Business Blasphemy

EP101: Here’s How You’re Doing Operations Wrong with Nikki McKnight

• Sarah Khan • Season 4 • Episode 101

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In this fiery episode, I talk to operations strategist Nikki McKnight to break down the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make with operations and hiring.

Nikki delivers sharp insights on why most business owners approach systems, hiring, and delegation all wrong — and what to do instead. Like, ACTUAL advice.

From avoiding "bitch eating crackers" moments in business to understanding the true role of operations (which, SPOILER ALERT, even a lot of operators are getting confused), this episode is packed with truth bombs, strategy, and no-BS advice.


Meet Nikki: 

Nikki McKnight (she/her) is an operations and systems strategist for creatives who want to develop operations & systems that create industry-leading experiences for their clients.

With over 15 years in operations, Nikki's superpower is making the complex simple, whether she's building high-performing teams, upgrading communication processes, or quietly geeking out over experience design.

When she’s not orchestrating logistical magic, she reads queer romance novels, builds Lego sets, and co-hosts the romance podcast First Dates & Soulmates —because successful millennials need hobbies too, right?

Connect with Nikki:

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The Business Blasphemy Podcast is sponsored by Corporate Rehab® Strategic Consulting.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Business Blasphemy Podcast, where we question the sacred truths of the online business space and the reverence with which they're held. I'm your host, sarah Khan speaker, strategic consultant and BS busting badass. Join me each week as we challenge the norms, trends and overall bullshit status quo of entrepreneurship to uncover what it really takes to build the business that you want to build in a way that honors you, your life and your vision for what's possible, and maybe piss off a few gurus along the way. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. Hello, hello, blasphemers. I am so pleased to welcome a fellow Canuck that's Canadian. For those of you who don't understand our vernacular, I want to welcome Nikki McKnight. Now, nikki and I have known each other kind of formally, informally, deeply and not deeply for quite some time now. I don't even remember how we kind of came into each other's orbit.

Speaker 2:

I think it's been four or five years, at least it has been.

Speaker 1:

And I love Nikki and I am actually surprised and ashamed that she has not been here sooner. Nikki was on. I need a letter. I mean complaint to the manager. Nikki was on my virtual summit last year God, last year already, geez, oh no, don't say that. And I honestly was just like why the fuck have you not been on the podcast? Like she is a genius. You will see that as we continue this conversation. But, nikki, why don't you introduce yourself to the people and then we'll take it away?

Speaker 2:

Lovely. Hello folks. My name is Nikki. My pronouns are she, her. I'm an operations and systems strategist. I own a company called the Ops Shop. We are your one-stop shop for ops and it is my goal in life to FAFO, f-a-f-o. I'm going to fuck around and find out, because I believe that is the beating heart of operations and systems. We're just going to find out, we're going to try things, we're going to experiment. I'm trying to bring fun and curiosity back into operations.

Speaker 2:

I think it's been there all along, but for many folks who think it's just checklists and software and automations and integrations and so much work, I'm like you have not oh, soapbox moment, but you know, I'm here to say, to reframe, like it's about curiosity, and if this is a part of your business that you ignore, it's your own damn fault. You're going to end up where you're going to end up, yep.

Speaker 1:

Now, okay, usually I start with you know, give me your real origin story. But just before we hit record, you talked about a bitch eating crackers moment and I really. Can we dive into that first? Yes, okay, set the scene for me.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so for those of you like not familiar with what bitch eating crackers is, uh, just to kind of set the stage for you, it is when there is a person for whom you feel like a strong and disproportionate dislike, Like everything this person does annoys you even it is something as simple as like eating crackers. So like if a bitch is eating crackers, you're like it's not actually that they're eating crackers, there's something else, but it's like the crackers is the thing. That's like I'm real feel real nitpicky about this.

Speaker 1:

There's so many people I feel that way about, and now I have thank you for that. Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It was a real bitchy and crackers moment. So I recently started playing pickleball at my local club. Yes, pickleball is a huge trend right now. It's delightful. It's a delightful game. I love it. I've been playing it for a couple of years. My parents play it very competitively.

Speaker 2:

But you know I joined the club and you know I go to my first open session cause I got my rating and I'm like ready to go. And I kind of go up to the person organizing the session and I was like hey, I'm Nikki, it's my first time coming to the open session. Like is there anything I should know? Like how is there anything I should know? Like how does this operate? What's the flow of things? And she goes, well, we just like play. I'm like okay, well, do we pick our own courts? Like is there to you know to start, is there any priority? Do we go in order of arrival? For who gets first dibs on courts? Like she goes, no, just like go. And I was like okay, cool, and I just went up and introduced myself to some people and then, like you know, we're playing some games. It's fun, it's nice. I'm the youngest person there, by about 20 years.

Speaker 2:

But during the game somebody faults, and I didn't call them on it, but I kind of went up to them and played. I stopped and said hey, what's your name? I just want to let you know like you're edging on an illegal serve because of where you're hitting the ball and like that was it. We go me aside. At the end she goes hey, we don't do that here. And I was like so sorry, what do you mean? If you want to give somebody criticism, you need to ask them first, if you can, because we don't want to get people angry. And I was like okay, she goes it's in the handbook. I'm like no, it's not. I read the handbook. None of this is in the handbook.

Speaker 2:

She's like also, don't call out the score so loudly. I was like we are in a huge space and I can't hear it when other people are calling the score. So I'm calling the score loudly. Well, you know we don't do this. And I was like okay. And she goes and like don't tell people what they're doing wrong. Like, ask them. And I was like okay, so do you guys not call faults here? She's like well, there's plenty of people like standing in the kitchen. It's a pickleball thing. Don't worry about it. You're not supposed to do it and she's like but when we're just you know, plenty of people are doing that I'm like, yeah, and they should be calling it because this is a mid beginner level, like these are things that are illegal. People should be made aware of it.

Speaker 2:

So, anyway, the tone was immediate condescension, and when y'all condescend, very few things make me angry, but if I feel like you asked, you know what I, what you should know about the club, I'm just trying to give you some tips. I was like yeah, great, thank you. And like walked away Cause I was like fuck. And then I came home and I started about ranting about oh my God, like this woman and how she talked to me and she was condescending and she kept stopping play to say nobody's in seconds to serve. It doesn't matter if you're out of position, right, I know these things and it just. Eventually I just went to my friend Jen. I'm like I'm having a real bitch eating crackers moment, because what I realized was this is one.

Speaker 2:

I was extremely annoyed, but it's because there was all of this implicitness around this culture.

Speaker 2:

Here's the business lesson for y'all.

Speaker 2:

Write this down.

Speaker 2:

But it was this idea that the stage was not set for how to interact.

Speaker 2:

There's a resource that apparently exists that tells you about this, but it doesn't actually exist.

Speaker 2:

None of this is in there and there wasn't like a dialogue for how we talk and it felt like I was being thrown into like a fight that was already happening, a culture that was already happening, and anything I did was going to be wrong.

Speaker 2:

Like you know that that that gift from community when Troy walks in with the pizzas and the entire room is on fire, like that's what it kind of felt like, because there was unwritten rules that had nothing to do with actual pickleball, but it was like clearly in the past they had had people complain about like don't tell me what to do, and while that's not what I was doing at all, it's almost like the ecosystem became so overly sensitive to how we talk to people because they were predicting that of course everybody was going to do it wrong, that when you're new into a space, you don't know how to react. And it's not actually about pickleball, it was about the fact that this culture was so implicit and it was very outsider focused that anything that happened immediately turned into a bitch eating crackers moment for me.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Like for three hours I just kept ranting about it. I wrote an email to my list about it this week. Like that was my newsletter topic this week. When you have a bitch eating crackers moment, what is actually the thing and how do you figure it out? What is actually happening? Cause it's not a pickleball. There's something else happening.

Speaker 1:

Right, so okay, so relate this to, because I can see where you're going. Relate this to business, particularly when it comes to operations because I can see you talk about culture. Yeah, help us understand the application to business, because it happens in more businesses than we actually admit.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I can tell you it's happening with every single one of my clients right now. Right, like somebody needs to reschedule a meeting. What do you mean? You got to change the meeting. Somebody asks a question about where something is. Well, why can't you just find it? Oh my God, another email. Why don't you just read your freaking emails, right?

Speaker 2:

Normally, when you look at those things by themselves, it's not a big deal. But when in your business there are like unspoken expectations, when there's unclear roles, if there's a general feeling of chaos, these tiny things start to feel like really personal, like you're under attack just for existing. And the thing I experience a lot being an operations and systems strategist who literally comes in when people are feeling stretched and under-resourced and anxious, like the very first thing they want to do is kind of go on the defensive, like I just haven't had time to do this, I haven't had time to fix it. It's not my zone of genius, I'm not good at it they immediately feel under attack because they're stretched so thin, they're overwhelmed, that even something as small as an email or asking a question in your general vicinity becomes the bitch eating the crackers, because the thing isn't the thing, it's the environment that has created the thing, and it's been a cascade of things that it's the one thing that makes you go. I fuck all of it all of it.

Speaker 1:

So where, where is the tipping point? At what point does operations in a business become and it's like an important thing? And I point, does operations in a business become an important thing? And I mean, I know operations is always important, but at what point are you hiring people in? But then where does that tipping point happen? Of you know, we thought we were setting things up, but things have kind of just taken on a life of their own, et cetera and so forth. Where does that happen, yeah?

Speaker 2:

I feel like it comes down to three key questions, and the first one is are our operations telling us if we are doing the right and relevant thing? Because y'all can be busy all day long, but if that thing that you're doing, the action that you're taking, the goal that you're setting, is not right or relevant for the direction, we have a problem there. The second question is is what we're doing getting results? Because if you don't know how to measure that, or if they're not getting results, that's also a problem. The third thing is is what we're building reliant on a single person or channel? Because if decisions are only made by one person, if sales only come in via one channel, if one person is the only person who understands how to do a certain thing, then that's a problem. So it's not necessarily a singular tipping point that can turn things into crisis.

Speaker 2:

It's when those three questions have an unclear answer or if they kind of go off the rails, like if you know, are we doing the right and relevant thing? I don't know or no, it can be a systems problem. The right and relevant thing, I don't know or no? It can be a systems problem. Are we getting results? I don't know or no, then why are we doing this? We need to figure out a better way to get us back to what's working. If things are built reliant on a single person or channel, then that's again a problem because the things are going to start getting overwhelmed. There's no outflow for that, so not necessarily a singular tipping point, but it's those three questions. If there's ambiguity or the answer is no, then that's when you need to kind of go back and look at great what are the foundational aspects around how we decide what we're doing and how we make decisions in the first place.

Speaker 1:

So how does a small business owner prevent something like that? Because you'll know you go into a small business as an operations professional or whatever right, you do become the holder of all of the things and there are a lot of people who get really territorial about that kind of thing. New team members come in. They don't want to divest what they're doing or it is just a solopreneur and, like one person, that person leaves. I mean, the number of times I've gone into a business and their operations person has left and they have the keys to the kingdom, they have all the information, but now you can't get into it Like it's just it's just. How do you prevent that from happening when you're already at the stage where there's only one person who's actually doing all of the operations stuff?

Speaker 2:

I feel like that's a problem to give it all over to one person, like maybe task execution, you can do it. But I think there's different levels that we think about things and you know, at the very base level it's a task level, right Like what are we doing? What are the things that just have to be checked off? You know, anybody can really do those things. When you're thinking at that level, you can find somebody fairly quickly. It's great to have documentation for that. If that person leaves, then it really becomes a time thing. You just need to have more time to do that. When you don't have that, it's a separate issue. But the thing above that is this idea of process right, it's how do all of these tasks come together and how do we make that more efficient? How do we make it more profitable? How do we make it more productive?

Speaker 2:

Above process, we have outcome. If this process works the way it's supposed to, what is the outcome that's going to happen? And above outcome is value. If our business achieves all these outcomes because ultimately you're going to have a series of outcomes resulting from a series of processes then what's the value that this brings to the business? So when I think about hiring or figuring out where I need to to use your word like divest of some things. I don't start at a task level. I should understand the value. But I'm starting at an outcome level, right. Like I kind of make a list of what are all the outcomes that have to occur on a regular basis for this business to be successful, then I say great, if that is the outcome I am seeking. What decisions have to be made to get us there? Then I give away the decision-making and say I'll go figure out what this task is. I don't need to know at that point.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you're one person with one support person, that person leaves, it's going to be crazy. It doesn't matter how efficient it is. Time is going to be an issue. You're going to have a lack of a resource. But I think if you can approach it more from a sense of I'm not giving away tasks, because then you have to manage tasks, you have to follow up on tasks.

Speaker 2:

You're still the bottleneck, and this happens too If you hire an operations manager. This is one of my pet peeves is when that's one of your first hires an operations manager Managing what, managing who, and don't just get a VA. A VA is not a job title, y'all. It's a type of business Get more specific. But what they try to do is they put the operations person between them and the rest of the team. I'm like, fantastic, you've just created another bottleneck. It didn't actually relieve anything and if that person leaves, then you're screwed because nothing's been solved. You've just put yourself back in the place of a bottleneck.

Speaker 2:

So I think when we start to get overwhelmed or we're thinking about how do we kind of reshuffle what we're doing? I think it does go back to those original three key questions, but it's like stop focusing on the tasks and start focusing on the outcomes. Because when you focus on an outcome, I think it helps you simplify things down a little bit more and it becomes a lot easier to say sure, I should have an email that goes out every single week, but that's not necessarily supporting a particular outcome. That is the priority right now. I'm going to put pause on that because I don't have help to do it and I can't do it. Pausing it fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Then you get to focus in on what is actually going to help you achieve certain outcomes. So how would you say and this might be a really I don't know if this is like a loaded question or just a really open question how would you say people are outsourcing wrong? Because I feel like this whole rhetoric around just outsource it, just outsource it, delegate it to somebody else I feel like there's not enough context, a lot of the time for that advice. So when we're solopreneurs because I think primarily that is who listens to the podcast they may have like one support person, but usually it's people who are kind of going solo how are they outsourcing or delegating wrong? How do they need and I know you've talked about approaching it from outcomes versus tasks so who should be your first hire?

Speaker 2:

ideally it's going to be different for every single company. Like I would never hire an operations person first because I'm competent at that. It's not where the business needs support. Like I might hire someone in marketing because I hate it. I'm not where the business needs support. Like I might hire someone in marketing because I hate it. I'm not great with words like writing. I struggle with that really hard. Or I might hire someone to do content editing for me because I have I'm a perfectionist and it stops me from getting things done.

Speaker 2:

So it goes back to what are the things that need to happen? Right, if I divide the company up into sales and marketing, so front end, everything that is visible that can bring people to me and then I break it into delivery and kind of day-to-day operations, what are the things that have to happen on a day-to-day basis to deliver the things that people have paid for and keep the business running? And then more of a financial, legal, admin side, right, this is the stuff that has to happen, so that I don't get a call from the government being, hello, this is the government calling, you are in trouble. So I look at those three things and I say, great, well, what has to happen in my sales and marketing for me to think this is successful. I have as many clients as I want to have at any given time. People understand what it is I do. At the end of the day, that's all sales and marketing for me has to do it, because then I can look at those two things and say great for me to have as many clients as I want to at any given time. What needs to happen? Well, I need to be constantly widening my audience and finding new people. I get most of my clients via referral and that works really well for me. So how do I do more of that? Great, if those are the two things I know will support that outcome. That's all I'm focusing on right now, because then I can get specific in that you know what I need to kind of figure out a good way for people to refer people to me. So then I can go talk to people who have sent me referrals and say, hey, how do I make this easier for you? That becomes a project that I can hire that out. I can outsource that specific thing. Or, if it's like getting in front of new audiences, maybe I hire someone to go find me summits, bundles, podcasts, speaking opportunities, whatever it is that becomes something very specific I can hire for and I can go to them and say this is what I'm hiring you to do. I'm not hiring you to send X number of emails per week and reach out to 35 people. I don't care. I want you to help me be visible to people who want to hire me. If you say that's podcast, fantastic. If you tell me it's YouTube, awesome. But I need to get more specific.

Speaker 2:

I think the hiring challenge, I think when people are first starting to do this, is they're at one of two extremes. One, they get very specific. I want Puma to answer this do this da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, like. It becomes very task oriented and I think the challenge is that's not actually gonna buy you back that much time, because when you're thinking of things as a series of tasks, there becomes a ceiling at which you can optimize that, that it can't go any faster. It's still there and you still have to manage that and check in on those tasks, say how is this going? Is that done yet? Here's another thing Do the thing and you have to constantly be thinking of things for that person to do. Or, if something comes across your desk, you have to throw it over to them. That doesn't really buy you back that much time.

Speaker 2:

The other extreme I think they can fall into is thinking in terms of I'm just going to hire a VA, and they do that. But y'all VAs are a type of business, it's not a job title. What type of VA Do you need administrative support? Do you need content support? Do you need tech support? Do you need customer service support? Like, figure it out what you actually need, so that you're not just saying I need a VA and then the VA is like fantastic, I'm great, I have a good price. You like me as a person and they're like okay, what am I doing? And it goes right back to you have to give them a list of tasks because you don't know what all this is.

Speaker 2:

So, but if you can go up to that outcome level, it makes it very easy for me to then go to a job board, to go to an entrepreneurial facebook group and say, hey, I'm nikki, I run a service-based business that does x, y and z. I'm really struggling with sales and marketing. These are the two things I want to have happen. I want people to know what I do and I want to have as many clients as I want at any given time. Who can support me in this? What do you think I should do? And then I can kind of respond to whatever comes in that way, versus me going in.

Speaker 2:

I need a podcast producer. Maybe it's not a fucking podcast. I need a social media manager. Maybe I shouldn't be on social media. I'm making assumptions.

Speaker 2:

I was listening to one of my former bosses, john Goodman, who just came on social media. I'm making assumptions. I was listening to one of my former bosses, john Goodman, who just came out with a book a couple weeks ago called the Obvious Choice, and John is a brilliant human. I hate how smart he is. The book is phenomenal. But he says you know, when you're talking about goals and when you're talking about like questions, the challenge becomes when you put the hypothesis in with the questions in with the questions Ooh, okay.

Speaker 2:

So the question is not how do I use social media to get more clients. Your hypothesis is in the question. You think social media is the way to get clients. The question should be how do I get clients? Well, shit, right. Same thing with hiring, same thing with operations. People are putting the hypothesis in the question how do I use Kajabi to sell digital products? You're making assumptions. How do I create a membership for solopreneurs? Those are both putting the hypothesis in the question. It shouldn't be how do I create a membership for solopreneurs? It's how can I support solopreneurs in getting XYZ that they need? What's the outcome?

Speaker 1:

versus. Maybe it's a membership Exactly Z that they need. What's the?

Speaker 2:

outcome versus membership? Exactly, maybe it's a membership, but maybe it's not, maybe it's not Right Again. So same thing with hiring, same thing with systems, same thing with software, same thing with processes. Don't put a hypothesis in with the question, because you're already making assumptions. And if what I often see with operations is people want to hire for this because it's not their zone of genius, but if they don't understand that aspect, they're going to make the wrong decisions because they're not even trying to understand the theory behind it. I can't build a fucking funnel. I can build parts of one, but I'm not great at it. But I know what a funnel should do. So I can go to a funnel person and say, hey, I would like a funnel that does X, y and Z. Tell me what you need.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, then they can go do what they're good at, but I know the theory behind it see, and I I'm laughing because I mean this is, and this is, I think, the problem that I have with a lot of coaches in this space. Now, if you listen to the podcast, you're probably thinking, sarah, all you do is?

Speaker 1:

shit on coaches. I don't. I mean I do, but I also don't because the shit is actually legitimate. You have a a vendetta. I have a vendetta. No, I mean so many coaches coach people and it just it kind of makes sense, given what you've said now about what John wrote. So many coaches coach to their specific deliverable or outcome, because that is all they can provide.

Speaker 1:

That's all they know how to do so. They require you to put the hypothesis into the question, because that's the outcome. They're trying to sell you right, and I think that real business coaches understand that the outcome is always going to be dependent on the need of the client, and there are so many programs and spaces that do not do that.

Speaker 1:

They tell you what the outcome should be, and now you are required to contort yourself into that particular deliverable and you get to the end of whatever program or time frame that you've been with that person or that company and you come out going this isn't what I asked for, this isn't what I wanted, this isn't what I thought I was getting. It's because we're not asking the question on the front end of what do you actually want to achieve?

Speaker 2:

Yes, 100% agree, and I think part of it, too is you're. You know, you're making assumptions about that and you're putting a hypothesis in, but you're in that model of doing business and I get why people do it. Because, like, if I want to scale my business, then I have to kind of do X, y and Z and that's how those offers get created, the challenge being you're not actually teaching that client any type of competency or confidence to do things without you, because you know. The example I like to give is if you created a digital product or a lead magnet or something on like 10 steps to launch your Facebook ads, great Me as a consumer, I'm like that's a really easy value. I understand exactly what I'm getting. I'm going to get that. But then Facebook changes their freaking ads manager every two weeks. Two weeks later, what you wrote is done, it's obsolete and unless you are a bigger company who has the capital whether that's time, money or people to go update that every damn week, it's now irrelevant, because you taught a methodology. You didn't teach principles. You didn't provide principles. But if, instead, you told people here's how to decide if you should even run ads, here's how to figure out if ads are successful. Here are the components to coming up with an ad strategy the creative, the copy, the audiences, the platform, the budget. And here's a unit on how to do that for Facebook, here's a unit to do that for Google, and those may change, but I understand the principles. Now I can go to an ads platform or I can hire someone more specifically to say, boom, I think it comes back again with operations. I'm not going to go to people and say here's why you should set up a membership on Circle, but I'm going to come back to the whole idea of right and relevant, getting results and reliance, because those work in all places. It needs to be principles-based rather than methodology, because then people can make decisions without me and ultimately that's what I want, because I the example I like to give.

Speaker 2:

I used to work as a personal trainer and I had a client really bad sciatic pain, a lot of back issues, so when she was with me I inherited her from a trainer who had left. They used to do the water treadmill like three times a week and this woman would just walk in a water treadmill for 30 minutes every Monday, wednesday, friday and I see a chiropractor six times a week. Very wealthy, but I was kind of like well, what's the exit plan here? Well, there isn't one. My body is now so reliant on this. There's not a world where I can't do this, and if I miss a session I'm in extreme pain, and I always remembered that when I think about people who work with service providers, that am I just making you locked into this water treadmill for the rest of your life Because you don't know how to operate outside of it? If you change your mind or if you find a methodology doesn't work for you, all that time, money, energy and brain power you put into something is now obsolete, and that pisses me off.

Speaker 1:

As it should. I'm sitting here and just going back through all of the client engagements that I've had and just you know, remembering how there comes a point where you're just like I don't need to be here anymore and that's kind of where you want to be as a service provider, unless you have you've created in an environment where they have to rely on you, so you've kind of proofed your job right, like you're not going to get fired because. But that also creates such a like you necessarily have to be not as good at what you do, because do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2:

So that kind of just continually reliance on you.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. But look what you just said reliance on you. What was my third question? Is something in your business reliant on a singular person or channel? Yeah, look what you've now done as a business owner. Now, if you want to stay in a group or with a coach for a long time because you like that person like I've definitely done that I like that, support that cheerleader and you're getting that Amazing. I love that. I've done it. I believe everybody should have that kind of support and realize when it becomes a reliancy and figure out what happens if that goes away.

Speaker 2:

Just like a team member, just like what was the software? There was a software, a private podcast software. It was like a Hello Audio competitor. It was a lot cheaper. I think it started with a D, I don't remember, but it was extremely popular. I know a lot of people that switched over to it from Hello Audio because it was a little bit too expensive for their needs. They announced they're going out of business. By the way, you have two weeks to get everything off of our platform. Yeah Right, and it happens. But they had built everything in their business to be 100% only on this private podcast. They had said, well, clearly, this is so much better than having videos and transcripts and different forms of information. We're just going to do all in on private podcast, and I get it. I love podcasts. I listened to them about four or five hours a day, but you made it reliant on only that.

Speaker 1:

Which is why I'm always a little bit nervous when a business owner wants to put everything on one platform, like a go high level or something like that, where like your emails and your marketing and your sales pages and like absolutely everything is on that one platform. Because what happens when that platform changes? Or it goes out of business, or it has a server outage yeah, right, like, and we've all experienced those.

Speaker 1:

Um, tell me a little bit about your villain origin story, because I mean, if you haven't noticed y'all, I mean fucking genius, right, like the way her brain works, honestly, but what is? How did you come to entrepreneurship? Because I know you do a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 2:

You're in like movies and you're like the wine, and so tell me a little bit about why entrepreneurship for you back when I was a wee child. No, um, I think part of the things I've always really liked is, you know, you mentioned the movies. I do background acting in Toronto, you know, from time to time because I like to see how the sausage gets made. Like I love production stories, Like I'm not really into celebrities, I'm like let's talk about the cinematographer, let's talk about this SFX team.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember the show, how it was made or how? Yeah, I love that show. I love it Because you know.

Speaker 2:

I like the behind the scenes stuff. You know I've always kind of joked that when I hear people go oh I just I want to be just like this business person idol, like you don't actually want them. You want everything behind them that you can't see, that allows them to be that.

Speaker 1:

Bingo.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, boom Take it, but that's always been my interest. I started my business back in like 2013, 2014, I think is when the company was officially incorporated Because I had worked in corporate. I'd worked for my dad for a number of years at his import, export and corporate consulting company. I got burnt out. That's when I switched over to being a personal trainer. But when I was a personal trainer I was like I see a lot of stuff that's wrong with how this business is run and how it's taking advantage of high paying clients and not paying the trainers shit. I see the problems in having a too open schedule. I slowly started to meet other people and I kind of missed business. And that's when I met John Goodman and I went to work for him for a number of years and that was my first kind of foray into online entrepreneurship and supporting someone like John and it was great. I learned a lot. And then that introduced me to my next couple of bosses and you know I was always kind of doing my own thing behind the scenes, just because I'm like I need to be in charge of my own schedule, I need space to go on rabbit holes, and I really felt that a lot of like my personal training career or my corporate career wouldn't let me go down rabbit holes and my ADHD demands that I explore rabbit holes and I couldn't do that in my work and it felt very stifling and it felt very hard, given at the point I didn't know I had ADHD. I know now things make a lot more sense, but you know, I got to a point where I've been working for a company for a number of years. I was, I'd gone from the executive assistant to the CEO to the COO and I liked it and the vibe was really good.

Speaker 2:

But the thing I really started to realize that was fairly endemic in that industry was a lot of people were talking what they should do but nobody was talking about how you do it and that pissed me off. It kind of felt like a bait and switch. Like you know, you can have the best guest teachers and the best resources and the best programs on how to build a course, how to write a book, how to start a podcast, how to have a lead magnet, how to build an Ascension model, but nobody was teaching the actual implementation. And that's kind of what started, because I was just really annoyed that I saw people, day in, day out, come into spaces with these big ideas, big dreams, and were told what to do. And then I would talk to them six months later and they hadn't done any of it.

Speaker 2:

So the entrepreneurship started with literally just how do we do a thing? How do we execute, how do we implement? How do we just take things from an idea into something you can actually do something with and test it and optimize it and see what happens. And then from there it's eventually grown into not so much the execution part, because I realized the problem wasn't in a lack of knowledge, it was in a lack of discernment and competency about decision-making. And we're having the wrong conversations about what platform? How do I do this? That's not the question, right? The question is how do I figure out what I should be doing? So that's where more of my work is now, because, you know again, people are still not doing things. I want people to do shit because otherwise it's not doing anything. I want people to do shit because otherwise it's not doing anything.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you just got a really expensive hobby at the end of the day.

Speaker 2:

Don't talk to me about Lego being an expensive hobby. I do that shit all day, every day, oh, listen, listen.

Speaker 1:

I sometimes wish it was Lego. If you had any idea what my kids hobbies are like every time we pass a bookstore. And I mean, I love books, don't get me wrong, but my child, my teenager, could start her own library. And it's ridiculous because she won't let me touch her books. She's like me, like that's my thing, don't touch it right. It's like no, don't, don't touch my thing.

Speaker 2:

I love that I was like. Does she read like YA romance and does she? Want to come on my romance podcast.

Speaker 1:

I will ask her. She is a prolific reader. She is more into like YA fantasy and she also writes. She's writing her own fanfic on Wattpad right now. Shout out.

Speaker 2:

I might want to talk to your 16 year old. Okay, and the reason I bring up, I have a podcast and it has nothing to do with my work.

Speaker 2:

It's about romance novels, because I was at an event in Niagara last year and it was an event for entrepreneurs. Because I was at an event in Niagara last year and it was an event for entrepreneurs and I met this woman and we realized that we both really loved romance novels. So we spent the entire weekend like talking about them. So we stayed in touch and a couple months later we were kind of just voxing each other back and forth like, oh, do you read this? I just saw this. And she's like do you just want to have a podcast where we can talk about this?

Speaker 2:

And I was like, yes, I do One, because I'm a millennial who wants hobbies, lego, romance novels but also I realized that that's where I wanted to spend my time is on my hobbies. So I couldn't build a business that was reliant on me to make decisions, to show up every day, to have to do all the things, because then I can't have my podcast, then I can't build my Lego, then I can't play pickleball. Right, my work is in service of my hobbies, expensive though they may be, and that's why I very deliberately wanted to have a podcast that we don't try to monetize. It has nothing to do with my work. We just want to talk about what we love, and I have to build systems that let me do that, otherwise I will shrivel and die.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I have to repeat what you said having a business that is in service of your hobbies and you can replace the word hobbies with anything having a business that is in service to your purpose, having a business that is in service to your lifestyle, having a business that is in service to your children, your family, like whatever you want.

Speaker 1:

I think we are losing that piece of it and there are so many business owners who are now stuck in this cycle of having to do all the things, regardless of having big teams or whatever, because they're not making the right decisions and the decisions that they are making are too reliant on other people or themselves. So I want to ask, kind of as like the you know, if you could leave people with one or two really key pieces of advice. If you are looking at first OK, there's two questions here. If you're looking at hiring out the operations side of your business, what should you be looking for in terms of competence in that person to do it like? If you're going to do it all on your own, what should you be prioritizing so that the business allows you to do the things that you started being an entrepreneur to do in the first place?

Speaker 2:

Okay, I'm going to answer the solopreneur one. Okay, I think it is really going back to this idea of focusing on outcomes, because knowing the outcomes gives you permission to say no to things and not do things. Because if I can identify an outcome, I'll go back to the sales and marketing example I gave earlier of I want as many clients as I want. I want to be as full as I'd like, because maybe right now I'm tired, I only want to have two clients and I have those two. Fantastic, I've won.

Speaker 2:

But maybe in the summer I'm like oh, I feel so energetic the sun is out in Canada, we actually getting vitamin D now energy. I want six clients. Then that's what I wanted to do, right? So if I identify that as the outcome, I can essentially look at all of my activity and say what is not in service of me getting that and then I can say no to it. I can put it in the parking lot and say I love you, thank you so much, you're great. No-transcript, it's not in direct service to that outcome. Then I will find a way to make that fit in. But you need to know what the expected outcome that you actually want is. What is it and keep asking yourself what is the, what is the result I am seeking here?

Speaker 1:

And it can't be a generic thing Like I just want more money or I just want I want more clients or more visibility or whatever the goal is. It can't be a generic. How specific do you?

Speaker 2:

need to get. I think, like with something with clients, I say I want to be as full as I want to be, because how full I want to be can change at any given time. I don't want to say I want 10 clients a month because there are months when I'm exhausted and I don't want 10. 10 would kill me. There's months I don't right. So I'm going to say I want to be as full as I want to be. When it comes to revenue goals, I don't set revenue goals typically. You know I know what I need each that when I go to Starbucks I always get vanilla syrup in my latte and I don't worry about paying for it. I don't worry about taking my nephew to the arcade every week. That's the kind of money I want to have. Right, that's more my focus. You know. I want to do enough or have enough free time that I can spend four full days every month with my nephew and I'm completely unplugged.

Speaker 2:

That's how I'm gonna set the goals. Not because I can't control how much money I make. I can't control how many clients I have. There is no, and if people tell you you can control it, I call it bullshit personally. But I can set qualitative outcomes that make more sense to me and that inspires me way more than I have $10,000 a month, I have $20,000 a month. I don't give a shit. My expenses are covered. That's all I want. I want enough money that I can play pickleball five times a week and not worry about the cost. I want to make enough money that I can take my nephew to Toronto and we can spend the entire day at the museum.

Speaker 2:

That's how I think you need to set goals, because then again, that gives me permission to say no to a shit ton of things without guilt, and you might feel guilty at first. I feel like I should do that. I should do that. Don't give a shit. If it's not in service of that outcome, park it. It's not saying you're never going to go back to it, but park it. Take it off your plate. You can't do everything and if you think you're going to, no, ma'am, you're going to get too tired Give yourself some space.

Speaker 1:

Why would you even want to have?

Speaker 2:

the hobbies have hobbies. I'm not going to sacrifice my hobbies each week so that I can write a fucking newsletter. Thank you, the hobby is more important to me.

Speaker 1:

You didn't see, if you're listening to print that, I'm going to print that whole monologue out and just post it once a week there you go, I'm going to put it on a shirt.

Speaker 2:

And then I think the other thing was about like hiring operations, right? I forget what your other question was. I just went on my soapbox moment.

Speaker 1:

Oh, what should people be looking for when they're looking to hire someone to come in and support the operations side of the business?

Speaker 2:

For me, the key in operations if you haven't figured it out for me, is how people think the thinky stuff is harder than the dewy stuff. Honestly, I can find a shit ton of competent people who can do stuff. The thinky stuff is harder and that's why I used to have to fight people who wanted me to charge them hourly. I was like do you want me to charge you for the four hours I spent thinking and strategizing about this thing? I don't think you do. How about a flat rate, right? So I think. Again it comes back to. I talked about, like, the different levels of conversations we can have with a team member. We talk about tasks, process outcomes and value.

Speaker 2:

I spoke at a summit last year and this was kind of a freebie I had created. It was like 28 hiring questions and, just to give you an example, let's say I have decided that operations and process management is where I need the most support. Maybe I don't have the time for it. It's really affecting my profitability. It's really affecting my overall client experience in a way that can lose me sales. So I'm like, great, this is the outcome. I need to work on A lot of people when they do a job description, or when they post on social or they're doing an interview, they will ask an operations person well, how do you prioritize and keep track of deadlines? Cool, that's an expectation. I call those sure fucking hope. So's I sure fucking hope if I hire you, you can prioritize tasks and keep track of deadlines.

Speaker 2:

That's not a differentiator for me, that's like when you're like a cleaning company and their advertising is we clean your house? Fucking hope you clean the house that's what you're hired for right, and to me that's the same thing.

Speaker 2:

So task level questions, I find, are often too much of the. I sure fucking hope you can do that right. So to go a level up, you could say something like well, how do you approach project management for like a one-off thing, like a launch or promotional period, how do you approach it? I'm not asking you to give me a plan, I'm how do you approach it? I'm not asking you to give me a plan, I'm saying how do you approach it, because the answer to that is going to tell me great, what's the first thing they think of? How much time do we have? What's in place? Have you done this before? What technology exists? What did you like when you do this? What are you hoping this is going to get you? How do you approach it?

Speaker 2:

It's a very process-based question. Then I would go to like an outcome question. What does it look like when you approach optimizing or updating an existing process? This is especially good for when somebody is coming into your business where maybe there was someone there before and they're no longer there. Stuff's happening. You have processes, whether they're documented or not, shit's happening, they exist.

Speaker 2:

So you can say to someone well, how do you approach optimizing or updating something that's already there? How do you even figure out what needs updates? Because I, as a business owner, might feel like, oh, I need you to focus on my pipeline management, I need you to focus on my email newsletter. I'm like, maybe they don't. How do you figure out what needs to be fixed first? Well, I would do an audit, I would assess, I would look at this. I have experience with this. My thought is this we would kind of do some research here and then that's how I would decide what needs updates. Fucking fantastic we're not talking about tasks.

Speaker 2:

And then, like the value aspect of it is like you know to be able to say to someone how do you approach creating and implementing business strategies? I'm asking them how they think, I'm not asking them if they can do shit. Most of the time, I will say most of the time. If someone understands how to think the Dewey stuff is easy, I can teach someone the Dewey stuff. I can teach someone how to do something in Thrivecart I can watch a YouTube video for that. But if somebody doesn't understand how to think structurally, how to think strategically, how to assess and audit and make decisions, I can't teach them that that's a quality they need to have. So that is when I approach hiring. That is how I do it. I'm not asking you if you can do shit. Your resume is going to tell me. If you can do shit, yeah, but I don't necessarily care about that aspect of it.

Speaker 1:

And I think that is such an important distinction because I think now what it also does is it puts the onus and responsibility for the business back on the business owner and not the team members. Right, because the number of people who are hiring and are like you need to make my business. I actually had someone years ago in an interview who basically was talking to me about coming in as an operations person but then asked me the question what are you going to do to make money in my business? That's not my fucking job. And I'm like, yeah, like I'm sorry, what are you going to be doing? I'm going to be, you know, applying for acting gigs or commercials or something.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be busy doing that. I'm like then why the fuck do you have a business Like what's going on here? So I think it does necessarily put the onus back on the business owner to be responsible for the success of the business. Like you have to be able to know how to do things not actually do them, but it's kind of like your taxes right. Like you don't have to be an accountant or a bookkeeper, but you sure as hell need to know what the bookkeeper and accountant should be doing, so that you don't get dinged when they audit you and realize that your accountant's been, you know, fucking your numbers for the last six years.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent and I think that's also really important. Again, I'm an operations person. I see it a lot. I'm sure it exists in other parts of the business. But you know, when people come to you and say I have a job description for an operations manager, I'm like fantastic, I'll review it for you. Like tell me a little about the business. And in there are things like they are responsible for growing the sales. No, they're not. I want them to do all the financial modeling and forecasting. It's not an operations job. I want them to build our collaborations and influencer campaigns. It's not an operations job.

Speaker 2:

Right, I think there is a conflation of operations with execution. Yep, no, sales and marketing can execute. Financial can execute. The business owner executes. We execute in different ways, we execute on different things, we execute at different levels. But don't conflate doing things with. That must be operations, because then you get into trouble and you start getting overwhelmed by things, you start making the wrong decisions, you start hiring the wrong people. Clearly, if this is something that has to be actioned, then it must be operations.

Speaker 1:

And I think that opens a whole conversation around the role of operations, particularly in online business, because you've hit the nail on the head, there are so many people who you know, regardless of what your title is.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I did the director of operations, certification, a number of years ago and the number of my cohort members who have gone on to work in businesses at a director of operations level, who are executing on a daily freaking basis, is shocking to me and complaining about not getting the kind of retainer revenue that they were promised they would get if that was their title and that was their certification. And I get it because business owners don't understand. It's like you said. They have conflated doing with yeah, so man, yeah, I always think of like operations.

Speaker 2:

If I'm going to define it to a business owner, like, if I think of you know what is the actual purpose of operation. It is I create the environment in which your business can thrive. I create the environment in which your business can thrive. I create the environment for it, but I cannot be solely responsible for actually making it happen. Like, ecosystems are self-sustaining and they have to be in order for them to be sustainable. Right, A tree falls down, it rots, it feeds the bugs, the bugs eat this and this and the animal, and then there's rain. Like all these things. Right, the business is the exact same way. It's a circle of life, Exactly. So what do you think happens when your ecosystem, going back to reliance, is overly reliant on operations to make every single thing happen? It's not sustainable. But also like you're neglecting other parts of your ecosystem. What about sales? What about visibility? What about marketing? What about finance? What about admin? What about you as the figurehead, as the owner? What the fuck?

Speaker 1:

are you doing?

Speaker 2:

What the fuck are you doing. I've had a lot of bitchy crackers moments this week, so I feel like that's why I'm a little bit. You know, I'll say spicier than normal today.

Speaker 1:

I'm just I like spicy Nikki. Spicy Nikki is my favorite, nikki. Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, honestly, I think we're just going to call this episode. Here's why You're Doing Operations Wrong, and that's more than sufficient. I accept More than sufficient. Nikki, tell us where we can find you, connect with you, hang out with you. All of the great things.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. My website is theoppsshopbiziz, primarily most active on linkedin, but I am on instagram at. I am nikki mick I a m n. I k k I m c k. Uh, and go listen to my hobby podcast. It's called first dates and soulmates. It's on sub stack, apple podcast and spotify and we're fucking delightful, have. I love it hobbies, uh. And if you would like me in your inbox, uh, every two weeks I do have a newsletter. It's called fafo. Fuck around and find out. It's a newsletter about systems for creatives who hate them, and I think it's very delightful sharing hot spicy takes and bitch eating crackers moments.

Speaker 1:

We will have all of those links in the show notes. Nikki, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, this was delightful. We love spiciness. Let's do it. We do love spicy. I'm a brown person. I have to have spice in my life. And, like I say every week, my friends, you can have success without the BS. You just got to hang out here more. We'll talk to you next week. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Business Blasphemy Podcast. We'll be back next week with a new episode, but in the meantime, help us this throughout by subscribing and, if you're feeling extra sassy, rating this podcast. And don't forget to share the podcast with others. Head over to businessblasphemypodcastcom to connect with us and learn more. Thanks for listening and remember you can have success without the BS.