The Secret to Business Efficiency

Andy Carruthers, welcome to the Marketing for Business Podcast. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here in sunny Christchurch, mate. This is gonna be epic. Look we've known each other, I don't know, it's probably 15 years. Yeah, it'll be all of that. We met through like a common friend at the time Hamish Conway.

Yeah. And we were in a mastermind group together, weren't we? Yeah. The 10 X Mastermind. And we had some great adventures. Inside that mastermind I learned a lot personally from you. And I'm gonna share some of those details today that I learned from you. 'cause I think they're very valuable to the audience.

This audience here is definitely, business owners people looking to get ahead, looking for some opportunities to grow their business. And one of the things you are really good at is, I would say, business optimization. Especially from a tech stack perspective. So we're gonna go deep into that.

But firstly, mate, you're a husband, you're a dad, you're an entrepreneur, tech expert, you're a mountain runner, but you're also a film director. Greg, congratulations. Tell me a little bit more about the film that you created and I've been lucky enough to watch it. And a great piece of of, I'd say art that you've created.

Oh, thank you very much. Yeah. The film that I created is called sk. Yep. And the film is a story about the heart and spirit of an incredible adventure community Yeah. In New Zealand. And really the story is 60 years ago, the four Wellington Tramping clubs created this weekend challenge where you'd leave work at five o'clock on Friday.

You'd catch the train to Una, you'd get a you'd get a taxi to the start of the trail, and over the weekend you would try to traverse the length of the range Wow. To get back to work on Monday morning. And in the film they talk about how the length it is and I think that gives her the scale.

So how far is it? So it's actually it's a little bit over 80 kilometers. Yeah. Which is not particularly far. No. But the thing that is. The thing that makes it challenging is that there's the same amount of climb. Yeah. That was it in the traverse as climbing Mount Everest twice from base camp.

That's crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's on our back doorstep in Wellington. Yeah. I remember when we were in our mastermind group, you thought it was a good idea to take a son, a tramp and go the side of this mountain. And I remember like the only one that was happy about it was you and, but I could see your passion for the outdoors.

I think that's one of the things you wanted to get across to the boys is and I remember going up to the top of this mountain and it was so windy. And in the film you talked, they talked about, I actually thought you had a speech impediment. 'cause you mentioned, I thought you were supposed to say the word cloud, but there's actually this other thing other thing called, what was it?

Cloud cl. Cl, yeah. SOG is basically fog but wet. Yeah. I thought I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah. And obviously that causes distress because if you get caught in clag one, it's wet. One, it's damp. It's good for growing moss, but probably not good for humans. Not very good for humans.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And interesting, one thing I noticed, and we did talk about this just before, is the camaraderie. A great saying, I learned from Dale Bowman, people come for the content, but they stay for the community. They come for the content of the, and the thrill of doing the traverse and the walk.

But actually there's a real community that you've created there now too. Yeah. There's been an amazing community created by a number of people. And yeah. One of the things that I, you know, one of the things that I always find really, fascinating is just this journey that we go on in life to find our people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that community is, to me it's a great example of, people finding their people. Yeah. And yeah. So it's really cool when when you find those communities that you really connect with Yeah. That you have, a shared passion.

Yeah. And what's, and it's really inspiring too. Yeah. Because, people are out there doing different things. They're, following different inspiration and, that gets shared and it brings people along. Yeah. And in the film there's a number of really key characters that have helped, inspire and shape that community.

Yeah. And, those stories, they're really powerful. Yeah. And, so for me. It was such a incredible experience making that film and actually interviewing a number of those key characters. Including a 93-year-old guy. Yeah. Dave Capper. Yeah. Who was, him and his mate Bruce, were the first to have successfully complete that challenge.

Yeah. That's awesome. And that was in 1963. Yeah. One of the things I thought, but didn't, wasn't, didn't get lost on me while I was watching, is the generations that were going, coming through and Sue, I don't remember what this, is it Graham or Graham Dingle. Yeah. Sue Graham Dingle. And I just thought, what a character he was talking about.

We'd crack two raw eggs and have a can of baked beans or spaghetti and get on with it. Yeah. And then the new generation comes in and they've got, they've got Mars bars, they've got gels, and then the story of the guy taking, he had 40 gels over the day, which was enough for like how many weeks of vitamin C or something.

And he ended up going him to go to the doctors. 'cause he, and I just thought he, he got the runs. He got the runs right. And I was just like, how, like the generational, of even like technology in that, raw eggs versus gels and stuff like that. It was pretty, pretty cool.

What inspired you to create the film? So it's about 15 years ago I went to my first mountain film festival. Yep. In Wellington. It was the Banff Mountain Film Festival that does this world tour. Yep. And I was sitting there watching these incredible adventure documentaries and I was completely inspired.

Yeah. And for many years I've been, playing with video cameras and making little videos and I thought, man, one day I would love to make an adventure documentary. Yeah. Of this, of that type of quality. Yeah. That inspired other people. Yeah. To go on adventures. So yeah. That's very cool.

And then, a few years ago. I, I've been making lots and lots of, short films and videos and actually went and went and did some study and Yep. Went and trained. I remember that. I remember when I was in the mastermind with you, you started to, and this, I think this is a key point.

You're in business or if you're thinking about, Hey, I'd love to do something else, go and train and learn and do some stuff. I remember you started to go and learn about video. Video, and you started, even some of the clips you started bringing in, you were learning and doing and learning and doing.

I thought that's pretty cool. Obviously then you turned it into a film, right? That's, fuck, it's pretty, it wasn't by accident, right? Like you actually, and I think most things that you've done where you are very intentional and we'll talk about the businesses that you had and all that sort of stuff, but very intentional about, Hey, I'm gonna do something or let's do it.

Yeah, from my perspective, when I look around and see. What people are doing. Yeah. Now I think it's very easy for us to sometimes only look at a surface layer and go, wow, isn't it awesome that person became an overnight success? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think every time you see that overnight success, if you just scratch a little bit deeper, you'll find that it's not an overnight success.

No. It's a, it's a 10,000 hour success. Yeah. It's a 10 year or a 20 year success. Yeah. People don't become good at stuff. Yeah. Just overnight. No. Like it's not the way it works. You have to go and you have to go and put the effort in. You have to have the passion and and the really cool thing is that if you have the passion and you put the effort in.

Anything's possible. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And the world will listen. Yeah. And that's the coolest thing. Oh, I was talking a guy the other day on, on the podcast, and my first office was as big as this desk. That literally was it. But I probably, I talked to my team this morning.

I probably spent, I don't know, 70, $80,000 on it's probably more than that there on, on education and teaching myself and self-education. And I think, because when I noticed at the start of the film, it was an Andy Caruthers original, and I thought, that's really cool. Original film. I thought, that's cool.

You put your name on it. So you know that I thought like for all the things that you would've done, the trial and the testing and the, and they're getting frustrating of video camera settings and all that sort of stuff. And like me not recording the audio on sometimes and you didn't give up and all of a sudden you've created this film.

It's pretty cool. Yeah, I just wanna say congratulations because I thought I was, I enjoyed watching it and I enjoyed seeing the characters inside it. I thought you bought them to life and I thought you bought the beautiful scenery to life too, very inspiring part of New Zealand as well.

Do I want, do I wanna run it? Do I want walk it? Probably wanna walk it. Definitely don't wanna run it. Hey, so I think when we first met you were running a business here and a business in Chicago. Yeah. Time zone one. And that to me was fascinating. You were, you had a creative agency and it was just amazing that here's a guy turned up and he's got this business running and you weren't really in the day to day, were you?

No. Yeah. And I thought that was even more. Like intriguing, like here's a guy, he's a business owner, he's not involved in the business, and part of the business is in Christchurch, part of the business in Chicago. So how did you get involved in that and what's some of the learnings there? The good and the bad?

Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of both. How I got involved is one of my closest school mates. Yep. Richard he, when he finished a university he actually came and worked with me in another business that I was involved in. And. He always had a, an aspiration to create his own, creative business.

Yep. And about a year or so that after we worked together, he said, Hey I'm keen to start this business, are you keen to partner me with it? And I was like, yep let's go and do it. Yep. And so turned out that, and then there were actually three of us that got together to start this business.

And at that stage I had another business. I was gonna say you had another business Oh. As well. So that was my, that was my main kind of job, I guess Yeah. Was for running that other business. And yeah, so we started this business and my role for most of the 20 years that I was part of that business was as the.

As the financial director. Yep. So I was responsible for, for managing all of the money and for managing all of the planning and working, with my business partners, in the strategic planning and making sure that, like our great business idea actually generated a return.

So the concept of the business when you had time zone one was working in one time zone like you Yes. And this is going back a very long time. We started this business in 1994. Yeah. So pre, pre-internet. Yeah. Dial up was, yeah. Yeah. And I was very, so in the late nineties three or four years into the business.

We had Richard had a few contacts in the uk. Yep. And he went and did a trip to the uk, talked to a bunch of people he knew and offered to provide our services from New Zealand. And so we we renamed the business time zone one because New Zealand's, the first time zone in the world.

Yeah. And that our, the business was really leveraging time zones and exchange rates to provide great value. Yeah. So we live at the bottom. Our exchange rate's a lot less than the uk. Yeah. Good value for them. Whatever they spend, they're gonna get At some stage they're getting nearly triple.

Yeah. So that, that's a smart move. Yeah. I mean it's today and for many years, it's something that, many, most businesses use, most. Yeah. Today is okay, we've got this global yeah. Connected. But in 1996, that's whoa.

Yeah. Revolutionary. So I guess, like for those of us as old as me, we're going back to, kind of Skype. Yeah. You like our first video calls were Skype calls. Yeah. Yeah. And your ear was getting like disappearing and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we grew that business ended up actually going into the US Yep.

And pulling out of the uk. Yep. Because we Richard had developed some better contacts there and they were a little bit more open to, they were a little bit more excited about doing business with New Zealand. Yeah. And yeah, that business has has grown. And I guess one of the claims to fame for that business was that we picked up a, an account for a very small unknown business out of Denver, Colorado called Crocs.

Oh wow. And it was time zone one and that. Shared their journey to go from a nothing brilliant to a to a global phenomenon. And what was the, like, how, when you started working with them, did you think no one's gonna buy these ugly pieces of guess what do you call it?

My son loves them rubber. Yeah, rubber. Yeah. And, but I'll tell you what a unbelievable business and also what an unbelievable comeback of a business too, right? Yeah. What was the big selling point there that you guys worked on? Do you remember at all? The big, the, we've, we won a number of awards for effective advertising. Yep. So what was that? So that is. Advertising that generates sales. Nice. So in America you have the Effies, which are the which are those awards. And what we did was not rocket science. No. We made sure that, we had, we took great photos.

We, we had a really aggressive media campaign. Yep. Getting the name out there, getting the name out there brand, and, we had, croc is a cool name too, right? Like back in the It would've been, yeah. The advertising was very cool. Yeah. Yeah. We had a great creative team.

Yeah. And to push a few boundaries with that sort of stuff. Absolutely. And you and the client, they were ambitious. Yeah. Yeah. And, so it was just this, it was an incredible kind of whirlwind. Yeah. And. And quite a, like a really interesting kind of story. They rode that wave of the plastic shoe.

But one of the things that they did really is they bought up hundreds of independent foot mate shoe manufacturers over that wave. Yeah. Because they knew that, just the plastic Yep. Crock. Yep. That was going to be faddish. But they were smart. Yeah. They bought up and they expanded their range.

Correct. They created their own retail stores still to the day. They did, built a really good e-commerce, platforms. Yeah. And. Did a great job. Yeah. No and still to the day, like my son and as all his mates are wearing them, and then I know you go camping, there's a few adults wearing them and there's lots of, actually lots of people wearing them.

I get amazed because my son goes to me dad, you're gonna, the states, you need to get me some of these Gibbs. And I was like, what? And I thought he was talking about Gibbs. And I said, yeah, but they're inside of chicken. That's what my grandmother used to talk about, the gits inside of chicken.

He's no. These things that go and he had one and he put it inside the crock. And I was like, that. It is genius. Yeah. All of a sudden these kids want these shoes because of this thing here. Yeah. And I went to the States and I was like, I went to the store, the Croc store, who had a dedicated area for bbs.

And you couldn't get in. Yeah. Because all the kids were there. And I was like, I was just sitting there going, this is incredible. What an incredible business, right? I was just like, someone is making a lot of money here. And they were expensive, right? So he wanted someone I think I only bought him six.

And then a mate of his said, oh no, you should get them through Teo. So he ended up buying some through Teo and he got 200 for the price. I bought six for in the States. But, and then all the kids are trading them and talking about them, and now he actually has a. A blue shoe and he's got a, like a brand that's a Pac-Man brand on it and stuff.

And it's actually pretty cool. But I just thought, you start out with a, with an idea, a crock and the reason you've, the backstory and that and it is pretty cool. I didn't know, I didn't, I've known you all these years. I didn't know that. That is fascinating. And I just love the way that brand owns their own retail.

They're in other retailers too though. They are. And I've been into the retail store here a couple of times 'cause Kerry's tried to get me to get a here and I always said no, but and I always try them on, but there's always people in there buying them. Yep. They're fascinating.

Fascinating. You end up in Chicago as well, right? You look after, was it the Chicago Mile or something like that? You be you were looking after a brand there or? So we did quite a lot of work for. For tourism in Chicago. Yeah. We did some work for the US Army.

Wow. We helped them with their recruitment campaign for post nine 11. Wow. We help them design these huge so this recruitment campaign, you'd have these huge trailers which would go to NASCAR events. Yep. Yeah. Big events where heaps of people are, heaps of people.

Target market is on point target market's right there. And you'd open up the big truck and it's, just this huge, interactive demo recruitment tool. Yeah. Nice. And, people come in and they'd, play with the guns and play with the Yeah. The technology. And that was the start of the recruitment campaign, like it was like a conversion event.

Absolutely. On a trailer. On a trailer, yeah. How good. Yeah, how good. So you guys were involved in that. It's pretty cool. What do you, when you think about running that agency or being part of that financial control of that business, what are some of the real, things that you can see, hey, this made a real difference in the business and why it grew.

And the reason I ask that is we're in a time for some businesses they are struggling. And I no doubt you would've been through some times where it was tough. You, in 20 years of business, you're gonna be through some of these. What are some of those things that you learned along the way that actually, helped you, get back on track or also grow the business from your perspective?

So this is really boring, but boring actually makes you money. Yeah. And I've realized that Yeah. In business and a smart business owner will start to lean in. Yeah. 'cause they'll know. Yeah. So in an agency business you are, you're selling time. And your margin and your, the amount of capacity that you're using is everything.

Yeah. If you've got, if you've got a team of 10 people, you've got 20,000 work hours for the year. Yeah. Now the success of your business is based on what percentage of those 20,000 hours you can belt. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Straight up. And the things that we learned was that we just had to, we had to measure, we had to know what was going on all the time.

Yep. And we had to make sure that we priced appropriately. Yeah. And you just, you are always having to have those con hard conversations because in a creative business like this, you get scope creep. Yeah. Big time. And you have to have it clear and you have to be willing to always be having the conversation with your clients to say, that's fan, that's a fantastic idea.

We'd love to do that for you. Yep. And there's gonna be an additional cost for us to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And be really clear on that. I thought what I did, like what you said there about measuring like. Like every business should be measuring. Yeah. And because if you don't measure, you can't manage.

Yeah. And I think that's really important. It's very hard in a it's easy, very easy in an agency to just do that other work too. And I think for most businesses too. Yeah. It's very easy. You get a sparky to come and put some lights and stuff, and he has to put another switch, and he is not gonna do that for free, is he?

No. And you do have to remind yourself of that. Yeah. And I think that's definitely one thing as an agency owner, we've had to learn to be better at as well, so Yeah. Very, yeah. So measuring pricing, getting the pricing right and being, courageous enough to have those conversations because, hey, if you go outta business, it's not gonna be good for them, is it?

Yeah. The, there, there are lots of really important things, to a successful business. Another really key one, for time zone one is having great salespeople. Yeah. So my business partner Richard, just an extraordinary salesperson. Yep. Who made an extraordinary very charismatic. Yep. A great listener. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And great energy. Just, yeah. One of those people that at the party Yeah. You wanna be around. Yeah. Because yeah. Just exuding. Yeah. One thing he's actually interested in you. Yeah. So he's actively listening to understand versus to reply that when he talks, its energy's there.

So Yeah. People are like yeah. I was listening to Shark Tank this week. It's not a shark tank, but Lewis House had Robert from Shark Tank on, and he was he became a billionaire, but he, when he arrived in Canada, his. Family were immigrants and he was bought from poverty, basically.

But he said his life changed the day. He decided to have more energy. Yeah. And he decided to bring more energy and there was some moments throughout his life where he got opportunities to showcase that. And he was a big part of that in sales. He said, look, seriously, you are transferring energy. And when you can, if you can get all your people in your business when either they're account manager or they're answering the phone or they're doing whatever, they don't have to be in sales.

It should be transferring energy. Get your, but you have to lead that. That's very cool. Like the same, you have those kind of skills, you're gonna be good at sales, right? Yeah. How good. And then I think there are things that can be learned. Absolutely. Absolutely. They can be learned. But you have to bring, you have to have a mindset to want to do it too.

Yeah. You have to. I. You have to want it, right? Yeah. You gotta want it. Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. So you were fortunate enough not fortunate enough, but you had a good team there, right? Amazing team. Amazing team. So then, okay, so you, I remember you, when we involved in the mastermind, you were getting out of that business.

You still had the other business that you were working on and raising money. Was it raising money for? Yeah. So we did some so that business is a publishing. That's right. A publishing business. So we were selling advertising. Yep. We also did a huge amount of, so we had a tele, a telephone sales team.

And one of the things that we did a lot of outbound telephone sales work for in the telecommunications, sector. Yep. Long, long time ago, you had the deregulation that happened in telecommunications and clear communications who were a new player, who came into the market, who, eventually got bought by Telstra.

Yep. We did a lot of the acquisition work. Nice. So we had a team of 30 people in Wellington who would be phoning Yeah. Small business. Dialing for dollars. Dialing for dollars. Wow. Yeah. Is that still a thing you reckon? Cold calling and dialing for dollars? Is it still going? Do you ever hear of anything still going like that?

Yes, there is. That's, that still exists. Nice. I did, I do have a client I work with who has now transitioned to AI calling agents. Yeah. Yeah. So instead of having humans doing the calling, he's got AI agents doing the calling. Yeah. And how effective is that? When you've got a match with your target market and the message you are delivering, there is no difference in the effectiveness.

Yeah. When you, when that is off slightly. Yep. It's not as effective. Wow. Yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was actually talking to someone about this the other day. I'm very interested in how that will play out long term around, that rapport building stuff, yeah. And how, like he was talking about, so he has a thing called emotional personal connection.

And so when he's calling, if he's calling someone in the Hawkes Bay, he researches about the Hawkes Bay, and he might, conversation might start off with, Hey, great to see the, the won a new award and the wine and stuff like that. Or if the Hawkes Bay rugby team had just done some good stuff he'd start off with that kind of stuff.

And it was like, wonder if AI can actually do that. And because those is those easily, yeah, that emotional connection with people I think is really what, what stands out at the moment. But if AI can start them doing that, then that, that's crazy. Yeah, we'll talk about AI a bit later.

Yeah. So that's interesting. But then you went and work for a big financial business. Business advisory. Business advisory, yeah. Yeah. So you started, meeting more and more business owners and obviously you've got your skillset that you've bringing and this, I guess what I was really interested in, in, in that optimization start of sort of stuff, you started to see some real opportunities to help businesses grow.

But I think one of the areas that you started to look at was technology. And I think I, I wanted to talk to you more about this today because I think there's a real gap in the marketplace for the technology side of business for just good ma and pa local businesses. I think they're missing that opportunity right now.

I think that, I think it's, I. One thing I always talk to you about, it's in the too hard basket. And it really is for a technology. And I, and look, I'm lucky enough to go and talk. I talk to a lot of businesses most months throughout New Zealand, and I definitely, they start talking to me about the technology.

Ah, I don't understand it. It's too hard. So let's talk about some practical things. So you now run a business and it's funnily enough, it's, hard basket. You help business owners really take some of that stuff. That's too, that is just hard for them. But if you get some technology in the right place you can actually do some really cool stuff.

So let's talk about that. Why did you wanna start that business? One of the. One of my key roles in my businesses was to make sure that we were using good technology to manage those businesses. Yep. So in the agency, we needed good job management. Yep. But we needed to know what was going on with the jobs we needed to be able to track, what was going on from a creative perspective.

Yeah. But also obviously, around a time and money perspective, we needed to be able to operate this global business. And so we kinda had to be at the leading edge of some of that. Yeah. Yeah. And I've always been an early adopter for technology and, as the internet developed, suddenly we started to get these tools that were, that, and that larger businesses had been able to develop for years, but suddenly they were accessible for small and medium sized businesses. Yeah. Yeah. So I became, really that became my core focus was how do we drive efficiency? Yeah. How do we leverage technology Yeah. To provide a better customer experience.

Yep. Provide a better team experience and be more efficient. Yeah. Okay. So I, yeah. I absolutely love that work. Yeah. And I, after 20 years of my own businesses, it was time to go and do something different. Yeah. And so I went and started helping other businesses to do those things, yeah. And. And, five years ago I decided it was time to go out on my own. Nice. And really just to, double down on connecting apps and automating workflows. Yeah. And I'm one of a small number of certified Zapier experts in New Zealand, and that's my main automation platform.

Just remember, Zapier makes you happier if you're a business owner. You want to connect that into your brain. Yeah. Zapier makes you happier. And we'll talk about why it makes people happier. Yeah. So you are one of the few doing that sort of work. Yeah. There are lots of businesses using Zapier.

Yeah. And lots of people who are great at Zapier. I'm just one of a. One of a small number of people that are actually, certified and part of their official network. The cool thing I think, when if you get enough time and you talk to Andy is actually understands business.

'cause there's a lot of people understand the technical side, but there's not, there's a lot of people that understand the technical side and then the business side. 'cause I think this is where most businesses get frustrated because they'll get someone come along and help them with the tech side, but never explain the business side.

So there's a real disconnection there and you use the words, I think so important in business and that's leverage. You've gotta look at this technology today and say, where can it help me get leverage? And leverage is basically doing more with less right? And getting an upside. And I think this is a great conversation to have because.

We've, we are moving into a world where I think Nvidia bought out a quantum computer the other day and it's for three grand. And they, like that technology was just not available. Yeah. And so the likes of all these technologies that you used, they were used to be very expensive or you couldn't get them, or you actually had to physically you go get the disc and load it and all that sort of stuff.

Now because of the internet and because of the speed of the internet, you can actually get these tools to drive efficiencies and have more leverage. So let's talk about some real practical example. 'cause these, the people listening and I get tagged in stuff all the time. Hey, I love the way you get practical examples.

Give some practical examples of how you are helping business owners Yep. With this type of stuff. So let's go. I know you've got some Yep. Some things there. So I've got some specific examples here of some recent projects that I've been involved in. One of, one recent project was for, this is actually for an Australian logistics business.

Yep. Okay. Now, the problem that they had was they have 20 truck drivers out on the road. Yep. And they have all of these purchase orders that come through their system. And the current output for those purchase orders is a, as a PDF document. Yep. And what they were having to do is to take that data and to manually key it in to a, some software, which is a Mero board, which Yeah.

Yeah. Many of you would've heard of. Yeah. And they set up the mirror boards for the truck drivers on their iPads in the trucks. Wow. Now this manual task was taking one of their key people, quite a lot of Yeah. Time. We got 20 people putting that in those inputs into yeah. Yeah. So what we're able to do using Zapier and using a a passa tool is we're able to send the PDF documents into an automation that took, that takes all of the data that we need from the PDFs, DFS formats it appropriately, and then sends it into the correct place inside of the Miro board.

Brilliant. So that, so that people don't have to do that manually time. Good. How good. How good. And so that starts with IDing a problem. And no doubt the person doing that entry would've been just over that 20 people. Yep. And you can't then scale the business if you can, but you just give that person more work.

Yep. It would be frustrating for them. Can you see why Zia now makes you happier? Because that software and it's just it's just stuff that's been done an old way. Yeah. Just done a new way with technology, right? Yeah. And all of a sudden the business becomes more efficient, saves more time and that person can be put on to do something else.

Yeah. And I think this is the thing that business owners, they get worried about Oh, if, or the person doing the job gets worried about too. If I. If they don't need me, what am I gonna do? But the business is still gonna need you. Yeah. You're just gonna do other things that are more, more valuable.

More valuable with your time. 'cause that's not a valuable task. No. Taking what they have into it from a PDF into a mirror board. Yeah. Cool. They would've been pretty stoked with that. How many hours do you reckon they would saved there? So they, that, that saved them? It was I think it was about 30 hours a month.

Wow. So how does a business owner, how do they Id that, how do they know that there's, how did they, how did they know that there was a problem? Did you put out some content and they saw, or we've got a problem? Or did they just come to you because they had an idea of a problem that they, so in this case, they, they knew they had a problem.

Yeah. They had heard about Zapier. Yep. They had gone in and. And had started to try to get it to work in Zapier. Yeah. Yeah. And they ran into a few roadblocks. Yep. So they reached out to me through the Nice, through the experts directory. Brilliant. And I helped 'em Yeah. To solve it.

So in that case, they had already identified the problem. Yeah. Yeah. So 30 hours a week, 30 hours a month. 30 hours a month. So when you like play that out over a year, that's a lot of time, that's huge. Time saving there, 360 odd hours of time saved and, that's cool. Yeah.

No, what's the next one? Okay, so next one is a retail business. And this is this is an Auckland retail business. So one of the things they're wanting to do is they're wanting to get reviews from customers that have purchased. Yep. Yep. So they're using SYN seven. Okay. Yeah. To manage their, their retail business and for their emails, they're, they're using MailChimp Yep.

To pretty commonly used systems. And so what they wanted to have happen is once the product has been paid for and has been shipped and received by the customer Yep. They want the customer to get an email encouraging them to provide reviews. And there's a sequence of emails.

Yeah. So it's a marketing sequence of emails. Yep. So the, there is actually a a standard connection between Send Seven and MailChimp. Yep. But. It's not very sophisticated. Yeah. And didn't enable them to do the workflow that they wanted. Yep. So what we did is we used Zapier to manage the workflow.

Nice. But the, one of the key kind of clever things we were able to do in here, and one of the things that they were really worried about and a lot of businesses are worried about Yeah. Can just about know what you're gonna say. Yeah. We all have those customers. Yeah. Totally. That are that we don't want to ask for a no, because we know that they're gonna give us a bad review.

Yeah. So in the process, what I was able to do was I was able to come up with a. An improvement to their process so that only the customers that they thought they would get a good review from Yep. Go into the funnel. Nice. Nice. And so I was able to change a couple of custom settings inside of syn seven for them, so that this automation only works with the ones that they want.

Brilliant. So they could like, Hey, that person come in, tick a box kind of thing, and then they would get the sequence. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So that takes all the kind of, the angst out of it because they only, the sequence is only going to someone they're likely to give you a good review. Yep.

Because a lot of that I, and I've had those conversations. Oh, we don't wanna do that. Yeah. 'cause we don't want, they don't they don't want the 10 good reviews 'cause of the one bad review. Yeah. Crazy. But that's how, that's very cool. And have you seen it, have they seen an increase in reviews?

Yeah. They went from no reviews to, because they weren't asking. Asking, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. And are, good reviews are so important today. Yeah. Like what other people, what your customers say about you is so important. Yeah. Getting known by the success of your clients is one of my number one marketing truths.

Yeah. For small business. It's just absolutely crucial, right? Yeah. Yeah. Next one. So this is this, I think this one's very cool. Nice. So this one is for an Auckland accounting business. And they work in a in a very kind of small niche Nice. Providing, providing some accounting services to, some specific.

A very small kind of specific group of people. And so they have this onboarding process. Yep. And the first stage of their onboarding process is there's a a form on their website Yep. Where they, where you answer five questions and the answer to those five questions, it sends you an automated email that says, rough estimate to solve.

The problem that you've got will be between X and X. Yep. So they had that in place. The next step in their process was to then do, to have a call. Nice. Okay. So they have a call and then from that call they, there's then this really complicated questionnaire to complete in order for a firm quote to be provided.

Okay. Yep. Now what they were doing is they were, they'd have the phone call, they'd then email them a Google Doc that was, it was probably 10, 10 or 12 pages. Yeah. And it wasn't very user friendly. No. It was overwhelmed with, so it was just hard. Yeah. And then from there, once they got that Google Doc completed, they would then go through and visually analyze it to then go and create a quote inside of Zero.

And what we're able to do with Zapier is when people completed the first form, we were able to send that data into Zapier. We were able to pre-populate a second form. So that instead of getting a Google doc Yeah. The prospective customer gets a new form, which is partially filled out from the five answers they've Already done.

Already done. Yeah. We've put it into a much better, into a form. Yeah. Which is much more usable. I like it. We're able to improve their experience. Yeah. So makes it easier for them to complete. Yeah. And then the really cool stuff is once they complete that form and submit it, we're able to use the Zapier automation and the rules and the form Yep.

To send that data straight into zero quotes. Yep. And to calculate the quote. Wow. Wow. Exactly. Based on what they're, based on, what they've completed in that second form. Nice. And so now. We have a team member that then goes in they get a notification that a new quote has been created in Xero.

They go and give it a, they give it a final review. So the automation's done all the heavy lifting for them. Heavy lifting. Lifting. Yeah. They go and the leverage, they go and have a look at it, make sure that it all makes sense, and press the send button. Brilliant. So this saved one of their key team members 15 hours a week.

Wow. Wow. And that's not a cheap hour rate. No. And so even what even excites me about that is like the machine learning comes into this. Yeah. And even with with Xero's API and and the AI that's coming as well over a period of time you'll be able to look at that. And so the person actually won't have to look at that.

Those quotes. Yeah. The learning of that and the accuracy of that. When you, if they even back costed all those jobs and stuff, which they would 'cause they're accountants. Yeah. Using other software, they could see how accurate those quotes were. Yeah. Over time. And not actually trust that over the next period of time we're not gonna actually have to check them.

Yeah. Phenomenal. And that's, I guess that's the conversation that's leverage. It's going okay. What we did another way, and also like you would've been the people that you would've been dealing with would've hated the experience if you were seeing them. A 10 page Google doc.

Yeah. I remember Donald Miller, he talks in his book, if you make people consume calories because of your information's too thick, you they have to consume calories and they get though, that's why they go away and get distracted, and that would've been a classic example. The drop off would've been, oh, it's more work than it's worth.

Yeah. If someone sent me 10 pages in a Google Doc, but if I get some, a doc that's already prefilled, that's already has some information, it, that's, there's a, I think there's, there is a psychology thing to it around, oh, you've already prefilled some of the information. Yeah, once again, I can, this is mine.

Yeah. This is my personal form. Yeah. And now I don't have to, now there's only me so many other parts I need to fill in and I'll be done. And also wanna save that problem. How good's that, eh, that's a, I can see why you said, but once again, Zapier makes you happier because 15 hours at a hour rate like that.

And can you just imagine that, like when you see the future of that, like how. How much more efficient? 'cause it takes time to do quotes. Yeah. Does, so if you are not having a quote that's pretty, pretty cool. So the next one you can't get better. Surely. So this is still, this is pretty cool.

I'm not sure, I'm not sure if the rates is better. No. It's very cool. Let's, let me judge that. Okay. Alright. So this is an Australian engineering business. Seriously, it's not that great 'cause it's Australian, so it's just, it was a New Zealand business. So this business they provide provide engineering consulting services.

So they have two offices, a team in Brisbane and a team on the Gold Coast. And. The thing that they were, the problem that they were wanting to solve is they've been growing quite quickly. So their kind of their quoting system Yep. Has been it's got a little bit out of control.

Yeah. So they've, so what they've decided to do is they've decided that they would start using Quont Yep. To manage their quotes, which is a great tool. Yeah. Use it. But what they were wanting to do was, there was, from there, there was all of this manual work where a quote would get accepted. Then from there, a like a and a invoice would need to be created.

It would need to be, sent to them to to pay a deposit. Yep. The job details would have to be updated. They're using workflow Max. Okay. They're using Xero for their financial tool. Yep. And because that team's growing, one of the problems that you get into when you have multiple systems like this is you need more of your, you need a lot of your team to have visibility on stuff.

Yeah. But you don't want them all going into your quont No. To your Zero. No. Workflow Max in this case we probably only want them in Workflow Max. And, maybe one other place, but we don't want 'em going into quota. No. We don't want 'em going into Xero. Yeah. So what we, they they decided that one of the tools they wanted to use was Zendesk.

Okay. Which, again, it's a great tool. Yep. And that they would, they wanted to they would use Zendesk. So Zendesk is like a ticketing system. Ticket, yeah. Ticketing system. So they would use that to, to be able to give them visibility and track what was happening. With each of these quotes.

Nice. So what we're able to do using Zapier, that's a good idea, is we're able to, when people, when a customer accepted a quote Yep. We automatically Yep. Send them a zero deposit invoice. Nice. With a payment link. Nice. Now we have it set up on, on a rules basis. So if the job is smaller than X value, then they just get an invoice for the full job.

Yep. If it's above a certain value, then they just get a deposit invoice. Nice. They get emailed the the invoice with the payment link. Now, as soon as the quote gets created, a Zendesk ticket gets up, gets created. When the quote gets accepted, it gets updated as accepted. When the invoice gets paid, the Zendesk gets ticket, gets updated as being paid.

Nice. And at the same time we're also with the integration between WorkflowMax and Xero, we are updating WorkflowMax. Nice. And one of the things we're able to set up in this automation, which is not part of kind of the standard integration that you have between Workflow Max and Xero, is we wanted to be able to send them, send the customer a, a workflow, max templated like job scope.

Yep. And so we set up this really cool automation that enables us to attach that Cool to the Xero, to the email with the Xero invoice and Link. Brilliant. From a customer experience, we're able to tick all of those boxes. Yeah. We're able to. Automate the process so the team aren't having to do this manually.

Yeah. We're using Zendesk so that everybody knows what's going on and Yeah. It's just saving the visibility. Yeah. Yeah. And savings and also like engineering firms they're probably a wee bit more old school when some of that sort of stuff. So you actually bringing them into the new world as well.

Yeah. And one thing will stand out there is the customer experience is better, so their customers will be happier compared to the other engineering firms that they're dealing with. Yeah. So there's a bigger picture to all of this. So really cool story. So the team that I work with on this, yep.

We're doing a presentation to the, to the wider team. And they were, talking about the automation and they had Zendesk up on, on the big screen in the room, and while they were sitting there. Oh, sale. Yeah. A quote got accepted, the Zen Zendesk ticket got updated. The invoice got sent.

The customer paid it. Oh, no way. The Zendesk ticket got updated on live on the screen to say that the, this deposit has been paid. Yeah. And nobody had to touch anything. Anything. Wow. Wow, man. So yeah, that's pretty cool, right? Like how good's that good use of software, which software in the day is leverage.

Yeah. Good use of technology, good use of thinking thing through things through. How do you, when you talk to business owners that have these problems, how do you start to see how things can work? You obviously must see how to take a problem and just practically break it down. Is that your skillset in that aspect of it?

Yeah. My, my skillset is that I have. I have lots of years of experience inside of my own businesses and working with other businesses. Yeah. That I've seen most of the problems I see. I've seen before. Yeah. Yeah. So I know from a, like from a business process perspective, what we need to do here.

Yeah. And then I am, I'm also, I've developed my technology skills Yeah. To become a to become proficient at the technology. Yeah. But I think, one of the key things that I've learned over the years is it's not about the perfect sys, it's not about the perfect software.

No. Okay. So much of using this technology and improving process and efficiency is about. Understanding what the workflow is. Yep. Understanding what the skillset is of the people that are going to be interacting and driving it. Yeah. Nice. And with those, with that information. Yep. Then designing something which is going to have some, it's gonna be the simplest thing.

For them to be able to manage ongoingly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really important, right? How can you make it simple enough so one will get implemented and it's manageable going forward. Yeah. Otherwise, if it's too confusing. Falls off. Yeah. Very cool. Hey man, thanks for really, I really appreciate you sharing some real life examples, right?

It must be quite rewarding, to see and deal with business owners knowing that you're actually saving them time, and, or not only time, but money. It must be very rewarding. Ah. It's awesome. I have so much fun Yeah. In my role and awesome. It must be epic to see that play out when they would've come back to you and, Hey, by the way, we made a sale and, the whole thing.

That's pretty cool. Hey Annie, we've been going nearly for an hour and I want to go and have lunch with you, so I'm gonna put you on the spot. All the experience that you have with business technology, understanding people. If you were gonna start a business today 2025 what are the five things that you would do?

Five things that I would do is. One, I would, the first thing I'd do is identify a problem. Yep. That I see that, exists in the market. Yep. And how would you identify that problem?

I would identify it. I, that really comes into, so initially I'd identify it by, from the outside influences that I'm seeing. Yep. The next thing I would do is I would go and talk to lots of my target audience. See this is this expert. So many people don't do that. Yeah. They have the idea problem.

And that's why I asked you what you'd do. Most people see a problem they think exists. Yeah. And they never go talk to anyone. Yeah. But create the product and then wonder why no one buys 'em. Yeah. Cool. So I go and talk to a lot of people and yeah. 50 Yeah. Probably. Yeah. 50 people at least.

Yeah. And see how deep that problem is. Yeah. Would they give you money for that point? Absolutely. How much of a pain is that problem, and do you need to solve that problem? Yeah. The next thing that I would do from there is I would, create my order form. Yep. Nice. And make a sale. Yeah. Yeah. So important, right?

Yeah. If you're gonna have an idea at least and you've got people that you've talked to get an rule form. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. Make a sale. Yeah. Nothing to you make a sale, right? Yeah. It's all pipe dreams. So you make sale. Yep. And then from there I would, I would use that, those first, that first project.

Those that first customer. Customers to make sure that I can create a commercially viable model out of it. Yeah. That business, business isn't business if it's not commercially viable. No. And that's gotta line up with the, the goals that I have for it. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's a good point, right? What are the goals that you have for the business and some goals are different for other people, right? Yeah. So your commercially viable businesses will be a lot different than someone else's, right? Yeah. So you've gotta actually have some thinking around that too, right?

Yep. Nice. And then number five is you then you find great people. Yeah. Build a team around it. Build a team. Build a team. What do you reckon some of the keys to building a team are knowing you have many people you've built in a team now, or you in the past? Yeah. Look,

It's all about, it's all about relationships. Yeah. It's all about, it's about culture. It's about rapport. It's about understanding, what people need and want. Yeah. Out of that, that relationship Yeah. That you have in your workplace. Yeah. And those relationships, depending depending on the role vary and depending on the person.

Yeah. And I think that the, the most successful team members you have, and the most successful teams are the teams that. Connect. They have open, robust Yeah. Conversations. Totally. They work together. They can play together. Yeah. They, they become a really important, relationships in your life. Totally. And then, and I think one of the keys to that is making a safer environment for them to do that. And you start to see people grow and have those, if they need to have those harder conversations because of that environment, which, I've seen you do that over the years, which has really cool.

And this has been a great conversation. Thank you for coming to Christchurch. From Wendy, Wellington. I know you've got some business down here today as well, which is exciting. But how do people reach out to you and if people are sitting there, 'cause I know there'll be people listening, they'll go, you know what?

I'm sick of that old thing that, we have that manual thing. And they think, or they think there could be a better way to do it. How do people reach out to you and maybe have a discussion and do you offer like a chat and how to work some stuff out, work it through? What do you, how do people get a hold of you?

Yeah, so people can, you can find me, you can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me at my website, which is hardbasket.com. I offer a initial 15 minute video call. Cool. You can, you can book on a time just by going to, not going to my website. And, we'll jump on a video call and yeah, have a chat and, okay, good.

Yeah, I reckon if you're listening and you think you could make your business more efficient, now's the time. Give Andy a call. Have 15 minutes with him and bring your problem. I think one, the, one of the cool things bring the problem and Andy will be able to help you talk through it and then see some solutions.

And, you've heard today we just, she just shared a few examples, but you've actually got hundreds of examples that of work you've done. Man so good to hear. You are helping so many more businesses and really, leveraging that technology to help 'em too. So I really appreciate your time man.

Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. Alright. Hey, one job. You've got one job now. You actually two jobs. One, you gotta contact Andy. 'cause if you're smart and you want to make your business more efficient, you will. And your other job is all you need to do is share this podcast. I've been getting some great tags in, on, on LinkedIn especially for people sharing the podcast and having some conversation.

So I'd love it if you just share the podcast out on LinkedIn or also Instagram. It's great being able to bring guests on like Andy and share with you what he's doing in the world to make the world a better place for business owners. So hey, share the podcast and look forward to talking to you soon.

And as always, have fun, take action and always celebrate your victories.