Mastering Business Transitions with Kerry-Ann Powell

Jeff Kikel: 00:00:00

Hello, Freedom Nation. It's Jeff and we are here for another wonderful episode of The Freedom nation Podcast. Today, my guest is Kerry-Ann Powell KKerry-Ann started his career as an attorney went into, into both government service lobbying and kind of finished her her career in the corporate world, working on a major project that you'll get to hear about a monument in Washington DC. From there, she actually went on to found her own business. And today she works with business owners to help them figure out what the challenges are when it comes to scaling their business, building systems and multitudes of areas around working with those small businesses to help them grow. So I hope you enjoy the show. We'll be right back with you in just a second.

FN Intro/Outro: 00:00:56

Welcome to the Freedom Nation podcast with Jeff Kikkel. On this show, Jeff shares his expertise in financial and retirement planning from a different perspective, planning for your Freedom Day, which is the first day that you wake up and have enough income or assets and do not have to go to work that day. Learn how to calculate what you need, how to generate income sources, and listen to interviews from others who've done it themselves. Get ready to experience your own Freedom Day.

Jeff Kikel: 00:01:31

Freedom Nation, it's Jeff here once again. And today, we are going to have some fun. I have Kerry-Ann Powell on Karianne started her life as a lawyer and went on to some really fun things. So we're excited to have this conversation. We did a little quick pre interview, and she's got some really fun things that she's done in her life. And she is somewhere in the world. We'll just say that. Welcome to the show. My friend, Jeff, my

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:01:57

Man, how are you?

Jeff Kikel: 00:01:59

I am fantastic. Let's kick us off. By telling us your story a little bit. How'd you get started?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:02:07

Yeah, so I was a Washington, DC lawyer lobbyists and a fundraiser for high level projects. And so the last one I did before I went to my business was building raising the 100 and 20 million to raise and build the Martin Luther King Memorial on the National

Jeff Kikel: 00:02:25

Mall. We've I've said it before, but it is the most beautiful, it's the coolest. And thank you for thank you for doing that project. Because it finally I think really laid Martin Luther King out the way he should have been his prominence in the world. So just

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:02:43

I really do way to go out. Yeah, right. was definitely one of it's still remains one of the most fulfilling things I've done. I absolutely love it. As a matter of fact, I still go back whenever I get back to DC I often go particularly at night and sit there just feel spiritual. For me, it's able to sort of, you know, think things through and you know, so, yeah, so, you know, once I did that, I was like, Okay, what, what is the next thing that I'd like to do? What's the next adventure? And, you know, I knew that I was leaning towards, you know, starting my business and moving into that, because I had started a business. And just from the while I was building the memorial, while I was so I was just using that entity as I was, you know, I was leading retreats and conferences and stuff like that.

Jeff Kikel: 00:03:27

But yeah, kind of your little side hustle for a little bit there.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:03:31

We had a bit of a side hustle. And so, you know, I I really was thinking, what would that look like? So, of course, the natural thought was, well, you know, I just sort of, you know, move into consulting for fundraising, because that's what I do really well. And many people were bringing me on as a matter of fact, I did do that for a bit, you know, but I realized that what I was leaning more towards, was the strategic planning, helping companies and organizations NGOs, as well to really become strategic about how they are going to thrive, whether it's through revenue, whether it's through, you know, anything. And so that was really where I began to, to kind of spark up a bit. And was that something

Jeff Kikel: 00:04:15

you were doing before and your other roles, and then this was just kind of a natural extension, or just, hey, I really enjoy this and go in

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:04:23

that way. It was something that I've always done. It wasn't the core primary thing that I used that I did, but I cut my teeth on it from early days, coming out of college, going into my first professional career, you know, sort of do strategic planning, and being able to sort of, you know, figure out not just creating a strategic plan and being strategic about your planning, but also the execution of it. And obviously, any big project requires that Jeff, when he anything that you want to get that sort of bigger than yourself, doesn't matter if

Jeff Kikel: 00:04:52

you're an NGO or you're a company, you've got to raise capital, you got to figure out ways to grow

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:04:58

quickly and be able to find a way to exit QB well, so yeah, so then, you know, I started doing that. And then it just sort of evolved into what I have today, which is a business strategy consulting company, or small and medium sized companies. So that's how I

Jeff Kikel: 00:05:10

love it. What a cool story. Now, let's talk a little bit about that. So I'm a company, I own a company. I'm, I'm sitting here going, I need to figure out what my next step is. What What's your typical engagement with somebody look like?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:05:25

Yeah. So you know, pain, pain is always a bit more preferred, motivating, motivating than

Jeff Kikel: 00:05:37

pleasure are going away from pain. So that's it.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:05:40

Yes. So, you know, folks usually come to us when they are experiencing pain. I mean, there are some forward thinkers that that are like, Hey, we know we have a vision for the company. You know, can you come in and help us form it? And I love love love that

Jeff Kikel: 00:05:54

wants to work with because you're not trying to drag them along here. They're easily pushing you along. Yeah.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:06:01

And then that's like a bloody mess that you got to clean up, right? Yep. So when they said when they first come to me, when this is a pain situation? I like to call that there's a symptom of chaos. Yeah, yeah. And there's usually four that I have found. And we talked about all the company, you know, one is, they've been around for a bit. And they are not scaling like they're growing, but they're not scaling the and and that's a big problem, why that gap between expenses and revenue continues to stay the same while they grow. And so therefore. And that's a big problem that that is a symptom of chaos. If it's not happening, or they're having a cashflow problem, there's no cash, right? It's a cash flow problem. They just can't get it under control. No, looky here, when you have a small and medium medium sized company, you're always going to have a bit of ups and downs, right. But when there is perpetual cash problems, that's a symptom of chaos. So they usually come from that. Third one is, you know, a lot of the companies that I work with, are still owner slash founder operated, they are still engaged in the business somehow. Yeah, so the CEO, the founder, the owner cannot step away from the business without feeling like it's going to implode. So they're, they're stuck to it talk about lack of freedom, you know what I mean?

Jeff Kikel: 00:07:26

I always put it as you let you probably left working for somebody else and build the most beautiful prison in the world that you've locked yourself into.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:07:35

So that's a big one. Because you know, at first people feel like, you know, there's this sort of atheists out there like just toughed it out that kind of thing. But when you're in it for a bit, you're like, wait, oh, there's a problem I need to fix.

Jeff Kikel: 00:07:45

This has got to get better some time. And it's not you because I told somebody one time I said, the best thing that ever happened to me was the pandemic, because it made me stop and slow down a little bit and realize that I work for the worst boss that I'd ever worked for in my life. And it was me.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:08:06

So true, oh, my goodness. And I guess the fourth one is a big one. But, you know, there's an inability to either build a strong team, the team is subpar. And those sort of unusually, you know, it's kind of funny, if people come to you, they're like, Well, you know, my team isn't doing well need to fix them. I'm always like,

Jeff Kikel: 00:08:30

let's start at the top and work down. had five divorces and all those women had been terrible. And maybe there's a common trend.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:08:46

So those are usually the four main sort of what I call symptoms of chaos that people come to me. And it just so happens that these are also the top four reasons why businesses fail nots, small businesses fail, why all businesses that fail was the top four reasons. So it's kind of a big deal. Right? Yeah. So but the thing is, though, what I have found is when I work with with with clients is that my philosophy and what I know to be true about the work that I do is that those are never the real reasons why these, you know, why your business is having these problems. There are these underlying fundamental things that are missing. And the problem that business owners have is that because fish can't see water, they can't identify, really, what's the underlying foundational problem that's causing all of this bubbling up chaos that you see in the business? And they often miss diagnose, and spend money and time trying to fix something that's not the actual culprit. And then they you know, sort of, you know, it's a it's a never ending cycle of fixing them, morale goes down, the whole thing happens, so I've seen it too many times. So I'd like to sort of think there's sort of eight fundamental core things that a business must put into place in order for there to be an addressing of the symptoms of chaos. And it's just like, you know, you go to the doctor, you say you got a backache, you're like, Oh, well, you know, I'm gonna go to the doctor, or you could go on WebMD. And you diagnose that you probably have, like, you know, I don't know, you pulled something, you know, out of the lift or something, and you pulled it right? Well, there are many other reasons why you could have a backache, you could have a kidney problem, right? I mean, it's just many reasons why you have a backache. And so, that's the sort of idea is that we basically come in, and we're like, okay, we recognize that you have all of these sort of symptoms. And we're not going to sort of have a knee jerk reaction and say, Oh, you're you know, you can't scale. So the problem must be XYZ, you maybe need to get more, you know, whatever. We go in, we do an assessment and audit, see what's really happening in the company. We sort of see where the red, red, red flaming, oh, my gosh, moments are, we see the yellows, we see the greens, and then we sort of get to work on creating, planning to be able to address those things. And sometimes those things are pretty simple, and sometimes kind of a thing. And there's going to take a while for the company. But But the bottom line is that once the first step really is becoming aware that there is chaos, because believe it or not, there are a lot of folks that live in chaos business owners, and they think, Well, this is just this is what it looks like. So normal.

Jeff Kikel: 00:11:29

I see that on the on the exit planning side, you know, when I work with business owners on the exit planning side, you know, I mean, I come into it on the front end of okay, well, here's where, you know, here's, here's where you need to be, or here's where you are today, here's where you need to be, well, I need, you know, I need this much money to, you know, live on, okay, well, great, we're gonna have to grow the business. And then you find that unwillingness to actually, you know, yeah, there's a lot of lip service, oh, I want to grow this business. But then when it comes down to it, you run into the, what you really don't want to because you don't really want things to change, you want to just stay where they are.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:12:07

Exactly, Jeff. Exactly. It's so funny. You said that around the Exit Planning because I was talking to a prospective client, this company had been around for about 50 years. Okay. Okay. And it was started by 111. Gentleman, but he was very close to he hired someone on very early on. And so he they were, the other person's family became. So it's sort of like two families are running this business. 75% of the folks that work at the company are related to one or the other of the two individuals, yes, we've got a whole generation of folks that want to now retire, sure, out of the business. And that, you know, God bless them, they did sort of have some sort of a plan where there were a couple folks, the younger generation, they were sort of beginning sort of train a bit and stuff like that. But for the most part, it's not looking good. They're now having to have conversation while creating the insurance policy in order to be able to get to the whole thing, Jack. And it's like, and it was interesting, the the person who I was speaking with was sort of the not the owner, but the person who was like right below the owner, right, the other family member. Sure. And, you know, she was really so aware that this was a problem. They needed to do this, and stuff, but could that she just couldn't get all the other folks to come on board and realize they need to bring someone on board to help them.

Jeff Kikel: 00:13:37

It's funny when they decide, oh, we're going to train all these people to do this, but then we're actually never going to give them responsibility to do it, you know, so yes, you're going to be the heir apparent, you're going to be the one to do this. But I'm never actually going to relinquish power to you to do this.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:13:54

Someone who knows a little bit about this,

Jeff Kikel: 00:13:57

you're describing this client, I'm like, Oh, my God, I've worked with that exact same client.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:14:04

I know, I know. And I get it, right. Like it's a scary, scary, scary process to kind of relinquish something where your blood sweat and tears. And but it's also scary where you're like, if you cannot pass this on in a way where the business can thrive? For what is the percentage that I read? I think it was like, something around 80% of companies where you pass on to the family members of family. The business fails within one generation.

Jeff Kikel: 00:14:32

Yeah. Right. I mean, it's yeah, it's typically 80% of second generation businesses fail. And then 70% of third generation businesses fail. So So you look at that, okay, by the time we get to the third generation, it's done. It's basically a zombie at that point, because you've lost that because they don't do a good job of making that transition.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:14:53

Yes, yes. And then you know, people always mistake what, what they could sell something for because you know, like, Yo, when I started my multiples, okay, well, sweetie, like, you know, systems and

Jeff Kikel: 00:15:09

basically the business is run on paper, and you're passing paper around it. You know, I think the other side of the coin too, you know is is the is a generational shift to because the bulk of businesses, small businesses today are owned by baby boomers. And they're the largest generation and the highest percentage of people who own businesses of any generation, yes, followed up with our generation, which is coming behind him where the smallest generation and the least percentage of business owners. So if you're that baby boomer, you You better do some work, because our generation also says, I don't want to work 90 hours. Yes,

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:15:52

yes. Yes, it's so true. It's so true. And, you know, I'm curious to you know, it's like, there's, there's a certain amount of, you know, I often say, a business is an entity, right? outside of yourself, because so many people don't really realize that you yourself are not the business, the business is an entity outside of yourself. That's designed for the purpose of, of creating value generating value to the stakeholders, the customers, the owners, the employees, investors, whatever. So if this company here is it's sold in your hands, and so you're so tightly connected to it in a way that you can't if you step away from it in any form or fashion, it's it doesn't exist, or does it implodes? You've done such a disservice to all every other stakeholders, your customers, your I mean, think about your customers, your employees. I mean, it's not it's not fair. It's not so

Jeff Kikel: 00:16:56

and not to, not to say also, that you there's that psyche that, you know, I built this whole business up, and then I walked away, and it just all fell apart. And that has to do some damage to your psyche as

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:17:08

well. It does. I'm sure. I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does. It's I guess it's sort of like, you either, and I don't like to think about medicine, but like, either take your medicine now. Or go to the medicine later. But you got to take the medicine All right. It's gonna happen. Do it now. But yeah, so so that so answer your question, that is sort of how we engage with with with with owners, you know, they they come to us, they either could say, hey, you know, like my, one of my most recent clients that came a couple months ago, you know, he's like, look, we're getting ready to scale Montgomery to scale big. And, you know, I need to come in and do that. It's fantastic. We love it, you know, do you have the time to do the strategic planning that because normally, if it's a crisis, you know, I like to have time and let the strategic planning process marinate. Because, you know, obviously, you can always do like, you know, a three day off site and do the whole thing, but there is something around sort of getting people in their thought process and letting things sit for a bit. Let him say, Well, you know, I came back, I thought about this, and actually, you know, I realize this is the direction we want to go, or this is how fast we want to scale or you know, all these different things. But nonetheless, this particular type of way, we love doing that, because then it allows for, and it allows it gives you the time, the oxygen the room for the entire team to be a part of that process. When there is crisis. It's a little bit difficult, because now you're like, You got to stop, drop a couple things, right? People are bleeding, like the company's bleeding, and you just got up, clean it off.

Jeff Kikel: 00:18:43

Do whatever, you can put the lipstick on the pig and get there. Okay, let's all right. We've patched it up. We've put some duct tape and baling wire on it.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:18:52

Yeah, so but yeah, but I love it. We love it. It's a great way to to impact and help companies owners, because when they're when they when everything is all said and done, and they look at you, they're like, Thank you, God bless me. I'll give you my firstborn. You know, that kind of thing. I'm like,

Jeff Kikel: 00:19:12

please don't ever leave me

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:19:17

realize you've done something. And of course, when the employees were

Jeff Kikel: 00:19:22

like, Yeah, well, because I mean, so many times they know what the point Yeah, they know the problem. They've seen the problems. And they just can't it sometimes takes that person coming in from the outside to go. Have you ever thought that the problem is you? He's been telling me that over these years, I just didn't listen to listen. Listen. That's awesome. Is there anything kind of new in your world that you want to share with the world now?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:19:52

Or? Well, you know, one of the things that's really exciting is that a couple months ago, we launched a, you know, sort of a Have a what we call a monthly dose of strategy for small means it's a live that we do, you know, on LinkedIn, and we stream it to YouTube, and Facebook. And I'm just sort of doing it as a way to kind of, you know, add value and keep our fans out there who are really loving it. And, you know, and now so we started adding guests and bringing people on and having real, you know, conversations arise, let's call the founders check in, and it's something that we're really enjoying, because it really it sort of just like, you know, quick dose of, you know, hey, strategy, like, do it done, move on, you know, none of the doing, we don't have to go into the the details of it if you want to get more details of different farms. But it's really great, because we do it once, you know, the first Thursday of every month. And it's just something that, you know, give brings, and it also brings people together other business owners to sort of, you know, like, you know, sort of say, okay, what are you doing? What's your company? And you know, we have them teittleman? And what are the problems that you're dealing with? And it really gives us space for people to just sort of share, because that is the one thing I think about being an owner or founder or business a CEO, is it's a bit of a lonely journey. Yeah.

Jeff Kikel: 00:21:10

And because Daddy can't tell you, yeah, Daddy can't tell all the kids, all the problems that are going on. Otherwise, they're all gonna bolt and leave the company. So yeah, it's a lonely job. So virtually nobody you can talk to I mean, I'm fortunate because I work with my wife. Yeah. So I mean, we know what's going on inside the company, and we at least have somebody to talk, you know, we can talk to each other, you know, as we go through it. So I mean, that's, that's one thing when people are like, I can't work with my spouse, like, I love it, you know, one because she does stuff that I am terrible at. But to you know, it's, it's having that person to bounce ideas off of something that's gotta find that whatever it is, whether it's, you know, doing your, your version of it, you know, getting into a Vistage group, whatever it is, you've got to find other people that are in your in your seat

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:22:04

must find it. And you know, you talk about freedom, you know, yeah, there's a certain feeling of freedom that happens when you can, when you hear someone say, Me, too, right, yeah, I get it. If you're not the

Jeff Kikel: 00:22:21

I got the same problem. Let's figure out how we can fix it together.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:22:24

Right? Yeah, it takes some weight off you and you're like, Okay, bam, because there it is, you know, if you don't, we're always told, particularly if you're, if you're a business, the ideas, well, you should know what you're doing. And

Jeff Kikel: 00:22:41

you're making it up every day when he talked about.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:22:47

So yeah, so that's something that I'm really excited about. And you know, we've been doing it for a couple months now. I've been driving.

Jeff Kikel: 00:22:54

I look at it the other way, too. It kind of trains your future clients to yes, you can refer to the you can prove that, hey, we do this every month. And if they're not quite ready to work with yet they start to see the value of that. I mean, it's a great way to do what we do with I mean, I do this with the podcast, I do this with our YouTube channel, that very same thing. It's like, Hey, I just want to share with you my ideas, and maybe you're not ready today, but you might be ready somewhere down the road. Yeah. And then when you are over here. Yeah, yeah. You know where to find us at this point? Yeah. Well, let's transition to the Fast Five questions. Now.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:23:32

Bring it on, you're ready.

Jeff Kikel: 00:23:34

All right. Number one, you wake up in the morning, your business is gone. I still have the knowledge in your head 500 bucks in your pocket a laptop computer place to live? What are you going to do first?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:23:49

You know, I'm going to first obviously, once you do the centering part, right. Like you're okay. With a falling apart, I reached out to my network. Okay, I reached out to I have found that you know, even though I am like the queen of strategy and you like and every you know, one of those, every one of those, you know, testing, they do this little test that you know, personality test discs, blah, blah, blah, I always err on the high part of strategy. But what I have found all the sucks, and I say not some, all of the successes in my life is because of my network. And I tell people all the time, like Yeah, have a plan, know how you're going to execute it, execute it exceptionally do what you need to do. Bring your people along. So I go to my network I call people so I'm having conversations and then see where it goes.

Jeff Kikel: 00:24:45

See? Yeah, here's what I can do help me to to get in front of those people. Yes. What is the biggest business mistake you've ever made?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:24:53

I tried to scale too fast. Story whenever I you I speak at conferences all the time. And I tell the stories are ferrocene. But I don't have I'm not embarrassed about it anymore. Because it's important to drive it home. It is better to not scale at all, than to scale too fast. Yeah. I think that the stats are two out of three people, three out of three, two out of three companies that have made it to the Inc 5000 fastest scaling companies fail, meaning that you sell their companies out of loss go completely out of business within six years after you

Jeff Kikel: 00:25:37

fail after hitting that, yeah, after hitting the list. Yeah, cuz, well, you get so focused on I'm, you know, I'm trying to hit this list. I'm trying to hit this prize. And then you get there. I was listening to a YouTube thing today, a guy that was talking about scaling YouTube channels. And yeah, he said the same thing. He said, like, three quarters to almost 80, I think 80 to 90% of YouTube channels that reached the monetization stage, which is a hard man takes a long slog to get there. He's like, 80% of them never scale beyond that, because they, they literally burned themselves out. And they had this prize. Oh, I'm gonna get monetized. And you know, that's just the beginning. You know, and I think that's the same thing. You get so many of these people, they just get burned out. Yes. You know, the business kind of just burns out because, okay, we've pushed, pushed, pushed, and we just can't push anymore, or you just don't want bush.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:26:32

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, a large part of what I do with people just helping them sort of figure out how, how fast they want to scale, what the scale look like for them, and being able to make sure they're creating capacity within their team and themselves so that they're not going to burn out at the

Jeff Kikel: 00:26:46

end. Yeah, well, and they have to understand to they're gonna have to, they're gonna have to invest for two to three years down the road, not that you might not get immediate return on, you're gonna have to invest because you can't if you don't put the infrastructure in place. Yeah, it's there. I mean, I saw it from going from a very large practice where I sold out and then started kind of a new again, you know, I realized, here's all the mistakes we made before I didn't we didn't automate the practice enough, from the beginning. And it was this time. All right, before we start at four, I started adding people, I need to get all the systems in place. And I need to think about this. As if I just as if I was training people, yes.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:27:29

Just said, you know, people. That's like, a million dollar advice, right? And people like people here, they're like, that is million dollar advice. People if you're listening, right? They're automating your business before anything else. In a scalable company, is the most important thing. Even more important than scaling.

Jeff Kikel: 00:27:54

Yeah. Well, and it's like, don't, don't be our start to look at every process he that you have in your business. And if it's, if there's if something can be bogged down by a person in that process, okay, what can be automated around that to free that person up nicely. We don't have to rely on those little clogs in the business Eisley. And you all you constantly have to be thinking about

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:28:19

walking perpetually. That's why, you know, one of the eight components that I always talk about within the thing is this idea of innovation and optimization together, right? Yeah. And this idea, you need to constantly be innovating, but you need to constantly optimizing as well. And sometimes those things can sort of hit against each other because you're perpetually optimizing on your current systems. And the innovation feels like it's faltering. But those both those things have equal weight. And if you don't have a process to make sure you're doing that, that is also a problem too, because then

Jeff Kikel: 00:28:52

the innovation side of it's way more fun than the optimization. What's a great book that you'd recommend for our audience?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:29:00

You know, I have to admit that there have been so many great ones right now. No, you're gonna hate me. I am gonna go to sit with two feet on mine. We've got no please. You are someone who's hasn't read the E Myth yet? Yeah. You must read it. It is an oldie but a goodie. But it's the fundamentals, I think still remain and it's not 30 years in right. Yeah. So if you haven't read the

Jeff Kikel: 00:29:27

three three update since

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:29:29

awfully, right. Michael Gerber is the man. So yeah, I'd say definitely that but you know, one book I have been really jonesing on lately is Jim Collins, B E two point out beyond entrepreneur 2.0 Is the updated version into during like, 2020 or something like that? Yeah. And I I'm loving this book. I started reading it about a year and a half ago. And I just go back to it because it's such really principled things in there because Jim Collins is fantastic. You know, he's brought us to be here, but You know, so I would say, you know, if you've done E Myth, you got it. Go check out beyond entrepreneurship. 2.0. Okay,

Jeff Kikel: 00:30:08

awesome. That's one I haven't heard in a while, you know, usually you hear Good to Great with him. So

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:30:12

yes, yes, yes. He said, What I love about the EB 2.0 is because, and he says it, he said he wrote it specifically for small businesses, because he's like he said he actually. And it's interesting. You know, when he started working at Stanford, he was it was all about entrepreneurship. That's what he was teaching back at Stanford. But he's on and

Jeff Kikel: 00:30:32

he kind of morphed into that, working with the big monster businesses. And yeah,

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:30:36

it's, and he says, He's like, he's like, people always think of me as sort of this big company guy. He's like, no, no, I really am at the sore core, the reason why I started looking at big companies, and the ones that that are great is to, is to sort of sift out the principles of those that that that that they did, so that small businesses can begin to implement them because so they can last and be great. That was good for you, Jim, up with you. Okay, yeah,

Jeff Kikel: 00:31:06

go back to what you go back to your roots. But it's a good tool that you use in your business every day. Okay,

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:31:14

so, so many good ones. But this one is the one that I am going to stay on this hill Nymi IO, it's a I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, it's basically an operating system, sort of a platform. And the whole thing around this, and I've basically sort of bring it like all my clients into 90 io, is the place where you can begin to upload your entire strategic plan, all your KPIs, all the ownership within the key of all the things that are important to you, and be able to track those things. Because you know, what 67% of fantastic strategic plans fail because of lack of implementation, why don't implement is because they can't track it, they don't, there's not a place to go look at it, you know, back in the day, Jeff, you do a strategic plan, you put in a cute little folder, it's all fancy. It's in the CEOs office.

Jeff Kikel: 00:32:08

By nobody, nobody looks at it again, and you don't

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:32:12

ever see, I don't even remember what it was about, until you go back. So this is a great place that if you have some vision of a company, some goals, some KPIs, some sort of core strategic goals that you're going, put them in there, I have people own it, you know, own their responsibility in it, you can do weekly check ins, monthly check ins, quarterly check ins, it's a great tool, I love it.

Jeff Kikel: 00:32:36

That's fantastic. Well, and it all rolls up to the top, I'm assuming in the company and everything else.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:32:41

And like you as a business owner can then look at you, if you don't want to go into the into the weeds, right? You could just look at your dashboard and sort of see, okay, what's happening with all of these different things and like top of my hand, but like, you know, you can sort of just go in and see that the big picture stuff. Or if you want to go in the way if you notice that something's happening, and in the business, and you're like, but why is this always red, you can go to the department where the lag is, and you know, you know, you could kind of have some conversations with the folks who are leading that particular thing or who own it, you can go straight to it. Also, it makes your meetings more efficient. There's a whole function within Nonito, where you there's a whole thing called meetings, like you literally click it, it generates the meeting agenda for you, and it generates the things you need to focus on. You're not talking about the things that are green, it just sort of you talking about things that are red, how to move red to yellow, and how to move yellow, green. And that's really it. You know, people always say, Oh, you screwed up in an email that kind of, I think a ridiculous time. But nonetheless, whatever I get it partially, once you sort of do that, you'll never have the this could have been an email kind of complaint because it's more about the metrics, the KPIs, this is what we decided we were gonna do. This is what you need to be doing. How can we support you get you from this read to the screen? What is what is the problem, and you begin to scrutinize there. So it's a great tool. I love it. Love it.

Jeff Kikel: 00:34:03

Love it. Love it. Love it. That's awesome. Cool. So final question for you. Yeah. What is your definition of freedom? Oh,

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:34:11

I just want to when you're with that question was a good marker. Because there's so many things, I think freedom to be able to, when I wake up in the morning to choose what it is that I am going to do. And feel like I have chosen this. So you know if it whatever it is, if it's simple, right? You know, one thing I love doing in the morning after I get up and go take a walk is to have a nice cup of chai and listen to some jazz before, you know, I sort of romanticize my life. You know, pretend I'm in somebody's movie. So, you know, I think a part of that is just the idea of deciding that I've chosen to do this thing today. Yeah.

Jeff Kikel: 00:34:54

Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. And it's such a great answer to carry on. If somebody wants to get a hold of you. What's the The best way to learn more about you?

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:35:02

Yeah, well, I love connecting with people. I'm always hanging out on LinkedIn, if you're there, you know, come and DM me and say, Hey, I'm Jeff, I'm with Jeff crew, you know, I'd love to meet you and say hi, and really connect. Because I think that's really, in the end of the day, I just believe people are really the currency of life, you know that that's what makes the world go around is us. If you find that your what I mentioned some of the chaotic stuff, you know, we talked about earlier, if you feel like you're kind of in that chaos, and you'd like to fix it, I do have a wonderfully free PDF that just sort of I downloaded my brain into that sort of, sort of eight things that I think it helps me identify really what may be happening in your business and some solutions around it. So you can download that it's called the eight true culprits that are causing chaos in your business. And you can find it love it at no business chaos.com No business chaos. downloaded, it's free of charge just for you. Because I don't think anybody should be living in chaos. Ooh, not good.

Jeff Kikel: 00:36:03

No, not fun. Well, we'll, we'll make sure we put all that information into the show notes so that you've got that in there. Carrie Anne, thank you so much for being on the show today. You are just You're so much fun to talk to.

Kerry-Ann Powell: 00:36:17

I've loved having coaches with you, Jeff. You're the man I tell you.

Jeff Kikel: 00:36:20

Yeah, it's just it's so much fun. I want to continue the relationship down the road here. So yes. So thank you. And folks, thank you for joining us today. We we do these for you. So certainly if you enjoy this, share it with somebody, make sure you use subscribe to the channel wherever you're listening or watching this. And we will see you guys back here on Tuesdays and Thursdays of every single week.