At Bulk Exchange, the construction tech company where I work, my role involves making fragmented industry data accessible and useful.
Despite my title as a data analyst, my responsibilities extend to automation and managing a remote team.
Understanding Construction Data
Currently, I’m focused on a database transformation project with a specific goal: making our construction data queryable through a custom GPT interface.
The construction industry is notoriously fragmented and opaque – similar to the restaurant scene before Yelp made information readily available.
Our customers shouldn’t have to navigate clunky, outdated search processes to find what they need.
The challenge lies in aggregating disparate data sources, ensuring consistency, and creating systems where different information types can interact meaningfully.
Making this data “talk to each other” is what unlocks its real value.
Bridging Technical Gaps
Here’s my secret: I’m not particularly technical.
My approach relies heavily on AI tools – primarily ChatGPT – to accomplish tasks that would traditionally require advanced coding skills.
I know just enough to be “productively dangerous” and to formulate the right questions.
Rather than spending years mastering Python or other languages, I’ve found it more efficient to leverage AI as the landscape evolves rapidly.
Beyond ChatGPT, I’ve experimented with Replit’s AI-powered application builder for small-scale backend projects and basic UI development.
The tools aren’t exotic, but the approach represents a fundamental shift in who can participate in technical work.
The democratization of technical capabilities through AI means expertise increasingly revolves around understanding problems and asking good questions, rather than memorizing syntax or algorithms.
For someone like me without formal technical training, this opens doors that would have remained firmly closed just a few years ago.
Bringing Tech to Traditional Service Businesses
This AI-enhanced approach extends beyond my day job.
I recently helped my brother launch a foundation waterproofing company in Georgia that generated over $1 million in its first year of operation.
The experience revealed something significant: many service businesses still operate with startlingly outdated technology.
Fax machines and paper forms remain commonplace, creating opportunities for even modest technological improvements to provide meaningful competitive advantages.
This observation has sparked my interest in potentially starting a service business myself – perhaps in plumbing or a similar field.
These industries may lack glamour, but they offer proven business models with clear paths to profitability.
By incorporating basic digital tools for operations, customer relationship management, and scheduling, a newcomer could quickly stand out from established competitors.
Shift in Skill Value
What ties these seemingly disparate interests together – from construction data to potential plumbing businesses – is a recognition that AI is fundamentally transforming who can do what.
As AI tools continue evolving, the advantage increasingly shifts to people who can identify opportunities, understand customer needs, and deploy AI effectively rather than to those with specialized technical skills alone.
This creates fertile ground for versatile problem solvers to enter fields that were previously inaccessible.
Conclusion
For me, this means embracing my identity as a non-technical person who can still achieve technical outcomes.
Rather than viewing my lack of deep coding expertise as a limitation, I see it as freedom to focus on problems worth solving across diverse industries and applications.
The most valuable skill isn’t coding proficiency – it’s knowing what’s worth building and for whom.
AI can increasingly handle the how, while human judgment determines the why and what.