Ep: 118 - Broken Systems, Missed Sales: The Hidden Cost of Bad Data with Kronda Adair
What if your business could run and sell, all while you sleep?
Systems expert Kronda Adair joins Erin to break down how service providers can stop leaking time and money by automating wisely. Learn why your email list is gold, how to keep your audience warm, and the real ROI of documenting your processes.
Are you the bottleneck in your own business? Kronda Adair exposes how a lack of systems keeps you stuck and overwhelmed. Erin and Kronda share practical steps to build automations that serve your clients (and your sanity). It’s time to work less and profit more.
Feeling like you’re reinventing the wheel every client project? Kronda Adair says: never again! Discover her proven frameworks to create repeatable success, nurture leads automatically, and finally escape the burnout hamster wheel. If you want to scale sustainably, you can’t miss this one.
Key Takeaways:
Systems That Set You Free – Kronda explains how documenting repeatable processes stops you from reinventing the wheel every time.
Your Email List is Your Lifeline – Why building and nurturing an email list gives you control over your audience, unlike social media.
Goodbye Bottleneck, Hello Growth – Tips to stop being the single point of failure in your business operations.
Authentic Automation – How automations can feel personal and build relationships rather than alienate clients.
Productize Your Genius – Why turning custom services into repeatable offers protects your time and IP.
Owned vs. Rented Audience – Erin and Kronda break down the dangers of relying only on social platforms for leads.
Small Tweaks, Big Impact – Easy steps to get started with automations that keep your pipeline warm year-round.
Protect What You’ve Built – Erin shares how contracts and licensing work alongside systems to keep your business scalable and protected.
Connect with Erin to learn how to Turn Your Expertise into Scalable Recurring Revenue.
Erin's LinkedIn Page: www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/
Scaling Expertise YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/@Scalingexpertise
More About Our Guest
Kronda Adair
Kronda Adair is a Black lesbian dog mom who wants more Black women to rest and let the robots handle their repetitive tasks. Through her Million Dollar Systems retainer and her Automation Club Membership, she uses her knowledge and skills gained as a web developer, content marketing coach, automation service provider, and tech strategist to help overworked business owners stop buying technology and start hiring technology to build a software team that supports their business. When she’s not working, she can be found enjoying time at home with her wife, and cat, hiking or doing dog sports with her two Vizsla's, reading, cooking delicious food, or enjoying the postcard vistas of the state of Oregon.
Find Our Guest
Music credit: Paphos by Mountaineer
A Team Dklutr production
Blog Transcript:
Erin Austin: Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's Scaling Expertise Podcast, where we talk about scaling your expertise. We look at it from two points of view, how we can help you scale your expertise, and we also talk to an expert who has scaled her expertise. So I'm very excited to welcome this week's guest, Kronda Adair.
Kronda Adair: Welcome Kronda. Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
Erin Austin: Yeah, it's gonna be a great conversation. You know, before, um, we decided what we were gonna talk about. I love it when I have a guest, when there's multiple things that we could talk about that would be of interest to this audience. And you're definitely one of those, but I'm, I'm excited about what we decided to nail it down to.
But before we get into that, would you introduce yourself to the audience?
Kronda Adair: Yes, absolutely. I'm Kronda Adair. I'm the CEO of CarVal Digital. Um, I've been in business since 2013. I started as a WordPress developer making $500 websites and have iterated my business through, um, being a content marketing coach for service-based business owners.
And through done for you offers and retainers that involved websites automation. Both marketing automation and business automation, tech strategy. Um, really like the whole nine. So now my, um. Primary offers are helping, um, both non-technical folks and systems folks, uh, through my membership automation club, just giving people a space to actually do their own work and focus on their own business.
So I host coworking hours through that. And then we have a done for you retainer, million dollar systems where we help folks get their systems right, um, and automated so that they can scale peacefully.
Automation Club & Body Doubling
Erin Austin: Tell me more about that. Both of them. So one, the coworking space so they know how. To set up the systems, but you're just helping them tell me,
Kronda Adair: you know, it's both.
I actually conceived of Automation Club as a place for non-technical folks who, you know, for whatever reason need to DIY, their stuff, but they don't wanna go to YouTube University and they don't wanna be sourcing, you know, crowdsourcing in the common section and to give them a place to. Do their work and then have an expert on hand.
And so I host two hour coworking sessions and it, when I say coworking, it's like we do 4 25 minute sessions, camera's off mute, you know, it's like, what are you gonna work on? Great. I set the timer and then we check in. And I think the, the different part of that is that. When we're checking in, if people are stuck, whether that's a technical question or a strategy question, then we hop into a a Zoom breakout room and they can work with me one-on-one to get that sorted, which usually we can do in about 15 minutes.
And so it's this nice combination of, you know, accountability, body doubling almost. Everybody I work with has a DHD and really benefits from that body doubling to actually just focus on their own stuff. Um, so that's, that was my conception and, and that definitely happens. But what also happens is that other systems pros need that accountability and space to do for themselves what they are so busy doing for their clients.
So, you know, trying to get shoes on those cobblers kids. Um, and so it functions in both of those ways.
Erin Austin: Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, I think, um, you know, I have been tempted and been told in the past to be part of a, uh, like boss as a service I think was one of them as well. There was one that had a B of some sort in their name.
And um, you know, just to make sure you have that dedicated time to dig deep. And I think we all struggle with that. You know, I'm very, very reactive to my inbox. And so that is a good place to hide out and make sure that doesn't happen.
Kronda Adair: Mm-hmm.
Erin Austin: Well, we, uh, well, let's jump in then. So I'm really fascinated by spreadsheets, which is a strange thing for a lawyer to say.
I'm pretty sure, but. I'm stunned by how powerful they're, which is a different thing probably than what we're gonna talk about, but I'm stunned by how powerful they are. Like, I'm kind, I'm just, I'm familiar with Airtable, I'm familiar with Excel. I use it like literally for list making. You know, like, oh, look at that.
I got boxes and it looks good. Um, but I know they're way more power for that. And so
Journey to Tech & Marketing Mastery
I do wanna talk about that. But let's talk about, you know, you talked briefly about your journey. To where you are, but expand a little bit more about like, were you previously in corporate and then came out, or how did you get to where you are?
Kronda Adair: No, actually I did not come from a corporate background, so I, um, originally was working at a, a very small startup and I had a meeting with a web developer, like a freelance web developer, and, um. When I was finished with that meeting, you know, he left. He has a little laptop and he left and I was like, wow, that, that guy's probably making three times what I make as a project manager and he can work from anywhere.
And so I literally went back to my desk and just googled like, how do I become a web developer? Like knowing nothing. Um, and so I ended up going to school and graduating for that. And I worked for one, I did work for one company. An agency, you know, and I made Drupal websites and WordPress websites. And then in, uh, and then I got fired for culture fit, you know, quote unquote culture fit.
So, um. So that was my catalyst to start my own business, which was, had been my goal all along. And so, mm-hmm. That, you know, I really came to it. There's not really a lot of, um, entrepreneurs in my family or anything like that. I just sort of was going along the path, taking one step after another, and, um, have been doing that ever since.
Erin Austin: Excellent. And so tell me about the evolution from web developer to where you're now.
Kronda Adair: Yeah. So. You know, eventually I figured out how to charge correctly for websites. Mm-hmm. Um, and, you know, was doing that successfully. But what I found probably in about 2018, I really started to get frustrated with this phenomena where people would hire us to, to create their website, thinking that that was sort of the be all end, all of it was gonna solve their marketing problem.
And a website is not your marketing. A website is a great branding tool and it's the front door to your marketing, like it's your space to welcome people into your world, hopefully, you know, get their email address so that you can connect with them further and. My clients just really didn't understand that.
And when I tried to explain and help, I got a lot of pushback and, and sort of just finished the website. And so I just got frustrated and decided to take that option off the table. And then I pivoted into coaching. Mm-hmm. And so in 2019, I launched content bootcamp because I was like, well, these business owners don't know how to market.
They don't know how to be people online. You know, all of their marketing is based on going to the meetup, the networking. Thing, the, you know, um, doing the speaking engagement, you know, all things that don't really scale. Like what if you don't wanna travel six months out the year? Right. Right. Mm-hmm. Um, and so being able to create your messaging online in such a way that it attracts the people that are qualified to work with you.
Gives you tremendous leverage. Mm-hmm. And so I just taught people how to do that, like how to use content, um, as a tool and to build relationships, really. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I was doing content bootcamp and about nine months into that. Folks were like, Hey, this is great. This is working. Um, our tech is kind of shitty.
Can you help us with that? Mm-hmm. I was like, uh, yeah, sure. Now that you care. Sure, I can help you with that. So that's how I ended up creating. I didn't wanna go back to selling websites, so I created a retainer, um, and it was a five KA month retainer called Insourced, and I basically. You know, went back through a whole bunch of my coaching calls and messages to figure out, okay, what are my clients struggling with?
Mm-hmm. And then just put together a package that kind of dealt with all of that. So it was an umbrella in which we would, you know, redo websites. We would do marketing automation. Um, we would do, you know. Tech stack strategy, like, okay, let's make sure you have the tech stack. You know, one thing I say all the time is stop buying technology and start hiring technology.
So we would do a whole assessment to, to figure out like, what do, what do you actually need to build the foundation for the business that you wanna have in three to five years? Mm-hmm. And then say, okay, it's gonna take us, you know, four months or six months to build this, so won't just come on retainer.
So it really covered almost everything except social media.
Erin Austin: That is so smart. Like don't, uh, buy technology, hire technology. And I, I'll say I, I'm aware of, of clients that are struggling with that and that they're on a buying spree and
Kronda Adair: Hmm. It's not
Erin Austin: working out quite as well as it could. And, uh, and then I am actually kind of just.
Reimagining my business, you know? Mm-hmm. Because just things so much has changed in the last few years regarding Yeah. Technology and, um, and you know, how to make it lean and mean as possible, and, uh mm-hmm. And what that means with like, who I'm currently using and. Like what to, like, how do I kind of get what I need from those roles in other ways?
Through technology sometimes or, or some combination of it. So, all right, well we talked about that. Alright,
Scale That Helps You Work Less & Live More
so this is the Scaling Expertise Podcast. Let's talk about what you consider scale.
Kronda Adair: Um, you know, one thing I say a lot is that I, I think in the, um, in the business space, when people talk about scale, it's usually about money, right?
You wanna scale from a hundred K to 500 k, you wanna scale from 500 K to a million, a million to 5 million. Uh, and that's great, but you could also scale your naps. You could also scale your days off. You could scale your vacations, you know? Um, and so I like to think of scale as, um. Being able to grow something without putting in exponentially more effort, right?
Mm-hmm. Being able to get the same or better outcome without burning yourself out, basically. Yes. And. So, you know, automation is a great tool for that, but you don't wanna automate blindly, like the people who tend to get the most out of what we do are people who have, um, somewhat mature businesses. Right.
You've, you've proven your offer, you've sold your offer. Um. You know, you've got clients, but then you're starting to hit that ceiling of delivery, maybe. Mm-hmm. Or, oh, I, things are going well now, but if I think about onboarding, you know, 10 or a hundred more clients, then I know it's gonna break, right?
Mm-hmm. And that's the point at which, you know, someone like me will come in and say, okay, let's, um, let's look at how you're doing things and the process. Is the same like the, the framework is flexible, but the process is the same. We map out what's happening now because most people don't have a visual representation of what's actually happening in the processes in their business.
Mm-hmm. And so we have a great tool that we use to visualize, Hey, this is what's happening now. This is step. One step two, step three of your, you know, application process, your sales process, your onboarding process. And making that visible is usually really enlightening to people because then they can instantly see like, oh, we're missing this step, or Here's where the ball gets dropped.
Mm-hmm. And then I can also see. Oh, you're doing these steps. There's 15 steps in your onboarding and 14 of them are manual, so let's automate 10 of them. Mm-hmm. We can outsource that repetitive labor to software instead and help pick, you know, which software that is. Um, and so one client that we. Did that for recently, we saved them 15 hours a week.
Mm-hmm. Just by automating their onboarding. So like that's nice. So, uh, you know, that person was able, able to scale date night with her husband. Mm-hmm. Right? And she had to bring that back, so mm-hmm. That's kind of how I think of scaling.
Erin Austin: Yeah, I like that. I mean, we all kind of are familiar with kind of the abstract concept of, you know, work smarter or not harder, but what does that really mean inside of our businesses?
Yeah. Is it about, you know, those manual processes that can be automated or is it about, um, you know, having the right, um, person in the right role? You know, like there's, there's the de the devil's in the details, right? It's,
Kronda Adair: and I actually have a great example from an hour ago. Um, I signed up for this webinar, and the webinar was about, you know, using AI and using a, a project management tool, um, as your CRM, which I is not something that I advocate.
Like, one of the things I rant against often is like, stop calling these, you know. Project management tools, A CRM, like it's not, but technology is also ever changing. So I'm like, you know what? Let me sign up for this webinar. So I was really surprised when I sign up, I get the invite and the invite late name is just Feature Fest, right?
So nothing about the brand name, nothing in the description about what I signed up for. And that causes a lot of mental overhead for people. Mm-hmm. Because in three days from now when I'm like. About to click on this link. I'm gonna look at Feature Fest and go. Okay, what is this? Did I sign up for this?
You know, like Right. And that causes a lot of mental overhead and that's gonna lower the number of people who actually show up live, or who go and click the recording. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I, I already quickly like wrote a little post about it 'cause I actually have a blog post about creating meaningful calendar names.
Yeah. I can't tell you how many times I've re received an invite from somebody. And when I look at it a month later on my calendar, it looks like I'm meeting with myself because they're just going along and they think. Oh, I'm meeting with Kronda, so that's what they write. Uh, but I look at it and I say I'm meeting with myself.
Right. And it's just those little things that like, I automatically think that way. Uh, but most people don't. And it's one of those details, you know, that people don't think about, but it makes a difference. Mm-hmm. Like when I'm laying in the dentist chair on Tuesday and I'm like, am I gonna click on this thing and listen in?
Like what even is it? And. The other part of that is that the spammers are getting so bold and I have had people put events on my calendar as spam. Like they somehow get my email address and they sign it up for, or they send some Google invite and it appears on my calendar as a confirmed event that I never signed up for.
Wow. And so if you don't wanna be put in that category, 'cause I saw that, you know, it was, I knew it was fake because it was literally an hour before. Suddenly this thing appears on my calendar and I'm like, I didn't sign up for that. I reported them to their domain registrar and they got suspended. Wow. So it's not even just convenience, it's like you better help people remember that they actually took this action to request this.
Mm-hmm. Thing.
Why Your Business Needs a Data Hub
Erin Austin: Interesting. Well, there's always, yeah, I'd not heard that one before. So thanks for sharing that with us. And you also have me wondering about the. Email invite to you to record this podcast. I'm gonna go see if it says, you know, interview. I think it was good. I think it was good. Alright, so, alright, so let's talk about, um, spreadsheets.
Let's get to it.
Kronda Adair: Let's, it's my favorite. Let's talk about it. What do you wanna know? So.
Erin Austin: And again, my understanding or my use is so elementary, so you know, the, the power of them. I don't even, you know, scratching the surface. Tell us about like. Almost like what's behind spreadsheets and why they're so powerful.
Kronda Adair: Okay. Well, let me first clarify, are you talking about spreadsheets or databases? Because one of my, one of my ongoing wars right now is I'm, I'm in a war against Google Sheets. Mm-hmm. So one of the things I see often is. Like spreadsheets are very powerful. But what I see a lot is that people try to use a spreadsheet as a database, or they try to use a spreadsheet as a calendar, or they try to use a spreadsheet as a project management system, right?
You know, all of these things. Or they try to use it as a database and. Sometimes all, all of those things, like I literally have a client offboarding this month that she was trying to use it in all of those ways and it was not working. Mm-hmm. And so the first thing about spreadsheets is knowing when you need a spreadsheet versus a database.
Okay. And the way that business is today and the way that people need to wrangle their data today. Oftentimes a database is going to be more effective and more versatile than a spreadsheet. So a spreadsheet being like Excel or Google Sheets versus a database like, um, Airtable or Smart Suite or something like that.
So I'm a big fan of Airtable and I have a lot of content on my YouTube channel about. You know, when you should use Airtable versus when you should use Google Sheets. Um, so that said, I think everybody needs a database. Mm-hmm. In their business. You need something. We have all this data like that. We're constantly creating, you're constantly creating content, right?
Whether that's marketing content, whether that's content for your offers or a course or your clients, and where does it live? Like it's going everywhere. It's going into Dropbox or Google Drive, and it's just all these links floating around. Mm-hmm. And one of the first things, one of the first databases that I made in my business was I was having the issue of having to search Google for my own content.
You know, I would have a conversation with somebody and I'd realized, oh, I have a YouTube video. Mm-hmm. Or a blog post or something about this that would really be helpful for you. And then I'd be like, well, where is it? And I start searching and I would literally be Googling and searching for my own content.
And what I realized is, okay, if you're marketing content. Is an asset that is bringing you sales and clients. Mm-hmm. Then why aren't we treating that seriously as an asset? Right. Um, and so I created a database, it's called the Pot of Gold Content Marketing Database, and it houses all of my marketing content.
So I have, you know, all 12 plus years of, of my marketing content in this one place that's now searchable. It's tagged. It's categorized, I can tell, you know what format it's in. Text, video, audio, like. I can categorize the data in all these ways, and then I can create views that, let me see it. Mm-hmm. Like in whatever context.
So if you and I are talking and I say, oh, you know what? I've got a great Airtable versus Google Sheets video. Mm-hmm. Let me pop into this database, go to go to the view of just my YouTube videos, and quickly find that and send it to you. I do that weekly. Mm-hmm. If not more. Mm-hmm. Um, and so being able to put your hands on.
Your data, whether that's, oh, you know, taking a course, right? Mm-hmm. If you're taking a course, you're taking notes on the things that you're learning in that you're, you're taking, you're keeping track of, oh, I need to implement these things. Where are those things going? So having a central data hub for your business, I think is critical.
Erin Austin: Ah, data hub. Yeah. I will say that I find the term database a little intimidating. Like, I feel like that's, you know, just. Billions of pieces of data, you know, like I, I don't think mm-hmm. You know, and so I, like, I'm not, you know, data hub. I'm just latch latching onto that. But I, I do think that's really interesting.
I, you know, search my, my website to find stuff. And then I also end up, because my PowerPoints aren't. On there. So I'll like, okay, I know I did a presentation, let reuse the slide. And I'd go through that all the time. Yeah, like searching through PowerPoints to find something. And um, so I'll
Kronda Adair: share an example of how, um, so I have a client right now, we're moving.
We're moving her from a WordPress based membership site into Circle. And so the first thing I did in that process was I sucked all of her content out of her website and put it into a database because she's like, oh, you know when you're moving, it's like if you're moving house, it's like you don't just wanna move like all your crap, you wanna go through it, right?
And see like, do I really need this or can I. Can I give this to Goodwill, right? Mm-hmm. So the database gave her a place to be able to go through and streamline and say, okay, in this new version of my membership, what are the things that I wanna keep? Mm-hmm. And gave her a really easy place to see that.
The other thing that we did is, um, we. Kind of gathered up all of her, um, membership data to see like, who's asking? 'cause she has, you know, this ask a coach feature. Mm-hmm. And so we gathered all that data and now we can easily see like, oh, this person's asking twice as many. Questions as everybody else.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And she's like, I looked at the thing and I saw that instantly and I was like, oh, I need to have this person on the podcast, like as a case study. Mm-hmm. Right. So that's a case where just having the data visible in a certain way, instantly allowed her to make a data-driven decision that's gonna help her market her business and get more, get more members.
Erin Austin: That is so important. I mean, like any, you know, corporate client, you know how. Much they value their data and I don't think we think about it kind of on, on our, you know, service-based business level as much as we should.
Data Hub That Actually Works for You
How do you talk to your audience about, 'cause, 'cause does the term data, like make them go, eh, that's, you know, not me.
Like how do you translate that for them?
Kronda Adair: Um, I tend to talk more about. The symptoms of folks who are using data in ways that aren't as useful, and then the outcomes of people who, um. I haven't been able to transform their data. So, um, one, uh, example is I have, like, I have a YouTube video about specifically Airtable versus Google Sheets.
And I kept seeing this trend of like every client that we got where I'm taking their, you know, taking all their spreadsheet stuff and sort of wrangling it, they do a couple of the same mistakes, right? One I call like highlighter hell, right? Mm-hmm. So in, in an attempt to categorize. Something that's in a flat spreadsheet, people will highlight rows, right?
And be like, red row means this yellow row means this green row means this. Right. One that's really hard to look at. Mm-hmm. And two, it doesn't allow you to actually manipulate and categorize that data. And so I will show that, and then I'll show how just making it an actual category, like in a separate column.
Mm-hmm. It means that you can quickly see, Hey, show me all what, what used to be red, green, and yellow? Right. You can quickly say, Hey, I just want a view of all the things that were red. Mm-hmm. I just want a view of all the things that were yellow and it allows you to manipulate the data. So I, I do a lot of content.
Um, I do a lot of YouTube videos 'cause it's helpful for people to see it. Mm-hmm. So showing the before and after and showing what people are able to do mm-hmm. When they use the right tool. Um, and then. The other thing is just the outcomes. For instance, you know. The examples that I've already given, you know, being able to save our clients, you know, hours per week by just helping them manipulate their data.
And I actually got, I got a new verb today. I became a verb today, so that was pretty cool. My client sent me a text this morning. They caron my, uh, data. Yes, exactly. So we just launched this, uh, wait list feature. So I have a client that has a lot of contractors. And the contractors didn't have good visibility into, they, they were using a spreadsheet for this, right.
Trying to have like who's on the wait list that we haven't been able to service and. Previously they were kind of the bottleneck of people had to say like, Hey, I've got room for, you know, taking on another client for this service or this service. And so what we did was we put all of that wait list data into a database, created an interface that's now visible to the contractors so that on they, they can go and see, hey, you know, they can filter it by service or by area.
And they can say, oh, I can take this client, and now they can click a button and fill out a form and say, Hey, I'd like to take this client off the wait list. Mm-hmm. And so my client sent that to her contractor and they looked at it and said, oh, it's been ified.
Erin Austin: That, that was like, awesome.
Kronda Adair: Yes, that is, that is my new thing.
I feel like Olivia, the word of
Erin Austin: 2025 Corona side, I love it. I, um, no, I, I, I absolutely love that.
Airtable Becomes Your Whole Back Office
So how do they keep going? Like once they get it going, like, do they need to be kind of, is it, is it as user friendly to use like an air table as like a, you know, some other type of. Tool that we Yeah.
Kronda Adair: You know, once they, once they get used to it, like there's always a learning curve, right?
Mm-hmm. Anytime you're changing how you're fundamentally doing something, there's always gonna be a l learning curve. Mm-hmm. But we give a lot of support through that learning curve, and I'm a huge Loom user, so mm-hmm. Love it. I create. You know, someone will ask me the smallest question and I will often default to just making them, you know, a minute and a half long loom to just show like, Hey, here's where you do that thing.
Here's how it works. Um, I made one just this morning and we put that into the documentation. So I talked earlier about. Creating those visual process map maps? Mm-hmm. Well, one thing the tool allows us to do is for each step in the process, I can actually embed a Loom video that goes through like, Hey, if you're at this step, here's where you go and look at the information and here's how you take the next step.
Mm-hmm. So it's not this like 30 minute long, you know how to, that they have to dig through every time. It's like really targeted. So. We do a lot of support. Um, and when you're looking air at Airtable specifically, we're building out the data on the backend, but we're also creating interfaces, um, and interfaces basically allow you to kind of build an app with your data.
Okay. And that's what our clients are interacting with 99% of the time. Mm-hmm. So they're just going to a specific view, the wait list view for. Your team versus the internal wait list view or the view for, you know, certain service requests that have been made. They're just looking at that sort of an apt view that's showing them exactly what they need in a specific context.
Mm-hmm. And then allowing them to take action on it in a certain way. And I think one of the most useful things has been. When you have, we're using sort of a client, CRM or a, an onboarding process where some of it's automated, but some of it's not. Mm-hmm. And you wanna have personalized responses. We can build that ability to send email replies to clients right into the interface.
So you're not context switching, going back to your inbox where you're then subject to, you know, the whims of whatever's coming through your inbox, right? It's like you're here in this context. I need to reply to this client and send them, you know, uh, hey, we can't do your speaking event because of X, Y, Z, and maybe I have a template.
Email that I can quickly spin up. Mm-hmm. But then I can personalize it and I can hit send right from that Airtable interface so that I'm not, I don't get lost in five other tasks because I look at my inbox and go, oh, squirrel.
Erin Austin: Mm-hmm. That's me. So can someone run their whole business out of Airtable?
Kronda Adair: Absolutely. Mm-hmm.
Erin Austin: Absolutely.
Kronda Adair: So they could get rid
Erin Austin: of their CRM and their
Kronda Adair: You could, yeah. I mean, some folks do a combination of Airtable for some data and then, you know, like a lot of clients still use active campaign mm-hmm. Um, as their CM CRM for the marketing automation piece that's available.
Mm-hmm. Right. Um, but in terms of client delivery and onboarding, absolutely. You could run your whole business out of Airtable. And even starting with just a basic moving your application process or your inquiry process. Out of Google Forms and into Airtable is life changing. And I've done that. I've done that with just like one of my power hours, um, where, you know, someone sends me their spreadsheet and I just take that data and I put it into Airtable because there's also automation available in the, you know, in the back end of Airtable that isn't possible with Excel or with Google Sheets.
Okay. Where, okay, we just filled out this form, this Airtable form. Mm-hmm. Well, now we can send an automatic confirmation email. So now not only are you saving your time, you are centralizing your data, you're implo improving your client experience with one tool.
Erin Austin: Excellent, excellent. I will, not that I hate to slander any particular tool, but um, I have one that I pay for online, never use 'cause I find it so difficult.
Buy Back Your Time & Scale with Ease
So, uh, yes, we have much to talk about after this. So, speaking of which, let's get to, I, you mentioned. The $1 million. Oh, million dollar systems. Million dollar systems at the top of the hour.
Kronda Adair: Yeah. Yeah.
Erin Austin: So tell us about that.
Kronda Adair: So, million Dollar Systems is a six month retainer. Um, it's 1500 a month or nine K pay in full.
And it's probably the most ec economical high ROI way to work with us. Simply because, you know, one thing you mentioned is when you fundamentally change the way that you're doing something, even if it's better and more efficient, it takes time for you and your team to actually internalize that. Mm-hmm.
And so that allows us to, you know, go through the mapping process, review and audit, the things that you're doing now strategically create or, um. Or make, amend your technology team, your software team. Mm-hmm. And then build out the actual system and then give us time to support you on the backend for actually internalizing that system with your team.
So that's really what that entails. And um, it's a lot of fun. Um, I drink my own Kool-Aid, so I use a lot of the systems that. Um, I build for clients. Mm-hmm. I have an Airtable client hub, um, that the template of which was created by my friend Ashley. And it allows me, you know, allows us to like, serve and manage a lot of clients at one time because everything about those clients, all the data about those clients is centralized in one place.
Mm-hmm. And so I gave the example of being able to, you know, send an email. Right in the interface. Mm-hmm. I created a way to, we send project updates where we'll say, uh, here's what we did. Um, here's what we're gonna do next, and here's what we need from you. So maybe we need you to sign up for new software or give us an email template or something like that.
Mm-hmm. So all that's just clearly spelled out, and I'm able to spin those up and then send those emails not only to the business owner, but anybody on their team who's opted to receive those. And I do it all from Airtable and it takes me seconds. Wow. And so, um, practicing what I preach and then building it out for clients and watching them reap the benefits is super fun.
Erin Austin: Yeah, I can see how someone could easily have gotten back 15 hours of their week with this. I dream of ease in. The operation of my business, and I don't know why it's not, so, I, I definitely, there's something I need to be doing or not doing. We can, we can talk
Kronda Adair: about that.
Erin Austin: Well, this has been wonderful to talk to you, Kronda-fied. And so please let the audience know where they can find you. 'cause I know they're gonna wanna catch up with you and get
Kronda Adair: Yeah. So if you wanna, if you wanna get ified, um, CarVal digital.com is the place to start. Uh, I recently revamped my homepage, so it's pretty. Up to date in terms of, you know, everything that I feel like folks would wanna know before taking a next step.
And my homepage is also available as one of my podcast episodes. So if you go on the homepage and you're like, this is long, I don't have time to read all this, you can just click on the link and go to the podcast version and I will read it to you.
Erin Austin: That is awesome. Well, thank you again. We'll make sure we have all of that in the show notes.
People can more easily find you. Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much and yes, we will be talking some more. Okay, thanks.
I.