Powerful Women Rising - A Business Podcast for Female Entrepreneurs

How to Automate Your Business But Still Be Human w/ Elaine Turso

• Melissa Snow - Powerful Women Rising, LLC • Episode 72

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In a world where AI and automation seem to be taking over, how can you keep your business running smoothly without sacrificing that personal connection? 

In this episode Elaine Turso, a Business Consultant and CRM Agency Owner, shares her expert insights on balancing automation with human interaction. 

Elaine explains how to integrate automation tools to make your business more efficent while ensuring your clients still feel valued and understood. She'll guide you on selecting the right software to streamline your operations while keeping  that all-important human touch that sets you apart from your competitors.

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To learn more about Melissa, upcoming virtual speed networking events, and the Powerful Women Rising Community: https://powerfulwomenrising.com/

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Episode Highlights:

(06:03) Why is CRM important for every business?

(12:23) The importance of automating repetitive tasks to improve efficiency and customer experience while maintaining a human touch.

(20:25) How to choose the right CRM software and what to consider when evaluating a CRM.

(29:33) Elaine's advice for automating your business while still keeping a personal touch and building genuine relationships with clients and prospects.

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To learn more about Elaine and take the quiz to find out which CRM is best for your business: https://www.elaineturso.com/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Powerful Women Rising, the podcast where we ditch the rulebook and build businesses with authenticity, integrity and a whole lot of fun. Join host Melissa Snow, business relationship strategist and founder of the Powerful Women Rising community, as she interviews top experts and shares candid insights on business strategy, marketing, mindset and more. Let's get real, get inspired and rise together.

Speaker 2:

This is Powerful Women Rising hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Powerful Women Rising podcast. I'm your host, melissa Snow, and I am happy to be here today. We are talking about a really fun topic today because you know, if you've been listening to me for a while, I am all about networking like a human and not like a salesy weirdo. I like authenticity. I like to hear what your real voice sounds like, not your AI voice. I like you to show up as a real person and I believe that is how you attract your ideal clients. Now, a lot of times, that seems to fall in the face of automation. It's how do we automate but also still be human? How do we set things up to run as smoothly and efficiently as possible without us but still have our own personal human touch all over our business? And that is what we are talking about in today's episode. I am equally excited because it is so much fun when I get to welcome a member of the Powerful Women Rising community onto the podcast, and even more fun when that someone is a woman who has been in my circle and in my network for a long time, and now we get to celebrate together on the podcast.

Speaker 2:

Elaine Turso is a business consultant and CRM agency owner, who focuses heavily on providing an amazing customer experience. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs with implementing the how with her done for you or done with you approach. She eliminates the overwhelm that many business owners feel when it comes to bringing technology into their business, and she does it with such a personal touch One of my favorite things about Elaine. Well, there's a lot of things that I like about her. She is a huge friends fan. I mean, like huge, like huge. So, of course, there's going to be a couple of friends references in this interview, but what I love most about her is her authenticity and her realness and her willingness to share whatever information she has and support in whatever way she can without expecting anything in return. This is one of the things I talk so much about when it comes to networking and providing value and creating trust and building relationships. That way, elaine is the ace at that.

Speaker 2:

Whether it is sharing what she knows on this podcast with you or on a consult call with a potential client who ends up not even hiring her, or with her actual paying client, she is always going above and beyond to champion female entrepreneurs and to make sure that we have what we need to run our business as smoothly and efficiently and effectively as possible. So, without further ado, here is my interview with Elaine Turso. Hello, elaine, welcome to the Powerful Women Rising podcast. Hey girl, thanks for having me yes, so excited to chat with you. Okay, so for the people who are watching on YouTube and also the people who are listening, who can't see your background, you got to tell us about it.

Speaker 3:

I'm a tiny bit of a friends fanatic tiny bit, tiny bit, and I decided to make my office the happiest place in the house for me, which is all things friends, and so I have. Everything in my office is friends themed, and it's where I'm like. If I'm going to be in here all day, I might as well make a place that I love to come to.

Speaker 2:

So totally, I love it. And you got a. You got a friend's tattoo recently too, didn't you?

Speaker 3:

I did. It's not done yet, but yes it's going to be getting that smelly cat here and my taxi and pivot.

Speaker 2:

That's amazing. I love it.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so tell, besides being a friend's freak, tell everybody a little bit about you and about what you do so I am a business makeover specialist and a CRM collaboration partner, and so what that means is that I love to help business owners with the behind the scenes of their business, the things that they don't love to do. I'm like, give it to me, let me do it for you. I got you and I love the processes. I love helping people figure out what's working, what's not working, how do we make it work, and then implement the things. So I'm an idea to implementation kind of girl and all the technology things. I'm here for all of it Love it.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I'm super excited for this interview because I personally know so many people who work with you and everybody just raves about you and is like I don't know how I would function without Elaine. That makes me so happy. I love it and I love that you do the like. Let's start from the ideas, but let me not just leave you Like. There's so many business strategists and consultants and coaches and things that are like here's all the things you should do and you're like thanks, that's super helpful and super overwhelming.

Speaker 3:

Right, and that's what I recognized that I felt I was like oh my gosh, I feel like I'm leaving people high and dry because now I'm telling them to go do all these things and they're like but I don't know how. And so then it started becoming here just let me do it for you, just let me do it. And my business bestieie page was like are you charging them for that? And I was like no, she's like. She's like you have to charge them. I'm like but I feel bad, they're already paying me. And it was a whole mindset crap, you know whatever. But uh, so I decided you know what? I'm just going to create a business around the idea to implementation, and then I won't feel bad because they already know that they're paying me to do it for them.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's brilliant, it's brilliant.

Speaker 2:

I love it. So let's start at the very beginning, because you one of the things that you do is own a CRM agency and for those that are newer in business, or those even not newer in business I think I was like two years in before I was like people keep saying this word and I just like smile and nod Like I know what they're talking about and I don't.

Speaker 3:

It's like the big giant monster hiding behind the curtain. It's the thing that everybody needs to have, but it's it's sometimes people don't know what it is and they don't know why they might need one. So if you are running your business on spreadsheets, you're a great candidate to have a CRM. Okay. And a CRM is a customer relationship manager and basically what's that mean? It's your database, it's where all of your customers live, it's how you communicate with them, it's how you keep track of your leads and maybe the processes that they go through, and it allows you to just stay in touch with your leads and your customers. And so if you are doing that on a spreadsheet, we need to talk. It's not the most efficient way to do it.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, a much better way. A much better way. And what's so cool about the way that you do it? This just came to me when you were talking and said the relationship piece part of it is. I think so many people that you hear will say, oh, your CRM is your email list, that's not your email list. Because, yes, absolutely you need a list and you need to communicate with them, and that's all super helpful, but having people on your email list and sending them emails is not the same as creating an actual relationship with these people.

Speaker 3:

Correct, and what I love to focus on is the customer experience, and I even wrote a book about it, about how to create like. Your business is only going to thrive if your clients are satisfied. So how do we create satisfied customers? Is that we wow the F out of them in the customer journey, and it is so much easier to retain clients than it is to find new ones. So in order to retain those clients, you have to go above and beyond, and that should not require you to live at your computer. So that's why we automate some things, so that it happens on autopilot and you're not having to live on your computer 24 hours a day in order to make sure that your customers and leads are having a great customer experience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about why automation is so important and why business owners need to probably focus on that a little bit more. Part of it is because that frees you up to do the thing that you actually want to do. What are some other reasons that automation is important?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think it's like how can we eliminate manual labor? Right? So if you were to think about it this way, okay, let's just pretend. Let's think of a scenario here you decide you want to run a workshop okay, and every single person, they have to email you in order to no, we're not doing that. You create a form, right, they register, you have a. Now they go into, you can tag them and say everybody who wants to attend this event is tagged with this certain tag that identifies them. These are the people that want to come.

Speaker 3:

Now I'm only going to email those people with and I can schedule it for the future. Right, here's everything you need to know about this event. Boom, automatically done. You don't have to worry about it. Now, you could even take it a step further and create the emails, create a sequence and everything, and it will just drip right out to them like magic. So that is the power of automation. So now all you have to do is promote it and here's the link to register. Boom, that's it. That's all you have to do, versus email me and then I'm going to sign you up and then I'm going to manually send you all. Please, don't, please, don't do that. Please, please, I'm begging you, please don't do that. It is unnecessary and not a good use of your time. And so, when you think about it, where do you thrive? Where do you shine in your business? Where do you thrive, where do you shine in your business? And it's probably spending time with your clients not doing manual spreadsheet labor. That is not a good use of your time.

Speaker 2:

Agreed and what you said earlier about improving the customer experience too. I'm thinking, as you're talking, you're going to want to murder me. But when I first started doing these virtual speed networking events, people would register on Zoom. So I would be like here's the Zoom link, register here. But I didn't have any sort of automation set up. So a couple of weeks after I'd started promoting it I'd have to go into Zoom, print the report of everyone who was registered, import that report into my CRM, then send those people an email. In the meantime, in the next week more she's dying. You can't see her, but she's going to fall out of her chair.

Speaker 2:

In the next week, more people sign up. Now I have to go run a new report, put the new people in right, and sometimes it would take me a couple of weeks. And so I'd start getting emails from people that were like hi, I registered for this thing, but nothing happened. Am I registered? What's going on? And I'm like, oh no, I just haven't downloaded the report and put it in my CRM and typed this email out to you yet. And now that I have all that automated, it's like first of all it feels like magic because I do literally nothing. And then I look and there's like 50 people signed up and I'm like, well, I didn't even do anything Right, but also it's so much better for them because they sign up and right away they get something that's like you're in, it worked, don't worry.

Speaker 3:

Everything's under control. Here's everything that you need to know. And people have such a better experience that way that you need to know, and people have such a better experience that way. They really really do. They really do so, 100%. Yes, that is a great example of why we need automations.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so is there somewhere in particular, especially if someone is just getting started in this area? Is there somewhere in particular where it is best to focus on getting automated?

Speaker 3:

in particular, where it is best to focus on getting automated. So I would say the first thing that I automated, which I feel like was a really big win for me, because I was using I'm ashamed to say it, I was using 13, 13 tools and softwares to run my business before I found the all-in-one platform that I use now, and so the first thing that I put on my big girl panties to automate was calendar reminders, because I was automatically or manually sending out hey, don't forget, we're meeting in an hour. Here's my Zoom link Because the calendar booking software that I was using at the free level didn't have that. So I was like I guess I'll pay $10 a month to have that automated. And that was like the best thing ever, and I'm like, oh my God, I feel so much better. I don't have to manually do this, and it improved my show up rate, like everything improved. Once I started investing in my business and not trying to do the free version of everything, everything changed for me and that was like the power of when you invest in your business, other people will invest in you, and I can't speak to high enough about that. It really is true. And so that was like the first thing that I started to do.

Speaker 3:

Then the next thing that I did was at Polka Dot Celebration, I had created a quiz which friend are you? Of course I did, and I was like the coolest thing ever was that kind of where do you automate and where do you become a human? Was they could? Once they took the quiz, 10 minutes later it would send them a text and ask them which result did they get? Which friend did they get? And I had it programmed based on that response. If they responded Monica, then it would automatically send them a text back and they had no idea that it wasn't me because it was in my voice and I was telling that you know, whatever. But then if they and I would ask a follow-up question, if they replied to that question, then I stepped in as the human because I didn't really.

Speaker 3:

I didn't want them thinking that it was an AI or robot or anything like that. I wanted to be a human and connect with them on a human level. And even though AI can do some of those things, I still really want there to be a human experience in my customer journey, and so that was super important to me. But those are like two, like really cool major things the calendar and some sort of lead magnet where you can, you know, ask follow up questions and get people to reply to you and automate some of that. You don't have to automate the beginning, but become a human. At what point do you want to become a human?

Speaker 2:

in there. Yeah, I think that's a great point because there is so much that you can automate and it's tempting to get on board with some of these, like bots and chat bots and all the different things, but we know the difference we do. We know that we might not know in that first text, especially if you've written it in your voice, but I don't want us to learn. Engage for five minutes in a conversation with a robot that is pretending to be you.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, I don't either right. That is not the experience that I want to have, some from someone else's business either. So I kind of look at it as what? How do I want to be treated as a customer, and I'm going to implement that into my own business.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. And so there are ways that you can automate certain parts of your business to make your life easier but also still have that personal element in there. Correct, Even just with your emails, right? If you set up an email sequence, you can make those emails sound like you. You can ask questions in those emails. I do it, and sometimes I'm like people respond and I'm like, oh, really responded.

Speaker 3:

I know, yes, I love when. I love when people respond to the emails and I just have it set up to notify me. Hey, some, I have it send me a text because I don't want to miss it. Like, hey, someone replied to your email or to your text or whatever, and so I can easily go in and become a human and engage with them or reply to text or whatever, and so I can easily go in and become a human and engage with them or reply to them or whatever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, brilliant. Are there any areas of business that you don't recommend? We automate.

Speaker 3:

The chatbots. That's really the communication part. Like I said, there are certain elements that I think is great to automate and, like, follow-up is a huge deal for me, right? I love to teach about follow-up and I have, like you know, monica had seven erogenous zones that she talked about in Friends. Well, there are seven follow-up zones that I've created based on that, because I'm a psychopath. Okay, I'm fully aware, and so I.

Speaker 3:

There are certain parts of that that it's like send you a reminder to do the thing right, or hey, once it gets to this, to this one, this is something that I'm going to automate. I'm going to because DM, like DMing someone, is a part of a follow-up strategy that you could use. I don't recommend automating that. I recommend becoming a human and going in and engaging with them. Also, social media engagement can also be a part of follow-up, right? So, going in, becoming that potential client's biggest fan, you can automate that. Go be a human, go be their biggest fan.

Speaker 3:

That you can't automate. And if you can, why are you even having a business then? I don't understand. It's not like, okay, oh, I got them, now they just become dead to you. That's not the customer experience that people want. They want to engage with you one-on-one as a human being and not, I mean, you see it all the time the big gurus or whatever. And people are like I thought I was going to get to talk to them or whatever, and I paid all this money and I never did. And I'm like you got the bait and switch, like what did you think was going to happen?

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, which is fine if all you want is to create some sort of passive income funnel Right that you have somehow been convinced is going to make as much money as Russell Brunson makes on his passive income funnel.

Speaker 2:

Right, that might be a whole other Oprah, but most of us I think at least the women that are listening to this podcast have gotten into their business because of the heart behind the product or the service. It's because they have some personal connection to it that they actually want that human element. And so what you're saying is the automation doesn't necessarily do all of the work for you, but it can take some of the like brain power out of it. Like even just having something scheduled to say hey, don't forget three days later to do X, y, z thing. That's super powerful in your mental energy and fatigue to just know like I'm going to be reminded when the thing needs to be done. I don't even have to like have it on my radar right now. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Speaker 2:

So how do you know? There's a lot of different CRMs. Yeah, some are more focused on like this is your email list, put your contacts in here, send them emails. The end. Some of them are real, big and fancy and do all of the things. So how do we figure out how to know which one is right for us?

Speaker 3:

That is a great question, melissa. I'd love to tell you you have like a quiz or something. I have a quiz, so this has been a brainchild since January. It is now May and I was super excited that before I left for my big trip it was done and I was like, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3:

I demoed 12 of the big name CRMs and I put all of the information, all of the features, all of the things that they do, into this quiz and basically what you do is there's categories like communication. What do you want to do when it comes to communication, calendars, what do you want to do when it comes to calendars, courses, memberships, all of the things and literally just go check, check, check. These are all of the things that I want or need for my business and, boom, it will spit out which CRM is best for your business. Each CRM has its own landing page. Each CRM has. I've scoured the interwebs to find out what people really think about these CRMs the good, the bad and the ugly and I even tell you what I like about it, and I even have the demo that I did, which you can 2x the speed to really just see the nuts and bolts, like some of them are 20 minutes, some of them are seven minutes and one is like 30 minutes because it sucked minutes, some of them are seven minutes and one is like three minutes because it sucked. But I like, I wanted to test, like, how easy was it to use, how easy is it to navigate, what does it do, what does it not do, and really help people figure out.

Speaker 3:

Like if, if, if a business needed HIPAA compliance, which CRMs have those features? If someone wants to have a commerce store to be able to sell products, which CRMs have those functions? Or integrate with other softwares that do those things, like Shopify or whatever right comparison spreadsheet. So you, literally I have the all-in-ones in one spreadsheet and then I have the ones that don't have websites from landing pages and funnels and shit like that in one, and so you can literally scroll down and see which ones have which things. So it is all there. You could see all of the information at once. But if you take the quiz, it will help you at least have a starting point to say, oh, okay, and then you can go research if it's a good fit for you and if you're still unsure you could schedule a call with me. I am happy to help you, like, figure out which one would be best for you and why, based on the knowledge that I have acquired.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. That must have been a lot of work.

Speaker 3:

It was so much work, and the funny thing is is that I tried to like delegate and hire it out and then I realized that some things you just can't delegate, some things you just have to do for yourself, because my brain thinks differently than other people's brains when it comes to these things, and I know how to find the things that I'm looking for and so being able to, you know, know that what does that mean? Because people who are like I I have no idea what this is. What are you talking about? You want me to do what. I don't know what that means. I'm like okay, this is one of those things that I'm gonna have to carve time out and do it myself, because you know, yeah, just can't sometimes, you just can't delegate all the things well, we appreciate you doing all that work so we don't have to.

Speaker 2:

What are some of the things that you think? I mean? I know, looking at your quiz and your resources, we can probably find the answer to this question, but I'm wondering what you think some of the like biggest things to consider are. When we're looking at a CRM Like for me, a big part of it is like how naturally intuitive is it? Like can I just look at it and figure it out? There was one that I tried, that I had a friend that like totally raved about, that, did all the things, and I got in there for the free trial and I tried. Man, I went in there like two or three different times and I was just like I don't know what it is, but every time I get in here my brain is like this is hard, this is confusing. Goodbye. So that's probably part of it. What else should we be taking into consideration?

Speaker 3:

Well, and that's why I did the demos right. That's why I recorded myself doing the demos, so that you don't have to spend and waste the time doing a free trial for something that doesn't that your brain is like no, that's not the one, because every brain is different, right, and everybody's like. I test drove Cartra, like many, many years ago, and Paige will attest to this. I said I it makes me want to stab myself in the eye, okay, and I demoed it again and it had improved. I didn't want to stab myself in the eye this time, probably because I had a different like, I had some new experience under my belt, but it just I was like what am I? What am I doing wrong? Right, and once you kind of like start test driving CRMs and stuff, then you can kind of figure out what works really well for you versus what doesn't.

Speaker 3:

And I think it's important as well to do your due diligence and to go Google reviews from other companies and you can. I found, like in Facebook groups and stuff like that you can use search keywords and I found the dirty, evil, ugly stuff that people were saying about some of the CRMs that people were using and I think it's important to also look at the terms and conditions. I found a couple of CRMs that I was like, ooh, because I did some digging, realizing, for example, hubspot you have a two-year contract and their cancellation policy is not really very clear policy it's not really very clear and I'm like somebody needs to know this right, because you are stuck. If you don't like this, you're stuck paying for it for two years.

Speaker 3:

So I don't do free trials of my CRM. I actually have a demo account where people can go in and play with it and see if their brain comprehends all of the things. And one of the things that I do differently is that I'm not just selling a CRM, I'm selling done with you, done for you set it up, I'll teach you how to use it, and I have office hours so anyone who's using it can come in and get support, get help, ask questions, show me how, or I have this idea and I'm like oh great, here we go, this is how you're going to do it. Because I know what it feels like to kind of feel like you're on an island all alone and you're like but I want to ask for help, but I know I'm just going to. I don't want to call a 1-800 number, I want to talk to a real person. I'm like that's me, I'm your person, I'm your IT person.

Speaker 3:

If you get stuck, if you need help, you just send me an email, you send me a DM, you send me a text, you send me a Marco Polo, I don't care. Be like how do I do this? And I'm like boom, this is how I want to take the frustration out of it of going, but I don't know how to do it and I don't know where to go, and I don't want to watch a YouTube tutorial. I just want someone to tell me how to do it, or do it for me.

Speaker 3:

So instead, I'm going to go eat a snack and watch something on Netflix, because this is hard, Because when we don't know how to do it and we're we're insecure, we don't have the confidence behind us yet. And so after a while, like I always tell people, like the first few weeks you're going to be calling me all the time and it's okay, that's, that's how you learn. And then after a while, you don't call me as much because now you have the confidence built up of like, oh, that's right, this is where I do it, Right. And so I want people to to feel empowered that they will figure it out or they know that I'm here to help them if they need it. Yeah, Night and day, Like for real, I get messages. People work on stuff late at night sometimes and I get messages and I'm like this is where you go, this is you know, this is how you do it. And they're like oh, I forgot about that or whatever, Because you know I get it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's, it can be a lot. It can. Yeah, that's awesome. I love what you do. I have this really bad problem because I have the most amazing people on my podcast and so inevitably at some point in the interview I like stop listening because my brain is like you just need to hire them, like this is what you've been waiting for. You just need to hire this person, every single guest.

Speaker 3:

I get that 100%. You're like oh my God, I need you.

Speaker 2:

I have to control myself. So is there anything? What? What parting words would you give people who want to automate but also still want to have that human connection and create those genuine relationships with their clients and their potential clients?

Speaker 3:

Write it down. That's what I would say is map it out and so think about, think about everything in this term. If this, then that. So if they do this, if they click this button, if they sign up for this, if they have a consult with me, then do this and I want you to think about. You know, you can create and I'm a huge fan of repurposing. So, like, if you write blog posts, you can convert those blog posts into emails. If you made a really great post on Facebook that was super educational and everybody loved it, you can convert that into an email, right?

Speaker 3:

Repurpose your content. Don't assume that everybody saw it because they didn't. And use those as ways to follow up, nurture, add value, because that's really what following up is is adding value and continuing the conversation with consent, Okay, adding value and continuing the conversation with consent, Okay. And and being able to just kind of help them, kind of ease into what it might be like to work together. And it doesn't always have to be a sales pitch. You can also just inspire them or motivate them or encourage them, ask them questions and things like that. So I would just say map it out, Like from starting, from the beginning, from when they download your lead magnet or whatever. Then what's going to happen? They schedule a call. Then what's going to happen? What happens after the call? But write it down, because then, once you write it down, then you can actually then develop process in order to make it happen. And if you're like I don't know where to automate, I don't know how to automate whatever, then you just call me, Like it's that simple.

Speaker 2:

That's all we need to know. We could have made this like the shortest podcast ever how to automate your business and still be a human. Call Elaine. That's all you got to do, easy. Thank you so much. This has been a great interview. If people want to know more about you, if they want your help, if they want to take your quiz maybe they just want to see all your cool friends themed stuff what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:

Yep. So I have ElaineTursocom and I have youcanautomatecom, which is where you'll find the quiz. There'll be a button that says take the quiz and you can take the quiz and then it will give you all the things that you need to know.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. I will put both those links in the show notes and thank you again for sharing your wisdom with us.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to Powerful Women Rising. We hope today's episode inspired you to keep rising. If you love the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review. It's like giving us a virtual hug and helps more awesome women like you find the show. Click the link in the show notes to get your free list of top virtual networking events for female entrepreneurs. It's time to make real connections and grow your business with integrity and authenticity. Until next time, keep rising and stay powerful.

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Melissa Snow

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