Melodie Moore, founder and CEO of Business Tech Ninjas, knows the incredible impact automation can have on businesses of all products, services and sizes. However, she’s also well-aware that automating your entire business can quickly become complicated and overwhelming. That’s why in this episode of Conquer the Chaos, Melodie joins Clate Mask to discuss how to automate every area of your business and get the most ROI out of your software without sacrificing endless hours, negatively impacting your team or causing harm to your customer experience.
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
[00:00:00] Clate Mask: Hi, I'm Clate Mask, and on the Conquer the Chaos Podcast, I talk with inspiring business owners about what it takes to build a great business and a great life. That means more money, more time, more control, more impact, more freedom. So keep listening to hear the tough lessons they learned so you don't have to repeat them.
[00:00:23] Clate Mask: Welcome everyone to this episode of the Conquer the Chaos Podcast. I am Clate Mask, host of the Conquer the Chaos Podcast and co-founder and CEO of Keap, and I am so excited because today we have someone who's a real expert in one of the keys and one of the areas that's near and dear to my heart, and that is automation. And so I'm confident that we're going to demystify some things for you today. And maybe if you're in a place where you're like, “I think I'm automating” or “Maybe I'm not feeling like I'm getting as much time back in my life as I could if I automated,” you're in for a treat. We're going to be able to give you some real practical things that'll be helpful for you.
[00:00:56] Clate Mask: So let me introduce to you our guest today. Melodie Moore is the founder and CEO of Business Tech Ninjas, and Melodie has been someone that we've worked with for many years in Keap Nation. She serves small businesses and helps them to conquer the chaos with automation. And so we wanted Melodie to come join us today and share her wisdom. Melodie, so great to have you with us.
[00:01:20] Melodie Moore: I'm very grateful to be here. And my business was founded because of Keap. So I have — Keap has always had a really big part of my heart. And it's like when I found campaign builder, it was like, “Oh, yeah, I have found the love of my life.” I remember there's a screenshot when I first started my business where it's like I had a glass of wine, I was working on campaign builder and I was like, “That's a great Friday night.”
[00:01:43] Clate Mask: That is awesome. You love automation if that's the case. And by the way, I love what we're doing with our Automation Builder. So we've expanded campaign builder to be Automation Builder. And there's so much more that's coming to it.
[00:01:54] Clate Mask: Some of the things are already in place, but there's more coming. And we just spent a couple of days as the executive team looking at all the stuff that's coming. I'm so excited. So I also love the automation because I love the way that it puts time back into people's lives and the way that it creates a calm process out of what is otherwise chaos.
[00:02:15] Clate Mask: So let's talk about automation. I think a lot of people hear automation and they either think, “Well, yeah, I'm doing that.” Or they think, “Maybe I understand, maybe I don't.” Help us really dig in and make it more practical and real when we talk about small business automation. What is that for you?
[00:02:38] Melodie Moore: So I think there's three different levels of automation. Like there's people that just don't do anything and it's like, “I have my paper.” I remember there was this guy that came to my house to give me a quote for my driveway. And he's got his clipboard, his paper and his pencil there, and he's writing up the quote and he's like, “Okay, I'm gonna take this home, my wife's gonna type it up and she's gonna send it to you. But oftentimes the emails don't go through, so we're also gonna text you manually just to make sure you got it, And everything in me is like, “Oh man.” The funnier thing is I never actually heard from them again. I don't know, maybe you just didn't want me as a customer. .
[00:03:12] Clate Mask: Yeah. That's what happens when your process is really janky. It's gonna not get done a lot of times,
[00:03:17] Melodie Moore: Maybe his wife got busy, right? They just had a lot going on. Obviously I didn't purchase anything from him either.
[00:03:24] Melodie Moore: And then there's a kind of like the manual version where they're not using automation really at all. And then you can have like this one-off automation, which is — there's an email that goes out here, an email that goes out here, and an email that goes out here, and then Jill does some stuff over here.
[00:03:38] Melodie Moore: And then there's what I call an automated journey. And what this is a combination of automation, but also a combination of human interaction. And I don't know if you hear this a lot, but sometimes when we talk about automation, they're like, “Oh, well, I don't want to do that because it will take the personal part of my experience away from it.”
[00:03:57] Melodie Moore: I was like, “If automation is done right, you should have more opportunity to have higher value interactions versus low value interactions.” There is an example of a client that we had, so they had a process — so this is an example of automated-ish. They have a process where they have a sales form on their website. And on the sales form, it has their different services, and then when you want to book a call, it gives the option of “Type in the three times that work the best for you.”
[00:04:30] Clate Mask: Mm. Yeah.
[00:04:31] Melodie Moore: And then what happens is one of the internal team members would then go and reach out to them and say, “Hey, um, so this time doesn't work for this person. Does this time work?” And I asked her, I was like, “Well, how long does that take you to figure that out?” And she's like, “Usually like a week, week and a half or so.”
[00:04:46] Melodie Moore: And I'm like, “Oh,“ and there was this Thought from the, from the people that were working in the company, like, “Well, we don't want to lose that personal interaction.” I'm like, “That's not a high value personal interaction. Like, you want to make …
[00:04:59] Clate Mask: And you can still do that personal interaction.
[00:05:01] Melodie Moore: Yes, and so it's like, what would be higher value than that? One: You fill out the form, you immediately get a booking link, you choose a time, you get a confirmation. So what that person right now is investing in kind of just going back and forth and doing admin can instead add value to that customer.
[00:05:18] Melodie Moore: Maybe go on their website, ask them some more information, do some digging, really prepare for that call to make that interaction where that person really feels seen and valued and heard versus just taking care of that admin side. So I went on a tangent there. I didn't really answer your question.
[00:05:34] Clate Mask: No, it's awesome. It's great. The automation of the journey. What you said was the automation of the journey is the combination of the personal and the automated thing, the automated tasks that get fired off. And I think that's the part that people don't understand. The automation — it doesn't have to just be a mechanical rote that gets executed.
[00:05:56] Clate Mask: For some things that is actually very good, but there's other things where when the human interaction comes in, now not only does it do less of the relationship building job, but it does it so much better because now it's coming on the heels of steps that have been taken that were done in an automated way.
[00:06:18] Clate Mask: And now the personal part is elevated to be much more special, much more personal and much more valuable. You know, I found this early on when we started doing automation. We were doing marketing automation, and it was just following up with nurturing the lead, and I found that when we started to put in place a lead nurturing from the time that I had a first call with somebody, and I sent them the information with a follow up that said, “Hey, did you get the information?” and with a follow up a couple of days later that said, “Hey, let's talk,” and I was inviting them to contact me back.
[00:06:57] Clate Mask: What would happen is if the automation played out and they never contacted me back when I called them, the response was so much different than if I had been trying to call them. I was elevated to them in a different way because I had been doing that follow-up and now They were saying “Oh gosh I'm sorry. I haven't called you back. I did get the information,” and it was a totally different conversation than when it was if I was just trying to reach back out and follow up. That's a very small Journey, but it's an example of what happens when we use the automated touch points and combine them with personal touch points.
[00:07:31] Clate Mask: You have a richer relationship building and a richer experience when you do end up putting human time on the process itself or a step in the process. So that's just one example. You've talked about the example of a booking link. There's so many other ways where you can make it very personal and yet you can you can reduce the amount of time that's spent and you can take so much of the manual work out of it The thing that I loved about your very first comment though, about the guy with the clipboard, is a lot of times we think in automation, it's just that it does it more efficiently.
[00:08:07] Clate Mask: A lot of times it's that it doesn't. When it's so manual, they don't do it, right? They don't get it done. They can, and it's natural because it's like, there's this big process here. Well, if I had that big process, I'd probably forget, skip it unintentionally, intentionally forget it, you know, those kinds of things.
[00:08:23] Clate Mask: So great. A couple of great examples. Tell us more about the mindset around automation that you sometimes encounter with your clients. I know when we were talking in Nashville, you shared a little with me about some of the principles that if people will think about this the right way, they can create automation.
[00:08:41] Clate Mask: That's not only personal the way you've just described, but it's also much more effective in terms of actually conquering chaos.
[00:08:48] Melodie Moore: I've been doing this for over 10 years now, and it's always been quite an interesting statement of people saying “Technology. It’s just so hard,
[00:08:58] Melodie Moore: I was like, “Is it though?”. It feels easy to me a lot of the time. Like, why is it so hard for you? What is this? And the more I thought about it, it was like, they don't have guiding principles of how they make decisions within technology. And it really kind of hit me when I started hiring my team and I saw them making bad life decisions and I was like, “Oh, why are you making these bad life decisions with automation?” And I was like, “Well, you don't have the same guiding principles that I do.” It's like I need to share this mindset with you and the more I delved into it and the more I worked on it both with clients and the team, it came down to three concepts. The first one being when you're thinking about automation and technology, think about the stability of the system that you're building. Because it can get really easy, when you have such
[00:09:42] Melodie Moore: powerful tool like Keap, to make it really complicated and to have all sorts of things. It's like, “We can do this and we could do this and we could do this.”
[00:09:49] Melodie Moore: So it's like, but should you? And so it's like when you're thinking about building and what tools you want to use, really think about the stability of that, of like how, what is the error rate on this thing that we're, we're potentially building? And then for the second one, the flexibility of it.
[00:10:06] Melodie Moore: And we see this a lot if you want to change something or if you want to test something, and this really comes down to an iterative approach of — I don't know if you've seen this, but I know I do it personally, I always have to talk myself off a ledge, which is, I want to do all of the things all at once.
[00:10:22] Clate Mask: Right. Right. Yes.
[00:10:23] Melodie Moore: And then I put pressure and stress on myself because it's like, “Well, I just need a solid day. If I have this day, I'm going to dedicate that day and I'm going to write out this series of 30 emails and it's going to be amazing after this day.” I manage a team. I've got clients. I've got a life outside of that.
[00:10:41] Melodie Moore: That day never happens. And instead, if you switch it to an iterative approach where it's like, “Let's build out, what is the version one?”. And I got this from a company I was coaching with, it's like, what's your version one and what are all the ways you can make it complicated after that?
[00:10:55] Clate Mask: Yeah. Love that.
[00:10:56] Melodie Moore: And then start from there and then build it. But fundamentally for you to be able to build that when you're choosing your technology and your system, it needs to be flexible. You need to be able to build on it versus having to re-platform. And then the last principle on that is user experience.
[00:11:11] Melodie Moore: You wanna think about the user experience for your internal team members because there's a cost there.If your team is having to go through and check things and it's hard and arduous for them, their quality of life and work is not gonna be as good, so your retention of them, it's going to be lower. Two, there's an actual money cost of their hours and their rates of going into that, of answering all those.
[00:11:32] Melodie Moore: So you want to keep that in mind and really serve them to make their jobs as easy as possible. And then fundamentally your customers, because it is becoming more and more expensive to acquire new customers — ad costs and everything else. There's
[00:11:47] Clate Mask: It’s been crazy the last couple of years.
[00:11:48] Melodie Moore: There’s more options for people with the internet and everything else. There's just a lot more options. So it's like, how can I make their user experience as good as possible? And what I've found is that by following those three principles,
[00:12:00] Clate Mask: So it’s stability, flexibility, user experience, when it comes to automation and how do you get it working for you in the right way?
[00:12:07] Melodie Moore: Exactly. And there's so much more to unpack from all of them, but on a high level, and this has really enabled us to build out better systems for our clients. Because I manage multiple seven figure businesses now, and it's like, how do you do it at that level of scale with a level of stability? Because I want to like my life.
[00:12:25] Clate Mask: Yeah.
[00:12:26] Melodie Moore: So I'm like a technology strategist for these companies and I want to like my life. And I don't want them to be emailing me at two in the morning. I don't want to work on weekends. So it's like fundamentally, one of the questions that clients have when they work with us is like, well, what's going to happen? Like on the weekends when I need something? I was like, “If we're doing our jobs right, you won't need us on the weekend. The automation takes care of the things.” So it's like, they have an emergency number for if something should happen, but it's mostly just to make them feel better. It very rarely, if ever, gets used. But it's like, if we're doing our jobs right and we're following these principles, that doesn't come up.
[00:13:00] Clate Mask: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love the work you do. I know you've worked with a lot of Keap customers over the years and I consistently hear good things about what you guys do with them. So I love that. But I think what I really appreciate about your approach is it's very practical, breaking it down to little pieces of the journey. Because a lot of times — I mean, I absolutely see when people try to take on automation, sometimes they're like, “Let's do the whole customer journey and let's build out this art of this whole automation.”
[00:13:31] Clate Mask: It's like that's great, but how can you start getting little wins and a little piece of benefit — finding the places where there's repetitive tasks, manual tasks, maybe some things are slipping through the cracks where you can just shore those things up. And I say all the time, “You want to turn your SOPs into SAPs.”
[00:13:50] Clate Mask: You want standard automated procedures. You want to get that basic standard operating procedure for whatever that checklist is, whatever that part of your business is, because when you start building it that way, it becomes much more achievable versus when you go from the beginning, when you try to do everything.
[00:14:09] Clate Mask: So I think one point is V one, get a V one. One way to make automation less complex is to do a V one like you described. And another way to do that would be where you look at from collecting leads to converting clients, to creating fans across the customer journey.
[00:14:28] Clate Mask: You're creating, at the top level, you're creating the main touchpoints. Another way to do it is to go to just a piece of it. So, maybe you and I were just talking about billing automation and what does that process look like? So maybe explain a little bit about that. What do you see when clients are taking just a micro piece of the entire customer journey, but getting that piece of the journey and getting it automated.
[00:14:54] Melodie Moore: I see a lot of the times and we do a lot of work with payment collection and recurring payments because our bread and butter is membership sites. We do a lot with membership sites. So it dovetailed into that.
[00:15:05] Clate Mask: Maybe just explain for a second because there are probably some people who don't know what membership sites are. I know most do, but just take just a second there.
[00:15:11] Melodie Moore: I feel like the most common form of membership that most people would be familiar with is Netflix. Netflix is a form of a membership site where you log in and you have access to a library of content. For our work, we work a lot with influencers who would have a course, like they might have a course on how to do automation.
[00:15:27] Melodie Moore: They might have a course on — we have ones that support people who are pursuing their CPA exam. We have ones for people who are bookkeepers. We have ones for people that had run tarot cards. We've got lots of fitness ones as well. So it's like you pay a specific fee, you pay either a one-time fee or potentially a subscription fee and you get access to content. And if it's an ongoing fee, then sometimes there's like community aspects and different things as well.
[00:15:53] Clate Mask: And so there's a membership platform that helps you run that, but then there's all of the automation that needs to happen in order to
[00:16:00] Melodie Moore: And it can get real fun with that automation.
[00:16:02] Clate Mask: Yeah, so maybe just explain a little bit about what the manual processes can look like around that versus when you automate it.
[00:16:09] Melodie Moore: Well, specifically around — because I mean, money, like cash is king with business. It's like, if you do not have revenue coming in, it's a big problem. And so when we're thinking about managing recurring revenue — and I just did a course with Keap Academy that should be coming out in the next couple of weeks or so, and in the promo video, we talked about the dream of recurring revenue and then the nightmare of the actual reality of it.
[00:16:34] Clate Mask: Right. Right. Taking them out of this and moving into this and charging this and making sure that the subscriptions are not messing up.
[00:16:40] Melodie Moore: It's like the definition of chaos.
[00:16:42] Melodie Moore: And I'm on a lot of the Facebook groups, which talk about membership sites. And recurring revenue and subscriptions are not unique.
[00:16:48] Melodie Moore: There's lots of businesses that use them. It's just my bread and butter happens to be membership sites. And with that, on the groups, they're like, “The dream was recurring revenue and consistency, and now people's payments are failing. What do I do with that? And how do most people address it?”
[00:17:06] Melodie Moore: Send out one email. Jill handles it. How do you update credit cards? Will they call in? Oh my gosh, I had somebody come to me and I was like, “Well, how do people update their credit cards? And they're like, “Oh, well, they put it in an email and they email it to us.” I was like, “Oh gosh, have you heard of PCI compliance?
[00:17:28] Melodie Moore: This is a problem here. And I was like, “No, we need a credit card update form. That's just not okay.” But people are just, — you're just trying to do the best you can
[00:17:39] Clate Mask: Right.
[00:17:39] Melodie Moore: at any given moment. And you just don't know what you don't know. So it's like these piecemeal automations. And then what I like to consider is like that automated journey, which you had …
[00:17:50] Clate Mask: Turning SOPs into SAPs
[00:17:52] Melodie Moore: It's the same thing. SAP, automated procedure. Same thing, just a different term. And I think it does need a term though because you do see this, this very different kind of piecemeal things of it needs to be a procedure of some sort.
[00:18:06] Melodie Moore: And when we think about payment failure recovery, that comes down to like, what's that journey look like? And that journey for us is like a 15-day period where they get a series of emails, then they can update their credit cards. And then we're looking for drop-off periods or drop-off points in that journey too.
[00:18:23] Melodie Moore: And one of the beautiful things about that is the iterative process. So start with that, that first version and then think of all the ways you can make it complicated and better. But the benefit…
[00:18:34] Clate Mask: You can make it complicated and better. I love that.
[00:18:37] Melodie Moore: The two are not always — sometimes they're the same. Sometimes they're different.
[00:18:41] Clate Mask: Well, let me just give, for people to think about, an example is this: The most common thing that we see that people want to automate is lead capture and follow up. It's the most common thing that we see and we've seen over the years. Well, you can start very simply with your main lead source that you're automating.
[00:18:59] Clate Mask: And you're automating the follow-up. Pretty quickly that turns into, “But what about this lead source? And what about these kinds of leads? And what about this other product we have? And, and what about if we want to not just have three email follow ups and a phone call? What if we want to turn that into a mail piece or something that complements that? What if we want to have a phone call that happens in the midpoint?”
[00:19:22] Clate Mask: There's all kinds of things. So you start with something basic and then you can turn it into — you start with the basic, “Oh, we want to capture the lead and automatically follow up with them.” But then it can turn into …
[00:19:33] Melodie Moore: Even that is just like mind blowing for somebody. It's like, “An email just goes right after they opt-in? What?”
[00:19:38] Clate Mask: Right. Right
[00:19:40] Melodie Moore: And I think sometimes people can really make it a lot and we don't just do this with business and automation. We do this in our lives too. It's like you've been procrastinating on something and you procrastinate on it for weeks. And then when you sit down to actually do it, you're like, “Why did I wait so long? Why did I make this so complicated in my head?”
[00:19:58] Clate Mask: We turn it into this thing in our minds that now suddenly we, it's like, “Oh my gosh, that was so stupid.”
[00:20:03] Melodie Moore: And I think that we can do that with automation too. And when we first start working with clients, I like to take it down to the ground of like, “Okay, what's the last lead that came in?” And it's like, “Okay, it's Jerry. If you had all the time in the world and you wanted Jerry to have the best possible experience with your company, what would you send him?” And it's like, “Well, I'd follow up with an email.” “Well, Jerry didn't respond to that email. What do you do next?”
[00:20:25] Melodie Moore: “Oh, well, I'd send them this. And I'd talk about our testimonials. I'd like to talk about how great our business is.” “What do you want Jerry to do now that you've sent him all this?” “Well, I'd like to jump on a call with Jerry.” And it's like, “Okay, well he's not responding to this email. What next email would you send Jerry if he's not responding to that?” And really kind of come down to the reality of it because we just make it so much bigger in our minds than really what it is.
[00:20:52] Clate Mask: I love how you just broke that down because it's so understandable.
[00:20:55] Clate Mask: Okay. You just spend a bunch of money to get leads. Who's the last lead? Jerry? Okay. Well, if you had all the time in the world and all the research to make that a great experience for Jerry … ” That's a great way to think about it. And then what would happen? What would happen next? And then what? and then what next?
[00:21:10] Clate Mask: And pretty soon, look at that — you've got your standard operating procedure of how you would like to follow up and build the relationship with Jerry. And now you can automate it. This is why I love automation because people start to go, “Oh my gosh, we can do that. That would be amazing.” Yes, and you don't have to be the one manually doing that and yet Jerry has a great experience, your conversion rates improve dramatically, the ROI that you got on that marketing spend is now — the math works, and you now can go spend more to get more Jerry's. Okay, we're going to keep this going, but first a quick message for you.
[00:21:44] Clate Mask: Conquer the Chaos listeners. Let me talk to you straight for just a minute. You're running your business, and it dominates your mind. It can be very difficult to take a step back and see what's needed to create balance in your business and your personal life, and to create great growth and development and progress in your business and personal life.
[00:22:03] Clate Mask: One of the most powerful ways to gain the perspective that you need is to get away from things. And immerse yourself in an environment where you're going to be inspired, where you can see possibilities, where you can create connections, and where you can learn and grow and develop. And I know of no better place for entrepreneurs than Keap’s Let's Grow Summit. For years. We ran this conference as just an amazing mecca for entrepreneurship. And then, truth be told, for a few years, we didn't run it. We got back to it last year, and this year, we're putting it on and it is going to be awesome. I am so excited about this.
[00:22:43] Clate Mask: And I want you as our listeners to not miss out on this event. It's going to be November 20-22nd in downtown Phoenix with the main days being the 21 and the 22. You can register for it by going to keap.com/letsgrowsummit. That's https://keap.com/letsgrowsummit. And you can take advantage of our early bird registration pricing, which expires at the end of July.
[00:23:04] Clate Mask: So if you are needing a reflection time, an opportunity to take a step back, gain greater perspective, inspiration, and most of all, see what automation (the fifth key to success) can do for your business, then make sure that you attend the Let's Grow Summit. Keap.com/letsgrowsummit, November 20-22 in Phoenix. I look forward to seeing you there. Alright, now back to our chat.
[00:23:29] Melodie Moore: You know, one of the things we talk about a lot with clients is making data driven decisions. Because it's like, where does stress come from? Stress comes from the unknown.
[00:23:36] Clate Mask: Yeah.
[00:23:36] Melodie Moore: Like I get stressed out in my business when I don't have a good handle on my numbers and I don't know what's happening because I feel like I'm just out of control.
[00:23:43] Clate Mask: Yeah.
[00:23:43] Melodie Moore: I’m like, “I don't know how to make this better.” So it's like, how do I make that feel better? I was like, well, I can see the numbers. Because if I see a problem, I can make a problem better, but if I don't know what the problem is or know how to fix it, I'm scared and I'm just going to throw a bunch of spaghetti mess at the wall and hope for the best. But I still have a very strong sense of stress and that stress, it doesn't just affect us.
[00:24:04] Melodie Moore: Especially if you run a team, it's going to affect your team. It's going to affect your family. It's going to affect your downtime too because when you have that kind of stress going on in your life, you can't really take downtime. Because if I've got that going on, even if I do take a break from work, it's still in my mind and you just can't let it go. So it's like, how do we feel better? We have numbers to rely on where we can actually see those problems. And when you look at an automated journey and being really intentional with what are the levers here that I could potentially touch? And just to keep going on the payment process — it's just top of mind because I did the filming for this yesterday — of like the different levers for how we can look at that.
[00:24:44] Melodie Moore: One of the things that we look for is a recovery rate on our payment failure system of, “Okay, 10 people got added into the system. How many of them did we recover?” And then to look at that number and say, “well, actually only 50% and we should have a higher recovery rate than that.”
[00:24:59] Melodie Moore: It's like, where should I invest my team or my time? It's like, how can we make it more complicated, but ultimately better and see if we can make this rate higher of this recovery rate? So let's add in text messages, add a phone call. And the other really beautiful thing about this is seeing what doesn't work.
[00:25:17] Clate Mask: Before we jump to seeing what doesn't work, I want to just say something about what you just called out there. You just very quickly called it a payment recovery system. And what you really just described was, there's a process for how we get declined credit cards to become good again so that we can collect, right?
[00:25:38] Clate Mask: If you're a business, that's a really big deal to small businesses when the credit cards are declining. And every month, by the way, if you start to get into any amount of volume, you're gonna have a percentage of your credit cards that start to decline every month. But even if you have 10, 12 clients, it starts to become a problem.
[00:25:57] Clate Mask: So most people don't have a system for that. Like you said a little earlier, Jill does that and sends an email. But you just said, “Oh, we have a payment recovery system” And really what you're saying is that — the way that I hear it is you have an automated journey. You have an automated journey for that little piece, the little process that you call a payment recovery system.
[00:26:19] Clate Mask: And what that does is it puts more money into the pockets of that business owner because the percentage of customers whose cards are declining is going down. And in a membership world, it's really critical because you get lots of — especially by the way, also what I've noticed, it's very interesting — people will say, “Oh, but the transaction size is small. It's not that big of a deal” That's actually where it just starts leaking away. The big ones, it's kind of easier to go after, but when you have the small ones and it's $19 a month, $50, $29 a month, $49 a month, it really matters.
[00:26:52] Clate Mask: And sometimes what happens is business owners are like, “Well, that's small.” So it doesn't justify them doing the manual work to go chase that down. And yet you put it into place with automation with a payment recovery system and all of those dollars are the profit that makes your business work versus not working.
[00:27:09] Clate Mask: So I love the payment recovery system probably because I've seen so many business owners over the years now, I'll now say decades, where they just let collections slip by and it's where all their take home pay is.
[00:27:24] Melodie Moore: They focus on just getting more people in.
[00:27:25] Clate Mask: Yep, and there's work around the collections and so they don't get that.
[00:27:30] Clate Mask: Well you think about it, that's all straight take-home pay. That's not even profit. It is like the actual money that you're going to deposit into your personal bank account that you don't get because you don't collect. By the way I think I have a special place in my heart for that because when I was a little kid and I had a paper route — I don't think I've ever told this story to anybody at Keap, but I will tell the story.
[00:27:52] Clate Mask: We had a paper route and my job was to deliver papers, of course, but it was also to go collecting, to go to my customers. And there were little tabs on this little book when I delivered the Arizona Republic and I did tear off those tabs and each one represented a week of me delivering the paper. And it was $1.65 for each one of those tabs. And I had certain customers that were really hard to catch at home. So those little tabs start to stack up and I'd like to catch them like every four to six weeks so that the $1.65 didn't turn into too much. Well, they'd start to get stacked up. They'd get really long on my collection book, and when I would go to them, I'd be like, “Yeah, sorry, sir. You owe me $44.” They’d get all grouchy. So I would start tearing some of them off sometimes. I was throwing away my money, dang it! But I did that because collections was such a pain in the butt. And I've watched small business owners do their version of my paperboy collection tactic, where you're trying to not do that uncomfortable work and then you don't make the business work anymore because you're losing your take-home pay. So don't do that.
[00:29:00] Melodie Moore: Don't do that.
[00:29:02] Melodie Moore: Don't do the paper route version
[00:29:04] Clate Mask: Do the recovery system. It's much better.
[00:29:06] Melodie Moore: And a lot of the times they they trust that their team's just on top of it, but like people, and especially if they work with an entrepreneur like myself, I throw stuff at my team all the time. I'm like, “I need you to do this and I need you to do this.”
[00:29:19] Melodie Moore: And their job is also payment recovery and following up with people. And what's going to take more of the priority in their mind? The fact that I've just thrown something at them or this duty of following up with payment recovery? So it's not anything to throw shade at them. It's just to say they've got different priorities.
[00:29:37] Melodie Moore: They've got other stuff going on, but automation, it doesn't take holidays. It doesn't take sick days and it doesn't have emotions. It's real nice as a business owner. It's like one of the …
[00:29:48] Clate Mask: That's why I say the fortune is in the follow-up because wherever that follow-up is, and especially in the collections …
[00:29:55] Melodie Moore: One of the things that we've really started talking about with clients is really thinking about your automated systems as assets.
[00:30:01] Melodie Moore: Because if I keep investing … So one of the things that I think you touched on a little bit earlier is trying to build up the whole system right away. And it's like, instead, build out the one room house. This is an asset and just keep adding a bathroom. Add a nicer kitchen now. Add this.
[00:30:18] Melodie Moore: Because when we really have the automated … Because we've been working with clients now, like some of my clients have been with me since I started the company. And in that time, we've been able to just keep improving on it, keep improving on it, keep improving on it as they learn and as their business grows. And if they're looking to sell it or maybe step away from it, they now have assets within their company versus if you are overly reliant on your team members. If they walk away, if something happens to them, that's gone.
[00:30:46] Clate Mask: I love the way that you're describing those automation, um, you know, those automated systems as assets, because take that little payment recovery system. That is an automation. It's a part of the customer journey. It's a very discreet section, but it becomes an asset that produces more value for the business. And when you start putting all those things together, you create a business that has a ton of value. There are two customer success stories that I get all the time that I love. One of them is when the business owner or key person in the business is unable to work for a period of time for some reason.
[00:31:24] Clate Mask: Sometimes it's a sickness, a hospitalization. Sometimes it's a family matter, something happens. And I love when they say, “You know what? My business just kept on running because of the automations that I put in place with Keap.” I love that story. And I get it all the time. The other story I love that I don't get, there's no vacation benefits…
[00:31:43] Melodie Moore: Because there are no vacation benefits when you're a business owner. There's no one helping you out.
[00:31:46] Clate Mask: Exactly. The other one that I get frequently, but not as often, is the one that says, “We sold our business and we were able to sell it for so much more because it wasn't dependent on me as the business owner. We built all these systems out and from the lead collection system to the automated payment system on the other end to the renewals and systems to the maintenance contract systems … Whatever your business is, there's so many ways to build in these systems, and when you do that, now the acquirer is able to pay much more for the business.
[00:32:24] Clate Mask: So I love getting those in. I will predict that some of your clients, if they haven't already, they're going to sell their business at some point. They're going to sell it for more because of all of those assets that you helped build.
[00:32:36] Melodie Moore: We have a couple of clients that are talking to some big companies now. And it's like an eight-figure number that they're going to sell it for. For me, I love being part of my customers’ success. Like the fact that I could play a piece in that just makes me really happy.
[00:33:52] Clate Mask: I know. I love it. Well, good for you. It's awesome. Is there anything else you want to share in kind of deconstructing automation for the audience?
[00:33:01] Clate Mask: This has been fantastic. I've loved the way we've just gotten down into like real specifics. And you're such a pro at what you do at Business Tech Ninjas and helping a lot of seven-figure businesses to automate in some of the more sophisticated ways that sometimes small businesses don't do. So awesome stuff.
[00:33:18] Clate Mask: Is there anything else that you want to share before I give you a chance to let people learn where they can go to learn more about you?
[00:33:23] Melodie Moore: I think that if there was one thing I really want people to take away is it just doesn't have to be so hard. Technology doesn't have to be so hard. It really is just a level.
[00:33:34] Melodie Moore: Like I'm a big fan of the concept that organization is a superpower and it's not necessarily the tool that you're using, but how you're using it. But I think that there's a level that our world of automation and technology management is still very new and we don't have the level of professionalism that we really need in the industry to say, this is the level of what you need.
[00:33:56] Melodie Moore: You need a technology strategist. Like if you're working with an accountant, when your business just starts, that's okay. You can work with a bookkeeper and then somebody can do your taxes at some point in time. But as your business gets bigger and you get to that seven-figure mark, you need a technical strategist, not just a person that can do the things.
[00:34:14] Melodie Moore: And I think the analogy towards bookkeepers helps that because there's this element of we have this false belief in our minds that we're going to just get this tool and it's gonna be really easy to use. And it's like, yeah, QuickBooks in the form, in a box, is really easy to use if I don't have a complicated business, but I am a seven-figure business and I've got complexity.
[00:34:35] Melodie Moore: So we really just need to crack that of what those expectations are. And I find that if that expectation has changed, it just brings a lot more peace to ourselves. Because it's like when we get stressed from the unknown, but from when our expectations aren't being met too.
[00:34:50] Clate Mask: Yeah, that's a great point. I say all the time, you don't just buy a piece of software and automate. You need the software plus the strategy plus the services. And sometimes people don't like to hear that because they want to think there's a magic pill — just get the software and oh, just well, Keap why doesn't it do that?
[00:35:04] Clate Mask: Sorry, that's just not the way it works. You need the strategy and the services to make it amazing. The other thing, though, that you said that I want to just touch on for a second is that I am convinced that we are in the very, very early stages of small businesses adopting automation.
[00:35:21] Clate Mask: You think about what automation looks like in manufacturing businesses. It is so precise. They've got it down to clean rooms, machines, and robots. They are just making it so, so efficient. Creating profit and big business opportunity around that in small businesses, it's services work mostly.
[00:35:48] Clate Mask: And yet we are so manual around it. There's just so much more we could be doing in the vast majority of small businesses. And so I, I love what you do. I think that people are going to discover more and more how they can put more time in their lives, create more of the lifestyle that they wanted in their business, in service businesses especially using automation … You've done a great job today of helping us see how it can be personal and how it can grow and the stability of the system, how you can scale it over time and how it can be flexible. By the way, all of those things you said, those principles are why we're here.
[00:36:24] Clate Mask: I love Keap so much because it enables you to do it in a very personal way
[00:36:27] Melodie Moore: It does.
[00:36:28] Clate Mask: and to be scalable and to be flexible and powerful. So thank you for sharing that. I hope that the audience has been able to kind of see a more personal way of going about automation and breaking it down into its smaller pieces, so it doesn't have to be so intimidating. And I just, I love the work that you guys do. So where can they learn more about you and Business Tech Ninjas?
[00:36:48] Melodie Moore: So BusinessTechNinjas.com. We're producing more content because I really feel like there's a mindset shift that we need to have around technology and really breaking that down because it's easy in theory, but harder in practice.
[00:37:00] Melodie Moore: So really having those ideas and how do you work with your team? How do you hold team members accountable? Check us out on YouTube, Facebook, and BusinessTechNinjas.com.
[00:37:10] Clate Mask: Melodie’s so good. Thank you for the great stuff you've shared. It's been awesome to spend a little time here. Thanks for all you do in Keap Nation and all you do to serve our customers.
[00:37:18] Melodie Moore: Thank you for creating Keap because my business … I was building out websites before and the software gave me, I was like, “I get this. This works for my brain,” so thank you.
[00:37:30] Clate Mask: You're welcome. Thank you. I can't wait for you and others to see all the things we're doing with small business automation.
[00:37:36] Clate Mask: You've seen some of it. There's more coming. It’s just an exciting time for us as we go beyond marketing automation into small business automation and enable partners and customers to buy back their time with automation to conquer the chaos and go from chaos to freedom through automation.
[00:37:54] Melodie Moore: Chaos to ease.
[00:37:55] Clate Mask: That’s right. I love it. I love it. Alright. Thank you everybody for joining this episode of Conquer the Chaos. Make sure you like, share, follow all those things. We love helping small businesses grow with automation and we appreciate Melodie and others that make that a reality for businesses all over our community that we call Keap Nation. So till next time, conquer the chaos with automation.