Could It Be Better?

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 Davis 0:32
Welcome to the All systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder and chief automation Officer of automation bridge, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers by teaching them Marketing and Sales Automation. And if you’d like to become one or find out more, you can visit automationbridge.com/ASP. And in fact, this episode is going to really help you understand exactly why you should be thinking about learning, Marketing and Sales Automation, if you already are practicing are familiar with the practice of digital marketing, because I want to talk about doing better, doing better who, who doesn’t want to do better? Okay, and this is going to be an episode of the classic comparison of effectiveness versus efficiency, or maybe effectiveness and efficiency because they’re not at odds, right? But the hope here is that after listening, you’ll have a greater perspective on what’s possible for you, along with a strong desire to change your approach for the better. Okay, but before we get into it, let me say if you’re new to the podcast, if this is the first episode, please do me a favor, listen to this in its entirety. And right at the end, make sure you hit subscribe and leave a review. I like you to be informed with what you’re doing. So subscribing after you actually have experienced the content is my preference. For those of you who are who are longtime listeners and have not subscribed and left a five star rating and review, please do so now.

Chris Davis 2:08
At the time at the time of recording, this the All systems go podcast is free to subscribe to. And you can find the show on all main podcasting apps like Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, you can even subscribe on YouTube. Okay, so we’re anywhere that you regularly visit to consume content where there, right, so again, thank you for your five star ratings and reviews in advance. And let me start out by saying let me let me pose this question to you. Okay. Let’s just have a conversation today. What are you leaving on the table? Some of you know, some of you know this, some of you just have a feeling. Right? Like, I just feel like I could be making more, right? Or I feel like I could be doing something different. Or I feel like I shouldn’t have to do all of that. Right, these questions internally, you may not voiced them. But internally, these are questions or feelings that you may be having. Right? And this is what I’m hoping is that you’ll be able to answer that by the end of this podcast and for framing. We’re going to discuss in we’re going to have this discussion through two formulas, equations or scenarios, right. So the first one is this, e without e leads to E. All right, the second one is E with he leads to E. Okay, for all of my puzzle solvers, your brain is probably just firing at all speeds. And I bet you can solve at least two of the ease in both equations, but you’re not going to get the last ones. Alright, but don’t worry, I’ll give it to you quick context. And reminder, we’re talking about effectiveness and efficiency, intent. Okay. And what I’m gonna do is I’m going to give you my definitions first. All right, you will not find these in Webster’s, you will find this in the dictionary. Oh, Chris. All right, along with any other word that you’ve heard me misuse, or create on this podcast are all found in that dictionary. Alright, effectiveness, it’s the ability to get things done that produce something. Okay? They have to produce something I’m not talking about. Again, I’m not talking about Webster’s dictionary. I’m talking about my diction, my definition. And again, this is with respect to marketing and automation. So it’s the built the ability to get something done that produces something, period. I don’t care how I don’t care what it is that you’re producing, but you did something and it produced something you’re effective. Okay. Efficiency is removing the unnecessary elements to produce that same result. with as much effort replaced with automation as pa

Chris Davis 5:01
Okay, that’s my definition of efficiency. Again, you got to go by the dictionary. Oh, Chris. For these, maybe we’ll call this the Davis dictionary, right? But efficiency is removing the unnecessary elements to produce that same result, with as much effort replaced with automation as possible. Okay, traditionally, effectiveness is what you do. Efficiency is how it’s done. This is not new. The only thing new is maybe my definitions thus far. So I just wanted to give context for us, right. So there’s a lot of effective businesses that have gone broke, and will hate to be the bearer of bad news. effectiveness does not protect your business at all, however, is really hard for an efficient business to break. If you want insurance embedded into your, your business, you need to have some efficiency. Because again, I have seen many effective businesses go out of business. And McDonald’s is the best example I can think of. And maybe it’s because I just recently watched the movie The founder. But the entire burger industry changed when Ray Kroc and hit and of course, this is controversial, because the McDonald brothers will have something to say about this, right? But when Ray Kroc approached these brothers and added a different means of producing burgers, and essentially, he helped them offer operate more efficiently. Okay. And that efficiency changed the game, every burger joint, every burger place, has adopted has derived their method from some version of McDonald’s is just what it is. They were the first, their first they were the first to do it. Some have improved on the model, some have just taken and said, hey, look, this is the now the new way that we produce burgers. But it was the implementation of efficiency, it was the addition of efficiency to affective processes. Okay. And that brings us to the purpose of efficiency, and that is to scale positive efforts. Right? That’s what that’s what efficiency does. If there’s something good, we can make it better by by making the production of that good thing more efficient. And we can see this across the board, right? I can take it as simple as a relationship and say it’s a good thing. When I do X, Y, Z to my friend. Okay, how can I do that more efficiently? Right, maybe it may be something as simple as sending a good morning text, right? Good morning. It takes effort every morning. You know, I got to wake up at the right time. And remember, right at the top of the day, what if I just automate that and schedule a good morning text every day of the week on Sunday, and I could schedule a different one. Hey, Happy Monday morning, hope you’re this, hey, Happy Tuesday, maybe it takes me five minutes on Sunday to do that. It’s queued up. And now every day, that effective behavior is more efficient, because it’s removed my time from it. And it’s happening at at a more consistent rate, which we could we could also put in here that when I say

Chris Davis 8:32
the purpose of efficiency is to scale positive efforts. We could add consistently, right on right on the tail end of that consistently. So in marketing, we don’t say scale positive efforts, we say scale profitable efforts. So when we talk about marketing effectiveness is the ability to get the things done that produce revenue, produce profit, okay, and efficiency is removing the unnecessary elements to produce revenue and or profit, with as much being replaced with automation as possible. Alright. So I hope that’s good context for you all. And let’s go into two scenarios, right. And these are going to be attached to the formulas that I mentioned earlier. And the first one is let’s start with the effective entrepreneur. This is the most common entrepreneur you’re going to find in the marketplace. Okay, effective entrepreneur. And this is what what what does an effective entrepreneur look like? What do they do? They found some things that work and are producing results. However, you don’t want to attempt to try to understand how and what I mean by this is you can ask them and they’ll tell you like top level or like, Oh, yeah, we run ads, and then we do this and we do that. Yeah, we got a million dollar company. But if you try to go any level deeper, hey, what kind of audiences and Hey, what you know what cost per click? What’s your row as our you know, what is your average order value? lifetime customer, right? Hold on What? Listen, man, we pay this firm a good amount of money, and we make millions. Why do I care? Essentially, they may not say those exact words, but their actions may write their mass producers, especially when it comes to content, whether it’s speaking, they’re always speaking, they’re always writing, creating content on social media online, they have no problem getting in front of the camera, firing up the camera and doing a video. Right? They could be on vacation or have a conversation and something comes up. They’re like, Oh, excuse me, leave the table for five minutes. Go Live come back like man. All right, great. Anyways, where are we at? Right there mass producers, they don’t necessarily care about the time involved, they’re willing to put as much time as needed into it. Right. So for as much as they make, they really have no clue on exactly why or how we talked about this and growth levers. Right, they don’t know the exact lever to pour to increase profit, or the exact lever to pull to increase their lead generation or the exact lever to pull to increase their sales conversion. They don’t know exactly what to do, but they’re willing to do anything. Right? They just know, when they do stuff. Money comes in. Very top level very surface, okay. They’re usually overextended in what they pay for help in both human resources and technology. Because they’re, you know, usually the effective entrepreneur that is not, does not have a value for efficiency, doesn’t pay much attention to detail is what I’m finding everybody, I really do, I’m finding that these are the ones the big visionaries, they don’t really pay much attention to detail. And it’s a shake of the dice if they are people oriented. Because if they’re not people oriented with a level of detail, they’ll just make sure that they can get somebody that can perform the task, because remember, effectiveness is just it, hey, I need somebody to take off, can they do it? Are they qualified? Do I like them? Okay, great. Put them in there. Right. And lastly, they have a feeling they could be generating more but have no clue, or the patience at times, right? To do what it takes to figure out what that process looks like. But it doesn’t prevent them from trying. The effective entrepreneur is the one that throw $10,000 at that, that Freelancer that claims, Hey, I know how to automate your business, or that agency that makes all these big promises they’re willing to explore. But they don’t have the patience or the any type of fortitude to really slow down and figure out exactly what the process looks like, and what they need to change the level of detail and focus that needs to be implemented. As long as it ain’t broke. They look like the hero. And they’re fine with that. And for me, it’s terrifying. Right, is terrifying, because you never know what industry threat is looming. That’s going to literally take you out. How many times have we seen this?

Chris Davis 13:23
Of course, the biggest examples are like the blockbusters and radio shacks and everything else. A change in the market can render You useless. Quickly, right? If you’re just effective. Right. And what happened is a lot of these entrepreneurs have bounced back. And it’s like, hey, look, that didn’t work. Alright, that’s down next. Right? But but we’re going to show you what this leads to in a minute. Because dealing with these type of entrepreneurs as a marketer, entering into such business, such a type of business is going to be absolute hell, it’s you’re going to have redundancy of software. These are the businesses that have Infusionsoft, ontraport, kartra, teachable, LearnDash and Thinkific. Right, just to name a few, right, and I got Oh, yeah, we’ve got Sam cart and thrive cart. And we do pay pal button sometimes. Right? Like, yeah, we’ve got QuickBooks and 00. And then we’ve got this other accounting software too. And you’re like, What? Why? Why do you have all this software that does the same thing? Whole bunch of undocumented processes? Hey, how do you guys send emails? Oh, we just create a new list every time and to send it out? Yes, well, we do and then you look and they’ve got over 50, sometimes 100 lists, use once and never use it again. Right? Hey, we need to create a new document for a client whose service we’ve done many clients in the past well, instead of empathizing it or taking something from what the previous client did. Let me just go and create a new document real quick. Right? And nothing consistently being measured, is hell. Now, with that comes a huge opportunity for growth right for the right person. And much more that I haven’t even mentioned, long story short, again, surface level operation, producing profits. And they’re of the mindset. Well, it’s working, if it ain’t broke, right? Don’t what I need to fix it for. But, but is that really true? They’re making money. So no harm no foul, right? Not necessarily, because when we go to the first equation, he without he leads to he, eventually he on there. And it is this effectiveness without efficiency leads to exhaustion. And this is just a matter of time. You can’t argue me this, you cannot argue and win with me, I’ve seen it too much I’ve lost count, the amount of small business owner SaaS founders and entrepreneurs who are highly successful. And my successful, let me just say, are generating a good amount of revenue over seven figures, okay. But they’re at a constant state, some form of confusion. And looming, if not already exhaustion. If you really sit back and talk to them, peel back those layers and get to the root, they’ll tell you, I’m just tired, man, I’m so tired of this agency, or I’m so tired. I’ve thought so many times that there has to be a better way. They are aware, they really are. They just don’t know how to get there. Right. So um, they’re not bad people. They just don’t know. They’re not efficient. They’re not, that’s not something that they value, or is something that comes easily to them, which is fine. But it’s hard finding people who complement that, right. And if they knew a better way to operate, they take it in a second, they would. But again, it’s overwhelming for them trying to figure it out. And honestly, it also boils down to personality types and traits, there are just certain personality types and traits that don’t pay attention to detail who are really good in front of people charismatic, XYZ, they really should never touch anything technical or anything detail. They really shouldn’t. Right? So it becomes a complex formula. Right? It’s not just like, hey, you’re an effective entrepreneur and your death is looming to your business. They may go out of business anytime it’s not as simple as that. There’s other factors, right? But let’s see what happens when when efficiency enters into the, into the picture. Okay, let’s take a look at what efficiency brings. What, what does life look like for the efficient entrepreneur? For starters, everything is calculated, there’s there’s no step that’s taken, that hasn’t been proven that it needs to be taken. Okay. And if it is taken, trust me, it is being calculated as it’s being taken to see, do I ever need to do this again?

Chris Davis 18:23
Right? elimination is not a problem at all. Cut some off in a second, forget a minute in a second, hey, we don’t need this, in fact that the efficient entrepreneur will eliminate a task first and ask questions later. Look, we don’t need it. Okay. Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. I think we do. Right. That’s that’s the flip side. It’s like sometimes you got to slow them down. Because they just got the scissors. Cut. Don’t need this. Don’t need that. Right. So let me pause here and say, if you didn’t know, I’m high on efficiency. If there’s a scale in like, from one to 10, I may be 11. I’m serious. It runs deep and everything I do. It’s how I’m wired. I’ve often viewed effectiveness as proving manual efforts, right? and looked at efficiency as automating such efforts. So I feel that this industry, like I was built for this industry, I don’t know. I would imagine, like players like LeBron, Kobe Jordan, Katie and talking basketball here is almost like they felt called to basketball come so natural. Their bodies were built for it right. Like, it’s not something you still have to work hard at it. Don’t get me wrong, and they mastered their craft, but it’s something that you could just look and be like, you know what I was just meant to be this. That’s what it feels like for me like, without knowing what automation was. I was just like, locked into efficiency. It bothered me at a young age to have to do something over and over and over again, I’m trying to figure out how can I wash dishes without washing dishes every night? No, what I’m saying like, these were questions of the young Chris’s mind. And when I go to college, I’ve talked about this in previous podcasts, I had a system for making sure my binder was organized. So I can go to these classes, and not have to repeat any effort that I’ve already done. That’s just how I’m wired. So it’s almost like just natural, how automation comes from me, my mind just immediately goes there. So again, effectiveness is, to me proving manual efforts, I need to be effective first, because efficiency comes with automation. Now that something is working less automated and become more efficient, so so you may hear my language change a bit. When we were talking about the effective entrepreneur, I’m like, give them the my language may change a bit to like, yeah, me we, I, right. Whatever the case may be, you may see that as I’m just helping you acknowledge that now. Right? So if I say we, it’s because I’m coupling myself into this whole, efficient entrepreneurship, right, so back to the experience, but go for the efficient entrepreneur, is to spend as much time determining what’s necessary, okay. And then never spend that same amount of time on that necessary task. Again, gonna say that, again, the goal for the efficient entrepreneurs to spend as much time determining what’s necessary, they never spend that amount of time again, on that same task. Right, ultimately, focusing first, on keeping results constant in with and minimizing effort. Okay, so we never want to sacrifice results, when we’re eliminating or streamlining or minimizing the effort required to produce it, right. So the first step, keep the results constant, while minimizing effort, then the next step is to maximize your results by keeping the effort constant. Who let me tell you, I this is this gets me going, everybody could do you can you see that? Do you not want that? Keep the results where they are? minimize my effort, then with that same minimize effort now increase my results. It seems like magic, but it’s real. And it takes it takes intentional effort, and in a specialized knowledge to know how to do this. But is that not exciting? Right? You’re

Chris Davis 22:50
in order to do this, look, I can’t even get it out. Everybody’s so excited just talking about it. Leverage is the key. And what you’re doing is you’re leveraging as much as possible, as much as what as much as what’s been done to prevent doing again, or doing anything new. Right, never starting from scratch. We just don’t efficient entrepreneurs, we just don’t start with that blank canvas. Our blank canvas is always our previous, our previous performances that have produced profit, right? Even if it’s for another client, okay, duplicate that change the name. Let’s There we go. We’re already halfway there. Right. So again, I get excited about the stuff, you hear me, I’m trying to calm my voice, bring it back down. I’m getting excited, because this is why automation exists for the digital marketer. Digital Marketing in itself is effective in itself. Okay, and there’s some efficiency built into it. But coupled with automation, and it becomes highly efficient. Digital Marketing, coupled with automation is the most efficient form of marketing that exists to us today. You heard it here. Okay. Digital Marketing is a start, not the destination everybody. This is why here at automation bridge, we teach marketing automation to digital marketers. Because, by default, they’ll just learn marketing. You know, lead generation landing pages, checkout pages, collect money, send emails, not the backend operations and making those efficient with automation, right. So now let’s solve the second equation which is e with e leads to e? Sure, you can get the first two effectiveness with efficiency but what does it lead to? It leads to exhilaration, exhilaration. Okay. And remember, there’s this theme of consistency with efficiency. That’s kind of like the overarching always present. Hey, want to Be consistent, be efficient. Right? I’ve never met a business owner with efficient operations, that’s overwhelmed, hasn’t happened. If they’re overwhelmed, it’s because of other factors, not their operation. So they’re, they’re generally always be ready for a new challenge looking for the next challenge. They don’t often, here’s what’s interesting. They don’t often venture too far into new endeavors that they can’t leverage efforts of the past with, whether it’s leveraged knowledge that they’ve used, or actually things that they’ve produced, because they want to expedite the path to success. When we say, keep the effort minimal, and results maximum, that’s because there’s highly leveraged efforts, because due to a track record, or access to a track record, right, there’s the difference between the implementer, who’s actually have a track record of doing or more of the thought leader that has a track record of seeking those who have done leveraging that to help others do.

Chris Davis 26:10
Right. This is the efficient entrepreneur, how we leverage the see that we how we leverage previous victories of our own and of others. And the goal is we want to just get you to the finish line faster. What’s the finish line, and efficient business? highly efficient business? So when it’s all said and done, every business needs increased efficiency, every single one. So in the automation quarter law that I often find myself in the most, the most asked question is, what can automation do for my business? And why? I get asked this all the time. There’s people who are just like, I hear this term. Why automation, and I’ve talked about it before how you can find success without automation. In a nutshell, I’m saying you could be effective, you could be effective, right? But effectiveness often is threatened by longevity, not welcomed. longevity is always looking at at effectiveness saying hey, you think you could have me? effectiveness, you think I can be had by you. Whereas efficiency, longevity rests in its arms. longevity is like, Hello, efficiency. We meet again, it’s a match made in heaven right there. They’re just easily into one another. But when it comes to effectiveness, longevity questions? Hey, I see what you’re doing. Yep, I see the profits. I don’t trust it. I’m not I’m not living with you. This is what longevity says to effectiveness. Right. So what the what what I, what I hear when someone asks that is things are working? Why should I focus any other efforts on anything else? Besides keeping what’s working, working? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s the short sighted entrepreneur and they only focus on the money. But money’s coming in, not operations. A lot of times, if you talk to the people in these companies, they’re just like, Oh, my gosh, we’re just so overwhelmed. There’s so much copy and pasting happening. There’s so many tools, and there’s so much confusion. Right. And while it’s good to start at money, automation spans across all operational areas in your business, we as automation service providers, yes, we’ll start with your marketing and sales, but we don’t end there. What about fulfillment, the back end operations? What about all the other areas that your business? Right? And with that focus introduces the potential to make them all more efficient, resulting in less labor for higher output in all operational areas that your business you cannot tell me that’s not, that’s not beyond appealing. That should be by the way, if that doesn’t get you excited, I need to check your entrepreneurial pulse. You may you may need to need some resuscitation. Because maybe you just you’ve gone things, the way that they have been for so long that you just stop hoping and looking for a better way. So So in closing, I want you to look at how you’re operating with respect to your exhaustion and frustration level good or bad. Doesn’t matter to me. And I want to add, I want you to ask the question, could it be improved? Could it be improved? Right revenue Could you be making more? Are you leaving money on the table? Are you getting even just because you’re making 5 million and and nobody else in your circle? Goal is even at a million. Are you using that as some form of achievement? Are you trying to get into a room of those making 50 million, that will really challenge you to say, look that more that you could be making, make those adjustments now, and one of those adjustments is going to be efficiency, right client? Could you be serving them better? Are you any efficient in the service of your clients? Do they fill it? Right? Do they fill it? And do you fill it? Aren’t you always feel like you’re scrambling? Or do you have a set place? Okay, great. This clients coming in, hey, grab that Doc, copy this in that agreement, boom, we’re ready to go. When you’re efficient, it just gives a different, you show up at a different level of preparedness, you really do.

Chris Davis 30:48
Now, while say this, and in the example that I just gave, I was thinking, there’s also this element of at some point, you have to stop inventing new things you have to stop creating, in order for efficiency to really have its place. Right? Because if you’re always creating, you’re always introducing variables, efficiency needs to reduce variables. Right? So you really become at odds, and hence why longevity eludes you. Hence why exhaustion is upon you. Okay, projects, could you be completing projects quicker? Sometimes, efficiency shows up in projects as a elimination or reduction of scope. Right? scope creep often comes in when we don’t know what that what we’re proposing exactly what produces the result, right, exactly what it is that the client really needs. So we just kind of throw everything in the proposal. Right? You name the area? Could it be better? Could it be better? The answer to this podcast? Not the answer the title of this podcast? Could it be better, I need you to dream bigger, I need you to expect more. But more so I need you to desire to operate differently. It is to your advantage. The tools that we have to leverage them to become more more efficient? Because the answer to every question, could it be improved? Could you could it be better? Could you make more money? Could you be quicker with your clients? Could you have more projects done quicker? The answer is yes. Only with increased efficiency. automation and efficiency go hand in hand. Okay. So who is who’s the person that needed to hear this? I have quite a few that have come to mind just me talking. Right? Some are aware that they’re they’re not efficient at all. Some don’t care. Some are aware, some don’t care. Share this with both. Share it with both. Don’t Don’t let them qualify themselves out of hearing this, they need to hear this. And for you, as the marketing automation specialists, aspiring automation service provider, you need to think about this, how you’re providing the service, as well as how can you help your clients reach this level of efficiency quickly. That’s what you really need to be thinking about share this amongst your digital marketing communities. Really, this is a conversation that we really need to be having more frequently, not just the difference between digital marketing and marketing automation, but also effectiveness, effectiveness and efficiency. So that we can truly start to help these businesses identify where they’re at, and show them a path of growth going forward. That leads that lends them to longevity. Okay? So if you found value in today’s episode, and you’re not subscribed, now’s the time to subscribe, and leave your five star rating and review. Please do so it’s greatly appreciated. Again, we’re focused, we’re dedicated and automation breeds to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers by teaching them how to become more efficient, starting with marketing and sales, but across all operational areas, small businesses, this is what they need. They need somebody that understands marketing strategy can couple that with technology, right, but also embed efficiency throughout all operational areas of their business so that they can grow quickly. Okay, these are the people this is the army that we’re creating. So what we’ve done is we’ve made it easy for you to get access to everything, everything. If you go to Allsystemsgopodcast.com you’ll get access to the latest episode episodes, you’ll get access to our amplify my automation package. And what that is, is a package focused on helping you put automated marketing and sales systems in your business over the next six months or your clients over the next six months. It Chris, break that down. What does that mean? higher efficiency in the next six months. Cap your effort and minimize it while increasing your profits. Alright, you can also get access to our free Facebook group there. You can request or refer someone to be a guest for the podcast. All right, we love SaaS founders to come on talk about their software, talk about their strategy, talk about marketing.

Chris Davis 35:38
Right. And any other resource or training mentioned on the podcast one URL to remember get you access to it all. In that’s all systems go podcast calm. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. And until next time, I see you online, automate responsibility