Sarah Jenneault - The Sourdough Method: A Recipe for Scalable Business Growth

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast where we talk to the business professionals who are preferred in the markets they serve.

Today we're diving into the intersection of high stakes strategy and operational discipline.

Our guest today is a literal top 10 leader.

Sarah Genone is the VP of marketing at Procedure Flow and a veteran of the fintech and technology Worlds.

With over 20 years of experience including leading multi billion dollar ass growth and successfully exiting two fintech ventures, Sarah knows exactly what it takes to scale a business without losing the customer experience.

But here's why you need to listen closely.

Today, Sarah is an expert at solving the knowledge gap.

In an era where everyone is chasing AI, Sarah advocates for a knowledge first strategy.

She helps organizations in the most complex regulated industries like finance and healthcare turn messy, unstructured data into visual, repeatable success.

Whether you're an entrepreneur looking to build an exit ready engine or a professional aiming to stay relevant in the age of AI, this episode is your blueprint.

Join me now for my conversation with Sarah Genot.

Well, hi Sarah, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Thanks for having me.

Now, where are we speaking to you from today?

I am from Blue Mountains, which should be lovely and sunny, but it's a little on the rainy side today.

I guess spring is coming way up

there in Northern Ontario and get a chance to go there many times over the year.

Great conference area, but it's a beautiful part of town.

Great ski.

You must be a skier.

I am a skier.

I definitely live up here because I love the outdoors so much.

Well, you're only 10 minutes from the slope, so if that.

So it's a beautiful place if you haven't found it.

Well, Sarah, I'm really excited about our conversation today.

You've got lots of experience, you've got over two decades of working in corporate America, if you will.

And we're going to talk about processes, we're going to talk about brand and product and positioning and how to grow and how to scale businesses and, and so I'm excited to dive into that.

Before we get there, our listeners always like to know, where did Sarah come from?

So you're back in high school.

Where are you growing up?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

No, I have had quite a few different hats that I've worn as a career.

And my biggest message to everyone, for those of you who are trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, I'm still figuring it out too.

So a long time ago, what feels like A long time ago I actually started in teaching.

So I was a teacher and very quickly realized, this really isn't for me.

And then moved into working more with adults and spent more time in as a kind of an educational consultant helping educators.

Loved that.

And then I just had a moment of saying, you know what, I want to start my own business.

And I thought I had a problem that I could solve.

And I just decided I wanted to take finance a little differently and I wanted to make my own money.

And much to my parents chagrin, I quit teaching.

I walked away from all the stuff that your parent, or at least my parents said, this is what you should be aspiring to be in the world, is get the pension, get all that stuff.

And I walked away from all of it, started my own business and never looked back.

Well, that's interesting.

Well, you walk away from the security of it.

And you know, just an interesting note.

In my three decades of working in business, I find that teachers or those who have that education have the highest propensity of success, the highest odds of success in an entrepreneurial journey.

So any teachers out there?

And why is because you know how to learn.

You know how to learn what you're missing and the process of learning, I believe, and I think that's part of it.

Plus you know how to communicate.

And so it's not unusual for you to be successful when you have an education background.

I think you even went back and got a master's in education as well.

So you really amped it up, right?

Yeah, I do.

I do love learning.

And you know what?

I think one of the biggest pieces that I can take a lot of times, if I'm sitting in a meeting room with a group of people and I'm trying to work through change management, we're trying to start something new.

There's risk there.

I very much rely on my teaching skills because it's very similar.

There's someone in the room that is on board with you.

There's someone in the room that's going to have all the objections.

There's someone in the room that doesn't care and is thinking about something else.

And it's our job as leaders to facilitate that conversation in a room to make sure we're bringing everybody forward when we need to to affect the biggest change we can in an organization.

Well, it's interesting.

Well, let's get into it.

You've spent a career in highly regulated industries like finance and healthcare.

So in these noisy and restrictive places, how does a brand transition from being, say, a commodity to becoming the preferred choice by their customers.

And this can seem tricky on the outside because you are so heavily regulated, especially in Canada.

I've worked in both Canada and the U.S. and there's different rules in different places, but in the financial space, there's a lot of people there that are really guarding what you can say when you can say.

Because at the end of the day they want to make sure that people are safe.

We work really hard for our money.

People are very emotionally connected to their money.

And so it makes sense that there are regulations around that.

So to make sure that there's really key learnings and people are actually actively working on something that's going to benefit them.

But in that space there is still room for growth.

Where I find in organizations though, through my experience, is that it's not necessarily the regulators that are prohibiting change or prohibiting different messaging or content that you want to have in your business.

It's actually the organization itself that is fearful of upsetting the regulators.

So, so they don't ever actually push the envelope to see how far they can go.

And that's really interesting.

And I think that's an opportunity especially for mid level leaders when they're working within their organizations, trying to figure out how do I make a mark here, how do I really help this business grow?

If you're working in a regulated industry, really think about what's the line and what does the line represent for my customer?

And if the line for my customer is over here, but my messaging is here and there's a little bit of a gap there, I what can I do to bring that forward?

What would the risk be in order to take that?

And the great way to position your brand is an opportunity to kind of look at, hey, you know what, where we are today and where we could go.

I think there's a bit of a gap.

Let's test that and have an opportunity for a sandbox.

Whether that's internally or whether you're actually trying with a small segment of your customer base, regulate.

Now I don't want people quoting Sarah said, don't listen to the regulators.

That's not my message at all.

But I do think that when you work in a regulated industry, they are also very willing to push areas.

If you can explain what the risk is, why you're doing what you're doing, how that might affect your customer and they're actually more willing than you think to work with you.

As long as you're obviously not going out and saying hey everybody, you'll make a Billion dollars tomorrow.

As long as you're not lying.

There is a process of moving forward your messaging in regulated spaces.

Yeah, no, it's interesting you call it, and I thought it was a great term, creative constraints.

And so the way you approach it.

So I read that in some of your writing material that you've produced and with it's really about consistency.

But how do you create a brand?

Because I work with a lot of financial companies and the products seem similar, the processes look similar, the compliance is similar, all of those headaches.

How do you effectively differentiate?

And so it's really about building trust and maintaining that trust.

But you build what you would call, I think, durable operating systems.

All right.

In order to do that, how do you enhance that client journey experience inside of those constraints?

So at Procedure Flow, that's something we're really focused on because that's important.

We want our B2B customers to be set up for success.

So we want to make sure that internally there's some guardrails with that messaging so that other employees, when they're messaging that out to their customers or even employee to employee within an organization, have the knowledge they need to make sure that brand message is consistent, is building trust, and isn't breaking any rules.

There's actually accurate data that's making sure that you're improving whatever it is that project that you're working on.

And that could be brand related, that could actually just be internal knowledge related.

We think about risk departments as well, making sure that the dotted lines are all there for everybody.

That needs to be too.

That's also a critical piece.

Well, with your role at Procedure Flow, you see a lot of entrepreneurial companies that are trying to scale, trying to grow.

Is there a common denominator, is there a common error mistake that you see entrepreneurs making or going down a road that, hey, if they went this direction, it would get.

They'd get there a lot faster and things to avoid.

Okay, so I got to use the big two letters here that everyone's talking about, which is AI.

Everybody thinks right now that AI is going to solve everything, and it might, but it also might create opportunities for more errors to actually be brought to the surface.

So it's a scary thing, right?

And AI actually represents a lot within an organization.

It is a means for efficiency, but it also is very scary.

And so I put my teacher hat back on and that change management back on because a lot of people are very fearful, fearful of losing their jobs, of things actually just being replaced.

And that might be so down the road but when we're edging in AI into our organizations, into our structure, we can look at it and say, what are areas of efficiencies that I can link into?

Maybe small, but can actually make a really big impact.

And what's interesting is that many different companies right now are on very different AI journeys.

And that's okay.

And I think it's really important that procedure flow.

We don't want to make anyone feel bad for where they're at, because where you're at is very important, and where you're at is where your company will continue to move forward.

Don't compare yourself to another company and say, well, I'm not there, so it's not good enough.

No, no, no.

Your business is meeting the needs of your customers today.

And our job is to make sure that we're meeting you where your technology vision is moving to.

And then if we layer that lower and say, where is your organization?

How is it set up today in a way that AI can be used most efficiently?

And that is really.

Sometimes it's a hard conversation because sometimes it' your standard sop, the experts that you always rely on, and all of that data, those policies, those pieces that have actually been kind of sitting tucked in a drawer, if you will, metaphorically, that really haven't been dealt with because there's been so much need for speed in terms of innovation to move forward.

Organizations haven't necessarily been able to stop, really sort and sift out how their internal processes work.

They've been just plowing ahead.

And now we've got this answer.

It's okay.

AI will solve it, which it can.

I'm very pro AI.

There's a lot of really great success stories out there.

But when we're trying to move so fast in innovation, we do need to make sure that those internal structures are actually capable of training AI the correct answers in the first place so that you can be more efficient.

Now, again, so many more layers there about people and working in a space, understanding the evolving evolution of what your brand message needs to be as you integrate technology and you build that into a customer service.

This is such a huge story.

There's so many layers here.

And so I think I just want to close with this idea of making sure everybody walks away with.

You can take the little bit of innovation, as small or large chunk as you want to and apply that in your organization, and it'll still make a big impact.

But just make sure that the structure that you're training, whatever you're doing in terms of innovation the human beings there are ready for it.

Your AI tech stack is ready for it.

And you have realistic expectations of the output of what you're looking for can actually, actually be achievable.

No, it's well said.

So you have a gentic and you have generative.

And we started as soon as we could and started learning it.

And it doesn't take long to learn it and to become capable.

And I agree with you.

You know, are you going to lose your job to someone or to AI?

Probably not.

But you will lose to someone who knows how to employ AI.

Exactly.

So the secret, it's an accelerator.

In my mind, it's an ex multiplier.

It amplifies.

And so the key is for us to elevate our game.

You know, I've got a new book coming out early in the spring, and the first chapter is called the Fourth Great Disruption.

When we've had four major disruptions of technologies, Internet, electricity, all the way back.

And people have always worried about losing their jobs.

And those who did well adapted and worked on continuous learning and focused on learning.

And you would appreciate that as a teacher, as a former educator, is it's building on your skill sets where today we see a lot of people using AI as, you know, a glorified search engine, all right, Instead of actually applying it.

So the process of learning and adoption, I think, are huge.

And I can see your point.

When customers or clients are just trying to put out fires, they're growing, they're expanding, they don't have time to work on that internal structure.

We can totally relate to that.

So.

And you advocate for a, which, and I love this part, a knowledge first, AI strategy.

So for the entrepreneur who is overwhelmed by all the AI hype, what does that actually mean?

And why is unstructured data the biggest hurdle they face?

Well, it's because sometimes as entrepreneurs, we're so busy and we are just jumping at every opportunity that we can grab and just trying our best to bootstrap things.

Sometimes what we're doing is saying, smack AI on top of this and this will solve it.

And what we're saying is, no, just stop for a minute.

Think about what do you really want AI to do for you?

And then the information that you're going to teach, teach it, which might be one or two times, eventually this is going to lead to time efficiency for you.

What is it being taught and what do you want it to do for you?

And when you have those clear, measurable pieces at the beginning, you have begun to create guardrails for AI.

It knows what it wants you to do.

AI can help you do what that is.

And also we talk about agentic, that extra layer of where it's beginning to actually do things for you, do things in that tech stack to actually build even more efficiencies.

But it's just important that we step it back for a minute, make sure that knowledge layer is in the tech stack so that information is structured.

We can even do it visually depending on how your tech stack and what you want and your output.

And that's another learning piece, putting things out in very clear one liners.

So there's actual steps there that either a human can follow or an AI can follow will mean that again there's just going to be so much more time efficiencies down the road.

Sometimes you got to stop, pause for a minute so that you can go faster again later.

Yeah, two steps back to go three forward or whatever.

You know, I get that 100%.

Well, AI is only as good as the knowledge you feed it.

And most companies have their, you call it their secret sauce trapped in text, heavy PDFs, messy emails, the veteran employees.

It's all unstructured data.

And basically if your humans can't follow a process, neither can AI.

So you've got to identify that first.

And then what are the areas that you can scale?

Do you see certain areas at all?

So in your work with procedure flow, you've got visual versus text heavy.

You guys turn complex text into visual guides.

Why is our brain wired as an educator, you know, and prefer visual flows over traditional manuals, Especially when we're trying to scale.

Why do we like imagery versus I gotta read all this?

Well, I think that's a conversation too about our brain and how we process information.

So I think you can do some cool research.

One piece is that we naturally read in an F pattern.

If there's been a lot of research done with eye scans and when you look at a screen, where do your eyes actually flow?

And we, we as humans try to move through it as fast as possible.

And so what we generally do is we start up at the top, left, top corner, read all the way across one time, then scroll down, read across somewhere in the middle towards the top again and then kind of go to the bottom.

And generally it's because we're all busy people and we're just trying to whip through as much content as we can to move to the next task, the next task.

And so at procedure flow, what we've done is taken the saying how can we make this as easy as possible?

How can we take the big heavy text documents, those big heavy PDFs and put them in a way that only the essential pieces are there, the forward steps.

So I know exactly what to do and put in a visual way.

So I know when there's a question, when there's a decision to be made, when there's an action to be made, I know also based visually there's a pattern there that I can follow so that I can move through that so much faster to get to the answer that I need to so that I don't have to go and ask a friend.

And same thing with AI, it just makes it easier for anybody to complete their tasks.

Well, I think for scaling a business, it means you can actually onboard new hires in days and weeks versus months.

You can ensure your customers are getting the experience they need.

We have different modalities.

Like when I was going through school, it was big textbooks, it was big, big books.

You had to read it.

Today we've got, you can watch YouTube, you can take courses.

If you're neurodivergent, there's ways you can learn.

There's no excuse if you're autistic, dyslexic.

I think we live in a great time, so there's no excuse for not learning.

Are you seeing as far as that process in converting say, text heavy organizations into say, a visual format, does that transition take a long time?

Is it a quick process?

Where do you start?

So we do have dedicated teams that help organizations through that process.

We definitely believe in holding our customers through the process of making sure they're set up correctly.

That's one thing I really admire about procedure flow.

As somebody who has worked in multiple organizations and helped scale lots of different companies, I do think it's quite unique here that they do make sure that they invest very much in the customer base and not just say, here you go, here's the tool.

But we actually help the process of building and implementing so that that actually is working.

And then we can go back and do feedback loops to make sure that there's improvement.

So I am very impressed with their continuous improvement model.

But I just want to also tap on something you said and it's only because it just trip triggered my mind yesterday.

I have two girls, they're 9 and 12, and we were watching a movie and all of a sudden on the movie screen was an address book, like an old address book with paper.

And it was indexed by letters.

And they're like, mommy, what is that?

And it just was incredible to me because I thought, oh wow, you have never been exposed to alphabetizing in paper.

And the idea of recording mailing addresses for them, it was something so fore for me.

It was something I completely just take for granted.

And now, granted, I don't actually do that anymore, but I remember my mother doing it.

I remember as a child doing it.

And so if I take that lens just for a minute and I apply it back into business.

What's interesting also is you have multiple generations of people working in organizations who all have organized their information in very different ways.

The ways my kids will come into the workplace or the younger generation today are going to organize their information very differently than the way I will or you will or people older than me doing the same things.

And that's another key piece here that is kind of an undercurrent in an organization.

If we're all organizing our structure, our information differently, that's okay.

But we need a knowledge layer in there that is going to connect the dots from the address book to someone who's got some texts and a phone.

And isn't that an incredible example of how we store knowledge in organization?

Yeah, it's a great example.

You know, I was an Evernote guy when the Evernote first came out, I used to dump everything into Evernote and then I learned about tagging so I could find it.

So I wouldn't just put an article in there, I would put what does this apply to?

So I always had a certain note.

So if I was picking a subject on say employee motivation, all of those will come up.

And so it's still a big filing cabinet that I dump stuff into.

I put it into different workbooks and categorize it.

But AI has been helpful in organizing, so that's going to Are you tired

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And now back to my conversation with Sarah Genot.

Let's talk about building a business to sell.

We have a lot of entrepreneurs and you've been through it twice.

So you've successfully exited two fintech ventures.

What is one operational must have that entrepreneurs often overlook that actually increases enterprise value during an acquisition?

It's the structured knowledge and honestly it's the piece that when I did sell, I look back of what I know today and say, wow, that probably would have added to my valuation.

That probably would have made the transition better.

Because most of the information of how the organization was run was a lot of it was in my head.

A lot of it was stuff that I was just so used to doing on the day to day or telling other people what to do.

And again, that's my own probably insecurity or learning.

We all have things that we learn as leaders and I've grown definitely from when I exited that.

But when you go to sell and then you're like, oh wait, yeah, I always did that little bit or oh, that was always our Tuesday meeting when I met with the team.

That's what happened.

And I never bothered to write a lot of this part down.

This is so essential.

And I do think that when you go to exit your business, when you have the processes actually all laid out in an organized fashion, not only will whoever's purchasing you actually think there's value in all of that, it also does help with that transition as whether you're staying on or whether you're moving into a new space, depending on how something is sold.

And that actually is just going to help you in the long run.

And I know, I get it.

Even I heard you before say I take all my documents, documents and I put it in folders.

I do it too.

And I never went back to organize sometimes and that process of just stopping for a minute and saying when I sell, because every entrepreneur should be working with the idea that you want to exit.

When is your exit plan?

When are you actually saying I am going to hit my target, this is my target and this is what I'm going for.

You're moving your business through that.

So in that evolution of whatever that long term goal is, making sure you have an operational layer in there internally to make sure that all of those processes, all the knowledge you have, is actually documented, that the rest of your team knows a lot of the information that you might take for granted.

And sometimes going through the process of writing it down by step or using a tool like procedure flow, actually it can be really informative to realize how much information you maybe do have stuck up in your head that you didn't even realize you did, did you?

Took for granted.

We take information for granted because we assume somebody will just pick it up or remember or know.

And when we have structure and routine in our organizations, that can work when we're smaller.

But as it begins to scale, there can be real gaps there in the knowledge that gets transferred from one employee to another.

And that also can mean AI, by the way, if you are educating AI, it also needs to have that structured knowledge.

So you need to have a. I think procedure flow is like a furnace in a house, if you will.

Like, it's.

It's not glamorous when you upgrade the firmness in your house, but you need heat or you need air conditioning, and if you don't have those things, you're miserable.

So it's just one of those essential pieces that you don't always see.

But it is part of the backbone of what a successful company should be.

And obviously, every successful company, I believe, is working towards an exit.

Well, I like what you said about taking it for granted.

It's things we think that are simple, and it's taking that journey, I think, mapping out all those touch points and breaking it down to simple steps.

And I think you've arrived when you can give it to a stranger and have them go and execute.

And if you can and watch, if somebody can basically understand how that works, you know, let's talk baking, because I know you're a big sourdough aficionado and my wife is completely jumped on that bandwagon, taking it to a whole new level.

So we enjoy some wonderful baked goods.

I want to talk about, because it's a great metaphor for, I think, what we're talking about and people will understand it.

Plus the outcome.

Delicious.

It's delicious.

Obviously, we can bring that to our business.

We end up with a delicious outcome for our businesses as well.

So my wife picked up on it, and boy did.

She's taken it to a whole new level.

So she makes things with discard, nothing gets wasted, and our fridge has got all the little.

It looks like a lab, a science lab with all our stuff.

But if you don't get it just right, your outcome becomes disastrous.

So even letting it rise and giving it that extra hour or two and spending that time, there's a lot of details.

So let's use that as a metaphor because a, it's great.

And if people haven't got on sourdough yet, it's a process.

And what you're talking about is process too.

So let's link those two.

And how does making sourdough using that work with our organizations and how we can scale them and bring that process into our work?

I do love sourdough also.

I am a little obsessed with just making it better and better.

For sure, I want people to think about this in the layer of an organization, I'm going to keep bringing it back.

But if I said to you, hey, to make sourdough, all you need is bread, flour, some yeast and salt and a bit of time, then you're going to put it in an oven, you're good to go.

The result of what you would get from the information I just shared with you is a hard brick of nothing that you would never be able to eat.

And it's the same with an organization.

And as an organization also gets bigger and there's more and more people to channel through information, let's say a CEO says, hey, I want to create this new vision, this new product feature, because this is what's going to relate to.

They try to bring that knowledge down, say, this is what I need.

It gets interpreted through everybody else.

And the end outcome of where it's actually getting potentially to the engineers or even the product marketers or the product managers in your organization might be very different from what the CEO says based on that description.

So now let's take a successful sourdough bread, which is beautifully crispy on the outside.

The inside is moist.

The texture of the bread is incredible.

Every human being eats it and says, wow, that is so good.

In order to get to that place, not only does it take time and multiple experiences and opportunities to make it a little bit better, there are specific rules, specific measurements that we need to follow.

Time, we need to wait.

Heat exchange, thinking about steam.

There's many nuances to make that bread great.

And if you follow a very structured process, you get an absolutely incredible bread that everybody loves.

And now let's layer that in to going back to that same example where a CEO wants to produce a new feature because they want to create a new business line, build more revenue.

Now, if they're got a structured knowledge there and they've Got an outline to say, this is what I want, this is what it needs.

This is what I think the revenue can be.

This is what I think the cost can be.

These are some projections.

Even though we've gone through some different people, we can take a vision and take that right back down into the engineer of an organization and link that right back up with strong knowledge so that the communication there is improved, so that the end of the road output is actually creating revenue for an organization.

We're not lost in not understanding or interpreting what one person is to the next person, to the next person, to the next person.

We're able to implement what we wanted to do and really enjoy that, you know, the goods at the end, that revenue growth that we're looking for in an organization.

So it really is the same thing.

And I think for anyone who's ever tried making sourdough and it's been a complete disaster, you can relate to what I'm saying.

And then for anyone who has enjoyed, whether you baked it or someone else baked it for you, has enjoyed an incredible loaf, you know, there's two distinct differences.

And I want you to think about that example when you think about an organization.

What we want to be doing is creating the most optimal output for a business.

We already have enough issues with competition and other things.

Let's create an optimal output to create the revenue you're looking for.

And the way to do that is very clean line of structured information that exists within your organization, that knowledge management.

So you get what you're looking for.

Yeah, it's a great metaphor because there's so many details like my wife's friends have, hey, can you teach me?

And so she started documenting and then videotaping each step of the way, what the pulling looks like, let it rise, how temperature impacts it.

You know, if it's too cool, she'll put things in the microwave and she has fixes for it not to heat up but just to have a coat closed thing or in the oven with a light on.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden her starters.

Right.

It always looks like a science experiment going on here, but you can't miss one of those steps.

And if you do, you get a different outcome.

And I mean I've seen the, let's call them the mistakes where procedure wasn't followed.

And they're simple ingredients.

Like it's very, you've got, I think salt, flour and water, you know, because you're using the natural fermentation process that's found, found in our environment.

But if you Miss one of those steps, the outcome's not good.

So, and each new recipe has something.

So whether you're making pancakes, whether you're making bread, scones, whatever it is, and cookies using the discard pizza dough, you name it, each has its own process.

And so the more you document, the mistakes don't get made.

You can give it to someone else and off you go.

So I think it's a terrific metaphor, might be a book in there for you somewhere along the way where you can link those two.

Let's talk about modernization and digital modernization for small business.

Cause that's what this is all about.

So for a mid size business owner or an owner who feels behind on digital modernization, where's the highest ROI place to start?

Where should they start?

Well, so that's what's interesting about procedure flow too, which I'm new to.

It can be used in many different industries.

And what I've learned is I came from the financial space that was regulated and I helped a large organization there.

Two of them really grow in scale.

And now looking at healthcare and retail utilities, we have customers in all different industries and every industry is actually at a very different place.

And so what I want to make sure is I'm being inclusive in my advice to everybody and by first saying, wherever you are in your journey, me, it's okay.

And what I had to learn in this job, as I was going out at trade shows and speaking to different organizations and helping them, what I originally want to do is say, oh yeah, agentic AI.

This is how you layer it in and this is going to create.

And then I realized, oh, Sarah, stop for a minute.

I have to understand a little bit more where the company is.

Because if generally I speak to someone in retail, they're much further away than where somebody is in, let's say, more utility space.

So that's one of my key learnings that I've had from joining.

And I want to put that out there because I do want to acknowledge that.

And that's part of anyone's learning and growth stage.

Right?

Everyone's in a different space.

So we layer back that into roi.

This is what the foundation of every organization is looking to do.

And as somebody who has implemented change management in a really large regulated financial space, what I did there is we needed to look at what is actually the easiest win.

I can implement this first because I'm going to get more people on board in my organization with the idea of implementing knowledge management and AI when I can show a small win.

So thinking about where am I lagging a little bit in, particularly in contact centers or particularly in responding to customer needs, like going right into the client.

Where am I failing there?

Where is it just not working and where can I make a small tweak at that point point?

And that's where I would start.

Because once I can prove that there's a better improvement on my ROI based on that little bit of metric, I can then find larger points to scale.

If I go the other way and say, actually this is just an example, but I'm going to completely remove trade desks, I'm going to put agentic AI in all these spaces.

It's going to do all of the first level of trading advice back to people.

And this is going to be the answer I'm going to.

One, not going to meet my customer where they're at.

Two, not going to meet a regular where they're at.

And probably not the internal engineering that are going to need to code and set that all that up.

So I'm probably setting myself up to fail.

But if I take the smaller point and say where is just an easy win and then from an easy win, how can I take a medium risk win and then take a larger risk win?

You're going to get more people within your organization on board with the idea of this new innovation.

And I think that's really a critical piece for people to really think about.

Where am I today?

Where is a small achievable opportunity?

Where is a large opportunity that I can work towards?

But I'm going to start with something small and then I'm going to prove that out and then I'm just going to continue to grow.

Because what we've seen with so many companies is when they start in one area and what happens a lot with us with procedure flow is we start in one department or in one area if it's a smaller business, and then it actually ends up building out and scaling out internally within the organization because people realize, wow, this is such a game changer for me and it's not something I ever realized I really needed, but it is making such a critical difference.

Well, that is great insight and I think it's the only way that founders who start and they're wearing all the hats can actually remove themselves and move into that leadership role where they can then farm that out because develop the process, hand it off, and that's how you know you've actually come up with a process that works.

So great advice.

Wait.

Time flies when we're having fun here.

So One last question for you.

If you could leave our listeners with one leadership lesson from the trail and I'm referencing your love for trail running about staying relevant in the age of AI, what would that be?

I think that trail running in particular offers incredible opportunity for people to be very reflective of themselves.

And even though we're moving far ahead with AI, it's also exposing an organization's strengths and weaknesses without realizing it.

If we've moved too fast, too hard, AI starts hallucinating, it starts making things up.

We've all had that experience where we've jumped on one and we've asked some things and you're like, wait a minute, this doesn't seem right.

And so, so same with trail running.

It can be a hard grind and sometimes those hills are bigger than you think.

It feels great at the end if you've paced it well, but it can be bumpy and you can fall and you can hurt yourself.

So thinking about that in terms of our organization, it's okay to push yourself.

We want to continue to be innovative.

You want to push hard.

Pushing hard feels good.

Think about what are you pushing towards and how do you make sure that you've paced yourself correctly so that you're really getting the outcomes you're looking for?

Yeah, no, that's interesting.

Well, I'm sure when you go running you've got your goal.

Where am I headed to?

If I'm headed to the peak, wherever that's, you know, where that's going, that's going to be my end result.

So let's call it the peak is the goal, but the path is your actual execution that you're focused on.

So you know, and I'm sure you would agree with this, AI is kind of is just a better pair of shoes.

It helps you go faster, but it doesn't choose your direction.

So it's a matter of that process and staying relevant in today's world.

Someone who understands that and the human problem that you're solving.

Let the tools handle the speed so you can focus.

Hey Sarah, this was really, really interesting and I really appreciate your insights on what we can do in order to scale and grow our business because we're all growth minded how we can focus.

What can professionals do who are maybe in smaller businesses?

What's a good place for them to start?

Are there some good AI tools, tools that you would recommend that and we'll send them over to Procedure Flow because it's reasonable, it's cost effective.

Who's the typical client?

Who's it for?

That if we said, hey, here's somebody who could look at this particular solution, who's your ideal client that can benefit from this?

We have everybody.

To be honest, we do really specialize in contact centers just because those can be more sophisticated in getting somebody else out.

But we also see incredible relevance in someone who's begun to scale.

So if you're moving into a larger team, teams, larger places where you no longer can be the one who has all the answers, and you need to be able to have a structured place where you can put that in place for whoever your customers are, then you need procedure flow.

Hey, well, thanks for being our guest today.

It was a joy having you.

Thanks for having me.

You got to come running with me and then we'll eat some sourdough.

We got this solved.

It's a perfect solution.

As you are listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention?

Attention?

And why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person who you can share that with, either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is the idea to focus on achieving small wins in digital modernization, to build internal, buy in, improve ROI before attempting to scale complex AI solutions across the entire organization.

Or to remember that while AI is a powerful accelerator, it requires a foundation of clean, structured knowledge.

Because if your humans can't follow a process, neither can AI.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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Until next time.

This podcast is created and associated with Summit Media.

My executive producer is Beth Smith and director of Research Search Tori Smith.

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Goodbye.