A critical factor that sets successful entrepreneurs apart, is their ability to streamline business processes. These processes can be recorded by a team member, but what if you could save money by “hiring” automation and technology instead?
While this sounds appealing, it can be difficult to understand the right kind of systems and software to use, and how to leverage the tools you already have in place.
In this episode, I’m going to summarise the conversation I had with Chris L. Davis on episode 78 – Supercharge Your Business: The Magic of Marketing Automation and share my biggest takeaways.
The most common and yet the most difficult question to answer is what’s the best tool to use in business? This consultative process involves getting clear on the jobs you want done, considering team member’s capability of using the tools, and how these tools can generate more revenue for the business.
This episode, alongside the full episode with Chris L. Davis, will equip you with the knowledge and insights needed to make informed decisions about incorporating technology and automation into your business operations. These tools may be the key to unlocking massive potential for your business growth and success.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL FIND OUT…
- Why you need to hire technology like you would a team member (03:07)
- Identifying tools suited for your business by writing job descriptions (04:48)
- Why you must separate automation and innovation (05:55)
- The impact of investing in revenue generating tools (07:20)
- Specialised tools vs all-in-one tools – which ones are best for business (08:20)
QUOTES
“Get clear on the job to be done. From there, picking the tool becomes easier.” -Carl Taylor
“If you can get a good solid, integrated set of specialized tools, you will have a better business output experience.” -Carl Taylor
WHERE YOU CAN FIND CARL TAYLOR
Automation Agency
CarlTaylor.com.au
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
TRANSCRIPTION
Carl Taylor Snippet (00:00):
I’ve got this saying that I like to say is separate automation from innovation. And so if you’re automating a process in your business, automate what you currently do, document the current process that you do, and go and find a tool that will help you automate the current reality before you start trying to innovate the process and improve the process.
Carl Taylor (00:32):
Hello, and welcome back to Entrepreneurs Rising. Well, I say welcome back, because I assume that you’ve been listening. And this is not your first episode, it is the first episode you’re tuning into, let me give you a little snapshot of what this podcast is about. We help entrepreneurs on their entrepreneurial journey, whether you’re in startup mode, or just getting started as a self-employed solopreneur.
Or if you’ve managed to move up into the manager level where you’re now managing a team, or if you’ve managed to actually get out of operationally being in your business and being a business operator, and actually be a business owner, where you’re now a leader of your business with a vision and you’ve got a huge team behind you. Or maybe you’ve even managed to extricate yourself to be an investor.
Most people listening No, you’re probably in one of those lower levels with the aspiration to become a complete business owner who leads a company that you set the vision, but you’re not involved in the day-to-day operations, you can take large amounts of time away from your business. And ideally, you’re moving into being an investor, if not in other businesses in other assets, like shares, property, etc. And that’s what this podcast is all about.
Today’s episode is a summary episode. So every couple of weeks, we interview someone. And when we have that interview, we put the longer episode out a few days earlier, so you would have found the last episode is the full interview with Chris Davis. And in this episode, I’m going to give you the short summary, or some really short summary, it is some of my biggest takeaways or things that popped that I think are worth pointing out and summarizing, in a shorter 10 to 15-minute snippet snackable episode.
So if you haven’t listened to the whole episode, I do recommend go and check out the longer episode with Chris to get all the goodies. But if you’re looking just for something snackable right now, then stick around and listen to this episode.
And if this is your first time listening to the podcast, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. longtime listeners. Thank you for tuning in again, love having you join us. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, your favorite podcasting platforms. And so I’m so glad that you’re with us.
So let’s get into today’s episode talking about Chris Davis’s and mais conversation. Now, there were a couple of big ideas that were really talking about. And we we went on a lot of journey, Chris and I have been in the marketing automation, the mahr tech space, I think we’ve figured out for over 10 years, like 1213 odd years.
So we talked a little bit about some of the history and the background or the tools, where we come from, if you want to know all that stuff, go and listen to a longer episode. But let me give you some of the goodies, some of the goodie that really stood out for our conversation is I want you to start thinking about hiring technology, just like you would hire a team member, I think it’s really easy to go, I’m using a tool to do this thing. And I want this tool to do everything.
Or you know, I don’t want to have all these subscriptions. My subscriptions are crazy. Like in my business, I know we spend over $100,000 a year in software subscriptions, over $100,000 A year six figures in software subscriptions, not everyone has the means to do that some people spend more, you’re listening, you potentially spend less. But here’s the thing like that $100,000 that we spend on software in my company is probably doing the equivalent of $300,000 worth, if not more of a team member. And so I want you to start thinking about software, filling the role. You have roles in your business, and whether it’s technology team members or a combination of both. That’s what ultimately is going to help you grow your business.
So if you start to think of a tool that you might spend 3040 bucks a month on, and not look at that as like I’m spending 40 bucks a month and actually go, I’m getting a bargain employee right now I’m getting a team member who’s going to do all this stuff for me at this crazy ridiculous hourly rate. So if you start thinking about hiring software, and tools, just like you would team that changes everything, you can start writing out your job descriptions.
You know, one of the most common questions that Chris and I get asked is what’s the best tool and anyone who’s been around technology long enough knows that that’s one of the most difficult and challenging questions to answer because the best tool for you may not be the best tool for the other person. So it’s a really consultative process.
So what I would tell you and what I’m telling you now is write a job description. What do you actually need done? What is the role that needs to be filled by this technical roles? There might be multiple roles that you’re trying to use one tool or a few tools to achieve If, but get clear on the job to be done. And then from there, picking the tool becomes easier. Either you can do that yourself, or you’ve now got a really great job description to take to market, to your social networks to a consultant to whoever you need to, to say, this is what I need. And you’ll be able to get far more specific and relevant advice as opposed to just, you know, someone
Carl Taylor (05:18):
going I use this tool, you should check it out, because that’s not necessarily gonna help you. And you’re gonna have to wade through all this just to do my do what I want. Whereas if you sit down and do the job description, and guess what, if you need help writing a job description, use a tool like chat GPT, tell it everything you need done and get it to help write a job description for the for the tool. So you don’t actually have to do it all yourself.
Anyway. So point number one I really want to summarize is hire technology, like you would hire team members, you write a job description, you go out, you go through an interview process, you might have a trial process, right, you try the software before you go all in and say this is my tool. The other thing too, is, I’ve got this saying that I like to say is, you know, separate automation from innovation.
And so if you’re automating a process in your business, automate what you currently do, document the current process that you do, and go and find a tool that will help you automate the current reality, before you start trying to innovate the process and improve the process. If you try and automate and innovate at the same time, I’m not saying it’s not possible, I’m not saying I’ve never done it, I definitely have.
But you’re setting yourself up for a lot more challenges. Whereas right now, if you can just go these areas in my business, I want to automate them automate the current manual process as is as best you can, then once you’ve got that process set up, start to look at how you innovate and make it better, you’re going to set yourself in a far better situation.
You also need to be considerate one of the things that Chris mentioned is you need to consider your team who’s going to use the tool, because very easily, I’m gonna go get this fancy tool, but you haven’t necessarily considered your skill set, have your team is going to be using the tool, are they capable to use this tool? Is this going to be within their ability to take on board, you know, when you’ve got a large team like I do, if I make a decision to put some software in, like, it’s going to impact a workflow of 50 odd people, there’s going to be resistance there, I might think it’s amazing. And I think it’s great.
But to roll it out in the company, I’ve got to make sure I’ve engaged the entire company who’s going to be using it, make sure I’ve got their feedback, understand their skill sets their workflows, and make sure I’m not making a bad decision. So you need to, you really need to consider those things. Another tip that I think it’s really worth talking about is, you know, there’s a lot of tools out there that free. And Chris was telling a story about
At what point does he go from I’m using the free version to now and paying for it. And he found that when he’s happy to do it and say with his clients, is when the tool has made a revenue generating activity.
So I’d encourage you with software that you’re buying, even services like automations, if you’re a client of automation agency, you know, what you want to look for is how do I turn this tool into a revenue generating tool? How do I get it to do something that’s going to generate revenue, because as soon as it becomes a revenue generating tool, even if you’re on the free plan, it’s probably worth upgrading and paying for a more premium tool that’s going to help you to you know, once it’s a revenue generating tool, it’s truly an investment.
And it’s worth paying it, whether it’s five bucks, 100 bucks or $1,000 a month, right? Very tools differ if you’re in b2b, there’s some software that have 1000s of dollars a month, and there are others that are 510 20 bucks a month, we also had a conversation around this whole specialized tools versus all in one. For a long, long time, I’ve always been anti all in one, because 90% of the time and all in one tool is great at a couple of key areas and really average across the board.
There’s been some shifts in probably the last decade in particular, tools like Ontraport, for example, have done a really good job, you know, again, I would say there’s things that they don’t do amazing, but they’ve been able to round out there, they used to be really good at a couple things and the other bits of average, now they’ve really rounded out to I guess the average has changed in the marketplace to maybe that’s a better way of saying it.
But so entrepreneurs are really good all in one tool. Another one go high level, high level is pumping out features very, very fast, and polishing some things and breaking other things. But they do a lot, there’s a lot of things that I would say are quite average.
So there are a number of really good all in one tools out there. But most of the time, just and I go back to the analogy, we talked about that your recruiting team at most of the time and all in one tool while you think it’s going to make your life easier. If you can get a good solid integrated set of specialized tools, you will have a better experience, maybe not better user experience better business output experience. So you do have to balance your your user experience, I get the idea of just wanting one tool. It’s simple for me to think about.
But sometimes you can have one tool like Slack, for example. But it’s plugged into all these other tools. So other do the specialized parts. So for example, if we think about you know, there are social media scheduling tools out there, if you get a tool that just does social media schedule, it’ll probably have deeper integrations, better analytics, a whole lot better than if you go and get a tool. Well go high level has a social scheduling tool in it. It’s okay, but it doesn’t do everything. It all has its own version of like Calendly. It’s okay, but it doesn’t do everything Calendly does Kelly’s specialize in only works on that, until you’re usually better off just integrating Calendly into Active Campaign or something like that.
Now, if you don’t know what tools I’m talking about, don’t worry. And what I’m talking about here is specialized tools, versus an all in one. My personal opinion is specialized tools went out overall, just like hiring someone, you’d might hire one person who’s doing three jobs.
But over time, you’re actually going to hire more people and take responsibility away, you’re not actually going to put more roles onto one person, yet, we seem to do the opposite. In software, we seem to go, Hey, I’ve got these 10 tools, but I’d rather come save my money and just go and get one tool doesn’t look like we do the opposite of what we do with team. And it seems kind of crazy to me, I get it, I do get it.
But at the same time, I think it’s the wrong way to think about things. Sometimes it’s a smart decision to amalgamate I’m not saying never do it. But a lot of the time, specialized tools will win out over an all in one strategy. So it’s just a quick episode.
Today, I want to share some of those takeaways from my conversation with Chris, if you haven’t listened to that full episode, I do encourage you to go back, check out the full interview with Chris, we talked about so many other things. But these are some of the big takeaways I wanted you to get. As always, if you like today’s show, if you like previous episodes, and you haven’t yet left us a rating, please leave us a rating, maybe even a comment and review of the podcast. That’d be super helpful. And if there’s someone that you know, who would get a lot after listening to this podcast, just send them a message and go, Hey, I’ve been checking out this podcast, I really enjoy it.
You’d be doing me a favor getting me in my message in front of more people. And hopefully you’d be doing your friend, family member whoever it is a favor to so that would be a really great win win. If you could share the podcast with that friend, or post it on your socials.
Spread the word. That’s another great way to help us out. If you need any links from this episode or previous episodes, you’ll find that at rising dot show, rising dot show and until next time, keep up the journey.
Outro:
You’ve been listening to Entrepreneurs Rising. Thank you, dear listener for tuning in. I appreciate your time and look forward to connecting in future episodes if you would like show notes or any resources from today’s episode, you can find them at rising.show rising.show you can find the show notes for this episode and all other episodes as well as links to socials and or the ability to reach out and connect with me make your suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep up the journey.
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