How to work ON your business, not IN it! (Part 1 of 2)

#68. Let's kick off the new year thinking about how to work ON your business rather than IN it.

**Due to a technical hiccup, we will be airing part 2 of this episode on Jan 15th.**

****************************

About BBSB -  We are two business owners with two very different perspectives on building business, and the business behind that in order to achieve your goals. One of us built to sell, and will continue on the serial entrepreneurial path, which means your focus and drive should include very particular tools and tips in order to achieve your goal. The other, is building a generational business, one that can go on long after she’s let go of the wheel. This type of business also requires very specific tools and platforms to achieve this goal. Both women have been successful in their own right, but in honesty - haven’t scratched the surface!

Sponsorship Opportunities - Email us to learn about our sponsorship packages! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thebusinessbehindsmallbusiness@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Notice - As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. These earnings contribute towards the costs of creating this podcast and we greatly appreciate your support!

Disclaimer - We are NOT licensed financial experts, nor do we give financial advice. Anything we share with you here on our podcast, whether it be a personal experience or submission, or advice/tips that have worked for us, or that we believe would work for you should not be viewed as either financial, business, or tax advice. We ask for you to do your research, have open and honest conversations with your company’s own support providers and make decisions based upon that. Throughout this broadcast we will share our knowledge and give suggestions and hope you will receive them as part of your overall research to better your own company.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi everyone. Thank you for listening to and watching our podcast. Tiffany and I give our all to this podcast with curating information, researching platforms, and creating a show with the best and up-to-date information we can. We have a vested interest in the growth of your business and the health of your business, and uh hope you feel the same way about us. Want to produce a show? Of course you do. All you have to do is email us at the businessbehindsmallbusiness at gmail.com to express your interest, and we will share with you what you'll receive with your investment. You'll have the opportunity to have your name and the name of your business mentioned multiple times, along with time during our show, have your company logo on our social media, along with details on how to get in touch with you and other marketing opportunities as well. Please support us so that we can continue to support you. Okay. On to the next thing. On to welcoming you to the business behind small business. Whether you're selling or staying, we're here to remind you that just because you own a business does not mean you are a business owner. It might not make sense to you right now, but just stay along. We are your hosts, stay with us, Savannah Stone and Tiffany Kale. And we're gonna get down into the nitty-gritty and walk you through the more finite details of entrepreneurship, revealing the dots between startup and success. No one gets to a million without getting a little dirty. I don't know why I feel like I have to say it loud. I don't know. At some point, he's just gonna break out into a song. Yes. Um I'm gonna be breaking out into song with this one with you how to go, it go. Um, there's a lot of business behind small business, so let's get do it. I think a lot of parents just became traumatized.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

I hate that. After hearing that song.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Oh my gosh. So we've had a great three seasons so far. Yeah, and our audience has grown exponentially, so thank you. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, since we began. And um we thought we would revisit our first season. We have alluded to this quite a bit, and uh, we've done a couple of other episodes in season three, and uh, we're kicking off season four by venturing back into the past. And um, you know what, we've learned a lot about how you want to hear your the subject matter or your subject matter. Um, if you've been binging our episodes from season one, then uh some of what we say might sound familiar to you, and for good reason, we've taken a script from season one and we've added just a little bit more perspective to it. However, much of it is still the same, and that's because the information's really good. What can I say? Uh in saying that, I'm going to die then. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are the only person that can run your business. You end up doing everything, and before you know it, you really are the only person that can run your business. You created a downward spiraling job that can easily ruin your business. So the opposite of that would be an upward spiraling business, not job. Uh so how do you switch gears and become an asset to your business, not its slave? So before we begin, please note our disclaimer. This is available in both our show notes and on our website and should be referred to before and or after the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Take it away. All right, so let's talk about what it is like if you created a job for yourself and your own company. Now, there are some people out there with lifestyle businesses, and I think they go out there to create lifestyle businesses. So if that's that's for you, go ahead. All good. But I think a lot of people get into business thinking that they'll gain back more freedom of time along with the freedom of money. And the freedom of time seems to be what is a little elusive to a lot of people. So let's talk about what that looks like so that way you can identify whether or not you're working in your business uh rather than on it. So I like how we kind of went like back analog, right? Like we have all this equipment now, we've upgraded all our equipment, but then the laptop is gone and we're back to paper.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Listen, just so you all know, I can't remember all this stuff, so I gotta write it down. You are not gonna judge me. I will not accept it. So if you expect a good show, then you're gonna have to watch us read the So, first of all, okay, so working in your business.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

So here are a few examples. One, you always feel like you're being reactionary. So you're probably more reactive than you are proactive, and you're constantly just tackling what feels like it's just in front of you. Like you never get to get beyond that. Um, you also feel lost, like there's too much to do and too little time to do it. Um, you start seeing little declines in your quality of work, right? Like you may be usually a very high standard um person and very meticulous in what you do. But in this case, if you're working in your business for too much, you might see a little slippage there. You're continuously missing deadlines. Um, and deadlines not so much for your client. I think most people or your customers, most people are pretty good about that, but we're talking about deadlines for this business stuff that matters too, like taxes or paying fees, like to your county, to your state, those kind of deadlines. Insurance, like those things get put a little bit to the wayside. You miss a deadline here and there. You cringe when you see that letter with the late fees on it. You probably spend upwards to two to four hours responding to emails. Uh, who doesn't like spending half their day responding to emails? Okay. Uh, you go to more than three networking events a week. Yeah, I remember those days. Me too. Nope, nope. You gotta wean yourself off of that as soon as possible. Uh, you find yourself working off hours and then continuously telling friends and family that you're too busy. So you're probably sacrificing quite a bit of family friends' time because you know you're too busy trying to work on your business. Well, you're really working in it. Um, you can't remember the last time you did your books or even looked at your financials, probably. Yeah. That's a huge one. And uh you probably lost your CPA's number, or they're just not picking up your phone call or responding to your email. And then you have nothing about your business written down anywhere. It's all in your head. So again, if you decide to stop working one day, um, your business will stop as well because it's again, it's all in your head. You might feel like you're also, if you have people, so let's say you've hired people. I see this happen a lot. Somehow you become the glue of the place. So again, it's such an essential, essential cog in the whole system that without you, the whole system stops. And that's a really good sign of when you're really working too much in your business versus on your business.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

I've also seen people who have way too many variations. Like variations in processes. Like um, I don't know, there might be one role for exception. Yeah, or yeah, exceptions, but also just different variations of the same thing. Of the same thing, too many variations. Like this person likes things this way, this person is do does these this way, this person does it, and it's not a role or responsibility situation. It's a variation of the same process or a variation of this of um how you're doing things. I find oftentimes it's in it happens in billing. Um, like this person likes things written um emailed to them, this person likes things mailed to them, this person likes things. Yeah, it's not systemistic things, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Yeah. Well, I will say that I feel like with any new business, there is always a time where, as the owner, you kind of have to straddle these rules where you're working in it while trying to extract yourself to work on it, right? So it's not a clear-cut, like there's a line in the sand, and one day you're working in it, and the next day you're like, oh, screw it, I'm gonna start working on it, and then everything just kind of goes goes to back. Um, I do feel like there is a transitionary period, which is what you're gonna talk about with it, but it's it's it's normal. The the the caveat to that is you don't want to stay in that transitionary period too long, or don't even think about transition, right? And it's not something where just because you want it, it's going to happen. Like it's very methodical, it's very it has to be very intentional for you to kind of replace what you were doing in the business instead.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

And it is a long road. I mean, don't think that what we're not an overnight thing. No, it's not an overnight thing, it could take years. And I mean, I always say that my business is in constant beta, you know, because you're always improving the business. And improvement comes with writing these things down and can and step by step removing yourself from uh certain roles, narrowing the amount of roles you have down to one or two roles, not seven or ten roles. You know, like you're not just you're the payroll person, the manager, the quality person, the you know, salesperson, the you know, whatever else you could think of. Like you shouldn't be all of the things.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Not forever. No, right? Like I think there's a point where yes, you start out that way, but you want to progress slowly to a place where you're not wearing all those hats anymore. And I think that's where people trip themselves up, right? Because they don't know how to do that. And they think that if they just hire somebody, they can say, hey, here's my hat, go ahead. And that's it. Like it's that easy. And it's not, it's not, it's never that easy.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Yep. So uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Uh so now that you know that uh you're the problem. You, you, person in a mirror, all of a sudden got this vision of Wanda Sykes and that flip from the movie. It's like, you want to know why your mom's crazy? You you're why she's crazy. Yeah. So so that's it. Um, so how do you transition your role? Uh, you want to make sure that you do something for your company, either every day or every week. You gotta be intentional. And this is the way in which you become you start to pull yourself away from all of the different roles and start filtering those roles, identifying them, solidifying them a little more. You gotta write these things down. I mean, I guess it depends on how it works for you. Like for some people writing it down, for some people putting it into an Excel spreadsheet, whatever way it is that works for you.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

It just gets me out of your head.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah, it just needs to get out of your head. Yes. You also can uh start to identify it by understanding what your strengths are and alternatively what your weaknesses are. So give up what you know you're not good at and keep the things that you know that you are good at. So for example, I know I'm good at sales, uh, but I know that I'm not good at I'm I'm good at problem solving, I just don't want to be good at problem solving. So I have someone else for that now, you know? But you were a problem solver for a very long time. Very, very long time, yes. Uh but what I'm saying is, is there are things that I don't want to be anymore. And so I've replaced them with you.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, those are the ones you start replacing yourself with others.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

And it doesn't always have to be someone else. Like if it's if it's something that is um automatable, automate it.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Always better to automate.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah. There are a lot of steps to onboarding uh clients or or even like inventory. If you carry inventory, have to automate these things, automating alerts or notifications if you need to. Um, but wherever it is that you can automate, automate and then delegate. Delegate wherever you can, uh, because you shouldn't be carrying the load. I feel like women especially feel like they need to be carrying the load at all times, and almost a lot of these things are um almost female focused, and I hate to put it that way, but I feel like it is because a lot of times I feel like men do not suffer from these same these same issues. Um, but you know, you gotta delegate. Uh don't um there's a saying in uh in Armenian, like one hand washes the other, both hands um can can clean a room. Okay, you know, more than one hand can clean a room. And that's that's basically what what you need. You need more hands. Um try to use your time more productively. And there's this, you know, whole belief of the four-hour workday, um, which I don't know. I I mean I guess if you condensed a lot of stuff into four hours, maybe you could get it all done into four in four hours. But I think identifying work hours for you, know what work hours work for you. If working from 10 to 3 is best for you, do that. If working from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m., do that. But identify work hours for yourself and know that those are the hours in which there's two hours maybe in the beginning of your day where you're simply doing office work, where you're perfecting your processes or writing down your process, whatever it is that you're doing. But you need to put very clear lines so that the rest of your team understands what it is that you are doing and when you are available to do the things that they might want you to do.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

So use the millionaire mindset. Your time is most valuable when it's spent solving problems and growing the business. Every minute you waste on a repetitive or arduous task actually gets in the way of growth. This concept is called the opportunity cost. The cost of something, in this case, the time you spend working on a task is whatever you give up to get it. And this was quoted from medium.com.

unknown 13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, I think like with anything else, the first I think the first thing with any with any business, and a great thing is most businesses have the same roles in it that needs to be fulfilled, is to basically identify all the roles in your business and then which ones you are fulfilling. Yeah, they'll be surprised if your name is next to every one of those because you're the only one there. Yeah, yeah. Um, but that's the that's the first step to understanding what's involved in your business. And then next is like you said, go through and figure out what what are you doing that you really don't like. Because those should be in a priority list to get off your plate as soon as possible. So either hire, automate if you can, that would be ideal, or not hire somebody else to do it, but those would be the ones that you intentionally kind of want to prioritize and make sure that you're thinking of ways to get yourself out of that role and have that role be um fulfilled uh without you there. Um not dropped, not not done, not the same thing. Uh that role and the responsibilities for that role exist in the business, whether you like it or not. So um yeah, don't, don't, don't, don't just don't just abdicate it, I guess that's the word. Don't don't don't just run away with it. And I've seen that happen quite a bit too with business owners, right? Like I said, like they hire somebody and all of a sudden they abdicate what that role is. Uh, which hire which happens with uh certainly bookkeep bookkeeping, um, accounting, um, anything else too, really. It's just um, I don't know, I don't know if it's relief that you hire somebody and you're like, hey, I'm done. I did the hard part, now the rest is yours, or something like that. But uh most of the time I've seen that crash and burn every single time.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

That seems to happen a lot in restaurants too, in food services, uh, because you feel like, well, how hard can this be? I I hired the chef and I hired the line cooks, and you know, you all know how to do these things, but you know, walking away from it, and um I I've seen it happen where they're like, Well, you know what to do. I'm just gonna be, I'm gonna go off skiing, I'll be, I'll be gone for like six months. And then, and then no, but there are still problems that that arise that require you to be there. So you're right, abdicating is not the way to go either. As much as you want, as much as you might want to.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

You can't run away.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So, in saying that, uh, I think that the best place to start is to smart, start small, think small, uh, build small, and grow small. And I I know that it seems counterintuitive, but believe me, it works. So, what do you do? You write down everything that you do, what your role is, like everything. Okay, so everything that you are personally responsible for, write it all down. And then do yourself a favor and write down what everyone else that works in your company within your company, uh, from the management roles down to down to the laborers. Uh, what is it that everybody does? What are they responsible for? And obviously, you're going to see that your list is like this long, whereas the the lower you go down, it gets like it gets smaller. So that that will show you what you should probably do.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

What you need to tackle.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Totally. So then make a list of what you want everyone to look like. What does a a good client, a good employee, uh, what does a good boss look like? What does the a good owner of a company look like? And what should be within their roles and responsibilities? What does a good manager look like? Um, you know, what whatever it is that your company does, whatever those roles are supposed to be, write down what you think their responsibilities ought to be. Now, from there, if you have other people in your office, write down what their roles are. Clearly defined roles will also clearly define responsibilities. Write it on paper, print it out, tack it onto your wall. Put the tape, tack it on your wall. Uh so that you can look at it. That's why. Uh write down how things get done. Start in layman terms, and then start sharing it up from there. So, like, how do you bill a client? How do you onboard a client? How do you onboard an employee? How do you accept payments? What platforms and tools do you use? What are your office hours? What do you do when X happens? What do you do when Y happens? Separating your company from you and starting to write out the recipe is what's going to make this business tick. Again, write it all out, print it out, put it on the wall. Uh, I know this all sounds like basic, but it's true. You really are creating a recipe for others to follow. You're measuring things out. You're seeing, do I need a cup of flour or a quarter, three-quarter cup of flour? You know, that's basically what you're doing with your business in writing out all of these roles and responsibilities and processes.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Well, you'll have a hand in every process. You may not need to write out every single process yourself. At some point, like if you hire somebody, they can help you with it, but you still need to review it and you still need to approve it, right? Again, you know, the whole abdication thing, right? Like don't abdicate. Yeah. So you can delegate it, but you still need oversight over. Yeah, it aligns with kind of what your vision of the bigger bigger picture is for your business. Yeah. Um, nobody knows that but you.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Right. And you have to have a a good sense of what it is that you're doing and what they should be doing. Um, it's not that you have to be the smartest person in the room. You need to be the most aware person in the room.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, I always kind of envision like um, like being a conductor of like a symphony or an orchestra, right? Like you want to be the conductor. But the conductor gives pretty good instructions to everybody else of what they need to do, when they need to do it, how they need to do it. And all of them have sheet music, and that's kind of their recipe and instructions. So it's it's kind of like that. It is.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

It absolutely is.

unknown 19:43

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Um, and I also suggest if you don't already have one, make a spreadsheet of your good returning clients. If you have a very large, or you know, it could be that you don't have a clientele per se. Uh, but if you have a list of returning clients, long-term clients, good clients, whatever that may be, make a list of them. Um break them out by name, what they do, how long they've been a client, how they came to you, who who sent them to you. By capturing who your clients are and where they're coming from, that's how you're going to grow from your strongest clients, not your weakest ones. I find oftentimes businesses will focus on how to make things better for the outliers, not so much for the ones that have been there for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

So I think some of that is also to the point of um typically if you're doing a lot of roles and you're trying to grow your business, you're gonna have to hire people. Whether it's a 1099, whether it's outsource, whether it's a full-blown W-2, part-time W-2, you have to hire somebody at some point. Because there's always going to be manual invention involved in some aspect of something. Um, and so I think that um to do that, you need enough revenue to hire people. Yep. And so learning how to grow your revenue and from the right clients and your best clients is is the way to go for that. And being able to identify that will help you get your you know capital and resources to be able to hire those people to get you out of those uh jobs you don't want to do.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Exactly. Yeah, and plus your largest clients, or or not largest, your um best clients are not going to I at least this is what I find. I could I could be wrong. Maybe it's just a maybe it's a me thing, but I find the best clients um or my best clients are the ones that do not have this expectation of me being um reactive. I find that the smaller ones font are more require me to be more reactionary.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

In that um they are reactionary businesses, or they are reactionary persons.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

And therefore, when something com comes up or something arises. It's a, I need this now. I need this immediately. Take care of this right now. And it it causes a tizzy within me. However, the best ones are more like, hey, I know some, this is about to come up. Can you, can you please give me a budget? I'm just making somehow. Like, hey, I know that this is going to be coming up for me. Okay. Can you um make sure that before the end of the month we have a budget and we know what our what our uh plant game plan is going to be?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

I am I did it make sense? I think so, but it's like um tie me back to the whole, like, you know, as far as part of the the recipe to getting somebody out of their own business.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Uh that's why I'm saying like focus on those larger clients and to continue to grow clients similar to them. Better clients. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Your larger clients, probably not your best clients. No, yeah, yeah. I don't mean larger clients. I mean like your best clients. Like when you're identifying to me, when you're identifying uh what a good client looks like, okay, and you start having those kinds of good clients, let's say you have five really good clients, whereas maybe you have like 20 not so great clients, okay, or maybe smaller, more um reactionary clients. If you're find out, like if you find out what the secret sauce is to how you got those five really good clients, and you can start growing, let's say you brought on another client that's similar to them. Okay. In I don't know, it could be in some design, whatever that design may be. And then you start replacing those not so great clients with those better clients. Having better clients, especially if you're in a service industry, will also help you be able to get yourself out of your business by not.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

It would give you more time.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

It would give you your time back, it would also align you with more same-minded people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

And I think that's the thing is working on your business isn't something you can delegate. Right. So that should be your priority to carve out time for yourself to work on your business. And if you have an insane, annoying client from hell that you know wants to, or a customer from hell that wants to take up all your time, you directly yourself, like as part of this process, you should identify that and know that that's a big time suck. And what are you gonna do to get rid of that? Because again, you need to protect your own time to actually work on your business to grow it, right? Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, I know. I I kind of rambled around on that one, but I this is why we're famous. I know. But that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

I I feel like part of getting you out of um But you most likely, if you're in this position, you're probably doing customer delivery work. Yes. That's what it is, right? This is that weird intersect you have where you probably have, if you're lucky, uh, more than enough customer delivery work, and you're also thinking about growing your business, so you're trying to get to the next level, but then you probably have more than enough to keep you busy already. So it's kind of like this is almost feels like overfill for a while. And if you're not careful, what I've seen is people stay in that overfill mode for a very long time and then they get burnt out, then they get frustrated, and then they can't ever get any of it right. Right. It becomes like a paralysis of it. Yeah, you're just constantly stuck in this weird limbo where you have so much deliverable to do, you need to keep earning that revenue. You're probably earning revenue from the wrong types of clients, which is probably what's going on, which means you're not freeing up your time enough to actually work on the business, and you're trying to hire people while you don't have time to work on your business, so they're coming into chaos. It just becomes a never-ending cycle of like crap. It's like a crap storm after a while. It really is, and then also you don't have enough time to hire the right employees, so you just hire you're also kind of desperate, and you should never hire when you're desperate and in a desperation mode. And so it just becomes a continuing cycle of losses that you have to keep taking. And you know, some people can get through it. Um, a lot of people just burn out during that time because it goes on for too long, and you just can't sustain all that. And that's because before they get there, there was no intentional plan, or they have unrealistic expectations, meaning that they think this can all be done in a month and not two years. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Absolutely, and you're absolutely right about that. And I I I hope that our listeners understand that this really is a short-term, long-term situation. This is short-term in the sense that in the in the grand scope or grand scheme of your business, um, it probably will take you about two years uh to really fully um and who's to say that in those two years things don't end up change and you recognize that oh, yeah. Or maybe you're like, while you're going through it, which is what happened with me, and what you know, we're gonna go into the raw truth. Yeah, as you start going into it, you're like, you know what? I think I'm more this than I am more that. And now I'm going to change the direction of my company, and I'm just going to overhaul everything because you know, so tough.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Like, I think when you're under a million, it's really tough because one, you have enough activity that there's there's quite a bit going on. You're probably still doing client deliverable work between some of your time is taken up there. You probably hired some people to help you sustain all of the revenue. So you're also busy managing those people. Um, yeah, it's really tough to kind of get out of that position. And it takes probably 18, 18 months to two years if you're under a million. If you're over a million, it probably just takes a little bit more time beyond that. And when you're under a million, sometimes you do go through that. Sometimes you go down this road and then realize you need to pivot or do some shift in your business. That's somewhat of a significant shift for the better. But it also means that maybe what you did for the last six months, now you're gonna have to undo and then redo, which sets you back a little bit. But that's all normal, that's part of the growth.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Uh, but before we move on to the raw truth, we want you to be a part of our conversation and let us know what you want to hear. Send us questions or comments to our email, the businessbehind small business at gmail.com, to ask questions related to our show and uh or just let us know how much you love us. Everything else you can give to yourself. Uh, we want to give you what you want to learn.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

You can't say something nice. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Don't say it, nana. Uh we want to give you what you want to learn about. So now we're gonna move on to the raw truth, where we each share our own gritty experience with today's topic. We want you listeners to know that success ain't easy, it ain't pretty, and it's certainly not a straight line. We hope you will hear our cautionary tales and learn from them. So have you a raw truth?

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Yeah, it took me two years. That timeline's not fake. It took me two years. It took me took me two years, and in between that I had a big pivot in the business too, and I had employees at the same time. Great, great idea to do all this all at once. But it took me two years, and it took one process at a time. Like one process at a time, like literally one process at a time. It's yeah, no. I mean, it's funny because now that I look back, I'm like, what the heck took so long? Why was it so hard? But like with anything, your first time going through it, I think it's it's tough, right? So, I mean, it wasn't anything fancier than I think I just finally got to a place of like enough is enough. Um, if I want to build this company to be sellable, um, I I read a couple books, and you know, systems was like that that that that uh recurring theme in all these books. You know, you want to sell your company, you want to create value, there has to be systems. You can't be working in your business, businesses where the owner is the primary kind of everything is uh least valuable, and it's hard for you to walk away from the business after it's acquired, too, right? Because then you have to stay on board a lot longer, not like, oh no, no, no, I'm not doing any of that, right? So I think that kind of um instilled in me the idea of okay, systems. And I just started with one word doc and one thing at a time. And my biggest thing then was I was a terrible recruiter. Um, I hired everybody with potential. Mm-mm. Everybody with potential. I also had a terrible, I also I also had like um maybe it's what they call it, like a savior complex a little bit. Like, oh yeah, of course, like, you know, uh we'll we'll get you up to speed if you, you know, first of all, I was a small business. I didn't have time nor money to do any of that. Um, so you know, because I was hiring people that weren't right for the business, which thank goodness I figured out later on, um, there was a bit of turnover. So I went through a lot of trial errors with all that. And um so the first thing I did was I did an employee onboarding process. So when people came in, uh, they had something that they could watch and see and walk through and immediately understand what our business did, what service we provided, who's who in a company, how are things done, what's our deliverables, what's our deadlines. And that really kind of helped alleviate a lot of my time from hiring as well as onboarding all these new employees. So then from that, I stepped back and I learned how to actually recruit source and recruit the right types of people for the business. That was a tough lesson. That was expensive. That was an expensive, expensive lesson.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Yeah, well, um, not to one-up you. Please do. This is not the place in which I would like to one-up you. Um, so it also took me two years. Yeah. Uh, so this was I started the company in 2011. I uh realized in 2018 that I needed to hire people, and in order for me to hire people, I needed to be able to tell them what what I do, what we do, what they do. And so I took 2018 to 2020, and during that time is when I discovered that my company's really more one thing, more growth management than we are back office. Yeah, right. Oh, everybody heard 2020 and they're like, oh, I know where those are going. Uh and so in tw January of 2020, um, I pivoted from offering social media because that's what I used to offer. Um, and I I wanted to pause, put pause on that and and let me grow the HR and um the the HR and payroll portion. And of course the world melted. And um then for two years it was just survival? Calls to the wall? What? I didn't want to use another word. Just say it. I know, but I don't think I can. Maybe basketball's to the wall. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Just because we don't have it.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

You can't say it. I know, but I didn't know if maybe like I would get somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

I'll make this not for kids. You're in a car, close your kids in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Yeah. So like it was it was so like and and then I got COVID and then I started hiring incorrectly. And then I for two for another two years, actually for another three years, I stumbled and fell, and stumbled and fell, and fell into this reactionary place that I could not get out of because COVID had really kicked my butt. Yeah. Both me having COVID and then my husband had a lot of health uh issues because of his COVID. And so personally and professionally, it really threw me. I it was like, you know, in the in the movie Princess Pride, when they're falling down the, when they're tumbling down the the very tall. And they just keep going, like when is this gonna end? And they just keep on you know, trucking. So that that's exactly what happened to me. And so it wasn't until um, you know, this year where things started to really stabilize. Traction again. Yeah, and I hit traction again, and I went through and I redid uh all of my processes, rewrote. I rewrote all of my processes because things had changed slightly. I felt a little bit different about certain things. Um, I had a management team now, and so I was pulling myself out of all a lot of things. Um, what I did do um was when I wrote my processes, I would write like this has to get done, and then in parentheses, I would put my name or admin or you know, whoever it is that's responsible for that. That's how I saw, wow, there's a lot of things I do here. So I'm gonna have to pull me out of these. That was good for me because I'm a visual person. So visual helps, yes. Yeah. So by me looking at it, that's when when I was re-redoing them all, I was like, okay, now this is this person's responsibility and that person's. And and now my role in the business is more of an overviewer.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

And um, I do a few things for the business so I can feel like I'm worth something. But but I'm in a much better place now, entering into my 13th year, whereas I don't know, maybe I would have been further along uh if it weren't for COVID. But thankfully, I mean, knock on wood, the reason why I felt like I was just I couldn't catch a break was not just because I got sick, but because I mean, business was insanely busy for us, I mean, in the accounting world, as you can imagine. So that was part of the reason why it was insane. But what I'm saying is is that by me finally going back, seeing everything, and then taking my name and replacing it with someone else's, yeah, it was a good feeling, but it also helped me see wow, I was responsible for a whole lot of crap.

SPEAKER_00 35:17

Yeah, I mean it's a systematic approach, right? I always say, you know, like for myself, it was thinking about how do I how do I fire myself from a position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do I fire myself?