Episode 331: State of Business in 2025| Kara Duffy | Business Strategist, Coach & Entrepreneur
It's been a rollercoaster in the business world so far this year in 2025. In this solo episode, host, entrepreneur and business strategist Kara Duffy, recaps what she's be coaching small business clients on as they've navigated tariffs, longer sales pipelines, new AI and the changes in customer service expectations. She explains the must haves to win in business in 2025 and how you can start planning ahead now to double your business in 2026.
“In 2025 it’s about whether your business has integrity and purpose. People are giving their money to brands and people they trust, they like, and who are doing things that are in alignment with their values. ”
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Sign up for Kara’s Double Your Business in 2026 Strategy Workshop HERE
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:52 - Parallels and differences between 2020 and 2025 for your business
3:48 - Radical drop in people making quick purchase decisions
5:29 - If you’re not getting the sales you need…
8:37 - no amount of digital marketing will replace direct sales
8:50 - why this matters for artists looking to make money
10:35 - where is there too much noise in your business?
16:08 - customer service and what it really needs to be successful
20:46 - Business Love Languages
22:55 - AI and your business
25:25 - Creating the simplified version of your business
26:32 - Strategies for doubling your business
Kara Duffy: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome to the Powerful Ladies podcast. Today I'm doing a special edition where. I am gonna jump in and talk about the state of business as I've seen it so far this year as a business coach with my clients, with my group coaching, and take you on an update on what's been going on and also how we're preparing to wrap up the year, but also get ready for 2026.
There's been a lot of parallels between 2020 and 2025. I think part of this is because of the kind of panic people have been feeling in different ways. We talk about how there can be financial crises at any time for an individual, a [00:01:00] country, a family a state, an industry.
We're never immune to crises happening. And this year there's been a lot of overlapping crises at once. There's been financial impacts, there's been immigration, there's been personal rights, like there's just a lot of layers right now, especially based on what country you're in, what state you're in, and different, demographics that are affecting each of us differently right now, unfortunately.
But when we look at 2020 and how businesses were affected in particular, and small business most of all in 2020, if your business was not physically fit, it was not going to make it. All of the clients I worked with that year, all survived through the pandemic. They all thrived in it or after.
And how we were able to do that is because we focused on the physical fitness of their business. That meant were they making money? Were they profitable? Did [00:02:00] they have profit margins? Did they have a sales pipeline? Were they taking action versus sticking their head in the sand? What's different, 2020 versus 2025 is that now it's about does your business have integrity and a purpose?
And not that every business needs to have some woo mission statement, but people are giving their money to people they trust, they like and who's doing things that are in alignment with their values and the values of the business Starting first. And if those values align with the customers, then we're getting to see growth in businesses happening.
And this applies to every business that's out there. If you are in real estate, if you are in financial services, if you have an e-comm business, if you're selling t-shirts, if you're a therapist, it doesn't matter what you're selling. Products or services, people are looking for alignment. [00:03:00] They're looking for that integrity.
Do you say what you do? You do what you said you would do? Do you have your values throughout your business? Are you treating people well, both in the company and outside of the company? Are you adding value to their lives? For a long time, a lot of businesses could grow based on. Ads and things that weren't talking about values, integrity or purpose values, you could just sell things because it was cute and it worked and people needed it, and people were moving quickly to make purchasing decisions.
We have seen a radical drop in people making quick purchase decisions, both for physical products and for services. Everyone I've talked to has had a longer lead time to close deals. There's been more introduction calls. If before you needed one 20 minute call to close a deal, you might be doing an hour consult.
You might be having a follow up. People might be choosing a starter package before they go into your main [00:04:00] package. There's been a lot of like conscientious purchasing happening, and when that happens, there's a downshift in the speed at which people convert. This is why if you've worked with me and you have a sales pipeline, it's so important to be measuring your conversion rate at each step in your pipeline so you can see where the gap might be happening.
For most of the people that I've been working with, it's not happening at their first step like meeting someone. It's not happening to get people to do an introductory call or get on their email list. It's happening in that final step of people committing to making the leap, and this is true of what you're selling is $25 or $25,000.
And the only industry I think that's been exempt from this has been the legal industry because. If you needed legal services before you need them now, and they're always time sensitive. So when we're looking at how we [00:05:00] can shore up our business this year to be effective and keep going, there's a couple of things I've been coaching people on a regular basis.
One is if you are not getting the sales that you need, are you actually doing the work you know to do? If you have mastered your sales pipeline, if you have created it, if you've written it down, if you have a plan towards it, are you actually doing it? Most of the people I've talked to who are struggling with sales just simply weren't working their sales pipeline.
It could be because they were overwhelmed, they were exhausted, they weren't expecting clients to leave at once for various reasons. Sometimes just bad luck of timing. And people were getting a little bit lazy in having their sales pipeline, having people coming through. So I bet that you know what you need to do to get people in the door.
Just ask yourself, first and foremost, have you been doing it? If you have [00:06:00] a e-commerce oriented business or a physical based product business. Are you doing your emails? Are you doing social media? Are making sure that not your funnel, but your whole web is connecting with people correctly.
Have you made sure that your website is dialed so that you're not losing people on your website? Like you can see the data. And what's great about tracking the sales pipeline is there's two things we have to manage. The people, who are we putting in the pipeline and how many we're converting at each step?
So when you look at your sales pipeline and try to figure out what part isn't working, is it a numbers issue or is there a part of the pipeline that needs to be redone, realigned, reinvested in to get it turned back on for having flow through that part of the pipe. If you are in a service-based business, chances are what you need to do is leave your house, [00:07:00] and the second thing you have to do is pick up the phone.
We cannot hide behind emails in our business. We cannot hide behind social media and digital marketing in our business. If you are a service-based provider and you need less than 100 clients a year to. Match last year's, which is what I would call your bronze plan or to double your business.
You need to be meeting people in real life. You can focus on direct sales if you need less than a hundred customers, and chances are that so few small businesses need more than that if they're a service-based business. Obviously, if you're in an e-commerce environment, you're going to need more, and that's why e-commerce.
It makes sense to rely heavily on the digital marketing space. But again, if you're in a service-based business, are you networking? Are you meeting new people? Are you making new relationships? Are you [00:08:00] following up with the people that you already know? What are you doing to leave your house, your office?
And to be out with people because people are looking for you. People are looking for the services you provide. They just don't know you exist. And no amount of money you spend in digital marketing will ever replace the impact you can make if you are out talking to people, speaking, doing workshops, hosting events.
And an area of clients that usually doubt me on this part are the artists. If you are a, an artist of any kind, a graphic designer, sculpture, fine artist, photographer. You often get fooled into thinking that you are running a product based business, and you don't think that you have to do any of the direct selling networking that a service business has.
But technically your business is a hybrid. People [00:09:00] are still buying because they like you. People are excited about the stories behind your work. The more that they can engage with you and have a great story, know, trust you and be a fan of you. We have to follow some of the thought leader tactics that other service providers would have because that's how you're going to sell the big pieces of art.
That's how you're going to get lifelong buyers. That's how you're going to get placed in. Different types of sales opportunities that can really enhance your arts-based business. Whether that is partnering with interior designers, hotels like commercial environments for art, but also the people who truly just are obsessed with you and love your art and wanna have as many pieces as they can afford.
So there's a inter, it's interesting to look at, what is the blend between your direct selling and working your sales pipeline versus digital marketing, and how can they come together for your [00:10:00] business? The other thing about this year. So again, we were just talking about managing your sales pipeline.
Are you doing the work that you know you need to do? The second part we've been looking at is where is there too much noise in your business? This is something I work with clients on every year, but this year in particular, like there is no room for nonsense. We don't have time for the distractions. We don't have time for the extra spending that we don't need.
We have to look at what do we streamline. To get what I call our lemonade stand or the four corners of our business dialed, so we can do it with more ease and focus. If you look at your sales pipeline or you look at your digital marketing plan and it feels overwhelming to you, it is probably the wrong plan.
That means there's too much. Even in my own business, I've been looking at, do we need all these apps? Can I consolidate? Can we go back to something really simple? Google's been doing a really [00:11:00] incredible job of you can now do contracts through Google Docs. You can schedule things. They have the Google Meet if you don't wanna use Zoom.
There's a lot of free or tools we're already using that are offering more and more things that our business needs where we don't need the other options. The more that you can consolidate the operations of your business, both for how you do daily tasks, but also how do we minimize, the CEO steps you have to do on a regular basis.
I want you in your zone of genius, which means you should not be spending 40 hours a week and spreadsheets looking at your numbers. Doing customer service tracking things like that is not. Anyone's zoned a genius. Unless you're an accountant, right? Then that might make sense, but most of you are not, and there's too much that you have put into your business, which is why it's not scaling.
There's no flow. It's not ease. It hasn't been [00:12:00] simplified, and there are a lot of people out there who are doing really great work who offer off, excuse me, offer. Really simplified structures for specific niche businesses. I've seen it for lawyers, I've seen it for real estate agents. What I will say about that is if the plans that you're putting into your business for anything operational, if they are not aligned 1000% selfishly to you, the business owners or leadership team, they're not going to work.
You cannot just take any system and plug it into yours and it will work. You all have different neuroses. You all have different habits and routines. You all have different preferences, and we have to be modifying those systems to you. So it's really important that you take some time this year, so hopefully sooner than later to look at what can you delete.
When I lead my time management workshops, [00:13:00] my, my phrase is, automate, delegate, delete. We have to automate things first before we can delegate them, but ultimately we should look at, do we even need this step or this process? There's so much noise about what should be in your business, what actions you should be taking, what marketing you need so much noise, right?
How do we get down to the essentials, the lifeboat things that you need to run your business and then consider deleting everything else. When I'm working with clients, we delete, anywhere between 15 80% of what the company or they themselves were doing because it was stuff that we adopted that we didn't actually need.
It wasn't helping us do what the business needed to do. And if you are gonna add like fluff into your business, then I really think it's important that it's hanging out in providing the level of excellence that you demand from your team and for [00:14:00] your clients and customers. An example of that would be investing in a system that automates your onboarding process.
It could be extra steps in customer service. It could be sending thank you gifts or handwritten cards. It could be organizing dinners to take your clients out to appreciate them once a quarter. So anything you can do to say thank you and build relationships and build more trust, that's where I think it makes sense to invest extra if you have extra time, resources, money, energy.
But if it's not in that area, if it's not helping you make money, and if it's not helping you make money that you can track and measure quickly, I'd be very suspicious about it. Working with a business strategist or coach like myself can help you decide what should be in and out of your business. It's so hard to choose yourself because you don't wanna make the wrong choice.
You're not sure what phase you're in, and that impacts so many of the choices. You wanna be [00:15:00] prepared for growth and scaling. But we also wanna be realistic about your time, your focus, the life you want. If you dream of living in Italy or Portugal. And working only, 10, 20 hours a week and you're currently working 60 and struggling and just trying to survive.
That is a big gap that we have to clean up. It's very doable. But that tells me right away that you're not charging enough, you're doing too much, and you business is over complicated for the type of business and lifestyle that you want. We can easily double your business by making it more simple for you.
So I was, I just talked about the customer service component, and this has been like a big gripe of mine recently. Anyone who's ever built a website who's worked with someone who's good at website design and ui ux knows that we wanna make sure that it is as easy as possible for [00:16:00] people to go from, I like this to, I bought it.
Which means less clicks, less steps, like less delaying the process of like just getting people to purchase. And yet when we look at businesses on a regular basis, we have accidentally made it so complicated first for our customers and clients to say yes and buy from us. But second, we've made it really complicated for them to go through our processes.
I had a friend recently talking about how they were going to a doctor they loved, they, first time you go to a doctor, you're used to filling out paperwork. Then like more paperwork just kept magically appearing or referrals needed or other stuff, and it was so distracting to have extra work because it is, it's a project.
It becomes homework for the customer. When this all could have been done at the beginning, first step, first time. Most consumers have a very short window [00:17:00] for any admin type of tasks. Nobody wants to do admin. The people in the business don't want to, the consumers and or, and customers. Clients don't want to either, so how can you minimize and streamline any onboarding, admin, paperwork type of things?
And my business, you're getting all of it in like a getting started email. It'll have contract links, credit card authorization, or an invoice. We have links to book or we book it for you that first time, like everything isn't a one stop type of approach. The other things we do is all of it is done digitally.
Questionnaires done online. You just have to click through and answer questions. Contract done in line. You sign digitally. Invoices, you pay digitally. Even when somebody sends me like A PDF right now to sign, I'm immediately triggered by it because it's not the up-level customer [00:18:00] service that we are getting accustomed to.
I understand that there are some people in the legal field who cannot use. Things like DocuSign for different reasons, but besides them, everyone else should be having digital contracts. Everyone else should be having digital experiences, and the more that we can allow our customers to fill it out quickly and do it in one go, the happier they're gonna be.
This also can apply too in renewals. My contracts have automatic renewals. You do like we don't, we can minimize the sales process also for existing clients by removing it, by making it something that is gonna keep happening unless we talk about it. There's just so many ways to think about how do we stop having to do this extra step that none of us like doing.
If you don't like doing it in your business, you're, you can assume that your customer and [00:19:00] client is also not gonna like it. In addition to minimizing the admin tasks, there's actually a lot of room to uplevel the customer service side of your business. When we go, when we build businesses, I like to have people start with like values.
What are seven values that you want your self to experience your team, to experience your customers and clients to experience? It should be the red thread of how you do everything. Choose partners, choose ven, choose vendors, et cetera. If you want someone to have a really up-leveled experience, what are those steps along the way where you get to surprise and delight them?
Really, like we don't spend enough time thinking about our customer's journey through our process, and whether that is checking out and buying a t-shirt online, it's receiving arts, it's having business coaching. It's, going through a therapy program. It's working with financial [00:20:00] services. There are so many opportunities to surprise, delight, inform, make it easy, let them feel cared for.
There's a lot of things you can do to show your values and often equally show your love languages. Every February I do a love languages for business, a business love language. Course we mix it up each year, so it's a little fresh. Last year we had a sales consultant who also uses the love languages in his process, and there's just this again, adds ways that we get to be our full selves in our businesses.
If you look giving people gifts, there should absolutely be a gifting program in your business. If you love quality time, there should absolutely be ways that you are getting together in person with your clients. If you love words of affirmation, there should absolutely be. Ways in which you are writing handwritten notes, cards, giving people certificates, testimonials.
We can lean into who we are. [00:21:00] And how we want to appreciate the people in our lives. And again, I don't care if you are running a taco stand or a financial services firm, these things all apply. If you want to have an extraordinary business, it's the same formula, the same questions to be asked, the same things to be checked off on the list, how we combine it for you, how you choose.
The special sauce for your unique business. Of course, we'll all be different and custom, but we should be thinking about the same prompts and questions. So if you are running a business and you realize my admin for my clients is super clunky, how do we fix that? Be like between now and end of year and ideally between now and end of September, if you are realizing that you are not appreciating your clients the way that you want to, how can you implement that program in a cost effective way so that you get to love people the way that you want to.
There's so many opportunities to [00:22:00] embed who you are in both on the efficiency side and on the appreciation side that often isn't talked about enough. So I'm really curious what you guys are thinking about right now and ways you can uplevel your own business. The last thing that I wanted to talk about today because it keeps coming up from so many people, is business and ai.
I'm gonna have a controversial opinion on this. Because I think the hootin and hollerin about how AI can solve all your business problems is a bunch of bs, and the reason why AI is not going to solve all your business problems is because most of you have not done the work to build the structures that you want for your business to answer core questions that give you clarity about your business and your customer and your transformations you provide.
And what that means is that you can't prompt AI correctly to help you in [00:23:00] any of these magical ways. It's touting it can support a business. Can you use AI in small ways and maybe through some of the busy work to do email scripts or other things? Of course. But again, you have to, if you don't know a great, the great prompt to put in, you're not going to get something that's gonna uplevel your business.
I also think that there's a lot of extra busy work we're doing because we think AI can do things that we don't even need. So this again goes back to what is the simplest version of our business. We can find automated solutions, different apps and programs that can do things that can take things off your plate, scheduling posts, getting emails scheduled, like there's a lot of things that we can do that you can set and forget.
Even just QuickBooks is a great example of using technology to streamline things. Also, an app that is not always perfect. Twice now I've have discovered that it wasn't [00:24:00] processing a credit card for a client and I had to go back in and redo the whole process because two months had gone by or three months or more, and they hadn't been getting charged even though I was being told that they were processed.
Side tangent about that. I still highly recommend QuickBooks for those that flaw. I will, it's still a huge time saver for me, my bookkeeper, CPA, and everyone else involved. But no, no app is perfect. No AI is perfect. But the more that you know your business and understand theoretically how it should work, have that clarity, understand the why behind it, then we can create the systems.
And so there's this concept of we don't know what we don't know, and that's why our business isn't working. And when it comes to technology, that is simply not true. Most businesses do not need the level of technology that we have access to. Most businesses don't need all the bells and whistles that are available out there, and that's why it always comes back down to [00:25:00] what is your lemonade stand?
What is the simplified version of your business? How do you make your thing, offer your product service, sell it, get paid, repeat. We have overcomplicated business. In particularly in the last 25 years, and it does not need to be that way. There is a simple, smooth, streamlined version for you to have repeat dream customers for whatever you're selling, and you don't need all of this stuff around you to make it happen.
Most of that stuff only really activates when you're hitting different thresholds in units, customers, and dollars that most small businesses. Never hit. So if you can't run your business simplified in a minimalistic way, that is a great reason to give me a call. We're having a really great opportunity in September.
I'm doing a two hour workshop. About strategies for 2026. How [00:26:00] can you double your business without doubling your work? It is a true working session. I'm gonna go through some different templates and guides we have. We're gonna be answering all the questions together so you can truly leave this session and have at least at a minimum, your outline for your 2026 plan that you can keep working on.
I do this workshop every year and every year people. I get so many emails after I've done it and talked about it online that they're like, oh, I missed it. I can't believe I missed it. So I'm warning all of you. Now, if you. Wanna see how I coach? If you wanna ask questions live, if you wanna start working on your 2026 strategies, and you should please sign up.
There is a link both in the show notes of this episode, but also if you go to my Instagram account Kara Duffy, you'll find it in my link in bio or on my website, care duffy.com. But this strategy session's going to be huge. It'll have so much information you'll get to take away the templates and the guides as [00:27:00] well.
And it's exactly the same process that I start working through with my clients who will also be on this call, because if you are a private client or in my group coaching, this workshop is free. If not, it's a really low price point to just get your strategy going. And again, the goal is to double your business next year with freedom and ease and space.
So not doubling your work, because that is the opposite. The hours you are working and the effort you're putting in do not correlate to how successful your business can be. And we need to break that cycle, come back to clarity, abundance, a plan that actually works for us and our lifestyle and the business that we wanna have, the team that we have.
And. This is how these miracles work. This is how 56% of my clients double their business in one year. That's a hundred percent increase, and over 78% have a 50% increase or more. And it's all about this streamlining, this clarity, this focus. It's like we con [00:28:00] mari your business. And when we do that, it's amazing what you can do with it.
I hope you guys enjoyed this special edition of the podcast. I'd love to hear your 2 cents and thoughts. If you would love to work with me, visit carew.com. You can book your free intro call. There's so many ways I can support you from group to private to different classes. But I just, I don't want you guys tolerating a business that.
You don't love, doesn't work is sticky, isn't giving you the dream life that you want. There's so many solutions to fix those things. So I hope this is helpful and you, I'll talk to you in the next episode.
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Episode 56: Kara Duffy
Instagram: kara_duffy
Website: karaduffy.com
LinkedIn: karaduffy
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
