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Join Adam and Amy today in Part 1 of 5 Days of Support for Your Digital Business. We’ve been in the digital space for over a decade & have lots to share for you!
What we’ll cover:
— Going digital? Should you hire someone to help you (ie VA, developers, marketing agencies)
— Where should you spend your time to get the most results?
— Is this the time to build a digital team (questions to ask yourself)?
— What are some of the digital tools we use?
We also recommend:
- Gessie Schechinger: Earn More Revenue with Smart Selling and Tech
- Rod Yapp: Next Level Business with High-Performance Leadership
- Adam & Amy: Breaking Down Marketing Misconceptions (And What You Need to Know)
Transcription of Interview
(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)
Adam G. Force 00:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. I hope you all are practicing your social distancing and staying safe these days. There’s been lots of great conversations going around the business world as we adapt to the situation that is, you know, affecting everybody right now. So Amy and I, if you guys have not noticed, we started doing some talks. If you follow us on Facebook, you might have gotten some notifications and started seeing this week. We’ve been going live every day at 12pm. Eastern. And that’s because we wanted to answer a number of questions and talk about what’s going on. But also just kind of get into some of the solutions and things that are going to be valuable for you to navigate, just for business in general but also during this time, right. So the little Last call. Not the last call, the last episode of the podcast was with me and Amy talking about just kind of like teen things up about navigating this situation with COVID. And, you know, as an impact entrepreneur today and what that looks like. So if you missed it, go back, you can check that out. There’s lots of good nuggets in there that will hopefully bring you some comfort and inspiration. And as we continue this week, we’re going live every day, okay. And every day at noon, and then this Friday, we’re doing a Change Creator, happy hour at 4pm. Eastern. So if you don’t follow us on Facebook, go over to Facebook, follow us there and we have it set up in the events, and we have a happy hour. So that’s going to be a chance where it’s just us everybody who wants to getting online. And we’re going to talk about some things with networking, what we’re doing, how we can support each other, and it’ll be in a virtual Zoom Room where we can all actually just talk you know, there’s, you know, it’s not about pitching or anything like that. It’s just a Happy Hour. So get your favorite bourbon or beer, maybe a glass of wine. We all just want to like take a minute to slow down, network Connect, see what people are working with us solutions or challenges, help each other out and just kind of have a little fun with this conversation while we get to meet each other. Okay. So again, follow us on Facebook guys, you can find the events outlined over there. They’re in the group and on the business page for Change Creator. So today, this is the Facebook Live from the first day of the week. And we want to put these on the podcast. So you guys have a chance in case you didn’t catch them over there. Just another great way to share this content. And so this episode is going to be about you know, we want to talk about going digital and being remote and being effective remote like and where you should be spending your time so it’s kind of like a lot of people are going from offline to digital or trying to expand their digital offers or pivot, right because they’re there you have to To make up for revenues that are lost otherwise. And so we talk about things like, you know, should you be hiring a VA or developers or marketing teams to help expedite your, your process? Or, you know, where do you really need to spend your time right now to get the results that you’re looking for? And, you know, like, should you be thinking about digital teams and and what kind of tools we’ve been using. So some of our favorite tools that we like to use, because our team is all around the world. And we’ve been doing the remote function and everything we do is digital. So we have some insights and favorite things we wanted to share with you at the at the end of this conversation. So that’s the gist of it for today. And I wanted to just share that and we’ll be having more of these live. So I’m going to put all of them from this week on to the podcast, so you guys have a chance to hear them. And just one more update is just the flow of the podcast. So what’s happening is we will be doing expert interviews as usual. And then we’ll be doing some discussions where it’s just Me and Amy are talking about some key topics and bringing you guys our experiences and insights to help you out. And then once in a while, we’re going to start doing some interviews with members in the captivate method to talk about some of their experiences and what they’re doing. So you can start seeing some of that stuff roll out soon, just as we are putting this podcast up with me and Amy talking and things like that. So hopefully, that’s helpful guys. And you know, we’re doing all this just to be as helpful as possible, because we know it’s a little bit scary and uncertain. But that is the nature of entrepreneurship, right? So we’re all used to it. We are problem solvers. And we look at these things in ways to say how can I help someone What can I do? What can I offer like this is a time for us to all unite and collaborate and just get creative with what we’re doing right and how we execute these things. So without further ado, guys, we’ll jump into this conversation. If you get a chance to stop by iTunes leave a review we always appreciate that and love hearing from you. And guys, if you ever have any questions, you can go to Change Creator calm and just go to our contact form. We’ll get your notes. If you have questions or thoughts. Go ahead pop in there, let us know anything that’s on your mind or that you want to hear us talk about or if you just have a question about one of our programs or how we can help you, whatever it might be, we’d love to hear from you. All right, guys, I’m going to jump into this conversation I had with Amy on the Facebook Live session about what you need to do to start setting up your systems for your business remotely, things you should be thinking about and stuff like that. So let’s dive into it. Okay, show me that, hey,
Amy Aitman 05:34
hey, we’re live here. It’s Amy Aitman
Adam G. Force 05:38
Adam force
Amy Aitman 05:40
Founders here of Change Creator. I’ll tell you how the week is gonna go we’re gonna for Facebook live events where we picked really special specific topics because we’re dealing with what we’re dealing and everyone’s at home now. And a lot of you I know are are scrambling to have a better digital system digital presence. So we’re we pick these four things. Topics specifically for you. And then on Friday, and I’m really looking forward to this, because I know that is going to be so much fun. We’re doing what’s called we’re calling the Change Creator. Happy Hour. I couldn’t even name happy hour. I can’t wait. So we want
Adam G. Force 06:18
We needed a more clever name, but that’s pretty much where we landed.
Amy Aitman 06:22
The most important part is that you bring your drink and you bring yourself you bring your questions and we get to mingle and collaborate and you know, have fun in this digital space. I know so many of us are feeling a little isolated. Now that we’re on lockdown and we’re self isolating. So I feel like that is going to be so much fun to like kick off the weekend, at home with your family. So let’s get started with our topic today is how to effectively set up systems for your business remotely. And this is really really an important one right now. Like I said, so many of you guys are reaching out to me and saying, you guys are set up. You have your system set up. You have You guys are all digital and you have your digital offer. And you’re like, What? How can I do this? And a lot of you. I want to caution, the scrambling right now. We really want to like it took us how long to set up our digital systems, Adam?
Adam G. Force 07:16
Well, you know, between the two of us, our third business, and so we’ve been down this road so many times, and it takes a while until you have the experience of doing it, seeing what works. And then you know, you can implement things faster, right. But there’s just so many Crossroads throughout the process. And I’m sure even this title today is probably, there’s probably a couple of different ways people might be thinking about what we’re talking about here. So it’s all around this perspective and things like that. So we’re going to touch on what we thought was really most important to respond to this particular question that we heard from you guys this week. So, you know, I think one of the most important like, just to kick this off, if we’re really trying to advance our digital presence now during this time of social distancing, and maybe you were a coach or a solopreneur, that’s doing a lot of in person or going to events and selling it, you know, trade shows and things like that. And now we can’t do that. Right? So scramble, and we try to get everything more effective in our digital systems. And so I think a lot of times people, Amy, they hear, well, I have something, I have this product, and I’ve been going on the road and selling and do all these things. And now that I want to be more efficient digitally, I can just delegate, get a VA get someone on a marketing team or you know, it really start ramping this type of thing up and that’s, that is I guess, when you’re thinking of that, that urgency, so it’s like what can I do quickly? Because I don’t have the time I’m special. I’m specialized in my area of expertise, but I’m not a marketer, and I’m not a salesperson. Right. So what do we start doing? We start, yeah, outsource. And we’ve all heard that we should delegate things that we’re not experts in. But I think you know, and Amy, let me know if you disagree. But this is a critical point where, when you’re the CEO, let’s say you’re the solo entrepreneur, and you’re running your own business, you need to be the number one salesperson in your business and really start learning the sales processes. And then this is going to be the first part of your strategy really to, to put it digitally, because if you don’t know these things, you’re going to struggle right out of the gate. And so in the world, this is going to create more mayhem.
Amy Aitman 09:35
And we’ve seen this, we’ve seen this so many times before added like, I like to give the example let’s call her Mabel, love that name. And she’s in. She’s a colleague of mine in one of our masterminds, and she was really she’s really, really good at what she does offline. She has an amazing community. She talks. She does a lot of now. Working, but going digital was kind of new for her. And I’m sure a lot of you are in that situation right now. And so a lot of people like even like me say, you know, my VA is are like the lifeblood of our business. They keep us going, they keep our operations going. And and now that we have your system set up our VA are great. And so my, my good friend, Mabel, let’s call her, she said, I’m going to hire a VA. And so she hired a VA and it didn’t go so great. Like, I want this, I want that I want the system set up, I need a marketing funnel, and the VA could only implement what she could give her. So she was like, Okay, I’m gonna, you know, I’m going to get another VA. And so she hired a VA that had specific specific knowledge on these digital systems. And sorry, my eyes are watering today for some reason. And these specific leads to Jill system thinking that this VA could just take what was ever whatever she needs to do. And put it out there into the world. And so months and months went by and long story short, the VA did not accomplish what my friend people thought she needed to accomplish in her business. And so I sat down and we talked about it to her and I’m like, is it wasn’t the VA? Or was it that you did not have that clarity in your business and your clear, offer to go digital, and then it’s really, really tough to hire someone to, you know, try to read your mind basically on me.
Adam G. Force 11:29
Because I think a lot of times what happens is you go, Okay, I need somebody that can build funnels, I need somebody that can set up my, you know, my email systems or something. And so you have these VA s out there with these areas of expertise here, okay, I’m going to hire them. I’m going to tell them I need this and this and this, and they’re going to set it up. And the most challenging part of that is that they can technically set you up. Sure. But what happens is you spend a lot of time, a lot of money and they’re going ahead to Implement based on what they know. And you don’t necessarily have a digital strategy that can really energize those systems to be effective. Yeah, you spend a lot of money on hiring these folks, setting all these systems up, and time goes by money goes out. And then when you’re not getting the conversions and the sales aiming, I could speak to this. And because we’ve done it, we’ve hired PR teams, we’ve hired marketing teams to do specific tasks. And they all you know, promise to deliver the world. And then the first month is, let’s get acclimated Let’s learn about your brand, get all the information we need, thousand 1500 dollars, whatever that that strategy sessions all about. And that’s set up for the month out the window, first month, no real traction, no real results. And then you get this second month and it’s another thousand, okay, we’re starting to really we’re doing this, we’re doing that. And then how long is it to really see that ROI, right. So a lot of time goes by and it’s all based on this foundation that is lacking a strategy to actually make the sales and convert so you just have all the things Without the fuel for the car, right.
Amy Aitman 13:03
And even the best marketing teams the best vas the best, the best experts out there, they can only do so much they can create these amazing funnels. But if your offer isn’t clear, if your business isn’t clear, all the digital strategy in the world is not going to help you set up your business digitally and work remotely, which, which is what we are doing now. So I think that’s what we really want to talk about. And I really encourage you guys to do that. While we’re all here. Oh, Matt cardones said been through that. Yes, man. It’s true man. That to me, I’ve been through that. And you know, like we said at the beginning of this talk, we want to share all the mistakes that we’ve made over the years. And so that you guys get there faster. You know, 10 years in the digital space, you learn a few things, you pick up a few things because of all the mistakes that you’ve made. And we hired like outside we hired those marketing teams and stuff. Yeah. So right now like I feel like where do you spend your most time to get your Results. Where do you spend your time today to get your results? Yeah.
Adam G. Force 14:04
So I guess I can answer your desk. Yeah, I mean, so just to just to recap here, like, there’s urgency right now we get it. So we’re taking actions potentially out of panic or fear, because we’re losing revenues of the in person functionality for our businesses. And now as we want to go digital, we want it quick. And we want it done to start gently compensating for the lost revenue, right? So when we make decisions out of that panic or fear, we tend to rush we tend to make mistakes. And it becomes instead of a shortest path between A and B, it becomes one of the longer paths, like you’re just adding, you know, confusion. So where do we where do we actually spend our time? You know, interestingly enough, the the most powerful companies and marketing strategy starts with the clarity of self because these types of this type of thought process and a lot of people I just hate hearing that like Oh, yes, yes, yes. I already know all that I know. And, you know, we go through so many students and so many clients that we’ve worked with to apply, you know, the strategies we’ve learned over the years. And this the number one, if I could summarize, the biggest challenge for companies in many startups, all across the board in different parts of business is clarity. And so when we don’t have this clarity of self, when we don’t have clarity of who we’re actually supporting, like, who is the number one person that we serve, to transform their life, right? The clarity they’re taking, slowing, as Amy always says, you want to slow down to speed up. So rather than getting panicked, rather than rushing to hire people to build things and do all the stuff that maybe you can’t do right now, you take a step back and start thinking about your strategy, like really like what makes you different from people that you’re going to have a conversation about with a very specific person that you can serve. So you can be very clear, because if you don’t have the clarity there and your messaging is off, it’s going to be an uphill battle. You know, right Amy so I mean about Yeah, I can go off on a tangent here things like you know our niche how Nisha the market and audience be and as everyone thinks they have it just like I’ll MIT like when we started Change Creator you know we had issues on our targeting but it took time to massage and and figure that out so this clarity about who you’re talking to yourself what makes you stand out what makes you original that you’re you can help people with the most and then really being clear about that messaging because that is what has read through everything you do digitally in order to connect and build trust and get people on board. So if
Amy Aitman 16:39
they’re important, and right now I can feel the panic like I am on Facebook and I’ve been a little like more distracted than usual. And I have so many of my business friends and people that I’m following starting to talk about productivity because like, oh, we’re at home now we got to be productive. We got to get these set system set up. Yeah, and I feel like That can really cause us to like jump in and make panic stations, I know some of you out there like I just need to get through the next few weeks my business, I need to make an extra five grand, he made an extra 10 K. But really the decisions that we make and the time that we spend in our business today is what’s going to set us up for success. And I really want to encourage you right now to not think about productivity, but to look inward and think about that clarity of yourself and the clarity of your offer that you have. It’s a lot easier to have that clarity when you’re having the one on one conversations in real life or at a conference or a speech. So how are you going to translate that into an offer a digital offer into a digital system and working remotely? So yeah, one of the questions that we that we wanted to talk about too is is is this the right time to build a digital team. Now we love our digital team here at Change Creator and I have built digital teams throughout my career up Quite a bit, and I love hiring people. But I can tell you right now, you can hire, I could hire 10 people right now and I didn’t have a system. And if I didn’t have a process that worked for our business, those 10 people would not know what to do. They would be figuring things out on their own, and we wouldn’t have a clear path, especially for solo entrepreneurs. If you’re thinking about hiring a team right now to get you digital. I want you to take a step back use this time to really look at your look at your offer and look at yourself and you know, get clear like Adam says that clarity yourself, it’s going to be so important, and it’s going to pay off so much more. I don’t want you guys like jumping in and, you know, trying to figure out so that’s a good question. And yeah,
Adam G. Force 18:47
yeah, so so and I just want to add a little bit more so you know, as far as hiring a team I, I know you might be thinking well how, like based on what you’re saying, How do I start clarifying like my message My offer and those types of things. And obviously, that’s a big conversation. But you know, we’re going to talk a little bit later in this week about niching and targeting. So we’re going to have that conversation. And one of the things that we do teach in the captivate method, which is our group, our mastermind community of people, is about digital conversations. So let me frame this up for you in a way that might help you think through the process. Now, we teach people to be because we work directly with solopreneurs in this program, and so we help them set these things up with easy tools. And we’ll talk about some of our favorite tools at the end of this conversation. But what we call it in the in the captain and that is a digital conversation, because you might have heard us say this in other videos, it’s like today as digital marketing is evolving. We’re all hung up on the technicalities of things right. And so I always like man, you know, we are storytellers. We publish magazines, articles, we run media companies, and then in our past lives, we did all kinds of storytelling for pictures. And sales and all that kind of stuff. And people are no longer in the digital world going door to door to make sales where we had this opportunity historically to basically say, Hey, can I come in? I’m going to talk to you for an hour about this vacuum. And every time they respond and say, Oh, well, I don’t need one because like, you can have an immediate response, right? So you get to hear them see their body language, and have an immediate response to what they’re saying. But what happens when we don’t have that in person, opportunity to sit down and talk now you want to sell your vacuum, and you’re online? And you have to say, Well, this is now a digital conversation, but it’s in these micro pieces all around the internet. And what do I say? Where do I say it? What kind of story should I be Sarah? Sharing to help people get more clear on why they should be part of what I’m doing right then the company grows. So if you’re thinking about the conversation that you have to Have to get people from where they are currently, right? And then where you want them to go, that’s gonna be a great starting point for you to start gaining clarity on those steps now, what we teach is the entire digital system and putting it all together. But you know, from the top end as far as we can go in this conversation here, what I can share is just the that theory to help you think with more clarity about what you’re doing online, right?
Amy Aitman 21:28
Yeah, that’s a really good point, like digital marketing has really shifted, and people can really tell if they’re being sold to if they’re being retargeted. So we created this idea of digital conversations because it is about personalizing your marketing. It is about reaching people really specifically and you know, finding those advocates for your brand and finding those people that are going to support you. And the biggest key in your digital system right now is to focus on these digital conversations and think About the people that you really want to serve. And that’s a really great point on them.
Adam G. Force 22:06
And, you know, we’ve seen this to guys and we’ve worked with entrepreneurs who are in the social impact space and you know, they are so original and unique and specific in what they’re doing. Yeah. This is this is scary for some people to get that clear and really start putting themselves out there as part of their marketing strategy. But it’s it’s fascinating the results that happen Oh, yeah, are willing to do that.
Amy Aitman 22:32
I can tell you I feel like I’ve followed so many amazing people’s stories over the years. And one of them is like our good friend crystal Earl. We first heard her story when we interviewed her at Change Creator and she just gave an update because her daughter after 10 years of trying to adopt her daughter from the Dominican Republic, she finally made it back here to Canada during this crazy time with corner of Coronavirus and everything. And I could tell you I had a serious emotional response. To that update because I know her story so well. And she’s an amazing social impact entrepreneur and she’s weaved her story throughout her marketing and her social media and her Instagram post. And her product and her her product and her story are just like one in one. And we we met her in person last year in Toronto, and Adam came up for the bike and feel good conference and she literally said to me, people are coming up to me buying my product, buying my sandals, buy my bags, and they’re telling my story back to them. And I’m like, Yeah, because he’s an amazing story. And her story really did influence her company her product or offer everything that she does. And yeah, I had an I had a serious emotional reaction. When she gave us this update. It had been 10 years for her daughter. Yeah, come back and it’s really exciting. And that’s how I want that kind of connection. For all of you out there with your customers and with your brand advocates where they literally get excited when you give them an update, and you share what you’re doing, and you share your values, and that’s why we’ve created this digital conversations, especially for social impact entrepreneurs, right, Adam?
Adam G. Force 24:16
Exactly me. And just so you guys know, when you’re thinking about this digital conversation, it’s kind of like, well, where where does the conversation begin? Don’t forget that part. Not everybody that like you’re either reaching people that are in a certain mindset, because that’s where you want to start. So your your message is focused to where they are in that journey of either knowing what you offer, maybe they don’t know, maybe they do know, knowing the problem you saw, maybe they do know it, maybe they don’t know it, depending on the answers to these types of questions and where they are their own journey. Your message changes. So you have to be very clear about understanding where you’re at with people and who you’re who you’re trying to attract. Right. So. Amy, I think you know, we’re at what 20 minutes let’s let’s go cover some of our favorite tools for working remotely. You know, we work with people all around the world, and we’ll probably never be in an office again. And so that’s,
Amy Aitman 25:10
that’s very true. That’s one of the things I do like about this. I will never be in an office and yeah, water cooler chats? Yeah. Kind of back here.
Adam G. Force 25:22
Yeah, digital watercooler chats. So some of our favorite tools, and it depends, you know, some of these are for communication, some of them, let’s focus on that for the moment. So as you are bringing on teams, even when we work with clients, right, that we implement these strategies for or otherwise, like, one of our favorites is slack. So you guys are probably familiar. But slack has a lot of great capabilities for managing your team connecting with Google Drive. And, you know, we do use Google business for our team to have the drive cloud access. But slack is so great because, you know, and I don’t want to take for granted that everybody knows and you This lack they may know it but not have used it. And maybe this will be a bit of inspiration for checking it out a little more closely. So, slack allows you to have multiple channels. So for example, we have a Slack channel for Change Creator as a business and the people who are involved there, and then we have a Slack channel for the captivate method, which is our signature program about, you know, applying storytelling to your business for sales and leads and stuff. So, you know, then those have dedicated teams that are working on those types of projects, right, so the business, the Signature Course, and every channel you can have different groups of people or different topics An example might be new developments or new ideas or you know, lessons and and you know, different teachings that we’re talking about or marketing strategies. And then they have these channels, and you can invite anybody to be in there privately or publicly. and manage teams. We’ve literally brought it developers and other people who are just assigned to specific channels relevant to them is really great. It also
Amy Aitman 27:07
connects with a lot. It connects not just with Google Docs, but it will connect with Asana. And I use Asana a lot in my other my other role with the teams. And I always tell people if you guys want to get a quick answer from me, slack me because I, one of the channels that I like that I communicate very for a lot on and you can just message one person, you can message groups of people, you can actually do calls through slack as well. I’ve done a few slack calls as well. So yeah, slack is a great tool for setting up a digital system. And
Adam G. Force 27:43
it’s pretty sweet actually, I think it’s free and I didn’t even know that slack could do you know, the live chats like Skype and stuff. So you basically have all these tools built in. And it’s great because as you have important documents like we have certain documents for our live calls and sessions and things with our team They get pinned up in the channel. So now they’re all pinned in and available at any time. There’s organizational benefits that are super powerful for that and stuff.
Amy Aitman 28:12
Yeah. You have to upgrade slack to get like screen sharing abilities. So that leads us to one of our next tools that everyone is talking about right now. And it’s zoom, everyone’s
Adam G. Force 28:25
heard of zoom. I’m like, duh. And she’s like, everyone’s talking about it now. Well, I wonder why. Because your virtual talk rooms, that’s where we will be on Friday. Our session, right?
Amy Aitman 28:38
So one of the things I wanted to talk to you about zoom is that this is a great tool that you can use early on in your for a beta program. So when we started our beta program, we literally did not invest a lot of money in our tools right away. We invested more of our time and getting clear and finding people to validate our idea and What we did was slow on Google, Google Docs and Google, Google, and zoom. And that’s how we that’s how we ran our beta program and zoom is great. Hi airy fairy thing. hi to me. And zoom is real great. I do want to give a little shout out to zoom right now. They’re like they’re overloaded, and they’re probably scrambling because a lot of people are using it. I do want to mention that I encourage people when they’re going on chats like this to turn on your camera. Even if you’re like in your PJs or your hair is not perfect or whatever. Like, I think working from home, you get to be casual. You get to have fun, and I’d say I encourage you to use your camera because that’s really where you’re going to build those relationships online. And when you’re working remotely, either with clients or you’re working remotely with your team. I feel like you have to go the extra mile to really start to build that relationship yeah and and here’s a little thing that maybe you guys don’t know I started working with Adam just digitally for a long time how long did it How was it that we work together maybe a year year and a half? At least Yeah Are we actually met up we were supposed to meet in New York at a conference because Change Creator was spa was sponsoring a media sponsor for our conference survive and thrive at the time. And Adam couldn’t come down to the conference because Diane was having a huge hurricane. I was like, we’re never gonna see each other in person. I mean, literally through zoom through Skype through daily to like talking to each other through conversations like this, got to really know each other and build our digital remote system. So any of you that are hesitant of doing that I say get yourself on camera, and you know, try to to make me go the extra mile on it. Coming to connect. And actually,
Adam G. Force 31:01
let me just add a little bit to for people. So zoom, what zoom is good for versus Skype. All right. So zoom is really great if you want to create a virtual room of people, right? So you can have a certain number of people that show up on screen visually for a live conversation where anyone who wants to you can control the room, meaning you can have someone muted or not, and let them talk so you can really control what’s what’s going on, depending on how you want to run that operation. And I know Matt Cardone, you know, he helps teach people meditation. So for example, you’re doing a lot of things in person, and you’re trying to do something digitally. You can 100% manage this type of process with zoom right now. So this is a great opportunity to get people on board. You can see how many participants you can talk with people to prep them beforehand, and then you everybody and go through your processes and things like that. And zoom is great for those types of functions. And you know, a lot of people do interviews And other things on zoom. But we usually prefer for example, if you’re recording conversations for an interview or a podcast and things like that, to do that over Skype because Skype actually has a better audio recording than zoom. So that’s a consideration that we always take is podcast recordings, good audio connection and sound comes through Skype. Zoom is a little less in quality for audio, but is great for visual and community discussions and operations like
Amy Aitman 32:31
zoom does have So Matt Cardona asked a question, what is the best platform for digital recurring sessions? I think zoom also has Oh are using stream yard now? Yes, we’re using stream yard and it’s a great great because you can have more than one person on your call and we can also go
Adam G. Force 32:47
to gym cheer and all that stuff. Yeah,
Amy Aitman 32:49
um, the great thing about zoom too, for like internal meetings and internal classes, or if whatever you’re doing is that you can do breakout rooms as well. So you can actually find people to go off and network or connect from them all back in. There’s a lot of flexibility. Zoom is really meant for this kind of digital remotes. Yes. But we like as Adam says, we like Skype for recording for the podcast for video.
Adam G. Force 33:17
Just real quick the reoccurring the recurring sessions that Matt mentioned. So, Matt, you could definitely create recurring sessions but there’s just it’s however you want to do it when people sign up. If they are getting into a membership cycle, you’re usually your membership software is going to manage the reoccurring sessions based on I’m doing monthly payments and I have this many sessions you know, with Matt right. Or zoom, you can schedule unique events. So then yes, you can schedule them and have reoccurring sessions all day long. They tie into Google Calendar and all those types of things. But I think if you want an automated reoccurring session that is showing up there There’s other tools that you would need to use in the membership space like, just to give you an example, we have a membership piece of software that runs our programs control content and frequency and payment systems. And that is tied in with a calendar tool that will we set up reoccurring instances in the calendar that ties into that for our members. So there’s, it’s just a little bit of getting creative. But you can definitely schedule and calendar things on zoom, it depends on what you’re trying to sell and what that looks like to model it. Okay.
Amy Aitman 34:32
And that’s a really good point that Adam brought up to that I want to kind of mention with tools in general. Sometimes when we find a tool that we think does everything, like I know somebody asked me about kajabi and kajabi does everything, but does it do every single thing Well, I feel like there I know that it’s kind of a pain sometimes but I actually am a little bit of a digital tool nerd. I like learning about tools and testing out new tools and So, for example, our email, our email, email marketing tool, we went, we had AWeber for a long time. And then we really wanted to have the best of email marketing tool. So I wouldn’t just use like Wix email marketing, or like, you know, kajabi email marketing, I want the best of every single tool. And yes, it means you have to set up your system in a logical way. But we want the best. So we recommend Active Campaign. It’s really amazing. It’s really easy to learn how to use
Adam G. Force 35:37
since you brought it up, Amy, so we were using AWeber because it was a well established platform, you can look it up, it’s well rated and it’s good for sending out notifications and yes, you can do some tagging systems and stuff like that. However, our our intention shifted as we want to become smarter with our marketing. And when I say smarter, I want to I want it our Amy and I would Discussing like, we need to be as relevant as possible because we don’t want to annoy people or share information. That’s right. So Active Campaign, they have the best behavioral marketing systems. So we was as we get new members into the captivate method, we go through all these tools, and we highly recommend Active Campaign. And that’s because of behavioral marketing sequences. So what that is just in a very quick nutshell for you, if somebody signs up for a free, you know, tutorial or some offer that you have that gets them acclimated with what you’re all about, they get on an email list, and you could say, Okay, now if they open the email, but didn’t click this link, I want to say okay, for those people that didn’t click the link, I’m going to send them this email over here to me say, hey, oops, you might have forgot this or whatever it might be to try to reengage them on getting that link. Or if they did click it, you’re going to send them down a completely different path. Now that’s, that’s marketing based on the behavior of the user. And this says increased our email open rates and overall campaign results substantially going from overarching like, you know, systems that have a average 20 to 30%, email open rate to a 60. And plus email open rate. So it makes substantial differences when you can really speak specifically to what’s going on throughout that customer.
Amy Aitman 37:20
Digital conversations. That’s that is why we got really clear on what we wanted to accomplish. And we that’s why we started using Active Campaign. So Matt, you have another question for us. I love these questions. Keep them coming. Yeah. Once one of clarity and using zoom and wants to scale, is that a service you offer? Well, actually, we do have a program. We’ve talked a little bit about here, the captivate method, we’d love to follow up with you and share but one of our parts in captivate is scaling and building these digital systems, of course, especially for people like solo entrepreneurs that need to get really clear on their offer need to build a digital system and want to do it quickly. And He’s not Yeah, not. I feel like the only people copy what other people are doing, and they’re experimenting with these digital tools. And it could take you it could be messy for a long time. And if you’re, if your digital systems are messy, Guess how your customers are feeling? Lost? Confused?
Adam G. Force 38:20
Like, what? And around clarity? So, yeah, Matt, I mean, the service we offer takes you through a process because we have to make sure people are they are actually clear. And because we’re helping people do is create their key stories. And there’s different kinds of stories write their sales stories. There’s your core story, and how do we actually apply them to the business so that we’re being original and effective and getting more leads and sales because that’s what it’s all about. So you get a whole sales toolbox is what we call it a sales story toolbox. And we go through then how do we set up our funnels and systems and all the taggings and all that kind of stuff, so that you can apply that that basically the fuel to the car All right, so it can actually run. And so first you learn all the stories, the strategies, and that really important stuff. And then you can fuel the setup of all the technology. So that actually works for you. MailChimp is not like Active Campaign or ConvertKit MailChimp is a much more simplistic tool. Now, to be fair, I haven’t explored MailChimp in a while, but they’re designed for people. Typically, this is the first the first email client people sign up for the free trial offer how many people you can get on your list before you have to pay and they hook you in that way so that you have a database there. And once you start getting into I have 5000 10,000 20,000 50,000 100,000 people on the list price points change dramatically. And the technology for behavioral marketing is not there. It doesn’t compare to a company like I say, like, like Active Campaign. We started in MailChimp went to AWeber. And then we realized we really had to get smarter with our marketing and we went to Active Campaign. So that’s why we recommend that This campaign despite the hefty price point, it’s once your systems are running, this couldn’t be more valuable.
Amy Aitman 40:07
Yeah, I honestly think with these kind of things, too, you can’t just think about where your business is. Now you have to think about where you want your business to be in six months in a year. And when you’re committing to a tool like MailChimp or Active Campaign, it’s there is a transition now you can transition from map MailChimp to Active Campaign pretty easily, but you will anytime you make a transition, you might lose. You might lose people and you might not.
Adam G. Force 40:35
I mean, that’s a kind of like an old myth anymore. I mean, I don’t want to I want to Trump that just a little bit. Okay, so Amy’s right, um, Amy is right, because here’s what would happen. We moved from MailChimp to AWeber. And what happened is, they made everybody opt in again, right or something gets lost in the shuffle so you lose people from your list. But now like we had to say we were so nervous about moving all of our people from AWeber to actually If campaign however working closely with them, they made it seamless, and we didn’t lose anyone, unless they were on our list in a parking lot and not active for a certain amount of
Amy Aitman 41:10
days a good it’s a good thing to do. It’s actually good to clean your list, but you have more engagement and morphing, and we saw the engagement and the open rates improve pretty quickly, do we
Adam G. Force 41:20
not? And so, so Matt, we do recommend Active Campaign and one of the things we’re going to start doing in our program, the captivate method is we’re going to start offering the templates, because we walk through all the sequences and the setups where thing to really optimize leads over the long term and make more sales and things like that. And so we’re going to start with what’s really great about Active Campaign is we can share the automation, behavioral marketing like templates, and then all you would have to do is drop them in there and then put the content in for your email. So you have it all built out already. You don’t have to like figure that out. So that’s something that’s going to be exciting part of what we start adding for now. That’s a good point.
Amy Aitman 41:55
And you know, when it comes to tools as well, the tools are only as good As the tools are going to be the strategy that you create, specifically through your business, and the stories that you tell, that’s what’s really going to give your digital systems that juice that power, those digital conversations, and that genetic quality of clicking.
Adam G. Force 42:18
Because I mean, honestly, ever, like if it was if it was just about the tools, everyone would be doing it everyone would be getting Active Campaign. Yeah, at all, like, you know, email, landing pages that are converting like crazy, because if it’s just about the tools, anyone can do it. There’s more to your digital systems and your businesses than just tools. But I could talk about tools all day because yeah, it is fine. It’s like being a carpenter, like, you do need the best tools to be effective and really good at what you do. But none of that will matter unless you have the knowledge of what you’re doing, which means you have like a strategy in place. Right. So Matt says with ongoing campaigns, I’m not sure so if you have an ongoing campaign and you move over to Active Campaign, they will They’ll help manage that. So if you have certain email sequences or a welcome email set up or something, yes, that can all be rolled over and replicated. So you don’t lose the flow. Right. So, you know, that’s something that you talked about with the team over Active Campaign. We went through a lot of that stuff. And it was pretty seamless. Like we had no real big hiccups or anything. So we were not only happy with the support, but we are been very happy with the results. And if you’re thinking long term as you guys should be, this is not a term marketing, and what am I doing this month to get results? It is about what is my long term? And how much money am I making? How am I growing? And where do you want to grow into you want to grow into a system that has the tools and effectiveness like Active Campaign that is where you can really grow into
Amy Aitman 43:49
definitely, and I feel like that’s a really good way to make any decision when it comes to tool that’s not just where your business is now, which a lot of the tools will mark it in that way. So especially with email Marketing Tools, they’ll say you do how many of you 500 a list of 500,000 thousand, but look up because I mean, if you want your list to be 30,000 40,000 someday, because you’re really ramping up your marketing efforts, then look ahead and think about that. So
Adam G. Force 44:15
and that’s part of what we teach to in the in the Kevin method is we teach how to set up this entire system. So aside from understanding how to really create a marketing strategy, and with the right stories, it’s how do we set up systems that we can generate ongoing leads regularly, and then really optimize them for the most sales for the money we spend to get people in there, or the organic or whatever it might be? Yeah, it all together. So anyway, Amy, I guess we can I mean, there’s a ton of tools. I mean, too much of the the dirty details, but if you guys have questions about tools, you can, you know, let us know, we’re happy to answer those types of questions and Matt or anyone else, if you’re interested in learning more about what we teach, you know, we can’t teach everything here, but we could talk about some of these bigger ideas. To help you guys, if you want to learn more about the captivate method, because this might be something for you, you know, reach out in the comments and say, you know, you want to learn about it or just PMS, and we can have a quick conversation, because our goal is to make sure it’s the right fit for you. It makes sense. We want you to get results as fast as possible.
Amy Aitman 45:18
Oh, yeah, definitely. All right, we do have a guide that we wanted to share a free guide for people that are starting to create those digital systems and thinking about working remotely and what that means for their business. And it’s called the impact business blueprint. And we’ve created this guide especially for for solo entrepreneurs and people that are just starting. So we’re going to leave the link in the in the chat here so that you guys can download that free guide and that’s a really great starting point. And it gives you some really great tips on how to build that. Learn more. Yeah, definitely. Pretty
Adam G. Force 45:54
awesome. All right. So Amy will put a link what in the we can update the description. We’re to the impact business blueprint. And yeah, we can go from there guys.
Amy Aitman 46:05
Yeah. And I mean, I encourage anyone that’s not a part of our profitable digital entrepreneur group to come on into that group, introduce yourself. We want to get to know your business, ask questions, and we’d love to continue these conversations there. I feel like this is the this is the time people that we can, you know, really connect and this week we’re going to continue to to come into the group live and on Friday, let’s not forget about our happy hour. Happy Hour. I want to see you guys there. It’s going to be on zoom. It’s going to be really intimate and really fun.
Adam G. Force 46:38
And tomorrow, guys, same time tomorrow, 12 o’clock PST tomorrow, we’re going to be jumping into our second live conversation about how to bid build digital authority and some things that you need to avoid. All right, so we’re gonna keep an eye out the event is in the group, you guys can, you know, put a reminder and set that up. We’ll be here again tomorrow. 12 Yes, that’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.
