Are You Prepared?

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 0:31
Welcome to another episode of The all systems go podcast with your host, Chris L. Davis. In this episode, I want to ask a question and you see where I’m going if you just follow me? Are you prepared? Are you prepared? Are you ready? And I know that that’s a very subjective question. And objective depending on what type of Thinker you are, you’re like, Well, I’m ready for what it could be in anything. But I’m speaking of a specific thing. And early, early November, around 2020. This was early November 2020. I was feeling cold sweats, just feeling terribly trying to try to work through it. And the client that I was working with at the time was like, Hey, Chris, can you you look like you’re struggling the best? Yeah, I am. I am. It’s just not one of my best days. I’m a little under the weather. And he said, What, what’s going on? I just told him that mannequins smell anything. I got these cold sweats. And, you know, I can’t I can’t really taste much. And he said, Oh, I said, What? He said, Have you got checked out for COVID. And as you all know, this was right around COVID. And I had not been paying attention to the news because I was one of those who was okay staying at home. Stay at home masked up, hey, look, no problem. So I wasn’t it wasn’t even on my radar. But I had gone to a speaking event prior to that, and hadn’t even connected the dots that I was out. And sure enough head COVID. Down brain fog, I couldn’t even send an email. Most people talk about all these other symptoms that they get in their body and everything else. The brain fog was debilitating. I couldn’t spell I would lose track of my thought and mid thought, and I think I still have some remnant of it to this day. Disaster disaster struck right. Prior to that. Death in the Family rocks, everybody hits my wife the hardest, and just sins. resonating, reverb are reverberating waves throughout the entire family changed the way that we looked at life, changed the way we looked at each other change what we valued immediately. But more importantly, it changed what we focused on. You just wake up. And you just think that today is going to be like yesterday, people will be here that today that were here yesterday, and you’re feeling good, and you just assume a lot. And then when life happens, you realize just how much your mind and emotion and just physical state needs to be in tech for you to operate. What happens when disaster strikes? What about just getting sick? You had an important call. You had a proposal to send you sick? What can you do? Right? What about depression, and just wanting to stay in the bed today? I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to people today. We’re all human. We’re all human. And we all go through the motions. And we’re also all susceptible to danger and disaster. And the question for this podcast is are you ready? And maybe you’re thinking, what is the what’s the connection here? I can follow you. I can follow you man on a lot of these broadcasts. But what does disaster in automation have anything to do with one another? Well, follow me keep following me. There have been many times and I get used to it, I have to slow down. And that’s the reason why I’m recording this, that disaster has has showed it’s uncomfortable hand to me personally, or those around me. And to be able to take immediately take time out and be able to either log off or fly to or be there, whether it’s a phone call, or whatever in some capacity and not have to worry about business is a luxury that I have been afforded more often than not because of how I have my business structured and set up. And I’m telling you, I haven’t always had a team. But I still had it structured and systematize and set up in a way where I could respond To the disaster, with without worrying, okay, and I know where he is a choice, we pick our fears and what we want to worry about and everything else. But what does happen when when disaster strikes, what happens when the thing that you fear the most is right there in front of your face? I don’t want to get morbid. I want to be real. want you all to understand that? If it didn’t just happen, it’s about to happen. If it just finished happening happening is something else is coming. That’s just life. What do they say you’re either coming out going into or preparing for storm? These are the three phases of life you’re always in. Right? So of course, the the life coach would say, and the importance is enjoying and finding joy, where you’re at, no matter the phase, right? Not against that. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m just speaking factually. And this was let me just share really quick my journey, I went to a, a seminar. This was back when I was in a corporate world working, I didn’t know about, you know, the seminars where they tell you to go to the back of the room and sign up. I’ve never been to one never seen it. So yes, I signed up for practically everything. I mean, they you just name it, I was I need that. Right, I’m struggling it at my job anyway, I don’t like the corporate job that I have. I’m just looking for a way a way out. They had a product never work again. As somebody who never wanted to work again, I ran to the back of the room. I mean, I was part of the crowd get home with like, $30,000 with the programs. And I’m looking at my wife, like, what did I just do? How are we going to pay for this? Thankfully, I read the fine print and you know, had to cancel all of it really. But the emotionality of it really guy had never been in an environment like that. But anyways, that that’s actually besides the point, the point that I’m trying to make is that’s the first time where I saw somebody share a story of them being hospitalized because something happened in their life and them not being able to work. And thankfully, they had systems in place that, you know, money kept coming in, and never forgot that. But because it was lumped in with this emotionality and spinning, I kind of put it off as soon as that real they probably were just saying that to get my money, right. But then fast forward, I’m working in the startup space and going out to lunch, one of the founders says, Hey, are all of you guys going together was you know, my whole team that I had marketing I was in. I ran marketing ops. Funny story is my marketing apps now is starting to research. And the young marketers are like, Oh, what’s this new thing is like, oh, it’s what it’s always been, again, besides the point marketing apps, this is way back in 20 2015. Maybe. So anyways, take my team out. To lunch founder says, Hey, where are y’all going? What are you all going together? We’re like, Yeah, why are we not? Can we not? Do we violate a policy. He’s like, hey, just don’t get hit by a bus. But seriously, I’m thinking to myself, that was crazy. That was the weirdest thing that I’ve ever heard somebody say. And sure enough, it really took me to own my business to realize that that was real. If if we were to let’s just say play around too much in a bus came a hit his whole marketing team, gone. Just like that. Just just gone. Right? And it didn’t start to hit me until I own my business. And the first thing I said is, man, I have a lot in my head. What would happen if I just fell a hit my head and forgot, my whole business is gone. Again, not trying to be morbid. I’m just trying to be real with you all for just for a minute, just follow me. If I slipped in fail, I live in the Midwest, every state that I’ve ever lived in has snow and rain, and sometimes both at the same time. If I slipped and failed, just walking to my mailbox and hit my head the wrong way. My business is in jeopardy. That’s a level of sensitivity that I was not comfortable with. And I didn’t start thinking about it until I was the business owner. Right? And this is true for most of you. You’re too You’re too comfortable with knowing having stuff in your head. And some of you marketers are too comfortable building without documentation. Your brain your thoughts have they have to be captured on paper. It’s just like math class, show your work. Show your work. Don’t just give me the answer and say hey, got it built out. No. Show your work. How do we get there? So if some Miles comes along, they can get there too. Right? So, so what happens if something happens to you, or them. And lastly, this was made more real. This is really this this reason why I’m recording this is because I’m so thankful right now.

Chris 10:23
My my assistant, my marketing assistant, slacks me and says, Oh, I was just in a terrible accident. And I couldn’t really read by the tone and the slack and just how bad it was. So she sent me a video, and my mouth drops. I’m like, Oh, my God, the whole front end of the car, gone. literally gone. I was I was in shock. As I’m preparing for like a webinar. I see this and everything comes to a halt comes to a halt. Two reasons. One, first and foremost, because she is a human being that I do care about. You, you don’t just hire people and bring them on board for them to do a job. And then you you’re just on with your life. And when they’re not doing their job. You let them go. No, she’s grown with me over the years. She’s she’s been there in times where Oh, shoot, I forgot this. She’s in a different timezone. So it was late for me but early for her, she’ll jump on when it’s early for me, it’s late for her, she’ll get on, fix something. Right? Like we’ve, we’ve been on the battlefield together. And perhaps I’m talking about a different level of leadership, a different style of leadership, but I’m a very engaged and interpersonal leader. I like to know the people who are working with me, not for me, are working with me. Okay, technically, yes, it could be for me, but I’m just saying we’re working together collectively to solve this problem. So anyways, that happens. First thing is, are you okay? How are you typing right now? Second is, what if you weren’t? What if she wasn’t? What if she wasn’t? Okay, so now, all of these things of the past, come come back. What happens when disaster strikes? Are you prepared? And thankfully, I will say, I was confident in my level of preparation, still nervous, still scared, and still and still hoping for the best. So in my head, I’ve got all of these things going on. I said, Okay, let me even if she doesn’t ask for time off, let me be prepared to give it to her. And don’t worry, still still pay what I was paying, right? Just just get better, be better. Right? And let me also lower my expectation of output for a little bit, just in case it was worse than even she assessed. Right? I’m mindful of all of the outcomes, and I’m just trying to be prepared. And then I went through what if she wakes up the next day, and doesn’t remember anything? doesn’t remember how to do it. I gave you an example. She literally hit her hit her head. Right? What if she doesn’t remember anything? What is my path to getting someone else up to speed? And thankfully, I have one. Thankfully, I had one, that’s a great sigh of relief. And many of you do not, you do not have a means of getting somebody up to speed in your business. And now I’ll piggyback off the previous episode, when I was talking about that manual marketer. Now that manual marketer hit their head, they knew everything was doing everything. But they can no longer do because they can’t remember, you’re back to square one. SOPs are not enough. I’m telling you, S O Ps are not enough. I am pro SOP, by the way, I’ve got tons of them. They’re valuable, they are not enough. If you have an SOP of a very complex process, it’s still going to take the new person a large amount of time to execute that effectively. Now, if that process is coupled with automation, and what type of automation am I talking about, for those of you that listen to the previous episode, facilitation, automation for the means of facilitation, it’s a lot easier, right? Because they don’t have to do everything. There’s certain checkpoints. There’s certain points in the process where they have to say, Okay, at this point, then log in here and look, if everything looks good, click this button. Right Now, I can bring a competent person up to speed x times faster because of the disaster that forced it. And we often talk about making more money and winning your time back one minute, hour, day week at a time. But what about the mortality of a marketer? What about that? What about if life just happens? No disaster, I just wake up and simply am not as good as I was yesterday anymore. What if I, I wake up, your marketer wakes up. And the thing that was driving them to perform so great for you, no longer drives them? They no longer care. What I’m saying is, we’re all susceptible to human desire, and worldly disaster. It’s all good when desire is high, and disaster is low. But what about when desire is low? And disasters? High? Do you ever think about that is is it just me? In my overthinking over engineering my life? Am I over preparing? I understand you can’t prepare for everything, but that what you can, you should. I know, you can’t prepare for it all. But whatever you can, you should. And we need to be thinking about if something happens to us, or the people pivotal to operating our business. And this is how we need to start approaching business, you will then see, all marketers are not the same. Because all marketers don’t care. Most marketers, they just want to get something up and running and get some cash coming in focus on conversion rates, which is good, that’s good. But better, is that along with a system ran by technology, that takes care of a great amount of facilitation to ease the load of human input reduces the errors just as a byproduct of reducing the load of human input, or reducing the requirement of human input. And it makes every human look better. My assistant will tell you, she is one of the she is one of the main recipients of facilitation done via automation. So all kinds of click up tasks, Slack channel updates, notifications that she receives along the way. So when she’s out traveling the world, you she can easily check something off from our phone, or she doesn’t have to fire up a Google doc to look through and figure out the entire process. No and look, if somebody else is in her place. Right? They would then benefit from such a system and be able to come up to speed that much faster. And I’ll admit, I’ve overlooked the value of this stuff I really have. Until I realized wait a minute I can I can bring somebody in the business and get them up to speed fairly quickly. And in doing so, am I able to identify? Are you necessarily a good fit? Do you stack up to what I need? I there is no three months, six months wait period? Because you can get up to speed so quick. I know within 30 days or so. Now, I may give you an extra grace of 60 Just in case I’m overlooking something and or 90 Just to be sure to that I’m sure. But no. It is not an insurmountable Oh, it’s gonna take a whole year. Oh, you talking specifically to you small businesses. You can build in a way today. There’s enough no code, low code, some code applications out there where you can energize and really streamline with technology, practically any process. It’s not widely talked about though, when’s the last time you know of a marketer that enrolled in a course that taught them how to automatically extract data from your CRM software to prove via reporting in a way that your CRM software can’t do it, and is interactive. So if you’re looking month over month and you see a spike, you can click that month, and it shows you every contact, every transaction, whatever you’re looking at, that encompassed for that that hump.

Chris 20:20
Show me, I know a couple of programs that teach that. And, and what they teach is just that, in that specific tool, they don’t cover the the marketing context, they don’t tie it together with other software and integrate it. And if they do, it’s not in a way that is scalable. Right. So this type of stuff, can only be known by those who do it. And it can only be taught by those who value it. So now, most people don’t know it. And a lot of people don’t value it. So here I am shouting from the mountaintop, to all of you to say, come this way, there’s a better way now, we can do it a new way. We don’t have to do it the way that you have been doing it or the way that you’re comfortable. I know good people are hard to find. And when you find them, you just want to hold on to them. Don’t go anywhere. Just stay in my business forever. Don’t you move. I get it. Trust me, I do. I’m not judging anybody. But I’m challenging everybody. I’m challenging you to really understand that your business could be one instance away from not existing. Last thing I will say on this note, my wife and I found a great dermatologist back in my home state of Minnesota. And I mean, this is years of of us trying to find a skin solutions for her my daughter, and he was just amazing. He knew from day one knew what to do. And it worked just like that. When he passes, you know, condolences to his family, he passes. And guess what? The entire business gone. Somebody bought it, but it is not the it’s, it’s it’s terrible. I’ll say that because I didn’t say the name of it is horrible. I, I’m disgusted at the company that bought it. And I’m saddened that there was no way to take that knowledge that he had, and pass it down to a friend, family member, somebody that could have kept the legacy going, kept the product line, still have the expertise, right? You don’t have to be him if he would have documented everything, hey, if it looks like this, do this, hey, when we see this, here’s this product, here’s where I get it, just, you know. And I’m talking about that. But from a marketing process standpoint, I brought that up just to highlight the fact that we don’t know our day. And if everything is tied to you, and something happens to you. That means goodbye to it all. And it just shouldn’t be the case. If you value your business and you know that there’s value that you’re you’re putting into the marketplace, do your due diligence, have your SOPs, have your documentation, but also have your automation in the form of facilitation. This is not this I’m not asking. I’m mandating and requiring it of you. So for those of you who have more recently at the time of listening to this experience some disaster in your business with your maybe your team, your family or even yourself. I’m so thankful you’re still here to hear this. My assistant I’m not gonna name drop she knows who she is. I’m so glad that you are still here to hear this. Then I’m glad you’re still here to help me. Until next time, I see you all online. Automate responsibly, my friends. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value and goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your market. Think 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