0:00:02
This is just kind of my baseline level of existence. It's five. It's five. Hello, y'all. Welcome. It is it's Monday. It's definitely a Monday. It's Monday.
0:00:19
So hopefully, we can talk about things that get you excited for the rest of the week regarding your operations. Listen, make money should be exciting. Yes. And it's so interesting that so today's topic is about operationalizing your revenue. Gee, we wonder why because it's such an important part of your business but doesn't really get talked about enough. Right?
0:00:43
So you've been in the business space, whether that's like online or in person or various industries. It's like, What what is the focus? Go make money. Right? That's the job of your businesses to go make money because if you don't have money, You don't have a business. You have an expensive hobby. But at what cost? And is it the way that you're making money supportive? Source today. That's why we're like, we're gonna talk about operationalizing your revenue, generating activities. Welcome to all.
0:01:18
I am Briar Harvey. This is the Nerd Everest City Media Network, and this is the incredible Veronica Young. And y'all making money is the, I think, sexiest part of operations. So this should be the thing that you wanna stick around the most for. Alright.
0:01:41
Let's start at the top. What? What are revenue ops? Because I had just heard that term. And -- You didn't say that. -- literally three minutes ago. And I am an operational person. So what are revenue ops? What does it mean? And what are we building here? Yeah. So the stuff that I just talked to you about before we went live, which we'll share with the audience. So ultimately, what we're seeing in the startup world And this is nothing new.
0:02:17
I didn't come up with it. Right? There are people who are now chief revenue officers for a reason, is that in very kindergarten or terms, you instead of having sales and marketing, like, be their own thing. Because if you have each department, sales and marketing. Each department then also needs to have their rep or their operations team to go with it. Well, now as sales and marketing and companies are becoming more and more interlaced, it's combining sales and marketing into one family and therefore taking two siloed operations departments and combining it into one. So you have one centralized command center that allows you to support sales, allows you to support revenue, allows you to support marketing.
0:03:04
But in today's conversation, we're not gonna get into nitty gritty of that because what does that even mean? Right? So I'd rather talk about What does it mean to operationalize how you make money? And what are the systems that go into, whether you are selling products like direct to consumer, e commerce, or even selling a service, whether that's to a fellow business owner or to somebody that is a customer like you do dual matching services. It's like operationalizing how you make money means that you're creating this supportive foundation that allows you to not just lean on making money.
0:03:45
Like, when I first got into this business, my mentor at the time said Veronica, you and your team actually are more suited for companies that are seven high six figure, seven eight plus figure businesses. And I'm like, wait a minute. If you are already at that level of business, You shouldn't need me. You shouldn't actually have good operations otherwise. Slings. Slings. Slings are hilarious. Slings are hilarious. They do not because I was quickly proven wrong. My men too was quickly proven right.
0:04:18
And He said the reason why these companies are making the money that they are and able to make this money is because the CEO or the sales team just knows how to sell. Just knows how to make money, but that's not sustainable. And the moment they stop selling, meaning the moment they themselves stop selling. The business crumbles. And so one, that is the importance of operations, but two, specifically, what does that mean for revenue? Right? How do you systematize how you make money so that it's not dependent on one to few people. And how do you make it repeatable? Right? So systems to us, the definition of a system is the people, the processes, and tools working together to achieve a specific result. So what is the system for getting somebody to go from a lead or prospect to booking a sales call? To becoming a client or going from, should I buy your software as a service or your product to getting onboarded and getting welcomed into the family so that you can inspire what people love to call increased LTV numbers, right, lifetime value or repeat customers. And the more and more that we've done this, that business late bear has worked with clients, like, and we'll dive into this today because we wanna get into the details of what does it mean to operationalize your revenue? It's like there are at least, like, seven systems that we have identified And that was just off the top of our heads that go into making money. So imagine this scenario, Briar, because these are true stories from our friends and clients that they have shared and have consented for us to share as learning moments.
0:06:02
Imagine you have a membership site And imagine the moment somebody wants to join your membership site, you have to manually send them a welcome email. Or that you then have to manually invite them into your Slack channel or your MyD network channel. And all of this is if you remember, this is you're making money. Right? But have you operationalized this experience? So this one specifically is in the new client or customer onboarding system. So that's one system. You should keep in mind. But just imagine if somebody if you were to go viral on TikTok, like, if you did that and they get new customers here and there, and if you remembered you could handle it, But what happens if you go viral on TikTok or whatever? It's so easy to go viral these days. I mean, not easy, but so much more common to experience that explosive growth, what happens if, like, your business went fifty x? And suddenly, fifty people every day constantly wanted to, like, join your membership. You're bottlenecking yourself from being able to make money well and create a really good kick ass customer experience. So that's the that's the first example I can give you.
0:07:18
And the goal is obviously, we're all the entrepreneurs here. The goal is to be able to take a month off and spend it on the beach. Right? That is why everyone gets into business for themselves. The four hour work week was something that we were sold. It was packaged up And if you're not buying the cord for it, then what you have to understand is how to get there. But this is where a lot of businesses collapse. Right? Is when that threshold of scale actually happens? Exactly.
0:08:05
Or even something like if you're a service based business, are you spending six hours writing each proposal because you have not systematized how you want to deliver your services. Meaning, we're not we're not here talking about cookie cutter stuff because that stuff you left in the kitchen. But how do you productize something where you can deliver the same solution to your clients. And so for us for business late, bear, that first gateway solution is the assessment. But we've had so many we've had hundreds of different types of agents come through our doors. And yet, they are all able to get unique processes and roadmaps and everything to tell them how to get from here to there in their business operations. So this client, she lacked a way to productize what she offered as a service, and that's not sustainable. I can imagine writing six hours worth worth worth worth of proposals. Like, every time I had a new client interested, it looks like not efficient at all. No. So that's, like, system number two, productization. And that makes a lot. It is a lot. And also, productization is the step where you figure out how to remove time for dollars. Even as a service based business. Even as a service based business So don't let anybody tell you as they have told me that I you cannot scale a service based business.
0:09:44
Oh, you can't. Because you can't. It it may not look the same as the service you were providing before. It may require different functions or levers. But it's not about scaling a specific offering. It's about scaling yourself and your business.
0:10:08
Most people think that in order to scale a business, you have to have a one, two, many offer. Right? It's the easiest to think about. Right? Like, what are those the ebooks and the e courses and the memberships where your capacity is uncapped? But what if you're not the type of person that feels that this type of business model satisfies who you are? Like for me, I felt like it was not relational, and I was just like it just felt transactional. And for me, because I was sold into the you cannot scale your business unless you have a certain model. It's like, well, unfortunately, but fortunately for myself, my my strengths are relational one on one.
0:10:52
So it's like, how do you create that parabolic mindset? And this is where I learned years after this person that kept telling us that we couldn't scale a service based business. He was coming at it from a sales perspective and marketing perspective, where to him scaling just meant expansion. So if you go from, like, one hundred thousand dollars in yearly revenue to a million dollars, they consider that scaling. And I'm like, scaling to me is parabolic like this rather than linear. And so if you for every hundred thousand dollars that you make have to hire an equal amount of team members, to support that. It means that you're not scaling at all. You're just growing proportionally, which is fine as well.
0:11:37
But this is why I think people when they talk about scaling, but that's such a buzzword. And I'm here to tell you that from an operations perspective, scaling is about efficiency, how can you get the same results with fewer or even yeah. With fewer resources or get more results with the same or fewer resources. And I'm not saying, like, burn people out or fryer. Whatsoever.
0:12:03
But it's just like how do you be smart in terms of how you and your business takes action? Well, I mean, I think that's key though, isn't it? It doesn't matter how much money I'm bringing in if what's going out is greater than what I'm bringing in. And you and I know from being behind many business with a successful launch. Right? Sometimes, you don't make any money on millions of dollars worth of products sold because of the Outgo. So I agree. It doesn't matter. How much is coming in on the balance sheet if there isn't actual growth. Right. And so if you're asking, well, how do I get that parabolic growth? This is where that systematizing your revenue generating activities come in. So I had to get, like, give a little backstory to tell you, like, why this matters because a lot of people are just so focused on the sale. Right?
0:13:11
But it's just like it's not just about the sale. It's about future sales. Like, operations often is about how do you support your current and future situation, whether that's team members, business models, growth goals, expansion goals, whatever that looks like. So when you can fully systematize how it is that you make money, and we can go through the seven or however many that we can come up with off the top of our heads. This is when you have morphed and evolved your business from that. We've talked about that last time, like, that baby who you're constantly having to, like, massage and make sure it's okay to it being like a self sustaining adult. If only there was that, rapid growth of actual children. It's fine. It's fine. Okay. So Let's talk about system number one.
0:14:07
The easiest thing that people think about, inquiries. Whether you are selling service or products or software, it doesn't matter. How people are inquiring about whether they should pay you or not? It seems super easy. Right? But I can't tell you how many times we've still run across clients who are not using a scheduler if they're a service based business, and they're still messaging back and forth with their prospective people emailing. What day and time works for works best for you, or I have this availability, but you don't. That is the easiest example I can give you. Inquiries. So prior, my question for you is if they had different business models that were not service based, what kind of things would you think about as an ops person or inquiries? Like, how would you systematize that? That's a good question. Truly, I have two different calendar schedulers because I'm not even a service based business anymore, but I don't do anything that's not on my goddamn calendar. So even friends get the coffee chat link. Here -- Absolutely. -- go schedule yourself. Put yourself on my calendar because I am autistic, and I will not remember.
0:15:40
But I think when it comes to people coming in, It's not just about getting them in the door. I also need to know some basic information in order to stock them properly. So I gotta know where your preferred social media site or favorite website is, and I would really like to know how you found me. Because especially when things are less funnel like and more web like, I need to know where you came from. Please tell me how you found me. Tell me how you found me because if I went to dupi, to Kate that. There we go. Then I have to know where you came from. So if you're you're saying if you want data, you have to have good systems and processes in place. That's correct. Did you just tee me up for that? I did. Although, it worked well, didn't it? I love it.
0:16:54
So ultimately, what we do with a lot of our clients when we look at their their revenue operations is The easiest thing that Umbrella, this all under, is the customer journey slash sales process. So when they think about customer journey, that's like outward facing. That's customer buyer facing. And then the sales process is like what you as a business or team members do on the back end to make sure everybody's like dancing and doing the things that they're supposed to do. Like, if you're a service based, it's like, well, the first the first thing hopefully is that somebody books a call with you. And hopefully, you have on your book of sales call, like, how are you getting all that information that Briar just said to be prepared. Like, there are so many people that we've seen where, like, when they book a sales call or even just like a demo call, there's no other information. Like, what are your biggest goals? Or how did you find us? Or what is your budget? These things are important.
0:17:52
Sometime, I will say about budget. That question, especially on an application, can be incredibly misleading. And it can be a way to select people out, especially if you have, you know, like, some multiple choice options there, and your lowest budget point isn't less than a thousand dollars. Right? Some people will probably not even finish scheduling the call. But budget is absolutely I mean, that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about making money. So I need to know when we get on a call, What are we doing? Yeah. Absolutely.
0:18:36
And it seems like these things are so boring. Right? But you just imagine like you oftentimes as the founder you started this thing. It goes from like a me, eventually to a we, as you onboard more people, but then to get from that me to we, to they, especially in order to not sacrifice revenue, these things have to be talked about. And as as boring as it sounds, it's like this is information, even that misleading thing about budget, which I do agree, it's a conversation topic and you're like, well, so you talked about having this budget.
0:19:08
But did you know that doing what it is that you want us to do requires a higher budget? Or that based on the budget you have, here's the services that we can offer you. So it's allowing you to and your team members to control the situation without feeling like you're just paddling or trying to stay afloat. Right? And all of that leads to good health because imagine if you brought on another salesperson, or maybe outsourced your sales to an outbound sales team. They could take your core values, take what's important to you, how you wanna create that customer experience and replicate that. So good operations here in the revenue area is about replicating those results predictably.
0:19:54
And what's key here is that replication process. I want it to be the same. Every single time. It needs to and service providers in particular, very special snowflake about this. Right? I don't I don't do anything the same for each client. Everybody gets a bespoke offering. And while that's often true, the process can be systematized. Yeah. There goes the productization of your offer.
0:20:34
And then what what happens afterwards? You get paid. Right? Payments. So after you inquire, there's payments. So that's another system. Are you making it easy for them to pay you? Are you making it easy for yourself to get paid? No.
0:20:50
And and and truly, y'all. I I would just like to say, The number of you who make it hard to get paid truly cannot be understated here. You you don't have buy now buttons. You don't tell me what the price is and listen, I there is absolutely valid strategy in withholding price on a sales page until a sales call is achieved. And this is virus psychology and the conversion numbers are behind this or sound. But if I can't click by now, I may never click by now. I have ADHD. I'm gonna go away and come back two weeks from now. And the window will have closed because I didn't read those forty eight emails you sent me because I have ADHD. So again, how how much are you easy for me to buy? And no, it's not sales because no. It's operations.
0:22:00
And the easiest thing that you can do that we work with their clients on even just the stuff we talked about because we haven't even talked about onboarding because that's one of our favorite things to talk about because it's like that first experience as a paying client or customer. So it's different. You get to reset expectations, but, like, create yourself a process map. I know that some people hate them, but I've I've come to learn that humans more or less are visual. They need to see things when their brains are working and whether that visual lization comes in a list form like bullet points or boxes with arrows. That's still visual because you're seeing it in front of you. And when you're listing out the steps, like step number one, prospective client or customer lands on my sales page. And then what? Where does that arrow or the next bullet point go to?
0:22:52
So if you're a customer or you're looking for customers to buy your product is, like, is there a collections page of best sellers? Or this is we just first started I started getting into crocheting, so from TikTok, thanks to the Wabbles. So it's like, I love it, but the Wabbles are so cute. I just I know. I just got my my second one. I haven't started yet, but it's just like the experience as well. I have no experience at all.
0:23:19
So the customer journey for me was I went to the menu, the hamburger menu, and it says for complete beginners or for beginners plus. So it's like, this is the journey that you're crafting. That you want these customers to replicate. So it's almost like a decision tree, like land on sales or product page. Where do you want them to go next? Are they beginners? Are they intermediate? Are they advanced? Or are they looking to buy, like, be a wholesale partner? Because, you know, sometimes people land wholesale partners land on the the by page too. And then what? So it's always like, you have to control the narrative. Like, where would you like them to go so that the they ultimately can predictably go down the path you've set for them. So there's product for you.
0:24:04
As a brief aside here, Both Veronica and I are tool agnostic. We do not believe that there is any one specific tool that can do all the things or even any of the things for you. But this one in particular, if you don't if if process on paper with just like a big sheet of paper and a magic marker is hard for you, I think Veronica uses Miro, and I like Whimsical because -- How do you see that? -- it's twelve dollars a month. Which right. So if you need something digital to help you figure out what this looks like, get yourself a tool that assists you to visualize the process.
0:24:55
Because process maps are probably one of the most valuable tools in your business. And it's not as easy as, like, just do this, do this, do this. You have to be really thoughtful about it. And so before I jumped on to apps like Miro, like, I used to process map with sticky notes. On a whiteboard, I literally had arrows, a stick like, everything was written on a sticky note so that I could just pull and replace. So, like, instead of this arrow pointing this way, I actually wanted to point down now because I'm like, oh, well, there's two options that they can make. Right? So the fact that you can get more involved in the process you know your business really well and you know what kind of experience you wanna create. So it is your responsibility to lead that vision and then have your ops team whether they are an internal or outsourced to us to do it for the strategy. Like, that way, the operations can complement and support where you wanna take this business.
0:25:53
So the fact that, like, the Woobles, for instance, allowed me to choose between complete beginner to beginner plus to intermediate allowed me to see where the progression could go, and it didn't shy away from the sale because I could have easily said, oh my god, I don't think I'm that beginner. Because I know nothing. It's easier to run a business. You know, many times I said it's easier to run a business than the crochet. I said it many times. So Woobles are not our official sponsor today, but we're gonna continue on with them because a lot of what they do is a good model. In terms of a small, and they're much bigger now, product based business. Whose sole goal is to create the lifetime value of a customer into buying more wools. And it's a really great experience on the front end for me because I'm a complete beginner and I totally felt like I my needs were answered. It was easy for me to pay.
0:26:54
And then let's talk about one of the other systems that we all love is onboarding, whether you have a service. A software or a product onboarding and getting new clients acquainted to your world is so important because you want they know nothing about your business. Right? And you want to be able to curate that experience so that they can have the best foot forward experience with you. And you put your own best foot forward out for your business as well because that creates ambassadorship, excitement, repeat purchases, all the good stuff that business owners and CEOs love. So that's the next system. Onboarding. Now it's very different for service, obviously. But the Woobles are such a great product base example.
0:27:43
Truly, I'm just gonna keep talking about them because it's so good here. So if y'all have not purchased one, it comes in this like ziplock bag. Go go. She's gonna go grab a fruit. It comes in the ziplock bag. You open the bag Yes. You open the bag and everything you need is in here. There is Oh, she's Oh oh, we're getting an unboxing video. It's amazing, truly.
0:28:12
Woobles. Let's talk. I'm happy to sponsor. So we're unboxing.
0:28:21
Now, there's yarn in here. There is a crochet hook in here. There's stuffing. That's that's to put it all together. The Wuxley bits, the tab, like, the needle, the eyes, the needles, all of the things.
0:28:40
And the start of everything. Yes. The start of project. They have Like, already started the project for you because they're assuming and, really, with crochet as someone who is terribly bad at it. So bad. But starting is the worst part. Once you get started, there's a rhythm and a process. To it. But starting is hard. Starting sucks like anything in business, life, operations, otherwise, So the Whoobles has done it for you, and -- Yeah. -- you're ready to go. So So on the service side though, let's let's flip this on its head a little bit.
0:29:25
Mhmm. So this was a so going back to the product, like, this is a really introductory way to create an uplift or customer experience. How do you want people to use what they just bought from you. Because if they don't use it, they don't get the result, and they don't there's no oh, user generated content, there's no social proof. But then on the flip side, for services, they have just paid you for a service. Right? So How is it that you can kick off this engagement together to, one, get what you need to do your job have them feel supported because there's nothing worse than a client that's constantly doubting you. Right, wondering if they're going to get taken care of, wondering if you know what you're doing. And if you don't have if you have not operationalized this part of your revenue generating activities, Onboarding clients is often that that squeeze part, the squeeze point that prevents you from un capped income and impact, especially as a service based business.
0:30:31
Like, if ten clients came to you tomorrow, waiting to want to work with you, would you be able to onboard all of them with ease, sustainability and integrity. And if the answer is yes, that's awesome. That's amazing. If it's no, you can. Where are the gaps? Because, truly, as an operational person, I can look at that and go, oh, no. No, I could not tomorrow. And here's why. But if you don't understand where the issues are, just wait and onboard a bunch of clients and see what they complain about. Because, truly, I hate to learn things the hard way. That's true. But but sometimes that's the only way to get that piece of information about which steps are missing.
0:31:29
For me, anytime someone comes to me with a question or complaints is when I go, oh, I have not operationalized this enough? For us, so the assessment, like, we'll use ourselves as a case study, so feel free to tear it apart. It's like, If we had fifty people wanting to buy assessments tomorrow, and I literally asked my team, would we be able to handle it? And they're just like, yeah. Okay. Cool. We got it. I was like, okay, really? Let me sure pat myself on the back a little bit and pat each other because we've all worked together to get here.
0:32:02
But it's just like, to know that especially for me, like, women, like, we're already facing so many invisible ceilings. It's like the last thing I want is for you to impose another ceiling upon yourself and that is growth, and that is money, that is income, that is impact, whatever it is that you wanna do with it. And the hardest part to get right is the onboarding because people don't sit and be proactive about it. They're like, oh, shoot, I just thought a client just paid Now I have to, like, create this worksheet for them or send them this thing, oh, yeah. And I I want them to book a kickoff call with me.
0:32:37
It's, like, go back to your process map, go back to your whiteboard, whatever it is. What is step one? Like, I know this could sound really intimidating. Because a lot of businesses that we have worked with as proactive as they are, they they've come from an experience where these processes have already been created for them before. So to actually be in that driver's seat to truly be, because when we ask our clients sometimes, like, what do you want to happen when they pay you? They're often, like, I don't know. Like, I know that they paid us to write their copy for their website or they paid us to do PR or whatever it is they do, but to get down to the nitty gritty about what that experience looks like. When they don't know, we don't fault them for it, but it's just like, This is what it truly means to understand where you wanna take your business and how operations when you're proactive about it can help you get there.
0:33:39
And I think, two, I can't productize if I don't have any of this clearly laid out. Right? That's true. So I have to be able to define not just what the buying prop process looks like. But what the customer's journey is once they've paid in order to be able to turn this out of volume. Yep. So then once they've paid and then when you get onboarded, the next part is regardless of what type of business model you have, product or service or software is now fulfilling on what they paid you for. So, yes, onboarding is the well the welcome experience, the welcome map. But then after you welcome them, like, you actually have to do the work, whether it is packing your products into the boxes to be shipped out or getting ready to do the work and getting that information. It's like you gotta fulfill somehow And if you don't have good systems and processes around fulfillment, and even things like product, like, we had a company come to us and we were auditing their fulfillment processes and nothing was organized.
0:34:46
They just randomly put boxes everywhere. Nothing was labeled. And I'm just like, so again, if you were to get fifty x the amount of orders that you did today? How would you deal? And they're like, well, we don't know really nothing is in clear bins. You get what I'm saying. So it's just like even things as small as this. It's like, well, it has to do with revenue generation. Right? People paid you to literally get your products. So how can you make this an efficient and effective product or process for you to pack, for someone else to fulfill, for a team member to be able to, like, for you to trust that your team members are getting everything that they need in that packing slip.
0:35:23
And the emphasis here always could be on lifetime value of the customer. I don't want a hundred new customers. If I can have ten, that will spend more money with me over the long term. That's not true for every business. No. That's what it is for us. Most. That's definitely true. Right. Yes.
0:35:50
So in the assessment after we've onboarded them, Like, we actually create because I'm a project manager at heart. We have a work back schedule. So when you after you pay, You send the contract and pay. Again, all I do is push one button or even no buttons if you don't need a sales call with me. The first thing the email sends you is to book a debrief call. That debrief call is where we talk about what we found in your assessment and how you can move forward, what your next steps are, that stuff that we do together. But the reason why I have you booked the last thing first is because that creates a work back schedule and allows us to know if you we do debriefs on Wednesdays, which means that Zapier and all our automations and stuff, when someone books a debrief call, The Monday, the week before is when their assessment begins. We always give them, like, we always take a week to do assessments, send the results on Friday, so they can marin and noodle on it, and then we meet on Wednesdays. And then now that you know the work back schedule of how we plan to fulfill, you have to book your onboarding call with us because instead of having you fill out, like, a questionnaire full of three hundred plus questions, let's just talk for, like, an hour and hour and a half. And then we need your login sent to us. So because you know when we're starting your assessment on that Monday, all of that stuff has to be done and interviewed and sent to us, with team interviews and stuff at least seventy two hours before Monday begins. Because we know exactly what we need in the time frame that we know we need them by to do our magic so that on Monday, we hit the ground running. We know what we're assessing. And by Friday or before, it's shipped off.
0:37:29
And I wanna note here too, there's some real opportunities to understand your customer and what they really want, what benefits them. Because Veronica would rather have an onboarding call for an hour And I would rather you fill out my ridiculously long questionnaire because my people tend to have ADHD or autism and process better when they're able to write. So I found over the long haul that long calls would get distracted and we tangent off sometimes we wouldn't actually get to the really important stuff. Whereas if I sent you the questionnaire, You could fill it out. You could take as long as you needed to fill it out. You could process in the way that you needed to process, and we'd have all of the answer. I got so good at the questionnaire that I didn't even need an onboarding call. But the questionnaire is long. But I didn't actually even need an onboarding call. So So know your audience. Know that, like, know your people, know who's buying from you, Like, for us, we're working with CEOs who are in a growth focused mode for lack of better terms.
0:38:49
They're either already growing about to grow at about to scale. Like, we get people who are, like, I'm growing too fast. Okay. They want nothing to do with my long ass question. Generic -- Not a goddamn thing. -- so when I designed the assessment, when I was thinking about the systems to support this offer, I was like, these when I tell them, I said, so we're trying to minimize how often we interact with you because we know, and I know as a CEO, my self that I have other things to do and I don't need you for six hours at a time because when someone has a VIP day or when I have a VIP day with someone sometimes I dread it because I'm just like, that's six hours, and I'm sure I can get things done, like, faster than that. Like, that's just how my brain works. So when they hear that they don't we don't need them unless it's for information or an hour call. They're like, oh my god. Like, you you know us so well and we're even more excited because you have taken the time to know what is important to us.
0:39:48
So but the assessment has been one of those, like, offers that we systematize the crap out of because it is the number one thing that clients go through with us first. There's no shortcuts. They have to do this because anybody can fake a business. Like, I was talking to my friend, like, you can write projection numbers on spreadsheet. You can make up numbers. You can whatever. But I'm like, you can't fool ops people. Like, we see the back end. You know what? Tapping. So it's like, we have a process, we have to follow it, and if we're going to walk or talk, that we're gonna create order for you. Please respect this is what we need, and it's been amazing. So I can step out of the process. I'm actually part of the process really well right now because I love it.
0:40:35
The first thing I do is I show up for the prep call, talk for an hour, then the baton gets passed to my team members, so this is where the fulfillment part comes in. So the next system is fulfillment. Like, I'm trying to create like a journey map for you here prior in this episode. Go from leads all the way down to, like, fulfillment. So for us, the fulfillment is we know exactly because of the process map, which tasks our color coded pink and pink to us means manual actions. So those manual actions get created as a task template in our project management software. Click up. So that nobody has to think about what to do next. Everybody knows, okay, once somebody pays, here's what we do next, next, next on our side, so that come Monday when assessed starts, we just hit the ground running and are ready to go. And so, like, I feel like this This allows me to step out if I wanted to.
0:41:24
The questions are more or less the same. We're not robotic, but, like, every we have certain questions we need to ask. And whether they kinda divert or, you know, but they I always have, like, this is what we need to know though. And you can remove yourself from this process. This is what's key. Someone else on your team could ask those questions in your place. Making you a not essential part of the delivery. And I say that and people are like, but I am no. No. The goal here is to not be essential to the delivery. I don't have to be part of the assessment process at all if I didn't want to because we have a process of how to do exactly what parts and who is suited, so this goes back to the first episode.
0:42:16
You and I talked about working from our zones of genius. So, like, Terry handles the tech stack audit because she loves it. Mikaela, she knows how to take information from different interviews and turn them into summaries and callouts, and I'm look overseeing other things. Right? So it's like this dance that we have is all very intentional, this fulfillment, whether it's designing your products so that they're easily pullable to create doing and performing the service that people paid. It has to be intentional and it was made intentional by me setting boundaries. Like, what do I wanna do? What do I know about the team members? What do I know about the clients? And then we create a process map from it because there is a process and it helps us to see, oh, shoot, we forgot this part. We better put it in before a client finds out and they fall through some, like, pull that we can't pull them out of and it looks bad on us.
0:43:12
So use like, I would say that the assessment has been a really good case study for fully operationalizing an offer. Now, I don't think the assessment is quite ready for prime time, but you are turning that into one off purchasable product. Correct? Yes. We are because not everybody can afford to work with us because we are on the higher end And again, higher end is so subjective if I've learned. So but we wanted to make sure that if you cared about your operations, like, this is why, like, I made the intention if we were to ever have a group program or an accelerator that we did test, it was not going to be in cohorts because I'm like, if you wanna practice your operations and, like, work on learning and everything now. I want you to come in right now, not because I'm lacking money, but it's like operations are not important to us. It's an evergreen program that allows people different people to start into in places. So again, intentional.
0:44:13
And we had to again, we looked at our any offer, product, service, and we systematize the crap out of it because we knew we wanted this to help us and not hinder us. So if you're one of those businesses that has a lot of offerings, whether they be product or service or software? Like, are you systematizing every single aspect of it? Because if not, you're not going to be able to step away. You're not going to be able to scale to this to the growth that you envision whether that's two x or three x or fifty x. Like, I'm not here to judge you on what your growth goals are for your business, but it's just like, The goal here is to be efficient and effective without linchpinning, like, key people who started the business or are running it. So where do they go to find you? And this They can go to business late bear dot com.
0:45:14
And the first thing that you can see at the top of the menu is way to ways to work with us, and you can book an assessment. But wait, I have one more system left that we haven't talked about. Alright. And then we're gonna call it good. Right? Because it's, like, this is a lot. Right? But at least I tried to give it to you in some order so that y'all can take some sort of insight inspiration or implementation initiatives. Wow. That's a lot of a literate. I love it.
0:45:41
But the last one is retention. People don't think about retention slash goodbye AKA, like off boarding, if you will, like, onboarding gets all the love and attention. But there's just as much merit to off boarding. Saying goodbye, having things close and come full circle well, even inspires them to want to be repeat customers or maybe you're very intentional. Like, after the assessment, we give them options to work with us further to implement this road map we've created for them, those operations road map because they realize it's not just setting up Zapier or other apps. It's like there are intentional strategies and frameworks that we have to go to. So it's like how do you inspire people to stay customers and clients. Because I would rather focus on retention so that it's less I have less effort here in the acquisition area because that's stressful. And even if you are a business who wishes for your clients to outgrow you, which is in fact one of the things that I work for. So there is an end point to my work with clients.
0:46:53
Offboarding then is when you get referrals. It's when you get testimonials in studies. When you get case studies. Right. Like, how are you deliberately structuring goodbye so that everybody's leaving on good terms and that there is a crack in a door somewhere to come back later if that's a thing that happens. Mhmm. I think off boarding doesn't it just goes doesn't get done because we don't like goodbyes. People don't like saying goodbyes. We don't know how to deal with this at all in any way, so we just kind of go, oh, no. No. Operating. No. Alright. Talks there.
0:47:42
So this is like something that we've been talking a lot. To our clients about. And and especially with an economy that is becoming like, we're not sure about the whole like, the recession at this time of recording is gonna happen, experts say, but now they're pushing it out to, like, quarter two, which we are in right now rather than order one. So it's just like how can you be intentional intentional intentional about doing more with less or being a effective over productive, taking care of clients so that they stay with you when others are so worried about spending money because they've never paid you before. So it's like, operations in a way makes your business or adventure like recession proof, vacation proof, family or life proof because you never then have to choose between this or that, but it's an and situation. I can be there and be present with my family and run a thriving business. I can be in business and succeed in a recession.
0:48:51
So by operationalizing a rough note, I think in this climate, And I am prior, you're much more adept at speaking about this than I am, so I'm happy to let you take this home, and I'm just like, your operations are more important now than ever. Yes. I'm biased, but also -- Yes. -- the client in situations that our our various societies are going through. So what you're operationalizing here isn't just your revenue. It's your relationships.
0:49:22
And for many people that feels transactional. And I also think that's why many people resist this process, that they don't like their relationships to feel transactional. And so having an onboarding process and an off boarding process feels like people are numbers and that they're not getting personal attention, but you can't scale personal attention. So what does it mean to build relationships deliberately and holistically so that once you've hit capacity, you can exceed it without breaking yourself in your company. Or notice where you are hitting capacity at. Mhmm. Because you have the information, the data, whether it's quantitative or qualitative, to be able to solve for it. Or maybe you're like, you know what, this feels good, this capacity, and I want a coast. Coasting is just as fine too, but as long as it's intentional to you, make their operations for that vision you have, whatever's even in your life or business you're going through. There you go. That's it. That is it. Alright.
0:50:37
Y'all, this has been ops on top. We are the neurodiversity media network. You can find us at the neurodiversity media network dot com. We are actively seeking advertising partners at this time. So if you are interested, please reach out and find us briar harvey dot compartners. We would love to talk more and have a conversation about this.
0:51:08
And as always, Veronica, I just want to point out every time we talk, I'm always like, oh, shit. I didn't do that. Like, we had this whole conversation, and I'm realizing that on this sales page, I don't have a way for you to schedule a call if you want more information. So in addition to the other things that I'm going to be doing today, there will absolutely be adding, hey, schedule a call. Right. And it's not even we are. We're not perfect. I mean, we our operations aren't perfect. But they're always ever evolving. Because so long as there's evolution, I feel like your business can only grow from there. But if you're like, I've always been doing this for the last twenty years this way or whatever we've heard people say, like, that just makes my skin crawl. Then that stagnation is where your business is not going to serve you.
0:52:02
So anyways, I'm Veronica, Founder and CEO of Business Laid Bear, where we help startups scale their income and impact with orgasmic operations. And revenue was part of it. So hit us up, DM me, message me, email me. There's all that information in the websites if you'd like to know how we can help. Thank you for being here today. This has been a joy and a delight. Next time, we are talking about your audience and how to define them, how to really operationalize that relationship and presence. Right. There you go. It's it's not hard. You just have to know what systems you're missing. And that's all we're telling you. So we will see you next time. I pushed the wrong button.
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