The Ops Authority

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

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 looking back to another episode of the ops authority podcast today i am sharing with you episode number two hundred and seventy nine and today's episode is a little bit of a behind the scenes in a cool way i have a program for our alumni once they graduate from our certification program they can come inside of a new container which they get my personalized one to one support what does that mean it means that my v my main mode of communication is through boxer which is an asynchronous tool if you've never used it oh my goodness it is so addict but i love it because people can lean on me whenever they want it doesn't require us to have a zoom call or have you know a long email thread but anyway v is the tool that i use and the reason that this is important to you today is i wanted to come in here and share with you some of the obstacles that operators these alumni who are in our orbit who are doing their work as operators inside of other people's businesses they are experiencing these obstacles and they're coming to me they're leaning into me for some solutions and so today in episode number two hundred and seventy nine it is about the current obstacles that operators are facing and how i am coaching them and so you're gonna get to hear and probably resonate with some of these situations that are happening and then i will share with you you'll get a benefit in the perk of kinda hearing my side of what i think that they should do so hopefully this is helpful to even more people than the individuals that are coming to me right now these that i have chosen today they're across the board so there's nothing kinda that is the same from one person to the next and you should know that as an operator inside of a business even if you're someone who works fractional and you're working in several people's businesses every business is so different and even if you have an offer where you're providing x y and z the way that you're going to deliver that to a variety of different clients is going to change because their team structured changed the personality of the leader changes the scale of the business changes the delivery model the products it is going to be different can you streamline that yes but i will say that no two businesses are alike and so the way that you deliver your services to two different businesses is going to be different so first thing i wanna share with you is one of my students and clients and actually all of these people have become my friends but she has taken on a local construction company as a client it is a huge contract and one of the things that she is struggling with right now the obstacle that she is facing is actually there's two and i could probably share a lot about this and it would resonate with you but the first thing that i will share is she started talking to this client this prospect of client a long time ago this has been one year in the works over that year she has stayed consistent with talking with them with being in communication with them it wasn't every week you know at the beginning it was more frequent and then it kind of got further and further apart as the time went by but they consistently told her that they were interested in working with her they just had some things to do internally before they could bring her on now the way that she was coming into this business is in a project or a consultant capacity so it's not like she was working in the implementation or administration layer it was definitely more in that strategic role where she was coming in auditing their systems auditing their personnel and creating solutions and recommendations for them to be able to implement and it was possible that she would be part of the implementation but the first thing that she needed to do was come in and get a good understanding audit of what is happening and then she would take it to the next level by giving recommendations so i wanted to share first of all that this took a lot of time her being very ten it's hard for me to withhold their names but i am going to do that it took her being ten to continue to follow up now on the mindset side this is the part i wanted to come to you with the obstacle that she's facing is that because it's been such a long period of time her mindset is now in the place because it oh i forgot to tell you this it's becoming reality they came to her and they said okay we're ready to do this send me the contract so now she's all heightened up have you ever been in a situation where you were hoping that you were going to get a client and you were working really hard to secure the client and then they finally say yes and then you have this crazy amount of impostor syndrome well that's exactly what my friend did that's exactly what this d is going through right now she's asking herself am i really qualified to do this what if i get in there and this is too big for me those are her exact words like is this too big for me the way that i'm coaching her is to understand and give her reassurance that she has done this before even though it's a bigger company with more layers of matrix to organization internally her main stakeholder are really two or three people and those are the only people that she needs to understand right now the other thing that i was talking to her about is i gave her four steps and i know as operators we are so much more confident when we have a plan laid out for ourselves if we're sitting by ourselves and you're working on this independently and you're thinking oh my goodness i'm not big enough for this or this deliverable is too big for me why did i ever say yes to this one of the things that you need to be reminded of is number one that you've done this before but number two you need to lay out a plan for yourself we are so good with having a plan so i told her the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna understand the expectations what do they want out of you now this has already been talked about many many times in the procurement process but now when everything is becoming real and true and there is actual money being exchanged we need to recalibrate hopefully before the contracts are signed but we need to recalibrate and get a better understanding right now of what the expectations are so understand the expectations define the success metrics for yourself then you need to come in and needed audit you need audit what is happening and we talked about this whole audit system you know depending on what the expectations and the success metrics are that would guide the way in which she's going to audit so maybe she's going to audit the financials first and then she's gonna move into the leadership and then she's gonna move into the independent teams i don't know that you know she's still learning that herself but that's just so you understand you know you can break this down to where it feels like you're not really going all you know you're trying to get to that success metric without a framework that's not the way we work and when we start to put this in bite sized pieces everything becomes way more doable we start to see oh yeah i can do this what happens at that point you start to feel confident so i wanted to share this because you've probably been in a similar situation where maybe your actually getting close to working with a dream client or really really big client maybe your biggest client that you've ever done and you have this like smack in the face where you're like oh yay i did it oh goodness gracious how am i going to do this so my encouragement is to set small goals for yourself create a plan and definitely have a good understanding of what the expectations are when you're working with big clients you may find yourself in a place where they want a lot and if that's the case then you're gonna need to come back to them with realistic expectations and maybe adjust the time or adjust the scope maybe it's you know how much you're working with them so anyway i wanted to share that that is one of the ops that our high level operators are working with right now and how i am coaching them 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 and 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 signs of scaling wherever you listen to your podcast if you want to ensure that you're working with the right company then you're gonna want to be clear on exactly where they're going and what they stand for if you want your work to be seen and felt you must be on the same page as the leader and if you want to make a lasting impact and do the work that lights you up then you're gonna need to help your leaders define their mission vision and values i know you want every single one of those things that i just described so here's your ticket i've created a free mission vision values training guide to help you create that solid foundation here's what i suggest do this for yourself master it and then walk your leaders through the exact same exercise again you're looking at action do it for yourself and then share it with the people that you work with in fact this is the very first step that i use when i'm working with clients and i encourage you to do the exact same you can download it by going to the ops authority dot com forward slash mission alright another thing that is really really real realistic stick is you have these people on retainer and for this individual who has come to me she has an agency in the agency she has clients working in different packages paying different amounts with different deliverables attached and different teammates of hers that are assigned to different projects and different clients so there's a lot of complexity there's a lot of moving parts but she came to me and wanted to lean into how to get more consistency in her financials so she was feeling the fluctuations where you know people were paying they were starting contracts at all different times during the month and so she was really trying to stabilize her monthly retainer income very very important this makes more sense in an agency model for a lot of directors of operations who are gonna be working f or even in a full time capacity they're getting paid once or twice a month from one or two three people but in an agency model you're getting paid by lots of people at one time and you're getting paid by several people at one time or separate businesses during the course of a month so she's trying to create some stability for herself which i totally understand so i recommended to her we kinda talk through two different scenarios one was maybe everybody starts at the beginning of the month you have an onboarding process where you start collecting information and then at the beginning of the month is you know the first payment that is brought in and then also everyone is on a similar cycle that didn't feel really good for her and the reason it didn't feel great for her was the fact that you know what if these are what if scenarios which always kill me because how many times does it actually happened this way but it could and i'm sensitive to that she said if somebody comes in in the first week of the month as a lead and they want to convert and they want to start working with her she doesn't wanna have them wait for three weeks or four weeks before the next top of the month rolls around so two suggestions that i had was pro rate them you know that there are four or five weeks in every single month and most of the time is only four so you can pro rate them if they wanna start immediately pro rate their first month another recommendation i had is to charge an engagement fee we all know and this actually if even if you're not an agency and you're working in retainer maybe in many project scenarios this could apply but you know the first thirty and sixty days of a contract or a new role are the most labor intensive because you're learning you're integrating and you're applying all of this at one time so you know it's like karen scar at the very beginning of a contract it's also for me some of the most fulfilling times in a business because they're seeing my value and i'm showing my value and i know it's different than anybody else it's ever been in their business so it's really like a very gratifying time if you will but it's a very very busy time and so my recommendation to this alumni was to consider charging an engagement fee for the first month it would be a higher rate than their typical monthly retainer but this allows her to increase and to maybe put those additional funds maybe into her savings so that the fluctuations could be covered by this engagement fee so i mean the reality is if you don't do an engagement fee you should basically take what that engagement fee would be and spread it out over the life of the contract but they're gonna fill that increased value at the beginning anyway so it wouldn't be i've done this myself before so it's not that far off to ask somebody to pay a little bit more at the very beginning when you're onboarding i've actually seen people call it an onboarding fee and engagement fee is another way of looking at it but these are two recommendations that i've made to this alumni to create more financial stability inside of her business and then also at the same time creating a little bit of a nest egg so that if that stability is fluctuating she can pull from her savings to create more of that consistency alrighty friends i'm gonna be back here shortly to share with you other obstacles that operators are facing and in the meantime i want you to listen to all of the episodes inside of our podcast or at least some of them all would be a big stretch because as of now we have two hundred and seventy nine but there are some real gems inside of here if you're a service provider if you are a high level operator or you're aspiring to be a high level operator this is the gold standard for learning how to navigate the up level of where you are to where you wanna be my promise is to come in here on a regular basis and share with you what's really how happening in this industry especially as there are changes that are happening right now i wanna be that real source for you to help you overcome some of the obstacles like we talked about today and even other obstacles i encourage you to come to our facebook group which is the ops insiders dot com share your obstacles inside of there so that i can bring them here to this podcast as well alrighty friends i hope you have a fantastic week a prosperous week your energy is really really high and you bring excellence to all of your clients and the leaders that you support you guys have a fantastic week and i'll see you next time thank you for investing 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 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 but 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 alrighty friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast i'm your host natalie ga i'm back again and you know you could always count on us having really good information really actionable information here on the podcast and or an amazing guest with us today and that's what you are coming into on episode two hundred and seventy eight today so meghan ge is going to be chatting with us today and sharing her perspective of being a student here inside of the director of operations certification program she recently came through is a stellar human being i'm gonna start with that and that has also allowed her to be an amazing student inside of our program so we love to bring these students in to share their perspective because i can tell you all day long why you should join us why this is a great next step in your career but at the end of the day i know as you know being on the other side or being a listener here i would wanna hear what somebody else who has been in a situation that i am you know curious about what their experience was like and even before they join the certification what their occupation what their work history was like but i can get a better understanding if this is the right next step for me so you're gonna hear that today from our friend our alumni and a proud certified a student from the ops authority and in the director of operations certification program so let me give you a little glimpse here into who megan is and then we'll dive through just an organic conversation none of this is pre scripted but you'll get to know megan and understand why she is someone that we are just so proudly associated with so meghan get part is a certified d she's also a certified mindset coach and an army veteran with eleven plus years of leadership experience inside of the military entrepreneurship as well as the nonprofit sectors her passion is organizational change with expertise in strategic planning operations team growth strategic communication as well as public relations which she now integrates as a sustainable business consultant through her business which is named apostolic fruit which she c founded a year ago with her best friend and business partner anna sa meghan and anna served catholic as well as christ led women in business ministry and leadership especially those who specialize in women's holistic health and well being they have got such a great niche i love working with them because i see this coming together in such a beautiful way but meghan is also a certified pregnancy and postpartum athletic coach and spearheaded policy change at the highest levels of the military for women mothers and parents who serve while she was on active duty as a military intelligence and public affairs officer meghan is incredible telling you right now we have had offline conversations and when we talk about policy change and leading by example and making the military accessible for women and fit into their lives as you know that conversion into motherhood man she is really just so admirable to me now let me wrap up here with meghan is a wife to her husband who's currently serving in the army and is the mother of three energetic boys one in which she gave birth to while she was inside of the certification so meghan welcome to the podcast today so excited to have you here thanks matt yeah appreciate your kind so much it's such an honor to be here good good i'm just so grateful that our lives have overlap and i worked very closely with the military sector for my entire really most of my professional career and so i'm always honored when military spouses as well as those who have served really partner with us because i feel like so much of my professional life was spent supporting that part of our nation here and it's an honor to have you i have an associated understanding of what your experience is like and it's just a huge honor to have you here and then i can't begin at this podcast without thanking you for your current and past service and service that you're still giving to your spouse oh it makes me well up here thank you i shit yeah husband just got back from a training course for several months so yeah he's just rein integrating now and grateful to have him back home yeah it's such i mean we can have podcast podcasts upon the podcast on what it means to serve and then also how you're leveraging that service and the experiences of that and what you're doing today if you're watching this you can see my eyes are awful full it's a big deal it's a it's a just such a big deal so i could brag and brag and brag on the person that you are and i know that the person that you are has led you to the service that you gave our country and is also still a very big piece of what you're doing in how you are leading your own business today and then also just the skills that you have carried through your entire life you know a lot of people who have listen to this podcast have heard my story of being eight year old natalie writing on that piece of paper creating a list for myself every single day and if i could turn the times instead of someone telling me man natalie you should be a nurse you're so caring you're so heart centered you're such a good communicator you really have a passion for this that and the other i wish somebody would have told me natalie you would be a great project manager natalie you would be a great hr manager but in the world in which we lived back in the seventies and eighties it was really you're gonna be a teacher you're gonna be a nurse you're gonna you know maybe you'll be a doctor but talking about project management and operations would never have been advice that somebody would have given me so knowing that you have all of these skills that have really traverse your entire life and you're still present today are things that have led us and our paths to overlapping so i love that we have this nerdy and wonderful fulfilling space of operations to overlap and that's what we're gonna expand on today in this podcast so thank you again for taking some time to be here and let's dive in a little bit deeper to your professional career what kinda of led you to getting to have interest in being a certified doj and i i know we talked about the military but tell and listeners more about meghan sorry thanks so much that do yeah so obviously you heard his military background my career was in the active duty army as the west point graduate i was primarily in intel and public affairs so i did a lot of strategic communication and both to internal and external audiences a lot of p media relations work some digital marketing a lot of community relations but i also found i just naturally gravitate towards where can i help assist with organizational culture change in a lot of ways and and that was you know in the teens that i was part of but it was also more broadly i've always been a strategic thinker and i always really want to have a bigger picture impact and so that was something that as i observed the gaps that i experienced personally as i became my mother while serving i immediately knew okay i need to do something about this i'm not the only one experiencing all these challenges and you know is everything from discrimination on the basis of pregnancy to just the challenges of balancing you know a family and growing your family well trying to pursue your career and progress forward and so that's what led to a lot of that because the efforts that i did while serving but alongside that i also was an entrepreneur for a little bit i i a say about five years while i was serving so the last five years i had a small business so the side gig really just i was passionate about helping other pregnant and postpartum women helping other mothers and so that's why i became a certified coach in several different facets both the fitness coaching but also the mindset coaching because i wanted to serve women holistically and especially those that were navigating the male dominated environments and just trying to figure out how do i thrive as a human being and the context of of these really challenging circumstances and ultimately i decided to transition out this past year his past summer almost a year ago now at this point because as our family grew and was going to be growing to three babies now i did want more flexibility and my husband and i got to a point where we recognize recognized you know it's just unsustainable to continue to serve both of us and the cost became too high and we just felt like the values are no longer aligned there and so we needed at least one of us to have more stability and it just made more sense and i felt very compelled that it ought to be me and i knew that god was calling me into more presence with our family and in the home and to be able to still pursue my calling in different ways and share my gifts but without as much of a compromise in the home life i know natalie that's part of your story too that you resonate with and probably a lot of listeners too and i i was in the stage of transitioning out of the military and i was like just deeply discerning where are all of my gifts and passions and talents and eric's of expertise and where is this all meant to merge together in this next stage and season and i knew that you know my family needs a certain level come to be supported but i i also didn't feel called to a full time job and so it was kind of in that in between space like if there's something i could create create my own business on my own terms this would be ideal and in that discovery mode i had been working with one on one with a coach in both life and business that was anna anastasia my now a business partner my best friend i had been working with her for several years and she was coaching me and she had seen me through a lot of challenging seasons of work and family life all the that because advocacy efforts it's my small business she was my business coach so she helped me to kind of embark on that process really of healing from very intense burnout through a lot of those stages and in the transition it was so much of like shedding who i used to be to try to figure out who am i meant to be now who am i becoming and that was like a deeply internal journey and came with a ton of identity shifts but from that space of like letting go of a lot of the old was where i felt like my passion just started to emerge into much more clarity on this new season which ended up basically leading very naturally to one day we're having this conversation i shared with her brainstorm google doc of like this is what i want to bring to organizations and to other women leaders this is the kinds of things i'm passionate about and where i wanna serve which is basically strategic consulting and i kind of wrote up that would look like and she's was like oh my gosh i need this like i knew know what you can bring and and it was kinda funny because we had just never explored that part of me outside of military it was just all directed in that channel in that direction and so now i was like wow i can make a business out of this so we quickly began collaborating and became really close and then a number of months later we've c founded apostolic group which is our consulting business now and so i now primarily serve as the lead strategist for business owners that we work with and she does more of the holistic leadership and mindset and emotional while being coaching yeah and we in the very early stages of working together i began eyeing video deal certification because i forget i even had heard about it exactly but it was essentially what i was doing informally with her and though i was supporting her as i think many people come into it if you know you you tend to already be an integrator in some form or another whether or not you have a formal name to it mh and this you very clearly became the right choice and it was the best decision that it could have made both to invest in my own growth in our business and and the current and future clients so yeah that's more of the the context yeah i of course i'm always so curious and i know other people are curious about what brings you here but it's not even what brings you to the certification it's all that good stuff that you shared with us it's way before then you know as you put that mirror you look through the you know connecting the dots backwards is always so much easier than trying to project with the dots are gonna be forward that's why it's like a a very non linear line but i think there's in the reflection of who we have been our passions and what you shared with us is which is so real and is people i i find that people want this to not be the case but it is absolutely the case our passions are gonna ebb and flow but there is always a through line in experience and passion and anytime when we experience massive burnout or massive highs or massive lows those are definitely going to happen and that really when we look at this from a professional perspective you know we all have i mean all of us have had low level jobs you know entry level jobs whenever we were emerging and maturing right i think back to working in a dress shop and i think back to working in a car dealership i think back to being you know i've had just like everybody else we've had all these crazy random up jobs and then i've had very professional jobs of being in nurse and you know working in hr and being an hr executive and there's a through line in all of those and that's where when i had the same opportunity that you had to really look at myself and say what do i wanna be when i grow up now yeah because who i wanted to be at eighteen when i was entering into college was a different you know i was at at a different stage of my life and i couldn't see what i could see today which is what everybody has the opportunity to do and i feel like we can reject ourselves by trying to impose something that isn't you that isn't authentically you but when you take the time and i have had that you've had that to look at okay where are my gifts and passions because i can make a business out of these gifts and passions like i remember thinking the very first thing i did out of corporate when i was making my own business identity i wanted it to be as natural as possible so i didn't want to start selling jewelry because i don't have a deep passion there and i didn't have any experience with that but what i did have that's an example and the funny funny story actually but of one of the things that i was looking at was like what is the most natural thing for me to be able to step into because i'm gonna be able to be confident talking about it i'm gonna have a process and i know i know for me i needed a process that i could articulate easily and execute easily and so that's what got me into my very first opportunity which was doing project management through the lens of event management i never expected to be planning events for online entrepreneur that was never i didn't even know this online world existed at that point this is ten years ago but i remember thinking i'm still doing project management i'm still doing the thing that comes the most natural for me and i've always had this lens of curiosity which was like oh i can fit event management into project management and tada here we are today fast forward a million lives in these last ten years but there's that through line of operations which you have been able to see for yourself and what i love about your story is pulling out the gifts and also the nuance of the variety of things that you have done to get you to this point to realize this is who megan is today this is where i get confidence this is where i have a lot of clarity and these are my undeniable strengths i feel like the younger we are the harder it is for us to see our own strengths which is why even my pursuit megan i was relying on other people i went out talk about market research i went out to all the people all the leaders that i trusted colleagues and c friends and you know just everybody my family like what do you see good about me you know like what is and i'm not talking about adjectives i'm talking about what do i and i remember people would come back to me my friends were coming back to me saying you're a great party planner i was like oh my gosh party planner i don't wanna be a good party planner right mh but i had to say deeper what was it about the party that was great was it how they felt around me was it the experience and then you know you did that through so many people but this is all coming back to just the through line of operations and nobody tells you natalie meghan you're an amazing operator you think so strategically you're able to find gaps and turn those in to action to solve like nobody talks like this right these are things that we and we can't even identify for ourselves and so all of this comes down to the powerhouse operator that you are today and a soul searching that you had to do the experiences that you went through to get to the point to really walk you into identifying as an operator to then find the ops authority and of course the rest is history or actually we're writing your history as you move into this next version of yourself and that version has come as you being an independent entrepreneur now being in partnership with anna and what you guys are creating and collaborating in your independent strengths and pulling those together to really serve in a very comprehensive holistic way for the lucky people who ask you to serve them so in that world of thinking about operations do you remember i i don't know if it's always a pinnacle time for you but what made you identify as an operator i know you use the word strategist and there's a difference in strategist as an operator and maybe they combine for you but do you have anything in your journey where you're were like yes meg i am an operator yeah i have a few things that come to heart so like i said i've always been a strategic thinker but i always really love to bring a vision to life and that i think you had described it i believe in the info session natalie i felt very seen by this but you connect dots between like past present to future i was like that's that comes so natural to me and i didn't realize how much of a gift that was until anna had reflected back to me i don't think that way like i was like oh okay so that's one piece i really feel like i've always been vega are and identifying possibilities drawing out unrealized potential and i think a lot of people would resonate with that like you just described seeing gaps and identifying those needs anticipating needs and meeting them of other leaders bringing order and clarity and slow and sequence and a systematic approach to change and to change processes always optimizing teams creating sop when nobody was even thinking about that at all and so those are the kinds of things i was just naturally intuitively doing and taking the initiative on in every team at every level i've been a part of and that included in military and and beyond even you know as a division individual and volleyball player i was doing the same thing on my team in different ways and so i see that as one thread and another example i had this really incredible mentor who just had such an impact on me in the military and she was a mentor of mine before she became my supervisor i got lucky enough to get station in the same place as her and work for her wow and we were just it was such a great collaborative partnership and she in many ways i felt it reminds me of me in anna partnership but she brought me in right away and was like i want you meghan to just attend all the meetings for these first two weeks sit back observe listen share with me what you see what the gaps that you're noticing where you feel you could best contribute and make an impact with your gifts and i was like oh this is so good to receive that kind of trust because that's where you know i'm able to then see the unrealized potential and i so much of what i also noticed in the way my strengths play out relative to other people and what i can see versus other people might miss is where are we being way to reactive and where can we create much more spacious and proactive from planning to execution but also even the research analysis piece like behind is the plan right do we have really solid analysis going into why we're creating this particular plan in the first place to solve whatever the problem is and so i've always been a researcher an analysis all the way through the strategy and the planning through like seeing it through and i have a lot of that perseverance understood like see it through in the discipline that i help bring into organizations i think so that's who some of the other ways that i feel like it's taking shape but i've never before the information session for the test drive for the deal certification that i have never before been so like seen and affirmed and validated in my gifts because you give a name for what i never had a name for i was like this is me this is absolutely me and i imagine there's a a lot of other people feel the same way when they first hear you start to talk about being an operator or being the integrator and what even that means because it doesn't come natural to a lot of people but yeah we've never quite been given a title around it or any kind of language for it god that's i think about myself truly as you're talking through this you know when did i identify as an operator because it wasn't even when i started my business we were not the ops authority we were natalie gamer dot com because i didn't know what to call myself i knew that i had really i was stuck in this word of project management this title of project management which is not even a title ever had a corporate so i didn't know what to do and i started thinking about corporate structures again started analyzing and reflecting and doing all the things that we naturally do as operators to really mind map out how do i describe myself and then when i came up with operations or operator i was like oh this is actually really hard to articulate to people how am i gonna sell myself as an operator and then i started to hide behind it now this is a whole other episode but i started to hide behind it because i didn't want to be too elevated i didn't want it to look too corporate i didn't want all of these things wanted it to be something simple and you know what i realized was when i started talking in simple terms i wasn't finding the kind of work that was actually challenging fulfilling work it was really entry level work which led me to you know doing or looking at things like being a virtual assistant which nothing against it man that is part a significant part of a lot of people's journey but in my words that's administration and i had done a lot of administration in my life i still do a lot of administration but the reality is i knew i could serve at a higher level and so it was like oh where is this bridge from you know and my terms now being a virtual assistant to being a director of operations and so much of that is in skill and then the other part of that is in the acquisition of the people you wanna work with it's messaging it's lang it's communicating in a way where you're showing them what's ahead and that's just my own journey but a lot of people are the same way but when you talk about how do you know you're an operator i think about i didn't call myself an operator ten years ago when i started this business and truly where i got the clarity was when i was the chief of staff and this fortune one fifty company i sat under the umbrella of operations so when i started to dissect my own skills it was like oh you're a great project manager where where would project management sit in a large corporate structure and so luckily we have those structures to reflect on and kind of reverse engineer but that's really how we got to the ops authority and i know that that's a crazy windy story and most of us don't have an operator title when they find me right i have to do a lot of that explaining and so i'm so glad that you were there that day to receive that and that it spoke to you because it's speaking to somebody else right now that's listening to this and it's important to know that we are given a lot of titles throughout our lives and then we are a lot of titles are projected onto us they don't actually fit us or we're not fueled by them and we accept them and another episode but you know i work with females exclusively and we tend to allow other people to give us labels and to believe those and that's a a whole other mindset of conversation but i want to be that vehicle that helps people to interrupt that and to accurately depict who you are and who you wanna be i believe that god has given me the gift and the calling to help women step into their next best selves and i didn't fully know that this was going to be the way i was gonna do that and i feel that responsibility every single day i talk about this freely and openly but i don't care if it's my daughter's friends that i'm impacting if it's you know volunteering at an entrepreneurship at the high school if it's a non nonprofit that i'm working in it is always my mission for those people who are around me to help them see what is your next best self i didn't realize that this was a gift of mine back in the day and i've been given this opportunity my entire life it was never it sometimes it was labeled then sometimes it wasn't but you know through the lens of operations that's where i have merged those two things and so understanding authentically who you are and where you wanna go and and giving yourself the permission to fully bring things together just like you are and what you're doing today you know i mean you've got a great history i'm sure there's bumps and bruises and pride enjoy as you reflect on those and things that we don't wanna go back and do again and then there's this great opportunity and vision that we see for ourselves that's like whoa i'm still on fire to pursue these things whether it looks like what i'm doing today five years from now or whether it looks like something completely different i know that operations will be the line or that string or that thread that holds all of these pieces of natalie and pieces of meghan through this it's a new month and that means a new podcast recommendation if you're listening to mine you probably are listening to others and so i wanna give you one that has caught my attention it's called mentors and it's hosted by julie meyer and jimmy edge and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the reason it caught my eye is it's all about mentorship and if there's one thing that's been consistent over my entire professional and personal money me it is my passion for mentoring people to become their very best so the focus of their podcast is to explore different ways to augment and to refresh the mentoring movement so if you find yourself in a coaching position a strategist a right hand i think that this would be really fantastic because part of what we do as high level operators is a lot of mentorship we're leading up and we're leading down i think this podcast can be of a great benefit to you go ahead and listen to augment mentors wherever you get your podcast it's that time the director of operations certification is open we are 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 and out of the exhausting implementation the time is right if you're looking for community for support for guidance 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 in 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 let's kinda transition into i mean i feel like i could talk to you for a year and not get tired but for the sake of the listener who's here today who is probably intrigued by your story and definitely inspired by your story i mean we've talked a little bit about what led you here but what made you believe that working with us was going to be the right solution for the meg the next best version of megan yeah so i think i very clearly saw that it would help me translate quickly the soft and the hard skills right those experiences and areas expertise and a lot of those gifts that i was naturally wanting to have a space and sometimes honestly felt s in you mentioned that two of not always being seen or valued in what you can bring and i think sometimes we have this like we have a unique zone of genius that doesn't have space yet to forest and like find a an outlet for and so i was naturally doing that in the that advocacy work whatever anywhere else but that was out side of my normal job right and so i was like longing to find the context in which my gifts could be best suited and i very clearly saw that this would help translate i mean the frameworks the tools the processes that give more structure to those skills that i had been developing over but also the credibility right so more tang to what i had tang and then the credibility of having the certification and that just that kind of accreditation of it before these the knowledge for the strengths for what i was already doing get home my gifts and behaviors and so and i'm always i'm such a continual learner and that's a huge part of just who i am and i think probably with so many listeners as well and so just always wanting to hone my skill set and deepen it to better serve that i'm working with and my clients and yeah to be able to support my family more so that was i would say the core of the decision i love it of course i love that so having gone through the five and a half months of the certification all of the content which is heavy rich and broad and specific all at the same time you know what aspects of your experience with us or maybe it's a particular piece of the content that you received do you feel like benefited you the most in our time together i wanna actually speak right before i jump into that i wanna say one he seat that i had experienced so i was about to have a baby at the time but also i mean it's a big investment right and so most people have come in are are looking at you know wanting to kind of have a career that's on their own terms they wanna grow their business they wanna support the family they wanna share that gifts but i think the emphasis on the return investment from the very beginning natalie was something that gave me a huge amount of trust right away because you guys did not shy away from talking about that or directly mh supporting us in that and so i think the program is very intentionally designed to support us in moving into action right away so the way i benefited from that immediately was the strategic mapping model i mean that you probably you know everyone probably says the same thing there but it was so immediately actionable and i i remember even before we fully learned it i was already implemented it with a client and like half capacity you know because i was doing it a bit of a longer more like a quarterly planning with her and i used like the structure of strategic mapping to be able to do that and then i learned the rest of it and i then immediately like thought about okay who do i know that would benefit from this and i started reaching out and i got momentum going in that and that gave a significant amount of confidence right away you know brought in some income was able to yeah i did receive my roi through the program or more i think definitely more through the duration but that was huge and it's such a it's such a need for businesses and what i've noticed in the businesses that i've been supporting in that is like it forces you to ask the hard questions that you don't necessarily take time for or like have an outside view of when they're so in the leads they just they know they're you know hitting capacity walls they've got the bottlenecks for the next stage of gross but they don't see the shifts that are needed when you can come in as that strategic partner and hold that space for them and ask those hard questions sessions and that objectively show them it's like it becomes so clear what those transitions are that are needed in their business and everyone that i've worked with and this is at one of those major inflection points so it's just been such a valuable tool and i think i've executed now six strategic mapping and then another one i'm about to do this month as well or more this month and then we also did it internally yeah with me and anna like yeah and this was an interesting thing because i had to decide like what am i wearing when i'm doing this mh for her and i took off the business part of hat and i was more like d to ceo type hat but that was huge and then some of the other pieces i mean i tried to implement almost everything that i've learned that is like relevant in any way to my clients or to our business internally we have been able to go through a full essentially almost the team organizational analysis process the hiring process yeah onboarding for clients developing really key operational foundations for them inside their business key performance indicators the financial assessments i mean really just a lot of communication frameworks with leaders have been huge for just helping keep them on track for major decision points and where are they even going and how do we keep the big picture of the business in mind so that again they're not so either scattered or blue side or where they wanna go in the first place yeah well thank you so much for sharing all of that roi is huge you started with that and i didn't expect to dive into that but that is always going to be my heart i actually have plenty of wounds from being a d at the very beginning of my journey and those wounds came from working with people usually when we come into businesses we're supporting people and there's a big emotional support part of what we do right the overwhelming of the burnout the big big goals intangible goals that they are and maybe unrealistic goals which bring emotions and so you know i've supported people at that stage and that's just part of the role like i'm not gonna say that we have a band aid for that that is part of the role and we give you plenty of frameworks to help you find the right people who support you and you know there's a whole emotional part of this but that's where you're meeting people and the reality is in my own we'll call them wounds today but in supporting people in that way i found that there was a lack of integrity in some of the people that i was working with because we would be putting together systems that were not for the greater or good they were either for their pocket book and i'm here to tell you businesses for money and businesses for financial transactions people are in business to make money that is absolutely not something that i am saying that you shouldn't have because i desire that megan desires that you should want that for the efforts that you're putting in but there is a part where that becomes ic right where it is i'm gonna this but i have no idea how we're gonna deliver this right that is the in authenticity that never felt good to me and i was seeing that and sometimes you know i had to do some lot of work around you know the patterns of people that were the kinds of people that did that and so i could protect myself from going into partnership with them but how did that translate into the story that megan shared about my intentional around roi is i took a long time to stand up the certification i wanted to make sure we had every tea crossed and i dotted before we ever said go or buy or join us because wanted to make sure that there was a very clear understanding of expectation from the very beginning i know from the other side for me to hand over money i've gotta talk to my spouse about this it has to feel like a good investment i want there to be roots i want there to be you know as many routes as there are limbs and very very clear expectations and i wanted to make sure that i could get somebody their full return on investment because this is a conversation that they have had with their partner that this is a conversation that they have mold over themselves to make sure that they're ready for it time resources emotionally having this space to do that and so we look roi from a lot of different ways and of course financial is the number one way because i know that that's you know probably the biggest toll that is going to go into your decision to joining us so thank you for pulling that out i would greatly value that and then strategic mapping is you're right you said it you know that is typically the number one way that people are the thing that they pull out we put it very early in the program so that we can help you to get your return on investment but also it is the foundation that i see that truly transformed me into low level into truly being a strategic partner and i needed to define that framework myself me just like you and lots of other people are already strategist you're already working in a leadership capacity in a partnership capacity but we don't really have a good firm foundation and so i went to work myself into figuring out what that foundation looked like so that i could put that into my clients businesses and the way that i worked and now i'm able to share that in license that with all the other people who come through our certification so thank you for pulling those two pieces out and and sharing so freely i think i've what we can wrap up here with is i think i have a good understanding of who you are today and the listener does too but when you look at the vision that you have for yourself what is the next best version of what you're holding for you or maybe it's ua anna maybe it's you independently and very interconnected with anna mh yeah i would say i think just continuing to build our business in such a way that i can work for about twenty to twenty five hours a week really have these high value strategic engagements with clients where i have a really deep impact and can be a great sounding board for them and decision making for their team bring them clarity direction helps them with planning that honors their real humanity and their capacity we are all about people first growth and that's been a thread of all the efforts that you know in all the stages of my life but i think it's really incredible to be able to meet careers where they're at and continue to grow alongside them and so i'd say for this next stage that's a very tangible piece we wanna continue to increase our income we want to continue to grow our team we have several team members who are in support of anna and i and i are the primary on delivery to clients but we are building our team and we wanna continue to grow that and be even more supported ourselves in being able to be in our zones of genius and help mentor others into their gifts in the same way so i think our overall vision is that like our families are able to thrive the families of those that we serve are able to thrive and the families of our team are able to thrive and everyone is stepping more fully into their gifts that god has given them and god just really life giving regenerative work in that way yeah because so much of the work that we do and the women that we serve and the businesses that we work with they all are you know participating in some form of restoration in the world and healing for the world and you know they are also on their own healing journeys too and so we hope that the way that we support them can help facilitate that at the same time as doing operations or whatever it may be right both the internal and that external that matter so yeah i think longer term you know my husband and i were just talking about how we'd love to like for my business income to be able to support him potentially transitioning careers at some point out of the army whenever we decide that that's the right choice and create stability during that transition and flexibility for him to do what he's passionate about without you know worrying about whether our families needs are going to be met financially and so yeah just allowing that to not be disruptive and just being able to truly be present for our family and all the ways that they need and letting that ebb and flow in the seasons of life as our family grows or changes and yeah they go through different transitions yeah we rooted likely in that you know what i term as legacy just you know making sure that i can be as present as i can for my growing family i'm almost set aging family because my kids are before we hit record today i was telling her like oh my goodness here some parenting advice as i look backwards man if i could only you know have done this in your you're at a a newer stage than me but anyway it's truly rooted in you know my transition and what really led my life's work was understanding what i truly wanted out of life which i was not getting in my corporate i can't even call it a nine to five i call it a nine to nine yeah which feel generous yeah yeah but it it really came from that that deep rooted ness and wanting to serve my family first and knowing that i had gifts that the world still needed that were outside of the home but every gift i have starts in the home and and will touch the home so being able to be my whole self and the fullest rushing of me which is where i'm the most fulfilled and so it it wasn't for me from my story it wasn't leaving corporate and coming home and solely serving inside of the house it was really doing in a holistic way and this what you guys are hearing experiencing and seeing from me as well as meghan is that that is where our journey has led us and this crazy line of operations is is the thing that probably holds our families and supports our families both financially and internally in the home structure as well thank too yeah oh yes oh yes oh ironically my husband is an operator as well which is very interesting and that that is not always the dynamic but it is definitely the dynamic here that we're both operators and we see that inside the house in varying capacities but i think that knowing that it starts there and it serves both of us as we continue to grow i see all of us because in my mind i was thinking your family of five and five family four and you know held this structure has helped us internally as well as professionally is something that i hold very very dear and i find it in a lot of people inside of our community so if this is a story that resonates with you you know just listen closely i tell you to listen closely i know that at this stage in our world in our economy and in your life's journey the gift of operations is something that is often unseen and this is something that from my heart to yours is something i ask you to just take one extra look at this is not coming from the lens of a sale and i want you inside of our upcoming twenty seventh round of the certification this is coming from a place of knowing your next best self where your opportunities are both internally and then where you can partner with me or with another organization even if that's the right thing you know megan has talked about becoming a certified mindset coach and that piece in her journey was important for her to become her next best self so from natalie to you you know really examine in your journey in if you take nothing away from you you'll remember me as an operator you'll remember me as an operations educator and that is great but what i really want you to remember me as is the person who helps people to become their next best self whether that's through the vehicle that i have for you or a vehicle that you can explore on your own and maybe this is the right time to join me and to partner with us and maybe it's not and i'm totally okay with that i want you to know that everyone has the ability the gift and the opportunity to become their next best self sometimes that's internal work and sometimes it's external partnership and i want you to explore both of those i'm very grateful for you megan for trusting me in that journey and for identifying it because i i really feel before you can say yes to the ops authority and yes to the certification you have to say yes to you and explore what that is for you but i'm very grateful that our paths have crossed i'm very grateful again today that you've taken the time to share your story and i love hearing these stories not from a selfish perspective but just i think about the listener on the other side who is just craving understanding that they're not alone understanding that they have opportunity being able to cast a vision of what they can experience for themselves whether it's through the certification or whether it's through the advocacy work that you have shared today i i really don't care i really want people to understand that you know your next best self is really really it can be tangible it is not a dream it is not just a vision it is up to us to make it but if we don't see that for ourselves and take the time to identify what that is it doesn't ever come true and i know through your work through the hundreds and hundreds of women who have said yes to us we have had the great benefit of being able to see what their next best version was and the beautiful thing is the ops authority is able to partner with them in one small slice that really can make a very big impact in the goals that they have and sometimes those our financial sometimes those our professional and honestly we get to see a lot of personal goals met through this one lens of coming in and supporting them through the certification so megan thank you so much for being here and for sharing so openly i know that your work has interested people who are listening today and we are fact finder we are researchers and we are curious and so i can't close up today without having you share a little bit about where people can find you and the work that you're doing today yeah you can find us at epic apostolic fruit dot com and then we also just launched about a month or so ago apostolic fruit podcast so you'll find us there every week so that's been exciting and then on instagram at apostolic underscore fruit we're just getting started on linkedin so thanks natalie advice we'll be yeah i don't think i had touched this since before i was at west point so yeah so it's it's the next stage here so so grateful natalie to just have a conversation today and hopefully this is inspiring to others for thinking about taking action and i know so much of my journey has just been like just moving forward with what i've got it doesn't have to be perfect because i think it's so easy to fall into that kind of especially if our perfection over analyzing or just taking in all the information but it's really where ever meets the road is really in the action where you can gain the confidence always always always and we're such good action taker so don't sell yourself short in that action but know that there's a higher level of the action by doing the action you get the clarity we always say action creates clarity clarity creates confidence and boy once you've got confidence you are unstoppable if you are interested in becoming a director of operations i invite you to attend our test drive which is exactly what meghan did probably a little over a year ago and that is coming up if you head over to the ops authority dot com forward slash test drive you'll be able to register and get all of the information on that we've got our twenty seventh round that is going to be enrolling here in just a second what does that mean that means that we are quickly approaching our five hundredth person to join us in the certification and have the opportunity to transform who they are and help them to walk into their next best self through the lens of operations and educating them to make an impact in their operations career thank you again megan for being here and for all of you listeners thanks for hanging out with us today a little bit longer podcast but i think it's one that we all got a lot out of so you will hear from us very shortly and head over to test drive join us today and you will really benefit from this info session that we have coming up thanks so much for hanging out with us today 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 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 it's natalie welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast i'm so excited that you are here today and listening in with me as i share a little bit of something that i don't typically come here with but my team encouraged me to come here and share this with you guys and i know that there's a lot of people listening that are business owners as well as operators and have the aspiration or are currently building a team i've got something that is really unique and i didn't intentionally get to this place and i really never thought i would be celebrating this but the thing that is so incredible today that i wanna just open up the book and share a little bit of behind scenes on is how i've been able to cultivate a team who has stayed with me for over actually the average tenure on our team is three plus years and you know as i was growing up in corporate that really wasn't something that was i mean everybody wants retention nobody wants turnover and i ironically worked in human resources for quite some time and our goal was always to bring in the most qualified people who would hopefully stick around and here at the ops authority i've been blessed to bring a lot of my own skills and leadership as well as you know the learned behaviors of my previous experiences is to be able to build a team that sticks around and i'm sharing this and it does feel like a soft brag but really it is such a gift and it allows us to be really best in class here at the ops authority it's not me this is really a collaborative effort of all of the people that work alongside me and as i have we all have navigated really twenty twenty till today which have been some very po years in business especially in small business we've seen ups and downs in sideways and a lot of question marks in business and my boxer which includes lots of my peers we talk a lot i can tell you if my boxer could talk that's what i tell people sometimes times like wow if my boxer could talk you would be amazed at the struggles i hear when it comes to team sustaining teams building successful teams and then the inevitable turnover that just will happen in business but this last i would say the last eighteen months to twenty four months we've seen a lot of struggle i have heard a lot of struggle with businesses really needing to expand and contract when it comes to their team and i hate to hear it because i know the most momentous a business can be is when the leader is surrounded by a team of people who are on the same track who have the same mission who are excited who are fired up who come in here to serve and to deliver with their whole hearts i know that that's how businesses can really elevate and get to the next level so we've been able to do that here at the ops authority and today i wanna tell you a little bit of a story and give you some pointers if you're listening hearing and you have the goal of building a team or you're reconstruct a team because i know that that can be a season two but i wanted to share a little bit about our team how i have had success building it and then also some strategies for retention as you look to move forward in your business career a little bit about us here at the ops authority we have twenty eight years of combined experience here at the ops authority i know twenty eight years but i've only been in business and i've only been building a team really for about eight years here at the ops authority but we have eight core team members and we have six employees including myself at the ops authority we have some full time and long term contractors that go that twenty eight years but i'm really really really proud of that we have on our hiring side of our business we have of diana who has been serving here at the ops authority for more than five years in one capacity or another so blessed to have someone so invest and i could say the same thing i'm not gonna point out every single person here because that is i mean i would tell you a lot actually maybe i will but alex gabby and lynette they've all been with me for more than four years yes four years in small business online remote business is pretty wild and so i am so proud of what their dedication to me we have adrian we have sky we have jess all of them have been here for three plus years and then again on our hiring side we have lindsey who's been with us for two years so this is our core team and collectively they bring twenty eight years of experience here inside of the ops authority so when you're looking for consistency obviously you want people to stick around so i looked at the bureau of labor statistics and it shows that forty seven percent so forty seven out of one hundred people or employees are going to leave their job on an annual basis now feather in my cap i feel really really really blessed to have people who have stuck around and to beat that statistic but this is why leaders have to truly be leaders if they want to build a team that is going to have her retention and honestly morale at the end of the day so i wanted to share a little bit about how i've been able to do that first of all it starts with values values values i have been very clear and intentional about doing the work many many many years ago ten years ago when i was standing up what it was that i wanted to build at that point i was a solo so i had to really envision what do i want this business to look like and today we are living that right now and it all started with understanding what my mission what my vision and what my values were so values when i'm looking at team team and who i attract and who i'm able to retain i see the highest correlation when it comes to values so what does that mean for me as a leader and for you as a leader you have to look and dig and see okay who is it that i want to work with who is it that i want to build this business with what are the values what are the characteristics that work and compliment me and i did that work and guess what i'm only able to attract and retain these amazing high autonomous performers because we overlap we're not the same i don't want you to confuse yourself with wanting to hire many means i hear that a lot like i just need someone to be just like me yeah you might need that for a little bit but that usually won't sustain you and allow you to go into a growth state so yes values are so so important but you don't need to build a homogeneous team we don't want that we really want independence and individuality different experience is a lot of diversity and we've been able to cultivate that here at the ops authority but really understanding what my values are and then complementing that with where i want the business to go i can tell you if you're just now starting to build a team values is the only thing it's the one that's the singular the most important the highest priority of what you need to be very very clear on that allows people to understand who you are and how you are so they can see themselves in your space in that role i would say the next thing that i really lean into is building a strong job description if you hung around me for a while you're probably exhausted from hearing about values and how you really need to show up with those in your job description all of my job descriptions are very accurate are they long yes sometimes are they too long yeah sometimes but you know what i wanna give the person who's applying to work at the ops authority a full picture of what it's going to look like what is our goals down the road but also what does it look like in the day to today in the implementation which is part of the role here i want them to really be able to envision themselves in that place so making sure that the job description is comprehensive and definitely accurate the other piece here the next piece after we are able to attract those people these amazing high achieving big bright stars in the ops authority the next thing we do is look at our onboarding process and our onboarding process requires me this is something i didn't do especially in corporate and i hope it's a tip that you can take away but it requires me the leader or whoever it is that they are going to be reporting to to be vulnerable you might not have expected that but when i am pulling someone in and we've already gone through a pretty comprehensive job interview experience and we have said yes to one another but when they come in to doing our onboarding process the very first thing we do is get to know one another one layer deeper we've already you know gone through the formalities of interviewing which of course we strive to be very open and it's an exchange it's not one way that's also important for me but when we get here and we're onboarding it's like you're already in i am trusting myself that you are the right person for us and you're doing the same thing but something unique i think that that is unique and i've tried to stress with many of my peers is when you're onboarding i am very very vulnerable i tell somebody hey here are the behaviors that you're gonna see from me when i'm stressed i know that i can be avoid sometimes here's how to deal with me i'm literally coaching them how to coach me and i don't care if this is someone that is isolated to our social media i don't care if this is somebody that is our director of operations and is going to be in my ear every single day talking me off the ledge on the ledge encouraging me really d prioritizing things whatever it doesn't matter i really don't care one of the things that is so important is for me to be a vulnerable human being something that i have seen my entire journey that has really helped me is to know that i'm going to be leading from the front but not from above and that's the culture that we bring here we are a collaborative culture and someone like me someone who is more of a coo than a ceo i know where my deficiencies are i know where i struggle i'm gonna need a team that collaborate together that i trust that i can lean on because decisions are slow for me and as much as i wish i could fix that and change that i'm not your typical you know visionary i require people to be around me to be bright to be intellectual to have emotional intelligence to be experts in their field and that's what we hire for here so in that i know that i need to be able to lead from the front but not from above it's a new month and that means a new podcast recommendation if you're listening to mine you probably are listening to others in i wanna give you one that has caught my attention it's called mentors and it's hosted by julie meyer and jimmy edge and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the reason it i caught my eye is it's all about mentorship and if there's one thing that's been consistent over my entire professional and personal journey it is my passion for mentoring people to become their very best so the focus of their podcast is to explore different ways to augment to refresh the mentoring movement so if you find yourself in a coaching position a strategist a right hand i think that this would be really fantastic because part of what we do as high level operators is a lot of mentorship we're leading up and we're leading down i think this podcast can be of a great benefit to you go ahead and listen to mentors 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 peek 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 well 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 another characteristic that i think has been a game changer for myself and that i want to help in instill in myself in in other people around me in my peers is to know that you are going to need to have a heart to human leadership that's what truly works after we start with values after we do the onboarding and i'm vulnerable and i'm really helping others to understand what it's like to work here to work with me to support me we lay really really clear thought out expectations for every single role it's truly the success metrics and how this person's going to soar once they get here but it comes back to that heart to human leadership it's really how i live my life but it shows up in the work that i do here and that allows people to come in here and to be autonomous they know what we're like they know what i am like they know the expectations for the role and they know that they can trust me because i'm gonna see them as a human incorporate it was all about getting like butts and seats butts and seats like come in here have a great skill do your job and be managed or micro managed i don't have time for that here i'm going to attract people i'm going to work with people who have the ability to come in here and to be their best self they know the skills that i need obviously i trust that they're bringing those skills but i'm gonna see them more than just for their skill set yes they have it i'm gonna make sure that they have it but that values first attraction is going to help me to step into them to lean into them for them to lean to me and to truly embrace a heart to human leadership style it's not just me to them it's them to me as well and that allows us to be a high performing team it allows them i use the word autonomous earlier and i'll use it again autonomy is everything to me we're a remote team i don't know what they're doing i don't know if they're taking a lunch break i don't know if they're working through their lunch we are not clocking in and clocking out i fully trust that i have people on my team who believe in the mission we give them plenty plenty of points in time where i can assess that but they believe in this mission they believe in me and they know that i am for them if they have a life event going on i mean i told you we have twenty eight years of combined experience here in leading at the ops authority with these critical team members i can promise you we have all gone through life events we've gone through hard things like things but it doesn't even matter at the end of the day we are human and it is so important for i believe if you're listening to this and you aspire to build a team always in the back of your mind be thinking heart to human leadership i do have the get of empathy but i don't think you have to have that i know that when my people are going through something i put myself in their position how would i prioritize this project this day this work my role with where they fit in their life i couldn't do that if we didn't have a team of people who are ready to jump in to support that person who may be going through something but self led and autonomy is extremely critical here at the ops authority and it's a value that my team really loves and leans into so i'd really come here to tell you that some of this is intentional and some of this is just because i do lead from the heart it is a vulnerable place to be and it's also a risky place to be it's not something that everybody has the ability to do the last thing i'll share with you that has helped us to be successful is that i hire people who will come in here at the implementation if you've heard me talk about the levels of talent implementation is at the bottom management strategy and then envision i hire every single person here at the implementation level and collaboratively we find a growth path for them all the way as high as they want to be as high as they desire to be and that's one of my gifts is i'm able to partner with them to understand and to assess where their strengths are where their gaps are but most of all where their opportunities are going to serve them to stay here alex is a great example she came in here as an ops coordinator she's been able to move into an ops manager and she continues to thrive we collaborate to understand where she can continue to grow here there have been stretch exercises there have been stretched years and i am so happy to share that she has recently been promoted to our director of operations but she started here at the implementation level why is that so important she starts at this implementation level and she's able to see me in all of my stress successes all of those things but she's also able to see how the business functions from a full comprehensive view now this has happened for every single person here we have you know expanded and contracted as the economy has as our opportunities here internally have and i just always want them to know that i even if it doesn't benefit me i have helped people exit the company that really wanted to grow in a way that we could not support so knowing that you as a leader need to look at people as you know where is their growth potential and does it fit you or does it fit them externally either way is completely fine with me i know that everybody has an opportunity to be able to expand and for the most part here in our company we've been able to cultivate roles build new roles gabby came to me not that long ago and said hey i see an opportunity for myself here can we build it it required me to invest more in gabby and guess what it has been a blessing to us but that's because we are able to collaborate i know that i've worked in environments where there was no way i could bro my leader and say hey can you basically give me a raise to do a different job here it works for us because we are all extremely heart centered and again that heart to human leadership she was expressing that to me because she saw not only an opportunity for her but how it could be a benefit to the organization and these are the ways that we have been able to build this business to retain high performing talent to continue their growth as leaders in their operations profession or in their profession in total the last thing that i will point out is we don't have we're a super small business we're a nano business in the land of small businesses we would be considered a smart a smart up maybe that's a freudian and slip but we are considered a startup up and on top of that we are a very very very lean team everybody here shows up they contribute the most that they can contribute they want the greatest success for myself for the entire community our community at large and for the brand as well as for themselves of course but one way that i'm able to give back to them even though it is so lean and so small is through looking at benefits that serve them and so i wanted to share that if you're building a business and you're not able to provide you know medical dental even wealth benefits or retirement benefits there are other fringe benefits that our team really leans into and the primary one is time off paid time off to do what it is that they want to do and when they do that they're free to literally not be here one thing i didn't share is i have very very very strong expectations that we don't work nights and weekends when i'm with my family i want my team with their families or doing whatever it is that builds their hearts and so i like to think of us as a nine to four team we are going crazy we're a launch based business so yes there are times when we are all gears clicking everybody is here but for the most part i want people out of their boxer i want people out of their emails nights and weekends and i compliment and i truly mean that and guess what i don't get boxer from my team's nights and weekends and they don't get them for me because i'm busy doing the things that fuel me so that when i'm reporting to work my whole heart is here at work that has been something that i did not see when i was supporting other teams and so it's something i'm very proud of and it's a value that i put on myself but our entire team it's reciprocate back to the benefits thing so we don't have formal structures for benefit plans here but i know that time off and space is incredibly important so just to give you a little view of what our benefits look like that everybody bow use here is we have monthly mental health days i pay my team to take a day off every single month i don't care how they use it it is a day to fully check out that's twelve days out of the year that they get for themselves in addition to that we have eight paid vacation days we have ten paid holidays we have seven to ten additional paid time off days most of the time we're using that at the end of the year for our two days off so my team is getting over forty days of paid time off they get to do their jobs they get to do a job that aligns with them so it should be a challenge but it also is something that complements their natural strengths and gifts we're intentional about that then of course you know if you're an employee here on i'm buying your equipment i'm making sure that you get a reimbursement for office supplies and then lastly if you're going to contribute to an organization that has your heart i'm going to match you in that and so that is up to five hundred dollars it's not a ton but a lot of us are mission focus in mission centric and so if you've got an organization or something around you that you're really invested in and you put your personal money there i wanna help support you we again coming back to that human that heart to human leadership that is so important to me so i just wanted to take some time today to kinda pull the curtains back and share with you what i have been able to do and has been really natural it's been an organic path for me to be able to retain top talent to pull in and attract and hold on to these all female squad here who is all invested in the ops authority in our mission and what we do and most of all that support you the listeners our community it starts with you guys and because that is our brand that is what we are and who we are and of course selfish officially they support me in being able to bring that vision to life so i hope that this has been something that inspires you and helps you to see that this is possible it is possible to have people that stick around for three four five plus years with you in a time where remote autonomy and this type of work online is actually possible i've seen peers really struggle with us and so i wanted to pull the curtain back and share with you how i believe i've been able to do that what has made us unique in keeping our team intact and really looking from a growth perspective as my company has grown and shifted just like yours has and will mine has done the same thing yet we've been able to keep a team completely intact and growing as we do that so i wanted to say thank you so much for tuning in today i will be back here with another episode in your ears to help you do this ops journey this ops career in the way that best suits you friends have a great day and you'll hear from me 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 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 for me in a week but 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 episode of the ops authority podcast i'm your host natalie gin and today we are recording episode number two hundred and seventy six with a very important topic that i know you're going want to listen to and it's not just me here talking about this we've got an expert here who is a scaling strategist and i know every single person who's got ears on this podcast is interested in scaling their time scaling their money scaling their freedom all of those things that are important to our community are actually all scalable and today anne marie rose is gonna be here talking to you and sharing her tips and ideas on how we can make this viable without losing the high touch that we really pride ourselves on so i've been looking forward to this conversation and i just i love that it's not just me who thinks like this it's such an honor to partner with people who work with people to bring this into their lives and as a great benefit to you you're gonna walk away with some free and accessible tips on how to make this a reality for you but why should you be listening to miss anne marie let me give you a little background she is an online business scaling strategist with a decade of experience helping serviced based business owners that's exactly why she's here she helps them to scale beyond five hundred thousand dollars in a way that's truly life proof her mission well it's to help passionate entrepreneurs ten times their impact and thrive in a business without sacrificing in life or skim on service anne marie welcome to the podcast you are absolutely one of our people because i think everyone here is listening to that and nodding their head i certainly am i feel like this describes me in our community really really well so welcome thanks for having me yes i was listening to i'm like these are some people i am so excited to talk you because i very much started my business doing lots and lots of done for you work just a small number of plants so i have been there in that space and even though that's not how my business looks now i still very much relate to that i know the challenges that come up and i know there's still room for scalability so i'm excited just to talk about it today yeah i mean i too started the exact same way from twenty fifteen to a little after you know twenty twenty i was serving almost as a solar if not a solar during that time so i was the one required to do the sales to do the marketing to do the fulfillment to do the client delivery and in many ways it was definitely less complex than what my business looks like today there was a lot you know there's a lot of benefits of to it there's some great profit margins and at the end of the day i still wanted to create something where in my particular story i wanted to be able to serve more people what did serving more people do well i am a servant hearted person i love coming in and truly being helpful to the person on the other end of my service and at the same time to shy away from the fact that i wanted to bring in more revenue i wanted you know more cash for myself i was walking away from a six figure corporate position and now taking on the risk and the joy the fulfillment of this brand new life as a service provider and when i say service provider i've got skills and ability and a passion to serve and so i package that into an offer i sold it to people who had similar values and needs so that's really how my business got going and i just wanted to come here in today and just say scalability how do you define scalability because i know it can mean a lot of different things i'd love to hear from you the way i define it is it's very relative it is really increasing your impact your income and then i add in fulfillment so your happiness your joy associated with what it is that you're doing without significantly increasing your costs in time time spent is also cost so time pouring in more money pouring in that is scaling we wanna increase those like three things of the front end income impact fulfillment and we don't want a significantly increase those from the back end the time and money spent to get there so i technically be on the the front end to get there yeah yeah you walk away with either less complexity as well as more profit margin and everyone says yes to that you know that we spend so much time and marie focusing on giving that exact what you just described des scalability we are focused on delivering that to our clients that so many times we forget to hold up that mirror and think about ourselves our businesses or our careers doesn't matter if you're listening in today and you have a client or you have an employer we are all service providers because we're leveraging our gifts and our skills to then serve the world in whatever capacity you are serving in but we all want to operate with greater ease and more fulfillment so i love that you brought that into the definition of scalability and a lot of times service providers really feel like we can't scale right a lot of us are solar or we perform one function for a company or we're one asset a lot of times we serve a lot of functions because of the the nature of who we serve but the reality is we want this to become easier for us or we want to be able to bring in more clients and today i wanna keep our focus on scalability in that solo mindset not necessarily duplicating our work by creating a digital product or anything like that i think that that's a completely different conversation and because why do i want to avoid that well i wanna avoid that because that really requires you to change your business model winning you change your business model you are in essence burning it down and starting it all over and while that may be something that you do over time i'm a huge proponent of working really in a hybrid space so that you don't lose the consistent revenue which is what our audience really really want like we're we're very aligned on that i have plenty of clients who've come to be in mostly you know operator mode and saying i mean one of the most common questions my clients are asking they're coming to work with me is do i need to burn my business to the ground and i'm like so it's let's keep what's stable refine it a little bit and then if you want to do something wildly different okay let's talk about it and let's ease you into it we don't need to burn stuff to the ground and then so that does your nervous system is just generally no good for anyone yes yes the sweet nervous system and when we talk about scaling we really want to bring in i mean that's a part of our conversation i didn't really expect to get into but as an entrepreneur you really have to keep tabs on your nervous system and our audience is generally female so i think the nervous system in general is quite different but wow thank you again for bringing that up to that is something that i have had to really keep in check on certainly not the person to teach or mentor about it because it's not my area of specialty but it from like my own self work it is really important and a big piece of the puzzle that we have to keep tabs on as we look at how do we build a business that truly serves us and i almost named my business ops with ease i almost named it that because i wanted ease that was like the number one thing coming out of corporate i hung on to two words one was legacy and one was ease fully did not expect to be sharing that today but ease and flow is part of scalability and if you're listening in and that service provider potentially a solo thinking how am i gonna ever amplify this without bringing in and doubling the number of clients i have or instead of working thirty hours a week working sixty hours week mh anne marie gonna talk to us today about how we can actually make that happen without living in this scenario that and i made that mistake emery i at one point i was like you know what i had a lot of clients coming to me and i just kept saying yes because i wanted to make as much money as i could so i was like yes come on come on what did that mean it did not mean ease it definitely led me to less flexibility mh and while i was making more money that's when i was like i need to start bringing in people to help me and so then you know i was losing out on that profit margin that you were you know talking about the expenses part of this so let's talk about how to create a scalable offer without abandoning that high touch style that operators love like that's our sweet spot and we can dig into that too yeah totally and like i said scalability is relative right so if we're looking at how can we possibly build in even if it's just ten percent more income impact and fulfillment in your work what i know can happen because i've worked with a number of operators in my business and had clients come to me who would define themselves as operators that i've worked with for long periods of time to transform their business models so i know what it looks like when you're really in the weeds with a couple of two three four clients and a lot of times you're wearing lots of different hats so your capacity to do that for if you were to say okay well i'd like to increase my revenue either have to have this tough conversation about raising my prices or i need to take a one more client and those are really the only two options at that point unless you created a slightly different offer and the nice thing when you are an operator there are a lot of business owners out there who are happy to invest in done for you work and so when you are highly skilled which if you're listening to this you are at the operational side of people's businesses you probably have people coming your way more people who wanna work with you but you don't necessarily like wanna take them on as the full client load that you have already so if you're kind of the go to right hand for three four clients being that for five six means sacrificing more of your life and we don't wanna do that right but what you could do alternatively is do what i i tend to find as like a welcome mat offer for my clients who are looking to have higher volume in their business models but this could work beautifully for operators who want to just have another option for people that doesn't require you to pour more time significantly more time into the business and this could look like just deciding what are people coming to me most often struggling with or what's the first thing that i tend to do with most of my clients and having a defined framework and time frame around that in a very clear process to get that one specific thing done so maybe it's over the course of a week you're getting their click up hub setup maybe it's over the course of two weeks you are building out their launch funnel and launch funnel is listen i've been in this for long enough to know there's a big difference between what launch funnels can look like so maybe it's a very specific type of launch funnel because the key in this scenario is containment you have a very very clear scope of what this is going to look like because if you're living in a world where you don't have that with your other clients you're key to having some amount of scalability is in the scope and having very clear processes and a framework in the scope that you can offer so if someone comes to you and says i wanna bring you on as my right hand ops person you could say i don't currently have availability for that but what you're gonna need when you bring that person on is your project management you know system built out your you know operational management system built out so what we could do is start there and they could refer you to a couple of colleagues and help you get started with somebody who could be a great fit to work with you now you've made some revenue on the front end you knew it was just gonna be a week long project you could take one a week if you want there you go you've built your revenue but you don't have to become that right hand person for somebody new mh right even if you are another way of looking at this is even if you are a right hand person a lot of our people are that's what they want yeah so a lot of the listeners here today are a lot like me like we want to come in and be a holistic high level operator and i talk about this in our certification and certainly here on this podcast that's only one way of being an operator you've got operational skills and you can package them in different ways you can work in more of a project capacity which is what you are just describing where you come in with a really specific deliverable and you focus in a short amount of time on delivering that definitely one option to help you with scaling the other part is if you wanna be more of a generalist that high level ballistic operator which is what i love doing i love knowing all the pieces and parts of the business there's still ways to be able to scale that and one of the what i talk about is pretty much in an alignment with what you just shared as far as like defining the work but yeah instead of if you've done this a couple of times you have a really good idea of what it looks like to come into a business and what maybe what you work on defining is what you're going to do in the first thirty the first sixty the first ninety the first hundred and eighty so that you're following a plan most of the people that are gonna be hiring you have never had support like this before most of the time a lot of our students and a lot of our community comes in in a fractional capacity so you're gonna have to use those good boundaries around your work otherwise that scope that you mentioned and marie can get really blown out of out of that and then you you ran to a place where you're not earning what you should be and there's resentment and talk about the nervous system that doesn't work ring it's a new month and that means a new podcast recommendation if you're listening to mine you probably are listening to others and so i wanna give you one that has caught my attention it's called mentors and it's hosted by julie meyer and jimmy edge and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the reason it caught my eye is it's all about mentorship and if there's one thing that's been consistent over my entire professional and personal money it is my passion for mentoring people to become their very best so the focus of their podcast is to explore different ways to augment and to refresh the mentoring movement so if you find yourself in a coaching position ernie a strategist a right hand i think that this would be really fantastic because part of what we do as high level operators is a lot of mentorship we're leading up and we're leading down i think this podcast can be of a great benefit to you go ahead and listen to mentors 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 o 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 peek 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 well 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 if you can take the same tips that en just shared about kinda creating that one piece of your offer in delivering on that you can do the same thing as a service provider who works in a retainer capacity we love the stability of the income but instead of it just being like hap hazard like what am i doing today my goodness you run the risk of that when you work you know in a holistic generalist way inside of a business even if you're at a strategic level in the business right there's always a lot of balls in the air blah blah blah blah but if you're someone like me who enjoys doing that you can minimize the complexity of this by creating expectations around what maybe in time frames this is what i'm gonna do in the first month the second month and the third month so how would something like that help you scale well you would have the predictability of the time capacity in how much it takes for you to show up for this so when you don't have that you don't know and i hear this all the time in marie people will tell me like i'm gonna do fractional services but i really don't know if that means that i'm gonna be working five hours right or eighteen hours in a business so when we look at scale from a time perspective if we can put some guard rails and expectations around how i'm gonna be showing up in the first thirty days what i'm gonna be accomplishing in the next thirty in the next thirty then you can back into some expected timing and how does that help you scale well now you know i can take on one client or two more clients and still work in the amount of time that i want to work in so how does that feel to you is that something that you have seen as well yeah in that instance what we're really talking about like truly defining is growth mode but again if we can look at ways growing without having to pour an additional time and money is scaling even if you're like i only wanna scale this bar so it's all about looking about how to optimize your efficiency and how you're working so that you can be able to impact more people mh without having to spend significantly more hours so it is difficult with this business model there's only a you know set number of ways that you're gonna be able to do that and so it's really up to you on whether you wanna define like really scope out the i mean and i'm a fan of doing that to a degree anyways when you are kind of that right hand person in someone in business having clear expectations having the defined scope having all those things what we're talking about there is more you know one scoping but also there's boundary setting that comes with that as well that's certainly one set of things when you are the right and someone's business so that's a you know heavy mental lift as well and at least with the operators i've worked with i've been so fortunate for the most part to have people in my business who really truly feel invested in the vision of my company in me in my well being and that's huge but as an individual operator that's also you know a lot on you so it's just about knowing what's your limit right can you do that for three people can you do that for five people can you do that for six people because not only is it the work of what you're physically getting done it's also the work of being that support for the person who you're there right hand mh so it's knowing how much you wanna pour and if you are someone who says i really want to grow my income i wanna be able to impact more people but i know that from an emotional and mental being standpoint i only wanna be all in on say three or four businesses then thinking of some alternative ways that you can support people is a great way to get creative to scale and to not feel like you're stuck in a place you don't wanna be in and and this is i'm all about knowing what's right for you and knowing that there is a path available to you no matter what that is so if you are someone who's the right hand of four business owners and you're asking yourself is this it i love it but is this it there's an alternative you know there are alternative options available to you to build in that additional income and impact that you're wanting without necessarily having to take on that fifth person who you feel like okay well that's one more birthday i need to remember one more life that when we're the when we're the ceos oh my gosh like you know different things happen in our life certainly impact the trajectory of the business and if you don't wanna be like along for the ride if being along for the ride of that and five business feels like it might break you then don't do that there's other ways to do it right yes and that's you know i talk a lot about if you're wanting more flexibility if you're wanting to bring in revenue maybe you move into that hybrid model i mentioned earlier which is instead of maxing out at four clients you keep three clients but then you start to look at bringing in some of these projects clients like you mentioned earlier so the workload is convenient for you in your life if your kids are for the summer and you enjoy being home with them and you tend to work less in the summer then that's not the time when you're gonna wanna bring in a project client but maybe when they're in school it's like oh this is a perfect time i've got more time at my desk or i've got more availability for me to be able to serve so i can take advantage of the extra time work in a short term capacity and bring in extra money i personally did this anne marie at the beginning when i was bringing in you know i was like oh if i bring on this client and manage this project for this short amount of time i'm gonna be able to bring in five thousand dollars and we're gonna spend that on a family vacation like it was my bonus to the family but it wasn't taking away from that consistency that we needed to pay the bills and and to contribute back to the house and my husband and my family so can i find that when people have more that choice and that freedom it automatically leads to feeling more fulfilled in the business so and when you are in that strictly retainer model while it is fabulous and stable and for a lot of personality types it's just such a great fit it can be a little bit limiting when it comes to you know feeling like technically this is my business but i wanna make more money in the next month and i don't really have a way to do that without again like sending out a notice on my clients i'm gonna raise my price or something so gives you that alternative that little bit of choice which can make all the difference in the world in terms of your happiness your fulfillment the longevity bur in your business and how sustainable it is for you so i'm a big fan of just having options yeah another very important option that i wasn't expecting to talk about but when we talk about scaling our services our delivery it also comes back to minimizing mh or decreasing the complexity that's what i wanna say and we've seen a big big big change in the last four years with our students looking to move from owning their own business to working full time or you know even part time if that's what their desire is and basically minimizing having the complexity of three or four clients into having one bigger client and you know from a scale perspective while that's not bringing on more it's also decreasing all the other things that may be very very valuable to you right if absolutely right at the end of the day you wanna think about scale as like you're getting more out of it without putting more necessarily and you can decide like what is the more out of it that you want it doesn't necessarily have to be significantly more income it doesn't necessarily have to be impacting infinitely more people those are some things that i want those are some things a lot of people that i work with what but it's not what everybody wants right maybe what the thing you want out of it is way more simplicity in head space yep awesome so it's also how you think about scale and i think that's just a really great point to bring up and something that did pop in my mind when you think about just scaling your service delivery there's so many tools available to you i probably don't need to tell anyone listening to this that because you probably know about all the tools far more than i do but with ai and with the functionality of some of these different tools that many of us use in our businesses there are so many things that you can do and set up and automate that can make your life easier i know one of the things for our team using fire dot and our team meetings makes my operators job infinitely easier because she just has all the action items at the end versus having to keep notes and then go back and take you know it's saving her a half hour at the end of each call yeah so there are little things like that that like i said you're probably already doing if you're listening to this but you can do every month every forty five days every quarter audit and say are there some things that could be better automating that would save me time i'm still delivering the same thing i'm not even needing to change the scope it's just i'm leveraging tools now to help me do these things faster yeah of course all that is totally true and we are at a place and time in our in our lives where we can optimize things and create efficiencies with software and there is no time better than right now than to get real real about those things because those two will help us with scale because we can work more efficiently so things have taken from our conversation today are the fact that scalability is defined in the way that works for you yep i wanted to add that there is something in my heart that tells me like there are seasons of scalability i've been in business for myself for ten years i've really carried every business model you could possibly think outside of a product based business and i've served many different types of avatars i've had many different offers i've had many different business models in those ten years and i as a person have gone from having great school kids to college age kids right and so my life has looked very different over these last ten years and during difference seasons for me i have needed different things out of my business which influence and should influence the way that you design your business and i think that's what i'm marie and i really want you to understand is scalability is defined by you and only by you it should be initiated by the values that you hold the true to yourself and know that it is possible to do this in lots and lots of different ways there is never a one size fits all and you know whether you're looking for more money more impact more freedom more of anything or less of anything you have the ability to make all of that happen so the other thing that i wanted you to know is that defined scope that defined framework whether you're going that is the key for me from what am marie has shared today regardless of if you're working in a project capacity or in a retainer capacity define the way you work yeah you have the ability to do this versus how i started and how a lot of other people start i'll speak to myself but i didn't know what i was doing i was trying to get clients i was saying yes to anybody and i let them tell me how i worked right in fact there's probably no one on the team that has the operational savvy that you do they expect you to love and be passionate about processes so kind with your process right yep come in with your process it will simplify the way that you work it will expand the way that you can show up and then deliver on that high touch that's the piece that i really wanna close with today is as operators we're very proud of how we show up we are servant hearted and so delivering and connecting you know you talked about carrying kind of the weight with the ceos we love that that's what keeps us here and that high touch it's your differentiator it's what makes you so great so you don't have to compromise that at the same time where you're trying to look at scalability so in radian me closing thoughts today it's just that so much of scalability as found in simplicity so rather even think you need to necessarily add a bunch of things or change up entirely the way that you do things it could just be the simplest little answers that make the biggest difference from you as simple as like let me get all my clients in the same communication channel not like on the same slack you know what i mean like they're we're all gonna use slack like everybody uses a slack that way i only have one thing to check instead of checking whatsapp for one client and checking slack for rather like those little things that we don't realize how much brain power or they actually take up less brain power in same or more output out you just made your business a few percent more scalable well emery marie it's been an awesome time for us to connect and thank you so much for sharing all that you have it's just great to know that there are other people out there that are guiding service providers into being and working with their best self how can our community get to know more about you and how you work so i am most active over on instagram little bit on linkedin but that is the best place to connect with me is just hang out me on instagram i mean i do have a website we're revamp it this summer so it's i would say not all the best place to come find me you having an everything page i and can send you my that link so that you can share if people wanna check out other workshops that i host and free resources and different things like that but i available i have a whole bunch of stuff but i've created over the years and refined so it's perfect for anyone who's thinking about scaling more in their business but instagram i'm at ask ama rose hit me up in the dms let me know what resonated with you from this conversation i'm always in there hanging out and love to have those deeper conversations awesome well thank you so much for being here and friends you will hear from me in the next couple of weeks so i hope you have a great one and let's continue to do big bangs thank you for investing just a little bit of time 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 time 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 alright hey hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast you've joined us day for episode two hundred and seventy five and we have lots and obviously hundreds of episodes where you are able to catch up on all the operational prowess that you could possibly want as you're scaling and building your career as an operator here on the ops authority podcast today we have a very special guest i know i say that they're all special but they're all vetted nobody comes onto the show cold and so that's why they're all special but today we are going to be jamming on a really great topic and it's a topic of conversation that comes up a lot in our community and a lot in our certification and so i bet you are going to want to hang out with us today and we are gonna be in and out here in about thirty minutes but we're gonna be talking about a topic that is really important for a lot of us and that is as you begin to grow in your career or especially grow in your business this conversation today is gonna help you to decide if you should scale as an agency or would it be smarter and better for you knowing your gift and the financial opportunities or lack thereof to remain a solar today we have a very special guest that guest is annie hill she is the founder and ceo of fourteen at twenty eight i'm gonna give you a little bit of her bio but i will tell you before i read that bio that i ran across annie at an event in dallas earlier this year actually last year and her presentation i was like i could not wait to get her booked to have her come inside of this community here inside of the ops authority to share her insights on this topic i was copious taking notes and i knew that her content her information would really be transformational for you and i couldn't hold it to myself so let me tell you a little bit about annie and why she's here today while annie was finishing her college degree she took a temporary accounting job and instantly fell in love with accounting she worked her way up to staff accountant and stayed there until starting her business in the beautiful year of twenty twenty right now she's spent helping business owners treat their numbers like a tool not a threat so that they can run empowered and profitable businesses with that calm confidence that we all want she helps business owners embrace numbers increase their profits and stress way less about monthly money management besides crunching your numbers she loves fitness baking bread and hanging out with her family you sound like a gal that bit right here and and we've talked about operations all the time here amy but one of the big key principles of our director of operations certification program is the financial aspect we're not teaching accountants or bookkeeper that we to be very educated in what financials look like because i don't believe that you can actually be a director of operations or a right hand to somebody without understanding the great reports that you and your accounting friends produce for us so anyway we we are like peanut butter and jelly and i'm so excited to have you here today because i know that this is gonna be a topic that's gonna help a lot of people so welcome yeah thank you so much for having me i'm excited to be here and share all the knowledge that was probably the best intro i've ever had so thank you well i'm telling you we we really are going to jam through this because i think this is a topic that i could talk about and kind of anecdotally and even experiential kinda give some background in some of my own experiences to but the part of this that was so attractive to me when you were talking at jordan's event about this topic which is i care about this topic because people are always asking me not i have a goal of creating it an agency or scaling an agency or here we talk about the a couple of different business models that operators can go into if they choose to take their service and make it a business we have a couple of these you know options that are available to me and they're looking to me and my team to help them get clarity on which one is going to be the best fit for them and in reality the agency model is certainly a model that is accessible and can be a good model for people you know i hear lots of stories of horror stories and i have heard a handful of really successful stories and so i come here today with my own experiences in both of those i have tried to set up an agency in an operational business model that did not feel good to me it ended up not working it was not successful and i can talk about why that wasn't successful and i ultimately chose not to continue with that model because it was not financially viable for me not only the financial piece but the stress peace was not working out for me which is hello why did you go into business for yourself like for me it was flexibility it was having control of my calendar and not having the stress of corporate that i obviously walked away from and today i currently have another business called the hiring authority where we are a successful profitable agency and there are two very different experiences that i have had one i would never do again and one is you know i i learned from my first experience and have created something that's very sustainable scalable and profitable which is what matters to me it should matter to every single business owner out there so anyhow i wanted your expertise in this financial piece because you were so tangible and i know what you're gonna share with our guest or our listeners today is just that tangible piece because as you're thinking through should i take this and create an agency or is that too complex you know too risky too much for me and it would it be better for me to stay a solar and serve my existing clients so that's what we're gonna be talking through today and amy let me just take a little bit more time to kinda set myself up for or the listeners up for this this is something that we hear so much of and so i wanna come in here kind of in their minds so that we can have the most helpful conversation for them typically when i hear people wanting to start agents agencies are asking me is this a model that i should consider they have been successful in being able to bring clients in so they're experiencing a surplus of clients which is a very awesome place to be it was a place i was in as well and it's exhilarating right you've got everything going for you it's like i don't have enough time or i don't have any openings for people nobody wants to be in that situation right like the all of a waitlist list is only cool to the person who has the waitlist list because the person on the waitlist list doesn't wanna be on the wait list so anyway if you've have found yourself in that position that's typically when people are reaching out to me saying oh man maybe i should you know bring on an agency or start an agency and let's just kinda talk about what the term agency means would you mind kind of describing what your feelings or maybe by definition what agency means to you yeah so i think i mean i really think we talked about this a little bit but i think there's a difference between having a team and running an agent see because yeah you can have a team and you delegate to them but you're still like the heart of it you know you're still doing a lot you're still super involved but if you're looking at an agency you know you not necessarily fully stepped back i don't think that's it but you are stepping into that ceo that visionary role and you're not doing the client where you're not bogged down with all of that so that's where kind of i see the differentiation where you are that ceo that visionary and then you have a team that is supporting you in that vision yes to me when you fully have an agency you have stepped out of the delivery and you're responsible for the sales the acquisition and being the ceo of the company so i'm glad that we just start there because people will say like you i wanna hire a va to help me with delivery that's a little bit different than building an agency so i wanted to just kind of lay that foundation there the conversation and the tips that amy's gonna bring us are gonna help you if you're on either side of what we just described an agency to be so you've got this surplus of people coming in you don't have enough bandwidth yourself to continue to fulfill or to serve them so then you bring on people to help in the delivery to take over the delivery so that you can step into the ceo portion of this now just think through that you're bringing people on it sounds amazing but remember these are other people that you're now responsible for not only are you responsible for their performance you're responsible maybe for their communication to a client that you secured that is ultimately relying on you to deliver what you promised and the other piece of this is the financial part so you now have to adjust your pricing structure so that you can be competitive in the market but you also want to take home a piece of this as well because you have the ultimate risk and hello business owner should be obsessed with profit margins okay and then you also need to pay a fair wage to the people who are coming in to be a part of your agency you wanna get qualified talent and labor in here so that you can then be very proud of what you're producing on the back end all of this comes down to a financial equation and decision that you have to be comfortable making so i mean i could really talk a long time about this but i got myself in a couple of pieces of trouble when i was doing this myself because i didn't raise my prices enough annie because i didn't have enough of a delta in what i was charging versus what i was paying the additional help mh i was financially strapped and then there was another whole piece of this equation where my time which is not the focus of our conversation today but my time was like triple what i thought because not only was i'm managing i was having to sell more to make sure more people were coming in so that we could you know fulfill on the obligation i had to the subcontractors who are working on my team so it was really a very nuanced position for me ultimately driving me to a place where it wasn't something that was lucrative for me unless i really changed this and i was still dabbling in what i wanted to be when i grew up which arguably i'm still in that place but at that point in my career which was about five years ago i ended up saying no i'm not gonna do this there was too many variables there wasn't the time freedom there wasn't the flexibility that i wanted and i certainly was not bringing in the money that i wanted or thought i was i ended up taking home less which was definitely not a strong proposition to my husband and partners so we ended up scrapping the idea i went back to one to one service work being that solo and i ended up scaling my delivery and the expectations and work with fewer people at a higher price point and had the greatest profit margin of my business career before i change my model to what we have today but most of the people who are listening to me today on this podcast are in that same position they are taking their gifts of operations and they're creating a business for themselves and so let's go ahead and dive into that decision you know give us your take from a financial perspective can talk about the soft skills the management is that something that you like or is it a skill set that you have because that's a whole other piece but let's dive into your beautiful brilliance in making this decision from a financial perspective yeah so what you just prescribed about you know growing an agency and then you're looking at your profit and you're like i'm profiting the same or maybe i'm profiting slightly more on i'm profiting less is one of the most common things we see because you grow and like you said either you don't increase your rates that or you don't out for those added expenses because yes there's the added expenses of the actual wages you're paying but there's also all kinds of the things like you know you had to pay for extra subscriptions like you have to pay i know it's really like a lot of people it's like the fun thing to do to host a team retreat nowadays and it's like those things are so fun but that's a huge expense that goes into having a team growing an agency so i think people don't take those things into account but we get to this point in our business when you say okay i'm at max capacity i can't keep doing what i'm doing so you have a couple options so you could say okay maybe i'm going to just increase my rates and still say just me solo newer i'm gonna do it on my own still so then you're bringing in or however like your capacity the same or on the flip side you could say okay now might be the time to think about running an agency i think my favorite part about this conversation we're having is that people are thinking about it it's not just like okay because i think a lot of times and i was told by a coach when i first started my business higher before you're ready and i actually think that's kind of terrible advice because you need to have a plan in place but also you need to think through is that even what i want to do do i wanna grow a team do i wanna have an agency maybe i don't like managing a team and i want to instead explore like i said increasing my rates or staying a slow but when you got you their point and then you say okay i think i'm ready to scale an agency i think it's a really skill an agency can increase your profitability but you have to do it strategically and you have to recognize it that it's going to require more of you so on the flip side if you're gonna stay a slow you less expensive but it's still dependent upon your capacity so you really have to look at those two things and decide what you want i'm really big on just looking at your goals and your plans holistically like your business doesn't an exist in a bubble your business supports your life and so what do you want for your life do you wanna be managing people because that's a huge part of running an agency if you don't wanna manage people then it's kind about for you i think something that a lot of people forget is that there's a training aspect so even if you bring on a team that's amazing there's time that is spent training them so it's going to take at the very least for the first couple months it's gonna take more of your time not less to grow an agency because you're bringing on your team you're onboarding and then like you said then the sales are fully dependent on you bringing in that money so your focus not only on training these people but also bringing in sales in order to you know support that team that you now have in place so there's a lot of considerations you have to think about before you decide okay it's time to build an agency but like i said i personally like to look first at personally like does this support my personality does this support my life that i want out of my business does this support where i want my business to head one to five years from now just really looking at the picture holistically instead of just saying oh i'm at capacity it's time to scale my agency you know i think it's really important to kinda lay that foundation of like okay i do wanna do this like i wanna make sure that this is what i want for the future of my business and for me and then you can kinda look at the financial sides of it okay so i mean there's so many things that go into it but like you said increasing your rates how much am i gonna increase my rate by so this starts with one of my favorite things a good budget so they can share you have a budget and not just hey i'm bringing on team members and we'll figure it out along the way i think having a good budget is important in knowing exactly how much your expenses are gonna go up and then that allows you to create pricing that supports that so that you're not at a place where the last thing we want to see is you growing an agency bringing in more revenue but your profit is exactly the same we wanna avoid that at all cost so making sure you're setting a budget and not only a budget for like financially but a budget for a time like how much of your time is gonna be spent in x y z areas but also for your team because this helps if you're budgeting for your team okay this project should take five hours then making sure you're holding everybody accountable and then that allows your budget that means your financial budget is accurate and then that's where you kinda kind of avoid some of the problems that comes with your prop and not increasing so setting a budget is so important to making sure you're doing that first and then obviously like this is not my area of expertise this is more yours natalie but making sure you're bringing on the right people you know hiring the right people that are gonna fill those roles and also making sure that like the people that you bring on this is not necessarily a financial thing but are they gonna grow with your team because again you don't wanna get yourself in the spot six months down the road where you have to hire again and you're doing this over and over again so just doing those things that really optimize your spending in making sure again we're all about laying a strong foundation so a strong foundation of a good team a good budget in making sure that those things are taking care of so that you can grow and scale and grow that agency of your dreams and you can avoid the problems oh man this is so so so good i wrote down and i circled budget because i didn't do this and i am very financially aware so i'm telling on myself today i believe in full transparency but i did not do this and some of the biggest financial woes that i had when i explored this model the first time really as you said that i'm like wow everything points to that i didn't know how much i was going to pay these people to come in here and to do this so it started at the very beginning i didn't even increase my rate appropriately right i barely increased them which was a you know there's so much imp and crazy mindset stuff that goes along with anybody increasing any rate right but to do it from an un unregulated perspective is c and i did it so even smart people do that because i would consider myself pretty smart but i thought oh if i increased by thirty percent that should be enough well it really wasn't and part of the problem that i had annie was i would bring people in and i know that this is real this happened to me and it happens i hear it all the time still today when people are like oh i gonna bring in somebody for five hours a week we'll guess what that person who's working for you five hours a week is never going to prioritize your work against their work or somebody else who's giving them thirty hours a week or ten hours whatever it is mh because their time is split right and i'm not telling you if you're gonna build an agency you need to bring in full time employees or anything like that i'm just saying that when i started i was doing small increments of time because i'm risk ave verse everybody listening to this podcast is not your typical visionary we are an operator right so where i was calculating my risk you know i didn't wanna be upside down and i thought oh i'm being financially responsible by getting this person five hours a week with me right five hours a week was super super tough because guess what it didn't keep them here for long so the turnover started right what happens when turnover began i either had to step into that role or try to and at the same time also try to quickly bring in somebody else into my business well you can't quickly do that because training like you mentioned is a whole thing so if you're looking at revenue then you can definitely see how that can be a d tractor from bringing any consistency in and you as a business owner if you're gonna have employees you have to just assume that you're going to have turnover at some point so i'm not up in the clouds thinking that that doesn't happen but when you're really running with real thin margins it can become a problem yeah it's a new month and that means a new podcast recommendation if you're listening to mine you probably are listening to others and so i wanna give you one that has caught my attention it's called mentors and it's hosted by julie meyer and jimmy edge and it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the reason it caught my eye is it's all about mentorship and if there's one thing that's been consistent over my entire professional and personal journey it is my passion for mentoring people to become their very best so the focus of their podcast is to explore different ways to augment to refresh the mentoring movement so if you find yourself in a coaching position a strategist a right hand i think that this would be really fantastic because part of what we do as high level operators is a lot of mentorship we're leading up and we're leading down i think this podcast can be of a great benefit to you go ahead and listen to mentors wherever you get 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 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 circling back to the budget itself so you know we talked about pricing and increasing the pricing but there's the operational part of this especially from a financial perspective that we need to look at and that is just looking at the cost of goods sold looking at the labor and so if you would because you've done this and you've advised on this talk about some of the cost of goods sold that we need to take into account as we're looking at this budget yeah so i mean the biggest one is the labor right you're bringing on more team members you're paying them either a salary or hourly wage that's the biggest one i would say but some of the things that i think that people don't take into consideration is things like there's the wages okay there's a hourly rate you're paying them there's also payroll taxes if you don't have a payroll system set up yet there's fees associated with that there's additional subscriptions that you have to pay for your new team members maybe there's benefits you provide benefits to your team that's another cost that goes into raising a rate employee gifts i know we all love to like spoil our team and that's such a fun thing to do but making sure you're working that into your cost associated with growing that team and then like i mentioned before retreats those are big expenses that go those are some of the ones that we see most frequently they go into the not so obvious mh costs related to growing a team yeah absolutely and subscriptions it's a big one for us you know you think about zoom i don't know or or whatever you guys use but we use zoom and when we multiplied our zoom account wow like yeah it's not breaking the bank but it is something that i definitely wanna calculate when i am looking at are we charging appropriately for what we are doing you know you can only last past so many things some things you're gonna need to have you know specific accounts for in additional subscription so just don't forget about the tech and the tools that go along with this and of course if you do have employees i know a lot of people will start with independent contractors but if you're moving or you want to eventually move into having employees come in here and deliver on your behalf remember that you're going to have not only the taxes and the fees that annie has mentioned but you're also gonna have equipment and other things that are just required for employers so budgeting is so so important to help you to understand what you're getting into this is you know just i wanted to bring you today with the help of annie knowing that you've got the soft side and then the hard side and if you've never heard one of my trainings you know the soft is like the anecdotal the people side the leadership side the time side and then on the other side the hard side is really looking at the numbers does this make financial sense for me to do this or should i look at another route should i look at you know increasing my capacity should i look at increasing the price of my services from a one to one perspective because the majority of the time people get into the mentality or the questioning of an agency when they want to either you know step back and have more time freedom or when they have more demand than they have capacity to deliver so those are the two scenarios that i have seen most and i wanted to kinda wrap up our conversation today by telling you that i learned a lot in what you have heard today and my ultimate decision to not move forward with an agency five years ago those experiences and just you know my business acumen that has increased over this time has allowed me to course correct and i wanna come clear today and tell you guys that i do have another company called the hiring authority that functions as an agency today their independent contractors that work for me and i also want to tell you that it is a thriving thriving business that has really great profit margins so even though to this point it has sounded like beware be very very very smart i wanna tell you some of the things that have allowed me to have this model today which looks very different than what i was attempting to do with the ops authority five years ago so back five years ago we were delivering operational services just like i was doing as a solar i was someone's right hand i was doing project management team management all of those things and i was bringing in people to help me with the delivery of that okay they would have their own clients and i would be the person who was attracting prospects and converting them into our clients and then we had people who are doing delivery underneath me that deliverable or the expectation was to be their right hand person to deliver on all of the operational things so the scope was very very wide so i'm looking at one person to do lots of different things inside of this business and what i learned over time that helped me to be successful today and to have a successful agency that is really smart and has great profit was that i needed to be very specific in what our deliverable was going to be you could probably tell by the title or the name of our agency the hiring authority we deliver one thing we are known for one thing and that is hiring right so i have a process that these independent contractors are trained in it is our process that they are delivering the other thing that has allowed me to be to really have this be streamlined and maybe be the ceo and not involved as much in the delivery i am in the experience i still do the sales calls for this by the way but we have a team that is doing the delivery it's one to one so i have one person who follows this process that they're educated in and they own that process they carry it out from start to finish i don't have multiple hands in here i tried that too that was very very difficult because the communication internal and external is very very hard so we have one person who has adopted our process and walks them all the way through the other thing is they're very vetted and they're very trusted in our process so what does that mean for me as the ceo they are essentially autonomous they get to do this because i trust them fully and they own the process i have been very clear in expectations because it's only one thing it's not like the day to day that can fluctuate it's not like launch management where it can be really all over i mean there there's so many different things that can come up that can impede them to be able to make fast decisions to own the decisions they're not coming back to me for a lot of things because it's one process and they also are very vetted in what we are doing here but that's been one of the most liberating things for me is they truly are independent and they're autonomous they have the ability to make decisions but they still have access to me so i don't wanna present this like they don't ever talk to me i'm involved with the delivery i'm involved in many of the email communications and i also acquire i'm in charge of that client acquisition before i hand it over to them we're still a team we still integrate all the time we talk through this if they have issues blocks concerns hesitation we all navigate that internally well over boxer because hello twenty twenty five but that has been very effective for us but wanted to come here and tell you the other side of the story because i want this to be something that you really think about if you're someone who's like yes i love managing people i really like time freedom and i have something that can be duplicated those are really wonderful things to help you to decide if those are soft decisions but if that can be something that you if you really want the agency model having those three things would be key points for you on the financial side which is why annie is here when i made that decision you know the time we talked about like figuring out time capacity if you're gonna bring on independent contractors you know do i need them for five hours or this when you have a process i know how long it takes for this process to be completed estimating time my pricing and all of that becomes much more manageable and sustainable so i wanted to give you both sides of this because one was a little hap hazard i had an influx of clients or at least interested prospects and i wanted to do this really really quickly well you could tell i threw it all together and i didn't protect myself financially now fast forward five years i was able to put together an agency that i was able to put this budget into place all the things that andy shared with us are in place today which has allowed us to scale and to price appropriately you know one of the ethos of working for our team is i want this to be the best job you've ever had i wanted this to fill like a fun place to come into i want there to be open communication and for me to be able to do that i wanted to make sure that they knew what they were walking into as well on the agency side so anything else you would like to add from a financial like making this decision from a financial perspective annie the only other thing i would say is it's just important to remember there's no one size fits all answer you have to consider all the factors you have to consider what you want to do how you wanna spend your time how much you wanna scale how you wanna scale how you want to if you wanna manage people and if you do decide it's growing an agency then that's amazing let's do it strategically let's make sure we're doing it wisely so that we are not getting to that point that you've been at that so many other business owners have been at so i would just say making sure you're really really clear on what you wanna do with your time and with your business before making any decision yes and you brought something up earlier that i will close us out on and it's really looking at the vision like is this something that you want long term mh i can tell you i've given you all of my real experiences and use cases here but when i stepped into this i did this like reactive i didn't do it proactively so i would ask yourself like am i proactively doing this or am i reactive doing it because i've got a surplus or because i need you know there's something else that has shifted for you i was really looking at the short term because i didn't take a second to look down the road i was trying to please other people more than me what i mean by that i was trying to get people in to my services of course i wanted the financial blessing of it but i wanted to take care of people really i was trying to be selfless when it did nothing for me except for it caused me a lot of stress right not only financial stress but just stress of people time my own capacity and you know think what amy said is so right is this for you is this something that you want down the road and if that is a yes that is fantastic you can start to make calculated changes that can slowly turn yourself into an agency right maybe you start building your team now you know you're a solar by all practical purposes and you are a part of the delivery well maybe you start to move your model to include a team right so maybe the team's is not responsible for everything but you start to test out am i a good leader do i want a business model that contains three to five employees am i looking for an empire with a hundred employees everyone can do this their own way right and i have seen success across all of those different models but if this is what you want if this is the way that you want to grow your business what are some baby steps that you can do today to set yourself up so that you protect your profit i want you at the end of the day to be in your gifts to be looking at the vision that you have for yourself for your family why you do what you do i wanna make sure that you have healthy profit margins because i really believe at the end of the day if you're a business owner and you're protecting your profits your sanity your stress and your time will be complementary there so it's when we get that out of whack that something gives and that there's nothing like financial stress i can promise you that but anyway i wanted to have this conversation i thought annie was the best person obviously annie give us a little bit more background on what you do we'll kinda conclude this episode with why you are the perfect person to come in here and talk about this yeah well thank you for saying that yeah so i own fourteen twenty eight financial a financial agency so a little bit of experience of this both with myself and my clients we do bookkeeping a cfo services mostly for online service providers so we love we really love this online space and we've been doing that we just had our five year anniversary last month yeah yeah i love that i saw that on your social celebrating you that's a big big milestone obviously to be in business at all and then of course to you know these last five years have been fruitful for you and if people are looking at potentially your services so our community i you know yes of course we have some great financial m you know here that are listening today but a lot of us are going to be looking for partners because i'm a big big believer that before a director of operations comes into a business one of our very first questions annie which may delight you is who takes care of your books every single month because directors of operations are not bookkeeper and sometimes people try to put us together oh yeah i'm also a big proponent of if they answer me with like my sister my cousin my dogs aunt is doing my books on nights and weekends that that's a red flag for me at least a great flag where i'm like what do we do here because i know we run into that too which can cause some instability and some friction along the way but if someone here is a director of operations or an operator inside of a business or on a team and they're looking to bring in a financial counterpart for the teams that they're supporting or in their own business where would they find you yeah so we're most active on instagram we're fourteen twenty eight financial but you can also send we have a contact on our website you can contact us there my email is annie at one four two eight financial dot com so reach out and i'd would love to chat awesome well thank you so much for being here i'm so glad that we kinda closed our conversation because it started at an event and this is just another good reminder for you all as you're going to events i mean i found myself taking a lot of notes when annie was talking and you know just don't forget about the connection that you have when you attend virtual or you know in person events there's always something another way that you can take this deeper sometimes it's asking a question and getting clarity on something that's on your mind then or even after that fact and sometimes it's coming on you know having them be a guest inside of your community you know doing a jv collaboration having them on a podcast there's always a way to take that interaction that positive interaction one step further in this is just proof to the community and to the gift that we can all be to those around us so annie thank you for being that gift today and i am so excited that we have been able to connect here today yeah well thank you so much for having me this is such a great conversation thank you alrighty friends we're gonna wrap up today head over to the ops insiders i would love to hear what your feelings are your thoughts were as you listening to annie and i talk about this we will see you at the ops insiders dot com and you'll hear from me next week thank you for investing 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 do big things on the backside of your business

hubspot is an amazing tool and even if you're not using it hubspot is one of the greatest research groups out there that is specific to us a small business owners and hubspot just dropped their twenty twenty five marketing trends report and friends marketing is a little wild if nothing else it's at least complex right now so you're gonna wanna see what is inside of this report here's a few things visual content is delivering twenty one percent more roi small influencers are building forty five percent more trust and ai of course is changing how fast we can create the best part this is not just another report full of stats it's an actual game plan there's gonna be frameworks ai guides to help you do more with less in real case cities and playbook which i totally love from teams that are crushing it right now one of the greatest things i love about hubspot is they source people who are actually in this game head over to hubspot dot com slash marketing to download it for free 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 thing so let's do it together hey hey friends welcome back to another episode of the ops authority podcast i'm your host natalie gin and today we are recording as a we because i got a special guest here and these are episodes that you are audience are listeners love and requests and lynette robinson and i are coming in today to answer all of the some of the questions goodness gracious we cannot be here for all of the questions maybe we'll be able to get through that through the end of the year but these are episodes that you guys have really enjoyed we call them up edition segment and in this segment we are collecting questions that come in from all of the different areas whether it's our students our alumni inside of our opt insiders group which is our free facebook group if you're not in there and you're listening those this we absolutely need to be inside that group you can find it at b insiders dot com but this is where we are going to answer the hottest questions that you need to have to because if somebody asking the question there are more than one person who needs to hear the answer and to do that i have asked my dear friend old friend forever confidant in business my friend lin robinson to come in here and partner with me because i believe that you guys need more than just my perspective here which i bring to you nearly every single week lynette that has been a part of our community for how long now four years old half okay yeah i was gonna say five so we're we're inch up there but we have been partners in building this business in this brand for quite some time she's got a very very a big space to take up and a big leadership role here inside of our team because she is our accountability advisor inside of our certification program so what does that mean it means that people who trust us to up level their operational skills inside of our certification she partners with a group of them and follows them from day one to the very last day is the person that they lean on for questions for support for guidance for mentorship and that is included inside of our certification program so not only do i trust her with the people who trust me she also has just an incredible perspective a lot of professional background and i just love the way that she coaches in addition to being an operational expert she's got a very high gift of being able to meet somebody to listen to them to share her perspective and her own experiences and then also not tell somebody how to do something allow them truly coaching like a real coach to allow somebody to make the conclusions and draw the conclusions that are right for them so because she's got all this sick experience and i trust her with everything that she's got i thought it'd be amazing to bring her on the podcast once again to go through a couple of questions that have come up inside of our audience and before i get started let me formally introduce you to lynette hi natalie hi everybody hi friend i'm so excited to have you here i know that i have gus over you so much in all of our podcast podcasts and especially in our ops edition but before we formally kick off i just have to say thank you so much for spending some of your time with us today you are just someone that our community looks to with such trust and such loyalty and on top of that from my perspective your experience and your perspective is just so incredibly strong and relevant and i'm really excited for us to dive into we've got three questions today lynette and so kinda of feels like a hot seat for you and me but you know alex paul think there some questions for us that i think are really great for where we are in twenty twenty five and so you ready to dive into the first one absolutely alrighty first question we have is how do we show off our detailed project management and i'm even gonna add leadership skills that's not technically in the question but i can perceive that that should be there so how do i show off of my detailed and project management thinking skills when my leader is such a fast quick start they always have a never ending list of ideas and things that they wanna get done actually they'd love to have gotten them done yesterday and before you know it there's another list of a new idea that's coming down here so this person is asking how do we basically stop that from happening and or when it's happening how do we show off that we've got these project management and leadership skills yep any good experiences to shine on that and tips oh i absolutely do and so in answering this question as i was thinking about it it really starts at the beginning before this person is even a client when you come to a discovery call that lead is looking for you to show up as an authority in your area of expertise sometimes people have a fear about oh i don't wanna give away things in the discovery call but you do need to give a little bit so that they can see your knowledge your expertise and what working with you could potentially be like in how you deliver information to them it's good to do that in discovery because you get to see how they receive it also when you're in your discovery call could i would pay attention to what the lead says about where they're at in business and how they're approaching issues this question seem to be written by a person who's already working with someone but i'm taking it back to the beginning because i just want to communicate to people in my answer that one option is to say no if you see the flags are front so that you don't get into a situation with someone who is dragging you for one end to the other with this idea that idea i think it's called shiny object syndrome some people refer to so that would be the first answer to the question is to start at discovery in making sure that that personality type is one that you feel you can manage and work with and you don't feel like you can manage that person being all over the place it would be to your benefit to say no and spare yourself the stress of potentially being in a relationship that may not end well if you are already in a business what i would recommend doing is making sure that there is a regular cadence of communication around the plan that you have established i'm gonna go ahead and give the benefit of the doubt by assuming me that there is an established plan or scope of work when there is an established plan and scope of work that will anchor you when these new things come up and this leader goes all over the place and when you use that to center both of you in the relationship and anchor your engagement then you put yourself in a position to have the conversation to say okay this new thing has come up how do we approach this in regard to the other things that are on the plan do we chase this down and not do something else do we do this but at a different time according to what we've already established as the priorities how does this fit in to what is best or the company at this time that's how i would approach the scenario with a business owner who tends to get distracted and go all different directions yeah lena you hit the nail on the head when i read this i thought oh this is a terrible place to be like once you're already in it's not i will say it's terrible i shouldn't i still not have used the word terrible but it is a chaotic place to be and it's a place that's kinda hard to emerge out of and so yes like stop it before it starts kind of thing is important but the other thing is all of you have the authority to speak professionally kindly and to speak up i think that that is something that has really been lost in actually i think that is mostly gender specific and that's a whole other podcast episode but there's nothing that says that the person who has asked you to come in and join them in the success of their business that you should just do what they say to do without you ever speaking up and sharing your heart a lot of times even if it is a firm message it's not like you don't have the right to express that so just know that you have joined this business because you felt safe because you felt that it was the right move whether you knew that this leader was like this as far as high high quick start and maybe you're a slow start that's typically what happens inside of businesses with vision and operators but regardless regardless if everybody on the team you and this other person are in the same spirit of desi success which i genuinely believe is where people are then it should be more safe and you should be more confident in stopping this cycle of not being able to prioritize things of having too many things to do of being so lean that it is actually impossible for you and the team to get the things done that the leader is aspiring to do so for me when i heard this message thank you for your response lynette i love and value what you have to say and and how you would respond to this for me i'm thinking of that stop the cycle like how do i stop the cycle if i've gotten into this business and the leader just keeps coming up with things and things and things and you know it's sunday night and i'm getting a oxford and it's like oh hey i wanna try this this week and oh you know what i have to figure out how do i stop this or how do i get out of this and frankly that's exactly the two options that i have and the first thing i would do is how do i stop this and for me the word that came up is i would recalibrate i would go into that in that scenario that i just shared i would go into a monday meeting and i would say alright this came up on sunday this is what you shared on friday do you realize that you gave me four ideas within a four day time period or a seven day or a fourteen day time period and we have three people on this team that are already maxed out so when you're sharing these things with me i know it's coming from a place of excitement and i want you to know that i'm going to collect these ideas and i'm gonna put them in the safe place so that we don't forget about them but i also wanna have just another conversation where you and i are i want us to be on the same page and i wanna let you know that it is actually impossible for us to get all these things done and the only way for us to move forward in one of these is to take one or two of the things that we're actively working on off of the table and off of the docket so are you open to having a discussion about that so that's a role play and really truly what i would say in that moment but the true answer i want you to walk away with as a listener if you've ever been in this place is you've gotta recalibrate you got to stop the cycle and a lot of times when you speak up like that conversation that i just role replayed for you it's not hard to have it doesn't make me nervous the only thing that would make me nervous is potentially the way that they would respond to it i want them to respond to that one way or another the worst thing that i could do is saying nothing and continue to fill the weight of never satisfying this leader who has all of these ideas and the false expectation that we're actually going to be able to do something with them in that scenario nobody wins nobody is better off nobody makes successful jumps in business with that and so i would just encourage you to stop the cycle to have the conversation it doesn't have to be an intimidating conversation it's a very fast actual conversation more times than not my friends by having this conversation it's just pointing out the reality and giving the facts like i did are you aware that you gave me four new ideas and when you give those to me i'm holding them here so now that they know it's safe but the next thing is how are we gonna prioritize these projects because there's no way i don't know what else to do with them right now we are a full capacity and just by pointing this out to them you don't have to be a stink you don't have to be deliver the point but it does help you to just give them the facts because a lot of times in me giving them the facts they're like they will laugh at themselves they be like oh my goodness why am i ever oh my gosh or i will see them be very very passionate it's like no i really wanna do this thing okay so alright does this mean that we're gonna take this off the table yes i want to dee that project that we're working on so we can real allocate things every here okay wait before we do that leader why well this is revenue generating okay well let's have a conversation around why we need this revenue right now and is this the right way have we thought it through now as an operator we're gonna slow these people down by nature and the reality is they already know that they need to be slowed down or they never would have contracted or brought you on their team so you've got a role to play and it is up to you to make sure that you are a part of the team not a recipient of what is happening inside of the business you've got an incredible skill set that can lead this company to success and if you don't speak up you're gonna find yourself burnt out ticked off and frustrated with this position and it really can be changed with an honest conversation other things that lynette picked up on or shared with you guys that i think as well having regular meetings with a quick start is incredibly important don't let the quick start be so quick that they don't care about the human and i have definitely worked with people who are like i'm too busy to have meetings now to work with me we need to see eye to eye at least once a week and i also the other tip i have is making sure you have open communication so how do you like to communicate how do they like to communicate is this something that you guys are gonna verbally process things over v sir are you guys gonna be in slack or are you emailing i don't care what you do but do you have a consistent communication place a platform where you can speak commonly frequently on a regular cadence and then taking those conversations into a structured meeting that again we've got a really strong cadence for and we've got an agenda it's dependable right we know that that's when we're going to be prioritizing workload that's when we're gonna be looking at you know issues and win and all those great things and hard things that happen in business but when you find yourself as an operator in inside you will find yourself in this exact same place where your leader has more ideas than time money or resources to make them happen you will be in a situation where you need to stand up for the business not only for yourself but for the business and i think rec cali with these conversations is a good way to do that any thoughts s at everything you said literally everything you've said something else that i find that comes in handy when you're working with someone one who has shiny objects syndrome is all over the place is keeping that open line of consistent communication because you have to keep them on track and keeping that consistent line of communication opens an avenue for you to bring them back yep to the place where you last settled on the direction you were taking in the business but literally everything you just said mh awesome awesome and i agree with everything you said too so i'm glad that we have multiple perspectives into this one that question actually leads quite well into the next question which we have pulled out here a lot of people who come into our community and also into our certification program have come from a place of being a service provider where they are implementing so they are the doe they are the administrator of the company or of a company and those are the skills that they are really strong in but they're looking to elevate into more of a strategic and leadership phase or stage of their own development in business so the question is how do you differentiate yourself or how do you actually make that change or that jump from implementation into a more strategic or director level role how would you advise people in it this is a really great question i'm so glad that someone asked it there are three parts to my answer for this question so digging right in the first step to showing up as a leader versus a doe is making sure that you have clarity on what you do and what you don't so that your yes is your yes and your no is your no the second step is to begin each client relationship with a clearly defined scope of work i have noticed over and over again where people take on these clients and they just do whatever the client is asking them to do versus doing a strategic mapping process or doing something at the beginning so that they can gather information about where the business is and what's going on and saying okay based on what i'm offering you what i offering in my business this is how i can support you so after you are clear on what you offer and what you don't the next thing you have to do is come into the relationship and the client engagement with clarity and mutual understanding around your scope of work and what you're going to do because it's inevitable that you're going to be asked to do something that is outside of that scope of work so when you do get asked something that is outside of that scope of work because you already have an agreement as a leader now you have set the stage for yourself to advocate to hold steady to your scope of work or if you have policies in place about taking on additional projects you can refer them back to whatever you did in your kickoff call or you're welcome packet around how you handle additional projects rush projects when you have things like policies and procedures in place it showcases you as an actual business a strong business owner and it also goes further for you that you're able to walk someone through an established process that you made them aware of before they paid you before they paid you i'm just letting that kind of rum out there so again one be clear on your offer what you do and what you don't do two have a clearly defined scope of work and stick to it and if you don't have a policy or process in place that you have already communicated to the client so if you do take on additional tests you know the process and you're delivering that process to them three is being clear on what things fall in strategy and management so that you could stay in those areas if someone is bringing something to you that's outside of your scope of work and it's an implementation you also have a unique opportunity to figure out if you may need to suggest that they hire someone new into the business to take this implementation you open up a different conversation for that client that ceo if they've got implementation that they're bringing to you that is significant so you have to hold your own boundaries and uphold your own policies and procedure and that is step three uphold what you worked so hard to build by being clear in your guess sure in your no and being able to say this is not in my strategic realm or in the management realm of my business and when it's not hold the line hold your boundary so that you do not take on implementation because before you know it if you do you're going to be in the three levels of that pyramid and stretch and burnout out because you are at so many levels in the business we see so much of that with people when they come into the certification and with both of these last two questions that we have answered as a listener i want to you to hear that lynette immediate response comes back to the very first tip that she's given us on both of these questions it is really reliant on how you start the relationship because you have the ability to frame this in a way that serves you because she's sent the magic words once money has been exchanged right once they have become a client it is going to be more difficult it is not impossible because we coach people all the time in existing relationships to get that clarity and to stand for what they want and what they want out of this out of the business relationship that they're in but it is difficult it is much more difficult to do that once money has been exchanged for sure so i just want to make sure that you guys hear that the bread the win for you the gold for you is do all of this stuff up upfront and understand if you are in the middle of it right now and you're making these changes while you have a client be asking yourself you know ask yourself is it easier for me to go out and get a new client at this new level versus having to work inside of this business and convince feel like you have to convince somebody because right now this person has a very interesting perspective because the way that they met you is the way if you're an implement and that's how they met you it can be very difficult to move out of that but it is not impossible i assure you it is not impossible since joining the hubspot podcast network i've challenged myself every single month to listen to a new podcast and this month i am listening to i digress it is a thirty minute or less podcast every single week hosted by troy sand and it is one that i think you're gonna love because he focuses on the marketing and sales part of businesses and what he does and implement inside of companies to help them scale we're a community focusing on scaling other businesses so i know that you're going to love his input why don't you listen to i digress wherever you get your podcast 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 more 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 something i wanted to share here is if i am personally moving from implementation and up our pyramid into management and strategy first thing that comes to mind for me is skills if i up level my skills which is what you do inside and this is not a plug for the certification this is how i have actually been able to do this myself and i know it works because we have almost five hundred people who have believed this as well and we have a lot of proof in it but if you up level your skills and you become a master and you believe that you have the expertise that we see that you have those skills translate to confidence and they translate the leadership those are unstoppable forces for your personal success and it starts at skills another way to amplify that is to make sure that you have the right support around you which is exactly why we designed our certification and the way that we have start with skills make sure you have support and if you're not interested in the certification then all you need support somewhere okay so find that support when you have those two things showing up strategically you've got new skills you've got a group of people you've got your army of people to make sure that you don't shrink armor you at all times showing up as that strategist is far easier with those other elements skills support strategy i see this as like a venn diagram because i believe that it is the superpower for allowing you to believe because you had the ability to be a strategist everybody here has the ability to be a strategist a lot of people need a framework for doing that to be able to extend quicker into that but you have the skills i trust that you have the skills to do that most of the time we're lacking leadership we're lacking the confidence to be able to step into that strategic base speaking of your finding your people right this has been something that's very very important i've seen it be very important and this person who wrote this question is sharing with us that business has been it's been hard it's been hard these last you know year or two and it's just been tough and so where do you go this person's asking where do you go when you're looking for positivity when you need to reach out where do you go and how do you reach out and get support so that's our third question today lynette so i even thinking about this question it puts me in a place of gratitude because i have built such a solid support system since becoming an entrepreneur he part of that phrase i built it it was not there when i started my business in the moment mh and so if i were to say anything about building your support system i would say that it comes from different places and i think that's a great thing so i have my best friend who's been my best friend since i was like five years old there is nothing she won't champion me with she doesn't even really understand a hundred percent what i do in my day but she's all about it so if all those fails i know no matter what i can go to her for support and then the next person that immediately comes to mind is gabby which is the other accountability advisor in the director of operations certification so were you ladies out there who are in different programs lean in to the environment get to know the people that are around you because you never know who you're going to lock arms with or who's gonna be the person that's holding your hand through the next basis of life in the next basis of business in this moment i cannot imagine my life without gabriel davis literally she knows me so well and i literally have only known her since i was in the certification in round seven so that's the other thing when you're participating in programs when you're out networking show yourself friendly so that you can make friends yep because sometimes the networking is about gaining new clients expanding your network but you never know when you're gonna stumble upon a gem of a person who will be able to understand what entrepreneurship is and hold you up as you might hold them up in their professional journey as an entrepreneur as well so that's the second thing that comes to mind when i talk about building my support system also connecting locally with other business owners has been a very big part of my support system in a myriad of ways there are people who i do business with to support other businesses that i met in my networking there are people who understand what it's like to have different ideas that you wanna test out that you wanna ask someone hey what do you think about this i can't go to my corporate america friends and say hey what do you think about this because there's a level that they don't understand so in your networking in you're getting to know other business owners make sure that you're connecting with them just on a human to human level also so that you have someone in your community that understands what life is like as an entrepreneur it's really invaluable so those are i think my pattern is three things with these questions those are three things that immediately come to mind when it comes to support they come from different places and people that have come to me in different parts of my life and the support that i get from them is different referral support idea support business support best friend since first grade i can do no wrong in her eyes and then gabby my friend my accountability advisor c coach like all the things so that's what support looks like for me and building that yeah i would have answered the exact same way which is you need different circles you can't just have your best friend you can't just have gabby you can't just have your local people what i wrote down when i saw this question was variety and i have been well served with different challenges with different ideas by tapping into different like every idea needs a different circle right or every different idea type needs a different circle and i have these i mean sometimes they're pretty random in nature but i have a mastermind that i joined in twenty sixteen and three of the nine of us are in frequent communication and that has been a hot minute ago almost ten years ago my business looks nothing like it did in twenty sixteen and neither does theirs but they understand who i was and so we have that they understand where i came from so to speak from a business maturity perspective they know where i have come from and they have stayed current in where i am at today so they know the evolution of natalie then i've got this group of people who are like my peers they do the same kind of thing there educators in the space of operational skills and we tap to each other with new ideas especially with challenges that are coming up with things that we're stumped on right and sometimes we just like to throw spaghetti at the wall together you know as people may look at us and be like man are you guys competitors like it's crazy that y'all talk none of us feel that way and i think when i came into this space my cards were close to my chest because i incorporate you keep them close to your chest because you don't know when doom day is coming so i took that into entrepreneurship and what i learned very quickly was i was surrounded by a lot of heart filled women who were eager to pour goodness into me and so i had to break that barrier and consciously break that barrier to allow people who were like me who shared the same audience to be able to be part of my you know inner circle and then i have another group i mean have so many different groups and i think that's what i want you guys to take away is just understand that as you're building your business and your career you can pull people along the way because they have something different from you that they are pulling together and as she said you have to build this right i have met and felt very connected to hundreds of people as i have been in business the last nine years i have let many of those relationships scam her away because i didn't do anything to hold them together and that's natural but you have to be the person to hold these together because at some point you're gonna want to lean into them so but i think we have very similar advice for you make sure that you are consciously building this circle because you will need to lean to them and if it's not because the economy is hard it may be because you have a great idea this year and last year i've been more creative in my business than ever before i have trusted myself more than ever before but all of those ideas make me really nervous they're exciting but they also bring some anxiety to this as well and i've leaned into these people i've leaned into all of these different circles because i needed reassurance or i needed to be course corrected and say grow you're going too far like maybe later and that's their sweet way of saying oh let's pull back the reins a little bit but naturally i believe it's just up to you and everybody needs positivity everybody's is going to need that reassurance everyone is going to need support make sure that you're doing which you can do to cultivate that because you've got groups you've got people that you meet online you've got coaches you've got your local friends you have personal friends you have your family and all of them are gonna play a purpose in supporting you along your professional journey even if they are personal friends you know what natalie i feel like i hear someone listening to this i hear their thought in my head saying but i'm an introvert and to you introvert person so to speak i want to encourage you and be very specific about the fact that natalie and i have been talking about maintaining relationships but you won't have anything to maintain if you don't put yourself out there you have to put yourself out there and get uncomfortable and outside of your comfort box so if you identify yourself by the term introvert i wanna encourage you and challenge you to break out of that so that you can build this support system that you hope to maintain as the days and the years go on get out of being an introvert and just take it one person at a time even one step at a time so that you eventually build the network of people that are gonna grow with you and love on you and pour that positivity into you that you're looking for wow this is so so so good and i wanna be transparent and piggyback off of this i have a friend kelsey we met through another friend and we have been side by side in business all these years but i don't wanna mis that i've got all these circles like and that's the examples that i gave you earlier i have all these circles of this group of three in this group of before and this i have some of the most powerful friendships business friendships i have are outside of a circle it is one person and lynette i know you just like me see all of these people who come through our program and there's a lot of introverts inside of our program but inside of these cohorts they will find one person who they connect to and if they walk out of our program with one strong connection of a person that they can lean on and the highs the lows the struggles the mistakes the questions that they have amen like i'm all about the one so i also don't want to say that you need to have these big groups and if you're introverted the initial response that i gave of finding circles and finding groups is probably not gonna sit well with you so understand that you can do this mono mono you can do this with one person it doesn't have have to be large groups and that may be more suitable for you and your personalities type thank you so much for for being a att to the person who's listening to this you're welcome so we're gonna wrap up with a real i can stir this a bonus question we have a culture in a way about us where we are always trying to solve problems find success and work really hard we have a lot of pride in taking action and creating success for ourselves and for other people for businesses etcetera one thing that i know i struggle with so the person who wrote this is my person but they're all of our person we struggle with actually celebrating our successes and all of us create a lot of success personally and professionally but we move so quickly on to the next thing because i love finding gaps spotting problems and finding solutions like that's my jam and i don't care if i'm at the grocery store if i'm driving a new route or if i'm working with a student right i love that is just how i am wired but i go from the next thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing it usually takes somebody stopping me and saying wow not did you know wow not you did this we have to do that for our community all the time because that's it's like native to who we are as operators so we had somebody right into us and say how do we celebrate our wins how do you celebrate your win well i believe in stacking wins big wins small wins it doesn't matter i want to stack my wins because the year is three hundred sixty five days and believe you me at some point in time during the year i'm gonna be hard on myself i'm gonna have a rough day i'm gonna think i'm not doing enough i'm not achieving enough and so right here you all probably can't see it but i have a mason jar that's full of posted note where i written a win every single week the initial goal of this was to be able to reflect on my wins at the end of the year however i ended up pulling this jar out when i needed to reflect throughout the year because a rough day happened because i didn't feel like i was on the right track because you know you just have those points in time so this is my thing that i do big or small every week on friday i am pulling out a post to note and sometimes my week has been so crazy i have to look at my calendar and see where i've been in the week to identify a win that's gonna go in this mason jar so of it that is how i make sure to take time to celebrate myself because the other thing that happens is we forget it's not even that we only celebrate like for a little bit sometimes we forget altogether want to even celebrate ourselves for so i wanna encourage each person who's listening to figure out a way to document as operators we don't just document sop you could done your wins too and if you're not a posted in the mason jar person something else that i've done over my entrepreneur entrepreneurship journey is i write my feelings down in a journal from time to time and i go back and i read from last quarter from a year ago and when i go back and i read some of the things that i said i'm chuck right now just thinking about some of the things that i know that i have said at certain parts of my journey it's such a great way to see your growth and your inner and the way that your communication changes and how you even evolve in your thoughts about where you're at in business and who you're partnering with and what's going on in life so that's another thing that you could do when you take on a new client right about how things are going with that client when that story ends right about how you feel about the period of time that you were working with that client if you're running your business within a certain business model write down how you feel about it the things that you've loved the things that you've not love one day you might shift your business model get into something else and decide know maybe i'm gonna go back to what i did previously you can go back and revisit really where you've been and where you haven't been the thing that really i wanna impress the most about the importance of doing this is stacking these wins helps me to remember what's true there is not a lie in this jar everything that's in this jar happened and sometimes especially when we're having a rough day or mindset is a challenge our brains can really play tricks on us about how well we've progressed in business our capability how we're transcending from level to level so having a place where i've written my innermost thoughts down or i've written my wins it helps me to anchor myself in the things that are true and factual about who i am as an operations professional i absolutely love the jar i was today years old when i got that idea and it came from you and i'm definitely going to emulate that here i have something as you were talking i was thinking i have a prayer bowl and so you know i know a lot of people and i'm at an age where there's a lot of things in need a prayer so sometimes i will respond to somebody oh i'm gonna add that to my prayer and they're probably thinking like what in the world but i take a little bitty sticky note and i bold it up just like that and i put it inside of this bowl and i pick out of my prayer all the time but it's the same concept and i want it to say why do i have that purple because i want it to stay top of mind i want to make sure that i'm doing due diligence and so that translates so well into your jar of winds and i'm gonna do that i struggle goal with wanting to move to the next thing and not giving myself the space to just celebrate and i don't also need like big fancy expensive monetary celebrations sometimes it's just honoring the fact that somebody appreciates my work sometimes it's looking at the progress sometimes it's the obvious but just acknowledging it so thank you so much for that lynette i'm so grateful for our time together i love when we get these quite sessions and then bring them here thank you for being such a an awesome partner in this and also sharing your incredible perspective thank you for being on the podcast today always appreciate all of you and just thank you so much you are welcome it's always such a pleasure to be here thank you for having me back yeah awesome well friends thank you for tuning in to another episode of the ops authority podcast i will be back next week for some work in 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 in the meantime new big things on the backside of your business