The Importance Of Looking For Problems

Welcome to Throb, The Reality of Business podcast. Real business chat from real people without the shiny veneer of gurus anywhere near it.

With your hosts Bertie Cordingly and Paul Chapman and maybe some guests along the route, we'll talk about our experiences of running business, helping others run a business and sharing real stories based on real experience. Hello. Hello. Hello, Albert. Are you an Albert? I am an Albert. Yeah, I wasn't sure if you were a straight Bertie or an Albert.

No, no, I didn't, although I didn't know my name was Albert until I was about eight and then like went through school and there was like being Albert, Albert. Well, maybe that's me.

It always concerns me. It's one of those things that I spend too much time thinking about is name abbreviations. And there's two bits that kind of get me, like the inconsistencies and the proliferation of Zed. Like a guy at school called Ryan was called Raz. People called Sarah called Saz. I don't get it. That winds me up.

Right. Baza.

Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that makes, that makes no sense. And also things like, like Harry short for Harold. Yeah. Is Gary short for Gerald? Like that's, that's the kind of inconsistency I don't think our world needs. And it's, yeah, it's something I spend some, probably more than I need to thinking about.

Yeah. It's when you've got, you have like really like, like Richard, his dick. Like unfortunate.

Yeah. Where does that come from? I don't know. I honestly, I don't know. I think if, if Richard was invented now, I don't think it would be shortened to Dick because it's just not a thing. But it was, maybe Dick's was called something different back in the day.

William is Bill. Like it doesn't, doesn't. Yeah. Like Will, like yeah. Yeah. Bill, why, like I suppose maybe there was just a thing back in the day. Maybe it wasn't Zed's then. Maybe it's just, we'll just make up different names for people.

Yeah. Your name's Stephen, but we're going to call you Sebastian. Bob. What's that? Oh yeah. Robert. Robert. Rob.

Yeah. I think everyone could hear the sarcasm laced with that.

So yeah. What's, what's been going off? I've, well, in fact, I'll tell you what, I've, my, uh, I'm, we might have to stop for a little break because I keep getting toothache. I have my fillings changed. This is my vanity. I remember this. Yeah. So I've no longer got, so if I show you my mouth, for the purpose of the tape, I'm opening my mouth. I'm opening wide. Um, I had loads because like as a kid, like I wasn't told to clean my teeth or anything. Yeah. So, uh, and you just have sweets, don't you? For breakfast, lunch and dinner, like in the eighties, like that's just how it was.

See, I wasn't allowed sweets. Were you not? Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, you see, I'm from Doncaster in Hyde Park and it was, it was a very rough bit. It didn't feel rough at the time, but you know, driving through there now, it's like, Oh, I used to live here. Um, yeah. So it was, it was a rough bit. So we would always go to the corner shop.

Yes.

Like on the way to school, on the way back, always get sweets. So yeah, my teeth were bad. So yeah, all the bottom were just metal, but I've had them changed, but now they really hurt. Like I'm regretting having it done.

So you're going to put one of those like wrapper-esque grills in.

I don't know what, what I'm going to do with it, but yeah, I just keep having excruciating toothache. I woke up this morning with a glass of whiskey next to the bed. Like that was, that was how I soothed it last night. Yeah.

Is it borderline alcoholism?

Borderline alcoholism now.

Did you finish it off this morning?

Uh, no, I didn't. No, I finished it off last night. I was just like, yeah. So I finished the bottle of whiskey.

Um, there are numbers. We'll put, if you're affected by Bertie Stromer, we'll put those numbers on the screen below.

But yeah, toothache's a killer, innit? Hate it.

It's like backache. It's inescapable. I don't like that.

And every, yeah, people do empathize for it. Like I was, like, I went to a networking meeting the other day and I was saying that I had toothache and everyone's like, Ooh, you okay? Like, try this, try that. Um, no one said try whiskey. Actually, I found that on the internet. But.

Which, which, which scientist delivered that to you?

I didn't say gargle with it, I didn't say swallow it, but I'm not, I only had nice whiskey. So I'm just going to gargle it and spit it out, am I? Like, I held it on the tooth for a little bit.

Good.

And then, uh, and then swallowed.

Which is what, there we go. There we go. Straight in.

It was, there was no innuendo there. If you're reading anything into that, then that's, that's, that's you. Anyway, we didn't come here to talk about my teeth.

No.

What did you come here today?

Well, I kind of, it's another, which is most unlike me. It's another mini rant. Okay. Right. I've always said, and I still maintain that your business. My business. Not yours. Anyone's business. In any format is the single most personal thing in the world. What you do with it, how you do it, what it achieves only is your business. It doesn't matter. But, and it's a big but. In fact, it's a Kardashian-al size but, if you will. The reality is at the moment, well, and forevermore, as will be, there is a state where what other people do will affect your ability to make money. And the example I'm going to give this. I had Jack's birthday not so long ago and, you know, you know, was on buying stuff. And I was buying, mind your elbow on that. I was buying, probably shouldn't use the name, but yeah, say a construction thing. From a well-known constructor of.

A construction toy.

Well, it's sort of, you know, brick-based construction.

Is it one that's been available for a very long time? It could be. Multiple colours.

So much about them, I love. I love, I love. And actually. For the purpose of the tape. Yeah.

Paul's talking about Lego. Yeah.

That's what you'd say. And who are brilliant. But onto their website, trying to buy something.

Yeah.

And it was just difficult.

Why are you saying Lego? What do you actually think is going to happen? Do you think Mr. Lego is going to sue us? Well, I don't know. For talking about, like, a genuine experience. Yeah. It's not like we're slating it.

No, I love Lego, everybody. Yeah. Anyway, look, it doesn't matter. Look, and the point being is that.

Other building blocks are available.

Other building blocks are actually available. But they never seem to work as well. Yeah. Which is neither. Anyway.

They've lost their patent now, though, haven't they? Have they? Well, it's patents only last. Is it patents? Or patents only last so long. So I think probably for about the last 10 years, other people can now make bricks that fit with Lego. Whereas they couldn't. So now you can get them, like, in Wilco. Other discount.

But when you've got a brand as good as that. It's quite interesting. Because it doesn't matter. It's interesting. Actually, we don't need any IP on this. Anyone can do this. No one will ever get into their space. Because it's too big a deal.

The way that the bricks, like, separate is just as important to them as the way that they build. No one else has got it. Just that good, have they?

And I look at the Lego the guys have now. The kids have now. It's just. It is brilliant. How it's thought through. The design of it. The pieces. You know, we've got my old Lego from mum and dad. Which came in these big kind of toolboxes we had. Now, remember those fold-out toolboxes. Big box down there. Look. Full. Full of Lego. I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. And actually, what we had, it looks so dated now. But anyway, look. The experience of this was just really annoying. You know, you click on stuff and it doesn't work. So you have to double click and then that does a thing and you go. And it was just.

You're talking about the Lego website. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

So it's just a really difficult experience. And to the point that it got to it that when I'd finally kind of got through and paid, I noticed that in the clunkiness of it, it pulled out a completely different address in my village that didn't work. So I live at, you know, I won't put my address out there. I live at number, I don't know, let's say 24.

Okay.

And randomly it says, oh, we're going to deliver this to 11. And I'm like, well, that's just really annoying. Okay. And I just, oh, right. Get on. So get online. Can't change it online. Call them up. And they're like, oh, well, we can't change it. But it's literally gone in like one minute ago. It's, you know, so there must be. And it's just everything about it was a massive kind of ball. I said, well, okay, all we can do. And I'm like, I still don't believe this. All we can do is wait for it to leave us to then speak to the courier and then ask the courier whether they can direct it. Now they may or may not. But for that to happen, you need to ring the courier. So I ring the courier and they say, well, we can't do that. We need the seller to change the address. I'm like, back to the seller. Well, we can, we can test, we can request it. And it just, this is utter, utter bullshit. It's utter nonsense because you look at like other people, look at Amazon, their processes are so good, you know? And I don't believe in the majority, even like really small businesses, I don't believe I couldn't do something as simple as change an address that they've got wrong in the first place because their automation is too slow or whatever it is. And I think, you know, this is, again, I'll try and pull the rant back in here. But people are forgetting that actually the money in businesses, it comes from the process. That's where the actual real profit is. And it's also where loses the most money. You know, I know kind of lots of businesses, actually, their processes are where all the money goes. The profit just disappears down there because, I don't know, they don't order things properly or they duplicate order or they, you know, they're not, they're not kind of doing the, you know, the end to end stuff properly. And I think, you know, this is what I thought we should talk about today because you are big on processes.

I love process.

And I've got a couple of questions there. But I think there is a massive reality. People think they need to sell more stuff to get it. And I can think of loads of businesses that are selling loads of stuff, aren't making any money. And not always, but most of the time, it is the process that is absorbing all the cash. It's not, it's not the product itself. It's not the margins, not all that kind of stuff. It's the process that's absorbing the cash.

Yeah, I think, I think, I mean, yeah, I love process. And I think just, I think the word just sounds very boring. I think as a result of processes, people can just switch off. But, you know, in this, in this example, like, I think a lot of the times you can create a process for the wrong reasons or what you perceive to be the right reasons. So a process is there to make your business more efficient, right? But actually, sometimes you can forget that is actually there to make it more efficient for the customer. So in your case, like they've added in the postcode automation or the building, the Google Maps, whatever they've used to determine what your address is. And for whatever reason that's failed. Now, you know, like knowing you, it could have been user error.

I find this hard to believe. Let's go with it for the purpose of the podcast.

But it could have been, it probably wasn't, but it could have been. But this is still a good example to use, whether it was user error or not.

Whatever process you are running, you have to accept that it's never finished. It's never a fine or polished process. And there are always going to be edge cases. And they're the most important ones. Well, not the most important, but they're always important that you have to take those into account. And the edge cases hit at first like your frontline staff. So in this example, customer service. So if the process is broken, there needs to be some sort of escalation process or something that can actually, first of all, fix the problem for that customer and actually accept like someone can say, yeah, the process is broken. Rather than, you know, you must have heard like, you know, the whole like computer says no or like, you know, yeah, I just can't help you. It's not on the system. It's like, I know it's not on the system. I know it's not working, but you can fix it. Like that's what you're there for. And I think this is where a lot of companies get it wrong and they don't have the ability to report these edge cases, these breakings in a process, whether it was user error or whether it was the fact that your postcode just didn't exist on the system. Either way, that process probably works for 90%, 95%. But you're the edge case in this. And they're the points where you can lose money. Because if you don't iterate and fix those processes, those failings will be there forever. And it's just money that's on the table that you're losing. Yeah.

Actually, I've not really thought about that. Because, you know, I said, well, actually, you know, the easy route here is that they look so clunky because there are plenty examples of, you know, kind of from Amazon to tiny business that can fix that. But actually here, there's a couple of processes broken, aren't there? Because there's, you know, and, you know, it could be using, you know, I just, I don't think it was because I can't see how I would choose the wrong address. You know, I know kind of what I'm doing, but there's that process possibly. But then also, I bet there is no process at that end to scoop up that error and go, how do we fix this? Yeah. You know, because it is, you know, I could understand this in days of yore where actually it's something, it's sent on a piece of paper, you know, to a warehouse, a warehouse of that, but it's all digital. Nothing's real until it's there. So actually the ability to go and change, you know, number 24 to number 11 or whatever it is, surely that's super easy.

Yeah, it is.

But there isn't that process to pick that up. So someone knows it a problem. So it'll happen again. Yeah.

And I think what you need is, I think this comes down to empowering staff to actually like to be able to take ownership of problems. And this is something we have definitely spoke about before. So actually having people that are on the ball, smart enough to recognise that, okay, fair enough, we don't understand why this has happened. That's irrelevant right now. Paul's ordered some Lego and it's not going to go to his house. How the fuck can we fix this problem for Paul? We need to take ownership of this and fix it. So fix that problem for the customer first and then report it to actually then feed back and iterate and improve that process. And there'll be so many examples of that. I mean, like I've had it so many times and I can see when processes fail. One of my biggest frustrating ones was when I ordered from a big online retailer, Amazon, and I'll tell you what happened. I ordered a camera. This camera was like 700 quid or something. And I got the camera, did the whole light set up thing, was no good, sent it back. The camera never arrived at Amazon. So I got a email from Amazon saying, you've returned an empty box. I was like, no, I didn't. Like, I definitely didn't.

So, you know, thinking it was Amazon and stuff like that and it would all be straightforward. I contacted them. It's like, look, I didn't. Thinking it would just be refunded. It wasn't. But I ended up in this loop of they were basically saying, yeah, we need to escalate this process to somebody else. And then what happened? I instantly got an email back saying, you need to return the empty box. Okay, that's a mistake. Call again. Same thing. This literally happened 10 times to the point where I'm like saying to the person, please do not press that escalation button because what's going to happen is I'm going to get this email. And I was telling them how broken their process was. So no one was ever getting to look properly at what was happening because there was an error in the process which I'd identified, but nobody cared. Nobody would take ownership of it. Nobody actually said, you know what? I can see you've rang 10 times about this now. We're going to get it sorted. And in the end, I just have to charge it back. So it's like, look, your only option is just to contact the credit card company and tell them that this isn't going to come through. So this isn't a rant as such. It's just that when your processes are clearly broken and you've got nobody there to report them, I'm sure that I'm not the only person that that's happened to. Yeah. But there was a clear failing. And it was so, it was frustrating to me because I just wanted to tell, look, your process is broke. Yeah. The process is broken.

And I think, you know, it's really interesting there because it reminds me of another example of a delivery company. I can't remember who it was, but they're just rubbish. Who is it? I can't remember. Anyway. And every time I see that's where it's going to be delivered to, I now just won't buy it. Mm. Mm. Because I just, I know it will go wrong. I know it won't be delivered. I know it will just, and you know, and he said, then you go onto their website and the only thing you can do is talk to a bot. And it's just the most angrifying, angrifying?

You're always making it up. That's today's made up word of the day.

It's the most infuriating thing in the world because you go through this process of, you want to track a parcel. It's like, well, the parcel's not here. You know, because you look at the website, the website, it's, it is being delivered five days ago between six and eight. Mm-hmm. And you go, well, okay, it's clearly not. Where is it? And then you just go around it and there's simply no way to speak to anyone to get any answers. And there's no contact numbers on there. And even when you Google it, there are no contact. And I get why there's no contact because they don't want people doing it. But if their, if their process was better, they wouldn't get loads of people calling.

Yeah.

And it's this thing that, like I say, goes around in circles and it just infuriates people. And I think, you know, there are so many other people where they get it right that, and again, you know, I'm sure there is a cost thing, which is why, you know, ABC company choose to use these couriers. But like, again, I'm not, I mean, I'm very unique in many infuriating ways, but I can't be unique in getting to this point of this is the most ludicrous thing in the world. You're telling me it's been, you know, it will be delivered five days ago between this time. It's not. Yeah. You know, how do I move that forward? Because there's no one to get in touch with. I can't do that. And it's, and it just, it just drives me mad. And I don't, I don't get it because, yeah, I'm certain that, you know, Amazon are not going to share their proprietary delivery techniques, software, all that kind of stuff. I know that, I know they're not, you know, but it can't be beyond the wit of man to fix these problems. And I suppose this comes down to the fact that these will not be fixed until someone sees it as a, as process is a profit driver. Yeah. Yeah.

Processes are, I mean, you need, in any business, whether you're a one man band or, you know, a huge company like Amazon or Apple, like processes are really important. So many places get it wrong. They will put a process in, like I said earlier, that's either a process for them. And then it's almost, it's seen as a verbatim process that can't be changed.

Yeah.

Like we've said before about when restaurants or whatever, maybe you'll DM them and like, can I come down today? And they're like, oh, you need to go through our booking system. That's, you know, that's their process.

Yeah.

And they're missing out on those customers then. Like it's just someone just have the fourth, the fourth thought, say, actually, I'll do it for you.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, we had like starting a business from scratch. I mean, with Fill My Belly, which was an online ordering for takeaway, like the process was that we built a website for people to order online.

Yeah.

But, you know, we very clearly had the phone number at the top of the website because actually back then people did actually like to speak to people. Not everybody, but, you know, you would, it was, you know, it helped conversion. So we would still get multiple calls of people wanting to place takeaway orders.

Yeah.

Now, in the early days when we were scrabbling around to get every order we could, we would just process those over the phone for them. Simple. Yeah. You know, but the ideal process, that wasn't what we'd built the website for. It was so that people could go and order online themselves. But we made the decision. So if somebody called, let's help them. Let's talk them through the order. But not only that is what we would do is we'd identify what caused them to call as well. So if we ever took an order, we would always ask the question, why?

Okay.

So you took three orders last night for customers. Yeah. Why? Oh, it's because one of them couldn't find a particular pizza on the menu or they couldn't customize it.

Right.

Let's fix that and we'll stop it going through. And that's an example of how you can iterate and improve your process. If you are not listening to those people that are taking the calls, then that process is never going to get any better. It's just static. You've built it based on best case scenario or worst case scenario or whatever. And it's a process is never, ever finished. And I think that's the thing you've got to accept. It's always, it always can be improved.

So why don't you think people put more time to it? I mean, I'm terrible at process. You know, it's all very well me ranting. I mean, I don't really need it. I don't really kind of have anything that needs it.

I mean, you'll have process.

Yeah, but why do you, why don't people think about this?

I think sometimes they don't really see how things can be changed or they'll be concentrating on other areas of business because it's all how you prioritize what's most important.

Right.

I mean, you know, let's, let's, let's put this into context. Let's just, you know, back in the days of fill my belly when we just started and we're doing like 20 orders a night or something, you know, an extra one or two orders over the phone. That's increasing our revenue like by 10%. So it makes a huge difference. You know, you then move to when you're generating like 500 orders a night or 5,000 orders a night, getting one or two extra orders probably isn't going to make that difference. So as I suppose, you know, you need the context around, is it the most important thing to be, to be spending your energy on? But I think a lot of the time, like if so, if one person's having that problem, there's probably a hundred other people having that same problem. So it's really important to recognize. I think, yeah, in answer to your question, like why don't more people look at it? Sometimes they might not think that the process can be changed or can be improved, especially if you're using like an off the shelf booking system.

Yeah.

You might not think that there's anything that can be changed to improve that process. So you just then accept it as verbatim that it's just going to be that normal thing. I'll tell you another example of like where processes are put in just like IVR systems where you ring up a company. It's like press one for this, press two for that, press three for account. Three options is okay. When you then go through to another 10 options, another 20 options, in the end you've got to leave a message anyway. Like it's not helping anyone. It is.

Actually, you know, why don't these people, or perhaps they do, you know, they need to, there needs to be that period of time where they go through that, which annoys the customer, it annoys the business, not annoys the business, but yeah, it annoys them because they've got to go through it and actually learn these things. Think, well, okay, last week we had a 55 calls that someone just couldn't find, I know, the number on the back of the credit card. Yeah. Right. How do we make sure we get an article right to the top of Google when someone types in, how do I? I wonder if you're right with what you said about kind of the arrogance or whatever it is, or perhaps it's the fact that they just, they don't believe that their business can be better. They don't believe, you know, and actually, and I think there's a confidence in there as well. And it's like asking for feedback, you know, actually, I really want to know if I've done something wrong. You know, I don't like it because I enjoy this kind of illusion that actually everything I say is awesome, you know, but I want to know that. And you need to find a way to do it because you'll just get left behind. And this is, you know, kind of right back to where we started today. Other people, and perhaps I'm not a good example, but other people will get this right or writer. Writer? Everyone will get it more right. Yep. A higher degree of writerty. They'll get that right. And then they will go ahead and you'll start to lose stuff. I wonder, therefore, if people, these are people that are too emotionally attached to their business. And as such, aren't comfortable with knowing that it might not all be perfect and they could do it better. And that kind of thing, which stops them going, well, okay, what's causing pain? How do we make it better?

It's hard to recognize if you're one of those people listening to this and thinking, like, I don't maybe think you would see it. Maybe it takes someone else to point it out. I don't know. But maybe, you know, some people are just too arrogant to even accept that they might be doing things wrong. I mean, we spoke before, like, I remember an example of, you know, and this is sort of technically a process. Like, I have a process that I'm putting in business for idea generation and then ideas all get generated. So think of it like this. You know, let's just say, let's take a company of, like, 10, 20 people, whatever.

In the examples that we've been talking about, like, ideas should come from anybody within the business, right? Whether it's the CEO or the people on the phone. And how we've identified in these conversations is actually the people in the phone could probably have ideas that are going to improve the process. They should all be treated equally or improve the business. So if someone's been answering the phone, like, actually, I've had, like, 10 calls today. Like, people can't find this particular item. Maybe we should move it to the homepage or whatever. If you've got the wrong culture within a business, then no one's ever going to hear about that. If you don't have any way to feed that back and it's going to be listened to. So the process that I like is where you feed all these ideas in and then equally, on a weekly basis, they all get looked at.

Yeah.

And then prioritise, like, is this going to make an impact on the business? What difference is it going to make? But the ideas from customer service are treated with the same weight as the CEO or an investor or whatever.

Yeah.

And then you can start to put those and prioritise those ideas based on the impact they're going to make. By having this process in, what it means is if an idea is going to be worked on, then that person then, it's fed back to them. Like, do you know what? That thing that you said is great. We've actually put that into the tech backlog.

Yeah.

You know, it'll be done in the next three months. Equally, if it's not going to be worked on, you can feed back to that advisor and say, this is a really good thing that you've thought of. However, we're not going to do that because of X, Y, and Z. And then at least they're getting that feedback and it makes their ideas much more valid. Where I had a really good example of where you could see where this wasn't working is, you know, speaking with the CEO of a company, which I'm not going to name.

And, you know, like when I explain to this process, it's like, yeah, I've tried that. But whenever I get any ideas from people, they're all rubbish. So I just tell them. So it's like, you know, so we all laugh about it. Like, you know, how rubbish their ideas, you know, like now we don't get any more ideas. It's like, well, that's your fucking problem right there. Yeah, it's not listening and, you know, even having the, you know, putting the time in to even consider what these things are. Because if people are having the wrong, I don't think there are any ideas are wrong, but if they're not thinking things in the right way, then maybe just explain to them and then shape them. Because you will eventually get that 360 feedback and your business is like a flywheel. It's constant feedback iteration that's going to, and improving all of your processes. Yeah. And that's really important.

That is, and you can see that guy there, whoever he is, is, that is a, that is someone that has no commitment to growing a business. There's no, there's no strength behind that. You know, they might say, oh, we want to do this, but actually they're not. Because as soon as you kind of cut people down like that, you just know it's not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. That, that goes back into that kind of arrogance of a lot. I just know it. I just get it. And I think, you know, you always need, I think, you know, as I think about that.

I'm just going to just, sorry, just before. So with that business, still a successful business, right?

Yeah.

And, you know, it was doing reasonably well from what I could tell. The problem was it could not operate without him. That's the thing. So like, you know, if he was ever ill, doesn't pass the bus test. Yeah. That's it. You take him out. There's no business because everyone's just waiting. There's no, yeah, there's no empowerment to anyone that works there and nobody thinks they're good enough to be able to commit. So that's, yeah, that's the difference. So I don't want people think, the reason I just wanted to interject is I don't want people thinking, oh, well, my business is successful. So clearly I don't have that problem. That's not it. You can have a successful business and still have this problem. But if you fix these problems within your business, it means then that it's no longer reliant on you as a whole. Like, you know, your staff are empowered. You can make really, really great things.

And, yeah, and it's really interesting because no successful business, you know, lasts forever. You know, look at, you know, Woolies and that sort of stuff. Woolworths. Yeah. No one, you know, it's obviously there's more to it than that, but no one stopped to think there was a problem coming there, even though everyone could see it. You know, there was no kind of thought to it. And you almost want, I think, you know, as I think about it now, if I had a business with a team, you know, you'd want to, what was his name? And, oh, God, I used to work with a guy ages ago and he'd just sidle up to your desk. He wasn't in charge, but he was quite high up. He'd just sidle up to, you know, in fact, you kind of say, look, what's happening? What are you seeing? What's going on? Just, and it's only as I look back, you think that's quite interesting. Was he looking for stuff? Do you think, actually, if I was a person and I had a team now, I'd want to just say to people, look, find me a problem. Just find me a problem. You know, find me anything. And actually get people to look for, oh, yeah, it's really interesting. I had this guy today. He was a bit cross on the phone because he couldn't change his order. Well, that's interesting. Do you get much of that? Well, I've had it once or twice. Well, okay. And you almost want that, look, you know, and again, it's back into that confidence of it as actually nothing we do here is perfect. It will only get better. As you said, you know, this will never end. We keep doing this process. We keep doing it.

But you have to have that commitment to it. And I think, you know, you've got to have every part of the business is a process. It's process driven. A lot of the stuff that I will talk to with the kind of clients I work with and kind of strategic plans I'm doing and that sort of stuff is, look, what's the point of this? What's the process? And if you are going to do, if you, you know, meet people, if you know, if a great converter is there is get people in a room and you chat to them, brilliant. But, okay, the events you're doing at the moment, you are getting 20 people in the room. You only get time to chat to about three of them. Well, that event is not doing what we need to do. How do we make that process so you get to talk to more of them? Or they get to hear you do stuff so they can. And you look at all these things and everything's got to be a process. You know, when you network, when you Facebook ads, when you write to people, when you call people. You know, it's all that process. And, again, it's the same thing because that's where a load of money is lost.

Yeah.

Loads of money is lost in networking because people don't follow up properly or they follow up once. And it's about, you know, just looking for this stuff and, like, actively trying to find it rather than waiting for it to find you. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, yeah, just take, like, a process for networking. You know, it's a lot more than just going, showing up. You know, you can go there and be, like, you know, the most popular person in the room. But if you're not then following up afterwards, then, you know, what's going to happen to those leads? Like, what was the point in doing it? So, and, you know, this is a great example, actually, networking. So, let's just say, you know, you are going to networking a couple of times a week and then you're not following up. Just a slight tweak to that process by following up and sending an email then could make a huge difference. Let's just say, you know, you speak to 10 people, follow up 10 people, three people arrange meetings. And, you know, this is, like, similar to your process, right?

If that works, the next stage to building on that process is automating it. So, once you have a process that works, then you can start looking at automation. So, for example, one thing that I do with networking meetings is I have, like, a pretty standard template. I don't just add people to a mailing list because that's stupid.

I don't know if I had, like, the guy the other day that emailed you after to say, you're getting this email because you gave me a business card.

Like, added me onto a mailing list and it said at the bottom. I love that. Like, you know, it's like, you know, you've subscribed here on whatever date, you know, unsubscribed. You got there. And there was, like, about the, I may have met you at a networking meeting. You may have given me a business card. I don't know. You may have said hello to me at a train station. It's like, what a fucking knobhead. So, anyway, yeah, so don't do that. No, don't do that. Don't do that. But, yeah, I mean, what I do, so I'll let you do one of my little automation secrets here, is I just have a template that says, great to meet you at blank networking meeting. I just have a spreadsheet. Anyone that I've met at the business meeting that I want to follow up in, name in there, email address, the meeting, hit send. So, that will then send out automatically those 10 people an email from me.

Yeah.

And that's set up. So, that's an automation process, but it looks personal to that person that's coming. I can add a little top and tail, like, you know, it was great to talk about kids or whatever it was we were talking about. And, yeah, that's part of my process. If they, at the bottom of that email, there's links then to go onto my email list should they want to subscribe.

Yeah.

There's a link to book a call, all depending on what it is I spoke about. So, you know, that's a really good example of how you can automate a process. But I didn't just create that process just for the sake of it. I did it to save me time from a process that works because I know if I follow up people from networking meetings.

Yeah.

So, I've just made that process a little bit easier by automating it. Yeah. And does it work? Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it would be exactly the same as you sitting down and writing out 10 emails. It's just, I just have to write, I have to do 10% of the work that I used to do now. Yeah. There's still some work there. Yeah.

I mean, I tend to do video follow-ups now.

Right.

Only because people get loads of business cards and I'm entirely forgetful. Forgettable. So, I just tend to, you know, I do that face-to-face connection thing again. Fantastic. They will recognise your face more than they recognise a business card. But it does mean there's a load of work. But, you know, but then the conversion rate is pretty good. But I think it kind of doesn't matter. You know, most people don't have any kind of, like, pick-up-and-drop process. So, actually, they can't measure if it works or not because they don't do it the same way. They can't outsource it to someone else because there's no way of telling me about it. And I think, you know, it's got to have that process element. So, okay, then. Where do we start? Someone's listening to this thinking, I don't know if I've got processes. I don't know if our processes are right. I don't know if it's losing money. Where do we push them to?

The first thing to do is don't think you haven't got processes because you will have processes. It's just they might not necessarily be documented processes. There might not be things that you've automated. But these are the things that you are doing day in, day out. So, an example of that process is go to a networking meeting, follow up. Look at, actually, what are the key drivers for your business. Is it networking meetings? Is it posting on social media? All of those sorts of things. And then you can start to actually put together just some very basic, if you've not done this, then start small, some very basic metrics for measuring that. So, if you're going to spend your time, effort and energy going to networking meetings, then let's start recording if that's working. So, how many meetings are you going to a week? How many people did you speak to? How many follow-ups did you do? How many of those then turned into leads, etc.? You can track that. Like, as you're going through that, you know, the business cards, it's going to take seconds. Once you've created that basic spreadsheet, it's going to take seconds. Now, this data that you're collecting might seem like boring and useless at the beginning. However, over time, you will start to then see that because you'll be able to go back. If you then get a client, oh, I met that client at a meeting four weeks ago. You can attribute them to that process just by collecting that data. So, I think that's a good place to start. And then if that works and only like if it's working, then you can, well, how can I make this process more efficient? This process is taking me two hours a week. Like, if I automate it, like in the way that I was talking about, that could take me 10 minutes a week. The process and then automation. So, and then once you have something that works, that's no longer like an experiment. That becomes your business as usual. And then you can start thinking, well, how can I add to that or create a new process? Do I go to more networking meetings? So, it's all about looking at what you're doing and starting to document it. But don't overthink it. It could just be as simple as, you know, two or three steps that you're writing down and just tracking and measuring. But if you're not tracking and measuring it, then how do you know if it's working? Yeah.

And I think, yes, it enables you to look for the hot spots. Think, well, okay. I go to a networking meeting. I meet 10 people. I get three meetings. I get one client. Yeah. So, that's me. Well, okay. I probably can't meet more than 10 people in a networking meeting. So, okay. I will now try another networking meeting. So, I will try and see if I can replicate the same results there. But also, I'm thinking, well, okay. How do I turn 10.3.1 into 10.6.2? Mm-hmm. And just kind of, and this is what I love about marketing. It's that fun bit. But, okay. What if I did do a video follow-up? What if I sent them something? What if I, you know, what if I changed the messaging in there and just kind of see? And you just get to tweak all of this stuff.

Yeah.

And actually, it's harder at the start, although it's quite exciting at the start. It doesn't take very long. But actually, it just turns into this kind of this cash machine. Because you know that actually, you know, you kind of, like factually, you know, when I do this, this happens. Like, you know, when I was at my last year at uni and I was kind of having to do all the stuff, all the kind of assignments and dissertations, I remember really kind of just panicking to think, well, I've basically asked around for three years. It all comes down to this. I really don't want a Desmond. I'm not going to get a first. It's all about a 2-1. I want to get a 2-1. And it's only when someone says to me, well, look back, you know, look back. And actually, as I look back, pretty much everything I'd ever done at uni had been between, I think, 60 and 70%, which was classic 2-1 territory. And I said, look, there is no reason to suggest anything is going to change because you've got all this history of it's there. And that's where you want to get to with business, the fact that, okay, it's not always going to the way. But I know if I find 10 accountants and send them 10 letters, history proves it's, you know, kind of five responses, one couple. Perfect. How many more clients do I need? Well, I need, I can't do the math, 50 clients. I need 500 people or whatever. Just make that math in some. And that's a really important. But that is such a crucial thing. That is a game changing thing to your life, profit and everything else. If you can create that, but it only comes from the tediousness or what people think is tediousness of having a process. Yeah. You know, but what's happening in most businesses that isn't happening where it is happening. It's not being tracked and measured. And that's what's sucking the money. You think, well, okay, I'm spending a fortune networking. So the process is wrong because there's no way of tracking it. They're just pissing money into networking or into Facebook ads or to whatever it is. They're chucking all this money. And actually all your profit is being sucked away because the process isn't treated seriously enough. Exactly. And, you know, and it's, I just, oh yeah, people don't talk about it. Yeah. That's, yeah.

So I think, yeah, you've raised some really good points. Well, I think this whole process thing in general is just important for people to do. So yeah, like recording your, like what are your processes, record them. How do you know if they're working or not? Then how can you iterate them over time? Because yeah, you're, you're, you're, like, you know, if we have those, those metrics recorded, we could actually look and say, oh, actually I've noticed now I'm getting loads more calls. Let's just have a look. Oh, since I started sending out those video things, actually my conversions doubled. So now I can go to half the networking meetings, which just gets me five hours back a week and still get the same result and still get the same income. Like this is the great thing. Yeah. It's not just a marketing thing. Like it's just, just testing, iterating and improving on those processes. So yeah. And I think so much you can do with it.

You can still automate that. I know that the videos increase my conversion by X percent. Well, okay. I'll have a standard video and I'll just record, you know, I'll come home that networking and just go, Hey Steve. Hey Sarah. Hey Chris. And edit it. You know, I'll send it to someone, edit it or whatever it is. You just, you can still automate all these processes, but you kind of got to know what works, what doesn't, how it works. And, and then what you do about it. Cause otherwise I say, you're just going to lose an absolute load of money. And one thing I would add to what I, when we said, look, what should people do? I'd get an outside pair of eyes on it. I would, you know, get, you know, treat it seriously. Get someone to come in and talk about your processes. Now there are people that do it properly. There are people like yourself that know this inside out, you know, definitely talk to Bert on this, but I'm not to take work from you. But anyone, a, another person in business can sit and have that conversation.

Right.

Paul, can you help me with my processes? Like just talk to me. And again, cause some say, well, look, what do you actually do? How does it work? What have it? And they'll start to bring it out. But I think, I think it's very hard for people to see their own processes for what they are or not. I think you need an outside pair of eyes. Yeah, absolutely.

I think sometimes, yeah, you, you're, when you're so far in it, you just can't see. I mean, like, you know, now I'm on sort of a, you know, I want to get lean for the summer. Like I've never had like a six pack in my life. Um, so that's my, you know, that's, that's like a goal. Um, got a keg. Yeah.

So, you know, that's, that's something that I really want to do. And actually, you know, when you, when you work it out, you know, like, you know, it's probably a few stone I need to lose, like a couple of pounds a week. You know, even though that's two stone, what's that? That's like 28 pounds, um, you know, 12 weeks. Like it's quite, it's quite, when you start to do it like that. So the process for that is actually, you know, to, to stick within my calorie goal and to walk a little bit more. It's not, even though it's quite a big goal, when I break it down, the process for doing that is quite simple. But with any process, like you have to trust it and you're going to have good days and bad days. And sometimes, you know, like with a, um, with a diet as an example, you know, you might like a few drinks, then it's that dirty kebab on the way home. And it's like, Oh, I fucked it up. You haven't, you've just had a bad day, right? You don't have to then, um, you know, go in like pig out the entire weekend. You can just pick up. So yeah, processes sometimes break down and, but you have to trust it. You have to trust in that process. And you know, one bad day doesn't make a bad month. You can just carry on. So yeah, I think, you know, trusting that the process that you're doing once you've documented it and then just carrying on, because you might like, again, with diet, you know, dieting, right? Like you're not going to see results. One day of healthy eating isn't going to yield the results that you want. It's that process over time. So if I'm trying that for 12 weeks and it doesn't work, then I can reiterate that process. But someone might look at me and I'm like, you know, I'm eating like 2000 calories a day. I'm working these steps. It's not working. Someone might look at me and say, yeah, you're recording 2000 calories a day, but you're not counting the times that when you're cooking and you're spooning in the food and that you're eating off the kids' plates and you try it like, yeah, exactly. Like all of that stuff. Like I might not realise that myself until someone's looking. It's like, yeah, you wrote 2000 calories down, but actually it's probably double that because you never fucking stop eating. It's amazing.

And you've got to, I think we've put, you've got to see it. You've got to create a process and see it through all the way to the end before you think about it, adjust it, try and change it. Because I see that with marketing all the time is that they'll just do, I don't know, some PPC or it didn't work. Yeah. Yeah. But you didn't send them to a good page. And then when you got to the page, you didn't send them to that. So you didn't actually do it. And that's like a nine step process to like PPC or whatever it is. You've got to see it through. And again, knowing that you are going to waste in inverted commas some money on this. You are going to, you know, this is going to slow you down. It is not going to be this dream thing, but you will simply not be able to create a process if you don't start to finish it. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. He's agreed. I completely agree. I completely agree. Well, it's good, mate. I think that's probably, I say that's the process of recording a podcast. Yes. Done. Seamless. Seamless. Seamless.

Except for the starting bit and the end. But otherwise, the middle was exceptional. Fantastic.

Well, it's been lovely to see you again.

Oh, it's nice to be back. Back in the studio.

So I will see you again, Paul, for either beers or another episode of the Throb podcast. We'll see you next time. See you soon. Bye bye.

We'll be back next week for another edition of the Throb podcast.

If you want to find out more, you can find me at paulchapmanuk.com.

And you can find me, Bertie, at bertiecord.co.uk. Thanks again. See you next week.

Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.