Business Automation & Systemization

Sure never say this to your clients, never do x, y and z, and they're like, Oh yeah, yeah, OK, OK. And he's like pretty much 0% of them would do it. 0% will follow what it is that you say. But if you play a different game and you say, OK, I want you to imagine yourself as the client now, or let's say, OK, here's a clear example I remember from the book let's say you're a recruiter and you're looking at CVS. So he designs the exercise to say, I've given you 15 CVS resumes, OK, I'm going to give you 10 minutes to decide who you're going to hire. So you sit down and whatever methodologies you use, explain yourself. And so they go through it, and they had this time limit. They're working really fast and then they stand up and they present. And then basically, by doing that, it more effectively communicates how you should build your CV so that you can get higher, right, so he can sit there and talk about best practices all day long. Here's another one that he did, which I thought was really smart. He gave six examples, and he says, you're the venture capitalist. You get to decide which one of these six companies you'd like to invest money in. And the six examples he shared were brilliant because I was like, all these sounds so good. Like, how do you make this decision? So the exercise was to prove to you just because you have a good idea doesn't mean somebody will invest in it. So not all good ideas are something that are attractive to investors. I was like, oh, this is good. And he says, also, if they reject you, you don't have to feel bad because there are a lot of decisions that are out of your control. And if you really want to build your company to get investment and to ultimately sell, you should start with this and understand what they're looking for. So it's fascinating. He had companies that made no revenue but had good market share. He had something that was growing, but they don't have any sales yet, and he has all these, like, really interesting. So I'm going to have him on the show. He and maybe his partner in writing the book that co-author Rob Fitzpatrick and Devin hunt, the book I've been talking about is the workshop survivals, survivor's guide or survival guide. In case you're interested. I'm not saying like this is on the top shelf of my 10 top books ever to read, but it's pretty nice because I'm fascinated by trying to become a better teacher, and I know there's been requests about like, let's workshop this stuff, Chris. So I'm like, OK, let me buy a book on workshops and not from Jonathan Courtney, but you know, somebody who's done like 1,000 workshops at the highest levels, and that's what these guys do. He says the really cool thing is when you design the workshop, when you intentionally design it, and it's very important and he uses this word in the book, there's very little work for you to do. All the work is up front. If you do all that work, you could do these for any size organization at any level for $100 for free, as he said, or $4,000 a head. No problem. All right. Quick questions before we dive in with what we're doing today, and I thought that was going to set up some context. Now let's do this democratically. Please raise your digital hand. We'll have a quick discussion about what I just said. To summarize, if you have a question about the concepts in this book on how to run workshops and to give talks. Let me know by raising your hand, please. Digital hand. Very good. OK, Mo, I turn it back over to you, chairman has the floor. Robert's Rules of Order. Thank you, sir. Hey, everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Regardless of where you're at, I hope you guys are doing fantastic. It's really good to see you all. Today's call, the objective is really to apply and to practice what we've been learning over the past month in regards to systems and automation. And it's awesome that Chris kind of alley oop to me with workshops. So this is hopefully one of many they are. If we do them intentionally, as he just mentioned and I got to read that book now they are, they take a timeout to set up, but as we get better, we'll grow together. So I have a very, very, very quick summary of what Greg talked about. In case some of you weren't on his call or some of you didn't watch the YouTube video, so you kind of understand how you're going to be working alongside your partner. But before we jump into that, I've seen a lot of new members introduce themselves in the group. That's super exciting to have new people very quickly unmute yourself and say hello. Yeah, well, I think for the sake of the edit, we should just keep going forward. OK, perfect. We then have to start with that because otherwise that gets embedded in this. And then it becomes a really messy thing to watch later. OK, perfect. Keep going. Love you, new peeps. We'll see you in the we'll see you in the wall. OK, I'm going to share my screen here and I'll jump right into it. OK, can everyone see the keynote? Yep OK, perfect. So for the sake of the recording, this is called 155. And this is Postgres. Workshop, I'm sorry. Greg's talk about automation, so today we're going to have a work session together, so we see your presenters slides, we see the current slide, the next slide, it's not looking super pretty right now, OK, we're just going to stay right here then. OK, and then do me a favor and hide the sidebar on the right. OK, man option. I command option, haha. And to move that screen up because we're getting a lot of we get a Black strip at the top, I think you see your own screen, right? Yeah, you must be sharing the screen there, not the app. No, I'm sharing the app. You are. Oh, no. That's better to open up. I think we're seeing, OK. Hold on. Yep we don't get this right. Well, yeah, uh-huh. Well, then, how do your rulers command are, I believe? Hey oh, good, we're looking good. Yeah OK, perfect. So the goal is just to quickly refresh before we break out into rooms. So when Greg talked about optimization and are automating and system monetization, he really brought up 3 outcomes, which is to automate parts of your process for a more efficient overall engagement to take the custom bespoke solutions that you guys serve, whether it's logo design, motion graphics, anything else and make them more productized for a faster and repeatable process. And the biggest goal for us is to go from this constant feast and famine one on one style engagement with a client where you're only able to be bogged down by one client and push any new clients further down the line to one to many. So how do we do that? He talks about limit your business to a pre-defined problem, pre-defined solution and a predefined scope. And a lot of us get really shiny I syndrome when we think about customization. So we look at all these automation tools, we look at all these apps. A big thing that he says is work backwards from your actual process, not an arbitrary automation. So what are you actually doing right now and then identify the areas that you may be getting bogged down and how you can break them into something that you don't have to do manually? And he says the first thing that we want to do is apply the rule, which is one user persona, one solution, one conversion method, one traffic source for one year, and his success was in about 11 months. He was able to go from no profit to six figure months for the rest of his career. And a lot of this is grounded in the niching literature, and I know many of you talk about that and we talk about that in this group. So the goal of the breakout session is to really, if you're not even here yet to be able to get clarity here to then be able to automate. So he says where the things go really difficult in your process is usually on the sales and production side. So a lot of us want to automate when we advertise or market, when in reality, the things that we get bogged down the most in the beginning is right closest to the cash. So when he says systemize, he says systemize what's closest to the cash? And he used this exact description as the customer journey. This is where you get paid. This is the sales process and this is the onboarding. Our goal when we're in these breakout session is to really think about not these things on the wider edge of the funnel, but the things that are closest to where we're getting paid. How are we selling? What does the onboarding process look like for us to get to the production side of things? And that's where we want to really implement certain automations and processes. So an example that he gave on the call was an automated onboarding example. So after you get paid, instead of immediately jumping onto a kickoff call, you want to train your client. And he described this really interestingly in a way that this could be your first course. Now, these could be videos that prep the client for your meeting. These are things you should expect from the engagement. These are things that you should bring with you to the meeting. You should probably look up this type of user or be thinking about these types of words based on what we're trying to create. And then after the training of what the engagement is going to look like, another segment, which is a warm up segment like these are the things you want to bring with you. I need you to gather these things. Maybe take this survey so you can prime them when they come in, that the conversation that you have on the kickoff call is so fruitful and you're not wasting time telling them where to go on the project management app, where to go on or what time the next meeting is going to be. So you're really, as he calls it, training your best client. So those were the biggest nuggets on how to systemize your process and what are we going to be doing today because many have asked about us workshopping or applying this stuff into practice? So we're going to go to breakout sessions. And you're only going to have one partner, and the goal for you is to discuss your current process for one, for your main solution with your partner. Through the discussion, you want to identify and let them serving as your client, identify three areas where your process could potentially be systematized. Then you're going to brainstorm potential ways to automate them. And then after you guys are done with the conversation together, you're going to take that list that you've generated and prioritize them from easiest to hardest. So some of us want to go for like, I want to automate the whole thing and give a whole project management system when in reality, the easiest thing is probably to type up a welcome letter for when they arrive at the business, or maybe make a video for how to walk through your office. And then take the easiest one that you identify from that list and begin working on it. And after the work session, you want to reflect with your partner as to what kind of clarity this gave you. What kind of clarity did it give them if they were the client? Now we're going to come back to the group and reflect. So I just want to break down how that's going to look like when you're in breakout room so you can make sure that you're doing the right thing. No, sir. Couple of things everybody should screen capture this right now. There's a lot of steps. Yeah I suggest that we break this at least into two parts. Yes so instead of spending what looks like 35, 40 minutes here. So I see it's 25 minutes of them going away, right? I think that's too long of a period. So why don't we do this? Because there are too many steps there. I can tell that just having freshly read this book, so not on you, I would do the exact same thing. So what we want to do is everybody. OK, so let me just see if I follow this, it says, discuss your current process. OK for your main solution. So they first have to identify what their main solution is. So everybody right now I just write down a piece of paper. What is the main offering that you currently provide if you're a seasoned veteran? This may be complicated because you may have a lot of meaning offerings. So how do you decide? And let's just say that you get to decide any which way you want, but the key here is to decide on one main solution. My recommendation not that you're asking me, is to do the thing that drives the greatest revenue for you today. Mm-hmm And typically, even in our past, when we did a lot of different things, we would say that most of our revenue comes from this. And it's the Pereira principle at play that 80 percent, the 80-20 rule, which is 80% of your revenue, comes from 20% of the jobs that you do. So if you do logo design, you do facilitation, you do workshops, you do lecturing all these kinds of things, and they're all wonderful when you love them all. I would say start with the thing that has the biggest impact on your business or your future potential business. So everybody just write down that one thing. So now we can cross off one thing that we need to do here. Ok? does everybody need a second to think about that? If you have a question, your unclear about which, what's your main offering, then go ahead and raise your hand. Mahi did you raise your hand or are you just stretching? OK, maybe stretching. I got you. This is like an auction. If you go like this, you bought the cow. OK, let's see. OK, so that's pretty clear. But it got that. OK so what you need to do is you need to break down your process with your partner, right? OK, so I'm going to say you should break down your main offering into five steps just five exactly five. No more, no less. So go ahead and write down 1, 2, 3 four five underneath what your main offering is. If you do identity design, sit there and really think what are the five big milestones from birth to death of a project with a potential client? OK, now when you go away in your breakout session, you're going to pick three that you could systematize in that five step process. Now that may not work, but let's see what you do. OK and if you get stuck? Describe your process to the other person. So the other person should be listening for. Are these the clear five milestones that you need to do? If not, challenge them a little bit. Seems like it's pretty heavy up front and pretty light in the middle, and the end. OK, get an even distribution about the major 5 points. One way to think about this is to think about it as a relay race. So each time you pass the baton onto another player, another role that is participating in the project, even if you do all the roles. Remember, we often describe ourselves as wearing too many hats. Every time you think you switch that hat, you put on a different hat. That's the beginning of another leg of the race. OK, now, Mo, when they come back to the group, we want them to have something very specific in hand. But let's do this. Let's do this, guys. Let's break and we're going to give you. I'm only going to give you five minutes now. You have to go really fast, OK, you've been primed. You can do this and we'll get to Rodrigo in a second. Rodrigo OK, we want to give you five minutes to do this, and then we're going to tell you to come back. We're going to shut down the room. So talk fast, get your ideas out. And then we're going to make sure that we're OK before we send you back to think about what ways to automate them. Ok? we just want to make sure, because otherwise you're going to come out of this room 30 minutes later with nothing. OK, where do we go? I'm going to stop the share. So if you need to screen capture it just in case we've even though we've changed the rules a little bit screen capture for your interest for our partners, are we taking them or how is that going to be a time? Should we find somebody that similar and really random, then it takes too long to put you in rooms. We'll eat up all the precious time that we have, so it's just going to be totally random. Is that ok? Yeah, it's cool. Just asking, yeah, because we've tried that before and it'll take 10 minutes for us to sign and I'd rather have time for you guys to work. OK, Mo maestro. So we have 40 participants. And I think I don't think you and I are doing it, so there's only I don't know how to do this now. Don't sign me to a room. Great great, great great. 20 rooms, an auto sign. I see somebody got scared and they just laughed like, oh, is it something I said? Everybody clear. You're going to disappear for about five minutes. We're going to pull you back. We'll close down the room. You go through your five steps and make sure they're legitimate. And then once we were clear about that, we'll send you off to generate ideas on what to automate. It's a cool. All right. Deep breaths, everybody about to the breakout rooms, and Ali, please just a question, if we just have five minutes, can you please let us know after like 2 and 1/2 minutes so we can shift partners, so not one is taking all the time. I got you. I got my timer on. You all be mindful and I will definitely give you a note. Will they send us a note? Yeah, we'll send you. Thanks, Daniel. Good good suggestion. Thank you. All right. Here we go. Send him away. Ron Boehm. Well, somebody else into that room with Chris. OK, hold on. Trigo is by himself. Yeah, he's. Hold on one second. If anything is making me a better facilitator, it's managing breakout rooms. Oh my God. Did you log in, it yourself? No, I logged in as you because I was worried I wasn't going to be host. No, you need to log it into yourself these days. That's why I raised Messing this up. OK Yeah. You have an account. I saw you. Angela Hi. Hi sorry, I'm back. My person wasn't there, so I didn't know what to do. OK, I just moved you to room 13. You're going to be with Chris. OK Yep. Hey, Angela. OK, everybody has two people in a room, and then let's pause the recording. Yes lock up. OK, so no one thinks that they no one has FOMO. We were not talking about anything except the fact that Hertz rental car went out of business. I know some people are like, Chris is talking. What was he saying? So just so, you know, Hertz car Hertz rental is out of business. OK, Chris, actually, I'm going to pass it off to you because you kind of switched it up a little bit, yeah, yeah, you kind of switched it up. So what are they going back to the break, OK to do? Well, the first thing that we need to do is to make sure everybody has a clear five step process, right? And from that, I think now what we're going to do is probably pick one to figure out creatively how we can automate this. And the goal here isn't for us to design your entire business for you and automate everything, but to give you enough confidence to be able to do the rest on your own. So did anybody struggle with identifying the five stages of their main offering? If you did, please raise your hand. I'm going to scan here and use a little twinkle in your eye. I could probably see it. Look, this is one of the few times I could see everybody on the screen at the same time. Yeah, we have a smaller call today. Mm-hmm OK fantastic, so, you know, one wants to workshop. Nobody wants a workshop, is what they're saying. I don't know. It's 30. I'm just making an observation. 35 people workshop means we have to work because there's the work and workshop. We don't get the shot. We just get to work. OK, so there's very good. I had thought I saw something, something in the chat before about how, Oh my god, I have so many offerings. So yeah, you have to pick one. You got to pick one, and then you have to break it down to five steps. So rags. What's up? There you go. Mr Jim. Yes, we can hear you. OK, so we have a precondition for me. The problem is coming up a sabbatical, I'm finding it really hard to focus, which is this sabbatical. When I finished the bootcamp, I took up the agency growth scaling and building period of conference for Designers. So I succeeded for a couple of agencies did that walk away and also magically came back last year and started taking over. I started getting a lot of work with the script to bring digital and content strategy for efficiencies. So for me, both are a good agency, good business because I love the scale of it. So let me interrupt. I'm sorry. Let me interrupt. For whatever reason, and I just hate to say this, but the audio is just so it's so hard to hear you. I don't even know. Are you even using that microphone? To tap, ok? Tap it. It's making those sound, I don't believe you have that selected. Now check once again spotting, can you hear me now? It's exactly the same. I don't believe. That microphone, because look, just like you guys hear that. Yeah see, I don't think you're using the mic. A lot of people will have this same thing happen, ok? So while we wait for rags, rags can you say something? Can you hear me now? OK, have you speak loudly like that? We can hear you. So what I got from what you said was were coming off a sabbatical and it's something. And then it's just, I don't know what I said, coming off of this. What's the problem? What's the plan? I don't know which of my service offerings I should take to even set the process first. I also know which one to take given to do the five ones. OK this is very good. Well, I would say for the sake of the exercise, perhaps you just pick a random one. So at least you can understand how to apply this. And we're not going to be able to solve the problem as a group in a few minutes. Like the way we're doing. OK so go back to like before you took a sabbatical and rewind the tape and say, well, before I left, this is what I was doing. This felt important at that time, and let's apply that moving forward. Is that ok? OK, sounds good. OK, perfect. Thank you. OK, and then let's see another hand that went up. It's that, Abhishek. Yeah hi, Chris. Hi hey. So like I have, I'm running a small design agency out of here in India. So my five step process is like dead. But it's I'm still not pretty much confident about it, like if it's the thing which I need to go with. So I have recently like after watching a lot of the videos on teachable, I have decided that I'll need time to certain categories, like just being a UX agency is not enough. I need down to certain categories and what I figured out is like I've been we have been doing a lot of work on demand services. So like when I'm talking about on demand services, particularly in hyperlocal, are doing hyperlocal apps and doing hyperlocal apps for various sort of services and including health care in different, different sort of services, but all happening in the hyperlocal. OK, allow me to interrupt since you're new here, everybody. Just so we set this up. I know every time everybody gets the mic, they want to tell me their whole life story. I get it. I get it. You want to talk. We want to feel connected. I get it. But for the sake of that, there are 34 or five other people that are in this room. We've got to get right to it. OK, so like, you're not clear what you want to do, and that's totally OK. So maybe even this exercise is telling you, let's get clear on what you want to do. The five one begins with the one like, figure out the one. OK so hypothetically, though, can you identify at least one step of one thing? So one step is so when you say one step or one thing, one thing is just that niche you're talking about. So clarify, OK, tell me one of the services you provide. So it's design for hyperlocal apps. OK, UX design. OK so there's a client onboarding process and there's the delivery. I know that every project, no matter what you do, there's an onboarding process. It's common to every single project. And a delivery, and there's something in the middle called production. Right? OK. And you may include something like research design as one and then something. So you see, it's like it's pretty common to every creative service thing. Now, if you're going to do UX design, pick one of the five steps that you could try to design an automated process for. OK so yeah, would that be like teaching about how I go about the entire process, like how I go, about how, what, how I go about designing the entire? Go ahead. No, I don't I don't not sure that that's what we're talking about here. Let's try this again. OK, so everybody, I think this is very helpful actually that you're asking these questions. So this is the Q&A where we see that there's not a lot of clarity, and I'm glad we did it this way because otherwise you guys would be in a room for 30 minutes and not come out with anything. OK, fantastic. OK I would say the hardest, most creative labor intensive thing that you do probably cannot be automated today. Let's not start there. Let's go with the easy. Like, what do we call that like? It's just like the softball pitch and like, just hit that one out of the park, ok? Usually it's run delivery or client on more typically because it's like, yeah, it's a robot could do this. I could train my, my cousin, my my, my 14-year-old son or daughter to do this. Yeah start with that. Don't go with it. Here's how I solve the problems of the universe, because that's really difficult to do. OK, just think about client onboarding, maybe head off to the design or production team or whatever it is and potentially the delivery. It's going to sound very similar for most of you. And then focus on that. OK, OK. You look a little confused. So how about like a step where I am just explaining about the process? Like what's going to happen from start to finish client onboarding? Things, onboarding? That's what we're calling. Yes, yes, Yes. Let's start there. OK, OK, Yeah. So for me, onboarding is about explaining different several steps that are happening in their entire design process. So can I automate like that? Well, in the brainstorm session, we'll find out. I believe you can. I believe so. Like, in a way. Can I just record those and put it in a certain format or in a certain place where I can just pass on the links to the client and they can just say, well, that's what we do in this session. Hold on. OK, so I'm going to ask you to unmute yourself right now. Because I have a couple of other people who gestured. I think before I saw Chris raised his digital hand, I think Nathan raised his real hand, right? Yes Nathan did raise his hand, but he said he's good now. Or what? No go ahead, Nathan. Can you hear me? Yep. OK. Avoid telling my life story. Got it! So no, just really quick. There's two sides of my business. There's one side where I'm coaching creatives. The other side is I'm working with clients. I'll focus on coaching creatives. I never really used well. I used ads in the past. It failed, at least for me, but I saw it was working very well for Greg Hickman. So I think the biggest thing is. The automation part of. People, you know, paying for a coaching call and then scheduling it, there's some manual work there. I'd want to around my schedule, that is yeah, I'd want to automate that. My friend, I had that part worked out. So we'll talk about, OK, good. OK I already have a solution for you. Well, we'll talk later. OK you're literally saying, Chris, how do I do exactly what you just did? So I could tell you, oh, OK, OK. So pick something else to work on because I can just give you that answer. All right, so hang tight. OK, Chris, please. And then these are supposed to be questions about the five steps. Just focus it on the five steps. Did you come up with your five steps? Because otherwise we're getting pulled apart here. We're kind of brainstorming right now. Some of the things that we're talking about is what could be happening with your partners. So be mindful of this conversation and we can take it into the breakout room together. Yeah so Chris, let's knock this out and then we're going to Amber. And that's it. OK so I picked out my five steps. I do brand identity and strategy. And in the first stage, finding it hard for to not make this cumbersome for my clients. As far as the discovery stage, discovery for me is obviously asking all the right questions, but it's talking about business goals. It's talking about what they want to get out of this exercise. It's not necessarily walking through every single step, but it's finding out what their goals are and how we can attack them and then diving deep into their business. So, OK, so what's your question, chris? I guess my question is, you know, I could set this up via like Typeform questionnaire or something. I just don't want it to be like a million questions. And my clients, like, I'm not going to do this is just too much for me. OK, I'm going to recommend everybody to maybe read a book on questions because everybody gives me their story. And I'm listening for a question, right? So, Chris, welcome. So, Chris, here's what I'm going to say to this. I believe you're trying to automate the hardest part of your business. The thing that is least likely the thing that you can delegate. We're not trying to create more work for the client. We're actually trying to make it easier for us to work together. So if you say if you're a strategist, the discovery part is potentially the only part or the most important part of your business. So let's not automate that part. Let's take some other part of that. OK Gotcha. And you can even zero in on one part of discovery that you think can be automated a little bit. I see. Thank you. If if you're, let's say, like strategy discovery lite, then you could probably automate it. But if you're truly, truly working as a facilitator, as a strategist, that's the last part you want to automate because it's the highest value part, right? Right OK, so pick a different part. Maybe or maybe I'm overthinking it. OK, Chris. All right. Now I saw Amber go like this, so she must be like, hey, I got something. So Amber. And she's balancing invisible balls. Hello Hi. OK, so I'm a logo designer and I have five step process. I guess it's not really a question. I was just going to say, I like this. I got it. Yeah so I, you know, I think. I mean, do you want to hear the five steps or do you want to have my question? I just want to hear your question first or your question statement. OK, so my question, I guess, would be. As a logo designer, I find, you know, it's kind of interesting to go about automating logo design. Of course, the making part I don't think can be automated, but I guess as far as like the discovery part, so the initial getting the information from the client can be automated. I've done a questionnaire before. Usually what I do is either a questionnaire or I do. I gain information from them over the phone or over a Zoom call through like AI guess I just go through a questionnaire with them and then that determines the brief. But sometimes that does feel a little bit clunky. So I guess, how can I make a streamline getting what I need from the client in order to make their graphics? I guess that would be my question. Oh, I know what you need. I get it. OK, that's a long time to get. Well, you know, here's a tip for everybody. Questions start with the five W's who, what, when, where, why. That's usually how it starts. So when I don't hear who, what, when, where, why chris? I don't even know what to listen for. So this is very important. This is client management relationships here. So we're going to take a slight detour. What you want to do is you want to anchor people's attention and focus, and you start that with a question and then you could backfill that. So that's the plant that you put into the ground and you backfill it with the history. OK so what you're talking about here is client onboarding once again Amber its client onboarding. Ok? when you say I need certain things from you, client in order for me to do my job. The difficulty of creating a mark, a system for you. I need a couple of things. I need your old logo. I need every piece of collateral you've ever designed in these formats. And you just go on. You just create that. So this is a client onboarding checklist, and you can automate this. I'm not a big fan of questionnaires for clients. OK so why don't you work on that? So this is called your client onboarding checklist, and you can automate this for sure. So as soon as you receive money in hand, you send this over. And even if you don't, you can say, look, if you're considering hiring me, I'm going to send you a PDF. It's going to tell you exactly what we need before we get started here in terms of payment. Here's how it works. And make it graphical. Make it beautiful and make it simple and easy to understand. Do not literally copy and paste a legal form into this because they're going to hate you. Remember how I was telling you earlier about putting on the judge's hat? I want you to judge yourself if you got this with this excites you, would this say you're a professional that knows what they're doing? Do I look forward to working with you or are you going to be a pain in the buttocks? Right, and I don't want more work, I don't want to fill out a DMV form, I don't want to wait in line. Generally speaking, so make sure you look at it from that point of view and make it delightful. And the way that you could possibly do this is think about how the very best hotels treat you when you walk in. That's how you want to treat your client. OK just think back to the very best hotel experience you've ever had or restaurant. And think about how they treated you. Treat them like that. Don't treat them like Walmart. Different experience. All right. OK we have more hands for some reason, even though I said I was going to be the last one because we want to get into brainstorming. Now I saw Alicia's hand go up, and then did she disappear? Wells had went up, then Alicia Landry goes, so. Oh, OK. Is that how it went? Well, that's how it went. The sensation I'm getting from the conversations with you, though, if I may people, is that we're brainstorming right now. So I don't know how you want to go about. If if we want to go into breakout rooms, we want a breakout room right now. OK, so we can have these conversations with our peers. Yeah I have a suggestion. Yes, please. OK I actually turned your question into a form and people can just fill out the form. So do you want me to just drop that as a file in here? It's really easy to open. You are a productivity ninja. Oh my God. She's like, I just workshop your workshop, guys while you were bantering about correct? Yes please drop it in the chat. Drop it in the event, too. Yes afterwards. So here we go. Whoa you'll want to download this. Thanks appreciate that. At least you are down on the word. Well, we could just download it and upload it to the event. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, we could do that. All right, guys. Unless you feel like you're running straight forward into a brick wall, I would like to put you into the brainstorming room so you guys can come up with this. And hopefully some of the Q&A here has helped you be a better partner to the person that you were previously spending some time with because it feels like I'm good. Drago, what are you doing at our office, dude? Yeah well, Jake, don't give me that. All right. What do you got to say? And let's be super quick. 30 seconds go. So you said you're not a big fan of the whole onboarding process, and since the onboarding process, what is it that you recommend that we do as onboarding because you have the expertise of doing and being successful with it? Yes OK. OK it's a very good question. I didn't say I'm not a fan of the onboarding process. I'm not a fan of asking sending a client a big questionnaire to fill out. Yeah, that's right. I'm not a fan, but I'm also not a fan of taking all the creative brain work and making that an automated thing, because that devalues you what you do. And I think that's really important. OK so Thanks for asking. That was a super clear clarifying question. All right. Here's what we want to do now. We're going to send you back into the same room. OK and I think once you're in a room, you can just rejoin the room by clicking the breakout room at the bottom and just join it right back, right, Mo. Or do you have to start it again, mo? Yes no, I recreated it because we've got people leaving, and so you're going to be with someone else, possibly. OK, so here's what you're going to do. You're going to take one of the things of whatever business offering you have of the five steps that seems the best candidate for you to automate. And then you get a brainstorm on the best ways to do that. And how many ideas did you come up with? Well, what is your sheet say? Ask me again one more time. What's the next step mo? The next step is for you to go into the breakout room and take the easiest thing out of that list and try to make an MVP of it. So that's your goal, and when you're talking to your partner, you're the partner is trying to serve as the client to let you know that this makes my life easier as well. So you guys have already talked about your process. You're going to be brainstorming at least three things in that process that you can automate. Pick one and this call serves as the first step into you getting that automation process going. So you're trying to at least complete one thing to the best of your abilities today. OK, so here's what this is going to look like when you return. When you return, you're going to say this is the process I want to automate. Here's how I plan to do it. Like, almost like, just like that, here's the part I want to automate. Here's how I plan to do it. And then we're going to give you feedback on that, ok? And hopefully you and your partner I've already thought about like, yeah, that's all. You can do this and you could do that. And then you've made a decision. OK all right. We all good everybody. Here's one part that I'm going to automate, and here's how I plan to do it. All right, we're going to give you another 5 soft five minutes. See, you go. Send them away. OK, bye. All right. Did you pause about the pause right now? When everybody comes out, buddy, it's like star wars, you just came out of hyper jump and all the ships are there. Look, look at Nathan, look at Nathan blaming me. Sorry, Mo, you're going to replace Nathan. Nathan was like, I cut off Alicia. We need as much time and we realize it's already nine 24, and we've already lost some people due to other obligations. OK, so we'll have to do probably when we do workshops, we need to plan them to be at least 90 minutes long, though, so we'll schedule this a little differently. So that you guys don't feel rushed out of it. OK a couple of things here. Couple of things. We get the sense that you guys are having some resistance to this kind of workshop format. I know many people have suggested doing it and I say, here's what we're going to do. Everybody, any time you, you have something new, give it a little time. It's natural to resist. There's nothing wrong with you wanting to resist because we haven't done this way before. Like, just tell us what it is. Tell us the answers. Do it for us. All right. But we're doing things differently. We're going to try. So in the spirit of trying and exploring and doing new things, let's just give it a chance before we say Yes or no. I'm not saying we have to do it this way. I'm not saying we're going to stop doing it this way, but we're going to just give it a chance. All right. And we're learning as we're going here. So it's cool. All right. I do know this, though, as evidenced evidenced or by the way, that the group has responded. I'm happy just to sit here and lecture to you for an hour. I really am. But the amount that you retain and actually apply in your life and to teach others it drops off a cliff really, really fast. So we have to change this because we get the same questions over and over and over again. So let's try. All right. Having said that, did anybody come up ok? Like, what's the next step? They're supposed to come back and say, what? Oh, you're muted. Yeah, sorry. They're supposed to come back with at least one area out of their processes identified. And they've at least started on it in a rough draft on how they would automate it. OK so I would love to hear from somebody who. And I want to just give a moment here because some of the shy people don't always want to volunteer first. All right. So I just want to give a moment before the really pounces on this. Just take a breath and I want you to think this through. Oftentimes, I get the feeling that people just say me, and then when the mic turns on, they start thinking about it and we don't want to do that. So let's just sit there and think for a little bit and process and let everybody have a chance to think this through. So what I'd love to hear from you is this is the one aspect of my business that I think I can automate. And here's how. OK, I see some hands. OK, we'll just let it percolate, ok? Raise your hand digitally mahi, please, so that we just have a record of it. OK, great. Great This is very good. I'm seeing a bunch of hands go up here. Now, historically speaking, what we do is we just pick the first hand up. But that just means we're training our people to hit the buzzer fast. So I'm going to try to do a little differently today. OK, I'm just going to pick at random. Let's see how this goes. I'm going to pretend like I couldn't. I don't remember who raised their hands first. Asha, are you talking to us? Are you? Are you wagging your finger at us? Asha, are you talking to somebody else in the room? Is that your husband you're talking to? No, I'm alone in the room, but I like the idea. You want to go? Definitely not. OK, see, old dogs can't learn new tricks. Yeah, OK. So go ahead. Put yourself back on mute. You're just like, yes, that's good. OK you can give me a fist bump next time. Look, I get it. All right. All right. OK all right. I think we give enough time for people to think so. Here's what we're going to do. Yes, right. I'm going to start with Maura because, well, I was going to pick Maura too. Well, here. Let's go, Maura. OK, thank you. So one part of my business that I could automate is my onboarding process, and I plan to do that with a series of welcome videos and exercises for the client to make both the best out of their time with me. Beautiful OK. Tell me a little bit about your onboarding process. Just high level bullet point and one or the one I plan to do. Let's talk about desired future state like features. OK so I have a I've been planning out a course of so I make websites. So what makes a good website? So kind of Education of the qualities of a good website and also target user persona? So thinking about before we go into a strategy workshop, thinking about who you specifically want to target and also the importance of picking one type of person. Because my clients love to say it's everybody, especially since they're nonprofits, they think of like donors, volunteers, service users is like pick one. Also, goal setting. So like having one business goal. So you can already know what your primary call to action is. Because when we go into the workshop, I'm constantly feeling like it should only be an hour and becomes 2 hours because they don't know how to answer those questions. So I want them to think about that before. And then have that forevermore as reference. OK, I like this. We're going to just really just put you on the spot. Can I have your permission to put you on the spot? Yeah OK, here's what I'm going to do. Do you have a bullet point list in front of you of what you just said? Yes, pretty much. Awesome I'd like for you just the freestyle right now, as if you were doing this video recording for your client because I like what you're saying. All right. So obviously, you don't need to get too granular because I only want you to do it for a minute or two and pretend like you're speaking to the camera and this is your client. And this is the video that you're going to send them. I just want to see how this sounds like because maybe in doing this, we just all hit record and do our own version of this because I like where this is going. All right, Maura, go ahead. OK, so welcome to my website course. So the first thing I want to talk about is what the three qualities that makes a good website. Every good website is first and foremost intentional, meaning that it drives you to one specific call to action. And it's one specific audience because it's intentional. It also needs to be consistent visually and within your copywriting. So it pushed so it doesn't distract the audience from going away from your call to action. And then third, it needs to focus on the solution and not the problem. So instead of using guilt tripping tactics, I probably wouldn't say like that, but focusing on the end successful results. So that would be my video one, and then I would go deeper into that. All right. Woo good job. Good job. Good job. OK OK, so this is fantastic. Like, I don't even know what you just said, but I wrote down a few things I'm going to pretend like I'm and let's, no, I'm not going to do that. Sorry, everybody. What did we? What did? Let's share some of the things. Let's reflect a little bit on what I just shared with this. What do you guys think? What did you learn from this? You could just unmute yourself, I don't I don't know who to call now because we're ahead of me because she clearly has an idea on what to do. Mm-hmm OK things down into bit-sized chunks that the client could easily understand and relate to. good job, Chris. Well done. Well done. Anybody else? Just unmute yourself and talk. Clear and precise. One more time clear and precise. Clear and precise or clear and concise. Both, right? Beautiful beautiful. She was talking about benefits over features. Love it! And let me ask this question, if you were a client and you had a more refined version of this, how would that make you feel? Do you feel like you're enthusiastic to work with it like she knows her, isn't it? As they say, sounds very professional. Yeah, that's the thing about professionals. They've seen the problem 1,000 times. And they're able to speak to that. So it's kind of weird that maybe your natural reaction to this might have been, oh, this little cold and automated like, I don't know, I'm stripping my humanity out of it. Or maybe could be the opposite. So let's just think about that a little bit. OK, so maybe some of the resistance. We're having to this whole process, it seems that dehumanize us. But it could also say, like, man, they took the time and effort and energy to put this thing together. It's going to force Moore to sit down and write a script to figure out what she needs to say. All right, so here's potentially one way to say this OK. First, I would love for you to beam through with all your loving and charismatic energy that you can and project that all the way into the camera. Of course, we just put you on the spot, but maybe one thing that you can say is like, I am so excited to be working with you, and I look forward to us doing something wonderful together and getting the results that you want. I found that over the years of designing websites that there are some common problems that we notice, and I want to ensure that this project goes smoothly and you get the results that you want. And based on that. Here are my three points that the three biggest things because I know your time is very valuable. Here's what you need to do. Mistake number one is clients tend to have too many client types, and I find that if you focus on one user type with one very specific job or task that they're trying to accomplish in their life, we'll be much more successful. And then we followed up with x, y and z. So I'm looking forward to talking to you, and that's when you just get out of the video. Something like that does terrible. I was just freestyling, but you get the intention, right, Maura. So more reflect back to me. Well, how did you feel? What did you think about the process. So far? The process of what you just said. Oh, no of us working together like this. Oh, it was pleasant. Delightful yeah, no, it was great. I don't know what to say. That was like a really. Let me answer that question. I'm sorry. I asked an open ended ambiguous question, and we'll take great. We'll take great. All right. So I think if you go put pen to paper and really think about that, one thing I would encourage you to is respect a person's time. And because they're the ones whose time is more valuable than yours. And how do I know that. Because they're the ones paying you to do something. So they don't have to do it, so don't make it along. Like, here's the epic saga. Don't turn into a Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy cut. It's too long. All right, just go straight for the high level. The most important thing, and I would say no more than three or 5 points. And then you're done. And use that as your beta. See how it goes. I like to make one more comment. Yes whoever was commenting, go ahead. Yes, please. Yeah so what I appreciate from like how you phrased framed, it is definitely more of like serving the client, and that's something I struggle with is like, I kind of am like, here's my manifesto, right? That's how I feel about it. It's like my passion project, but really need to think more about how they are interpreting it. So it's like, I'm here to serve you, not for you to serve me in my purpose. So that's what I liked about how you twisted that. Bingo that's an excellent learning outcome right there. Phrase the things that you do as a positive thing for the client. It's a benefit for the client. Of course, you benefit as well, but you don't need to talk about that part. Right so there everybody think about that. However you automate it, don't make it look like just makes it easier on me. This is a benefit to my client. I think this is saying the same thing, but I liked how the focus was, was flipping, flipping the coin and showing them what would happen if they didn't use you like pitfalls. So that's the reading between the lines, right? Right yeah, exactly. Yeah excellent. OK I would have a suggestion for Maura. Maura, you can also test it with some of your clients to pick maybe three, four or better would be 5 and then just test it and see what they give you as a feedback. Thanks that's great. Hey, Sabrina, how are you doing? It sounds like we're flying on air, Sabrina, right? It's excellent. Like, this is your pilot and we're flying over the Swiss Alps right now if you look out to the window on the right. It's very interesting. I like your headset, ok? And I like seeing you. So what do we need to do now? Mau mau, you pick one now? Laco who? It's a or Aiko Aiko Aiko acle, eagle eagle, jaco. It looks like an L from over here and then I saw your initials r I and I was like, I said that wrong? OK, yeah, it's fine for me. Basically, it's very similar to what Maurice setting up, but I'm creating a microsite on Notion instead. So I'll just be embedding like the video on notion, and then I'll also be doing like the common pitfalls and all of that with the script. That's basically the exact same thing. OK, so you're doing client onboarding, but instead of doing video base, you're going to create a microsite to help them understand this. Oh, it's those video based, but it's going to be hosted on notion, so it's very accessible to everyone. Even they can even look at the user through their phone. OK all right. So you're talking about a delivery platform? Excellent good. All right. Anybody have one that's different than a client onboarding or a different approach to client onboarding? OK I saw Joanna, you'll want to go ahead. So it's not exactly that the solution is a bit more different because we're talking about videos and I was thinking about the people that don't have the best audio and video yet, then we can just buy an existing template, for example, example, graphic remover like an animated one with writing and you just put your own copy in there in your own animation if you have time for that. But it's just good to start with better just as best as you can to just get things rolling. Mm-hmm I see. So what you want is saying that in case you don't have high quality video or audio gear that you can come up with more creative solutions than you can most definitely do that. So I think the most stripped-down version of this is probably a PDF or something like that, and you could definitely do that. Send them a really beautifully designed PDF play to your strengths. I would encourage you, if you could, if you can, to have some of your voice in there, either in the writing style, a picture of you, so or something like that, because otherwise it could start to feel a little cold and generic. So if you don't have the capability of producing high quality video and audio design, the heck out of that PDF make it look really, really good. Or if you can program and you can build like a real site, a website, you could do it that way and make it really interesting and interactive. And you get to flex a little bit of your design development muscles there. And that could be really interesting, too. But remember, respect a person's time. Keep it short. Make it benefit for them. OK and there are also CRM apps that you can implement interactive forms that lead to a link. So basically, you upload it on your website and you can access it by phone or by visiting the website. OK no, I think we have time for one last person, and I think we I have to wrap at least and we have to move on. So Mo, you want to pick the last question? I do want to pick the last person, however, these three hands. I love you all, but I've seen them before. So it is before I pick somebody out of these three hands. Is there anyone that does want to say something in reflection that maybe was too shy to raise their hand in the beginning? That perhaps adds a different lens to the conversation that we've already had, because I think now we're very clear about potentially how to do a client onboarding. Correct OK. No new hands. Well, male pig, are you touching the screen because you're chatting with somebody else, trying to chat with us? I want to chat with you because she's the woman. You're the one like this to the screen. I'm like, hold on, there's something going on with that screen. I just want to share one of my ideas, and I hope this was helpful for everyone. But because the same thing is heard, no, not quality. Video no quality. I can do a good PDF, but what do you guys think about having a Ma board? And that's what my idea in that boy, he can see the PDF and he can see the whole process. You can put a board and you put the schedule, and it's a place that the client can go and see any time he wants how the process is going. Check his briefing. Check the ideas. Check the. You know what I mean? Sorry, I got nervous. No, no. It was the last one, checked the. So it's a check, the schedule. Check the date. Check, check that next meetings. Check the PDF. The first thing will be the PDF, introducing how the process is. And it's just a place so he can see everything. That's a white look of how the project is going. Excellent So you're talking about like giving them a lot of transparency as to transparency. OK, beautiful. Whatever tools, Yes. Do that. OK, so my business coach taught me this a long time ago. It's your job to communicate. It's your job to keep the client in the loop. And if you don't, they start to wonder, is anybody working my project? So having small updates is actually much preferred over having long gaps of silence and then seeing something like what? Because they get nervous. Like, right now, I'll give you a really quick example. I'm having somebody build a bookshelf for me because you don't have books everywhere and it's been four weeks. I don't know what's happening, so I feel like now I got to text them. If he just told me it's being laminated, it's being drilled anything just like, yeah, that puts my mind at ease. So anything you guys can do to that front is going to be great. All right. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you guys 30 seconds. So I think will mahi Adolfo and then Reggie had 30 seconds, just say whatever, and then we're going to wrap. This call will go, oh, I was just going to share the minus is connected to the feedback loop. So basically embedding in my website somewhere password protected a video kind of explaining just design principles and how clients can give me effective feedback with some type of like summarization or assessment, which I hope is not too pretentious. OK you have to do that very carefully will think it's like, don't tell you, Mr client, this is client. Just how you got to talk to me, the designer. OK, so we have to be very careful there. Now I know this from my own experience here. When you present them a piece of design, you should have them. You should direct your attention towards something. I would like your feedback on the color palette. Does this work for you. So you don't need to lecture them about what you need, how you just tell them, focus on this thing only here. It's just a usability study. So I just want to know does this seem to flow for you? That's it. So each time you do this and that could be a part of a form, they can sign off on it, they can check a box or you could just talk to them about it. But I would caution you about teaching them design principles and how to talk to creatives, because that could be a tough pill to swallow. You might be the person to do it, but it could be tricky. OK, Thanks very much. Mahi go 30 seconds. Um, yeah, I have to work on onboarding and the things I have thought of are videos. First of all, want to educate my clients about branding and strategy itself because not many people are aware of the detailed details in this process. So that is one, and the second one is for something like a warm. What will be there in the process and all those things? And for delivery? I also have thought of using templates and I have got the style guide now, so I will use that. So these are the things that I have thought of. Great excellent. Thank you. Beautiful, Adolfo, go. So I sometimes in the group, I see people asking if they should automate social media and everything, and I think absolutely Yes. But I suggest first finding out what works by yourself and then when you hire someone to do it, you already know exactly what to instruct them to do. The only struggle, I mean, question ad right now is how to give access to the other people. That's going to manage my social media, either giving them the password to the Instagram account, let's say, or using an external program, you know, for them to post their. Great who's next? I think, Reggie, for some reason, Reggie has something to share, even though he joined actionscript Reggie, Reggie lowered his hand, so he's good, he said in the chat that he's good. Oh, we're good then. Yeah all right. Did you just put up a green screen? Yeah, I was going to drop a background in here. But let's see, does it work? OK, I like, can I say something? I like Dustin's learnings because I think this would add something new to the discussion here being called out Dustin. Sorry, Dustin. Well, OK. So I do website design and hosting, and I've been doing it for 13 years, and Sabrina gave me a really interesting idea was to do like user testing and because one of the main pain points we have is getting clients to say yes, make our website live. And the reason why they're not saying Yes is because they have some reason they're afraid. Sometimes sometimes they want to get approval from other people. So her suggestion to me was to maybe get three other users in the community who can kind of do user testing and help the people we're working with to give that approval. That's excellent. So this is the opposite of everyone else. Not the onboarding, but let's say the outboard boarding, so the final approval. I think, also something really interesting, almost like to ease their mind on pushing the launch button, it's like, hey, we've tested this, this is ready to go. This is the feedback. Let's, let's hit it. Let's hit the ground running. Nice what are you doing, chris? I am just downloading video wallpapers, I just changed locations, guys. So OK, eventually I'm going to work on this edge. So that it fills the whole frame. Got you. Dustin mentioned user testing as his during the delivery. Yes, I heard. OK, perfect. Yes OK, excellent. So here's what we knew going to wrap up this call. But before I wrap up the call, I want to first prompt you with what did you find to be the most useful from doing this together? I just want you to think about it, and then I'm going to ask you just type in your chat, answer, OK, we don't need to have a discussion about just yet, and we'll mope. Can you help me by monitoring what people are typing in? Next is I want to answer the question about, I think, was it Nathan about teaching and scheduling and all that kind of stuff? Yes, there we go. I promised that answer. Oftentimes I forget these answers. And then I never go into it. Here's how I do this. If you want people to book you and manage your calendar, you need to integrate cleanly with some kind of payment gateway. This is how we do it. So what happens is in order for people to book my calendar, they have to God. I'm not explaining as well, but Ben has integrated the payment, as well as the calendar all in one. And so I use calendar Nathan. You do so, you have slots that are open for them to book, you do to be trained or mentor, or coach by you, right? So all you need to do is tie to the e-com side and then you have one seamless thing. So nothing pops up on my calendar unless it's already been paid for, and I don't have to worry about that. So what I want you to do is to either dig into Calendly and figure out how to tie it to a payment gateway or reach out to Mr Ben burns because he's the one who automated the whole process for me. You could see that it was an easy answer, right? It's that simple that way it's not a 2-step process. The way that we used to do it was we would have a payment gateway and then once they paid, they would be sent a link to the calendar. But Ben just made it like one seamless thing, I think. Yeah, at least for me, I don't have to do anything. All right. OK, so Mo, anything that stand out here in terms of the workshop useful? Yeah, Ma, he said. I got it done. So she actually went off of her checklist least. Or maybe the starting, Emmanuel said, actually taking a focus bite into something, starting and getting out of inertia. Mm-hmm Helping others? Oh no. No oh, no, no, no, no, no. Hearing other people's ideas and brainstorming together a lot made me appreciate how to prioritize task. Ice analysts said pick one thing to start with low hanging fruit tested and evaluated, so it's giving people a starting point that seems to be the main thing. Mm-hmm And breaking it down into small steps. I have a suggestion. I want to take this all the way at this point. Now that we've done a first workshop? Yeah so the pro group is probably the safest space for you to test this kind of stuff. For anyone that's creating a video or creating an illustration or anything for your onboarding, I challenge and encourage you to throw it in this event. Oh good, you're done and you're done. And we're going to look at it and we're going to give you positive, critical and helpful feedback. If that is your MVP, maybe you take it to the next level after us, or maybe it's ready to ship. But I think getting it and shipping it to us will ease it when you ship it for yourself and your own business. So let's take it to the next level there. Well done, sir. Well done. I'm going to give you a real life thumbs up right there. I got to catch my flight. You could see the guys there reporting pretty soon, so I need to get out of here. You know, I can even Don my light in here to change the color, to match the background. Oh my God. Yeah, I just got to get that side a little bit closer, ok? I think that's it for us this week, and you guys let us know how we did. And if we're moving in a positive direction, keep in mind that everything new is foreign and you're going to just not like it, and it's going to be painful and horrible. But if you stick with it, if you don't fall out, if you don't quit in the dip, so to speak, we can, we can have some breakthroughs together. Ok? I don't think that I'm encouraging everybody to automate everything about their business and to replace it with AI and robots. I'm not saying that if you find that you're doing something and it's a repetitive task and you're not getting the kind of results that you want, that's the time to start looking into automation. And let's cut out something because everything that you cut out of your business. And that's draining of your time, you get to take back to do something with your family, with your friends, maybe with other clients or just for yourself. And that's I think that's the preferred way. OK, with that, let's stop the recording. Mo? also.