This is an archive episode, first broadcast in 2024 under the show's previous name. It carries a short synthetic announcer introduction; the conversation underneath it is untouched human audio.
A twenty-person manufacturer cut its customer response time by seventy-five per cent. No AI department, no consultants, no budget for either.
Ethan Wadsworth is director of sales and marketing at Discreet Heat, the family business behind ThermoSkirt, a skirting-board heating system that has been on Dragon's Den. He started out packing boxes. What follows is a small company describing what it built, what it wasted time on first, and what it would do differently.
Recorded in November 2024, when the show carried a different name.
What this episode covers
- Implementing too early. His first attempt did not work, and he is candid about why. It is the most useful part of the episode for anyone about to start.
- Why twenty people need a developer. The economics of employing a full-time software developer in a twenty-person manufacturer, which sounds absurd until he explains what the alternative costs. Nobody was going to build these tools for a company this size.
- Smart templates. How email templates in the CRM became something considerably more useful, and where the seventy-five per cent came from.
- The fourth lane. His argument for how small businesses now overtake much larger competitors, and why a hundred thousand Instagram followers beats a marketing budget.
- Rough footage is good enough. Teaching installers to film on site, and the decision that perfect was the enemy of publishing anything at all. He applies the same logic to why the show goes out live.
- AI washing. His term for what he sees vendors doing, and why he thinks the label becomes meaningless as the capability becomes omnipresent.
- AI is a hammer, not a money printer. His correction to the expectation problem.
- Building a custom GPT that sounds like you - and the customer service email that no longer reads like a robot.
- Unlimited patience. His framing for what AI removes: the job nobody wanted, done without complaint, at three in the morning if necessary.
- An economy built on the scarcity of knowledge. His broader argument about what happens when that scarcity goes, including what it means for his four-year-old and for schools.
- Where to start. Write down five things you are bad at. Then look at that list.
About the guest
Ethan Wadsworth is director of sales and marketing at Discreet Heat, the manufacturer of ThermoSkirt, a skirting-board heating system, and appeared with the business on Dragon's Den in the UK. It is a family company and he started in it packing boxes, which is worth knowing: his account of adoption is a practitioner's rather than a strategist's, and the failures he describes are ones he paid for himself.
Find them at DiscreetHeat.com. He recommends their social channels if you want to see the marketing he describes in the episode.
Resources mentioned
- ThermoSkirt and Discreet Heat - the business under discussion
- Custom GPTs - the specific thing he built to match his own writing voice
- The lab data entry case - his ninety per cent example, and what the scientists do instead now
Quotes
"Anybody who thinks that it's a fad, they're the kind of people who are about to be swept off the pier by a massive tidal wave."
Ethan Wadsworth
"Write down five things you're crap at."
Ethan Wadsworth, on where to begin
Books - the Human-First AI Series
- Hello! I'm New Here
- An Absolute Beginner's Guide to AI
- Use AI, Stay Human
- The AI Pilot Handbook
- When AI Becomes Your Responsibility
Connect with Alastair on LinkedIn.