A couple of days before Christmas, we released another client on our Talicms.com platform - Columbus Realtors Association in Ohio.  https://columbusrealtors.com/

It's been a great project to work with them, and honestly, the site looks fantastic. We've integrated MLS for listings, incorporated the Tangilla AMS(https://www.tangilla.com/)  for events, agents and offices view.

Our goal was to try and create a beautiful site for our client, Columbus Realtors.

But that's just one piece of what's been happening at Dazlab in the past week or so. We've been heads down building, launching, and refining products that solve real problems - problems we've experienced ourselves and know other businesses face too.

The Columbus Realtors Challenge: Content Migration at Scale

Whenever you take on building, rebuilding, and redesigning a new website, the hardest thing is actually bringing the overall content from the old site. It's not glamorous work, but it's where projects can really bog down. With Columbus Realtors, we knew this would be the make-or-break element of the project.

"We built a list of importing tools that makes our job easier. We're using AI to enhance some of that integration. That would be the biggest trouble that we had, which means we've actually built some reusable tools so that the next sites we should be able to live up with less back and forth and more accuracy."

The design held up quite nicely throughout the process. But here's the thing - with TaliCMS, we're able to do refinements continually. That's the point of building our own platform. We're not locked into a rigid system where updates require major overhauls. We can iterate, improve, and enhance as we go. Which is great for us and better for our clients.

What started as a challenge for one client has now become a competitive advantage for future projects. Those importing tools we built? They're now part of our toolkit, ready to make the next migration faster and more accurate. It's this kind of compound improvement that gets me excited about what we're building.

Handl Billing: Real-Time Profitability for Agency Owners

We got a lot of new work complete on Handle Billing this year, which has been quite exciting. We're adding new functionalities so that digital agency owners can create new projects in the platform, but also see the profitability as it happens in real time.

Here's the problem we're solving: A large amount of time, agency owners are so busy doing work that they think they were gonna make a certain amount of money off a project, but they're never quite sure. They send out invoices, log hours, manage milestones - but the actual profitability? That's usually a mystery until it's too late to course-correct.

"What we're trying to do is we allow integrations with the project management tool, the time sheet tools. And for each of the milestones, we're able to see how many hours were logged during the start of the milestone or end of the milestone. And then be able to chart a course to say, this is where we are from a profitability point for this project."

We're getting granular with this - down to the week. So we can see in one week that this project, we need to spend too many hours or we've got hours free to spend in the next week to catch up with the milestone. It works for time materials billing too, which obviously is a little bit easier because you know exactly how many hours you're doing for the period.

For a milestone or for a time materials invoice that gets sent out, we attach it for the client, but we make the profitability report available for the agency owner. Real-time visibility into project economics - that's what agency owners need, and that's what we're delivering.

mber.ai: The AI Content Platform That Actually Works

The other exciting news is that mber - we've now got it creating content thats more refined with better visuals and Webflow integration for CMS publishing.

This newsletter you're reading? It's written by mber, which is quite exciting. We did our first content with the last newsletter and first CMS push through to Handl Billing's blog, and we've got the visuals working nicely, and the content's working nicely.  Check it out: https://getahandl.com/blog/how-automated-billing-transforms-client-relationships-in-digital-agencies

Only a couple of words needed to be replaced when I reviewed the article created by mber, and the publishing into Webflow is working quite nicely (Some SEO things still to fix though).

We're just getting ready to submit the app that we built for mber to the Webflow app store so that we can integrate with other platforms.

The Technical Journey: Finding the Right Voice

At the end, it was quite a tricky project to keep working. We were originally using ChatGPT real-time for the voice, and then we moved to Gemini. Neither of those really provided the level of voice that we wanted or the level of transcripts that we wanted.

"We really wanna be able to get the emotion of someone talking and that just wasn't really capable. So we've got a bit of multiple integrations to get this working now."

Here's our current stack for Amber: - Claude for generation - ChatGPT for the conversation messages - Deepgram for the transcription - Eleven Labs for the voice - Ideogram for the image generation

There's a lot involved in that one. But it's good that we've now feel like we've broken the back of it. We're able to start creating content for all the platforms that we've got, which is good. Coming into the new year, we have this new capability that we can use.

Building Infrastructure for Better Support

Other things we did - we installed HelpScout on all the platforms so that when people register, we get alerted to someone who's registered. It also means that we can start to tightly integrate our support into all of the platforms. If anyone's got any questions about how to use the platform, we can respond very quickly through that HelpScout integration.

HelpScout is gonna be the conduit, that connection between our platforms and our users. We'll be reaching out to users as well to see if to get their feedback. And then from when that comes in, we'll obviously go through how we think we can design and implement - if we can or if we feel like it will fit into the product.

Looking Ahead: From Our Problems to Your Solutions

Between Handl,  mber and TaliCMS and Arbeo, they're all at a nice MVP state. And so now it's about getting users to give us some feedback, get on and use them, get some feedback on how we can enhance all of the products.

"We built Arbeo because we had problems with hiring and sorting through CVs, and mber because I sucked at creating content. What we will be doing and we're excited about doing is using those products as case studies for us to show that if we have that problem, I'm gonna guess other business owners have those same problems."

As we roll into issues and problems, we're gonna just create more products and then make those available to other business owners as well. We're solving the problem for us, but we can also hopefully solve it for other people and other businesses as well.

The feedback users provide will definitely 100% shape the course of all the products. We're building them so that they're very helpful for our audience and for the people that want to give them a try. What we are aiming to do is get the products to a stable level, usable level with functionality that we know would be required based off competition that's around. But then we really wanna shape the products based off the uses of the product.

Wrapping Up 2025

First half was awful (Will talk about that next year), second half of 25 It's been all about building, launching, and learning.

I hope everyone had a really good Christmas break. I hope everyone is looking forward to their new year and feeling upbeat about what 2025 has ahead for us. We're excited about the products we've built, the problems we're solving, and the feedback we'll get from users like you to make them even better.

Here's to building software that solves real problems for real industries - one product at a time.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Handle Billing track project profitability in real-time?

Handle Billing integrates with your project management and timesheet tools to track hours logged between milestone start and end dates. For each milestone or time materials invoice, it automatically calculates profitability down to the week, showing agency owners exactly where they stand financially and whether they need to adjust hours to stay on target.

What makes Amber different from other AI content platforms?

Amber uses multiple specialized AI integrations to capture authentic voice and emotion in content creation. It combines Claude for generation, Deepgram for transcription, Eleven Labs for voice, and Ideogram for images. The platform can publish directly to Webflow with minimal editing required - typically just a couple of words need adjustment.

What were the main challenges in the Columbus Realtors project?

The biggest challenge was migrating content from their old site to the new Tally CMS platform. To solve this, we built custom AI-enhanced importing tools that reduced back-and-forth and improved accuracy. These tools are now reusable for future projects, making content migration faster and more efficient.

How is Dazlab using user feedback to shape product development?

We've integrated HelpScout across all our platforms to create a direct connection with users. When someone registers, we're alerted immediately and can provide quick support. We actively reach out for feedback and use it to guide design and implementation decisions, ensuring our products solve real problems that businesses face.

What products has Dazlab built to solve their own business problems?

We built RPO because we had problems with hiring and sorting through CVs, and Amber because we struggled with content creation. Handle Billing came from our need to track project profitability in real-time. Each product solves problems we experienced firsthand, which we believe other business owners face too.