Why Everything Lives in the Founder's Head- And How to Fix It | Aveline Elfar | AE&CO | Profits on Purpose

Episode Description

Most founders think their bottleneck is marketing or sales. It's not. It's operations.

Aveline Elfar spent six years managing franchise operations before discovering that online businesses were drowning in even more operational chaos. Now, as a fractional COO specializing in health and wellness brands, she helps six and seven-figure founders reclaim 10+ hours per week through strategic automation and process optimization.

Her philosophy? "Clarity is kindness." Whether it's customer journeys, SOP databases, or team communication, unclear systems create friction, missed deadlines, and founder burnout. This conversation offers a clear path to operational clarity.

Key Takeaways

In this episode, we explore:

• The top 3 operational problems in 7-figure e-comm brands (and how to fix them)

•  Why "everything lives in the founder's head" is killing your growth

•  The House Analogy: Operations as piping, sales as water

•  Process documentation vs. process automation (and when you need each)

•  How to maintain SOPs without them becoming obsolete in 6 months

•  The "definition of done"—why your team isn't failing, they just don't know what complete looks like

•  A shocking example: A founder doing 6 figures per month still answering Slack messages

•  How to test your processes "under pressure" before rolling them out

•  Why building your own process database might be doing yourself a disservice

•  Client retention rate as the ultimate operations metric

See More from Aveline and AE&CO

• Aveline Elfar & Co's Official Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Subscribe to her Newsletter here!

Listen to the full episode to discover how Aveline's experiences can inspire and guide you on your entrepreneurial journey. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful conversations!

I hope you enjoy this episode!

Give it a like, share, and subscribe to not miss the content coming your way weekly.
– Nate and the Profits on Purpose podcast team

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Transcript

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00:00 Introduction to Aveline Elfar and Her Journey
04:07 Transitioning to the Health and Wellness Niche
09:05 Common Operational Challenges for E-commerce Founders
16:38 The Importance of Customer Journey Mapping
22:57 Clarity is Kindness: Aveline's Philosophy
28:23 Operational Mistakes Founders Make
33:41 Leveraging Technology and AI in Business
40:27 Key Performance Indicators for Success

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Nate Littlewood (00:05)
Welcome back to Profits on Purpose, the podcast for eComm and CPG founders who are looking to scale their businesses, both profitably and purposefully. I'm your host, Nate Littlewood from Future Ready CFO, which is a go-to CFO solution for founders who are looking for help with turning financial chaos and confusion into business clarity and confidence. Anyway, today's guest is Aveline Elfar, who is a fractional COO, and founder of a business called A.E. & Co. Operations Agency, which is a boutique consultancy that helps health and wellness entrepreneurs transform operational chaos into scalable systems.

Over the past decade as a fractional COO, Aveline has worked with multiple six and seven figure businesses, helping them reclaim sometimes over 10 hours per week through strategic automation and process optimization.

Her philosophy to business is simple, really powerful. Clarity is kindness is kind of what she's all about. And she brings that principle to every system that she builds. What makes Aveline's approach unique is that she doesn't just help you strategize. She actually rolls up her sleeve and helps with implementation as well.

From her early days optimizing franchise operations to now helping online businesses automate customer journeys and build process databases. She's seen firsthand how the right systems can be the difference between a founder working a 16 hour day and working just four hours per day. Wouldn't that be great? Aveline, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here and I'm looking forward to diving in.

Aveline Elfar (01:52)
Appreciate you having me, Nate.

Nate Littlewood (01:55)
Of course. Well, I always like to start these conversations off with a bit of a backstory and just learning a little bit more about you. So take me back to the moment when you realized that you wanted to make this change in your career, getting out of franchise operations and focusing more on the online business world. What was it kind of about, you know, digital entrepreneurs that really, you know, pulled you in?

Aveline Elfar (02:20)
What I really saw while I was there was how manual processes and firefighting was constant. And I didn't really understand for me, I am a very like, I'm an operations nerd, I'm an A type personality, I like organization, it gives me a standard and it gives everyone around me a standard to work with and work by.

And I just thought that that was natural. I assumed this is a huge franchise. Of course we're going to have processes in place. Of course we're going to have standards for our employees so that everybody can, everything can run like a well-oiled machine. And that just wasn't the case.

So I installed a operating system and framework and essentially took the bull by the horns and turned that location into a very profitable and successful location. We were actually one of the highest locations in that area in terms of revenue, in terms of customers and customer satisfaction as well. that honestly kind of got me hooked onto like, this is what it's all about. This is the work that lights me up is actually, you know, helping people

reclaim their time, but also helping standardize processes and workflows across the board. What really drew me to the online space was the possibility. And I think we're seeing that in the age of AI now was that there was just so much possible. It was so exciting. And so then when I transitioned to helping online business and really leveraging technology to just reach more people,

with their mission and with their services and with their products, that was really, really exciting for me. So, you know, then I went on to like in particular one health coach that we worked with was just drowning in administrative stuff and operations. And we were able to automate a ton of workflows and she reclaimed like 10 hours a week. And that was like, this is amazing. So yeah, that's really where it all started.

Nate Littlewood (04:34)
Nice one. Nice one. And I understand that you've niched down a bit more specifically into the health and wellness space. And that kind of covers both consulting and coaching type businesses from what I understand, as well as kind of e-comm or physical products type businesses. Tell me, how did you get focused on that niche specifically? Why is health and wellness so important to you?

Aveline Elfar (04:58)
Yeah, it's been a recent change in the way that we've done business in the past. But honestly, it's really personal because at 21, I was told I needed surgery that was usually reserved for people in their 40s and 50s. And I was otherwise healthy. But I did have a diet of like full, like a bunch of processed foods as most people do. And instead of accepting that prognosis,

I really set out to just heal naturally and found a homeopath who introduced me to the world of natural medicine. And that journey just changed everything for me. I ended up being able to heal myself naturally and it just opened up for me to see how powerful holistic approaches can be. And I really wanted more people to know about this. So that's why I'm so passionate about leveraging technology to help health and wellness entrepreneurs reach for people so that they can help and help people heal naturally too. Yeah.

Nate Littlewood (06:00)
So that's so what I'm hearing here is you're the sort of person that loves systems, processes, and an organization. And you're personally passionate about the health and wellness space. I imagine that a lot of the skills that you have and the stuff you can do can probably be applied.

to other industries, right? Like, you know, it's not just health and wellness people that might need help with this, but I'm curious within the health and wellness space, is there anything kind of specific or unique about their needs with respect to, you know, the sort of services that you provide?

Aveline Elfar (06:36)
Well, I would say that the unique piece that we have found is that we are in the age of a lot of health and wellness influencers and they often need help leveraging the network that they have created and the audience that they have created to produce more revenue essentially. So like we partnered with a doctor, he was a chiropractor, he had a huge following, but he didn't know exactly

Well, he had he had monetized through launching a membership because we do work with service based businesses like that as well. And but he hadn't capitalized on a lot of his email marketing. So we were able to set up some automations and systems and like to access growth with a lot of what we in his business. So yeah, so that that's unique. And I would also say the affiliate piece is unique because many doctors work with affiliates.

and work with their product. So we're doing a lot of cross promotions. We're doing a lot of affiliate revenue tracking and things like that. And so that is a piece that has come up again and again. So we've either worked with the services or the influencer, if you will say, or where that traffic is coming from, right? Where that audience is established. And then we've also worked with those products on the other side

where they have, they need some affiliate system set up to promote to their influencers, right? So, you know, talked with a founder last year, he had a product he wanted to launch and like, we know this to be true, right? One of the biggest priorities on his list was finding established health and wellness influencers and entrepreneurs. Some of them like to call themselves influencers to partner with to promote their products.

Nate Littlewood (08:34)
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. So I understand the big picture here and you've given me a couple of examples around partnerships and, you know, tracking revenue and affiliate stuff. I also understand your focus on health and wellness, but I was wondering if we could get a little bit more tactical. So assume a e-com founder comes to you, they're doing seven figures and they say to you, my God, I'm overwhelmed. Like I'm working 16 hours a day. I'm burned out.

Can you help?

Aveline Elfar (09:07)
Yeah, this is my job. I love this question because this is what I do. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, so the top three ones that I see is that there's no clear process for customer follow up and engagement. The customer service tickets and operations in general are usually left to their own devices. Number two is that everything lives in the founder's head. So how to manage certain things, how to look over tasks. It's typically all from the founder's head. And then three, in accordance with that, they're also just relying on the founder for every answer. So usually it's a systems and a people problem, know, unclear roles, scattered standards, operating procedures, and tech tools that don't talk to each other. So they're the typical problems that I find.

Nate Littlewood (10:05)
Okay. Talk to me a little bit more about getting everything out of the founder's head. I know you've done some work with like SOPs and process databases. Like how do you go about tackling that and what's the, what does the workflow or process look like to actually build that?

Aveline Elfar (10:23)
So there's process documentation, which is part of what we do. And then there's also process automation. So you'd imagine if I told you how to do a task, documenting that is one phase, right? But then looking to see how we can automate that properly, then that's a whole nother phase. So we try to marry them both if we work with a founder or a company.

that already perhaps has some documentation in place, but they actually need help figuring out what can be automated, then we come in we help with that. If there's a company that literally has nothing in place, then we help with the documentation phase first.

Nate Littlewood (11:07)
Okay. And how do you manage for SOP or process obsolescence? I've actually had in a past life, I was an e-comm founder myself and a little bit like you, I'm also obsessed with systems and processes and SOPs. And I had this, we actually had a database of probably, I don't know, 70 to a hundred different SOPs covering like

How to send inventory to Amazon, how to do customer service, everything. Anyway, in this day and age of AI and you know, even pre AI like technology is always moving so fast. And what I would often find is that, you know, you could write an SOP today, but six or 12 months down the road, you know, the focus of the business has changed. The priority has changed. Maybe there's a new technology or tool. And if you've developed this SOP and you've shift shipped it and you know, you've got a virtual assistant or some other team member.

handling it for you, how do you go back and revisit them and make sure that you're you know, not mindlessly doing things on autopilot that might be redundant?

Aveline Elfar (12:11)
Yep, yeah, great question. So I actually ran a workshop a couple months ago on this exact subject because that's what a lot of founders ask. either have the question of how do I get my team to follow the processes or how do I create feedback loops to actually improve on those processes and ensure they're up to date? And I think it's as simple of an answer as ensuring that you have some kind of reminder in place to update those. There should be somebody on the team

that not only owns the task, but owns that result and how that's being improved upon. And so they should have ownership of that whole area. And I think honestly, that also is a difficult thing for founders because that mindset of self-improvement and like, we wanna get better, we wanna implement the latest technology, that's actually quite unique versus like, this is just the way we do things.

Nate Littlewood (12:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aveline Elfar (13:11)
So there are two things there, right? So they have to have that awareness that automation is gonna make things easier, technology is gonna make things easier and can still feel high touch. And we can go into a process and say, like I just realized, know, Shopify can automate this now. I just realized Claviyo came out with a new feature and we can implement this process. And then actually going back to that whatever spreadsheet and making sure that that process is up to date. And then I would say,

Number two is also making sure that people are going back to that. So if you have a task management system, you're linking to that exact process. So the team is aware, okay, this exactly is what I need to follow to get the exact result that is expected of me.

Nate Littlewood (13:54)
Yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to get your feedback on this. When I went through this process a few years back, we incorporated a couple of features into these SOPs. One was that we had a publication or last update date. And six months after that, we would automatically trigger a review. And when that review gets triggered, it gets put on the to-do list for the SOP owner. And it's like, hey, here's your six month review comes up.

The other thing that we incorporated is linked it into our daily task management tool, which we built in Airtable. But it basically meant that you could always see when each SOP was last completed. And if there was ever a period, I think we'd set it to like six months or something, where we hadn't used an SOP for six months, that would also trigger a view. It's like, OK, is this actually still relevant?

If not, can we retire it and make it redundant because it doesn't really need to be in the library anymore. Are there any other tricks or hacks for maintaining these systems and keeping them clean and up to date?

Aveline Elfar (15:07)
Yeah, I would, I think that's great. Having those things trigger off automatically. if you know how, then absolutely that's a good starting point. one thing I would say is that if you have someone on your team or have someone who is more aware of the technology coming out, having them do a full audit on all your processes or hire us to do that, but to them do a full audit on all your processes so that they can have a bird's eye view.

because when they're just looking at the one process, they're not seeing all the other steps. They're not seeing the full customer journey. Perhaps they're not seeing the full team communication and all the steps in place.

Nate Littlewood (15:51)
Got it. Got it. Okay. And you mentioned a number of times already the customer journey. When you go and look at customer journeys for new clients, you know, specifically an e-comm brand, what are you looking for and what are some of the common problems or issues that you, you know, you see a lot of?

Aveline Elfar (16:14)
Yep. Yeah. So customer journey, just so everyone understands that what that means is mapping every client touch point. So like from when they're a lead to when they're a customer to increasing post purchase purchases. So, and essentially what that means is automating as much as possible. So typically what I find is that that

Nate Littlewood (16:31)
Mm-hmm.

Aveline Elfar (16:38)
post purchase flow, things like reorder reminders, automated email sequence to encourage the founder, to encourage the customer to learn more about the founder, learn more about the product, create an awareness of all the products that are offered, right? Like what next step do you want the customer to go on? Do you want them to just purchase this one? What's the next step for them? And making that really, really clear,

and consistent. So yeah, I find most most founders typically drop the ball after the sale.

Nate Littlewood (17:16)
Okay. And it's the post purchase stuff where they're usually lacking. is that, is there more to that than kind of Clavio post purchase automation? Is there other cool stuff that you, you you help people with?

Aveline Elfar (17:29)
I find that's the biggest thing. mean, there's abandoned cart sequences. There's so much coming out day to day even. Most people, I think, have some of the basics there, but don't actually look for new automations. So I would say that, yeah, making sure that that post purchase email sequence is there and that they know what the next step is and going back and updating it. If you have a new feature or you came out with a new

Or you updated your materials or your contents or your ingredients, like making sure that once somebody purchases from you, there's a certain amount of trust that happens there, right? Now they're wanting to trust your brand more and you can build that reputation with automated email sequences like that and make sure that it increases the likelihood of them purchasing again.

Nate Littlewood (18:26)
Mm hmm. Okay. Just circling back for a minute on this whole, you know, SOP and processes topic, I'd love to get your thoughts on something. One of the issues that I recall running into a lot when I was trying to do this is that I would often find myself as I was going through a process and, you know, documenting it or, you know, writing out the steps of someone else. Firstly, I would

fun myself questioning, hang on a sec, like, this actually doesn't make sense the way I've been doing it. You know, I've got these, you know, a couple of redundant steps in here and there's actually a better way of doing that. Um, I also sometimes encountered tasks where I thought to myself as I was doing it, you know what, I'm not ready to be doing this yet. This is not yet at the point where it should be a standardized SOP because there are

multiple journeys here and there are judgment calls that I am making. And I, as a founder and CEO, have context and information in my head that my team members don't. And I'm using that to make decisions that I don't think my team members are going to be able to make. I'm curious how often you encounter those sorts of problems and do you have any tips and frameworks for folks on how they might handle situations like that?

Aveline Elfar (19:51)
Great question. Yeah, it definitely goes back to the whole, everything is in the founder's head. So when you're writing processes, imagining that this is somebody who knows nothing about your business, knows nothing about the product, and is very, very simplified. And that's gonna make it easier for your team ongoing. That's gonna make it easier for new employees you have. That's gonna make it easier for everybody to understand.

And any managerial, if you have a C-suite, any managerial person to come in and make sure that they can help as well if needed. I would say whenever I've gotten this question before, we've always made it a priority to test and put the process under pressure almost and make sure that it actually holds. So we would even do a test project or a test, like just test it and see.

Nate Littlewood (20:36)
Okay.

Interesting.

Aveline Elfar (20:51)
I've done this even with new hires and saying, you know, here's this process. Like, what do you think it needs? What do you need more from me? And that really helps. New hires, I think, have a blank slate in the way too. So it's easy to test it in that way. And as a founder, it's harder to be reflective because you've been in the business, you've been in the weeds, you've been in every single thing. So everything...

more of a no brainer for you. You're like, of course you go to this and you do X, Y, and Z, but that's not the way. And that's honestly typically why a lot of people partner with us is because we're able to come in and say, okay, we were a blank slate. And so tell us what needs to be done, you know, from A to Z. And then we can help make sure that that's translatable, right? We want to make sure that everybody

can understand it in the same way that everyone can read English. We want to make sure that it's written in a way that they can understand it and execute to the standard that you have as well.

Nate Littlewood (22:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. You make some really interesting and excellent points there. love that. Especially about, you know, putting these things to the test and also being mindful of the stuff that's in your head that you take for granted, right? You've been doing this for multiple years and you have all this, you know, subconsciously, you have a lot of knowledge and wisdom and context in your head that you probably not don't realize. And

when it's not until you kind of give these instructions to someone else that you can really see like whether they're going to be able to follow them. So I love the testing idea. That makes a lot of sense. Listen, you mentioned something the other day when we chatted offline. You used the phrase, clarity is kindness, which I found really intriguing. Can you elaborate on what you meant by that and how do you kind of incorporate it into your work?

Aveline Elfar (22:57)
Yeah. Thank you for asking about this because it's one of my favorite phrases. I use it in a lot of ways. I would say it's more of a mantra of mine because I do think that it spreads out across multiple different areas in business. I would say this is true for also some marketing as well. But in the operations and systems world, you know, it means building systems where everyone knows what's expected, when and how.

As we know, that lack of clarity creates team friction. know that that's where missed deadlines are. We know that that's where founder burnout is. And so by helping create that clarity, it's actually doing a kindness to not only your team, but your business at large. And I think in the marketing side, being as clear and concise as you can is actually

what is most valuable for a lot of customers. They want transparency, especially now. People want transparency. So yeah, that's the long and short.

Nate Littlewood (24:06)
That sense. That makes sense. So I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit here, Aveline. I'm curious if there are any specific client examples that you can talk to on this topic, before and afters in terms of no clarity versus clarity. Help me understand and maybe quantify what that transformation looked like for some of the people that you've worked with.

Aveline Elfar (24:33)
Yeah, absolutely. One example I can think of is clarity around metrics. So we worked with a holistic wellness founder where we ran an operational audit and she had no clarity on what her best selling product was and what her highest product profit margin was. So once she found this out, she...

Nate Littlewood (24:54)
Mm-hmm.

Aveline Elfar (24:58)
Like we changed our marketing plan completely because now she knew that she needed to capitalize on promoting specific products more and encourage multiple purchases from buyers by offering them something that would complement their original purchase. So that was a huge thing. I can think of also a beauty founder that we worked with who had just no clarity on who was running what for product sales.

It was a constant scramble to figure out who did what when. And that made her pull into the weeds every with every single decision that needed to be made. She was making it and it caused her to work crazy, crazy hours and pulling her hair out all the time, trying to say, I feel like I should be able to hand over this ownership. But nobody wanted to take it because there was no definition of done, which essentially means nobody knew what it looked like to have.

a task done in the business. didn't understand what kind of result she was looking for because she didn't communicate it. So that's why, and you know, it could also be said, this is just a matter of expectations. We need to be clear with the expectation result that we want to see. but many, many founders I've partnered with have said that they have done this, that they have communicated, that they have said all these things, but I will come in and perhaps sometimes even meet with the team.

and that is definitely not the case.

Nate Littlewood (26:28)
Wow.

Okay. That's, that's so interesting. I love your point about clarifying what done looks like. I, as you probably know in my CFO consulting business, I get involved in a lot of founder dynamics and sometimes I'm privy to the founder slash team dynamics. And I see it all the time. Like a founder gives instructions, a team member hands in the work, but then it's like, now can you do this instead? Or no, I didn't want that. I wanted this. And it's like,

Well, if we had to just clarify what the end goal was to begin with and give them an example of what you're hoping to receive back here, then we could have saved a lot of the back and forth in iteration and got this done a lot more quickly. So I think it's a really great point to make about being crystal clear on what the outcome should look like. This is good. This is excellent. This is what I you to aim for.

And I think it's also really empowering for the team members, right? Because it gives them the autonomy to go figure out how they want to do it. Like, you've told me where I want to get to. Let me figure out how to get there, and I'm going to do it my way. It might not be the same as your way, but it's how I think it should be done. And yeah, I think that's a clever way to think about it. So we talked a lot about good, and we've talked a lot about what

efficient systems and processes look like. You've given me a couple of hints already about some of the big mistakes that founders make and some of the things that they get wrong. But looking at kind of seven-ish figure, ECOM, CPG folks specifically, which is kind of the universe that I play in. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see them get wrong operationally? Where do you see them falling over and messing things up?

on a consistent basis.

Aveline Elfar (28:26)
Yeah. So I would say the biggest mistake would be waiting too long to systematize or trying to DIY everything and then having to pay someone, often people like me, to come in and clean up and simplify it. So a lot of founders we work, you know, they're, they're visionaries, they're creatives. They love ideas, but they get stuck in the weeds of like, okay, how do we take this to fruition? How do we actually make this happen?

And so, you know, my clients are often, often say, okay, I have this great idea, but like, I have no idea how it's going to happen. I have no idea what systems I need. And I have no idea what processes I need to put it in place. Surprised at how many seven, eight figure founders we have worked with that do not have these things in place. so, yeah, definitely, you know, I always use the analogy of

When you think of a house, the piping is your operations, your delivery systems, what you have in place and sales is like the water. So there are visionaries and founders that focus on getting that, getting those sales in. But if you have no delivery systems, you're going to have leaks everywhere. Right. And in the same way, obviously, if you build and you have no water coming in, that's not good either. You want to have that water coming in. But.

Oftentimes founders will tell me, especially when I run a comprehensive operational audit for them, they'll often tell me like, I wish I should have had this in place years ago.

Nate Littlewood (30:04)
It gave me, you know, warm fuzzies to be thrown in the deep end, have an opportunity to absorb information, learn something new, try to figure I'd never built an SOP database before, but you know what? I really enjoyed figuring it out. How, how, how I'm, you know, I guess having a little side conversation with you here. How is a consultant, right? Like trying to help that source sort of personality. And I think that sort of personality is somewhat common.

amongst CEO founders. Like a lot of us do like figuring things out and learning. How do you, as a service provider and consultant, trying to help these people, like how does your client or the founder know that, all right, it's time to tap out. As much as you enjoy doing this, you're not doing a good job. And someone like you, Aveline, can help them do it much better or more efficiently than they currently are. What are some of the telltale signs

we should be putting our hand up and asking for help.

Aveline Elfar (31:05)
question. I feel like I can definitely empathize with the dopamine.

Nate Littlewood (31:08)
You have that issue too?

Aveline Elfar (31:11)
100%. Everything is figureable. It's actually a, it is a big value of mine. Like resourcefulness is actually a very big value of mine. I do try to hire even on soft skills. We have a small team that helps implement and I love hiring resourceful people because that attitude is so, so valuable. But I agree how that, how that outlook on life and on business becomes really difficult. So one of the, and I'm sure you've heard of it,

One of the books that really helped and I've sent it to clients sometimes is called, Back Your Time by Dan Martel. Very, very good outlook on how even what is your time worth? Right. Because I do think it comes down to that. What is your time worth as a founder? Is your time worth doing that $20 an hour task or is your time worth focused on revenue generating activities?

and things that only you can do in the business as a founder. So if nothing else, if you're like, you know, I think I can do this. I think I can build this automation. think I can build this process database. I think I as a founder should do it. I believe that you are actually doing yourself a disservice by doing those tasks. Because in the beginning, it makes sense. If you're a solopreneur, you're building, you know, your,

It makes sense to wear more hats, but as you grow, you need to let go. You need to trust other people and you need to let go of that, you know, high fact finder, um, resourceful figure it out. Because you need to do the marketing, the selling typically that that's what the founder enjoys to do. If that is the case, you need to do the things that only the founder can do.

And so that slows a lot of people down, honestly, because they don't want to relinquish. I talked to a founder in the summer. She was doing multiple six figures per month. And she was still answering customer service issues that happened in Slack day to day.

Nate Littlewood (33:18)
Mm-hmm.

Aveline Elfar (33:25)
So that is going to naturally bottleneck your time. That's gonna naturally hinder you from focused on the big picture decisions and the forward thinking and leadership that founders should be doing.

Nate Littlewood (33:40)
I don't know in what shape or form, but I feel like at some point in the future, you and I are going to have a collaboration. We think very similar ways and we do, you know, looking at a lot of the similar sort of problems. I currently have a retainer client and they came to me, you know, overwhelmed, like I'm packing boxes, I'm doing customer service, I'm ordering, doing this and that.

One of the first things I did with them was a one month time tracking study. use this app called Hoggle. What's the gap here? We need to get you, we need to increase your, you know, your hourly rate and stop you doing, you know, these, these lower value tasks. It sounds like your onboarding and mine might be quite similar. I don't know.

Aveline Elfar (34:27)
And we and we figure that out too. But yeah, and I think there's that and that seeing those numbers helps a ton to write some visualize and really understand. you know, it does take like, I don't want to negate the fact that it's all numbers and tech and tech and systems. Like it does take that mindset shift as well of like, I'm going to trust other people with something that I have built and deeply

passionate about and deeply care about, but you have to in order to work on the business and not in it.

Nate Littlewood (35:01)
Mm-hmm. Since we're both tech nerds, I feel compelled to ask you about some of the tools and technology that you use to build all this stuff. mean, within the folks that I deal with, I encounter Notion a lot. I encounter ClickUp, Asana, Slack, obviously. Like almost everyone's on Slack. I'm personally a big fan of Airtable, although I don't see any of my clients using that.

What are some of the favorite tools and systems that you have to build upon?

Aveline Elfar (35:36)
Yeah, of course I have favorites. So for a lot of econ brands, it's Klaviyo and Shopify. And we are working with those. My favorites in terms of categories for task management, our favorite is ClickUp. We just did a ClickUp build, just closed one last week. it was just, just the capabilities are really, really wonderful

and the automation and now the AI that has been integrated. I mean, that's changing every day. So it's just incredible to see a user interface and a workspace that can be so highly optimized. So that's one of our favorites for email marketing active campaign. It's my favorite really because the ease of segmenting of tags and their reporting.

Aveline Elfar (36:35)
is really wonderful to see. I do.

Nate Littlewood (36:38)
Over Klaviyo? Okay,

interesting. Does it integrate as well with Shopify?

Aveline Elfar (36:45)
It can. I believe you need Zapier to help, which if you don't know what Zapier is, it's a connector tool, which we're actually partners with too. Zapier is one of my favorites.

Nate Littlewood (36:56)
makes complete sense.

Got it, got it. And talk to me about the AI factor here. I have this weird relationship with AI. Like every week, I think, you know what? I need to sit down and dedicate some time to this. And actually, on my to-do list in my diary, was just writing it out this morning while I having my coffee. was like, need to set up recurring time to work on the AI project.

I've got some, you know, new products, should we say, that I think can be built in it or with it. And I'd love to be spending five or 10 hours a week on this, but I inevitably get to the end of the week and I haven't spent my five or 10 hours. And then a month or two later, I come across a new tool or technology that can do in five minutes the thing that I was about to spend five or 10 hours figuring out. And that somehow makes me feel self justified. And I think to myself, geez, I'm glad I didn't waste that time because now there's this tool.

You know, as a result, I'm constantly plagued with this feeling that I'm being, you know, left behind and it's, you know, running away from me. How, how, talk to me about your relationship with AI. How are you incorporating it in your own business as a, you know, consultant, know, agency owner, whatever you would call it, but also what are some of the best practices that you're seeing with your clients and the businesses that you, you work with?

Aveline Elfar (38:19)
Yeah, I empathize. I'm the person that is also making sure that I'm not doing something that could be automated. There's got to be a better way to do this. There has to a better way to automate this. And I agree. I think things are changing so fast. It's very exciting. So AI is a huge lever with efficiency, which is what I'm all about, creating that ecosystem of efficiency. So we use it for everything from like automating repetitive admin, mostly like reporting.

We do some of that for clients and so that helps with analyzing client data for bottlenecks and it's not replacing people, it's just making teams faster if they're able to use it the way that it needs to be used. Yeah, so I mean, I think every seven figure Econ brand should be looking at AI powered tools, process documentation, support bots, things like that. Some of, like I would say,

some of the roadblocks people hit or is that they are either at a place where automation is very, very new to them. And getting automation on board is like, Whoa, this is revolutionary. And so we, we don't touch the AI integrated stuff as much or we'll build it for them. Or some people do have some automation in place or something's in place, but they're clunky, or they're just like, we automated it.

Aveline Elfar (39:46)
But then we go in and it's a very, very basic or it's outdated or it needs some improvement just in the same way we were talking about processes. It needs a vision to update. Yeah.

Nate Littlewood (40:01)
Cool, I love that. Well, we unfortunately need to wrap things up pretty soon, but I've got a couple of remaining questions for you. The first is one that I ask of all of my guests on the show. And hopefully you've heard me ask it to someone else already. But I'd love to know what is your favorite business KPI or metric? How often do you track it and why?

Aveline Elfar (40:27)
Yeah, so we're all about creating a cohesive customer experience. So naturally, my favorite metric is that client retention rate or customer lifetime value. I track it monthly in terms of like our own because we want to know how well our systems are supporting both the businesses that we partner with and the client experience. And high retention means that you're delivering great value and that clients trust us to help them scale in that way.

And then for our clients understanding that customer lifetime value just gives you insight into what that, how many purchases the customer is making on average and where to capitalize on those efforts.

Nate Littlewood (41:08)
Okay, okay, nice one, nice one. Well, Aveline, this has been a fascinating conversation. I am so glad that you sent me that random Instagram message and said, hey Nate, we can chat. Where should people go if they would like to learn more about you or to get in touch?

Aveline Elfar (41:28)
Yeah, so you can find me. I'm active on Instagram and on LinkedIn. So my name is Aveline, A-V-E-L-I-N-E, Elfar, E-L-F-A-R. And I am on LinkedIn a ton. On Instagram, it's avelinealfar.co. And you can find me on my website, www.avelineelfar.com.

Nate Littlewood (41:50)
Perfect. Thanks so much, Aveline. Hope you have a fantastic holidays and we'll be in touch again soon. Take care.

Aveline Elfar (41:58)
Thanks so much, you as well.