The skills, ideas and implementation of them in the business world is constantly changing. Seemingly but not really a long time ago, there was no social media and how companies got their message across was different. Today things such as branding are popular terms but not the only thing a business owner should be concerned with. Marine Corps veteran Jared Ledbetter, CEO of Carbon Digital, joins the show to break down some things he see from his clients and how to better streamline your business. From branding, outreach, operations and the people of the organization, Jared drops his insight to help you make your business as strong as carbon.

Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:

https://anchor.fm/realbuildingblocks  

https://carbondigital.us

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-ledbetter/

Transcript from Episode 83 with Jared Ledbetter:

Keith McKeever 0:02

Hey there, welcome back to another episode of the battle buddy podcast, if you run a business, thinking about running the business, you know, everybody's in the digital age, but especially if you're running a business, you want to pay attention today, I've got your lead better on from carbon digital. Today we're going to talk about not only the digital side, but you know, branding, outreach operations, people's and different things like that about running a business. And everything in business today is very digital in nature. Technology runs everything that we do. So you know, if that sounds like something of interest to you, you definitely want to pay attention. Make sure you go like and subscribe and follow the show too. And make sure you do it. My guest, as always show notes and everything will have all of his links and all that stuff in there. So without further ado, welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. Welcome to the podcast, Jared.

Jared Ledbetter 0:55

Thanks for having me excited to be here.

Keith McKeever 0:57

Absolutely, man. And it's always good. I think we've talked a couple times over the years. Yep. Always good to talk pick your brain on different things. So before we get into all the digital side of things, and the business and everything to do, let's, let's get a little bit of a backstory, who is Jared, you know, I know you serve in the Corps would you do in a corner? Those kinds of things? He was a little backstory? Yeah,

Jared Ledbetter 1:17

sure. So did four years in the Marine Corps, supply admin 3043. The short version on all of that is I got thrust into running a whole warehouse and half the admin shop by myself my first day in the fleet. So needless to say, I picked up a few tricks of the trade while I was there. And that kind of thrust me on a career of continuing to pursue Supply Logistics, I have actually 15 years under my belt right now Supply Logistics. And then on the side back in, like 2012, I had a need for website, and I was like, I was smart enough to figure this out. And so that kind of set me down the trajectory of, you know, turning that into a business and an agency and really doing what I can to take things to the next level, not only for me, but for other businesses as well.

Keith McKeever 2:07

If you see all kinds of things out there, you know, choose my words carefully. It just might offend some some listeners, but a Facebook page is not a website.

Jared Ledbetter 2:17

So true. So true. I brought that up a bit, and everyone send them all your social media is not a website, I would even go as far as to say is, you know, your pre Google My Business site that you give you as almost not qualified as a website?

Keith McKeever 2:37

Because it's like, this is like a spiderweb, right? You know, like, to me, the Google's in the middle of the universe, and everything else is just a little fingers or whatever often offered that, you know, you got to have to have all these little points, they all have to connect and sync and, and all that stuff. But yeah, that's that's the fun stuff of working in a digital digital age. You know, if you're in business 20 years ago, the challenges that you would have been totally different. You know, creating a custom website, like,

Jared Ledbetter 3:06

challenges are different, but the principles are the same. Right? Because the principles of 1900 running a general store, still apply to today. Right? Do good work, be courteous to your customers, you know, provide value for them. All of those things still apply today. We just have, you know, more advanced mediums for connecting with people. And that's a huge difference that a lot of people neglect, submit to actually leverage.

Keith McKeever 3:39

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, you know, as you said that, sort of like Yeah, I mean, for bookkeeping, to advertising, to get the word out to managing employees, managing your books, you know, all the inventory, all this stuff is basically the same. Yeah, we just got different tools. You know, it changes so fast. I mean, I've been in my business for almost 10 years, you've been doing your thing for, for quite a while. So like, you see those changes, you know, it changes pretty frequently. So I think this is a this is a good one, especially to kind of kick off, you know, we're recording this before 2023. But your episode is going to be here to begin at first month of 23. So good for people in a slower times in the winter to like, Hey, listen to this, some of the stuff. And if this is you, and it offends you, then you probably have some things in your business need to work on. So

Jared Ledbetter 4:29

yeah, I'm trying to really live my life by how many people are offended. I just call it like I see it. And I'm very direct. And people either respond to that or they don't. And if you don't respond to it, then you probably won't be a client. So that kind of helps filter people out.

Keith McKeever 4:46

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. I had a conversation like a roundtable discussion a couple days ago, and something was brought up and I said, Hey, wait a minute. We're all in business. You don't have to bring somebody on as a customer. If you get kicked out of the red flags, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, whatever, you don't have to do business with that person. You know what to think about the stress of not doing business is stress, you say, but not your business like that person if you've got those red flags that are flying up, so

Jared Ledbetter 5:17

yeah, for sure. And you know, marketing people don't really make things easy, because they like to apply marketing terminology to cut through the conversation fast. But what you're talking about is a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead. Right? And the whole premise of that is, are they going to be a good customer? Are we going to work good together? You know, can I help them? All of those questions, you still need to ask yourself, but yeah, a lot of marketing people haven't really helped the rest of the world, because they like their acronyms and their, you know, their specific terminology for things. And so that that confuses a lot of people as well. And, you know, either you know, these words, don't, you know, that's where Google is your friend?

Keith McKeever 6:07

Well, I think, you know, if you're running a small business, like we do, like, you have to wear multiple hats, but if you get into a large enough company, those two different departments are sitting in different cubicles, maybe in a different building. Yeah, they're not talking to each other. They have differences of principles and philosophies and whatnot, but but back back to your business, carbon digital, so when did you start that? You know, what, what kind of services do you do you offer? Because I've got some things I want to ask you about some of the things I found on their website.

Jared Ledbetter 6:35

Sure. So I started doing this professionally back in 2014. Under the brand fighter solutions, we specialize at the time and martial arts and fitness, lifestyle brands. And then in 2017, we rebranded as carbon digital and niched up, meaning we got out of our specificity, to be able to bring in additional clientele across multiple industries and verticals, in terms of services, the primary services that we do our web design and development, and search engine optimization, those who are our prime, real estate's but we also do, you know, web application development, we, you know, advertising, marketing, business development, branding, all those full marketing service type of things we pretty much do at all, it's just a matter of which one of these services is going to best benefit you the most at the time that we actually connect.

Keith McKeever 7:41

Understandable. I've had a few people on now, there were 80 Plus episodes into the podcast, talking about SEO. So that's why I was looking at your website is like, ooh. Two questions on branding, outreach operations and people. Yeah, everything's broken down. But before we get to that, because I think everybody knows, I think in the back of your mind anyway, everybody knows they should have a website. Everybody may not know exactly how SEO works, but everybody knows that. It's what makes the makes everything work, right. It's how you rank and all that stuff. Some people can do it, some people can't. But I thought it was really interesting. There's these other tie ins to the business that affect your business, I would say arguably, just as much or more, if you're not taking care of those little, little things, but what what are the two major, like pain points that you see when you talk, talk to people, you know, and especially the small businesses what they're running into?

Jared Ledbetter 8:39

Well, going back a couple of years actually did a over the course of the summer, I talked on the phone for almost 200 hours to people free of charge, trying to help them out, provide more value trying to ascertain that same question, what's the answer this question, what do people need? What are their problems? And from that, I ended up developing a business foundational framework. Because of that, and it's it's always been the same problems across the board. And the step one of that framework is your branding, which under that branding, Limelight that goes into, you know, your logo, your imagery, you know, the different colors that you use, and do they complement or contrast each other. And then from there, it goes into deeper things like, what do you stand for? what's your what's your message to the people? And how do you communicate that effectively? And so, a lot of times, people will just take the, you know, Italian spaghetti approach and just slap throw stuff up against the wall and see what sticks. And that's never gonna work. But if you focus on your branding, and make your brand, the central focus of everything that you do, because you were talking earlier about how Google is the center of the world Eb, right? When it comes to your business branding is the center of the web. And a lot of people skip that they try to put something else in there, and they screw it up. So that has to be the initial focus of everything that you do. And then if you do it right, which we've been promoting storebrand for a few years now, if you follow that framework, you can actually take that and leverage that against everything else that you do, you know, writing up the social media post, does this social media post about service A, B, and C, align with my brand message? Yes or no? No, then we're gonna go fix it. And you can use that across all mediums, your email marketing, your website, your social media, even, you know, you have a, like one of those texts, chain community things, everything can be used as a litmus test against your branding to make sure you're consistently on message. And that's, that's one of the most impactful things that you can do. So following that up with number two, you know, obviously, things like do SEO, run some ads, those things are kind of a given. No one really knows the in depth details of those. But the one of the top five principles of what Made Millionaires millionaires was consistency. And so if you're not consistent in your approach, the way that you do your work and support your customers, and basically do everything, you know, from cradle to grave, if you're not consistent in everything that you do, then you're a waste of space. And as sad as that is, it's the truth. Right? And 20 years, are you going to be here? No, because you're not consistent. And people have a hard time grasping that.

Keith McKeever 11:58

That's, that's a really good, like two things you said there, especially on the first one, the brand new just, you know, throw spaghetti at the wall? Because I think if viewers or listeners think about it, maybe you're they're not doing it their business. You don't have to look that far to find somebody who's doing that. No, you were very far

Jared Ledbetter 12:18

at all. You know, I worked for the government for a long time. And when anybody who's a veteran is gonna know what demo is, but it's basically the military junkyard. And those guys say all the time, well, we're unique. And I see business owners saying all the time, well, well, we're unique. No, you're not. You're the same as everyone else out there, you have the same list of problems, the same areas of concern that you need to focus on. So go and do it. And people don't want to do it. And I mean, really, once, once we've developed this, this foundational framework, you know, lights went off stuff, Spark, you know, pistons firing, and you really start seeing this more in depth. Like, once, once I developed this, I, my eyes were open, I'm like, holy crap. Everyone's making the same mistakes across every industry, no matter what. And it's like, how do you? How do you fix the world? You can't so just kind of take care of one client at a time because I can't help everybody.

Keith McKeever 13:27

You know, there's one industry that jumps out to me. And it's the industry on it, which is real estate. Yeah, that's one of those. Everybody's like, Hey, look at me, I'm different. I'm different. I, you know, well, I've seen somebody already. Don't even have profiles don't have pictures or bios on their profiles on platforms, like realtor.com or Zillow, or Trulia. With a very basic, you should have your picture and contact information and a little bio about, you know, it's amazing to me how many don't, and yet they think that there's wilderness is special, that they provide this outstanding level of service. It's like, you can't even bother yourself to go do those things.

Jared Ledbetter 14:06

You know, and that's, yeah, it's my industry. So it's another thing too, that everyone thinks real estate agents or rich, or real estate agents, everyone thinks are rich. That's why you see every one of them wearing a suit, and every one of their photos, right. But there are the few people that do things that are off the wall. And a few people that do things that are kind of crazy. Like I I'll give you two examples. I saw this real estate agent profile sharing, like TV show clips, they were uploading them to their profile, like something you would see with, you know, a foreign name, randomly thing posting, you know, Game of Thrones clips. Why, you know, how does that even remotely relate to what we're what you're doing? It's irrelevant by a longshot. And yet people are doing it. Whereas the other one that I saw, I'm kind of big into fishing and there's this guy, his name's Brandt. And he's also a real estate agent. And so he has a dedicated page for his fishing stuff. But then he also will put some of his fishing stuff on his real estate page, just to show like, Hey, this is my hobbies what I love doing. I'm gonna take care of you, of course, but this is this is me. What if I don't? And that's not on the fishing boat? Yeah, exactly. I might be on a fishing trip. But hey, I'll call you when I get back. And you know, those, those things, that show that you're raw and real, are what people naturally are going to be pulled to. And so that's that's the exact reason why I stopped editing videos years ago. Because see this stuff, you know, the whole world is photoshopped, and doctored. You know, not too many people are raw and real anymore. And so I stopped doing it. And the response has been phenomenal.

Keith McKeever 16:09

Yeah, I mean, I hear that all the time. Like, just stop with the fancy editing or the, you know, even even sometimes, like the branding photos and just be authentically you. It's kind of Yeah,

Jared Ledbetter 16:21

I mean, there's stuff that you can do to, you know, a lot of the thumbnails for like YouTube. Some of them are clickbait, and some of them are tasteful, right. And you can kind of tell which ones or which. But I'm at a point in life where I don't care. I don't even make thumbnails, like, you get what you get. Either you're here to see the content or you're not. And so, I've got videos, I've posted, you know, two, three years ago, still getting views and comments. And that's just because it's good content, you know, people have a problem, they find a solution on that solution.

Keith McKeever 16:59

Yeah, good content, good title, good description, that that pulls it up in searches. People are like, hey, there you go.

Jared Ledbetter 17:06

Yep. That's exactly right. And it's, it's no different with, with even SEO, you know, good quality content and proper optimization is going to outlive whatever face, you know, Google's in right now. Because they're gonna go through their iterations, they're gonna make changes. But if you do it right the first time, you don't have to keep redoing it. You know, you don't have to rewrite it 10 times, you might rewrite it two or three times of the course of 10 years, but you got to do it annually. Yeah, it's a difference.

Keith McKeever 17:37

It's like, just you know, you got the plan, you got everything dialed in, and all you have to do is shift your fire to change this. Alright, well, here's how we're going to adapt in just plug it in. Yep. And let it do its thing. Yeah, never lose that second thing consistency, because I think that that might be the most brilliant thing I've heard all day. Because that's incredibly true. There's so many people that can't stop it just, you know, different things like, well, it didn't work. I tried to five times and it didn't work. I tried it for two weeks, and it wasn't successful.

Jared Ledbetter 18:09

Well, there's some factors in that, you know, there's two schools of thought, right? Because some things are genuinely going to take time to master, right. And then some things follow the definition of insanity, where if you keep doing the same thing over and over and get and expect a different result, you're going to lose your mind. Right. So you know, SEO. And if you're mastering any type of task takes time, whether it's your email marketing, or your social media, or doing your own SEO, or writing content that actually engages with people, those things are going to take time to master. And if it don't work, pivot and try again. Whereas, like you said, if you keep doing the same thing, five days a week for two weeks and no change, it's probably something wrong there. You need to reassess?

Keith McKeever 19:09

Absolutely. Yeah, something's just like some things do take a lot longer. You don't have to master them. You just have to do certain things longer, like marketing, in some ways, like, not everybody's going to enjoy your content, but you should be more consistent about what you put out there. And you should change your expectations on the impact of right yeah, you can't you can't just be like, Oh, I'm gonna put this video up and be like, Oh, this thing's gonna go viral.

Jared Ledbetter 19:40

Ya know, the

Keith McKeever 19:41

odds are stacked away against your favor.

Jared Ledbetter 19:43

I expect absolutely nothing to go viral. Every time you know, you set your expectations low, but have a plan. Right? The old the old military theme of you know, plan for the worst hope for the best. That's that's The only thing you can really do and some with, you know, like, hey, you know, I hope I get one click off this thing. Sweet, you know, be excited about every win no matter how big or small it is.

Keith McKeever 20:13

Well, that's one thing. It kept me going with this podcast, you know now going on, you know, season three and a nice episodes. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, some episodes are going to do perform better than others. Some of them are going to be shared more than others, some of them are going to be more valuable content to a wider audience than others. Yeah, perfectly fine. You know, but it's the longevity of everything that maybe I help somebody this year, maybe help somebody six years from now, who knows? Okay, yeah, that's valuable. And somebody's like, Oh, hey, that's totally me. I can I can use this. And, you know,

Jared Ledbetter 20:46

yeah. There's a guy named, goes by the name of Andy fries. Ella, has a podcast, he used to be called the MF CEO. Now it's called Real AF. And it started out as like a business development type podcast. And so I heard one episode somewhere in the middle, and I was like, what? Oh, hell, no, I have to start this at the beginning and find out everything else that's happened. And that's what I did. I went back to the beginning of time for their podcasts and listen to every episode. And every one of them was amazing. And I loved everything about it. And I did the same thing with like, Star talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I went to the beginning of his podcast to started day one, it's to

Keith McKeever 21:34

blow your mind and multiple ways. Exactly. Yeah. There's smart people. And then there's guys like him. Yeah, make the rest of us like idiots.

Jared Ledbetter 21:42

He makes smart people look dumb. You know, if you're talking about guys, like Sheldon Cooper, it's probably not too hard. But, you know, still these levels beyond levels. You know?

Keith McKeever 21:56

I couldn't agree more with that. So. So when it comes to the to the branding stuff, yeah. Images, audience ads, things like that video, where are you seeing people go wrong the most in those areas?

Jared Ledbetter 22:10

Yeah, so let's start with something basic colors. Right? You can actually look it up. We even have some articles on our website about this. It, there's an actual philosophy of color theory. And that is how a color ties to an emotion, which helps people feel a certain way and react a certain way. And so each color has that designation. And so when you're looking at what, you know, what do I want my brand to say? What do I want it to stand for? Colors play a role in this? Right? If you're trying to say, I want to show you know, I want to sell, you know, teddy bears write something cute and cuddly selling teddy bears. You go down the path of like, black and red. You're way off target every time. Because black and red is more synonymous with like Slipknot than it is teddy bears. Right before maybe kill the teddy bear not sell the teddy bear.

Keith McKeever 23:23

And so one factor. Yeah, exactly. And warmth. But it's also can have other other factors to it right. And

Jared Ledbetter 23:30

so if you were to get rid of the black and soften up the red, and then bring it closer to a pink, and then leverage that with other colors, that's a different story, right? And so that's a spectrum of the colors. And every color has its own area. And it's not just about picking one color. Of course there's a there's a primary base color, but then there's accent colors, right? So if you pick up a red and a red, orange, those are too close together. So you need something that's going to offset that and an opposing fashion kind of like a yin and yang. Your top two colors need to be an opposing force and still present a consistent messaging and whatever it is you're trying to do. And so that's where a lot of people falters, they pick the wrong colors, because they don't know what they want to say. And that's a huge thing.

Keith McKeever 24:31

I've got my logo up in the corner. What what do you think of my podcast logo and the colors?

Jared Ledbetter 24:39

Okay, colors. I like them. I like that you have the highlighter yellow. Really big and bold. I liked that you're using the font for the battle for a cup podcast. I like that stencil font works really well with a silhouette behind it. The other stuff that's on the right side the microphone And then the little text under that, that's kind of a waste of space, I would cut those two out and blow up that silhouette behind the seats.

Keith McKeever 25:08

I do have an alternative version of that. But that's exactly what I did is, you know, in my wife to do that in Canva. And that's black ops. One is the is the font style. Yeah. And I was like, that's perfect. That's as close to military type font as possible. Yeah. And I went with the yellow. Because I thought I was like, I want yellow and glow straps. I don't I don't want like a reflective Bell. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. More or less just, I wanted to get attention as I looked through podcasts before starting mine, I was like, nobody's using bright yellow. Nobody's using really super bright colors to crack, right. And I want to be stands out as a warning. And I want people to be like, Oh, what's this yellow? Like, I want the eyes to pull to it and see what it is. And then you got, you know, it's pretty self explanatory, the silhouette and a flag. And it should, it's almost anybody that's a military veteran type podcast.

Jared Ledbetter 25:56

It anyone who has been an oath taker, and their career is going to instantly recognize that everyone else that she might be trying to bring in outside of that initial audience base, might not get that right off the gate.

Keith McKeever 26:10

That's all right. Well, my whole audience is for the military and veteran community anyway, linear build houses and kids and all that stuff. But ya know, that was, you know, so I appreciate that. Those thoughts on there? Because yeah, yeah, man.

Jared Ledbetter 26:22

And that kind of rolls into the other. The second half of that branding imagery is the actual text, right, the fonts that you choose, they have to complement that as well. You know, you're doing Veterans Military theme, you got your stencil, like font there, it plays nicely into what you're doing. You know, if you went with a little cursive script type font, everyone would say, Who the hell is this guy? Yeah, no, that would be like, whereas that stands out. And it's very clear and obvious what that is. And that's exactly what you want. There's a there's a book. It's, I hate reading books, that are not a, you know, anything that's nonfiction, I really despise reading. It's really hard for me to do fiction, you know, fake stories, sci fi, action, thrillers, all day, anything that's real is really hard for me to read. And that's why I'm the total opposite. And that's why for me to be able to get through, you know, some of these actual books is an achievement to have for me. But there's one that's called Don't make me think. And it talks about marketing, branding, and call to action within the marketing sphere, right. And so you have less than a second, to get people to understand everything about you. Just like in an HR department, you have less than one second for them to look at your resume and be impressed. It's no different with consumers. And it used to be longer, but you know, the declining attention span of the world has gotten shorter. And it's less than a second, it's not even half a second. People know instantly, whether or not they will understand you are not and some people will pause, take the time to do a little digging to really find out, most people will not.

Keith McKeever 28:28

So as I said, people who want to tick tock who have a business and they start off by saying, Hey, I'm John Doe, and I'm with such and such company, and this is my title, and this is what I do. You've already lost them. That's why they'll get any

Jared Ledbetter 28:39

middle right? And that's exactly why all of those dance and stupid dance videos are freaking going viral is because people have lost their minds. And the sense of, they need something to grab their attention. But the problem is that attention span has gotten so low, it needs to keep pulling you in. And so it's it's like a tug of war of the psychological warfare of your mind. And that's why videos like that do so well. It's because of the way society is now. But that ties directly into your business. Like if I didn't know anything about the military, and I see your logo, you know, battle buddy podcasts. That's cool, but he's going to battle right? Now, they're not going to know what that is. And either that sounds like something they're going to be interested in because they play Call of Duty, or it's not. Right. That's what it boils down to, you know, Halo or Call of Duty and they know and they want to learn more or they don't

Keith McKeever 29:42

really civilian Call of Duty warriors that we have that listen to the show.

Jared Ledbetter 29:46

I suspect it's it's a lot of them. Yeah.

Keith McKeever 29:53

There's bound to be a couple of these. Yeah. But ya know, that's that's some good stuff. I see some. I see some logos and stuff out there. Sometimes it's just kind of what they have in mind. Yeah, or people tie things in. I'm trying to think of an example. But people like tie design elements or things in that. It's like,

Jared Ledbetter 30:14

it's obvious for you because you know your industry, but it's not obvious everyone else. Yeah. Yeah, their business

Keith McKeever 30:21

changes or goes to a different direction. They'd have to change the logo. Universal enough.

Jared Ledbetter 30:28

Right? You know, that's also why brand either. Yeah, that's exactly why when it came time to rebrand, I intentionally chose to rebrand as an agency, instead of rebranding as myself. And the purpose of that is, initially it was to look bigger, right is back in 2017, or so the idea was to look bigger than I am. Okay, that works. But at the same time, as I want to disconnect me from my brand, right, you'll hear a lot of people say that I am my brand. Oh, yeah, that's true. You know, and I don't

Keith McKeever 31:07

always want that tied to your business. Well, I live and breathe websites

Jared Ledbetter 31:10

do that live and breathed code, I do it every day, a lot throughout the day. But that doesn't mean that I'm the only one who can do that work. And so that is where I intentionally decided to brand as an agency so that I could build a team around me build my own spider web and divvy up those tasks and hand them out and get other people on board. And it did what it was supposed to do. And at one point, I even had a team of 12 We're

Jared Ledbetter 31:43

not anymore, but I used to think COVID kind of plays a role. And thanks. Yeah.

Keith McKeever 31:51

COVID made a lot of changes to a lot of industries. Yeah, of course. You know, that kind of goes to was gonna go into the next topic of outreach. Sure. And I think this is another area where people have a lot of problems. I'm sure you've seen some things, but we're, where people are really missing the ball or missing the mark, when it comes to outreach through people because I get those. I get the LinkedIn messages like everybody else. Yeah, I get the random texts, like, Oh, we got this or we got that or, you know, real estate's really bad at Oh, I'm such was also with the company. We do referrals for XML, or do we have might have some people in your area? Are you interested in it's like,

Jared Ledbetter 32:32

alright. Yeah. So you are,

Keith McKeever 32:34

you know, like, anything, you just, oh, you're with a company easy referrals? Like?

Jared Ledbetter 32:39

Yeah, the reality is, is that your options for connecting with people are highly limited, right? You got phone, email, text, social media, and walking into their door, there is nothing else. The difference in all of that is how you leverage it, right? Because you can leverage triggers to send out text messages and emails, and even social media messages, we can leverage automation to do some of those things for you, at least in the initial stages. And whether you do that or not, is really up to you whether or not, you know, you have the time and the capability to structure these things. But also whether or not, that's actually part of your brand, right? I know people who will never use automation for not only email marketing, but for social media messages and text messages. They refuse these automation period. Because they want that interpersonal communication to be real every time.

Keith McKeever 33:56

Well, because you can read it. I mean, you know, can read it.

Jared Ledbetter 33:59

Yeah, you can tell when it's a canned response. And you're doing this work for years. I can tell when there's a canned response. But I can also tell, even when I'm talking to people, and they're trying to sell me, I can tell when people are trying not to sit, not to sell me to sell me. I had a call with a guy that day, he goes off, you're like, Yeah, I had a call with the guy that day. And, you know, just the way he was asking the questions. It's like, okay, dude, I know exactly what you're doing. I've written this script before for other people. But I'm going to play your game because I want to see where you go with it. And for me, it's either I either hit a brick wall like nah, Screw this, I'm out. Or I go along with it to see what happens. Because I'm curious because what are they doing that maybe I can adapt to my own efforts and principles and clients, but a way

Keith McKeever 34:55

of looking at it from people out like I before just to be like, I don't want this out there, but I don't want to waste their time because they're just doing a job. They're just trying to make sales. I get it. Yeah. Honestly, I'll keep on going just to waste a little bit of their time.

Jared Ledbetter 35:10

I've, I've gotten to the point, if it's a spam call, I have no tolerance for spam call, personally, will I hire an agency to go make 1000? Phone calls a day? On my behalf? Yes. Will I wait for people? If they call me? No, I have zero tolerance for spam for me. But I have no problem putting that on other people. So it's kind of a weird, weird thing that I have?

Keith McKeever 35:38

Well, it's the

Jared Ledbetter 35:41

I mean, you can tell the information.

Keith McKeever 35:45

Oh, yeah, your information is

Jared Ledbetter 35:46

being sold every every hour of every day. So it's never going to stop. So you can

Keith McKeever 35:53

know when to stop it is to not have your information online. And good luck doing that.

Jared Ledbetter 35:57

Yeah, you'd have to shut down Google. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Keith McKeever 36:01

You're not going to me, right? Now, you won't pull back what's already out there. But you can't really even unplug yourself completely and not have new information out there.

Jared Ledbetter 36:11

Right now. There's even public databases where you can go by profiles of people with all their contact information, their family history and all that stuff. So what am I really gonna do? Right? But I'll tell people, no, right. Take me off your list, bro. I'm not interested.

Keith McKeever 36:30

It's like playing Whack a Mole? Yeah,

Jared Ledbetter 36:32

it really is. Because you pick up the phone, and they're like, oh, add them to our call list. Like pump the brakes homie. But yeah, so frustrating. But the with phones, you know, you have you have the cold calling systems, right. But, you know, you could send that out to an outsource service, you know, see what they can do with it. But also you have, you know, voicemails and voicemails that you can send to people. You know, you can actually mix, mix and match your strategy. Right? Write, send them an email, and have them call you, which follows up with the text. That's a random combination. But you can mix all three of those, you know, at this stage, pick up the phone and call somebody. You know, they say they respond to a text. They're like, Yeah, I'm definitely interested. Call them right away. Hey, hey, Keith, this is Jared, I saw that you are interested, you know, and you can actually take that even further when you're applying analytics into your efforts. Because there's been times where I'd send out some email marketing, see that people read it? And I'm like, huh, let me call them. Hey, Keith, this Jared, I'm just calling to check and see how you were doing today. And they're freaking out. Like, what? I just read that email, and I was just thinking about you, what do you what do you do it? You know, and it's, it's creepy. But it's also very effective. From a business perspective.

Keith McKeever 38:07

Well, yeah, to attract some people. My industry is one of them. Where, yeah, people don't move every day. So you may not right, you know, you can sell a house today, that person may not move for five years. 710 30. Who knows? So to stay on top of them and say, Hey, I'm your local expert. You know, use me for whatever services you need. You have to constantly kind of be in somebody's face. Right? And you do,

Jared Ledbetter 38:33

it takes a lot of interactions with people for the knee bend to the for them to be a customer. And so for you to be able to connect with them. I don't know, let's say that you, you text them, you know, and here's a link to fill out our form that you asked for. They go fill it out, you follow up with an email, and then later on call them, right? That's three, three mediums. Three touch points in a single day. You know, Hey, I saw that you filled out this form. Just wanted to follow up with you make sure I understand. You know, something as simple as that is insanely powerful. Oh, Keith, yes. Thank you for calling me I was wondering about X, Y and Z. It's, it's crazy how mixing and matching those things is as a powerhouse. I mean, there's proven efforts and proven practices, but everything works. You know, I know people. I have guys who swear by social media, direct messaging, private messages, right? They'll send you a message on Facebook or Instagram or something. I'm like, Dude, why? Why do you keep doing that? Because I hate it when people do it to me, like why are you doing this then? I don't know. You. You don't know me? What the hell right

Keith McKeever 40:00

Well, your was a personal connection Where's? Well, I at least some sort of a relationship, I

Jared Ledbetter 40:05

regularly block people. Let's put it that way. I block people all the time almost every day. But I have a buddy who's like, Hey, man, I might send out 100 messages, collect three clients, because that's the ratio that he has found for his industry. So he'll do 100 messages a day, five days a week, pick up 15 to 20 clients for this next month. Like, are you kidding me? He's like, Yeah, dude, it's disgusting, but it works. Oh, okay. I guess so. You know? So, again, that's

Keith McKeever 40:42

another, you know, it's an option.

Jared Ledbetter 40:45

It is an option. Yeah. And I mean, that's another area where I'm not personally going to go do that to people. But I might hire somebody to do it.

Keith McKeever 40:54

Right? I'm with you there. I'm the kind of person like,

Jared Ledbetter 40:57

I might hire a person on my staff, like, Hey, your jobs, reaching out to people on social media, go conquer the world.

Keith McKeever 41:05

It doesn't bother me to call somebody who I've got to dealing with or somebody I know, or, or like a warm lead that comes in, where they're submitted their information, like I already know a little bit about this person, you know, but in real estate, it's not uncommon for a lot of people just to pick up the phone, get a number a call and be like, Hey, I'm selling. So such such company, are you looking to buy or sell house today? Because, first of all, like what their situation is,

Jared Ledbetter 41:29

there's a lot of early dirty dealings in the real estate.

Keith McKeever 41:32

We'll just we'll call those all day long, you know? Yeah, that's one thing like me personally, I'm not saying I was like, I couldn't sit at my desk and just make phone call after phone call after phone call, and probably get chewed out good. 20% of the time, they'll take me off your list.

Jared Ledbetter 41:49

We'll see the plot thickens, depending on your location as well. I'm not sure what state you're in. But boy, so

Keith McKeever 41:56

the Western people here, so yeah.

Jared Ledbetter 42:01

I had a client, it was a real estate agent out of Texas. And I tried to convince him to hire a VA to do some of that grunt work to respond to people to call people and schedule meetings. Right? And he's like, I can't, because they have to have their freakin license to be able to do this work. Like, that's insane. And so stuff like that really plays a factor into what can you do. And that's where I've seen a lot of people in real estate, automate their mess a lot, because they can't afford to hire somebody else and give them the cut of the commission. Because that's what it's going to turn into.

Keith McKeever 42:43

Yeah, there's, there's a lot to it. There's a lot of rules, you know, like, code of ethics, and a lot of things like that you got it. You kind of got to figure out what path you're gonna go down. And you have to kind of make sure that you're in compliance.

Jared Ledbetter 42:58

And yeah, your heart accountant, part lawyer, part salesman, you know, you gotta know it all. Sometimes we're counselors

Keith McKeever 43:05

to help people with their problems, and I don't I got this problem or that problem, or I don't have enough money to sell, I gotta whatever, you know, running. Thanks. This makes it interesting, because no, two clients are the same. No, two days are the same up on your toes. Yeah, yes. That's the joys of running a business miski. That's for sure. Which makes me awesome. I love having conversations like this, because being a business owner and sharing this with people who maybe are thinking about getting into business, you know, I've seen these things personally, just like you have. So you know, all this is coming from real life examples that we've seen, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. So next thing I want to ask you about was operations, because you kind of had on lists on their outdated equipment, software, poor choices, something along those lines, and scams, like what what kind of stuff are you seeing there when it comes to the operation side of people in their business?

Jared Ledbetter 44:03

I don't think people just make people just make bad decisions. That's what it is they when it comes to the operation of your of any organization, not not just a business that covers nonprofits, even even government as well, you know, people make bad decisions. They don't think through a problem object objectively. They don't define what the root cause of the problem is. And then they try to cut corners. So you don't know what the actual problem is. You don't know what you want to fix, or you don't know where you want that solution to go. And you don't really want to do the work. That's how that translates.

Keith McKeever 44:47

It's a recipe for disaster. Yeah, it really is a problem to fix. You don't have a business. Yeah, exactly. without a problem. You

Jared Ledbetter 44:54

don't have a solution. Yeah. An organization is a living organism. It's ever Are, it's changing constantly. It's it's molding and evolving every day. And being able to figure those things out and define them is going to be able to help you progress. Right? And the reality is, is if you're not tracking anything, if you're not measuring your success, you're not going to be successful. Right? That's why people look at a lot of people that are in sales, spend their time focusing on their volume of their sales, right? Hey, I got five sales today. Awesome. Right? Well, if that could be, I sold, you know, five boxes of toilet paper for 100 bucks, or I sold five Lamborghinis for 7 million. Right? So context really needs to apply there as well. So some of those have to be volume based orders. And some of them have to be quantity based. And a lot of that plays a role into that. But if you don't know what you're supposed to do, and you don't know what the outcome is supposed to be, then how are you supposed to fix anything? That's, that's crazy. Just like, like you for real estate. If you don't know what kind of house they want, you can't find it. Right, exactly. And what's worse is you're in a sector where people don't even know what they want until they see it, which makes it even harder. Yep, I know. I know.

Keith McKeever 46:28

In real estate, that buyers are liars, because it's true. So you need somebody, you know, if we were having a consultation, and you tell me, Jared, alright, Keith, what I'm looking for is a three bedroom, two bath, ranch style home with a two stall attached garage. Yeah, well, we got five houses, and then all of a sudden, you want a fenced yard and in ground pool, and you don't care about the size of the home anymore. And you've really like a fourth bedroom. So by the time you buy something, you buy a two bedroom with two offices that are technically bedrooms, no pool, no garage, but it's got it's got what are they?

Jared Ledbetter 47:05

Now part of that is economical decisions, right? Because people have unrealistic to people have unrealistic expectations of how things are supposed to cost. That's going to happen daily. But also, that boils down to people also don't know what they want. Because they have this idea of you know, there's the idea. And then there's the reality. People don't know how to juggle those two. And so the first time you're talking to people, it's usually the idea. Five houses later, it's reality.

Keith McKeever 47:39

Well, a lot of things are shaped by that. I don't think it's just my industry, too. But

Jared Ledbetter 47:46

it's more obvious there.

Keith McKeever 47:48

Well, social media shows you, you know, these fancy homes and all this stuff. And he's like, Well, I want that, like, who doesn't want the fancy granite countertops? and stainless steel appliances? Right?

Jared Ledbetter 47:57

Of course. 2000 square feet? Yes, please. Yeah.

Keith McKeever 48:01

Everybody wants that, you know, those kinds of things. But obviously shows like TV shows on HGTV stuff.

Jared Ledbetter 48:08

Yep, all those remodeling shows a lot of

Keith McKeever 48:10

like young buyers, first time homebuyers. They see those and they're like, oh, that's what I want. Okay, that's great. But here in the Midwest, that's not what you're gonna get. Well, also, for that, what you're going to find is something that's still dated in the 80s 70s, or 80s, might have some shag carpet needs some updating, that's in your price range, it might have the bedroom and bathroom count, but you're gonna have to put over that was sweat equity into it.

Jared Ledbetter 48:33

I've seen so much because the hospital background is getting physical therapy. That's the only thing they had on their TV and their wedding room. And so I couldn't tell you how many of those episodes I watched across HGTV and all the other channels like that. It's just the same stuff over and over again. Like oh, what's your budget for this house? You know, I was thinking 600,000 What? Where are you buying this house from? Right?

Keith McKeever 49:02

And it's like and he's a writer and she is a butterfly collector. Yeah, yeah. So how do you afford that? You know,

Jared Ledbetter 49:08

exactly. When I walked into budget for my house is like Yo, I got 150 in this no one I got the VA loan and I can go higher like not on 50s But my target Yeah, I start small and work my way up. So we ended up closing on the house. It's 1700 square feet at 195. Not bad. Yeah. And that and but the thing is, is the same house over in freaking Los Angeles is you know, 5 million.

Keith McKeever 49:42

Well, that's why it's important to have a plan just I mean, just like anything else, like up education, talk to the experts figure out what's really going on. And then when you're educated to a certain point, you can start making educated decisions.

Jared Ledbetter 49:55

But see, that's all work for the customer and customer And he said, sometimes they don't want to, though. And that's where, where that's where the the business owner, the the expert has to come in and do for two very critical things. The first one is you have to educate them, right? I didn't, I knew I had the VA loan when I went to buy my house, but I didn't know what my options were because I had no clue. Like, Well, shit, what are my choices? You know, A, B, or C? Hmm. Okay, let's, let's do a little digging now. And Mario three ended up spending, you know, hours talking to me to try to figure it out, or to help me understand what was going on. And I'm phenomenally grateful for him for that.

Keith McKeever 50:41

What is the value proposition comes in?

Jared Ledbetter 50:43

Yeah, exactly. And, but the education piece has to happen in you know, you're not selling fidgets, spinners. So everything else, especially on the service industry side, you have to educate, that's, that's required, no matter what you do, you're gonna have to educate somebody on something, be prepared. The other half of that is managing client expectations. And it's so much fun trying to do that. Because you find out real quick, what kind of client you have, whenever you try to manage their expectations. Like, you know, they'll come to me like, you know, I got $1,000, but I want a website. I, I'm not going to do that for you, again, at the rates that I charge, that's less than 10 hours of work. And I need about 40 hours to do the work. So you want me to work 30 plus hours for free? Won't be happening anytime soon. Right? And so that might mean that's the expectation site

Keith McKeever 51:50

on your own? Yeah.

Jared Ledbetter 51:52

I mean, that's the thing is like, like, you can only spend 1000 bucks on a website, listen, go go to fiverr go to Upwork. That's going to be your best investment for your budget. Because it ain't gonna be me. Because I can, I can kick you off in the right place. But that still leaves you doing the brunt of the work. And doing those things from the beginning. I mean, I've I've pissed off people because of that. Why? This one dude called me telling me, he needed a logo. I'm like, Alright, dude, well, I don't really know what kind of logo you want, or how much effort you won't put into it. But I'm like, you know, it's probably going to be somewhere around three to $500 for a logo. He's like, Oh, man, that's out of my budget. And I'm thinking calm and price range for a logo. It really is. It really is. But that's what he told me. And I'm thinking, Okay, I hate this. I hate being put in this position, because now I have to negotiate on price. Right. And at that time, I still was doing that these days. I don't care. Okay, goodbye. But I felt that I'm like, Okay, well, you know, if the logo price turns out to be 300 bucks, and he's only got 250. Can I work with that? Right? And at the time was like, yeah, yeah, I think I could, you know, if his budgets only like 200 Could I finesse this to fit that mold? Okay, I could probably do that. So I decided to ask, alright, dude, what's your budget? Instantly? 28 hours? No, kids fuck on. Fiverr F IV e rr.com. Go?

Keith McKeever 53:39

Know, you'll always yeah, pretty decently over there. Yep, don't waste your time. Go. It's sometimes mean you learn is to know their worth, and know what their stress is worth. Yeah. Like, you don't want to take on a client that is willing to pay 100 bucks for a logo. And you're charging 200 Vendors can be angry and pissed off the whole time because you're charging them more than what they really are. And nothing's going to be right. They're going to keep coming back and trying to squeeze more value out of you. You don't want that person that you're like, Okay, 500 bucks to do it. And they're thinking 1500 is what it's going to cost. I know, like I slept on 500 I was thinking 15 Cool. Do it.

Jared Ledbetter 54:18

Yeah, we'll see. That's, that sucks for me sometimes. Well, right? Because like, I could I get another 1500

Keith McKeever 54:26

which was that person that looks at it like that is that's worth the value. Right? Slam Dunk, you're gonna do a great job. I know it, you're gonna roll out exactly what I want. But there's leaks in the changes and I'm gonna get what I'm paying for and I'm gonna be happy with Yeah.

Jared Ledbetter 54:40

Let's see the flip side of that is value is a subjective measurement. There's a lady that sold a logo for $2 million. And it was a stupid looking logo. And that provides the value that was placed on that logo was of high quality, right? There's just a, you know, GoDaddy and you know, a lot of other companies last year went through a re branding with their logos. And some of them look great. And some of them look stupid. And I guarantee you, they spent $100,000 Plus on their on their new logo with r&d back, metric based design, blah, blah, blah, looks stupid. That's the reality of it. When Google went through and did their logos, their icons for all their apps, they went through and redid them all. And you couldn't tell what half of it was. And they use the same like four colors for everything. So it confused the shit out everybody. I had a buddy that went through his, like 10 minutes drew out new logos, just on it's just pen and paper took a picture. I mean, it's like, hey, Google, you can have this for free. And it was better than what they rebuilt, but they redesigned. That's crazy.

Keith McKeever 56:10

Well, yes, probably probably too many people sit in an office debating what was yeah,

Jared Ledbetter 56:14

that's that's, that's corporate squabbles,

Keith McKeever 56:18

a lot of that, those kinds of things are gonna happen. But for sure.

Jared Ledbetter 56:21

But here in the small business sector, you know, that shouldn't be a thing. And yet it sure it happens, still.

Keith McKeever 56:31

The joys of running a small business, all of the different things that that you don't have to do. This is definitely speaking to people who are thinking about starting a small business, you're going to have to wear every hat, especially at first, if it's just you, you're gonna have to wear everything from accountant to social worker to finance everything in between. It's where your legal hat, you know, you're not an attorney or went to law school, like you got to do it all. until you figure out what you can ship out to a VA or what you can hire somebody to do. Or, of course, you want to go do a certain things. So, I mean, it took me almost 10 years of the business before I finally hired a virtual assistant. You know, and she's, she's gonna be the one chopping this up into some reels. You know, she does an outstanding job. It's something I I should have done a years ago. Yeah, you know, you live in LA, right. That's, that's, that's the ups and downs. That's the ride that you take as a small business owners

Jared Ledbetter 57:32

on that growth trajectory, you're a lot more skeptical. Right? Before you hire her. You're super skeptical. Is this going to work out? I can only pay X? I don't know if this is right. Now you're like, best decision ever made? Yeah. And that's the reality of thing is,

Keith McKeever 57:53

this person's got skills, like I could cut up a video, I could do that. But it'll take me 10 times longer, of course. And if in all kinds of other tasks, and no matter what you could do, you could get a virtual assistant to do you can delegate a lot anything. You know, but you got to figure out what are the what are those things that you absolutely must have to do? And what can you give up? Is it okay? If it takes a little bit longer, if you got to bounce back and forth with some revisions or something, that's fine. It's just, it's just time and work. And after a while, you'll figure out what what both sides expect and what both sides can do. And it just kind of hit hit your groove.

Jared Ledbetter 58:31

Yeah, and the thing about delegation that a lot of people don't seem to understand is that which, to be fair, I learned this the hard way. I thought back in the day, I used to do jujitsu full time. Got some medical stuff going on. I can't anymore. But I used to do jujitsu, you know, three to five days a week, and loved every bit of it. And that was a, you know, I was a great student and whatnot. And then I reached a point where I had to start teaching. And I thought I knew the techniques until I started teaching. And I started having to second guess, everything that I knew, because I had to figure out how to break this down in a way to be able to explain it to people who have no idea what I'm saying. And when you have to teach your expertise, you learn it very, very well. And so, a lot of times, you know, when you hired your VA, you know, she's probably got some skills doing X, Y, and Z, but it's still on you to define what the SOP is. It's still on you to define what set order of operations, what has to get done, what's the full checklist, what's the order in which they happen? And what's the final output going to be and it's on you to be able to define all of these things. Add a a very detailed perspective for that person to be able to replicate that level of detail Telling your SOPs is what people tend to forget when they're like, oh, yeah, I'll hire somebody, wait a second, you got to know what you're talking about. You have to know what in and out no one in your sleep until you're there, you're not ready to hire somebody to do those tasks. And a lot of people hire too early. And a lot of people hire way too late. So you got to be able to manage that X, manage that time on on when's the right time to hire. And so what I discovered was, if I hit a consistent number of weeks, I've got a certain number in mind. But if I hit X number of weeks, where the same time management problems are arising, because there's too much stuff going on, then I need to farm it out. And it's, you know, I have a day job, I have a business, I have a family. So there's still a lot of stuff going on. And so I factor those things into this calculation that I've devised. But you know, if I've gone three to five weeks in a row of not being able to do you know, this, I don't know, let's say that posting on social media is what I intended to do, once a week schedule everything right? Well, it goes back to that consistency does get back to that. See, but if you're not, if you're not able to upkeep that consistency, because there's too much work, then you probably need to farm it out. But also, there's always a flip side of everything, right? The flip side of that is, maybe you're not being efficient enough. And that's why it takes you so long to do stuff. So that's another that's stuff you have to look at as well. Right, make the process as best as you can. And when you reach that point where it's time to hire out, make sure you can educate.

Keith McKeever 1:01:58

Well, that's exactly like what I what I say with my virtual assistant and cutting up these videos and other things. Can I Can I cut the end off of a video or do some stuff in the middle? Yeah, but it's gonna take me five times longer. So it's not an effective use of my time. You're talking to

Jared Ledbetter 1:02:12

listen, but that time that you would do that, you know that 510 hours a week that you get back, you know, what do you get to do with that?

Keith McKeever 1:02:21

income producing activities. That's what every every focus your time and attention on income producing activities and if it's not, that farm that out to somebody else?

Jared Ledbetter 1:02:32

Yeah. revenue generation. It's an umbrella.

Keith McKeever 1:02:36

No, that's that's the bottom line when it comes to business. Yeah. So but it a lot a lot to unpack your Jared for people. Yeah, I know. There's, that's for sure side, there's a million different things we could go. But there's a lot of problems. And I hope that business owners or prospective business owners take a moment to step back and reflect. Yeah, truthful to themselves of like, your shortcomings were my success. Business term, but run a SWOT analysis on your own business. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? What are what's what's going on in your business? And that will tell you what you need to know to make educated decisions. Just go from there. But I don't think a lot of people were doing that. So there's an action plan. I

Jared Ledbetter 1:03:26

don't, I'm not. I'm not gonna lie. I don't think I've ever done a SWOT analysis for my company. I don't think I ever have done it. I just looked at I document everything. If you've saw my my project management system, you freak out. Because I have I've templates on everything that's highly documented. I have SOPs that are highly documented. I have workflows and automation set up to do XY and Z, and to communicate with multiple functional areas. It's a work of art. So I've never focused on doing a SWOT analysis, but what I have focused on is optimizing things. You know, early on in my career, I got engrained very deeply to leverage process improvement in everything that you do. You no matter how good or anything right there, it really is. And it's not even like an after action review kind of thing. It's more like, every day. What can I do better tomorrow? And that, that kind of has molded this into what it's become? Because I actually have live editable templates that I can quickly edit and overwrite. Does the system template like like a working file section? Yeah, yeah. So I have these documents ready to go at a moment's notice. So quickly, hop in, make my changes, save it. And all of a sudden the next time we go to use it, it's there, just with the quickness. And just something as simple as that those quick, quick adjustments on the fly 100 times a day, or 100 times a week, you know, making those things consistently adjusting.

Keith McKeever 1:05:17

Right. Hello. One thing I do for this podcast? Well, I mean, I use Evernote for lots of other things, but I love Evernote because it syncs to all my devices. But like I've got

Jared Ledbetter 1:05:27

said Evernote, Evernote, yeah, so yeah, I've got Google Keep. Yeah, I mean, using something

Keith McKeever 1:05:32

like that, like I've got just just on you here, right? I've got your name, CEO of carbon, digital. Sometimes I get more information than others. But I have different things like interests and hobbies, past events, family occupation, education, topic of interest of the person wants to talk about military service, I copy all the links in there, their their phone number, email address, and get all that off the signup stuff. That's why I write the title, the description, everything that goes into show notes. The questions so I draft the questions during the pre show interview, when, when I do when somebody I don't really know, well, I'll kind of draft notes, and then I'll go back and turn them into questions. And then I've got a checklist. And then I've got the email template that I copy and paste in the email the night the episode goes live, said, Hey, your episodes going live tonight, here's all the links where you can find everything, all of it is in one long note. On one safe place, anything I need for that particular show is right there. Yeah. And all you gotta do is pull it up a copy, paste stuff over, you know,

Jared Ledbetter 1:06:34

get it I should probably show you click up sometime. I do some gangster stuff. And I've got order forms, custom built order forms that automatically create HubSpot contacts, automatically add you to email automation, automatically port you into our client management system. And then also put you into our project management pipeline from one form being submitted. And then from there are various teams go in and do their work and started attacking. We have other stuff where onboarding automation happens, right? Our sales team actually had to build this for our sales team. They needed a way to be able to send out questionnaires, whenever they're talking to people on the fly, right? They pop in for a five minute phone call, or they only the person only has five minutes to talk cool. Let's see what you're doing cool. And they crank out a survey questionnaire real quick. So I had to build that up as automation to expedite that workflow, because they had a short window, to be able to ascertain whether or not we want to go further with it. And since we actually moved this portion of the process towards the beginning, before we even really sat down and had a long conversation with them. We brought over to collect a lot of project related details before we even had our first conversation. Because in that quantify, we're like, listen, we're, we're you know, at the time, we were charging, you know, 150 an hour, right? So it's like, listen, we charge 150 an hour, that's a rate, you know, average website will say 40 hours, it's this price, that's average of five or 6000. So it's like whoa, okay, you know, some people freak out and some people don't. You got to figure that out quick. But the sales team Yeah, they needed some automation kicked up. So that's what we did. So that entire pipeline from, from sales team, to automation, to HubSpot to questionnaire all the way on to them actually becoming a client and being in our systems, and we're onboarding them as an official client now 90% of that's automated. And it was automated out of necessity, not out of desire. Because I wanted people to be interactive with this, but I needed automation. That's just the way it is

Keith McKeever 1:09:08

to keep things across. I mean, think about your call someplace and somebody Person A passes you to person B at the same company different rep, they automatically have all your stuff up on the on the screen. Yeah, systems are all talking to each other everything's flowing.

Jared Ledbetter 1:09:24

The information gets where it needs something as simple as you know, updating your CRM, the person finished their questionnaire you know, put that into a workflow to be reviewed and looked at by a salesperson something as simple as that is insanely impactful. Because

Keith McKeever 1:09:43

how to use them what could be a whole nother topic for a whole nother day right there. Well, that's probably a week's worth of

Jared Ledbetter 1:09:48

time, which we don't have. But you know, just leveraging those things, is a phenomenal, phenomenal capability. The reality is that anything you want Dude, we could do it. You could do anything you want to do. Because you're not the first person that ever asked this question. Right? You won't you're not the first you won't be the last. We can figure it out. It's not the woods. It's the how, right? Elon Musk is not trying to figure out what needs to happen to get to the moon, or ticket to Mars. He's trying to figure out the house. Because he knows what he wants. That's his goal. Yeah, the house is a different story.

Keith McKeever 1:10:30

Just like setting up a colony. They're like, okay, he's well known, like, that's what the goal is to do research and development, testing and all that stuff. But yeah, the question is how, like, how do you put people up there long term, and there's health and safety? And how do you get them up there and how to get everything else up there to build a colony. It's a matter of time and time too, because you'll figure it out. It may take a year, it may take 10 years,

Jared Ledbetter 1:10:54

you could wait five hours trying to figure out how to integrate systems, or you could call me and I can give you a three minute spiel on it.

Keith McKeever 1:11:03

And you go, Well, if anybody thinks he doesn't have anything, you gotta get your website there. Carbon digital.us. It'd be in the show notes too. So have no fear. If you're listening to it, just down there, you can find it click it. So anybody needs anything you can reach out to Jared, there's a lot of different stuff, as you can tell from our hour long conversation here, a lot of knowledge, a lot of information in his head. So if you got questions, reach out and ask, and Jared, I appreciate you coming on and sharing with

Jared Ledbetter 1:11:35

us. Definitely, man, glad to be here. I like having a conversation where we get to talk about how you know how to make the world better.

Keith McKeever 1:11:43

Absolutely, you know, if we somebody just takes a couple of these pieces of information and actually applies a little action behind it, you see changes to their business in order to handle their personal life that they never expected. And you know, that's

Jared Ledbetter 1:11:59

why even if this but my only goal in all of this is to to spark interest in someone to go research it themselves. Because everything I've said you can find online, it's not even that hard to find it anymore. Good point. So if I can information if I could trigger Google search, I'm happy with that.

Keith McKeever 1:12:21

Awesome well, let's get I appreciate you being here. Definitely man. All right. There you have it, folks. Hope you enjoyed it. As I always say, on my website, battle buddy podcast.net. I've got information and resources on there about a variety things but if something's missing, and you think it should be there, and it's not please reach out, let me know. I always like to add as much value there as I can. And if you're struggling for some particular reason, remember the national suicide hotline number is now 988. Press one

Transcribed by https://otter.ai