Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Welcome back to The Jazmin Starr Show, a place where we talk about business, go to market strategies, and today we are going to be talking about finding a secret weapon, an ace in your pocket, an operator to bring your business to its highest potential and alleviate so much overwhelm as you are growing and scaling your business. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about how I was in the process of a search. I was looking for something very specific. I searched for a highly specialized doctor. I waited eight months to get on her patient list. She didn't take my insurance, so I paid out of pocket to see her. I drove from Newport Beach to Manhattan Beach through traffic, taking hours out of my day because she was the best of the best. She had built a highly covetable brand. Now she was part of a private group practice. So what does this mean? There was a time where she worked in a hospital and took my insurance. That's actually how I found out about it.

Jasmine Star 00:01:01  But somehow my luck, she ended up going out and starting her own private practice. It was her and 3 or 4 other doctors, and what these 3 or 4 other doctors did is they got together and they decided, we're going to share a front office manager, and we're going to share our ends, and we're going to instead of working for the man, we're going to come together and have our own private practice. And that worked well for her for a couple of years. But there I was in her office and she admitted to me, Jasmine, I want to build my own practice now. I'm not going to get into the details, but let me tell you, she's a female doctor and we're sitting there having this conversation. I was like, we are up and close to my business and I'm going to get up and close to your business. She literally had no idea I'd been working with her. Goodness gracious. Like eight months by this point in time. And so we had gotten had gotten to know each other.

Jasmine Star 00:01:48  I was seeing her once a month for just highly specialized work, and I was talking to her. And when she said, I really have a dream of going out on my own. And I was like, oh. So then I started asking questions. In fact, I asked a billion questions and I think it's somewhere along the line. She was just like, this patient has a lot of questions. I was asking her, have you ever been out on your own before? What are the exact financials of what you're trying to do? Are you trying to lease or buy your building? Do you want other doctors to work as part of your practice? Do you have somebody to manage front office and kind of be like a concierge when people get there? What does it look like for you to hire an RN? Does it need to be an RN or are they part time or are they full time? How much does it cost? How much does it cost to buy a chair or a table like a patient table with stirrups? Right.

Jasmine Star 00:02:41  You're getting all into details. And so once you start answering all of these questions and she's probably thinking to yourself, what in the world that I get myself into? I started to share strategies. I told her, hey, this is what I do. I build businesses, I empower entrepreneurs to go out and take big risks, not foolish risks, calculated strategic risks. I talked to her about marketing. I talked about how is she going to take her client book from this private practice to her own private, private practice. And then I begged her to get her financials in order, because when I was asking her how much she's getting after her insurance payments, how many of her clients or patients are paying in cash, how many of these people are going to stay with her as she moves? Is she going to stay in Manhattan Beach? Is she going to go a little further south? How many people are actually going to follow her? What is the cost of being in business? And she said, I just dream.

Jasmine Star 00:03:37  I dream of buying a building with my office in it. And I was like, oh, doc, I like that dream, but are you sure you want to buy as you're just starting for the first time ever because you're no longer going to be a doctor. You are going to be an entrepreneur with a medical practice that's different. You have to now become an entrepreneur. And where you went to what? I don't even know. Eight, ten years of school plus her residency, plus her specialization, years of training her to be a doctor. And now she wants to go to be a business owner with no context of what it is. And so I had said, hey, here's a great place to start. You need an office manager. You basically need somebody in operations, somebody who's going to help move the ball down the field while you are taking care of patients, staying in your superpower. And she looked across from me in one of those, like, wheelie chairs with her clipboard and a laptop in her lap.

Jasmine Star 00:04:32  And she looked at me, lowered her glasses and said, I don't know how to find an office manager. And I was like, oh, okay, let me show you. And then I brought out LinkedIn on my phone and I thought to myself, There are some bigger question here. There is a bigger underlying current that I have experienced. Now, here's the thing. You might be sitting here being like, Justin, Jasmine, I don't care about your personal problems. I don't care about your doctor. You might not even be looking for an office manager. But soon. And I am talking about very soon, I'm going to suspect that you're going to need somebody to handle more of the operations in your business. Why? Because you got into the business to run the business, to stand in your place of power, to deliver on your purpose, to do something that you're really excited or wildly passionate about, what you didn't get in business of which is the sad reality for many people, is you got into business and you got to run the business.

Jasmine Star 00:05:31  What is the business of your business? So I interviewed over 25, seven figure entrepreneurs in preparation of this podcast episode, and then I interviewed a lot of other eight figure entrepreneurs and six figure entrepreneurs. I interviewed a lot of people, but I was really focusing this conversation on seven figure entrepreneurs. And I started asking them. I said, listen, I am your Latina fairy godmother, and I have a magic wand and I can grant anything to happen in your business. What could I just be? What can I do right now in your business? And it doesn't have to make sense. I am literally, I can make up dragons to slay. If you tell me that that is the thing that you would need. What is the magic wand in your business? And if you could believe it, more than 60% of the people said they were looking for somebody to help them with their operations. Why? Okay, well, for most CEOs and visionaries and founders, somebody who is handling operations well, when somebody is handling that, it keeps you and your place of power.

Jasmine Star 00:06:29  There is a very clear line of, I can create the vision and I can build the culture. And I could talk about strategies, but actually the minutia, the doing, the planning, the assigning, the who's doing what, who's on first, who's up at bat, who's warming up, who is our pinch hitter, all of that. That should be handled by somebody who is a specialist in operations. Because when we start a business, we have like a grand vision. And then on the back of the grand vision, we realized we were all the hats. We're doing customer service where the janitor we do marketing where front facing, we're back facing for fulfillment or shipping or support. And you're like, great, okay, I got this thing off the ground. But then we grow and that's amazing. That's what we want. We want to grow, we want to scale. But with that comes more people and more processes. And the more people you add, the more processes you need. But a lot of times what happens is we're like, we need to hire and we need to hire fast because we're scaling.

Jasmine Star 00:07:26  But without the processes in place, we end up doing a lot of the same things over and over. There's a lot of miscommunication, there's a lot of wasted time, there's a lot of unnecessary meetings. And then you become overwhelmed and you become totally distracted because you're caught in the weeds. And then you raise your head up and you realize, oh, it's me. I'm the bottleneck to my business. Everybody is coming to me asking me all these questions and all these things. And then you're like, I'm pressured. I need to hire somebody. I need to hire anybody. And so all of a sudden, you get to this place where you're like, I know I need to hire somebody for operations. I actually don't know exactly what I'm looking for. Well, I've been there, but one thing that I'm going to come straight out and tell you is if you got your business to this point, I firmly believe you know how to ask questions. This episode is all about asking questions that will help you find that coveted third arm that is behind the curtain.

Jasmine Star 00:08:29  The person who loves organization and systems, the person who loves to hear a crazy idea put a lot of pressure on it, push back on it, and then say, all right, let me see how I can make it happen. And then this person comes back to you because they're all about operations. And they'll say, you know, that big crazy idea that you had? Well, I mapped it out. I think this is what we're going to need to make it happen. These are the people that will need. This is how long I think it will take, and this is how much I think it will cost. Furthermore, based on your projections, this is how much I think we're going to make. that description. The person who comes in and does operations. Now I get it. Maybe your business is at the size to where you're like, really? I really just need that like third arm. I actually not calling them my CEO. No problem. I actually think that I'd love to hire somebody who's operationally minded.

Jasmine Star 00:09:22  I love hiring somebody who doesn't come in as the CEO or director of ops. That's totally fine. They don't come in as an office manager. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It's not important to me. What I'm looking for is, can you think operationally, can you think in systems? Can you look at a project and say, hey, I think I can do it this way and it'll get us there faster or better or less expensive? Can you think like that? Because if you do, you have a definite place on my team. I want to cultivate a team not just of doers. People who follow, plug in, plug out. I want people who are operationalized. These are people who look at a plan and say, I can optimize it. I can do it faster. I could do it better. I ask questions and now I just think of like, how do I get from point A to point B in the fastest amount of time, doing it the most efficiently, doing it really well, and have it be less expensive? So if you're here and you're like, that sounds like a dream, that is absolutely something that I want to do.

Jasmine Star 00:10:14  We're going to do a little bit of a workshop. This podcast is going to look and sound a little bit different, but I am literally just walking you through my process because I believe if you have just enough operation chops that you'll hear what I'm going to do, you'll watch what I'm saying, and then you can go and do it yourself. Do I think I'm a natural born operator? I wish I was, I wish I was, I have trained myself to be, I have learned, I have invested, I have studied, I have paid to be part of programs to help me think in this way when it is not natural. So I know enough about operations to be dangerous, but it is not something I love to do. And it takes so much dang time and energy for me to get there. So hiring my CEO, oh. Our chief operating officer has been the lifeblood of the business. I look at the way the business has grown, the way that the business currently is. There is just zero chance that I would have been able to build it without her, because her operation skill set is off the freakin chart.

Jasmine Star 00:11:14  So let's go through that process. I had hired a recruiter to help us look for a CEO. We got very specific on what we were looking for and how we were looking for it. The goal for me was to find a CEO that matched and counter matched my skill set. So I read an article as I was preparing to hire a CEO. I read an article on Harvard Business Review, and they talked about how the role of CEO is not as easy to identify the role as CMO, your chief marketing officer or your CFO, your chief financial officer or your CTO, your chief technical officer, the COO really looks so different across any organization. Why the CLO is often complimentary to the CEO. They have a totally different skill set. So when I was reading, they had said there's like seven types of CEOs or seven types of CEOs. And like I went through each one and I was reading what type of CEO relationship I would need to cultivate based on my skill set and what I wanted this person to really start driving within the organization.

Jasmine Star 00:12:25  And so what I realized was the clear I got with my role description, the better candidates I would be able to source. So working with this recruiter taught me so much. She walked me through and said, Jasmine, I want you to list all the things you're doing, and then I want you to list all the things you want your CEO to do. Now, I have to be honest here, there were some things that I wanted my CEO to do, and I was really happy to be like, you know, those are the things that I definitely don't want to be doing in the business. And I can't wait for somebody to operationalize this. Something like onboarding. I knew we needed to systematize our onboarding. We hire somebody. And at the time prior to this, I'd be like, I'd meet with him and he's like, hi, this is what do I want you to do? This is where you'll find everything. I wish you all the best. It's so great. I'll check in with 30 days.

Jasmine Star 00:13:11  Here's our slack. This is our onboarding meetings. Boom. That was it. And I knew that we needed to systematize it so that when we hired somebody new, they would go in and they would watch a few videos like tutorials, SOPs, they would know about our core values, they would know about our mental health days, they would know about vacation policy. I know we needed that. And I was like, I have no time to build it out. So that was one of the projects. I said, when we hire the CEO, this person is going to start with those projects. But then a crazy thing happened. Not only did she do the things that I wanted her to do, she came in and started finding projects and creating projects that I didn't even know we needed. And it seems like it's common sense, right? We needed a paternity leave and a maternity leave. We needed to know our vacation policy. She wanted to have an employee handbook. Why? So there was no confusion and we can ensure that every employee was treated the same way.

Jasmine Star 00:14:02  So there is a skill set that somebody has to think about things operationally. And so when I go back and when I think about what that job listing looked like and felt like, I was like, well, knowing what I know now, I probably would do things a little bit different. So as we get into this like quick, brief workshop, I'm just going to walk you through a little bit of a process. So I went to a website called Hire a Chief of staff.org. Now a chief of staff is defined as, quite honestly, a mini version of the CEO. It's like the CEO shadow and in a very big organization, not the organization of my size and a very big organization most often, most often what you'll see is a traditional C-suite set up. You'll have the CEO at the top, the CEO and perhaps the CMO, the CFO, the CTO, or depending on the structure, it would be the CEO and then the CEO reports to them. The CTO purports to them, the CFO reports to them.

Jasmine Star 00:15:03  Different org charts look different. But where does the chief of staff normally sit? A chief of staff becomes an echo of the CEO, which means that the chief of staff shares the voice of the CEO. Now, the chief of staff is not making big, sweeping company decisions. The chief of staff is making sure that they're implemented, deployed, heard, facilitated. Think of a chief of staff that is above an executive assistant. A chief of staff is literally a mini version of the CEO, but that person is not responsible for operations. However, a lot of organizations, specifically startups, will put job listings on chief of staff or a job listings like maybe on LinkedIn. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to show a slightly different perspective of what I would do now. I would definitely go to a site that's looking for a chief of staff, especially if you have a smaller budget, looking for somebody who's operations, because traditionally you pay Srivastav a lot of money, but not traditionally as much as you might see.

Jasmine Star 00:16:00  Oh. Now, of course, they look different in different organizations, but I'm just walking you through my process. So there is a company. I know nothing about this company, but I'm going to highlight this company because dang, I think they did it right. When I look back at my job description, I was like, girl, you can get a lot better if you are looking for a job description to find a head of operations or a CEO. I'm going to read what I had gone through and I don't know this company. I don't know what they do, so please don't come at me if they do something sideways. But they have a job listing for the company called Jetro, and they had listed this title as Head of Operations on Jetro. As head of Operations at Jetro, you'll be crucial in making sure the company is working well, like a oiled, machine owning functional operations responsibilities like legal, accounting, financial planning, HR, culture and hiring, you'll have 100% transparency on everything happening in the company and will work side along even our CEO, to make sure the company is running smoothly.

Jasmine Star 00:16:54  You'll learn how to run a SaaS company at Cashflow Positive alongside executing an ambitious and innovative growth plan. You'll work with the best tools in the market, making sure your time is being spent in the highest leverage way possible. Y'all. If you are trying to attract a c o o, you want this, you want to identify who are they reporting to? So in this case at Jetro, the CEO is reporting to the CEO. A lot of CEOs definitely prefer that an innovative growth plan a CEO wants that. They want a complicated puzzle to take apart and put that together optimally. They want to work with the best tools in the market. They want to make sure I like this, that the company that they be working at, a SaaS company, at Cashflow Positive, nobody wants to get into a company that's like a little uncertain. They're listing all the things that somebody who's highly qualified, looking for security and has experience is going to dive into now. Then they up leveled it. This I thought was really interesting.

Jasmine Star 00:17:49  I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it was fascinating because they didn't just say, this is the role you'll do what they said in big text you come to as a person. Now, the reason I'm saying this, the reason we're talking about this, the reason we're recording this, is because as you're listening or watching, I want you to think about every job listing that you're putting out. And now I'm just going to be real. My bar is now Jetro. I look at this. Not only are they describing the role with crystal clear specificity, they're also talking about them as a human. So here's a few examples. You as a person. Colon. Then bullet point. You're a high energy, passionate person. You bring lightness to the rooms that you're in. Next point, you care about culture of the company that you work in, and you like being productive and making sure people are being treated well. You as a person, you love being in the details of things. Your friends would describe you as being highly organized, analytical, a planner, and driven.

Jasmine Star 00:18:41  You know how to get bleep bleep done and you're going to have a very high throughput. And I said the bleep bleep because on this show we're family friendly and I don't need somebody coming at me in my DMs and saying, I was listening to my podcast with my six year old, and now they know how to say bleep bleep.

Jasmine Star 00:18:54  Bleep Okay.

Jasmine Star 00:18:55  You practice committed ownership. You pride yourself in rational arguments and often search for facts before making judgments. You thrive in situations of high uncertainty and even chaos. You understand how fast things can change in a startup, and you're not someone who will jump ship when things get messy. They literally said, you know you're right for this job, not based on your skills yet. They said, you know you're right for the job. If this is you, then what they did is they went in to describe a week in the life. I want to describe this very clearly, a week in the Life Monday. I'm not going to read all of it. Like I literally it was so good.

Jasmine Star 00:19:34  But Monday morning you'll start the week with an async. Now people say, Jasmine, when you say async or asynchronous, it means that asynchronous means you watch it on your own time. So you're going to start the week with an async alignment with our CEO to prioritize open projects and flags any business risk with your mitigation plans, because you have experience reporting to the CEO. You've been there and done it and you've seen it before. You'll be able to synthesize on all fronts and be open in less than five minutes of the content aimed at driving approval and awareness to ensure you get a quick response back. That's an average Monday. I read this and I was like, heck yes! This is the kind of CEO I want to be on to work with this person. Tuesday, you'll run a meeting with our external accountants and dig into the recent 30% jump in software expenses that you saw last month. You're going to collaborate with the engineering team to understand the drivers of this jump and how we should forecast the cost going forward.

Jasmine Star 00:20:22  Wednesday, prepare and finalize vendor order form to assist the sales team in closing a new deal. You'll realize this task is repetitive and frustrating, so you build a new process to automate this. Next time, let's go! I'm looking at this and I'm just like, man, they went through Monday through Friday. They said some projects that you've worked on in the last 2 or 3 months, the Legal suite update, tax compliant billing practices, business continuity documentation. Dang. They said before you even apply, you will know what your week looks like. You will know who you report to. You will know the constant projects that you're working on. Now, I will tell you that of all the job listings that I looked at at hire, chief of staff, none of them were that thorough. So props to Jetro. I don't know what you do or who you are, but, Evan, good on you for your recruiter, your HR, or whoever is doing that hiring process. You have challenged me and invited all of the podcast listeners to do the same now.

Jasmine Star 00:21:22  Let's go back to my doctor, she said. But Jasmine, I don't know how to look for an office manager. Okay. I went to LinkedIn and I typed in medical office manager. Now what came up for me was dental office manager, medical billing manager, nurse manager, dental office manager. So then what I decided to do was like, okay, well, maybe a medical office isn't. I probably would have listed like an OBGYN office manager or something along those lines if I was being really specific with the type of doctor, but I clicked on dental office manager and there were things that I really wanted to see. So I clicked on one that was for Cave Creek. I don't know where Cave Creek is, and I clicked on another a dental office manager for Santa Barbara, California. But it was the same company who is hiring an office manager. So let's go back to why I was doing this. I was saying, I'm going to pretend to look for an office manager, somebody to help me with my operations, the same way that I was pretending to hire and look for a director of ops or a CEO on hire, a chief of staff.

Jasmine Star 00:22:29  And what I'm finding here is, even if there is not a direct comparison, I could find the language. I can find how much I should be spending on average for where I live. So the office manager in Cave Creek for the same dental office practice, it's like a branch of them. It's a national chain. If you work at a dental office manager in Cave Creek, I just noticed it's in Phoenix, Arizona. They'll pay you 50,000 to 55,000 a year on site full time. Now for the same dental brand in Santa Barbara, California, you will get paid 75,000 to 90,000 on site full time. So if I was my doctor, I would be looking at this and saying a dental office manager in Santa Barbara, which is comparable to living expenses and rate, what you would be paying people as Manhattan Beach. She's probably going to be looking for an office manager between 75 and 90,000. So let's read their job description for an office manager. Are you highly organized and passionate about supporting a team dedicated to providing top notch dental care? Do you know the ins and outs of managing the daily operations of a busy dental practice? Do you enjoy managing employee and patient relations and helping give patients an exceptional dental care experience? If these questions make you smile.

Jasmine Star 00:23:47  Read on. Okay, that was really cute, right? Because they're a dental office and you're smiling. And that's what they want. They became clear. Were they as clear as Jetro? No. Do I think they're paying as much as Jetro? No. Do I think that they're needing somebody with as much experience as Jetro? No. But let's kind of flip the switch now. That was as much as their job description was listed on LinkedIn. Okay. It was enough. It was enough to get somebody who was looking for a dental office manager or medical office manager enough information to say, maybe I'll decide to apply. Now. In the digital marketing world, people use different words that are industry specific. You have your CEO, you have your chief of operations. You have an like a director of operations. And sometimes in the digital marketing space, specifically, after a book was written called Traction by Gino Wickman, he defined what he calls an integrator. An integrator would be kind of the exact same role that somebody who was operations would do.

Jasmine Star 00:24:48  So the word integrator is, quite honestly, the same thing as a director of ops, or even perhaps as a CEO, an integrator. By Geno Wiseman's definition. If you haven't read the book Traction or Rocket Fuel, definitely check them out. Phenomenal business books just to kind of get like org charts locked in roles and responsibilities locked in. And he described it as an integrator. So I said, okay, I am no longer hiring as Jetro and I am no longer a doctor looking for an office manager. I'm now pretending that I am in the digital space and I'm looking for an integrator. So I went to LinkedIn and I typed in the word integrator because if I was looking to hire an integrator, I would want to see when a job's descriptions, how were they describing that person. So I knew how to create a listing to start attracting what I was looking for. Are we on the same page? Okay then. Side note this is the first time that I'm doing this type of podcast. If this is not resonating with you, like I'm actually getting into the nitty gritty.

Jasmine Star 00:25:39  We're not talking about hypotheticals. I'm walking you through what you might be able to do to hire somebody who's operationally driven to help drive that bottom dollar and push the ball down the line. If this is not for you, no worries. Please. I would not be offended whatsoever If you sent me a DM and said that this podcast didn't resonate with you at all, like thank you, please, it takes us hours putting this show together. And so I don't want to continue making work that you don't find valuable. I make the show for you. I make the show for people like my doctor who are like, I don't know how we're diving into that right about now. So you are looking for, let's say, an integrator. I typed in integrator. Now I found somebody who is labeling her job title as a certified iOS implementer. That's in the digital space. She's working with entrepreneurs and she's looking for an integrator. This is the job summary. You will be an integrator for various business entities affiliated with blank.

Jasmine Star 00:26:29  Blank. I'm not going to use their names and providing personal and professional support to growing their iOS practices. The position is expected to lead in work environment where you are engaging with entrepreneurs, managing two thriving coaching practices, developing professionally, doing purposeful work and sharing in financial successes, and still having time to pursue other passions beyond work. No, seriously. So then they went on and describe the roles and responsibilities. They broke them down categorically by client experience, what they should be expecting. They broke it down. Also, in terms of client management, number one was client experience. They listed, I think, nine things. Client management. They listed nine things administration. They listed 15 things. They got very specific. And then special project management I'll read this one responsible for strategic insight planning and execution oversight on any special projects. You assist in the development of new product lines and service opportunities. Think about workshops, retreats, conferences and other property acquisitions, and you oversee the execution of a new product lines including but not limited to event planning, logistics, and outreach.

Jasmine Star 00:27:31  They're looking for somebody who can do a lot of things with a lot of specificity. So I went through these descriptions and I wanted to make sure that you got an up close look to how I would approach creating a job description for somebody that I really needed in my business to do operations. If you are building your business and you're wearing all the hats. I've been there. I've done it. I totally get it. Keep pushing on. When you get to the point to where you know the business is at scale, that you're going to need somebody who can handle operations and be so detail oriented and focus on a myriad of initiatives and be able to be autonomous, be able to look at a very complicated vision that you have and then break it down into pieces, and then understand how all the pieces work together, and make sure that the team is all moving towards those objectives. I simply just laid out exactly what I would do. I want to say thank you to the companies that put out their listings.

Jasmine Star 00:28:32  That allowed me, like, actually, I didn't share any of the companies that I broke down. With the exception of Jetro, because I only said really fricking great things about them, and they challenged the bar for me to be putting out job listings that specific for future team members. But beyond that, this was a lesson in learning how to find the thing that you actually don't know how to find. I believe that you can think in bigger ways. I believe that you can ask really great questions. I believe that you can search exactly for what it is you're looking for. I believe that you can go to job listings, places like LinkedIn, start reading through descriptions, start pulling out descriptions that are resonate over here and resonate over here and resonate here, and bring them all together so that you find your perfect job listing to bring somebody in who will help you grow and scale your business beyond everything you thought was possible. Thank you for listening to the show. If you found this helpful, please share it with somebody and just say, I heard this podcast.

Jasmine Star 00:29:28  It was very in the weeds. We talked a lot about personal information as well as doctors and special beds where your feet can hang up upside down. We also talked about job listings, what made them good, what made them strong. We actually talked about getting into the nitty gritty. If you think that somebody else would find this helpful on their journey. Please feel free to forward it to them. I just want to say thank you a thousand times over for watching, listening and sharing. The Jasmine Star Show.