In a recent Simply Be Found Huddle podcast, hosts Rob and Dean sat down with Aarti Anand, an AI automation expert who helps business owners eliminate bottlenecks and reclaim their time through strategic automation.
Listen To This Episode On…
About This Huddle’s Special Guest
Aarti Anand is a seasoned software product developer who made a bold move in 2023—leaving behind years of building tools for others to launch her own business focused on something she believes in deeply: helping fellow entrepreneurs reclaim their time through smart, sustainable AI automation.
With over 15 years of experience and a fresh perspective as a new business owner herself, Aarti knows firsthand how quickly burnout can creep in. That’s what led her to embrace AI—not as a gimmick, but as a practical tool for reducing overwhelm and unlocking real freedom. Now, she helps established businesses identify operational roadblocks, streamline processes, and implement custom automation strategies that allow teams to do more of what they do best.
Guided by her North Star of freedom—freedom of time, money, and location—Aarti brings a grounded, strategic approach to her work. She’s especially skilled at separating the tasks that require a human touch from those that can be offloaded to AI, helping businesses operate smarter, not harder.
Outside of work, Aarti makes health a priority—mixing running with strength training and even completing her first half marathon on Mother’s Day while listening to Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time. That philosophy has become a cornerstone of how she builds her business—and how she helps others build theirs.
She also shares weekly insights in her AI-first CEO newsletter and creates helpful, down-to-earth content aimed at demystifying AI for business owners. Her mission is clear: help entrepreneurs build businesses they won’t grow to hate by using automation to free up time and focus on their zone of genius.
We’re grateful to Aarti for sharing her story and practical wisdom with the Simply Be Found community. You can reach out to her on the following platforms:
- Lead Generation: Automate traffic drivers to your site.
- Lead Capture: Use tools that grab contact info the moment visitors arrive.
- Lead Qualification: Let chatbots, voice assistants, or emails pre-screen leads.
- Lead Nurturing: Stay top-of-mind with the 97% not ready to buy today.
- Content Creation: Generate blog posts, emails, and social updates across the entire funnel. “Once these five areas are on autopilot, you’re saving hours every week while growing your business,” she explains.
- 0:00 | Welcome to the Huddle: Meet Aarti Anand
- 0:27 | From Employee to Entrepreneur: Aarti’s Journey
- 1:27 | The Power of AI in Small Business
- 2:44 | Auditing Business Processes with AI
- 3:43 | Delegation vs. Automation
- 5:07 | Mindset Shifts for Effective Leadership
- 6:33 | SOPs: The Key to Delegation Success
- 7:15 | How AI Has Replaced the Traditional Assistant
- 8:14 | Why Most AI Has Been Around for Years
- 9:02 | Building Systems Using Existing Tools
- 10:44 | The Problem with Fast-Changing APIs
- 12:17 | How AI Startups Rise and Fall Overnight
- 13:32 | Measuring to Improve: Content & KPI Focus
- 15:04 | Aarti’s Top 5 Business Automations
- 18:22 | Lay-Down Leads vs. Nurturing the 97%
- 21:15 | Automating Lead Capture, Qualification, and Nurture
- 22:59 | Importance of Marketing Consistency with AI
- 24:22 | The Marketing Tree Ecosystem Explained
- 26:05 | Repurposing Content the Smart Way
- 27:26 | Why Business Owners Must Act Now on AI
- 28:57 | Keeping Human Behavior in AI-Driven Content
- 30:01 | What is a Character Diamond?
- 32:44 | Building Connection through Human Stories
- 36:04 | Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt in Business
- 38:04 | Lessons from Dan Martell & Role Models
- 39:47 | Identifying Bottlenecks and Taking Ownership
- 42:10 | Ideal Clients for AI Automation
- 44:00 | Advice for Small Businesses Starting with AI
- 45:07 | Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset
- 46:27 | Valuing Employee Feedback in Growth
- 47:49 | Narcissism and Letting Go of Control
- 49:17 | Closing Thoughts & Where to Find Aarti Anand
Key Takeaways From This Huddle
After 15+ years building software for others, Aarti launched her own business—and quickly found herself juggling every role. From sales and marketing to daily operations, it was too much. Instead of burning out, she turned to AI automation to lighten the load and create a business that aligned with her values.
“With the help of AI, I was able to offload many things from my plate so I wasn’t going to build a business that I was going to hate,” she shared. Today, she helps fellow entrepreneurs design businesses they love by using AI intentionally and strategically.
Using AI Automation to Free Up What Matters Most
Aarti starts every client relationship with an audit—looking at bottlenecks, repetitive tasks, and missed opportunities. She then maps out what can be automated and what truly requires human attention.
The goal? Freedom of time, money, and location. That’s her North Star—and the promise she helps business owners move toward using smart AI automation.
The CEO Mindset: Delegation Before Burnout
One of the most common blockers Aarti sees is the reluctance to delegate. “If you don’t know how to delegate, then how are you the CEO of your business?” she challenges. Her process starts with a mindset shift. Before hiring or automating anything, she insists business owners develop strong standard operating procedures (SOPs). “First, SOP has to exist before you hire someone or delegate it.
Then, many of the tasks you would give an assistant, automations can handle for you just as well.” It’s not about choosing between delegation and AI automation—it’s about using both with intention.
Aarti’s Top 5 Use Cases for AI Automation
For those ready to take action, Aarti offers five core areas where AI automation can immediately create leverage:
Even as AI automation grows more powerful, Aarti emphasizes the human side of marketing. Her “character diamond” includes four elements to humanize your brand:
North Star (your purpose), Kryptonite (your honest weakness), Daily Practices (what you stand for), and Personal Quirks (the habits that make you real). “It’s not B2B or B2C—it’s H to H: human to human,” she says. “People buy from people they trust. That’s how you scale trust—with story, not scripts.”
One of the biggest shifts business owners need to make is how they value their time. Aarti puts it plainly: “Assign a dollar value to your hour. If you’re spending time on tasks worth less than that, it’s costing you money.”
The more time you spend on energy-draining tasks, the less time you have for revenue-driving ones. AI automation isn’t just about saving time—it’s about protecting your energy and focusing on your zone of genius.
The Next 18 Months Will Define the Future
As Rob noted, we’re roughly 18 months away from a new wave of innovation—and the businesses that act now will lead the curve. Aarti added that technologies like quantum computing are already on the horizon. The takeaway? The small businesses that embrace AI automation today won’t just stay afloat—they’ll scale faster, grow stronger, and thrive when the next tech wave hits.
It’s Not Just AI that Can Save Your Business
The AI revolution has been happening for years now and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you’re a business owner and you want to keep up with the biggest changes happening across the board, Rob, Dean, and the Simply Be Found team can help. Check out our membership benefits and see how we can change the way you run your business.
Transcript
0:00 | Welcome to the Huddle: Meet Aarti Anand
Rob: Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle where you get Dean and Rob talking about everything business and marketing and a bunch of different stuff. Today we have our guest Aarti. Did I say it correctly?
Aarti: Yes.
Rob: Awesome, welcome to the show. We’re so glad to have you. From what I looked at, it looks like you do a ton inside of the AI automation area. Looks like you have a company that does AI for leads. Tell us about you, tell us about what you do, and kind of give us some insight there.
0:27 | From Employee to Entrepreneur: Aarti’s Journey
Aarti: Absolutely. So I’ve been building software products for more than 15 years now, and last year I decided to stop working for someone else and started my own business. And then as soon as I started doing my own thing, I realized gosh, I am wearing so many hats. I am the salesperson, I’m also the marketing person, I’m also the head of everything else that goes in my business. And it could have been a road to burnout sooner than I would realize.
So with the help of AI, I was able to offload many of the things off of my plate so I wasn’t going to build a business that I was going to hate. And the good thing about what I do is I also help other entrepreneurs now build their businesses in a way so they don’t grow to hate it either.
1:27 | The Power of AI in Small Business
Aarti: And the way we do it is we help audit their business and we help them realize where are their workflows that they are doing manually today, where is the room for automation, and if they are doing it more than once, let’s just sit down and see where the bottlenecks are.
And then we head down first with the biggest bottleneck, and then we see where the room to delegate is. If you were to delegate, would you hire another person to do it or is there a tool that we can use to automate the whole thing?
So that’s my North Star. I want everybody to live the life of freedom – freedom of time, money, and location. And that’s what I want in my life, and that’s what I’m helping other business owners achieve too.
Rob: So in the world of business, you have only so much time and you only so much money, and that’s just the two gaps that end up either holding you back or making you kind of pivot to go completely out. I’m kind of quoting Dan Martell I think that talked about that for buying back your time and doing all that stuff.
So you have that whole piece in there, but AI has changed that piece. I was thinking about this the other day, and when I saw that you were on the calendar for today, last night I was like, I’m going to open this can of worms.
It used to be where you talked about the very first thing you had to do was get an assistant to be able to do all these different things, and you’d have this EA or executive assistant inside of there, or admin assistant however you look at it. That world’s changed.
2:44 | Auditing Business Processes with AI
Rob: We got allergies. So that world has absolutely changed 100% because what you used to go grab a person for, you could put AI in place to do a lot of those pieces. And in your opinion, where do you think that’s all changed and what do you kind of seen and do you agree and have you kind of explored that some?
3:43 | Delegation vs. Automation
Aarti: I love that you quoted him because he is also part of a big influence on how I run things. I’ve just learned so much from Dan already, so I love that we’re starting with that.
I agree and also disagree, and I’ll share both sides of the story. So if I’ve learned anything being in the business and also helping other business owners do what I want to do and what they are doing today, everybody goes through one limiting belief. They have a challenge – they hate to delegate. They just cannot do it.
But if you don’t know how to delegate, then how are you the CEO of your business? Because you’re everywhere. And as a CEO of your business, your job is to not just do the thing but also build the system in a way where you’re also leading by example. That’s how you help your team step up when you’re not there, and that’s how you also help your business continue to run when you’re out on a vacation because you’re going to need that to avoid burnout.
5:07 | Mindset Shifts for Effective Leadership
Aarti: So it’s a mindset first – are you ready to delegate? That’s where Dan Martell’s theory and “buy back your time” principle comes in, which I love by the way, and I’m a huge supporter of it.
So when you’re ready to delegate, you have mastered the first step. Then do you go hire someone else to do it, or you look for a tool or an automation and a system that you will put in place which will do the thing that you want your assistant to do?
So before any of that comes, and after you have had the mindset of delegation, then the second critical piece that’s missing in majority of businesses is that they don’t have any SOP. They have no internal training in place. And guess what happens if you don’t have an SOP or a training document? How are you going to train an assistant to do their job? You’re not. And to do it well.
And if you hired them, you also have to pay their salary before you get your salary from your business. And guess what? Without a training, they’re going to mess up, and then you’re going to be mad at them. But it’s your fault because the system did not even exist before you hired them.
6:33 | SOPs: The Key to Delegation Success
Aarti: So first, SOP has to exist before you hire someone or delegate it to someone. And then from there, yes, many of the things that an executive assistant can do for you, many of the things our automations can also do for you well.
Rob: And that’s where automation has really kind of taken over. I mean, if you look at Dan Martell’s book, I think he needs to write another one because it’s one of those things to where AI can manage the inbox. So the role of that EA, that assistant side is being able to set those tools up so that it can go through and run it. So it has that manual person behind the scenes doing it, but you can speed up your processes.
7:15 | How AI Has Replaced the Traditional Assistant
Aarti: Absolutely. AI is, and I think every single business owner should have some sort of AI or multiple pieces of AI. Maybe one day I’ll release out the AI that makes all the AIs talk to one another that they start arguing with each other. I’ve had a couple requests come across for that. I’m like, I don’t even know if I want to open that can of worms.
But it’s one of those things to where you can set up processes in place. Now for us as a company, we use AI. We couldn’t do the coaching we do without it and how we kind of process through the amounts of data that we do. Marketers use it all the time. Our listings engine uses AI to a point to be able to go out and be able to get them listed on all the different networks.
There’s AI built into that, but you have to remember at the end of the day that AI has been around for years. We just reboxed it and repackaged it as something a little bit sexy as once we got these new language models that came out because technology finally caught up.
8:14 | Why Most AI Has Been Around for Years
Rob: The hardware that was out in the 90s or early 2000s, it could handle all this stuff. We just didn’t have the software to be able to compete. It’s hard to be able to have it in there because hardware is always before software. It takes that team of engineers to go through.
I mean, inside of the engineers, I’m sure you’ve seen this as well coming from that background. You either have an engineer who’s adapting to the AI that’s coming out or you have one that’s fighting it. You have that inside of business owners as well.
A lot of our listeners are small business owners. They’re busy, they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off. For your AI software, do you work with multiple different software or did you build one software that kind of does a lot of this?
9:02 | Building Systems Using Existing Tools
Aarti: I do work with multiple tools. Yes, that’s how we do it.
Rob: Yes, and then I was like, maybe I read that wrong and maybe that you developed your own that kind of puts it all in one box.
Aarti: We may go there in maybe 12 months from now. I mean, SaaS has existed for years and years and years, and now with the age of AI and in 2025 where it’s basically going to look like AI-first SaaS, so we’re going to go that route.
But we want to build the momentum first, and it’s also why do you have to reinvent the wheel today before you get to that level where you have exhausted your options?
I’m a huge proponent of you have to get your hands dirty and learn from lots of other people, other things, other experiences because that just primes you. I’ve built software products for a very, very long time, and now with AI, we’re just building them faster. So that’s where we’re going to go that route. We’re just not there yet – in 6 to 12 months.
Rob: Well, we got asked the question of why we don’t have like Chat GPT inside of some of our writing descriptions and everything. I said because if we integrated into it, it wouldn’t be where you wanted it because we’d have to keep up to it. We’d have to increase our price enough right now, and it’s moving at a speed that we could ever keep up with it.
Exactly. They’re like, really? And I’m like, yeah. I mean, the API is changing so damn fast on it that you got to let it kind of get… I’m waiting to find out to be able to build software on some of these things until it starts to get some normality inside of there.
10:44 | The Problem with Fast-Changing APIs
Rob: Because right now you’d have to have a budget that most of us don’t have to be able to keep up with.
Aarti: Yeah, and I love the way you put it, Rob, because one of the things that I mean, every time a Chat GPT update comes in, do you see how many startups get killed instantly? So it’s changing so fast.
And I just, I mean, I wake up and I feel so blessed like this is the freaking age of technology we’re living in. This is good. And for anybody who sort of shies away, I honestly just tell them there are two things: either you have a limiting belief that your business is not capable of getting there, so you just have to get out of your own way, or second, you have a knowledge gap that we can sit down and I can help you fill. I mean, again, why walk when you can fly?
Rob: Well, and there’s people with bigger budgets that you can advise them to go over and do and teach them and help them set that stuff up, and they’ll be a lot better off than having it inside of your own until it gets to that certain point of normality. And we haven’t hit that.
I mean, if you rewind me back into the 90s of working at HP, AOL, and all the different companies I got to work with, I compared this to the times that we were going at the same speed.
12:17 | How AI Startups Rise and Fall Overnight
Rob: Going from the 144 modems to the 366 to 56K, then there was a version of 56K. Then I got cool. I was wrong the other day – DSL came out before cable. So yes, DSL and then cable, but we moved so fast. And then we saw this bubble get really big, and then we saw it pop for the dotcom bubble around 2000. And Y2K was kind of part of that adoption. Everything kind of had to get that normality to where it brings it out.
It’s no different than if you’re – I was working with one of my friends that has a venture capital group, and we were talking about the normality. It’s no different than the stock market. The stock market has to correct itself.
So until we see that correction inside the software, you have to utilize the tools that are out there before you start building on those tools. So as a business owner, most businesses don’t know where to turn to be able to start that process.
But Dean, you got kicked back in the what was it, the 70s and the 80s for bringing automation into the engineering world?
13:32 | Measuring to Improve: Content & KPI Focus
Dean: Oh yeah, I used to do machine cells, and a lot of people really resisted. You know, anytime you have a technology improvement, you have a resistance from customers, from the owners, from whoever. And people think their jobs are going to be replaced, right?
And what they realize is that, but what you’re doing, Aarti, is you’re allowing the business owners to do the things that they love to do, not the day-to-day activities, because that’s the problem with most.
Like we went through a titration process for in the medical field. You see the little going through the different test tubes, and they’re going “Well, you’re taking away my job.” And then the technicians go, “Oh, we don’t have to do all that physical work anymore. Now I get to use my brain and use what my what I really want to be doing.”
And it sounds to me like that’s kind of where you’re – I mean, that’s a different reality too, but it’s the same results. And so you have to wait for that plateau to happen a little bit. Is that kind of where you’re at with that process in your mind too?
Aarti: Yes, I love where this is going. So since you referred, Rob, to Dan Martell’s book, there’s the DRIP matrix that he teaches people. I actually use the same DRIP matrix to help people assess where and what they should automate.
So if you look at the DRIP matrix, there are four quadrants. You go from left to right are the tasks that don’t print you money but they give you energy. You go from bottom to top, there are the tasks that print you money, they may not give you a lot of energy.
15:04 | Aarti’s Top 5 Business Automations
Aarti: So the right of the two quadrants, this is where you as a human being, as a CEO of the business, you get personal development, self-improvement from, and the tasks that give you energy and they also print you money.
So you do not want to automate those two quadrants. So working out, go run, go do strength training, go run 13-milers – that’s what you need to do. Play with your kids. They give you energy. They don’t print you money, but they make you a better person who does, wakes up, does hard things every day. And you also are capable of making harder decisions in your business.
And then the upper right corner quadrant, which is the production quadrant, which is you do a phenomenal job as a CEO because you’re good at those things, and they also print you money. So nobody needs to do that. You are the person who needs to do those tasks.
If you look at the left two quadrants, the bottom and the upper one, those are the tasks that you either need to delegate or you need to find a replacement for you. So that’s where automations happen.
Now when you start to hire someone to delegate those tasks, that’s exactly what you talked about, Dean. Then you go ask your team members, are these the tasks that they are good at and they also bring them energy? If yes, they’re the right person to delegate to.
But if they don’t, these are the tasks that don’t bring, that don’t light up your staff. Guess what? They’re not going to be good at it because they’re going to suck their energy out. So you don’t want to delegate to them.
At that point, you go find a tool. For example, when I work with local businesses and they have lots of inbound calls, I install AI voice agents because who wants to sit at the front desk and for the hundredth time in a day, they want to answer what are your office hours? No, nobody lights up from answering those questions.
So that’s exactly what you talked about, Dean, is to find higher leverage tasks for your staff, which helps them light up and it also helps them on a personal journey that they are on, that they become more, to attract more.
So that’s why automating the task that doesn’t light up your staff is where we come in. And we automate the inbound voice calling, the lead qualification, the lead nurturing part of it, which is where email marketing automations come in, and the outbound calling, which is many local businesses end up doing with their list of leads who are going cold and nobody’s reaching out to them.
And when in real estate, you have to go talk to people, “Hey, are you by any chance looking to sell your house?” That’s a perfect job AI outbound caller can do. And your staff now has time on their calendar to pick up the calls where they’re ready to close the deals, not qualify them. So where is the task that prints you money? That’s where your staff and your actions should be focused on.
18:22 | Lay-Down Leads vs. Nurturing the 97%
Rob: Now when you’re looking at all this and you’re looking at all these quadrants and everything inside of there, what do you think the top five things are that someone can automate inside of the business that would be a typical business owner?
Aarti: I love that question. Yes, so anything that generates more traffic for your website – so lead gen, anything that brings in more traffic to your website. No human should be sitting down and doing it. I think we’re at the technology, we have all the tools available we can integrate via APIs just like you mentioned, Rob, that can be 100% automated now.
Second problem I see and where the leaks happen is many businesses have enough leads, but they’re not capturing them. So what happens when they come to your website? Do you have a capture mechanism there? If you capture, then you know if it’s a lead generation problem or capture problem. That second part can also be automated.
The third part is when you’re capturing them, who’s sitting down and qualifying them? That can be automated as well via voice, via chat, via email as well. That’s number three.
Number four is how are you nurturing those? So remember, only 3% of your market is ready to buy today, 97% are not. So those 3%, some of them you’ll close based on your conversion rate, but what are you doing with the rest of the 97% who is not ready today but they could be tomorrow or 6 months from now?
Rob: So do you know what that’s called for that 3%? What it’s called?
Aarti: No.
Rob: It’s called lay-downs. So they’re easy. There’s they’re the ones that just closed no matter what, didn’t have to try, didn’t have to do anything. It’s a lay-down. When I used to coach sales teams, those were lay-downs. So if you were just going to take the lay-downs, some people could survive in that 3% mark. But if you wanted to get out of that and actually do really well inside of sales, then you had to go into the other world to be able to start doing that. Sorry for interrupting you, my brain just…
Aarti: No, no, so this is the term interestingly I have not heard yet, so I’m glad to have that in my back pocket now.
But the good news is they are problem aware and they’re also solution aware, and they also see you as the problem solver in their world. So that’s why those 3% are ready to buy from you.
21:15 | Automating Lead Capture, Qualification, and Nurture
Aarti: So for the 97%, as we were talking, it would be lead nurturing, which could also be put on autopilot via email marketing automations.
So those are the four I would put at the top because if you solve that in your business, you’re generating enough leads, you’re also capturing them, you’re not leaking them, and then you also have a nurturing process in place, which whenever that time comes when it’s a good time for us to pair up, they’re going to pick up a call and I’m going to be ready to close them. So that’s four.
Now fifth is, a lot of things in those four buckets happen with content, and that’s as you must know already, it would be top of the funnel, middle, and the bottom of the funnel. All that content generation can also be automated with AI.
So these are the five things that any business needs on a daily basis, and once you put them on autopilot, you can easily, easily save many, many hours on a weekly basis.
Rob: You can. There’s a lot that’s to that, and what it is, and once those AIs get to know you, it can definitely go out there.
So like if we look at our software for the listings engine, for example, it would take you… we work with over a thousand networks. I don’t even know how much time that would take you to fill out a business profile in a thousand… fill it out one time, goes out, it makes those decisions for you for being able to adjust your categories but make sure you’re consistent.
22:59 | Importance of Marketing Consistency with AI
Rob: So probably one of the biggest things I’ve seen inside of AI and with where technology could come in as a whole to be able to help a business owners to speed up the process and improve consistency. So when you improve consistency inside of marketing, it makes it a lot better.
And then also the other piece is repurposing. So when you’re talking about the world of marketing, you want to be able to repurpose and get the most out of that content you possibly can, no matter if you wrote the blog, if you talked to AI to be able to write that blog for you, or if you created a video and you want to be able to create information off of it. There’s so much you can do for it, and everything is connected.
So have you watched any of our videos before for the podcast?
Aarti: I have quite a few.
Rob: Did you watch the tree? Did you watch the tree concept?
Aarti: No, maybe not that one.
Rob: Was it recent or an old one?
Aarti: It would have been pretty recent, I think.
24:22 | The Marketing Tree Ecosystem Explained
Rob: So we look at everything as kind of a marketing as a tree for how we describe what the ecosystem looks like now. So the very bottom you have your root base of that tree. That’s going to be all your citations, your profiles that you have and all the stuff that builds your business, that’s your business data as well.
So that’s your business name, your phone number, your address, your social media links, your descriptions – all that stuff sits in the bottom root piece of that tree. Then you have your tree trunk, which is going to be your website. Now you can have a bigger website, you can have more of a narrow website, depends on what your business needs are.
But then you have branches. So your blog is technically part of your website, but I’d almost put it in its own branch. Then you might have smaller branches that come off of that branch. Social media would have a lot of branches off of it for like Facebook, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call that now, YouTube, all that stuff there.
But then you might have cold calling, you might have email marketing, you have all that stuff. And where most businesses get it wrong, and a lot of marketing companies and a lot of marketing experts get that wrong, is they don’t connect everything together.
And I believe everything (or we believe, I believe, I think Dean agrees with me) everything is one great big huge giant ecosystem, and you have to be able to get the most out of it.
So if you write that blog, do that video, you can turn that into email marketing, you can turn that into your parts of your website, you can then have it in your social media. Everything is connected. But if you don’t utilize it to its full potential, you’re not going to get very far with it, right?
I think AI has made that easier to be able to do, and it’s also changed to where everything is more connected than it ever has been, especially with how Chat GPT and all these things work.
26:05 | Repurposing Content the Smart Way
Aarti: No, I 100% agree. And I love how technical this is going because in order for you to improve, you have to measure first.
And Rob, I loved where you plugged in the repurposing part of it because if you don’t look at the data – so remember, you’re posting social content, you’re running ads for an end goal in mind. What is that end goal? I want to bring in more leads, or I want to bring in just followers, I don’t care about the revenue that it brings. But is it money? Is it followers? Or what is it? What is the KPI?
And when you’re looking at that KPI, then what are all the inputs that are going in the system? How many pieces of content per day? Which one is performing better on what platform? And then if you’re measuring, then you know which one to repurpose 3 weeks from now, 4 weeks from now.
Or if you were to create more pieces of content, you would take that as an inspiration and put a twist on it, and then you would go plug in more. So that’s again, if you… and that’s where I think AI shines.
Think about for you to be able to hire a data engineer, data miner, a statistician, folks like that. And now you can build automations which are basically monitoring all those metrics for you on a daily, hourly basis.
And then every week or every day you wake up, you send yourself a report, completely automated, which tells you which pieces of content performed the best, what are the insights from that. And then you also can reach out to people who have engaged with that pieces of content without spamming everybody. But there are ways to do it, and then you also just leverage all those insights.
27:26 | Why Business Owners Must Act Now on AI
Aarti: To do that at scale, and that’s what we mean when business owners who are not jumping on this now, today, it’s going to be hard for them to catch up a year from now because of this reason. Because anybody who’s doing this today will have an edge a year from now because they would have scaled faster, they would have made so many improvements in their system already, which would basically be running on autopilot. They would just be able to move so fast that in a year from now, it’ll be hard for you to catch up if you’re not doing that today.
Rob: It’s going to be super hard to be able to catch up, especially when you’re talking about organic marketing. Anybody who’s focused inside of the organic marketing right now and putting automation to that and building it up is going to be a lot further than somebody that’s not.
And it doesn’t matter what age your business is, it’s going to be a huge piece that’s there, but you have to put that in there. And the biggest thing you have to remember, in my opinion, for when you’re putting AI in place is you have to put that human factor into it to make it real because people are looking for things real.
28:57 | Keeping Human Behavior in AI-Driven Content
Rob: I disagree in having videos of double personalities of yourself and reforming yourself to do the videos because you’re not going to get that same human connection inside of there. And they’re going to know that’s not you. But you have to be able to make sure that you’re inside of there as a real person and bring that human behavior in.
How do you look at that as far as human behavior, and how do you make sure that human behavior stays in when you’re looking at AI automation? I’m kind of curious.
Aarti: Oh my gosh, I love that question. So think about this: when technology is so accessible and the tools are that inexpensive that anybody could get their hands on them for a few bucks a month, if anybody can do it, then how do you stand out? Because if anybody can do it, everybody will try to do it, right? Then where do you stand? How are you different?
So that’s where your character diamond comes in.
30:01 | What is a Character Diamond?
Rob: When you try to do things… it’s called a character diamond? I’ve never heard of that term. What is that?
Dean: Really? No kidding. I was going to ask you to define that for me because I’ve never heard that either.
Aarti: Okay, because I presume because you know Dan. So Dan learned this from someone else. His name is Ryan Dy. He’s also been a software guy, like really veteran in that industry, building software products for years and years and years.
So character diamond basically means, so just like you and I are talking now, you know a little bit about me, I know a little bit about you. When we try to do things at scale and we go to social media and we post content, when people have followed you for a year, for a few months, for a few days, what do they know about you?
So there are four pieces to the diamond. The first one is your North Star. So anybody who has ever consumed my content, they must know, and if they don’t, then it’s a problem with my content because I’m not making it super obvious. My North Star is freedom.
I am building a business of which would give me and my family freedom of time, money, and location. And that’s exactly why I got into AI and automations, because it can help any business owner do the same if they do it well. So my North Star is freedom. Whenever I talk about content, why I do what I do, freedom is always there.
Then the second, which is the opposite diagonal opposite to free the North Star, is your kryptonite. Well, this is your North Star, but not everybody can live up to their North Star 100% of the time. You must have some flaws too, right? So what would that be? So the second piece is your kryptonite.
So I am a proponent of automating things to build time for other meaningful things in life. But what is my kryptonite? Where do I go spend that time that I save? I go build more things. But I could have used that time more wisely. So I’m also sort of there. I’m very hardwired to do things. I’m just hardwired that way. So I’m also still struggling with where do I use that freedom and use it wisely. So that’s my exact opposite kryptonite.
32:44 | Building Connection through Human Stories
Aarti: Now the third corner for that is what do you do on a daily basis? So for me, it’s health is the first system that anybody should take care in their systems of businesses and all those things, right? If you cannot get out of bed, what can you do? So health first for me, which is why I constantly post about running.
And then eating – I have an 80/20 rule of 80% food and then 20% of your workout. So I combine cardio with the strength training that I do. So everybody who follows my content would know that.
And the fourth is, what are some of the quirks? Like things that you’re not proud that you do on a daily basis, but you still do because you’re still a human being. So for me, that’s when we go to bed with my kids, we love scrolling and finding funny dog videos, dogs and cats. And my kids and I are in bed, we probably do that for 20-30 minutes.
And yes, it’s not something to be proud of, but I am sort of proud of because it’s how we bond and we just love dogs and cat videos. So if you know my character, if you know me as a human being and you followed my content for a while, these are the four things that would be very obvious to you.
So what it does is you’re not just there to sell, and I know that’s why we’re on social media, but it’s also a way for you to connect because it’s never right B2B, B2C, it’s always H to H. It’s human to human. And you and I both know we would be more probable to buy from a person who we trust more than anybody else. And that’s how you build trust at scale.
And the only reason why we are there is because I learned from… I have like 50 role models on the internet who I follow their content. I just admire where they have come from and now where they are. And if these are the people I want to be like in 10 years from now, that’s why I’m consuming their content. Whether I realize it or not, I’m subconsciously becoming like them or just evolving my personality one day at a time.
36:04 | Overcoming Fear and Self-Doubt in Business
Aarti: So there may be people who typically do believe, well, who’s going to listen to me? What have I done in life that is worth sharing? But you still forget you’re unique, not just in DNA, but where you came from and all the experiences you have in life.
And when someone who’s two steps behind you, they just need to listen to you today. And that’s how you’re going to impact their life. And maybe they were on the verge of giving up, running their business today, and you and the algorithm somehow showed your video to them and they got inspired and they didn’t give up today. And tomorrow again, they didn’t give up because you shared something the time that you failed and they survived.
And in a year from now, you will be a little part of their success, whether you know it or not. And that’s how I found Dan and Ryan and Tony Robbins and all those people.
I remember when I was running my first half marathon last year on Mother’s Day, I was listening to Dan’s book, the audio book “Buy Back My Time.” One of the things he said, “Before you can dream of living the life of Oprah, you have to start protecting your time like Oprah.” So and he doesn’t know it, but that has had such a massive impact on who I am today, a year from then. And so that’s what I meant by character diamond because it adds layers, it also you are a human, you’re also showing that side of you, but you’re also showing why they connect with you at the level they do, which is your North Star and the things that also make you human.
38:04 | Lessons from Dan Martell & Role Models
Rob: So have you ever, since you’re into that whole running and health area, have you ever went and did his walk where you get to talk to him? His what? His walk. So he does a whole entire, I guess it would be a hike? He does a hike.
Aarti: Yes, so I was in Kelowna, BC last year. I was hoping to join, but that day, I have a big enterprise client. We were supposed to be on prem for some testing that we were doing. But I am in his fitness coaching program. I’m also in his business coaching program, and I’m also in his mindset coaching program. So Dan has had a… he’s one of the biggest influencers in my life for sure.
Rob: That’s awesome. So for human behavior, the person I like probably the most for that would be Vanessa Van Edwards. Have you ever followed any of her stuff?
Aarti: I’ve… that name rings a bell, but I cannot put a face to it. I have to look it up.
Rob: That one, I think you would probably eat alive. Yes, you would very much so.
Aarti: Yes.
Rob: I think it would open up all kinds of stuff and thought processes and about the whole entire human of how we interact. She sells herself as being an ex-social awkward person. But she does everything – she’s done things for the FBI, all kinds of big intelligent pieces of reading people’s not just the spoken behavior, but their body language, everything there. Some of her stuff is really cool. So I’d recommend looking at it, especially if you like Dan’s stuff.
Aarti: I love that. Thank you. As soon as we drop off, I’m going to go look her up.
Rob: Yeah, that’s a good one inside of there. I remember the whole entire… I don’t remember being the diamond connector inside of Dan’s stuff, but I remember that analogy that’s inside of there.
39:47 | Identifying Bottlenecks and Taking Ownership
Rob: And everybody has their kryptonite, and a lot of the… I think business owners in general, their biggest thing is they’re unsure about what to do. They don’t know where to start, and they don’t know… they’re afraid that they’re going to make a mess or they’re going to make a mistake along the way. Do you find that a lot inside of your sales process for working with these businesses?
Aarti: Oh, absolutely. I was on a podcast two, three weeks ago. One of the very similar questions we talked about, and my response to that is I think everyone, each one of us is responsible for our own actions. And that’s where extreme ownership comes from.
So I always say, if you go look for red, you’ll find red. If you go look for blue, you’ll go find blue. And the reason why I say that is if you are running a business, it is your moral responsibility to figure out where the bottlenecks are and then am I going to survive them or not.
Once you start from that mindset, then are am I looking for problems or solutions? Am I the first person who’s running a business who’s dealing with this problem? Most likely not. And that’s why my strategy is I go find the person who’s there where I want to be. And before that, I have to figure out a goal. So goal first, second who’s there where I want to be, third I just go pay them so they can give me the blueprint and I just follow the path.
So that’s three, and none of them would happen if I didn’t have the mindset of, “Oh my gosh, we have a problem. I have to solve it,” right? So you seek first before the signs start appearing to you.
And when I try to sell something or I get on discovery calls or sales calls, if they book a call with me but then they are hesitant that they’re not ready yet, I have to start peeling the onion if they’re interested and if they’re still on the call with me. And then really go to the bottom of what are we really talking about. Is this a money problem? Is this something else?
So once you start with, “I have a bottleneck problem. I have to go find a person who can help me.” That’s only when the change happens. But if they’re just so adamant that they don’t have a problem or they don’t want to see it, then unfortunately, we may not be the best person to help them because they don’t have an open mind to look for solutions. They’re still stuck in, “I have a problem, but I’m not really sure if I need help.” Or they just don’t want to see where the problem is. And if they don’t identify… if we don’t together identify the problem, I can have 10 solutions in my back pocket, but I may not be the best person to help them.
42:10 | Ideal Clients for AI Automation
Rob: No, I totally agree. It’s one of those things to where there’s a lot that’s inside of there, and there’s ways to be able to do it. You have to spend some money to be able to do it. Some solutions are cheaper than others, and you have to kind of work your way through that whole entire process.
When you are working with businesses, what’s a typical… what is your ideal customer look like for your side? What kind of businesses are you working with?
Aarti: Yeah, so typically we work with anybody who’s a million to 3 million or above ARR. And the reason why that is because they have… every business has problems that AI can solve, but if they are at that level already, they have the growing pains that AI is equipped to solve.
And second, since they have those pains and they are at that level, that’s where business owners sort of try to get in their own way because they see that growth is coming, but they’re not ready for it and it scares them. And with the AI, given how much time I can save them and how much revenue we can bring them, because with AI, we’re going to be doing things on scale.
It just they are… they become our perfect target ICP. So that’s we haven’t niched down per se for now, but we may get there in almost a year from now, based on where we are going and the type of problems we’re solving, because then it would also be easier for us to scale if we have a certain types of automations and we’re just rinsing and repeating them.
44:00 | Advice for Small Businesses Starting with AI
Rob: No, that totally makes sense. So if you were going to advise somebody or give someone some advice that was not at your ideal customer profile, they were in that small business or that startup mode, and they’re looking to be able to take some of that weight off their shoulders with AI, is there any advice that you would give them?
Aarti: Oh yes, absolutely. And you have to… this is the part where you need to listen because I’ve made this mistake more than anybody else who’s listening to me.
As a business owner, you have to put a dollar amount to your hour or minute. That’s your worth. And anytime you find yourself doing a task which is significantly lower than that, you don’t want to do it. It’s not in your best interest. It’s actually causing your business money.
45:07 | Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset
Aarti: By you having to go check your email, which could be a $10 an hour task, versus if you’re a business owner and let’s say hypothetically your hourly rate is $500, then why would you go check your email? That’s a perfect opportunity for you to come to us or to anybody else and either hire an EA or we could build an automation for you, which will look in your email inbox and it’ll categorize those emails for you. And it’ll only send you an alert for an email that needs a response from you, and everything else just can sit there and wait.
So if you value your time more than money, money will come to you. But you have to start valuing your time today for anybody who wants to grow their business.
It’s not very super technical advice, but that’s where how I would start because it’s always in any area of your life, it’s always mindset first, action later. If you have the mindset to be a runner, only then you’ll go sign up for a race. And only then you’ll go train for a half marathon.
If you have the mindset of “I am the CEO, where is my time best spent?” Only then you’ll only choose the task that light you up and also print you money, and then delegate everything else.
46:27 | Valuing Employee Feedback in Growth
Dean: No, that’s a great point though, what you just said about the value of your time. I think most small business owners miss that point. They’re so busy trying to keep their fingers in everything that they don’t let go of the things that they don’t need to be involved with.
Because if you’re not being creative and making the business, then that really holds you back. And that’s really a great point that I think a lot of business owners miss on that topic a lot, as far as what you should be doing.
And they self-sabotage in that aspect, Dean, that they’ll get in their mindset they’ll think they’re the best to be able to do all of that. And sometimes letting go, and all… I guarantee all three of us, I know I have been guilty of that to where I thought I was the best person always to be able to handle those tasks.
And I mean, it’s easy to go… it’s easy to go… it’s easier to go down that road than it is to let go of that road and just hope that it’s going to come together and be able to teach that process. And because as a business owner, you try to self-soothe yourself and make yourself feel like you’re way up here all the time, and you aren’t necessarily that way.
47:49 | Narcissism and Letting Go of Control
Aarti: And absolutely, Rob, once you let that ego part go off that gives you so much freedom. A, you start to accept 80% done by someone else is way better than 100% done by yourself.
Second, it gives you time and mindset to start putting SOPs together because you’ll have to hire someone else to do it, and they can’t follow unless you have a plan.
And third, you could go sit on the beach, and your business will not fall apart in two weeks. Who doesn’t want that?
Dean: So one of the other things that happens with small business owners, they don’t listen to their own employees. I just recently went through this that my employees said, “Dan, you need to quit doing this. We have it covered. You go do the other things that we need you to do.”
And internally, you have people that can advise you if you’re willing to open your mind and listen to them a little bit because they told me to quit doing quotes. “We can’t… we’ve got the quotes handled. You get just don’t do that. We need you here.”
And so I think that’s a really good point too, that you actually internally in your businesses have people that that see this as well, if you’re willing to open your mind a little bit as well to help you. And then they might even direct you into the AI pieces as you know, in addition to that.
Rob: Absolutely. That’s where you have to give your staff the freedom to be able to communicate back over to you. And sometimes that’s a really hard thing for staff to be able to do, to be able to say, “I can come up with something.”
Now don’t bring me a problem if you don’t have a solution for it, or an idea to the solution is my always been my philosophy. But if you see something that could be done in a better way or there’s a new piece of software, especially in today’s world, bring it up. But bring… don’t just bring me a problem, but bring me a solution with that problem.
49:17 | Closing Thoughts & Where to Find Aarti Anand
Aarti: So I think it’s also again, when you’re running a business and you hire people on your team, you also want to look at where they want to go in their career. If you don’t let them make those decisions today, you’re also sort of preventing them from getting in the direction that’s in their best interest, right? Because they want to… they want to grow as well.
I mean, they don’t want… I mean, you forget that you’re not the only one in the business, that there’s other people that you have to be making sure that they’re growing with you, and they’re going to stay with you.
Dean: I mean, I’m fortunate. I have a young man that’s been with me now for almost 20 years. So and that doesn’t happen a lot in industry. But we’ve given him the ability to to grow and to develop and go where he wants to go. And you have to be open-minded enough to help with that as well.
Aarti: Absolutely.
Rob: And and you have to realize that you’re not… Dean wrote a blog a long time ago. We bring this up all the time. He wrote a blog that he never published, which I wish he would have, about how most business owners are have narcissistic behavior or that they’re narcissist, which I agree with. At some point, all of us are kind of had that narcissistic behavior. Most of us have ADHD, especially if you’re inside of anything software related.
And you have to be able to get out of yourself and be able to look at how the business is going to run without you. Because if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, you want those systems in place so your family can move on with your company that’s sellable.
And that’s coming from my side of buying and selling businesses in the VC world. A lot of business owners don’t build a business. They build a job for themselves. And once you build a job for yourself, you don’t have anything of value really to sell because once you’re out of it, there’s nothing there all the time. So you have to kind of keep that in mind as you’re kind of building your business as well.
Aarti: Absolutely. Absolutely, 100% agree there.
Rob: So if anybody is interested in being able to work with you and being able to set up those automations for their business, what’s the best way of contacting you? What does that look like? And just kind of go through and tell us all about that.
Aarti: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re all on social media platforms. We can be found on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. We also have a YouTube channel where I’m regularly posting now. And there’ll be lots of tutorials and lots of live demos that I’m going to be doing in the next few days just to give you a very tangible example of if you’re running a business of sort, then this is the first automation or the top five you need today. So that’s also going to go on YouTube, but there’s a lot of material already there.
I also run an AI-first CEO newsletter. The reason why I started that is as I was talking to business owners, again, it was a mindset issue. Three problems I heard: I have no idea what AI can do for me, I have no idea where to start, and do I need a technical team to do it? And let’s say I hire you to do it, what happens after you’re gone? All those things and what type of automations does my business need?
All those topics plus the mindset, I send a weekly issue every Friday morning 6:30 a.m. mountain time, and then it goes out on a weekly basis. So that’s also anybody who’s not ready for AI today, but they just want to follow along the journey, that’s also available.
And my website URL is www.codnixai.com, or you could just DM me on any of those platforms, and I would love to talk.
Rob: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I think there’s a lot… I think there’s a lot of the world of AI that’s fascinating. I’m really kind of excited to see where we end up in the next probably 18 months. I think is the number that I’m going to give it before it kind of gets to that natural state of where we’re going to see it and kind of see what kind of opportunities are going to come from and then we’ll see another boom that ends up happening later on when they bring out the quantum computing if they end up releasing that.
Aarti: Absolutely. I mean, that seems to be on the fence right now if it’s going to be released or not released. Everybody has it, and I’m just waiting to see who who pulls that trigger first. But that’ll open a whole new world.
Rob: Yes. But thank you so much for joining us today. And everybody who’s listening, make sure that you know that we put out our podcast once a day, Monday through Friday. So yeah, and you can check us out at simplybeefound.com. But thank you so much for being our guest. Dean, anything you want to say to finish?
Dean: I actually learned so much with the two of you talking technical because I’m more of the small business guy kind of thing. So I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much.
Aarti: Thank you, Robin. And I really appreciate it. Thank you.
