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In this Podcast, Sam speak with Ed Watters of Dead Amerca Podcast. Some of the things they cover in this podcast include many processes with no automation—the five stages of business. Find out where to use your human workforce. You can work from anywhere we speak about names can be misleading. So do your homework. We cover the value of automation.
Transcript:
Speaker: 00:00:00
Today we are lucky to have Sam Ovett with us. Sam is with Mobile Pocket Office, very unique, what Sam and his father has put together for you. Sam, could you jump in, explain to us a little bit about who you are what you do. And why you do it.
Speaker: 00:00:21
Yeah, absolutely, really glad to be here and appreciate you having me on. As far as what we do, I’ll give you the big picture Mobile Pocket Office a little bit of the backstory of who I am and how I got there. Regarding Mobile Pocket Office, what we do at Mobile Pocket Offices, we help people be human where it counts, and otherwise automate. And what that means is, we businesses come to us,
Speaker: 00:02:16
Yeah, it kind of is confusing when you look at the name, because you’re expecting an app. But when you dive into it and find out what Sam and his father does, they provide a unique service that you cannot explain the value of this automation. I could not tell you how much I love automating things. And when you dive into it, you don’t know what you’re getting into. And it can be a head spin. So
Speaker: 00:03:01
Yeah, certainly. Great question. And I think the backstory on it all is pretty interesting. So we can get there. But the businesses that we work with are at a, it’s actually surprisingly not industry dependent, we’ve, we’ve ended up working with a lot of businesses in the digital space, where they’re providing some aspects of their business is, is serving some kind of digital product, right?
Speaker: 00:05:22
Yeah, a lot of people when they think of automation, they think, bots,
Speaker: 00:05:29
Totally, bots, machines, robots.
Speaker: 00:05:32
Yeah, they can, they can be very unpersonalized. Very annoying.
Speaker: 00:05:40
Oh, yeah. And I thought that, you know, kind of a bad automation. Honestly, a lot of the automation that we see and feel we noticed, as humans is like the negative aspect of automation to that experience. And we remember bad experiences much better than positive experiences. And it’s easy to think about that in automation. However, a lot of the automation that we do with folks is is
Speaker: 00:07:50
frustrating. That’s the stuff that we also want to avoid. And that’s why we have this strategic approach of you want to be human where it counts and otherwise automate. Because if you can put that human touch in and create incredible customer experiences, that’s going to drive organic referrals. And people are going to be raving fans about whatever it is you’re doing. But if you are creating an
Speaker: 00:08:25
Yeah. So what made you realize the human touch was a vital part of this automation process?
Speaker: 00:08:34
Yeah, so I think it’s interesting to back up and go into my background a little bit, because I think it’s a bit relevant to this whole automation discussion. prior to doing this, and running this with my dad, in the outdoor industry, I graduated college with a degree in environmental science, but what I wanted to do was be a whitewater kayaker. And so that meant, you know, going on expeditions and
Speaker: 00:11:03
the reality is, in the in that world, it’s largely, you got to do something pretty unique to break through and make a decent amount of money on it. And so that was the point that I decided, Okay, I don’t want to use my physical body to make money, right, I’m gonna use my brain, I sort of started to head that direction, with my involvement in brands, but largely, I was using my physical body to
Speaker: 00:13:15
creating partnerships with software companies, that that’s how we generate a lot of that is today how we generate a lot of our business as well and interest in our services. So that’s the shift. That’s the background. There’s also a lot of risk management that we apply for my time spent assessing life and death situations, and making decisions and really high consequence situations to making
Speaker: 00:14:07
Well, do you use existing tools? Or do you make these tools of automation yourself? Do you code them out for each client? Or do you use specific tools that are already on the market for people to automate with?
Speaker: 00:14:27
Yeah, that’s a good question. So what we do, we also recommend this. Now we live in an age where we’re, we’re rich in tools we’re abundant in digital tools that you can use to automate things. So we really advise people against using or building their own tools or investing in building your own tools. Once in a while. We’ll do that if it’s necessary, but largely the value is in freeing up
Speaker: 00:16:35
Yeah, it does, what you really need to do is focus on mapping out a process and finding your underlying process that needs the automation in place. And then you actually would go find the tools if the tools are available for that specific process.
Speaker: 00:17:01
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And you know, there’s a really simple thing that anybody listening can do to get the process started. And it’s as simple as a printed out piece of paper, like that in a spreadsheet style. Take that piece of paper you print it out, if it’s just you, or if you have a team of people that you work with in your company, what you do is you spend three days,
Speaker: 00:19:09
occasionally, maybe those are the ones that should be human. Right? Don’t automate the thing that happens occasionally, I make things happen repetitively. And then also automate things that provide your customers a better experience. And then from there, you take those personal activity logs, what you do with them, then you start looking at the five pillars of your business. Every business has
Speaker: 00:21:18
stopped. The great ones don’t, but the good ones stopped around fulfillment, don’t put a lot of thought in the next two, which is delight and refer. So if you sell anything, you have an opportunity to delight your customers after they’ve made a purchase, they’re also more likely to give you repeat business. So you can delight them with more ways to be involved with you. It made sense for them based
Speaker: 00:23:28
can improve our effectiveness, let’s say we’re trying to convert 75% of those, or 25% of the, let’s say we’ve gotten leads, right, we have 1000 leads a week, for example. And we want to take 750 and put them through our tried and true process, the one we know that works, right, because that’s safe, it keeps your business running, keeps revenue flowing. Let’s take the other 25%, the 250 and put it
Speaker: 00:25:39
more effective than your manual process, that we automate that or similarly effective that we automate that, then that becomes your 75%. And then you work on that 25% to continue improving each of those different aspects of the process.
Speaker: 00:25:56
You can really make multiple funnels, and funnel those in different directions, depending on what you want your process to be or the outcome.
Speaker: 00:26:15
That’s right.
Speaker: 00:26:16
And that actually is a good sells technique, those sales funnels. But automating those processes, it can be very difficult, and how you implement this mapping out process. I think that’s a key to every business proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. That’s the seven p principle that I was taught many years ago. And I love just the fact you’ve got to plan. And the more planning
Speaker: 00:27:16
You know, I think the number one I see thing I see is that the ability, the technological ability to automate some stuff is getting easier and easier. Which means, and that’s happened over the last 10 years. I mean, it’s just become the things that you if you were to look at this space, 10 years ago, there was a lot less that was accessible to a large range of business sizes, it was very custom. It
Speaker: 00:29:30
process, there’ll be internal or customer facing. What am I going to do next to improve my business? I think that’s the thing I really like people to think about is what am I going to do next to improve my business? Because that’s where you have to take it. And that’s how you go from saving time but doing the same thing to growing a business. That makes sense.
Speaker: 00:29:55
Yeah, sure does. So there’s a couple more things before I let you go Sam. First, I’d like you to explain to the audience, I was listening to you and your dad on a video, explain to us what cowboy, cowboy mode is.
Speaker: 00:30:17
I know, what’s your really you’re talking about. So cowboy mode is, and you’ve probably heard Josh say, that’s my dad, is that the mode that the majority of business owners are in most of the time, they’re just going, they’re running and gunning, and trying to build things, and do things at the same time and put it in place. And it’s just wild, I got to get it done now got to make it happen. And
Speaker: 00:32:34
building within the tool to make it happen. And that’s really the experience you bring people through the experience of prepping, thinking strategically, what is this going to look like? How is i going to end up? What are all the ingredients, we need to pull off this technological experience that is ultimately going to convert more people to become customers? Try to stay out of cowboy mode a
Speaker: 00:33:04
I think that’s valuable. Intellectual thought right there. And everybody should take that in cowboy mode, yet when you have to be. So what’s it like working with your father? Getting all of this done?
Speaker: 00:33:23
Yeah, I think that’s the most unique, wonderful and also challenging aspect of this. When you work with someone, I mean, everybody has different relationships, we have a great, very close father / son relationship outside of our business, but initially working together, was really challenging for for, if I think about it, it’s pinpointed like one specific thing that was challenging for me to tell
Speaker: 00:35:34
be open communication is going south. So we decided, Okay, we have to have something that we do here, that’s, that says, hey, I love you. None of this is personal, quote, unquote, it’s all business. But it’s to get to the readers idea, let’s have a actual debate, in the truest sense of debating an idea to get to the best components of it and work through the problems that ideas have, which
Speaker: 00:37:45
together, which we can we work together, great now. But if we can’t, you know, our priority and kind of agreement is that our relationship as a father and son is more important than any of this business stuff.
Speaker: 00:37:59
I think that’s so cool. And I congratulate you, and it is not hard to get along. You know, it’s easier to get mad at people and throw it out the door. So get together with your father and work it out, make something happen for the family. I think that’s one of the most wonderful things a person can do on this whole planet. Yeah, I think it’s unique too in our situation is that we are partners in
Speaker: 00:39:41
That’s right. That’s pretty awesome. So how do people get ahold of you, Sam, and how can they get your services?
Speaker: 00:39:52
Sure. I appreciate you asking that. mobilepocketoffice.com you can put a link to it if you have shownotes that you do, And on the website, we have a book a call option. And that initial call is just to see if you truly are in a position where you need automation. And oftentimes, we’ll have to call up people and say, you know, I don’t think you’re ready for this, here’s some basic things you can
Speaker: 00:42:08
that people go out and try things. You know. That’s how you engage our services.
Speaker: 00:42:14
That sounds awesome. Sam, I want to say thank you very much for bringing your story and your services on to the podcast. It was a pure delight.
Speaker: 00:42:25
Thank you. Thank you, thank you for having me here. And hopefully, you know, there’s some stuff people can take away from this. They can realize how to think about automating their businesses. And you know, to me, if you do, the automation is the vehicle to grow your business, but also the getting time back in your life, which is the one resource that is limited. It can’t get more of it.
MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST:
Link to Masteringdiabetes.org and video 👇
If you answer yes to one of these questions.
- Need to fix your business and get a life?
- Just starting your automation journey?
- Feeling overwhelmed on where to begin your automation?
- Just feel sometimes like chucking your whole system out the window?
Then we can help.
Here’s the problem: You are manually doing everything in your business. And have no idea where to where to start or how to start automating. Finally, you want to be working ON your business not IN your business.
Here’s the solution: Understand what your process looks like to acquire a customer. By making a map of each and every step a customer takes in your funnel. Then reduce any mistakes they can make when entering information.
Easier said than done. Traditionally this is called Business Process Engineering and we at Mobile Pocket Office have taken this concept along with Six Sigma and LEAN manufacturing concepts concepts to improve a business … aka be human where it counts, otherwise automate!
Just because your business is still afloat, doesn’t mean it isn’t taking on water. But you probably already know this, and that’s why you are here. Identifying that there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be is the first step, but what are the next steps? Mobile Pocket Office is leading the way in helping new and established businesses augment their human and technological resources to leverage growth and streamline productivity.
