give you a little tip. There's a platform called Apollo, which you might've heard for like scraping leads or pulling out businesses as well. So if you do tell your Claude to go get an Apollo account, you'd have to give it an API key and then hook it up to your, obviously your Claude. And then you can pull like anywhere between like, depending on what account you got, like 150 or 200 people a day from there. And you can get your Claude to kind of like clean up that data list and be very specific about who it reaches out to. That's something that I have, um, where it goes through and pulls like a certain amount of people from that every day, puts it into our CRM, and then I get McCord to clean it up every day and take out any businesses that might not have the right website, wrong emails, um, it's not the founder, it's not the director, and that's kind of like how I get it to clean it up and kind of like scan for it. Also another one just on this side, I'm giving you, trying to give you as much as I can. Using my Claude account to clean up your CRM. A lot of businesses have a CRM where it's just like there's so many dead emails, going through all that data and information and actually like cleaning it out. That's the duplicates, all of the wrong emails, the test emails. There's so much stuff in there. That's something that I like to do with Claude as well.

Kirsten Scott35:08
Awesome. That was— no, that was awesome. Uh, Darren Parker.

Luke Heka35:15
I know Darren.

Kirsten Scott35:18
Hi there, Darren. Do you want me to ask the question for you? Oh, here we go.

Luke Heka35:25
Yeah, how you going? Sorry, I'm in a Wazzy Cafe. I think you already answered it. Um, what are your thoughts on, um, Paul Cohen's view pricing with the separation of the autonomous agents are YouTube's products. Yeah, 100%. There's a lot of like commotion at the moment with people saying like Claude Code took away, you know, a subscription price and what it was, let's say Claude Pro, the Pro account, which was like $30. And the reason why they took this away, which no one's willing to obviously say, is because if you do use it in Claude Code, you're probably going to get about 4 conversations anyway. So there's no use having it. That's where it just doesn't make sense to have a $30 subscription to use Claude Code because you're probably going to have 4 or 5 conversations and then your tokens are going to run out anyway, uh, which is exactly what happens. The thing that people aren't talking about is the actual bandwidth, the 5x Claude Max account, which I think is $160 Australian. What you can actually pull off with that amount of money or what you can actually do in a a month is, I think is money well spent. I have a $20 max plan on Claude, which is a, which is a lot. I might take my money every week. That's, it might be $320 a month, but the amount of work I get done for that $320 is like, I'm like, please take it off me because it's worth every cent. And when you're using these platforms properly, the actual cost of owning and having one of those softwares if you're using it correctly for what it can actually do in your business is like, I'm like, please, it's, it's a cost-effective solution compared to, you know, probably employment. Um, and just like wasted talent in the team. I feel like it's, yeah, I can't even argue with anyone that's going to battle with it. It's, yeah, it's so worth it.

Kirsten Scott37:17
Awesome. Hopefully that answers your question. Uh, Wanda, you've got a great question. Hi, yeah, for, um, it's any business but mine's a product-based. I struggle with content, um, and everything that I've put into AI comes out looking like AI, um, the models. So I guess I just want to find out your thoughts versus, you know, Nanobanana, Higgsfield, but also Claude Design, um, you know, what's your preference?

Luke Heka37:47
And is it the prompt that you actually put that really matters.

Kirsten Scott37:51
Yeah, great.

Luke Heka37:52
I'm going to answer this in a couple of different ways because this is a very confusing space to navigate. So if we look at Claude Design, Claude Design is really good for obviously websites. If you're trying to create PDF presentations, documents, or even Instagram carousels, I really like it for that aspect of it. But if we're looking at like product photos, product images, AI influencers or anything like that, The— I would separate them as well. This is where people are trying to like just throw it into these AI softwares and be like, hey, just do all of this. It can get very confusing and you will get a very different outcome every time. So if we look at Claude Design for like websites, carousels, PDFs, presentations, just keep that on that side. And if we look at like actual product shots and that side, I would just use a platform called Higgsfield. There's many more., but getting in there, one, I know if you're working with, like for me, for example, I have my AI avatar in Higgsfield. I spend a lot of time on that. I make sure it's really good. Um, and then from there you're able to obviously create photos, create images. And if you want to connect up your Higgsfield with your Claude Code, there's a thing called an MCP connector. So if you're ever talking to your Claude Code, say, hey, can you give me the MCP connector to Claude Code, uh, to Higgsfield? Um, you can connect those softwares up. But to give you like some little tips here on where to get like prompts from and how to like actually get content that doesn't look like everybody else's, go to Pinterest, have a look, get a style that you like, find something, and then put it into these platforms, something like ChatGPT or Higgsfield or whatever you— oh, Claude— and say, hey, I like this image of what I've got here, build me a prompt like an image prompt based off what you're looking at, it's a really good starting point as well. And I've done this many times as well, rather than just being like, hey, you know, grab this and like, you know, build this and kind of stack onto it. Definitely work on the prompt, but also another little tip as well, go into your Higgsfield. You'll see a bunch of like the library where people have like created content before and you can see the prompt. Try find one of those prompts and use it as an example. Because it'll, it has all like the camera angles and lenses and stuff.

Kirsten Scott40:17
That's great. Thank you. I haven't done Pinterest one, so I'll definitely try it out. Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. Um, guys, in time for one more. Matthias.

Luke Heka40:26
Hey, sorry. Also noisy cafe. Um, but yeah, what do you think about using Claude Co-Work instead of Claude Code for the less technical users? I like Coworker. I just feel like it's slow compared to Claude Code. So if you do use Claude Code properly, like a lot of like the browsing on the web, using your Chrome browsers and everything like that, you can do all of those things in Claude Code. I think if we look at your desktop app, at the moment we've got Chat, we've got Coworker, and we've got Claude Code at the top. I just look at that as a progression bar of like you know, starter, beginning, and advanced. As a business owner, I feel like just trying to progress towards Cloud Code anyway is a really good start. You can use Coworker. I just feel like it's kind of slow. Yeah, that's my only thing. Use it as a, I guess, an intro into Cloud Code. But if you, as a business owner, I would definitely try to get onto Cloud Code because you can do all the same things, just a lot faster. All right, thanks.

Kirsten Scott41:34
Awesome. Uh, wow, that was fantastic. Thank you so, so much, guys. If you want to watch a recap, it will be on the video content library in a few days. But thank you again, and thanks everyone for joining this morning, and we'll see you soon.

Luke Heka41:48
Awesome. Thanks, everybody.

Kirsten Scott41:49
See ya.