 Llywodraeth yr ymddechrau i ddatblygu ac yn adnodd? Felly, iddyn nhw'n cael ei amser i os yw ardechrau yn unig. Rydym defnyddwn yn Rheidio, i gyda ei hofnig cymryd yn y rhan fawr neis, neu byddai ddim yn yr ysgol iawn eu unig. Ond yma'r rhagor yn sylleddau'r ysgol iawn yma, yn y jyfrddau rhai sydd ar y syniad ar gweithgfu gwestiynau ar Ysbydd Lsiwn Gwasanaeth Fentl. Ymdrygu'r rhagor yn ddiwedd yn ymryd, your own team who is managing the tech side of the meeting Хорошо. and also will be answering your questions in the chat function, so please do reach out to her to. And let us know if you need anything. We do ask you to meet yourself throughout but there will be plenty of opportunities, ask questions later. And make sure you use the chat function, I know Jody's keen on getting your views across in the session so. We'll be sure to pick these questions up throughout for those who are new to the series. by Westus its counter council, a have been taking place since September. So this is series four. So the three previous series have been run by Freedomworks and Creative Bloom and are organised to help small and medium businesses utilise digital tools and gain expert knowledge and advice in how best to grow their online presence and attract and retain new customers. So, as I mentioned, the previous series one to three from Freedomworks and Creative Bloom have been presented around getting online customers and marketing and systems and productivity. So today we're moving on to the final series this month around by always possible. We'll be looking at growth expansion and new products. So the aim of this series is to help businesses create the right conditions for growth in a digital world. So this includes tools for automation, online sales, cybersecurity and keeping productive whilst working apart. I really hope you'll be able to join us for a range of sessions taking place. Every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January and we'll include in the link for booking here. I also wanted to take this time to introduce you to our digital champions. All attendees from these sessions will now have access to eight hours of free specialist support from one of our seven digital experts. And the seven experts range from specialisms in consultancy, marketing technology and all aspects of digital adoption. You'll find all listed here on the slides. So please do take the knowledge from the series webinars and use them to help implement and find the right tools for your businesses. And again, we'll have the link here to request support. The digital champions will be joining us all week and at the last event to speak to them and find out more information on how they can support you and your businesses. Lisa Kerr, one of the digital champions who came up on the slide earlier is joining us today and will be speaking later to tell us more about accessing your support. We'll be continuing all our sessions from series four throughout January, so please find these listed here. I've included the book here again in the chat. So today's session will be joined by Jodie Rainsford, CEO of Hello Genius. Jodie is an experienced journalist, copywriter and marketing consultant. And Jodie will be spending this lunchtime talking to you about your own digital strengths as well as an opportunity to share your own experiences. So over to you, Jodie. Thank you very much and welcome everyone. Let me just switch over to my slides. Just checking that everyone can see that. That should say digital tools for growth. Is that good? OK, perfect. Thank you. So this is kind of an introductory session really. And what I really want to do with this is I want to take the opportunity to find out a little bit more about your businesses and then think about how you use digital tools to achieve your aim. So just to give you a kind of a quick background on myself and who I am and what I do, actually, let's stick with the goal first. First, understand how digital tools can help you grow, share some ideas, empower you to get started and take some action steps. The whole point of all of these things is that you can talk about technology. You can talk about digital for as much as we want, but until you start implementing it and actually start using it effectively in your business, in your life to get the results that digital promises us and actually, you know, it isn't fulfilling the promise that we originally hoped. So actually getting some steps to take away from this would be really valuable. And so what I'll be doing is I'll ask you right at the end, you know, what will you be doing after this? So so as we're going through, feel free to, you know, think, you know, make notes around, oh, actually, that'd be quite good if I did this or this is something that I need to think about or this is something that, you know, I could apply to to my business or or this is a question that I need to ask. And you've got the you've got the digital champions who of course you've got, you know, that amount of time with. And so it may be something to explore a little bit deeper or kind of like signpost you off to to some of the other sessions. The other thing to remember is please feel free to interrupt me. I go quite quickly. You probably have noticed that quite now, but feel free to interrupt me. I am not precious about, you know, making you wait to the end to answer questions or share ideas or anything else like that. Let's let's turn this into into more of a sort of a discussion in the conversation and, you know, find out a little bit more about your businesses. And if you've got what specific advice I can either help you or I can point you to someone who will be able to help you. Just starting off like why listen to me. You know, my background is as a journalist, a copywriter now as a marketing consultant. That that's all wonderful and everything, but the actual way where that's actually useful to you is a sense that, you know, throughout my whole career and especially with the with the work that I've done with my existing clients and clients in the past, is that I've used a whole range of digital tools by which to achieve the things that I've wanted to achieve and also, you know, build my business along with it. So why I'm showing you here, I'm not showing you this because there's a funny picture of someone's bum there. I'm showing you these are all sales letters that I've written for clients in the US. And these are these are those really, really long sales letters. They, you know, about six, seven thousand words long, make a huge amount of money and people absolutely hate them generally, unless unless you're buying something from it. The reason I'm telling you about that is that when we put these together, when I was brought on to help, it was an international team that came together to create these, you know, we had people in the US, people in Serbia, people in South America, me as a British copywriter. And so pulling all these things together, this doing this would never have been possible, you know, 20 years ago. And so it's kind of showing you that actually there is so many tools available now to be able to do whatever you want. That is also a challenge, as we'll kind of discuss as well. I've written a couple of books, one recently called How to Start a Cult, which is a little bit divisive, another one called Engagement Formula. But let's go straight into thinking about you. Like, what is it that what is it that where are you in your business? So I know we've got a poll here. So if you could just if we're going to pop the poll up, and I just want to get an idea really of where you are in your business right now, and so we can kind of get an indication of it. So what stage in your business are you are you growing right now? Are you actually in the process of growth and actively looking to to add sales to your business or add team members to your business or or expand into other areas or expand your products? So is growth a thing for you now? Are you looking to go? Is growth something that's maybe not not happening right now, but it's something you're thinking about in the in the medium to long term? Or are you in a period of consolidation? Are you basically, you know, trying to secure what you've got? You know, put things in place to make sure that, you know, you can you can get ready for maybe some growth in the future. If you could just answer those questions, that'd be really valuable because then we can kind of get an idea where where everyone is. Right. Is everyone everyone answered? Perfect. OK, so if you shared it, OK. So we've got a bit of a mix there. So we've got 30 percent of people are growing right now. So you're actually in the in the mix and actually get into a period where you're where you're trying to go. 50 percent are looking to grow. So, you know, we're kind of in the planning stage and thinking about what it is that we need and 20 percent are consolidating. And there's all kinds of things that we can. There's all different ways of thinking about, you know, what we need at different stages and, you know, different tools for different periods and certain things. So with all digital tools, it's always going to be a balance about, you know, what you need, what you can afford, what you like using, what your personality is like as well. So there's lots of things to bring into that. So let's let's kind of like think about that. Is there anyone that wants to kind of let's just kind of stick at the start? Do you want the ones to kind of share their particular story at this point? You know, you know, where kind of like your business is? Because it would be kind of good to put a little bit of like meat on the bones of that. Is there anyone that wants to kind of share what their what their business is? Claire, Claire, you are happy to. Can you can you take yourself off of me? And let's see if I've got such a gallery of people and I can't see your face. There we go. Hello, Claire. Hello. Hi. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. Thank you very much. So what what is what gives a little bit of a bit of context? Who are you and what is your what is your business? Yeah, sure. So I'm a clinical psychologist and I offer therapy and coaching and also support for organisations to think about well-being. And I've been in a private practice now since 2015. I don't have any shortage of clients, but there's only me. So I spend more time turning away clients than I do being able to actively work with them and and and build for expansion. And so I I'm in the place where I've I've reached the capacity of an individual, single person, one to one model. And I need to think about other ways of serving people in a way that is more accessible and that I can expand my offering. So you're you're you're very much you've got plans to expand. And does that mean what kind of expansion are you thinking of that or you kind of open to to different ways of expanding? I got a couple of different possibilities. One is in terms of online course training, masterclass type offerings, which I've previously always done live and would like to understand a little bit more about the technology that can help me expand in that way. And the other way is to free up some of my time and capacity for development and potentially also taking on more colleagues to work alongside me to build up an associate model. But the bit that I really want to focus on is how digital tools can help me to expand to be able to free up some of that space to deliver to a broader community. Right. OK. And so is your is your biggest issue at the moment time then? Is that is that what is that what you're struggling with? Absolutely. Purely that I can't possibly meet the demands of the referrals coming in specifically for therapy. Yeah. So I'm limited that the growth of my business is absolutely limited by my capacity. And because I am spending my time either supporting referrals onwards or working with the one to one, it then is preventing me from having the time to invest in my business to develop in different directions. Yeah. Yeah. It's classic chicken and egg situation. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. OK. And is it just you in your business or do you have do you have anyone else that works with you or is an assistant to you or anything else like that? Yeah, I have a virtual assistant. Yep. And I'm also looking at taking working alongside contractors for assistant psychologists and I'm looking at the moment for associates, clinical psychologists to work with alongside me in the business. But at the moment, it's me and my virtual assistant. OK. OK. So you have you have like a resource there with the virtual assistant and it does the virtual assistant today, the person that's kind of taking on a lot of the like answering the emails or things like that. Or you still doing all that yourself? I'm still doing that because of the clinical nature of it and the need for that to be a therapeutic response. So my virtual assistant can take on all of my systems, organising, sorting and trying to keep me up to date and on track with with systems, clinical management systems and the practical stuff. But actually, I still am the person doing the face to face contact and triaging and making clinical decisions. So it's getting the balance of what parts can you know, what parts are appropriate to have a delegated support for and actually what does need a clinical response. And I'm sure that there are probably some things that I'm doing that don't require the level of clinical response that I'm taking at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. I think actually your particular situation there and I'm sure some of the digital champions agree with me. There's probably a lot there that is more about working out the kind of function and what you need from tools before like rather than looking at the tools themselves. So actually taking a step back and looking at the functions and what you should be doing and what you couldn't be doing and what you can hive off and everything may be quite a good exercise to do before actually choosing things. And as I want to say through this presentation that I'm about to do that actually taking that step back and having that perspective will make a huge difference in terms of just kind of taking an overall view of things and assessing exactly what you need. I think there's going to be loads in this for you and I think you're going to get loads from it because I think that there are... I've specifically dealt with people with that kind of situation doing exactly the type of thing like very, very hands-on, very, very one-to-one stuff and then trying to find a way of disassociating your time and money in order for you to be able to expand on those things. One of the bits that I want to replace with digital tools is that I do live webinars and then actually replicating when actually probably people would prefer to be able to access a webinar in their own time rather than necessarily always have that live interaction with me for some of the components I do. So some of those digital tools, I take a look whenever I can that my tech knowledge isn't good enough for me to know where to go next with it. So that's what I'm hoping to get from today. OK, perfect. Perfect. I think that I think there'll be plenty of things. We can come back to this because I'm sure the situation you're in is very similar to everyone else's. Thank you. So thank you for that, Claire. Is there anyone else that wants to share their situation before we kind of move on? If there's anyone that's thinking slightly different or no problems, if not, because what can do we can crack on. And then if you've got any questions as we as we go on, we can we can go through that. So you probably identified that there's a bunch of things that Claire was talking about there that you find in your own business as well or that you may find about your about your own business. So I'm going to call this a joy of digital because essentially the the the kind of the the possibilities that the digital has presented to us as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as people that need to reach different audiences is incredible. But it also brings its own challenges. And I think this is this is where it can. There's no there's no lack of knowledge out there. The issue is how do you take what all the information is out there and use it in a way that's practical to you that doesn't tie you up in knots? So if we look at looking at like the value of of digital tools that are available is that they're, you know, depending on depending on what they are, they can be simple and easy to use. One thing that, you know, a lot of a lot of apps are built on is simplicity, things that, you know, previously you did need an expert to do. You can you can do yourself to to a certain degree. A lot of them are often free or low cost or free and low cost up to a certain point. Normally, which is quite quite useful because if you're if you're growing your business and scaling your business, you don't want to start loading up on costs. I got to one point in this is all stuff that I've done myself in our business. I've made all like the mistakes. So you're getting all the benefit of all the the huge amount of money that I spent on subscriptions and things for stuff that I've never needed. But but it is entirely possible to, you know, to to to get a lot of the a lot of the tools that you need free or low cost. They won't have the same amount of functionality necessarily, but but they'll get you they'll get you moving further enough ahead to make sales, do marketing to whatever it is that you want to do. The other aspect to to this is that, you know, if you if you want to reach beyond a local business is beyond your sort of your locality or your region, digital tools give you the the possibility to do that. You know, we this would have been a lot more a lot more exciting to talk about two years ago before the pandemic. But now we kind of, you know, know the value of working remotely and we know that, you know, what what can be achieved when when everyone's forced to forced to operate on the on the sort of a remote digital level. There's flexibility over location and time, so you don't necessarily have to have to work between certain hours. You can certainly be in different places. I I regularly go go away and, you know, run my business from from from different locations, which, you know, it can be good. Even if you have a business that has a physical location, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in in that business all the time to to perform certain other functions as well. This is I mean, this is the bit for those people that are growing. This next part is the is the really, really useful. It's the scalability, so it's the ability to scale up or scale down, increase the services you have or decrease the services you have. Or, you know, having that ability, you know, with with them with the problem of things like office space and stuff like that. You used to have like, you know, when you if you bought an office and you've got lease on an office and it was only for four people and you grew very quickly, then you're stuck in a lease and you've got all those kind of things. It's the same thing we used to be with a lot of a lot of tools and a lot of software that and hardware that people used to buy that hardware was made for a certain number of people as soon as you started scaling up, it was really expensive. With the digital tools that we've got today and with the software available, you know, that you are when you grow, you add people to it and it's really simple and it's, you know, you can combine people in it in a really simple way. There is no there's no problems with scalability. The only issue are things like bringing people on board who need to learn how to use it. And and cost and that's really and that's really it control. One thing that the digital really allowed you to do and this is particularly true in things like finances and if you're doing sales and things like that, is having a certain level of control over that. You can get a good overview of what other people are doing in your organisation, not from a sort of a big brother. I want to watch what you're doing, but you can look at people's performance. You can see, you know, which areas may be need some attention, which people may need some additional training, things like that. So it gives you some real ability. And then the other aspect to it, which I think there's an entire session like dedicated to automation, but automation really that's where you can really get the value of, you know, if the building relationships with people getting, I mean, I'm talking from a marketing perspective if it sells a marketing perspective, but building relationships with people, even if you are not there to answer the phone, even if you are not there to respond to something, even if you know that you can deliver some value to someone, but you don't physically want to pick up, need to have the opportunity to pick up the phone or send an email to them or things like that. There are lots of things that you can do in terms of automating your responses and automating it in a genuine and authentic way that builds a relationship and gives people value and will help, will do all the work in the background while you are in your business, you're growing it. And that's true of like operational things as well. You know, there's a huge variety of operational things that you can automate, that previously you'd need someone to do. So when you do this, well it's like adding another person to your business, but it's a big, it requires a lot of thought before you do something like that. That all sounds great, but it comes with some challenges and I'd love to hear some of your challenges as well as a result of using some of the digital tools because I'm sure that you're all using digital tools to some extent and you're all having issues with it. So number one, too much choice. There is so many tools out there. If I just go to this next slide, I mean this is just like the top 100 or something. You know, some of these have disappeared now and some of them, I have to update this so regularly because things change so much, but there are so many things to choose from. It's so hard to know. I need a piece of presentation software. What shall I use? I need storage software, which shall I use? You can spend so much time doing free trials and wasting time with these various things. And so it can become paralyzing to know which ones you should use. And there's always new ones coming out. I don't know if like, if you ever start looking for something on Facebook or on LinkedIn, you start being served with ads for another $37 piece of software, which is a lifetime deal, which is going to be the next best thing. And so it's really hard to focus on it. You have to shut that out and think about something different. Lots of features as well. One thing that product people like to do and anyone that's creative to do it, is just shove features in. So many features, more features than you ever know what to do with, which is great if you have full control over knowing what it is you want about the tools that you're using. But most of those features may go unused. Hidden costs. So one thing that happens with a lot of software companies is that as a software company gets bigger, some of these digital tools expand, they hike the prices up or they change their business model. Like anyone that's been using Hootsuite, anyone that's been using things like Lume for a while, it's just boom. If they change all of a sudden, it can cause issues. The other hidden costs, of course, are opportunity costs. I don't know. It used to be the case with us in our agency when we were sending out emails. It would take an hour to write an email and then sometimes if you ever had an issue with your mailing list or something like that, it would take three hours to send the thing because you run into a technical issue and the amount of man hours, the waitress or person hours are wasted as a result of technical issues and things like that. You can really waste a lot of time with those. And so things being complicated can have an exact time price as well. There's a certain risky element to it as well that by using digital tools, I can't remember when it was, but Instagram was out for a little bit and the world surprisingly didn't collapse. But you'd have thought it would have done. We've had outages of things like Xero and other technologies as well. So if your business relies on those things, if you've got sales coming in all the time and your business relies on those, that is a risk and that's maybe something to think about in terms of your risk management. And of course, there's GDPR compliance. So if apps are based outside the EU, there's a potential issue that if you're storing data that they may not be GDPR compliant and a lot of them aren't. A lot of digital tools aren't. A lot of the key ones and the main ones are. I'd like to find out from you though, like what problems have you found using digital tools? Has anyone got any kind of negative experiences of using something, spending lots of money on something? It going kind of sat there for years unused. I know someone that had a subscription to a piece of software called Infusionsoft, which is they were paying about $150 a month and in 18 months they had it, didn't send a single email with it because they were just too scared of doing it, which I think would go down as a bit of a waste of money. Has anyone else got any experiences that they want to share? Just quickly asking either of the digital champions that are here, would they add anything else to that that they've seen that may be challenges that people have found with digital tools? I think I'd add to what you said, Jodie, totally agree with what you said about there are so many digital tools out there. It's really about people making sure that they get the right ones. So think about the business model and what it is you want to do first before you go diving into tools. And you're right, there was a session in series three that I actually ran that ran through 16 digital tools in 45 minutes, which shows you just how many are out there and that was just a few of the very, very, just 16 in one session. But the point being, there are so many that actually, there's always something out there to do what you need, but don't just go and see all these things and go for them and think, oh, that sounds good, that sounds good. And then you just end up in a pickle and they don't link to each other. So plan offline before you buy apps online. Yeah, that's a really good point, actually, that you make about connecting up with different parts of your business because everything talks about compatibility and only when you start using it do you find out how incompatible things are and then you start needing other bits of software to make them compatible. And all of a sudden you've turned something which is relatively simple into something that's incredibly complicated. There's a couple of other things. So Kim, I somehow started being charged on MailChimp for £11 per month, not sure why. Not sure why. So that's... Has someone got there? Sound on. OK, perfect, thank you. Yeah, so that's one of the issues that you can find, that you start off with using something like MailChimp or whatever, you put your billing details in and then 18 months down the line you find that you're being charged for it. And so they kind of rely on you kind of forgetting with a lot of these things, or especially with free trials, give you a 60-day free trial and hope by the end of 60 days that you've not remembered. Just a quick comment from Vicky here before I'm going to pass to Andrew. Vicky, I find trying to post on different social media is frustrating as having to adjust and time-consuming. Yeah, I think that's a major issue as well. But again, that may also come down to focusing on what it is that you want to achieve with different social channels, and we can do this. Andrew, you wanted to add something to Andrew, another one of the digital champions. Yeah, sure, Jody. I think what's really interesting is, as Lisa's mentioned, the key part of before you actually enter into anything on contracts and software or cloud systems is concerned, is the business planning side. So in other words, you need to know where your business is going. You also need to know what your current challenges and issues are. And common things aren't as simple as, I need a website or I need to be selling online, but it could be. But they're usually things like, I need to improve my staff productivity. I need to improve my communication to my clients, my partners or people I'm selling to. Or I need to improve mobile working due to COVID. So in other words, it could be tech like tablets for people to work from home, or it could be decent software to run meetings from, or it actually might be integrating various bits of equipment that I've got or IT together in order to enable people to work more efficiently and to make more of their time. So I think that's the key thing is, it needs almost like a brainstorm session with all the senior managers in the business, just to work out what's required and then work out what the kit is. And is it software? Is it hardware or is it cloud systems? That's a really interesting question actually, because I'll come back to you, Lisa, on that, because I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with knowing which order to do things in. Do I choose a piece of software? Do I choose a tool and then tell everyone we're using this piece at all? Do I choose it first? Do I master it? And then tell everyone this is what we're using? Or do we collectively try and choose something that's going to be appropriate? We'll come back to that though, because I think other people may have that as an issue. So if we just kind of push on through, so what Lisa and Andrew both said there is kind of like supports what I'm going to talk about now, really about thinking about what it is that you need in your business that requires the tool that you're choosing, or the app that you're choosing, anything else. So there is one big, big mistake that I find that businesses make when choosing tools. And I'm looking at this from a marketing perspective because I tend to work with people on the marketing and sales side. I'm sure that this might cross over, I'll be interested to see if other people's opinions are this. But it really is choosing like an all singing, all dancing tool that doesn't do anything in particular well. And that's talking exactly to the type of things that you see all the time where people are selling this, is you can get rid of all of these different tools that you're using and replace it with one. And I've honestly, in the time that I've been using anything, no one thing does everything brilliantly. Or if it does come close to that, you're paying a lot of money for it, that there's a real thing to it. So I would just be very, very wary about looking for this kind of like holy grail of a single thing that's going to help me with my expenses, with my emails, with staff productivity, anything else like that. So there's a right way to think about digital tools. And this is just something I think that is kind of common sense and also based on whatever I was saying. It's just are some basic questions, really, taking a step back and thinking about this. What am I trying to do? When you want to think about any particular thing, think about what is my goal? What am I trying to do? And this speaks to what Andrew was saying there. Do I want to try and articulate the problem? Solving the problem is normally best done when you articulate the question really, really well. And it might be something as simple as, like Andrew said, with a website. Is my goal to have a website? Or what is it I want my website to do? Like what is I actually want from that website? Do I want to get leads from that website? Do I want to position myself with that website? Do I want to capture data? Or do I want to use that website for support? So it's all about really kind of getting to detail. What is the specific goal that you're trying to achieve? The more specific, the easier it's going to get you to answer the questions. What wasn't working about the previous process or tool? So you may be looking for digital tools to come in and replace some of the things that you're doing. So for example, you may have a process whereby people get in contact with you, then it's passed to someone else manually or they take a phone call or they do this. What doesn't work about that process? Why are you thinking about changing that process in the first place? And again, the more you can think about that, the better. What is missing from what we're doing? Like how can we improve the process we have? How can we improve the function that we have? What is it that we think we could do better and we think that having a digital tool will allow us to do this? The thing is that a lot of these things, like even when you're looking at digital tools, like some of the stuff is you don't know that you can do it in the first place. I'm talking about automation here. I'm talking about lots of different things. There may be things that I'm talking about here that you never knew that some of these tools could do. So having a good, I think like Lisa said there, having a brainstorming session around apps, using those to think about what else would we really, really find valuable for us to do in our business? And then how long will it take to implement this? And this is really where it comes down to it. This is where you really have to take advantage of things like working out or being really critical about what an app is like or what a programme is like or what a digital tool is like in order to get it working properly. It's really exciting. The thing is it's properly sexy when you're buying new digital tools and you're rolling them out. Well, it is sexy for some, maybe not for everyone. But it's like people love doing this because you feel like you're doing something. You think, bang, I'm going to do all these exciting things with all these possibilities you've been sold on all these features and all these outcomes you get. And then you get into it. And then all of a sudden you're hit with the technicality of it or you're hit with, oh, I've got to do this or I've got to import this or there's loads of things. And all of a sudden it becomes a bit of a drag and you don't implement it properly. And there's all those issues. You need to take a step back and think, OK, I need, if I want to make this work, and it's like anything. If I want to make this work, how long will it take me to master this? How long will it take me to learn all the key functions? And how long will it take me to show the other people in my business how to do it as well? And that's really what that's looking at. A lot of these things are sold on ease of use. And generally they are easy to use right away. But for them to get really working in business and become an integral part of business, you have to spend some time mastering the tool. And which is why the selection of it is really important. Is there anything anyone wants to add to that? I mean, has anyone been through that process before and arrived at the right kind of tool as a result? Or been through that process and missed something out of it and got and ended up with something that was completely inappropriate for their business, which they've ended up having to change? I can tell about my experience. OK, go for it. I have just recently changed job from a fairly corporate and digital environment into a smaller business that is really scaling up their game here in the UK. And they took me on board because I had experience as a marketer in using a variety of CRM systems and emailing tools. Also the ones that they are using now. So now having used those tools before in a very fairly sophisticated way, like Salesforce, for example, which is very, for those who don't know, it's a very sophisticated sales tool, CRM tool. You can, very powerful. Really powerful, isn't it? But only very powerful if everyone knows how to use it and if the data that is in this tool is usable, essentially. So that's just, I just want to bring that alive in terms of that because I have an example from that because I had a friend of mine who is a sales manager and they use Salesforce. And Salesforce is an incredibly powerful tool, but his sales team were entering names with different spellings. And so because they hadn't sorted out their internal process, all the data that was going into Salesforce was incorrect. And so that's a perfect example of exactly what you're saying. Unusable data is one thing that affects. If I could add something. I'm a digital champion as well, by the way. In my experience, it's this cultural change. You can bring in the tech and you can even do the training. But unless you really change the culture of the organisation so that everybody understands that the data that they collect in the front line of sales people is vital and that it's garbage in, garbage out all the way through the organisation, unless you get that cultural change, that commitment to doing things in a new way, you're always going to end up with tools not used to their capacity. And the other advice I give is before you start investing in new tools, use the ones you've got. And I think Google Analytics is a great example of that, that everybody's got Google Analytics installed. But how many of us, and I can look in the mirror as much as anybody else on this one, actually go into Google Analytics and see and really take the learnings from all that data, not many of us. And it's a huge opportunity. Whenever I've invested that time in it, I get huge benefit and cover something that will really help my business. But unless you do that, you're not going to get very far. So the other thing, I just want to make one final point. And this is related to the culture point that I started off with. It's about changing habits, which is part of culture really. So that I always talk about digital transformation that's like getting fit. Unless you integrate it as a new habit, it tends not to last very long. It's a bit like we're in January at the moment and everybody's waiting. I'm going to get fit and by the end of February, they've all given it up their gym memberships. And I think this happens a lot too, that there's a lot of enthusiasm at the beginning and everybody's on board. But because it's not embedded as a habitual thing, we all sit down every sales meeting and we look at the data. Unless that happens every time, people don't get into the habit of looking at the data. If they don't get into the habit of looking at the data, then downstream people are going to say, actually the data is not very important. And then it starts kind of gently falling apart to the point at which, oh, let's not bother looking at the data anymore because it's not very good and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So that's a terrific point. And I think that kind of underpins everything, that if it's not important in your business and it's not important to the function, then no digital tool is the thing. Sorry, I wanted to get back on to your point, Lisa, that you were making about the specific use of sales force in your organisation. Yes, first of all, thank you. Really good point that you made about the culture. Kind of lost my train of thought now, but I... But you were using it in a sophisticated way. Yeah, so I think what I am now struggling with is that I know how powerful it is and I know how this tool... It can do to my world as a marketer or as a salesperson, but what I now struggle slightly with is where do I start and how do I make an existing sales team of 20 people who work quite comfortably on spreadsheets? How do I make them work the way we need it to so that marketing and sales can actually work together and so that we can grow? And with anyone, as you already mentioned, culture and cultural changes are, I think, something quite difficult, especially for someone who comes new into your business and says, like, this is a really powerful tool. Yeah, exactly. But I actually don't know it from the sales perspective, but I need the sales people to work and put the data in there so that I can, in the long run, help them. Even when it's just about coding, saying, can you just tick the box and say that they speak English? Or that it's a male or female or whatever data I need so that I can then do something with this data? And I say... Ginny, this talks a little bit to the point that Andrew made earlier about buying. Andrew, do you have anything to add there? I know you've got your hand up. I'm sure you want to put that in there. I think it is very much on that, and it's to add to what Rob said. I think the key thing really when you're looking at quite a big team in your case, which has been used to doing something in a particular way, that culture change is often hard. So the start of it all really is a... It's almost like a briefing at senior level and eventually to your sales team about the business need. I think when they get the fact that there are some efficiencies there, that there's potentially more revenue for them and better bonuses, they'll get it and they'll go for it. The second thing really then is having a really good specification. It doesn't need to be too complicated, but when you're specifying any technology system, I think you need to have that business in need there. Who's it going to target? Who's going to use it? How are you going to review it? And then the third thing is obviously decent training that goes without saying. But then the fourth thing I think which is really important is having a champion within your team. So nominate one or possibly two people within that sales team. And basically they then are your go-to person for any problems that occur or any improvements that you want to make. And also then that fifth stage is a regular review process. How's it working? How's Salesforce going? And you maybe do that once a quarter, maybe less regularly after that. But then you build that learning into a further briefing back for the sales team. And I think that works for any piece of software or any project to be honest, but it's that good quality spec, good quality brief, training, review and a champion that works really well. Can I bring Lisa into this as well? Because I just think if you've got any sort of examples or anything to add to that around getting buy-in or getting other people within the business to use the tools that you've kind of selected and trying to win them over. Yeah, I think when you ask earlier about whether it's the kind of you choose a tool and then you pitch that out to your team was saying that's what you've chosen. I would try and get the teams buy-in as much as you can before you get the tool. So unless there's some particular reason why you can't. And as Rob was saying, it's culture all the way through. But just to give a very recent example of one of my clients, they put in project management. This is very small business. So just four or five staff. So you don't have to be a huge business to be using these kinds of tools. And someone mentioned the Monday project management tool just because I think someone had heard of it or thought it was good. And so they launched into that. And so I was working with them on getting back to work for them. And it was one I hadn't actually used before myself. And then we found that they just didn't like it. And so now they just didn't like the layout of it. And so now I've introduced them to Trello which basically does exactly the same things but it just looks different. So you've said there are very many tools out there that offer fundamentally the same things and it can come down to something as simple as do they like how it looks, not even how it functions. But you can ask that. There's no point launching into a system when you could say there's two things here. They do fundamentally the same thing. Have a play, have a demo, see which ones you prefer and then we'll implement that one together rather than I've decided we need a project management tool. I've just gone out and got Monday for everyone. Yeah, I think there is that idea, isn't it? Of just jumping into something, having a look around it saying that I think I like this. Whereas if you take a more considered approach you'll identify those other needs that may not be entirely functional, that may be emotional, there may be emotional needs. I don't like how this looks or things that you would never have picked up off if you're just looking from a technical perspective. If we come back to you, Rob, you wanted to add something to that. Yeah, I think, again, part of the cultural piece, but there's always going to be a period. So, taking the example of coming into an organisation with an existing sales force, there's likely, and certainly in my experience, I've been through this a few times, when you're introducing new digital software into a business with an existing field sales force, there's a lot of fear there. They think it's a thin end of the wedge. And what this is about is the early stages of putting them all out of a job. So, they have to be reassured. That fear has to be overcome. It has to be something, I suppose the main point I was going to make is that, whilst you're persuading, whilst you're making that case, and I've been the e-commerce director for 25 years, I would say two thirds of my role has been persuading people. It hasn't been a technical bit, it hasn't been a strategy, but it's been making the case. So, what I was going to say is you need to get that support, particularly at the beginning, right from the top, because if the sales force or anybody else doesn't get the idea that it's really something coming from the top and it's got to happen, it probably won't happen. Sorry, I'm having trouble with my video here. Multi-tasking, and I'm a man, and it's difficult. And so, I think that's very important to bear in mind. I think the thing that we're generally seeing here, and I think the general theme that's emerging here is actually, we're talking about technology and digital, but really, a lot of the success around this is nothing to do with digital at all. It's all around thinking about what it is you actually want, the practicalities of it, the practicalities of implementing it, what is it that people need, what is it that we know work, and making the case for that. You have to make the case for yourself first as to whether you actually need something. And in some cases, a digital tool may not be the right thing to do. It may be to get sticking with the system. You do it if the point you were making there about automation is that, obviously, as soon as you start using automation, people immediately think of manufacturing and taking people's jobs and things like that. But if you're thinking about things like automation, you can think about it in terms of how do we enhance what we do? How do we enhance the process? How do we make life easier for people working within the business? Or how do we allow them to take menial tasks away from them and repetitive tasks away from them so they can focus on things better? And so there is this weird combination, even though we're talking about technology and digital tools, we're actually talking about things like planning and persuasion and understanding what we need in order to be able to implement these things properly and actually focus on them. So the next thing I was going to focus on was really what is it we want to achieve? And everyone has touched on this already. All the digital champions have touched on this already. It's all about thinking about the function, like thinking about, don't necessarily think about, I'll bring in this one-size-fits-all that needs to do that. Think about the individual functions in your business and work on those individually and think about, what is it that's... And it may be, you may be working from the perspective of what do we have problems with at the moment? So if you've got a problem, if you're looking for a digital tool in order to solve a problem which is hindering your growth, that may be the focus on. If you're working on something and we're not driving enough sales or we're not driving enough, that may be the problem area. But think of it in terms of function and then break that function down. I think all the things that we need to do within that function, that we may need a tool to achieve as well. And it's with a lot of situations that... A lot of tools don't do all of these things very, very well. Some of these tools, if I think about, for example, finance tools, I mean, how many people here are using something like zero or free agent or any of those other accounting bookkeeping tools? They're great, it's great for some of the bookkeepers, great for things like the vats and things like that. But for things like track and expenses, it's not great. That's its weakest area. So you'll combine it with Dext, which used to be sort of receipt bank. And so you bolt two digital bolt tools together, which fulfill all the functions that you have. And so, again, we're thinking about what are the functions that we got? I just want to come back to Lisa because I think this is an important thing to bring you in on. When they were thinking about the people you work with were thinking about Monday, what were they looking to achieve? Why were they moving to that project management system? Had they identified a challenge? Or was it something around expansion? Or what were the triggers for that? So it was actually a business that what hadn't even launched yet. So they were planning the stages up to launching as in physically opening a space. And they needed something to put thoughts down on paper. The choice of Monday was nothing more than someone apparently had heard of it. I think the owner thought they had used it and liked it, but I think they just heard of it, so they put that in. And then figured out that none of them knew how to use it. So actually, as part of being a coach to that business, I figured out how to use it and taught them how to use it. But actually, I didn't particularly like it either. So it's one of my least favourite project management tools. So it's been a really interesting experience. And funnily enough, they're now using Trello to manage day-to-day projects, but to actually plan for the launch of the business, we actually went completely away from project management and went to something called Mindomo, which is an online mind map tool. And they actually found that much easier to put a huge mind map and put people's names against it. And they then printed that out, put it on the wall, and everyone just picked off bits as they did it, because in launching physically opening a space, you're not actually all at a computer all day. So there's a balance between the technology and the point when actually you just need to put it on a mass of sheet of paper on the wall for people to mark off as they do things. So people shouldn't think it's all got to be on the computer all of the time. It's what works at different times for business. I mean, there's a whole industry, whole change management industry that is constantly trying to change people's behaviour and habits and culture, like Rob was saying there, to get people to implement technology and things like that. And actually, if you're a small or growing business, that's a whole layer of stuff you don't want to add on. It's like let's think about where the business is at the moment. How are people working now and how can we find a tool that fits in with how we work or fits as closely to that as how we work? I mean, there's going to become a point at which when you get to a certain size, you have to adopt those things. But if the majority of people on this are people that are getting ready to grow or growing. And so it's always going to be a case of trying to find something that fits with the way that you are operating right now. And as I say here, any tool should fit with how you work, not the other way round. That was absolute luck that I said that before that slide. It wasn't, I timed it in that way. The best tool is the one you use. I mean, I think everyone would agree with me that that actually something that you're implementing and using on a regular basis is something that is how you would judge the success of it that actually everyone is using it and it is getting the result. And I suppose there's also that element of having to monitor this as you go by, monitor the success of it, not just using a tool and then thinking, OK, well, that's done. Is it actually delivering the games that we're hoping? Is it delivering the efficiencies? And a lot of the tools are quite good at judging that for you. But again, this is one of those non-technical aspects. The soft deals have actually constantly been communication of the people that are using it. If you're using a tool that some of you are using in marketing and some are in sales and marketing and using it really effectively, but no one in sales is using it, but you've got no one who's making that connection between the two, then that's going to be a huge issue. I think the kind of thing to kind of think of, we've got like half an hour left now. And I think it would be quite useful to, if anyone has any kind of thoughts or if they want to kind of share their situation, and maybe we can kind of train some of the knowledge of the digital school champions onto that, because you can see that we've got a lot of expertise in the room here. So, is there anyone that's got any kind of like anything they want to say about their business or anything they want to say about the technology that they've tried to use or struggles that they're currently having and they need some advice by which to, and they need some criteria by which to judge what they're going to choose. So Clare, who I spoke to before, Clare, are you still there? Hiya, I am. Hiya, yeah, it might be worth coming back to your particular point here, because I think a lot of what everyone, a lot of what we've been talking about probably fits in with some of the issues that you found, particularly around the fact that there is a, we kind of have to take a step back. There's not going to be a digital tool that does the thing that you want to do. There's going to have to be some thought about, what is the, what is going to, what elements do you need to think about in order to kind of make that separation between constantly having to pick up those calls manually and do that. Question I wanted to ask you, just from a kind of a purely marketing perspective, and in terms of like, because one of the things that you mentioned was you want to add associates. And the best, you know, a good thing to have when you're thinking about adding other people to the business and adding the, is obviously to have a database. Have you, have you been growing a database from all the contacts that have been coming in if you're getting this constant stream of leads? Okay, okay. No, no, all of that is new to, and part of the discussions I'm having with my virtual assistant at the moment, yeah, I don't have mailing lists, I don't have, I'm not capturing from my, you know, I have a lot of traffic on my website, which I'm not capturing. For therapy, I haven't needed to market. It's very much a word of mouth professional relationships and registered systems I provide through healthcare insurers, for example, as well as self funding. So for the therapy component of the business, I haven't even needed other than websites, et cetera, to use marketing approaches. So if the other components, you know, I need full marketing tunnels, it really is very much sort of transferring what is a very old passion type of business to all sorts of other streams to expand, which is why I'm sort of in this middle ground at the moment where I'm licking specifically, exactly as you said, at some of that planning and the functions and which route is best place to take. Yeah, I mean, I mean, in terms of thinking about growth, I want to, you know, from a very sort of specific perspective that I offer, you know, I would say that, you know, if you are thinking about, if you're worried that a lot of leads are coming in that aren't necessarily, you can't service them all and everything, I absolutely would start creating that database. And this is where something like automation can work really, really well, is that, you know, you may not be able to service those people, but you can still provide them with information, you can still provide them with your expertise, you can still, you know, build a relationship with those people that maybe that you can't get on the phone to, that you can't do those things with. And so there's one specific example of a digital tool that will allow you to start building a database, start nurturing relationships, which, you know, may not help you immediately free up your time, but it will certainly in the future, when you come to, you know, want to grow your business, whether that's, you know, getting people to attend some kind of online course or watch a line of course, or, you know, adding associates so that you have greater capacity, you have that database there, you have a number of contacts that you can market to who you've already built a relationship, but that's taken none of your time because it has all been automated. And so that's something that I know, maybe not the most immediate thing, although I would always say to people, start growing a database right away, but it's certainly something that I think you're doing that will not take any more of your time if your VA is working on that and can add people to a database and get people to kind of like nurture them as well. In terms of the other aspects of it, is any of the digital champions want to kind of jump in here and give any advice as to how they see it in their perspective? I would say, Clare, you covered quite a lot of different areas at the start there in terms of how you're looking to expand. I would suggest that you start by just doing kind of some brainstorming on your overall business model and your business plan in that it's whether you're looking at taking on more clients or taking on the online masterclasses. You mentioned about looking at tech to deliver kind of life and recorded sessions online. You've talked about the associate model, digital tools, you've got a VA, but those are the productivity tools. There's quite a lot of different aspects to your business there. So I would say, you know, maybe start with more of a business planning session just to get clear which of those aspects it is that you actually want to drive forward with before you start looking at the tools and technology that will help you with either of those because it's quite different in learning to be more productive, more efficient and therefore service more clients face to face than if you wanted to, for example, set up an online training course and might well hand over to Rob here and see if he's got anything to add on that one, Rob. Just knowing. How did you know, Lisa? How did I know that, Rob? See how seamless we all are? You think we're making an office with them? Well, Lisa has seamlessly handed on to me because I'm in the process of productising. So, you know, in a sense, what we're talking about here is on one hand, how do we make our businesses more efficient through automation and so on? But the other aspect is how do we take our businesses in a new direction using digital channels and a key way of doing that, I think is to productise what you do. I'm in the process of doing that at the moment. So, you know, I wrote a book called Get Fit for Digital Business. You don't make any money from a book and it's a lot of work, I don't recommend it. But it does provide you with great credibility to back up a course or anything that you're developing. So, I'm developing an online course. It's quite simple doing it in PowerPoint using a piece of software called Camtasia, filming it in my home studio. And, you know, I really wish I built up a bigger database as somebody suggested a few moments ago to market it when it's when it's ready, which will be quite shortly. But I do have quite a big LinkedIn. And so I would say if you haven't got a database, do start building that up, as Jovy said, but also look at your LinkedIn if you've got quite an established presence there, because that can be a bit of a gold mine for developing. But yes, if you can think about how you can productise it. So, mine's called Get Fit for Digital, the training course based on the book. And, you know, it's a process. Everything we've talked about today, you know, it says it's not just about the technology, it's about the culture and the process and so on. And I've made this analogy. And I think, you know, in most fields of work, you know, we can all make analogies, you know, we can all do the Vantam analogy. And as a good analogy, I'm pretty much. But, you know, the point I'm trying to make is it's like getting fit. You've got to do your planning. You know, you've got to think about all aspects of it. You've got to get buying from everybody. You know, you've got to have a sort of some sort of personal trainer to help you along the way and keep you involved. So, yes, thank you, Lisa. That's that's something I'm trying to do. And I've done it with a home studio for less than £1,000. I mean, it's still, you know, small business, plenty of money, but a home studio, including the camera and the sound stuff and the green screen, all that sort of stuff. Relatively easy, even for an old boy like me to work out how to do it. And, you know, it's a very easy way of scaling your business. And that's really what we're talking about here. I mean, even if you were talking about that, you know, about a book, I mean, like even something, I mean, it's the cost of stuff now is so low. I mean, which is great because it allows you to enter the market, but it's bad because it allows everyone else to enter the market as well. But even doing something as simple as, you know, writing that book, you know, you can you can use the free tools that you have got, your own knowledge, a lot of time, and you can essentially start selling books on Amazon for nothing without any cost to yourself. And so don't do what I did and get a publisher because they take all the money. I mean, it's great to have publisher and they obviously pay and do a very professional job and it's a great ego boost to get a publisher. But, you know, as Joey says, you can do it yourself and you'll take, you know, more like 90% of the profit rather than 15%. So just a little hint there to add to the bit there. Actually, you made a really, really important point there, Rob. And I think this is really, really important for you as well player is to do that thing that Lisa said is to basically go back to a business planning session, plan out all the things that you that you need to do. You need from the business and you need to do. And I think the important thing there for you. And I think this is important for probably a lot of the business here is to work out the right order in which to do things. So Rob mentioned there, which he built a database before, you know, releasing the book. And that's that's the thing. And you don't you don't sometimes you don't realise that until you actually sit down, you plan it out and you think, OK, and I think for your situation, it's freeing up that time in the first place. So what what can possibly happen within within your business for you for you allow you to free up the time because you're not going to be able to do any of these other things. You know, it's great. Loads of people actually go out and create courses and do that. And actually, there's long term asset that's going to make a massive difference to freeing up your time. But that won't unless you, you know, you can free up the time now in order to create the asset in the first place and you free up time in order to market the asset in the first place. And you know, marketing is not your priority right now. You don't need to do marketing. Building a database without taking any effort would be fine. Anything that you any functions that you can do which take up no more of your time that you can add to your business may be worth doing, but anything that takes up your time now that's not removing you from the business is going to be an issue. You your time is your most precious thing. And so I think going back to a business planning session, as Lisa suggested, and really thinking about what functions can do I need to look at in order to shift around. So it and it may be just freeing you up for an hour a day, an extra hour a day, which may seem utterly crazy right now. But you know, start with an hour a week. But but but but that may that may be that may be the thing to do. And you've already got you've already got a VA. So you've got someone there who can provide some level of support while while you're doing it. So Clare, I was going to ask you. So what's your what's your what's your action coming away from this? It's mailing lists, which I was I was emailing my VA about prior to the session. But it's really great to have that confirmation that actually that's really where I need to be at. I've got, you know, I'm doing a whole series of webinars that are hitting every school in the county in the next in the next month. And so I know there's going to be loads of people checking out my website. And I need to be have the stuff in place quickly to capture that. So finding something, even if it's an interim plan for capturing mailing lists, we're looking at Mailchimp at the moment. I don't know what, whether that's a good long term option. But I need to find a way of being able to capture that data. Don't don't don't think so much longer. I don't think so much. Like I mean, the thing is the most important things you get started because I think with a lot of these things, you know, we've talked about a very tidy process there of going through those things, assessing those things, doing that, that. The reality is that most of the situation is not going to be like that. You'll end up using something, your needs will change. You'll realise that you don't know the functionality on something isn't quite. They've removed some features, which means it's not a scalable it is. They've put the price up. You know, you will go to places that it's better, I think, to focus on what you need, pick a tool, really work on making sure making that tool work. And if it doesn't work, if it doesn't do that thing, then then changing it. But it's really important to kind of the process of getting sort of emails and process of building that database is the thing that needs to happen and changes as you go along. But just I think by doing this process of asking those questions and doing that planning first, you're at least getting in the ballpark. You're getting in the close enough ballpark. You're kind of reducing the the the target, as it were, and trying to trying to try to improve that. I'm in the complete opposite situation. You know, I've created an agency and we've got we do digital courses and all kinds of things as well. And as we've grown the business and we've needed various things, I've added, you know, different different functions. Other people in the business have added different digital tools and stuff. And we end up with like a proliferation of digital tools, which I'm now going all the way back to actually cutting them and simplifying because, you know, it just it just takes too much out to you having so many different tools that everyone needs to be trained on. And then some won't be used and other people say so actually getting through to a to a number of digital tools that you're using within your business on a regular basis that makes it really easy. Because, you know, you've got to your VA has to be trained in in this as well. And so if it's super complicated and Vicky has asked a question around is Mailchimp the best one to start with to connect to your website. Mailchimp Mailchimp is just super easy. It's made it's made to be really easy. It's it's changed its model slightly recently in terms of, you know, it's more focused on on e-commerce. It's becoming more of an e-commerce thing. But, you know, as a as a free tool, it's it's really, really good. It integrates with everything really well. I would kick I would kick off with it. We do more complicated email marketing, you know, something a little bit more sophisticated stuff like that. So, you know, we normally if we work with someone with Mailchimp, we change very quickly. But if you are not collecting anything, if you're not doing those things already, I would start I would start, you know, on on something like Mailchimp. I don't know. I'm sure someone will completely disagree with me there. So you want to Rob? No, no, actually, I'm not going to complete. I think Mailchimp is, you know, it's it's as good good as any and better than most. But really what was going to say is an obvious point for Claire, really. But again, you're thinking about the technical solution. Mailchimp is or is it something else? But I'm sure you have already. But do think about if you've got all that traffic coming to your website, make sure there's a really clear call to action for people to want to sign up. So yes, you push for time. Maybe you can't put a little ebook together or being a 10 things you need to know about, you know, something that makes people want to sign up in exchange, you know, they give you the email address. You give them some value or that you've got a really exciting newsletter that goes out once a month or whatever. And it doesn't matter that it's not ready yet, but you can put that on there because, you know, you'll probably get 50% more people signing up. You know, if you've got a really good, clear call to action and something worth signing up for and then all that traffic won't be wasted because a lot of those people will never come back otherwise. And you might miss your opportunity. Perfect. We've got another question here. Thank you, Claire, so much for sharing all that. And I hope that's been really useful to you. I'd love to find out how you get on with that as well and see all your all your new online online courses launched soon. But that'd be that'd be great. And we've got a question here from from Ali Carr. Can you suggest a tip for bringing on other teams to use processes that the rest of the team are actively using? Yeah. So Rob, Lisa, Andrew, do you have any any kind of suggestions for for that? How to bring on other team members that you know that some team members are using it, other team members aren't? What's the what's the best way to to do that? Quick wins. You need to you need to you need to demonstrate that it'll make people's lives easier, although it's unbenefit out of it. So, you know, if they're the salespeople worried about losing their bonuses, you know, find a way of showing how the system will make their bonuses bigger. You've just got to appeal to to people's in everyone's trying to do their job in an organisation and they probably all got too much to do. So try and identify for each of the various audiences that you have how this piece of software is going to make their life easier or or or better in some way and demonstrate that in a small way. And then being a build on that to do more and more in the in the future. But quick little wins. It's and would you would you would you structure it to to to get those wins? Would you would you like introduce them to the software in such a way that they they they get a get a win immediately from that and then introduce them to other parts of of the software? I mean, what how kind of how contrived are those wins? If that if that's all right. Well, I used to do it in sort of quite large organisations, so it had to be quite contrived to be perfect on it. You know, if you've got a bit of software that you're trying to get everybody involved with the sales, people are going to be coming from one perspective. The marketing people are coming from somewhere else. The the the finance team are coming from another perspective. Give give them each something that they can immediately see will make their life easier. You know, in a narrow area, because if you try and, you know, for one thing, you know, the job of being this champion within an organisation, trying to find five things of financial life and five things that the salespeople were like. It's just overwhelming anyway. So you won't actually pull it off in nine times out of ten. So in a very practical sense, you know, you've got to narrow it down, show a win, move on, but but just get people tippy towing on board. You know, you're not going to turn them into mega evangelists overnight, that's that's for sure, and don't expect you. It's sometimes it's sometimes, I mean, we're kind of talking in detail about how to implement systems and the right kind of systems. And so it may feel, you know, if you if this just one of you or two of you or three in the business, we feel quite daunting to to, you know, to feel like you need to do a lot of these things, but actually all of this is really talking about how do we how do we just get people, how do we just match the right tools to to what we need in the business and how do we make sure that actually our behavior that it fits our behavior, it fits the habits that we've got already. It fits the processes and we make sure that we maintain. We show the other people in the business how important it is. And so I think it's about keeping those keeping those few few things in mind. I think I think sorry, Jess, I think that's true up to a point. In all the sort of implementations I've gone through over the years, you do hit moments when you do have to say to people, I know you've always like this way and the software has a different flow. You just have to get with it because you can change the flow for every, you know. But that would make a lot of sense in the larger business, but if it's two of you and then the other person, if the other person is absolutely, then I think it changes a little bit there, doesn't it? Yeah, you're right around focusing. You have to be a little bit more amenable. You do. To who they are. Yeah. So again, that just kind of tells us that actually, you know, the process that you go through and your choices are going to be very much dependent on the size of your business as well. So all things that are worth thinking about. Are there any other questions there? Thank you. Are there any other questions that anyone has while you've got us on the line and you've got us focused on your issues with digital tools or you want some suggestions? I mean, some of the other sessions that are going to be available are going to be focusing very much on specifics. So things about sort of security online and things about productivity. We haven't even talked about, we've talked about how you use a digital tool across a business in order for team members and stuff. But how do you use digital tools to keep yourself productive and working on time? Vicky, Vicky, you've got your hand up. Let's hear from you. Hi, yeah. I'm just wondering, apart from my jewellery sort of side of things, I have another sort of little venture that I'm thinking about and obviously I was on a Zoom call just before yourselves actually and the person thinks it's a great idea because there isn't anything out there at the moment. So I need to get on to it pretty quick. Obviously my jewellery comes first, but this second one. You've got to take an opportunity when it comes up, haven't you? Yeah, especially when they're a franchise and licensee expert and they think that I've got something there. So I'm like, right, OK. The one thing with my jewellery sort of side of things with the website, I need to kind of get an e-commerce, like just kind of see if I can possibly add, have that added on to what I've already got at the moment. I've got a WordPress website at the moment and it's just kind of adding, just trying to add a kind of plug on or something like that in the interim on that side. And for this other project thing that I'm thinking about at the moment, what's the best software setting up a website that connects with a mobile app that is quite a good way, not spending too much money straight at the start or anything like that, but having something that is quite good functioning. A bit like the West Sussex County Council, like the library, they've got the phone app that kind of, you can renew your library books and things like that. That sort of technology connecting with their website. Do you know anything, how you can possibly have something like that added to a new website that's cost-effective for a start-up? My expertise on apps is absolutely, well mobile apps is zero, so I will have to defer to any of the digital champions, can they help with this? Sorry to be a pain. No, no, no, this is perfectly great because these are the questions that people have. Is Andrew still on? He'd be on man with me. Is Andrew there? Is he there? Are you there, Andrew? No, I think he might have just stepped away for a second. I've done lots of apps and millions of websites, but a low-cost integration of that, I'm probably not your man, to be honest. So I'm not going to bullshit. It might be worth reaching out. Andrew's not here at the moment, but he will be the person who knows that. So it might be worth reaching out to Andrew on that specific point, and Stephanie's just pointed out that we can follow up with this for you. In terms of... Sorry to button there, but in digital champions, Malcolm Duffort, as well as actually an e-commerce expert with its sales, so I don't know the details of what your mobile app is, but if you're looking for e-commerce support specifically, then Malcolm Duffort is the digital champion who specialises purely in e-commerce. Yep, good. In terms of the point you made before about adding an e-commerce solution to your existing WordPress website, I have personal experience with this because I have a running brand and we sell merchandise through it, and so we use e-commerce, we e-commerce, we e-commerce. Again, it's one of these digital tools that is great up to a point, it's free to install, and then it starts charging you for things that you don't otherwise... things like inventory to do the inventory and you pay a subscription to it and everything else as well. It's really good to get started, but the costs start adding up, and then I think at a certain point, we're going to switch across to Spotify, not Spotify, to Shopify as a solution, but again, it's like all of these things. I'm sure Malcolm or Andrew will be able to give you more details on both of those because they are the e-commerce experts, but again, it's one thing to just be wary of things like WooCommerce and stuff like come across as free, come across as a really simple solution, but just have a look on the back end of that as to what the hidden costs are, what are the percentage transaction rates they're taking from it, that kind of stuff as well. OK, thank you. Thank you. Do you conscious we're getting towards the end of time? Would this be a good point to show the slide on how to contact the digital champions that I was going to chat with people just to let people know how to get that support? I was going to say thank you very much for everyone for your kind of contribution to this discussion, and thank you very much to the digital champions as well for helping out that. If you want to take over, Stephanie, that'd be great. Yeah, of course. Thank you very much, Jodie, for that. Like Lisa said, I'm going to hand over in a moment, but I just want to take this opportunity to thank you all for joining today and give you a bit more information about the next sessions that are going to be running. So if we just go back one slide, you'll see them all listed there. As I said, they're going to take place every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January. So we'll pop the link again on the chat bar just to show you who's going to be joining that. But as mentioned, Lisa Kerr, you've heard from her throughout the session today. So I'll give you a bit more information about how to access support. As we've mentioned, each attendee from today and for all the sessions have access to eight hours of support from one of the digital champions, all experts in their field. So I'll let Lisa give you a bit more insight on that. Thank you. Well, thanks, Stephanie. So the details are all here that you need, but just wanted to add to this to people because it looks like you might need to do quite a lot of information. So I just wanted to really say that it's very straightforward to go on to this contact form. It's on, the link is there, it will be sent out with the slides. Or you can go on to the Grosehub site from Ghost of the Capital where you can also find details of the seven digital champions and the areas that we each cover. We also, as you can hopefully tell from this session, we all do actually know each other quite well from working through Ghost of the Capital. So don't think that you have to pick the right digital champion if you speak to one of us and we realise that actually a different champion is more suited for your needs. We will pass you across, we work as a team and we want people to get the right support for them. So the seven of us will work together. Or you can speak to one of the growth relationship associates. There are three of them, one NASA was on the call earlier, but so we've had to drop off already. So you fill out your details and where it says here, you undertake a quick digital review. Again, that is nothing to be scared of. It's just a 20 question kind of tick box exercise that gives you a very brief picture of where you're at in your digital adoption. And that can just be helpful for us as champions to see where you need that support. So take you kind of five, ten minutes to complete all of that. And then that's all you need to do. And either the team or us will put you in touch with the right digital champion and we can arrange for you to get the free day of support that is kindly funded by Ghost of the Capital. Thank you. I can see you put the detail in the chat. Thank you. Yes. All the information about access and support is just on the chat there. So thank you, Lisa. That's really great. And thanks for joining us under Andrew and Rob as well. Thank you. So, yeah. I hope you've all enjoyed today's session. As I mentioned, we've got lots more sessions to run in series four every Tuesday and Thursday throughout January and the last session. You're all welcome to join all the digital champions to be joining as well as all last facilitators. It's more of a ask the experts kind of session where you can have a bit more one-to-one support and find out a bit more details about support and specifics that you need for your business. So thank you to everybody. I'm just going to pop up a slide just around the next couple of sessions we've been running. So this Thursday we're joined by Emerace Green, which focuses more around cybersecurity. So all those things in the digital world to keep your business safe. And then following Tuesday there will be a session with Lindsay, who is focusing more around, Jodie mentioned, specific productivity apps. So the likes of Clockify, Candlely, all those sorts of things that really help productivity for your business. There's a lots out on the market, but she's going to get to grips with those ones that have proven most useful and can work effectively specifically for you. So I hope you'll be able to join those again. The link to joining the extra sessions is on the chat there. And I hope to see you at some more sessions this month. Thank you again for joining. And thank you to Jodie for today's session.