Backable

"No one would pay that much." "The market's shrinking." Every business runs on a few stories nobody questions. TK and Nigel pull them apart, starting with the day TK's agency put an $8,000 price tag on the thing it used to give away free. In this episode: - Nigel's daughter Indie announces she can do a backflip, with zero evidence - The $8,000 free offer that brought in more clients, and better on...

K and Lana started their first company while they were dating, and most people thought it was a very stupid decision. Twenty years and several companies later, they sit down with Nigel to talk honestly about working with your spouse - what it costs, what it gives, and the rule that has kept work from coming home. In this episode: - Lana was 22 and TK was already running his own business - and the...

Feeling behind on AI? You're not, and you don't need an expert to get started. Free prompt pack from this episode - a 20-minute desk audit and five prompts to hand your busywork to AI: [DOWNLOAD LINK] In this episode, TK (Tim Krotiris), Founder and CEO of Backable, answers the question business owners ask us more than any other right now: am I too far behind on AI? He compares this moment to the l...

We sat in a pub in Carlton working out how to make our first $1 million, charging $60 a week for social media. It was a lot of clients, and that plan had to die so the business could grow. TK says most businesses rebuild their model 4 or 5 times on the way to $20 to $40 million. In this episode: what it felt like to let the first one go, the member who walked into our office in tears, and the AI t...

Some owners use honesty to clear the air. Others use it as a licence to be rude. Tim and Elana work out which one radical candour has become, then turn the spotlight back on the one person who can’t step out of it: the owner. Elana opens with a question from a book she’d been reading: is radical candour still useful, or has it quietly become an excuse? Tim Krotiris (TK) doesn’t soften his answer....

It started with a dead plant. Years ago we began a simple game: remove one thing from the business every day. Day one was the plant. By day ten it was a bench full of junk. Eventually it led us to our client reporting, which was thorough, took our team half the week, and was read properly by fewer than one in ten clients. That reporting now takes two minutes. TK, Elana and Nigel talk about what ha...

Every big jump in our business came right after something broke: a client, a person, or an idea we were holding too tight. TK and Elana talk about the move every growing business has to make, from lone wolf to wolf pack. Why the thing you're holding onto is often what's holding the business back. Why the transition feels worse before it feels better: more people, less money, and wondering whether...

“I think you need an internal arrogance. When you commit to something, you're all in on it, not half in. Fear is confining your ability to make the right decision.” - TK A team of 20-year-old founders lost a million dollars and doubled down anyway, and it worked. In this raw, unscripted episode, Tim (TK) and Elana (Lana) pull apart what that kind of risk actually costs, starting with their own: tw...

Right now, the business landscape is exhausted. Between rapid AI shifts, economic uncertainty, and post-COVID adjustments, business owners are hitting a massive wall of decision fatigue. But in this solo episode, TK explains why this industry-wide tiredness is actually the greatest commercial opportunity of your lifetime—if you know how to use your small business advantage. TK shares a powerful st...

In this episode, TK breaks down the exact moment he flipped the script on his agency's lead generation model: taking a high-value resource they used to give away as a free lead magnet, putting an $8,000 price tag on it, and watching client conversion rates actually increase.   If you are currently burning team capacity on low-value "freebie seekers" or settling for a comfortable "B+ Life" because...

Her rates halved in four years. Not because she got worse. Because nobody's buying what she thought she was selling. Episode Summary This one's for business owners who built real skill over years and are now watching the price for that skill quietly drop — while people with a fraction of the experience seem to be winning the work. Nigel brings a live case study from his own kitchen table: his wife...

There's a theory that says the smartest thing you can do is quit. TK and Elana spent the episode arguing about whether that's true — and landed somewhere neither of them expected. EPISODE SUMMARY This one's for the business owner lying awake wondering if it's time to walk away. TK and Elana — back together after three years apart on the mic — start with a theory about squirrels foraging up trees,...

Some people lose a business and never talk about it again. TK messaged a stranger going through exactly that this week, mid-liquidation, heartbroken, and it cracked open a story he's never told on the show before. EPISODE SUMMARY ( If you've ever lain awake running the numbers, wondering whether this is the year it all falls apart, this one's for you. TK talks about DM'ing a stranger mid-liquidati...

Only one in ten businesses that survive ten years ever actually sell. Most owners never ask that question until the day it's the only one that matters. Episode Summary: TK breaks down why so few businesses ever exit — and why building without a clear endpoint means spending your best years pouring risk and capital into something that might be worth nothing when you finally want out. He walks throu...

Some people stay stuck for twenty years. Others compress a career into two. TK and Nigel get into why — and it isn't talent, luck, or timing. Episode Summary A business partner of TK's picked up the phone and cold-called a competitor ten times his size. Not for a favour, not for a deal — just to ask how they did it. They invited him in for a week. He walked out with 25 years of expensive lessons a...

Would you run your business differently if this was your last year doing it? TK puts that question to Nigel straight after the Australian end of financial year, and the answer changes how you think about scaling, hiring, and your own role entirely. EPISODE SUMMARY This episode is for Australian business owners who feel like every new financial year starts the same way: same cadence, same to-do lis...

This episode is for small business owners who look at a competitor with the exact same offer, the exact same market, and the exact same opportunities, and can't work out why that competitor is growing while they're stuck. TK and Nigel open up a real conversation about the moment two identical trade businesses split apart: one owner kept putting himself in the way of opportunity, and the other kept...

Most business owners are carrying a label they never chose: failure. TK and Nigel pull that label apart and show why the businesses winning right now aren't the ones avoiding failure — they're the ones who stopped calling it that. EPISODE SUMMARY This episode is for business owners who feel like they're constantly falling short of a goal they set months or years ago, and who quietly wonder if that...

There's one moment that ends business overwhelm — and it's smaller than you think. Nigel and TK dig into why your brain buries the one change that actually matters, and how to find it before it finds you.  EPISODE SUMMARY   This episode is for business owners who feel like everything needs to change at once — the ones caught in decision fatigue, carrying a hundred small things they could fix but p...

Most business owners aren't failing because they're not working hard enough. They're failing because they're working hard on the wrong things — and calling it commitment. TK breaks down why activity without outcome is just procrastination wearing a business suit.    EPISODE SUMMARY   In this episode, Nigel and TK unpack one of the most misunderstood ideas in small business: that hard work and effe...

TK opens with a saying he loves: the warrior who sleeps with a sword looks foolish every night but one. This episode is about what that actually means for your business — and whether "being ready" and "just being busy" are the same thing at all.  Click here to watch a video of this episode. Click here to watch a video of this episode. {{video | title: 'Click here to watch a video of this episode.'...

What does it actually look like to build a business with the person you love — not the highlight reel version, but the real one? The date nights that buckled under the weight of cash flow conversations. The shared office, shared vision, and the quiet fear that in chasing something great, you might slowly hollow out the very relationship that made it worth building. In this episode, TK sits down wi...

What does elite sport actually teach you that business school can't? For TK, the answer isn't what most people expect. It's not tactics or tenacity — it's the experience of being around specialists who see what you can't see in yourself, competing against people who push you to levels you'd never reach alone, and learning to find complete clarity in the moments of highest pressure. In this episode...

What separates business owners who break through from those who stay stuck? TK has watched hundreds of transformations over the years — people who came in shaking at the thought of spending $100 on advice, and came out the other side driving their favourite car, running a business they love. The difference was never a marketing programme or a new strategy. It was a fundamental shift in how they re...

Five years ago, TK and Nigel went quiet. No announcement. No farewell episode. Just — gone. That was the point. In this episode, they come back to explain the decision that felt, at times, like the riskiest thing they'd ever made. Why they walked away from a proven model. What they were building while no one was watching. And why right now — in the middle of the biggest technology shift since the...