Blue Collar Builders Episode 6: A Master Plumber Who Uses AI to Run His Business

Today’s Blue Collar Builders’ episode talks about Josh Waldrep, the master plumber who ended up using AI to run his business, without any prior coding or software engineering experience.

Josh shares his secrets with Todd Saunders, co-founder of Dalton Mills, an AI-powered platform that allows blue-collar contractors to build custom AI software designed specifically for their businesseHow a Master Plumber Discovered the Power of AI

Josh Waldrep is the most typical blue-collar business owner in the industry: a hardworking professional with years of experience in plumbing, but not expertise in AI.

Despite that, it didn’t take long for Josh to see AI’s potential, beyond just simple chatting. Something which, as Josh points it out, most plumbing contractors fail to realize:

Todd: “Are there other plumbers or people you talk to in the trade using AI or do they all think that you just speak a different language?”

Josh: “They don’t hardly know what it [AI] is, for the most part, other than Chat GPT on their phone. I don’t think they realize that AI actually does things.”

Josh himself took two years of trial and error, switching two different AI models to finally find a way to incorporate AI-based software into his business operations.

How AI Changed the Game for Josh’s Plumbing Business

Josh managed to integrate AI into several facets of his business, with one of the most impactful ones being in the SEO department. As Josh himself put it, the AI software he’s currently using “raised our web ranking pretty substantially”.

Other than that, he’s also been using AI to check invoices and reports for any data issues, write quotes, manage some of the payroll paperwork, and even trim old data to find specific information. 

In one particular case, the AI managed to pull up a specific client from a past project, based simply on Josh’s written description of a photo associated with that project.

These use cases show that AI can be very versatile and that it’s really only limited by the operator’s imagination.

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How Contractors Can Work With the AI to Problem-Solve

As Josh himself realized over the two years of working with AI, the potential of the tool itself is strictly linked to the operator’s implementation ideas:

“I’d say the ideas are the harder part now. Once you have the idea, implementing it is pretty easy at this point. I spent more time planning than getting the code out”.

This raises two interesting points. First is that there is no limited number of use cases for AI. Each business can find new avenues, new uses, and new problems that AI can help solve.

The second problem is that the AI industry doesn’t yet support full customizability. Contractors like Josh still need to figure out ways on how to adapt their operations to the software itself, including figuring out the right infrastructure and even managing the security aspect.

Josh himself ran into this problem, when he realized that the way he was using AI created a security risk for his business. So, he used AI to solve the AI problem: he created an open-source software, Pipelock, that would specifically solve the security problem.

Josh's case shows that not only does AI have a place in the blue-collar sector, but that it may have become an indispensable tool for businesses seeking to increase their productivity and automate some of their workflow.

Dalton Mills’s Different Approach to AI

As Todd Saunders explains during his talk with Josh, Dalton Mills is the solution to the industry standard, which essentially forces businesses to adapt their operations to the AI software. 

As Todd explains:

“[...] The problem is that a lot of the current software isn’t malleable. [...] If you want that stuff (custom software), you have to rebuild everything, the CRM, the quoting tool, the architecture, and that can become a security risk. We’re building the harness to help protect all of that.”

The Dalton Mills harness in this context is the AI model, which contractors can use to create fully customizable AI tools, designed for, sometimes, unique use cases. 

This approach allows contractors to adapt the tool itself to their internal operations and workflow, rather than the other way around. The result is better AI implementation, tighter API security, and a smoother transition from manual to (semi)automated work.

If your business could benefit from AI automation or you just simply want to see what AI can do for your trade, apply for early access with Dalton Mills and you can start building your own tools today.

No coding needed.