In this high-leverage episode, John Burdett, President & CEO of Fast Slow Motion, shares how he has leveraged his passion for helping businesses scale to help 1,000 companies implement game-changing technology to accelerate their growth rapidly. If you’re frustrated with your CRM, have been running your company without one, or are thinking about building your own, take advantage of the wisdom he shares in this fantastic episode.
You will discover:
– Why almost no one should build their own CRM from scratch
– When to implement a CRM and how to choose the right one
– How to plan for an immediate implementation and improve it over time
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is yet another high demand coach, advisor, consultant, even the one and only John Burdett, whose entrepreneurial journey started with a pivotal realization, his passion lies in helping others build their businesses using scalable systems and processes. John’s approach to entrepreneurship is grounded in practical wisdom. His current business, fast slow motion specializes in helping clients grow using scalable processes built on platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, with over 1900 projects completed for all over 1000 clients across various industries. John’s journey is a treasure trove of practical wisdom, from bootstrapping businesses to achieving exponential growth without compromising quality, and he’s here with us today. John so excited to have you on the show as we get started here, we’re gonna dive into what Salesforce are and HubSpot in just a moment, but kind of zooming out for a second, thinking about CRMs in general. So we have a successful founder, where in their journey, should they really start thinking about a real CRM input implementation?
John Burdett
Yeah, I recommend as early as possible, and that journey when you realize that you’re starting to have some success, I call it when you kind of get to the I made it level. If you have real customers, you’re able to start hiring people, and you realize that obviously you can do everything yourself. I’m a big believer that entrepreneurs should be the first in everything in their business, because that way they get to understand how it works, what doesn’t work, and then they can then implement the systems and processes so that you can onboard people to do things consistently to get the outcomes that you want. So once you’re at that kind of inflection point of like, okay, I’ve got something a little bit go on and start using HubSpot or Salesforce yourself and start building up that data. And to be frank with you, it’s much better tool than using a spreadsheet or post it notes or whatever method you’re using today.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that idea of of pioneering, right? Is the language I’ve used for it. And one of the things that founders do, they they do that automatically and intuitively out of the gate, because it’s just them. There’s not an option for anyone else to do it right, and they’re actually quite good at it. But what I found many do is they they actually underestimate how good they are at it, right? They think that I’ll hand it off and someone else will approach it like I would, right? Someone else will approach it with that pioneering spirit and, well, yes, there are others who do that. It’s very, very rare that that would actually be the right person to hire anyway, right? And so I love that idea, and almost commitment to, Hey, get out there. Be the first. It’s interesting. I don’t know if you know this, but deep in the kind of root of the word entrepreneur is to is to go between. That’s the meaning of it, which is a perfect example of what you got here, so
John Burdett
yeah, can I add something on there? I think this is really important, because what makes you successful as an entrepreneur, we all have to make that mindset and that transition in our role to be that go between person where our job is no longer to do the work, but it’s then to enable our employees to be able to do that work way better than we ever could. And that’s how you scale your business. And it’s really, really hard. All of us entrepreneurs have control problems, and like you said, we’re all intuitively good at what we do, and sometimes that doesn’t allow us to be the best coach, because it comes very naturally to us. So what I found in my journey is like I had to make a mindset change. I had to say the game’s no longer to win the customer, deliver the product, whatever is to do that through other people consistently, and that’s how you scale a business.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. The way I’ve described that to folks is the mindset has to shift from winning the next player, even winning the game, to winning the season. That’s exactly right, right? And, yeah, it’s such an important transition. So having technology, especially technology that can help you to implement and consistently apply systems and processes very, very important. A CRM is almost universally necessary, right? There’s very, very few industries where that I can, I can’t think of any off the top of my head where you don’t need something along those lines. So someone gets into it, they realize we need a CRM. I mean, you type CRM in Google and it’s, it’s just horrible, right? It’s just a horrible thing to do. And so there’s so many of them, and there’s so many features and and there’s so many sales people like, it’s, it can be a really overwhelming process. How do you know what the right CRM is for you and your company?
John Burdett
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there. And that’s that, you know, Salesforce is stock symbol is CRM, right? So there the what is a. CRM, and was it valuable? The reality in today’s world, Salesforce and HubSpot are platforms. They’re platforms to run your entire business, and that’s what you want as an entrepreneur. You don’t want to have to have 20 different applications in all different parts of your business and then try to integrate that data have one source of truth. So we’re firm believers that your CRM is a platform to do everything in your business, and not just marketing and sales, which that’s where those companies started and kind of created the CRM, you know, software genre, if you will. So I always recommend is, yeah, you can find cheaper point solutions, but they don’t scale. So why not start with one that you know will scale? Because once you’re successful, you’re going to want to do more in it and get more out of it. And you also don’t want to pick one that may go out of business, they may be bought, they whatever. And you definitely don’t want to pick one where you start having to do awkward things and have to work around the limitations of the CRM. So for those reasons, I highly recommend you start off with either HUD spot or Salesforce, and you it’s really inexpensive to start if it’s just yourself, you only have to buy one user, and then you start that iterative process of scaling your business, and you have one source of truth. You don’t have any of the tech bloat that comes along with all these different software applications where, you know, it’s one of our other diseases as entrepreneurs, we chase shiny objects. We like new things. Kind of gotta, you gotta get away from that and say, I want to keep it simple. I want something that’s going to scale and run my business forever. And that’s why we recommend those two platforms.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So within that world, right? A lot of folks will know both of those names, but they may not really know, like, what’s the difference? So do most folks use them together? Do they use one? Do they use the other? How do you even, how do they differ?
John Burdett
Yeah, there’s both those companies been around for a while, Salesforce, a lot longer than HubSpot, and they’re very large, publicly traded companies, so there’s a lot of stability and peace and being able to use one of those to scale your business on they’re not going anywhere. Historically, you know, HubSpot started as a marketing solution only, and they what you call a point solution, and then they’ve migrated into the platform world. Now they have sales, service, ops, all those different things. Salesforce started on that journey a lot sooner. The nowadays, there those products are more similar than different. Honestly, we can advise you on which one is better. There are some industry things or some some, some minute details that you know would push us one way or another. But I would say, in general, either one is good. I would pick the one that makes the most sense for your business. Try them out. We can help you try them out at another high level generalization, HubSpot is a little easier to use and simpler because Salesforce is a lot more flexible, and as with flexibility, you get complexity, so as a result, still a lot more powerful than than HubSpot. But those gaps are are minimizing on both sides, Salesforce is becoming easier and easier to use, and HubSpot is becoming more and more powerful with a lot more complexity inside of it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. So one of the challenges that I’ve seen is folks have tried to roll out a CRM is that they’re they’re rarely a perfect glove fit right out of the box, right and and so first off, one of the things that I’ve seen, and I’m guilty of this myself, we started business in the earlier days of Salesforce. I wasn’t aware of HubSpot at the time. I don’t know when they started, but it was going to cost us a significant amount of money to adapt it to our needs, and we opted to just build our own which in many ways was like the best decision in the worst decision of my time as an entrepreneur. So do you help folks who have the time and capacity to think through Should we just build our own software for enterprise type software, or should we get one out of the box and adapt it?
John Burdett
Yeah, exactly. We help mentor you on what you should do. The the mindset has to change too, from like this being a cost to being a return on investment. So you’re making investments in your business that are going to allow you to scale, to do things cheaper over the long term and get more profit out of it. So you’re you got to kind of look at it from a total cost of ownership. You know, if you’re going to spend a million dollars, you want to be able to make ten million if you were going to spend $10,000 you wouldn’t make that investment if you’re only going to make $8,000 right? So the the number of amount of investment needs to be relative to the return on investment and kind of the intentionality of where you want to go as a business, I would say, in general, in today’s world, it’s never a good idea to build your own. It makes zero sense. Unless you’re a technology company producing a software product, don’t build any of your own tech. There’s so many good platforms out there. Once again, that’s why we recommend these two. There’s a lot of people out there in the world that know how to configure it and use it. So you have a lot of people that know how to do it. The other thing is, every. Thing is more declarative nowadays, meaning you don’t have to write custom code, and so it kind of gets around what you were talking about before, where, hey, this doesn’t fit my business and look like my business. What we do is make it look like your business, and we’re doing that in a matter of days and weeks, not months and years, and we do it. The final thing I would say around this hesitation is you want to do things iteratively, in those short sprints where you get some value, you get some return on it, you see the possibility, and you keep iterating on it at the right time in your business, when you when that investment, that return on investment, makes sense.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah it’s like you read my notes. Because my next question was, how should we think about evolving this over time. So what would you say is that, are there typical patterns to, hey, this is how we start. This is how we kind of grow it, and this is where we start to really scale it.
John Burdett
The first thing is, you need to think of this as a process, not a project. You’re never done. And if you’re done, your business isn’t growing. And so that’s not a good thing. So you want to think, don’t, don’t beat yourself up. It’s like, man, we’re always spending money on this thing. We’re always evolving it. It’s because your business is always changing. It’s always growing. You have new problems and new things you want to solve, but once again, you’re getting that return on investment. So it makes a ton of sense to do that. And so the general thing we always come in with is, okay, let’s identify one or two of your major problems at the point, at this point, usually those are kind of self identified, and say, okay, yeah, I’m really struggling, kind of getting consistent, consistency in my sales process. My sales people are all over the place. I’m trying to train people. I don’t have a system of record all those kinds of things. So let’s define a four to six week project. Put some guardrails in place. We’re not going to bold ocean. We’re going to keep it keep it simple and get that foundation bill. And then you start seeing some momentum from it. And then you’re like, Okay, now I want to do this. Now I want to, I want to hand off to my delivery team, or I want to hand off to my product team. Oh, I want to move upstream and start getting marketing involved. And it just, you just start building upon it from that perspective.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So we’ve talked a lot about a CRM, and for good cause, with all your experience there, you’ve been doing this for a long time, and you know, better than the most that the CRM is just kind of one instance of the many ways that technology can help us as we’re trying to scale what would you say your success has taught you about the role that technology should play in a growing organization.
John Burdett
Yeah, that’s a great question. Technology is nothing more than a tool, and you need to think of it that way. The tool is not going to solve all your problems. There’s no magic wand. The secret sauce is your consistent business processes, the inputs that are going to produce the right outputs for your business. You can control outcomes. You can control inputs. And so much about business as being intentional and building good, consistent processes so that you can measure and understand what’s going on and hopefully get to a point where you’re driving your business looking through the windshield instead of the rear view mirror. And so these tools like CRMs, help you implement those processes, iterate on those processes, and make sure you’re doing things in a consistent way, and then also have having a place to capture the data, so that you have visibility into what’s going on in your business. And it’s really that simple. What’s hard about it’s like a workout program, like, there’s, we’re not we don’t lack in workout programs in the world. We lack of people getting in shape. And the hard part is the discipline to do that and, and, and to stay true to those processes and, and as a business owner and a business leader, you have to to you’re, you’re, you’re probably the main problem, to be honest with you, it’s not your sales team, it’s not your employees. You are not encouraging the right behavior. You’re not going into the CRM, running the reports you you’re not managing the business from within the CRM, and all that’s doing is telling your team what they’re doing is not valuable, and so they’re not going to do it. They’re going to send you that rogue spreadsheet. They’re going to do all those kinds of things. So that’s what that’s that’s kind of how I think about it. But yeah, it’s, it’s definitely just a tool, and don’t pretend it’s going to solve all your problems. I like to joke a lot of times, is a lot of people buy these expensive CRMs, and it’s like buying a Ferrari and keep it in your garage and listening to the radio. There are much cheaper ways to listen to the radio, so don’t go buy a Ferrari if you’re not going to drive it, is what I would say.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. So John, there’s a question that I like to ask all my guests. I’m interested to see what you have to say here. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching and listening today knew?
John Burdett
I wish there were shortcuts. There are no shortcuts in business. There’s no shortcuts in life, your experience allows you to do things more efficiently and wiser and make less mistakes and everything but the reality of everything we just talked about, it’s hard, but it’s absolutely worth it. And if you want to buy margin in your life, if you want to buy margin in your business, both financially from a time perspective, be able to go on vacation all the things you want to do as. You grow and scale your business, what I just talked about is fundamental to setting that up. So you got to invest time today to get payoff in the future, and you can’t skip steps. I mean, Tom Brady didn’t win seven Super Bowls by accident. He just didn’t get lucky and show up at the right place and right time. He invested a lot of time and energy and made a lot of sacrifices to get that payoff that he eventually wanted, and that’s how business is.
Scott Ritzheimer
So much gold in there, John, there’s some folks listening. They’ve been putting this off for a while. They know they need help. They’ve got to get all this stuff moving in the same direction. They need some help getting their processes built into a CRM. How can they find more out about the work that you and your team do there at fast slow motion.
John Burdett
Yeah, check us out on the web at fastslowmotion.com we’re on all social too, but all the socials are listed there. We have a podcast and blog and all the things you would want to maybe learn more and then kind of see if we’re a good fit for you. But I would say, just reach out to us. We’re very, very passionate about this, and I promise you, there’s nothing you’re going to tell us that we ever haven’t seen and more than likely, it’s not, it’s going to be a mistake we’ve already made, and the only reason we’re good at it is because we’ve made those mistakes, and we want to help other people not make those same mistakes. So we’d love to talk to anybody that’s kind of struggling with this, or doesn’t even know where to get started, or has even more detailed questions about how to do it and the best way to do it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I’d highly recommend fastslowmotion.com. Had a chance to check it out. Both the blog articles and the podcast episodes are fantastic. Just great, great advice. It’s not like super techy, nerdy, like all the stuff that you tend to see in this space, just really practical, really helpful from an entrepreneurial mindset. It’s great stuff. So well done with that. Your team doing a great job, John, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate having you here today, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Guest Name
John Burdett’s entrepreneurial journey started with a pivotal realization: his passion lies in helping others build their businesses using scalable systems and processes. John’s approach to entrepreneurship is grounded in practical wisdom. His current business, Fast Slow Motion, specializes in helping clients grow using scalable processes built on platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, with over 1,900 projects completed for almost 1000 clients across various industries. John’s journey is a treasure trove of practical wisdom, from bootstrapping businesses to achieving exponential growth without compromising quality.
Want to learn more about John Burdett’s work at Fast Slow Motion? Check out his website at https://www.fastslowmotion.com/
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