Drowning in daily tasks while driving transformation?
Discover how the right mindset turns AI automation into your practical
ally, so you can escape the operational grind and focus on the high impact
work that truly lights you up.
My name is Alexandre Nevski, and this is Innovation Tales.
Navigating Change, one story at a time, we share insights from leaders tackling
the challenges of today's digital world.
Welcome to Innovation Tales, the podcast exploring the human
side of digital transformation.
Escaping the operational grind isn't just about wanting change.
It demands effective systems, especially when using complex tools like AI.
So how do you build those systems smartly amid the constant technological
buzz and endless vendor promises?
Our guest, Aarti Anand, spent 15 years as a product leader.
She knows what it takes to build solutions that work and scale effectively.
She famously walked away from the security of that senior role choosing
to build a life centered on freedom.
Now she channels that focus and her deep product expertise into
her AI automation business.
Expect insights grounded in years of practical implementation
experience, perfect for leaders needing proven approaches.
Without further ado, here's my conversation with Aarti Anand.
Aarti, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Alex.
I'm excited.
Well, you are passionate about using AI to help businesses
scale past the daily grind, and I sense your own story fuels this.
From your perspective, why AI for scaling and why now?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I had been building software products for almost 15 years.
And then I realized almost each one of us tends to get busy in day to
day, which may not necessarily be as productive as we think we are.
And with the rise of AI and automation and the tools that you literally see on the
market every single day getting updated.
I call it a golden era and golden age of technology, where if you know what
you're struggling with, if you know what the bottleneck is, you can easily
find or build yourself a tool or an automation that could literally put
anything that is repetitive, that's boring to you, that can be put in the form of
a workflow or a process which can be delegated to either someone else or we
could use AI to build that automation.
And what business owners don't realize is when you take yourself
off of your business, how much freedom it actually gives you.
Because let's be honest, we all created our businesses or started our businesses
to build the life of freedom that we want.
But somewhere along the way, we totally forget why we're doing this.
And then we get in the daily grind and the follow ups, and the emails.
But there is a better way to do this, and it's with AI and automations
and it's a whole world out there that's just ready for you to explore.
And that's what I help business owners do now.
Super interesting.
Because I guess for a lot of our listeners, when we mention artificial
intelligence, there's so much news every week, like it almost feels like a second
job just to keep up with the technology.
So I think it's super interesting that when you looked at that, instead of being
overwhelmed, I guess by how everything's changing over time, how much that there
is to learn now, you see the opposite.
You're like, oh, I can use this.
I can put a few automations in my business and get time back.
Do you think it's like just how you think of technology generally or was
there something about this specific technology that made you realize this?
I, yeah, I love how you put it.
exactly right.
I think everything that you want to do, it's always
mindset first and action later.
And that's true with technology as well.
Everybody needs to have their North Star.
You wake up.
What is it that excites you?
And that's why I started my business is because when I was working for
someone else, I didn't have the control of the time that I wanted.
If someone wanted me to jump on a call, I had to jump on a call
because it was part of my job.
And when I started looking at my North Star, it was very clear to me that
I'm a mom of three kids, two dogs.
I have parents to look after.
They're getting older as my kids are growing up, my parents
are not getting any younger.
I'm not getting any younger for that matter.
So what is it that I look for in life?
What does my life look like at the age of 70 or 80?
And then, start to work backwards.
And one thing I realized is I just didn't wanna lose all those
years when my kids are growing up.
So what is it that I was missing?
I was missing the freedom to take decisions, how I am spending my time?
Where am I spending my time?
And who am I spending it with?
When I started looking through that lens, starting my own business made sense.
I just had to figure out what I would do as a new business owner.
And right around that time, AI and automations, they started booming
and I was like, wow, if you can just automate your lead gen, then
you are not sitting and wondering where's my next client coming from?
Which is a beautiful thing for a business owner.
Because then they're just sitting and fulfilling.
They're not figuring out where the next client is again coming from.
And similarly, when you automate the lead nurturing part of it, you're
also now converting them on autopilot, you're not sitting and talking
to them and doing the follow ups.
I love that we're living in this technology.
I see this as a blessing.
So it's always what are you trying to achieve?
And then AI or social or anything is just a tool.
If you start looking at, from that perspective, then you look for
problems and then you wanna solve them.
And you have a mindset that I wanna solve this.
And then you go figure out how you are gonna do it.
But what we end up doing is the reverse.
We start to look for how and that in intimidates us because
we haven't figured that part out.
But if you look for what is it that needs solving, and then you start
brainstorming how later, then it just becomes easier than you think.
I love the the reference to the North Star.
And I'm also thinking that your clients, when you start working with them and
I guess bringing that enthusiasm, that optimism for the technology to free a
lot of their time, I'm guessing they, they must also feel like, well, you're
technical, you have a background in software engineering, so you can do it.
But can they, really?
Is that a conversation that you're having when you're starting working with clients?
Yes.
And and that's the number one concern I hear.
Because if I pitch them how I'm doing it, what technology I'm doing it, then of
course we're gonna derail the conversation from: they have a problem that they need
to solve, and I'm getting into how I'm gonna solve it, which of course is gonna
be an information overload for them.
It probably won't make a lot of sense because when I set up a
15 minute discovery call, what is it that they wanna hear?
They wanna hear, do I have a solution to their problem?
Yes or no?
How I've helped someone in the past who had the same problem.
That's all they care about.
And it's good because they don't talk to AI strategists on a daily basis,
but I talk to B2B owners who have those kind of problems on a daily basis.
So I need to have a process and a roadmap in place with how I'm gonna take them
from this painful situation to the sunny day scenario where they want to go.
So I never talk about how I'm gonna do it.
I always talk about what is their problem?
What is the cost of inaction that they are not automating today?
And if we were to put a black box where they input the problem and the output
is a sunny day scenario, what that sunny day scenario would look like for them?
And when I put that conversation in that perspective, they end up loving
the idea because they, in the end, they don't wanna know how we're gonna
do it, they just wanna know if we have a solution for their problem or not?
And to anybody who's listening, I always encourage them to also
route your conversations and lead your conversations in that way.
Because in the end, someone who hires you, they don't really care how you
solve it, they just wanna know what is the probability that you'll be able
to help them solve their pain point.
That makes total sense.
And so do you always start with them from lead generation and
nurturing or, like sometimes, they need something else entirely?
Yeah, it's really different and based on what is the pain point that
they have in their business today?
What is the bottleneck?
So I start with: what are the goals for the next six months or 12 months?
Where do you wanna go and what, how is the business doing today?
If they tell me we're three millions top line revenue, my next question
typically is, well, why isn't it six or two X of that already?
And then they know or they start to brainstorm why they
think they're struggling.
And that's typically our starting point for peeling the onion
on what's actually underneath.
Do you think you need to hire more?
Do you think you have inefficient processes?
Do you think you have processes that nobody can replicate them.
They're not reproducible because most likely it's not a hiring problem.
It's a systems problem.
They don't have the systems that can help them support to
go from 3 million to 6 million.
So first we need to sit down and we need to put those systems in place.
Because guess what?
If you don't have a repeatable process, we can't automate it.
Then we're just guessing.
So, it's systems first and AI / automations later.
Because you can't automate anything that's not proven to work even manually.
So it, it almost sounds like using AI for automation is an excuse or a catalyst
for establishing systems that scale?
Is that what you're saying?
That's where it should always start.
Do I have the systems in place that can help us scale?
If yes, let's just have them run faster by using AI and automating
and doing that at the scale.
Okay, that makes sense.
So what are the other common issues that people face when you
start working and they're like, oh, AI, we can do this and that?
What are the common misconceptions?
Because there's so much noise around AI, it could be
overwhelming for anybody, right?
So when they come, the first thing they're struggling with:
where does it fit in my business?
I don't even know where to start.
So I give them clarity by having them take a quiz.
So I've put together now a roadmap where after helping dozens of business
owners, and after taking 200 and some change discovery calls over
the last few months, I finally come up with a roadmap where I take them
from AI-curious to AI-first operator.
So when they're AI curious, they know AI exists.
They just, they are overwhelmed by all the noise.
They just don't know what is the next step?
Where do I go?
So I take them through this journey of awareness.
The second stage is assessment, where they really sit down and look for: oh, I know
what AI can now, so what can AI do for me?
Then they enter the stage three, which is alignment.
And in alignment, they really sit down and see, this is what
AI can do for your business.
Now they need a blueprint.
So that's when they enter stage four, which is AI implementation.
So we take them through an AI audit, and in that AI audit we give them a
blueprint, which is a 40-50 report.
And it lays down everything that they're stuck in their business today: the
first automation they can put in, which will have the highest ROI, and then
all the other automations they can put.
So they can either hire us to implement it or they can just take
that report and go with another vendor.
And after that, they enter a very cool stage, which is AI liftoff.
Now they have implemented something from that report.
And they see the ROI and now their mind is blown.
Now they wanna go replicate this in other parts of their business.
So they can just take that blueprint and have it replicated in other
teams or orgs or departments or processes or functions inside their
whole business as an umbrella.
And after they've implemented all of that, then after that, I say they graduated.
They are an AI-first operator.
They are running a business where AI is part of their DNA.
Yeah, of course, once you have experience, you probably also
have a bit of skills internally.
Things start to accelerate.
Do you see any patterns in these custom roadmaps that you
are producing for each one?
Do you see patterns repeating, for example, in terms of what
you know is automated first?
So things like marketing or more like integration between
their CRM and something else?
Are there any patterns that you see emerging?
Yeah, so I think the internal operations should always be
the first to be automated.
Because that's level one.
If you're sitting and looking at your email box, you are basically a
CEO who probably has an hourly rate of 500 where you're spending it on
a task, which is worth $10 an hour.
When you do that internal operations, everything is automated, that's
when you go on higher leverage tasks, which is lead gen and your
content, and all those things.
So you need to make sure you as a business owner, as the CEO of the
business, you take yourself off of the lower leverage tasks as soon as
possible, and that's your baseline.
And once you go up there, then you are either automating your lead
gen and at that point you are still hopping on sales calls, which is good
because that's where you print money as soon as you close a client, right?
And at some point you also wanna get to where you either
hire someone else to do it.
Or you make sure that before someone jumps on a sales call with you,
you have qualified them enough.
So you're not the taking those sales calls where you're also qualifying
them on the fly and then you figure out 20 minutes later you've completely
wasted your time and their time too.
So lead qualification is one of the things that I help them
automate via AI voice agents.
And it's a very popular solution that we have.
Because, if you can have AI call the person who just showed interest
and they entered your ecosystem as a completely cold lead, if you can send
them a text or have AI call them.
And I'm gonna use a real estate example here, they showed interest, they left
their information on some of the forms.
Maybe you were running a targeted ad or something.
And they left their information so clearly they interested.
If you can reach out to them within the next three minutes, you have a
90% higher probability of converting them compared to if you reach out
to them five days later when you have the time to reach out to them.
That's an amazing example.
It sounds like, whether it's on this lead generation side, where it's not
that you're no longer going to do a sales call ever, it's just that you are
ensuring there is a callback within three minutes and also that you qualify before
you engage in a longer conversation.
Or coming back to your initial example with the CEO spending time on emails,
I'm guessing it's not that the CEO stops talking to everyone in the company.
And now it's a chat bot that does that, I guess.
It's separating those requests that can be handled by AI versus those that, the
CEO actually needs to spend their time on.
Do you see that pattern where it's more about sorting the work between those
that do require human intervention and those that are repetitive, mundane,
or need to be happening three minutes after the lead has been submitted.
The way I help them figure this part out, like what exactly do I automate and where
do I sit down and actually do the work?
So I have them do this exercise where they list out all the tasks and they
only pick the tasks that light them up and they're also printing money.
So that could be, for a CEO, it could be sales, for another CEO, it could
be that they just want to be build a world-class team and they love to
train their employees on something.
For another CEO it could be that they like to produce content.
So they like to spend time on podcasting and guesting and hosting.
It's different for everybody.
I have them sit down and list all the tasks.
So the only tasks that they should be doing on a daily basis are
either the tasks that light them up.
They may not print them money, but they help them become the better version of
themselves, which is working out, playing with your kids, spending time with your
family, whatever that is that helps you do your own personal development.
Those are the tasks you cannot delegate.
Running a half marathon.
You wanna do it because it's gonna give you better heart health.
Going and strength training.
It's gonna build you muscle and you'll have an optimized body.
Which will be able to make harder decisions on a daily basis.
Those are the things you wanna do.
You cannot delegate.
And then the second quadrant is where you are doing the task as a CEO for your
business and they also light you up.
And anything else you either wanna delegate to another person or you
wanna build an automation or hire someone to build an automation for you.
You never have to do it again, but you wanna make sure that you have
a training or an SOP in place.
Where if someone to sit down, go through that SOP, it's a repeatable
process they can do manually.
And then once you've proven that, then you go and put automation on top of
it, and then it runs on autopilot.
I love the the selection process.
It's part, let's call it McKinsey or KPMG when you're printing money, and
part, the selection of the task that lights you up, you keep, and everything
else you delegate or you automate.
I think That reminds me more of the Tim Ferris Four Work Week.
But I love it.
I love it.
Yeah, this is called a Drip Matrix and it's not something I came up with.
It's from a book.
It's called Buy Back Your Time, and it was written by an author and entrepreneur.
His content is great, and I'm sure you're aware of him.
His name is Dan Martell.
So I've just adopted that to my heart and then I've adopted
in helping business owners.
I have them go through this exercise and it's produced some
really massive results for them.
Great.
We'll make sure to put the link in the description.
And is that where the strategic laziness, let's call it like
this, that you mentioned in some of your other interviews,
is that where it's coming from?
Is that more personal?
Yes.
So that's something I'm sure you know the inspiration's from there.
You wanna be lazy, but then it's because you hate doing hard work which
could have been automated yesterday.
Yes.
So inspiration is definitely from there.
Maybe that's where this is also coming from.
We are both software engineers by training and in software engineering
it pays to write less code.
'Cause there's less to maintain, there's less opportunity for bugs, the code has.
I dunno, remember from way, way back, we had competitions on whose code can
fit in the smallest number of bytes.
So it is something that, as engineers, we got trained on, but I think it has
application in the real world, doesn't it?
Oh, absolutely.
And again, it's always mindset first, isn't it?
When you were to produce something which is world class, nobody
has to sit and maintain it.
That means a lot of thought went ahead of time.
And when you put that much energy and thought and strategy into it, it's
definitely gonna be better than anything that was just blurted or was written.
And that's why I call it high leverage.
It's because you are doing things that take more effort and
you've been trained to do this.
Which is why you earn more trust because you know it has been
battle-tested in your head for so long.
And you've proven the value and that's why the leverage is higher than anything else.
Absolutely.
Totally agree.
Uh, Before we wrap up, I usually ask a couple of questions.
And you've already mentioned a book, but usually I ask for a book, a tool,
or a habit that has made the most impact on you, only in the last 12 months.
So is there something more recent then?
Oh, I, I love that question.
There's another book.
It's from an author, I tend to forget his name, but the book is The Miracle Morning.
He said something in the book where he went from being not a
morning person, but also never had run even a mile in his life.
And then he started running.
And he went from not being a runner to a marathoner.
And I just took that to heart.
I had recently started my business, and then I literally went from
couch to half marathon in 10 weeks, last year, this time of the year.
Ah, congratulations.
Thank you.
And running has become a part of my life now.
and I run because I wanna have good heart health, but I also do strength
training because it, if you have more muscles, of course your body's optimized.
And it also gives you the quality of the life that you need when you wanna
live longer for your kids and your family to enjoy all the grandkids that
I'm planning to have in the future.
That's great.
That's an excellent answer.
And finally, I know we've been talking about everything that's
changing, but is there maybe one thing that will not change, as far as
you're concerned, 10 years from now?
It would be human to human connection.
I know people are worried about AI taking over everything, but the conversation
that you and I are having, I would never delegate it to AI or anybody else.
I would not put my AI agent in front of a podcast.
I.
It's something that will never change and I, I think people overcomplicate,
tend to overcomplicate things.
It's just, it's a technology.
Use it where it's needed and then free up your time, so you can go have more
coffee chats and happy hours with the people that you wanna hang out with.
Awesome.
Totally on board with that vision.
Aarti, thank you very much.
Likewise, it was a pleasure and I loved the conversation and hoping
to have many more in the future.
That was Aarti Anand, providing such an actionable roadmap, moving from feeling
overwhelmed by AI possibilities to implementing practical high ROI solutions.
Key takeaways for me included her emphasis on starting with internal operations,
the discipline of building systems first, and using clear frameworks to
decide what truly requires leadership attention versus what can be automated.
It's a grounded approach, focused on process and clear thinking,
not just the technology itself.
Reflecting on Aarti structured method from initial assessment to full liftoff,
maybe the critical question for us is: what is the single biggest bottleneck
in your specific area right now that could be addressed first with smarter
systems, paving the way for automation?
For business owners inspired by this vision, but unsure how to take the
first practical steps in automating workflows, Aarti is offering a
complimentary 15 minute audit call.
Check the description for her calendar link.
As always, we have more exciting topics and guest appearances lined up, so
stay tuned for more tales of innovation that inspire, challenge and transform.
Until next time, peace.
Thanks for tuning in to Innovation Tales.
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