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294:What Tech Tools Should Small Businesses Use for Marketing Success? · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Kendra Korman.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science, and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kendra Korman, and today I am joined by Tom Altman, and I'm super excited because we're going to be talking about something that I have a love-hate relationship with, and that is tech, because I love how much easier it makes my life, but I hate figuring it all out, so welcome.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I always say you don't have to use technology.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know what you do, I love it.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I know Like if technology goes down like I'm like woohoo vacation, that's it so welcome.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you again so much for being here.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Why don't you?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: So you're a CIO.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Yep, I kind of walked the line of CIO CTO.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I've been in technology for about 25 years.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I quit the radio business to get into tech, learned to be a web developer.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I always say I wasn't that great, so then I ended up being a manager.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: When you can't do well, then you manage right.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: So that took me down the road of working in media businesses.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: I worked for some people and then I got into e-commerce about 15 years ago and did a couple stints with a couple companies there, Got out of that, got pushed out of that and started doing fractional work.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So fractional CTO CIO kind of walks the line from there.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: For me, my forte would be more in strategy, more in the things that go down.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Again, I still continue to be that good manager, but not maybe the best practitioner.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: So it's been fun, especially for me learning a lot about AI and all the things that come with it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: But it's been fun because I've done a lot of SEO, marketing and working for the media companies and advertising agencies.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Along the way you pick up all kinds of fun.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: It's been a good ride.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, can I ask something that might be a stupid question?
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: What's the difference between a CIO and a CTO?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I would say the biggest difference is CTO deals with the software side a little bit more, cio maybe a little on the hardware side more.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: So I've worked at companies that were less than 100 or 200 people, so usually you kind of walk both those lines.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: As things get a little bigger you tend to kind of have to separate.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: All right, interesting.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I know I'm always working on my software costs because they just every year, they just keep going up and they get out of control with the SaaS right.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I mean it's per seat Pretty soon.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, we have two people, it's great.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Well, now we have 10, right, and now?
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: This isn't add on and that isn't add on it.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: We're not using that anymore.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly, we're still paying for it.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe we are but we still have the customers in there.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: We haven't taken them out yet.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Again, I love hate relationship from my perspective.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I love tech, I love shiny objects.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: That's why I would have all the things, because I love them and I love playing with them and I love talking about them and new things.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: But I'm small right, and we can't have all the things, even though we want them all.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: How do small businesses leverage technology to like streamline their marketing, improve ROI, that type of stuff?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: That's a great question.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I think we're moving into a world now where that becomes easier and easier.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Right With AI and automation, it really is becoming something that's interesting.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, you've probably done this before already, but you take a small business.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I know my wife runs a small storage company and she knows that she needs to market.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: So what do you do?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: You start asking her questions.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: You tell it your goal, you tell it who you are, what I am, and then I always like to say interview me, ask me questions, what did I forget to ask you so I can make this the most effective thing?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And then you know, take the best marketing concepts you know and teach me.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: You know, tell me what I need to do.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: And I think this is one of the most interesting things, and that does not mean it replaces experts or replaces anything but boy, when you know what you need, if you think, if you want to learn to do it yourself, and or you need to go to a company and ask for a marketing firm to help you, you can never be too educated, I think in that way.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: So I love that part of artificial intelligence and some of the things that are coming right now.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: They're just so helpful.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: They educate you.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: They teach you.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you've used the Google LM platform, but you can put a whole bunch of information in there and it can help you learn it as well.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: I think it's one of the greatest things that's come around since the internet, probably.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I love AI, Love, love, love AI.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I love, I love AI, Love, love, love AI.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I mean it saves me 30 to 40 hours a week on average, which is insane right, it sounds wrong, but it's you.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Know you to do this.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: I'm paying you to do that.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And he struggled with the value that it would provide.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: He gets it now but he's like I wish I had known more at the beginning.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: So I love that using it to educate, because, no, it doesn't replace experts, but knowing a little bit more about what you want or need going into it doesn't hurt.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've said numerous times if I had a dollar for every person I talked to.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: That was excuse my language screwed over by some other marketing agency who promised the world I'd be rich and retired.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: What I love about it is its ability to pivot as well.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: So if you think about, like, I just think we as humans we're very single track.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I know that, you know I like to wear black t-shirts, I know that I like to drive Volkswagens because that's what I do, but I can't really put myself into someone else's shoes, and I think that's another thing that just is amazing to me is I can say what am I missing here?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: You know, like, who is interested in these things or what's another angle for this type of thing.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: That is something that I was just terrible at.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: I think we as humans there's very few people that are truly empathetic, and I think that's a piece of this whole marketing puzzle that you need to figure out and to just have it be in another person's tone, another age group's tone, any group that you can imagine's tone.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: I mean it's just magic when I see that happen, and the same thing you said with your client.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I mean that's how you learn, I think, by taking it and looking at all the angles.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: What am I missing?
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I just love using that term when I'm trying to figure things out with AI.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: So I was writing a Google response to a Google review for a client, because I was going through their Google reviews and somebody was upset about something and it was like, well, if they used us, they wouldn't have this problem, right.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But I was like, okay, so it gave me a response and then I said, all right, what?
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Like I was thinking I might want to say, hey, if you used us, you wouldn't have had this problem.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And they're like no, like hey, I just said no, I don't think that that's a good idea.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It goes against your, your brand values and this and that, and explained to me why I shouldn't do that.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Now, keep in mind, I was on the fence as to whether or not I should do it anyway, but it was, it was really good.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It's like yeah, no, I don't think you should do that.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: and I'm like thank you, I agree with you you know, I think also to say, hey, how can I turn this review because you know, negative reviews are the second best kind of views, right, uh, so you know how do I turn this over so that, yeah, maybe that person's frustrated still.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: But if someone reads it like, how are they going to read that and say, well, that seems compassionate and the fact that they're replying is awesome, you know it's good, because it's like, hey, we're not for everybody right, like, but you know we want to make it right, or you know, whatever it takes.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's only like so many times you can say yes, but that's not really our fault.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I remember reading actually a long time ago talking about what you're mentioning was a long time ago, I'm guessing it's probably close to 10 years ago that negative reviews actually sold more products than positive reviews on Amazon, because they'd say it doesn't have this button.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, finally, I've been looking for something without that feature, or it has this feature and I don't like it.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Oh good, I've been looking, you know so.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: What do we do when we see five stars?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a five stars, all five stars.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: It's like well, that's just not possible.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I don't believe it, right, until you see, I mean, someone had to hate it, you know, for some reason.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: And when you see that, then I think it starts to be like oh yeah, this is real.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's good.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: It feels a little bit more real.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: So, talking about AI, so Google, notebook, lm, you like that?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: What other tools are you using?
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I'm still a chat GPT guy right now.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I think I just got used to it, using it a lot.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: I'm really trying hard to learn Copilot more and more because it's in everyone you know.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: You look at these companies and so many companies are using Microsoft, so I've just been learning a ton about that.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: I think that their next version is coming out soon.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: I think they're beta testing it now and I think we're going to see a lot of updates there.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I think the beauty of that is or the questions I get asked by CEOs.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: A lot is like I'm scared of my data being taken, right.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: So I love that about Copilot because it allows you to have that world garden already.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: So it's already.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: You don't even have to move your data, you don't have to put it anywhere.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: So we have a lot of talks about that and I think that's good.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: So I think when Microsoft is really good usually at version 3, and when we get to version 3 of Copilot, I'm pretty excited about what I see there.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And then you add in all the Power Automate platform back and stuff, things get really interesting.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I think people underestimate it a lot.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: There's a lot more there than meets the eye.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: They've been doing the automation game for a really long time.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: So I think if you're a Microsoft shop, I think it's something to keep your eye on.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: You know so, I think.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: And then you know a lot of people.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You kind of are in a Microsoft or you're in a Google shop as far as, like your backend goes, and so if you're in the Microsoft shop, there's a lot to look forward to there, and Gemini is doing well too.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: And then my son is into data analytics and data science and he's explaining that he really likes X slash, twitter slash, whatever it is called these days, and he's telling me that it's got some pretty strong skills, especially in the analysis.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Some of my clients that do a lot of financial analysis.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: They like Wolfram Alpha, which has been interesting.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Anytime you have the maths, the maths love that.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a good point.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, I am a Microsoft shop, just in case anybody was curious.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: So I do have Copilot.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I pay extra for Copilot to be on my computer.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I've been learning a lot more about it.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I want to do a lot more with it, because I think that there's just so much I haven't even touched when it comes to it.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: So much I haven't even touched when it comes to it.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: And it is built on ChatGPT, right.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: So Copilot is ChatGPT.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: It's just a different interface.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It's inside your Word, your Outlook, your PowerPoint, whatever that happens to be, and so I think that there's a lot of power there.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So I'm loving it.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: It's very stuffy right now.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: I think if you think stuffier, you'll get the answers that you want.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: But I do like also and I'm not sure how you've used it but the Copilot.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: You can turn that on during meetings and it does a heck of a job transcribing and you can ask it in real time if you had to slip off for a second mentally.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: The other thing I like to come back is it's really really handy when I'm writing emails after a meeting that was transcribed.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, so then it'll do a really good job of that and you can ask those questions.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: There was a detail about this.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: I've forgotten what it was and it'll focus on that.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: And again, like it's just, it learns you and that's what these things do.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: They get better over time.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: So I've been using Fathom as my note taker because a lot of my clients been using Fathom as my note taker, because a lot of my clients, Zoom is their preferred meeting software, so I end up in Zoom and so, yeah, so Fathom works with both Teams Well, all three Teams Google, Meet and Zoom.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: So that seems to work.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: So I definitely don't play enough with that aspect of it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I've got a couple of clients that we do team stuff, but not enough.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: So I'll have to check that out.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: If you record the meeting, then it's all in there.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: If you have Copilot, if you're the originator of the meeting, you can just turn on the Copilot piece and then that will be running as well.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so there's kind of a two-factor piece, but it's really.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: The summaries are really great.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting when you start to use it to kind of figure out.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: The other thing that Copilot's really good at is digging into where your files are and finding files for you too.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: So that's another thing to find.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, you just sold me to spend more time in Copilot because, yeah, where is this file?
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: I am a huge fan of Microsoft 365 because most of us only use Outlook, powerpoint, excel.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: You know we're using like five different tools, but there's like 60 or something in there.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean SharePoint's becoming very, very powerful.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It's ugly still, it's clunky, but once you kind of get over that, there's a lot of features to it.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I use it a lot.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: You know, every time you build a SharePoint site you get a folder repository that's kind of for that and you can add that as a link to your OneDrive so you can kind of have those in your OneDrive when you're in File Explorer too, and to me that's super handy.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: I don't have to go all the way into the SharePoint but I could find the files that I need.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I really enjoy it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, I know everyone's not a Microsoft fan, but you know, the funny thing is is a few of the places that I've worked that had Google Workspace.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Then they end up buying Microsoft tools because they need them anyway.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's the tough part.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: I mean there's no doubt about Gmail is definitely a more superior tool than Outlook, but outside that, the rest of the tools are pretty darn good.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah Well, and I love Excel.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I use Excel all the time and Google Sheets just can't compare in my opinion.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: But that just might be me, Definitely in the larger data sets, but I worked at a place that was a very Google shop and so I learned a lot.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of neat things you can do with both programs, like querying data, more like a database that you know, kind of accessing things.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of advantages in both places.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: But there's a lot of cool features.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: But by far Excel can hold bigger file sizes, which is probably what you're dealing with.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: A lot of the analytics that you might be aware of Very cool.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Well, and I know a lot of people are very concerned about security, I mean, but if you're trusting Microsoft with your Excel and your Word doc, which is your entire business, right, you should be able to trust Copilot as far as you can trust any of this stuff.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I think the hardest part about security when it comes to that the Microsoft platform, or any of them, is cut this term it's used loosely data governance.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: You really have to know who has access to the data, Because right now it's like I would say it's security by obscurity.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: It's seven layers deep into a folder, somewhere that no one's going to dig into, but that copilot does dig into there.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: So you know, if you accidentally left the salary spreadsheet somewhere where everyone could see it but just couldn't find it, chat GPT will or, excuse me, copilot will answer that question for you.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: How much did we make last month, you know?
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: So you got to be really careful.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Security levels or security access is something to be very, very mindful in this kind of AI rule, and that goes for any of the pieces of using any of the platforms that I've accessed.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love that tip because I think people have a tendency to like give all the access or none of the access, and the more detailed they get and the more complex it gets.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: I've seen this at a couple of clients.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: They get really complex on their permissions and and it's like then they forget who has what and they move on and don't need it.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Or someone comes into their role new and they get all of that person's access that they didn't need.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Half of it, it's just yeah.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that happens, you know, and it's over time too.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the employees that have been there a long time will get.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: You know they had sales access.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Now they're having warehouse access, you know, and now we're giving them, you know, some other finance access and all of a sudden they can make decisions and do things that maybe we didn't design it that way.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Or, you know, this is a new person and he's going to be doing exactly what Kendra's doing, so let's just give him the same access.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Well, we forgot that like way back when Kendra also had access to the finances because she used to do accounting and, you know, marketing at the same time, because we only had 10 people then.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: So those are those little things that slip by.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: If you're not careful, it just it'll catch you.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Especially, there's just a little more gotchas in that data security game with AI.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So interesting.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I'm horrible at it.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I'm just like access for everybody.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Here's my one hidden folder.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: But outside of that, yeah, it's just really intriguing because it's very much about process.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: It's really about making sure that you have standard operating procedures, which I love.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Using AI to come up with standard operating procedures, right, like, hey, here's how I do something, and you can even just talk through it, take the transcript of the talk and have it, make it into it if it's really your process, or say, hey, how would I go about doing this?
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: It can even give you ideas about stuff you've never done before which is so cool, you know, if you go into Teams and you click on the calendar view, you can start a meeting anytime with yourself, and that'll do a screen recording too.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: So, like I would take it one step further, because most of these now are able to read and see the pictures on the screen, and it'll take it even one step further.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: So talk your way through it, just like you're talking about, but it'll screen record it, you know, and then it'll analyze both pictures and the audio.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: And then to your point, help me understand where I'm.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Where was I getting caught?
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: How would someone maybe not understand this?
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I'm horrible at creating processes and standard operating procedures, but I'm in love with them, so I can't make them myself, but thank goodness for AI.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Ai helps me out with it a ton and can really assist me in the whole process of it, but I love it.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you create yourself a template as well, then it'll fill in the template from you so you can have them become actually standard.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: We all have operating procedures, but it's nice if they're more the same.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful thing for that.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And then what we're going to find is, as these agents come into play, which are kind of like little bots that we can build for these, they're going to be able to read your standard operating procedures and they're going to be able to execute on them for you.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: It's too awful long.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: It's moving so fast, like it just blows my mind.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: But for those of you listening and watching, like, take notes here, because if you're not using Microsoft, that's okay.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Google has a lot of the same things in there and there's ways to line everything up.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: But I mean there are at least 10 different things that are going to save you hours that we're discussing here.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And I think one thing again on those standard operating procedures is even if you're a shop of one, even if it's just you and your business, start them now, start documenting that so that when you get big enough you can start handing that stuff off, because without them it's going to take you a ton of time.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Well, and you forget that you're maybe not doing it very consistently and you know, yet we're training people, but they don't know.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you're a marketing shop of one, what I would be doing is keeping a list of my top 10 proposals just my favorite 10, and then put those into a folder and use any one of the to your point any one of the AIs to say here's my 10 best proposals.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Now here's the data that I need for this new proposal.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Let's write it like that, or maybe you break it up by subject matter so this is my arcade game clients and this one's my other people clients, and so keep those together.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Wherever your proposals seem to be similar, put those together in your best ones.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: What's my best work?
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: And let's use that as opposed to the first one you found and then copying and renaming it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Hey man, those are beautiful ways that are just really efficient.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I love that, Okay.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: So again, no matter where you're going, standard operating procedures are hugely important, because I think it helps keep you accountable.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Like you mentioned, you might not be doing it consistently.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: There might be a lot of exceptions.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: How do you word those in?
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Should there be exceptions, right?
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: And so how can you limit those so that you can train people to hand it off eventually as you continue to grow?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So it's a lot easier to do it now than it is later.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I will attest to that because I've been in business for over 11 years now and yeah, it adds up all the processes that are in the background, and then how they change is always so very interesting.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: But yeah, AI is just.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: It is so easy to scale and save time that it's unbelievable.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: And I also like to have my system map written down as well.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: So all the tools that you use, write those down and kind of draw lines how they interact, because with that and the processes, boy, you've got a lot of knowledge about your company.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: At that moment in time it's really easy.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Some people are visual learners, some people are audio learners, so that's kind of a way for everyone to kind of see it and hear it.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: It works really well.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I have a list of my systems but I don't have anything where it shows how they interact, which is really interesting, and a lot of my systems don't interact or they'll interact with, like makecom I don't use.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Power Automate as much as I want.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: So you would connect those two.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Then, if there's manual processes, that interact.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: You write them down right.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, what I usually use is these dotted lines, Like if I'm drawing a picture.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: The dotted lines are just manual, but at least I know that there's things that are happening there.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: When I was doing a lot more web work, you know a lot of downloads from Google Analytics was data files and then I process them somewhere else and that would have been a dotted line.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: So you can say that manual process.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: If you're using a makecom, draw a regular line and maybe it just goes one way right.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: It doesn't come back into the system.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So you use the arrows on the end so that you can see that.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: It's sometimes easier for people to see that when they're trying to put two and two together later, Because maybe what happens to me is I tend to forget those little details, you don't write them down, then they just become a new one.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, I forgot to write that All the time.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean as the emails come in.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Those can be manual, but at least write that down.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: They come in via email because a lot of these tools now are really accessing email and they can grab those attachments and then they can press for you.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: If it's not able to do it now, it will be able to do it soon and those are going to be time savers.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: To get one of you Look at AI as helpers right, it just helps you do things.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Proposal time can get cut down from you know you want to make a great proposal and you're putting a couple hours into that.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Well, if you already have the great proposals now I'm using that as a template you could probably get that down to 15 or 20 minutes pretty easily right after a little while, yep, well, because you know what you do and, again, you're involved in that process.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Ai is not yet at the point where you can't be involved in the process.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Like you have to be involved to some extent in the review process.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Like you're not just saying, oh, an email comes in someone asking for a proposal and it automatically creates it and sends it out.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: You do not want to be doing that.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Can I do it?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can, but I wouldn't.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd like to go to draft mode.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly so.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: You just never know.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: But the little research, oh my gosh, the research that I can help you do too.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: It's just amazing.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: You know things that maybe the customer is not doing yet.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: You know, do some competitive analysis for that.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: There's some really great tools for that.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Now some of you guys might be wondering why are we talking about technology when it comes to marketing?
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Well, because technology is at the core of almost everything we do marketing, and traditional marketing too.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Right, because there's still tasks and projects that need managed and all that stuff.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Technology makes it so much easier.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Technology can educate you can challenge, you, can really aid you in your process, and I think that that's so important and that's why I have Tom here today talking about all of this.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: In case you're like, where's the marketing?
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: The marketing is there, like it's taken notes from the client meeting or from your brain, so that there's no lost in translation.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Right, when you're taking the notes, nothing is missed and it just, it really truly does streamline all of the processes.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Again, like I said, it saves me 30 to 40 hours a week on average, which is insane.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Little nuances of meetings or things.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: You just don't want to forget about them.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: I find it super helpful for me.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: My mind is scattered most of the time, so when I can build my to-do list and make my notes from that, it's been super helpful.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: We've talked about a lot of things and I know that you're in the CIO, cto space, but this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I've spent a lot of time trying to work SEO or websites over the years and I think of a couple things.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: I think one when you're building new websites for people, you know we tend to put these development websites up.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: A couple of companies that I worked for had many, many products, so we were in the e-commerce space.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: One thing that I just have burned all over myself is we were building development sites but then we didn't put out the don't index, don't follow on the development site.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: So pretty soon we're doing Google searches and people are like calling because they can't, they didn't know where their order was or something.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: So we had gotten our website, our development website, indexed.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: So people were ordering on the development site and didn't realize that it was that.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Nor did we.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: So you know, I learned really early now is no matter what Google's so efficient these days about indexing websites.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Before you had to beg them to come and see it right, but now it's become so efficient.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: You just got to really be careful of what sites you have indexed.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: That backs up that whole need for standard operating procedures and processes and checklists and procedures that go along with it.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And again, if you don't think of it, AI probably would have.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: What am I missing here?
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: We can automate it, because I had recently built a development site for a client and I had asked the people that were doing the work for me hey, make sure you put that on there.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: They didn't.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: I went and manually checked it because I have the scars.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: But how great would that be, I mean because everybody makes mistakes, right.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: So, like you know, maybe just in your process, have something that goes out there and takes a peek and make sure every week, every day, it can automatically check it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: So anything you can automate that way, and that's something that doesn't need human supervision, right, if it's checking it and stuff like that, you know it's something that you can just take off your plate and not need to worry about.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: But again, that's where that process or standard operating procedure comes into play, because if something ever broke with automation or something like that, you'd understand why it's there.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: I love this.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I could talk to you for like two more hours minimum.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: There's so much value in the tech, especially for small businesses, that will allow us to scale and compete with much larger organizations and allow us give us time to do the stuff that AI can't do that creative thinking.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Ai is not coming up with new things, but you can, and you can do that even better if you have time, and the way to get time is through technology and through automation and all of the wonderful things that it does.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Again, I have a love-hate relationship.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: I get really excited.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I usually hate it when the bills start coming in and I find out how much SharePoint space I've used, which I may have found out this week.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: But this has been an amazing conversation.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I hope all of you guys have learned something new or this has motivated you to do something you've been putting off, aka procedures that you take something away from this that's going to hopefully save you some time and effort.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you, tom, so much for joining me.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate the time For all of you those listening and watching if you would learn something, rate and subscribe.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Subscribe, because that would really help me wherever you're listening or watching, and until next time.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Have a great rest of your day.