Alane Boyd with Workday Ninja

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s time for Nashville Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Nashville Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast co-founder with Workday Ninja, Alane Boyd. How are you?

Alane Boyd: Oh, I am great, Stone, and I’m so excited to be here.

Stone Payton: Well, I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions. Elaine, we probably won’t get to them all, but I think maybe a good place to start is if you could articulate for me in our listeners a little bit of a broad overview, mission, purpose. What what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks.

Alane Boyd: Man our mission and it’s been the same since we started. And it’s to make work days easier for people because we’re burnt out. We have so many things on our plate, how can we enjoy work and be done with work at the end of the day? So that’s what our core mission is. And you know, I really that’s our purpose. And that’s why I started this company, was because I saw what the workday was doing to people and just wanted them to have an easier day so that they can go and do the things that they really want to do and enjoy.

Stone Payton: So what’s the backstory? How did you get into this line of work, doing this, kind of providing this kind of service for these folks?

Alane Boyd: Such a roller coaster. But I sold my first company in 2018, and I built that company for about ten years, and we were a social media and reputation agency. I built two software platforms, and our niche was with car dealerships. So we did all of this stuff for car dealerships. And the reason I got acquired was because I was such a well-oiled machine with our team and we, the private equity companies and companies looking at us, we’re thinking, you’ve got a skeleton team doing this much work, and I’m going, this isn’t a skeleton team. Like they’re they just get their work done. And when we sold, I realized we were unique, that what I built with my business partner and the systems that we had was something special that not every company did. And I thought maybe other companies need it.

Stone Payton: Now, if I remember from my notes, you have had two successful exits and you bootstrapped both companies as opposed to going and getting external funding.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, I did, and, you know, and there’s of course like a whole bunch of ifs and thens and buts in that. But I was bootstrapped. We did take on an early seed round and it was such a terrible relationship after two years of trying to. To work with that investor that we actually bought him out. And so we went back to. Being bootstrapped.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, helping others and replicating your success and providing that rigor and discipline and structure and repeatable processes and all that. What’s the most rewarding about the about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?

Alane Boyd: Oh, gosh. I mean, you know, you you start working with a team and you can just tell the energy is being sucked out of them. And they they really they want things to work better. And they’re at a point where they’re just like, we’re going to try anything because I’m I’m exhausted. And then after, you know, some projects are longer. It depends on how many moving pieces there are, how big of a team there is. But when we start getting closer to Implementation. You can see the excitement and relief that these team members have, and they always write us. I mean, we keep a log of all the the sweet emails that we get written and of course like testimonials and things, but these people genuinely are just so excited to have something that they can be proud of and get through their day without being tasked with tedious work, having to put out more fires. And so that’s the best reward, is just seeing how we do make a difference, and that it’s making people’s days better.

Stone Payton: I’ll bet. So have you found yourself gravitating more toward a certain type of business, an industry, a sector, or have you found that you can be pretty agnostic and serve a lot of people in several different arenas?

Alane Boyd: Well, that’s been a learning curve in this business. In in my early days of starting my business partner and I were, you know, we were coming out of an exit. And so we were just kind of consulting. We were getting bored not having anything to do. And so we were working with all types of companies, and it really revolved around our expertise. And of course that’s evolved over time. And now we’ve got a full team. And yes, we have niche down, because when you can, when you can do everything for everybody, you know, you’re not serving anybody really. You’re too much of a generalist. So we really narrowed that down. And there is a little bit of a team size revenue scale that plays into it. But a lot of times it’s mature businesses because they have systems, they’ve got team members, they’ve got already workflows that they’ve been doing, even if they are strenuous to the team, you know. So they know the value of if if it could improve that, how much of an impact that would be. So that’s typically the the client type. Now industry Does. We’re in a bunch of different industries. And so the biggest thing that we have found is that at a core, they use specific project management systems like Clickup, Asana or Monday, and they use a CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive. And these are just examples. There’s others that we do, but that’s the core pieces. Like they need to have some some software platforms and that we are experts in those platforms.

Stone Payton: All right. Let’s dive into the work a little bit. Maybe if you could walk us through the process. I’m particularly personally interested in the early stages of, I guess I’ll call it an engagement. And maybe you want to apply it to a to a use case. Of course, you probably don’t want to name names or, but yeah, let’s help us get our arms around what it might look to look like to to work with you guys.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So that’s perfect. And I can this is a very common workflow that we do with a lot of businesses. So it’s not calling any particular company out of. Out. And it’s the idea of you start with a client, a potential client, and you have to create a proposal for them. Well, we do AI and and automation so that when it moves to proposal stage in your CRM, it’ll auto generate a proposal based off a template and use AI in the call notes to generate that proposal so that you’re only having to edit, you know, 10 to 15% of the proposal instead of trying to create it from scratch. So that would be the first step of the customer journey. Then if the customer signs the proposal, the next piece of the automation would then kick off automatically. New client onboarding. You know what needs to happen? A welcome email needs to get sent. Um, maybe if you’re using a project management system, tasks automatically get created for that client for what needs to have happen after that. Maybe an asset folder in Dropbox gets created. And let’s see, I love that. I love a task. We have this set up for our clients to connect with them on LinkedIn automatically if, you know in that automation. And so and then the last piece and you’d be surprised how often people forget to invoice their clients, but it automatically creates a customer in QuickBooks with a draft invoice. So, you know, these pieces that we don’t have to memorize for everything, this can automatically be done. So it takes two hours of work that would be done manually down to about five minutes in an automated sequence.

Stone Payton: Wow. And everything you’re describing that that you bring to your client systems and help them implement. I’m operating under the impression you’re probably eating your own cooking too, right? Like you’re you’re probably doing this for your own practice. Yes.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. We drink our Kool-Aid and it’s, you know, and and to be honest, I’m glad that you said that. Yes we do. We do eat our cookies, drink our kool aid. And we were doing this for ourselves. I started writing our very first automations in 2016 with my previous company, because I was getting so frustrated. You know, the sales team, they just want to move on and get their next sale. And so their attention to detail can sometimes be missing. Then I’m seeing this long transition between sales to account management to do all the knowledge transfer. I’m paying an admin to go and manually set up all the things that need to happen. And I was just like, you know what? I’m really frustrated today about all this money I’m seeing. Just go out the door for my company. And I wrote our first automations and it just transformed, you know, it would take us, on average, two weeks to onboard a new client back then because of we’re we’re waiting on people to do each step. Right. And then we got it down to. They’d be on boarded almost immediately. And I’m like, wow, I could save that time for my team members. Plus the admin that was doing that, I repurposed her on a more valuable position within the company. So not only did I save her salary, but I’m making money in her new position that she was in. And I just thought, you know, that’s what I want to focus on. And so I’ve been drinking this Kool-Aid for a while to answer your question.

Stone Payton: And I have to believe when you can tighten up and button down systems like that, get them humming, it would have to have a really strong impact on the on the culture, which then could turn around and strengthen things across the board. Is that accurate?

Alane Boyd: Yeah, you nailed it. And the culture piece is what I didn’t even think would be a result early on. You know, I’m looking at it as a business expense and advantage Vantage for us to save that money. But the culture change and I’ll I’ll tell you what I saw in 2016 when I started to implement this, that our team went from staying on board for about six months to where they were staying on for years because they weren’t so burnt out, they didn’t feel like they were being pulled in so many directions. Our lifetime value of our client went up, so we weren’t losing clients, you know, on, you know, let’s say that they were staying on for a year. They were staying on indefinitely at that point. And then one of the most interesting pieces is because our employee turnover was reduced and our lifetime value was increasing. The amount of money the client was spending with us was also increasing. And so you just felt this energy in the company that we didn’t have before, where things just felt like a drag and we were being, you know, wrung through the wringer all the time and, and chaos. And then we just saw it flip flop, where people were so excited they were cheering each other on whenever we, you know, kept clients on longer and, you know, celebrating anniversaries and people just got to build longer relationships with each other. The culture really started to thrive.

Stone Payton: I gotta confess, Elaine, I feel like you’ve been reading my mail, and here’s why. Yeah. Lee Kantor my business partner and I, we own the business radio X network. We’ve been incredibly blessed. We’ve made a comfortable living. We’ve impacted some lives. And just to be perfectly candid, you know, our onboarding is is clunky. We have a, you know, 21 years plus of best practices. And I’m sure, you know, buried in there somewhere is some genuine in some ways is some genuine intellectual property. A lot of it’s in Stone’s head, a lot of it’s in Lee’s head. Some of it is in the 19 studio partners heads. Um, and yeah, I, uh, I feel like I’m getting a. Hey, gang, if you want to get some free consulting and talk to some smart people, get yourself a radio show. Uh.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So do some interviews.

Stone Payton: But. And, you know, I’m sure as people begin to have this kind of conversation with you, the light bulb starts to go off a little bit. And you, you probably have some coachable moments and can probably get a lot of, uh, a lot of good done pretty quickly, huh?

Alane Boyd: Yeah. And that’s been the fun part is, you know, we bring on a client and they have a very specific need right then. And they want to solve that problem in their in their workflow or in their team. And it typically does not end at that once we get there, because then they can see the possibilities. They’ve now had the time to take away some of the layers of the onion and say, hey, you know, could we improve this operation or this workflow? Could we be using technology for this? And so it does grow. And this instant institutional knowledge piece that you just mentioned, between stone or between yourself and your business partner is a huge piece. Because when you have knowledge in people’s heads, they are the workflow. You have to go to them because they have all the knowledge in them. And so part of what we do is start getting that knowledge out of their head, to start getting into a process that people can delegate and have some accountability with, instead of that person always having to be it. And then that’s where you I don’t know if you use slack internally, but you see slack messages start to decrease because people don’t have to ask you as many questions anymore.

Stone Payton: That would be nice, I think. So on the front end of things, and it’s a question I often ask the people that have a chance to have a conversation with how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours? Like to have that to even get a chance to have this conversation. Is it all referrals now that you’ve been at this as long as you have, or do you do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit like some of the rest of us?

Alane Boyd: Well, I you know, I don’t like sitting back and doing anything, waiting around for anything so early in our business. It was very referral based and, and that was comfortable at first. And then once I was tired after I sold my company and I really just needed a break for a while. And so, you know, when we were just consulting and early days, you know, we were 100% referral based. But now I have, you know, we’re talking about operational automation in this conversation so far, but I have a whole nother side of the company where we focus on sales, outreach, automation. And I do a huge piece of that myself, drinking my own Kool-Aid. And then I also train companies on that. And, and it’s, you know, how do you find your target market? And I love using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for this. To find your exact target market, find the contacts that you need. And then I use tools like Lemlist or Apollo to do cold outreach to them. And I have a whole automated sequence. So it’s not just like one email or one LinkedIn message where they’re receiving a number of them. And, you know, there’s a there’s a lot more to the sales outreach part, but it’s actually my favorite part of the company that that I lead and enjoy. And then I also do a lot of speaking engagements, and I’m in a few niche industries that I do speaking engagements at, and I see that as a lead generator as well, because people in the audience are my potential customers. And so we’ve brought in clients from that.

Stone Payton: So I know in my world anyway, business talk radio, digital media in on some channels, if you will. There’s, uh, I’ll call it misinformation. There are some preconceived notions. There’s some just downright, downright just off the mark information. So sometimes early in a conversation in our work, we’ll have to we’ll have to educate before we can even really consult. Do you find with regards to AI and automation and processes and systems and tools and all these wonderful things that you’re describing, that sometimes at least early in the conversation, people come in with a little less than accurate lens on things, and you are kind of in education mode early on.

Alane Boyd: Yes. Oh my gosh, an AI just made it even worse. You I can there are so many conversations now that we have with a potential client where they are 1,000% convinced that I can just do everything in their business. And I’m going, no, if that were the case, none of us would work. That is not possible. And so there is an education piece. What could I alleviate? And and also there’s a missed understanding of what not only what I can do but where I can’t do everything. But automation can be a big piece to do things that you don’t even need AI for. And so that’s a part of the education is like you are going to overcomplicate your process by trying to use AI here. You just really need automation. And those two things are different. And we’ve started creating free tools that companies can go and use to try to start to distill down. What could I do in the beginning? And so automation is a big one. Like what could you automate if you’re using Calendly and zoom And Pipedrive CRM and Monday.com, you know, where we’ve started is like, let’s have a tool that gives the education first. And so we have a free tool. You answer eight questions, it takes less than 30s, and it’ll send you a custom report within about two minutes to your email with 25 automation ideas that you could put in your business right now based on your software that you use. And so that’s been a great just initial piece to the conversation, because they get that report, they get real ideas of what could be automated in their company instead of these bizarre out of like, you know, what they want to want to do would be $1 million investment. You know, what could you put in that you could actually afford and get value from in your business? And that’s been a big change for us that we’ve seen in that initial conversation.

Stone Payton: So this next question, 100% ulterior motive and I’ll share it with you before I even ask the question. Business RadioX network. Stone and Lee and team uh, on the short list. We we want to put a physical studio in Nashville, and we have some hypotheses around why we want to do that. But I wanted to ask you why Nashville. For you, what’s the business climate like? Or is it just you were there in Nashville and that’s just where you are anyway?

Alane Boyd: Oh, gosh, Nashville was actually so I’ve been in in Nashville for almost 11 years. And I’ll tell you why. I moved my company there. I started my first company in San Diego, and that’s where we were based. We were working with car dealerships all over the country, and my team was getting burnt out with the time zone change. And so I had two things on my mind. One, I wanted to open a central office that team member I could hire from, I could hire a little like less expensive than California costs. And that I could buy a second house as like a getaway house on buy some land. You know, in San Diego, you can’t buy any land unless you’re way out in the outskirts. So I wanted some land and I wanted some water on the property. And I just had these visions. And Nashville hit all the spots. And there’s. We’ve hired the very best people in Tennessee and the Nashville area. And, you know, I sold that company and I chose to start the next company there because of the environment. People are just so kind. They connections. You’re, you know, you’re one introduction away from pretty much anybody you want to meet. And I also joined EOE Nashville. It stands for Entrepreneurs Organization Nashville. And that that CEO environment has been such a good client like just investment for me to be in that, and I just would not want to leave that group of people.

Stone Payton: Well that’s encouraging. Thank you for that. And I’m sure Nashville appreciate you as well. We’ll have to send it to Chamber of Commerce and invoice or something.

Alane Boyd: Yeah I know right.

Alane Boyd: And you know, when I moved, we moved the office. We opened the office in Tennessee, and we offered any San Diego employee we offered to move them for free to our office in Tennessee. And we had two employees that did it. And they’ve now moved their entire family. Their parents now live there. Their siblings now live there. So it has been a good economic boost for for us to be in their small, small scale, but definitely a benefit.

Stone Payton: Oh that’s fantastic. I’d like to switch gears on you for just a moment. If we could interest hobbies, pursuits, passions outside the the scope of this work, a lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. How about you? Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about other than this kind of work.

Alane Boyd: Man, I’m the biggest nerd, and when it comes to hobbies, I’ve probably oversaturated myself. But I love traveling. You and I could talk forever on that one. It sounds like. So travel. I do leather working, so I make my own leather bags and I come up with all kinds of stuff I made myself and my my brother a firewood carrier out of leather. So I, I do that, and I love hiking and mountain biking. I love being outdoors. So I’m just. And I always try because I’m, I’m doing technology. I’m in front of my computer so much. I’ve just found that being outside and being active outside is so important for mental health. And so I try to push that on everybody in my family too.

Stone Payton: But at least my experience is similar to yours in that yes, it’s good for me and I enjoy it, and I feel like I do get a chance to recharge. But I think everybody wins because I genuinely believe with all my heart an afternoon in the woods. It equips me to be of that much better and more service to the people I’m trying to help. And it sounds like you feel the same way.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we need to give our brains a break and be bored in the outdoors. Let our mind wander. And, you know, I’ve. And I’m sure you’ve noticed this, too, when you’re out hunting and you’re you’re just sitting around waiting is that’s when like, ideas pop up. So I always have either a little notebook with me or even just taking notes on my phone if I’ve if I brought my phone with me, it’s like, that’s where your ideas and your good ideas start to bubble up because you gave your mind to rest. And so I found that that’s just really important for me to take that break.

Stone Payton: Amen. All right. Before we wrap, I think it would be great if you’re up for it, if we could leave our listeners with a couple pro tips, something to chew on just to be thinking about and look, gang. The number one pro tip here is if any of this interests you, if you recognize any of the symptoms in your organization that these kinds of solutions might address. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Elaine or somebody on her team. But let’s see if we can tide them over with a little something to chew on between now and then. Elaine.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I think two things that have really just impacted me in business is listening to podcasts and listening to a different perspective, and I’ve found that I’ve had to listen to things that aren’t in my wheelhouse, because if I listen to things that are in my wheelhouse, I already know those things. I need to push myself to be listening to things outside of it and reading, reading, reading, reading. I read so often. I’ve got Libby the free. It’s from the library. Every county has Libby and Tennessee, and I put on audiobooks on it. So I’ve always got an audiobook downloaded, and so it’s free, you know. It’s by the public library so you can access it. So if money is a barrier, you know, these things are free on Libby. So I’ve always got an audiobook and I’m always reading, um, books. And right now I’m reading one of Nick Saban’s books because even though I’m an avid LSU fan and he left and went to Alabama, what he did in football is incredible. And his players love and adore him. And I’m, you know, for as a leader and wanting to be a leader, you know, am I that into football to know everything about football. No, but I am I love him as a leader and I think that there could be things that I learn. So I’m reading his book right now. And, you know, I think us, you know, whether you’re running a business or you want to grow, I think those things and expanding our knowledge is so important.

Stone Payton: I agree 110%, and I’m so glad that I asked. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners To learn more, tap into your work. Maybe have that conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So first way is on LinkedIn. I’m very active, so connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Elaine Boyd and shoot me a message. I love connecting with people. And then the next thing would be you can visit our website, Workday ninja.com. And we’ve got two free resources. So the one that I mentioned with the 25 free automation ideas that you could put in your business. And then we have a second one for project management tools. A lot of time companies, they feel like maybe I’m in the wrong project management system or I don’t even know where to start. And again, it’s super quick. It’s just a few questions and it’ll tell you immediately which project management system would be best for you.

Stone Payton: Elaine, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. It’s been a real shot of fresh air for me. I feel like I’ve personally learned a ton. I know our listeners have, and clearly you are doing important work and having a great deal of impact on so many. That, in turn will have impact on others and it will just keep going forward. Thank you for investing the time to visit with us this afternoon.

Alane Boyd: Thank you. Stone. This was a lot of fun for me.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Elaine Boyd with Workday Ninja and everyone here at the Business RadioX family. Satan. We’ll see you next time on Nashville Business Radio.