Why Automation is Essential for Business Success with Nathan Weill

automation is not going to replace anyone's Shob not even AI is going to replace anyone's Shob welcome to the let's talk business podcast a project of the PEX group gain valuable actionable ideas from the world's top Business Leaders to help you take the next step in your business journey and now here is your host Manny Hoffman coming to you from the PEX atus in Brooklyn New York this is the podcast for No Nonsense advice to help you learn grow and lead today I'm so excited to be speaking with the former Chief automation officer of the PEX group and a great friend Nathan wild Nathan wild is a self-identified tech geek he founded flow digital in 2018 providing headache free automation support So business owners could stop struggling with SAS tools and repetitive tasks and direct their full of energy towards business growth in our interview I discussed the importance of Automation and business processes by identifying repetitive tasks and setting clear objectives then Nathan highlights examples of automation for lead generation internal processes and follow-up procedures to see what you could also automate in your business I also discussed the common misconception about automation such as automation equal job loss too expensive for small businesses or taking away the personal touch all of those things are being discussed in our conversation we also discuss using automation to save time and energy improving efficiency when it comes comes to client communication this and so much more only on the let's talk business podcast let's get right to our conversation with Nathan [Music] wild Nathan wild thank you so much for joining me on the let's talk business podcast so good to be here yeah so we're friends and we have been working together for a long time and I think it's time to bring you on the show The what you do with the agency is now more important than ever uh um which will get to what you do exactly and um I figured that there our listeners they turn to the show for a lot of mindset stuff but also for a lot of practical tactics to use in their business so today will be first will be a part of it will be mindset understanding of how you go about Automation and everything you need to do to automate the processes in your business but at the same time we'll go into some technicals to see where to look out for what type of processes to see if you could use Automation and today we'll touch a little bit on AI as well how that actually goes together with automation today um so it's not just the shiny object but it's a little connected to automation as well but for our listeners that don't know you or may not know you tell us a little bit about your origin story yep it's interesting story I used to work for a Brooklyn based marketing agency called PEX group and uh I know that company yes I know I know it well and I everything that I know about automation I learned at BX so yeah as as director of operations I noticed the so many manual tasks that that go into the day-to-day and the task switching and the and the jumping between apps and exporting CSV files to build dashboards and and between so many apps and uh like and marketing of course email marketing podcast onboarding all all the good stuff we started automating stuff so and uh I saw the value and at some point uh the during the time of Co I I went into you and uh told you that uh it's time it's time to start my own agency I I realized that there's a major need for this and I'll never forget it you say you said PEX will become your first client and uh and still is yeah and still is and uh I'm forever grateful for this because I was able to start with with a client uh already and and that was a huge help I appreciate the kind words and uh we have only great memories for you being part of the team and also helping us with automation like I remember going back years ago um when we started doing content creation uh even way before the podcast I'm talking about you know PEX is now 23 years old I'm talking about literally 15 years ago when we were looking for the first CRM and I started saying you know we have different services in our company we have a branding of marketing we have the call center we have different services and leads are coming in and to really start segmenting our list and understanding who's coming from where especially at that time we did a lot of downloadable type of content and at that time um we were looking for a software and the first thing I said you know I think the name automation wasn't yet uh born like it wasn't a category but I said you know it has to be a better way than manual Excel files in different formats and different you know systems to be using for different things but today it's a whole new ball game you know it's almost like a crime if you see a business owner not utilizing automation to a degree in order to help them with their systems and processes so for the audience that doesn't understand what automation is all about or how it affects them because it's more of a technical term what would you say is is automation how would you describe it in a sentence so yeah automation is a buzz word Especial Especially nowadays and and to simplify it it's simply like if you have digital processes you have apps software that you use in your business it's to to put it simply a lot of a a lot of the time these processes can be done automatically so some people call it automations some people call it Integrations but it's basically to make software talk to each other yeah so so if I may I'll just expand on that for our audience which is um you're already speaking about people understanding that they have software and now we want to have our software talk to each other I think for our listeners to understand what automation is in the first place and the Really the mindset of automation is that you are limited on the amount of time you have in your day and if there's any part of the day that you're working on a task that potentially could be automated you're wasting your energy and your time and burning calories on something that could be automated and and and we we'll throughout the conversation we'll have some some some like real life examples that we use in PX and I think it's something that a lot of companies are not using now what you mentioned is also worth expanding on you mentioned about softwares talking to each other because once upon a time a company that had the mindset the business owner that had a mindset of I want to automate things I want to have a proper system um that talk that has all the data and has all the the data points in our company that would mean a custom software I'm taking a developer it's going to take six months the developer tells me six months it took six years or six or never finished or whatever it is because I I had to come up with all the different things I need for my software I'm talking about the business owners and then speak to a developer and start doing it and doing it this way and that way and doing everything custom now there's so many great platforms out there for different functions of the business from the CRM to the sales sales you know your Sales Management to marketing uh or even Micro Systems that people use for their Industries now there is Integrations that you mentioned before that could talk to other which means is we don't have to settle on a custom system we could use a bunch of off-the-shelf and systems and then the data could be S synced up from the different softwares with automation as well in the integration ma the software so I think for our listeners is to understand where automation integration comes into play and daily in Daily activity in businesses have I said it right yes yes I love it uh and and you touched on a very important point with the the fact that up until recently only the big companies that were able to invest so so much money in automations and Integrations and systematizing and nowadays like with no code you can you can do so much it basically became accessible to everyone from like the smaller businesses to even for the larger businesses now take advantage of the easier ways of there is to to implement automation yeah so let me ask you a question so you do a lot of um you know client consultation when somebody wants to know if they can automate it or what should they automate and so on and so forth what would you say is the the most significant misconception business owners have about the category of automation so it's very important to note that not everyone everything should be automated a lot of uh people companies they they feel like okay automation is a new thing AI let's automate everything but uh sometimes it's just there needs to be some manual processing in place you know like uh especially with with high touch communication sometimes like you don't have to automate the actual communication you can automate the reminder to do the phone call you know like uh so one misconception would be to you know to figure out what what should be automated and most importantly what shouldn't be automated great now one of the things that I hear a lot when people hear the word automation or hear about systemizing things is they're gonna their business will lose their personal touch how do you address that that's a very common argument against automation that a lot of people a lot of people say however it's just the opposite if you are bogged down with manual tasks and notifications of all over and uh um there's a study that I recently saw about context switching if you work with with many apps and you keep switching between apps and between processes and between tasks it takes up to 9.5 it can take up to 9.5 minutes to to get back in the zone wow so yeah and and if you're constantly switching between tasks there's no chance you can have the touch with with your clients that that that is necessary so I I would argue it's just the opposite with automation you have the bandwidth you have the the peace of mind to to focus on on the high touch communication that that requires exactly like um um especially like like you sometimes you speak to salespeople so you can ask the salesperson how do you manage your leads and they'll say well I I remember my people my people I write it down on my phone or or whatever type of format you have but if you don't have segmentation and be able to have reminders of who needs a call first it's impossible um to to manage especially when you start building a larger list now even if you do manage it the time of effort that goes in every single morning so imagine a salesperson has an hour a day to make call calls or make follow-up calls to existing leads but from that hour half an hour goes to searching which person to call versus with automation automation that that system will just you know populate a list for him that these are the calls for today all of a sudden you got full hour to make the phone calls versus a half an hour of searching for the contact exactly so important so important so for example we've worked with a travel agency that books a lot of uh trips and uh they had the process that they call a week before the trip they they call their clients so if you don't have Automation in place you know the the process would be like they go in open their list of bookings they search by date and they start searching like who who do I need to call today but with with automation you get a list the day every in the morning you get a list of people that you need to call that day and you can just start calling instead of trying to to search and uh it basically eliminates all the manual work to do to your point got it now let's say some you speak to someone where is the first place a business owner should start looking to see what they could automate like what's the process you would suggest a business owner to go through to to see what they could pass automate yeah great question we typically start with the list of software that they use the tools I have to check uh technically wise if it's possible to automate that at all so one place to check is um there's a tool called zapier and zapier is uh allows you to build Automation and they have a directory of over 7,000 apps that is integratable it could you can build automation with it so the first place we we encourage our clients to see is your app listed in that directory and if not there are other places to check see The View API documentation but uh that's that's the first question and what would be the second so the second um question you would ask a business owners is what systems and process they use already in the company yeah so to review the process that they want to automate sometimes a a client would would want to automate certain processes but that doesn't make sense to automate you know like uh the second thing is to see like how do you do it manually how how's the process working manually currently and does it make sense to automate or not maybe we could go through some scenarios of different projects um that you have helped automate similar to what you mentioned about the travel agent just to to give people a sense of understanding so on lead generation what type of automation have you seen companies automate from getting lead the getting the leads process lead generation so the there are many things that can be done with with lead generation one one that comes to mind is internal processes so you get a lead right you can get a lead by somebody filling out the we uh form on your website you can get it by email some people get like buy leads as of they they get they get leads distributed VI email so first of all typically when you get a lead you you put it into your CRM so that that part that process of adding the details to your CR M that's a very common process to automate so the logic may be use the email address to check if that person already exists because you don't want duplicate contacts in your CRM right so that's one like the Outreach email first initial email so if somebody reaches out there's no reason why you would have to send them an email thank you for reaching out here is my booking link right so that's something that can be automated and maybe the followup email can also be um automated I see you didn't book a meeting any questions I can answer and from there it goes manual right and once they book a a a meeting uh a thank you email um for booking and here is here's your Zoom link or looking forward to meet you at that this and that address you know so that's that's it's part of uh Legion got it and and you mentioned about internal um which um sometimes you have oversight of of the amount of leads that came in you could also automate um for managerial purposes like uh you know a leader that needs to see what's happening in their sales funnels in their lead generation funnels what what marketing works that could also be automated so notifications could go out to multiple people based on if this than that type of scenarios which is also an important thing like I know that in our sales process um we have something that when which was automated so I don't have to know every lead that comes in but if there's a process where it hits the CRM and then at one point um the salesperson did not respond with the quote or did not respond with then and then leadership would get notified that this is already three days without without a response yeah so then you could work with your team and say you know what there's a bunch of leads that did not respond and sometimes manual say oh I forgot to update that I did speak to the person and sometimes they would say yes I totally forgot about this or I didn't get to it and then you could take action so every time you look at automation look at it from the person doing the task or at the same time the people that probably need to get reported on the task so I think that's that's an important point to look at it definitely definitely and to add to that we've built an automation for for somebody that when a lead sits in a certain stage in the CRM for x amount of days it automatically reassigns that lead to a different sales birth oh wow so that that's that's you know like uh at a certain stage that like if it's not updated within like 3 days that means that it wasn't touched you know so and also for internal processes what we use internally is we we we work with uh many different software when different apps so not everyone on our team knows every app so when I when a call comes when a call is scheduled uh when a new request is is when we have a new inquiry regarding a specific software and one of the questions is like which software do you like to talk about it searches a database of our team who from like who is is specializes in that software and based on that it sends them their uh cly link uh to book a session it's amazing and then keep in mind like like for just even as booking links and people again more and more are taking it for granted because it's it became the norm but there's still a ton of people business people that don't understand the value of just having a calendar just a basic as a calendar setup and how many back and forth goes every time you want to schedule a meeting especially with multiple parties you would send out the email back and forth versus here's the link and just schedule it in particular it's it's very important and it's very helpful when you're going through let's say you're looking to hire person and all of a sudden you're you want to do a brief intro calls with candidates that applied for a job so think how much communication with every person back and forth versus you have this link and and people could right away just book and you could also even have a a a a block of hours dedicated for for that project and only those hours are dedicated for for this project so people could be very creative with uh once you know the challenges you're facing and speaking to somebody like you or anybody that does this type of services creatively there's so many ways of to accomplish some today's day and age um um you know Automation in the processes um I will share a couple of things that we have done together in PX which I think just to give more people ideas of what could be automated so we spoke about uh lead generation so obviously if you have a website in an in let's say if you go to the new pexg group uh.com website you obviously we have recently rebranded and built a beautiful website and if our listeners if they did not check it out yet go and check it out because there's a ton of resources there from the podcast to blog post to case studies so go go to check it out but if you fill out forms and there's different forms there's a form somebody who says I want to join the mailinglist there's forms somebody wants to be a guest blog on the put a guest blog on the site there's a form of contact us there's um those different things need to be can't come into the same place these I need to be right away put into the different buckets to to actually respond to that same is with inquiries different people will respond based on the inquiry request so that's a place where you could automate and distribute leads and distribute contactors to you know different inquiries to different people now the same is with the follow-up we said about the S the whole sales process there's a ton of followup for instance we use and this is another point that I want to make which um today with technology Once Upon a Time you had one system and you had to be limited to the UI with the user interface the user experience the functions of that one system and now you have to force every single person in your team regardless of where which department they are to use this one custom system and you could see sell companies that have Legacy software from years ago and they just can't move away because for years they've been everything built in that system today if you have somebody that does proposals and they want to use a a simple tool let's say panded that weuse use which is very customizable and very simple to use and beautiful templates out there but the CRM they use is pipe Drive which is another tool that you've set up but now you don't have to send over contact information from one system to the other automation so as soon as the lead comes in all the systems that potentially will need it gets the same pieces of information so now you have in our case probably four or five systems every lead that comes in four or five systems will get it regardless who is using which system starts off often that that that contact is there they don't have to say wait a minute what's that inquiry I got what's that person's email address what's the person's everything is there and the inquiry is syncing up between the different systems so another reason not to force on technology to your team because the end of the day you're using technology to enhance your business and if you feel a certain part of your team is going to be more adaptive than others try to figure out which tool they they would actually make sure to use and see if with automation you could just sync it them up instead of forcing them on to one system for everybody such an important Point another point that I would want to mention is the whole onboarding of a client and I think that's that's another step that we've been using a lot of automation of once a person becomes a client to make sure that that internal and external internally letting the you know the team know that a new client is onboarded accounting let letting the person know that this is the information for invoicing purposes and they have the information from the from the proposal directly letting the client know that who's going to be their account executive and so on and so forth these things it just enhances experience so that's not so much sometimes it's not so much to instead of a a a a manual process but it's there's also a ton of what you could enhance the experience of that onboarding the client and so on and so forth in our case just to throw it out there you could have a new client that needs we need to create a Dropbox folder in our system that we're using for time tracking accounting these are all different systems that it's being created now all these systems automatically a folder gets created so now when somebody starts working says oh I need to create a new folder I need to start putting in the name of the client these are all sitting and waiting there as soon as we start working on that project these are all functions that you could automate and again I'm just giving you example for our listeners because think you know not in the box but out of the box how those things would apply to your setup and see how you could do it for business also about internal and I think this is some this is one of the people just don't look at it that way because most of the people when they look at pers systems and processes they're looking about ex external looking about them with clients them with the difference um but they never look to enhance the experience of their own employees and their own onboarding process so you speaking about HR HR is now a huge huge function of every company you want to make sure that people from the interviewing process from the actually from the inqu from the sending you know actually applying for the job the whole onboarding process till if they got if they got the job and then the on booting process the training process getting them to know a little bit about the culture and so on and so forth that's also a beautiful process that you cannot automate with so many so easily with so many simple systems out there very coste effective you know people think that needs to cost thousands of dollars to create something like that and all of a sudden you don't have to remind the person that wait a minute a new employee starting tomorrow and make sure that there's a phone a computer set up and stuff like that all of those things could be automated and think for a moment how many times you had a new employee come in and they say oops we forgot to set up a phone or we forgot to put that the it didn't get notified about a new computer now if you know a person starts in two weeks from now that same day a email could be fired off to to IT department speak to this and this direct report they're getting a new candidate ask them what they need a ticket could be created whatever whatever system works for you but so much out of that manual process so I think that's something that people should start realizing just from a from a from a managing that process but then then comes the part which is just the being the going above and beyond on culture uh in our case we have our core values pretty we're pretty vocal about it and you could see it on our website you could see it in the office but a new hire gets hired they could have a campaign and giving them those you know dripping them those those emails in a little bit yeah every day is a different value yeah but not only that it's also encouraging them to respond so it's not like a oneoff automated very cold type of of system it's actually a warm email and it's it's encouraging them to respond back which infuses that back and forth uh with with the direct report or with leadership and so on and so forth so those are just ideas where you could start regard on day-to-day activity your company to figure out so I'm just giving those couple of ideas now let me go back to you uh Nathan there's a lot of people that ask the question that you know is the premise of automation to replace jobs or is it to enhance jobs like how what's your like what's your response when somebody would ask you that automation is not going to replace anyone's job not even AI is going to replace anyone's shop oh automation is here to enhance what you do with throughout the day we have so many tasks like we we're running after like we're drowning a busy work okay and nobody nobody wants that and automation is here to basically eliminate or reduce the busy work that you're busy with you know we all have 24 hours in the day you know like the same 24 hours a day but everyone is spending it differently like how if if you can FOC focus on meaningful high value tasks throughout the day uh it will make all the difference uh you'll feel better you'll accomplish more you'll be more efficient so this is what automation is is here to do it's not going to replace anyone's job and I want to touch on on one point that you mentioned earlier about about having different apps yeah like like there are all the Jack of all trade apps that do every they promise to do everything but uh if you have an app that that that that promises to do everything most of the time they only do most of the things 70% of the time you know so now with with automations you can choose for example you mentioned pandu pandu is phenomenal for agreements and contracts but you know if if your CRM maybe does um agreements or contracts it's maybe it's not 100% there and you want to use panduct you now you're able to do that because it's so easily integrated with any of the other tools so you can basically choose the apps that you use and are familiar with and stick with that and integrate make it talk to each other so you get you get the value 100% for every from every tool yeah it just reminds me another point that actually just using our own use case so which uh you help built out so a lot of times um you have Executives that would just want high level information and that high level information sometimes is is simple to just see it in in in Excel or Google doc whatever just very simple Google Docs so we have a system where where we have a level 10 and our scorecard numbers and measures and so on and so forth where that information will be pulled from multiple places but we could just open one Google Google sheet and and see everything right there and then even the information is coming from different places so instead of sitting in a meeting and saying let's open up this dashboard to see this and that that to open that and and now be busy like digging into different uh uh tabs within a software you know if that software is great for time tracking let the people that need to Time Track use that system but for reporting purposes there's so many great tools out there that could just pull the data and report back to you as as a leader so sometimes you could see leaders um being stuck on a certain system because that's the easiest for them you could probably stay with that system that's easier for you and still give it a little bit more of a robust more of a a custom software for the team that needs to work on that and just have automation pull the data so everybody has their view of the data exactly and and and without automation what would you would do you would export CSV files you would like copy paste data who wants to do that and this is what automation takes like like eliminates right why why they need to nobody wakes up in the morning they like okay I'm going to export CSV files today like yeah you want to look at the dataa you want to make decisions right this is what you you're here for so yeah just reminds me something that I I always say as a as a benchmark is understand that everything you do you're burning calories every single step you burning calories you have to ask yourself is this task worth I should burn calories over or maybe I could use automation to burn the calories for me and you focus on those most important things things that automation cannot do things that AI cannot do and stuff that that I could I need the human interaction human intelligence to actually produce and so on and so forth so I think that's very important I love that I love that you only have so many calories to burn throughout the day so exactly so let me ask you something is automation something that you set up and forget about it is it something that it's like as business owner they want to set it up like what's the normal process you usually tell people to be prepared for if they start doing automation great question and and it depends of course you know like uh you can set up a an Automation and totally forget about it it runs it's goes smoothly it's it's it's great but sometimes processes change one example would be also a travel agent uh during Co you needed to check certain things you know like uh when you went to different countries everyone had their different regulations and the regulations change every single day uh almost so for somebody like them you know it needed to update their processes every like when they get a got a new client and the regulation changed we need to update the the automation because like it reminded them of certain tasks related to to the co regulations so it it it all depends but yeah you can have automation that basically lives in the background and works perfectly for years now let me ask you um you know obviously business owners listening this they always are looking for what's my Roi what's my return on investment so I'm going to spend money on software I'm going to spend money on somebody helping else implement it or whatever it's needed a company like yours and I want to know am I getting a good return on investment how do you like what what are the kpis key performance indicators you would tell a person like what how do they measure return on investment on on on on automation yeah simple simple way to look at it is how how do you value your time your time like uh how how do you value your team's time like do would you like to pay your team to export uh CSV files like uh the copy paste data like the the be you know have them focus on on the work that that's meaningful that Revenue generating tasks not not mundane dull tasks that can totally be automated so it's uh it's it's a matter of of how much you value your time so there are different calculations that can be done like for Roi you know it's it's just a matter of like how you value your time let's talk a little bit about AI so AI is is is is people confuse AI with um with automation obviously AI is artificial intelligent now you see a lot of tools are building are merging their tools capabilities with AI what have you seen how AI is actually helping uh automation in general yeah AI is is uh the new shiny object and uh everyone talks about it and we're as far as I know we're only in the T tip of the iceberg like it's we're only getting started and yeah AI is already being used as part of automation now like a lot so one good example would be that we've recently implemented is um as simple as summarizing a request that we received online into a subject line so when the automated email response that goes out has the details like three or four words about their request in the subject line it increased the open ratees tremendously because it's relevant to them that versus receiving an email your request or whatever you know like uh that that's one small example why would you say say what what else have you seen let's say on the people that are using automation for in the sales process so and their sales process is it's just uh Ai and in your CRM is is becoming a big deal now like a Hotpot pipe drive now has uh AI you can use chat Bots like it's like every every day there's new new technology coming out but one one way that I recently saw is is you can have like a chat bot basically chat with your CRM like this maybe you have a salesperson that you used to like hey what is the status with this and that lead how many leads did we close I know you can have a dashboard but it's easy to to chat with your CRM basically and get all the data that you need you know pull a report of this and this and that and it gives you the report so it's it's it's phenomenal yeah and another another thing that uh we're actually working on it right now for PEX for this exact podcast is you know when when a guest submits the information their bio and what they do and all the details about them you can have ai generate a list of questions you may not use it but it gives you inspiration of of of what what you know this another example of of of utilizing AI as part of automation yeah so like for our listeners just a fun fact um people always ask me how do I have time to do those episodes and spend so much time you know there's a lot going on and which a lot is going on but um when I committed to do the show uh for our audience and for our listeners to be able to enjoy and I think we're going close to 200 episodes wow in four years I think it is but one of the ways from the GetGo if you remember uh when we spoke about it I said I need to automate as much as as I can and I think we have about 23 steps that automated for the show and and anything and everything that we could automate in the process not to take away the human interaction with the guest or human interaction with us speaking out live and recording this but all the other nuances of of me sending the recording to the producer producer getting the document to create teasers and so on and so forth the guest scheduling and and reminding them they need to upload their bio and their photo um and and reminding our team that if we did receive we didn't receive it and whatever it is all of those things could be automated and I would never be and then this is just a public shout out to you because I would never be able to produce this for our audience on a regular basis without uh real Automation and constantly looking at how what else we could improve in the automation process to to be able to simplify the process for producing content so it's just another way yeah I I remember you said you're not going to do it if it takes too much time yeah yeah and and I I think we did the calculation and we end I think we ended up saving like 2 hours per episode yeah yeah and and uh just as for I'll put it in the show notes but if people go to the zapier sweps blog and maybe search for flow digital or maybe PEX group uh you might see a full case study you might find a full case study how many steps were automated for the show it's probably outdated already by now because we added a bunch of steps since but just to give you the the the the inspiration of what else what what could be um automated now I want to turn the conversation we've spoken a lot about Automation and the takeaway for our listeners is not to look at automation or AI as as a shiny object but rather look what could you really what could get get you back time what could save you time what could enhance the process the the experience with the existing employ with internal team and external leads and so on and so forth and see what you could automate to help boost your productivity at the same time you're also growing a team your own and you're building your own company it's an agency and has all the the ups and downs of an agency and as every business has one of the things I know you have set up set yourself up a little different than let's say PEX is you have most of your employees remote what are you doing in order to build a culture and making sure that the team is on board with understanding the vision of where you're going with the company and ultimately making sure that client success is is up to par to your to what you expect yeah all all of our team members are are remote I took a page out of zapier's Playbook zapier is a thousand person company and they're all remotes from day one and culture culture is something I have learned at PEX group thank you PEX is first and foremost focusing on culture and I I I will never forget that like I I I loved every single day that I I went to work at PEX and I I still I still miss it appreciate it so what we do is is first when it comes to technology uh people get stuck you know like uh you can be the best expert but you can come to a scenario where where you don't know what to do or maybe you need a a second pair of eyes on something that you've built right so we have a we we as a remote team we use slack for communication so we have a a channel called help and we just help each other out every single day they're like especially for for remote teams and there's uh not not there's no face tof face meetings uh so having that channel for example is one way of building culture like people help each other out every single day do you have like let's say when you on board a new team member how do you like do anything particular that you do um from merch or onboarding stuff that you do that that just gets them excited to who you are as a company yeah of course onboarding is is is a big is a big deal we everyone gets a a package in the mail when they when they come on board includes like a a mug with a logo like a cap and a t-shirt um yeah and and one one thing that we took a page out of the PEX uh Playbook is a Monday huddle we have every Monday we have a huddle that the whole team joins and uh can bring up anything and we have the high fives as well so culture is something I learned at PEX nice is it at this point are you in touch with every employee or do you have other other yeah we're we're only at 12 people so I I'm I yeah meet with everyone uh one on one very cool so um if people want to what's your process if people want to um start the process of automation or at least have a consultation to see what they could automate what's your process and how do you work with people first of all is like we have to review the processes that that need that they want to automate uh something that uh that is automatable it needs to be something repetitive you do it you do it often and you do it digitally so it happens but that's something somebody somebody would schedule a consultation call with you sure so yeah just go flow. digital and uh book a free Discovery call you'll answer a couple of questions and uh we'll answer any any of your questions got it um I know that you're also vocal on LinkedIn um um is there any other platform that you put out content LinkedIn mostly I'm also also X Twitter got it yes for the links resources mentioned this episode check out the show notes at www.p group.com podcast where we link to flow digital flow. digital and we also link to Nathan's uh LinkedIn account so you could follow him for automation for for tips on auto Automation and case studies let's close with the four rapid fire questions are you ready o number one a book that change your life o a book that changed my life uh there are a couple of books but I remember uh I read a lot of books at PEX you know we every all employees get rewarded for reading books so one is good to great yeah great book I think you were a fan of Malcolm gladwell's books no Malcolm gladwell's is phenomenal phenomenal it's it's great entertainment didn't change my life though good okay good to Great is a great great business book yeah number two a piece of advice you got that you never forget version one is better than version none exactly I know who said that number three anything you wish you could go back and do differently yeah so when I started out I I was not big at doing Sops standard operating procedures and I I like I didn't even think that I'm going to like we're going to grow so fast so like during Co like things exploded everyone wanted to automate as much as possible so like started out on my own automated a lot of our own processes but like I never created standard operating procedures from my own team and as we grew it became an issue so I had to go back take take things out of my brain and put it on paper so other others can follow it a good point and number four and last final question what's still on your bucket list to achieve great question so we want to create a newsletter we know a lot of people have a lot of questions about Automation and they want to know uh everything about it so we're we're we have an our Buckle is to start newsletter we also want to start the online community that people can ask questions so these these two things are on my rocket list beautiful Nathan thank you so much for joining us I know your time is valuable that is why in our name of our listeners we forever be grateful for sharing some of your time with us today it's been a blast thank you so much Manny great catching [Music] up that's my conversation with Nathan wild my takeaway from this one number one identify repetitive tasks start by listing out all repetitive tasks in your business processes those are prime candidates for Automation and can significantly reduce manual workload number two set clear objectives find what you aim to achieve with automation such as reducing errors saving time or improving customer satisfaction clear goals will guide your information strategy number three lead generation use tools like chat bots on your website to engage visitors and capture leads automatically platforms like hopspot infusion sof keep can automate email campaigns to nurture leads number four choose the right tools research and select automation tools that align with your business needs consider factors like ease of use integration capabilities and consumer support and last and final premium models take advantage of Premium versions of automation tools to get started without a significant upfront investment tools like MailChimp offer free plans for small businesses once you get started and you see automation works for you then you could always go up and start paying for those automation tools and that's a wrap for today's episode of the let's look business podcast I hope you enjoy enjoy the Practical non-nonsense advice that our guest shared if you found value on listening I would be so grateful if you could share the episode with your friends and if you could give the show a five-star rating on Apple podcast or whever platform you listen subscribe to the show and get notified every time we publish a new episode The let's talk business podcast is a Pex group original production until next time make it a great day [Music]