Mining Data and Claude to do Receivables

Skipping the jingle is not a gimmick, it is a bet on your time. We start with the “cold open” philosophy and why the attention economy rewards creators and business owners who get to the point fast, especially when people are trying to learn something practical and they are already halfway through the problem. 

From there, we borrow a sharp line from Jay Abraham: “You can’t see the label if you’re inside the jar.” If you are juggling customers, staff, payroll, and rent, it is normal to miss obvious opportunities sitting in plain sight. We walk through one of the biggest hidden assets in business growth and marketing: your existing customer list. We talk customer data mining, simple email marketing and SMS ideas, and how to use buying behavior to uncover what customers need before and after they buy from you. That naturally leads to smarter cross-sells, bundles, and joint venture partnerships that add value without reinventing your whole product line. 

We also challenge the idea that you should be totally “outside the jar.” Staying close to the front line matters, because real customer pain points show up in calls, complaints, and the messy day-to-day details. To reclaim time without losing touch, we share a hands-on example of automation: building an AI agent to follow up outstanding invoices using Microsoft Outlook, Zapier, Claude, and Xero. It is a practical look at how AI automation can improve accounts receivable, protect cash flow, and even help you react faster when customers show signs of financial distress. 

If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a business owner who is stretched thin, and leave a review with one “obvious opportunity” you think most companies ignore.

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Transcript

Why We Skip The Jingles

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So hello Nathan. How are you doing today? Pretty good. How are you? Good stuff. Very good. Very good. Hey, there's one thing that you probably would have noticed or not noticed, or I actually we did speak about it briefly. But for the audience out there, you've noticed that our podcast doesn't start with a proper welcome. You know how everyone's got a tune and everyone's got a a proper goodbye and then another jingle tune to exit. And there's a reason for that. The reason for that is we want the audience to go straight for the meat, if you like, in your words. So how do you s still feel about that? Three episodes into the podcast? I'm happy to keep supporting that, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah. Well, that at the end of the day, the value is for those that are listening to the podcast. You know, it's not about us and it's more about them and what they can get out of it.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

A very quick word. My name is Charles. I run an agency called Cubic Promote. We are the leading supplier of promotional products and uniforms in Australia and also in New Zealand. We supply it to 3,000 organizations on any given year. If you're looking for a reliable partner to supply you with merchandise for your office or uniforms for your organization, trust us, Cubic Promote. And now back to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Particularly in in marketing. It's generally it's about, you know, we we talk about a funnel and we talk about sifting out the prospects or the you know, the people in the market that aren't suitable for our business, and it's what's left over at the bottom. And that's that those experiences follow the same principle of, you know, we want to go straight into what we're what we think has been valuable for us and what we think is going to be valuable for the audience.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah, and with the attention economy, like I'm so over listening to Jingle's intros and outros. I just want to go straight into what you have to say. In fact, I nowadays I watch YouTube, anything that's educational, I watch it at 1.2 speed. Because I just cannot sit through. And the content that resonates more are the content that just goes, okay, I will now show you what to do, as opposed to the people that will have an intro.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yeah, especially if you're trying to learn something. If you want to learn something, sometimes you're already halfway through. Let's say you're repairing your washing machine, you're already halfway through it, you already understand, okay, well, this is this is the area that I need to attack. So I'm going to skip all the way to that point. And I don't need to know about the technical details of the published or whatever else is going on.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Oh, anything. Yeah. Okay.

The Label Inside The Jar

SPEAKER_01 2:13

So what have you got to share with the audience today?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Okay, so I got an email during the week from a business growth legend, I'll call him. His name's Jay Abraham. He's not Aussie, he's from the States. He's done a lot of work with Tony Robbins over the years. Oh, yeah. He was talking about business owners who miss obvious opportunities and obvious opportunities that are right in front of their face. And obviously everyone's very, very busy. And he summed it up well. He said, you can't see the label if you're inside the jar. Which I think.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

This is the back of the label.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, the back of the label. So you don't know what's printed on the other side. And I thought it resonates really well because business owners with we're dealing with customers, staff, payroll, rent, all sorts of issues that are coming up. And it's very normal to miss opportunities and wins that are right in front of us. And I want to talk about some of those opportunities that are in front of business owners that you might have experienced or might have seen work for you. And because you were too close to it, you might have overlooked it for a period of time. I think the other reason people are obviously very, very busy. So bandwidth to actually work on a business rather than in it is a pretty hot topic, too. But my most obvious one before we jump into yours is the customer list, your existing customer list, and how many ways that you can activate and exercise that particular list and provide value so you can take value from that. Everyone's always looking for new ways to market and reach a bigger and wider audience. And I think a lot of business owners don't mind their data hard enough or don't activate their data or engage their existing customers enough. And it's and it might be something as simple as sending more frequent emails, more frequent newsletters, SMS offers.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Or topics that resonate to them. And they do it very well in elections, but possibly you're right, they don't do it well in businesses. I know they do it well in elections, for example, when you have your your Donald Trump's in the world or even Anthony Albanese. For these type of people, knowing what to say and when to say will and that will change elections. And they could only know that by mining data.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Absolutely. And understanding the customer, understanding their customer and their needs, you know, what do they what do they buy before they deal with you or after they deal with you? What does your product complement that you could potentially help them solve? And it's not just it's not just about, you know, let's say you sell mice for computers. It's not just about saying, well, okay, well, people are going to need a keyboard as well. You might have a specialist ergonomic mouse and you've found a supplier that does a specialist ergonomic keyboard, and the data suggests, well, you combine them together, you're going to get X effect on someone that has had RSI or is having some issues and is a frequent heavy user of a computer. You don't just have to find a way to label that product of your own. You might be just introducing that product via your channels. So you might decide, okay, well, I'm going to have a meeting, sit down, have a discussion with the owner of this business or the business development people, and work out a joint venture deal. Something to that effect. And there's a lot of opportunities out there. I think it's not just about having the time to do it, it's also understanding what are the possibilities, what is actually possible out there, how many ways can I skin the cat? Are there certain things in your world, Charles, that you've seen that you've Yeah,

Stay Close To Customer Pain

SPEAKER_00 5:12

yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

A couple of things, a couple of random key points that come to mind upon hearing that. So never mind, I feel that it's very much a personality thing. Because I'm just saying jumping into the rabbit hole and wanting to jump into a rabbit hole just to explore and find out what is that is there. Can I tinker with this? Can I combine this? Can I utilize this? I find that it works with certain personalities for other personalities. They just want to do what they do and they just want to keep their blinkers on. They don't want to see anything else, but just really hone in. So another one I think is also in in the front lines. I got this LinkedIn post just randomly. I don't know how it got in my feet. Jim's mowing and Jim posting about his experiences and all the toilet. I do. That's why I got the LinkedIn post. And he was talking about how he, for many years, he's very old, he doesn't do it anymore, but he would pick up the phone. Um, even when he was running a rather large franchising organization, he would be picking up the phone. And I can imagine him being picking up the phone, he is listening to his customers. And he would be able to respond accordingly to customers. Whereas if he was acting CEO, as he would, as he rightfully would, when organization decides, he wouldn't have listened or been able to listen to the customers. As much as I respect the comment, which is you're in the jar and you can't see the label, I feel that you do need to be somewhat in the business. Somewhat in the jar, maybe on the lid, but you certainly can't be out the jar, you know, metaphorically speaking. Because if Jim wasn't picking up the phone, he wouldn't know the pain points. And if you're not in the business actually doing and knowing at least how the process runs and works and where the pain points are, you wouldn't see that, oh, there is an opportunity to do this. So being somewhat in the business is is important. No, very good. I like that. I like

An AI Agent For Cash Flow

SPEAKER_01 6:55

that quite a lot.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And I think, yeah, having having time to be able to jump out of the jar and making time is is very important. So I wanted to talk a little bit about you know, what are some of the things that we can do to bring back a little bit of time in our diary to work on the business? Are there any things that you do, Charles, that I did something spectacular this week.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

So what'd you do? I I created my own AI agent and using technology that was not available a couple of months ago. So a couple of months ago, um creating an AI agent required some sort of programming skills. You need to learn it, and a lot of people went off and bought MacBooks and dedicated computers just to run AI agents. So Claude has an ability for people to create agents using natural language, and it's a game changer. It's incredible. So I created an AI agent yesterday. It took me about maybe 30, 40 minutes. I watched about six, seven YouTube clips before I proceeded. But the actual process of creating one took me about 10 minutes, and within 15, 20 minutes, I created a piece that could follow up on all our outstanding invoices or automated. I could have made it totally hands-free, but at this early stage, I it's a little bit daunting. So I've made it so there are interim pieces where it could cut in so that a person could have a look before it proceeds to action. Um, so through the use of Microsoft Outlook, Zapier, Claude Cobra, and Zero and cutting software, I was able to combine them all together and have the AI system find out the balances that are over 60 days and just send an automated email reminder.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yep. Um just a gentle reminder, not a threat to break any knees or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Australia.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

The most we can do here, that's another topic altogether. The most we can do here to collect debt is just a angry phone call. There are no recalls here. It is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah. And sometimes a gentle reminder helps put you at the top of the list of uh bills to pay. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

With that piece, there's also another amazing piece is that I can, I haven't done it yet, but I can layer, and this will only take me a couple of minutes, I layer an AI piece on top of it so that you can analyze and see what's been happening in the business landscape, and so we could see which companies are in financial distress, and so we could predict and react accordingly. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah, everyone doesn't know who's in distress. For example, if there's a company announcement, a company being in liquidation, or perhaps it's on the news. So it's anything that's on the internet. Publicly available, though. Publicly available. And you'd be surprised. Obviously, you've got news sources, Australia Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald, etc. etc. But you also have your Reddit sources, and you also have company announcement sources, ASX sources. There's a lot of different social media company announcements and disseminated and pushed through into my spreadsheet in a couple of minutes. Remarkable. It is, it is. So that's that saves a lot of people a lot of time.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Save you a a lot of time and it'll also hopefully help you to reclaim a bit of that money.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yeah, yeah. To be more active. Because previously we had to wait until maybe maybe three months later, and then we realized, hey, you know, this we're still outstanding. I think that might be a problem.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah, it's Bill Standard Rock.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

And then by the actual phase, and then at that point in time we realized, oh, okay, we I guess we need a debt collector or a lawyer involved. And in most instances, it's clearly too late. You've lost a lot of lead time, and timing is everything when it comes to having bills paid. But yes, that AI agents using Claude, that's a big game changer for me to reclaim a lot of my.