Steve Miksta is the Founder and CEO of Oppty, a transformative company that helps organizations significantly enhance their productivity and profitability. With a robust background in finance and technology, he is an expert in the strategic use of automation to foster exponential business growth. Steve's breadth of experience spans over a decade in the mortgage and financial industry, where his innovative approaches have been instrumental in driving success. As a dynamic leader, he focuses on enabling clients to clarify their objectives, deploy strategic processes, and leverage technology to realize their business goals.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:06] Steve Miksta talks about Oppty and strategies for boosting productivity
[3:12] Why technology alone won't solve problems without proper input from team members
[4:42] The significance of user feedback shaping technological advancements
[6:54] How consulting can influence positive changes in personnel behavior
[14:58] The necessity of having top-down support and visionary leadership
[16:23] Steve shares tips on how to use human intelligence as a bridge to AI efficiency
[25:58] The reasons AI may not be the go-to solution for certain business problems
In this episode…
Are you struggling to foster efficiency within your organization? How do you harness technology effectively without being overwhelmed by it? Could there be simple yet overlooked opportunities to spur your business growth?
A dynamic leader with deep roots in finance and technology, Steve Miksta delves into the integral role of people in driving technology's success in business. He shares personal stories and lessons from his journey, emphasizing the creation of clear objectives and leveraging employee insights instead of solely focusing on technology. Steve dismantles the notion that complex tech solutions are always the answer, advocating for a closer look at the human element behind the processes and identifying opportunities for improvements while scaling sustainably.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Steve Miksta, Founder and CEO of Oppty, about leveraging automation and strategic processes for business growth. Steve talks about Oppty and how focusing on people and processes can lead to increased productivity, why technology alone won't solve problems without proper input from team members, the significance of user feedback shaping technological advancements, and how to use human intelligence as a bridge to AI efficiency.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"The Winning Formula for Customer and Investor Success With Mark Gatto" on The Customer Wins
"Transforming Financial Services With a Customer-First Approach With David Crow" on The Customer Wins
"Maximizing Efficiency in Client Documentation With Corey Westphal" on The Customer Wins
"Streamlining Document Processes With Digital Vaults With Clifton Schaller" on The Customer Wins
Quotable Moments:
"We really do challenge business owners to think about and define what they want to get out of their business."
"The tech will not solve the problem; the people in your organization are the ones who can solve the problems."
"It's the intention of defining how we will do something and then leveraging technology to achieve it."
"The only way that we're going to create those better outcomes is if the people change their behavior."
"It's about putting a person in a role, defining performance and success, and aligning it to the organization."
Action Steps:
Define clear objectives for business growth: By establishing specific goals, businesses can better align technology and strategies for improved customer experience and growth.
Focus on strategic process automation to double productivity: Implementing automation thoughtfully can streamline operations, saving time and resources and ultimately leading to profitability.
Utilize employee insights for technological advancements: Engaging with end-users and incorporating their feedback can lead to more effective and user-friendly tech solutions.
Scale sustainably by analyzing data points: Looking at specific data and KPIs can identify untapped opportunities, allowing businesses to grow in a structured and controlled manner.
Integrate human intelligence before AI: Leverage human insights early on to bridge the gap between current processes and future AI capabilities, ensuring more immediate and effective outcomes.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Mark Gatto of CION Investments, David Crow with Axos Clearing, Corey Westphal of Mobile Assistant, and Clifton Schaller with FutureVault. Today, I'm speaking with Steve Miksta, the CEO and founder of Oppty. Today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik!, using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
All right. Joining me today is Steve Miksta, the CEO and founder of Oppty, a company that empowers organizations to double their productivity and profitability through a proven framework. With a background in finance and technology, Steve specializes in leveraging automation and strategic processes to help businesses in various industries achieve exponential growth. He brings over a decade of experience in the mortgage and financial sectors, where he has consistently driven innovation and success. Steve, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Steve Miksta 1:42
Yeah, thanks for having me Rich. Appreciate it.
Richard Walker 1:45
Yeah. Look, I'm always excited to talk to people who are about efficiency. So if you haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. Steve, let's understand your business a little better. How does your company help people?
Steve Miksta 2:06
I'd say that. I mean, we challenge people and that's been hard at times as a small business and trying to work with smaller business owners, but we really do challenge them to think about and define what they want to get out of their business. And through the process of making them think and forcing thought right, we really get clear on what it is we can do and what change needs to occur in order for that to happen. So just creating that focus, I'd say is where we really help organizations get clear on how they can become more productive.
Richard Walker 3:03
So you're not just walking in saying, here's your tech thing that's going to solve all your problems. You're fitting Tech where it needs to solve problems instead.
Steve Miksta 3:12
Because the tech will not solve the problem. The people in your organization are the ones who can solve the problems, and they're the ones with all of the knowledge and information and that has to be extracted from those people and put into technology that can do the automation. There's so many companies who try to leverage technology, it's not the tech. The problem's not the tech. The people or the processes, or the lack, the gap right between what happens every day and what should happen every day, right and the intention of defining how we will do something and then leveraging technology to achieve it.
Richard Walker 4:01
It reminds me of a friend of mine from 20-plus years ago. Every six months he upgraded his phone. This is before the iPhone. So there were all these new innovations and things coming out. And His excuse was, this is going to make me better at my job. And the funny thing is, he's selling tech, selling tech services and consulting. And I kept asking him, like, what specific feature is going to make you more productive, make you better, make you more organized. And he couldn't answer it because he just wanted the gadget. So what is the challenge? Is it getting them to actually stop working in their business and work on the business? Is it trying to extract that data from people? Is it getting them to stop and actually think, because people don't want to think? What do you think is the challenge?
Steve Miksta 4:42
I mean, all of the above, yeah, definitely, it's a lot, it's overwhelming and when it comes to technology, I think the natural perspective is people are scared. Of it, or they think they're scared of it, right? And so they don't approach it with confidence. And this stuff can be learned. And I'm it really like my experience is a testament to that. I started off as a loan officer and basically solved these problems and started learning the technology. And 20 years later, from doing it more like now I have a consulting company. I literally help, like it can all be learned and I've had a unique perspective. I think if you go down that consulting route, and you start working with a consultant, or in a particular industry, that becomes all you know. And starting off as a loan officer and as an end user, and being able to experience the problems and the pain of man, I just want this tech to do this.
And going through that whole process of knowing what I want and being able to communicate that to a developer who can build it, I mean, there is nothing more frustrating. And I've been doing that for 10 plus years and in the process of doing that, though it's allowed me to develop the skill set of both understanding what a user wants, but then being able to make that translation in a way where it can be delivered extremely quickly. And in today's world with technology being so configurable, right, like there's less and less developers needed now, right? So, now it's a matter of, especially with a lot of these smaller businesses, it's a matter of just the tech can be configured as quick as we get the requirements.
Richard Walker 6:54
Sure. Well, I'm gonna ask you a question. I'll give you some context behind it. And the question is, what makes you different. And some context is my mom, she's a technologist, and her favorite thing to say was, I'm inherently lazy. I want the computer to do all my work for me. So she had a mindset of trying to get the computer to do things back from the late 80s. This was her mindset. So did you have this belief system that allowed you to break free of the job and say, I think it could be better, because a lot of people just do the job, right?
Steve Miksta 7:26
Yeah. I mean, when I was originating, either the pain that I had was, and I think this applies in wealth management or in any business, right? If you're a salesperson, like, what you should be focused on is selling and building relationships and getting referrals and being the guy that that brings in the visits, right? But when I was originating, I get the pipeline full to a certain number of loans, and then all of a sudden, operations breaks down, and I spend the next 30 days putting out fires, going back in, recalling clients, and talking through like I understand we shouldn't have to document. This is a time when all the financial crisis hits and the documentation gets out of control, and like, you're counseling with your borrower, right? I mean, that's been a running joke in the mortgage industry, but all that, that's all unproductive time, like there's no, I mean, yes, you're getting the loan closed, but man, wouldn't it be better if the client just had a great experience?
The loan closed early. They didn't have all the frustration, and they referred all their friends and family, because it was such an easy process. And so that's really where I started. I'm like, well, and looking back, the technology just wasn't readily available. And I got introduced to Salesforce, and then started configuring it, and then just it started to blow my mind. Just wait a second, you can literally have this thing do anything you want it to do. It's just a matter of creative you can, whether you can come up with the ideas and, and then we'll get into the, but then the people side of it, right? Like, because it didn't matter if I configured the technology the way that I needed it, it didn't matter unless my team was a part of that, right? They had to be the ones who were giving the feedback encouragement, and it's their ideas that allow them to be more productive, right? And I just facilitated that feedback.
Richard Walker 9:51
Yeah. So you're hitting on something I talk a lot about, which is the customer experience drives adoption. And if you don't have adoption, your technology is worthless to you, even if it's really amazing. So you've got to focus on building the right experience. And part of that I have found is you've got to involve the people who are going to have that experience. You have to know what their needs are. You have to hear their feedback and put them into the process with you to design it. Yeah, so it sounds like you were doing a lot of that to get them to buy into it.
Steve Miksta 10:20
Yeah, yeah. And that's part of our process with the organizations that we work with is like, and we set that expectation up front, like it's not the tech that is going to solve your problems, it's your people, and it's their ideas, and it's their knowledge and it's their experience, right? And so the feedback, like, what you said, like that is the most important thing. The faster we can get feedback, the more feedback we can get, and the more specific the feedback we can get, like, the more specific we can design solutions to solve the exact problem that they're experiencing, right?
But we won't know that until we meet with those end users in so many organizations, especially bigger organizations, right? They try to push this change from the top down through hundreds of people, and it's never going to work like you're pushing tech that doesn't allow that person at the end user to be productive. And we go and spend 15, I spend 15 minutes with an end user, whether they're processing, like, don't give me a list of all kind like, I hate this, and I can't do this, and I spend an hour doing this, and it's like, oh my. So 70% of your day you're literally doing it's like office space, right? Literally doing nothing.
Richard Walker 11:46
Yeah, I've done a fair amount of consulting and helping people become more efficient, and I agree with you. If it's a top down approach that's not good enough. Sure, the top-down approach is setting strategy and choosing the right product, possibly, but getting down to those details, the nitty-gritty details are really what changes the organization. And so how do companies do that? How do you recommend that they get that feedback and engage those people, especially when they're bigger companies, and it's hard to talk to all those people?
Steve Miksta 12:18
Yeah, so I'll kind of answer the question that you asked earlier through this, I think. But what makes us different from any other consultant out there and that is really it's our belief in the people in that organization, because the tech is not going to solve the problems of sleep and for us, like, we got to find the right organizations. Like this isn't for every organization, but as long as we're aligned, or like, we're both held accountable, right, to implementing this change, right? It's not hiring a consultant and then say, Oh, it didn't work. Like, who are the people at your organization that are going to lead the change with us, right? Who are the people that are going to engage with us and help us define a plan actually to influence the behavior of the people in your organization? Like, we're a consultant, we can't influence behavior, but your people can.
And so, our process, and what we call the experience, like the Oppty experience is what really we facilitate with these organizations, where we come in. In essence, we're operating alongside the organization. We're understanding what's happening in the day to day, and we're facilitating these interactions to generate that feedback right around what it is that needs to happen. And as we continue to do that, we get more and more clarity on where there's opportunities to make change right and create better outcomes and all of those things. But the only way we will create those better outcomes is if the people change their behavior. That's employee productivity, right? And that's especially this world of AI, the people need to be doing the more valuable work. If they're entering out these forms and filling this information like you're just throwing money away.
Richard Walker 14:31
Right? So I'm gonna bring this back. You are an example of somebody who was in a job saw the problem, said, I want to fix it. I think it could be better. Why is it you think not everybody has that ability mindset, or takes that chance to try to drive the change for themselves and their role at their part of the organization within these companies, because you're being called in by management, not the end users, right?
Steve Miksta 14:58
Depends. I mean, sometimes it's the end user who gets like, I mean, I say this stuff to an end user, and they're like, man, that sounds great. If only our executive team would be open minded enough and willing to do this. Then you look at that end user like, sorry. Who knows if you'll be working there in a few years?
Richard Walker 15:22
So you're saying one of the reasons, then, is the management team hasn't bought into innovation, evolution, making things more efficient, etc. Maybe they're throwing money at the problem, labor at the problem.
Steve Miksta 15:33
And to their point, like they've probably invested a ton of money in technology before, they've probably worked with a lot of consultants before, right? And they haven't been successful. And why? Well, because they didn't take this approach, like they didn't actually come at you and say, look, I don't care what we do, at the end of the day, like your people are the ones who are going to make this successful or not. And, let's work together to be successful.
Richard Walker 16:04
So earlier in a different conversation, outside this episode, we were talking about and kind of sharing notes on this idea that people don't always know what's possible. They don't even know how efficient their job could be. Can we talk about that a little bit more? Because I think that's one of your frustrations you've seen.
Steve Miksta 16:23
Yeah, I mean, frustration, but also where there's so much value there, right? And, and where you know now that we've seen all of these things, like, I can generate those ideas very quickly, right? And talking with the business, it's like, wait a second, like, there's a huge opportunity here, right? And sometimes I'll get out over my skis, with, with, like, here's the roadmap, here's all of the stuff we can do, right? And like, yeah, sounds great, but like, let's get this delivered first, right? So there is that balance between how much and how big, and some of these bigger things that, yeah, it'd be awesome if we could leverage AI to do this, this, this, but that's going to take years to get there.
And in reality, the knowledge that will go into that AI, that's the starting point. And we can do that today by automating this process. And so who's the person I could work with to automate this process? And how do we define success, and who are the users? And then let's get them in, and let's turn it on. And like, once that piece is done, we're on to the next thing, right? And over time, like, eventually we're using AI to automate all this stuff, but it's extracting the knowledge from the people.
Richard Walker 18:01
No, that's so true. I was having that conversation earlier with some AI scientists that I'm possibly going to engage with to help us with a project, and I was laying out the phases, because you have to be able to put the data into the AI process, not even just a large language model, but the overall process. You have to get that knowledge into that system for it to do what you want to do. And that's not trivial. Let's take a step back with AI, because AI also points out to me, and it's really made it more apparent to me that there's a set of people who are innovative, who look at AI and go, oh my gosh, it could do everything. Let's make it do everything, and let's go try.
But I think there's a much larger group of people who don't really understand what is possible, and they're not seeing the opportunity. They don't realize certain things could be done, faster, better, easier, cheaper, etc. And to me, that seems like what you're helping customers do is see those opportunities, see that vision for what's possible, because they're just sitting there doing their job. How do you break that cycle for them and help them to see the innovation and vision side?
Steve Miksta 19:06
Yeah, I mean that, it takes time, and it takes building trust and delivering on the things we say we're going to deliver on, and allowing them to experience and understand and allowing their people to engage with us and see the value that we're providing, but also start to become more open-minded, right? And like you mentioned, really growth-minded, right? Like it's that mindset shift, right? Like, we don't have to do things the way we've always done it, but to get to the future and do it a new way, like we've got to spend time thinking about it and being intentional about designing a process, looking at the people in that process, defining what their role will be in that process, specifically, right?
And so much of this is just about and where data can help with all of this, if it's the right data. If I look at trying to double production, it's like, okay, well, who are the people doubling it? And then like, how many of those requests are we doing? And then, in order to do that many requests, how many support items are needed? And then breaking all those things down to mathematically, say, like, okay, we can double production. This person needs to do this many of these. This person needs to do this many of those. And like now we can scale.
Richard Walker 20:48
Yeah, all right, I'm gonna switch gears a little bit. Let's talk a little bit more in-depth on AI. What are some cool things you're seeing clients do to create productivity, employee engagement, etc, with AI tools on their side?
Steve Miksta 21:09
I mean, I think we're at the very early stages of AI, right? And like, frankly, I don't think many organizations are in a spot where they can actually leverage AI and create value with it. Like, where we come in is kind of in between there. And to me, I mean, AI is, yeah, I mean, it's automated intelligence, but we can get there a lot faster by leveraging human intelligence, right? If I throw a bunch of raw data in and say, who should I contact, versus spending some time looking at the data set and saying, okay, like, of your book of business, like, let's look at some of these data points and where's their opportunities to get business right?
Like, where are their current assets? Where are those invested? When's the last time you did a review? Do they own businesses? Do they have retirement accounts? Maybe they're retired now. Like, all of that becomes data points where it's like, holy cow, like, if we did better reviews, and we actually retained this data of their retirement accounts, and we actually tracked whether they owned a business and when they were going to sell it, we've got millions of dollars in future business but no one's doing it.
Richard Walker 22:40
So you're really demonstrating what you said before, which is, it's not about the tech. AI is not the solution, it's a tool to use to help you solve problems. But you still have to understand the overall problem. You need to understand what the threat, the drivers are of that problem, or the solution or the goal you're after, right? It's interesting that you're not seeing a lot of adoption of AI. And I think that a lot of AI adoptions actually kind of come through the products people purchase and use. You do a lot with Salesforce, don't you?
Steve Miksta 23:12
Yeah, I mean, and not to say, I mean, we use a ton of AI, right? And to me, like, like, along that same point, like, I could learn anything faster with AI, right? I can do anything faster with AI. So, I mean, I use chatGPT every single day and we use it a ton internally, and we're optimizing our system internally to be able to allow us to better manage our clients and do all of those things. As far as solutions that we're delivering with our clients, I'd say like, yes, there's more tools, and there's chat GPT, and there's things that they can absolutely do out there, but our focus is more on, like, bridging that gap between, because, like, as we're bringing them on, we're getting access to data and information, and, like, there's very specific knowledge that we don't even need AI.
We can already look at it and say, like, hey, here's a huge opportunity, we just need to aggregate the data, put it in a spot, and then assign a person to go after that business and be committed to doing it, and then hold them accountable to doing it, and ideally aligning their performance with compensation, right? Which, again, all of this is like, it's being able to put a person in a role, define performance and success, align it to the organization, say, hey, we've got $2 million in potential business here for forever. Like, you can call it work as hard as you want, as little as you and you'll get a pay bump if you go over this thing, right? Like everybody's aligned, that person's now doing more productive work. When they close business, they get rewarded. The organization gets rewarded because we don't know what they're doing today, and everybody went.
Richard Walker 25:25
Yeah. And that's leadership and management. 101, principles, right? I mean, it's get the right people on the bus in the right seat, and be aligned in the same vision of where you're headed. All of that super important So, and I appreciate that you're driving back to that, because again, AI is a tool. And in a lot of ways, I feel like the way AI is unfolding is like watching a bridge be built. You can't walk across it until it's fully built. So there are things you just can't accomplish yet in the ways that you want to accomplish it. So it's still not the right solution. And the right solution is the people like you're talking about.
Steve Miksta 25:58
Yeah, I mean, with AI. Like, the problem with all of this information is, in order to get a result, you need constraints, right? So, like, how are we using AI? Well, there's a million ways to use AI, but what's the outcome we're trying to create? And once we can define that outcome, now we can much more clearly define what AI specifically will and how it'll help us to achieve that outcome. But if I don't define the outcome, then I'm in this world of AI like, it's too much information. And I think that is literally where most of these businesses are, is you're just, you're frozen, because you don't know which way to move, and you don't know what to do to move your organization forward and so you just don't do anything. Or you get 10 licenses, and now you're paying all this money, but you're not actually using any of these applications to create value in the business. You just have 15 of them that you're paying for on a monthly basis.
Richard Walker 27:21
Yeah. And so, whether it's AI or any other tool, you don't want a tool looking for a problem to solve. You want to solve the problem by selecting the right tool.
Steve Miksta 27:28
Yeah, and get clear on the problem, right, specific problem you're trying to solve. I mean, your product's a great example of that, like, you look at all that time spent, between operations and reentering this data, and it's like, okay, we're gonna automate 100% of our forms. Yeah, that's the focus, right? Okay, let's do it. We're gonna integrate with it. We got all these data points, they got to go into that form. Who are we working with to do that? And the technology can do it, as you know, right? The technology can do it. It's just a matter of whether that organization is focused on doing it, and whether they will allocate their people to be part of that process of doing it right.
Richard Walker 28:24
That's exactly right. And sometimes it's about change. Sometimes it's changing from whatever they were doing to something better, and people resist change for whatever reason. And then you have to get through that. So having that alignment with here's the goal, and here's how we get there makes it easier for how people are going to change. I kind of remember that with how I talked to some customer some customers now. Steve this has been great. I have another question for you, because we're going to wrap up here. But before I ask it, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Steve Miksta 28:54
Well, you said you'll include email, website, LinkedIn, any of those. Opptyunlimited.com is the website and then emails, just smiksta@opptyunlimited, and on LinkedIn and search and yeah, happy to connect and love to help.
Richard Walker 29:18
Cool, yeah, you're easy to find. You have a unique name. Me, I have to put like, flags next to my name so people can find me. All right Steve, so here's my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Steve Miksta 29:38
There's two people that really have influenced me over the years. Originally, John Boehm was a coach of mine for years when I was on the mortgage side of things, and recently have been fortunate to align with Aaron Belky with Get Out of Your Own Way Coaching. And Aaron, just recently, this this past year, started to engage with him again after not having a coach for some time, which for me, was unusual, but it was hard to find someone who understood what it was we were trying to do. And Aaron has been phenomenal in he is, what that guy understands about people and motivation and how people are wired is fascinating. He's unbelievable at it. And so he's been a great help in clarifying the vision and being able to really make progress towards it.
Richard Walker 30:46
Sounds awesome. I love it when people can just cut straight to the heart and tell you, this is where it is. This is what's happening. This is what needs to happen, and give you that clarity. That's great, man. All right, I want to give a big thank you to Steve Miksta, CEO and founder of Oppty, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Steve's website at opptyunlimited.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com, where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Steve, thank you so much for joining me today.
Steve Miksta 31:23
Yes. Thank you, Rich, for having me. Appreciate it.
Outro 31:27
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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