Automate Your Agency

What software do I really need?

• Alane Boyd & Micah Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 11

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It's no secret that investing in the right software can significantly reduce operational costs, maximize efficiency, and in many cases generate more revenue in your business. 🎉

Despite this truth, many businesses struggle to look beyond the initial investment and instead will spend thousands to hire new team members for tasks and processes that can be automated by a software for only $200/mo. 🫤

We get it. As budget-conscious business leaders, the thought of lugging around a bloated bundle of software while trying to scale is far from enticing. However, we're here to assure you that a properly curated tech stack can have you competing at a much higher level! 🥊

In this episode of Automate Your Agency, Micah and Alane reveal their philosophy on software adoption and the steps you can take to keep your tech costs under control. Tune in to discover their list of software essentials along with tips and tricks to make sure you only implement what's best for your business!

Why Listen: 👇

  • Identify the Four Types of Software that Every Business Needs to Succeed
  • Learn How to Properly Pilot New Software with Your Team
  • Discover the Key to Keeping Your Software Costs In Check

We hope this episode inspires you to optimize your software use to boost your business's efficiency and growth. If you are interested in learning more about any of the software mentioned in this episode, you can find them linked below!

Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode! Thank you and see you next time!

Software Mentioned In this Episode: 

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0:00:00 - (Alane): Welcome to Automate Your Agency. Every week we bring you expert insights, practical tips, and success stories that will help you streamline your business operations and boost your growth. Let's get started on your journey to more efficient and scalable operations.

0:00:18 - (Micah): All right, Alane, I got something for us to talk about on this one. I know it was your idea for.

0:00:23 - (Alane): The topic, but you always steal my ideas. It's fine.

0:00:26 - (Micah): Is that how it works?

0:00:27 - (Alane): No. No.

0:00:30 - (Micah): There have been so many times where we'll be on a call with a client or a prospect, and we'll be talking about software that could be offering immense value. And their very first question is, well, how much is that gonna cost? We don't wanna spend more on software. And yet they will hire somebody for five, six, $7,000 a month to do the work that could have been either replaced, not needed, or greatly minimized by employing a piece of software that costs them 100, 200, $300 a month.

0:01:10 - (Alane): Yeah. Most software for a team, a small team, is less than $200 a month for everybody to be on it.

0:01:17 - (Micah): Yes, yes.

0:01:19 - (Alane): This is such a trigger topic at this point for me because I speak on the using software, you know, going in front of large crowds and always at the end, somebody will say, well, how, you know, how much does it cost to use all this software? And I think that is such a blindsided question to ask when you look at how much software can completely revolutionize your workflow, how it's done, the customer value and the manual work. Not even manual work, but the amount of time that an employee would have to spend doing all the things that a piece of software would do.

0:02:00 - (Micah): Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think the easiest example is a tool like Asana ClickUp or Monday. This is always in our purview. It's always constantly in front of us. We scaled our last business using Asana. We're using ClickUp now. And I don't know how we run. Sure. We spend, I don't know, a couple hundred? I don't even know. It doesn't even matter to me how much we spend because it is of so much immense value. The cost that it would take us to run our previous business or this business without a project management tool and without a good one, it would be in the tens of thousands, not hundreds.

0:02:40 - (Alane): Right? I mean, we think about a couple hundred dollars a month in expense versus the $1,000 thousands of dollars that it empowers us to make.

0:02:51 - (Micah): Yes, yes.

0:02:52 - (Micah): I mean, I think it's natural and it's human for us to analyze this stuff and think about it differently. We could go into a convenience store and go, I'm not buying a $3 king size Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, all right? But then we go into a restaurant, and we get a $14 dessert that's about the size of a king size Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

0:03:15 - (Alane): Right?

0:03:16 - (Micah): So it's all perspective and it's all context. I think software puts it into that, too. It's like, ooh, do I want another subscription? Do I want this other cost? But we've done really well training ourselves to think about this not as a cost, but as a cost savings.

0:03:33 - (Alane): Right. And, you know, we do really like using software because we see what value it gives us. That doesn't mean that every software we try out, we keep forever, you know? And I think that's one thing that we do, is about every quarter you and I come through our software subscriptions that we're paying for, and are we still using it? Is it still giving us value? And if not, then we cancel it. So it's not like we're over here software happy. Software has to be solving a problem and giving our company value.

0:04:03 - (Alane): Otherwise, it's not worth paying for.

0:04:05 - (Micah): Yes, yes.

0:04:06 - (Micah): There's a tertiary perspective on this, too, which is, can I buy or leverage or subscribe to software that is gonna do everything for every piece of my business? And I think this is an issue that comes up quite a bit, too. Now, I don't think we need to get into ERP systems, because they are specialized. They have been developed. They have a lot of stuff that can go on. But I'm thinking more of, like, the all in one freelancer software platform that can do invoicing and time tracking and all this other kind of stuff.

0:04:40 - (Micah): In those platforms, they're only as good as their weakest component. Right. ClickUp tries to be the end all, be all. Now, we use ClickUp, but that does not mean we use ClickUp as a CRM. We use ClickUp for our documentation platform. We don't. We use ClickUp for what it's really good at: Project management.

0:04:57 - (Alane): Yeah, fantastic at that. And then we use the best software for the other things. Like, we have a time management software that we use, and we've got Quickbooks for invoicing. Like, we're not looking for everything to be all encompassed in one. We use the best tool for the job, and then we can use something like make to tie it all together.

0:05:19 - (Micah): Yes.

0:05:20 - (Micah): The other thing that I hear a lot is not another platform, and there is truth to that. You don't want to just keep adding and keep adding because there's change training that you need to do on your teams. But at the same time, maybe it is worth trying this another platform to see if it is a further cost savings if it does provide more value. So as our team grew with our last business, we implemented what we called very creatively, the team test.

0:05:51 - (Micah): And that's where we would take a piece of software that we thought might be useful and apply it to a specific team or even a smaller group within a team and get feedback. Slack is such a great example of this because right before Slack, Atlassian announced the release of hip chat, which if anybody is listening to this and has heard of Hipchat, leave a comment. Because we thought, I mean, I looked at this and I was like, yes, this is an enhanced, real time messaging platform that it had a lot of the features of Slack.

0:06:25 - (Micah): We did the team test and everybody hated it. There's probably a reason. If anybody's listening and has not heard a hip chat, it's because it didn't pass the team test. The team, just like I looked at it when this has the features we need, but the usability wasn't there.

0:06:43 - (Alane): It wasn't. And sometimes it's down to just the UI. Like, it's not a friendly ui, whereas another platform just feels better. Sometimes it's just that, yep, yep.

0:06:54 - (Micah): Now, a couple months later, Slack got announced.

0:06:57 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:06:58 - (Micah): And we signed up for the demo. I remember this very distinctly, cause we signed up for the demo, we did the team test, and I'm like, man, this is gonna be another hip chat. Like, this is not. Like, I had no faith that it was going to work. We went to lunch and we came back and half of our staff was on Slack, using it with real time and loving it. And the difference was they knocked onboarding out of the park, as you were just saying, the user experience was phenomenal, so people wanted to use it instead of didn't want to use it. And that can be the difference between not another platform and hell yeah, bring it on.

0:07:37 - (Alane): You've got champions just spreading like wildfire within your organization. I mean, that's what you want, is that. And you know, sometimes Slack is such a simple platform to get going in. You know, that might be different than using a project management system where it's a bit more overwhelming. You need to have a little more training up front.

0:07:55 - (Micah): Absolutely.

0:07:56 - (Alane): But having those, that small team test it out, get some champions on there is a big part of bringing software in.

0:08:03 - (Micah): Yep, yep.

0:08:05 - (Micah): So when you're thinking about software, don't think about how do I minimize my use of software. At least this would be my recommendation. This is how we operate and have for years is what's the new software coming out? We started with desk. Desk got purchased by Salesforce. We did not want to use Salesforce. We stopped using Desk. We found HelpScout and then we implemented that. Now I think we team tested a few platforms to determine that help scout would be the go to and it's kind of like setting up a proof of concept. You just want to get out there and try it.

0:08:39 - (Micah): But we didn't say let's use a manual paper ticketing system or let's do all of our support in email. Ticketing systems were just coming out. Zendesk was just starting as this was happening and we jumped on that bandwagon and it was a lifesaver.

0:08:58 - (Alane): Yeah. So let's talk through some of the core software that we find is the most valuable and that we, whenever we started this company it was like we need this, this and this.

0:09:08 - (Alane): Yep.

0:09:09 - (Alane): So the very first one, since you're on that topic is an email ticketing system or support type of front end for your email. So whether you're Google based or Microsoft base, you just, these emails import into a system like HelpScout or we use Front now. And it's a way to better manage email and have team collaboration. You can reassign emails, you can have a team inbox. These kind of things are a bit foreign when you're not in this every day, but 1000%.

0:09:41 - (Alane): This is one of the first things that Micah and I go to now when we, like when we started this company and I always say I'm never going back to, even if I leave this company, go somewhere else. Like personally I'm always going to use upfront or similar.

0:09:57 - (Micah): Yeah. And Front is a $300 bill a month and we happily pay it because we're able to collaborate on emails, on drafts, on responses. We have shared inboxes. So it breaks down the communication silos across departments. That is if we didn't, if we didn't spend $300 a month on that, we'd be spending $3,000 a month chasing emails. Absolutely easily at a minimum.

0:10:25 - (Alane): So that's the first 1 second one. Project management system.

0:10:29 - (Micah): Absolutely.

0:10:30 - (Alane): Without a doubt. Even if you're a solopreneur, a project management system keeps you knowing what to do every day.

0:10:37 - (Micah): Yep.

0:10:38 - (Alane): Keeps you organized. So whether you're one employee or a thousand employees or however many, this is so needed in an organization and a.

0:10:46 - (Micah): Project management system is really the backbone of operations. You can build systems, you can start basic automation, build templates, just start systemizing with a project management tool. So now just these two alone, and you might spend another, I don't know, ClickUp is $19 a user per month on the business account. Like, even if you have a bunch of users and you're spending $300 a month, it's still worth it. Yeah, still worth it. And so we talk about collaboration. There's collaboration in Front or your ticketing system. There's collaboration in your project management tool. It's important to note where that barrier exists, because there needs to be policies in place that says, this is when we collaborate in Front. This is when we collaborate in our project management tool.

0:11:36 - (Alane): Yeah, I mean, sometimes when something's really important and I need to revisit it in a month, so doesn't mean it's not important. It's just something that needs to happen in a month from now. I'll even take the Front URL for that and put it in the task and ClickUp for me so I have the context with the reminder right there.

0:11:55 - (Micah): Yep, yep.

0:11:56 - (Micah): Absolutely. The other platform that I would say would be on our top list is CRM. We use Pipedrive. A lot of people will think, well, I could use Monday, or I could use Airtable, or I could use ClickUp, or I could use Asana as a CRM. Sure you can. It's gonna be terrible. No salesperson is going to want to use it.

0:12:19 - (Alane): Scalability wise, that becomes an issue. If it's just you.

0:12:22 - (Micah): Even reporting wise, how do you even get the right metrics? Like, Pipedrive is not that expensive. I think it's $29 a user.

0:12:29 - (Alane): I don't know.

0:12:31 - (Micah): Sure, that can sound expensive per user, but again, think of how much money you'd spend trying to track your sales leads. Or we're getting an opportunity cost here. You know, the follow up is key to everything. If you don't have your pipeline documented in an easy way to see and to forecast and to know where to follow up, you're likely missing hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars. Yeah, by just measuring and following up. So, CRM, ticketing system, project management, get a real accounting software.

0:13:10 - (Micah): We don't have to dwell on that, but just get a real accounting software. Quickbooks Online, Xero gets a real one. Don't get a freelance based one. We tried that. Yes, it's a disaster. Your accountant will love you if you have Quickbooks or Xero.

0:13:27 - (Alane): Yes. And on the CRM, I want to touch on that just for a second, because a lot of times companies think sales team is the only people that need to be in the CRM. And I disagree with that. If you have an account management team, because they're always selling. Right. Whether they're on a subscription with you and they pay the same every month, your goal is to keep them for the longest amount of time as possible.

0:13:55 - (Alane): That CRM is so valuable. I managed a 20 person account management team with Pipedrive. We paid for every single one of those to have a user. And when we moved from just a couple of people being on it into where I could see activities being made, making sure, you know, there's the movie, the Troll movie. And at the beginning, he's like, no troll left behind. The dad's running and saving all the trolls.

0:14:22 - (Micah): I believe you.

0:14:23 - (Alane): Yeah. Yeah. It's adorable. So I put in, like, no client left behind from that idea, and I got visibility immediately as a manager.

0:14:33 - (Micah): Yep.

0:14:34 - (Alane): I could see where what clients were falling through the gaps because you can also integrate it with your email and see the conversation chain. You can see if a client is being followed up with.

0:14:44 - (Micah): Yeah.

0:14:45 - (Alane): And so when we went from not having that to having that, our account management team did $50,000 that month in additional sales because accountability.

0:14:56 - (Micah): But you had to pay the cost of the additional users.

0:15:00 - (Alane): I had to pay the $30 a month for a team of 20. So to make $50,000, it cost us $600 that month.

0:15:08 - (Micah): Yep.

0:15:08 - (Alane): So I think that's worth it, you know? I think so, yeah.

0:15:12 - (Micah): And that's the way we need to think about it. So the final. I think the final platform that I would recommend, it's a sticky one, and it's the real time messaging. It's the Slacks, the Teams. And the reason that I say it's a sticky one is because it can get out of control very, very fast and become detrimental instead of supportive of teams.

0:15:34 - (Alane): Yeah.

0:15:34 - (Micah): There are huge, huge benefits to having real time messaging platforms. But if you let them get out of control and everybody's messaging all the time and all the notifications are going off all day long, it creates chaos.

0:15:46 - (Alane): Yes. Now, there are free versions of some of the real time messaging platforms versus a paid version. And so we do the paid version of Slack, and that is a cost of software for us. But again, it goes back to the value. You lose a history of messages if you're on the free version. After 30 days, it starts to delete those older messages. Well, as a company, how many times do you need to search and find something?

0:16:18 - (Alane): Our employees will star and pin things that they want to reference back again. Now, they could take it out of there. Absolutely. But we're talking about a minimal cost for so much value of having that search and feature to be able to go back and find something that somebody said before. And these can be things that you don't think are important at the time, which is why you didn't take it out of Slack in the first place. Yeah, but you need, then later, four months later, you're like, you know what? I had this conversation.

0:16:45 - (Alane): I need to go back and look at what they said.

0:16:47 - (Micah): Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, totally worth it. With the caveat that there's guidelines to usage, right?

0:16:54 - (Alane): You don't want it to be complete chaos of chat all the time.

0:16:57 - (Micah): Yes.

0:16:58 - (Micah): Yes. Because it's, I mean, we've talked about that in previous episodes where, you know, Slack can get out of control and you can log in at 08:00 a.m. answer questions from your team until 06:00 p.m. and then wonder, what the hell did I do all day?

0:17:11 - (Alane): Yes. So I think those would be our core ones. Now, of course, we're, we have other software. There's ones that specialize in different things, especially with AI being a part of things. There might be a better tool for a specific job, but at our core, those are our top ones.

0:17:28 - (Micah): Yeah. At least running a business, those are going to be key. Yes. And pretty much worth any cost. Like if your business is large enough to have hundreds of employees, then you probably have the cost offset enough to be able to pay for hundreds of users. And not every employee needs to be on every platform.

0:17:49 - (Alane): Exactly.

0:17:50 - (Micah): That's the other piece, too.

0:17:52 - (Alane): Thanks for listening to this episode of Automate your Agency. We hope you're inspired to take your business to the next level. We have free content and tools for automating your business at our website, workdayninja.com.

0:18:04 - (Micah): And join us next week as we dive into more ways to automate and scale your business.

0:18:08 - (Alane): Bye for now.

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Alane Boyd

Co-host
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Micah Johnson

Co-host