Boosting Efficiency and Profits with Automation | RMT248

Hey, this is Laura Welcome back to Ask Laurel and our podcast name laurels real money talks. So our podcast is about money, how to make it, how to keep it, how to invest it, use a team and integrate it team is your best option because our financial services is extremely segregated and difficult to navigate. And every Friday I come up with a podcast with amazing people either making money keeping money or investing money today I have a gentleman with me who are going to teach you how to make some money and a lot of it for those of you who want to automate and have a lot of ease and grace in your life. Because most of you work way too hard. So Paul Sokol is with us today. He's actually part of our team, we use him as a consultant also just joined our big tables super excited about that, started selling dime store candies for 25 cents in middle school like those typical like little cute middle middle school things. At least you weren't selling, you know, Girl Scout cookies, pulse good. And after a gauntlet of college courses, took his direct sales, just his whole experience and founded his own company, and 2008, which helps you automate inside of your marketing. So I always think we use the same system. But you know, Paul, how I always start with this, I always say what you help people do is really, you know, the jobs of two or three Bas and better because it's, it's consistent. It's repetitious, and you can track the actual revenue. So welcome, Paul. Thanks

for having me. I'm super excited to be a guest this year, some stuff because I like automation. It's yeah, yes.

So talk about that, like, I mean, your passion for it is more than most most people don't even know what it is. And now you're into AI, which will end our interview having that conversation too. But where did that all come from that passion.

My degree is actually in electrical engineering. And that went all the way up to get a master's in processing. I wanted to, I wanted to like build drum machines and stuff like that. But in grad school, as you mentioned, in 2008, I got involved in a video email company with with my good buddy flywheel. And that's where I first learned about automation. And his job was to get people in the door. My job was to get people using the software and emails to people. And so that's where I first got exposed to it. And then I ended up actually working for Infusionsoft as a success coach for a few years, and then later their product team. And that's where I really found out that what I learned about electrical engineering is super applicable for automation.

Interesting, so talk about some of the common challenges. I mean, what we've seen, you know, I have clients coming from all over the world, they use all sorts of just, you know, I call email marketing automation. So talk about the breadth of automation we're talking about, because it's way larger than when people hear that a lot of times they associate to something simple. And that's not what we're talking about.

Yeah, we're talking about business automation. So the the way that I approach business in general is really academic, I believe there's seven parts of any business no matter how big or how small you got, and it's a customer journey centric model, you've got your offers your products, or services and your p&l line items, right. And every single line item has its own customer journey of the marketing, the sales and the fulfillment. And then behind the scenes, you have the operations, which is how do you market? How do you sell? How do you fulfill and that's where automation shows up. And then of course, you have people to do the operations and then money which pays for all of it. So when we're talking about business automation, we're talking about using automation to scale up relationships at any one of those seven parts of the business. I've built automation for offer development, to track customer interviews, just doing interviews with customers and getting product feedback. And then of course, the traditional marketing automation for emails and sales automation. But then automation for fulfillment is actually where where the money actually is. And I don't see many people actually talking about that. They're all about marketing to all about sales. And then it's crickets, when it comes to fulfillment. And that's really where the Relationships are hard and they're made. And that's the longest part of the customer journey. If you do it right, somebody's going to be in your fulfillment cycle for literally the rest of their life.

So when you talk about the top three automation strategies, I mean is are we talking about from marketing? Or do you get the lead to the sales to the fulfillment or talk more, just elaborate more for those that are out there listening, going, maybe actually lean in and pay attention? So

for automation, it's about the journey that you're creating, and then being clear on what part of the what part of the business are you working on. So for example, with sales journeys, especially if it's like a high ticket thing, or if it's an assisted sale, or they have to talk to somebody, you definitely want to make sure you have some kind of a pipeline, and not just a pipeline with meaningful stages. But the automation is there to support what people are doing anyway, through that. So like a top strategy is always pipeline automation for anything that's like usually like b2b or services. And then if we're talking about the kind of the whole other side of the coin of like b2c products, this is where you get into things like lead magnets, freebies, but then it's always supporting the next part of the journey. So just because somebody like, for example, downloads a coupon for your restaurant, great. Are you actually following up with them to make sure they come in and actually redeem that?

So there is, I would think, statistically, what 50% Don't redeem them? What's the number? Do you know, that's just a signal, I

know that it's really high, I know that like with gift cards, your gift cards are the same kind of thing, people will buy a gift card, and then they won't use the full amount. And then the places basically get to be a bank. You know, they they've taken all the money, they've got that liquid that they can play with. And then they're just waiting for you to show up, if ever to redeem that gift card.

I love it. So what are some of the best practices in business, super starting automation, obviously, getting the right software?

Yeah, the software is really important, because you gotta know what you're trying to do. But the journey is above and above and beyond the most important part. So as far as the best practice, I always approach it from the milestones first. So first of all being clear, like, what am I trying to do in the first place, but once you're clear on that, then looking at the different milestones. So like, the first major thing that happens is this. And then the next thing they have to do is this, I like to use a theme park analogy, because you get to the theme park. And then there's all the big rides, and those are kind of the milestones. And then you have the pathways that take people from milestone to milestone and these are the sidewalks and the little shops and decorations and stuff that you see going right to the next. I

love that. Yeah, cuz I am one of those people who have to hit every ride, especially the big roller coasters. How do business owners, Paul ensure they're not over automating? I mean, I know that I'm one of those clients because I want to keep a really high touch. You know, everyone who becomes a table client, because my cell phone mean, we keep a really high touch, personal touch. But I've also know a lot of my colleagues who have so over automated I mean, finding a human to talk to becomes challenging. So where's the balance in that? So

the balance in that is not automating any family. So don't automate anything weird, don't do weirdness at scale. So if you wouldn't do it as a real person, you definitely shouldn't automate it. And so this is where being clear about the milestones and the pathways to get people from one milestone to the next is so like, let's say you're inviting somebody to a party, right? Hey, boy, it's it's Tuesday right now. Hey, Laurel, I've got a party on Saturday. Yes. Okay, cool. And then if I don't hear from you after like, three days, maybe in the morning, I will text you, Hey, are you going to come to the party on Saturday? And then if I still don't hear from you, maybe Friday evening, I'll send one last, hey, party's tomorrow, are you showing up? You can totally automate that, because that's how a real person would interact and would engage. And so that's going to scale. What doesn't scale is doing something that you wouldn't do normally as a human. And then that's, that's how it feels icky and robotic, because a real person wouldn't do it in the first place. So it's obviously automated.

So I want to cut into AI just given that answer, because AI is automating a lot. I mean, we're gonna start using it, right? You're assisting us users. So is it the same sort of formula that if a real person wouldn't do it, then you use it? Because I mean, I mean, I could have you probably go on a 10 minute rant about the pros and cons of AI.

Yeah, so ai ai I actually studied machine learning in grad school back in the day and like, you know, 2008 2009 and whatnot and machine learning. Artificial Intelligence is literally just pattern recognition. Like, at the end of the day, that's all it is. Either you, you know the answer, you're looking for the output, or you don't. And so when it's just, that's just two different types of AI tasks. So in the case of something like automated phone agents, right, you know, exactly the output that you're looking for. So you need to design the experience, just like you would design an automated experience to factor all of those things in. And when you're not meticulous about it, and we do not get super intimate with it. That's where you create weird AI kind of stuff. So like with the phone call, yeah, we can have a phone script and all that jazz. But what happens if it's a voicemail? What happens if somebody picks up and then they hang up on? What happens if they pick up but oh, it's a wrong number. Those are all things that you have to absolutely dig into all those normal cases, but also some of those edge cases. Otherwise, it's going to be weird experience. And then it's, it's, they will be the same as being stuck in phone Tree Hill, like, you know, happens with forever. Yep,

I was just there. That's what I was a little bit, I should say, a tardy to our call, because I was in a phone tree of a university for my daughter, and I went round and round push one push all the way up to 10, then you push the one and then you're back in another phone tree, another tenant cycle is gonna take forever. Yeah, so that's

poor design right there. They just don't give it enough love and care. They abdicate their relationship rather than actually delegating.

So what are some of the pitfalls then obviously, I mean, you're speaking to sound but go deeper on that conversation.

So the biggest pitfall of being a just being slapdash or not really caring about your automation is the relationships at the end of the day, you're trying to build relationships and do it at scale. And so if your automation is not fostering a good relationship with people, you're just going to hurt yourself faster. And that's probably the biggest pitfall. And then the other thing is just not factoring in all the possible ways that people could cheat me or show up in an automation or leave a particular automation. I just released a free mini course. And when I was testing, and I realized that if people never bookmark the thing, and all they're doing is just saving the email, and then they're clicking to get into it. That's going to continue to repeat the automation every single time. So I had to build in a thing that says, Listen, you only run this once. So if they save the email, and they're clicking it over and over again, we're not going to blow them off.

Interesting, interesting. So as you look at future businesses, automation, I mean, what do you what do you see in the next five to 10? I mean, chat GPT, you know, was kind of the the leading to market. It's not the only one, there's plenty that are out out. And it's not just AI automation, we're talking about folks, we're talking about all automation, including your initial software stack that you that you come with, but what what do you see, and I really want to talk about the Delta side of this, because I think there's a huge Delta side to doing this wrong.

Yeah, so I feel that consumer tolerance of bad automation from large corporations that can just throw money at stuff without actually caring about the experience that's gonna go way down, like it is already getting to that point where like, if you don't really dial in that experience, people are just going to flame you for it. And that's where I believe small businesses have a huge advantage because they can sit down and spend the time to create a great experience for each and every single person. So that way they felt they feel listened to heard, loved and cared about. And just because we can automate something, or just because we can AI something doesn't necessarily mean that we should. And so I think we're gonna start to see a lot more AI fails and a lot more automation fails, and people are going to be tired of it. Because that's really just show that that's really that's the equivalent of sending an email from a no reply. And not addressing that and email. That's basically saying, I don't care about you. There's some valid reasons to send from a no reply address. And you still need to address Hey, this inboxes are monitored if you need support or help. This is where you're supposed to go. You can just send it from a nameless something and because how many people actually check when you hit Reply to something where it's going to the average person doesn't. So they could be replying to a no reply, email and then be like, well, they never followed up with me. Why don't they care about me and it's just because you simply didn't care enough as the business candidly to care. To care about that. Interesting,

interesting. So tell me more about the next five to 10. What else do you see? Because I agree with you, I think the small and medium sized businesses are going to dominate the I think the the Giants, you know, the delegates are gonna, they're gonna have a harder time. And I mean, I just My son is, is becoming an auditor for one of the the the casinos that are real right here in Nevada. And it's interesting. Human turnover and remote turnover is causing huge, like from a third party audit perspective, huge, huge and like really, really tough issues. So I think the big companies are gonna have a harder time controlling their quality. I mean, do you agree with that not agree with that, I think it's an

interesting, I 100% agree. In fact, in the next five to 10 years, I think that that that people journey is gonna start to become front and center for a lot of people. Like I said, you know, it's your offer market sales, fulfillment operations, and your people. And your people absolutely have a journey. And I like to call it the hidden customer experience, because almost nobody is talking about hearing about it, you'll you'll see things talking about like e x, which is like the employee experience, but really, it's just an internal customer. You there, there's the hiring, the inspiring and the firing, just like marketing, sales and fulfillment. And for the companies that really double down on designing good hiring experiences good inspiring, just as somebody is hired and as they work for you. And then also designing a good termination or firing experience. Like it sucks to get cut from a job. But if you're being cut on like a Zoom meeting with like three kinds of people, that's terrible. You remember that happened a couple years ago, and that company just got completely flamed for it. Humans, people do the business. And so in the next five to 10 years, I think there's going to be a lot more focus on the employee and the contractor experience. Because at the end of the day, they have to be happy, and they have to be supportive. And they need to have the enablement to do their jobs. That's why people can take somebody off the streets and have them working in an Amazon warehouse four hours later, because they have that onboarding process laser precise. And same thing with like McDonald's, they they train their people, I don't know if your peek behind the counter, but they have little booklets that are picture based. So even if you're illiterate, or you're not strong at reading, you can still build a Big Mac, because you can look at pictures. And it's that kind of really on that unreasonable focus on detail and what your your people are doing, that's going to separate the people that are successful from the people that just become irrelevant and eventually not.

Interesting, what's the most rewarding part for you? What keeps you up and passionate about this?

I think the most rewarding part for me is, is solving problems that are hurting the relationships for whatever the business is. I can take any number of any number of forms, like I got a client that they do challenges every every quarter, so they do a really big five day challenge. And for the past two years, so we've dialed in how to not only make that challenge, a better experience for the people going through it, but also easier internally, that employee experience has taught me about making it easier for the people on their team to administer and deliver the challenge and make sure that you know the Facebook group is being supported and everybody knows ahead of time, like what they're trying to do. I like solving problems that that most people have given up on. Yeah.

Those of you that are just joined if you vibe and pass this recording somehow to to you and during this podcast, our call to action for you is at any point if you have a question or request go to ask laurel.com as K Lor al ask a question, make a request. We'll be right back with you. And again, we have that just dialed in. So you can ask as many questions and one thing I want to say about that. For those of you say, Well, I don't know what questions to ask you is all over my sites. I'm giving this away at least the first few chapters and by reading any others my book or other person, you know somebody else's book, money questions are should be relevant in your daily life all the time. So automation is a huge one for us, which is why we're enjoying our relationship with Paul. Talk about what keeps you motivated and innovating because innovating. Probably more on the innovation side because it's changing so quickly and technology changes. So how is someone who's performing this how do you stay encouraged and motivating versus I know other people I've talked to that are, I say have a similar, not as advanced skill set, but they get overwhelmed because there's so much new tech technology, you just feel like you got it. And then it changes. And then you feel like you got it and then it changes. Yeah,

well, that's the only thing that's constant is change. So. So as far as staying motivated, I like to expose myself to as many of the different tools and things that are out there. So like, in recent years, we've seen this, this CRM, go go high level, this just shown up out of nowhere. And rather than saying, Oh, I'm not interested in that, or oh, they're there, they're weak, whatever. I've got clients that are using it, and I'm hopping in there, I'm figuring it out, and I'm learning it and to avoid the overwhelm. It's always staying grounded in, you know, what part of the business am I working in? And what's the customer journey. And as long as you have that, it doesn't really matter what the tool is, I like to say that a CRM is like driving a truck, if you can go ahead and drive and 18 you know, an 18 Wheeler, it doesn't matter what brand of truck it is, a truck does truck things. So CRMs and automation are the same thing. Emailing is sending an email, yes, it's important that it comes out right and it gets delivered and that it looks good. But what you're saying, and that is really what's important. So keeping yourself grounded on what you're doing. Helps helps avoid that. And then for new stuff like, like, language models, GPT. Play around with it, ask it questions, just see what other people are doing with it. And at least being informed about what it can and can't do. And because everything is just a tool, and at the end of the day, it's just another tool for your tool belt. And sometimes it's super relevant. And other times we don't need it. Yeah,

I know you have a new brand new program, right? So if you go to and a gift for everyone. So if you go to ask Laurel again as kale, Lor al asked little.com, forward slash, a l. A. P, tell us about that automated program that you just built and ready for everyone? Yeah,

so this is a free mini courses that I just released, called how to automate like a pro. And I'm covering exactly how we plan and design and our methodologies for building world class automation that every single client goes through, whatever we're building automation for them. And so I talked about how do we approach it like being the director of relationship and getting the milestones down and making the ball and stick diagrams of what your customer journey looks like. And I'm even including functional copies of the handful of planning and messaging tools that we use, because I've been doing this automation thing for close to two decades at this point. But I've never sat down and been like, this is how we do it. And so I figured it was about time, I was encouraged by some of the other certified partners in the community to finally sit down and do this. And that's why making it free, this stuff isn't rocket science, it's really just understanding how to think about it. And then once you're clear on that, okay, then you can go ahead and build it. So the feedback has been super positive so far. And I'm very excited for you to go through it and see how this can help you know, better automated journeys, well,

and I'm looking forward to our whole team going through it too. So again, if you want that you go to ask laurel.com forward slash a L A P, which is automate like a pro. And it's in the description notes in the show notes below. Paul, to wrap up our interview, because I could talk forever about this, because it's just interesting to me. What advice in wrapping up would you give to the entrepreneurs out there that feel like they were in you know, as a huge part of that. So I'm going to spin that question just a little to those who have done it and and are now spoiled by it. Because experience wasn't good. It didn't really work. And now, I mean, they're kind of back where they were. So what advice do you give those entrepreneurs of same courage, like you said, Stay innovating, and keep working on it.

I would say, keep your customer in mind, keep your employees in mind, look at what's working, look at what's not working, and then solve those. And again, it can happen over phases too. You don't have to eat the whole elephant in one bite. There's been cases where we've built one simple automated thing, like a form or some kind of, you know, just a big red automation button. And that's made life better for people. Just look for places that you can improve. Even if it's just a little bit and always be evolving. It's like a house. You can always be renovating and remodeling and adding new stuff to your house. So do one thing at a time fix that broken dishwasher. Go ahead and replace that busted door handle, you know, buy a new window to replace that one that the dog cracked you know, whatever it is just, there's always something that you can do. Automation is never in its final form. because your customer journey is always evolving, right? So look for simple wins. And you'll feel really good about what you come up with. And I love

it. So again, if you would like Paul's gift his course go to ask little.com forward slash, a L A P. And last thing, which I'm going to spend to what we both love, near and dear, which is kids. And if you haven't grabbed my book, make sure you grab it make kids millionaires fall, you have a nonprofit for kids. So share that passion and journey. Yeah.

So back in about late 2014. Laurel, I realized there's a huge problem that school budgets are being slashed left and right. And it was forcing cornered administrators to make difficult program choices, including cutting the arts, and one of the first things to go is the music programs just because the equipment is so much more costly compared to other things. But I realized that's not the actual problem. The problem is that if we stand by and not do anything about it, in a couple of generations, there's not going to be any original music coming out of America. And it's all just going to be top radio and engineered pop stuff, while the rest of the world still has their their cultural fabric with music in it. And so I stood up and I said, No, I refuse to live into that world. And that's why I founded keep children rockin. And we provide music equipment, donations and repairs to youth music programs. As of this recording, we're going into our 10th year, and we've donated over 20 grand worth of stuff, donations and repairs to over 20 programs throughout the state of Arizona. That's, that wakes me up and I want to do a lot more of that. And now that I'm part of the big table, that's that's part of the vision, we got to we got to talk about that on our on our next sequencing.

Absolutely, we got to do a whole podcast about that because the bell curve has been cut ripe for special needs and gifted and talented. Those are the first that I saw because I have a gifted and talented you know, kid and bored in school. No arts really limited music, if any. I mean chorus Yes, but like a band cut. You know, all even home Mac. I mean, I remember my good old days, I took a woodworking class. So all that stuff's cut, cut, cut, cut. And so you're down to the core basics, and that doesn't let a kid up during the day. You know, they they need just to have some skills. So I'm excited you're doing that. And and where did they go if they want to just check out and donate to your nonprofit?

Yeah, people want to learn more they can go to keep children rockin.org There's no GN Rafi. So K EP children, Roc K i n.org. And you can learn more about us and you can donate directly through Pay Pal. And if you have equipment or music gear that you want to go ahead and donate, reach out, and we'll find a way to rehome it. I'm literally in the process of rehoming a piano from an old co worker to a local school here in Gilbert. And so now I'm herding cats between a piano mover my friend and the school.

I love it. I love it. I love what you're doing and appreciate it. Again, those of you anytime you have a question go to ask laurel.com Ask a question. make requests. We'll be back next Friday with another amazing interview with another amazing entrepreneur. In the meantime, have a great day. Paul, thank you.

Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate your listenership. Everybody