Speaker 1: 0:19

Thank you, evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 2: 1:11

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook. I'm Craig Andrews, and this is my partner in crime, Evan Poland. We are excited today. Why am I excited, Evan?

Speaker 3: 1:21

You're excited because we had a great guest joining us today for our podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Yes, and a lot of times when we come to you guys as our audience, we like to make sure that we bring together people. Who's going to tie sales and marketing together, and ultimately, what we have a guy here who is is I'm not, I'm not going to be shy, I'm going to say a genius when it comes to software, an absolute genius. He starts blowing my mind and things in ways that I'm going whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. I'm not that part yet. So give me a second. Give me a second to catch up. That's how good he is. Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 1:54

So, and I think the other thing that people are really going to resonate with is a little bit in terms of Mac's story and some of his background and how he got to where he was and some of the obstacles that he's overcome, some of the fears that he had that kept him, that he's been able to overcome, and I think a lot of our audience is really going to resonate with that as they look at what they need to do to be successful, moving forward on their sales and marketing journey.

Speaker 2: 2:22

So, as a background, steve P McEwen, also known as Mac we call him Mac is the founder and CEO of MacGyver. We're going to touch that MacGyver Tech and Mac and Nerd boosting. Over 30 years experience in the tech industry, his career has given him a passion of deconstructing and creating, which naturally led him to the fields of software development, reverse engineering which is big and ethical hacking. With a firm committed to ethics, mack is focused on utilizing blockchain technology to promote ethical practices and contribute positively to the world. He invites us to join him on his mission of forging an inclusive and equitable technological future. That's a mouthful. That's a mouthful. That is a mouthful. But let me tell you something he is an important guy when it comes to sales and marketing, especially when it comes to public speaking. We're going to talk a little bit about that, especially when it comes to technology. So let me introduce our star of the hour.

Speaker 4: 3:22

Mac, Hello everybody.

Speaker 2: 3:24

Hey.

Speaker 4: 3:24

Mac, how you doing.

Speaker 2: 3:27

You don't mind if we call you Mac, right?

Speaker 4: 3:28

No, absolutely and honestly. Thank you for that very humbling intro. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 3:33

So, before we really get going here, how does a guy with Pink Floyd connections, who's a self-proclaimed nerd and loves to face his weaknesses and embrace challenges, put all that together into software and public speaking?

Speaker 4: 3:48

Oh, wow. Yeah, I know I'm collaborating with a lot of different things and technologies and most people usually don't do that. I'm a little unique and the way my brain works it doesn't work like others. So I kind of think different, I guess you would say, and I always look for what everybody else isn't doing. You know, I'm always.

Speaker 4: 4:07

You know, the big fan is like, you know, like the bell curve. If you remember, in probability statistics you had that little bell that kind of goes up. Everybody goes towards the middle. I go to the edges first and then I work back if I need to, because that's already tested and tried. But if you're going to look for multipliers or changes or things that others haven't seen, you got to kind of go to the outskirts. You can't just kind of go to the middle ground. You can always come back.

Speaker 4: 4:29

So it just kind of it changes your perspective a lot of times when you do that too and it opens up other ideas and ways of thinking, and I've always been doing that anyway. So I like to come up with creative solutions to problems, no matter what it is, if it's business technology, my own personal life, or I've had to MacGyverize my tractor with duct tape and change the piece and this and that. You know I do those types of things. So I'm just a natural tinkerer like that guy MacGyver. You know, like if you get stuck in the elevator I'm probably the guy to get you out. I kind of I don't know the like turns on when there's tight end moments show up in my life and I kind of enjoy being thinking on my feet, solving problems and doing that.

Speaker 3: 5:11

So you know my back. So, mac, in a zombie apocalypse, you're the guy that we want with with us.

Speaker 4: 5:18

Well, absolutely. Also, I live in a castle that has 18 inch stone walls and slits. You know, this is built back in eighteen hundred, so there's like slits for rifles in the basement. Wow, it's actually a fortress. So if you want to come, come along to my fortress and we'll protect everybody. Bring the family and the dog well.

Speaker 2: 5:34

So what's interesting about this is right. So evan and I are constantly, when we're talking sales and marketing, we're in constantly in position about think outside the box, don't do what everybody else is doing Okay, so I guess I want to tell them You're absolutely on to something. So, Evan, in terms of a salesperson who has to think outside the box, what's your viewpoint on?

Speaker 3: 5:52

that I agree. One of the things I tell my clients all the time if all of your competitors are doing it, stop doing it immediately. We don't want to be just like everyone else. Stop doing it immediately. We don't want to be just like everyone else. So if everyone's sending out the email once a week doing this, doing that, you don't want to look sound, feel like everyone else. So how do we stand out, how do we stand apart in everything from an elevator pitch to talking about what you're doing?

Speaker 3: 6:21

Again, the tweak from the sales perspective that I have people make is don't talk about yourself. People really don't care about you. Yes, we're most comfortable saying these are all the things I've done. Talk about your clients. What kinds of problems do you solve for them? What kind of challenges do they have that you might be able to help them with?

Speaker 3: 6:39

They care a heck of a lot more about that than they do about me touting my own accolades, tooting my own horn, talking about how great I am, saying, doing all of the same stuff everybody else is. Now, again, it's comfortable to do that because I can prep for knowing all of my collateral and knowing all the things that we do, and I run the risk sometimes, if I ask questions, of maybe not being 100% prepared of what questions I might get, but that's going to resonate a lot more with our audience. So again, if everybody else is doing something, I want to see how I can tweak that a little bit, turn that on its head a little bit. And, mac, again it sounds like you've got a lot of the same perspective of if everybody else is doing it, why do the same thing everybody else is doing? How do we look to the margins? How do we look at other things?

Speaker 2: 7:30

And a lot of times, from a marketing perspective, our job is to be different than the competition. So we're out here and we're putting out information to say, yes, I know you've seen that person before, but this is what we do different and why you should consider us. So that's how the three of us kind of tie together in that perspective, in which, mac yourself, you just self-proclaimed, you look at the edges and then said, hey, how can I create something different? And we're going to touch upon your software piece, but first I want to get to your public speaking.

Speaker 4: 7:59

Sure, absolutely, because I think that's a. I wear that with a badge of honor honestly right now because you know I want to kind of back things up to Mac as a kid.

Speaker 1: 8:08

You know I was.

Speaker 4: 8:08

Actually. I had a very tough childhood. My dad was a manic, depressive and bipolar and then he took his own life and that was really horrific to even go through that piece. But also I, you know, found out. You know my dad was exposed to Asian orange a couple of times while he was in Vietnam. That's a neurotoxin and it actually can be passed down to your siblings, and myself and my brothers probably have exposure to that as well.

Speaker 4: 8:31

That being said, what affects it at? Sometimes it can cause neurological damage. So for me that is like ADHD and I'm a little on an autistic scale. So I kind of was born with a really disability and emotional intelligence. I would say, you know, I'm really smart at everything else math, science but when it came to communication and just like we're doing here, this was really difficult for me. So the reason being is, you know there's a condition that comes with ADHD called RDS, and RDS stands for rejection dysphoria syndrome. So most normal people, if I tell you something bad, you'd be like, yeah, you're brushing it off. But me I feel physical pain when I hear, feel or see or perceive rejection. That can be debilitating for anybody.

Speaker 4: 9:14

I would just blank and couldn't even public speak. The reason why I'm saying this? Because I want to let you know where I started. And I basically started at the bottom, probably actually under what everybody else would start at in this area, and I had to basically lift myself up to become just as good as everybody else. And now I've lifted myself to become better and it took a lot of practice, a lot of determination and a lot of grit and I literally would be public speaking with a cue card saying hi, I'm Stephen McKeon, I do software, will you buy from me?

Speaker 4: 9:42

And it was really awkward, really crappy and I didn't know what I was doing. So I joined a really cool organization called BNI, which is a business networking international group helping young business owners kind of find a way be around other business owners that are kind of doing their thing, and a big part of that is public speaking. So every Friday morning at 7 am I had to get in front of 70 business owners and tell them what I did. I did that for a few years and I kind of stunk at it for a while, but I just kept doing it and kept doing it and I still remember this day, still sitting in that chair two chairs from the left, why do I even care? I just went up, said it from my heart and authentic, and I never turned back from that. Now I just go up, even here. I do better with that Q and a thing. I just be authentic and the things that I know, I know and the things I don't know, I'm very honest about them.

Speaker 1: 10:37

That's where.

Speaker 4: 10:37

I think a lot of people get themselves in trouble. They don't want to look like they don't know something, and you know that's where I think people fall short. The best thing you could do in public speaking is be yourself.

Speaker 2: 10:49

Well, let me. Let me come in here real quick, Steve. So I know that you do a lot of public speaking as well in your sales seminars.

Speaker 4: 10:56

I do yes. I do now yes.

Speaker 2: 10:58

So, Evan, from your perspective, from a public speaking and someone who has gone through what Steve has gone through, what would be your advice to the audience who might have a phobia to speaking publicly?

Speaker 3: 11:08

So two things. One I think Mac just illustrated a really important lesson and I want to make sure that this point is not lost. Mac didn't say I decided one day that I wanted to be good at public speaking. I went up there and I was great overnight. He talked about being in BNI meetings for several years, practicing for several years, then having something click and saying, okay, well, now I just don't need to care anymore. And now I need to go and not only practicing the skills but having the mindset and changing the mindset from one way to another. So I don't want that to be lost. For some of you who are out there who don't like going to networking events, don't like public speaking, don't get up on stage. It's not going to be just one or two times and then you're going to be cured and it's going to be easy, it's going to take lots of practice.

Speaker 3: 12:04

It's going to be easy. It's going to take lots of practice, it's going to be a skill that you need to build up over time. But with repetition, with the right mindset, you can develop the skills. So again, mac, I think I agree with you in hearing your background. You didn't start as equal from everyone else. You started with a major disadvantage and major obstacles to overcome and I think you're a great illustration of what can happen when somebody really puts their mind to it, decides they want to do it. So I just don't want that to be lost on folks.

Speaker 3: 12:37

For me, public speaking is extremely important and, craig, you and I have talked about this before whether you're the business owner or you're a sales rep for another company or an account executive, you are the face of your company when you're talking to anybody, whether it's a customer on the phone, a prospect at a trade show or a networking event. So it's a skill that you really need to build up. It's a skill that you really need to develop. Steve mentioned B&I. B&i is a great organization. Lit Tip is an organization much like B&I, where business owners and salespeople get together on a weekly basis. For several years I ran a group through Toastmasters. Toastmasters is a nonprofit organization. Go look at toastmastersorg and there's probably two dozen chapters within 20 minutes of where anybody listening to this podcast may live.

Speaker 3: 13:27

Great in terms of giving you the skills, giving you things to concentrate on so that you can get better and determine it. But if you can't articulate, if you can't communicate, it's going to be very difficult for you to get across to other clients why they should care about what you do, what your value prop is. And, quite frankly, people, especially these days, need to practice not only that written communication I'm sorry, not only the verbal communication, but the written communication as well. You could have the best product or service in the world. If you can articulate to other people what that is and why they should care, you're going to have a really tough time. So, craig, from a marketing perspective, what do you see and what have you seen in terms of working with different clients, in terms of people who are willing to get out there and able to do it versus people who are just so uncomfortable, in that there's that joke out there about giving a eulogy and that people would rather be in the box and out there delivering the eulogy, so you know.

Speaker 3: 14:30

so talk a little bit about how it's important from a marketing perspective.

Speaker 2: 14:33

Yeah, thank you. So, from a marketing perspective, you know, ultimately a lot of the communication that Mac and you guys and you, evan, are talking about is really coming from a comfortable position of being able to express yourself and how you're different. Right now, in everything that we do, whether it be social media, whether it be websites, whether it be software, whether it be anything, we have to be able to communicate. What's the benefit for me? That's your sales thing, right, evan?

Speaker 3: 15:01

What's in it for me. What's in it for me.

Speaker 2: 15:04

What's in it for me. So if communication is not happening in a clear, concise way, what's the easiest thing to do? Go to the next person who is clearer thing to do, go to the next person who is clearer. So Mac really touched upon a great point here about actually we talked about this in the pre-post-podcast meeting. Mac says, and I quote, if I can do it, none of you guys or all of you guys can do it, and he was very clear about that and he just illustrated kind of the struggles he had getting to this point. So the ability and I'm an introvert too, believe it or not, even though I'm sitting on here talking on a podcast the ability to get out and explain yourself and just have a communication Most of the decisions are made by who they like, right, sales guy. More business is done with who they like versus what they actually know, and that's an important part when it comes to the marketing perspective is to be able to market yourself, brand yourself. We've talked about that in other episodes.

Speaker 4: 16:00

Can I jump in here I? Just want to add a little thing, because I think it's really important to kind of really put the exclamation point on this. You know my mentor when I was still kind of you know, a young engineer starting to manage people started you know kind of training and one day he told me like listen, you can be the smartest person in the room. It doesn't matter if you can't communicate that effectively.

Speaker 4: 16:22

So, you know I don't want to be the smartest person in the room on purpose. I mean, even people say I might be. I'm actually seeking out the smartest person in the room and I'm trying to communicate that and find those people. And public speaking honestly, is my most valuable skill set. I can do a lot of really cool stuff on the nerdy side, but that doesn't come to comparison of what the value is.

Speaker 4: 16:44

Public speaking can change your life like it will give you a voice and the biggest thing is you need to have comfort and I think, craig, you push it on. People can perceive fear. All animals can. And if you're coming across and you're fearful talking, you're really kind of timid, even though you don't say you're saying that. That comes across in your body language. Absolutely, you have to be comfortable with yourself and that was that when that clicked for me. I was finally comfortable with myself, no matter what other people thought, and I think that's really important to resonate, because if you can't be comfortable with yourself, no matter what you say is not going to come across genuine and it absolutely comes off, as you said, it comes off physically, it comes off in your pitch, it comes off in your deliverable and everything.

Speaker 2: 17:27

And I'm going to take us back to high school, because we just did a series here about high school. We've all been in the scenario where all these movies that we talk about the jock, we talk about the nerd, we talk about the pretty girl, we talk about all that stuff there's movies upon movies based on that, and that's really the concept that all this stuff comes from. So if you can really demonstrate a level of confidence, if you can really demonstrate a level of comprehension in your own comfort, I agree with you guys. You go miles and miles and miles with your business, without a doubt.

Speaker 4: 17:58

I'm sorry, go ahead. I just want to add one more thing and one thing I learned because I'm good at talking. I'm very, you know, very fast at that, but sometimes I need to slow down, and one of the things I think was really helpful for me is the two to one ratio. You have two ears to one mouth. You should be listening more and be more interested than interesting.

Speaker 2: 18:17

There you go. That's it. We got to use that.

Speaker 4: 18:19

You want to be interested in what others are doing so you can resonate and build that emotional connection. I have it written on my whiteboard here because, as somebody like myself, emotional connections is a difficult thing for me. So I really work on this and I basically try to resonate with whoever I'm talking with in this. And I basically try to resonate with whoever I'm talking with, even like syncing my breathing, my heart rate to them. When you sync with a person emotionally, they, you will naturally do that.

Speaker 3: 18:42

So if you kind of do some of those tricks, you can kind of force you know you to be in that synchronization mode subconsciously yeah, and Mac, you're touching on a number of the things that I talk about in my reports really important, and if you're in sync with the other person, they're going to be more likely to kind of resonate with your message. And again to what you said, if I'm talking, I can't find out what somebody else's problems are and I can't determine whether or not I can be a good resource for someone else if I'm the one doing all the talking. So listening, having some of that emotional intelligence, asking really good questions, is going to help to determine whether or not I can be a good resource for the other person and whether or not I can help them with whatever their problems might be. So I think that's a great point.

Speaker 2: 19:39

I love the fact that Matt gave us a little nugget for the podcast. The two to one ratio, two ears, we got two of them.

Speaker 4: 19:46

I mean, you know, this kind of makes sense.

Speaker 3: 19:49

And if we want to take that one step further, not only do we have two ears, but depending on who you are, you also have two to four eyes, you know, depending on whether or not you've got glasses, contact lenses.

Speaker 2: 19:57

I've got four eyes, so are you busting on my glasses right now?

Speaker 3: 20:03

I'm not wearing mine. I only need my distance, If not for my contact lenses. You guys who the screens about 18 inches from my face would be fuzzy If not for the contact lenses I had in right now.

Speaker 2: 20:15

I got you Awesome, awesome. Let's branch a little bit into your software. So Evan and I speak a lot about the importance of having technology that is going to help the sales and marketing process work together better, be more efficient, and I know that you're head and heels over with software. Tell me about some automation stuff that you've come across from a sales and marketing perspective, or software you've created to help the automation process.

Speaker 4: 20:42

Yeah, no, this is a great point because really you know thinking about that whole communication piece. Granted, you know your webpages aren't really talking to you If they were, you probably wouldn't make it go away but they're still communicating a message there and how to get people interested in stuff. So it's really important. And in my world is a thing called above the fold. So what that means is on any webpage and I see Craig, he knows what I mean here Any webpage on your phone or your computer, above the fold is what you see when you first come to that website. That is critical because anything in there should have a call to action for what you want to convey, your message and what you want to do with them. If you don't, people are rarely short attention spans two seconds they're gone. So you know you have a very two seconds to communicate something. So it's really effective to make sure that you have that right, not only for but the words, the colors, the tone and what it does.

Speaker 4: 21:29

To give you an example, like what we've done as problem solvers in this area, we work with lots of companies and it could be anybody from just doing, you know, selling services, from a cleaning company up to a company that builds products you know and sells the you know, like companies like Amherst Beer, or sells sheds and buildings. So one of our really cool projects we did was for a company called Rhino Buildings. Rhino Buildings is a fabricator, so if you want to get a shed or if you want to get like a school, they can build that for you and they have a really cool thing to do it. The problem is his competitors had, and him had like this really clunky kind of thing to help kind of quote out what you can build your own model. So we took that over and we basically made his quote intake engine as a 3D model builder that people can use to build the buildings they want.

Speaker 4: 22:15

It saves that and it sends it to the sales team. So when they get the link, it opened up exactly what that person built. Tweak it a little bit and they can use the common interface of a 3D model and a web page to consolidate, make sure they're on the same page of what they want to build and making sure the windows are in the right placement. So you can go down to the millimeter on moving the windows left, right, up and down, colors and all that. It's phenomenal. I mean if guys share, we could ever see it. You can go to Rhino buildings and you can see the little builder there if you're interested in it. But that was a creative solution to create a sales intake funnel. That tool probably generates a hundred quotes a day move for that company wow, there's

Speaker 4: 22:51

probably 30 or 40 sales people that are using that, coming up, picking it up. And it's not just doing things like for the builder, it's actually intuitive where, like say, if that salesperson took on that person initially for a job and they asked for another job, we automatically match them again. And we've done smart things because you don't just want to do a round robin and find somebody another salesperson at the same company that, hey, you know, you got another building, now you got to build another relationship. That usually is awkward and you want to have that person's already had a good relationship with that customer. Take that relationship over again and move them along the journey. That is the right way to do it. And we kind of built all those things in custom for that company, how they wanted to run and build and give them a competitive advantage over his competitors.

Speaker 2: 23:34

Wow, evan heaven, did that spark you as a sales guy? I mean, I mean, that's a sales thing we had.

Speaker 4: 23:39

It's a sales tool we created. It's really neat because it's a 3d model we're built. It's like playing a video game in a web page, so it's kind of cool, but its purpose is to generate leads and generate opportunities, and this is what it does in a very visual way and I would imagine it engages that those prospects immediately instantly, immediately.

Speaker 4: 24:00

They basically as soon as that thing gets submitted, the sales guys are calling them within a few minutes and they're like okay, I got your drawings here, I see what you want to do and then we can. They can spin the building around outside. I can see your back. You know you might have a little bit of issue here like these, not, these are technical sales people. They understand how buildings are and what you want to get out of it. If you just build a shed and you put a 100-foot roof all the way up there and you have only two posts holding it up, it might work in a model, but in real life gravity might take hold. Those are types of things. You're allowed to build all these different things and be creative, but understanding how they actually know what the materials are and how that works is really important and they help them through that journey. But we just created a tool as a technology company for them to be more effective there.

Speaker 3: 24:42

And there's probably a lot of people with home contracting businesses and contracting businesses right now going. Why can't my company do that? And when are we going to get a hold of Mac? Because right now they're just filling out boring, filling out three, three, four lines worth of stuff. And if somebody can play with this stuff and make it real, yeah, we've even uh, I've even done for, like cleaning companies.

Speaker 4: 25:02

Back in the bni day, we built a quote generation tool which we just took all the numbers and how they do the stuff from their paper, and then we created a really cool little widget. Like you can slide things around like how many windows and doors, what is your pitch on your roof? Um, I know it's kind of similar to another company, but they're actually in a different lane. They're doing cleaning services for houses and dry uh, soft wash, they call it where they spray materials or chemicals on your building and instead of scrubbing or power washing it, this makes the, I would guess, with the younger generation of kids who are used to gaming and video games and those kinds of things.

Speaker 3: 25:37

If you can give them more of that experience when somebody is interfacing with your company, whether it's on your website or in your showroom, whatever you're doing, I would imagine that you know. Again, craig said a couple of minutes ago people like to do business with people that they like. If they're giving me something that I like and this is really cool stuff they're going to be more likely to want to work with you versus just, you know, filling out numbers on the spreadsheet.

Speaker 4: 26:01

A hundred percent and you hit a point here. People do business with people they know they like and they trust. Yes, All right, that's it. If you get those three, that's where you win.

Speaker 3: 26:19

And you just want to kind of focus on that.

Speaker 4: 26:21

It's really important. The three of us should really look at joining a group where they really focus on knowing, liking and trusting.

Speaker 3: 26:24

Yeah, I know there's always something out there like that. You know, Tracy, this is a plug for you and Provisors.

Speaker 2: 26:28

There you go, there you go. All those are Provisor members.

Speaker 4: 26:32

Yes, I've been about six months in. I got to say I've been doing tons of networking all over the country in different groups. Provisors, is it? If you're really serious about your business and serious about building long lasting relationships, this is it. No-transcript Brought to you by I thought you were going to jump in and say something.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Yeah, so let's talk about your content, right. So how do you take something very technical and this is again industries that we all touch how do you take something as technical as you're talking about here and simplify it for a salesperson, a marketing person and, obviously, a developer? How do you simplify that in your world?

Speaker 4: 27:20

It's not easy. The thing is, you know I do this a lot where I have to take you know very technical things and boil it down to somebody to make a decision on.

Speaker 4: 27:27

And it's not all acronyms and things they want to hear. It's like what is the value proposition? What am I able to do? Do use this widget or technology to accomplish? What can I do with it and how can it maybe close the gaps or make things more efficient?

Speaker 4: 27:39

So me, when I, you know, a lot of times, sometimes I'll start working with a company where they're dealing with pain you know a word a little unique, because we're builders, we're also audit things. We can help you remediate or fix things that have been hacked, where me personally, as'm an ethical hacker. So a lot of times I come into a company that's been having pain. Maybe their database was attacked by the Chinese army and taking over and the IT department can get it to somewhere, but there's a lot of software stuff that IT guys don't know. I usually come into those situations.

Speaker 4: 28:08

I help them when they're in pain, and then all the skeletons come out of the closet once I earn their trust.

Speaker 4: 28:11

And then all the skeletons come out of the closet once I earn that trust and they're like hey, you know, I want to tie this together and what I'm just looking for is efficiency gains.

Speaker 4: 28:21

You know, less time and less clicks.

Speaker 4: 28:21

You would have to do something Like if somebody's trying to generate a report and they're doing the same repeatable process and they're spending an hour or two.

Speaker 4: 28:26

If we can reduce that down to an automated task or script, that's what should be done, because that multiplier of two hours will add up every week and by the end of the year, you'd be really astonished at how much money and resources you have spent, even though you don't think it's that big a deal. So you know, really building into those types of things and I'll maybe share a little bit of a journey recently personally, because I'm working on a product that we're currently working with in the AI space and you know I have probably close to 4,000 people in my DRM, which is quite a few, and what I wanted to do is I used AI to help me go through my 4,000 things, because if I had to go through and say, hey, I want to find all these IT companies, we know it would take a little while might get my list there. So I was able to use AI to help speed that process up with data. You know, pull my data out of what I wanted out of there once I did that.

Speaker 4: 29:13

I used another ai bot you know, since I'm a developer I can kind of do these things and I allowed myself to take that excel spreadsheet that had all the contacts in it with the first name, email and stuff and this kind of made a thing. I made little text files, my template. I said ai, take this template, take this excel file and then make me the intros personalized for each person, and I created a text file for each one. So that whole process from the beginning of getting the data to end, was probably 15 minutes normally. That would have taken many, many hours manually and I was able to really speed my processing up and getting something that would take longer shorter.

Speaker 4: 29:50

So that's really what you want to use these technologies for, because we I mean honestly we are in a golden age of technology and commoditized intelligence.

Speaker 3: 30:00

Absolutely, absolutely. If you multiply that by three, five, a hundred users, all of a sudden that adds up quickly in terms of per day per day per day.

Speaker 4: 30:10

Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a three, 65 multiplier. So that's where I think always a lot of yellow business owners get caught up in that and don't really care, like even me. You know, we just went through an auditing thing through our company. There's a lot of little things and services, we don't know what we're using and stuff and we just were refining our things to be more efficient and removing things that were distractions and or costs. You know they weren't helping, so, um, but that's an ongoing thing. You should always kind of keep going and sort sweeping and cleaning up your stuff kind of thing. I forget the acronym. My wife works for boeing and they have this asian kind of acronym that basically talks about sort sweeping and kind of keep iterating that through to keep making your processes better and better, refining them yeah, so go ahead, evan, go ahead g Craig, and then I was just going to make sure that Mac's got an opportunity to share with people how they can get a hold of him.

Speaker 2: 31:00

That's exactly where I was going Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 31:03

So, mac, if you just want to because I think that what you're talking about is important for a lot of folks out there in our listening audience Can you just share with people how they can get a hold of you if they see that they're running into these things? They want to see how they can create efficiencies or be more interactive. So how can folks get a hold of you?

Speaker 4: 31:22

Yeah, first of all, the easiest way is our website, which is MacGyverTechcom. You go there. All of our social media links and everything are at the bottom. I also have a really good social media following on different platformsin. You can find me pretty easily also on twitter, but my twitter handle is macgyver media. When I first started my company, macgyver media was my company name. I didn't know when I made a name media, it was really a marketing company and I went through a branding journey about three, four years in and we rebranded to macgyver tech, but I still have the handle. I have quite a few followers. I talk about everything from technology to helping people, so I would. I would love to chat with you, if you see out there, and that's the easiest way to get ahold of me.

Speaker 2: 32:02

Awesome. So my last question to you, mac, and this is off the top of my head give us three things that people in the sales and marketing and the development space need to do right away.

Speaker 4: 32:14

One is embrace AI. Ai is a force multiplier and make sure you're at least using it for simple things like using chat, gpt and open AI to help you maybe craft up that email that you want. That's going to have a hook into it. That's going to pull that emotional string with somebody. Use it to its advantages. It's got all the knowledge of humanity packed inside and it's an intelligent database you can talk to. So use it to its advantages. It's got all the knowledge of humanity packed inside and it's an intelligent database you can talk to. So use it for that.

Speaker 4: 32:38

If you're not ai enabled, you're going to be disabled, because this wave is moving really, really fast through any other technology we've ever seen and transforming the entire workforce. So make sure you're involved in using that and speeding your things up along the way. There's a lot of of tools and this is a really fast-paced space. So if you have any questions, I can always tell you how to do that and where you need to go in AI space. But just embrace it, don't be afraid of it. It's something that's only going to help us move forward, but it is extremely transformative.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Awesome, awesome. So two, everyone who's heard Mac and heard Evan and I talk, please, by all means, subscribe, leave a review. We're on every major platform, whether Apple podcast, spotify, podcast advocate, amazon Music and many, many more. You can see us on our podcast page, which is SM Playbook SM Playbook Unleashed dot com, and we're going to let Matt go right now because I know you're busy and got a lot of things to do.

Speaker 4: 33:38

Everybody say thank you, matt. Thank you very much everybody. It's a pleasure being here. You guys are wonderful.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Awesome. I'm Craig Andrews. That's Big Mac. I'm going to call you Big Mac from now on. I love it and we thank you guys for listening to our podcast Until next time. Bye-bye now, and we thank you guys for listening to our podcast Until next time. Bye-bye now.

Speaker 4: 33:55

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 33:59

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