The Dangers of Over-Automating Your Business: How AI Can Hurt Client Experience

[00:00:00:02 - 00:00:11:03]  I did that before with the default calendar, but I had it all, like, reminding me when I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do. But I easily just conditioned myself, like, don't tell me what to do. Pass self.  [00:00:11:03 - 00:00:14:21]  (Music)  [00:00:14:21 - 00:01:06:06]  Welcome to the Entrepreneur Experience. My name is Coach Joe, and we have-- Jared Taylor with JT visuals. Without the eye-- Because there's more than me, CI. And you are with-- Action Coach Kansas City. Nice. I'm a business coach, and you are an amazing videographer that specializes in podcasting. Business solution-driven creatives. That's what our company-- I love how you use words, like so many words together. I know. I don't know how to-- it's like they all are key words. It's like, business solution-driven is combined into one word, but we're creatives. So business solution-driven creatives. There's so many different ways to create solutions for different problems with this. You do it through the creatives. Yep. And we're not a service, we're a solution. We go for the results.  [00:01:07:09 - 00:02:33:19]  There's something you learned today. Change the words up to provide more value just by people listening to it. And SEO just crawls everything, so now it's like, oh, hey. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Look, so we've really been on the topic of AI and automation lately. Yeah. And the last couple of-- well, the last one specifically, I think, was about AI. And then throughout the other season, we sprinkled a lot of AI, because AI's just really kind of taken over. It's big. It's here. Yeah. It's big. It's here. And if you're not on it, you need to get on it quickly. But today-- because there's still a problem with AI. It's ever-evolving. And what we're noticing in most trends, even in the business world, people look at a trend and say, oh, my gosh. We're going to do it. Then there's such a large push for automation, automation, automation, AI, and AI. And then people take a step back and realize, oh, shoot. People still want a personal touch when it comes to business, because kind of experiences everything for retention. It's everything for them paying you. And the business needs to make money. So we want to talk about the dangers of over-automation. We don't want you to think that AI, in general, and automation is bad, but there are times you can overdo things. AI can be one of them. Would you agree? I agree, because one of the things-- my personality, I do want to automate a lot of things. If only I could automate this, I can drag this here, and then it just does it. But I'm trying to get so creative just to get out of a 10-second job.  [00:02:34:20 - 00:02:40:03]  I quickly noticed, when hanging around you, it's like, dude, he has zero automations,  [00:02:41:05 - 00:02:43:05]  but he has the systems.  [00:02:44:09 - 00:02:59:01]  And it was like the people being the system. So then I started changing my perspective of, dude, just jump in, get it done sooner, and you can revamp later. And so your admin assistant at the time was really good at-- (Inaudible)  [00:03:00:16 - 00:03:19:21]  So she was really good at, send an email, when this, or once there's onboarding, keep track of send them a gift here, write them a letter here, all of that stuff. And for me, I want to automate it. But then it's like, well, just-- Well, guess what we did? Just have the human.  [00:03:21:12 - 00:04:12:10]  Yeah? Because there were certain things that just made sense, eventually, to halfway automate. When a client says yes, they want to do it, they click the button, and an agreement gets sent to them. That's easily automated. They assign it, they put the ACH form, we take it out. And then she has to go and put it in QuickBooks, and say, hey, this payment's going to be drafted on this date. Like a manual task shows up or something? Exactly. Like, hey, a manual, like an alert to say, hey, put the banking information in. OK. And then once that's done, it's approved, and she hits a button on our CRM system, and then it sends an automatic like, here's a positioning and once that's done, then it triggers an automation, say, if you do this, then do this. Because you wouldn't want to fully automate, because what if it was wrong on the bill of it, and then it overcharged them? That would be a huge mess.  [00:04:13:16 - 00:04:16:07]  Exactly. And I'm sure we can eventually assume that it fixes that.  [00:04:17:08 - 00:04:26:01]  But one of the things that are important for my business is client experience. I'm a business coach. And even in other businesses, I have service-based businesses.  [00:04:27:21 - 00:04:42:16]  How the clients feel with the whole entire transaction, every step of the way, determines if they're going to leave you a five-star review. It determines if they're going to refer you work. It determines if they will respond yes when you ask them to pay you more for extra work.  [00:04:44:06 - 00:04:47:03]  So there are certain elements where we're like, OK,  [00:04:48:03 - 00:04:53:10]  human touch is way more important than an automated message or an automated thing.  [00:04:54:11 - 00:05:01:02]  But automating half of what we do is things that make sense. Because it really bought us so much time back. Yeah.  [00:05:02:06 - 00:05:27:15]  But I remember we also-- we were starting to think of, hey, let's automate everything. Yeah. Our coach is like, don't do that. Yeah, because the danger is you're trying to-- it's hard to prioritize what to automate first. And then it's like, how big of a task is that? How much time is it going to take versus just doing the thing or hiring someone else to do the thing? And they are the automation. You know?  [00:05:28:19 - 00:05:35:06]  Because I would spend like 10 hours trying to save time by cutting out five seconds. It's like, dude, it's five seconds.  [00:05:36:17 - 00:06:17:21]  There's a different way. Well, in a day and age, too, where you have access to VAs now, you don't have a budget to hire somebody at $20, $30 an hour. You can hire a VA part-time at $8 or $9 an hour and get really, really good work done. I'm not saying we should outsource everything in other countries. But you know, the business is getting started. Yeah, some of the automations could be human interactions through a more humanistic approach because a human's sending an email, a human's sending a text message, a human's making a phone call, things like that. I don't know what's easier, but for a second, I was thinking it's easier to train a human than AI. And then I was like, wait, hold on. I don't know.  [00:06:19:08 - 00:06:37:10]  But AI is like-- (Inaudible) Yeah. But then I've realized you can get 80% to 90% there within the first prompt. And it's so amazing because you get that result. One little modification, and it just goes completely sideways and changes the whole thing.  [00:06:38:11 - 00:06:51:17]  And so I've even done that with custom GPTs where you can type it and tell it to change something, but then it changes everything and changes too much. There's specific wording in there that needed to happen, and now you lost it.  [00:06:52:22 - 00:06:57:06]  So it's like, prompting to train is harder than just  [00:06:58:06 - 00:06:59:04]  manually training.  [00:07:00:13 - 00:07:31:22]  But then humans can do the same thing. You can tell them one thing and then-- OK. There's a challenge with everything because when you're into humans, you're also dealing with emotion that can change and shift the skill based on how they feel that day. Yeah. You can also deal with a skill problem where somebody comes in and they bragged about who they were on their resume when they show up. A total different thing. I think what I would like to kind of address is industry by industry, it might make more sense to have more automations versus less.  [00:07:33:02 - 00:07:48:18]  I look at an industry like the home service industry, like lawnmower, landscape people, plumbers, HVAC. Obviously, what will most have to be automated is the communication versus the actual labor. True. Yep.  [00:07:49:19 - 00:08:25:23]  But even then, I know a couple of business owners who try to over-automate all their admin stuff that even through there, there's things that fall through cracks. There's certain custom things that just need to be done. Where a human emotion is best to assess a certain situation than a computer. And then debugging and troubleshooting can take even more time. Whereas a human could be two seconds of correction. Right. Right. So when it comes to automation, I think that it's an amazing tool and we should all go towards that route. But I think there's a maturity about it to say, OK.  [00:08:28:13 - 00:08:33:21]  We don't need to automate everything because we don't want to take the human element out of certain things that occur. Right.  [00:08:35:03 - 00:08:46:20]  But we do need to automate things that make sense so that we become more efficient as a business. It positively affects our profit margin. And we gain capacity to do other things that bring more value to business.  [00:08:47:21 - 00:09:08:03]  So there's one that we were mentioning right before recording this. And we use a program-- I love this program. I'm not bashing on them or anything. But this is definitely their weakness that they're not human. It's called Opus Clip. And it's really good. It's the best way to take long form YouTube videos. And then it gives you a lot of clips.  [00:09:09:12 - 00:09:24:14]  And yeah. And we start with that. But it doesn't do our protocol. And we have to go in and correct that because it can only take you so far. And then it chooses the weirdest hook. It thinks it's a 99 out of 100 hook.  [00:09:25:19 - 00:09:27:01]  But it's like according to who.  [00:09:29:03 - 00:09:33:00]  Like, yeah, you say it's going to do well. But how do you actually know?  [00:09:34:02 - 00:10:25:21]  And until you push it out there. And then if you push it out there as is, it just kind of looks messy. And the quality of it just doesn't work as good as if you had someone else go in there and put in the best practices to correct it. So I recommend it. But you end up finding yourself being the editor anyways. And that's OK if you're the editor or you're the marketing person for the business. But if you're the solopreneur and you're doing that because it's $29 a month and you're comparing that price versus the other one, but then you find out that you're spending more time trying to finish it and polish it and then post it. And so that's one of those examples of--  [00:10:29:10 - 00:10:29:17]  (Inaudible) Yes.  [00:10:31:11 - 00:11:11:01]  I think what makes automation so attractive, especially to self-employed people that do it by themselves or have a part-time person or a tiny team, where that person pretty much is the business, it would be so tempting to be like, OK, let me automate everything so I can rely back capacity. But if you're not quality controlling how the automation is working, that could really hurt. And then you need someone that's like maintenance. And sometimes that's down on that program we use. And now, dang, that's our whole backbone. We need to be like less reliant, which we are. If something really happened, we have our regular editing program we go to. And we can do the exact same things.  [00:11:12:15 - 00:11:32:21]  Anyways, that's just like, yeah, if you over-rely on it. And it can look flashy because it gives you that 80% to 90% result at first. But you just got to step back to the fundamentals of like, what are you actually trying to do? Well, let's talk about the areas where over-automation can really hurt. I have a client. Not going to mention the name, not going to mention the industry, because I know you're watching.  [00:11:33:22 - 00:11:49:19]  (Laughter) Shout out to unknown. Shout out to unknown. But this person, their skill-- when I assess them as a coach-- I've been coaching them for about four years now with a gap in between, but I think about a year--  [00:11:52:03 - 00:12:12:03]  this person's skill is totally marketing. Their ability to network and build relationships and go to potential clients and make them clients. This guy has the ability to help people make the decision to use our company for a very, very certain-- a home service that's in demand. It's really hard to say. Yeah.  [00:12:13:20 - 00:12:34:05]  But one of the things that this person got so caught up with earlier this year was over-automating email systems to brand new leads and text messages. Because logically, the thought was, well, I could do so much more with automations, and I don't have to spend so much gas and time and energy to go to a place.  [00:12:36:03 - 00:13:01:04]  They had to spend more time on it because it kept breaking? Well, that was one of them. OK. But then number two, because their clients actually valued in-person visits-- Ah. I was like, that more. The automations were amazing. They were getting them, but they won't respond in the same way as if he would show up with a big smile and say, hey, he's the one since he used us. Would you like us to come and provide service again?  [00:13:02:06 - 00:13:36:00]  And so what we realize is keep the automation that's going, pull back, but insert yourself after the third or fourth automation and give a humanistic touch. Yeah. A lot of people still love to do business with people they build relationships with. Yeah. And if you want good results, building a relationship is still a fundamental business that you will always-- Yeah. No matter how robotic things become, a relationship is still something that you have to develop in business in order to get people to use you. Dude, I want to start doing a lot more ugly videos. I've talked about this once before with you.  [00:13:37:12 - 00:14:04:23]  It's like-- and it's ugly, meaning it's not polished. It's just like a video message. But you say their name, and it's very customized just to that person. Very personalized. I want to do a lot more of that, because eventually I'll start losing touch. Once we're at even just two locations, once we're even there, it's like, who's JT? Who's this guy? I want to still be able to-- (Inaudible)  [00:14:08:21 - 00:14:22:01]  Yeah. So it would just be in my-- (Inaudible) Or it's just in my default calendar, because there's so many people. And I just go through the five people of that day and then send them those emails, hey, I just made you a video. Jared Taylor.  [00:14:23:16 - 00:14:43:12]  (Inaudible) Yeah, whatever it is. I want to make sure and keep that personal side, because it will get a little too robotic. And even with pre-recorded videos, it's still cool, because you see them. It's like, oh, this message was for me. But it's different than if they actually say your name, and it's that personal touch is the extra--  [00:14:45:06 - 00:14:48:11]  Actually, I went to a marketing-- actually, no, it was a biz ex.  [00:14:49:11 - 00:15:33:00]  And the guy that spoke was about-- he was a phenomenal marketer. And I think he was one of the groundbreakers for the video message follow-up system. Oh, I gotcha, yeah. So the thumbnail was him saying this, or pointing out a card, and the card said the personal name. And then the technic said, this is a real video. Can you watch it? Yeah. No, for real, we actually made it for you, or something like that. Then I copied it. You did it one for me. Yeah. And I can go to the first one. Nice, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the automations were there, but they weren't responding. So like, hmm, let's insert this human approach to it, even though it's a video, and let's schedule it out. It was me. I was like, hey, so-and-so, look, I know you're busy.  [00:15:34:07 - 00:15:52:19]  I forgot what I said. Yeah. And then two days later, we get that person onboarding. And that's the power of hearing the tone, too. Did you know Tony Robbins, he always does voice messages, even in his emails? And I don't know if it's only that always, but he said that in a podcast once.  [00:15:54:12 - 00:16:12:17]  But it's because he's always super energetic. And if you have that kind of energy, when someone hears it, you send an attachment of a recording, like MP3, or something like that. You could do a voice memo on--  [00:16:14:02 - 00:16:28:04]  you could do it right now with a voice memo app on your iPhone, or equivalent if you're on Android. And then you just hit that Share button and send it as an email. It'll show up as a M4A file or whatever, and they click it, and then it plays.  [00:16:30:00 - 00:16:44:02]  I know it's not always the best on the receiving side, because it's like, where are you in the environment? And is it muted? Is it unmuted? Am I in a meeting, and I'm checking the email, and I'm not supposed to? And then now Joe's voice is going to be like, hey, yo, what's up?  [00:16:45:20 - 00:17:16:20]  But that is less of the worry than typing an email. It just definitely makes it stand out. Hey, here we go. And there's probably a way to embed your voice, too, and just play from there. There's got to be a way. But-- Well, I'm going to figure it out. But you just reminded me, we're talking about a human approach. I stopped for some reason, because I got started doing video messages. I'm going to start doing video messages. I mean, I did, too. It gets pretty-- I'll show you a series. It's pretty hard. I'll show you a series. For my week tomorrow, I was going to be doing a video message content for a new and a full content.  [00:17:19:07 - 00:17:30:10]  Like, that would be cool. The automation-- I had to make a video message content for video. Oh, nice. See, that's how you do it. That's how you lead yourself. And you just-- like, you can build an automation of reminders.  [00:17:31:18 - 00:17:46:23]  And that's cool, as long as you can actually follow it. Because I did that before with the default calendar, but I had it all, like, reminding me when I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do. But I easily just conditioned myself, like, don't tell me what to do. Pass self.  [00:17:48:07 - 00:18:06:07]  (Laughter) I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Yeah. Let's go over what is good to automate, that actually helps. Because obviously, we don't want to dog on automation. That's going to be a large part of having a successful business. But here's two areas that I find automation truly, truly, truly helps with.  [00:18:07:13 - 00:18:53:20]  First, it's with sales. So right now, there's so many people that, when they're out buying, they've already pre-shocked. They've probably used AI to make recommendations. And so when they call you, or when they call a company, they're like 70% or 80% already sure they're going to use them. And price is never truly an issue. If all the other bots are chucking in, can they get to me fast? Are they going to answer the phone quick? Does it fit within my ID? So people have already pre-shocked. Let's say you are a service company, and you get a phone call or a message coming in. Well, you have an 80% chance of closing that deal if you were the very first person to respond. And we're talking within one to three minutes. Three minutes is still already very long.  [00:18:55:02 - 00:18:59:01]  Try microwaving a meal for three minutes. How long is that taking your super, super money?  [00:19:01:10 - 00:19:03:11]  So people make a decision to buy.  [00:19:04:18 - 00:19:17:22]  And then when they inquire, part of the guy that they see to use you is how fast you get to them. Because for them, there's a problem, and they need a solution. Sometimes a solution is whoever the fastest person to get to.  [00:19:19:00 - 00:19:29:07]  Yeah. Now, let's just say you are by yourself, or you have a small team. And there's no way some of those calls can be responded to within-- 0.2 seconds.  [00:19:30:22 - 00:19:39:07]  That's where automation can technically help. There's a couple of ways. There's like, hey, if the phone goes out, they give you an automatic text message. They go down and say, hey, we are super busy, but we still want to serve you.  [00:19:40:14 - 00:19:51:04]  Here's a link to just go ahead and schedule our calendar, or give us this information, and the technician will be with you as soon as possible. That stops most people from shopping around just waiting for you to respond to them.  [00:19:52:13 - 00:20:26:19]  The other automation is this, using an AI answering service. It's so good right now. It's like, hey, having somebody answer the phone so that somebody can be talking to something or someone, whether they know it's AI or not, and it stops them from shopping around. And you can prompt the AI bot to really go as far as you want it to go-- Right. Connect to a human. Connect to a human or buy the product. Those are amazing ways to automate certain parts of your business. It's impossible for you to do something in a speedy situation. And that's great for the frequently asked questions.  [00:20:28:07 - 00:20:34:06]  I do know that on the customer side, a lot of people aren't fans of robots.  [00:20:35:07 - 00:20:39:20]  But where AI is slightly better is it can be conversational.  [00:20:39:20 - 00:22:20:13]  a phone-- maybe it's an outbound call from the business to a potential customer, and then it's just a message like, hey, yo, coach show here. It's not going to be received. You still might get some good thoughts behind it, and they get to hear your voice. But then at the same time, it's just not nearly as good as all the little nuances to guide someone, because I think that's what it's about. It's guiding them. So when AI can guide, and then maybe that guy takes them to a human or to the sale, that's when it's great versus just recorded. I have a client who's using an AI answering bot, and he was able to prompt this thing so well that it was actually closing some real-- Sweet. That's cool. And some people don't even know it's an AI bot. That's the best. Yeah. Yeah. As a matter of fact, he sent me-- hey, listen to this. It was a conversation between him and somebody else. And he said, what do you think? I was like, oh, that person is pretty sharp. Why are you about to hire that person? And he's like, this is an AI bot. I was like, oh, that's amazing. Right? The voice, the expressions, all that stuff, it felt so humanistic. So like I said, and honestly, if that's working well, I see that getting better and better every single year. Mm. Yeah. So that's one area where automation is very appropriate based off your capacity. But even then, you might have the capacity, but you definitely need certain things to be out of it. The systems are best when it's followed exactly the same way every single time. Right.  [00:22:21:17 - 00:22:24:17]  Another area to automate where it's appropriate is your follow-up systems.  [00:22:25:18 - 00:22:36:23]  Yeah. I'll tell you why. Did you know that 80% of the business-- well, 80% of most closes during a follow-up process happens on the 12th follow-up.  [00:22:38:01 - 00:22:51:06]  Oh, OK. So business is a numbers game. And a lot of people stop at two to three thinking, oh, they don't want us because they go to this. Right? But 80% of business that is closed is typically closed on the 12th follow-up.  [00:22:53:07 - 00:22:56:03]  So what that means is how fast can we get to 12?  [00:22:57:21 - 00:23:03:08]  Now, do you have the capacity to follow up with that person 12 times? Probably not.  [00:23:04:16 - 00:23:47:04]  If you're a solopreneur, if you're running a large organization, so what if it's something like you set up the estimate, and for the first three touches, you're texting, calling, and emailing so that way they get it. Right. And then the next day, there's an automated email and a text. And the next day, there's an automated email and text. And the next day, you have your office person call them. Right. You can create the automation between them and insert the next human touch. So that way, it's like a little bit of automation, little bit of human. The automation will be human. How fast or efficient can we get to that 12th touch so that we play the numbers game and see if we can convert? And I have clients starting to do that right now. And they're noticing that their conversion ratio is shooting up.  [00:23:48:11 - 00:23:53:17]  Because they're getting fast at answering. And they're trying to hit that 12th touch as fast as possible.  [00:23:55:13 - 00:24:10:00]  So automation works in those two areas. An area from a receiving side that I've noticed where automation was just too much, and it feels illegal, actually, is like this happened twice. I never actually filled out an application, but I started.  [00:24:11:00 - 00:24:13:01]  And then I was like, never mind, before I hit Submit.  [00:24:14:02 - 00:24:15:03]  Or even next page.  [00:24:16:06 - 00:24:18:16]  And they already had all my info that I typed in.  [00:24:19:20 - 00:24:20:17]  And then they called.  [00:24:21:18 - 00:24:59:03]  I was like, bro, how did you get this? I talked to the person. And they're like, yeah, that's that new thing we got. It's pretty bad. I'm like, no, that's stupid. That's got to be illegal, right? I didn't even consent to the privacy policy and all that yet. I don't know. It's too proactive for me. I don't know if anybody else gets that way, and I'm alone or not. But I don't like the overly proactive on the receiving side. I think people are going to get so used to automation in AI, because that's how things are going. That just like we were in our generation, we started to see certain things that were normal. True.  [00:25:00:05 - 00:25:05:07]  But when I was a kid, I remember it was OK for telemarketers to call at 8 or 9 o'clock at night when we were having dinner.  [00:25:06:11 - 00:25:13:15]  And that was our thing. They would call at dinner, because they knew people were home. I'd put laws in place for them to call when during--  [00:25:15:00 - 00:25:15:07]  Right.  [00:25:16:07 - 00:25:19:19]  It just depends on the generation of what they're accepting as normal now.  [00:25:20:20 - 00:25:31:06]  So you might just be stuck in between two generations. I think I'm stuck in between. But those other ones where it's like, I didn't even hit submit. That's got to be-- Well, yeah, that is definitely most likely a priority. Yeah.  [00:25:33:09 - 00:25:47:01]  But most of the messages I get on LinkedIn are like someone trying to sell me something. And eventually, that's an AI bot. And I think it is. But LinkedIn tries to crack down on it. And for real, you can't-- I already looked into it, and they closed it off.  [00:25:48:21 - 00:25:54:19]  It's like, dude, if people are doing this, and they're getting their leads, and then they're communicating in Sales Navigator or whatever it is--  [00:25:56:03 - 00:26:00:20]  I want to get on to this. But LinkedIn is doing so well at trying to be organic.  [00:26:01:21 - 00:26:03:21]  And so they're cutting off bots.  [00:26:03:21 - 00:26:22:18]  When you're doing things in the bulk, you're probably like, what are other areas where it's like you can actually over-automate, but what is the appropriate amount of automation for? Because you bring a whole different industry to the table here. Like, I'm more contractor as home service. That's kind of what I'm used to, even as a coach. But you have more of the creative side.  [00:26:24:14 - 00:26:54:08]  Probably-- this actually goes back a long ways. But this is just me being really particular. Hitting that pin drop for white balance to color-correct videos. If it's a commercial video, and you want to make it look really good to make it look high quality, and that's the whole purpose why someone hired you, and then you're still clicking the white spot, and that's all you do to correct it, and then mismatching cameras from here to here in those shots--  [00:26:55:22 - 00:27:10:19]  to me, that's an automation when they're doing all that stuff. But it still needs that touch, the verification. So that's something that can downgrade quality on a creatives side of things. What about the client experience?  [00:27:12:02 - 00:27:26:04]  You deal with clients. I do. Many people do that on podcasts. Yeah. What is automation too much with your client experience and shop communication? I don't think I've hit it yet.  [00:27:27:08 - 00:27:30:07]  So I can't speculate too much.  [00:27:31:18 - 00:27:34:17]  I don't think I've experienced the too much side yet.  [00:27:35:21 - 00:27:39:23]  At least from my perspective. Because if you get a no, then it's a no, and it worked.  [00:27:42:19 - 00:27:48:00]  So I've never heard a testimony of, hey, I would have gone with you, but you sent one too many messages.  [00:27:49:11 - 00:27:54:05]  I've never heard that. Nobody ever talks about that. And if it is, it's one out of 1,000.  [00:27:55:16 - 00:29:12:20]  But I do have other follow-up methods. It's not always feeling bombarded, which is like, hey, I'm just thinking of you. You don't want to feel bombarded with your follow-ups. I'm assessing myself on how I shop. And do you ever get emails and text messages? You're like, oh, I'm not in a position to respond to it right now. So I'll just leave it unanswered. Right. But then after the whole day, it's like it's buried between 75 of the text messages you don't see it anymore. So I actually appreciate if it's a client or a vendor that I trust to over-communicate with me because I know after the tenth time, I'm like, I know this. Hey, how are you doing? Sorry about that. I did that today with somebody who reached out to me two days ago. And I had the intention to get back when I was putting my kids to sleep. And this is a very important person. I went back to them today and said, hey, sorry, my kids were sick. But he was texting me throughout yesterday and today. And he said, OK, he knows where to do it. He's just keeping that line open. Yeah. And understanding that it's not about bugging me. It's about just reminding him, me, that there's an important composition. So it's two things when it comes to converting with follow-ups is the decision requires more information if they have not decided. It's just information. Anybody can make a decision anytime.  [00:29:14:08 - 00:29:42:17]  But what's holding them back is they're thinking of something. What are they thinking of? And then so they need more info from you or from something. And then the second thing, maybe they did decide they need the time. And when it's the time part, that's when staying top of mind is the most important. Because that would suck for someone to decide yes. But then the timing, they forget because they're so busy.  [00:29:44:03 - 00:30:07:22]  And then I didn't send that other message. That would suck. So I always try to be the last one to say something on text or email or whatever. And I'm getting my team to be able to do that too for anybody that's a client. We should always be the last one to say something. If they say thanks, then we go, you're welcome. We're the last one. You know what I mean? Yeah.  [00:30:09:05 - 00:30:28:05]  But there's one that I sometimes just wait. And then the next morning, I'll do it just for another reminder. And I don't know if it's a good tactic or not because I haven't seen it work, but I haven't seen it fail. Is on iPhone, when you hold it down, hit Like.  [00:30:30:01 - 00:31:07:21]  So if they say thanks and we say, you're welcome, or they say thanks and it was too late and we didn't see it, then in the morning, I can hold it down, hit Like on the previous thing. And it just re-prompts them just to bring them back to the, oh, yeah, I was going to do something. Exactly. Exactly. That's really good. I don't know how effective it truly is or anything, but it's just a way to stay top of mind. You know? Top is top is top is mind. They see your name. They talk to you. And the thing is, people know. Like when they see your name, they know that, hey, there's something that's supposed to happen. Yeah. Right.  [00:31:09:07 - 00:31:24:04]  Right. Yeah. So sometimes I want to call just to be like, I'm not going to bring it up. They'll bring it up because they know. They know what I'm associated with. So I'm just going to call. I was thinking of them. I'm like, OK, bro, are we going to do this or what?  [00:31:25:10 - 00:31:31:12]  It depends like the relationship. If it is one of those relationships, I do feel very confident. Be like, yo, come on. Let's just make this happen.  [00:31:32:13 - 00:31:37:07]  Like the other day, they're like, hey, so we lose your thing. Yeah. Like we have that different like-- yep.  [00:31:38:08 - 00:31:39:10]  That I totally forgot.  [00:31:40:10 - 00:31:41:01]  Oh, cool.  [00:31:42:10 - 00:31:48:12]  Sweet. Well, there's so many requests for transactions or to collaborate or this or that.  [00:31:49:18 - 00:31:51:05]  Yeah. I have to start thinking and choosing.  [00:31:52:08 - 00:31:58:17]  Where people that I've known before years ago because I wasn't as busy as a coach, I would say yes to everything. And now I have to say no to like--  [00:32:00:01 - 00:32:05:00]  (Inaudible) Which I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Saying no is good.  [00:32:06:04 - 00:32:09:11]  So now it's like I have the chance to say yes to the most--  [00:32:11:14 - 00:32:17:23]  things that make the most sense, basically, for what we're trying to do. Yeah. Like, for example,  [00:32:17:23 - 00:32:29:01]  we were kind of looking at pooling together entrepreneur experience to something bigger. And we've already taken a first step for that. So he's got his-- everything's business solution driven.  [00:32:29:01 - 00:32:42:16]  And that's where we pool together. So you've got your coaching and some other businesses, too. You have systems. And like, we have courses. You've made courses. I filmed them.  [00:32:44:05 - 00:32:53:06]  But more than that, we are teaching how to make a podcast and other things. But we're going at it from business perspectives.  [00:32:54:09 - 00:33:09:13]  So it fits within the pool of the school. So we started the school community. You should actually be able to join it. It could be a little bare right now. But it's the free community where we're going to have all the resources and everything.  [00:33:09:13 - 00:33:13:17]  should be coming out pretty soon. Yeah, I already started it. There's a URL.  [00:33:14:21 - 00:33:24:18]  And it's got this entrepreneur experience podcast logo on it for now. But we're calling it-- I'm calling it the hub. It's the entrepreneur hub.  [00:33:24:18 - 00:33:30:14]  is the place where it's discussions, questions, resources, courses,  [00:33:30:14 - 00:33:38:06]  for new updates and things that we find. It's less of like--  [00:33:39:19 - 00:33:40:12]  I don't know how to say this.  [00:33:41:16 - 00:34:00:02]  Usually people say be a thought leader. But it's more about being a thought contributor. So this is the place where everyone can contribute. And we're not just spewing our thoughts and experience. It's everyone's experience. We have a great idea about something. There's a topic that a lot of people are talking about. You know we're quoting like this. Right.  [00:34:01:16 - 00:34:13:19]  Yes, exactly. And we could have exclusive specific events on the calendar on there. So that is-- (Interposing Voices) Yes, no, for real. Actually, we could post it there. (Interposing Voices) Yeah. There's a lot.  [00:34:13:19 - 00:34:15:05]  (Inaudible)  [00:34:22:08 - 00:34:27:08]  I'm just dreaming. This is OK if I just-- OK, yeah, just dream. This is real time.  [00:34:29:06 - 00:34:44:23]  If we started to-- because this is an entrepreneur experience. And restaurants are businesses. Yeah. And we like to eat. And we like to talk business. Eat or drink coffee or other things. And what if we're waiting to feed while we're talking about business? Yeah. And promoting a really cool local restaurant?  [00:34:46:15 - 00:35:11:03]  So it's a really good way. If you've made it through our podcast all the way to here, and you know a restaurant or a restaurant owner, that would be great for this. This is great publicity. They will get clips from this. And to start, we're not even going to charge anybody. Because we think it'll help our podcast and the experience. And then they get to just send their product in.  [00:35:11:03 - 00:35:26:22]  it's kind of like product review, but it's food review. To start, we were thinking of keeping it here, so we can not do all the work to go somewhere else. Eventually, that would be kind of cool to take it to a location. Yeah, it'll turn to a TV show, I think.  [00:35:28:02 - 00:35:40:07]  I think it would. Well, there's some fundamental thing that we have to do. Right. And right now, we have the operation and the cost of this is all included. So now we're just adding a food item. So if you got a bakery or like--  [00:35:42:00 - 00:35:59:07]  yeah. If you have something you want to send in, we would be happy to give the entrepreneur experience thoughts about that. Also, if there's topics in business you want us to talk about, coming up with a topic to talk about is always the easiest and hardest thing to do.  [00:36:01:00 - 00:36:04:15]  Once we know it, we try to say what's relevant right now. Right.  [00:36:05:15 - 00:36:22:07]  We also are looking for if you want to be featured here in person, or you want your business to be featured, we're starting to take sponsors and people who want to be here or sponsor a commercial. Yes. And it's still very, very affordable. The investment's still very affordable right now.  [00:36:23:09 - 00:36:29:09]  We're starting to get pretty big. I mean, we're getting a lot of followers, a lot of interactions on all platforms-- YouTube, Spotify,  [00:36:30:12 - 00:36:37:09]  Apple. So our plan is to continue doing this as long as it takes for us to become a well-known podcast.  [00:36:39:04 - 00:37:01:01]  We've already beat a lot of odds. Crossed over 600 on YouTube alone. That's cool. Be part of the first 1K. And then once we get to like 50K, we'll reward their original 1K or something. But the cool thing about the first 1K, we're noticing that it's still a lot more than noise. So two really freaky things happened in San Diego.  [00:37:02:03 - 00:37:06:14]  I went to a restaurant, and the owner was an old client of mine.  [00:37:07:20 - 00:37:14:20]  Don't even know how often they're interacting with any of my content. And he's like, dude, I watch your podcast every single time.  [00:37:15:20 - 00:37:20:04]  Nice. And his team also watched them watch. So yeah, you're the podcast guy.  [00:37:21:11 - 00:37:38:15]  Here in Kansas City, I was walking in my office. And there's some shared office areas that even if you're not renting from there, you can rent the conference room. And I got stopped by a company that doesn't even rent, but they were renting a conference room for just a training from the day. Really? Hey, Joey, podcast. Really?  [00:37:39:17 - 00:37:40:04]  That's cool.  [00:37:41:17 - 00:39:45:20]  We know that who's following us right now are a lot of locals. So even with $600 to $1,000, it's still a good-- $600 local is good. Yeah. And the first $1,000 is typically-- that's what we were shooting for. We're not trying to get super big so fast. We still want local viewers, because if you want to showcase your business here, and we met you, and we think you're relevant, making a financial and even in-person investment needs to be worth it. Yeah. It's already starting to pan out for a lot of people that we've already been advertising for. So you can sponsor the show, and then we'll give you the video clip. And then you can use that however you want, which is the whole other value for it, because it's not like, well, how many listeners and how many people are going to see it, and what are your-- look, you're going to get a freaking awesome video of someone that's not even you. So it's like getting the influencer recommendation as well, that you can run as your ads, and you don't have to fake a podcast to make a good ad creative. So it's actually cheap. Yeah. Podcasts are trending, and we're finding that people are faking podcasts for commercial-- Right. And it's still working. This is a real podcast, and other people there. So people are starting to look at you like an authority in the industry. Right. And that's what podcast does. Yeah. And then not just sponsorships, but if you want to be a guest, we do have paid guest opportunities. And I do have to say that if you are a guest, you get so much more out of it than just sponsoring. So come be a guest, and then your face is there. If you do marketing material, if you need to show yourself more to get out there, then going around and being a guest on podcasts is actually really good. Yeah. I agree. It's good stuff. So anyways, guys, don't over-automate, but understand the power of automation and client touch. Those two things together, it's magic. And as AI is developing and evolving, let's keep up with that, right? Yeah. Stay personal and stand out. Yeah.  [00:39:47:00 - 00:39:49:22]  All right. Stay strong. And keep on keeping on.  [00:39:49:22 - 00:39:54:09]