Skill Mammoth, Minneapolis, MN (2025)

09/19/2025

Think your operations are efficient? These four stats tell a different story.

20 hours+ a week of work time is lost to poor processes.
$37 billion annually in lost productivity.
47% of employees can’t find company information quickly.
19% of new hires take 6+ months to become productive due to unclear processes.

When information lives in silos, teams spin their wheels and onboarding drags on.

Process optimization, clear SOPs, and AI-driven guidance change that equation, delivering faster access to the right steps, consistent outcomes, and quicker ramp times.

What are you doing to do document your processes better?

09/17/2025

Most businesses don’t have a lead problem.

They have a follow-up problem.

When a prospect fills out your form, calls after hours, or downloads a freebie -do they hear back instantly?

One roofing company we worked with went from chasing cold leads → to doubling their leads just by:

1. Automating instant text + email replies
2. Capturing every lead in their CRM
3. Nurturing with a simple follow-up sequence

Speed = sales. And it doesn’t take Salesforce to get there.

👉 Want to see how this would look in your business?

Comment “STREAMLINED” and I’ll send you our free audit..

09/16/2025

This lead magnet → instant estimate workflow not only drives more leads, but it saves hours every single day.

Most people would see this diagram and think “just a bunch of arrows and circles”

My client sees it and thinks “finally, my business runs without me pushing every button.”

Here is what happens step by step:

A prospect fills out an instant estimate form in Fillout → they get a ballpark price on the spot.

That submission flows straight into their Trello board → all the right custom fields update automatically.

Files get pulled in too → if they are the wrong type, CloudConvert fixes them instantly.

The system checks their master contact list → vendors, leads, and customers stay current without lifting a finger.

Then it creates a QuickBooks estimate that is already 80 percent complete → the team only adds the final details.

At the same time, a speed-to-lead system fires off a text or email within seconds starting a nurturing sequence so no lead gets left hanging.

The result = faster quotes, less busywork, and more deals closed.

Tools used: Fillout, Trello, CloudConvert, Make, QuickBooks, Google Sheets, MailerLite

👉 If you could automate ONE part of your business right now, what would it be?

09/15/2025

Grateful for this 5 star note from Kathy, franchisee owner and operator of Gotcha Covered in the Northwest Suburbs of Minneapolis. She came to us with a clear goal, welcome customers right after they choose their window treatments and set expectations for materials, scheduling, and installation. We built an automated onboarding video that creates a smooth handoff, answers FAQs, and gives that white glove experience while saving her team time. Kathy told us the process felt easy from kickoff to final cut.

Our approach is simple, map the journey, script what matters, automate delivery, measure feedback. It is how we help clients go from scattered to streamlined while building trust and elevating service quality.

If you want simple systems, big results for your customer experience, let’s design a proactive onboarding flow that frees you up to focus on growth. Schedule a Discovery Call to get started .

09/13/2025

Have you tried using AI agents at your work?

95% of AI pilots fail, according to MIT’s latest findings.

The surprising lesson isn’t that AI is risky; it’s that many teams dive into automation before they understand their own processes.

Garbage in, garbage out, and AI won’t magically fix a broken system.

My pro tip: sit down and really map your workflows.

Do a self-audit, or bring in a trusted advisor to help you get started. Then figure out if automation or AI is the right next step.

In practice, the quickest path to value isn’t more tech, but better process discipline: define the problem, audit data quality, clarify inputs and decision points, and pilot with clear metrics.

09/12/2025

Most business owners know they should post on social media, but almost no one does it consistently. It feels like a full-time job, and the payoff is not always clear. The truth is, if you are not showing up online, you are invisible to your customers.

That is why I am hosting a free webinar with SCORE Twin Cities where I will show you exactly how I have built Social Media Engines for three different businesses. These are simple, repeatable systems that turn content you already have (or can create quickly) into a steady stream of posts, without the stress of figuring out what to say each week.

You will learn:
✅ Real examples from three businesses and how their engines were built
✅ Why automation keeps you top of mind (and saves hours each week)
✅ The exact tools and templates you can use right away
✅ A step-by-step system to finally make social media work for you

📅 Date: September 25, 2025
🕐 Time: 1:00 P.M. CDT
📍 Where: Zoom Webinar

09/08/2025

Grateful for Paul’s 5-star review. Paul, an American Family Insurance agent, set out to give new clients a welcome that was clear, helpful, and uniquely his. We partnered to build an automated video onboarding hub that greets policyholders on a custom page, explains their coverage, answers FAQs, and invites them to request the endorsements they need.

It also captures buyer’s agent and mortgage broker details in one place, so Paul’s team can respond faster and keep service seamless, maintaining the 5 star standard they are known for. A small system change with a big impact on trust, clarity, and conversion. This is From scattered to streamlined in action . Simple systems. Big results.

Ready to create an onboarding that builds trust and growth, schedule a Discovery Call and let’s map it out together .

08/21/2025

I talked to a bookkeeping business owner yesterday at a mastermind I'm part of.

She’s running into this problem where her team leans on her for the most basic answers. Every time they hit something they’re unsure of, they stop and ask her. She gives them the answer, they move on, and the same thing happens again the next day.

She told me it feels like she can’t step away without the whole business grinding to a halt. She is the bottleneck, and it’s exhausting.

I shared a framework with her that has been a game-changer for me and a lot of other owners: eliminate, automate, delegate, educate. (It's useful but it also rhymes, so there's that.)

First, you look at what can be eliminated. Half the stuff we do would not matter if it stopped tomorrow.

Then you look at what can be automated. If software can handle it, why spend human hours on it.

If it cannot be automated, that is when you delegate.

And when you do delegate, you have to educate. Teach your team how to think through it so they do not keep coming back with the same question.

08/20/2025

Story time with Storey. 📕

Just helped a local upholstery company tighten up their estimate process using Make, Trello, CloudConvert, and Fillout.

Saving roughly 30 minutes of admin time per estimate, conservatively, on the front end. Not to mention all the time switching costs that we saved, plus all of the new time back from fixing their data hygiene.

For folks who like to get in the weeds, this is what we did:

They use Trello as a project manager, and before, there was a ton of copying and pasting between the Typeform they were using to intake the estimates and the form.

They had a Zap that was doing some lifting, but there were always quirky glitches when a client or designer uploaded a PDF instead of a picture, and it was always assigning the wrong people.

We leveraged CloudConvert to make sure that if that happens, it converts it so it will play nice with Trello.

Some better mapping helped them keep their data hygiene a little better and searchable (the Zap was just dumping the Typeform details as text into Trello).

The next step is tying this into their QuickBooks backend from this process so invoices can get as far along as possible before bringing in a human-in-the-loop.

08/12/2025

One great thing about being one of 8 billion people on the planet is that chances are someone has done the thing you want to do before.

That means you can learn from them, learn from their mistakes, learn what steps they took, and essentially take a shortcut.

That's one of my philosophies. Never stop learning!

Recommended books and people to learn from:

Ed Lefkow - great business coach that has helped my business considerably.

First Things first by Stephen R. Covey

The Goal by Eli Goldratt

Traction by Gino Wickman

08/07/2025

For automation tech heads, there was some big news from n8n.

Lots of changes to their pricing, but the one thing I want to highlight is their elimination of their active workflow limit.

This single handedly was the thing stopping me from recommending to my clients.

Self-hosting is great if you're technical (a way to get around the former workflow limits cheaply) but it was too complicated and unweildy for folks who just wanted to jump into drag and drop atuomation.

We still use Make primarily, and n8n for some internal automations, but this new update may change our thinking.

Definitely puts pressure on Make to update their "per operations" pricing model

08/06/2025

Everyone knows people are using AI at work.

Most of us are using it daily at this point, whether it’s writing emails, brainstorming ideas, or handling repetitive tasks.

But even in 2025, organizations are still slow to offer any kind of structured AI training, which is a major oversight.

The numbers speak for themselves. Only 8 percent of companies provide adequate AI training. Less than half of employees have had formal GenAI training. Over 50 percent of workers are hiding their AI use because they don’t feel supported. At the same time, 27 percent of white-collar workers are already using AI frequently.

This isn’t something to plan for later. It’s already happening, and teams are figuring it out on their own, often without any guardrails.

If your organization doesn’t have a clear plan for how AI should be used on the job, you’re not just behind - you’re leaving people to guess.

The good news is it doesn’t take a massive initiative. Even short, role-specific training can build confidence, reduce risk, and unlock real productivity.

AI is no longer optional. It’s part of the work.

Have you had AI training at work? How did it go?

Skill Mammoth

09/19/2025

09/17/2025

09/16/2025

09/15/2025

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09/12/2025

09/08/2025

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