7 Lessons On Scaling A Business Without Burning Out | Robin Sims-Allen | 400

Are you an overwhelmed SaaS founder ready to make the leap from leading a team to leading an organization? Join us each week as we refill your think tank with actionable tips and strategies from great business minds you know and those you don't know yet. This is SaaS Fuel with your host, 5-time entrepreneur, SaaS founder, and globetrotting adventurer, Jeff Mains. Welcome back to the SaaS Fuel podcast, where chasing algorithms is exhausting. Building community is harder, and somehow the people winning long-term are the ones acting like actual humans on the internet. I'm your host, Jeff Mains. I help SaaS founders like you grow from traction to scale. Here, growth is more than just numbers. It's about crafting a future-proof company, premium valuation, and leaders who build a business of significance while living epic adventurous lives. Here's a question that might sting a little bit. I've been thinking about the weird questions in business, and I do that a lot. And what if the reason your business isn't growing the way you want it to do has nothing to do with your product, your market, or your funding, and everything to do with how fast you're moving? Sounds crazy, right? We live in a culture that celebrates the sprint. Move fast, break things, scale yesterday. And for a while, that energy works. But at some point, speed stops being a superpower and starts being a blind spot. You're so busy fixing, building, and pivoting that nobody's actually stopped to ask, are we even solving the right problem? And in a world that is shifting as fast as it is today, it's an important question. Well, in today's episode, we're going to slow down on purpose because, as it turns out, that's one of the most strategic things a founder or an executive can do. You'll hear why the best leaders spend their first days inside a new challenge just listening and how that one habit alone can save you months of expensive, well-intentioned mistakes. We'll dig into why your team might already know exactly what's broken and why they haven't told you yet. And we're going to talk about community building in a way that'll make you rethink everything you thought you knew about growth, engagement, and what your audience actually wants from you. This is an episode about doing. It's about doing less, better, smarter, and with a whole heck of a lot more intention. If your business feels like it's running fast but standing still all at the same time, well, today's conversation is exactly the reset you didn't know you needed. Let's dive in. Our expert guest last Thursday was Corinne Cavanaugh, founder of CAC Media and Publishing. She came on to talk about how companies escape the messy middle of growth by replacing founder-led chaos with scalable systems and not scaling chaos. We talked about validating demand before building features, the rise of fractional leadership. I think it's a great model. Retention-focused growth strategies and why sustainable scaling requires discipline, not just activity. And then our founder one week ago today was Mike Armstead, the CEO of Pulse Security AI, and he joined us to break down how companies navigate major tech shifts while balancing innovation, security, and long-term resilience. Really good stuff. He's been through multiple rounds like this. We discuss startup conviction, cybersecurity risk communication, fragmented systems, and why lasting companies are built through adaptability and disciplined execution, not just a hype cycle or one hype cycle after another. If you missed either episode, go back and check those two out. My guest today is Robin Sims Allen, Agile Consultant, founder of Phoenix Marcus, and creator of TotalHER. A social media platform built specifically for women and community-driven engagement. Robin's focus is the stuff that doesn't show up on org charts, the emotional and cultural bottlenecks that quietly kill execution and erode trust across teams. Her approach starts with listening before diagnosing, which sounds pretty obvious but is super rare. Sometimes slowing down is the strategic move. So welcome someone helping organizations uncover the human bottlenecks holding them back, Robyn Sims Allen. Hey, Robyn, welcome to SaaS Fuel. Thank you. Glad to be here. You operate across agile consulting, fintech delivery, and entrepreneurship, which is pretty awesome. What is the thread that connects all of the work that you do, even though maybe it looks a little different on the surface? So Agile, when you think about Agile, you're thinking about software development. You're thinking about producing products, getting them to market fast. You're thinking about solving problems. And that is exactly what I do, is solve problems. I see something that needs to be solved and come up with a solution. And that's just what it is. With Agile development, you're thinking about How can we get this product to be the best it can be for our ideal customer? So, I've worked in a variety of industries, not just fintech, but aerospace and defense, transportation. I've worked in human capital. I've worked in utilities. And they all have the same kind of problem, believe it or not, the same problem. It's how do we move faster? Or how do we remove blockers? Or how do we create something new? How do we innovate? And so that's just what I do. And with entrepreneurship, I saw issues that happen in the world, and particularly I'm passionate about women. So I wanted to solve issues that impact women everywhere. So that's why I created a solution for it. Love that. It seems like a lot of fun consultants would focus on process and that kind of thing. Part of your focus is big into cultural and emotional bottlenecks? Yeah. When did you realize that those were real blockers to execution? I would say it's because working in those different industries and the first probably 48 hours on a project, I already know what those issues are. I'm looking at their tech debt. I'm looking at their backlog. I'm looking at how they're speaking to one another in meetings. What is being said? What is not being said? And I'm looking at the gaps as they're there. And it just became a point where people just in general don't see what— until others from outside looking in exposes what's happening behind the scenes. I believe a lot of industries or tech industries, these companies, they make decisions from the top. And it's usually C-suite that makes the decision, never coded a day in their life, never sat on a team, never wrote a user story, never did a requirement. Don't have a clue what the system does. They have a general idea because they're selling it, they're supporting it. But behind the scenes, the operation of it, getting it done, that's where a lot of C-suite just doesn't have that exposure unless they did a startup and they started from the ground up. But a lot of these big tech companies, that's not the case. You're inheriting problems that you may not even know that you have. So I saw the same issue everywhere. It was cultural. We have engineers jumping on projects, leaving projects because they're having to context switch or they're not in alignment with what the mission is. And then the funny part is leadership is not in alignment with the mission either because they change it every week. Right. And if you're changing it every week, then how do you expect a team to deliver what you're expecting them to deliver? So in this day and age, post-COVID, people just don't have the patience to put that loyalty behind these companies and stick it out bad seasons while the company restructures or realigns. They just jump ship and go to the next thing. And think about the organization. Is your organization so leveled or so layered up where it's impossible to get a decision made in a timely fashion? Do you have more managers than you do developers, that's a problem. And that's some of the things that I call out with these projects that I'm on. That's big. And then those projects, you are in some larger companies for sure, and you spend a lot of time listening before trying to solve. And I think that's very different than many of us leadership roles because we just want to jump in and fix the problem. So we immediately, we're in fix mode instead of taking a step back and really understanding what the problem behind the problem or what's going on inside the organization behind the problem. Yes. So in every project that I take on in any situation, regardless of what team, what department that I'm sitting in, I say nothing intentionally for at least the first 2 to 3 days. I don't ask a question. I don't any of that. I am listening to everything. And what I'm doing is taking note and stock of Who's talking in these meetings? Who's my go-to person? Who knows everything and they shouldn't know everything? Who is the people that are quiet? Why are they quiet? What are they saying? What is the point of this meeting? Why are we in this meeting an hour and a half and no decision has been made? What exactly is going on? And I listen and then I start taking notes. And then at that point, I start interviewing. So I'm talking to leaders. I'm trying to find out where their current state is, their future state. What is it that their big picture is? And then I start talking to the team because 9 out of 10 times, that's my disconnect. The team has no clue what the big picture is. They've lost that big picture a long time ago. So then it becomes, okay, how can I make change without it being obvious? When you think about consultants or you hear about consultants coming into these big tech firms, they're coming in with an agenda and a play already in motion. Hadn't talked to a single person. And right, it's disruptive. It probably leads to a whole lot of layoffs. It probably leads to decisions that are made prematurely without actually assessing what is going on. And that is why I operate differently. You can't solve a problem if you're not listening to the problem itself, because a lot of times your answers to those problems are within those conversations or answered by the people who are engaged in it, and you're just not listening to each other. Yeah, that happens a lot. As a founder, you built a really interesting social networking, really, I'll say, experience, TotalHer, and it really kind of came out of your frustration with unequal opportunities for women in tech. And, you know, I would love to see a lot more women women in tech, and I think maybe we're trending that direction at least a little bit. What was the driver behind that and how was it designed for women to truly thrive? So, it was more or less my response or my last stand, so to speak. Where I've come in my career, it was very hard to get there. I had to pivot and I'm still not on level playing field. As my counterparts. And I think it's designed that way intentionally. Companies nowadays, they're not considering the modern-day woman, that they're having to be a superwoman. Essentially, they have to manage the household, raise the children, and work. And then at work, they're changing, they're moving the goalposts where they're expecting you to do even more and extend even more. And women are burning out, and they're burning out in ways that's not even logical. Some of them are leaving the corporate arena because they have no choice. Some of them are being pushed out because the opportunities to move up is just not that easy for women. And I've noticed on social media that women are trying to sell a product or service or something of that nature. And because traditional social media requires algorithms and virability. They're not getting that exposure like they needed to. So I wanted to create an intentional space for that opportunity to be expanded where you don't have to worry about an algorithm, where you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on ad spaces that may or may not land on the target, or you're having to create a solution within a solution or having to have a subscription for multiple solutions just to make your business work. And I wanted it to be an all-in-one, an intentional, safe, protected environment, and where conversations, they're meant to be meaningful and intentional. And also it's meant to support women in whatever stage of life they're in, whether they want to be a business owner or whether they just want to be a part of a community. It's a professional network. Essentially, it's merging several different social media, the best parts, into one platform. So you have your LinkedIn type of approach for your sales and your marketing. You have your Instagram type of approach where you're communicating in the social networking, the chats, the DMs, and those things like that. And then you have the booking component. And then you also have where you can be paid with your profile. So it's in-app where you can charge for your services, put a value on your time, put all of these elements into one platform so that women can thrive. That is brilliant. So it's really blending community, you said professional networking, monetization, so you can get paid for your time, privacy. I think that's a really big one. So it's not open to anybody that happens to be on one of 2 billion people, 3 billion people on a social network. What's the vision? To create that platform or to create something different or a hybrid that the current platforms don't offer? So in theory, in the United States, there are 58 million women entrepreneurs. Wow. Obviously I'm not targeting 58 million. However, I'm available for 58 million women and what I wanted it to be was somewhere where you are set aside intentionally, where every design that is in the app is designed specifically for a woman, something that they would find of value. I find that a lot of the traditional social media platforms, they're generic. It's a template for everyone because it's available for everyone. I wanted a verified, almost kind of like an exclusive opportunity. So my vision is I want to be able to reach— out of that 58 million, I want to reach just 3, maybe 5 million, because I want to keep it where it's still intentional. I don't want garbage in, garbage out type of approach. I want it to be where it remains like a protected, safe space, but at the same time We're building our brands at the same time. We're helping get our families to the next level because we're financially supporting them. But once again, I want to keep it where it's low, where it's intentional, just for those women. Oh, that's really nice. I like that, that it really does bring those things together, but then having that privacy, a little bit of exclusivity. It's more of a, a social club, not, you know, open to everybody to post anything and everything and. I think that's maybe what LinkedIn was at one point, was much more professional, much more valuable. And now it's become just a big pitch fest. Yeah. And the value is not there like it was 10 years ago. Yes. It's become the point of everyone is trying to sell you something. That's it. Now, I don't know that anybody's buying, but everybody is selling. I guarantee you that. Yeah. And then on, when you deal with other platforms like Facebook or Instagram, It's the competition. You feel like you have to do extra, do the most, or be out of character just so someone will like your video. That's ridiculous for a woman. Be the dancing bear. Yeah, to have to do the most just to do whatever it is that you're trying to do. You may be trying to sell body butter, or you may be trying to offer business plan services, or you may want to do a podcast with someone and you You wanna interview 'em, but now you've gotta pay for ads that probably say something misleading or something just to get that attention in, and it still may not even increase your revenue or anything. So it's really just a money pit. And that's why I wanted to create a space where you don't have to do all of that. You just scroll. And as I understand, you said protected space. You said that a couple of times, and you're really protecting the user experience Are you selling data or is that something that you're not doing or monetizing, or how have you thought about that? We're not selling data. I'm also not using your content. There's other platforms where they're using your content without your knowledge. They're repurposing your information. I'm not doing anything. The, even the videos that you see of showing activity with faces of some of my women that are on the platform, It's because they're influencers. So I'm not even using their information without their knowledge. And that's how I intended it to be. I'm not going to recycle. I'm not going to steal your content. You're not going to see your content repurposed in a manner that 5 people are saying the same thing. We're not allowing any of that. In fact, we have built-in protocols where if you feel like you're being harassed or you feel like your content is being stolen, You report that and my system administrator is gonna take a look at that immediately. And if we find that it's a violation, you are removed from the platform. Just as simple as that. That's good. And it's very different because most social platforms optimize for engagement. All they want is eyeballs. And if it creates a toxic environment, they don't care because it's just gonna create more eyeballs and more comments and more engagement. But you're intentionally doing the opposite of that. What kind of trade-offs come with that kind of a decision? It slows down traction because when you're out in the open world social media, you're trying to get as many people as fast as possible to be on your app at the same time, and it's just trying to move forward. I'm moving slowly and I'm doing it intentionally, so I'm not targeting several thousands of people at one time. I'm— that's not my— my whole strategy is to move exactly the opposite of what you experience in the real world or in other applications. It's intentionally— every strategy that I put into place is meant to do the exact opposite. That's good. I love just the counterintuitive idea. If everybody in social media is going this way, I'm going to go that way. Yeah. And it's, it's an intentional choice. Yes, I like that. I think some of the best entrepreneurs, that's exactly what they do. If the market is all doing one thing, they go do the opposite. And it's very refreshing to, to even think that something like this exists, because I just don't spend really much time at all on social media anymore, because there's just, there's nothing there. It's just a bunch of people arguing about mostly dumb stuff, and nothing ever changes. It, it's not necessarily effective. Is it a sales tool? I don't know, maybe. But, you know, thinking about a space like that, I think that's very appealing and probably welcome to, to the audience. Definitely. I did wait for traditional social media to do something where they were thinking about the women. It just never happened, so I built it. Love that. And while most people would probably go out and raise a bunch of money and, hey, I've started this social network, it's for women, and you should fund it, you've self-funded And this is something that's super ambitious for sure. What's been the hardest part about balancing the vision and just the financial reality of what's possible? It is risky, just to say the least, to put this vision out here. And because I know how important it is, I risked everything, literally, just to get this to the market. So to some people, they're like, oh my God, that's probably the dumbest thing you could have done. It had to be done and it needs to be done. My legacy is going to be, if I didn't try, who would have? Sure. In, in an effort, yes, I am raising now because now it's become bigger than me. But my intention was let me do versus depending on someone else to see my vision. I wanted to build my vision and now you can see it., and then you can help elevate the vision further. And I think that's what's missing in the market now, especially when we think about AI. Everybody is using the same type of AI function. They just call it something else. And right, it's not what it should be. We should be thinking about what's different, what's new, what haven't we touched? What's a new way that we can remix a current strategy to make it more effective. Just because it works today or just because it worked 10 years ago, does it really work? Where are we going to be 5 years from now? And sure, when I built this app, it's because I'm thinking about where women are going to be 5 years from now. It's going to be a lot of women that are back at home raising their families and they're building their businesses on the side. Because they're not working in corporate America anymore. The future of work is digital. It's random, remote. It's all of those things. And that's what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about 5 years from now and not today. Like that. Definitely things are changing really even weekly, but just in the last 5 years, the way we work, the location we, we work from, all that has changed and continuing to. The work we do is changing, and I think that's changed a lot even in the last year. The next 5 years, that's an eternity. Yes. To think about that. But I think you're right. A lot more entrepreneurs because they can, because they're really empowered to do that from wherever they are, and they can build some significant businesses without working for somebody else or without working 12, 15 hours a day. Yes. All about quality of life. And I believe that became the mentality of everyone post-COVID. We begin to see things. Life is short. No one wants to do 80-hour weeks anymore. I don't want to do that anymore. Now it's all about how much time can we spend with our loved ones while we have them? How much can I get done in the day faster? So that's where AI comes into place, where it can help you do production of what would have taken you 8 hours to do at work. You can now do it in 4 and deep work and focus for those 4 hours versus, hey, let me pretend I'm busy for 8 hours. People are just not there mentally anymore. And I think technology and tech companies need to realize that. No more of that, let's do 100 hours and see where we are at the bottom of the rat race and all of those things. People are just not interested in that. They're worried about the quality of life and how can they take and support their families and how can they feed their souls with their missions and their values. Because I think a lot of times when you feed the system, you lose more and more of your integrity, your ethics, your values, because you're becoming something that you don't like. You're waking up tired in the morning, dreading to go to work. You have Sunday scaries and you have all of those things. But if you were building your side hustle or your business, You're doing something that you enjoy doing. And I have a motto, do something that you don't mind doing for free, and then you never worked a day in your life. Yeah. Oh, that's really good. And I think as founders, there's a lot we can do to create those kind of environments for our people where they do love coming to work. They love the people they work with. They love the environment, the things that they're learning and contributions that they're making, the, the progress. Not only for them, but for clients, for whatever it may be, development, if it's client success, that see that what they do on a daily basis matters. They know what success looks like and they can measure that. And that's why I focus on bottleneck success assessments, because that culture, sometimes that is not in there. Once you've gone IPO or once you've merged with another company, that original, that startup vibe that everybody get down in the weeds together and fight together, that died with the IPO or the merger. And I think companies are worried about the profit versus the people. And that's another reason why I created my company, because I— the people, that's the point. It's not the afterthought, it's beforethought. So it's all about taking care of people and helping people take care of each other. And that's not going to change regardless of whether or not it's TotalHer today or whatever new app that I come up with, because I'm actually working on two right now. So there's other things coming, but whether that is, it's all about the people and making sure that we're being the best that we can for each other. I like that. How did you think about the go-to-market and pricing for the platform? I wanted it to be a price that wasn't ridiculous. So being that the app allows you to do booking components and host webinars and different things of that nature, you don't need to have those outside subscriptions that you would have to maintain because it's all built within the app. And I wanted to be a bundle price where you're getting all of these things for a reasonable price versus having 100 different subscriptions and you're still having to then throw money towards advertisement and then try to get you sales reps and different things of that nature. I wanted it to literally be a helpful launchpad for a business owner or a potential business owner. I wanted you to get up and running. In minutes versus years. Ever notice how every leadership book tells you to take the journey, but none really show you the map? Well, after scaling multiple companies to over $260 million in combined revenue and working with over 1,000 leaders, I discovered the key difference that separates leaders who burn out from those who build unstoppable momentum. It's not strategy, not charisma, it's not even luck. It's relationships, specifically 4 of them. My new book, The Captain's Keys, reveals the Stability Matrix, a proven system that transforms leadership from survival into sustainable success. Inside, you'll discover the 4 critical relationships every leader needs and exactly how to build them. You can get your copy at thecaptainskeys.com, Amazon, or your favorite bookstore, and it's available in print, ebook, and audio. You don't need another playbook. You just need the right people in your boat. That's really good. And with the webinars, I think that's fascinating. You can do it within the platform. Does somebody have to be a member of the platform to attend the webinar or just to host and then anybody can attend? So because it's a protected space, yes, they would need to have a profile on the platform. So the best thing about it is You can host one-on-one conversations or you can host up to 100 people. So if you're a course creator or you're someone who is doing a virtual summit of some type, you can have your protected community there with your content. There are influencers on my platform that only share certain information on TotalHer where they don't share it in public. And that, that was the intention because I wanted everyone to have just a little bit of exclusivity and a little bit of secretive and what it was meant to do. You have to be, I think, really smart, but it's also a really good way to grow the platform. So you can have people invite to this event that's exclusive, but you have to be on the platform in order to participate and come to the webinar and get value. And then also when you think about it, if you're hosting anything in open source or out in the open world, you can't control who joins and who gets to see this information or who has access to you. That's another thing that's really scary about what happens outside of the platform. And that was another thing that I thought about when designing. I was like, how can I keep this where it's not going to be remixed somewhere on the back web somewhere? So the reason why we built in so many protocols so that it remains protected. I think a lot of founders talk about community, but with the platform, it seems like it really does that because you have the webinar component, you have the one-on-one, you have circles, you have live calls, courses, ways to monetize. What does authentic digital community require today? I think now because there's so much unrealistic things and things that you can manipulate with systems and stuff, authenticity is most important to anything. No one wants to see anything that's overproduced or over-engineered. It's raw. It's real. They wanna see what we used to see, which is unfiltered, unrehearsed content. And that's what it is. I like that. In your consulting, you've worked with big companies, fintech enterprise teams, and you're also building a consumer-facing platform. It seems almost different worlds. How have you adapted your leadership style between those two? It's not, it's not different because in those corporate arenas, they're still servicing a customer. The customer just may not be women. It may be other businesses or it may be a consumer. I'm all about building products. So whether it's in corporate or whether it's in private, If it's going to be something that's going to be of value, that's what I want to stand behind. If it's going to be something that's going to impact someone's life in a good way that we don't have to overwork, overthink things, and it's going to help them get through, that's what I want to do. So whether that's in my own company or in other companies, it's all about solving problems and making things happen. It's good. Building technology, trust, privacy, emotional safety. Got it to this point. You said you're starting to pursue outside funding. How do you maintain the conviction and values that don't always maximize short-term growth? And how do you sell that to investors that this is the community we're creating? It's not just about maximizing growth and getting as many people, 58 million, on the platform in the next 3 months. So it's Selecting which investors to go after. Okay. I'm taking stock of what they have recently invested in. I'm taking stock of how they're supportive, how they're engaged. And I also take a look at, in particular, those that are socially confident or what I call socially confident, which means they want to make a social impact. Versus let's run for the next big thing. Let's blow this up and get us off to private equity, equity and different things like that. I want a partner that wants to be and see the value of women empowerment, see the value of making future for women. I want them to see the value of growing slow because what I find is As I'm growing slow and the exposure and the brand is out there for women, it's actually going to begin to fly. And when it gets to fly, it's going to grow at a massive rate. And anything that I've seen or been a part of as an agile consultant, I find the faster that you're in market and the faster you rise, that's the fastest you fall. So I'm intentionally going slow. And building up speed until you see it and there's no other choice. That makes sense. And absolutely true. Look at Clubhouse rise and then collapse. And they had a chance to sell at crazy multiples and didn't. And then the whole thing just disappeared. It was something that was, it was really big for a little while. I think it is taking it slow and steady does make sense. How did you think about taking it as a for-profit company versus nonprofit? You definitely have a big social asset. Aspect. Did, is that something that you thought about doing or just this was gonna be a for-profit thing from the beginning? So I initially thought about doing a nonprofit. However, the thing about that is that was an attempt that I did on another venture where I took that particular project nonprofit, and I found that it was difficult to get people to support you when it's nonprofit. Hmm. Okay. So it, it was more or less trial and error where I just had— I knew that this strategy had to be for, for-profit versus in a nonprofit type of arena. Not to mention, there's a lot of opportunities for women in the nonprofit sector, and they're just not getting attention. So being that this is a for-profit, I can also help nonprofit business owners and so forth because now they can be on my platform. So if you have a girls group or a women's group and you're supporting women or you're a domestic violence center or something like that, you can now be on Total Her and you can get an answer and address even more women. And I just think that the exposure is different when you're for-profit versus nonprofit. That makes sense. For other founders that are building community-driven products, what's the biggest mistake they make when they're trying to create engagement? Trying to be a solution for everyone. That's big. Yep. Trying to be a solution. When you are trying to do a one-size-fit-all, that's where you go wrong. That's why I intentionally focused on a niche. That's The intention was to address needs of some, because when you're addressing the needs of some, you're addressing the needs of everyone. But when you are addressing the needs of everyone, you meet no one's standard. That's good. I think that really applies to, to every business. It's getting focused on who you serve and the value you deliver. Yes. And, and that's hard to do, especially early on, cuz we don't wanna say no to anybody. That's another reason why I started this business when I did. Because I spent years watching people do it wrong. That's good. You said that should use understandable language instead of jargon. How important is the simplicity in leadership, product design, even company culture? I think in general, we've gotten to the point where we just overthink and over-process. I think keep it simple, make it understand. No one talks like they have an MBA. All the time, even though I have one. No one talks with the big words. Even if you're a doctor, you're not using these big words. When your doctor comes in and they explain what is happening with your test results and what's happening, they're not reading to you a medical book because you weren't skilled in the medical field. Right. They have to talk to you in a language that you understand. And I think that's what companies need to get back to. Let's start communicating in realistic language. No one understands what your internal language is. Like when a lot of people hear machine learning, what does that mean to somebody real? That doesn't mean anything. But if you are telling them what the problem is and how this solution that you've created answers that, that's all they care about. So that's what we need to go back to. Let's get back to the basics. When we go to the bakery and we order a bagel, or a cake. We want a bagel and a cake. I don't care how you made it. Uh, that's good. The most effective communicators do use plain language that everybody understands. It's just, it's very clear. And I think that's one of the things that gets lost when we try and use big words is clarity. Yes. Yeah, the message gets lost in, in the delivery. As AI becomes more integrated into online communities and management, where do humans still need to lead intentionally? One thing that I say over and over, AI is a tool. It is not a person. It is not a replacement of a person. It should be utilized in the way that it was designed. It is a tool. It is something to assist you to do an activity a little bit better or a little bit faster. Than you would have normally have done. I think we've lost what it was designed to do. We have to also think about it's a human person that is programming this, no different than your MacBook or your Windows. It's the same thing. You didn't let your computer get up and walk around the house and replace everything. You used it as a tool. Same way with a calculator. We use a calculator to do math. So that's what AI is. And I think what we're seeing here in what's happening is we're thinking that AI is a replacement of, and that's where it's gonna end up, where this is gonna be the next dot-com blowup because we're taking the human element out of it. And instead of just realizing it's a tool. For founders that are trying to build businesses that genuinely improve people's lives. Very much Total Hair does that. And so really improving people's lives, not just capture attention or not just create buzz or a viral effect. What principle has guided you most consistently through this journey? Transparency. Making sure that there's nothing that's being done behind the scenes or secretively. My mission has been the same today as it was when I first started. Total Heart, it's about female empowerment. I want to build a bridge or be the bridge that you need to make it, or whatever your vision is, your passion, your community, whatever you need to make it today. Because we have been through a lot, a lot, and you just need somebody to give you a break. And that is That's exactly what I intended to do and what I'm going to continue to do. That's great. Where can we learn more about you online? And of course, about TotalHer? So TotalHer, you can look up anything related to TotalHer on www.totalher.co, not com, co, C-O. Me, I'm available on Instagram. I'm available on LinkedIn. I am working behind the scenes on robin sims allen.com, but it is not up yet, but it will be soon. Where you will see all things related to me and the inner workings of my mind will be on there. You'll see it all. But other than that, you can reach me on any of those platforms. I'm on everything, including TikTok. So you can find me there. I think I'm not on Twitter anymore. I lost my password and I haven't bothered to figure it out. So I'm not on there. But I believe Total Horror is on there, but not sure who's managing because it's not me. I don't know the password. But you can definitely find me in any of those platforms. Sounds great. We'll make sure and link all of that in the show notes. And Robin, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for being on SaaS Fuel. Well, thank you. We're glad to be here. It was fun. Thanks again, Robin, for coming on the show and sharing your journey and insights. You can learn more about Robin and her company TotalHer at totalher.co. As always, all links, highlights, resources, and full show notes are available at sasfuel.com. And be sure to check out our site on YouTube as well, our channel on YouTube. It's @championleadership. And you know what? Thought leaders like you, they share. Share this episode with a teammate who says, "Happy to help," and then vanishes like a startup magician. Everyone who shares this week gets one follow-through notification loud enough for the entire org chart to hear. How do B2B teams stand out in crowded markets where everyone is using the same outbound tools and intent signals? Next up, Mohan Mutu, founder of SpringDrive, joins us to talk about resonance messaging strategy. You've probably never heard of that before. Strategic go-to-market engineering, modern outbound systems, and why sales teams win by creating relevance, not just increasing volume or fake personalization. And then milestone, we have episode 400, and that episode is actually going to come with a huge announcement That's huge. The world has never seen anything like it. All right, maybe they have. But I'll do something I've only done a few times with that big announcement, and we'll step back from guest interviews one time here to explore some big picture themes that are shaping leadership, growth, AI strategy, and the future of business and the future of this podcast. I will see you next time. And as always, enjoy the journey. Thanks for listening to SaaS Fuel. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at sasfuel.com. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you're enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review at ratethispodcast.com/sasfuel. We'll be sure to read these out on future episodes. Yeah, let's go!