The Foureva Podcast
Welcome to The Foureva Podcast, where we break barriers and redefine success!
Join host Jamar Jones, a dynamic entrepreneur, national speaker, and author of "Change Your Circle, Change Your Life," as he takes you on an extraordinary journey of inspiration and motivation.
In each episode, we bring you an impressive lineup of star-studded guests, each with a unique voice and a wealth of insights to share. From industry leaders to renowned experts, we uncover their secrets to success in personal, business, and marketing domains. Prepare to be captivated by their stories, strategies, and experiences that will empower you to reach new heights.
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a marketing professional, or simply seeking fresh perspectives on life and business, The Foureva Podcast is your ultimate destination. Discover the transformative power of changing your circle and unlocking your full potential. With each episode, we delve into the minds of the most influential voices in the industry, providing you with the tools and inspiration you need to overcome obstacles and achieve greatness.
Don't miss out on this dynamic podcast that will fuel your ambition, challenge your limits, and propel you toward success. Tune in to The Foureva Podcast and join a community of driven individuals who are ready to make an impact. Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and 'foureva' transformed!
The Foureva Podcast
Email Marketing & CRM Hacks for Entrepreneurs: Jason Case Reveals All
Want to grow your brand while staying grounded in who you are? In this episode of The Foureva Podcast, Jason Case breaks down how authenticity, storytelling, and smart brand strategy can take you from idea to impact.
Jason is a brand strategist and creative visionary who helps entrepreneurs build businesses that reflect their true selves—while still standing out in a crowded market. He dives into the power of niche marketing, building emotional connections with your audience, and how to lean into your unique identity as a superpower.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
✅ Why your brand should be a reflection of your values and vision
✅ How to build deeper connections with your audience through storytelling
✅ What most entrepreneurs get wrong about branding
✅ The importance of consistency across your platforms
✅ Tips to avoid “comparison culture” and trust your process
✅ How to build a legacy, not just a business
Jason also shares powerful advice on overcoming doubt, trusting your intuition, and making aligned decisions that lead to long-term success.
🚀 If you’re a founder, creative, or entrepreneur ready to level up your brand without losing your authenticity, this episode is a must-listen.
🔔 Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and turn on notifications for more conversations that inspire purpose-driven business and personal growth!
Companies are bleeding money even though they can still be profitable. They can be way more profitable with systems and processes. And then a lot of times you know, if you look at like small businesses a single employee business or just a couple employee business a lot of those businesses are just so busy just doing everything right Like they're they're the salesperson, they're the marketing person, they're the customer service person, they're everything.
Speaker 2:As we get into this conversation with Jason dude, dude, I'm super excited to have you here, man. Um, we're gonna get into some really good discussion and conversation of how to scale your business. Um, crms, email marketing and and kind of everything in between that, I mean it's. It's gonna be so many different things. Uh, what's up everybody on instagram live that are joining in? It's going to be so many different things. What's up everybody on Instagram Live that are joining in? What's going on? What's going on, jason? First, let's start off with just tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks for having me first off. I appreciate it. So I have a company, a CRM, a Sales Marketing Automation Company similar to an active campaign HubSpot. I got into this space I've been doing this type of work for over 15 years kind of got into it with a previous business I built and sold, knew the importance of leveraging a CRM software to keep your data organized but also to leverage automation to streamline your business with sales marketing and also just automating routine administrative tasks. So after I sold that company, kind of get more into the space and developed our own software and that's what I'm doing full time now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is it like to build up your own company and like did you want to feel like you wanted? Did you have an attachment to it? What was that like? As far as selling the company?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, anytime you put your heart and soul into something right and build something, you have an extreme attachment to it and um, but you know, it's uh, I think I involved as a a person and um, when I got started in the business it was actually a printing business um, I have a background in design work and stuff like that and really when I started that business, I had no clue about digital marketing, no clue about CRM, sales, marketing, automation, anything like that. But to grow that business, you know, I needed to learn that stuff and once I learned that, I grew a new passion for something I knew nothing about and that was actually just became more of my focus as building the business. That's what I really wanted to do, you know. So that's, I just kind of gravitated to that side of things, yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:But you, but you got a passion overall for, for marketing. I mean, that's what, that's what it seems like.
Speaker 1:I love it, man, that's yeah, I mean that's what, that's what I love it, man, that's. Yeah, I mean that's what I do now. But I never knew that when I started that business, you know. But you know over time you kind of, as you do different things in life, you learn different passions that you didn't know you had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, if you could. Just, I think a lot of people are so, a lot of the listeners and people that are viewing this. Either A they're like in grind mode for their current business right, and they're trying to grow and scale it, or they may be a serial entrepreneur and they may have sold businesses in the past, or they have multiple in the past or they have multiple. Can you walk us through just, really quick, just, and share as much as you can as far as, like, the process of actually selling your business, like how did that come to be? How did you make the transition from that printing to digital marketing? And like what's the actual process? Did you do outreach to see who's interested? Did they find you? Like, how did that happen?
Speaker 1:it was probably a lot easier than most people go through. Um, to be honest, like the reason I I sold it, I just kind of got tired of doing like we were running like three different shifts like we're. I had no focus on building this to international level, like it started as a local business, but then it was starting in 2007, 2008, when the economy was tanking um, so I had to find other strategies and that's where I like discovered like businesses online were booming, so that's where I started to go online and then we grew that to international level uh, shipping orders all over the world and running three different print shifts so I became like more of a full-time babysitter.
Speaker 2:I felt like and I just that's real yeah.
Speaker 1:Ah, man, and I, just I, I just wanted to do what I like doing after you know, like digital marketing and doing the CRM and the marketing automation stuff and, and I told my wife one day, I was just like I feel like I want to sell the business and, you know, gravitate to, you know that side of things. So, um, honestly, finding a buyer man wasn't that hard. I just reached out to um one of the people that we used to outsource some of the orders through. They were interested and that's how we did it. Um, okay, and I didn't really go through much of it. I could have probably went through a more elaborate process on that, but I was just ready to go and, um, the price was right and I, and that's how I did it yeah, how did.
Speaker 2:How did you know what to how to price your business?
Speaker 1:I did research on it, talked to some um business associates. I knew, uh, that's went through that before and yeah okay, so you.
Speaker 2:So you kind of had like a, an advisory or or hiring, like you're having an attorney on my side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, leverage our accountant on some stuff to do evaluations of their business model and things like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, for sure, for sure, and then the buyer kind of came from people you were already doing business with, but you were like hey, they knew our volume, they knew our, they knew our business model and aligned with their stuff. So yeah, and how and how quick is the a deal? Like that is it. Is it a couple months, is it a year, like how long does that process take?
Speaker 1:it's probably about a half a year. I think that we took uh through the process of going through things, um, but yeah yeah, okay, okay, cool, cool, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think for anybody watching and listening to this, that it takes a little bit of time. You may get lucky. Look at your current suppliers, look at your current vendors, people that you already know, that you're doing business with or that's in your circle that understands your business and what you do. At least spark up a conversation, and I guess the first part is it never hurts to ask, right.
Speaker 2:It never hurts to see who's interested, because I think the selling of someone's business it's not like unless you've got a big for sale sign on your business, it's not like you're marketing and advertising that, hey, we're looking to sell. So it's one of those kind of sometimes like taboo things, of like selling your business because you want to be in business but not show the market that you're like I'm trying to get out of this. So it's a very, uh, tricky time. Um, depending on the industry and business you're in. Okay, cool, cool, um. So now fast forwarding into what you're doing today. Let everybody know about, know about having a good system as far as in your business. There's so many, especially small businesses, that don't systematize what they do. I hear it all the time. I do a lot of marketing, branding plans and work where all of a sudden you start to see like they don't have their data organized and they just don't have a system to do whatever they're doing. They're kind of just winging it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've worked with 250 plus employees. Actually you know quite a few of them and you'd be surprised I'm so surprised when I come into some of these. You know huge businesses that they don't even have the processes in place, right, like, how did they even get to that place? But some industries, you know, you can just naturally grow if you're in a good niche, but the systems and processes are a mess. So a lot of times those companies are bleeding money even though they can still be profitable. They can be way more profitable with systems and processes.
Speaker 1:And then a lot of times you know, if you look at like small businesses a single employee business or just a couple employee business a lot of those businesses are just so busy just doing everything right, like they're the salesperson, they're the marketing person, they're the customer service person, they're everything you know, and those businesses a lot of times just don't have the time to do a lot of that stuff. But that's where sales and marketing and automation is key and organization is key, because if you can automate a lot of the things that you do on a routine basis, it frees up your time to do you know what you need to be focused your more critical tasks that you need to be focusing your time on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure. And for some reason, I think people like to just be busy I don't know what it is or they never stop. They're so busy being in the business they're not working on the business, and that's such a common thing right.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've all been there and it's. You know you need to get your stuff done. That's important in your business, but you also need to, you know, leverage some of that time and a lot of times getting started out. Unless you have a lot of capital behind you, which most of us don't, you know you need to hustle and put in a ton of hours to do it. I mean, I wish there was an easy button, but, um, a lot of these gurus which I kind of hate, you know, they, they make it seem like it's so easy and there's so much of that stuff littered over, like social media and YouTube and stuff like that now which, um, I can tell you there's no easy way. I mean, it takes time, a lot of testing and measuring and, you know, sometimes luck, right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, oh, it definitely takes a little bit of luck. I got into some great conversations with some amazing people that like really built up some businesses and they, and what we came down to figure out is that there's usually always an event or a moment that your business lines up with timing, uh, trends of something that happens, or an event or or kind of an anomaly that happens almost like. The best example currently is, like you know, 2020 with COVID like some businesses just exploded. I mean, yes, they were growing right, they're moving in the right direction, but I'm talking about an event that just explodes or moves forward your business in a way that you could not anticipate. And it's just right timing, right moment, you have the right product, the right solution and it just hits and that does. It's a little bit of luck. You can try to position, you could try to anticipate or form that event.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you got to pivot in situations like that, right Like, if you look back at the Great Depression, a lot of the big businesses that boomed during that time they made extreme pivots, you know, and they're some of the biggest companies today because of those pivots that they made, you know, and it's same thing with COVID, you know. I saw a lot of businesses pivoting during that time too.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, it just takes a little bit of that and and the guru stuff like it it does just. It really gets under my skin when I see this stuff Cause, cause it also makes a lot of the the younger generation, you know coming up. They, they think that it's just that easy and so they get into entrepreneurship and they may, you know, get knocked down a couple times, get super discouraged, and then they just quit when because they're like, oh well, this person's just saying it's so easy, it's not, it's it's, it's really not, no matter what you're doing. Yes is, is the access and opportunities easier than it was 20, 30 years ago? Sure, as far as, like the internet opportunities, the access to an audience marketing your product, you don't have to just go on TV commercials and do these large marketing campaigns. There's quicker ways to acquire.
Speaker 1:But it's not easy. There are, but it's also much more saturated, right that's true yeah, I mean man back in the printing business. Right when I was growing that business we did a lot from SEO. Seo back then was like the wild, wild west and it was pretty easy and quick to you know, adapt to you know and and now it's just so saturated that it makes a little bit more challenging yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:There's always those kind of challenges and um and those things that people have to overcome, and that's just the truth in entrepreneurship and um, that's one thing we would like to really tell people the truth on this podcast. So, um, so, speaking, speaking of the truth, uh, out of all the companies on the digital marketing side, the, the companies that you've um, that are they're getting set up with their crms, the people that you work with, what is the most quick, like the, the quick win as far as that you've seen over the course of your career with, like email marketing or CRM, like, what are some of the quick wins for a business that can be implemented pretty fast to be able to get a result?
Speaker 1:Easy, one man. So this is for companies that actually have lead gen dialed in, right. Like you're booking, you get people that are booking appointments or you get people that are coming in through your website inquiring about your services and you need to schedule meetings. You're going through a sales pipeline process. I don't think I've ever came across a business that has this process like nailed down, like even a fraction way nailed down, and that's putting sales automations in place. So those are just general like lead capture automations to get them into the CRM, basic steps. Most businesses have that part we somewhat nailed, but that's where it drops off, so you have no follow-up automations from there, right? So if you're needing to schedule a meeting the first step, like to get a discovery call or something like that you should have an automation in place. Usually a course of a couple of weeks is a good thing. Put a series of emails, maybe even a text message or two, in there to get them to schedule that meeting. As soon as they schedule the meeting, stop that series. Put them into a scheduled stage in your sales pipeline. If they cancel, no show. Another huge area that most businesses don't have automations in place to follow up with those people. So putting automations in place, similar thing course of a couple of weeks to reschedule them, put some in automation to reschedule as soon as it's rescheduled, stops it and then automating some of the other processes through the sales pipeline.
Speaker 1:I put that system in place for a 250 plus employee or a business that had seven brands. We implemented it for one brand as a test. It actually came from like a 30 minute call with the COO. They're showing me like the bottlenecks and their sales processes and again, this is a big company you know, and they had tons of weeds coming in their sales team were managing their processes from Excel spreadsheets. They had a CRM system and they were managing their stuff from an Excel sheet. But the reason they were managing it from an Excel sheet is because their sales team did not have like sales processes, like they had no processes to follow in the company. So if you don't have processes to follow in the company, then you're going to gravitate to something that you know how to use, which is most likely Excel spreadsheet or something. So I pitched what I saw, the problem being we put those systems that I just told you about in place. We increased their sales conversion rates by 750%.
Speaker 1:And they had a ton of leads coming in, right Like a ton of leads coming in. So when you have a ton of leads coming in, you're going to see a much bigger conversion rates and results from it.
Speaker 1:But from then we implemented those same processes with smaller companies and saw same results in those same processes with smaller companies and saw same results. If you have leads coming into your business, that's so important to put in place because I don't care if you're a small business or a larger business. If you're a small business, you don't have time to follow up with those people, especially cancel a no-show. You're focusing on new leads coming in. If you're a bigger business, you as a sales team I guarantee you that sales team is going to be focused on the new leads coming in. Those are new opportunities. They're not following up with people that are not responding. They're not following up with the cancels and no shows. So it doesn't matter the size of business putting those processes in place or the quick wins and can have substantial results and not just for sales conversions.
Speaker 1:That's efficiency too right. It's increasing efficiency because if you are just a one person, two person business, you now have more time to focus on those qualified leads. Same thing if you're a bigger business you have sales team. That sales team can just focus their time on the qualified leads and close more of them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, the follow up game is like, and they'd say like the real growth in a business is in the follow up I've done, I have a workshop that I do with that I've done for like seven and eight figure businesses and what I found is that we kind of go through the customer journey right.
Speaker 1:So the five phases of customer journey and the one that's always missed is the nurture phase every single time I'm like Tony man, I've never came across a business, and it's probably just because of the nature of the business, the people that reach out to me and the people I work with. But I've never came across the business, not once. That has that process nailed, and that's just like. What I just described is like bare bones, and you know that right. You can take that further right, Like integrating like with Facebook, custom audiences, retargeting ads at different stages in the sales pipeline, you know, even incorporating direct mail into it, depending on your business model, and automating your direct mail pieces and stuff like that. So so much stuff that you can do, depending on the size of your business. But that nurture thing is it's key.
Speaker 2:It's the back end process.
Speaker 1:Somebody told me a while ago that this is, that's where the goal is at. Somebody told me a while ago this is he's had a CMO of a very large company A lot of people know out there. But he said 80% of your time should be focused on your backend processes. Right, like 20% on your front end, but 80% is on your backend processes, cause those backend processes are what convert the people to customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and think about how.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, generate more money from your existing customers. Right? So it's not. You shouldn't be stopping Once you get a customer. You should be upselling, cross-selling, getting more business from those customers 100%.
Speaker 2:100% Because it's the think about how much time that it takes to even get somebody interested and become aware of your brand and then, when they actually become a lead, you spend so much time and effort on that process but then you're spending like most companies are spending like nothing to actually get them, to nurture them, to to really understand, retarget, remarket out to them, um, because there's there's like this graph, um, and we may show it up on the screen in the posts, uh, of this podcast, but there's, there's a graph that shows where there's the people that are ready to buy. And then there's this huge chunk of people that are just curious. They're shopping around, they're looking, but they're not quite ready yet, but there's some intention, because they're not feeling enough pain yet. And then there's this other part of people that don't even know the pain exists yet, but you know that they're the target market and they're the target audience that you could help, but they don't know it yet because they don't have enough pain.
Speaker 2:Most people spend all their time in just the people that really want it right now and they try to convert those people. But there's a huge market for people that they know it. They don't have enough pain yet, but they're just kind of testing it and if you could grab a little bit more of that market share every single time and really nurture those people that are a little curious. They want to learn more. They may not be quite ready, but you can give them resources, tools and things to help them along the process. There's so much money in that and just that that big area of people that are that are not quite there yet it's a huge.
Speaker 1:Even a small percentage makes a huge yeah, 100.
Speaker 2:So in in email marketing. What have you found to be the best lead magnet for somebody's email marketing strategy? Like to get somebody to get their email address or to get their phone number? Is there a golden rule for a lead?
Speaker 1:magnet. I mean that's more on the WeGen side of things to get people in your system. It just really depends. I've seen some things work great for certain businesses and absolutely fail on others. I don't think there's a. If I was going to tell you there's one thing, I would be BSing you because there's not. You know what I mean and I've worked with so many different industries and you know, tried to implement something that had huge success with one industry into another one and absolutely saw zero results with that industry. So you just need to understand your audience and sometimes, like a lead magnet is not the best thing, right, sometimes it might take just direct outreach and you know business development strategies to to work it. So, true, true, you really just need a test to measure. I wish I could have a better answer there, but I I don't want to I think it's a.
Speaker 2:I I think it's a good answer of of testing and measuring and constantly looking at like is it a? Is it a digital product? Is it a resource? Is it like there's a lot of different forms of lead magnets?
Speaker 1:it just depends on the industry and you cannot understand how, how much competition you have in it and stuff like that too, right? Like if you're in a super competitive niche or just getting started and you're going to try to run facebook ads, it might not be the best thing, right? Because you know you're gonna have to spend a ton of money to capture stuff in a super competitive market. So, depending if you're a local business versus national business, a lot of things go into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just so, if we look past the lead magnet or that initial capture, how many emails should you send to somebody as far as to nurture them, to give them more resources, value, before you go for the sale? Or like, hey, schedule a call with us, book a call like to actually go for a sales, I mean?
Speaker 1:I think that's the power of marketing automation, because you can leverage based on actions that they're taking website activities, activities that they're taking without having to manually look through it. So, rule of thumb, they're not really. I mean, you need a base engagement activity based on that right. So I want to go directly for a sales call right out of the gate for somebody that's not really requesting more information or requesting a call right. You need to nurture and educate and then, based on that activity and stuff like that, then you can move them into that like more direct sales funnel to push them to book a call and stuff like that. But if they're not ready, keep them in a long-term. Nurture more educational stuff. Then keep on feeding them content based on what they're engaging with and things like that. And then now, if they come in through like a form requesting more information, you go directly to book a call right, like you know or?
Speaker 1:somebody that's a Facebook ad, that's requesting information, go right towards that. But if they don't like, book a call and say five emails, then put them in that long-term nurture because they're not ready yet right, the timing's not right. They might be ready but the timing's not right. Like who knows what their personal circumstances are? You know they could have gotten in a car accident, and then who knows? Then you just need to stay in front of them and nurture them and then bring them back into that. It takes time and you got to understand your different segments of your business and leverage marketing automation to do the work for you.
Speaker 2:Speaking of segments, I want to talk about this really quick. The other thing that I've seen a lot and I would love your hot take on this the amount of people that just blast out an email to everybody and they don't segment their audiences at all. It's like if every message just goes out to everybody and they don't like put people in groups to understand, like, what is their interest, what is their needs? How often have you seen that? And like, what's, what's your hot take on that?
Speaker 1:It's a lot more common with smaller businesses, right, like somebody that's using like a MailChimp or um, you know, a constant contact. They might have some different lists in those programs, but they're not really leveraging like a CRM system with actual data, keeping historic data and then leveraging automation to automatically update those segments based on the customer's journey and how they're, you know, moving through the process and stuff like that. Now, with that being said, I've came across quite a few larger companies that are using CRM systems and stuff and they tried to take like a segmentation approach. But the data is a mess, right. So you got to have good naming conventions, good, you know, good structure, good strategy behind it to keep that data queen and accurate so that your segments are up to date. You know it's important, but yeah, I mean it's a common thing that's overlooked and a lot of businesses don't nail it because you focus seeing on on a lot of other stuff. Then then you know there's again, there's back end processes, that's yeah, yeah, you, you.
Speaker 2:I mean it also just takes a little bit of time too, and I think that everybody's so busy being busy in their business, they don't, like you said, they don't take that time to really focus on the back end or carve out that stuff, to say, okay, here's our audiences, let's start to segment them, let's start to put them in buckets and figure out, okay, what are some actual strategic ways we can market out to these people, to these particular groups, because you're just going to get a higher conversion rate, you're going to get a higher open rate, all your numbers are going to go up, because if you're speaking to everybody, you're speaking to nobody.
Speaker 2:That's kind of the common. Thing.
Speaker 1:It's a good point that you bring up and I would say it just made me think about this. Out of the most successful companies that I've worked with some half a billion dollar companies you know, leveraging, like outsourcing this stuff to another company to do for you, is key because, like, your internal team just doesn't have time, and thinking about it like right now, like some of the companies that I see like having biggest bottlenecks on that, are trying to do it internally and they, their internal team, doesn't have the time. So, like bringing in a like outside team that understands that stuff and can work with you to put that stuff in place, have a much better impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure, Just leveraging the. There's somebody else I was talking to as well and they said that the thing that really helped scale a business is they wish that they should have hired externally out, like sooner to outsource some of these things, especially if you know. So don't blindly outsource, but if you know there's certain elements in your business where you're like, oh man, if we could just get this right, it could really help us. You know, 5x, 10x, really grow my business to get to that next level, then you go find that expert in that particular thing, you outsource it out and then it could just work wonders for you. I think the problem is some people outsource blindly. They're like I just need help with marketing, and then they hire out. They're like these people come in marketing and then they hire out. They're like these people come in, like well, we really know this, but you actually need.
Speaker 1:You need this yeah, another key that's. It's a great point, like, don't go blind way. But even then, like, I think, um, one of the things I learned from a another company working with them is like um, hiring and th so running tests on threes. So, for example, if you had the capital right, like, and you're hiring a new person, hire three is test right and test in three, see which one works, and then get rid of the two and hire the one and do that based on processes, right.
Speaker 1:So who can follow? Because somebody might have great reviews, might have an outstanding background, but if they can't follow processes and procedures, they're not a great great fit, you know. So, because that's not going to be a person that can help scale the company. So another thing is like marketing agencies, right. Like if you're hiring a marketing agency, don't go as one, try three and run three as a trial, and then can the other two. And again, that comes down to capital and how much resources you have, but still, of course I've seen that have great results for companies that do it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure, great advice, Great advice. Uh. Great results for companies that do it that way? Yeah for sure, great advice, great advice. Uh, so I want to talk a little bit about so back to the systems piece of it how important is reporting? So you know, as far as like it's essential understanding your business and and getting that data.
Speaker 2:Um, how important is data for for business? Because oftentimes when you get the CRM set up, when you get these backend stuff set up, then you could actually start to predict and kind of understand your business a little bit more. But for what you've seen, how important is that?
Speaker 1:It is absolutely critical. I mean, it's essential. So it's funny you brought that up right this time because I was telling you about the company that you know, hires. And threes, they're using Pulse, right, and we are working with them to set up a like real-time reporting. They're using Excel spreadsheets. So we worked with the COO, took their data that they're using Excel spreadsheets, feeding it into the CRM, setting up their dashboards and pulse. So once we got that set up, we actually presented the data to them and the COO thought it was inaccurate because they had three marketing agencies that they're running and they thought the one that they were was best performing by far was not even even. It was losing money actually. So here's the thing they had somebody internally on their team um, lower, you know, lower level person set up these excel spreadsheets. So when they're having month or weekly review meetings.
Speaker 1:They're reviewing these numbers. Nobody actually dug through to make sure that data was set up properly in the formulas. They are missing one key element the cost that they were paying that agency each month. The cost that they're paying that agency was $10,000 a month. You factor that in, it changed the numbers completely. So, right, right, we actually went through the data because she is like this can't be right and that where I was like I'm 100 accurate, this is right. I checked it three times and so she went through it with me. She couldn't believe it. Next day I talked with her and said so what do you guys decide to do? Because she talked with the CEO. She's like we fired that company and now we're allocating that budget to the best performing channels. So reporting is absolutely essential, right, and you need to have that stuff updated in real time. You need to make sure the data is accurate, but as long as the data is accurate, it's feeding in and it's updating in real time, you have a clear picture on what's going on in business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, it's so funny because everybody says, with data is like garbage in, garbage out. Know, like if you're putting in data or numbers in, like you could show anything.
Speaker 1:You can show anything.
Speaker 2:But also if no one's checking or cross-checking or double-checking that stuff, yeah, it could become.
Speaker 1:It could be a big mistake, right? You're going blindly on like on something, so yeah. Yeah, for sure Like if you're a smaller company, you would have probably identified that problem right. But this is a larger company, you know, um, they got money coming through, they got revenue coming through and, and some of those things can be overlooked and yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:It is very easily for it to be overlooked the bigger you grow and scale. So through your, through your career obviously you were in the printing business and now in the digital marketing really systems, operation or systems and and the software you know of of helping people grow and scale their business. What has been one of some of the like things, challenges, that you've had to overcome being a business owner to help somebody else out today as far as what's actually scaling your business some personal, you know, a couple of personal stories or things you can share of. Here's some, maybe some, some challenges or maybe some mistakes that you made to help somebody else out when it comes to growing or scaling scaling their business yeah, trust your gut.
Speaker 1:Um, trust your gut, I mean that's like one thing I wish, like I would have. I. I mean, I think it's such basic stuff, right, and you hear people say that, but it's like so true. I mean, if I look back at the failures I've had over the years, or like misdirection that I went, you know, getting in like involved with, like business partnerships that I thought were going to be good, but my gut was telling me I don't know Right, and you know I went that that route, like if I were to just trust my gut feeling, I would, uh, you know, miss that. I mean, I it's super basic advice, but it's, it's so, so true.
Speaker 1:And another thing is just like, um, test many different things. Don't like, like, try not to like follow all these. I mean, you got to educate yourself, you got to read books, you got to read blog posts. You got to read books, you got to read blog posts, you got to listen to podcasts. But don't try to follow, like these gurus that like are going to tell you like success overnight, right, like what, when they could have had great success.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm not doubting that, but what they don't tell you is the money and the resources that took them to get there Right. None of them got there overnight, none of them Right, and it takes a lot of testing, measuring. So what works for one person is not necessarily going to work for you. So like, like I said earlier, a lead magnet, a lead magnet, a specific lead magnet might work great for one business but doesn't work for another industry. So testing and measuring is super important running micro tasks, trying to figure out what you know, what works, what doesn't, and just keep going until you find something that sticks. And once you find something that sticks, triple down on that, max that resource out and keep going. And then you know, rinse and repeat, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, great, great advice. I mean the trusting your gut thing is I know it sounds like you know like hey, yeah, just trust your gut. But I hear that from a lot of business owners Like it's so true, it's so true, it's so true.
Speaker 1:I mean for myself, for others.
Speaker 2:They're like if I just trusted because you got something in you telling you that this is like either kind of beware of this or or maybe you shouldn't do this or it doesn't feel right, go go with those. Like, if something feels good, go in that direction. If it feels. And I understand too, because, like oftentimes, the problem with trusting your gut with some people is, I think, to really grow and also scale your business, you need to get out of your comfort zone. And to get out of your comfort zone and to get out of that comfort zone, it means that you're not comfortable in the direction you're going. So your guts may be, but I also think those are two different feelings. Like the gut is really in your best interest of where you're going, then the comfort level is just like the unknown of something and so. But if your gut is telling you to go in the unknown, then it's like okay, well then maybe I should learn this or I should go in this direction. But I think those are two different feelings. What do?
Speaker 1:you say, I'll say too, there's been times that I've trusted my gut and it didn't work out Right, but but it's still. If I look back today, I'm glad that I took that direction because it moved me forward right. So sometimes failures are successes too, you know. So, like I'm not saying like every time that you trust your gut, it's gonna be like always a success if that's how you're measuring it, but usually, like when you trust your gut, it's the right decision. I don't know if that's how you're measuring it, but usually, like when you trust your gut, it's the right decision.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that makes sense or not. Yeah, no, for sure, for sure, because it's. Maybe you need to go through that lesson to understand something else, to get you to that next level.
Speaker 1:You don't like, you don't keep moving forward. And without failures, you know failures are huge lessons learned, and usually once you fail once at doing something, you're not going to fail again doing the exact same thing.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Success is an up and down thing. Just as long as you're up and down, at least continues to move upward.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:That's the goal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not down below the baseline right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's never this, though it's never like I never fail. Um, no, this is, this is, this is great, jason, I think this is really, um, really good advice. And so what's what's next for you, man? So you're building pulse. Um, what, what is next for you? What are you looking to to go into?
Speaker 1:the goal is to build and sell this business as well. So that's my previous business. That wasn't really my goal like um, but this is definitely my goal, like my goal for this business build it up, you know, um, sell it, uh, goal was by age 50. Uh, so like four more years. I don't know if we'll be at that point. Like I get get approached, you know, every month by a few different people. I just tell them, not right now, but, you know, put it in the poll like of people that I can reach out to when the time comes. After that, like I have like long term goals of like you know, so that's like still a long-term goal. But then even after that, like if I reach that goal, like what my next goals are, and it would just be to like help other businesses. You know, kind of do the same thing that I've learned over the years invest in other businesses. And you know, live life, travel more, enjoy time with family live life, travel more, enjoy time with family.
Speaker 1:Traveling this next winter for a few months, going out to Colorado for a month to snowboard for a month?
Speaker 2:Oh nice, Then I can't do that without going down to the beach.
Speaker 1:We're going down to Florida for a month and enjoying some time down on the beach after that. My wife is not a cold weather person, so yeah, just trying to travel more and enjoy life and yeah, oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:That's cool. What? What is your, uh, what's your hot take on? Um, because you went from the printing business to a software business. So what's the difference between those two industries? Um, like more of a service-based business to now, uh, I mean, you're still service-based, but you're, but you're a software to help people scale. Like what was the reason for that and like what's the real difference between, uh, those two industries?
Speaker 1:it's a lot of difference. I personally think and it might have just been the timing, but I've actually helped other B2C businesses and the WeGen aspect of those service-based businesses is much easier Going into a competitive B2B business space is much harder. Like b2b business space is much harder. You know, I completely underestimated, um, how challenging it would be going up against billion dollar companies and a super competitive niche. But, um, yeah, it's challenging. But you know, we've, we've, uh, we got the customers all over the world and we're continuing to grow month over month. So I would say there's a lot of difference there, definitely differences, but processes similar. When you look at the process and you break the processes down, the back-end processes are similar. It's just a different approach based on your, your customer segments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. And and the the obvious one is that the software can help many, you know. I mean, yes, you can grow customer base on a service base, but it's it's very one one, one one one where a software you could have, you know you could wake up tomorrow and be like, oh, one one one where a software you could have, you know, you could wake up tomorrow and be like, oh, you know, 20 new people registered or, you know, signed up, and it's it doesn't matter if you're in B2C or B2B.
Speaker 1:You need to have backend processes in place to nurture those people. Um, streamline. I mean we didn't even talk. We talked more about sales and marketing and automation today. But I mean there's so many processes that you can just automate from an administrative side of things too. Like one landscaping company we just recently working with, they automated their Google Drive folder structure. They're creating like 54 folders for each new client and they're doing that manually. So now, like as soon as they get to one stage in the sales pipeline, boom, that's automatically creates it. It's done in like a minute, automatically, no manual process behind it. So think about the time that that saves, like the office manager or whoever is in charge of doing stuff like that. So I mean I think it doesn't really matter really what industry that you're in there can be huge differences between that but the backend processes got a web bridge automation.
Speaker 2:Got to, got to and I'll give you a couple minutes to answer this really quickly as we close out. But what's the biggest difference with Pulse versus the other CRMs that are out there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so two different things that we focus on. One is we will never charge based on module features. So if you get started in like a hotspot, you can get started for free as soon as you start to like grow your business that price is going to skyrocket, right.
Speaker 1:Like we recently brought a company over from Australia as a business consulting company that was using HubSpot. They're paying, I think, close to $2,000 a month and now they're paying around $200 a month, um, and now they're paying, uh, around two hundred dollars a month with false and still leveraging the same features that they're doing in in hubspot. So you know, yes, hubspot's got tons of features, right, but the majority of businesses don't use all those um and you need a sales person to talk to a sales person every time you need access to this specific section of HubSpot. You know, but HubSpot's not it. You know Salesforce Like we got a Fortune 5000 company that's coming over that's paying like $800 a month per enterprise user license, right, and then they're also paying for ActiveCampaign for their email marketing and another software for their text message marketing.
Speaker 1:They're able to migrate to Pulse, consolidate all those tools and save a substantial amount of money. So we charge based on users and contacts. Meaning, as you grow as a company, then we can kind of grow with you but still keeping the price affordable. I feel like that's super important and when you look at that from like a small business perspective, don't feel like you're being nickel and dime by future. Right Like you can get all the same features being a one person business and get started as low as $49 a month and have access to sales pipelines, email marketing, text message marketing, crm system, all the resources that you need to help you grow and scale the company. Real time reporting right, weigh that foundation in place and then as you grow as a company, you've got that foundation in place to help you grow. So that's probably one of the key differences in our business model. But then also taking like a handheld like approach to help them get started when HubSpot, you might have to pay like a $2,500 onboarding fee Onboarding fee yep.
Speaker 1:For a module that you get right, like for a module that you get and any of these companies do the same thing and it's a templated approach. It's a templated approach. It's never really customized to your business processes. So what we do is we like to work with the company to understand your business processes, how you're currently running your business, offer suggestions where we see the gaps being what we see that probably the most important milestones getting set it up, to set your foundation up right, and then working with them to help them get that foundation set up right. That's like one of the key differences. I don't care what CRM system you use HubSpot, activecampaign, salesforce, keep it doesn't matter Like if you try to take that approach and set up yourself and never really done that process before. That's the key reason why people turn and go from CRM software to CRM software. It's not the software, it's the, because all of these right can work to do your business Like all of them will work.
Speaker 1:It's the process you put in place to make it work. And if you have that properly set up, then it'll work for you.
Speaker 2:And I was going to ask you too, because I think if people were listening and saying like, okay, I'm getting kind of sold on being on switching to Pulse the most common, probably objection you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like okay, what does that transition look like, though? Maybe because sometimes it's painful to switch systems.
Speaker 1:It's so painful it depends on how many it depends on the size of your company, right Like small company that doesn't really have many automations and systems in place.
Speaker 1:It's pretty simple, right, export your CSV file, always clean the data before bringing it into the new system to make sure that you're starting with clean data and stuff like that. And but bigger businesses, like the fortune 5000 company I was talking about, yeah, very complex, right, that's like a year-long transition, right, you're? You're talking about tons of automations, tons of processes, moving over, um, lots of different audits that you need to do, and different, you know, because a lot of the things that you're currently doing might not be the right processes, right. So, like, redoing, re-engineering, different things and stuff like that. So, just different, uh, different depending on on business model, a lot of migrations for, like, smaller uh, mid-sized businesses. No more than two weeks to a month to just at least get the first foundation set up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, for sure. No, that's good, that's good. I wanted to take a moment because we were talking a lot about systems and processes and also some of the marketing strategies that companies can use, but definitely wanted them to hear about Pulse and definitely, guys, check out Pulse technology and take a look at it. I mean, as you can see what Jason's talking about, it could be a really good resource and tool for you to use for your business. But you should definitely first look at what are you doing currently in your business. Do you even have a back-end? Do you have, do you have up, you know, a system set in place not just for the sales and marketing, but also for your, your general admin tasks that you're, that you're using?
Speaker 2:take a look into that and see what, see what, what ways can you improve that? And Pulse could definitely be a resource for you.
Speaker 1:I'll just throw this out here too. Do a quick Google search for Pulse CRM. We usually show up number one in the results. But reach out. If you just want to even have like a free consultation, reach out and I'm happy to like take a review of your current processes, systems, offer you know suggestions on you know ways you can improve efficiency or possibly improve sales, conversions, revenue and stuff like that by leveraging automation.
Speaker 2:So cool man. Well, thank you so much for being on the on the forever podcast. This is. This is a lot of fun, did you? Did you enjoy it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, man it's always great to have conversations like this. I wish I could do this all the time and get paid for it, but I can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, it's. It's always great to talk about this stuff and we and we we focused a lot on the sales and marketing side, like you said, but there's so many other ways that we could have took this conversation and dived into your story and um, but it was really great, uh, to learn about this and if you're listening, watching for everybody, that's uh, that's on the live. Uh, please like, comment, share uh, this podcast, especially when it drops um, and look at and this is a reminder to everybody, look at your business, what you know. I always tell people you're always working in your business. When are you going to work on your business?
Speaker 2:Um, especially for the, the smaller uh companies, even the medium-sized companies. Uh, you know, look at your business and start to work on your business and say, hey, what things can I improve, what automations can I set in place? Um, and and can I really systematize a lot of, a lot of what we do? So, thank you so much, and reach out to Jason too. You guys know this podcast. I always say these people are reachable, you know, depending on who they are and their schedules and stuff that you know may take a second, but they're reachable, they're a real person, hit me up, yeah a second, but they're reachable.
Speaker 1:They're. They're a real person. Hit me up. Yeah, you're a real person. You're a real person. I'm not ai. I promise I'm not an ai bot here.
Speaker 2:Hit them up um get connected. Connect with them on linkedin. Um, yeah, we didn't even talk about like. You have a pretty good following on linkedin. Did you do a lot of content? Uh, I used to do a lot of content creation.
Speaker 2:Um, back in the day and I you know I'm on there now, but more my team manages my account and stuff okay, um, yeah, yep, okay, okay, cool, well, connect, connect with jason on linkedin and, uh, don't forget, guys, you can change your circle to change your life and we'll catch you on the next episode. All right, peace, don't forget to like, comment and subscribe, and don't forget to hit that notification bell for more amazing content that we're going to be putting out. And don't forget you can change your circle to change your life. Thank you.
