Empowering Ops Professionals that use #NoCode with Operator (an automation management platform) and community at NoCodeOps 🧰

I lead AI Transformation at Zapier. Previously, I was the co-founder and CEO of NoCodeOps, a community and automation management platform acquired by Zapier. Before that, I built the onboarding program for 15,000+ real estate agents at Compass. With 8+ years in operations, internal systems, and automation, I’m passionate about empowering teams with no-code solutions.

Fun fact: Before tech, I was an actor, I appeared on Law & Order, in films at Cannes and Tribeca, and way too many of off-off-off Broadway shows to count.

So I saw these on the Atlanta Beltine today.

And yes. Zapier.com/phil is a real thing 🤯

Huge shoutouts to Sadie Hochfield, Hannah Herman, Leah Miranda, Ashley Hadeed, Jeff Walls, Beth H., and Clay Parker for making this happen (+ Dan Slagen and Wade Foster for green-lighting this madness).

Philip Lakin 

Director of AI Transformation at Zapier. Co-Founder of NoCodeOps (acq. by Zapier ’24).

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Globally remote company. Hyper-local sidewalk collision. Took my kid to the park. Ran into one of our brand new teammates. Jazzed to have you on the Zapier team making MCP dreams, Wade Burrell 🚀

The first draft of my book is officially done. And I changed the title. From "The Accidental Technologist" → "AI and the Art of Figuring It Out"

That shift says a lot about where the book ended up.

Originally, I thought I was writing about my own journey. How I went from actor to building automation systems to leading AI transformation work at Zapier.
But as I wrote, something became clear.

This isn’t really about me accidentally ending up in tech.
It’s about a whole group of people who have been quietly building the future for years.

The ones who:
•  See a broken process and can’t ignore it
•  Teach themselves tools because waiting six months isn’t an option
•  Build “quick fixes” that become mission-critical
•  Feel slightly out of place because they don’t fit cleanly into business or engineering

Every time I’ve used the phrase “figure-it-out people,” the response has been intense. Not surface-level engagement. Real messages. Real stories. “I thought I was the only one.” “This is my entire career.”

AI is accelerating everything right now. Execution is getting cheaper by the day.
Which means judgment, systems thinking, and the ability to translate messy reality into working infrastructure is becoming more valuable.

So the book evolved.

It’s now a blueprint for how figure-it-out people can make the most of this moment. How to lean into your systems brain instead of apologizing for it. How to turn invisible fixes into visible leverage. How to move from scrappy fixer to architect.

I’m also adding a full section on something I don’t see talked about enough.

There’s a huge overlap between figure-it-out people and what I call neurospicy wiring. ADHD. Anxiety. Hyperfocus. Pattern obsession. The inability to leave inefficiency alone.

For years I thought intensity was just part of the deal. Therapy and medication changed my trajectory in ways I didn’t expect. Not because they made me someone different, but because they made me stable. And stability turned out to be leverage.

Draft one is done. Now I’m deep in the editing process.

After that, the next step will be talking to book agents, as I’m still figuring out this whole book publishing thing. This will be my first time publishing a book.

If you’ve been through the process and have advice, I’d love to hear it. And if you know great agents who focus on tech, business, empowerment, or movement-building books, I’d genuinely appreciate any introductions.

More soon.

A very large percentage of the “Figure It Out” people I talk to are deeply neurospicy.

Founders. Operators. Creatives. Executives. The people who seem self-aware, driven, high functioning.

Also anxious. Also ADHD. Also cycling through stuff they don’t always post about.

Like me.

For years I just thought this was my personality. I’m intense. I care a lot. I go deep. I burn out sometimes. I disappear sometimes. I come back with a new idea and a new system and convince myself this time it’ll be different.

Therapy helped. A lot. It gave me language. It helped me see patterns. It helped me take responsibility for my own brain.

But I was scared of medication for a long time. Pure stigma. I didn’t want it to mean something was “wrong” with me. I didn’t want to dull the edge that made me me.

Eventually, with a doctor, thoughtfully, I tried it.

It changed my life.

Not in a magic fix way. It didn’t solve my ambition or my trauma or my existential spirals. But it gave me something I did not have before.

A fighting chance.

The moment that blew my mind was realizing you could have a bad day and then the next day just… be okay. Not euphoric. Not superhuman. Just functional. Steady. Back in the game.

I genuinely did not know that was an option.

Before that, a bad day could turn into weeks. A missed workout became a lost month. A hard conversation became full shutdown.

Medication didn’t fix everything. It made the tools from therapy actually usable. It made momentum possible. It let me recover faster instead of living in the dip.

I’m not recommending anything without professionals involved. Get evaluated. Talk to doctors. Do this responsibly.

But please stop stigmatizing this stuff.

When I opened up about it, I was stunned how many “high performing, totally put together” people in my life quietly said, yeah, me too.

We are not broken. Some of us just need support for our brains the same way we’d support a knee or a thyroid.

If you’re grinding through something that feels harder than it should be, consider that you might deserve more than grit.

For me, this didn’t change who I am.

It just gave me access to myself.

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Salesforce: Dashboards

Muhlenberg College

SAG-AFTRA and Actor's Equity Association 

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NoCodeOps (acquired by Zapier)

Compass

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Your NYC Concierge

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Davenport Theatrical Enterprises

Head of Enterprise Innovation at Zapier. Co-Founder of NoCodeOps (acq. by Zapier '24)

Philip Lakin is the co-founder and CEO of NoCodeOps, a community and automation management platform (Operator) dedicated to supporting operations professionals that are reimagining the future of internal innovation with no-code. He was previously the Solutions Architect for National Operations at Compass where he built the onboarding program for over 15,000 real estate agents across the United States. He has more than 8 years of experience in operations, internal system implementation, field marketing, and onboarding.

Head of Enterprise Innovation at Zapier. Co-Founder of NoCodeOps (acq. by Zapier ’24).

Jay 🚀 Floyd

AL's pricing page just became a contact sales form.

You can have the smartest, most motivated, most AI-curious team in the world. It still doesn’t beat sitting next to someone and building together.

Every time I block an hour, pull up a chair (or a Zoom), and actually go hands-on with someone, adoption jumps. We get through the tiny roadblocks that would’ve stalled them for a week. The “why isn’t this working?” moments. The small tweaks that feel obvious once you’ve seen them once.

Docs help. Looms help. Templates help.

But working through a real workflow, in real time, with someone who’s a few steps ahead? That’s the unlock.

I haven’t found a better lever for AI adoption than shoulder-to-shoulder building.

I’m convinced the Mac Mini marketing lead invented OpenClaw and handed it to Peter like, “Run with this.” 🍎

Your AI output isn’t bad. You’re just burning through its guessing fuel.

Every time you prompt AI, you’re giving it a capped tank of fuel to guess what you mean.

Yes, guess.

It’s insanely sophisticated pattern prediction. But it is still allocating probability across possibilities.

And that fuel is finite per ask.

The more things you ask it to figure out at once, the less fuel it can spend on each one.

That is why you sometimes get something that feels:
• Generic
• Slightly off
• Weirdly structured
• Confident but shallow

It is not because AI is useless.

It is because you handed it too many unknowns.

Simple example.

If you say:
“Summarize this document.”

All the fuel goes toward comprehension and compression.

If you say:
“Summarize this 30-page document, extract action items, rewrite it in my voice, make it funnier, turn it into slides, and identify strategic risks.”

Now the same tank has to cover:
• Reading comprehension
• Prioritization
• Tone matching
• Humor
• Formatting
• Strategic thinking

Of course the quality drops. Attention gets diluted.

This is also where context windows get misunderstood.

Yes, models can hold a lot of information.

But attention inside that window is still limited. The more surface area you introduce, the thinner the model spreads its reasoning.

Long prompt. Vague objective. Multiple transformations. No constraints.

You are basically saying, “Here are 12 things. Figure it out.”

Humans would struggle with that too.

This is especially true with agents.

I hear, “I tried agents. The result was terrible.”

What was the instruction?

“Build me a growth strategy.”

That is not a task. That is an ocean.

Better:
1. “List 5 growth levers for a B2B SaaS selling to mid-market ops leaders.”

2. “Rank them by speed to impact under a 50k budget.”

3. “Turn the top two into 90-day experiments.”

Same model. Same intelligence.

Better fuel allocation.

And this is why skills matter.

AI does not replace thinking. It amplifies structured thinking.

If you know how to:
	•	Define a problem clearly
	•	Break work into stages
	•	Add constraints
	•	Evaluate tradeoffs

You reduce the guessing load.

The best AI users are not magical prompters.

They are good operators.

Less guessing per step equals higher quality per output.

AI is not magic.

It is probabilistic reasoning with a capped tank.

Learn to manage the fuel, and the results change fast.

To all my #GTM, #SalesOps, #RevOps, and #FigureItOut people in/adjacent to inbound leads, you will not want to miss this!

🚀 I’m hosting a live webinar this Wednesday on Lead Router Open Beta: Build Smarter Routing Workflows — and What’s Next.

If you’re managing lead distribution, territory rules, round robin, or complex routing logic — this session is for you.

We’ll cover:
• What’s live in the open beta
• Real routing use cases
• What’s coming next
• Live Q&A

📅 Wednesday at 1 PM ET
🔗 Register here: https://lnkd.in/e5VCZmeT

Hope to see you there!

Open article: Lead Router Open Beta: Build Smarter Routing Workflows — and What’s Next | Zapier by zapier.com

Lead Router Open Beta: Build Smarter Routing Workflows — and What’s Next | Zapier

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