Expert Spotlight
Andrew Wadsworth
The Ontraport medicine man.
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Expert Spotlight
Andrew Wadsworth
The Ontraport medicine man.
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Andrew Wadsworth admits he has an odd obsession: online forms. From the moment he became a franchisee in a cleaning business in 2006, Andrew tried to convince the franchise owner that he should automate certain processes and systems, especially the intake of information via forms. “They had an offline database, and I wanted an online database and automatic follow-ups when people need quotes,” he said. “Those were the things I was really excited about. I just could see the power of automation.”
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From Modern Ontrapreneur issue five
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From Modern Ontrapreneur
issue five
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Andrew soon discovered that automation was his real passion and natural skillset, so he sold his franchise and began working for a business owner who shared his interest, Paul Antonelli. Paul had mapped out the customer lifecycle for his business, Resicert, a property inspection company, and tasked Andrew with automating it in Ontraport.
“We created a really automated system for him to go from about 15 inspections a week to around 40 a week,” Andrew said.
Soon after, Ontraport launched its Certified Consultant program (now the Certified Expert program), and Andrew jumped at the opportunity to be in the first wave of participants. He launched his automation consulting business, IT Mooti, in 2009 and has since supported hundreds of businesses in improving their systems and growing.
“Mooti means medicine in Zulu. My business partner is from South Africa so when we were thinking of a name, since we want to help people with online technology, we thought IT Mooti,” he said.
He and his team at IT Mooti also create products that integrate with Ontraport all-in-one suite.
Andrew shared his entrepreneurial story with us as well as how his life has changed since becoming a Certified Expert and his best tips for Ontraport users.
MODERN ONTRAPRENEUR When did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
ANDREW WADSWORTH I figured out I was an entrepreneur when I was about 13. I would go to the corner store before going to school, and I would swap my lunch money for lollipops, choppy chops [that’s what Australians call lollipops]. I had $3 of lunch money so I would buy 10 choppy chops and then sell them for 50 cents each, so I would get a $2 profit. Then I realized that would sell out within five minutes so I started buying more. I got to the point where I was selling about $50-100 worth of candy before school every day. I probably earned a gross sales of like $2,000, and then I got suspended. But you should’ve seen my spreadsheets. I had things that were so organized — I knew my costs against my expenses, I knew how much profit I was going to make.
Knowing what I know now, it was an opportunity lost for me. If I’d had a mentor, I could have gone a lot further and quicker. It’s a different world now, I think there are a lot of opportunities now for young people to be in business, and you don’t necessarily need to get an MBA. You need to try things out and have the ability to solve problems for people and do it in a competitive way, and if you like doing that, then anyone could really do it.
MO What path did you end up taking?
AW I did enter university and I graduated with really good grades. I got into the mining engineering and commerce double degree. My university gave me the opportunity to go on exchange for my first year to Chile, so I went and I visited some mines. I was horrified by what I saw by these large companies that were creating big open copper mines. I saw how the workers were living and I wasn’t inspired by that, so I ended up not doing engineering.
"I had just spent three to four years with Ontraport, building lots of creative solutions around the app, and I could really see the potential so I was ready to jump in."
I started another course after traveling for a couple years and it was called sustainability in business. We were learning about how you can give microloans to help people in small communities start micro-businesses. In Africa and Asia there are communities where people, especially women, are coming out of poverty through micro-businesses. That really inspired me, and that’s when I started to see that business isn’t all that bad. Especially small business, especially when women run businesses it seems.
What I was learning was that we have to empower people to be able to run their own businesses in their own communities and not have so much interference from big companies and people telling them what they can and can’t do. So that’s what sort of inspired me, and that’s when I was like, “I’ve got to start my own business.” I had the opportunity to buy a franchise of an eco-friendly cleaning company, and that’s where it started. I then went on to work with Resicert, a home inspection company, where my passion for automation came to life.
MO Why did you decide to become an Ontraport Certified Expert?
AW I had just spent three to four years with Ontraport, building lots of creative solutions around the app, and I could really see the potential so I was ready to jump in. I did start out originally with the intention of doing work with Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and Active Campaign, but then it kept coming back to Ontraport — it had the better solution. It was more integrated with what we were doing and, to be honest, being a specialist is better for everybody. When you can hire someone who really knows the app really well, you’re going to get the most efficient outcome.
Initially the first round of Ontraport consultants — I think there were 10 of us — had to be jack-of-all-trades across Ontraport. Now I think it’s different — I think now an Ontraport expert can actually be a specialist. Now my specialty is custom objects and API integration. I’m interested in working with clients that have a unique problem to solve and finding a way to make it work within Ontraport or by integrating something else with it.
MO How are things going as a Certified Expert?
AW Well I can give you the numbers: We’ve grown every year. The first year we grew by about 50%, then 40%, then 30%. So our growth rate is dropping but our revenue is increasing. I used to work six days a week; I now work four and a half days a week. So there are two markers that make me realize that I am doing well. I can finish work at 5:30 and have dinner with the kids. I’m creating products that I am happy with. So that to me tells me I’m doing what I want to do.
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MO How do your clients find you?
AW Since becoming an Ontraport Certified Expert, I’ve enjoyed a steady stream of leads directly from Ontraport from businesses all over the world in all kinds of industries.
My advice to an aspiring Ontraport Certified Expert would be to find a niche. Take what you’re good at, learn how to do it in Ontraport and become the best at that. For example if you like copywriting and you’re a graphic designer, become an Ontraport Certified Expert — people need help with that. If you do Facebook advertising or you’re really good at setting up UTMs and tracking the stats, be an expert at that.
I think what people generally do when they come to Ontraport and ask for help, is they look for one consultant and I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s good to talk to a few consultants who specialize in different areas. When you’re ready to launch a membership site, talk to someone who is an expert in membership sites with Ontraport. When you are ready to set up your sales automation, there is someone who’s an expert in that. For me I love pushing the envelope; I love API integrations.
MO You have your finger on the pulse of the small business owner and entrepreneur. What gaps are you seeing?
AW When I think of a business, the most important thing is having the ability to get good reporting on your finances. That’s what I think good business is — at the end of every month you run a profit and loss, your cash is reconciled, you know exactly where everything is at, and then you can allocate funds and make decisions based on where you’re going. So for me the thing that’s missing is this link between accounting and your CRM and marketing automation. Therefore the bridge between accounting and Ontraport is what I’m currently focused on. So one of our tools is XOSync, which is the bridge between Xero (the cloud accounting platform) and Ontraport. It brings in all of Ontraport's transactions into Xero so that they’re reconcilable with one click. It means that if you run your profit and loss statement today it’s completely up to date. So for anyone that’s using Xero and Ontraport it’s an essential.
Then we have Vital Statistics, which brings information from Xero, Facebook, Google analytics and any data you want out of Ontraport based on the KPIs that you track in your business. You can view them in real time and track your team’s performance and business’s performance overtime. It’s not snapshots of today; it’s a comparison — How did we do last month compared to this month? What’s our trendline? What percentage can we increase?
The way that Vital Statistics works is we create data sources and then create visualizations of the data. If you go into your Messages section of the Ontraport app you can see how many opens an email had, but can you see how many opens you had this week compared to last week, or how your emails performed over the last 30 days? The only way to get that is to aggregate the data from all messages and, because we are able to see it over time, we can see how much we’ve improved. Knowing this information would allow the marketing team to have a particular target. You can look at which emails performed poorly and the ones that are performing well and then take a learning from that. It’s a way of analyzing and constantly trying to improve, in an even more aggregate way.
MO You’ve supported several companies in implementing Ontraport's Sales Force Automation features. What is your advice to others considering getting started?
AW Businesses sell and they deliver. If you’re selling something that’s predictable and delivering something that’s predictable, and you’ve got good systems in place, you can get someone else to sell and deliver it for you. So the better that you get at systemizing your sales process and your delivery process, the quicker that you can extract yourself.
The advantage of creating a system using lead routing, tasks, tasks outcomes, merge fields and the ability to create generic user-based messaging is that when you are ready to turn the tap on for more leads to flow through your lead funnel, it’s easy to just keep adding in new sales people without having to create anything new — it’s a scalable system you’ve created. You can quickly go from five to 10 sales people without having to change anything in the system itself. One reason some people are not using this strategy is because they have to pay per user seat. However, if you are able to put on another sales person, that means that you’re able to add a lot more revenue that far outweighs that cost.
"In 2009 I was in $45,000 worth of debt. I’ve now built my own home; I’ve designed it myself. I’m living in the town I want to live in, my kids are going to the school that I want them to go to. So definitely Ontraport is doing that in my life for me."
MO What do you love most about being an Ontraport Certified Expert?
AW I’m an entrepreneur that initially didn’t like business, big businesses — I think big business does a lot of damage, but I love small business. It’s what gives life to communities. I think Ontraport supporting small businesses is a great solution for so many people across the planet for helping the world to regenerate its creativity. I think small businesses are good for everybody — you’re more connected to the people, you’re able to give back to your own community.
My passion is helping people, but I see business as a vehicle to get what you want in life. If you have a business that can help you achieve your life goals, then I want to help you get your business working right.
MO The Ontraport way is "better business, better life." Do you feel like you're achieving that as well?
AW In 2009 I was in $45,000 worth of debt. I’ve now built my own home; I’ve designed it myself. I’m living in the town I want to live in, my kids are going to the school that I want them to go to. So definitely Ontraport is doing that in my life for me.
Around Ontraport there’s hundreds of millions of dollars worth of an economy that it’s created, which has helped me to have my own home. I told Landon when I built my house, “You did this … this is the kind of thing that you’re helping.”
MO What's next for you?
AW At the moment I’m working on building a data source creation tool to be able to better extract data out of Ontraport so that other Certified Experts can use my dashboarding service. So I’m wanting to bring Vital Statistics to create an Ontraport-specific set of dashboards that people can easily sign up to, without too much cost, and start using it.
The other project I’m working on is this group called Hive. It’s a collaboration of Ontraport experts that businesses can come to and have a solution delivered by four or five support consultants. We make the client our queen and with the hive we produce something sweet together.
Work with Andrew
Andrew is a natural problem-solver with a passion for business automation. He helps grow small businesses through his consulting company, IT Mooti, focusing on several different Ontraport specialties — CRM systems, business automation and dashboard and integration customization, to name a few.
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