Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome back to Market it with Atma, where we share the tips, tools and strategies to help your business be successful. I'm your host Story and we have reached the final series episode of the Build, launch, grow, scale series. So welcome back everyone, and we have again joining us Mr Brian Acosta, ceo of Advent Trinity, to explain to us today how to scale smart and how to encompass all of the new age technology and with a marketing strategy that is clear and defined. Welcome, brian.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 0:48

So I think we should just jump right into the scale phase We've gone through build, launch, grow. Scale is important, but you can't have it without the others right?

Speaker 2: 0:58

Yes, that's correct, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 0:59

So let's go ahead and talk on the first question for a minute, Brian. What's the biggest mindset shift? Businesses need, business owners need to scale correctly.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Yeah. So the biggest thing is that you know, when we're talking about scale, everybody wants to get into scale phase and everybody's anticipating, hey, you know. But I'm just going to talk real like as a business owner to business owner. Right, business doesn't go as planned as always, right?

Speaker 1: 1:28

I think that's always variable.

Speaker 2: 1:30

And the thing is it sometimes takes time to get into the scale phase right, and so we have to put a lot of energy in building and then launching the business and then growing the business. Those are the main three. But scaling never actually works unless there's a foundation, and that foundation, well, it starts with with building right.

Speaker 2: 1:49

It starts with making sure you have the right foundation, and so let me kind of give you an example here, right Cause, um, you have, and we'll talk about this too, like we're going to mainly talking about CRM and AI automation. Um, so a lot of people are like hey, I want to scale because I want, I want to scale quickly, you know, I want, I want speed. Right, scaling has nothing to do with speed.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Scaling has to do with stability. Okay, so you can't scale in chaos. A lot of people, a lot of business owners, that's what they want to do. They want to scale in chaos. But, they don't know they're scaling in chaos, right? Yeah, I mean, they're just like you know. They're like, well, there's a problem here, there's a problem there, right? And the reality is you have to know what the difference between scaling and creating systems to you know. Ensure that things are scalable, right.

Speaker 2: 2:35

And those are two different things, so I'm going to give you an example, right? So everybody wants to use AI, everybody wants to start utilizing these tools, and that's great, uh, but example one how let's just say I want to. I want to do customer support, ai okay, how would you do that?

Speaker 1: 2:50

um well, I would think first a chat bot I would. I would want a chat bot to respond but what are the answers that it's giving?

Speaker 2: 2:56

oh, that's a good point so like and so you can be like. Well, you know it's just generic. No, that's not how it works, right. So you know, building is a true support ai. Uh, if you look at the bigger, you know businesses out there. They're filled with knowledge bases, they're filled with how to's, they're filled with support documents, they're filled with articles, they're filled with videos. So the ai has plenty of resources to do. What To refer back to?

Speaker 1: 3:24

Right.

Speaker 2: 3:24

And so if you don't have a foundation of support articles, support things that help answer those questions?

Speaker 1: 3:31

Your content right.

Speaker 2: 3:33

Exactly your process, your business. Right? You can't train the AI and think of the AI as one of your employees, right? If you can't train an employee, then how do you expect to train an AI? Absolutely as one of your employees, right? If you can't train an employee?

Speaker 1: 3:50

then how do you expect to?

Speaker 2: 3:50

train an AI, absolutely so, and I was gonna say, like the same example for for sales AI.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Okay, sales AI, do you have a cell system? Do you have cells documents? Do you have cell scripts? Do you have? Once again, when people think of AI, it's like, oh, you know, it's just gonna do its own thing and that's just not how it works. You have to train the AI. The ai speaks how you speak, right, and the ai talks the way you talk. Uh, it's artificial intelligence, but what is it referring to? It's not gonna, it's not gonna fix your problems off of just being there, right. So there has to be that mindset change where, hey, before we even think about ai, before we even think about crm automation, before we even think about AI, before we even think about CRM automation, before we even think about automation period or scaling is, do we have a foundation where, hey, even if I'm using AI or a real person, can I train that AI or person?

Speaker 1: 4:36

That's a great point. I didn't think of it as you're really. Think of it as if you're training your staff. How do you want your staff to respond and train your AI the same way? Is that what you're saying? Yep, that's awesome. So let's talk about time now. What are the first processes someone should automate to reclaim time in their business? Everyone wants mailbox money. They want it to work without having to pay attention to it every single day. So what's the first process someone should focus on?

Speaker 2: 5:09

I think you first need to talk about bottlenecks, right, and as a business owner, you need to first think of like what an assistant look like to me, right? There's a lot of things that you could do. What does an assistant do? Well, they call and they confirm appointments. Well, you can use AI for that. You can use automation for that. Of course, excuse me, but you don't have to use AI to do that. There's plenty of CRM automations and software automations that allow you to automate that as well. There's calendar systems that help you manage your calendar. So, just first off, bottlenecks, right. What's bottlenecking your business? Is it, you know, for a small business? Is it you know? You have leads coming in? Are you qualifying them? You know, back in the day we had old systems. Once again, all these softwares are doing is piggybacking off of systems that are already in place.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Okay.

Speaker 2: 6:00

So think of a. I used to work in a gym. I used to work in a gym, so let's talk about the gym, okay. So in a gym, you know, every morning they would have us call and confirm our appointments. Why, like, literally physically pick up the phone and call to. If you schedule an appointment for people to tour the facility, tour the gym, maybe, do a free day pass, you know, get them in, which still works. You still want that personal touch. I wouldn't say, stop calling, but their system is in place already now. Where the software will, you know, automatically email for reminders and it will automatically text for reminders as well, which is funny because I'm pretty sure you've ran into this when you have appointments and your automatic emails get sent out and they think it's really us emailing them.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Absolutely, because we've trained. You've put the system in place so that the automation talks like I would talk and behave.

Speaker 2: 6:53

And it's funny because they're like, oh yeah, he's actually confirming and so I have to reply back. So they'll reply back to the email, not knowing and I'm glad because you know if there's a problem. I do want to know if I have to respond back, but that's not really me. That's the automation in place. Right, you know you have to pre-frame sales calls. There's things that you can do that allow you to take step by step, maybe how to's or, you know, setting up the expectation of a sales call which will help you boost your show rates. You know, for e-commerce it's. So let's go into, like retail right, e-commerce does this, and they've been doing this with AI and without AI Before AI existed. They still do this, which is the abandoned cart methodology. Right, if somebody puts something in their cart, Amazon does this a lot too.

Speaker 1: 7:41

They still do it.

Speaker 2: 7:41

Yes, yes, oh my God, they beat up my emails when I'm like I just want to put it in my car, I want to put it in my car so I don't forget. But then I get emails I'm like, hey, you have something in your car, hello, right, and so just automated reminders to close the sale. At the end of the day, that you're doing to automate and a lot of people when they think automation, they're, really, at first glance, they're all they're thinking about is I just want this business to run on its own. Unfortunately, you know, if you wanted to do that, you have to spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, building the foundation you have to spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, building the foundation.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Absolutely, and to your point, finding those bottlenecks and seeing if AI can help you automate those, I think is a great, great advice to anyone. Okay, so AI is everywhere. It's all the buzz right. So what are the smartest, most practical ways to use AI and marketing right now?

Speaker 2: 8:46

most practical ways to use AI and marketing right now. So the first thing, once again, is knowing that AI isn't just, it's not a magical tool, you know. It's a strategy amplifier, right? So if you're amplifying what you already doing, if you're using it to you know, basically, I mean you can, but if you're doing it it doesn't have your natural voice, it doesn't have your natural business sense, right? Right, and things could go wrong. Trust me, if you put anything into ChatGPT and you don't check it, you'd be in trouble. So, that being said, don't jump into blindly without knowing what kind of outcome you're trying to produce and what kind of AI software. I mean, there's a gazillion. That's not even. I think that's a, that's a word.

Speaker 1: 9:27

There's more coming out each day than I could count for sure.

Speaker 2: 9:31

And some of them are identical to others, but some of them really cool, Right? But a lot of them are imperfect. You know, almost every one of them is actually imperfect. It's just like training a person. Right, they are tools and, at the end of the day, if you, if you don't realize that they're tools, then you've already lost right. But so you have to. First off, what am I trying to accomplish? Am I trying to write content? Am I trying to help myself with email marketing?

Speaker 1: 9:57

Am.

Speaker 2: 9:57

I trying to help me with an assistant. Am I trying to you know I don't know help me with marketing and SEO, am I trying to? And there's, there's AI now that allows us to do like audience segmentation and predictive targeting, like where you know. In fact, it's funny because AI is new to us. You know who it's not new to.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Who.

Speaker 2: 10:17

Google.

Speaker 1: 10:18

Oh, absolutely, they're the ones that spearheaded it, right.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Google their search engine.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Their search engine was AI, right, and so you know. Facebook, it's not new to them either. You know why? Because a lot of their algorithms which is what it is is artificial intelligence. It's artificial intelligence, so you know. Understanding that, understanding, you know.

Speaker 2: 10:42

What am I using this for Sales automation Customer service automation Right. What issues am I using this for Sales automation Customer service automation Right. What issues am I trying to fix right now? Okay, and so often we look at AI, we look at the CRMs, we look at these softwares and we're trying to automate stuff that hasn't had yet a foundation, which goes back again. What is the foundation? What am I trying to accomplish? So the first step is okay, let's actually talk about our goals. Is it lead generation? Is it qualifying leads? Is it helping with show rates? Is it Helping my salespeople? Is it helping my customer service? You know customer support. What am I trying to accomplish here, and is it accomplishing it in a way as if I had a human being? Not, you know, because a lot of times, a lot of people will try to implement AI and people know it's AI and they get mad Instantly.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Because it's not real, Because it's not personal right. So it's all about really how you educate your AI and if it's really optimizing what you need it to optimize right.

Speaker 2: 11:45

And right then, and there you lose your credibility as a business and then, once again, you start to go down. You know people stop trusting you.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Well, 100%, and they won't refer you. So to move to my next question, to jump off of AI for just a second, you often say scale doesn't mean chaos. You mentioned it in the very first part of our interview. How do you build systems that support growth and not stress? Because I'm sure, as a team member of yours, I'm stressed a lot, but how do you support more growth than you do stress with your team?

Speaker 2: 12:15

So you know what is chaos? Chaos is trying to do a lot of things at the same time. You know, I always tell people and I say this a lot to my employees what do I say? I say one thing at a time.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:26

One thing at a time. So you know you want to make sure that chaos happens, but while chaos happens because business is sometimes chaos, but you're growing at the outcome, that is, on pace of what's going on.

Speaker 1: 12:40

OK.

Speaker 2: 12:40

You're always at the outcome, that is, on pace of what's going on. Okay, you're always going to have problems. You're always going to have problems in business. Your job as a business owner and a CEO is okay. What's the problem? How do I find systems to solve those problems?

Speaker 1: 12:51

Right.

Speaker 2: 12:51

And I think that's the key word here is systems. Scaling is about systems, right, and so a lot of people, when they think scale, they think of this automation, but I think about systems, right, and so, uh, a lot of people, when they think scale, they think of this automation, but I think systems. What are the systems that we have in place that will help us elevate our business and processes? Right?

Speaker 2: 13:08

right and then the a, the automation tools, and the software and ai. They are amplifiers of those systems, right, and so what we really need to do is like, in the midst of chaos, you create more systems to reduce the chaos, right, okay, you need to document processes, like I mean, if people don't document things right, how many things do I have documented a lot, right, like it's.

Speaker 1: 13:31

If we didn't have a cloud drive, it'd be scary.

Speaker 2: 13:33

Yep.

Speaker 1: 13:34

We document everything.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Do we have clear roles? Do we have repeatable workflows? Yes, you know, as your boss right, and I'm talking to you like you know, if I didn't have a sales process, a clear sales process, a process of how the customer goes from point A to point Z, it would be very hard for you to sell.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Right. Without that framework or template to base everything off of, it would be impossible.

Speaker 2: 13:59

And it would be even harder for me to set up automation.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 14:02

If I didn't have those processes. So you know, you first have to think okay, making sure that you have these systems in place. Right, Because when you're building out automation, this is what automation looks like, when you think of terms right, as you're building it out, you're setting up rules just for you, Like, we set up rules. If this happens, then do this. So you set up triggers. You're setting the same triggers when you're working with a customer service, when you're working with employees. What are you doing? Well, if this happens, you do this. Well, if this situation happens, you do this. Well, if you don't have that written out, you can't expect to set up automation.

Speaker 1: 14:42

Absolutely so. Are you saying in the growth phase that you need to be paying attention to those things and making sure you have that framework written out before you move on to scale?

Speaker 2: 14:51

You should be in love with charts and diagrams Right Like literally mapping out.

Speaker 2: 14:56

You know, if this does this, this Honestly, if you get used to diagrams and actually charting it out, that's exactly how what happens? You'll go into um, like these softwares like hubspot, chat, gpt and other things of that nature. If this happens, do this. If this happens, do this. And if you're mapping out those triggers, I mean you're basically becoming a expert automation. It's no different. You know, you first once again write it out on pen and you can still use AI to help you. You know, refine.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Right, but it has to have a foundation first. Okay, that's a great point. So how do you know when you're actually ready to scale? For instance, what are some red flags that say you're not ready to scale?

Speaker 2: 15:36

Yeah, so that's a good question. So if you're solving, if you keep solving the same problem over and over, then you're not ready.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Okay.

Speaker 2: 15:43

So, and the reason why I put that as a topical point here is because that means you haven't solved the problem right and the system doesn't work. So the reason why you create systems is for what?

Speaker 1: 15:57

For automation.

Speaker 2: 15:59

For automation, but it's to solve the problem absolutely right. And if it becomes hey, this is working right now, becomes an engine. Now you can go back and look at automation, saying, okay, let me take a look at ai, let me take a look at my software, let me take up my crm, uh, and now let me automate, because we know it works. You don't go into something and try to automate something because you think it's going to work. That's not how it works. You have to test and measure, and the only way to test and measure is by real experience, right, right. And then you know, scaling magnifies everything.

Speaker 2: 16:31

So, including broken processes oh, so you don't want to magnify those broken yes like if, if it's, if, if you think it's a problem now and you automate something that you were not paying attention to, it's a bigger problem, right? Uh, when it, when it's being automated. So here's some warning signs if you have, uh, no standard operating procedures you know, if you don't have standard operating procedures, don't even think about scaling, right?

Speaker 2: 16:57

right, because you're, you're, you're trying to scale something that has no procedures, right? Uh, if you're missed follow-ups and poor client retention, poor client retention, I'm telling you right now, ai, automation, that is not going to be your, your saving grace. Okay, it's, you have to first fix that problem. Uh, bottlenecks and onboarding fulfillment, like you know, people want, people want to automate, but they don't know what actually really works. So here's when you know I'm ready, okay, I'm ready to do this. Everything looks good when you have strong demand and you have a strong process, okay.

Speaker 1: 17:32

Okay.

Speaker 2: 17:32

That's number one. Number two is do you have repeatable results? Is it something that the results are repeatable, consistently repeatable result? Is it something that the results are a repeatable and it's consistent? Now I'm saying, okay, now it's time for me to say, okay, how do I scale this and make this faster? Okay, and then there is it. You fix that what's broken, and now you're ready to amplify it. So you know it's not broken anymore, it doesn't need repair. Now I need to amplify it. Amplifying it is make it, you know, scalable, make it, you know faster. Right, it is make it, you know scalable, make it, you know faster.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Right, it's it's it's efficient. Now, how? How do we speed up the process?

Speaker 1: 18:06

OK.

Speaker 2: 18:06

You know, think of it. You know what? This is a good example. I just came in my mind Boom, this is great. Light bulb, light bulb. Ok, ai and AI and automation and CRM. Automation is the conveyor belt. Oh, okay, now the conveyor belt does nothing. Right, it's the conveyor belt, it moves the product down the conveyor belt. Okay, the conveyor belt does nothing if the people and the tools aren't in the right place to build the product, to build this demand, the product, to build this demand. If you're thinking, okay, I'm just going to build a conveyor belt, but those, those, whatever you're using to build the products or the services or to deliver the product or service, if those systems aren't in place, then you can't build a conveyor belt.

Speaker 1: 18:50

It was pointless, wasted money and time. Right, exactly Okay, that's, that's great. So what tell us?

Speaker 2: 18:56

what are your favorite automation tools for small business owners looking to scale, but scale lean, okay yeah, so you know, obviously we're HubSpot partners, but there are other CRMs out there that do automation. But the reason why we use HubSpot is, you know, because of the flexibility, scalability it has and the features that it has. So you know we use that. We use ChatGPT. Everybody uses ChatGPT nowadays, uses chat GPT nowadays right.

Speaker 1: 19:20

But are you using it right?

Speaker 2: 19:22

But are you using right? Uh, just a shameless plug. I'm doing a chat GPT workshop this month.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Yes, we are, yes, we are.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Yes, we are so catch that Might be doing webinars later out through the year. I'm not sure Depends on how this one goes, but chat GPT is obviously changed the landscape of AI. Um, you know, is obviously change the landscape of AI. You know there's things that you can do with ChatGPT, like you know. Basically it speaks like you, talks like you works like you?

Speaker 1: 19:45

Yeah, teach it the tone of voice.

Speaker 2: 19:47

Another thing, another AI that I forgot to put on here is Motion. You guys use Motion.

Speaker 1: 19:52

I love Motion. It's amazing If you haven't heard of it and you need help scheduling your life, get it guys. So you need help scheduling your life.

Speaker 2: 19:59

Get it guys. So there's Motion. That's basically like a task management AI. It helps you. I'm not very good at managing my time, okay, so there's that. So you got HubSpot, ChatGPT. I mean, there's a plethora of them, there's a lot of them.

Speaker 1: 20:16

There's a lot of them. I can't even think about right now that you constantly stay educated on as a marketing company. I mean, I would assume you would have to, but there are some not to use as well.

Speaker 2: 20:23

Absolutely, and there's some. You got to be careful what you're being sold on when it comes to AI. A lot of them are imperfect, once again, and a lot of them won't work with what you're trying to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 20:34

Right.

Speaker 2: 20:38

And that's the problem too, is that today's age, and this happens a lot in everything that we do. They make it seem easy, right, and then when you get into the software, it's like this isn't what I was expecting they kind of overpromise under delivered Right, absolutely, and you're locked in and you're locked in and then you're trying to, you know, get your money back and you can't but anyways, so really have a strategy.

Speaker 2: 20:56

And then you know there's integration systems like Zapier. Okay, you know, zapier is an integration tool. It allows you to integrate one software with another or multiple softwares, and that thing is using AI now and it helps you kind of map out stuff. So there's just a ton and I mean a ton of software out there and, uh, part of the reason why you need to research what actual software is going to work for your actual company, uh, because you could easily, uh, I mean, just there's, uh, just take a look, and just part of one of our stories too. But just like, uh, uh, just NuvaDesk alone, the coworking space. We went through three different uh membership systems to finally find the one that actually will manage this facility right and we're now.

Speaker 1: 21:38

You seem to stay more educated on what is working for different industries. Since we have a plethora of industries now, which is going to be, my next ask of you is do you have any client success stories that you really where automation helped them scale smarter?

Speaker 2: 21:53

yeah, so uh, obviously, the co-working space is the biggest, like the biggest one that we have, because what we did was we set up the membership system and it goes from point A to point Z. And how do we workflow that? Right, so from the from the minute that they inquire on the Web site to getting auto reminders to come to the facility, to even showing a pre-tour before the tour right, so we automated that. So it goes from one patient there. Right, so you can see the facility before you come see the facility. That way we don't waste time, right? Yours or ours. Exactly, it's like is this something that you're looking for or not? Right? And then, finally, the automation from onboarding and then automating that workflow from the customers being onboarded. How does that work? Asking, answering those questions to the resource center and how the software works, because the coworker uses a lot of software right?

Speaker 1: 22:49

Right, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 22:50

In fact, if you're working and dealing with software, you're going to need automation.

Speaker 2: 22:54

So it brings me to the next customer. I'm not going to say who it is, but the software, right, we use. We actually use ai to build the resource center. Uh, so you use chat, gpt to help you build out the processes and this is, this is how you would strategically utilize artificial intelligence to help you. Okay, um, so you build out, uh, use ai to build out the actual documentation. You use systems like scribe and tango to actually, when you click on different steps, it would walk you through how the software works right and just so you know, that alone used to cost thousands of thousand. You would pay somebody to take screenshots and document everything, basically SOPs for software. It would take, you know, thousands of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 2: 23:42

And now you can use AI to help you do this on your own Right. Let's see, I'm trying to think here as well.

Speaker 1: 23:51

You had a few different ones. I know that we spoke about earlier, but to your point, you really have to do the research spoke about earlier, but, to your point, you really have to do the research.

Speaker 2: 24:02

Well, you know, in the smaller companies, because we have a lot of health and wellness companies under us as well um, show ratios were a problem. Well, show ratios is always a problem, especially when it comes to, like, appointment-based businesses. The first thing you could possibly do is and you know things like calendly and hubspot and all these things that offer calendar systems. They make it so easy to just follow up and saying, hey, just a reminder of your appointment, upcoming appointment. You know it's coming up in one hour or you know 15 minutes, and things of that nature.

Speaker 1: 24:32

Right. So maybe to your point on the second or third question I asked you look at the programs you have now, Look at the bottlenecks you have and see if those programs already have availability so you can optimize those bottlenecks. It's a great idea in my opinion. So pretty much, Brian. What you've kind of gone over with us is the fact that scaling can be overwhelming. It doesn't have to be with the right automation and smart automation be overwhelming, it doesn't have to be with this right, automation and smart automation.

Speaker 2: 25:00

Yeah, just be smart about it and and kind of like a summary of what we're talking about today. First is, you know you have to have a foundation first, right, um, then ai. You know I always people which is really are so, um, uh, eager I would say that eager to get into AI without having a solid foundation and build the system first, then automate it.

Speaker 2: 25:21

You know if that's a key phrase I think we're about to use. Oh, we're about to use AI to edit this podcast. I forgot about that. We are. But build a system, then automate it. Ok, start automating where you lose time, so automate.

Speaker 2: 25:36

You know, for example, now for this podcast, we use artificial intelligence to help with editing, to expedite. You know, obviously it gets back to the video editor and they make sure it's correct and they edit properly, but we, we help expedite that which helps us to then serve more customers, right Cause, you know, our demand is high, right, and so, because our demand is high, we have to help our staff, to help other customers. We have to use AI to amplify strategy, not replace it. So you know, you're not replacing strategy, you're amplifying it. And I'm going to keep on saying that over and over again Use automation, use AI to amplify what you have, not to replace it. Scaling should simplify, not complicate. You know, if it's complicating your business, you're not doing it right, and then you can't scale broken stuff because it will shine faster than than those that are good, and then just make sure that you're you're using the right tools. Do your research, make sure you're using the right tools to automate. So that's kind of what we went through today that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 26:50

Thank you so much for the summary run and helping us understand how to scale with clarity. Um, let's turn it to the audience. Would you like to answer a few questions from the?

Speaker 2: 26:59

audience today.

Speaker 1: 27:00

So our first question that we have on the board is what's the best AI tool for creating consistent social media content that you found?

Speaker 2: 27:10

So obviously we still use Canva, but, you know, canva is probably our most go to. It does have artificial intelligence in there, but we still use ChatGPT to help us with content writing. Make sure they're like, and how do we do it? How do we scale our agency? Because we have lots of customers in different industries. It's you know, one thing that you have to do understand is you have to teach. Part of the process of social media is teaching the AI how you talk, how you speak, what you want it to say, um, and then ensuring that our content writer is obviously checking the content, because chat GPT isn't perfect, uh, so make sure it's grammarly correct, um. And then we use, you know, canva to help us with, uh, you know, different graphic ideas and things of that nature. Um, you know those are to help us with. Uh, you know different graphic ideas and things of that nature. Um, you know those. Those are probably the best tools that I I know for a fact that have helped a lot of people with um, with their social media, um.

Speaker 2: 28:08

one thing I will say, though um, no matter, cause I know we want to scale, and it's easy to get. It's easy to get in the mundane of, hey, I really want to expedite this. Nothing is better than authentic content. So one of the things that we learned was video editing software like Opus, things of that nature, that help us produce this, because this is authentic, but edit it in a way that goes onto the Internet, but on social media. So those would be my biggest things ChatGPT, canva, opus. Take a look into them.

Speaker 1: 28:46

Great one. Social media is everything right now right.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 28:49

So the second question I have on here is can automation work for service-based businesses primarily, or is it mostly for e-commerce? What? What automation is best for what industry?

Speaker 2: 29:03

automation is for every industry okay if the system is in place right okay so you can't automate. It goes back to what we've been talking about. You know I can automate sales if I have multiple sales documents. How you work, I can automate that. I can automate training sales people through learning management systems and getting them onboarding right. So things of that nature people didn't realize. You know, when people think of learning management systems, they think of online courses.

Speaker 2: 29:31

They think absolutely so, uh, and here's something to think about too. Uh, because you have some customers that might be interested in this. Um, but learning management systems. When, when you think of learning management systems, you think, and here's something to think about too, because you have some customers that might be interested in this, but learning management systems? When you think of learning management systems, you think, oh, I'm just going to sell a course, it's going to be CEU, you know, people are going to get credit.

Speaker 2: 29:51

You can use a learning management system integrate with the Internet system right and onboard new salespeople, oh wow. Right, and so like if you have sales training and saying hey, I want you to go through this course for first, then we have a sales meeting. Wow, now you can literally automate your sales process.

Speaker 1: 30:06

Ok that's great points, because actually my third question on here was how do I choose between hiring help and automating a task?

Speaker 2: 30:16

That's a good question. I mean, we just talked about that. So the question to answer that question is, once again a lot of people are eager to replace people, but if you couldn't train a person, you can't train AI.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Oh, that's a good point.

Speaker 2: 30:32

And so I've seen a lot of people that you know they'll downsize because they think they can automate. And what I realize is that and here's the truth is that we see what people don't see because we're managing people's social media, and so we see the reviews coming in, we see the comments whether they're good or they're bad, right and so when we see bad comments, it's like, hey, you don't have a marketing problem, you have an operational problem.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 31:01

And you can't scale that and you can't automate that if you don't fix the customer service first, right and so and you might have a culture problem that we can't, we can't fix it, no matter what we do.

Speaker 1: 31:12

Absolutely so. Marketing and process everyone is two very different things.

Speaker 2: 31:18

Two very different things. Yeah, two very different things.

Speaker 1: 31:20

You can market, but that process it has to have a personal touch.

Speaker 2: 31:23

It seems like I've said this before in other webinars and other like podcasts is you can't out market a bad customer service or bad. You know bad. You know customer experience and it's like I gave the analogy of the gym right. You know every trainer is going to tell you the same thing. You cannot outwork a bad diet, right. And your business is you can't automate. You can't out automate bad processes.

Speaker 1: 31:52

Absolutely. And customer service, not just right now.

Speaker 2: 31:55

I'm going to use that for an ebook later. Hey, why not Right?

Speaker 1: 31:59

The things you'll think about. Well, Brian, I really appreciate you going through every phase of the build, launch, grow scale methodology. And, for our listeners out there, if you're ready to take your business to the next step, please go out to AdventTrinitycom. Schedule an appointment with our team and we'd be more than happy to help you. And don't be afraid, we're not leaving you forever. We have a lot of upcoming guests with strategies, tools and tips to help your business succeed, just as Brian did in this series. So until next time, we'll see you then.