Irit Levi Podcast Transcript
Irit Levi joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Irit Levi. Irit Levi helps coaches, creatives, and consultants scale their businesses with process, strategy, software, and automation. She has provided nearly 14, 000 software recommendations over the years, but at her core, she’s about scalability, not software.
Her approach is different because she believes technology is just a tool. It’s only as valuable as it is helpful. She is a longtime automator with 15 plus years and going strong. She’s a compulsive tool tester with over 978 tools tested and counting. She’s a serial speaker and trainer. When she’s not tinkering with tools, she’s always talking about them.
She’s a generous wisdom dispenser. Over 1, 400 articles, posts, and videos. She’s also a playful podcaster. She’s the co-host of Off Tangent. A playful podcast about business process and growing pains. And lastly, she’s a masterful course creator. She’s created courses in house as an instructional designer, helped entrepreneurs launch their own courses and developed her own sales pipeline automation accelerator.
Well, good afternoon, Irit. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:20] Irit Levi: Thanks so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
[00:01:23] Brian Thomas: This is awesome. And thank you again for making the time. I’m in Kansas City, you’re in Israel. Sometimes making time zones work in podcasts is always a challenge, but thank you again, Irit.
[00:01:35] Irit Levi: Oh, my pleasure. This is actually afternoon and only one kid is home. So, it’s quiet now.
[00:01:40] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So Irit let’s jump right in here. Let’s talk about your career in technology. You were an instructor, a web developer, designer, entrepreneur. Now you’re the Founder and Chief Strategist of Day by Day.
Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:59] Irit Levi: Ever since I was a kid, I was a jack of all trades. I had my hand in various fields and the truth is I loved them all. So, I guess where I got to today is like a culmination of all of that. All the jobs that you described; I had done those for years.
And then on February 12th, 2020, I gave my notice for my final position as a product owner in a startup. And then March 12th was my last day, and March 15th, the world stopped. So, then I turned to my husband, and I said, Right, no one’s going to hire me right now, we may as well open my own business. And, with the help of the one above, I guess that’s how I got to where I am.
And that’s what inspires me, just my faith, and the way that I live, knowing that there’s someone above us, always watching us and wanting what’s best for us.
[00:02:45] Brian Thomas: Thank you for sharing your story and I think that’s important. Everybody believes different things. And I believe that there’s a higher power obviously just similar to you.
And sometimes that’s what we really need to get back to our true north. Especially during the pandemic, there’s a lot of people I talked to on the podcast to have some real challenges. And I think at the end of the day, we do need to get back to the thing that. Will serve us best and that is the higher power. So, thank you.
Irit, we’re going to really my favorite question of the day is just love what you do out there. I did a lot of research on you, and you do a ton of things for your entrepreneur clients. It’s amazing. And you’re just always smiling about it. But you take all the tedious work off people’s hands by automating most of their tasks, showing them how to focus on those productive things, creative work that makes them successful.
Can you walk us through a couple examples of some big wins you’ve had?
[00:03:38] Irit Levi: So, every client’s a little bit different. It’s really hard to just, any example is going to be very specific, but the thing that’s the same. With most clients is that moment when we flip the switch, and we see the entire process working.
There were two projects I think that were really major in this. One of them was an architect that had a really, really complex process. There were multiple forms and there was the project management was made up of tasks and subtasks, and we needed to build it from multiple players.
So there were employees and there were and. There was the management and then there’s also the clients. And after a lot of research and back and forth, we settled on two different tools and integrated them together. It took us a really long time to tweak. And then one day we flipped the switch, and he was like exhausted by that point of, all the research and everything.
And he saw it in action with the test client start to finish. And it was just so much fun to see his reaction. And I think that’s the moment that you know that this is worth it, because it does take a while for complex projects to come to fruition. Another example was a copywriter who wanted to build a micro agency, and her process was so complex as well.
She had multiple complex forms and research. avenues, research in points and project management. And we ended up building a research tool for her with the multiple entry points. And then with a click of a button, it outputs a branding brief or a branding. It was actually a full guide. And then of course, all the client and project management aspects of the project.
And again, it was a really long time working on it, but then when she ran it with a client, it was like, wow, this just saved her so many hours of copy paste and manual labor. So that I think is. The best thing that I can see with my clients is seeing that moment when they realized that their investment was worth all of the labor that it took.
[00:05:23] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And at the crux of it it’s serving others. It’s people that make the world go around. And I know we all experienced this in whatever profession we have is, when I ran large help desk back in the day, taking care of a customer, when they had a smile on their face, they put the biggest smile on my face, and I can totally relate to what you’re doing out there.
But not only that, you’re actually making these entrepreneurs be more successful so they can focus on their creative work. So thank you for sharing those stories. Irit. We know you leverage quite a bit of software and automation tools, right? I think you’ve touted thousands of tools or software automation that you’ve used, touched produced, whatever that is automated over your career.
But we like to ask if you’re leveraging any of that new and emerging tech, or at least highlight a couple of tools for our audience.
[00:06:13] Irit Levi: Tools are advancing so fast these days. I think. AI and ChatGPT, or ChatGPT is an example of AI is taking over the world. Although the real AI is happening not in our field, it’s like happening in major machine learning stuff.
But on the day to day, every day when I open my computer, I get emails about new features and tools. One recent example is Notion, just introduced native on automations on their paid plan, add that with their built in AI, and they’re becoming a real force in their industry. And that I think is the direction that we’re going to see more of the AI and native integrations within any tool.
So, the tools are now enabling. Full on workflows without actually having to leave the tool. And there’s a distinction between that and an all in one tool. But if you push any information today, for example, video, if you. record yourself on video or even on an audio podcast, you upload it to a folder that sends a message to your editor, they edit it, that sends a message back to you that it’s ready, automatically sends it to chat GPT to write some script that will go above it on your post and that automatically sends it to posting, with a click of a button today.
All you have to do is invest those first few minutes in recording and everything else is done for you. And that, I think, is something amazing that if we know how to leverage, can make all of us better entrepreneurs.
[00:07:38] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And I love it. It’s back in the day when I was a developer, there were some limited tools as far as automating tasks.
But we had to work within our community developer community to come up with some utilities to kick off processes. And now it’s just like, well, it’s no code, low code, and everybody’s leveraging it from people in the community. High school all the way up to people that are in their retirement age.
And I think we’re really in this new era of amazing technology and automation. So, thank you for sharing. Irit, last question of the day. Could you share something from your career experience that would be helpful for those looking to grow their career in either tech or entrepreneurship?
[00:08:19] Irit Levi: I don’t know if what I have to share is specifically for the tech and entrepreneurship in general, like it’s more just a general for life, I think. It’s don’t be afraid to try new things and shift even if you’ve gone down a route and it hasn’t succeeded, and you find that you have to go a different route.
And then don’t be afraid to make mistakes and then take ownership of your mistakes. And if you do this, growth is almost a given in any field in life.
[00:08:44] Brian Thomas: Thank you. That’s very nice. You’re sharing your life experiences with us today. There’s definitely probably about three gems that I pulled out of that.
And I think that’s awesome. And we need to get back again to center, true north and not care about what people think. And you’re right on up to our mistakes. I think that’s so important. Irit, it was a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:09:07] Irit Levi: It’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:09:10] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Irit Levi Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
