BizTech Superhero

Joshua McNary [00:00:00]:
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, Nicole Mead, partner and director of Business development at Creative Planning Business Services. I'm looking forward to discussing the technology Nicole and her team uses and supports for their clients as well as how they are evolving new tools for use in sales and marketing. Nicole, welcome to the show.

Nicole Mead [00:00:27]:
Thanks for having me. Joshua, excited to be here.

Joshua McNary [00:00:30]:
So for folks just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Nicole Mead [00:00:35]:
Sure. As you shared during your great intro there. I am the director of Business development for Business Services team at Creative Planning. Our group here really partners with business owners and leadership teams, helping them manage their daily operations, help them strategically scale their business, and then ultimately help them navigate through some complexities they might have with exiting or transitioning their business. We do that through a variety of means of hands on solutions that could involve accounting, payroll tax planning, managed it, HR consulting and strategic advisory. Since today we are going to dive into technology, I'm really excited to, as we continue to chat to talk more about how we do leverage technology not only internally but externally as well. And I know that I started about the business there, but a little bit about myself is my background previously was in software engineering and computer programming. So before I took the leap into sales, I was very passionate about technology and continued with that passion here today.

Joshua McNary [00:01:47]:
Well, I love that merger of the technology background with the client services side, the sales side of what you do. I mean, I know that's part of what I try to do in my work from a standpoint of really understanding the client need and then being able to connect that with the solutions, which is also my understanding of what Creative Planning is doing across the board, really outside of technology and across the entire business all the way to the exit at the end like you said. So I love that holistic approach. It's definitely a lot of what we talk about here on BizTech Superhero and in my work, being strategic and wise about how you're doing things certainly within technology as well.

Nicole Mead [00:02:24]:
Absolutely. It's so important as every single day we're inundated and no matter what your role is, I feel like we're inundated with new technology. And to really understand, you know, what is important, what's what does my business need first and foremost, whether that's me and the team setting our goals for the year in business development or it's working with clients and their operations or their marketing or, you know, how work's flowing through their organization. If. If you don't have that goal in mind when you're implementing new technology, you are not going to streamline things. You're not going to make it any easier. You are just going to distract. At the end of the day, a.

Joshua McNary [00:03:06]:
Slide that's been in my slide decks for many years is technology is not magic. There's this mentality of it. Just sprinkling that on to whatever you're doing is going to make it better. That's partially the technology marketing that's out there. And I mean, in today's day and age with artificial intelligence, it's the little, literally the sparkle little icon that appears inside of our tools now. That is the AI icon. But it's not magic. You have to have the intent behind it.

Joshua McNary [00:03:31]:
So I know we both feel strongly about that.

Nicole Mead [00:03:34]:
Sure do. Sure do. Excited to dive in.

Joshua McNary [00:03:38]:
Awesome. Well, why don't we start out by talking about how you and your organization and your team are incorporating technology into what you're doing to be able to better serve your clients.

Nicole Mead [00:03:50]:
Great question. We, like any organization out there today, have been on this technology journey of some. Oh, man. Maybe five or six years ago, really developed an internal technology roadmap team, so started having the conversations and how we're pulling together different service lines. As you can imagine, we have a variety of services and some of them operate in very disparate systems. So one, how are we going to get those systems talking to each other? Is there one, one, one stop shop that's going to work for everything or how are we going to connect these at the end of the day? So we've really been on this journey. I'm excited to say that as of the time of recording this call, we are one week away from launching three new technologies that are going to not only help empower the business development team, but also are going to just move mountains with our client service and overall customer experience. So we're looking at implementing an outreach program that's going to help us for a lot of the top of the funnel conversations and activity.

Nicole Mead [00:04:56]:
We're also getting into Salesforce, which will be very exciting, not only for managing that workflow or that top funnel, but also workflow and then also streamlining our contracting for clients. I think when you think about technology, it's more than just about empowering our team members. It's about trying to understand how clients want to be communicated with how they want to do business with you. And so I'm excited because I feel like those three are going to be a great start and huge shift in our business.

Joshua McNary [00:05:29]:
That's great. I mean, it's the whole cycle, right? The initial contact, the lead generation, the moving through salesforce, that's a sales process, typically. And then, and then on the backside actually get that contracting done. So then they can be sent off to the probably other systems that are handling the actual implementation. We probably won't have time to get into all that today. But let me ask this question. So you noted that you went on this journey and you're talking about kind of getting to the finish or starting line. I'm not sure what we'd actually call it in the next week when you actually hit the go button on these tools.

Joshua McNary [00:06:01]:
But talk about that, like, what were the symptoms, what were the reasonings that the organization decided to start going on this journey that's leading up to this current action state that you're in? And of course, you're also a company that helps other companies do this stuff to a degree. Right. So I'm kind of curious how you internally kind of turn the lens on to yourself.

Nicole Mead [00:06:26]:
Great question. And our business services team over the last 10 years, like many of our clients, to your point, Joshua, have been on a journey of mergers and acquisitions. Right. So sometimes when you're buying a company or you're merging in with maybe a competitor, you're growing, you may or may not be on the same systems. And even if you are in the same systems, you still might not be looking at your data in the same way. And so how we were working before was, you know, if we were in the same systems, we work with our data in the consistent way, but we still needed those other systems to talk to each other. So we took it as approach of finance first. So we wanted to make sure that we had all of the information, you know, for our finance teams, like many organizations, like that's going to be very important is, you know, are you having consistent billings and collecting.

Nicole Mead [00:07:19]:
And operationally there is the money heading, as it should be.

Joshua McNary [00:07:23]:
Right. You can't do the technology work if you don't have the money to do the do the stuff.

Nicole Mead [00:07:27]:
Exactly, exactly. So we combined our Systems initially through APIs and other means, some data transfers to get on a consistent financial system. That was first and foremost. And then whenever we would have an acquisition, it would transition that in there first. Sometimes we would keep some of the other lines and applications, but even as those continue to evolve now we're looking at some that can just maybe do more. So how work flows through from the time that we put out a request to a client to get their tax information for the year. Right. So it's more than just them dropping off tax documents, scanning them into a system.

Nicole Mead [00:08:07]:
It's more electronic files, some of the reading. And then how does that workflow schedule and things through the system. So continually looking out for that in operation.

Joshua McNary [00:08:16]:
Gotcha. Gotcha. So it was the various mergers within your organization that really prompted these technology changes and moves that you've been making. And then I guess that question about the how did you kind of for your team, for the, your. Your. Your services group, that idea of turning the lens of like your own organizational type aptitude toward what you're doing. I want to hear more about that.

Nicole Mead [00:08:41]:
Great question. For us, it was as much about the client experience and consistent onboarding as it was for my team's own efficiency. So our business development team is around 30 team members strong and you know, to not have a consistent way to measure track activity, people working in different systems. We do have kind of a center of truth for any sales right now. But it's all of that day to day activity that people have been operating through spreadsheets and their own lists and their own task sheets. But I would say as an organization, the big selling point cross functionally was the vision of the consistent client experience and making sure that the information that we uncover in a business development experience is transferred along to the next team members that everybody has what they need in order to do that most effectively and hit timelines. And just client experience was also very top of the list there.

Joshua McNary [00:09:44]:
Gotcha. Well, obviously everyone wants within your what you hope everyone wants inside your organization wants the client to be happy at the day. But there's a buy in thing here too that I've seen over and over again. So you have dozens of people that need to buy into this. They were using their way of doing it in spreadsheets or whatever before. So how did that process work? I mean you did some kind of road mapping initially it sounds like, and then moved towards these different tools. But how did you kind of bring everyone along and make sure all the input was coming in so that as you go to turn this thing on, everyone's ready to go and really excited about it like you are.

Nicole Mead [00:10:20]:
Another great question. So our business services team actually went through our own acquisition two years ago when we became part of creative planning. And creative planning at their core was already on a salesforce System. So that I think that was already kind of vetted and we were headed in that direction anyway. But what was extremely helpful for me, as you know, we're still having goals like our clients, we still have our day to day and system implementation is not easy and the requirements, gathering to your point, all the considerations, we did have a dedicated team. So we had a dedicated. They have been absolutely fabulous to work with both internally and on our Salesforce groups and our external vendor partners. And I think really having that dedication, it's key.

Nicole Mead [00:11:12]:
They need to be communicating with all the stakeholders, reaching out to all the groups, understanding, you know, what could be some of these gotchas as you get going. Can't plan for everything. But to have that buy in to your point is it's huge. Or else you can implement the systems and they just sit there.

Joshua McNary [00:11:31]:
Yep, yep. And even when you do the due diligence, there's still like you say, there's things you can't, you can't know, you have to try to do and then you figure out how to mitigate it. And if you're in that mindset, you can overcome those challenges and be okay. But it might move a little slower than we all want as technologists at times to kick this stuff forward. I know I experienced that in my own work in my own business as well as occasionally with clients.

Nicole Mead [00:11:58]:
We have to continue to iterate. So what we see next week is not what we're going to continue to work with and we'll grow together. But it's exciting that it's here.

Joshua McNary [00:12:08]:
Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the specific tools you're implementing. So you mentioned Salesforce earlier. If you're willing to share kind of the other tools on those, the marketing side as well as on the contracting side. And let's talk about how you're integrating these tools or like how, how you expect these things to work well together in a holistic way.

Nicole Mead [00:12:28]:
Yeah, happy to dive in. So as part of the Salesforce ecosystem, we are also using the marketing cloud version there. And like many organizations, that's going to be for corporate branding and a lot of the corporate marketing place. So the business development team will likely not be operating a lot in that space. We'll be using some of the information that that happens there. But that's going to be a lot of the corporate marketing that's happening for the business development team and I'm going to say our center of action. So Salesforce is going to be our center of truth and, and outreach.com is going to be our center of action. So our team will be working within that tool.

Nicole Mead [00:13:11]:
For instance, you know, for having a conversation. Joshua, you want to follow up and learn more about our services? I'll put your information in there and it'll remind me to be reaching out to you. You can set up your own sequences, you can have your own follow up. It also has like many of these sales enablement tools, it has the recording capability that has AI built into it. So it'll help a lot with our discovery meetings and when we're on calls and recommendations and help with that flow and then also with setting action items. And the exciting part about it too is transitioning that information that we learn to our team members. So it's not just reliant on us recapping in our own way in our own email. Our team members are very succinct on what the next steps are as we transition.

Nicole Mead [00:14:01]:
So that'll be our center of action where we're living in day to day and recording client interactions. And then as opportunities are created, it'll create it in Salesforce and from there our flow is going to be into. We chose a proposal tool called PandaDoc and so it'll take items from Salesforce and create those into Pandada to make proposals, sharp looking proposals that we can use corporate branding. And then what'll also be really exciting is that we can pull in various options too. So clients love options. They want to know, hey, what's available. But they might not be ready to commit to everything today. So it gives them the control to pick, you know, how much or as little they might want to consume at that time.

Nicole Mead [00:14:46]:
And then all of the information is stored back in Salesforce once again.

Joshua McNary [00:14:51]:
Okay, that's great. I think your summary there was awesome. I know it's high level, but the you seem excited and that's great that you're looking forward to using these tools. And you did make that comment about the artificial intelligence component of the. It sounds like a meeting. The meeting component is what you were referring to at that time. But that's of course been a common theme on BizTech Superhero over the last number of months is talking about artificial intelligence here in 2025. So are there any other spots you know that those tools are helping or maybe just you want to talk about any other ways that you and your work in recent times, even before this current transition, have been using artificial intelligence in some way and maybe how you think it might be affecting the system going forward?

Nicole Mead [00:15:32]:
I think there are the common ways that people are using AI. Right. They may have Copilot within their Outlook tools and they want to make sure that the email has the right tone, that they're covering the right bullet points, maybe some formatting. I think if people are not using that AI, sometimes they should be and keeping it conversational. I think, Joshua, you've seen enough and I have as well. You also see those come across where you're like, whoa, I'm talking to ChatGPT here.

Joshua McNary [00:16:02]:
This is not good. Yeah, there's a balance there between like too much and too little, right?

Nicole Mead [00:16:07]:
That's right. That's right. I also think it's really important that business development marketers, I mean, regardless if you're client facing, I think that AI can be very, very helpful in researching and being informed and prepared going into client meetings. So I know it's very popular right now in business development and sales marketing to learn about some client Personas. Right. What is going to be very interesting to a CFO in this industry, specifically this company, you can dive into some deep research. You should never walk into a client conversation and say, what's keeping you up at night? If they're a manufacturer and you're probably like, wow, you got some tariffs going on right now, There could be some impact there. How are you feeling that heat? And know you, your business, you know, what are you thinking about with that? So I think going in there informed is just table stakes.

Nicole Mead [00:17:00]:
If people aren't using that to be more efficient in it, I think they're missing the boat.

Joshua McNary [00:17:05]:
So it sounds to me like in the context of the new system, the new workflows, it's not necessarily a key component, at least not yet. But in the context of, in our sales roles and in our, our account management roles, we're using as a copilot. You mentioned Microsoft copilot. But there's also this idea of that partner, that research assistant, that intern over here, and really leveraging that is how you've been using it.

Nicole Mead [00:17:30]:
Exactly. Yep.

Joshua McNary [00:17:31]:
All right, so let's talk about a challenge that you have faced in your career and your work or maybe with one of your clients, like on behalf of one of your clients, with technology and how you overcame it. So whether that's in regards to what we've been talking about already or kind of another angle, can you talk about a challenge that you've seen technology really knock out of the park and really help improve either your internal or maybe a client use case.

Nicole Mead [00:17:55]:
A very specific example that comes top of mind on this was with a manufacturing client. So there was somebody that we were working with and they're a tech medtech startup. So they were just starting to get into market and when we met them it was to help with some tax strategy and some high level business planning. But quickly we started working with them on how are they going to create efficiencies in their organization. From the time a client places an order all the way through, fulfilling that order, getting the work done, making sure that everything was in one system and if not in one system, that we had the systems at least talking. So I think today especially, and this might sound like a tangent, but I think it's all relevant, especially with the competitive workplace that we are in and the up and coming workforce being so strong in technology, technologically savvy, they're expecting that they're going to go into a place where they're maximizing their brain power and they're using technology rather than filling out, forming paper around and duplicate entry and all of those things. So being able to take that organization and as a startup be thinking about technology from the beginning and how it's going to allow them to grow their workforce with people that can make the biggest impact while scaling to hit the levels that they wanted was really important. It was a, it was a great project to see through.

Joshua McNary [00:19:34]:
That sounds interesting. I appreciate that because that idea of the entire life cycle, I mean you talked about that in your own world, within your own department here earlier, streamlining the cycle. But then this use case you brought up this idea of helping this organization really see through the entirety of it. And then I also love that idea of the generational component. I mean there are some people listening to this and they're like, oh yeah, I'm still using paper to do this over here. Or I haven't actually figured out this SOP over here quite yet. Let alone have they thought about eliminating double entry or the things that are going to annoy the Gen Z person or whatever it's going to come in next. Right, so.

Joshua McNary [00:20:13]:
So that's an important component here. I mean a lot of our conversations on BizTech Superhero have had a component of the human side because technology is here to help us, to serve us. And Even though the AIs of the world are, there's concerns about where that's going to lead us. You know, that is ultimately a way of interacting with, in a human way with a computer. It's only going to become a higher bar as we go forward. So there's that element of the technology being more adaptive to us, but it's also the idea of making sure that our technology is being cognizant of the people that we're working with. So can you talk a little bit more maybe about again, just based on your experience or working with clients? That idea of the generational components and making sure that you can serve everybody right, because there's people that are maybe towards the end of their careers that have one technology aptitude and then you have the people that are coming up that are uber technology centric. So talk about that and what you've seen and how that's worked in some of these implementations.

Nicole Mead [00:21:13]:
That can be the very tricky part. I mean, I know during my intro we mentioned that we help prep businesses for succession and transition. And there are so many businesses out there that are looking in the next three to five years to sell. And that falls into your first point of relating technology to everybody. So much of their business might be in their own head, but. Or they maybe have had the same accountant or bookkeeper or office manager with them for their entire, you know, life of their, of their business. And so much of that information is. It's all in their head, it's on their relationships.

Nicole Mead [00:21:50]:
And so when we look at is that valuable to the next transition, the next generation, we need to get that information out of their head somehow. And that can be a little tricky because, you know, they're very protective, they've grown their business for a reason. But then also that office manager, accountant, bookkeeper, that key employee, they might not feel like they're at the end of the rope yet and ready to retire or move on. So for them, that knowledge is their job security. So this gets to the tricky people component of how do you empower them. And a lot of it is the change management piece, right? It's the setting the goals, it's letting them understand the value that they still have in the organization. And then also just that the business needs to continue to grow and we need to get that information out of their mind in order to do that. So once we can kind of get past that is a big step, then the next step will be, you know, what can we automate? What can we use technology to help back? What does the future team look like in the second third generation? Some of these transitions of businesses, that generation doesn't want to do business like their parents did.

Nicole Mead [00:23:10]:
They want to go on vacations, they want to spend more time with their family, they have a different lifestyle plan. And so that's where technology plays a huge impact in generational as well. And not only that, but taking some of those. Some of those jobs or some of those responsibilities out of the office and, you know, in more of a fractional sense as well.

Joshua McNary [00:23:33]:
Yeah, it's about the people. It's about the people. And the technology is there to help the people. Even though I'm a technologist, that's so important to remind ourselves over and over and over again. I know so often people present to me with a symptom and maybe a possible technology solution. And it's like, what are we actually trying to do here? We're actually trying to transition this to our family. We're transitioning to sell the business in the cases you're talking about or various, you know, different things. That's what's actually important.

Joshua McNary [00:24:01]:
And all of the stuff that your organization does, whether it's technology or accounting components and all these things that approaches you're able to provide to your clients. And hopefully those that are listening here today are able to step back a little bit and yes, think about technology and being a biztech superhero, but also, why do you want to do that?

Nicole Mead [00:24:21]:
The why is extremely important because businesses operate on more technology today. They have more applications at their fingertips than ever before, but it's not always creating the efficiencies because they don't know where they're headed or why they're using it.

Joshua McNary [00:24:36]:
And that brings us right back to where you started earlier today. So I think that's a good point for us to come down to. Our final question that we ask here on the show. What is one actionable tip that you would give businesses looking to better leverage technology?

Nicole Mead [00:24:51]:
My gut was talking about the why, but I'm going to be a little bit more pointed than that. And think about how will leveraging technology differentiate you in the marketplace with your clients and help you get to your goals? So think about your clients by you utilizing technology that will really differentiate you in the marketplace.

Joshua McNary [00:25:14]:
That's great. That's a great comment and something that everyone should be thinking about in their organizations all the time, because I'm a technologist. But at the same time, it's great that you brought that out so that people can leave this episode thinking about that and what that means to them. And hopefully they got some good ideas through our conversations of your internal systems as well as those that you're helping. So appreciate this. This has been great. I'd like to ask you where people can find you online so they can connect with you.

Nicole Mead [00:25:40]:
Nicole, great question. You can find me, I would say the best place would be on LinkedIn. Or you can always send me an email@nicole meadreativeplanning.com and I appreciate the time today. This is great conversation.

Joshua McNary [00:25:53]:
That's great. Thanks for joining me today.

Nicole Mead [00:25:55]:
My pleasure.

Joshua McNary [00:25:56]:
All right folks, that's it for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and any of the popular directories. Tell a friend about what you have Learned here on BizTech Superhero and subscribe to my newsletter@mcnarymarketing.com subscribe. Thanks for listening. I'm Joshua McNary and I hope you will join me again next time so you can learn how to become a BizTech superhero. Bye now.