The Ops Authority

nobody likes a spoiler unless it's your clients telling you exactly what they need but the reality is most businesses are missing out on these signals because these messages in this information is lost in your emails maybe they've responded to your emails but you don't capture it anywhere or you've got dms going on with your clients in a one to one capacity and you missed them all of it is trapped in the digital ether but with hubspot you get all of this data in one place their customer platform brings together the insights that you need to grow your business spoiler alert the more you know the more you grow visit hubspot dot com and find out more today this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast today we are porting episode two hundred and eighty nine inch and closer and closer and closer to that three hundred episode mark which is kind of epic if i do say so myself and speaking of epic today we have a dear dear dear friend i know you've heard me gus about her in the past because we have recorded this style of podcast now several times i think we have six episodes already out there that are particular to this but this is our incredible expert coach accountability adviser and like i said my very dear friend lynette robinson so i am so excited to have her back and the goal of this episode is to just break it down in real time neither of us have scripted answers to these questions but what i'm bringing you today are the culmination of a couple of themes that we're seeing in the coaching that we do so lynette is an accountability adviser inside of the director of operations certification program she's been by my side now for probably four plus years and either as a student or as a coach and so we i'm just gonna be real we hear it all we see it all and we have a really great vantage point of being behind the scenes and coaching people to become their next best self through the lens of their operational skill set which may sound a little bit wacky but that's the unique vantage point that we have so we collect some information and some questions some themes that we're seeing from our community right now and instead of us kinda chi chatting behind the scenes on boxer and with our extended team we figured why not just bring them right here to use so that you can benefit from two different perspectives i think that's another thing that i really value is understanding that there's not just one way to think about or to solve a problem or a question there's always a lot and i believe that being the fact finder that we are the more we know the more confidence we have to make our own decision and sometimes that's validating a way that we think or fill and other times it's giving you a springboard to go a little bit deeper from the thoughts that you're already having so that's why we have lynette here that's why we are doing this episode of what we call the ops edition and let me just give you the formal bio of lynette if you've hung around us for any time you already know a just how special she is and how bright she is how special she is to me how special she is to the world and then also what a bright light she is inside of our community but if you don't and i hope i'm welcoming some new people here let me formally introduce you to the most amazing lynette robinson she is the founder of lighter living virtual solution and she is leveraging over thirteen years of experience in technology sales to drive operational excellence so if you're listening in and you're new to us i want you to always be listening to how people have had these operational skills and have built a career around them in various different ways and technology sales is kind of where she got her starting point and now she's still got that same you know vision of operational excellence with the director of operation certification coming from us the ops authority she supports female ceos with multiple businesses by leading their teams creating consistent processes and adding the structure their companies so desperately need and if you've been behind the scenes you know that is a big statement and a big job for us lan people centered approach champions women as small business heroes contributing both to their professional success as well as their personal fulfillment she's guided by a legacy of family leadership when that's work in her own business helps her to shape a brighter future not only for her to a beautiful amazing cute daughters but also for the next generation of female entrepreneurs lynette is committed to building a world where small businesses thrive driven by innovation integrity and a deep rooted commitment to people that is the version of lan that is available to everybody and there's also so many more rich layers and i think that you're gonna have a great time listening to her and myself today as we go through a couple of questions that we have for you welcome lynette thank you natalie i'm so happy to be back i love it alright friend so our friend alex has gathered some questions for us and where did she get those questions she went to our d o o different rounds she went to ops insiders and she's listening to the calls that we have with our d o o our active d cohorts right now and so you're gonna see that you've probably heard or seen some of these questions before but everyone who's listening in just know that these are kind of themes that we're hearing but these are actual questions these are not like planted questions that lynette and i came up with these are from your peers your people and i'm excited to hear nets perspective i've read over these questions so i have an idea but i don't know that's gonna bring us today so i do know that she's an exceptional coach and has so much great experience not only in listening and guiding people but really coaching towards the individual success that everybody wants so you ready i am ready alrighty so let's start with question number one and here's a little bit of a scenario before we get started for those of you who work full time in someone's business but also have your own side hustle how do you manage or balance your social presence i'm thinking about linkedin specifically i put my business on the burner fir the last year for a variety of reasons and now i wanna pick it back up again but i need to do that alongside my full time job however i don't ever see entrepreneurship being my full time gig i wanna have a professional presence but also use these platforms as a means for getting clients for my side hustle how do i do this so this is a really great great question and you know what we're in the time where we're seeing i think the pendulum is swinging a little bit to where we're seeing especially the people that are enrolling in our program but i'm seeing it even in my personal friend circle and stuff where people are liking the dependency of a w two a full time role and they're still looking to do some service provider work on the outside or maybe they're you know wanting to create something a little a quote on unquote more passive and offer you know templates or courses or something like that so i think that this is a really relevant question because this feels very representative of what i am seeing both personally and professionally so lynette what do you think how does this person build this presence on social that supports their entrepreneurial dreams and what this person has labeled as their side gig but also stay professional for the employer that is providing them stability this is such a wonderful question i'm so glad that whomever this is brought it forward because it's a two pronged approach i feel you can take one i just wanna remind whomever this person is your social media platforms are yours to do what you want to do with it i have friends who do not identify who their employer is on their social media platform there are some people who keep all their platforms private some people who keep their platforms open there are people who be friend their work friends there are people who do not do that there are people who like and follow their employers pages there are people who don't so if you are someone who is in the process of looking for a role right now i know this person is trying to figure out what they wanna do because they're already in a role but for those of you who are looking i encourage you to figure out how you want to handle your platforms because they brand you before they brand anyone that's attached to you or any organization that's attached to you second for this person who is already employed and trying to figure out what route they want to take i'll start with the second part of the answer and that is to be clear determine if you feel that it's in your best interest or whether you have the type of relationship with your employer to tell your employer hey i have this side hustle we're connected on social media you might see it but this does not infringe on my work with you during the hours i've committed to you i've completely committed that time to you you have my full focus but as we both know i don't work twenty four hours a day so you made some things that reflect my other interest but please know that you have my commitment during the hours that i'm available to you but i'm also involved in this other endeavor which you know is yours you have to determine if that's something that you want to open up to them or not so that is the first thing that i would ask yourself is do you have the type of relationship where you want to reveal that information or not are you connected to your employer have you been in the past the other caveat to this with social media you kinda can live a few lives right you can completely overhaul it you could decide to take certain pictures down like recently i took all of my children's pictures down from my social media you can change how you want your social media to look and feel at any time you choose if you want to pursue this endeavor and you wanna slightly step away from people that you were previously connected to that's your decision to make but be very clear on which way you're going to decide and whomever you'd need to have clarifying conversations with have those conversations so that no one thinks that you are acting outside of integrity that's the exact word i just wrote down as integrity like i would say that this is the desire of a lot of people as i've already said the reality is you're not hiding if you're on the internet and i don't care what social platform you're on and how much you scrub it down you're not hiding from anyone so you have to be in integrity with what you're doing and your decisions that you're making and how you're showing up that just exactly like lynette said you need to be aware of any kind of non compete that you might have signed you know if you've been in at this company for one year five years ten year do not remember what you signed on day one but there are company policies that you need to re yourself with before you go down this path you owe it to yourself you owe it to your employer that is providing you probably a lot of benefits not on top of just your compensation maybe it's you know insurance and whatnot but you need to make sure that you are following the quote unquote rules if you will definitely disclose it i've worked in hr i actually handled this so much in my corporate time which was you know it's been a decade since i have been out of the big corporate space and a lot of things have changed in that ten years as far as having side gigs and desi side gigs but i can't encourage you enough to have the conversation as lynette said and then disclose it because if you don't disclose this and you try to beat out the internet which i'm telling you cannot you will be terminated and then you end up in a situation that would lead us to a whole different question than what has been raised today so that's the tough love part of me because i've had those same thoughts where it's like i'll do this and nobody will find out that is just it's unfortunately that is not the truth and you know you wanna be in integrity because i i know that that's who you are when you're having those conversations you can also be realistic with the leadership and the type of leadership that you have to really understand when they say yes this is okay maybe this is okay you really need to look at it through their lens if you are really really requiring the stability of the w two position that you have right now and then practically so that's all my warnings but if you want to move forward in this way which is a very exciting way and i think it's way more realistic in today's world than it was in the corporate days that i was just referring to depends on the employer it depends on so many things but i think it's way more feasible today to do exactly as this person is asking to have a full time income and to create a side gig or a small practice on the side that you can work on nights and weekend but realize you are probably going to find yourself in a position where you're going to have to deliver this nights and weekend so when you're designing that business model just remember you need to make something that's really flexible that fits in and the customer that you're trying or the client that you're trying to get understands that you're a night and weakens kind of person so this is like bonus someone's one's asking me this but if i were in this scenario where i'm setting up a side gig where i'm requiring face to face or client delivery work i would probably wanna work with that exact same profile as me someone who is building a side gig because who's available nights and weekends and who wants to be eagerly available nights and weekends the person who's building a side gig so i think that it could that would be somebody i would be targeting as my avatar and then business profiles so the pendulum is always swinging when it comes to social and i do not believe that social media is the best way for you to build a business but in this particular case they're asking specifically about linkedin you can create a business profile and you can also have a personal profile and i don't think i need to coach you on the differences between those but on that business profile you can still create content you can do everything that you can do on your personal profile but now maybe the business profile doesn't have a face attached to it and maybe it does it really won't matter as long as you've checked all the boxes with the company that you're currently working for but i think to keep the separation of you know church and state if you will put this endeavor underneath your business profile doesn't mean on your personal profile that you can't link to both of the employers at the same time you being one and then your full time company also being on your personal linkedin and i also just wrote a note whenever i was reviewing this that i think that the best way to do this is to build one to one relationships locally i know lynette and i specifically have talked about this in the past but if you're wanting to bring in some additional money i know for our directors of operations who have learned the strategic mapping model delivering a strategic map night and weekends with people in your local environment would be a great way to do that so building one to one relationships locally would be another tip that i wrote down as i was going through this you made me think of one other thing natalie i hear the phrase all the time control your own narrative you don't want your nine to five to find out about this and then you have to be reactive and try and respond to their objections or to mis conceived notions that they might have about what your true intentions are and then if this business is a service provider if you are a service provider in your side hustle control the narrative with the clients that you're working with too and let them know what your availability is so that you are acting in integrity all the way around the board oh i just had something else that came to me too if you're building a business as a side gig i would make sure that the avatar specifically the avatar is really really really different than the people that your company serves because most people are gonna have a non compete and even if they don't it's gonna be flagged and become uncomfortable if they don't have the formality of a non compete in there this just not gonna feel good if you work in insurance and then on your side gig you're working on marketing plans for insurance companies like it just doesn't feel good i would say you know move over into another sector and the skills that you have don't necessarily have to change so if you're a great strategist you can be a strategist in both places but if you're serving different people be a lot safer in the end that's super good i think we could had a whole episode because i i still feel like we could just keep jamming on that but let's go to the next question alrighty so looks like this person is doing some hiring for a company and the question is where do you look for salary data and averages for directors of operations and against company sizes so in this particular case this person was like okay so what does a d get paid in a company of three people in a company of ten people a company of a hundred a thousand ten thousand she's negotiating her way through a raise and she has conflicting data from her employer so it sounds like they have sat down and this person's rising into a d role maybe and her employer came back and said we're gonna pay you this and the i feel like the person's like oh wait that doesn't sound like what i'm worth so i'm gonna start with this lynette and then you can kind of pick up after this but when i saw this question i think this is from our facebook group because i saw it and i was like oh you know what i wanna tell you exactly as i was thinking the reality is director of operations procurement manager vendor manager hr manager you can use any of those titles none of these are regulated titles right when i say regulated title a doctor is a regulated title an attorney an accountant those are regulated titles meaning they sign an oath to practice in a particular way most of the titles and the job responsibilities in the world are not regulated the reason i'm kinda going off on this is because this person has in her mind that at a director of operation as a director of operations i should be making x amount in truth be told this is not a regulated field this is not a regulated title so i wanna know what kind of roles and responsibilities are you doing are you performing at a director level or are you adding new responsibilities that are now at that strategic level making you more in that director level because that would be an easier way to talk to a leader basically instead of focusing on title focus on the level of activity and what kind of direction you're giving and providing to the company what a director of operations makes in my company versus your company is going to be different so there is not a one size fits all for title which also means there's not a one size fits all for compensation this is unsolicited advice friends you need to know what you need to earn and don't put yourself in a position or a title where you're not being compensated what you have to have to live the lifestyle that you want now that's opening up pandora box but i just wanna remind you guys that you control talk about control the narrative you control what you're going to be paid because if you need to have you know sixty thousand dollars a year don't take a job for fifty hoping you're gonna get to sixty you need to take a job that makes a minimum of sixty right or you shoot higher and you say i have to have sixty but i'm gonna look for jobs that are seventy five or more it's a new month and so i'm gonna be sharing a new podcast with you this month it's the d pod and it's also brought to you by the hubspot podcast network which is the audio destination for business professionals just like me and you you might be like me and wondering what d what that abbreviation means and it stands for direct to consumer so i got interested in this podcast because as you know or you should know we recently started the shop for ops dot com which is an e commerce shop so it only makes sense for me to start listening to d t pod right now so if you're supporting a leader that's got an e commerce platform or that is an industry that you're interested in then i definitely want you to listen to this podcast as well they talk to founders to marketers to platforms creators all kinds of things about the marketing side of these platforms you're gonna hear about building brands social media influencer marketing and then of course the technical pieces like website conversion and seo if that is of interest or you're just curious about your favorite consumer brands this podcast is for you you can listen to d t pod wherever you gets your podcast hey hey operator it's your mom and at coming in here to give you a little truth talk i know business feels tighter i hear it i see it and i'm listening to you thing i can do is help you to create systems for yourself to bring in more clients i'm telling you i mentor coach and advise operators like you every single day to help them to overcome this you're gonna need clients to have a thriving business and i know that's exactly what you want come on into our upcoming training this is the first time that we've ever done this it's called clients on command linkedin in addition we are personally using linkedin for this exact process and it is generating awesome results this is not a theoretical thing this is actually what we are doing to create results for ourselves at the ops authority i wanna to share this process with you i will break it down step by step so that you can take the system and put it inside of your business sign up at the ops authority dot com slash clients on command we all need us some clients and this is exactly how you're gonna do that so let's get back to the question where do we look for salary data so this person's wanting to come back and to challenge her leader and say but this is what everybody else gets paid so i'm telling you first make sure that you understand are you truly at a director role in the broad scheme not just at your business but in the broad scheme and then with that knowledge you're gonna be able to look at particular sizes of businesses so if you're functioning at the director level in a business under ten people you need to be aware of that like that's how you're gonna guide your searches and then as far as like where do we look like the ops authority and the hiring authority where do we look for salary and data comparison information there's a lot of different comp tools on the market i mean you can go to glass door and on some of these platforms they're free by the way they are completely free but you can go there the only way that these actually hold up is to follow the advice i just gave you though because if you go to your leader and you say yes it says directors of operations make two hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year they're gonna look at you and say well number one that's not feasible for us but number two where did you get that data okay you're gonna open it up and they're gonna say oh yeah well that's for corporate companies that have fifty thousand employees and are on the fortune ten list right so you have to be really aware of how much information is out there and these companies that are aggregating data they are looking at title so these companies glass door saying okay everybody who has the title of operations manager makes this range if you ever look at those ranges they are huge right you're gonna see twenty five thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand legit so most of them or some of them give you the opportunity to kinda dive down a little bit deeper to put filters on this is this a remote role what kind of benefits are we looking at is this you know a specialized role what size of business is geographic like where does this business sit so you know just be very aware and if you're looking and using a tool that doesn't have the ability to filter down and to get more granular then i would tell you to put those into quadrant take that big range and put it into quadrant and always go to the second quadrant for the most realistic okay has a lot of info there what what do you have to say so i am a bit of an outside of the box thinker and so i agree with every single thing that you said but what i want to add to this for this person is are there other ways that you can get to your salary number without it necessarily being in the salary let me break down for you what i mean is there a way for you to get a quarterly bonus how about tuition reimbursement what about a four day work week instead of five hybrid remote or on sight this is key for me because if i have to get ready in the morning and be present that's a whole another thing that's gas that's makeup i need to have clothes that's another expense that's coming out of by paycheck so that is a factor summer hours there are businesses that have a very busy season like a launch or sometimes in government there are times where people are at the capital or lobbying a lot and then after that season is over companies get like one to two weeks off because they've just gone through like super busy season what outside of the box things can you negotiate that are of value to you that may not be dollars necessarily in the salary or the compensation couple other thing home office type end or if you use your cell phone to do the job can they give you some money towards your cell phone some people pay for a gym membership the health savings s in where you can use your money towards your health expenses childcare care s what else is important to you in your life where you spend money that you may be able to ask this company for so they're still giving you things that are value to you but it's just not in your annual salary think of those ways as well when it comes to negotiating your entire compensation your total package mh yeah so what she's talking about are fringe benefits it she gave a lot of great examples but honestly used chad g gp go to google whatever you're searched tool of choice and put in fringe benefits for small businesses if that's indeed who you know you're the person that you're working for do you ever use comp tools lynette it when you're yes i do i'm sorry i meant to mention that so i use the bureau of labor and statistics i use sc i use glass door i use pays and i'd also filter by industry two industry is big deal and then i believe pays scale and glass door are self reported versus like the us bureau and maybe sc are based on corporate hr data versus the person actually in the role reporting what their salary or what they were paid so that is also a factor when you're looking at these tools yeah very very good to point out thank you that's very true where the source of the data comes from so that's very important alright let's wrap up with our last question what is one affirmation that you give yourself when you're dealing with rejection so this is a question that we received that had context that i didn't feel comfortable sharing here because it was personal but everyone has gone through it especially if you're listening in today and you're a service provider and you are dealing with clients clients come and go which means what it means that you have faced rejection either in the client acquisition process or in the client delivery process so if you're going to be in business yes you are going to be experiencing some sort of rejection it just happens and so how do we build the muscle to help ourselves when those things come about one of the hard things that i know not only for myself but from this amazing community of people is that we are servant hearted we are leveraging our skills to serve other people we get a high and a full heart moment when we're able to make the lives of the people that we work with easier and better so number one you can have that confirmation and affirmation but the other part of that is we are using our heart a whole lot more than we think i think we typically tell ourselves it's our great brains and it's the way that we work and it's because we get complimented on that all the time right you're so organized you're so productive everything is so much better when you're doing it you track things better we get told that we are really good because of our skills but i want you to know that there is a heart part of this heart not hard and it's hard but a heart part of this that makes you really unique and makes you really stand out which also makes you really vulnerable and hard on yourself when things are not just a yes yes yes and happy go lucky kind of situation so if you're gonna be in business as a service provider just you're going to have rejection whatever you're feeling as rejection look around every single person in our five thousand person group has experienced rejection you're not the only one you may feel like you're experiencing it more because of the change in the economy you may be feeling it because you're hyper focused on it you may be feeling it because it's fresh i mean there's a lot of reasons but just know everybody experiences rejection and if you're going to be in business or a human being hello you're going to have rejection so today my answer is not about how do you avoid it because it's not something that you can avoid i want you to know that you lead with your heart you're most likely like me and lynette and you lead with your heart you only wanna work with people that you really love and you care for so that makes it a little bit harder whenever we face that no or that turn or that pivot that personally affects our hearts right so rejections there it's going to happen and instead of focusing on the affirmation which i'll share a few affirmations for you the reality is a longer term practice and i'm gonna turn it over to lin because we did kinda chat about this two seconds before we hit record today and i don't wanna steal your thunder i think you have some thoughts even though you haven't shared them with me yet i'm excited to know those i do have some thoughts and whomever this person is know that i feel you and i respect you and i love you as professional because i can feel the heart behind this question however i don't have an affirmation for you today because i feel like we're in a time where we need more we need more than the affirmations on the post we need more than to look at ourselves in the mirror with our impact statement we need more because we're getting hit with so many different scenarios throughout the day that can really do a number on your mindset natalie you talked a lot about heart they could really do a number on your heart and your esteem so you're about to get some true tea as i call it love it and i hope you're ready for it because it's all in love number one and these are all things that i do currently i would never tell anybody anything that i have not done or do not do or i'm not prepared to do so please keep that in mind as i answer your question the first thing that i have done this year and i kinda have done it quite often this year as i check myself first people are applying for jobs more so than ever before a lot of people are looking for clients and so there is a need more so than ever for you to differentiate yourself so the first question i ask myself is can someone tell that i'm different from all these other people if they cannot i've got some work to do to help refine my message that is something that i own is how to make sure that people see me differently than everybody else who calls themselves by the same title as i do to me i have to do that work in order to feel like i have put my best foot forward and represented it myself well it starts with me first and that's not only where i physically show up but also where i have presence online a lot of us have not taken as much time as we wish we could to refine our linkedin profiles in our other platforms but please do yourself that service to make sure that when you are not physically present that when people are online and looking at your presence that it reflects you really really well so that's the first step that you can take that you have control over to make sure that people can see what makes you so special and different from anyone else that might have or offer a similar service as you the second thing i wrote down is to stay in community don't shrink back don't not tell the people around you that you're looking for work tell them you're looking for work tell them what you're looking for tell them about your tough client share what's going on no matter what it is i have family members who know i work on a computer they don't know the specifics of what i do but i will still tell them if i had a hard conversation that day and they will listen and sometimes we just want somebody to do that one simple thing and that is listen so don't isolate in this time don't shrink back share whatever is going on whatever the scenario is with the people that are surrounding you and allow them to support you however they can number three be mindful of what you're watching what you're listening to and who's around you this is the time to edit everything be mindful of the podcast you're listening to in the shower if you are looking at trash tv they might you know be argument or whatever this is not the time for it change it because we need as much uplifting as much knowledge as much positive information as possible this fourth one might be a little basic but it's important that is rest stay hydrated drink your water and get outside and have some sun there's nothing like some good old vitamin mid d like take the lunch break outside and then number five i begin it in my day with gratitude like my daughter's coming in my room is saying mommy i love you and me giving that back out who doesn't feel great about that in their day even if it's the small things that you can find and your day that you're grateful for it will actually really lift your spirits and so when you do a combination of those five things for me it takes me further than looking at the affirmation on the posted or saying the things in the mirror no shade to the people that do that but i need more and these are the things that i'm doing right now to keep my spirit and my mind my body healthy i am so grateful that you went deeper than just the question because you're right there something behind the question and just coming in here and saying what our statements would be i to be honest you know when i read this i put myself in a place like ten years ago or eight years ago five years ago of like what i would do when a client tells me no or a prospect says no and gives me a string of reasons i went into the mental place of where i was then and i probably was more of an affirmation girl to be honest i was probably like man i need to like you know slap my face around a little bit and figure out what i need to do and read some affirmations i used to have stick all over this desk and maybe it's an evolution of me maybe it's an evolution of the world or just the work and being told no wait what i feel like today's natalie that affirmation which is not really an affirmation it's just a statement would be like next because i'm like you know what challenge me if i'm not right for you i release you quick like bless and release and that's an affirmation that a statement that i say all the time for a lot of different things not necessarily just rejection but bless and release and then next like i know that the right next thing is coming for me because i deserve it and i work for it and i show up for it every single day and all of the energy suggestions that lynette was sharing are so so real i don't wanna turn this to you know my mother role but like i'm raising you know a daughter i mean raising a daughter her but my daughter still in the house and you know off you know should be watching some to eat and i'm like girl that is not gonna help your week and you're already moody as hey you can not even me watch another girls being moody and rude to their parents like that's not gonna help you to be a nicer version of you i'm so glad you brought that up because we just had this conversation conversation maybe eight hours ago but she was getting sassy with me and i was you know why you're sassy it's because you're seeing all this right like and this is becoming your norm and if that's your norm you're gonna replicate it so there you go you just proved my point i have to tell emery that len on my side alright friend well thank you so much for being here and for sharing this unique perspective i love this when we come together and it we're intentional about not like hive minding or even sharing what we're gonna you know what our responses are to the questions heck we don't even pick the questions but it's important to me to just have unique perspectives because whoever's listening they have their own perspective to layer it on to ours they may you know gravitate or be inspired and be encouraged by both of us or one of us and i'd love perspective in general and so i'm so glad that you're here with me today to do that thank you so much for having me god goodness gracious so it's such a gift and always just wonderful to be in your company thank you so much for the wisdom that you share with our community and for how you show up yourself and then of course and support all of us so thank you so much friend you are very welcome my pleasure alrighty friends well if you have liked this episode i can promise you that we have another one coming up very very shortly so make sure to always check out are episodes with lan called ops edition see you y'all all soon thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you add one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from in a week and in the meantime new big things on the backside of your business in

nobody likes a spoiler unless it's your clients telling you exactly what they need but the reality is most businesses are missing out on these signals because these messages in this information is lost in your emails maybe they've responded to your emails but you don't capture it anywhere or you've got dms going on with your clients in a one to one capacity and you missed them all of it is trapped in the digital ether but with hubspot you get all of this data in one place their customer platform brings together the insights that you need to grow your business spoiler alert the more you know the more you grow visit hubspot dot com and find out more today this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends it's not welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast i am so excited to be here today is just a solo episode i shouldn't say just one of the words that i want to remove from our vocabulary is just the other one is basically the other one is juice or juicy but i guess you did ask me for all of that so anyway i'm here in a solo episode to chat with you about a really important combo and i need you to tune out whatever you're doing listen in and make it to the end of this episode i'm gonna try to make it snappy so that you can get all of this in in one sitting but we are recording or i the proverbial we natalie and all of her other ultra egos are recording episode and number two hundred and eighty eight i'm recording a little later in the day and it's making me a little spicy so anyway welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast where i am recording episode number two hundred and eighty eight and today is all about helping you to become indispensable i recently had two interactions that have spurred the conversations that i am sharing with you they're two drastically different situations but i gave them the same coaching and this is just two i have had the same conversation come up in my boxer time and time again and so i figured why keep it behind closed doors let's bring it straight to you where i can share this with more people because obviously more people need to know this but situation number one this is an agency owner who i've been coaching with for the last six months she's also a certified d that's how she has access to coach with me in a one to one capacity but she came to me with a goal of wanting to make a certain amount each month essentially she wanted to build up her recurring income on a monthly basis so at the beginning of our coaching relationship i asked her to share with me what her offers were what they were priced at and i can't deny i made some tweaks to those i looked at what her financials were to see where she was currently at from a monthly recurring status and then of course i looked at her labor cost because she's an agency she's got other people fulfilling on her behalf and specifically i needed to help her to get rid of some of the clients that were holding her back so that we can make capacity and make room for people who would come in who she could serve at a higher level so that's a little bit of background there we did some work rather swiftly and then we figured out how many clients that she needed each month to reach her new goal and we reverse engineered the volume of conversations here we go the volume of conversations that she would need to have to create a pipeline healthy pipeline of prospects so that she could meet her goal her goal of the number of clients that she needed which would back in to the revenue number or income number that she needed every single month she was very faithful to networking in person she was very coach she did exactly what i asked her to do she was coach but she was networking both and i want you to know this that she was networking both in person in her local area and then also in some specific online groups and she used the metrics that we set to reach her goal she met her goal week after week and guess what i was receiving boxer from her that celebrated her best month ever two months in a row her team was busy and her bank account was full exactly as she had wanted it to be so things are going very smooth and then i wasn't hearing a lot from her but that meant good news for me that meant that she was in motion she was doing what she needed to do and she was getting the return that she wanted then one very early friday morning i coach over boxer so one early friday morning i got a frantic boxer message it went a little bit something like this i don't know what to do but i'm at the point that i cannot pay myself this month and my family relies on my income what do i do natalie excel i'm sure you've been in that same place or you might have i hope you have it but with the full heart in a big deep side just as you heard and some tough love i came up with five action steps that were like quick wins what could she do today and i remember getting this message and thinking okay natalie i know that this person is in a crisis what can we do what levers can we pull right now to change this situation some of those suggestions which this is not the focus of this podcast episode but i wanna be transparent with you because maybe you can gather more than just one takeaway from this i talked to her about up upsell to her existing clients are there is there another service another add on that we could position her in front of her existing clients so those people already trust her so why not another thing going back to former clients with some project work maybe it's not long term work but maybe just a couple of things that she could do to bring in some cash injections also do some strategic posting in some of these groups that have been fruitful for her in the past reaching out to prospects that she had been talking to but had fallen off in the sales cycle these were all quick fixes that could serve her and then it came down to some tough love it's never easy to deliver this tough love but it always makes the most profound difference with those people who are coach and that's exactly what this gal was so now let me tell you about a second scenario before i give you the ending and the result of this and the coaching that i gave i want to share this other scenario because they finished the exact same so situation number two our facebook group the ops insiders is a community of operators and it's a place it's a comfortable place where people can lean into a group that understands them we're all operators inside of this group it doesn't matter if we're building businesses or porting businesses is we all share the same skill set and if you're wondering where does this unicorn place live it is the ops insiders dot com i invite you to join us there but we had an anonymous post that came up a few weeks ago and they expressed these words defeated deflate and desperate it hit me in the feels and i had i thought all day long about how i could respond to her she got to the place where she was doubting her professional development choices and wondering why her experience wasn't getting her looked at for the roles that she was applying to and it breaks my heart genuinely hear me it breaks my heart when people doubt themselves specifically women doubt themselves but everybody but i get it i'm human and i experience this too of course our group is incredible and we had so many good hearted people empathetic humans extend a hand encourage her and give advice like i said i thought about my response all day long my heart hurt for her but i really wanted to meet her with where she was and have her hear me so that she could take action i know that action is the cure for doubt hear me out i know action is what breaks the cycle of doubt and that's where this person was so you might be wondering what my advice was well the first half of it was instead of applying to job postings create your own economy i'm a big proponent of this because then you're in the driver's seat you're not waiting for people to respond to you you have a ton more control over the outcome and you also can learn a ton by doing this it's a new month and so i'm gonna be sharing a new podcast with you this month it's the d pod and it's also brought to you by the hubspot podcast network which is the audio destination for business professionals just like me and you you might be like me and wondering what d t what that abbreviation means and it stands for direct to consumer so i got interested in this podcast because as you know or you should know we recently started the shop for ops dot com which is an e commerce shop so it only makes sense for me to start listening to d t pod right now so if you're supporting a leader that's got an e commerce platform or that is an industry that you're interested in then i definitely want you to listen to this podcast as well they talk to founders to marketers to platforms creators all kinds of things about the marketing side of these platforms you're gonna hear about building brands social media influencer marketing and then of course the technical pieces like website conversion and seo if that is of interest or you're just curious about your favorite consumer brands this podcast is for you you can listen to d t pod wherever you gets your podcast the second part of my advice was the same for her as it was the first scenario that i shared with my agency owner client these are just two scenarios but my boxer is full of others in which i respond with the exact same way so that's exactly what spurred this topic today in this podcast alright let me get to the two questions that i asked both of them and many others here are the two questions how many conversations have you had in the past week in the past two weeks in the past month here's the second how many times have you talked about your business with someone who would be a good fit for your services let that sit with you in both situations these women led a vital critical part of success fall by the wayside they stopped prospecting in an organic way not a pay but they stopped prospecting when i say prospecting i mean reaching out to people and to businesses who are going to be a great fit to work with when you stop doing this it compounds and eventually your pipeline dries up and this usually comes when you least expect it and it's certainly a never welcome circumstance but it puts us in a very reactive place if you've learned from me whether in our d certification or actually we have this training inside of our shop you can go to the shop for ops and look for clients on command you're gonna find a really good detailed training of this exact thing it's not just the training you're also going to get the frameworks and some other really good big goodies inside but i teach you that you need ten new and qualified people to talk to every single month now not all ten of those are gonna say yes which is why i tell you that you need ten plus if they don't move forward with you and they don't go into a partnership or become a client then you have ten people that you can ask to share yourself with somebody else so one or two of those is probably gonna take you up on that because you've built a genuine connection that's called a referral and every business is better with referrals so these conversations are so helpful in gathering information about who you're talking to about how to position yourself in the future right you get a lot of positive feedback and just feedback in general until your client roster is completely full you are going to continue searching for ten new people to get on your calendar every single month that is every period single period month period big bold letters alright when it's full and you're serving the number of clients that you want then instead of ten you can have that and you could start focusing on five conversations a month you can create visibility in many different ways and yes even when your client roster is full you're still gonna want to pull in five people i don't care if you feel like you are working with the best clients ever and these clients are never gonna leave your side promise me pinky promise me that you will continue to bring in five new people every single month so you can create visibility in a lot of different ways you can you know direct outreach to people you can find groups where you're ideal person your ideal leader your ideal client is active in referrals networking groups and don't forget to leverage your own personal profile this philosophy is how every single business and business model becomes stable i don't care if you're fractional if you're looking for full time work if you're looking for your perfect client if you have a project based business i really don't care if you want to have a stable business bringing in ten new people to talk to every single month is incredibly important as i wrap up today i want you to remember this if you desire to own your own business it is a requirement that you continuously in all caps you continuously create conversations with prospects you cannot stop this cycle most of us get into a service based business because we are great at these operational skills maybe it's project management maybe it is strategic advice maybe it is hr skills but we get into these businesses we create service based businesses because we have really good skills but just like any other business you're gonna have to promote those skills and create a way for transactions to happen to move this person from a person or a prospect into a client they're not just gonna magically fall in your lap you might not see yourself as a salesperson but it's a skill you have to have it's a muscle you must continue to flex if you want to have a business of any kind service based or product in person or remote e commerce or digital it doesn't matter plainly put it is a requirement your business has to have or it will not make it you cannot be in business if you don't have clients so my reminder to you today is don't find yourself with a pipeline that has dried up don't find yourself in a position where you can't generate business the solution to be able to do that is to have conversations always be thinking conversations to clients conversations to clients the other takeaway from this episode is i want you to bring in ten people every single month reverse engineer that how many people does that mean that you have to talk to every single month make it a game game if it for yourself this may not be a natural skill that you have but it is a skill that is going to be required if you want to own your own business many of us who own businesses service based businesses are owner operators so we don't naturally have that visionary tendency to get out into the world and to share share share but you're gonna have to and i'm not telling you this entire episode i never mentioned social media what i mentioned was one to one conversations you need to find a way to make sure that you're doing that if you have found yourself over the last couple of weeks months or years in a place where you're feeling defeated and down just like in that scenario number two where you don't have your ideal clients but you wanna replace them with better clients if you have found yourself without clients to talk to without clients to work with with no one paying you this is the fix for that make sure that you are having conversations i hope nothing more for you than you find and you must up the confidence to get out there and find where your person your person that you wanna work with lips it all comes down to having organic conversations these don't need to come from any paid source this truly starts at understanding who you wanna talk to and getting in front of them being bold in asking them to have a conversation with you i put this entire method inside of a training called clients on command it was a challenge i did at the beginning of january twenty twenty five we had over four hundred people that came into that training we have put that training inside of the shop for ops we received so much amazing feedback from it that we've made it available to you inside of our shop so you can find this exact training if you want the step by step you can find it inside of the shop for ops dot com and then search for clients on command it's so important to me that yes we have it as a paid training if you want the step by step but it is so important because it keeps coming up in all these different places so i wanted to make a little bit of that available to you today to get you started alright so make sure to have these conversations because conversations are what convert into clients already friends i hope that this has been a blessing and helpful for you i look forward to talking to you and the next time you hear me on the ops authority alright brent have a fantastic day don't forget ten conversations every single month bye for now thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you add one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week in the meantime do things on the backside of your business

this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow in scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast i'm so excited to have you here today you've probably been hanging around the show for quite some time but if for any reason this is your first time or your first couple of times in listening to us i love to come here on a very regular cadence and talk to those operators who were the backbone who are the behind the scenes queens of all of the small businesses here and around the globe i love to help you with understanding how you can make a greater impact on the businesses that you're serving and scaling and also how you can better serve yourself by improving the way that you work how much you can deliver on and being really realistic and balance with who you are as a person and how you show up in your personal life i don't think that those two things have to be separated and so if all of that sounds good to you then you are in for a great episode today i am the founder of the ops authority and also the creator of our director of operations certification program and without further ado i want you to hear from a very special student who recently completed our program who had amazing results but even more important than that is she is the kind of person that has inspired me along my journey which i think it's good to hear that full circle because i'm inspired by my students on a regular basis literally every single day because we've pulled together a community of nearly five hundred amazing powerful smart brilliant and balanced women who are striving to become the best version of themselves while using this incredible skill set that a lot of us i definitely can speak for myself that a lot of us didn't really feel was i would say worthy or different than the way other people thought and so all of those skills come together in project management people leadership process development and we call that a high level operator here at the ops authority so today we've got a star student who's gonna share a perspective that she has a perspective that she brought to the certification and then also just walk through the journey of what the certification has done in her life and what it looks like today and i think you're going to walk away really honestly impressed with the kind of people that come into our certification but also put yourself in her position as to what it looks like and what it feels like to partner here with us if you are interested in you have been following along our journey and the ops authority and you've been curious about the certification program our application period is open right now and so you went ahead to director of ops dot com get your application in we review every single applicant to make sure that you're the perfect fit for our program just like doctor ramona is was today that you're gonna hear from today so before i get into our interview i would love to just give you a little bio of who it is that we're gonna be talking to and then we're gonna break that down get super personal get very organic and open and doctor ramon is gonna have her time to just chat with me about for experience here so doctor ramona is a director of operations at the foundation for sickle cell disease research doctor ramona is responsible for leading operations across clinical research and administrative teams she's got more than fifteen years of experience in systems leadership as well as grant management she ensures that the effective implementation of strategic plans and she oversees the key state grant portfolios and supports cross functional coordination across all of the programs and the locations she's held key leadership positions as the director of research for the sickle cell community consortium and academic leadership positions including the director of the health equity and community engagement as well as the editor in chief of the journal of the georgia public health association i remember when her application came through i was like who and the world wants to come here this chick has it all together she's been in academia she's worked as i mean her professional pe is beautiful big and very very bold and i thought wow someone like this still continues to want to become the next version of herself what doctor ramona did i'm shortcut cutting the bio here but what she did was she saw an opportunity to continue to evolve even though she comes in with a lot of experience even leadership a ton of leadership decades of leadership experience she saw a place for her to expand and i am so delighted that she chose us to partner with her as she was making this jump she has evolved a whole lot even though she came in with all of this experience and from a professional perspective looked like she had reached the pinnacle as i was reviewing her application but even with all of that she came here and has grown by leaps and bounds and it is an honor to have someone like doctor ramona inside of our community and with all of that i welcome you to the podcast today oh natalie what a wonderful wonderful introduction i really appreciate you and the ops authority and all that you have done for me you have literally changed my life and i'm so excited to be here today to talk to everyone about that transformation in that journey you are so kind my eye started to well up because it's those stories that truly you know i think about my own journey and kind of putting myself where you were as i just introduced you you know we all come with a set of skills and those are got given hopefully a lot of us have been able to dive into those and pull those out and build a profession around those if you're listening here and you don't know my background you know i started out in the health world in the medical space and was a nurse for many years it wasn't until life life and i had to pull out those skills and figure out what i wanted to do when i grew up and that was twenty years ago right i thought i had it all figured out i'm gonna do this one thing and then as i joke life became interesting and i started to look around and think of well what is the next best version of natalie look like and that's what got me digging and uncovering all of these god given skills that had really set me apart my entire life i'm sure you have heard this exact same thing and many of our students in our community and probably you listening today have been told this but i was told like i was boss i was organized i just got stuff done and i took all of that for granted for so long i do not regret or resent going down a different path and pivoting that path over my life's journey in fact i have done that you know several times in my career and in my adult life and it's all led me to this but i'm just so grateful that life has done that for me and that these amazing skills that were the backbone of me they were really i know it sounds do and nerdy but these are the skills all those organizational and perfection tendencies and trying to find gaps and solve problems like that has been me from a very young age do you feel like you could say the same thing for yourself absolutely i have always loved puzzles connecting the dots putting things together i was the person you wanted on your team if you were trying to do a trivia game or anything like that and and so yes even before i gained the actual skills i could see those things emerging when i was a little one yeah and it's so crazy now as i'm raising my own kids and i know you're in the same kind of stage of life as myself you know i'm talking to my kids and my kids friends and when i can see a project management skill set and a young kid i am like i'm gonna be that bold crazy lady who is like don't forget there's this whole other world out there that you can play you know you can define your careers in your professional endeavors around that no one's probably telling you because especially as a woman people are trying to put us in these boxes of care taking in some sort whether that is you know nursing or teaching and all of those amazing professions them so grateful for those people that do those things but there's a whole lot more than i feel like i didn't know about until life taught me those things so anyway i have defined those skills as being an operator and there's a whole lot that make that up and so i would love to hear from you like when did you find out when did you finally say you know i'm sure you've been listening to me for a little bit better i know that you've been listening to me for a little bit did you always call yourself an operator or when was it that yeah yeah that's the exact response i was thinking that's what i usually get but what do you define as your operational skills and when was your aha moment of i think i'm an operator i should listen to the ops authority i didn't know i was an operator until right before i came to the ops authority and then i started to hear your podcast i saw the different things that you were talking about online and i was like this person gets me this is the first time that i have seen that someone says oh you like to do research you like to manage projects you're super organized all of the things that you were saying made me realize that i was an operator but my job was a professor so i never remotely thought that i was an operator and nobody told me what that was or what operators did and so when i came to you right before i came to you i was at the top of the academic game right i was a full professor i was coming in and i had led multi million dollar research projects and i was doing things like project management the team work that we learned i was basically doing some hr functions and just all of the different things that we were talking about in the program i was doing strategic planning i was looking at budgets all of those things but i didn't really feel confident in that skill set enough to say that i was an operator until i came to the ops authority and i think you know it's funny that you talked about my cv and all of the different things that i had done with leadership and all of that before i came but i compartment minimized it into what i was doing then but i had a longing in my heart because i was like i know i love systems i love these operations types of things but i wasn't really allowed to use them fully right in that position and so when i came to you i realized off i really am an operator so i think that's when it truly emerged is when i started to hear you and some of the things that you were saying so it's so interesting i mean all of this i just love talking to people and of course i think it's interesting but having spent fifteen years in corporate america i traveled all over this one company for those fifteen years and some of those were in human a lot of them were in human resources some of them in project management and then i ended my career as the chief of staff there at this company this fortune one fifty company and never one time throughout my journey in those fifteen years would i have used the term operator it wasn't until i left corporate and i started really digging into the skill set that set me apart i mean i was going through my own journey i knew i was gonna do something on my own that was my destination my next destination after corporate america but i was trying to put together what it was that i wanted to be when i grew up like many of us do and it was through the really like what do people value in me what do i value in myself what sets me apart where do i feel confident and it came back to this operational skill set and i remember using doctor google back then to be like okay i am a great a bit planner i'm a great project manager of and i kinda zoned in on the project management piece because i knew that was the one skill that really thread a lot of these pieces of me together and so that's really where i kinda started putting my eggs in the term operator now i'm not alone i'm not saying i invented anything here but it was the first time i had titled myself that and then of course you guys can see where this goes i ended up calling this business the ops authority mh and i remember telling myself doctor ramona like i've got an uphill battle and convincing other people that this is a thing right and then of course we title the certification the director of operations which if you go to linkedin and you put in director of operations you're gonna see a plethora ra of those but for whatever reason with the skills that i have possessed i never put myself in that umbrella and so it's been a really big honor to present that to show people to have them embrace that and to own that title as well because this is exactly what it is and if i just stuck with project management that's just one piece and mh this comprehensive puzzle i needed to find an umbrella to put this all of these skill sets inside of because in a large company you may be able to have one project management skill or that human resources skill for me those were different functions those we're completely different leadership and leadership styles and you know missions and then in a small business which i have chosen to invest deeply into scaling and growing of small businesses there is not such thing as the hr manager the process manager the tip of staff the you know that doesn't exist here so you know and i needed to find something comprehensive that we could be holistic and also high level so anyway that's where the whole operator thing took off for me and i'm always curious how i bridge that gap for you and most people are like the two of us we didn't call ourselves operators until we got a better understanding of what operator look like so mh i talked in your bio and then you also talked about being a professor before you got here and at the top of your game and one of the things that struck me as you were talking is you still had this curiosity you still had you know yes you may have been at the proverbial top of the of the mountain or the top rung on the ladder but you still felt like there was another step or another peak that you wanted to go to for yourself and there was still transformation right there we still know i still feel that for myself i know i'm not done my vision for myself is even actually it's probably bigger now than it was when i was i don't know thirties and even young forties mh my age is definitely giving me greater vision i guess we can summarize it like that right of course it's an honor for you to have trusted me coming in with the experience that you have but what was it that you saw for yourself were you feeling like i'm ready for a change was it you know i'm looking for frameworks like you were saying you were doing all of these different functions inside of your role but a lot of people tell us i'm looking for frameworks like i'm doing these things but am doing them right that's a cool question or feeling that you're having kinda give us that background of where you were yeah it's so interesting natalie because as a professor as a public speaker i've done a lot of different types of training and even when i was doing my speaking training i would always wonder how did they do these things behind the scenes what is the framework that made this happen and so i was less concerned about just what they were doing on the stage and i wanted to know oh i see they did facebook ads and then this facebook ad led to this and then i got to this step and then as a professor i was seeing they wanted to expand they had this vision of building these large research centers and moving to this r one status which is in academia is research one and it's a big thing right and so my brain was still like okay well what are the steps to this how do we ensure that we can get this done and i really just wanted to use the operation skill set and so i realized that regardless of where i am this is how my brain thinks now how do i move into that and i started to feel that i was out of alignment regardless of all of the different things that i had accomplished all of the things that i had done it looks great it sounds fancy to be a professor or to be the keynote speaker or to do whatever but i felt like okay now i want to be that person that does the systems that does the operations do i still love speaking absolutely i'm gonna do it but i wanna know what happened behind the scenes and so for me to be in alignment with that i know that i needed to build that skill set i knew that i needed like you said the frameworks and i was already doing systems and operations in my business and helping other people with it but i'm like you i don't play around with people's businesses so i felt like i need this one more thing this framework this set of skills that i'm sure that our concrete that are proven that are evidence based that i can roll out to people and have that confidence that i'm going into their businesses and that i can stand on business right i can really be there and do what needs to be done to grow their business and so that's what i was seeking and i think i just met you at the time that i was saying i've gotta find this particular thing this is what is gonna launch me to the next level how lucky am i how lucky are we me yeah that i take intercepted each other at the the time that both of us really needed each other so mh i love that it's that time the director of operations certification is open we're accepting applications if you are ready to up level your operations if you're ready to gain the up level skills that you need to be that next best level of yourself the time is right for you if you're ready to step into strategy in out of the exhausting implementation the time is right if you're looking for community for support for gaia leadership mentorship this program is what you need all of those come together to help you elevate to your next best self to find the right clients the best clients to help you turn your prospects into clients the time is right and we have the perfect solution for you the director of operations certification program is enrolling now please apply we will get back with you very soon and we cannot wait to welcome you into our growing program the framework piece is so important is there any framework and let me kinda tell my side of the story as far as the frameworks you know i was walking around for years solving problems listening to the same thing you doctor ramona as well as you the listener you know we just solve problems in our heads all the time and and i joke about this but like you know when you go and you return something at target and it's like a a a a jan experience in your mind you're like man they should do this this and this right you go to a restaurant you have weird service and you're like they should do this this and this like to you it is so clear how to solve that particular gap that's the way our brains are trained to think and that is rare not everybody thinks like us i i feel like they should but they definitely don't and so you know i was working with businesses of course my corporate career gave me so much background and so many real life experiences at a different scale and then i applied those to small business for the first five years and i was building frameworks and methodologies and i didn't know that i would certainly i wasn't calling it that back then but that was the backbone and really the receipts to the records that i was able to bring and the solutions that i was able to bring on a recurring or repetitive basis and so it was really a coach and a friend i was actually speaking at an event myself where a friend who completely changed my life by the way she's the one that stopped me and was just like like i'm i'm making this up she didn't really do this but it felt like it like shaking me and just saying natalie you have got these frameworks that you need to document and that's where it all began i was still working with clients for many years and still am today and taking the methods that i was using and turning them into something that i could personally repeat every single time because i would work with you and then i would work with the next person then i would work with the next person and while i had this idea of what i thought worked i didn't really have a blueprint it was like us i would just kinda tweak it a little bit every single time and of course when you do that you don't feel like you have a sturdy steady structure to jump off from and then there's questioning there's curiosity there's a lot of gaps that can come up from there and we love structure we wanna know we wanna be confident in what works and we want to have the structure to be able to execute it efficiently and then also to be able to do this over and over again with different people and so that's the process that i went through to create these frameworks and to be able to hand these off to other people really has unlocked the ability for my students like you to be able to put them into action so much faster right with a lot of confidence as well so it's probably one of the things that we hear the most of i'm tired of just wing this i have been doing this and i've been successful but i want to bring in the systems that are repeatable that work if they worked for you all these times and they worked for your five hundred students i want in on that and then you know i think something that makes us a little bit different is that you know we give you the system but it's important for me to know that those systems are flexible they have to fit you so even though this is the way that my brain thinks you know i want it to compliment the way your brain thinks because that's when you act actually use the systems mh for the better good of not only you but also your client so thank you so much for sharing that and giving me the opportunity to kinda share where my head was in all of that and how we got to this place not only did i do that you can do that too as the listener and you know just be conscious and be aware that you have intellectual property too even if it's just one simple process that is something that the way your brain thinks and it creates a positive result somewhere you also have you know that intellectual property just like i have i've put it together and that's what we share inside of the program of all of these frameworks doctor mona which are the ones or the one that you feel you have used the most or leveraged the most in the way that you're showing up today oh my goodness it's hard to pick one because every single thing in the program is so valuable i'll say from the very beginning the strategic mapping is absolutely the core of everything that we do and so that one i think is the one that i use the most i think about the fact that i have something where i can look a across seven strategic objective of an organization and i know what is going on i know where to start i know what to do within those seven strategic objectives and so i absolutely love strategic mapping and i was able to gain my roi back on the program very quickly just from doing the strategic mapping but i went on a trip over the weekend to visit some friends and they were talking about some things that they do at a very large pharmaceutical company and i was like you all are missing the kpis and how the k a's lined up with that and there i was just giving them all kinds of of project management and ops information about what they needed to do within their organization and so i literally use all of it every single day and so managing people working with hr to develop sop and the different policies that we have across the organization i am looking across financials to ensure that everything is on track with budgets strategic planning i am making sure that projects are managed we have things that we're rolling out with project management software i mean literally everything that i have learned in the program i use it every day and i can use it with confidence now that i'm in this position and i literally never would have walked into this position had i not done this program and you don't know this natalie but i almost didn't do it because i was like oh maybe i should just do the next round right and so i just oh i'll just start a little bit later but something said nope go ahead and then disposition became available and it was absolutely the right time absolutely the right thing for me to have done and so there really is not one thing you can pick out from this program i am the biggest cheerleader of it regardless of what my cd looked like before this was truly the best training i have ever done i can literally say that i'm so grateful so let's talk about your transition i know you came in as a professor let's talk about you know how you've evolved and the opportunity that we just alluded to i know i mentioned it in the bio but the listener has no idea the journey went on to get to that place and i'm i'm a big believer in understanding that pivot they may feel uncomfortable but they're always on purpose and they're never the end of the road they're the beginning of a new road so i'd love to talk about your pivot just because it's a it's a great learning lesson for all of us and taking risks and staying open to the opportunities that may come up yeah so as i said before i was a professor for fifteen years i was a public health professor and so really doing a lot of research i do sickle cell disease research and so something that's very important to especially individuals with sickle cell disease and so absolutely loved i i love my job it wasn't that i just hate it being a professor but as i said before there was a longing there was a knowing that that phase in my life was ending and that i was gonna still use those skill sets and so i knew that i was supposed to do systems and operations and those types of things but i also knew that i wasn't supposed to leave sickle fill disease and so it was very frustrating to me because i was like i know i'm supposed to do both of these things and as a little bit of a backstory i would ask if i could do operations things within the job as a professor and it was not always completely well received it was like okay you're supposed to do these types of things and that operation skill set wasn't completely fulfilled and so i got to a point where i was frustrated grader would not being able to do ops but also knowing that i shouldn't leave the area of sickle cell disease and so i went to present at a conference and talk with the ceo of the foundation for sickle cell disease research and she was absolutely open to the combination of skill sets of being this sickle cell disease expert with this director of operations which they needed because there are fifteen clinics across the state and there is a lot of a moving part to within the organization so doing some amazing things for sickle cell disease but also using my operations skill set and again i was able to step in that i think even the opportunity became available to me because i was ready then if i would have waited i and not done this that's what i think about yeah and so it was two it was like here's another certification i've done a million a lot of times they're boring i don't finish there's other things that happened and so this was so different if you are thinking about operations and you are wanting to just dive deeper into that skill set it is absolutely the place to be you will finish as you will be supported you will have the accountability you will have the information that you need to grow in every area that they're teaching and there are different things that help grow the skill set that we do for every single skill that we're learning and so it was just so good to have all of the not only frameworks and skill sets and support but just the community yeah is amazing within the ops authority and so natalie i cannot say no i honestly cannot say no anybody call me if you are thinking about this is it she's gonna roll out our phone and we of listen and it's it is an honor to have someone from academia we have had phds we've had mds we've had people with twenty years of you know c level experience we've had just a big range of people that have come into our program and the thing that i love is we can have somebody with fifteen years as a professor and we can have somebody who has three years as an administrative professional or an admin in lots of different types of businesses but there's this big breath of a variety of experiences a ton of different industries lots of different skill sets and we're all able to come together under that guise of operations like that's the gift that we have been able to identify for ourselves and then all of a sudden once we get into this community it feels like to me that we just flatten i saw you partner with other people be friend other people guide other people come in community with people who are very different than your stage of life or different than we're in the united states but we had people inside of our cohort from four other countries and i just flattens i guess that's the best way for me to describe it is mh once we have that one common thread everything flattens and we're able because of the way that we have strategically built the program of course you've got great quality content but the biggest piece to me is making sure this is important that there is a good smart bright loving human on the other side of this which we do through our accountability advisors to make sure that you stay as invested and as interested on day one as you do on you know month five and a half when we're wrapping up because i know what it's like we all invest in things and in life you know happens and all of a sudden other things take priority and that is going to happen especially in a community where we're serving ourselves we're serving our families we're also serving businesses that are very dynamic and lean so there's gonna be a lot of things are gonna pull us back but the thing that you pulled out and i wanna make sure that the listener who may be curious about the certification knows is as important as the curriculum and the content is that is met with equal if not even more so on the accountability and the real life human ness on the other side of someone who understands what your goals and intentions are because doctor ramona are gonna be different than sarah are gonna be different than jane's and everybody has a different goal because we have different backgrounds and different passions just like you've been able to couple yours with an area of expertise that you have i mean look at this you're in a full time director of operations role pivoted into something that you probably didn't expect for yourself or didn't know that it would present itself but because you had the skills because you had the confidence as well to have the conversation to really sell it to them they were able to bring you on in a way that you probably didn't imagine whenever we the two of us were you know chatting over video ask before you said yes to the certification never would have imagined how my leg changed no i i mean it it is mind blowing when i think about it and the responsibility of what you're doing as well as overlap with an area of interest that you're extremely passionate and educated on so mh it's just it's so cool to see how directors of operations how they support who they support and how really the title i'm not toot my own horn here but how this title and how this responsibility does have an impact on real lives right it's not just the money you bring in it's not just you know the industries that you are passionate about and how you get to serve them it's the combination of everything because i am a big believer in i mean really the reason i left corporate is because my corporate identity started this is a deeper episode and i won't make it long but my identity and corporate really became very ego and i was thinking about my legacy and my next best self and it was i knew it was in my home but the circumstance that i had was very proud about to be honest was too tied up in what i was able to getting chills right now but was too tied up and what i was delivering at work and not enough at home and so i had to switch that and i started looking at everything very holistically and we tried to do the same thing here in the ways that we can for the program of course i wanna teach you wanna guide you i wanna love you i wanna see that transformation nothing is more fulfilling than the stories like you're hearing today of doctor ramona and all the other studies and success stories that you hear on the certification but we have hundreds of them the great thing is that this is not an anomaly this is not a fluke we have hundreds of them and it is our greatest honor it's my life's work and the thing i never thought i would have the opportunity and the thing that i am most proud of outside of my children and my family that i've been able to do just by being authentic and really leading and of course capturing the things that work and the things that don't work but thank you so much for ent us and of course saying yes to something that it always feels like a big question should i do it now is this really what i need and so as we wrap up today i'd love for you to share with that person who's just curious they're like man and this has been really cool to hear how this plays out in someone else's life but is this right for me should i do this you know we talked about delaying it which you know that's very common right there's a financial investment in doing this and that always feels uncomfortable and you know there's that question of am gonna get my money back that is a big focus that we have and you you know our students who come in and who trust us who take action always get their return on investment but i can't make people do that so mh when i see that that makes me proud it is how we developed our program though i'm as authentic as they come and if i were going to be investing i would be working my tail off to make sure that i did my family right and did that investment right to make sure that i do my part to get that return on investment so anyway for that person who's sitting on the fence today who was like i wanna be the next doctor ramona what would you say to that person oh yeah so i was there i was with you i was on the fence as well i came with a lot of skill sets a lot of things on my plate but i knew there was this longing and i think that you are here you're listening to this because you have that you know that there's something else you're supposed to be doing there something that is the next level and this program truly truly will take you to the next level this is a place of absolute knowledge skills love all of that all wrapped up into one and so i would say do it for you do it for your next level self because this has absolutely been a phenomenal experience they do not let you slip in any way along the way you're never gonna be by yourself you never fall by the wayside they always meet you right where you are and that's what i absolutely loved about this i think everybody has life and life is life and constantly but they keep you interested engaged there's a community of support that gets you through it and when you get to the end of this thing it is just an absolute it is one of my proudest accomplish honestly to have this certification so i say that if you are on the fence jump on over into the certification get off the fence to do it because your next level self you have no clue what that could be once you finished this i had no clue that i would have a whole new life a whole new job a whole new outlook on where i am i mean i would never have imagined this and so if you are ready and truly ready for your next level sale jump into this certification and you will not regret it i love that thank you so much for sharing i love to have these stories on here not to you know tell you all the great things that we do but really for us to be able to focus on what our students have done we have laid the groundwork but they're are the ones that do the work they're are the ones that get the results and so coming here and spending a little bit of time to to give you a real life experience i am always encouraged motivated and i learn from people who are doing something that i aspire to do and so that's the purpose of bringing doctor ramona here it and it's always fun to talk about our program because i'm so passionate about making sure it just continues to evolve and continues to be the gold standard in educating the operators of the world so doctor ramona thank you so much for trusting us and for putting your hard work into this too and then of course being an advocate for us i appreciate everything that you've done i wish you so much success i to see what you've been able to do in the last six months can you believe what you're going to be able and the imprint and of marks you're gonna be able to leave you in the next six or the next six years with my goodness gracious so it's an honor to have amazing students like you and your entire cohort honestly y'all were a rockstar star cohort so i'm excited for this upcoming cohort we're gonna be enrolling the twenty eighth round of the certification here if you're interested about it you can learn all about it at director of ops dot com and of course you'll see the application link there it's available right now if you're listening to this and we're not in an enrollment period then i welcome you to join the waitlist list which you'll see there at director of ops as well doctor mona thank you so much for being here thanks for being a star thanks for sharing your amazing story today and i'm just so grateful to be in partnership with you thank you for having me natalie thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you add one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week but in the meantime do big things on the backside of your business

if you're hearing you're a business builder then you are always in pursuit of clients and what's behind client acquisition it is a sales cycle cutting it in half sounds pretty impossible right well that's exactly what sandler training did with hubspot and they used their tool hubspot tool an ai tool called breeze it tailor every customer interaction without losing that personal touch which is so important and ai is doing amazing things like this we already know but hubspot hasn't built in their results were really incredible their click through rates jumped by twenty five percent their qualified leads quadrupled and people spent three times longer on their landing page if you're interested in this you wanna go to hubspot dot com to see how breeze can help you grow your service based business this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hello hello friends welcome back to the ops authority podcast today we are recording episode number two hundred and eighty six and like i say nearly every single week it is such a privilege such an honor and i'm proud of you for being a listener and i'm proud of me for showing up here for this many episodes to just share and part what is on my mind what i'm seeing what is going on in the industry the space what it looks like to be a servant oriented service provider and even a freelancer if you're listening in and those titles resonate with you i'm just so grateful that you have showed up today and i also have a very special treat for you because well i have to imagine that you enjoy coming here to this podcast and listening to me it's just a really extra special treat when you hit me and then one of the people that i admire that has been influential for me in my career and in this whole space of navigating entrepreneurship and so i'm gonna be sharing a special friend with you today who has wisdom that i need and i know you need it's a message that i have heard before and it is so valuable for everybody who is listening in today because this specifically ties you guys know i vet every single person i bring on we get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of exhausting and awful pitches and the people that i bring on very rarely ever pitch me i'm the one that is pitching them to come on my podcast and that's exactly what is happening today i do that because i want the people who are talking to you that i am sharing airspace which sounds very fancy but i want the people who are coming here and i'm sharing space with you and with them to understand what you do and how you do this and today our guest linda to do is someone who actually understands what it's like to be a service provider her business like my business and your career have all taken lots of twist turns an honor to be able to pull some of the greatest knowledge and frankly intellectual property that linda has and be able to share that with you in hopes that you take one nugget or all the nuggets and really put to use every single time i'm around linda not only is her presence and impactful for me she guides me and leads me without being my quote unquote leader she's pure that i look up to and someone who's got a body of knowledge and side of her and shows up holistically and whole hearted to make sure that we grasp it and do something with it i've seen linda on stages i have inside of her community which i'll share with you here in a second and we have been box our friends for quite some time so without further ado let me introduce you to linda professional biography linda to do is a lead generation strategist and the founder of the mixer mind a dynamic community designed for established entrepreneurs who value connection over competition with a background in top performing pharmaceutical sales she brings a rare blend of strategy intuition and people savvy to every conversation that she sparks this is exactly why she's going to be talking to us today about the topic of visibility let me wrap this up really quick she's been featured in forbes and she's trusted by platforms that you probably know like cubicle to ceo and jordan gill the system saved me podcast linda is the go to expert for business owners who want to grow their network with intention not hustle another thing i pull out of here and i'm like yes this is why you're here at linda her passion for list building community led growth and meaningful relationships turns visibility into velocity and casual contacts into collaborations that convert girl you know i love some liberation welcome to the show thank you so much what a beautiful way to introduce me i'm so excited to be here in natalie well you are gonna be a gift to everybody listening in like i i've already you know toot your horn and i will do it all over again because you have something i remember being in the audience a couple years ago when i heard just a little bit of this conversation and i was inspired and affirmed to be honest because of are similarities in the way that we people i'll just make that a verb so anyway let me introduce the topic that we're gonna be talking about today and linda has something that she calls the magic match girl you do love a liberation like me i love that but the magic match and that's what she's going to be sharing herb wisdom on today but in essence this conversation is all about how to gain visibility with less effort and i wanna take just a few minutes before i turn it over to linda to kinda just set the stage of what it looks like as a service provider as an operator even a director of operations you know in these types of roles we're not looking for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients right we're not looking to do significant list building if you happen to be a service provider that typically describes kinda where we are we are looking for some close connections to be able to serve them in a deep capacity so we're not looking for necessarily volume but it is very very very important that we are looking for real values based connections from people so the magic match is going to be able to help a lot of people whether you are what i just described or you are one of those people who are listening today who may be a business owner or may have you know shifted or navigated to a new path where you are looking for a one to committee model where you're looking to bring in lots and lots and lots of people but the reason that i want to be intentional with this time with linda is to affirm and to let you guys know that we all need magic matches and i don't think we spend enough time figuring out who those magic matches are this is what linda encourages me and inspires me to really look for because it's easier to look around and say i wanna be connected to this person or i wanna be connected to this person and you can do so but is it truly like magic match quality right or is it gonna be something that's really more superficial and more transient in nature and i've had all of these types of relationships what i love about linda and what she's gonna share is there is a personality piece of this that brings awareness to me right like who am i what kind of personality do i have and then how do i synergistic pull the right people into me from a personality perspective because that amplifies not only the speed but the quality of the relationship that i'm able to build if these people that i'm leading into are truly magic matches magic duh magic really really really takes over in a much faster way and guess what then they're able to spread my message right or they're better able to mentor me in a faster way so anyway i don't wanna steal the limelight here but i wanted you to know why linda is here today visibility is one of those things as a service provider that takes a lot of energy linda i were having a private conversation yesterday about visibility for our own businesses and where we're exploring and thinking about putting in energy as far as like tactics and modes and models of the way that we can be visible when you narrow all of these different ideas and tactics out and you pull them back to who who should you be connecting with that's where you start talking about this on a people level and if you can find the right people your visibility efforts don't have to be wide and far they can be much more narrow and focused which of course is going to amplify the result and the quality of what you're able to get so service providers i hear you i know you it is visibility is an exhausting i'm gonna say it it's a chore right in our natural state the the way that we love to show up for people is to serve them so visibility feels like a very different part of our brain but linda has a solution when we start looking for magic matches that make this much more organic and natural and i am so excited to have linda to hear today to talk about the magic match thank you natalie i appreciate so much so you are here today to learn about the magic match and how to gain more visibility with less effort because you wanna propel your business forward but i will tell you the power of personal experience it's rooted in powerful marketing so basically what i'm trying to say is in order to build a meaningful cannot options you need to allow people to experience you because when people experience you they trust you but before we dive in i wanted to share a little bit about my time and pharmaceutical sales i learned the disc framework to understand how to better understand physicians how to communicate with physicians and also how to present and sell to physicians this allowed me to be more effective when it comes to one on one sales and less calculating and a little bit more authentic understanding personalities has become the through line of my success and so today i'm gonna talk to you about how you can use that for your business as well so here are three common myths that often hinder business owners from forming aligned partnerships time constraints confidence and outreach and finding the right partnerships maybe you're dealing with one of those right now possibly all of them investing and building relationships it might feels time consuming at first because i do think most people think it's time consuming but it's actually a strategic move that's gonna pay off immensely it honestly is kinda of leap frog into visibility in my opinion so finding the right partnerships will amplify your marketing efforts through personal experiences and recommendations fostering stronger connections and enhancing business success and today i'm gonna introduce you to the arc framework acknowledge relate and collaborate we're gonna kick it off with acknowledging yourself it all begins with a deep understanding of who you are and knowing your strengths this kinda takes me back to my disc framework days and so if you know if your task oriented are people oriented introverted or extroverted you're gonna understand how you leverage your strengths and how to communicate inform deep connections with others so if you imagine a grid if you think the top of the four grid so there's four different grids okay well four different quadrant i should say if you look at the top the top of the grid is going to be people who are action oriented then the bottom of the grid are going to be people who are a little bit more thoughtful with their decisions then if you slice it up and you go to the right side of the grid these are people oriented and if you focus on the left side these are task oriented so in a nutshell your personality is gonna fall into one quadrant over the other you are gonna actually be people oriented and fast paced or you could possibly be more thoughtful with your decision making and a little bit more task oriented and if you take an actual assessment you will have qualities that reflect all four of these personalities or all four of these grids right but the thing is is if you take an actual assessment it's gonna ask you so many questions in a different way that you're gonna ultimately end up in one of the quadrant over the other we're gonna look at this each a little bit separate so you can understand each different quadrant number one is the powerhouse personalities these entrepreneurs or service providers are fast action takers and more tasks are oriented they prioritize results they like to maintain control their fast action they trust clear benefits strong outcomes and they're confident this is beyonce in my opinion so they in order to actually collaborate with these individuals you're going to want to provide clear communication about your collaboration proposal highlighting the benefits and outcomes you need to also respect their desire to be in control give them options and allow them to take the lead in making the decision the next personality is still fast but these are people oriented people and i call them the passionate personality they prioritize creativity relationships positive energy they trust being an authentic they love recognition and they love collaborative feedback this is the oprah free of the personalities these individuals focus on building a genuine connection and rapport before they actually collaborate with people so be prepared to move once they show interest because they're fast action takers and move fast but i will tell you this personality you need to kinda warm up their relationship before you ask them to collaborate in partner because they really want to trust you just like natalie does before they put you in front of their audience i think i am this profile by the way you think you are that is exactly like me and it's funny that you mentioned because we people hard and you'd mentioned that before yes it's so i will raise my hand to that too i am definitely the passionate personality next and this actually this next personality is my favorite they tend to be some of my best friends personal life and an online business too but this is the pleasant personality pleasant personalities are are a little bit more thoughtful with their decisions but they're also very people oriented they prioritize sincere relationships quality over quantity and they don't like to be pressured so any type of low pressure approach to them will feel really good they trust low risk they love to look at testimonials and predictability this personality you know in order to collaborate with them they want to take the time to build a relationship first they also want you know once the trust is established it's really important that you nurture this relationship for a long term because they can definitely tell that if you're just like doing something for almost like calculating like or a quid pro quo type thing that's not something they're interested in they're definitely interested in values alignment and long term relationships they're also the type of people that if you have them over your house they're gonna stay after and clean your dishes after they had dinner they're just the best people next step is the precise personalities these are more thoughtful decision makers but task oriented folks and so they prioritize accuracy details structure and they love clear data proof to back up claims and logic so if you're gonna collaborate with this individual you really have to set them up for success by providing detailed information about the collaboration swipe copy for support a promotional calendar and you want to respect their need for accuracy precision by answer ensuring that all ask specs of the collaboration are well planned and executed so when you look at all the personalities don't worry too much about who is this personality when you're thinking about collaborations and partnerships the big takeaway from this is if you do everything at like a high level you can set everybody up for success when it comes to collaborations and partnerships so what does that mean as long as you're providing options for people and you're building a connection first and you're also nurturing that relationship and setting them up for success with detailed information calendars sweat copy and everything that can set them up for success you're basically gonna communicate and support this individual to support you and it's going to work out beautifully let's take a look a little bit about task oriented versus people oriented so task oriented people they're gonna prioritize efficiency and results by showcasing expertise and leadership and high impact events our buddy l is a great example of this so what is she gonna do when she attends an event when she's task oriented natalie ellen is actually gonna be a speaker out event usually right but what she does is she doubles down on her visibility exposure and she'll host maybe a mastermind the day after the event and so now she's turning one visibility opportunity into two so she maximizes the visibility and credibility with her industry and this is something you can do if your task oriented as well as you can double down on opportunities and think out outside of the box on how you can do that people oriented people might do something a little bit different i see these people as super connectors they bridge gaps between other individuals and use their emotional intelligence to forge meaningful connections and collaborations so what they could do at an event for example and i've actually done this before i'd be curious if you've done anything similar natalie but before i went to the ka job live conference i figured out who else was going to the conference and then i hosted a breakfast right before the events we could all walk in together but i did it for two reasons i wanted to secure time with certain individuals that were also attending the event and i also wanted to connect them with each other before the event started so it set us up for success i'd be curious if you've done anything at events or even in person or virtual that's very similar you know what's interesting for i'm putting myself in the event space and i think i'm more like after the fact very process driven afterwards like i at some of the you know events that we've been at together i came back and had a couple of pages in my notebooks of the people that i met something that i remembered about them and then i kinda have like a filing system off the back end where i follow up with people and i'm gonna leverage those relationships in different ways so i feel like mine is more after the event i will say during and i i i don't think i've ever done anything before an event and i'm a very like i can tell like i am growing more to be more of an am than just a straight ex when i was younger i think i was like full ex today that's a little bit different and so maybe that's why i'm not doing as much beforehand but while i'm at the event once i start to like feel out for who my people are it's really important for me to like do dinner with a small group or you know make sure people feel included that's important to me especially if there a synergy between us like i'll be sure to say oh let's grab dinner tonight let's go have a drinker let's do something so that i can bring those people together absolutely and i've actually capitalized on post event strategy as well similar to you i had pulled together like a virtual mixer one time from an event that i did and i got everybody's names an email address is and i coordinated this event so we could check in like a month after the event and see how things were going so you can definitely think of pre and post ideas definitely leverage your strengths and how that works out for you and the idea is find people that you have a values alignment with and stay connected with them and see how you can develop that relationship further because if you are coming to in person events there's nothing better that's gonna break down barriers and develop trust quicker than being in person with people absolutely that's why linda we talk a lot here on this podcast and with our students and our audience about there's been a big redirection i would say over the last two to three years about talking to people in your local area right because you're doing more face to face and more you know that connection is just so it's just it's un beat from a time perspective it just it collapses everything so it really does i agree and it's funny that you brought up am a little bit ago because i'm gonna take a look at ex versus introverts but i too feel like i'm more of an am at these days too when i was full on ex when i was younger so ex birds typically thrive in social settings and may naturally gravitate towards taking on more tasks or engaging activities that involved interactions with others they almost can hold more capacity for it in a way and so they draw energy from social interactions and they feel more energized when they're involved in various activities one time after covid i went to an event i was just so excited to be around people again i can barely sleep which is funny but anyway introverts on the other hand they may prefer to conserve their energy and feel more comfortable quieter solitary environments so they're gonna be a little bit more selective of what they decide to do and not do and maybe they decide not to go out to dinner that night and to order dinner in to conserve that energy they're gonna focus on activities that allow them to recharge and reflect so i'm curious if you've ever thought if you're introverted or extroverted it sounds like both natalie and i have landed on were a bit of both these days but it is something to think about when you're going to an event and how you go all in or not next we're gonna talk about relate this is the r in the arc and so equally important as so what's really actually this might be the most important thing in business is understanding your ideal clients so how do you learn more about your ideal clients you're gonna learn more through interviews surveys polls you can uncover clients desires needs and language to use on your sales page to communicate with them to sell to them and by tailoring your approach to resonate deeply with those you serve you'll build meaningful connections so let's take this a little bit further you don't know how many times i've asked somebody about their ideal client whether i was creating a quiz for them or whether i was trying to help with collaborations for them and they really aren't sure on who their ic aca is and you really need to know who your ideal client is so you can leverage collaborations and partnerships long term so very first thing you need to do is interviews one on one interviews or case studies or i loved zoom interviews back in the day like just one on one interviews because you could take that transcript and you could put it through otter ai and you could get a ton of great information to use but a lot of people don't like to do that so i think surveys are probably the next best thing but really asking people for detailed answers because a lot of times if you do a survey you're gonna get back like one word and that's not gonna help you at all you can also use polls in instagram you can do polls and your emails you could do like a this or that and make it fun but i will tell you so i live in seattle and i use the starbucks example all the time but starbucks puts their clients at the head of the table they will never roll anything out if it wasn't something that their own client said that they wanted and so when they served up the pumpkin spice latte people are just lining up out the door to get it this is what you want to do for your clients you need to know exactly who they are what do they identify with and what do they want from you so you can serve that so you work backwards from your client it's that time new month new podcast recommendation and this is from a peer that is also inside of the hubspot podcast network i'm recommending the podcast titled inclusion and marketing it's hosted by sonia thompson and she digs into important topics to us i know that our community loves and really resonates with her content expertise and that is in belonging in customer experience as well as diversity and it also teaches us how you can practice inclusive marketing within your own effort so whether this is for your business or the way that you can really help and build diversity and inclusion inside of your clients businesses you're gonna learn that by listening to sonia podcast every single week what i love about sonia podcast is she's got some great advice she also interview some really enterprise guests and then the other thing that i think is so fun and i think you will too is she looks at active marketing campaigns that are going on and she reviews them and is able to give us perspective on how inclusive or not they are so if this topic is interesting to you then listen to inclusion and marketing wherever you get your podcast are you ready to shift gears in your operations career if so then it is time for you to join us for the test drive the d this is an event where you're gonna get a real behind the scenes look at our director of operations certification program you're gonna be able to discover the strategic mapping model and how that's transformed the careers of over nearly four hundred and fifty ops professionals just like you this is gonna be your chance to peak behind the curtain and really understand exactly how our program can elevate your ops career we've done it a lot and we're ready to do it alongside you join us live reserve your spot today at the ops authority dot com forward slash test drive we want you to stop dreaming about success and drive it join us today so finding the right partnerships so without clear understanding again without a clear understanding of who your person is there's no way you can actually partner with people so the ideal clients come first and everything should be revolved around your ideal client anyways and we'll get to that in a little bit but why this matters is because when you form partnerships that align with your ideal client you can now target and leverage borrowed audiences that match your ideal client let me take that back a little bit basically i was actually talking to a client the other day who have known for a very long time i always thought that she served coaches and course creators come to find out she was telling me actually linda a lot of people that come through my program are actually doctors and maybe their therapist turned coach or their academics and they have a doctor in front of their name and this changed the ballgame for everything with her because prior to knowing this she was actually showing up trying to be on podcasts that served more coaches right well now she knows like if these are the individuals and she needs to leverage a borrowed audience she now needs to find people that also have an audience similar to that so she was able to get a lot more clarity on who she should have in front of her audience who she should be pitching to be on different podcasts and leveraging that borrowed own audience okay so we're gonna get into the collaborate and i'll talk more about examples of collaboration but collaboration you know you really need to establish solid mutually beneficial collaborations to make it a triple win so a win for you a win for the other entrepreneur and definitely the win for the client and people must experience you firsthand before you can create a collaboration so basic warm pitches is start by reaching out to someone you already know and if the connection has cooled re kendall that relationship before you make a request a cold pitch you can leverage this differently if you there's somebody that you know you want to partner with or collaborate with but you have no relationship with them whatsoever you need to think about your network and say who has been on that podcast that could actually send over a note to put in good feedback for me so then you lean trusted peers or mentors to help open the door for you and so you turn a cold lead into a warm lead by leveraging your network okay so now that you know warm leads versus cold leads and how to leverage that you need to find the right partnerships for your business again you need to really focus on a triple win so a win for you a win for your peer and a win for your shared audience a great example of this was i put out a quiz years ago and i think this is actually i can attribute this sole question to all of my success i've had in the online business you know since i've started an online business but basically i asked my audience what do you identify with and i said you identified with a coach course creator service provider i give examples fifty percent of my audience identified as a coach then the next highest i think it was like thirty five percent identified as a course creator why is this important because now that you know who your audience is and what they identify as that is the north star on the decisions you make to the mastermind you join to the in person events you go to to the conferences you go to right so when i decided to go to ka job in austin it was because there was a decent chunk of course creators that was in my audience when i was there i got to know the podcast host funny enough he ended up on my flight back to seattle there's a ton of people that work in ka job in seattle which i had no clue but i developed a relationship with him i pitched him and i ended up on that podcast so that was an intention i set because i knew i wanted to get on that podcast because it was filled with course creators so i want you to start making great business decisions and get roi for your own business through knowing who your ic aca is three people you can partner with today by the way this is so easy and it's right under your nose but it's peers clients and mentors and this is where we get into the magic match so when you have pure like natalie and i there is deep trust that is there natalie has trusted me to come in front of her audience to share my wisdom and insights you earn that you don't just get that right same thing goes with your own clients you've literally helped your own clients create a beautiful transformation so there's deep trust with your clients you have helped them go from a to b and make a beautiful transformation so your clients are gonna be people who really wanna encourage other people to meet you and they'll show up for you the other is mentors if you're earlier in your journey and you haven't quite yet have great clients that can speak on your behalf or peers that you've developed it through the years you can also leverage mentors back when i first started an online business i would give testimonials to people who i was in mastermind with those testimonials would end up on their sales pages then i would also shout them out on instagram or share the testimonial on instagram and i would tag them all of a sudden they would res share it in front of their audience which could be like fifty thousand people and now i was leveraging that platform to get in front of their audience right so you can use that by being an a plus plus student go through your own transformation create a testimonial and show up for your mentor because that too creates a lot of trust and by doing that and making them look good if you wanna pull the card later and be like can you help me or can you share this they're more likely to do it right or maybe they're doing it without realizing it by putting your testimony on the sales page or res sharing your instagram story with their community okay so where do you get the magic match it's when you have a client that turns into a pure that might have been a mentor or it could have been a mentor of yours that now hires you so their a client and because of your time together you guys have now become peers that is typically what happens to me when i create my magic matches typically like natalie you were mentor to me ellen was a mentor to me and it was funny i'll share ellen yu story because this was a beautiful example of how this happened but she was a mentor to me i listened to her podcast i pitched her to be on her podcast she had me on we talked about quizzes this is back in twenty twenty one i believe she hired me to create her quiz so now she's a client and through all this time together we've worked a lot together we are now friends so we are now peers so she is my magic match and because of this we've spent years together so there's a lot of trust that's built so how can you also leverage your personality type with magic match sometimes you just kind of vibe really well with people who are similar to you like natalie and i we might have the same personality right so we really really have a values alignment and so those individuals are great magic matches too or people that are next to you so if you're fast paced other people who are fast paced if you're people oriented other people that are people oriented they're really gonna be a values alignment and you can leverage those personalities to do partnerships and collaborations so your job today is to write down three people in your network who are your magic match and reach out to them to see if they wanna collaborate and partner i will tell you before i wrap this up and go back to natalie is there's nothing more viral than one of your peers clients are mentors given you their full recommendation we are in a world with ai right now and recommendations mean more than anything so it's gonna be really important that you can get recommendations and i will say having a community or not can lead to your worst and best moments in life back when i started my community to get the mix or mind i literally just invited about twenty five people into the small community to start collaborations and partnerships and to support each other and about a month after i did my soft launch or my beta launch i was diagnosed with cancer and this was not something that was on my bingo card that year at all and so i had to undergo a couple surgeries and radioactive iodine treatment and my community showed up for me tenfold and what i thought they were there for like collaborations and partnerships they really became my lifeline because they not only helped with calls on zoom but they raised money so i could get grocery deliveries because they knew i couldn't carry groceries i used some of that money for dog walking services that they truly became my lifeline and so that is how impactful creating partnerships can be for long term business and personal success linda i love all of this if you saw me looking down i was running a few notes as you were sharing first of all i'm gonna kinda chronological go through this because that's why my brain thinks but the overarching piece of all of what linda shared with us today with the arc framework is giving you a lens of how to incorporate emotional intelligence into your life and i don't know if linda you've ever even looked at it like this but all of these skills are helping people to people better and what do we mean by people better i mean when you're sitting across whether it's in person toe to toe or you know zoom to zoom your job as someone who is looking for these connections is to fill out that connection you know do you have that values alignment that linda talked about that we talk about a lot here whether you're looking for a client appear or a mentor like that's what you're looking for is that connection there and being emotionally intelligent is the most underrated and it's just not talked about enough and a lot of people just don't understand what that really means right and so for me in my own soft definition it's being able to flex to other people being able to uncover who they are to get them comfortable so that i can receive who they are and not a version that they think they should be when they show up because if you force people in that way then the obvious downfall is that you don't get the real then right and if you don't get the real them then there's not going to be a connection in the future the reason i'm sharing all of this is if you are looking for a particular type of client knowing like she said who your avatar is it's very very important so that you can pull that in you know the types of questions you know how to act how to be how to feel how to present yourself to make sure that that is truly what you're getting as service providers here we are not new to the game of getting into a business relationship supporting somebody in them turning out to be something you completely did not expect right and i think a lot of that comes to those initial meetings when you should be doing the vetting now there's a whole other conversation here about i always say have a quote that desperate attracts desperate so if you're in that state you're never gonna find the magic match but i wanted to pull your awareness to this arc framework really parallels increasing your emotional intelligence for being able to read to perceive to build bonds with people and it doesn't matter this really does bridge if you're looking for building connection with mentors peers or potential clients the other piece i wanted to bring out is that as service providers and i think a lot of people listening today linda are probably in that precise quadrant because it was really hard for me to kind of pick between passionate and precise and i do feel like and like you mentioned i i've got all of the quadrant sing a little bit to me i think the one that's the strongest is the passionate but the precise that system type focused in that precise quadrant is really representative of myself and of a lot of the people probably the majority of the people that are listening today so i just wanted to tie some things together here that if that is your personality we tend to be very structured we like process and we're very detailed people we are slow and we can be very ta right it's slower in task is that right yep okay so when we get into building relationships and even into the sales piece i'm going to reflect back to you and this is more coaching but for you to meet your magic match here your magic match can come in any of these quadrant right like just because your this doesn't mean that they have to be that the process that linda is walking us through is being aware of where you are and knowing that people fall in all of these and so you can narrow it down and be specific and say hey i want to pull in people from this quadrant fine i'm just telling you as you go to sell as you go to build relationships as you go to become more visible know that you've got a variety of different types and qualities of people that are gonna be showing up and it is always in our best interest to be flexible in the way that we present information to them and i talk about this a lot because i didn't know this about myself until later on but like you i'm very analytical i've got this great twelve step you know hiring plan and i would get on phone calls with prospects and talk about this hiring process being twelve steps i would take thirty minutes i would be so passionate i would be so excited and here i am talking to a powerhouse who's really really fast i lost them in the first five minutes and they're like not slow like honey i was ready to pay you in the first five minutes you don't need to give me the twelve set plan so i was attracting a lot of people like that and it took them reflecting to me because i didn't have all of this information that linda is fast tracking you with today i didn't have all of that so i just assumed that everybody needed to see the full plan needed to know every single thing i was going to do so that i could show value to them and it took so many of these powerhouse and passionate type personalities to come back to me and say i already trusted you like you already were the authority before we got on the call or in the first five minutes of the call so it really helped me to teach our students today how to be flexible when building these relationships and definitely in presenting the sale i have to do in in real life if i'm doing a discovery call for a hiring project i'm reading linda or i'm reading the person across for me to kinda assess what quadrant are they in do i need to go through the twelve set plan because you know what i was on a call last thursday and that lady needed a twelve set plan she was very detailed very methodical very kind of micro manager like very very very deeply curious and i love people like this but most of the people i talked to don't need to know exactly my plan they wanna know like very high level and so i have had to take my process and shorten the explanation of it but i basically have two different styles i can go long and deep or i can go short and very specific and i'm telling you that those teachings that i have shared with my community really resonate with what linda has shared and imparted with us today and then the last thing i want to wrap up with here is that the magic match as you were talking linda i think about my magic matches and one of those magic matches i think is how i met you which is jacqueline malone way back in the day so i worked for jacqueline at the very beginning of my business we're in a mastermind together probably before that or in a community together and then i started working for her and we have built a really strong relationship and that magic match is really awesome it made it very easy for her because she knew organically and wholesome who i was holistically excuse me who i i mean i think i'm wholesome but let's go back to holistic but anyway because she knew me because we did have that magic match she knew specifically who to introduce me to which by no surprise she introduce me to you right so anyway there's so many great uses for this and linda you have done a really good job of helping us to see exactly the variety and the versatility of the entire arc framework as well as these personalities and so anyway i'm really excited to share this i've been excited to share this with you all for a while because it's like i started this podcast it's so difficult and we have a lot of limiting beliefs because our style is so methodical and so structured we have limiting beliefs that we're not going to be able to make good relationships with or deep relationships or quantity whatever it is that you're looking for because the process can be long but this gives you a framework to be able to build flexibility into it to build clarity into it and then of course we just love information and the knowledge to be able to do this faster well because of all of the greatness it's no surprise that linda has put together an amazing community that continues to grow year over year which is hard to do these days in business but it's because of linda skills and abilities and what she's been able to see for herself and be able to pull a wide and diverse group of people together that still have a similar base and foundation and that is her mix mind i'm not necessarily here to pitch her mixer mind but i do wanna let you guys know that she has built a business that serves her natural skill set which is exactly what we are trying to do inside of the ops authority we are looking for service providers to take their skills and to monetize their skills that's exactly what linda has done and i have been a participant this year or a member i should say of the mix mind it's not open right now if you're listening to this live or when we publish this it opens once a year and if this is something that's been on your radar she's absolutely a great place for you to go there's plenty of service providers in there a lot of service providers inside of the mixer mind and it creates and cultivate a collaborative space for us to share ideas to dream to get feedback it's been really really great so i know it's not open right now linda but do you have a waitlist list that we could share with all of the listeners yeah absolutely i would love to have more natalie gin in the community so we are gonna open the doors in november however you can join the waitlist list and the waitlist list will get first d on the information on the events the magic mixer that you were a part of actually last year i'll be doing invites to those early bird to the waitlist list first so if you wanna get in the know and get the first invites to all the things definitely get on the waitlist list yeah and if i'm not mistaken last year the waitlist list almost sold out the entire mixer mind right fully well it was crazy the magic mixer events yeah the very first event that i did had a thirty five percent conversion rate so i sold a lot of seats during that event and then around that same time i actually opened the doors to the members that wanted to stay in the community and i was around a hundred members before i even had a chance to open the doors to the public and it actually sold out two days before the car closed days so yeah it was wild that is awesome i wish you the same amount of success this year and i look forward to continue to be a part of that linda thank you so much for being here today and thanks for sharing all of this i love the presentation and the content and the applicability to our audience and really to just humans in general so thank you for being here friend and i want you guys to head over to the mixer remind i'm gonna put that link here inside of the show notes as well so that you can head over and take a peek of that if that's of interest to you and linda thank you so much for being here today thank you so much natalie yes alrighty friends i will see y'all on the next or hear from you'll hear from me on the next episode of the ops authority podcast y'all have a great day thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you have one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week and in the meantime new big things on the backside of your business

if you're hearing you're a business builder then you are always in pursuit of clients and what's behind client acquisition it is a sales cycle cutting it in half sounds pretty impossible right well that's exactly what sandler training did with hubspot and they used their tool hubspot tool an ai tool called breeze it tailor every customer interaction without losing that personal touch which is so important and ai is doing amazing things like this we already know but hubspot hasn't built in their results were really incredible their click through rates jumped by twenty five percent their qualified leads quadrupled and people spent three times longer on their landing page if you're interested in this you wanna go to hubspot dot com to see how breeze can help you grow your service based business this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast today we are entering in to episode two hundred and eighty five every single time i say that number i'm taking back a little bit and i'm thinking about natalie and the ops authority whenever i was recording episode five an episode fifty in episode one fifty and so today is kind of a testament to the grit that it took to kinda stick through all the waves the ups the downs the you know how much i've evolved and changed over my time as being in nor still of having this podcast so anyway big celebration for being at two hundred and eighty five lots of stories and tales and wisdom and lessons learned along the way and today in this episode we have a special guest who i feel has kind of been a silent partner behind me this entire time because we have been on this journey for probably around the same time and we were just talking pre hitting record about just what the journey has looked like and i know that we have both evolved so so much and that is absolutely normal there's no way that i would be content being natalie in twenty sixteen as i am in natalie in twenty twenty five and the same for my dear friend and today's guest kate ko little backstory story or little bio of kate she's a certified life and business coach and is the founder of success with seoul leveraging a decade of experience helping thousands of entrepreneurs build profitable sustainable and soul led businesses without burning out and you can tell those three words profitable sustainable and soul exactly why i've asked her to come onto this podcast today and of course it doesn't hurt that we have been along a similar journey sometimes tighter than others just in our journey of evolving but i mean you can see why she's here today she's a staunch advocate for justice and dismantling the patriarchy kate empowers her clients to achieve success through seo through funnels feminist systems and focusing on sustainable growth and here's the kicker without social media that is exactly that topic right there is exactly why i have kate on today of course i trust her which is another great reason to have her introduce my friend to you all today but the thing that has been really admirable for me is she does what she says and that's one of the values here at the ops authority because i feel like in this time and space and just the stress and the energy that goes into sales and into conversions into that marketing part of small business the delivery and doing what you say you're going to deliver can sometimes be a lonely place and so i'm only gonna partner with people who share that same value and kate is one of those people that not only do i think that i know that i've seen that and i trust that so that's why we have my friend kate joining us today to talk about something that is when i i'm just gonna call like a soap box moment because that truly is describes this topic that we're gonna introduce to you so first of all welcome kate i'm so glad that you're here thanks and i was blown away when you said two hundred and eighty five episodes i'm like oh my gosh that's a lot yes and fun little behind the scenes and side note is this morning i was talking about potentially bringing in a youtube component and our marketing manager says oh it's only taking you three and a half years to warm up to that and i'm like yeah if back way back in my baby business when esther was doing any kind of support that i needed esther was there for me i was like yeah it took esther about three years to get me to start the podcast so yeah we're about right on trend here so days wow yeah two hundred and eighty five really fun but kate i am excited to have you here so that you can share your wisdom you have walked the talk you have been able to capture that talk into a system that has helped not only me and my audience but now an even greater part of our audience into understanding how to build a service based business without being on social media before i turn this over to you to educate us and to show us the way i mean i know we could go round and round here too but it is such a mis number it's such a false hood that you need to be on social media all the time chasing a game that i know i fully know this is actually not going to help you win any faster or any better than doing it in some of the ways that you're gonna talk about today my audience is you know we're service based business providers we have been gifted a skill that we have been able to assess and create businesses and create a careers around and because we have that skill we monetize that skill through the service based business and when you're in into service based business we're not looking to serve hundreds and thousands of people we're looking to get maybe one maybe five clients at one time so just if you look at that i'm scared to use the word funnel but if you look at it like a funnel an upside down funnel where the top is bigger the bottom is smaller the bottom is obviously where you get that client where you convert that client but you need people to come into the broader part of that funnel if you will and to start having those conversations well if you're only looking for one to five people to make it all the way through that funnel if you reverse engineer that which my audience is amazing at because we're operators and we're great project managers if you reverse engineer that i mean what do we need like maybe fifteen or twenty conversations happening and as we start to have these conversations we get better and better and better and we're able to convert more so maybe it comes down to ten and i'm making these numbers up if you're looking for like to have five clients at a time which in my world as a you know director of operations there's no way i could have five at one time but you get the idea if we're not looking to have thousands and thousands and thousands of people coming into a product and we only need a hand less than a handful we don't need to be spending all of this energy on something that is actually really really really hard to get somebody to progress through that funnel if you will so i bought that talk for a long time just so we're all clear i felt like what everything i just told you was false i told myself i was impressed upon other guru in our space about a decade ago that i had to have all of this presence i had to be in all the places and all the things and the most important thing i could do was figure out how to repurpose all of these things and get them in all the places and show up and engage and be in that cycle number one it was unsustainable number two was exhausting and number three it led to the worst parts of me and it took away all the joy from that gift that i've been given that i am so excited and i'm still excited ten years later to be able to share and so that got me reassess and weight is that really true like i know these big cool people are saying this but is this really true for me so that opened up a whole other pandora box which we're not gonna talk about today but you know as we look back i wish i knew now what i didn't know then and i wish i had people like you to help show me how to do this because i know when i can see a really good system i know when someone has done what a lot of people don't do is be able to walk the talk that i could have short myself save myself a lot of stress save myself you know expenses and labor of you know whenever i realized i couldn't do it myself what did i do i ended up investing in other people to do it for me and guess what it didn't get me any closer to the goal for myself so i'm a full big believer in your process and what you teach and even more importantly the belief that as a service based business and we could even expand that even more because i know you have proven that too but as a service based business you don't actually have to be in the rat race of social media so i invite you to come here today and share the ways that you're able to do that we love really good tactical step by step and of course we also love to hear your history and how you've been able to do that for yourself so all of that welcome get thank you quite the introduction i'm so glad to be here and a few things came up for e when you were talking one of which you mentioned a couple times like finding somebody who walks the walks the talk not as such a value of mine and like you were saying before we hit record we were kinda talking about how maybe disillusioned and kind of jade we'd become about some of the big names and the industry and stuff and it just it's so i find that a lot of people will tell you oh yeah you don't need social media they might even be teaching like i'm hosting a webinar about how you don't need social media but they're literally telling you about it on social media like they're still using it themselves and so no wonder we're confused because we're like well they're saying you don't but they're still posting there so obviously something you know misaligned here and so yeah i quit social media in twenty twenty one so it's i'm going on over four years of not using it at all i don't post i don't scroll i don't have the app on my phone i don't use it as a consumer i don't follow just my friends there i don't have a secret account that i used to you know follow people i i do nothing and like you said i have so much more joy in my life i have so much more mental health i have so much more time to do things that actually move the needle in my business and whether you're a service provider or you are a coach or you have digital products really no business needs social media social media doesn't even need social media you know instagram got big without instagram and so i think there's rate marketing i mean in capitalism and patriarchy are really strong here where they've really convinced us this is the way you must follow it is like this cult almost of like social media is the only way you can do something don't question it and once i started questioning it i realized kind of the error of my ways because just like you for years i spent time just thinking if i could just get the right strategy or i'm just not consistent enough or i'm just not this enough or i just need to engage more after i post i just need to be in a comment pod or i just need to pay someone to do it for me believe me i tried all the things none of it ever worked in any kind of meaningful way and when i left i was able to double down on the things that had been working for me the whole time and my business is so much more profitable it's sustainable and joyful now and yeah i'm excited to share yeah so give us all the wisdom in how we can actually make this happen for ourselves okay so i would say if i could boil my system down to a few steps there's kind of three non negotiable that i do every single week for my business that allows me to make sales every single day but even if you're a service provider and you don't need to make sales every single day you can at least start getting a consistent revenue coming in and so those three things are i email my list and i make an offer so i'm not just sending nurture emails i am literally emailing them at least once a week sometimes seven days a week it really just depends but i am emailing them a sales email where i am making an offer i am asking them to pay me money for something and i don't separate sales emails from value emails or nurture emails they are both in one in and so that has worked really big for me this is not anything new everyone knows you need an email list that is just where i have doubled down i mean the hundred x down on my email list and it doesn't mean that you need to have hundreds of thousands of people there you know i've been able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars with an email list of two to eight thousand people and so it's not the same volume game that you feel like we have to play when we're on social media and you feel like you need to have a hundred k followers or something like that total vanity metric anyway okay so emailing my list and actually asking for the sale is something i do every single week i have a lot of automated funnels and series and things that are going out that can do that for me so i'm not constantly having to be on and i combine that with a hybrid model of some live emailing and a lot of automated emails that are pre scheduled and week running on autopilot all the time the second thing i do is i get in front of a new audience every single week and so you really can't do we were just talking about this in a coaching call today with some of my clients you really can't have one without the other if you are growing your email list but you're never actually giving them a away to pay you it is all for not you might as well have a hundred thousand instagram followers and be making zero dollars you have to actually ask for the sale but if you have an email list and you're asking for the sale all the time and my clients come to me all the time and they say i did the flash sale i did the launch i did this thing i have the funnel set up it didn't work nobody bought and i said say well how many people went through the funnel seven well of course nobody want even seventy okay well if an average email funnel converts at one percent which is industry standard that's not even one person would buy if you only have seventy people so you have to be doing both you have to be growing your email list and getting in front of new audiences and you have to be asking for the sale we put so many steps in between us and making money and i think that really hurts a lot of businesses and slows down the progress and the results that they could get so i have a lot of ways that i get in front of new audiences and if you've been on social media thinking that that's the only way i would just ask you how's it going for you are you getting hundreds of new people onto your email list by posting on social media all the time are you getting a new client every week because you've been posting you know three times a day probably not i have yet to really meet anybody that's seeing those kinds of results so there's lots of other more effective ways one of which is guessing on other people's podcasts so yep crm i am speaking on somebody else's podcast podcasts so that i can get in front of their audience hopefully then y'all will come over follow me on my email list and then i will make you an offer and you'll become a customer of mine as well that's kind of the whole the whole purpose here so i could list a hundred other ways that you can get in front of new audiences and we can go down that road if you want to but for now i'll stop there and say there's a bunch of other ways outside of social media and the third thing i do is more of a long term strategy and that's creating search focused content meaning i'm not creating short shelf life content like instagram or facebook post or tiktok videos or whatever things that basically have a couple hours shelf life if your followers even see them at all rather i'm creating content on platforms that are find so podcasts youtube blogging pinterest those are all search based platforms including now being find through ai so i try to post one thing every single week to one of those platforms and not all of them and you don't need to be in all the places you could just pick one and have some kind of content that's out there that people can type in a problem they're trying to solve and you will show up so that was it send an email to your list once a week make an offer get in front of a new audience every week and publish something on a search based platform that's it it's that time new month new podcast recommendation and this is from a peer that is also inside of the hubspot podcast network i'm recommending the podcast titled inclusion and marketing it's hosted by sonia thompson and she digs into important topics to us i know that our community loves and really resonates with her content expertise and that is in belonging in customer experience as well as diversity and it also teaches us how you can practice inclusive marketing within your own effort so whether this is for your business or the way that you can really help and build diversity and inclusion inside of your clients businesses you're gonna learn that by listening to sonia podcast every single week what i love about sonia podcast is she's got some great advice she also interview some really enterprise guest and then the other thing that i think is so fun and i think you will too is she looks at active marketing campaigns that are going on and she reviews them and is able to give us perspective on how inclusive or not they are so if this topic is interesting to you then listen to inclusion and marketing wherever you get your pie cast we've all heard and learned these things along the way yeah i think that we make i i'll just tell myself i have made a lot of excuses because it frankly it looks sexy to be on social but some of the downfall falls of social that you've pointed out is they're not sticky how sticky are the people on social not berry and then the other piece is it's not searchable it is just simply not searchable the shelf life is so short so constantly on that hamster wheel of always needing to create new new new more more more just to stay relevant and hope that maybe two percent of your followers even see what you're putting out there and i yeah i think about like this is more philosophical but i think back to like instagram when instagram started it was post you would come in there you would post something and then they created the whole ability to create stories which expire and oh my gosh well why did they do that i mean it's a drug so that you would keep coming back and coming back and coming back and always feeling behind the curve think about mental health and think about what we're doing and how we're training our brains which is another episode you and i could probably have a perfectly deep conversation on but that's what they did to keep you coming back at the same time people kinda raise their hands or we're like i don't want these stories to go away like what are we gonna do and so i'm sure you remember like i remember when they started creating the little i don't even know what they're called my highlights where you onto to those because people strictly because the human body wants to we crave memories we grade hold on to those things and so they sat us with these highlights how many people use highlights anymore hardly anybody you know why because the algorithm is sick and it has trained us to not even care i'm i'm getting deep but not care about those things that feel important in the moment it's just a drug it just keeps coming back and so if you're trying to build your business i mean maybe instagram has figured it out or meta has figured it out but if you're trying to build an ethical service based business that's not the way to create a sustainable and scalable space for you in that environment but look at meta like they're not posting on instagram instagram profile is not full of reels and posts and like that's not how there growing their business because it doesn't work yep yes yes but so what does work for service providers which is something i mean it's the reason we're here today it's the reason that i've been able to be successful in my own service provider business is through deep rich and ample conversations like that to me is the replacement for social media any day but the things that you focused that you have shared with us today emailing somebody offering the people in this case on email list telling them if i have this great service that i believe is divine and given to me and i never tell anybody about it exactly nobody is gonna purchase that from me right so i can't be in business without actually having that conversation and email is a beautiful way for a lot of people to do that because even i teach how to have conversations verbal conversations being on zoom and for a lot of people that is absolutely not what they wanna do it's not where their energy holds them and the number or the quality or the confidence that they lack to be able to have those is not a skill that they have right now email is a perfect place to do that because it's hands off but you're still putting yourself in a place where you can capture attention where you can be visible and it's a push and a pull you get to deliver it and they get to open it and take action when they're ready so it is a very gentle way but i am with kate you can't just have the email you can't just write the email you have to talk about what you do right i don't not saying you have to sell in neither a she that you have to sell in every single email but it's a great platform for being able to do that and then sharing about getting in front of new audiences i mean i was hoping that you were gonna say exactly why you're i mean guest podcasting hello but this looks a lot like a lot of different ways i have a community here in san antonio where i just got introduced to somebody else because they knew me they knew i was in business and now they're handing me off to a friend of a friend i mean referrals what she's talking about here is referrals and in a service based business referrals are huge is exactly how i built my entire business the first year of being in business completely outside of the space having never been in this space before i became a person who asked for referrals right yep and then i just feel so deeply true that long form content is actually the way of the future i wish it we would have never gotten side rail because when i came into this space in twenty fifteen it was everything blog blog blog pinterest pinterest pinterest and then we got stuck into this short form content space video space of all the channels that we're talking about today and you know what i haven't put a new blog we were just looking at this i haven't put a new blog out into this world in years mh and you they'll get traffic to your site and guess guess what we just we just welcomed round twenty seven into our cohort into our round twenty seven of our director of operations certification program and we're doing introduction videos and guess what kate someone tells me i found you on this article i was so frustrated with where i was in my career i went to pinterest i just happened to be on pinterest and i went into pinterest and i said what is operations and you popped up and i learned all about operations from you i went there genuinely asking the question yeah what in his operations and it took her a year she's probably listening to this podcast right now because she went from my podcast with that long form connected back to my blog that i wrote years ago yeah that she became curious she's listened to my podcast and now she's a student inside of our community exactly and this is i feel like how amazing that this is effort that you put in years ago that is still paying off today and it's exactly why it works because this person was typing in what they were looking for and social media is interrupted marketing you have to stop their scroll they're not there looking for what is operations they're there mindless trolling because they wanna relax because they wanna turn their brain off on veg on the couch after a hard day at work they're not actually even looking for solutions they're literally just trying to turn their brain off and so you have to not only engage their brain you have to stop their role you have to be so compelling that they want to leave the app which the app is designed to keep people there it's like you have everything working against you or you can publish a helpful blog post and years later people are literally searching for the thing that you can help them with and then they're ready and she might not have been ready to join the certification program right away but she was ready to take the next step which was join your email list or download your podcast or start listening to something else start following along and the more that she interacted with you in a meaningful way mh more likely she became to them purchase and so i have another tip to add on to this kind of like a fourth bonus tip two that we talked about at the webinar that we hosted together last month which is a way i think to shorten that sales cycle a bit whether you're selling services or high ticket packages or programs and that's by having a quick easy win that you can sell for ten dollars or less on the front end so when somebody opt in to your email list you're gonna give them like a trip wire that has a very irresistible offer like all of my products have seven dollar trip wires on them and you give them something it solves a very specific problem and it helps them do something very quickly so they can immediately get it take action on it get a result and then go wow that was good what else does natalie have and then they're gonna go and start looking through your looking through your website and seeing what else is out there and seeing how else i could work with you and especially if you design it in such a way where you're showing them oh i can do this myself or i could hire natalie to do it for me and save myself a lot of time in energy and headache then you've really shorten that sales cycle so i think a lot of service providers don't think about adding especially low ticket products into their offer suite but i think it actually is a great way to get people habit of buying from yale and get them a quick win get them wanting to work with you again yep and i think that it unveil the mystery it just it expedite everything but i think a lot of times when people are looking at a service provider it's usually a higher ticket investment and they wanna believe them right and in this space of especially remote cultures and you know all of this there's a lot of question that the cycle can be very very long so if you can give them a little bit of a taste of how you deliver your intellectual abilities or maybe some intellectual property very quickly it reaffirm to them that you're my person and maybe it repel them which is probably a blessing to you as well yes but i know that when we were going through the webinar we had a lot of people asking questions about what that looked like for an operator and so if you're listening to this today and you're thinking oh i wonder what that could be for me i will kinda share what some of the ideas that we had all come together with but if you're an operator and you're thinking oh what could i do for like seven dollars or maybe it's twenty seven dollars or maybe it's a hundred and seven dollars i don't really care what the amount is kate whole point is give them a taste that answers that question and delivers a result in a very collapsed timeline very quickly one of the things that as operators we are really good at being curious and we're really really good at spotting gaps or finding inefficiencies and so maybe your gift is automation maybe your gift is how to incorporate ai or maybe your gift is in spotting those gaps and spotting the weakness maybe your gift is in setting realistic and actual goals i mean there's a lot of gift that this community has so what does it look like to get in front of that for a really you know very low risk low investment but high value a lot of people were coming back and saying oh you know what i'm a strategist in x y and z ways all the ways i just told you and it doesn't really matter the type of strategist but the way that they were going to get in front of this and position themselves to get that first point of interaction of paid interaction was to do an audit of some sort so an audit is a great opportunity for a potential client or a prospect to be able to see how your brain works how you deliver you are who you say you are and for them to still walk away with something impactful if they get a little piece of that and you've only given them like one tiny tiny tiny tiny piece of your brain that can be done in a really you know fast timeline for you they're interested they're gonna remember you maybe they don't go on to become your client because it's not the right time for them but if you've been able to solve a problem a specific problem and a quicken them amount a time and you do what you say you're gonna do guess what now we go back to the second point that kate talked about earlier which is to partner with other people now they become a referral for you if they're not gonna work with you they still had a good experience they've still taken something away and the power of passing them forward is now possible if you never had that interaction they may never talk about you again so anyway i wanted to add that i got all excited about that but yeah i think audits are a great option and the other thing that came up on that webinar too was operators are obviously so good at organizing information data metrics tracking so any kind of tracker spreadsheet dashboard any kind of tool or something that you use that somebody could even just see oh wow like i'm a very visual person so if i got a great dashboard from somebody and it was pretty and it was organized and it helped me see the numbers that i needed to see i would be like oh my god if this is how they put things together and it can make my stuff look like this instead of some boring excel spreadsheet that i can't read i i definitely wanna work more with them i wanna find out more so i think that's another great option too and it's something that you could sell a million of and it doesn't cost you any more time because it's a scalable digital product yes well i love all of this today kate of i'm gonna wrap up here but i hope that all of you have been able to walk away believing something that i say all the time which is you actually don't need to be spending all that time on social media at least for a to build your business it is a mis it's a poor belief that you have do rely on social media when in fact it is one of the most i'm gonna say it corrupt ways of believing that your business will be a bigger blessing to more people it truly just isn't that way does it still have a space for you if you want it to but kate's here to tell you it actually doesn't have to be because she truly has not been on social since twenty twenty one and her business continues to be lean to have high margins and to do i mean before we hit record today she was telling me that she was you know out she's been on vacation enjoying her family and she's been able to do that because of the type of business that she has created we work so hard with our students to make sure that they're not copying the type of business i have or that their friend has or you know somebody else that they admire and respect you truly we are living in an age where you get to build an architect of business that serves you serves the stage of life that you're in to serve the passions the goals the dreams that you have for yourself we actually get to create that for ourselves and it doesn't you a huge to disservice to copy anybody else so hopefully these steps today will show you that you can do exactly that by not leveraging social media not putting the emphasis on it that maybe the outside forces are telling you you have to be there you have to invest in more people to do it better you need a better engine you're not good enough all those destructive things that are gonna stop you and delay you from being your next best self which i'm extremely passionate about here so yeah k thank you so much for coming on and for sharing and i would love for you to invite people into your orbit into all the great things that you have she's a great partner here at the ops authority we've had several students actually go on to partner with kate because if you've enjoyed me and what i stand for and what i believe in and how i teach you're probably going to be really interested in what kate has for you so tell us about that yes we have several d that have come in through my mindful business academy program which is basically like my everything offer all the strategies that we just talked about today are all taught in this program and i call it my everything offer because it's literally everything i sell all in one place for a fraction of the price if that's not where you're at today we also sell everything a la carte in our shop so you can say oh actually i really just wanna learn more about how to pick great go get pitch fast i really just wanna learn more about how to do an instagram nine grid and get off forever and never post again cool we can teach you just how to do that one thing so you can pick and choose we'll meet you where you're at and if you just wanna learn more about getting off the social media hamster wheel we've got a free four day challenge as well call it beyond the scroll and that'll help you take some of the first steps that we'll free you from the you know just as you said corrupt toxic cycle of social media and and find definitely freedom and joy on the other side fantastic and we'll have all those links for you here in our show notes so make sure to check those out i do wanna brag and commend those d for you know stepping in into building their business and looking for the right support for them kate is a great business coach and one thing that our audience really enjoys and i value as a learner is it's an accessible model both financially as well as the way that she teaches it it's not theoretical it is a combination of theory strategy and the how to is included and i think that that is such a big deal for operators because we get enamored by the you know how does that looking right but it's like how do we do this because we are very methodical analytical you know sequential thinkers and kate i have to tell you as much as you are a visionary you definitely have a strong operational muscle because i've seen your your teachings your trainings and the way that you educate and i i know that it's something that art our students and you know people that are listening today could really just it's it's believable you can do it because you show it and then we can learn it and do it as well so anyway i can go on and on and on i'm so grateful that we share the space and that you're willing to come in here and you know talk about these systems that are have you know they they get a lot of gl and glamour but they actually do not turn into a lot of dollars and i know a lot of people here are looking for some financial freedom and if we can do that in a realistic way i know you and i are all for it yeah absolutely thanks for having me that yes thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so great to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you add one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of this owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week and in the meantime do big things on the backside of your business

if you're here in you're a business builder then you are always in pursuit of clients and what's behind client acquisition it is a sales cycle cutting it in half sounds pretty impossible right well that's exactly what sandler training did with hubspot and they used their tool hubspot tool an ai tool called breeze it tailor every customer interaction without losing that personal touch which is so important and ai is doing amazing things like this we already know but hubspot hasn't it built in their results were really incredible their click through rates jumped by twenty five percent their qualified leads quadrupled and people spent three times longer on their landing page if you're interested in this you wanna go to hubspot dot com to see how breeze can help you grow your service based business this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast i'm your host natalie gen in today you've got just me no guest solo episode here with the founder of the ops authority here recording this podcast today and the emphasis for today is about the evolution and the next era of the ops authority it is a massive big big time for this business because i'm really doing something pretty much outside of my comfort zone and so today i'm gonna be pulling back the curtain and really sharing everything that has been on my heart and then also showing off all of the hard work that my team has done you know we have built such a great great product here and i'm really excited to unveil that and to show that to you but as i get started i just wanted to kinda give my heart piece of this and then we'll move into more of the tactical stop and what this has looked like for me but i've heard this quote and i've heard it for so long it actually searched the internet to see where it came from and there's no one that i can actually give a solid of attribution to but they did say that mark cuban said it but i know that there's been a lot more people before mark cuban and that quote is the only thing that stays the same is change and you probably have heard it that change is the only thing that stays the same and i'm gonna put a little like astra cure to say in business so the only thing that stays the same in business is changed i have mentored thousands of people over my professional career in the last thirty plus years and i can tell you i have said that so many times it didn't matter if i was in my corporate days and mentoring people who were looking to grow outside or grow within the company i would tell them it's totally normal to feel like you want something new you want something bigger you want something better you really are at a place where you wanna change directions totally it's okay you can do that internally and externally and then i have coached and mentored so many people inside of the ops authority who i have given the exact same advice for and the reality is that there are so many reasons behind change and why that comes about sometimes change is a result of growth opportunities like maybe things are going so great and you were growing at a pace and now it's time to change other times it's because maybe you went out on a limb and you tried something and it didn't work so now you've got a change and you've got a course correct also i'm not going to lie we've got other really tactical reasons why change can be inevitable that can be economic drivers we're in a space right now it's twenty twenty five it's q three twenty twenty five when i'm recording this and i would be absolutely lying if i sat here and said that the economy has not shifted the way we work how we work who we work with and all of the above economic shifts are massive drivers for change technology disruptions oh my goodness right now as you're listening to this we're in one of the biggest if not the biggest disrupt based off of technology in my entire lifetime we thought the internet was big oh no artificial intelligence way bigger way more profound impacts on our lives and of course business as a result another reason that change can come up as financial positions so if you need to make more then you're going to have to do something different in your business you're gonna have to change your business maybe it's your business model maybe it's who you're working with maybe it's the team that supports you maybe it's your delivery but financially when your position changes it's going to affect the business like i mentioned you can have staff changes maybe turnover maybe somebody leaving your company abruptly that you really leaned on and as a small business i'm not gonna lie you really really really have to pay attention to all of these because in a small and a tight in a lean company when someone leaves it creates a bigger hole than anything that you could have ever imagined inside of a larger corporate style organization another reason for change is like a personal rec calibration of your needs or your goals when i first left corporate a long time ago i had one goal for myself my husband and i had this one goal he just said that you can do anything you want but you have to bring home fifteen hundred dollars every single month that fifteen hundred dollars was gonna cover our mortgage now this has been a hot minute ago but that was what our financial needs were and i hustle and i worked and i put things together that could fill that gap of fifteen hundred dollars now since then the last ten years our financial needs have changed because our lifestyle has changed my kids are older my kids are in college friends you will never be more broke than when your kids go to school people say oh day care so expensive trust when your kids go off to college it's a whole different style of financial maturity and financial actually just being strapped financially but anyway i've had to personally recalibrate how much i take home and how much we need to take home which means i have to work differently in our company so i know all of these things to be true because we have changed and we have pivoted inside of the ops authority over these last nine years that i have been in business because of all of the reasons that i just shared with you there are so many different reasons for change and i want you to know that that truly is that sentiment of the only thing that stays the same in business is change is absolutely true so if you're going to be in business i tell people this all the time service providers we love stability we love to be able to i'm gonna say the word control the environment and make something really procedural and standardize and methodical so that it can be easy to repeat that's away my brain works and i'm sure it's the way that your brain works ultimately it puts us in a place of being really risk ave ave but i'm gonna tell you today and i have to tell myself this i had to do mindset work on this because that is my natural state wanting to really create something very solid something that is stable something that doesn't change very often but you heard me say it and i know this myself the only thing that stays the same in business is change so if you are going to be i doesn't matter if you're a solo if you want a team in an empire of fifty employees it doesn't matter things are going to change sometimes in your control and sometimes out of your control inside of business and i have been sitting in that space of necessary change for one year i started this company nine years ago i started as a solo running this business serving clients in leveraging my services my skills my gifts and my abilities i worked inside of companies in a fractional capacity doing that i worked for myself i didn't have any team over the last nine years i have built out a solid team and that team obviously requires payment right and so with that we have had to you know generate more income and in addition to that our vision our mission of serving operators has continued to grow but about a year ago and i'm gonna say exactly a year ago i started to feel something really different in my gut and to me it was a disrupt to me it felt really uncomfortable i have always had a very clear vision for this company and to no fault of my own just the ability to be able to be so passionate about something so passionate about the people that we serve and that lean on us that trust us to help them do their work bigger better brighter for all of those reasons i have stayed and remain so passionate about the body of work that we have now i spend i was telling you i spend a lot of time on helping people to create the vision for their life the vision for their company and i'm completely in that business too i don't just teach you i do that every single year i make it a point by the end of every single year that i'm gonna revisit both my personal as well as the ops authorities mission vision and values now your mission will change if your services your offerings and your audience change your values rarely change actually i established our company values when our culture began to grow so about five years ago i established these very clear values it was only about a year ago that we added one more to that so your values are pretty stagnant they stay the same because they're very deeply rooted now your vision is something that doesn't really change of those three things your mission is gonna change the most because the only thing that stays the same in business is changed so your mission is going to change but your vision is five to ten years out and so that doesn't change as much because it takes so much work to get closer to that vision but this is work that i do every single year and i make sure to do it the hard thing about rec cali your mission your vision and your values especially your vision is that it's not something that you can just like put on your calendar and you can say okay today or this friday from eight to noon i'm gonna sit down and i'm gonna re look at my vision well you can do that and you can check the box but it won't be intentional it won't be deeply rooted and that's what i expected of myself to continue to lead this business and to continue to have the trust and partnership from all of our students and our customers it's important for me in my team my goodness it is important for me to have a clear vision of what it wants and guess what if it doesn't change that much year over year that's okay you're not doing anything wrong but for me something really started to feel uncomfortable not in a negative way in a very expansive way so i started to see the vision of the ops authority in a very different light than i was seeing it for the last like three to four years and this was bigger than anything i had ever seen before honestly it a way too big for me i doubted that i could actually pull off this vision and i really i i tried to prove it wrong i tried to not believe it i didn't tell my team about this for about six yeah six solid months i didn't wanna tell them because it really it felt that big for me i knew it was gonna cause a lot of work if we actually did it so i kept telling myself oh i'll stay safe and i'll just keep it up in my mind and maybe when the time is right or this is you know all of these excuses caused me to hold on to this and to not share it with the closest most trusted assets that i have in business which are my team friends i even did like market research for the sole purpose of talking myself out of it i kept thinking if i find an a facts i will prove to myself that there's no way i could do this i also told myself especially in the last six months you know what with all these economic changes this is a really bad time for me to try to do this i'm just gonna wait i'm gonna wait and then it bubble up to the point where it was like a tea kettle that had reached the boiling pot it was like blast off i could not keep this to myself i couldn't avoid talking about it dreaming about it and working on it so me and my team finally shared with them and me and my team began to build this out we were so intentional we were very strategic we were also scrappy and lean but we were committed we were just celebrating here recently that we set a due date and we met every single milestone now y'all know i'm a fantastic project manager like that's what we do here as operators and that is a skill set that every single person on my team is very very proficient and but i'm not gonna lie and tell you that we hit all of our milestones and we hit you know all of our deadlines we don't there's a lot of things that we're juggling here and so things don't go as planned just like they don't end your projects as well but for this project for whatever reason we hit every single target deadline milestone so today i wanted to spend some time to share with you what in the world this vision actually looks like for the ops authority and hopefully you'll be as excited as i am about this and most importantly i hope that i can convey this in a way to where you can see where we started and where we're growing and what kind of goodness that means for you as someone who is in our ops insiders world if you're listening to this we consider you an insider but i hope that you take this one step further and you see that dreaming can be scary dreaming can feel risky there's is a weight with thinking and really being specific with your vision but the payoff will bring this excitement that you're hearing from me alright so just trust yourself in that alright so what is this new era of the ops authority well i have taken a deep look and what we know outside of that everything changes is everything changes in business but it also you change your skills change the tools that you're using to execute on those skills change your circumstances change which means that your career has to change as well we are not the same person that we were let's just back it up ten years ago or a decade ago think back to who you were what you were doing ten years ago think about the job title itself what were you doing ten years ago now fast forward to where you are today wow remarkable differences right the greatest thing that i have ever truly believed and taught and tried to propagate to anybody who would listen to me is that we owe it to ourselves every single day to become the next best version of ourselves the times when i have been in a fun the times when i have felt defeated the times when i lived in fear the times that i was scared it's all because i stopped looking for and i really became obsessed internally which slowed me down and it was certainly not my next best version all of those negative feelings i'm just gonna call him more of like a depressive state they result when i'm hiding when i am totally slipping back to my last version of myself when i feel fear or threatened i don't typically it's not innate in me to rise up what is so natural is to go into that turtle shell into hide so if we owe it to ourselves and if our best date is thinking about the next best version of self then let's make that happen it's imperative that we continue to march forward we continue to equip ourselves with all the things the people the resources to become our next best version and this next era at the ops authority is doing just that as i'm getting into this i don't know how much you know about me but i just wanted to share with the vision of this era the ops era no doubt a play on taylor swift i love it but there's like eight eras in me just in me over the last thirty years there are eight versions of me and they're still counting because i'm only at thirty and i've got another twenty years in me right of working years i'll have more twenty on this earth but god willing anyway i i wanna take you through that journey of those thirty years in all the different versions friends i started out as a nurse version one is a nurse version two i was a professor version three the corporate girl era number four the chief of staff at a thirty six thousand employee company i never expected to be that remember refer back to version one where i was a nurse now i am in corporate america working in human resources project management and now i am the chief of staff what an unexpected journey but i continued to put my next best self forward and that meant that i had to make a really big change i had to shift from corporate into my own thing all because my vision for my life at that point was to support my family in a different way to become the mother that i dreamt of and not that corporate mom who is trying to do everything at home everything in corporate i needed to change and disrupt the way that we were living so that i could fulfill on my vision so now we're into natalie fifth era which is when i be came a solo service provider just like you i have the operational skills that it took me a second to realize that these were actually unique and not every single person had these but i took it upon myself to use the skill of project management and event management and i stood up my first business which was natalie gin dot com i literally partnered with business owners in the online space to help them with their project management that continued to evolve from a fractional space into a larger part time and even full time for a small stint of supporting people's holistic operations inside of their growing scaling businesses it's about this time that natalie sixth era my sixth version pops up and that's when i founded the ops authority there's a shift from that solo to the founder of the ops authority because that's when my team began to grow and this is only four short years ago about that same time the seventh version of me which you may know me from is the author of the director of operations certification this was a huge undertaking and it is the body of work that i am the most proud of in my professional existence it has brought so much growth for so many other people here that takes me to the eighth i thought that actually the seventh version of me is where i thought i would stop i was content i was happy i was doing my life's work i was working with the best people i had have existing an amazing team and about a year ago as i mentioned i started to really wrestle with that next vision that i had for the ops authority and i knew it was bigger than me but this eighth version of me is the visionary for all operations professionals not just directors of operations not just chief executive officers not just chiefs of staff this is now what i'm being called to do is to help be the visionary for all operations professionals that are looking to elevate and expand their career so here at the ops authority we are starting something brand new something that's gonna revolutionize the way that operators grow professionally and we're doing it in a way that is not your typical growth pattern we're gonna be able to do something different to where we can now serve every single operator in any industry and at any level of the business it doesn't matter if you're entry level or peer at the very very top we're also going to be able to bring operations education in an accessible and an affordable format i'm not ignorant to the economic changes that are happening right now i understand we're holding on to our money a lot tighter so it was my goal to build this in a way that could be accessible and affordable we are going to create we are creating the only marketplace exclusively for operators i'm not calling in marketers and all of these other types of people we are only focused on operators which is something that's near and dear to my heart but this is going to be the only marketplace exclusively for operators when we do this we're gonna minimize the amount of time it takes you to elevate in your ops career and that's what i believe deeply is going to help you get closer and closer to your next best self so dun the name of this is called the shop for ops now i'd love me some good iteration and the way that this arrives but the shop for ops has officially arrived has been birthed out of this vision from one year ago it is here today and i could not be more excited for what we are now able to provide all operators this is the only destination that's creative exclusively for all ops professional it's a collection of trainings and templates and technology and tools we've got master classes and guides and frameworks and resources all inside of one container called the shop for ops we're gonna be focusing on strategy and theory and practical application i believe that that is something that's really unique to the ops authority because i have been in the space of growth and development for a really long time and it's so common to cling on or to be taught and led by somebody who's really good in one of those three areas they're either really good strategist they're really good theorist or they're really good at the application piece we have a very comprehensive teaching style which combines all of those and that's what you're gonna find inside of the shop for ops this truly is a one of a kind playground for learning for growth and for development four operators as we're kicking off today i wanna tell you that there are three main buckets when we were kinda doing this design of this product there were three areas that made the most sense and that i know that our community wants to learn from one is the operational skills the tactical skills that we need to continue to refine what it is that we do to refine our craft even expand our craft so that we can create better offerings that elevate us to our next best self this is gonna cover your common disciplines of operations so project management human resources data financial technology administration those things the second category outside of operational skills is business strategy so if you're here because you're monetizing your operation skill set and you're building a business around it you're gonna need business strategy this is different than building anything else you can trust us because we've already done this this collection is gonna enhance the way that you structure your business it's gonna help you with how to attract clients how to market your business because it's different as a solo business or as a service provider business you're gonna market yourself differently you're not gonna have as many resources to be able to go you know running facebook ads and having really big campaigns you're still going to be able to be very successful and we wanna make sure that you're focusing on a lean operation so that you take home all that cash within the business strategy category you're also going to find systems for selling as well as for pricing we get so many questions around that and then the third pillar or category is career growth this is for all of you guys because every single one of you guys does are desi growth and to continuously develop and if you're gonna do that you're gonna have to have the support beyond the skills and the strategy that we just talked about this is the category where you're going to expand on your soft skills relationships communication leadership balance balance for you balance for you as a mom balance for you as a female and balance as a wife inside of a company as well as running your own company is so so important that's where you're going to be able to expand and to elevate so we've got these three different containers operational skills business strategy and career growth underneath each of those you've got really finite topics which are where our trainings are going to come from at the time of recording every single product in the shop for ops is gonna be in one of those categories and i think the biggest thing one of the greatest disrupt here is that these products are going to be between seven dollars and a hundred and forty seven dollars that may change over time but at the time of unveiling the shop for ops we've got very low priced accessible products for you my greatest desire is to serve more people and we know that pricing is going to increase accessibility also all of these products are going to be able to be downloaded instantly so this is not where you need to show up to calls you don't need to carve out time to meet face to face this is all asynchronous and you're gonna be able to instantly download this and another great thing is these are not just for ops professionals but also owner operator so if you're a solo and you don't have a dedicated operator inside of your business and you're wearing the hat as an owner operator these tools are going to be fantastic for you as well so i've just shared with you what the shop for ops is like today now remember all of the stories about the vision i was having here's where it comes together in twenty twenty six the shop for ops is going to expand exponentially this is when the shop for ops will become a bona fide marketplace what do you mean by that not well we're going to be able to rapidly expand the number of products that we have inside of our shop because we're going to leverage our certified directors of operations these are the finest the brightest the most diverse operations leaders i know and they have knowledge and wisdom to meet the needs of more than what i can do on my own so what you're seeing today inside of the shop is not what the shop is going to look like in the future if you imagine going to amazon are going to etsy those are marketplaces where you can literally pull lots of different things off of the shelf kind of in an a la carte manner one of the things that we are doing as we have launched and something that you're gonna see us you know do a couple of times throughout the year is we're gonna run campaigns where we're going to allow you to come into the shop and to buy an all access pass these all access passes are gonna give you an opportunity for a really reduced price to buy everything to get access to everything in the shop that you see at that moment for a massive massive discount these are gonna come out during you know like i said during different times of the year and when we put together some different campaigns hint tent look out for black friday if you missed this launch then no that hint intent we're probably gonna have one of those campaigns around black friday so just know that our all access passes are going to be an awesome opportunity for you to come in and really absorb every single thing but if you're interested in something and you don't wanna wait till the all access pass is available i encourage you to go into the shop there's a search function in there and you can search click up you can search project management you can search mindset you can search communication roi reporting data financials whatever it is make sure to go over there and just give a quick search all of our products are gonna be between seven and a hundred and forty seven dollars for the time being as we were kicking off we identified a lot of products that we could put inside of the shop we gave ourselves a timeline we gave ourselves a goal of initially starting with twenty products inside of our shop and we were able to do just that but that doesn't mean that we're not going to continue to put my brain and wisdom inside of the shop we have about fifteen products that are up our sleeves right now we're never gonna stop this is the place that we are going to put my new content inside of and like i said we have fifteen identified products that are going to be making their way into the shop over the next six to eight months and i would be lying if i didn't tell you that i can't tell you how many times i'm driving in my car and you know we already have already mapped out with the products that are going in the shop the ones that are on our road roadmap but as i'm driving around or i'm having conversations or i'm mentoring other people i'm like a that's a great idea i keep making notes of more and more products to put inside of the shop so you're not gonna run out of ways to learn from us you are going to only be able to learn more have a greater platform for seeing the way i do operations and then in twenty twenty six you'll have the opportunity to see how other people inside of our certified alumni community are tackling ops today if you're wondering hey i have always wanted to do the director of operations certification program where does that fit well friends as i started this business remember back to version i think it was five of me where i was the solo i came in here and i was doing all of the things as i began to become the founder of the ops authority we began growing a team we now have a program manager over the director of operations which has been my baby it's been what i've been working on for the past six years things it isn't a very stable yet thriving place and it's got an owner on top of it it's like i may be like the president but we have a program manager who directs who sets everything up who is fully in charge it is now her baby as well and the certification going nowhere in fact we're gonna continue to be on a mission to serve more and more people at that level that will always be our signature are immersive in our most transformational opportunity to gain the highest level of and the most in operational skills the other thing about the certification that makes it so special and another reason we'll never let it go is that that's the only place within the ops authority where you're going to get one to one coaching high high amounts of accountability so that you complete the coursework so that you get the result that you want which is to be certified as a director of operations in the shop we're really looking at a comprehensive view of operations meaning different levels right so we're able to serve all different levels in the certification we are really building strategist operational strategist so that's where that content is we're gonna continue to bring on three cohorts every single year and there's a lot of licensed material and intellectual property within the certification and it is going to stay there the items that are in the shop there are not duplicates they are not duplicates of what is in the director of operations certification program which means if you're already a certified d or if you want to be but the timing the financial resources just haven't aligned for you yet you can partake and still grow with the shop for ops it's a great complement to the certified d program that we run three times a year so that is what has been on my heart that's what we have been working on so hard over this last division was about a year but we've pulled all of this together in a very short time frame of six months which may feel long for you but it has been a rapid pace working over here and i just wanna say thank you thank you for being here thank you for listening thank you for believing in your growth it's because you believe in your growth that you value operations education because of that you light me up to continue to serve more to serve greater to serve deeper just thank you for walking in this journey with me the shop for ops is bigger than a collection of tools this is truly my commitment to operators at all levels to operating professionals to owner operators for you to continue to grow your career your confidence and for you to evolve as an operator this entire product the shop for ops was built specifically for you with you in mind for our director of operations community and for every single operator that is tired of wing it and for those who have a burning desire to do more i cannot wait to see what the shop for ops does for our profession and honestly for the entire world this has a really big ability to be a massive disrupt and i am here for all of that i'd love for you to go check out the shop for ops dot com take a browse let me know if you find anything in there and we'll be seeing you inside of our free facebook community the ops insiders dot com i'd love to hear the product that you just could not live without alrighty friend thank you so much for listening in thank you for giving me the space to share my heart the ideas that i have and to be a little bit vulnerable about how this big idea was planted on me and i tried to run and i did escape the hiding of that which is why we were also proud today to unveil and debut the shop for ops alright go take a look over there and you will be hearing from me very very soon you guys continue to do big things and always be working on your next best sell thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you add one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear for me in a week and in the meantime new big on the backside of your business

if you're here in you're a business builder then you are always in pursuit of clients and what's behind client acquisition it is a sales cycle cutting it in half sounds pretty impossible right well that's exactly what sandler training did with hubspot and they used their tool hubspot tool an ai tool called breeze it tailor every customer interaction without losing that personal touch which is so important and ai is doing amazing things like this we already know but hubspot hasn't it built in their results were really incredible their click through rates jumped by twenty five percent their qualified leads quadrupled and people spent three times longer on their landing page if you're interested in this you wanna go to hubspot dot com to see how breeze can help you grow your service based business this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop erin kelly and natalie welcome to the simple pin podcast hey hey hello i'm so excited to record this and i've introduced you all in the intro so everybody has a little bit of background so wanna gonna jump into how we got started with our mastermind here and i'm gonna start with my first part of the story and how that kind of kicks off and then we'll kind of have each one of us tell where we came onto the scene but in twenty seventeen there was a conference that we had all went to and in the evening there was a girl that i connected with there and there was lots of wine flowing and we began the conversation with what if we could recreate this on a smaller scale where we are having these conversations about business and life and faith and it's this long standing group where we could really connect and go deeper in business and it was like well yeah that's a good idea who's gonna start it and the two of us kind of looked at each other like well i guess we can and it became this like who do you know who do you you know wanna connect with who do you wanna be involved one of the things that are important and this conversation is only literally like thirty minutes maybe and the idea for a mastermind was born and i think actually natalie you are the next one i think that i mentioned this to that i said hey do you wanna be a part of this so i guess pick up on that part of the story that of how if we remember because we talked about how this is twenty seventeen like you know eight years ago nine years eight years ago yeah i can't do bath so nat tell me where you pick up on this where you hear about this mastermind idea i like counting good numbers the years with my fingers because it has been a hot minute and honestly when i think of eight years and like where we were that night kate y'all have like gone the distance with me the whole time i have been in pretty much the whole time i've had an emerging business at least so yeah so that we were all at this conference and what a pivotal like what just thinking back just what a great pivotal moment for me to be able to join in with partnership of you guys in a different way that we might think of partnership from a business perspective but yes the wine was flowing i remember you guys coming over to me it was also a really pivot that day specifically it was a very pivotal day for me which we will not need to go into in the thought path but i felt a sister hood this that was like the biggest gift because it was a very trying day it was a from a developmental perspective and growth perspective it was huge it was a destroying day and also a day that was met with a ton of just love and french friendship and when this opportunity i just got goosebumps but when this opportunity came up and you you know included me in this mustard seed of what could be it was like maybe this is going to truly be a mastermind that serves me in a different way than all of the other ones that i had participated in thus far mh and i looked at the people that you guys would had approached me kelly is that the first time i'd had met you i no no wait i'll talk about that origin store because i didn't meet you until we got on the plane to cancun mh really because that was it was the next year that kelly had come to that conference so it was really just the few of us were there and i actually went kelly we were in that personal mastermind and i was like hey because actually to what you just said nat i think at that moment i had that same ache for something that could be deep and personal and we had had this kind of zoom mastermind was like there's something missing here like it's not going to that next level so it it's kind of like when that piece happened then i went back to kelly i was like hey what do you think about i don't even know how it started so actually now i'll jump to unless not you have more to share on that i'm just left if someone's watching this on youtube they're probably like why is she sm i instantly went to cancun to a flight to cancun yeah oh my gosh well think i think just to summarize where i was and to move the story forward i was in a place of wanting to be connected to people that were you know like minded and then also different which i know will also dive into as well but it really came at just such an offer at a great time for me in my journey and i felt like i was playing with the big girls playing with people that been in the business who had really understood a lot more and had more history than i did and in this specific space and so it was just such a big gift and a big honor to be asked to be a part of it yeah it was definitely in the beginning of something amazing i can't wait to get to that cancun flight kelly so i i come to you and actually i don't even know if i don't actually remember the conversation so you tell me your perspective of how this door kinda of cracked open well i think i just butted myself in if we're gonna be honest so like you guys are looking at me funny but like because i have known uk for eternity like that i mean i mean over a decade and probably closer to two thousand eleven at aaron's conference did yeah and i've known aaron for that amount of time too and aaron and i have traveled a lot together so you know we knew each other really well and i had heard i think you had mentioned something about this or aaron had don't remember but then i was like well i won't be part of it too and so because aaron had been invited by another person at the time into the group and i just remember i kinda butted my little butt in there and i was like i won't be part of this because for the same reason we had been part of a personal mastermind together i've been in other mastermind too over the years and i was just looking for something deeper and different and i was kind of letting myself be open to that so yeah and didn't meet mad until the plane ride because not and aaron are both from the same area in san antonio and they were flying and we were meeting up at houston okay houston and so like i met them at the gate and met nap for the first time in aaron for the first time and then we took advantage of the free beverages on southwest and then i i knew instantly like this was gonna work because i'm also introverted which you three are extroverted and so it is kinda scary to meet new people you know and to put yourself out there but like i knew by the of that flight that i was gonna be fine so yeah oh so good so aaron tells us how you kind of you know got your way in because it what you and i knew each other and but i actually didn't know what was kind of working behind the scenes until i think kelly might have told me like hey erin it's gonna join them i was like oh no way so tell me a little bit about that i think do i remember this i think it was kind of a joint like i knew kelly i knew you i had been in a small four person mastermind with somebody previously that ended because one of those members was no longer gonna be working an online business kind of going back to sort of mom life and in that season of her life and so it are that one just sort of ended so i was at like a hey i would love for this type of thing to continue it's such a blessing to me and when this came about it was just like okay that's the natural extension because and knew both of you not at least literally up the road but i didn't know her yet and so it just sort of i say i fell into it it but it also goes to you know who do you know who is like doing something similar to you and but not well competitive anyways right i know we'll get into that so i think it just seemed like the natural fit because we this is a very difficult night life to understand being a woman business owner it's all on you you know building a team i mean there's so much to all of this instead of have the comm the empathy the support the strap bouncing i mean there's so much and so that it was just thrill gift to me so i think i sort of fell into it don't know that i bullied my way like kelly thinks she did even though she did it but i think i kinda fell into it just through knowing you guys through the event circuit and the grapevine vine and whatnot well and one of the things that i didn't say in the beginning which i think is important to know is that we did start with seven original members and in november was when we had this first conversation and in march was april when was our first may february into february okay for spring break yes i do remember the spring breakers in the transfer van from the airport that was real intense so we met with seven and i think what's important to note is that we are all gathering in cancun and that was a really important component to it was that we didn't want it to just be on zoom we wanted it to be this intensive or we came together we were able to talk about those three elements of business life and face and we were able to kinda bump along and figure out what it was going to be so this first one was really an experiment in is this going to work like are we actually going to connect and gel and that first one was great and then we had two members fall off and then we had five and then a couple years later we had another member of fall off so i think what's important for people listening to note is that if you're trying to start a pure mastermind you need to be flexible you need to be willing to ebb and flow with the differences of people and it could be their schedules it could be their personality could be their stage of life but it is going to take a long time for you to curate a culture within the group that you have that allows for those things to happen so that i think it's was just really important it was seven of us we all met cancun cone we purposely chose an all inclusive because we did not wanna have to think about meals we didn't wanna think about having to spend extra money on different things we wanted to just arrive at a destination and mexico really offers that because there's no all inclusive in the us and this was we didn't wanna do an airbnb we have since done those but this was just a really good opportunity for us to meet there and be together so that's kind of the jump off point from here and kind of how the group has evolved so before i get into kind of the differences i wanna say this is that we have met multiple places over the years we have done some years we've done two meetings a year sometimes we've done one meeting year we actually were in mexico as the world was shutting down for covid and we were barely got back which is great we were in cabo so we have done cabo multiple times they have done cancun we've done palm springs we have done texas so we've chosen a dot a lot of different locations but also one of the things to know is that we're all mothers we're all mothers of kids who are around the same age in fact three of us just graduated kids from college and from high school so that's a lot to accommodate baseball schedules sports schedules you have to have a group that is okay with that and i think this group that we have here of the four we landed really well in these things but i wanna address our differences and so i wanna jump in first with that to natalie i wanna kinda toss that to you we don't have the same business models and that's actually really cool but i guess talk a little bit about those differences that you've seen kind of emerge as we've kind of created our culture yeah i think it's one of the greatest things of this container that we have created for ourselves and it's one that has allowed me to really feel like i could contribute and i could receive and so part i i mentioned earlier and i think all of us and even those of you guys are listening have probably been in other peer groups or other groups pay you or peer and it was important for me at the moment that we all came together and still continues to be very important to me that i was in a peer group and you know the pay groups had served me well in the past but the thing about us c this together and really to find that synergy i knew that i needed number one at peer group but number two i needed to be in a place where i could receive i do a lot i find myself just the person that i am i find myself in places where i give give give i'm an operator and so what that means to me is like i'm always listening i would say i'm a good listener but i'm always finding gaps and ways to improve what someone is telling me whether that's my kids whether that's my friends and my husband my business friends this mastermind it doesn't matter like that's just the way that my brain works and so i have found myself so many times in places where i am in a mastermind or in a container or group where all i really do is give give give and i haven't and this is a flaw in my own self but where i haven't either felt comfortable or been around the right people to be able to receive and ask and so the thing i think that has made this group for me be so sticky in a place of comfort and true authenticity is that i've been able to find people who are like me and who are different for me not even personally or personally as well as professionally and this group's differences are far and wide even though we have stuck together and we have a lot of synergy there's is i mean we're more different than we are alike but for the right reasons it works and you know we've mentioned we've got faith differences we've got political differences we've got business differences the things that are similar we've already talked about we are all mothers we are all christian we all find faith the middle of us we all value family we are in this digital space that is different for each of us our in consumer looks different but there's a lot of things that are very similar too which of course are going to be the threads that hold you together so if you're listening to this and you're thinking me and how do i curate something like this for myself i think the natural things to find people who are like you but the thing that has made this so sticky for me is that there are a lot of differences as well and these women have really mentored me because they all came into the digital space before me they knew the landscape and they've been able to give me perspective and advice and i just found myself in a place where i could truly be open to whatever it is that the experience that they had and the wisdom that they had and if i you know looked at this like every other group that i've ever joined i may not have i've have said yes so the differences this have been very very po for me yeah and a lot of groups actually would hold them back it would say i don't want somebody who's so different i want everybody here as a you know there's to b2b b businesses and two business to consumer businesses they would say i only want b i only wanna learn and i think when people join with that take take take mentality it sap the group dry because you're going into it with this like i just wanna get what i want from this group and then get out but there's so much that we wanna contribute to each other and actually kelly i think one of the things that you brought up that was so great when we were prepping for this and i was asking like what are the things you guys wanna talk about you brought up this idea of superpower like what does each of us possess that contributes to the group to elevate the group so i wanna talk about that first like what i guess what spurred that thought for you and in kind of wanting that to be a really important question that was brought to the table well we all have different businesses and because of our businesses you can say well they're really good at x right so like you know kate you have an agency and you know aaron and i are both business to consumer and that you've got you know this like amazing d that you do and so like those are your super superpower right we wouldn't have gotten into business without those but i think the other thing that i learned is we spent more time together is that each of you have other superpower as well and you know as aaron mentioned this is a crazy business to be it's lonely it's you know you don't have coworkers really that you're seeing on a day to day basis you know we've all talked about that being an entrepreneur is like the worst session of therapy ever like all of your bad stuff comes flying out and so it was nice to be able to kinda see how else we can help each other so like you know for uk you have an agency so you are so great already at putting together teams and systems and that the way that you you know just really have that connection with your team but in addition to that like you are one of the best connectors i know of people you do an amazing job of knowing people and then knowing how to connect them to other people for them to continue on their journey and that's not something that is necessary to your as part of who you are you know and i talked you know with aaron aaron is my greatest cheerleader like she firmly believes that all of us have the ability to do whatever we wanna do and she will say it on a regular basis like we'll just go do it you can do that you totally you can do that like all the time but the other thing you don't know about aaron is that she has a steel trap for people and their names and everything else so like we've bend to conferences and out don't know anybody because like a name goes in my head and then completely out and she's like well that's so and so and i'm like who she's like well they do and then she will have like their whole backstory story down and like then she goes up to him and then she's connecting and they're connecting with her and like that is just it's a superpower that i don't have but i know if i have a question about somebody that's what i'm gonna call because like she's gonna remember who they are nat is amazing at operations of course she is right i mean like and just like she said like i always build those gaps but nat is the best communicator i've ever encountered where she can take we've all had this like a really hard situation that we've came to the table with and she articulate it in a way that is fair and it is kind but it is to the point like she just does it in such a way and i'm always like writing you know to do that so i think those are things that help a mastermind it's just not to your to matt's point into your point kate just take take take but that you can come and that they can help you out in ways that are degree different than even what their business is yeah absolutely erin to you know bridging off of that what do you see in each of us that has kind of really help support your business on that superpower piece you know what has been the stand thing about na and kelly and i that's really supported you i mean i think d kelly obviously i think there's things that you've each pushed me to do that i wouldn't necessarily have done to understand like how i tick then how that like translates to both day to day and like high level sort of things you know even practical things like i don't know that i ever would have done a disc profile if natalie didn't know the brilliance in that and like how that like of that is so important for understanding how you operate and then team members operate and then how you click together like they're that that's the same for you uk like just knowing how all of that works y'all have always had a bigger team than i have had and so it's been a joy to see that be managed in a way that you know maybe i well one day maybe be i don't know and so that's been a real gift to me as well and i just think that like this we believe all each of you has created this space that it makes me think of that the little tiktok thing that goes around we listen in and we don't judge like that's how this group has been from day one like we're just here to listen and then solve problems i think that actually is the really maybe we haven't talked too much about that like we're here to help each other solve these very unique problems maybe not i mean unique to you know online entrepreneurship maybe not necessarily unique to business so i feel like big disk space i guess safe space i don't wanna sound like a snowflake but it really has been that and just getting this is more general than each of these specifically but getting that like love back and support back whether it's a life crisis because i think we've all had one of those and you know helping navigate through that with grace and patience and also pushing forward i don't know i'm kinda rambling but i think their tribute has spoken into my life my heart my mind my business in different ways over the years really and i think it comes back to that like this is just a safe supportive place and that each of you is a you know very important part of that despite you know differences seasons of life graduation i don't even know which direction was the last month but here we still are right so i just feel like it's the love and support from each of you and d out to what kelly said so i agreed matt what about you like feedback on powers differences mh collectively it's i look at this group as my like board of directors if you will right this is like as aaron said it's a safe place but i see this container as truly my board if you will my best friends in business my you know this it's wild especially from someone from the outside looking in maybe even someone who's not been in this entrepreneurial world before but these you know the three of you guys are some of my best friends on the planet and our touch points are not like anyone else's best friends right because it's a whole different world and it's very very hard to articulate or even envision and i'm so grateful that we took the time and to build what we have here so if you're thinking of or if you're wanting and desi something like this i think that's a good i want to share that with you guys that i really have invested so deeply in these relationships because they are you know on a personal side they're are some of my best friends and then on a business side i look at them as my board and why does that match because when i'm inc new ideas before i'm like have the courage to tell my spouse or my director of operations or my team they hear it they hear it ugly and these are the people this is my say the word again that this is my board and when i think of that i look at each of you individually i think wow like kelly's is a person who i can bring is she truly doesn't like she's got such a great creative mind and very strategic and also balanced with that data piece and the gift of telling somebody with no filter how she really feel and and it's not personal it's like she's gonna make it to how my market like she really inserts herself into a prospective director of operations even though she's not one but you think she doesn't follow my stuff on social you think she doesn't listen intently to me she absolutely does and so when i come to her with a big idea she's like hey let's like let's look at it this way nat or like let's take this a little you know three steps further down or let's expand it and there have been some things that i put into my business that truly she has cultivated off of my mustard seeds she's taken and made something else erin i you know erin ability to genuinely listen to you she's a fan eva i watch her here she's just a fantastic listener but her experience in this space and we have weird overlaps of like of local friends who we each have you know parts of their businesses and our brains and stuff so we've got a lot of synergy there but when i share something with erin she meets me with that operator brain she is very creative and strategic but she's also the one who's gonna help me like break it down and actually make it come into its next version and then you know kate and i have the most similarities of our group because we are both you know b to b we both are natural our native state is being a service provider i think that just our histories are very similar we both have a passion for building team based businesses and stuff like that and so you know i lean on her because she understands more than kelly or aaron about what my business is doing or what i'm facing in with these economic changes and you know i all of us have been through the highs of business together and we joke about them i forgot what we call twenty twenty money oh with twenty twenty one yeah working buy a yacht like we broke we i mean actually that with our said good laughs but anyway we've gone through twenty twenty money and we've gone through the secrets that we don't want anyone to hear and we don't want to vet with our audiences and heck we may not wanna share with our spouses but it's like we've gone through the man should i what should i do next like should i really bail from this like this is really really a tough season we've navigated all of those together and i just got chills again so but such a fantastic group yeah i so agree yeah i was thinking twenty twenty money when we were talking about that and i think to that point of i believe it was in march of twenty one we are in marco island it was kind of the first time we could get back to other after covid yes that was there's so many stories you guys but we did i think the strengths finder during that and we've talked about the ground before and matt and i've taken the colby and our colby are almost identical they're like one number off so when we did that though what was really interesting is kelly you so high on like a marketing and the strategy and i'm not like i don't even think about it like i i'm in the relationship piece i'm in this like positivity space not the kelly isn't positive but that's like one of the things and it was so great to see those differences and like erin is such a she's a quick start which is opposite on the colby of matt and i who are fact finder who we are just like sometimes analysis paralysis and aaron's like get just do it like go like research and do it take charge and those all come together in this really cool place where it's almost like we're ping pong off each other in a discussion and when somebody's taking the hot seat whether they're struggling with it and there's been times when we've done a hot seat or we've done a whole day and we have talked about business but we also wanted to like speak into people's lives when they are in these places where it's just really tough or we don't know there have been seasons where some of us have come to the table and said i don't know if i'm gonna have this business in a year i know that even if i don't have a business we will have this like that's not really going anywhere but this question of like can i navigate through the recession can i navigate your covid can i navigate through all of these things and sometimes you just need a group of people who have different perspectives to show up and say yes yes you can and it's almost like you have four people that are together like picture us all back to back but we're looking out in different places and we turn around inward and we bring in that perspective to the center and now you don't just have these thoughts in a vacuum and we talk about that a lot too like we'll see these messages online and we have a boxer channel where we'll bring them in we're like we know that's scrap we know that selling tactic is garbage we also know that if you're buying into a twenty five thousand dollar mastermind or thirty or six sixty d i think we would sell it for a hundred one time if you're buying into that like that's not really what you need like you need your rider eyes like you need these people who are gonna show up for you and sometimes in those places where you're paying they're not always bad but when you're paying for someone to lead you or you're pain to get closer to that person or whatever a lot of like what we've created here goes out the window completely like the authenticity gets moved down the way the raw many of us have all of us have come to the table broke cried people and crying and just and not because we're in our forties you know like yes just because of what's going on pain exactly and i think that is the beautiful part and we've talked about this before too and i wanna share this just before we get to how we structure our time together but we've talked about how we know people ache for something like this and how we know they're spending money to try to find it and they end up coming up empty because they joined and they thought well i'm gonna get connection and i'm gonna get know depth of business and it's almost like that money spent there's a barrier inhibits something from people growing like i don't wanna sound chew down on like mastermind you know we've all talked about it aid mastermind sorry we've all talked about it here but it's just you gotta you have to inter that you have to inter like why am i joining something what do i hope to get from it and am i hoping to contribute to it in the good the bad the ugly because if you are then knots the making for something that's really gonna grow obviously none of us knew that we showed up in cancun and spring break twenty eighteen like i mean we just didn't know it so let's talk about a structure of timing here and i wanna toss this to you there's been many different ways that we've structured over the years but i feel like we've landed pretty well on like a system of just when we go into it we kinda fall into this structure so talk about like where have we gone how did we choose a time and then like what do we do once we get there well i think it in large part depends on how much time we have together we have been together for a week before we've been together for three days two and a half days forty i mean we've really it's been a little bit different every time but i think the consistent structure within each of those is that we each get an individual i don't know session i don't know we don't even have a name for but like it's a session and sometimes it's a full day sometimes it's a stay it really just depends on the time and the session is just kind of a long walk of time where we're sitting somewhere somewhere not when we're out watching the whales on the boat not then if that's not the time but where we're sitting it can be around at the pool it could be around like a in the lobby in a big like laundry space it's been a different sort of physical space every time but the structure has been very similar where we'll focus on each one of us at a time and it generally starts with sort of like state of the union where are things right now what's working what's not working and then it turns into make things we wanna do in the future and then let's address the problem so it's been slightly structured differently time wise but i think overall getting in the making sure that our needs are met and we get what we need from it if we all scattered and it was oh let's talk about this and then that like you know yes we what does it call squirrel rabbit trail whatever we do that but like very much it comes right back to okay i know this is kate stay we're gonna finish talking about this new product line they wanna do or des shopify store or whatever it may be right and so that's we just really try to keep it focused on that and then we just use sometimes we use you know a breakfast time sometimes we use not usually dinner though that's more like life type stuff but we really just try to keep it focused on each one of us that way we get the feedback we need we get the honest feedback we need we get the questions answered we get i always come away with like this is where i need to go with things like i was thinking this way but also maybe picking that and maybe we're already gonna do this and then it's like okay i have a clearer path of what needs to happen based on where we are what's you know the rub i guess and then you know it just gives me that clarity of where we need to go yeah i think that's a general rough our time together if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time you know that the signature way that we have been educating our students is through the director of operations certification program and that is going nowhere however i wanna make sure that you are fully aware that something brand new is taking place we are taking over the ops world in educating you all in another way brand new to the ops authority and to the world to be honest we want you to be first in line to claim your vip pass to the ops era tour the tour is gonna kick off on monday july twenty first at eleven am central will be having a big time party for those backstage pass holders to unveil something very very new that you all need to know about tell me what your most memorable or favorite or whatever like most impactful you use whatever term you wanna use like when you think of one of our trips like what has been one that you've walked away from either business building or you were recharged or you refilled like what's been your favorite trip so far i mean we've had so many fun little memory moments right like mh i mean the dolphins hanging out with the dolphins and shelling and markle island and then whale watching it caught i mean we've had so many of those like i almost feel like that's as much of a highlight yeah as like all the business stuff i think the most impactful for me was that we started the how are we gonna get our businesses through the recession conversation before anybody else did i remember it it was twenty twenty one right march twenty twenty one mh yeah we were at le leblanc and i was like do we differently really need to be doing this everything's fine mh here we are four years later and we're all still here and i've seen you you know we you all know this but you see heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story of friends and colleagues who have poured their lives into this and then just yeah so we're still hyper focused on that conversation and making hard decisions we all have and might have to continue right we don't know but i think that that early conversation i don't know if i living in a cloud or what but i was a no you we're fine why fine like so anyways that was impactful for me because that helped me make decisions early on about you know both on the consumer side as well as on our internal side mh and then i just think that you know clarity on new products new programs financing finesse programs the tri new strategies things that have worked and have it worked you know all of these little nuggets that come up over the years or have come up over the years i think is i don't know if that's the first thing that comes to mind i know i will think of more things later yeah yeah no it's totally fine that's how all of our brains work these days and we know you can just box to us later yeah i will we'll i'll be sending out my this is what i've meant to say i talk something yes totally kelly what about you a favorite destination or a moment or most impactful time together that just spurred it to the next level for your business or life i think marco island was probably my favorite i mean destination we went to it things had just opened back up we've been stuck with our families for out don't know how long and we were done being stuck with our families for how long and we pull up to this house which literally looks like it should've have been part of mtv crib in the nineties i mean we pull up and we're all like one in the world like for in honesty eight we are usually pretty frugal we are pretty financially good stewards but this house was huge i mean let's just be honest it was huge like we didn't use half of it i think there's rooms we didn't even go into but for me that was probably the trip that solidified us as a group the moment we spent almost i think it was five days together it was one of our longer trips we had a lot of deep conversations about family and about money and our businesses we had a really baller pool that we were spending time in and bought alcohol from costco so there was enough of it to go around but it it's just a that's like i love all of our destinations but that one has a real special place in my heart of just we just i felt like we just really poured into each other a lot during those days and yeah i'm favorite thing for my business i think it's you know there's been many like i think palm springs was probably the most strategic you know when we had the day and had the paper on the slider glass door and we all do real deep and then we had papers that we took home with us and mh but each one has been i think super memorable and what i loved about it is having the day or the time allows each one of us to keep going until we feel like we've had enough and so you don't have that situation of somebody else button in with their stuff not that we've ever but can happen right like you've got somebody that wants to do that and you know we usually say like do you feel like you got what you needed mh and that's how we kind of know that that's the end of that that time and then we can move on to dinner time which is a little different always fun yeah it is always fun but yeah the mtv crib house in morgan glasses yes and that like for reference to as members in the group have fallen off that was our first one where was just the four of us and i agree like i think that was such a pivotal time to offer for all of us to connect not what about you like what's your favorite i am just sm and giggling over here care of all the crazy stories and circumstances good chances that we have encountered i think that we've met up over ten times i was just trying to make a list of it but i looked over here and i have a picture from nashville over here picture from a cabo but i always think that the i mean i love every single trip and all of us are gonna say the same thing because they are trips that we plan we organize we have as you can tell from aaron's explanation of how we kind of bring all of us together they're all thought through like it's not like you know i don't think any of us go on a family trip without some sort of an idea of what we're going to be doing and we treat this like a real trip at the same time every single time we go they are destinations on purpose because we're rewarding ourselves i truly look at this as a business expense where i'm rewarding myself for the efforts of being a ceo of a growing business and keeping us and our team afloat and continuing to forge a difficult path of entrepreneurship and so there as much of a gift and a reward as they are that strategy that i need to feed my soul so i can continue in this path so i always think that our mexico destinations number one when we go to mexico it's a feat because of you know we're looking because of travel but we get typically five days and you know that's a good amount of time that's the most refreshing for me because we get like a whole day or three quarters of a day to focus on each of us and the thing is this is also getting into like the structure piece but you know i wake up that next morning and we're all pretty early rise and before we get to whose day it is i'm following up with kelly or aaron or kate or whoever it usually it's kelly or aaron because i always i was gonna stay sleep with kate but you can say that you you can share with secret so i at her at nighttime but i'll follow up with questions with kelly or aaron in the morning and say okay we talked about this about me yesterday or it may be three days after my day quote unquote day and i'm still like mu on things because as much as i'm giving and listening and i'm still learning from who else you know from other people so anyway i love the mexico retreats i we have some serious moments there that are you know just unforgettable i also love that we get taken care of and we truly get pam we get to go to the spa we get amazing food and we always choose destinations that have good food because we've learned over our time we care about that mh there is no time to waste with crappy food and i not to cut you off now but i think to piggyback off of that i think what's interesting is the iteration of the economy to erin point about recession is that we chose this amazing resort in mexico leblanc it's beautiful you know that was where we went in twenty twenty and it was just very luxurious and amazing and i don't know if we had talked about recession but did we buy the coupon for the next year that year because we kind of knew and they were trying to get people to come back because everybody could see the right on the wall travel was going to cease to exist and we were like okay fifty percent off sure we'll take it and even this last one where we met in vegas it was a really great place but kelly found it and it's through it we went to virgin and it was how can we get this as cheap as possible because we need to meet with each other but we know we're spread financially we know this is the time it might not be our year to go to little leblanc but we will still make space to have good food and to have a really nice atmosphere because we are intentionally choosing to take time out and make it a reward like we have put in the hard work like we have been in the dirt and this is going to be a give back to us you know not just to be with each other i was actually wondering how many times we had met so you got ten so far not that's round number i don't know okay well we've been to mexico four times texas palm springs natalie i guess national marco vegas yeah see i it k yes but two two canned and two combos yeah right okay for three combos yeah two and two combos okay so support because there was a time when we were trying to meet twice a year and we planned on international and then state side to make money yeah exactly went doing yes we're being real there was twenty twenty money was fun times okay i'm gonna switch this up a little bit i was gonna do the giving advice to other business owners that want to pick a master my group but before we get to that i want to talk about a favorite memory i don't care if it is an excursion or a moment like what has been your funniest memory takeaway from one of our trips kelly killed the story of kelly bank and on the weekend that was going to be i was i was prepping i was like oh can i do that so funny oh well kelly you get sorry you can route yourself out if you want i can i mean that isn't it's not my favorite moment it's just kinda who i am but my favorite moment was whale watching which i think somebody also probably saying and give some details on it but that particular moment we were at leblanc we were at the night the nicest restaurant at lip leblanc we're one french one yeah it was nice and we were there early so it wasn't like we were in there at like prime time dinner time like we were one of the first reservations and we were having a good time like we were being a little silly and the wine was flowing maybe some champagne you know we were just having a good time and there was an individual there with his pre teen girlfriend he okay let's be honest it was like you got sued like this teen girlfriend and he was shu natalie because they were he thought we were being too loud and he didn't do it once but he did it like a couple of times like shu you and i was done with that like no one does shu my good friend like i'll show you and so we gave him some dirty looks and he just kinda kept going at it so we left because we were at the end of our meal anyway but then i just decided to take it a step further and i went to the front window where they were setting at and i banged on the window in front of them and i do believe i used some explicit to say how i felt about them and then i bought off and then you flipped in the bird yeah as well as saying you know how i felt about you yes using four letter words yeah a lot yes that was a good one kelly is mama bear though like she is our mama bear she loves us so fiercely and she was straight pissed that this person would be rude to me now i might have deserved it because i know i was over served the loud and and but frankly we were early it wasn't like it was like seven o'clock and everybody was there eating the place wasn't even full like i was just like oh good gosh and the was so supportive of us they were not annoyed by us at all yeah so good yeah yeah i had some words to say to him i banged on that window pretty up yeah yeah that is it's good one that what about you you know i don't know who here would not say the whale watching like that was like core memory for all of us i just i saw the question what was your favorite memory and those were the two that popped up we're seeing the whales i'm telling you was that a march trip mh yeah so march in cabo if you're into the whales even if you're not it was like unbelievable and it was just it was such a great experience to have and luckily i was with these ladies to see that happen and then of course kelly's kelly's window banging it came up really quickly thereafter but i mean we've had great memories at every single place sometimes my takeaway is not necessarily the place but what business lesson i got or what inspiration or what clarity i got but mexico and the whales is is it for me yeah aaron what about you i did o to both of those however y'all don't remember the uber breaking down oh that's that's say my brain it's really to kid that we just clueless like we're fine so like we gonna die we did not die thankfully well here so we went from leblanc we went off property one of the few times we ever did in large part because of horror stories that you hear that i'll never be asked we'll be pines so we go to this adorable precious harm table i've actually known several people to go there including my sister anyways but we uber over and we're leaving and we're going back to the hotel it's twenty five minute driver so not terrible and he's like my car breaks down i'm like everybody out we're out we're out get out get out get out he goes there but this is what he said and i speak spanish so in hugh i was talking him and he said there's somebody else coming i was like no we're calling another uber absolutely not this is how it happens this is how i died in mexico anyways but if i'm gonna die in mexico car wanted to be with y'all y'all but anyways we call the second like another uber so that we didn't like get in this some other they've get stuck in some other guys trapped that wasn't gonna happen that day well anyway it wasn't kate the only one that had phone coverage too because the rest of us are to eat to have he only needed to butt really i know anyways yeah but he it literally was like how you read like the car breaks down somebody else comes along it was that exact scenario and thankfully i listened to enough true crime and enough missing people stories to see what's happening in the moment i was like you don't get away from the car come over here everybody look every direction and the second car was like right there it was like coming around the little circle i was like nope we're getting in there one bye you can i'm pretty sure natalie was like i'm not telling just this like well now everybody knows yeah everybody does that was hilarious i forgot about that i too yeah i think only other fun excursions to go i mean we've done so many fun things in addition so well in that is a part of it too that we've curated it with this whole idea of like our dinners are usually really nice like we will kinda scrap it up it when it comes to like breakfast or lunch but then we'll choose one really nice dinner for the week or maybe in this case it was like an off property breakfast so that you know we actually had to pay for it there and then we'll sometimes choose an excursion and these excursions are so nice because we just kind of let down right we do something that's really fun in the area we get out and in cabo we did the whale watching and then in marco island we did the shelling which was amazing i had never done that i didn't even know that was a thing but i'm we don't do that in the northwest so but it was so cool because we went to this island and we just gotta pick up all these shells and then lay them all out and take them home and i still have them here on this bowl of shells as this memory and that has been so cool for me i think in texas we did the pet nat the sword thing at that sn winery right where they were kinda sn as well i don't know loud i don't i don't actually think we were i think it was like something weird about i don't remember what it was but i do remember the sword and that was pretty cool yeah yeah and even just the pool in palm springs there has to be a pool i think that has been our constant theme like wherever we go there must be a pool because the conversations about life faith and business times happen in the margins and sometimes it can happen between all four of us or just two of us or three of us but that's when you're kind of relax ensure we do this whole hot seat thing by the pool too but it's this time where you just you are away from the business you are not sitting in front of a computer you are not doing any of that but you are starting to let your brain relax and think and these excursions or these nice dinners kind of releases that a little bit to where we do end up talking about business over dinner sometimes or maybe somebody in their hot seat that day or their session is like oh i didn't bring this up and so i'm gonna bring it up now and we get to end up having this really great conversation and so yeah i think the dolphins for me might be in the dome homes which i've heard are no longer there after that hurricane yeah so being able to see those was like super cool and just we just laughed too it's like we are actually getting this true physical release of old attention and all the stress of business and life and you're just gonna to do something fun and it's like most women in their late forties early fifties don't take enough time to do these types of things and especially the pressure of being an entrepreneur i think is pretty tough too okay so to kinda round it out if you each were talking to somebody about starting a mastermind or looking for one that they wanted to join what would you tell them it doesn't have to be one piece of advice but like what would you say to them about where they needed to start so aaron gonna start with you like what would you tell someone who comes to you and says i'm thinking of starting to mastermind well what should i know before i start this i think it's about your intention and kind of the taking little and nuggets i it's actually from all of you said is like you have to be willing to give and receive you have to be willing to be open you have to be vulnerable you have to not judge you have to have hard conversations you have to let conflict refine you and make you better it's such a complicated dynamic and i think just going in with shouldn't say complicated dynamic there are a lot of dynamics at play in order to i think get what you need from a pure mastermind and so to be willing to be i think just open and vulnerable in that kind of giving and receiving which is kind of what we've shared all the way throughout and then i think you know if it's not the right fit you know for yourself bow out you know there's no hard feelings anywhere from any of the bow outs that i had in previous ones or you know from our original seven and so i think that that's just you know but it's also just keep putting yourself out there and then i think also not being in one that with somebody who's an immediate like competitor to you that would be a hard note for me because you know i mean there's such thing as like coop competition right cooperating in competition but that's i think at a higher level not at this dislike life mastermind level so i think that that would be something to be like maybe your really good friend has a very very similar business model to you and then you're like well maybe you're gonna steal my things are you like how do you protect that i think that's to that adds a layer of you know complication that is not worth it so i think not being competitive with would be another one yeah yeah just but it's putting yourself out there just doing it yeah for sure kelly what about you i think that one of the things that's made us work is that at least for me is that you have to be able to love deeply to each other and there will be conflict like i think that's something we haven't mentioned but there has been conflict within the four of us before and i think the thing that has allowed us to keep going is that the ability to say i'm sorry mh and i screwed up and can you forgive me because it's just natural that it's gonna happen and i think that if you don't have that ability to love deeply to forgive easily and also to ask for forgiveness and to listen for greater context and understanding but you know i think you have to have those in order for a mastermind to have gone on as long as ours has mh and so i would say those things and they're not easy to do you know but i think all of us come to the table with that and that's why i think we are as strong and as deep as we are like i don't really believe that there is anything that we could do happen with us mh that we wouldn't be able to work through and i think it's because of those things mh yeah great for sure not what about you i think knowing like being really aware like if you're craving something like this i mean this is like life coach one zero one but really knowing yourself first and being honest with what you need where you are what you want and i would say that i have i thought i was doing that with every group paid or peer that i have been a part of and there have been many many many that i have been a part of but really what makes us work for me is being ultimately aware of that and then looking at this from a whole person perspective i have done and been somewhat satisfied in the past by being in groups that served me in one dimension but not all dimensions the reason that this one has longevity is that it is whole person it is you know i can be going through a hell personal time i can be going through financial i mean one of the most raw moments that i will never forget is in cancun talking first cancun talking about like real financial stress in my home right had nothing to do with the business had everything to do with the home and you know that formed a whole new level for me that i had never been able to really fully express and that was my feedback my three sixty at that moment of like whoa this is like like friendship on another level from people who barely know me right and so anyway i've just say my thing is looking at this from a whole person perspective not just you know aaron touched on you know sometimes i've been in mastermind minds where they were all very similar to me they were all service based or they were all moms or they were all this and this is truly a place a bubble that we have created that is very whole person it's very we have a lot of similarities and we have a lot of differences and because of that we have been able to like persevere through the highs the lows the challenges of personal the the id that we have as people in a group and then it's knowing that the transactional mastermind that i have been a part of did not work and that's where i show up and i give give give but i don't have i'm not in the right place to ask and to receive and then know that everything is a season we've talked about people exiting and by the way they self selected out we didn't it wasn't like a we kicked them out it was like they had the awareness to raise their hand and say this isn't a good fit for me because of life or their season or a struggle or changing businesses or exiting business or whatever but you know if you find yourself you know don't feel like you have to build a mastermind or build a peer group that lives on forever that may not work no i would say that what we have cultivated feels somewhat unicorn like because for sure the things that we have seen and been a part of in the past but think the biggest thing is just the whole person knowing that i have been most fulfilled here because i could be pretty and i could be ugly and i could be together and i could be clear and i can be all those things in this one container and if i could go back and look at those other groups that i have been a part of in the past what didn't serve me was that they weren't whole person yeah that sums it up really well i don't really have a lot to add to what the three of you have said besides be open to take a risk because it is a risk like it was a risk to all me in cancun and be vulnerable to lean in to say okay i am going to try it and i think that is part of the risk the risk isn't getting on a plane and going to cancun like that anybody can get on a plane the risk is showing up in a small group and when it's your turn to share these pieces of yourself to watch how they're receives to feel the bumping up against and knowing like are these my people can i connect with them can i go deep with them and that only comes from being willing to risk vulnerability and that is hard when you are in an online business space because what do you do all day you are in your own space by yourself and kelly to your point you tend to go more introvert so it's even harder for you because you know you it's talking right like that is what a mastermind is it's a lot of people in it's a lot of talking and now it's easy for us because we kind of know our rhythms but in the beginning you have to be open to taking a risk and for a lot of people that's just not something they're willing to do and there's no shame in that it's fine but when you find yourself presented with an opportunity be it at a conference late at night when there's a very excessive happy hour and you come up with this idea take hold of it don't just see it as like well that's a pie in the sky idea that would never work grab hold start telling a few other people and they'll tell a few other people and you'll end up with a few people in mexico and then ten years later or so you could be like yeah it worked it actually ended up working but it took hard work it took vulnerability and it took being able to say yes to each and every trip because each of us says yes knowing full well this is time out of our family lives this is time out of our business lives we know our team needs us we've all answered you know slacks and boxer messages by the pool or late at night but we put prioritization off it on it because we risked at first and i just think that is such an important thing that i would tell anybody and even in the day and age where things have changed in the online space ask great questions to like ask people questions about have they taken personality to us have they like how are they wired what's their view of the future with their business are they in it to win it like it'd be really hard i think all of you would agree with this to join a mastermind right now with somebody who's been in business like one or two years because you just it's so volatile right and i think that was a unique thing about our group was that we hadn't been in business a chunk of time enough to know like okay we're in it but also was a different time then too i think that's something important to highlight the twenty seventeen twenty eighteen leading to twenty twenty money was fantastic right like those are golden ears we thought hard them i love the fact though like we were okay we call it twenty twenty money but and and we've had that and then we've now having twenty twenty five money which is very different but i think we're still finding ways to make it work and i think that's you know you we still do yeah it's so important well ladies thank you for sharing your story here on this podcast i'm sure people listing that well actually i'll say i hope people listening were inspired and encouraged and at least gave you a little idea or something that you could start on your own and we would all encourage you to do that we would all encourage you to step out in faith and you know next time you meet somebody at a conference and you strike up a great conversation lean in and go back on that so thanks ladies for being on the podcast and i'm excited to see how our story impacts other people thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you have one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week but in the meantime new big things on the backside of your business

hey friends if you're looking for an amazing conference to go to that's really going to combine the ideas of entrepreneurship marketing sales ai then i wanna suggest to you inbound twenty twenty five since i have been in business for myself inbound has been one of those conferences that always comes up that sparks my attention because they have the ability to bring together really big businesses and i know that small businesses are able to learn so much from these bigger players so this hotshot conference is gonna be held september third through the fifth and it's gonna be in san francisco three days and you're gonna have keynote they've also organized it to where you're gonna have tactical breakout sessions you're gonna see some new products be revealed and also some immersive workshops which is always important for the operators of the world you're gonna be able to network with some big leaders and gain some actionable insights to implement right away if this sounds good visit inbound dot com slash register to get your ticket today this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends it's natalie here with the ops authority podcast and today we are going to be recording episode two eighty two and this is another behind the scenes this is all about the journey of coming the director of operations here at the ops authority and this podcast is about sharing the journey of moving through the ranks as they say gaining trust building a partnership to become a director of operations as well as celebrating alex's promotion and their tremendous job and impact that she makes every single day here and to me as well as this company at the ops authority so as you know we teach operations here at the ops authority and in fact we have a certification called the director of operations certification so i'm telling you that because this is something that is probably like we teach how to become a do and i'm gonna share with you how we have cultivated and what it look like for alex to become the director of operations here inside of the ops authority let me preface this by saying that not every single business needs a do it needs to be the right size you need to be at the right revenue level and have the right margins in your business you also have to have the right leadership mentality and you also need to have a team those are kind of the criteria for having a director of operations on your team in a recurring or in a retainer type of fashion now inside of our company we are leveraging full time employees which for my size of company and for the dreams and desires that i have the way that i've structured this business that makes the most sense for me but again even that fluctuates in other businesses business models etcetera so if you're listening to this and maybe you're listening this as a founder or you're listening to this as an operator inside of the business and you're thinking well my team isn't this size and we're not making x amount of dollars and we don't have a team so you know we're not really ready just understand if you're not at that point then the ceo or the founder truly has to fill that gap and they are not only the ceo but they're also the d and probably a lot of other titles too and full transparency that's exactly where i was up until about this last year as the team grows my responsibilities have shifted but i was still the one that was owning division of the entire company as well as all of the operations too but of course i had people who are helping me who are on this team to get things done and even to manage some of these initiatives that we had but at the end of the day i was both ceo and d so here's our story and it's one that i think a lot of founders can benefit from in just my philosophy of growing talent internally but it also is a great compliment to people who are operators like many probably most of the people who are listening to this podcast who desire to grow within a company it's always my greatest intention that you understand you as an operator understand your values and you partner and you look you secure companies and brands and leaders who share that because i believe that when you do that that's when you have the ability to truly grow inside of a company so let me take you down a little path first of all i wanna preface this by saying that alex has been with our company for four plus years a little bit more than four years actually in january that was her four year anniversary so it's four and a half now but she started out in this company as a full time operations coordinator she was my very first full time hire actually i had to go look for her job description and it looks like at that time it's been a minute and we've done a lot of things over that time period but she had a lot in a variety of tasks that covered the operational side as well as the delivery side of our business let me explain to you what delivery side needs so i told you about our director of operations certification program that is our may that has been our signature way of doing business with us and so for us to be able to facilitate that we have what we call a delivery side of our business where we fulfill the obligation we have to our students so you can think of it as like delivery or maybe even like our programs discipline of our company but she was doing a whole lot of things and her title was operations coordinator she functioned primarily as an executive assistant to me helping me to keep my calendar organized which always needs help ensure that i closed the loop on tasks because i'm infamous for starting just like you and many other people right we start things and we don't quite get them to the finish line she was excellent at helping me to close the loops she did a little bit of project management and actually probably a lot because managing me is a big project and she was a massive i can't stress this enough she was a massive facilitator of the director of operations program i'm gonna call that the dol certification as we move through this podcast but a lot of what she focused on was implementation with a little bit of manage but mostly she was involved in the implementation activities and when you think about the delivery side of the program side of our business this looked like facilitating our calls making sure i was prepared before the calls making sure that we got our trainings our live trainings up into our learning management platform communicating to the students handling you know failed payments or late payments and all of that so she was really operations not only for the brand but also for the d sort of vacation and that's when she was a ops coordinator or an operations coordinator for us speaking of the doj program she's the very first person that i had to really really help me to create the program to have a stable structure and to have the capacity for us to take an active stance in creating standard operating procedures for the program also integrating and managing some of the projects that emerged or bubble up as a result from the feedback that our students are giving now you probably know this from listening to this podcast but i'm really really really active with our students and i wanna create an environment where they tell us what they would do different or spot opportunities or gaps that we have and i had been holding all of these things but you know when you are doing this on the super super lean team and maybe you're the only team there's just so much time in the day and so by bringing alex you know having her really look over in shepherd the doj program we were starting to be able to tackle some of these things that really made a significant difference in the experience which i massively care about for our students but she was able to be very instrumental of that her oversight of the d program was the perfect way to highlight her ability to be a strategic partner to meet and it was such a critical part of what we do in how we generate revenue and what our brand looks like internally and externally and this became just insanely valuable to me and it was at this juncture that i gave her a promotion from operations coordinator to d operations manager and this was truly a bridge between heavy management as well as establishing herself and dipping her toe into becoming a strategist inside of our company i had been able to test the strategic part of her brain while she was overseeing the d program because i was truly del in stepping back and letting her own some of those critical pieces that i had maybe held on to a little bit too long or too hard in the past so i had seen her be proficient at strategy it was uncomfortable for both of us but i saw her really thrive and at least be curious at this point so that kept both of us really invested in one another of course the results that i was getting kept me there as well at this point it was time for us to ring on another operations coordinator to allow us to some of the task that she was doing that alex was doing and that we're going to i needed to be able to free up some of her time so that she could take on additional new stretch tasks for her but she couldn't do everything just like i couldn't do everything so for the same reason that i brought on an operations coordinator so i could delegate things now alex had settled into this operations coordinator role she had elevated into the ops manager role and it was time for her to delegate some tasks as well this is when we brought in the amazing adrian so if you've been around our structure then you probably have met adrian but she's is a person who came in right behind alex and alex this is who alex trained to backfill her role as an operations coordinator and just to give a holistic picture it was at this point in my business journey that i was just now starting to see a matrix organization coming together to support the initiatives that we were doing and what i mean by this is that we were at the point where i can strongly delineate the marketing function from the operations functioned as well as from the delivery or the programs function not only could i see three different departments if you will we were also building support underneath each of those so it wasn't complete at this point but i could see the vision for these three different functions to come together and then i could also see in my vision having leaders of each of those areas along with support personnel underneath them that they were independently managing but that's kinda where i was mentally at this time when i had both an ops coordinator as well as an ops manager new month new podcast recommendation this is a good one it is called no straight path and it's hosted by ashley min baba she is also inside of the hubspot podcast network which is where i get my podcast recommendations every single month the great thing about the show and something i know that you're gonna love is she's gonna be shedding light on the stories behind all the shiny resumes that you see in the linkedin profiles the social media highlights and the crazy cool job titles but in this podcast she strive to human success from the millennials perspective and i know i've got a lot of millennials here listening to me today if you like an interview style conversation with diverse and important voices you should definitely take a listen this show is going to be perfect for the business builders inside of our community you're also going to love it is a pleasure to listen to ashley on those straight path she just has the perfect podcast podcasting voice she also has a unique perspective and there's a ton of vulnerability and we all love that listen to no straight pack wherever you get your podcast this month it's no secret that if you're listening this podcast you are dedicated to up leveling yourself and all your operator ness and to make that possible i'm telling you you're gonna need to up level the type of clients that you were bringing in every single day i'm hearing of people being dis with what they're doing and it's not because they're not delivering it's not because of the amazing skills that they have it's because of the clients that they are currently serving so stop no board do you have to continue to take the clients you have been taking there is another level of client waiting for you i promise you it is not just for him her or them it is for you and you have access to that today i put together a guide for you for this it is called the ten ways to finding high quality clients and i give you ten actual strategies that me natalie have used in growing my business to continuously attract the right level the next level of client for me you can find that by going to the ops authority dot com forward slash ten ways the number ten ways so now that adrian is here she has assumed some of the responsibilities that alex had now it was time for me to really showcase alex in her ops manager role and to do that her scope changed of course she was still running to back into the business but now she had become our chief project manager she set up and she managed click which was somewhat new to us we transitioned into that tool from trello and she still does that by the way she began onboarding our new employees she oversaw our podcast and documented a tremendous amount of processes which shouldn't surprise anybody listening to this but she had a very holistic view of the business she got to know me very deeply what my desires what my working style look like and because of how closely that she supported me in her previous role as an ops coordinator and because her scope was bigger it was easier for me to leverage her now to go all in to leveraging her as a strategic partner and it was at this point in our journey where i saw her being a decisive counterpart to me this is very very important not all founders are like this and not everybody has the same strengths and weaknesses i do but one of the things i really have struggled with because i'm a natural i'm a native operator i am not a native visionary so it's a stretch for me to be in that visionary space but one of the things and the deficiencies i have is being able to make quick decisive decisions so having alex be my partner has truly helped me to become more decisive this doesn't have a price tag that i could even share with you guys it is insanely valuable and what this looked like in real life was and you need to hear this was her pushing back when things were out of alignment helping me to rep prioritize initiatives that really didn't help us get towards our goal you've heard of shiny object syndrome i am no stranger to that either but she helped me to rep prioritize whenever i was getting off of my path we as the strategic map so she was always great about she is always great about knowing what our goals are and whenever i start to do other things that are gonna take us further and further away from our goals she also had and still has a lot of times where she will redirect me when i go to over extending myself or not being realistic with my time now this is another real i'm telling all myself but this is another really big big flaw in me because i i feel like i can get it all done and i'll just work nice and weekends but she knows that that's not something i really want to do and i've proven over and over and over that i may say that but i really don't do that so she's amazing at helping me be very realistic she has mastered lots of skills to this point but it was truly this that made her indispensable to me everything that i have just shared is really the thing that elevated her and speaking of elevation to elevate her and her confidence which she did need i gave her a huge responsibility in this operations manager role and that was to coordinate the redesign of our entire certification program now this is the way this is the signature way the only way that people work with us now this is a huge project because it's a hundred and twenty videos we res scripted every single one of them i mean we had a content plan we had and she did all of it and i can't even i will never be able to articulate everything that she did but to give you an idea she redesigned our entire hundred and twenty training curriculum this is probably the largest project that our company had taken on and i delegated it all to her i totally knew that she could do it and i knew that she would thrive but i also knew that it would push her and it definitely did that this involved her writing the project plan managing an ever changing project plan documenting processes negotiating with vendors and all the support personnel that it took to do this reorganizing restructuring the content taking the output of us working with instructional designers and laying out the program in a new way and then of course back to managing all me the main content creator behind every single one of these videos and also helping me to manage my time so that we could get this done in a timely manner she also quality checked and tested every single link every workbook i mean navigated paying all of our contractors and then also many flights to texas to get this project done this project took us about one year to complete all the while she's not only managing this huge project she's also managing all the other items that i previously shared and managed our matrix our growing matrix team this was a significant milestone for me and i remember thinking now this is the perfect time for me to take her to the quote final test if you will i remember the phone call or the call that we had where i was discussing if she was open to learning the financial side of the business which would be the discipline that she was most uncomfortable with and it was completely new to her i really didn't know what she was gonna say but i was really really hopeful i guess one of those things where i was like bracing myself for her to say no i'm fine right here and we've always been very open and honest so she should have felt really comfortable to say no but she was all in i remember her eyes were a little bit big and i could see the doubts in her but it was up to me to help her to feel comfortable and also giving her the training in the tools for her to be able to step in into this last rung on the ladder of being able to overcome all of the objectives it takes to become a director of operations so from a financial perspective we centralized and we brought all of our financial strategy in house this will forever be the biggest payoff off in our business and for so many more reasons and i can share on this podcast today but alex learned she redesigned she asked really good questions she researched and she improved our financial position she continues to be just a force to be reckon with especially on the financial side and this is nothing that she thought was in her skill set when she came here and that makes me so so proud not only for her but then also the gift to our business she's so connected to our products our level of expectation are my expectation of accuracy and delivery and she fully understands our vision and my vision oh she understands me and my goals is my personal goals too so after one year of doing this her efforts her attention to detail her in ingenuity ingenuity has saved us nearly ninety thousand dollars in one calendar year as i was receiving our tax preparation documents for last year for twenty twenty four i saw that on i thought oh my goodness we saved ninety thousand dollars ninety thousand dollars in operating expenses which was unbelievable it totally saved our profit margin in a pretty challenging economic market so her attention to financials i want you guys to hear this saved us nearly ninety thousand dollars let's go ahead and round up to six figures so yeah she's pretty darn legit in addition to this she has been working on our financial four now this is like the tip of the iceberg when i look at financial management one piece of it is making sure that your finances are clean that your sound that you are in a good position but the other part of this and this is something that you know i've been able to put into mature companies and really aspire to be able to do over time but she has been working on our financial forecasting which is a whole big project but this exercise is something that we do at the end of the year with our goals as well as our historical information and data to be able to build out what we can expect financially month over month if we perform at our good goal it's extremely important for companies to do this so that they know and they have an expectation of what's coming in and even the bigger deal is so that we can recognize are we falling behind or are we ahead of the curve and that's where this strategy really comes in so we look at this eight in every single month and this is where alex has been so amazing at helping our company with growth or contraction if that's where we are so at this point of our journey together she has proven examples of being competent and a leader in every single one of the five key components of being a director of operations which are strategy project management human resources data and financials and throughout this podcast i maybe not have called every single one of those out but that's exactly what alex's journey internally has done and this is why it is an absolute no brainer to promote her to our director of operations here at the ops authority now this is our story at the ops authority the timeline looks different in every business and for every single leader i believe in growing and building teams internally rather than sourcing for new levels and leaving my most tenured employees at the place in which they entered so you'll see other companies who will look externally in the external market to bring in managers or directors into their business because they're looking for someone who has a lot of experience in that place for me it just makes a lot of sense and i truly believe for most small businesses they need to take a path similar to what i have done and plus you build that legacy you build that partnership which is really difficult to find and to fast track in somebody that you're just bringing in from the outside that hasn't truly quote unquote grown up inside of the company now this isn't gonna work every single time it's not gonna work in every single person's business but it's been something that i've been able to successfully do a ton of times over my twenty five years of management both in small business and large corporate management you also might have taken away where i started this podcast and said that this has been a four year journey you might be thinking i don't have four years to be able to do this i'm excited and ready to dive in to being a director of operations right now so don't let this sway you this timeline is ours my business went from a baby business to a teenager business to a big girl business with the partnership of alex and so if you're looking to fast track this you wanna come inside of a company that is further down the road in their maturation journey alex came to me with an implementation role she grew into management and she has joined me in the strategic and visionary side of this business she has truly grown beside me as i have grown the ops authority and to be honest in her early years of being a full time employee at the ops authority i didn't need a director of operation but today i do and we do so with all of that i wanna give a heartfelt congratulations to the most amazing alex on her promotion to becoming the director of operations here at the ops authority she is truly a confidant she is our key strategist she is my protector a people leader she is trustworthy she is my dear friend and she is also very candid the most important value to me even when it's uncomfortable for her so i wanted to just bring this to you again to celebrate alex and her journey with us on this promotion which is a key pinnacle part inside of our brand and internal team structure at the ops authority but also to show the rest of you guys what this may look like for your company whether you're leading that company or you're a team member or even a decision maker inside of that company i hope this finds you all very very well join us inside of our facebook group the ops insiders and congratulate alex alongside me and i look forward to being back here on another episode of the ops authority podcast bye for now thank you for investing just a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you add them one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week and in the meantime new things on the backside of your business

hey friends if you're looking for an amazing conference to go to that's really going to combine the ideas of entrepreneurship marketing sales ai then i wanna suggest to you inbound twenty twenty five since i have been in business for myself inbound has been one of those conferences that always comes up that sparks my attention because they have the ability to bring together really big businesses and i know that small businesses are able to learn so much from these bigger players so this hotshot conference is gonna be held september third through the fifth and it's gonna be in san francisco three days and you're gonna have keynote they've also organized it to where you're gonna have tactical breakout sessions you're gonna see some new products be revealed and also some immersive workshops which is always important for the operators of the world you're gonna be able to network with some big leaders and gain some actionable insights to implement right away if this sounds good visit inbound dot com slash register to get your ticket today this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast we have a special ops edition today and if you're listening in and maybe these are the episodes that you come back to all the time and maybe this is the first time you're hearing an ops edition but what is an observation here well it is when i invite my incredible friend longtime team member of the ops authority someone who has coached over two hundred women inside of our program to become their next best self by leveraging their operational skills that special guest my dear friend is lynette robinson today we are going to take three questions that i have come into our community from existing director of operations students and we're gonna tell you guys are two perspectives the reason i love these ops edition episodes is you're not just hearing from me and how i think you're getting the duality of the way two different people who are high level holistic operators solve and work through a question or a problem that is being presented to us and so anyway it is my pleasure to have lynette here with us to talk through these questions and i know if you are a prospective student meaning you're looking at a certification program this will give you a little insight into the types of questions that come in and also on the other side of that you get a sample of what it's like to be supported by this incredible coach lan as well as myself the mentor inside of the d program so lynette are you ready to tackle some questions today i am ready the only thing that would make this better is if we were sitting in person and just chi chatting so zoom will have to work for today but i guess this isn't even zoom this is fancy stuff but we get to see the other face to face and it's always an honor to be in your company you have such great perspective and lynette is you know she's engaging with our students every single week and in a one to one capacity as well as in a group capacity and so she knows what is happening in the operational world and we all tackle things a little bit differently so you're gonna get and glean two different ways of looking at a question or a situation so you ready to dive in i am ready thanks so much natalie i'm excited yeah awesome alright so vip days this is a topic that comes up quite a bit for the people in our sphere who are business builder so people who have a skill and they create a service around it and they're looking for clients there's a lot of different ways that we can deliver the solutions and the transformations that we like to do and so one of the ways that comes up a lot is a vip day so that means taking whatever deliverable you have and instead of working with somebody on a retainer or recurring relationship or length of time they're condensing that solution into a much shorter time frame so here's the question i just wanted to give a little perspective as to what a vip day is so this individual says that she really likes vip days because they fit with her lifestyle however for what she wants to deliver it requires more than just one day possibly maybe even one week have you ever seen that structure work where it's not doesn't fit in a day but maybe a week have you ever seen it done and then also how would you suggest setting this up this is a great question i've heard of vip days being completed over one day i've also heard of them being done over several days my suggestions for setting up the vip offer that's gonna fit your lifestyle whomever this person is are not that different from what i would say to a person who setting up their project or who's setting up you know their process for even being in a retainer relationship so i a couple questions that i want ask you to help you design this vip day offer that's taking place over several days there are things that you wanna keep in mind question number one is what is the outcome you want the client to experience by the end of the vip day be sure that as you're setting up that the outcome is attainable mh also when you start putting together the vip day be aware of the information that you will need in order to even begin one of the key components of having a vip isp day is gathering up all of the information that you needed in advance so that you can either work behind the scenes or work alongside the client to complete the desired outcome so what materials what systems what information do you need ahead of time to be able to execute this vip day in that shorter time frame the other thing that i would say that is similar to if you're doing a project or retainer is be aware of what is included in the vip day and what is not and make sure that you take that a step further by communicating that to the client you want them to make sure they understand that even though this is an offer that is put together in a different structure a shorter time frame these are the things that are included and these are the things that are not next you want to make sure that your process and structured is communicated you want to have that in into place your framework is what we often call it in the certification but you want to also make sure that the client is aware of how the vip today is going to work so that their expectations are set that there are mutual expectations that's a term that we like to make sure that everyone is using and i could go on you wanna have the tech and tools in place you want to make sure that the customer knows how they're going to be paying you have any agreements all in all what i'm saying is whether you have a retainer offer whether it's a project offer or whether it is a vip day offer what you do to prepare it is going to be the same whatever you do you want to make sure that you have clarity mutual expectation and mutual understanding between you and the client that you're delivering the offer to i love all of that vip days i feel like those come like in style at a style and it really depends on you know as this person said like she feels like an offer delivered in a vip format which is a shortened condensed format she prefers that for her lifestyle and so like for us as coaches who hear a lot of how people are gonna leverage their skills you know sometimes these are like hot things and sometimes it's not and it really comes down to a lot of what lynette said is like how do you want to give people that transformation i believe if you're going to be leveraging a vip solution that it needs to be very specific kind of you know where lynette left off was like you know scope you know know what you do and know what you don't do know what's included know what's not included that's all talking about scope and with a vip offer it needs to be very specific i don't believe that this type of container is conducive to like a high level holistic operational like solution that would be more for like recurring retainer relationship so don't give away the farm it's not gonna work for you to do that and then she touched on this too but a note that i had made prior to getting here is like have a realistic time frame i've been in those situations where i've over committed and let's say it was like i thought it was gonna be a four hour meeting and then in reality there's no way i could've have accomplished what i intended to accomplish in four hours and so you know run through this yourself learn and you know take the time to document how long these things would be and one of my general rules for life is just add twenty percent also if you've never done this before add twenty percent of the amount of time that you think and just build it in there because guess what at the end of the day if you get done sooner nobody's feelings are going to be hurt when you have a vip offer you need structure and lynette on the specific structures that may come up for you or that you need to think through but it's it needs to be a highly structured solution and the framework for you that you'll hold yourself accountable that you also communicate with the client just is gonna be very important so those are my thoughts on a vip i think a lot of times vip days are very sexy or appealing when you're delivering something very concrete what do i mean by that if you're someone who wants to be a high level strategist it's more difficult to have a compelling sell or compelling solution in a vip day when you're just selling strategy there are ways around it but you know i think that where i have seen vip days be very effective are when you're delivering something very concrete at the end alright lynette we're gonna move into the second question and this is more of a mindset question but this comes up so this person had shared with us this is the very first time that i'm selling this particular offer and i've never been paid for it before i know i can see exactly what i wanna do i know how i'm gonna do it but i've never actually been paid for this how do i know that they're gonna get the projected desired outcomes if i've never actually been paid to do this i'm having a mindset challenge to overcome because i'm weary of saying that i'm gonna deliver something and then what if i can't actually deliver on it because i've never done it before so that's the question and everybody has been in this situation before because we have all done something for the very first time lynette i know that you are amazing at supporting students and a lot of the people who are coming through our program we're teaching them new skills and new methodologies that they have never done take strategic mapping no one's ever done strategic mapping before before they've come through our certification yet the majority of our students are going to do that inside of the six months and so they're all doing something new how do you help them to overcome maybe we'll call it imp the question that they have of themselves of am i able to do this how do i tell people that they're gonna get this when i've never done it and been paid for it before i echo exactly what you were saying what i say to students who have reservation about putting themselves out there with a new offer is that first of all what your feeling is completely normal it's completely normal so i always start there the first time you offer something new it's easy to question if the outcome we're promising is good enough or if it's real for the client to experience but remember the right clients are not expecting you to be perfect the clients that we're working with want clarity they want the one who's honest and they want someone who is going to partner with them and guide them from where they are to where they want to be so if you've created an offer that is rooted in your true skill set your experience and your intentions are good then you're already ahead of the game yep you're already ahead of the game so instead of focusing on whether or not you can guarantee certain results focus on whether you've designed a clear and supportive of experience that gives your client the best possible chance to move their business forward or make progress with you as their partner dining them along the way that's what i would say i love it i i really and i can feel myself as i was even describing her sharing the question like i am still in that place we do new things all the time or we do things for the first time all the time right even in an offer that you've had for a really long time you may be shifting you may be working with a new type of client which requires something new and so i think the bulk of the question is around like the fear we have with doing something for the first time or it's completely new and maybe it's the first time we're doing it so that's going to happen and it's gonna continue to happen over and over in business and building the offer around a place of confidence you know take me i'm not really a great tech person i can muddle through tech i can figure it out but it's not my source of strength so i naturally feel less confident around it if i am selling somebody on a technical solution it's not my jam right and so i'm gonna have more mindset setbacks i'm gonna have more g lens coming into my head trying to call me out telling natalie what are you doing that's not your strong suit so how do i overcome that i create an offer in specialized areas where i know i'm really really good at what my very first offer that i ever did in my entrepreneurial journey was around event planning why i'm a great project manager i had done tons of events and corporate and it was the easiest place for me to step into with confidence i knew exactly what to do yet i didn't really know the environment of how online i didn't know this space but i had that skill so know the places where your skills are top notch undeniable forces when you have that you will have confidence which allows you to be literally in that situation you have an expectation of how you're gonna deliver something and so confidence is everything if you're selling something that you're not confident in there's a host of mindset setbacks that you'll run up against the other thing is if you're selling something for the first time you may be selling it for the first time but that doesn't mean that you haven't practiced this i think operators are very realistic we're kinda risk ave immersed and so if you're doing something for the first time tested it on yourself test it on a friend but at a minimum mock up the process for yourself i mean this is something i would definitely say take the time to practice it on you i'm not saying you have to give it away for free you to your friend or your neighbor to your sister i'm saying mock up this process know how you're gonna deliver it and actually take the time to walk through it on your own self or your own business that creates a good expectation and it helps you to be able to articulate what you're going to do and how you're going to do that why is this important it gives you confidence it gives you structure and i believe that structure will give you the confidence that you need to minimize any of those like impostor feelings that step up when you're doing something for the very first time and then one thing that i know lynette and i talk about all the time is business and offers are iterative meaning the way you deliver it at one time is not gonna be the way you deliver it the next time we're dealing with business and on the other side the clients that you're supporting the vision that you're supporting they are iterative right they are always changing and pivoting so our services are going to do the exact same thing so know that if you're doing something for the first time come in there with confidence and just know that as a part of being a really good solution oriented person that your offers are going to need to be adaptable and you can always improve you're gonna deliver it the best you know you're gonna prepare you're gonna deliver it you're gonna come in with confidence you're going to you know that provide a solution around areas that are in your greatest strengths experiences and skill sets and guess what the next time you do it every single time you do this you're gonna gain feedback you're gonna gain perspective and you're gonna continue to make it better and better and better to where you're always showing up in your most competent self new month new podcast recommendation this is a good one it is called no straight path and it's hosted by ashley min baba she is also inside of the hubspot podcast network which is where i get my podcast recommendations every single month the great thing about the show and something i know that you're gonna love is she's gonna be shedding light on the stories behind all the shiny resumes that you see in the linkedin profiles the social media highlights and the crazy cool job titles but in this podcast she strive to human success from the millennials perspective and i know why i've got a lot of millennials here listening to me today if you like an interview style conversation with diverse and important voices you should definitely take a listen this show is going to be perfect for the business builders inside of our community you're also going to love it is a pleasure to listen to ashley on those straight path she just has the perfect podcasting voice she also has a unique perspective and there's a ton of vulnerability and we all love that listen to no straight path wherever you get your podcast this month as i was diving in into entrepreneurship as a service provider i was so lone sum i was looking for a place in a community where i fit where people understood how my brain works and when i was looking around there was nothing out there for me so i created it myself and you're invited today to join almost forty five hundred other operators who are in the market doing the things supporting clients just like you are if you're a project manager an online business manager a director of operations in training an ops manager a virtual assistant any of those titles ring true to you then you are invited to join us inside of the ops insiders the ops insiders is a free facebook community where we carry on the conversations that we are having here on this podcast but in addition to that you will see job postings you're gonna see other people sharing wisdom and looking support connection and growth if all of this sounds good head over to ops insiders dot com join us today something else that i feel like i heard in this question is around integrity like they want the person who asked this question wants to be sure that they are in integrity in what they're promising to the client but i wanna say to this person offering something you does not take you outside of being in integrity it does you are expanding the ways where you can flex your skill set yeah and bring something unique to the marketplace that does not make you out of integrity so i just want you to know that as well as you expand the ways that you offer operations or whatever the industry is where you find yourself offering new things in new ways does not take you out of integrity it's you flexing yourself and coming up with new and innovative ways to provide service to be a support to the people who need you i love that integrity that really does because our people people like us we are very i mean what i can see in our community there's several adjectives that i would use to describe us but we are very real we are very tangible and that integrity is something that all of us i mean as a service provider it's something that we want because our credibility lies upon it so yeah thank you for pulling that out alrighty we're gonna switch to something this is kind of mindset as well but this is something that is so true especially as we're coming off the heels of a question around for the first time we're doing something here's the question when i started out i started out working and helping a friend and i helped them for free and now i want to charge and they need to charge but i don't know how to have that initial conversation i cannot tell you how many people and i do not advise this but a lot of our students and a lot of people in our community will say that they are getting experience by working for free so anyway i can't tell you that that's what i would suggest you to do but that is what a lot of people will do have done at least before they get to us and they have our coaching but lynette lets the two of us answer that question i started helping a friend for free now it's come to the point where i need to get paid because guess what nobody likes working for free but how do you suggest that they have that conversation with their friend that they've been helping for free my heart goes out to whomever sent in this question it really does my encouragement to you is to be strategic and approach this a very specific way get your pen and your paper okay the first thing i would do before you can bro achieve this conversation is get a testimonial from this front mh get something out of the deal and if you get nothing else get a testimonial so that you could use it in your marketing whether it's on your website or your social media platforms so before you even bro the conversation about getting paid get the testimonial because if you get nothing else you can use that look at you that is i love that let's be strategic about this k now the second thing that i would say is get your pen and paper again because you're gonna write a script here's what's gonna go in the script i would say to print friend i'm so happy i've been able to help you in your business by doing fill in the blank as you know i have a company as well and while i've enjoyed helping you it's taken considerable time away from my prospecting efforts i really need to turn my focus back to bringing revenue into my business i've documented the projects or tasks i've been working on for the past few weeks and if you're ready to pay me for this work it will cost fill the blank i'm happy to create a plan for you pay me on a sliding scale over the next few months until we reach this number or if you're not able to pay me i understand however i'm sorry i can't continue to work for you for free i hope this doesn't change our friendship let's discuss what work i can complete for you by the end of the month or next month because i wanna make sure that we mutually agree on how we're going to move forward if i have to transition out of your business that's the script that i wrote specifically for this question so if you take those words or you finesse them a little bit to make them sound more like yourself i encourage you whoever wrote this question to write down what you want to say to this friend so that they hear your heart either way and that they understand that just like you are supportive to them in their company that you have one too you need to make money too so that's my sir yes thank you lynette it's hard for me to see this question come in because it's something i personally have never done and probably would never do but that's not to say that it's not a valid question because we do get it so we if you're listening to this and you find yourself in a position or a proposition where someone is asking you to work for free i would tell you to stop yourself before you get there but if you have gotten into this place and i've seen this with siblings i've seen this with neighbors i've seen this with church friends i've seen this you know our operators have such big servant hearts that it's not a surprise to me that they find themselves in this situation but really i think when they do enter this they're looking at it like i can gain experience which is why your suggestion of getting a testimonial is brilliant thank you i would not have even thought about that but that is extremely valuable and one of my personal values is can and so even if it's a hard conversation to have you owe it to yourself to show up in your full authenticity and sharing and what lynette said is absolutely right you have mouths to feed and a business to grow and your value of time and money by the way which hello commerce is commerce like we all need that so they understand that from a human perspective and it may just take a little pattern interrupt by you having what feels like a difficult conversation but it's a realistic conversation nobody's gonna hear you on the other side and say yeah you know i'm spending free time with you that i need to reap appropriate that time to work on my business and to work on bringing paid clients in i do like that lynette shared kinda giving them a runway i wasn't thinking of that at all in my mind i'm thinking hey in thirty days we're gonna discontinue this work but from a friendship perspective you enlightened me because they are your friend and the tapering off of time maybe it's over two months right instead of cutting them off in two weeks or four weeks like i probably would you know giving them a little bit longer runway to say hey i'm gonna do this in the next thirty days and i'm gonna work less over the additional thirty days but these are just different solutions and how you can manage this what i want you to take away is that you have to respect yourself enough to know that you're not being unrealistic bike asking them to pay for your time commitment skills and passion you deserve that that's why we have careers that's why we work and so your good hearted has come into it a place where you can still continue that but you continue that in exchange for money that's what business is so i'm very glad this question came up lynette thank you for your perspective and how you tackle this script hello winning think if that's amazing for all of you listeners out there that may have been in this situation find yourself in this situation right now that script is very very valuable so lynette anything else to wrap up today these have been very very good questions what it reminds me of is just the great heart that operators have we want everyone to be successful we give our all so that others can get their all but don't forget that you're running a business don't forget that you're running a real business the integrity the support like all those things that works two ways so don't forget about yourself that's what i would say in closing us out don't forget about you and all the hard work that you're putting it to make your clients businesses successful don't forget that you have a business to make successful to yes and the value of the result that you get for your clients has a dollar attached to it i know it's difficult to price things it's difficult to price a service but you have to look at the transformation and the result that you and your unique skill set is able to bring friends thank you all for tuning in today i love that you're listening to the ops authority podcast and we will be back again next week with another episode lynette thank you so much for sharing your perspective and your wisdom i should say wisdom because that's what you bring here and of course i will always thank you for your partnership in all of the work that we've been able to do together thank you for being here today you are so welcome it's my pleasure alrighty friend you will hear from me next week have a fantastic week thank you for investing us a little bit of time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you have one more action to your to do list today just visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week and in the meantime do big things on the backside of your business

if you're here in you're a business builder then you are always in pursuit of clients and what's behind client acquisition it is a sales cycle cutting it in half sounds pretty impossible right well that's exactly what sandler training did with hubspot and they used their tool hubspot tool an ai tool called breeze it tailor every customer interaction without losing that personal touch which is so important and ai is doing amazing things like this we already know but hubspot hasn't it built in their results were really incredible their click through rates jumped by twenty five percent their qualified leads quadrupled and people spent three times longer on their landing page if you're interested in this you wanna go to hubspot dot com to see how breeze can help you grow your service based business this is the ops authority podcast where my mission is to break down the backside of your business so you can take the right actions to grow and scale hey i'm natalie gin a small business operations expert and i'm gonna give you a front row seat to real solutions that will help you reach the vision that you have for your business all while equip you to put out those inevitable pesky fires and those fears that pop up listen in for strategies to grow your team craft the systems and processes that you need for your business and establish business foundations that you may have skipped over i know you're ready to do really big things so let's do it together hey hey friends welcome come back to another episode of the ops authority podcast you're catching us on episode number two hundred and eighty and i think you're in for a treat i feel like i could say that every single week because i try to be extremely intentional about what i'm bringing you guys how we show up every single episode but today i really do feel like it's extra extra special we have done several episodes like this before and we've got a couple more in the queue and let me give you some oversight as to what we're going to be doing today so i've got my incredible friend and a longtime team member at lynette robinson here with me today when i say team member she's been on our team for over four years she's a certified director of operations she is a current accountability adviser and just a premier coach inside of the certification program the reason outside of all of that i have a huge heart for her she has a huge heart for what we do here the mission behind the ops authority and she has a ton of experience in coaching operators to become their next best self she has been part of probably two hundred and fifty is it around two hundred two fifty when i would say so yeah a just a ton of our students she's been behind their transformation and i want to bring her here to share some space and we're going to take some questions that have come inside of our community and the two of us are going to answer these in our own ways we know what the questions are but we haven't collaborated and said oh i'm gonna say this said you're gonna say this the reality is i wanna bring you a different perspective you get to hear from me almost every single week definitely every single month and so you probably get a sense of where my mind is that that i love bringing different perspective it's the same thing we do inside of the certification when we have our expert coaches coming in for each of the different modules that we teach on so perspective is very important for me because this is never gonna be the natalie show operators have very complex ways and different ways of solving problems and so i'm showcasing that today alongside my dear friend lynette lynette how are you doing this morning i'm wonderful excited to be back again i love it i love these number one they're so easy for me to do and i learn a ton about the way that you think and other options and other solutions whenever we do this so i'm so excited that you're here me too likewise i love how we arrive at the same place in different ways yes and you know what i know some of you guys may be seeing this in video but i also love that we are rep the brand colors today but we are so insane let me day alrighty well let's dive straight in i'm all about making sure that we keep these as tight as possible but we've got some big questions today someone on our team has pulled these together for us and we were both like whoa these are big questions and listeners you are in for a treat here because these are true questions that come up inside of our community so you might be thinking these as well let me set the stage for the first question when i am teaching this is something that we teach inside of our program and i wanna make sure those of you guys who aren't inside of our program or are curious about our program or are just general generally our operators which is every person listening to us if you were trying to sell or communicate your services i find that operators tend to be very long winded and i might just be picking on myself probably leave lynette as well but we're long winded and why are we long winded it's not because we have a lot to say it's because we are very complex thinkers and so what do we do for a living we literally spot problems and we provide excellent solutions and many of us have our hands in creating and executing on the solution so we are all i'm at the top end of that we are excellent process and project managers like it's how our brains are wired what does that mean it means that we create step by step solutions so in my mind i joke about this all the time if i'm gonna go to the grocery store i create a plan i have a regular plan in my head and it's something i do every single week and i could create a twelve step plan on how natalie goes to the grocery store right it's the way that i think i break everything down into a sequential solution so i do this for everything that is presented to me right it's why i live by a to do list it's why i thrive in organization and productivity that's just the way that i think and i'm sure it's the way that you think as well i'm getting to my point here but the reality is i've got a lot to say and once i'm having an active conversation with somebody about a business problem or gap in my mind even before my mouth ever opens is coming up with a one two three four five this is how i'm gonna tackle this and so when i get into an active conversation with somebody oh that can be very very long winded so in my process of trying to system this and make it more su i have the expectation of myself and this is something that we teach our students to make this and keep this most su for people i like to create a visual process which highlights how i'm going to be solving that problem so if you're a business builder if you're a service provider who is leveraging your gifts of the skills that you sell that's what i call a service provider that's what an operator is who is building a business for themselves then i like to think about the solutions that i bring and i hold myself accountable to stay the sync and to clearly articulate what i do by creating like a visual representation of the transformation or the deliverable that my offer provides my clients so why is this important to me it's important to me i already told you to keep it su synced secondly to hold me accountable so i don't go on and on and on also so that i don't bite off more than what i can chew i don't love that analogy but you know scope creep is a real thing for operators and so when i pull up a four step program or a four step process or a six step process it holds my words to what my actual deliverable can be so anyway i can go on and on but you can get the idea of why this is important and how this question came up so that's the background to it but are you ready for the question i'm good question one of our students she understands the value of documenting the visual process which is what i just described but her question is where do you suggest placing this as you're going through the buying process as you're trying to acquire a new client there's a lot of different places and times when we could use this visual process along the client acquisition process as well so there's a lot of different places in that client acquisition process there could be somebody could find you on your website somebody could find you on socials somebody could give a referral and then you're likely going to be in a discovery call and you're sending contracts and follow ups so when i talk about the client acquisition journey those are some of the different milestones i would say that take place but this question is alright not i understand why the visual map or visual process is helpful where do i put it what do you think it so when i think about this question two things come to mind the first is the process that you just talked about the journey from a person becoming a lead to when they become a client that's what i call the intake process the second process or journey that comes to mind is when someone becomes a client what i call the work in progress phase of the relationship there's a process or how you complete the work and the deliverables for the person that you partnered with in business i've seen both processes outlined on websites and i don't have a problem with either my personal preference however is to have the work in progress process that portion of the client service provider relationship to be off the website instead i covered the work in progress part of our relationship during the discovery call and here's why when i go through the process during discovery call it gives me an opportunity to further explain the offer see the client's reaction to the information that i'm providing and in real time answer their questions about why my process is what it is if i put it on the website they may bring that up they may not but i don't wanna take the chance of losing an opportunity to give a thorough explanation of why i do what i do the way that i do it this creates space also for authentic connection it allows the client to understand the structure of my offer and if there's anything proprietary about my offer it helps me protect that proprietary environment so the work in progress phase of our relationship i would keep that off the website and cover during discovery i referenced the intake process how a lead journeys from being someone you've just met to someone that you're now in business with that intake process no issue with that being on the website whatsoever it's great to give people a visual representation so they can see of this of the steps of the process and then as operators we get to flex how we cover the details how we take a person through becoming an actual client of ours they get to see a little preview of how our brain works so i would keep the intake process if you're gonna put it on your website that's where i would place it but the work in progress phase of your relationship i would keep them in the discovery recall right these are a lot i have written down quite a few things here i tend to agree with you on the website part of it you know the different milestones that i referred to earlier like where i would put my visual process i agree wholeheartedly if you wanna put what i would call like the onboarding process of how you become a client on your website fine go ahead i don't think that that's gonna be compelling i don't know if it's a great use of real estate on the website but that's not what we're talking about today right but what i do like about it and you highlighted this and you're kinda coaching me i do like that you're showing like a one two three four and what people are looking at from us what vision are looking at from operators is they realize that they don't have that systematic approach that they don't have a methodical brain and so by showcasing that on your website that's pretty cool now i think it's i find it and this is a whole other question but i don't know if like building out and investing a ton of money in this crazy wicked website is actually a good use of your funds do you need one i think you need a storefront and a footprint but i don't know if you need to go like crazy because as a service provider we're looking for a handful of clients we're not looking for fifty thousand clients and so our website we need to have a storefront or a footprint but we don't necessarily need this like tricked out website but that's provides the point if you are gonna have it i don't think it hurts you to showcase your methodical brain on your website since joining the hubspot podcast network i had challenged myself to listen to a new podcast every single month so i'm gonna challenge you to do the exact same thing and the one that i'm recommending is the science of scaling one of the episodes i recently listened to was with alyssa rose who is the head of sales for open ai a tool we all are likely using anna thought was a really cool behind the scenes look at how she got the job how she builds her team and of course lots of other operational goodness that i think you're really going to enjoy so take a listen to the science of scaling wherever you listen to your podcast as i was diving in into entrepreneurship as a service provider i was so lone sum i was looking for a place in the community where i fit where people understood how my brain works and when i was looking around there was nothing out there for me so i created it myself and you're invited today to join almost forty five hundred other operators who are in the market doing the things supporting clients just like you are if you're a project manager an online business manager a director of operations in training an house manager a virtual assistant any of those titles ring true to you then you are invited to join us inside of the ops insiders the ops insiders is a free facebook community where we carry on the conversations that we are having here on this podcast but in addition to that you will see job postings you're gonna see other people sharing wisdom and looking support connection and growth if all of this sounds good head over to ops insiders dot com join us today now if you do have your you know lynette used the work in progress phase which is what i would call like how i bring the solution to my client the deliverable like how i do what i do right that's what i create as a visual process you know if i was gonna put that on my website i would make it very high level for the same reasons when said that's your intellectual process that could be your differentiator from somebody else out there so know making that public i would if you do it you need to make it really high level and there's still value in that again because you would be showing that you do actually have a process there is a structure to the way that you show up and then the risk in putting that out there is you're leaving it up to interpretation if it's external meaning website social media you know if you're putting this out there you're leaving that up to interpretation because you're not able to partner that visual with your words and so you know people i mean think about how we define operations people define operations all different ways and so you know i think that that's just my thought came to my mind as lynette was speaking is you just don't know how other people are going to interpret it so if you have it out there keep it higher level and then i agree with lynette creating something more granular that you can speak to you know have a visual like the visual is very powerful for vision that is something i would want you to take away but having it on a slide or on a pdf so that you can pull that up when you're having a one to one discovery call is extremely powerful for all the reasons i talked about before like you're gonna hold yourself accountable hopefully you can help yourself to stay distinct and then also the learner or the potential client on the other side has something to wrap their head around as far as what they're going to tang get from the experience altogether i don't believe that you have to keep this that you should actually make this external i do believe that you need create a visual representation of what you're doing keeping it to you is good and i personally would use it in my discovery calls i would have it as a pdf i would use it in my follow of emails and maybe even in the contractual sheets of your work together can i add something else to this conversation when we talk about website and things that we could put on our website that would make this a valuable use of debt real estate and that investment talking about the transformation and the results that clients can expect to receive as a result of partnering with you showing them what's possible the outcomes referrals i'm sorry testimonials is what i'm meant to say that is a great way to use your website and that very important real estate think about it a person's gonna go and access your website outside of your presence what do you want them to see is it going to be most valuable for them to see your process or do you want them to see the result of your process and the transformation through the words of other people who have worked with you and data that you collected from the success behind executing your process with your clients so let your website be a place that gives clarity that gives outcome that highlights the transformation that clients have received as a result of working with you more so like let your website be what highlights the end state more so than the beginning parts that he state is more valuable to me yeah so good do you hear everybody why she is so amazing that is that is very very very wise advice people wanna see they wanna put themselves in the experience of what happens at the end right the result the outcome that's what you wanna highlight so thank you for adding that too alright we're gonna move into our second question and this is something that comes up and as operators we are always looking for ways to be visible so that we can call in new clients the right clients higher level clients and so the amount of options of visibility tactics is very high so and you know they're seasonal like sometimes like i've been in this game for ten years now and so i've seen email swaps i've seen podcast guessing and so anyway they're all over the board but the question that we recently got is is it worth it for me as an operator as a service provider to participate in summit and so if you're listening to this and you're like what is a summit let me give you a quick description really quick it is where somebody's in charge of this somebody's putting this on and hosting this they reach out to a really they can vary but anywhere i let's just say like twenty different speakers they're gathering twenty speakers on a like topic or a like solution and everybody contributes to this presentation which is a summit and so everybody gets maybe twenty to forty five minutes as a speaker to bring their goods and their topic to this summit and so that's what the summit is it's really a conglomerate of mixed voices coming together to talk about topic that the in consumer finds important and finds valuable so anyway that's what a summit is lynette what do you think is it a worthwhile effort from a visibility tactic to be a part of a summit as an operator that's a big question so because there's also an investment involved right with the summit there's a part of me that wants to say absolutely till the summit but then there's the other part of me that says let's take a step back here and qualify whether or not it is worth it for an operations professional to participate in the summit there are different ways that you can participate you can be a keynote speaker you can be someone who does a workshop or you could just go as a guest with the goal in mind of networking and gaining clients from the other people who are attending the summit right so the first thing that i'm wondering is how do you want to participate or attend is this stomach gonna have your ideal client there are you going to have a legitimate opportunity to speak to your ideal clients even if you're doing a workshop where if you're doing a keynote and you're pitching what is the actual opportunity that you will get to bring those clients closer to you where you can talk about your business not every summit is gonna be worth your time mh and that's something that's very very important that people need to remember and a lot of times if i had a nickel every time an operations person told me well i'm an introvert i'm an intro mh i'm not a person who puts myself out there keep that in mind too as you're trying to consider whether or not a summit is gonna be worth it for you if you're not someone like me who can walk up to a stranger strike up a conversation think about that mh you can't get caught of in the ro of all these people are gonna be there and all my clients could possibly be there if you're not a person who's gonna walk up and talk to someone so know what you wanna get out of it do you want networking do you want visibility collaboration or you just go to learn be clear on what it is you want to get out of the summit how does it align with the goals you've set for yourself for the year is your ideal client in the room if you are actually participating in the summit how are you being positioned is there something you can leave behind where people can contact to for business inc inquiries like there's so many questions i could just go on and on and on so i will just a minute this is the detail that natalie we was talking about earlier that we could live in and swim for days as operators what's the cost to participate in a summit can you afford to go if you have a budget that you've set for your business for marketing for the year does this fit in that budget do you have time to follow through with the people that you need from the summit do you actually have the space to do that and then the part that a lot of people forget is what is the opportunity cost of me participating in this what am i saying no to to be here for this day or two what do i have to reschedule so that i can fully show up and be in this space and then the last thing that i would say about participating in a summit is if you're not the person who is putting on the summit is the person who is putting on the summit in alignment with your brand like you don't wanna just go jumping on anybody's platform if their brand is not an alignment and the value system that they have is not similar to yours because then your audience is gonna be confused about why you're showing up there so all very very very good and much more in depth than i was planning to come with so i'm very glad to have another perspective for me it's all about idaho ideal client if the host of the summit is attracting somebody that is i i'm speaking from experience is attracting someone that's at your level or like you and the profile of the guest of the summit is not your ideal client you are wasting your time and all the things that lynette just talked about there is a lot of time invested in just showing up to a summit much less preparing a presentation and the energy that's going to be required to present and to prepare for one so you know if your ideal client is not represented on the sales page of the summit it's a hard no for me and i would tell you not to do that the other thing to consider is what do you offer like the whole reason that you're participating in a summit is it's not to educate people it's to educate people and get them to get into a relationship with you it's to educate them enough that they are interested in buying what you have to offer so is your offer at a price point that makes sense for this audience which dovetail tells very nicely into is your ideal client the person that they are targeting and then lynette i wasn't thinking about this but you're totally right if you are a weak presenter people are not going to feel compelled to continue in relationship with you so just know that about yourself be aware maybe you know another visibility tactic is more important for you maybe you know maybe video is not your thing maybe it's more audio and then i would tell you spend more time in doing podcast if written word is more compelling than being on video or audio then start figuring out how to write longer form blog post or do linkedin post or something like that but i'm gonna tell you to know yourself just like she did know what your capabilities are lynette and i i mean we're here we're on video we're on audio right now because that's our jam we're both very comfortable in those elements i've had people on this podcast who are not strong enough where i'm like yeah i can't air that because they're not showing up as their best self because there's too much going on for them so anyway know yourself and that was a very very very strong point there so anyhow these are two amazing questions that came in and i hope those of you who are listening in today are like yes i've had those questions or i was thinking about that or at the very minimum you're walking away with something where you're like oh yes i learned something today that's exactly what these podcasts are for we call them the ops edition because you're getting these perspectives and you're also getting real questions that come into us that pertain to operators these today were really looking at operators who are using their skills to create an offer and a service we call those service providers so believe that this has been beneficial thank you so much lynette for hanging out with me today i always love spending time with you and i love the perspective and the heart that you bring not only to this podcast but to our entire brand and to the hundreds and hundreds of students that you have supported with me alongside me so thank you for being here friend it is my pleasure it's always a great time yay thank you for investing just a little bit a time to listen to this episode of the ops authority podcast i am so grateful to be surrounded by real action takers like you who are invested in growing their business through operations will you have one more action to your to do list today visit the ops authority podcast dot com where you can join our community of business owners and other ops experts you're gonna hear from me in a week and in the meantime do big things on the backside of your business