Tech Chaos to Cash Flow: Mastering Digital Tools for Entrepreneurial Success

Welcome to this Podapalooza special. Actually, today I'm joined by one of the amazing VIP guests that are part of the Podapalooza sort of podcast virtual fest, and I'm here with Martin Ricketts, who is actually in Toronto. He's got a company called Digital Samurai. He's going to help us with recurring revenue and how to monetize your story and how to overcome those problems. I guess in your case, how to fight those challenges, Martin, that keep entrepreneurs locked to the desk. Martin, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot, Jim. Nice to be here.

Look, it's great to have you here, and I know with the Productpalooza ladies, they want to keep us very tight to schedule. Explain for my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs what you do, Martin, and how you do it.

Yeah, well, Digital Samurai builds end-to-end marketing and technology solutions that bridge the gap between what technology can do and how it's actually used. For example, AI is a great powerful tool, but only if you ask it the right questions, right? So being able to come up with the, what we call the last mile problems, the difference between how you do something and the best practices around that, that's what we help companies with. And one of the first things we do is solve a problem which most people don't know they have. We call it technology chaos. That's any friction between you and your data, you and your team. I can't find this file. The link didn't work. I can't play the video. That's technology chaos. We solve that first by using standardized tools and tactics, best practices that we teach you so that you don't have to think of that. And that's really important because what you really want to do is you want to create automation and systems Such that you can focus on revenue-generating activities and not on all the problems and the minutia. You wanna be talking about the video strategy, not how to get the video, right?

Marty, you're absolutely right. And my experience as well, and I think statistics show that CEOs, especially of SMEs where you don't have departmental heads, spend up to 40 to 50% of their time just solving the problems for their team. I know when I had my team in Singapore and China, most of my time was set up simple things like getting the internet to work, getting the mobile phone data to synchronize with the database on the SaaS, for example. So as we get into more and more scale, we need more and more tech, don't we?

That's right.

You talk about standardized products and solutions. Martin, help us there because The last thing entrepreneurs want to do is spend a lot of money on buying what we used to call middleware, apps that would glue apps together so that you could help them all to work. How do you get that to be done economically for entrepreneurs?

One of the first things I teach people is tactics matter more than tools. People get excited about, oh, this app and that new thing and that new thing. How you use the tools is way more important than which tool to use. You ask a miner, for If someone works in those industries, construction, yeah, no kidding. The tool doesn't matter at all, they'll tell you. And so we really focus on the best practices on how to use the tools, templates, and other systems that make it so that you don't have to figure it out. We use 12 very specific programs. We use very specific tools in very specific ways so that you don't have to figure it out. And it's more important that all of these things work as a harmonious system where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Rather than, oh, this new shiny object or that one. So for instance, for communications, we have what do we call it? The doctrine of one, the one solution strategy, which is one place for communication and it's not email. So in our team, we don't use email for communication because it's not a good communication tool, right? So we use WhatsApp and WhatsApp Desktop because it plays well with others. For managing information, we use Google Keep because Keep is really good at capturing information coming into your digital world, archiving it, retrieving it at will, and sharing and collaborating effortlessly. And it's really good for this, Jim, because it's very few steps, 2 or 3 steps, and you can capture that information. And ideas are organic. You're out and about, you're in the park, you're waiting for the elevator. You want to be able to capture ideas which you can then turn into strategies and content. Because as the founder, as the entrepreneur, that's your primary job, to come up with value and talking points and strategies that articulate what your value proposition is. That is a higher cognitive value pursuit. And the only way you can do that if the friction to coming up with those ideas is minimized. And so we really focus in on that.

Martin, and I think you absolutely hit on something there. the role of the CEO and the entrepreneur to find those opportunities, to capture them, and to share them. How do you then help the entrepreneur to spread that message? Because, you know, you've mentioned, you know, capturing using Google Keep.

Mm-hmm.

But my experience of running cross-cultural teams, I had offices in Singapore, China, and India at one stage, was I could put the information into the system. But it didn't necessarily mean that everybody accessed it or that people knew what to do with it because people in different departments or different levels of experience would handle information differently. So do you want to just take us through, once you've sort of maybe got ideas and content into the systems, how are you helping that information to filtrate into the people that need to do it and to take action with that information?

Right. Well, you know, one of the things we really want to stress is that first you want to get your systems in order and your processes before you start doing the other work. Because if you don't, there'll be a lot of chaos and friction. And we're obsessed about taking friction out of these processes. Once you've done that, then you can focus on building your brand and your message. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have to really think about this. Are you chasing leads or are you building a brand? Chasing leads is what everyone does at the beginning, right? You get email opt-ins and you try to sell to people. But the thing is, most of those leads don't pan out. In real estate, it can be up to 90% of them don't pan out. So, you're spending most of your time doing things that aren't going to convert. Whereas if you spend most of your time creating content and putting it and deploying it out there. Now, that might be you do a podcast like this or you do a Zoom call. Then you chop that up and you deploy it in social media, right? But first you have to have the systems in place to make that frictionless so that can effortlessly be done. And that's about outsourcing and all that kind of stuff. But then it's about consistently deploying your message in such a way that people can get to know, like, and trust you and opt in for whatever it is you're selling them. And so that process is a process over time. It takes time to build build the muscles to do that, to put the content out there, to get people interested in that such that they recognize your brand and they were then going to interact with you. So it's really this kind of 3-step process. First, you have to fix the tech and make the friction out of it. Then you have to start coming up with what is your message and your offer and your talking points and all of that. And that's an ongoing process. It evolves as you see how people are responding to your message, right? You know, I talked here at the beginning, you know, our tagline is do work you love so you can monetize your story and design a future you love. Do work you love and monetize your story, design your future. That's evolved over the last 7 years based on what people said. But really, isn't that what everyone wants? To do work they love, make money doing it, and have a freedom lifestyle, right?

Yeah, Martin, I think if you love what you do, then it doesn't really feel like work, does it? Let me just ask you a question though about About control, because you've mentioned about the content, you know, coming to the system and then have the messaging. As you know, one of the issues is about keeping consistency in an organization of information. Later on, I'm gonna ask you about security because that's another big issue we need to talk about.

Mm-hmm.

But let's just talk about consistency across an organization. How with your systems are you ensuring that everybody's getting the final version, for example, of that document?

Oh, that's a really good question. One of the things we teach people to do is use Google Workspace to its advantage. Google has the best collaboration and security tools out there. Microsoft's are great and all that as well, but Google, because they also own search and YouTube, that integrates really well. So one of the most important things you can do instead of using PDFs internally or even for clients, use a Google Doc with a dynamic link because, and not just a doc, but also a Google Sites, which is websites, Google Slides, which is like PowerPoint. We use these and we use the dynamic links with them so that there's only one document. So when you put that document out, It doesn't matter who's got it. You can make changes to it. And there's a little trick that I do when you take a Google Doc, you can go into the sharing and pick the link. And then if you edit the end of the URL that says edit and you change it to preview, it'll hide all the stuff on there and it looks just like a PDF. They can't change it. There's no controls. But then you share that. And in fact, you can shorten that with Bitly and make it customized or whatever. But the key thing is you share that with your proposal, your MOU, whatever it is. And you send that out, you can make changes to it after you've sent it, right? So in fact, they're not going to look at it the first time anyway. So you can continue to automate and change that internally. That means that there's only one sales document. There's only one talking points document. And that consistently gets updated. For our notes, we use Google Keep in the same way. Keep notes can be shared with whoever's using them. And there's only one note for your talking points. And when that gets updated, everyone immediately has all of the talking points. So instead of using files like PDFs and PNGs and things for your internal stuff and for marketing, use these dynamic links, dynamic documents, dynamic slides, so that there's only one of them and it automatically gets updated for everyone who has it. That's a really important thing to do, and it saves a lot of challenges with version numbers and all that other stuff that you have to put up with.

Well, that's what I was going to say, because what you have to do is otherwise do version 1, version 1.1, right? Especially with press releases, for We used to have to do this with clients. Martin, you're plainly a Google advocate. I'm going to ask you about security next because Google, I personally don't like Google just because I feel like I can't understand why I have to use this Gmail account and I can't use my company name. And I sort of feel like it's all too open. And they, I just, maybe because I'm a Mac person, I don't know.

Well, it could be part of it. We do both. But I will say businesses should use Google Workspace. That's the enterprise level one with enterprise level security and controls, right? And you don't necessarily have that with just the regular free Gmail account. So you want to use the Google Workspace first of all, then you can use your own domains. Like our domain is monetizeyourstory.info. That's a Google website, but with our domain, same with our, with our email stuff. So it's really important to use the paid version, Google Workspace now it's called, used to be G Suite. Um, rather than just the regular Google.

Okay, Martin. Yeah, that's so— that's so from a security and also compliance and branding point of view, you can still look like a proper company in the eyes of your client by using Google. Martin, it would be remiss of me not to ask about AI because obviously it's hitting us all. What's your view on AI when it comes to Information and automation, which I know is a big part of what you're helping people to do as well.

Yeah.

What should we do? Should we use it? Should we lose it? Should we bury our heads in the sand?

I just did a post about this the other day because I was talking to a writer and he said, AI isn't good enough for writing right now. And there's a number of people I've heard have said that. It's not up to the standard of the writing guild. I don't know what the writing, but whatever that is. And while that may be the case, there is a lot of things that AI can do right now that are incredibly valuable for entrepreneurs. There's 3 things that I would talk about. The first one is summarization. And now the current version of ChatGPT, although Microsoft version does it as well, their Copilot and Google's Gemini, you can take a 100-page document and summarize that. And summarizing is very hard to do for humans.

Yeah.

So it's exceedingly good at summarization. And then you don't have to deal with the, things of other people's stuff or plagiarization or anything. It's your words. So it's very, very good at summarizing them. That's the first thing. Second one is structuring. I was on a Zoom call the other day, a networking call. And, you know, we saved the chat with all the contact info. But if you've looked at those text files, it's a mess of stuff. So I used the prompt to get ChatGPT to restructure the text file from the Zoom into a spreadsheet. And it did it with the name and email columns and phone number and all of that. And again, the devil's in the details and what prompt to ask it, but restructuring things into spreadsheets, into words, into code, super good at that. Really, really good at that. And then the third thing is creating video scripts. So if you want to create a video, you need the narration, you need the B-roll. So you can take some copy that you might have done or talk you might have done. And then you can convert that into a video script where the AI is going to suggest the B-roll that you use. It's going to show you, you know, here's what it says. It's going to open the scene with the sun rising and the farmer walking down the road. We did one like that. And then you can take that script and use a program like ElevenLabs to create an AI voiceover for it or HeyGen to create an avatar with a voice. And, you know, I'll say to people, because, Jim, some people will say, oh, AI isn't that great. First of all, it's the worst it's ever going to be. It will be unmistakable from humans in a matter of time, a year, 2 years, whatever it is.

Yeah.

So now is the time to get into using some of these things and getting used to it. But especially if it's for onboarding or internal training, it doesn't matter so much. And I'll say to people, compared to what? The AI avatars now look very good. The voices are excellent. And especially when you compare it to a PDF, right? You're going to get more conversion with a video with rich media and talking than you will with the PDF. And so the AI tools are really useful for creating videos where you can create the script, create the audio, create the video with it, and you can do it in much less time and cost than it would have been. So it allows you to create, for instance, an onboard program. So maybe you have a talk that you do. But now you can create an online program that doesn't require you to do the talk, and you can make money from that. Now you've got a recurring revenue stream.

Yeah, Martin, you're absolutely right. And tools like Synthesia, for example, exactly, um, are doing amazing work.

Yeah, I will say HeyGen's better than Synthesia. It's cheaper, and you get— it's got more. I used Synthesia first. HeyGen's cheaper and better.

So yeah, and there's DDI Labs. I mean, we're, we're spoiled for choice, right? And, uh, people like Descript have just come out with the new Season 6, which has got some amazing audio to video.

Yeah, audio voiceovers especially are exceedingly good. Now, I will say this, there's a thing, you know, someone just mentioning Twain said, I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.

Right?

It takes time to do the shorter, more succinct stuff. What I'm saying is correct the AI stuff. Don't just generate the copy and leave it. You have to tweak it after it generates it. Same with the voices, because the AI voices make inflection mistakes and contextual mistakes for the subtitles. So you need to fix that stuff, right? Because those are what makes it really noticeable, especially the inflection mistakes in AI voices. So redo it, retweak it. ElevenLabs allows you to tweak the parameters on the voice. So don't just put something out there and leave it. People are lazy. They've done that from time immemorial. So it's not just with the AI tools. Whatever you do, The polishing is the most important part. And quite frankly, it's the one that takes you the most time. But if the video would have taken you, you know, a week to do, you can do it in a few days. And most of that time will be you tweaking it because the AI part might take an afternoon, right? But it's the tweaking and the polishing part that only you can do. And you need to do that. It still overall will take you less time, but it's critically important to do that polishing so you don't get these AI artifacts.

Yeah, Martin, Martin Ricketts, Digital Samurai. I can see now why People are coming to you for advice on their tech and getting it all to work in. And sounds like you're putting in some very, if you like, um, practical and accessible tools like Google Suite, but also staying abreast of the AI as well and what it means for people. Martin, if people want to get hold of you, where can they do that?

Yeah, thanks, Jim. You can go to monetizeyourstory.info. And there's a Contact Us request in there, and we'll send you some microlessons. We have these targeted lessons on things like AI, like voice typing that we can send you that you'll get instant wins from, and you'll get to see some of the best practices that we use.

Martin Ricketts, I know that we've got a Podapalooza timeline. They've given us just 20 minutes today, so I think we could have carried on this conversation for longer. Thank you for joining me.

sometime. That'd be great.

That'd be wonderful. Thank you. Martin Ricketts joining me originally, actually he's from Lewisham in the UK.

That's right. Yeah.

But he has abandoned ship and moved to Canada.

Yes, indeed.

So thank you, Martin, for joining me, and thank you for joining Martin and I on this Podapalooza podcast special. My name is Jim James, and until we meet again, remind you just to give a quick review if you can on the player, share this with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur because we don't want like let anybody go unnoticed. And until we meet again, keep on communicating.