Upleveling Your Automation Skills To Go Up Market 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 sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis. And today on this episode, these are these are always fun for me because I get to bring back not just some body. This is an important somebody, many of you who have been listening to the podcast. First off, thank you for that. You’ve heard of her quite a few times. And she always comes on with big results. But not just like lofty stuff, but like detailing what it took to get to that stage. So this one will be no different. We have our own automation bridges own because she’s a Certified Partner, Kronda Adair and if you’d have not heard of her because you’re new to the podcast, and you’re like wait a minute, what did I miss? Let me do my official intro because what we’re going to talk about today, is that process through up leveling your your career as an automation service provider. What does it take to get bigger and bigger and bigger clients? What does that process look like? And, and all of it, and a lot of it takes outside of the skill set of automation. So it’d be a very interesting conversation today. Let me do my job. And Kronda is from from humble beginnings making $500 websites 10 years ago, to being obsessed with the marketing which has led her to a love of pairing technology and great marketing strategy. She’s the founder at Carville digital, where their mission is to help mission driven service based businesses use content to sell their services so they can scale without burning out in the process. Quick parenthetical shout out, Kronda has a pot of gold resource that every single person I know personally that has purchased it is just like, Oh my God, I wish I had this 10 years ago. This has been amazing. So that was just parenthetical. Let me get back to the intro. And she provides tools to help you organize your content and through their marketing intensive and VIP days, they 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 Khurana. It is my pleasure always to have you back on the podcast. Welcome. How are you doing?

Kronda Adair 3:08
I’m doing so well. And it’s always good to be back here. And I was thinking that, you know, when I got your invite, I just I hit him scheduled immediately. Because I gotta keep my you know, I gotta keep ahead of the others. Right. It’s my fourth time. Not that I’m competitive or anything. I’m very competitive. So yeah, it’s always good to be back.

Chris Davis 3:30
Yes. And I want to preface this everybody what you’re about to hear Khurana explain mindset stuff, all of that clients approach. Best best cases like things that worked really well. I have to say this what you don’t see is Khurana is one of the most most faithful people I know if there is a we run weekly office hours in the membership Academy. And we’ve been doing it who maybe three years now Kronda I’m thinking I can count on probably one hand how many Khurana has missed. And I’m pointing this out everybody it’s like I’m a big sports fan. And sometimes you see the all star make the game winning shot. But you don’t see the practice the long hours in the gym before people get there staying after people leave Kronda is doing those long hours. So everything that you hear always from her mouth. Trust it trust that because it’s not somebody who’s just flicking through the internet clicking on on links and going on social media posting pictures that look good and sound good so Khurana with that being said with that being said, I’ve I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you make quite a few shifts in your business. And the most recent one is the one that I was like, Oh my gosh, we have got to talk about this. Give people insight of course. I feel like there’s a lot of people aspiring to do Some of the things that you’ve done, right, like, Okay, I do want to make this automation thing and go bigger, I want to go up market, I want to get bigger clients. So start, start from where we left off last time in the last episode, those of you who don’t know, go listen to it. But we were talking about the new CRM to sales offer that’s really opened up the door to allow people to get more out of their CRM profitably. And from that, you’ve seen even more opportunity. So So let’s just start there. What Yeah, where do you give yourself permission to keep growing? Where does that come from? What Why are you not satisfied with just yesterday’s results?

Kronda Adair 5:42
Um, I mean, how boring would that be, like, I have, I have a friend that I’ve known since grade school. And you know, we still live in the same town, we run into each other every, like, four or five years. And every time I’m like, what’s new, she’s like, Oh, just work home, you know, and I would just like, I could not live, like I gotta be doing. So like, you know, last time I was on the podcast, we didn’t have a puppy. And now we have a puppy. It’s our second dog. So I’m learning how to work business around that. And but I was thinking about it on the dog walk this morning, you know, we’re nine months into this new offer CRM to sales. And it’s been a journey. And, you know, it started out of necessity, right, I was running a content bootcamp. And I was really like, I love coaching. And I love working with people in that way. And then our back end offer, which was done for you just really kind of dried up. And that was the bulk of our revenues. So I really had to go look at the market and say, What is going on, you know, pandemic recession, price of eggs, whatever. And what do people need right now. And so that’s really what it was born out of was really looking at, okay, let’s hone in on this one piece of automation, which is the piece that I really enjoy. And let’s look at what people are doing. And people just were not taking advantage specifically of Active Campaign, because that’s what we work with. And so that’s what this offer was born out of. And so as soon as I took that to, you know, my existing audience, they like, ate that up. And we, you know, we sold out q4, with that offer, and just piloting and getting our beta clients in which, right, which were a lot of our clients that had been past clients and come back, they were, it was like, they were waiting in the wings for us to figure out like, what, what the offer was. And so then, in delivering that to like, our first, you know, dozen or so clients, you know, I learned a lot like, I learned that even though it’s, quote, unquote, done for you, because we’re not providing the content. Like, we’re doing everything under the sun, except we don’t write your emails for you. But we gave them the templates for the emails, and they’re from, you know, Robin Kennedy over email marketing heroes. So like, really good, you know, psychology driven, like, battle tested, right. And still, people were having trouble. And so I realized, Oh, I still need to bring in an element of coaching into this for the people who need that, who, even with a template can’t figure out like, how do I make this sound like me? How do I make this? You know, how do I bring my stories and my experience to it, like, that is a skill. So like, Okay, let me let me bring back some of these, you know, support and coaching elements. And so like, later today, we’re having like an email writing retreat, I’m just going to be available online on Zoom. And people can come and use that as accountability. Come get your emails done, if you want me to review them, you know, and so we brought some of those things back. And, you know, I think when we started talking about just focusing on the CRM, right, because I’m not the only ASP, who’s been doing this, we’ve been talking about this. I feel like we started as a, let’s bring automation, like, down from the heights, you know, let’s bring information to the people. And I really envisioned it, I started out, you know, I gave the beta pricing is like, 500 a month after we go in and clean up the systems and stuff. And then, you know, just through delivering, you know, what I’ve realized is that, again, a lot of the people who can most benefit from this are the more established businesses who are doing multi six figures or a million a year or more, because, like I always say, if you automate crap, then you get automated crap. And a lot of, you know, either younger or less experienced or smaller, you know, solopreneur where they maybe just have their VA or their OBM don’t have the systems in place to really benefit the most from automation. And so I learned that lesson again. And so then I had to start saying like, Okay, I need to qualify clients differently. And make sure like, the people who are going to benefit the most are the people who have a process that is working. But that process is really manual. And so you want to take that process, and you want to make it more efficient. And so one of our clients came in, and this was a client in the education space. So there’s all kinds of shenanigans that go on there, there’s, there’s just everything is manual, everything is custom, and this and that. And so we looked at their process, and we mapped it all out. And we said, okay, we can take away, you know, this, and this, and this, and this and this, and just creating a form and a reminder, automation, for a process that they were doing to try to reengage their past clients eliminated 70% of the manual work that they were doing. So, you know, and this was really brought home, I had one client where it was one person who had two businesses. So it was like, you know, she had a business, her husband had a business. And so on the one side, you have like a well established business, you know, multimillion dollar business, really defined processes that we were able to take and say, Okay, here’s your sales process, let’s automate these parts of it and make these pardons, like way more efficient, you know, even the manual parts, it’s like, well, you can have a template email template that you just fill in the blanks. And then on the other side, you know, the other business, I realized, as we got into it, there was no process. And I was like, Why is this so hard, and then I realized, Oh, we’re building the, the, you know, landing ramp as the planes coming down. And that’s why, and it was, because it was same person to business. It was such a stark contrast, that took me a few weeks to be like, Oh, this is why this is so hard. So it’s just really been an eye opener and, and a learning journey.

Chris Davis 11:55
Yeah, I’m writing notes as you’re speaking. So I can be attentive, but also keep track. Two things that you said that that stood out to me is one is the decision and opportunity to go up market a bit, it was not birthed out of, hey, I want to make more money. It was literally your observation of the market where their needs are, and how to best fit them, I have to tell you all who are listening, at some point, you’ve got to get serious about your business growth. And what I mean by serious is, you’re going to have to invest in marketing in a way that you haven’t done previously. Because whatever you’ve done previously has gotten you here. And what Kronda and even myself have have experienced is that you’ll be in your own way, we’ll be ready to help make more more of your profitable processes efficient, we’ll get down and maybe retool some of the foundational stuff, right? Most people are not using their CRM systems or software anywhere near to the level that they should be to make a profit. So when you see that your your heart goes out to them, because you know, like Khurana, you know the other end of a profitable CRM software. So it’s like, I want you to have this thing. So that’s the first thing that stood out is that this is not some cash grab, like, let me get as much money as possible, just go up and charge my prices more, right. And then and then the second one. And this is maybe something that I hit home with, with a lot of people and maybe the second you said it, they’re like, oh, my gosh, nugget, I’m done with the podcast, I got what I need. You talked about going into the education industry, and creating a form that replays like 70% of the work. What people have to understand is that one, we’re talking about automating your processes, and making things more efficient. We’re not talking at times, it’s not like we’re coming in with this big ol backpack of automation tools to deploy all of them. We’re smart enough to identify the areas and the amount of automation needed to really increase that output without with keeping the input constant. So when you do something like create a form, that seems so rudimentary, that seems so basic, so Oh, a form, anybody should do that. No, strategically, understanding the process, knowing what the form needs to bring in and put out and make sure that data gets there. There’s more to it, you know, so yeah,

Kronda Adair 14:37
I would love to elaborate on that too. Because, you know, we’ve looked at so there’s the form we created for that client, which which, you know, just gave them so much benefit. And yeah, it’s not just, oh, let’s create a form for that. It’s, what questions are we asking? It’s what data like what’s the structure of the data that needs to go into it? Where does the data need to end up ventually in order to take action on it in the best way, like, there’s all that stuff that goes into the form, and and then the process on the back end, because you know, in this case, it’s like, yeah, we’re going to send them the form, some people are not going to fill it out. So then we’re going to put that reminder automation on the back end, that as soon as they fill it out there, it’s going to take them out of that sequence and stop reminding them, right. And then we’ve seen the other side where someone slaps a form together. And we, you know, we talked about this in an office hours, we’re looking at it, and we’re like, well, like, why are you asking this question? And why is it structured this way, and, you know, if you made this, you know, drop down instead of a, an open text field, like you would be able to analyze the data. So like, you know, so we’ve seen the opposite to where somebody just slapped some questions together, not even thinking about, especially when you’re talking about, you know, application, right, I just got a new application from somebody to work with us today. And it’s like, people don’t want to spend time on sales calls, talking to people who aren’t qualified, but then they don’t do the thinking to say, well, what is what are the questions? What are the things I need to know that tell me if someone’s qualified or not? Like, that’s what needs to go into your form. And so it’s not just, Oh, we’re going to show up? And we’re going to like push buttons in jot form, like, No, we’re going to talk about what questions are you asking? What’s the structure of the data? Where does the data need to go? And, you know, like, you and I have both created forms that segment people automatically it’s like, if you answer this question and this question in a certain way, you’re not qualified, and you’re not getting any further. And then, and then our time is protected. And we do the same thing for our clients. But we have to think it through.

Chris Davis 16:45
Yeah, I will say this everyone. Forms are not something that you just put up on your website in and let people fill out, you put some thought into those questions. Kronda, look at any of her forms, look at any of my forms, in fact, look at any certified partners forms, we are intentional with every piece of data we collect. There is not a form. I don’t know if I have a contact form. Khurana I got

Kronda Adair 17:12
rid of my contact form at least five years ago, at least. And I and then when I have a client who has one I’m like, let’s just pause and think about do you really need this? Like who will who’s going to fill this out? Because for me, it was really just like, developers in India, asking if I needed help. That’s what it came down to. And I’m like, what I don’t, that’s not what I need to attract.

Chris Davis 17:35
Yeah. So it may seem like we’re talking about something that’s just again, so simple. But sitting down and strategizing around the type of information you would like to collect is going to make the onboarding of prospects to leads that much more efficiently. And speaking of strategy, I want to ask you this, or give you the opportunity to answer this Kronda I’ve witnessed, I’ve witnessed your language change, as you get bigger results and start getting bigger and bigger clients. And it seems to me from the outside, and I’ll let you confirm on air with with everybody listening, that you’re you leveraging more of a strategic mind and approach is Has that been a theme that you’ve seen as you continue to go up market and serve these bigger these bigger businesses, that there’s more of a draw or pull on on the strategic approach?

Kronda Adair 18:33
Yeah, definitely. I mean, strategy has always been important. But I think the bigger the bigger the client, the higher the stakes, the more important the strategy becomes. And I think I want to talk about like, what is encompassed in that word, because I know you talk about automation as being this catch, all right? And yet, there’s so many different facets of automation, like are you automating marketing or sales or onboarding, or admin or, you know, all these things? And I think the same thing can happen with strategy because I had some pushback from a client because I was talking to them about air table which you know, we we air table is our Bae right we, I realized like, that is now one of my qualifiers, like if you aren’t good with air table, then we can’t be friends because so much of automation. And in process is about data and managing data. And there’s just no where better to store and analyze and recall data than air table. Right? That’s why we use it for pot of gold. And so the pushback I got was, why are we talking about technology like it came off to that person has like, I think like shiny object syndrome, like oh, just want to play with the tools. And yet you and I know how important tool selection is to your overall strategy. So there is like, what’s your marketing strategy? There’s What’s your business strategy. But there’s also strategy involved with the hiring of the technology to execute your processes. And that is, like a large part of the strategy that we bring to the table is, okay, you’re telling me you want to do this, this and this, I know that, you know, six months or a year from now, you’re going to want this data, right? So I’m thinking about that now. Or I know that if you put your data here, it’s going to be you know, it’s going to save your team this many hours, versus trying to, you know, manage some poorly constructed Google Sheet. Like I’m thinking about all that ahead of time. And that’s why I’m bringing that stuff up.

Chris Davis 20:43
Yeah, and I’ll say this. Sometimes, as you go up market, and companies start having results. And perhaps they’re more firm in their identity, who they are, who they want to be perceived as in the marketplace, they begin to get a bit prescriptive, right? They come on these calls already with the full prescription in the bottle of medicine and just saying, Hey, tell me how to take this medicine. And you’re like, Oh, we rewind a bit. Hold on. First off, throw that garbage out of here, respectfully, but this I’m the expert. Let me diagnose you

Kronda Adair 21:26
true. It’s so true. And this is one of the things that’s been the hardest to navigate is, simultaneously people are like, Oh, you’re the expert. You know, we’re so glad you’re here, tell us what to do. And then at the same time, like fighting you about, like, different technologies or different things, and it’s like, well, which is it? Yeah, you know, like, do you need our help? Or do you want to be right? No, and no shade to you for not knowing some of the things that’s literally why we’re here. So, you know, it’s, it’s interesting to try to navigate and I feel like, oh, man, I need a psychology degree. And, uh, like, it’s, you know, because humans are going to human and everybody has their their foibles. But, yeah, that’s definitely been one of the interesting things to navigate. And I think, you know, one of the things that has served me well is you talked about, like, the faithfulness of like, showing up to office hours every day for three years. It’s like, I’m not just going on, like my experience and my own knowledge, I also have had the benefit of your mentorship and the experiences of everybody in the community, so that when I run into these shenanigans, and these people were like, well, we know how to do it. I’m like, No, that’s like, I feel extremely solid and saying, like, this is my lane. Right? And this is what you hired me for. So that, like you can take the recommendation are not right. But I’m going to tell you, this is this is what we think based on all of our years of experience and all the study and and so it, I think it’s just another thing to filter on, right? As we look for the people who are going to be best to work with it’s like, you know, be solid in your expertise, and then be humble in your non expertise.

Chris Davis 23:24
Oh, that is so good. And, and I love the fact that you bring up you’re not doing this alone. So So So listen, everybody, when when you listen to Khurana speaker, or any of my my certified partners just know they’re never in a vacuum. This is this is never a echo chamber. We come together, weekly in in between the weeks we’re chatting, we’re sharing resources, new tools, I’m testing out new things to make sure that everybody is up to speed, and sharp with everything latest technology and tool wise. Well, that’s intentional for you as the business owner, the recipient of the service, so that you can rest assure that much more that yes, you’ve you’ve hired Carville digital and a whole army that you don’t see, you know, to support and it’s so important. Kronda because Never has there been such a low barrier for entry matched with a desire to start to automate. So now that the desire has increased, and the barrier has lowered, that’s a combination for a whole lot of bad stuff to happen.

Kronda Adair 24:41
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s like web development of old right? I mean, how many clients did I have to save because they paid you know, in some cases $25,000 or more for websites that were incomplete or built on just you know, terrible ThemeForest template It’s, you know, unusable crap, basically. And that’s, that’s where we are now it’s a little bit wild west, because anybody can hang out their shingle.

Chris Davis 25:09
Yep, yep. And we’re trying to bring order, if there’s anything that I’ve been told, the word that’s the most consistent just across the board is order, bringing order to technology to your processes to your business is just a means that we do it is automation. But But tell us a little bit about because I want the business owner to self identify. And then I want you to help the service providers out there, tell me a little bit about the process of inheriting or prospecting a client that just spent a boatload with another company, or another agency got no results from it. And then you come with a planning strategy that you know, will work? And they’re like, well, we just paid this company like 30k, I don’t know if we can do it. How, how would you how have you? And how would you advise somebody kind of navigate those waters?

Kronda Adair 26:10
Well, I mean, you know, we put out all this content to try to get to people before that happens, right? But it doesn’t always work. And we’ve we have all none of us are immune from having, you know, invested that money in the thing we thought was gonna be the solution, and it doesn’t work out. And I think if there’s one consistent trade trait among mature, successful, and when I say successful, I’m talking about some of my mentors who, you know, have created nine figure, like several nine figure companies, it’s the speed at which they make decisions, and that they don’t get caught up in sunk cost. Like, that didn’t work, great lesson learned, take the lesson, right? You win, or you learn and apply it to the next thing. So if you have invested in something or somebody that didn’t work, welcome to The Club. You know, like, both sad to say, and relieved to say, you’re not special, we’ve all been there. And the decision point that you have arrived at is what are you going to do now? How are you going to take the learnings from that and make a better decision. And we’re here putting out this content to show you the depths that we go to in order to make sure that we are bringing like, the most skilled people and the best strategy and the best technology to help you achieve whatever your goal is. So you know, when somebody asked me once, I think, from a client perspective, like, you know, what should I bring to the sales call? Or how do I make a decision on the sales call, and I’m like, You should have kind of already decided before you get to a sales call, like I have 10 years of content. This is my fourth time on this podcast, I have guests podcasts, I have a YouTube channel, like you have enough information to go in stock, you know, and see, like, do I like what this person’s putting out? Do I like her philosophies? Like do I like the technology that she’s, you know, recommending in general? Do I like the way she thinks, like, you should really have enough information to be like, 90%? Sure, you know? And so, like, you just have to, you just have to take those lessons and do your due diligence, like, I’m never gonna save this to somebody who just spent that money and it went badly. Like, I’m never going to try to convince them to hire us, because that’s going to go badly. Right? You have to internally decide, did that didn’t work? Let me do the next thing and decide and do your research and feel good about that research? And make the decision?

Chris Davis 28:59
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s so spot on. And it is the idea that, Oh, we did that. So let me hold back. So I don’t get burned. Again, that’s just not business. And what you want to do is you want people like Rhonda that you can go consume a few podcasts, read some articles, buy a low ticket product, if you want to go buy pot of gold and say, Oh, wow, I really like how she’s organized. I see her mind or brain and how it works on my business, I can see the possibility of an increase right, by you have this is to your point ground of why we produce content, so that you can use that to help you it’s not just for us to be like oh, I’ve got a million views and this this and that is to really help you get to know more of the expertise and the person behind it. You said something You said the word special, and I can’t help but think about the people who come in again prescribed got their medicine in a bottle that says, hey, I need it to be specific to me. I, I My business is different. I don’t think I’ve heard you on a few podcasts. And I’ve read a few articles. And that’s really cool. Some of the automation you’ve done. But but my business is so unique that it it needs this. You’ve seen it? I’ve seen it. What say you? Because you hear it, you hear it more as you go up market, right? But the solution is the same. Were what? The floor is yours.

Kronda Adair 30:44
Man, oh, man, okay. So, I mean, I just I just went through this, right, because we have been moving up market and we had a, you know, probably our biggest automation project to date, which we did the fastest, we did it in half the time that we usually do it because the client was very organized. But we definitely ran into this mentality. And what I will say is, absolutely, you are special, and your business is unique. And that is amazing. But automate. Ethics. And the foundations are the foundations. Like I can swim kinda, and Michael Phelps can also swim. And it’s just the level to which the basics have been met. Yep. Right. But the basics are still the basics. And, you know, I think there’s this impression that like, large companies that are making a lot of money, like, oh, they have all their shit together, right. And I know, this is not true. Like, I’ve worked with those clients, my colleagues have worked with those clients, like you can get to a million dollars or more and still have chaos happening on your back end, they’ll have chaos happening in your marketing, like you can kind of flail your way to that level. And if that’s what you’ve done, then you still need the basics. And so, you know, I have had clients like push back, because the way that I work in my mentality is, if someone has asked me a question, three times five times 10 times, well, that means there’s a commonality there. And I’m gonna create some content around that. And this is how so one of the things we have for our clients is a resource vault, specifically for our CRM to sales clients. And it’s not a course it’s not like a you know, you need to go in and consume these modules. It is literally a resource. And so I will point people and say, Oh, here’s what you need to focus on right now. And here’s the resource, because yes, we can have a conversation, and I can explain to you what UTM ‘s are, but five minutes later, you’re gonna forget, because it’s not your job. And it’s fine. So I’ve got a video on, here’s what UTM is, are that you and your team can go back and reference anytime you wake up at one in the morning, and you’re like, oh, I need to I need to figure that out. Like you can go and do that. Right? And I’ve had that be perceived as like, Oh, don’t treat us like the rest of us. Like we’re, we’re special. And we need like a custom, you know, solution? And yes, the thinking and the strategy. And some of the things that we do are going to be customed to you. But a lot of things are going to be the exact same question that 10 Other people have asked me, and you can get that answer in three minutes by clicking the link to this video versus waiting for, you know, me to be done walking the puppy. The exact same answer, just with your name attached to it. Like that’s just an ego play. And it’s like, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. It’s like the information is there. And I’m happy to point you to it. And if there is something that is unique to you and custom you then we’re absolutely going to have that conversation and I’m absolutely going to answer that specific question. But I think people really, really overestimate like, how, how different they are, you know, let’s see, you know, see this in I was as you were like sort of setting this up. I was thinking about again, Robin, Robin Kennedy, you know, because they have a membership teaching people email marketing and so they have literally like hundreds and hundreds of people come through. Well, email marketing won’t work for this. I’m like, dude, guys selling cakes by subscription with email. Tell me why it won’t work for you. So I think you’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you have this mentality. idea that like, well, we’ve reached this level. And now these common things don’t apply to us. It’s like, well, yeah, they do. Because it’s its foundations. And once you have your foundations, then you can get creative and specific and, you know, start to optimize and tweak and things. But you got to have those foundations first.

Chris Davis 35:16
Yeah, you forsake not the foundations, everyone. And as you were talking, I had this vision of a car and a race car. And both can do the same thing, but one can get you there faster. However, however, we’re talking about speed and scale synonymously, I can’t get there faster. If I don’t know how to drive. Right, I have to have the basics of, okay, this is how a wheel turns this is how the accelerator works. This is how the brake works. Now, maybe I’ve driven a go kart or some other vehicle in had a lot of success. I would not take that experience, and say, okay, because you’ve made it this far down the road. Because you’ve made it to this amount of money, you have what it takes to double that to 3x. That’s the missing piece is everybody. We’re talking about doing it at scale. That’s a different conversation. Do you know what scale does scale test your foundation first? That’s the first thing it does. You say, All right, I’m ready to pour gasoline on this thing. Let’s go Let’s pedal to the battle baby. And imagine if you had a loose tire, right?

Chris Davis 36:37
And you floor it, you’re only going to get so far before that tire falls off, and your vehicle or business may not recover. So what we’re saying is, we don’t in any way want to dismiss that you’re not special, we don’t in any way want to make you believe that there’s not a specific level of care that your business needs that’s unique to you, what we’re saying is, you’ve got to, we have got to ensure that the foundation is in place first. So that when we start to put that special need in it, it can handle it, and it won’t fall apart. And it will actually accelerate you to your destination.

Kronda Adair 37:20
So your tire analogy reminded me of something else that I want to talk about, which is maintenance, because that’s part of what we offer as well. And, you know, you said as soon as you said loose tire and wheels falling off, like I literally drove around knowing that my actual literal car tire, I was like, oh, yeah, I need to replace that tire knee replacement tire. And guess what? All of a sudden, I’m driving down the road. And I’m like, Well, why is it so bumpy. And sure enough, that tires completely blown. So now I get to pull over to the side of the road, park my car call, you know, do all the things, right. And the other thing that I have seen is clients who come in and they’re like, Okay, we’re going to do this project. And we’re set the foundation. Thanks, bye. And that’s I mean, if that’s what you want to do, that’s what you want to do. But if you don’t have somebody on your team, who’s going to maintain your CRM, and you know that, you know, the level of documentation that we create and provide like it is, I would put it up against, you know, any other business that you’ve ever worked with in terms of the level and the types of documentation you want it, you want to see the data, you can see it in airtable, you want to see a visual, you can see it in whimsical, you want to see the high level, you can see that you want to you know, deep dive, you can double click and see that, like so much documentation so that if people want to, you know, go on on their own, at least you have a reference, you know what we did and why we did it, right. But what I’ve seen so many times is clients hire us, and we give them that foundation. And they don’t know how to maintain it, or they don’t have someone on their team who can maintain it. And so then their results just go down and down and down over time. Things get, you know, disorganized, you know, tags start to go in willy nilly segments are in you know, and, you know, when people buy a car, they already know, at least in the US, it’s like, okay, I need my insurance, and I need my you know, I need my DMV tags. And uh, you know, you already know the stuff and so please, if you’re engaging in this and you’re like, I’m going to scale with automation, I understand that there’s a certain level of maintenance that comes with that and be prepared for that.

Chris Davis 39:41
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say this, you also in that maintenance, you want to be connected with people who are continually evolving in their skill set. So just this week, I believe it was this week Kronda, all these weeks run together on office hours, but I believe you We’re presenting a new approach. You had a you are a speaker at an event. And I think there was a another gentleman speaking and they were talking about personalization and all. Hey, wait a minute, I believe this was Brennan done of right message. And then at Robin Kennedy’s event, yeah, inbox so, and Brennan made the statement of or he talked about how he uses custom fields. Right? So so watch this, everybody. Now Kronda has this learning, bring it back to the collective community, we start dissecting it breaking it down, identify, Okay, how can this be deployed. And guess what this is now part of the expertise of the same person that’s maintaining your CRM,

Chris Davis 40:49
right, like, I just can’t think of more security, and more insurance that you can get in marketing than someone who desires to maintain your CRM and desires to continue to learn and is actively in the market. It again, it’s a no brainer for me. And I just hope that when people are listening, they can see that, and I’ll say this as well. When you’re dealing, I, I play pickup basketball, I can go to the park, and I can have a good game Kronda there’s no trophies. I’m not bringing, I’m not on TV. Now, if somebody were there, let’s say a shooting coach from the Golden State Warriors, one of my favorite teams, and they say, Hey, I really like your form. And you can go to the next level. But we’ve got to fix some of your Shot Mechanics. The last thing I do is tell them no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute, look, I can make it from here, I can do this, I can do that. And they say, Okay, you got it. There you go state be a park King, you know, local park. Or I can submit and say, okay, this person, though, I know how to do a thing. They know how to do with thing at a much higher proficiency. Let me go and say good job for learning how to do it thus far. Now take me to the next level. So in closing, Khurana give us you know, one, one or two use cases want to be fine. Of the other side of that the client that actually said, Here I am, I hear you. Take have your way Kronda Karvel digital, take me where you could take me help people envision what that promised land looks like?

Kronda Adair 42:42
Yeah, so you know, we talked about the client, we saved them 70%. And that was just on one process. So now we’re on to, you know, looking at the next process that they want to optimize. You know, as soon as you were saying that, like I It actually took me all the way back to my very first in source client. So in source was the predecessor to this offer. And she was the very first and I have to say, to date, I don’t think anybody rivals, the trust that she had to where I could literally say, hey, go sign up for memorable, I want to do something cool for you. And she would no questions asked, just be like, okay, and go do it and hand me the login. And then like literally, you know, days later, like, I’d be like, oh, here, we can do this now, you know. Or she came to me. And remember, she came to me it was August that she was like, hey, my birthday is in a week. I wanted to and she had moved into product sales. So she’s like my birthday is in a week and I want to do a birthday sale. And I need onboarding, but I need it specific to these three different scenarios. And can we do it in a week? And we did it in three days? And we did because we had worked together for 18 months with her trusting me the whole way like, No, we’re not using Squarespace. We’re using WordPress note winner to do what you wanted to have a program. And of course, we got to use like just her trusting me every step of the way. And never questioning, which is not to say you can’t question I’m always happy to explain like why we do things. But you know, we’re at we’re also like, actual friends. So because of that trust and because of the foundation that we built, then when she came and said, Can we do this thing and in a crazy amount of time? I’m like, Yeah, sure we can do it. So it was like, make the products, you know, create the tags create the onboarding, specific to you know, oh, I remember what she wanted to. She wanted people to be able to buy it but she also wanted to be able to for people to gift the thing. So it’s like you got to have the onboarding for the people who buy it. You got to have the onboarding for the people who buy it as a gift And then you have to have the communication for the people who receive it as a gift and let them know how to get it. And we did all that in three days.

Chris Davis 45:07
Beautiful, beautiful it. You know, I say there’s no no better feeling when someone truly interests you. Because just know, everybody. It’s hard on us to like, as we speak, I was I was thinking while you’re talking, I’m in the middle of a project. And I’ve identified that the technology that we collectively agreed to, in the beginning, is not going to be the technology at the end. And the technology that’s going to be required, is going to unlock a whole nother level of marketing capabilities and revenue. Now, the trepidation comes from knowing that this is going to be a big implementation, right? So we know that we carry the weight, I promise you all we do. And we’re not just haplessly haphazardly, saying, hey, let’s do MailChimp. Oh, hey, let’s do Shopify. Hey, no, that is not the case. So you know, to the point of the example that you brought up, that client really trusted the direction. And because of that, they were able to get to the destination, because they trusted your direction. So I hope that you all that are listening, this was insightful, I wanted to make this kind of like allow you all to be a fly on the wall. And some of the conversations that take place, outside of the implementation of automation that are required to really up level and meet people at a higher need, with higher stakes on the line. So those of you who are scaling horizontally, and perhaps want to one day scale vertically, you now know what that’s going to take those of you who are actively scaling vertically, you’re like, Oh, I remember that. Yep, I remember the time. And then those of you on the business owner side, this helps prepare you for engaging with a company that really knows what they’re doing in a space of automation. What that will look like, there’s going to be tough decisions on both parts, there’s going to be some given some some get on both parts, but just just trust. And hold on Kronda. There’s somebody, maybe many people who have listened to this episode. And they’re like, Okay, I’m ready. I get it. I am not going to listen to another All systems go episode with her kronda, have this feeling in my gut, and not reach out to Corrado and start the conversation of what it would look like for me. For those people, what do you say where can they go to get in touch with you and take the next steps.

Kronda Adair 47:49
So for those specific people, that people who are listening to this are like, I’m finally ready. Y’all can go to CRM, number two sales.com. And that will just take you straight to the place where you can fill out the form the very intentional form that we talked about. Let me just check my and we can we can start having a conversation. And I’ve changed my as of right now because of the puppy. I’ve changed my process a little bit. So when you fill out the form, you’re gonna go to our video, ask and you’ll start the asynchronous conversation because the puppy does not give a hoot about my meeting schedule. So um, so that’s where you can go to get started. And for the rest of you who are like, this chick seems cool. I think I want to follow her. You can go to Carvel digital.com, get on our email list, get on our email list and experience the email marketing engine and experience the communication. And then you can also you know, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Instagram, I’m on threads now if you’re threading so Carville, Carvel digital, all the places really easy to find. Look forward to having some. And you know, I definitely have some people on my email list. Some really engaged people who are like, Oh, I found you from the last podcast. So I always like having those conversations and I respond to all all the email replies that I get from from our emails. Great.

Chris Davis 49:27
Great. Thank you so much for that. Kronda This is always good. Listen, everybody, I’m spoiled. I don’t I don’t get Karana once every three months, you know, I get her weekly along with a whole bunch of other community members. So if you want to join the club, you can do so as well. I just feel so honored to be a part of the growth karandi And and it’s just such a joy to see it. And I’m excited about the business says that will be impacted in a positive way they’ve been trying to figure this out for so long on their own help is here help has arrived. So thank you Kronda for sharing for being an open vessel just pour out all of your knowledge and and experience listeners thank you for your listenership. You know I’ve been saying this Kronda I don’t know if it’s a real word but it’s a word now. I like it listenership is a word. Thank you all for your for your consistent listenership. Every time I meet one of you in person, my heart is filled that much more you guys give me the fuel to keep going. So if we haven’t met, thank you for your for your support. If we have met, I can’t believe you won’t believe I’ll say how excited and happy I am, which is why I take a picture every time I see. So if you see me out in the wild, and you’re a listener, pull me to the side Chris, I’m a subscriber we will take a picture and maybe there’s some picture of gallery output on the website at some point. But listeners Thank you, everybody, continue to automate responsibly, my friends.

Chris Davis 51:11
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 podcast, 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 goodnesses. 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

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 sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis. And today on this episode, these are these are always fun for me because I get to bring back not just some body. This is an important somebody, many of you who have been listening to the podcast. First off, thank you for that. You’ve heard of her quite a few times. And she always comes on with big results. But not just like lofty stuff, but like detailing what it took to get to that stage. So this one will be no different. We have our own automation bridges own because she’s a Certified Partner, Kronda Adair and if you’d have not heard of her because you’re new to the podcast, and you’re like wait a minute, what did I miss? Let me do my official intro because what we’re going to talk about today, is that process through up leveling your your career as an automation service provider. What does it take to get bigger and bigger and bigger clients? What does that process look like? And, and all of it, and a lot of it takes outside of the skill set of automation. So it’d be a very interesting conversation today. Let me do my job. And Kronda is from from humble beginnings making $500 websites 10 years ago, to being obsessed with the marketing which has led her to a love of pairing technology and great marketing strategy. She’s the founder at Carville digital, where their mission is to help mission driven service based businesses use content to sell their services so they can scale without burning out in the process. Quick parenthetical shout out, Kronda has a pot of gold resource that every single person I know personally that has purchased it is just like, Oh my God, I wish I had this 10 years ago. This has been amazing. So that was just parenthetical. Let me get back to the intro. And she provides tools to help you organize your content and through their marketing intensive and VIP days, they 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 Khurana. It is my pleasure always to have you back on the podcast. Welcome. How are you doing?

Kronda Adair 3:08
I’m doing so well. And it’s always good to be back here. And I was thinking that, you know, when I got your invite, I just I hit him scheduled immediately. Because I gotta keep my you know, I gotta keep ahead of the others. Right. It’s my fourth time. Not that I’m competitive or anything. I’m very competitive. So yeah, it’s always good to be back.

Chris Davis 3:30
Yes. And I want to preface this everybody what you’re about to hear Khurana explain mindset stuff, all of that clients approach. Best best cases like things that worked really well. I have to say this what you don’t see is Khurana is one of the most most faithful people I know if there is a we run weekly office hours in the membership Academy. And we’ve been doing it who maybe three years now Kronda I’m thinking I can count on probably one hand how many Khurana has missed. And I’m pointing this out everybody it’s like I’m a big sports fan. And sometimes you see the all star make the game winning shot. But you don’t see the practice the long hours in the gym before people get there staying after people leave Kronda is doing those long hours. So everything that you hear always from her mouth. Trust it trust that because it’s not somebody who’s just flicking through the internet clicking on on links and going on social media posting pictures that look good and sound good so Khurana with that being said with that being said, I’ve I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you make quite a few shifts in your business. And the most recent one is the one that I was like, Oh my gosh, we have got to talk about this. Give people insight of course. I feel like there’s a lot of people aspiring to do Some of the things that you’ve done, right, like, Okay, I do want to make this automation thing and go bigger, I want to go up market, I want to get bigger clients. So start, start from where we left off last time in the last episode, those of you who don’t know, go listen to it. But we were talking about the new CRM to sales offer that’s really opened up the door to allow people to get more out of their CRM profitably. And from that, you’ve seen even more opportunity. So So let’s just start there. What Yeah, where do you give yourself permission to keep growing? Where does that come from? What Why are you not satisfied with just yesterday’s results?

Kronda Adair 5:42
Um, I mean, how boring would that be, like, I have, I have a friend that I’ve known since grade school. And you know, we still live in the same town, we run into each other every, like, four or five years. And every time I’m like, what’s new, she’s like, Oh, just work home, you know, and I would just like, I could not live, like I gotta be doing. So like, you know, last time I was on the podcast, we didn’t have a puppy. And now we have a puppy. It’s our second dog. So I’m learning how to work business around that. And but I was thinking about it on the dog walk this morning, you know, we’re nine months into this new offer CRM to sales. And it’s been a journey. And, you know, it started out of necessity, right, I was running a content bootcamp. And I was really like, I love coaching. And I love working with people in that way. And then our back end offer, which was done for you just really kind of dried up. And that was the bulk of our revenues. So I really had to go look at the market and say, What is going on, you know, pandemic recession, price of eggs, whatever. And what do people need right now. And so that’s really what it was born out of was really looking at, okay, let’s hone in on this one piece of automation, which is the piece that I really enjoy. And let’s look at what people are doing. And people just were not taking advantage specifically of Active Campaign, because that’s what we work with. And so that’s what this offer was born out of. And so as soon as I took that to, you know, my existing audience, they like, ate that up. And we, you know, we sold out q4, with that offer, and just piloting and getting our beta clients in which, right, which were a lot of our clients that had been past clients and come back, they were, it was like, they were waiting in the wings for us to figure out like, what, what the offer was. And so then, in delivering that to like, our first, you know, dozen or so clients, you know, I learned a lot like, I learned that even though it’s, quote, unquote, done for you, because we’re not providing the content. Like, we’re doing everything under the sun, except we don’t write your emails for you. But we gave them the templates for the emails, and they’re from, you know, Robin Kennedy over email marketing heroes. So like, really good, you know, psychology driven, like, battle tested, right. And still, people were having trouble. And so I realized, Oh, I still need to bring in an element of coaching into this for the people who need that, who, even with a template can’t figure out like, how do I make this sound like me? How do I make this? You know, how do I bring my stories and my experience to it, like, that is a skill. So like, Okay, let me let me bring back some of these, you know, support and coaching elements. And so like, later today, we’re having like an email writing retreat, I’m just going to be available online on Zoom. And people can come and use that as accountability. Come get your emails done, if you want me to review them, you know, and so we brought some of those things back. And, you know, I think when we started talking about just focusing on the CRM, right, because I’m not the only ASP, who’s been doing this, we’ve been talking about this. I feel like we started as a, let’s bring automation, like, down from the heights, you know, let’s bring information to the people. And I really envisioned it, I started out, you know, I gave the beta pricing is like, 500 a month after we go in and clean up the systems and stuff. And then, you know, just through delivering, you know, what I’ve realized is that, again, a lot of the people who can most benefit from this are the more established businesses who are doing multi six figures or a million a year or more, because, like I always say, if you automate crap, then you get automated crap. And a lot of, you know, either younger or less experienced or smaller, you know, solopreneur where they maybe just have their VA or their OBM don’t have the systems in place to really benefit the most from automation. And so I learned that lesson again. And so then I had to start saying like, Okay, I need to qualify clients differently. And make sure like, the people who are going to benefit the most are the people who have a process that is working. But that process is really manual. And so you want to take that process, and you want to make it more efficient. And so one of our clients came in, and this was a client in the education space. So there’s all kinds of shenanigans that go on there, there’s, there’s just everything is manual, everything is custom, and this and that. And so we looked at their process, and we mapped it all out. And we said, okay, we can take away, you know, this, and this, and this, and this and this, and just creating a form and a reminder, automation, for a process that they were doing to try to reengage their past clients eliminated 70% of the manual work that they were doing. So, you know, and this was really brought home, I had one client where it was one person who had two businesses. So it was like, you know, she had a business, her husband had a business. And so on the one side, you have like a well established business, you know, multimillion dollar business, really defined processes that we were able to take and say, Okay, here’s your sales process, let’s automate these parts of it and make these pardons, like way more efficient, you know, even the manual parts, it’s like, well, you can have a template email template that you just fill in the blanks. And then on the other side, you know, the other business, I realized, as we got into it, there was no process. And I was like, Why is this so hard, and then I realized, Oh, we’re building the, the, you know, landing ramp as the planes coming down. And that’s why, and it was, because it was same person to business. It was such a stark contrast, that took me a few weeks to be like, Oh, this is why this is so hard. So it’s just really been an eye opener and, and a learning journey.

Chris Davis 11:55
Yeah, I’m writing notes as you’re speaking. So I can be attentive, but also keep track. Two things that you said that that stood out to me is one is the decision and opportunity to go up market a bit, it was not birthed out of, hey, I want to make more money. It was literally your observation of the market where their needs are, and how to best fit them, I have to tell you all who are listening, at some point, you’ve got to get serious about your business growth. And what I mean by serious is, you’re going to have to invest in marketing in a way that you haven’t done previously. Because whatever you’ve done previously has gotten you here. And what Kronda and even myself have have experienced is that you’ll be in your own way, we’ll be ready to help make more more of your profitable processes efficient, we’ll get down and maybe retool some of the foundational stuff, right? Most people are not using their CRM systems or software anywhere near to the level that they should be to make a profit. So when you see that your your heart goes out to them, because you know, like Khurana, you know the other end of a profitable CRM software. So it’s like, I want you to have this thing. So that’s the first thing that stood out is that this is not some cash grab, like, let me get as much money as possible, just go up and charge my prices more, right. And then and then the second one. And this is maybe something that I hit home with, with a lot of people and maybe the second you said it, they’re like, oh, my gosh, nugget, I’m done with the podcast, I got what I need. You talked about going into the education industry, and creating a form that replays like 70% of the work. What people have to understand is that one, we’re talking about automating your processes, and making things more efficient. We’re not talking at times, it’s not like we’re coming in with this big ol backpack of automation tools to deploy all of them. We’re smart enough to identify the areas and the amount of automation needed to really increase that output without with keeping the input constant. So when you do something like create a form, that seems so rudimentary, that seems so basic, so Oh, a form, anybody should do that. No, strategically, understanding the process, knowing what the form needs to bring in and put out and make sure that data gets there. There’s more to it, you know, so yeah,

Kronda Adair 14:37
I would love to elaborate on that too. Because, you know, we’ve looked at so there’s the form we created for that client, which which, you know, just gave them so much benefit. And yeah, it’s not just, oh, let’s create a form for that. It’s, what questions are we asking? It’s what data like what’s the structure of the data that needs to go into it? Where does the data need to end up ventually in order to take action on it in the best way, like, there’s all that stuff that goes into the form, and and then the process on the back end, because you know, in this case, it’s like, yeah, we’re going to send them the form, some people are not going to fill it out. So then we’re going to put that reminder automation on the back end, that as soon as they fill it out there, it’s going to take them out of that sequence and stop reminding them, right. And then we’ve seen the other side where someone slaps a form together. And we, you know, we talked about this in an office hours, we’re looking at it, and we’re like, well, like, why are you asking this question? And why is it structured this way, and, you know, if you made this, you know, drop down instead of a, an open text field, like you would be able to analyze the data. So like, you know, so we’ve seen the opposite to where somebody just slapped some questions together, not even thinking about, especially when you’re talking about, you know, application, right, I just got a new application from somebody to work with us today. And it’s like, people don’t want to spend time on sales calls, talking to people who aren’t qualified, but then they don’t do the thinking to say, well, what is what are the questions? What are the things I need to know that tell me if someone’s qualified or not? Like, that’s what needs to go into your form. And so it’s not just, Oh, we’re going to show up? And we’re going to like push buttons in jot form, like, No, we’re going to talk about what questions are you asking? What’s the structure of the data? Where does the data need to go? And, you know, like, you and I have both created forms that segment people automatically it’s like, if you answer this question and this question in a certain way, you’re not qualified, and you’re not getting any further. And then, and then our time is protected. And we do the same thing for our clients. But we have to think it through.

Chris Davis 16:45
Yeah, I will say this everyone. Forms are not something that you just put up on your website in and let people fill out, you put some thought into those questions. Kronda, look at any of her forms, look at any of my forms, in fact, look at any certified partners forms, we are intentional with every piece of data we collect. There is not a form. I don’t know if I have a contact form. Khurana I got

Kronda Adair 17:12
rid of my contact form at least five years ago, at least. And I and then when I have a client who has one I’m like, let’s just pause and think about do you really need this? Like who will who’s going to fill this out? Because for me, it was really just like, developers in India, asking if I needed help. That’s what it came down to. And I’m like, what I don’t, that’s not what I need to attract.

Chris Davis 17:35
Yeah. So it may seem like we’re talking about something that’s just again, so simple. But sitting down and strategizing around the type of information you would like to collect is going to make the onboarding of prospects to leads that much more efficiently. And speaking of strategy, I want to ask you this, or give you the opportunity to answer this Kronda I’ve witnessed, I’ve witnessed your language change, as you get bigger results and start getting bigger and bigger clients. And it seems to me from the outside, and I’ll let you confirm on air with with everybody listening, that you’re you leveraging more of a strategic mind and approach is Has that been a theme that you’ve seen as you continue to go up market and serve these bigger these bigger businesses, that there’s more of a draw or pull on on the strategic approach?

Kronda Adair 18:33
Yeah, definitely. I mean, strategy has always been important. But I think the bigger the bigger the client, the higher the stakes, the more important the strategy becomes. And I think I want to talk about like, what is encompassed in that word, because I know you talk about automation as being this catch, all right? And yet, there’s so many different facets of automation, like are you automating marketing or sales or onboarding, or admin or, you know, all these things? And I think the same thing can happen with strategy because I had some pushback from a client because I was talking to them about air table which you know, we we air table is our Bae right we, I realized like, that is now one of my qualifiers, like if you aren’t good with air table, then we can’t be friends because so much of automation. And in process is about data and managing data. And there’s just no where better to store and analyze and recall data than air table. Right? That’s why we use it for pot of gold. And so the pushback I got was, why are we talking about technology like it came off to that person has like, I think like shiny object syndrome, like oh, just want to play with the tools. And yet you and I know how important tool selection is to your overall strategy. So there is like, what’s your marketing strategy? There’s What’s your business strategy. But there’s also strategy involved with the hiring of the technology to execute your processes. And that is, like a large part of the strategy that we bring to the table is, okay, you’re telling me you want to do this, this and this, I know that, you know, six months or a year from now, you’re going to want this data, right? So I’m thinking about that now. Or I know that if you put your data here, it’s going to be you know, it’s going to save your team this many hours, versus trying to, you know, manage some poorly constructed Google Sheet. Like I’m thinking about all that ahead of time. And that’s why I’m bringing that stuff up.

Chris Davis 20:43
Yeah, and I’ll say this. Sometimes, as you go up market, and companies start having results. And perhaps they’re more firm in their identity, who they are, who they want to be perceived as in the marketplace, they begin to get a bit prescriptive, right? They come on these calls already with the full prescription in the bottle of medicine and just saying, Hey, tell me how to take this medicine. And you’re like, Oh, we rewind a bit. Hold on. First off, throw that garbage out of here, respectfully, but this I’m the expert. Let me diagnose you

Kronda Adair 21:26
true. It’s so true. And this is one of the things that’s been the hardest to navigate is, simultaneously people are like, Oh, you’re the expert. You know, we’re so glad you’re here, tell us what to do. And then at the same time, like fighting you about, like, different technologies or different things, and it’s like, well, which is it? Yeah, you know, like, do you need our help? Or do you want to be right? No, and no shade to you for not knowing some of the things that’s literally why we’re here. So, you know, it’s, it’s interesting to try to navigate and I feel like, oh, man, I need a psychology degree. And, uh, like, it’s, you know, because humans are going to human and everybody has their their foibles. But, yeah, that’s definitely been one of the interesting things to navigate. And I think, you know, one of the things that has served me well is you talked about, like, the faithfulness of like, showing up to office hours every day for three years. It’s like, I’m not just going on, like my experience and my own knowledge, I also have had the benefit of your mentorship and the experiences of everybody in the community, so that when I run into these shenanigans, and these people were like, well, we know how to do it. I’m like, No, that’s like, I feel extremely solid and saying, like, this is my lane. Right? And this is what you hired me for. So that, like you can take the recommendation are not right. But I’m going to tell you, this is this is what we think based on all of our years of experience and all the study and and so it, I think it’s just another thing to filter on, right? As we look for the people who are going to be best to work with it’s like, you know, be solid in your expertise, and then be humble in your non expertise.

Chris Davis 23:24
Oh, that is so good. And, and I love the fact that you bring up you’re not doing this alone. So So So listen, everybody, when when you listen to Khurana speaker, or any of my my certified partners just know they’re never in a vacuum. This is this is never a echo chamber. We come together, weekly in in between the weeks we’re chatting, we’re sharing resources, new tools, I’m testing out new things to make sure that everybody is up to speed, and sharp with everything latest technology and tool wise. Well, that’s intentional for you as the business owner, the recipient of the service, so that you can rest assure that much more that yes, you’ve you’ve hired Carville digital and a whole army that you don’t see, you know, to support and it’s so important. Kronda because Never has there been such a low barrier for entry matched with a desire to start to automate. So now that the desire has increased, and the barrier has lowered, that’s a combination for a whole lot of bad stuff to happen.

Kronda Adair 24:41
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s like web development of old right? I mean, how many clients did I have to save because they paid you know, in some cases $25,000 or more for websites that were incomplete or built on just you know, terrible ThemeForest template It’s, you know, unusable crap, basically. And that’s, that’s where we are now it’s a little bit wild west, because anybody can hang out their shingle.

Chris Davis 25:09
Yep, yep. And we’re trying to bring order, if there’s anything that I’ve been told, the word that’s the most consistent just across the board is order, bringing order to technology to your processes to your business is just a means that we do it is automation. But But tell us a little bit about because I want the business owner to self identify. And then I want you to help the service providers out there, tell me a little bit about the process of inheriting or prospecting a client that just spent a boatload with another company, or another agency got no results from it. And then you come with a planning strategy that you know, will work? And they’re like, well, we just paid this company like 30k, I don’t know if we can do it. How, how would you how have you? And how would you advise somebody kind of navigate those waters?

Kronda Adair 26:10
Well, I mean, you know, we put out all this content to try to get to people before that happens, right? But it doesn’t always work. And we’ve we have all none of us are immune from having, you know, invested that money in the thing we thought was gonna be the solution, and it doesn’t work out. And I think if there’s one consistent trade trait among mature, successful, and when I say successful, I’m talking about some of my mentors who, you know, have created nine figure, like several nine figure companies, it’s the speed at which they make decisions, and that they don’t get caught up in sunk cost. Like, that didn’t work, great lesson learned, take the lesson, right? You win, or you learn and apply it to the next thing. So if you have invested in something or somebody that didn’t work, welcome to The Club. You know, like, both sad to say, and relieved to say, you’re not special, we’ve all been there. And the decision point that you have arrived at is what are you going to do now? How are you going to take the learnings from that and make a better decision. And we’re here putting out this content to show you the depths that we go to in order to make sure that we are bringing like, the most skilled people and the best strategy and the best technology to help you achieve whatever your goal is. So you know, when somebody asked me once, I think, from a client perspective, like, you know, what should I bring to the sales call? Or how do I make a decision on the sales call, and I’m like, You should have kind of already decided before you get to a sales call, like I have 10 years of content. This is my fourth time on this podcast, I have guests podcasts, I have a YouTube channel, like you have enough information to go in stock, you know, and see, like, do I like what this person’s putting out? Do I like her philosophies? Like do I like the technology that she’s, you know, recommending in general? Do I like the way she thinks, like, you should really have enough information to be like, 90%? Sure, you know? And so, like, you just have to, you just have to take those lessons and do your due diligence, like, I’m never gonna save this to somebody who just spent that money and it went badly. Like, I’m never going to try to convince them to hire us, because that’s going to go badly. Right? You have to internally decide, did that didn’t work? Let me do the next thing and decide and do your research and feel good about that research? And make the decision?

Chris Davis 28:59
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s so spot on. And it is the idea that, Oh, we did that. So let me hold back. So I don’t get burned. Again, that’s just not business. And what you want to do is you want people like Rhonda that you can go consume a few podcasts, read some articles, buy a low ticket product, if you want to go buy pot of gold and say, Oh, wow, I really like how she’s organized. I see her mind or brain and how it works on my business, I can see the possibility of an increase right, by you have this is to your point ground of why we produce content, so that you can use that to help you it’s not just for us to be like oh, I’ve got a million views and this this and that is to really help you get to know more of the expertise and the person behind it. You said something You said the word special, and I can’t help but think about the people who come in again prescribed got their medicine in a bottle that says, hey, I need it to be specific to me. I, I My business is different. I don’t think I’ve heard you on a few podcasts. And I’ve read a few articles. And that’s really cool. Some of the automation you’ve done. But but my business is so unique that it it needs this. You’ve seen it? I’ve seen it. What say you? Because you hear it, you hear it more as you go up market, right? But the solution is the same. Were what? The floor is yours.

Kronda Adair 30:44
Man, oh, man, okay. So, I mean, I just I just went through this, right, because we have been moving up market and we had a, you know, probably our biggest automation project to date, which we did the fastest, we did it in half the time that we usually do it because the client was very organized. But we definitely ran into this mentality. And what I will say is, absolutely, you are special, and your business is unique. And that is amazing. But automate. Ethics. And the foundations are the foundations. Like I can swim kinda, and Michael Phelps can also swim. And it’s just the level to which the basics have been met. Yep. Right. But the basics are still the basics. And, you know, I think there’s this impression that like, large companies that are making a lot of money, like, oh, they have all their shit together, right. And I know, this is not true. Like, I’ve worked with those clients, my colleagues have worked with those clients, like you can get to a million dollars or more and still have chaos happening on your back end, they’ll have chaos happening in your marketing, like you can kind of flail your way to that level. And if that’s what you’ve done, then you still need the basics. And so, you know, I have had clients like push back, because the way that I work in my mentality is, if someone has asked me a question, three times five times 10 times, well, that means there’s a commonality there. And I’m gonna create some content around that. And this is how so one of the things we have for our clients is a resource vault, specifically for our CRM to sales clients. And it’s not a course it’s not like a you know, you need to go in and consume these modules. It is literally a resource. And so I will point people and say, Oh, here’s what you need to focus on right now. And here’s the resource, because yes, we can have a conversation, and I can explain to you what UTM ‘s are, but five minutes later, you’re gonna forget, because it’s not your job. And it’s fine. So I’ve got a video on, here’s what UTM is, are that you and your team can go back and reference anytime you wake up at one in the morning, and you’re like, oh, I need to I need to figure that out. Like you can go and do that. Right? And I’ve had that be perceived as like, Oh, don’t treat us like the rest of us. Like we’re, we’re special. And we need like a custom, you know, solution? And yes, the thinking and the strategy. And some of the things that we do are going to be customed to you. But a lot of things are going to be the exact same question that 10 Other people have asked me, and you can get that answer in three minutes by clicking the link to this video versus waiting for, you know, me to be done walking the puppy. The exact same answer, just with your name attached to it. Like that’s just an ego play. And it’s like, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. It’s like the information is there. And I’m happy to point you to it. And if there is something that is unique to you and custom you then we’re absolutely going to have that conversation and I’m absolutely going to answer that specific question. But I think people really, really overestimate like, how, how different they are, you know, let’s see, you know, see this in I was as you were like sort of setting this up. I was thinking about again, Robin, Robin Kennedy, you know, because they have a membership teaching people email marketing and so they have literally like hundreds and hundreds of people come through. Well, email marketing won’t work for this. I’m like, dude, guys selling cakes by subscription with email. Tell me why it won’t work for you. So I think you’re just shooting yourself in the foot if you have this mentality. idea that like, well, we’ve reached this level. And now these common things don’t apply to us. It’s like, well, yeah, they do. Because it’s its foundations. And once you have your foundations, then you can get creative and specific and, you know, start to optimize and tweak and things. But you got to have those foundations first.

Chris Davis 35:16
Yeah, you forsake not the foundations, everyone. And as you were talking, I had this vision of a car and a race car. And both can do the same thing, but one can get you there faster. However, however, we’re talking about speed and scale synonymously, I can’t get there faster. If I don’t know how to drive. Right, I have to have the basics of, okay, this is how a wheel turns this is how the accelerator works. This is how the brake works. Now, maybe I’ve driven a go kart or some other vehicle in had a lot of success. I would not take that experience, and say, okay, because you’ve made it this far down the road. Because you’ve made it to this amount of money, you have what it takes to double that to 3x. That’s the missing piece is everybody. We’re talking about doing it at scale. That’s a different conversation. Do you know what scale does scale test your foundation first? That’s the first thing it does. You say, All right, I’m ready to pour gasoline on this thing. Let’s go Let’s pedal to the battle baby. And imagine if you had a loose tire, right?

Chris Davis 36:37
And you floor it, you’re only going to get so far before that tire falls off, and your vehicle or business may not recover. So what we’re saying is, we don’t in any way want to dismiss that you’re not special, we don’t in any way want to make you believe that there’s not a specific level of care that your business needs that’s unique to you, what we’re saying is, you’ve got to, we have got to ensure that the foundation is in place first. So that when we start to put that special need in it, it can handle it, and it won’t fall apart. And it will actually accelerate you to your destination.

Kronda Adair 37:20
So your tire analogy reminded me of something else that I want to talk about, which is maintenance, because that’s part of what we offer as well. And, you know, you said as soon as you said loose tire and wheels falling off, like I literally drove around knowing that my actual literal car tire, I was like, oh, yeah, I need to replace that tire knee replacement tire. And guess what? All of a sudden, I’m driving down the road. And I’m like, Well, why is it so bumpy. And sure enough, that tires completely blown. So now I get to pull over to the side of the road, park my car call, you know, do all the things, right. And the other thing that I have seen is clients who come in and they’re like, Okay, we’re going to do this project. And we’re set the foundation. Thanks, bye. And that’s I mean, if that’s what you want to do, that’s what you want to do. But if you don’t have somebody on your team, who’s going to maintain your CRM, and you know that, you know, the level of documentation that we create and provide like it is, I would put it up against, you know, any other business that you’ve ever worked with in terms of the level and the types of documentation you want it, you want to see the data, you can see it in airtable, you want to see a visual, you can see it in whimsical, you want to see the high level, you can see that you want to you know, deep dive, you can double click and see that, like so much documentation so that if people want to, you know, go on on their own, at least you have a reference, you know what we did and why we did it, right. But what I’ve seen so many times is clients hire us, and we give them that foundation. And they don’t know how to maintain it, or they don’t have someone on their team who can maintain it. And so then their results just go down and down and down over time. Things get, you know, disorganized, you know, tags start to go in willy nilly segments are in you know, and, you know, when people buy a car, they already know, at least in the US, it’s like, okay, I need my insurance, and I need my you know, I need my DMV tags. And uh, you know, you already know the stuff and so please, if you’re engaging in this and you’re like, I’m going to scale with automation, I understand that there’s a certain level of maintenance that comes with that and be prepared for that.

Chris Davis 39:41
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say this, you also in that maintenance, you want to be connected with people who are continually evolving in their skill set. So just this week, I believe it was this week Kronda, all these weeks run together on office hours, but I believe you We’re presenting a new approach. You had a you are a speaker at an event. And I think there was a another gentleman speaking and they were talking about personalization and all. Hey, wait a minute, I believe this was Brennan done of right message. And then at Robin Kennedy’s event, yeah, inbox so, and Brennan made the statement of or he talked about how he uses custom fields. Right? So so watch this, everybody. Now Kronda has this learning, bring it back to the collective community, we start dissecting it breaking it down, identify, Okay, how can this be deployed. And guess what this is now part of the expertise of the same person that’s maintaining your CRM,

Chris Davis 40:49
right, like, I just can’t think of more security, and more insurance that you can get in marketing than someone who desires to maintain your CRM and desires to continue to learn and is actively in the market. It again, it’s a no brainer for me. And I just hope that when people are listening, they can see that, and I’ll say this as well. When you’re dealing, I, I play pickup basketball, I can go to the park, and I can have a good game Kronda there’s no trophies. I’m not bringing, I’m not on TV. Now, if somebody were there, let’s say a shooting coach from the Golden State Warriors, one of my favorite teams, and they say, Hey, I really like your form. And you can go to the next level. But we’ve got to fix some of your Shot Mechanics. The last thing I do is tell them no, no, no, no, no, wait a minute, look, I can make it from here, I can do this, I can do that. And they say, Okay, you got it. There you go state be a park King, you know, local park. Or I can submit and say, okay, this person, though, I know how to do a thing. They know how to do with thing at a much higher proficiency. Let me go and say good job for learning how to do it thus far. Now take me to the next level. So in closing, Khurana give us you know, one, one or two use cases want to be fine. Of the other side of that the client that actually said, Here I am, I hear you. Take have your way Kronda Karvel digital, take me where you could take me help people envision what that promised land looks like?

Kronda Adair 42:42
Yeah, so you know, we talked about the client, we saved them 70%. And that was just on one process. So now we’re on to, you know, looking at the next process that they want to optimize. You know, as soon as you were saying that, like I It actually took me all the way back to my very first in source client. So in source was the predecessor to this offer. And she was the very first and I have to say, to date, I don’t think anybody rivals, the trust that she had to where I could literally say, hey, go sign up for memorable, I want to do something cool for you. And she would no questions asked, just be like, okay, and go do it and hand me the login. And then like literally, you know, days later, like, I’d be like, oh, here, we can do this now, you know. Or she came to me. And remember, she came to me it was August that she was like, hey, my birthday is in a week. I wanted to and she had moved into product sales. So she’s like my birthday is in a week and I want to do a birthday sale. And I need onboarding, but I need it specific to these three different scenarios. And can we do it in a week? And we did it in three days? And we did because we had worked together for 18 months with her trusting me the whole way like, No, we’re not using Squarespace. We’re using WordPress note winner to do what you wanted to have a program. And of course, we got to use like just her trusting me every step of the way. And never questioning, which is not to say you can’t question I’m always happy to explain like why we do things. But you know, we’re at we’re also like, actual friends. So because of that trust and because of the foundation that we built, then when she came and said, Can we do this thing and in a crazy amount of time? I’m like, Yeah, sure we can do it. So it was like, make the products, you know, create the tags create the onboarding, specific to you know, oh, I remember what she wanted to. She wanted people to be able to buy it but she also wanted to be able to for people to gift the thing. So it’s like you got to have the onboarding for the people who buy it. You got to have the onboarding for the people who buy it as a gift And then you have to have the communication for the people who receive it as a gift and let them know how to get it. And we did all that in three days.

Chris Davis 45:07
Beautiful, beautiful it. You know, I say there’s no no better feeling when someone truly interests you. Because just know, everybody. It’s hard on us to like, as we speak, I was I was thinking while you’re talking, I’m in the middle of a project. And I’ve identified that the technology that we collectively agreed to, in the beginning, is not going to be the technology at the end. And the technology that’s going to be required, is going to unlock a whole nother level of marketing capabilities and revenue. Now, the trepidation comes from knowing that this is going to be a big implementation, right? So we know that we carry the weight, I promise you all we do. And we’re not just haplessly haphazardly, saying, hey, let’s do MailChimp. Oh, hey, let’s do Shopify. Hey, no, that is not the case. So you know, to the point of the example that you brought up, that client really trusted the direction. And because of that, they were able to get to the destination, because they trusted your direction. So I hope that you all that are listening, this was insightful, I wanted to make this kind of like allow you all to be a fly on the wall. And some of the conversations that take place, outside of the implementation of automation that are required to really up level and meet people at a higher need, with higher stakes on the line. So those of you who are scaling horizontally, and perhaps want to one day scale vertically, you now know what that’s going to take those of you who are actively scaling vertically, you’re like, Oh, I remember that. Yep, I remember the time. And then those of you on the business owner side, this helps prepare you for engaging with a company that really knows what they’re doing in a space of automation. What that will look like, there’s going to be tough decisions on both parts, there’s going to be some given some some get on both parts, but just just trust. And hold on Kronda. There’s somebody, maybe many people who have listened to this episode. And they’re like, Okay, I’m ready. I get it. I am not going to listen to another All systems go episode with her kronda, have this feeling in my gut, and not reach out to Corrado and start the conversation of what it would look like for me. For those people, what do you say where can they go to get in touch with you and take the next steps.

Kronda Adair 47:49
So for those specific people, that people who are listening to this are like, I’m finally ready. Y’all can go to CRM, number two sales.com. And that will just take you straight to the place where you can fill out the form the very intentional form that we talked about. Let me just check my and we can we can start having a conversation. And I’ve changed my as of right now because of the puppy. I’ve changed my process a little bit. So when you fill out the form, you’re gonna go to our video, ask and you’ll start the asynchronous conversation because the puppy does not give a hoot about my meeting schedule. So um, so that’s where you can go to get started. And for the rest of you who are like, this chick seems cool. I think I want to follow her. You can go to Carvel digital.com, get on our email list, get on our email list and experience the email marketing engine and experience the communication. And then you can also you know, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Instagram, I’m on threads now if you’re threading so Carville, Carvel digital, all the places really easy to find. Look forward to having some. And you know, I definitely have some people on my email list. Some really engaged people who are like, Oh, I found you from the last podcast. So I always like having those conversations and I respond to all all the email replies that I get from from our emails. Great.

Chris Davis 49:27
Great. Thank you so much for that. Kronda This is always good. Listen, everybody, I’m spoiled. I don’t I don’t get Karana once every three months, you know, I get her weekly along with a whole bunch of other community members. So if you want to join the club, you can do so as well. I just feel so honored to be a part of the growth karandi And and it’s just such a joy to see it. And I’m excited about the business says that will be impacted in a positive way they’ve been trying to figure this out for so long on their own help is here help has arrived. So thank you Kronda for sharing for being an open vessel just pour out all of your knowledge and and experience listeners thank you for your listenership. You know I’ve been saying this Kronda I don’t know if it’s a real word but it’s a word now. I like it listenership is a word. Thank you all for your for your consistent listenership. Every time I meet one of you in person, my heart is filled that much more you guys give me the fuel to keep going. So if we haven’t met, thank you for your for your support. If we have met, I can’t believe you won’t believe I’ll say how excited and happy I am, which is why I take a picture every time I see. So if you see me out in the wild, and you’re a listener, pull me to the side Chris, I’m a subscriber we will take a picture and maybe there’s some picture of gallery output on the website at some point. But listeners Thank you, everybody, continue to automate responsibly, my friends.

Chris Davis 51:11
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 podcast, 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 goodnesses. 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