How Smart Businesses Use CRMs, Automation, and AI—Without Getting Lost in the Hype ft. Jeff Tilley, Founder of Muncly | Ep 253

​Please note: This transcript was generated using automated transcription tools and may contain typographical errors or inaccurately captured words or phrases.

Dr Steve Day: In today\'s episode, I interview Jeff Tilley from muncly.com where he helps people to implement CRMs for sales and customer service. This conversation probably started a little bit slow, but then when we got going and got into subject of AI, how it\'s affecting the workforce, the right place for it, what the myths are about it, and the scaremongering that\'s around it, all the hype.

And maybe some of the actual reality that we\'re actually seeing day-to-day on the floor or the work floor. Sure. I should say that was where I think this absolutely got interesting. I love this interview. If you are thinking about using a CRM, if you\'re not currently doing it or wondering what else you should be doing with your CRM, then listen into this episode before you invest and make the mistakes that Jeff explains so clearly how to avoid.

He is a true expert in his field. He\'s also like me, passionate about technology, about systems, CRMs, automation processes, and AI. And so this was an opportunity for us to go head to head, discuss what we\'re passionate about, and also hopefully massive value to you. I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed recording it. Thanks very much.

Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show. It is really nice to see you, and I\'m excited about this conversation. As I was saying just before you came on air, that I think you and I have a lot of shared passions and interests around automation and AI and CRMs and process mapping and, and yeah.

So I, we are looking forward to this because I think this is going to be one of those conversations where we\'ll get to, hopefully, enjoy exploring some of the stuff we\'re both working on. And maybe learn a thing or two in the process as well, and hopefully share some value with the listeners in the meantime.

So let\'s get into it. Jeff, thank you very much for coming on the show.

Jeff Tilley: My pleasure.

Dr Steve Day: Cool. Tell me, Jeff, why did you get into the work you do with Muncly? So maybe just give us a quick minute overview. What does Muncly do? Who are you as a company? And then yeah, I\'d really like to know the reason, the story behind your journey into the, into this world of geekiness and, automation.

Jeff Tilley: So basically, I like to say that I am a CRM consultant, customer relationship management consultant, helping companies build. Business systems that attract customers, help retain clients and all that independent from individuals. So basically that\'s building business systems. I focus on two main areas.

It\'s customer acquisition and sales. but sales in a broad term, we do, when we say sales, it\'s sales to new customers, new business revenue, and existing customers. So, and that oftentimes that comes with the customer retention, strategies, customer service, customer support. Everything around it. So this is why I am, I help companies build great relationships with their clients, build digital customer experiences.

I am expert in B2B and high ticket B2C industries, so I\'m not good retail. I known a little about, selling to, smaller B2C customers. I\'m good in B2B and building those B2B relationships with clients at scale. And I work with the companies, starting from as small as 50 employees and up to couple of thousands.

But there is really a limit because we don\'t go into enterprise. Because there are different rules in the enterprise world and, approaches that work in this mid segment do not necessarily work in this higher tier segment and vice versa. those approaches that work in a higher tier segment, they do not work in a smaller businesses.

So, and that\'s a big problem that I\'m trying to solve. I\'m trying to, get the knowledge out from higher tier, businesses. All the books being written for the higher tier companies, but approaches that work there, they don\'t work here on our..

Dr Steve Day: Smaller scale.

Jeff Tilley: Smaller scale, exactly. So what we do, we implement, routines, business practices, every week we do this, every day we do that, business rules.

If this and that, if this happens, call this guy. If this happens, do this. And we help execute that. Or every day through software like customer relationship, CRM software. Think about like a big contact book, I don\'t know if listener is aware what CRM is. But is basically a big yeah, smart contact and address book on steroids. Where you just keep all your relationships, all your sales orders, all your accounting invoices, customer contacts, all engagements like emails, phone calls, messages, everything,.All in one platform.

It\'s just a tool to keep everything in one place and from there you can create different rules if this and that. If this happens, do this, if somebody places an order, drop a any a thank you email. If somebody didn\'t place an order in the last 90 days, it\'s time to contact them. You know, this is the kind of things I do.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, as I mentioned before, we, play in a similar field or similar park, but maybe in a different arena. Don\'t know what the analogy is here. But so, interestingly, like I am absolute, I love automation, I love CRMs. My focus is very much on the operations side of things. So really building out the other areas of the business that you haven\'t mentioned, in fact.

So yes, I, of course, in our my own business, I have my own sales, CRM and my own marketing driven a lot through my CRM. And customer manage across relations through that. But actually the primarily what I help other people do is to use automation in other areas of the business. So I think like we have a, we\'re approaching the, same problem of how do you run a good business just from the, different, angles, so to speak

And similarly, like when, when you are 50 plus, I\'m typically working with the businesses up to 50. And again, I have worked with a few businesses over, but the vast majority of my clients are less. But I\'ll load that description you gave of, or you gave of trying to disseminate some of the knowledge and the, information that\'s up in there for the bigger businesses. Where many of the textbooks or the, you know, the good books are written for and bring that down.

Because that\'s exactly what I\'ve tried to do for me. Beause starting out as a, well, as a solopreneur and reading some brilliant books, but then trying to translate that into something that made sense to somebody who was hiring their first employee when they\'re talking in about teams and KPIs and KRAs and all this stuff.

And yeah, get your sales manager to do this. And I\'m like, yep. But I\'m all those things. And so I\'m interested to dig into that a little bit more. So what have you seen in your own experience that the good practices or the best practices, or those nuggets that you are, you talked about, like what are you trying to translate from that corporate world down into the smaller businesses that would be, valuable that you don\'t see that\'s already available?

Jeff Tilley: I\'d say one word. It\'s planning and something that big companies and big corps do really well sometimes. Too well to the point that it becomes really bad, like too much of a planning. But essentially like to squeeze everything I\'m trying to do and all the messages that I\'m trying to communicate to my audience and to my customers is that planning should be the first thing.

So if somebody approaches, Hey, we want to make our company digital, the first question, why? So the planning, like, why do you want to make it digital? Do you, have you heard just a fancy term? Oh, there is a nice AI, tool and everybody seems to be using it, or there is a particular reason why you want to do that.

Because, for example, you got 25 employees and you are done hiring. You don\'t want to have any more employees and you want to. You know, learn the options. Maybe you want to shift your business model towards slightly different model where you don\'t necessarily have to hire more people to, deliver more value versus, versus the questions like, which tools can we use? What tools are capable of, I hear it every second day, like, Hey, can you show us what this tool is capable of? It\'s like, getting a shovel, and, you know, going to the DIY store and asking, Hey, can you show me around shovels? I want to know what they\'re capable of.

I want to, you know, based on what they are capable of, I want to decide what kind of renovation or a trench I\'m, going to dig. It\'s not, doesn\'t work that way. So we don\'t approach those physical items that way. We somehow want to approach digital world that way. So this is what I\'m trying to communicate.

So with the big Corps, they know very well. They first try to answer the question, okay, what do we want to achieve? And they are forced to do this because they, more often than not, they do have investors. They have to pitch their ideas in front of investors or board of directors. Make decisions to spend money.

They are, responsible in the end of the day with their own investments into saying yes or no. And they\'re like, do we really want to invest like couple of millions in this project? Do we really are getting any ROI from it? They are asking this kind of questions. And smaller business, it\'s usually happening in one hat and the person like, yeah, I really want it.

And, pretty much it\'s competition between a new car and, a new CRM like in, in this person\'s head. it\'s a different mindset. It is a different, complete setup of people. and what I\'m trying to do is like, hold on a second. Just stop for a while. Do not invest in tools, invest in your, knowledge.

But unfortunately, you cannot invest money. You should invest time. The most precious thing you got on earth. So you have to invest your time to educate yourself and you can, save a little bit of your time by hiring somebody like me. But necessarily a lot of time because you still have to, dig deep into your business.

Understand, because all those tools that will have a profound effect on how you do business first place. And again, tools are somewhere on the background. They should not be your focus, they should not be your interest. So, and Big Corp are doing that really, well. And small businesses are not doing that at all. There is a massive gap in this. If that answers the question.

Dr Steve Day: It answers it and it very nicely as well. and interestingly, literally, I\'ve just finished recording a podcast, which will either come out the one before this or the one after this. and that is on, my project vision, my 2020 vision board, sorry, my project 2020 vision board.

I\'ll get the word out in the end. And that is doing what you just described for me as a, I\'m a micro business owner, so we have currently three staff. And so one of the things that I have done terribly in the past is planning, and I\'ve talked about this on my podcast before, like the, Hundreds, if not thousands.

If you include my staff of hours, we have wasted by investing in the wrong apps, by just going, Hey, that looks very shiny. Let\'s go and play with that for a while. That\'s exactly what I was with. No, with no goal or, metric to go against. What does success look like? How long are we going to wait to get that success?

Like, what do we actually do? We actually even need to change what we\'re currently doing. Like I\'ve used five different CRMs in seven, or sorry, eight years now, but five different CRMs and each change, as you will know very well in what you do is huge. Like the, heartache you go through of shifting everything is just a nightmare.

And so what you are just saying now, I\'m just trying to emphasize for anyone listening to this that thinks I don\'t need this because I\'m not big enough or whatever, from somebody who\'s been a solopreneur and wasted my own time from then being a micro business owner to having a small business and then shrinking back down again.

Each and every stage. I wish I\'d planned more. That\'s all I want to say.

Jeff Tilley: I can give you a wonderful, thought. How I usually say this to my clients on my own example, when things come to tools, because people, they just don\'t understand how to plan, how, what questions to ask and what outcomes should they expect in the result of planning.

Because normally when you plan, everybody\'s teaching us that the smart, way of, putting the task should be achievable, blah, blah, blah. That\'s all fine, that\'s all has its place. But the sim, to put it simply, when I started YouTube channel and I was planning, I asked myself a question, okay, will.

What should I do to sustain this for a prolonged period of time, what would be the motivators? What would be obstacles that I have to overcome? And what will be the criteria of success that is dependent from me, not dependent from external factors, but dependent on me? When I\'m saying external factors, I\'m saying subscribers.

I could not influence number of subscribers. I can only use this as a metric of whether I\'m doing things right or not. So as a result, I said, okay, my planning is that for the next 12 months, I\'m publishing one video a week. Unless there is a reasonable, not reasonable unless there is a good reason to delay it for longer.

If for example, there is a good piece of content and we need more time for editing. Fine. that\'s a valid reason. Okay. So more or less, we\'ve been publishing one video a week, through, since November last year. It\'s almost a year now. we didn\'t have a single hiccup. People got sick, you know, we had vacations.

Life happened in the middle. And still, we were publishing one video a week. That\'s like a recent example from my, like my own company, because we didn\'t have YouTube channel. Now we have it. We are a year away from launching it. are we massively successful there? No, because we only got thousand subscribers.

But we made, but along the way, we learned how to make production. we learned how to hire, who to hire, how to split roles. We built managerial infrastructure and now we hired an expert who can help us and consult us on, on, on, this thing. Now this expert guides us. Any third or so you see the planning. It doesn\'t, we normally expect the planning to be okay, by the end of 10th of, the month, we are going to have 10 new customers.

This is not going to work this way. This is not planning, this is ideating. And you know, dreaming planning is okay, what can I do? What is the where, what can I do that I can influence personally and I could benchmark myself slash my team? with, something objectively slash subjectively, but more or less it\'s independent from anything.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah.

Jeff Tilley: Okay. So this is important factor. And the same applies to tools and this is completely like different angle. You should look at this. It\'s not even something we\'ve been learning when you implement it. And CRM, okay, we want CM be implemented by this date. We want everybody to use it. That\'s not a metric.

How do you define, like everybody uses it. How do you like. What\'s the metric? What do you want to learn? But the right goal would be okay. We want to learn to consistently follow up with clients no matter what the tool we\'re going to use. Like along the way, do we use to-do list? Do we use Excel? Do we use a fancy CRM?

Doesn\'t matter. Do we want to learn how to follow up our clients? You know what I mean?

Dr Steve Day: Absolutely. Yeah, that, that is very interesting in the way that you approach. Because it\'s exactly the way that we, I\'ve talked about it on the podcast in the past that, whenever you are going into any piece of software. It\'s simply my, what I try to say to people is.

Think of one good reason or one good objective, like you\'ve just said of this software could solve and make sure that it\'s the best, like the best objective, and make sure it can solve it the best of any other options you\'ve got available. Ignore everything else and get that implemented. Unless there is something you know is critical in the near future that you also want to get on board because there\'s so many things you can do.

And I remember we went to HubSpot about many years ago, well five years ago now. I think we were four years in tiny business. We had, I think, probably five staff at the time, maybe six, and my business partner at the time said, oh, HubSpot\'s amazing. We\'re going to go post spot, I think cost us around 900 pounds a month.

Then it\'s probably about 1200 pounds a month now for the package we were on to get the bits we wanted, half it, we didn\'t even look at, we just didn\'t have the people, the personnel, the knowledge or the expertise to just make a scratch in the surface of that level of CRM, because it was the wrong tool for us, and all we really needed was the ability to send emails to people.

That was it. And take payments. We didn\'t need HubSpot to do that. So yeah.

Jeff Tilley: That\'s a very, unfortunately, I, was in the same position couple years ago before I started Muncly. I had a business also consulting business also in CRM, same industry, but in different countries. So when I moved, I had to close the company with my ex business partner.

And we were in that situation. We had Salesforce, we heavily invested in it. We tried to automate every, everything, and ev everyone. now I have less people. Much less people. We do more, and we, have Salesforce, but we use it only as because we are Salesforce consultants and we have access to Salesforce licenses at discount, and that\'s why we use it as a hub.

Just faster for us, more efficient for us.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah. Like you were saying before, you are not Salesforce, only you are No, Tool agnostic. Is that the right word?

Jeff Tilley: Yeah, this is what I\'m trying. Yeah. We used to be sales. We started as a Salesforce only two years ago. but we are slowly moving away from Salesforce because Salesforce is losing the game, for smaller businesses, especially on the AI side, especially in the customer support side.

Because we see a lot of our existing customers from my previous companies, that come back to me and they say, Hey, new tools arrived. We wanted new tools. And they\'re like, okay, Salesforce is not capable of, doing that. We\'re like, okay, we should look elsewhere. And unfortunately, that\'s, the reason why we are becoming sales, tool agnostic because in the end of the day, it doesn\'t matter how you achieve the goal.

Dr Steve Day: No, we\'re the same. And I have my preferred tools, the ones that we use in the business, and therefore I can help with those at the higher level. But actually, whichever project management tool you are using, or CRM or password sharing or whatever it is, the key apps that we, talk about and recommending a coach on, I\'m like, I\'ve got clients on many different apps because I don\'t believe that the apps, what I use are the only ones that can achieve the goal.

I believe there\'s many good apps out there, and as long as you know you are, like we just said, picking them for the right reasons with a very clear intention and plan to what you hope to get out of it, that is actually what should be more important than the actual app itself. So totally agree. You just mentioned the word AI and I actually wanted to jump into AI because I know there\'s something that you are very interested in.

As you\'ve mentioned, a few possible questions we could jump into on the application form, which I always ask people, and I think four out of five mentioned the word AI. So let\'s get into it and chat a little bit about this, because this for me is a. Area, which we cannot ignore anymore. There are many businesses that are only just scratching the surface with AI in this that will happen for many years to come.

But there are many businesses that are just taking off and making huge, head rows into, actually getting the most out of it. No, I\'m getting shaking headsets. Oh, this is going to be interesting. So how do you see AI. Affecting the workforce. And I\'m just going to hand over to you just to go for it on this one because you look like you\'ve got something to say.

Jeff Tilley: Let\'s, AI is overrated, period. This is why cut this into short. first of all, yes, AI has an impact, but it\'s not a revolution in a sense that everybody is screaming. It. It is a revolution in the in, in other senses that people are not talking about. Now where it\'s not a revolution, AI cannot be job for you, period.

I think we ex, at least in the current form, when I\'m saying AI, I\'m meaning specifically language, large language models. Okay, let\'s put it straight. Because there are different AI models nobody is talking about, and LLMs are new and mentioned because they are universal. You can chat with them. It feels like you are talking with somebody, thinking, feeling enable to, make a logical statement, and that\'s not true.

The system, the LLM, is faking being smart and being intellectual and it\'s faking so well that sometimes. It\'s even correct in its, thoughts, because it\'s generally speaking, it\'s a statistical model that is trying to predict the next best word in a sentence.

So if you start thinking about it and you start reading the replies of the of, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever you\'re using, you were, you will start seeing it. You come the moment you see it, you cannot unsee it. So this is the first big. Statement that I want to make, it\'s overrated. Now, what\'s heavily underrated is the fact that we have, AI or machine learning capabilities for decades and we are not using them.

I\'ll give you an example. recently I\'ve been involved in a project, with a large chemical manufacturing company that. Was addressing a seemingly minor problem of Misload. Misload means that the wrong product has been shipped to the wrong customer. Okay? So that\'s like a big statement. And they were trying to the companies, it\'s a massive, it\'s a world, one of the world\'s leaders in MA in chemical distribution and manufacturing.

It holds like 15 to 20% in some areas of the chemical distribution in the world. Out of a hundred thousand orders, they would have maybe like three or four Miss loads. Sounds like a tiny amount, but let me put this in perspective. Imagine you have a kid swimming pool and you ship the wrong chlorine concentration barrel to that swimming pool.

Imagine how massive of a public health, public safety issue that is. So the goal of the company was to. Keeping all other security measures, add another, layer, like a supervisor layer that would use AI and watch things like the color of the belt barrel, if that matches the label, the document that is being put on top of the barrel or whatever the packaging is, and provide extra layer of protection.

And they have reduced those miss loads more than three times. So basically back in the day, it was only in a hundred thousand, shipments. It was like three to four, maybe. Now out of 200,000 shipments, maybe that\'s one. You know that, that\'s a massive improvement even though it seems like a tiny problem.

What did they use? It was not LLM, it was all old school, different models like, visual models, vector models, and so on and so forth. I\'m not going into technicalities right now, but generally speaking. Because of the high, because of the LLM high company management realized, oh, we could actually invest there.

Took decades old models and implemented them on the, factory floors and, this, and warehouses and boom. that\'s that could be used and, applied in real life apparently. And it\'s not a new technology. So this is what I\'m trying to say, that AI, as we think about AI is overhyped.

It\'s. It definitely is not going to change how we live. Yes. It changes a lot of cognitive, low value cognitive work, like transcribing, you know, maybe formulating sentences better than you would do. For example, I\'m not an English native speaker. I speak English well, but it\'s not my mother tongue.

Come on. I\'m missing a lot of idioms. Those, Tiny intangible things that would, like somebody who is the native speaker would, get. I\'m not getting that. So I actually use AI to get me closer to fake, like in my content that I am like, native speaker. Not for the sake of faking who I\'m not, but for the sake of better communicating my message, don\'t get me wrong, so that I have a better leverage to connecting to the world and bringing my message to more people.

In a more profound way, if you will. So this is, where AI is great, but now I have created a notion document created seven agents, and now I don\'t have anybody to work and everybody does the job for me. Bs I\'m sorry, but that\'s not true. This is not possible. I wouldn\'t, I\'m not trusting AI even to create a simple corporate email.

Because it hallucinates makes mistakes and sometimes play puts like sentences in a, like an unbelievable structure. Like we would never as a human put those words together. It sounds legit, but has no meaning. Like it, it sounds like a real sentence and looks like real sentence, but when you start thinking about what\'s the meaning of that sentence?

It has no meaning because it doesn\'t make any sense. And this is the problem of ai because it\'s not a thinking being. So that\'s my message, to be a bit conscious about looking about into AI, not thinking that AI is going to, revolutionize the way we work in its current form. Yes, it changes a lot of things.

Yes. How we code, like junior positions, all that stuff. I\'m open for discussion, but generally speaking, I\'m not worried at all. And I don\'t think anybody, everybody should start, running. With hysterically trying to hire somebody to implement AI in their business.

Dr Steve Day: Interesting. So I have a slightly different take on this.

Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So I agree with a, like most of what you said, and I think it is overhyped in many ways, I think there are things we need to be very, worried about, as in the ability for things like deepfake and the manipulation of populations based on. Whatever it is, social media or advertising or just misleading for political reasons, all that\'s scary stuff and that\'s real.

And, but that aside, coming back to the world of small business, one of the things that we have had a lot of success with is when we train agents and build, some really nice. Prompts and some really well structured knowledge based documents to be able to get really consistent results. It takes time.

This isn\'t stuff that you basically open up a ChatGPT thread and like you say, can you write a reply to this email? Please ChatGPT. Like to get it to do that well is many, hours of work to understand like how to really. build something that actually speaks like a human, speaks like a corp, like someone that is on our brand, in the right tone that actually answers correctly.

Because the amount of, like you say, mistakes that come through, it\'s definitely not a, it\'s set and forget method, whereas something like, back, like not back in the day, only few years ago, but like when you build chatbots to do more traditionally with logic, you knew what was the outcome would be.

There wasn\'t the opportunity for it to get it wrong if you programmed it right, because it only had the options. You gave it available. When you put AI into the mix, and this is agreeing with you very much as well, is when you put AI into the mix and you add, you put in a brain. Now is that brain any better or worse than a human in the same position?

You can debate that as much as you want because humans make mistakes. Inexperienced people that don\'t know the role will say the wrong thing. So is it any better or worse than human? I don\'t know, but it definitely isn\'t foolproof. It\'s not that you can say, Hey, let\'s stick AI into this, sales funnel, for example.

And these, all these people now promoting like these like hands off, total hands off sales funnels, that don\'t require any human input whatsoever. It\'s like whose model are they using to sell to your clients? who\'s who? How are they selling to your clients? Are they selling ethically to your clients?

Are they saying things that you actually want to stand by? Because, but similarly. I\'ve had salespeople working for me who weren\'t selling the way that I wanted it to be sold, that were saying things that weren\'t true, that were, basically promising the world to people just to make the sale. And I think that is one of the biggest challenges that we, have in sales.

I\'d love to get your take on this, specifically like AI aside and when the opportunity, this is opportunities. Well, for AI, for my side is. I don\'t trust that Most salespeople, and I\'ll say not all at all, but most salespeople don\'t have a deep interest in the success of that client they\'re speaking to on the phone beyond the sale.

They may have a fleeting interest, but most of them don\'t. Some will, of course, and those are, gold if you find someone like that who actually really believes in what you\'re doing and really wants to see that person do to succeed. But most people, they want to earn a living. That\'s why they\'re in sales.

They want to get paid for the work they do, and they\'re really good at doing the work they do. So that\'s actually where I see an opportunity for ai because we can actually be with the right. Building the right training for the AI, the right structure for the prompting, et cetera. See, I think that\'s an opportunity that we can use AI to actually improve the outcome of sales, but still be mindful that we\'ve gotta be monitoring it and adjusting it and training it just like you would a human.

Jeff Tilley: Where do I start? okay, let\'s start from, people not knowing their sales process part. I am completely with you here, and this is one of the biggest problems that I\'m trying to solve, and actually, this is surprisingly the hardest part of my work, and I will explain you why. When companies come to me, most of the time, they find me through, oh, we\'ve been looking for a CRM system for our business.

We are already convinced that we need it. Okay. How much it would cost to implement it. Like the first question they ask, do you have a established sales process? Of course we have a business, it\'s a multimillion business. And then you start asking questions, they\'re like, what are your sales stages?

And I would ask like at least two people in the company. Two different people at a separate meetings. And what I discover is they have completely different understanding of their sales process. They have completely different under, they\'re not on the same page with the sales process. And then when I\'m trying to demonstrate them, like guys theorem, imagine a, molding, molding machine.

Okay. Molding machine. Basically you install, a tool inside, it uses the pressure and molds, metal, and it creates some sort of, a part or a car or whatever. Now. Your sales process is the tool, the part that is coming out, it\'s a sale basically. Now, you could not just, throw five random tools and expect the same part to come out of it.

You have to create the tool, and CRM is a V tool. And in order for CRM to be working like it, it\'s not only related to CRM, it\'s any digital tool. We are not looking at digital tools, as physical tools the same way because they are intangible and somehow we are not wired to look at them the same way we\'re looking at tangible stuff.

It\'s, it has to do something with psychology. It\'s probably my next big, area of study of my life probably. But generally speaking, circling back to the stool part and the people not knowing their sales process. This is the hardest part to convince people to actually start investing in, at least sitting in the same room and agreeing on what are we doing?

And this is partially why I am a, I\'m not a conspiracy theorist because every, time I, hear somebody, oh, that\'s a conspiracy. Every world leaders have come together and agreed. Have you tried to make like. Get at least three people in the same company get to an agreement that\'s, this is the point where you stop being a conspiracist because you understand it, like this is how systems work.

Okay, inefficiently because people are around and people naturally disagree with one each other. So I am completely with you on that side. But then where I disagree is, but it\'s not disagree or agree. It\'s just. You just confirmed my point that AI is yet another tool in our toolbox.

It\'s just another tool. It\'s not any different from what we had, like small chron chronological order in like in 19th century, we got those old written machines, right, those punch card machines. When fast forward in end fifties, we got those. Machines, which were like a room big calculators, if you will.

Like now, we, I think something like this is more powerful than the Antioch machine at the day. Now, inside our smartphone, we have something more powerful than we had on an A polo mission, which put people on, on, on the moon. So these are technological leaps, and every time we got better and better technology in our hands.

Did we change as a people? No. We are still humans with hands, with legs. Did people change their buying behavior? No. They still want to eat. They still want, to get dressed things. The form of those things change. Of course the trends change the way how you do certain things change, but if you look at a bigger picture.

It\'s all the same thing, just with a different tool set. That\'s it. This is what, that\'s my point. This is what, I\'m trying to, I\'m just trying, A lot of people are just very anxious about this automation that\'s like automation anxiety, which is similar to what\'s happened in sixties. If you, just dig a little bit into history, I, see a lot of similarities.

What happened in sixties to what happen, what is happening now. A lot of people are just getting anxious and just saying, just. Yeah, it\'s going to be fine.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah. I, think there\'s a big fear and, I do have. Opinions on this, but it is different. Sorry, I can say what I\'m going to say. There\'s a big, there\'s similarity to the industrial evolution where you did have a huge population workforce shift where everybody used to work in the countryside and suddenly machines did it all.

And so basically everyone don\'t have to migrate to the cities. And what I\'ve been talking about in the podcast and, within my communities is that I believe. The that people who don\'t now, as in people, businesses, and staff members that aren\'t using AI as a tool to improve their productivity will become unemployable because there will be people who are equally as experienced.

Who can just get 2, 3, 5, 10 times more work done. They can\'t do it without the experience, but they can do it faster with the ai and that will be make them more, far more highly valued in the workplace and be able to do the work of say, two or three people. Whereas the people that are just sticking their head in the sand and thinking this isn\'t happening, they\'re going to be at risk of being replaceable because they\'re not skilling up.

And whether it\'s AI, whether it\'s just using a computer, going back a couple of decades, being able to proficient with the internet, understanding about cloud storage, all these big leaps as you say, or small leaps even people now that can\'t use a keyboard and a computer are pretty much unemployable.

That\'s what I think is a, good similarity. The way we use technology because of AI will fundamentally shift and the way we interact with it will shift. Just like the having a digital keyboard rather than a typewriter or whatever, or using a Rolodex rather than a CRM is the companies that are still using Rolodex, are they still making money?

Probably. Could they make more money? The CRM? Definitely, and it\'s that kind of shift, I think is more predictable.

Jeff Tilley: Yes and no, but important thing that, you didn\'t mention is that we need to specify types of jobs because Yes, I agree. If you are talking about hands-on low value slash mid value intellectual work, like creating presentations, drafting emails, like marketing campaigns.

That kind of stuff. That still requires human input. It still requires reading through and editing and it still requires input, right? It still requires human behind the computer as I\'m setting, saying this is just a different tool. Will some of the people be, will become unemployable without using those tools?

Probably, yes, you\'re right. I probably agree, but I\'ve seen a very broad example of. Completely computer illiterate employee sitting very, high in the company hierarchy. And it didn\'t make any sense to me at the beginning, why is this person even hired by this company? Because he is literally skill less if, you will.

Like he doesn\'t, didn\'t have, he had a zero hard skills, like literally opening a laptop and reading an email was already top performance for him. And, but at some point I realized his ability to analyze and, listen, absorb information and then output a very valuable output, if you will. But the form of the output is like basically who should do what and when, like a plan out of his mind.

That was so valuable that he could sit like in, in the next 20 days doing nothing. And then the 21st, they would output this kind of plan for everybody else, and it\'s much more valuable than anything else in the company. And this is the only reason why this person is sitting up and in, in higher in the hierarchy.

Is that an exclusion to the, that only confirms the rule? I don\'t know. but I, have. I assume that there are far more people like that than I see, because, looking at the, at how big Corps are operating, I doubt myself sometimes.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah. I totally agree. I think the. The higher value roles, the role roles that require human intellect, compassion, empathy, the, analytic roles of basically seeing what\'s going on.

See reading between the lines, not just trusting the data and just actually being a human, like basically anything C-suite and above, you know, like those. Roles aren\'t going to change anytime soon. Will there be help by the stuff that AI produces? Probably And analyzing stuff like data summarizing, et cetera.

Yeah, I\'m sure that can help, but I just have to look at my own wife\'s career path and as she\'s progressed that she works for a big, accounting, company in, the audit department. The more senior she\'s got, the less work she does and the more. She becomes a decision maker. A person who deals with people who manages, but also supports who trains who nurtures her team through, who organizes events.

Like it is crazy. I thinking like the more senior she\'s got, she\'s actually doing stuff. I was. Surely that should be something that we done like by an admin. It\'s no, because they don\'t do it right. And it\'s that kind of stuff like the glue that holds the company together, the culture building parts of the business that is, as people elevate up, I think become far more important.

And yes, I would be very, surprised if AI in the very near future does much to put that, those sorts of roles of threat. So I totally agree.

Jeff Tilley: My best advice to somebody who\'s anxious about the future and AI, just forget, remove the word AI. Just remove the word and replace it with word tool, text tool, and try, looking at the world through the prism of phone, text tool instead of AI, and you will start seeing world differently.

Trust me, because we don\'t have AI as we were, as we expect it to be. It\'s essentially a machine learning on steroids.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah. Cool. We could chat about this forever, I think, and have a very interesting conversation. But I will move on. I\'ve got a couple of couple other questions that I really wanted to dig into you because there are things that I am also very interested in.

One of them is about when to start thinking about systems in a business. Now I have very strong opinions about this, so I\'ll keep mine quiet for a minute and just hear, I\'d love to hear what your thoughts are on this.

Jeff Tilley: There is no one, there is no one answer. I wish there was, but there is no one answer.

And, that\'s the beauty of doing business. Every situation is the same. I can answer how I help my customers make the decision whether it\'s time to implement CRM or not. And there is a simple role if your revenue is below 1 million Euro, and or you have. Less than two persons dedicated only for sales role.

The same applies to customer service, by the way. just the revenue is different. don\'t do it. You can get away with Excel. There are times where it\'s valuable to use some CRM like tools to get to that number, but you will, If you need that tool to get to that number, then you\'re probably building a highly automated business.

And you don\'t, have this question anymore. this question is irrelevant to you. Then we are probably asking like a normal conventional, probably brick and mortar com, type of businesses or service companies, solar printers. They are like looking at the tools and thinking, do I need it or not?

The short answer is that if you don\'t, if you have less than two sales per people, working on the same role, doing like sales full-time, you don\'t need CRM. And if you have a revenue, less than 1 million, again, it depends on what type of business you are. For some businesses like consulting businesses, one 1 million revenue is pretty high Revenue can have a lot of people already and still not having 1 million in revenue.

But generally like, a rule of thumb, two people should be at least working in sales. 1 million of revenue. Yeah, that\'s the answer. And look at everything like this.

Dr Steve Day: Yeah. No, I actually agree with you on that front. So I\'m not in conflict with that whatsoever. I have a CRM, I do not use it for sales.

I don\'t think, I don\'t believe that the investment of me. Setting everything up, monitoring it, training staff of making it work, making it, make sure it\'s used in the correct way. So it\'s actually a single version of the truth, that it\'s just, it doesn\'t make sense for me at this moment in time. I don\'t have the sales volume to, to justify it.

However, I do, use a CRM, but I use it for marketing. I use it to send emails and I use it to have, funnels in there and to capture leads. And to, take payments through, for example, and to send e-sign documents. So I use it for a lot of, because the CRM software I use, go high level. Because it\'s, affordable.

It has lots of these other apps, which I was already using, and it allowed me to consolidate them into a single platform. So I was looking like, we\'re going back to that question of planning. What, why you want a CRM? I wanted to do one, one thing, I wanted to consolidate as many apps as possible. I was currently already using into a single platform to allow me to streamline the training and also the automation that I could actually get between them.

So I had a very single purpose. We haven\'t, I\'ve looked at the sales stuff. We\'ve, I\'m aware of it, I know how it works, not touched it. Customer service not touched it. So I\'m glad we\'re on the same page and I\'m glad I\'m, following your ruralness. So Yeah. at some point it\'s there when I need it.

And because it\'s in the app that I\'ve got, I don\'t need to then. No, if I stick with this up or look whatever, I don\'t need to then go look elsewhere, but I\'m not chasing it. I\'m not there attracted by that shiny penny just because it\'s there. I\'m going to go figure out how to use it. There\'s just no point.

So I a hundred percent agree. I think where, just to where I come in with the systemization part of it, just the general systemization rather than specifically looking at say the, CRM. So if you think about like systemization in general, so creating processes, whether that\'s through process maps or sim, simple SOPs or checklists or whatever, is there a stage in business where you think you can get away with just winging it or do you think that\'s something you should be thinking about from day one?

Jeff Tilley: From day one, if you\'re thinking about sales and customer acquisition and delivering your product, I think that\'s the core thing that you want to, that you want to know. I will give you an example that I recently had actually learned from one of my clients, to be, exact. He\'s not my client, he.

Just a guy from a retail, he owns a, chain of stores. And as I said, I\'m not a retail expert, so I explicitly mentioned him, Hey man, I\'m not the right person to talk to. And even though we decided to jump on a call and have a couple of our, conversation, and he said, my policy is that when my customer comes into the store, I want to have a perfectly fresh tomatoes in front of him.

It doesn\'t matter if the gate opens automatically. He doesn\'t care either. Now, my competitor, they care about automatic door, semi-automatic checkouts, all those, fancy automations within the store and so on and so forth. Nice app. But their tomatoes might be rotten or they might be missing some critical products on the shelves.

And this is an illustration of how you should prioritize your business and how what you should prioritize in your business. Put fresh tomatoes in the front of your customers first place. And if there is something that prevents you from putting those tomatoes in the front of your customers, remove that obstacle.

If that obstacle is lack of resources or lack of efficiency, that could be solved through automation. Automation, it is. If not, it should not be like on, on your, on your agenda.

Dr Steve Day: I love it. Very, simple visual and yeah, just thought provoking way of looking at it. And that\'s the kind of thing that I understand and so amazing.

Cool. Jeff, I\'m going to have to draw this to a close. I am very, sorry to say I, as I said, I could happily chat about all the kind of things that we\'ve been talking about for hours. And I\'m with you. this has been fun. Before you do go, firstly, if people want to find out more, get help from you in. Building their CRMs and all the other wonderful stuff you do, how can they best get a hold of you?

Jeff Tilley: Subscribe to my YouTube channel. It\'s Tilley Live. Depends on where you live. \"Tilly\" Live or \"Tylee\" Live.

Dr Steve Day: T-I-L-L-E-Y.

Jeff Tilley: Yeah. \"Tylee\", \"Tilly\", depends on where part of the world, where you live. Find me on YouTube. You will have all the links there. Join community on YouTube. Ask me any questions, I am living there. That\'s the best way to find me.

Dr Steve Day: Perfect. So it\'s tilleylive.com. Amazing. And we\'ll obviously put the links in the show notes as well if you\'re anyone that\'s interested. And before you do go, I have a couple of quick questions for you. Firstly, being a lover of technology, hopefully you\'re going to have a good answer to this.

No pressure. What are your favorite apps or tools or plugins that you are messing around with right now? He\'s holding up a paper notebook for anyone listening on the podcast.

Jeff Tilley: This is by far the favorite tool that I have. My second, favorite tool. It\'s not here any, anywhere on the table.

It\'s on my, in my backpack because I\'m back from customer Big customer workshop yesterday, it\'s a voice recorder. The workflow is as follows because a lot of my work has to do with people communication and, communicating messages. I would put my thoughts into notebook. I still make notes even though I sometimes I don\'t do voice recording anyway, anymore as a mean of, creating notes from the meetings.

They create too much content and too much noise, so I process it myself. I tried, it doesn\'t work for me. And I circle back to the large notebooks, paper notebooks. I make notes, and then I open notebook. I have a huge library of them here. That\'s only the recent ones, so I can always circle back to one of them.

And, take a look. Take my voice recorder. Say what I want to say. Throw it in Transation, which is called Whisper AI. Whisper is a local model which works locally. It\'s from open AI and transcribes. Your voice works in all the languages, including Laan, which surprised me because Laan is my, I\'m from Latina.

Latin is language that I use often, and including Russian, which my, which is my mother tongue. And works with many, including Dutch, which is here. So it\'s very, powerful tool. Second best tool is notion and, but then I have a platform of them for writing. I use Ulysses for, I use ARG browser as my browser.

Plenty of them, but by far it\'s an notebook and voice recorder and whisper AI for transcribing.

Dr Steve Day: Cool. I like it. You\'re the first person to pull up a paper notebook when I asked that question, so I\'m, glad you\'re the first, because you\'re probably the least person I would\'ve thought would\'ve done it after our conversation.

So I like it. I like it a lot. Perfect. Lastly, last question for you, the title of this podcast is Systemize Your Success, but what does success mean to you and why?

Jeff Tilley: Yeah, that\'s a very, that\'s a very hard question to answer, but to me. Success means that I am happy and I have a purpose and I am fulfilling the purpose every day. That means success to me. when I was a bit younger, in my teenage years, I don\'t know, what\'s 18, 19, 20? To me success was money, you know.

Somebody who makes a lot of money, you know what? I see a lot of people who are not millionaires or just, random Joe, John Doe\'s, around me here in Netherlands. They make out their living. They live their best lives, And they\'re very interesting in deep personalities.

And they stand behind what their values, they live to their values. they do what they like and they don\'t do what they don\'t like. And like all the money in the world would not buy. They, them doing not what they don\'t like. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that\'s a success. If you can, do what you like and not do what you don\'t like, that\'s a success.

Dr Steve Day: That is a perfect answer. Amazing. I think so anyway, Jeff, it\'s been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you very much indeed for your time today and yeah, really nice to, get to know you.

 

Jeff Tilley: Thank you very much.