Kara: Feeling productive doesn't mean you're being productive, right? I think that's always been true in small business, especially in entrepreneurship, when you have to hold yourself accountable to getting the right things done. I think AI can help us feel like we're moving so fast, and it's so expansive. It feels like you're able to produce so much so quickly, and because of that you get this zing of satisfaction of having produced and been productive. And actually, I think it heightens that feeling that a lot of us have at the end of the day of, well, what have I achieved today?
Austin: There's some good ones. I just did Theresa Rose last week, I think it was. And I don't remember how I got to this, but I saw that you were on her show that she did for a minute a while back. I don't know if that was when you guys were working together or what, but I was like, wow, look at this. This is like the beginning of... I don't know if it's the beginning of Backstage Ops, because I feel like you've been doing it way longer than I realized, but it was still two years ago or something, and it was before I had really seen you do your thing and I saw you speak at the thing. So anyways, not that I would say that you're significantly more polished or anything now. But anyways, it was just an interesting blast from the past to be like, look where we've been.
Kara: I intentionally didn't speak or do podcasting or any of this for a long time. So that's probably quite accurate, that it's just in the last year even that I've gotten more serious about stepping onto stages and owning my expertise, and wanting to share it in that format feels more comfortable and energizing now than it did. So yeah, that's funny that you found that, though.
Austin: So you've been doing more podcasting, more speaking. Why? What prompted that for you?
Kara: I had really good people telling me that the things that I was sharing were really of service, right? I think I could see how the things that I would share with folks would really land. Someone said once, your own life is not interesting to you, but other people want to hear it, need to hear it, perhaps. And I think sometimes our expertise feels similar. We get so close to it and we're so deep into it that the things that feel normal and natural to us, and not very interesting to us, actually are really profound and valuable. And so I think when I realized that it really was of service and that people could take it away, as opposed to just feeling like it was about me...
Kara: From that first time, when you saw me speak, that was the first real stage that I had been on, I would say. And I just had that in my head the whole time: this isn't about me. This is just about me delivering insights that may or may not be helpful to the people in the audience. And the right people are gonna take the right things away and be able to, I don't know, not have systems feel so negative, or the dark, shadowy side of their business. And I think that gave me some conviction. No, you gotta get out and be able to talk about this and share what you've learned, because it does make life easier for people who are in pain with some of this.
Austin: It's funny to hear you say that, actually, because I remember sitting there at the SCN conference being like, dang, Kara's so good at this. I wish I was this good at this. Comparison is stupid, okay? So I'll just get out in front of that. But still, nonetheless, it's counterintuitive to me to have somebody who's tuned to the back-end stuff, the engineering brain, to be so good on stage. And you're so good on stage.
Kara: Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I still get crazy nerves and just black out. I know some people, they're itching to get on stage, and that's not me. I'm like, okay, I'll do that part so that I can get into the awesome, meaty conversations afterwards. I'm so excited to get to that part of it. But thank you for saying that. I'm glad you felt that way, that I represented well. Thanks.
Austin: You did. I'm proud of you. Also, I saw this thing that you posted, I think it was probably on LinkedIn, the other day that had me shook, because it's something that I've noticed about myself but never really labeled or called attention to, which is this tendency to use AI to the point where you're doing more work than you would have otherwise, where you're in the loop of iteration and stuff. And I'm curious, what gave you that idea? Was it you caught yourself doing it, or are you just noticing other people do it? Because everybody is just like, it's all upside with AI. Well, then there's the doom and gloomers that are like, the world's ending.
Kara: There's that.
Austin: But that was an interesting take, a different take.
Kara: Well, thanks. It basically was to say that feeling productive doesn't mean you're being productive, right? I think that's always been true in small business, especially in entrepreneurship, when you have to hold yourself accountable to getting the right things done. I think AI can help us feel like we're moving so fast. I talked to somebody about feeling like it's so expansive. It feels like you're able to produce so much so quickly, and because of that you get this zing of satisfaction of having produced and been productive. And actually, I think it heightens that feeling that a lot of us have at the end of the day of, well, what have I achieved today?
Kara: I set out to do XYZ, and then on my way to do X, I realized I needed this little piece over here done, and all of a sudden this little piece over here became this huge project. It's just so much easier to let those tangents blow up our day, and then never get to the XYZ that we promised we would get done this quarter, or the thing that needed to get out the door to the client this week. And so I've had a couple of folks that I really respect for their initiative to dig into AI and figure out how it's gonna serve them and their clients. But I also see them really struggling with the actual business of getting new clients, getting their fulfillment out the door, because they spend so much time tinkering, to the point where they're exhausted by it and it's not energizing anymore. It feels like they're being weighted down by all the stuff they've built in AI, that now they're underneath the cloud of it.
Kara: And there's also something about this idea of it being expansive. Some of my friends that are visionaries and business owners who are ADHD, lovingly neurospicy in whatever way, it feels like having a tool lets you expand when really you just need to narrow focus so badly. I see the struggle of, but I could do this ten times better, or I could do this thing, or it gave me this idea, and it's so hard to not follow that. And we just have to be honest about our time and energy, and it's hard. It's harder than it's ever been, because you can feel like you're doing so much.
Austin: It's funny. I think there's data to back up what you're saying from the research that we just did. Two examples. One of them would be people are spending just under a third, 31.5% or something like that, of their average marketing time on social media, which produces 2.3% of revenue. And I think that it's because being able to go and add comments that get likes, and create a post that gets some feedback, really taps into that neural circuitry that says I've got something done, I've made progress today. I got some attention. We moved the needle. But in reality, it's just vanity metrics. We're measuring something that's not actually connecting to the bottom line.
Austin: And then on the AI note, there's a $70,000 difference between people that are using AI for operational reasons versus those that are using it to create more content. It's the same thing. Those that are using it to get more stuff done are inherently, by the nature of what AI can do, focusing more on people and relationships, on their delivery, on follow-up, stuff that AI can't do well, and less time on admin and mundane tasking and stuff. And then, for the person that's using it for content, it's just so easy to write a prompt, good, bad or otherwise, and then have a thing to go out and share with the world that again taps into that brain chemistry that says I've done a thing. We get the dopamine spike. And in reality, it just has no meaningful impact on the business.
Austin: And actually, I think this is a whole microcosm, macrocosm, I don't know which one it is, of the type of work that you do. Because I think a lot of thought leaders, being that creative visionary type, just do things without it ever actually connecting to the business making progress. So you so desperately need somebody who can think that way.
Kara: A hundred percent. A big part of what we do is get people into 90-day sprints, and it's not profound to set quarterly goals, but it's very hard to actually stick with it and to practice it. I've been doing this for a long time, and it's still hard for me and my team to stick with the goals that we set. The things that happen in a small business at the end of June don't feel relevant anymore at the beginning of October. And it's very important for you to be able to narrow in on what is important about the next 90 days. How do we just get in and work on a sprint?
Kara: And I think, again, it's becoming even more important with AI, because all day long you're noticing things that could be better, things that could be optimized. It makes it that much harder to focus on what's actually gonna increase revenue, what's gonna reduce expenses. And every time I have a conversation about AI with someone, that seems to be the quickest filter. How do we cut out all the nice-to-haves that could be done with AI? Those things, we can talk about next quarter, but how do we focus today on what's gonna hit revenue and what's gonna hit expense?
Austin: I'm interested in the timing of this, okay? And now I'm getting a little bit into Austin and SpeakerFlow psychology here, okay? So we're gonna think together for a second. For the longest time we were big fans of the EOS framework. That's what we used to manage SpeakerFlow. And for a variety of reasons, we decided to kill that, partially because we didn't have a team anymore. It's just Taylorr and I. So doing a leadership planning session with two of us just always hit weird. It's like, what are we gonna catch? There are no cascading conversations. It's just us doing our thing.
Austin: And at some point we were like, man, I don't even know if the quarterly goal thing is helping us anymore. So we did this experiment where we will sit down and we will have a conversation about the things that need to be done and where our opportunities are, where our biggest risks are. And really, both of us will just commit to one or two big things that we're gonna work on. And then we just get those things done. And sometimes it takes a week, and sometimes, like getting Technically Speaking back on the ground, it took me three months. The State of the Industry report, that was another one that's three months. And then it's done, and then we're just thinking about the next thing. But I'm not doing it regularly. So if something takes a lot less time than I was expecting, great, I'm moving on to the next thing. And if it takes more time, then that's okay too. I'm not pressured to finish early. I just finish when I finish. And I'm gonna do two more things, and then I promise I'm gonna shut up and I want to hear thoughts.
Kara: No, I love this.
Austin: Another anecdote was a sales team that I caught wind of. This was from one of our clients who relayed this to me. He encouraged his client's sales team to sit around a table and come up with one thing that they felt like they could do that week to move the needle. And they all agreed, committed, said they were gonna hold each other accountable, worked their butts off for a week, and then the following Monday did a postmortem and talked about next ideas, repeating the ones that worked, doing something different if they didn't work, and they did it again. So instead of a 90-day sprint, it was one week. Every week they're rethinking what the top thing is that they could be doing that week. And they had tremendous success with that.
Austin: And then the last thing that's anecdotal that comes to mind here is the water filling the container that it's in thing. I've found so often people will set a goal for this quarter and then, knowing full well they have three months to do it, not do anything for six weeks or eight weeks, and then try to cram it into the end, and then we have time wasted on the front end. So all of those things have challenged what has been, for my entire career, my belief about the 90-day sprint. And your conviction about the 90-day sprint is fascinating. And I'm not gonna say any way is right or wrong. I think everybody's gotta figure this out for themselves. But why is that the framework that you've chosen? And what would be your arguments against my arguments?
Kara: I love this conversation. So I would say what you just finished there, with the sentiment of people need to figure out what's gonna work best for them, what's gonna get the best out of them and their team. I think it's gonna be different from your company to mine. I think what's valuable in my mind about the 90-day sprint for small business... I will say a lot of EOS people will say it really needs to be five mil or above, whatever, you have to have a certain size for that to really make sense. I think the principles can be helpful at any phase, adopted correctly or adapted to fit you.
Kara: So in the spirit of that, I do think that small business owners are challenged by the 90-day sprint to think more long-term, and in that way more maturely, about their business. I do think that we are so stuck on our little seven-day Google Calendar, what's coming, that it's just very hard, I think, to think long-term. And part of thinking long-term is also, for me, thinking in terms of abundance and seasons of business, and being able to be more strategic and calculated about what are the important things right now, given all the things going on around me, not just how I feel today. Because I think so many people are driving their business based on how they feel today. I respect you and Taylorr so much because I do see you making strategic moves, getting big, chunky things across the finish line, and it's just the two of you now.
Kara: So a lot of people would struggle to stay focused without having a team to follow, right? I feel like in some ways that's the benefit of having a bigger business, is that you do have to, to some degree, get more disciplined at holding yourself accountable, because the team is following you and you can't give them whiplash by changing your mind every week, right? You and Taylorr could change your mind every week, but you don't. You pick a thing, you get it done. A lot of people struggle to get it done.
Kara: When I've worked with solopreneurs in the past and I've heard them reflect back what works for them about the 90-day planning, it's that they feel like they are being challenged to think in a more mature fashion about their business. Part of it is the nuance of how you go about it. So, for example, what you're saying about the procrastination and cram at the end of the quarter, that is so not the point and isn't effective at all. It's like, cool, at the beginning of the quarter, could we have set dates to knock it out and say, okay, this is the priority the first few weeks. We gotta get this done by such and such date. We're gonna space it out, and then we've got people who are owning those due dates. So there's certain ways. And even the definition of done, taking the time to be really clear about how we are gonna define done at the end of the quarter. Is it black and white, as opposed to "make our CRM better"? That's not a goal, right?
Austin: That's a terrible goal.
Kara: So if we give it a timeline, if we give it some definition, we have to then be specific. And I think that's probably the biggest thing, honestly, is getting specific about your goals so that you can be real about whether we've achieved it or not. You have to be honest about that at the end of a window of time, whatever that window is.
Austin: That's the best, most honest response to that that I could have imagined. So I think that's good. And again, comparison is stupid, but Taylorr and I, our brains work differently. Your brain works differently than the types of people we all serve. The highly creative, highly visionary person that does not think in terms of constraints and timelines and dependencies, the big-picture stuff, they're constantly chasing rabbits. At least they're at risk of constantly chasing rabbits. So I think really any structure is tremendously valuable.
Austin: But I think your point about long-term thinking is the best one. You have to contextualize, and it's about being a business owner, right? You're running a business. The business is a thing. If I'm John Doe the speaker, it's not about John Doe. It's about John Doe LLC. It's the thing that I've created. It's not about me. And it's really easy, I think, to lose that awareness, maybe, is the best word for it. And then squirrel chasing and stuff, you do that more often when we've lost sight of this thing that we're taking care of. It reminds me of this, I forget where this came from, but people are more likely to give their pets a full round of antibiotics than they are to take the full round of antibiotics themselves.
Kara: That's hilarious.
Austin: So I think we're tuned to take care of others more, maybe, than to take care of ourselves. And when we're thinking about our business as this thing that's outside of ourselves that we're caring for, it changes the dynamic, versus if it's just me thinking about me.
Kara: Yeah, a hundred percent. And like I said, I think individual business models are especially tough this way, because it's just you. Part of what we do is fractional COO services. So when people have enough 1099s or enough of a team that they really need somebody to come in and manage and be a strategic partner in the day-to-day, that's when that fractional COO role makes sense for a business that size. And I was talking to one of my team members about an interaction she had with one of our clients who wanted to bring in another outside consultant to support with a certain project. And it's been something that they've been round after round of trying to find the right person to help with this problem. And my team member pushed back and said, we already have a plan. I think that person's gonna come in and tell us to do X, Y, Z. Guess what's on our list right now? X, Y, Z. We already know what needs to happen.
Kara: And so much of that is not being alone in your own head with it, and being able to come to someone on your team or come to an advisor. I don't know how much you do this anymore, Austin, but you in particular have been an excellent source of accountability and honesty for people. I don't know, a couple times a month someone mentions that Austin kicked their butt, giving them an honest truth about something they needed to do or something they needed to look at. And I think they've been so lucky to have you, so they don't have to be alone in looking at these problems. And as a solopreneur, I think you need to find somebody who's a mentor or an advisor or someone who thinks differently than you do. Like you said, we're operator brains, less of the creative. I think they need that counterpart. I think the same way, if you're growing a business, you need to find somebody who can come in and challenge you and be in that with you day to day. And yeah, I think it's just hard to stay focused.
Kara: I guess I wanted to ask you quickly, because you are an operator brain, but you also sit, we're back to EOS, in that visionary seat. You also need to be able to flex that muscle. And you're lucky because you've got Taylorr, so I know the two of you can probably play off each other's strengths that way. But do you notice times where your visionary, creative side is a weakness that you have to be conscious of or work at?
Austin: Yeah, for sure. I see it in places like being overoptimistic about timelines, where I think that I have way more time and space and energy than I actually do. I'm just like a golden retriever. I'm just endlessly optimistic that everything is gonna be fine. And that's sometimes really helpful. Sometimes it really isn't, though. I need Taylorr's more pragmatic, "No, we're gonna break this thing down and be honest with the situation."
Austin: And I get bored easy, and I get excited about things. It's something I've definitely had to pay attention to a lot over the years. And it helps that I'm in my, well, I don't know, tenth, twelfth year of entrepreneurship. So I've had to beat down the parts of me that struggle. And having Taylorr, man, I feel for our clients so often that are solo. Even if you have a part-time contractor or something, it is just not the same as having somebody who's deeply invested in the business. There's a reason why attorneys often end up in firms. They can operate independently, but it's just way harder, and you share the burden and have somebody to push against and so on. So yeah, I do struggle with it, though.
Kara: Yeah, just curious. I had a partnership a long time ago, and we did the visionary-integrator thing, and I was definitely in the integrator seat. But somebody told me, they said the only ship that's bound to go down is a partnership. And I thought, that's really depressing. And for a long time I thought, gosh, it is just so hard to be collaborative and to be able to do that functioning relationship. But I've worked with enough great partnerships now that I think it just takes a lot of intention, and it takes the right kinds of people to be able to share the leadership of a business. But yeah, I have a lot of respect for you all. I think you've done a great job, and it seems like you play off each other well, which takes work.
Austin: Thank you. I'm gonna have you on the show to give me compliments more often.
Kara: I'll hype you up any day, man. Big fans.
Austin: You're awesome. I'm so grateful for you, likewise. So you put in your notes, and I'm sure this is in this vein, triggers and containers. Help me understand how all this fits together. Because behind all of this, I know, is philosophical, psychological, MBA interconnectedness. So when you were thinking through what we might want to talk about here, that was one of the things that you added, and I was like, that. So anyways, how do all these dots connect? Help me understand.
Kara: I put that in there in part because I think it ties in well to the work that you all do also. So I'll share a little bit about that, and then I want to hear your perspective. When I speak to groups, and in the last six months I've spoken a lot more than ever before, one of the things that is most resonant, that people come up to me afterwards raving about, is this idea of triggers and containers. Again, I don't think it's profound, but it hits different. So triggers are any catalyst for what gets you to do the work in your business. It is the thing that gives you a nudge that gets you to get the thing done. And then containers are where you go for the information you need to do your job effectively, and it's gonna be data or information. So I think businesses are operationalized and systematized properly when they have reliable triggers that they trust, and they have clean containers that are organized and intuitive enough that they can find what they need and their team can find what they need.
Kara: So in thinking about this idea, triggers can be as simple as a notification from a program that says, okay, signed contract from DocuSign or from Zoho Sign, whatever that trigger is, an email that says go do a thing. Great, that's a trigger. It might be a calendar appointment where you meet with your, I don't know, bookkeeper every two weeks, and that could be a trigger for you. I've got that meeting coming up. I'm gonna get my gears turning, or I'm gonna get on that call, we're gonna talk about finances. That's a trigger for me to get into my financials.
Kara: The thing that I talk about more than anything is project management tools, task management tools. This is like Triggers 101. This is where you go to put your digital task list and make sure that everything is in the same space. So having not just triggers, like a task list and a to-do list that tells you what to do and what to prioritize, but further than that, having it centralized so it's in one spot, and you can see all your priorities there together and then decide strategically what needs your attention as you go through your day. So that's triggers. Containers are a little bit more intuitive. It's like Google Drive or your Dropbox, where you go to find your files. Some people maybe have a quick links library, or files on their computer. So different containers like that. Your CRM, with all your data, that side of the CRM is a container, right?
Kara: So when I've talked with folks about this, I'm finding that people come up and they go, I'm way over-triggered. I've got notifications, I've got things trying to pull my attention all day long, but then I try to go do the thing and I'm not really organized enough to be able to effectively get it done and get it across the finish line, or know how to manage the triggers that I've got coming my way. Same with containers. I've had some people who say, I think I'm really organized because I've done all this work in my Google Drive. I feel like I have my things contained, but nothing ever sends me into them to go do the thing. So then I'll drop balls because I forgot I have to go into that folder to go get the headshot or to do the thing.
Kara: So that's where, when we do system audits with people, when we work with people to look at their systems holistically, that's one of the things I'm watching for. Do you have a healthy balance of reliable triggers that you and the team can trust? And do you have containers that are clean enough, labeling and file systems, whatever it is, that are intuitive enough that you're not having to go spend twenty minutes to find a document? Which, thank goodness for AI, is getting easier now. But we can get into AI, because AI in this conversation, again, can be so powerful and wonderful, or it can be just a wild distraction and waste of time. So I'm gonna pause and see what you think about that.
Austin: There's both of those things, no doubt. I've got a million thoughts. How do you feel like this connects to the visionary-operator conversation we were just having? Why is this so relevant for this audience that we share of hypervisionaries?
Kara: I'll say one of the biggest learning curves for our clients is being disciplined about their triggers. They'll say to me, I feel like I spend all day organizing my to-do list. And my response to that is, you are prioritizing in a way that you never have had to before. There's a certain amount of needing to follow your natural energy, and have your day and your time and energy be organic, that's gonna bring great things into your business, and it's gonna keep you energized about what you're doing. But if you never go in to clear your to-be-determined so your bookkeeper can get the things reconciled, you're gonna get four months behind on reconciliation and then be frustrated you don't have numbers, right? There's a certain amount of necessary evil to get things done, to keep systems running, to keep your team able to support you, or just to be a healthy business. You have to do some of those things. But you have to be strategic about your time and energy.
Kara: The more that we, being me and you and operators, can support visionaries and creative folks with strategic prioritization of where to put their time and energy, and how to capitalize on the moments that they have a juicy creative energy, go give them an outlet, help them do it in a way that is strategic instead of sabotaging to the business. That's where I see that coming into play. And they've got different strengths, right? There's some visionary, creative folks who will pick up the phone and call, because they're so great at relationships and people, and that's what they want to do all day long, and that's gonna serve the business. But if they sign 15 contracts and then they're sucking on fulfillment and clients are getting frustrated, that's a short-term play. You have to be able to balance those things. So that's where I think triggers are most important.
Kara: And then containers. I'm separating them out, but I think with containers it's easy to think short-term about what you're doing in a digital space. Whereas over time, your digital space becomes your office. And if it's a mess and you can never find what you need, and your team can't trust any of the documents that you pull up because everything's always outdated or confusing, you're just wasting time. And so if you can find ways to, again, create the outlet for the creative energy, but have it be in a container where it stays meaningful, you'll get so much more out of that creative energy, instead of, I created this document and then I spent three hours building a program and then we don't even remember where it was, or I forgot it existed, or I rebuilt it three months later because I forgot I did it. There's a lot of that that I think is not only wasting time and resources, but I think it discourages business owners over time, where they go, gosh, am I really making progress? I feel like I'm spinning my wheels here.
Austin: So two things stand out to me with that rant. One of them: we had a client years ago come up to us at one of the events that we were at, and I just started small talk, and she asked how Taylorr was doing. I told her, and she was like, I was talking to somebody the other day and they asked, hey, should I be working with Austin or Taylorr, do you think? And, well, we work with anybody and everybody. Taylorr and I work together collaboratively, but we do tend to have people that are drawn to one or the other of us. And she was like, well, if you want to get things done, talk to Taylorr. But if you want to have fun with it, talk to Austin. And that has forever been a compliment, because Taylorr is just really good at getting down to the nitty-gritty and knocking stuff out. And I'm definitely more of the people person, that we could talk shop for 30 minutes and talk about productive things for a very small amount of it.
Austin: But you, I feel like, are the optimal balance between those two things, of getting things done and having a good time doing it. But also, listening to you talk just really demonstrates how much you care about people's humanity, them as people, regardless of the business performance and all that. We're gonna assume that we care about that, because that's the work that we do. But you talking about people's energy levels and stuff, and you mentioned somebody saying Austin kicked my butt. I don't have that muscle the same way you do. It's there, but people say, I have too many things going on, and I'm like, well, freaking sit down and do your work and quit talking about it, which is not the right way to approach that by any means. But I feel like you have such a more balanced and understanding way of looking at people.
Kara: Well, I think of you as setting them up with a tool where, if they can lean into the tool and do the thing that you've trained them to do, they will be successful. And then I think where people get stuck is if there's certain ways that it doesn't work for their brain and they can't learn it or get over it or be disciplined enough, right? I don't know if this will be controversial. I think there are people who have invested in SpeakerFlow who wasted time and money because they then don't show up and do the work to use the tool and keep it alive and keep it meaningful, right? It's the most frustrating thing for people like us, who want to see them be successful and pour our heart and soul into it.
Kara: I will just say, if it's not working, great, we're gonna change it. We'll throw it out. Because at the end of the day, all I care about is that you actually get in and do the thing. We're tool agnostic, which means we'll work in any tool, but it also means that sometimes I feel like people are not playing to the highest level that they could. And I think people who are investing in SpeakerFlow need to know that they're still gonna have to do work to make the results happen. The tool is going to support you, and it makes it so much easier if you get in and do the thing. But I guess what I'm getting at is I see people have me build them systems where I feel like we're holding their hand and they're still not showing up and doing the thing as much as they could. It's a very frustrating experience. It's not even about, you didn't use my system. It's like, we're working really hard to make sure this works for your brain, and we're doing everything we can within the options and the resources that exist. You still have to show up. You still have to be bought in, or ask the questions, or be consistent.
Kara: And this is where I see people switching tools all the time in a way that I just think is devastating to businesses. This isn't just a matter of saving a few hundred bucks once a year. You are spending hours and hours and hours of your own time and energy, and the team's time and energy, to transition. And for what, man? It's gonna be a learning curve. I don't even know where I started, but it really bums me out when I see a graveyard of tasks or a graveyard of systems that could have been great if people just stuck with it and stayed the course.
Austin: I'm constantly feeling like I can't care about this more than you, the client. You've got to care about your business more than anybody else. And as long as I'm more invested in your situation than you are, this is just never gonna work. And it's funny, the tool agnostic point. This is surprising to most people, because obviously we've become really known for working inside of Zoho, but I'm tool agnostic too. The best tool is the one you use. That's really what it comes down to. And CRM is my favorite example of this, because it's the one that I think most businesses know they need and have no idea what to do with. But a CRM is a CRM, especially in 2026. They all do the same thing. In fact, people can work with me and I'll implement Pipedrive for you instead of Zoho.
Kara: Really?
Austin: I'm gonna charge you way more money, but yeah, because I don't care. Everything we do in Zoho is templated, right? So I save a lot of time using the tools that we've committed to already. But if somebody was deeply committed to the thing and they wanted to pay for my time to engineer the whole thing from the ground up, fine. I don't care. Use whatever you want.
Kara: That's good to know. And I'm not surprised, because in our conversations I feel like that's come through, that you're like, I'm gonna do the thing that gets them to do the work and supports them wherever they go. I'm glad we're talking about it, because I think people don't know that. They don't know that you all are, like, the CRM geniuses, I think. And our competence and our interest stops right before all of the data-heavy stuff, which is CRM. We're all about the day-to-day workflow of how you get in, and that's why I'm all about the triggers, and the big picture of triggers and containers in your business. But when it gets deep into CRM, you need somebody like you to be able to decide what is the right CRM tool and why, and how do we just use it, whatever we decide. Because at the end of the day, it just matters that you show up.
Austin: A hundred percent. I'd be curious to hear your take on this. For years we've been saying we do systems implementation, which is very similar language to how I know you guys describe this, but sometimes the same word can mean different things. So when people ask me what I mean by that, I'd say a system is where you get three things converging: people, technology and a process. So people, whoever's involved. Most of the people we work with are solopreneurs or very small teams with part-time contractors or something. Technology could be a stone and chisel, just anything that gives you leverage, right? In 2026, we're probably using software. That's the thing that our brains go to.
Austin: But an analogy I just made actually in our newsletter, The Soapbox, if you're not subscribed, go subscribe, that'll come out tomorrow, I think, is the three levels of tractor. Level one is a hand plow, where it's all of the manual effort, but you can build some muscle memory and there's a skill. And if you get really good with a hand plow, you can probably do it pretty quick. And your ability to do that over somebody who doesn't have a hand plow, infinitely better. Number two would be a tractor you drive. You actually have leverage, right? You don't have to work as hard to get the output. It's doing most of the work for you, but you still have to operate it. And then there's the robot tractor, where there's a nerd in a barn somewhere and he's programmed the tractor to go run the routes and do the thing or whatever.
Austin: And it's like that with tools, with technology. You have to figure out at what level we're going to use technology to help us. And it's not that the more automated, the better it is. There are many times where the more manual it is, the better it is, because it's more honoring of a relationship, let's say. But anyway, some type of technology has to be there to give us leverage. So the people is who's doing it, the technology is the leverage that we have to get it done. But both of those things are functionally useless if there's not a process that's being followed. There needs to be a series of steps.
Austin: CRM is the best example of this. People have it in their head that I'm gonna have a CRM, and now I'm gonna make a million dollars a year on autopilot, and I can just stand on stages every day of my life, and that's the only thing I'm gonna do. At no point has that ever been true, and at no point will it ever be true, because for one, there's no such thing as a magic wand. If there was, I'd be on a beach right now in Tahiti or something with my family. But for two, you can't automate a meaningful relationship. It's impossible. You just can't. You shouldn't. That's not what we want. We automate the rest of it. But anyways, when those three things, people, tech and process, aren't working together, you don't have a system, for one, but also everything is just harder. So what's your take on that definition of a system?
Kara: Great. Wrap it. Shut it down. That was it. That was perfect. I love it.
Austin: Okay. See ya, we're done.
Kara: No, truly, I think that's great. Our framework is a little different. I'll talk through it, I suppose. I'll do a definition of operations. So I'm a little higher than that, I suppose, in how I talk and think, just in the sense that it's an umbrella including what you're talking about. The way that I'll talk about it is we need to align your strategy, your systems, your software and your staff. So all three things you said are in there with different words. I think the strategy piece is the only thing that's different, which is to say you need that longer-term picture. You need to be able to see where are we going with this, back to our conversation about 90-day planning or however you want to do long-term goal setting. I need to understand where we're steering the ship before I... no, my metaphor's running away. Before I build the mast. It's like, you have to know what your business model is before you pick a CRM, for example, in my opinion.
Austin: A hundred percent.
Kara: Are we going B2C, and I need to keep track of 50,000 contacts and do segmentation within that? Or do I just need three great corporate contracts? And if you can't answer that question for me, it's very hard for me to make strategic decisions about your systems, about your software, about your staff, and where we're headed. And I think, again, people feel like if I just keep my head down and stay the course, I can figure it out as I go. And that's where I really think you need to have some sense of where you want to be a year from now, three years from now. And that's why everything we do starts with strategic planning. Because I wanna have that bigger picture when I go to make a small decision about the tech, about the investment right now. So yeah, I really like the way you think and talk about that.
Kara: I guess I'll go to AI for a second. I think that AI, for a lot of people who are not operators, is making it really hard to think in terms of process, which I think is just as important even with AI. I think AI makes it seem like you can customize everything all day long. And again, I think you can get yourself into a bad spot doing that, right? As opposed to someone who can decide, this is our process and we do it every time, we're gonna take clients through that. Great, you're gonna be scalable. You're gonna be thinking in terms of long-term scalability. As long as you're customizing on the fly constantly, it's really hard to scale custom. Which is why, even within consulting, you have to have a sense of process to be able to scale a consulting firm.
Kara: I will just say, we had a good conversation today. I was at the CAPS High Income Earners Group, and they were actually talking about you today, and how great some of your stuff is that you're helping somebody with, implementing AI to get more out of their Zoho, basically. And one of the things that they were talking about is how can we take some of the SOPs and process work that we've done and build skill files, and really be able to build your Claude with some of those processes, so that you aren't relying on AI to build your process each time you go to do something, right? A lot of us have this in our brain or documentation, and we're not pulling it into our tools effectively yet. So that's one of the things I'm helping people do: especially if you're in a centralized tool like Claude where the whole team is in there, get really good at pulling those things in now, so that you're not reinventing process that you already actually have, whether you've written it down or not.
Austin: I think this is where the strategic element starts to matter so much, because the tool can be amazing and a process can be a process, but if it's not anchored to the bigger picture, and it's not anchored to the goals that we're trying to accomplish, the way our business operates, the types of clients that we serve and the way that we serve them, it's not even just neutral, but completely unhelpful. It has to be properly informed or else it's gonna be wrong. And AI gives us a high level of confidence, because it's all powerful and knowledgeable as far as we're concerned. It's like the omniscient tool all of a sudden that we have in our pockets. So I think that it's easy to have this preconception that whatever it comes up with will be better, and so we can just let it do its thing.
Austin: But in reality, here's a way to think about it. If you're doing sales outreach, if you're not following the same process for doing outreach every single time, you will never be able to improve, because the data is a mess. We have to know how many touch points there are, we have to know what the mechanism is, we have to use the same messaging at the same time, with the same types of people, because every time one of those variables changes, our data gets worse and worse and worse. And so I think in the context of AI, right, even if your process isn't as good as it can be, if we can at least have it be consistent and standardized, then after playing that through a bunch of times, we can see, well, step three in XYZ process sucks. Everything breaks here. So how do we improve that part, right? But we'll never know if it's constantly being invented on the fly. Now, I think AI on top of a standardized process will make it way better than we would do on our own, because it can look for those little trigger points and things that break way better than our biased and/or lazy and/or overwhelmed eyes can on any given day. But it's still not a perfect science.
Kara: Yeah, a hundred percent. I also think there's a parallel of, again, back to how hard it is for solopreneurs in small business to be really consistent and disciplined. I think people are successful in the speaker business, or in small business, or as solopreneurs, when they can be consistent, and when they can be doing the same thing long enough for people to understand what it is they do, let it settle in their brain, get some referrals out. It feels like there's this need for us to be innovative and cutting edge, and that doesn't mean we throw everything out. It doesn't mean you change your entire positioning every six months. It feels like there's such a need for people to figure out what is the thread that I need to hold on to and be really consistent about, that's gonna serve me. And then what are the little lenses or different little pieces of it that need to be innovative and iterative as I go, so that I don't get irrelevant or get too complacent.
Kara: But it does feel like people undervalue being consistent and keeping it simple. Whether we're talking about process or positioning or whatever aspect of your business, there needs to be some level of consistency, and that gives me a sense of, as a business owner, because it feels like there's so much all the time, to give yourself a break and notice: this is where I'm strong, this is what's working, let me make sure that I hang on to that as I'm going forward and figuring out what to tweak and adjust over time.
Austin: I think we're wired to look for pain avoidance, or solving pain, instead of thinking about the upside. One of the things that you just mentioned there triggered that in my brain for a second, where I was like, yeah, the overwhelm of things being chaotic all the time sucks. So having things be consistent means I don't have to deal with that chaos. But the upside there is that when I'm not completely overwhelmed by chaos all the time, in the moments where I do need to be spontaneous, or something arises randomly that needs to be solved that isn't consistent at all or isn't baked into a process, then I have so much more faculty available to be able to give that situation my best. And so things are so much better.
Austin: I'm reminded, I guess it would have been almost eighteen months ago now, you and I sitting in, I think, a Moe's, eating burritos or nachos or something together, and you telling me this story of a sales call that you hopped on, where somebody came in just really overwhelmed and asking you what to do. And she's like, what do I need? And you were like, I think that you need a hug. And then I got to see that as a more polished story in the keynote that you gave at the Speaking Consulting Network event, which was so cool. But I think that there's a lot of people that may listen to this episode and just think about how bad they feel about running their business. I know, and I sound so harsh, but our data shows it. People really struggle. And I don't think that a lot of people feel very clear. And if you go to AI, all you do is get a bunch of chaos. So anyways, there's definitely a lot of people that need you, and you're just the best person that I could possibly imagine sending folks to. So if there's somebody listening to this right now going, I need a hug, where would they go?
Kara: You're so funny. I would say find me on LinkedIn and send me a message and we'll chat. I really feel fortunate to be in a business model where I have an agency. We've got a team, and I've been able to work with, I should count, but I would say hundreds of people over the last ten years, in the back end of their business, figuring out what's working and not working. And I feel like you too. We're able to see trends and patterns and things in people's businesses because of that business model of seeing so much of the back end. So I like being able to help people cut corners, not make mistakes, not drop twenty thousand dollars on coaching programs that are gonna lead to that same sense of overwhelm and lack of implementation. So I'm always happy to hop on a call and just be a listening ear and a sounding board for those decisions.
Austin: You're the best. Thanks for coming on, Kara.
