The Future of Business is More Human Than You Think with Kari Enns

I think we've been on this very fast moving train towards automation and AI and everyone trying to do everything more efficiently and faster and keeping up with the rat race.

But I foresee a shift, I think it'll flip where people are going to put less emphasis on the streamlining and more emphasis on how can I authentically connect with my customers, how can I show up for them, how can I have these, you know, face to face conversations?

Because I know that's what they value the most.

So I think, yeah, it's very interesting.

I think that that authenticity, that in person handshake, nothing will ever be able to replace that.

The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't More this is the Business Development Podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips and experiences and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by Capital Business Development capitalbd ca let's do it.

Welcome to the Business Development Podcast and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Hello.

Welcome to episode 354 of the Business Development Podcast and today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Carrie Ends.

Kerry is a serial entrepreneur, business growth strategist and keynote speaker who has spent the last 15 years building, scaling and reinventing companies across wellness, AI marketing, e commerce and franchising.

She is the co founder of Thera Luxe, a luxury sauna brand redefining home wellness, and the founder of Scale iq, an AI powered education platform and growth network for entrepreneurs.

Known for her ability to merge cutting edge technology with timeless business principles, Carrie has led ventures from scrappy startups to nationally recognized brands while mentoring founders and helping them design scalable systems that generate sustainable results.

She speaks on the realities of growth, the power of relationships, and how leaders can future proof their companies by embracing both innovation and fundamentals.

Her message is clear.

In a world of disruption, the businesses that endure are those built on strategy, resilience and vision.

Carrie doesn't just talk about building the future of business, she's doing it and she's here to challenge every leader to do the same.

Carrie, it's an honor and a privilege to welcome you to our stage.

Wow.

What an intro.

Thank you so much Kelly.

I am so excited for this.

So thank you so much for bringing me on.

Honestly, honor and privilege is all mine.

You basically just came into Edmonton and made a massive, massive impact.

I feel like everybody here is talking about carry ends in one way or another.

Wow.

Well, thank you so much.

I am new to Edmonton.

I've only been here about oh, what is it, six months?

Just over six months now.

But I've been doing a lot of work to put myself out there and build a community and really try to a reputation for myself here because it's a new city for me.

So thank you so much.

I really appreciate that.

No, it's pretty cool.

It's pretty cool to see, you know, you've quickly kind of worked your way into a lot of the circles that I've been part of for many, many years.

And I see you at all the speaking events like everything going on, massive impact you're making.

Serial entrepreneur just switched cities and was like, I'm going to own this and have who the heck is Carrie Ends.

How the, how did you end up on this path?

Wow.

What a great question.

Hey, I'm a go getter.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, okay to share a little bit of my story.

If I go way back.

I have always been entrepreneurial.

It's in my blood.

I was born and raised in a small remote community in the middle of northern Alberta and my grandma was actually one of the first female entrepreneurs in that community.

So.

And that went against a lot of the cultural norms.

So it's in my blood to build businesses and to push against the grain.

And so yeah, my grandma ran one of the first businesses and she's one of my role models.

I was an entrepreneur from a very young age.

I've always been very fascinated by technology and when, so when VHS is.

I grew up watching vhss and when the DVD came out and became really popular, one of my first, I wouldn't call it an official business but one of my like business ventures was my parents helped me get an VHS to DVD converter.

And so I went around the community and I like helped everyone convert their home videos into DVDs and I was just so fascinated by the idea of using technology and creating something new, you know, and, and holding onto things that are important to people and using technology to protect and enhance that.

And then.

So I really love the idea at a very young age.

I never went to university.

I'm pro education.

I want to preface that.

But I never going to college was one of the best decisions I ever made, to be honest.

When I was 15, I bought a camera and called myself a wedding photographer.

And I'm so Sorry.

If, if you're listening out there and I did one of your.

I was.

You were one of my first couples when I was first doing weddings.

I'm so sorry.

I. I learned from failure.

We'll just say that I was thinking about applying for university around that time and I was honestly, like I said, it's.

It's one of the best decisions that I ever made.

A lesson that I learned around that time is that courage really trumps credentials.

When people see yourself putting yourself out there and you just dive right in and you learn from failure, you learn a lot of lessons that you could never learn in a classroom.

So that was a really powerful lesson at that time.

So started a wedding photography business right out of high school.

Got into the corporate world around that time as well.

Had a marketing job and was with that franchise.

It was a franchise.

I started in one of the locations, worked my way up.

I was with them for about eight years and ended up in a marketing director position for 22 locations across the country and was very proud of that job.

I was thriving in it.

Yeah, I. I really loved that.

And so.

But by then my photography business was thriving.

It became nationally recognized, won a few awards and I was really proud of that.

But as you can imagine, as I had that 9 to 5 and running that business on the side, you can imagine what my schedule looks like.

So I hit.

I hit burn up pretty hard around that time.

That was probably 2019, right before COVID And so I decided to let go of my business at that time and focus on my corporate job because there was some exciting growth opportunities in that and I was really loving that around that time.

Moved away from my hometown down to Vancouver bc, which was a quite a significant move from a really small town where everybody knows everybody to Vancouver where you don't know a soul.

I had, I had no friends.

I didn't.

Just starting over a completely clean slate.

And within about a month of that happening, there was a leadership change in my job and I was let go of that job very suddenly.

Wow.

And with very little explanation.

And so that.

That spiraled me into a two year identity crisis.

When you have all the pillars that you think hold up your identity all crumble at the same time, you are left with some pretty big questions about who you are and what's really important to you and what really shapes your identity.

And so that was a very difficult time for me and you know, figuring out what I want to do and really who I am.

So around that time I had so many business ideas Multiple business failures and learned a lot during that time.

I was very determined to start my own marketing agency around that period and I did.

Right after I launched.

I was struggling so much.

Like I had the website live, I had a huge vision for it and I just remember being sitting in my chair feeling completely frozen in fear because of this fear of rejection, fear of putting myself out there.

I'm in a brand new city, nobody knows who I am.

I just what it feels like had everything that I felt defined who I was just, you know, wasn't there anymore.

I was building everything from scratch and launching this new business, calling up people, getting hung up on and just feeling all this rejection.

And it was, it was really, really hard.

It, I really felt the isolation of entrepreneurship in that and it was just, yeah, really challenging.

So was pushing through that round in 2022.

Co founded.

Well, actually I had to back up a little bit.

I was doing some market research on new business ideas.

I'm always doing a million things and actually came across a hole in the market in a Canadian market for luxury saunas and cold plunges.

It was a space that was growing very quickly, especially in the Vancouver area.

Was just home wellness and saunas and just like personal home.

Yeah, home wellness.

And so did some research, couldn't really find anybody in Canada or North America that was creating beautiful, aesthetic, high end luxury saunas.

And so talked with my business partner, we decided to pull the trigger on it.

The problem was is that we were living in apartments and had no places to build a sauna.

So we literally built a sauna on a neighbor's backyard down the road.

Just asked him if we could build a sauna's backyard.

Built it.

My business partner is a very, very talented builder, so went in and built it.

I went in with my camera and it was in February in Vancouver.

It was rainy and muddy and not the most beautiful setting at all in a residential neighborhood with a fence in the background and whatnot.

So I just went in with my camera, took some nice photos.

The product was beautiful.

It's just the setting was not of course, yeah, some nice photos went into Photoshop, put in a nice setting, put a nice sunset in the background, some green grass and whatnot and went and built the website off of that and the social media.

And within a few months we had some pretty high end clientele reach out.

We ended up building some saunas for like managers of professional athletes, ex Olympians, people reaching out and just saying we love your product.

We don't see anything like it.

Can I Get one.

So that really taught me a lot about branding and marketing and just how setting a good impression and having content that accurately represents the quality of your product and putting it out there and getting people to understand it within a few seconds of coming across your brand, that's a really powerful lesson that I learned.

So that was pretty exciting.

It took off pretty quickly and I'm still involved in that business to this day.

Something I'm very proud of, where I'm a leader in the industry in Canada.

Around that time, my marketing agency started doing well as well.

I gained a lot of confidence and was finally able to really put all of myself into the marketing business.

But then ChatGPT came out around that time and it was really interesting to see how it rocked the marketing world.

So I got really interested in AI.

I partnered with some developers and created some pretty cool custom AI products specifically for the automotive industry, which was pretty fun.

And I started integrating AI into some of my marketing solutions for my clients.

And I just started to see this gap of small businesses and I was quite familiar with this needs of small businesses.

Having worked in marketing for so many years, I just saw such a gap of this new technology and small businesses and everyone was like, we need to start using this technology more.

How do I keep up?

It's moving so fast.

I'm overwhelmed.

But they didn't know where to start.

They're like, how do we use this in a way that makes sense for me?

And so I went in and I transitioned into AI consulting where I would help small businesses implement AI in a way that made sense for them and infusing it into their existing processes and not just.

Not just using the latest app for the sake of using it, but actually how can we solve the problems that you have in your business using new technology?

Because most people were just not even aware of the potential it could have.

So did that.

Did some marketing coaching in between.

And then fast forward to beginning of 2025.

I closed some pretty big chapters on the personal side when moving from Vancouver to Edmonton.

So moved to Edmonton.

It was boat in January, February of 2025.

And so that was a really big reset for me.

That was the second time I have now started over from a clean slate and again was faced with a lot of questions of what is the impact I want to create in this world?

What is the legacy I want to leave?

Who am I?

What part of me do I really want to lean into here?

If I'm laying on my deathbed in 20 years, what do I want to what do I want to leave, look back on and say, wow, I'm really proud of that.

What is that for me?

So when I moved here, I intentionally.

I stayed in my sister's basement for about 30 days, and I shut everything out.

I sat in silence for about a month, and I didn't listen to any podcasts.

I didn't.

I didn't watch any videos or.

I totally shut off my social media.

I talked to my family, and that's it.

I had realized that I'd come to the point that I had so many voices around me, I had lost my own voice.

I didn't know what my own voice was, because when I asked myself those big questions, it was.

I don't know.

I don't know the impact.

I want to leave.

So I was like, I need to figure that out.

So I completely secluded myself from the world for about a month.

And during that time, I filled.

I focused only on output, no input.

And I filled, I think, three notebooks and I don't know how many Google Docs and voice memos and just dumping what's in my heart and in my mind into what is it that I want to put out into the world.

And what was really hitting me is those challenges that I felt when I started my businesses.

There are so many people that feel that, and there are like, literally over 50% of small businesses fail.

And I want to change that.

That is the statistic that I want to change.

I want to help change that.

And I understand why many of them fail.

Because you're alone and you're isolated and you don't know it.

You don't know you're wearing a million hats.

You get into business because you're really good at what you do, and all of a sudden you're in it, and you're supposed to all of a sudden be an expert in marketing and in sales and in finance and leadership and systems and.

And all the things, and you're.

You're simply not.

It's a lot of hats for one person to wear.

So I started building something that was really special to me.

That.

That was.

It's.

How can I.

How can I solve this problem that's out there?

And it's.

It's a really, really big vision.

So I started.

I started putting that out there.

And so after those 30 days, I was like, I'm.

I refuse to be alone here.

I'm going to build a community.

I am going to meet people.

Yeah.

All honesty, I wanted nothing more than to put my head under a pillow.

And stay there for two years.

It was terrifying to think of putting myself out there again and completely starting over and facing rejection.

Potentially terrifying.

But I was determined that I will not be alone here.

I'm going to build a community.

I'm going to meet my people.

So within 24 hours of making that decision, I was at a networking event with a business card that I don't even know what it said.

It had my name on it.

I'm like, I'm just putting myself out there.

So I met people, I shook hands, and since then, it's been incredible, the community I've been able to build, build here.

Because first of all, the Edmonton business community is incredible, exceptional.

But it's.

It's been kind of been a domino impact of people, you know, introducing me to more and more of their community, and it's just been truly incredible.

But now I've spent the last good part of the year building this really big vision.

And I was fortunate about, I say, like, maybe four or five months ago, meeting someone that had a really similar vision.

So we've been tag teaming it and as business partners, kind of building this out.

So that is something that I'm really passionate about, that I've been building.

Well, sure, we'll talk about it later.

But it's an entrepreneur's growth network that I'm really passionate about.

I'm also a speaker.

Now.

That's been a big dream of mine is to get on stage and inspire other entrepreneurs to face their fears and just really shoot for the moon and get out there.

Because people hold themselves back a lot of the time.

So I just want to inspire people to just take action and, yeah, do what it is that they're passionate about.

But anyways, you asked who's carry.

I feel like that's a long winded version of my story, but that's kind of.

I feel like that's all really relevant.

It's all brought me to who I am today.

So absolutely.

No, it's a powerful story.

And like, you know, the fact that you've had to restart not once but twice and have apparently crushed it both times.

You have the road map, you have the guide book.

You know, maybe that should be the next speech.

How the heck do you rebuild a life twice, you know, in a new city?

Because so many people, you know, make that choice to go somewhere else and start fresh.

And it's.

It's hard.

And it's so funny because we both have.

We both have seemingly tripped and fell into the community building life.

It wasn't it wasn't necessarily what I had set out to do, even with Catalyst Club, but it became blazingly obvious after hundreds of interviews with entrepreneurs not unlike yourself, very successful people that have made massive impacts, who have literally told me, kelly, I have nobody I can talk to.

Like, I, you know, I can't talk to my significant other.

They're sick of hearing about it.

I can't talk to my co founder because they expect me to have my shit together.

I can't talk to my employees because they expect me to have my shit together.

And I don't know a lot of other entrepreneurs.

Like, I just don't know anyone.

And so I just.

It just kept coming up, Carrie, over and over again, and I was like, my gosh, like, we need support communities for entrepreneurs.

Which was what kind of ended up leading into the Catalyst Club and looks like it's leading into.

Into scale IQ for you.

But it's.

You're absolutely right.

It's a massive, massive need.

And we could have, you know, we talked about this earlier.

We could have hundreds of communities and it still wouldn't be enough.

We have to create support systems.

And you immediately keyed into that and started doing that the moment you hit Edmonton.

I want to say that me and you, I don't even know how we connected exactly, but I want to say, like, we connected, like, not like two or three weeks into you being in this city.

And honestly, that's a testament to, like, how much work you were doing.

Thank you.

A lot of work.

I think we connected on LinkedIn.

And yeah, yeah, I. I was putting in a lot of work because I would go to events and I would meet a few people and shake hands and connect with them, and then I would go and look at who they're connected with, and then I would say, hey, I see where mutual connections with this person.

Here's who I am.

I'm new to the city.

I'm trying to build a community.

It's nice to meet you.

How can I help and support you?

And so I.

It would just kind of snowball from there.

So I believe that's how we were able to meet.

And yeah, I'm.

I'm grateful that we were able to.

Yeah, likewise, likewise.

I would say, like, the best thing about having this podcast has just simply been the community that a podcast builds.

Right.

Like, people don't really think about.

They think about the impact.

They think, oh, well, you have a podcast podcast, so you get to talk to a whole bunch of people, but actually what you get to do is Surround yourself with more knowledge, more help than you could have ever imagined.

Like, I. I don't think that I could have put two and two together.

How impactful this show would be just in my personal life, frankly, just in the people that I now, when I'm, like, suffering and I'm struggling and I'm like, I need to talk to someone.

I need help.

I now know hundreds of people who I can call for help.

Right.

I don't think that I'd put two and two together.

That's.

That was what was going to happen.

But when people ask me, what's the benefit of having a podcast now, I straight up say it's the community you build with one.

Absolutely.

I think the biggest mistake a lot of people make is thinking they can do it alone.

And you can do a lot alone, honestly.

But I'm a huge believer in collective intelligence.

It's, first of all, the support of having people around you who get it.

Yes, friends and family want to support you, but often they don't understand the isolation of entrepreneurship and the weight that you carry of building something alone, especially if they haven't had that journey.

So they can love you and be supportive, but it's just different to be support, just surrounded by people who get it.

So it's that emotional support, but also the collective intelligence of a group of people who have had their own failures and learn from their own mistakes.

Even just the intelligence between you and I combined, like, this is more than I could achieve in years.

Like, if you have a group of six people and they all come from different backgrounds, different perspectives, and they all learn together, that is more knowledge that you could ever gain in a lifetime as a single person.

So why are we not absorbing the knowledge of the people around us?

I think the answer to that, honestly, we all have an ego, and we all want to blaze our own path.

And it's kind of humbling to, you know, learn from other people.

Or it can be a humbling journey to, like, learn how to do that effectively.

But, like, why are we not doing that more?

You know, we can set ourselves ahead so much.

It's.

It's so funny.

One of my.

One of my friends, Colin Harms.

You probably come across him somewhere on your journey.

So far, he's been.

He's been a major influence in this show long term.

But he was reading.

I forget what book I want to say, like a Mel Robbins book.

He was reading.

I could be wrong on this, but he was reading something like that, and he said, I read something in there and Kelly, it said, whenever you're, like, struggling with something, just let people know it's your first time being human.

And I was like, you know what?

That's a really good point.

I don't know what I'm doing because it's my first time being human.

I haven't done this before.

Right.

None of us have the answers.

And it's so funny because, you know, I think when I started this show, Carrie, I thought that I would meet the people that had all the answers.

I think there was, like, a part of me that just thought, like, I'm so new to entre.

Like, when I started this show, I'd been in business, like, a long time.

I'd helped other people build companies.

Not dissimilar from you, but it was my first time kind of on my own entrepreneurial journey.

I was two years in when the show launched, and I remember thinking, okay, well, I'm gonna meet the people and they're gonna.

I'm gonna ask them the questions and they're gonna have all the answers, and I'll know.

And the more that I interviewed people, the more I realized we all are experts in something for the most part, but none of us have all the answers.

Like, we're still figuring it out.

It's all our first time being human.

Yeah, exactly.

Do you know what?

I was actually at a conference a while back, and they had a panel of these four experts on stage and a moderator, and they were asking questions.

And there was one question that was asked to one of the panelists, and he was just completely upfront, and he was like, you know, I'm not sure, but I would love to open this up.

Like, what do you guys think?

And then the rest of the panelists brought in their perspectives, and we actually got some great discussion from the audience, and we ended up getting, like, a dozen perspectives on this topic where, like, no one was wrong.

Everybody just had their own perspective that they brought in, and it ended up being such a good discussion.

And we all learned in the audience.

We all learned so much more than we would have if that guy had just shared his one opinion, even if he was a complete expert and knew the perfect on paper answer.

Yeah, that's been like, maybe the biggest, most amazing thing that surprised me from the community building.

So we do, you know, not.

Probably not unlike you, we do multiple events in our communities.

Two of our events are essentially.

One is like a therapy session for entrepreneurs, which is like, just come in and share your challenge, and let's just, like, community support you, because we get it.

And another one is like a Q and A session.

I'm coming with this challenge.

Help me.

Yeah.

I think in the beginning, I was like, my gosh, like, I don't know how to do this, because I know I'm not going to have all the answers.

But, you know what's been amazing about it is that the whole community has stepped in, and so I can be in that Q and A panel, basically, where it's like, I don't know.

But, John, do you have the answer?

How about you, Jesse?

Do you have the answer to this?

And you're right.

That collective information, there's probably 200 years of entrepreneurship in that room at any given time.

One of us could never answer it, but as a team, it's amazing what we can accomplish.

Yeah.

And honestly, the beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is that there is no roadmap.

There is no perfect rule book.

There is no.

It's not black and white.

Everyone's journey is completely unique.

And so that's why I think it's so powerful when entrepreneurs come together, because we can support each other in those journeys.

It would almost be easier if we could just say, here is the cookie cutter blueprint of building a business.

There you go.

That would be easy for everybody.

But it's not like that.

And that's why it's so beautiful when people come together and we're able to support each other and support.

This is why I love.

The community is supporting each other in their failures.

Yeah.

And we're all struggling, every one of us.

Yep.

High highs and low lows.

And a lot of people give up in those lows.

But if you have people that can support you during those dips, that's where you become resilient, really is if you have people around you that can pick you up and encourage you when you need it.

Well, and it's pretty cool that you're, like, so focused or have been so focused on that technology space because, you know, maybe you could create the roadmap 20 or 30 years ago, pre Internet.

Right.

Or pre AI for us.

Right.

But my gosh, I don't think anybody can see two years into the future at this point, let alone 20.

Exactly.

Like, AI is completely changing the game.

This is why I'm getting on stage.

Honestly.

This is why I'm speaking.

This is why I'm creating courses about this.

This is why we're doing workshops.

A lot of scale.

IQ is education focused.

And the reason for that is because everything is changing.

We are standing at the edge of a New era, literally, business will be completely different in five years or 10 years, and nobody knows what that's going to look like.

So there's all these unknowns, and a lot of people are in denial of it, unfortunately, and they're just kind of pushing against it and they're holding onto what's familiar, which is our natural instinct.

We're going to lean into what's comfortable.

That's how we work as humans.

I get that.

But if there's anything I've learned about stepping into the unknown and starting from a clean slate, it takes a lot of courage to do that.

But I really think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs need to do right now is kind of stepped into that, like, discomfort.

You don't need to fully let go, like, hold on to what's working, obviously.

But I just think it requires a bit of a mindset shift of, okay, this is.

That this is.

AI is on my team if I want it to be.

It's not here to replace me necessarily.

It is here to help me.

So how can I use that to enhance what's already working for me?

Because if I.

If you don't do that, unfortunately, there's going to be other people that do, and they're going to be working ahead a lot faster.

So it requires a bit of a shift in mindset right now.

So that, that's why I'm talking about what I am, because I just really feel a lot of urgency.

Things are moving so quickly and you.

You need to be able to keep up.

Me and my partner Shelby were sitting at a table, I want to say, like a.

Not even a year ago now, but a while ago.

And I remember thinking at the time, because I just learned the stat and it might even be beyond this now, you would know more than I do.

But at that point, AI was advancing two times, like, double in power every six months at that point.

That was about a year ago.

And I remember doing the math and realizing that if we use 2023 is like the year of AI emergence, like chat GPT1 or whatever.

By 2028, AI was going to be a thousand times more powerful than it was in 2023.

And I'm thinking, oh, shit, it's 2025.

We're three years away from a thousand times more power.

And I remember thinking, what does that even look like?

Like, I don't think we can even imagine what a thousand times more powerful AI looks like.

But it's going to be like you said, world shaking like night and day, different.

It will be.

I completely agree.

I think that narrative unfortunately is creating a lot of fear in people.

And so that's also why I'm talking, what I'm talking about.

So in my 30 days where I was creating, you know, I, I built so many frameworks, I created courses, I created so many things.

Something that came out of that was a framework called the human signal.

And that is my response to this incredibly fast moving world where people are scared, where like, what is business going to look like?

How is this going to impact me personally, professionally?

So basically it's my idea of what is something that, what is it that technology can never ever replace?

Regardless of what, where AI goes, there are things that will never ever change.

If we look a thousand years ago, what was it that built businesses?

What was it that made people successful?

And those are things that no algorithm can ever repeat with.

It's your, your human skills.

It's being adaptable, it's being able to build relationships, it's effectively communicating.

It's the art of persuasion.

It's a value creation.

It's.

Everyone is completely unique.

As your lived experience, it's like your fingerprint.

Everybody's is completely unique.

And like your intuition, your skills, your passions and these are things that technology, regardless of what it looks like, technology can never compete with or replace these things.

So how can we use the technology that's obviously here and not going anywhere, it's obviously going to be more and more part of our world moving forward.

How can we lean into that and help get the technology to actually protect and enhance those things so that we can be resilient moving forward?

So that, that's my kind of my response to how quickly things are all moving.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're absolutely right.

There's a lot of fear because especially for small business where it's like, is my skill, is my skill set or service even going to be valid two years from today?

It's, you know, I'm sure it's a question we've always had to ask.

I think the Internet age also made obsolete a lot of services, a lot of companies, right?

All we have to do is look at Blockbuster, right?

Like perfect example, I would say taxis.

We were in Calgary over the weekend.

I think I might have saw five taxis at one time.

I would have saw 500 in an hour, but Uber got them.

Right.

So I guess we can't see what those are, but we do have to ultimately prepare for it.

What advice are you giving to these small businesses that you're working with?

How do they Prepare?

Is it small incremental steps?

Is it looking at repetitive tasks?

Do you have a framework that you work with them to get them prepared so that it's not such a shock to them?

So the biggest mistake I see small businesses making right now is that they're adopting AI in a, out of a reaction.

They are reacting to the fast moving technology and it's out of the place of oh, I need to keep up.

And so they just use it without purpose and without intention.

So my position is that if you, if you implement AI and you put it into a chaotic environment, it will just make chaos happen faster.

So what is the intention behind using this technology, especially where it's at right now?

I think if you're, if you don't have a clear purpose and intention and a problem that you're solving with it, you're just using it for the sake of using it, you're probably better off just not even using it right now, to be honest.

Just like go with what's working in your business.

I think that you need to take it a layer back and really do an analysis of where you're at, what your bottlenecks are, what your problems are and how can we implement this technology in a way that actually makes sense for you?

And it's hard to do because AI is very different than any other technology that we've ever had at our finger fingertips because we're used to technology coming in a box, like an IKEA box, let's say you hide that's right thought or something and it tells you, okay, this is what you're getting, this is how you onboard, this is the end result you're going to get with it.

Here's how you train it, here's how you get your team on it.

Like it's very clear, very black and white.

You get this box with the instructions.

AI has no instructions, there is no box.

There is no visual graphic of what the end product looks like on the paper.

You are given the raw materials and told, here you go, you can build whatever you want with this.

There's no black and white result that you create with it.

This is a very powerful technology you can do a lot with, but people have very little instructions.

This is also why we're taking an educational standpoint here.

It's like informing people of like how you can use this in various areas of your business.

So I think it can be very powerful in solving key problems in your business if it's used with intention and if you've got to have the right Balance of human interaction and AI.

I don't think you should ever fully rely on AI.

So if you have that, the right amount of human touch points and you have intention behind it, it can be very powerful.

But unfortunately, very few people are taking that approach.

Yeah, yeah.

And we're seeing that actually, because if you look at what posts and marketing materials are working well on LinkedIn at this point, it's actually not the fully AI approach.

Right.

Like, we're.

I think we're already kind of training to be able to spot it.

And when we spot it, it's like, okay, like, I think I'm checking out, like, what's doing well on LinkedIn.

90 Second personal video.

Right.

Real faces, real people.

Mind you, I was gonna say, I just heard an A Completely AI podcast.

I don't know if you've heard it yet, but the Joe Rogan AI experience.

Have you.

Have you heard his AI experience yet?

I have, I have, yeah.

It blew my mind.

It blew my mind.

I'm like, oh, my gosh.

He just did a whole show with someone who is passed away, did Steve Jobs, and both were AI.

And I liked it, which is the worst part.

I enjoyed the conversation of robots.

It's so funny, honestly.

It is.

That is such a big conversation right now.

Like, when I was.

If I go back when I was building those custom agents for the automotive industry, we were creating basically voice and AI chat agents to help with the car salesman problem.

Nobody likes talking to a car salesman.

So we're like, how can we streamline the car sales process using AI?

And I feel like it was a great idea at that time.

This was back in 2022, 23.

That's maybe way ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was a great idea.

People were.

People were very interested in the product.

I did so many demos.

It was a hard sell at that point because people were so skeptical of AI.

They were like, people are not going to want to talk to AI.

People want to talk to people.

My customers don't want to talk to AI.

I'm seeing the shift.

There's quite a shift now.

People.

I literally, like, the other day at an event, I was talking to somebody and she was telling me about the AI chatbot they've built for their business.

And it is.

Has better conversion results than when they had a human bot because they have it trained to a point where it feels very human, very conversational, and it listens to the user.

Like, it doesn't.

It doesn't have this cold, like, classic.

I feel like there's a Bit of a robotic voice.

It likes to talk to a robotic voice.

So I feel like it's trained to the point where people actually like to interact with it.

Personally, I don't mind interacting with AI if it's well trained.

It's, it's fast, it's consistent, it's, you don't have to wait for the human response.

It's the, you know, there's not going to be errors in it.

You know, it's just, there's a lot of benefits to it as a technology is just getting better.

It's, it's come a long way.

So I think it's a really interesting conversation.

Honestly, I don't think that it can ever fully replace, you know, that human authenticity.

The other day I got an email and there was a typo in it and it was actually a breath of fresh air.

You're like, oh, thank God, that's human.

No, I'm like, honestly, it's great to see because I'm used to seeing all these LinkedIn posts with that.

I'm like, yeah, that's AI.

That's AI, yeah.

So I honestly, I think people are going to value that human authenticity more and our mistakes and like value our mistakes more because then we're human.

So it's interesting conversation.

I, I was blown away when I heard the Joe Rogan AI experience because it was pretty good.

Like, you know, you can tell just the way that the sentences are structured and stuff, that it's still a little bit robotic.

But the fact that's where we're at, which to me that means in a year to two years, you will not be able to tell the difference between an AI conversation and a human conversation.

I would, I would bet at this point, one to two years, you wouldn't know that that wasn't Joe Rogan.

And you know, aside from Steve Jobs not being with us, you wouldn't know that it wasn't Steve Jobs.

It was that close.

And I guess what does that actually mean to the value of the authentic conversation?

To me, I think what it means is that, you know, you're already working on it, keynotes are real in person is going to be like the big thing, right?

Because we can get, we can get Carrie ends voice AI automated to give the best virtual speech ever given.

But if you want the real Carrie ends, that's where the value is going to be.

I definitely see the real human experience starting to become a premium commodity.

I completely agree with that.

I think we've been on this very fast moving train towards automation.

And AI and everyone trying to do everything more efficiently and faster and keeping up with the rat race.

But I foresee a shift, I think it'll, it'll flip.

Where people are going to put less emphasis on the streamlining and more emphasis on how can I authentically connect with my customers, how can I show up for them, how can I have these, you know, face to face conversations?

Because I know that's what they value the most.

So I think, yeah, it's very interesting.

I think that authenticity, that in person handshake, nothing will ever be able to replace that is again, going back to like the things that an algorithm can never replace.

If you really think about it, nothing can replace that handshake.

They can replicate your voice, they can replicate your face, and that's a whole other conversation.

But nothing can ever replace an in person set.

Somebody standing on a stage and you being in a room with thousands of people and the applause, the, the, the feeling of being surrounded by people who get it and having that one on one coffee with someone who just really sees you and understands you and supports you and gives you that hug.

Those things will never, ever be able to be replaced or competed with technology.

So I agree.

I think those are gonna be very valuable in the future.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there you go.

Take away from this start to figure out how you can do more stuff as yourself, as yourself.

That authentic thing, you know, hand write that email shoot that text book, that lunch.

So even from a business perspective, so I have a marketing background, right.

And so it's very interesting to see the impact this is having on SEO and like findability for businesses.

And it'll be cool to see how the AI algorithms come out because they're all, they're still kind of figuring that out with how is AI SEO gonna work and PPC and that kind of thing.

But I think that from a small business standpoint, this is what I've been, you know, helping small businesses with is the content that you create as a business needs to reflect that same authenticity if you want to get found.

Because if somebody is going to type into AI, find me the best coffee shop in within 15 km.

The results that come up are going to be based on that person's search history and where they've been in the last few weeks and who they've talked to and who they follow on social media and what their interests are and what kind of vehicle they drive.

And it's hyper, hyper personalized.

Everything is going to be completely personalized.

So for us as businesses to put out content marketing content or even just like your, your, what your website looks like, everything, your Google business profile, like for everything to reflect how what you do authentically meets the needs of your ideal customers.

So having those handwritten blog posts, having the imperfect, the videos on social media, the algorithms are going to catch onto that because they're going to know that people prefer authentic content.

Yeah.

So.

Well, and it already is.

It already is.

Right.

It's no secret that authentic video on LinkedIn is doing the best at this point.

You can't really fake it yet.

Keyword yet.

Give it two years.

Exactly.

But yeah, it's like, this is what I mean.

Like everything is changing and like there are no simple answers to a lot of these questions and everybody is asking them.

So, yeah, that's why I feel like it's so important to talk about it because everything is, it's all changing so quickly and business, and just the world in general is going to look very different in just a few years.

So how can we as humans and as businesses, how can we hold on to what's most important and show up as our authentic selves, but also not be in denial of this technology?

It's there, it's not going anywhere.

So how can we use this in a way that is ethical and helps us and helps the people around us?

Yeah, yeah.

And, and, and ultimately you have to figure out how to incorporate into your business because you have a valuable service and we have to make sure that you keep doing it.

Exactly.

I'll be able to adapt.

Absolutely.

You talk about something called the seven pillars, right?

What is the seven pillars?

I know when we started talking initially that was something that I wanted to spend a little bit of time on with you.

You speak about it.

What are the seven pillars?

Yeah, great question.

So the seven pillars, I call them the seven pillars of a future proof business.

So this again, it comes to the conversation that everything is changing so quickly.

And the reason why I'm talking about these seven pillars is that the pillars are different than what they've been in the past.

So this is why this is important.

So the pillars are branding, marketing, sales team, systems, AI and automation.

So the AI and automation pillars, those are new ones.

Those were not essential to building a future growth, resilient business 10 years ago, or if that even.

But these are rising pillars that are becoming a very essential piece if you want to build a resilient business that's successful in the future.

So basically this is what our education at scale IQ is built around.

Actually, these seven pillars that we address every core area of business from a modern future forward perspective and talking about like how, like how can business owners become educated in every single one of these areas?

Because especially like in the AI automation, I feel like there's a lot of, a lot of like authentic, actually helpful education that's modern, that's out there for small businesses.

So basically these seven pillars, the idea is that they work together to provide a foundation for a future proof business basically in any, any industry.

Help them become more resilient, more scalable and future ready.

And if any of them is walking, like let's say, let's say you have really strong marketing but you don't have a great team in place, maybe you're having team issues or maybe you don't have systems in place, maybe you don't have AI or you have, you've got great, like great sales but you don't have the AI paces.

So if any of them are lacking, you don't have that solid foundation and there's going to be cracks moving forward.

So if you set that foundation now, regardless of where technology goes, you're going to have that solid foundation to be able to grow.

Can you give us a little bit of an in depth Just because it's seven, it's a lot.

Okay, five might have been enough.

No, I'm kidding.

Take us through each pillar and maybe just a couple key principles or ideas around each one to just help our business owners maybe start to implement those today.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

So branding, first of all, what is it that you're being remembered by?

What is the first impression that people see in your business?

You have three seconds to set a first impression as a business so you can have the best product in the world.

If you don't have effective branding, if that's not, if that's not being communicated within a few seconds of somebody coming across your, your brand, you're not doing your product justice.

So that's a lesson that I learned when we started theralex because we had solid branding and we had solid imagery and representation of our products and that led that into the marketing and the sales process.

So branding is a really important piece, the marketing.

Marketing is that communication.

So branding is the eyeballs.

Marketing is the voice.

It's the communication of your product and what you do and the problem you solve.

It's you getting the attention of who your ideal buyers are.

And that can be in so many ways, like if you're networking, that's, that's marketing.

It can be digital marketing.

That's a Big piece of it is that website, the social media marketing.

If you're running paid advertising, it's just the voice, you know, the amplification of your, your business, your, your product, your solution into the world.

And then we have sales.

So you bring them into the sales process, they've raised their hand, they said I'm interested.

Okay.

And then they get into the sales process.

You can talk about that.

Those are more of the one on one conversations.

You bring them to conversion, actually process that transaction money in exchange for the product or service.

Sales team is a really important aspect of the, the seven pillars because you can't just do it alone.

You can to some extent, but you become your own bottleneck very quickly.

And team.

This like bleeds into the system pillar a little bit.

But team actually also means delegating to like if you, if you have like physical people in your team, but also like virtual assistants or even like technology, like you can delegate to technology to replace a lot of those tasks that you don't necessarily need to be doing.

As a business owner, your time is really valuable.

So how can you like delegate to, you know, people and systems to make the most of your time?

So team and then systems having the right software tools, technology in place to be able to actually scale.

It is crazy how many small businesses I talk to who don't have systems and they are just kind of running by the seat of their pants.

They have their email open on one tab and social media on the other and they just kind of just, it's everything is in their head and they don't actually track anything and it's just, with all due respect, a big hot mess.

And it's a lot to keep track of with one person or even if you do have a teen and you don't have those systems, it's just the communication is off and it's just, you know, it's, it's a real challenge.

So systems just getting the right technology in place to be able to actually scale and then the final two pillars, AI and automation.

So AI, how can you integrate AI into your team?

An example that has actually become quite popular with the people that I work with is using, you can use different AI technologies for this, but using AI to preserve human knowledge in your business.

So particularly onboarding, offboarding, if you have somebody leaving your team, you can create a custom GPT of that person and you train it on all of their email threads and calls and messages and social media and everything.

You just train it on that person.

You basically build a digital version of that person and you use that when the next person comes on, you preserve that knowledge and they can be trained by that GPT and you have a much smoother onboarding process.

Another example is having increasing or improving the communication within your team.

So we have, let's say at theralux, we have a team, like a pretty diverse team where everybody has different learning styles, different communication styles.

So what you can do is have personality assessments so that you understand the people on your team better, understand their strengths and weaknesses and how they communicate, and then you can plug that into AI and help AI to communicate with people in your team better.

So for example, we're having issues with Bob and Bob did this and this and that, and I, this is how I want to resolve the issue.

How can I communicate this to him?

And then it'll come up with like a script or an email or something to be able to effectively communicate this to this person in a language that they understand.

Because for me, I just have my one perspective of how I can solve this problem.

And often everyone in your team, you're all on the same side, but it's just so much miscommunication that happens.

So communication is so hard.

It's like it's where everything breaks down always.

Exactly, exactly.

It's huge.

So that's been, I've seen that in internal communication.

That's been a really, really big way that AI can help and streamline.

And then the last pillar is automation.

So where are the inefficiencies in your business?

Where are all the bottlenecks?

And a question I often ask is, in a perfect world, where would your business be a year from now?

What.

In a perfect world, shoot for the moon.

What ultimate goal would you want to reach?

Envision yourself there.

And what is holding you back from doing that in a year?

Really?

Like what?

What is it?

Where are your bottlenecks?

So that really sheds light on the inefficiencies in your business.

Maybe you need to hire for this certain role.

Maybe you need to get better technology in place, maybe you need to get more lead generation.

Maybe as a business owner, everybody's asking you for everything and you can only do so and so much.

So where are those inefficiencies?

And then how can you create automations to relieve those bottlenecks?

Because unfortunately, a lot of small business owners just aren't even aware of how technology can help them.

But it really starts with identifying where the problems are.

And then there's a very good chance there's a technology or some kind of automation that can be put in place to help relieve that bottleneck.

As somebody who used to and still does assist companies with selecting and finding these technologies, how do they find them?

Because I think that's a lot of problem is that, like, first off, companies haven't identified what the challenge is, and then if they identify with the challenges, they may or may not be able to identify what technology would fix it.

What, you know, I mean, would your advice be to hire a consultant to come on and help you identify someone who may be like you, who already knows what solutions might be out there in the market?

Or are there ways that business owners can figure that out on their own?

I think talking to a consultant is never a bad idea, but I do think that there's a lot of progress you can make on your own.

It kind of depends on the stage of your business.

But I really do think that if you ask around, ask other people in your industry, go on Reddit.

That's a really good resource, actually.

See what people are saying online about different software, because especially in the AI space, there are new solutions coming out literally every day.

So what works now, there might be a better option six months down the road.

So I think, like I said, it just starts with identifying that problem, and then from there, do a simple Google search.

There might be, top of, right at the top of the page, the best solution for you.

A lot of them have free trials, so you can check it out.

But I would honestly, I would just start with talking to people, see what other people are using.

If no one's ever heard of it, nobody else is using it.

You know, that might say something about it.

So.

And also just test it and try it.

You don't need to fully commit to something if it's not working for you.

But yeah, I say just be curious, see what you can find.

And if you want to talk to somebody, like, I've worked with a few clients where we have completely revamped their tech stack, like new technology across the board, and we have AI infused into all of them, and they're all talking to each other and they're all automated.

And that's great.

Obviously you.

You got.

It's helpful to talk to a professional about that and have somebody help you set that up.

So also kind of depends on the extent of work that you want to do.

If you want to recreate everything.

If you have one little problem that you just want one tool for, you can probably find that on your own.

So.

Amazing, amazing.

And I want to lead this into your keynotes because you've been doing a lot of keynote speaking.

It's all over LinkedIn.

What are some of the talks that you've been giving and what are you looking for with regards to upcoming shows?

Yeah, great question.

So I talk about the future of entrepreneurship.

That is my, my core topic.

I've had quite a journey myself so I, I share a lot of my story.

I have shared a very small glimpse of it here in the past hour or so, but I share my story and I really open up and I am deeply passionate about entrepreneurs and helping small businesses on their journey.

So I speak to entrepreneurs in general, women in business.

I speak to quite a bit as well.

And just talking about the future of business, I know that's a really big topic, but subtopics, I would say women in business.

I also talk quite a bit in AI and how AI is transforming the business world.

More on the technical side as well, like AI ethics.

How can we ethically implement this into the business world?

But I'd say for the most part, just speaking to entrepreneurs, speaking to people starting out or small businesses.

If you've been in business even five or 10 years and you've hit that bottleneck, you've hit that ceiling and you want to grow past that, speaking to that onions.

Amazing.

Amazing.

And obviously we started this show on community, so why don't we just end it on community?

Take us into Scale IQ and what you're building.

Sure.

Oh, I'm so excited about this.

So Scale IQ is an AI infused education platform for small businesses.

It is everything I wish already existed, everything I wish I had.

So it is, it's providing that knowledge across every core area of business that I've talked about here and then from a very future forward perspective.

So the a modern approach to business education, we provide that, but also the community aspect as well.

So it could a trusted peer support network, a community, a place of belonging for entrepreneurs.

A safe place to learn and innovate and succeed and fail and be supported while you fail.

And you have people that are going to, you know, help you and encourage you and support you through it.

Also technology.

So we have like a three prong approach, access to technology and systems, CRM frameworks, tools, basically everything that you need as a small business to be successful.

We help you with your tech stack and we provide ongoing support and community around that as well.

Amazing.

And Carrie, if people are hearing this right now and they want to check it out, where do they find it?

ScaleIQ Group and if people want to find you, what's the best way to do so.

Find me on LinkedIn.

Carrie, this has been great.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Love Love talking AI.

Love forecasting what the future might look like.

I don't know about you, my crystal ball has been broken for a while.

I'm still figuring it out.

We are coming up to Halloween.

Maybe somebody will lend me one.

Oh goodness.

Until next time, we've been speaking with Carrie N. Serial Entrepreneur, Founder of Scale iq.

Looking forward to our next chat.

Gary thank you so much Kelly.

I appreciate it.

Until next time.

You've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we'll catch you on the flip side.

This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca.

See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.