Chad Franzen: 06:54
Okay. Sounds good. Next, Next topic. Someone in your network who has impacted you recently?
John Corcoran: 07:01
Yeah. So we just overlapped when I was at that conference in Hawaii, and it was Adi Klevit who’s a long-time friend and a client of ours, we helped her to launch the Systems Simplified podcast. Her company is Business Success Consulting Group, and I don’t think I’ve probably introduced her to maybe over a dozen people. And I think every single one of them has hired her because she provides a service that people need, which is documenting their systems and processes. And so many people are not good at doing that.
And so she comes in and she asks the right questions. She takes them through processes and she documents them there, their stuff. And so we, you know, in our company, you know, I don’t claim to be perfect or anything like that, but that we have documented everything, you know, I mean, there’s probably not any very few things in our company that doesn’t have a system for it, you know, and that’s critical to what we do. It’s critical to making sure that what you do is consistent, predictable. You know that people know how to do it.
If one person is overworked, then it means that whatever task can be handed to someone else and that person can do it because they’ve got an SOP that shows them how to do it. And you know, so it’s such an important thing and you know, but there’s a lot of companies that don’t ever do that. They don’t document their process. And if you don’t, you need someone like Adi who can step in, who can help you to do that. And I encourage people to also check out our podcast, because that’s a great way to kind of learn about her and what she does. And you know how she does it.
Chad Franzen: 08:40
Yeah. Documentation is very important to us here at Rise25. Was that always the case? You and Jeremy came together? You’re going to do B2B podcasts. Did you know that? Okay. We need to document our systems. Like from day one or. Or did you learn it over time?
John Corcoran: 08:55
We definitely learned it over time, and initially we had a very rudimentary version of it. So we had a version that existed on Google documents and it was like a spreadsheet. Chad, I don’t even know if you ever saw that, but we had a spreadsheet that had these different documents listed. We thought it was efficient, but once we switched over to using Sweet Process, which is the tool that we use now, it was like such a game changer. I remember one of the team members saying, thank you so much for switching over to this.
I didn’t think it was that big a deal, but then I realized now how invaluable it is. So yeah, I mean, I, I didn’t have I had some systems, but not many before Jeremy and I became business partners ten years ago. For my previous business, I had some systems documented, but not as many as I should have. Now I realized like that was something that was really holding me back.
Chad Franzen: : 09:48
I think I interviewed an investor or a buyer. Somebody who? Somebody who likes a company buys smaller companies and things like that. And I asked him, you know, what are some of the most valuable parts of a business that you may be looking to buy? And one of them they listed was they need to have all their processes documented.
John Corcoran: 10:05
I mean, I’ve looked at you know, we’ve been looking at acquiring other companies and I would not consider buying a business that doesn’t have all their systems documented unless it’s just a business that you’re getting for a song. But if you’re spending good money to buy a business, yeah, you absolutely need to have some kind of system, you know, have their systems documented because otherwise then it’s where it is, you know, how do you know how to do it? And, you know, it could be one person, it could be 2 or 3 people that are implementing things that just exist in their head. And, you know, if that person disappears or whatever, then you don’t, you know, the business crumbles. So it’s really critical.
Chad Franzen: 10:50
Final topic, an issue in your industry. We kind of talked about this before we started recording. Kind of having to do with what’s real and what’s fake.
John Corcoran: 10:59
Yeah, especially when it comes to content creation. You know, these days it’s we’re. Rapidly accelerating towards a point where when things that you see online, we won’t know if they are real or fake. Is this a real person talking? Is this a real video of an actual person?
And that’s exciting. But it also means that when it means that the real human interactions that we have with someone are going to be even more important if we don’t know things that we see online are real or fake, then that means that that human interactions are going to be far more important. And ultimately, that’s what this industry, that’s what B2B podcasting is about. It’s about creating real, genuine human conversations, connections with someone and building a relationship. Relationship through that process.
And so I think that it will be even more critical for you to break through all the noise, you know, because, I mean, we’re already bombarded by a lot of incoming messages as it is. Business owners are, you know, you’re you have these automated messages that get people that are bombarding you. You know, people that are trying to sell to you things like that. And as the volume of that increases, then people will just kind of tune out that noise, but they won’t tune out genuine human connections as long as it’s genuine. As long as, you know, you know that you’re having a, you know, a conversation that matters. And that’s really what B2B podcasting is all about. So I’m a big believer in that.
Chad Franzen: 12:42
Sure. Can that be that kind of genuine human connection applied as content? Can that be valuable for SEO?
John Corcoran: 12:50
Yes. And that’s a great question that I have asked a lot of people. You know, is SEO going to go away? Because you hear some people say that, you know, like, oh, ChatGPT people are going to in the future, they’re going to get all their information from ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude or something like that. But I just heard from a past guest on a podcast that I conducted who told me that their team or someone was searching in ChatGPT, and the information that came up was based on the podcast episode that we’d done together.
And so the thing is, these chatbots are these AI chatbots and all these LLms are all being trained on information that’s on the internet. So the content that you put out on the internet and SEO around that is going to be even more important, because it’s going to inform all the different laws that are out there. So yeah, I mean, I think that’s a very important point, is that those who are not putting out content, who are just expecting their website to do all their heavy lifting. You know, I mean, your website is basically a brochure on the internet. And we, you know, how much we trust brochures, like someone hands you a brochure or something, you’re like, okay, whatever, right?
Like, do we even look at that? You know, barely. And so, you know, you really need to engage in the conversation, which is through having a podcast and having great conversations with clients and referral partners.
Chad Franzen: 14:22
Okay. Good stuff. Good advice. John. Great to talk to you and great to learn this stuff from you again this month.
Really appreciate it.
John Corcoran: 14:29
Always fun to do four topics Tuesday. So thanks, Chad. Thanks for having me.
Chad Franzen: 14:34
Absolutely. So long everybody.
Outro: 14:35
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.