Blue Collar Builders Episode 4: How a Masonry Contractor Started Automating His Business With AI With No Coding Knowledge

From Masonry Businessman to AI Software Developer in Just 3 Days

Zac O’Hara comes from a blue-collar background, with his father and grandfather-side of the family managing a generational roofing company doing 9 figures a year. By joining forces with his father, Zac was able to spread his masonry-and-concrete business to Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Dallas.

But first were the problems. While North Shore Masonry was growing, it was also facing problems. Too much administrative work, ineffective operational planning, too many spreadsheets tracking cashflow meetings, job backlog lists, job treads, and bank log-ins that formed a disjointed and confusing system.

Then came AI, which Zac realized it could do a lot more than “create funny images and rewrite your emails, which was most of what we were using it for”. AI could actually contribute to his business in a meaningful way, “speeding things up and organizing things”.

“What Can We Automate, What Are the Things That Are Taking Up More of Our Time?”

As Zac himself explains, everything started with presenting AI with a problem and asking for solutions:

“We were living a lot in Excel sheets [...] I just started talking to it (the AI) and asking it what it can do for me and what strategies it might have.”

That kickstarted his entire AI integration strategy. Zac would ask the AI for solutions, then it would ask it to implement them, whether in the form of a custom app or a service software that would track and update data related to clients, sales, calls, or whatever else he might’ve needed.

That’s when the question started becoming obvious for Zac: 

“What can we automate, what are the things that are taking up more of our time?”

So, he started to find new use cases for the AI within the North Shore Masonry ecosystem regularly. One such use case ties in with the business’s scalability strategy:

“He (Zac’s father) would text a picture of a business card, it (the AI) goes to research the top three in the company, starts a cold email campaign, a nurture sequence, and gives us some nice outreach to property management companies”.

Today, Zac’s company uses AI throughout its operational departments, from structuring essential company data, to summarizing videos and using the information to lay out goals and the best strategies to achieve them.

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Why AI Custom Tools are the Future

Zac’s story highlights an important pain point within the AI ecosystem. The absence of truly customizable AI tools that contractors could use to address problems that could be unique to their trade.

Zac had to build one for his company in the form of an app that would upgrade his then current EOS Level 10 meeting app called Mason. The new app made Mason “easier to organize and something you’d want to be working on throughout the weeks”. 

Then he started building more, adapting each new custom AI software to a different operational department. 

This final interaction between Todd and Zac explains exactly where the industry is headed:

Todd: “No other software company could even pretend to know what you know about your unique business and workflows and the industries you’re in and all of that. [...] It’s much easier to build it when you have the pain, you know exactly what you want, custom to your needs”.

Zac: “100%. That’s where it’s going. It’s just like describing what you need and what you’re struggling with and getting a custom build around it”.

Why Dalton Mills is at the Forefront of the Custom AI Software Market

Dalton Mills offers contractors truly customizable AI tools that they can build and fully adapt to their internal operations.

Just like Zac’s North Shore Masonry, most other blue-collar businesses face a range of problems, many of them unique to each specific business. Too much paperwork, disjointed records, bad record-keeping causing meeting delays and missed job opportunities – a custom AI model can handle all of these with ease.

It took Zac just 3 days to build a custom AI app for his business with no coding experience and “no technology background at all”. Dalton Mills offers the same opportunity to other blue-collar businesses that seek to harness the power of AI to improve their structure, operations, and internal logistics.

More importantly, unlike in Zac’s case, who still needs to track and manage different AI software, Dalton Mills brings everything under one roof. The Dalton Mills platform is the working bench where you can create and structure all of the AI tools you need, so you can track everything with ease.

You can apply for early access to check what Dalton Mills has to offer and start creating your first AI software today.