The Biggest Goal Podcast
The Biggest Goal Podcast, with Alane Boyd and Micah Johnson.
Learn how to reach your biggest goal as we reimagine the workflows you run into scalable systems that use today's latest technology.
Every week, we take one real workflow and cover what you're likely doing now and how to improve it with today's latest technology. We'll look at where AI could be applied, what should be automated, and where you still need a person.
Alane and Micah are the co-founders of Biggest Goal. They grew an agency to 600+ active clients before their exit and have since helped 300+ teams put technology to work building scalable systems across every department.
(Formerly this podcast was called: Automate Your Agency)
The Biggest Goal Podcast
Part 2: Use Claude to Find Your Audience's Pain Points | EP 116
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Your CRM was built to run a sales pipeline, not to answer marketing questions. Alane Boyd and Micah Johnson open up the five tools behind their 300+ leads a month and show why adding a database beside the CRM turned a slow, token-hungry search into a five-second answer from Claude.
If you have ever asked an AI tool about your leads and watched it pull deals, then contacts, then notes, then give you something vague, this episode explains why. The hosts cover the full stack, from the AI note taker on every sales call to the automation that catches each form fill and booking.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to pick an AI recorder that Claude Cowork can read through a native connector or MCP server
- Why the CRM and the database get different jobs, with sales in one and marketing analysis in the other
- What makes Supabase a fit for Claude, and where Airtable falls short
- When to use n8n instead of Claude for anything that waits on a trigger
- Three questions worth asking Claude once your lead data sits in one place
If your lead data lives in a CRM and you want real answers from it, press play to see how the stack fits together.
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Welcome to the Biggest Goal podcast. I'm your co-host, Micah Johnson.
Alane BoydAnd I'm Alane Boyd. We're doing a follow-up episode to our previous one where we talked about our marketing system. And we're going to be digging deeper into a couple of the pieces. So the first part of the system where we were pulling transcript data from sales calls to the fifth part of the system where we're putting the data into a database and into our CRM and why we built it like that and the tools that we used to get our 300 plus leads per month.
Micah JohnsonBut before we jump into the meat and potatoes of this one, we have a two-day boot camp coming in October. It's October 13th and October 15th called Scaling with AI. And on day one, we cover how you actually use AI to scale your business. And on day two, we're going to build with you. So you're coming out of the boot camp with AI employees yourself. Now we've got special early word pricing. So head on over to events.biggestgoal.ai and get signed up today.
Alane BoydLet's get started. Just Micah talking about our actual platforms that we use. And it feels like a lot because there's five, but hopefully some of these five you're already using in your company.
Micah JohnsonYeah, if not, just use this list as a checklist on maybe what you should be looking at because they're all super helpful. And this is our actual system, Alane. Like this, we're not just making stuff up. This is our a practical guide to what we've built.
Alane BoydYeah. So our first one is Grain, our AI note taker. And, you know, insert your platform when we're going through this list. As long as you have one, great. So Grain for our AI note taker for when we're on calls and meetings. PipeDrive is our CRM. Claude AI for our AI piece to make the glue and have things happen. And then the two that maybe you don't have is N8N, and that's in the number eight, the letter N, just because it kind of sounds funny when we're going through this fast, which is how we build the automation. And then our database is Superbase.
Micah JohnsonYeah. And don't be scared of the database because if you have Claude, Claude can help you design and set up things in Superbase, which makes it way easier than it ever has been before. And that is like the secret sauce, as you'll see in some of the examples that we'll have later in this episode.
Alane BoydThe first one where we talked about is grain and have in our AI recorder. I think this one is like so simple because it's such a common piece of this. Like you see so many AI note takers when you're on calls. So it's not really foreign. But we use that to capture some of the ways that people said things on the call so we could hear what the problems they were running into. But Michael, what I also love is the other side where we got better about how we said things. And in the beginning, we were just doing that to share the information with each other, not really having this grandiose plan of building out a marketing system for getting leads. And as we were starting to go, hey, let's build a let's build a real marketing system, is where we started taking those transcripts and having AI analyze them for picking out the trends, what people were saying where their problems were, and we could pull those for our landing pages and our ads.
Micah JohnsonAnd you think where technology is at, Alane? I don't I don't know. I I because I'm I hear what you're saying and I'm remembering how we got to where we are. But at first, AI was like the AI note taker thing, like, oh, cool, it's grabbing this transcript in real time as we're recording this. Great. And that was fantastic. But now we're to the point where like we take that for granted, and then we sec another AI like Claude on it, and we're like, hey, cowork, can you go through all the sales calls that we've done in the past 30 days and pull out all the pain points? And like that's the entire request to Claude Cowork. We already have grain connected, and it just goes to work. It was, it was literally from a practical standpoint, it was literally that easy.
Alane BoydIt was. And so there's something really important in what you just said. So for our listeners, A, you need a recorder. Go and pick out one if you do not have one yet. The other piece of this is that there was a native connector in co-work for grain. And there's so many of them in there. So Fathom has them. I don't know if Fireflies does or not, but there's Teams has it and Zoom has one. So get an AI recorder and then make sure that it's either a native connector in Cowork or it has an MCP server that you can connect because that it gives us the capability to have Cowork and Claude analyze it.
Micah JohnsonYeah, if you don't have that, you're going manually through like what's the point? You got to go manually through all your transcripts and try to do searches. That's defeating the whole point of this. Like you want AI to do the heavy lifting for you.
Alane BoydSo that's what we were doing, kind of leading into this. And the reason that we wanted to combine this episode with the first part and then the last part is that it all is about getting the data of what people are saying. So in the beginning, we weren't getting all these leads where we needed to have the database yet. So we needed to pull it from the sales calls that we were on. But now we have two things happening because we have the leads coming in. They're filling out a form and they're telling us exactly what their problems are and exactly what they're looking to do. And so that's where the next data piece came in.
Micah JohnsonYeah. Yeah, I think it's easy to think about this as like two different data sets, uh, achieving the same thing or shooting towards the same thing, right? So we have one data set that's like all these calls that we've recorded that have pain points mixed into conversation that would be impossible to pick out without a tool like Cloud Cowork connected to it. And then we have kind of our traditional lead generation form. People fill out a form, they tell us what their pain points are. Maybe some of you listening have filled out that form. Um, but you know, we we understand better the industry, the uh role that that person is playing, the pain points, why they care about making a change or a transformation now. We get all of those data points. I think a lot of people listen to that and go, sweet, but you already have a CRM. Why would you also add a database as one of your platforms to this?
Alane BoydWell, and that was my question when you kind of started building this piece out as well, I I don't want another software piece in here. I want everything going into the CRM. That's our single source of truth for leads and um contacts. And you were like, Well, Alane, yes, you're right about that, but it's really hard to analyze the leads once they go in there. Yes. And that's when the light bulb went off. And I was like, whoa, so we can get this database, we can get so much more information and just in a very clear package almost. Everything from these lead campaigns are going into this one database. And that way we can use it easily for other campaigns, for pulling pieces out, quotes from what people are saying. And it just made it so easy now that I get to be the recipient of that.
Micah JohnsonTo try to paint the picture, we're really using both. So we have our our CRM, our pipe drive, that's storing a bunch of the data. It is storing the contacts, it's storing the leads, it's creating a deal, it's storing the organization information that we get. Claude is going out, and if we're getting emails from people looking at the signature files and populating contact information from the signature into our CRM. But the CRM is where we run our sales pipeline.
Alane BoydThat's exactly what I was gonna say. Two different things are happening. Once it goes into the CRM, that's for sales to take care of. Yes. Marketing needs the data easily for marketing purposes.
Micah JohnsonYeah. So if we only had the CRM, we could still have Claude connected up to it, but Claude would have to do so much legwork and be less effective and use way more usage by going to the CRM. And then we can only pull data from their API endpoints. So we have to go and get all the deals, and then we have to go get all the contacts, and then we have to get all the notes, and then we're getting so much information. Claude is basically running around in circles trying to figure out what the hell it's looking at based on what we asked it. The converse or the other side of this is if we just store all of that in a database, then Claude can run like one query and go, hey, database, what percentage of leads are students? That's it. And five seconds later, Claude has an answer. Minimal token usage, minimal time, minimal runaround. It's not absorbing context windows. It's going to the database, it's asking a question, it's pulling information out. If it needs to ask different things like, all right, how many are students? What campaign did the students come from? What keywords did they search from that generated those? Well, all of that's flat in the database. Claude can run quick queries and we're done. There's no way to easily store and pull and analyze all of that if it's only the CRM. So the CRM, like you said, Alane, is that's for our sales, right? Like that's how we manage sales. And I really like your delineation. Like the database is more marketing because, hey, what's working, what's not working, how do we slice and dice this?
Alane BoydAnd for the CRM, you know, we're talking about pipe drive. There is a native connector in cowork for it. We also have some stuff happening in 8N for it. But if you're using HubSpot, that's a great one. If you're using another CRM, go and look in Cowork and see if there's a connector, or if there's not, look and see if there's an MCP server. These are really important pieces. So if you're looking at what CRM to use right now, look at you know what capabilities it has with talking with Cowork or AI. For the database piece, Michael, you we you chose Superbase. And one of the questions that I was thinking, we have some stuff in Airtable from the past. And, you know, why was it Superbase that you chose and not another platform?
Micah JohnsonYeah, I mean, there's you can use other database software. The reason that we went with Superbase over anything else is because of its capabilities with tools like Claude. The fact that Claude can start a brand new Superbase project, design the entire thing, build the entire database, run queries, create views, analyze safety protocols, um, adjust all the settings. It's just one, it's kind of an industry-leading solution right now. Two, it's open source. So you have that capability as well. Three, you can actually run and build functions directly on the Superbase server, which means it's a little bit more than a database, and you can actually do some automation there as well, which can get it's more advanced, but it really opens up the doors. So Airtable is, I would say, halfway to a database and halfway to a spreadsheet. And it kind of met in the middle and it really filled a need when Airtable came out. But in this case, we want a real database. We want a nice relational database that we can scale quickly and have Claude do all the heavy lifting for us. And so that's where we ended up with Superbase.
Alane BoydAwesome. So then there's some things happening here. So we've got the database and the CRM, but how the leads are getting in there.
Micah JohnsonAnd that's where N8n comes into play.
Alane BoydYeah, that's where N8N comes in.
Micah JohnsonThe reason I guess you know, we I could answer the same question. Why do we like N8N? It goes back to the best tool for the job. So we could say this about all the tools that we selected. So Grain, we picked because it has audio and video and amazing uh MCP capabilities, and it's the best tool we found for the job that we need to do with our AI note taker. Superbase, same thing for all the reasons that I just said. And N8N, kind of along the same lines. It's really quick to build in, it's super easy to connect up to Claude. It allows us to have AI agents inside of it. Claude can help us build all of our N8N platforms. It's a leading platform. We can self-host it. So for all of these reasons, we've gone through this, tried out all the options and go, and and we decided N8N is the best tool for the job that we're trying to get done. And I think that's the way that we look at a lot of these platforms when we select them. Is there are other ways that we could do this, but is it the right tool for the job? And then we have to make a judgment call on that.
Alane BoydYeah. So with N8N, we're getting the leads and then it's helping put the lead into these places that we're talking about. So it's putting it into the database, it's putting it into the CRM. And that way we're not having a human have to go and do it. This workflow is like a little AI employee for us doing that tedious work for us.
Micah JohnsonYeah, and let me give some examples of that, Alane, just uh so for our listeners, when we say getting the lead, there's a number of places that we can get leads. So you talked about the web form that we have. So, like that's on our landing pages, we have various forms. So there's all these different forms that the lead needs to come in, and we have to do something with it. Well, Claude can't just sit there and wait for a web form to be filled out. So that's where N8N comes in. N8N can sit there and wait for a web form to be filled out. Another place we use N8N is when a calendarly booking happens. So a booking comes in that can notify N8N. N8N gets all the information about the calendarly booking. Guess what? Goes to the CRM, goes to the database.
Alane BoydUh and so it's updating the lead, essentially. So it's exactly that way things are getting cleaned up as that lead progresses through taking actions with us.
Micah JohnsonOh, great point. Yeah. Yeah. Because it doesn't even have to be at the beginning. This, these actions can happen throughout the entire customer journey of a lead. And N8N is sitting there just waiting for these things to happen, catches it the second it happens, takes its own actions, its own workflow, like you said, to go and look at it. Do we have this lead already? Oh, yeah, we do. Let's update it in the CRM. Let's update it in a database. Those are all perfect use cases for N8N. Where's the lead data coming in, or what's new? And how do we update it? That's not a good fit for Claude. So we don't use Claude for that.
Alane BoydYeah, it's it's what's happening based on a trigger and the N8N workflow can happen once that gets triggered. And like you said, it's just waiting. Like it can't wait to do its job.
Micah JohnsonYeah, the most we have with Claude right now are scheduled tasks.
Alane BoydMicah, I thought I would plug our next N8N cohort coming up.
Micah JohnsonYes.
Alane BoydSo October 20th is our four-week cohort. Micah teaches it. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays, it's live sessions where we teach you how to build an N8N.
Micah JohnsonYeah, and it's our last one for the year. So if you want to learn how to build an N8N and Claude and tie all these things together that we're talking about in this episode, go to events.biggestgoal.ai and sign up for it today because seats are limited and it's the last one we're doing.
Alane BoydI think we only have six seats left, Micah.
Micah JohnsonYeah, it's been pretty wildly popular.
Alane BoydYes.
Micah JohnsonAll right. So let's uh give a few examples of how we can use this combination of green and claude and NADN and TypeDrive and our database.
Alane BoydWhat I realized, Micah, we kind of jumped ahead when we were talking about the database pieces, what we're actually storing in it. So it goes into Supa Base. It's not just their name and email address and company name. We have a lot more data pieces than that.
Micah JohnsonOne of the things that makes the database so powerful is that we can actually pull data from various sources and bring that all into a single set of records. So, for example, we know which campaign the lead came in at. We know the campaign ID, we know the ID of the record in pipe drive, uh, we know the basic Google Analytics data, we know the heat map records related to this user. And by having all those IDs and linkages and data points stored in the database, which again would be a nightmare in a CRM, that way we can ask Claude, hey, where did this, where did these leads come from? Or where did this lead come from? And it can go and actually, even if we're not saving 100% of the data in the database, we're saving the the ID or the like linkage to the platform that has the source of truth. So if I ask Claude, hey, where are we at with this lead? They just booked the meeting. Claude can go to the database, it can go, oh, let me check out the pipe drive record. The pipe drive ID is sitting in the database. It can then go to pipe drive, and that's where it can make the API calls to go, oh, well, they booked the call from the follow-up call that happened last week. Here's the latest notes. This is the latest email that was just sent in. And all of that data can be pulled from the sources, but it's still coming from the database that knows how all these things connect.
Alane BoydMm-hmm. And where does our analysis come from that we get daily? Is that coming from it analyzing the database records?
Micah JohnsonThat's a coming from So it's a combination of the database and it's a combination, or it's combining the database with also what's happening in ads, what's happening in analytics, what's happening in heat map, what's happening in our CRM, what's happening in emails, what's happening in our Calendly.
Alane BoydSo that's another piece that we have AI functioning with the database and all the other pieces, is that it's giving us a daily analysis every morning and making recommendations.
Micah JohnsonIf there's like any trend that we could spot between these examples, the ones that we just talked about too, Alane, it's that AI is really good at pulling from separate data sources, looking at large sets of data now, and analyzing and cross-referencing between those and giving us results from that. There's so many use cases inside of a business that can do that. But maybe we can go through a few just really clear examples, Alane, of what we could ask Claude with this type of setup to get really important and useful information out of it.
Alane BoydYeah, I love it. Tell me one of them.
Micah JohnsonAll right. So one of the ones that that we use all the time, that is kind of what this whole episode and our last episode is based on are what are the top pain points that are shared by our leads? So we ask Claude to group them by title and role and then also by industry. And then we can have it do that type of analysis to say, don't just give me quantities, but also give me percentiles or percentages of total leads that we've brought in. And we can even take it to the point of then give us a visual of this, not just a data table.
Alane BoydYeah, it was so cool to see. And, you know, we get a lot of people looking for marketing help with AI, which is why we did this episode. But it's also why we did an episode on finance and reconciliation, because we saw such a large amount of leads say from finance with looking for these tools to help them. And so we, I don't know if we would have really caught on to that if we were just looking at each individual lead on its own. It wasn't until we got the analysis with all the data that's like, hey, this is a big piece.
Micah JohnsonI mean, I think that's one of the points that I really want to point out on this is we probably wouldn't have caught on to that without this because of the amount of time it would have taken to analyze that. This this ask that I just gave as an example, that was five minutes in Claude. That's all it took. It was five minutes to go to the database, pulls some different sources, cross-references everything, builds a summary, shows it to us. There's no way that we could have done that without Claude. All right, so another example is um hey Claude, please find all the COOs or CEOs who want to personally learn cowork in our database and in our CRM, and then add these leads to a high priority list so that our team knows these are the ones that we should be calling next. And we know that because we know our ICP, our ideal customer profile. Who are the people that typically purchase one of our products or services, our CEOs and COOs is what we typically see. And so that's why we wanted to go through our database and pull those because those are the most likely hot leads for us. And a third example here is hey, Claude, pull data from the database and the CRM and build me a custom UI on top of that that includes our most active leads, but also make it filterable and searchable and add a visualization so that I can see where every lead is in our funnel from cold lead just came in to already made a purchase.
Alane BoydAnd then we can share that with each other. So, you know, or any executive on our team has that information or the sales team. So it's it's just put together so easily to see, okay, where are we at? Where are we going? Who needs to be, who needs a touch point right now.
Micah JohnsonAnd I think we could keep listing more and more examples. And hopefully, if you're listening to this, you're also thinking about like, oh, what are the different things that I could ask that if I had this data at my fingertips or at Claude's imaginary fingertips, then what would I want to be asking about my leads, about my current customers, about my clients, about who's buying from title, how often, how long does it take for a sales cycle, at what point of the sales cycle, where are the channels that my leads are coming from? I'll stop, but I think you get the idea. Like there's so much that when this is set up correctly, you can really work on. But Alane, now it's time, the end of the podcast episode where we talk about the biggest obstacle, not perfect world, everything set up, all this cool stuff that you could do. The BO report, the biggest obstacle report. Take it away.
Alane BoydYeah. So I was really thinking about the BO report and what obstacles I see with companies. And one of them we touched on, and it's that they're not using an AI recorder on any of their calls. And so it's really a core piece, not even in just this scenario. Having an AI recorder is just, I can't imagine doing business without it now. So take the time, pick one that has an API, an MCP server, a native connector. Those three things are pretty much all the same for this purpose. But so that way you can use it for Claude. And then the other piece of it is that take the time to build the database. Don't skip that part. Because the database is what gives you the core information that you need to build a really rocking landing page. And that's going to be one of our next episodes is like, okay, well, how did we build the form? How did we use cloud design? How did we push those landing pages? Because this entire process that Micah and I started was at the end of June. And so we're not talking about a year's worth of work that we put in, we're talking about we were able to go from this idea to launch within a few days. And having that database piece has been really, really helpful. So taking the time to understand these software platforms. If you don't know how to use N8N, come to our next cohort on October 20th because it's going to give you the superpowers that you need to do this stuff quickly and it not be a burden. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you are a listener of our podcast, please take just a few seconds of your time. Please go and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. If you look at Apple or Spotify, we have less than 10 reviews and we would really, really appreciate it.
