Chris Troka - Elevating Business Through AI and Collaborative Innovation

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Welcome to the Real People Real Business Show. My name is Stephanie Hayes, and I'm a business strategist who helps experienced business owners design asset-based business models that set them up for growth and exit. I love to speak with like-minded entrepreneurs to share their real stories in the gritty details on how they've navigated their own way through. On this show, you won't hear about the glamorized entrepreneurship journeys that you see online, and you won't be told how to make six figures in six weeks. Instead, you can expect to hear real vulnerable and inspiring stories that you can relate to that have helped create the foundation for each of our guests businesses today. I am so excited to welcome Chris Troka. Chris is the founder of Focused Biz, a marketing company that uses AI to help businesses reduce friction in the customer's experience by offering a 14 in one D I Y software, a guided automated solution, or a focused biz complete automation. With Chris's process, he promises that robots can work alongside business owners as they build and grow their business. A serial entrepreneur, Chris, also founded. M U P DJ services and has now served over 500 clients winning the not sustained Best of Weddings award four years in a row between the two businesses. He has seen exponential growth over the past two years, while also finding time to offer free marketing and support for businesses needs. Holy smokes. Welcome to the show, Chris, and thanks so much for taking the time to share your story today. Thanks so much for having me. Stephanie. Really love your podcast format and the fact that it's real and vulnerable. I feel like a lot of podcasts, again, are just showing you the shiny anything, but this is real and I love real conversation. Humans connecting. No, we want gritty and messy and all of the stories. I love it. I think it's true, right? It's absolutely true. We have lots and lots of shiny stories that we can read and see and hear, but I wanna hear like, how did you get through? And I see, and you're a serial entrepreneur and I love that as I, so let's dive in like. Give me the backstory, how did you get here? Sure, absolutely. So I will try to keep this message a little more concise than what the long story could be. However, the past 15 years working nine to five jobs. I've worked in different capacities from healthcare, customer service, sales, and I found with any. Position that I took, I always wanted to leave it better than I found it. So I found myself, you know, if the business owner needed help with marketing, getting more leads, that's where I helped. They need help with graphic design. I'm down for that. They need help with process improvement, improving the customer's experience, and just saving time and admin work. That's what I was there for. So throughout that journey, although I loved the work, I realized that a lot of what I had to offer wouldn't benefit me directly. It was benefiting another business. So that was. My first, you know, introduction into entrepreneurship, started the DJ business. Started to grow that decided, okay, what if I treat this like a real business? Started improving things and eventually loved marketing so much, I went back to school for it. So today I started a marketing agency as well, beyond the DJs beyond the DJ business, and it's just been an incredible journey chatting with other business owners, helping bring value to other business owners as well, so that they don't have to make the same mistakes that I've made too. Okay, but you've kind of bypassed and blown through a really important part of this story. You didn't just start up a marketing agency. I mean, you've gone full on into ai. Absolutely AI and automation. I think the technology and tools that are out there to help us create and build a better business, I think we need to utilize those because otherwise we're gonna be left behind. And who wants to be doing all this? I. Crazy admin work. Who doesn't want more time? Who doesn't want to be saving money? Who doesn't wanna create a better experience for the customer along their journey? So that's when we got together with a team of developers who were also looking for feedback from business owners and entrepreneurs. They said, how can we work together to create a better business, c r m, better business app? So that's when Focus Biz was born. We started to leverage AI and automation within A C R M within one dashboard. To again, improve that customer experience and save time in admin work. And based on your past experience, from what I've seen, it seems you delve heavy into the technology, the process improvement, the strategy behind it, which is something that I was so excited to meet with you specifically and chat about that stuff. Oh, you're after my heart. Talk nerdy to me, please. Yes, talk nerd to me, I think the IT space for almost 30 years, so I, I could definitely relate. So I mean that's a, that's a gutsy move to take right to, to. F to try a spin on marketing that is maybe non-standard. So tell me a little bit more about that part of the journey. Yeah, absolutely. And I think for myself and many other business owners, we're always taking calculated risks. I. So I think for us, we are taking risk, we are seeing opportunity, and it's up to us to either take advantage of that opportunity and make something from it, or do we calculate that risk and say, it's not worth trying. And I say don't tell yourself no before someone else has a chance to say that to you instead. So with that, it's about. You know, after you analyze anything that you could do and should be doing, take action on it. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are stuck in that analysis paralysis, where they're just thinking there's one, one more secret, one more tip that I need to learn. One more process. That, and, and again, they just get stuck in the learning phase as opposed to the doing phase. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that was something that we wanted to bring together was the, the AI and automation piece of improving a business improving the customer experience, the customer journey, and saving admin time for a lot of entrepreneurs. I. So dig in a little bit. Tell me, tell me what the software does. Sure. So it's a 14-in-one business tool. It starts with the foundation of a robust c r M system. We all need to manage our customer relationships. We need our email inboxes to be connected to those so we know exactly what communication is going on between them. For business owners, we also offer custom forms. So you create these advanced forms. Based on logic and conditional logic that can route the experience and the questions and personalize the marketing for that individual, which is really fantastic. And who what other tools do business owners need? They need payment processing, they need invoices, they need a calendar meeting schedule. And all of that is tied into robust automation. So based on what answers they selected. What parameters, what defines that can take them along a separate more personalized journey and help you increase your speed to lead through our AI chat bot and just improve the customer experience with more personalized touchpoints. I. So who are you working with? Who are your ideal customers for consuming and getting the most leverage out of the tools? Absolutely. So for those who are the more d I Y focused entrepreneurs, they're a little bit more tech savvy. They like to get into the, the nitty gritty details of software and process improvement. Those are the ones that can benefit directly from using the software just on their own, learning it as they go. For other business owners, we find that simplicity is king, where they don't wanna think about a lot of those things. So we actually come in and we will work alongside you and take a look at your process. Where does the customer, the lead come in? How are they nurtured? How are they fulfilled, and then how do we get more reviews from them? So the entire customer journey. So we try to simplify that for them. One process we use is we call them smart forms. So we create a form that is basically the, the simplest, easiest way for you to input customer data and let the system do the work in the backend for you through the automations. So we find that. If you want something set up for you, something a little more personalized where you don't have to think about that, we can create that, that journey for you, create that software for you. For those who like D i Y and like to get techie, those are the ones who can get into the software and start using it themselves. Yeah. Well of course. I would love that. And did you build from scratch? Are you white labeling? It's a little bit of both. So the the core foundation of the software is from a team of developers that we're offering kind of this early access you know, beta opportunity for business owners and entrepreneurs to help them improve the software. So we have a white label access that we received from this. But based on our input, we've been improving the software over the last two years and there is a potential opportunity for us. As resellers to also offer a white label opportunity. So let's say you've, you know, you're in a particular industry or vertical and you feel like you have a really good grasp of the customer journey and the entire processes that you have as a business, you could create that as an entire template and then resell that as your own white label provider. I like the idea, like I think a lot of people are kind of like, oh, but I should really build everything from, and you know, I own a software development company. I know how much effort and time and risk and work that is, but I think it's a smart strategy to look at what you can leverage and then continue to make it your own and build on the pieces that are most interesting to you and make it. Unique to your, to your business and kind of where you wanna go, right? I, I agree. Absolutely. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. If there's an open source software that's out there that we can either get inspired from or use pieces of that, that just means that we can get to market a little bit faster. And if it's done, it's been done before, what can we tweak to improve it? So that, that's kind of the, the basis behind a lot of software development, right? Is what can we use that's been created in the past, use those resources and then build something better from that. I was just in an all day session yesterday talking about how we build patterns and automation inside of a large enterprise IT organization. And it is all about automation and reusability and, and if we have to build something new from scratch, we better have a pretty good reason for doing it. Yes, absolutely. We're, we're always trying to find the path, at least resistance, right. Usually make things easier, right? Unless you're in the innovation group, which is the other part of my, my job, and then it's the complete opposite. We should be finding the path of most resistance. So true. Absolutely. So are you a marketing company or a technology company? I wanna say we're a little bit of both. I, I started first with the marketing aspect of it. I was using a lot of different technology and tools from other providers. HubSpot, constant Contact, MailChimp. And I'm realizing, okay, some of these systems have to be built out custom for you, or there's something missing, or it's not specific to this industry or this niche. How do we bridge that gap? So the, the software itself that we offer is really cool because it gives you that foundation of a lot of advanced automation and a lot of capabilities. And then you build that out based on your needs. So whether you're using one or two, Of our own tools within the system. We know that that will provide an r o i for you and your business, whether that's improving the customer journey or saving time in admin work for others. Once you kind of build out this system and it's created, that is where the money maker is. Once you have that process, that just continues to bring dividends down the road. Yeah. And I think if you have the flexibility to be able to make those changes inside the system, I know I've done a lot of work with trying to find those all-inclusive, end-to-end solutions that are supposedly out there. And I think I only found one or two that really truly do the job, but mm-hmm. It's you know, it's the constant. It's the constant endeavor of any small business owner in the online space is to find that that system that's gonna be able to automate all the different pieces rather than piece them together. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I think it just, it's a lot easier for you know, software developers, people who are kind of in that, that front end user experience. What does that look like? How many, how many different tools do we need to piece this together? And each tool that you introduce, there's an opportunity that it can either break. Or it's going to really help them. So we try to find that that balance between how many tools do we need to integrate here or what can we simplify to make that a little bit easier. So you made the transition into being a business owner, right? Mm-hmm. Was that tricky? Yes. Yes, it was. Absolutely. It was it was challenging and when I first started, I didn't know. A lot of things. Now I know more had I known certain things, I may have saved myself some friction and some obstacles. But again, each failure and each obstacle is a learning opportunity, and that's our opportunity in order to learn more and then improve that and help other people do that a little bit better. So, My business journey, it was working a lot of either full-time or part-time jobs while I'm doing the other job. So I'm putting in 12 to 15 hour days as many entrepreneurs can relate to. And it was how do I create financial stability, time freedom as well with this business opportunity? How do I take this seriously? How do I advance that? How do I scale it? So that, that journey was, it was a struggle. It was a challenge. But something that really resonated with me, I heard someone say choose your hard. So choose your hard. Business can be hard. There's a lot of challenges, a lot of obstacles. But you know what's also hard is not having enough money to fill up your gas tank or wondering what bill can I pay today that won't put me in default. That, you know, it's just that challenge. You have to choose your hard. And that's something that a lot of people that I work with, a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs, they, they can struggle with either technology. Adaptation or just, you know, running a business as a whole. So it's again, hey, I know this is hard. It's a challenge for all of us, but we're in this together, number one. And number two, what is the alternative? Do you wanna go back working to a nine to five? Do you want to be in debt? I mean, let's, let's consider our options here. So I like to tell people, choose your hard, and they typically wanna stick with owning a business. You know, I gosh, that, that's a great way of putting it. I, I, it made me just think now and I thought, well, why have I chosen? Because this is hard. It's hard every day. Yes, it's, but it's fun hard. Whereas to me, going and getting a job and working in an organization again, would be, I. Like soul destroying hard. Like hard? Yes. Hard because I'd hate myself and I'd hate my life every day. And I would feel like I didn't have the ownership and the freedom and that obviously is what I value. So that's a great, that's a great question. Choose your hard. I appreciate that. Hey, thanks so much. And I think someone for Like yourself with actual diagnosed A D H D. If, if I'm not mistaken, I don't wanna speak for you, but I feel like your creativity and your productivity comes in spurts, right? Like, if you're not feeling motivated to do something, that task isn't gonna get done. So that can be a challenge. But again, some of the, the most creative and beneficial work that you can do it just has to be on your own time. So the typical nine to five schedule. You can't turn your brain on and off and say, all right, now I can be creative. You have to let that creativity kind of come to you and get to work when you can. I think that's true for everybody, though. I don't think it's just us neurodivergent folks. Mm-hmm. Though I was, I will say like, exercise for me is like a pressure release and it's like a, it, it like releases all of the, the mess up inside your head and then, you know, after that is, Clear thinking. So there's, you know, some element of needing to be able to do that in the course of a day. And I think we're well past the time in our lives, in our culture where we accepted the, the slave to a job type of mentality. Mm-hmm. And people are demanding a lot more and a lot more balance. It's one of the benefits that we got out of the, if there could be any benefit to the whole covid situation that people are starting to rethink work. Absolutely. And I think that's changing a lot of strategy for a lot of business owners where they're wondering what are the motivating factors for a lot of their personnel, their employees. And some of 'em are still stuck in the 2019 and before thinking, or they say, alright, it is just the culture. We need another pizza party. And in reality, the, the motivations behind people and what they value. Has changed. So as business owners, if we want to create a, you know, a sustainable business model with employees with VAs, we need to think creatively in terms of what, what value do we bring to the employees and to keep them motivated. We can't keep thinking. The 2019 and prior. This is, this is a new era of, you know labor unions, people collective bargaining, working together, and they just have different motivations behind what they're doing. They want their work to serve a purpose. They don't want to feel like a slave and the cog of the machine. They want their work to be purposeful and they wanna earn an honest living that they can actually save some money and get ahead. It is true. I think one of the, the biggest demands that is new-ish from. People in jobs is, and I hear this all the time with the, the group that I'm working with in a big public sector organization, that more and more it matters to them that they can connect the work that they're doing to some type of benefit to the organization or to the people that the organization serves. And it's becoming more and more and more important to. Employees that they can, that what they're doing is meaningful, that what they're doing has some, and it doesn't even have to be like social purpose. Mm-hmm. But they, you know, even if it's an entirely for product profit organization, they also wanna be able to connect the work that they're doing to the. The profit in the organization or to whatever the, the organization is sort of aligned around. So it's not about a, a values judgment, but it's more about this, this kind of this, this seeking meaning and seeking. And, and so this comes kind of back full circle to ai, right? Mm-hmm. And. You know, a lot of people have, we've talked about this before we got on the show, but a lot of people, a lot of creative individuals got very uncomfortable with the idea of, you know, cognitive technologies and AI and oh my gosh, it's gonna replace all my work. And we have to, you know, stand up against this. Yes. First of all, you're not going to. Secondly, secondly, I think that what a, what a lot of these technologies is gonna do, are gonna do is. Make your work more meaningful because all of the stuff, all of the fluff work that is, you know, not necessarily a good use of your time. Or the thinking work or the, you know, like the processing work mm-hmm. Can be accelerated so that you can focus on the real high value work. And I, I know I use it in my own consulting work because there's parts of the stuff that I need to deliver that isn't really like unique or. Meaningful in terms of the work that I really need to be doing. But it needs to be there, right? It's like structure. Mm-hmm. And it's, or sometimes it's just like a thinking tool. It's a way to get me started. It's a thought tool so that I can really focus my time on the meaningful work that I have to do. Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head. As soon as chat g p t and Mid Journey came out, this was a, a shock factor to me. I, as a creative professional, also thought, okay, great, now I'm, I'm really finally gaining some traction with my business here and now it's gonna be gone. And that's a fear that a lot of us have. But I think just as you mentioned, It's gonna take a lot of that busy work, that fluff work something that really didn't need to involve, you know, human creativity before we can use that to accelerate what we're doing and what value we're we're bringing to other businesses. So I feel like most businesses can benefit from some sort of ai, some sort of automation. And I think for us it's just the ways that we, that we implement it. Of course, we don't wanna be losing our jobs, but. Is there a way that we could find work a little bit more meaningful and impactful if we had a tool that could take away some of that work for us? So I think you described it perfectly. It's that initial shock reaction and then we get a little more acclimated and realize, okay, where are the capabilities? How do we use it? How can it benefit us? How can it benefit our clients? My best friend is a, is a graphic designer and she got it right away. She, and so now she's actually built a hole. Like a whole brand around AI art. Wow. And let me tell you, it's not, it's, it's, it's actually a whole other skill in itself. Now she makes beautiful art on her own, and she's very skilled and she'll continue to be skilled and she'll continue to sell her services as a designer. But her, what she's doing with Mid Journey and with her AI art is just like, Stunning. Yes, right? Mind blowing. And some of these artists who have really embraced it are creating art that is just unique. And instead of them using their hands to create it. They're using their brains and they're figuring out how to build that skillset. And it is a skillset, it's a unique skillset. And some of the stuff they're producing is just phenomenal. It's truly art. It's, and it's not, you know, it's not a regurgitation of someone else's art. It's their own. Right. Absolutely. And I think just in the same way that you know there are people who like use Google search, like the very specific prompting within a Google search to do you know, Tech resolution or find solutions to problems, I feel like that's gonna be a similar job, is gonna be a chat, g p t, prompt, prompt, scripter a mid journey prompt scripter. And there is a skill within creating that prompt in order to tell the software Mid journey chat, G P T. What parameters, what to do in order to create that end result. You can't just Do you what? Go ahead., I was gonna say, do you know what else I think it requires is empathy? Yes. Because in order for us to. You know, produce a, a human result. We need to understand how, how humans would think or go about us. And that's like, this also relates to me to like really good s e o too, is being able to understand how people think and work and feel, because then you can most, most productively emulate the kind of behavior that they're taking online. Right? Absolutely. And that was one of. The most interesting aspects while attaining my marketing degree was the psychology behind marketing. And with, with any sort of industry, anything that you do, there's always like, you know, kinda like the white hat, black hat, sort of, there's, you know, power to be had. Do you use it for good and do you use it for evil? Of course, with marketing and communication, there are ways that you could. Obviously influence someone to think of something in a certain way or perceive value in a certain way. And it's up to us to, you know, kind of take the reins on that and make sure that we're doing it eth doing it ethically and that we are not deceiving people through our marketing strategy, through communication and the tools that we use. I think that's important as well. Well, that's interesting 'cause how do you govern that then? Right? Because the, the big fear is, oh, the robots are taking over, right? Mm-hmm. So how do you keep, how do you retain some governance over what's being produced? That's a great question and I think we're all still kind of figuring that out. However, I feel like with any tech software, anything that's new, we try to put safeguards in place. We try to create limitations, but the power but the power is only had within the human element that's behind the robot. What training do you provide it? What do you tell it to do? And it can do a lot of things, but what are you going to use it for? I feel like the, the self, you know, there's that difference between do we let our governments kind of dictate what we should or shouldn't do with that? Or do we self govern and how can we vote with our, our pocketbooks, with our dollars and support more ethically sound companies? And I think there's been a big transition. Between, you know, businesses that are just providing the service, and that's our only option. This is that monopoly versus how do we vote with our dollars and support the businesses, the smaller businesses that are being a little bit more ethical, that have a higher purpose. Welcome to Web three. Yeah. So where do you think the biggest opportunity is right now within AI and marketing? Within AI and marketing? I think a lot of business owners can benefit a. From improving the customer journey, the buying experience. So when we take a look at when a visitor comes to your website, are you communicating properly about what your offer is for them to take the next step? A lot of that is done through chat, G p t powered AI chat bots. So for us, in our system, we have this really cool chat bot that is powered by Chat G P T but it only answers in the data that you train it with. So it can train within your data within seconds. It scans your website. So now you have this one location where a lead or a visitor can go to. Get answers to all of their questions and then take the next steps in the sale. So I feel like it improves the customer experience, the customer's buyer's journey, but then it also removes a lot of the admin and labor costs from, from the human element. And I'm hoping that a lot of businesses see that as an opportunity not to get rid of their staff completely or to minimize it, but to then utilize the human resources in different aspects, in different ways. And where do you see the human side of the equation evolving? Sure. So basically I'm seeing more customer sup. Like it's that balance between, it, it, it is tough because we have this chat bot that can answer a lot of questions. It takes, you know, for a typical, like a SaaS software company, we can eliminate probably about 60% of the generic questions that come in through a support channel. If we can minimize that, can we now train our humans to be a more advanced tiered support? So let's say they were tier one before, now they can get removed from those elements and become a more, you know, expert in other areas. So I feel like there's never going to be a complete takeover of robots and AI because there's always that human element that's required and businesses and. Business in general is about relationship building and that human element. So we need to find that balance between what AI can do for us and when can a human jump in and kind of take over and, and nurture from there. Yeah. Well, and, and I, I think what we still have that I. AI doesn't, is empathy and, and the mm-hmm. So I see like customer support coming up to a higher level, right? Mm-hmm. And customer service being almost a sales team. And that is what we can't necessarily do without understanding the context of the conversation that we're having, right? Yes. Yeah. And so where are you, what's been working for you in terms of finding customers? Sure. So it's gonna depend on the industry because both my strategy for myself and then the strategy for other industries will vary. So for one example, I think something that benefits almost all industries is going to be, I hate to say it, but a Google business profile. With the changes with SS e o, I'm sure that you're familiar with and aware of. The original top organic rankings used to be our own websites and now they are the Google business profiles. So I find that having an optimized business profile through Google is really helpful for gaining organic traffic. And again, with your branding, your messaging, You wanna upload that into your Google profile, you wanna have the right keywords in there. You wanna encourage them to take the next steps. So I'm finding that that as an organic lead gen has been very helpful for a lot of businesses. And then beyond that, I think it's relationship management. It's building relationships, connecting with people, developing that like no and trust around someone. I know for myself, I've even supported business owners, not because I thought their unique value proposition was just so irresistible. I just liked the person and I thought this is gonna be a great relationship, a great business opportunity, and for me to be in that position where I could help support someone else, I was, you know, excited to do so. So I feel like, you know, depending on your industry, Your lead gen tactics are gonna be a little bit different. But again, it comes down to that human element building relationships. So have you been self-funded? Yes. That's a hard go. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Something for our our community, which has been really fantastic is the software. Funding itself was created from this development team where a group of entrepreneurs came together as early adopters to help them improve the software. So we in a sense were the early adopter beta testers that were crowdfunding the development team, but then the development team kept bringing new features and requests. They were listening to us, they were implementing the features we were asking for. So it was a really cool opportunity where, We could work alongside each other to help the development team help us, and we help them. That's amazing. That's amazing. And I think that, that the, the, you know, the presence of crowds and the, the membership and community is gonna become a much more viable business model going forward because mm-hmm. There's, there's so much more power in those collaborative relationships. Absolutely. And I'm finding that with a lot of business owners, Someone I just spoke to said something very inspiring is that it's, it's the amateur business owners who are a little more cutthroat. The ones who are a little more polished and professional, they're more willing to help other entrepreneurs as well. And it's, it's not seen as a competition. It's more seen as a, how do we come together as a collective to help each other out. We can still target our own industries, our own, our own, you know, sub niches. We can be experts in that, but how do we help each other? And it's really about providing value to the next person. So anything that I've learned, I'm happy to educate others on sharing what I've learned. There's a bunch of cool technology and tools that I've been introduced to that have just been, again, like a game changer for what I do. Saving time, saving money. So any opportunity that we have to be a collective, a group, share resources and ideas, I think it just benefits the community as a whole. Absolutely agree and I, you know, I used to have this conversation with a lot of my clients and they would be so worried about com competition and competitors. Mm-hmm. Like there's no such thing, honestly, like, you know, in the sense that a customer can choose another option. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. But you're only competing with yourself and you know, your, your unique brand is you. Nobody else can be that. And so people are gonna resonate with who it's gonna res. You're gonna resonate with people in terms of who you are and your unique capabilities. So don't worry about what, what else is going on out there? Be friends. Right. Absolutely. Just be friends and, and there are no frenemies. Absolutely. I completely agree. There have been so many instances where within competitive industries, having that, that relationship where it's, it's less cutthroat, there is a bigger benefit for you to be frenemies, like you said, where you're actually helping each other out. And I see a lot of business owners who unfortunately they, they see the competition in what they're doing and they either want to be exactly like them. And that can be either detrimental to your business or that kind of creates that analysis paralysis where they spend so much time trying to think, thinking about what they're doing, that they, they lose sight of their own business, what makes them unique and how they build their own, their own customer journey. You can't, you can't, you know, secure every single lead that comes to your website. There is just something unique about you and your, what you're offering. It's all about, you know, trying, trying to better your own business, but don't let other businesses bring you down. Don't let that competition fool you. If you're gonna look around, look around to be inspired, right? Yes. Look around for new ideas, look around for inspiration on how to solve current problems, whatever it might be. But just keep your eyes on your paper and the minute you try to emulate, that's where you start to destroy your brand. Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. So what's in the future for you in the future? For us what we are looking to do is work with business owners that believe that they're. Handling their industry. They have a really great grasp on their industry and they want to bring their industry experience into our software because our software can the foundation is very robust and what you can do with it, and then you kind of build your own software within the software. So you create your own, you know, your own custom forms, your own custom email automation sequences. So we're looking to work with businesses who are in a particular industry where they feel like they're doing it really well. And from their insight and feedback, we can build a brand new software targeted towards that industry. So then it's, it's about, you know, solving a specific problem and now we've removed the heavy lifting that friction within that. So those are the people that we love working with, and we feel like that's gonna be an opportunity for. Those business owners to white label for their own industry or if they wanna work with us and create templates. But again, it's just about helping each other out and improving the the customer journey. The buying experience. Which industries are you looking to break into? I. Sure. So we're, we're open to any and all of 'em. Something that I've been personally working on, because I've started a DJ business and went into the wedding industry, I'm creating a software built specifically for other wedding DJs because I know I. How, how often people come to the website, how many touchpoints they need to make a purchase decision, how long does it take for them to decide on that? I have a really good grasp of that industry and that process. So for us, a, a lead comes in, it takes three to four weeks for them to make a decision and they usually like five to six touch points. So we built that within our own automation platform that now we can hand. Basic, you know, basically this key key to the car, the key to success. We can hand that to them and allow them to now have similar conversion results and save time on their own. So that's just one example of kind of a industry that we could work with to provide value to them because we understand it now. Yep. Yep. Did they say the the riches are in the, well, I can't say it because the riches in the, in the niches. Right. I can't say it because it's niche. It's not niche. I know, I know. I've heard that so long. The riches are in the niches. Yeah, absolutely agree. Yeah. There, there's a lot more money to be made with more expertise, I feel like. Yeah. More, more specificity is required and business owners really want. Feel comfortable that you have a grasp on their industry? Yes.'cause O otherwise there's too much of a learning curve. Of course, we have a lot of great foundational knowledge, like again, marketing best practices, ss e o that can apply to many different industries. But it's not until you're in that industry that you gain a much better understanding that you may realize, wow, there is a channel that is just a much higher r o i compared to others. And we also surprise ourselves. Things that we realize were a best practice for many industries may not apply to this one specific one. Right? That's something that we kinda learn as we go throughout the journey and you know that that process improvement evaluation. Right. Right. Awesome. I have a question that I ask all of my guests. Mm-hmm. As we're kind of wrapping up, and I'd love to hear your take on it. We're talking about being real and, and the real stories about building business in this show. What is the difference in your mind between what we hear there out there in the business world you know, all the things that we're told? What's the difference between that and what's real about being a business owner? Hmm. Is a great question and I feel like a lot of us as business owners, To the outside world, we want to create this perception of success and I'm having a great time and it's easy. And that's kind of the perception we need to put out there.'cause I don't think a lot of other people would understand what we go through as business owners. But when a business owner connects with another business owner, I feel like we let our guard down a little bit more and we can be a little bit more vulnerable and real. And that's when the truth really comes out. And we start to share more of our failures, some of the things that aren't working for us, all the stress that we're going through, the obstacles that we're trying to overcome. Because when we're speaking with friends and family who aren't in business, we don't wanna bore them or let them down with our, you know, stressful stories and obstacles. But when it comes business owner to business owner, I think we're a lot more real. So I think something that, that we, that we kind of need to put out there is be a little, be a little bit more honest, be more truthful in what you're experiencing and going through. And I think business owners connecting and sharing those experiences have been fantastic. I've, I've been inspired, I've learned a lot from other business owners as well. So I hope. Anyone listening could be a little bit inspired here in my journey as well, and just help each other improve. I love it. I love it. Okay, we're coming up on time. Can you let our listeners know how they can find you? Sure. Everyone can find me either on LinkedIn or through our website, which is focus-biz.com. LinkedIn or Facebook is great to find me. I'm Chris Roka. T like in Tom, R o K A. And we'll put all your links in the show notes so that people can hunt you down and connect with you and become part of that super valuable business network that we are always talking about in that community. I appreciate it and love it. Thank you. Awesome. Well, I loved hearing your story. We're gonna wrap up. So happy that we had the opportunity to chat with Chris today to hear more about how his business came to be. His experiences along the way and what the future of his business entails. And thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Real People Real Business Show, where we get the real entrepreneurial stories and journeys that you can relate to. The show notes, resources, and links from this episode are available on my website and social media platforms. If you've enjoyed today's content, I'd love for you to give us a review on whatever platform you're on to help us share these genuine stories with an even bigger audience. Until next time, keep building, keep dreaming and keep being real.