Achieving a Nomad Lifestyle with Automation feat. Jovana Vujnic

ASG 064 – Achieving a Nomad Lifestyle with Automation feat. Jovana

Chris L. Davis: [00:00:00] 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 sales systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of Automation Bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris L. Davis: [00:00:31] Welcome to the All Systems Go podcast, I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder and chief automation officer of Automation Bridge, an online publication for small business marketing automation, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers for your small business and enterprise. IT. In this episode, I’m welcoming Jovana Vujnic, the founder of Bumper Leads, a marketing automation agency that helps businesses simplify and automate their sales and marketing systems to save them time and money. She is on a mission to help business owners fall in love with their business again. And what’s equally as important and special for me is that Jovana was one of the first mentees of mine. She enrolled in my mentorship program in its incipient stages, and she details what life was before the program, during the program and afterwards. And there’s a few things I want you to pay a special attention to. Is the mind set that that she she had that forced her? Or I should say that elicited her initial outreach, as well as pay attention to the goal that she had set when she reached when she initially reached out to me, she’s like, if you could just help me do X, Y, Z.

Chris L. Davis: [00:02:01] And once you bookmark those two things towards the end, compare and contrast that to where she is now. And in the beauty of Jovana story, as you see the transformation, you see it right. Somebody who came in with this expectation and left with that expectation times five times 10. And one of the things here at automation bridge in everything that we do is our mission is to restore choice. We want you to have the ability to choose whether you want to work with that client or not, whether you want to work that day or not. And what Jovana was able to do with her choice was decide on whether she wanted to stay home and work or be a digital nomad and explore the world while working while working digitally. So after years of of working with clients on business growth and marketing, she has now developed her own unique six step system designed to achieve real growth for clients. And it’s called the bumper blueprint. I love the name of it, and it is her it’s her signature process. So she’s going to detail how she reached this point all in today’s podcast.

Chris L. Davis: [00:03:19] Today, because we have none other, so I won’t call her by her, her official name, I’ve given her a name and it is Jovanathe Great, OK, and she’s going to come in and give you the no holds honest truth pathway of her business and success, life before the mentorship program. Life during and life after. Because I want to I want to be real. I want to give you all a full comprehensive view of of what the transformation looks like. So that’s what we’re going to do for the next hour. I’m going to go ahead and add. Jovana, let me see here.

Chris L. Davis: [00:04:00] Jovana, welcome to the podcast, we’re going to start recording in a minute. All right. It looks like we’re good. Everything is streaming well, everything is on, so we’ll just get right into it. Jovana. Welcome to the live recording of the All Systems podcast. For those of you listening on the podcast audio, I’m recording this before a live studio audience is our automation building workshop that we run throughout the year. And they are in here locked and loaded listening and you get to listen as well. But we’re live. Jovana, how are you doing?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:04:40] I’m fantastic. I’m so glad to be here with you, Chris. And it’s a dream come true. And I have to say yes.

Chris L. Davis: [00:04:48] Yes, I you know, I remember I still remember our first call because this it was the first time that I launched my program. And you were actually the first one that scheduled a call and then after you was Mateus.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:05:04] And every morning that I do remember Chris, I do remember actually reaching out to you two months before you actually started anything. Yes. And I remember browsing through the campaign and I think you are one of the testimonials back then when they had this old website. And I’m like, oh, I need to check out automation bridge. And so I went in and I really enjoyed reading everything that you said. It was spot on. It was exactly the values that I shared. And I was thinking, well, will this person be interested in, you know, teaching me? And so I just took some courage. And that approach that I emailed, you called Outrage and you emailed me back, I would say, within 48 hours. And you said, that’s a very interesting idea. Let me explore that. I will come back to you.

Chris L. Davis: [00:06:03] Yes.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:06:05] And so I really go back to that time because it was a very special time for me that year, is I’ve left my corporate career so I can tell you a bit about me if you want to.

Chris L. Davis: [00:06:17] Yeah, yeah. Let’s let’s start there. And I want to put a bookmark in the courage that it took to reach out. We’re going to come back to that. We just put a little pause there. But, yeah, give everybody some some insight on your on your humble beginnings. Jovana, you know, did you grow up and you had the entrepreneurial spirit just embedded in you from a baby? Did you did you acquire it somewhere else? What was that journey like for you?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:06:44] I yeah. I mean, I as you can tell, I have an accent. I’m originally from Serbia. And so as a young kid, maybe about 10 years old, I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I didn’t know that that was entrepreneurial spirit. But I remember my first sale was I think we were on summer holidays and I was bored and I had some posters know used to collect.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:07:11] I had Vanilla Ice and sea.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:07:16] And I thought, you know, I’ve got all these posters, can I sell one and just buy myself ice cream because I really want ice cream. And we lived in a village area where it wasn’t really that, you know, there was no people. It just four or five houses. And you have to drive to get to another destination. But out of the blue, there’s a kid on the bike that comes. I’ve never seen him before. And he’s like, oh, my God, I love Vanilla Ice. How much? I’m like, oh, 75 cents. That’s how hard it is. And and he bought it. And that was my first sale. And since then, I’ve always been interested in business. I studied business. So I lived my family migrated to New Zealand in ninety five and I studied business. But I always thought it was hard to start a business. So I ended up actually working for big corporations and I worked for a lot of companies like Vodafone, I.T., Hewlett Packard. Maybe that was big back in the 90s before the company merger. And I worked in the procurement and supply chain area for 12 years. And procurement supply chain area is an interesting if any of your listeners have worked in the procurement supply chain area. But it’s all about mitigating risks, being efficient, saving money, cost savings, because that’s where our KPIs were. And so I saw that as really a natural fit for automation’s, thinking about using technology to help us, as you say, execute a marketing strategy. What does that mean? How do we do that? And technology does save a lot of our time if we know how to use it smartly.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:09:05] So what really attracted me to marketing automation is the fact that I was a natural fit, but I didn’t know what marketing automation was. I just you know, there was a gut feel about this industry. And and I think it was just I mean, it’s still emerging, isn’t it? It’s still evolving. It’s just getting started. Yeah. Yeah. And and so my idea for starting a book, a Bumper Leads, was actually born when I bought my first business. So that’s the other entrepreneurial spirit that I had. I was one of my jobs. I used to change jobs every year. I don’t know why. The longest job I’ve ever stayed in was four years and I was made redundant. And then I find another job and within three months I get made redundant. And it was always easy for me to find jobs. Procurements was very up and coming professional, but I really didn’t enjoy it. So I was really bored in a few of these jobs that I thought, what could I do? Well, I could buy a business. I don’t know how many people think about that, but I could buy a side hustle. And this is two thousand and fourteen thirteen. I don’t think a lot of people were back then thinking about having two businesses or two of revenue streams, if you will. So I bought a business that fit my supply chain experience, but I had no passion or desire for the product.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:10:34] It was a very much a commercial transaction. So we went it was myself and my sister actually that got in. But we found a business that was doing about a million dollars in turnover. It was a national business in Australia. And we found there are some tricks and hacks you can do when buying a business. But we ended up buying this business for nothing. It was maybe ten thousand dollars we spent. Wow. And they had no online presence. And so I said, OK, well, this is. What we can do to improve the business, so there was about forty thousand dollars worth of stock warehouses in different states in the parts of Australia where relief and I ended up flipping like renovating the business and flipping this business in 18 months. And I did some automation checks in there, but I didn’t think about that as a profession either. So I implemented some things where and where it hit me, really in terms of the power of automation is when I was able to my business was very much 80 percent wholesale and I had to hire some staff, sales staff to go and door bars and restaurants and sell. What I was selling was like alcohol, which I never drank. To tell you the truth, I’ve never tasted tequila in my whole life before I. Anyway, I had to hire these people. But then I learnt about this concept of using your website, having a lead magnet, collecting the leads.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:12:08] And I thought, OK, let’s do that. Within the first week, I think I had 50 organically come in. I had one person who is a famous famous sports person here in Australia. I didn’t even know he was. And he bought six bottles of this product that is unique to us at the time. And he loves this product so much. And he spent like three hundred bucks for me. Whoa. Somebody who doesn’t know me just spent three hundred dollars and I didn’t have to go. And what what else could I do with this. And and so I ended up running a little lunch. You send the three emails. I had some beer that I had to get rid of. So I was able to clear stock with just three or four emails and a very small database of people that was like, well, I need to know how I can amplify this. I need to know how I can do more with this. When I sold the business, a lot of the new buyer was just not interested in knowing these concepts and he didn’t really progress with the business. The business is still there, but it just hasn’t moved anywhere. And that’s something that I was like, oh, that’s frustrating. And so when I started Bumper Leads, which is the existing business with providing automation, it’s that frustration that I have that I want to help these businesses improve. And my vision was that I want to help them fall in love with their business.

Chris L. Davis: [00:13:33] Again, I love it. I love it. And, you know, as I’m listening to your story and you explain it, you see process all through it. You know, like you were very process oriented details. Right. Always looking at the details and then results focused, you know, like, OK, we’re doing this. There’s an opportunity here. How can we take this and get it there? You know, and what I see, Yovani, it’s amazing is that it’s raw talent, right? Raw skills. And because automation is not marketing automation or sales automation or anything like that, it wasn’t a thing growing up. You didn’t hear about it.

Chris L. Davis: [00:14:15] You tell people about it now and they still don’t really quite understand everything. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like you have this raw skill in this raw talent and have no idea how valuable it is. In the walk into a space, because I was the same way as an engineer, I had all these skills and I was like, where where else do these skills transfer? You know, like what other industries what other areas would would this be good in? And I couldn’t figure it out. And I stumbled upon this and I said, oh, my gosh, I’m like, natural. This is what I is what I was meant to do. And I see there’s people in the in this workshop that I’ve talked to, and I have to tell them that I know you don’t know, but you’re this is natural. This is like what you do and you don’t even realize it. Welcome welcome to your new career that you didn’t know that you would excel in beyond anything that you’ve ever done. So it’s always fascinating to hear that because all of our journeys are very similar. We just arrive at different times and at different levels. So to see you, you are over here, you know, buying businesses, working in procurement, switching jobs every year or so. I was over, you know, in America, working this corporate job, trying to figure out what what am I doing with my life.

Chris L. Davis: [00:15:37] And then you find automation, you find this this space. And then once you find it, you realize, oh, my gosh, this is it. And then you take all of the pain that that you experience in the frustration that you witnessed and say, you know what, let me not be selfish. I could learn this for myself and just go and be successful. But how can I help empower these other businesses, these other people to do the same? So great. Always good to hear it. Every time you you tell the story, I pick up something different. You can hear it. So let’s talk about, you know, you get to the point bumperlead’s is in existence and you know, you have a good idea of what you want to do, I believe. Yeah. Because when we met, you had you could talk about it. You could talk about the desire you knew marketing, automation. Was it now with that bookmark that we placed in talk about that process of seeing it and say, you know what, I’m just going to reach out, I’m going to reach out because I think I need to figure out how to do this thing better or whatever the case was. What what was that experience like?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:16:44] Yeah, I even during that first business that I had, I knew that I couldn’t really do it alone. So I always had this. You know, I’m a big believer in investing in your education. And and I’ve hired coaches. I think I’ve spent at the time over sixty thousand dollars. And you don’t know that. It’s just easily right. It’s easy. Yeah. And one investment that I made being a procurement supply chain professional, you don’t really have the marketing head on. So you’re really much a risk averse and you don’t take risks. For me, taking a risk was scary. It was just unimaginable. I had that. You know, you can’t I don’t have kids, but I can imagine people with families. It would be even more shocking. And I was like, what am I missing out? I could just take this risk. It’s easy for me. I can just do it. And so I launched into that business buying a business because I thought it was easier to buy customers rather than find customers for an idea, only because I did the assessment and maybe the cost benefit analysis. But essentially when I came across marketing automation is that when I looked at all the marketing and the top funnel funnels and website design CEO and paid advertising, the general look, general field of marketers out there, I didn’t fit right with all of these specific disciplines, but I saw that marketing, automation, coverts, you have to know all of these disciplines and then you had to know the process side and looking at the business as a product so that you can move that customer from every stage in that bucket of the product.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:18:36] Like you said, you know, how do you move the stranger and convert them into a customer? Well, that’s the processes that go behind that. And you can look at the processes. A bucket is a product. So I was I knew that instinctively. And then when I came across, I think I was reading one of one or two of your blog posts and I thought, this guy shares the same values as me. You know, he’s looking at the helicopter view, which is what I’m used to doing. I need to know how I can do the same here for Australia. And when I reached out to you, it was not too scary, but it was different because I’ve never had to cold outreach a mentor before. And I really, really wanted you to say yes. And you didn’t say yes. I was like, OK, you don’t have anything. So I’ll just wait. I’ll just wait. And I’m a big believer in the universe. There’s something. Is out there, you know, driving or, you know, kind of like a puppet moving the strings for us and I think it came at the right time. It was a perfect time.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:19:41] My husband came in, I think it was almost that week he came in and he said, I want to quit my job. I’m sick of it. You need to help with this pump or I’m going to help you. But you need to within six months, you and I need to do something. And and so on a Friday, you emailed me back and you said, OK, I’m ready. Let’s let’s book that cold and let’s have a chat. And so because I’m in Australia and I think you’re in Chicago, you’re still there in Chicago. I’m still here. Then I thought, OK, I’ve booked that time. But it’s you know, it was five a.m., I think my time and it was two p.m. Chicago or something after lunch, you know, I didn’t go and complain. I didn’t do any. I was like, no, this is really this is me lucky. I’m lucky to have this time. You know, once we had the conversation, I think you were just it was within twenty minutes I made the decision, I want to work with you and I think I’m trying to think back. We started maybe within two weeks or something. Yeah. Yeah, we started filming. We had five people that were interested at the time. It was just an idea. And then Mateus and I were a hundred percent in developing your idea and then it just grew from there.

Chris L. Davis: [00:21:05] And one of the things that I remember is, you know, from my side I went into this had this big grand vision. I’m going to show them everything. You know, this isn’t that in my mentor warned me on that approach. He said Chris scale back, said, don’t give them too much, don’t scare them away, have have your content planned out, but also keep your ear open to where they’re at and what they want. And that’s saved me. Jovana, you maybe I haven’t told you all this, but that saved me because I was ready to record the entire thing, put it in a platform and just give it, you know, and under my mentorship, the advice, my mentor is advice. He says, no, do this live, get understand where they’re at, the feel for it and then modifying it.

Chris L. Davis: [00:21:51] Just so as we had every call, it was right. You guys would ask him. I’m like, oh my goodness, I’m glad I didn’t I didn’t record this one because we really need to talk about this.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:22:02] You know, like I said, remember, you were always sharing some good gold nuggets from your business coach. I was like always comes up with the most clever things like, whoa.

Chris L. Davis: [00:22:17] Yeah. And you see it right, Jovana? You see the consistent thread that ties all successful people together throughout every industry is that willingness to be uncomfortable, invest in yourself to grow? Right. I think a lot of times people try to hold on to what they have so that they can keep this and get more. And it doesn’t work like that. You know, you’ve got to open up so that more can be put in your hands, keep it, and then just say, OK, just put it in this and let me keep this let me just figure out what to do with this.

Chris L. Davis: [00:22:55] You got to let it go. And part of that letting go is some of our mental stuff. So so talk about that. I remember we had a few calls where it wasn’t even about the technology or even the process, really. It was it was really like the mindset around even pricing. I remember us discussing pricing and at the time I think it was like a hundred bucks. You were you were charging for like a consultation and you were going all in with these consultations.

Chris L. Davis: [00:23:24] I was like, whoa, that’s like a force. You’re like, no, but they won’t pay.

Chris L. Davis: [00:23:29] So talk about some of the mental shifting that that took place for you as you navigate through the through the curriculum, because I’ve actually never worked in an agency environment or having to sell any services, you know, so I’m used to selling a product, a physical product. You know what the, you know, margin, you know what the costs are. You know how much you’re going to get. At the end of the day, everything’s calculated with the services. It’s all about value. And I am you know, my mindset issue was, well, who am I? Who am I to be selling marketing automation? You know, why should people buy from me? I am just nobody. That’s pretty much what I was thinking at the time. And I’ve never really I don’t call myself a software engineer, but I felt this. If you had to be a website designer, website developer, you had to have this. People against you so that you can call yourself a marketing automation expert, and I was so happy and glad we like really guided by you because you gave me so much confidence and it was almost on a weekly basis, we would meet and I would go to these business networking events and people would be so impressed with me. And then I would tell them and they said, how much how much will it be till I even had people call me and said, no one has done this for me because I used to review people’s websites and they would call me and said, oh, my God, you’re amazing.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:25:04] I really want to work with you. And I tell them the price. Oh, OK. So, OK, let’s do this. Let me think about it. Yep. Yep. So I thought, OK, I need to know what I’m doing here. So the price that product market fit that you talk about is Israel. You know, it’s real and that is a constant look, constant thing. You have to measure and think and learn and get feedback all the time. And, you know, I was you know, I just said, yes, I’m going to say yes to every single opportunity that came in, whether they’ll pay one hundred dollars for this project or they’ll pay ten thousand dollars for this project. I just said I need to learn how to do this. So I’m going to get some confidence callouses. I’m going to get calluses of confidence. So let me just do this project. And if I hate it, I’m going to learn from it. It’s going to be a positive anyway. There’s nothing negative in this whole process. And I did know I had some bad apples of its clients along the way. And you have all these I think you had coined the term client process.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:26:19] We have so many.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:26:24] So, yeah, if I called them callouses. Yes, I’ve got this callouses that built it with the confidence and and I remember you doing a lot of these videos, Facebook lives or we used to be on Facebook before you were on that mighty networks. Yep. Yep. And and I, I think I save some videos that go back and I listen to them and it’s all about confidence. It’s all about mindset. And you said one thing that really struck out was when I made my big sale. I remember you talking me through the we we had a sales script. Yeah. I went and I did my presentation like a proposal, came back, told you what else. This is what they said. And you said, no, no, stand firm. Tell them you’re happy to work. If you’re like my Cobra Kai, my sensei in this automation space. And then I basically closed them on the day and then I called you. I was so happy and you said, you wanna go go for a walk, go for don’t do anything today. You have to celebrate the success. And that was my first, I think, ten thousand dollar sale that I made and that was within two months of working with you. So I was like, whoa, this is going to pay my bills. You’re going to pay. Chris is going to pay my next learning my next lesson. And then you said in one of those things, he said, because of my mindset, who am I? Am I am I not? That I had this confidence of the selling my first project, my real secret project. You said it’s like coming out of the closet. You know, you need this. You’re now you have proof. You have proof that you are the expert. Somebody has validated that idea for you. And it gave me another confidence Keli’s that I can just earn. And along the way, I look at back. I look back now and I go, oh, wow. Ten thousand is just nothing like how can I get more?

Chris L. Davis: [00:28:33] Less, Jovana? I love it because I remember it vividly. And I’m glad you did what you do because a lot of times, especially us who are teche analytical and everything, we think that’s it. If we could just figure out the mechanics, the building of the system in the execution, and it’s so much more, sometimes we can do all of that and then we limit ourselves or we don’t believe it or we just don’t know what to say at the time. I can’t count how many times I’ve been in a room where I’m just like I have no idea how to close this deal, you know, like the money is on the table. And I’m like, I actually have never seen this amount of money at one time. And it’s so easy. Like, I just have to show up and do like three hours worth of training and you’re going to give me all of those tens of thousands. I remember that feeling and just wanting somebody to be like, OK, nope, stand. Just do this, just just do that.

Chris L. Davis: [00:29:33] So when I have the opportunity to give that give that back, it’s such a great thing. And then the flip side is, Yovani, you listen right? Like, that’s the it’s the perfect parity, right? I can speak and you cannot listen or you can be ready to listen. And I’m not saying anything.

Chris L. Davis: [00:29:50] And it was that perfect balance that you say something, somebody hears it trusts you, does it, and it produces results. And, you know, where else can you get that so hard to find. So when you have it, hold on to it and squeeze it out of it as possible.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:30:10] You have to. Yeah, once you have an idea, another mentor of mine said you have to go. Yeah, let’s go. Yeah. Get off your ass and do it. Go one, go, yes, but I also remember of being not non techie, I remember you guiding me through my very first integration with commerce and and selling this whole commerce thing that you said you’re ridiculous. You sold it for like five hundred dollars. You know, she’s getting like ten thousand dollars worth of value. I don’t care. I just want to know this is the first time I’m doing this. And and we were on a live zone call and you’re telling me, OK, you need to start, you know, start with a trigger and start with a tag. And it must have been so painful for him. But I was very quickly thinking on my feet, I knew exactly how to fix the problem. And you said, oh, my God, you want to you are one of the very even software engineers can figure things out that quickly to go and check that. That is the cause of that not working. If I was just so quickly thinking how I can solve this problem, how I can solve this problem, that’s all. That’s how I was focused on that. That’s it. Yeah.

Chris L. Davis: [00:31:28] And it’s a big piece. It’s a big piece to be affirmed in those areas because we can easily just gloss over that, like, OK, figure that out. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, no, no pause. Let me put some context around this. You realize there’s people who are paid professionals in these other industries that could not do what you just did. So, again, it’s it’s the the value of understanding the value of what you’re doing, because once you understand the value of it and that’s that’s the other part into even pricing and showing up confidently in the marketplace is it’s one thing to, you know, like want to sell something. Right, want to make money. But when you understand the value of what you’re doing, it’s so much easier to produce and present it at the level that it is, regardless if it’s perceived at that price. So nobody now nobody can come now.

Chris L. Davis: [00:32:27] Nobody can come to you and say, well, I looked at everything you’re doing that’s worth about five hundred dollars. And you’d be like, oh, OK.

Chris L. Davis: [00:32:34] You look at them like we’re crazy. You’re like, well, clearly you’re not from this planet. So go back to day from.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:32:42] Another thing is, you know, for me, I didn’t have that relationship with the results because I’ve never had the result of implementing a successful job and have seen the outcome. I didn’t have that confidence or value, like you said. I didn’t know what my value, what my worthless. But once I started, even with the small gigs lucky, I got lucky with some of the clients. And I produced some amazing results on people who have tried launching products themselves. They failed miserably and when we helped them, they were able to make twenty five thousand dollars on the first launch. And it all was very quickly and easy. And I’m like, this is not right. Why is it so easy for me to make money for other people like this? So once you get the formula going, you develop this signature process that you have for your own consultancy, your own what’s a service provider, a certified service provider? You become you can get your own signature system going. And that’s exactly what clients want to see. At the end of the day. They want to see that you have the IMF to show them how you’re going to take them from A to Z. That’s all they are know they don’t care. How are you going to do it if it’s just show them what you take me there?

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:11] Yes. Yes.

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:13] I like the other thing that I like about, you know, your your journey is that you were you were able to derive from my framework your own. And we saw it we saw it take place because you were like, OK, it’s almost like training wheels, right?

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:31] It’s like, all right, just hold on to the bike, show me how to do this thing. And then, you know, OK, you want to turn this way, then turn this whether you like. Actually, I think I could turn that way. And I’m like, OK, that’s not what I said, but hold on.

Chris L. Davis: [00:34:44] I think you got it, you know, and you start to grow your own wings and you started to identify the market and see things in the market and start to build based on the knowledge and everything, the confidence, the understanding of the value. And then you started to build that signature solution and it just took off from there. So I know one of the things when we first met for the program you were talking about, I think it was a ten thousand dollars a month was like one of the targets. Then once we once we accomplished that, it was to to be a digital nomad. You know, you want to go and work from anywhere, because that’s the beautiful thing when you have that relationship with results. It it helps your vision get bigger. And most people who have these small visions because what they aspire, they’ve never experienced. One day I want to make five thousand dollars and they don’t they don’t have that relationship with that.

Chris L. Davis: [00:35:37] And then when the five thousand says, OK, if this was nice, just you and me at five thousand, can we go get ten thousand, have a five and ten thousand dollar party and ok, ten thousand say here and you got a relationship with the five and 10 and they’re like can we go get 20, you know. And it’s, it’s that level of growing and just not being complacent.

Chris L. Davis: [00:35:56] So in that, in that journey, spoiler alert, you were able to to achieve that. But tell me this. When you look back at it, what was what was that lever? What was the if you could I know it’s all connected, but what would main lever that you were able to pull that helped you truly achieve that ability to say, OK, I’ve got a strong business, I’m going to travel the world now?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:36:22] After six months, I think, and I think we just finished this was a six month, wasn’t it? And Corey has pretty much my husband, Corey, who works in the business as well, is he had it with the with the corporate career that he had. And he said, I’m quitting tomorrow and we have to do something. He was he’s very different to me, as you know, like a risk averse I’ll question things or challenge things I’ll ask. I sometimes hesitate before I take action. I feel like I need more, more, more information about that decision. And we had many conversations around what we agree or disagree with something. What is Corey? He’s like he lives in the present. He’s like, we’re doing this is idea was let’s pack up our bags and let’s just travel. And I’m like, you’re crazy. How am I going to do this? My business is just picking up. But it was something I really needed to do. And it took a month for us to pretty much advertise our home. And as you know, I have a cat as well. And people I used to go to a real estate agents say, hey, I want to rent this house out, know fully furnished with a cat and then need to pay me and then know no one’s going to rent this out. And I’m not really. So I put an ad I use my marketing training from Chris, I put an ad out and within a week I find a perfect candidate for prime renter who lives in the area, wants to stay in the area, divorced and needs a place now.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:38:06] And he’s like, oh, there’s the cat. Come with the I need some company and he pays the top rent. So once once we got that, that was the trigger for us. For me, that was safety. That was like my risk of this uncertainty managed because this financial risk is now gone. We picked our banks, just the bare minimum essentials. We had two suitcases and we said, OK, which country shall we visit? And I thought of Chiang Mai, you know, being very close, maybe an eight hour flight from here. And it was also one of those digital nomad type of towns where you hear people in the podcasts talk about being in Thailand, working from Thailand. A lot of these go there in Chiang Mai. And I thought, what is this place? Let’s go and see it. It’s amazing. Amazing. We decided, let’s use Airbnb, we go on Airbnb, we book a month. And what I found is that when you book a month, you get extra discounts with Airbnb, you could get 50 percent off. And because we are traveling off season, you get more. And our budget was fifteen hundred dollars for accommodation per month. Fifteen hundred Australians. So what is that? Maybe thousand US dollars a month. We were able to achieve that until we came to the US.

Chris L. Davis: [00:39:22] Yeah, that’s a beast out here.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:39:25] Chicago. New York. No way. Yeah. Yeah. That was a first destination within a month and we love it. It was like you wake up smiling every day but you feel it’s normal. You practice joy in your life, it’s normal. And after going three months, our business was growing at the same time. And when we went to tell them Thailand, we went to Chiang Mai, we went to Vietnam, we went to Malaysia. We had to extend our stay in Malaysia because we were so busy with work. Our dining table was converted into office and we had a system in place that we bring our suitcases. The first thing we do is set up the table, set up the desk, and it was our routine, a ritual. Every country and every country. You have to go and learn another language. And I love this variety that we had a loved how it was every day was such a different day and you learn so much. And we met some amazing people like I posted on Facebook. I was in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. And someone that I used to work with from ten years ago is getting married and he doesn’t have anyone there. And I attended a Vietnamese wedding in cochairmen city. Look, wo would that be there if I said no to this opportunity? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then when he ended up being in Istanbul, in Turkey and people used to say, what are you going there? Is it safe? It was I have to say, the safest place would be all around the world.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:41:00] I think really, really, it’s a it’s a really special place. And we also extended our stay because we were busy. But going from Malaysia to Istanbul, Istanbul was the winter like it was zero degree. What is your temperatures in Fahrenheit? We went from being super hot in a T-shirt to having to wear. So then I had to learn, if you want to be a digital nomad, pick your seasons. You know, you’re wearing a t shirt every day. Make sure you go to these places. So it was it was winter, but that’s when I felt a bit burnt out by it all. And I felt, OK, when you feel a bit burnt out, maybe I need to get some coaching. And there was somebody that I met who was able to coach me through the volume of work, someone in Australia locally that could get help me with labor and subcontractors. So you kind of still need to network at the same time. You need to be hustling and thinking, even though the travel is this, it wasn’t it’s not as luxury as people tend to make it sound, but it is definitely a lot of work. But the weekends, you have fun. You have fun on the weekends. Yes. You still look at a cool like to from active campaign when you were working there, and that’s when they said, hey, we’re running this activates conference and you know, you’re one of the consultants here in Australia. We would love for you to come and present MC. Whoa. Where did this come from? Was Chris behind this?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:42:34] No, he wasn’t about it. Yep.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:42:39] And this opportunity, I’m like, yes, let’s do it. Where is it? Chicago in June. I didn’t budget for this, but yeah, I’m doing it. I’m looking to send it’s once in a lifetime opportunity. And so from Istanbul, we went to Greece, Romania, Serbia, Chicago, New York and New Zealand. And we also visited visited other European countries on our previous trip. So we just wanted to go to places we haven’t been before. But everywhere we went, the Internet was awesome. It was better than Australian Internet. Even America us. We had the best Internet in Asia, 100 megabits per second was like our normal speed. Makes a big difference when you have digital.

Chris L. Davis: [00:43:24] Yes. And I was looking I was actually I forgot about activate. I was trying to find a picture and I think I found one. This was this was good because I don’t know if it’ll show on camera, but this was over.

Chris L. Davis: [00:43:42] This is you. Right. They were slow to be able to share a stage with you. It was it was like full circle. Nobody had active campaign, knew that I had been mentoring you.

Chris L. Davis: [00:43:58] And at the same time, they’re like, this is one of our best, best consultants in Australia. And I never I was just tight lipped. I said, oh, what’s the name, your phone? I was like, OK, anyway, you know.

Chris L. Davis: [00:44:10] You know, so I really didn’t have anything in any hand in that. But to have you come in near the stage, it was like, wow, this is it was so amazing because again, I know the before and after and I know where you were, where you were at beforehand and how you’re thinking. And then now and one of the things when you talk about being a digital nomad, one of the the the mission statements for for Automation Bridge and I shared this in the workshop, is restoring choice, right. Giving people the choice. And that’s what you had once you had these systems in place. Revenue was starting to come in much more predictable than before.

Chris L. Davis: [00:44:54] You say, you know what, I do want to travel, you know, let’s go and set up it. And the beauty is, as you were traveling, the business was growing to the point where you had to get help. Yeah, these are the things that I want people to understand when it comes to systems is that they just keep going. They just keep going. And any time that it takes to learn how to do it and how to build it is time well invested because it pays you back on the back in. A lot of people think about the money, but if you put, let’s just say, fifteen hours into a system and it’s working one year, two years later, that system is going to pay you back hundreds of hours.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:45:39] And if I still use the same system when from day one with the first customer, I just change the product. But the system is the same right now. I’m looking to introduce more. But it’s not it’s not something that I also see other business owners make mistakes of offering too much, getting things complicated once you get almost like the technology. We work with SAS companies now and I’m doing some massive integration CRM custom CRM integrations. You wouldn’t think I’d be doing that day one. But even these guys who are technically savvy can overcomplicate simple things that you need in order to scale your business. So but the other thing I wanted to mention is that if you look back, I’m not sure that you still have my 12 month goals. You know, in the beginning, if you still asking your guys to students to fill in the 12 months. But one of those tall ones was my dream to go to Chicago and meet you within 12 months.

Chris L. Davis: [00:46:51] Yes. Yes.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:46:53] I didn’t even think about that, but I did it just, you know, the universe. You know, you put your ideas to the idea of fairies and the fairies make it happen to you. Good luck.

Chris L. Davis: [00:47:05] This was so amazing because I did remember that. And when you were here, I actually this was during the day and I left the office, I said there’s no way we met. And I think it was got us in the baker on Wabash. And I said, there’s no way that I’m going to miss this opportunity. Yovani is in Chicago. This has to happen. So to have this moment and have a picture with you, we locked it into eternity. And I think what’s more than anything about this picture, those of you listening to the podcast is the picture Yovani and I in a in a restaurant and in the great thing about this is just the journey. You know, it’s it wasn’t it was it was mutually enjoyable. And you start to build relationship personally and professionally to where this it gives purpose to you. Right. Like this was purposeful, purposeful for me to meet you, to to hug you, to hear your voice in real life, you know, like to get that real life experience. And I think is really was what’s missing today was everybody is so quick to throw solutions and try to monetize, you know, on people’s ignorance. Just that true. The true guidance. Right. Like this is this is mentorship. You want somebody who is invested in you, you know, your business, go out. All right, you want to have fun, but it’s like, no, you know, we’ve been in got you’ve been one of the main businesses that I’ve been able to refer business to, you know, come in and they’re like, hey, we’re trying to do this.

Chris L. Davis: [00:48:41] And I’m like, oh, I don’t do that. But I have somebody, you know, and I have that trust resource because I can trust you with the framework. I know that you’re not going to cut corners and skip steps and it just helps it just helps provide so much more value to the to the to the space. So so as we wrap up to tell me this, you all get to get caught up right along with me. Where is bumper leads at now? You’ve gone through so many transitions. You went through so many growth stages. Oh, one one. One quick story I want to share. I remember there was a time when and I’m sharing these things for you ought to get a comprehensive view of what what mentorship looks like, what the journey looks like. We had a one time I remember where the system was working, right, Yovani? The system was going in. And the one particular one that we put in place, it ended because these were higher tickets. It ended with a phone call with you. So you were on the phone call and you kept telling me, you know, we’re on this company. Like, I just I get nervous. I lock up. I you know, in the calls were going well. And I remember I didn’t know that you had a twin sister at the time.

Chris L. Davis: [00:49:52] And I’m like, oh, well, wait a minute, can she fit it feeling for the car? And it was like one of those things who could plan something like that? You know, we had twin sisters.

Chris L. Davis: [00:50:09] They wouldn’t know the difference in that way.

Chris L. Davis: [00:50:11] You don’t have the pressure of saying, no, she can do about that. That’s still for us. For you. So it’s a funny story to share with everyone is not all about finding solutions in technology. Sometimes it’s literally right in your house and it’s like, hey, wait a minute, that that woman looks just like you.

Chris L. Davis: [00:50:30] Who’s that?

Chris L. Davis: [00:50:30] You know?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:50:33] Got another girl we could have, yeah. Have you made Melinda my twin sister.

Chris L. Davis: [00:50:40] Yeah. So that’s our collective next goal is the both of you. That’s that’s a good one.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:50:46] We’ll put it to Australia. Yes.

Chris L. Davis: [00:50:49] Yes. I’ll gather up the courage. Everybody’s been telling me that the creatures won’t kill me. So I’m really starting to believe it and I will make my way out. But no, I agree. As we finish up, tell us what you’re up to now. Bumper leads, is it? I would I think it’s safe to say you’re one of the leading companies in Australia. We’re delivering the service of marketing automation. So what what does that look like for you now? What’s the team size look like? What what what do you what are you up to?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:51:18] Well, I. I’m a. Big believer in going slow and steady. I don’t have that desire that you have to scale straight away like a year. I still feel like I’m a student. I need to learn things. Technology, technology changes almost every month. Yes. And it’s always a new tool. Always. And something new to learn. And so my big thing now at Pilates is officially, I would say as a company, we were going for years. But before when I was working with you more, I would see myself more of a freelancer. Not so much of a CEO, if you will. Yeah. So now I have big responsibilities. We have six people. There’s six people working. We are in the middle of launching our own workshops in Australia and that was before covid. We were going to do some physical workshops. And we have this presence in Australia where other digital marketing agencies are coming to us and they want help. What is this? Marketing automation? But most of them would try it out and then they would just give up. So a lot of them a lot of the business is now coming from these agencies who don’t have the time to implement or the desire to do the implementation. And my big thing is to make marketing automation simple.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:52:48] And I want to think simple, like, how can we make things so simple? Usually the word marketing automation can just turn somebody into a pretzel because it’s so confusing and overwhelming. And if you are a business owner who is not that tech savvy and you meet somebody who just keeps tick, tick, tick, tick, it can be very scary for people. So my whole goal in bumper leads is to make that automation process very simple. So that’s what we specialize in, making automation simple. It can be in any business. We’ve worked with e-commerce companies, a lot of service type of businesses, coaches, consultants, and I find the same formula works in every business. Yeah, as we scale, I feel the staff, like the talent pool that is out there is definitely a challenge. It’s not very it’s not very abundant. Like, let’s say you find a WordPress developer or you’ll hire a WordPress developer that you think will know automation, but it’s a completely different skillset, completely different skill sets. So that’s another challenge. And I’m hoping that Chris will be able to help through the process of certification is to be able to help have a breed of these automation certified automation providers who are ready to take a project because the demand is out there.

Chris L. Davis: [00:54:18] Oh, my God, it’s so big. And I’m glad you said web developer, because, you know, these are some of the people that are closest to the gold, right? They have the technical chops. They often have a book of clients. And if they could just learn the automation side of it, they don’t understand how much they how much more they can do. You know, how much more they can get for a retainer, how much more they can charge. And not just Web developers, just anybody, digital marketing professionals in general.

Chris L. Davis: [00:54:45] Once you know what you need, you realise it’s not a lot of options out there. Right. Once you come into the knowledge that, OK, I am nobody’s I’m not sold on just the funnel anymore. I don’t want just a landing page on a sales page and trip wires, all of the jargon. I want a true customer experience. And then you go out in the market and you look for that. It is hard, is hard to find it so. And I am glad to say I would if any of you are in Australia, are beyond I know you’re not geographically based in your services. You serve the entire world. But any of you are looking for a while. I wonder who Chris would approve. Jovana, Hazmi, this, um, virtually putting a stamp here on the video. But yeah, this is a stamp of approval in. The biggest thing is you’re never too deep in water by yourself because you always have access to and access to the you say, look, we’re looking at this what’s what’s what’s happening out there. How are you guys solving this problem?

Jovana Vujnic: [00:55:47] So is it the secret weapon, Chris? Yeah, right.

Chris L. Davis: [00:55:52] And I just keep equipping you, all right? I give you everything. I don’t hold back and say, well, that’ll be another thousand dollars if you know so. Yes. Yes. OK, so last question. What is so initially we know we were at one hundred dollars an hour and if I could just make ten thousand dollars in a month, that was the initial goal. Right. And that seems so insurmountable at the time. Now, fast forward a couple a few years now. What is your revenue goals? What’s.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:56:20] Are they now given our revenue goals, so we have if you look at your active, recurring and passive so which is something that Chris is very much teaching you as part of the lessons, was to develop, you know, reduce the amount of time you’re spending in your active. So if I’m still wearing the strategy and sales hat, I’m still doing that type of active sales. But, you know, I have to say that the help of passive and recurring income recurring is coming through monthly support and testing is coming through software sales so far. And I want to grow that baby to be a bit more. But 30 percent is coming from these so far and 70 percent is still active. And the revenue is now, you know, my goals are that we hit seven hundred thousand. So it’s like just the number. Now, it’s not a scary number, but for me it’s how do we grow beyond that so that we can help as many business owners as possible? That’s that’s the vision.

Chris L. Davis: [00:57:35] Yes, I love it. I love the big numbers because remember, anybody I’m connected with a big number means big help. That’s in the government is not saying seven hundred thousand because I want to buy this big house on the hill in Australia and get away from everybody. And I won’t have to look at people know so much good will there.

Jovana Vujnic: [00:57:55] So, you know, I live in the same house. I still drive my Suzuki Swift little car. I look like a normal person. But I was I was just saying to my husband when we had breakfast the other day, how life feels peaceful. You have this inner peace. There is no stress or anxiety. When is the next paycheck going to come? And that’s something that, you know, that uncertainty that you’ve managed through having the structure of the passage that occurring, but also having your brand in the marketplace. That helps that helps the building a brand is it’s not just about making this buck today. You know, you want to be thinking about the long term and the branding is where you have the equity and people find you. We had the funny story is we had one of our really, really good clients. Most of our clients are now with us for three years. I would say very, very slow, very low number is leaving or not coming back or not renewing this. And so this one client particularly loves us. They’re going to do a video. We have a new website coming up. And and so we had the other Klein that loves us get a call from somebody who is looking for help in the CRM. And these people don’t know each other, but they all recommended Bumpe relates at the same time. And then another person I met at the conference, I think I was at untempered conference. They also got the call from the same person saying, who do you recommend, Jovana, from Bomblet? And that’s what the power of branding is. And you need to do more of that.

Chris L. Davis: [00:59:39] Yeah. Yeah. Great story. Ivanna, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. I know everybody has heard this multiple times, but just to make sure we’re clear if they want to find out more about you, bumper leads, look at your services, get some help.

Chris L. Davis: [00:59:56] Where should they go of their websites? You can go to bumperleads.com. And we are also all social media, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, I think Twitter. But we’re not really big on Twitter. I think it’s more in the US. The Twitter is big, but Instagram is definitely where we like to play.

Chris L. Davis: [01:00:20] Great, great. Well, all of the links to yourhandles in the website will be in the show notes everybody automationbridge.com/podcast given again. Thank you. Thank you for coming on to the podcast and just giving a honest, honest insight, insight into the journey.

Chris L. Davis: [01:00:41] You know, the the what’s required to start it, how to sustain it and then how to scale from it. So I am eternally grateful for you to me to invest in and thank you for coming on to the podcast and distilling your wisdom and knowledge to the to the audience.

Chris L. Davis: [01:01:00] Thanks for having me. I’m so grateful. So grateful. I can’t really describe that in words of working with you and having this access that I have with you. And I think anyone that’s considering that they’ll be mad if they don’t sign up. Honestly, it’s one of the best things I’ve done and I’ve invested now over. Hundred and fifty thousand dollars in mentorship and coaching, and I have to say, I’ve been with Chris for since day one and this is K is real deal. He is the best in the business. And I highly recommend and I’m so grateful to thank you so much for having me today.

Chris L. Davis: [01:01:38] Yes. Yes. Thank you, Your Honor. We’re connected. You’re in the community. We’ll catch up. In fact, stay on for a little bit so we can do the post show, catch up and say goodbye to the folks. But thanks for coming on, Jovana. All right, everybody, that was that cut her off a little bit. I’m sorry about hit the button too quick, but I will figure it out on the back end. Thank you all for attending, being a guest, live studio audience for this podcast. And again, we’re nearing the end of the workshop. So this weekend, this is our hour or a bunch of hours of power this weekend. OK, we need to get. I need you all to go into overdrive. If you haven’t completed your worksheets yet, please do. So this is for my review, but more so for you. Do the work as you Yvonne. Yvonne is a witness. This is a real person. You saw the picture. I didn’t make this up. She put in the work and got the output. And once you get the output, it’s just a matter of doing taking the right steps to scale it. So I want you all to do the right thing. Remember what I what I say to you all the time, the right thing.

Chris L. Davis: [01:02:48] If you do the right thing the right way, the only difference is the time. It’s a it’s a time factor for all of you. So the right thing, the right way in time will produce the right result.

Chris L. Davis: [01:03:01] And that’s what we’re looking for. So make sure. Make sure. Dr. Charlotte. You’re welcome. Saltman, good to see you, Adam. Thanks for jumping on, Dion. Always good. Make sure you guys go in the group right now. We posted the the feedback link. Please, please go there, provide the feedback. Let us know how we did. Of course, just by doing so, we’re going to enter you into a drawing and you get a free is I forget where it’s at a free gift. One of them is a wireless charger. The next one I will not tell you what it is, but we’re shipping that out to you at no charge. And I’m grateful for your participation. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. We will publish this hopefully this month, hopefully this month. And I look forward to seeing you guys on the call. Remember, you have until Monday, Monday to get on the calendar so you and I can talk about getting you on the same path that you just heard. Yovani has has started on, continues on and will continue on. So I look forward to meeting more of you, discussing the opportunities and exploring possibilities. So until next time, automate responsibly everyone. And I’ll see you in the network.

Chris L. Davis: [01:04:07] Thank you for listening to this episode of the All Systems Go podcast, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed recording it. And the thing about Yovani is she’s so sincere, right. That that was one of the things that really comes out is how sincere she is. And I love her heart, you know, her heart in her mission to give in her drive to help the space and really help the small businesses. I hope that it gave you a more comprehensive view of what investing in yourself as well as mentorship looks like. One of the things I’ll never sell to you is that, hey, just make this decision and it’s all it’ll all work out. It will only work out if you work it out. OK, so just remember that if you if you put in the work, if you put in the work over time, it will produce the results. What did I say in the podcast. Doing the right thing the right way over time will produce the right result. So some of you just need help figuring out what the right thing is. Right. Of the others, you may be doing the right thing, but not necessarily the right way. And the time factor, it just seems to elude you and you’re wondering, will it ever happen for me? I’m here to tell you, yes. With the right mentorship, the right community and the right guidance.

Chris L. Davis: [01:05:33] Yes, Jovana’s story can be yours. Or I should say your story can be even greater than Jovana’s. So make sure you share today’s podcast with somebody who is teetering. You know, maybe they’re there. They’re looking at investing in coaching or mentoring for the first time, or perhaps they have hit some revenue and and they know they want to grow, but maybe they’re a little afraid to let go in order to receive more. Share this podcast with them. Here at Automation, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. That is our goal in our mission because small businesses are in dire need of marketers with this ability to learn marketing and technology, understand your processes and deploy automated systems for growth. You heard Jovana talk about how hard it is to find good help. OK, so if if you like to get connected with community, get around people who are not just talking the talk, but they’re walking the walk in a way that will help you get to your desired destination that much faster, openly sharing tools, strategy, automation, building tips. By the way, Yvonne is in their. Right, I would extend right now the opportunity for you to speed up your learning curve, rub shoulders with people like myself and Jovana and make you better, quicker. That is what this community is for you. And it’s actually the only place that I am daily, engaging, sharing, discussing episodes, the unfiltered Chris.

Chris L. Davis: [01:07:09] You know, you get my raw opinions on things. Peel back the curtain of what I’m doing. We have monthly automation challenges. It’s it’s just a great community to be a part of. And I guarantee you, it is worth your time and your investment. So if you’re interested in joining go to automation, bridge dotcom, forget join. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, this is my invitation to you to subscribe to make sure that you don’t miss another episode every Thursday rerelease new podcast episodes to your app. What wherever you get your podcast, the All Systems Go podcast is there. So make sure you subscribe. And while you’re at it, your five star rating and your review is greatly appreciated. All of the show notes and podcasts are accessible at automation bridge dotcom for slash podcasts. You could subscribe there and listen to other episodes. If you would like to be the next guest on the All Systems Go podcast, go to Automationbridge.com/podcast and submit your information. We would love to have you on if you’re a digital marketing professional or a thought leader in your respective industry and you know you have something valuable to offer in terms of insight that has proven to produce results are results that you’ve proven yourself.

Chris L. Davis: [01:08:28] Please go there, submit your information and we would love to have you on the podcast to help our listeners have a more comprehensive view of success in with business, success with automation in business.

Chris L. Davis: [01:08:42] All right. So until next time I see you online Automate responsibly, my friends.