Last week I wrote about how AI is creating a divide in the design and construction industry between those who are exploring AI now and those who are ignoring it. You can read that post HERE if you didn’t see it.
I'm not the only one talking about this right now. For example, did you see this viral video that Reese Witherspoon made during the week talking about the exact same thing?? (Click here to watch)
Anyway, the response to my newsletter last week was huge. I had hundreds of messages with some version of "okay, I'm convinced I need to pay attention to this, but what does that actually mean for how I run my business?"
So this week I want to give you three real examples of things I've been doing with AI that have nothing to do with rendering, mood boards or weird AI people walking through AI generated bathroom videos.
1: I designed a full interior design website in 12 minutes
This week I did a live experiment and recorded myself "vibe coding" an interior design website from scratch. I wanted to see if I could create a good looking website in around 10 minutes or so (and I did!!).
Take a look at the video here 👇🏻
As you’ll see in the video I simply described the kind of site I wanted and it planned and built a fully functional website with an admin backend. What I built isn’t just some dodgy prototype, it’s a proper professional looking site that I could set live and use to attract clients.
The point of the video wasn’t to show that every business owner needs to “vibe code” their own website, I just wanted to start showing you what's possible and how AI can now build things that used to require hiring someone and a $10K bill.
I filmed the whole thing and you can watch it HERE.
2: Never write meeting minutes/summaries again
This use case is so simple and will save you so much time.
Here’s the workflow:
- Record your site visits and client meetings using an app called Otter.ai (it runs on your phone)
- After the meeting, upload the transcript into Claude Chat
- Within about 30 seconds it will give you properly formatted meeting minutes with action items, who's responsible for what and deadlines
- You review it, tweak anything and turn it into an email you can send to your client and project stakeholders within the hour
- If you want to get really fancy with this you can set up a Claude Project with context and templates in there and this process will become even faster and easier (this is the sort of extra step that really makes AI become like an employee in your business).
Think about how long you currently spend on things like this. You get back to the office after a site visit, you try to remember everything that was discussed, you write it all up, you format it then you send it out. Or perhaps you don't do that at all (which isn't great for risk protection and isn't a great client experience).
That's easily 45 minutes per meeting and if you're doing two meetings a week that's around 75 hours a year you're spending on meeting notes alone.
If you charge out at $150 an hour that's over $11,000 a year in time you could be saving from this one very simple AI automation.
3: Get building codes explained in plain English
Upload your local building code, standards and other compliance documentation into NotebookLM (it's a free tool from Google).
Once it has the documents you can ask it questions in normal language like "what are the minimum natural light requirements for a habitable room?" or "what does AS 1428.1 require for an accessible bathroom layout?" and it gives you cited answers pulled directly from the documents you uploaded.
The great thing about NotebookLM is that it only pulls from the source material you give it so it won’t make things up or give you answers from other jurisdictions' codes.
You'll still want to verify what it tells you (always check the source), but instead of scrolling through a 400 page PDF trying to find the right clause, you get a clear answer in seconds with a reference to exactly where it came from.
If you're spending even two hours a month doing this kind of manual searching that's $3,600 a year in time you're getting back.
So those are just a few extremely simple examples of actual money saving use cases that you can do with AI using tools that I am guessing most of you have never heard of (Replit, Otter.ai, NotebookLM).
With those ideas alone I’ve already saved you about $25,000 a year. You’re welcome :)
