Beyond Defensive Automation, Boost Revenue with Offensive Tactics

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. Today we're going to Tbilisi in Georgia, actually to talk to Yaron Bean, who's originally from Israel, but now he and his wife have moved to Georgia. And he had a very large dropshipping business that was destroyed overnight by the iOS update. So we're going to talk to him about how he's pivoted and how he is a growth hacker. He's going to show us some And explain how we can use some free tools to build automation for our businesses. And he's going to identify the difference between defensive and offensive automation, a term that I'd never heard before, which is really, really interesting and will make a difference to how you approach automation. And we're also going to talk about the one thing he doesn't recommend that you do when it comes to growth hacking your business. You're on, Bean. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Jim. I'm very excited to be here.

Well, look, it's great to have you on the show. You have built one very large dropshipping business, and as an entrepreneur, you've had to pivot and rebuild kind of almost overnight. A real example of how the platform can be in control of your business. So, Jeroen, just tell us a little bit about what happened and how you managed to rebuild your business, and then we can take it from there.

For sure. Awesome. Great. I'll give you a bit of context. So you can tell based on my accent that I'm Israeli. And while I was serving in the special forces in Israel, I think I realized that I don't want to have any bosses, any commanders, or any people walking next to me or beside me. So this was the first realization towards my journey as an entrepreneur. And I studied in the university and eventually I started working in a media buying agency in Tel Aviv. I was spending approximately $1 million on a monthly basis for this agency. And, but I didn't have an upside nor a downside. So I just kept on going. And luckily I met a friend of mine in a bar in Tel Aviv for a beer. And he showed me a screenshot of his Shopify store. And he told me that he was making money online. And I was shocked because until that point in time, I thought that dropshipping was just something that gurus sell like horses, but nobody's really making profits from it. So, but it was a childhood friend of mine. So the morning after, my wife and I, we built a store and the same evening we got our first sale and we realized, whoa, we can make money online. And this was pretty shocking and also beginner's luck. Long story short, after 2 years, we both quit our jobs and we embarked on on a journey as digital nomads while we were operating this store. And we sold more than $4 million revenue until the iOS update. And the iOS update, which happened approximately in 2021 or 2022, basically changed a lot. Apple introduced a lot of new privacy regulations, which changed the way the Facebook algorithm functioned. And since we were operating in very slight margins but very low volumes, it made us irrelevant. So we had to decide whether we want to rebrand or do we want to, you know, keep on losing money or quit and seek a different alternative. And this is what we did. We pivoted away from this store. And since then we've been focusing, I mean, I've been focusing mainly on running automations and trying to solve problems with code instead of capital.

You're on, you know, well done and congratulations on, on turning around so quickly. Yes, it's, uh, you know, it's interesting how these platforms, if they change their algorithms, lives change. It's really why being in control of your own brand and your own sort of customer, um, list and so on is so important. You raise the issues of automation, you know, and For more and more people, time is about automating tasks that they can either, you know, some can be delegated, some could be outsourced, some can be deleted. But those that we have to keep and that we don't want to outsource, we need to automate. What's your approach? And you've shared with me before we started recording offense and defensive automation. I've never heard that expression before. So I'd love for you to explain what those mean and The implications for my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs? Sure. Yeah.

So I think I coined this term. Usually I don't attribute anything to me because all of my thoughts are like a derivative of someone wiser than me. But in this case, I think I coined this term and defensive automations versus offensive automations. And what do I mean by that? Defensive automations. Normally when you say automations, The first thing that comes to mind is Zapier or Integromat or Make. This is what everybody knows and these tools are great and they are just basically API connectors and I've used them as streamliners. They usually help you save time. So let's say you want to automate sending the invoice from your mailbox to your bookkeeper or you want to automate sending a lead to your CRM and sending, I don't know, a welcome message. So these are defensive automations. They just, they mostly save time. While on the other hand, what I view as offensive automations are revenue generating processes that you automate. So for example, you scrape a list of prospects and then you can go ahead and like the recent post on a specific platform, let's say Facebook. And after 3 days you can send them a DM automatically. So this is a revenue generating process in opposing to just something that streamlines and saves you time.

You're on. Let's just talk about the, let's call them offensive or maybe proactive. Offensive, you know, in some circles has a different meaning. With these offensive and proactive automations, first up, you talk about scraping information. Just let's address the privacy issue because there isn't— there is a sort of implication that you're taking information that isn't being readily shared. How do you address that issue?

Sure. So there are many things to keep in mind when you do these automations, when you run these automations, and every platform has the terms and conditions, and many platforms also enforce and limit the amount of automation that you can do. So for example, in LinkedIn, whatever you do, you can't even send more than 100 DMs daily. Same goes with Facebook. You can't send over a certain amount of friend requests. So you are limited by the platform, as you should know the terms and conditions. But as long as you respect the terms and conditions, there are many things that you can still do within the boundaries that you wouldn't do manually because it takes a ton of effort and time, but you can automate. And this is the way, this is my landscape where I play in between the boundaries.

Okay, yeah, so there's a sweet spot, isn't there, between, you know, it's what it's allowed, it's just that the economic reward from doing it manually isn't great enough, but if you automate it at scale, then it can be. Can you give us an example, Yaron, of one that you've done that would help people to understand?

Yeah, and I just want to maybe correct myself. I didn't say it's necessarily allowed, but it's not disallowed.

So for the lawyers out there listening, it's a fine line.

Because still hacking, you know, there is a lecture by Dan Kennedy and he says all business is opportunistic. And I do like playing by the rules, but still, whenever you can exploit to a certain extent, I think you should because this is where the opportunity lies. So one clarification.

Yeah, and I think as long as we clarify, we're not exploiting the people, right? We're just seeing the systems. And the opportunities to use what's there for most effect, right? So, so, Yaron, have you got an example that you could share with us?

Yeah, for sure. So for example, I want, back in the days, I wanted to appear on more podcasts as a guest. So I started sending, like pitching hosts manually and it was tedious and it was boring and it didn't produce the results that I wanted. And since I'm a big believer in volume, I thought, okay, how can I put more volume into this? So what I did, I went to a directory of podcasters. I scraped their show notes and the information regarding the show. I put it in an Excel spreadsheet and basically I used ChatGPT in order to generate personalized outreach from me using like my expertise. But it was also personalized based on what the show is about. So let's say I was reaching out to you automatically. ChatGPT would spit out content that would make you feel as if I read and know stuff about your show. And this way I was able to send out within one click 1,000 DMs and like 300 people answered me. And this allowed me to be a guest on more shows that I could have been If I did it manually.

You're on. That's amazing. The only danger then, of course, is you've got to be able to respond to all of those inquiries, haven't you? So does that lead to another automation, which is the response to those people that have said, you know, variously, yes, no, maybe? Because, you know, we don't necessarily get a binary response, do we? How do you handle that?

This is a great question. And it really depends what is on the line. In this case, it was my reputation, which was on the line. So I didn't want to automate the response because ChatGPT sometimes produces a funky output which isn't necessarily your tone of voice. So I preferred having myself or a personal assistant of mine respond to the people. But still, it's after I got the responses, which were an amount which was manageable. So this is one solution. And if it wasn't my own reputation on the line, I might have thought of creating some sort of an automation for responding, but not in this case.

Okay. So just tell us then, which tool are you using? Because most people, Jeroen, are not hackers. Most of us are, you know, doing our best to serve the clients or doing some marketing, but you're at another level. Is it very complicated? Is it very expensive to use these tools? Just help us to understand where people can access this.

Sure, this is a great question because actually I'm using a free tool by Microsoft which is called Microsoft Power Automate Desktop. And it's such an amazing tool and I don't know how come not everybody is using it because as I said, it's free and Microsoft keeps on updating and adjusting it based on like the needs of the clients, of the customer base. And it's a drag-and-drop tool. It looks like Zapier to an extent and you don't need, in order to do like simple stuff, You don't need to be like a coder. You don't need any— there is no steep learning curve. You can pretty much get up and running within 2 or 3 hours and start doing basic stuff, which will save you a ton of time at the get-go. So definitely recommend Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

That's very, very interesting. And that's presumably, well, it is a free-to-use tool. In terms of Automation. With your experience, Jeroen Been, are there some mistakes that you see people making? In other words, they are quite possibly damaging their business by using automation because it's not a panacea, is it? It's just because you automate it and you reference that a little bit that maybe ChatGPT sends information that isn't your tone of voice. What dangers do you see with automation, Jeroen?

There are a few. First of all, some people, I myself must admit that I'm doing this mistake often. When you fall in love with automating stuff, you focus often on the engineering side and you focus on the automations and sometimes you waste a lot of time on trying to automate to the T instead of just understanding that nothing can be automated 100%. And it's a process that you constantly need to optimize. So this is a misconception that I used to have, as a lot of people who automate still have, that it's not as if you, once you automated, you have solved the thing. You need to constantly, it does save you time, it can produce money, but you need to constantly manage it. So it's like a very compliant and effective worker. It's not as if it's a set and forget.

That's a very, very good point then, that it's not set and forget. And presumably tasks have to be of a certain magnitude to warrant the effort to automate. Any guidance on that as well, Yaron? I mean, at what stage is it quicker just to write the email yourself, for example, than to get it into ChatGPT and get it to do it for you?

Exactly. So I think, and this also relates to To another common mistake is some people, they try to automate before they have nailed down the process. So you need to understand the complete logic from A to Z and do the things manually at least a few times, and then you just translate it to an automated process. But sometimes people, because they fell in love with the automation or they feel that they can do something very effectively and efficiently, They don't even— and I also did this mistake very often— you run into creating the automation without completely understanding the logic and the process that needs to happen in the real world. And only after that you can build. And this relates to your question. If you don't need— if you didn't do the process many times manually and you don't completely understand, so there's no point, in my opinion, to start automating this because if you don't do it frequently, or it doesn't have a lot of impact, why automate it? Because automating takes time and effort.

So then you might as well just, for example, have a virtual assistant somewhere in the world that does those things for you at $5 to $10 an hour instead you're on.

Exactly.

Now you've had to pivot from a large dropshipping. Now you've repositioned yourself in the— as a growth hacker, right? Tell us as an entrepreneur, Yaron, how have you been doing that? How have you been repositioning yourself and getting a really a different kind of client? Because dropshipping presumably is almost anonymous. You're really arbitraging, aren't you, between goods being sold before they're bought? And now you're actually dealing with clients. How are you managing to rebrand and reposition yourself?

It's a great question. And actually, one of my learnings from the dropshipping and the fact that it eventually didn't turn out the way I wanted it to be was the fact that I was anonymous. And I love being anonymous, it's great. But still, if you want to create capital or you want to succeed financially, I don't think it's the way to go. So we should— I mean, I realized that I need to compromise my privacy if I want to get paid. As simple as that. So since my face wasn't attached to the dropshipping business, I don't, I didn't build an asset. It was a cash machine. And now what I'm doing is I'm creating a brand that revolves around me, myself as a human being, as a persona, professional. And I believe this asset will go with me until the grave or if, I don't know, or beyond. Yeah, that's right.

You might live in perpetuity. You're on that. You could be automating, you know, your life. So even when you're gone, there'll be Messages going out by automation. So how have you been doing that, Jeroen? That's great. So recognizing that anonymity can lead really to a fairly perilous position, especially as the platforms can just decide that you're no longer allowed to play. So having a personality, having a brand, having a presence, really key. How are you doing that? How are you establishing yourself?

So I have a podcast in which I interview thought leaders and marketers and e-commerce store owners, and I have a YouTube channel and I do networking. I mean, the basic stuff, I would say. And I also try to enhance all of these efforts with automations, which we discussed before our call. And I mentioned a few, like, during this conversation, but I do many automations just to enhance my reach.

Again, you can really scale yourself out there. Just to give us an idea of the frequency of content creation, because you may be automating that, Jeroen, but it'd be useful to get an idea of your posting frequency and posting content.

So I wouldn't say it's so frequent lately because I've been working on other big projects. Although I would love to go back to having like a structured and well-scheduled, you know, something more frequent. But I used to try to do like this podcast every other week, like having, being a host on my podcast. YouTube channel was, I'm planning to like revamp the YouTube channel and upload content which revolves about automation, around automations and stuff that I'm doing. Yeah, so there is no like defined frequency. It's more like whenever I feel like it because I'm also creating money and generating stuff on the backend. So I don't, I didn't make it like my goal building this brand. It's more something like it goes while I'm growing as a personal, like as a person and an entrepreneur.

Okay, that's wonderful, Jeroen. So Jeroen Been, if there's one thing that you would share that does work as an entrepreneur for building a brand and for building a business? What would you share with my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs that would be a great takeaway for them?

Yeah, so in one of my podcasts, I asked someone, I don't remember the guest unfortunately, and I asked them what was the key to to doing better marketing. And they said something that stuck into my, in my mind. And they said, if you're not overdelivering, you have no business. And I, it really like clicked because when we had this dropshipping business, we were generating cash and we were acquiring customers all the time, but we never overdelivered. So we tried to fix, you know, the campaigns by optimizing, doing tactical stuff. But we never overdelivered. So an overdelivery is the thing that creates loyalty, creates lifetime value. It creates a business, it creates the asset. So if you're not overdelivering and trying to fix other stuff, you're basically building on quicksand. So you need to fix the fundamentals. So I think this is the most important piece of advice I ever got.

You're on, Bin. I love that. I love that. Of course, overdelivering. Um, is something that you can, I guess, attempt to automate. But at the end of the day, there has to be the passion, doesn't there? And the, and the desire to serve your clients that motivates the overdelivering. Otherwise, you're just delivering enough to get paid, and that's not enough to generate any kind of loyalty or brand value. You're on being— if people want to find out more about you and your amazing automation skills and other tools that you're building? How can they do that?

Sure. So I'm mostly active on LinkedIn. The last few months I wasn't so active since the war has started. So I kind of don't know how to position my post within all this noise. But generally speaking, I'm mostly active on LinkedIn.

Okay. And that's at, you're on Been, right? That's B-E-E-N as opposed to Mr. Bean. It's actually B-E-E-N as in having been there, seen that. Jeroen Been, thanks for joining me on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show today.

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much, Jim.

It's been wonderful. So we've been to Georgia to meet Jeroen Been and, you know, amazing. I keep getting surprised and stunned at what people are doing in their own worlds and their own markets. So that's one of the lessons for me is to always be curious and always be exploring. So I was very glad to receive Yaron's, you know, request to come on the show. And now I realize it was actually sent by ChatGPT. So I'm still, I'm still delighted he's come on the show, but now I know his secret. Um, so automation, uh, one of the key points that he's made is work the workflow first, do it multiple times offline manually before taking the time to try and automate it, because automation without A system can really be detrimental to your business. And we've also talked about the difference between defensive and offensive automation. I think it's a lovely, lovely distinction and one that I'll be carrying forward. So credit to Jeroen for that. And I think he didn't automate that. I think he actually generated that himself. So wonderful. Thank you for joining me, Jim James, on this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur.

Thank you.

I really hope you've enjoyed it. Do please leave a review for the show because it really helps. and to follow the show, because I don't want you to miss out on another episode. And the guests I get, you can't automate. They're all real people, real entrepreneurs sharing real ways to grow your business. Thank you for listening. Until we meet again, keep on communicating.