How to Scale with Automation and Systems With Brittni Schroeder

Josh: What is up everybody, Josh Tapp here again and welcome back to the lucky Titan, today we are here with Brittni Schroeder and really just kind of intro this lady, we've been talking for 40 minutes before this call, which is very uncharacteristic of me so she's a great conversationalist first off, but we're both LDS Mormons, whatever you want to call it, which is really fun. It's fun to see other people from the same church but we have a lot in common with business as well but this lady has accomplished some amazing things, she has been featured on The Wall Street Journal, she's been on. Oh, my goodness, what was it famous news channel, can you tell me?

Brittni: Good Morning, America.

Josh: Good Morning, America. Thank you. I don't watch the news guys, I'm sorry. Um, but she's been all over the place. very successful coach, I wanted to bring her on because specifically, I think her and I jive really well when it comes to marketing topics and to scaling a business through systems so I first want to kind of have you first off, I obviously say hello, Brittni, say hello to everybody. 

Brittni: Hey, hey, 

Josh: I'll make it uncomfortable for you and for everyone else. Um, but it's good to have you here and I want to kind of get right into your story to to our audience knows where you're coming from and so I want to ask you the epiphany moment so for you, what was the big epiphany when you realized I could be a coach, I could actually teach people this stuff.

Brittni: Oh, that is a good one so I think I've always had like an entrepreneur, I've always been an entrepreneur, like ever since I can remember and I think the moment is just like helping people realizing like, Have you watched? What's the what's the movie? Catch Me If You Can, with what's his name, Leonardo DiCaprio.

Josh: Leonardo, I get confuse for him all the time.

Brittni: Oh I am sure, so but you know, in like, he was like, he was a scammer in that, right? And, but it's based on a true story and he was like a professor and then when this like, I don't know, who I don't even know who the real person is, like, the real guy's name but they said, you know, like, how, how did you like you taught, like, he taught, like, he was a college professor for a while. They're like, how did you do that and one of the quotes in there in the movie is he said, or in, like, what he the guy said is like, you just have to be one chapter ahead of everyone else, you know, and so I think that that is, like, true to just being like, a coach is just like, you have to just be one chapter ahead of those that you're teaching and so I think just realizing, you know, as people started, you know, asking these questions, and, you know, and, and I think it's like, the longer we're in any profession, we take for granted, like our knowledge, you know, where we think, Oh, everybody knows that, you know, but like, but no, like, people don't know and so I think like, my moment was just like, oh, my gosh, like, I know, a lot of stuff about business, like, I can help like, a lot of people with these, like, just these basic things that kind of come naturally to me, you know.

Josh: I love that, quote, you know, it's funny Brittni, I've had probably four or five guests on over the years. That was one of the big turning moments for me was actually seeing that movie, because you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm ahead by one step, I don't have to be ahead, I don't have to be the smartest person in the world, I said, the smartest one in the room.

Brittni: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. When people struggle, like how many people struggle with like imposter syndrome, you know what I mean? It's like, watch that movie and take notes, you know?

Josh: yeah, and you actually bridge right into my next question very well, that was brilliant, guys. We did not script this, I promise this but what was so interesting, Brittni, about that is that the next problem that people have, though, is is why me, everybody has an excuse. You know, I'm 28 years old and when I was first starting coaching, I was like, 22, I mean, imagine the imposter syndrome at that age, I'm like, I'm in college, I'm making no money, they're asking me for marketing help, you know and yeah, then you could be like, Well, I'm old. Oh, I've never actually worked on on these type of projects before, whatever, there's 1000 different reasons why you could have imposter syndrome but I want to ask you this, though, Brittni, I think you're uniquely qualified for this is like how, how do you keep yourself from feeling like you have to be 40 chapters ahead and trying to teach 40 chapters ahead as a coach, instead of just teaching that one chapter ahead so it makes sense.

Brittni: elaborate a little bit? No, I think I understand what you're asking. 

Josh: yeah, like, how do you as a coach, keep yourself or restrain you to just teaching that that one step that you already know, instead of feeling like you have to teach the entire system?

Brittni: Okay, that is like a hard one because I think I felt like you and I were talking about this a little bit of just even like value, you know, like, we invest in things and we want them to be good and so with me sometimes like, it's like taking a drink from a fire hose., like I really have to like hold back and say, okay, baby steps like that is something that I've had to work on because I do want to give so much information because I want to give value, but sometimes it's just giving that like one little step that is going to help them the most because people get overwhelmed and paralysis by analysis, right? Like, when there's too many things to do, like, we freeze, we don't progress, you know so I'd have to say, that's something that I definitely have to like, that is something that I have to work on and I have worked on in, you know, in my own business is just like a one step at a time, you know, like, it's a system, it's a sequence, you have to learn, you know, like, players, you know, even funnels, I teach my clients this all the time, like Funnels is like, you're just building layers and layers and layers, but like, you have to have the foundations first, before you can build on to the those layers, you know,

Josh: yeah, I love that was a great response by the way, I just the reason I asked that is I know, for myself, I run into that same problem, too. You know, we, I think it was January or February, we started looking at companies to start growing by acquisitions and bringing new companies on, which is really kind of a tier three strategy, you know, you've passed the offer mark, you've finally got a good team in place and then you're you can scale through buying other companies and I started like teaching it on my podcast, I remember stepping back and being like, Whoa, these are people who aren't even close to ready to acquire companies at this point, why are you talking about this, you know, and I know, for me, it was kind of that moment where I was like, Man, I I'm overstepping what I need to do, you know, I need to just back off a little bit and let it be just as teach that one step that I'm great, anyways, so I just want to ask you guys a really interesting question. So, um, so let's talk systems on this because I know that one of your unique abilities is actually helping people to scale using systems and you've worked with a lot of people helping them start from scratch, no, the actual company, but what have you, what have you found to be like the number one, I guess, scaling mistake that you've seen people run into when they're starting a company?

Brittni: Well, I think like not having you know, systems in place, like I always teach, like, they don't have standard operating procedures, like SOPs, is, like huge, and I think a lot of people, you know, we're our wheels are spinning unless we have these like SOPs in place and we know what we're doing, you know, you're it's like a hamster wheel, like, you're just, you know, you're you're, you're going and going and going, but you're like not moving anywhere and so I would say, I'm not having systems, I always say, like, businesses fail for two reasons, two main reasons, either they don't get enough business, or they get too much all at once, and they can't keep up with it and bad customer service, or you know, that you're losing business that way and so, you have to have systems in place, especially, you know, you're especially like businesses who are just starting out or have smaller teams, like, you can only scale so much, you're only one person and if you don't have systems and automations, like, things are gonna fall in the cracks, and your business is gonna start to like unravel, you have to have like, really good, like systems in your business to scale, do you agree? Don't you agree?

Josh: I 100% agree. And you know, it's funny, you're talking, I'm nodding over here, because I'm like, that's exactly, because like that's been our business is it's either feast or famine, right? You're overdoing it, you have way too many sales coming in the door, and you're not prepared for it or you have not enough and you're you're still suffering cuz you can't keep enough money coming in the door and I'm kind of curious what your remedy is to that because I know for us identifying that first system so I will even tell you, we ran this problem again, last month, we were prepping because I was trying to get myself out for the for two or three weeks, because we were having our first baby as everybody knows and so I was like, I can't be there for two or three weeks so we've got an kind of ramp up and everything so we took on a bunch of new sales. And I realized that I hadn't done a good enough job of replacing myself system systematically so anyway, so what I found is that when, um, you know, for me, like we're running into the system, the system's issue because we were, we weren't prepared to replace me, I was the system that was unreplaceable at the moment, I didn't do a good enough job of that and what was happening is we were having poor customer service with some of those new clients, because that that journey for them wasn't traveled effectively, I guess it'd be a way of saying that. Um, but so how do you remedy that and what are the first systems you recommend that people put in place for scaling and preventing that?

Brittni: Okay, so probably my first one is kind of an exercise that I do with my clients is, I have like a little worksheet and I'm like, Kate, what is the client experience from the moment of contact, tell like, you've delivered your product or service, you know, what is that and write it down, like write down every single step in the process like it, whether that's a console or whatever, and then Like go through and like, what can you automate, what are things so I'm big on automation, but like, what are things in the process that you can automate, what are things you're doing over and over and over again, that you can automat and you know, like, so automate that so for example, if like, if I'm coaching somebody, I do like to check in on my clients, and I do group coaching but I still like to check in on my group clients, my group clients, when I'm, you know, just have time but I also have, like, these systems that are automated, you know, so they, you know, like, I have a system set up that they pay, and then it puts them into, like, an automatically they get the contract, but then it also puts them into like, an email sequence where I'm checking in on them, even when I'm not checking in on them and so, you know, like, how many times have you worked with a company and you just or, you know, anything coaching or anything, and you feel like you're not seen or heard, you know, where you're in a group and so it's so important that you are making the effort like that you are reaching out, and those are things that you can automate. You know, there's been, you know, several times I live in Houston and so, we have hurricane season and, you know, like, last year, we had a freeze, and we never get a freeze, because we don't get like, we don't get snow or anything and it like knocked us out, like we were out for like a week, like no power nothing like, you know what I mean and so we're, I mean, we don't even have like, our like fireplaces here, you know, so, but it was like, I had no power, but I would drive down the street to check once a day, go check my email and I was like, I was still bringing in money, my clients were still like, getting emails from me, my social media was still being posted because I had created these automations in the systems that were working and so that's probably my first one is like the client experience, like, know, your client experience, what are the steps and like, what can you automate so that's like that, that's probably like my, one of the very first things that I tell people to do 

Josh: and I wish I had known this years ago, I think that was so spot on, Brittni, because that is, in my opinion, the most important automation to have in place is that customer experience, because we've all been through it, you know, even recently, we paid somebody 30,000 or $35,000, to do a specific system in our business, I kid you not in one month's time, I could not get them to communicate with me, for a whole month this is a big company and most of you would probably know their names and I remember sitting back going, how have they not mastered this yet, this is like $100 million company and so I remember like stepping back in, and we actually fired them, which was weird having to go to this, this big client, but then we switched to a different one, who was probably the number two on that list and they crushed, I mean, they did such a good job of I mean, I was getting annoyed by how much they were communicating with me actually and that's what was really interesting is I'm like, wow, they actually are going to guide me through this process so I love that answer, Brittni. Um, so when it comes to the customer experience, I want to unpack that a little bit, how should people be bringing these clients into their world, right so we're talking to agencies and coaches here, we all have basically the same type of process that we should be implementing so how would you recommend the customer journey should look like for somebody who's an agency, when they're onboarding somebody?

Brittni: Well, I think to one of the things and I have learned this in, you know, I've worked in nonprofit and I've had other businesses and it's really like, people sometimes don't remember, like, the product or the service, but people always remember like, how you made them feel, you know, and so I think that it's just, like, so important that, you know, like, a handwritten letter a thank you letter, like, is like, so powerful, you know, like, knowing when their birthday is, you know, like, just like these little things and I think that as you scale in your business, and you're like, making more and more and more like you can afford to, like, create, like an awesome, like, experience where is you know, like, sending a little gift sending like, a thank you because I feel like when you are charging more, like your experience needs to, like, reflect that and, and, I mean, like I probably I'm very type A so I have I have high standards, you know, but I think there's been times where I've invested in, you know, like different coaching or different programs, and then I've been like, Okay, well, this is kind of this is like, I haven't heard from you, you know, kind of what you were saying where it was just like, you know, you can check in on me, you know, like, you know, I think personalizing the experience, you know, you want to make sure that like everybody feels seen and heard and that like whether you are coaching one or like 200 people you should know like everybody like by their name and their story or whatever, you know what I mean? So like, probably not by their name, I'm horrible at names. I remember like random 

Josh: defacing the story. That's what's important.

Brittni: So I think it's just, you know, so I think that's like super important that just like the experience, like, how did you you make them feel, you know, like, do they feel like they were seen and heard and and, you know, maybe it's different for men and women, I don't know, is it?

Josh: No, I would I would 100% agree. I don't think that's a gender specific thing. The truth of it is we all want to be taken care of. It's a status thing, right? Well, we go to a $50 hotel, we're expecting a five-star treatment no matter what, right? Yeah and when and I'll react. It's like, well, you paid 50 bucks. It's not gonna be a concierge service hotel right? But yes so so that's, I would say, yes, it is. It isn't gender specific and I agree with you 100%. We had a, we hired somebody some systems for us a while back and one of the things that they told me was like, Well, what's your reward system for your clients? I remember going, that's a weird, that just sounds weird. It's like, they're dogs, like, how do we treat them? Yes, have a reward system for them but they're like, well, when a client hits a milestone, send them a gift. Yeah, they're already paying you so much money, just a lot of into your budget, or increase your prices, and then a lot of into your budget and I remember thinking, this is brilliant, I can't even imagine like, for myself, if I hit a milestone, like just say, like, I got my first leader, I got my first sale from their service. If they were to send me, you know, some really cool award or something, you know, that would make me feel really good. Yeah, you know, what, I made a good decision, it reaffirms their decision to buy with you so I love it, your whole customer experience thing, it touches a nerve, because we're focusing on right now.

Brittni: And don't you think like, marketing is really like, it's becoming memorable, you know, and that's why I'm constantly pushing with my clients, like, you know, like, repurpose content, like, you know, get on, don't be on a million platforms, but like, get on a platform and like, repurpose that content, you know, like, in your email marketing on different platforms, because people might not need your service right now but when they do, like, are they going to remember you? Are they going to remember to refer you like becoming memorable and I really think it's like that experience that really makes you like, memorable, you know, those little things?

Josh: Wow, yeah, that's brilliant are you memorable, and that's the word I think we should be thinking about, especially in the agency world and as coaches, right, it's become so commonplace to be a coach or an agency and it feels hard to stand out and I hear that over and over again, a lot. It's hard to stand out from this but what you're saying is, that's the difference, the difference, right and if you ask any entrepreneur, if you ask them, what's your differentiating factor, right? They'll always say, we care more. That's like one of the things we care more Oh, and we do this, this extra thing but you don't care more by feeling you care more by actions and if you show them and you reward them, and you like you said, they come in, they just feel so welcome and accepted and they're part of that family and you have that relationship with them, they're going to stay forever so I love that. 

Brittni: What is your what is your different? What did you say? How did you?

Josh: the differentiating factor?

Brittni: I always say like, what's your superpower but like, Yeah, let's go with that, what is yours?

Josh: Ours is really making you legacy based. It's literally we're making you ridiculously visible and because people, people in the content creator space, I love that you asked us this, people in the content creator space, it's like, oh, we have a content strategy for you, but like, people don't care about that, we're here to make you famous. That's what we're here to, do you know, how wanna make your top podcaster? so we're trying to make our differentiating factor be, have a bunch of little ones like, like sending them gifts and we're actually in a process right now of training somebody, their entire role is going to be making sure the client feels welcome and they're going to be saying gifts and like personalized gifts, you know, like we're allotting a big part of our budget, raising our prices and everything so we can make sure to be providing that, that good of a service, so love that, love that question. So, Brittni, you mentioned you're a type A personality. Now, I should know this on the DISC profile. Is that a DI?

Brittni: Oh, I don't know, I don't know that just profile. I'm very like analytical. I'm very like, um, so I like I did photography for years, and I had to work harder the creative part, but the business part comes naturally because I my dad's an engineer, like I think

Josh: like you're in DC, I think is what it is. 

Brittni: Yeah, I don’t know that one. 

Josh: you're crazy. You're a crazy good driver, because you're like, get it done, but you're also hyper analytical so you my problem is I'm a DI so I'm like, I'm big driver, but I'm like, hey, somebody clean up my mess, I'm gonna make all this chaos, you make it work, right?

Brittni: I'm very organized very or I like I do spreadsheets for like a hobby, and a pastime. Like, let's just make a spreadsheet for this so

Josh: what's weird is I actually really enjoy that too but it's not my personality type, I don't know how that worked out but maybe schooling did that to me, brilliant so the reason I asked that is a lot of the people who listen to the show consider themselves introverts, right and I would actually consider you from what I know of you in the past hour that we've known each other, that you are pretty extroverted, right? You're, you're totally fine being out there and what I like to call like the dancing monkey for your company, right? That's what I am, how would you how would you recommend for somebody who's more introverted, to incorporate systems that don't put them into a box, getting them away from the people role?

Brittni: Yeah, well, I think you have to focus on like, what you're good at, like, what are your strengths, you know, and, and I teach this all the time, like, what works for me is not going to work for everybody else, because I am extroverted, I told you this before we started recording said, Oh, I was networking before I even realized, like, it was a thing, like, I just am a very, like, curious, inquisitive person, I asked a lot of questions, you know and so I think you have to, like, you know, focus on what you're good at, you know, like, I always say, like, I can teach you every single thing that I know how to do that has made me successful but that doesn't mean that it's going to work for me, you know, somebody who's introverted might be a really great writer and they spend a lot of time on like, email marketing, or writing blogs, or, you know, something like that so you have to, like, focus on your strengths and I always say, like, here's point A and point B, there's like, so many different ways to get there, and, you know, we we see all these like, influencers or whatever, and they're doing it this way and we think we have to do it that way to have the success and that's not true, it's really not like everybody is different. So find what, find what you want to do and be committed, be committed to what you decide that like, Hey, I'm gonna do, like, I want to work on SEO, I'm a blogger, I don't want to be on like social media, like commit and be consistent, and just stay in your lane and focus on what you're good at.

Josh: Yeah, that's brilliant. You know, what's funny to me is that a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs feel like they, in order to be an entrepreneur, like you said, or an influence, or whatever you want to call it, is they feel like they have to be the Russell Brunson, the Gary Vaynerchuk, the front, the flagship person at the front of their company but it's been interesting to watch that in our day and age as you can actually come in as that introvert type person who's maybe way more systems oriented, doesn't care to do any marketing and all you have to do is find somebody who is a visionary likes to be in front of people and just partner and what's interesting is you're both still guiding the company's direction and you can still have 100%, saying what's going on, but it's putting you in a position of strength instead of into your weak areas and I know for me, that would have helped me speed up a lot in the beginning is knowing oh, I need to partner with somebody who's very good at systems but who is also a driver who wants to keep those systems moving. So yeah, I love where you're going with that so I want to ask you this, Brittni, we are coming up to the end here so the first thing I want to ask you is, if you could give one actionable step to our audience, something they could go apply right now after this call would that be?

Brittni: So one of my favorite like, mantras, if you will, is automate delegate and eliminate, so something is just look at, like your business and where are you getting an ROI, where are you getting return on investment, you know, are you, you know, are you spending like, five hours on social media, but you're not getting clients from there and if that's the case, like eliminate that, and and, you know, find ways that you can automate things that are a distraction to you, and then delegate that kind of just like, touching on what you just were just kind of talking about is like, if like, delegate your weaknesses, you know, I, I do think it's important to like, have a knowledge and understanding of every aspect of your business, but understand it, and then if you don't want to do it, and you're not good at it, delegate it but I think you have to have a knowledge in order to be a good manager because I mean, I'm sure you've seen this a million times, like, I know, you did Facebook ads, but it's like if people don't like how many times are we hiring people who really don't know what they're doing and so I do think you have to have Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent, but like, 

Josh: that's good, that's good. 

Brittni: But no, like, have a good habit knowledge of like, all of the parts of your business and then if you don't, if you're not getting a return on investment, like you delegate that, you know, so that's probably like, my, those are my words of wisdom for an entrepreneur,

Josh: why and I love it and I want to highlight one point in there, which is eliminate it, that's the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur is to look at something and hand it off to delegate and eliminate it and I know for me, right, I actually really genuinely enjoy editing podcasts and creating content these things, I'm not really an artist, but for some reason that stuff just makes sense to me but I recently hired a coach called Gordon and he was the first call, he's like, Josh, I never want you to touch anything fulfillment related I don't even want you involved in the fulfillment process of your business ever again, by the end of the week, I need you out of the fulfillment and I remember just like being floored going on, but it's so hard to like hand that off to somebody and just hope that everything gets done and everything and there were some some hiccups, but it's actually helped a lot to have that fulfillment completely out of my hands and, and I know that you almost need somebody like whip you to get you to not do things. 

Brittni: I think, yeah, and I think it's hard because when you're an entrepreneur, I think like, it's your baby, like, No, I don't care, you can hire the most amazing people, but like, nobody loves it the way that you do, nobody cares and so that's definitely like a struggle of mine. Like I'm a control freak, like, I want it done and I want to generate and like, you know, I've had to like let go of some things that aren't like they're not helping me, like progress are not helping me scale and grow but I wanted done a certain way and I've had to let go of some of that control. You know, is that is a hard one.

Josh: Yeah, it's it's letting go, I could rant on that for days, but it's definitely difficult so, where Brittany, where do you actually post the most, do you blog? Do you hang out on Facebook, Instagram or your podcast? Or where do you hang out?

Brittni: So I would say Instagram is probably my jam where I like I post on there and then I repurpose. Oh, that's another tip, repurpose that. That's that's YouTube. 

Josh: That's our business guys. She's preaching for us. 

Brittni: Yes, that is Josh. That is Josh but so I would say like Instagram, but I also like I don't spend a ton of time on there. You know, I'm big on like, Mondays are content creation day, I do all my content creation on Monday, it's scheduled one and done and then I engage and use social media as like a place to socialize and network, but I would say like Instagram is probably my jam. If I had to pick one. It would be Instagram.

Josh: I love that. So what's your handle? Where can people access that?

Brittni: brittni.schroeder, brittni.schroeder, so I'm the oldest Brittni that I have ever met, I think how old I am I'm 44 I have to think

Josh: you're the namesake of Britney, you're like oh, everyone names after me.

Brittni: Yeah, I always say like Britney Spears but better way better.

Josh: And I have all my hair. She says yeah. Sorry, Britney, if you're listening to this, you know? Yeah. Love that. Okay, so I want to ask you one final question then and before I do that, actually, everybody, make sure you go check out bittnischroeder.com. That's where you can get in communication with Brittni at any time so Brittni, if you could give us one final parting piece of guidance, what would it be?

Brittni: No. Okay, this is the part where you said I was going to be uncomfortable or is there something more?

Josh: This is the most uncomfortable part of the whole interview?

Brittni: Gosh, I feel like I gave my good stuff with automate, delegate and eliminate, okay, so 

Josh: I'm gonna rephrase that question for you. 

Brittni: Yeah, okay 

Josh: so I'm gonna ask you this, if you were on your deathbed, and you had an entrepreneur sitting there, what would you tell them?

Brittni: What would I tell them? I would tell them to, well, like aside from systems and automations, I would say like, be consistent, learn how to fail and like, like, get good in your mind, like mindset is like, it's huge. You know, if you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will.