From Bottleneck to Breakthrough: Getting Smart with Systems for Success

In this episode of The Tech Show, we sit down with growth, cashflow and exit strategist Laurie Stirling to explore how she helps business owners transform their companies into scalable, self-sustaining assets. Laurie shares her journey from building and selling her own business to realising the risks of founder-dependence and how that experience shaped her work today. We dive into the role of systems, data, and smart use of technology in removing operational bottlenecks, improving decision-making, and creating businesses that can grow without constant founder input. If you’re interested in how tech-enabled strategy can unlock real business freedom, this episode is locked loaded and ready for your ears 😊

Learn more about Laurie’s work: Laurie Stirling Consulting (Laurie Stirling Consulting)

If you want to know more about Kate visit AskMrsWatson.com, follow @askmrswatson on Instagram or follow The AskMrsWatson show on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AskMrsWatsonShow/. I'll also be on the TikyTok before too long as well so keep your eyes peeled!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Laurie, welcome to the tech show. Uh, thanks for having me. It's great to have you here. I've got my little snapshot here that says Laurie Sterling is a growth cash flow and exit strategist who helps founders scale businesses beyond founder dependence. Her focus is on building structured systems, improving financial visibility, and creating businesses that are sustainable, scalable, and ultimately sellable. Is that a little description of what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yes, that's quite the mouthful, but definitely that's what I do for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Excellent, excellent.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

And and how long have you been doing this? Um for about eight years in this capacity, but I've been an entrepreneur for about 21 years now. So uh my first business I started when I was 21 years old. Um it was a graphic design business. It turned into web design and then web development, and we ran that for over 14 years in Australia. And then when I moved from Australia to the UK, I we sold that business and yeah, made this pivot into the coaching side.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Oh wow, that's brilliant! So, yeah, there's a lot of tech connections there for us to uh talk about today. So that's that's quite the pedigree you've got there. So, how long have you been in the uh the UK then? Uh seven years now, yeah. Oh right, it's flown, still got the accent.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yes, I do. Right in time just in time for a pandemic, so lucky me. Oh yes, got here, got settled, got the kids into school, um, and bought a house, that sort of thing, and then got locked up for about a year and a half. And then by the end of that time, I was like itching just to get out into the community, get to know people, and so I started networking because that was sort of the most obvious way to get out and meet people and yeah, fall in love in love with the community that's here in Newcastle, so it's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Oh, yeah, we love the Northeast. We're all very, very proud of the Northeast and Northumberland in particular. So, yeah, so in this first sort of segment, obviously, we're as as as we've alluded to with the tech show and the work that you do, a lot of the time you'll come across bottlenecks. Can you tell me more about when you talk about bottlenecks what you mean by that and what type of thing might be typically a bottleneck when it comes to a founder and it comes to the type of people you support?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, so when I work with entrepreneurs, it's usually because they are at capacity, they've run out of time, they've got no more time to give, but they've still got that ambition that they want to keep growing their business. And what I've found is that there are five particular bottlenecks that is what is holding a business back from growing to that next level. And so the first bottleneck is just brand awareness. How do I how do more people know that this business exists, that you solve a problem for people, and that you're the person who solves that problem, not just that that's a problem that can be solved in the first place. So, brand awareness, that's definitely um one of the big bottlenecks. The second bottleneck is creating leads, but not just finding leads, but nurturing the leads that you have. So when somebody discovers you, they will usually indicate in some way that they are interested in what you do, and that might be following you on social media, it might be filling out a form on your website, it might be just stalking your website and looking for more information. Um, it could be having a conversation in DMs on your socials with you, or it could be signing up to your email list, and so they have indicated that they are interested in what you do and what you offer, and it's now up to you to nurture that person to get them to the stage where they just can't help but need to work with you, that you are absolutely the only person that they would even think of when um when it comes to solving that problem for you. So that's the second bottleneck is nurturing your leads. The third bottleneck is converting those leads, so that can be the process of someone being interested and then actually someone signing up and handing over the money, you know, signing contracts, it could be a transaction through your website, going to cart, it could be meeting you in person and having a sales call one-to-one. So there's lots of ways, what I call a sales vehicle, where someone will actually sign up and that conversion happens. Then once they're actually your customer and they've signed up, the fourth bottleneck is your capacity or delivery of what you have offered. And in some businesses, this is the next step, or in some, if you're a product-based business, it will actually be the cash flow is the first that in that you might pay a deposit to work with me first, or if it's the other way and you pay a product, then you have to actually build the product and put it on the shelf ready for them to come, and the payment is the last piece that happens. So cash flow is the last bottleneck, the fifth bottleneck, and that can interrupt our businesses in so many different ways. It's a little bit unique compared to all the other bottlenecks in that not having enough enough cash flow can be a symptom of one of the other bottlenecks, or it can actually be the cause that we need the cash flow to come in so that we can solve one of the other bottlenecks. So that's the trickiest one to find the balance of do I actually need to get external funding and get help with the cash flow inside my business to be able to grow it to the next level? Or is it that I just need to bring in more sales and more leads to be able to create that cash flow, or is it that you've got the leads and your customers just aren't paying you on time? Or maybe that's they're not paying you enough. You have only priced your packages or your your services to cover maybe the delivery part of it, and you haven't taken into consideration that the leads and the nurturing and the brand awareness is also part of that client journey that happens, and so cash flow hasn't actually like might be your pricing that you need to put up there. So, and then it's sort of it's a big cycle that happens all over again. That once someone has finished working with you, either they will tell somebody else and they'll they'll create brand awareness for you, or they might come and be a customer for you again, or they might come and be like next level, you know, an upsell into something else that you also provide for them. So there is a cycle that happens through each customer, but also as your business grows, you might fix a bottleneck in one area, and then that creates a bottleneck somewhere else. It's like the weakest link in the chain. There they'll always be a bottleneck somewhere as you keep growing and coming to that next level, but that's a good thing. That's it's just important to be able to diagnose which is the right bottleneck for you at this particular time in your business.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

So I think you use the word diagnose there, and I think that's the issue with entrepreneurs and people and founders and working in the business. You're kind of busy doing the day job, and then all these other things feel overwhelming that you kind of know you speaking from experience here, you might be able to tell. But it's all those other things, so you you might even know not know what your bottlenecks are, you might not even, or you don't know how they're interconnected, or you don't know where to start. So I think that's um you know, there's so many other things, isn't it? So many different facets that are interlinked. So yeah, there's a lot to uh a lot to think about and unpack there. Um but we'll uh we'll talk in the next segment about the role that technology and data and everything can play alongside people and processes and everything else. When we come back after this little break. Welcome back. We're here with Laurie, who is talking to us about the work that she does and how she supports individuals, companies. We'll talk to different people to uh identify, as we said in the first segment, their bottlenecks, and then once they've identified, then how to uh unplug all those bottlenecks and uh get to where we need to be. And one of those areas that can sometimes people can sometimes find quite daunting is uh technology and data and everything else. We live in a very uh technology-oriented world. So, when it comes to those bottlenecks, what part does technology play in that, Laurie?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah, a huge part, particularly in the capacity and delivery part of the bottleneck, then tech has a huge part to play. But even just in the diagnosis section, understanding metrics, and there's something to understand when we talk about metrics that there are what I call lead and lag metrics, sometimes they're called leading and lagging indicators, but that is where the data comes into play and where tech can help. But it doesn't have to be like hi-fi tech, it doesn't have to be complicated tech, it could be something as simple as once a month opening a spreadsheet and writing how many followers do I have on my social media and just track from month to month what the pattern is. Have I had you know some growth this month that I haven't detected before, or have I had a drop in income this month that is maybe because I haven't done as much networking as I have in the past, or understanding what are some key metrics that you would like to measure inside of your business that if you were doing everything correctly would actually help that big goal. So a lead metric, sorry, let's say a lag metric first is something like okay, at the end of the month I want to earn £10,000 in my business. With a lag metric, you get to the end of the month and you either have or you haven't achieved that metric. You can't go and fix that metric in the past that it's it's happened already. Where a lead metric is kind of the milestones that happen along the way that indicate if these milestones are happening, then I will easily reach my lag metric, my goal at the end of the month. But sometimes there are clues along the way. So if my goal is to let's say I'm gonna put on a webinar and I'm going to, you know, give my offering at the end of the webinar to a special that I have, and I want to make 10 sales at the end of that webinar. Actually, one of my biggest metrics will be how many people have signed up to my webinar, how many times have I posted about that webinar? Can I get a hundred people to attend that webinar? Because I'm I would know, let's say, my conversion metrics to do with my sales, um my my sales bottleneck might be currently you know 20% of people will convert, and that would be a good figure. So if I need 10 sales, then need to have at least 50 people attending that webinar or listening to it, but not necessarily everybody listens to that webinar, so I might want to have double as many people. So these are the the lag the lead metrics along the way that give me clues as to whether I'm going to reach that lag metric at the end. And I don't and I don't want to overwhelm people with numbers because it doesn't have to be complicated, it could be just writing them down, checking in from day to day, week to week, or month to month what those numbers are looking like. If you're uh a bit more of an advanced uh business and you want to go deeper into your metrics and your numbers, then there is plenty of technology platforms out there that can create your dashboards that these numbers are happening live as we speak, and and you can get the information and that helps you make a decision on what to do inside your business. And I've used AI to be able to help me build these dashboards before, so it doesn't have to be you don't have to be knowledgeable in those areas to make that happen.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

No, that's that's very true, and and AI comes into every conversation, whether it's tech or not, to be fair, and it is one of those things where I think it's it's trying to feel confident and having a a bit again of fundamental understanding, and you say it doesn't have to be super tech, you don't have to go out and spend thousands or however much it is on a fancy platform or or anything like that. It's it's been able to, I think for me, it's been able to answer those questions, and that's again as a small business, you know, separate to this. I struggle with that where some people say, right, you know, question number one, I'll go, ooh, I don't know. Ooh, I don't know, ooh, oh I don't know that either. And then you think, Well, do you know anything? So I think it's getting to that stage for your own purposes, and it's also very easy to hide things. I think as entrepreneurs and small businesses, that's our baby. And also when we've had an idea about something, there's also an element of ego, whether we like it or not, that we don't want to go, well, that didn't work, or I I'm not able to do it the way I thought it should be done. So you're kind of like, Well, I'll just I'll just put my fingers in my ears and I'll just pretend and I'll just spool along and you know, and not face it sort of thing. So I think it's it's all of those things, all in a kind of kind of whirlwind, isn't it? And I say that that you know the technology side can feel very overwhelming, and also I think you can be, I would say, working with somebody like yourself, there's an element of support there in that you, if you're thinking of investing on something, whether it's it's CRM, whether it's a say platforms, or whether it's working with AI, you're not, you know, because not everybody's nice, not everybody's genuine. That's the reality of the situation, isn't it? So it's nice to have someone there to say, I'm thinking about this. Do you think it's right for me? And somebody be able to ask you that question and trust the answer. Because, say, when you're a small business, you've not got a lot of revenue to play around with, and it's easy to make a very expensive mistake, which you know then puts you off, and then all that gets you despondent and all those other things you don't want to be when you're you're trying to build a business. I suppose that kind of leads a little bit into talking about uh resilience, resilience of as us as uh as business owners, resilience of the technology we use, all of those things, and we'll chat about that in our next segment. Welcome back. So here we are in segment three already, and we have been looking at uh bottlenecks and organizations, we've been looking at part technology plays in that and metrics, and and I was very interested to start to understand the terms lead and lag because I understand that a little bit differently, but it really really makes sense. So if you just join us at segment three, you want to go back and listen to segment one and segment two. So, yes, in this part we're gonna talk about resilience because we alluded to it in the previous previous segment, resilience of the person, and also resilience in terms of the technology and the tools you use. So, what can you sort of uh share with us around that, Laurie?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Oh, I think going into business is the most humbling experience that you can do, and it that is for sure building up your resilience because it's it's hard, business is hard. There's so much that you have to learn to stay on your feet in a short amount of time, and it's basically like you have to learn to wear so many hats all at once, and so we start to feel like as entrepreneurs and business owners, we're quite proud of all these hats that we've had to learn to wear along the way. The problem is as your business grows, we have to start taking those hats off, and that can feel very humbling, and kind of when you mentioned earlier about ego, ego can come into play because as the business owner, we're quite often the superhero of the business. When something is going wrong, we swoop in and we fix it. That's what we're good at, it's it's our business, we take ownership of that. But when you start taking these hats off and delegating them to other people, or you know, getting software to do what we were, you know, what we've had to learn or or what we've been really good at, it's kind of this identity shift that has to happen as a business owner. And you're now perhaps you've you built your business on a talent that you've had for a very long time, or a skill set that you've built for you know most of your career, or maybe it's a talent you had as a child, and you've really leaned into that, and that has become part of your identity, your business has become part of your identity, and therefore what you earn has been attached to this identity through your business because now you're making money out of that talent that you've had, and we can feel like the money we're making is how much is directly related to how what we're worth as a person, and so that's like a massive mistake. That there is absolutely no correlation between what you're worth as a person and and what you make, what your business is. Oh, light bulb, massive light bulb. So, yeah, I think like there's that shift to takeaway to that your talent is and how much money you're attaching to that talent has nothing to do with how valuable you are as a person. So that's one aspect, but also when we start bringing on a team and we delegate a task to them, sometimes we can make the mistake of not delegating the decisions that come with that task. And when we delegate a decision, we're actually asking somebody else to make a risk on our behalf because it's our business, we're used to making risks when we go into business. Where it's entrepreneurship is a very risky business. So when we ask somebody else to take that risk, quite often when we delegate a task and they've got a decision that they have to make, they'll come back to you and ask you the question, and so you end up spending all day answering questions from your team because that they're not comfortable taking that risk on themselves. Do they, you know, what happens if they make the wrong decision? What happens if they lose money for the business? Are they gonna lose their job? Are they gonna be able to fix the problem? It's safer for them to come back and ask you the question than it is for them to make the decision themselves. And so again, it's an identity thing as the business owner. Can you make it safe for your team to make decisions? And again, that's where technology comes into place. We can create SOPs, we can create software to guide our team to do something in a particular way. We can set up systems and processes, um, we can have a CRM system that or a task management system that can guide your team and what to do in you know in decision tree sort of scenarios, and that definitely helps with that identity and resilience for both the your team and you to step back and let your team make mistakes and and own their tasks as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

So there's definitely an element of leadership in there, isn't there? So I think it's it's about learning to be a leader and learning to I suppose it's a two-handed thing, really, learning to let go, which is often hard, and also giving people that safe space you've mentioned, but not wanting to be the fixer all the time either. So to come in and swoop, and I mean I find as a mum as well that's always like don't worry, mum fix it, you know, and I want to come in and then sometimes you think, well, I've got to give you the opportunity to work out those solutions for yourself rather than just spoon feeding. And I think that sometimes you think you're helping, but actually you're not allowing somebody to grow as a as an individual or grow into their role, or give you that, you know, so that you can start to step away. So it's it's all seems to me there's a lot of psychology as well as everything else, isn't there?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

A hundred percent, yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

Already we're uh we're on our way to uh to segment four. So, yes, we're in a lovely location here, and we're in a quieter location than we were earlier where there was uh there was animals mooing and dogs barking, drills going, and uh trains going past and train announcers, and it was all very good. And uh yeah, we were finding it difficult to record anything because we were laughing so much, but that's not that's fine. So we're a little bit quieter. We are now in this this lovely um I'm trying to remember what's the name of the place called again. Dylan Bear, isn't it? Dylan Bear and Whitley Bay Metro Station will give you a plug as well, and uh we will see you in the next segment. So we're in the final segment already. That's a time flies when you're having fun, it sure does. So, Laurie, obviously, I already know you and I know how great you are and all the things that you do, which is is brilliant. If anyone listening has resonated, and I think there'll be a lot of people that will resonate with what you've said. How can they what's the steps in the cycle to engage with you and and how you know what have they got to think about in terms of working with you and then ultimately also how can they contact you?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, um I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram, but if you go to my website, which is lauristerling.com, very high tech, there's actually a bottleneck quiz that you can take on there to identify which bottleneck is your most annoying bottleneck right now, and then that will give you a clear action as to what to do about that bottleneck next. And if you do fill that out, you can also get a link to my calendar where we can have a free one on one to talk through what is your biggest challenge and what do you need to do to be able to step back from your business.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Oh, I love the idea, the whole idea of bottlenecks. It's it's just really it's so it makes it so much easier to understand. Understand when you're in a sea of you know you feel like you're firefighting and going around in circles to be able to to give it something visible in your head to say that's the thing I need to I need to work with that's the thing I need to kind of hang on to. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to chat to you. I think there's certainly a lot I'm gonna take away from it, so I'm very happy for me, but I'm sure there'll be uh lots that other people will take away from it as well. So it's lorrysterling.com.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yes it is.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

So yes, check that out for sure, and um, we will see you again on another episode of the tech show