Scale Smarter: What to Do Next When You’re Ready to Grow

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You know when you've got more spreadsheets than you have items on your to-do list. You know when you're copy and pasting things from one thing to another so that the information joins up. You know when you're doing all those things and you're crossing your fingers and you're hoping that things work together well then let me just share with you, this episode is literally made for you because here's the thing. What I've seen and what I've learned and why I brought on today's incredible guests is that most SME business owners, most entrepreneurs, coaches, service providers, MSPs. They don't have their core processes written down anywhere. They don't have their customer journeys mapped out. And so when someone goes on annual leave, typically you the CEO, what ends up happening is systems stall and when you come back, there's a whole pile of things for you to come back to and things that you have to work on. And maybe clients are having to chase you or you are having to chase clients, but that's so not good for you. It's stressful. 📍 Your brain is striking cortisol on the daily, so today's guests are here to help fix that. Meet the Experts: Debbie Crompton and Stephanie Bonnie But first, I'm Deirdre Martin Award-winning international bestselling author. I help purpose led founders find, win and keep their ideal clients so they can make their first million without burning out bottlenecking or sacrificing what matters most. And my guests today, Debbie Crompton and Stephanie Bonnie, the duo behind Stebbington, AKA. They're nerds. You need, and listen, after this episode, I'm sure you're gonna be like, I fricking need them. They're proudly system agnostic. They don't force tools on anyone, and best of all, they design human systems that fit the business that you have, and then they wire in automation in the right way for you and your clients. They've literally taken onboarding processes from two hours down to zero minutes for one of their clients. They've pulled teams out of the, who's in the spreadsheet hell, which I dunno about you, but I've definitely been there many a time, particularly when I worked in the bank and they've built source of truth tech stacks that stop the leaks and help scale the profit. In people's businesses as well. So by the end of this episode, you're gonna know exactly how to map your backstage processes so you can pick the tools that are right for your business without falling for shining object demos, you're going to be able to automate what should be automated while. Keeping the human element where it really matters. And the ladies are gonna share how to use some AI agents and learning language models like chat, GPT as a smart teammate rather than a loose cannon in your business. So buckle up. This bit's fricking wild in the best possible way. 📍 Debbie and Steph, welcome to the Master Your Business podcast. 📍 Debbie. Steph, it's fantastic to have you on the Master Your Business podcast. How are you guys? Good. Great. Thank you for having us here. I'm excited. Oh, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. The Tipping Point: Recognizing System Failures We've got loads to discuss today because you guys are gonna talk about systems, and I know I'm speaking from personal experience here that a lot of businesses that I come across, they hit a point where things are working. Until suddenly they're not. Yes. What does that tipping point usually look like for the clients that you serve? It usually looks like sleepless nights feeling stressed, being a bit cross. It's usually that kind of thing where you just feel like you, yeah, basically just stress. It's where, you know, maybe something goes wrong, maybe a client suddenly doesn't get a bit of information that was really important. So then you start thinking, oh no, you know, it's all going horribly wrong. That's usually around the time where you feel a bit like a headless chicken. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's when things start slipping through the net. When a client's having to chase you. Mm-hmm. I find like that's quite a key indicator as well of going and not, you know, sometimes clients do need to chase of course, but when something's like, you know, following up going, are we gonna have this call? Or you are meant to be here, or we do, that's when you kind of go, well, something's right. And I think a deficit is when something goes wrong. That's when you realize that your processes aren't where they need to be. Mm. 'cause when when they are and everything's swimming, that's fine. But if something goes wrong and then it becomes a massive thing, you kinda go, well. Something's amiss. It's normally because there's a lot of manual handling. I was just gonna say, it's probably usually when a team member is on annual leave and that process is like, oh, what do we do? I don't know. Oh shit. Yes. That when things crumble. Yeah. Or, or when there's the bottleneck. When some, especially, you know, if you're the manager, you're the owner. You become a bottleneck because everything at some points, having to go through you, which is again, goes back to the sleepless nights and the stress because everything's going to you. And then, oh my goodness, you're human and you, you get sick, then what happens? It's all about having your processes and systems, and I think, and that's always our, our first bit of advice because lots of SMEs, I think it's like 92% don't have it written down. They don't have the basic processes noted down, and it's not about having a fancy document, you know, for a higher level board level. No. It's about having a practical for the team members, for the team to say, what happens? How does this actual process, okay, they might not do all the process, but where's their bit in this? How does it all link to the bigger picture and how can you deliver a better service to your clients? I love that, Steph, because, I see that as well when I do customer journey mapping with clients, we really map out the customer journey from the client's perspective. You know, you're in the client's shoes and what do they experience as they engage with the business, but then we layer it and we do the processes. So what do you do behind the scenes in the business to deliver that? Experience in the front end, and then we layer it again because we add empathy mapping. So it's a three layered process. But from the processes, like from, because this is what you guys are shit hot at. Right. I know like from your perspective, and we've chatted about this before, Steph, where you are, you're system agnostic. Which I love. And I think that's so important because I think so many entrepreneurs and business owners, they get boxed into the wrong tool. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And , they might start with the tool because so and so was using it and that's how they started there, but it wasn't the right one for them. So when you are working on processes with people, how do you start untangling that tool and software mess? Understanding Business Needs for System Selection Well, the key mainly is to get to know the business. We are really hot on making sure that you're using a system that fits your business, not the other way around. We've run into quite a few clients lately who have typed it into, so just say they're looking for a CRM. They've popped it into Google. One of them's popped up, they've spoken to a salesman who's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Can do that. And it turns out that when it. It comes to actually implementing it. It can technically do it, but it's not doing it for the business. So the thing that we find really important is getting to know the business, getting to know. People in the business getting to know how they think, how they work and then finding the right tool for them. So for instance, you might have a business that absolutely loves spreadsheets and is used to looking at spreadsheets. That's how they work, that's how they think. So there are tools like Airtable that is very spreadsheet. We call it a spreadsheet on steroids. 'cause it kind of does spreadsheet stuff, but it does so much more. So it's not as hard a kind of jump to learn to use it, or you might have people that are a little bit more technical, so they might wanna use something like Zoho that you can kind of do a lot more technical stuff with. But the key is kind of getting to know the business first so that you can select a few different cr What we usually do is sort of give them a, an example of a few different CRMs and then. Have a little go on each of them and see which one feels right to them. Because you need to make sure, if you're gonna be using this system, you need to make sure that you are all in on using that system. So, you know, using demos, just having a look and making sure that is actually what you want and you know how you can use it and you know your team's gonna be behind you because that's 90% of the thing really. We can suggest all the systems, oh, we love systems. You can get your system for absolutely everything, but if you are not prepared to invest that time to actually learn to use it and make sure it fits for every bit of your process map to make sure that, that that is right and it does everything then yeah, you are onto a bit of a losing battle. So yeah, it's, it's really getting to know the business, making sure they're all invested in it and making sure we're picking systems that. Follow their process. So they're not gonna have to change in six months time, basically. That's what we want. We don't want that. 'cause that's, no, and that's the thing, isn't it? Even when you start with the system at the beginning, it's more of the foundations. Yes, you might, might not need all the bells and whistles to start, but start using a system, creating those foundations so that as you grow the system can grow with your business. Mm-hmm. And it isn't one size fits all ever for example, you can have two consultants and yes, technically they do the similar thing, but they might work completely different. There might be, you know, the T's and C's. How are they sent out? What's included? Is it a template or is it a bit more in depth? Is there images? Different systems will have those different features, so it's, like Deb said, it's just making sure you understand the business and your actual needs, which is obviously where the process mapping comes in as well. We love a process map. Yeah, and I mean, I do too. Like, honestly, having worked in bank, right, I've worked in a couple of different banks and even in my own business, some of the banks, it was so fucking annoying because you'd to key stuff into one part of the system and then that part of the system didn't speak to the other part of the system. So you're practically keen in the same stuff again. And like there were certain things. Let's say if I was doing a lending application in the bank, I might have been lending a million euro. Right. And I had to type the same stuff into about three or four different places. Ridiculous. These are billion dollar companies. Yeah. And they haven't got, they're quite often the worst. To be fair, and it's also, the thing with that is it leaves them open forever. Error. Yeah. Like always you say like, it's 2025, you shouldn't need to copy and paste and that's the thing of having one system as the source of truth. So you might have a really great CRM and that can also hold, your clients as well as prospects and everything. But then you've got a project management software. Okay. We integrate them then. So when they become a client, it automatically creates the project. Their info is added in. Straight away. Oh they're gonna be, need to be invoiced again. Automatically add them in. And then you've got your CRM. You can view everything there. You can process your leads through there, but you've also got a holistic point of view of your business in that one source of truth. And I think , that's the thing. Copy. Oh, sorry. I'm like, oh. The sort of having to enter the same D data in more than one system as just like. No nuts. Right? And like those systems not talking to each other, that can be a problem I use Zap, Zapier. Zapier, yeah. I don't even know how you say it, right? I've got all these Zap set up, but I'm like, Zapier is not. A business strategy. It's not a system strategy. It's duct tape and shit together. Right. So I suppose like when you come in and you said Debbie, that the first thing you do is you start to understand what the customer's businesses and how does it work, and then you look at processes. So talk us through what is that first move when you come in? Or if somebody is listening today and they're like, okay, what should I be doing? Where do I start with this? What would you recommend? Well, I had I've got an example of a client who came to us because they had gone into Google, put in a CRM and had HubSpot. So they signed up to HubSpot. They spent an, a stupid amount of money on HubSpot and there were lands buying and selling business. And HubSpot said this agency said, yeah, yeah, can do everything that you needed to do. Turns out. It can't. So what we did was I sat down and learned about all of their individual processes, learn about how land buying and selling kind of works. Obviously at a very small level. I'm not going off to do that anytime soon. But like learn about all of those things and found out where everyone sits in the business. Who does what? For instance, they've got sales guys. I'm like, well, do they use HubSpot? One of them doesn't. One of them does. So kind of understanding all of that and then knowing what the capabilities of HubSpot are it said it's gonna do this, and we've fixed it. We've kind of made it work, but again, it's like a sticky tape. But she's now tied into this contract, so we are gonna have to just make it work, which we have. For me it's like understanding how the business works. You know what. What does it mean? You're going out and seeing a bit of land and then there's all these contracts and things like, how does that work? And then I think, well, okay, how can we put that on the system to make it simple? And not so time consuming? 'cause we don't want them to be in the system all the time putting in little tick boxes all the time. So it's kind of. Pulling it back and seeing, coming at it from a business point of view as well as the system point of view. 'Cause sometimes people put loads and loads of stuff in the system that just doesn't really need to be there. And if you start doing things like that, people are gonna get lazy in your teams. Some people go, well I didn't tick that box. No one noticed, but have no idea that further on down the line, that box needed to be ticked 'cause it was setting some other stuff up that's usually what we do is sort of learn how the business works. In a kind of roundabout way, understand that, not that industry, but understand all of those things to make sure what's important. So it's kind of drilling out what's really important for that foundation of the system, and then you can build on it later on. Hmm. There's so many different platforms and you talk about platforms adding on so many different things. Like yesterday I got an email from Kajabi, they've announced 10 new features, and I'm like, yay. 10 new features. And then I'm like, okay, now I need to take the time to see what those those are so that I'm like, how can I leverage them? , I've used go high level with some clients to help them and like it's a really good value platform compared Yeah. But I started with Kajabi and I kind of feel like I'm tied there now. And I know there's other people listening who are maybe WordPress users and whatever with websites and all that sort of stuff. And depending on what the customer journey looks like, that's where a lot of the transactions can start, right? Mm-hmm. That's a really great example that you've shared Debbie, around that land selling agent and stuff, but like really boiling it back down to basics. How do you decide what tech stack is going to make sense for a business or when there's a stack in place, how do you know when is the right time to move it? Ooh, that's a good question. So with finding the right system we do actually have like a how to choose your CRM, which works. Yes. A little download down the website which also does work for, applicable for other software. So it's is what do you need? So for example, project management, if you're building a website, you probably need a little bit more. Well, yeah, you'd need more. I was gonna say. But you'd need even more. If you were building a house, then you would need an all singing, all dancing project. 'cause there's so many different other variables and different moving parts. So, we do break it down things to look at so you know how much data's gonna be in there, how many users are you gonna have, what kind of other systems are you using? So does it integrate with those systems, or are you gonna need something like Zapier or Make or pli? And then it's looking at. Again the process. Do they need proposals? Do they need fancy proposals or standard proposals? What about scheduling? And then it's utilizing, okay, can we get a system that does all of that really well? Maybe, maybe not. If not, what's the other system that works really well with that system? So if you are tied into, say, Kajabi, then you're gonna go, okay, well, what other system actually integrates with Kajabi? Is that gonna work for me? It might not, but it's always a good place to start. Is the other integrations. That's why we stay system agnostic because we know about all the different, so, you know, some systems have like their little shiny points and some have their ones that they're not that good at, but they say they are. So for us, when we are sort of recommending we know enough about all the different systems, about the sales side of it, because if you go to. Those systems and say, oh, can you do this? They will say yes. 'cause they're technically, they sort of can, but they don't understand. So, the criteria list that Steph's referring to, it kind of really drills down on those things that, in our experience are the things that will determine which system you need to use. 'cause once you've got that all written down, you can then go further into looking at the different systems and seeing, okay, well can I actually do this? And sort of score it if you like, and say, well actually this one kind of does most of what I need. There's a couple of bits here and it can integrate with something else. Yeah, and it's also, I think once you have that, so then it goes back to the demos. So if you're doing this yourself, the first thing I would do post this map, then we start looking at the criteria. Okay. Right. So what do I need? What is important to me? Like, is color important or spreadsheets fine. You know, little even down to that because again, how you work. And then that's when you can go and look at A CRM, you might see something. 'cause obviously budget as well is important. So you can do a search. There's websites like Cafeteria where you can actually kind of search for things and then compare them across. Then you can have a demo. But when you're speaking to them. It's, you know what you're looking for. So when they say, yes, they can do it, you can go, but I do it this way. Can you actually And give them specifics? Yeah. Because then they have to kind of really understand your business a little more to be able to answer. So yeah, go forewarned, because obviously they're great at what they do. We love systems, all of them. But the sales people, sometimes they do just say yes, like Deb said in her example, technically can do it. Does it do it the right way for your business? We'll find out. Yeah, I have absolutely experienced that firsthand. I signed up for A tool earlier this year, and it was supposed to be the all singing, all dancing tool, and it was supposed to connect to LinkedIn, but actually it didn't connect to LinkedIn at all. So I signed up, I had the call with the person to get the demo. They did, showed me all the things that looked fabulous. It was like a go high level version for social media on LinkedIn. It was like, and when I say that framed, you, has no idea what I'm talking about with go high level. If you think about 10 different tools you need to run your business all thrown into one. Yeah. Do you know what we actually, we love go high level. One of our clients, we got their onboarding down from like one to two hours down to zero minutes because of go high level. Yeah. Like it's, it is a machine love. It's for all of that. So this was like a social media equivalent of go high level. And I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna be telling everyone around this. But then it just, it didn't work once I got in. So one of the things that I've been doing as I'm testing tools is I'll take the demo. I'll sign up for a monthly subscription, then I might try it for one month after the demo. 'cause sometimes, you know, in those first week or two weeks, if they don't give you a month, you don't really get chance to test it really. And also on the demos, you don't always know which features they're giving you. So you sign up to the demo and then you go for the first monthly subscription and then half the stuff you can't use anymore because it was in the dem. And then they're really cheeky and sneaky about actually telling you what is. Part of which subscription. Yeah. So yeah, that's a great, yeah, so I think pay for one month and then decide if you wanna keep it or not. So that's been one of my learnings. Automation vs. Personalization: Striking the Balance So I also wanted to ask you about automation. We said at the start that usually when things fuck up or when there's a tipping point, it's because of the manual processes. And you've just said about go high level and getting somebody's onboarding down from two hours to zero. Yeah. Pt, he was a PT trainer, and it's because he had contracts. There's also questionnaires. He had a weekly email list. They needed to be added on depending on what subscription, what needed to be happened. But, and I think sometimes it's confusion between the automation and ai. So automation is, this happens now. You need to do this. That is automation in a nutshell, that's the, the some most simplest, but it doesn't mean that you have to take away the personalization to the client. What it does is free you up so that you can deliver a better service to your client. Because, for example, this pt, he's awesome. But you know, he's spending that time at one to two hours. That's one to two training clients he could be actually working with instead of filling out paperwork or copying their name into an email list or making sure that they responded to the questionnaire. Whereas with automation, things like that, so the contract, we could add in the information from the CRM, so it automatically mapped out, look nice if they hadn't signed it, the system went, hang on a minute, you they haven't signed that yet because there's been no update, and they can automatically follow up. Whereas he wouldn't always. Do that because he was managing it on a spreadsheet, who signed it, who's not. Then you have to go looking and it's only like, oh, it's only a few minutes going to find out, but it's those extra few minutes that's taking you away from what you love to do to work out some admins. So just because you're automating doesn't mean taking away personalization. It's just about utilizing what's out there. And making your life a bit easier and not having to then wake up at five in the morning and go, oh my goodness, I forgot to do that thing. No one likes that and we all do it. I love that you said that about personalization, because actually that's, I think the crux of what I want to know is when you are choosing what should be automated and what shouldn't, what's your filter? We've all got our businesses and we wouldn't have our businesses without our clients. So the way I kind of see it is if there is something added value that you're giving to your clients that probably shouldn't really be automated in the respective just say you've got a thank you for your invoice payment, email. Automate it. That's just a, an email, a polite email. However, if you wanted to, you know, find out how your client's dog is or something like that, and you're keeping that kind of personal touch, then don't automate it. And also as a person. In the world. I can usually tell when an email is really automated, and that does, that almost gives me the it a little bit about, you know, when, if your emails are constantly automated and you can tell it's Hi, hi Debbie. Oh wow, what a week it was. And then there's like nothing else in there. They're automated emails, but if I'm working with someone and they're like, oh, you know, how are you doing just checking in to see how you're doing or do you know what I mean? It's just that kind of personal. Touch if it's sort of client facing. But not if it's client facing and it's an invoice, thank you for your payment, then yeah, automate that. 'cause that's gonna take time. But if you are giving, if you are getting that time back from sending note, by sending out those sorts of things and automating processes and you've got time to go and send someone a real personalized email 'cause that's part of your checking or something. Then don't automate that. It's how you, again, like you were saying earlier about having how the client perceives you. When you think about that. It's those sorts of bits. What can I put more to, more of myself into for the client experience then sending out an automated email. Yeah. And I would say like, it's like from calls after you've had a call, like you can use templates. Mm-hmm. So obviously you've got email templates say save time. So if you've had a call with a prospect, I don't like the automated emails after that because what happens if they've told you their dog died on the call? You're like, oh, it's great to chat with you, blah blah. Learn about your business. And no mention of my dead dog. Like that just seems harsh. But you might have a certain blurb, there might be certain information. So you can use email templates, but if you are gonna forget, then you can automate the task to say, Hey, or like when a client's been with you for a month, automate a task to say, Hey, don't forget to check in. Yeah. And you'll have a template that you can use. So it's only a couple. But you don't know what, what's happened in that month. The system's not gonna know. So it's, that's again, another bit of personalization. That's what I was trying to say. Utilize the templates and the other stuff. So the actual customers just getting a nice email thinking, oh, they've remembered and they're checking in. Really, you've had a system say, Hey, hey, don't forget, check in. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. The Role of AI in Business Systems And I think adding to that now and building on those automations, you distinctly said, and I get it, but maybe others don't, that AI and AI agents are not automations. And I've started experimenting with AI agents, so I'm doing things like I'm getting it to conduct research for me or things like that. So it's sending me through updates automatically. I've heard of people who are using it for more in their personal life. I haven't heard too many people using AI agents. From a business perspective just yet. So I'd love to know what you guys are seeing in your business. Like, what's your take? Are they helping businesses yet, or even if they are helping, are they just adding another layer of complexity? Yeah, it depends on the technical knowledge. It does, doesn't it? Okay, so yeah, AI is everywhere. So many CRMs now have, like this HubSpot, ai, they all have their own capsule ai. Look, we like AI and it should be utilized, but I think it's also not always a hundred percent. So when you are automating, you want a hundred percent or closest to a hundred, but like 99.8%. Correct. And you want to know if there's a mistake. The only thing with with ai it's kind of, it's thinking, isn't it? So it can actually read an email and then it can go, oh, this person seems happy or sad, and they can analyze it and they can do that, and they can go, oh, well because of this, then we should head them that way. Whereas with the automation, it is a lot more kind of like, this has happened, so now you need to do this. The thing is, it's like that it's got a better success rate overall, and the thing that worries me sometimes when people go all in gun blazing with AI is that, so they're like, oh, I've told it what to look for and it'll extract that information. Whereas if you use automation, you can code in that email there isn't that error gap there. I love ai. I do think we should be embracing it. I think it is the future. Is it where it needs to be to run a full business? No. You have your chat agent, your, agent bot. They're great, but you have to put all that information in, right? It doesn't just learn. You have to spend that time. And that's the thing with AI you've got to understand if you are having a chat bot, you need to put in so much information to make sure you're getting the most out of it. Otherwise your clients are gonna get annoyed 'cause they're clicking on it and it just ends up going in a circle, doesn't it? Going on. And basically. I don't compute because you're speaking like a human. . The other thing I find with AI is I feel like we are being given this big tool. It's like being given a Ferrari, but nobody has a driving license. I think sometimes people are like, oh yeah, use ai. All the CRMs are like, use my ai. And everyone's like, okay, I trust you to be doing everything because you said so and, but people don't understand how it's. To be used. So, they were seeing a lot of build your own CRM with AI and things like that, and people are like, well, I'll just do that. Cool. If you aren't technical, you will make a CRM that will break if you're not doing the proper testing, if you don't dunno how to teach it, if you dunno how to test it, if you don't know. How to do all of those things, then you're gonna end up with a system that doesn't work. And whilst, and you think you're saving time in the long, but you're not. And I feel like that's more of the thing with ai. I feel like the way people use chat, GBT Gemini, where they're just popping in spreadsheet data of people's bank details and that having literally no idea that is not safe. Like people just, they're just putting it in there. I feel like there's not very much education about how to use it. And I feel like when there is a little bit more about it and we're not just taking chat GPTs words for things and we're not just taking the CRM AI's words for things, it will work a lot better. I feel like it's just such in its infancy at the minute. Yeah. So I think for my, my practical tip is just be careful when you're using it just because it's not always right. You look at someone's chat, GBT compared to someone else's chat, GBT, they may be on completely different sides of an argument and their one chat, GBT we telling, and this is all the facts, this one will be telling and the other, and, but they're. It's because it's just scraping the internet. It's not, it's not an omnipresent kind of, or whatever that word is. It like knows everything about the world. It's literally just reading stuff off the internet. But it is very useful for content creation. Yes. AI in CRM: Benefits and Cautions And emails and analyzing, like you said it's great for taking data and reporting back and that's. Very useful, especially in CRMs. 'cause you can see the health of your pipeline and you can see it all there. It gives you a nice little graph. But again, as we all know, even with content and email, it's a starting point, isn't it? Otherwise we all sound, what is it? The m dashes and sounding like a robot. Yeah. Like I know when I use it, I use it as a starting point and then I can change it. But it's easier to do that than to start with a blank page. So I'm like, okay. This is where I'm going. And sometimes you can have a little chat with it, you know, and it, it can inspire you in some ways. So yeah, definitely use ai, but like Deb said, with caution, don't be putting in personal details. And also when it comes to the customer facing, I would be very tenure. What's that word? Tentative. Yes. Thank you. It would be very tentative. Like, not, not against chatbots, though. Chatbots are different because you do have to plug the data in Yeah. To be able to use it. Those are really great points. GDPR Compliance and LinkedIn Integration And I actually just wanna pause here and say that folks, if you're listening to this and you're like, holy. Go back and listen to an episode with Margaret Julian about GDPR and data compliance and privacy, i'll share , the episode details in the show notes, and also an episode with Brian Altimas surround cybersecurity. So just in terms of data, passwords and all that kind of stuff as well. So. Yes. Really important and aligned with what we're talking about. Yeah. Because that's another thing when you're building your own CRM, is it GDPR compliant? Whereas, any software we use, it's something that we have to check out. Where are their data centers held? What jurisdiction do they come under? Are you safe? And also something that you mentioned earlier, Deidre about the LinkedIn connection on a CRM. We've had it a few times where some systems say that they can connect to LinkedIn. LinkedIn really closed itself down when it got bought by Microsoft. Some systems can, but they're not doing it in the right way. So if you find a system that says it can go to LinkedIn. Always contact LinkedIn and find out if they are one of the registered people that is allowed to have that connection on. Because if you don't and LinkedIn find out you're using it, they will shut down your LinkedIn account. So that is something, there are a few out there that say, oh yeah, you can connect to LinkedIn. And the other thing as well, they say that you can connect to LinkedIn, but it's usually the business page, which quite often people aren't using. They're usually using their personal page and it's very limited with actually the stuff that you can do. Yeah, so that was, that's a good one though, I would say. Surf is a good one and it Pipedrive if, yeah. Yeah. Pipe drive surf. They do use LinkedIn. Yeah. Drip Apply is another one I've heard of. And Skype is my favorite one at the moment for LinkedIn. And those ones I've been using Tapio is there. There's Shield and a few others. But with those, one of my mentors actually was using a tool connected to LinkedIn and whatever the tool was doing, LinkedIn perceived that it was bots on him page. And that's exactly to your point, Debbie, they were going to block him and luckily he'd been on a LinkedIn workshop and so he had a contact for somebody in LinkedIn. He was able to purchase them directly and go, yeah. Hey, I'm not a fricking bot. I'm a real thi gimme back my LinkedIn because he is got like 30,000 followers or something. Yeah, yeah. That and you know, it's a real thing. But chatbots. Okay. Understanding and Utilizing Chatbots I wanna talk about chatbots 'cause you've mentioned them a couple of times now and I'm like, will you explain what a chat bot is? The most common one is on a website, isn't it? So when you have that chat to us, you have a little, little icon in the bottom right hand corner, and you click on it and you're talking to a computer, basically. What a chatbot is, is. You would upload your information, so about your company if a person's gonna contact you, what are the services you offer? Or if there's frequently asked questions so you put that information into the chat bot so that when someone then goes onto your website and they've got a query about a specific product or service, they can then ask the bot. It will then look at its little information, its database, and go, oh, this is that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do that. And then they can have a conversation. It's basically a conversation between a human and a bot, but the bot actually does have the information the human's looking for. Most of the time. Yeah. And I, I feel like that's the, the basic, that is the basic kind of fucks of it. I've seen a really great way that somebody's been using this recently and I was like, mind blown. I'm like, fuck, I think I should, I'm missing a trick here. I might look into doing this. Innovative Uses of AI in Business And it's with a tool called Delphi. Have you guys come across yet? No. So Delphi like that, what you can do is I could take all the podcast episodes, the solo ones that I've done, and upload that to create the knowledge bank that you've referred to Steph, and then it'll have my voice as well, and my voice transit. Mm-hmm. Ah, yeah. It actually will speak in my voice so people can type their questions into the chat and it's like they're calling me and they can do up to 50 prompts in the thread. And I'm answering back. Well, don't you find, it's kind of creepy, don't it? Yeah. With Debs on this one, straight away I went, well, that's creepy. It's weird when you're using it in the business environment, but isn't it when you could, like, when you take the business out of ai, it gets very. Yeah. Ah, so I was thinking, oh, there's a couple of ways that that could work really well. I was like, one of my clients, his team are constantly asking him questions because even though they have a knowledge bank that they've built internally for the team, and they have all the SOPs and the processes, it's so nuanced. That they keep coming and asking 'em questions or, you know, and then they're asking 'em the same questions and I'm like, that's a problem. And so it's like, how can we resolve that? And I'm like, how about doing something like this? Yeah, yeah. Instead of them phoning you, they're phoning the app. You can also use it. Someone speaking to the other day, they had one for internal, for like that training, onboarding. So they would have to go through the courses and then they had the chat bot. So if they got stuck on something and like courses, it was internal. So it's like, you know, this is our process to do this, and they run through it. And then if they've got any questions, again, they go to the chat bot. So yeah, again, a great way to utilize it. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen, I've seen it as well, the person who showed it to me actually used it as as a low ticket option for a membership sort of thing . So people could sign up and they were getting stuff in membership, but then if they had questions they would just ask the questions there as opposed to having live access to her. And I thought, that's really smart way to use this to these. Yeah, yeah. Like also could be quite frustrating. Yeah, potentially. Potentially. I do. We, I always, we yeah, you find most of 'em have a fail safe of, I need to speak to a human. If you put that in and there's a good chance you can then go to a human, because I find again great, they are. For the most part, I've just sometimes cautious because then if someone's got say a complaint and then they're meeting with this robot, then it can get more frustrating, I think. Mm. So it's, it goes back to that when is the right time and when's it not, so they, you probably wanna have a trigger word, so like if they're using this language. Contact, contact a human straight away kind of thing. I love that. I love that. See, and this, this is what I mean with, we have to embrace ai, but I think it's being realistic of where it's at. Yeah. It's not, it is hyped up for good reason, but it's probably what, like the internet was back when it first started, you know, it's not what it is now. So it's going to be, we're gonna embrace it. It's everywhere. Everywhere. Personal and business. AI is everywhere now. Yeah. But it's going with it and being realistic and again, keeping mindful of the client. If they're good. Yeah. I do like that idea for the subscription though. Get taken note. I, I love what you said there. 'cause it is kind of like, that's where I draw the line. You know, it's like if there's these things, that's where I'm gonna draw the line. I think that's really important. And to have boundaries even internally before you go and you set up all of these AI things is really important because at the end of the day, AI should be treated a little bit like a team member as opposed to the CEO, right? And Yes, exactly. So how do you support clients to do that in practice? It's that kind of thing of, again, looking at it from your client's point of view and also from your own personal point of view. So, you know, like Steph said, if. One of the things I hate is if I'm contacting an AI bot, I know it's an AI bot and I've got a question about a system or something, and then they're just sending me back to the help desk at the, like the help resource website. And I'm like, no, I need to speak to someone. And then you can't speak to someone. That is something that is so frustrating 'cause I would, I'll do. Anything to not have to speak to someone. Okay, I'm, I'm all about chatbots. I'm happy with it, but sometimes you have to speak to someone, and if you're not given that option, that can really relieve a real sour taste in your mouth with your clients because. Sometimes it's too new. I know. We are doing this to save time for us, but we also need to take the client's time into account as well. So if the clients just can consistently be trolling through your website for your, frequently asked questions and it's not there. They're gonna go somewhere else. So that's something we always sort of consider. Steph and I worked in customer service for a long time before, so we've kind of come into this with both the kind of nerdy kind of technical stuff, but also that people, customer support kind of eccentricity. So. We always keep that in mind. So yeah, we're here to tell you about what automations and stuff you can implement in your business, but also look at it from your client's point of view. And again, it comes back to that customer journey map. It comes back to all of that stuff, that process map right at the beginning. Because saving yourself time is great, but if it's gonna wind up, the customers don't bother because you don't have any. And be aware, I think likewise, like any system, isn't it, even with ai, any system, it's only as good as the data that's in it. Yes. So you, there's, there's a good few companies out there that will sell you amazing chatbots and everything. The thing to note, no matter what is, you have to have that information to put in, that you need to create that knowledge base, right? And no matter what, so doesn't matter which one you go with. That work still needs to be done. Yeah, so important and I really admire and have to give you kudos for every time we talk. How you always bring it back to the customer. Hats off to you, you guys. Thanks. So, question. I know you guys have worked with like consultants, engineers, service providers, PTs, all of those different types of businesses. Challenges in Lead Management Are there some process or system or tech problems that everyone seems to face irrespective of their industry? Oh, I've got one. I've got one. Managing leads. Yeah, I was gonna say that one. That is a common one that we find where they might have a CRM, but again, like there's, they, they might, someone might not be using it or other people might not be updating it like as regularly as they should, or they might not have one at all and they're relying on a spreadsheet, and I get it. We wanna grow and you go out and you get this marketing person come in and they're gonna do amazing things and you're gonna have all these leads. But then what? What happens next? And I feel like that is a real common kind of like lead comes in, then what are you gonna do? What is is that, that's. That's the one that first spanked to mind. I'm like, yeah, how many times they go, we've got all these leads, like a hundred leads, one company paid for with them. I'm like, oh my God, be at them. How do you hug these people? It's true, and we've noticed a quite a bit of a trend recently with accountants. And companies that have that practice management software. So, you know, like lawyers, accountants, people that have a specific piece of software, and most of them come to us and I'm like, okay, so where do your leads go? And they're like, well, it's just on a spreadsheet because practice management software is once that client is a client. So all that stuff beforehand, all those emails, all those, talks and proposals and everything, it's just hanging around somewhere on the computer. So having that initial bit of where things come in from, you know, integrating your website forms into there, having pipelines doing and then doing automation off the back of that is probably every business needs clients. Clients become clients from being leads. So every ever, your business is. You need that. And there's quite a lot that don't have that. If you are listening to this now and you're like, oh actually yeah, I don't know. You go networking and you collect a business cards. What you doing with them? Are you cutting them up for kindling for a campfire? Or are you putting them anywhere? Like a lot of people aren't, so Yeah. Yeah, that's a hundred percent that one that all businesses need is some kind of lead management. Yeah, because it's the following up as well. Again, you get busy and then suddenly you go, oh goodness, I forgot to do that lead, or I saw that thing come in, or You're getting an email from your website. Why? Well, don't get an email. Put it straight into the system. Then you can send an automatic email saying Thank you for contacting me. Set an expectation. Someone will be in contact with you within the next one to two days, or whatever it is my booking link. Yeah, if you wanna jump straight to a call, here's, make it really nice to work with you. 'cause then that's their first impression of your business. So if you've sent a lead and then you don't get anything and then you are following, they go, oh, I didn't hear back from that company. And then chase them. It is not really a great start, is it? It doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy like they want to work with you. Yeah, for sure. Because I think more and more people are a bit like Amazon now. We, had that Amazon experience where it's one click to buy. So if you are having to chase down the company mm-hmm. To work with them, it's a bit like. Oh no. Yeah, yeah. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want to, it is like, and like we said, it's the first impression, isn't it? And it's other things as well. If you are tracking your leads and you can get all this lovely data off the back of it, you know, you can see that your leads, you can see the trends. Like maybe if you've got seasonal business, you can see people are starting to contact you in September. So you're like, okay, well next year I need to put my marketing budget in August. There's so much stuff that there's this whole like mine of data that you're probably not using or doing anything with because you don't have any kind of lead system and you're not able to track any of that. So that's, that's another thing that's, another bonus. Sources. Yeah, because then you can know where to put your marketing, don't you? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. I've been talking about this with people recently, just not a spaghetti scatter gun approach with their marketing. It's like, use the data from your marketing and your sales to inform your future marketing. This comes up all the time at lie. I can only imagine because, and also the lead times. Yeah, because depending what service you are offering, sometimes it can take a few months. I know some bigger companies that we work with, it, it can take up to a year for them to make the decision because there's gonna be a meeting and then they have to have a meeting about that meeting and it goes round and all of that. Yeah. So it's again, data collection and then you can analyze that data. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna ask you a question now and put the two of you on the spot. Oh, we won't answer. We're both walking the walk. In terms of working together as a team and you're growing a business yourselves as well. Automating Internal Processes So what's something that you've had to systemize or automate or leverage AI for internally that when you reflect on it, it's a bit surprising? Oh, I don't know. We embrace all, well, I dunno if this is really the answer to the question. So originally we would have, somebody was signing up with us and the contracts and stuff like that, that was so manual which was end up taking forever. So, you know, we, we'd have to go into one system update and actually copy and paste things in. Yeah. Which is very bad. So we don't do that anymore. We, well, we kind of realized, 'cause we have quarterly meetings and that, and we're like, all right, what processes here are taking up time like affy. So we've completely fully systemized and automated the whole onboarding process. Which we hadn't done before, even though we were doing it for other people and we were like, why aren't we doing it for ourselves? So that is definitely something that we've done. I had a big project, I had a load of like, to just little bits of code that needed like a little field changed. Giving that to AI and going, can you just do the same code, but can you just change this last field? So that saved me a, massive amount of time because I wasn't having to then. Do it myself. So that's, that's, and also because on chap GBT, you can also create little projects. Mm-hmm. So, and they're really useful as well, aren't they? And I use them for a project because again, it's just having that kind of. Place for it. We've got our project management, but it's just when you're asking a quick question or something, you're going, hang on a minute. I don't know. Sometimes if Debbie's not available, I just, I replace her with chat, GBT basically, Debbie, I need to talk this out, and she's. I'll go to chat. GBT, then GBT doesn't go in Kohl. I'm curious what you guys do as well. Optimizing Tech Tools and Systems So internally in your business and with clients, like when Brian was on the show and we were talking about cybersecurity, Brian's like, you know when that Google thing comes up and it's like update or updates available, do them straight away. You know, like all the tools and software. I mentioned Kajabi earlier, like Kajabi had 10 updates yesterday. How often should people be going back to look at the tools they've already got to see how they could be leveraging them even more. Like, should they wait for an email that might even spot the email or, well, you know, like what? What's your advice on that? Well, I think it depends. So like that there might be an email that comes in that initiates it, or if you're delivering a new service or you've got a new product going out, that's normally a good time but at least I would say at the very least, if you're an established business once a year. Yeah. And I mean a full process day, like Deb says, we have our quarterly meetings and one of those will always be full on and we will be there. We will have a wall, we will have different post-it notes, and we go through the overall process and then break down on every little bit of that. So like that. A new onboarding client, yet the contract's automatically created. They're added onto QuickBooks. 'cause we use QuickBooks. They're automatically the draft invoice. Draft invoice, not just sent deposit. Again, we'd just like to check with that. Sometimes, you know, it is the creating that stuff and the, that takes the time, a quick glance and then you can go, okay, yep, send, done it is only a couple of seconds, but taking that time again for the customer experience and also your process might just be fine. You might not need to add all of these things in. Like obviously don't forget Kajabi, all those systems, they're businesses, they're trying to upsell or they're trying to get you to use something else. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to it's what's right for your business and you know, if you're, look, you're having your process mapping session every year and you're looking at it. If there's something that your team are like really hate doing. Then you know where to look. 'cause sometimes people can tell you about all of these things that they're doing, and then you've gotta try and remember them and they might not be relevant. So every time you're looking at your processes, see what's not working. And then have a look to see if the tool has got any updates. Unless you see something really cool in the updates and you're like, I want that, that's fine. But, don't spend a lot of time worrying about it because they're always gonna be sending out updates. And you know what it's like sometimes when something's new doesn't mean it's ready. Like when it's, I always the nerd who signs up for all the beatta stuff. 'cause I want to know all the new things that come out. I am like, I am a tech nerd. I have to admit, if you're technical, go for it. Have at it like, honestly, like yes, if you enjoy that sort of stuff. It's, it's always good to expand your knowledge, but we run into a lot of people who are not. So for the people that are not tech nerds, don't panic. Awesome. Yeah. And also, when you are looking at your process, look at what your system can do. 'cause we've had it on a few occasions where people come and they're like, we've got this, we've got this, we've got this. And we're like, well first off, you've got too much tech. You don't need that much because that does that. If you've got a scheduling tool like Tidy Cow or Calendly, but you're using, pipe drive or go home or HubSpot. They've got schedulers within them. Yeah. You use the system because then it's automatically integrated, so you don't need Zapier to then take it from candidly and put it in. The thing is I think, and this is where the overwhelm comes in sometimes there is just so much out there and there is so many shiny objects, which is why we are always going back to the get your house in order, know what you want. Yeah. What you require for your business. Then go looking. Because otherwise it's like going shopping when you're hungry. Yeah. Don't do that. Dangerous. Yeah. I end up with so much junk food and bread. Yeah. It's like that when you're tech. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So for the business owner who's listening right now, who's drowning in manual work, disconnected tools, and maybe they've gone tech shopping when they're hungry and they have some chaotic systems, I have a feeling I know what you're gonna say to this, but where should they start today to sort their shit out? Process map always gonna be a process map. 'cause you need, it's the, and it's the visual as well for humans. We need that sometimes. What systems are you using? And the process isn't just like you contact the customer and then this happens. What systems are you using where, and there's a really nice style called a swim lane. So if you have loads of tech, use a swim lane process map. Google it and get a template, I'm sure from Google Docs or something, or there's lucid or smart draw. There's loads of process mapping software out there as well. Free stuff is utilize it. But yeah, a swim lane, just list all your tech alone, then build your process and you can see straight away that visual will highlight things. Well, hang on a minute. Why am I adding it there? If I waited until the next step? Like we, we had one recently. New contact straightaway. They wanted them to add them in to their project management software and I was going, but if you do that, you are overloading that system. And if you wait until after the meeting's scheduled, because they had a very high success rate, someone comes to them. They're pretty much sold. It's just getting them through the process of having the call and the quote and the budget chats. So it was like saying, well, don't do it at that point. Wait for another two steps. Then you've got all the information in there already and you're not having to update. Yeah, we are gonna always go back, go to a process map. But a swim lane, if you've got loads of tech, I would use a swim lane so you can see where it lists and see where, what interacts with what, at what point. And does that make sense? Oh, just call Stebbington. Yes. Yes. And where can people learn more? Connect with you or, and you guys are the nerds that they need, right? Yeah. We're the nerds you need. Yeah, I love that. Where can they find you, connect with you, learn more about you and all that sort of stuff to get to work with you, get help, whatever. Well, we have our website, which is www.stebbington.com. We're on LinkedIn both personally and via the business page. We're on Facebook. We've got business page we we're on TikTok, but that's more for the lows and little short little bits of content. YouTube, we have a podcast that comes out most months. We didn't do last month, so I can't say every month. You'll find us at Stebbington and Instagram we are on, we're in a, we're everywhere, but we're @Stebbington or @StebbingtonLimited. So, yeah. And our website, as we said, has got free resources. We've got like your CRM criteria list a few downloads and that you can use for change management, what you need to do. Yes, change management's a good one because especially if you've got a team, people forget that. They just focus on the tech. And again, going back to the people, you need the team morale and you don't want to cause ugh like, yeah. And TikTok, can I just say TikTok is where you'll see us dressed up as purple dinosaurs. Because that is, I'm definitely putting the link to their TikTok in the show notes so you can go and check them out. Girls, it's been an absolute blast haven you on the show. Thank you so much and for sharing all your wisdom and knowledge. , We'll send everybody your way and thank you so much. Final Thoughts and Action Steps Okay, so let me break this down. The ladies hit us with three truth bombs today. Number one, process before platform. Map your process journey, and then pick the tools and tech stack that you need, not the other way around. Number two, use or create one source of truth so that your systems are talking to each other, and then you're avoiding any of that double data entry and the duct taping stuff that you might do with Zapier or Maker or any of the other tools that the ladies mentioned. And number three, use AI as your teammate as opposed to the CEO. Automate the stuff that's repetitive, but keep the relationship human. That came up quite a lot today, not to lose the personalization. So as always, I've got an action step for you today. I want you to open a doc, a Google doc, a Word doc, whatever kind of a doc, and basically sketch out a swim lane map. So basically those are lines, horizontal lines. Of your lead to client journey, what does that look like? And if you're losing leads like the ladies talked about in the show, I want you to spot where or what is that bottleneck or manual choke point that's literally causing your leads to leave you? And if that's something that you could automate, could you put in something there? Is there an action step or something? Some task that could be automated that would prevent those leads getting lost? Identify what that is and automate it this week. That's your one action step. And remember, done is better than perfect, but when you're automating something, make sure it's a step that can be automated on repeat, and is not going to automate problem. Because you're brilliant and you're busy, go ahead and grab their CRM checklist from stebbington.com so you can stop guessing and start choosing your CRM tool like a pro. And Debbie, Steph, you were outstanding. They are absolutely the nerds we all need, and that's definitely the vibe that they shared today. So if this episode helped you, do me a favor and share it with one entrepreneur who you know is stuck in a little bit of tech chaos, and then rate review and follow the show wherever you're listening today, it takes 30 seconds or less and it helps us help more 📍 founders build businesses they're proud of. So thank you today for listening, and thank you as always for listening. I'm Deirdre Martin. And until next time, keep mastering your business.

INsert Question

You know when you've got more spreadsheets than you have items on your to-do list. You know when you're copy and pasting things from one thing to another so that the information joins up. You know when you're doing all those things and you're crossing your fingers and you're hoping that things work together well then let me just share with you, this episode is literally made for you because here's the thing. What I've seen and what I've learned and why I brought on today's incredible guests is that most SME business owners, most entrepreneurs, coaches, service providers, MSPs. They don't have their core processes written down anywhere. They don't have their customer journeys mapped out. And so when someone goes on annual leave, typically you the CEO, what ends up happening is systems stall and when you come back, there's a whole pile of things for you to come back to and things that you have to work on. And maybe clients are having to chase you or you are having to chase clients, but that's so not good for you. It's stressful. 📍 Your brain is striking cortisol on the daily, so today's guests are here to help fix that. Meet the Experts: Debbie Crompton and Stephanie Bonnie But first, I'm Deirdre Martin Award-winning international bestselling author. I help purpose led founders find, win and keep their ideal clients so they can make their first million without burning out bottlenecking or sacrificing what matters most. And my guests today, Debbie Crompton and Stephanie Bonnie, the duo behind Stebbington, AKA. They're nerds. You need, and listen, after this episode, I'm sure you're gonna be like, I fricking need them. They're proudly system agnostic. They don't force tools on anyone, and best of all, they design human systems that fit the business that you have, and then they wire in automation in the right way for you and your clients. They've literally taken onboarding processes from two hours down to zero minutes for one of their clients. They've pulled teams out of the, who's in the spreadsheet hell, which I dunno about you, but I've definitely been there many a time, particularly when I worked in the bank and they've built source of truth tech stacks that stop the leaks and help scale the profit. In people's businesses as well. So by the end of this episode, you're gonna know exactly how to map your backstage processes so you can pick the tools that are right for your business without falling for shining object demos, you're going to be able to automate what should be automated while. Keeping the human element where it really matters. And the ladies are gonna share how to use some AI agents and learning language models like chat, GPT as a smart teammate rather than a loose cannon in your business. So buckle up. This bit's fricking wild in the best possible way. 📍 Debbie and Steph, welcome to the Master Your Business podcast. 📍 Debbie. Steph, it's fantastic to have you on the Master Your Business podcast. How are you guys? Good. Great. Thank you for having us here. I'm excited. Oh, it's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun. The Tipping Point: Recognizing System Failures We've got loads to discuss today because you guys are gonna talk about systems, and I know I'm speaking from personal experience here that a lot of businesses that I come across, they hit a point where things are working. Until suddenly they're not. Yes. What does that tipping point usually look like for the clients that you serve? It usually looks like sleepless nights feeling stressed, being a bit cross. It's usually that kind of thing where you just feel like you, yeah, basically just stress. It's where, you know, maybe something goes wrong, maybe a client suddenly doesn't get a bit of information that was really important. So then you start thinking, oh no, you know, it's all going horribly wrong. That's usually around the time where you feel a bit like a headless chicken. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's when things start slipping through the net. When a client's having to chase you. Mm-hmm. I find like that's quite a key indicator as well of going and not, you know, sometimes clients do need to chase of course, but when something's like, you know, following up going, are we gonna have this call? Or you are meant to be here, or we do, that's when you kind of go, well, something's right. And I think a deficit is when something goes wrong. That's when you realize that your processes aren't where they need to be. Mm. 'cause when when they are and everything's swimming, that's fine. But if something goes wrong and then it becomes a massive thing, you kinda go, well. Something's amiss. It's normally because there's a lot of manual handling. I was just gonna say, it's probably usually when a team member is on annual leave and that process is like, oh, what do we do? I don't know. Oh shit. Yes. That when things crumble. Yeah. Or, or when there's the bottleneck. When some, especially, you know, if you're the manager, you're the owner. You become a bottleneck because everything at some points, having to go through you, which is again, goes back to the sleepless nights and the stress because everything's going to you. And then, oh my goodness, you're human and you, you get sick, then what happens? It's all about having your processes and systems, and I think, and that's always our, our first bit of advice because lots of SMEs, I think it's like 92% don't have it written down. They don't have the basic processes noted down, and it's not about having a fancy document, you know, for a higher level board level. No. It's about having a practical for the team members, for the team to say, what happens? How does this actual process, okay, they might not do all the process, but where's their bit in this? How does it all link to the bigger picture and how can you deliver a better service to your clients? I love that, Steph, because, I see that as well when I do customer journey mapping with clients, we really map out the customer journey from the client's perspective. You know, you're in the client's shoes and what do they experience as they engage with the business, but then we layer it and we do the processes. So what do you do behind the scenes in the business to deliver that? Experience in the front end, and then we layer it again because we add empathy mapping. So it's a three layered process. But from the processes, like from, because this is what you guys are shit hot at. Right. I know like from your perspective, and we've chatted about this before, Steph, where you are, you're system agnostic. Which I love. And I think that's so important because I think so many entrepreneurs and business owners, they get boxed into the wrong tool. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And , they might start with the tool because so and so was using it and that's how they started there, but it wasn't the right one for them. So when you are working on processes with people, how do you start untangling that tool and software mess? Understanding Business Needs for System Selection Well, the key mainly is to get to know the business. We are really hot on making sure that you're using a system that fits your business, not the other way around. We've run into quite a few clients lately who have typed it into, so just say they're looking for a CRM. They've popped it into Google. One of them's popped up, they've spoken to a salesman who's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Can do that. And it turns out that when it. It comes to actually implementing it. It can technically do it, but it's not doing it for the business. So the thing that we find really important is getting to know the business, getting to know. People in the business getting to know how they think, how they work and then finding the right tool for them. So for instance, you might have a business that absolutely loves spreadsheets and is used to looking at spreadsheets. That's how they work, that's how they think. So there are tools like Airtable that is very spreadsheet. We call it a spreadsheet on steroids. 'cause it kind of does spreadsheet stuff, but it does so much more. So it's not as hard a kind of jump to learn to use it, or you might have people that are a little bit more technical, so they might wanna use something like Zoho that you can kind of do a lot more technical stuff with. But the key is kind of getting to know the business first so that you can select a few different cr What we usually do is sort of give them a, an example of a few different CRMs and then. Have a little go on each of them and see which one feels right to them. Because you need to make sure, if you're gonna be using this system, you need to make sure that you are all in on using that system. So, you know, using demos, just having a look and making sure that is actually what you want and you know how you can use it and you know your team's gonna be behind you because that's 90% of the thing really. We can suggest all the systems, oh, we love systems. You can get your system for absolutely everything, but if you are not prepared to invest that time to actually learn to use it and make sure it fits for every bit of your process map to make sure that, that that is right and it does everything then yeah, you are onto a bit of a losing battle. So yeah, it's, it's really getting to know the business, making sure they're all invested in it and making sure we're picking systems that. Follow their process. So they're not gonna have to change in six months time, basically. That's what we want. We don't want that. 'cause that's, no, and that's the thing, isn't it? Even when you start with the system at the beginning, it's more of the foundations. Yes, you might, might not need all the bells and whistles to start, but start using a system, creating those foundations so that as you grow the system can grow with your business. Mm-hmm. And it isn't one size fits all ever for example, you can have two consultants and yes, technically they do the similar thing, but they might work completely different. There might be, you know, the T's and C's. How are they sent out? What's included? Is it a template or is it a bit more in depth? Is there images? Different systems will have those different features, so it's, like Deb said, it's just making sure you understand the business and your actual needs, which is obviously where the process mapping comes in as well. We love a process map. Yeah, and I mean, I do too. Like, honestly, having worked in bank, right, I've worked in a couple of different banks and even in my own business, some of the banks, it was so fucking annoying because you'd to key stuff into one part of the system and then that part of the system didn't speak to the other part of the system. So you're practically keen in the same stuff again. And like there were certain things. Let's say if I was doing a lending application in the bank, I might have been lending a million euro. Right. And I had to type the same stuff into about three or four different places. Ridiculous. These are billion dollar companies. Yeah. And they haven't got, they're quite often the worst. To be fair, and it's also, the thing with that is it leaves them open forever. Error. Yeah. Like always you say like, it's 2025, you shouldn't need to copy and paste and that's the thing of having one system as the source of truth. So you might have a really great CRM and that can also hold, your clients as well as prospects and everything. But then you've got a project management software. Okay. We integrate them then. So when they become a client, it automatically creates the project. Their info is added in. Straight away. Oh they're gonna be, need to be invoiced again. Automatically add them in. And then you've got your CRM. You can view everything there. You can process your leads through there, but you've also got a holistic point of view of your business in that one source of truth. And I think , that's the thing. Copy. Oh, sorry. I'm like, oh. The sort of having to enter the same D data in more than one system as just like. No nuts. Right? And like those systems not talking to each other, that can be a problem I use Zap, Zapier. Zapier, yeah. I don't even know how you say it, right? I've got all these Zap set up, but I'm like, Zapier is not. A business strategy. It's not a system strategy. It's duct tape and shit together. Right. So I suppose like when you come in and you said Debbie, that the first thing you do is you start to understand what the customer's businesses and how does it work, and then you look at processes. So talk us through what is that first move when you come in? Or if somebody is listening today and they're like, okay, what should I be doing? Where do I start with this? What would you recommend? Well, I had I've got an example of a client who came to us because they had gone into Google, put in a CRM and had HubSpot. So they signed up to HubSpot. They spent an, a stupid amount of money on HubSpot and there were lands buying and selling business. And HubSpot said this agency said, yeah, yeah, can do everything that you needed to do. Turns out. It can't. So what we did was I sat down and learned about all of their individual processes, learn about how land buying and selling kind of works. Obviously at a very small level. I'm not going off to do that anytime soon. But like learn about all of those things and found out where everyone sits in the business. Who does what? For instance, they've got sales guys. I'm like, well, do they use HubSpot? One of them doesn't. One of them does. So kind of understanding all of that and then knowing what the capabilities of HubSpot are it said it's gonna do this, and we've fixed it. We've kind of made it work, but again, it's like a sticky tape. But she's now tied into this contract, so we are gonna have to just make it work, which we have. For me it's like understanding how the business works. You know what. What does it mean? You're going out and seeing a bit of land and then there's all these contracts and things like, how does that work? And then I think, well, okay, how can we put that on the system to make it simple? And not so time consuming? 'cause we don't want them to be in the system all the time putting in little tick boxes all the time. So it's kind of. Pulling it back and seeing, coming at it from a business point of view as well as the system point of view. 'Cause sometimes people put loads and loads of stuff in the system that just doesn't really need to be there. And if you start doing things like that, people are gonna get lazy in your teams. Some people go, well I didn't tick that box. No one noticed, but have no idea that further on down the line, that box needed to be ticked 'cause it was setting some other stuff up that's usually what we do is sort of learn how the business works. In a kind of roundabout way, understand that, not that industry, but understand all of those things to make sure what's important. So it's kind of drilling out what's really important for that foundation of the system, and then you can build on it later on. Hmm. There's so many different platforms and you talk about platforms adding on so many different things. Like yesterday I got an email from Kajabi, they've announced 10 new features, and I'm like, yay. 10 new features. And then I'm like, okay, now I need to take the time to see what those those are so that I'm like, how can I leverage them? , I've used go high level with some clients to help them and like it's a really good value platform compared Yeah. But I started with Kajabi and I kind of feel like I'm tied there now. And I know there's other people listening who are maybe WordPress users and whatever with websites and all that sort of stuff. And depending on what the customer journey looks like, that's where a lot of the transactions can start, right? Mm-hmm. That's a really great example that you've shared Debbie, around that land selling agent and stuff, but like really boiling it back down to basics. How do you decide what tech stack is going to make sense for a business or when there's a stack in place, how do you know when is the right time to move it? Ooh, that's a good question. So with finding the right system we do actually have like a how to choose your CRM, which works. Yes. A little download down the website which also does work for, applicable for other software. So it's is what do you need? So for example, project management, if you're building a website, you probably need a little bit more. Well, yeah, you'd need more. I was gonna say. But you'd need even more. If you were building a house, then you would need an all singing, all dancing project. 'cause there's so many different other variables and different moving parts. So, we do break it down things to look at so you know how much data's gonna be in there, how many users are you gonna have, what kind of other systems are you using? So does it integrate with those systems, or are you gonna need something like Zapier or Make or pli? And then it's looking at. Again the process. Do they need proposals? Do they need fancy proposals or standard proposals? What about scheduling? And then it's utilizing, okay, can we get a system that does all of that really well? Maybe, maybe not. If not, what's the other system that works really well with that system? So if you are tied into, say, Kajabi, then you're gonna go, okay, well, what other system actually integrates with Kajabi? Is that gonna work for me? It might not, but it's always a good place to start. Is the other integrations. That's why we stay system agnostic because we know about all the different, so, you know, some systems have like their little shiny points and some have their ones that they're not that good at, but they say they are. So for us, when we are sort of recommending we know enough about all the different systems, about the sales side of it, because if you go to. Those systems and say, oh, can you do this? They will say yes. 'cause they're technically, they sort of can, but they don't understand. So, the criteria list that Steph's referring to, it kind of really drills down on those things that, in our experience are the things that will determine which system you need to use. 'cause once you've got that all written down, you can then go further into looking at the different systems and seeing, okay, well can I actually do this? And sort of score it if you like, and say, well actually this one kind of does most of what I need. There's a couple of bits here and it can integrate with something else. Yeah, and it's also, I think once you have that, so then it goes back to the demos. So if you're doing this yourself, the first thing I would do post this map, then we start looking at the criteria. Okay. Right. So what do I need? What is important to me? Like, is color important or spreadsheets fine. You know, little even down to that because again, how you work. And then that's when you can go and look at A CRM, you might see something. 'cause obviously budget as well is important. So you can do a search. There's websites like Cafeteria where you can actually kind of search for things and then compare them across. Then you can have a demo. But when you're speaking to them. It's, you know what you're looking for. So when they say, yes, they can do it, you can go, but I do it this way. Can you actually And give them specifics? Yeah. Because then they have to kind of really understand your business a little more to be able to answer. So yeah, go forewarned, because obviously they're great at what they do. We love systems, all of them. But the sales people, sometimes they do just say yes, like Deb said in her example, technically can do it. Does it do it the right way for your business? We'll find out. Yeah, I have absolutely experienced that firsthand. I signed up for A tool earlier this year, and it was supposed to be the all singing, all dancing tool, and it was supposed to connect to LinkedIn, but actually it didn't connect to LinkedIn at all. So I signed up, I had the call with the person to get the demo. They did, showed me all the things that looked fabulous. It was like a go high level version for social media on LinkedIn. It was like, and when I say that framed, you, has no idea what I'm talking about with go high level. If you think about 10 different tools you need to run your business all thrown into one. Yeah. Do you know what we actually, we love go high level. One of our clients, we got their onboarding down from like one to two hours down to zero minutes because of go high level. Yeah. Like it's, it is a machine love. It's for all of that. So this was like a social media equivalent of go high level. And I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna be telling everyone around this. But then it just, it didn't work once I got in. So one of the things that I've been doing as I'm testing tools is I'll take the demo. I'll sign up for a monthly subscription, then I might try it for one month after the demo. 'cause sometimes, you know, in those first week or two weeks, if they don't give you a month, you don't really get chance to test it really. And also on the demos, you don't always know which features they're giving you. So you sign up to the demo and then you go for the first monthly subscription and then half the stuff you can't use anymore because it was in the dem. And then they're really cheeky and sneaky about actually telling you what is. Part of which subscription. Yeah. So yeah, that's a great, yeah, so I think pay for one month and then decide if you wanna keep it or not. So that's been one of my learnings. Automation vs. Personalization: Striking the Balance So I also wanted to ask you about automation. We said at the start that usually when things fuck up or when there's a tipping point, it's because of the manual processes. And you've just said about go high level and getting somebody's onboarding down from two hours to zero. Yeah. Pt, he was a PT trainer, and it's because he had contracts. There's also questionnaires. He had a weekly email list. They needed to be added on depending on what subscription, what needed to be happened. But, and I think sometimes it's confusion between the automation and ai. So automation is, this happens now. You need to do this. That is automation in a nutshell, that's the, the some most simplest, but it doesn't mean that you have to take away the personalization to the client. What it does is free you up so that you can deliver a better service to your client. Because, for example, this pt, he's awesome. But you know, he's spending that time at one to two hours. That's one to two training clients he could be actually working with instead of filling out paperwork or copying their name into an email list or making sure that they responded to the questionnaire. Whereas with automation, things like that, so the contract, we could add in the information from the CRM, so it automatically mapped out, look nice if they hadn't signed it, the system went, hang on a minute, you they haven't signed that yet because there's been no update, and they can automatically follow up. Whereas he wouldn't always. Do that because he was managing it on a spreadsheet, who signed it, who's not. Then you have to go looking and it's only like, oh, it's only a few minutes going to find out, but it's those extra few minutes that's taking you away from what you love to do to work out some admins. So just because you're automating doesn't mean taking away personalization. It's just about utilizing what's out there. And making your life a bit easier and not having to then wake up at five in the morning and go, oh my goodness, I forgot to do that thing. No one likes that and we all do it. I love that you said that about personalization, because actually that's, I think the crux of what I want to know is when you are choosing what should be automated and what shouldn't, what's your filter? We've all got our businesses and we wouldn't have our businesses without our clients. So the way I kind of see it is if there is something added value that you're giving to your clients that probably shouldn't really be automated in the respective just say you've got a thank you for your invoice payment, email. Automate it. That's just a, an email, a polite email. However, if you wanted to, you know, find out how your client's dog is or something like that, and you're keeping that kind of personal touch, then don't automate it. And also as a person. In the world. I can usually tell when an email is really automated, and that does, that almost gives me the it a little bit about, you know, when, if your emails are constantly automated and you can tell it's Hi, hi Debbie. Oh wow, what a week it was. And then there's like nothing else in there. They're automated emails, but if I'm working with someone and they're like, oh, you know, how are you doing just checking in to see how you're doing or do you know what I mean? It's just that kind of personal. Touch if it's sort of client facing. But not if it's client facing and it's an invoice, thank you for your payment, then yeah, automate that. 'cause that's gonna take time. But if you are giving, if you are getting that time back from sending note, by sending out those sorts of things and automating processes and you've got time to go and send someone a real personalized email 'cause that's part of your checking or something. Then don't automate that. It's how you, again, like you were saying earlier about having how the client perceives you. When you think about that. It's those sorts of bits. What can I put more to, more of myself into for the client experience then sending out an automated email. Yeah. And I would say like, it's like from calls after you've had a call, like you can use templates. Mm-hmm. So obviously you've got email templates say save time. So if you've had a call with a prospect, I don't like the automated emails after that because what happens if they've told you their dog died on the call? You're like, oh, it's great to chat with you, blah blah. Learn about your business. And no mention of my dead dog. Like that just seems harsh. But you might have a certain blurb, there might be certain information. So you can use email templates, but if you are gonna forget, then you can automate the task to say, Hey, or like when a client's been with you for a month, automate a task to say, Hey, don't forget to check in. Yeah. And you'll have a template that you can use. So it's only a couple. But you don't know what, what's happened in that month. The system's not gonna know. So it's, that's again, another bit of personalization. That's what I was trying to say. Utilize the templates and the other stuff. So the actual customers just getting a nice email thinking, oh, they've remembered and they're checking in. Really, you've had a system say, Hey, hey, don't forget, check in. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. The Role of AI in Business Systems And I think adding to that now and building on those automations, you distinctly said, and I get it, but maybe others don't, that AI and AI agents are not automations. And I've started experimenting with AI agents, so I'm doing things like I'm getting it to conduct research for me or things like that. So it's sending me through updates automatically. I've heard of people who are using it for more in their personal life. I haven't heard too many people using AI agents. From a business perspective just yet. So I'd love to know what you guys are seeing in your business. Like, what's your take? Are they helping businesses yet, or even if they are helping, are they just adding another layer of complexity? Yeah, it depends on the technical knowledge. It does, doesn't it? Okay, so yeah, AI is everywhere. So many CRMs now have, like this HubSpot, ai, they all have their own capsule ai. Look, we like AI and it should be utilized, but I think it's also not always a hundred percent. So when you are automating, you want a hundred percent or closest to a hundred, but like 99.8%. Correct. And you want to know if there's a mistake. The only thing with with ai it's kind of, it's thinking, isn't it? So it can actually read an email and then it can go, oh, this person seems happy or sad, and they can analyze it and they can do that, and they can go, oh, well because of this, then we should head them that way. Whereas with the automation, it is a lot more kind of like, this has happened, so now you need to do this. The thing is, it's like that it's got a better success rate overall, and the thing that worries me sometimes when people go all in gun blazing with AI is that, so they're like, oh, I've told it what to look for and it'll extract that information. Whereas if you use automation, you can code in that email there isn't that error gap there. I love ai. I do think we should be embracing it. I think it is the future. Is it where it needs to be to run a full business? No. You have your chat agent, your, agent bot. They're great, but you have to put all that information in, right? It doesn't just learn. You have to spend that time. And that's the thing with AI you've got to understand if you are having a chat bot, you need to put in so much information to make sure you're getting the most out of it. Otherwise your clients are gonna get annoyed 'cause they're clicking on it and it just ends up going in a circle, doesn't it? Going on. And basically. I don't compute because you're speaking like a human. . The other thing I find with AI is I feel like we are being given this big tool. It's like being given a Ferrari, but nobody has a driving license. I think sometimes people are like, oh yeah, use ai. All the CRMs are like, use my ai. And everyone's like, okay, I trust you to be doing everything because you said so and, but people don't understand how it's. To be used. So, they were seeing a lot of build your own CRM with AI and things like that, and people are like, well, I'll just do that. Cool. If you aren't technical, you will make a CRM that will break if you're not doing the proper testing, if you don't dunno how to teach it, if you dunno how to test it, if you don't know. How to do all of those things, then you're gonna end up with a system that doesn't work. And whilst, and you think you're saving time in the long, but you're not. And I feel like that's more of the thing with ai. I feel like the way people use chat, GBT Gemini, where they're just popping in spreadsheet data of people's bank details and that having literally no idea that is not safe. Like people just, they're just putting it in there. I feel like there's not very much education about how to use it. And I feel like when there is a little bit more about it and we're not just taking chat GPTs words for things and we're not just taking the CRM AI's words for things, it will work a lot better. I feel like it's just such in its infancy at the minute. Yeah. So I think for my, my practical tip is just be careful when you're using it just because it's not always right. You look at someone's chat, GBT compared to someone else's chat, GBT, they may be on completely different sides of an argument and their one chat, GBT we telling, and this is all the facts, this one will be telling and the other, and, but they're. It's because it's just scraping the internet. It's not, it's not an omnipresent kind of, or whatever that word is. It like knows everything about the world. It's literally just reading stuff off the internet. But it is very useful for content creation. Yes. AI in CRM: Benefits and Cautions And emails and analyzing, like you said it's great for taking data and reporting back and that's. Very useful, especially in CRMs. 'cause you can see the health of your pipeline and you can see it all there. It gives you a nice little graph. But again, as we all know, even with content and email, it's a starting point, isn't it? Otherwise we all sound, what is it? The m dashes and sounding like a robot. Yeah. Like I know when I use it, I use it as a starting point and then I can change it. But it's easier to do that than to start with a blank page. So I'm like, okay. This is where I'm going. And sometimes you can have a little chat with it, you know, and it, it can inspire you in some ways. So yeah, definitely use ai, but like Deb said, with caution, don't be putting in personal details. And also when it comes to the customer facing, I would be very tenure. What's that word? Tentative. Yes. Thank you. It would be very tentative. Like, not, not against chatbots, though. Chatbots are different because you do have to plug the data in Yeah. To be able to use it. Those are really great points. GDPR Compliance and LinkedIn Integration And I actually just wanna pause here and say that folks, if you're listening to this and you're like, holy. Go back and listen to an episode with Margaret Julian about GDPR and data compliance and privacy, i'll share , the episode details in the show notes, and also an episode with Brian Altimas surround cybersecurity. So just in terms of data, passwords and all that kind of stuff as well. So. Yes. Really important and aligned with what we're talking about. Yeah. Because that's another thing when you're building your own CRM, is it GDPR compliant? Whereas, any software we use, it's something that we have to check out. Where are their data centers held? What jurisdiction do they come under? Are you safe? And also something that you mentioned earlier, Deidre about the LinkedIn connection on a CRM. We've had it a few times where some systems say that they can connect to LinkedIn. LinkedIn really closed itself down when it got bought by Microsoft. Some systems can, but they're not doing it in the right way. So if you find a system that says it can go to LinkedIn. Always contact LinkedIn and find out if they are one of the registered people that is allowed to have that connection on. Because if you don't and LinkedIn find out you're using it, they will shut down your LinkedIn account. So that is something, there are a few out there that say, oh yeah, you can connect to LinkedIn. And the other thing as well, they say that you can connect to LinkedIn, but it's usually the business page, which quite often people aren't using. They're usually using their personal page and it's very limited with actually the stuff that you can do. Yeah, so that was, that's a good one though, I would say. Surf is a good one and it Pipedrive if, yeah. Yeah. Pipe drive surf. They do use LinkedIn. Yeah. Drip Apply is another one I've heard of. And Skype is my favorite one at the moment for LinkedIn. And those ones I've been using Tapio is there. There's Shield and a few others. But with those, one of my mentors actually was using a tool connected to LinkedIn and whatever the tool was doing, LinkedIn perceived that it was bots on him page. And that's exactly to your point, Debbie, they were going to block him and luckily he'd been on a LinkedIn workshop and so he had a contact for somebody in LinkedIn. He was able to purchase them directly and go, yeah. Hey, I'm not a fricking bot. I'm a real thi gimme back my LinkedIn because he is got like 30,000 followers or something. Yeah, yeah. That and you know, it's a real thing. But chatbots. Okay. Understanding and Utilizing Chatbots I wanna talk about chatbots 'cause you've mentioned them a couple of times now and I'm like, will you explain what a chat bot is? The most common one is on a website, isn't it? So when you have that chat to us, you have a little, little icon in the bottom right hand corner, and you click on it and you're talking to a computer, basically. What a chatbot is, is. You would upload your information, so about your company if a person's gonna contact you, what are the services you offer? Or if there's frequently asked questions so you put that information into the chat bot so that when someone then goes onto your website and they've got a query about a specific product or service, they can then ask the bot. It will then look at its little information, its database, and go, oh, this is that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do that. And then they can have a conversation. It's basically a conversation between a human and a bot, but the bot actually does have the information the human's looking for. Most of the time. Yeah. And I, I feel like that's the, the basic, that is the basic kind of fucks of it. I've seen a really great way that somebody's been using this recently and I was like, mind blown. I'm like, fuck, I think I should, I'm missing a trick here. I might look into doing this. Innovative Uses of AI in Business And it's with a tool called Delphi. Have you guys come across yet? No. So Delphi like that, what you can do is I could take all the podcast episodes, the solo ones that I've done, and upload that to create the knowledge bank that you've referred to Steph, and then it'll have my voice as well, and my voice transit. Mm-hmm. Ah, yeah. It actually will speak in my voice so people can type their questions into the chat and it's like they're calling me and they can do up to 50 prompts in the thread. And I'm answering back. Well, don't you find, it's kind of creepy, don't it? Yeah. With Debs on this one, straight away I went, well, that's creepy. It's weird when you're using it in the business environment, but isn't it when you could, like, when you take the business out of ai, it gets very. Yeah. Ah, so I was thinking, oh, there's a couple of ways that that could work really well. I was like, one of my clients, his team are constantly asking him questions because even though they have a knowledge bank that they've built internally for the team, and they have all the SOPs and the processes, it's so nuanced. That they keep coming and asking 'em questions or, you know, and then they're asking 'em the same questions and I'm like, that's a problem. And so it's like, how can we resolve that? And I'm like, how about doing something like this? Yeah, yeah. Instead of them phoning you, they're phoning the app. You can also use it. Someone speaking to the other day, they had one for internal, for like that training, onboarding. So they would have to go through the courses and then they had the chat bot. So if they got stuck on something and like courses, it was internal. So it's like, you know, this is our process to do this, and they run through it. And then if they've got any questions, again, they go to the chat bot. So yeah, again, a great way to utilize it. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen, I've seen it as well, the person who showed it to me actually used it as as a low ticket option for a membership sort of thing . So people could sign up and they were getting stuff in membership, but then if they had questions they would just ask the questions there as opposed to having live access to her. And I thought, that's really smart way to use this to these. Yeah, yeah. Like also could be quite frustrating. Yeah, potentially. Potentially. I do. We, I always, we yeah, you find most of 'em have a fail safe of, I need to speak to a human. If you put that in and there's a good chance you can then go to a human, because I find again great, they are. For the most part, I've just sometimes cautious because then if someone's got say a complaint and then they're meeting with this robot, then it can get more frustrating, I think. Mm. So it's, it goes back to that when is the right time and when's it not, so they, you probably wanna have a trigger word, so like if they're using this language. Contact, contact a human straight away kind of thing. I love that. I love that. See, and this, this is what I mean with, we have to embrace ai, but I think it's being realistic of where it's at. Yeah. It's not, it is hyped up for good reason, but it's probably what, like the internet was back when it first started, you know, it's not what it is now. So it's going to be, we're gonna embrace it. It's everywhere. Everywhere. Personal and business. AI is everywhere now. Yeah. But it's going with it and being realistic and again, keeping mindful of the client. If they're good. Yeah. I do like that idea for the subscription though. Get taken note. I, I love what you said there. 'cause it is kind of like, that's where I draw the line. You know, it's like if there's these things, that's where I'm gonna draw the line. I think that's really important. And to have boundaries even internally before you go and you set up all of these AI things is really important because at the end of the day, AI should be treated a little bit like a team member as opposed to the CEO, right? And Yes, exactly. So how do you support clients to do that in practice? It's that kind of thing of, again, looking at it from your client's point of view and also from your own personal point of view. So, you know, like Steph said, if. One of the things I hate is if I'm contacting an AI bot, I know it's an AI bot and I've got a question about a system or something, and then they're just sending me back to the help desk at the, like the help resource website. And I'm like, no, I need to speak to someone. And then you can't speak to someone. That is something that is so frustrating 'cause I would, I'll do. Anything to not have to speak to someone. Okay, I'm, I'm all about chatbots. I'm happy with it, but sometimes you have to speak to someone, and if you're not given that option, that can really relieve a real sour taste in your mouth with your clients because. Sometimes it's too new. I know. We are doing this to save time for us, but we also need to take the client's time into account as well. So if the clients just can consistently be trolling through your website for your, frequently asked questions and it's not there. They're gonna go somewhere else. So that's something we always sort of consider. Steph and I worked in customer service for a long time before, so we've kind of come into this with both the kind of nerdy kind of technical stuff, but also that people, customer support kind of eccentricity. So. We always keep that in mind. So yeah, we're here to tell you about what automations and stuff you can implement in your business, but also look at it from your client's point of view. And again, it comes back to that customer journey map. It comes back to all of that stuff, that process map right at the beginning. Because saving yourself time is great, but if it's gonna wind up, the customers don't bother because you don't have any. And be aware, I think likewise, like any system, isn't it, even with ai, any system, it's only as good as the data that's in it. Yes. So you, there's, there's a good few companies out there that will sell you amazing chatbots and everything. The thing to note, no matter what is, you have to have that information to put in, that you need to create that knowledge base, right? And no matter what, so doesn't matter which one you go with. That work still needs to be done. Yeah, so important and I really admire and have to give you kudos for every time we talk. How you always bring it back to the customer. Hats off to you, you guys. Thanks. So, question. I know you guys have worked with like consultants, engineers, service providers, PTs, all of those different types of businesses. Challenges in Lead Management Are there some process or system or tech problems that everyone seems to face irrespective of their industry? Oh, I've got one. I've got one. Managing leads. Yeah, I was gonna say that one. That is a common one that we find where they might have a CRM, but again, like there's, they, they might, someone might not be using it or other people might not be updating it like as regularly as they should, or they might not have one at all and they're relying on a spreadsheet, and I get it. We wanna grow and you go out and you get this marketing person come in and they're gonna do amazing things and you're gonna have all these leads. But then what? What happens next? And I feel like that is a real common kind of like lead comes in, then what are you gonna do? What is is that, that's. That's the one that first spanked to mind. I'm like, yeah, how many times they go, we've got all these leads, like a hundred leads, one company paid for with them. I'm like, oh my God, be at them. How do you hug these people? It's true, and we've noticed a quite a bit of a trend recently with accountants. And companies that have that practice management software. So, you know, like lawyers, accountants, people that have a specific piece of software, and most of them come to us and I'm like, okay, so where do your leads go? And they're like, well, it's just on a spreadsheet because practice management software is once that client is a client. So all that stuff beforehand, all those emails, all those, talks and proposals and everything, it's just hanging around somewhere on the computer. So having that initial bit of where things come in from, you know, integrating your website forms into there, having pipelines doing and then doing automation off the back of that is probably every business needs clients. Clients become clients from being leads. So every ever, your business is. You need that. And there's quite a lot that don't have that. If you are listening to this now and you're like, oh actually yeah, I don't know. You go networking and you collect a business cards. What you doing with them? Are you cutting them up for kindling for a campfire? Or are you putting them anywhere? Like a lot of people aren't, so Yeah. Yeah, that's a hundred percent that one that all businesses need is some kind of lead management. Yeah, because it's the following up as well. Again, you get busy and then suddenly you go, oh goodness, I forgot to do that lead, or I saw that thing come in, or You're getting an email from your website. Why? Well, don't get an email. Put it straight into the system. Then you can send an automatic email saying Thank you for contacting me. Set an expectation. Someone will be in contact with you within the next one to two days, or whatever it is my booking link. Yeah, if you wanna jump straight to a call, here's, make it really nice to work with you. 'cause then that's their first impression of your business. So if you've sent a lead and then you don't get anything and then you are following, they go, oh, I didn't hear back from that company. And then chase them. It is not really a great start, is it? It doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy like they want to work with you. Yeah, for sure. Because I think more and more people are a bit like Amazon now. We, had that Amazon experience where it's one click to buy. So if you are having to chase down the company mm-hmm. To work with them, it's a bit like. Oh no. Yeah, yeah. Oh no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You want to, it is like, and like we said, it's the first impression, isn't it? And it's other things as well. If you are tracking your leads and you can get all this lovely data off the back of it, you know, you can see that your leads, you can see the trends. Like maybe if you've got seasonal business, you can see people are starting to contact you in September. So you're like, okay, well next year I need to put my marketing budget in August. There's so much stuff that there's this whole like mine of data that you're probably not using or doing anything with because you don't have any kind of lead system and you're not able to track any of that. So that's, that's another thing that's, another bonus. Sources. Yeah, because then you can know where to put your marketing, don't you? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. I've been talking about this with people recently, just not a spaghetti scatter gun approach with their marketing. It's like, use the data from your marketing and your sales to inform your future marketing. This comes up all the time at lie. I can only imagine because, and also the lead times. Yeah, because depending what service you are offering, sometimes it can take a few months. I know some bigger companies that we work with, it, it can take up to a year for them to make the decision because there's gonna be a meeting and then they have to have a meeting about that meeting and it goes round and all of that. Yeah. So it's again, data collection and then you can analyze that data. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna ask you a question now and put the two of you on the spot. Oh, we won't answer. We're both walking the walk. In terms of working together as a team and you're growing a business yourselves as well. Automating Internal Processes So what's something that you've had to systemize or automate or leverage AI for internally that when you reflect on it, it's a bit surprising? Oh, I don't know. We embrace all, well, I dunno if this is really the answer to the question. So originally we would have, somebody was signing up with us and the contracts and stuff like that, that was so manual which was end up taking forever. So, you know, we, we'd have to go into one system update and actually copy and paste things in. Yeah. Which is very bad. So we don't do that anymore. We, well, we kind of realized, 'cause we have quarterly meetings and that, and we're like, all right, what processes here are taking up time like affy. So we've completely fully systemized and automated the whole onboarding process. Which we hadn't done before, even though we were doing it for other people and we were like, why aren't we doing it for ourselves? So that is definitely something that we've done. I had a big project, I had a load of like, to just little bits of code that needed like a little field changed. Giving that to AI and going, can you just do the same code, but can you just change this last field? So that saved me a, massive amount of time because I wasn't having to then. Do it myself. So that's, that's, and also because on chap GBT, you can also create little projects. Mm-hmm. So, and they're really useful as well, aren't they? And I use them for a project because again, it's just having that kind of. Place for it. We've got our project management, but it's just when you're asking a quick question or something, you're going, hang on a minute. I don't know. Sometimes if Debbie's not available, I just, I replace her with chat, GBT basically, Debbie, I need to talk this out, and she's. I'll go to chat. GBT, then GBT doesn't go in Kohl. I'm curious what you guys do as well. Optimizing Tech Tools and Systems So internally in your business and with clients, like when Brian was on the show and we were talking about cybersecurity, Brian's like, you know when that Google thing comes up and it's like update or updates available, do them straight away. You know, like all the tools and software. I mentioned Kajabi earlier, like Kajabi had 10 updates yesterday. How often should people be going back to look at the tools they've already got to see how they could be leveraging them even more. Like, should they wait for an email that might even spot the email or, well, you know, like what? What's your advice on that? Well, I think it depends. So like that there might be an email that comes in that initiates it, or if you're delivering a new service or you've got a new product going out, that's normally a good time but at least I would say at the very least, if you're an established business once a year. Yeah. And I mean a full process day, like Deb says, we have our quarterly meetings and one of those will always be full on and we will be there. We will have a wall, we will have different post-it notes, and we go through the overall process and then break down on every little bit of that. So like that. A new onboarding client, yet the contract's automatically created. They're added onto QuickBooks. 'cause we use QuickBooks. They're automatically the draft invoice. Draft invoice, not just sent deposit. Again, we'd just like to check with that. Sometimes, you know, it is the creating that stuff and the, that takes the time, a quick glance and then you can go, okay, yep, send, done it is only a couple of seconds, but taking that time again for the customer experience and also your process might just be fine. You might not need to add all of these things in. Like obviously don't forget Kajabi, all those systems, they're businesses, they're trying to upsell or they're trying to get you to use something else. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to it's what's right for your business and you know, if you're, look, you're having your process mapping session every year and you're looking at it. If there's something that your team are like really hate doing. Then you know where to look. 'cause sometimes people can tell you about all of these things that they're doing, and then you've gotta try and remember them and they might not be relevant. So every time you're looking at your processes, see what's not working. And then have a look to see if the tool has got any updates. Unless you see something really cool in the updates and you're like, I want that, that's fine. But, don't spend a lot of time worrying about it because they're always gonna be sending out updates. And you know what it's like sometimes when something's new doesn't mean it's ready. Like when it's, I always the nerd who signs up for all the beatta stuff. 'cause I want to know all the new things that come out. I am like, I am a tech nerd. I have to admit, if you're technical, go for it. Have at it like, honestly, like yes, if you enjoy that sort of stuff. It's, it's always good to expand your knowledge, but we run into a lot of people who are not. So for the people that are not tech nerds, don't panic. Awesome. Yeah. And also, when you are looking at your process, look at what your system can do. 'cause we've had it on a few occasions where people come and they're like, we've got this, we've got this, we've got this. And we're like, well first off, you've got too much tech. You don't need that much because that does that. If you've got a scheduling tool like Tidy Cow or Calendly, but you're using, pipe drive or go home or HubSpot. They've got schedulers within them. Yeah. You use the system because then it's automatically integrated, so you don't need Zapier to then take it from candidly and put it in. The thing is I think, and this is where the overwhelm comes in sometimes there is just so much out there and there is so many shiny objects, which is why we are always going back to the get your house in order, know what you want. Yeah. What you require for your business. Then go looking. Because otherwise it's like going shopping when you're hungry. Yeah. Don't do that. Dangerous. Yeah. I end up with so much junk food and bread. Yeah. It's like that when you're tech. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So for the business owner who's listening right now, who's drowning in manual work, disconnected tools, and maybe they've gone tech shopping when they're hungry and they have some chaotic systems, I have a feeling I know what you're gonna say to this, but where should they start today to sort their shit out? Process map always gonna be a process map. 'cause you need, it's the, and it's the visual as well for humans. We need that sometimes. What systems are you using? And the process isn't just like you contact the customer and then this happens. What systems are you using where, and there's a really nice style called a swim lane. So if you have loads of tech, use a swim lane process map. Google it and get a template, I'm sure from Google Docs or something, or there's lucid or smart draw. There's loads of process mapping software out there as well. Free stuff is utilize it. But yeah, a swim lane, just list all your tech alone, then build your process and you can see straight away that visual will highlight things. Well, hang on a minute. Why am I adding it there? If I waited until the next step? Like we, we had one recently. New contact straightaway. They wanted them to add them in to their project management software and I was going, but if you do that, you are overloading that system. And if you wait until after the meeting's scheduled, because they had a very high success rate, someone comes to them. They're pretty much sold. It's just getting them through the process of having the call and the quote and the budget chats. So it was like saying, well, don't do it at that point. Wait for another two steps. Then you've got all the information in there already and you're not having to update. Yeah, we are gonna always go back, go to a process map. But a swim lane, if you've got loads of tech, I would use a swim lane so you can see where it lists and see where, what interacts with what, at what point. And does that make sense? Oh, just call Stebbington. Yes. Yes. And where can people learn more? Connect with you or, and you guys are the nerds that they need, right? Yeah. We're the nerds you need. Yeah, I love that. Where can they find you, connect with you, learn more about you and all that sort of stuff to get to work with you, get help, whatever. Well, we have our website, which is www.stebbington.com. We're on LinkedIn both personally and via the business page. We're on Facebook. We've got business page we we're on TikTok, but that's more for the lows and little short little bits of content. YouTube, we have a podcast that comes out most months. We didn't do last month, so I can't say every month. You'll find us at Stebbington and Instagram we are on, we're in a, we're everywhere, but we're @Stebbington or @StebbingtonLimited. So, yeah. And our website, as we said, has got free resources. We've got like your CRM criteria list a few downloads and that you can use for change management, what you need to do. Yes, change management's a good one because especially if you've got a team, people forget that. They just focus on the tech. And again, going back to the people, you need the team morale and you don't want to cause ugh like, yeah. And TikTok, can I just say TikTok is where you'll see us dressed up as purple dinosaurs. Because that is, I'm definitely putting the link to their TikTok in the show notes so you can go and check them out. Girls, it's been an absolute blast haven you on the show. Thank you so much and for sharing all your wisdom and knowledge. , We'll send everybody your way and thank you so much. Final Thoughts and Action Steps Okay, so let me break this down. The ladies hit us with three truth bombs today. Number one, process before platform. Map your process journey, and then pick the tools and tech stack that you need, not the other way around. Number two, use or create one source of truth so that your systems are talking to each other, and then you're avoiding any of that double data entry and the duct taping stuff that you might do with Zapier or Maker or any of the other tools that the ladies mentioned. And number three, use AI as your teammate as opposed to the CEO. Automate the stuff that's repetitive, but keep the relationship human. That came up quite a lot today, not to lose the personalization. So as always, I've got an action step for you today. I want you to open a doc, a Google doc, a Word doc, whatever kind of a doc, and basically sketch out a swim lane map. So basically those are lines, horizontal lines. Of your lead to client journey, what does that look like? And if you're losing leads like the ladies talked about in the show, I want you to spot where or what is that bottleneck or manual choke point that's literally causing your leads to leave you? And if that's something that you could automate, could you put in something there? Is there an action step or something? Some task that could be automated that would prevent those leads getting lost? Identify what that is and automate it this week. That's your one action step. And remember, done is better than perfect, but when you're automating something, make sure it's a step that can be automated on repeat, and is not going to automate problem. Because you're brilliant and you're busy, go ahead and grab their CRM checklist from stebbington.com so you can stop guessing and start choosing your CRM tool like a pro. And Debbie, Steph, you were outstanding. They are absolutely the nerds we all need, and that's definitely the vibe that they shared today. So if this episode helped you, do me a favor and share it with one entrepreneur who you know is stuck in a little bit of tech chaos, and then rate review and follow the show wherever you're listening today, it takes 30 seconds or less and it helps us help more 📍 founders build businesses they're proud of. So thank you today for listening, and thank you as always for listening. I'm Deirdre Martin. And until next time, keep mastering your business.

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Key Takeaways:

If your business feels like it’s held together with spreadsheets and wishful thinking, this episode will show you how to scale without losing the soul of your brand.

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Scale Smarter: What to Do Next When You’re Ready to Grow

Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts

If you’ve got referrals coming in, happy clients, steady revenue, but have the feeling that you’re capable of more growth, you’re in the right place.

Key Takeaways

“Stamina is not a scale strategy.”

A question to reflect on and keep coming back to as you read through:“What is the next best move that creates capacity and growth for you in your business without breaking your client delivery?”

What to do next to scale starts with one diagnostic question

“If you don’t choose your next move deliberately, the business is going to choose for you.”

If you are doing all the delivery, create capacity before you market more

“If you’re already at capacity, more visibility just creates more pressure.”

If those five clients for you this month, would you be excited or panicking?

The identity trap that keeps experts overfunctioning

“If your self-worth is tangled up in being the one who does all the things all the time, growth is going to start feeling like you’re giving up something.”

Pick one deliverable you do repeatedly. Document the standard for it. Then test delegation on that one thing. Build proof for your brain.

Decision lanes break the founder bottleneck

“You’ve hired help, but all the decisions still route back to you.”

Stop trading time for money with offers and retainers

“If you bill by the hour, your income lives and dies by your calendar availability.”

If you took a month off, would your revenue keep coming in, or would it pause while you were away?

The real cost of doing nothing is a stamina-based business

Capacity, then lanes, then packaging.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do I know what to do next to scale?

Should I market more or hire first?

What should I hire first, a VA or a contractor?

How do I break the founder bottleneck quickly?

How do I stop trading time for money as a consultant?

What if I fear quality will drop when I delegate?

Related Articles & Resources

Full Transcript

[00:00:00] The question that reveals structural fragility

[00:01:02] The “I could do this in my sleep, but what now?” stage

[00:02:53] The core diagnostic question, your next best move

[00:03:48] Move 1, create capacity before marketing

[00:05:40] Real example, VA + contractor, 12 hours back weekly

[00:07:16] The momentum shift, 5 proposals in 5 days

[00:07:42] Self-check, excited or panicked by more clients?

[00:10:22] Move 2, decision lanes to break the founder bottleneck

[00:11:05] Research insight, switch cost and why you feel scattered

[00:11:48] HBR stat, 1200 toggles a day and the real time loss

[00:15:48] Move 3, packaging into retainers, stop trading time for money

[00:17:28] Self-check, does revenue pause when you’re off?

[00:18:14] The deeper cost, stamina is not a scale strategy

[00:19:11] What to do in the next 30 days

[00:20:31] Work with Deirdre, Strategic Reset call

[00:20:50] Watch next, decision fatigue episode

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A question to reflect on and keep coming back to as you read through:

“What is the next best move that creates capacity and growth for you in your business without breaking your client delivery?”