Buyer Beware, The Cost of Using the Wrong Software feat. Kronda Adair

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris 0:32
Welcome everyone to another episode of The all systems go podcast. And this this episode, it pleases me it pleat. What? Okay, let me let me let me just say this. There’s a lot of software out there to be purchased. And of that software, a lot of it should never be purchased. And and I say that with a certain set of considerations in mind for a marketer. But then there’s another, there’s another category of software that should never be purchased by anybody. So what I have the pleasure to do is walk through some of the what do I will I’ll say case studies in some of the ways that people have II erroneous ly selected and implemented software. And the goal is this not to necessarily put anybody on blast more than help you all navigate and do what what are we doing this, this this season everyone, strategically selecting software for the intelligent implementation of it. So I figured who better to kick off our new season of software selection strategically, then my very own certified automation service provider who has been on this podcast maybe four times now and five, by and will be more. By the way, I’m, I’m glad to have people in my rotation like this. But it’s none other than Kuranda. A dare many of you who have been following the podcast, know of karandi If you don’t Caranas bio is as such, from humble beginnings to making $500 a website 10 years ago, her obsession with marketing has led her to a love of watch disappearing technology and great marketing strategies. So she’s the founder of Carville digital, where their mission is to help a mission driven service based businesses use content to sell their services so they can scale without burning out in the process. She provides marketing intensive VIP days and can help you craft a strategy to deploy your content to the right people at the right time. So your prospects show up ready to buy from you. Karen is here to help us navigate this. How in what’s what’s even better is Khurana just recently, at the time of recording, wrote an article about which software to avoid, okay, to help you all not make terrible decisions when it comes to software. So I have around to share her expertise around that we’re going to talk through the article, I’m going to jump in and add some of my not so great experiences. So you all can learn from us. And hopefully, we can save money and shave hours, two days, two weeks, two years, hopefully. I guess hopefully not for you using the wrong software hitting your head. Khurana. Welcome to the podcast, how you doing?

Kronda Adair 3:51
I’m good. I’m so happy to be talking about this. I feel like I’ve been on the soapbox for pretty much my entire career. And yet, there’s still people out there who are making these decisions that, you know, the title of the article is bad software that’s costing your business. And one thing you didn’t mention in your list of things was the stress. People are so stressed out, either because they find out the hard way they can’t do what they need to do. That’s one source of stress, then they when they have that realization, then they realize they have to make a move. And sometimes that transition can be really painful, especially coming from some of these these tools that really just want to keep hold of your data. So I’m really happy to be here and be talking about this.

Chris 4:39
Yeah, I’m so glad you mentioned stress. And I want to mention for those of you who are just jumping in and have not had a chance to listen to the previous episodes. There was one that I had called Platform imprisonment. And you find

Kronda Adair 4:57
I send that one out all the time. All right, you will

Chris 5:01
find yourself in this case, we’ve all been there. And you will be there if you haven’t yet. But it happens when a platform is just locked down. It is okay, we’re getting your data in and doesn’t allow you to get data out. And then there’s another episode that we created around some software selection and why you can trust automated automation service providers who are certified with this. And the fact that usually the person selecting the software for your business is you. And you’re like, the worst person ever. And no, not. But what do you know about software? Those of you who are listening, I want you to, like make an honest assessment, look yourself in the rearview mirror, if you’re driving briefly, the mirror at home and say, What do I actually understand about software online? And that’s another thing that leads to this Khurana because there’s no check. There’s no checks and balances to say, Hey, don’t do that yet. Do this. So it’s kind of like the wild wild west.

Kronda Adair 6:04
Yeah, I mean, order of operations comes into play, like what at what point in your business? Do you need certain software, if you are going on to you know, a lot of people when they’re in the beginning stages, they just want something that works, and that’s easy. And so they do, you know, whatever the crowd is telling them to do. And I am not against that, like, that’s a, that’s a reasonable thing to be doing. What I really have a problem with is just the ignorance around, you know, what’s gonna happen after that, what’s gonna happen when you grow out of that software, and just making that decision, like having that information, you know, knowing what you’re going into, if you still want to make the decision, make the decision, but then at least you’re going in and you’re aware. Yeah,

Chris 6:47
you know, you mentioned it in your article. And we’ve talked about it quite a bit on the podcast about not buying software, but hiring it. And it’s the premise of making sure you have a job description clear. So that when you go select a software, you know exactly what it’s going to do. Khurana share with us, how do you approach creating such a job description for the software that you’re planning on using? Do you sit down and and write? Do you have a list that you go through? Is it a whiteboard section? How are you going about selecting or documenting the criteria for to hire the software?

Kronda Adair 7:27
Yeah, so I just actually went through this with a client who’s, you know, being forced off of a platform that is literally breaking down. So one thing is don’t, don’t wait until you’re forced, if that’s going to be, it’s going to be a tight spot you don’t want to be in? And so I just really quickly was like, Well, what is what is it that you need? What what is it that you’re already doing? What’s your process, and you know, we talk about this all the time, you have whole episodes dedicated to talking about process, and everything that you do in your business, and in your life two involves a process. And so you have to look at that process. And you have to say, what are the steps in this process? What is the data that is collected, or, you know, sent out in this process, and really document that. And then, when you’ve done that, or if you’re doing that in conjunction with some, you know, I do this as like, as a console, right? Once you’ve done that, then someone like us can come along and say, okay, of these processes, software could handle, you know, 70% of this potentially. And then we take that just Just what the knowledge of of having used so many different tools and produce results with so many different tools, I can look at a process and I can very quickly probably pick out 80 to 90% of the software that could execute those processes. Because it’s just we’re not we’re not new at this, you know, so it seems it might seem like, you know, Ill considered but it’s just experience, it’s just like, you know, I’ve been through this with different clients, different industries, different considerations, and it take all that experience, and I look at what you’re doing, I’m like, Okay, here’s and I literally just did this to for one of the dog trainers that I work with, because she’s starting to feel the pains of doing everything manually. And so we went we went through we talked through her processes, she wanted to streamline you know, client inquiries and all these things. And so I could say like, I literally gave her a database and I’m like, here’s the things that you’re going to need now, here’s some things you might lead need later that I approve of. So you don’t have to come back and ask and and even gave her some options. I’m like, you could go this route, you could go like a more independent route where you’re gonna like take best in class tools and tie them together. Or you could do this you know, other option where you have some things that like work together and you don’t have to have so many different tools. So that’s kind of the process. It’s like going through, what’s the process? What is the data involved in the process? And where does that data need to go? Yeah,

Chris 10:10
that’s, that’s really good. And when you speak of data, I just want to reiterate in highlight, one of the most critical data points for every business is their CRM software, you want to be a, you want to ensure that the software that you’re using is bi directional, it can get data in and out of your CRM software fairly easily. So that’s just just that’s just a note everyone. Let’s let’s jump into some of this, some of this bad software, Khurana and I’m gonna, I’m gonna be nice to you all today. And I’m gonna give some context and say when we say bad, we mean bad through the lens of marketing effectively, and streamlining and increasing your efficiency. All right. All tools aren’t are not created equal. And some of these that we don’t like is remembers from that lens of a marketer you may be like, but I’m a branding expert, and I love it. Okay, good for you. But if you’re actually going to produce results online, stay away. How about that, okay, now, the nice version, there’s one tool, I’m gonna I’m just gonna say this upfront. When we get to this one set of this one software, I will not hold back and he’s warning you all now. I’ve been abused for a long time. I’ve got to speak alright. So looking at WordPress, not WordPress, looking at websites software. There’s a platform that we’re not even going to waste any time on. I call it the single parent platform. And it’s GoDaddy with no debt.

Kronda Adair 12:03
I call it No daddy as well. Nobody

Chris 12:05
should be using GoDaddy is the single payer platform just okay we Yep.

Kronda Adair 12:10
Let’s I actually have a keyboard shortcut of no daddy and it just spits out the link to my article that talks about why you shouldn’t use it you can literally just Google my name and GoDaddy you can find the article up like it’s been done don’t do it many reasons

Chris 12:26
everybody many reasons but what other what other website and what what bunch in landing page software to Khurana what what type of software should people be mindful to be beware of?

Kronda Adair 12:43
I’m just gonna say you know, Wix Weebly. I talked to someone with a very successful business still on godaddy page builder, like all of those sorts of tools, I just think of those as like Lego blocks. Like you might, you could build a cool little, you know, Star Wars action figure with it, but like, you’re not gonna build something you’re gonna live in with that, right? You know, I have not yet met million dollar business owner who’s using Wix for their foundation for their website. It’s just, you know, like, use it for your, your Beyonce fan site. There you go. use Wix for that. Because, again, we’re going back to the marketers lens, being able to integrate well, with a variety of tools, being able to have your landing pages on they’re having good SEO, you know, those hosted services, you know, it’s not great to try to do SEO, and improve that on their Squarespace. You know, I’m not mad at Squarespace as like a starter, a starter kit, right? Again, going in knowing like, Okay, I’m doing this, I can get something up. But when I when it’s time to get serious and you need to do marketing that encompasses different platforms, integrating email, marketing, all those kinds of things, you’re going to want to level up. So that’s, that’s it on the website, and I will say click funnels, you know, I just, I, it’s like the burliest of bro. You know, and I like there’s not a lot of software companies out there that are actively antiracist I would say member balls is probably the only one I’ve come across. Maybe ConvertKit Nate’s doing pretty well. But Click Funnels I’m just like, I can’t I could not you know and and it doesn’t work that well as bloated and just like it’s a waste of money like you could you could just make a bare bones WordPress site and put Thrive architect on there and you’ve got landing pages and now you own those pages. So yeah, that’s that’s what I’m gonna say on the web. Say Frank. Yeah, now

Chris 15:01
I will say, the brokenness, to Click Funnels really did open up a huge opportunity for platforms like fg funnels, you know, to come around and really provide a solution I’m in. Listen, I’m not promoting it, I just know it exists, but an alternative for force, such as software. And when we talk about owning your, your website, it’s simple stuff, everyone. Some of these platforms like Weebly and Wix don’t allow certain businesses on their on their platforms, right? I’ve seen it. Here’s here’s the biggest mistake that I see is that these platforms try to be all in one. And then they start adding extra stuff like I knew somebody that’s it was Wix, or Weebly, one of the w’s. And I guess you can do lead generation Kuranda. not exaggerate. You could do lead generation. And so they’ve been using Wix or Weebly to capture leads. And I say, Okay, we’ll send over the CSV. Oh, my God, it was the worst formatted data that I’ve ever seen. Like, it was inconsistent. For one I’m like, how do you have dates of origin for some contacts and not others? If they all filled out the same form? How was this possible? And I think that’s the true danger is that once you get sold into these types of platforms, by nature, as your business grows, you want to get more out of it. And then they try to give you

Kronda Adair 16:42
more and more and more and just so hard to extract yourself. It’s so true. And while we’re on that, actually, let me throw in an honorable mention, for signing up for these services using your Google or your Facebook or whatever account they try to make it so easy. They’re like, Oh, did you sign up with Google? You’re already logged into your Gmail, you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s so great. I cannot tell you like every, maybe two, three times a year, like I just throw this out on Facebook, and people are like, Oh, my God, wait, why should I do you know, and when it comes time for you to have a team, and then you want to share access to that thing? And then you realize you have to give that VA from Upwork, your Google Admin, like login in order for them to act? No, it’s not that we’re not doing that. Friends, don’t let friends. So if that’s you, and you’ve already done this, just go and send an email to support and request a regular old email and password login. And then you’ll be good.

Chris 17:46
Yes, yes. I agree. And and remember everyone, you know, if you if you do have wicks, and Weebly, you also just want to be thinking of marketing growth. How do I how do I put popups on those websites? And if I do, if I can put a pop up on there, how do I do UTM is to where I can start to track where leads come from stored in fields that are set sent to my CRM system that I can go on and on, but there’s just trust us when we say, as your marketing matures, you are going to mature beyond it. So why not start in a platform that, you know, can can handle that maturation? So so on the email, on the right, on the email, what do you what are you seeing the stay away from these days are our B buyer beware, we’ll say,

Kronda Adair 18:52
um, well, you know, MailChimp is always on my hit list. And, and I was talking to someone who, you know, I think that he works with clients on MailChimp. And he’s like, Oh, they’ve added a lot of stuff. I just, I just can’t get behind it. You know, if nothing else, the fact that they are still charging you, like for the same contact to be on multiple lists is just like, What are you doing? That’s like, you know, Apple took forever to get to get the stuff and I know you’re an Android. So you’ll laugh at this, but right, you know, but Apple takes forever to get the stuff right. So it was like back in the day was like, everybody else could send photos via text message. And then Apple comes in like a week afterwards. I’m like, where are you been? Right? That’s how I feel about MailChimp and they’re, they’re double charging. And, you know, it’s just, it’s almost Robin Kennedy, our friends over email marketing heroes, you know, they’ll go on a rant about this every once in a while, and it’s almost more like rather than trying to keep track of what to avoid, just understand You should probably end up on one of the big like three or four if you’re going to be serious about marketing automation, right. Yeah. So that’s active campaign. You know, keep HubSpot Ontraport. Right. And if you’re a creator, and you’re not, you don’t need custom fields and like automation like that. ConvertKit is like very popular. I’m not mad at ConvertKit for the people who like it, and it does what they need it to do. But that’s, that’s pretty much it. People come to me and they’re like, Oh, God, you know, Constant Contact or what? And I’m like, Why? Why are we still doing this? So I do like mailer light, again, talking about the starter kit, right? You know, because people like, well, if you don’t like MailChimp MailerLite I think mailer light has a great user interface. I think they have like a lot of, you know, good features. They allow you to create landing pages. So if you’re on Squarespace, and you want to do email marketing, you don’t want to try to futz around with you know, getting a landing page and trying to connect Squarespace to something which is a total pain. mailer light, great option, I met a business owner with a, you know, half a million dollar a year business and 15,000 contacts and mailer light and was doing great.

Chris 21:14
Yep, yep, I will say this, I’m going to double down on MailChimp. And in the reason being is because I feel like they’ve really raised their prices and the offering. They’ve added a bunch of features. But it’s for people who have never seen anything like that before. Right. So they journey builder. And if you’ve never used marketing automation software, it’s like, oh, my gosh, look how visual it is. But it’s so limiting. It’s not drag and drop. Where do they do that? In marketing automation world, like everything is pretty much drag and drop. There’s no copying, there’s no multiple triggers. There’s no dynamic wait states. It’s essentially what hub spots work. Visual workflow builder was about eight years ago.

Kronda Adair 22:07
And, yeah, they’re late to the party, customer

Chris 22:12
journey builder. And I want to I want to just do my annual disdain for Constant Contact, I just want to let you know, I’m still never ever ever going to accept them as a as an email platform. But watch this watch. What’s how I soften the blow a little bit, everyone. I understand their place for nonprofits? I do. So a lot of their nonprofit pricing in their nonprofit packages are very friendly. So I get it. I would rather listen to me well, I would rather you use constant nonprofit, I would rather you use Constant Contact, then like a spreadsheet, or some way of BCC in Gmail, all of your contacts, right? See, there’s I can be friendly, I can be friendly, but let me tell you this marketer. If if if I ever find a marketer, that’s like, Hey, bro, hey, let me let me show you my system. And it’s in its constant contact. Correct. Karen? I

Kronda Adair 23:20
don’t know what to say. No. I’ve seen all I needed to see.

Chris 23:26
By good to know you. There’s nothing here that we need to

Kronda Adair 23:29
throw him off the island. Right hook? Yeah, you know, don’t do like how, like, tell me you don’t know what you’re doing without telling me you don’t know what you’re doing. You

Chris 23:40
go. That is it. So like you mentioned mailer light, I’m a fan. I’m a fan of mailer light. And I do I have to say, Nathan berry at ConvertKit has stayed true, he stayed true to email marketing, and email marketing automation. He hasn’t tried to go out of his realm and do CRM and pipelines and all of that, so I can respect what he’s done. And if I were to start email marketing, in fact, I’m looking at all of the solutions today, like who what software was somebody picking 2023 2024 If they wanted to start email marketing from scratch, and it’s one of them is one of the top three ConvertKit price wise, design wise, it’s been around for a while. So you know, they’ve kind of worked out the bugs and kinks. So, yes, solid software there. Alright, you’ve and everybody just so you know, I have Caranas article right in front of me. So I’m just kind of scrolling through. If at any point you’re like, hey, I want to I want to read the article for myself. We’ll have the link below in the show notes. So just go and click to the to the show notes from the your podcast app, and you have that link and you can follow along with us. You’ve got to got a couple of mentions of Hello, sign in in dubsado Tim, Tim you But that

Kronda Adair 25:03
Hello sign I wasn’t I used it, you know, I used it very casually back in the day. And then came the point where when I was running content bootcamp, and I was having, you know, I wanted to fully automate the onboarding process. So the process was, we have the call, I send you the invite you pay, I want you to sign the contract first, then get access to the platform. Okay. So, when I went to see what is the, you know, what is the signature software that I can use that I can fully automate this process, you go to Zapier, they’ve got HelloSign integration, and then they’re like, oh, but you need to pay all this extra money in order to be able to do automated signatures zaps, you know, sending of contracts and have them be legal. And I was like nixed. So, because

Chris 26:02
people don’t take enough time to go in it and figure out how does this platform integrate with like the Zapier is and other ones out there. Because I think we had the same experience. I went, I was like, Oh, I’ve been using HelloSign. It integrates with Dropbox. So whenever somebody signs something is right. In my Dropbox. I’m gonna automate the process this gets to automate the process. Yep. Oh, clunky.

Kronda Adair 26:34
Yeah, no, no, good. So So then HelloSign got booted for that. And then dubsado. I mean, you’ll see if you, when you go to the article, you’ll see the post I made, you know, one of those square posts on Facebook, and I said, an escape room. But for people trying to leave dubsado You want to talk about software that just gets its hooks in your data and game over? Game over, there’s just think of it like digital quicksand for your data. So you better go in real, real intentional. So like, I know, you know, one of our one of our other tech guru folks uses dubsado. Only for contracts. Yeah, only for contracts. That’s it. Right. But if you’re gonna do that, you might as well just get software that does contracts well, right and find something else. So dubsado I mean, I when I meet people, and they’re like, Oh, are you sad? I’m like, okay, Godspeed. You know, because they’re not, they’re not getting out of there. You know, they have to get to a really, a really determined place will say before they’re ready to escape, because then you have to, you have to go replace all the things that dubsado has a toxin you for, right? So how are you going to sign contracts? How are you going to do you know, and it’s not a CRM, like, it’s not a true care. So, yeah. If you’re on dubsado, and you’re trying to escape, you just you have my thoughts and prayers and best wishes, but it can, it can be done, people have done it, but you really have to understand what you’re losing by staying in there and why it’s worth it to to get out. Yeah,

Chris 28:23
and I think dubsado is in the same family as honey book, which is a software that my wife uses, and how many conversations we’ve had where I’m like, oh, yeah, sure, you could just go into No, you can’t any book doesn’t integrate with anything. No.

Kronda Adair 28:42
They don’t. Oh, there you had your wife on the podcast. And you You told us, you know, you shared with us all along. And when I heard HoneyBook, I was like, how painful is that for you to live with on a daily?

Chris 28:57
Every time I see a need, I mean, thankfully, she let me put her website on WordPress. And she’s like, Oh, my God, now she loves it. But you know, to be fair to everyone who’s listening, you have to start somewhere. And it was simple enough for my wife to really get get her footing, get some some contracts out XYZ. But I want to I want to share a question that she asked me that I think all of you using these platforms have to ask. She was like she came to me. She was like, hey, you know what I want to do? You know how people have like stuff online like a like a PDF or something like that, that they give away and this this and that. I’m like, yes. It’s called Lead Magnet. I’m familiar. She’s like, that’s what I want to do in honey book. And I’m like, I don’t think that’s possible. She’s like, why not? I have forms and they had all the things right. I said, Well, if we look at it, whenever a lead comes into HoneyBook, it’s part of a pipeline. So if you were to run a legion play in a platform like dubsado or HoneyBook, you’re going to have Have a hundreds of pipelines, that software was not meant for that. So I was just trying to inform her, but I saw like the hopelessness coming onto her face. And she’s like, well, then what do I do. And it wasn’t until that moment where I realized, ah, they’re so focused on sales, right, like the invoicing, all of that. They totally bypass marketing. And they don’t promise it, if you go to dubsado, honey books website, they don’t promise marketing. So I want you all to be mindful of that. Even if you’re using that, you’re still going to need some kind of Legion marketing system to capture leads, send emails and qualify. So either way, you’re going to be really to see marketing

Kronda Adair 30:44
system that doesn’t talk to sales. That’s, you

Chris 30:49
see, and that’s right, because I can’t integrate anything into these programs. So the only way for one contact that’s in my marketing system, to get into my sales system of dubsado are HoneyBook, they’ve got to fill out a dubsado or HoneyBook form. And guess what, I can’t pass data in prefilled, hidden fields and link it. So I know they came from here. It’s just disjointed. And I want you all to be mindful of that. So we’re not, again, this, this is worth repeating. We’re not here to like make you feel bad about your software, we’re here to make you feel glad that you now know why you should be looking or thinking about other software’s that can do other things. So I’ve got to jump down. You’ve got surveying type, type form, Survey Monkey and type form on here. Before you go and talk about Survey Monkey, in type form, I just I just have a question for for my listeners, if you’re using Survey Monkey right now, the one question I have, why. And then my follow up is how, how are you? Out of all of the software that is available? How is it still being selected? It is the most archaic, closed system that does not integrate, it doesn’t make capture easy. Like I don’t have these companies. It’s got to be like enterprises or something. Using a software when there’s such, you know, I

Kronda Adair 32:25
had one client that was using Survey Monkey for lead gen. Don’t ask me how. And, yeah, and I was like, Yeah, this could be way easier, way easier. And they protested when I tried to improve it. Oh, you know, we built a whole other system for them on Jeff. I’m not sure if they’re using it. People get entrenched. So yeah, I don’t think I need to say any more about Survey Monkey. But let’s come for Typeform. Because everybody seems to love that one question per page. And I don’t know about you, but as a form filler outer. I find that extremely irritating. Just show me what you want to know, maybe page it out. If it’s really long, maybe like two three pages. Okay. But one question per page, like, come on. So that’s my beef with it. You know, I know it’s pretty, but it’s annoying. And then my second beef that I know you share is again, the integrations on the back end, if you want to have the ugliest tags on the planet, all over your active campaign or whatever you’re integrating with, go ahead and use type form, because they don’t even let you determine and and control what tags are going to the system when somebody fills out a form? And that is just like, what what century is it?

Chris 34:03
Yeah, and they are really ugly, my friends, these tags are terrible. And one other thing I’ll throw into type form, again, you’re talking about people who build marketing and sales systems. We have a very specific skill set. And we’re looking for specific things. And one of the things that I was disheartened by because there’s there’s such a wide adoption of Typeform was how they integrate with Zapier. me how they passed out is really hard to use, especially if you’re using dropdowns or multi selects it it. It took me for one one form. It took me about an hour to get it connected appropriately. And once that hour was spent, I was like Okay, everybody, we’re good. Don’t anybody logging in touch anything in Zapier, right? The company nobody did guess what they ended up doing? Changing something on the form Oh, no, no, I’ve got to go all the way. The integration is just, it’s just not great. So, again, are we saying never by type for move out of there? Well, I’m actually saying that for Survey Monkey, but I’m just saying, We want you all to be aware of these things. So you’re not caught off guard, I now know the limitations of type form. So if somebody’s using it, it helps me just out the gate. I know exactly what they can do and what they can’t do. We’re savvy karate, and I are savvy enough to work within the confines of whatever software you’re using. The problem is, you’re not. And more than often your team is not either. So yes, I’ve I’ve worked with Survey Monkey, I’ve got a good friend of mine is using it. Right now. Cringe worthy, but work around it got QR code setup, where they scan it, it pulls up the survey monkey, I have it exporting out to a Google Sheet, that Google sheet then adds it to air table. And we’ve got some interfaces like, I’m pretty much bypassing their whole internal reporting system. But

Kronda Adair 36:13
you know, we just want to, I just want to share that, like what you just said, made me tired. And I could do it. I could do what you’re describing, but just you saying it out loud made me tired? Yeah.

Chris 36:24
Yeah. And that’s, and that’s the point, everyone, yes, you can do this stuff. But you literally cannot, because you don’t know how to. So yes, we can do this stuff for you. But we don’t want to so so let’s just start out the right way, using the right software. And remember, this is from a marketing automation standpoint, if you want to go on Upwork or somewhere else, and hire somebody that takes all your type form submissions, and enters them in to your CRM system and does that manually because you love type form. So be it. We just want you to know that in the journey of automating, you’re going to run into some roadblocks and some quicksand where you’re just trying so hard, and you just can’t seem to get ahead. Alright. Let’s let’s let’s talk about coercing community software.

Kronda Adair 37:18
Let’s do it.

Chris 37:20
I’m gonna give you the first two in the last one is mine, because this is long overdue. But we’ve got mentioned Kajabi, think if IK and teachable, what what what has your experience been? And what should people be beware of using those platforms?

Kronda Adair 37:38
Yeah, so first, I will say I am actually on Kajabi as a student, you know, Mike, a lot of my coaches, etc. So I bought programs that were hosted on Kajabi, as a student, I’m not I’m not mad at it, it’s fine. Again, when it comes to integrations, right, that’s where that’s where things break down. So, you know, our friend, our friend, Ashley from systems, overstress, makes these beautiful sales dashboards, you know, sales hubs and airtable, where you can get all of your sales data from everywhere that it’s coming, whether it’s Kajabi, thrive, cart, whatever. And if Kajabi is your main payment, then you cannot get rebill information from it. So you can get that initial payment. But if you have payment plans, you’re not gonna be able to get that. So you’re not going to have and, you know, this is talking about a sales dashboard, right? Where you could go in one place and see what your money is doing. So, again, and then where I really have issue with Kajabi is email Kajabi is trying to is trying to be an all in one they’re trying to tell you, they can do email, I had someone come to me for a console, she’s like, I want to know why my emails aren’t performing the way I want them to, like, can you look at it? And I didn’t know before? I said, Yes, I didn’t know she was on using Kajabi for email. So I go in. And of course, I want to export a CSV. And I want to see, you know, what’s the open performance with the clicks performance, like to look at the trends of like, well, what emails are doing better than others, so we know which direction to go in. You can’t you can’t export that data. You can go into each single email that you sent, and you can click and you can copy down the how many clicks you got, and then you can go back and then you can click in and you can see how many opens and you can write that like, No, I was immediately I was like I nope, I can’t help you with this. I’m sorry. Like it’s so and you know, forget any kind of advanced automation CRM like nothing so, so no to Kajabi teachable and Thinkific again, platform wise, you know, as a student, not mad at them, but just the level of automation and especially if you want to track what your students are doing, being able to to send back to your CRM, like, Oh, somebody’s completed this lesson or this module. And you know, if you’re trying to make these decisions, or you’re trying to research on your own, here’s, here’s a quick shortcut, like, whatever software you’re looking at, go to zapier.com and see what the integration is, if they don’t have any integration, turn around and walk away. And if they have very limited integration, think real, real hard about whether you want to limit yourself in those ways.

Chris 40:30
Yeah, and I want to mention something everyone. I was I started out, I started on teachable. That was my first course first sale 1999 20 bucks. And this was over 10 years ago. And what I am what I had to do to get like website tracking back to Active Campaign, I had to go into the source files, understand liquid figured out exactly where to copy and paste the tracking script, put it in there. And then I could see, at least in Active Campaign, the pages that that people were visiting, I couldn’t get course progression out of there, or anything like that. So some of you have never even known a world where you can see what video somebody has watched how long how much of the video they watched, like, there’s so much data in a course platform that’s just there, that if you could export it out, you could increase retention, you could you could increase completion rates. And you can, I guess increasing retention is reducing attrition. But you can get better performance by understanding what people are doing, and being able to just incentivize them to continue to consume and log in and complete the courses. So it’s, it’s definitely next level, elementary school, you know, teachable? Thinkific Kajabi that’s fine. When you start getting to high school. When you get into college, and definitely when you’re out of college, you You better not bring get out of here, you know, the smaller balls that they play basketball with, like showed up on the court, like, hey, let’s, let’s play with this little. It’s like, Sure, it goes in a little five foot basket, right? It’s like, yeah, we’re what is another lead here. So let me say this community software. I’ve been abused. I’ve been abused everyone. I’ve been imprisoned and abused. And I, they I’ve met the people behind the software. And they’re nice people, they really are. But as a marketer, as a marketer, not a branding person who loves beautiful looking things and tries to have everything in my course solution payments and all kinds of fun stuff. Mighty networks, has been a thorn in my side, hip, leg, arm, back, neck, everywhere, every every way possible. Kuranda is my witness. She is one of my most faithful students. She’s been with me since the inception of mighty networks, all the way till now she seems that she’s seen the multiple pole variations. I’ve attempted to reorganize the launch spaces. I’m like, maybe this is it. Let me say this. Of course, it’s imprisonment. You can get no data out of it. Hold on, hold on. I’ve got I’ve got receipts here. Watch this. I tried. Here’s what I tried to do. There’s a Zapier integration. It says when someone posts when a post is posted in the network, fire the Zap. And what I was hoping to do was take the content of that post and put it somewhere because my thinking was there certain really important posts in your in your academy or in your course or community that what I want to do is use a hashtag to trigger saving that post. So I saw the trigger in Zapier. I’m excited. I’m like, Oh, wow, great. I go set it up. It triggers a created a post it triggers. I go down to look at all of the information. I’m like, Alright, where’s the content? Missed it. Okay, let me let me clear my eyes. Okay, let me look again, where’s the actual content of the post? It’s grown to nothing. How? Just Just follow me, everyone. How do you have a trigger when new content is posted? But don’t include the content? Are you serious? This is what I’ll talk about abuse. This is like somebody saying, hey, look, I made some food for you in there. You got dinner, and you walk in there and it’s like, I know I’m starving. But even I can’t eat this sauce, soggy cereal, things like a course progression. It’s all in there. But there’s no gamification in mighty Network. likes to say, hey, if they’ve completed this course unlock this, give them a badge, do something. I can’t sync the course progression. I use that in Zapier, as well said, Okay, maybe as they complete courses in mighty network, I can see it in in my CRM through Zapier triggers maybe 50% of the time, maybe their their Zapier integration is never updated. It’s it’s just like stuck and stale. And whenever you reach out to them and say, Hey, can you guys provide this information? Can you this? Their answer is always, oh, sure, export it as a CSV. Hope, who, what, what? So if you’re looking to, if you’re looking to get more engagement, and let me say this to let let me not minimize the fact that the interface requires more clicks than it really should, right to do a thing. Click a button, give me a Yeah, put something in. And that’s it. I just think it’s over designed over engineer over product. But I understand that there is an audience for it. I’ve seen people who are raving fans of mighty networks, and you cannot take it away from their kung fu grip. I’m not one of those people I have tried so hard. I’ve talked to the founder, I’ve talked to multiple people on their team. I’ve referred people that I’ve referred enterprise people, they’re currently like, in 10s of 1000s of dollars a year they’re paying this company. And for them to just turn a blind eye to the marketing needs. It that’s not that’s just not their focus. So I’m not going to knock them for that they’re focused on who they’re focused on. If you’re a marketer, and you want a community that has more of an integrated feel, you can get data in and out when people do stuff, you can trigger automation and replication and all of that. Mighty networks, isn’t it everyone? There are other platforms, there are other platforms. But it’s there’s

Kronda Adair 46:59
so many other. Yeah, and you know, I know, you and Samantha did a whole episode on this. And at the time you made the decision, right, other solutions were not in existence. So you make your decisions with the best information and the best options that you have available. And then when someone repeatedly shows you who they are, you have to make another decision. And I have several, well, I have a client who’s on mighty networks. You know, I’ve taken some classes that have an in person component, and then an online component and mighty networks. And I logged in maybe twice, I was like, I just can’t, you know, the even the process of, of getting access, you know, we took a one on one class, and then we want to take the 102. And you have to go through all this rigmarole just to get access to the thing. And, you know, my real pain around this right now is that, you know, this client who’s on mighty networks, like wants a certain result, but doesn’t want to, but doesn’t want to move. Yeah. And so then you have to have a really hard conversation about like, Okay, we’re gonna do everything that we can. But understand that client experience student experience, is part of what is going to affect your results. And if it is so hard for people to get into your platform for people to access your platform for people to you know, know where they are in your platform, for you to know where people are in the platform, so you can help keep moving them along, that is going to reflect your results. And so, you know, you might you might be in mighty networks thinking like, Oh, this is such a pain, like, you know, I don’t want to move. But you also need to think about the long term cost of providing that experience. And, you know, having been with you on mighty networks for this long, I used to tell people because I’ve always hated mighty networks, like as a participant. And because it’s you like That’s why because it’s you and I would I would tell people all the time, I still tell people I’m like, if Chris said we were meeting on AOL Instant Messenger, I would go find one of those discs because it’s you but most people don’t have that kind of poll when they are starting their their course journey or their community journey. And so the experience you provide really matters

Chris 49:35
absolutely in and out and I’m going to be transparent for everyone here. My retention, I believe has suffered because of this platform. I really do. How I intend on using it. How I will let me just how I intend on building community and using it. It just does not fit at all and I believe I have seriously lost money due to it. And last last job here, search functionality, garbage 100%. Non useful, Khurana again witness how many times have you

Kronda Adair 50:11
been emailing you going? Where’s that one thing? And

Chris 50:14
then Khurana searches for it. I’m like, maybe hold on wait a minute is currently being one of those people that didn’t use Google. So I go in and I try to search and I can’t find it. And I’m like, what is the algorithm for searching, it got to the point, every one that I had to move all of the content that was in mighty networks, onto my website, because I can install at least a plugin on WordPress, that allows a much more greater functionality. Even when it comes down to the hashtag, you can type in something with a hashtag. And it won’t pull the result of every post that has that hashtag. It’s ridiculous. So it’s small things like that across the board. For me, that makes it unusable. So yes, I am putting the buyer beware tag on it. While I know that there are some people who have like, Isn’t I built a seven figure big business on my network, I know you did. There’s some people that drive across the country, in a nice little Honda Civic, and some in a Tahoe, some in a Mercedes, so you can get to your destination in whatever vehicle you choose to. But that one is not getting me to where I need to be. So with that being said, give us some last words of wisdom about the backing up your data, how you should approach it, why and what’s the benefit of it?

Kronda Adair 51:38
Yeah, so we, you know, we are huge fans of documentation, huge fans of backing up, oh, I forgot to say this, when we were talking about MailChimp, but I actually did have a client recently, who lost her entire mailing list because MailChimp shut down her account without warning. So one of the things that we do, you know, when people come in for CRM to sales, and we’re working on their accounts, is we set up automated backup of every lead that comes into your system at the point of capture. And I learned that from you, Chris. And we’ve been doing it ever since. And so that’s one thing. And then, of course, you know, we are heavy, heavy users of airtable. To document everything that’s going on, you know, we’re using Active Campaign primarily. And so we have a whole automation automation hub in airtable, where we’re documenting everything that’s going on with your account, your contacts, your automations, your emails, your custom fields, your segments, so that you can go somewhere that’s outside of your system. And it’s not just for backup, although it’s good for that. It’s also like, it can be slow to like, click around in a system all the time, when you just want to know one thing you just want to know, like, Oh, what was that email that I sent last Thursday, and you can go to airtable database, and you can find out real quick, or you’ve got an automation and you’re like, oh, I need to update the webinar date. And this, you can go you know, find it an air table, click straight through to the exact page to edit that one thing. Yep. And it just saves so much time. And it’s so efficient. So heavy, heavy users of air table, and you know, even our mighty networks client, like we took the time, you know, I had my VA go and like, and get all and like, literally copy all of the data. So I’m like, You know what, you don’t want to do this. Now, you can’t really conceive of doing this now, but at least now you have your stuff, right? And it’s been really useful because we’re kind of rearranging, like, what do we want to, you know, we want to create a new course. And so it’s so much easier to see in a database and air table, like, Oh, here’s all the lessons available. So now we can like mix and match and rearrange stuff to plan what the course is going to be and then they can go build that out. So you know, even if you’re not planning to move, like go in and hire somebody on Fiverr or Upwork to go and literally copy and paste your stuff if necessary and put it in air table and having a database at least you’ll have your stuff.

Chris 54:11
Yeah, I can’t echo my sentiments enough around that. And I I just want you all to be careful with it all so with with all that we’ve said today there is definitely more software out there and more software being released. It’s I my promise to you all is to remain agnostic. So sometimes that may mean that I say some things about the software that you love that you don’t like and on the other side I may be on your team. So I I’m not above using any of this software. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve used mighty networks before of use type form. Never Survey Monkey never MailChimp, never Constant Contact. But you know, I’ve used some of some of the stuff on here, and we’re here to help you learn better so you can do better That’s all I don’t want you all to feel shame or anything walking away from these types of conversations. But my dedication to you is to make sure I bring the sharpest minds. So we can have the most intelligent conversations around this. And if there’s a some software that you want us to know about, review, talk about, if there’s something we missed, and say, Hey, I know you guys talked about it can’t do this. But here’s something really cool that can do. This season, this time going forward, we want you all to be more interactive, we want to give you a voice, you can always send an email to holler at automation bridge.com, that’s h o l l e r, at automation bridge.com. We will get them perhaps your query turns into his own episode. Perhaps we do something else with it. But this is a two way street. And we’re looking forward to hearing from you all and continuing to give you value like this around the best software to to select strategically for your business Khurana you’ve been so gracious to give us so much of your time and so much of your intellect and insight, by the way comes from actually doing everyone Kuranda is not in some office looking down at all the peon saying, Yeah, you should do this. You should do that. Digital dirt under her nails. She’s doing it her and her team. So you’re getting a report from the front lines here. Khurana if people want to get in contact with you. Is there something recent that you’re doing now that’s different from the last time you’ve been on the podcast? Where can they reach out to you? And what is that?

Kronda Adair 56:39
I’m still Carvel digital.com best place to start. And I will say we do have an update on CRM to sales, which we talked about last time that we are really streamlining because I really looked at, you know, what is the core things that we’re doing in that first engagement that are going to give people the most bang for their buck. And it’s really just that welcome sequence in that sales sequence. So we have actually reduced the investment to start working with us by 50%. And we’ve shortened the initial project time from 90 days to four weeks, because we just really kind of cut out all the fluff and said, This is what’s gonna get you the biggest results, you know, going forward. And then at the at that point, then you can, you know, talk about, we can talk about retainer, if you want to continue to support you want us to clean up your system, all those good things. So that’s a big update, I would be remiss not to mention the pot of gold in this conversation about backing up your data and keeping track of things and being organized. So of course, you know, we can put the make sure that you have that link for the shownotes. But yeah, come find me on Instagram or LinkedIn. And let’s chat about all this. I love, you know, talking all things software, I have an actual power hour that I used to keep this on the download. But so many people are having these issues that I’ve been more loud about it, you can book an hour with me and we can talk through your systems. And I can give you that customize technology plan so that you you don’t need need to necessarily implement right away, but at least you know, going forward and you’re not going into Facebook groups, you know, asking coaches about technology twice, so well make sure to get you all those links. So they’re in the show notes.

Chris 58:27
Great, they will be there. They’re already there waiting for you all. Again, thank you Kuranda for jumping on to the podcast look forward to our next episode whenever it comes up, and to talk about the latest and greatest there. And I truly hope that you all have learned something today on how to have more comprehensive considerations when selecting software and I hope that something that we said resonated with your experience. Maybe you put words to something you’re experiencing and just kind of didn’t know how to say it. And maybe we expose you to some new software that you should be using either way. We’re thankful I’m thankful for your for your support and ongoing listenership so Khurana, thank you for joining us today. Listeners, thank you, as always for taking the time out to listen to these episodes and share them and leave the reviews. Khurana you know, I I stopped looking at the reviews. And the last time I looked up I’ve got almost 10 5 star ratings. So I can

Kronda Adair 59:35
Wow, well deserved

Chris 59:37
for the support. We’re bringing the fire this this season. I’ve got founders, co founders of software marketers partners of software to help us understand how they’re using it. There’s no other place. There’s no other place you’ll get this kind of learning. So anyways, thank you all for listening. Until next time I see you or you hear me online automate responsibly, my friends. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday, so make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends