Full show notes + links mentioned in this episode:

👉🏾 https://karveldigital.com/56

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📸 Instagram: @karveldigital

💼 LinkedIn: Kronda Adair

🎵 TikTok: @krondakarvel

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About Begin As You Mean to Go On

Hosted by Kronda Adair, founder of Karvel Digital, this podcast is for Black women running mission-driven service businesses. We help you increase your income and impact—without the hustle—by strategically automating your backend systems so you can reclaim your time and peace.

🔗 Learn more: karveldigital.com

Welcome to begin as you mean to go

on where we help black women with

2

mission-driven service-based businesses,

grow your income and impact while

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creating a more peaceful, profitable

business by strategically automating

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your critical business systems

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Kronda: my name is Kronda Adair.

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And I went from making $500

websites to becoming a certified

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automation service provider.

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Doing multiple six figures per year,

while working part-time wrangling

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to high energy dogs and having some

of my highest revenue months while

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taking completely off-grid vacations.

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Thanks to strategic

automation and a small team.

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Inside my million dollar system service

and my automation club membership, we

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help you create a cohesive software

stack and automate one new thing per

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month in your business resulting in a

compound interest of time, energy and.

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peace So you can build your business

without the patriarchal white

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supremacist hustle and grind.

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If you're ready to work hard once

and hire and employ technology to

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execute proven marketing strategies.

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So you can get back to the rest

of your business and your life.

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You are in the right place.

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Let's get it going.

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Kronda (2): Before we get into the

official episode, I just wanna let

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you know that this episode about

slowing down was recorded during a

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two and a half mile walk that I took

to go pick up our car from the shop.

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So you will hear some traffic noise,

you'll hear some dogs barking.

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Overall, I think the sound is

pretty good and it is what it is.

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So enjoy the message and make sure

to hit me up on Instagram or LinkedIn

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and let me know what you think.

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Hey y'all.

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Welcome back.

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This episode is a little bit

different, at least for me, in

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that I am not in the studio.

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I'm actually taking a long walk,

and that goes perfectly with what

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I want to talk about today, which

is slowing down, specifically

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slowing down to speed up because.

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Our world is just sort of rushing

and rushing more all the time.

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And as someone who's in the automation

space, I deal with people who want

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to be more efficient, who want

to be able to do things faster.

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And often one of the things they

want to go faster is our project.

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And you can do a lot very

quickly with automation.

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We've done incredible things for

our clients in very short amount of

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time, and I will give you examples.

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But the thing that you need in order to

go fast is you need a solid foundation.

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And the foundation is the

part that you cannot rush.

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And that is the part that we

always start with our clients.

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And so there can be a bit of cognitive

dissonance when I'm spending a month

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mapping out their processes and they're

like, how come nothing's happening.

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Speaker 3: A lot of entrepreneurs are

quick starts, by which I mean we have

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the idea, we execute the idea, right?

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And we wanna move fast, fast, and

there's nothing wrong with that.

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In fact, I did that just last night.

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I had a really great sales call

for the thing that I've been.

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Working on pivoting towards, and

afterwards I decided, you know what?

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It's time to make this official and

start it on a sales page, and built

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out the entire automated onboarding

sequence in an evening, and I can do

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that because I have the foundations in

place to be able to execute quickly.

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So when I talk about slowing down

to lay the foundations, I'm not

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talking about six months, right?

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It doesn't have to be forever, but.

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two months, can you give two

months to lay the foundation

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and be able to build solidly?

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If you think about all the years

people spend just sort of spaghetti

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building their systems, two months

is actually not a lot of time to

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lay a foundation, to get clarity and

to have systems that actually work.

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So I wanna lay out what

that actually looks like.

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What is, what are those two months spent

doing, and then what is an example of.

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A fast project that you can do

because you have foundations.

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So the first thing is process mapping.

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If you followed me for more than

five minutes, you're probably not

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surprised to hear me say that.

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if you were gonna hire an architect

and you asked them like, Hey, how

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are we gonna build this house?

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And they were like, yeah,

we're just gonna vibe it.

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Like you would never hire

somebody like that who didn't.

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Make a plan and write down

their plan so that the builders

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actually know what's happening.

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And the same is true for your business.

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So the first order of business is always

going to be what is actually happening

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right now and getting that visible so

that everybody on the team can see it.

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Most of the clients I work with

are neuro divergent in some way,

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and so for a lot of them, if they

can't see it, it doesn't exist.

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It is always a highlight for me the first

time that I actually show someone what

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is happening in their business and they

feel this sense of clarity and almost

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can exhale for the first time knowing

oh, okay, this is what's happening and

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now we know how we want to change it.

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The best way that I found to do process

napping is to just get access to all

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of the key software that my client has.

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So the, your website.

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Backend, your CRM, your form software.

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And the reason for that is twofold.

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The first is that, you are busy, like

CEOs are busy and yes, they could,

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sit in a 90 minute mapping session

or longer or have their team do it.

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But what we want to know is

what is actually happening.

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And the best way to know what's

happening is for me to just

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go and look with my own eyes.

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So it saves the business

owner time because.

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All the client has to do is

show up for the access call.

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I do schedule a call to get access

to all the software just because

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two factor off is such a bugger.

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It's really more efficient to just

get on a call and work through

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all those access issues one time.

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and then I have all the access that I

need and then I spend, depending on the

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client and the project, anywhere from

one to three weeks, doing a deep dive.

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I go to the website, I look at it

as if I am a lead and I figure out

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how does someone enter your world

and what are the steps they take

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to subscribe to your list or buy

something, or whatever the process is.

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Once I do that, start to develop a

pretty good picture of how things

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are sitting and where the gaps are.

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And then at that point, that's when I

will schedule a 90 minute strategy call.

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And then instead of walking through

step by step trying to figure out what's

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happening, I get to say, this is what

I have found is actually happening.

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what are the gaps that you see?

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Is this what you expected?

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And then we can look at, now

that we know what is, how do we

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want to improve these processes?

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So the strategy calls where we start

to get clear on the vision of the

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business owner, whether that's they want

to automate their onboarding or they

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want to start streamlining their data.

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We can start from what is actually

happening and move from there.

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And of course, I use Puzzle for

all of this process mapping.

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If you haven't heard me talk about Puzzle,

it is the purpose built process mapping

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tool that I've been using for about two

years now, and it has been a game changer

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for bringing clarity to our business

and our processes and our clients.

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Clients love being able to see

what's happening and see how their

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software and their people work

together to execute their processes.

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If you're not familiar with Puzzle,

I will put the link in the show

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notes to my YouTube playlist.

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And if you want a more hands-on

introduction, you can register for

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my next to get your business out

of your brain workshop and get a

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personalized walkthrough of how it works.

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And we can even do some live process

mapping so you see how it can work

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for your business specifically.

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If you wanna register, go

to karveldigital.com/process

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to see when the next

workshop is happening.

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When I am mapping processes

and in the beginning phases,

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I am extremely tool agnostic.

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I'm not married to any particular tool

because as I've said so often we need to

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step completely away from the technology.

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And focus on what is the experience that

you want to create that gives us the

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job description to be able to go out

and hire the tools that will help you

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create the experience that you want.

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In some cases, that might be the tools

you're already using, and sometimes

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that might mean an upgrade or a

migration, but since we're optimizing

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for the long haul, we don't want to get

stuck in constraining ourselves based

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on the tools that we already have.

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One of the things that surprises my

clients throughout this process is the

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extreme level of detail that I will

document things and the extreme level

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of detail when I'm implementing things.

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I saw an interview recently with,

Steven Bartlett, the host of the Diary

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of a CEO podcast, and he was being

interviewed on a late night talk show

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and he was talking about how their

philosophy is that they sweat the small

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stuff because in the end that yields

them better results than trying to

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have some giant transformational thing.

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So for them, that looks like paying

attention to the music that's playing.

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When the guest walks in the room, he

will research the guest's favorite music,

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the first concert they ever went to.

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It looks like paying attention

to how the room smells.

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He even talked about monitoring

the CO2 levels because apparently

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when CO2 levels get too high,

it lowers cognitive function.

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He said the first few hundred.

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Views he did.

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He was basically the

equivalent of being drunk

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and because of this level of detail,

his guest rave about the experience, and

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it's a really memorable time for them

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in the world of automation, obsessive

detail to me looks like paying close

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attention when we're building a form.

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I try my best to not ask clients

or my clients' clients for

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information that we already have.

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That means if I'm gonna send you to a form

and I already know your name, I already

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know your email address, and I already

know your phone number, I'm gonna pre-fill

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those things so that when you click

through, the only thing you have to answer

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is the things that we don't already know.

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It is a small thing, but it makes a big

difference in the client experience.

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Another important difference is

once we've gone down the path

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of documenting your systems,

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we need to make sure that we maintain.

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That documentation so that you can always

trust that your documentation is the truth

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of what's happening in your business.

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For me, that means when I'm

implementing something, I'm always

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going to have a Puzzle tab open, and

I'm gonna be documenting as I go.

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And I know it's so easy to tell

yourself like, oh, I'll come

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back and document this later.

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But the truth is, we probably won't.

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Life moves so fast and you'll get sucked

up into the next thing, and We need to

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create a habit that's gonna maintain

the integrity of our documentation.

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If you're starting to get the idea

that embarking on having an automated

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business means that you need to

change the way that you work, good.

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Too many people think of automation

as a project that you finish.

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And it's not that, it is actually a

different way of running your business

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and you have to change your team and

your culture to be able to support

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and maintain that way of working.

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So what does all this

foundation work get you?

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When you take the time to think and

plan, it means that execution is going

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to be much faster and it's going to be.

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Less likely to produce errors.

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I wish I could find it again.

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I saw a video on Facebook and

it was one of those sort of

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like logging competitions.

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So picture a pole standing straight

up, and these loggers are racing to

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climb the pole and chop off the top.

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The way they're doing that is they're

taking axes, making a notch in the pole,

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sticking a board in the notch, using

it as a step, and then repeating that

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process until they get to the top and

then chopping off the top of the pole.

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So the race starts and everybody

is rushing to just chop their.

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Log.

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Everybody's going as fast as they can,

except for this one guy who takes the

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time to just stand and think for a second.

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He spends about a minute thinking

and he appears to be behind

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everybody else, but in reality,

when he actually starts to work

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He surpasses everybody else and he

wins because he has taken the time

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to think through what is the best and

most efficient way to get to the goal.

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That is the patience that I need

you to have as a business owner.

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When you are at the foundation stage and

it feels like nothing's happening and

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you're wondering, is this even gonna work?

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You have to trust that going slow in the

beginning and laying a good foundation

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is going to get you better results.

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So what is your reward

for all of this patience?

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What does moving fast look like after

you have laid the right foundation?

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It's, I'm gonna give you an example

from a client of mine who had a

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brick and mortar business, was

back, at the beginning of COVID, and

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she realized she needed to

diversify her income streams,

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and so she created a product.

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She came to me about 10 days before

her birthday and said, Hey, I wanna

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have a birthday sale for this product.

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And not only that, but I would like to.

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Set up all of the

onboarding to be automated.

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And not only that, but I would like to

let people buy this product as a gift

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for other people and have different

messaging based on whether they purchased

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for themselves, whether they bought it

as a gift or whether they donated extra

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money to be able to contribute to other

people getting, this product for free.

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And so we had that conversation

and she said, yeah, can I, can

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this all get done in a week?

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And I was like, yeah, no problem.

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And the reason I could say that,

and the reason we could execute

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that is because this client had been

working with us for many months.

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We had laid all the foundations,

we had all the information and all

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the assets that we needed, and.

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I was able to execute that,

test it, launch it, and she

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had a great birthday sale.

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So to my quick starts out there

who want to go fast, I promise

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you will be able to go fast,

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but when you're just starting

out, you need to be patient.

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You need to lay the foundation properly

so that you're not moving fast and

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breaking things like the bros say you

want to move fast and have success.

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We made it to the car in 69 minutes.

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Yoda was such a good boy.

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Total distance was 2.28

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miles.

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I got a great walk-in.

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Y'all got a great podcast.

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And Yoda boy got all his sniffs.

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Yeah, he's such a good boy.

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So if you've made it this far and you're

like, okay, Kronda, you've convinced me.

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I'm willing to slow down.

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I'm willing to lay the foundations.

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How the heck do I do that?

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And what does it look like?

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Let me introduce you to

the backend blueprint.

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The backend blueprint is a short term.

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Retainer where I will go through the

process that I've just outlined for you.

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We'll dig in.

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I will get access to all of your software.

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I'll map what's actually happening.

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Then we will strategize together,

what do you want it to look like,

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and then I will help you with

implementing and making that a reality.

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That implementation could look

different depending on the structure

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of your team and your business.

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It might be overseeing your team.

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It might be helping you source

a team member or a contractor

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who can implement for you.

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It might look like jumping in and

getting hands on and getting it done.

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But at the end of it, you will have

one process, whichever process is

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the big bottleneck for you right now.

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That process will be

streamlined, improved.

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It will be using the right software for

you and your team and the long-term goals

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of your business, and it will set you up

to continue the process of automating and

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creating more efficiency in your business.

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The investment is 2k month with a minimum

two month commitment, and after that,

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you have the option of continuing if

you have more projects or bringing me

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on in a fractional capacity to help

oversee your team and your operations.

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If you want 'em, learn more about that.

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You can go to karveldigital.com/blueprint

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and get all the details and book a call to

see if this is the right solution for you.

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All right.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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I'm always happy to be back in your ear

holes, and I want this to be a discussion.

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So if you have had a revelation or you

have questions about this, hit me up by

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sending me a LinkedIn message, replying

to any of my emails if you're on my email

289

list or hitting me up on Instagram DMs,

and I look forward to talking with you.

290

Until next time, don't forget

to begin as you mean to go on.

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Kronda: Thanks for listening

to begin as you mean to go on.

292

If you like this episode, show your love

by leaving us a five star rating and

293

review, share it on your favorite social

media platform or in your newsletter, or

294

hit me up and let's have a conversation.

295

Send me a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn

or hit me up on threads and let

296

me know what you liked about this

episode and what were your takeaways.

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Until next time, don't forget

to begin as you mean to go on.