A strategist, a builder, and a realist walk into a bar.
You only have to hire one of them. The all in one package.
I'm Yael Keon. Business Strategy & Systems Consultant for small business owners building a business around their life, unapologetically.
Plenty of people will write you a strategy and wish you luck. Plenty more will build you something clever that doesn't fit how you work. Almost nobody asks whether the thing will survive a Tuesday with two school pick-ups in it.
I do all three parts. Strategy, tech, and reality.
Marketing, sales, and delivery, joined up, and built for the brain, the week, and the business you've got.
The short version
> A marketing degree, an MBA, and a stack of courses since. The learning never stops.
> 25 years in marketing, more than 10 of them online, and hundreds of business owners helped.
> Strategist and builder in one. I design it, then I build it.
> Host of That Systems Show, and a professional member of the Australian Marketing Institute.
> Neurodivergent founder, running the whole thing during school hours from Perth.
The real problem with your systems
You know what you should be doing. That isn't the gap.
You've read the posts, bought the course, watched someone confidently explain their tech stack on a podcast. You've probably built half of it. And then it sat there, unused, quietly making you feel like the problem.
The strategy usually isn't wrong. The tool usually isn't wrong either.
What's wrong is that nobody built it for you.
Not for a brain that loses interest the moment a process has 14 steps. Not for a week that has two school pick-ups and one usable working day in it. Not for a budget that can't absorb another $350 a month subscription with a search bar where the support used to be.
So you patch it. You do the thing by hand. You keep the important bit in your head, because at least your head doesn't need an integration.
And then you get told you're disorganised. Not disciplined enough. Bad with tech.
You're not doing it wrong.
Nobody built your systems for the brain, the life, and the business you've got. That's the job I do.
What you won't get from anyone else
Joining it all up
Your cart to your email list. Your forms to your CRM. Your content to the place your brain can find it again. The joins are where the business leaks time, and the joins are where I live.
Reality as a design input, not an afterthought
Accessibility, energy, season of life, and how your brain works aren't caveats I add at the end. They're in the brief from the first minute. A technically perfect system you won't use is a failed system.
Strategist and builder in one person
You don't get a strategy deck and a referral to "a tech person". I design it, then I build it, in the same head. Nothing gets lost in translation between the plan and the thing.
AI, without the evangelism
I use AI every day, and I can build it into your systems properly if you want it there. Sometimes it replaces a tool you're paying for. Sometimes it quietly does the job you've been doing by hand every Monday morning.
What I won't do is talk you into anything you're uneasy about. My job is to lay out what's possible, including the options you didn't know were options, and then you pick. Some clients want AI doing the heavy lifting. Others want it nowhere near their business. Both get a system that works.
How I got here
The Girl with all the "Potential"
I was the good girl at school. The one who did as she was told, and who heard a great deal about how much potential she had. I finished high school at 15, went straight into an administration traineeship, and then straight to university. Nobody suggested slowing down, so I didn't.
The Corporate Years
I started in marketing admin. I ended up in charge of major system implementations, including ERP and Salesforce rollouts, which is where I learned exactly what happens when a business installs a system without asking how anyone works.
Oil and gas, then telecommunications. Tradeshows in China, India, and the USA
When the Wheels Came Off
Partway through my MBA I was involved in a tragic car accident. I kept studying anyway, because stopping wasn't something I knew how to do.
Then I burnt out completely. So I quit everything and went backpacking around the world instead.
Building Things Differently
I came back, returned to the career, met my husband, and had our kids. Something had shifted though. I was no longer willing to run on empty to prove anything to anyone.
I started my business in 2015 and tried all the things. Some worked, plenty didn't. Along the way I built a reputation as an email marketing expert and started teaching it at scale.
The Penny Dropped
Then came a late ADHD diagnosis, and the whole story rearranged itself in about a week. The potential. The burnout. Why the systems everyone recommended never stuck.
Midlife turned up around the same time and quietly took away most of my interest in what other people thought.
The NOW: Owning It (Screw "Potential")
Twenty-five years in marketing. An MBA. A corporate career spent watching expensive systems fail because nobody asked how the humans worked. And a lived understanding of what running on empty costs you.
I use all of it. That's the job.
You're also allowed to run it your way
My mission is to help small business owners run their businesses unapologetically, whoever they are and however they're wired. Around their lives, not the other way round. With space for the good stuff and the freedom to do it their way.
That's the whole thing. Not a bigger business at any cost, and definitely not a busier one.
Systemise the boring. Automate the repetitive. Create space for ideas.
The systems I'll happily get my hands dirty in
I'm tool-agnostic. I start with what you've already got, and I only suggest a move when it genuinely earns it. Here's a taster of the systems I work with.
Email marketing: ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Kit, MailerLite, Mailchimp, and whichever one you signed up for in 2019 and never quite left.
CRMs: Salesforce, HubSpot, Go High Level, Dubsado, and plenty of random niche industry ones that only make sense to the people who use them.
Delivery: calendar bookings, learning management systems, form builders, video hosting, contracts. There are far too many to list, and I've probably met yours.
Projects and organisation: Notion, Trello, Asana, ClickUp, and the spreadsheet you're still secretly running everything from.
The joins: direct connections first, Zapier or Make when there isn't one, and a stubborn refusal to accept that two things "just don't talk" until I've properly tried.
The AI layer: same rule as before. I'll build it in where it earns its place and leave it out where it doesn't. At its best you barely notice it, quietly doing a job you'd rather not do yourself.
Not on the list? Ask anyway.
I'm up for almost anything, and a tool I haven't met yet is usually a fun afternoon rather than a problem. If it's genuinely outside what I do, I'll tell you straight and point you somewhere better.
That thing you keep doing by hand? There's a better way.
Let's find yours.
The Process Audit is a proper look at your business across all three pillars: Strategy, Tech, and Reality.
We begin with a 90 minute, 1:1 consultation where I get to know you and how you like to work. I get to know your business, how it's been running so far and how you'd like it to run. Then I'll build you a big picture process map, step by step breakdown and provide you with recommendations AND options based on all we discover.
Professional bio
Yael Keon is a Business Strategy & Systems Consultant who helps small business owners build strategy-led systems made for their real brain and life, so the business runs around them rather than the other way round.
Over 25 years in marketing, more than 10 of them online, Yael has worked across marketing, sales, and delivery systems for small businesses, and has taught hundreds of business owners through her courses and membership. She holds a marketing degree and an MBA, and has spent the last decade specialising in the tech small businesses run on: email marketing platforms, CRMs, carts and checkouts, project management tools, websites, and the integrations that hold the whole lot together.
Her earlier corporate career took her from marketing administration to leading major system implementations, including ERP and Salesforce rollouts, across the oil and gas and telecommunications industries, with international project and tradeshow experience in China, India, and the USA.
What sets her work apart is the insistence that systems are designed for the specific human using them. Her framework, The Sane Systems Blueprint, is built on three pillars: Strategy (what to do and why), Tech (the tools, the integrations, and the AI layer), and Reality (how this person works, thinks, and lives).
Yael is tool-agnostic and builds systems her clients own and run themselves. A neurodivergent founder based in Perth, she runs her consultancy during school hours and is a vocal opponent of hustle culture in all its forms.
She hosts the podcast That Systems Show.