In this episode, joining Callan Faulkner’s $20K/year Uncommon Leaders program exposed a critical execution gap: dozens of documented SOPs existed in Notion with zero automation implemented. The core challenge wasn’t understanding Zapier or Make.com—it was systematically prioritizing which processes to automate first and effectively communicating requirements to contractors.
Key Takeaways:
- The Execution Valley Between Documentation and Automation Having complete SOPs doesn’t translate to automation—the missing bridge requires assessing what percentage of each process is automatable, estimating time savings, and creating clear contractor instructions.
- Chief of Staff Framework for System Building The real breakthrough involved creating a meta-system: an AI-driven process that evaluates every new SOP for automation potential, prioritizes by pain and time savings, then generates contractor-ready specifications.
- 10X Problems Demand Immediate Action Framing automation as exponential growth potential rather than incremental improvement forced movement on tasks that had been procrastinated for months despite being acknowledged low-hanging fruit.
Listen to the full episode for the specific framework used to finally overcome automation inertia and build systems that continuously identify automatable processes.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. Excited to be talking with you all today. Like semi-mindset Sunday here when this one is coming out. back on the AI train. we decided to join, I know I’ve talked about Calvin Faulkner’s Accelerate to Automate program. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. I just really think she’s one of the most special entrepreneurs.
and her whole team that she’s brought on. Like I’m just becoming much more selective who we spend our time with, who we associate with and learn from. And yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’ve just been kind of with Cal and all the way here. Um, uh, you know, again, just think, think she’s super, super special and the value add has just been tremendous. Um, so just take that for what it’s worth. But she also came out with this uncommon leaders program just now it’s like, it’s like almost 20 K a year. Uh, but you know, we.
had that as roughly our budget for what we might bring on another hire for, but I thought, okay, I think it’s actually lower hanging fruit to juice our AI training even further at the moment now. So I would rather devote that side of the budget to just further AI work. I still think that’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest lever for almost any business owner to pull at the moment here. So we opted into that with some other high performing businesses across all.
you know, different types of industries here. And, there’ll probably be more updates to come here, but, we’re, having weekly meetings and two, meetings every month are just called strategy labs. So we’re kind of implementation sessions, but, know, Cal and her team will pull those of us who are part of the, you know, uncommon leaders group and to see, okay, what are the most critical,
problems that we can solve within the business, know, AI or not related. that’s the things like, you know, it’s not just AI training, but it’s also just how to be a good business owner too. Um, uh, so you really need both of those hand in hand to actually generate the key results. like, know, gallon and the folks working for her, like it’s had a lot of success, um, as entrepreneurs and business operators. So I think that is what has been the secret sauce for, you know, why they’ve been successful combining that with.
Um, you know, cutting edge AI principles. so, um, you know, as I was trying to think of like a biggest challenge here, uh, for, for us, um, again, when you put, put, put stuff into words, you know, writing or, know, actually speaking aloud. And that’s why, like, I enjoy doing these podcasts and stuff too. Sometimes it’s rough around the edges and I like, realize, yeah, just, uh, that could have been said differently, but you know, all these thoughts that might be in my head, they, you know, it helps.
for me to articulate them and organize my own thinking as well on, what’s actually real or not about this particular topic or the way it sounds in my head was actually way cooler or more, yeah, for lack of a better word, articulate than when I actually say something out loud there. So, you know, this is just kind of continued practice to be able to actually convey ideas.
But the same thing goes to when, you okay, you’re, filling out forms for, all right, the strategy session. They’re asking, what’s your number one biggest challenge right now? And you got to figure out what, what is the key thing that if we’re just starting off here, we should really focus on as a business. And so, you know, when I spent some time earlier today about this, you know, to me, our lowest hanging fruit.
from the AI side is just the fact that we have 0 % automated within our business. Like we understand how to do it. And we learned that within the A2A program and you can use Zapier, Gumlobe, Make.com, whatever, N8N. But the actual process of overcoming that inertia and putting your SOPs into an automated format is where we’ve been stuck. So like when I actually started to write or really use Whisperflow,
and draft what our issue was. It’s like, okay, overcoming that inertia, like we’ve actually gotten better, especially my core ops manager has built out a number of SOPs according to, know, Kellyn’s team’s frameworks within Notion. So we have the growing database of full SOPs that are just repeatable tasks within our business, but we haven’t translated that over into anything that’s automated.
And the key issue for us is like, know, okay, we can hire somebody to do Zapier work, like a contractor on Upwork. But the bridge is, okay, which of these tasks should we focus on first? And how do we know which pieces are more automated than others? Like, do we know, you know, is 50 % of this SOP, you know, automatable is, you know, 80 % is a hundred percent. And also like what’s level of effort.
and potential time savings related to actually automating some of these tasks. Like, you know, what’s the cost benefit ratio for, you know, potentially automating something. And then how do we present this SOP over to a potential contractor so they can quickly assess what they can do to help. And so then they can, you know, execute and implement for us. Like how do we convey that message over to them? So that that’s been the bigger hurdle. And you’re like, well.
You know, kind of hearing it, you know, even as I speak, or maybe as you’re listening to this, well, yeah, just go on up work and just fight, but, know, you probably know yourself, like there’s just certain tasks that get procrastinated on or just, you know, some inertia and hurdles. And like, this is definitely one for us, in terms of how we prioritize and how we actually go about getting this done. like we’ve never done it before. So those tend to be the tasks that, you know, get, get kicked down the road more often than not.
even though they are lower hanging fruit and we really should get them done. So, that is our current issue there. Plus it’s like, okay, how do we build a system around that process too? Because that’s just, that’s an extra step forward. It’s like, you know, once we do this, you know, for one particular SOP, how do we build basically an SOP for automation?
for any, so, so basically like any SOP that we enter into the database, it should then trigger, gets processed through, I don’t know, either an AI project or some other type of assessment tool, that determines, okay, here’s roughly how much should be automated, or could be automated within this particular process. and maybe, you know, kind of, again, prioritization based on length of time.
within the business, how much pain is associated with it. Some of those are subjective measurements. And then, how would you convey this information over to a builder who’s actually going to execute on various automation software like Zapier or whatever. So that’s like the system within the system to have a process to continue to automate parts of our business. And so what can be automated should be automated and will be automated.
And so as soon as we can knock out some of those tasks that allows myself and my team to continue to embrace more of our zone of genius or go after even higher leverage activities that, you know, we no longer need to spend time touching, you know, automatable functions of the business. And we can just keep going up the chain for larger priorities or even figure out as technology improves other areas that.
could be automated with more effort or at least systematize better. So, or maybe just require more creative thought on how to approach a certain problem. So, I really appreciated their framing on how to ask, what’s your number one biggest problem? And then also like they asked, hey, what solutions have you tried? And like, I had to be honest, like I’m kind of a blank slate here, we haven’t really tried, but based on your experience, just for us to lessen learning curve here,
what would you suggest the next steps be? and then also like that they frame it from a 10 X standpoint to like, make sure, Hey, this is a exponential increase, potential increase in the growth curve of your business. Like focus on 10 X problems. I guess that if we can start automating, there’s no doubt that there’s a 10 X potential, that I’m probably not even realizing yet. And then they asked for a loom too. Like, again, I use looms all the time for stuff. Okay.
break it down, here’s, and that forces you again to explain, even though I put some writing down for what the issue is, now I have to screen share and actually show, okay, here’s how I’d be thinking about these steps in a more executable format to help their team understand. So really, smart and savvy way to collect feedback and what to, how to actually help people. So I just wanted to share that framework, because that’s probably even helpful to do within your own business here. And hopefully we have some
updates on the implementation here by the time you hear this podcast, you all have been up in, Minnesota and hanging out with Callan and, her, basically see COO Carter Jensen too. so hopefully I have a lot more info from that and, can report accordingly, but hope you enjoyed this one, seriousland.capital for any of your funding needs again, 50 K minimum, 150 K plus preferred purchase price.
Zero Cost Review Land Deals at Land Daily Diligence Facebook Group and LandPricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Subscribe and share, everybody. Take care. Talk to you tomorrow. Bye.
