In Season 3, Episode 26 of WyzeCast™, join us for an enlightening conversation with Peter Banigo, a tech-savvy entrepreneur on a mission to empower business leaders in navigating the ever-evolving landscape of technology. Discover actionable insights on recession-proofing your business, even if you’re not a tech expert. Peter shares his wealth of experience in building profitable ventures, guiding you on leveraging technology to thrive in times of uncertainty. Don’t miss this episode as we unravel the secrets of working smarter and letting technology fuel your success.

Watch on YouTube – Premieres January 14th, 10 AM ET

Listen on Spotify – Premieres December 29th, 9 AM ET

Melanie McSally
Welcome to another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive differences they are making in the world.

Folks, I have a timely episode for you today. In fact, I’m bringing on a fellow techie, and we’re going to talk about thriving in a recession and recession-proofing your business. Over the last few years, decades even, depending on your perspective, we’ve seen technology changing at a dizzying pace. As a business leader, you’re expected to keep innovating just to stay competitive. With little or no technical skills, simply keeping up with new tools and trends can feel overwhelming. What if I told you that you can recession-proof your business with technology, no matter your skill level? Today’s guest is devoted to helping leaders leverage technology no matter their industry. He has successfully built multiple profitable businesses across various sectors and in different geographies. He leverages his experience in guiding companies to streamline operations for steady, sustainable growth. Today, we will talk about using technology to not only withstand but to thrive through uncertainty. You’ll learn to work smarter and let tech fuel the results. It’s time to recession-proof your success.

My name is Melanie McSally, your host for today’s episode, and without further adieu, I would like to give a warm welcome to the handsome, funny, and talented Peter Banigo. Peter is joining us from London in the United Kindom but originally hails from Nigeria. Welcome, Peter!

Peter Banigo
Thank you so much, Melanie, for having me on the show. It’s great to be here, and I hope we have a very lovely conversation.

Melanie McSally
Oh, the pleasure is all mine, Peter. So tell us, how did you get started helping companies use technology to drive growth and stay competitive during times of economic uncertainty?

Peter Banigo
I think, first of all, it will be great to look at what happens during a recession. So, during a recession, people spend less, which means companies earn less. They end up spending less, too, which leads to a lot of companies downsizing; a lot of companies have all sorts of issues because not enough revenue or profits are coming in. But when we look at it, you have companies, billion-dollar companies like United Airlines, Costco, and Revlon Co, were all started during times of economic uncertainty. The Great Depression and other times like that. So now, coming back to a personal example, in 2013, I started a business with a friend, just funded by the Prince’s Trust in the UK. It failed. It was a food business, and it failed because everything was manual. Everything was manual, and this led to burnout. This led to spending so much on things I shouldn’t have spent on. So, learning my lessons from that business, in late 2014 and early 2015, I started another food business, but this time I implemented technology. I’ve always been a techie, but unfortunately, I didn’t really implement it in the previous business. So this business, the second one, used Facebook ads with enticing photos of meals. Facebook ads are very simple and very easy, and that ended up leading to over 70% of the orders, 70% coming in from those ads. Now, at that time, having that kind of sales, having that volume of sales would have needed multiple branches in order, but we didn’t have to spend on that. So also, we had processes for everything. We had the recipes measured down to the last teaspoon using simple Google Sheets, nothing too complex, meaning there was a lot less waste. Also, the taste of the food we made was consistent. So I kept getting asked more by people about these systems I built that made the business work instead of the business itself. That led me to start to get into it. Then, I realized that the average business owner doesn’t really take full advantage of tech, even though tech seems to be everywhere and really popular. So, apart from Target ICT, I also started the Tech Your Business podcast last year to give out information free to business owners who are thinking of tech-ing their businesses, like I say.

Melanie McSally
I love this evolution, and I love that you bring a different perspective to implementing tech than my own. My listeners know I have a background in software development and IT leadership, so I have years and years, decades even, of experience evaluating and implementing software, managing developers, etc. So, I have a perspective on technology. You’re giving us the perspective of a business owner who learns technology to build a better business and then further that learning and growth to help others as the need arises. So, we are covering the whole spectrum here. I love it. So, Peter, for those nontechnical business owners struggling to keep up with new tools and innovations, what are the biggest frustrations and roadblocks you see that are holding them back?

Peter Banigo
Thanks, Melanie. Great question, again. From working with a lot of business owners, a lot of my clients have been non-technical, and I can divide the roadblocks I’ve seen blocking them into four categories. First of all, time, for you, Melanie, you, me, for all business owners, time is something we don’t really have enough of because we have a lot on our plate all the time. So, making time to learn about new tech is actually really demanding for the average business owner. Then, talk about implementing the new tech. So, the second constraint is shiny-object syndrome. That’s an entrepreneur thing where, at the end of the day, I’ve looked at it. Every day, you have a new tool coming out that those hundreds of tools are already doing. It’s easy to get distracted by all these new tools and leave what’s already working to try out these new things without letting the old ones constantly dates. The third roadblock is information overload. It’s related to the previous one I talked about. So you have so much info coming to you every time you scroll social media, you scroll the news, and everywhere, and it leads to what we call analysis paralysis, which makes lots of business owners who try to learn end up not doing anything at all. Then, the fourth constraint, which relates to being non-technical and with everyone else, too, is the perceived complexity. So, a lot of these tech tools are made by techies, and the UI (user interface) is complicated and can be really intimidating when you’re exposed to them for the first time. So, a lot of people look at these and just go back to paper or go back to what they were doing before or come to us, you, Melanie, and me, who live and breathe tech every day. So those are the most common constraints that I’ve seen, and these are things I consider when I’m working with businesses to implement tech to reduce their costs and make them more efficient and resilient.

Melanie McSally
Yeah, I’ve led many developers over my career, and the one thing that I had to continue to remind them over time was that unless they were developing for other developers, then chances are their designs were not going to resonate; we are a breed amongst ourselves. Along those lines, as a technologist, I have my own frustrations with the tools that are out on the market, which are that they are too complicated for non-technologists and they’re not customizable enough for techies, which makes most of them not necessarily great tools, or great generalist kind of tools, I should say. Don’t get me wrong—the advancements in technology and the tools available today do make it so much easier to deliver services faster and better, but choosing the right tool is definitely paramount. So, Peter, you’ve implemented tech for your own business as well as for others. Walk me through your process for identifying the best areas to implement automation and systems. How do you know where to start?

Peter Banigo
Interesting question. So, I’m really big on process. I’m really big on processes. I actually have almost everything broken down into process, step-by-step processes, and this is not left out, implementing automation in businesses.

Peter Banigo
So, at the end of the day, that leads to opportunities to build custom logic that can replace decision-making, which can be slow and unreliable, and you have workflows that can become structured and repeatable.

Melanie McSally
This is great because one of the questions I get most often is: What system should I use for X or Y? My answer usually frustrates people because I say: It depends; it depends on your short-term goals, your long-term business vision type goals, what systems you already have in place in your tech portfolio, your tech IQ, and your desire to build and maintain technology. All of these things matter when it comes to making technology decisions. One of the things I find most frustrating when I do tech evaluations for companies is that I see a bunch of tools that do the same thing, or I see a few tools that are not in use at all. When I ask: Why do you have tool A? Why are you using tool B? Why do you have both X and Y? What are you using them for? The overwhelming majority of the time, I find people bought a tool because somebody recommended it. But then they didn’t know how to use it, they found it frustrating, or they found the mountain to learn how to use it or leverage it for themselves too tall of an order to overcome. So meanwhile, two things are happening. One, they’re unnecessarily paying for tools that they’re not using. Two, they’re not reaching their goals because they don’t have the right tools in place. So I love that you’re bringing analysis into the evaluation through your day-in-the-business initiatives, day-in-the-life, day-in-the-business. I love it. So, can you share a story of a company where you’ve helped simplify their technology approach to reduce costs or improve productivity? How much impact did they see?

Peter Banigo
Oh, yes. I’ve had a couple of case studies that I can talk about. This is actually a favorite. It’s actually a case study on our website. Before the pandemic, I worked with a textile manufacturer. They operate on three continents: Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. So, when I talked to the managing director of the company, I realized they still used paper and a bit of Excel. This is a company that’s almost 50 years old. This method of capturing data causes inventory issues, late payments, and scattered data everywhere. Built-in time and location made it impossible for the directors to get an accurate picture of the weaknesses because the directors live everywhere. They live in different places, so what we did was implement a simple cloud solution that put everything in one easy-to-use platform called the Enterprise Resource Planning platform. So we had the inventory, the accounting, the HR, the everything, everything in there. So, that meant that employees in any part of the world could collaborate in real time by the end of this project. In the tracking of inventory, the accuracy for that rose by about 5% because shortages were reduced a whole lot by about 5%. Processing of invoices paid up in all loads, which improved cash flow. In any economic climate, cash flow is really important. We often say that cash is king and profits are vanity. So, the directors got visual dashboards that let them see what was happening with the company in real time, which improved their decision-making. So when I say all these things, it sounds like it was really expensive, but honestly, it wasn’t. It wasn’t. In a couple of months, the company was saving, calculated at 2800 work hours every single year for not doing manual paperwork. So this allowed them to focus on sales, which led to a 20% increase in gross sales the next year. Sales are important in any economy. We have economic uncertainty, so this is one example of the optimization I work closely with businesses to achieve. At times is something like that. Sometimes, it’s more complex. At times, it’s just a simple linking of different things with tools like Zapier and the rest.

Melanie McSally
Oh, nice. I love that you mentioned both data and sales. When I ask businesses what their struggle is, what they’re struggling with, they usually say: I need more leads, but when I ask them what their conversion rate is, I often get a blank stare because they don’t know the answer. It’s funny; when I started my tech company, I struggled with the sales process, not actually performing sales, but the process itself. What I realized after doing some analysis was the process itself was out of order. There were so many implied things behind it. Like, you had to do certain things in order to be able to do the steps in the order that they were in. For instance, the first step is to acquire leads. But why would you acquire leads if you have nothing to offer them? So obviously, you need to develop your products and services or your free gift or your community before you start inviting people because where are you going to put them; what are you going to offer them? You’re supposed to then convert those leads into paying clients. Again, you need products and services for that. People aren’t going to pay you just because you want money. Or maybe that’s a limiting belief; maybe they will. But anyway, generally speaking, in business, you need to have a product or a service that people pay for in order to get said people to pay you. Then you need to actually take payment. If you’re selling and you want to get paid for those services, you have to be able to take payment. So it implies that you already have all of your tech that’s going to allow you to do this, setup. Then, you’re supposed to engage with your client and deliver these services. Once again, you need stuff in order to be able to do this. To do these tasks. So, you need systems and processes to run your business, and you need data to be able to identify what’s going well, what needs improvement, where do I need to tweak a lever in order to get to the next level, in order to advance your business? So yes, leads are important, but you probably already have enough leads. What you probably need to do is go back and look at your data, and if you didn’t capture any, then you need to fix that first. But go back and look at the data because you can probably convert those leads if you make some tweaks.

Okay, Peter, like you, I attract non-techies. So, what do you want to tell the non-techie business owners out there? What are one or two quick tips that you can give them to get started right away at a low cost to help future-proof their business using technology?

Peter Banigo
I think one thing that wasn’t so obvious to me until I got into owning a tech business was that business owners don’t use CRMs. That’s the first thing I’ll say: get a CRM and learn how to use it. So you have HubSpot, you have Zoho, and you have free versions of CRMs. Getting them for your business will ensure that you keep in regular contact with your clients, which will let them remember you when they need your services. Someone said that marketing is the things we do so that when clients are ready to buy, it guarantees they see us there.

The second thing is if you’re not doing any form of email marketing, start right now. Start after this episode. Sign up for the products; you have MailChimp; you have Active Campaign; you have so many of them; you can even set up on your own server with Sandy. There’s an app called Sandy, which you can link to Amazon emails, and you can send millions of emails for a very low price. Then, another thing is to sign up for basic workflow automation software. I mentioned earlier Zapier, which lets you link different things. You can link your email to your CRM or whatever. Other software that does the same thing: You have Make; You have IFTTT (If This Then That). Then, one of my favorites I’ve been exploring lately is NSN Cloud. So, everything I mentioned has free versions, and they will let you perform automations like the one I talked about with the locksmith. So this will save you a whole lot of time and money, and they’ll ensure that you stay on top of mind with your clients, meaning that you get more sales opportunities. It’ll help you automate so many things, saving you time, saving you money, and helping your business, like I said before, stay resilient.

So, finally, my final quick win. If you get into a new city move into a new city. You go to the largest departmental store there, and you want to get an apple; how do you think you get the apple faster? Would it be by working isle by isle looking for where they have apples so you can pick one up when you’re not even sure they sell apples there, or would you ask a member of staff of the supermarket: Where do you have apples? How would you get your apple faster? I think apply that to your business. If there’s anywhere you want to go. If there’s anything you want to achieve, I think the best way, the fastest way, the most cost-efficient and time-efficient way to do that is to seek direction from people who have the knowledge about where you’re going to and who have been where you’re going to. So, you can talk to, when you’re talking about technology and business, you can talk to someone like Melanie here, you can talk to me. Look for someone with expertise, with a track record, who knows what they’re doing, and you’ll spend a lot less time doing trial and error.

Melanie McSally
These are great tips. I love that you mentioned Zapier and other tools that are in that same genre because these are tools most non-techie business owners would never search for. It’s because they do things that most non-techie business owners wouldn’t search for. They wouldn’t use the words that would result in these tools coming up in search results. So folks, these are integration and automation related tools. They specialize in helping you to integrate your systems together so that they talk to one another so that you’re not doing manual tasks to move your leads from one place to the next. They also allow you to automate common tasks. Peter mentioned a bunch of things that you can automate and a bunch of ways that you can streamline your business. I like to say: If you can repeat it, you can automate it. It’s as simple as that. If you can repeat it, you can automate it. The reason why I say it like this is because a lot of times people associate technology, automation, and robots with not personalized, not human, canned things. And that doesn’t have to be true. You can use automation for all the things you don’t want to do, and for anything in between, you add in your personal touch. So, let’s just say that you love to give interviews before you accept a new client. You want to interview every new client before they sign up. You want to actually put them through a face-to-face, virtual, or in-person a face-to-face interview before you bring them on board. Let’s just say that’s part of your process. That’s totally cool, but that doesn’t mean you can’t automate everything up to that point, including the scheduling, and then everything after that point, or everything up to the next point where you want to inject your personal touch.

Okay, so, Peter, it has been such a pleasure having you today. I love meeting and connecting with other businesses that are helping their clients with technology. It’s an abundant world out there, and we are in an era and time where more and more people need technology. They don’t necessarily want to implement it themselves, so being able to refer especially to technologists who are in other countries because every country has its own rules and regulations and time zones. So, it’s great to be able to refer when somebody comes in and wants to go local or even for us to collaborate, brainstorm ideas, troubleshoot issues, and things of that nature. So, thank you so much for being here, Peter. It’s been such a pleasure. I know you have a gift for our audience. Would you like to tell them a bit about that?

Peter Banigo
I’ll say the best thing is that we have a podcast. It’s almost fifty episodes now. We feature tricks and stories about implementing tech in your business. So that’s my gift to all business owners. The Tech Your Business Podcast. You can find it at techyourbusinesspodcast.com. So you can just go on the podcasts and find the episodes that relate to the struggle you’re having with tech, and if you don’t get a solution from the episode you listen to, then you can just go into the show notes. There’s a link in there where you can have a free tech chat with me about your issue. I’m not selling you anything; I’m just focusing on the issue. If it’s a quick solution, I give that to you, and I’m happy that I’ve helped someone else. So go on the podcast and learn more about how to recession-proof your business with tech.

Melanie McSally
Awesome, folks. So, if you are interested in learning how you can leverage technology to optimize your business, streamline it, maximize your profits, automate more, incorporate technology more into your business so that you can save yourself some time and money, and do it in a low-cost way, then I highly suggest that you take Peter up on his offer to listen to his podcast. The link is below, as well as in the description. So thank you so much. Check that out. I’m sure there is great advice on there. I’m going to check it out myself. So thank you once again, Peter, for being here. It’s been such a pleasure having you share your wisdom and be a guest on The WyzeCast™ Show.

Peter Banigo
Thanks, Melanie. It has been great being on your show today, and I hope the things that I shared and the things you shared will be of help to one or more of the listeners today, so thank you.

Melanie McSally
I want to thank our listeners for tuning in. If you like what you’ve heard here today, please do like, share, and comment. We are trying to get WyzeTribe™ to be a hot new release. So if you feel inspired, if you feel moved, if you feel called, if we earned it, please do like, share, and comment. It is free for you to do so and really helps the podcast grow. And we really do love your engagement.

This was another episode of WyzeCast™, the show that elevates the voices, shines the light, showcases the gifts of our heart-centered guests, and amplifies the positive difference they’re making in the world.

If you want to learn more about WyzeCast™, you can visit our wyzecast.com. We dropped ten episodes every month on the 21st, so you can binge-watch or spread them out over the month. Whatever suits your mood and lifestyle.

Once again, my name is Melanie. It has been my pleasure being your host today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, thank you for your engagement, and I invite you to come back and join me once again for our next episode of WyzeCast™.