Focus on Marketing & Tech: Balancing Technology and Human Connection

In the latest episode of #TheAmberStittShow, we dive deep into the world of marketing technology and the importance of balancing it with human connection. 

Our special guest, Scott Nelson-Archer, and Amber's business partner bring his expertise to the table, providing valuable insights and tips for navigating this ever-evolving landscape. 

Here are 3 key takeaways from our conversation:
1️⃣ Stay informed: Even if you're not a tech enthusiast, it's crucial to be aware of the latest advancements in marketing technology. Understanding the possibilities and limitations of these tools can help you make informed decisions for your personal and business life.

2️⃣ Leverage your team's expertise: Don't try to be a one-person show when it comes to technology. Lean on your team members who have a knack for it and regularly seek their input on software or hardware that can improve efficiency. Delegating technology-related tasks to interested team members can free up your time for other important aspects of business management.
3️⃣ Balance is key: While technology offers numerous benefits, it's essential to strike a balance between technology and other aspects of your business. Consider factors like staffing, financial planning, and human connection. Remember, the human element will always be necessary in business, regardless of how technology trends may change.

Thank you for joining to learn the importance of balancing technology and human connection in marketing. 🎧 

Contact MD Disability Quotes for more information here:
www.MDDisabilityQuotes.com
Scott Directly: 281-770-8080
Amber Directly: 480-707-2771
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#MarketingTech #BusinessManagement #Innovation #YourFutureOurFocus #FocusonMarketing #PathwaysofPeakPerformance #DisabilityInsurance #LifeInsurance

Transcript

Amber Stitt  00:08

Welcome back to The Amber Stitt Show. We have Scott Nelson-Archer with us today. Welcome back, Scott, we're going to talk about marketing and technology today, which is a topic that I bring into the five steps because we need to be aware of what's happening around us. Even if we don't love all the technology that's occurring, we have to pay attention to it. So welcome back, and we're gonna unpack a little bit about the efficiency behind technology and marketing that we utilize with ourselves and our team. So, thanks for being here.

Scott Nelson-Archer  00:34

The input, I'm gonna give you may be minimal, at best.

Amber Stitt  00:37

I knew that this was not going to be your favorite segment. But no, I mean, it is because you've dabbled, you try things, it might feel more painful but going back to focusing on talents, I mean, some people do not want to get in the weeds with the details on this stuff. And then some people love it, aligning the people that can help you delegate this to, or buying an app that can be that for you, can really be helpful. But we do need to innovate, we do not need to shut our eyes to the things that are happening. And we're in an industry that's a little antiquated, would you agree?

Scott Nelson-Archer  01:07

It's about 20 years behind.

Amber Stitt  01:09

So, we can DocuSign things. But really, I'm talking about when I go out, and we meet leaders in our industry, too, they basically say, "I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to establish this or that, not for me." So that's okay, if your team can be that for you. Right? So, you've done that over the years, what do you need? Right? You ask your team?

Scott Nelson-Archer  01:30

Right. Well, that's exactly right. You know, technology is not my strength. It's not, and it's not an interest of mine. And so, you know, that puts me at a disadvantage for progression. And I understand that. So, what I try to look at and how I try to handle things, I go to my team and ask them, you know, once a quarter, "Is there anything or is there software or hardware that would make your life better? Would it make life easier?" And at the end of the day, I try to sit back and do you know, an economic balance. So, you know, as an example, you know, if we look and go to utilizing electronic policies instead of paper policies, you know, if I can electronically send an application, or a policy to somebody, how much time does that save? Yeah, I'm not creating a FedEx label. I'm not putting it in a FedEx. I'm not driving over the FedEx.

Amber Stitt  02:18

It's more secure, too, because it's not sitting in the mailbox. 

Scott Nelson-Archer  02:20

Exactly, and you know, I'm not chasing down a client to say, "Hey, did you get your policy that was sent FedEx?" So, you start shaving off minutes here and there. And minutes, add up to hours and hours add up to real wages. And so, if we can sit back and figure out how to create something that makes it more efficient, then you know, that's a time saver, which is also an economic saver. And you know, a lot of the folks in the office, they're really good at trying to figure out what it is they need, and what's going to benefit their job and make their job to be done quicker. That's always a good thing, in my opinion.

Amber Stitt  02:52

Well, we joke about you not wanting to really dabble technology, but nobody would know that. So, I want to bring that up. Because we do things in business. And for the people, whether it's team, family, basically, you're delegating it out, nobody on the other side of the business would know that because you're still making it happen and managing that. And so, if it's not for you, don't make it be your thing. But you need to find someone that can help you leverage that and be opposite of you, right?

Scott Nelson-Archer  03:17

Oh, absolutely. I mean, because the folks that are truly interested in the tech side and improving that aspect of our business, they are also not really the ones that are probably wanting to look at, you know, spreadsheets, and they're probably not the ones to look at balancing accounts and projecting, you know, for marketing dollars, and, you know, about staffing and things of that nature. So, you know, everybody's got their strengths. And, you know, like we talked about prior segments about building a puzzle, right? It's getting things to fit in there correctly. And, you know, you want people to be complimentary. If everybody's got the same skills, and you know, they might still have a rotary phone.

Amber Stitt  03:54

Yeah, yes, you might. No, you know, solopreneurs can always have that luxury. But what I found, I mean, you didn't always have a big team -- now you do. Didn't always have partners -- now you have  strategic partners. The thing I want to say to the audience is if you're going through the grind of doing all things, and it's just feels like a nightmare. Sometimes what you're doing is you're learning how things work. So, when you are hiring, when you are building teams, something breaks, you can come in, or it's the weekend, they're not there, how are you going to handle that? So, the balance is there to teach. Then you can also know it's supposed to work like this for the most part, then it can also help you oversee teams making sure things are running efficiently, but it keeps you so we are understanding it enough. The big thing right now is AI and ChatGPT and is it going to take over certain jobs and I don't see you going in a deep dive on let's study all the ways about AI, but you know it exists. You know that people are utilizing it for certain things to be more efficient, but ultimately it is just having that awareness and understanding and having communication I think is going to be one of those timeless things like personal development, leadership, working with people, helping people. We have marketing technology trends that are going to change. But ultimately, that foundation of you is always going to be something of a currency that you never know what the dollar could do in the future, but the human element is always going to be necessary.

Scott Nelson-Archer  05:11

I believe that 100%, you're not gonna be able to replace all aspects of it, you know, there's gonna be some things that people want to maintain in a more electronic manner, written manner, so that there's no mistaking what is meant, you know, because it's written. And so, I get that, but I also think there's a lot of people that are still looking for advice and looking for conversation to really understand because you can get so much more done verbally than electronically, in my opinion, because, you know, people can understand it. And if they don't, you can correct that conversation on the fly, you know, come at trying to answer a question a couple different ways versus a singular way. But yeah, I think, you know, having a team of people that know how to do different things is just really critical. If you don't, it's hard to move forward if you just kind of continue to do the same thing.

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Amber Stitt  07:14

So, as we move down the five steps, we are talking about the fourth step, which is understanding marketing technology. Innovating. So, we're talking about knowing who you are and how you're going to manage your personal life or maybe in business. And then we talk about how we're handling our money, putting dollars in. I know you test certain things, we spend some money and we don't get the metric we want, but we have to try it. So, we do a little bit of that. And we can do that. Because again, we manage our money in a way that allows us that freedom to not feel the trials...

Scott Nelson-Archer  07:41

Yeah, it's experimental marketing dollars is what it comes down to.

Amber Stitt  07:43

The tech fund, if you will. And then we roll into risk management. I mean, we have to innovate and see how do we stay more secure with technology, and really looking at all the avenues but knowing who your client is, and what kind of technology, or meeting style that they want. There are all types of ways to receive information, not everyone's going to watch this video, they might listen, they might want to read something, you have to hit all aspects now, which is cool, because we have technology that can help us. But we know that with our physicians being really busy, it might be a 30-minute meeting, it might not be longer than that, we have to be so efficient and educate and communicate in a way that works for them. All of this has been able to help us put any personality type, depending on their specialty, which has been really great. We've been able to leverage that.

Scott Nelson-Archer  08:29

Absolutely. Well, and you mentioned 30 minutes, gosh, I probably don't have a 30-minute meeting once a week, most of them are five to seven because they're in between rooms or, you know, in between cases. And it may end up needing two or three of those calls in order to get a full understanding what somebody needs, of what they want and how to build a contract and to meet what their expectations are but, you know, that's our job is to try to figure out how to understand what somebody needs. How to build it to meet those expectations, and then how to relay that information to a client that this was what you said you wanted. This is built with these characteristics.

Amber Stitt  09:05

So, automation is pretty trendy, obviously, for everybody. We want things quick and fast. We're busy. Let's talk a little bit about why "accelerated", "algorithm base", all these buzzwords about... gosh, over a decade ago is like portfolios of algorithms are gonna be all these things. They are so exciting, but it does sometimes hurt our outcomes of our insurance offers. And so, if we're just always going automated clicking on a website, this is great. You might be missing an element, you might be actually spending more, they're not going to advertise, "Oh, by the way, your cholesterol is high, you might get this rate." Oh no, they're going to show you the best rate for everybody and get to the end of the process. And then oh, so if you can work with teams that understand we're going to use technology, we're going to talk to you, we're gonna figure out what's your story so you're not winding up building something out, or taking that time and then being upset at the end. We can help with the relationships we've established to find the solution. So, let's talk a little bit about the automation. It's not always a good thing.

Scott Nelson-Archer  10:01

It certainly is not. It can actually come back and haunt you. But you know, customers and clients don't know what they don't understand. That my health is perfect. My height, weight body ratios are perfect, my BMI is perfect, but you happen to have a 65,000 a year resident job, or fellowship job, and you have $300,000 in consumer debt being a medical student loan and that, in and of itself, is outside of the rigid structure of this automated underwriting. So, you look risky, because you spend too much money, because they consider that to look like same as credit card debt, or auto debt. And there's no way you can actually support that on that income. And the systems don't have the ability to realize, "Oh, you're a resident force and a PGY4 or something," you know, it happens. So, there's a reason for that, you know, change your, you know, income from 60 to 300, or 400, or 500. And this is going to become something that's very affordable to manage, not, you know, an anchor that you're trying to swim with. And that's what it looks like in the structure of an automated process.

Amber Stitt  11:00

A form is not going to understand that. And in the last few years, and we've seen a lot of the carriers, insurance companies are coming up with a time, so that's good. There are benefits there. But there's been a lot of house purchases, even that alone can make you look risky. So, it's like, "Wait! I thought we we're talking about health here."

Scott Nelson-Archer  11:21

Right. But it's not. That's the reason why they asked you, you know, what your applications are? What are you doing? So, you know, health applications, economics, driving behavior, right? I mean, it's all that little stuff. You don't really think about what's life insurance gonna cost or, you know, it's all part of the makeup of who you are, and what the risk is to the insurance company. You know, somebody's got high risk on income out of whack with the debt service, there's some tendencies that happen and mortality changes on those. It just does. 

Amber Stitt  11:49

We have a lot of doctors that don't want to give blood. Isn't that funny?

Scott Nelson-Archer  11:52

Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, well, like I always say, you know, doctors are scared of needles, attorneys die without wills, plumbers have an outhouse, the yardman has the weeds. It just is, what it is.

Amber Stitt  12:03

If we want the best for yourself, you're gonna rate lock something in, let's do it right from the beginning. So, that's really the benefit that we've seen if we're going to apply marketing and technology into, "Hey, by the way, let's look at it from the top down. What do you have going on? How old are you? Are their purchases of the debt there?" So, we can help you translate that to the carrier, sometimes as a letter rewrite that can explain the situation. "I don't make much money, but I have a lot of dependents." So, we have to explain it. So, working with a team, if you don't have that team, that independent thinking can certainly help you there. But always pay attention to that. Because just moving too fast in life, sometimes we got to stop and just see what else can be out there for us.

Scott Nelson-Archer  12:41

Yeah, and you need to understand what the pros and cons are. And I don't think that's always well thought through. And I don't think it's well explained. You know, just slamming people through a process, you know, the output may not be ideal. And so, ...

Amber Stitt  12:56

Time is wasted. 

Scott Nelson-Archer  12:57

Yeah, to learn, get five minutes of a consultation. And I think you can be surprised that, you know, maybe there's a better process for you, because you are specific to you, you know, it's not general, across everybody. So, you want to really take some time, especially in the resident fellowship market, because the biggest thing I always see is the economic ratios are out of whack, but it's because of what the future is, not what the present is.

Amber Stitt  13:22

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, he can't translate that into some forms. So, thanks for sharing that. And hopefully, that's helpful to the audience that's considering looking at life a little bit differently, but keep as healthy and be as well as possible, but we got to factor in those financials, too. All right. So, that'll wrap up today's episode. Thank you so much.

Scott Nelson-Archer  13:40

Great. Thanks.

Closing Outro  13:43

Thank you for joining us on today's episode of The Amber Stitt Show. For more information about the podcasts, books, articles, and more, please visit me at AmberStitt.com. Until next week, enjoy your journey at home, and at work. Thank you for listening!