0472 | Aytekin Tank

I'm Aytekintang. I'm the founder and CEO of JotForm and I'm also the author of Automate youe Busy Work and you are listening.

EA interviews EA interviews episode 472 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect. Interview business isn't always easy, but I know you wouldn't change it any other way and. And I wouldn't either. But sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming. And there's this commercial I'm thinking of where you're spinning one plate here, there's a fire in the background, the parrot's chirping and it's like, you know the phone is annoying when it rings, but it's worse when it doesn't. You've probably thought, can I just get someone or something to do something more to help me with all this? Maybe you've even thought about automating your busy work and maybe you've thought how can I do different things to make the websites and online and just the whole process more efficient. I am super excited to have none other than the CEO of JotForm and author of Automate youe Busywork, Itech Cantonk on today's episode. And we're gonna dive in and get your questions answered. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Itech and Tonk Itechen. How are you feeling today?

Hello Mario. It's great to be on your show. I'm doing great.

Glad to hear it. Well, I would be too if I was the CEO of Jotforman. Had a new book coming out. How exciting is that?

It's very exciting. It's coming out next week.

Why did you. Why, why do you could do a book on anything in the world. Why automating your busy work? Do you think it's more prevalent now with AI and all these things going on or. It's always been there and people are just talking about it more now.

It's always been there. So let me tell you the story from the beginning. So when I, when I, when I started Jotform, it was A small company. In the beginning, that was 17 years ago. That was a long time ago. And in the beginning things were slow and but a couple of years into it, things started picking up and I had more customers and I had to, you know, provide support to them. I had to, you know, do like accounting, hr, legal. Like it was a small company. I had like a few employees at this point. And I'm a product guy. Like I love working on my product, I love growing my product. And at this point I was spend all my day with busy work, like doing customer support, you know, doing all kinds of things basically, you know, working in my business as opposed to on my business. And right at this moment, something else happened that was a turning point for me and that was Google forms came out like now. You know, I was, I was already so busy and I wasn't really advancing my product. I wasn't happy about how things were going and now I had to compete with Google. Like that was like a really, you know, decision moment for me. I had to change something. And when I looked at what I did for our customers, I was actually automating the form creation. But forms are just the beginning of, of journey. So let me tell you a little bit about my company. So Jotform is a online form builder. So you can go to jotform.com, create an account, create forms for whatever needs you have. But. So we were helping people automate their tasks. Like we were helping them with their forms. Like the automation of their emails, automation of the, like, document generation, sending data to other services, creation of reports. Like we were doing so much for our customers, we were helping them automate their business. But at the same time, my business was completely like manual. Everything was manual. So I decided, okay, I have to change something. I have to, I'm going to apply my own medicine to myself. So that's what I started doing. Like, I started automating everything. I started with emails. I started automating how we did like, you know, office supplies. I, I started automating like, you know, our account in HR legal. So that made a big difference. Like I was able to reduce the time I spent on emails from like at least six to eight hours a day to like two hours a day. And I was able to like, like say. And it wasn't just me. Like, I, we were able to streamline how we did product development, for example, and that also saved the way we work and we became more productive and this made a big difference. And today Google didn't beat us. We are a successful company with 500 employees and 20 million users.

That's impressive. And I also want to let everyone know. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember as far back as 10, 12 years ago, right, when I was starting with Jotform, you even had encrypted forms that you could take payments through, right?

Yeah, I mean, we still have them.

So it was one of the first ones. I remember being able to do that at the time. And I was actually selling tickets for my speaking events and having people. I actually looked the other day. I still have the list. It was like, 2012 speaking event, Detroit, Michigan. I'm like.

It'S just amazing. And it was so simple with the drag and drop editor. It's one of my favorite form builders. Even to this day.

I think we are in the middle of these three revolutions. The first one is software is eaten the world. And this was said by Mark Anderson. And basically everything is turning into software. So it's like the things that were done in different industries are now becoming part of software. Like travel agents. In the past, you would go and tell them, hey.

Here is like, I want to go to a workplace. But today you actually do everything yourself. It's kind of more work, but it also gives you so much more freedom. The second revolution is this SaaS. No, code revolution. And Jotform is one of them. Like, you were. You. You. You didn't have any resources. Like, you didn't have, like, big resources, but you were able to go to Jotform and create a form. You created a payment form and you created an encrypted form, and you were able to use that without, you know, it. It's just form is free for the beginning and it's, it's. It's not very expensive if you have a lot of usage. It was quick, too. Yeah.

Click, click. I need this many fields. Boom box, boom, click. And then if I recall, it was simply an iframe or an embed code you just put onto the website. And I'm like, and it works? Yeah, because I was just learning coding and hiring coders and programmers, and I'm like, this. Contact forms are everywhere. It shouldn't take three hours to build one out. And it was like really plug and play and everything. And I've since taken a step back from coding and, you know, running the company more now and have people. But when I was developing, I developed a Software to build WordPress websites automatically. And so the whole thought process, when you were saying, I love working on my Product and improving it. I can totally relate. As much as I love being on stage or sharing my books info and helping people, it's like I can also just zone out and go, all right, we just improved this by what, 33, 33 seconds or something and it's like now it's eight times faster. Whatever the case is, it's fun.

Yeah. I mean if you think about it, in the past big companies could go to SAP and then they could like automate everything to software and that would cost them like millions of dollars and they would take care of everything. But today there are all these thousands of like SaaS, cloud products that they can do everything you need and you just go to a website like g2.com and you can find in any area, you know, hundreds, thousands of different products and they are all like no code products. So you can build your own solutions. Like you can, you know, use their flexibility. You can customize things, you can, you know, add them, add things to them. And these products also connect with each other. Now like it's like there are products like Zapier and like make where you can connect the data from each product. So you would, you, you can, you know those mean those products that like SAP solutions that cost like millions of dollars, you can build them up for like hundred dollar a month just by adding all these products, all these SaaS products. And they are much cheaper and they are much more flexible free. And they're all like focused on one area. Like Jotform is focused most on form. So we do it so well that like if you were trying to do everything, there is no way that we could do it that well. But because all these products are like focusing on, on their own areas, they are really good and they provide so much flexibility and so many options to people. So this is the second revolution and the third revolution you can probably guess is the AI revolution. And AI revolution is just putting like so much gas into this, this fire. Like it's just every product today in like five years from now are going to involve, include AI in them and they're going to be much more flexible. So basically much more powerful because AI is, you know, much more flexible, capable and smart. So you know, with the, with this, the revolution of AI, everything is going to change. And I feel like we are just like, I'm kind of old, I'm 45 and I remember the time Internet came out.

So this is like, this is very similar. Like when Internet came out it was amazing.

We could see the member Prodigy.

Yeah, yeah, Juno Email. Yeah, and all the, you know, Angel Fire. I built my first website on Angel. Same here. Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, my gosh. I haven't heard that in, let's say, a few years.

Yeah, it was sad to see them. Like, I think they closed down, but so. But the possibilities was endless. But we could see them, but we couldn't have them. So same with the AI. Like, we could see, like, so much has come in, but like, we cannot have it yet. So. But it's going to change everything. So all these, what's happening with all these revolutions is that automation is just. Now is so much more possible compared to like 10 or 20 years ago. I'm not even compared to like 50 years ago. But today is like, we are in a. We're living in a different world, but people are not really. People don't know how to reach them. I have to use automation. It's, you know, it's. It's kind of sometimes scary. Sometimes people say, hey, it's. I'm used to doing it this way. Yeah.

What do you think about that? I wanted to ask you, do you. Are.

Are you.

I'm getting the impression you're excited about this, but are you more excited or scared or a healthy amount of both?

I mean, you're probably asking about AI, right? AI and automation, how it's going to affect, like, the job, not just the.

Automation, but just the AI in general. Because there's people that are wigging the heck out and there's other people, like, yes, finally.

And I think a lot of us are somewhere in between.

So here's the thing. When things change, like, and it's changing, like, there's nothing we can do about it. It's not like we cannot just say, hey, we are, you know, we don't want AI and we cannot stop this. It's just, you know, it's just gonna continue. There's no way to stop it. If one country decides to, like, ban AI, the other countries will actually will, will pass them. And it's just, there's no way to stop.

We can't just rewind the movie back to the beginning.

No, we can't. And if, if you can't stop it, I think it's a good idea to make sure that we are actually changing with time. So instead of saying we don't want to adopt new things, it's better to.

Ask the question, how can we change the job so that we can use AI? And AI can do many things, but it cannot be human. It can be like, human, but it cannot really be human and human capability that things humans can do are so much more different. And what, what can happen is like, we can be more powerful, we can do more things using AI and we can use the power of AI to, to become, to, to work on things that, that really matter for us to work on meaningful things. So.

Same thing like in my book, I'm talking about how like automation is an AI, is also automation. How automation. We should be using automation not just because, you know, we want to get rid of work, but we want to.

Be able to work more efficient with it. Ineffective.

Yeah, yeah, be more efficient.

As a matter of fact, your application for the show went to schedule once, which I have set up on a zap that automatically pulls it into pipedrive and loads all this stuff in, which then sends it to the, to my calendar.

Yeah. And what this happens saves a lot.

Of time for how many episodes we do and everything. And I don't feel like, oh, I didn't do that. It takes away from the episode. On the contrary, I can put all my effort and my team can put all their effort into a great interview and a great episode. Not like copying and pasting information over. So I'm with you. It's like there's people going, oh, they're going to take our job. And I just said the other day, I'm like, if you're doing a job and haven't upped your skill set, if, if you can get replaced by a robot, you probably should.

Yeah. In the book, I, I advise people to do something I call the time audit. And basically every hour you make a note of what you did during the last hour and you create a spreadsheet from that. And at the end of the week, you look at how you, how you spend your time, and I want you to ask like two questions to yourself. What should I spend my time on? And what shouldn't I spend my time on? And the second question is more important because the time you spend on things that doesn't matter, like, you know, sending all those things like, you know, scheduling and things like that. That's, that's actually the time that, that sucks your time, that sucks your energy, that can be used in more important stuff, things that matter. And that's exactly what I'm talking about, the book. So you really described the book well when you gave the example.

I, I, I appreciate that, but I, I'm smiling now because I did the exact I, for the first time, maybe right, right around JotForm, 10, 12, 14 years ago, I Actually made a spreadsheet and I was like, how can I be more efficient? I was automating everything.

Business wise. But I'm like, what can I do to optimize my day? And I actually started tracking it and I noticed like, oh, whenever I do this, I do this, this and this. And I was like, well if I change that, it's going to change the trajectory for all of those. So I like decreased like junk food and added more. Reading was like one of them. And I was like, you know, it just gives you. And now we got smart. Well, I'm not wearing one right now but you know, smart watches track like you get all your vitals and everything. It's, it's real easy to see if your stress level goes every time on Thursday at 3 or whatever. It's like what goes on at Thursday 3? Oh, it's a meeting with so and so or I have to go to such and such family members place. It's like, oh, okay. It's just data. It's what you know, if you want to do something smart with it, go for it and if not, complain about it. Right?

That's a great question. Like okay, you know how your time is spent and you know how what you need to automate, what do you do next? And, and you need to make time to save time and you need to take the time to really design your automations and do some research. And what I describe in the book is this, you know, first you need to kind of figure out like figure out how your time is spent and you need to figure out your workflows and when I say workflows so you, you are doing things and you're spending a lot of time on doing things but they're not just like single item and they, they involve like many steps and they involve many peoples.

Yeah, it's like it's multiple series of.

Exactly. It's, it's, it can, it has many steps and it involves other people, it involves waiting for things. So it's just, you know, harder to automate. What do you do about that? So one of the tools that I recommend is like use just pen and paper and create a flowchart, a workflow chart about like how you are spending your time, like how different workflows work. Because this helps you really visualize how things are happening. And the great thing about this is you can actually take those workflow charts and when you look at them, you don't even have to automate them. You're gonna actually find opportunities. You're gonna find shortcuts, you are gonna find reasons to eliminate things. Like you're gonna optimize your business processes, you're gonna optimize your business.

And it's infinitely easier on paper to erase it or white it out instead of having to change thousands of line of code. And if you can't visualize it there, no way the programmer is going to be able to, you know, you need to know what you're talking about. Just like storyboarding a movie or a film or something.

Yeah. And you don't even have to, you know, have a programmer.

You know, because there's all these like no code products and I would recommend using them because.

Let me ask you about the no code because there's so many talented people that you know, like one of my favorite products, Basecamp, created Ruby on Rails. And you're talking like taking something that's existing, making it better to make a product that's friggin awesome. Where do you see AI going with the no code and all of this? Is there going to be a need for code in the future? Because I know there's certain stuff out there that already writes it and people are like, I just wrote this program in 33 seconds and everything. Or do you think it still lacks the creativity to go from literally blank to like, if there's not an existing data set base that it can model, after.

How long do you think it'll be creative enough to like really, really take away the creativity part?

So, you know, one of the really, you know, top users of ChatGPT is actually developers. Like it can actually GPT4, it can actually write code as well. So this actually like, you know, makes things faster to write the code. But I think that's, you know, that's not the right approach. I think the right approach is like to have all these building blocks and then bring those building blocks together. And the AI is of course really helpful here because AI gives everything so much flexibility so you can actually match those things together and build things more. But you know, to automate your stuff today you don't actually need AI. You can actually do that with existing no code products. And they provide so much flexibility. And if you go to a website like G2.com you're going to find like so many options there. But with the AI, all those products are going to be like 10 times much more flexible, capable, smart in the coming years.

Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of when I was learning Flash again, right around when I found JotForm. Before 2010.

Flash was all the rage. But it felt like every three months it was like, I know what I'm doing now. Nope, there's something new. I know what I'm doing now. Nope, there's. And that's when I was like, this is nuts. I prefer working with clients and helping people. As much as I like figuring stuff out, I'm like, I can't keep up with this. And I feel like all these AI experts, you know, even from three months ago or six months ago, it's like, here's the definitive thing. And then like A week later, GPT4 comes out. Like, okay, it's changed again. It's changed again. Do you, do you think it will ever stabilize or do you think it's just going to keep growing by leaps and bounds? Just like the Internet did, you know, in relationship to radio and TV, where it was, you know, this took 40 years, this took 20, and this one took four. Do you think AI is going to keep just like quadrupling every six months or something?

Yeah, just like software is eating the world, AI is also eating the world. And we expect, I would expect for everything to involve AI, but I mean, AI is also automation. It's not, you know, it's even the, even chatgpt is not like really, really understanding what it's saying. What it does is it just look at like a big number of words like it has in its memory and it just says, okay, you know.

It makes sense to say this word. It doesn't really understand the things that it says. And there is a possibility that that may also arrive. But still, I mean, humans are deciding like what to, you know, what's happening and what should happen. And yeah, it's just definitely it's going to make it easier for us to automate things with the advance in AI.

Yeah, I love that it's speeding stuff up. Based on all of our tests, it's at least five to six times quicker for certain things. But I did ask it if it has a personality and why it's being so dry and not replying with humor. And it told me, like, I'm not designed to. And I'm like, well, that's sad because this wasn't that entertaining for me.

So, you know, I think people have to realize, take it with a grain of salt, but absolutely, if you're looking up, you know, large sets of data, there's no way you're going to read 2,000, 3,000 words in four seconds or whatever it is now. It's probably down to one. But I appreciate everything you're sharing because some people are afraid to talk about this and some people are embracing it. And I think it's great because when businesses can be more effective and leverage all this, all these different things for them, I really believe any of the time saved, you can be doing great interviews like this. You can write a book, you can serve your customers, think about new ways to help them even more and just give back and do all of that because ultimately the computers are just there for a tool. So I want to ask you, with all the stuff you have automated and clearly built for a successful company, what would you say for someone listening, let's go with the brand newest entrepreneur and someone that's already established but still just kind of running around like we used to going, okay, we're dealing. You know, there's one time I put on Facebook, I'm a firefighter and people are like, really? I thought you had this company. And I'm like, no, you don't even understand. And then my entrepreneur friends were like, I get at what level? Captain, chief lieutenant, where are you at this week?

What would you say to the entrepreneurs that are still spinning plates? Where would you say the top three spots to automate their busy work would be?

Yeah, so I think the startup founders, you know, the startups actually need automation more because they have very little resources, they have very little people. So you will see them adopting all these products and as I mentioned, all these, you know, revolutions like the software eat in the world and the SaaS, no code products and AI. Now we have like so many, so much more options to use from. So if we go into specifics, like I'm a startup founder, I would start by first, like really, you know, apply the theory here, which is like the, what I call the automation Flywheel framework. And there are three steps in this framework and I'm going to give more specific examples, but I want to really give, give the framework.

Please do.

Yeah. So the first step is divide and conquer. And this is the step that I mentioned, like how your time is spent. Like you ask yourself, what should I spend my time on and what should I spend my time on? Questions. And you try to figure out how you, how you are spending your time, what you are doing. You explore your workflows, you try to understand all the things you do. And as a startup founder you're going to look at how you are spent, how you are spending your time on. So for example, I was spending so much time on emails and I'm sure everyone is the same. And the problem with Emails is like I have this email inbox, it's full of emails. I receive hundreds of emails every day. And the email that's like the top priority emails is listed next to like a newsletter or a spam message. So now my time is spent trying to figure out how to clean up all this mess so that I can really focus on the important emails. So what did I do was a solution. I found this specific solution that the, the first thing I did was I, you know, searched for like products that I could use and I tried like 10 different products and nothing worked for me. And but while I was searching for the product, while I was trying this product, I actually figured out what the solution I need. Like I needed an exact solution. Like I, I could actually envision the exact solution in my mind, but none of the products actually did that. And for me the, the important thing was the priority. So in an ideal world like the, the email provider action knows like the top email for me. What's the top, top highest priority email for me. Instead of showing me like list of emails by time it should be showing me like the priority. And I know that Gmail has like priority inbox, but it doesn't work. I never seen anybody who, you know, who actually, who it works for. So it, it doesn't really work. So I, I've, I built my own solution using on Gmail using like labels and filters. I couldn't find a product. I, I thought, hey, Gmail actually has this, I could just build this on Gmail. So it's very simple. What I did was I created these three label labels. Level one, level two and level three. And I don't need any, any more levels, just three levels is enough. And level one is the top priority email, like this most important email. And I define it because I want to see those emails first. So for example, my publisher for the book is Wiley. So if someone from Wiley.com sends me an email, it's going to go.

You probably want to see it.

Yeah, I want to see it. Like between meetings, if I have like 15 minutes, I want to see the top priority email. So I go to my level one and what I do is I never go to my Gmail inbox. What I do is I have bookmarks in my browser and I go and click on level one and that's it. I see the top priority emails and all my filters make sure that I do that. And as I have more important emails that I care about, I will add new filters to my Gmail. So it's very Simple.

So did you have to add any no code or custom code or is this literally something anyone with Gmail could do?

It's complete in no code. And I actually looked at Gmail has a app script and I could have used that. I never had the need for it. Like, okay, I looked at example codes and I could have written it like very quickly. But filters and labels are enough like so powerful. Like Gmail already provides all these different options. Like you know, all these filtering options that you can define on the, like the search bar. You can enter like different things like you could use like curly brackets and things like that. But you can, you can create all these filters and, and the level two is for email that's directly coming to me. Like someone sends me a direct email, I should be probably responding to that. And then level three is all the other emails that I care about and everything else that the, the spam and the sales emails, it just goes to my inbox, which I almost never look. I, I look at it time to time, but I will just do it for make sure that if there is an email that dropped, that didn't go to one of the levels that I can actually create the filter for it. And this has been working for me for many years and this is, this made me so much more productive and sane because I don't have to worry about like an important email is missing or if, if there's an important email that I didn't see. So you know, I can just, I clean level one, I clean level two, I'll clean level three. So this give, this was the solution and I didn't have to, you know, use. I don't have to write code or like find a specific solution. Gmail already has had all these no code features that I could use to build the solution and this saved me so much time. So I was talking about.

Yeah, that sounds phenomenal. Yeah, I mean in simple too. Solutions don't need to be super complex. I was literally thinking about this the other day because there's so many people that don't realize you can flag emails, create folders, create filters, use the labels and do all of this. You know, same thing with websites, you throw a little tag on there and now your site is that much more searchable.

Yeah.

Yeah, I can continue on the automation flywheel. Yeah, please. The first step is divide and conquer. And it's all about figuring out how you spend your time and how what are the things that are that should be automated. So you create a list of things that should be Automated and you also figure out like the meaningful work for you. So it's, it's a good exercise. On the second step is, it's the design and implement step. In this state stage we go in more into like implementation mode. Like so we, we go look at the, our workflow diagrams and we try to, and I give like so many examples in the book, like really charts. So if you get the audiobook, you know, you may not be able to see those, but you know, the Kindle, even the Kindle or the hardcore version has those charts. But, so when you go to those, you know, flowcharts that you, you streamlined your work but you also find opportunities for automation and you search for all these no code products that are available. I think it's very important that you make time to save time so that like you, you spend the time to do research and learn. And you know, it's, it's just easy to do the same things again and again. And it's just, you know, there's this like, we are all afraid of technology, like trying new things, but if you take the time, if you spend some time. And these products, these no code products have, usually have like free versions and most of them have free versions or trials and you can, you can use them and, and they're also inexpensive. So, and especially for your business, like if you, if your time is worth, you know, hundreds of dollars, if, if you are just paying like $20 a month for a product, it's nothing compared to the time you spend on them. So it's just saves you so much time. So you try these different products and figure out how you can automate things.

And I recommend adding automation slowly as opposed to like trying to automate everything at once and then launching it like in one day. So this is a flywheel. This actually starts slowly, like it starts turning slowly and in time it gains momentum and it becomes much more powerful. But you want to, what timeframe are you referring to?

Like 3, 6, 12 months or closer to.

18.

I guess it depends on like how busy you are and how much. But this is not, this is never ending. Like the, it's a.

You're just, you're just saying don't stop what you're doing right now. Change everything overnight and then see what happens next week.

Exactly, yeah. I mean, just add one automation. Just like you added automation that involves like Zapier and everything. I'm sure if you go back, you'll find more things to automate even as.

The products change or your ideas and needs change.

Exactly. And the great thing about automation is once you automate things, it's easier to improve them. So if you do things manually, if you want to do one more thing, you're going to say, okay, I'm already spending two hours to do this, I don't want to add two more minutes to it. Even that is like too much. But if it's automated, it's working while you are sleeping, it's working without your involvement, it's just, you know, handles things itself. So you can just go and add more things to was like that for our HR onboarding. So we are now like, we have 500 employees now. And in the past, like, like in the first days of platform, I would do everything myself. And then we, we added hr and HR was doing things manually. But as time went on like this was actually, you know, someone is on vacation, we forget to do things. And like this person like just started in our company. We wanna, we wanna be really nice to this person and we wanna be, you know, do things properly. We don't wanna miss important things. You know, we don't wanna miss their healthcare or we don't wanna, you know, when they come for the first day, we don't want to not have their hardware or account set up, things like that. And when we were doing things manually, like people are not perfect so, you know, we were forgetting things, we were doing things wrong. But as we automated more and more things, we were able to just like you, by automating things, you were able to focus on your interviews, doing them better, having better questions and spending more time with the people you interview. But yeah, the same was happening with our hr. We were able to spend more time with the people and give them, assign them bodies on their first day so that they can have a better first day. And it all improved our onboarding. And the thing is, when we want to add one more thing we weren't worried about, oh, we are already stretched. Like how can we add additional tasks here? No, because it's automated. We can just add additional tasks without worrying about it.

So when you're saying you're automating the onboarding, it's not necessarily you're taking this new person and just going here, go through this assembly line. It's more, you're automating all the stuff you need to do to support them, like you're saying the accounts, the, you know, hardware, software, all these different things. So that way they feel super welcome and they can run. And now you're taking that extra time to handhold them a little bit more and give them a great experience. Right. So it's really two tracks.

So instead of just automating everything, or you're automating things like bureaucracy, things that like repetitive tasks, and you are not automating the things that, that matter. Actually, you're able to spend more time with these people because, yeah, instead of, you know, like being busy with bureaucracy, like handling paperwork, you're actually busy with.

Really spending more time with them and really, you know, asking them questions and making sure they are having a good onboarding experience. So it just. Automation actually makes things more human because you are able to spend more time on things that humans can do, things that are more important.

Let me ask you about sops. What are your thoughts on sops in the company?

Sops.

Standard Operating Procedures.

Okay.

Like, do you have something digital or. They used to be in binders where it was like, consult the manual. I'm sure you have it digital. But if I were to walk into the company right now and be like, all right, we need to fix xyz. Do you guys have a lot of everything? Down to a science where it's like, okay, anyone can pick this up and get the answer for it, even if they can't contact the person who's in charge of it?

Yeah, I think we have it, but we don't have it on a, On a paper. It's actually a part of the workflow. It's actually part of the automated workflow. So the documentation is the automation, the way we automate things allow us to actually, you know, also document them. Because, and I talk about this on the third step, which is refine and iterate. But basically what you do is like you build systems and you refine and iterate them. But the most important part is looking at the numbers, like metrics and KPIs, so to see how things are going. And with the onboarding example, like how long it takes for the, for example, all the signatures to be completed or if on the first day everyone gets their accounts and hardware ready before even they start the work, or all the, you know, healthcare or benefits ready when they start working for the company. So.

You look at those things by kind of like reports and logs and the emails you receive are providing documentation about how things are going. And when you automate things, you kind of need to do that, because when you do things manually, you can see them. But when things are automated, you need to be aware what's going on with your systems. And basically you are building Systems and those SOPs are kind of your system. Right? You have a system how things work and you document them. But when things are automated, those automations, like those definitions, like you have the Zapier rules like zaps. So you know, those are your documentations actually and it's just easier to change them. But they're documented there and you know what's happening there. And if you're on vacation, someone else can log into Zapier and you know, look at those rules and find out how things work and improve them if necessary. So you still have the documentation but it's not on the binder? Yeah.

That's awesome. And do you have a specific system you're using for the digital sops?

So it's, it depends on the products you use.

For example, on, on the hr, we use bamboohr and when we go log into bamboohr we can actually see all the kind of all, all the steps that people take during the onboarding. So there are like hundreds of steps like sign this document, like send this email, like create this to do for this person so that you know, the person who is responsible for ordering the hardware receives a to do item. And even the, you know, the, the manager of the person who is going to be hired, they are, they are notified about their, when they are starting out, for example. So everything is documented there and you can actually look at that and see it. And for example.

So we came up with this product that we call Jotform Apps. And the reason we came up with Jotform Apps is because like we have so many forms that we use within the company. If someone makes a request that within the company from, it could be from hr, it could be from like the office managers, it could be from, you know, different departments or someone might want to request training, going to a conference, things like that time off. So all those things we had forms. But the problem was that we were constantly asking what was the URL for that form? And then we decided, okay, why don't we create a product.

So that we can actually create apps from that involve our forms. We could put all the forms in it. And when we go, when we, you know, we can, we can also install these apps in our mobile phones and when we, when we log into them, an employee, when an employee login logs into them, they can actually see all the forms. And we also added features so that you can also add like links. So it doesn't have to be all forms. Like you can add a link to a Google Docs document if you want to just provide information. So, and this really helped us because now employees can, can just, you know, they need to request something. They could, they, they could just use their mobile phone, log into and they're already logged in to, to their account. We call this JotForms app. And you can actually, you know, you can use Jotform apps to create apps and give, give your own names. So they can, they can go log into JotFormers app and then they can actually fill one of the forms to request something. And we automated everything. And the great thing is they can actually find like 20, 30 different options forms or like information in within the app. And this also gives them information. So it's not just like, hey, I'm looking for this form. It's also like when they look at all the list of things they can do, oh, okay, I can actually go to a conference. So Jotform allows me to go to a conference. So and then they find a conference and then they log into JotForms app and then they request to go to a conference. And that also.

Involves a workflow. We also implemented workflow, of course, like all these automation ideas that I have been applying and using, I actually also implemented them in our product within JotForm.

So you're making them available too.

So if someone requests to go to a conference, their manager can actually review that and approve that and that information that triggers an email to the person who is arranging all these conferences. And that sounds really streamlined. Yeah, so it's just like there's just so many possibilities with automation that many things that has been. And this also makes, it makes things easier and gives people, you know, more reasons to do things. Like, you know, if they want to go to a conference, like, they might be afraid to ask about it, but when they see it on the, on the jformers app, they see that it's a possibility and it's just, you know, encourages.

Yeah, it's empowering them. Because I can imagine that, you know, depending on how many bosses you have, you might not always like, well, I don't know. I don't know. When you're empowering them to go, please ask, here's what's available. Who wouldn't want to go? And I would see it from, you know, the CEO standpoint of if you have people that are constantly asking to go and truly learn versus someone who has never asked in 12 months, that more data that probably tells you something, right?

Exactly. And the great thing about automation, you can also automate like reminders. For example, you know, people forget we have this rule that you know, everyone in the company, managers and everyone in the company have one on one meetings at least once a month. And those one on one meetings are also tracked by like forms. So you, you, when a manager has, has a meeting with, with, with someone, they can actually fill a form and then, you know, notify that they had their one on one. And if everything is good, they can, if, if that person requests something, you know, they can also enter that there. But the great thing about this is like we can also send them a reminder email. Hey, this mount, you forgot to do your, you know, your one on one meeting. And those kind of features are kind of it's. And in the book I talk about like how automation is not just like, it's actually good for like things like, you know, memory, you know, peace of mind. And I actually talk about like different things like, you know, how you can automate your memory, how you can automate your communication, how you can automate your peace of mind, creativity, growth and happiness. So there are like different kind of.

You know, examples in the book about how you can actually, you know, automate these things and just, you know, automation is not just something you do as your, for your business processes. It can also help you on things that you really care about.

And that's what's most important. Getting being empowered, having a more enriched life, having more of that time, freedom. We were talking about family, if we didn't mention it in the episode, we were talking about about it right when we were getting ready. And I, you know what, we're in agreement with that. That's what's more important than sitting there doing.

I don't want to make anyone feel bad, but just stuff that's not that you are sharing so much great stuff. I wish we had like all the time in the world because I have no less than a dozen more questions to ask you, but I'm going to just go with one. Well, one and a half. You have to pick yellow or black. This is the wheel of whatever. And I'm going to ask you a question that literally is whatever you said yellow.

Yeah.

All right, look at that one. That's a good. See the question there?

There's nothing there. I.

It's just fun because it is a wheel. I almost did put questions. I didn't want to get pigeonholed. So with all the great stuff you're sharing about work and automation, I want to flip it and go, all right, tell us about your nights and weekends. What do you like to do for fun with family, friends on a personal side.

So now that I had my third child.

Yeah.

You know, nighttime weekends are pretty much all about the kids. So I have two kids, two boys, six and eight. And usually my weekends are like with them and, and I now have like a four month old girl.

Congratulations.

Thank you. So yeah, my nights are also with the, with the baby and stuff. So it's just, it's. I have a lot of busy work with, with the kids when. But I enjoy every single second of it. Yeah.

Let me add on family vacation. Where's somewhere you would love to take them, Take the whole family that you haven't been yet?

Oh, I haven't been banned yet. So I've been. But the kids, I never took them to Orlando and I took them to.

And what's in Orlando?

Like the, the, the, you know, the Disney Town and all the, you know, I took them to the, the, you know, the LA and the San Diego, you know, Disneyland and Lego, but I never took them to, to the east side. So it's just, that's one place I'm sure they're gonna enjoy a lot.

They. Absolutely.

Oh, by the way, there is the Mario World, right?

I think there is, yeah.

Yeah, definitely. You know.

Did, did you take them to see the new movie?

No. No.

Oh, because I know that that came out and yeah, they'll enjoy Orlando. It's one of the first family trips. I remember when I was. You said six and eight, right? Yeah, I think I was eight.

Yeah. Perfect time.

Yeah. You'll have to tell me about it once you take them there, but yeah, you should get to Florida. All right. We're gonna thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori. I went from having an idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling authority. Or Mary Alice, what he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody.

I've worked with Mario over the phone.

And online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to.

Go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. If you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody.

Else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation and is our next video success story. Once Again, that's EA publishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round Egg Ticken. Are you ready to take imperfect action?

Sure. Ready.

All right, Rapid fire. What do I say? 60 second or 30 second or less? Short answers, Whatever you want. First one is what is the fastest path to the let's go with profits today.

I really don't, don't think it's a good idea to go to profits fast. I don't think it's a good idea. I took a different approach. I took the approach to a long term profits and when I started Jotform it was completely free and I want people to start trying using the product and give me feedback so I make a really good product so that in the long term I have a good product and only after a year that I introduce a paid premium version. And I didn't do that before. I really, I was really sure that I had something that people should, you know, can pay for.

You're going to love one of the next questions and I appreciate the honesty. Um, number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

It's, it's easier to stay and not automate things. It's easier to like, it's easier to procrastinate like when you, when you don't want to work on things, you procrastinate and you do the same usual the things that you already know. You spend your time on things like manual task and the things that you know. But I think it's important and the way to fix it is to, you know, take the plunge, take the time to learn about all the automation solutions available for you and find good solutions for you and automate things.

Number three, this is one you're going to love. What's the best way to maximize customer lifetime value.

It's the product. If you have a good product.

That people are going to stay with you for a longer time and you're going to have much larger lifetime value and you're going to reduce the churn. People are going to love your product, they're going to talk about it to others and this will also create like more additional customers with higher customer lifetime value.

I appreciate that. Being a publisher, you know, I got to ask you about books. What are some of your favorite books that have helped you for business in life?

I love System Think Systems Thinking by Donnella Meadows. And this is a book about how the work world is about systems and how you can, if you understand the systems and if you understand how you can make a change by applying force in the correct locations on systems. Like if you really apply, if you apply your force in things that doesn't matter like that doesn't have any effect. That that's not going to really have any consequences. But like systems are consists of parts, smaller parts. Systems have cause and effect. They have like things like feedback loops, leverage points and this book is really good and similar to my book. I recommend reading the real book or the Kindle version because the graphics, the diagrams in the book is also really good. Yeah, it's a great book.

Excellent. Where would you like people to learn more?

So Automate your busy work is available on Amazon.

So you can search for it on Amazon. There's also. I also have a Website, Personal Website, itecontang.com if you search for. If you search my name, I take in tongue. You will also find this website. But there is also like a free, free first chapter on my website that if you want to read it first before you know, thinking about buying it. So you know, I hope you like it.

He gave you the option but I'm going to tell you to get a copy because obviously he gave great value here and he knows what he's talking about. But I so appreciate everything you've shared and it's been a real pleasure and I'm happy to see you're still as passionate as you were when you started all of this. So thank you for sharing everything you have.

Thank you Mario for having me on your show.

You're very welcome. And also I will make sure that's what I was going to say. I will make sure those links are on eainterviews.com so people can go there too. And with the redirects to Amazon, I'm looking at it right here.

So cool. I'm so glad you did this because not enough people are talking about it. I feel that are coming from a place of experience and you definitely are. So with that Expert Authority world, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day. God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethod book.com to get started now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it. If you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com forward/LinkedIn. Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.