Neil Kristianson, The wild ride of a ‘reformed remodeler’.

MO  It’s great to hear your genesis story with Ontraport. So as to your consulting business, what kind of clients do you work with and what do you focus on?

NK  Our primary focus is small sales teams. And that can be defined as anywhere from 1-15 sales people. Or, it could just be an owner/operator, just one person. We work with automating and building process around sales, marketing and onboarding. Pretty much trying to automate the customer journey for sales teams. I love helping entrepreneurs take all those shiny ideas they have floating around and actually put them into play. I find that most entrepreneurs have a process, whether they realize it or not, and what I do is pull that process out of them and then automate it. 

MO  Got it. So, what are the aspects of Ontraport software that you find most useful or that you think are underrated that people aren't taking full advantage of?

NK  The number one underrated thing inside Ontraport is Tasks. Underrated, underused, misunderstood. I find that with what I do, we use Tasks all the time. We are automating the human touch. People are worried about automation because they are afraid it's going to get cold and impersonal but, if we do it right, we're just scaling that human touch. Tasks allow you to do that because it puts the break in the system and says, “Whoa, slow down; humans need to intervene here.” So then, once completed, the system can take back over. Once my clients start using Tasks, it just opens up a whole new world of Ontraport for them.

MO  A lot of people are talking about preserving the human touch right now, yeah.

NK  Yes, almost everyone I work with is very concerned that we are going to automate the personality out of their business. Tasks keeps you from doing that. 

MO  What is one great email marketing tip that you can offer people? 

NK  Well, my number one marketing tip is: one email, one action. Meaning: What is the one thing you want somebody to do after they read an email? You can't ask them to do seven things in one email. That's what Ontraport helps you do because, if you're segmenting, you can ask the one specific question to the customer that is going to apply to them. Sometimes people try to use email as a catch-all, writing one email that applies to everyone. In that case, you end up with multiple calls to action. But if you have your list segmented, you can use just one call to action that applies to an individual person or group of people.

MO  That’s an important point. It's easy to want to put all the great things you have to offer in every piece of content. 

NK  Right.

MO  You very much have your finger on the pulse of what’s going on for small businesses and entrepreneurs. What gaps are you seeing? 

NK  As a group, entrepreneurs are the most stressed out, overworked group of people on the planet because we see this grand vision of where we're going and what we want to do — so we take on too much. We want it too fast. As I work with clients, the ones who are most successful are the ones who aren’t trying to do it all themselves. Some of them rarely ever log in to Ontraport. They just know what they need it to do. They find the right people and hand it off, and let them take it. I think as a group, entrepreneurs would be much happier people and less stressed out if they could learn that skill.