Podcast Transcript:
Getting to know Jillian a little bit better. This is two questions, two facts and two updates about me.
Hey there, I’m Jillian Kendrick and welcome to the Momentum Marketing Podcast. I’m a mama, a wife, an entrepreneur and a three time best selling co-author. In each episode you’ll get real world practical advice and strategies and maybe a parenting tip or two along the way. If you’re ready to create a business that supports your family and your lifestyle, then you’re in the right place.
Hey, I’m so excited that you’re here joining me on this episode of the Moment and Marketing Podcast. I thought I would switch it up. Rather than giving tons of marketing advice and talking a lot about marketing, which of course is my niche and that’s my thing and that’s not going to change on this podcast whatsoever.
But I kind of realized I get to know these coaches and develop a relationship, but I don’t get to know them so well. I know them in the sense that I follow their content and I get to know them professionally. But I realized I’ve known this one coach that I’ve been following for probably 10 months or longer now. And I don’t really know anything about her personally. And so I just found that really fascinating. And of course, then went on this rabbit hole of trying to get to know this person a little bit better. And really none of the content that she produced was related to her personal life. It was all business and marketing and all that sort of stuff. And it really took me back and made me think. I don’t want the same thing for my listeners. I want to make sure that, if you’re invested in the time here and I’m teaching you and sharing with you. That, if you want, you have the opportunity to get to know me a little bit better.
Before we dive into all of that, make sure that if you haven’t signed up for my brand, brand new training on how I get over 600 leads consistently every single month. It’s amazing. It’s gorgeous. It’s like less than 40 minutes. It won’t take up your entire day, and it is jam packed with some amazing, really, really good training and stuff. In fact, if you’ve been doing marketing, if you’ve owned a business for a while, I promise you will learn something new because I put a couple of big twists on some very common marketing things that I’m sure you’ve heard of, but you’ll look at it in a much, much different way and hopefully have a couple of really good aha moments. Go to jilliankendrick.com/webinar to check it out. I’m also bringing back my quiz and you’ll see this in the signature of my emails. I don’t have a URL for it just yet, but it will probably pop it down in the show notes underneath this episode. If you want to get to know yourself as a business owner better. And by better, I mean, when we have self awareness and we understand the way that we operate, then we can compensate for the things that we’re lacking and improve the things that we’re already good at so that we can get even better, and understanding the way that you run your business. Understanding the type of business owner that you are is just incredibly empowering because it gives you that insight on anything else. I have a quiz that will walk you through which business personality type you are, we’ll pop that you are all down in the show notes below this episode.
So now for you to get to know me a little bit better, here is: two questions I get asked all the time, two things about me that you might not know, and two updates from my business that I want to share. By the way, if any of this resonates with you, if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you and likewise get to know you better. Because I don’t want this to be a one sided relationship where you get to know me and I don’t know anything about you. So if you like this, if any of it resonates with you, if you feel the same, if you feel differently, I would love to hear about it. Drop me a line hello@jilliankendrick.com.
So first, two questions I get asked all the time. I would say the biggest one would be what automation system is going to be best for me. I think that depends on a couple of factors when it comes to automation systems. There are so many. There are automation systems that are also CRMs or Contact Relationship Management Softwares. There are automation systems that include a membership platform. There are automation systems that just do automation and then you have to integrate with a database. When you compare automation systems, you’re never ever ever comparing apples to apples because they don’t always have the same features. They don’t always work the same. They don’t always integrate the same. Their email deliverability might not be the same as well. And even sometimes the way that they do reporting might not be the same.
I’ll give you a, for instance. Without naming names. I know of a software right now that when the reporting for the email opens and the email clicks comes back in, it only gives you the number in totality of all opens and all clicks. Let’s say you sent an email to 500 people and I don’t know, 50 of those people opened the email multiple times. I totally do that. I’ll get an email and be like, oh, this is really good. I want to save this and read it later. So then I’ll open it, save it. I’ll go back to it again. Open it again. I might go back to it a few weeks or a few months later and open it again. And so therefore, I’ve opened it multiple times. And the reporting from that particular automation software would have said that you had three opens. Whereas the software that I use, will calculate opens, but it also calculated its unique opens. Meaning it will tell me how many times the email has been opened in totality, but it will also tell me how many people opened that email.
So when you’re looking at software and you’re trying to compare, unfortunately, you’re never ever ever comparing apples to apples. You’re always comparing apples to oranges, and apples to peaches, and apples to plums, and apples to strawberries, and apples to bananas. And I think you get the analogy. But that’s where it becomes really difficult and really confusing for the average business owner, like yourself, who may or may not be super tech savvy to sit down and be like, OK, I’m going to try this thing. I’m going to try to figure out what automation system is going to be best for me and pick one and run with it.
I have three things that I recommend when it comes to choosing an automation software. Number one, what is your level of commitment or tech savvy or usability? You need to decide as the business owner or as the entrepreneur. Are you going to be the one to go in and program and write emails and do the automation or are you going to hire out and get somebody on your team to do it for you? Because that can be a big differentiator in which system you use. You might find a virtual assistant or a member of your team that knows or prefers to work in a software that you wouldn’t necessarily find intuitive or prefer to work on your own. So you really have to think about who, who is going to own this thing and what’s the level of commitment and the learning curve that they’re willing to take on in order to make this thing work. So first choose who is actually going to be responsible and own working in the automation platform.
Number two, consider where you are not only in business but in using automation. There are platforms that you can use that are very bare bones, super simple that will send out an email or a broadcast. And sometimes that’s really all you need just to get started. And it depends on budget too. But if you only need to be able to send a broadcast email to a bunch of people. You might just want to stick with a simple automation platform to begin with. So depending on which level of automation that you’re ready for and what your needs are, that is also going to be a big factor in which software you use.
You might not necessarily need a massive, huge, humongous, all powerful, capable, CRM. When you’re just starting out and getting into business, I will say that in my experience, even the businesses that are just starting out that think, OK, all I need is a simple broadcast email and a place to put my leads. Even those people I have found in my 12 plus years of automation experience that they will quickly graduate out of doing that stuff. They’ll very, very quickly realize, oh man, OK. If I do the broadcast and I set everything up, even if I’m in a simple platform, there’s still a lot of manual work I have to do to make this thing run. Whereas if you start off with a simple yet sophisticated automation platform, it will give you not only the tools that you need right now, but some of the tools that you can also grow into. And then you don’t have to be switching platforms when you’re ready to up level into doing more automation. And I’m not talking about more in terms of complexity. I’m talking about more in terms of adding stuff and taking things off of your plate that you can automate and have a system do for you.
All the clients that I’ve worked with that said, oh, I just want something really simple and I just want to send emails. It’s so addictive. It’s like the second they find automation and they realize how incredibly powerful it is, and what it can do for them, and for their business, and their family, and their bottom line, it’s so addicting and very, very quickly they want to graduate into, OK, what else can we do? What else is there? What’s the next step? So I find that if you start with a super basic platform, that’s totally fine. But I promise you, you will very quickly want to graduate into something better and be able to do more for yourself, because automation is amazing.
The third thing I would say, if you go on a platform like G4 and you try to do the, apples to apples comparison of several softwares, up against each other, very quickly, it’s going to be so confusing. Even for someone like me who is an automation expert and I’m very well versed in multiple different softwares, even for me to keep track with spreadsheets, and with team members, and with other people in my industry, keeping track of all of the different components and capabilities that all of these softwares have is very difficult. And like I said, you’re never comparing apples to apples. So the third thing that I would say is if you have a coach or expert that recommends a particular software or you have a team member that knows a particular software, go with that, try it out, see how far you can get with it and what you can do. And then when it no longer serves, you then have a plan for graduating into another software.
What I love about the software that we use is it actually has three different versions depending on the level of business and the amount of automation and the sophistication of the automation that you need. So then you’re able to start at a simple level and then slowly graduate into more automation and more complex automation. But also, then you don’t have to completely switch systems and you get to know one system, which is really, really amazing. I cannot tell you how many clients I’ve had that have migrated from one software to another one cloud based to another. And it’s a nightmare because inevitably you never actually end up taking with you all the data points that you have. So I really love the software that we work in, in particular. And if you’re a member of List Builder Blueprint, if you’re a member of my mastermind, you know, the software that we use and I highly recommend and have been a partner with for almost a decade.
And the second question that I get asked all the time is, what can I automate? It would be too broad and blanketed of a statement for me to say that you could automate just about anything. But that’s not necessarily untrue. Let’s think of it this way. You can automate anything that a computer can do, and you can automate some fulfillment. You can automate task and task management. You can automate reporting, you can automate customer flows, you can automate project management.
I’ll give you several examples. Whenever we bring in a new team member or a new client, all we have to do is apply a tag, or push a button, and that starts a series of events that have been automated to onboard, that new team member or onboard, that new client. And we do various things depending on whether it’s a team member or a client. But all of it goes into and through a template inside of our project management system. And that is also in conjunction with using our slack channel that we have as a team, and our automation system, and signing contract tracks, and sending out W-9s or 10-99 tax forms for them to fill out, and sending them a welcome gift, or a welcome card, and managing the chronological process of what step has to happen. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, et cetera, all of that from sending a gift, filling out tax forms. All of those things are automated. All of my emails in my funnel are automated. All of my text messages in my funnel are automated. Any time we get a text message to our business phone number, it shows up inside of Slack, and that is automated so that we can see it and we can share it with the rest of the team.,If we need a Google verification code or we need to log in to Godaddy or something like that. Our whole team can get access to those codes through text message verification that we have running through Slack. We have automation set up for Facebook groups that when new people come into Facebook, it automatically welcomes. There are so many things that you can automate. It really just depends on the process as a whole and which pieces of that process you absolutely have to have a humanbeing, have their hands on. But the rest of it truly can be automated, which is amazing.
Next questions, two things about me. So first, I have a three year old son who is obsessed with the Itsy bitsy spider and Hickory Dickory Dock. We probably hear those songs about 700,000 times a day and that’s a lot of fun. He is incredible and the absolute joy of our life.
He’s awesome. Being a boy-mom is super fun. Although I will say I don’t really have anything to compare it to because I don’t have a daughter. But being a boy-mom is really, really fun. And so wild and so much energy this kid would probably climb up the walls if he could find a way to do it.
Second thing about me, I have a degree in music, so I went to college for opera. I went to college to be an opera singer and, and successfully did that. And when I got out of college it was a recession and it’s normally very difficult to make money as an opera singer. But in the middle of a recession, it is especially difficult. And so rather than doing that for a living. And honestly, by the time I got out of college, I was really burnt out from music. I needed something different. And my entire identity up until that point as a young adult was wrapped up in my talent. Everything that people knew about me, everything that people associated me with was, oh, she’s talented. Oh, she can sing, oh, she sings opera. Oh, she does this. And I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do other things and that my identity wasn’t singular to my talent. And I really just needed to make money and keep a roof over my head, which is how I found Upwork and Odesk and then started freelancing and then eventually got my own clients, started my own business. And now I am an expert in the automation space. So there’s two things about me.
Next two updates that I want to share. This has been a weird hard week. Between, our son had horrible diarrhea and stomach pains, and just figuring that out, and helping him through it. Our AC was dying so we had to get a new air conditioning unit. But of course, we live in Florida and it was like the hottest day of the year yesterday. So I’m sitting in my office sweating bullets waiting for them to install the AC. Thank goodness, everything is fine and we still have a roof over our head and we make plenty of money so that we can buy a new air conditioning unit. And there’s definitely a lot of blessings that come along with having a really, really annoying day of sitting in your house being so hot. The house actually ended up being hotter than it was outside.It was very difficult.But that’s all right.We got in the car and drove around in the air conditioning and got ice cream. On top of that. My husband and I are both going through some medical stuff. It’s not a huge deal, but just another thing that we have to deal with. We’re traveling this week, which then also makes life just a little bit harder, a little bit more hectic. My husband’s work has been really wild with lots of projects on his end. Which is great, we’ll take job security for him for sure, but it doesn’t make it less hard. So he’s been dealing with that and it’s just been a really, really rough week.
But even in spite of all of that, I’ve gotten some of my best work done in the past week. I’m really, really proud of just pushing through, getting stuff done, changing habits and really, that leads to my second update. List Builder Blueprint is such a good program. It’s so gorgeous. We’ve launched, it’s up and ready and I cannot wait for you to see it. Head on over to automatedmama.com/lbb and you can check out everything related to List Builder Blueprint. If you have any questions, email me hello@jilliankendrick.com or check me out on Instagram @automatedmama. And I guess one more update that I could share and this is more of a shout than an update really. I’ve been going strong with doing this podcast for 27 weeks in a row. I think there’s been like one or two that we’ve, probably two, that we’ve had to go and backtrack. But it’s been really good and I’m really proud of it and I’m so grateful that you’re here with me and I’m glad to be sharing and teaching. And if there’s anything that you would like to hear, any topics that you want to know about, anything struggling with in your business, email me, at me on Instagram. Let’s talk. I want to get to know you better.
Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the Momentum Marketing Podcast. If listening to this has brought you value, improved your life, or given you insight on how you can build your own momentum, then please share this with a friend. And if you’re ready to grow your business on autopilot, then I want to help you get there easier and faster with a free copy of my Entrepreneur Survival Kit. Leave a review of this podcast wherever you’re listening right now. Hopefully it’s a five star review and you love it. Then screenshot the review and email the screenshot to hello@jilliankendrick.com. Once we confirm the review, we’ll send you a copy of the Survival Kit totally free. Thank you so much for joining me and I’ll see you on the next episode.
All content is written and recorded by Jillian Kendrick. Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.
The Momentum Marketing Podcast
By Jillian Kendrick
Episode: # 30
Topic: Getting to know Jillian
Contact: hello@jilliankendrick.com
Follow IG: instagram.com/automatedmama
