BizTech Superhero

BTSH Jen Speers
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[00:00:00]

Joshua McNary: Welcome to The Biz Tech Superhero, the podcast that empowers you to unleash the technology superpowers within your business. I'm your host, Joshua McNary. I'm joined by today's superhero, Jen Speers, founder of Moonwake Collaborative based in Des Moines, Iowa. Jen is a marketing strategist, creative partner, and passionate advocate for small business who loves helping organizations tell their stories and turn big ideas into practical action.

Joshua McNary: Jen and I first connected through Iowa's business community, where I quickly came to appreciate her energy, creativity, and genuine commitment to helping businesses and nonprofits make a great impact. She's someone who believes good marketing isn't just about getting attention. It's about understanding people, creating trust, and creating momentum.

Joshua McNary: With more than 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, and leadership, Jen has led teams and built deep expertise in project management, branding, and business strategy. [00:01:00] Today, through Moonwake Collaborative, she works alongside entrepreneurs and organizations to transform ideas into clear plans, strong brands, and measurable results.

Joshua McNary: Today, we're going to explore what it takes to build an authentic brand, how creativity and strategy work together to help businesses grow, and why understanding your story is often the key to standing out in an increasingly crowded and technology-driven marketplace. Jen, welcome to the show.

Jen Speers: Hi. Thanks for having me, Josh

Joshua McNary: So for folks just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

Jen Speers: Absolutely. My name is Jen Speers. I am the founder and owner of Moonwake Collaborative. We are a virtual assistant and digital marketing agency in Des Moines, Iowa, that specializes in supporting small businesses with everything from admin assistance to branding, website creation, social media, all of [00:02:00] that.

Jen Speers: We like to think of ourselves as the one-stop shop for small businesses so that they don't have to go to Fiverr or, and find those one-off projects from somebody. We're able to facilitate all of that while also always having the foundational belief that small businesses deserve support just like bigger businesses.

Joshua McNary: That's great, and definitely aligns with my approach over the years towards making sure all businesses are able to achieve what they wish to. In my case, more kind of that technology or sales and marketing software type angle. But I think that's part of why we are friends because we have some alignment on those values.

Jen Speers: Yeah, for sure. And I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, so for me it was driven into us really young that you support small all the time. Small business owners are the people that... That's the money that is in your community, that goes right back into your community. They're also your neighbors the people serving on the boards near you.

Jen Speers: And so it's really important [00:03:00] to give to those businesses the same way that you would to big brand names

Joshua McNary: And little businesses sometimes become bigger businesses and actually then, also help our communities in that way. While also even those that are not ever wanting to be big are contributing in massive ways in, in making our communities really go. So absolutely, I love that. And being here both in Iowa, we're different parts of Iowa, but having that community sense is something that I think we share.

Joshua McNary: With regards to Moonwake, you are doing all kinds of things. You have this s- core of branding and strategy and such, but then you're doing these other tasks as well. So can you talk a little bit more about what those engagements look like and, maybe start bleeding into a little bit what the technology aspects for you as a business are and how you're procuring that work?

Jen Speers: Yeah. So how we handle that is we have different people on our team who are experts in different areas. And so we're able to call upon that person when a client has a need. So we have our digital [00:04:00] strategist that will handle strategy, like overall strategy, six-month strategy launch strategies, but also social media, email campaigns.

Jen Speers: But we have designers that can design business cards and websites. We have a website developer for any coding and all of the more difficult stuff. And all of that, so we have these experts that can come together to create a really strong support team for a small business. But because of that, we do rely heavily on a task management system that allows everybody to put their input in, that we can be very organized with projects that we know exactly where the status of all of our projects are.

Jen Speers: We use Asana for that. I think as we grow, we may have to find something that is a little bit more robust, but right now it works for us and it's got some great capabilities in it that allow us to just easily move things back and forth and change times, [00:05:00] and everybody can see where all projects are in their process, their timeline to completion.

Jen Speers: But another thing is that our team is all over the country. They're all in the United States, but we're working from different time zones. And also because everybody's virtual, we really... It's important for us to feel like we're in an office together. So we use Slack not only for internal communication on clients, but also for daily engagement.

Jen Speers: Share pictures of your kids and your pets and all of that so that we are getting to know who we work with, even if we're not in the same building or the same room, which is really important when you're collaborating and brainstorming as a team,

Joshua McNary: it gets back to that community aspect we were just talking about with serving our customers that way, but then also the idea of you gotta have a community and that sense of belonging within your own organization. And while I don't have as many staff, how many staff do you have right now, actually?

Joshua McNary: 17.

Jen Speers: have 17 people on our

Joshua McNary: so yeah, I had, [00:06:00] half a dozen staff at one point in my business, and so that same idea now, at that time was b- it was the before times, before the COVID times. We actually had more time in the office together. And of course, now everything has been democratized towards the internet.

Joshua McNary: Not that we weren't doing that before, much more now. But anyways, but back to the idea of how do you create the, that culture within your organization is definitely that kind of internal aspect of technology is something maybe we can come back to here in this conversation. I wanna actually go back to the Asana thing, though, first.

Joshua McNary: So Asana is a project management tool for those that maybe haven't been exposed to that in the past and has been a standard one, I would say, a best practice one in the last number of years. How long have you been using that platform with the business? Has it been forever or since it

Jen Speers: yeah, I think at least four years. I think we started-- I started it just with myself on the free version because I am a late in-- I was diagnosed with ADHD late in life, and so it became a much necessary tool for me to keep everything in my [00:07:00] brain out and organized. And then my team grew pretty organically, like just one person at a time, and so then it became a great way to kind of offload tasks to others, be able to, describe what the task is.

Jen Speers: I like that you can add documents and, do approvals and all of that in one place. And then as we've grown as an agency, obviously our needs have grown and we've been exposed through clients, through larger clients with some other task management. So we're at a tipping point where we're starting to look at other platforms that may work better for us especially due to cost, because obviously, as a large team, we pay per seat.

Jen Speers: And so it's a pretty expensive monthly cost for us. But right now we're happy with it. It does what we need it to do. I think in the future we'll look for something that's got more AI involved, that it's going to be prompting people to, fill in more information, or it knows where it needs to go next in the [00:08:00] funnel, that type of thing.

Jen Speers: So but, y- as a business owner, when, especially when you have a team, it's very daunting to think about changing technology on your team because you feel like everything's gonna fall apart for a while, and you're trying to train 17 new people on how to use it correctly and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks at the same time.

Joshua McNary: I've used the platform Teamwork Pr- Project Manager, Teamwork PM it used to be called, but it's teamwork.com. And it's another tool built for service agency type organizations as both of our firms do. And it's the same thing. I've used it for a very long time, and even though I don't have as many number of staff as I used to, I've kept it 'cause it's what you know.

Joshua McNary: And then there's also that idea of the the legacy information there as well. So it's, if you make a transition, some of that you may be able to migrate. For instance, I moved previously from Help Scout for my support side of my business, like support desk system, which is a [00:09:00] different type of software.

Joshua McNary: But moved from that Help Scout to Teamwork Desk, which is their solution. So at one point, a number of years ago, we consolidated everything into, for those two platforms, those two functions, project management and help desk, into one thing. But yes, it's very much okay, there's that, the cost to move, and that's very common in the work I do with any type of organization, whether it's ERP or CRM or accounting or inventory or whatever the tools are.

Joshua McNary: There's just a huge cost to that, and that's part of why it's scary to, to move. The cost and the labor and all the things

Jen Speers: Yeah, and we deal with, like we have, because we do virtual assistance and s- social media, like we are touching our clients' work every single day. It's not where it's a project where you're building a website where there might be a little downtime while you're waiting for somebody to give you information.

Jen Speers: So for me, it's really important that when, if we did that, that the clients not feel the [00:10:00] transition. Like you somehow have to shield them from that, but also making sure that all of your deadlines are hit and everybody's getting every task done every day that needs to be done for the client. Yeah.

Jen Speers: We are definitely looking into it because I'm sure that there's better options for us, but I'm also not super excited to change anytime soon.

Joshua McNary: Then, here, this is not a consulting call where I'm trying to help you solve a problem. But one thing that comes up when you say that I've suggested to others, is the idea of, okay, new clients might go towards this new system, and then, the old clients stay on the old system, at least for a period, right?

Joshua McNary: Until then you can figure out the kinks of that new system. So that's one approach that you could potentially take as, as a transitional element if you can't do more of a clean, that clean cut

Jen Speers: that's a great idea

Joshua McNary: a little scarier. But yeah just one idea for our listeners that are listening to us chat about these problems here today.

Jen Speers: Exactly.

Joshua McNary: So let's come back to that internal side of technology as well. So you talked about the Slack and being able to have that communication. Maybe we just generally could talk about communication with your [00:11:00] clients and because you have remote team. What are you using beyond Slack if anything, for...

Joshua McNary: Do you- is it Zoom? Is it, are you using Google- Google's workspace and using their meet or tools as far as in-person meetings? And just maybe talk about then how that actually works for you. Is it efficient or not? Kinda tell me how else you're making communication happen and making sure that to clients or to your internal team.

Jen Speers: Yeah. For clients we have everything on Google Workspace, so all of our clients' folders live there, so all of their assets. And when we meet with clients, we meet with them through Google Meet which seems to be easiest for them. I feel like a lot of people use Google already, and so this is my opinion, but if we were on Microsoft or Zoom even, I feel like some people can get tripped up.

Jen Speers: And so Google has seemed to be... Because we deal with, we have clients of all ages and technology abilities. That seems to be a really good one for them. And then we use the Gemini that's with Google so that we can grab... Not only it'll [00:12:00] give us a meeting, like lowdown, like action steps and what was covered, but we can get the full transcript, which has been really great for if I'm doing a discovery call, I can pop the transcript into AI and ask it to pull out the scope.

Jen Speers: And so it really saved time in doing things like that. I can also, if I'm gonna send a follow-up email, pull out, any, a meeting transcript and just say, "Let me know what action items and who's responsible for them," and all of that. That's been really great. The clients seem to like it.

Jen Speers: I have had clients that wanna meet in person if they're local here, 'cause we have clients all over the country. And I'll do that. I'll meet them locally. I think, that's a great way to build that relationship with them as well. Clients like to be contacted lots of different ways.

Jen Speers: So I prefer email, but some of our clients want to be called, some of them want to be texts and some like audio messages. And so we have an intake form that we use through Google Forms when a client comes on, and that is a question that we ask them. Some people wanna be able to listen to an [00:13:00] audio message on the go and then they'll, send us one back.

Jen Speers: And so everybody's different, and we consider it our job to figure out what works best for them and makes it easiest for them, and we'll acclimate to that.

Joshua McNary: That makes sense. Yeah, that's great. And, it sounds like you're using these best practice tools, whether it be Asana or Google Workspace, which I also use Google Workspace for various things. Although we're talking with-- on Zoom today, which is how I record these. That's what I like to use for my meeting tool.

Joshua McNary: Which by the way, I think is somewhere between... I think you did a nice job describing there's like Microsoft's platform tends to be the hardest to work with. Then there's Zoom, which you always have to do those upgrades, like right at the last minute when you're trying to join a meeting, it seems.

Joshua McNary: And then you've got just the web-based meet tool from Google, which has gotten much better over the years. So I do agree that there's kinda like a hierarchy there. But anyway, that idea you have, you're using Asana, Google Workspace for various things and then leveraging the connections to Gemini AI and such to, to make all these things go.

Joshua McNary: And ultimately, it's about servicing [00:14:00] the, the customer, going back to the beginning of our conversation. What meets their needs the best? And when we're working with small businesses, it's gotta be easy. It's gotta be-- You gotta be able to get to the outcome as quickly as possible. Or if there is some kinda hoops to jump through, there's a good reason we're doing that.

Jen Speers: Yeah. And people are coming, the businesses that are coming to me are overextended, right? They've been handling... When they, by the time they come to us, they know they need help, but they don't even know exactly where they need help. They're just reaching out for help. And so that's what I love about what I do here, 'cause I handle most of the incoming new clients, is helping them piece out where exactly we can start.

Jen Speers: But the last thing they need is to not be able to understand how to even get... 'cause a lot of them come to me and they're like, "I am technology illiterate." They are struggling with social media. They're struggling with organizing their emails. They're struggling with fi- file organization, even.

Jen Speers: And so I [00:15:00] want to just remove as many barriers as possible when it comes to like being able to help support them, because the, the last thing they're looking for is for me to be like we need to do this. I just need you to, log in here and download this new whatever."

Jen Speers: Because I think that would actually turn a lot of people away. They're looking for an easy button, and that's what we're trying to provide for them.

Joshua McNary: So I've had a routine theme in my presentations, and I've done newsletters on it recently and such, the idea that technology is not magic, right? There's not an easy button necessarily around technology. But that's where your work comes in, or maybe the work I do in a different on that business systems side of things, it's a little bit different than what you're doing.

Joshua McNary: The idea of how do we help interpret to make it as easy as possible and bring it... Take the more complex thing that isn't, there is no easy button for, and

Joshua McNary: Just make it easier, in some capacity. So I think that's a, that's something that we share. But then I also wanna take that [00:16:00] line and pull it out a little bit further and say, with the artificial intelligence revolution that we're going through, people are looking to that as an easy button, and it's not always perfect either.

Joshua McNary: Let's maybe start by talking about how you're using artificial intelligence inside your business and maybe come back to this idea of how our customers

Jen Speers: yeah, absolutely. This is something that amongst the team we talk a lot about because we obv- we use it. We do use AI. It makes our lives easier, but we have a clear definition on, in our agency where it should be used and where it shouldn't. So we use AI obviously for meeting transcripts, and we use it to create SOPs.

Jen Speers: If we have somebody-- we're in the process of creating all of our SOPs for all of the tasks that are done. We have used it for generating like a, a springboard for generating [00:17:00] ideas. But that being said, AI, as everybody knows, is a regenerate-- It's just regurgitating a already done ideas, and it's taking away...

Jen Speers: It-- I feel like at currently people are looking at marketing like, "Oh, it's really easy. My computer can spit something out in 15 seconds, so why should I pay, this, this company to do it and it takes them three weeks?" But you're taking out the expertise of people who understand the nuances between, with the goals of a business and the struggles that they might be going through, and the ability to produce brand-new ideas that maybe haven't been done yet, or produce ideas that maybe have been done but in a, at a, in a brand-new way.

Jen Speers: And so we do use it, but we never use it to replace the creativity and the experience of the people on our team. We use it as a way to make our lives more efficient within the agency [00:18:00] to cut down on admin tasks, to cut down on, things that would slow us down. And we also just use it as a foundation sometimes for brainstorming.

Jen Speers: But it's really a tool. It does not in our agency take away from the human component of what we're doing here. Because what we're doing is very human

Joshua McNary: I'm a big AI advocate, as and as many of my listeners here would know, but I totally get what you're saying. And I also recognize that these AI tools are intended to help us, us humans here. That's what they were created for us, right? So this whole, we're not trying to get into big ethical debates here on this short conversation today, but the idea of what you're saying is how do we have these tools help us be able to be more human, is how I like to talk about it.

Joshua McNary: So that's what you're saying in, in the idea of okay, if we could use this tool to help us have a springboard, I like that term you used. Okay, we could maybe brainstorm some ideas, tend to get started with, but then we develop as [00:19:00] humans the actual idea off of that. That is what we're looking for versus just throwing it in the machine, trying to hit the easy button and have it like pump out the perfect thing.

Jen Speers: Because we know our clients. We know what they're struggling with. We know what they've... I guess you can put all of this into a chatbot, but also just the human aspect of it, of understanding what it feels like to be in a position where maybe sales are down or something's not working that was working before, and being able to work around fear a- with clients and things like that.

Jen Speers: I also, because we build brands here and we create branding and logos it's im- it's important to me that my clients understand that when you create a branding or a logo through a chatbot or AI it needs significant human manipulation to be able to trademark it. If you create something to save money and time, you're [00:20:00] still gonna have to pay somebody eventually to recreate it in a way that's diff- because it's, AI is

Jen Speers: You can't trademark an AI design. I've seen lately AI websites, and I don't know, I don't know how much you know about that. I don't know a ton about it, and I haven't looked into it, but I keep thinking like, what if you just need a small change? You have to have it reproduce everything. What if...

Jen Speers: it is, it seems time-saving, it seems cost-saving, but in the end, you're still- you're gonna run into something where you're still gonna have to have somebody create it for you, and you don't own any of that code that it built it on. So it's really like a... It doesn't give you the control that I think you would probably want if you are starting a business and wanting to grow that business.

Jen Speers: Now, if you're gonna throw a block party, there's no reason that you can't, throw in an AI logo or whatever for that. But I've really been trying to express to our followers and our [00:21:00] readers that there is benefit in having it created for you. We've had lately a lot of clients come to us with their AI designs, and they can't get it set up for a printer.

Jen Speers: They wanna put it on a T-shirt, or they wanna... And we end up having to pull the entire design apart and recreate it anyways so that it can go to the printer. So they're not saving the money that they think they are. It's actually kind of a hassle, and then they're s- they're settling for maybe not something that would be their ideal design in the first place.

Joshua McNary: That was where I was gonna ask next is when someone comes to you for what you do in your business, and I've seen versions of this in my own world with technology solutions. But the idea of like when they come to you, you just brought the example of the logo. Okay, they tried doing a logo on their own, and now they're coming to you to help you actually get it the way they need it.

Joshua McNary: But what about like just someone that comes off the street or maybe is not coming off the street right [00:22:00] now for your traditional approach when you're-- they're coming to you for they just need help. Do you think that they're less likely to be coming to you right now because of the AI stuff? "Oh, I'm gonna try delegating it to AI instead of delegating it to Jen first."

Joshua McNary: Or d- what do you think, what do you think is happening there from a standpoint of how customers are approaching you or not because of that at this

Joshua McNary: time

Jen Speers: I am sure that there's less people reaching out because they think they can throw everything into a chatbot. I have no doubt. But I also am, like, an eternal optimist, so in my head I think at some point they're gonna realize that's not working for them, and it's not.

Jen Speers: Copy that's generate- unless you know what you're doing, right? Copy that's generated by AI, designs that are generated, like social media posts that are des- designed by AI, they all are taking away from the brand. They all look very similar. They all sound very similar. And so that brand is not standing out in any way, shape, or form, so they're not gonna get a return on that [00:23:00] anyways.

Jen Speers: So I think that the optimistic part of me says that yes, they're not coming in right now 'cause they're probably trying that, but that's not a forever solution. At some point a human has to step in and come up with new ideas and new ways to promote and generate business and use that creativity of things that are not gonna be produced by a chatbot

Joshua McNary: There is so much more we can talk about

Jen Speers: I know.

Jen Speers: This is my my hot seat. I lo-

Joshua McNary: Yeah, that's good.

Jen Speers: I'm really passionate about this right now, because my brother is very... He works for NVIDIA, so he's heavy into AI. And when I got, met with him a couple weekends ago, he was very like, "Nope, you're gonna have to figure it out. It's AI." And I'm adamant that you will never be able to replace human creativity. And so I, my husband is our creative director, and there is no way that we could... That eventually everything's gonna look boring and stale and you're gonna have [00:24:00] to come back to a human. So I believe in human creativity

Joshua McNary: We believe in humanity. Let's go. Yeah I'm joking by saying that, but I also believe that. I've been an AI advocate, but I also recognize that humanity is what makes that stuff interesting. So my own use of artificial intelligence is always flavored with what I actually believe and what my values are.

Joshua McNary: And then, and just like before AI, that's what got you results, and that was what you were alluding to with the use of it as well. So we're gonna continue to evolve with that. If we talk again in a couple of years, or next six months from now, or two weeks from now, there'll probably be more to talk about in that arena.

Joshua McNary: But ultimately, uh, there is a lot of room for use of that technology while also recognizing the humanity of what we're doing. So I appreciate your comments there and we haven't had-- I don't think ~any-anybody~ on the show has given that, uh, you know, we haven't talked to that depth on AI kind of values and ethics lately.

Joshua McNary: So appreciate those comments.

Joshua McNary: All right, Jen. I think we're gonna wrap up here now with the question I ask everybody on the show which is, [00:25:00] what is one actionable tip you would give businesses looking to better leverage technology?

Jen Speers: So my actionable tip for businesses would be to have them decide where AI fits into their business and where it doesn't, and how to use it without losing themselves in the AI. So staying authentic. There was a recent poll that said that 91% of consumers are... feel trust when they know there's an authenticity, and 52% will not purchase from a company that feels inauthentic.

Jen Speers: So you have to keep what makes your business you while finding a way to use AI, because it's not going anywhere, to make your business more efficient, but to keep your own voice, your own point of view, your own values at the forefront of all of that

Joshua McNary: Great advice. Definitely ties in with our themes of the day [00:26:00] of authenticity, community, local business, technology for good in the best way possible. So I appreciate that as our way of wrapping up today, and appreciate you being here today. So with that, where can people find out more about you online and what you're up to?

Jen Speers: Yeah, absolutely. You can find us at, um, moonwakecollaborative.com. you can find us on Facebook and Instagram @ moonwakecollaborative, and same on LinkedIn at Moonwake Collaborative. So as long as you know how to spell collaborative, then you're in good shape.

Joshua McNary: Perfect. Thanks for joining me here today

Jen Speers: Thank you so much for having me, Josh

Joshua McNary: All right, folks. That's it for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast on any of the popular directories. Tell a friend about what you have learned here on Business Tech Superhero, and subscribe to my e-newsletter at mcnarymarketing.com/subscribe. Thanks for listening. I'm Joshua McNary, and I hope you will join me again next time so [00:27:00] you can learn how to become a Biz Tech superhero.

Joshua McNary: Bye now.