Today we’re chatting with Kathy Rast all about her experience learning and implementing ClickUp into her business and how it’s made running her business easier.

Kathy is a Linguistiologist which means she knows natural language patterns. Kathy looks at the human at work. Taking them on behind-the-scenes tours of their messages and showing them words that are blocking their success and how to move them out of the way.

Connect with Nicole on Instagram.

Visit Nicole’s Website.

Get the Action Takers Guide to ClickUp here.

Join the Take Control with Nicole Facebook group here.

Join the waitlist for The Members Lounge here

———————————————————–

Full Episode Transcription

Nicole Smith 0:02
Welcome to take control with Nicola. as business owners we experienced firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce, overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, hello and thank you for joining me for another fabulous episode of take control with Nicole. Today I have the amazing Cathy Ross with me and we are just gonna have a conversation. We are just gonna do then a call and Kathy thing and come together and have a chat. And in particular around how Kathy has started to use click up and how she is loving, you know every day which will be really exciting. But firstly, for those who haven’t met Kathy yet, I would love to introduce you. So Kathy Ross is a linguist geologist which means she knows natural language patterns, Kathy looks at the human at work, taking them on a behind the scenes tour of their messages and showing the words that are blocking their success and how to move them out of the way. She puts the in, in human in. Absolutely love. Hi, Kathy. Thanks for coming on.

Kathy Rast 1:35
Lovely having a chat with you as always. It is really being and human being in the Indian human being. Yeah, do you love that we’re gonna have a conversation. This is our second conversation of this session. We have already been talking for 40 plus minutes pretty good at daybreak. That’s fun. Yeah, now I’m looking forward to talking all the things.

Nicole Smith 2:10
Thank you so much. Ilove talking all the things. It’s always such a fabulous journey from here to the end and how fabulous and how wonderful we get all those in the conversations as well. I thought maybe we could start at the beginning and how we connected because we are both a member of VBA and that’s how we initially found each other really on one of those live calls and think that Susan’s talking about processes and systems and you asked a question I think we got chatting and I’m like let’s have a chat.

Kathy Rast 2:45
Yeah, you slipped into my DMS into the DM Yeah.

Nicole Smith 2:49
And I think our initial 20 minute conversation ended up going for like an hour or an hour and a half didn’t like to think that’s when you know you found your person

Kathy Rast 3:01
when you just go on no oh yes or no if that conflict of we could just keep talking yeah and we have so that’s good so like what arrow I get what are we almost a year later Yeah, so we’re still talking we have we’ve only just started but how wonderful there we go first how wonderful we can play a drinking game because you’ve seen me I’m a half a Glass girl whatever is less than a Cadbury the new year we started we started talking and it was for many different reasons that we started talking but then quite quickly, you were able to see through. I’m pitching I’m going to give a sports metaphor here. What can happen is you’re not very sporty. I know that’s okay. So I’m okay Cody. So there we go in in a in a park on a London and watching the football so well. I know in football and then AFL football, not soccer. No sorry for swearing. In netball and footy, we have what you call a zone defence. So you basically set up this, this blockade this wall in the middle and it’s it you know you’re going to the goal at the other end. yet. If you don’t know how to work with that zone and how to kind of jump on the stepping stones between those points and how to manoeuvre then you kind of get to get boxed in in the zone defence is going to win and push you back toward that goal. So that’s kind of what you have done with me is that I knew all the things and I’m very switched on. I will say that and yet I was too close to it. I will in it and I am in it as we are in our own businesses even I call you out on your own business as well. And it’s just that beautiful safe person that can go by Are you going to put an A on this? If it’s through chat with Kathy, that means there’s a little bit of swearing. I’m going to go Okay, I’ll put it in a BS, a BS on that. implied explicit. So we are encouraging this in the afternoon. So more later in the day, the more you get closer to the room, least it’s not a Friday. And that would be a completely different experience. That would be that would be yes, that’s not for recording. Um, so yeah, you are able to take analyse, take the beautiful, your skill of analysing all the pieces. And then I helped me put it in filter, move things around, and then introduce me to the wonderful tool of clickup. And I’m just going to say click up as because I’ve worked with, I’ve actually helped design and been subject matter expert on a couple of national systems, specifically biometric system and state based biometric system. So I’ve been involved in a bit of it. And this is like having your own custom system where you know, and we don’t even need to put the dollars figures on it. How much a custom system costs businesses, and the support that is not really supportive and warranty periods, which expire? Like a puff of smoke, and yet two weeks is what No, we can make it look sparkly into the 15th. Day. And yeah, I’m just all these flashbacks of it. And this is honest, and I’m pointing here as I’m talking to you, because I’ve got it open on my other screen. That’s exactly what this is. Basically, you’ve got you want a business digital system done to it. And yeah, had it. What were you gonna ask me? How do I use it? Is that a question?

Nicole Smith 7:20
We’ll we’ll get? Yeah, well, absolutely, But just on, on click up in particular, I know my journey with it was that when I first started, I was looking for that solution. And I had the similar background to you, Kathy, where I was dealing with custom design solutions where I was that conduit, or that middle person that that translator between the business and the developers because they do speak to very different unique languages. And being able to articulate all of the what we need, as a business into what the system can do is a skill I love. I love it to be honest.

Kathy Rast 8:01
But then you go to the beautiful opportunity. And then they call us business analysts in the middle. And they can call you can call bs on the end user. Yeah. And you can call and the business user at all levels. And you can call bs on the it as well. I know you can do it. I know it’s a flick of a code. And I know you’ve already done it. And for some reason, it’s not working now. So get it done. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Nicole Smith 8:26
And then when I was looking at the system, the for my business, I looked at Asana, and Trello, and Monday and all the project management solutions. And then I saw click up. And that’s exactly why I chose it as well, because I could see, and this was a year ago. So this was before the funding and the investment really started with it, I can see such potential of being able to have access as a small business user to create this space that is really designed for you the way that you want to use it without the massive price tag of having to custom design something. So yeah, like I needed.

Kathy Rast 9:04
I also loved that the like you say, when we started working on it, and obviously you were working with it long before me. It’s a totally different system in that short time. So the updates are crazy. So it’s wonderful to have you as somebody who is telling me what updates to pay attention to and then knowing how to use them, which takes the time and the effort to go. Okay, well, that’s nice, well done. But how do I use my Gantt chart now to map out my client journey or whatever it is? How do I use my goals? How do I set up a dashboard and all of these things so you can just come in and either one do it for me? If I want to keep coming back to you. That’s always an option or, and some of those things I will for me, but other things I like Okay, cool. Can you show me how to use that or how I can and adapt what I have to use it. So it’s handy to either have the opportunity to talk to you frequently, or the opportunity to have milestones ago cool, we get up to an amazing standard here and then you come back in six months, 12 months, and then we go cool. This is what we can do. Now, we didn’t have the opportunity to do that. Can I give you my favourite example? Love you to absolutely go for it. So my favourite example is the templates. Yeah, so when we first started with that, it was very, it was very clunky. It was like the Commodore 64 all the systems to put it there felt like there was a joystick there that clamped back and forth. And now it feels like my brain. Oh, yes. How it How is trackpad sorry, then go up on it and the side trackpad game change out love it. versus a mouse crazy. I know. Yeah. So anyway, that was a Kathy I love my it my Mac stuff. Um, so the templates, obviously, we started where they did what they did. And but there were lots of drawing into your knowledge about your ability to create workarounds, workarounds being, it speak for, oh, it’s not working the way we want it to. But you can do it this way. Basically, it hacks to put it in everyday speak. So then, but now, I’m like, cool, I’ve got the confidence to press all the buttons, cuz now I know where it fits in my processes that we work in. And then from there, I now just create templates. So the first thing it’s changed. This is where what where there is a by direction, there’s a two way direction in processes versus a symptoms, symptoms, systems. So that’s why you have a bi directional relationship between the processes in the system, and that they implement it. So we have the processes that I initially started out with you. And then we design the system around that. But now the functionality in the system has changed. Now I can influence how I do with my processes. So specifically, what that means is that now when I am developing a product, or service, now I go in, and I will go and record my process now. Yeah. And I will do it. And now we’ve got the wonderful layers, we’ve got 234 More Tears in those processes and checklists that we can have. And now I’ve worked out how I can just create that template and easily update it, as well as create relationships. And I can also feel to what I move in my templates. That took me a little bit to work the buttons, I’m sure you would have done it in a blink of an eye. But for me, I pressed the buttons. I didn’t break it. So it’s pretty cool. By the way

Nicole Smith 13:16
That’s all part of of learning a new system though, right? So like, if you want to learn if you want to learn it again lately, yes. So it’s about at first click out can become can be a little bit overwhelming because it is new, and it had does have all of the functionalities in there. And it’s really about understanding how to use it in relation to how you use you work every day in your business, and being able to create that sort of what I call structure that will support you to be making things beautiful and simple. When if you get distracted for that moment, you can come back in and know exactly where you need to go and pick it back up.

Kathy Rast 14:02
And that’s the natural chain process. So there’s always the storming stage, like I can’t do this, I’m not it savvy, guess what? Yes, you are, you’re human. So we’re going to put the young and human in here. And it’s like, we naturally feel that I think the uncomfort is just the loosening up. Before we can get comfortable, it’s just shaking off the old and bringing in the new so it’s actually exciting to answer all the questions that you may ask and go cool, what’s this process? What’s his process and and breaking down that process at the main level and then the next level and then the next level or just staying at the main level if that’s just enough to get comfortable with the process. So it’s really cuz that’s one thing I found that evolved from our conversation. So you can either go super super specific and we or you can break Get down to these and the main steps. And sometimes in some processes, especially if it was a new product or service for me, that was more comfortable to get familiar with it, and then I can go Okay, now I’m going to go to the next level, what’s the steps within that step? Now, what’s the steps within any of those if there are any of those, or what are the documents that are already part of that process? So now the templates, which was this is a very hard question. That’s my favourite part. Yes. And but I do have another one that’s coming up the close second.

Nicole Smith 15:37
What’s your close second?

Kathy Rast 15:39
Goals.

Nicole Smith 15:40
Oh, yes. Okay. Yep. Cool. Cool.

Kathy Rast 15:42
Can I tell you how I haven’t told you how to use them yet?

Nicole Smith 15:45
No, we haven’t had that conversation. I Oh, yes. So your beautiful post this morning on our Insta stories sharing that? And how wonderful we were actually just talking about setting the race. how fabulous. I don’t even have a water here to drink anyway. That’s if I ask anything. That’s the Friday. Um, yeah. So having having those, the aim? We’re heading. So you know that that is where you’re going? Right?

Kathy Rast 16:15
Is that the aim? Or that? That’s just where you’re going? Well, that’s where you’re going. Yeah, that’s how easy you make it? Yeah.

Nicole Smith 16:23
Yeah, absolutely. It’s setting that having that that vision. And now having an in clickup, as well being able to link in all the steps that get you there.

Kathy Rast 16:33
Yeah, so I don’t know, I haven’t even gone into next level. So this morning, and it was just this morning. So we know, this is this is my part of the conversation where I’m bringing in that the human side of it, we can until something is anchored or is relative to something. So I’ll give you a really good example. I’ve broken it up into a couple of really big folders, and then I’ve got goals under those and then goals under those. And it’s right through from a subscriber list. Yep. And we get this is the beauty of what you’re doing is that we get told to build a subscriber list for this purpose, so that we can talk to our people directly, because there’s so much noise in this world. But what you are doing is that there’s never, you’re never building enough. So I went by her this morning, I’m going to build and I’m going to build to this level, this is my first target. This is when I’m setting it. Yes, I know, it sounds like we’ll do that’s what goal setting is. But now I’m not setting a goal, I’m saying a target and everything is tracking towards it. So I go in there and I can update it. And I can say the little things. And I know we’ll shoot confetti when I get target

how fabulous when you’ve read all all you notifications, and you’re like, whoo, and there’s a beautiful quote, they’re like,

oh, I’ve come up, I’ve come up with a workaround for that. And so that’s what I found. Yeah, so and then I put it in the same thing, well, an increasing this service. So I put the number in, and then I’m tracking it the same with the sales the same way. Now I’ve actually put my human in there. It’s literally called human before we actually said it. So I’ve got my moving goals the other day. And then I’ve also got writing my book in there. So now I’m starting to break that down and building that to being a real thing. So it’s something that I will come back to at the start and the end of the week, because I know that when I look at it at the start of the week, it sets that intention that this is my focus for the end of the week, and at the end of the week, I celebrate where I have come in that week. Yeah, start again on the following Monday, and how to that,

Nicole Smith 19:02
that is beautiful. I love that you’ve touched on the personal side of things as well. Because clickup is can be just business, but how fabulous that you can create everything in there.

Kathy Rast 19:16
So you know, my medical stuff in

Nicole Smith 19:19
I think it’s great, you can know because remember one central location Why? Why complicate things and try and have different systems for personal and business like as, as entrepreneurs, our worlds, like work isn’t work. It’s our passion. It’s it’s what we live and breathe and love and, you know, having it all of the things means that we can have know exactly where they all are, and really actually plan your day out.

Kathy Rast 19:47
Yeah, well, it’s just basically like having a clean, harddrive. Mm hmm. Yeah. So obviously, it’s cloud. So that’s good. I can access it on my devices and computer and all that fun. stuff. But it also allows me to be a central calendar. So when I do have personal human appointments, or when I do have business appointments, they’re all in my calendar, they were in my running sheet of the day, I can move things around by dragging and dropping things. I can block out time there as well and offload through to my synced Outlook calendar, as well. So it’s about it being. So yeah, I know that you back yours up to OneDrive, or one of those. If it’s under a meg, I think it no maybe. Yeah, outfit Sandra make it goes in here. If it’s bigger, it doesn’t fit. So that’s easy enough, then you just embed a link to Google Drive, which is what I do. And you can either embed it or you can set a bookmark. Yeah, there’s a zillion things that I do now that I’m like, Oh, I’m so excited to go and brag to Nicole that I worked out something she already knew. But that’s because she just shared with me and say, Oh, how does that help you? And how’s that? How has that helped with your process? And what are you going to do and use it from now? So, goals and templates are my favourite thing.

Nicole Smith 21:14
Yeah, I love the term. And you are so right, coming back to the updates and what’s happening in clickup. In particular, like, with the influx of investment, like last time, it was late last year, there has been all of these changes happening so quickly. And so simply that the template change was a major game changer, being able to have that really easily accessible actually see, in a, in a place one place, what you’ve already created. And for that whole cleanup process as well, you know, as, as we’re developing processes, as we’re developing, the way we do things, they’re always evolving as we learn new things, and we explore different ways or we realise that, you know, you want to be over here instead of here or whatever it is. And if you decide to completely remap that, that way of working, you can remove the old one and it will be nice and keep that sort of templated area really beautiful and clean. Or you keep it there for historical love. And I my riches, maybe what I do, because I love to have a look at where I’ve been and where I’m going. But I always make sure I’ve got a reference point of which is the main ones that are active, just like you would in in your filing structure, having a really beautiful naming convention that you understand and your team understands in a general sense.

Kathy Rast 22:43
If you fall off your perch, your business will still keep running. Yep, the old purchase. Hey, they’re

Nicole Smith 22:52
just interrupting this episode to let you know all about our exciting new membership. The doors to the take control with Nicole members lounge are now open and we are ready to welcome you to date your chair as one of our fabulous foundation members. The members lounge provides a safe space to learn and implement productivity and organisational techniques for creative small business owners. We offer a unique approach to breed ease in your everyday by customising strong foundations that save time, money and sanity. how fabulous when you are able to confidently stride down at street? Would you walk through door A or B? hop over to HTTPS Academy dot the artisans.com.edu slash members dash lounge to join us in the members lounge. I look forward to welcoming you very soon. See you later.

Kathy Rast 23:50
Bye. But the thing that’s really cool that took me again took me a minute. And I’m pretty it savvy so it takes everybody a minute to learn stuff. I was talking to somebody the other day I did Kobe. Yes, I will. I’m not it savvy. Guess what? I just spent two hours working out this thing with my email management system. The difference is I just know it takes a moment to learn a system. Yeah. So you just you just do it. Yep. And it’s, that means you have to learn and that means you have to use it. That means you have to do it. But if you make it really easy and enjoyable, then you get to do it and enjoy it at the same time. But the templates is not just obviously, your tasks. So the process is your views. It’s your documents. It’s your What else is there? I haven’t used any I don’t think I’ve used any of that for Well, yes. So you’ve

Nicole Smith 24:42
got folder lists, task views and views in different ways as well like view as in Is it a list view, a document view or whatever view or actually in individual lists, you can have different views of how you look at The data, so you have different custom columns, settings, etc. dashboard is one that isn’t a template yet that I’m waiting for, because I use dashboards as my communication portal with my clients. And yes, you can. You can again, I have a workaround for that. But it’s not quite in in template, but yes, sorry,

Kathy Rast 25:20
but it will be, it will be really, really quick. Like, it won’t be too far. I surely know. I would say no, so no. And that’s it. I’ve never seen a system grow as quick as this. Yeah. It’s again, working with it. People beautiful it people. There’s so many, but there is so many things. I mean, once you do anything in a test environment versus a production environment, you’re like, what can that do that? Usually it’s used, I still remember one of the things I wrote out, it was designed perfectly, but guess what? Oh my gosh, the first day it rolled out. A serious? Never thought someone would press that button. Of course, what happened? Most users press that button. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, so this is amazingly speed. But the I guess the whole point of templates is just that you can keep repeating over and over and over again. Yeah. And

Nicole Smith 26:12
that you can email templates is another one. Sorry, that was another one for when you’re on a business plan. So like the free goes free, unlimited, and then business, it opens up the world of email templates and adding your email signature as well. So that’s a feature that I use, very often made a massive part of my onboarding process, part of my podcast creation part of the whole element of communication, email forwarding process, as well, I’ve got an email template in there, I have to

Kathy Rast 26:43
learn that one. And I’ve only dabbled in the email. But I guess, again, I just cannot get over how crazy it is that you can pay like backrow. Especially when you get the what you think then after the, for the lifetime of it. It’s just like, seriously, I’m surprised at businesses haven’t actually gone, we’re just going to go to these online vailable to everybody market system. It’s just crazy. Like, I can see why you fell in love with that. And I looked at, I want them to pick up email marketing, because I’m still haven’t found anywhere that I love that. Um, but yeah, so and then integrations with other systems as well, like, especially email, I love how I can just save my emails to tasks or create tasks from my outlook. Yeah, I What else do I integrate with? White? Do you have any queries or questions for me?

Nicole Smith 27:43
Because I’ve just started talking and love it. No, but this is really exciting. Because for me, it’s, it’s the journey of at right at the start of, of chatting with you and going right, Kathy? What’s going on up here? Like, what are we what are we? What are we creating today?

Kathy Rast 28:03
Like, I know it can go anywhere.

Nicole Smith 28:06
But how amazing that it does, because I find this with all of my clients is that we start here and we have this big brain dump. And then what happens is, my brain just starts to do something, the stuff we call stuff, and connecting all the things and going, Hey, we’re missing this bit how we thought about this are we could actually utilise this system by doing this and setting it up like that. And then all of a sudden, all of these other things that you may not have realised that at that point is what is it it’s in the backpack in your subconscious mind.

Kathy Rast 28:44
subconscious and unconscious, you can look back interchangeable.

Nicole Smith 28:48
Yeah. And they come forward because all of the things that you’ve been holding at the front, and now out, and here. So it’s allowed the space for the other little things to come through that we are aware of that we naturally you know, we jump in the car and we drive to the shops, we don’t really know how we’ve driven there because we do it so frequently. Whereas what this do, what I do with my clients is really pull it out and make it so that whoever is sitting in that drive

Kathy Rast 29:18
nicely. It’s not through your nose with a bean needle or like a swab that we have a couple of times. Absolutely not. It doesn’t feel like that. Or if it does, it’s really pleasurable at the end, because then you get to enjoy the long lasting but I did say to them when I had to come over as well. I’ve only had two. So that’s like I think I’m doing a pretty good run. I did say to him said, guys just find that bit where we can feel good. And I’m sure everybody would just come in voluntarily get tested all the time. Yeah, isn’t it funny. But I also haven’t mentioned I’ve got two businesses in here. So I’ve got my personal plus two businesses so people could totally put in there. Kids, their, their messaging or their pics or like whatever your different parts of your life are, it’s easy enough to create totally separate spaces

Nicole Smith 30:12
and private spaces. So remember when you have a team if there is your personal space that you may not want to share with everyone, but maybe you want to share it with your assistant who helps manage your your well being your life, you can share it with just them. So that is another power of the you know, if we’re talking back in the IT world, that IT security element of things, just sharing what you want to share, and being able to understand how that all works is, you know, a little bit of a game changer as well,

Kathy Rast 30:46
huh? Yeah, like, yeah, you could totally pick it up and do it yourself. Yeah, oh, and this is the thing that I know, that we, we are learning as we do in our businesses, you can do anything yourself. Or you can do it quicker, easier, more enjoyable, and to a whole new level that you can’t do yourself by engaging with someone or something that can facilitate that introduction and that building and that implementation of all those things. So yeah, you get what you pay for. If you’re paying yourself and you don’t know anything. Garbage in, garbage out. But if you are going to go and in interconnect with someone like yourself, it’s like, cool. Well, I can just say to you, Nicole, actually, I don’t give a rat’s. Talking Kathy language. Yeah, I I don’t give a rat’s about the detail. Can I just tell you this? And you go do that. And you go, sure. Okay, that, that? I go, I really want to learn this. Can you teach it? Sure. Here’s a loom video. Yeah. And here’s the link. So you can watch it as many times as you like. So yeah, especially like, I that’s how I learned to do the notification things and thinking all those stuff up. So yeah, I guess that levelling video? Yes. And I love that it’s in the central location. And I can just type your question in our dashboard. And now in the members land where we can share it with other people as well. So and we can get those regular updates. of what’s coming. So it’s, yeah, I’m, I’m a total convert. I don’t. Yeah, I do. Like it gives me a whole new level in my business. Yeah. Because it’s not just the point of having a subscription that covers so many bases, because it’s more like, cool. Now they incorporate this, I can trim off that subscription. Now I can do this, I can simplify. Again, they are doing that whole, bringing into the system’s making it a central system for so many things and integration. So easier that you don’t have to zap so much. Yeah, you can just set the little bit that you need to. So it gives you a whole new level of confidence. And of course, once you’ve got your client experience set up, that again, I’m going to learn from you more and more, then in the automations of that, then that will be it’s one. That’s that is that that I’m guessing you’re talking about, which is you don’t have to do, you only have to think about the things that you need to think about. And then the rest is both easy for you. But more importantly, it’s easy for your clients, or customers. They are different, by the way, look them up. So clients and customers and that experience is seamless from their end. Yeah. Absolutely. Especially with the email thing, and making sure that they’ve got Yeah, all those things. So or even with our podcasts, yeah, doing things like that, or newsletters or little things like that which require part of human intervention and interaction. And a lot of it we can automate. And with very professional finish, and I and that is exactly it. So,

Nicole Smith 34:25
you know, creating the creating of processes or creating the way that you like to work is just as important to be enjoyable for you, as it is for your clients or your customers that are working with you. You know that seamless experience is something that I’ve always had front of mind that if I enjoy the process from the front end user point of view, from my clients point of view, I know that it’s going to be an enjoyable and easy process, it may reduce the what is it like the flow of resistance to complete something When it’s that little bit clunky, having it just really easy for them to use, and so much more on the inside as well, you know, when things are happening when your business is growing, when you’ve got all the things happening, having something that you don’t have to use as much energy on, because it’s already there for you is just such a beautiful thing to experience.

Kathy Rast 35:27
And it’s really far, I got an earworm. I know you did. I saw it. Loud, I know she’s still talking, I can’t share it, share it with a seamless. So you touched on the unconscious mind, which goes like electricity to the path of least resistance. So we want our clients to go to that conversion to working with us easy and then to close a relationship easily and effortlessly and to enjoy the whole process. So that that is because they are just as much as they’re getting that product or service. They’re in there for the experience. Yep. And we want them to have top notch experience. There’s a reason when you wouldn’t want people to have a top notch experience for this conversation for another day. But it ties into seamless. Yeah. And I haven’t asked you to ask your clients this yet. But I do remember mentioning something like this, it’s Are you ready for your workflows to be seamless? Are you ready for it to be easy? Are you ready, because guess what those things are serving a purpose. If I’ve got a wrinkle here, I might have a certain client that I don’t want to work with. Or I might not have to do that thing that I don’t like doing. Or if I’ve got a wrinkle here, then I get to do that because I love doing that part. But I’d like to win over here, which is actually the most important to that conversion to that client experience to that growth in your business. So by having wrinkles, they are every behaviour has a positive intent. So those wrinkles are there for a purpose they are where they never existed until you created them. And do you know one of my favourite wrinkles that I will probably never outsource is formatting documents.I love it. It’s like a restaurant Ilove that is like crack today. I love it. Love it. Love it. So it is. And But yeah, I can spend I know the longest I’ve spent formatting in a document which is so it was a very long, it was basically a short book was Yeah, a better part of 20 hours. But so I know that that there is my strength. But I also know that it doesn’t actually go towards me businessing it just feeds my need for self validation to say I’m good at something. So that’s one of the main things is that even though we can do something, sometimes we need those little reminders when we are having blips that we go and do things that we know that we are good at that we know that we’ve got a good feeling when we do it. But then we get the guilt afterwards. Because we have done that thing. And we haven’t done that other thing, which is really important to our growth, to our engagement with our clients to the conversion to sales and all of those kinds of things. So it’s wonderful business things. So that was the E where my god from seamless, you have to be ready to be okay. And to maybe even be excited about things being seamless. Yeah. Because you do can show up with all your beautiful enthusiasm, your knowledge, your experience. But if me as the client is not playing at 100% or is not ready yet, by 100% that is okay. But guess what, you’re not going to get it down because you can’t do it for me or you can do it but you can’t make me use the system. Yeah. So that wonderful. So I suggest that’s a question for you to ask them. Are they ready? Are you ready to have and how do you know that you’re ready? And then by that by them answering that question. Then they can form and see or or go wait but Oh, okay, cool. So you know, there’s a bit of resistance. Is that something that can dissolve now or is it something bigger that’s outside of your scope? How does that sit with you?

Nicole Smith 39:40
Absolutely. I love that. From every client I work with and I support. I learned something fabulously new each and every time of how how I can support them better and have those conversations early on and I love I absolutely love that because it really He does as much as I can support and provide the resolution and the solutions for you. Unless you are exactly right, unless you are open and ready to bring that into your world and make it a reality. It’s you’re never going to experience the true joy of what what it what it is that we build. So having that conversation at the start, I think is Yeah, absolutely.

Kathy Rast 40:27
So one. So yeah. So first you say, is it possible that you can and then you say, is it okay, yes. Are you ready now? Or is it all? Again? That’s the case where but the thing I’m getting in there is the yet? Yeah, yes. Because you want to be when people are, like so close, they might just want to chat with you one or two more times to go. Yeah, cool. Now I’m ready to get really, because that’s easy enough. If you’re like standing at the door, and it’s just a matter of opening up, or now it’s a long way off. Fantastic. What support Do you what’s preventing you from being ready now? Yeah. And then you go great. Because you have such a connection with a broad range of services, you can go, here are one or two recommendations of people that I would personally work with. I know that have had success with their peoples, whatever it might be. Yep. So that’s another thing as well to have a conversation with you. Yes, click ups part of it. And it’s wonderful. But it’s more, but anybody can teach us this. I mean, there’s enough videos, you can go online itself, but it’s more how you, you connect to it you as both your experience as a business owner, as well as a human. Yeah. And wonderfully curious. Human. That’s why we keep talking. Yeah, I still I know before we started recording, and that’s when you said oh, we should be recording. And that’s the beat that again, with any system garbage in, garbage out. If you’re putting in messy dated, not yet well captured or crafted or articulated processes, which usually comes from a fresh pair of eyes asking you questions. Yeah. Well, I love that eyes asking questions, whether there’s an image for you. And if you are, that’s what you’re going to get out. Yep, change it out. That sounds why we don’t put neon. But if your come to you, and you go, Hi, this is my heated mess that I call business. And this is how I do wonderful, get wonderful success with my clients. The processes are clunky, and I’m up late at night, or I am doing this and that I’m getting it done. But hey, I can’t do it. I can’t keep this out. The doc says especially that I’m going to self combust. So you go cool. And again, I’d the image that I came up with I just love it. Some sort of again, he did miss pile of turd, but great, great success their clients. The backend, How fun is that? Nothing You mean, the back end. And then the other side is just rainbows. Yeah, and of course your sparkly, so sparkly rainbows out the other side, because you’ve just transformed it. Like the magic Nicole wand into just, I don’t know how to describe it, but just then the other end, it can go in his garbage. And it can come out as wonderful rainbows.

Nicole Smith 43:51
I really love them. Thank you for saying that. I love that I really do. And that is the exact experience that I want each and every person that I come into contact with as I work one on one or joins the membership will will reach an experience like it’s it’s one of my clients recently, you know, intro call she basically you just described the call and she was like, I’m it’s just a hot mess here. Like it’s just a hot mess, all the things like working on weekends, scheduling all the theme and doing all the things I want to be doing or things like that anymore. So how do we make that not happen and move it to this. And yet it’s lovely to be able to experience that and support support you through that, you know, be your second set of eyes that looks at things from a different view that you’re in when you’re in it when you’re in the box that we call business. You know, we don’t have that opportunity all the time to step away and ask those questions and look at those things in a different light right

Kathy Rast 45:00
And oh, maybe maybe it aligns with a psychology phenomenon where we read a word again, follow COVID dates with me to like, you know, oh yeah, this can work. So end to end people that don’t know, we don’t know what I’m just doing now just talking to myself and making a wonderful connection. So end to end. It looks like it’s working. Yeah. It’s in the middle. Yeah, that’s messy. So there’s a phenomenon where we can read a word as long as the first and last letters are correct. The middle bit can mess up. Yeah, fee now I don’t. Yeah,

Nicole Smith 45:39
you should all go and listen to Kathy’s podcasts we’ll share the link in the notes but you you should go over and have cushie if you want you don’t have to I would love you to but he’s a

Kathy Rast 45:55
lot of that’s really fun because that’s really what happens isn’t it an aka my voice is going up and I’m really excited because I’ve just made this wonderful little connection that’s what we can say but the jobs getting done yeah. You know how to attract people you know how to get success but in the middle it’s absolutely killing it and then like some people call I don’t really don’t like these words. They’re not words that I don’t think that they’re helpful, which is they burn out they because you didn’t really burn really can you burn out you’re more like explode or you blow a fuse Yeah. Cuz burnout just means that you don’t need any arm that’s from really wide or it like it or burnouts actually a little bit funny if you think that key teenage days when everybody got a card. Yeah.

Nicole Smith 46:52
Interesting that that’s not whenever that buzzword is spoken about. That’s not what we originally got. That was not what we associated with. But yeah, like teenage Nicole. Maybe the boys that might have been hanging out with it. They all have their hot it especially in Melbourne on a Friday night was the thing you know, going where do you go? When you’re young? What? Okay,

Kathy Rast 47:14
so I’m a country girl. So where do you go to hang out? Is it like shopping centre car parks and things like that? Or did you wait near?

Nicole Smith 47:23
Just like you used to just go to people’s houses and drive around in the cars and yeah, that’s interesting when at that stage anyway.

Kathy Rast 47:37
You think oh, so this is the wonderful thing. So now you’re now you’re not going to be able to smile when you think of it. And now we think of all the mistakes we got off to a youngins. And yeah, I associate it with in a country town, you’re on a property somewhere. Are you down by the lake or up to all kinds of mischief? Love it. So now I’m actually that’s a bit

Nicole Smith 48:04
light fitting a different light on a word. You are fabulous at doing

Kathy Rast 48:10
given a new meaning. It’s a lot of meaning. It’s a fun meaning now, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay, now? Yeah, I don’t encourage it. No, of course, safety first people safety first. Plus, ties are expensive. Yes. True. Yes. You have no views. You just did. They just looked at the car. But yeah, so. Anyway, there we go. That was a wonderful

Nicole Smith 48:34
Welcome to the world of Nicole and Kathy conversations. We start here and then we may go over this and we will always come back. We’re gonna go over there as well.

Kathy Rast 48:43
We are we’re kind of like, moving. Yeah, it’s kind of like a balloon. So we start at the start, and you let it off and it’s around in the air. But for some reason this alone always learned exactly where we knew it was going. Yeah.

Nicole Smith 49:03
actually happens in our house. The kids that’s a fabric five, bla bla bla bla bla words. That’s a game that they love to play. Assignments always blowing up balloons for them. So love it.

Kathy Rast 49:20
Have we talked to other things? Yeah, I think Sorry. I’m sure we will continue talking. But I just say I just want to call realness like because it is a chat with me and

Nicole Smith 49:35
visuals for everyone that obviously cannot say Cathy’s now found a ball and it was just looks like an eyeball.

Kathy Rast 49:42
So it’s my first ever filtered thing. I’m learning how to felt. Which This is one my residuary. gasca can never say. Like without asking. Yeah, Mike wazowski from monster’s Inc, kind of. So I felt it. So, which is a type of weaving? Yeah. I’ve thought with the needle. So I did want to say it sounds like this is a sales pitch for clickup. Yeah, I just want to call it what it is, I just love to call it what it is, it is part of that. Yeah. But it’s more to share my experience of one connecting with the system, but more importantly, your connection to this system. And I just want to call a spade a spade, because I just love calling it that. So it is about how working with you makes it an enjoyable experience. And that when you know an answer you freely give up, or you know when to stop talking and ask a question, as we’ve been working together, as well as so that you have the longer lasting results, or you just get it done. If I asked you this, you do that? And which is wonderful as well, or this is a better option, because you didn’t I didn’t know that was a thing until you said, and you stay on top of the updates. And you are Yeah, you’re just like wonderful in the way that is both supportive in the way of doing but supportive in the way of guiding as well. So I if I kept coming back the same question more than say twice, or something like that, then you’d go, you’d have the awareness to go. Wait, something’s getting lost in translation. Yeah, I’m not an IT support desk. Yeah. And then you can go away, it’s in your process. This is where we haven’t quite found the right words, or the right level of, or the right view or didn’t, whatever it might be, we can change out that option. And I don’t have to read the click up updates, because you’re telling me all the things which is wonderful. And I know what wants to get excited about and what ones I don’t need to get excited about, as well as enough autonomy. I love autonomy that can just go like we set up a structure for what I knew. I learned the system. And I’ve totally restructured it. I’m looking forward to I haven’t actually showed you my beat yet my workspaces yet, but I’ve totally restructured it. But that’s only because of a couple of things. I was confident I understood the system. Yeah. at multiple levels, I was confident that now I know the system then that influenced my processes and how I looked at the different parts and gave me clarity on my businesses. As well as then also, I also knew that I could come back to you as a resource with questions. Yep. So it is about really being clear that this conversation has been about my experience with the system, but more importantly, my experience with you. And the system. Yeah, you are the first anytime we say click up we go speak to Nicole. But then once we speak with you, we know quite quickly, that you’re more that that’s only like the smallest part of what you bring to the table. So you always have a seat at the table. So that’s a very unscripted and unrequested. So you’re probably just like, holy sugar, you just wrote my sales page. thing is I just wanted to call it like it is. Yeah. And I can’t lie to you, it’s actually physically impossible for me to lie. Yeah. And so I just wanted to call it for what it is and what this conversation has been about, which is about you, and how you have influenced me to get me where at so I could get me where I am right now. Thank you, Alex,

Nicole Smith 54:08
thank you. Again, that was lovely. It’s, um, I am learning to take compliments. And that was wonderful. Thank you very much. It makes me feel very happy that by working together, you’ve gained that confidence to really jump into that system and know at every stage as you’re because your businesses, your businesses are new and they’re evolving, and you’re refining and every stage there’s something different to explore and being able to have that confidence in the system now and also how we’ve worked together to pull out all the beats and really refine them and readjust them to where you are now and going forward. That’s That’s lovely. That’s really lovely. Thank

Kathy Rast 54:55
you. Yeah, I didn’t get any whoever like oh, compliment. Okay. I promised last year at home, go for it. You just said I’m getting used to what, what if everything’s a compliment? That’s actually one of my homeworks for people. Everything you get is compliment, okay? Everything you get is a compliment, which really now I look at the definition, it really doesn’t make sense. Because a compliment is applied expression of praise or admiration. I’m not blowing smoke up your skirt. I don’t know how to bring it politely. I can’t make it through that. But I can put words in front of you. Yes. Lightly and the verb is so that was a noun and politely congratulate someone for something I’m not doing. Okay, sorry. That is not how it is. I get a compliment, then. Thank you for saying no cities. Yes. Just saying your. So I’m saying my experience. Yes, sure. There we go. I’m happy with that. So yeah, compliment comes from the Latin words for completion, fulfilment. I aligned with that. Okay. Yeah. This is my, my experience fulfilment of the requirements of courtesy. Oh, no, then we’ve gone and Italian transformed the Latin to Lazzara. Now, I’m waving my arms around. I don’t agree with them. Anyway, no, it’s not polite. It’s just honest. And it’s just that he, pretty much everybody that we have in our networks, at so many different stages in the business, whether you’ve been doing it for 20 years or two minutes, there is more than you need. And once you do one thing, then it makes it easy to do the next thing and the next thing. So it’s just one step. And then the next step. And then the next step. Again, I kind of picture like walking down the old fashioned bridle down the aisle, together, step together, step together, step together. So it’s kind of like that pace. Yeah. So that’s why I’m excited to see how that pace is danced with, again, playing off your dancing metaphors. How we do that in the membership, and how we, again, not a paid blog, how we how we all pace and just get it done? Yeah.

Nicole Smith 57:40
I’m really excited about coming together, you know, I attract these fabulous people, and being able to have us all in this in the space in the lounge in our velvet lounge. And so getting about that chair, by the way for this study, she’s going to be upgraded soon. Morone Of course, ah, yeah. There is a beautiful blue one that I have. I’ve got hired out for the soon to be room where we watch movies at some point that’s over there. Right now. Um, but yeah, I’m so excited to have everyone in in there.

Kathy Rast 58:17
So that’s the difference between you though, huh? And the other? That’s different. So we’re part of a couple of shared networking groups. Yeah. And memberships. And then we’ve got other ones that we’ve got on our own. So that’s the difference. This is a place where both you have the space for a moment. But that always links to getting it down. Yeah. So I know that we have so many spaces where it says I need to do that. So then your next question is going to be and it always is, okay. So how are you going to get that done? Do you know yet? Do you okay? You don’t know yet? Fantastic. Or sorry? You say fabulous? Wonderful. So and then I put one foot in there. So fabulous. How how, and then that ninny go down the practical path as well as connecting it to the bigger picture. So that’s the difference, I will say is like the biggest difference. Yeah, there’s no nervous Nellies in here. It’s about people that come in that, get it done that, balls it up. Come in, get it done both rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. But all the while moving a lot forward. It’s always a movement, we can’t move backwards, but you can stay still, but then you still have to do backflips so you naturally want to move forward. So you have to do backflips to stay exactly where you are. But that’s not what you’re about. You’re like, you make it really easily hard for you not to get it done. Yeah. Easily hard to not get make it not get done. Oh, yeah, no, it’s um, yeah, no, yeah, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Smith 1:00:08
Yeah, it’s, it’s really, it’s, I’m really excited about exactly that. And, you know, it is a group membership, like, we’re gonna have people in there. But the experience is not, you’re not a number to me, you are a person with a business with a life with, with your own journey that you’re going on. And we’ll be able to together shape what that is, and you help you take that action. Because that’s what you’re here to do. You want to move forward, you want to take those steps to the goals that you’ve put in to click up. And you’re just need a little bit of support to do that. And I’m here and I’m your cheerleader, and everyone in this membership will be the same, you know, creating a community, I’ve got such a strong focus and passion on community on the one that’s there on there. I mean, if I mean, I mean.

Kathy Rast 1:01:05
And that’s what I am really looking forward to. Yes, you’re a natural connector. I am. Yeah, it’s Monday, I seriously, your affiliations or referral codes, I must be going crazy. Because if you get Nicole in your membership, you will at least have three or four people are following on the first day if not more down the track. So it’s that wonderful. Your value of community and connection. And that’s the funny thing

Nicole Smith 1:01:33
is I don’t have affiliate codes, I’ve got to click up on that I had there for the longest time. And I’ve only just realised that

Kathy Rast 1:01:42
I should be sharing that with my clients that are upgrading to where you can now put it in your process, which is in there already. I’ve just there we go. Yeah. Well, thank

Nicole Smith 1:01:57
you so much, as always, and I won’t ask you the three questions, because we’ve already done that. And that’s not what today was about. But I really appreciate you as always. And yeah, thank you for sharing all that you shared. Absolutely Fabulous. Thank you. I will be putting all of the things in the show notes. Because Kathy is wonderful. And her podcast is amazing. And everything that she does is is fabulous. Sorry, checked on my website. So please go and connect with her. But thank you again, Kathy. And for everybody that is listening. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And enjoy creating space anti freedom by now. Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social shares? If not, please come on over Say hi, I’m on all the platforms at the artisan solution. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I would love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week and until next time. See you then