Removing the Confusion from the Customer Journey feat. Greg Jenkins

ASG 071 – Removing the Confusion from the Customer Journey feat. Greg Jenkins

Chris 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 cell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of Automation Bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis: [00:00:32] Welcome to the All Systems Go podcast, I’m your host, Chris Al 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. And in this episode, I have Greg Jenkins, the founder of Monkey Pod Marketing Marketing, where he focuses on empowering entrepreneurs through online courses and educational resources. More specifically, Greg helps keep an Infusionsoft. Users understand their marketing software in a different way and at a higher level to maximize the return on their monthly investment. And prior to Monkey Pod. Greg worked at Infusionsoft as a curriculum developer and a lead trainer for Unit You Infusionsoft University. And that is really what how our paths crossed is our mutual respect and love for educating the marketplace. Specifically to to marketing automation. And Greg, everybody, for this episode, he’s he’s here to remove the confusion from crafting the customer journey. OK, there’s a lot that goes in to making sure that your customer journey is personalized and effective. And we’re going to have we’re going to have a candid conversation about Infusionsoft. It’s it’s unfortunate monicker that that the marketplace gave it and how to achieve success. Anyhow, I think that somebody from Infusionsoft is the appropriate person to talk about removing confusion. And you are probably already know where I’m going with this. But I say this in a podcast, and I just want to make sure that when we’re all making fun of and, you know, we’re competing and even as users, we’re selecting various software and maybe one doesn’t do something, another does. Maybe one is just too hard to use.

Chris Davis: [00:02:29] At the end of the day, Infusionsoft has done something no other platform has done. We talk about that in the episode and we give them their just due and their respect. OK, so I’m excited to have Greg on who I have met only a handful of well, actually, not even a handful of times once I met Greg once in person. But some people, you know, you meet, they have a lasting impact on you. And I would consider Greg beyond just an associate, but a friend. I trust his judgment. He’s got a strong, thriving community of Infusionsoft professionals. And again, I couldn’t think of anybody better than him to come on and really talk about how do we go beyond the confinements and complications of software at times and craft the the perfect or ideal customer journey. All right. So before we jump into the podcast, if you’re new, make sure you listen to this episode in its entirety and then leave a five star rating in review. After you subscribe, listen to it. See what we’re about. I promise you, I promise to over deliver. OK, so whatever your expectation is, I’m here to exceed it. And you can show me appreciation by subscribing and leaving a five star rating in review. If you are a listener to the podcast and you’re not subscribed yet, please do so. We’re an Apple podcast. Google podcast. We’re on YouTube. You could subscribe there, make sure that you are subscribed and you leave a five star rating and review. It is greatly appreciated. So let’s jump into the podcast with myself and Greg and let’s discuss this customer journey.

Chris Davis: [00:04:02] Greg, welcome to the podcast. Always you know what, I can’t say glad to have you on because that will be too small, Greg, like it’s always, always good to connect. And I’m so happy to be able to have a conversation with you because we always are connecting and engaging in some way. But now everybody gets to see it. Everybody gets to glean from it how it is.

Greg Jenkins: [00:04:29] It’s a privilege. I am a bona fide fan of of of the show of Chris Davis.

Greg Jenkins: [00:04:37] But yeah, man, I feel you. I’m sure I’m sure you get this right, I, I feel like the word excited has been spoiled because every marketer is like I’m so excited to tell you about, you know, whatever it is. And it’s like, no, but I’m actually excited to record this. How do I how do I tell you that it’s not hyperbole.

Chris Davis: [00:04:56] Right. How do I find another word? You know, so I I’m looking forward to this. And the listeners may not have a clue on what a treat this episode is going to be. And I’m looking forward to diving in and maybe hopefully I’ll be able to even put you on the spot. Like that’s the goal is like, can I can I can I shake Greg? You know, you’re so rooted in what you know, so that that that’d be interesting. But start from the beginning. Let everybody know a little bit about yourself and your business.

Greg Jenkins: [00:05:31] Sure man So my brand is is monkey pod monkey pod marketing and I serve small businesses specifically keep users. And I do it through education and training, which is part of what sets my brand aside is is really focusing on helping those who want to, you know, want to understand the strategies that they’re operating in their business and the technology that support those strategies, because there are plenty of small businesses successful and otherwise who don’t care how it gets done. They just want results and they’re, you know, they’re outsourcing that. So I sort of the the desires, the people who do have an appetite for that and, you know, have their hands on the keyboard, their sleeves rolled up and are pressing the buttons themselves. My introduction to entrepreneurship. Well, I grew up in a in a small business, entrepreneurial family. But I ran a business right after college servicing and installing draft beer systems. That was my life birth into the small business world, a typical local service provider. You know, we had accounts that I would visit. We would do like a cleaning every three weeks for some accounts for weeks, rather. So it was a subscription kind of model and it was entirely manual.

Greg Jenkins: [00:06:42] You know, my CRM was a notepad of the center console of the van where I would like circle somebody’s name if they called, like, check it off if I called it back. And it was a very. Yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:06:53] Systematic, then great.

Chris Davis: [00:06:55] Well, to me, I mean, I hesitate to describe it as a system, knowing what I know now.

Greg Jenkins: [00:07:02] But there was a process. Yeah, there always is. Yeah. And then I you know, twenty five, twenty six years old and I found myself like burnt out. I found my because it was, it was like to to grow the business. I only saw one path which was just work more hours like go knock on more doors and get more accounts. And if they had a draft beer system we could, you know, clean it or add lines for them. If they didn’t have a draft beer system, we could install it. But the problem with with with getting new accounts is then you have to do the work. You have to you know, you have to go fulfill on it. So and I found myself in this the cycle that I didn’t know how to break out of there. I didn’t like the path forward, the path for growing the business just didn’t appeal to me. It just sounded draining. And I started to build a team. But then I found myself managing those people. And yeah. So I eventually my business partner bought me out. I decided I needed a change. And I, I in that transition, I moved to Arizona where a friend of mine said, hey, you should check out Infusionsoft as as the company was called at the time. And I said, screw you, I’m a beer guy.

Greg Jenkins: [00:08:12] Not I’m not a technology guy. Why would I look at this nerdy Infusionsoft company? And then a couple of months later, I had a couple of months later, while I was still unemployed, I finally I was like, well, maybe I’ll go. Maybe I’ll go check out this website. And Chris, I tell you, man, I was like doing preliminary research to see if this was a company that I might be interested in or might that there might be an opportunity for me at and watching, like the even the simple videos on their website. I was like, holy cow. This would have changed my life, this would have changed that business, and this is what I was missing. But the interesting thing is that I didn’t know to ask for it. Like, sure, I didn’t understand that there were you know, that there were email follow up systems that I could put my clients on a recurring billing schedule and not have to drive to their restaurant to collect a physical check. Like those were the things that I was doing. And the idea of like optimizing meant like finding a faster route to get to the restaurant that like, you know, finding a digital way to to process that transaction. So my lens was just underdeveloped at the time and it rapidly changed once I discovered Infusionsoft.

Greg Jenkins: [00:09:21] And I did get a job there, onboarding new clients and working with them. And the light bulb light bulbs, plural, kept kept going off, as I saw, you know, the role that that automation and systems and technology could play for. Simplifying or multiplying what a small business is about, because my my business would have been a perfect candidate for what these tools offer, and so it became kind of a a charge of mine to help as many small businesses as possible avoid those same. You know, potholes and pitfalls, because I had I had the scar tissue. I’ve got to kind of do it at myself.

Chris Davis: [00:10:02] Yeah, I love it, man. And it brings me back to my entry into Infusionsoft. And, you know, I had my introduction into business. I think I’ve said this before. It was through Internet marketing.

Chris Davis: [00:10:17] I had people are shocked. I had no clue how to use the Internet, man. Sure, I was proficient in blogspot dot com. And that meant I knew how to follow blogs, like I knew how to find them and follow them and check them to know what an RSS feed was when you knew how to click subscribe.

Chris Davis: [00:10:34] Yeah, yeah. I was like, what is that?

Chris Davis: [00:10:36] But you’re bored at a corporate job every morning I had a roster of blogs that I would check. It was like my newsletter, I mean, my newspaper. That’s what it was. And I just remember office autopilot being the only tool that people ever talked about. Now report. And I had a couple friends or I should say acquaintances that I met through these programs that I enrolled in. I needed help. So I started to do that. And I didn’t even know that was automation at the time. I just thought, oh, this is software that you need in your business. It’s business. Software is what I thought. And I remember when I was looking at trying, you know, I’m a web developer trying to make money. I’m like, where is the money? I have to differentiate myself. Everybody’s a web developer. There’s people’s literally. Graig, there was one person whose grandmother recommended a thing for them to download.

Chris Davis: [00:11:26] And I said, you know what? The day I’m competing, no knock against grandma. The grandmothers can be technically savvy. Perhaps this one was it. I knew this one wasn’t Greg. It was different, man. Just like, you know what? I need to set myself apart. And I did not know how to sew, actually. And what I want to talk about today, actually, the term confusion solved is what attracted me to Infusionsoft, because my thinking was this. If everybody’s confused and doesn’t know how to use it and I learn how to use it, thus I become Poyet like I become valuable. I had no clue about the company, the back story where they were located. I just knew it was this green looking logo when this in the website was antiquities. Nothing near what we see. I keep now. I mean, if we could just roll back the hands of time to what Infusionsoft look like back then. Oh my gosh. But I was like, OK, I’ma do it. And then there was the two thousand dollar starter fee.

Chris Davis: [00:12:27] And I was like, oh, maybe, maybe I won’t do it yet. How serious. Ebbie. Right, right.

Chris Davis: [00:12:33] But back then, Greg, I have to tell you, man, it was a badge of honor to be able to pay that two thousand dollars Kickstarter fee eventually and then be paying three hundred dollars a month. Right. Like it was that alone was like, hey, look, I’m an Infusionsoft user. So you knew, oh, that person is invested three thousand dollars and they’re paying at least three hundred dollars a month.

Chris Davis: [00:12:53] They must be swaggy, right? Yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:12:56] And now look, man, go ahead. If a startup tries that now. Oh, my goodness. You’re done before you begin. So for somebody like yourself, man, again, I think you’re the one of the most decorated and the only reason why I say one, because I don’t know everybody. Right. So even some space. But for me, in my personal sphere, you’re the most decorated Infusionsoft expert, I’ll say. And I think what you you mentioned earlier is what really sets you apart is the fact that you go from an educational perspective. And so many people, myself included back then, Greg, we were just trying to monetize monetize your ignorance on the platform. You don’t know how to do it. Pay me to do it and I’ll do it and I’ll make money, money doing it. So how Infusionsoft rightfully so and rightfully so. Whatever your disposition is, there is the term confusion soft? It’s been.

Chris Davis: [00:13:53] I feel like the click funnels group has maybe thrown it around a little more reckless or right. They may have fanned fanned the flames. So yeah, you get what I’m saying.

Chris Davis: [00:14:04] Like, yeah, OK, I see what you’re saying, but you know, but at the end of the day, we have like we have to be honest in what Infusionsoft bickie, you know, what they have done for the small business space has never been done.

Chris Davis: [00:14:20] They revolutionized space and equipped us with software that, as you mentioned, we didn’t even know we needed, you know, so as many marks they get as making it confusing, confusing. And this doesn’t that it has fueled the success of countless businesses. Man. And I don’t want anybody new to the space to come in and slander that name without the scars and bruises. You you know, what you can’t say can thrive off if you just learned about if you know it as keep right. And if you just learn about it two to three years ago, you can’t say those. Words, you don’t know what that you know, you don’t know what that means, you haven’t you haven’t gone through the the flames, right. So in your experience, greg what I want to do is there’s Infusionsoft users listening. There’s maybe other platform users that are looking at Infusionsoft. What would what would your tips be in making, you know, this term confusion of breaking that, breaking away from that? How do we demystify how to leverage the true power of Infusionsoft bickie?

Chris Davis: [00:15:26] What would you what approach and steps would you give people?

Greg Jenkins: [00:15:30] So there’s a quote or a rebuttal that you’ll hear tossed around from the the Infusionsoft faithful, which is like it’s a it’s a lousy carpenter who blames his hammer. Right. And it’s interesting because, you know, regularly I hear complaints from frustrated small businesses who who are stuck on something and it feels confusing to them. And it doesn’t help that, you know, confusion and confusion. Right. So but but that that situation, I mean, with the exception of the rhyming, is not unique to Infusionsoft. It’s not unique to keep that exists in every community or every every user base for any any platform to some extent. Right. There’s different things that people get picked up by. But what I like to remind people of is that. This software and my experience is predominantly with Infusionsoft, that’s where I’m kind of playing at my flag and the audience that I serve. But I think the advice that I’m going to give is is agnostic of platform.

Greg Jenkins: [00:16:45] I think there’s this.

Greg Jenkins: [00:16:48] Challenge that small business owners have where they look at a software, they think like this is the software that I use, so therefore it’s for me.

Greg Jenkins: [00:16:57] And the reality is there are dozens or hundreds of business models in different industries, in different parts of the world of different shapes and sizes who all use that platform as well. And so if this tool is so robust or so diverse that it can serve all of those types of people and all of those types of businesses, then there will be features and use cases that aren’t applicable to you. And so it becomes it becomes a game of like, how do I look at this set of one hundred features, let’s just say one hundred for round numbers and figure out which, you know, twenty five I need for my business and like that’s it kind of bends our brains a little bit because, you know, the consumer in us, the, the thrifty consumer in us wants to like wring every drop of value out of the software.

Greg Jenkins: [00:17:52] But the trap you fall into is you start clicking on stuff and using features that like aren’t intended for you and they don’t play a role in your business. And that is where I think it adds a lot of confusion because you find yourself going down these rabbit holes trying to try just to use the features for feature sake, because they’re they’re not because they solve a specific problem in your business or not, because they add an element to the experience that you’re creating with your customers.

Greg Jenkins: [00:18:17] So rather than approaching it from like a software like feature forward sort of perspective, it’s really about defining first, what does your business need?

Greg Jenkins: [00:18:28] And I actually recommend that people like write up the job description like a actually like almost as if you are hiring an employee, like, what am I hiring keep to do what am I hiring active campaign to do, what is its job in my company. And you write up. Well, it’s going to manage context. It’s going to help you follow up with new leads. It’s going to X, Y or Z. And then and then you go about finding the right tool, selecting the right tool that does that fills that role. Right. And if it’s Infusionsoft, if it’s keep great, but it may not be it may be that another platform will actually lead pipe drive. And that’s the thing that gives me what I’m after.

Greg Jenkins: [00:19:07] But until you have that clear job description, it becomes, you know, it can be really challenging to to explore your software because you don’t have a specific, you know, roadmap for how you’re planning to adopt it. So that’s where I recommend people start, is like getting clear first on the objectives that this is going to play for your business and then remembering that like. You know, nobody said you have to use 100 percent of this software.

Chris Davis: [00:19:34] Right, man, there’s this unspoken, like pressure on people to, like, use all these features. But like, nobody’s telling you to do that.

Greg Jenkins: [00:19:42] And I wish you could I wish you could, like, give people the blinders to only grab the things that they need or reframe it. Like it’s not about using a horrible set of the features. It’s about using one hundred percent of what your brand needs at 100 percent is personal. It is like it is your own like section of that pie. And if you can focus on that, you’re going to you’re exponentially more likely to succeed than starting the other way.

Chris Davis: [00:20:06] Greg, man, I’m loving I’m loving this because, you know, I’ve always viewed it because because, like you said, it’s not specific to Infusionsoft. You could get lost in any of these platforms and then they don’t have to be all at once. Right. And I you know, I’ve always looked at it as, you know, these platforms become the buffet to the starving entrepreneurs.

Chris Davis: [00:20:28] Right. And what is the entrepreneur starving of success and just want success. And they think they’re you know, everybody’s gone to the buffet on an empty stomach. All of the food looks good. There’s stuff there’s stuff that, you know, you don’t like. And truth be told, after you’ve eaten it and you’ve satisfied that initial hunger, you’re like, why did I put that in my body? Right. But they come into it and they’re starving for some form of digital success. All of these features look good and they think they have to fill their plate with all of these features and then go home and then use them all when it’s like no one’s gluttons.

Chris Davis: [00:21:04] Yeah, everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:21:08] So it’s to your point, how do I. Because it’s twofold, right, Greg? One is how do I define just those features that I need and then the discipline to be satisfied with just those. Right. And not get tempted. Like maybe I should be using more because there’s some guilt. I see some people have words just like I’m not even using the platform to his capacity. So even when I was an active campaign, people will call and say they would apologize. I know I’m not using all of the studies and I would have to stop them and say, listen, as long as you’re using the features that are successful, you’re using enough. You do not have to try to use everything people shy away from.

Greg Jenkins: [00:21:49] I think my impression is that a lot of people shy away from like the ahli conversation, measuring our life from our tools. Right. But but it is if you treat it like an employee. Right, then what am I paying this employee? And, you know, there are versions of keep that cost much less than three hundred dollars a month. But let’s say it’s three hundred dollars a month. OK, so you’re paying thirty six hundred dollars. Thirty nine hundred dollars a year. I’m I’m not a math allergist, but you’re paying a couple thousand dollars a year for this employee. And so the question is like, was it worth it? Is it paying a positive ahli? And if you’re not using any of the features, it’s probably not worth it right now. But where is that break even point? And like you remember, this employee you’re hiring, it doesn’t take days off. It works 24 hours a day. It doesn’t need, you know, like like that’s part of the equation here. So it should be a financially responsible investment.

Greg Jenkins: [00:22:44] You’re you’re hiring this tool to play a job for your business and you’re paying it hopefully much less than you would be paying an employee to do a similar role. And there, you know, the nature of automation is that it doesn’t get tired. Right. So you can load it up and you can you can pour more into it without necessarily I mean, depending on your your what your version limits are, you might need to like level up the number of contacts so the number of emails are or the different add ons. But the point here is that like do the math. Right, let’s figure out like where does that. All right. I come from? And you might find that you launched, you know, a single automation. You launch one campaign that nurtures people after and after their consult and drives them towards joining your your membership. Right. Yeah. And if that.

Greg Jenkins: [00:23:33] Urns are alive for you if that, like, pays for the subscription than anything else you do with this platform is gravy, right? Is icing on the cake.

Greg Jenkins: [00:23:44] But there’s but people come at it from the other perspective where they’re like, but I’m not this, that or the other thing. And it’s like, well, OK, that’s just opportunity. But my recommendation for people is to, like, decide where that point of return will be, where that break even point is with your software and when you get started or now if if you got started years ago and never did this, do it now, like focus on, you know, measuring like is this software paying for itself? Because without fail, whether it’s keep or anything else, there will come a time where you are, like, frustrated with it or you’re disappointed or there’s a bug and you’re like questioning this investment. And the way that you, like, take emotion out of that equation is by going to the ahli and being like, well, you know, as frustrated as I am by this instance, it’s still made me, you know, ten grand last month and I spent three hundred dollars on it. So, like, here’s here’s the here’s the tradeoff, man.

Chris Davis: [00:24:38] That’s so powerful, Greg, because you’re right, that ROIC conversation is, you know, why not had because that that same onus that you’re putting on the technology is really yours right now.

Chris Davis: [00:24:53] I don’t want to own responsibility of success now.

Chris Davis: [00:24:57] I just want it to do it. I want to pay for it, do what somebody said and be successful. Why do why do I have to define what success looks like? Why do I have to measure that? Why do I have to set objectives that don’t just keep my my my people alive, but my technology, too? Right.

Greg Jenkins: [00:25:16] It’s it’s tough, Chris.

Greg Jenkins: [00:25:17] I am a I’m a people person and I believe the best in people. And that’s part of why I love the education space is because people are like you could tell when they have an appetite for it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:25:31] You could see when the light bulb goes on and it’s really rewarding. And there are also plenty of people who are just looking for a crutch, they’re just looking for a scapegoat, and it’s it’s you know, I think that if you really dug in with a lot of the people who are complaining about confusion software, it is not performing, you would discover that there’s a an underlying issue with their business model or their third deliverable or the experience that they’re creating and that the problem, you know, didn’t go away when they switched the way from Infusionsoft and it probably existed before they adopted Infusionsoft. And they’re just they’re they’re projecting it onto the this the software Luly. But, you know, you can trace that back to in most instances, you know, misaligned expectations. Like what who when you signed up, like what were you hoping this would do? And, you know, how how was that expectation set from from the onset?

Chris Davis: [00:26:32] Yeah. Yeah. And I want to talk about I want to ask you about some of your most successful campaigns and Infusionsoft, just to give our listeners some insight. But before that, how do you you know, it’s one of the hardest things to do is untrain, right.

Chris Davis: [00:26:51] Get people to unlearn these these misguided approaches to not just the software, Greg. Right. Just marketing automation in general, marketing and sales automation. In your experience as you’ve been educating it and really and championing being the forerunner.

Chris Davis: [00:27:11] How about that? Yeah. And that word won’t come out. I think that all the time. Right. And leading with education, because that’s an intentional choice. Greg, I know you. I know your business and I know your brand. At any point you can switch it to where the focus is revenue based. Right. Like, hey, look, this is more leads more, more and more clients. But you intentionally choose to educate in this path, in this path.

Chris Davis: [00:27:35] What are you finding are some of the key things that help people unlearn this this mandated broad stroke approach that gets them in a position where they’re approaching the tool incorrectly, they’re blaming the software. How do you get them to change that approach, man?

Greg Jenkins: [00:27:56] Yeah, I think I describe education and you’ll you’ll be able to appreciate this as the get rich slow gig, I, I, I chose I chose education because well No.

Greg Jenkins: [00:28:11] One, because there were fewer people doing it right. Like, I recognized a need that Infusionsoft users were having to like adopt the software. And there is a learning curve with it because not not necessarily because the software is complicated though that’s a fair criticism, but because small business is complicated. And so understanding the parallels between your business and the software, where they overlap, where they can serve one another and where they shouldn’t is just like a it’s an intricate conversation. So that’s that’s where I plan on my flag. But the second prong of of education was that I knew I could reach more people. Whereas if you go like the service provider route, if you’re working with clients one on one, like your bandwidth is finite. And in the education space, ostensibly your reach is is infinite. And so that was really appealing to me, was knowing I could I could serve a much broader audience, create a bigger impact that way. But your question was like you’re fighting against these misconceptions, these myths that are being perpetuated still. Like there’s yes, I think there are fewer people like you and I helping people understand. You actually had an episode recently. It’s not about the technology. Right. Which was great. And I will give your listeners a plug to go listen to that one once you’re done here. OK? All right. I don’t get it. But the way that I combat those is I mean, it’s not easy and it’s ongoing.

Greg Jenkins: [00:29:35] So I’m constantly looking for new ways to shine the light on that to help people come to that realization. But what I have what I have distilled my learnings down to is a process that I call the one conversation, and I call it that because if I could have only one conversation with any small business owner on the planet, then this is the conversation I would have. And there’s a bunch of terms for it. I’m actually kind of excited to share this with you, Chris, because I’m sure you’ll have your own vernacular, your own way of thinking about this. But effectively, it challenges a business owner to look at like their product or whatever it is that you sell. And if you sell multiple things, just start with one of them as the you don’t as this central piece on a timeline. So extend a line out in either direction from that. And you have everything leading up to that product. Then you have the actual purchase of that product and then you have everything that comes afterward. And the composition of those three things is, is your customer journey, right? You’ve got the pre purchase, you’ve got the purchase experience and you’ve got the post purchase. And just from there you can see light bulbs going off for people.

Greg Jenkins: [00:30:42] They’re like, oh yeah, after the purchase, you know, because so many people I think you talk about this one as well in the delivery episode you did.

Greg Jenkins: [00:30:52] But so many people like they treat the sale as the destination and they forget to design the experience. They want their customers to have it. It’s just we’ve all experienced that as a consumer as well, where you buy something and then you just it’s just the cliff.

Greg Jenkins: [00:31:06] There’s crickets. Yeah. Yeah. So I challenge people to say, all right, draw that timeline out. Right. And then start to insert start to identify what are the milestones that then then represent progress along it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:31:21] And maybe it’s just like maybe it’s just three, maybe it’s like, OK, they joined our our webinar or they requested a quote or they attended an event and then they bought and then they bought again or joined our membership group or joined our partner program or told a friend. Right. So maybe there’s only three milestones, but the more milestones you can get, the more granular you can get, the the better. And it becomes about those gaps in between them. It forces you to start looking at, OK, well, what paves the path from milestone one to milestone two for milestone two to milestone three or three to four? And what I’ve what I think a lot of people find is that there are.

Greg Jenkins: [00:32:07] Like, very clear dropoffs where they either have no follow up in place or they have inadequate, insufficient follow up, or we’re just like it’s disjointed because it was designed at a different time and now, like, the things around it don’t fit.

Greg Jenkins: [00:32:24] And so what you’re looking for is not just like, do we have something planned for each one of these stages, but are they cohesive? Is there like a continuous thread that guides our leads and prospects all the way through this this experience?

Greg Jenkins: [00:32:39] And then, you know, the the one conversation kind of evolves like, OK, so you got your milestones, you got your bridges that kind of span the chasms in between. Now, where would automation enhance this? Like where can we use automation to lighten the lift so that if we dial up the traffic, we’re not going to feel overwhelmed, we’re not going to, like, fall apart, struggling to fulfill for these clients or what have you. But where could we use automation? Not just.

Greg Jenkins: [00:33:07] Not not necessarily to take people out of the equation, but to allow.

Greg Jenkins: [00:33:13] Our human effort to be used more strategically, right, because that’s I think that’s a misconception about automation as people think it means like less humans and it doesn’t have to. It only means automation only means cold and robotic if it’s done poorly. Right. If it’s done well, it allows you to focus on the things that are the best use of your time. And if that’s like, you know, having an onboarding phone call in person with people, then keep doing that. If it’s writing a handwritten thank you card, then keep doing that right. I think that there’s an important I think it’s important to retain some aspects of the human intervention here, but to use automation so that you’re controlling where it is so that you’re not creating bottlenecks or pinch points for yourself.

Chris Davis: [00:33:59] Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I hear the phrase I know I should be automating this or I know, like, this could be automated maybe. Right. Right. And the young me, trust me, the young just I’ve got Infusionsoft just up. I put it on everything. Look, I’m trying to automate my tie my shoelaces. Right. Of course. Yeah, right.

Chris Davis: [00:34:19] But the more mature me respects process now, and when someone makes that statement, it’s like, well, maybe, maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. Perhaps I could. I make the case. Maybe you need less. And they look at me, they’re like, wait a minute. But you’re the you’re the automation professor. Well, why are you not telling me more and more and more? And it’s like, look, man, Grig, what I loved about what you just explained was it’s all about the customer journey. There is nothing more important than that. Journey in automation is an aid to ensure that that journey is as personalized and perfected, not perfect, perfected as possible. And when I think of perfected, you talked about the milestones. When someone is on their way to a milestone and they drop off, automation is there to catch them and just put them right back on the path.

Chris Davis: [00:35:15] That’s it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:35:16] Yeah, it should make it should make them feel led. It should help them understand, like, oh, here’s the thing I’m supposed to do next. Right. As humans, we want to feel confident like I’m where we’re going. And you you as the architect in your business probably know. But does your prospect does your customer at each junction like know what they should be doing next? And that’s that’s where automation, like, can lead them.

Greg Jenkins: [00:35:40] I also want to I want to call out as much as it is about the customer journey, not every element in their journey is customer facing. And that’s important as well as like you can use automation to hold yourself accountable, to remind you of the things you should be doing, to remind your team of the things they should be doing. That’s a big part of like automation. If you only design customer facing interactions or steps like that’s fine. But you’re missing out on, I would argue 50 percent of what is automated happens behind the scenes.

Greg Jenkins: [00:36:14] It still influences their customer experience, but it doesn’t have to be, you know, a touchpoint that goes out directly to them in an automated fashion.

Chris Davis: [00:36:22] Yes, Greg, I have to I’m going to show my hand here one of my favorite things. I’ll tell you what it was and how it evolved. One of my favorite things was internal notifications. I am the king of internal notifications. I will send those before I send an email. Right. Because it lets me know without being logged into my system. What’s happening now in between those milestones are throughout the customer journey. I have what I call indicators of interest. Every action is not important. I don’t care about every action, but I know the actions that are indicators of high interest and I just want to be informed. Right. So I love getting those reminders. When it was just the power of me, it reminded me what to do. And now that I can send them, you know, in and automation do it if or a decision, dive in and determine who gets that notification to keep my team in the loop. It has evolved from email now to slack.

Chris Davis: [00:37:24] Greg, I cannot tell if listeners, if you do not have a dedicated channel for your CRM to send notifications of indicators of interest throughout the customer journey that do do it, do it the. Oh my God, it’s empowering, right?

Greg Jenkins: [00:37:40] It like it it helps you just create a deeper level of insight into your audience, into their engagement, their behavior and into your journey. Like what? Like what patterns am I seeing?

Greg Jenkins: [00:37:51] Because what you made what you may find is that like you thought you had these milestones in order, but people are like jumping around or doing things in a different direction.

Greg Jenkins: [00:37:59] And that’s OK. Right. That is I just I do describe this as a linear process because in a perfect world, like it would be, but rarely is that the case. Right. Your business probably has converging and diverging journey. And that is OK, but if you but each one should be mapped, right, like it shouldn’t end at a cul de sac, it should lead back to an onramp.

Greg Jenkins: [00:38:21] And that main freeway that that guides them somewhere, man, that so that that’s a quotable for you, Greg, we’re going to change and turn into a quote, boys should not lead to a cul de sac.

Chris Davis: [00:38:32] Yeah, right. There’s got to be a plan.

Chris Davis: [00:38:35] It’s got to be a plan. But, you know, get them on that road that that doesn’t end in. And I’ll tell you, man, I you just can’t stress enough that the customer journey is not reactive. Right? It very much is proactive.

Chris Davis: [00:38:52] You know, that somebody takes it. You’re like, oh, how did you do that? What do I do? You know, here’s the thing.

Greg Jenkins: [00:39:00] Listeners with or without your consent or design, your customer, Gerdy, already exists. It is already happening.

Chris Davis: [00:39:09] And so it may as well be something that you are proud of that you intended and that, you know, consistently produces an experience that you are proud of. Right. Like it’s already there that, you know, if you have had customers, they came from somewhere and they had a fulfillment experience, really. Challenges like how? When was the last time you looked at it? What is the last time you, like, poked at it and thought it challenged? Why is why is it that way, you know, who set that up and or did we. Right.

Chris Davis: [00:39:38] Yeah. Greg, let me share this as well. Man, you got me wide open right now. Greg, this is this is fun. All right. One of one of the notifications that I send to to my team in Slack is when somebody becomes a customer. Right. And it’s not about, you know, a celebration, though. We do put emojis and all of that. You celebrate your wins when they become a customer.

Chris Davis: [00:40:00] What I do is I send a notification, the saying what they purchased and to make sure you check their contact record that they use if they use the different email address. It’s it seems so simple, right, Greg? But you already know where I’m going.

Greg Jenkins: [00:40:16] It can disjoined that entire customer experience is if they have a different record with a different email, who’s receiving the promotional emails and they don’t feel responsible for use it to emails that they’re like, well, you should know, right? Yeah, you should know.

Greg Jenkins: [00:40:30] That’s a that’s a tricky one because the system, you know, how do we expect automation to catch that? How does it know there could be more than one Chris Davis. Right. You know, I mean, obviously you’re you’re the favorite, but there could be more of that, right? Yeah. Yeah, it’s great.

Chris Davis: [00:40:45] And it’s the hardest thing. So it there’s no automation. Yeah, that is a manual check.

Greg Jenkins: [00:40:52] Let me read to you let me give you a little aside, a little deep dive for that for the for the technical listeners. I do I do something similar when we have a new member join my monkey pod community. But it’s a it’s an email, not a back channel, which I might steal.

Greg Jenkins: [00:41:10] And it goes to my community manager. Her name’s Jade. And it goes to to me as well. And I not instead of just using like a static emoji, which is fine, I use Zap here to pick from a spreadsheet a list of celebratory gifts.

Greg Jenkins: [00:41:27] So I’ve got 15 different like gifts. It’s like, you know, Michael Scott and Dwight from the office, like partying or celebrating. And so it it randomly chooses one of these gifts and so it cycles it into the email. So each time we get a notification saying there’s a new member, it uses a different gift. And periodically I pop it there to add a few more. But I’ve curated this list of like celebration gifts, knowing that it’s going to grab a different one, which is just the you know, it adds a layer of of of, you know, fun and originality to it where it is automated, but it doesn’t feel uniform. It doesn’t feel repetitive because it cycles through those.

Chris Davis: [00:42:03] I love it. That is amazing. Mannar there. And actually, as you were explaining that, I’m like there’s so many other applications for that same automation.

Greg Jenkins: [00:42:13] Well, I actually got that from a customer of mine who was like, hey, how could I create this thing, you know? And so we started a company wide sales notification. It uses a random rotating gif and we came up with that solution together. And then I went and adopted it myself. Yeah, I love it. Shout out to Brett from crew tracks for helping me come up with that one.

Chris Davis: [00:42:32] Thank you, Brett. And it helps us highlight the point. Guess what? When you were mentioning that, Greg, I did not feel limited, that I can only do it in Infusionsoft. Oh, right. Like I can only do it an active campaign.

Chris Davis: [00:42:46] Only HubSpot. That’s the power when you break free that the tool is mandating what you do and you understand like your goals and what you’re trying to achieve. And you’re willing to say, OK, let me I would like to send a different gif every time. That’s the process. Now make the tool Binta that don’t you dare bend your right to the tool it gets. It’s backwards.

Chris Davis: [00:43:13] And I mentioned it earlier, I want you to share I’ll share one, too, but I want you to share the first one that comes to mind, because I don’t want to say the most. I want to share I want you to share the first one that comes to mind when you think of the campaign that you built that is time tested in this thing, just keeps on working. What is that? That campaign for you, if he’s.

Chris Davis: [00:43:37] Yes. So I will say that I don’t think this is a hot take, at least not not for you. But I think some people may or may not feel this way until they dig in. But I think that there is a disproportionate focus on lead generation and small business.

Chris Davis: [00:43:56] I think, you know, way too far, too many businesses. It’s sexy right there. They’re focused on, you know, landing pages and lead capture and their ad strategy. And yes, that’s important, but it is only a piece of the puzzle. And I think that people have a generally just don’t focus enough, you know, the optimization of, like, how we’re converting leads or how their path to becoming customer or their experience as a customer. So like a tried and true campaign of mine is not a revenue producing campaign, but it is the experience that parallels one of my virtual courses. Right. So the one I’m thinking of specifically the KBE trilogy course, which teaches the foundational concepts and advanced features within the campaign, deltour inside keep.

Greg Jenkins: [00:44:39] And you know, when somebody buys right, it creates access to them and it uses dynamic content, which is a Infusionsoft feature to forecast out the schedule.

Greg Jenkins: [00:44:49] Right. If you bought the course today, if you watch the modules in this order, you’re going to be done by this date and it sort of lays it out for them all relative to when it is set so that it feels like, OK, this agenda has been prepared for me. Right. Here’s where I go. Yeah. And then as a participate in the course, I’m using a third party to a plus this to to update their contact record as they’re watching videos, as they start a video at thirty seconds in and updates it and then as they finish the video so it catches, hey, if they left off in video three of Chapter one, right. They’re going to get a prompt that communicates with them and says, hey, video four is where we tackle this next topic. And I don’t you know, you’re missing out. So it’s constantly leading them because I don’t know, this is maybe this is going to sound kind of basic, but you know that my content is only as valuable as their willingness to consume it. Right. If somebody buys that course and doesn’t do the work, the content doesn’t serve them. And that creates a customer who, through no fault of my own, may resent monkey pod because they didn’t do the work or didn’t fill out it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:45:58] So I use automation to do some handholding there to guide them through that experience, to make sure that it’s prompting them at the right points. And I do give people the option to opt out of that because they can feel a little big brother. And so I want to make sure that they’ve got some some influence, some agency in their experience.

Greg Jenkins: [00:46:16] I think that’s another important layer of automation is like you can automate the majority of use cases, but there will be a minority of customers for whom that is not their preference. And you can account for that by just giving them a choice. Hey, click this button to fast track to the end or click this button to to turn off these notifications, et cetera.

Chris Davis: [00:46:36] Yeah, I always tell people the back the the exit should be just as big, if not bigger.

Chris Davis: [00:46:42] Oh, my gosh. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Greg Jenkins: [00:46:46] Here’s here’s I think content producers. Yeah. At large we sometimes apologize for like.

Greg Jenkins: [00:46:55] You know, if this wasn’t valuable or if you didn’t if this wasn’t a fit or etc., if you’re not interested, we sort of like hedge our conversations and our information that way.

Greg Jenkins: [00:47:04] But the people who aren’t

Greg Jenkins: [00:47:07] for whom it’s not a fit, have to doubt their God, you know, like the only people listening to this podcast right now are interested. They’ve lasted, however, many minutes into this into this interview because they’re interested. So, you know, there’s a piece of me that’s like we’ll double down. The same thing is true for your marketing as your marketing builds. The people who are still reading, still opening, are telling you something by being there and you can use that. But as you said, I think it’s equally important to give them an exit, you know, an escape hatch or a jacket.

Chris Davis: [00:47:36] But we’re not holding anybody hostage. Right. Like we’re four. We’re four. We’re confident in our content. And I love your example. I have one similar campaign, similar than the one that you mentioned that that that I do like, not as customized and personalized as yours. And I would say for me, I’ve got like a qualifier automation, you know, that. And actually the automation is basic because the automation just sends out the emails. But my software, the third party software that I’m using a qualified does the routing.

Chris Davis: [00:48:11] So when you look at it, it doesn’t look they look like disjointed automation’s. Yeah, but if you had if you understood that the third party was doing the routing and sending them man, it’s one of the again two to three emails per outcome.

Chris Davis: [00:48:27] You know, most people who run some form of Cui’s online probably have a similar version, but it’s so intentional. And what I love about it is, you know, personalization is really easy when you know, the previous step, right.

Chris Davis: [00:48:40] Is when you don’t know the previous step because you’re not tracking you’re not intentional with the building out. The journey is where personalization is like, what do I say? Let me just put first name in the subject line.

Greg Jenkins: [00:48:52] You’ve done an episode of this have with you is like the like what you are listening for and how you could use that to impact their experience.

Greg Jenkins: [00:48:59] Yeah. You’re telling it man. It’s it’s. It’s the easiest thing that most people aren’t doing every time your prospects take an action, like you said, not everything needs to be tracked. Yes, but when they click a link to a specific blog post, they’re telling you this is something I’m interested in when they click a link to a specific product. I have a campaign I call actually it’s a series of campaigns. I call it the Mona Lisa. And it starts when people visit any of my sales pages. If you go to any checkout page, but don’t check out. Right, 20, 30 minutes later, it’s just an abandoned car email, I call it. Do you watch Parks and Recreation with that show? Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Jenkins: [00:49:39] So there’s a character in it called Mona Lisa Sapperstein, John Ralph’s sister, who has this line where she’s like money, please, and she’s asking her dad for money.

Greg Jenkins: [00:49:48] So I call it the Mona Lisa because it’s basically just reaching out to that person who, you know, was just on your sales page and saying, hey, you know, would you are you interested? Did you want to check out did did the ice cream man drive by? You got distracted. Right. Let’s get you back to that sales page. But I do. I’ve added layers to it over the years, and I don’t send that promo if they’ve purchased the course before. Right. Because if they visit that page and they already have bought that thing, can you imagine if that sales email shows up? Right. So I add decision logic. And if they are a referral partner of mine, instead of sending them the follow up link, I send them their promotional link. Hey, you were just on this page. Were you looking for this link so that you could recommend it to someone else? Right. So there’s I think there’s just small tweaks like that that you can do based on what you already know about the people in your audience to make their experience feel more. Personal life, and that’s, you know, automation doesn’t like I said, it doesn’t have to be cold and robotic. If it’s done well, it could feel personal and valuable.

Chris Davis: [00:50:49] Yeah, and you said you said something, Greg. I got to do a quick highlight. Then I want to do a two round quick. What is it, fast, fast action, fast answers, whatever, whatever it is. OK, lightning round, the lightning round, the lightning round. You said, I’ve added layers to this automation as time went on and that it it what’s in there subtlely is expertise and experience with not trying to do too much too soon. Too early. Right. I was just sharing with my community earlier today. I said, you know, I’ve I have this new process that I’ve been thinking through and I have an automated automated it because it’s a new process, because that’s my fundamental rule. I don’t automate due process. I need to work it and figure out, fill it out, you know, get a feel for this thing first. But when you say add layers, it just speaks to you know, I’ve said it many times, you know, your first time is your worst time. Don’t try to get it perfect. Most people look at somebody layered solution and that’s what they say I want built. And it’s like, you know what? You didn’t even need Tenley. You needed the core and like one and a half layers and you were fine. But they’re anchored on. I need the whole thing. Give me the whole onion.

Greg Jenkins: [00:52:04] You know, on all those layers launched doesn’t mean finished. And that’s that, you know, don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. There’s, you know, a dozen different ways to say this. But here’s the thing, right? As small business owners, we are, you know, intensely passionate about our our brand and our product and and proud of it, as we should be. Yeah. So we have this I we have this tendency to like want everything to be perfect, buttoned up, dialed in, you know, and just like it finished in order for us to get it out the door. But what I find time and time again is that if you can be willing to get that first version live, the things you were like kind of hoping to add your customers and the data behind their experience will tell you if those are the right next steps.

Greg Jenkins: [00:52:54] Right. Because we have hunches. We have like, oh, I want to add this gift for I want to you know, I want to create this other page and like link them to that.

Greg Jenkins: [00:53:01] But maybe the data will tell you that’s not a priority. And instead, you should put your focus over here. And so launching can really be liberating. It can help you prioritize or you might find that it works as is. And it’s you know, it’s it’s producing what I needed it to produce. Yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:53:17] Yeah. New new layers are necessitated by that contact throughput man. That’s it. People through there see what they’re saying. I agree. Oh, my goodness, man. By the way, everybody, it’s like this every time. Just so you know, I want to do a lightning round to serve our audience even more.

Chris Davis: [00:53:36] Man to two questions. First round when it’s time to build out campaign and Infusionsoft, are you a analogue in some capacity or digital flowchart in some way, or are you using keeps campaign build or because they have the published in draft mode where you can draw it out? Infusionsoft is unique to where you can add notes anywhere on the canvas. So it’s really flexible, free flowing builder. Which approach are you taking?

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:09] I build it in the campaign building, so I was hired at Infusionsoft in March 2012, which coincidentally was the same month the campaign daughter was released.

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:19] So my relationship to an understanding of automation has evolved like in that context. So it is like a second language that I speak or like a comfort zone for me. So that is where I spend most of my time.

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:32] But interestingly, when I collaborate with others, I have to like pull myself out and like go to a Google doc and organize the email, copy it like kind of map things together using I use Drogo a fair bit, which is another like flow chart and kind of tool in the Google suite.

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:51] But you know, I’m a solo person. Well, I do have a community manager, Jade, but that’s a recent hire as of last year. So most of my processes, it’s just you know, it’s just me and I have an idea for a book, for a blog or a YouTube series called Coworking with myself.

Greg Jenkins: [00:55:10] It’s just like conversations with the different, you know, Greg, the CEO, Greg the marketing guy, Greg the social manager, like all these different roles that I play in my business.

Greg Jenkins: [00:55:20] But fortunately, we often agree that different versions of. So I build in the campaign builder and I do use the notes pretty extensively with like here’s the to do list. Here’s where I left things off here. The things that are missing, it’s a fight. It’s just a nice way to keep everything visually represented on the same canvas. And if you you know, if you followed that one conversation example I gave earlier with the the milestones and the bridges in between, the there are direct parallels to Infusionsoft goals and the sequences in between. It’s a really natural transition there. And I know that, you know, the other automation platforms have their their equivalents for that. There’s there’s no technology to support the same type of flow. I just don’t have all the vernacular nailed down for each other.

Chris Davis: [00:56:08] Platform, you know, is good. One of the things that I do enjoy about the campaign builder and Infusionsoft is how text friendly it is. So when I was using it at Lee Pages, those sequences, you weren’t limited to just like two words and like you could really define the sequences before somebody went into them. And then, of course, you couple that with the notes in the fact that the canvas is open is right. It doesn’t snap. Now, granted, back in the day, one day I’ll date myself. You’re back in the day, everybody. There used to be a time where if you had, like a spider web looking automation, you were the part like you were the expert. The more complicated you can post a picture of your of your campaign, the more flex. Yeah. Writers like look at all of these lines. Right. And it since then migrate like the cleanliness that I’m starting to see now out of just everyone across the board. But yeah, man, I remember empty sequences using empty sequences just to make sure that because most of the time you have to use the empty sequence if you want to use the decision time and and kind of skip somebody on if you didn’t want to use a go. So, yeah, that visual representation in and I also like like how it shows where somebody has been right. There is a have been there who’s there now. You know, things of that nature.

Greg Jenkins: [00:57:24] Yeah. It gives you sort of a visual.

Greg Jenkins: [00:57:29] Like understanding of the flow, the path people are taking, which which can can be enlightening if it doesn’t match up with what you may have thought. Right. There’s a quote I’m reaching for and I don’t have it. So I’m hoping you can you can fill me in or maybe it’s not a quote.

Greg Jenkins: [00:57:45] It’s a it’s like a concept I’m picturing like an ark. And and there’s like. Simplistic at the lower left hand corner of that hour and then at the top, there’s like complex and then on the right there’s there’s simple.

Greg Jenkins: [00:58:03] And the point is that simple is on the other side of complexity. Right. Simplistic is like really basic and like in many cases, not valuable. And then there’s like complex where like you’re solving the problem, but you’re doing it in a complex way and that it takes like to push past that another level of expertise to be able to distill it down into simplicity. And that’s where I think we’re talking about with those like spiderweb campaigns.

Greg Jenkins: [00:58:29] Oftentimes as impressive as those may be, they were overkill or they were they were they were a workaround because somebody misunderstood a feature or didn’t. And if you can press on that and push through that complexity, oftentimes you can get to that next level of like, no, like here’s really the same outcome, but done in a in a more manageable, understandable way without compromising the experience we’re providing.

Chris Davis: [00:58:52] Absolutely. All right. Final round of the lightning round. You mentioned one, but if there is any two to three, two to three third party plug ins, you feel like every Infusionsoft user should have No.

Chris Davis: [00:59:07] One is a gimme. We both use the first.

Chris Davis: [00:59:09] Yeah, but you’ve already said I’m a big, big fan of plus this. Not not just it’s it’s a it’s tough to say like what does this do? Because each of their features are kind of like standalone functionality that that solves problems in different ways. And it’s not just an Infusionsoft tool. I believe they also integrate with a handful of the other platforms out there. So feel free to check it out. But what I love about plus this is how responsive their team is. I’m the type of guy where, like, as I’m using a feature, I’ll be like, oh, it’d be great if that you had this or if that could do that. And so I suggested in their user group, and they’re a small enough company that they can respond oftentimes quickly and add these tweaks and modifications. So I love the way that they are pivoting, that they’re solving problems in real time and that they’re they’re.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:00] It like any tool, right, you want to measure the morality of it, but plus this makes it super easy because it only takes two or three of their features to justify whatever you’re paying.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:10] They have a 40 dollars a month package or eighty dollars a month package. And I find it’s a no brainer, especially because.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:18] Every feature that they offer.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:21] Is it solves the problem, like they wouldn’t often feature if they didn’t do anything right.

Chris Davis: [01:00:26] But it’s not it’s there because somebody or a bunch of people more likely, we’re like, hey, we would really love it if we could X, Y, Z. And so plus this kind of steps in and has this collection there. So plus this is is a is a must have. I’m a Zappia fan boy. I didn’t, I didn’t get it for a while. I was like, man, I’m like, what am I missing on. Everybody’s talking about Zappia.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:48] But you have to remember I worked at Infusionsoft so I was hypersensitive to the like another add on conversation.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:58] Like everybody, small businesses are oftentimes making ends meet and have to be budget conscious. And so recommending additional tools was something that I avoided because I wanted to. That’s actually part of why I have the expertise I do with the native software. It’s just from like forcing myself to try to make everything work in house, use all the native functionality. But Zappia is a is an essential integration and it goes well beyond its power with keep. It has internal functionality. I use it for all of my social syndication. When I publish a new blog post or new YouTube video, I’ve got Zepps set up that go to all my social channels not just once, but at a cascading interval so that they get more mileage out of them. Yeah, I yeah, I just can’t say enough good things about ZAPORA. I do. I did. I recently added this where I use Zappia to create certificates for all my courses using Google slides. So I set up a Google Slide template. And then when somebody finishes of course using the plus this video tracking, I know that they’ve completed the course. It takes the information create post. Zappia uses Zappia to create a new template from that Google Slide, which can merge in their name and the date and my signature.

Greg Jenkins: [01:02:17] And then it exports that that slide as a PDF, which I can store in a custom field on that contact record and ship it off to them. It’s obvious, and that’s it’s totally not necessary.

Greg Jenkins: [01:02:30] But I get it. It’s not it’s that it’s not doing anything. They’re not expecting it.

Chris Davis: [01:02:36] But it’s a nice to have it. And automation can you know, when you get to that point where you’re Pastorelli and you’re talking about like, what else could I be doing? Right. Think about the ways it could enrich your customer experience. And some of those things are non-essential, but those are what differentiate your brand and what people talk about. Man, though, Zappia would be tool number two. And you know what?

Greg Jenkins: [01:03:01] A couple of years ago, I would have said Wistia as tool number three. There’s other video hosting platforms out there. But I love the tools Wistia has. I’ve actually been leaning more and more into YouTube just from like a strategy perspective. You know, YouTube gets the the the search rankings and and reach that way. So I have been using less of Wistia, but I’ll say I’ll go with Access Allai, which is my membership Munyon and I love Natalie.

Greg Jenkins: [01:03:27] Yeah, Natalie and Robyn. They are great. That’s another. This is. I don’t know, I mean, we live in the most connected day and age there ever has been. That is true every time I say it.

Greg Jenkins: [01:03:41] But more and more I find that people want to do business with people, with businesses that we know and that we feel good about. And I have nothing bad to say about the team at Memorium or Customer Hub or some of the other membership platforms out there. But I just really like the accessibility and their community and what they stand for and what they’re about. And and it helps that access. Ally has built in e-learning tools, progress tracking and tracking in some of their own features there. So it works really well. But Access Ally is just a personal choice. The the value it offers is a, you know, a membership experience and it works with WordPress. But there are others that are standalone and that creates a private environment where I can post content for people and their access dictates what they do and don’t see which. And it fits naturally with my business model. But I think it’s also I think more businesses have an opportunity to use something like that than they may realize. I would I would argue most businesses could have a customer center or a billing center or a training center that helps empower their users.

Chris Davis: [01:04:51] Greg, this is a whole nother episode. I’m taming myself Not to go there. That’s all right. You know what? I’m I’m going to say it. bold statement alert. I feel that platforms the misinterpretation and sometimes it’s from their marketing platforms like KJB really missed that point. You know what I’m saying? Like is that membership for customers in that access via levels integrated with your CRM, they just miss it. And again, no knock against KJB and KJB users. I just want to job. Yeah, absolutely. It’s just a different it’s a different experience. Right. If if I’m looking for that very course friendly, you know, go through achievement base, go ahead, use KJB. But if I want to make KJB look good, is it beautiful templates. Right. But if I want to give a more comprehensive experience beyond coarsest right and restrict content, give my people somewhere to go to do some training. But whatever the case, I’m beyond that. So it’s OK to keep these platforms in their respective most, although they don’t necessarily want to be boxed in, I guess.

Chris Davis: [01:06:01] Yeah. You know, I get it. So Greg, I can’t thank you enough man. Again, we can go on for four hours, not just minutes, but hours.

Greg Jenkins: [01:06:09] I am I am not known for my brevity. Yes. I appreciate you indulging me.

Chris Davis: [01:06:14] Yeah. Yes. No, this was good. And I know it’s going to be highly valuable. People have heard something there like how do I learn how to do that? Wait a minute. Rewind. You will probably need to listen to this one a couple of times. And if you were listening to it at two X because you know these podcasts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You might want to slow it down because right in the middle there was some there was a lot of nuggets, you know, dropped there. So if somebody wants to get connected with you, Greg, learn about your community or just stay connected in any capacity, where should they go?

Greg Jenkins: [01:06:45] Yeah, monkeypodmarketing.com, you’ll find it all there. If you are specifically looking for the community, you could go to Ogmembership.com.

Greg Jenkins: [01:06:55] I learned like a year ago, I learned how to buy a domain that just redirect it wherever I want. So I went out a little. I’m going to dig friends. You get by all by yourself about it. But I am not hard to get a hold of.

Greg Jenkins: [01:07:07] And I love these types of conversations. So feel free to drop me a line on any of the social channels. Reach out if you have questions about anything we talked about here. But yeah, this was an absolute blast. Chris, I can’t thank you enough, man.

Chris Davis: [01:07:19] Yes, thank you, Greg. We’ll have the links, of course, in the show notes and Greg, I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time and all good. My pleasure.

Chris Davis: [01:07:28] Thank you for listening to this episode, and I guess maybe I should have done a better job warning you on the front end whenever Greg and I get together, that’s that’s what I was really excited about. It’s like we have so many conversations, whether it’s on Facebook Messenger, email, whatever capacity that I feel, so much value comes out. So I’m I’m pleased that we were able to capture that. And when you just think of a lot of the things that Greg said, though, we are focused on his expertise and his expertise in his in the tools that he uses, can you not see how it expands beyond that? How a lot of what he was saying is just the responsible approach to automating a business? We can never overlook that. We can never overlook that there is a responsible approach. There is a way to do this that that we’re talking about right there. There’s a way to do it to where you you still are highly effective, right? You are you’re still highly effective, but highly authentic. And you’re not erroneously leaning on your technology to do something that is your responsibility to do and instruct it to do. All right. So who needed to hear this? Who’s that Infusionsoft user that’s a little frustrated right now. They just maybe they just need to recalibrate. Their approach may be wrong. The Infusionsoft keep what is it, Infusionsoft by keep maybe the tool for them.

Chris Davis: [01:08:58] And maybe there maybe this episode helps shape things up and put things in perspective. Maybe they’ve been thinking of leaving Infusionsoft and going elsewhere, whoever that is, send them this episode, send them this episode. So whatever decision they make, it can be an informed decision. OK, here at Automation Bridge, remember, we just want you to choose the right tools for your strategy in your business growth. All right. So if you found value in today’s episode, now is the time. This is my invitation for my first time listeners. Come join the all systems, go family. How do you join it? There’s a seat at the table. How do you sit down, go into your your podcasting app. Wherever you get podcasts, hit the subscribe button while you’re at it. Level five star rating and review. If you are confused in any capacity, how do I leave a review where we’ve got you covered? Go to automation bridge dotcom forward review and we will take we will handle the capture and posting of your testimonial for you or your five year five star rating and review for you. All right. Here at Automation, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. These are people who go beyond the principles taught in digital marketing and really focus on those automated systems, starting with marketing and sales, and goes beyond and reaches every operational system in a business to help them scale by maintaining a small footprint, a small human or a small payroll footprint.

Chris Davis: [01:10:33] OK, and you need there is an approach in a way to do this. And that is what we train automation service providers on, because businesses need marketers who can handle who can properly navigate automation by taking marketing technology, your business strategy, aligning it with the goals and putting software to work, employing software for the responsible deployment, the deployment of automated systems for your rapid growth. OK, so if that’s you, if you when you listen to Greg and I talk on this podcast, it feels like you should be at the table with us. You have stories to tell. You’ve got marketing battlefield scars to show. Right. This is you you’re that you would have fit right into this conversation. That is a great indicator that you may make a good automation service provider. So do me a favor. Go to automationbridge.com/ASP and take the next steps to talk to myself or someone on my team to assess if you will be a good fit for our upcoming program launch to become an automation service provider. The need for for automated service providers has has never been greater. It’s never been greater. And we are working in various capacities to equip as many people and businesses with the resources to properly.

Chris Davis: [01:12:04] Let me say navigate, let me say properly leverage, leverage the tools of technology and automation for their business success. I don’t want it to be a question mark or a confusing point anymore, OK.

Chris Davis: [01:12:18] Lastly, if you enjoy Greg as a guest and you have someone else who would make a great guest for the All Systems Go podcast or you yes, you listener to you. We’ll make a great guest for the All Systems Go podcast, go to Automation Bridgecom/podcast. There you can submit your information or your referral information and they will have an opportunity to come on the podcast and be able to interview them and give some insight to whatever their expertise or area of profession is.

Chris Davis: [01:12:48] Right. All the show notes and podcasts are accessible at Automation Bridge Dotcom for its last podcast.

Chris Davis: [01:12:55] You can subscribe there and listen to all and any other episodes at your leisure. So until next time I see you online automate responsible.

ASG 071 – Removing the Confusion from the Customer Journey feat. Greg Jenkins

Chris 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 cell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of Automation Bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis: [00:00:32] Welcome to the All Systems Go podcast, I’m your host, Chris Al 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. And in this episode, I have Greg Jenkins, the founder of Monkey Pod Marketing Marketing, where he focuses on empowering entrepreneurs through online courses and educational resources. More specifically, Greg helps keep an Infusionsoft. Users understand their marketing software in a different way and at a higher level to maximize the return on their monthly investment. And prior to Monkey Pod. Greg worked at Infusionsoft as a curriculum developer and a lead trainer for Unit You Infusionsoft University. And that is really what how our paths crossed is our mutual respect and love for educating the marketplace. Specifically to to marketing automation. And Greg, everybody, for this episode, he’s he’s here to remove the confusion from crafting the customer journey. OK, there’s a lot that goes in to making sure that your customer journey is personalized and effective. And we’re going to have we’re going to have a candid conversation about Infusionsoft. It’s it’s unfortunate monicker that that the marketplace gave it and how to achieve success. Anyhow, I think that somebody from Infusionsoft is the appropriate person to talk about removing confusion. And you are probably already know where I’m going with this. But I say this in a podcast, and I just want to make sure that when we’re all making fun of and, you know, we’re competing and even as users, we’re selecting various software and maybe one doesn’t do something, another does. Maybe one is just too hard to use.

Chris Davis: [00:02:29] At the end of the day, Infusionsoft has done something no other platform has done. We talk about that in the episode and we give them their just due and their respect. OK, so I’m excited to have Greg on who I have met only a handful of well, actually, not even a handful of times once I met Greg once in person. But some people, you know, you meet, they have a lasting impact on you. And I would consider Greg beyond just an associate, but a friend. I trust his judgment. He’s got a strong, thriving community of Infusionsoft professionals. And again, I couldn’t think of anybody better than him to come on and really talk about how do we go beyond the confinements and complications of software at times and craft the the perfect or ideal customer journey. All right. So before we jump into the podcast, if you’re new, make sure you listen to this episode in its entirety and then leave a five star rating in review. After you subscribe, listen to it. See what we’re about. I promise you, I promise to over deliver. OK, so whatever your expectation is, I’m here to exceed it. And you can show me appreciation by subscribing and leaving a five star rating in review. If you are a listener to the podcast and you’re not subscribed yet, please do so. We’re an Apple podcast. Google podcast. We’re on YouTube. You could subscribe there, make sure that you are subscribed and you leave a five star rating and review. It is greatly appreciated. So let’s jump into the podcast with myself and Greg and let’s discuss this customer journey.

Chris Davis: [00:04:02] Greg, welcome to the podcast. Always you know what, I can’t say glad to have you on because that will be too small, Greg, like it’s always, always good to connect. And I’m so happy to be able to have a conversation with you because we always are connecting and engaging in some way. But now everybody gets to see it. Everybody gets to glean from it how it is.

Greg Jenkins: [00:04:29] It’s a privilege. I am a bona fide fan of of of the show of Chris Davis.

Greg Jenkins: [00:04:37] But yeah, man, I feel you. I’m sure I’m sure you get this right, I, I feel like the word excited has been spoiled because every marketer is like I’m so excited to tell you about, you know, whatever it is. And it’s like, no, but I’m actually excited to record this. How do I how do I tell you that it’s not hyperbole.

Chris Davis: [00:04:56] Right. How do I find another word? You know, so I I’m looking forward to this. And the listeners may not have a clue on what a treat this episode is going to be. And I’m looking forward to diving in and maybe hopefully I’ll be able to even put you on the spot. Like that’s the goal is like, can I can I can I shake Greg? You know, you’re so rooted in what you know, so that that that’d be interesting. But start from the beginning. Let everybody know a little bit about yourself and your business.

Greg Jenkins: [00:05:31] Sure man So my brand is is monkey pod monkey pod marketing and I serve small businesses specifically keep users. And I do it through education and training, which is part of what sets my brand aside is is really focusing on helping those who want to, you know, want to understand the strategies that they’re operating in their business and the technology that support those strategies, because there are plenty of small businesses successful and otherwise who don’t care how it gets done. They just want results and they’re, you know, they’re outsourcing that. So I sort of the the desires, the people who do have an appetite for that and, you know, have their hands on the keyboard, their sleeves rolled up and are pressing the buttons themselves. My introduction to entrepreneurship. Well, I grew up in a in a small business, entrepreneurial family. But I ran a business right after college servicing and installing draft beer systems. That was my life birth into the small business world, a typical local service provider. You know, we had accounts that I would visit. We would do like a cleaning every three weeks for some accounts for weeks, rather. So it was a subscription kind of model and it was entirely manual.

Greg Jenkins: [00:06:42] You know, my CRM was a notepad of the center console of the van where I would like circle somebody’s name if they called, like, check it off if I called it back. And it was a very. Yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:06:53] Systematic, then great.

Chris Davis: [00:06:55] Well, to me, I mean, I hesitate to describe it as a system, knowing what I know now.

Greg Jenkins: [00:07:02] But there was a process. Yeah, there always is. Yeah. And then I you know, twenty five, twenty six years old and I found myself like burnt out. I found my because it was, it was like to to grow the business. I only saw one path which was just work more hours like go knock on more doors and get more accounts. And if they had a draft beer system we could, you know, clean it or add lines for them. If they didn’t have a draft beer system, we could install it. But the problem with with with getting new accounts is then you have to do the work. You have to you know, you have to go fulfill on it. So and I found myself in this the cycle that I didn’t know how to break out of there. I didn’t like the path forward, the path for growing the business just didn’t appeal to me. It just sounded draining. And I started to build a team. But then I found myself managing those people. And yeah. So I eventually my business partner bought me out. I decided I needed a change. And I, I in that transition, I moved to Arizona where a friend of mine said, hey, you should check out Infusionsoft as as the company was called at the time. And I said, screw you, I’m a beer guy.

Greg Jenkins: [00:08:12] Not I’m not a technology guy. Why would I look at this nerdy Infusionsoft company? And then a couple of months later, I had a couple of months later, while I was still unemployed, I finally I was like, well, maybe I’ll go. Maybe I’ll go check out this website. And Chris, I tell you, man, I was like doing preliminary research to see if this was a company that I might be interested in or might that there might be an opportunity for me at and watching, like the even the simple videos on their website. I was like, holy cow. This would have changed my life, this would have changed that business, and this is what I was missing. But the interesting thing is that I didn’t know to ask for it. Like, sure, I didn’t understand that there were you know, that there were email follow up systems that I could put my clients on a recurring billing schedule and not have to drive to their restaurant to collect a physical check. Like those were the things that I was doing. And the idea of like optimizing meant like finding a faster route to get to the restaurant that like, you know, finding a digital way to to process that transaction. So my lens was just underdeveloped at the time and it rapidly changed once I discovered Infusionsoft.

Greg Jenkins: [00:09:21] And I did get a job there, onboarding new clients and working with them. And the light bulb light bulbs, plural, kept kept going off, as I saw, you know, the role that that automation and systems and technology could play for. Simplifying or multiplying what a small business is about, because my my business would have been a perfect candidate for what these tools offer, and so it became kind of a a charge of mine to help as many small businesses as possible avoid those same. You know, potholes and pitfalls, because I had I had the scar tissue. I’ve got to kind of do it at myself.

Chris Davis: [00:10:02] Yeah, I love it, man. And it brings me back to my entry into Infusionsoft. And, you know, I had my introduction into business. I think I’ve said this before. It was through Internet marketing.

Chris Davis: [00:10:17] I had people are shocked. I had no clue how to use the Internet, man. Sure, I was proficient in blogspot dot com. And that meant I knew how to follow blogs, like I knew how to find them and follow them and check them to know what an RSS feed was when you knew how to click subscribe.

Chris Davis: [00:10:34] Yeah, yeah. I was like, what is that?

Chris Davis: [00:10:36] But you’re bored at a corporate job every morning I had a roster of blogs that I would check. It was like my newsletter, I mean, my newspaper. That’s what it was. And I just remember office autopilot being the only tool that people ever talked about. Now report. And I had a couple friends or I should say acquaintances that I met through these programs that I enrolled in. I needed help. So I started to do that. And I didn’t even know that was automation at the time. I just thought, oh, this is software that you need in your business. It’s business. Software is what I thought. And I remember when I was looking at trying, you know, I’m a web developer trying to make money. I’m like, where is the money? I have to differentiate myself. Everybody’s a web developer. There’s people’s literally. Graig, there was one person whose grandmother recommended a thing for them to download.

Chris Davis: [00:11:26] And I said, you know what? The day I’m competing, no knock against grandma. The grandmothers can be technically savvy. Perhaps this one was it. I knew this one wasn’t Greg. It was different, man. Just like, you know what? I need to set myself apart. And I did not know how to sew, actually. And what I want to talk about today, actually, the term confusion solved is what attracted me to Infusionsoft, because my thinking was this. If everybody’s confused and doesn’t know how to use it and I learn how to use it, thus I become Poyet like I become valuable. I had no clue about the company, the back story where they were located. I just knew it was this green looking logo when this in the website was antiquities. Nothing near what we see. I keep now. I mean, if we could just roll back the hands of time to what Infusionsoft look like back then. Oh my gosh. But I was like, OK, I’ma do it. And then there was the two thousand dollar starter fee.

Chris Davis: [00:12:27] And I was like, oh, maybe, maybe I won’t do it yet. How serious. Ebbie. Right, right.

Chris Davis: [00:12:33] But back then, Greg, I have to tell you, man, it was a badge of honor to be able to pay that two thousand dollars Kickstarter fee eventually and then be paying three hundred dollars a month. Right. Like it was that alone was like, hey, look, I’m an Infusionsoft user. So you knew, oh, that person is invested three thousand dollars and they’re paying at least three hundred dollars a month.

Chris Davis: [00:12:53] They must be swaggy, right? Yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:12:56] And now look, man, go ahead. If a startup tries that now. Oh, my goodness. You’re done before you begin. So for somebody like yourself, man, again, I think you’re the one of the most decorated and the only reason why I say one, because I don’t know everybody. Right. So even some space. But for me, in my personal sphere, you’re the most decorated Infusionsoft expert, I’ll say. And I think what you you mentioned earlier is what really sets you apart is the fact that you go from an educational perspective. And so many people, myself included back then, Greg, we were just trying to monetize monetize your ignorance on the platform. You don’t know how to do it. Pay me to do it and I’ll do it and I’ll make money, money doing it. So how Infusionsoft rightfully so and rightfully so. Whatever your disposition is, there is the term confusion soft? It’s been.

Chris Davis: [00:13:53] I feel like the click funnels group has maybe thrown it around a little more reckless or right. They may have fanned fanned the flames. So yeah, you get what I’m saying.

Chris Davis: [00:14:04] Like, yeah, OK, I see what you’re saying, but you know, but at the end of the day, we have like we have to be honest in what Infusionsoft bickie, you know, what they have done for the small business space has never been done.

Chris Davis: [00:14:20] They revolutionized space and equipped us with software that, as you mentioned, we didn’t even know we needed, you know, so as many marks they get as making it confusing, confusing. And this doesn’t that it has fueled the success of countless businesses. Man. And I don’t want anybody new to the space to come in and slander that name without the scars and bruises. You you know, what you can’t say can thrive off if you just learned about if you know it as keep right. And if you just learn about it two to three years ago, you can’t say those. Words, you don’t know what that you know, you don’t know what that means, you haven’t you haven’t gone through the the flames, right. So in your experience, greg what I want to do is there’s Infusionsoft users listening. There’s maybe other platform users that are looking at Infusionsoft. What would what would your tips be in making, you know, this term confusion of breaking that, breaking away from that? How do we demystify how to leverage the true power of Infusionsoft bickie?

Chris Davis: [00:15:26] What would you what approach and steps would you give people?

Greg Jenkins: [00:15:30] So there’s a quote or a rebuttal that you’ll hear tossed around from the the Infusionsoft faithful, which is like it’s a it’s a lousy carpenter who blames his hammer. Right. And it’s interesting because, you know, regularly I hear complaints from frustrated small businesses who who are stuck on something and it feels confusing to them. And it doesn’t help that, you know, confusion and confusion. Right. So but but that that situation, I mean, with the exception of the rhyming, is not unique to Infusionsoft. It’s not unique to keep that exists in every community or every every user base for any any platform to some extent. Right. There’s different things that people get picked up by. But what I like to remind people of is that. This software and my experience is predominantly with Infusionsoft, that’s where I’m kind of playing at my flag and the audience that I serve. But I think the advice that I’m going to give is is agnostic of platform.

Greg Jenkins: [00:16:45] I think there’s this.

Greg Jenkins: [00:16:48] Challenge that small business owners have where they look at a software, they think like this is the software that I use, so therefore it’s for me.

Greg Jenkins: [00:16:57] And the reality is there are dozens or hundreds of business models in different industries, in different parts of the world of different shapes and sizes who all use that platform as well. And so if this tool is so robust or so diverse that it can serve all of those types of people and all of those types of businesses, then there will be features and use cases that aren’t applicable to you. And so it becomes it becomes a game of like, how do I look at this set of one hundred features, let’s just say one hundred for round numbers and figure out which, you know, twenty five I need for my business and like that’s it kind of bends our brains a little bit because, you know, the consumer in us, the, the thrifty consumer in us wants to like wring every drop of value out of the software.

Greg Jenkins: [00:17:52] But the trap you fall into is you start clicking on stuff and using features that like aren’t intended for you and they don’t play a role in your business. And that is where I think it adds a lot of confusion because you find yourself going down these rabbit holes trying to try just to use the features for feature sake, because they’re they’re not because they solve a specific problem in your business or not, because they add an element to the experience that you’re creating with your customers.

Greg Jenkins: [00:18:17] So rather than approaching it from like a software like feature forward sort of perspective, it’s really about defining first, what does your business need?

Greg Jenkins: [00:18:28] And I actually recommend that people like write up the job description like a actually like almost as if you are hiring an employee, like, what am I hiring keep to do what am I hiring active campaign to do, what is its job in my company. And you write up. Well, it’s going to manage context. It’s going to help you follow up with new leads. It’s going to X, Y or Z. And then and then you go about finding the right tool, selecting the right tool that does that fills that role. Right. And if it’s Infusionsoft, if it’s keep great, but it may not be it may be that another platform will actually lead pipe drive. And that’s the thing that gives me what I’m after.

Greg Jenkins: [00:19:07] But until you have that clear job description, it becomes, you know, it can be really challenging to to explore your software because you don’t have a specific, you know, roadmap for how you’re planning to adopt it. So that’s where I recommend people start, is like getting clear first on the objectives that this is going to play for your business and then remembering that like. You know, nobody said you have to use 100 percent of this software.

Chris Davis: [00:19:34] Right, man, there’s this unspoken, like pressure on people to, like, use all these features. But like, nobody’s telling you to do that.

Greg Jenkins: [00:19:42] And I wish you could I wish you could, like, give people the blinders to only grab the things that they need or reframe it. Like it’s not about using a horrible set of the features. It’s about using one hundred percent of what your brand needs at 100 percent is personal. It is like it is your own like section of that pie. And if you can focus on that, you’re going to you’re exponentially more likely to succeed than starting the other way.

Chris Davis: [00:20:06] Greg, man, I’m loving I’m loving this because, you know, I’ve always viewed it because because, like you said, it’s not specific to Infusionsoft. You could get lost in any of these platforms and then they don’t have to be all at once. Right. And I you know, I’ve always looked at it as, you know, these platforms become the buffet to the starving entrepreneurs.

Chris Davis: [00:20:28] Right. And what is the entrepreneur starving of success and just want success. And they think they’re you know, everybody’s gone to the buffet on an empty stomach. All of the food looks good. There’s stuff there’s stuff that, you know, you don’t like. And truth be told, after you’ve eaten it and you’ve satisfied that initial hunger, you’re like, why did I put that in my body? Right. But they come into it and they’re starving for some form of digital success. All of these features look good and they think they have to fill their plate with all of these features and then go home and then use them all when it’s like no one’s gluttons.

Chris Davis: [00:21:04] Yeah, everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:21:08] So it’s to your point, how do I. Because it’s twofold, right, Greg? One is how do I define just those features that I need and then the discipline to be satisfied with just those. Right. And not get tempted. Like maybe I should be using more because there’s some guilt. I see some people have words just like I’m not even using the platform to his capacity. So even when I was an active campaign, people will call and say they would apologize. I know I’m not using all of the studies and I would have to stop them and say, listen, as long as you’re using the features that are successful, you’re using enough. You do not have to try to use everything people shy away from.

Greg Jenkins: [00:21:49] I think my impression is that a lot of people shy away from like the ahli conversation, measuring our life from our tools. Right. But but it is if you treat it like an employee. Right, then what am I paying this employee? And, you know, there are versions of keep that cost much less than three hundred dollars a month. But let’s say it’s three hundred dollars a month. OK, so you’re paying thirty six hundred dollars. Thirty nine hundred dollars a year. I’m I’m not a math allergist, but you’re paying a couple thousand dollars a year for this employee. And so the question is like, was it worth it? Is it paying a positive ahli? And if you’re not using any of the features, it’s probably not worth it right now. But where is that break even point? And like you remember, this employee you’re hiring, it doesn’t take days off. It works 24 hours a day. It doesn’t need, you know, like like that’s part of the equation here. So it should be a financially responsible investment.

Greg Jenkins: [00:22:44] You’re you’re hiring this tool to play a job for your business and you’re paying it hopefully much less than you would be paying an employee to do a similar role. And there, you know, the nature of automation is that it doesn’t get tired. Right. So you can load it up and you can you can pour more into it without necessarily I mean, depending on your your what your version limits are, you might need to like level up the number of contacts so the number of emails are or the different add ons. But the point here is that like do the math. Right, let’s figure out like where does that. All right. I come from? And you might find that you launched, you know, a single automation. You launch one campaign that nurtures people after and after their consult and drives them towards joining your your membership. Right. Yeah. And if that.

Greg Jenkins: [00:23:33] Urns are alive for you if that, like, pays for the subscription than anything else you do with this platform is gravy, right? Is icing on the cake.

Greg Jenkins: [00:23:44] But there’s but people come at it from the other perspective where they’re like, but I’m not this, that or the other thing. And it’s like, well, OK, that’s just opportunity. But my recommendation for people is to, like, decide where that point of return will be, where that break even point is with your software and when you get started or now if if you got started years ago and never did this, do it now, like focus on, you know, measuring like is this software paying for itself? Because without fail, whether it’s keep or anything else, there will come a time where you are, like, frustrated with it or you’re disappointed or there’s a bug and you’re like questioning this investment. And the way that you, like, take emotion out of that equation is by going to the ahli and being like, well, you know, as frustrated as I am by this instance, it’s still made me, you know, ten grand last month and I spent three hundred dollars on it. So, like, here’s here’s the here’s the tradeoff, man.

Chris Davis: [00:24:38] That’s so powerful, Greg, because you’re right, that ROIC conversation is, you know, why not had because that that same onus that you’re putting on the technology is really yours right now.

Chris Davis: [00:24:53] I don’t want to own responsibility of success now.

Chris Davis: [00:24:57] I just want it to do it. I want to pay for it, do what somebody said and be successful. Why do why do I have to define what success looks like? Why do I have to measure that? Why do I have to set objectives that don’t just keep my my my people alive, but my technology, too? Right.

Greg Jenkins: [00:25:16] It’s it’s tough, Chris.

Greg Jenkins: [00:25:17] I am a I’m a people person and I believe the best in people. And that’s part of why I love the education space is because people are like you could tell when they have an appetite for it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:25:31] You could see when the light bulb goes on and it’s really rewarding. And there are also plenty of people who are just looking for a crutch, they’re just looking for a scapegoat, and it’s it’s you know, I think that if you really dug in with a lot of the people who are complaining about confusion software, it is not performing, you would discover that there’s a an underlying issue with their business model or their third deliverable or the experience that they’re creating and that the problem, you know, didn’t go away when they switched the way from Infusionsoft and it probably existed before they adopted Infusionsoft. And they’re just they’re they’re projecting it onto the this the software Luly. But, you know, you can trace that back to in most instances, you know, misaligned expectations. Like what who when you signed up, like what were you hoping this would do? And, you know, how how was that expectation set from from the onset?

Chris Davis: [00:26:32] Yeah. Yeah. And I want to talk about I want to ask you about some of your most successful campaigns and Infusionsoft, just to give our listeners some insight. But before that, how do you you know, it’s one of the hardest things to do is untrain, right.

Chris Davis: [00:26:51] Get people to unlearn these these misguided approaches to not just the software, Greg. Right. Just marketing automation in general, marketing and sales automation. In your experience as you’ve been educating it and really and championing being the forerunner.

Chris Davis: [00:27:11] How about that? Yeah. And that word won’t come out. I think that all the time. Right. And leading with education, because that’s an intentional choice. Greg, I know you. I know your business and I know your brand. At any point you can switch it to where the focus is revenue based. Right. Like, hey, look, this is more leads more, more and more clients. But you intentionally choose to educate in this path, in this path.

Chris Davis: [00:27:35] What are you finding are some of the key things that help people unlearn this this mandated broad stroke approach that gets them in a position where they’re approaching the tool incorrectly, they’re blaming the software. How do you get them to change that approach, man?

Greg Jenkins: [00:27:56] Yeah, I think I describe education and you’ll you’ll be able to appreciate this as the get rich slow gig, I, I, I chose I chose education because well No.

Greg Jenkins: [00:28:11] One, because there were fewer people doing it right. Like, I recognized a need that Infusionsoft users were having to like adopt the software. And there is a learning curve with it because not not necessarily because the software is complicated though that’s a fair criticism, but because small business is complicated. And so understanding the parallels between your business and the software, where they overlap, where they can serve one another and where they shouldn’t is just like a it’s an intricate conversation. So that’s that’s where I plan on my flag. But the second prong of of education was that I knew I could reach more people. Whereas if you go like the service provider route, if you’re working with clients one on one, like your bandwidth is finite. And in the education space, ostensibly your reach is is infinite. And so that was really appealing to me, was knowing I could I could serve a much broader audience, create a bigger impact that way. But your question was like you’re fighting against these misconceptions, these myths that are being perpetuated still. Like there’s yes, I think there are fewer people like you and I helping people understand. You actually had an episode recently. It’s not about the technology. Right. Which was great. And I will give your listeners a plug to go listen to that one once you’re done here. OK? All right. I don’t get it. But the way that I combat those is I mean, it’s not easy and it’s ongoing.

Greg Jenkins: [00:29:35] So I’m constantly looking for new ways to shine the light on that to help people come to that realization. But what I have what I have distilled my learnings down to is a process that I call the one conversation, and I call it that because if I could have only one conversation with any small business owner on the planet, then this is the conversation I would have. And there’s a bunch of terms for it. I’m actually kind of excited to share this with you, Chris, because I’m sure you’ll have your own vernacular, your own way of thinking about this. But effectively, it challenges a business owner to look at like their product or whatever it is that you sell. And if you sell multiple things, just start with one of them as the you don’t as this central piece on a timeline. So extend a line out in either direction from that. And you have everything leading up to that product. Then you have the actual purchase of that product and then you have everything that comes afterward. And the composition of those three things is, is your customer journey, right? You’ve got the pre purchase, you’ve got the purchase experience and you’ve got the post purchase. And just from there you can see light bulbs going off for people.

Greg Jenkins: [00:30:42] They’re like, oh yeah, after the purchase, you know, because so many people I think you talk about this one as well in the delivery episode you did.

Greg Jenkins: [00:30:52] But so many people like they treat the sale as the destination and they forget to design the experience. They want their customers to have it. It’s just we’ve all experienced that as a consumer as well, where you buy something and then you just it’s just the cliff.

Greg Jenkins: [00:31:06] There’s crickets. Yeah. Yeah. So I challenge people to say, all right, draw that timeline out. Right. And then start to insert start to identify what are the milestones that then then represent progress along it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:31:21] And maybe it’s just like maybe it’s just three, maybe it’s like, OK, they joined our our webinar or they requested a quote or they attended an event and then they bought and then they bought again or joined our membership group or joined our partner program or told a friend. Right. So maybe there’s only three milestones, but the more milestones you can get, the more granular you can get, the the better. And it becomes about those gaps in between them. It forces you to start looking at, OK, well, what paves the path from milestone one to milestone two for milestone two to milestone three or three to four? And what I’ve what I think a lot of people find is that there are.

Greg Jenkins: [00:32:07] Like, very clear dropoffs where they either have no follow up in place or they have inadequate, insufficient follow up, or we’re just like it’s disjointed because it was designed at a different time and now, like, the things around it don’t fit.

Greg Jenkins: [00:32:24] And so what you’re looking for is not just like, do we have something planned for each one of these stages, but are they cohesive? Is there like a continuous thread that guides our leads and prospects all the way through this this experience?

Greg Jenkins: [00:32:39] And then, you know, the the one conversation kind of evolves like, OK, so you got your milestones, you got your bridges that kind of span the chasms in between. Now, where would automation enhance this? Like where can we use automation to lighten the lift so that if we dial up the traffic, we’re not going to feel overwhelmed, we’re not going to, like, fall apart, struggling to fulfill for these clients or what have you. But where could we use automation? Not just.

Greg Jenkins: [00:33:07] Not not necessarily to take people out of the equation, but to allow.

Greg Jenkins: [00:33:13] Our human effort to be used more strategically, right, because that’s I think that’s a misconception about automation as people think it means like less humans and it doesn’t have to. It only means automation only means cold and robotic if it’s done poorly. Right. If it’s done well, it allows you to focus on the things that are the best use of your time. And if that’s like, you know, having an onboarding phone call in person with people, then keep doing that. If it’s writing a handwritten thank you card, then keep doing that right. I think that there’s an important I think it’s important to retain some aspects of the human intervention here, but to use automation so that you’re controlling where it is so that you’re not creating bottlenecks or pinch points for yourself.

Chris Davis: [00:33:59] Yeah, I can’t tell you how many times I hear the phrase I know I should be automating this or I know, like, this could be automated maybe. Right. Right. And the young me, trust me, the young just I’ve got Infusionsoft just up. I put it on everything. Look, I’m trying to automate my tie my shoelaces. Right. Of course. Yeah, right.

Chris Davis: [00:34:19] But the more mature me respects process now, and when someone makes that statement, it’s like, well, maybe, maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. Perhaps I could. I make the case. Maybe you need less. And they look at me, they’re like, wait a minute. But you’re the you’re the automation professor. Well, why are you not telling me more and more and more? And it’s like, look, man, Grig, what I loved about what you just explained was it’s all about the customer journey. There is nothing more important than that. Journey in automation is an aid to ensure that that journey is as personalized and perfected, not perfect, perfected as possible. And when I think of perfected, you talked about the milestones. When someone is on their way to a milestone and they drop off, automation is there to catch them and just put them right back on the path.

Chris Davis: [00:35:15] That’s it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:35:16] Yeah, it should make it should make them feel led. It should help them understand, like, oh, here’s the thing I’m supposed to do next. Right. As humans, we want to feel confident like I’m where we’re going. And you you as the architect in your business probably know. But does your prospect does your customer at each junction like know what they should be doing next? And that’s that’s where automation, like, can lead them.

Greg Jenkins: [00:35:40] I also want to I want to call out as much as it is about the customer journey, not every element in their journey is customer facing. And that’s important as well as like you can use automation to hold yourself accountable, to remind you of the things you should be doing, to remind your team of the things they should be doing. That’s a big part of like automation. If you only design customer facing interactions or steps like that’s fine. But you’re missing out on, I would argue 50 percent of what is automated happens behind the scenes.

Greg Jenkins: [00:36:14] It still influences their customer experience, but it doesn’t have to be, you know, a touchpoint that goes out directly to them in an automated fashion.

Chris Davis: [00:36:22] Yes, Greg, I have to I’m going to show my hand here one of my favorite things. I’ll tell you what it was and how it evolved. One of my favorite things was internal notifications. I am the king of internal notifications. I will send those before I send an email. Right. Because it lets me know without being logged into my system. What’s happening now in between those milestones are throughout the customer journey. I have what I call indicators of interest. Every action is not important. I don’t care about every action, but I know the actions that are indicators of high interest and I just want to be informed. Right. So I love getting those reminders. When it was just the power of me, it reminded me what to do. And now that I can send them, you know, in and automation do it if or a decision, dive in and determine who gets that notification to keep my team in the loop. It has evolved from email now to slack.

Chris Davis: [00:37:24] Greg, I cannot tell if listeners, if you do not have a dedicated channel for your CRM to send notifications of indicators of interest throughout the customer journey that do do it, do it the. Oh my God, it’s empowering, right?

Greg Jenkins: [00:37:40] It like it it helps you just create a deeper level of insight into your audience, into their engagement, their behavior and into your journey. Like what? Like what patterns am I seeing?

Greg Jenkins: [00:37:51] Because what you made what you may find is that like you thought you had these milestones in order, but people are like jumping around or doing things in a different direction.

Greg Jenkins: [00:37:59] And that’s OK. Right. That is I just I do describe this as a linear process because in a perfect world, like it would be, but rarely is that the case. Right. Your business probably has converging and diverging journey. And that is OK, but if you but each one should be mapped, right, like it shouldn’t end at a cul de sac, it should lead back to an onramp.

Greg Jenkins: [00:38:21] And that main freeway that that guides them somewhere, man, that so that that’s a quotable for you, Greg, we’re going to change and turn into a quote, boys should not lead to a cul de sac.

Chris Davis: [00:38:32] Yeah, right. There’s got to be a plan.

Chris Davis: [00:38:35] It’s got to be a plan. But, you know, get them on that road that that doesn’t end in. And I’ll tell you, man, I you just can’t stress enough that the customer journey is not reactive. Right? It very much is proactive.

Chris Davis: [00:38:52] You know, that somebody takes it. You’re like, oh, how did you do that? What do I do? You know, here’s the thing.

Greg Jenkins: [00:39:00] Listeners with or without your consent or design, your customer, Gerdy, already exists. It is already happening.

Chris Davis: [00:39:09] And so it may as well be something that you are proud of that you intended and that, you know, consistently produces an experience that you are proud of. Right. Like it’s already there that, you know, if you have had customers, they came from somewhere and they had a fulfillment experience, really. Challenges like how? When was the last time you looked at it? What is the last time you, like, poked at it and thought it challenged? Why is why is it that way, you know, who set that up and or did we. Right.

Chris Davis: [00:39:38] Yeah. Greg, let me share this as well. Man, you got me wide open right now. Greg, this is this is fun. All right. One of one of the notifications that I send to to my team in Slack is when somebody becomes a customer. Right. And it’s not about, you know, a celebration, though. We do put emojis and all of that. You celebrate your wins when they become a customer.

Chris Davis: [00:40:00] What I do is I send a notification, the saying what they purchased and to make sure you check their contact record that they use if they use the different email address. It’s it seems so simple, right, Greg? But you already know where I’m going.

Greg Jenkins: [00:40:16] It can disjoined that entire customer experience is if they have a different record with a different email, who’s receiving the promotional emails and they don’t feel responsible for use it to emails that they’re like, well, you should know, right? Yeah, you should know.

Greg Jenkins: [00:40:30] That’s a that’s a tricky one because the system, you know, how do we expect automation to catch that? How does it know there could be more than one Chris Davis. Right. You know, I mean, obviously you’re you’re the favorite, but there could be more of that, right? Yeah. Yeah, it’s great.

Chris Davis: [00:40:45] And it’s the hardest thing. So it there’s no automation. Yeah, that is a manual check.

Greg Jenkins: [00:40:52] Let me read to you let me give you a little aside, a little deep dive for that for the for the technical listeners. I do I do something similar when we have a new member join my monkey pod community. But it’s a it’s an email, not a back channel, which I might steal.

Greg Jenkins: [00:41:10] And it goes to my community manager. Her name’s Jade. And it goes to to me as well. And I not instead of just using like a static emoji, which is fine, I use Zap here to pick from a spreadsheet a list of celebratory gifts.

Greg Jenkins: [00:41:27] So I’ve got 15 different like gifts. It’s like, you know, Michael Scott and Dwight from the office, like partying or celebrating. And so it it randomly chooses one of these gifts and so it cycles it into the email. So each time we get a notification saying there’s a new member, it uses a different gift. And periodically I pop it there to add a few more. But I’ve curated this list of like celebration gifts, knowing that it’s going to grab a different one, which is just the you know, it adds a layer of of of, you know, fun and originality to it where it is automated, but it doesn’t feel uniform. It doesn’t feel repetitive because it cycles through those.

Chris Davis: [00:42:03] I love it. That is amazing. Mannar there. And actually, as you were explaining that, I’m like there’s so many other applications for that same automation.

Greg Jenkins: [00:42:13] Well, I actually got that from a customer of mine who was like, hey, how could I create this thing, you know? And so we started a company wide sales notification. It uses a random rotating gif and we came up with that solution together. And then I went and adopted it myself. Yeah, I love it. Shout out to Brett from crew tracks for helping me come up with that one.

Chris Davis: [00:42:32] Thank you, Brett. And it helps us highlight the point. Guess what? When you were mentioning that, Greg, I did not feel limited, that I can only do it in Infusionsoft. Oh, right. Like I can only do it an active campaign.

Chris Davis: [00:42:46] Only HubSpot. That’s the power when you break free that the tool is mandating what you do and you understand like your goals and what you’re trying to achieve. And you’re willing to say, OK, let me I would like to send a different gif every time. That’s the process. Now make the tool Binta that don’t you dare bend your right to the tool it gets. It’s backwards.

Chris Davis: [00:43:13] And I mentioned it earlier, I want you to share I’ll share one, too, but I want you to share the first one that comes to mind, because I don’t want to say the most. I want to share I want you to share the first one that comes to mind when you think of the campaign that you built that is time tested in this thing, just keeps on working. What is that? That campaign for you, if he’s.

Chris Davis: [00:43:37] Yes. So I will say that I don’t think this is a hot take, at least not not for you. But I think some people may or may not feel this way until they dig in. But I think that there is a disproportionate focus on lead generation and small business.

Chris Davis: [00:43:56] I think, you know, way too far, too many businesses. It’s sexy right there. They’re focused on, you know, landing pages and lead capture and their ad strategy. And yes, that’s important, but it is only a piece of the puzzle. And I think that people have a generally just don’t focus enough, you know, the optimization of, like, how we’re converting leads or how their path to becoming customer or their experience as a customer. So like a tried and true campaign of mine is not a revenue producing campaign, but it is the experience that parallels one of my virtual courses. Right. So the one I’m thinking of specifically the KBE trilogy course, which teaches the foundational concepts and advanced features within the campaign, deltour inside keep.

Greg Jenkins: [00:44:39] And you know, when somebody buys right, it creates access to them and it uses dynamic content, which is a Infusionsoft feature to forecast out the schedule.

Greg Jenkins: [00:44:49] Right. If you bought the course today, if you watch the modules in this order, you’re going to be done by this date and it sort of lays it out for them all relative to when it is set so that it feels like, OK, this agenda has been prepared for me. Right. Here’s where I go. Yeah. And then as a participate in the course, I’m using a third party to a plus this to to update their contact record as they’re watching videos, as they start a video at thirty seconds in and updates it and then as they finish the video so it catches, hey, if they left off in video three of Chapter one, right. They’re going to get a prompt that communicates with them and says, hey, video four is where we tackle this next topic. And I don’t you know, you’re missing out. So it’s constantly leading them because I don’t know, this is maybe this is going to sound kind of basic, but you know that my content is only as valuable as their willingness to consume it. Right. If somebody buys that course and doesn’t do the work, the content doesn’t serve them. And that creates a customer who, through no fault of my own, may resent monkey pod because they didn’t do the work or didn’t fill out it.

Greg Jenkins: [00:45:58] So I use automation to do some handholding there to guide them through that experience, to make sure that it’s prompting them at the right points. And I do give people the option to opt out of that because they can feel a little big brother. And so I want to make sure that they’ve got some some influence, some agency in their experience.

Greg Jenkins: [00:46:16] I think that’s another important layer of automation is like you can automate the majority of use cases, but there will be a minority of customers for whom that is not their preference. And you can account for that by just giving them a choice. Hey, click this button to fast track to the end or click this button to to turn off these notifications, et cetera.

Chris Davis: [00:46:36] Yeah, I always tell people the back the the exit should be just as big, if not bigger.

Chris Davis: [00:46:42] Oh, my gosh. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Greg Jenkins: [00:46:46] Here’s here’s I think content producers. Yeah. At large we sometimes apologize for like.

Greg Jenkins: [00:46:55] You know, if this wasn’t valuable or if you didn’t if this wasn’t a fit or etc., if you’re not interested, we sort of like hedge our conversations and our information that way.

Greg Jenkins: [00:47:04] But the people who aren’t

Greg Jenkins: [00:47:07] for whom it’s not a fit, have to doubt their God, you know, like the only people listening to this podcast right now are interested. They’ve lasted, however, many minutes into this into this interview because they’re interested. So, you know, there’s a piece of me that’s like we’ll double down. The same thing is true for your marketing as your marketing builds. The people who are still reading, still opening, are telling you something by being there and you can use that. But as you said, I think it’s equally important to give them an exit, you know, an escape hatch or a jacket.

Chris Davis: [00:47:36] But we’re not holding anybody hostage. Right. Like we’re four. We’re four. We’re confident in our content. And I love your example. I have one similar campaign, similar than the one that you mentioned that that that I do like, not as customized and personalized as yours. And I would say for me, I’ve got like a qualifier automation, you know, that. And actually the automation is basic because the automation just sends out the emails. But my software, the third party software that I’m using a qualified does the routing.

Chris Davis: [00:48:11] So when you look at it, it doesn’t look they look like disjointed automation’s. Yeah, but if you had if you understood that the third party was doing the routing and sending them man, it’s one of the again two to three emails per outcome.

Chris Davis: [00:48:27] You know, most people who run some form of Cui’s online probably have a similar version, but it’s so intentional. And what I love about it is, you know, personalization is really easy when you know, the previous step, right.

Chris Davis: [00:48:40] Is when you don’t know the previous step because you’re not tracking you’re not intentional with the building out. The journey is where personalization is like, what do I say? Let me just put first name in the subject line.

Greg Jenkins: [00:48:52] You’ve done an episode of this have with you is like the like what you are listening for and how you could use that to impact their experience.

Greg Jenkins: [00:48:59] Yeah. You’re telling it man. It’s it’s. It’s the easiest thing that most people aren’t doing every time your prospects take an action, like you said, not everything needs to be tracked. Yes, but when they click a link to a specific blog post, they’re telling you this is something I’m interested in when they click a link to a specific product. I have a campaign I call actually it’s a series of campaigns. I call it the Mona Lisa. And it starts when people visit any of my sales pages. If you go to any checkout page, but don’t check out. Right, 20, 30 minutes later, it’s just an abandoned car email, I call it. Do you watch Parks and Recreation with that show? Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Jenkins: [00:49:39] So there’s a character in it called Mona Lisa Sapperstein, John Ralph’s sister, who has this line where she’s like money, please, and she’s asking her dad for money.

Greg Jenkins: [00:49:48] So I call it the Mona Lisa because it’s basically just reaching out to that person who, you know, was just on your sales page and saying, hey, you know, would you are you interested? Did you want to check out did did the ice cream man drive by? You got distracted. Right. Let’s get you back to that sales page. But I do. I’ve added layers to it over the years, and I don’t send that promo if they’ve purchased the course before. Right. Because if they visit that page and they already have bought that thing, can you imagine if that sales email shows up? Right. So I add decision logic. And if they are a referral partner of mine, instead of sending them the follow up link, I send them their promotional link. Hey, you were just on this page. Were you looking for this link so that you could recommend it to someone else? Right. So there’s I think there’s just small tweaks like that that you can do based on what you already know about the people in your audience to make their experience feel more. Personal life, and that’s, you know, automation doesn’t like I said, it doesn’t have to be cold and robotic. If it’s done well, it could feel personal and valuable.

Chris Davis: [00:50:49] Yeah, and you said you said something, Greg. I got to do a quick highlight. Then I want to do a two round quick. What is it, fast, fast action, fast answers, whatever, whatever it is. OK, lightning round, the lightning round, the lightning round. You said, I’ve added layers to this automation as time went on and that it it what’s in there subtlely is expertise and experience with not trying to do too much too soon. Too early. Right. I was just sharing with my community earlier today. I said, you know, I’ve I have this new process that I’ve been thinking through and I have an automated automated it because it’s a new process, because that’s my fundamental rule. I don’t automate due process. I need to work it and figure out, fill it out, you know, get a feel for this thing first. But when you say add layers, it just speaks to you know, I’ve said it many times, you know, your first time is your worst time. Don’t try to get it perfect. Most people look at somebody layered solution and that’s what they say I want built. And it’s like, you know what? You didn’t even need Tenley. You needed the core and like one and a half layers and you were fine. But they’re anchored on. I need the whole thing. Give me the whole onion.

Greg Jenkins: [00:52:04] You know, on all those layers launched doesn’t mean finished. And that’s that, you know, don’t let perfection get in the way of progress. There’s, you know, a dozen different ways to say this. But here’s the thing, right? As small business owners, we are, you know, intensely passionate about our our brand and our product and and proud of it, as we should be. Yeah. So we have this I we have this tendency to like want everything to be perfect, buttoned up, dialed in, you know, and just like it finished in order for us to get it out the door. But what I find time and time again is that if you can be willing to get that first version live, the things you were like kind of hoping to add your customers and the data behind their experience will tell you if those are the right next steps.

Greg Jenkins: [00:52:54] Right. Because we have hunches. We have like, oh, I want to add this gift for I want to you know, I want to create this other page and like link them to that.

Greg Jenkins: [00:53:01] But maybe the data will tell you that’s not a priority. And instead, you should put your focus over here. And so launching can really be liberating. It can help you prioritize or you might find that it works as is. And it’s you know, it’s it’s producing what I needed it to produce. Yeah.

Chris Davis: [00:53:17] Yeah. New new layers are necessitated by that contact throughput man. That’s it. People through there see what they’re saying. I agree. Oh, my goodness, man. By the way, everybody, it’s like this every time. Just so you know, I want to do a lightning round to serve our audience even more.

Chris Davis: [00:53:36] Man to two questions. First round when it’s time to build out campaign and Infusionsoft, are you a analogue in some capacity or digital flowchart in some way, or are you using keeps campaign build or because they have the published in draft mode where you can draw it out? Infusionsoft is unique to where you can add notes anywhere on the canvas. So it’s really flexible, free flowing builder. Which approach are you taking?

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:09] I build it in the campaign building, so I was hired at Infusionsoft in March 2012, which coincidentally was the same month the campaign daughter was released.

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:19] So my relationship to an understanding of automation has evolved like in that context. So it is like a second language that I speak or like a comfort zone for me. So that is where I spend most of my time.

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:32] But interestingly, when I collaborate with others, I have to like pull myself out and like go to a Google doc and organize the email, copy it like kind of map things together using I use Drogo a fair bit, which is another like flow chart and kind of tool in the Google suite.

Greg Jenkins: [00:54:51] But you know, I’m a solo person. Well, I do have a community manager, Jade, but that’s a recent hire as of last year. So most of my processes, it’s just you know, it’s just me and I have an idea for a book, for a blog or a YouTube series called Coworking with myself.

Greg Jenkins: [00:55:10] It’s just like conversations with the different, you know, Greg, the CEO, Greg the marketing guy, Greg the social manager, like all these different roles that I play in my business.

Greg Jenkins: [00:55:20] But fortunately, we often agree that different versions of. So I build in the campaign builder and I do use the notes pretty extensively with like here’s the to do list. Here’s where I left things off here. The things that are missing, it’s a fight. It’s just a nice way to keep everything visually represented on the same canvas. And if you you know, if you followed that one conversation example I gave earlier with the the milestones and the bridges in between, the there are direct parallels to Infusionsoft goals and the sequences in between. It’s a really natural transition there. And I know that, you know, the other automation platforms have their their equivalents for that. There’s there’s no technology to support the same type of flow. I just don’t have all the vernacular nailed down for each other.

Chris Davis: [00:56:08] Platform, you know, is good. One of the things that I do enjoy about the campaign builder and Infusionsoft is how text friendly it is. So when I was using it at Lee Pages, those sequences, you weren’t limited to just like two words and like you could really define the sequences before somebody went into them. And then, of course, you couple that with the notes in the fact that the canvas is open is right. It doesn’t snap. Now, granted, back in the day, one day I’ll date myself. You’re back in the day, everybody. There used to be a time where if you had, like a spider web looking automation, you were the part like you were the expert. The more complicated you can post a picture of your of your campaign, the more flex. Yeah. Writers like look at all of these lines. Right. And it since then migrate like the cleanliness that I’m starting to see now out of just everyone across the board. But yeah, man, I remember empty sequences using empty sequences just to make sure that because most of the time you have to use the empty sequence if you want to use the decision time and and kind of skip somebody on if you didn’t want to use a go. So, yeah, that visual representation in and I also like like how it shows where somebody has been right. There is a have been there who’s there now. You know, things of that nature.

Greg Jenkins: [00:57:24] Yeah. It gives you sort of a visual.

Greg Jenkins: [00:57:29] Like understanding of the flow, the path people are taking, which which can can be enlightening if it doesn’t match up with what you may have thought. Right. There’s a quote I’m reaching for and I don’t have it. So I’m hoping you can you can fill me in or maybe it’s not a quote.

Greg Jenkins: [00:57:45] It’s a it’s like a concept I’m picturing like an ark. And and there’s like. Simplistic at the lower left hand corner of that hour and then at the top, there’s like complex and then on the right there’s there’s simple.

Greg Jenkins: [00:58:03] And the point is that simple is on the other side of complexity. Right. Simplistic is like really basic and like in many cases, not valuable. And then there’s like complex where like you’re solving the problem, but you’re doing it in a complex way and that it takes like to push past that another level of expertise to be able to distill it down into simplicity. And that’s where I think we’re talking about with those like spiderweb campaigns.

Greg Jenkins: [00:58:29] Oftentimes as impressive as those may be, they were overkill or they were they were they were a workaround because somebody misunderstood a feature or didn’t. And if you can press on that and push through that complexity, oftentimes you can get to that next level of like, no, like here’s really the same outcome, but done in a in a more manageable, understandable way without compromising the experience we’re providing.

Chris Davis: [00:58:52] Absolutely. All right. Final round of the lightning round. You mentioned one, but if there is any two to three, two to three third party plug ins, you feel like every Infusionsoft user should have No.

Chris Davis: [00:59:07] One is a gimme. We both use the first.

Chris Davis: [00:59:09] Yeah, but you’ve already said I’m a big, big fan of plus this. Not not just it’s it’s a it’s tough to say like what does this do? Because each of their features are kind of like standalone functionality that that solves problems in different ways. And it’s not just an Infusionsoft tool. I believe they also integrate with a handful of the other platforms out there. So feel free to check it out. But what I love about plus this is how responsive their team is. I’m the type of guy where, like, as I’m using a feature, I’ll be like, oh, it’d be great if that you had this or if that could do that. And so I suggested in their user group, and they’re a small enough company that they can respond oftentimes quickly and add these tweaks and modifications. So I love the way that they are pivoting, that they’re solving problems in real time and that they’re they’re.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:00] It like any tool, right, you want to measure the morality of it, but plus this makes it super easy because it only takes two or three of their features to justify whatever you’re paying.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:10] They have a 40 dollars a month package or eighty dollars a month package. And I find it’s a no brainer, especially because.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:18] Every feature that they offer.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:21] Is it solves the problem, like they wouldn’t often feature if they didn’t do anything right.

Chris Davis: [01:00:26] But it’s not it’s there because somebody or a bunch of people more likely, we’re like, hey, we would really love it if we could X, Y, Z. And so plus this kind of steps in and has this collection there. So plus this is is a is a must have. I’m a Zappia fan boy. I didn’t, I didn’t get it for a while. I was like, man, I’m like, what am I missing on. Everybody’s talking about Zappia.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:48] But you have to remember I worked at Infusionsoft so I was hypersensitive to the like another add on conversation.

Greg Jenkins: [01:00:58] Like everybody, small businesses are oftentimes making ends meet and have to be budget conscious. And so recommending additional tools was something that I avoided because I wanted to. That’s actually part of why I have the expertise I do with the native software. It’s just from like forcing myself to try to make everything work in house, use all the native functionality. But Zappia is a is an essential integration and it goes well beyond its power with keep. It has internal functionality. I use it for all of my social syndication. When I publish a new blog post or new YouTube video, I’ve got Zepps set up that go to all my social channels not just once, but at a cascading interval so that they get more mileage out of them. Yeah, I yeah, I just can’t say enough good things about ZAPORA. I do. I did. I recently added this where I use Zappia to create certificates for all my courses using Google slides. So I set up a Google Slide template. And then when somebody finishes of course using the plus this video tracking, I know that they’ve completed the course. It takes the information create post. Zappia uses Zappia to create a new template from that Google Slide, which can merge in their name and the date and my signature.

Greg Jenkins: [01:02:17] And then it exports that that slide as a PDF, which I can store in a custom field on that contact record and ship it off to them. It’s obvious, and that’s it’s totally not necessary.

Greg Jenkins: [01:02:30] But I get it. It’s not it’s that it’s not doing anything. They’re not expecting it.

Chris Davis: [01:02:36] But it’s a nice to have it. And automation can you know, when you get to that point where you’re Pastorelli and you’re talking about like, what else could I be doing? Right. Think about the ways it could enrich your customer experience. And some of those things are non-essential, but those are what differentiate your brand and what people talk about. Man, though, Zappia would be tool number two. And you know what?

Greg Jenkins: [01:03:01] A couple of years ago, I would have said Wistia as tool number three. There’s other video hosting platforms out there. But I love the tools Wistia has. I’ve actually been leaning more and more into YouTube just from like a strategy perspective. You know, YouTube gets the the the search rankings and and reach that way. So I have been using less of Wistia, but I’ll say I’ll go with Access Allai, which is my membership Munyon and I love Natalie.

Greg Jenkins: [01:03:27] Yeah, Natalie and Robyn. They are great. That’s another. This is. I don’t know, I mean, we live in the most connected day and age there ever has been. That is true every time I say it.

Greg Jenkins: [01:03:41] But more and more I find that people want to do business with people, with businesses that we know and that we feel good about. And I have nothing bad to say about the team at Memorium or Customer Hub or some of the other membership platforms out there. But I just really like the accessibility and their community and what they stand for and what they’re about. And and it helps that access. Ally has built in e-learning tools, progress tracking and tracking in some of their own features there. So it works really well. But Access Ally is just a personal choice. The the value it offers is a, you know, a membership experience and it works with WordPress. But there are others that are standalone and that creates a private environment where I can post content for people and their access dictates what they do and don’t see which. And it fits naturally with my business model. But I think it’s also I think more businesses have an opportunity to use something like that than they may realize. I would I would argue most businesses could have a customer center or a billing center or a training center that helps empower their users.

Chris Davis: [01:04:51] Greg, this is a whole nother episode. I’m taming myself Not to go there. That’s all right. You know what? I’m I’m going to say it. bold statement alert. I feel that platforms the misinterpretation and sometimes it’s from their marketing platforms like KJB really missed that point. You know what I’m saying? Like is that membership for customers in that access via levels integrated with your CRM, they just miss it. And again, no knock against KJB and KJB users. I just want to job. Yeah, absolutely. It’s just a different it’s a different experience. Right. If if I’m looking for that very course friendly, you know, go through achievement base, go ahead, use KJB. But if I want to make KJB look good, is it beautiful templates. Right. But if I want to give a more comprehensive experience beyond coarsest right and restrict content, give my people somewhere to go to do some training. But whatever the case, I’m beyond that. So it’s OK to keep these platforms in their respective most, although they don’t necessarily want to be boxed in, I guess.

Chris Davis: [01:06:01] Yeah. You know, I get it. So Greg, I can’t thank you enough man. Again, we can go on for four hours, not just minutes, but hours.

Greg Jenkins: [01:06:09] I am I am not known for my brevity. Yes. I appreciate you indulging me.

Chris Davis: [01:06:14] Yeah. Yes. No, this was good. And I know it’s going to be highly valuable. People have heard something there like how do I learn how to do that? Wait a minute. Rewind. You will probably need to listen to this one a couple of times. And if you were listening to it at two X because you know these podcasts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You might want to slow it down because right in the middle there was some there was a lot of nuggets, you know, dropped there. So if somebody wants to get connected with you, Greg, learn about your community or just stay connected in any capacity, where should they go?

Greg Jenkins: [01:06:45] Yeah, monkeypodmarketing.com, you’ll find it all there. If you are specifically looking for the community, you could go to Ogmembership.com.

Greg Jenkins: [01:06:55] I learned like a year ago, I learned how to buy a domain that just redirect it wherever I want. So I went out a little. I’m going to dig friends. You get by all by yourself about it. But I am not hard to get a hold of.

Greg Jenkins: [01:07:07] And I love these types of conversations. So feel free to drop me a line on any of the social channels. Reach out if you have questions about anything we talked about here. But yeah, this was an absolute blast. Chris, I can’t thank you enough, man.

Chris Davis: [01:07:19] Yes, thank you, Greg. We’ll have the links, of course, in the show notes and Greg, I appreciate it. Thank you for taking the time and all good. My pleasure.

Chris Davis: [01:07:28] Thank you for listening to this episode, and I guess maybe I should have done a better job warning you on the front end whenever Greg and I get together, that’s that’s what I was really excited about. It’s like we have so many conversations, whether it’s on Facebook Messenger, email, whatever capacity that I feel, so much value comes out. So I’m I’m pleased that we were able to capture that. And when you just think of a lot of the things that Greg said, though, we are focused on his expertise and his expertise in his in the tools that he uses, can you not see how it expands beyond that? How a lot of what he was saying is just the responsible approach to automating a business? We can never overlook that. We can never overlook that there is a responsible approach. There is a way to do this that that we’re talking about right there. There’s a way to do it to where you you still are highly effective, right? You are you’re still highly effective, but highly authentic. And you’re not erroneously leaning on your technology to do something that is your responsibility to do and instruct it to do. All right. So who needed to hear this? Who’s that Infusionsoft user that’s a little frustrated right now. They just maybe they just need to recalibrate. Their approach may be wrong. The Infusionsoft keep what is it, Infusionsoft by keep maybe the tool for them.

Chris Davis: [01:08:58] And maybe there maybe this episode helps shape things up and put things in perspective. Maybe they’ve been thinking of leaving Infusionsoft and going elsewhere, whoever that is, send them this episode, send them this episode. So whatever decision they make, it can be an informed decision. OK, here at Automation Bridge, remember, we just want you to choose the right tools for your strategy in your business growth. All right. So if you found value in today’s episode, now is the time. This is my invitation for my first time listeners. Come join the all systems, go family. How do you join it? There’s a seat at the table. How do you sit down, go into your your podcasting app. Wherever you get podcasts, hit the subscribe button while you’re at it. Level five star rating and review. If you are confused in any capacity, how do I leave a review where we’ve got you covered? Go to automation bridge dotcom forward review and we will take we will handle the capture and posting of your testimonial for you or your five year five star rating and review for you. All right. Here at Automation, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. These are people who go beyond the principles taught in digital marketing and really focus on those automated systems, starting with marketing and sales, and goes beyond and reaches every operational system in a business to help them scale by maintaining a small footprint, a small human or a small payroll footprint.

Chris Davis: [01:10:33] OK, and you need there is an approach in a way to do this. And that is what we train automation service providers on, because businesses need marketers who can handle who can properly navigate automation by taking marketing technology, your business strategy, aligning it with the goals and putting software to work, employing software for the responsible deployment, the deployment of automated systems for your rapid growth. OK, so if that’s you, if you when you listen to Greg and I talk on this podcast, it feels like you should be at the table with us. You have stories to tell. You’ve got marketing battlefield scars to show. Right. This is you you’re that you would have fit right into this conversation. That is a great indicator that you may make a good automation service provider. So do me a favor. Go to automationbridge.com/ASP and take the next steps to talk to myself or someone on my team to assess if you will be a good fit for our upcoming program launch to become an automation service provider. The need for for automated service providers has has never been greater. It’s never been greater. And we are working in various capacities to equip as many people and businesses with the resources to properly.

Chris Davis: [01:12:04] Let me say navigate, let me say properly leverage, leverage the tools of technology and automation for their business success. I don’t want it to be a question mark or a confusing point anymore, OK.

Chris Davis: [01:12:18] Lastly, if you enjoy Greg as a guest and you have someone else who would make a great guest for the All Systems Go podcast or you yes, you listener to you. We’ll make a great guest for the All Systems Go podcast, go to Automation Bridgecom/podcast. There you can submit your information or your referral information and they will have an opportunity to come on the podcast and be able to interview them and give some insight to whatever their expertise or area of profession is.

Chris Davis: [01:12:48] Right. All the show notes and podcasts are accessible at Automation Bridge Dotcom for its last podcast.

Chris Davis: [01:12:55] You can subscribe there and listen to all and any other episodes at your leisure. So until next time I see you online automate responsible.