Building Software Your Team Actually Uses | Lazy Leverage #75

34 snips

Oct 21, 2025

Unlocking the power of AI for small businesses is the focus here. Internal tools trump personal productivity hacks, offering the greatest potential. Jon shares how he transformed hiring processes, screening thousands of applicants in seconds. The hosts advocate for custom tools tailored to unique workflows instead of conforming to existing software. They emphasize identifying business constraints and using AI to solve them, from screening to property management outreach. The conversation concludes with practical applications of AI that cut costs and boost efficiency.

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INSIGHT

Internal Tools Are The Sweet Spot

Internal team tools unlock outsized value compared to personal hacks or public SaaS products.
Big-company internal software is now democratized for small teams via AI and low-code platforms.

INSIGHT

Workflows Should Serve The Software

Large firms’ internal tooling forces employees to 'work for the software' and drives operational consistency.
Small businesses can now replicate that discipline affordably with AI and low-code tools.

ADVICE

Build In-House When It Fits Your Edge

If you're fluent with AI and low-code, build in-house exactly how you want processes to work.
But weigh maintenance risk and future updates against commercial software benefits.

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Jon and Peter crack open the real opportunity in AI for small businesses (hint: it's not what most operators think). Forget personal productivity hacks that save you five minutes on email. Forget launching the next big SaaS product that becomes a customer support nightmare.

The gold sits squarely in category two: internal tools for your team.

Jon's built $50-100K of monthly value at Sagan using Replit and some API connections. Not by selling software, but by solving their actual constraint: screening 1,000 applicants for a single role. What used to take a week and a half now happens instantly, with AI dynamically ranking candidates so humans can start at the top of the list.

Peter's advice for the last 12 years was "conform your business to the tools." Things are a little different now. With AI coding assistants, you can build exactly what you want, how you want it to work.

No more spaghetti workflows. No more feature requests. No more conferences.

The framework is deceptively simple: identify your constraint, then attack it with AI and automation. For Sagan, it was screening speed. For property managers, it might be lead flow.

Jon and Peter then go tactical. If you want to blow past your competitors, have AI monitor their listings, identify the property owner, generate custom direct mail with an impressionistic rendering of their house, and dynamically select messaging based on which competitor they're using. Total cost: $130 in Replit credits.

Big companies have thousand-person software teams building internal tools. Now that capability is democratized. Your maintenance guy can get an optimized route with required tools pulled from inventory. Not because you're a 20,000-door operation, but because you spent two hours in Replit.

TIMESTAMPS:
(01:00) Three Categories: Personal, Internal, and External Tools
(02:04) Why Internal Tools Are the Sweet Spot
(11:54) Theory of Constraints: Finding Your Attack Vector
(18:25) Property Management Lead Flow Constraints
(22:04) Building an Owner Portal in Two Hours
(25:46) Sagan's AI Screening System: 1,000 Applications Ranked Instantly
(39:12) Automated Competitor Targeting with Custom Direct Mail