i was excited to speak to Tuly Weill—not so much for any specific advice he might offer about automation, but more importantly, to introduce the idea to business owners that there are affordable, easy-to-implement tools that anyone can utilize to save time, money and effort.
Anyone who works with technology performs many different tasks throughout the day, often without realizing that there may be a better way to get them done. You get an email with details about customers, which you manually enter into your Customer Relationiship Management system. You collect contact information from a web form and transfer it to your email marketing platform. Software like Zapier, however, allows the two programs to talk to each other so that the information is automatically entered.
For example, workflow can generate automatic responses. It can send confirmation via text whenever you receive an email or vice versa. Or let’s say that your company works with numerous photos and documents. Zapier can automatically create folders based on the sender, and then file them appropriately. It can also put them into a specific drive. The possibilities are endless.
Tuly started out by automating systems for his employer, and then went off on his own. Today, Flow Digital is ranked as the number one certified automation agency worldwide on Zapier’s marketplace. We spoke about Tuly’s journey, some of his past projects, and what steps our readers can take to save time in the workplace. Enjoy!
—Nesanel
I grew up in Monroe and I am a Satmar chasid. I am the oldest of nine children. My father was a life insurance agent who then went into real estate. My maternal grandfather, Reb Yitzchak Markovitz, is well-known in Monroe for his philanthropy and is well respected in the community.
“Right now, I’m in the technical field, but I can still harness some of the creativity I felt as a child. I loved music. From a very young age, I had a dream to one day compose a song that a singer could record on their album. Initially, I wrote songs for family and friends’ weddings. A couple of these songs organically went viral among yeshivah bachurim. Eventually, I began reaching out to singers and producers to share my demos with them. Whenever I went to a chasunah, I would approach the singer and tell them about my compositions.
“In cheder, I was in the same class as music producer Naftali Schnitzler, and when he got into music professionally, I had access to a producer to work on my songs. I composed a couple of songs that were recorded on albums. Beri Weber, Yoeli Greenfeld, Michoel Schnitzler and Yumi Lowy have all used my tunes.
“I also had the privilege to arrange a couple of workshops with Yossi Green, giving a group of new composers the chance to meet with him at his home in Seagate and work on songs together.
“I like to play the guitar and piano a bit as well. But nowadays my sons use my musical instruments way more than I do, and it’s the biggest pleasure to watch them become way better at them than I ever was.
“I also got involved in projects in yeshivah when I could. When I was a bachur, before computers and the internet were widespread, I was able to help with the publications for class because I understood how they worked.
“I got married when I turned 19 and learned in kollel for about a yea, after which I went to work so I could provide for my family.
“My first job was as a service coordinator at Hamaspik, working with special needs children and their families in Williamsburg. It took a lot of effort and consistent ongoing work to apply for and maintain government services, and it was satisfying to see firsthand how my work impacted the lives of special needs children and their families.
“In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, it became much harder for certain programs to get government funding, and I felt my work was having less impact. I also wanted to transition to the private, for-profit sector, which was beginning to make a comeback.
“I joined Ptex Group, a marketing agency run by Meny Hoffman. At that time, Meny was managing operations but wanted to focus more on his role as CEO. I was hired as his assistant in operations and eventually became the director of operations.
“At some point, I realized that my role involved a lot of manual work. I started automating a lot of the marketing and inner operations for our company, and I recognized that other companies likely needed to do the same.
“One workflow that used to take a lot of time was onboarding guests for the ‘Let’s Talk Business’ podcast that Ptex was launching. Around two hours per episode went into scheduling guests, who were often important people with busy schedules. We needed to request their bio, headshot and a few other details in advance. Preparing for an episode and keeping track of recording schedules took a lot of effort.
“I wanted to streamline this, so using Zapier, the automation tool I was working with, I built a 22-step Zap to automate the workflow. As soon as someone booked an interview, it automatically sent out a questionnaire to the guest. If they didn’t fill it out, they received automatic reminders. After two reminders, an internal notification was sent to manually follow up. Once the questionnaire was completed, the details were automatically organized into an auto-generated Google Drive folder, and the task was marked as done in the project management system.
“Now that AI is a big factor in automation, we are updating the workflow to have AI generate a list of potential questions based on information the guests submit about themselves.
“Zapier’s marketing team found out about this workflow and was so impressed that they featured it on their blog.
“At the time, Ptex was launching the LTB Summit, which, if I remember correctly, was featured in Ami Magazine. The entire registration process and marketing communication were automated, saving a lot of time and effort for the operations team.
“Onboarding new employees was another process that took a lot of time and effort due to manual tasks, including remembering to create software logins, setting up payroll, preparing a desk and computer, and introducing the company’s core values, with a different value shared each day.
“I wanted to start an automation division within the company and Meny was on board with the idea, so we hired a couple of employees and tried it. But as Ptex is a marketing and branding agency, it was hard to focus on automation services as well, and it never really took off.
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