Andrew: This course is about using tools to increase your productivity or as Mark, my friend, likes to say, 'To get an unfair advantage'. It's led by Mark Brooks, founder of Courtland Brooks, which provide media relations, business development, and strategic advertisement services. I'm Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, where proven founders teach. Mark, we're going to show people a whole lot of tools. But they're going to want to know how it impacts their lives. So do you have an example of how using these tools, makes people more productive? What happened to you? Mark: Sure. Well, I was inspired to start looking for these kinds of tools after I had an occasion to go the Shanghai, to go to an Internet dating conference, which I usually talk around, all over the world. Went to the conference in Shanghai and I was very scared about going to the conference, because I made a decision to go for a couple of months. I was actually going to spend some time in Shanghai and hopefully learn more about the market over there. I thought, this is going to be a problem, my clients aren't going to like this, I'm going to end up losing clients. I'm out in Shanghai, 'Where's Mark?', 'Oh. He's off in Shanghai.', 'Well, enjoy your holiday.', that's what people usually say. And the reverse happened, exactly the reverse happened. We ended up picking up more clients. And what I learned from that experience was that, people, clients, didn't give two hoots where I was sitting, as long as the work got done. So I've been spending a lot more time looking for ways just to help that process along. Tools that can help me, just get the job done and then ultimately the clients didn't care where I was sitting. So now, I'm sitting in Malta, this is the place I've chosen to live and spend time. And I've my yellow office in Malta with pictures of New York on the wall. But prior to all these, I was in New York, I decided to break away from working directly for individual Internet dating companies after I had three offers at once. I figured, 'Well, I should start working for all three of these companies'. And so I was sitting in New York, in upstate New York, trudging through snow in the winter... Andrew: And this is where you, can we say the company you were working for at the time or not? Mark: Sure. I was working with Cupid. Now I've left Cupid to start contracting for them, and working with these other two companies. I thought, 'Well, Cupid's going to want to have me on their doorstep, right there'. But ultimately I got to the stage that I got tired of the cold weather and I fled one day to Florida. I set off at 3:00 in the afternoon one day and I thought I'd stop when I got tired and I didn't, I kept driving 24 hours, and drove 3:00 in the afternoon into Tampa with my AC blowing, and here we are. What, basically the message here is, I enjoy certain freedoms and I extended those freedoms to my team, they enjoyed that so much that they just never leave, they stick with me, my turn over is very low. Andrew: So I was looking at photos of Shanghai, what a beautiful country, what a beautiful city, excuse me. You were there, and even though you were disconnected. Not only the work gets done because the tools you set up while you were away, continue to work, and the people who you empowered through those tools continued to be productive. You got more business while you were away, because of those tools. And this is why I asked you about what life was like before you used to work, where you were freezing your butt off, you were having to get stuff done, you were constantly depended on how many hours you could put in, back when you were working at Cupid.com and other sites. And I can see that sometimes I get that way. And one of the reasons I want to put this course together is because if I can use these tools, then I know my audience can, to increase their productivity, to allow themselves to take a little bit of a break. And more importantly to empower the organization to grow the business to grow sales. OK. So now, we see what can happen, we see what can happen without that. Let's talk about the first tool that will get us there. And first tool that you told me that you love, that helps you organize your whole business is something called.. What is it? Mark: In order of importance, let's start with my intervals, because this has changed my life round. I don't know how I can possibly operate my business without this particular tool. Andrew: Can we take a look at that? Mark: Sure. Let me bring it up. OK. What you're looking at is a task list. This is actually internal tasking, so we're not giving too much away with clients that we work with, they'll be fine with it. So let's take a look. What I like about this tool, you all seen varies, there's so many different task managers available now. We used to use TaskAnyone, but there's couple things missing from that tool and I couldn't find it anywhere else and I ended up coming across two companies that provided what I was looking for, and this one had the best usability. So I went with my intervals, because they're pretty low cost. This cost me fifty dollars a month, and I would gladly pay 500 dollars a month for it, for what I get out of it. What this allows me to do is delegate to my team. So they can all see exactly what is on their cards: they can slice and dice down to the particular client. But most importantly, the piece that was missing from the other tools that I looked at, is that there's a timer built in. So, I consider invoicing a waste of time, really: there's no real productivity in invoicing. And, at the end of each week, we're able to look at the time that each person has poured into Courtland Brooks work, and just send out a check. They don't need an invoice: it's all done through these timers. Let me show you what that looks like. Andrew: OK, sure, and... Mark: So if we go to this first task here... Andrew: Bigger picture, by the way, just to take a step back: what you're saying is that the average entrepreneur will send out requests via email and say, can you get this done? And that's inefficient. Before you show us how this solves the problem: that's inefficient, why? What's the problem with me sending out an email and saying, Andrea, please get this done, and waiting for her to do it and then sending me an email back? Mark: Well, let's pose a scenario: I need to get something done. Andrew, you're the man that I think can get the job done for me. I send you an email and I send you a request: would you mind getting this done? But that's not enough. You need to know: what the priority is really. Well, who's the client, who's it really for? What's the detailing on it? When must it be completed for? And, most importantly, and this is the piece that was missing from most of the other systems: what is the scope? How much time should you pour into this? Andrew: Ah, so you wouldn't just ever do what I do, and say, please get this done. When you ask for something to get done, and I'm sorry, I keep interrupting you, but this is something I get excited about, that's why we made it the first thing on the list. Because, most entrepreneurs just send out a request. You wouldn't just send out a request -- you'd give your people all the details they need in order to get it done, and we'll see how you do that. You also say when it's due by, and you say, this is how much time I'd like you to spend on it. And then, this tool, My Intervals, allows you to do that, and to constantly be on top of where they are in the process, how they completed it, how much time, and then of course if you're paying them by the hour, you know exactly how much you paid them for the week that they've worked with you. Mark: And there's one other element to this: it's all very nice for me to see what's going on, and for you, but how about the client? They should also see what's going on. And so, the reporting, having worked with marketing agencies in the past, I always felt that the reporting was weak. And when I did get good reports, I felt that they probably spent an awful lot of time on them. I want to be able to dive in and see what's going on at any time, and so should the client. Andrew: OK. Mark: So, this enables me to give the client access whenever they want to log in and see what they're getting for their money, they can log in and see progress. And they can see detailing under task. Andrew: OK. So let's take a look at that. So, maybe can you show us how you would create an assignment, or an assignment that's done? That's already been sent out? Mark: Sure. Andrew: So, that's how you would send a new task, OK. Mark: So, create a new task. So, there we go. We've come up with five killer PR ideas for Andrew. And my friend, Andrew. Let's have a look. Courtland Brooks Central, and that's media relations, I want to get that done for next Thursday, I never schedule anything on Friday, because that's kind of the cleanup day for the week, and that's for me, and it's super-high priority, it's got to be done then, and I'm going to spend 2.5 hours on it. There, all done. Andrew: I see. So now, you just sent yourself an assignment. If you were sending it to someone else, you might include more details on it, but essentially, this is the way you'd send it to one of your people. Now, what would the person who's doing this job see? Mark: They would get an email, notifying them of the task. And then, when they log in, they can see everything that they're supposed to get done. And, once they start working, once they've gotten to the task, they can hit the timer. And they're working on it. Andrew: Ah, and now they... Mark: And once they're finished working on it... Andrew: Got it. Mark: Stop. Apply. And, then they choose the name from the work type, and, there we go: save. And that time has been saved against that task, and they've moved on. So there's also a nice way of getting people to just focus on one task at a time. We've all read these productivity books which say, look, just focus on one thing at a time, get it done, and that's the best way of being most productive. So that ties quite nicely in with that, too. Andrew: OK. Now, how about the dashboard? One of the things that I loved about this when you and I talked about this before our session started is that I essentially have a dashboard that tells me what's going on in my company, who's working on what, where they are in the process of getting things done. Can we take a look at that or are we going to reveal some secret information about your business? Mark: I've got just Courtland-Brooks up here, so we use Courtland-Brooks Central for things that are related to biz-dev and just support work. That's eh screen that I've got up here. For example, one of the tasks that I've got here is I just came back from IDates Russia. There is a task somewhere in here to prepare CEO summary of IDate Russia conference findings. What I'm going to do is pull together my notes from the conference and push that out to clients so that they can get the key intelligence in bite-sized, so that they can be ahead of what's happening in Russia and perhaps be inspired by it. Andrew: Nice. Mark: That's got to be done by the 8th, so that's a nice weekend task for me. It's probably going to take two or three hours to do that. Andrew: So, even for yourself, to keep yourself on task, you give yourself a set amount of time that each project should get done. Mark: It helps give me perspective. Andrew: OK. Mark: The rule that we give out to the team is it's plus or minus 50%. It's a very rough number, but if somebody was feels inclined to put more time into something, then roughly it's plus or minus 50%. So there's no hard and fast rule on it. Scope is important in any task. Andrew: As the head of company, if you don't mind me snooping here on your notes, first of all I see that you have a lot of assignments assigned to you, but second I see for example that you've got, Jerry, Laura, Mark, and Vanay, who are working on Conrad's side. So, you can keep of the fact that they had that assignment. If they had already started, you would see that counter to the right of the estimate with the number of hours that they put it on that assignment. Now, you see instead they have three hours on this project, and as you watch this you can see your business get done. You can also see if you're looking to assign something see that this guy Mark Brooks has lots of hours assigned to him, I'm not going to hand anything to him, I'll hand it to someone else. Mark: Right. Andrew: OK. Mark: Ultimately, I can log in and see what's getting done, and if there's any particular task that could rogue. One of the things that I change several months back that really made a night and day difference to stuff getting done is I started paying the entire team on a weekly basis. That gives them a 12 to 23% bonus, provided that they get all the red and yellow tasks completed at the end of each week. Andrew: What's a red and yellow task? Mark: Red is really important, can't slip. Andrew: I see, it's priority, not about how late it is or not. Mark: Yeah. Yellow is also 'can't slip', but it can move a day or two. It can't move over to the following week. Green, just let it roll, it can go on whenever, it's a filler task, essentially. If things are slow, they can move to the green tasks. Andrew: So, let me say this to the audience. We want you to see specific tools, because I know how you are. If you watch this session and you don't know what to do the next day, you're going to feel a little cheated. I want you to be able to learn from this, and then go implement it within the next 24 hours. At least try it within 24 hours. But more important than that is to get the bigger picture. We're not saying you have to use my intervals. We're just saying look at how Mark uses this one tool, and take the bigger message away from that, so that if this one tool is not right for you, you can find other tools. Here, the important message is you are the boss of the business, you are the head of the company, you want to know exactly what's going on and who's working on what, and you want to be able to assign things in a way that enables others to get done, that let's them know how much time you expect it to take, and lets you keep track of where they are. So, actually, for this specific tactic, you have another tool that you recommend. What other tool is that? Mark: There are all sorts of project management systems. There are some that include Gant charts and are very extensive and quite suitable for, say, the programming environment. This suits, I think, the majority of fairly straightforward businesses where programming and more detailed project management is not required. This and Base Camp, the system that we used before was Task Anyone. Andrew: Do you happen to have that tab up still on your screen? Mark: Sure. Andrew: So, if you guys don't like that one program, you've got Task Anyone, you've got Base Camp, but the key ideas are there for you. Is there one thing about Task Anyone that the audience should know about? Mark: Sheer simplicity. It takes the best of My Intervals and makes it even simpler. Both are very reasonably priced as well. To ask anyone, also, last time I looked it was available in software version 2 that would synchronize up to the online piece. The difference with My Intervals is it's got a timer that's integrated in the project management system. It's more extensive, more flexible. It's the next step up from Task Anyone. Andrew: What's cool about that is a lot of us are working with remote times and it's hard, in fact impossible, to look over someone's shoulder and get a sense of what they're doing and you feel out of touch with what's going on in your own organization. What you're showing us is how we can feel like we're in the same room, watching what we're all doing, getting a sense of where we all are. Mark: Also, it's really a matter of trust when you've got a distribute work force. You want to be able to trust them and they've got to trust you. It's all got to work in sync and that lack of visibility can be quite constraining in some ways. You need to have a comprehensive system that pulls it all together. But the bonus system is what's really inspired people to pay a bit more attention and try and keep things on time. Having that weekly pay system in a contractor environment works quite well. Andrew: We've got more big ideas like this and specific tools to implement them. How about for PR? What I've noticed a lot for PR is people will go and hunt down the right contacts, they'll go and search for the right reporter. You have a different system that you use. What's that system? Mark: It can be a real time sink looking for contacts, up-to-date contacts for the press. We've selected a tool called Ciscion, which used to be called Bacons, by the way. A lot of people would be familiar with it as Bacons. In a nutshell, this is up-to-date contacts of a quarter million press around the world. Let's have a look. Andrew: OK, let's have a look. Mark: I go to quick search. Andrew: There it is. There's the site, and the URL is CisionPoint.com? Mark: It's Cision Point for the actual products but it's Cision.com for if you want to sign up for it in more detail. Andrew: So now I see that you're on the search screen. This is the way you'd search for the right report or the right contact. Mark: Let's look at a particular report at first. Perhaps you might have heard of a fellow called Saul Hanzel. Actually he's in there. Let's see if his contact comes up. Probably all of them. [???] Let's try Ed Baig. USA Today, biggest newspaper in America's distribution. There's a telephone number, there's his email address. Andrew: While it's searching. This will give you contact information for the reporters you are looking for? And you can search not just by specific name, but if you run a gadget company and you need a gadget reporter you can do a search here for them. If you are someone who has a new start-up and you need a reporter who reports on start-ups or blogger who reports on start-up, this is the system you would use to find their contact info. Let me zoom this in for people. He covers technology, that's the topic. Title is personal technology columnist. Walk me through the rest of it, what's on here? Mark: It gives a tidy profile, as you can pitch him by fax or give him a call or email him, but more importantly, these days, it's important to follow the Twitters of reporters. Reporters are often inundated with pictures. So a good way of really connecting with reporters is via Facebook and Twitter, because it's a lot more difficult to spam. So their attention is far higher on these media. You'll see that Cision influence is 99, Ed's right at the top of the totem pole in terms of influence. It lists his LinkedIn profiles and Facebook profiles, the social media aspect of Cision, they've done a really good job of this recently and helped enhance the usefulness of this tool. Andrew: What does it mean that he has a Cision influence profile of 99? Mark: It's probably more familiar with Klout, K-L-O-U-T, and it is a ranking of how influential a particular newspaper reporter, or blogger, or member of the media is in terms of influence: how far afield can their word be felt, and this gives some idea of their rank. So there's Klout, Cision has their CisionInfluence. I think I'm about a 40, 40 or 50, in Cision. I'm listed in there for Internet dating. Andrew: I see. OK. So, I've got a sense now of how to search on this tool and how to find the right people. Let's take just a segue for a moment here and ask you: How would you, if you found the contact right here, it's like magic, you no longer have to go and hunt down the people, you don't have to work for months trying to put together a good contact list. Once you had that, what would you do, what would Mark Brooks do? Mark: Well, look, the ideal scenario here is not so much to pick somebody out of the blue, but actually have a relationship with them. So what we do, every single day, we look over the news for Internet dating. We get the news, in fact, Petra gets the news every day, she's sitting in Prague. Every morning, she gets the news, and she helps run, just filters out the news. We then summarize it and run it on OPW. Then, she goes into here, looks up the contact information for the press that we've run summaries of on our Online Personals Watch. We then email them and say, hey, we've run a link to your article and a summary. Thank you very much, and by the way, if you ever happen to be writing about Internet dating again, please keep us in mind. So they know us, they have some connection with us. And then we keep their contact. So I've got about a few hundred, five hundred-plus contacts that have written about Internet dating in the past. So that's our hotlist. We're in a difficult industry, because there's no, what's known as a beat, for Internet dating. There's a beat for Internet, there's a beat for consumer electronics. There's no beat for Internet dating, so it's important for us to connect and maintain -- initiate and maintain relationships with press who might write about Internet dating again. Andrew: You know what, I've got to tell you, I'm so glad that I asked you that question, because, you're quoted in the media all the time, you're looked at in this space as THE authority on online dating, and now I see what you do -- one of the things that you do. You have a blog where you essentially summarize the dating base to online dating news for an audience of people who are in the business. But you don't just stop there, you go and contact the reporters this way, who you've written about, and now they must be flattered because you took their message and extended it to the proper audience and linked back to them, and you've started the relationship with them by saying, 'I've given you something. I've connected with you and shown you that I'm here, I'm an authority in this base.' And of course, when they want to contact someone, they contact you. This is so much better than the other systems that I've heard other . . . I almost want to have you come in just to talk about PR. But, now I see the way you work. It shows me the tools that you use, but also as I said earlier, the bigger picture, the way that you organize your system so the press comes to you, so the press thinks of you as the authority. OK, one more thing on this topic before we go to the next one. Do you have another tool beyond this, that you could throw out the name of? We don't even have to take a look at their website, but just to give people another option. Mark: Yes. One of the questions that I've been asked over and over again is: how do you measure PR? How do you measure social media, too, that's the new question. I remember, back in 2003, Andrew Conru from FriendFinder asked me: How do I measure PR? How do I measure the results? And back then, I said, well, I have no idea. I don't know how to do that. But now there is a tool, called Meltwater News. And there are a few versions of this, but Meltwater is pretty well respected, and that's the tool that we use. It allows you to track the news, and then match the press hit, the media, up with distribution. And further, actually show what's known as the Ad Value Equivalency. It's a very mushy number: it's very rough number, but at least it's a number, it's something. It's a dollar figure, which equates to a multiple of the ad value. If you were to advertise in that media, what would it cost, and what's the multiple of that, which is for most PR is generally regarded as being more valuable. So we use Meltwater News to provide a monthly report for clients as well. Andrew: OK, alright, so guys, check out this site, and also Meltwater News. OK, how about, do you mind if I bounce around a little bit? I know we've got a list in order of the sites we want to look at, but what you just said here made me think of how you use Relenta. Let's bring up Relenta and tell me about, while it loads up, though I see your mouse is moving, so we're all caught up. While it comes up on my screen fully, tell me, what's the problem that Relenta solves? Mark: There's a multitude of different CRM systems, right? You want to stay in contact with people, but you got to remember to follow up with them when they don't email you back. The problem that we had is just remembering to follow up with people who've initiated interest, whether it be for a PR pitch, some business development or for sales. You've got a hot list of people that you want to get attention from and do something nice for, hopefully. The problem is follow up. It takes a lot of mind share to follow up, and it's very costly time-wise. So what I looked for was a way to do what's known as work flows. Here's a scenario. You email somebody, you have some products or service that you want to market to them. The best approach is to try to do something for them right off the bat. So, you send them an email and then you generally want to follow up in two weeks time, and it's generally going to be the same email. Ideally, the system should look after that for you. Then, a couple of weeks beyond that, if they've not responded you want to follow up with them again. Probably, that's about right. You've followed up with them with three emails. If they've not emailed you, it's because they're not interested. Andrew: I see. Let's take a look now. Mark: So what we do with this tour, we've got the PR folks here with us, but let's go to email marketing, because that's the powerful piece of real interest. What we've done is split up the database. We've got 500 contacts within the Internet dating industry. We've got three emails, three auto emails for optimal payments, for example. Let's look at the first one. Andrew: OK. Mark: We've built a resource. We don't sell, at Courtland-Brooks. We do nice things, for the industry, essentially, and refer them to products we believe in. We've got a resource which we've built, called a payment processor spreadsheet, which lists all the major payment processors that serve the dating industry. We've got a client called Optimal Payments, one of them. I know if they're interested in the payment processor spreadsheet, then they're probably look at alternatives. If they're looking at alternatives, I want to refer them over to Optimal Payments, as a resource they should be looking at. I need to gauge if they're interested in looking at alternatives. So the first email says, "Have you got the latest payment processor spreadsheet? If not, I'd like to get you a copy." The second email - Andrew: Before you go to the second email, let me see if I understand this. Is that because the resource you're recommending is a client of yours? Mark: Yes. Andrew: I see. So the first thing you want to do is say, "Have you seen this spreadsheet?" What's the spreadsheet that you're asking them about? Mark: The spreadsheet is an analysis. It's the sort of analysis that somebody internal to an Internet dating company that looks after payment processes would probably never get around to doing, actually. It's just way, way extensive. In it we've got over 30 criteria that we look at. I think we're over 20 companies now. We've looked at all these companies over the years, and we update it every six months. We look at all these different criteria for these companies, and we add ones in as they come across our desk, as we hear that other dating companies are using new providers. It's a one stop snapshot of all the options. So rather than the payment processing manager at a dating company looking at three or four alternatives, we've got all the alternatives and all the major criteria that they consider looking at. Andrew: So you're sending them a spreadsheet where you do the analysis for them and show them how your tool compares to others, and gives them a sense of all the tools that are available. You're saying, "Have you gotten a chance to look at that?" Is that the first point of contact? Or is the first point of contact sending them the spreadsheet? Mark: The first point of contact is asking them if they'd like a copy of the spreadsheet. Andrew: I see. Mark: If they say yes, they get moved out of the way of the workflow. That's really important, because workflow based CRM systems are the quickest way to build a relationship. And they're also the quickest way to destroy them. If you don't remove them from the workflow, they get another email and they realize that we're on automated email and that's not cool. That's not really so cool. You've got to be very careful that once you get a response, you remove them, and follow up on an individual basis. So, what I do is that I then remove that individual contact from the workflow to a manual follow up process. I basically move them into my [???] and I follow up with them individually. Andrew: I see. Gotcha. Mark: You're looking at referrals, not sales. Andrew: I might limit myself to, maybe the ten people who I can keep track of each week. You say no. If the market is big enough, I want to reach everyone in the market and give them all a chance to, at least, consider my product. But I can't contact everyone and stay on top and following up on everyone and build relationships with all of them, so you automate that process. You get them in the system where you send out the first email. The first email, because it's consistent, you can test it a little bit and be sure it's the right message, one that gives you a high conversion rate. And then if they don't respond, you send them the second email, and I see the way you're doing the second email. It's so clever. First, tell me about what's there and I'll tell you what I'm especially attracted to in this email. Mark: I'll usually send the second email which will say, "Hey, I just want to bring this to the top of your email list again." And I'll include the email that I sent initially so they can see that I'm willing to . . . They're going to get some follow ups. In this case, what I've done is just said, "Hey, I don't know if you'd like a copy of this processes spreadsheet. Here's a big more detail below, the original email." We usually have to point out that it's free. A lot of people think that I'm trying to get them to buy a report. That's not the case; it's free. It's a goodwill service Andrew: I see. And what I was drawn to are a couple of things. First of all, you have the system auto insert the first name of the person you're contacting, but second, because you put those little - what are they called, carats, I guess - because you put them on the left margin, it looks like what you did is went into your send box and hit reply again on that original message. It feels authentic. It feels like you're following up with them, and that short at the top of it feels like it's, "Hey, a quick reminder. Let's bump this up on the top of your inbox" and it's free. Mark: I did actually used to do that, but I realized that it was something I could alternate, so why not? Andrew: What I like about you is that you find a process that works, and instead of repeating it mindlessly week after week or giving up on it because it's too much work to repeat mindlessly week after week, and those are the two options that most entrepreneurs consider, you find a third option, which is automate this. I'm going to have the process just work to build my business, so the process builds my business not I have to build my business. So, the people build my business, not my limited hours have to build my business. So, this is the second template. You've got a third one in the series, and that's the general idea here, to systemize that kind of relationship building. Once they respond, take them out of the system so you can have that one on one conversation. This doesn't replace human contact, it just starts the relationship. Is there another tool like this than you recommend people think about? I want them to know the big picture, but if there's another tool to get the big picture result, that's fine. Mark: ACT does this as well if you like software. Andrew: A-C-T, I know them, right. Mark: Yeah. And SalesForce does it, although it's a higher echelon service. You pay a hundred dollars plus a month. But what I found with SalesForce there are so many options within Sales Force, the usability, they are a little tough to follow. Andrew: They have to go hunt down . . . Mark: This is a lot easier to navigate and get up to speed on. Andrew: OK. Since I'm bouncing around in our notes here, but I want to make sure to fill everything in, let's talk about the process of connecting with people. First of all, you're remote. Let's bring up the tool that you use for connecting with people, and then I'll ask you this question. Mark: Tungle? Andrew: Yeah. Mark: OK. Andrew: OK. You get a lot of people who ask you to connect with you. They want to meet with you. They want your expertise. You're the guy in the space. When someone wants to meet with you and you're in Malta enjoying the good life over there, what's your response to them? Mark: We have matching complexity. We have 15-odd people in the team in total, seven people in our core team. So, we've got several people in our team. We've got, at any time, between nine and 12 clients. We've got multiple people that we're coordinating with. And then we've got several time zones. We're all the way from Malta. I've got a client in China, and we've got to coordinate the time zones. So, it just becomes really complex really quickly, especially when I can be involved as many as a dozen teams a week. So, all I need is for someone to say, "Well, I can't make that time now." That constitutes one among many, and it just becomes a massive time table problem which can really soak up a lot of time. First of all, I try assigning this to my super admin. She's super. She's been with me now five years. She could not get her head around this. It's the one task in five years where she said, "I don't want to do this. I just don't want to do this." So, I looked at a few options, and I came across Tungle. That's the only one that worked. I looked at TimeBridge, great tool. What I like about Tungle is it just hits the nail on the head. It's simple. People use it. When I use it and push out a meeting maker, it works. So, I actually have a live meeting that I need to schedule. I'm sure you know how it works. Andrew: By the way, as long as I'm looking over your shoulder and spying on you while you're doing that: Happy Birthday! Mark: Well, thank you! [laughs] Andrew: Can we tell the audience where you were on your birthday, or is that too private? Mark: Oh, no, that's fine. I was in Malta, and I had a surprise birthday party. My wife surprised me, totally caught me. Totally caught me. Andrew: So what you did was, you painted the time that was available to you, you selected the subject for it, you've got the location on Skype, and you selected the meeting time. Mark: Yeah. So, I say, I'll call you on Skype. 'Message' -- don't bother with. We'll type in 'Kate'. Should autofill, which is also very nice. Should do. There we go. A few people, add Eric. And that should autofill, there we go. Propose some times, I know they want to meet on Tuesday, because Kate's in Canada and it's a holiday on Tuesday, so let's go for, probably,...it's a little full then. That could work. So let's run with that, and failing that, we'll offer Wednesday. Then we'll put [??] and then let's push it. That's it. 'Create.' Andrew: OK. Mark: So now Eric gets an email, and Kate gets an email, and both of them say, please select all the times that you're available from these options. They click through, they select the times, and Tungle books the earliest common time. Andrew: OK. And you've got now... Mark: It goes on my schedule. Andrew: And I see where you've painted the times for them, I see...and can we see what the person who you've invited to a meeting would see? Mark: Well, I'd have to invite you. I don't have... Andrew: Or, if we go to, do you want to go to that screen that you created, you've got a public-facing calendar that we can use as a test here. Mark: So this is one of the features of Tungle is you can actually show a personalized page. This links into my calendar and it shows the available times that I have. And I generally offer up 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. EST five days a week for meeting times. Andrew: Let's give that a moment to come up on the screen while you describe it. I'm still seeing your screen, not your guest screen. OK, there it is. So now this is what anyone randomly would see if they wanted to book a meeting with you. And essentially, this is what the specific people who you've invited to pick their meeting times would see: they'd see a list of availabilities; they'd click the time that they want. Mark: Yep. Although I've done a subset of that, because I know Kate wants to meet on a Tuesday, but I've also offered up Wednesday, and so they can just pick off all the times that are available, and hopefully one will work. If it doesn't, then I get notified, and I can go and push a meeting time. Andrew: OK. And let's talk alternative tools, and then again, we bring it back to the message here, because it's not about the tools, guys, it's about giving you a new way of looking at the world. Because every time that I see you, by the way, Mark, not only does your business get done, but this confident, happy attitude just permeates from you. I believe my audience can get a sense of the person who I interview and who I have in the courses, and there's a calmness to your life that I would like to have in my life, that I'm working towards, and the way that I'm learning to get there is by studying the systems that you created and finding my own systems. Let's talk about alternative tools. What other tools are there for getting this same kind of job done? Mark: The tool that was the precursor to this that we looked at was TimeBridge. But I found that some people didn't use it. The email that they sent through was good, but not entirely usable. Not entirely easy to follow. Tungle gets it right. The message is simple: book [distortion] are available, and people follow through. It works. So I've opted with Tungle. But there is another missing component to this, and I hope Tungle gets their head around this missing component one day. The other part of this, the missing piece of the pie is follow-up. People often forget about the meetings. I'll book meetings, in some cases months in advance, and people just forget. Even if it's the following week; they don't quite remember it's on the calendar. So the ideal, I thought, was to get an email follow-up. And I didn't want to have to remember to do that, and I didn't want my super-admin to have to do that, either. She's got better things to do. So I came across a system called CureCRM. And they've got all sorts of bells and whistles, but they've got one particular thing that I wanted, and that's the automaton calendar follow-up. So essentially, what you can do, is you sign up for CureCRM, sign up for their calendaring tool. And, here's what I do: if I've got a meeting that's booked onto my calendar, I add 'Victoria' -- and you can choose the name -- but I add 'Victoria@CureCRM.com, and Victoria then follows up with all the people who are involved with that meeting and reminds them immediately, when I ask her and also a few hours before the meeting. And you know what? Night and day difference. They just don't miss meetings now, people are aware. Andrew: And it looks like you've got this great assistant who always follows up with people on your behalf, and it comes across as a very professional interaction with you. Mark: Yes. Andrew: So, CureCRM has an addition to Tungle. There's now appointment slots available on Google Calendar, if you guys want to try that as a specific tool alternative. We've experimented with AcuityScheduling which has some benefits and also some things that it can't do. It can't book meetings with multiple people at the same time. The tools are there, alternatives are there. The big picture is: when there is something that's just taking up too much of your time, systemize it and have it just work. A system can even be better than doing it yourself in this case. For example, if you did it yourself, you'd have to remember to send a reminder to people. If you had an assistant do it, she would have to coordinate everybody and take up a lot of time, and then she'd have to remember to send a reminder. Find the right system. You set it and you forget it, like Ron Popeil says. That applies a lot to business. You just systemize and you run. So, now you've got the meeting with them, and, Mark, you want to get these people locked into an agreement with you. My lawyers will still - do I have it here? No. They still send me frickin' paper documents, all the frickin' time, and it's these big things. What I have to do is I have to scan them in, and I bought a scanner. I use SnapScan, and then I have that go. It's just endless. I just wish they would learn this, and this is what you've introduced me to in our prep session, let's take a look at what that allowed you out, OK? Mark: This has really helped speed up the signing up process. So, once we get to this stage for a new client, once we get to the stage that they said "OK, send the agreement over." I'll send them a hard copy. I'll send them an agreement by email, but I'll also send them an echo sign. A good proportion of the time it is signed into here, and they sign by electronic signature. So, let me back up a step. Andrew: Mm-hmm. Mark: Here's the contract that people sign that they become retaining clients to Courtland Brooks. I've loaded that into the echo sign system. If I want to send . . . I'll send you an agreement right now, so I go to CourtlandBrooksUSA agreements. I'm going to send that from the library. I'm going to send that to - is that right? Andrew: Let's see. It's coming up a little slow. It's mail@awarner.com or actually andrew@mixergy.com works, too. Mark: There we go, and that's it. Andrew: I see. It's in there. It's the same exact document. Boom! It's sent. Mark: Yeah. Andrew: And you've got a password protection option. You can add a signature to this document, preview signature as I see. You've got all these options available to you, and it's sent. They can just handle it. If you don't mind, let me go off on just a small rant here. I've done very, very little startup investing, and these are the guys that are cutting edge technologists. And you know what they do, Mark? They send me a document via email, and then they want me to sign it and fax it. I don't have a fax machine here. I don't even have a printer. I have to email this to the receptionist. The receptionist prints it out, brings it out. Sometimes, in the middle of an interview you'll see me just get distracted. It's because a legal contract comes out. I sign it. I have them fax it back or go back to my scanner, and I scan it so I have a copy of it. And then I email them the scanned copy. I can't imagine even cutting edge technology people don't think: how can I systemize this? How can I make this easier for myself and for the person who is signing the contract? It's going to be so much easer for them if they could just say, "Here's a contract. Sign it digitally." Boom! That's my little rant. Mark: It dramatically speeds things up. It makes life easier. It reduces the mundane. Andrew: Do you have a tool for getting people to sign on time? Is it just enough to send them a digital contract, or do you also have a way of getting people to sign on time because I know when people have those legal documents, they tend to drag their feet, to take forever to talk to their lawyer, take forever to read it because they're intimidated by it. What do you do about that? Mark: Well, I think the personal touch, that's one thing that I wouldn't so much want to automate because I think there's a certain dialogue once you get up to that sort of point. If people aren't signing, it's because they have an objection because there's something that's bugging them. Andrew: OK. Mark: So, I want to know what's going on with them. It's very important to ask the question: is everything all right? Please let me know if you've got any concerns or questions, and part of the sales cycle is I'm covering things that are bugging people. Andrew: OK. All right. So, you're not automating every single interaction. If the person has a contract and they haven't signed it, you want to know what's going on with them. Mark: Yeah. They're at the bottom of the funnel at that stage, so I want to provide them with as much personal connection as possible. Andrew: All right. So, finally, let's take a look at getting paid. You've sent them the contract they've signed, you've done the work for them, and now it's time for you to get paid. You use a tool that many of us -- oh, one more thing, is there an alternative to EchoSign that we can bring up? Mark: You know, I'm sure there are, I've not really looked for anything else other than EchoSign. Andrew: OK. All right, if there's nothing that you especially think of as a great second best, that's fine: the audience can go on a search for that themselves. I want the big message to be: Simplify it, Systemize it. And we've shown it to them. Alright, now this is your -- wait, before I zoom in on this for the audience, I'm going to leave it intentionally zoomed out -- can I zoom in on this, and show this to the audience? Mark: Well, we've got some clients in here, so . . . Andrew: OK, so I will black this out when we go live. Fair? Let me see if can black this out right -- no, I can't, it's too late. Alright, I'll zoom in, and I will black this out. Sorry, guys, it's not about the numbers, it's about the system. Now I don't -- this is how much Mark is charging. Interesting. Mark: [laughs] Well, it's entirely public. We charge 2500 bucks every two weeks on a one-year basis. That's it. It's the same with everybody. Andrew: Ah, 2500. And many of us have. I do for my ads for the interviews. It's the same amount of time, it's not one day you pay 25 bucks, the next day you pay 2500 dollars. Every month, it's the same amount. Mark: And we denominate to USA. So we go in any major currency. Whatever xe.com tells us is the mid-rate; we adjust every three months or so. Andrew: OK. So, what I do is, until recently, I just sat down, and I would write out the invoices, and I would see when they got paid. And you automated. Talk to me a little about that. Mark: There's no added value in invoicing. It's a pure cost base. I used to pay somebody three-, four-, five-hundred bucks a month to do accounts receivables and follow up with all of this, and my goal really was to automate it as much as possible. Now the problem was, there is a stage at which you want to be able to connect with people and identify when things push out a little bit, when they get beyond the payment terms. And there are really three reasons that people don't pay on time: it's either because they're not happy, or they're not willing to pay, or they're not able to pay. And, in all three cases, it's important for me to know what's going on. So I wanted to remain connected with this, which meant I needed to bring it down to a two-minute a day job. And that's what this system has allowed me to do. This FreshBooks, this is the one that we use, but there's also a site called Blinksale, I believe, and Zoho. Also very good options. But what I liked about FreshBooks was that they will also send a hard copy. And they also allow me to use multicurrency. And they're pretty darn inexpensive, for what they do. So, if I've got a new client, I'll go into... Andrew: I think you can do it from within 'New Invoice', you can add a new client from within there. I just want to move away from this screen, so that I don't have to worry too much about accidentally releasing your numbers. There we go. And I will personally edit the numbers out. Mark: So I can pick off a client. Let's pick one that's -- well, that's public. People know that we work for Plentyoffish, so we can leave that screen open. And I can say, 'Service', 'PR', the amount, every two weeks. And there we go. There's an invoice, it's ready to go, it's pre-filled, actually, all the information... Andrew: Where do you tell it every two weeks? Mark: Well, there's something called 'Recurring'. Andrew: Is that on this screen, or is that on a different screen to create -- oh, there it is, it's the secondary tab to the right of 'Invoices' at the top of your screen. Mark: Yeah. So first step: I create the new client. Second step: I add the recurring profile. And that's it. Pretty much. Andrew: OK. Mark: The final step, really, is tracking all the payments. So, either, if you've got a really good bank manager, then you can have them let you know when you've got payments in. Or if you've got somebody handling your accounts, you can let them know, let you know when you've got payments in, and, I like to know. And I can mark them as 'Complete.' Say if I want to mark an invoice as 'Complete', I can go to 'People', I go to -- who's outstanding? I'm actually pretty good right now. Let's try and find one. Let's try that one. I go to 'Invoices'. Andrew: Wait, the Recent Activity screen, do you want me to hide stuff on there, too? Yes. Mark: Just company names. That's the only thing they might not like that so much....Let me go to--this works, people are paying on time. Andrew: OK. I'm, getting a little paranoid about all these. About potentially revealing too much of your stuff. Let's go back to your home page. So that I don't have to worry about. Mark: There we go. Andrew: Oh. You've got something? Mark: Yeah. So if I want to mark one as paid, I hit the invoice, I hit enter payment, I hit paid in full, I hit the date. This is really important. Actually note the date it hit the account, or something is referenceable. Because what you don't want to do is, double enter a payment. Andrew: Let's give it a moment to catch up. It looks like it's just a little behind us, there's a bit of a lag. And you want me to hide this company name too? Mark: Probably should. Andrew: OK. I'll hide it all. I see what you're doing now. You're entering the date that they took it, the date they paid. You're entering the method, if you entering it manual, it means, it came by check and that's it. For the most part, what they see though is ... Mark: Enter the date. I hit save button and they get emailed notification, 'Thank you very much, you've got a payment'. Andrew: All right. Let's go to your home screen, where I can feel a little safe about, not accidentally, I mean, not your fresh book home screen. But your home screen at CourtlandBrooks. I get very protective of the confidentiality of the people who leads these sessions with me. Even though as people see, I get a lot of details in my interviews, because I get people to reveal their finances and all that. One of the ways I do it is by being trust worthy, and being someone that they can count on with information they don't feel comfortable sharing. Are you on your home screen? Because so far I still see FreshBooks? You are right? So just going to take a moment to come up. OK. Ask you about bigger picture philosophy . Now that we've seen the tools, we've seen them in action. If you can leave someone with one message, what would that message be, that will help them create their own systems like this, and get that peace you have? Mark: I think, we're moving into a new era. I think creativity is becoming more important. And it's not so much what you know, it's what you can create. People really appreciate having the freedom to find where they work and when they work. Maybe I feel more creative sitting on the beach in Thailand. At least part of the day sitting on the beach in Thailand, and then working from a hut. The engine that is strong enough these days, perhaps that will be the right environment for me to be most creative. Maybe I'll try that one out one day. But Shanghai certainly works. And Malta certainly works. And next week in England, I'm sure will work. So there's a lot of value I think in providing. I enjoyed those freedoms; I think it's only fair that the people in my team enjoy those freedoms. I've managed to extend those freedoms to them, thanks to some of these systems here, and mine most significantly. So I think you can select the right tools these days. If you can motivate people right and they will follow through for you good. Now, we do still meet, in person and in conferences. And we do still meet, of what I call, virtual water cooler calls. So I always got other tools like siCoCo and Skype to help us stake an exit. So there is that personal connect. That is very important. But ultimately I have freedom, they have freedom, they don't leave. They stick around. And that's nice, I want to work with those people i enjoy and we seem to enjoy this environment. Andrew: And to me, I used to think, I'm so impressive as an entrepreneur. I'm working until 10:00 at night. When everyone else is going back at, the receptionist is going to leave here at 5:30 today, I'm going to work until 10:00 at night. I'm going to work till midnight. And what I didn't realize is that I was making the big mistake that, a lot of things that kept me working that late, are things I could've systemized. Now, you can't sit here remotely and systemize my job personally, perfectly or my listener who's watching us or listening to us on the run. You can't systematize their business perfectly, remotely like this. What we can do and I believe we've done it and I appreciate you doing this is show them how it can get done. Send the message that it's possible, show examples of how to do it, and then leave that person a ticket to the last step in automate their own lives. And I know every time we do these courses, people actually use the tools, they use the tactics and they email me. In fact, we did a course on linked in. I think I posted the course and about an hour and a half, and an accountant came on and said, 'Andres, I'm an accountant, I took the session, here's a screen shot of my linked in screen, if you search for accountant, in my home town, I'm the first guy who come ups '. This works for me I love that. I hope that you're using the ideas here. And if you're not, rewind and go back and use it, or look at the transcript that we give you, and follow along and use it. And I want to see the results. I care so passionately about your result. Come back and let me know and of course, you got so many ways to connect with Mark, right here on his website, we shall zoom in on. Contact him, let him know we're both very, there is nothing he get's out of this, except for this, the pride of feeling that he's changed your live and so on. When you have that opportunity, to have your live changed and your business change, choose it, and then come back and share with me and Mark. Thanks you all for watching. Looking forward to all of your results.