This morning I made a trip into the city to meet Andrew Lambert, the consultant behind Lambert Consulting and the host of the Mind Yo' Business podcast, and show him what I built on Bloomington Online over the last three days. He pulled up his own business listing in our directory. It was there, but it was nearly blank. This post is a thank-you to Andrew for the work he does in our community, and an account of how we fixed his listing and then rebuilt the south side of the Courthouse Square from a pile of photographs.
Andrew Lambert, in his own work
Andrew started his advertising agency in 2010 and launched the Mind Yo' Business podcast in 2017. Lambert Consulting helps owners with traditional marketing, digital advertising, websites and hosting, and one-to-one consulting. The podcast has run for nine seasons and is often recorded live in front of an audience at Morgenstern Books on South Auto Mall Road. Season 9 this year has included conversations with Brian Dorsey of Meineke Car Care Centers, the team at Brightside Cafe, Jordan Davis on food and festivals in Bloomington, and Kaytee Lorentzen on the Chamber of Commerce.
The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce profiled him in April as part of its Small Business Series. It describes a former professor and stand-up comedian who wanted interviews to feel like a real conversation, with very few scripted questions and room for the mistakes and pivots that most people leave out. His idea of being "selflessly selfish" is that you can chase your own success as long as you create value for the people around you, and his advice to people starting out is to be real, stay flexible and take action.
He also gives back. On his own site Andrew says he served as Marketing Director and then President of the Monroe County Autism Foundation, founded in 2011, and as an advisor and contributor to the Katie and Victor Root New Hope Scholarship at Ivy Tech Community College, which helps adult learners return to school. He is the author of Be the Lime: An Insider's Guide to College.
If you own a business in Bloomington and you haven't heard the show, start with the episodes. If you need help with your marketing or your website, he is a good person to call.
The blank listing
When Andrew looked himself up in our directory, he found a one-line placeholder that had been generated automatically when the directory was first filled in. That is the kind of thing I have been cleaning up all week, and it was a good reminder of how many businesses are in the same position. So we fixed it. I opened Claude Code in the Terminal, told it whose listing to improve, and it read his website and the sources about him, then wrote the description, added his logo, set the categories and tags, and corrected his website address. Every sentence in it traces to something he or a reputable source has published, and the old text is backed up. His podcast's listing, which was also a placeholder, was rewritten the same way and moved to the media category where it belongs.
That is the whole method. I describe the job in plain English, the assistant does the research and the typing, and I decide what goes on the site. A written note, a link, or a photograph is enough to get it started.
From eighteen photographs to a courthouse
The part of the demonstration I enjoyed most was the photographs. The previous version of the courthouse in Bloomington 3D had a copper-green dome and a front with steps up to the doors. It was a fair miniature, but it was a guess. So I walked around the Courthouse Square and took eighteen photos: the south front, the stairs, the flower beds, the plaques, the stores across Kirkwood Avenue, and the fish on top. I gave them to Claude Code and asked it to make the model match.
The photos corrected the model right away. The real courthouse has no steps at its doors. The long flight of stone steps with cheek walls and green lamp posts is down at the street, and a concrete walk crosses the lawn from there. The dome is dark and ribbed, with a clock on each face of the tower and an ornate crown at the top. The model now follows all of that, along with the lettering on the building, the "Anno Domini" panel, and the group of limestone figures over the entrance.
The details on the lawn
The photos also showed what is on the lawn, and all of it is in the map now. A state historical marker stands beside the walk with its text about the 1818 log cabin and the brick courthouse that stood here until 1906. There is the Women in Government Plaza, with its stone benches and the block carved "Sophia," and a stone marking the Center of Population. A limestone memorial to county commissioner Warren Henegar, dedicated in 2013, carries its plaque and the words "Make me an instrument of Your peace." A tall war memorial topped by a soldier stands on the south lawn. The beds along the walk are full of orange and red flowers with blue salvia.
And the fish. Its weathervane is a long slim fish with a forked tail on a pole with four arrow-tipped arms, and the dome beneath it ends in a crown of leaves and scrolls. The old model had a plump fish on a lantern, so we rebuilt it. The fish swings slowly on its pole, as a weathervane should.
Across Kirkwood Avenue
The storefronts were next. The old map had a single long brick building across from the courthouse. In reality it is six, each with its own color and character, so each one got its own front: the white building with blue-trimmed arched windows and the cream one beside it over Andrew Davis menswear and formalwear, a narrow red-brick building, the cream building with the teal cornice over Mirth and its "Browse the shops inside" sign, the tall limestone Fountain Square building with its black awning, O'Child and #skullznbunniez, and the limestone building with the oriel windows over Tivoli Fashions.
These are still miniatures. The shapes and colors come from photographs taken from the lawn, so they are close but not exact, and the buildings along the rest of the Square are next.
How it works, in case you want to try it
- I take photographs or write down what I want, and I put them in the Terminal where Claude Code is running.
- It reads them, writes the code or the listing, and renders the result in a browser so it can check its own work.
- I look at what it made, point out what's wrong, and it fixes it. Every change has a backup, so anything can be undone.
- The listings follow a rule: no fact goes in unless it comes from a source I can point to.
AI makes mistakes, and today's first attempt put steps at the courthouse doors because that seemed reasonable. Photographs are what fixed it, and they are what I'd ask you for if you'd like your own business or building to look right on the map.
Visit, and say hello
Open Bloomington 3D and walk up to the courthouse from Kirkwood Avenue. Then look up Lambert Consulting and the Mind Yo' Business podcast in the directory. If you own a business, make sure your listing is correct. If it is not in the directory yet, let me know and I will add it. Thank you, Andrew, for the time and for the good work you do for Bloomington.
