Update 2023:

‍Since this interview, things have continued to go strong for Luhhu. As predicted, businesses continue to embrace tools like Zapier and combined with the recent rise of AI, I've found myself building automations to cater for a whole range of businesses models and processes.

I've also found time to give back a little to the Zapier community. First, in 2022 I created a mentoring community for other aspiring Zapier experts which has now grown to 150+ experts at various stages of their journeys. We have regular discussions on strategy, marketing and sales as well as sharing ideas, resources and just general support. And, just last month I created AutomateNow, which is a directory for members of the community to promote themselves on and find new clients.

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What's your personal background? What motivated you to start your own company? 

With a background in sales and starting lead generation-style businesses I’ve honed a skill for selling solutions.

I learned to use Zapier when I started a small business matching language students with teachers. The business didn’t make enough for me to hire admin support, so I figured I’d better find a way to put the business on autopilot.

I impressed myself with what I was able to get done with Zapier and figured there might be demand from other businesses. I joined Upwork and my hunch proved right - by 2018 I was freelancing fulltime and when 2019 came along, forming an agency felt like the right next step. 

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Other than Zapier, do you use any other no code tools when working with companies to automate their processes? 

Airtable and Integromat are other tools that find their way into a lot of client projects we do. They also happen to be tools we use internally at Luhhu. They are lightweight, low cost and you can do an enormous amount of stuff with them.

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What's an example of a recent project you worked on to automate tasks within a company?

Over the last few weeks we’ve been helping a client streamline their onboarding process. They get new client details via PDF from an intermediary - so we set up a zap that parses the details from those and creates records in their CRM. 

Taking it a step further, when it comes time to bill the client, the invoice amounts are calculated via the zap based on a rather complex algorithm and then the invoices are created and emailed to clients.

Previously this took 15-30 mins per client to do manually - while Zapier has made it an instant process. 

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How do you attract clients?

In the early days, new work all came from Upwork or Fiverr, but we now get most of our clients from the Zapier Experts program which runs a directory and as a referral program.

To my surprise, Twitter and Reddit have been a good source of clients, thanks to the time I’ve invested there in helping people solve problems and find resources.

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What are the biggest challenges you've overcome building Luhhu?

When running an agency it’s always hard doing proper positioning - by which I mean identifying the best types of clients and knowing how to attract them.

Like most new businesses, we started by taking any project we could get, but we found that while we always delivered a solution - in some areas we just don’t have the expertise to do it quickly or profitably. That’s something we’re working on.

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How much money is Luhhu making per month?

Luhhu is making between $5-$8k per month and growing steadily. I’m hoping for that to double or even triple in the coming months.

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What's your advice for employees inside a company who want to automate aspects of their job?

Depending on the office politics involved, it might be wise to take a small part of what you do and quietly automate it as an experiment. If you can show meaningful time and preferably direct cost savings then take the results to the boss and try and get formal go ahead to roll it out.

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What are your future plans for Luhhu?

Aside from continuing to grow revenue we’re investing heavily in SEO this year - building content and resources that should hopefully put us top of Google when people go searching for solutions to the sort of problems we’re experienced in solving.

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How do you think the rise of no code tools will impact the workplace? 

Positively. Especially in the current climate, businesses will be looking to reduce costs and deliver faster wherever possible, and nocode is perfect for that. With correctly trained staff leading the charge in every business, we can expect to see a quickening of innovation in the coming years.

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Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Join me on Twitter at @AndrewJDavison if you want to chat Zapier, nocode or business life in general.