In this episode of the Finally Feeling Podcast, Kathy Baldwin shares the story behind Finally Business Systems and the belief that has shaped her work across more than 40 years in sales, operations, buyer behavior, root cause analysis, podcasting, and business system architecture.

The conversation begins with one of Kathy’s earliest sales memories, when an angry retail customer came into the store expecting a fight. Instead of defending the original sale, Kathy started asking questions. That moment became one of the first clear examples of what would later become a core belief in her work:

Sales is service.

Sales is not about forcing a yes. True, ethically based sales is about helping the buyer get clear enough to make an informed decision.

From there, Kathy explains why the buyer journey is not a mechanical funnel. A buyer is not simply moving from awareness to conversion. They are moving through trust, readiness, questions, fear, past experiences, assumptions, disappointments, hopes, and expectations.

When a founder-led business builds its process around the final offer instead of the buyer’s actual decision-making path, the buyer can feel friction long before they ever name what is wrong. That friction can look like hesitation, ghosting, repeated questions, needing more time, price resistance, or the classic “I need to think about it.”

This episode also explores founder dependency, which happens when the business relies on the founder to manually hold too much of the buyer journey, sales process, delivery experience, decision-making, follow-up, and operational structure.

Kathy shares how her previous podcast, Unlearn the Crap, was meaningful and valuable, but eventually became a one-way system because it was not connected to the buyer journey, the business model, or the support structure needed to keep it sustainable.

That lesson became part of the foundation of Finally.

A business asset can be meaningful, valuable, and deeply aligned with your heart, but if it is not connected to the buyer journey and the business architecture, the founder still ends up carrying the weight.

This episode is for founder-led business owners, consultants, coaches, service providers, experts, podcast hosts, and business owners who know too much of the process still lives in their head.

Kathy breaks down what belongs with the human, what belongs in the system, and why business system architecture is not just about automation, software, or funnels. It is about protecting the buyer relationship and supporting the founder so the business no longer depends on them being the system.

In This Episode

Kathy talks about:

• Why sales is service
• How buyer advocacy shaped her career
• Why the buyer journey is not a mechanical funnel
• How buyers experience friction before they can name what is wrong
• Why founder-led businesses often become founder-dependent
• How Unlearn the Crap became a one-way asset
• Why podcasting can become part of the buyer journey
• What AI and automation need before they can actually support the business
• Why systems protect trust, follow-up, expectations, and commitments
• What belongs with the human and what belongs in the system

Key Quotes

“Sales is service.”

“A sales process in its absolute, rawest, simplest form is helping somebody make a decision.”

“The buyer’s journey is not just a funnel. It is a relationship.”

“When you give constantly and don’t receive anything back, you become depleted.”

“You are not the system.”

Book your Finally Business Systems Audit: https://finallybusinesssystem.com/

If you are building a founder-led business and too much of your buyer journey, sales process, podcast workflow, or delivery experience still lives in your head, start with a Finally Business Systems Audit.

The audit helps identify where the founder has become the system, where the buyer journey is creating friction, and where your business needs clearer architecture to support both the buyer and the founder.

Book your audit here: https://finallybusinesssystem.com/

1

Hi, welcome to another episode of the Finally Feeling podcast where you are not the system. So on my last podcast, I talked about the reason why this podcast exists, what the purpose of it is, what the vision is of how I love to bridge the human versus what belongs in systems. So I've been having a lot of conversations lately and one of the things I thought would be a great conversation to have today is how and why did I create Finally? So in order for you to understand that, I want to go back to where I started. I started my career many decades ago. Actually it's been over 40 years. I just, I'm in my 60s and when I started my career, I was in sales. And I had a natural aptitude for it because I was able to see what the root cause of situations were. So, for example, I remember one of my very first jobs. I had an irate customer come into a retail store that I was working in and she was very irate. Her husband had purchased something that she did not want or like. And she came in, guns ablaze and fully expensive, expecting that she wouldn't get her money back. And here she was, met with a young girl behind the counter. And I started asking questions. What was the issue? What were you wanting? What were you thinking? What's going on? And the more questions I asked, the more her demeanor came down where we could have a conversation. And at that point, point I was able to say, what do you want? How do you want to make this right? And turns out that not only did I not refund her that money, but she purchased something. I think it was like three times the value of what her husband had. So I had actually increased the sales. And now that was when I was, I don't know, 18 or 19 years old. And, and it stuck with me because I realized that people just want what they want and if we can give them what it is that they want, rather than trying to sell what we have now, we are creating a win win situation. And my sales career blossomed over those decades. I turned into always an award winning salesperson. I got presidents, clubs, I got awards. There was all these things that happened and it was because I was never ever trying to sell a product. Because sometimes the answer was, what I have does not work for you. And sometimes it was, you know what, what you're asking for is not going to solve your problem. You actually need to spend more money in order to get what you want. And no matter what the case was, I was able to create long term repeat customers in every sales environment. That I was in because I stopped selling and I started being a buyer's advocate. What do they need? What do they want? What is. What is getting in the way? What are their problems? How can I be of assistance? How can I solve? Because I believe that sales is service, and I believe that management is service to the team. And so I ended up going into sales, management, operations. I've been on the buying end of distribution. I've worked in everything from OEM manufacturers to distribution, retail, direct sales, sales. I mean, I made sure that I covered a huge range of industries and products. One, because, to be totally frank with you, I can only sell something I 100 believe in. And so when I changed opportunities, it was never, never, ever in the same market with a competitor, because I didn't believe that I could have integrity and say, yes, I told you that that company, that product was the best, and I believed in it. But now this company and this product are the best, and now I believe in this. That didn't sit with me. And so I always changed industries and found a company and a product that I could get behind, that I could believe in something that I knew with my every ounce of my heart and soul, that I could sleep at night knowing that I was doing something in alignment with my integrity, my beliefs, my values, my morals. And if it wasn't, I couldn't do it. And so finally was born, actually, out of a podcast that I had, if you know anything about my past or my history. I used to have a podcast based on a trilogy of books that I wrote called Unlearn the crap. And crap was an acronym for conditioned responses and automatic programming. And it was the culmination of everything that I had learned over 40 years of studying human psychology, human behavior, understanding how the brain worked and how the biochemicals of the central nervous system and how it was all interconnected. And I did that in a way of servicing the buyer, because the more I understood the motivations, what was behind what was going on in the buyer's journey, the more I could pick up on cues, the more I could understand how the brain processed and understand the different things that were happening, the better of a service that I could deliver. And when I delivered a better service, I made more sales. I. Things became easy, and I would end up training so many different sales teams on how to do this, because it was part of who I am. So I leave corporate, which so many people are leaving corporate. There's so many things that are happening. Jobs are changing, the environment's changing, everything in Our world is changing and we're all in flux. And it's amazing because I was talking to someone the other day and it really think massive shift happened at Covid. The world had a pause button and everything that we thought we saw, knew and believed in became crystal clear. In. In the silence of everything slowing down, we could really see things. And that's when things really started speeding up in our, our society and things started breaking down and. And I really believe that Covid was a massive reset button for our world. And so, so many of us have been going through massive, massive personal challenges, changes, disruptions. There's not one person that I've ever spoken to that does not have a before and after story about what that time period did to them and their lives. And that was. That was how Unlearn the Crap was born. But then I started to, I guess, come out of the fog. I'm not a coach. I don't profess to be a coach, but Unlearn the Crap was about personal empowerment and unlearning condition responses and understanding the psychology and the neuroplasticity of how our thoughts and our brains that are wired and everything and coaching seemed to be what was in alignment. And so when I had an opportunity to create a podcast based on my books, somebody approached me and said, hey, we really love what you're doing and the messaging that you have is needed in this world and we want to build a podcast and promote you. I jumped at the opportunity. It wasn't anything that I had thought about or planned or decided. It was. It was evolution of what was happening. And I see this pattern with so many people. You know, our lives evolve rather than conscious choice and decision. Well, that arrangement was unsustainable. It broke. And when it broke and I realized that I needed to take on that extra role, I'm gonna be honest with you, I was overwhelmed. I was trying to manage so many different things and projects, and now I had this podcast. And this podcast was taking so much out of me because it was a one way system. I showed up every week, I brought on guests, I brought in my perspective, I gave with my heart and soul, and nothing happened. And eventually I realized that my podcast, the. The one that I built and loved and grew and put my heart and soul in, was not in alignment with the very universal laws that I had been talking about. I'd been talking about cause and effect and the law of reciprocity and all of these other things, the law of correlation and correspondence and all these other universal laws. But Here I was putting my heart and soul into something that was not in alignment with that because I was giving, but I wasn't receiving. And when you give constantly and don't receive anything back, you become depleted. And that's what happened with Unlearn. And so I realized I needed to retire it with honor, with love, with respect, because it was a passion project for me and it added a lot of value out into the world. But now I needed to consciously, deliberately create. And so I stepped back and I took the 40 years that I had done in corporate with the buyer's journey, with all of the sales knowledge I had with operations, with business, with systems, with root cause analysis and everything that I had, and I started to apply it to what I wanted to consciously bring about. And so finally was born, Finally Business Systems. I picked the name because of the visceral, somatic feeling that we get when we say the word finally, Finally, finally, finally. That's what I wanted to create. And so when everything became about that feeling, I realized that we have the tools and the structure and the technology in order to, for individual founder led businesses to create that with conscious, deliberate choice. And so I began mapping out the buyer's journey and I began mapping out what I could and could not deliver. And I, it became another evolution of my own personal growth. And I am so grateful for that because I learned so much more about myself. By the way, if you're a founder led business, you know what I'm talking about. Because there is no way that you can build a business, especially from scratch, and not have it be a personal development project at the same time. There's just no way. It requires you to grow and change and learn and do all these other things and anyways, off topic, off track, sorry. I promised myself that I would show up at this podcast differently than I did before. I promised myself that Unlearn the crap was about me trying to show up as a, a professional news person or polished and perfect and you know, everything structured. And this time I, I told myself I'm just going to show up as me. And so yeah, sometimes as a Gemini, I will get off track. Anyway, what I did was map out how a buyer goes from unaware to problem aware, researching, finding the solution and making a buying decision. And instead of it being about a funnel, which is something that our business has been talking about, you know, get people into the funnel, get your free lead magnet, grab email addresses, nurture them and pull them into a funnel and get them to a buying decision. I thought this is crazy. This goes against everything that I know to be true about human behavior and how we actually think and buy. And so I realized that, yes, we have products and services and expertise and learned knowledge that is of value to potential buyers, and we build our business based on that, and we put everything we have and we need into that. But our buyer is not in the same place as our expertise or they wouldn't need us. And so there are so many founder led businesses. And I'll admit at first I went down that same rabbit hole of following this marketing trend in this business coach and because I believed part of the crap I needed to unlearn about business, that doing things outside of brick and mortar was different. But it's not. Because people are people and our brains and our bodies and our central nervous system and our cortisol levels and our hearts and our intuition and, and our needs and, and the issues we have don't change. There's still the same issues. And so I realized that I could take the technology, that I could take all of the things that are happening with advancements in AI and tools and services and all of these things, and I could apply different things to the buyer's journey. And actually this podcast is part of that. Because how do you know who I am, what I do, how I think, what I deliver? How do you know that Kathy Baldwin even exists unless I am out there and showing you who I am and what I do and what I think? And so I believe that podcasting needs to be built into a business. I believe that podcasting needs to be the voice of the founder led business. It needs to show who you are, what you do, how you do needs to be a way for your buyer to come into your world with zero expectations, with zero pressure. And there is no less pressure than being able to consume your information without actually engaging. And that's the beauty of a podcast. And so when I'm working with clients there, there's almost nobody that I can't find a way to build podcasting into a business model. But it's not necessarily the right answer for every single person at every single stage of their business. But that's why this podcast was born was because I needed to come out from behind the scenes. I needed to implement the very things that I was bringing into my clients, businesses, and I needed to do it for myself. Because one of the things that I believe in is a business cannot grow and scale if it's based on founder dependency. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, if the founder is evolving you're naturally problem solving, you're naturally putting yourself out there, you're at every networking meeting, you're on every interview possible, you are talking, you're doing your social media, you're building your products. I mean, you are just spread thin, thin, thin. And that is natural for the beginning stages of a founder led business. And so what I do is I take a look at that entire process and I put the right tool, the right service, the right experience that moves the buyer through the journey for them to self select, for them to self identify. Because we're not, we're in a time right now where knowledge and information is plentiful. It's a commodity, it's everywhere. And so your buyer is becoming very well educated. It used to be, I think years ago when they started measuring the touches that it would take like five to seven touches in order for a buyer to make a buying decision or for a consumer to become brand aware or for someone to make a decision. Well, with the advent of all of this technology and all of this information available, buyers are consuming even more before they make a buyer decision. Which means you have to give them what they need and what they want. And we can, when we know our buyer well enough, we can design what it is the buyer needs and give it to them how, when, where they need it, honoring their process instead of trying to sell products and sell service and make everything such a hard friction. Yes, for those of you who are only listening, I was actually clapping and creating that friction. So if it made a lot of noise on the microphone, I apologize for that. But that's what your buyer experiences. And when your buyer starts to experience friction, gaps, bottlenecks, roadblocks, then they now become stressed out, Their central nervous system is enacted, their cortisol is enacting their fear flight. They're looking for danger, they're looking for what's, what's wrong, what's, what's triggering this in me that is going to prevent your buyer from moving forward with you. So if we know how the human brain works and we know how the central nervous system works and we know what the buyer's journey is. Because most founder led businesses are based on experience of something they've gone through and they found the solution and now they're creating a business out of it. So you know, you know what your buyer's journey is. If you sat back and mapped exactly what you went through in order to create this knowledge, experience, expertise, you can go back to the beginning of where it happened. And when we do root Cause analysis and we map out the buyer's journey and we align that with the sales processes so that the sales process matches and aligns with the buyer's journey. We can absolutely design it, architect it on purpose. And that's how finally was born is I realized that I had this ability to take what started as a natural thing when I was a teenager first starting out in sales and I could translate it into system because I see and think in pattern recognition and in systems this is root cause analysis. These are things that I just absolutely naturally do and think and see. It's part of my corporate world. It's part of, it's part of how my brain works. And so that's what I do is I come into someone's business and I help them see their buyer's journey. And then we architect and build out a plan that creates a system and a process for each step that we are delivering what the buyer needs, when and where and how the buyer needs it in order for the business needs to be met. I had a conversation the other day and I heard these words which were so many people are using technology, automation, AI as a way to hide from the messiness of humans. And that struck me because that is what so many people happen, especially for founder led businesses who think they're not salespeople, they are a masseuse, they're a real estate professional, they're, they're construct whatever. They're not salespeople. And so they get intimidated by the sales process. Which is exactly why if you can use technology and system and design the process so that you extract what your genius is, what your skills are, and then use systems and processes and technology to feed the things that are not your expertise, that's the way you do it. It's not that you take a tool here and a tool there, here a tool, there a tool everywh wear a tool tool. Yes. Sorry. Anyone who knows old McDonald just came out. Welcome to the the brain of Kathy Baldwin. When we design purposefully and systematically on you the, the the business owner and you the buyer and we align them and we make both processes easier by understanding that we are humans. The reason I love systems is because humans are messy, humans are emotional, humans are reactive. We have patterns, we have all of these things that are humanness. And when we look at the buyer's journey, do you know what it does to trust? When commitments aren't met, when expectations aren't met, when things fall through the cracks, when things are messy and uphill and difficult because there isn't a foundation in a system to make it easier. We make it hard for buyers to buy from us when we have these friction gaps and bottlenecks and roadblocks, when they're in the way, when we can't see what we need to see. And so the podcast was built as a way to interconnect my business with my buyer's journey. And in the process, this podcast is about telling you who I am, what I do, how I do it. But it also is about giving value and giving education and sharing knowledge and creating relationships. Relationships with, with you, listening to me, relationships with the guests that I bring on. It's about a place where humanness can thrive, where you can feel safe and I can feel safe. And your needs are met and my needs are met. And I encourage so many business owners to create a podcast. And if you're worried about the work behind it, you can systematize it, you can automate it, you can do all sorts of things. I mean that's how finally was built, was creating systems for podcasts. So I don't want that to be a barrier, but I want you to think about how marketing is changing, social media is changing, how you connect to your buyer is changing, visibility, pr, everything that we're going through is changing. And there is nothing more intimate than one human speaking to another who is listening. And that's what this is. This is not about creating a podcast that becomes a global phenomenon and has millions of people watching. This is about me connecting with my ideal client and helping them through the process and at the same time being hopefully an inspiration to other founder led businesses that you can create a podcast that allows you to show up real and authentic, delivering your expertise, sharing your knowledge and bringing people into your world in a non threatening, non committal way where they can learn and experience and grow with you. That's what podcasting is in my belief to businesses today. It's a way of inviting you into my world. A way for you to ask questions, a way for me to give value. A way to connect and learn and explain. Is it the be all end all? Absolutely not. But that's why we have, we map out the journey. Because there are people who are going to want to be self taught and self learned. And so there's a quite courses for that. And yes, I'm, I'm building a course. There's books, yes, I'm writing my, I'm just finishing up my, you are not the system book. There are so many ways that you can meet your buyer through the stages of their journey. Because we're not all the same. We don't all need the same thing. And we definitely do not need all the same thing in the same way. And so that's why finally was born. Because my expertise is seeing the map, seeing the process, seeing the root cause to the end, understanding the interconnection, mapping it out, creating processes from root cause analysis, that's my business. What's yours? What are you doing? How are you delivering the finally feeling for your clients? Are you mapping it out? Are you doing the high level perspective about what your buyer needs instead of what you want to sell? There's a huge difference. But they both can work together. When we map it out, systematize the places where human messiness gets in the way, where we are creating friction for our buyer, because friction for our buyer shows up as objections. They show up as stalled indecision. It shows up in looking for a price. It shows up in so many different ways. And what that is, is your buyer has not come to a place where they are totally comfortable and ready to make a decision to purchase with you. But we can give them what they need and want. Because to be really frank, a sales process in its absolute, rawest, simplest form is helping somebody make a decision. Not necessarily a yes, definitely not selling whatever it is that we have. That's not the purpose of sales. It's to help somebody make a decision, yes or no. And if we as business owners are not helping our potential clients make a decision, yes or no, regardless of what the decision is, that we have no emotional attachment to what decision they make, that our needs, our desires, whatever, have anything to do with what that person needs. And we're not putting our thoughts and experience and expectations and biases and triggers and all of that onto somebody else. But we're just creating a safe place for somebody to come into our world and explore and find out, is this what I need and want? And if the answer is equally safe to be a no as it is to be a yes, then we have earned the trust and the respect. And so I want you to really think about your business, especially founder led businesses who are building businesses on your knowledge, on your ability to create desired results for your clients. You know what you know and you know what you can deliver. And you are so, so comfortable in being able to say yes, I can fix that, I can solve that, I can resolve that, I can do that. And when you are building your business based on that firm grounded, I've got you, I got you. And everything Else that is not your expertise is systematized, is processed. That is how we take our founder led intelligence and our knowledge and we extract it from us and we create something new, our business that gives us freedom, that gives us the ability to thrive as business owners, but it gives the buyer a safe place to for their needs to be met and nurtured. That's what the Finally Feeling podcast is about. That is what I believe in, that is what I deliver. And that's what you're going to get more of as a guest or a visitor or as a listener of this podcast. And that's what you get when you work with me, whether we are designing an art or auditing or we're building whatever it is together. And so I ask you to take this vulnerability that I'm sharing here and apply it to you, apply it to your business. How do I show up as the safest, easiest place for my potential clients to come into my world and get the best of me out? And anything that is not of your best, create the process that holds that container systematically, consistently, repeatability, repeatability, like oh well, I made up another word. But you know what I'm trying to say here? That's where systems belong. That's where tools belong, that's where processes belong. Not on your shoulders, not on you. Carrying everything all the time because you are the founder. Because if you're carrying everything, you're not delivering your best, you're not being there for your clients. And so that's what we're building here. I'm going to show up sometimes I'm going to talk about tools, sometimes I'm going to talk about systems and processes sometimes I'm going to have guests on the show who I think exemplify the, the guest I've got coming on the next show, I can't wait for you to experience because the conversation we had, I call it have my happy tail wagging. Because they exemplify everything about how to deliver the finally feeling for their clients and for their team. And so I encourage you to come and watch and listen to the next podcast because I'm telling you, you're going to want to see it. And my goal here is to deliver exceptional value, but to invite you into my world and meet you where your needs are, how you need them. And together we do things differently, we do things better, we rise up and become what the world is looking for. Right now we're in an incredible opportunity change. It brings about so much opportunity. Anyways, I don't want to get on my soapbox, but I wanted to have that conversation that the whole purpose of Finally Business System, how it was born, what I believe in, why this podcast exists, is all about dividing up what belongs with the human and what is a repeatable process that belongs in a system that is automated, that carries and supports and nurtures you. And don't get lost with the shiny object syndrome of this tool, this solution, this one size fits all because it does not work. We are not all the same. We do not have the same needs, we do not have the same businesses, we do not have the same anything and when we can deliver exceptional service and deliverability by meeting our buyer where and how they need us to show up and we do it in a consistent, trusted, reliable way that our buyer knows what to expect and they get what we promise because we have systematized our weaknesses and our foundation and our deliverables that we are doing this of service to the buyer and not in pressure of selling products. That's the difference. This has been another episode of the Finally Feeling podcast where you are not the system and I am your host Kathy Baldwin. I am a systems architect focusing in on helping founder led businesses create and systematize their processes so that they show up as their best. I welcome you into my world. Cannot wait to help you bring about the best of who you are by creating a safe foundation for you and your business and your buyers. Have an amazing day.