Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam.
Welcome to Power CEOs, the truth behind the business. I'm Jen Goadet, your fearless host, entrepreneur, investor, and business strategist. Why are we here? Because I believe that iron sharpens iron. And when we bring industry leaders, entrepreneurs, investors who are moving and shaking to share what's working in business and even what's not, we are all able to learn and grow. As a result, our businesses grow. And the ripple effect impacts not only ourselves, our teams and their families, but but also our communities and our world. We're in for a treat. Today. I have a very special guest because we are going to dive into roi. Yes, real monetary return.
Not vanity metrics, not dashboards full of noise. Listen, most businesses track activity. The ones that win track what actually drives profit. The rest slowly bleed out without even realizing.
I've got Les Moyer here because the truth is, most people miss that. Every business solves a problem, and every business problem shows up in your numbers first. Leaders don't just know how to read the numbers, they know how to interpret it. Les Moyer helps companies connect client behavior directly to revenue through what he calls ROI intelligence. And he's known for cutting through the complexity of with a less is more philosophy. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Oh, Jen, thank you so much for having me here.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: I'm really excited to have this conversation. You know, before we aired, there are a lot of synergies. There's a lot of things that we both cover. And I'm really excited for people to hear your perspective.
So I want to think about ROI as leadership, discipline.
Okay. And so I want to help everyone understand how to translate that client behavior into that revenue truth. So they're not scaling busy. They're not burning themselves out along the way. They're really focused on the data that matters so that they can move forward powerfully. So tell me, why do most businesses think they understand roi return on investment folks, but actually don't like, where does that misunderstanding start? Is it attribution? Is it cost? Is it decision making? Where is the true root cause?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Well, I think a lot of the time what it is is not just about the attribution, not just about the cost, but it's about underlying the triggers that actually cause those not tracking. Often the right thing. And when you're not tracking the right thing, you can't change the right thing. You can't make that difference.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. It gets measured, gets managed. And so talk to me about how do we find that right thing?
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Well, sometimes we're looking at lead generation and then potentially conversions. But at the same time, what are we actually, what are the differences that they're making? How many times are we missing something? Where I often talk about the simplicity of a leaky bucket, where are those leaks, where are they coming from? And are we plugging them and are we finding out what makes the difference? Because lead gen, we can control that. We're often tracking that. And then from sales onwards we're tracking what's happening in production, but are we tracking what's in between? How many missed calls are happening, how many times are being followed up? All those intricate details that add up to a whole lot. And what we find is that sometimes because of the lack of being able to track all of that, we're down to 2% real overall conversion. And that's really poor when we can track these little things along the way. But you've got to be doing it right.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. And you know what you're talking about. I call it holes in the boat, right? Imagine you have a boat and you've got all these holes that are just like taking on water and you have one little person with a bucket. But that's not really helping if you don't plug the holes. And so folks like we, a lot of people tell me when they come in, they say, hey, I have a lead problem, I need more leads so that I can close more business. But they have that exact problem. They're not tracking anything between first contacts and closing the deal or they're not tracking enough. So for the people in the audience, what does that look like? How intricate is mapping that prospective client journey? How do we find the right metrics?
[00:04:41] Speaker B: I guess asking that question is actually the key to it because what we understand from the statistics that we get across the board is that people are not responding immediately to people, that there's not enough follow up. There's a whole lot of statistics around this. When we monitor it, when we understand what makes the difference in those. For example, most people, if you've got an office, somebody walks in the door, they're acknowledged immediately, right? But if they connect us with us digitally or over the phone, we have a tendency to relax around that and go, we'll get back to them. And yet the fact is that within five minutes response to somebody is you're 21 times more to be able to convert. And being able to connect with them within a minute is something like 391% difference. And being able to do that in the modern day in smaller businesses, it makes that big impact because 80%. I love the statistics because it really makes a difference and makes us think over 80% of the first responder is going to actually get the business.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. I think especially with service based business and I think immediately of trades, if I've got a problem, a plumbing problem and I've got water coming in, I want somebody here now. And the first person who picks up the phone is the person who wins my business because I've got a now problem.
What about service based businesses that are not necessarily a now problem? Like for example, I'm going to use marketing as an example. A lot of companies know they need marketing. They're not really sure what they do and so they're looking to shop around, if you will, to make what they think is a more informed decision. What about those service based businesses?
[00:06:23] Speaker B: I really think that along those lines, often what happens is a lead comes in potentially and the respondents, people get back to them once or twice and then don't want to bother them anymore. But their understanding about real marketing and real connection with, with a potential client or a lead is that now it takes over 11 times to be able to get back to them, to convert them into a client. And if it's a high, high priced item, it's even more, it's up around the 23 times. And those are just averages. So unless if you're, if your salespeople or your, your CRM is not going back, and I'm not talking about trying to ring them up and ask them for the sale every time, but what we're trying to do is build authority, build connection with those clients and build a real communication. Unless you're doing that, you're going to lose out. Because if you think about it, if you're letting one of those leads go, you're increasing your or decreasing your return on investment.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. And now I'm going to go to the conversation that we're having in a lot of circles, especially in the tech circles, and that's trust.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: When, when we reach out once or twice and then we don't follow up again, we haven't established trust with that prospect. So especially in industries where people do business with people they know like and trust, they want to do business with people they trust. If we haven't established that trust by following up and answering their questions and providing the value, then they're immediately going, well, I haven't even paid you yet. What's going to happen after I pay you? Are you going to Drop off the face of the planet. So can you speak, speak a little bit about some of the mistakes that you see leaders making when measuring roi, especially when it comes to service based businesses and the trust factor?
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I like to reframe it from saying about mistakes to.
Because we're talking to people who are already making a big effort. They've got teams, they've got and made the difference by actually being a business person, especially the small to medium.
But what it is is about how do we leverage and how do we create more ROI so we can grow faster. And if we are actually making those connections with clients, building trust, as you said, that's what makes the difference. But the only way you can do that is by communication. And this is a quote from my coach, J.T. fox and I think he often uses it is that you get high on your own supply because really, really what that means is that you're into your own and you believe that your product sells itself. It doesn't. And one of the key things that I learned over time was that perception is more important than reality. What is the perception of your client? Because what you believe about your business, what you believe about your client is that getting truly communicated. And if it's not, then you have to change the way you think about how you're communicating, how you're connecting and how you're helping them understand what difference is going to make, the benefits it is going to be for them.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Okay, so let's close that leak in particular. I love action steps. I'm a coach and a consultant. You guys know, everybody knows that I like an action step at the end, at the end of every segment. So based off of that particular leak, if you will, how, what is one action step that people who are watching now, no matter what stage of business they are startup, you know, going to scale, looking to exit where they can plug that perception versus reality leak.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: I think it's about creating some assets that actually talk to your client about not necessarily just one of your products, but how it benefits them and actually getting feedback from them as well and then passing that on to others, adjusting what you're doing and asking them what their perception of what you is, what your perception of your service is, what their perception of your product is and being able to adjust. Because a lot of the time we fall in love with our own company. It's, it's our baby, right? And then what we end up doing is we forget being on the other side, but then we go out to a restaurant or we hop in a taxi or an Uber. And we do give feedback. We do all of this, but then we protect our own ego sometimes. And that's a hard thing to face, but we protect our ego because we don't want to see the negatives in our business. We only want to look at the positives. But that's what you need to track, is where it, where those leaks are and finding them. And that's an investigative thing. And sometimes you want somebody from the outside to come in and go, this is where your statistics are breaking down. But often you're not even tracking them. So find out and inspect that.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. So if you are watching, that's an action step number one that you can take.
Establish your feedback loop with your clients. Understand the difference between the perception and reality. What is their perception of your business? What is their perception of your products and your services and every step of the process so that we can plug that leak and make sure that we're serving our clientele in the way that we want to serve them. If you guys are really resonating with this conversation, make sure you go to Facebook and join the Power CEO's Facebook group, because you can interact and we can continue this conversation. But the moral of the story today is if you, if you can't measure what drives revenue, you're not really leading, you're guessing.
And if this is hitting a nerve, good, because we are going to dive deeper into this. We want to know what you're seeing in business, what's not converting, what's not clear. And up next, we're going to talk about how most companies think they have a lead problem. They don't. They have a connection problem. Stick around. We'll be right back.
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Now let's dive into our conversation of the day.
We left before the break talking about how most companies think they have a lead problem, but what they actually have is a conversion problem, a trust problem.
Everyone seems to be chasing more. More leads, more traffic, more attention. But more doesn't fix the holes in your boat. It doesn't fix the broken system. It only amplifies them. The real leverage is in connection, in conversion, in retention. And we're here with Les Moyer to dive deeper.
Les, talk to me about, when you say client connection, what does that Mean in practice, not theory. Like what are the observable behaviors in a company that has client connection?
[00:13:38] Speaker B: I think often it's not observed and that's a lot of the problem. Often what we're doing is we're tracking lead conversions. We love all these dashboards that come from Facebook or Google and things like that because they mean something to us. But what we're not actually doing is tracking how fast we're connecting with a client once they come in, how fast or how many times we're tracking, as we were discussing earlier, and those client connections, those, those client connections that matter is what actually helps build the trust. And if you're not doing that, then you're failing your client. You're failing to actually communicate your business's value to them. And if you're not doing it, somebody else is doing it better, they're going to win, win the client over you. And that is your conversion. Because we're tracking all this stuff, getting the lead in, but then not tracking every point afterwards and understanding what makes that difference, where we're getting less conversion and how we tweak that to make it more customers for you, you being able to connect and being able to actually deliver for more people, which is what you want to do to grow. And the other thing is that once we get that sale, a lot of people forget again about customer connection after that and being what we call visible, what I call visible because oftentimes it's like your car goes into the, into the back of the garage. You don't know what's going on. Then they come out with a bill. And I deal with accountants. They're an ideal, they're an ideal example with when they're sitting there and they're doing the numbers and then they come and sit down with all the negative news and whatever might happen.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: And.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: But if they are actually giving feedback to their client along the way, it changes the perception about the delivery of their product. So it's more visible to them. And when they're able to do that, it changes the feeling and the connection with the business. And the problem is that quite often, especially in small to medium businesses, there's two or three key people who are always the connection. But we need to spread that across the board. So the whole company is giving that key connection because otherwise you can't scale properly.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Yeah, you're talking about a culture of connection and trust. And so let me ask you the question because I know this is coming.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Well, lesson Jen.
I track every follow up through, follow through and to sales.
But sometimes there's drop offs. Like how do I know what subtle moments are killing this conversion?
They're tracking the number of times, maybe that they follow up, but they're not having any deal detail in that. So can you speak a little to that?
[00:16:22] Speaker B: I think again, we go back to the point about asking questions.
Sometimes we get concerned about asking questions around negatives. But there's also the point around, are you tracking where there's movement? And often what we're tracking is results or points. But is there movement along the, along the pathway? Because if you think about it from the other side, it's a client journey.
I love the example of when you, when you order an Uber, right. How many of you put away your phone and just don't worry about. And then the Uber turns up. No, we like to be able to see what's going on, how far away the guy. And then we're going, oh, come on, he's stuck at lights or he's sitting. What's he gone and gone a drink. But the point around that is that we like to be engaged in what's happening. And sometimes we fail to deliver in the, in the transparency of what we do.
But that actually builds trust with our clients. And then afterwards, are we actually following that up and getting their feedback? If they're positive, are we sharing that and asking them for more clients? What I see business as is compounding. But often what we do is we have this peak with the client and then we let them go after our delivery instead of keeping growing and, and compound and keeping that as that client becomes an asset because they can refer other people and they're all connected.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: And that's something that I call viral marketing method.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Right. When you're asking for the referrals from
[00:17:48] Speaker C: your clients, we're super happy with you. They love the client delivery and so
[00:17:52] Speaker A: we're asking them for, hey, if you really enjoyed the service, asking for the
[00:17:56] Speaker C: review could be one part of that.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: And asking for who do you know
[00:17:59] Speaker C: who could benefit from this as well? This product, this service?
Because we're really missing the boat here. Our happiest clients are our biggest advocates. They would be happy if they only knew how to share. And so creating that system is so incredibly important. So let's shift this conversation just a little bit to the investor looking at buying a business.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:20] Speaker C: Because this is something that I get asked a lot and that's, hey, I know how to do due diligence on the financial piece and on like I have the legal team team to do the legal. Like that's good. But so many times I don't understand how to quickly assess weak spots in trusts or in that client. You know, sort of that client connection piece during the due diligence process. What should I as an investor be looking at? When I look at a company that can be like a red flag that says, oh hey, you know what, check out this because this could be a problem.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: I actually believe that one of the most, the best things you can do is either become a customer and experience that. Right. What does it feel like from a client's point of view? And if it's not, you get somebody to do it for you.
And also go into the back end and see what's being tracked. Understand not just the product, how that's being delivered, not just the lead generation, but what's in between.
Are there specific data and is there good feedback from the clients? Because unless you're getting that, you're not actually getting the true feedback from the other side. You might be getting it right at the end from happy customers. But what about the drop offs?
Where is that missing? What's that data? And I think that a really good business understands their client where the drop offs are better than the end client and the happy client. Because if you've got that great data right through that is going to tell you the truth about where you can improve the company.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: So let's talk about systems now.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Because we live in a world where folks not tracking your data is not an excuse. We do not. I don't care if you're a solopreneur, if you're a micro business or if you are a Fortune 100, there is no excuse.
With the tools that we have today, with artificial intelligence, with the CRMs and the advanced systems that are out there that every step of the way we could not be tracking these things. So Les, I'm going to ask you because I get this all the time. Well, I don't have a, I don't, I have a CRM, but I don't know how, I don't know what's happening in it. Right? That's a common conversation that I hear in small business world. If I only have 14 days and I'm a small business owner and I'm watching this show and I can't add more leads, but I have 414 days, where do I look first? What is the first metric I track? What is the first thing that I pay attention to in my CRM or if I don't have a CRM how do I assess which one is right for me?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: All right, data is king. We know that from accounting. Look at accountants and look at the way you analyze business.
If you are not tracking where your customer is coming in after that lead and the conversion that section there, unless you're tracking it properly, you're missing a whole lot of data. And that is the biggest leverage that I see when we go into a business. If you're not tracking how many phone calls you're getting versus how many are actually being replied to and connected with and followed up, that is a huge metrics because that's where we see the biggest drop off in reality, in the real world. And as to why your customer acquisition cost is high and we can lower that very quickly in that point.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: And so I'm going to ask the next question and that's okay, great. I start tracking this. I notice I have a difference, but I don't know what to do. How do I fix this problem? I see there's a leak. Oh goodness, there's a leak. I've got a problem in my business. What do I do next?
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Okay, I think this is where you need to invest because unless you've got somebody who can help you understand that, understand how to make those changes but also spend the money and this is where your return on investment comes is being able to convert that. But you can do that so much more. We have access for small business now that was only ever available for corporates. They used to employ huge amounts of stuff to do exactly what we can do using AI and the combination the power of an AI and C CRM together. And we're not talking about chat, we're talking about business level AI. Right. We're not talking about something that you interact with. But, but your AI should be able to be responding to people either on the phone through messages, connecting with them and taking them through the process where you you can't operate 24. 7 or that your, your clients aren't being connected to with immediately. So what we're wanting to do is drive that to a point where human interaction is necessary.
[00:22:58] Speaker C: And so folks, if you're listening to
[00:23:00] Speaker A: this, do this immediately. Map your client journey from first touch to sale to repeat business. Identify where your deals are stalling, where people, whether they're prospects or clients are disengaging and where do the expectations break. Fix that first.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: Don't add more leads until you fix that. And reach out to somebody such as Les. Les. How can people reach out and learn more about what we're Talking about today,
[00:23:22] Speaker B: look, we come along, my website's on there, ROI Intelligence, make a connection. I'm happy to have a 15 minute call or one of my team will. We'll also give you demos. There's a whole lot of things that you can do. It's not about sales, it's about you understanding more. I'm actually going to put some things up after our conversation so that people have some free resources to go to to help understand those points where you should be tracking. And I'll have a video there to give you clarity around where we should be tracking, why we should be tracking and some statistics. So they're pretty shocking. But it's a roundabout going, why we need to change this and then go in and make it happen. And if you consult with the right people, it's actually far more return on investment than employing another person to try to answer more. More calls.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. We do have to take a brief break. But the reality is more leaks don't fix a broken connection, they accelerate your losses. Coming up next, we're going to talk scale because connection without systems does not scale. And this is where most businesses break after this.
Welcome Back to power CEOs the truth behind the Business. I'm Jen Goday and I am here with my fellow AI expert Les Moyer. And we're going to talk about our favorite topic on the show lately, which is AI. How can we leverage AI? And if your only path to growth is hiring more people, your margins are already under pressure. Folks, everyone is talking about AI, but very few are using it to actually improve their performance. We're not talking about putting stuff into a chatbot and using it to search. What I'm talking about is leverage digital employees systems that produce output without adding headcount, maximizing the headcount that you have, amplifying this. Let's break that down today, if you don't mind. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you to kind of talk about this like, what is a digital employee? How is that different from simply using an AI tool like a chat or a cloud or whatnot?
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Look, I think what we've got to understand is the chats, Claude, et cetera, especially the paid ones, don't use, first of all, do not use the free version, pay for it. Right? There's a whole lot of reasons. I'm sure you've heard them before, if not research it.
But using those can leverage our thinking. Right? But what we also want to be able to do is Leverage our time and our resources.
And that's what using, using digital employees. I describe them as digital employees because it puts them in a place in our mind.
But what it is is something that takes a process from A to B where human interaction isn't required. And when we can implement those one by one. I always say start small, start at some key points and get that return on investment around having something. If you think about a chat, it's going to, it's going to give you some information back and then you have to process it. What we're trying to do is be able to give an AI a process and take it from A to B. Now that can be in onboarding your clients, it can be in connecting with them, getting more data and feedback from them without human interaction. And if you keep those things simple, some, some people think, okay, a digital employee, now we can go give it something and then everything is done. No, what you want to do is have multiple levels and then being able to give each one a task that it can do simply. So think about employing some like an 18 year old being able to give them a task, take it from A to B and it's a data processor, it will do it very well, faster than an employee will. So what you're doing is leveraging time and then you move your employees to high impact client connection zones so they're making a big difference. And what it does is it just creates efficiencies within your business, but also it processes data and gives you feedback. So much better than.
I'll give you an example. Sorry, an employee. I'll give you an example. We often implement voice, voice AI answering systems into small businesses.
What that can do is actually analyze all the conversations you've had within a millisecond with that previous customer and so they're directing them in the right direction. Or it can answer something that is being done. And as you increase that training, it can work 24, 7 and handle multiple instances.
Whereas one person with sick, with time off with lunch breaks, it doesn't give you the same leverage. And that is where you can start talking about scaling. Because your return on investment as you grow actually decreases.
Increases.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. Increases. And so we've talked about, what should we automate first? We want those simple things, the lower value repetitive tasks, the things that are going to make our teams more effective and efficient. But now let's talk to the other side, because this is something that is a very hot topic of conversation. I'm on a lot of ethical boards for AI integration. What role should I never automate because trust is too fragile?
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Every business is going to be different in that aspect. You will understand your business and you understand the key points of where that happens. And primarily when you're talking about that conversion point, that trust point of sales, that's a very key point.
Eventually we might get AIs that can do that for us. And it depends on the level of the. If you've got a small product, an introductory product, yes, you can probably do that when you're scaling, but you have especially times where you've got an upset client, where you've got, where you've got emotion involved in that level. It should always be a human.
AIs are getting better at reading intent and reading emotions and sometimes they can do better than humans because they're never going to be unhappy, they're never going to be rude to a customer. But at the same time, what you understand in your business, if you thought I should be there answering the phone, that's where you have to have a human interaction.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: You know, I'm going to ask you this question because there's a lot of interesting sentiment out there. Right now we're here in Houston, Texas. That's where we record this film and this show and there's a lot of anti AI sentiment coming out, water shortage, the usage of the data centers, all of these things. And so people are like, I don't know about AI. And then on the other side there's. I don't want to feel like I'm just being processed through a mill, like I want to talk to a human
[00:30:43] Speaker C: at some point in time. This is customers, right? The customers complaining about this.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: So how do we, as the viewers know which automations to implement that are going to enhance the client experience versus those that might make customers feel like
[00:31:00] Speaker C: they're being ignored or rushed through a process?
[00:31:04] Speaker B: I think we've got to step back as business owners and think about this a different way.
What you're doing now is probably not connecting with the customer, clients as much as you could be.
And what does it take to do that? Either investment, employees and investment in a whole lot of data, or, sorry, CRMs, etc. But the other option is going AI. So what it actually does and we don't. If we're thinking from this point of view or the negative feedback, that's actually a small perception and sometimes our own perception comes into that.
I want you to think about, we talked about Uber earlier or the rideshare.
Would you prefer to go rideshare or taxi Right. Most people say, and I've researched this, probably 90% say rideshare. Why? There's clear communication across the board and yet there's no humans involved in that other than the driver.
And I also want you to think about it from a different point of view. We've got driverless cars out now.
A lot of people say, hey, I wouldn't ride in a driverless car.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: It was a little scary the first time I did. I'm going to be honest.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. But you know what? 80% of accidents are caused by human, human mistakes.
So if we look at the data and we go, okay, so if that changes, 80% of. Of can be avoided, then how do we go, okay, what is this?
What difference does this make if we're actually going into an investment? Are you going to invest in driverless or driver cars? Right. Because then you're talking about monetary investment and what sort of leverage one's going to work 24, seven, one's going to work for eight hours. There's a whole perception in business where we've got to go and it's not just about like when you have taken a driverless car, what was the result?
[00:33:06] Speaker C: Oh, I got to where I was going.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: That's the point. And that's in our business, although we don't want to take away that human connection, the conversations, the humanity of it, we want to fill in the gaps in between so it's more efficient. So your people are actually doing the highest and best value of what they do.
[00:33:27] Speaker C: Absolutely. And so, Les, I'm going to ask you the next question because this is
[00:33:32] Speaker A: something that you sort of touched on, but it's something that I see a lot in entrepreneurs and that's. I don't like AI. I don't want to use AI. I saw Terminator. Look what AI did in the movies. Right. So the perception of the entrepreneur, founder or CEO is absolutely not. I'm afraid of it. I'm going to stick my head in this and hope for the best.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: That's not possible because AI is in literally every tool that we're using at this point in time. It's in every enterprise level solution.
And quite frankly, folks, if you're watching Netflix, AI is there. If you're watching Amazon Prime, AI is there. It's leveraging your data. If you're on social media, it's AI optimized. So is it better for us to stick our head in the sand and have this anti AI sentiment because then we're sort of a victim to what other people are doing or, or how do we shift towards. How can I influence what I'm okay with AI doing in my business? Like, what does that conversation look like? What. What do you have to say? Because that is a very big problem. And it's not just small business. It goes all the way up to the top.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's across. It's across everything.
I think, though, sometimes it's. It's our emotions again, about that decision. So let's, let's reframe it. We have had. I would describe this as an AI revolution. Right. And we're at the.
Just in front of the wave. I don't think it's actually fully hit us yet. And yet AI has been around for 50 years. And that's sometimes the perception that when I talk to business, it surprises them to understand that. But we've had the industrial revolution. We've had.
We've had computers come through. We've had the mobile phone or, sorry, the cell phone, Australian.
And we've had. All of these things have changed business.
Right. But then there's some people who decided, no, we're not doing the change. We've always done it this way, and therefore we always will. And guess what?
Okay. You talked about Netflix.
Do you remember Blockbuster?
[00:35:40] Speaker A: I do.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Right. And we were actually heard the background on some of that is that they almost went for the Netflix route, but the CEO went, no, we're sticking with old technology and didn't lead the way, didn't embrace what is current. And AI is here. It's not going away.
The second one we talk about, I talked about Uber versus taxis.
Taxis have their.
Or that their business has dropped significantly because Uber and some of the other rideshares came in and they solved the problems and they automated things and they took a lot of the human delays out of things. And that's what we're aiming for. We're aiming for a better customer experience.
So that's what you should be thinking about. How can I use a tool to improve the experience of my customer? And if we're not using the. It's sort of like I come originally from the building industry and there was the nail and hammer and then the nail gun. Why did it make a big difference? Was efficiency. Right. And if you're not using the best and best tool that enables you to be able to give the best service for your customer, somebody else is going to and they're going to. They're going to take clients away from you. Now, here's the thing. There's some boutique businesses that will always stay one on one and charge high rates. So it depends on your specific business. But don't use that as an excuse not to make sure that you're using what you can and being able to change your customer experience. And this is where we're talking about shift your idea away from, away from product focused into client focused. And that's the biggest difference I see from from small to medium businesses that get to a point where they start hitting a ceiling is because big businesses or fast growing and scaling businesses, entrepreneurs who go and invest, they understand up front that it's all about the client experience. It's got nothing to do with the product.
The product can change, the product can move, you can bring in different products. But if your client experience is right, that's what makes a difference.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: You're absolutely right. And this is about feedback loop and constantly being in touch and understanding. How has the perception shifted with your client? How has the world shifted around us in our business and our client? So if you're scaling, identify your 1 role in business that is repetitive, rule based, time consuming, whether it's client facing or internally and ask can this be systemized? Can this be automated?
Measure the time saved. Like I cannot impress this. We've talked about this on the show. If you have something that's repetitive and you're doing track it, how much time are you or your team spending on it every single week?
And then once you systemize or automate it, what is it costing now to run that same process? What was the time saved? What was the cost reduction? Because now we have half the labor or 80% less labor. What is the revenue impact? That's your first digital employee, folks. That's what automation is about. Automation is not about replacing people. It's about protecting your margins. We will be right back after these important messages.
Welcome Back to power CEOs Truth behind the business. Loving what you're watching? Don't miss a moment of this show or any of your other favorites. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS or if you're like me and you love podcast version, check them out at NowMedia TV where we are streaming 24 7. Ready when you are. Let's dive right back into it. Most businesses don't stall because of the market. They stall because the founder refuses to get out of the way. We have been talking about this every step of the way. What is it that we're getting in the way of? Are we ignoring the AI Evolution? Evolution. Every founder says they want to scale. They want to grow, but very few are willing to remove themselves from the center of everything. And until that happens, the business has a ceiling.
Les Moyer let's kind of dive into that transferability, the systemization, the optimization.
Because if the business can't operate without the founder, it's not scalable or saleable and it's harder to put a value to, it's harder to exit.
Let's talk a little bit about the mindset shift of the founder because we talked about this with regards to AI, but now let's talk about this when they have to actually start exiting their role and empowering people and systems to do the work for them so that they can actually look at an exit potentially.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Quite often we've talked about it before, you get high on your own supply. I love that saying because it really makes me focus and what I, what I actually, let's talk about mistakes.
Recently I went into, we went into a deal with a client, ended up going, I thought hey, we can do anything, right? And went off scope and it ended up being just messy, right? We delivered and everything. But at the end of the day, what that comes down to is I thought and went past the business, right? Sometimes what ends up happening is it becomes ego based. But if you want a saleable, scalable business, you need to take that ego away and go, what am I, I am creating an asset. And what does that asset have to include now when, when somebody's looking at buying a business, they want statistics, they want to know roi, they want to know your leverage. If we put money in here, what's it going to mean at the end result? How are we going to grow this?
What is being tracked? And unless you're doing all of that across the board from point A to point Z, then you're missing things and a business is going to get you at a discount price.
So if you want ultimate high return on your asset build, stop being the bottleneck, stop being this point or a funnel that slows everything down. What you want to do is be the long term goal.
Like I can't imagine a great big CEO with. Let's talk Richard Branson, right? He's not going to go and try to learn how to be a pilot and fly planes. But sometimes we end up getting down there and trying to get in the trenches and we take the respect away from our team and the systems that they've created and we try to take it back because hey, I'm the be all and end all. And his, his interesting, the conversations and quotes that he has, but he always talks about. And many big CEOs and powerful leaders, they hire people that are better than around us. And that's taking away your ego. I do that. I used to think that I had to prove something. And that's the mindset that we've got to get away from is going what is best to create the asset and then learn those skills, Learn the skills to build businesses. And once you actually are able to do that, it takes it away from us. And we give it honor to our team. We give it honor to. And we put in systems that are scalable and are able to monitor and can be tweaked at each time. Look at McDonald's for example. Now we often talk about, hey, you know, how fast they make a burger and all that sort of thing. But they track from when you hit the drive through how long, exactly how many seconds overall.
And that is all about the customer experience.
And sometimes we don't talk about that part of it. But everything in that business is systemized and that's why an 18 year old can run it right. And that it might be not your vision of your business, but we need to go how do we put that into place place so that those things are governed. So you go away from your business and you have your first 30 day holiday and that you come back and it's running exactly the same way. And when you know that you can do that, then you've got a saleable business. Because then you come in, you can put more money in at this end and it comes out at a multiple at this end. And that's what an investor wants. That's what somebody who's going to either buy or roll up or something. That's what they're looking for, premium price and that's what they want as their lead business.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: You hit the nail on the head. It's funny, I'm thinking about this and I'm going to tell you as someone who buys businesses, I buy businesses that I know nothing about. I buy trades. I am not a trades person. I know nothing about plumbing, I know nothing about electrical. Why? Because I don't want to sink into that ego and think I can do it better than the people who are skilled in trades or the people who have been doing this. Like what is my skill set? I know business, business. I know how to, you know, pull the levers to improve the return on investment, how to look at the data like that's my role.
[00:45:08] Speaker C: I'm not taking away from that operator.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: And so like I on purpose buy businesses I don't know.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: So the first thing I look at
[00:45:15] Speaker A: is is the founder involved in decision
[00:45:18] Speaker C: makers every step of the way? Because if so that, that tells me I'm buying a job. And as someone who buys businesses, nobody wants to buy a job. So if I'm going to buy a job and I have to put systems in place, I personally don't do that anymore. I used to.
Then I'm going to discount it heavily because I'm not going to pay top dollar for something that I now have to put a lot of labor hours into to fix. So Les, this has been so tremendously fun. It's been fun having you on.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: It has been. Yes.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: We're talking about some of my favorite topics of conversation. How can people reach out to you if they would like to learn more about scalable ROI in their business?
[00:45:49] Speaker B: Look, either the website that's there or reach out to me on LinkedIn.
You can connect with me on my website.
You can either book in a 15 minute call, we can have a conversation and we'll run you through some of the things and what difference it can make in your business because it's so important about like you said, if you're not removable from your business then you don't have a business.
It's running on your energy. And that's the thing that we want to get you back is your energy making you the leader who's going to move you forward.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Time for your expertise. Thank you Jen. I appreciate you and you. Yes you now it's time. Your business will grow to the strength of your systems. Not your effort, not your ambition and definitely not you if you will have to be this bottleneck and make every single decision. So this was really powerful. We talked with Les about roi, about connection, about systems, about scale. But for you, if you want to grow without guessing, today's the day to take action on one of the things you hard if you're not tracking from the moment the lead enters until your conversion, start tracking all your follow ups and your follow through and pay attention to where they drop off.
That right there will help you to improve your sales conversions. If you are the bottleneck in your business, what is the repeatable repetitive process that I can automate or systematize. Take action today because otherwise you just listen to to us talk for an hour and the way that we actually move forward is when we take action and start that positive momentum so that we can improve the revenue, improve the conversions, improve the ROI in our business. So if you want to grow without guessing, increase your profit without adding chaos, and build something that scales, this is the work you have to do.
Growth doesn't come from doing more. It comes from knowing what works and having the discipline to repeat it. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, including this show. But the good news is we will be here same time, same station, next week. So until then, win today, win this week, and we will see you next time.
