E029 Nathalie Doremieux: Online Program Strategist

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:07
Once upon a time, there were millions of businesses struggling. Every day they wasted time, effort and energy on repetitive tasks that added no value. One day, the Better Automation podcast by PROCESIO came to help them find a way. Because of this, these businesses save time, reduce costs, innovate, and make better decisions because of that these businesses grow, scale, and use human creativity to change this world. Hello, my name is Aziz, and I'm your host at Better Automation podcast by PROCESIO where I interview the world's top experts and share their very best ideas on how to improve automation in your business, processes. And life. My guest today is Nathalie Doremieux. Nathalie has 16 years of experience helping heart centered entrepreneurs leverage the power of technology and automation to scale businesses online. Nathalie and her husband are the founders of the membership lab where they help coaches, teachers and founders turn their vision into a scalable and engaging online platform. Nathalie, how are you today?

Nathalie Doremieux 1:35
I'm doing great, thank you so much for having me Aziz

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 1:38
It's my pleasure. It's my honor. It's my privilege. And I'm excited to think in this way. I have a question. One heart centered entrepreneurs, coaches consultants come to you. What is the thing that when it comes to scaling to automation, or anything like that, that they seem to either struggle with or it's something they didn't know is possible. And often, it's an eye opening moment when you tell them about it,

Nathalie Doremieux 2:08
I would say that the first thing that when people come to me about scaling, and automating is realizing that in order to automate and to scale, you have to have processes in place. So some people might think that it's just a matter of okay, just let's pick a tool. And then, you know, the tool will do the thing. But the thing is, you need to have the process the systems defined where you want to automate. And sometimes they are like, they really wait until they are like so overloaded with with work or like they they're like, Okay, now I have to start to delegate this, automate this, and now they want to automate everything. So there is an order of things where you want to automate, because you really need to know your process before you can automate that process.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 3:02
I love that. And if I understood you correctly, somehow these heart centered entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants are being chaotic. They're just doing things because of reactivity because of urgency because of habit, without clarity on what is the process, what is useful, what is a waste, and all that. And suddenly, when they're so overwhelmed that they cannot keep doing it any longer. They want to automate and delegate everything at once. And that's even more overwhelming and impossible. And therefore, the right way, is to both understand your processes and codify them, as well as go for the low hanging fruits or begin with what you hate or begin with what is most repetitive, or whatever it is. And therefore, you don't just go for everything, because that's an infinite project that will mess up like that will get messy, and you will have no control. Did I understand Correct?

Nathalie Doremieux 4:02
Yeah, that's exactly that. It's real. So this idea that they really don't know what can be automated. So sometimes they have this idea that they could automate something. And and when you start to have the conversation, and I hear, it depends, well, it depends. It's very hard to automate. Right? So and on the other end, there are other things that could be easier to automate, and they don't realize that it is. So they they know they want to automate, they just don't know, I guess what can be automated or they have this image of what they would love to have automated and sometimes that's not exactly the reality.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 4:44
Thank you. So if I understood you correctly, it relates back to not having processes, which means every time they're reinventing the process for every situation, and that's why their answer is it depends. Because I guess there is this notion or even something from a long time ago where it was said, Oh, the future is customization where every item you will buy will be unique to you or to the client. And therefore they think I have to serve each person in such a unique and individual way to go for that. But that is not feasible. Unless, like you're getting paid the whole revenue for your business to for one client, or whatever it is that you can dedicate everything for it, or at the same time, like you said, they might not know what can be automated, and therefore, to them. It's an unknown, and they're trying to automate what is harder to automate, because they don't have procedures for it, and neglecting what could be easy to automate. And it's a low hanging fruit. And therefore, imagine one of those ideal clients is watching right now. And they're like, I'm not sure what you mean, and what can be automated that I'm not aware of right now. Can you give some examples or things that to give ideas to someone? You think, wow, I didn't know, I could automate that that makes so much sense.

Nathalie Doremieux 6:08
Sure. So for example, so we just so you know, so we saw, we build membership sites, and that was the membership club. But we also have this other business search detail, which is basically a suite of tools for content creators to help them gain more visibility on that content. And one of the things that I want to tell these people is that automating is actually saving your time. So things you can automate. For example, like if you have a podcast, or if you have a YouTube channel, is to automatically automatically being able to have transcript generated and put on your website. And people don't realize that I know, like, we could talk also about transcription and things like that, but they are automated services. But there is also the I have to upload I have to download, I have to put it on the site. Like, there are things that can be automated, that people are not aware of, and it's going to save them a lot of time. I think saving time is a huge, a huge benefit, a huge pain that people have when it comes to scaling their business. And, you know, that's one of the benefits of the feature, why we build search, ditto is to save the content creators time. So automating these things that are done repeatedly, where there is a process that's very well known, and picking the right tools to make it happen. Right. That's, that is scaling your business.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 7:42
Thank you. That is wonderful. I love what you're speaking about. And I imagine this because humans are so complex, you know, they're creatures that are somehow irrational. One of your entrepreneurs are coaches and consultants, they want to scale. They believe in scaling, but somehow they hesitate or self sabotage because they think, the imposter syndrome situation, and I'm not good enough, maybe I'm not worthy. Or maybe I'm scared of being gay getting so much visibility. And therefore, that's a reason to perpetuate the cycle of overwhelm, because it keeps them within their comfort zone. So what do you say to that? When someone will say, what's unique about me? I'm no, like, I'm nobody special, I'm just doing my best, or they're saying, I'm unworthy. Or I'm pretending or I don't know why people like me or whatever it could be that is deep down. The thing, one, what, what is the psychological response that you get to that? And secondly, when people come to you, and they don't have clarity on what will make their content unique, their personal brand unique? How do you proceed with that?

Nathalie Doremieux 8:54
For the imposter syndrome? Which literally, I think everybody has, at some point. I mean, you have to have like a major ego. It's not to have it at some point, right? What I tell people is to shift the focus, you know, you cannot be in fear. And, you know, thinking about that, and being inaction and being excited about what's possible at the same time. So, if you especially if you look at what you've accomplished so far, that's proof. So whenever you're doubting, you want quick ways to be able to go back and see proof that you are worth it. That can be a posted that's on your computer. That can be for me, I have a place where I have a whole bunch of testimonials that be that can be listening to video testimonials from your clients. I do this every now and then that could be listening to, you know, motivational speech on YouTube, which I do as well. You know, there are several ways what's really important is to notice it, because it happens and then to have those triggers that you know will help you To switch back and be in the right vortex in the right positive energy, because until you're there any decision that you make if it's out of fear, it's not going to be the best decision probably for your business.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 10:13
Thank you. I love this. And therefore scaling on automation and all those beautiful things. What opportunity do believe they open up for coaches, entrepreneurs, and consultants that before was not possible, because when you think about people who are coaching before and all that they were thinking about having a lifestyle business where they reduce the work, they don't want to be overwhelmed, they want to just have money to cover their living expenses. And therefore they they don't think about scaling, because scaling for them comes with headaches with managing employees, with all kinds of things. So what did automation tools make possible that was not possible b efore?

Nathalie Doremieux 11:01
Well, what automation tools made possible were is, you know, anything that has to do with repetitive communication, whether this is accountability, customer support, and things like that, those those are all things that tools that exist now that didn't exist even five years ago, that are Luas, to do things like I call behavioral automation, which is because one of the things that at least my clients, you know, will tend to be heart centered people and really want to create great experiences for their members and their students. There, there is a fear with the word automation. Because automation means it's a robot, everybody's going to be treated the same, like a number. And my clients don't want that. So that's the resistance that they have in saying, No, I cannot really scale. They want me they want me the reality is they probably only want like 20% of you. The rest, if it's done well can be automated. So when I talk about behavioral automation, which is something that we implement when we build these online portals, it's basically automating communication, but based on what people do when don't do so, think progress tracking, think of the logging into the platform, are they consuming content? Or they're asking questions, you know, what, like, if you can automate so that people really feel like they are heard, then then then you have you've achieved, you know, a good automation, because it's not diminishing the quality of support, and therefore the results that your students and member will be getting?

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 12:47
Yes, I love that. And a lot of people would say, you should do things that don't scale and you should do things that are one on one and very personal and all that which is a prevalent actually train of thought, within the coaching consulting, entrepreneurship online business thing where someone was having the proud declaration that for every new prospect they get, they will write a postcard for them and mail it to them personally because that's how they will give them a special experience, etc. So okay, those say because humans fall in love with other humans, that the relationship is more important. If someone will dig even deeper, they say, Okay, we're automating so much what will be unique about my business, if everything is done by the robots, as you mentioned? Like how can I keep a level of uniqueness or anything like that, that will keep me special? Because if everybody has the same tools, why can't everybody just have the same business and therefore we become not unique in the marketplace,

Nathalie Doremieux 13:58
The tool is just the tool, right? The message that you carry through the tool is what makes it unique, right? It's not because you can automate a sequence of email but everybody is receiving the same email right? It's still your copy you value so the closer you know going back to you know being unique is like the more unique message the more unique the more you you put it into your business nobody else can be you but you so nobody's going to copy you if you do you right so especially like when you're a coach you can automate all these communications you know when you know when content is going out you know reminders for the calls but also those other you know behavioral automation Hey Natalie, you haven't logged in in two weeks have everything okay? Do you want to book a call you know six you know these type of things, which are automated but make it feel like oh my gosh, she's actually care. She actually can see that I haven't come. Those can be automated. it right? So, but it's the program, it's like, it's it's the is what they are learning, you know, that makes it really unique. And that is your your process your system, what you're teaching, you know what you know, works for people. So it can be the same thing that you're doing one on one when you're doing it at the non scalable level. But you can take it one step further, where there can be some pieces that are self study. And you can come for like group calls, for example, and things like that, that becomes scalable.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 15:35
Thank you. Yes, I was thinking because a lot of coaches or people who will look for automation will think, Well, let me just use those AI that you tell it like, right for me an opening email, right, you know, like, or templates, where they just put the name of their business and their name, and then they will send it because they believe that's part of automation. So for you, what's your perspective on this, because there are a lot of like, if coaches want to study marketing or and all that, it seems to be a big selling point when the person gives them all my templates that I use to generate whatever how much money and you can just put your name and put your business name in it and you will make the same.

Nathalie Doremieux 16:18
So this is targeting my opinion, this is targeted to do it yourself yourselfers because they do it yourself, I will say, Okay, I pay for this and is giving me 50 templates. This is awesome. You know, but the reality is that these 50 templates, they are not your voice at all. So what they will tell you is that you can start with them to get started. And then you start to update them, you know, to make it into your own voice. This is for people that are completely stuck. And it's a way for them to get their feet wet. Right? And get started with something, you know, it's like the blank page syndrome, right? What do I do? So it's, it's meant to be a starting point. But if you're going to use that, like for your business, it's not going to be your voice, you know, the very little chance that it will ever convert, right. But it's it's more like they should be seen as examples of things that can be done. And then for you to tweak and make it your own.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 17:19
I love what you all what that we're talking about. Right now you're using a lot of automation tools, what do you believe is good about them? What frictions Do you wish they could improve? And what could be the future for those automation tools that you think new technologies or new things that will take the results and the usability and whatever they can do to the next level?

Nathalie Doremieux 17:46
Well, I think what one thing that I like about the current automation tools is the the fact that we are starting to be able to integrate more and more tools, right? Because in order to automate, we very often need to have tools that talk to each other. So what do we tend to do, we tend to use tools that are popular, and that have a high level of integration. So the new tools that are coming in, that don't have a lot of integration yet, like well, we don't really pay attention to them. Because they are lacking integration, I need to link to my CRM system, I need to link to my payment system, right? They don't have all this integration. So what is great is that this is coming up. And we start to being able to really automate a larger portion of the funnel without losing the experience, right without making it like a robot. Because automation doesn't mean being a robot, it can but it doesn't have to. And, and where I see, you know, things evolving is more and more seamless integration between tools, you know, last login time and things like that, where they would be able to pass in more information between applications. So improvement in that integration, because I don't, I don't believe in the tool that do everything I don't I prefer to use something that is really good at what he does, and then integrate it with something else. Like for example, our search ditto, we integrate with otter.ai. And we decided to do this integration right away. Why because a lot of people are using otter.ai The people that we were talking to and alone search ditto, people would still have to either upload a transcript or they could use the Amazon transcription integrated but they'd have to pay for credit for it. And we were like, if we do this integration will save them about a whole bunch of time. So I hope that you know tools can can see these kind of things and can really listen to the users because that's Like we've been doing, that's how we add integrations is by people telling us well, I use this and that and how can we save them time? And we move in manual step.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 20:10
Beautiful. I really, really like that. And therefore, I'm very curious about what you do at the membership lab. Can you speak about it? Or about your other ventures? Where can people find out more? What benefits can they get from them? What work? Do you do some examples of testimonials that you said, you read or you watch those videos that clients have told you before?

Nathalie Doremieux 20:36
So the membership lab is the place where we work with heart centered entrepreneurs, and we help them scale their business. So like I said, they they've achieved some level of success, they have a process a system, something that works and get that get people result. And we help them design an online program, where it's not one on one anymore, and they can really make a much bigger impact. But they also don't want to sacrifice the connection, the relationship and the support. So we tightly integrate education so like tutor videos and things like that we support and accountability because those are like the three key elements for an online program to work. So that's what we do we I do the I consulted the strategy, and then we build a platform the tech in terms of people that we work with, well, we we don't have a specific market we work with like I said, we lot we work with a lot of coaches so people like Martha Beck, for example, who is a big life coach, we also work with people industry that do you design, you know, designer of like the three boats renovation, they have an amazing YouTube channel with kind of like a show. And they've had, we've done two courses and one member membership recurring subscription with them. So our ideal client when they come to us, this is to have a new revenue stream. And, and the other way is like, it's super fast, because they just have everything, they just need it to be packaged and automated. And then people come running and signing up. So they have the audience, they've got the result, they've got the success. And people like knocking on the door and saying, Hey, when are you launching this thing, right. And that's when people join, you know, come to us, and that we build this and then they launch in and in 48 hours, they get like, you know, lots of members signing up. So so that's the membership lap. And then the other business is searched details. So you can so the lab, you can find that the membership lab that come to select the name and search do is that search tito.com. And that's that's very, very new. It's 2022. And, and basically, our goal we searched you to is really to help content creators. So what we are doing is we are trying to save them time and gain more visibility with their content, we believe that your content should not be in just one platform and should try to be in multiple places. One of them being your own website. Why? Because you have control over it. And because search engines like Google can index it, right. So whether this is your podcast, or this is your YouTube channel, search, ditto is helping gain more visibility. It has the automatic transcription with other it has a search through the audio content. It allows you to see like on my podcast, for example that I have on my site, it allows people to, I can see where people are searching. So you're helping people consume more of your content on your own YouTube channel on your own podcast, and searching through the audio itself, not just the title or the description. So that's that search Ditto.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 24:03
Thank you. And then I will ask you one thing. A lot of people will say if I have a community or a membership, as you said, that's a lot of work. I will need to be given up my time all the time and certain things that 5am or 5pm and almost adding to myself 10 times more work. So we spoke about automation. We didn't specifically answer this, if someone will say yes, but at least one on one. I know when I finish the call or whatever, I can relax, I don't have messages on my phone telling me new comments, new posts, new anything. And if I'm not active within my community, then people will not be active neither and therefore it will die. So what's your perspective on this?

Nathalie Doremieux 24:49
So my perspective on this is that and that's where program design comes into place because it's very easy to get carried away by what you can do and to over promise and just be burned out. I mean, we see people building memberships and being burned out. Really, the key is to set expectations, on what type of support they're going to get, what type of access to you they're going to get, when you design your program with that in mind, and you can even you can even have multiple level of membership, then it's not, they're not getting access to you, the benefit of the community is that you get all these brains that can support you as well, it's not just about the owner of the membership anymore, right? And you can be really clear, you know, like, Natalie is going to be on a, we're on a monthly call, you know, group call, you send your questions in advance, I show up, I insert a call down, the rest of the time is endorsed by the community, or I have, you know, people start to have community manager so that they can also, you know, monitor, monitor the community and things like that. It's about setting the expectations. And the goal of the membership is really to add a new revenue stream to your business, it's not to add more work, right? It's not to have another job, you know, like I said, some time, because it's easy to get carried away, oh, I should do this, I should do this. It's not about quantity. It's about quality. And even if, if, if you can give them the result with less content, even better, right? So it's about what recurring problem am I solving with my recurring solution? And that doesn't involve always you being the person, you know, that supports them.

Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 26:40
Thank you. That's enriching. I mean, you have a lot of wisdom, a lot of insights on the topic. I love all the automation you're doing. And you're doing it in the right way, which is automating things that are not so unique, or they're not heart to heart connection, but rather the things that are administrative or logistical or things that will get you more visibility so that you can help actually more people in this world without needing to manually copy and paste and take from this place to that place. And all that time. And those add up a whole lot. And I'm sure you're using a lot of wonderful tools. For me personally, what we always recommend, and I recommend that this podcast is PROCESIO. PROCESIO is the modern low code, no code platform for advanced automation and creating an enterprise grade platform and backend for your software. Any viewer or listener can request access to a totally free account at a processor dot app that they can use forever, and those who have much larger needs. There is a very generous 50% of discount. It's BETTER50OFF one word in capital letters. More than that in the description. Nathalie, this was my privilege, my honor, such a wonderful conversation and I wish you to keep going and have a good day.

Nathalie Doremieux 28:06
Thank you so much for having me Aziz