The Tech Smart Boss Podcast

Sometimes things can be a little overwhelming as an entrepreneur. Things that you have to get done come at you fast and furiously. And sometimes you just get in a rut and don't want to do anything, especially when there are a lot of more fun things you could be doing, such as summer vacations. In either case, you need to prioritize what is important and get done what matters, ideally quickly and accurately. In this episode, I go over my 4 steps to help plan what needs to get done each day and week, which allows me to keep my sanity and be more productive so that I can have some downtime when needed. https://www.techsmartboss.com/85

As a Tech Smart Boss, we're always working on improving our sales funnel (at least you should be). But there are so many different ways to improve a sales funnel you have to be strategic in where you spend your time. Typically, most businesses have a leak or are losing leads, in one of three areas. In this episode, I give a high-level overview of what a sales funnel is and then take a deeper dive into the 3 most common problem areas and what you can do to fix them. https://www.techsmartboss.com/84

If you're in the software business, everyone wants to know your roadmap. And for good reason. But many software vendors are hesistant to share information for a variety of reasons. In this episode, I go over the do's and dont's for sharing your product roadmap and how to get the most bang for your buck if you do by capturing valuable feedback from your customers (and potential customers). I also cover the piece of technology I currently use and share a few other technology providers you can check out for your product roadmap and feedback solution. https://www.techsmartboss.com/83

One of the most common ways for a business to go bust is to run out of money or time before they find a winning customer acquisition method. It's essential for a startup, but also for a growing business because the method to scale changes as your business matures. In this episode, I go over 6 of the best ways to find customers for your product or service and walk through the thought process on which one(s) might be best for you right now. http://www.techsmartboss.com/82

Almost every department in your business is obtaining signatures at some point or another. Sales, HR, Operations, all require either internal staff, partners, or customers to sign agreements. Optimizing that document delivery and signature process is one of the best ways to leverage technology to do things faster and be more productive. Some businesses are still thinking it's too expensive or not safe to work with digital signatures, and if that is you, this podcast is for you. In this episode, I go over the background of e-signature, where you can adopt it in your business, and some of the vendors to check out and their price. http://www.techsmartboss.com/81

Running a subscription-based business with a recurring revenue model is the way to go these days if you ask me. But if you are going to do it, you have to keep a close look at some key metrics to make sure the health of your company is strong. In Episode 60, I covered what I consider to be the most important things to monitor from a business operations perspective, the leading indicators. In this episode, I'm going to cover a set of metrics that apply to more established businesses, with enough customers and data to make them make sense, but even if you are not there yet, you should know about them and establish a process and way to start calculating them (get in the habit). They are Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), Churn, Lifetime Value (LTV), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Average Revenue per Account (ARPA), and Quick Ratio. In this episode, I explain what they are and how you should use them. https://www.techsmartboss.com/80

These days even if you are a responsible sender of emails, it's hard to avoid the spam folder. Between over-aggressive spam gateways and e-mail providers trying to bubble up what they think is an important email or not, odds are your email may not make it to the intended viewer's inbox. There are some things that you should be doing to help prove you are a reputable e-mail sender and in many cases, small businesses are not taking advantage of those. In this episode, I go over some of the key technical things you should do related to email authentication and security and also how you can test to see if your e-mails are going to look as safe as possible, even when you are relying on a 3rd party email service provider. http://www.techsmartboss.com/79

Being a Tech Smart Boss means one thing for sure, you will always love technology more than your employees. It's something you have to keep in mind as you start to implement technology to your team. Most rollouts of technology become shelfware, where the team never uses it to its full capacity (if at all). In this episode, I go into the reasons why and how you can make sure you roll out technology and process in a way that sticks. And as a result, you can achieve the growth for your business that you are looking for. http://www.techsmartboss.com/78

I am a huge believer in using freelancers as much as possible in my business and I think you should be as well. But you have to do it for the right reasons and you have to do it correctly, or it could cost you. Everyone has their freelancer horror story, which is why you may be hesitant to use them as much as you should. In this episode, I go into the top reasons you should (and dare I say must), leverage freelancers to help grow your business and I'll give you some use cases that are appropriate for outsourcing to a part-time resource. http://www.techsmartboss.com/77

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is going into effect on May 25th, 2018 and it seems like the entire Internet is freaking out about it. If you are a small business that interacts with people that live in countries that belong to the European Union, then it applies to you. And it holds the threat of penalties of 4% of your previous year revenues or $20 million euros (whichever is greater) if you are not in compliance. My take, for the majority of small businesses, it's not something you need to worry about from a penalty perspective. But you should worry about keeping your customer's data protected and GDPR may give you the reason and a good guideline how to go about doing it. In this episode, I got into what exactly GDPR is, how it impacts your business, and what steps you should be taking to comply with it. http://www.techsmartboss.com/76

When was the last time you looked in your spam folder? I may be the only one, but if you look in there you'll find a lot of junk, but you'll also find some updates from many of the companies you buy products and services from, that you probably wanted to hear from. These days you can't count on email to get your message across, and with the upcoming GDPR regulations, there are even more reasons email is not going to be a reliable communication method going forward. In this episode, I go into some ways other than email to keep your customers (and your leads) up to date with the messages that you want them to know about. http://www.techsmartboss.com/75

Almost every social media company is under pressure these days due to all the security lapses, leaks, and controversies that are taking place, almost on a daily basis it seems. As a result, they are making changes to restrict APIs, change terms and conditions, and do whatever they can to stop the bleeding and bad press, and it seems like they could care less the impact to our businesses and their developer partners who are using those services. In this episode, I go over the changing landscape in social media, how it's impacting your business, and what you should do about it. http://www.techsmartboss.com/74

Every business has customers (and potential customers) that have questions about your products and services. Therefore it only makes sense that every business should have a knowledge base or support site on their website. But many don't. In this episode, I go into why you should have one, what you should put there, and what you should do with it once you have it. http://www.techsmartboss.com/73

Knowledge is power, and in business, the more knowledge you have, the more likely it is you will be successful. But with information coming from all directions, it's hard to be on top of everything, unless you leverage technology that is. In this episode, I cover the 3 main areas of oversight that every entrepreneur needs in their business to be successful. http://www.techsmartboss.com/72

If you are anything like me, you really dislike attending long and boring team meetings. Especially when you're the boss and paying everyone's salary. In this episode, I cover 8 steps and some very useful technology to take your meetings to the height of efficiency and productivity. https://www.techsmartboss.com/71

If you have listened to our podcast for more than a few episodes, no doubt you've heard me talk about the importance of content marketing for lead generation. In this episode I got deeper into the subject and outline the tech stack that I use as well as the process of how I use it. http://www.techsmartboss.com/70

Part of being a Tech Smart Boss is always trying and learning about new, early stage technology. But you can't just jump into new technology and expect to use it right away. It's called early stage technology for a reason. In this episode, I give you my 6 step process for finding, evaluating, and eventually adopting early stage technology that helps grow my business (on a budget). http://www.techsmartboss.com/69

There seems to be an explosion of entrepreneurship taking place these days. And in general, that is a great thing. But in this episode, I'm going to toss away pleasantries and political correctness and hand out some real talk. Not everybody is built to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to give you my thoughts on if you have what it takes or not, or if you should just stick to your day job. Caution: Don't listen to this episode if you are easily offended. http://www.techsmartboss.com/68

Even though it seems like everybody is #winning with their business, the harsh reality is that most businesses fail (and a very high number in the first year). Another large segment are in zombie mode, they are basically dead but still limping along due to the sheer force of the entrepreneur who refuses to let it die. In this episode, I cover 10 reasons on why and if any of these currently apply to you, it could be exactly what you need to hear to change course and save your business from becoming a statistic. http://www.techsmartboss.com/67

Everybody's blogging (at least it seems). But most businesses are just wasting their time and money. Don't be like most businesses, listen to my 8 step process on how you should build and execute your blog strategy with the sole purpose of generating traffic and converting leads. Even if you have a successful blog, I hope you get a few steps from this episode to make it perform even better. http://www.techsmartboss.com/66

I've mentioned in previous podcast episodes that I don't believe in paying too much to competition. Too often as entrepreneurs, we give our competition way too much credit and waste a lot of time trying to either stay ahead of them or worry about what they are doing. But that doesn't mean I completely ignore them either. I like to put a side eye on them and in this episode, I go over what types of information I try to learn from my competition and the technology that I use to do it. http://www.techsmartboss.com/65

In the last episode, I discussed how to set up your YouTube channel for your business and brand, but I didn't get into what types of videos you can post. Video marketing goes far beyond just YouTube and in this episode, I go through the different types of videos you can use in your business and some of the technology that can help you get there on a budget. http://www.techsmartboss.com/64

YouTube is a massive source of traffic that you may be missing out on if you don't have a properly constructed YouTube channel. In this episode, I go over the key things you need to focus on to make sure you are properly represented on YouTube and getting valuable organic search traffic from the world's #2 largest search engine. http://www.techsmartboss.com/63

The one thing we always tend to sacrifice as entrepreneurs is our personal health. We put so much into the business, we see exercise and eating healthy as a luxury. I've learned that nothing can be farther from the truth, and making sure you focus on your health as the business owner, reaps a lot of benefits for your business. In this episode, I go over three important areas of focus for the entrepreneur, and also how you can bring a focus of personal health to your team. http://www.techsmartboss.com/62

With all the hacks and security holes we hear about almost weekly, the honest truth is you're never 100% secure if you're on a device connected to a network. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do everything you can to protect yourself from the busters and knuckleheads who want to cause you damage. In this episode, I share 12 things you need to be doing at a minimum, especially if you are a remote workforce and spend a lot of time working from outside a traditional office. http://www.techsmartboss.com/61

In Episode 59, I talked about when and how to start using Business Intelligence software in your business. In this episode, I go deeper into the concept of leading indicators and give you a process for determining the key performance indicators that you can use to drive your business. http://www.techsmartboss.com/60

As the founder and CEO if 5000fish, I spend most of my time selling Yurbi, a dashboard and reporting solution. Far too often, I find small and large businesses looking to buy BI software before they are ready. In this episode, I'm going to break down how to know when you're ready for BI software and then give you a process to follow to get the most from it when you are ready. http://www.techsmartboss.com/59

We may sound like a broken record, but the key to success is to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person. In this episode, we cover the concept of Customer Personas and what they are, how to build them, and how to use them. A solid set of Customer Personas can get your entire team on the same page with the message and the approach of how to work with your ideal customers (and allow you to quickly avoid the wrong ones). http://www.techsmartboss.com/58

Leveraging content marketing strategies is extremely important to a Tech Smart Boss. The best return on investment you can find in your marketing efforts are the leads you get from organic search engine traffic, which basically means Google search engine traffic. But Google is always changing their algorithms and how they decide who gets the top search engine rankings and you want to be as close to the top as possible. In this episode, I discuss the important SEO factors you need to know about for 2018 and how to adjust your content creation so that you can stay at the top and keep getting those leads! http://www.techsmartboss.com/57

For the past 19 years, I've been on #TeamBootstrap when it comes to running a business, but I haven't always been as lean as I should have been on the operations side. Having experience being bootstrapped and non-lean versus bootstrapped and lean, I think the combination of a bootstrap mentality and the focus to run a very lean operation is key to succeeding in business these days. In this episode, I cover 11 traits or characteristics you should try to adopt to make this entrepreneurial journey as successful as possible for you. http://www.techsmartboss.com/56

As a small business one thing that commonly gets left out is planning. We're too busy running from one fire to another, or simply getting things done to try to plan events. It's true that you have to be flexible as a bootstrapped or lean operations run company, but you can't be so reactive that you never take the time to have a plan. In this episode, I go over the 6 steps I use and this is specifically to help you prepare for 2018 but you'll see this is a process that you'll repeat often to make sure you have a focus, a path, and a plan. http://www.techsmartboss.com/55

I've talked about Slack a lot in past podcasts but I've never gone into detail why I use it, how I use it, and how it's transformed my business. And believe it or not, I was initially a huge naysayer to using Slack. In this episode, I go into how I recommend you set up Slack for your business and how I leverage it as the hub of communication for my business. http://www.techsmartboss.com/54

As a small business owner and entrepreneur, we wear a lot of hats in our business. One that I don't like wearing as much as the others is the role of hiring people. Thankfully, after 18 years, I've done it enough to nail down a process that works and a set of technology apps that make the task easier and the end result (a great new member of my team) more repeatable. In this episode, I go over my process and the tech stack that I use and hopefully you'll get some ideas on how to improve your own hiring processes to find your next superstar team member. http://www.techsmartboss.com/53

Episode 52 represents one year of Tech Smart Boss. My motivation for starting Tech Smart Boss was a combination of passion and for experimenting and learning new techniques that I can apply to my primary focus, my business intelligence software, Yurbi. In this episode, I take a look back at all the things I've done the past year, what I've learned from it, and how I plan to apply it to Yurbi (or ways that I already have). Hopefully, it will generate some takeaways for your business as well. http://www.techsmartboss.com/52

In our past podcasts, we have talked a lot about a content marketing strategy where the focus is to provide value to your customers and potential customers. One way to deliver that value is in the form of education, teaching them about topics in your industry and about your products and services. One of the best ways to do that is via online webinars but it can be tricky to pick the right webinar software with so many options out there. In this episode, I cover why you should be doing regular webinars and discuss the different types and different features you should look for in your webinar software. And of course, I list a lot of tools that you can research for your business. http://www.techsmartboss.com/51

Can you believe how fast time flies? We are up to episode 50!!!! I thought it was a good time to take a look back since our last recap show in Episode 25 and see what topics areas we have covered since then and give you a breakdown of what episodes to listen to in what order (or which ones you may have missed). In this episode, I do a recap of the past 24 episodes by category, so if you’re new to the show or if you missed a few, you can follow the proper sequence to hear me talk about Marketing, Lead Generation, Tech Stacks, Software, Website Design, and more. Plus we go into some of the stats and what’s coming up in the next 25 episodes! http://www.techsmartboss.com/50

These days chat tools are a dime a dozen. But surprisingly a lot of businesses still don't support chat on their website. In this episode, I give you a lot of chat tools to consider and the 5 must haves and 4 nice to haves to help with your selection. But more importantly, I discuss how having a customer-focused business means you must have chat on your website, but it doesn't mean you have to have a team of live agents 24/7 to handle incoming requests. Learn how website chat can benefit your business and more. http://www.techsmartboss.com/49

A large part of being a Tech Smart Boss is being able to use technology to scale and grow your business in ways that have been limited to only big businesses in the past. But we don't want to emulate everything that big businesses do because we all get those impersonal and wrongly delivered messages that come from their automation tools. In this episode, I talk about how you can scale and automate your business but keep the personal touch so that the right messages are going to the right leads and customers, and then you can convert more business and grow faster. http://www.techsmartboss.com/48

In a couple of the past episodes, we talked about the importance of lead and customer segmentation, so that you can target people with the right message at the right stage. There are services out there that allow you to enrich the data you have on your leads and customers to get even more sophisticated in your segmentation. In this episode, I'm going to discuss the different levels of data enrichment and list multiple options for you to take a look at that range from free to expensive. https://www.techsmartboss.com/47

I've talked about some of the lifetime software deals that I've purchased in the past but I've never given you the details on what lifetime software deals are all about. In this episode, I let you know what they are, where you can find them, why vendors might do them, and how sometimes they can be a blessing or a buyer beware situation. http://www.techsmartboss.com/46

There used to be a saying that you should never mix business with politics. These days, however, that rule seems to have been thrown out of the window. In this episode, I discuss my thoughts on how businesses are getting pulled into more and more social and political issues, the consequences of that, and what I think a Tech Smart Boss should do or at the very least contingency plan for. Warning up front, we don't talk a lot about technology in this episode but you're also not going to hear yet another person tell you what side of the political argument they are on. My focus on this is to get you thinking about how to handle it should your business be pulled into a controversial discussion. http://www.techsmartboss.com/45

Starting Oct 2017, Google is going to start warning website visitors when websites are not secure. If you don't have your website protected by SSL, you will start to lose conversion, brand credibility, and traffic. In this episode, I cover the 3 top ways to set up SSL on your website and the pros and cons of each. Two methods are free, so there's no reason why you shouldn't do it today. http://www.techsmartboss.com/44

Everyone knows that build it and they will come doesn't really work in today's noisy business environment. The smart thing is to have an interested set of potential customers during your pre-launch so you can get some traction right away with your new product or service. For those of us who bootstrap, it's the most viable way to success. In this episode, I go over some of the things you can do to grow your following and find your niche, before you even have a product or service ready to sell. http://www.techsmartboss.com/43

How many times have you said, "I wish I could get this task off my plate but it's easier to do it than teach someone else how to do it?" If you routinely say that, then this podcast is for you. I cover my 4 step process for getting those time consuming, but very important, tasks off your plate and into the hands of someone affordable who can perform it with high quality and precision. http://www.techsmartboss.com/42

Most businesses stay in old, outdated business software way too long. It gets comfortable, it gets too hard to replace, and in many cases, you just don't spend the time to research what may work better for your business. In this episode, I go into detail on how to evaluation, research, and buy business software and it doesn't include going on your social networks and asking others "What's the best X?" http://www.techsmartboss.com/41

All I do is talk about the benefits and how you can grow your business better and faster using modern technology. Well in this episode I'm going to flip the script and talk about the negatives and dangers you could face by relying on cloud and SaaS technology in your business. http://www.techsmartboss.com/40

Retargeting is one of the most cost effective ways of advertising (with the highest ROI if done correctly). In this episode, we take a deep dive into retargeting advertising. We discuss the what, the why, and most importantly how to do it the Tech Smart Boss way. http://www.techsmartboss.com/39

Are you making sure your leads and customers are getting the right targetted message, at the right time? Unless you have a framework for segmentation, probably not. In this episode, I go into the reasons for segmentation, how to implement a segmentation process, and how to apply segmentation in your business. https://www.techsmartboss.com/38

I just built my first online course and in this episode, I share the steps I took to plan and execute the effort and the technology I used. I also talk about how much everything cost me and you'll be amazed at how you can also put together a digital product on a budget. I put the main 8 steps of my course building process in a download that you can get below. http://www.techsmartboss.com/37

In episode 35 we talked about the key things you needed on your website, in this episode we're going to talk about the technology that can help you create and manage it affordably and like a Tech Smart Boss. We cover 9 key pieces of technology you need to create a lead generating website for your business. http://www.techsmartboss.com/36