Jack Jostes [00:00:00]:
Are you using AI in your snow and landscape company? You've probably heard how you can use it for sales and marketing ideas. Check out today's episode to hear a conversation with John Paganini about how you can use it to streamline your HR processes.
John Paganini [00:00:15]:
AI is still growing and improving. There's new versions coming out all the time. It's prompting. How do I talk to the AI? What do I have to do? It's getting better and it's getting smarter.
Jack Jostes [00:00:26]:
The human review component of it, of like, reading, interpreting it, editing it, and refining it, is a very important part.
John Paganini [00:00:33]:
It is human plus AI. I like to think of it as having, like, a personal Einstein, you know, at your fingertips all the time.
00:40 - Meet John Paganini: CrewTracker & His Violinist Roots
Jack Jostes [00:00:40]:
All right, folks, we are here at the Ramblin Jackson booth at the SIMA Symposium in Pittsburgh with John Paganini, who I interviewed on the train ride last year. So that was fun. We were literally on the, I think the caboose of a historic train in Hartford, Connecticut.
John Paganini [00:00:56]:
And we talked to the conductor as well.
Jack Jostes [00:00:58]:
We did. We talked to the conductor. It was a great time. And so, John, we were just having a quick chat about your name because I said, is it Paganini or Poganini? And tell me about that.
John Paganini [00:01:08]:
Well, it's great that you recognize this. Apparently you're a violinist, and Niccolo Paganini was a famous violinist from the late 1700s. And I have a website, paganini.com, which is really an homage to his violin expertise. There's a lot of stories about Niccolo Paganini, and on the website, we've documented some. We've documented his lyrics. His playing is just his wild capability. He played very, very fast, and he was a rock star back then, and he had a kind of a dark side to him. He gambled a lot.
John Paganini [00:01:43]:
And so he was a very colorful character.
Jack Jostes [00:01:46]:
Yeah, he was. And so I grew up. I played violin starting at age six. And it's actually a key reason that I know how to record audio and do my podcast. And everything that I do is rooted in music because I grew up and I had a cassette tape player and I would record myself playing violin, and I'd listen to myself play back. It was part of the Suzuki method, and so I learned that way. And then I kind of became just very interested in audio recording and music and that, and then interviewing people. And at one point, I actually wrote a play based on audio recording I did in New Orleans. So just kind of a random, quick story about that.
John Paganini [00:02:31]:
Good history. I still have cassettes.
Jack Jostes [00:02:34]:
Yeah. And you still have to rewind them. Right.
John Paganini [00:02:36]:
I still have an old reel to reel player actually.
Jack Jostes [00:02:39]:
Do you really? That's. That's incredible. I have a Paganini record.
John Paganini [00:02:47]:
Oh, my goodness. I might have it.
Jack Jostes [00:02:49]:
That's cool! We're gonna check that out. So, love the story of the name and everything. Are you related? Do you know?
John Paganini [00:02:55]:
Well, we actually have hired two separate genealogists to go back and make that connection. And we got to the same city, so we think we are. And if somebody looks at Niccolo Paganini and I look at his pictures of me, they go, oh, my God, you're related. So maybe.
02:55 - How CrewTracker AI Simplifies Snow & Ice Management
Jack Jostes [00:03:11]:
Cool. Well, so, John, you run CrewTracker Software. So just quick, quickly. What is that?
John Paganini [00:03:18]:
It's software to run the operations for snow and ice management business. And this year, we're actually celebrating 20 years of being in business. And the original developers and owners of the system started it 20 years ago when they saw there was a need to track electronically all of the documentation needed in a snow and ice. The routing, the services, the accounting part, sending the invoices out, paying the vendors. And so it has had a long growth path over the years. I'm the third owner myself and my background has been in I.T. since, not as long as Niccolo Paganini, but I've been in the I.T. business forever with a focus on systems integration. So if you like, I can talk a little bit about what's cool about the integration.
Jack Jostes [00:04:06]:
Yeah, tell me what's cool about the integration.
John Paganini [00:04:08]:
We have this kind of a philosophy and approach where we are a digital services platform. And so we're bringing in information from companies like WeatherWorks, Frost Solutions. Of course, we integrate with QuickBooks to do the accounting, but our vision is that we're a platform to bring in the necessary data that these operations managers and the owners of these businesses need to better run their operations and efficiencies. And where I got excited is this year we're announcing. I have a recent student, if you will, of AI in the past couple of years. And so we've introduced this year a crew AI chatbot. And you can say, show me my top properties, or show me my top materials or services, and it'll generate output showing you from a database that information. The other aspect is we've developed a chatbot just for the help desk.
John Paganini [00:05:01]:
So we've ingested into the AI all of the user manuals, the FAQs, and any information that we thought the users would need to run their business.
Jack Jostes [00:05:12]:
So is that, For Help Desk, does that mean like a current customer, a subscriber of CrewTracker Software? Yes, they would go onto your website and ask the Help Desk?
John Paganini [00:05:21]:
It would be in the application itself.
Jack Jostes [00:05:23]:
It would be in the app.
John Paganini [00:05:23]:
How do I send invoices? Or how is a vendor bill calculated? Or how can I do the crew rates or whatever it is that the system needs to do that has been documented will then emerge in a nicely formatted output. Now, this doesn't take away from, you know, we try to excel on customer excellence, so we had that 24/7. But it may be a good start at being self sufficient to the users who can just say, ah, geez, I forgot how to send an invoice. Let me, let me do that and ask the Chatbot. And that's only going to get smarter and better as it moves on.
05:57 - ChatGPT for Landscapers: Streamlining Your Operations
Jack Jostes [00:05:57]:
Cool. So you presented here on five ways to use ChatGPT in your snow. So what are, what are some of them?
John Paganini [00:06:07]:
Well, you may be aware, but with ChatGPT one of the things I did talk about first was what is AI? Give a general overview to people who are really not familiar with it because it's still new to a lot of people. Definition of AI, what is it? What's going on with that, much less a fear. So it's, the message was, let's get started on AI now because it's here. So a little bit about overview of AI and then a little bit about prompting. How do I talk to the AI? What do I have to do? Like, for example, you want to tell it, it's a, for example, you give it a role. You're a social media marketing expert extraordinaire, and you know LinkedIn, you know YouTube, you know how to do all these things. Now that you've told the AI who it needs to be, then you can go in and tell it what it needs to do. Create a 30 day calendar for me of posts focused on my new snow trucks that I bought that include these types of features.
John Paganini [00:07:04]:
And you can be very specific. So there's a couple of different approaches there. You can be very specific, or you can be a little bit general and see what it does and then kind of refine it because AI will remember the conversation. So you can say something very vague like, you know, tell me about Pittsburgh, but then you can be very specific. After it knows it's in Pittsburgh, you say, well, tell me about the convention center or tell me about the restaurant that's right down the street close to that. So it remembers the context of your entire conversation. So some of the things I talked about was social media. The advantages of using it in social media is a big thing, especially marketing.
07:41 - Using AI for HR in Snow & Landscape Businesses
Jack Jostes [00:07:41]:
So John, so you shared some good ideas like the social media content creation. What are some of, maybe the more operational or even HR uses for ChatGPT.
John Paganini [00:07:54]:
HR is one of the ones I talked about, for example. But let's say you want to develop some standard operating procedures for your employees. Maybe you want to focus it on training. Maybe you want to put together a questionnaire, or maybe you want to ask a survey to your employees. Possibly you might want to do a job description. So, you know, give me a job description for a snowplow operator and have it started now. One of the cautions I guess I have is that AI is still growing and improving. And as you probably know, like with any software, there's new versions coming out all the time.
John Paganini [00:08:34]:
It's getting better and it's getting smarter. But you should always check to make sure that the information you're looking at is correct and what you're looking for, especially if you're going to share it.
Jack Jostes [00:08:47]:
Yeah, for sure. The human review component of it, of like reading, interpreting it, editing it, and refining it, is a very important, and also though, using good prompts. So asking the right questions when you're using it, what are maybe some prompts for people listening, they're like, oh, I've never done this. Open up Chat GPT and what would be an example of a prompt that we could type in that could help us with a standard operating procedure document?
John Paganini [00:09:13]:
I just want to address one thing that you said is it is human plus AI. It's not just AI by itself. And now the human could be complemented by an AI. And I like to think of it as having like a personal Einstein, you know, at your fingertips all the time.
09:28 - Effective ChatGPT Prompts for Snow & Landscape Pros
John Paganini [00:09:28]:
But let's say you're doing an HR. So you would tell, I would tell the AI, you are an expert at human resources, you've been in the business forever, and you really understand human resources and you've been in the snow and ice management business.
Jack Jostes [00:09:43]:
You would type that in?
John Paganini [00:09:44]:
Yes.
Jack Jostes [00:09:44]:
And press enter?
John Paganini [00:09:45]:
No, I wouldn't press enter yet. You can, though. You can.
Jack Jostes [00:09:49]:
You would continue this long input?
John Paganini [00:09:52]:
One approach to doing this is letting the AI know who it is. Like, let's assign the AI a role in this conversation. You're now an expert. You can eliminate that. And maybe it'll try to figure out what it should say. But if you set the stage for who it needs to be first, that really helps the situation, because now that you've told it who it is, you can then say, well, I need a safety manual that's focused on certain areas of my operations. Like when I go out to plow at 1:00 in the morning, what do the drivers need to think about? Or whatever it is that you're asking. And now that you've set the stage for who it is, it's going to give you back information in that context of its identity, if you will. And that's where it really gets smart.
John Paganini [00:10:38]:
So you mentioned the enter key. You can hit the enter key because it'll recall what you said before and continue that stream of consciousness.
Jack Jostes [00:10:46]:
Yeah, that's how I've been using it is, you know, like starting with a prompt like that and then continuing and kind of iterating with it. So there are different ways of using it.
John Paganini [00:10:55]:
And so that, that's a great way to do it, actually, step by step, because you'll see, it'll come back with something. Ah, that's not quite what I was looking for. Let's see how I can enhance that. Take this out.
Jack Jostes [00:11:04]:
Yeah, that, that's, that's what I found. Or, okay, now reduce that to 200 words.
John Paganini [00:11:09]:
Yeah.
11:10 - Getting Started with ChatGPT: Simple Steps for Success
Jack Jostes [00:11:10]:
Or create a bulleted list of these things. Create a step by step summary so they're all these different things. So love it. Any other things? What did you see from the audience that you shared? Maybe that light bulbs went off where you're like, oh, I was surprised that the audience really enjoyed this from my talk.
John Paganini [00:11:29]:
Yeah, that's a good question. I think what happened afterwards is a couple people said, I'm going to do this now. I see that because I ended the talk with just start now. Start simple.
Jack Jostes [00:11:39]:
I agree. So let's give people something to do. People are either watching or listening to this. Maybe they haven't even used chat GPT yet. What would you say to, like, just go do today right now? Pull out your phone, take out your computer. What would be a fun first thing.
John Paganini [00:11:54]:
About the snow and ice business, I would actually have it create a picture because that is the most fun piece of the AI. Say, create a picture of a penguin on an iceberg on top of a mountain looking at a sunset, and it'll do that so you can have fun with the creativity. And by the way, you can have Chat GPT create the prompt you want to create the picture. So you say Chat GPT I'm looking for a picture that says this. Give me a really descriptive prompt, and it'll come back with something very elegant, very descriptive. And you can also define the tone of that. You know, I want a creative.
John Paganini [00:12:30]:
You know, I want a formal, casual. So I would say experimenting with the pictures is a fun way to see.
Jack Jostes [00:12:37]:
So I did this with my kids, who are eight and nine, and we created an AI logo for The Pythons was their club name, and it was amazing. And we made this thing that said The Pythons. And it was an image of a. Or no, it was The Cobras. And then, either way, it was a snake.
Jack Jostes [00:12:57]:
But then they wanted to print it, and I was like, hey, guys, this is going to take so much ink, and it's gonna look awful. And they're like, no, dad, we gotta print it anyways. And so we printed it, and sure enough, it looked awful. Well, I don't know. It just used so much ink. Like, it was, like, mainly black with, like, yellow eyes. And it reminded me of the first logo I made when I was a kid in, like, Microsoft paint and then printing it a long time ago. Yeah.
Jack Jostes [00:13:26]:
So some things haven't changed, and some things really have. So. But anyway, so that's. That's a good prompter. Another. Another one is to, like, plan an itinerary.
John Paganini [00:13:34]:
Oh, of course.
Jack Jostes [00:13:34]:
You travel. Yeah, plan it.
John Paganini [00:13:36]:
What should I do? I have two days in Pittsburgh. Tell me the best things I should do.
13:40 - Final Thoughts & Where to Learn More About CrewTracker
Jack Jostes [00:13:40]:
Yeah. Cool. Well, John, thanks for coming by and doing a follow up podcast with me for folks listening. Where can we connect with you and learn more?
John Paganini [00:13:48]:
Jack Jostes [00:13:49]:
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on The Landscaper’s Guide.
John Paganini [00:13:51]:
You're welcome.
Jack Jostes [00:13:53]:
Hey, it's Jack Jostes, and you've been listening to The Landscaper’s Guide Podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, make sure you give us a 5 Star Rating and share it with somebody in the industry. And make sure you Subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast, where I'll instantly send you our top three episodes, plus invitations to our upcoming live and virtual events. I hope to see you at one of them again. It's Jack Jostes. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to talking to you next week on The Landscaper’s Guide.
Show Notes:
Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: landscapersguide.com/podcast
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: landscapersguide.com/toolbox
???? Explore CrewTracker Software: www.crewtracker.com
???? Connect with John Paganini: www.linkedin.com/in/jpaganini