Jeremy Shapiro is back after many years.We discuss his new book as well as the intersection of AI and business growth today...which will be different tomorrow!But you can use technology to enhance your sales and marketing strategies. As usual, automation is important as well as the entrepreneurial mindset, which is probably the toughest component of all of this.We get into a few more things...but I don't want to spoil it for you.00:00 Introduction to AI and Business Growth08:31 The Evolution of Technology in Business11:08 Sales and Marketing Strategies for Growth13:58 The Role of Automation in Business Efficiency16:37 Entrepreneurial Mindset and Problem Solving19:17 The Importance of Testing and Implementation21:59 Leveraging AI for Business Optimization24:43 The Value of Mentorship and Continuous Learning27:08 Final Thoughts on Business Growth and AI41:27 Introduction and Context44:11 Embracing Change and Personal Growth46:17 The Importance of Focus and Mastery48:55 Leveraging AI and Automation for Business SuccessUnlock the secrets of sales success by understanding what makes people do the things they do—access your free training: https://wesschaeffer.com/dailyBecome unstoppable in 12 weeks for free, with the 12 Weeks To Peak™ habit tracker: https://wesschaeffer.com/12wConnect with me:X -- https://X.com/saleswhispererInstagram -- https://instagram.com/saleswhispererLinkedIn -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/thesaleswhisperer/#12WeeksToPeak #SalesTraining #GoalSetting #PersonalDevelopment #GrowthMindset
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So welcome to whatever this is. It's episode 722 of the Sales
podcast. Maybe the last one, maybe I just
keep rolling and rename it. But I get into this with Jeremy
and I asked him right off the bat, but Jeremy Shapiro, a good
friend of mine known for many years through the Infusionsoft
community, I've got a few guys coming back-to-back from that
space. And the reason for the
(00:22):
confusion, you know, I scheduledhim to be on for the sales
podcast. And literally in a matter of a
week or so, I'm retooling a lot of things.
I've been talking a little bit about AI and, you know, I'm
finally getting my brain wrappedaround it of how we can do this,
how mere mortals can use AI in sales and in business.
And I've always focused on solopreneurs, C2 salespeople,
(00:43):
sales managers, you know, small business owners.
Hey, do y'all use be real? You know what, I'm going to keep
going. Be real is kind of cool.
I don't think I've never I've never done an interview or an
episode of using be real. So I'm going to take a pic.
Let me look over here. So you have two minutes to take
a picture. You have to be real.
But so I got that done. So I've had these folks
scheduled, but I've been talkingwith them.
(01:05):
Like I said, I'm wrapping my brain around the realities of AI
and its potential. And just like with Infusionsoft,
HubSpot, Entreport, how to use automation in everyday life by
mere mortals without getting bound down and stuck and tied
down to onerous contracts from fat cat consultants, I'm, I'm
(01:26):
running into this with the military, talking with some
classmates of mine, Some deals could be the beginning of
something big, could be a goat rope.
But so many consultants just milking the government and it's
irritating me. I'm doing it at my alma mater
right right back there. Irritated me, so I got some
classmates up there. So we shall see Hagseth and Doge
(01:48):
and everything else efficiencies.
But you know, I digress. I'm, I'm sick of the sick
offense of the leeches in all walks of life in all industries.
And you know, I've been wrappingmy brain around things literally
for years. Like, what do I want to sell?
What do I want to go to market with?
What, what am I great at? What does the world need?
(02:10):
And I think now more than ever, they need transparency,
authenticity, all those overusedwords, right?
These people throw this stuff out there and they don't mean
it. So Jeremy, you know, he's got a
new book out. We talked about that, but I
asked him about these things andI'm going to be sharing a lot
more. So I may rename this podcast.
I may start a new one and link over to that, discuss AI and and
(02:31):
sales, because the concept is not just to be an AI geek.
It's like give me a specific tool, a specific way that you do
AI. And I already did the conclusion
for this. But I talked about, I have Jason
Benedict again, I've known him through Infusionsoft for many
years and he gives us some specific examples of what you
can do affordably to use AI right now.
So it may become like a. Daily Podcast.
(02:53):
But I just, there's so many tools out there, right?
But it's not to give you, you know, 30 minute and one hour
deep dives. It's just here's a potential,
here's something you that might interest you and something you
could deploy quickly and affordably and have a fast ROI.
I'm talking, you know, months, if not weeks or even days.
(03:14):
And because again, once you get used to building these things,
you know, the first few are going to be hard just like with
anything. But as you get some reps and it
gets easier and easier and easier.
OK, so I already had Jason on. So I interviewed Jeremy just a
couple days ago, Jason yesterday.
So I'm going to compress these at the time schedules.
(03:35):
I'm several weeks behind. You know, it's been 3 weeks in
the publishing episode, which isabnormal.
You know, I've had some gaps here and there.
You know, I didn't, I get pitched so much.
And they're all using AI, you know, they're they're using
these scraping tools and they'refinding lists and they're using
e-mail marketing and, and just cold pitching and charging a
(03:56):
premium price. OK, that's fine.
But you can do this yourself. You know, I'm seeing how for not
much money you can have your owndatabase, your own database,
your own contact locator, contact enrichment, right?
Fill in all the fields, all the relevant important fields,
social media, e-mail, phone address, whatever.
(04:18):
And then, you know, drip out 510emails a day on your own behalf
for not much money. OK, so that's why I don't do
magic tricks. I I like showing people how it's
done. That's how I've done my my CRM
sales for so many years. I would get so irritated I
(04:40):
people would come to me. They when they paid thousands of
dollars to a developer to build these complex campaigns and then
they'd hand them over without really teaching them.
And now they were beholden to use that, that developer
forever, you know, or they'd come to me and I'd unpack the
thing, show them how to use it and give it back to them.
I'm happy to work with clients for years and years and years.
(05:01):
But I want you to want to work with me, not feel like you have
to, right? Like you're.
Forced. Anyway, long intro, I'm headed
to jiu jitsu and teaching the kids class on Mondays and
Thursdays and helping out and there's some things coming out
that I discovered about that. So I'll make that announcement
once it's official. So I'll do that tomorrow.
All right, but hey, thanks for tuning in and you're in for a
(05:24):
treat. There were some issues.
You may you'll notice I'm doing this in black and white right
now, different angle got a new microphone.
I'm getting new headset probably, but I mean it I
ordered a new camera. It didn't fix the issue.
So I don't know changing lighting, changing settings,
changing auto focus, there's always something.
What are you going to do? You know, quit or you figured
(05:44):
out and push on all right. Anyway, thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening. Now let's get on to our
interview with Jeremy Shapiro. Jeremy Shapiro getting his
groove on. Author, philanthropist, serial
entrepreneur, advisor, investor,mastermind, facilitator, cyclist
and author of your business growth playbook.com.
Welcome to the sales podcast. How the heck are you?
(06:05):
Doing fantastic W thanks for inviting me on.
I'm excited to be here and long time listener of the show and
love all that the Sales Whisperer has to offer.
Man, Yeah. You know, flattery will get you
everywhere. I was looking you up, man.
It's been. I got to scroll.
I got to scroll all the way. I thought I had it pulled up.
I did have it pulled up. But then, you know, we had some
technical stuff. You were Episode 183, if memory.
(06:26):
Yeah. March 1st, 2016.
Nine plus years ago. And look at us, still here,
still kicking. Still kicking, man.
So you know, I didn't tell you this.
I was waiting to spring this on you live because I wanted I'm
like those ambush investigator reporters, right and get the
cameras recording. So this is a this is a
(06:46):
transitory transitioning kind ofpodcast and I'm going to get
your take live. OK, because I may, I may shift
my focus, my emphasis some more on AI.
So this could be like one of thelast sales podcast episodes or I
just blend it, you know, maybe do I rename it like selling with
(07:08):
AI podcast? But what's your take on AI?
We're going to get into your history.
You know what? Because we've known each other
what, 10 years? 15 years?
Through that. Infusionsoft, right?
Yeah, Yeah. So a long time.
Have you always been in San Francisco?
I mean at this point for about 20 ish years so.
OK, OK, so. For a long time I'd always call
myself like an East Coast transplant, but you know, we
(07:29):
identify as Californian. All right.
Yeah, my son's up there. He's up near the Presidio.
Oh nice, yeah, right up in it's been up there.
Gorgeous area. Since he's been up there since
2015. Oh, he travelled the world with
his school, but OK anyway, so AIman, but I'm I'm going to drop
this right on you. We didn't discuss this.
(07:50):
What's your take on it? Well, it's it.
It's here. It's here to stay.
Evolving and becoming better at at a faster rate than anyone can
really write about this. Whatever we say right now,
someone coming back and listening to this will be like,
you know, reading a 10 year old time.
Outdated, yes, yeah, yeah. And but you've known me a long
time. It takes me a minute to figure
(08:10):
stuff out, but when I do, I'm pretty damn dangerous once I
figure it out. And it literally in the last few
weeks, like I'm seeing the powerkind of like with Infusionsoft.
Back in the day I was telling mywife, you know, 2008 I stumbled
across in fuchsia soft. I was like, man, wait, what?
I can automate all like all thisstuff.
What you talking about, Willis? Willis, you remember the story
(08:32):
of when I first found those guys?
So I was at a a conference for abusiness I had at the time where
the entire back end at the entire CRM, e-mail marketing,
e-commerce, we'd all written by hand from scratch in house.
Yeah, this is a would never recommend us.
Are you? A coder like by trade.
Recovered. Recovered.
OK, so were you doing the the development?
(08:54):
Yeah and leading it? Oh, wow.
OK, Yeah. We built all that out.
So you think, you know, recurring transactions, e-mail
marketing, event registrations, up sales, sales pages, I mean
all of it we built from scratch.And at the conference I met
these two guys who just launcheda company and they're building
this thing called ACRM, which I know you talk about a fair
(09:15):
amount, right? And you know, I'm having this
conversation and I'm realizing that the entire infrastructure
of the business could be someoneelse's problem and I could just
focus on like building a business while someone else
dealt with everything under the hood.
And I love that idea. But I also realized converting
over the entire business from our home grown CRM to a third
(09:38):
party hosted software as a service CRM was not a task for
the Fanta Heart. So my commitment to them, as I
said, the next business I launched, because you know,
we're serial entrepreneurs, I said the next business I
launched, I'm launching on your CRM and that way I can just
focus on building a business. And that's exactly what we did.
And so when we launched that next business, it was built
entirely on ACRM and we could just focus on building a
(10:01):
business and that was awesome. So yeah, you and I have been
around since since the early days with them.
Yeah, technology is crazy, right?
It's good, it's bad. It's I want to, we're talking
about how this applies to your book.
I don't know what you do, but I see people, I tell people this
feels like 1995. Oh, there goes my camera. 95
(10:25):
maybe what 98 Bill Gates is coming out Windows 95 he wrote
that book about you know what's coming you know with the
Internet, how can I zoom in zoommyself if y'all are just
listening, then you're not getting Vertigo something's
going on with my camera Oh well but still to this day right 1995
(10:48):
he's saying the internet's goingto change everything and there's
still people that barely get online the iPhone comes out in
2007. I'm updating an old post.
I show people how to use text replacement.
I I literally can kick. Fan of that and on your
programs? I love it.
And dude, I, I, I, I can kick the most sales people's butts
sitting at a stop light, right, with two thumbs with my
(11:09):
predictive text. It's just not, not even
predictive text and my short codes, right?
I have BIOS, I have all of my YouTube hashtag, my cell phone,
right? Anything.
It's like you can easily type ina wrong e-mail or you can fat
finger and like, I didn't get your stuff.
Well, you fat fingered it, right?
So e-mail address, my EIN, my Tia, you know, traveling number,
(11:35):
all of it. People still don't use that
today. So there you are.
You want to change everything? Yeah, for the bleeding edge
people and those who can convey the message, which most cannot.
Yeah, yeah. And you also have to keep in
mind here as well, like in any way that AI is helping you,
right? Is it helping you to deliver the
(11:57):
message in your voice and your style trained on your material,
right? Or is it providing the average
of what everyone else is doing and a generic version of what
you're trying to do? Right.
So if you're coming out the gateand you don't have your voice,
your brand, your style, your content, how much can I help
you? Just like I'm sure you've seen
Wes at the predictive responses to your emails or text messages
(12:18):
and what not, How do those compare to your shortcuts that
you've trained that are built onthe things you want to say in
the moment? Yeah, well, my shortcuts are
just, you know. Oh, that's funny.
I sent a friend of mine an e-mail yesterday and she says,
well, did you, did you write? Is that AI?
(12:38):
And she thought it was an AI summary.
I'm like, no, I wrote that, you know, don't tell a writer is
that AI? I'm like, I'm, I'm going to come
through this phone. No, you know, but but I, I'm
seeing just so many people. I don't know, man, it feels like
it feels like just a few years ago with NFTS, you go to this,
(13:00):
you can, you need, you need a board ape, you know, like, OK,
but nobody could explain why, right?
It's just because everybody elseis doing it.
And you you saw where that went,right?
And, well, you always have your oh, go ahead.
Well, you'll always have your early adopters, right who who
get in, who can't explain why, but are going to adopt early and
that can often give you an edge or you end up jumping down a
(13:21):
rabbit hole or something that doesn't matter.
And you don't know till you get in, right?
And your your later stage early adopters get some advantage with
someone else proving the way. But as things get out there more
mass market and more for the larger audience, you know it, it
doesn't mean it's gone. But just like your example
before about there's people still not online, some people
who still don't have a smartphone.
You'll always have your folks who are just never going to
(13:42):
adopt to, you know, or adapt to whatever is coming out.
And that's not your market. That's not who you're selling
to, right. So we talk, talk about getting
out there and go sell something,right?
Your early adopters, you don't have to finish your pitch before
they say, yeah, I'm in. But the larger audience overall,
right? How do you communicate to them?
How do you dial your messaging in so you do get it out?
So do you get into that with your book because your book is
(14:04):
coming out? We're recording this end of
July, it's coming out in September, right?
So business growth playbook, howmuch does sales play into
business growth? Yeah, a lot, right?
But you and I have bookshelves full of books teaching about,
you know, sales and marketing and how to get more qualified
leads. There it is, right?
(14:28):
That's just one bookshelf. Right.
Yeah, I have like, you know, my quick access bookshelf right
behind me here, but elsewhere I'll have the bigger, larger
catalogs, right? So look, and there's so many
books on how to build your audience and do better and more
marketing and fill the funnel with qualified leads more.
That's great. So your business growth playbook
is for a business owner who already has a business, right?
(14:51):
You already have leads and salescoming in.
You figured out your messaging, right?
But what got you to where you are now isn't getting you to
where you want to go. So we look at all we can do with
your existing flow so we can increase that customer lifetime
value, right? And we can do a lot more with
what you're already doing. If you're like an early stage
(15:11):
founder or you're thinking of starting a business, there are
other books that are going to get that will get you off the
ground. All right, man, stand by.
I am having some audio difficulties.
All right, so let's see if the technology gods stick with us
and the gremlins go away. So people are crazy.
Most entrepreneurs hate sales and marketing.
It seems like they are always starting over again and again
(15:33):
and again, right? Why don't people stick with what
work do they get bored? You know what, 'cause I, I tell
people all the time it, it's hard to get started and nobody
has the time to do this stuff, at least to begin, right?
And I'm having this conversationwith all of my clients.
But I say, look at what you do two or three times a day or four
or five times a week and have a process for it and ideally
(15:53):
automate it. And I was talking to a kid last
night, a friend of my daughter's, he's getting into AI
and he's like, give me some examples.
I'm running out of ideas. And I'm like running out of
ideas. I said, OK, but here's the deal.
Everybody thinks they have to make these big nuclear bombs of
automation and I'm like, brah, that's the new.
(16:15):
That's the new. All the kids taught me that,
brah. My 11 year old said brah,
remember. When you were a.
Dad, I may not have an 11 year old soon.
But anyway, I digress. But Mike, look at the smallest,
tiniest, most tedious, nagging thing I said.
If you hear somebody say twice in a day, twice in two days,
this bothers them, go automate that.
(16:36):
Why do people make stuff so hard?
You know, it's interesting. When I look at entrepreneurs,
right, who have gotten out thereand successfully done this,
there's sort of three checkpoints I look at that tells
me you are going to be an entrepreneur, right?
The first, if you look at all ofus, where others just see things
as they are, we see the gaps, wesee the opportunities, we see
(16:56):
how something could be better, right?
Sometimes we're accused of having like that, like oh shiny
syndrome where we're distracted.That actually is what allows us
to see that gap in the marketplace and the opportunity.
So that's that first thing, right?
Others walk on by, we see what could be better.
The second thing is we see a solution, we see what we could
(17:17):
do to actually fix that. Where others might see a problem
and complain, we see a problem and create the idea for how to
solve that, right? But the third piece, this is
what tells us if you're going tobe a successful entrepreneur or
not is 1/3 is that you actually go out there and do something
about it. See, others might never see the
(17:37):
problem. Some might see the problem and
complain about it. Some might see the problem, have
an idea about it and do nothing with it.
But you as a successful entrepreneur see the problem as
an opportunity, create the solution and then go out there
and build a business on that, right?
So. Yeah.
Distractibility comes with, you know, comes with being an
(17:58):
entrepreneur, but that's why we are because we see the
opportunities. Yeah, and I'm sick of the whole
everybody's got something ADHD blah, blah, blah, overcome
trauma, like whatever. It's like, you know, one good
excuse can last you a lifetime of of mediocrity, right?
Like. I got a bucket of excuses.
(18:19):
They're all pretty grind like good grief, but it's like I was
telling this kid last night, youknow, I'm, I'm building an agent
right now to clean up my posts because I I'll write something
posted on LinkedIn. I usually start there because
I'm limited on LinkedIn. You can't, I don't want to make
(18:41):
it an article. I want to make it a post.
And so that's my shortest because I can, I can copy that
and expand it on Facebook, expand it on sub stack, expand
it on Twitter or wherever. But when you write on there.
It's. It's the markdown language, I
guess. You probably better than me.
So it adds whatever carriage returns.
So when I copy and paste it to Facebook, it adds two or three
(19:02):
returns. So now I got to go delete,
delete, delete, delete and and Iusually write one sentence in a
in two lines, you know, so not abig deal in the big scheme of
things. But if I have to go and delete
203040 returns and do that four times, I'm like it's.
Not a good use here today. That's a pain in the butt right.
So I'm like, can I let me ask ChatGPT and I'm sure Oh, you
(19:24):
should lose Claude. You should use Gemini.
What? Shut up right, use whatever, but
it so it gives me an idea. Well, now it's building a
workflow and a table for me in Notion.
So now I can take that and have the template and then blah,
blah, blah, a clone, but next, next and then give me all the
proper formatting. So I'm trying to explain that to
him. I'm like, that's this is not,
(19:46):
I'm not saving the world from global thermonuclear, you know,
destruction. I'm cleaning up some carriage
returns. But you know, I bet I can sell
that for 50 bucks. 100 bucks, I don't know. 200 bucks, you know?
It's have you ever even thought of fixing that?
What's the value of writing onceand having proper format for
(20:11):
four or five different platforms?
How much does that expand your reach?
You know, so but yeah, you can go build it if you have time.
I mean, I've, I've gotten stuck now I'm, I'm a day behind
because I have it mostly done, but then life gets in the way.
I got to do stuff. And so I'm like, go build a
bunch of those. You know, I said you're still in
an office. You got 20 people work in your
(20:31):
office. Just look.
Look at what 20 people do every day and build an agent.
You know, it's, it's funny when we talk about like the
automation of the agents, a classic problem I've seen with
business owners is, and you've probably experienced this when
working with clients on CRM on boarding, right, is they want to
jump in and automate a whole bunch of unproven stuff, right?
They want to invest all this time in building out a funnel
(20:53):
that's never had a single lead come into it and then go test
that out. They don't even know if there's
a match with the market and they're ready to build and
invest heavily in a huge fund, right?
So in the same way, you can go build out really complex fancy
agents to do things that don't actually take up that much of
your time and that there's no market for, right?
So let's, like you said, listen to what the market is looking
(21:17):
for, right? Often times I start with
ourselves. What's the gap in our own
business or in our own day and how do we optimize that?
Almost all of my businesses havebeen some spin off of of an
existing business filling a needwe had in that business or for
the same customer base where we saw the need.
Yes, yeah, Amen. You know, one of the I still
sell this campaign to Infusasoftusers for doing outbound
(21:42):
prospecting and it just tracks the call 12345 just an internal
form and it's just just radio buttons.
So you can only select one which, which call was this?
What was the outcome? You have like 5 or 6 options
left voicemail not interested needs to delay whatever.
So you come up with your optionsand then it does the whole
spider web cross referencing if this and if it was call one and
(22:05):
this outcome. Oh not interested, then remove,
you know from the sequence blah blah blah.
No answer left voicemail. OK, send e-mail #1 you know,
create task #2 make, you know, create task, call #2 in one day,
2 day, whatever. SO33 clicks, boom, boom, boom.
And it's like that saves you, let's say 5 minutes.
(22:26):
Because most people let me pull up the contact and copy the
e-mail, let me type up a. They don't even use a template.
I mean, God forbid you use a template built into Outlook,
built into Google, built into you can e-mail from, if you just
have, you can e-mail you. You're getting better.
If you have a HubSpot that templates within Google, within
Outlook, but they'll type it allfrom scratch, you know, oh, then
(22:48):
they'll forget that e-mail doesn't get sent because
something else comes in. They go back later.
Oh crap, there's a myth. Let me, oh, never mind, I won't
send that. Oh, did I mark that as complete?
Did I reschedule? You forget to reschedule, you
forget to make call #2 right? So boom, boom, boom, 3 clicks,
done. If you do that 12 times a day,
if you do that 12 times a day and say 5 minutes, I just gave
(23:09):
you back an hour of your life for the rest of your life.
And I give you 100% utilization,assuming you can click three
buttons. So for the sake of argument, I'm
going to say if somebody makes acall with that internal form,
they will click three buttons. So they will be 100%
utilization. So how many more leads do you
reach? Just run your math.
(23:30):
Those convert. But I tell people, let's say it
takes US 8 hours to build that first campaign for you because
it's all brand new and we're talking through things.
And what's the best? Should you e-mail from internal?
Should you copy and paste? Should you put?
Should we use ZAP here if we need whatever?
OK, so we build it. It takes 8 hours, but now you
save an hour a day for life. So 8 days from now, you're net,
(23:56):
you're neutral, you've regained 8 hours.
Our light it so fast. And but now the build the second
one, we can clone the first one probably, but now you're
conversing at least. So now it takes 4 hours to build
the second one and that's a 7 minute task.
And then it takes you 2 hours tobuild a third one.
The other nice thing wired to us?
(24:17):
And and then they're like, and that's, that's how I've sold so
much stuff. I just fixed these little
things. And I'm like, Oh no, you're on
your own. Go fix that thing with 87 nodes.
No, I ain't touching that API call that own HTTP POST like I
am not your guy called Jeremy. That dude's smart.
(24:38):
The other neat thing what you'retalking about there too, Wes, is
the consistency, right? I mean, you, you work with
Renegade sales teams that you know, it's a Wild West if
everyone's doing things their own way and their own statuses,
if they even track it all right.And now you've got a
consistency. Now you've got good data going
in, which gives you good data coming out it.
That's so powerful that you can't do without a good system
like. Right.
(25:00):
And I was that renegade. That's why I'm on my own, man.
I was, I was unemployable because I'm like, this is
stupid. Why do we do it this way?
Just shut up and enter it in Salesforce, then enter it in
Siebel, then enter it in Excel, then export it to APDF, then
e-mail your boss. I'm like, no.
I want to make some calls. Like I I don't get paid for
(25:22):
that. So here we are.
You remember what's the oh, the Star Trek where he games the
system and he wins. Now I got to look it up.
Are we talking TNG here? From the movie.
So they they they give all thesenew, you know, potential
officers something Maru oh, now I got to type it in the ChatGPT.
(25:46):
It's an unwinnable scenario, right?
I mean that that sounds like word games from the 80s.
Yeah, shall we play a game right?
The only solution is not to play.
All right, hold on Captain Kirk games the system to win.
What's it called the Kobayashi Maru?
Come on, man, You haven't heard of this 'cause this is with the
(26:07):
new the new Captain Kirk. Not like that dude.
I think Chris Pine, I think it'shim, but so he he gained the
system, right? So because the simulation.
So they just wanted to see how these guys handled stress, you
know, and that what is their decision making process, you
know, like, oh, this is bad. Oh, it's getting worse.
Oh, I'm going to die, You know, everybody's going to die.
(26:29):
And he's like, I don't want to lose.
So he figured out how to hack the system and he won.
So now everybody's like, how'd this guy win?
And then they're mad. They're like, well, you cheated,
you know, and he's like, I won, you know, they're.
Supposed to be. Training us to defeat the enemy
and bring our crew home alive, you know, so it's like, so I
would do that at my different companies.
(26:50):
I got to know the IT department.I, I could be BCCI bought my own
BlackBerry in the early 2000s. I could, I got notifications
instead of waiting till I got tomy room late at night.
I'm like, I'm going to win regardless of the issues and the
obstacles you put in front of me, so.
Well, this is like we see this all the time in businesses, you
(27:11):
know, dashboarding KPIs, right? Whatever key performance
indicator you put out there for your team, guess what, they are
probably going to hit that. So the question is, is it a KPI
that matters and are you OK withhitting that number no matter
what? And So what we usually find is
you is your dashboard AKPI, the team hits that and you realize
you don't like how they got that.
So you adjust it and you kind ofkeep, you know, moving the
(27:33):
levers. And the Classic 1, you know, you
and our audience I think would appreciate is on the sales side,
you tell your sales team they'vegot to hit a certain volume, a
certain number of sales. It's the next thing, you know,
say at a car dealership, your sales people are out there and
they're moving volume, taking a loss on every unit.
And so now they hit the number you wanted, they hit the volume,
but you lost money. So is that really the KPI you're
(27:54):
looking for? And this is something you know
even smaller businesses without a sales team often make the
mistake of doing. You chase a number like gross
sales or sales volume without any regard to profitability or
without any regard to customer lifetime value without looking
beyond that sale. And yet, where does sustainable
business come from? Not just pouring in you know
(28:16):
dumpsters worth of leads at the top of the funnel, but actually
optimizing and getting better atwhat comes through the funnel
and qualifying and improving what comes up at the bottom.
And then we can look at customerlifetime value and that's where
so much growth can happen. Yeah.
So here's a quick question. Thank goodness for long
standing, smart, patient, entrepreneurial friends to put
(28:40):
up with this technological. So you're going to be my last of
the sales podcast purists, my last.
You're my first on this new microphone.
You're going to be my last with the Airpods.
Everything's changing. You're bringing about change,
Jeremy. You're teaching an old dog.
How to do new tricks so? How is that?
Right, continuous, never runningimprovement.
(29:00):
Man, so why did you write this book?
Let's talk about you some more, shall we?
Your business growth playbook. Who wants a book?
It's all AI. I've got an AI widget that's
going to read your book and summarize it to me and give me
like 2 pages. So you know why?
Why not just give me an AI widget of your brain?
You know, it's funny you mentionthat because one of the things
I've been doing during this whole book publishing journey is
(29:22):
sharing the manuscript out with beta readers ahead of time,
right? I'm an.
Alpha reader don't. I'm never beta but anyway.
All right, and some alpha readers.
All right, Wes. So, yeah, we got that manuscript
out early, and it's really good when you know who your target
audience is and you give them first access, right?
We talk about MVP, getting your minimum viable product out
(29:43):
there, getting early feedback and iterating.
Well, I've been doing that sincethe earliest drafts of the
manuscript and hearing back frommy ideal reader about what's
confusing, what they love, what they want some clarity on and so
on. And so the manuscript's gotten
revised along the way. And as I've been sharing this
out, what I found is that some folks were saying, man, I love
(30:03):
this, but like, I'm a podcast person, right?
Or I'm an audio book guy. Do you have an audio version of
the book? Well, not for the first drafts,
no. But wouldn't you know, Wes?
Yeah, I can do a great job summarizing my whole book.
So, yeah, I fed the manuscript in.
I got out a wonderful, you know,notebook LM style to talk show
host banter format going over the entire book and that's
(30:26):
available free online for folks that I was getting really good
feedback from people on saying Ilove what you put together.
This book is fantastic. The audio overview of the book
is great. But for me, I'm one of those
dual path reader guys. I like to read, skim, go forward
back and move around. So I took that AI audio
transcript and fed that back in and got out my transcript of the
(30:49):
audio, which I could then read. So we took my original work
from, you know, almost 30 years of my experience working with
business owners distilled into abook.
We then got the AI audio summaryand then the AI transcription.
And so we have all these great derivative works from that
depending on the format you're looking for.
But the actual playbook I put together, Wes is can be read
(31:14):
cover to cover, right? But this really is meant to be a
playbook you crack open, go to the section you need the most.
Right now. I have indices in the back by
industry. So if you're an e-commerce
company or you're a consulting company or you're an agency,
whatever your business model is,I've got your short list of
strategies that are going to work best for you given your
business model, industry and so on.
(31:34):
So it's really giving the high level simple formulas, which you
don't need AI to summarize for you is, you know, one line
formulas you can use in your business to incrementally grow
not just revenues, but also profitability, right?
And then I give you the experiments to run in your
business because sure, AI can summarize it for you.
(31:55):
But is AI going to go test an idea in your business, make the
changes in your business, see what's working and incrementally
improve? Not quite yet.
We're getting there. But for now, you still have to
choose the strategy that makes the most sense to you that you
can try in your business. And we give you the examples of
businesses like yours, big and small, that are using the exact
(32:15):
strategies in the playbook in their business to grow the
revenues, grow the profit. And then we give you the
questions to ask yourself in your business about how to
implement that. So you can go out there and test
and MVP this and look for that little win and then repeat.
Yeah. And I think that's newbies or
amateurs or small time players. You know who you are.
(32:37):
If you struggle with this idea, if you think I only need
guaranteed stuff, like there areno guarantees.
You have to be willing to commitsome percentage of your revenue
towards testing, allocating someideas.
Now you come to old dudes like Jeremy and me to narrow those
(32:57):
down. And I got some Gray baby, the
good beard. Beard, Gray, Gray.
I got some wisdom here it looks.Good.
So you know, instead of having 100 ideas to test, you know,
we're going to help you narrow it down to three.
OK, but you got a. Testing thing I love, right?
Like, at the end of the day, it's good to hear shortcuts
about what to test, but then youstill have to test that result
(33:19):
for yourself. You know?
Years ago, Russell Brunson was putting out a book on split
tests and I contributed a numberof the tests that got published
in that book. You know, things like to use the
red, but red button or green button, Blue arrows are red.
You put the time or not the time.
You know, all this kind of stuff, right?
And the result from that, the take away isn't you should use a
red arrow, not a blue. The take away is this test
(33:41):
result didn't matter, had no impact.
This one did for me. Maybe you should test a for
yourself. Yeah, and but people don't want
to get that granular, but that'swhy you got to hire somebody.
You got to hire a coach. And you know, I've, I'm like
everyone else man. I I'd struggle Tooting my own
horns till to this day. I have always sold other stuff
(34:01):
better. I've sold a lot more software
than my own coaching services. But man, just like AI, kind of
the light has broken through theclouds of my brain and I see the
light. I see the light because I'm in a
coaching program and I had been half ass paying attention for a
(34:21):
long time in this group and I finally started focusing and the
breakthroughs came and I'm like,OK, it sounds self-serving, but
it's like hire me, hire Jeremy. Join our groups, get our emails
you but read them, listen. And if we're not resonating,
unsubscribe. But go find somebody that pushes
(34:45):
you, because this crap is all hard, you know?
And you've got to buckle down for a minute until it's maybe
not easy, but less hard. And then you'll get the
breakthroughs, you know, a few. Pieces there Wes right, like one
you're spot on, right, get the help, whether it's a book,
whether it's a coach, a consultant, a a group, right?
(35:07):
These are all valuable. Like that's that's step one.
We've all got to do that. Step 2 though, is just like you
said, start paying attention andtuning in, right?
Buying the book and putting it next to your bedside table and
never cracking it open doesn't do you any good.
Filling a bookshelf with books you've never read doesn't do you
any good, right? So Step 2 is actually show up,
pay attention, read it, take thenotes, go to the conference, and
(35:29):
so on. But the third?
And this is what actually drivesthe change, right?
We all know it comes down to implementation.
There's a there's a story many of our listeners might know it's
been reused through cultures everywhere over generations,
right? But one of the early versions
like Aesop's fables, you might say, this is, you know,
different versions even in the Bible.
(35:50):
But the version I love is Hercules and the Wagoner, right?
So for our listeners who don't know the story, there's this
this guy out with his cart and oxen pulling him along the old
road and his wagon ends up getting stuck in a rut.
He is, we use the phrase, I'm stuck in a rut.
This wagoner was literally stuckin a rut.
So he gets off the wagon and he's like, like, Hercules, come
(36:11):
help me. I'm stuck.
And he doesn't do anything. He just is like, hey, somebody
come save me. Come do something.
Come help me out. And so Hercules comes down and
he's like, what do you want me to do?
Like you haven't even done anything.
Have you even urged your oxen on?
Have you leaned your shoulder into the cart and tried to
actually get it back on the road?
Like you've done nothing except ask someone else.
Solve this for me, right? So the wagoner, you know,
(36:34):
grumpily urges his auction on and leans them into the cart.
And what do you know, like is able to push between himself and
the auction, gets the cart out of the rut by him doing
something and he's on his way, right?
And so it's not a matter of like, hey, thanks, Hercules for
doing it for me. It's the I just need to be
reminded that I've got to take some action.
So when you get that book, you get that coach, that, that
(36:55):
group, that consultant, whatever, right?
Good job signing up, good job going through and paying
attention to understanding what you're supposed to do, but
excellent job actually taking action and doing something.
That's what makes change in our business, in our lives and so
on. Implementation.
So look, a couple things. One, you know, you name drop
Aesop tails, you didn't know theKobayashi Maru.
(37:17):
So you're still, you know, kind of suspect to me.
But I mean, that's a good one. You get a little St. cred there.
But but yeah, I tell people all the time, it's literally the
answer is within, you know, a good mentor, guide, coach,
wizard, whatever you want to call us just pushes you and
holds you accountable. You know, 8 1/2 years I've
(37:38):
trained jiu jitsu, soar, beat up.
But I got buddies, I got smart people that let me show up.
Did you get better on the mat bystaying at home thinking about
it? Right.
Well, we always lie. Like, man, you've been watching
YouTube videos, huh? And, and so like when COVID hit,
right, there's this, this company called BJJ Fanatics.
(37:58):
And I had, I had been training for a few years and never bought
in their stuff, but follow them on social media, get some tips.
But they said, Hey, we're all home and I want to do my part.
Here's a here's a link for a free video pick anything.
I was like, OK, but he was a smart marketer.
Once you got your free 1, he said, hey, here's a coupon for
50% off a second one. And I'm like, you know what,
(38:19):
this dude's giving and boom, I'll, I'll buy one at 50%.
That's a good deal. So now I got 2 because I like 70
bucks apiece or something, you know, back then, five years ago.
So 70 or 100 bucks, I mean, not expensive, but not, not cheap
either. I mean, so, but I'm like, OK,
now I got two of them for 35 bucks.
And so one of them was 90 minutes long, man.
(38:41):
And. And we were just starting to get
back the. The school was just starting to
open back up, but I spent 90 minutes watching half of it.
I mean, 90 minutes to get through 45 minutes and it's
teaching just one attack. And I kid you not, I went to, I
went to a morning class, actually one of the few times I
went to a morning class. And so I'm like, hey, I want to
try something, you know, so we start in a certain position and,
(39:03):
and it says, OK, within 6 seconds, I screwed up the
technique. I'm like, stop, busted my phone
out, logged in. I'm like damn it, I spent 90
minutes studying a move and I couldn't do 6 seconds of the
move. But until you go hands on, it's
all just theoretical, right? You got to go hands on.
(39:23):
Everyone's got a plan until. They get punched in the face.
That's great. You know Napoleon says, right?
No. No plan of attack survives
engagement with the enemy, but you still plan, you know?
So yes, riding it out is fine. Thinking about it is fine.
You've got to pull the trigger and ride the bullet, you know,
(39:44):
See where it goes. Yep.
So much of that is, I mean, showing up is a big part of it,
but it's not 100% of the equation.
But you do have to show up. You do have to get in the ring.
You got to get in the ring. It's scary and but you know,
when you got somebody pushing you, supporting you, you know?
It helps. So get somebody and get your
book right, your business growthplaybook.com, that's the URL.
(40:09):
Your business growth playbook.com.
OK, And by the time people hear this, well, I'll publish this
right away, but they can pre-order and they've got what
you got some other goodies they can get now.
Yeah, so you can have that audiooverview we're talking about is
available on the site. You can also download, you know,
the first, first bit of the bookif you want to get a feel for
me. And like, who is this guy and do
(40:29):
I like his style? That's available for you, as
well as some of the goodies and bonuses.
So you can find out everything you need about the book, about
the process, the formula we use and why this playbook even
exists. And that's all at your Business
Growth Playbook. Yeah, cool.
All right, man. Well, thanks for being my last,
my first, my technical issue. I got you.
(40:50):
It's been good, brah, Been good.Brah, what's?
Not sure, you says like you know, Dada, daddy, Dad brah.
Yeah, I know it's the. Evolution from those kids, huh?
Oh, my gosh. All right, well, I'm gonna play
your grandkids for a minute and go to jujitsu and choke the life
out of some people. You know, It keeps me calm.
Attempted murder. Attempted murder keeps me calm.
(41:12):
Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to change my audio
because I think the landscapers realize we're done recording
here. Nice.
All right, Well, good point to wrap it up, Jeremy Shapiro,
thanks for coming back on the show.
Great catching up with you, man.Have a good one.
Hey, thanks for putting up with any kind of issues that may have
come through there. You can see using a different
(41:34):
angle, different lighting, goingblack and white.
I don't know what's happening. I got a new camera, still having
issues but it could be the lighting.
Could be the back. Lighting, there's always
something, but at the end of theday you got to keep pushing
through, right? It was good catching up with
Jeremy. He sent me this little blurb, so
I want to make sure I repeat it.So you know how to reach him,
right? But his his book of tried and
(41:57):
true strategies. Get it today, right?
It's called your business growthplaybook.
You can get on Amazon, your local bookstore, if you'd like a
sample of his book right now, because if you're listening to
this before September, then it'snot out yet, but he's giving you
a sample. OK.
You can get your very own complimentary growth checklist.
OK, Visit your business growth playbook dot right now for
(42:19):
Jeremy Shapiro's stuff. I had another guy on the podcast
yesterday. I'll get that published soon.
Jason Benedict. I've known him through the
Infusionsoft community for many years.
I saw him last fall, Smart guy. I am catching up on Saturday
with Partee Shaw, another guy I've known through Infusionsoft
for many, many years. Just some smart people making
(42:40):
good money, doing good business,doing good things.
But this using AI to streamline things is here and I think it's
the future. I talked about it this morning
in my inner circle, which you need to join.
OK, I have not stressed that enough and it's because I wanted
to make sure I was bringing you something new.
(43:01):
I've been studying stuff, mostlyjiu jitsu for the last several
years. Honestly, I didn't want to bring
you the same old, same old, but I see it now.
I've got some new excitement andyou know, I found this, I came
to this new vision, this new excitement, this new
enlightenment because I'm in groups, I'm in multiple groups.
(43:21):
And so I've been learning, I've been applying stuff to, to
myself, my own business, but very slowly, not as quickly as I
need it to. And you know, I'm human.
I built up savings, had residualincome, got some investments,
but it's like it's time I got, Igot 4 grandkids now and I'm not
anywhere near creating the legacy that I want to create and
leave behind. So fortunately I still feel
(43:43):
good. 55 I was talking to party this morning as we were
scheduling this call. He's like, so is this W 2 point
O? I'm like, man, this is like W 3
point O, 4 point O, maybe 5 point O, depends on when you
want to define the where does one O start and two O begin,
right. He was the military 1.0.
He was getting out of the military, jumping into sales.
(44:03):
Was that 2.0 starting my own thing in 2006 was that 3.0
branching into HubSpot and entreports away, not necessarily
away, but I mean kind of away from Infusionsoft, but but not
solely focus on them, you know, was that 4.0?
So this could be 5. I don't know.
You, you got to, you got to keeppushing, right?
(44:27):
And sometimes things are hard. I get it.
You know, I'm talking to a friend of mine I know through
the Academy, known for 35 years and going through a tough
negotiation lawsuit with some people, sold her a house and
didn't disclose the proper things.
And she was having a moment. But we talked and you know these
(44:49):
people a year ago almost, you know, July, August, 9 months ago
gave her a stupid lowball offer like 5 grand on something that
has cost her over 100 and now through attorneys and everything
else well over 100. And today they came back with
97,500 and she was still kind ofstressed and down.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
(45:10):
You took. These.
People these, what can I say about them?
These are older people. They're people of means.
They own multiple properties. They know what's up and they
pulled a stunt on a single mom veteran.
She's still in the reserves and she's winning.
And so I tell you this, it's like it's when you're eating a
shit sandwich and taking a lot of bites without even any bread,
(45:33):
it's, it can feel daunting, but you've got to look back like in
jiu jitsu, you know it. You don't feel like you're
getting any better because the the your peer group, the guys
you're in with, you're still winning and losing the same
ratio. You're like, am I getting any
better? But then when new guys come in,
you crush them, you know, so people would say today, can you
beat yesterday's version of yourself?
(45:55):
It's like, yeah, can I beat the version of me that started this
journey in January of 2017? It with ease.
OK. So if you think you're late to
the AI game, you're not. If you think you're late to
automation, you're not. People are just that they're
they're nibbling around the edges.
Most people are distracted, disjointed, incoherent, terrible
sales messaging, looking at at 100 different things to do
(46:20):
instead of mastering 1. You know, I'm getting close to
my black belt in jiu jitsu. And I always told people like, I
thought I would know a lot more things before I got, you know,
at this level and talking with the higher blue belt or black
belts, you know, my instructors 5th degree and other ones, the
third degree. And these guys are stone cold
killers. And you know, they talk about
this like, look, you a black belt doesn't mean you've
(46:42):
mastered every single move. It means you've mastered your
moves and you can inflict your game, you can inflict your will
on your opponent regardless of their game.
And that makes sense, right? It's like like football.
You know, I played ball through high school and college and you
have your game. You know, the Air Force Academy,
we, we do that the triple option.
(47:03):
We have not changed that triple option.
And 40 plus years. So are we the best, you know,
deep passing? No.
So does that mean we're no good because we've only mastered, you
know, one offense? Well, we haven't been good
lately, but you get my point, right?
It's like, be proud of what you've mastered.
(47:25):
And, and in looking back, like when I was really making crazy
good money with ease, new money every month, new residuals every
month, I was very narrowly focused.
OK, so success is really it's more about what do you say no to
so you can focus on what you're great at.
And when you, when you focus, when you niche down, it doesn't
(47:46):
mean you can't do the other things, but it means you get to
choose when to do the other things because people will come
to you. You don't say you're a, you're a
plumber, right? You only work on single family
homes or say you only work, workon commercial.
You know, somebody calls. Oh, it's an emergency.
I don't really normally do that,but you know, yes, I am a
plumber and you know, just poured a beer and steaks coming
(48:10):
off the grill. Pay anything else you can
charge. Hey, all right, you know,
$1,000,000 yes, come you save myPersian rug, whatever, right?
Some of you can you can pick your terms, name your price.
OK, I'll come over. You know, and so being narrow in
your focus doesn't limit you frees you up.
And so trust me when I say I'm not telling you this.
I'm just I'm just talking to myself.
(48:31):
So I just let you listen in. So thank you for allowing me to
vent and get my therapy session going here.
But seriously, you know, I hope you I liked the episode.
Jeremy's a stand up dude. I am making some changes and
I'll figure it out. I'm fortunate I've got a good
role of X of people that are lining up to talk with me.
Praise the Lord. They're a bad judge of
(48:53):
character. What can I say?
But you know, I'm getting adviceand wisdom from them.
I'm asking the real questions. It's it's what I've always done.
And fortunately y'all think I'm a real dude and it comes across
and and you know, these interviews are unscripted and
I'm just curious. But I'm telling you say I stuff
(49:13):
there's again, there's a lot of noise.
It's like 199520000. The internet's going to change
everything. What does that mean?
Too many people don't get down to the specifics.
So find again, drill down, nichedown.
Find one irritating little thingyou can automate and get rid of
out of your daily, day-to-day life and you'll be much better.
(49:35):
And then you'll learn, OK, then you can build another one and
another one. If you need help, call me, call.
I'm going to have Jason on call partive.
I mean, call these guys. They'll help you.
But you want to get ahead of this curve.
If you missed the the CRM marketing automation craze, you
know, late 2000s, you know, yeah, late 2000s up to 2010,
(49:56):
eleven 12. And, you know, then it was
really in full swing. HubSpot kicking butt and, you
know, became a multi billion dollar company.
And again, I've got I've got automations running since 2008.
So can you get some automation, some agents running since 2025?
Because you know what, 5-10, fifteen years when I go by in a
hurry. So don't turn a blind eye to
(50:17):
this. I'm not saying make them don't
lie to people, don't trick people, don't make them think
they're talking to you when it'sa robot, right, when it's
digital, but use these tools to become more efficient.
I mean, it's just like a mechanic, right?
Good friend of mine, I do jujitsu with, you know, they
have power tool that pneumatic drills.
You wouldn't go there if they didn't have power tools.
(50:38):
They didn't have lifts things, you know, pump that oil like it
makes them more efficient. So for you to say no to these
types of AI tools that can help you grow, you're just crazy, OK?
You're like the shade tree mechanic.
You're treating your business asa hobby.
So find someone to help you get up to speed.
(50:59):
OK, Join my inner circle, hire aconsultant, join a mastermind,
whatever. But you got to get ahead of
that. All right, and stay tuned to
this. I don't, I may just tweak the
name of the podcast, you know, the Selling with AI podcast.
I don't know if we just put it right on top.
So just stick around, keep paying attention.
If I do make a new channel and I'll let you know, I'll do an
(51:19):
intro to that. I'll link over to it, but I'm
easy to reach. OK, check out the
salesmanfor.com. I'm using sub stack now.
I'm going to be talking about that in the coming months.
Simple, streamlined. You know, it's the same reason I
went to an iPhone years ago off of Windows Phones and all these
other things. I don't want to mess with these
tools. I want to just create.
And it's so refreshing. You know, I'll write in in a
(51:42):
markdown editor and and just copy, paste, boom, boom.
And I can paste it in the LinkedIn.
And you know, I built a tool to share all that, but I haven't
finished it. But you know, I'm eating my own
dog food. I look at things that are taking
my time, wasting my time, irritating me, and I figure out
a way to automate it. But streamlining e-mail with
berserker mail through I've beensettled.
(52:02):
Troy Broussard once simple. I want to free up my time, save
money, be more efficient, more effective, get the word out and
start doing more events, live events online, but live events
in person. So use these tools.
The world is changing. You know, SEO is changing how AI
indexes and bubbles you up get you found you've got to pay
(52:23):
attention. OK, so I'll leave you with that.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.
I'll go sell something.
So welcome to whatever this is. It's episode 722 of the Sales
podcast. Maybe the last one, maybe I just
keep rolling and rename it. But I get into this with Jeremy
and I asked him right off the bat, but Jeremy Shapiro, a good
friend of mine known for many years through the Infusionsoft
community, I've got a few guys coming back-to-back from that
space. And the reason for the
(00:22):
confusion, you know, I scheduledhim to be on for the sales
podcast. And literally in a matter of a
week or so, I'm retooling a lot of things.
I've been talking a little bit about AI and, you know, I'm
finally getting my brain wrappedaround it of how we can do this,
how mere mortals can use AI in sales and in business.
And I've always focused on solopreneurs, C2 salespeople,
(00:43):
sales managers, you know, small business owners.
Hey, do y'all use be real? You know what, I'm going to keep
going. Be real is kind of cool.
I don't think I've never I've never done an interview or an
episode of using be real. So I'm going to take a pic.
Let me look over here. So you have two minutes to take
a picture. You have to be real.
But so I got that done. So I've had these folks
scheduled, but I've been talkingwith them.
(01:05):
Like I said, I'm wrapping my brain around the realities of AI
and its potential. And just like with Infusionsoft,
HubSpot, Entreport, how to use automation in everyday life by
mere mortals without getting bound down and stuck and tied
down to onerous contracts from fat cat consultants, I'm, I'm
(01:26):
running into this with the military, talking with some
classmates of mine, Some deals could be the beginning of
something big, could be a goat rope.
But so many consultants just milking the government and it's
irritating me. I'm doing it at my alma mater
right right back there. Irritated me, so I got some
classmates up there. So we shall see Hagseth and Doge
(01:48):
and everything else efficiencies.
But you know, I digress. I'm, I'm sick of the sick
offense of the leeches in all walks of life in all industries.
And you know, I've been wrappingmy brain around things literally
for years. Like, what do I want to sell?
What do I want to go to market with?
What, what am I great at? What does the world need?
(02:10):
And I think now more than ever, they need transparency,
authenticity, all those overusedwords, right?
These people throw this stuff out there and they don't mean
it. So Jeremy, you know, he's got a
new book out. We talked about that, but I
asked him about these things andI'm going to be sharing a lot
more. So I may rename this podcast.
I may start a new one and link over to that, discuss AI and and
(02:31):
sales, because the concept is not just to be an AI geek.
It's like give me a specific tool, a specific way that you do
AI. And I already did the conclusion
for this. But I talked about, I have Jason
Benedict again, I've known him through Infusionsoft for many
years and he gives us some specific examples of what you
can do affordably to use AI right now.
So it may become like a. Daily Podcast.
(02:53):
But I just, there's so many tools out there, right?
But it's not to give you, you know, 30 minute and one hour
deep dives. It's just here's a potential,
here's something you that might interest you and something you
could deploy quickly and affordably and have a fast ROI.
I'm talking, you know, months, if not weeks or even days.
(03:14):
And because again, once you get used to building these things,
you know, the first few are going to be hard just like with
anything. But as you get some reps and it
gets easier and easier and easier.
OK, so I already had Jason on. So I interviewed Jeremy just a
couple days ago, Jason yesterday.
So I'm going to compress these at the time schedules.
(03:35):
I'm several weeks behind. You know, it's been 3 weeks in
the publishing episode, which isabnormal.
You know, I've had some gaps here and there.
You know, I didn't, I get pitched so much.
And they're all using AI, you know, they're they're using
these scraping tools and they'refinding lists and they're using
e-mail marketing and, and just cold pitching and charging a
(03:56):
premium price. OK, that's fine.
But you can do this yourself. You know, I'm seeing how for not
much money you can have your owndatabase, your own database,
your own contact locator, contact enrichment, right?
Fill in all the fields, all the relevant important fields,
social media, e-mail, phone address, whatever.
(04:18):
And then, you know, drip out 510emails a day on your own behalf
for not much money. OK, so that's why I don't do
magic tricks. I I like showing people how it's
done. That's how I've done my my CRM
sales for so many years. I would get so irritated I
(04:40):
people would come to me. They when they paid thousands of
dollars to a developer to build these complex campaigns and then
they'd hand them over without really teaching them.
And now they were beholden to use that, that developer
forever, you know, or they'd come to me and I'd unpack the
thing, show them how to use it and give it back to them.
I'm happy to work with clients for years and years and years.
(05:01):
But I want you to want to work with me, not feel like you have
to, right? Like you're.
Forced. Anyway, long intro, I'm headed
to jiu jitsu and teaching the kids class on Mondays and
Thursdays and helping out and there's some things coming out
that I discovered about that. So I'll make that announcement
once it's official. So I'll do that tomorrow.
All right, but hey, thanks for tuning in and you're in for a
(05:24):
treat. There were some issues.
You may you'll notice I'm doing this in black and white right
now, different angle got a new microphone.
I'm getting new headset probably, but I mean it I
ordered a new camera. It didn't fix the issue.
So I don't know changing lighting, changing settings,
changing auto focus, there's always something.
What are you going to do? You know, quit or you figured
(05:44):
out and push on all right. Anyway, thanks for watching.
Thanks for listening. Now let's get on to our
interview with Jeremy Shapiro. Jeremy Shapiro getting his
groove on. Author, philanthropist, serial
entrepreneur, advisor, investor,mastermind, facilitator, cyclist
and author of your business growth playbook.com.
Welcome to the sales podcast. How the heck are you?
(06:05):
Doing fantastic W thanks for inviting me on.
I'm excited to be here and long time listener of the show and
love all that the Sales Whisperer has to offer.
Man, Yeah. You know, flattery will get you
everywhere. I was looking you up, man.
It's been. I got to scroll.
I got to scroll all the way. I thought I had it pulled up.
I did have it pulled up. But then, you know, we had some
technical stuff. You were Episode 183, if memory.
(06:26):
Yeah. March 1st, 2016.
Nine plus years ago. And look at us, still here,
still kicking. Still kicking, man.
So you know, I didn't tell you this.
I was waiting to spring this on you live because I wanted I'm
like those ambush investigator reporters, right and get the
cameras recording. So this is a this is a
(06:46):
transitory transitioning kind ofpodcast and I'm going to get
your take live. OK, because I may, I may shift
my focus, my emphasis some more on AI.
So this could be like one of thelast sales podcast episodes or I
just blend it, you know, maybe do I rename it like selling with
(07:08):
AI podcast? But what's your take on AI?
We're going to get into your history.
You know what? Because we've known each other
what, 10 years? 15 years?
Through that. Infusionsoft, right?
Yeah, Yeah. So a long time.
Have you always been in San Francisco?
I mean at this point for about 20 ish years so.
OK, OK, so. For a long time I'd always call
myself like an East Coast transplant, but you know, we
(07:29):
identify as Californian. All right.
Yeah, my son's up there. He's up near the Presidio.
Oh nice, yeah, right up in it's been up there.
Gorgeous area. Since he's been up there since
2015. Oh, he travelled the world with
his school, but OK anyway, so AIman, but I'm I'm going to drop
this right on you. We didn't discuss this.
(07:50):
What's your take on it? Well, it's it.
It's here. It's here to stay.
Evolving and becoming better at at a faster rate than anyone can
really write about this. Whatever we say right now,
someone coming back and listening to this will be like,
you know, reading a 10 year old time.
Outdated, yes, yeah, yeah. And but you've known me a long
time. It takes me a minute to figure
(08:10):
stuff out, but when I do, I'm pretty damn dangerous once I
figure it out. And it literally in the last few
weeks, like I'm seeing the powerkind of like with Infusionsoft.
Back in the day I was telling mywife, you know, 2008 I stumbled
across in fuchsia soft. I was like, man, wait, what?
I can automate all like all thisstuff.
What you talking about, Willis? Willis, you remember the story
(08:32):
of when I first found those guys?
So I was at a a conference for abusiness I had at the time where
the entire back end at the entire CRM, e-mail marketing,
e-commerce, we'd all written by hand from scratch in house.
Yeah, this is a would never recommend us.
Are you? A coder like by trade.
Recovered. Recovered.
OK, so were you doing the the development?
(08:54):
Yeah and leading it? Oh, wow.
OK, Yeah. We built all that out.
So you think, you know, recurring transactions, e-mail
marketing, event registrations, up sales, sales pages, I mean
all of it we built from scratch.And at the conference I met
these two guys who just launcheda company and they're building
this thing called ACRM, which I know you talk about a fair
(09:15):
amount, right? And you know, I'm having this
conversation and I'm realizing that the entire infrastructure
of the business could be someoneelse's problem and I could just
focus on like building a business while someone else
dealt with everything under the hood.
And I love that idea. But I also realized converting
over the entire business from our home grown CRM to a third
(09:38):
party hosted software as a service CRM was not a task for
the Fanta Heart. So my commitment to them, as I
said, the next business I launched, because you know,
we're serial entrepreneurs, I said the next business I
launched, I'm launching on your CRM and that way I can just
focus on building a business. And that's exactly what we did.
And so when we launched that next business, it was built
entirely on ACRM and we could just focus on building a
(10:01):
business and that was awesome. So yeah, you and I have been
around since since the early days with them.
Yeah, technology is crazy, right?
It's good, it's bad. It's I want to, we're talking
about how this applies to your book.
I don't know what you do, but I see people, I tell people this
feels like 1995. Oh, there goes my camera. 95
(10:25):
maybe what 98 Bill Gates is coming out Windows 95 he wrote
that book about you know what's coming you know with the
Internet, how can I zoom in zoommyself if y'all are just
listening, then you're not getting Vertigo something's
going on with my camera Oh well but still to this day right 1995
(10:48):
he's saying the internet's goingto change everything and there's
still people that barely get online the iPhone comes out in
2007. I'm updating an old post.
I show people how to use text replacement.
I I literally can kick. Fan of that and on your
programs? I love it.
And dude, I, I, I, I can kick the most sales people's butts
sitting at a stop light, right, with two thumbs with my
(11:09):
predictive text. It's just not, not even
predictive text and my short codes, right?
I have BIOS, I have all of my YouTube hashtag, my cell phone,
right? Anything.
It's like you can easily type ina wrong e-mail or you can fat
finger and like, I didn't get your stuff.
Well, you fat fingered it, right?
So e-mail address, my EIN, my Tia, you know, traveling number,
(11:35):
all of it. People still don't use that
today. So there you are.
You want to change everything? Yeah, for the bleeding edge
people and those who can convey the message, which most cannot.
Yeah, yeah. And you also have to keep in
mind here as well, like in any way that AI is helping you,
right? Is it helping you to deliver the
(11:57):
message in your voice and your style trained on your material,
right? Or is it providing the average
of what everyone else is doing and a generic version of what
you're trying to do? Right.
So if you're coming out the gateand you don't have your voice,
your brand, your style, your content, how much can I help
you? Just like I'm sure you've seen
Wes at the predictive responses to your emails or text messages
(12:18):
and what not, How do those compare to your shortcuts that
you've trained that are built onthe things you want to say in
the moment? Yeah, well, my shortcuts are
just, you know. Oh, that's funny.
I sent a friend of mine an e-mail yesterday and she says,
well, did you, did you write? Is that AI?
(12:38):
And she thought it was an AI summary.
I'm like, no, I wrote that, you know, don't tell a writer is
that AI? I'm like, I'm, I'm going to come
through this phone. No, you know, but but I, I'm
seeing just so many people. I don't know, man, it feels like
it feels like just a few years ago with NFTS, you go to this,
(13:00):
you can, you need, you need a board ape, you know, like, OK,
but nobody could explain why, right?
It's just because everybody elseis doing it.
And you you saw where that went,right?
And, well, you always have your oh, go ahead.
Well, you'll always have your early adopters, right who who
get in, who can't explain why, but are going to adopt early and
that can often give you an edge or you end up jumping down a
(13:21):
rabbit hole or something that doesn't matter.
And you don't know till you get in, right?
And your your later stage early adopters get some advantage with
someone else proving the way. But as things get out there more
mass market and more for the larger audience, you know it, it
doesn't mean it's gone. But just like your example
before about there's people still not online, some people
who still don't have a smartphone.
You'll always have your folks who are just never going to
(13:42):
adopt to, you know, or adapt to whatever is coming out.
And that's not your market. That's not who you're selling
to, right. So we talk, talk about getting
out there and go sell something,right?
Your early adopters, you don't have to finish your pitch before
they say, yeah, I'm in. But the larger audience overall,
right? How do you communicate to them?
How do you dial your messaging in so you do get it out?
So do you get into that with your book because your book is
(14:04):
coming out? We're recording this end of
July, it's coming out in September, right?
So business growth playbook, howmuch does sales play into
business growth? Yeah, a lot, right?
But you and I have bookshelves full of books teaching about,
you know, sales and marketing and how to get more qualified
leads. There it is, right?
(14:28):
That's just one bookshelf. Right.
Yeah, I have like, you know, my quick access bookshelf right
behind me here, but elsewhere I'll have the bigger, larger
catalogs, right? So look, and there's so many
books on how to build your audience and do better and more
marketing and fill the funnel with qualified leads more.
That's great. So your business growth playbook
is for a business owner who already has a business, right?
(14:51):
You already have leads and salescoming in.
You figured out your messaging, right?
But what got you to where you are now isn't getting you to
where you want to go. So we look at all we can do with
your existing flow so we can increase that customer lifetime
value, right? And we can do a lot more with
what you're already doing. If you're like an early stage
(15:11):
founder or you're thinking of starting a business, there are
other books that are going to get that will get you off the
ground. All right, man, stand by.
I am having some audio difficulties.
All right, so let's see if the technology gods stick with us
and the gremlins go away. So people are crazy.
Most entrepreneurs hate sales and marketing.
It seems like they are always starting over again and again
(15:33):
and again, right? Why don't people stick with what
work do they get bored? You know what, 'cause I, I tell
people all the time it, it's hard to get started and nobody
has the time to do this stuff, at least to begin, right?
And I'm having this conversationwith all of my clients.
But I say, look at what you do two or three times a day or four
or five times a week and have a process for it and ideally
(15:53):
automate it. And I was talking to a kid last
night, a friend of my daughter's, he's getting into AI
and he's like, give me some examples.
I'm running out of ideas. And I'm like running out of
ideas. I said, OK, but here's the deal.
Everybody thinks they have to make these big nuclear bombs of
automation and I'm like, brah, that's the new.
(16:15):
That's the new. All the kids taught me that,
brah. My 11 year old said brah,
remember. When you were a.
Dad, I may not have an 11 year old soon.
But anyway, I digress. But Mike, look at the smallest,
tiniest, most tedious, nagging thing I said.
If you hear somebody say twice in a day, twice in two days,
this bothers them, go automate that.
(16:36):
Why do people make stuff so hard?
You know, it's interesting. When I look at entrepreneurs,
right, who have gotten out thereand successfully done this,
there's sort of three checkpoints I look at that tells
me you are going to be an entrepreneur, right?
The first, if you look at all ofus, where others just see things
as they are, we see the gaps, wesee the opportunities, we see
(16:56):
how something could be better, right?
Sometimes we're accused of having like that, like oh shiny
syndrome where we're distracted.That actually is what allows us
to see that gap in the marketplace and the opportunity.
So that's that first thing, right?
Others walk on by, we see what could be better.
The second thing is we see a solution, we see what we could
(17:17):
do to actually fix that. Where others might see a problem
and complain, we see a problem and create the idea for how to
solve that, right? But the third piece, this is
what tells us if you're going tobe a successful entrepreneur or
not is 1/3 is that you actually go out there and do something
about it. See, others might never see the
(17:37):
problem. Some might see the problem and
complain about it. Some might see the problem, have
an idea about it and do nothing with it.
But you as a successful entrepreneur see the problem as
an opportunity, create the solution and then go out there
and build a business on that, right?
So. Yeah.
Distractibility comes with, you know, comes with being an
(17:58):
entrepreneur, but that's why we are because we see the
opportunities. Yeah, and I'm sick of the whole
everybody's got something ADHD blah, blah, blah, overcome
trauma, like whatever. It's like, you know, one good
excuse can last you a lifetime of of mediocrity, right?
Like. I got a bucket of excuses.
(18:19):
They're all pretty grind like good grief, but it's like I was
telling this kid last night, youknow, I'm, I'm building an agent
right now to clean up my posts because I I'll write something
posted on LinkedIn. I usually start there because
I'm limited on LinkedIn. You can't, I don't want to make
(18:41):
it an article. I want to make it a post.
And so that's my shortest because I can, I can copy that
and expand it on Facebook, expand it on sub stack, expand
it on Twitter or wherever. But when you write on there.
It's. It's the markdown language, I
guess. You probably better than me.
So it adds whatever carriage returns.
So when I copy and paste it to Facebook, it adds two or three
(19:02):
returns. So now I got to go delete,
delete, delete, delete and and Iusually write one sentence in a
in two lines, you know, so not abig deal in the big scheme of
things. But if I have to go and delete
203040 returns and do that four times, I'm like it's.
Not a good use here today. That's a pain in the butt right.
So I'm like, can I let me ask ChatGPT and I'm sure Oh, you
(19:24):
should lose Claude. You should use Gemini.
What? Shut up right, use whatever, but
it so it gives me an idea. Well, now it's building a
workflow and a table for me in Notion.
So now I can take that and have the template and then blah,
blah, blah, a clone, but next, next and then give me all the
proper formatting. So I'm trying to explain that to
him. I'm like, that's this is not,
(19:46):
I'm not saving the world from global thermonuclear, you know,
destruction. I'm cleaning up some carriage
returns. But you know, I bet I can sell
that for 50 bucks. 100 bucks, I don't know. 200 bucks, you know?
It's have you ever even thought of fixing that?
What's the value of writing onceand having proper format for
(20:11):
four or five different platforms?
How much does that expand your reach?
You know, so but yeah, you can go build it if you have time.
I mean, I've, I've gotten stuck now I'm, I'm a day behind
because I have it mostly done, but then life gets in the way.
I got to do stuff. And so I'm like, go build a
bunch of those. You know, I said you're still in
an office. You got 20 people work in your
(20:31):
office. Just look.
Look at what 20 people do every day and build an agent.
You know, it's, it's funny when we talk about like the
automation of the agents, a classic problem I've seen with
business owners is, and you've probably experienced this when
working with clients on CRM on boarding, right, is they want to
jump in and automate a whole bunch of unproven stuff, right?
They want to invest all this time in building out a funnel
(20:53):
that's never had a single lead come into it and then go test
that out. They don't even know if there's
a match with the market and they're ready to build and
invest heavily in a huge fund, right?
So in the same way, you can go build out really complex fancy
agents to do things that don't actually take up that much of
your time and that there's no market for, right?
So let's, like you said, listen to what the market is looking
(21:17):
for, right? Often times I start with
ourselves. What's the gap in our own
business or in our own day and how do we optimize that?
Almost all of my businesses havebeen some spin off of of an
existing business filling a needwe had in that business or for
the same customer base where we saw the need.
Yes, yeah, Amen. You know, one of the I still
sell this campaign to Infusasoftusers for doing outbound
(21:42):
prospecting and it just tracks the call 12345 just an internal
form and it's just just radio buttons.
So you can only select one which, which call was this?
What was the outcome? You have like 5 or 6 options
left voicemail not interested needs to delay whatever.
So you come up with your optionsand then it does the whole
spider web cross referencing if this and if it was call one and
(22:05):
this outcome. Oh not interested, then remove,
you know from the sequence blah blah blah.
No answer left voicemail. OK, send e-mail #1 you know,
create task #2 make, you know, create task, call #2 in one day,
2 day, whatever. SO33 clicks, boom, boom, boom.
And it's like that saves you, let's say 5 minutes.
(22:26):
Because most people let me pull up the contact and copy the
e-mail, let me type up a. They don't even use a template.
I mean, God forbid you use a template built into Outlook,
built into Google, built into you can e-mail from, if you just
have, you can e-mail you. You're getting better.
If you have a HubSpot that templates within Google, within
Outlook, but they'll type it allfrom scratch, you know, oh, then
(22:48):
they'll forget that e-mail doesn't get sent because
something else comes in. They go back later.
Oh crap, there's a myth. Let me, oh, never mind, I won't
send that. Oh, did I mark that as complete?
Did I reschedule? You forget to reschedule, you
forget to make call #2 right? So boom, boom, boom, 3 clicks,
done. If you do that 12 times a day,
if you do that 12 times a day and say 5 minutes, I just gave
(23:09):
you back an hour of your life for the rest of your life.
And I give you 100% utilization,assuming you can click three
buttons. So for the sake of argument, I'm
going to say if somebody makes acall with that internal form,
they will click three buttons. So they will be 100%
utilization. So how many more leads do you
reach? Just run your math.
(23:30):
Those convert. But I tell people, let's say it
takes US 8 hours to build that first campaign for you because
it's all brand new and we're talking through things.
And what's the best? Should you e-mail from internal?
Should you copy and paste? Should you put?
Should we use ZAP here if we need whatever?
OK, so we build it. It takes 8 hours, but now you
save an hour a day for life. So 8 days from now, you're net,
(23:56):
you're neutral, you've regained 8 hours.
Our light it so fast. And but now the build the second
one, we can clone the first one probably, but now you're
conversing at least. So now it takes 4 hours to build
the second one and that's a 7 minute task.
And then it takes you 2 hours tobuild a third one.
The other nice thing wired to us?
(24:17):
And and then they're like, and that's, that's how I've sold so
much stuff. I just fixed these little
things. And I'm like, Oh no, you're on
your own. Go fix that thing with 87 nodes.
No, I ain't touching that API call that own HTTP POST like I
am not your guy called Jeremy. That dude's smart.
(24:38):
The other neat thing what you'retalking about there too, Wes, is
the consistency, right? I mean, you, you work with
Renegade sales teams that you know, it's a Wild West if
everyone's doing things their own way and their own statuses,
if they even track it all right.And now you've got a
consistency. Now you've got good data going
in, which gives you good data coming out it.
That's so powerful that you can't do without a good system
like. Right.
(25:00):
And I was that renegade. That's why I'm on my own, man.
I was, I was unemployable because I'm like, this is
stupid. Why do we do it this way?
Just shut up and enter it in Salesforce, then enter it in
Siebel, then enter it in Excel, then export it to APDF, then
e-mail your boss. I'm like, no.
I want to make some calls. Like I I don't get paid for
(25:22):
that. So here we are.
You remember what's the oh, the Star Trek where he games the
system and he wins. Now I got to look it up.
Are we talking TNG here? From the movie.
So they they they give all thesenew, you know, potential
officers something Maru oh, now I got to type it in the ChatGPT.
(25:46):
It's an unwinnable scenario, right?
I mean that that sounds like word games from the 80s.
Yeah, shall we play a game right?
The only solution is not to play.
All right, hold on Captain Kirk games the system to win.
What's it called the Kobayashi Maru?
Come on, man, You haven't heard of this 'cause this is with the
(26:07):
new the new Captain Kirk. Not like that dude.
I think Chris Pine, I think it'shim, but so he he gained the
system, right? So because the simulation.
So they just wanted to see how these guys handled stress, you
know, and that what is their decision making process, you
know, like, oh, this is bad. Oh, it's getting worse.
Oh, I'm going to die, You know, everybody's going to die.
(26:29):
And he's like, I don't want to lose.
So he figured out how to hack the system and he won.
So now everybody's like, how'd this guy win?
And then they're mad. They're like, well, you cheated,
you know, and he's like, I won, you know, they're.
Supposed to be. Training us to defeat the enemy
and bring our crew home alive, you know, so it's like, so I
would do that at my different companies.
(26:50):
I got to know the IT department.I, I could be BCCI bought my own
BlackBerry in the early 2000s. I could, I got notifications
instead of waiting till I got tomy room late at night.
I'm like, I'm going to win regardless of the issues and the
obstacles you put in front of me, so.
Well, this is like we see this all the time in businesses, you
(27:11):
know, dashboarding KPIs, right? Whatever key performance
indicator you put out there for your team, guess what, they are
probably going to hit that. So the question is, is it a KPI
that matters and are you OK withhitting that number no matter
what? And So what we usually find is
you is your dashboard AKPI, the team hits that and you realize
you don't like how they got that.
So you adjust it and you kind ofkeep, you know, moving the
(27:33):
levers. And the Classic 1, you know, you
and our audience I think would appreciate is on the sales side,
you tell your sales team they'vegot to hit a certain volume, a
certain number of sales. It's the next thing, you know,
say at a car dealership, your sales people are out there and
they're moving volume, taking a loss on every unit.
And so now they hit the number you wanted, they hit the volume,
but you lost money. So is that really the KPI you're
(27:54):
looking for? And this is something you know
even smaller businesses without a sales team often make the
mistake of doing. You chase a number like gross
sales or sales volume without any regard to profitability or
without any regard to customer lifetime value without looking
beyond that sale. And yet, where does sustainable
business come from? Not just pouring in you know
(28:16):
dumpsters worth of leads at the top of the funnel, but actually
optimizing and getting better atwhat comes through the funnel
and qualifying and improving what comes up at the bottom.
And then we can look at customerlifetime value and that's where
so much growth can happen. Yeah.
So here's a quick question. Thank goodness for long
standing, smart, patient, entrepreneurial friends to put
(28:40):
up with this technological. So you're going to be my last of
the sales podcast purists, my last.
You're my first on this new microphone.
You're going to be my last with the Airpods.
Everything's changing. You're bringing about change,
Jeremy. You're teaching an old dog.
How to do new tricks so? How is that?
Right, continuous, never runningimprovement.
(29:00):
Man, so why did you write this book?
Let's talk about you some more, shall we?
Your business growth playbook. Who wants a book?
It's all AI. I've got an AI widget that's
going to read your book and summarize it to me and give me
like 2 pages. So you know why?
Why not just give me an AI widget of your brain?
You know, it's funny you mentionthat because one of the things
I've been doing during this whole book publishing journey is
(29:22):
sharing the manuscript out with beta readers ahead of time,
right? I'm an.
Alpha reader don't. I'm never beta but anyway.
All right, and some alpha readers.
All right, Wes. So, yeah, we got that manuscript
out early, and it's really good when you know who your target
audience is and you give them first access, right?
We talk about MVP, getting your minimum viable product out
(29:43):
there, getting early feedback and iterating.
Well, I've been doing that sincethe earliest drafts of the
manuscript and hearing back frommy ideal reader about what's
confusing, what they love, what they want some clarity on and so
on. And so the manuscript's gotten
revised along the way. And as I've been sharing this
out, what I found is that some folks were saying, man, I love
(30:03):
this, but like, I'm a podcast person, right?
Or I'm an audio book guy. Do you have an audio version of
the book? Well, not for the first drafts,
no. But wouldn't you know, Wes?
Yeah, I can do a great job summarizing my whole book.
So, yeah, I fed the manuscript in.
I got out a wonderful, you know,notebook LM style to talk show
host banter format going over the entire book and that's
(30:26):
available free online for folks that I was getting really good
feedback from people on saying Ilove what you put together.
This book is fantastic. The audio overview of the book
is great. But for me, I'm one of those
dual path reader guys. I like to read, skim, go forward
back and move around. So I took that AI audio
transcript and fed that back in and got out my transcript of the
(30:49):
audio, which I could then read. So we took my original work
from, you know, almost 30 years of my experience working with
business owners distilled into abook.
We then got the AI audio summaryand then the AI transcription.
And so we have all these great derivative works from that
depending on the format you're looking for.
But the actual playbook I put together, Wes is can be read
(31:14):
cover to cover, right? But this really is meant to be a
playbook you crack open, go to the section you need the most.
Right now. I have indices in the back by
industry. So if you're an e-commerce
company or you're a consulting company or you're an agency,
whatever your business model is,I've got your short list of
strategies that are going to work best for you given your
business model, industry and so on.
(31:34):
So it's really giving the high level simple formulas, which you
don't need AI to summarize for you is, you know, one line
formulas you can use in your business to incrementally grow
not just revenues, but also profitability, right?
And then I give you the experiments to run in your
business because sure, AI can summarize it for you.
(31:55):
But is AI going to go test an idea in your business, make the
changes in your business, see what's working and incrementally
improve? Not quite yet.
We're getting there. But for now, you still have to
choose the strategy that makes the most sense to you that you
can try in your business. And we give you the examples of
businesses like yours, big and small, that are using the exact
(32:15):
strategies in the playbook in their business to grow the
revenues, grow the profit. And then we give you the
questions to ask yourself in your business about how to
implement that. So you can go out there and test
and MVP this and look for that little win and then repeat.
Yeah. And I think that's newbies or
amateurs or small time players. You know who you are.
(32:37):
If you struggle with this idea, if you think I only need
guaranteed stuff, like there areno guarantees.
You have to be willing to commitsome percentage of your revenue
towards testing, allocating someideas.
Now you come to old dudes like Jeremy and me to narrow those
(32:57):
down. And I got some Gray baby, the
good beard. Beard, Gray, Gray.
I got some wisdom here it looks.Good.
So you know, instead of having 100 ideas to test, you know,
we're going to help you narrow it down to three.
OK, but you got a. Testing thing I love, right?
Like, at the end of the day, it's good to hear shortcuts
about what to test, but then youstill have to test that result
(33:19):
for yourself. You know?
Years ago, Russell Brunson was putting out a book on split
tests and I contributed a numberof the tests that got published
in that book. You know, things like to use the
red, but red button or green button, Blue arrows are red.
You put the time or not the time.
You know, all this kind of stuff, right?
And the result from that, the take away isn't you should use a
red arrow, not a blue. The take away is this test
(33:41):
result didn't matter, had no impact.
This one did for me. Maybe you should test a for
yourself. Yeah, and but people don't want
to get that granular, but that'swhy you got to hire somebody.
You got to hire a coach. And you know, I've, I'm like
everyone else man. I I'd struggle Tooting my own
horns till to this day. I have always sold other stuff
(34:01):
better. I've sold a lot more software
than my own coaching services. But man, just like AI, kind of
the light has broken through theclouds of my brain and I see the
light. I see the light because I'm in a
coaching program and I had been half ass paying attention for a
(34:21):
long time in this group and I finally started focusing and the
breakthroughs came and I'm like,OK, it sounds self-serving, but
it's like hire me, hire Jeremy. Join our groups, get our emails
you but read them, listen. And if we're not resonating,
unsubscribe. But go find somebody that pushes
(34:45):
you, because this crap is all hard, you know?
And you've got to buckle down for a minute until it's maybe
not easy, but less hard. And then you'll get the
breakthroughs, you know, a few. Pieces there Wes right, like one
you're spot on, right, get the help, whether it's a book,
whether it's a coach, a consultant, a a group, right?
(35:07):
These are all valuable. Like that's that's step one.
We've all got to do that. Step 2 though, is just like you
said, start paying attention andtuning in, right?
Buying the book and putting it next to your bedside table and
never cracking it open doesn't do you any good.
Filling a bookshelf with books you've never read doesn't do you
any good, right? So Step 2 is actually show up,
pay attention, read it, take thenotes, go to the conference, and
(35:29):
so on. But the third?
And this is what actually drivesthe change, right?
We all know it comes down to implementation.
There's a there's a story many of our listeners might know it's
been reused through cultures everywhere over generations,
right? But one of the early versions
like Aesop's fables, you might say, this is, you know,
different versions even in the Bible.
(35:50):
But the version I love is Hercules and the Wagoner, right?
So for our listeners who don't know the story, there's this
this guy out with his cart and oxen pulling him along the old
road and his wagon ends up getting stuck in a rut.
He is, we use the phrase, I'm stuck in a rut.
This wagoner was literally stuckin a rut.
So he gets off the wagon and he's like, like, Hercules, come
(36:11):
help me. I'm stuck.
And he doesn't do anything. He just is like, hey, somebody
come save me. Come do something.
Come help me out. And so Hercules comes down and
he's like, what do you want me to do?
Like you haven't even done anything.
Have you even urged your oxen on?
Have you leaned your shoulder into the cart and tried to
actually get it back on the road?
Like you've done nothing except ask someone else.
Solve this for me, right? So the wagoner, you know,
(36:34):
grumpily urges his auction on and leans them into the cart.
And what do you know, like is able to push between himself and
the auction, gets the cart out of the rut by him doing
something and he's on his way, right?
And so it's not a matter of like, hey, thanks, Hercules for
doing it for me. It's the I just need to be
reminded that I've got to take some action.
So when you get that book, you get that coach, that, that
(36:55):
group, that consultant, whatever, right?
Good job signing up, good job going through and paying
attention to understanding what you're supposed to do, but
excellent job actually taking action and doing something.
That's what makes change in our business, in our lives and so
on. Implementation.
So look, a couple things. One, you know, you name drop
Aesop tails, you didn't know theKobayashi Maru.
(37:17):
So you're still, you know, kind of suspect to me.
But I mean, that's a good one. You get a little St. cred there.
But but yeah, I tell people all the time, it's literally the
answer is within, you know, a good mentor, guide, coach,
wizard, whatever you want to call us just pushes you and
holds you accountable. You know, 8 1/2 years I've
(37:38):
trained jiu jitsu, soar, beat up.
But I got buddies, I got smart people that let me show up.
Did you get better on the mat bystaying at home thinking about
it? Right.
Well, we always lie. Like, man, you've been watching
YouTube videos, huh? And, and so like when COVID hit,
right, there's this, this company called BJJ Fanatics.
(37:58):
And I had, I had been training for a few years and never bought
in their stuff, but follow them on social media, get some tips.
But they said, Hey, we're all home and I want to do my part.
Here's a here's a link for a free video pick anything.
I was like, OK, but he was a smart marketer.
Once you got your free 1, he said, hey, here's a coupon for
50% off a second one. And I'm like, you know what,
(38:19):
this dude's giving and boom, I'll, I'll buy one at 50%.
That's a good deal. So now I got 2 because I like 70
bucks apiece or something, you know, back then, five years ago.
So 70 or 100 bucks, I mean, not expensive, but not, not cheap
either. I mean, so, but I'm like, OK,
now I got two of them for 35 bucks.
And so one of them was 90 minutes long, man.
(38:41):
And. And we were just starting to get
back the. The school was just starting to
open back up, but I spent 90 minutes watching half of it.
I mean, 90 minutes to get through 45 minutes and it's
teaching just one attack. And I kid you not, I went to, I
went to a morning class, actually one of the few times I
went to a morning class. And so I'm like, hey, I want to
try something, you know, so we start in a certain position and,
(39:03):
and it says, OK, within 6 seconds, I screwed up the
technique. I'm like, stop, busted my phone
out, logged in. I'm like damn it, I spent 90
minutes studying a move and I couldn't do 6 seconds of the
move. But until you go hands on, it's
all just theoretical, right? You got to go hands on.
(39:23):
Everyone's got a plan until. They get punched in the face.
That's great. You know Napoleon says, right?
No. No plan of attack survives
engagement with the enemy, but you still plan, you know?
So yes, riding it out is fine. Thinking about it is fine.
You've got to pull the trigger and ride the bullet, you know,
(39:44):
See where it goes. Yep.
So much of that is, I mean, showing up is a big part of it,
but it's not 100% of the equation.
But you do have to show up. You do have to get in the ring.
You got to get in the ring. It's scary and but you know,
when you got somebody pushing you, supporting you, you know?
It helps. So get somebody and get your
book right, your business growthplaybook.com, that's the URL.
(40:09):
Your business growth playbook.com.
OK, And by the time people hear this, well, I'll publish this
right away, but they can pre-order and they've got what
you got some other goodies they can get now.
Yeah, so you can have that audiooverview we're talking about is
available on the site. You can also download, you know,
the first, first bit of the bookif you want to get a feel for
me. And like, who is this guy and do
(40:29):
I like his style? That's available for you, as
well as some of the goodies and bonuses.
So you can find out everything you need about the book, about
the process, the formula we use and why this playbook even
exists. And that's all at your Business
Growth Playbook. Yeah, cool.
All right, man. Well, thanks for being my last,
my first, my technical issue. I got you.
(40:50):
It's been good, brah, Been good.Brah, what's?
Not sure, you says like you know, Dada, daddy, Dad brah.
Yeah, I know it's the. Evolution from those kids, huh?
Oh, my gosh. All right, well, I'm gonna play
your grandkids for a minute and go to jujitsu and choke the life
out of some people. You know, It keeps me calm.
Attempted murder. Attempted murder keeps me calm.
(41:12):
Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to change my audio
because I think the landscapers realize we're done recording
here. Nice.
All right, Well, good point to wrap it up, Jeremy Shapiro,
thanks for coming back on the show.
Great catching up with you, man.Have a good one.
Hey, thanks for putting up with any kind of issues that may have
come through there. You can see using a different
(41:34):
angle, different lighting, goingblack and white.
I don't know what's happening. I got a new camera, still having
issues but it could be the lighting.
Could be the back. Lighting, there's always
something, but at the end of theday you got to keep pushing
through, right? It was good catching up with
Jeremy. He sent me this little blurb, so
I want to make sure I repeat it.So you know how to reach him,
right? But his his book of tried and
(41:57):
true strategies. Get it today, right?
It's called your business growthplaybook.
You can get on Amazon, your local bookstore, if you'd like a
sample of his book right now, because if you're listening to
this before September, then it'snot out yet, but he's giving you
a sample. OK.
You can get your very own complimentary growth checklist.
OK, Visit your business growth playbook dot right now for
(42:19):
Jeremy Shapiro's stuff. I had another guy on the podcast
yesterday. I'll get that published soon.
Jason Benedict. I've known him through the
Infusionsoft community for many years.
I saw him last fall, Smart guy. I am catching up on Saturday
with Partee Shaw, another guy I've known through Infusionsoft
for many, many years. Just some smart people making
(42:40):
good money, doing good business,doing good things.
But this using AI to streamline things is here and I think it's
the future. I talked about it this morning
in my inner circle, which you need to join.
OK, I have not stressed that enough and it's because I wanted
to make sure I was bringing you something new.
(43:01):
I've been studying stuff, mostlyjiu jitsu for the last several
years. Honestly, I didn't want to bring
you the same old, same old, but I see it now.
I've got some new excitement andyou know, I found this, I came
to this new vision, this new excitement, this new
enlightenment because I'm in groups, I'm in multiple groups.
(43:21):
And so I've been learning, I've been applying stuff to, to
myself, my own business, but very slowly, not as quickly as I
need it to. And you know, I'm human.
I built up savings, had residualincome, got some investments,
but it's like it's time I got, Igot 4 grandkids now and I'm not
anywhere near creating the legacy that I want to create and
leave behind. So fortunately I still feel
(43:43):
good. 55 I was talking to party this morning as we were
scheduling this call. He's like, so is this W 2 point
O? I'm like, man, this is like W 3
point O, 4 point O, maybe 5 point O, depends on when you
want to define the where does one O start and two O begin,
right. He was the military 1.0.
He was getting out of the military, jumping into sales.
(44:03):
Was that 2.0 starting my own thing in 2006 was that 3.0
branching into HubSpot and entreports away, not necessarily
away, but I mean kind of away from Infusionsoft, but but not
solely focus on them, you know, was that 4.0?
So this could be 5. I don't know.
You, you got to, you got to keeppushing, right?
(44:27):
And sometimes things are hard. I get it.
You know, I'm talking to a friend of mine I know through
the Academy, known for 35 years and going through a tough
negotiation lawsuit with some people, sold her a house and
didn't disclose the proper things.
And she was having a moment. But we talked and you know these
(44:49):
people a year ago almost, you know, July, August, 9 months ago
gave her a stupid lowball offer like 5 grand on something that
has cost her over 100 and now through attorneys and everything
else well over 100. And today they came back with
97,500 and she was still kind ofstressed and down.
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
(45:10):
You took. These.
People these, what can I say about them?
These are older people. They're people of means.
They own multiple properties. They know what's up and they
pulled a stunt on a single mom veteran.
She's still in the reserves and she's winning.
And so I tell you this, it's like it's when you're eating a
shit sandwich and taking a lot of bites without even any bread,
(45:33):
it's, it can feel daunting, but you've got to look back like in
jiu jitsu, you know it. You don't feel like you're
getting any better because the the your peer group, the guys
you're in with, you're still winning and losing the same
ratio. You're like, am I getting any
better? But then when new guys come in,
you crush them, you know, so people would say today, can you
beat yesterday's version of yourself?
(45:55):
It's like, yeah, can I beat the version of me that started this
journey in January of 2017? It with ease.
OK. So if you think you're late to
the AI game, you're not. If you think you're late to
automation, you're not. People are just that they're
they're nibbling around the edges.
Most people are distracted, disjointed, incoherent, terrible
sales messaging, looking at at 100 different things to do
(46:20):
instead of mastering 1. You know, I'm getting close to
my black belt in jiu jitsu. And I always told people like, I
thought I would know a lot more things before I got, you know,
at this level and talking with the higher blue belt or black
belts, you know, my instructors 5th degree and other ones, the
third degree. And these guys are stone cold
killers. And you know, they talk about
this like, look, you a black belt doesn't mean you've
(46:42):
mastered every single move. It means you've mastered your
moves and you can inflict your game, you can inflict your will
on your opponent regardless of their game.
And that makes sense, right? It's like like football.
You know, I played ball through high school and college and you
have your game. You know, the Air Force Academy,
we, we do that the triple option.
(47:03):
We have not changed that triple option.
And 40 plus years. So are we the best, you know,
deep passing? No.
So does that mean we're no good because we've only mastered, you
know, one offense? Well, we haven't been good
lately, but you get my point, right?
It's like, be proud of what you've mastered.
(47:25):
And, and in looking back, like when I was really making crazy
good money with ease, new money every month, new residuals every
month, I was very narrowly focused.
OK, so success is really it's more about what do you say no to
so you can focus on what you're great at.
And when you, when you focus, when you niche down, it doesn't
(47:46):
mean you can't do the other things, but it means you get to
choose when to do the other things because people will come
to you. You don't say you're a, you're a
plumber, right? You only work on single family
homes or say you only work, workon commercial.
You know, somebody calls. Oh, it's an emergency.
I don't really normally do that,but you know, yes, I am a
plumber and you know, just poured a beer and steaks coming
(48:10):
off the grill. Pay anything else you can
charge. Hey, all right, you know,
$1,000,000 yes, come you save myPersian rug, whatever, right?
Some of you can you can pick your terms, name your price.
OK, I'll come over. You know, and so being narrow in
your focus doesn't limit you frees you up.
And so trust me when I say I'm not telling you this.
I'm just I'm just talking to myself.
(48:31):
So I just let you listen in. So thank you for allowing me to
vent and get my therapy session going here.
But seriously, you know, I hope you I liked the episode.
Jeremy's a stand up dude. I am making some changes and
I'll figure it out. I'm fortunate I've got a good
role of X of people that are lining up to talk with me.
Praise the Lord. They're a bad judge of
(48:53):
character. What can I say?
But you know, I'm getting adviceand wisdom from them.
I'm asking the real questions. It's it's what I've always done.
And fortunately y'all think I'm a real dude and it comes across
and and you know, these interviews are unscripted and
I'm just curious. But I'm telling you say I stuff
(49:13):
there's again, there's a lot of noise.
It's like 199520000. The internet's going to change
everything. What does that mean?
Too many people don't get down to the specifics.
So find again, drill down, nichedown.
Find one irritating little thingyou can automate and get rid of
out of your daily, day-to-day life and you'll be much better.
(49:35):
And then you'll learn, OK, then you can build another one and
another one. If you need help, call me, call.
I'm going to have Jason on call partive.
I mean, call these guys. They'll help you.
But you want to get ahead of this curve.
If you missed the the CRM marketing automation craze, you
know, late 2000s, you know, yeah, late 2000s up to 2010,
(49:56):
eleven 12. And, you know, then it was
really in full swing. HubSpot kicking butt and, you
know, became a multi billion dollar company.
And again, I've got I've got automations running since 2008.
So can you get some automation, some agents running since 2025?
Because you know what, 5-10, fifteen years when I go by in a
hurry. So don't turn a blind eye to
(50:17):
this. I'm not saying make them don't
lie to people, don't trick people, don't make them think
they're talking to you when it'sa robot, right, when it's
digital, but use these tools to become more efficient.
I mean, it's just like a mechanic, right?
Good friend of mine, I do jujitsu with, you know, they
have power tool that pneumatic drills.
You wouldn't go there if they didn't have power tools.
(50:38):
They didn't have lifts things, you know, pump that oil like it
makes them more efficient. So for you to say no to these
types of AI tools that can help you grow, you're just crazy, OK?
You're like the shade tree mechanic.
You're treating your business asa hobby.
So find someone to help you get up to speed.
(50:59):
OK, Join my inner circle, hire aconsultant, join a mastermind,
whatever. But you got to get ahead of
that. All right, and stay tuned to
this. I don't, I may just tweak the
name of the podcast, you know, the Selling with AI podcast.
I don't know if we just put it right on top.
So just stick around, keep paying attention.
If I do make a new channel and I'll let you know, I'll do an
(51:19):
intro to that. I'll link over to it, but I'm
easy to reach. OK, check out the
salesmanfor.com. I'm using sub stack now.
I'm going to be talking about that in the coming months.
Simple, streamlined. You know, it's the same reason I
went to an iPhone years ago off of Windows Phones and all these
other things. I don't want to mess with these
tools. I want to just create.
And it's so refreshing. You know, I'll write in in a
(51:42):
markdown editor and and just copy, paste, boom, boom.
And I can paste it in the LinkedIn.
And you know, I built a tool to share all that, but I haven't
finished it. But you know, I'm eating my own
dog food. I look at things that are taking
my time, wasting my time, irritating me, and I figure out
a way to automate it. But streamlining e-mail with
berserker mail through I've beensettled.
(52:02):
Troy Broussard once simple. I want to free up my time, save
money, be more efficient, more effective, get the word out and
start doing more events, live events online, but live events
in person. So use these tools.
The world is changing. You know, SEO is changing how AI
indexes and bubbles you up get you found you've got to pay
(52:23):
attention. OK, so I'll leave you with that.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.
I'll go sell something.
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