Tech Chaos to Cash Flow: Mastering Digital Tools for Entrepreneurial Success

[00:00:00] Welcome to this Podder Palooza special. Actually, today I'm joined by one of the amazing VIP guests that are part of the Podder Palooza podcast virtual fest and I'm here with Martin Ricketts, who is actually in Toronto. He's got a company called Digital Samurai. He's going to help

[00:00:20] us with recurring revenue and how to monetize your story and how to overcome those problems. I guess in your case, how to fight those challenges, Martin, that keep entrepreneurs locked to the desk. Martin, welcome to the show. Martin Ricketts Thanks a lot, Jim. Nice to be here.

[00:00:38] Jim Iuorio Look, it's great to have you here and I know with the Podder Palooza ladies, they want to keep us very tight to schedule. Explain for my fellow UnNoticed Entrepreneurs what you do, Martin, and how you do it. Martin Ricketts Yeah. Well, Digital Samurai builds end-to-end

[00:00:53] marketing and technology solutions that bridge the gap between what technology can do and how it's actually used. For example, AI is a great powerful tool, but only if you ask it the right questions. Right? So being able to come up with what we call the last mile problems,

[00:01:11] the difference between how you do something and the best practices around that, that's what we help companies with. And one of the first things we do is solve a problem which most people don't know they have. We call it technology chaos. That's any friction between

[00:01:26] you and your data, you and your team, I can't find this file, the link didn't work, I can't play the video. That's technology chaos. We solve that first by using standardized tools and tactics, best practices that we teach you so that you don't have to think of that.

[00:01:41] And that's really important because what you really want to do is you want to create automation and systems such that you can focus on revenue generating activities and not on all the problems in the minutia. You want to be talking about the video strategy,

[00:01:56] not how to get the video. Right? Martin, you have to see right in my experience as well. And I think statistics show that CEOs, especially of SMEs where you don't have departmental heads, spend up to 40 to 50% of the time just solving the problems for their team.

[00:02:13] I know when I had my team in Singapore and China, most of my time we set up simple things like getting the internet to work, getting the mobile phone data to synchronize with the database

[00:02:25] on the SaaS for example. So as we get into more and more scale, we need more and more tech, don't we? That's right. You talk about standardized products and solutions. It's about it. Help

[00:02:38] us there because the last thing entrepreneurs want to do is spend a lot of money on buying what we used to call middleware, apps that would glue apps together so that you could help them all to

[00:02:50] work. How do you get that to be done economically from? One of the first things I teach people is tactics matter more than tools. People get excited about this app and that new thing and

[00:03:02] that new thing. How you use the tools is way more important than which tool to use. You ask a miner or someone works in those industries construction, they're kidding. The tool doesn't

[00:03:13] matter at all. They'll tell you. And so we really focus on the best practices on how to use the tools, templates and other systems that make it so that you don't have to figure it out. We

[00:03:25] use 12 very specific programs. We use very specific tools in very specific ways so that you don't have to figure it out. And it's more important that all of these things work as a

[00:03:35] harmonious system where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts rather than, oh, this new shiny object or that one. So for instance, for communications, we have what do we call it?

[00:03:45] The doctrine of one, the one solution strategy, which is one place for communication and it's not email. So in our team, we don't use email for communication because it's not a good communication tool. Right? So we use WhatsApp and WhatsApp desktop because it plays well with

[00:04:04] others for managing information. We use Google keep because keep is really good at capturing information coming into your digital world, archiving it, retrieving it will and sharing and collaborating effortlessly. And it's really good for this, Jim, because it's very few steps

[00:04:21] two or three steps and you can capture that information and ideas are organic. You're out and about your in the park, you're waiting for the elevator. You want to be able to capture ideas

[00:04:31] which you can then turn into strategies and content because as you know, as the founders of the entrepreneur, that's your primary job to come up with value and talking points and strategies that articulate what your value proposition is. That is a higher cognitive

[00:04:47] value pursuit. And the only way you can do that if the friction to coming up with those ideas is minimized. And so we really focus in on that. Martin, and I think you're absolutely hit on something there's the role of the CEO and the

[00:05:00] entrepreneur to find those opportunities to capture them and to share them. How do you then help the entrepreneur to spread that message because you've mentioned capturing using Google keep. But my experience of running cross cultural teams, I had offices

[00:05:21] in Singapore, China and India at one stage was I could put the information into the system. But it didn't necessarily mean that everybody accessed it or that people knew what to do with it because people in different departments or different levels of experience would handle

[00:05:40] information differently. So you want to just take us through once you've sort of maybe got ideas and content into the systems. How are you helping that information to filtrate into the people that need to do it and to take action with that?

[00:05:56] Well, one of the things we really want to stress is that first you want to get your systems in order and your processes before you start doing the other work. Because if you don't there'll be a lot of chaos and friction and we're obsessed about taking friction

[00:06:12] out of these processes. Once you've done that then you can focus on building your brand and your message. And as an entrepreneur you have to really think about this. Are you chasing leads or are

[00:06:23] you building a brand? Chasing leads is what everyone does at the beginning, right? You get email opt-ins and you try to sell to people. But the thing is most of those leads don't

[00:06:33] pan out in real estate it can be up to 90% of them don't pan out. So you're spending most of your time doing things that aren't going to convert. Whereas if you spend most of your time

[00:06:42] creating content and putting it and deploying it out there. Now that might be you do a podcast like this or you do a zoom call then you chop that up and you deploy it in social media, right?

[00:06:52] But first you have to have the systems in place to make that frictionless so that can effortlessly be done. And that's about outsourcing and all that kind of stuff. But then it's about consistently deploying your message in such a way that people can get

[00:07:05] to know, like and trust you and opt in for whatever it is you're selling them. And so that process is a process over time. It takes time to build the muscles to do that, to put the content out

[00:07:18] there to get people interested in that such that they recognize your brand and they were then going to interact with you. So it's really this kind of three-step process. First you have

[00:07:27] to fix the tech and make the friction out of it. Then you have to start coming up with what is your message and your offer and your talking points and all of that. And that's an

[00:07:35] ongoing process. It evolves as you see how people are responding to your message, right? Here at the beginning, our tagline is do work your love so you can monetize your story and design a future you love. Do work your love and monetize your story, design your future.

[00:07:52] That's evolved over the last seven years based on what people said. But really, isn't that what everyone wants to do? Work their love, make money doing it and have a freedom lifestyle. Right? Yeah, Martin, I think if you love what you do then it doesn't really feel like

[00:08:07] work doesn't be... Let me just ask you a question though about control because you've mentioned about the content coming to the system and then have the messaging. As you know, one of the issues is about keeping consistency in an organization

[00:08:28] of information. Later on I'm going to ask you about security because that's another big issue we need to talk about. Let's just talk about consistency across an organization. How with your systems are you ensuring that everybody is getting the final version for example?

[00:08:45] That's a really good question. One of the things we teach people to do is use Google workspace to its advantage. Google has the best collaboration and security tools out there. Microsoft's are great

[00:08:58] and all that as well but Google because they also own search and YouTube that integrates really well. So one of the most important things you can do instead of using PDFs internally or

[00:09:10] even for clients, use a Google doc with a dynamic link because not just the doc but also a Google sites which is websites, Google slides which is like PowerPoint. We use these and we use the

[00:09:24] dynamic links with them so that there's only one document. So when you put that document out it doesn't matter who's got it, you can make changes to it and there's a little trick that

[00:09:35] I do when you take your Google doc, you can go into the sharing and pick the link and then if you edit the end of the URL that says edit and you change it to preview,

[00:09:44] it'll hide all the stuff on there and it looks just like a PDF. They can't change it, there's no controls but then you share that and in fact you can shorten that with bitly

[00:09:54] and make it customize the whatever but the key thing is you share that with your proposal, your MOU, whatever it is and you send that out. You can make changes to it after

[00:10:03] you've sent it. So in fact they're not going to look at it the first time anyway so you can continue to automate and change that. Internally that means that there's only one sales document, there's only one talking points document and that consistently gets updated. For our notes

[00:10:19] we use Google keep in the same way, keep notes can be shared with whoever is using them and there's only one note for your talking points and when that gets updated everyone immediately

[00:10:28] has all of the talking points. So instead of using files like PDFs and PNGs and things for your internal stuff and for marketing, use these dynamic links, dynamic documents, dynamic slides so that there's only one of them and it automatically gets updated for everyone who has it.

[00:10:46] That's a really important thing to do and it saves a lot of challenges with version numbers and all that other stuff that you have to put up with. Well that's what I was going to say because what you have to do is otherwise do version

[00:10:57] one, version 1.1 especially with press releases for example you used to have to do this with clients. Martin you're plainly a Google advocate. I'm going to ask you about security next because Google, I personally don't like Google just because I feel like I can't understand

[00:11:16] why I have to use this Gmail account and I can't use my company name and I sort of feel like it's all too open and they just, maybe because I'm a Mac person. I don't know.

[00:11:27] Well it could be fine we do both but I will say businesses should use Google workspace that's the enterprise level one with enterprise level security and controls right and you don't necessarily have that with just the regular free Gmail account so you want to use the Google

[00:11:42] workspace first of all then you can use your own domains like our domain is monetizeyourstory.info that's a Google website but with our domain same with our email stuff so it's really important to use

[00:11:54] the pay version Google workspace now it's called you speak G Suite rather than just the regular Google. Okay Martin yeah that's so that's so from a security and also compliance and branding

[00:12:08] point of view you can still look like a proper company in the eyes of your client by using Google. Martin it would be remiss of me not to ask about AI because obviously it's hitting us all

[00:12:22] what's your view on AI when it comes to information and you know automation which I know is a big part of what you're helping people to do as well yeah what should we do should we use it should we

[00:12:36] lose it should we bury our heads in the sand. I just did a post about this the other day because I was talking to a writer and he said AI isn't isn't good enough for writing right now and

[00:12:46] there's a number of people heard have said that it's not up to the standard of the writing guild I don't know what the writing but whatever that is and while that may be the case

[00:12:56] there is a lot of things that AI can do right now that are incredibly valuable for entrepreneurs there's three things that I would talk about first one is summarization and now the current version of chat gpt although Microsoft version does it as well they're co-pilot and Google's Gemini

[00:13:12] you can take a hundred page document and summarize that and you know summarizing is very hard to do for humans so it's exceedingly good at summarization and then you don't have to deal with the

[00:13:24] things of other people's stuff or plagiarization or anything it's your words so it's very very good at summarizing them that's the first thing second one is structuring I was on a zoom

[00:13:35] call the other day and network and call and you know we saved the chat with all the contact info but if you've looked at those text files it's a mess of stuff so I used the prompt to get chat gpt

[00:13:48] to restructure the text file from the zoom into a spreadsheet and it did it with the name and email columns and phone number and all of that again the devil's in the details and what

[00:14:01] prompt to ask it but restructuring things into spreadsheets into words into code super good at that really really good at that and then the third thing is creating video scripts so if you want to

[00:14:14] create a video you need the narration you need the b-roll uh so you can take some copy that you might have done or talk you might have done and then you can convert that into a video script

[00:14:25] where the ai's gonna suggest the b-roll that you use it's going to show you you know here's what it says is going to open the scene with the sun rising and the farmer walking down there

[00:14:34] we did one like that and then you can take that script and use a program like um 11 labs to create an ai voice over for it or hey jen to create uh an avatar with a voice and you know I'll say

[00:14:49] to people because Jim some people say oh aight isn't that great first of all it's the worst it's ever gonna be it will be unmistakable from humans in a matter of time a year two years whatever

[00:15:00] it is yeah so now it's the time to get into using some of these things and getting used to it but especially if it's for onboarding or internal training it doesn't matter so much and I'll

[00:15:10] say to people compared to what the ai avatars now look very good the voices are excellent and especially when you compare it to a pdf right you're going to get more conversion

[00:15:22] with a video with rich media and talking than you will with the pdf and so the ai tools are really useful for creating videos where you can create the script create the auto create the video with it

[00:15:34] and you can do it a much less time and cost than it would have been so allows you to create for instance an onboard program so maybe you have a talk that you do but now you can create an

[00:15:43] online program that doesn't require you to do the talk and you can make money from that now you've got a recurring revenue stream yeah watching raps you right and tools like synthesea for example

[00:15:54] are doing amazing work yeah i will say hey jen's better than synthesea okay cheaper and you get it's got more i use synthesea first hey jen's cheaper and better so yeah and there's ddi labs

[00:16:05] i mean we're we're sport for choice right and people like d script just come out of the new season six which has got some amazing uh audio to video and so audio voiceover especially

[00:16:17] are exceedingly good now i will say this there's a thing you know um someone just mentioning uh twain said i didn't have time to write your short later so i wrote you a long one yeah it takes time

[00:16:28] to do the shorter more succinct stuff what i'm saying is correct the ai stuff don't just generate the copy and leave it you have to tweak it after it generates it same with the voices because

[00:16:39] the ai voices make inflection mistakes and contextual mistakes for the for the subtitles so you need to fix that stuff right because those are what makes it really noticeable especially the inflection mistakes and ai voices so redo it retweak it uh 11 labs allows you to tweak the

[00:16:55] the um parameters on the voice so don't just put something out there and and you know leave it people are lazy they've done that you know from time immorium so it's not just with the ai

[00:17:05] tools whatever you do the polishing is the most important part and quite frankly it's the one that takes you the most time but if the video would have taken you you know through a week to do

[00:17:16] you can do it in a few days and most of that time will be you tweaking it because the ai part might take an afternoon right but it's the tweaking and the polishing part that only you can do

[00:17:27] and you need to do that it still overall will take you less time but it's critically important to do that polishing so you don't get these ai artifacts yeah martin martin rickett's

[00:17:37] digital samurai i can see now why people are coming to you for advice on their tech and getting all to work in and sounds like you're putting in some very if you like um practical and accessible

[00:17:49] tools like google suite but also staying abreast of the ai as well and what it means for people martin if people want to get hold of you where can they do that yeah thanks jim you can go to

[00:18:02] monetizeyourstory.info and there's a contact us request in there and we'll send you some micro lessons we have these targeted lessons on things like ai like voice typing uh that we can

[00:18:14] send you that um you'll get instant wins from you'll get to see some of the best practices that we use martin ricketts i know we've got a pot of pelusa timeline they've given us just 20 minutes

[00:18:26] today so i think we could have carried on this conversation for long but thank you for joining me that'd be great that'd be wonderful thank you martin ricketts joining me originally actually

[00:18:35] is from lewish i'm in the uk that's right yeah but he has abandoned ship and moved to canada so thank you martin for joining me and thank you for joining martin and i on this pot of

[00:18:48] pelusa podcast special my name's jim james and until we meet again remind you just to give a quick review if you can on the player share this with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur because we don't want to let anybody go unnoticed and until we meet again keep on communicating