Episode 035 - Don't Fear Automation...It's Here To Help

You know, there's so many things that you're doing in your business each and every day that's eating a lot of your time that could be used for revenue-generating activities. I know if you, if you sat down and you thought about it, you listed it all out, you could identify probably things that, that you're eating up over a couple hours a week that if you were to automate that so that you didn't have to do it, think of the time you'd save, but also think of the revenue-generating activities that you could be doing. All right, we're back with another episode of the Content Amplification Podcast. We are in episode number 35. We're going to be talking about automation in this, and we're not talking about like manual versus automation in vehicles. We're talking about it in your business. And welcome to the show, Jodi. It's going to be a fun one.

Oh yes. You know, it's going to be good when you start off with a dad joke.

Hey, it can get really bad really fast. We want to do that kind of feature, dad joke, because I got a lot of them.

I don't know what I just encouraged, do I?

It's all right. Regular feature now. Yeah. So I wanted to come up with talking about this topic because I think it's very crucial. We're 35 episodes in. We've been talking about a lot of content on this episode. Or not on this episode, but in the series and the podcast over the 3 seasons. You know, how to amplify. You know, our guest next week is a ghostwriter, and you know, some really great content in that episode. We actually recorded that one before this one here. So, you guys will, if you're interested in content and copy and writing, you want to check out next week's episode. But we're going to talk about automation, and you've got it. As always, you got a bunch of questions you're going to fire at me, and we're going to We're going to answer them. A little disclaimer, I did ask what the questions were before we hit record, so I do have a sense of an idea of what I want to say.

So yeah, don't worry to our listeners though. I already gave him, gave him a little bit of trouble for doing that anyways. I called him a cheater.

So yeah, well, I don't know, she maybe gave me false questions and then she's got a whole new stance.

Who knows? Yeah, maybe I'm tricking you. But this, this podcast topic for me is particularly interesting because I kind of come from the side of things where I don't really know a whole lot about automation yet. I mean, I've done a little bit of work with Keap or Infusionsoft, as some people might know it, thus far, but I'm still pretty new to it. And so honestly, it was really easy to come up with questions for you for this podcast because I still have so many questions myself. So hopefully the listeners find that a little helpful because I'm coming from the same place they are. So first things I wanted to talk about, because even when I was, you know, in my marketing courses and stuff, a lot of times I associated these types of automations with larger businesses. So I can definitely see why, you know, some small business owners would kind of be hesitant because they would assume that, you know, those features are, are, are more efficient and, you know, easier to implement for larger businesses. So, so would you agree with that or what do you think?

I think the larger the scale of the business, the more complicated it becomes. So as a small business who's starting out, you're actually in a good place to implement some form of automation. Now, the word automation, while we use it, is kind of scary in that way that you think, you know, machines and complicated systems. And it doesn't have to be. You know, in its simplest sense, it's giving some kind of action to get another action to happen. So, you know, best case example is, you know, if somebody was to book an appointment with you online and there were reminders that were sent out to them automatically, that's automation, right? It's simple in it's very basic. Like, we had the action they took and then there was a reaction or another set of actions that happened after that. So that's really what the automation is. And as we go through the episode, we'll talk through different thought processes that you can have in your business as to identifying what could you automate that's going to make your life a whole lot easier. And I'll share a story about how it's changed my business even, you know, 10 years ago when I first got into this.

Right now, along with that, I also— even myself, I'm guilty of it— I am not a tech person. You know, I know Shaun, you're, you're nerdy about that. You love the IT side of things. But I think for a lot of small businesses, again, people who aren't exactly, you know, inclined to be really interested in the IT side of things, they, they think that it might be a little bit too complicated for them to wrap their heads around.

Yeah, and it's, you know, if you want to get into the weeds and learn how to build the automation, that's more of the geeky side. You know, we work with a lot of clients where once you start to think about all the tasks that you do in the run of a day, in the run of a week, in a month, in a year. And you start to write them all out. And you know, if you're a business owner, you know what those are. And if you don't, some time thinking about it, they'll come to you. But then looking at those and figuring out if I didn't have to do them because they're redundant and I have to do them over and over again, but they still have to get done. If something else could do them for me, would that change the way that you operate your business? Would it give you back more time? Would it allow you to work on things that are going to be revenue generating? Yes, in most cases they will. So that idea of automation and just thinking about it, I think any business owner can do that. You know, if you— like I said, if you want to learn how to implement it, that's a different thing. There are people out there like us that can implement it for you, um, so you don't have to worry about that. Uh, it's just a matter of do you want to invest the time into your business to make your life easier.

I, uh, I have to say I had a meeting with a client the other day and the there, there's this moment when a client realizes how much an automation software, Keep in this scenario, can do for you. And oh my God, Shaun, it was like it brought tears to her eyes. She was so excited about how, uh, how, how much more time she would have and how little she had to put effort into those really repetitive tasks that, you know, sometimes slip her mind too. So follow-ups, you know, asking for testimonials, all those sorts of things.

Yeah, exactly. And you know what, time, you know, you're looking at businesses, time and money. You know, you've got the money aspect where, you know, you want to be making as much money in your business and having those billable times. But there are things that are not generating revenue that have to get done. They're using time. You know, that's one simple sense. But then there's also that the currency of stress in your mind. You know, we always had used the phrase, What's keeping you up at night? When you go to bed at night, what are you worried about? Oh, I have to remember to do this tomorrow. I have to remember to follow up with this person or that person. If you didn't have to have those thoughts of worry because you knew that the system in place is going to remind you when the time to follow up with them is, or even better, it does that automated follow-up, how better would your night's sleep be? I guarantee you, if you're like anyone, that would be better. So, You got to look at that type of kind of life change that you're going to get out of properly putting something like this in place.

Now, with that in mind, I think a lot of people, especially, you know, if you think about you as a, as a business owner, your, your business is your baby, right? Like it's something you hold very, very close to your heart. And so I think some people are a little bit taken aback by the idea of automating messages to their customers that they've known for years because they feel like it's not very personalized or it's just very generic, not content.

Yeah, absolutely. And that was a fear for many people. And to be honest and completely transparent, if you don't, you know, properly think through how you want this follow-up or these messages to go, it can come across as cold, especially if you're trying to hide the fact that it's automated. You know, a lot of times, you know, let's say you, you purchase a product or you book a consultation, that email you get back initially is automated. And we've had clients that have actually wrote that in the message. This is an automated reply, but it has a value in that customer journey because it's a confirmation. Yes, what you did is confirmed. You did get it. And now, we've got text messaging. We've got Messenger, Facebook Messenger, and a lot of that stuff can be automated. To serve a purpose. It's, you know, that initial journey, like, you know, hey, you know, thanks for messaging us. You know, tell us a bit about what you're looking for. So you type in a question and the bot will actually kind of look through what you wrote back and pick up some keywords and say, oh, here's some things, you know, that you may be interested in. Maybe it's like, you know, they want to know when are you open. So the word open may trigger a response of like, here's a link to our hours on our website. You know, that's automated. That can be automated. It's a clear input and output of conversation. But if it gets to the point where, okay, it doesn't know the answer, it can say, I'm going to transfer you to the business owner, and then you get a notification. So, a lot of times, you might be wasting a lot of time just responding to those same questions over and over again. Another technique that we tend to get people to think about is How many emails do you write over and over again? You know, most business owners have like a Google Drive or even on their desktop like Word documents that are templated emails that they open, they copy, they paste it because they have the same process that people go through over and over again and they need it. So why can't we automate that? Well, we can. We can automate that so that, you know, you go into your, your CRM like Keep, you get that response, you just apply a tag and that email will fire out to them. Automatically. So there's some automated parts that you can, can easily implement as well.

Yeah, and I guess that's— it really is all about perspective, right? Because while some people may see it as, you know, it's, it's not as personalized, well, you know, how personalized does specific content have to be, right? To— because at the end of the day, automations are not only going to benefit, benefit the business side, but it's also going to benefit consumers, right? Because if you think about, like, you talked about the automated bots in the chat, that could have taken, you know, a day to get a response before from the business owner if they weren't regularly checking their social media pages. So that's something that's going to benefit the consumer. They get the answer faster than they would without the automation. Same thing with the confirmation, you know, like it, it takes the guessing game out of it, right? They, they have that peace of mind. Or with appointment reminders, maybe it completely slipped their mind, maybe it completely slipped the business owner's mind, you know. So there's— it's a mutual benefit, I think, which is what a lot of people don't, don't see in it.

Yeah, exactly. And let me share a story, an actual, like, real-life case study that I was working on where this client was, was holding an actual, like, in-person live workshop. This is back when we were allowed to actually meet as humans in one space. But, you know, people would register on the website, so they fill out the registration, they pay their fee, all that stuff happens. You know, there would be emails that would go out to them leading up until the event, kind of getting them excited about it. And then The night before the actual event, we had a text message go out to them with a Google link for the venue in it. So it's like, here's the directions link to the venue. If you have any problems finding it, just reply to this text. Well, all that was automated up until that point, right? They didn't have to do anything. Well, somebody responds back to the text, then they get a notification and they can actually either call them or respond back to them to that unique situation. So we had people monitoring that texting response and there were people that they couldn't find parking or they didn't actually know which door to enter. So they were able to circumvent what could be a disastrous experience for those individuals by putting automation in place and then having an ability to respond back when it was needed. So that was how— that was an example of how you can automate most of the entire process and still provide a great customer experience.

Yeah, no, and I think that's something a lot of people, you know, you know, they'll see it in black and white instead of, you know, what parts can you automate and then what parts need to be, you know, that personal, you know, something that can't be automated.

For sure.

Something else I wanted to talk about because we had an interesting conversation the other day about brownies that were sent to you based on an automation. And I'm not going to give any more context. I want you to tell your story.

It's funny. I actually was talking to a client today at lunch and I mentioned, I'm like, hey, I can get the system to send out brownies to your clients too. So there are so many additional services that are out there that can integrate with systems like Keap. Now I keep saying Keap because we are Keap certified, but you know, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Ontraport, there's hundreds of different systems out there that you could use and some are right for some businesses and some are not. We just love Keap because we've been with them for 10 years and we know what it can do. So You know, let's say you, you finish a project with a client, or, you know, you finish that engagement and you want to send them a thank you gift. Well, you know, up until any type of automation, you'd have to either keep an inventory of them in your, your office, or you have to go out and buy something, and then you have to take it to the post office and find the right box and mail it, and hopefully it gets there and all that kind of stuff. Well, there are thank you gift companies out there that you go in and you pick, you know, what you want and then when you have whatever trigger in your system, maybe you mark them as closed or you even apply a tag to the record that says send thank you gift, it will then communicate to that company, send them their mailing address and everything, the name, even the handwritten note that you wanted, and they will actually package it, ship it automatically, and then you get charged whatever the fee is for that, that particular unit. So I had done a, a referral to a copywriter in the US on a project, and he ended up working with that client. And as a thank you, I got a box in the mail and opened it up, and it was two gourmet brownies that was there. You know, there was a handwritten note from him. It wasn't from him. The system actually wrote it. And I think I was telling you this— there are systems out there that actually have robots that hold pens and will actually mimic your writing. So you handwrite the note, you upload it to the system, and it will actually recreate that note for you. In the system and send it out. So that's, that's like a top-level automation, but it can all be done. You know, thank you cards, gifts, all that kind of stuff. So you're focused on serving your clients, doing the best you can, and all that stuff in the background that you really want, that enhanced customer experience, let's automate that, right? So maybe brownies aren't where you need to go right now, but if that is something, yes, you can do that.

Yeah, the sky really is the limit when it comes to these automations. You know, creativity is really your only, uh, your only, uh, obstacle that you need to get over, right? There's all kinds of different, um, apps or plugins or add-ons that can, and can do really anything that you can imagine pretty well and in an automated way that, that makes your life a lot easier and saves you time for sure.

Yeah, I want to add to that what you said, um, you know, when you say the customer journey and you may be listening to this and you're like, I don't really have a customer journey. Well, if you have customers, you do. There's a journey they're going through. It may, it may not be as ideal as, as it should be, and it could be enhanced in many ways. But one of the, the exercises we give to any new client who, you know, wants to get organized, wants to automate, wants to kind of get control of their life back from their business is let's take away any thoughts of what softwares can do, what they can't do, and let's build that dream experience. You know, if there was no limitations from the moment somebody hears about your business to the moment they pay the invoice or they, you know, become the client at the very end, what would you love that experience to be for them, right? And let's map it out. And then from there, we then start to chop it up and figure out how can we do each of those steps that are in there. And out of the box, you know, a system like Keep can do maybe, you know, 70-80% of that. And the other, you know, 30 to, to 20%, we have to have other systems integrated with it. So, um, you find yourself sometimes getting, getting, you know, handcuffed and, and kind of confused about, well, what should I, what should I implement to make this journey better? And stop, stop doing that. Think of what is the best journey I want my clients to go through.

For sure. Now I want you to walk me through the, the basic simplified steps of setting up an automation and kind of what to do with, with the software once you have it.

Yeah, so I'm going to obviously talk about Keap, and they've come a long way. I mean, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, I first got involved with them— this is prior when they were called Infusionsoft. You know, they had automated process. It was very linear. You know, you, you did this and then this happened and then that happened. And then over the years, they evolved to something called Campaign Builder, which was allowing you to have kind of branched, kind of automated series. So, you know, if you get to a certain fork in the road, let's give that example, and you want to go left or you want to go right. Well, you know, if you are a new client, you go right. If you're an existing client, you go left. So by segmenting your list and having pieces of data on the record like tags or, or even, you know, different labels, you can then tell the system if they've got this tag, put them on the right side. If they got this one, go left, and that type of stuff. So you can build very complex automations, but you can do some very basic stuff. Like let's say you're going to send out quotes. So if you're a business that sends out quotes, you can do that in the system. So I send out a quote to a prospect and they don't open that email. Well, I either have to remember to come back and check and see if they open it, but the system can identify that and you can say, okay, if they don't open it in 24 hours, let's send them a reminder. If they still don't open it in another 48 hours, tell me to call them. We can automate that, right? Very simple interfaces are in there, and it's called, um, like, simple easy automations is what it's called in the system. Very intuitive to set up. It walks you through it. It's like, okay, you know, you send a quote, what do you want to have happen? You want to send an email? Perfect. What do you want the email to say? So the system is very user-friendly. For doing that. And that's really what we tend to do is, but before you're actually going in and building stuff, you know, start to think about what you want to do. You know, same type of experience with that is, you know, maybe they open it and they view it, but they don't accept it or they don't decline it. They take no action. Well, maybe you can say, you know, if they viewed the quote, maybe, you know, 3 hours after they view it, I want to send them an email with some customer testimonials because maybe it's going to build their confidence in the brand a bit more and the experience. So you can have that happen. You know, that email would not go out until they've actually viewed it and taken no action. So what we're doing, we're trying to enhance that experience and move people along in the most ideal situation.

For sure. Now, I can't help but think about one of my old high school teachers. He was getting close to retirement for sure. And I just remember him saying over and over again about phones and automations and, you know, all those types of things about how, you know, it was making people stupid because they didn't have to think anymore. And I remember our whole class just bringing up the idea of, you know, the more time that people have, the thing, you know, the wider amount of, of area and time they have for innovation and creativity. That's, you know, that really is how innovation happens. Something, you know, is improved to the point where we don't really have to put a lot of time into it, and then we can move on to the next thing to improve, and the next thing, and the next thing, right? So Maybe I'll have to send him the link to this podcast and tell him he got a special shout out. Yeah, I wanted to discuss, you know, the main, the main kind of topic of this podcast, which is business automation versus marketing automation, because I don't think a lot of people understand the difference.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the business automation is not as widely used as a term. Marketing automation has been used very heavily, and a lot of the systems that are out there. Leverage that because that's what business owners are looking to do is they want to market their business. Marketing allows you to grow, allows you to make revenue and all that kind of stuff. But actually hidden in there is automating a lot of the processes in your business. And that's why I think business automation is a better suited term because your marketing is part of your business. But let's say every quarter you remit your taxes to the government. So, you know, if you don't remember that, you can actually build the process to remind you. Now, that's not a marketing task. That's a business task. Or, you know, somebody buys a product and, you know, you have a team member who has to go and fulfill that product or send that product. You know, that automation is a business task. It's not a marketing task. And that's really, you know, the difference between the two. And we just published a blog post today on the 5 ways that business automation can help you grow grow your business. And, you know, one of the, the things in there that I talked about was the fact that, you know, marketing is getting the right message to the right person at the right time, where business automation is getting the right action to the right person at the right time. And that's really, I think, the two differentiating factors between the two is, is one is around messaging. Marketing is all about messaging. And business automation is all about the actions or the tasks that need to get done.

Yeah, definitely. And something I found a little ironic when I was researching specifically business automation, you know, because we touched on the fact that people feel that it's so complicated and, you know, just way too hard to understand for them, is, is that business automation essentially simplifies your operations. So, you know, it's actually the opposite of what people, people assume it to be.

Yeah. And like, let's say, you know, I'll give you this example is, you know, somebody buys a service from your business and, you know, 10 things need to happen in your company. So there's 10 tasks that need to be created. But the last 5 tasks don't need to be done until the first 5 tasks are done. So you could have the approach where it's like, okay, they buy the, the service and you create all those tasks. Well, people start doing the, the ones at the end first and then the other one, so it's all out of sequence. But we build it in a way that's smart, that's like, okay, once these first 5 are completed, then the next 5 are then, you know, issued and created out. So you're keeping the timeline of the way that your team is working or even yourself very organized in that way. So it's, you know, you're not putting the cart before the horse. You're not burning time that could be used to do more urgent things, you know, today that, you know, those tasks could be done next week. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Now, the next thing I want to touch on is, you know, something that I have always found to be the key to success, even in my personal life and, you know, my professional life, my life as a student. And that has been consistency. So I want you to talk about how consistency is improved with automations.

Absolutely. Very consistent. You know, if you want that, you know, it comes back to that whole customer experience in the journey. And people don't remember a business based on, you know, the product they buy. You know, you can buy a car at one dealership. Let's say you're going to buy a Honda Civic. We'll use that. You know, we're not being sponsored by Honda or anything, but I'm going to use that experience here, but you buy a Honda Civic at one dealership and you go in and you're greeted like royalty. It's an amazing experience and everything like that. But let's say you bought that at a different one and it's very cold and it wasn't great. You know, you still ended up with the same vehicle, but the experience was completely different, right? You're going to remember Honda Civic. You're going to remember the Honda brand, how it made you feel when you went there. And when you build a customer experience journey that is consistent because you know that everybody's getting the same experience that you've architected and it's happening, it's not reliant on you remembering to do something on your own. And the more you have to do, the easier it is to forget things. That's where that consistency comes in. And that's where people remember stuff. You know, in the blog article that each and every one of you listening is going to go read, I mentioned the fact that, you know, as a small business owner, you know, you're out in the community all the time and you're running into people you know. And, you know, you can probably relate to this. You say, you know, hey, Joe Prospect, nice to, you know, you have a chat with them and they say, you know what, I'm going to follow up with you. Let's get together. You know, I'll send you some, you know, a link to my calendar, let's say. And you don't have a way to do that other than remembering going back to your office and then emailing that out. Well, you know, using a system like Keep, you have an app, so you could go out to your car after you meet them, before you even started, open up the app, bring up their name, and actually send them that link right away. It's off your plate. You don't have to worry about it. And the fact that they get it so close to the point of when you discussed it, they're going to take action on it versus, you know, days later or even, you know, never if you forgot about it until you run into them again.

Right, right.

So that's why it's consistency, um, uh, in everything that you do.

Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely easy to forget as a business owner, particularly because you have 500 million things on the go at all times, right? So, all right, now moving on. Um, along with the picture you sent me of you in your teens with your DJ business thriving, um, you also sent me your very first Podcast interview that you did, and oh, and by the way, that picture was posted on our social media page on Instagram and it is in our highlights. So I definitely recommend you go take a peek to, uh, okay, to see that for sure. Um, but anyways, you talked about automation and how in your first year of implementing an automation software, you actually managed to double your rent of revenue.

Absolutely. And I want to kind of back it up to the whole experience of being introduced to Infusionsoft prior to them changing to Keap. And this was about 10 years ago. I opted into some kind of lead magnet online. I don't even know what it was. But I got a call from a sales rep and he followed up and he's like, hey, I want to talk to you about our system, this all-in-one system for small business. And I was like reluctant, of course, you know, he's doing the sales pitch and, you know, I'm like, okay, well, You know, why don't you call me back next week and we'll talk about it? Well, next week came and sure enough, he called me back and he went through the thing and I was like, you know, he did about 2 or 3 times and I kept kind of pushing away. And I then went online, I did some research and I found some independent blog posts of how, you know, the software actually did what they claimed it would do. And, you know, when he called back, I took that leap and I bought into the software. So one of their key processes was to be hooked up with this, uh, success coach, and it was a 6-week engagement, and he would help me set up the software and build out an automated, um, campaign. So we did that every week. We did a live, um, Zoom meeting. I think back then it was WebEx or something, but we started to look at what can we build out. And at that point, Facebook was just kind of gaining some traction in our area. And I came up with the idea that I was going to create a very basic sequence of teaching people how to use Facebook for their personal life. I knew that they needed to understand that before they could see how it could be used in business. So I created 10 emails over 10 days with 10 videos, and they were very niche-focused. It was like, The first video was like how to register for a Facebook account. That's all it was covering. The next one was how to upload a profile picture, how to put in your about details. So very much, you know, the whole kind of mini course in there. And I put it out there on a landing page for completely free and started to promote it. So people would go through and at the very end I had one email that said, you know, thanks for going through this series. Could you see Facebook being used in your business? And I had a probably a 68 to 75% response rate back from that email. They would actually reply and say, oh, I learned so much. I never knew I could do that. I'd love to talk to you about helping me with my business. And that was how that one process allowed me to double my sales in that first year is because it was automated. You know, I built it once. It was happening. People were opting in, going through that sequence, and they were replying back. And all I had to do was reply back to them and book a meeting. You know, and back then, there weren't online calendars as easy as there are now. You know, I could have even today built that and had the link for them to book the meeting. And then I would just basically— it'd be filling up my calendar, and I would just have to show up for the meetings and close the sales. So that's how I was able to do that. It wasn't complicated. It was simple, it was linear, it was here's what we're going to deliver, deliver it, and then ask. Um, and I think any kind of sales is, is down to that, is make the promise, deliver on that promise, and even go above and beyond that. And then once you do that, you are in that position where you've been given the right to be able to ask for the sale after the fact.

Yeah, for sure. Now, while you had success, it's also because you understood that, you know, Lifestyle framework. And so for the listeners who don't know about that, Shaun, maybe you can elaborate a little bit on, on what that is, especially with Keep.

Yeah. So Keep's whole framework is around the whole lifecycle marketing and the idea that people are at different phases. So, you know, they go through the initial like awareness phase. So, you know, let's say, you know, you fix leaky basements. Okay. We'll use that as an example. Well, people don't wake up every single day going, I'm going to look for leaky basement. Businesses unless they have a leaky basement. So once they become aware of the problem, they start to go look for solutions. So they're going online and they're starting to search. Now in that case, it might be a little more urgent and they're willing to just call through. But, you know, let's say you have a damp basement. It's not leaking, it's just damp, right? At the current moment, you might be searching for, you know, people that, that fix, you know, damp basements. So you come up with like 3 different businesses in the area, you go check out their websites, and one of them has a free PDF download on the homepage. You put in your name and email address, and it's like, you know, the top 5 things you need to consider before hiring a basement— leaky basement contractor. I don't even know if that's what they call themselves, but right, so you opt into that because there's, there's that fear that there's something you don't know, right? There's that fear that if I just choose another contractor, maybe this one knew something that that one didn't and it would have been a better experience. So you're going to opt into that and you're going to read through it. Now, if they've done their marketing properly, they would have positioned exactly how they do their business in that document. So as you read through, you're being educated and it's their process. It's through that. So people are in that awareness phase and that once they opt in, they're in an engagement phase and they're starting to engage with the idea of how to solve that problem. And they need to be the hero in that story. And that kind of comes down to like story branding where, you know, every movie, every TV show has that idea that there's a main character and that main character is not you as the business owner. It is your client. You are merely just the guide to help them overcome that problem they have. So, they go from awareness to engagement, and then here's where the key part is, a consideration phase. So, this is when they're making that decision, and they're going to make the decision based off many different factors. 1, did you give them enough information? 2, what are other people saying about you and your business? So, that's where, you know, a lot of that social proof and reviews come in. They're going to ask people they trust, hey, who would you hire? 'Have you had any experience with this company?' And once they have that consideration phase done, then you've basically closed the sale. And, you know, it's your sales process. So once they said, 'Yes, I want to do business with you,' how do you make them feel? You know, we're talking about that whole, you know, feel-good experience about it. You know, I bought a vehicle once, and during the whole sales process, I was made to feel great until it was sold and they took me over the service counter and the service person was like, 'Yeah, here's a card. If you have any problems, give me a call.' Right. Felt very cold. Next time I came in for my first service, sales guy walked right by me like he never even knew me. Right. So very poor post-experience that was there. I didn't feel as valued like, like they tried to make you feel when you were there initially. So that whole customer experience journey and that customer lifecycle is we tend to focus heavily on trying to obtain a client And then, we kind of lose a little focus in the serving them. A lot of people do a good job. But when they're finished, that's where most people end. But there's a whole third stage where you have to build that experience as a champion where you want them to go and leave and tell people about what it is that they loved about what you did for them. Because they're essentially, you're releasing your own sales force out into the universe. So, they're going to be that person that's recommending you to other people who have that problem.. And if you spend the time to figure that out and go through that process, and we can help you with that if you want to go through that process, really it's like that, that, you know, the flywheel approach where, you know, the more energy you keep putting into it by giving that great experience, the faster that wheel is going to spin. And, you know, within a couple years, if you're consistent in that experience, coming back to that consistency, you have to put as, you know, least or a little bit less of an effort on the front end to attract new people because the people coming out of the back end are driving people back to the front. And that's really that whole experience. And it's a fun experience to go through when you start to sit down with a business owner and start to get them to talk through their business and what they love about it and what the experience is. You can see them start to light up. And, you know, like the client that you were dealing with when she started to see the automation and what it could do and the amount of time it could save and how the experience could be very consistent, there's excitement that comes over, comes over you.

No, for sure. And, you know, while automation is, you know, one of the best things that has ever happened to marketing in the business world, I definitely want to highlight the fact that you have to be willing to put in the work to really understand that framework and that customer journey if you want to see, you know, success like you had in doubling your revenue from, uh, from automation.

So I'm purposely not going to edit that out for the bald joke from the previous episode.

I was just gonna say, are you getting me back? All right, moving on.

But yeah, I mean, when you think about putting in the effort, you mean that initial— I think your, your customer journey needs to be reviewed, um, yearly at a minimum. Minimum because your customers are going to evolve. And, you know, maybe the way that you're talking to them, you know, like, like full example is, you know, 3 years ago everything was email-based and now the ability to send text messages is a lot easier with these systems and people are opening text messages. Everybody's got a mobile phone. The open rate is much higher than email. It's much more quicker and it allows for faster response time.. So, you know, if you had built this customer journey 5 years ago and you never updated it, now you're still sending out those emails and people are not engaging with it. So you'd still need to review it just like any process or policy that you have in your business. Mm-hmm.

For sure. All right. Something else I really wanted to touch on, just for people who really aren't aware or knowledgeable about automations in, in the business world. What are the most used features of marketing automation or business automation? And are there any that are kind of standard across all industries and across kind of every business really?

There's nothing really that's standard. I mean, every business is unique. But I think if you've got an element of marketing, and I don't really know many businesses that don't, but automating a lot of the initial inquiries that people, you know, come to your website or they opt in for a free resource or a download or anything like that. And then getting them into that what we call a nurture. So, you know, you build out your ideal situation. Somebody comes to your website, they opt in, they read whatever it is you gave them, then they, you know, contact you, they buy, and that's ideal. But nothing is always going to happen that way.. So we look at where can they fall off, and, you know, if they opt in for this free resource, actually, let's take it a step back further. So, you know, they come to your website and they don't do anything. Well, you either have to run more ads or you retarget them and, and that kind of stuff to drive them back with different messaging to so that they'll take action on it. But if they opt in and they don't actually book a consult or buy a product, then they should be in some kind of nurture where you're sending them, you know, additional value. Maybe it's, you know, customer testimonial videos, or, you know, it's, it's a, personal video from you as the business owner, or maybe it's more resources on a certain topic. You know, a great example of this has been, you know, in the financial industry, there was a client who had an initial opt-in. I don't even know what the resource was, but one of the key questions on that form was, if you could take a dream vacation this year, where would it be? And there was like Paris, Disney, golfing, or a beach down south. I think there's like 4 different options. So you would just check the one and then you would download, right? So part of their process is they were also integrating mailouts. So they would send out mail postcards and they had printed 4 different postcards, one with a Disney, one with a beach, one with a golf course, yada yada. And I mean, you can figure this out. The person that said golf on that one question the mail that they got had the picture of golf on it because they know that's what that person is attracted to. You know, the whole reticular activated part of the brain that is identifying things is going to see that in a stack of anything else because that's what they're interested in. So, you know, that's one of the key things is to, you know, build out that type of element in your business and start to think through those processes.

Yeah, definitely. Okay, Shaun, well, that was pretty much all the questions I had for you. Is there anything we haven't touched on yet that you wanted to discuss?

No, actually, a funny story. When you talk about automation, this wasn't a client of mine, but I met this person at a conference for, for Keep years ago, and they were like over the moon excited about automation. I mean, they automated a ton of stuff in their business, and they were brought up on stage and they said, well, you know, What is the best campaign that you've ever automated in your business? And he said, you know, no joke, he's like, but I've automated all the birthdays and anniversaries of my relatives. He's like, I can— I never miss my wife's or our anniversary. I never miss her birthday. It is automated. That tells me I have to go buy a gift in a certain amount of time. So I had it there. And basically, he, you know, he automated all that in his business to make his life a heck of a lot easier. So, you know, it doesn't have to always be business.

It could just be life automation, right?

Hopefully Stephanie doesn't listen to this. I actually, actually, I want to give her a shout out. Remember in the last episode when we talked about, hey, if you made it all the way through, send me an email and tell me and I'll send you a book? Well, I got an email that night and it was from her and she's like, where's my book? I listened to the whole episode and she's like, I was waiting for a shout out. So I do have to give her a shout out in this episode to be the only person to actually listen and send me that email to get the free book. The book is in the mail. I am going to mail it to you, uh, and, and I'll actually autograph it for you too. So just— I'm sure she's gonna hear this, but she does listen to every episode. Yeah, just for clarity, that is Shaun's partner, in case you didn't pick up on it. That's right. And if you are listening and you would like to talk about automating your business, um, just go to our website, bluecowmarketing.ca automate, uh, and that's where you can book a consult for a Keep Automation. Um, it's not a sales call, 100%. We're not going to pressure you into sales. We just want to talk through what your process is and, and really answer any questions that you have along the way, uh, and just see if you could benefit from having some automation. It is not going to benefit us to sell you a system that is not going to be working for you because you're not at that stage in your business. Right, and if you want some social media help, we can do that as well. Yes, we've got— we're releasing soon, uh, whether if you're listening to this currently, uh, it might not be available, but if it is, you can go to our website. It's on the bottom of every one of our blog posts. You can opt in for a 12-week, right, 3-month, what we call a social media, uh, primer. I was going to say incubator, but you're putting together some great content to help people come up with just kind of get their brain thinking about what it is that they could post this week in their business. I know a lot of people we're running into, that's where they're kind of getting hung up is I don't know what to post, I don't know what to do. And there's some great articles you're finding, you're writing the content, you're giving them tips completely free. You can opt into that. It'll come out by Facebook Messenger each and every week. So you'll have that to help you get going.

Anything you want to add?

No, I think that was pretty much it. Excellent. And so we're even now with the bald joke and me leaving that little hiccup in the show. So even until next time. Yeah, she's got a new microphone. If you're watching the video, you can see it. But if you're just listening, she got a new microphone.

So she's all pro as a podcast host. I definitely didn't have it accidentally muted when I when I first entered the podcast room.

That definitely wasn't something I did. No, no, that never happens.

It's just a joke. Yes, it doesn't. I don't know if I'd quite say pro yet, but my voice probably sounds clearer, so that's nice.

It does. Excellent. All right, well, everyone, thanks for listening, and we'll be back. Like I said, next week we've got Matthew Turner, who is a novelist and ghostwriter. So you'll want to stick in and listen to that episode when it comes up.