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Take your balloons to the next level. As we delve deeper into what truly makes a professional balloon artist with your hosts, Zivi Kivi now welcome to the balloon artist podcast.

Zivi:

Hello, welcome back to the shoptalk by Rachel Porter. The spot of the show is where you get to dissect and deconstruct and just explain some of the really key principles, this business, the business of balloons. And we’ve been a veteran in the Walker for so many years. We’ve been helping other people in the industry go into six figure businesses. So

Zivi:

What are we going to talk about today?

Rachel:

Well, today I thought we would cover automation. What we can do to streamline and save time in our businesses, especially now during the Tam that pandemic, I am noticing that we are doing more jobs, but there’s smaller jobs where before the pandemic, it was fewer jobs than there were larger. So the money was really good, but now the price points are lower. The jobs are smaller, so we’re busier than ever. And just because we’re busy, doesn’t mean we’re profitable. I think it’s important to take a look at what things we’re doing, that really isn’t making us money directly, or really isn’t adding any value. So if we can automate that saves us money, which means profits go up.

Ziv:

And when we’re talking about automation, we’re talking about all sorts of tasks that you already are doing with your customers, and they are repetitive in some way, and that you could get some sort of facilities. So it doesn’t have to be an expensive service, but the CRM customer relationship management tool can help you to automate some of these scenarios and it can help you save time. So go ahead, bring us to the safe land.

Rachel:

Okay, well, you mentioned CRM software. I coupled that with accounting software, one of the things I did from day one in my business was invest in accounting software. I personally use account edge. There’s a lot of other ones out there, QuickBooks, Peachtree, whatever. And I got into the habit of entering in all of my customer information right away. And then as soon as they place the order, I would create the invoice, send it to them. They pay it and everything would be entered in already. I never did orders and then play catch up later. I always made sure I got paid. So that’s one way. And by doing that kind of automation, you’re not writing it down, you know, writing orders down on a scrap piece of paper and then trying to find it and enter it later. Cause that’s basically double entry. You’re doing it once manually and then doing it again on a computer.

Rachel:

And a lot of the apps out there are quite sophisticated. You can have it send out a quote and then you can have it follow up with an email if they haven’t responded in so many days, or you can have it set up to send out a thank you and fill out a survey afterwards, after so many days after the job has been completed, you can have it set up. So it sends an automatic follow-up like the next year, if you were doing birthday deliveries for a family, you load in all of their birthdays, you can have the software automatically send out inquiries to see if they’re interested in, in having a birthday deliveries again. So there’s a lot of opportunities, not only to eliminate double entry or writing things down manually, and then putting them into a computer, but also helping you with your marketing and your follow-up and a number of other things. I mean, you’re the automation king. I’m sure you’ve got other solutions too.

Ziv:

Well, what all did you said was entirely too and exactly the point of automation. And I asked myself then when I automated my business prior in 2015 was when I did it. I used the tools as well available back then, it was actually a little bit complicated. I needed to do like all sorts of patching of different software so that they will talk with one another. But the tools were there to do that, to allow you to create a solution. And I started with just one flow, just one flow in my business, which was for me, the one that was aching the most, which was one, someone booked me. I had all sorts of logistics that I really wanted to do with them or that I did manually. And sometimes I will forget one of the emails that they want to send or one of the messages.

Ziv:

And it was fascinating and it took a lot of time. And once I automated that one flow, I suddenly realized I just saved one hour for each of my customers. And on one year that accumulates very fast to hopefully 100 hours or maybe even way more. And I then started to add other tasks and other things in the automation flow. So that eventually it was two hours of my time that was saved for each customer. Some of those tasks I wouldn’t agree to do if it wasn’t for the fact that they were done by an automation tool. But with that time that was safe for me. I actually started podcasting. I was able to find the time to podcast because of that, because I was working in an efficient way where I’m not really well. And then later on, I’ve added a flow for sale for pre-sales basically for customers that want the quote and the flow for after the event for nurturing the relationship, then slowly glue into like just machine that helps me run my business.

Rachel:

I think those are all very good examples of why every business person should look at automation, even at a simple level. Anything you can do to save time is a good thing. I’m a really big proponent of accounting software. Another thing that I like to do because I keep up with all of my data entry, not only my invoices, but all of my expenses is that I can simply press a button and see my profit and loss statement right away. So depending on how you have your chart of accounts set up, which is a whole other topic, we should do that sometime talk about chart of accounts, depending on how you have it set up. You can run a profit and loss statement every single week. And you can see if you’re candy cups are generating the profit you want, or you can see if your, your yard poles are profitable, or if you’re making the profit you want on your organics or however you’re breaking out your revenue and your direct costs.

Rachel:

So that’s a really powerful tool because if you’re selling a thousand candy cups a month and you run your report and you see you’re only running 20% profit, then you’ve got some decisions to make, right? Either live with only a 20% will actually be at 20% margin. If you’re only making 20% on those candy cups, then you either need to increase your prices, increase the value of them so that your customers will want to pay the higher price, or just cut that out. Don’t do that. Don’t be spending so much time on an item that even though it’s a hot seller, isn’t making you any money. So that is probably the number one thing that turned me into a very profitable business was the fact that I understood my accounting reports and I made decisions based on those accounting reports.

Ziv:

That’s and something that can be intimidating to some, with like actually knowing every single expense of your business. But that is the chill of running a business. It’s one of those chores. And I remember the moment that I have made the decision that I will start tracking expenses and profits. And it was a very important day in, in my life as a business owners. I literally can say that without doing that either you’re not making profits at all, or you have no idea on how to increase them because they’re not mentioning anything like in the bottom line of your business. So measuring your expenses doesn’t have to be hard with no students. And if you do have more time now, or more customers that are smaller customers that has bigger direct expenses and overheads that we’ve discussed on in another episode, then this is even more important than ever to step up our game. As artists, as artists, as people that serve the event, the story and making the decision. Is it a hobby that makes money? Is it a side hustle that can stay at any size whatsoever? Or do you want to go four figure to five figures a year and four, five figures a year slowly to high-end five figures a year then eventually also to which the six figure marks, which is totally possible.

Rachel:

I completely agree. Yeah, you have to make the decision. If you’re in business as a company where you don’t want to be working full-time or part-time anymore, do you want to do this full time? Then you have to look at your numbers. I mean, you are a business owner first and a balloon artists second. And I think having that mindset is critically important. Even if you have the margins to hire out your accounting and all of that, you still need to know how to read your reports because your bookkeeper or your accountant, they’re going to crunch the numbers for you. And they’re going to present the numbers for you. But if you don’t know how to read the reports, you could be running your business into the ground. And you’d never know it because you’re given the information, but you don’t know what to do with it.

Rachel:

So another way that you can streamline your business, especially now with all of these little orders coming in is channeling all of the order requests into one place. Back when I started my business, I was doing only deliveries. I did balloon flower deliveries, and I created a little character. I called the balloon buddy. It was a little short, two foot tall balloon column with a geo blossom on top. I added some round balloons for eyes and a nose, some, two sixties for the arms. And the simple version was he’d hold a little sign. It would say, happy birthday, get, well, congratulations, whatever. Or I’d put his arms together and he’d hold a big bouquet of balloons. So I basically had two products and several variations of those two products. And 90% of my orders came in through the internet. I was a very early adopter back in early adapter, back in 1997, back when people could place orders online.

Rachel:

And there was no encrypting of credit card numbers. That was a long time ago. And it became very efficient because I was able to take orders without even being there. I had the choices on the computer and everything. They pick their choices, send in their credit card number, and I would get an email. I could just print the email out and go. So today with my business pre pandemic, I would engage with my customers in whatever method was the most convenient for them. So for example, I have one customer to casino. Sometimes she would text me sometimes she would email me. Sometimes she would call me sometimes she would want to meet for lunch or dinner to go over the job. And I was super because this customer was worth $30,000 a year to me. So if she wanted to text me, I would answer the text.

Rachel:

But now for me to take orders via text, via email, via messenger, via Instagram, all these other methods is just crazy. It’s a waste of my time and it would make me frantic. So to be able to take all of that and channel all of that into say a website with limited choices that would certainly streamline it. And it provides a big peace of mind. And you also control the ordering options that they have to, instead of trying to be everything to everyone, you’ve got maybe three or five core products and there’s variations of those products.

Ziv:

So this is really like a, as been the situation right now for many Luna artists that was hard. And it is hard, which is just managing those deliveries with the yard. Art is very confusing. Some people bring in information that is partial of Instagram, and some people are sending text messages and some people have a Facebook messenger. And like, how do you just consolidate it all these days?

Rachel:

Well, an easy way is regardless of where the order is coming from, you let them know to go to your website to order there. So you can’t go to my website and look at how I do it because I, right now, I’m not taking orders have been fortunate enough to continue with one of my casinos and they are doing enough volume that I don’t have to do the deliveries right now. But if I were to do it, I would be channeling everybody to my website. And on my website, I would have a form where they’d have to fill in their information, their name, their cell phone number and their email address and the customer’s name and mobile number. And then I would have like little radio buttons where you can pick which design you want, whether it’s a balloon flower yard, art balloon, buddy, whatever it is you’re selling.

Rachel:

And then I would offer very simple choices. So customization might be, do you want them in bright rainbow colors or do you want them in shades of blue or pink or some pastels probably go rainbows and pastels is probably the two choices I would have. And then from there I might offer like one customized balloon. Do you want a message balloon? And I might have a couple of choices there, or if I, you know, I’d get my vinyl machine out and maybe do some very simple choices on that. Just a little bit of customization, but not a crazy amount. I certainly wouldn’t be offering glitter balloons or anything like that. Just keep it really simple. And then they can link to PayPal or however you want to do your payments, just keep it super simple. And I would also have on there a calendar or I not allow them to place orders the same day, because you don’t want someone to place an order that’s due in an hour and you’re out doing deliveries and you don’t even see it for two hours. So you’d need to manage delivery times and dates also. So some people won’t even accept a delivery unless it’s at least two days out.

Ziv:

Well, and if you’re listening to this might sound hard, but it’s actually not that complicated. If you don’t have a website, you can actually just create a Google form. Or if you do have a website, you can just get the Google form and put it on your website, embedded into a website. There are all sorts of ways how you can create this link for the Google form. That will be shorter. And like the services for that called U R L shorter nails. And if you take that short URL of your form of your booking form, and you create a shortcut on your phone, a keyboard shortcut, where if you just start to hide down the world, let’s say form. Then it fills up that URL. Then you can also save time. And then on the backend, if you’re working with some sort of a charging service like PayPal, you can create buttons in paper where at the end of the phone, people will be needing to choose which link to use the link for the 50 bucks, the 70 bucks, the 100 bucks, whatever. And of course you can write down all of the conditions and terms like so that you could decide later on to cancel the deal. If, if you’re not happy with what they chose to pay you, but this is like pretty standard stuff. You don’t have to go fancy with a system that costs you a fortune or with ongoing fees. You can literally just build something like that with existing free services,

Rachel:

Another service to create forms that I recently learned about this paul.form.com, J O T F O R m.com. That one was pretty easy to use also.

Ziv:

Yeah. Indicates a prettier form. It’s not about which tool you use, but how you use them. You can take a ladder and stack another ladder in another, another, on the floor. You still won’t be able to climb over any wall that you need to without stacking the ladder in the right way on like, just putting them in the right way on the wall. That’s something that is true for any automation tool. Really the advanced automation tools like pipeline and lead carrot and HubSpot, all those tools are more advanced, the harder to use potentially they do vote for you. So that’s why they cost at least 50 bucks a month. And that’s something that you should consider only after you’ve realized that you’re saving so much time that those 50 bucks a month becomes a joke. We can. Of course, I’ll be happy to spend 50 bucks and get another piece of the puzzle automated.

Rachel:

That’s right. Think about how many more jobs you can do because you’re automating. If you can pick up one or two extra jobs a day, because you are automating and your stress levels are lower. The cost of the automation tools, if there are costs involved, pay for themselves within a few days each month.

Ziv:

Cool. Anything else about this that you wanted to share for today?

Rachel:

Just a reminder that if you do any customization that you’re not throwing it in for free do consider the costs. I find that a lot of people do undersell their vinyl work. I see a lot of people underestimating how long it takes to set it up. And then what’s called weeding where you peel away all the vinyl that you don’t want and then masking it and then transferring it and centering it on the balloon and scraping it all off and everything. It just takes time. So make sure that you are charging adequately for that. But other than that, I could talk all day on automation and efficiencies. It’s how I’ve managed to run a bit profitable balloon business for 26 years.

Ziv:

Well, we will come back to additional topics next week in the balloon artists podcast. I thank you again for shedding some light in one more element of running a business and running it successfully and see you next week. Have a good week.