When Two Podcasts Collide: Technology Decision Making with the Other Anthony | Biz Bites Crossover Episode

When two podcasts collide technology decision making with the other Anthony Biz Bites crossover episode, like you’ve never seen thought leaders, are you making smart technology decisions for your business? In today’s special crossover episode of Biz Bites, I’m joined by Anthony McMahon, the host of the other Biz by.

His is B-Y-T-E-S, and mine is Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. And we’re gonna explore how businesses can avoid costly technology mistakes. Discover why implementing systems without examining your processes first leads to bad outcomes faster, and how to. Being sold features you don’t need and why The human element remains critical in your increasingly digital world.

Get ready for some practical insights that will help you make technology investments that truly serve your business goals rather than creating new problems. Stay tuned for this, a very special episode of Biz Bites. Four four liters with two Anthonys.

Hello everyone and welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Now I’m gonna emphasize the four thought leaders for a really particular point. Some of you pointed out to me. And in one or two, actually it took a little bit that there is actually another Biz Bytes podcast out there and the host is also named Anthony.

So lo and behold, we’ve met each other and we thought we’ve gotta do a podcast together. Anthony from Biz Bytes. I’m Anthony from Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Meet Anthony from Biz Bytes for meet Anthony from just straight biz bytes. So here we go. Let’s have a bit of fun. Anthony, welcome to my program.

Thank you very much Anthony. And I was thinking before about how our listeners could tell us apart as we are talking, and I guess the difference is I’m a kiwi. If you’re an Australian, we’ve got a slightly different accent. If the pronunciation just sounds a little bit forced, it’s probably me.

And if it’s a little bit longer on the vowels, it’s probably you. But thank you for being here and it’s great to be here.

It’s an absolute pleasure and we’re gonna have some fun. And I think on the back of that, we should say that any international listeners who are going, I can’t tell the difference between the Australian and the Kiwi accent.

Now you’re in real trouble. Try and work it out. Good luck. There’s a, I think it’s quite funny, isn’t it? Because for us there’s a huge difference in the. You can and I’ve got a lot of friends who are South African and that’s quite different. But I know the Kiwi accent often gets confused with the South African accent, yet it sounds completely different to

me.

Yeah, I agreed and I hear it all the time of particularly at the American side, if you’re talking to anyone in that market where they go, oh where are you from? Because I can’t pick your accent. It’s like I can tell an Australian accent a mile away. South African’s even, that’s even more distinct for me as well, just like you’re saying.

But yeah, a Kiwi accent. We don’t have one as far as I’m concerned.

Yeah, I don’t have one either. Yeah. So good luck everyone. Firstly, let’s just start off and say we’ve established the fact that we both have, interestingly enough, have podcasts called biz Bytes at its base but quite different audience.

And I should say your podcast is spelt with a Y in the Bites. Mine is with an I just to be different. That’s, is that the Australian and New Zealand accent? I dunno. But but look, why don’t you do the first thing and do a bit of an introduction to the to the audience and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, look, thanks.

Thanks for that, Anthony. And yes, there is that distinction with a why bites of the why. And the reason for that is my podcast has a slight technology theme to it. So I’m just gonna go through the journey of how I got to that podcast and where it’s come from.

I my background is technology and working with businesses to help them make smarter technology decisions and help ’em improve efficiency and just get better at being business by doing better things with technology. And. I have been doing that for, since about 2018. Prior to that, I was working for one of the large corporates here in New Zealand, one of the large banks.

And I took all those skills to go out to a small and medium market for us as well. And with biz Bytes, what I wanted to establish was a channel where I was having good conversations with business people, with people, not just business people, but with people about tech. And it’s been an interesting one because I was reflecting on this yesterday.

It’s been going for. Over five years now. We started in 2020. When I started it, I had a plan to meet a lot of people in person and record episodes. And then the pandemic came up and i’ve been recording through COVID and been doing a lot of remote recording ever since. But the idea of Biz of My Biz Bytes channel at least is a, it’s a show for people who want their technology investments around their business to work and to learn how they could be fixing and doing things differently to get a better outcome for their business.

Beyond that. I’m a Kiwi, so I’m a tragic rugby supporter. Just coming to grips with the fact of, we’re halfway through another rugby season and we’re about to start the international series. But my, my, I’m originally from Wellington, so the team I support is the hurricanes. And now I live in Auckland where I begrudgingly also support the blues, which is very hard for anyone who’s not from New Zealand to appreciate how hard it is to get behind an Auckland rugby team.

But I have two kids two young kids who are both blues fans. So I help them out when they need more support.

I love it. Just to confuse everyone, I am much more of a rugby league fan can’t tell you too much about Rugby Union, to be honest. But don’t ke I don’t keep too updated with it.

But certainly the New Zealand Warriors, on the other hand, can tell you a little bit about them. Enjoy watching them play. Isn’t it up the wires these days? Isn’t that the, that the big thing up, the wa

Yep. That’s, that came about and I heard yesterday they’ve played on the up the Waz with they’ve got the NRL women’s team now, which is the Warriors still.

But they’ve, someone referred to them as the wni Wahine being a Maori word for women anyway. So they, they’re playing on the up the wires into that as well, which is very clever, very good marketing.

I’d have to say when I first heard, when I first heard that and this talk about, here we are getting our two podcasts confused.

When I first heard up, the was, I thought they were talking about, strangely enough, as someone who is not a rugby union fan, I immediately thought of the wars being the New South Wales rugby Union team. So I thought it was about them, and that turns out it was at all. So it’s it just gets you very confused when they do all of these things.

But no, it’s been very secure. Been very successful. But I’m fascinated about the technology side of things and let’s just talk a little bit about that because it is it’s a space. And we’ve had some discussions on this podcast as well about technology, but really from a point of view of thought leaders and how they actually utilize it and the.

The need to utilize it. And where do you draw those lines in? It’s, I think it’s channeling that from a what is a must do versus I’m being peer pressured into doing stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s a really good point. Actually, just before this call, I was talking to a, another client of mine from a technology side.

They are, they’re not-for-profit, so they’re in an interesting position. But they. Have estimated that with one supplier alone, they’re spending about 300 grand a year in tech. And part of that’s happened inorganically the organization’s growing and with it, their tech spend is growing as well.

But they’re now starting to ask good questions around whether that supply is actually one is right for them, whether they’re getting the right spend and whether they’re even getting the right service from that particular vendor, but also looking across their entire technology landscape.

It’s not just, the vendor side of it, but looking across everything and saying Where is it we could be going and what do we need to be thinking about differently to, to improve our organization and to maybe cut some cost out of what we do as well? I talk about and I’ve got one bubbling away as an episode that I’m gonna be recording, but I talk about technology as not about systems.

It’s about people, process and systems. Systems just happen to be that tool that you use to, to deliver processes and that people used to do their job. And I think for many organizations and many people out there, they mistake it and go, it’s just all about the system. That’s all I need to worry about.

Whereas I’m looking at a full view of what’s our system that we are using, what processes that do that, does that support what people are using it? And then what partners might be helping support it as well.

Yeah. And I think as well there’s and something that we’ve touched on in a previous episode is you have to make sure that you’ve got quality as a foundation.

Of course. Yeah. Because the problem is if you systemize something that’s a rubbish process in the first place, yes, you’re gonna have a system for it. And it might even be automated, but it’s gonna produce the same kind of rubbish that you have in the. Now if it’s not actually a good process in the beginning.

Correct. And I think that’s such an important thing that people overlook that, that idea of saying are we systemizing something that is actually

good? Yeah. And that’s a really good point that process side comes. That’s why I focus on that process side of it as well. And it’s something I’ve often said on through my Biz Bytes channel, but also to my clients, is that.

If you take a bad process and put a good system over it, even if that system is ai, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on it, all you’re gonna achieve is bad outcomes faster. So if we go far enough back with most organizations through robotic process automation, the championing that we can take a 10 minute process and run it in three, which means that instead of doing six an hour, we’re doing 18 an hour, which means if that process was doing a bad outcome, you’re now doing that 18 times an hour instead of, what did I say before? 10 times an hour, six times an hour. Is that what your business really wants? And that’s why you’ve gotta take it back to the process, but also the people, are they invested in this and do they understand what the change is gonna be and how it’s gonna impact them and how it’s gonna help them as well because of you.

Don’t bring the people on that same journey of as you’re improving process and you are bringing new systems in. They might not use it and therefore it’s a bad investment as well.

I wanna come back to that in a second, but I just wanna make the point as well to, to people that are listening in that one of the biggest areas that people focus on, particularly with technology and AI in particular and recent times, is around content.

Yeah. And this is a really great example of where the sort of the unless you give it something that is. Yours that is authentic. That is your stories and your content and your way of thinking what it is going to produce is not going to be great. No, it’s also going to be, and it’s not gonna be great in a definition of the fact that it could be anybody else’s material.

It may or may not exist. Yep. Because we know that AI has a way of falsifying stuff and making things up. And so ultimately what you’re producing is not doing your business any good. Yeah. So it may look great, you may read it and you go, oh, that’s a really great piece of content. And I couldn’t have written that.

And that’s actually the key. I couldn’t have written that. Therefore, it is a problem. And I think, basing it on your tone of voice, basing it on your stories, on what you’ve authentically said is a whole different ballgame. And it’s one of the reasons, and we’ve talked about it off air, one of the reasons why I love podcasting is because you generate this authentic content.

And so the transcript allows you to reutilize that content in a multitude of different ways, including getting facilitated by a ai because you’re saying to the ai, use only this transcript to produce. Something, then it can do that. Yeah. Now for those of us, like me who prefer to be creative and love writing anyway, doesn’t get used as much as it might do, but there are a lot of people that it takes a lot of time to write quality content.

Yes, that’s fine, but based it on a real, what you’re really saying. Absolutely. And I think it it, that principle is what extends to everything that you do in an organization. ’cause when you bringing it back to what you’re talking about in terms of processes and systems. There’s a myriad of things from the operational side right through to the sales and marketing and even, servicing existing clients and keeping in contact with them.

There’s a multitude of ways that you can bring technology into those different elements of the business.

Absolutely. And just on that content piece there’s, it’s a mistake I made last year for. I think it was chat, GPT. Anyway I needed a monthly in newsletter and I just threw it in chat, GPT and said, grant me a monthly in newsletter.

And I did and I put it into my MailChimp channel and went go and it went out. And a month later I came back and went. But that just felt so Inge ungenuine, I know it’s not a word, but it just didn’t feel real and it didn’t feel like something I’d write. And I actually owned it as well to talk about exactly what you’re talking about was I owned it and went, look, I just put too much faith in the technology there and I can’t even tell you what I talked about last month.

Not gonna do that again. And that then highlights one of those dangers of over reliance of systems. If you bring the, if you forget about the people and the process and you over rely on systems, you do get that inauthentic. Customer experience at the end of the day as well.

Yeah, and I think it’s really important to remember the simple fact that people still do business with people.

It is a saying that comes up all the time. And it’s not going to stop coming up because yes, there are certain products and services where you don’t need human interaction. And I get that. That can happen in certain businesses, but the majority of businesses, that isn’t the case. And you are doing business with a person.

And how that person responds to you is. Everything. Yeah. And whether you are running a restaurant or you are a manufacturing a large ticket item or smaller or ser doing some sort of service related business that’s somewhere in between. It doesn’t matter. There are people involved at every step of that process, and that, that creative insight is what is of huge value and should not be lost in all of this.

The technology should be helping things go faster. But still based on quality and also creativity.

Absolutely agree. If and as long as you get all of that there’s no problem in what technology and the technology choice actually becomes academic at a point as well of and this is a conversation I have with a lot of clients through the day where, oh, should we use HubSpot or should we use Zoho?

Or should we go to Salesforce? That doesn’t matter. That’s, we’ll figure that one out at the end of this journey. What we’ve gotta figure out first is what problems do you need to solve? Why are they problems in the first place? And then how are we gonna solve them? And eventually, once we’ve asked though and, sorry, there’s a fourth one in there.

Do we even need to solve them?

We

hope

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And this is a conversation I have with a lot of clients through the day, with, should we use HubSpot or should we use Zoho, or should we go to Salesforce? That doesn’t matter. That’s, we’ll figure that one out at the end of this journey. What we’ve gotta figure out first is what problems do you need to solve?

Why are they problems in the first place? And then how are we gonna solve them? And eventually, once we’ve asked those and, sorry, there’s a fourth one in there, do we even need to solve them? And once we’ve answered those four, we can actually then turn around and go, right here’s the right system to solve those problems as well.

Yeah, and I think that’s, that, that is the important bit as well, because. You can also get hung up on the latest and greatest in technology and that’s a never ending cycle, right? What you recommend today can change tomorrow because tomorrow you didn’t know that this new company was coming up or there was an update on someone else’s system that now puts them ahead of what you were recommending yesterday.

That is a never ending cycle, and it’s really you. You have to be focused on what you actually need and not. The frilly bits around the outside that you think you’re going to use and then realize it’s, you’re just never gonna

use it. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s something that I’ve given this feedback today, even to a vendor, but it’s something that really grinds my gears to to put it bluntly is the way most technology sales cycle have taken on a demo led approach.

What they’re trying to get you to do is get you on a phone call, get you on a video call, give you a demo of that system where they take an hour to run you through the whole system and what it can do and how amazing it is and why it’s better than this, and why it’s better than that. And I’m sitting there going, I don’t need the demo.

What I need you to do is show me how it solves my problem. This is the problem I need to solve. I need your demo to take me through and show me how you’ll solve that problem. And then we can start talking about the next step. But I’m not interested in how you do user management. I’m not interested into why this screen is yellow or green or blue or purple, or whatever that means.

We’ll get to that later. Show me how you’re gonna solve my problem.

Yeah, and I, it’s so easy because we, in a typical sales process. We tend to focus on those things that we don’t need. I the good example is when you go to buy a new car that they don’t start off with the base model.

They never start off with the base model. They start you off at the high end. And for the, for good reason, because the simple equation is this, that you walk in and they say this one comes with the sunroof. It comes with larger wheels. It’s got a bigger screen, it’s got leather seats, it’s got a Dolby system.

And you’re sitting and then you’re going, you’re imagining yourself in this car and oh, that’s great. And look, if you want something that’s a little bit cheaper, look, there’s no sunroof in this one. There’s no wheels and there’s no and we still get the leather seats. You still get a sort of slightly smaller speakers and slightly smaller screen, it’s pretty good.

And then they say look, if you really need to save money, we’ll take you to the base model look. And there’s just, there’s no leather seats. It’s a small screen, it’s a standard wheels, there’s no sunroof. And you’ve already imagined yourself with all of these other things, and you, in your mind, you’re trying to work out how can I actually justify it?

The intriguing thing, and I’ve, I’ve been in this situation myself, where the intriguing thing is you’ve come out of a car that has no screen in it at all, right? You’ve been using your, you’ve only had your phone sitting there and mounted on the side, and looking at that when you need to, when you need to for directions.

You certainly haven’t had the wheels or the leather seats and all the rest of it, but it’s it’s very hard though to not jump to that other end. And we tend to do that in business as well, where we pay attention to those extra things that are being offered and say it comes with, and CRMs are great example, right?

Where there’s CRMs come with so many bells and whistles, but is your business actually set up to deal with those? Are you re, are they tools you. Need to use because you might you might want to use them, but do you need to use them? Because if you don’t really need to use them in the end, what you want to do might be a long way off and you might be paying for it for a few years before you ev ever get that opportunity.

Absolutely.

Ab absolutely. And it’s also the and your car example is spot on for another experience that happened with I I. I do this on my podcast as well. I like to bring in personal experiences to some of those stories to just to bring them to life. But I was in a rental car and it was a Toyota Corolla big screen right in the middle.

Our Toyota Corolla that we have at home doesn’t have a screen, so that, that was cool. And the reason I had the rental car is I had to fly down halfway down the north island. New Plymouth, which is a city on the west coast of the North Island. And then I had to drive inland for an hour to see a client.

So I had a rental car for that. I’m not from New Plymouth. I’m not familiar with the road. So sat nav was gonna be pretty key for me, and I got on the car, turned it on, and there was a message on the screen saying you have not subscribed to the navigation services.

I get it right. A rental car company’s not going to so to, to have a subscription on their cars. But what got me was two or three years ago, I would’ve jumped in that car and I’d appeared my phone and it would’ve worked, and it would’ve been fine. And in this case, I paired my phone so I could make phone calls on the move.

Google Maps still didn’t link to that computer to that screen. So I had to have my phone in a position on the dashboard where I could see where I was going, which was fine. It was somewhere, it was, there was nothing unsafe about it, if anyone’s concerned about that. But what it got me thinking was, one, there’s a service that’s actually quite valuable to me that I can’t get because I’m not subscribed, and again, it’s not my car.

And two the solution that I have didn’t integrate. And there’s a really good metaphor for technology there as well with when you go and buy a system on the promise that it’s got this thing, the car has sat, there’s just not turned on. And technology can be the same where you think you are buying one thing, but then you find there’s an extra add-on and an additional hidden cost to that.

And then you also find that maybe one of your existing systems doesn’t integrate that well with what you’ve just bought. And that’s why. It comes into working through what the problem you’re trying to solve is, and how you’re gonna solve that, and why you need to solve that, and looking at what else is around and what else you’re using.

Because if the tool that you’ve bought doesn’t integrate with one of your other core pieces of technology why did you buy it in the first place?

And it’s also about the, what you’re doing to clients or to your team as a result of it not working properly. Because the, your satellite navigation is a perfect example, right?

Where the hard thing is you’re in the car and you’re going surely the rental company could have got around this and made this work. Like, why? W did that or should they have warned you beforehand? And even worse, like I, I find it they, and the rental companies used to do this, do you want to pay extra for the satellite navigation?

I dunno that they do. I don’t rent cars very often, but nowadays you, you wouldn’t do that because hey, you just got, you’ve got it on your phone and you’ve got free access to Google Maps or to, and it, but it’s just seems like such a silly thing. So now you feel bad about the rental company, like you have a negative feeling towards them as a result of that, and that experience of being let down by something that perhaps they didn’t even need to offer in that way or could have found a way around it would’ve made you feel completely differently.

And I think that’s a it’s a, it’s a. Perfect example. Where technology not doing all the things that it can do, but not doing the core of what it needs to do well. Yeah. Is a huge problem.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And to that point about the customer experience, part of me is now we have Corolla that Corolla will eventually need to be replaced.

And right back to your point at the start there about you can get the base model with none of the bells and whistles, or you can have the expanded model. I’m don’t really care about the car with a screen. If the car with a screen doesn’t come with satin nav and doesn’t work with my phone, we’ll just get rid of that screen and I’ll just carry on doing what I’m doing now, which is having the phone mounted on a cradle on the dashboard so that I can use Google Map.

Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s I think it’s such an important idea that businesses need to think about is. What are they saying to team members? What are they saying to the rest of the clients or suppliers by having something there that doesn’t function as it should?

Because that’s part of the problem is that people buy into this whole idea it should do this. And the reality is the technology is not keeping up with our expectations. And our expectations are being set unfairly by larger companies. I’d say unfairly for, from smaller business point of view, because larger businesses that can invest in a whole bunch of things can do stuff that smaller businesses can’t do.

Correct. And but they set the expectation. To a large degree you’ve got these big companies that, Amazon’s a good example, where they can set up and organize that you can have something delivered the next day. They’ll take a photograph of it at your door and they’ll give you tracking along the way.

All of these kind, and they won’t charge you extra for the, for it if you’ve got a membership, all of these things. That as a small business, you don’t necess, you can’t necessarily compete with that. And and the expectations that get set by people as a result of that can be. Unfair and difficult to manage.

And you’re constantly keeping up with the latest and greatest in that respect. So you do have to stay in your wheelhouse and do what you do well. And understand that there are certain things that the technology doesn’t allow you to do right now. Focus on what it does do well, and again, make sure as you say it is compatible.

With what you’ve already got, where people are comfortable with it, and and it’s integral to what you’re

doing. Exactly. And that’s where the sales cycle of technology should be disrupted by the customer, not by or dictated by the customer, not by the salesperson. Because they should be looking at it from a, what is it gonna do for me and what else have I got?

There’s a whole journey they should be getting to before they even get on that first sales call.

Yeah. And that’s it. It’s, and it’s that interaction with real people often not exclusively anymore, because I know there are ais that are handling some of the sales side of things, but it is the interactions.

Even if it is with an AI and understanding some of the expectations that are being set by people and as to then what you are prepared to deliver as a result of it. Because I think we’ve all been gi been guilty in business of saying we’re going to do something and then realizing we’re not really set up to do it.

And actually delivering that consistently. Is hard. Yeah. And in my world, certainly that’s one of the reasons why I established the podcast Done for You Service was because a lot of people were having exactly that with a podcast. And you and I both know, there’s a lot of effort that goes into producing a podcast.

People think, oh, it’s just a, certain amount of recording, but it’s not the recording time, it’s the, it’s the post. Anthony and I exchanged messages beforehand before we actually got in here. We had a few minutes of chatting before we hit the record button. And there’s all the post-production that needs to happen with it before we even get to the publishing it.

And and then ultimately also promoting it. And by the time you are watching this or listening to this, it’s you’re at that end phase. So it’s not just a five minute, oh we’ll just, we just have to do a, put a couple of fancy things on the end that’s automated and off it goes. It’s not like that, and I think it’s the right reason why.

A lot of things that businesses promise end up failing, and as I said, podcast is one of those things where there’s, you realize there’s so much effort involved that takes you away from what your core is that you don’t end up offering. Exactly. And it gets back down to things like, again, it’s why Podcast Done for You is here so you don’t have to worry about it.

But it’s why a lot of technology is also there so that you can do that. But again, you, technology that’s gonna deliver something that’s an extra that you don’t have time to really service is of no value. Correct? Correct. And,

Not just. The system itself. But if the training and the knowledge and the expertise, so again, it could be the best system in the world and it could look amazing, but if your people aren’t prepared either through the time or capacity or just whatever’s going on at the moment to learn that system, then it’s something that maybe you hold off on and don’t buy right now because what you’re doing might be good enough.

It sounds strange to say this coming from a technology consultant, but from. From my perspective, you’ve gotta look at it more than just a, we’re buying a new system. But you’ve actually gotta look at it as we’re taking our organization through a change. And whether you’ve got five people or 500 people or 5,000 people, they need to be prepared to change as well.

Because if they’re not, that investment you’ve just made in that system is going nowhere.

Yeah. And I think it’s important that you do sit down, isn’t it, with technology and understand before you’re choosing what it is that defining things in really in categories of what is absolute absolutely critical and what is not.

So you don’t get, as you say, taken up by those things that are the nice to have but don’t really need.

Exactly. Yeah. It’s the and when do we need to have the py as well? It’s, flip this around a different way actually is the other side of the technology equation. We’ve got it running and it’s a story I heard many years ago about incident or service management.

Service management being the process of managing your technologies. And this was a large organization, large retail organization where they had serious level agreements in place. And the technology team reported on those every month to the core business units. And they went to. The head of the retail chain in January and said, oh, we are really stoked to to report that we made 99.99% uptime on the pause system last month.

So pause point of sale, and the story goes that the director turned around and said, that’s great, but that 1% or 0.1%, that was Christmas Eve and we’re a retail store and our customers couldn’t buy anything. So I don’t wanna hear about how good you were. I want you to explain to me why it was that bad.

And I think that’s the same thing from a buying systems as well, is don’t look at all the things you think you need. Take away that noise and look at what you don’t need and see how much of that balance is and which side of the ledger is balanced on that. If it’s got more of what you don’t need, maybe there’s a cheaper system to solve your problems.

Yeah. And that’s it, isn’t it? It’s, there’s so much noise around at the moment. Around different things that it’s easy to get swayed and I know I recently made a decision around a CRM for the business and the decision was, do you know, that I was looking at was, do I stay with where I’m at or do I move to one of these newer ones that people were, lots of people were talking about and were interacting with a couple of businesses that I was dealing with?

And it was a really interesting process to go through. And in the end circled back and went well. Part of it was the amount of effort that was involved for very little gain to shift was not worth the effort. Yeah. And and what’s interesting too is when some of the hype wears off, some of the some of the ones that you were thinking about, you start going.

Yeah. When it really gets down to it, is it really all that it’s cracked up to be? And I think that’s it. It talking to people and taking your time to do it and not just jumping. I think the one lesson I’ve certainly seen as far as technology is concerned if there’s a deal today that’s running out.

Tomorrow, you can guarantee there’ll be another deal next week. Yep. It’s or that if they really want you, they’ll circle back to that deal that they had offer on offer a week ago. So don’t necessarily get sold into the sales pitch when it comes to technology there. It’s not something that I do in my business.

I don’t offer those kinds of deals for good reason, but because exactly that psychology, right? That if the, if it was worth a hundred dollars a month. In terms of a discounted rate, and now they’re going to say it’s gone back up to $125 a month. My value is what you valued it at the discounted rate, which is a hundred dollars a month.

Yep. If it was discounted before, it’s because that’s what the true value of it is, and even then, you’re making a profit on it. So I’m not paying 125. So go back to it. Yep. And I, and so it always strikes me as strange when businesses do that, but that’s a big swayer in the technology department.

Definitely. There’s plenty of retail chains that have lost leaders that supermarkets are really good for it, aren’t they? They’ve got a loss leader because they know that you’ll come in and we’ve got. Costco in Auckland here, international chain, one of their loss leaders is butter.

Because people are going in to buy a kg of butter for whatever it is, which is cheaper than a half kg butter block in the regular supermarkets. Once you’re in Costco, you might as well spend the rest of it, right? And that’s the same I agree with what you’re saying. With the discounting. I avoid discounting on my services as well.

’cause the price I’ve set is the price I’ve set. Yep. It’s the most realistic price for what I can charge and still cover all the expenses and everything else and still earn a living. And so that’s why I haven’t gone higher than that, and therefore I’m not gonna go lower than that as well.

Yeah it’s psychology behind all of those things, but I think, we could get into the whole pricing thing as old, separate discussion, but I think what’s important here to understand is also the value that you place on technology that you’re bringing into the business. It’s how do you actually value, and that process in itself is a. A difficult one because you get sold on subscriptions very easy.

Oh, it’s just another a hundred dollars, it’s just another $50. And suddenly you’re spending quite a lot of money on subscriptions to things and are you actually using them? So that’s one part, but it is defining the value for a business of whatever it is is that it might only be a hundred dollars, but is that, are you actually getting that value out of it?

Or not? Because I’ve seen some businesses where the technology that they’ve brought in has sped up one part of the process, but created a whole new set of work somewhere else. Yeah. And is that end outcome actually better for anybody or not? Has it just created more work in

another area?

Yeah,

And I’ve definitely seen examples of that.

Big companies are very good at doing this, where they’ve got a decentralized value chain where different parts of the business are doing different things. And by putting technology in at the start, all I’ve done is move the bottleneck slightly further down the ba the value chain. And it’s where from a technology strategy, any business, again, no matter how big or small they are, needs to look at it as the whole of the value chain and not just what their one piece is.

If you are the sales team and you apply a new CRM, that means you’re getting more leads faster. You wanna make sure that the people who are fulfilling that at the other end of the channel. Are gonna be able to fulfill it in that order. And I think back to a conversation I once had with the marketing team when I was working at the bank that I was working at and said, Hey, you run these marketing campaigns, it’d be really nice if you just gave us a heads up that they were happening.

They’re like, why would you need a heads up? I was like, I imagine if it was so successful that you had 10,000 people coming through the doors on the first day we wanna make sure our systems were available and ready to go for that. And the response shook me on them ’cause they went.

Oh, we never get that many customers through the door on the first day, and my first thought was why are you running the campaign then? It’s, but it’s it was coming back to that point of, if you can tell us when there’s a campaign on, we’ll make sure the systems are available so that the that the staff in the middle of this can actually service what you’re offering.

Yeah. And that’s that, it’s such an important point, right? That isn’t it, that you can bring in something in one end. And I, and this is a, it leads me to an example that I had with a previous guest on the, on this program a little while ago. And those of you will remember the discussion with JD about de about direct marketing.

And I know one of the examples he gave where he did some direct marketing work. For a a small business, a tradie, and they generated 300 odd. Inquiries and the business owner said that’s fantastic, but I’ve got no way of making 300, returning 300 phone calls. What am I supposed to do now?

Now, that’s where the, that’s where the AI has come in and made those phone calls and book things in for him in advance, which is fantastic to be able to do that. And, but that’s the point is that unless you’ve got that at the end and you’ve, they were able to facilitate that happening.

Then otherwise you just what’s the point? And I think a lot of people don’t consider that if you know that needs to be involved. And it’s always intrigues me when people start off with then with the marketing side of things and they generate this whole bunch of leads and it’s actually, have you got the time to answer all those queries?

Have you got the salespeople that are going to convert it? And then if you do get some in, how do you actually get. The the, facilitate that. ’cause what are, what is it that you’re capable of delivering and where are you gonna run into troubles? Have you got backups and things in place?

I know for my business, for example, we’ve got access to additional resources, should we, get a massive rush on people. Who want podcasts done yesterday instead of, for you now. Yep. And and that happens at times. So we’ve got, we can facilitate that when that happens.

But not all businesses are set up that way, and I think that’s important with technology is to look at it and go, where is your actual starting point? To make sure that you are ready to handle things. And you’ve got the efficiencies. Do you start with the marketing or do you start at the operational level?

Exactly. Yeah. Where’s the point? And something I’m going through for myself at the moment, not with the podcast, but with my business, with Target State, which is, i’ve I’m partnering up with an alliance where work will hopefully come. I’m also making sure at the other end that I’ve got all the systems in place for when that work arrives, because there’s no point in me going, yeah, I can do that.

No, I can’t. Sorry. And I dunno when I can do it. ‘Cause I’m just gonna lose it. When I say lose it, not lose it, lose the opportunity.

Yeah, it’s, and it is, it’s that’s exactly it. It’s so important to, to do that. And it’s a constant struggle in business. It’s it is finding where is the starting point to make sure you get it right.

Look, I just wanna wrap things up because we could talk for ages and we, but good thing is we’ve both got podcasts and we’re encouraging everyone. Hey, if you’re out there and you’re listening right now. Subscribe to both Biz bytes. Subscribe to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, subscribes to biz Bytes with a YA hundred percent reminds me of that.

And and, make sure that you get your best of both worlds and so much. It’s so much fun, by the way to have found this. I can’t believe. We are both a hundred plus episodes in Yep. And it’s taken us this long to work it out that there were two Anthonys out there with with the same name podcast just spelt differently.

And I guess neither of us bothered to put it in, in, in the search and go, is there one that spells it down? You didn’t, I didn’t think of spelling it with a y Makes perfect sense, particularly for your podcast. And there you go. Yeah. That’s the way these things happen. And I guess

We should do a shout out to Gaylene Adam’s Love, who’s been a guest a couple of times, I think, on your biz bias.

I’ve yet to hear her on mine. Yes. But she made that connection finally for us both and said, you guys need to talk to each other and see where it goes from there.

Yeah, I should point that out to people That was Gaylene, who people will remember and maybe we’ll include a link to her episode in the show notes who has been a guest on the program.

And she got approached by Anthony to, would you be a guest on my Biz Bites program? And she’s going, hang on. I think I’ve been guest on the Biz Bites program with he before. Turns out, no. Yeah. It’s am it’s amusing how these things happen and how they, it’s such a. It’s such a small world that we’re, we are mixing in similar circles even though we’re in different countries.

Just to wrap things up, I have a question I like to ask my like all my guests, is, what is the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were gonna have in advance? Just one.

Just so a view. So for me it’s it is that view of, we can see our way through and the aha moment for one of the client, probably the most relevant one that I’ve got is where they sit and go, okay, we’ve just. So three years working with this vendor and we never understood what they’re saying, and you’ve just come in and in 30 minutes you’ve had a conversation with them and you’ve just translated it and you’ve given us comfort that we’re at least getting a good service from that partner.

Or the other side of it is that we’re not getting a good service from that partner and it’s time to move on. And that’s probably that aha moment when they sat there and said, look we’ve been beating our head against this wall for three years, for five years. We didn’t understand what the what our technology partners were trying to tell us.

And you’ve at least given us that comfort that we’re either needing to change or that we should stay with what we’ve got.

Yeah, I think it’s such a an important. Thing for people to understand. And I can totally see why that is a major idea for people. And I’ve enjoyed chatting about all things not least of which of the similar podcasts, but but also all things technology because there is so much to consider in the, in this space.

And I can see why, choosing that and spending that time with you is going to be such a revelation to people. And of course, we do always include details in the show notes of how to get in touch with our guests, and we’ll include that including a link. We’ll make sure we include a link to the podcast as well.

So we like to share each other’s audiences. We want you to listen to both. So if you’re listening to both podcasts send us both a note. And it’s I feel like with two Anthonys together, we should say it’s goodbye from me and it’s

goodbye from him.

Love it. Until next time, don’t forget to subscribe to both our podcasts and we’ll see you next time on Biz Bytes Football Leaders.

Thanks

so much, Anthony.

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