679 – Get people to show up: Tom interviews Jonathan Zacks

Episode 679 – Jonathan Zacks
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, is Tom here with episode 679 Screw the Commute Podcast. I'm here with Jonathan Zacks, and Jonathan has figured out a way to make people show up or get up way higher. Percentage of people showing up when they have an appointment with you. And that can mean a lot of money, a lot of money to to most of you out there. So so we'll bring him on in a minute. I hope you didn't miss episode 678. That was a recap of my first 28 days on tech talk, and so far I have not been kidnapped and put into child slavery. I don't think they want me because I eat too much. I don't know. As far as I know, I haven't received any identity theft because being on TikTok. So. So anyway, I'm going to take advantage of it the best I can before they get me. And there's still a lot to learn. I'm not claiming to be an expert. I'm six weeks into it with two weeks of study and about four weeks. But I did have just this second before I came on here, just one of the videos. And remember I'm total beginner, doesn't count on my big email list. Nothing. And just one of the videos went viral. It's so far it's 40,000 views. So that's pretty cool for coming out of nothing. All right. So when you want to reach it back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 678. All right. I want to thank the folks. We just started a Patreon to help fund my scholarship program for persons with disabilities.

[00:02:02] And other than the Patreon fees, I'm not taking any money for myself. It's all going to the scholarship fund. And we have three people in the program, two of which are blind and shooting better videos than I do. So. So check that out. screwthecommute.com/patreon and then make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. I mean, this we actually estimated at one time as geez, it was seven and one half million. Now it's about 8 million keystrokes. That saved me with just one of the tips in this automation book. It's how I take care of customers and prospects Lightning fast without pulling my hair out. So check it out that you can grab a copy of that. By the way, we sell it for 27 bucks. That's screwthecommute.com/automatefree and you get a copy just for listening to the show. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app. Put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:03:06] All right. Let's get to the main event. Jonathan Zacks is on a mission to decimate no show appointments. After running an appointment based business for a decade, he co-founded Go Reminders, which increases business revenue and cuts wasted staff time with automated appointment reminders and online booking. Now Jonathan runs growth and marketing for go reminders and loves helping small businesses with automation and communication automation. We love it. Jonathan So are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:03:42] I'm ready, man. I've never been more ready.

[00:03:44] All right. Yeah, we had you booked a while back and somehow something snuck up on you and just knock you down for a little bit with that crazy COVID. But we got you back finally.

[00:03:55] Yeah, I'm happy to be here.

[00:03:56] Yeah. So now, one thing I got to ask you, though, it seems like you're the CEO of like ten different companies. I looked on LinkedIn. You're in charge of like the whole New York State, right?

[00:04:09] Exactly. Yeah. My LinkedIn is sort of an accumulation of through the years. I have you know, I've never had a job for since I graduated college. I've never had a job for another company. I always started my own businesses. And so so I have never had a need to really clean up my LinkedIn profile for a job application, knock on wood. And so it sort of just accumulates things. So some of those positions are, are positions that that are my one of my companies sort of fills as an outsourced I.T company and like cto and i.t director roles at some at a client and others are for my services business. It has sort of two brands so that's two companies and go reminders there and, and yeah, various things that have started throughout the years.

[00:05:01] But so how do you split up your day between all those obligations.

[00:05:05] I well now I. Really just have these two companies and I have some other startups that I've invested in. And so the majority goes of my time, goes to running my companies and, and yeah, a little bit time to investing.

[00:05:19] Yeah. Okay. So how did this idea for go reminders come about because you know point me in my particular case a lot of times I'm happy when they don't show buts but it does mean a lot of potential money down the drain for a lot of businesses. But how did you come up with the idea?

[00:05:38] Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, the no shows are a tricky subject and can be a weird one to pinpoint of how much time is wasted and and revenue is lost due to no shows. I myself been running a services business for the year many years, had that experience of feeling like, oh man, I get to eat lunch early or I get to eat lunch because I plan so many client visits today that one of them, you know, didn't isn't there or just canceled last minute. And now I have to eat lunch. And the days when I don't get to eat lunch, it was lame. And so no shows where this weird thing where I let my clients plan my lunch by, you know, whether or not they'd show up and not really realize how it what a tax that takes on myself. And also you know some days be multiple no shows and I could have been ending my days earlier I could have been scheduling other clients into those slots. And so it's just a weird thing because in in it can it can have this sort of freeing effect when the moment when someone doesn't show up, ooh, I have an extra hour, but it's not actually that way. It's like you just lost time and money. That's.

[00:06:56] That's the way it is for me, because it could be a whole load of money if they did show up.

[00:07:00] Right? Exactly. So, So yeah, so there's there's this, this weird psychology around it. And so I had personally experienced that and, and my, you know, I, I was trying to build a few different types of software platforms, some with friends, some with the friend that I ended up founding go reminders with, some with other friends and go Runners is the one that that took off. And the the idea came because my co founder, my friend at the time, Justin, got a call a week after he had missed an appointment that was scheduled a year earlier. So he had had an eye procedure done at an I hospital a year earlier, and there was a checkup a year later that he apparently had scheduled and he missed it. He didn't have it in his calendar. Got a call a week later saying, hi, you missed your appointment. Would you like to reschedule? And it was just mind boggling to him that he would that, you know, why wouldn't they just call beforehand or text or email? Because that is the way to to remind people he he absolutely would have been there if they had just emailed him.

[00:08:04] But yeah, but they can say, you know, we've got another opening in 2035.

[00:08:09] Exactly. And I don't even know if he rescheduled them. He might have said, Oh, you know what, like I'll just go. It was in a different city. Like he he I think he might have ended up rescheduling for different ones. They lost that entire revenue from him. And so we got to building something that, you know, an MVP minimum viable product that could solve this problem for businesses that had no shows to avoid without the involvement of someone manually picking up a phone and calling and B, doing it ahead of time in an automated fashion that would dramatically that that we didn't know at the time how dramatic it would be. But from the data from our customers, it's just like it's crazy how much time is saved and how much revenue is is recovered essentially by having an automated scheduling reminder system.

[00:09:02] All right. Now, I want to ask you a basic question. What's the difference with your system and just the basic sequential autoresponder?

[00:09:13] So a sequential order. So our system basically. So what would be a sequential order responder?

[00:09:20] Well, I mean, it's just a basic yeah, I mean, basic a Webber kind of thing that, you know, put them in and then it a year later it sends them an email.

[00:09:29] Right, Right. Totally. So I mean, it has aspects of that, but our system is built for businesses that have appointments scheduled. And so it's a calendar system. It's a booking system. If if they want to give clients or patients the option to book their own appointments, they can do that. A lot of our users don't do that, but there is a calendar system in place that they can do all sorts of things repeating if it's a weekly appointment, if it's a monthly appointment, if they can set up messages, several messages to go beforehand, people can. There's all sorts of functionality that's built in for scheduling.

[00:10:06] Or more far more sophisticated than just basic auto responder.

[00:10:10] Exactly. There's just a checkbox that's automatically enabled to ask for confirmation, and it's a button and an email reminder, click, confirm or in a text it says reply to confirm and that's it. People just reply to confirm it, updates it in the calendar and go reminders. Yeah.

[00:10:25] So are those the two major ways, email and text?

[00:10:29] Yeah. So we do email and text reminders. We do not do voice reminders, which is something we considered early on, but it just didn't seem to be an urgent need for it. And there were enough awkward blocks to it to either having people record them or have computer voice one that it just didn't seem to make sense. And it turns out now that I really recommend people not do phone call reminders in most situations because it trains people to not pick up your call. It trains people to see your call and say, Oh, they're probably just reminding me I'll let it go to voicemail. And that's not what you want to do. Like when you call someone you want them to pick up. And so if you have to cancel, if you really need to reach them for for a sales call, like you want them to actually pick up, not just to think that, oh, it's probably just a reminder I can let it go to voicemail.

[00:11:22] I never pick up or anything anymore. I mean, it's all it's all day long as robo calls.

[00:11:26] All day long.

[00:11:28] Yeah. So. Yeah. So it's far more sophisticated than that. So the base, the basic two ways are email and text. Now what happens, you know, let's say in that guy with a year, I mean the statistics show that like people, you know, in a year, 35% of the people on your list are going to change their email. So so what happens if it bounces?

[00:11:52] If it bounces, you get a notification saying that either if first of all, definitely much less likely that they'll change their phone number. And so as long as they are someone who wants to receive text reminders, they will still likely have that phone number. You know, the so that's the main thing. But you'll get a notification if it isn't delivered via text or email, the business will get a notification.

[00:12:15] So they don't have to go into a bounce manager. They'll actually get a notification.

[00:12:19] Exactly. Yeah. The business will. And it's so low in this in these situations. These are people who the businesses are have a relationship with already. And so it's it's extremely it's usually very unlikely that someone gives them a fake number or email address. It's usually if there's a mistake, there's a typo. Right. And so those are pretty low. And then they get a notification. They check with the person whether it's know, oh, it's the wrong number, they update the number and that's that.

[00:12:47] Now, I understand, is a major client for your tattoo artist.

[00:12:53] Yes. Yes. We have a lot of tattoo artists using our product. Yeah. The largest tattoo studio in New Jersey. Actually, I just went to the grand opening of that and they are a customer of ours.

[00:13:03] So tell us how it works. Now. Is this a software as a service? They they log on to something or is it the Mac?

[00:13:10] Basically, it's software as a service it we have a native iPhone app and Android app and and it works on any web browser so any computer Mac PC you log in and and you're using the software you know we crafted it to be extremely easy to use and so the within 30 seconds you can be using it and entering appointments and the default settings have a specific schedule that we've identified to be pretty good for most businesses. But then if you're like, No, you know what? I want my reminders to go out on a few days earlier or this or that. You can go in and customize all those settings and take advantage of all the power of the customizations. However, if you're just, you know, I just want people to be reminded, you just sign up and you start entering appointments and your clients and customers start getting automatic reminders. All right.

[00:14:04] But then didn't you say that there's a calendar function where the customer can set appointments?

[00:14:10] So yeah, so. If if they want their clients to book appointments, then you just enable booking and you get a link and you send that. If you can upload your logo as a business and set your business hours and do a bunch of other stuff, anything that you need to make your booking page work for your business. But yeah, and then you can we have text blasts and email blasts, so you could do an announcement to everyone. Hey, we have a new booking system. Here's the booking link. You can do all that within go reminders or let people know separately. You can print out a QR code, post it on your on your door or at your receptionist table so people can book. Yeah.

[00:14:51] So now how much can you customize the the page the customer sees? I mean, can you put ads on it for other stuff or is it just the form to the calendar?

[00:15:02] It's just the form. It's just the form. You can you can customize. Basically the top of it is sort of a headline and then a blurb. You know, we've looked we've thought about doing more of a rich text editor where people can add links and other things. We shied away from that because we really haven't gotten requests for it. Basically, our customers are they're just they don't have they haven't really had a need for that. But it's definitely something we think about adding in the future. And depending on what our customer needs, our needs are, then then we reprioritize features based on that.

[00:15:40] If I got a hold of them, they'd have a need for it because they just don't realise they have a need for it because this is what we call a thank you page selling.

[00:15:48] And yeah, so you can customize the thank you page and you can put a link on that and you can put whatever info you want on it. It's just not necessarily like, like a designer, like a page builder, right? Yeah, You can put whatever information you want and some people do put a lot of information.

[00:16:04] Okay. Okay. They can put something on there to lead people or some other potential revenue stream.

[00:16:09] Yeah, that's.

[00:16:11] Okay. So we've got to take a brief sponsored break. When we come back, we'll ask Jonathan what a typical day looks like for him. Not business wise, but you get up early, you know, do you have a morning routine? You know, these are all entrepreneurs out here that love to hear the stories of successful business people. So so folks, about 25 years ago or so, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head and that people at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to help them with their small business online stuff. And I knew a lot of these people, you give them 50 grand up front, you'd never see him again. So I said, You know, that's not fair and it's too risky for those small business people. So I just charge an entry fee and I tied my success to your success. So for me to get my 200 grand, you had to net for me to get my 50 grand, you had to net 200 grand. Well, people love this. And 1800 plus students later, it's still going strong. It's the longest running, most unique, most successful Internet and digital marketing mentor program ever. I always triple dog dare anybody to put their program up against mine because I'm a crazy fanatic that's working day and night here, and I could have quit 22 years ago and I still doing it.

[00:17:25] So you get an immersion weekend at the Great Marketing Retreat Center. You actually live in this big estate with me for an immersion weekend. We have our TV studio, we shoot for you. It's all one on one. We do not lump you in with people more advanced or less advanced than you, so it's highly customized. Plus you get a scholarship to my school, which is the only license dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world. And you can either use it yourself for extra training or gift it to someone. People want skills. Now, even IBM and Google have knocked off the and lots of other big companies have knocked off the college degree as a requirement. They want people that can actually do something. So that's what we provide. So check it out at IMTCVA.org for the school and for me greatinternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:18:20] All right, let's get back to the main event. Jonathan Zacks is here. He's a budding entrepreneur. We love people that never had jobs. I mean, there's very few of us out there. That's why this is called Screw the commute, by the way, for you new listeners. So Jonathan, what's a typical day look like for you? Like, do you get up early? Do you have a morning routine? Do you work out? What do you eat? What's what's up with you?

[00:18:42] Let's see. What do I do? I get up and deal with my two toddlers who are two and four.

[00:18:50] There's your exercise routine right there.

[00:18:52] Yeah, exactly. It's it's like basically analogous. All the business books, I feel like out there that I've read are really applicable to managing a household of toddlers that I have no control over. And I'm trying different things to corral and all the parenting books. I'm like, Oh, this is useful for management.

[00:19:19] Well, now I don't have kids, but I understand you're not allowed to use stun guns on them. Is that true?

[00:19:25] The a new rule, the new guidelines. Yeah. So. So, yeah. So it's it's been interesting. And with all of the I mean our our daycare is currently which we love and adore is currently shut for a gas leak issue that will possibly take weeks. And so we're sort of like dealing with pods of kids at at various friend's house while that so there's never a dull moment in in our home. Yeah so it's basically getting our kids up and dressed and fed and getting ourselves up and dressed and fed and out the door and getting them to daycare and then coming home and taking a breath and sort of cleaning up some mess and getting to work. And then I work at home. I have a home office and so work here and then basically just work for for a sort of pretty much 9 to 5. And then I pick up my kids on depending on the day. My wife has certain late, late evenings at work. And so one of us picks up and and somehow we get dinner on the table and the kids to bed and are exhausted and.

[00:20:39] Never forget to pick them up. That'd be me.

[00:20:43] Like to pick them up.

[00:20:44] That'd be me.

[00:20:44] Like, I'd say, have some close calls.

[00:20:46] I know I was supposed to do something. What was that?

[00:20:49] Yeah, Yeah, exactly. I mean, there definitely been some close calls Where. Where? It's like an off day or like, my wife took my one kid out early, and I have to go pick up the other kid, and I thought she had to pick up and she picked up both of them. Yeah. No.

[00:21:04] I've been abandoned. Do those, those daycare channels start at $100 a minute? Don't they have to if you don't.

[00:21:10] Pick, it's it's a pretty flexible place. But but, but you know, it's like how much how do I really want to push on my daycare to take care of my kids longer? And like, they probably had quite a day. Yeah. Yeah. So pets. Yeah, we have two cats.

[00:21:30] Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we got dogs.

[00:21:33] So. Yeah. So I mean, that's that's pretty much my day. It's pretty structured during the week. And, you know, I've tried getting up really early. I've tried a variety of different schedules and essentially just sort of getting up just before my kids get up. If I have a chance to get ready before they're awake. Thrilling. And if not, we do what we can and, and yeah, and then work sort of normal normal hours. And then sometimes I work in the evenings, depending on what's going on, what's needed. And if anything crazy came up during the day that I, that I needed to take some time off or, and I need to catch up on some things. But, but yeah, that's pretty much I mean at this point as I've been running my businesses for about 20 years. So it's, it's I would say relatively calm and and and collected. But it was definitely years of constant fires and late nights and this and.

[00:22:29] That and yeah, yeah that's the way it is doesn't that entrepreneur. Yeah but one thing I wouldn't say about the parenting and again I'm not a parent I thought I read this somewhere maybe it was on TikTok that you can buy Benadryl by the gallon nowadays I think amazing amazing.

[00:22:48] Oh one thing I will take note of that.

[00:22:50] One of the things I forgot to ask you about is do any do a percentage of your people charge for no shows?

[00:23:02] That's a good question. So there that's definitely a strong debate. And I think it really depends on the industry. I know. So for example, in Tattoo, there's people take deposits, but it really depends on the relationship and the reason for the no shows. And I think a lot of people lean on charging for no shows and taking deposits as sorry, yeah, charge for no shows and taking deposits as a way to get rid of no shows. But I don't actually think it's that effective. And what it leads to is like when someone does no show for for a legitimate reason that could have been prevented by an automated reminder. It's like no one's happy. The business is not happy, the customer is not happy. Any goodwill from the customer to that that they're probably annoyed at themselves is now getting directed at the business because they're getting charged. And it's just like it's like they're never going to refer anyone. They might lose them as a customer for forever. Like, it's just it's, it's used. I've seen discussions about it being like, well, they don't deserve to be a customer. And it's like, are you running a business or is this a hobby? Like, it's a hobby and is your friend group? Like feel free to just not talk to that person. But if this is a business, like don't worry that you might have to remind people and don't take it personally. That's my feeling on it because you know, it's just business. It's not.

[00:24:26] Yeah, I mean, I think if I did have one installed, I would probably waive it easily, you know?

[00:24:32] Exactly. And make myself that bad. I like the idea of, like, crediting it. So like if someone gets a deposit and they legitimately can't make it, it's within the window. I think it just comes down to context. Like, does this person cancel a lot? Is this person very flaky in general? And like, the deposit really needs to like, help them understand that, like, listen, this is something of value or is it just that like they had an emergency come up within 24 hours and they let you know, 18 hours before and like they wish that they knew ahead of time, in which case it's like, let's just apply that to your for your next appointment. And it is what it is. But, you know, dealing with those shows, it's not about cutting out 100% of no shows. It's about getting it down to a level that is usually so low that it is not consequential in terms of how much time or revenue is lost. And the and also, if you are not reminding people ahead of time at the right times and saying the right thing and all that, then you're just you're just letting a lot of money and time go down the drain needlessly because it's really easy to make to to deal with no shows of people who just don't look at their calendar. If they get a text three days ahead of time and they go, Oh, crap, let me look at my calendar. They look at their calendar and they text back saying, Oh man, I can't make it that you get. You then have enough time to to fill that slot. And so once you fill, once you deal with all the no shows that are easily preventable, you're left with very few no shows that that are like last minute, no calls, no shows, things like that.

[00:26:17] All right. Now I want to be clear for everybody out there, do people use this when it's not a paid situation? Like if you go to the dentist, that's going to be a paid slot that that person that dentists lost. But what if it was a prospecting call to try to get a customer or people using it for that kind of stuff?

[00:26:39] Yeah, definitely. For for sales meetings and things like that. And they're using reminders for that for sure. And so in that case, it's really important. In those kind of cases, it's really important to make sure that your reminders communicate the value that the people will be getting at the appointments, because that's less if someone's going to the dentist, the value is quite clear, like the dentist was not selling them on, Hey, you should come in for an appointment. It's like, I don't want my teeth to fall out. Right. If you're at a sales call, like it might have been a cold call, it might be something that you're ambivalent about. So like, really communicating the value of that appointment in those reminders, like, Hey, looking forward to seeing you. Like, here's what we're going to go over by at the end of the call. Like, here's what we're going to have achieved and have that focus on the benefits and what is important to the person who's on the other end is a way to and I know that you talked I saw you talk to a bunch about this in in your book on showing up to webinars really on the landing page. It's the same thing with reminders, just like reiterating in the reminder, hammering home like, this is why we're doing this call, because people are busy, They might not remember, they might not have that top of mind, Top of mind, top of mind might be the price tag. And so they may be thinking, Oh, do I want to take this call? It's a lot of money. If they see a reminder that reminds them of like, Oh yeah, there's the value I'm going to get out of this service and out of this meeting. It's you have a chance of saving people who are like, Oh, yes, that's really important to them. It just wasn't top of mind.

[00:28:13] Got it. How do they check out your stuff?

[00:28:16] I go to goreminders.com and yeah we have a 30 day money back guarantee so you can use it we will know no questions asked except for why we'll ask you why you want to cancel and get a refund. But otherwise we are you know we have top rated customer support and all that and so we're happy to help you get up and running if you have any questions with any of our advanced features and and whatnot.

[00:28:46] Now, does this have any difference in pricing depending on the size of the company.

[00:28:50] The pricing is essentially based on volume of appointments. Okay. You have an entry level plan that has a limited feature, but our main middle tier, which is our most popular, has all our 95% of our features features that that most people need. And, and it just scales up based on how many appointments, right?

[00:29:10] Oh yeah. Good. So, so if you're getting that many appointments, it's that's fair.

[00:29:14] Exactly. Exactly. And so yeah, there's unlimited staff members, unlimited locations like all of the stuff that is sort of maybe this could you could have a big business if you have a bunch of staff members, but they might all be freelancers who are working a few hours a week. So we don't charge based on that. We just like. But if you have 300 appointments, you're probably able to pay more than someone with 20 appointments.

[00:29:37] You got it, Got it. And so very cool. Can could save, could make and save a lot of money for people checking this out. So thanks so much for coming on, man.

[00:29:50] Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Tom.

[00:29:52] All right so goreminders.com. You can get a 30 day free trial to check it out. And I assume there's some training there in some fashion to teach you how to use it, but it sounds like I seen some of the reviews. Seems like a really powerful thing that could help you set those appointments. All right. We'll catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.