Unlocking Productivity: Kelly Goss on No Code and AI for Business Automation

If you want a better understanding on how to transform business operations from chaotic to streamlined using no code and AI, this is the episode for you.

Kelly Goss is a leading expert in business process automation. In this episode, Kelly highlights the significance of starting with the basics before integrating AI and automation into your workflows.

Kelly also explains the foundational principles of automation, the importance of understanding existing workflows, and how her company, Solvaa, helps businesses of all sizes achieve productivity gains. You will also learn about the vast integration possibilities with Zapier and the critical role of continuous improvement in achieving efficient automation. 

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Previous guests include: Arvid Kahl of FeedbackPanda, Andrei Zinkevich of FullFunnel, Scott Van den Berg of Influencer Capital, Buster Franken of Fruitpunch AI, Valentin Radu of Omniconvert, Evelina Necula of Kinderpedia, Ionut Vlad of Tokinomo, Diana Florescu of MediaforGrowth, Irina Obushtarova of Recursive, Monika Paule of Caszyme, Yannick Veys of Hypefury, Laura Erdem of Dreamdata, and Pija Indriunaite of CityBee.

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Transcript

Kelly (00:05.882)
Thank you, Eric. I am awesome today. Yes. Thanks for having me.

Eric M. (00:07.272)
Goss, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Eric M. (00:14.124)
Good. My pleasure. My pleasure. Let me give the audience a little bit of background about you. Kelly Goss is a business process automation specialist. She is the author of Automated with Zapier in Generative AI. She's the founder of Salva. That's right. The book, the book is right behind you. The founder of Salva, a digital agency that helps businesses increase productivity using streamlined systems, automated processes.

I first met Kelly a few years ago when we shared tips. She shared tips on how to use and integrate Zapier with Bonjuro, which is a video tool that you use to send personalized videos. And since then we've become friends and she's also helping me streamline my business, B2B Pod Pros. So Kelly, really excited to have you here today.

Kelly (01:02.234)
Thank you, Eric. I'm really excited too. And I have to say that that Bon Jura webinar that we did was so much fun. I loved it. I had like, I was smiling by the end of it. It was, it was great. And you know,

Eric M. (01:17.896)
Yeah, yeah, it was both valuable. It was both valuable and fun for everybody. And I think they learned a lot of cool stuff that you could do with Zapier and Bonjuro together.

Kelly (01:22.874)
Yeah, yeah. And yes, we've become friends, not just virtual friends, we've become like in -person friends. So that's, I'm grateful for you, Eric.

Eric M. (01:35.272)
Hunting for Jack the Ripper. Yeah, hunting. That's right, folks. We hunted for Jack the Ripper in London a while back and we didn't catch the killer. We didn't find out who he is, but we learned a lot about his victims.

Kelly (01:46.49)
We did. We did. Yeah, that was a fun few hours. Anybody wanting to do something like cool like that? What was that tool called? Questo. my gosh, that was so much fun. It was good.

Eric M. (01:59.08)
A questo, questo.

Yeah, yeah. So Kelly, I thought we could talk about three different topics. The first one, no code. The second one, salva, which is your business. And the third one, the different methodologies that you teach when it comes to automation. All right. So the first one, no code. You are a no code educator. What does that mean? And specifically, you know, what do you teach?

Kelly (02:23.098)
So no code is basically just a fancy term for doing stuff without the need to use any code. So you don't have to be a developer or a programmer to use no code principles and no code tools to build systems and workflows for anybody, for yourself or for businesses if you're doing consulting work. So that's essentially what no code is. It means that...

anybody from any kind of background can learn how to make themselves more productive with software that's available on the market without having to develop that software. And what do I teach? So I'm really passionate about this area. I think mainly because I've come from a background where I wasn't technical. I had a really sciencey background right at the beginning of my career.

And I've kind of gone as you do in life, everything brings you to where you are now. And I've kind of gone through these different phases in my career, experiencing difficulties in, I guess, being productive in a business that I had previously, burning out all of those things that most entrepreneurs have to experience because when you're running a business, you kind of, you start out and you have to wear all these different hats, marketing sales, all of it. You have to be good at everything basically.

and you spend so much time doing everything. And what I do now, other than the consulting side in terms of education, I'm really passionate about helping people to understand how they can be more productive with things that are available to anybody and really cost effectively as well. So I think my main passion is teaching people to learn how to use no code workflow automation tools like Zapier.

which means that you can create a bespoke workflow to, to connect different tools that you have in your business without having to write a line of code. It's all there built in an, and an editor that you can create really easily. And, now a lot of these tools have got AI built into them that make it even easier to do things. so that's, that's pretty much what I teach people about, but I do speak at different events and that kind of thing. Again.

Kelly (04:47.418)
more on the broader topic of no code and process automation and systems and process improvement and that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Eric M. (04:59.88)
Yeah, now currently I'm a solopreneur, so this is music to my ears because I don't have a developer background. But let's be realistic. Is no code only good for solopreneurs or is it also good for businesses that are much bigger than the solopreneur business?

Kelly (05:13.69)
It is applicable to anybody. And in fact, no code is even now becoming applicable to developers. So people who have got programming skills are saying that they would rather go down the route of no code development than coding something from scratch because it takes a lot less time. So essentially by using no code tools, which you can put together yourself, or you know, you're using existing platforms to create something.

that will take typical development times of could be, you know, long periods, lots of months or years down to a few weeks. So developers are actually going down that route as well. And then when it comes to businesses themselves, any type of business can use these tools because they're so cost effective. So, you know, a solopreneur, you know, micro business, a small business, a medium sized business, you know,

Everybody, including enterprises use no code to some extent. So yeah, totally applicable to everybody.

Eric M. (06:25.96)
Yeah. And I know no coding is great, especially with Zapier. You described the tool that it allows different tools to communicate and work with each other. we did that webinar, that integration where Zapier could integrate with a Bonjuro and, you automatically get a notification when you could send a Bonjuro. And I think there were some other things that you shared. What are some other tools that quite often you see work really, really well together for small businesses? And maybe let's just talk about email and text messaging. Are there like.

different tools that are compatible with each other using Zapier.

Kelly (06:55.386)
Yes. So Zapier integrates with over 7 ,000 different tools, which is, if you think about that, that is, that's actually pretty incredible because it means that there are millions of different possibilities of ways that you can connect tools together. So as a consulting business,

We work with clients all over the world that have different tools. We're pretty tool agnostic in that sense. So we can help businesses to do, you know, create workflows based on anything that they're using as long as one, they have an integration with Zapier. Or if it doesn't have an integration with Zapier, does it have an open API and can we build custom steps within the workflow to use that API without it having?

necessarily having an integration with Zapier. So even those 7 ,000 plus tools, they're actually way more tools that you can integrate. But I think a lot of SaaS products now are making it a priority to integrate with tools like Zapier. And Zapier is not the only one on the market. Zapier make, Relay is another. There are a few other tools. But they're making a priority.

to integrate with tools like Zapier because then it opens up these possibilities to then be able to automate manual and repetitive tasks that you might have. So some examples, and I'll use us as a business actually. So we use ClickUp internally, we use HubSpot, we use Google Workspace suite of tools, we use Zoom. So those are just some of the things that we use and obviously like Gmail, emails, that kind of thing. But we have...

so many different workflows that we have set up. I wouldn't say that we're a fully automated business because businesses change and develop all the time. So you're constantly trying to keep on top of continuous improvement. If something changes, you want to change something, add something in new. So we're constantly trying to think of new things that we can automate if it makes sense to do that. But for example, we have calls with clients on Zoom and all of those clients have got Google Drive.

Kelly (09:12.378)
folders and we have an automation that runs every time the zoom recording ends. We have an automation that runs to find the client folder based on how we've named the meeting, find the client folder and upload that zoom recording straight into that client folder, which means that we know where we can find recordings. We don't have to search for things. We know where the client folders are. And so it's the same thing with, you know, creating projects when we have.

you know, new clients that start with us, we have a whole onboarding automation that runs to create those client folders, create client projects, create documentation from templates, and a whole lot of other things. So, you know, that's just one example, but there's so many countless things like, you know, we do a lot of work around CRMs for clients. So there's so many automations that you can, you can build around those particular things. But one thing is important to mention that Zapier is,

kind of like the end of the process. What people should be doing is making sure that if they've got a tool that they're using, say for example, a CRM, they're optimizing what they can use within that tool. So if there's built -in automation, use that automation first before you're then relying on Zapier because you could do everything in Zapier, but then that's costing you money. So optimize what you're using first. and yes, you asked about email and SMS. Was that it? SMS loads of,

Eric M. (10:32.936)
Right. Yeah.

Eric M. (10:38.504)
SMS, yes. Yes.

Kelly (10:39.578)
things on the market, like I said, 7 ,000 plus tools. I'd have to look at the Zapier directory, but they actually have a section on SMS and communication. So you can actually see what different tools integrate with Zapier. They have their own built -in SMS tool that you can use for free, but you can't use it for sending to other people, but you can use it for sending to...

a number that you own. So you can actually get like SMS reminders for different things. If you wanted to set up a workload like that. There's a WhatsApp integration. So that's kind of SMS as well. And then there, you know, I can't think actually off the top of my head Twilio, you can send SMS with Twilio and there are a few other several, probably several hundred SMS tools that you can use to integrate with Zapier.

Eric M. (11:34.216)
Wow. Wow. Okay. I'm pretty excited. you've got me using pipe drive right now, which is a CRM. And I know I'm just scratching the surface of what it does, but now I'm wondering if it within pipe drive, if I can automatically get, folders created in Google drive, like if I'm onboarding like a new client or, you know, starting a new campaign or something, I don't know if I can do that now within the platform. but anyway, you're just giving me ideas on other things that I can do. Yeah.

Kelly (11:58.234)
Yeah, yeah, there's all this cool stuff that you can do, Eric. So, you know, you could say based on your sales pipeline, let's just say a deal moves into a particular stage in the sales pipeline, or maybe it's closed one, right? So that's the point that you may want to start your onboarding process, like I was talking about mine. So you could then use Zapier to once that deal has been marked as closed one.

Eric M. (12:17.576)
Mm -hmm.

Kelly (12:25.21)
to then create a folder in whatever location you want in a client folder. And obviously if you've got a signed contract or something like that, you could actually move that file wherever that is based on whatever your storage locations are and then move that document into that new client folder so that you've got everything in one place. And obviously set things up based on, I don't know, name it based on what the deal was named or the client's name or something like that. So yeah.

So many things you could do, Eric, so many things.

Eric M. (12:59.784)
Okay, yeah.

Yeah, no, no, I'm pretty excited. I can't wait to show you what I've done so far, but we'll save that for later. Okay. The second thing I want to touch up on Kelly real quick is your business. Salva. What are some of the most common things that you help clients with? And I guess why do clients reach out to you in the first place?

Kelly (13:18.618)
Okay, so Solver basically is a, what I like to call a systems process and automation agency, but all to do with no code. So we don't do any coding. We use platforms that exist already on the market have been developed. A lot of people have spent all that money on developing platforms like PipeDrive, for example, Zapier, for example, Smart Suite is another one. So we help businesses to either,

implement specific types of software. So they may be coming to us because we're a PipeDrive partner and they want to digitize their sales process or they might be using PipeDrive already and they want to optimize their sales process. And they also then want to automate different things that they're doing to make themselves more efficient and get more sales essentially. So we help them with specific tools like PipeDrive or Smart Suite, which is another...

very cool no code database where you can basically build a whole lot of stuff in it like CRMs, project management tool, inventory trackers. You can build this all out yourself. It's kind of like Lego putting piecing things together. Or we might have businesses that come to us because they know that they need to work smarter. They know that they need to digitize. So they may be in a situation where.

They don't have anything. So a perfect example would be a client that we, we, we're working with at the moment where they literally were using email, OneDrive, paper, storing credit card details in, you know, in a, in, in, in a safe and processing credit card payments at the end of the month. So everything was, was like super manual.

They didn't have anything else in place other than those particular things. Okay, yes. Well, they did actually have zero for an accounting tool. So they were able to send digital invoices, but nothing else was set up. And we basically helped them to analyze everything that they have right now. So current state and put together a blueprint for them of exactly what they should have within their business. So all the digital tools that they should have, how everything is going to work together.

Kelly (15:43.194)
and how we're going to connect all those pieces together so that they could communicate with each other, you're not having to do duplicate entry, you know, copy and pasting and all of that kind of stuff. And we've taken them from a system where everything was pretty manual to them, you know, where they were spending three days sending invoices to a system where they have a CRM, they have a timesheet management tool.

They have direct debits and so they can take money by direct debits and automated stripe payments as well. And all of that is connected together. So now their invoicing process takes a couple of hours from three days to a couple of hours. And then we're doing that twice a month. Basically, we've now consolidated into one time a month. Everything's connected. They see have full transparency of their sales process.

their projects, their time sheets, everything is set up and automated and works efficiently. So that's an example of a business that had nothing, but we've also got businesses where they do have certain tools in place. They may not be using them properly. They're not connected. We help them to understand what the right tools are for them as a business. So we're not in the frame of mind to say, okay, well this, you know, you're not.

we're going to take this out of the picture because it's, you know, we have a preference for something else. We're not in the habit of doing that. What we want to say is, okay, is this tool fit for purpose? And if it ticks, you know, 80 to 90 % of what you need to do, don't replace it, optimize it, connect it to other things that you're doing. So we help businesses to look holistically at everything that they're doing within the business.

optimize what they're doing with the right technology, streamlined processes, and ultimately automating so that they're much more productive. So, yes, does that answer the question?

Eric M. (17:48.84)
What's your typical client that you service, Kelly? It did answer the question, yeah.

Kelly (17:49.914)
A typical client, actually the reality is that we don't necessarily work in a particular niche or vertical because we're very broad minded in terms of the tools that we can use and we are very, very good at understanding how businesses tick and how they work. So we can analyze exactly what they're doing and translate it into the technology that...

they should be using, that actually means that we can work with any business. So the only restrictions for us ultimately would be where there are lots of legalities with the way that a business works, industry -specific legalities, but that often necessarily isn't a problem for us. And time zone. So we can work with businesses all over the world, but I suppose...

Asia Pacific becomes a little bit difficult for us. But generally, we can work with any business anywhere in the world, any industry, because we are really good at understanding how they work and translating that into how they can become more efficient with technology.

Eric M. (19:13.256)
All right. All right. Okay, Kelly, last thing I want to dive into is your mythologies. And I know you've given lots of different workshops. I think you were at the no code event that took place in London recently. And so what are some of the things that you're educating other business leaders and marketers and everybody else who's interested in your type of work? I mean, what are some of the hot topics, hot workshops that are filling in these seats here?

Kelly (19:39.066)
So I think one thing that is on everybody's mind at the moment is AI and how you can use AI to make yourself more productive. But I think there are a lot of things that we don't know yet about the capabilities of AI, but it is an opportunity for businesses to be better at what they're doing. But I think one of the principles that and methodologies, as you mentioned that

we take into consideration is that actually you need to start from scratch. You need to understand whether or not you have the right tools in the business to use. So yeah, AI might be a great thing to help with some parts of productivity, but actually are you forgetting about the basics? So if you have the right tools in place to do the jobs that you need to do, you know, I always talk about CRM. So perfect example.

CRM, if you have a good CRM and that CRM has great automation and features and functionality is built into it. Chances are they're also probably building in AI functionality. So that means that you don't then need to learn about how to use 10 different AI tools. Actually, you might have tools that you already use within the, in your business where you can actually optimize the way that you work using built in AI functionality.

That's always an important thing to take into consideration. So go back to basics. Are you using the tools correctly? Have you got a really good way of working? Have you optimized that way of working? And then that's when you start thinking about automation and AI later down the road. But all of those things are great for productivity. So when it comes to methodologies, I like a lot of the things that I like to talk about are these things about going back to basics, but also.

you know, I come from, I'd mentioned the science background, but actually part of my initial first roles in the industries that I worked in really helped me to gain a love for process improvement. And there are a lot of process improvement principles that a lot of big, you know, enterprise companies will talk about lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, continuous improvement, all of those things, but actually those are.

Kelly (22:07.034)
Big words that small businesses and entrepreneurs can, if you know the basics of them, they will really help you to understand how you can go back to basics and improve the way that you're working. So some of the words that I like to use are continuous improvement, going back, reviewing, constantly going back, your business is always going to change. So going back and reviewing things so that you know that.

You're tweaking things as you go and you're really staying agile with what you're doing.

Continuous improvement as well kind of goes back to checking things. So when you're doing reviews, if you have an automation setup, for example, you want automations that also check the automations so that if something goes wrong, you can go back and you can make an adjustment very quickly so that you're not compromising data in your system because something has gone wrong and you haven't addressed it. So it's like a checking of the...

Eric M. (22:58.216)
Hehehehe

Kelly (23:09.274)
the automation that you need to put in place. But there's also stuff like I mentioned already, process improvement. That's super important because you can't actually be efficient by automating something. If the process is totally inefficient in the first place, you're just going to be magnifying whatever is a problem because you haven't addressed it. So these are always good things to, again, go back to basics. Start with just like mapping out.

what tools you're using, what process you're using. Process mapping is a super important thing. It doesn't have to be visual. It just go with what you think is good for you. So if you like the visual aspect, you could create a flow chart. If you don't, you can just put the steps in your process down in a list that's just as sufficient. But what you really want to be getting out of that is how you're doing things right now and how you can understand how you can change that.

Eric M. (24:12.136)
Yeah, I loved how when you asked me to process map my business and I wrote down, for example, when I onboard a podcaster, I was using like four different tools, maybe even more like Slack, Google, you know, Canalee, things like that. And you were like, well, if you use this one CRM, it could actually take the place of many of these different tools and knock out like five of these different steps. And there was no AI involved.

It was just, hey, there's just this tool that can automate a lot of that and save time for you. So we've been hearing AI is going to use AI to streamline things, make you work faster and smarter. But in most cases, there's already tools out there that can help you do a lot better at your job that already exists. And you don't need to go learn anything about AI. So I'm definitely on board there. The second thing too is Canva. I'm the big user of Canva.

And I probably only use maybe 10 % of the functionality, but I do know that they have AI functionality within the tool. And it's, yeah, there's like those little prompts that say, use AI to fill in this or use AI to do that. And I haven't even begun to explore what Canva can do. So before I should even start considering other design tools, AI design tools, I should really learn what is Canva? What do they have in place incorporating, you know, AI? So I'm definitely on board with you there.

Kelly, I'm going to put links to you and your website in the show notes before we get to the rapid fire section. Any other questions I should have asked you that you think would have been beneficial for the audience when it comes to automation and your methodologies that you teach.

Kelly (25:50.234)
gosh, any other questions? I don't know, Eric. I mean, obviously, if people do have questions, they can reach out to me and I'd be happy to help. I mean, it's such a broad topic, but I think the important thing to bear in mind, and I've been talking about this most of during this session, is don't just jump straight in and think, okay, well,

automation AI going to solve all my problems, actually think about what you're trying to achieve in the first place. And is there a smarter way of, of doing it? Because actually the reality is you may not need to use a bespoke custom built workflow. You could actually use functionality in tools that you're using. So like you're talking about Canva. Yeah, there's so much cool stuff in, in, in Canva. Like, you know, you can.

take a bunch of text and change languages, you can change images. There's like a whole load of stuff that you can do. And why would you want to go and start looking for something else unless you know there are specific things that you can't do with it. So, yeah.

Kelly (27:09.786)
Gosh, yeah, under pressure. Go on.

Eric M. (27:09.928)
Yep, okay, rapid fire questions, give me the first thing that pops into your head, you ready?

Okay, first one here. What is a silly reason you once cried?

Kelly (27:17.85)
A silly reason I once cried. Gosh, I don't know. Maybe knocked over my favorite juice when I was a child.

Kelly (27:32.474)
Maybe I just haven't cried in a long time.

Eric M. (27:35.432)
It's been a long time since you cried for no reason, huh?

Kelly (27:40.026)
I got some crying, yeah. All that emotional build up. I need to spill some juice.

Eric M. (27:41.448)
Okay, you got some crying to do, Kelly. Okay.

Eric M. (27:48.168)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Next question for you. What is the most interesting thing you did in the last 26 days?

Kelly (27:57.594)
26 days. my gosh. That's a hard one. The most interesting. Well, I have to say that actually, yeah, actually I went to Downing Street, number 10 Downing Street. That was the most interesting thing that I've done in the last 26 days. I think it was in the last 26 days.

Kelly (28:20.25)
Yes, yeah. Go on.

Eric M. (28:20.936)
Okay, very, very cool. I remember seeing that picture on LinkedIn. Yeah. Okay, next question. What is your favorite song?

Kelly (28:25.946)
yes, this is a silly one, right? I love Rockset. And my favourite song is Silver Blue by Rockset. Silver Blue by Rockset.

Eric M. (28:42.12)
Okay, silver and blue bar box set.

Kelly (28:44.474)
You're going to have to go check it out.

Eric M. (28:46.664)
All right, I don't know this, but I'm gonna go look it up after this.

Last question for you. Instead of flowers for Valentine's Day, you would rather receive blanks.

Kelly (28:56.666)
gosh, a tailored holiday to somewhere in Southeast Asia.

Kelly (29:11.322)
I know, but hey, got a lot to live up to with me.

Eric M. (29:13.224)
Okay, that's no small gift there.

Yeah, I know you're going to tell your partner when this episode is published, like, hey, check this out and make sure you listen to the end.

Kelly (29:21.786)
Yeah, she's going to love that, definitely.

Eric M. (29:27.656)
Yeah, Kelly guys, thanks for coming on the show everybody listening I will include links to Kelly's business in her LinkedIn profile pleasure having you here Kelly

Kelly (29:35.898)
Always a pleasure, Eric. Always have such great fun with you.

Eric M. (29:44.264)
All right. Me too. For everybody listening, I will see you next week on innovators can laugh. Feel free to check this out on YouTube and you can see our guests reactions and how they laugh. They're gestures. You can see Kelly's two plants in the background and the book that she, she wrote is in the background there too. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. Cheers.

Kelly (29:54.906)
Yeah.

Kelly (29:58.842)
Thanks, Erin. Bye.