Foreign. You ever notice the people doing the most aren't asking for advice? This is Built Without Permission. I'm Matthew Mac. Before I ever drew a blueprint or signed a business deal, I was folding suits, hauling snow and washing glasses until 2am Then came architecture, tow trucks, and a built business from the ground up with my partner. No blueprint, no safety net, no approval. Just real stories, hard pivots and what it actually takes to build something from nothing. Let's get to work. So Luke, thanks for joining me on Built Without Permission. We're going to get to the nitty gritty here, so let's start off with give me the 62nd version of who, who you are, what you built. No fluff, just the real story, brother. Okay, 60 seconds. What it did way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I got a CS degree, graduated in 2005, worked corporate, worked at an oil refinery until 2022, at which point my wife's family was in New Brunswick. We were in Saskatchewan. Moved across the country to be closer to them. Worked another position for about two years and then they let me go. And they're like, you're the unemployee of the month. And I'm like, well, I guess I got do something on, on my own. I've been doing some freelancing work in the AI and automation space and realized, well, I guess I'm going to be doing a lot more of that in the near future. And that is how, how I found myself here on your podcast. Got into, got into some coaching with Matt here and the rest, as they say, is history. Is history. Awesome, man, awesome. And then like now in, in terms of what you're currently working on right now or what, what is it with AI that you're using and what's your business that you know, you're offering? Well, the business itself, basically what I found when I worked in a large organization, I mean, worked for a company that I think their top line was like eight or nine billion dollars a year. And I automated out one of the processes I was working on. So effectively I cut this down from something that was taking, I don't know, 20 or 30 hours a week to we got it to about 20, 40 hours a year, which is a huge reduction. Absolutely. When you're like automating a guy who makes six figures out of a job, when you do billions of dollars, top line, who cares, right? It's a rounding error. So I realized with the advent of all of the new automation tools, AI tools, that I could do that for People in that, really, the target is like the 1 to $5 million range where you can get to a certain point without having your systems formalized and automated. However, past that point, you gotta have some things written down, structured out, or, you know, as a growing business, you're going to. You're going to cap out there. And that's what I help people do. Awesome. So organize processes, automate them. Awesome. Awesome. So more or less like you're helping those small businesses of that range that you're seeing, and then you see what their challenges are and whatnot, and then you help automate for them. Yeah. And oftentimes it's often administrative tasks. It's always, hey, every. You know, as much fun as billing is, no one wants to spend a whole day or a whole weekend. Oh, yeah. Going once a week. And then you're. You find yourself, you're two or three months behind on invoicing, and then that employees want to get paid, of course. Yeah. What the heck's up with that? Right? Like, come on, you know, we thought of that, right? So, yeah, so that's where I come in, is to try to figure out and iron out those pain points. And the big thing with automation that people don't always realize is it's not that you aren't doing it anymore. It's more so you don't have that mental load that you're carrying with you. And also that it's being done the exact same way every single time. It's not, hey, we write a standard operating procedure, and then a guy out in the field changes that a little bit here and there, and all of a sudden the person at the top doesn't know what the person at the bottom is doing and can't figure out where, you know, money's bleeding out, that sort of thing. Yeah. So it's actually kind of interesting because in terms of how AI is and what it can do in terms of automation and helping out for those processes. Right. Where initially, prior to the coaching program, we're on together with Dan, and when I started dipping into learning AI for my current business, and I'm loving it because there's so much stuff I'm learning and it's fantastic journey. And I used to actually think that you could replace people with it, but then now I've learned that that's not the case. And it's like how you kind of brush upon that just now, as well as learning from Dan's coaching is the idea is not replacing people because you're not going to replace People in a lot of positions. It's more so how to help everyone move faster, support the team. And it's not a replacement thing, it's just replacing certain work, not people. Right. And that's where I was a little bit lost in the beginning stages of starting out into AI, was thinking like, yeah, I gotta get all this stuff that I can do, this, this and this and that, and I don't need people no more. But then I was totally wrong. Yeah. And that is a bit of a reframe on it is that AI comes in and I think you could look at anyone's job, regardless of, you know, top to bottom, from the person, you know, I don't know, someone pumping gas all the way up to a CEO of a multi billion dollar organization. There's always something they do that if they could just get it off their plate, they could do something else that would make more money. Yeah, correct. Right. Save them time, save them money or make the money. And those are the big three things. If that when you're automating, if you don't, don't focus on those three, it kind of just becomes business theater. And I've automated a lot of stuff for myself that falls into that category. It sure looks pretty, but, you know, it doesn't, doesn't always give you a big lift. So that's always something I try to focus on. Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's where like, you know, part of the challenges that I was going through was that I was spending so much time in things that I felt like it was just not making me money. Right. Sitting behind the desk is actually not making money. When I'm going through invoicing, accounting stuff, trying to match up things, record reconciling, all that. Right. And now it's definitely a game changer. Yeah. The other, other nice thing is, is that sometimes your AI comes through with solutions that you wouldn't think of yourself. You know, even as recently as, like half a year ago, a year ago, you would have to go in and say, you know, here are my spreadsheets, here's what I want to do with them. And have to kind of guide it towards an answer. And now it's more and goal based. You can say, hey, I need a P and L statement off of these three dozen spreadsheets. Can you make that for me? Or what else should I encounter? My wife was doing some work where she had, I think it was about a dozen Acrobat files PDFs and it was like 378 pages. I don't know why I recall that. And no one's going to read 378 pages of reports from the town council. So we just rather. Yeah. And it was like here's your summary. It's all chronological. Everything's cross referenced where you go. So it gets a lot of those very time consuming, very manual labor tasks off your plate so that people can actually do the. The more value added things. Absolutely. Now tell us what sacrifices or sacrifice that you made that most people would never see or talk about. Oh geez. The. That's an. That's an interesting one. You know, besides. Besides thinning hair as. As time goes on, the sacrifice is always. Oh, that's an excellent question, Luke. Don't see getting married because we'll both get divorced. Divorced it is. Yeah. You know, I'm going to take an example back from actually to move across the country and this is a bit of a personal thing, but my wife's father was in a quite bad traffic accident in the mid late 80s, like did not work thereafter. And she is from New Brunswick. Yeah. And so her folks were there. But when she graduated university, she's a teacher. There wasn't much in the way of teaching jobs. She moved to Saskatchewan, met some guy me. And it got to be in. I think it was the winter of 2022. It kind of occurred to me if she was ever going to be able to spend some tangible time with her father. Before father passed away, we were going to have to move and do this. Yes. So I had worked at the same job for. For many years. I think I started in 2006 and finished the end or left in November of 2022. So that was a very secure job. I'm not sure if anyone's aware, but oil is a good place to work if you are not entirely concerned with the environment and like money. Yeah. And as someone coming out of university that was really appealing. But it was a very stable, very secure job. However, the. I don't know if you'd classify it as a sacrifice, but the big change that had to be made was I was gonna have to step back from that and kind of. Yeah. Stick my neck out there and do that. And that has kind of led down a pathway to where I am now that now. Yeah, I'm quite pleased with. But there were some. Some changes that had to be made, you know, entirely worth it. I'm happy here. Winters in New Brunswick we get snow. It's. You don't have to shovel cold. But I mean I call my folks and they'd be like, yeah, it was fine. It's 40 today. Why do I do this? So in terms of the sacrifice on that side, it is. You could kind of have anything you want, but what are you willing to give up to get there, Correct? Yeah. And I would, I would say that is a big sacrifice for you because. And you did it for a good cause, right? You did, you made a decision, a life decision. Right. For. For your partner as your first. Right. And that's a huge thing. Right. And then that obviously shows how much she means to you in that sense. Right. That you took that, you know, you, you took your, your, your self selfishness in a way, because everyone to a certain extent is selfish for themselves. But you took that away and you gave it all to her. Right? Yes. You saw what you could do to support that, which is amazing. Right. Well, you know, not to. If I be full candor is also that working with. In the position I was in, there was lots of room for lateral movement, but not much room for vertical movement. And after you've been someplace for 16 years, it's like you've kind of seen it all. And I was ready, ready to be gone there. But the opportunity presented itself. And I mean, if you're ever sitting around in January in Saskatchewan, you don't think this isn't the best place to spend in January, you know, so. So it wasn't all altruism. It wasn't just, you know, oh, Luke is the perfect husband. And, you know, if you, if you ask me what my anniversary is, I'm gonna have to minimize the screen. So it comes up once a year. Yeah, once a year. My wife always tells me the day or two after, so I'm good. I got it covered. She's still with you, so there's something there, buddy. You know, it's like we, we liked each other enough to get the law involved. Oh, my. Yeah, man. So now, okay, what does success actually look like in the trenches versus what people post online? What does success look like in the trenches? It's really the day to day wins because it is never. How could I put it? There's never an entire week that goes by, at least for me, where I'm like, yay, everything's perfect. But you kind of have to celebrate the moments, right? Because you, you, when you're growing a business, you always are looking towards that next thing and there are things you, you know, you have your first. I don't know, it's always the, it's always going up the ladder of the Number of figures, right? Yes. You start freelancing or doing something like mowing lawns, and you're like, I made 100 bucks. And then you make a thousand, and then you make 10,000. You're like, yes, yes. Yeah. But at a certain point in time, you stop celebrating those milestones or those lines in the sand simply because it is just the next step on where you're going. Yeah. But then you. You look back and you're like, man, I should have appreciated that that more when I was there. You know, it's. It's always one of those things where you do something. You know, the best stories are always the ones where, you know, you're the most miserable and you and your buddies are looking back on it and you're like, yeah, we got mauled by a bear when we were camping. And it's like, well, how often do you see a bear? Like, pretty much a glass half empty kind of person here. So. So, yeah, that is the part that people don't end up seeing is that, you know, everyone posts the Polish stuff on Instagram and it's like, look at me, I just bought my first jet. And it's like, yeah, people. People also want to identify with that struggle, you know, for sure when you're putting yourself out there. They want to know they have to connect with something other than the glitz and glamour. And I mean, absolutely. And that's where I see it. Like, you know, going back about how you said, like the, say, the jet and whatnot. It's. It's, you know, now I see it as that person sacrificed a lot. The, you know, whether true or whether not, let's say true, that they actually got it. Right. It's. There was a lot of fails that got them to that point. Right. They just failed more than others who have not reached that success yet. Right. There is no envy. There is no. None of that. You celebrate for people's wins, but yet you, for sure, especially, you know, being an entrepreneur and growing your own business, you realize yourself. Like, there are so many challenges each and every one of us go through. No one ever knows what it is unless it's spoken about. But it's never really spoken about. Never on content, but it's always spoken about maybe behind the scenes to those that you, you know, are willing to share it with. Right. Just to share experiences, to have better comfort. Yeah, that's exactly it. You're kind of a shared misery. Yes. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Shared misery. Yes. Well. And then laugh about it. Well, it's. There are Certain things that you can't, you can't truly understand unless you have, have gone through them. And I could give an example. It's an odd one, but my previous employer, I was in a unionized position and pro. Anti union, whatever. I'm not in that, but I was in a union. We were involved in a labor disruption and I was on a picket line for half a year. Well, there are some friends that I would not have a million years otherwise that are really good friends of mine. Just because we went through this like crappy experience together and you get together and as one guy, I ran into him, I was picking up a takeout order. He's like, oh man, I haven't seen you since the battle days. Yeah, the battle days. Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, you have that, that shared experience. Experience. Yeah, no, for sure. And then that's what kept you guys kind of, you know, connected, right? Absolutely. Cool. So now tell us, what's something you know now that would have saved you years of pain earlier on? What is something I know now that would have saved you years of pain earlier on? Save me years of pain? Well, I've worked in IT and played around with computers. Geez, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna ask how old you are, but I got my first computer in like 1991, so I'm older than that. So the one thing that you learn, and I don't know if it's unique to working with computers, maybe it's, you know, in every industry in general, the way you think your clients or your customers or anyone using your services are going to do things in no way reflects how they're going to do things. That's interesting. The. Because it's not. It's the way you're running your brain, how you're thinking how they should be thinking, but they're actually not thinking at all the way it is. No. And, and what that leads to is I, I got involved with computers because at the age of 13 or 14, I realized I don't really like people that much. And that's changed. But I was like, there's nothing wrong with that. What's the most money I can make before I really have to deal with people? I'm like, I can work with computers. Great. They're logical. You give them instructions, they do the thing. If it's wrong, it's, you're wrong. So figure it out. Right. But as a result of that, sometimes when I'd work on projects, it's happened very recently where I'd be like, okay, I'm done. And people would come back and something would just be immediately blown up in a way that I just couldn't even fathom. It would be almost one of those things where you're. Where sometimes you make your parents angry and they'd be like, I don't care what happened, I just want it fixed. Yes. And then I recall reading a story where someone said like he had broken a window and his dad was like, I don't care what happened. And he's like, wait, there's maple syrup all over the floor now. I do care what happened. And, and it's one of those things you. And the real learning is you do. You know, when you're working in a business, you are working with people and you have to figure out where they are so you can meet them there. Because I can, I can talk to technical people all day. And I see it a lot in the content that's produced by people in. Yeah. In my field is they are talking to a technical audience and trying to reach business owners. And that doesn't always land. And that's been a big thing for me is just figuring out how to bridge that gap. Show yourself more, buddy. That's what it is. Show Luke to everybody. Expose yourself to the world in the way. However way shape or form is not an. That's not an. Only fans. No, it's not. We've just got Instagram. There's only one of those. Only one. Only one. Yeah. No, like, and you know, it's interesting on that take and just something that I learned myself too, right. Like with building the software that I'm working on right now for my, for my current business is obviously to help automate and workflow better for my, my staff, my employees. Right. And what was interesting is say last year we were, we were paying for a third party service company like that created this, their, their own software for our industry. And my team was so accustomed to how that system worked. So now when I built ours, now that we're using, it's my brain that I put into it, my logic. Right. But it was like I gave it to them, said, here you go. Right. So now when certain issues were arising, I didn't stop to think that hey, they are still used to the old ways of how that system ran, not the new ways of how I want it to be and how it is now. Right. So then I would just go into like, you know, whatever it is and just say, hey, fix this, fix that, fix this based on what my feedback Was. And then I come to realize, like, no, I wasn't wrong. The system wasn't wrong. They were giving me feedback of what they were used to. So then I had to go back and then fix all that. And I was like, yeah, it's almost a. How can I put it? You're looking at a bullseye. You have the outer ring, and that's what you can see because you're making the software correct. All they're seeing is this little part of it that they use, use. And it becomes, how much of that outer ring do you have to open up to give them the context they need? Because a lot of people are, you know, if you hand something over to them, they're not. Like, people aren't stupid. No, they're not. But there's also the expectations you have coming in and the expectations they have coming in. So it becomes, okay, what's the context I need to give you? I don't want to say it is. It's an interesting parallel between working with humans and now with AI. I find that people who are good at giving instructions to people are getting really good results out of artificial intelligence. Yeah. Because you have to provide the same amount of context to make. Exactly. And then I think that's where I was lacking too. Is. Is that part not giving enough context to the team on. On. On instructions on how I want to do things? Because you know, what happens is when you're busy, too. It's like, I don't have time for here. Figure it out, figure it out, figure it out. But not everyone can figure it out. They don't have your brain, don't have my brain. They don't have what it is that we do to be able to just figure it out. They'll figure out, to their extent and their knowledge. Yeah, but that's it. It's capped. Yeah. It's always also the why of your why you're doing something and not just the what of what you're doing. It's all one thing is you come in and you look at someone's problems in a business. Yeah. And they talk about this. It's always great if you ask them, hey, what do you do five minutes before that, five minutes after. Yeah. And. And you just get a little narrower window of what's going on. Yeah. And then someone has to have the whole picture. But sure. You know, you've got the whole photo album and they got the little individual pictures of what's going on. Yeah. So I know, Luke, you and I have been having some fun with the built without permission and all. Tell me what resonates with you with built without Permission. I'm not going to reverse engineer this backwards, but the idea of built without permission, isn't that the only person's permission you need to do something is your own? Within reason. A lot of people are capping themselves, myself included, because you'll sit there and you'll think of a thousand reasons not to do something. Yeah. And all you have to do is, you know, do it. Just start. Right. Like there is no. Like the, the old saying, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is today. Right. You, you have to, you're. How could I put it? I can tell you that it was not the, you know, most pleasant experience to find out, oh, look, I'm a full time businessman because I came back from vacation. They're like, you're the unemployment of the month, you don't work here anymore. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. But you put yourself in the situations and you have to give yourself permission to do something. Absolutely. Whether that's right or wrong. And you also have to be comfortable living with the consequences. In my particular case, my previous position upon moving to New Brunswick took me eight months to find, which was, was new. And obviously I hadn't gone through the job hiring cycle for a very long time and things have changed. Yes. So the question became, well, do I go through that again or do I pursue something different? Well, I could have gone through that cycle again. But the question then becomes, if you're ever going to start something of your own, do you, is this the cut in the sand and do you give yourself permission to do it? Yeah. So there is, there is that and then I guess there is the, the permission of everyone else involved in there and how much you're going to take that into contention because, oh yeah, you do have to be a little bit contrarian to, you know, in your position. I believe you're trained as an architect and you run an equipment rental company and I don't know all what else, but the level of vertical integration there has to be tremendous. It's, yeah. Very interesting. Right. It's just putting all that together and what I do now, like a lot of people, they'll say, how did you get from that to what you're doing now? I'm like, don't ask. I just know that I enjoyed what I did there. I still do like that stuff. But now I just wanted something on my own and just ventured off with my brother in law and then we started this and it's been going good ever since. So. Awesome. I had to do it. It was that moment. Just said it's gotta be today. You know, just like you said, it's gotta be today. Right? You gotta plant that tree. Yeah, for sure. So. And it, man, it takes, it, it takes a lot to get that tree from here to here. Absolutely. But you know, it's part of the process and it's part of the learning and it's part of the challenges, so which for me, as a person who likes to solve, solve problems, it's good. But the number of problems that fall into the category of, you know, would have thought of this, you know, two months ago, but it's a raging tire fire right now. Yeah. The problems are endless. But it is what it is, right? Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, Luke, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us here on Built Without Permission. If anyone wants to find you, where are they going to find you? On Instagram. Best place is Instagram. At Luker Potter, you can follow along and either, you know, comment and regale me with tales of your adventures or you can look at it and be like this. This really is. Isn't for me. So. But yeah, happy to have people out there. Interestingly enough, I had not to pump my own tires, but I literally put out the most useless little 8 second clip last Monday and apparently like close to 900,000 people have watched. Talk about how Claude code is down. And that's it. I. I will never understand social media, but I guess I participate now. Yeah. Awesome. Great job, man. And keep doing it. Keep making more of those and it's going to keep kicking it, you know, in a good way. Here's hoping. Here's hoping, man. That's it. Awesome, Luke. Well, we'll be in touch, man. All right, enjoy the rest of the day. Let's catch up soon. Sounds good, man. All right, cheers, buddy. Bye. Take care. Bye. Bye. If you're waiting for permission, you're already behind. The life you're building starts with the decisions you make today. So stop thinking and start moving. Subscribe, share this with someone. Still thinking about it. And start building something of your own. No blueprint, no approval, no excuses. I'm Matthew Mack. This is built without permission.