997 Karen Ahrens:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP997 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Karen Ahrens

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Karen Ahrens:

Back when the app was first launched and the first time I booked an assistant and I booked three hours to help me with a bunch of stuff, just running things around, prepping for an event at the studio. I needed some decorations and things. And that night when I was driving home I just had a 27-hour day. I just actually did get three more hours of work done because sure, I could have done all that stuff. But then after dinner instead of like watching a show with my son, I would have had to get back to work. That mindset shift I do think is trickier for women versus men being a little bit more comfortable on the delegation side and especially as moms I think we, you know, we’re just going to try to martyr through it and do everything and there’s a, there’s a bit where you say no, you know you, there’s actually a smarter way to do this and, and to get more done.

Melinda Wittstock:

Every entrepreneur juggling business with family, friends, fitness, you know, a life, wishes they had more time in any given day, so what if you could squeeze 27 hours into a 24? Karen Ahrens has a solution for managing and extending time, and the idea came to her one day in the DMV. What if time could be traded? Well, it can, and Karen is here today to talk about her app Wait4Me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I believe in paying it forward, so as a five-time serial entrepreneur, I started this podcast almost 10 years ago to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb. Please take a moment, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode, tell your friends and colleagues, and we appreciate it when you help this wisdom get discovered with a 5-star rating and review. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who found her inspiration in the local DMV one day to create a time trading app that lets people literally buy and sell time. Karen Ahrens left her corporate career to found Wait4Me, a mobile app that lets people hyper-charge delegation through a peer-to-peer marketplace for administrative tasks, errands, research, and more. It’s a dynamic platform that matches people who need more time with those who have it to spare, creating new opportunities for meaningful work and efficient living.

Melinda Wittstock:

Many people, especially women, struggle to hand off tasks, compelled by perhaps societal conditioning to “do it all”—even though delegation allows greater focus on work and life priorities, and allows entrepreneurs to double down on the tasks that build sustainable value. Today, Karen and I explore all the many practical use cases for time marketplaces: administrative work, errands, market research, organizing, and more. The idea is clear: free yourself to do what only you can do, and let others handle the rest. 

Melinda Wittstock:

We also get into the business challenge of what it takes to build a two-sided marketplace and how Time4Me differs from other gig economy platforms, plus her mission of ensuring fair compensation for human assistants, how AI fits into the future of such work, and the importance of adapting to customer and market feedback.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Karen Ahrens.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Karen, welcome to Wings.

Karen Ahrens:

Hello. Thanks for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love this concept of Wait4Me, buying and selling time.

Melinda Wittstock:

What inspired that?

Karen Ahrens:

The original inspiration was actually before I joined the company, and it was waiting in the DMV and being late for picking up my son and needing to just figure out, how am I going to get out of here? When I look at my number and realize I’ve got. I’ve got an hour and a half wait, and the woman sitting next to me has a number that’s obviously much, much closer to the line than I am. And she has got her bag, she’s knitting, she’s got her water bottle. It is obvious that, like, she’s not in a rush, she’s camped out. So, I turned to her and just said, if I gave you 30 bucks, would you switch numbers with me? She looked a little crazy. And then she said, really? I said, yeah, I really. Like, I’m late. 

Karen Ahrens:

What do you need? She said, yeah, absolutely. So, she switched numbers. I walked out of there thinking, you know, our time has value, and for me, I need more time right now. And at that time was, you know, had a corporate job, I had income I could absolutely spare to spend a little bit of money to get more time. This woman had extra time and could use the extra cash and said, how do we create something that matches those people? Because time is this commodity that everyone has time.

Karen Ahrens:

No matter where you are in the world, no matter where you are economically, some have too much, some have not enough, but it’s something that we can actually use to our advantage, whether that be making money with that time or buying more time.

Melinda Wittstock:

How interesting. So, give me some use cases. You gave me the DMV, the personal experience but, what are some of the ways that people buy and sell time?

Karen Ahrens:

So, the most common is what I tend to group as, like, admin and errands. I always advise people when they’re first coming on, because a lot of people joining as clients, because we have these two sides of the equation, right? You have clients and then you have assistants who are looking to do the work. And you find that a lot of people are. They struggle a little bit with delegating, especially if they’ve never had an assistant or an executive assistant before. I always tell people, just start with that generic sort of, I’ve got some admin stuff and some errands to do, and then I guarantee the day that you have that person. There’s going to be a ton of stuff on your to do list that you’re going to say, you know what? That person can go get my dry cleaning. They can scan my receipts.

Karen Ahrens:

They can go fill up the water bottles for the office, something I always send up. Having to do little things like that are the easiest way. It’s sort of the gateway to get in. I do see lots of other sort of extensions, though, that start to be much more interesting. This is where a lot of the assistance, the feedback I’ve gotten is they’re so excited to be able to use their talents and experience because there’s things like market research. So, a lot of small businesses will throw stuff in. They’re like, I just need somebody to help me, like, sort through and create some summaries on market research. Yes, I could do it, but I just, like, I have a million things, and if somebody could just give me back a report.

Karen Ahrens:

The other thing, organizing, like organizing closets, sending somebody to your aging parents to go through their pantry and throw out everything that’s expired. There are those little things, they just take time and you could do it. But it’s also an easy thing to delegate versus the things that only I can do. You know, as an entrepreneur, only I can revise my pitch deck for my next meeting. I’d much rather be doing that than taking the Amazon return back to Whole Foods and picking up my drink, dry cleaning and scanning receipts for two hours.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. So, an early company that did this sort of a version of it was TaskRabbit. So how would you compare to something like that? I remember way back in the day, I was at SXSW launching our app there, and it was when SXSW was getting incredibly crowded and it was hard to get into sessions. There’d be these long lines as people were using TaskRabbit to just pay people to stand in line for them.

Karen Ahrens:

Right, right. I’m trying to remember the name of the company, if it’s the Line Dudes or something like that in New York, a very niche company that all that they do is wait in lines like for the, you know, the private sales or tickets or whatever.

Karen Ahrens:

So TaskRabbit, first of all, is owned by Ikea. Right. So, the original impetus of TaskRabbit was this problem of people not wanting to assemble their IKEA Furniture. So that’s where it really started. 

Melinda Wittstock:

That makes so much sense because all the YouTube videos and all the frustration of assembling…

Karen Ahrens:

IKEA, I mean, I’ve got it on my list right now. It’s like, my son needs a bookcase and like, I just gotta, you know, you know, you’re gonna spend a Saturday assembling that bookcase. But that’s where I, where TaskRabbit came from. Now they’ve added all these peripheral things around it. It’s the same concept in general as far as a business model where you have two sides of the equation. You’re matching people, you can rehire people, which is another very important thing to us is that we’re not like Uber, where, you know, you’ve really got to go around the system if you want to reuse someone. But what we focus on is that specific slice that are things that a personal assistant would do. Now that’s very broad.

Karen Ahrens:

Anybody who’s worked with an assistant, you know, but I’m not actively going to be going after things like assembling furniture or repairing things. If someone posts it, they post it. But that’s not our niche. Our niche and the talent we’re attracting are people that are along the lines of assistance, which is much more of the. Again, it could be running errands, party organization, it could be research, travel agenda management. It’s more specific towards that. But again, it’s the same model.

Karen Ahrens:

There’s other, there’s another company. There’s, there’s task, air, task, task. There’s a handful of them. But what I find, and which I don’t like about them is it’s like everything in the kitchen sink. You can literally have somebody do your horoscope and you can also have somebody who is a personal assistant or assemble your furniture. It’s just too much. And so, you’re not focusing on who are those people who are signing up to do the work. Where I’m focusing really on getting amazing talent.

Karen Ahrens:

And I am. Every time I meet a new assistant, I’m like, if people could understand the quality, the expertise, the experience of people that are looking to do flexible side hustles but want to make a fair wage as well, which is also, you know, again, we, we’re very specific about people set their rates. We don’t, we don’t do algorithmic pricing, even though on our advisory board we’ve got. The person who wrote those algorithms for Uber at its founding is someone who, who worked at one of the companies in my former group. We want people to be able to set their rates, and we want clients to be able to say yes or no to how much someone wants to be paid for something.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Okay, so take me through the origin story of this beyond your own personal inspiration. Setting up double sided markets is tricky, right? You’ve got to find the talent but, but you also have to find the people who pay for the time… You’ve got to do both at the same time. So, the challenges of actually pulling that off?

Karen Ahrens:

Luck isn’t necessarily the right word, but one thing that has revealed itself because that at the very beginning was a question and I had in the advisory board, actually that person who, who was at Uber at its founding had said to me early on, you need to pick a lane. You need to decide are you going to put your efforts into recruiting the client side or the assistant side. But you can’t assume you can do both equally. So, I thought about it at the time, the decision still holds, but it’s for a slightly different reason. So, my focus is on actively recruiting clients, people who need work done. And that is much harder to get people over the line for the first time to try this service.

Karen Ahrens:

Given the economy that we are in assistance come when there is work and they can make a fair wage. I have to do very little to attract assistants. So, I try to keep a 1/3 client, 2/3 assistant base and just so that there’s enough people responding to new assignments that have been posted. And that’s where I’m at with putting next to nothing into recruiting assistants. Because all I have to do is put a little floater out there, get one person to say, hey, you know what, I got this great job on, on wait for me. And you know what it paid, it was good work. And suddenly you get, you know, 10 more people who sign up. Clients are where I have to focus.

Karen Ahrens:

Someday it may be that I have to spend more time, but given our economy and in areas like Los Angeles, you know, as we go into New York, Atlanta, Austin, people, people need additional income. They need a side hustle, but a meaningful one as well. Not door dash, not Uber, but something that’s actually using their time and skills.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, that’s very astute. So, getting those first clients, what was that like? It, was it, was it hard or did people say oh God, thank God, I, I like I really need this? 

Karen Ahrens:

It’s both. It is both because AB 100%, everybody’s like, I need that. I need that. And then they get in. And it’s hard to get people over the line with that first assignment. So that’s still something that we focus on. And I would say I haven’t totally cracked yet.

Karen Ahrens:

I think there’s a momentum piece that starts to help, but it’s still figuring out what are the different hesitations that people have with going for the first time. The same way that, you know, years back, like, what did it take for the first time you to get into somebody’s, you know, 1995 Camry and let them drive you across Manhattan? The first time you did it, you’re like, and now you don’t even think about it. Right? It’s cracking that and understanding what do we need to do to make people really comfortable and understand who’s on the other side of the equation? Who are these assistants? There are little things we’re adding as far as profiles, video profiles to help people feel more comfortable with knowing, like, oh, okay, this is. You know, this is somebody from my community, right? Our campaign. We have a campaign. Our first major campaign, actually. It’s human, local now, is how we focus.

Karen Ahrens:

These are real people. It’s not AI. These are people that are in your community and they are available now. There’s still more. I have to crack on ensuring how do I not only get them, because everybody’s like, this is an amazing idea and I need it, but how do I get them to book that first assignment? What are those barriers that they have to booking that first one?

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. I mean, a lot of it is something we’ve talked on this podcast about for a decade now, which is that women have a really, really hard time. Women in particular have a really hard time delegating, like. Because sometimes it’s like, oh, it’ll be easier if I do it all myself. Right. Partly because our brains are organized that way. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. And so, really, particularly for entrepreneurs, finding those leverage points in your life, because as you said earlier in our conversation, your most value as an entrepreneur are doing the things that only you can do.

Melinda Wittstock:

If you were thinking of yourself as an hourly worker, what would be your value to the company if you sign some big strategic deal as opposed to fixing typos on a website or broken links? Right. And so, you can get into a situation where you’re, you’re actually stealing from your own company. I mean, it’s kind of like a hyperbolic way of saying it, but true. And so, when you think of your clients, are a lot of your clients female? Is there a difference between the, the male and the female when, when, when selling this service?

Karen Ahrens:

I think psychologically there is and there, there will be more and more. But what I want to say is I think there’s a lot of letting us see how people are using it as well. I see the signs in what we’ve launched and the people who have been using it. I would say it’s been 2/3 female clients, one third male clients up to now. And that could be some of, based on some of the recruiting that we’ve done. So, I need more data and I want to keep gathering more data to see is there something that we need to be speaking to those two different sort of mindsets differently. But what I will say is, you know, I’m, I always consider myself the perfect example is getting myself over that. Like I can just do it.

Karen Ahrens:

It’s not a big deal. I’ll just go run those errands. But the back when the app was first launched and the first time I booked an assistant and I booked three hours to help me with a bunch of stuff, just running things around, prepping for an event at the studio. I need some decorations and things. And that night when I was driving home to get, everybody could just understand this feeling like I, I just had a 27-hour day. I just actually did get three more hours of work done because sure, I could have done all that stuff. But then after dinner instead of like watching a show with my son, I would have had to get back to work or I would have had to get up, you know, stupid earlier than I usually do to get some stuff done. Like my ability to say, yeah, I can do all of this stuff, but it’s going to take longer and I’m not going to get the meaningful stuff done.

Karen Ahrens:

And whatever that meaningful stuff is, is it can be on one day it may be a work thing that’s meaningful and another day it could be watching a show with my son or getting a run in that I haven’t been able to get in in a couple of days. That mindset shift I do think is trickier for women versus men being a little bit more comfortable on the delegation side and especially as moms I think we, you know, we’re just going to try to martyr through it and do everything and there’s a, there’s a bit where you say no, you know you, there’s actually a smarter way to do this and, and to get more done.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, really interesting. So how, how much do all your assistants get paid and what does it cost for the clients?

Karen Ahrens:

The main, the main service and the main concept is the gig economy, right? So, it’s a peer-to-peer marketplace. The assistance bid on assignments. So, let’s take this admin and Aaron’s assignment that I booked. I put three hours out there and then find the one I booked this week. I got like 8 or 9 responses on it and people will tell me how much they will do it for. So, they’ll say I’ll do it for 25 an hour, I’ll do it for 45 an hour.

Karen Ahrens:

We don’t let anyone bid lower than $20 an hour and we give a guidance of $35 an hour for a market like LA. Now some people look at and be like, you know what? I actually live in Santa Monica. The errands are in San. This is an easy thing; I’ll do it for 20. But again, when there’s things that are going to require I have somebody right now doing, helping me figure out how to update my deed for my property post-divorce because the county doesn’t help you. It’s like paperwork and research. That’s not a 20 an hour.

Melinda Wittstock:

No, that requires more expertise.

Karen Ahrens:

And more so and I’ve even, I’ve had to tell assistants sometimes like you need to, you need to ask for more money. Like your time has value and your experience has value. So, I think that one, she bid 35 or 40 an hour. Now there are some much more skilled things so people can, people can bid much higher on things and people can have more skilled. We have business strategists on there. You got somebody right now doing AI like helping people just kind of get up to speed. But for what? You know for what a small business owner or a, you know, somebody at a director level needs to know from AI.

Karen Ahrens:

They don’t need to know everything. But I’ve got somebody on the app right now who’s been picking up some assignments, doing that just sitting with somebody for a couple hours sort of helping them like these are the tools you could use. This is, how could it could help you. That’s not a $20 an hour assignment. There’s no. For this gig economy piece of it. There are no fees to sign up, neither on the client or the assistant side. How we make money is by taking a, having an admin fee and taking a percentage.

Karen Ahrens:

So again, very similar to model like TaskRabbit.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Karen Ahrens:

We do have a separate tier of service that’s in its early stages. We’ve got a couple of test MVP clients. It’s more of a VIP concierge level. So, what’s surfaced at this, you know, especially being in a place like la, there are people who either can’t or won’t post assignments and they want, they want a little bit more consistency in some cases. You know, we’ve got this, the nonprofit music studio and we’ve got a couple musicians in here. They can’t post assignments. Right. They’re, they’re going to get, you know, people who are just looking to actually, you know, be able to meet them.

Karen Ahrens:

And we also would, you know, want things like NDAs signed but they’re not at the level where they would hire a full time assistant. They need some help, but not quite that level. Same with some, you know, certain high net worth individuals that they’re, you know, the offices that manage their finances saying you need somebody to help you with some of this stuff. So that level service, it’s more of a subscription base. And we’ve got, you know, we’re building this bench of assistants who have experience as personal assistants, executive assistants have worked with people in this way so that we can allow for, you know what, you’ve got 10 hours a week or you’ve got 20 hours a week and these are the people, person or people that work with you that you know and you’re comfortable with. So that’s a, that’s a different model. It’s the sort of the, the offshoot that we’ve just seen this opportunity arise.

Karen Ahrens:

And especially in markets like la, as we move into New York, there’s a different definite need for that as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s interesting. So, so from your description, I mean some of these can be virtual assistants so it’s not location based and others are doing physical errands.

Karen Ahrens:

We definitely, so we focus on having local, you know, that your, your people are always local. There are some things that end up being remote assignments. I think if someone is only remote they’re going to struggle to find enough work because the, the, the piece that is so important here is these things that can’t be automated or done by AI and this is, you know, this is a big piece of, of what we see in the economy that we understood. And you know, I have a, a tech background, a precision marketing background. I, I use AI in my business. But there are certain things that AI can’t replace and that’s where we’re focusing. So, some of the remote, we don’t want to put too much focus on the remote because when you can, I find it slave labor. But you can basically have, you know, somebody in the Philippines for $5 an hour do your remote work.

Karen Ahrens:

Again, I find it an abhorrent rate because you know that even in Philippines that is not a livable wage. So, you can get remote, you know, you can get people offshore to do that work and also replace a lot of this stuff with AI. So, to me it would be short sighted to focus too much on that. Now I absolutely sometimes have assignments. You don’t need to come and meet me. Like this is something you can do on your own. But again, I’d say that’s the minority of assignments at this point.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, interesting. So, you’re in LA and so that’s one of your markets. How are you going to market with this? You’re operating in other cities. Which, which ones?

Karen Ahrens:

Yeah, so we now, and it’s funny, I’ll have people ask me, are you, you know, are you live in XYZ market? We’re an app, so technically we’re live anywhere. It’s just if you have enough volume of people, we, you know, as many entrepreneurs and people who have plans of how they’re going to roll things out, we have a, you know, this nice plan of, you know, start in la, then we’re going to move to a midsize market to sort of prove out and we looked at like Austin or Seattle and then move to New York. Well, I’ve learned in this journey you just can’t be too stuck in what you think is the right path. So, some opportunities have arisen in New York where New York was definitely something that we were going to push off just because of the how much money it will take to really properly fully launch in New York, which was always our intent. We ended up having an opportunity to have a billboard in Times Square which is live right now. It’s our first major campaign. We’ve got a fundraiser for breast cancer that we’ve been asked to sponsor in August, and we’ve got a lot of connections. My former job was in New York, was based in New York and the co-founder is originally from New York as well.

Karen Ahrens:

And it just keeps sort of presenting itself that there’s an opportunity to get something started, even if we do it on a small scale and focus on certain communities. The same thing’s going on in Atlanta. The universe is talking to us where we just keep getting these people and connections that are active in Atlanta. And we say, you know what? Okay, if we do it, minimize the effort and cost and we’ve got some people on the ground that can help, why not? Let’s see if we can get the momentum and volume there. The main focus and the sort of by the book is still la. LA will be our playbook that makes this something repeatable that we can really launch across different markets. But in the meantime, we are absolutely fine doing, if you want to call them tests, if you want to do them, soft launches when these opportunities arise and we have people who are active and involved and say, you know what, I think we’ve got something in this community as well that’s really interesting because…

Melinda Wittstock:

…You can have a plan of what makes sense of like, say I’m imagining your financial model, right? You got your projects. I’m like, okay, so this is how we’re going to get density in LA. But our next site is going to be XYZ. But then if you have an app, it’s available everywhere, so, so your customers are going to tell you so. It reminds me of my son’s business. It’s called TailsTrails. And it’s got a similar issue because it’s connecting dog owners in real life.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay, so think of it as Strava meets next door meets Hinge meets Instagram. Right? But all focused on, all focused on getting dog owners to meet for like, dog things. It’s going to launch in LA and Vancouver but like New York in the spring. But once the app is live, I mean, that could wildly change, right? So, it just reminds me of his issue, right? Because it’s all about getting density, right?

Karen Ahrens:

Well, and it’s, it’s funny, I lived in, in France for a long time and worked there. And I’ve got these connections from friends who keep pinging me saying, is it live in France yet? Like, you know, it’s not, but it could be, right? You want to, you want to help me out?

Melinda Wittstock:

So, you don’t want to launch something that looks dead, right, because that’s, that, that’s literally death for like an app that’s social. So, like, say if someone downloads the app in France, like, what’s, what do they.

Karen Ahrens:

Especially if they’re an assistant, they’re not going to see assignments. So that’s where, if we see. And Francis and I, because there’s also, obviously there’s data protection laws and there’s different things that, that we would need to account for before moving into, into Europe. But if we look at these other markets, the, the main focus for me is needing to have a small group of people signed up as assistants who I know can respond if we’ve got clients posting assignments. So that’s sort of that, that first little safety that I have. Now you do risk that assistants sign up and they get a little frustrated because they don’t see any work. But again, my focus needs to be on clients because those are, that’s who’s harder to recruit and to get active on the platform. So, for Atlanta, it’s okay.

Karen Ahrens:

I need to make sure I’ve got like five assistants, people that I know or, you know, if they’re connected somehow. Sign up and make sure you’re checking if there are assignments. Now I also go into the dashboard and I’m checking so I can ping people. Same thing in New York. As we move towards do this fundraiser in August, we will make sure that we’ve got a small group of assistants that are ready to accept assignments because that’s again, it’s, that’s where the, everything clicks. If somebody posts an assignment and no one bids on it, they’re not coming back. They’re not coming back. No assistance.

Karen Ahrens:

You can get them back. Even if it’s like they, you know, they join and they don’t see any assignments for a couple weeks, you can send out some notifications, say, hey, check out the latest. Again, because of the economy and because the value of this work, it’s you, we’ll get them back. I’m less concerned about them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, it’s sort of like if you suddenly have a lot of people downloading the app in, I don’t know, Kansas City or something, right? All of us out of the blue, right. Then, then you know that you need to start thinking about recruiting clients there.

Karen Ahrens:

Right, exactly. And, we haven’t brought in large investment funds yet. So, you have to be really, really thoughtful about your marketing dollars and your marketing money and how you’re going to recruit users. It’s a funny thing coming from, you know, I was, I was president of Omnicom Precision Marketing Group. So, our clients were, you know, the big ones. Right.

Karen Ahrens:

Our clients were. When I was actually in France, my client was PNG and Pampers and you know, BMW and Apple is a client of that group. Massive, massive clients with big budgets. And when you suddenly are on the side I’m on now, like, you’re looking at like, is that thousand dollars really going to be worth it? But you, you think a lot harder about the ROI on marketing because you need to make it work really hard. And what’s interesting, what’s been working, like you said, Kansas City. If that were to happen, the first thing I would do is get onto Kansas City next door app and start looking for people who are looking for work or who are looking to have somebody do something and just start responding. Say, hey, try out our app. It is phenomenally useful.

Karen Ahrens:

Network Reddit is the other one. Like, there’s things that you can do even without throwing advertising dollars at it and just putting a little bit of time into making people aware of it. Now that won’t scale, but it gives you that initial base of people who have exactly the intent you need, which is what I can’t get by dumping a bunch of money into like social media advertising campaigns. Right. I don’t know if they’re in the mindset to delegate or to take work, but somebody on Nextdoor or Reddit, like Reddit, I love it when people, you know, there’s people like me, they’re like, how do I juggle all this? Like, like child work exercise? Like, how do I do it? I’m like, you know what, I got an idea.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, because this is an area where you can use a, to AI to figure out what are the conversations going on. 

Karen Ahrens:

It’s a really good way when you have people in your, you know, your family and friends who are like how can I help? And it’s rather than saying use the service which you know is usually my, my main one you say, you know like just if you’re on next door, if you like just mention us. So, it’s also a really easy way when people like how can I help you? To just say yeah just you know, make a mention, let people know that we exist. Especially when you’re in those early, early stages of getting started.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So the obvious question to ask you Karen is AI and, and what’s your moat against AI? Because so many people’s lives are getting, you know the folks that are getting full on automations and like agentic and doing all these things. It’s freeing up a lot of time.

Karen Ahrens:

Right, right.

Melinda Wittstock:

For them, the ones that are.

Karen Ahrens:

But I would argue if it’s freeing up people’s time you can spend a

Melinda Wittstock:

lot of time on it.

Karen Ahrens:

Absolutely. Which you know as a, you know where I am in the journey with this company so and I have extensive precision and digital marketing background. I’m not going to be hiring an agency. I know how much can be done with AI of what agencies do, strategists, high level creatives, all that high level thinking. Very happy to work with people and I am, you know, lucky to have a network of amazing people I’ve worked with throughout my career that come in and work with me. But then the execution side of it, I don’t need, I don’t need an agency to be creating emails or digital campaigns for me. But what it did do is put that workload on me because at this point I’m still the like I know exactly what I want. It’s, you know, we’re in an earlier stage of a company and it’s not something I can just delegate and know that we’re going to stay true to sort of the vision of the company.

Karen Ahrens:

So, it’s actually sort of increased workload in that sense, and I think there’s a lot of people in senior positions that it is something that it’s been added as something that you now need to be competent at because if you’re not using it you’re really not being smart now. It can save tons of time. I love when I’m able to churn out something that to design and make something beautiful. I put some bullet points into Claude and Say, create, you know, a flyer that I’m able to hand out to the volunteers who are doing XYZ and it, you know, it takes a minute to do it. Right, right. That part is amazing. But it’s put that workload on more senior people while we have fewer lower-level positions because they’re saying that stuff is replaced by AI, so what I see is that those more senior folks actually are even more overloaded. And you have fewer assistants in companies now.

[PROMO CREDIT]

Wings of Inspired Business is brought to you by the podcast, Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets where Steve Little – serial entrepreneur, investor and mergers & acquisitions maestro – shares the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a $5m business, and a $50mm even $500 mm business. It always pays to understand what’s driving the underlying enterprise value of your business. So, check out Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and available wherever you get your podcasts. More information about valuation growth at Zero Limits Ventures.com

Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Karen Ahrens, CEO and founder of the time trading app, Wait4Me.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Karen Ahrens:

Right. It used to be like executives would have a dedicated assistant. Now you might have one assistant for a group, and he or she is going to do only what they can, which might be like entering an expense report, but that’s about it. Like you, you just don’t have people that. They’re certainly not going to help you with anything personal. Personal. And even doing your expense reports, that, that might depend. So, I don’t know that I would say AI is definitely giving people more time.

Karen Ahrens:

As far as a moat, I don’t, I don’t particularly need a moat because we really are, are hitting that piece of the work that only a real local human can do. So again, like, AI is not going to pick up my dry cleaning. AI is not going to organize that cleaning closet that is a lip and catastrophe and has been like that for a year. And I just want somebody to help me get everything organized. So, it’s neat. Like those are things real humans have to do and travel like. Absolutely. Okay, you can plug it into AI but there’s a component of people knowing you and being able to converse that, you know, in some cases, like, I want somebody who’s gonna, you know, be able to tap into understanding me and my personality.

Karen Ahrens:

And some people argue and say AI can do that and that piece, maybe it will be replaced. But the, the rest of these, these things, you know, getting the, the house ready for a party that you’ve got going on and dealing with the invites and the decorations. AI can’t do that. AI can give you a list of everything you need to do, but it can’t actually do it. It’s not going to decorate your house for you. Right?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean there’s always going to be physical things that, that need, that need to be done. This is so interesting. So how have you. Have you bootstrapped this company, Karen? Or is it VC funded or…

Karen Ahrens:

It’s not VC, but it’s angel. Combination of earlier was more bootstrapping and then we’ve had angel investors, so different folks. And I wouldn’t say we’re definitely out of the friends and family phase. We didn’t tap into that real much. So, it’s been angel investors that have been helping. In the meantime, as we get to a point where we’re on the cusp of that actually we’ve got our first meetings coming up in the next couple of weeks to get proper. The, the larger funding that we need to really take it to the next level. So, some of it has been wanting to get the momentum as well and having a real solid story going into asking for, you know, the larger asks that we, we really need to be able to right.

Karen Ahrens:

Make this thing fly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, once you really prove that, you know, density, product, you know, all those things product market fit and such, which sounds like you have, you can take money to actually scale what you’ve already proven, which is a much better place to be to take money to begin with.

Karen Ahrens:

Absolutely. And just being able to, like I said, even. And there will be more adjusting but even just seeing the things where we’ve had to say well oh actually like this is we thought it was going to function this way or we thought that’s what was going to be important, but it’s actually this other thing that’s important. And you know, those little pivots. What I’ve seen just even in my initial sort of more casual conversations with potential investors is like that’s, that is very useful to have because they, it, it starts to help people understand this isn’t just, it’s not just a good idea. It’s something that we’re already starting to course correct and figure out where we need to adjust and that these, you know, the folks running this are capable of doing that which I think is, you know, is also an important thing. And being able to say like I thought we were going to go left but actually going right seems to be the better option.

Karen Ahrens:

You know, adding this VIP concierge service was never something that we had looked at doing and it’s just, it’s come out of a need. People asking us and advice from investors as well of saying like this is going to make it even more attractive to investors if they see that you have this top of the triangle element to your offering and that is successful, they’re going to believe much more strongly in the more generally available app version. So, we adjusted.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. That’s interesting. Well, all the best businesses are really good at listening to their customers and co creating with their customers, right? Because markets always kind of tell you right. Even with the best laid plans in in the world. So, tell me just, just how big is it now? How many people do you have on this?

Karen Ahrens:

So, we’ve got about a thousand people, mostly LA. We’ve got a little bit of small group in Atlanta, small group in New York but the most active right now is in Los Angeles.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, right, right, right. So and so scaling from there. Where, where. Where would you like to be like five years from now?

Karen Ahrens:

Five years is a, is a. Is a long time. 

Karen Ahrens:

Our intent would be we go beyond the United States. We’ve seen that there’s definitely a desire, need like I said, I mean the France thing pops up. 

Melinda Wittstock:

But don’t forget Canada.

Karen Ahrens:

Oh well, Canada. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think you know there’s it’s witness which cities is it best suited for? Because Even in the U.S. you know, we have to think about and that evolves but we need to look at which cities are more likely to accept a service like this. So, I’m originally from, from Wisconsin.

Karen Ahrens:

I still have quite a bit of family there and you know Chicago is an area that, you know, close to Wisconsin but similar mindset that I would hold off with Chicago because I’m not certain and I would say I’ve done some market research on this. I think there’s going to be a bit more of resistance to outsourcing personal things. There’s a bit of do it, you’re going to do it yourself. You know, it’s having a cleaning person isn’t as sort of widespread in Chicago is, you know, Los Angeles. A lot, a lot, a lot of people have cleaning. You know, no one would ever question you. I think in the Midwest it starts.

Karen Ahrens:

It’s not quite the same. So, there’s the same certain cities that I think it would be. There’s more of a mind shift beyond just the personal assistant side and those are the markets. Like we’re not going to focus too much there. But I think when you look at like a, you know, you look at Toronto.

Melinda Wittstock:

Toronto. I’m from Toronto. Toronto is an obvious, you know.

Karen Ahrens:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you got like. Or Calgary which you know I also,

Karen Ahrens:

I’ve been to Calgary actually from one of the agencies from my former group is there if I was there for Stampede.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I’m self-interested in Vancouver because I go back and forth between LA and Vancouver. 

Karen Ahrens:

And Vancouver, definitely, because it’s a lifestyle city.

Melinda Wittstock:

Because it’s so beautiful. 

Karen Ahrens:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. So, you know, five years from now, the intent would be that we are in major metropolitan areas in the U.S. Plus, those midsize markets like Austin and Seattle.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, Austin. Austin is obvious. 

Karen Ahrens:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So exciting. Well, congratulations on all your progress, Karen. I want to make sure people know the best way to find you and work. Work with you, like either as a client or as, you know, somebody who wants to offer their time.

Karen Ahrens:

Perfect. So, we’re on App Store and we’re on Google Play. It’s Wait4Me, the number four Wait4Me app. Otherwise you can find us same name. Wait4Me app on social. So, we’ve got all the social channels or our website as well. But I would say download the app.

Karen Ahrens:

There’s no cost to it, so you’re able to sort of poke around and see what it looks like.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Karen Ahrens:

All right. I appreciate it.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Karen Ahrens is the CEO and founder of the time trading app, Wait4Me. 

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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