True Wealth: Building Business Success Without Sacrificing Your Life feat. Kelsey Kitsch

Speaker A: You are listening to the Beyond 7 Figures podcast with Charles Gaudad. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Growing a business can be hard, but it shouldn't be a struggle. The beyond seven Figures podcast is all about helping you build, grow and scale a successful business. Learn the stories and the strategies from top level CEOs and business owners from some of the fastest growing companies around the world. And here's your host, the expert in predictable profits, Charles Gaudette.

Speaker A: All right. Hey ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the beyond seven Figures podcast. I'm excited to bring you today's guest today. He's been a friend for number of years. One of those friends that you feel comfortable taking off all the masks and being truly vulnerable and transparent and let everything just out there because not only has she come from a place of lived experience that she can relate to and freely talks about, is able to support you in that, but it's just the type of person she is. And she's extremely successful and accomplished. She was twice named Canada's number one female entrepreneur. She's built multi million dollar companies. She raised $38 million if I remember correctly. She took a company public. She wrote a book called Success Hangover and on and on and on. We're part of this community of other 7, 8 figure entrepreneurs around the planet. Very tight curated community of a small group of folks and we just have just this awesome connection and I just felt I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't introduce her to you. So Kelsey Kitsch, welcome m to the show, my friend.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, what a lovely intro and thanks for having me. It's a gift to be here and to jam with you and, and to have all your audience listening to you and I get to have a real candid conversation about what it's like to, to be us and whatever we could offer to them. You know, given all of our shared experiences.

Speaker A: It's funny, you and I, I don't think there's a topic that's off the table that you, that you and I really haven't talked about.

Speaker C: No.

Speaker A: And you know, I, I don't even dare to go into the realm of where our conversations have gone. They've gone everything from deeply personal and to even professional. But I find that the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone is connected. So everything is related. So, um, why is that? I mean, I mean even something all the way down to say, somebody's intimate relationship with their spouse, how would you find a connection between that and to business success?

Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. And

Speaker A: I'm throwing you with a real hard one right off the bat. Let's just get right to it.

Speaker C: Get right to it. I mean, here's the thing. I'll speak from my own experience, and then sometimes I'll pepper a few pieces of research and knowing in, but in my own understanding and to give people a sense of, you know, I started out as. I'm kind of the underdog makes good story. You know, my businesses have spanned from heavy symbol infrastructure, so building roads and bridges and dams, um, you know, to kids toys to psychedelic drug development companies, to now intimacy, intelligence. And everything I built, I built not really knowing what I was doing. I think most of us can agree that's how most great businesses start is we. Yeah. If we actually knew what we were getting into, I don't know. I don't know if we would really. And I think the same is true for relationships. You know, our primary relationship with our partner. If we really knew what it took to develop a deep and rich relationship with a person beyond, you know, the, the great initial attraction and the hopes and dreams that we have. But to really be embedded in building something substantial, uh, we might, you know, reconsider. Because not only are. Are both of these similar in that when you do them right, they can create such a foundation for freedom and such a foundation for being our best selves and truly living out what it is that we're best at and being seen and known and loved for it, whether corporately or. Or personally. But it takes some intention. And I think the, you know, for me, I was sold a little bit of a, uh, bill of goods. I came up in the Disney era and I thought we just, you know, met Prince Charming and had a lovely wedding and there was some birds and chipmunks and a great dress. And then, and then it all worked out. You know, they never mentioned the fact that there was going to have to be kind of like quarterly meetings.

Speaker A: You'd have to slay a dragon at some point.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, that was up to him. He was gonna do that, just gonna hang around. Turns out it's an equal effort game. We're both slaying dragons, you know, we're both bringing our best selves, we're both bringing the romance. We're both waking each other up from our slumber with the kiss, you know, all the way through. And I think that what we find. So I'm fine to declare that I'm 50 years old. I am a divorced person. I was married for 17 years, and I Think what, what certainly I found in that discovery of building companies and building relationships and, and when I underestimated about the value of having a solid, uh, relationship is how when things are great at home, everything else seems possible.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: You know, like when, when my primary relationship is on fire and everything's stable and, and good and I'm really engaged in it, I have more courage at work, I have more focus, I have more enthusiasm. I just, I feel a little bit unstoppable.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: But it doesn't always translate the same way in reverse. When my business is on fire, it doesn't naturally mean I come home and feel like everything's gonna be easy.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So the thing that I think is more imperative is having, having the, the kind of strength and robustness in our relationships. That's the whole life level up as opposed to the other way around, which is kind of what society taught me. It told me, go and get your MBA girl. Make a million bucks, build a great business. And the, and the great relationship you have will still be there waiting for you when you get back.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And it turned out, in my case, it didn't work out that way.

Speaker A: Right. Uh,

Speaker C: you know,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker C: but I will add, you know, for your listeners of people who are listening are saying, oof, I kind of feel that, or, oh, that's not me. Or we're in a great phase. Is. I think the strongest relationships at the start are the ones that are actually more perilous in the long term because we can, we have the sense that we can rely on them to be good when we get back.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: When we've made the time for them after our career, when we, you know, and so we can let them sit for longer.

Speaker A: M.

Speaker C: The ones that were a little rocky to start with, we know, oh yeah, this takes work. Oh, we're working. Oh, here we're working again. But the really solid ones out of the gate can be kind of set aside and go, yeah, it's, we're good, we're good, we're good. And then before you know, it kind of have drifted because we tend to marry great people. Great people like us, you know, and they tend to grow just as fast as us too.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I think, to answer your question, kind of sum it up is to say that I think that building relationships is more important or more impactful for us in our building of great businesses than we realized. And now when we get to this stage in our life where we built the business and we built the, you know, the relationship with the family, we can really look back and notice like, oh, the times when that one thing was great, everything was great.

Speaker A: Well, I think what a lot of people don't realize is they look at the success of a, of a founder of a CEO and they oftentimes equate it to, to strategy. And while strategy is an important part of it, I would argue that it's probably less than 10% of the overall game.

Speaker C: And

Speaker A: that's because we are ultimately uh, intellectual athletes in many ways. And you look at say an F1 driver, uh, let's take Max Verstappen as an example, Multi world champion or Lewis Hamilton, doesn't matter. Um, one of the things that you'll notice is, you know, my son was a professional race car driver way back and so for him to say get to maybe 80% of Max Verstappen, that part is actually not that hard. If you want to get to 80% of, to Elon Musk as an example, that's really not that hard in terms of like strategy, intellectual ability, you know, the whole deal. It's when you start closing the gap between 80% and then 96% that gets incrementally much, much, much more difficult. And then if you want to close the gap between the 96% and then the 1% now it's that the amount of effort is enormous. And so you need every advantage, every benefit, everything there. So you know, if you're just sitting there and you want to make a million bucks a year, and you know I look at that as like the first 80%. If you want to just you know, make a million bucks a year, you can, you can do that. You can oftentimes get there just in the backs of hard work, word of mouth and referrals. And about um, if I remember correctly, it's somewhere around maybe 4% of all companies that start can actually get to that million. But now let's say you want to go from a million to then 10 million. Well now that's a fraction of a uh, of a percent. Now it's really much smaller. So now we have to close the gap even further. We have to get better. And Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, they have personal development coaches that are working with them um, nonstop to make sure their mindset is super dialed in. Cuz the difference between winning and losing could be 1 1000th of a second.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: So when you are an entrepreneur and you get paid for the decisions that you make every single day, if your mind is, is with ah, an argument that you have with A spouse, the biggest opportunity of your lifetime could have come right in front of you, and you missed it because you were so hung up on an opportunity, a fight, or you got so hung up on a fight that you had with your spouse, or not feeling loved, not feeling appreciated or whatever that might be, you missed that damn opportunity. And

Speaker C: so

Speaker A: this is where it's like everything is all connected. You're. If you're listening here, chances are is because you want to be the best. Average people don't listen to this podcast. You know, ambitious. Yeah. You know, driven people. They listen to this podcast. And if you're listening, it's because you want to be the best. So we're just. It's about how do we close the gap and build all those edges. And for you, you were named entrepreneur of, you know, number one female entrepreneur in Canada, not just once, but twice. That didn't happen by accident. What was that magic like? Let's say that. And I know you're on to other things, but let's say you decided you wanted to be the third time. Let's say you wanted to get it for the third time. What did you learn from your prior experiences to if you were to do it again, what would you do?

Speaker C: Well, I mean, I. Honesty is m. Integrity is my number one, My. My mantra. And so I have to be honest in that I. They did offer it me M to me a third time, but I thought that wasn't making way for anyone else. So. So the. So the truth is, I could have had it

Speaker A: every

Speaker C: time.

Speaker A: Awesome. Very.

Speaker C: But that just felt like, you know, too much and to be. To be blunt about had become distracting. The idea of putting up the numbers and jumping the posts and, you know, tumbling through the hoops for these kind of external metrics of being the best against whatever, it no longer served me in that. That arena of accomplishment. To your point, I. I got to the. I got to the top of being able to build roads and negotiate contracts and, you know, that part of my life coming. The place I had to turn was not more awards. The place I had to turn was what's actually going to keep fueling me to get up at 4 in the morning and to work six days a week. What's actually going to keep fueling me to, like, what do I want all these freedom units for? That's why I call money freedom units. You know, what am I doing with all of this stuff?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's where my growth edge was. So if I can go back and tell myself, hey, girl, like what's that? What's. What's going to take you from 80 to the next? I was a slow learner in this regard. But it would be to say, you know, look at the personal parts. Look at the parts of yourself that you shut down, turn down, quiet, silence, stifle. In order to show up as this business person everywhere and at all times.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: I wasn't personally growing anymore. I was just. I had become a robot. I'd lost my humanity.

Speaker A: M.

Speaker C: I had become just like a person who does this that way and I can execute strategy and I could build teams. But the part of me that was missing was actually the part of me that got the business started was this, this woman who was really excited about things, who was, who was really interested in things. I had become kind of this like shell of myself and I had lost myself this, this woman who I was, who did other things other than just you know, talk to my accountant and build some roads. So if I had to go back to myself and say what would made you feel like you uh, deserved the third year in a row? Because I didn't want to be on the COVID of another magazine being some mogul or some inspiration for women coming up in business and be kind of this soulless archetype of this one dimensional character who just did this one part of being alive really well.

Speaker A: So these

Speaker C: other person being a lot done.

Speaker A: You were rich but not wealthy. To put, to put uh, it in words that Garrett Gunderson would say. Right. The difference between rich and wealthy.

Speaker C: A hundred percent. You know I um. This is a little vulnerable but I, I will share it with you and your audience because that's the kind of relationship we have. When I had our first child, I had her on a Friday at 2:30 in the afternoon and I went back to work on Monday with her. And she lived in my office in a

Speaker A: crib. Wow.

Speaker C: And I have photos that my ego was so proud of myself. They used to have these little things called a bumbo chair. I don't think

Speaker A: they sell

Speaker C: them anymore because they're really bad for kids necks. But I would sit her in this bumble chair and I have all sorts of pictures of her literally growing up through her first year sitting on my office desk.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: You know, that's the honest truth. That's where I was at. I was just entirely about this dream of this business and this thing and, and not that she was entirely secondarily but I, I had lost the plot about being a whole person. I was rich but not wealthy.

Speaker A: It

Speaker C: was parts of my life that were suffering.

Speaker A: Yeah, I got

Speaker C: it.

Speaker A: Well, that's it. You know, that. I mean, I, I can relate in many ways. I mean, after I made my first million when I was 24, I remember telling my wife that I'd be willing to give up everything just to feel happy.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And you know, but at the same time, I realized that while I was successful on paper, the gap between where I was and where I knew my potential was, was actually limited by the fact that while I was successful, it got to a point where I started to resent my success because the more money I made, the less happy I was. And then, um, I started making decisions that inadvertently ended up costing me that million. You know, I ended up losing that and, and more because I was self sabotaging myself. Because when I got to that point, I wasn't happy, but I was happy when I was making less money. So my unconscious was like, well, why don't we take some wild risks and swing for the fences? Why don't I be a little more careless and less dialed in than I was when I was really going to make that money? And then this way I could lose it and blame it on something else and then, you know, work my way back up again. Because the struggle is where I was happy.

Speaker C: Yes, this is it. We're growth machines. Like, I think that is a thing that I learned when I was in that kind of success hangover place of having it all but feeling terrible. I remember being like, I thought when I got to the mountaintop, I was supposed to feel whole, but it's hollow up here. Like, where's the leprechaun and the pot of gold and the rainbow and the, you know, the thing. But it was later that I realized it was the growth, it was the change, it was a challenge that I was. That that's what really kept me alive and wanted to do things. So I would create similar to you. I would create disasters so that I could challenge myself to have to solve them. I would kind of create holes in my life. And at a certain point I was like, girl, this is a one man game. Like, no one. You're playing this against yourself. Who is a, who's a more worthy opponent than yourself? Okay, let's sit down and let's really have a nice talk with her and let's get real about like, what is, what are we living for here? You know, I was lucky. I got cancer. And that was my, that was my.

Speaker A: Let's think about that for a minute. Uh, those Words. I got lucky. Cause I, uh,

Speaker C: got

Speaker A: cancer.

Speaker C: Right,

Speaker A: right.

Speaker C: That's kind of mixed up.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. But go ahead. So go ahead.

Speaker C: No, but it's true because I was. So by that time I'd had my or third child and he was two months old when I was diagnosed and I was traveling across. I was, I was on the same routine. You know, I just turned up the dial on the, on the treadmill. I was still just going like gangbusters. And so I got cancer. And when I got that diagnosis, it was like the room closed in on me. Time dilated. I just like everything got really clear.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um,

Speaker C: and if not for that, I don't know that I would be much different today. Like I can endure some pain, I can endure some suffering. I can be tremendously unhappy and still show up and keep putting the numbers up.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like hundred percent. But it zoomed me right, right out to this idea of like, girl, you get one ride on the blue marble in space. Is this, is this, is this it?

Speaker A: I love that.

Speaker C: Is this what you're gonna spend it on? You know, like, maybe not.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I got to, I got to really appreciate aliveness.

Speaker A: M.

Speaker C: Which doesn't diminish my, you know, my thirst for success and, and for accomplishment and for challenges. But it, but it changed the aperture.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: From this really tiny little part of life to all of it to go. Oh yeah. At this funeral you're about to have. So my prognosis had a 17% survival rate, so it wasn't looking good. So I imagine my funeral, I thought, is this like everybody's gonna stand around and say, oh yeah, Kelsey was a lot of fun and she did all these things and that was neat until she turned to about 20 and then she went to school and then she worked her little face off and then she did a whole bunch of that. And that is neat.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And that's about the story.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like that didn't feel good to me. So. So I, so I. It changed my perspective on what I wanted to choose, my. Choose to spend my time doing. And I think about my funeral every day now as a practice,

Speaker A: um,

Speaker C: to remind myself, like, what is it that without me narrating my great life, what are the people gonna have really felt about my impact here?

Speaker A: You're right. And you know, I made a mistake when I talked and introduced this concept by comparing it to making a million and then making 10 million and so forth. Because at the end of the day, you know, or most of our audience, they look at like the number and that's the number that they're getting to and so forth. But the reality is that it's actually not a number. You're actually looking for an outcome. And we have to be real clear on, you know, what that outcome is. And an example is we have a client of ours who, uh, when she started working with us, she had just a small, real small business. But for her, if it was, hey, let's make, you know, several seven figures and by the way, your kid's gonna have to sit on your desk and you know, you're gonna miss dinner with your husband and you're gonna work seven days a week and everything else that would have made her completely unhappy. But she came to the call and she knew her non negotiables and she was like,

Speaker C: what

Speaker A: needs to happen in order for me to be able to be at the bus stop every day at 2:30 and from there be able to spend the time with my kid. I, I want to, I love to cook. I want to make dinner for my family, my husband. I can still after that spend an hour or two if I need on the business. But what needs to happen for me to do that and create a widely successful company? And she's gone ahead and now she's done it. And she, uh, she went to Greece and she closed deals. She's on these RV trips and she's closed deals because unlike a lot of people, and this is the way I was when I started it was so what do you want to do? I looked at my outcome was just make a million dollars. And I would say I'll shovel shit to get to a million dollars. And I metaphorically did shovel.

Speaker C: You probably did,

Speaker A: right? And I felt like I did. And I was at a real low point. She did it differently. She looked at what is the outcome that I want and how do I reverse engineer and build the business and the relationship with my husband and the relationship with my child and everything else. So instead of work life balance, which is oftentimes is what throws us out of balance, she immediately approached it with work life integration. So she didn't separate business and life and health and adventure and travel. Instead she built, uh, what is the integration, what is the system and how does the business fit into the system? It was a really great way to look at it.

Speaker C: Oh my goodness. I mean, I wish I had known that I was, I was the same as you. I was like, well, I'm going to make my first million. And I remember my accountant, you know, stopping me on whatever day it's a Tuesday. And being like, Kelsey, you did it, you made a million. I was like, yeah, yeah, fine. Like it was. No, that was. And, and it's just like any part of life, I think you can create this numeracy or this finish line, but the finish line is just some um, some new starting line until you integrate it all and recognize that it's all part of one thing. And I think that's brilliant of her to look at that. Like, look, let's be honest, there are points. Anybody who's listening knows it's true. There are points when things go wrong and sideways and not the best and you do have to grind it out. And the idea of picking someone up from the bus that day is not going to happen. Like that's reality. Sometimes we have to be flexible. But uh, from a whole system perspective, you just can't sprint your way 100% through life.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: It's just not possible. You know, it just isn't possible. You kill yourself trying. And, and I do believe that that was my, that was my wake up call, my, you know, my close count, my close encounter with death was, was a gift to me and to everyone around me in that like, look, I still like to make millions of dollars, don't get me wrong.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course I

Speaker C: don't want any to get the wrong impression that I like hung my boots up and just straight chilled out. But I included other things in my equation of whole life value.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: That I haven't included with the same coefficient of importance.

Speaker A: It's just getting really clear on the outcome as opposed to just a variable in the equation. You know, it's like so it's knowing that full outcome.

Speaker C: But

Speaker A: you know, you talk about just running a million miles an hour and whatnot. We've kind of gone that way right now as just humanity because

Speaker C: yes,

Speaker A: you know, uh, at one point we sort of all hit the, hit a ceiling with our, with our productivity based on the technology and the resources that were available. And then now we have AI. And so you take a look at an a player in 2025 and you compare that to an A player by the end of this year. And we've already saw, seen the breakthrough in the last two weeks. A player is predict, predicted to be 100 times more productive at the end of 2026 when they know how to leverage AI the right way. And then in um, 2027 that same a player is projected to be 1000 times. Now you know, most people don't understand. They think they treat AI as a technology. But AI is much different than that. It's a, uh, it's an alternative form of life. And that's a whole other conversation that we can get into in terms of how to scale an organization appropriately using AI. But AI is having a damaging impact on our ability to be human because they are separate. People are looking at it like a technology. And this is unlike anything we've ever experienced before. So, you know, where, where is, where are people losing their humanity? But why is actually retaining their humanity going to provide every CEO and founder listening with the next big advantage?

Speaker C: Sure. So I'm gonna guess that most of your listeners have golfed or play golf. And I like, I like to use this analogy. So AI

Speaker A: don't judge me on my ability to play golf, though.

Speaker C: You don't have to be good at

Speaker A: one.

Speaker C: I mean, that's, that's a great. You know, golf is like the best subscription model business sport in that, you know, you're never going to be satisfied. You're always going to go back for another round because you never get it right. But, um, so you're at the, you're going to tee off in the, in the hole, say 500 yards away. And when you, when you stroke, when you hit your driver and you hit the ball, you may, you may have a great drive. You may. Charlie, you may drive 350. I have no idea. Right, so you have a great drive

Speaker A: right into the.

Speaker C: Yeah, a hundred percent. But this is the point, is that the further and faster you go is entirely dependent on the point of impact. Okay. So if you're off by 1% at the time that you strike the ball and you go 500 yards, you're off by quite a distance from the pin.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: And this is where I think people are kind of thinking about AI incorrectly. And that, and this idea of remaining human is you can have all the agents working for you that you want, you can deploy AI like a mad person, but unless you're hitting it with the right prompts, in the right direction, with the right strategy, it really doesn't matter. It's just a whole lot of gobbledygook. It's a lot of information. It's not useful.

Speaker A: This is gold. This is

Speaker C: Right. The differentiator is wisdom. So the wisdom is our earned experience, our own unique perspective, that thing that makes us us, though. The only reason we're successful is because of the sum of our own experience and our ability to identify opportunity, to discern between options. AI can give you stats, but it's not going to give you wisdom. Right. So AI can be a great management consultant. And don't get me wrong, you, uh, know, I was a management consultant for a brief period of time, but I quit management consulting because I realized that it's all fun and good to have a lot of opinions, but discerning between which the right options are is a human job. It comes down to a little bit of magic, a little bit of our own knowing, Right. That every great leader would be lying if they said that every decision they made was based on statistics and numbers.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: That's not true.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: There's always a little something. That is the Charlie that came into it, the Kelsey, the thing that you go. That's where it's headed. I can see that. And AI is a great. It just has taken the rear view mirror and made it clearer and more expansive. It's taking up more of the windshield now, but it's still looking at all sorts of information that's past data. And it can make projections just the same as us. It can do the mathematics. But I think the human element and the thing that differentiates any one of us is that point of impact with our driver in our business that says, oh, I'm. I'm actually also going to read the wind.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker C: Instead of driving 500 yards, you know what? I'm going to drive 250 so that I can get a clear read on the green.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker C: because just landing on the green doesn't mean shit. Sorry, I don't know if I can swear on your podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, you can. Yeah.

Speaker C: It's the lie that matters as well.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Right. And so I, I would just encourage anyone who's in the wash that we're all in. Right. The tidal wave is happening. I feel it every day, too. I'm on a surfboard with this giant wave of information pushing me, feeling like I'm. Like, I'm almost nauseous thinking about it, how much there is to do and how fast I have to do it and how, like, the pressure is immense. But, like, if you can just slow down and look at the discerning ways to deploy what you're doing with a little bit more humanity, your own discernment and thoughtfulness, and take shorter strokes

Speaker A: to

Speaker C: try and drive between. Like, hey, we're going to run this agent, he's going to give us this information, then we're going to pause and we're going to deploy some human agency, some knowing, some insight, some wisdom, which it doesn't have, I think. I think people will feel A lot better about the thing that makes them uniquely capable of being the next most successful person in their arena of business.

Speaker A: It was fascinating because I spoke to a, uh, client that runs an AI development company. So they build custom, uh, AI apps and products and tools and the whole deal. And we had this discussion on AI and leveraging AI to scale. And the difference is I was looking at it through the perspective of this is an agentic team member. And he was looking at it through the perspective of this is a technology. The result of looking at it like it was a technology, it was limiting him. And I said to him, I was like, let me ask you a question. If you could be twice as more. So we're not even talking a hundred, just twice as more productive as you are right now, twice as more, literally double, what would you be doing and what would the outcome of your business look like? And I'm talking about like, not numbers, like what would you be doing? What products would you create? What services? What? He was like, that's a really good question. And I was like, let's talk about that. We're not even talking about getting a hundred times or even ten times more productive. We're only talking about doubling what has got you stuck. And it was because he just spent time doing and he didn't have that, that ability to think. It hasn't built that muscle to be like, what would it look like if I was twice? Yeah, like what are the opportunities? What are this and that? And then, so we started going into it and then I began to just look at the way that he was treating the, the agents and whatnot and how he was managing that. And I was like, again, you are looking at this like a technology to the extent that you are going to succeed is going to be in direct correlation to your ability to lead and manage.

Speaker C: And

Speaker A: he was like, well, I'm a shitty manager, I can't do it. And I'm like, then you, you had no business leading all these, this agentic workforce because your output is only going to be as good as the, your ability to manage. And by managing, you have to give them a clear outcome that they can, you know, work towards and, and, and so forth. And that, that's sort of where I see. And you can maybe tell me if I'm wrong, but that's where I see the advant folks towards the end of this year and in 2027, you're either going to be an intrapreneur or an entrepreneur, but you're going to have to be one of those two and uh, have the qualities of that visionary, strong, you know, understanding of where you want to go and to be a good manager and a leader, you'll do a lot less doing and a lot more of just being strategic.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I teach one day a week at the MBA school here. It's called Ivy and I'll plug it for a second. It's Canada's top female, top, top MBA school. And the reason I like to plug it is it's my alma mater. And I, and I really appreciate. So you, you just imagine we have all these young minds. Okay. We're sending them off. They're, they're meant to be the next frontier of, of best business people and uh, our greatest leaders. And, and, and I, and I, I like the approach they took. So I teach Design driven Innovation, entrepreneurship and private equity up there.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: And with my Design driven innovation class, I went in and uh, sometimes they get a little bit leery about the things that Kelsey's going to say as a professor. So I always get a little talky dude before the semester. But I went in and I said, congratulations, everyone. You're going to have a really expensive piece of paper after this. And having a hammer doesn't make you a carpenter.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So now you've just entered an age where all of your MBAs, great table stakes, great. You can Google the diamond D model, heck, you can even throw it into AI and it can tell you all sorts of things about all sorts of things. The only thing that's going to make you stand out is by putting your hand up in some board meeting or some meeting and having an original thought that is based on something creative that you discerned out, uh, of all of this mining of information and all of this something, something, something. So to your point about intrapreneurship or entrepreneurship is we, in my estimation, have reached the era of the tall. It used to be that the tall poppy got cut down.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah. I think the tall poppy actually is now in the era of standing out.

Speaker A: The

Speaker C: outlier is the forerunner. Now the people with the most unique talent stack that can only see something from a very different perspective are going to be the people who win.

Speaker A: I agree.

Speaker C: It's uni stacks. It's, it's, it's human intimacy and the intricacy of being really compelled to, to know and understand a thing that will differentiate people. And you know, to your point, hiring a whole bunch more staff, that's what agents are. They're staff members.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: You know, so now I I just, you know, I just deployed 10 more, 10 more staff. You have to think about what that it's not costing you that much more money, is it? But it's costing you that much more time and management that much more. So would you actually hire that like cost aside in your business, do you need a hundred more employees? Probably not,

Speaker A: right? I mean, but very literally like when I go to bring on another agent, I create a job description of

Speaker C: uh,

Speaker A: what I want this agent to, to accomplish. I give it a KPI. So we know what we're working towards. Just like any organization, it's, where does it go on the org chart? And because any human can only effectively manage between four and seven other people, the same thing happens in an agentic workforce. You can only effectively manage 4 to 7. So then if you're going to bring on other agents, you have to bring on managers of those agents. And then how do you hold those managers accountable to make sure that everything else is flowing the way that it should flow

Speaker C: and

Speaker A: I mean even to the point where everybody needs to be rolling in the same direction. So do you have your mission, vision and values? Are those articulated and well understood and then distributed back to your agentic workflows? So, so they understand that North Star that everybody is working towards. But it's like things like that, that is not technology driven outcomes. Those are, those are human decisions. And, and just the way that you know, we have to create that, that's all human. I can't go to ChatGPT and be like just do it. I have to create it based on, on, on my vision and what I want done. And the only way that I'm going to do that is through context. And the only way that I'm going to get the context is through experience.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And so you know, my, my son, he's over at the University of Florida, he's working on getting one of those expensive papers. And uh, I told him as he was going in, I said, hey kid, just know one thing, you don't need to know any of the answers,

Speaker C: right?

Speaker A: And he was like what? Don't worry about any of the answers. Don't worry about it. Here's the most important thing, I want you to get outta school. And he goes, what? I go, know the questions to ask that people don't even think about asking.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And he is like huh? I go, that will be your advantage. Be curious, be insatiably curious. Question things. Put yourself around super smart people and just ask questions and keep asking questions. Because the most successful people in the world are the most curious. Be curious

Speaker C: 100%. It's not, it's not about, you know, what to think. It's how to think. It's how to train your mind to look for that like, you know, the little anomaly and be like, what's that about over there? The thing that's overlooked or under. And, you know, we can be so presumptive. I see so many success stories come from people who take something from another business or another form of acumen and bring it over into a new industry. Because all the people in the typical industry are like, we could never do it that way. It's not done that way. That, you

Speaker A: know,

Speaker C: because we have assumptions on how it is. And someone from something, some outside experience comes and looks and goes, but is it

Speaker A: right?

Speaker C: Just that simple, you know, and industries are upended. And I absolutely, you know, I try. I, I keep pitching the university on teaching this class that I call Disruptive Innovation, but they never accept it because, um, most of it's illicit. But, uh, I'll explain to your listener why this matters. Okay, so we're all looking for the unicorn. I think, you know, many of us anyway are like, what is the one thing? Or what's the rocket? Or what's the, you know, what's the unlock for my industry and the m. You know, the most common ones that we know are the, the Ubers and the, and the Metas and, you know, and the Teslas and all these kind of things were the Airbnbs. So, you know, Uber and Airbnb were illegal when they started, right? They were going against all sorts of local and governance ordinances who were not, they were not legally allowed to do business the way they were doing business. And we saw all sorts of lawsuits about it. Right? You couldn't have this kind of rental and you couldn't, you couldn't have a taxi that wasn't a taxi, and you couldn't have this and you couldn't have that. And so many, uh, you can look at the cannabis industry in Canada or in America, like most of the people who made the most money with their go publics were they started out as illicit operators. And some regulatory change unlocked. It's all regulatory

Speaker A: to

Speaker C: unlock these big opportunities. And it, and, and I, the reason I think they really don't want me to teach is a, it kind of, you know, supports illegal business, but B, is because I always want to open the class with the story of how prostitution became legal in the Netherlands. And it was because it was a port and all These sailors would come in and they would get a certain kind of services from a certain gender of people. And. And it turns out that the Catholic Church would get a lot of people coming to confess their sins. And the more people who would come to confess their sins, the more contributions they would get to the church.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: And so the church approached the government and said, you know, what if we protected the ladies and set up a regulatory system so everyone's safe. We don't want anyone to be unsafe, and we don't want anyone to be out of choice. But we are interested in the merits of the collection plate when people are.

Speaker A: And that's facts.

Speaker C: Yeah. Confessing their sins.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And so

Speaker C: suffice it to say, all of that story is to look at where we are in our time in this industry and all of these opportunities that feel just a little bit like, what are we going to do with this AI? Is it going to take us over? Is this the right way to deploy it? Is this going to be okay? Is this going to be. Look, industries change all the time, and the things that we thought weren't allowed to be done before can be done. You know, we have to really kind of zoom out and look at not the right or wrongness of a thing, necessarily, but the usefulness of a thing.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker C: like Airbnb one, because it's useful, it's solving a real problem between now and, you know, the origin was a lot of regulatory change between, you know, the Catholic Church and what is now the Netherlands is a lot of regulatory change. And I think we're going to see the same thing happening with AI in that a lot of regulatory change is going to come down the pipe because nothing, Nothing becomes unwielded like this and forever. So if people are listening and they're thinking, like, what is an opportunity I can do with AI? What is something that we can. That we can. I would just encourage them to, like, be curious, you know, think a little bit at the margins of, uh, how are we utilizing AI right now that maybe, you know, could do something different.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And don't. Don't assume that. Don't assume that it's always going to be this way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: You know, privacy and information is going to change. There's going to be lots of ways that people are deploying AI. They're going to be shut down. So don't think because your competitor is way ahead of you, the race has been won, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I think it's just we have to get a little bit clear about, like, where's the human in all of this? And where is the strategy and all of it? And, and these highly unregulated industries at some point do become regulated.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And the whole game changes.

Speaker A: I mean, the AI part is, is simple and the technology part is simple. It's the thinking part that is, is, you know, they under appreciated undervalued component of making it work. But look, I know we're pushing up against the clock here. Let me ask you a question, my favorite question as our guest. This is the Beyond 7 Figures podcast. What would you say is your biggest, best step across the board, whatever it is that you've experienced in all your life, your biggest, best step for our listeners who want to take their business beyond something Figures.

Speaker C: Gee, it's tough to narrow down to just one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna wager two. Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: One thing that I didn't realize I could do was ask for just a little bit. So when I started in business, I would try and negotiate 15% off and DA, da, da, da, da. Uh, but after a while I realized, wait a minute, I want to maintain great relationships, but I always want to get just a little bit. And so I started asking for 1% off. And 1% off of every single thing that I bought became a lot of percents off. And ultimately, when we were buying like, you know, $2 million worth of fuel in a year, that 1% off paid for my family holiday. So I would say to, to anyone listening like this, just a small thing. Look for a small yes in every single thing that you do. You're more than likely to get it. And the compound effect over a career of small yeses is astronomical.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker C: so that is, that is one thing. Just the compound effect of a small yes has made a tremendous difference in my checkbook and in, in my relationship too.

Speaker A: That's the first

Speaker C: time

Speaker A: I've ever heard that tip. Uh, that's, that's interesting. And I could see how that's brilliant. Yeah,

Speaker C: the compound interest of 1% is a, is a big amount. And then the other thing I would say is if you want to take your, your business, you know, beyond seven figures to eight figures, and I would say, you know, it's the old, like, it's, it's the humans. It's the. Think about the relationships that you have and the people that you can call, look around you and recognize the access to networks and to information into lived experience is probably. Oh, my God. It's probably wonder the. One of the greatest untapped Resources that I, I didn't realize I had just turned to someone and say, what do you know about this thing? Or to ask someone a question about something or another. Like the, the network effect of the people around you is worth a lot more than I think we give it credit for.

Speaker A: I got it.

Speaker C: And so, uh, you know, it's a. Building relationships. I mean, look at. That's how you and I met. I

Speaker A: was just gonna say that. Right,

Speaker C: right. It's. It's the compound interest of being interested, um, in other people

Speaker A: for sure. Now I

Speaker C: think that's as peace.

Speaker A: I love that I could talk to you forever and ever and ever. And because I think these conversations, you never know where they're gonna go. And I wish we had that time to be able to continue our conversation. And you and I will likely end up talking next week or the week after anyway. How could people learn more about you and, and connect with you? Where do we send them?

Speaker C: Sure, I'm on Instagram pretty well every single day. So that you go to Kelsey Kitsch. That's just easy. Elsie Kitsch. K I T S C H uh, you can check me out on LinkedIn, but my primary business at the moment is called Paramount Love, where we focus on people's intimate relationships with their partners and foundational connection and what that can unlock for your whole life happiness. And ultimately, like we opened with, you know, the greatest successes at work and career come from a great foundation at home. So that's what I'm focused on.

Speaker A: And that right there is our mic drop. We covered so much today, this episode. We talked a lot about how hip bones connected to the thigh bone is connected to the, you know, the shoulder bone, how everything is all connected and what needs to happen in order for you to become top performer. We discussed the difference between being rich and then being wealthy. We talked about the importance of human and how AI is playing a role in today and in the future. And the difference between success and failure can often come down to just how you hit the ball. And you know, that one degree difference can be the difference between the ball going into the pond or even hitting a hole in one for that matter. And it's all comes down to how you think and being curious and all those other elements that make you more human, which becomes your advantage towards the end of this year and also next year and the years to come. So that wraps up today's episode of the beyond seven Figures podcast with my friend Kelsey Kitsch. Don't forget to check her out over on Instagram. LinkedIn. You can also see her website at Kelsey Kitsch. Com. I don't know how updated it is, but I know that

Speaker C: it is. It's ready to rumble.

Speaker A: You got it. And I will see you in another episode. And also, for those of you who are looking to grow your business faster, more predictably and less dependent on you, check us out@pretable profits.com Again, that's predictable profits dot com. And we'll talk to you all later. Thank you, everyone.