Next-Level Septic Business: How Courtney Van Delden Supplee Uses AI, Automation & Data to Scale Van Delden Wastewater Systems

Running a successful septic company for 88 years takes more than experience — it takes innovation.
In this episode of Catalyst for the Trades, host Jennifer Bagley and strategist Vee Nettles talk with Courtney Van Delden Supplee, owner of Van Delden Wastewater Systems, about how she’s keeping her fourth-generation business thriving with AI, automation, and data-driven marketing.

Courtney shares how switching to CI Web Group’s AI-enabled website platform and adopting tools like Manus AI and Cortex helped modernize operations, boost SEO, and streamline team workflows. She opens up about transforming company culture, making bold technology decisions, and using AI to manage everything from social media to work orders.

If you’re a home service business owner, septic contractor, or trades professional, this episode will show you how to future-proof your business with AI optimization, smart automation, and digital transformation strategies built for the trades.

Timestamps 

01:00 – Intro: Meet Jennifer Bagley, Vee Nettles, and guest Courtney Van Delden Supplee

01:58 – Company History: Van Delden’s 88-year journey and Courtney’s path to ownership

03:42 – Leadership Challenges: Building a team-first culture and long-term career growth

05:17 – Partnering With CI Web Group: Why Van Delden upgraded to an AI-enabled website

07:26 – SEO Impact: Growth after migration and measurable results from digital upgrades

08:50 – Business Agility: How Courtney manages fast-paced decisions and tech adoption

15:06 – AI-Era SEO: Using customer language, blogs, and local keywords to drive calls

20:30 – AI Social Media Automation: Leveraging Manus AI and Cortex for marketing

28:02 – Workflow Optimization: Managing 40+ daily work orders with AI and automation

33:28 – Model Context Protocol: Building custom AI systems for back-office operations

39:44 – AI in Daily Ops: How automation drives performance, bonuses, and efficiency

41:05 – ChatGPT vs Multi-Agent Tools: The next phase of AI integrations for contractors

43:09 – AI Search Optimization: Why businesses must adapt beyond traditional Google search

47:32 – Final Takeaways: Courtney’s advice for trades owners—embrace AI and start now

Guest Details

Courtney Van Delden Supplee
Owner, Van Delden Wastewater Systems
Fourth-generation leader of an established Texas-based septic company. Courtney is redefining what it means to run a legacy business by embracing AI tools, automation, and data-driven marketing to enhance customer service, efficiency, and profitability.

Resources & Links

• Van Delden Wastewater Systems (vdwws.com)
• CI Web Group
• Catalyst for the Trades Podcast
• Just Start AI Community
• Manus AI

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Transcript

Jennifer Bagley [00:00:32]:
Welcome to the podcast, you guys. Thanks so much for joining. Welcome to Catalyst for the Trades. I'm Jennifer Bagley, your host and I am very, very excited. Today I have the famous Ms. V Nettles who is a senior account strategist with CI Web Group and has been on our team. How long have you been on our team now?

Vee Nettles [00:01:18]:
Almost two years.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:20]:
Almost.

Vee Nettles [00:01:22]:
That means.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:23]:
That means that she's graduating to OG status.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:01:27]:
Yes.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:29]:
I love that. And one of our amazing clients, Ms. Courtney from Van Der Water Systems. I'm so thankful for you being able to take time with us today.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:01:39]:
Well, thank you for asking me. I'm very honored.

Jennifer Bagley [00:01:41]:
I love it. So before we get really, really into the. The nitty gritty in the trenches, Courtney, tell me a little bit about your guys company, your role. When did you guys get started, what I specialize in? Let's just give the audience a really good overview of Van Delden.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:01:58]:
Yeah, awesome. Happy to do that. So we are in the septic system business, and we've been in business actually 88 years. My family started in 1937. My great grandfather started it, and so my brother and I are current owners and we're the fourth generation, so we'll see, you know, if our kiddos want to go in in the future. But we do everything from design septic system design, installation, repairs, maintenance, pumping, you know, pretty much everything that you can do in the septic realm, we do, and we have done for a very long time. And, and so we're just, we're very honored. We know we want to be the ones that continue.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:02:39]:
Continue tradition and excellence set before us.

Jennifer Bagley [00:02:43]:
I love that. I love that. What, at what point did you go. We're gonna, we're gonna go down this route with the family business. And. Were you ever on the fence?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:02:52]:
You know, it was never like assumed or pushed on us from our parents, so it was kind of one of those things. And I was getting ready to graduate from college. I went to Texas A and M, and I didn't really have anything lined up, so I said, well, I guess I'll give it a try. And so it's been, I think, 25 years this year. And. And then my brother was kind of. He worked in the field, which, you know, can be dirty in high school. And so he kind of like put it off as long as he could until we, I think we both kind of realized, like, hey, this is a good opportunity.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:03:25]:
We should take advantage of it. So luckily our parents brought us on and trained us up and so here we are.

Jennifer Bagley [00:03:32]:
I love that. I was gonna. I was gonna crack a joke about a bad taste in my mouth.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:03:40]:
Exactly.

Jennifer Bagley [00:03:41]:
Let's switch gears a little bit. At one point. You guys, I'm curious. How do you find CIWeb Group? I don't know if you even remember. I don't remember either. So how did you find us, and what made you wind up choosing to work with CI Web Group and then get a little deeper?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:03:59]:
Yeah. So we were with our previous website SEO provider, like, 12 years, and I just. I started doing some digging, and I think I found you on your, like, recommended. I'm on the service Titan Masterminds Facebook group or something like that. And I was kind of doing some searches through the post, and I was noticing, you know, the ones that the companies that kept. Kept coming up as being recommended, and CI Web Group was one of them. And we set up a call. I said, with you.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:04:37]:
I had. And you, you know, looked at our website just off the fly, and we're bringing up all these things, and I was just like, oh, my gosh, we. We have to move. And. And so it was a scary thing, but it was also exciting, too. So I think it just brought to light a lot of things that maybe our other provider. I felt for a long time that we were kind of on autopilot, so to speak. And after 12 years, that's probably easy to do.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:05:05]:
And then, you know, I get busy with things, and so just kind of kept going the way it was going, but a lot of things were outdated and old, and we needed a new. A new fresh start. And so that's what you guys provided for us.

Jennifer Bagley [00:05:16]:
I love that. What's. What's. What's it been like since then? This is good, bad, and dirty. Like, you can let us know.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:05:24]:
I don't really have anything bad, to tell you the truth. So we did. We've gone through two websites with you guys. We started. I don't know what the old PI. I think go through. Yeah. WordPress.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:05:35]:
And then earlier this year, we moved to Web Flow.

Jennifer Bagley [00:05:38]:
Right.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:05:39]:
Am I getting the verbiage right? You're gonna have to tell me. And both. Both were so smooth. I was so nervous to redo our website because I really liked our old one, and we were always getting compliments on it, and. But y' all just did a fantastic job. It was pretty seamless on my end. I mean, as long as I was providing you guys with the feedback, you. You guys just did what we.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:06:03]:
What we wanted to, but with some fresh ideas, and it was A very smooth process. We were very happy with that. And then just since then. I mean, numbers don't lie. And, you know, I've been keeping track of it on my end. You guys keep track of things on your end. And so, you know, when things are obviously improving and calls are coming in and revenue is up and all that's working, you can't really, you know, how many things complain about. So V is wonderful.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:06:34]:
I love meeting with her and getting updates on my account. She's always available for anything that I need. And. And so is the support, the help desk, which is super handy. So I don't have to bother V for little, little things. But we've been very happy.

Jennifer Bagley [00:06:51]:
Good. I love that. I love that. So probably doesn't feel good to have somebody build a site and then come back. I don't know how long it was. Was it a year later?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:07:01]:
And I think I want. Yeah.

Vee Nettles [00:07:03]:
Very long. At all.

Jennifer Bagley [00:07:04]:
Yeah. I mean, let's dig into that, because these are business decisions that not everybody pulls the trigger on. What was kind of the. I would say there's got to be some anxiety or whatnot. If we just built a website and then we're saying we need to redo this and, and giving our input on why, how'd it feel? What were some of the things that made you pull the trigger? Why would you do that? Why would you have us build a site and then build another one in less than a year?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:07:32]:
I think, number one, because things change and adapt and technology is changing and adapting faster and faster. And so what was relevant eight months prior was not going to be relevant in the. In the near future. And it's always been important that we kind of stay on top of our competition and we didn't want to fall behind. We kind of felt like if we're not doing the things that need to be done now in the early end, we're going to be behind by the time everybody jumps on board. And that really was our reasoning. Did we love spending more money and going through the process again and, and all that? No, but you don't love everything you have to do in business. And so it was kind of one of those things we just decided was the best, was the best thing.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:08:18]:
It kind of coincided, I think I watched Jennifer, one of your webinars, like right around that time or right before that, about AI and AI websites and why they're important, and it just kind of got me thinking already. And then when you guys kind of asked me, like, hey, would you be interested in doing this, like, this is think. Something that we think you should look at for the future. Part of my brain was already on board, but it was kind of that. It was kind of like that. That money aspect and the time aspect, that was really holding me back. But when I talked to my brother about it, we're like, yeah, I think we need to do it. So I'm glad we did.

Jennifer Bagley [00:08:51]:
I commend you guys. I don't think that's easy, and I feel like I know the stress that I would have on my own, but those are the. Those are the tough business decisions I commend you for, because that. That's not always the case. Everybody's presented with the same opportunity. Not everybody makes the same decisions.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:09:11]:
It definitely would have been easier to be like, no, we just rebuilt it.

Vee Nettles [00:09:15]:
Yeah.

Jennifer Bagley [00:09:16]:
Yeah.

Vee Nettles [00:09:17]:
Having those hard conversations, like, being able to have honest conversations with Courtney and just educating her.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:09:25]:
I'm not gonna spend the time worrying.

Jennifer Bagley [00:09:29]:
Yeah, her Wi fi's check.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:09:32]:
I know. And I'm not even on WI Fi either, so I don't know what's going on. But, yeah, you really. You really helped me. And, you know, I felt comfortable because I had already had great results with you guys, and I already had a great website rebuild experience. It just. It didn't make me as nervous to go through it again as I would have been if I was just, like, coming on for the first time.

Jennifer Bagley [00:09:53]:
Yeah. B. What do you notice? What's the difference? I know you. I mean, you work with a lot of different companies. What do you notice? The differences in the way that Courtney approaches these kind of tougher conversations, harder decisions. What's your thoughts?

Vee Nettles [00:10:08]:
Yeah, well, Courtney definitely epitomizes out some of our core values where we say, you know, show up to suit up, participate, and just being able to have the relationship with Courtney where we can have those honest conversations and just. It's never about the pressure. It's like, I just want to inform you and educate you on what's going on, what's coming down the pipeline, what we're working on, our recommendations, and when you're ready, then we can have those, you know, tough conversations of like, do we upgrade your website after we've just built out a new one? And the benefits of that and the whys and just feeling comfortable being able to have those hard conversations.

Jennifer Bagley [00:10:47]:
So, no. I love that I see your name on. I see your name pop up constantly. I love it. There's some channels, like in our Slack channels, where I'm like, it's just us. Ding, ding, Ding, ding. We. We built a.

Jennifer Bagley [00:11:00]:
We built a. A platform. It's called an MCP platform that basically, I call it God Mode. It gives us the ability to see what's going on in the well, gives me the ability to see what's going on in everything. I can literally at the end of the night, I can say, me, summarize every single meeting, every single slack channel, tell me what's going on with all of our clients. Analytics, which ones have increased, which ones have decreased, who's got increased volume of traffic, but lower volume of leads. I can see everything. And I love it because you always show up in the summary of active, participating customers.

Vee Nettles [00:11:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. Reminds me a lot of Billy at Integrity. Like, all our ideas, crazy or not, good or bad, you're in. You're in it to try them out. And you know, I see you. I tell you, oh, you should be posting more on social media. And Courtney will go ahead and do it.

Vee Nettles [00:11:50]:
And I can see it. And I love going through and liking all your things. And it really is a partnership. You have to. All of us have to put in the work. It's not just us doing the work, it's you doing the work as well.

Jennifer Bagley [00:12:01]:
So, yeah, I have a massive amount of respect for you as an owner, operator, and professional in your trades, because I would say you're Amongst probably the 10%. So for your team, your organization, your employees, they need to know they've got a killer leader sitting in there that's willing to dive in, even with. When it's uncomfortable and even when we don't even know if we need it yet. Because a lot of these things we're throwing at you, we're like, I'm pretty sure we need to do this. We can see change coming. We're planning for it and so forth. And I'm pretty sure this is. I don't.

Jennifer Bagley [00:12:38]:
Well, we don't have a crystal ball, but we're trying to make these really predict, predictive based decisions. And that's not an easy. It's not easy to make decisions on something where, you know, I mean, I'm sure it's like, well, show me the results. I don't have any. We haven't done it yet. You're like, all right, well, we'll be first. Yeah, yeah.

Vee Nettles [00:12:58]:
And Courtney's always willing to jump in and try it, you know, and if it works, it's great. You know, if it doesn't, that's okay too.

Jennifer Bagley [00:13:04]:
So. Yeah, I love that. So social media, so that's. I know you guys are on the Cortex Pulse program. Do you want to talk a little bit about a. What is it to you and how are you utilizing the platform to be able to change other things in your business, like social.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:13:24]:
Okay, sure. So, I mean, I think I've only been using it for like maybe two months. I don't. I don't know, maybe it's longer V. But. And again, Jennifer and I. The funny thing is I don't have a lot of time to watch all your webinars, but I, I save them all and I happened to watch one and you had. I can't remember their name anyways, is a lady and a gentleman from two different companies.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:13:48]:
And you were showing the Cortex platform as you're like showing it. You have our, our Cortex up and like showing how great it's performing. And you start talking about septic. And I'm like looking at this little screen and on my laptop and I was like, what? I was like, oh, wait, that's us. And I was like, super excited. I was like, okay, well, I guess it's working well. And didn't really know how to read the results real well. But you went through and it kind of explained.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:14:12]:
It kind of felt like you were giving me. You were schooling me on our, on our thing. Somebody. Somebody else's webinar anyway. And so you were talking a lot about how having authority, website authority, and how linking everything back to your website and all that stuff just really ties together and helps your SEO and AI searches and all these things.

Jennifer Bagley [00:14:33]:
Right.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:14:34]:
And so I just came away like, super pumped from that webinar. And I don't look at our blog posting that is like creating every day. I know that there's things in there that like, we may not provide that specific service. And I. It's one thing that I've learned is that I used to be like, oh, we don't. We don't use that verb or that word. So we should not use that word in our. Because we don't provide that service.

Jennifer Bagley [00:14:58]:
Yep.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:14:59]:
But what I realized is everybody uses keywords different. Right. Like, they're not going to call it exactly what we call it. And so we need to be open to that. And even if we don't provide that service, at least they're still calling so we can see if we can provide that service. Or maybe they don't even know what they need. And so that's a little bit off.

Jennifer Bagley [00:15:18]:
Off the subject, but let me just focus on that. Like, you could repeat that 35 times because I would want everybody who's listening to this? To pause, rewind for that last one minute and listen to what Courtney just said right there. Because we want the call. Like, they might not even know what they need. But do you want the call and the ability to say that? Absolutely. That's something you might want to consider. But you might want to consider X, Y and Z. Or I have a great partner that offers this service.

Jennifer Bagley [00:15:45]:
But have you guys gotten your maintenance done or have you got. I don't even know how. I don't own a skeptic, so I don't even know what to do. I saw. Oh, gosh, there was. I don't want to get you off your train of thought, but there was. I'm. I'm studying Yalls AI analytics.

Jennifer Bagley [00:16:00]:
Every day I look at your report. Every day I look at your report because I find it really unique and I don't know a lot about septics. And in the AI analytics area, we track all of the prompts and queries that people have on different AI search engines, four of them. And there is a trend of people losing their septic tank lids on their farmland.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:16:25]:
That's hilarious.

Jennifer Bagley [00:16:27]:
And in my mind. And the interesting part is, like, if you go look at your report and you pull it up, there's hunt for the queries, the prompts, where there's a question on one of the AI platforms and there's no brands mentioned. So, like three weeks ago, I was studying your report and we're looking at this. And it was in another. Another training session. I think it was internal. And I was like, is that a thing? And all I think about is somebody having this big old farm and some septic tank and the lids missing and there's cows somewhere and they're trying to hunt for this like they're digging for gold. So we were testing and I was like, let's.

Jennifer Bagley [00:17:07]:
Let's start. Let's feed that to the AI and let's have the AI start generating this, like, lost septic tank lid on a farm with some cow stuff. And now if you go into your report and you start pulling that up, it's not that no brands are shown. It's. Your brand is shown on all of the platforms and you're the only one that's showing up for it.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:17:26]:
Oh, my gosh.

Jennifer Bagley [00:17:27]:
It's really freaking cool. I didn't know that was a thing. But, like, you guys could do a social media video where you have like all your guys in their branded shirts out on some farm with some cows, like, hunting for a septic lid. That'd be fun.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:17:38]:
That is great. That's so funny. And, and that's, that's a good example too because when you say septic lid missing, like that can mean five different things to five different people. Right. And so that kind of goes back with me wanting to stick to like our industry terminology versus like what is the customer and the homeowner actually going to use? What do they call it? Right. So, yes. So anyway, so back to Cortex, I guess we. So anyway, in doing that, when I watched that webinar, I was like, you know what? And V had been.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:18:12]:
V had been encouraging me to post more on my social and things like that on our website. And I, I have been using a platform called Social Pilot to pre plan and syndicate through like, you know, all the, all the social. And basically like last year I set three, three years worth of like weekly posts and just to like get it out of the way and have it done. So I spent a few days, knocked that out and then as she's encouraged me for that and as I'm watching your webinar and I'm like, I think I could do better at what is what we're doing for social. We need to like, link back to our website. We need to start doing all these things and start using the keywords and, and have our blogs involved. So everything is tying together. And in that same webinar you were talking about Manus AI, which I had never heard of before, but I was really intrigued and I was like, you know what, I'm going to try it out.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:19:06]:
And so I just started like, I just went in, I started making some prompts and I was like, this thing works really good. And so basically for the last three or two or three months, and I'm sure it's going to adapt and change because really I do not know what I'm doing. I'm. That's why I'm telling Manus to do it for me. But I basically started off with saying, okay, here's the link to my Cortex site that has the blogs pending or scheduled for the next 30 days. Create social media posts for all these different social media platforms. What did I say? I think I wrote a few things down because I was like, these are good create. So I wanted to create every day a link that goes back to the blog from the previous day and to use the information from the blog from the previous day to create a social media post.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:20:01]:
And if you want to learn more here, then we're going to link them back to that particular blog on our website. But I also told it to use SEO keywords that rank for our website in. In the social media post every day. You know, certain days, times use the hashtags, emojis, all those things called actions. And it took a couple tries, but really within like an hour and a half of like, testing it and telling it what to do and working with it, I had an imported CSV file with pictures that it was bringing from those blog posts set and into social pilot for the next 30 days.

Jennifer Bagley [00:20:38]:
Let's go chills.

Vee Nettles [00:20:41]:
Let's give me the chills.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:20:44]:
And I was, like, blown away. I was like, how. How is this even happening? But anyway, so I. I just keep trying it and I guess we'll keep. Keep going. I don't know. You know, it's. It's neat that technology can do that.

Jennifer Bagley [00:20:58]:
Girl, I love you. Make my eyes water.

Vee Nettles [00:21:03]:
How much time and just the headache of thinking about what to post. You don't have to think about it anymore.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:21:10]:
I mean, there's no way that I have time every day to be like, okay, let me make a. We make a social post and put that on for. Link it back to the blog from yesterday and, like, do that every day. Nobody has time to do that. So my next thing on the horizon is V keeps suggesting you need to put videos on your social. So we'll. We'll see when that comes. But starting somewhere, you got to start somewhere, right?

Jennifer Bagley [00:21:33]:
Needs to be on a farm looking for a septic tinkler.

Vee Nettles [00:21:39]:
Wait, I just saw a post. I think it was on LinkedIn. And I was gonna comment because I know it's septic and it's down and dirty, but you had this picture and it was something spraying out of. I don't know what it was, but the sunlight going through it was. It was morning or sunrise or I'm like, how does she make septic so beautiful? Like, I love that picture.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:22:01]:
Well, nobody wants to look at ugly stuff. Although it does have to be in some of our pictures.

Jennifer Bagley [00:22:05]:
Right? Right.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:22:07]:
That was one thing. I think that through the last few months of doing this with the social posting through Manus and Cortex is the first month I just had it pull pictures from what was in. Was already scheduled in Cortex, which. Some of them were AI photos, which were not super great, but I used them because I was like, okay, I'm just gonna try this. So this last month or for the next 30 days that I just posted earlier this week, I actually went in and I. I did everything else the same. But then I Hand picked my own photos in there so that it looks a little more genuine anyway.

Jennifer Bagley [00:22:43]:
Yeah, I love that. I saw that. I use that as an example all the time. That's. I'd rather have everyone doing something than nothing. And no one's going to send us pictures. It's not going to happen. We literally there was a, I want to say it was like a year ago, we tested.

Jennifer Bagley [00:22:58]:
I was like, let's see if we give away our social media marketing program for free, which was 2500amonth if we give it away. But the only requirement is, is you have to send us video and we'll do the editing, we'll do the posting, we'll do everything. We send it out to a thousand clients. Want to know how many people sent videos in?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:23:17]:
I know I didn't, but I wish I did now. Oh, wow.

Jennifer Bagley [00:23:22]:
So we just continued doing social media marketing. I was like, okay, pull it. We're done. Like, I can't give it away. I can't get. And I don't want to make Canva graphics and just post canva graphics all day long. Right. So it's not helping.

Jennifer Bagley [00:23:33]:
It's just, it's nothing. I'd rather just bite it, call it a day, say I tried but I love the fact that if we put something out there that's moving that you're taking the minutes that it takes to go in and just update the, update the pictures, change them out. Right. That's freaking golden. How long does it take you within the Cortex platform? You've got. So for everybody that doesn't know, she has one blog every single day, Monday through Friday. And usually I think there you have a rolling. Like we have the next month and a half, two months of content ready to go in advance.

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:04]:
If you were to do 30 days and just change out the images, how long does it take you?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:24:09]:
I think this week it took me like an hour and that was like, with like I had to redo some prompts because it didn't learn the first time, you know, that kind of thing. But it was. But as I keep doing it's much smoother so hopefully won't even take me that long next time. I think my challenge right now is I think I feel like I've cycled through all my pictures between my website and social and past social that I'm, I'm really trying to get a lot more new pictures to stay fresh and relevant.

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:33]:
I love that. I freaking love that. That's golden. What a difference. What's your thoughts on? Oh, go Ahead V. Where you gonna say if that hour.

Vee Nettles [00:24:44]:
When you think about all that work, I mean, that would have taken days.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:24:47]:
Yeah.

Vee Nettles [00:24:48]:
And you probably would have just given up at that point.

Jennifer Bagley [00:24:52]:
Yeah. I mean, even. Even us, a year and a half ago, we would charge $300 per page of content. Like, and now we can publish a million pages a day.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:25:07]:
Yeah. So crazy.

Jennifer Bagley [00:25:09]:
And the content is, like, eight times better, faster, bigger, ever. It's just wild. AI is wild. It's absolutely incredible once you learn how to use it. So are you in our community side? Are you in Just Start AI? I feel like live streams.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:25:24]:
Yes.

Jennifer Bagley [00:25:26]:
So talk to me a little bit about Just Start AI. What is it to you? What. What have you learned from it? What. What's your thoughts?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:25:34]:
So it is a very good tool. I wish I had more time to dive into it. It's one of those things that, like, I get, okay, this webinar is coming up, or these different things. Resources are there, and I know they're there, but I, like, just don't have the time to do it. And so I think it just kind of ties all together because I was, like, kind of against AI at first, and there's part of me that still is. But when I see how. When I see how much time it saves me, like, on these blogs, right. I'm like, well, what else can I do in my business to help streamline things? So I have time or my team has time to be able to look at more.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:26:17]:
More things, you know, so that way I have better. More ideas. But that's. That's kind of like the rolling circle, right? Because then I'm going to have more time, but I'm going to watch your stuff, and then I'm going to come up with more things I need to do, because there's always something that we can improve on and something we can always do better and improve. And there's so much out there that I feel like I. Especially with AI and the way things are changing and the capabilities, I feel like I just can't even. I'm just barely touching the surface, but I. I can't even, like, swim the surface with it.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:26:44]:
You know what I mean? Like, I'm barely keeping up.

Jennifer Bagley [00:26:47]:
Yeah, that's gonna be. That's gonna be the space we live in for a while.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:26:51]:
Yeah. So my challenge to myself is to. To dig more into. Into the site that you've got going and spend more time there eventually.

Vee Nettles [00:27:02]:
But I feel like we're already ahead of the curve by just being in the community, like That's a huge step, just getting, getting my clients into the community because, and I always say take as much or as little out of it as you want, like set aside time, grab a big cup of coffee once a week and sit down and watch something that is really interesting to you. Just make the time, make that, make it happen, you know, and you're already there. So you're already one step ahead of the curve.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:30]:
Yeah, 100%. I would. The community's grown really fast and it's technically not even live yet. It doesn't launch for two more weeks until the site's done. There's like 500 members in there and it's growing. I think there's almost 600 as of this morning. It's growing really, really fast. But I'll tell you the interesting part.

Jennifer Bagley [00:27:52]:
We sent the invitation probably 20 times out to all with more than a thousand clients and we only have 10 of our clients that are in the community. So you're, you are definitely ahead of the game. Not, not everyone is moving quickly at all. So if you feel like I'm overwhelmed or I'm behind, just know that you're not. You're ahead in many, many ways. I think the average person thinks chat DBT is what AI is in general. And you, you're literally sitting in a space where now you're using a multi agent platform Manus to be able to have 10 agents go out and do work for you at the same time. You have a fully AI enabled website, fully AI enabled marketing platform and as you start to bring in more of these AI enabled tools, it is going to buy you more time because it improves proves efficiency, it's going to make you be able to operate faster, but it's also going to free you up to do more stuff.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:28:52]:
Right now.

Jennifer Bagley [00:28:55]:
At any point in time I usually, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 computers here and I will usually have, there's four of them that are working right now on projects that I woke up and I couldn't stop thinking about this morning and I just sent the agents out to go work on those things. Well, I'm here in the podcast so I'm getting like a thousand times the work done per hour but it doesn't mean like I'm chilling and just like, I mean yeah, snuggie and up and can go sit by the fireplace but.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:29:24]:
Now that's another idea I'm taking from you because now I can get, you know, once I have that, I don't have to like be sitting and watching it Think either. But I'm so thankful for you, Jennifer, because having these communities and these webinars and all the things that you're doing and just the vision and the foresight to see what's on the horizon and encourage your clients to, to start somewhere, at least something's better than nothing. Like, I love that. It's really, it's really encouraging. And it's a, it's a flip. Total flip.180 from where we were with our previous provider, which was just staying in the status quo and just kind of on autopilot. So super thankful for you and you deserve a lot of credit.

Jennifer Bagley [00:30:06]:
I love that it's not been easy. I think our team, we gave everybody gray hair way, way early. It's definitely not easy. We push. I love you. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate it. It's not all a waste.

Jennifer Bagley [00:30:20]:
I would like a higher participation rate. That would make me very happy. I. I think it's coming.

Vee Nettles [00:30:26]:
It's coming.

Jennifer Bagley [00:30:27]:
It's.

Vee Nettles [00:30:27]:
It is scary. And a lot of people are. I understand. They're busy working their business and they're like, I don't have time for this or I'm scared or I don't know how to use it. But just start somewhere, just somewhere. And then once you get that little taste of it, you're like, oh, I want more.

Jennifer Bagley [00:30:43]:
Can I do?

Vee Nettles [00:30:44]:
Yeah, right?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:30:46]:
Yeah. So I feel kind of along those lines too. Once, once I got this taste of Manus and what these agents can do, we actually started implementing it. And one of our service departments where we've been audit, we audit probably about 40 work orders a day. Just to have one person that does. That's a very manual process. And we're making sure that the form matches with the invoice and, you know, all these different things. And so we.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:31:11]:
Feeding information to Manus. And so right now we're still doing it like one by one, but having it audit everything and then we just go back in and fix what we need to. But I am looking forward to the day where we can just say, here's the day's work orders. It does it all, and it's. And it's done. So that's. That's my, that's my goal coming up.

Jennifer Bagley [00:31:31]:
I love that. So here's your. Here's how to do that.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:31:36]:
Okay.

Jennifer Bagley [00:31:37]:
So right now, when you look at manuscript and the activity you're going through, you're taking a manual process and you're speeding it up because you have a multi agent working on one set of sweep of data, right? Three different data points. Okay. When you. When you perfect that process and you get it to where you have a single prompt, it might be 10 pages long, whatever that is. Right now you're doing prompt after prompt and reiterating and reiterating on each one of them in order to get what you need. Think about it like I'm designing a training model. If you were to build the perfect sop, the perfect set of instructions for a new employee, that, that, that was their job. And you get it to where you're getting consistent every single time.

Jennifer Bagley [00:32:24]:
You're getting exactly what you want. That becomes the training data for what can turn into an mcp, which. An mcp, it's model context Protocol. Your own server that connects to resources and tools and your training data that prompt the instructions. Right. So your resources would be the invoices and the documents themselves, the tools would be the systems, the technology that those documents live within, and the instructions. That's this prompt that you guys are doing right now. You're actually designing the future system that can literally connect to the tool.

Jennifer Bagley [00:33:13]:
Where does the information and resources live, Access the instructions, which you've perfected over time, and then you give it a schedule. Now you're in an agentic environment where you have multiple agents that have the ability to go into the tool on a schedule, access the instructions, grab the resources, and then automatically do it for everything.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:33:36]:
You're making me so excited. That is so. That, that is like my vision and I'm so happy to hear that. And it's just like, we don't want to replace anybody with AI. We just want to, like, make things more efficient. And human error is like a bit. A big thing. We all, none of us are perfect and there's human error.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:33:52]:
We all get busy and distracted. So that would totally free up time for us to be able to work on other things. That's. Thank you for that information. I was taking notes if you didn't know. We're gonna do this one day. Once we get all.

Jennifer Bagley [00:34:08]:
We're building the infrastructure for that. So we're building an MCP marketplace. First we have to fix ourselves. This is like the airplane. Put your own mask on first. I gotta be able to deliver every single thing that our clients need as it relates to the services we sell first. So we're doing this in our own business and perfecting this process of building these protocols. Whether, like, I now have the ability to say, tell me all new accounts that started this week.

Jennifer Bagley [00:34:35]:
Tell me every single account that started over the last three weeks that hasn't finished their onboarding. And I'm like, this is like, tell me everything right now. I know, tell me every account that hasn't paid a bill or this credit card has failed. So the System is your QuickBooks account, the system is your CRM system, the system is our analytics account, the system is your webflow. Those are all of the tools that it has the ability to talk to and it can log into any of those. It might be your email, it might be your calendar once it's connected to the device. Now you have your own AI platform. Imagine going to Manus or like GPT or Claude or something like that.

Jennifer Bagley [00:35:16]:
And that now is the device that you use to access all of those tools. And you can get any information that you want in a matter of seconds. You can have it do anything in a matter of seconds. You could say, text every one of my technicians that's late to their appointment right now, Text all technicians that are currently at an appointment, say, do not come home without a review, honey. So those are, that's where we're headed. So as we move into Q1, of course B is going to let you know, but when we finish ourselves, then we'll extend that marketplace to the systems and tools you guys do and you'll have the ability to do the same thing. So all of these, when you take time to perfect a process utilizing a multi agent platform, just know that that is what you're using as the training data for your next step, because that's coming.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:36:07]:
Awesome. That's super exciting.

Jennifer Bagley [00:36:10]:
It's really exciting. Yes, absolutely. Now when you are, when you are picking technology that you want to work with, let's say that you're, you guys are looking at a field management system or software or whatever, your questions to those technology companies changes. Because what matters now is not the same thing that matters in the future. In the future, what matters is this is you'll get used to saying, show me your end points. I want to. Which sounds like I wouldn't even ask that question on a demo right now. But what you need to know is what are the APIs, which is the protocols that they allow us to connect to, allow AI to connect to.

Jennifer Bagley [00:36:52]:
And the endpoints, and the endpoints are what data points can I access and what can I do when I get there? So if you were to go to Google, or if you were to go to Google and you were to say, show me all of Google Workspace API endpoints, you're going to get this list and you can do this in Manus or whatever and it's going to say grep, put archive, delete, change, update, send, sort, filter, mass, select. Those are the activities that we have the ability to do. So it depends on the technology, it depends on what they allow us to connect to and do. That will be the only limitations of an mcp. It's as limiting as the software providers that you're, you're working with. If they allow us to take that, to access that data and to take that action, you'll be able to fully automate it, which is really cool. Yes, really, really cool. Show me your endpoint.

Vee Nettles [00:38:05]:
It almost sounds a little naughty.

Jennifer Bagley [00:38:09]:
That's a different podcast. Oh my gosh, I love that. What else are you guys. Oh, we're getting our 10 minutes. Okay, thank you Danny. Love you. I could do this for like the next two hours. What else are you guys automating? How else are you using AI?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:38:25]:
Anything, I think, I mean besides the normal, like, hey, I mean this is so elementary at this point I feel like for like Chat GPT and stuff but like I'll, you know, have it rewrite an email or summarize a document, you know, but all those things just have like helped have saved a lot of time that I would have to like read through and like figure out myself. We, it's helped us do. We're rolling out some different bonus structures within the company and so something that would have taken, I thought really was gonna take like six months. It took like a week, two weeks for me to just like gather the information, put it in and have them have Chat GPT analyze it, give me suggestions, then I'd feed it back some more information and it's saved so much time and now we're able to roll this out. We're actually in the, in the process of introducing that to our team fully next week and we're going to be live with that January 1st, which I thought that was going to be like into, you know, the next year. So there's so many ways you can use it and I feel like I don't, I use it so much now I don't even realize I'm using it sometimes. And I never thought I'd be here in such a short amount of time either.

Jennifer Bagley [00:39:35]:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. That's. Yeah, I love that. And when you flip over, what do you notice the difference between chat GPT and a multi agent platform like Manus? What's the biggest difference to you?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:39:48]:
I just feel like Manus can get more detailed and I feel like it remembers better too like chat because we really, before we tried it with, with you know, with doing the, the work orders, we, we did try Chat GPT first but it would keep forgetting and it, you know, then it would like max out on, I don't know, it just like got tired of thinking I guess. Yeah, exactly. So, so that's when we, we said like, oh, let's try Manus. Because I knew it was working for the blog stuff and we were like, oh, this is way better. So I mean I think, I feel like Chat GPT is more good for general.

Jennifer Bagley [00:40:27]:
Yeah.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:40:27]:
Casual Manus is good for the nitty gritty.

Jennifer Bagley [00:40:31]:
Yeah. And those are so for everybody that's listening, there's multiple levels of AI. You have conversational AI, that's what ChatGPT is. You have multi agent which would be what Manus is. You can operate, you can have 10 super agents which have the ability to perform functions, access other systems and so forth working for you simultaneously. So you could have it writing 15 different documents for you at the exact same time. And then you have what cortex is, which cortex is agentic. And agentic means you have thousands of agents that are pre programmed and trained within a network.

Jennifer Bagley [00:41:07]:
So you have your short term memory or long term memory rag which is a retrieval augmentation system. That's how you don't lose memory. Retrieval augmentation says I'm going to give it all this training data and the rag is going to come back and it's going to access that every time so it doesn't have to try and think outside of those boxes. And then when you connect to model context protocol then you have, then you have a revised brain that works more like a robot. So yeah, you guys are taking those steps. Just keep, just keep, keep leveling up. I absolutely love that last thing before we get out of here. We got our five minute warning.

Jennifer Bagley [00:41:50]:
Now that you're using AI the way that you are, can you see why Google is losing market share and entire droves of human beings are never going back to Google the blue links and the ads again.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:42:05]:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I, I mean as much as I use, I mean a lot of people are using Chat GPT like they used Google, but now they don't have to click like get the results and then click into each company and then find out for themselves what they want to learn from that company. They can just put the question into chat GPT or whatever it is and it tells, it tells them for, you know, and they trust what it says. So like, if we're coming up for whoever's lost their septic tank lid in a farm with cows around it, we're the ones that come up, then they're going to call us. They're not going to go and click anybody else.

Jennifer Bagley [00:42:43]:
Right.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:42:43]:
And so I, I see a big shift already.

Jennifer Bagley [00:42:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. This is. If I go back to 2008, I was speaking at a Mitsubishi diamond dealer conference and I remember standing in front, there was like 250 people in the audience. And I asked them, the entire group, I'm like, how many of you guys are investing in SEO? And there was 10 hands that raised 10. Right. So at that point I was stunned. I wasn't in the trades industry then. I was coming out of like medical and legal and finance and real estate.

Jennifer Bagley [00:43:20]:
And that was. Our client base was mainly those groups. And when I did this, it was the first time I spoke at a trades event. I didn't know jack about heating and air conditioning other than my thermostat. And I like it. And it was this kind of aha moment where I was like, this whole industry doesn't know about, like getting in front of consumers on Google. This is what the heck. And so when you look at now, you have this kind of 10% or maybe 1% of an entire industry that back in 2008 said, I'm going to start focusing on website and search engine optimization and keywords and domain authority and reputation and reviews and so forth.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:05]:
And that was that little group, right? And then you fast forward to now, those are the companies. If they didn't make dumb business decisions, if they made bad business decisions, then they had a website rebuilt, dropped all their content, lost their rankings. You start over. It's like, it's like a game of Monopoly when you land on the go to jail, go directly to jail, don't pass anything else, don't pick up any cards, nothing. Every bad decision is like the go to jail card. Go back, you're going to start over, right? Right now. But there was a small group of companies that didn't get that. They didn't land on go to jail.

Jennifer Bagley [00:44:41]:
They didn't have to start over. And they got to get way ahead. They got to get really far ahead. They got to build these enormous websites and they just kept making good decisions over and over and over again that allowed them to expand and expand and expand and own and occupy page one of Google for traditional search phrases. AC repair, septic tank company near me or whatever it is. And they got to win. And those companies aren't going to slow down for other companies to catch up. So there's a lot of.

Jennifer Bagley [00:45:10]:
There's a lot of business services and markets where there's no way in hell that a new company is going to get into page one of Google. It's just not going to happen. No one's going to slow down for you to catch up. If you just started, you know, saying that maybe this is important and I'm going to start now, it's not going to happen. But you, m', lady, you are in that 1% that is taking this little window of time and saying that before everyone else gets way ahead of me, I'm going to be that 1% that starts off caring about how people converse with AI, this new platform. And I'm going to get ahead of it. I'm going to start making sure that I understand my business, my buyer's intent, I understand how they search, what they're asking, what they're prompting, what. What's important for them.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:02]:
And you're gonna kick some major butt because you are that 1% right now that is getting ahead of everyone else in advance of what will later be something that a lot of companies wish they would have. So congratulations.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:46:15]:
Well, thank you. That's really good feedback, and it's really encouraging to just keep my head down and keep going the way we're going. So thank you.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:23]:
Go. All right, you guys, anything else you want to wrap up with for all of our listeners today? V, I'll start with you.

Vee Nettles [00:46:29]:
No, I just really appreciate you, Courtney. You are an absolute pleasure to work with, and I knew this would be a fun podcast. So thank you for joining us and sharing your thoughts, and I just hope other people can listen in and learn from this. Just start. Just start somewhere.

Jennifer Bagley [00:46:46]:
I love it, Courtney.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:46:47]:
That's what I was going to say is just start. Something is better than nothing, right? And I got that from Jennifer. So, yeah, just start somewhere and see where it takes you. And if you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. You can always revert back to your old ways, but let's not stay stagnant and keep growing. And I'm just thankful for. For V, our wonderful account manager.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:47:09]:
And I'm thankful for you, Jennifer, for giving a platform, inviting me to be on and just being inspirational. So thank you.

Jennifer Bagley [00:47:16]:
You are amazing. You guys, if you're not following, Courtney, definitely go do that. You can follow them on social media. What's your website address?

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:47:24]:
It's vdwws.com so Vandelden WasteWaterSystems.com or just Google us or put us in chat TPT and you'll find us.

Jennifer Bagley [00:47:35]:
Yeah, let's go with that. You guys follow them. These guys are leading the pack and definitely a company to follow. Thank you so much for being with us today and being honest and open and vulnerable and transparent. I think that's really important in these times. This is the moment where all this AI stuff, it's absolutely fantastic. But what really, really needs to happen is we need to have these kind of conversations more often. There's a lot of people that are scared and uncomfortable, and it's okay.

Jennifer Bagley [00:48:03]:
We got to get comfortable being uncomfortable, but it's a lot easier with friends. So thank you.

Courtney Van Delden Supplee [00:48:08]:
Thank you.

Jennifer Bagley [00:48:09]:
All right, thanks, everybody, for joining. Share, like and subscribe. We appreciate you. We'll see you on the next one.