Marci Rossi 0:01
Go do the thing. Go have conversations with potential clients and your audience members. Go tell people about the solutions that you have to offer. Go sell and serve what time you have left. That's where you go and clean up the back end, because it doesn't really matter if you have this beautiful onboarding sequence, if no one ever buys from you.
Finola Howard 0:19
That's Marcie Rossi. She's a fellow business strategist who focuses on systems that create greater ease in your business. This is a key ingredient for scaling your business, and one that just makes everything feel so much lighter. One of my favorite quotes from Marcy is this one, success isn't a mystery, it's a workflow. And that sentence alone is why I wanted her to share her expertise with us here on your truth shared, take a listen, and if you want to get out from under that pile of stuff that's holding you back and be the CEO of the business you dream of having. I'm Finola Howard, Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart, and your host of the your truth shared podcast, I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared. Today, I want to talk about systems. Okay? Because systems are the things that are going to make the business easier and more capable of scaling. Because too often entrepreneurs, particularly small businesses, are trapped in their own technology blocks and so much more, and we need to kind of simplify that, because business can be simplified. And I love this quote from our next guest, and our next guest is the lovely Marcy Rossi, who was former lawyer turned business strategist, coach, etc, but I love this statement that she makes, which is, success isn't a mystery, it's a workflow. Welcome, Marcy,
Marci Rossi 2:14
thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Finola Howard 2:17
Oh, it's so good to have you. But I love that idea that it's not a mystery, because I think we make it this big, huge thing that is never going to be achieved, and it is actually so one of the statements I make is, is that it's often predictable, because we know there are ingredients success, so to success, so why don't we just do them?
Marci Rossi 2:38
Because we're looking for the answer, right? We want that one missing piece, and the answer is consistency. And the thing that makes consistency so much easier is having systems behind it, right? I feel like a lot of times in business, when you're starting out, you're just looking for that one thing, that one thing, to make it click. But the advice that I see most often from the people that are the most successful is it comes down to consistency. It comes down to doing the thing over and over and over again, whatever that thing happens to be. If you love social media, if you love, you know, blogging, if you love whatever that thing is. It is through that repetition that we build competence and confidence which allows us to keep showing up. So, yeah, I mean, that's that's really what it comes down to. I think if we're gonna summarize this episode right here, it's really just consistency. And I truly believe that what makes it easier to be consistent is when you have a business that supports you in that.
Finola Howard 3:30
I don't think small business owners think like that. Do you? Do you think they think like that? They think that there's an often, often there is a need to because they're creative. You know, we're all creative. So there is this need to create, to invent, to iterate, because maybe we're bored seeing the same thing all the time. So therefore we think we have to bring something new to the market, and new and new and new and new. And therefore you never have can you can never build consistency, or can you if it's always new?
Marci Rossi 4:02
Yeah, I don't think that they necessarily believe that consistency is the answer. It does feel boring. It does feel stale. I do think they're looking for that answer. It's that one missing piece of like, Oh, if I just knew this one secret, if I just niche down better, if I just do this one other thing, build this new offer, change something. That's what's missing. But I like I said, I like I said, I don't, I don't agree with that. I think it is the consistency and whatever that is, to make a name for yourself, you really have to kind of pick a path, and instead of putting in 10% here and 10% here and 10% here, really devoting yourself. And devotion takes time and energy. And so if you can make it easier on yourself by having things set up, I think that's that is the secret, I think, that a lot of people are looking for. And I say people I spent a lot of time, a lot of money on consultants and mentors just telling me, just do the tell me what to do, and I'll do it. And I push back every time they would say, like, Okay, go on Instagram Live every single week. It's like, no, but I want to just tell me that. Tell me the real answer, right? Which I was trying to just kind of refer my beliefs, but my beliefs weren't getting me to where I wanted to go, the. Are people making far more money than I even imagined was possible for me, telling me, Marcy, go do the thing and then do it again next week and do it again next week. And I'm like, Yeah, but I had this other idea for this other thing I want to do now, right? So it just kind of, is that that
Finola Howard 5:13
cycle, but I like that you said that. You said my beliefs weren't taking me where I wanted to go. My beliefs, because it's really interesting. Like, I have a I have this feeling about formula, like formula, because an interesting thing from a marketing perspective, formulas I love because it's process, right? And it's proven, tested, all of that. But then there's this other side, which is, if everyone, everybody is using the formula, then everybody sounds the same, which means I'm not unique. I think in that space is the trap. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah,
Marci Rossi 5:47
absolutely. And I think, I think when you think formula, it doesn't mean that every single person has to go in on Instagram, live on Friday mornings from nine to 10. And that is the secret there. It is, consistently showing up. That's the form
Finola Howard 6:00
to your flow, like consistently showing up to your flow, yeah, to have what suits us, yeah, yes,
Marci Rossi 6:07
in the way that that honors you. Because if you don't, if you do something that you really hate, been there, done that, it shows up. It's very obvious, right? I feel like my audience knew when I was on social media, but I just didn't love it. I didn't come out with this excitement, like I can't read to share this is like, oh, okay, do another post. Because my mentor said I need to do another post today, right? So I think people pick up on that. So yeah, there is a formula that says, if you show up on social media consistently over time, give value, quote, unquote, for whatever that means, then that. That's how it works. Well, that didn't work for me. Instead, when I pulled back and saw what was working for me and doubled down, that's when things really started to click. So I think you can kind of, I think really honestly, any formula will work, as long as you devote a fair amount of time and energy to it, it's not going to work just because you tried it once.
Finola Howard 6:52
What was the shift that allowed you to find the thing that would work for you?
Marci Rossi 6:56
I think it was, well, I mean, I had been asking for answers, I was doing what people were saying, and it just wasn't working. So I did it as an experiment. And I love experimenting in business. I think that's one of my favorite things to do, is just to try and see what happens. And so I didn't approach this of like, I'm burning down my social media, deleting all my accounts, never touching it again. I did. I'm gonna take a break and see what happens. What's gonna happen to my energy levels, to my mood when I don't have to think, like, oh, I should film this for real. I didn't bother even considering next. I knew I'm on a break right now. And as I started to pull back and then look at the numbers, I'm a huge fan of numbers, I could see that this is actually working. And so I still don't say that I've quit social media forever. I don't I mean, who knows, but it's what I'm doing right now is working for me. So why would I go back to something where I have years of data with no results, when I can have several months showing that it's it's just so far much better. So I think approaching things with this experiment without necessarily trying all of the curiosity, yes, yeah. So the openness, curiosity, but also respecting that you have to give it a fair shake, right? If I'm not going to do social media, I need to really devote my time to something. It's not just like, oh, I'll just sit back and hope that clients fall into my lap so experimenting, but not with all of the things all at once all of the time.
Finola Howard 8:15
Yeah, I love that. You also say on your website, the two biggest roadblocks that you've seen is indecision and implementation. Tell us more about that.
Marci Rossi 8:25
Yeah, I think in the beginning, especially for me, I I'm speaking for myself and for a lot of the clients that I've worked with, and especially myself since
Finola Howard 8:33
the expert. But this is a great point of reference. This is the great point,
Marci Rossi 8:36
yeah, for sure. So when you, when you're starting a business, it's hard because, see, there's so many things that you don't know, and you're I find that a lot of my clients are also aware that they don't know what they don't know. They don't know what that thing is, but they're like, I'm missing something. I don't know everything. And so we spend a lot of the time in learning about we are doing some research, and some of that is beneficial, right? If you just try to play on Facebook ads, have you never touched the platform? You're probably going to end up wasting a lot of money. Some learning can be beneficial, but at some point, we need to actually do the thing. We don't need to watch that 47th webinar on niching. We need to just start talking to the people that we believe are our target audience, right? So in the beginning, because we get stuck in that learning education mode, it makes it really hard to make decisions for ourselves. We are looking for other people for answers, and so we don't trust our gut, we don't trust our intuition, we don't trust even what we're excited about, right? I hated social media every minute of it, but someone told me that it would help my business, and it definitely helped her business, but it didn't align with my passions and my skills, and I knew that I wasn't on social media before I had a business. So why would I all of a sudden change what it is that I'm naturally doing right? So I think the the need to understand things that are brand new to you. If you're a brand new entrepreneur, there's a lot to learn. And I think that fear of not doing it right, like I want to get it right the first time, I don't want to make a mistake, that kind of imposter syndrome, perfection. Them that pulls us back from making a decision. So we outsource those decisions to other people, and then we hide. We hide because it's risky to put yourself out there. We hide because it feels more productive to do some of these little, small tasks when we can't be rejected. And so that's kind of the implementation piece. That's why I work with clients to be like, I'll do all those behind the scene things that you don't have that excuse. You have to go out there and talk to people. I'm not going to be posting your social media reels or writing your blogs like that's your expertise, but you have to do that. You have to express an opinion. You have to sell, goodness forbid, right? So like, that is kind of that implementation piece is it's scary. That's where we can be told, No, that's where we can get trolls online, that's where we can really open ourselves up and be vulnerable. And I don't, I don't begrudge anybody for not wanting that. That's not a comfortable feeling, but that's where the results come. Right? Everything is. Everything good happens outside your comfort zone. And so if we can find ways to really free up all that back end so you don't have those quote, unquote excuses, that's how you get out there and actually get things moving, really moving the needle and and moving forward.
Finola Howard 11:06
And that ability to like it's interesting. It's about this fear of rejection is stopping us from the things that will help us to actually grow and not be rejected, to actually be embraced by our clients, the people who want to do things with us. I really like this. I remember several years ago, starting to work with someone who was going to put systems into the business and and I think I might have mentioned this to you when we were on our first call, but there was such a rigidity to it and such a this is how we must do it, and you must follow it this way that I that I never applied them, yeah,
Marci Rossi 11:46
well, and I think a lot of people too, they especially entrepreneurs. We're creative individuals. That's literally what we do. We create something out of nothing. And so when you have systems that say you must do it like this, it feels very constraining and like that's that's not. If I wanted to be told exactly what to do, I'd go get a corporate job again, right? Like that. They'll tell me exactly what I need to be doing. That's not what I that's not what I mean when I talk about systems. I mean, yes, I'm a big fan of SOPs, and I make them wither, literally, like, click this button and then type in this thing. But I do it for a couple of things. One, I free up my brain space. I never have to remember. Wait, what is it that I do when I need to publish a podcast again? I have a list, if I ever need to refer back to that two I get to outsource it. And you know, when I outsource things that gives me even more time freedom, that gives me even more room to be creative. So if we look at these as a way to free up our brains, that we can generate more creative, exciting ideas, who doesn't want that in their business? So, yeah, it doesn't have to be a bunch of SOPs, but making sure that you know what you're doing, so that you can hand off a smooth process to somebody else, instead of just outsourcing chaos, that is where you get to find the fun and creativity and space in your business.
Finola Howard 12:55
But also this allows you to outsource because, as you just beautifully put it, outsourcing chaos. We don't want that. I think it was the rigidity that always because I like systems, I like process. I like process that gives me freedom. That's how I think about that. It allows me the space and the time to create. Yet this just felt like here is a box I want to shove you in and not really understand there was such a tight approach to it, and I think I completely rejected it. Do you? How do you? How do you deal with clients, or how can you advise list listeners who are a little bit nervous of the systems? Because we know the systems will help us scale, right? We know this. It's just proven everywhere. How do we remove the block that allows us to jump in? I
Marci Rossi 13:50
think there's a couple things. So some of the systems and processes that we put in place are a one and done, right? So if I have, if someone books a call with me, they're going to get two, I think, two reminders, I don't know, because I set it up right and I don't touch it anymore. They get two reminders, 24 hours before and one hour before for their calls. I never have to touch that again. Did that involve a time commitment putting it up front? Yeah, yeah. Of course. I had to actually set those things up, and now I set it and forget it, and I don't have to touch it again. So there are some things where it involves a higher time commitment initially, and then you get to let it go. Another example I have is I have an evergreen welcome sequence. So when someone joins my email list, they get a normal welcome sequence, and then they get moved into another series of right now, I think it's up four months where an email goes out every Friday. What this means is, if I do nothing in my business for the entire week, they're still going to get an email from me on Fridays. So I give myself more freedom. I had to write, what is that 16 emails. In order to have these all in, I had to plug it in and create the little automation sequence, and then I get to leave it alone. Now, if I want to expand that absolutely, I can go change these things, but right now I what I've done is I've set aside some time to give myself. Freedom to say, even if I step away, things are still going to be working for me. I'm still going to be selling, I'm still going to be making offers to people and finding ways to support them. So that's part of it, getting over the Yeah, it's going to take some time, but recognizing, but why are we doing this? What is book going to be to pay off in the long run? For other things, I think recognizing, you can have freedom and processes simultaneously, right? So when you're when you're doing this podcast, you get to choose who you interview. You get to choose when you interview. You get to set your own times. You get to choose when you're going to put it out. All kinds of things. But you don't have to think about where you're recording it. You don't have to think about what happens afterward and how this person edits and how it gets uploaded. There's no creativity in how I upload my episodes to Buzzsprout. It's just, it's just what I do, right? But what I talk about when I record, do I want to batch record and do several episodes on one day? Do I want to do, you know, literally, the night before, trying to scribble something together? That's my prerogative. But the pieces that go with that, there's no real creativity there. There's no need for creativity and how I press the Upload button. So having those pieces there, I don't have to think about, okay, wait, I just uploaded it. Okay? I also have to write a blog post. I also have to tell the guests that it's coming out, like all those other things, because I have a checklist that comes when there's a new episode. It tells me, Marcy, these are the 1024, whatever things I have to do, and I get to play with the rest of it. I get to talk about whatever I want to talk about whenever I feel like. Whenever I feel like talking about it, but I know that when I do, it's going to come out the way that I want it to come out and present the image that I want
Finola Howard 16:29
it to so if we have gotten through to our listeners and and said, you know, this is your journey to freedom, this is your journey to be able to kind of explore success, to actually set yourself up for it in a way that your genius is being fed. Because we're everybody's talking about, you know, working your genius zone and all that like this is what the systems do, is help you work in your genius zone. And all the good things, the joyful things about having your own business. So say someone is coming to the market and they have their business. Maybe they have an online course. Maybe they do still do one to one work. Maybe they have a podcast, maybe they have a blog, whatever it is. You know, there are kind of standard ingredients to this kind of business model, but they're trying to do everything, or they're spending an inordinate amount of money on outsourcing everything and not feeling really in control of it. Where would you say they should start?
Marci Rossi 17:25
Great question. So I would say, don't outsource anything until you're smooth and clear on it, right? We're not outsourcing chaos. We're not just passing off something that's not messy, because if we can't get it the way we like it, how are we possibly going to expect a third party who's never going to be as invested in our business as we are to get it right. They may have some ideas, you know, they may have worked with some other people and have some ideas, but I'm going to assume that if we really want things to work the way we are, let's figure that piece out. So let's pull delegation off the table right now. What can we do that we need to work on? I would say there's a couple different ways you can approach this. The first is, what's going to have the biggest, most immediate impact in your business, right? Anything that's client facing or customer facing, that's something that we want to keep as smooth as possible, because that's where we build trust. I don't know about you, but if you've ever purchased something, and then you're like, checking your email, and you're hitting refresh, and you're like, where's the link? Where is the course, where is the thing I'm already like, did I just get scammed? Did someone just steal my money like immediately doubting myself, not feeling reassured if instead, when I purchase I'm taken to a thank you page that says exactly what's going to happen. Marcy, you're going to get an email from me. It says this. It says the subject line, it should be there in 15 to 20 minutes. If it's not, send me an email, I can help you out, support you that way, that person gets the email that I said they were going to get it tells them very clear next steps. Here's what you go do, A, B, C, D, whatever. They've now gotten that twice. Okay? They know exactly what they did. They were reassured that they made the right decision, and they could feel comforted that I follow through if I say I'm selling you a course, and then you get that course, you know that you can start to believe me at this point. If not, you've already started to break that relationship right from the get go, if it gets messy. So I would say, start with anything, depending on you know, of course, your business client facing, whether that's if you're one on one, do you send a contract right away? Do you send them a link to book their first call right away? Like, what do they need in that moment to feel like, yes, this was a great decision, and yes, I trust this person. It works the same way with your courses, right? Deliver the course. If you say you're going to live a course, deliver the course. What do they need to trust that they made the right decision and they chose the right person, right? It's the made the right decision, chose right person. Anything that supports your business in that. That's what I would say you should
Finola Howard 19:37
start with. And that's that's what you said to me before, which is about your brand promise, following through on your brand promise, and that's what systems do.
Marci Rossi 19:47
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what we when we hold ourselves back because we work on perfectionism, it's because we want to show ourselves in the best light. So why would we not set up our businesses to do that same thing? Why would we not welcome someone kindly and generous? Ly into our world when they've just entrusted us with one of the most valuable resources out there, which is their money and, of course, their time. So yeah, it absolutely reflects on your brand the way you set these things up. And that's why I would say starting with that the external facing things before you start cleaning up your this is how I upload an episode into Buzzsprout sort of thing,
Finola Howard 20:20
and then outside, so after that. So that's like the onboarding piece. What do you where would you take them next?
Marci Rossi 20:27
My, honestly, my favorite place to go next is the things that they do not that often. So maybe there's something in your business that you do maybe once a month, once every couple of months. And the reason that I like to focus on this is because I find there's a lot of wasted brain space of okay, what do I do next, right? If I'm taking that the podcast episode, just because it's very timely, right? Now, what do you do for that, right? Do you have to edit the podcast for both the audio and the video version? Do you create a blog post out of it? Do you email your guest a thank you and let them know where the quotes are? Do you have to write the show notes? Do you have to come up with an episode title? Do you have to create Pinterest pins for whatever those things are that you're not thinking, Oh, I forgot to actually upload it to YouTube this week, or I forgot to actually write the blog post making note of those and making note while you're doing it right there. There's software out there you can kind of capture what you're doing. I don't again has to be, I don't think has to be so restrictive of like, click this button, click this button, but a very clear process of when x happens, I need all of these y things to happen. Mine, I have two kind of versions. I have an SOP, which is more of that click thing, and then I have use click up for project management. And so each of these types of tasks has all these sub tasks behind it, right? It tells me to upload it. It tells me to write the show notes. It tells me to email the guest, etc. Every single time there's a new episode, all of those pieces fill back up. So I find we waste a lot of time and energy trying to remember or even missing pieces when it's not second nature yet. So let's just go ahead and document it the next time that we do it, and that way we can have something in place the next time that we don't have to remember what those pieces are. Anytime we can free up brain space. We give ourselves more room to create.
Finola Howard 22:10
If you and the thing, if you do it in click up or something like that, it means you can outsource it. When you've cracked it that you know it's flowing. Then we can do the delegation piece. Then we can do the outsourcing piece, which then levels us up again. Oh,
Marci Rossi 22:24
I don't want to, I don't want to imply that I'm not about delegating and outsourcing. I am 100% about it. I just think that we need to outsource something smooth. So, yeah, you know, in clickup, you can assign those tasks to other people. You can have documents in there that say, Okay, we do A, then B, then C, then D. It's just about knowing what you want, getting clear on how you're going to make that happen, and then you can easily hand that off so that you have time to do things that really excite you. Right? Writing show notes may not be your most important thing, but it does support your goals. So or most favorite thing, at least, but it does support your goals. So when you get to delegate these off, you get to focus on the things that only you can do. Right? That zone of genius we talked about before,
Finola Howard 23:02
and this is this makes us start to think about business in a much more methodical way, in a much more conscious way, instead of being, let's face it, a bit more childlike in an approach. You know what I mean? We've got to be thinking strategically. We've got to be thinking, you know, what is the impact on the business of me doing this? Is this where I should be spending my time? Should I be spending it's one of the most regular questions that's asked in the business, is this where I should be spending my time?
Marci Rossi 23:29
Well? And I think you can easily find that answer. I don't think we're going back to that indecision. It's, let's look at the data. What is the data saying? I can ask you as an expert, but even you, you're not an expert in my business and I'm not an expert in yours, just from you know, getting to each other right now, but you might know your members, or at least you'd find a way to find them. So if you have your social media and you're finding that a lot of these people, you're getting sales right there in your Instagram Stories, don't ask about me. What you should do, go make more Instagram Stories, right? That's where your sales are coming from. So I think we kind of like that, that indecision of not wanting to make the wrong step, look at what the data is telling you, if you're putting in you know, it's that Pareto Principle, 20% of our results come from 80% of the effort, or however, more elegantly it's described, looking at that, where are your 20% coming from? And let's flip that around. Let's put that the dedication and time there, instead of just asking, Well, what's working in your business? Because no two people are exactly the same. And even if we had, even if we were attracting the exact same people and serving them in the exact same way, you and I still had different skill sets and interests, right? We still have different personalities and desires and and talents that we would be bringing to this. So they might not necessarily align. So I would say, look, look at your numbers. But I always say, look at your numbers. So
Finola Howard 24:43
what numbers would you say people should look at then,
Marci Rossi 24:46
yeah, I mean, really depends on what your business is. But the general things you're going to want to know are, what is your source of leads. So if we're looking at, if we're looking at your let's, let's go with an email list, because that's something very familiar that. People look at the conversions, where are your leads coming from, but more important than that, where are your sales coming from? Because you may have a lead magnet that's going like wildfire. It is bringing people in, and none of those are actually converting. So looking at where your sales are coming from and how those people found you, and then doubling down on that it can be harder to tie, you know, like an Instagram follower to a purchase, unless we're actually seeing it's a link only in our stories, we can look at it that way, but looking at where people are finding us, but also, more importantly, the people that are purchasing us, not purchasing us, not just growing our email list to say that we have a large audience.
Finola Howard 25:39
And I think the ones that, there's a couple of ones that come to mind, but there's like, I remember doing a blog post at one point where I pointed to how to, you know, how to get started on Instagram. And then they watched this, the they read the second blog post and the third blog post, this is ages ago. Then they converted into a launch strategy that I did. Then they converted into a brand, a rebrand, redesign thing so you can track customer journeys the whole way through, because some of them shine so often, it's really good to actually look at where are your top checks coming from, where are the top earners coming from, and what was the route for them to get here. Tell me what your thoughts are on AI, because AI has just changed everything. So yes, and it's also affected the delegation thing, because, again, we have to instruct AI on how to do stuff. But I'd love to get your perspective for
Marci Rossi 26:34
sure. So I it's love hate relationship. I think a lot of people have a similar feeling about it. I use AI every single day. Had a chat open on my window before we started this call. I would say, recognizing that it's a tool, not an answer. I feel like this is where we also get some of that indecision, where we're like chat to BT be my business coach. What should I do next? Versus looking at what your actual numbers are? If you're not feeding in the data, it's just kind of making things up, I think too, that over reliance is watering us down. So a lot of the traditional approach in building a list, a lead list, was to create a lead magnet, a freebie, whatever you want to call it, and getting it out there, and then people are just going to magically sign up, and all of a sudden you have all these leads, and you're converting it, 235, percent, whatever. But if what we're creating is we just want to have a thing, and we ask chat GPT, Hey, make me a lead magnet for this. Your competitors can do that too, and so can your customers. So are you actually providing any more value? Now, if all you're doing is a copy and paste dump from chatgpt. Now, I think we can train it really well to sound like us if we are building custom GPT, so not just necessarily having sporadic conversations, but really doing the work to first get clear on what we sound like, so that we can teach chatgpt, I find that's a big piece missing, but if we are over relying on it and copy and pasting everything it says, we're going to sound watered down. We're going to look like everybody else, and we don't really have any true value or authenticity. So I think with the rise of AI, what's going to be really important coming forward is that human aspect. We're going to get tired and burned out of having a conversation with a robot who always uses emojis for his bullet points and who uses the know this, know this, just this triad, like there's some familiar phrases that we start to see, and then we realize we're not actually chatting with a human. We're chatting with someone who copy and pasted. So getting really clear on your voice before you start outsourcing that work. It's that same thing of getting really clear on your process before you start outsourcing that work. It doesn't mean you can't, but if you want to reflect a human with true value, making sure that that's part of the equation, that we're using it as a tool, not as an answer.
Finola Howard 28:48
Do you feel that we need to become more human because of AI?
Marci Rossi 28:51
I think it's going to be desirable. I think we're going to see more rise of offers that are have a human component, right? Whether that's even just like a Slack channel where we're chatting with people, or when we have group calls, I find that the desire, I believe that the desire to connect with another person, to have more of those immediate human responses, is going to be more valuable, because I I've had, I've had conversations with chat GPT for my business coach, but I still go to my actual business coach when I want real answers, when I want to human with experience. Chatgpt doesn't have experience. It's pulling in phrases from other people. So if I want to replicate success, I want to talk to someone who has actually done it, not who is guessing what that next word should be.
Finola Howard 29:33
Have you had the same conversation with chatgpt As you've had with your business coach? And what was the difference? I know you've probably answered, but it just if you have an example, it would be curious.
Marci Rossi 29:44
I don't. My questions for my business coach are very situation specific, right? I have an idea for a summit that I want to host in October, and so my my questions are going to be, I have the. That going I'm waiting for it to respond. But like, have you done one yourself? Is there anything that you think I should be aware of or want to keep track of? I'm trying to leverage her lived experience so that I don't make them say mistakes, if she can, if she can, help me avoid that for chat, GPT, the questions he has not run a summit, most likely I use the word he, but whoever you call yours Chad or Claudette, or whatever you name your your tool there, there's not gonna be that same kind of experience that that bot can speak generically based on what it's able to scrape from the internet. But I might be finding advice from someone whose business is completely different than mine, where we have nothing aligned, versus my business coach, who has the kind of business that I want to have. So when I use chat GPT, it is really best suited, at least for me, in breaking things down into chunks. So it's these are my goals. What are some ways I can get there and I still have to keep training it on? Well, no, but I don't actually do that thing very often, or I don't really have that sales process. Versus my coach, who's who knows my entire offer suite, who knows where I spend a lot of my time the answers are just more tailored. So I can, I could take the time to train chat GPT on all this, or I can have a conversation with a human who's been there, done that, and already knows the answer in a way that most aligns with me.
Finola Howard 31:12
And is it because that your coach can tell you how it feels? I know it's the lived experience, and I know that you know, having done a summit before, but is is it? I'm just curious, is it, is it the feeling that we're get, wanting to understand? Is it the challenges, the mindset that we want to overcome? What is it that's different? What does lived experience mean?
Marci Rossi 31:34
Great question. I it's it's hard. This is one of those things that are hard to articulate. Part of what my coach does is, when I ask questions, she reads what's under the question, right? So we'll take it literally. It is a very literal How do you do a summit? Well, you do A, B, C and D, and my coach will be like, Why are we all sudden, focusing on a summit? When last week, you said you wanted to do this, that and the other, right? So she doesn't answer the question as the verbatim. This is what she wants. So this is the answer. She knows that what I'm really asking is I'm worried about my visibility. I want to find something new, or she knows that I have shiny object syndrome, which I do, and I'm trying to start something new, when really I have this other goal. And is this really going to support my goal? Maybe it will. But she knows that I have a goal for the year, and I've said I'm going to do X, Y and Z. Is that actually going to fit in? So I think that's the real value there. Chat GBT is going to take you literally and doesn't know the human emotions, fears, blocks that are underneath there, that someone who is trained, especially I see, I've trained, where they understand, really, how to ask the right questions back to you, versus trying to just give you an answer, I find that's the real value is chat. GPT is not really going to ask you another question. My coach always will.
Finola Howard 32:48
I love that. Okay, so if I was to say to you, because everything we've talked about has has a direct impact on our time, because I'm getting this very strongly from you that we have to put in the time for X, Y and Z. We have to put in the time to reflect. We have to put in the time to make better choices, to look at data, to look at processes, to make sure that we're not not outsourcing chaos, all of that kind of stuff. How much time? So say somebody has no systems in their business. How? Where would you get them to start in terms of time?
Marci Rossi 33:26
I would say there's not a there's not an exact number. But going back to that piece we talked about before, with that implementation piece, right? Are you setting up systems? Because you're actually just hiding, right? I can't put myself out there because I need to document how I write a blog post. So I would say the time that you're going in there is whatever time you have left after you go do the thing, go do the thing, go have conversations with potential clients and your audience members. Go tell people about the solutions that you have to offer. Go sell and serve what time you have left. That's where you go and clean up the back end. Because it doesn't really matter if you have this beautiful onboarding sequence, if no one ever buys from you, you have to let them know that you have something for sale, and then you can clean up that that sequence going forward. So if you're using it as a with love, excuse to hide behind the scenes. Zero amount zero hours is how much time you should be spending go do some things. And we can't just be selling eight hours a day, seven days a week, right? There's some behind the scenes things that need to be there if we're selling, but then we don't actually deliver the course. Well, we've already broken that trust. So yes, some effort needs to be there. But if you are saying you can't do this until this piece happens, then I'm probably going to call BS on that and say that we need to cut down that system process. It hurts me to say, but we need to cut it down so that you're actually getting out there, so that those systems have something to do. They're actually serving you.
Finola Howard 34:55
So let's face the fear. It's a it's the selling fear. Yeah, because no. Maybe every entrepreneur has it,
Marci Rossi 35:01
well, yeah, we don't want to. We don't want to seem pushy. I don't want to. I I'm afraid that they'll unsubscribe if I start to sell from them. I'm afraid that I'll be annoying if I tell people about my offers. But if you believe in what you have, I think you're doing people a disservice by not telling them about there, because what we're doing solves a problem. It may not be a massive problem, right? There may be other people out there that can serve them. If I'm a restaurant, I'm solving the problem of hunger, but yeah, there's some other people out there. The world's not going to end if my one restaurant isn't there, but I'm adding value to the world. I am helping people in that way. So if you don't believe in what you're offering, then maybe you shouldn't be selling it. But if you do, if you think that it helps people, why wouldn't you want them to know about it, and I'm not here to grow a big following. I'm here to help people. If I have 1000 people on my email list that never open my emails, I'd rather have 100 people on my email list that actually care what I have to say. So if people unsubscribe, they were never going to buy from you anyway. The ones that really need what you have, if you're trying to appease some fake followers, versus the people that need what you have, I think you're kind of aiming in the wrong direction there. So direction there. So I
Finola Howard 36:04
don't know, because what I ended up writing down was you've got to believe first. So you have to look at your business and say, What do I believe in? What am I here to do? What am I what is my purpose here? What's my why all of that good stuff, then go out and sell it, then systemize it. Yeah, absolutely. We did a little system there. Write that one down. What would you like to leave people
Marci Rossi 36:28
with today? I Oh, gosh, I could all the things. If I were going to to do this, I would say, I think what it comes down to is just putting yourself out there. The systems are meant to help you do that, right? That's why I take a lot of these pieces off of other people's plates, so they they can't use it as an excuse. Like I said before of I have to do this system first. I do think both of these things are important, and I think the best solution is when you're getting visible and you're getting your business set up correctly from the start, I think it's just so much easier than only putting yourself out there and then later having to build things to fit. It's just messier and it's already more complicated. Instead of enhancing something, you're starting from scratch at a much bigger scale. So ideally, you're able to do both. But I recognize that we have a finite amount of time, and there are hopefully other passions in your life, aside from business, that you want to spend some time with. So yeah, what it comes down to is finding whatever balance works for you and the time and money and energy that you have, but making sure that it's at least on your radar to start documenting things. Because if you want to grow, you will need support, and we want that support started off on the best foot, on being able to replicate you, and being able to replicate things the way you want it done, so you have a consistency of image, so your audience can continue to trust you, and so that you can continue to
Finola Howard 37:50
grow love it. Thank you so much, Marci,
Unknown Speaker 37:52
absolutely. Thanks
Finola Howard 37:53
for having me, and that's it for this episode, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Make sure to connect with Marcy on LinkedIn and check out the quiz she's got for us that'll help you figure out where the bottleneck is in your business. I'll post a link in the show notes for you, and thank you again for listening to your truth shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please do rate and review. It makes a difference, and you can do that at love the podcast.com/your truth shared really does help spread the word and helps me to continue to invest in this podcast for you and for me, you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai