01:16 Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm so stoked because we're hitting the topic that everyone's been talking about for a couple of years now, and that is AI. And we've got a special guest, Michael Greenberg, to give us the lowdown. Michael, who are you and what do you do?

01:32 Well, I call myself the gentleman of technology. It's a title that I made up when I joined my first seed stage startup 12 years ago, maybe 13 years ago now. And they let me choose my title, which you should never let any like 20 something year old do. So I was like, well, I'm half COO half CTO, I'm going to be the gentleman of technology. That became my personal blog and my holding company. But these days, what I do is I take that combination of operations and technology that I started with, and I consult with primarily small to mid -sized businesses in the 2 to 20, 2 to 50 million range and work with them to implement what we call digital operations. That means AI means digital tools, means SOPs and workflows, means a whole heck of a lot of automation.

02:37  Yeah. Yes, yes, agreed. And this is exactly the audience we're talking to today. Our audience is made up of a lot of people in that stage, that two to 20 that are like, hey, I launched, I'm making money, what do I do next? What do I do next? And what you do is an integral part of their ability to grow and scale. So, Michael, take it away, man. How do you approach an implementation or a relationship with somebody when they are in that mode of money making, nothing's really automated. Take us through that. What did that look like?

03:15 So first off, it's a partnership. I know a lot of service providers will say, we're partners, and we're here, and we're going to stick with you for the length of this project and not a minute longer. That's not how we work because that's not how this sort of work ends up being successful. Everything we do is not new. This is very much the digital transformation of 5, 10 years ago. It's just new technology. And so I work as I found the best way to do this on what we call managed staffing. And so that means we are actually embedding a team member and they are going to essentially join that company. They still have all the experts on our internal team. They, when they need to call somebody or bring in some extra support, it's all available and it's all part of the same retainer, but they get one primary point of contact who handles the majority of their work. And that person is always an expert operations consultant. So we embed that person, and then we know, this is where your bottleneck is. I've got a client right now. We have spent the past three months with them overhauling their sales workflow. So this is, call it like a three, three and a half million dollar a year business. They recently acquired about 40 years old. We're working with the new acquisition team to help overhaul when they bought it literally using carbon copies still.

05:02 Shut up. Are you serious? 

05:03 Dead serious. 

05:06 My kids don't even know what that is.

05:07 Carbon copy in triplicate. On -premises, self-hosted ERP.

05:14 So white, pink, and gold sheets. Probably. yeah!

05:20 with a Windows 2000 server running. 

05:22 Michael, what's going on here?

05:24 Well, it gets better. 05:27 We're in 2024.

05:28 But their CRM was a brand new Airtable custom implementation that they had done. So that was built by their marketing, their fractional CMO and team. So we took over that Airtable build. We integrated their Airtable with PandaDoc. So that way we could auto -generate the proposal from Airtable and turn that into a signable document so everything would go through Pandadoc. The ERP will not load up a production run unless it gets the verification that everything has been signed and sealed from Airtable. And now suddenly they've gone from, we're an entirely offline process, a sort of a level zero process for us, to they are now scaling an outbound sales team entirely offshore.

06:25  Love it. Love it, love it. So when you say level zero, walk us through this, because I heard you say a couple of minutes ago something about a level one, level two, like what are these levels and how do you identify where people fit? Because if you're listening to this and you are resonating with what he's talking about here, I hope you're not using triplicate. I hope none of you are using triplicate, but if you're feeling like.

06:51 I don't think many people are.

06:52 No, if you're still operating in that type of protocol and you're a three and a half million dollar company, my guess is that by the end of the year these guys are gonna be 12.

07:04 I think it's probably going to be five five and a half this year, but they're also hiring a GM. So like there it's going to be if it's five, but the owner is not running it anymore. I think he's going to be pretty happy.

07:21 Alright, so level zero, talk to us, talk to us. What are these levels you're referencing and how do people identify where they're at?

07:26 So these are the levels of digital operations. And yes, I made them up. But I guarantee they're real. So level zero, nothing in the cloud, nothing digital necessarily even. Everything is just local. There is no ability for it to share. That's zero. I would say with level zero, it's normally you have little to no process documentation as well. Level one. Yeah, let's say every look if your business is under 10 million. I will bet you $1000 you don't have good process documentation. Because.

08:12 Agree. Very founder driven, very in your head type of instinctive responses.

08:21 Unless you've hired somebody like me before, I've never seen a business have those things. So that's level zero. Nothing talks to each other. Everything's local. Can't really share information and nothing's well documented. Level one is everything is now, or at least four level one processes, things are now in the cloud. So you can do everything not necessarily from anywhere, but from most places, and all your data is accessible.Level two is we take those silos that we have of data and we start connecting them. So we make sure that everything can talk to each other and we're even able to potentially make some connections between tools. But even at level two, your processes aren't well documented enough. And because of the lack of documentation in processes and the way your information is not connected yet, it is very difficult for you to do something as simple as automating because you're unable to pass the data along effectively. And you probably don't have the documentation like with the client I was talking about before. We spent about 150 hours with them building and redesigning their sales workflow. And of that time 60 hours was spent in interviews and workflow design, like saying, OK, we are going to do this thing, then this thing, and it's going to be this way. And so people really underestimate the investment in setting up a process effectively like that.

10:29 captainscouncil.com

12:05 Yeah. I love it though, I love it though. And for those of you listening, like this is something you absolutely have to do. Like even if it's just a simple whiteboard layout of, okay, my client goes from here to here to here, they sign up and then we do this, we do that, we do that. Like you just have to build it and look at it and say, does this, what kind of friction points do we have, right?

12:29 They're so easy to see once you, the deeper we go, the more detailed we get, the easier it is for everyone to be like, we very clearly see what is wrong with this. And it's just cause nobody sat down and done this with you which allows us to get to level three. In order to get to level three, we gotta do those interviews. We gotta get that mapping done. Because level three is a unified data layer. It's a single point of truth. So we know all your customer data is in the CRM or directly accessible from it. When we have that Airtable CRM, it has a linked record to the ERP. So that way we know this client record, this deal record.This production record means this shipment all the way through. Without that, we cannot do any real automation in a business.

13:26 Totally. Totally. There's no doubt. You can't automate what you don't have systematized and you can't repeat and you can't train someone without a system to train them on. Right? 

13:39 Exactly.

13:40 I mean, it's just like, it all compounds off of the same fact. When you brought up that company, it makes so much sense for people in that same size range to think, okay, if I wanted to go on vacation for a month, could I? Could people replicate what I do on a daily? And if not, start whiteboarding and mapping and doing what you're talking about. I love it.

14:04 So level three, unified data layer. Level four, we finally get out of data. Level four is that workflow where we have the automated panda docs, where everything sort of works one to the other. Level four is automated with a human in the loop. So we have started to minimize the amount a human has to do, but there's very specific spots where, the sales guy does have to go in and type in every measurement and then confirm them and then hit, okay, this is good to go. And then that is going to trigger the proposal being made. That is where most people stop at this point. Generally, we'll take a workflow from like a zero or a one or two and we'll get it to four. Four is amazing.

14:57  But with this level four, yeah, I was gonna say with this level four, you really can start operating and seeing growth patterns in your business that will get you probably at least to the 10 million mark. Was that fair?

15:11 I think so. Level four, we're going to see 2 % to 300 % return in the next year on the automation. And we're going to see, generally, you're going to see a 30 % to 40 % either capacity increase or time to completion, depending on the type of workflow, how we measure that output and success rate. Or for a company like this, it meant they have no more mistakes on their POs, and every client is signing off on it. And so that $20 ,000 return they had last year can't happen again. And they have a process that they can now hire offshore for. So an $80,000 a year onshore rep can be moved to a $30 ,000 a year offshore rep. And those savings.

16:03 And that does not happen without processes and tools.

16:07 No, we knew when we started the process with them months ago that our end state vision was an offshore business development team. And we built with that in mind every step of the way.

16:21 Love it, love it. And just as a professional BPO guy myself, having done this since 2006, if your processes aren't dialed in and you've never done a business process outsource mapping like he's referring to, you absolutely have to and do it with someone who knows how to do it. Guys like Michael are literally lifesavers for most people because he understands as do I that until you can map each step, and hand it off to someone and say, okay, can you do this? Even if they don't do it awesome, can they do it? They get better at it the more you can work with them, but you can't pass it off without that kind of documentation, systems, and tools.

17:09 Pretty much every client that we work with runs the same. And if you're not working with us, you are going to use the exact same process with anyone you work with inside of operations. You're going to sit down for a strategy meeting. You're going to figure out some sort of department level set of bottlenecks. That's going to allow you to document workflows and audit their tools which is then going to allow you to figure out which of these things is actually the solution. And then you're going to implement it. And it really is like that simple. It's, what tools do you use? Do they talk with each other? I notice your CRM can't talk with your project management software. Here are your options to change them.

18:02 Right. Right, right, right. And you know, it's funny you show this because I was literally in a meeting today with 15 or 20 other CEOs talking about AI. And what it takes to implement an AI solution is you've got to be at a level four or higher to actually implement something to execute it, right?

18:27 Well, that's level five. So.

18:28 I took the bait, Michael, I took it.

18:29 Level four, we stop there because we've got to sit there for six to 12 months with most processes. In order for us to get enough AI to go past level four, we have to already have the data structured and set out in a way that we can use it to build a more complex AI system. And that's why we stop at level four in most cases, because it's literally, we're going to revisit this in nine months. When we have 500 runs of this process, we're going to have the data we need to be able to make an AI to replace these three more steps in the process. And then a human just approves it at the end. That's, I think that's where most people go wrong with AI if we want to sort of take a shift there.

19:34 I love it, I totally agree with you. And it's funny, when I first started doing this podcast, it was right at the beginning of COVID, and I interviewed 250 people and found that in almost every case, when I asked them about their biggest challenge in their growth journey, it was almost always people, processes, and tools. And what you're trying to solve are all three of those things and trying to identify systems, processes, mechanisms of automating that. And it really is the universal growth mechanism is that people process tools problem. And so looking at your own business, Michael, and looking at the way that you operate, what have you done specifically in your business to like, looking back on your growth, can you pinpoint two or three things that kind of were key decisions you made to ramp you up?

20:22 Yeah. So first off, we're a knowledge based business. The reason a client buys and contracts through us instead of contracting with somebody similar directly is because we have a business's worth of knowledge for our team to pull from and they have access to those experts. That doesn't always mean the expert's still there, but it does mean rule number one. ABR, always be recording. Every document of architecture we have made for a client is recorded and version controlled. So we can see the evolution of that project. Every time we complete something, we create a mini case study. We document a template. Every call we have with a client is recorded. Every internal call we have is recorded. So that allows us to surface and contain so much more to then share with team members. So that's number one. Just today, the team was like, we don't have a great template for this thing. And I'm like, we do. We made it a year and a half ago. You guys have just never seen it before because it hasn't come up. Here it is. So that's number one. Number two is we do AI training. The first two weeks of a new team member is what we call the crucible. And so they're generally going through a bunch of courses, and they're upskilling themselves quickly and publishing notes. And then sometime during that second week, they start getting onboarded to the actual team and clients. And so that allows me, every team member who comes in knows the same base level of information about some of these tools. Every one of them knows how to use chatGPT. Every one of them knows how to use Claude. Everyone knows how and when to choose Claude over chatGPT or vice versa. And having that basic level of education, not only in AI, but in automation and in operations lets us communicate and scale more effectively.

22:55  I love it, love it. This has been really fun. So as you've been able to implement your own processes into your business, you've seen it grow exponentially. What kind of surprises have you seen that maybe the challenges that you weren't anticipating, as I'm hearing you, I'm guessing you've got a certain level of your business offshore, you've got a certain level onshore. How is that integration going for you and have you run into problems that you weren't? Really anticipating.

23:27 So I've been running like global remote teams for my entire career. So I'm coming up on like, gosh, I'm coming up on more years than I'd like to share. But let's say it's over 10. And I as a result, like, I think one of the big advantages at least that I bring to all my businesses is that sort of geo arbitrage. We do a little better job hiring, I think than other people, especially offshore. And that is I don't quite understand why. But it ends up being, we don't really distinguish between onshore and offshore. The salaries are actually pretty similar for the roles I'm hiring for. Like, I'm not hiring somebody in San Francisco. I'm not hiring somebody in New York. But we have team members in Denver and we have team members in Beirut and we have team members in Poland and we have team members in South Africa and all over and that but we pay very competitively, right? Like when I'm hiring somebody outside of the US, we are one of the highest paying jobs in the region. And when we're hiring somebody in the US, we're just average but we're fully remote and have a good culture and a clear path for you to grow in the business, which most remote teams don't. Like I can tell any team member, actually, this is the real advantage. Any team member that joins my company knows how they can get a significant raise every year. And when I say significant, I mean 20 to 30% minimum. They know, okay, this is the set of actions I need to get to the next level of my career and I can choose to take them or not. And my boss is gonna support me either way. So I'd say we're just a better place to work offshore.

25:46 Love it, love it. That's very cool stuff. Yeah, that's great. And for those of you who are looking to hire Offshore, I will tell you from personal experience along with Michael here that you do get what you pay for and you can be picky. A lot of people just take their first referral of someone that wants to work for them and they take them and think that they're gonna be able to do everything. And that's not the case. Everyone's a specialist. You don't need generalists. And as you get the specialist, no matter where they're at, Beirut, South Africa, wherever you're coming from, you've got to qualify them for the specific role that you want them for. So I love that. Very, very clear advice there, Michael. Thank you.

26:32 I use LinkedIn jobs is my other advice. Like you get really good candidates from there. And we're like our average hire has a master's degree and like four to five years experience. And so it's a very white collar job and we get LinkedIn jobs is our most successful spot.

26:51 Very cool, very cool. Well, Michael, tell me, you know, I rarely have someone on the show who doesn't have a person, a team, a group, a whoever that they lean on for a lot of their strategy or a lot of their, just kind of there to bounce ideas off of. Do you have someone you want to give a shout out to today that's been there for you?

27:14 Yeah, I think I'm going to I'm going to shout out my mastermind. I've I've been in a community called the dynamite circle for many years now and they provide masterminds is like one of the services. And this is my third mastermind through them. And they're they're super cool guys like they have older.

27:39 What do you get out of it? Why is this so cool for you?

27:41 Well, there's just, we've shrunk a bit over the past couple years, the group, but so there's just three of us in it now. We all have very different businesses. They both have location dependent businesses, like they cannot move their business. And they both have businesses that are like 10 years older than mine in B2C services. So totally different business, whereas I only do B2B, I'm like, My business is just two years old. We're growing faster. Like we are mature businesses. We're just hanging out. And so we get to, there's a lot of good stuff we can share. We're like, they're just moving some jobs offshore and I'm just figuring out how I set up my performance reviews. And that's a great trade.

28:34 Love it, love it. That is a great trade. That is a fantastic group. And for those listening, if you don't have a group like that, you need one because there is so much value in talking to other active operators that you just don't get from a consultant or from someone who's not actively engaged in operating a business. Like you just, the environment changes, everything shifts, and what are they doing? How are they handling that? It's so good to get that advice from someone currently operating their business. So very cool stuff.

29:04 Thanks. Yeah, I love it. I think everyone should have a mastermind of some sort.

29:10 Thank you for sharing. Michael, this has been a fantastic conversation. And honestly, for those of you listening, I highly encourage you to check out Michael and his services because if you're not implementing AI into your outreach, especially in your marketing outreach and things like that, you really are missing the boat. And if you have other executable operational things that you do on a regular basis, talk to someone like Michael who can help you plug that into something incredible and automate even more the things that you're doing.

29:42 Yeah, we didn't even touch on automated outreach processes. That could be a whole episode in itself. Save that for next time.

29:50  That is a panel discussion. Let's do that on the lives, man, because that's one of my favorite things to automate. So I think we'll have a fun discussion on that.

29:52 I'm like, I've got two full -time team members on a dedicated team that all they do is set up custom CRMs and outreach processes. It's one of my favorite things.

30:10 I love it. I love it. Well, Michael, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. And for those listening, go reach out to Michael. He's on LinkedIn. His contact info and company info are in the show notes here. And we appreciate you being here today. Thank you.

30:28 Thank you for having me on.