Action COACH St Louis West

It will be more intelligent next week too.

So even though it is not perfect today, it will constantly get smarter.

That is why I tell owners not to run out and get an AI tool.

Define the use case first.

What do you want to do, and how do you want to solve it.

Then we go look at the software.

Happy Labor Day!

Today, we recognize and celebrate the hardworking individuals, entrepreneurs, and business leaders whose dedication drives our communities and economy forward.

Success is built through commitment, perseverance, and the willingness to show up every day with purpose. We are grateful for the workers, teams, and business owners who continue to make a difference through their efforts and leadership.

Every technology transition has three states, and most owners only plan for two of them.

There is a now.

There is a future.

And in between there is a next, which is where almost everything goes wrong.

The now is the process you have today, including the broken steps nobody has looked at.

The future is the clean automated version somebody sold you in a demo.

The next is fifteen to thirty to forty-five days, and it can run up to three months depending on the transition you are doing.

During that window you have to run both.

You are doing it manually and you are doing it automated at the same time, and you are training the system until things are accurate.

That dual-running period is the part people skip, because it feels like doing the same work twice.

It is doing the same work twice.

That is the cost of the transition, and it is cheaper than a system that was switched on before anyone verified it.

Automations are great as long as they work.

The next is how you find out whether yours does.

What is the longest software transition you have lived through, and what made it hard? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments 👇

Wishing you a Happy Labor Day! 🌟
To all the entrepreneurs, team leaders, and business professionals—thank you for the work you put in every day. Your dedication drives success.

If you have a business and you have to run it every day of your life, you do not have a business.

You have a job, and you have to get that into a repeatable process.

When I work with clients we do a 13-week planning session, and four of those equals fifty-two weeks a year.

One week out of every thirteen should be time off.

During that time off we measure whether it is the first thirteen weeks, the second, the third, or the fourth where you can actually go on vacation without spending all your time on your phone.

That is the first litmus test.

You do not need a consultant or a coach like me to come in and do an assessment to figure it out.

You can tell me how much time you spend, or better yet, let me talk to your spouse.

Because your spouse will tell me exactly how much time you spend on family time on your phone.

If you cannot unplug, the fix is not more hustle.

It is having people under you who can get the work done, people who are fixing the processes, and people who are driving it.

That is also when private equity or other investors start looking to invest in you, because you can actually scale it.

From there we map out a roadmap that gets you to a business that operates without you.

Book a 15-minute discovery call if you want to walk through where yours stands.

In small businesses, the phone either rings or it does not.

It is five calls at one time, or there are no calls for two hours.

And you cannot hire somebody to sit there and cover the overflow for a couple of hours a day, so those calls go unanswered and that customer moves on to the next company until someone picks up.

That is where I have implemented AI with clients, and it works because we go through and train it first.

The bot sounds just like you or I.

It asks the questions, it gets their name, address, phone number and email address, it validates their address, and then it gives you a message to call them back.

Then a human being calls and says, hey, I heard you are at 123 Main Street, and I understand you have the following problem.

Are you available next Tuesday for us to send somebody out there?

That to me is the best way to use AI.

Some big companies have gone in and eliminated their whole online support groups, so it is AI and a chat bot and you are lucky to ever find their phone number.

That is not the way to implement AI.

Use it as a force multiplier to answer the phone and get the basic information, then let your people close the relationship.

Where in your business do calls get missed most? Share your thoughts in the comments below 👇

You are going to blame a system that has ones and zeros.

It is only doing what you told it to do.

Before you replace the software, go check what you asked it to do in the first place.

I would be very careful about raising prices, and I would be even more careful about who you raise them on.

I would increase prices on the new customers who come in versus the recurring ones.

Then you can move the existing ones up CPI plus one, or whatever is reasonable, and most people would agree with that.

What happens is businesses really hold back on doing that.

Their costs go up, they do one inflated price increase, and it hands them to your competitor who is the startup in your market.

If you just send a letter and an email out saying products are going up three point one percent and services are going up two point eight percent, most customers will not even think anything about it.

But go from an eight ninety-five appetizer at happy hour to eighteen ninety-five after, and it is really surprising when you walk in there.

People are willing to pay a fuel surcharge, because they know it is going to come off at some point.

What they are not willing to absorb is being moved up too fast.

Your margins go up, and you lose the customers who stayed with you.

Take the intellectual rigor against the decision before you send the letter.

How do you handle annual price increases with long-term customers? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments 👇