AEP E7 The top five issues successful empire builders face today (and how you can fix them)

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome to this week’s episode of [00:01:00] the Audacious Empires podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about five of the big issues that I’m seeing successful empire builders face and how you can fix them. In my role as an OBM and an integrator, I talk to a lot of business owners. And successful ones.

So I’m not talking today about issues that, only happen when you’re in a startup phase. These are issues that I see coming from seven figure, eight figure businesses. And they’re all really easy to fix. But I wanted to give you the insight so that if you are facing some of these, you don’t feel like you’re alone.

Because that’s another question I keep getting asked is, do you see other people that have this same problem? The answer is always, yes. The likelihood is if you are facing a big issue, someone else is facing it too. And there are all different [00:02:00] ways that you can go about fixing that issue. It is not just a you thing.

So let’s dive in. The first of the issues that I want to cover is the battle between impact and money, as Empire Builders we want to create a big impact. Usually, this is what started us on the journey that we are on now. We have a big purpose. We want to change the world. We want to make a difference. We have a fire in our belly that fuels us. and very rarely does it have to do with us. 

Most of the time, it’s about other people.

And the impact that we have on them, the world around them, the relationships that they have, the life that they live. And so with that, we feel a big responsibility. We want to do everything that we can to support them, to create that impact, to grow that impact, to help more people, and for us, it does not feel optional.

We’re driven. We, it’s something we must do. If we can’t do it, we feel like we’re not doing the right thing. We’re not living up to what we’ve been called to do.

So how does that impact when it comes to money? What I see so often with empire builders is they have this desire to create the impact and they know that they need money from a business perspective. The two don’t always align. In fact, the two are tug of warring. If you’re focused solely on impact, then the money side tends to fall over.

If you’re focused solely on money, the impact side tends to fall over.

Which means we’re left in this place. Where we feel like we’re in a battle all the time of having to choose and it is frustrating. But I want you to think about it this way. When we’re in this battle, our focus is split. We’re either looking at impact or we’re looking at money and we see them as opposing forces.

But what if we flipped it a little bit? And what if we shifted our mindset so that we looked at the two as a collaboration, the impact needs the money. So it is Batman and Robin. One can’t really exist without the other. If you are focused on impact and you don’t look at the money side at all, what you will find is you will burn out very quickly.

[00:05:00] Or you won’t ever be able to make the kind of impact at the level that you want because you don’t have the money that supports it. This isn’t about greed or just revenue generation or anything like that. This is about, we need to have the resources to create that impact. Otherwise, We will end up having no impact.

I will say it again. If we don’t consider the money and the role the money plays, the vital role the money plays, on creating a big impact, we will have no impact. Because you will burn out, and if you burn out, You’re not helping anybody. There is no business, there is no you. There is no showing up, there is no sharing what you know, there is no getting the cut through that only you can get to, because [00:06:00] there’s no fuel for that fire.

And then if we look at it in the other way, There is no money without the impact. That is because you’re an empire builder. You don’t do things in halves. You don’t do things, just to take the first step and run away. If there is no impact, there’s no money. And that’s because without the impact, you’re not in it.

That impact needs you, and the money will only come if that impact is being made, because that impact is what fuels you. It’s what keeps you going. It’s what keeps you seeing these are the opportunities in front of me. If you’re in a place where all you have to focus on is money or making money, you’re not going to sustain what you’re doing, because that’s not why you started doing this.

It might be part of the reason. But I bet you it’s not the sole [00:07:00] reason. And so if we don’t show you the impact that you’re having and you can’t see it unfolding, there’s going to be no money because you’re not going to back it and the money needs you.

When we’re looking at this battle of impact versus money, you need to flip your mindset and see it as it’s not a battle. They feed each other and each is just as important. And that means we need to give each the right amount of attention. They both need our time and our commitment so that we can keep growing.

And if we just focus on one, that’s when things get wobbly. So remember, we need to cover both bases. Make the time to cover both bases.

The second issue that I see is keeping pace.

Empire Builders tend to have [00:08:00] two modes. That are default. So this is in terms of, without trying, one is moving too fast, the other is moving too slow. They’re the default. Until we start to rationalise and until we start to really commit to changing the way that we operate, that’s just the status quo.

But both of these have issues and have consequences. When we are moving too fast, we lose strategic perspective and we generally lose quality. Our focus becomes on speed or our focus becomes on immediate impact, immediate outcome. And that just adds pressure. The faster that you’re moving, the more pressure that gets added, especially if it’s not backed with strategy.

And there’s a whole lot of reasons that we move quickly. We’re excited. We feel like this is urgent and it needs to be solved right [00:09:00] now. We can see an opportunity and we don’t want to miss it. There are lots of reasons. Sometimes we just feel anxious or we just want to feel like we’ve achieved something, so we move faster.

But very rarely is the outcome as good as what it could have been if we took a breath first. And then, on the flip side, if we’re moving too slow, we start to lose opportunities. And when I see empires moving too slow, most of the time it has to do with a decision. They need to make a decision about something, or they’re procrastinating doing something.

And it’s that delay that misses them opportunities, and it actually causes mental exhaustion. Because even if you’re not doing it, you still know that you need to. You still know that there’s a choice that needs to be made, or there’s a thing that needs to be done. And in your [00:10:00] mind, in the background, that’s still sitting there.

And it takes that little bit of your energy. Now imagine that. Ten choices. Fifteen. Twenty. That little bit of energy isn’t little anymore. Because it’s happening across all these different areas. And so then we’re suffering the consequences of moving too slowly, of being unsure. So what we need to do is work out a better balance.

We need to know when to move quickly and when moving a bit slower is okay. And the way that we do that is to know your core drivers. When I’m working with a lot of my clients, I usually am in on what all their goals are and I know them as people. So I know as people what’s important to them and I know from a business perspective [00:11:00] what’s important to it.

That means that when we’re having conversations I already know what the crucial pieces are here. I know where we’re headed. I know where we’re headed based on a business front and based on a human front. And because those are clear for me. When there’s a decision that needs to be made or when there’s a really exciting opportunity that lands in our lap or a new thought that pops into our minds and the things that could develop to be, I have something to go back to because I can measure.

Every opportunity or every decision against these core drivers. Is this something that is moving with us in alignment with those drivers and these goals? Or is it something completely off to the side? Because every time we choose something that is off to the side, it means that something’s taken away from one of our core [00:12:00] drivers.

And are we okay with that? So often we can’t make a decision until we understand the consequence of that decision. And sometimes the answer might be, yeah, it’s actually okay in this scenario to take that opportunity and to do it and to do it quickly, because that actually feeds straight into what we’re doing.

But sometimes it just means you’re taking away focus, energy, and time. From the things that really need it now, that you’d already decided without emotion, without urgency. The more that we can come back and have that tangible, measurable plan to go back to, you’ll make far better decisions and you’ll be able to keep a better pace.

Because you won’t be constantly going between fast, fast, fast, or slow, slow, slow. The third thing is reinventing the wheel. *This is something I hear from people that I work with a lot. I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel. I’m [00:13:00] organised, but even if I’m organised, I still feel like I’m doing the same things that I’ve already done.

There has to be an easier way. Usually, this stems from empire builders trying to be organised and creating processes. Now, I’m an OBM and an integrator, so I love processes. But I also know that the second that you create a process, the second that you document it, it’s pretty much out of date because time has moved forward and time changes things.

I also know that processes that are contained within a system have context and context is what makes your processes longlasting. So we’re constantly reinventing the wheel and doing the same things over and over again, even though we have processes, because those processes have no context. They don’t know how to [00:14:00] function and be of use without you or the person that wrote them.

So we need to start looking at what are the systems in our businesses. That these processes support because that’s when we start to see systems of scale. That’s when we start to see a reduction in the impact of people changing roles or leaving or coming in. The impact of that. The reason being that the systems are not built for any one person.

They’re built for the business as a whole. And the processes tie back into those systems. The two feed each other and that’s what makes them last longer because they can be done by anyone with any knowledge of that role because the context is there. They don’t have to know when to use this process, why to use this process, whether it’s this process or the other process.

If I change something in this process, is it going to affect a different process? Will it [00:15:00] affect a different team? What will that do to the bottom line? There are all these things that happen within processes if you leave them without a system. Put them in systems and then the systems work together and the picture makes sense.

It’s that clarity that will keep your business driving forward and you won’t be reinventing the wheel anymore. The wheels are already there in motion, you might just support them and improve them.

The fourth thing is being busy but not strategic. We’re Empire Builders. We like to be busy. Usually, it’s because being busy makes us feel like we’re closer to the impact we want to make, or we feel productive. But, being busy and being strategic are not the same thing. And you might be doing a lot. Let’s be honest.

Most of our Empire Builders [00:16:00] out there are doing a lot. But it might not be the right things. When we’re not focused on the right things, we go round in circles. At least that’s what it feels like. Whenever really moving forward, sure, we’re getting a lot done. We’re getting through a lot. I’m not really seeing the outcome of that.

And that’s because we’re being busy. I also want to add the context of what is business today might not be in a month. The things I do today that would be counted as busy things, that I’m not going to see the impact for, in a month’s time, they might be the right things, and I’d see the impact very quickly.

Therefore, in that scenario, they’re not busy anymore. The difference is the timing and the priority. This is how we fix our constant lack of time, [00:17:00] even though we’re doing lots. We start to look at prioritisation. Priorities fix everything. If you know what to do when to do it, and why that we have to do it in that order, in that way.

You will get to your outcomes far quicker. It’s methodical. It’s planned out. And you won’t burn out as easy. You’re seeing impact faster. You’re jumping a lot of hurdles when you do things in the right order. That’s just how project rollout works. That’s how operations work. If you prioritise properly, things run a lot smoother and you reach your goals faster.

So if you’re in that position, what I really want you to do is take a look at where all your time is going. Really, where’s your time going? And before you go to do the next thing, go do the [00:18:00] next thing, think about why you’re doing that. What is the purpose? And what do you want that thing to get you? And is that something that’s going to happen soon?

Or maybe is there something else that you That your time is better served doing and then shift. It’s okay to shift. It’s okay to change the scope of different things. Nothing ever has to be set in stone, especially if we wanna be constantly moving. Nothing ever stays still if we’re moving. So you’ve gotta be flexible and that’s okay. And then the last thing that I wanna talk to you about is owning the role of CEO.

Now you might be thinking, that doesn’t really sound like an issue. That just sounds like a dream, but can I tell you, I see empire builders [00:19:00] spending way too much of their time doing other people’s jobs, not being CEO. Not because they have to, but they do.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Just because you can do it well, doesn’t Doesn’t mean that you should do it just because you can do it faster than someone else also doesn’t mean you should do it. Not if you want to be the CEO, getting the opportunity cost in a business, there is only ever one CEO. There’s lots of workers. There’s lots of people in the organisation and they all have their part to play. There’s only ever one CEO. That means you have to choose. And that means every time you do something that isn’t in your CEO role that someone else could be doing, you’re choosing not to do your CEO role.

Your time and energy are getting taken up by something that isn’t serving you. Someone else can do it. Whether they’ll do it as good as you, whether they’ll do it as fast as you, whether they’ll do it in the same way you would. Totally different story. But the truth of the matter is, only one person can be the CEO.

And if that person isn’t you, no one else is doing it. And what will happen to your business if they have a CEO who’s there most of the time but then sometimes just [00:21:00] disappears? Things won’t stay on track. Things won’t get to where they could be as quickly as they could if they had a CEO who was leading.

And every time we choose to jump into somebody else’s job, someone else’s task, something that someone else can do that is not a you only thing. 

We often desperately want to be CEO, but the reality is it’s harder for us to stay there. Or to work our way up to staying in that role, because it’s a new way to operate. It’s not the same as it’s always been. If I’m an admin assistant, there’s four admin assistants. There’s four of me. There’s more wiggle room for my role.

If you’re the CEO, there’s only one of you. There’s no fallback here. So, we have to operate differently. To do that, [00:22:00] you need to start looking at your capacity. And look at all the things that you’re doing. Can anybody else do any of those things? What are the things on there? Only you can do, nobody else, because they’re the things you need to be aiming to do all of the time.

It doesn’t mean that you have to be doing it all tomorrow, but you’re setting yourself a baseline and you’re understanding, hey, this is what my role should be. And you’re starting to see the gaps and the opportunities to grow. Because if you’re doing things that other people could be doing, it means that you’re not spending that time looking at growth.

Or impact or new opportunities. And none of those things will happen unless you’re managing it. So as much as we can, we want to start building our team and bringing in the right people in the right [00:23:00] roles where you’re not needed. And then we equip those people to do the best that they can do. And it might look different to you.

And you know what? Most of the time, the results they get. They’re going to be better than the results you would have gotten because that’s their jam. Your job is to be at the head of the table. And so we want to own the CEO role, but we need to understand what that really means and be practical about getting there because it won’t happen overnight.

Just like success doesn’t happen overnight. And creating a little bit of a transition plan is okay. It’s practical. It’s saying, all right, I want to move forward. One step forward is still one step forward. So they’re the five big things that I talk to my clients about, that I talk to empire builders about, that I’m seeing right now in 2024.

And hopefully this episode has given [00:24:00] you the starting points on how to overcome those issues and not stay stuck in them. Because the world needs you to be the best you that you can be. That’s where the impact happens. That’s when the world changing happens. I’ll see you next week, everyone bye. 

AEP E7 The top five issues successful empire builders face today (and how you can fix them)

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome to this week’s episode of [00:01:00] the Audacious Empires podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about five of the big issues that I’m seeing successful empire builders face and how you can fix them. In my role as an OBM and an integrator, I talk to a lot of business owners. And successful ones.

So I’m not talking today about issues that, only happen when you’re in a startup phase. These are issues that I see coming from seven figure, eight figure businesses. And they’re all really easy to fix. But I wanted to give you the insight so that if you are facing some of these, you don’t feel like you’re alone.

Because that’s another question I keep getting asked is, do you see other people that have this same problem? The answer is always, yes. The likelihood is if you are facing a big issue, someone else is facing it too. And there are all different [00:02:00] ways that you can go about fixing that issue. It is not just a you thing.

So let’s dive in. The first of the issues that I want to cover is the battle between impact and money, as Empire Builders we want to create a big impact. Usually, this is what started us on the journey that we are on now. We have a big purpose. We want to change the world. We want to make a difference. We have a fire in our belly that fuels us. and very rarely does it have to do with us. 

Most of the time, it’s about other people.

And the impact that we have on them, the world around them, the relationships that they have, the life that they live. And so with that, we feel a big responsibility. We want to do everything that we can to support them, to create that impact, to grow that impact, to help more people, and for us, it does not feel optional.

We’re driven. We, it’s something we must do. If we can’t do it, we feel like we’re not doing the right thing. We’re not living up to what we’ve been called to do.

So how does that impact when it comes to money? What I see so often with empire builders is they have this desire to create the impact and they know that they need money from a business perspective. The two don’t always align. In fact, the two are tug of warring. If you’re focused solely on impact, then the money side tends to fall over.

If you’re focused solely on money, the impact side tends to fall over.

Which means we’re left in this place. Where we feel like we’re in a battle all the time of having to choose and it is frustrating. But I want you to think about it this way. When we’re in this battle, our focus is split. We’re either looking at impact or we’re looking at money and we see them as opposing forces.

But what if we flipped it a little bit? And what if we shifted our mindset so that we looked at the two as a collaboration, the impact needs the money. So it is Batman and Robin. One can’t really exist without the other. If you are focused on impact and you don’t look at the money side at all, what you will find is you will burn out very quickly.

[00:05:00] Or you won’t ever be able to make the kind of impact at the level that you want because you don’t have the money that supports it. This isn’t about greed or just revenue generation or anything like that. This is about, we need to have the resources to create that impact. Otherwise, We will end up having no impact.

I will say it again. If we don’t consider the money and the role the money plays, the vital role the money plays, on creating a big impact, we will have no impact. Because you will burn out, and if you burn out, You’re not helping anybody. There is no business, there is no you. There is no showing up, there is no sharing what you know, there is no getting the cut through that only you can get to, because [00:06:00] there’s no fuel for that fire.

And then if we look at it in the other way, There is no money without the impact. That is because you’re an empire builder. You don’t do things in halves. You don’t do things, just to take the first step and run away. If there is no impact, there’s no money. And that’s because without the impact, you’re not in it.

That impact needs you, and the money will only come if that impact is being made, because that impact is what fuels you. It’s what keeps you going. It’s what keeps you seeing these are the opportunities in front of me. If you’re in a place where all you have to focus on is money or making money, you’re not going to sustain what you’re doing, because that’s not why you started doing this.

It might be part of the reason. But I bet you it’s not the sole [00:07:00] reason. And so if we don’t show you the impact that you’re having and you can’t see it unfolding, there’s going to be no money because you’re not going to back it and the money needs you.

When we’re looking at this battle of impact versus money, you need to flip your mindset and see it as it’s not a battle. They feed each other and each is just as important. And that means we need to give each the right amount of attention. They both need our time and our commitment so that we can keep growing.

And if we just focus on one, that’s when things get wobbly. So remember, we need to cover both bases. Make the time to cover both bases.

The second issue that I see is keeping pace.

Empire Builders tend to have [00:08:00] two modes. That are default. So this is in terms of, without trying, one is moving too fast, the other is moving too slow. They’re the default. Until we start to rationalise and until we start to really commit to changing the way that we operate, that’s just the status quo.

But both of these have issues and have consequences. When we are moving too fast, we lose strategic perspective and we generally lose quality. Our focus becomes on speed or our focus becomes on immediate impact, immediate outcome. And that just adds pressure. The faster that you’re moving, the more pressure that gets added, especially if it’s not backed with strategy.

And there’s a whole lot of reasons that we move quickly. We’re excited. We feel like this is urgent and it needs to be solved right [00:09:00] now. We can see an opportunity and we don’t want to miss it. There are lots of reasons. Sometimes we just feel anxious or we just want to feel like we’ve achieved something, so we move faster.

But very rarely is the outcome as good as what it could have been if we took a breath first. And then, on the flip side, if we’re moving too slow, we start to lose opportunities. And when I see empires moving too slow, most of the time it has to do with a decision. They need to make a decision about something, or they’re procrastinating doing something.

And it’s that delay that misses them opportunities, and it actually causes mental exhaustion. Because even if you’re not doing it, you still know that you need to. You still know that there’s a choice that needs to be made, or there’s a thing that needs to be done. And in your [00:10:00] mind, in the background, that’s still sitting there.

And it takes that little bit of your energy. Now imagine that. Ten choices. Fifteen. Twenty. That little bit of energy isn’t little anymore. Because it’s happening across all these different areas. And so then we’re suffering the consequences of moving too slowly, of being unsure. So what we need to do is work out a better balance.

We need to know when to move quickly and when moving a bit slower is okay. And the way that we do that is to know your core drivers. When I’m working with a lot of my clients, I usually am in on what all their goals are and I know them as people. So I know as people what’s important to them and I know from a business perspective [00:11:00] what’s important to it.

That means that when we’re having conversations I already know what the crucial pieces are here. I know where we’re headed. I know where we’re headed based on a business front and based on a human front. And because those are clear for me. When there’s a decision that needs to be made or when there’s a really exciting opportunity that lands in our lap or a new thought that pops into our minds and the things that could develop to be, I have something to go back to because I can measure.

Every opportunity or every decision against these core drivers. Is this something that is moving with us in alignment with those drivers and these goals? Or is it something completely off to the side? Because every time we choose something that is off to the side, it means that something’s taken away from one of our core [00:12:00] drivers.

And are we okay with that? So often we can’t make a decision until we understand the consequence of that decision. And sometimes the answer might be, yeah, it’s actually okay in this scenario to take that opportunity and to do it and to do it quickly, because that actually feeds straight into what we’re doing.

But sometimes it just means you’re taking away focus, energy, and time. From the things that really need it now, that you’d already decided without emotion, without urgency. The more that we can come back and have that tangible, measurable plan to go back to, you’ll make far better decisions and you’ll be able to keep a better pace.

Because you won’t be constantly going between fast, fast, fast, or slow, slow, slow. The third thing is reinventing the wheel. *This is something I hear from people that I work with a lot. I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel. I’m [00:13:00] organised, but even if I’m organised, I still feel like I’m doing the same things that I’ve already done.

There has to be an easier way. Usually, this stems from empire builders trying to be organised and creating processes. Now, I’m an OBM and an integrator, so I love processes. But I also know that the second that you create a process, the second that you document it, it’s pretty much out of date because time has moved forward and time changes things.

I also know that processes that are contained within a system have context and context is what makes your processes longlasting. So we’re constantly reinventing the wheel and doing the same things over and over again, even though we have processes, because those processes have no context. They don’t know how to [00:14:00] function and be of use without you or the person that wrote them.

So we need to start looking at what are the systems in our businesses. That these processes support because that’s when we start to see systems of scale. That’s when we start to see a reduction in the impact of people changing roles or leaving or coming in. The impact of that. The reason being that the systems are not built for any one person.

They’re built for the business as a whole. And the processes tie back into those systems. The two feed each other and that’s what makes them last longer because they can be done by anyone with any knowledge of that role because the context is there. They don’t have to know when to use this process, why to use this process, whether it’s this process or the other process.

If I change something in this process, is it going to affect a different process? Will it [00:15:00] affect a different team? What will that do to the bottom line? There are all these things that happen within processes if you leave them without a system. Put them in systems and then the systems work together and the picture makes sense.

It’s that clarity that will keep your business driving forward and you won’t be reinventing the wheel anymore. The wheels are already there in motion, you might just support them and improve them.

The fourth thing is being busy but not strategic. We’re Empire Builders. We like to be busy. Usually, it’s because being busy makes us feel like we’re closer to the impact we want to make, or we feel productive. But, being busy and being strategic are not the same thing. And you might be doing a lot. Let’s be honest.

Most of our Empire Builders [00:16:00] out there are doing a lot. But it might not be the right things. When we’re not focused on the right things, we go round in circles. At least that’s what it feels like. Whenever really moving forward, sure, we’re getting a lot done. We’re getting through a lot. I’m not really seeing the outcome of that.

And that’s because we’re being busy. I also want to add the context of what is business today might not be in a month. The things I do today that would be counted as busy things, that I’m not going to see the impact for, in a month’s time, they might be the right things, and I’d see the impact very quickly.

Therefore, in that scenario, they’re not busy anymore. The difference is the timing and the priority. This is how we fix our constant lack of time, [00:17:00] even though we’re doing lots. We start to look at prioritisation. Priorities fix everything. If you know what to do when to do it, and why that we have to do it in that order, in that way.

You will get to your outcomes far quicker. It’s methodical. It’s planned out. And you won’t burn out as easy. You’re seeing impact faster. You’re jumping a lot of hurdles when you do things in the right order. That’s just how project rollout works. That’s how operations work. If you prioritise properly, things run a lot smoother and you reach your goals faster.

So if you’re in that position, what I really want you to do is take a look at where all your time is going. Really, where’s your time going? And before you go to do the next thing, go do the [00:18:00] next thing, think about why you’re doing that. What is the purpose? And what do you want that thing to get you? And is that something that’s going to happen soon?

Or maybe is there something else that you That your time is better served doing and then shift. It’s okay to shift. It’s okay to change the scope of different things. Nothing ever has to be set in stone, especially if we wanna be constantly moving. Nothing ever stays still if we’re moving. So you’ve gotta be flexible and that’s okay. And then the last thing that I wanna talk to you about is owning the role of CEO.

Now you might be thinking, that doesn’t really sound like an issue. That just sounds like a dream, but can I tell you, I see empire builders [00:19:00] spending way too much of their time doing other people’s jobs, not being CEO. Not because they have to, but they do.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Just because you can do it well, doesn’t Doesn’t mean that you should do it just because you can do it faster than someone else also doesn’t mean you should do it. Not if you want to be the CEO, getting the opportunity cost in a business, there is only ever one CEO. There’s lots of workers. There’s lots of people in the organisation and they all have their part to play. There’s only ever one CEO. That means you have to choose. And that means every time you do something that isn’t in your CEO role that someone else could be doing, you’re choosing not to do your CEO role.

Your time and energy are getting taken up by something that isn’t serving you. Someone else can do it. Whether they’ll do it as good as you, whether they’ll do it as fast as you, whether they’ll do it in the same way you would. Totally different story. But the truth of the matter is, only one person can be the CEO.

And if that person isn’t you, no one else is doing it. And what will happen to your business if they have a CEO who’s there most of the time but then sometimes just [00:21:00] disappears? Things won’t stay on track. Things won’t get to where they could be as quickly as they could if they had a CEO who was leading.

And every time we choose to jump into somebody else’s job, someone else’s task, something that someone else can do that is not a you only thing. 

We often desperately want to be CEO, but the reality is it’s harder for us to stay there. Or to work our way up to staying in that role, because it’s a new way to operate. It’s not the same as it’s always been. If I’m an admin assistant, there’s four admin assistants. There’s four of me. There’s more wiggle room for my role.

If you’re the CEO, there’s only one of you. There’s no fallback here. So, we have to operate differently. To do that, [00:22:00] you need to start looking at your capacity. And look at all the things that you’re doing. Can anybody else do any of those things? What are the things on there? Only you can do, nobody else, because they’re the things you need to be aiming to do all of the time.

It doesn’t mean that you have to be doing it all tomorrow, but you’re setting yourself a baseline and you’re understanding, hey, this is what my role should be. And you’re starting to see the gaps and the opportunities to grow. Because if you’re doing things that other people could be doing, it means that you’re not spending that time looking at growth.

Or impact or new opportunities. And none of those things will happen unless you’re managing it. So as much as we can, we want to start building our team and bringing in the right people in the right [00:23:00] roles where you’re not needed. And then we equip those people to do the best that they can do. And it might look different to you.

And you know what? Most of the time, the results they get. They’re going to be better than the results you would have gotten because that’s their jam. Your job is to be at the head of the table. And so we want to own the CEO role, but we need to understand what that really means and be practical about getting there because it won’t happen overnight.

Just like success doesn’t happen overnight. And creating a little bit of a transition plan is okay. It’s practical. It’s saying, all right, I want to move forward. One step forward is still one step forward. So they’re the five big things that I talk to my clients about, that I talk to empire builders about, that I’m seeing right now in 2024.

And hopefully this episode has given [00:24:00] you the starting points on how to overcome those issues and not stay stuck in them. Because the world needs you to be the best you that you can be. That’s where the impact happens. That’s when the world changing happens. I’ll see you next week, everyone bye. 

Ep 6 What’s the difference between a Virtual Assistant and an Online Business Manager?

Hey, hey, legends. Today, I want to talk about the number one question that gets asked of virtual assistants and online business managers. And that is, what’s the difference between a virtual assistant and an online business manager? I don’t think I have met a person who hasn’t had this question. They learn the answer, then they know the answer.

But prior to that, everybody asks it. And today? I’m going to give you a really clear picture. So first things first, let’s get our terminology right. An OBM is a virtual assistant. Dun, dun, dun. What does that mean? Okay, when virtual assistants began, they were primarily admin assistants. They were people who had secretarial skills and when the internet became a thing, that’s when virtual assistants started to begin.

And that is because we were [00:02:00] admin assistants who could work remotely, hence virtual, hence assistant. Over time though, the industry has grown and changed. At the same speed as technology like this was founded on the internet. So as technology grows and expands, so does the industry and the people within the industry and the things that you can do within this industry.

So what a VA used to be known as is not accurate anymore. There is the VA industry, and that is anybody who offers business services in an online manner. Remotely. Contractors. So there are lots of different specialties within that industry as a whole. An online business manager is a VA who has specialised in business management.

And we do it online. For the purpose of this episode though, when we say [00:03:00] VA, what we’re referring to is a general admin VA. Somebody who has niched down into providing general admin services across businesses.

Now that we have cleared that up and we all know what we’re talking about, I want to share a little story. For a long time, I was a VA. At least I referred to myself as a VA. And then one day, one of my clients said to me, Leanne, you are not a virtual assistant. And I was a little bit confused. If I’m not a virtual assistant, what am I?

And they said to me, you’re an online business manager. The way that you see my business, the skills that you have, and the way that you run your business as well as my business, that tells me You’re not a VA. If you put what you do and what a VA do side by side, [00:04:00] it’s very different. And I thought, huh, this sounds interesting.

And so I explored it a little bit further and what I found was amazing. And then I transformed my business at that point because it made so much sense. I had been frustrated at the level of VAs that weren’t really running businesses, they just decided, I can use words, so I’m going to charge for it. And that’s as far as it went, and getting compared to people like that, getting compared to 5 an hour cheaper services, thinking, but they can’t do what I can do.

And it’s because we weren’t doing the same things. I wasn’t comparing apples with apples. And so today. I would love to share with you what I really learnt and what the differences are between a virtual assistant and an online business manager. There are nine things we’re going to go through, so [00:05:00] buckle up.

Number one, focus on the end goal. A VA is primarily task based. They are exceptional at completing certain jobs or certain tasks in a timely or professional manner. They look at the task, they look at the extent of the task, they do it, they come back to you with a job well done. An online business manager looks at the bigger picture.

If we are looking at one task, we’re not just looking at that task, we’re looking at the whole process flow. And we’re looking at the system around that task. What’s the purpose of it? What is the way that we approach this? Is that the best way? If this task was done in a different way What would the impact be on the rest of the process?

And what do the pieces involved in this task and process do to achieve our end goals? We want to see the bigger picture. We want to [00:06:00] see everything within a business working in a system to support that. The business goals. So we’re looking at that entire machine rather than looking at the goal of the task.

Number two, different skill sets. Virtual assistants have niched down into that general administration. So it’s across the board, business admin, super supportive, great. And OBM has admin skills. Generally, we didn’t just start as with all this knowledge and this capability at some point, we’ve been in admin roles, we understand admin, but in a role of an online business manager, that’s not our focus.

And it shouldn’t be our focus, because our jam is to have high attention to detail, a strategic focus, and looking at and managing operations, projects. We also have a [00:07:00] really solid understanding of what it takes to run a business. A business as a whole, not just a piece of it or a niche of it. It is how do we get this whole business running smoothly.

And what impact do the processes have on that? What impact does the technology have on that? What impact does the team have on? Online business managers will focus their energy on getting all of the pieces in a business established and working towards that big end goal. Whereas virtual assistants are exceptional to a deep level at their tasks.

Number three, training and development. VAs will generally train in skills specific to their service offerings, to their niche. They’re the things they do every day, or they rely on their previous experience in terms of administration and administrative [00:08:00] tasks. They might change a little bit, but the whole foundation of what they do and what they are don’t change at a rapid pace.

A lot of VAs will do some kind of annual training, they’ll brush up on something that tends to be the pattern in the industry. Online business managers train in skills that support all of their service offerings. And they update their skills regularly. As an online business manager, I want to know how to make my business run better.

When I’m learning how to make my business run better, I’m learning how to make your business run better. When I’m learning how to make your business run better, I’m learning how to make my business run better. So it has this like little ecosystem of expansion and education. Online business managers will generally invest in more training and they will spend more money.

In that training, we seek it, we make it a pillar in our [00:09:00] businesses, especially when our role is to lead and guide and know, we need to have the most up to date understanding of things that are going on in business world. OBMs don’t just schedule in annual training, we don’t stop training. And what I mean by that is we do formal education, enrolling courses, do things like that, but we learn every single day.

And if you’ve got an online business manager who’s not learning every day, they probably aren’t a good one. Yes, I said it. Because when an OBM is faced with a new scenario or a problem, it’s their job to go and find a solution. It’s their job to be able to learn and adapt and make executive decisions as the business grows and changes.

And every day we’re learning all the tools and resources [00:10:00] that will help grow your business to get us there.

Put aside annual training time. We learn and we grow and we change every day. It is built in to our role. We will be learning how to run your business better and how to run our business better. So think about it. Every time I am upscaling or expanding my knowledge to make my business grow and run smoother, I’m getting all that same knowledge to do it for your business. And then when I’m doing that same thing for your business, it’s boosting my knowledge from my business. And it’s this awesome little ecosystem that starts to happen. OBMs will generally invest more financially in training because of how paramount it is to our role. If you have an online business [00:11:00] manager who isn’t consistently learning or updating their skills or interested in what’s happening and what’s working today, They probably aren’t a very good one.

I said it. We need to be curious. We need to be interested. We need to be invested in growth of ourselves and of your business. And because of what we do is all about making sure the business is doing everything it can in an easy way to achieve its goals, we need to be equipped. With up to date knowledge.

We need to know what’s working in business land right now. We need to know if something has changed between last year and this year. We’re core team members. If there is a problem, or if we’re looking at an opportunity where we need new ways to do things, an online business manager will go [00:12:00] and find the solution.

They will go and solve the problem. And if they don’t know how, they will learn. That’s the idea here. It is not a situation where we see a problem, or we have this desire to achieve something new, and then we just stop and go, sorry, I don’t know. We need to be consistently learning. And OBMs learn every single day, every day in my business.

I am learning. I very much, in myself, like to keep my skills up to date. I’m an avid learner, and I enjoy it, and I’m naturally curious. I’m, I naturally want to do the things better, and I want to learn how to improve, and I want to learn how to tweak things, or explore completely new options that flips everything on its head.

That gets a better impact. That’s the aim of the game here. So when technology moves as fast as it does, when people move as fast as they [00:13:00] do, when team members have different personalities and change, you need to be able to grow and expand with all these changes. And so I have always Had this natural inclination to make sure I’m learning what I need to learn in line with what my clients need, as well as improving my baseline type skills.

I want the best service that will support my clients. And so it is an everyday investment in my business.

Price point. This is another favorite question. How much do virtual assistants charge? How much do online business managers charge? For general VAs, general admin VAs in Australia, at the moment, what are we 2024? The entry level rate is about 45, 50 an hour at AUD. That’s for someone who has the [00:14:00] skill to be an administration assistant.

Maybe they have worked in admin as an employee and now they’re going to do it in their business. So they’ve got that skill set, but might be new to the industry or new to running their own business. That’s the entry level. Anybody that is charging less than that hasn’t really invested in their business at all yet.

If they’re charging less than that, they are selling themselves short, and they’re not considering the expenses that exist running a business. But generally, someone entering this industry at the moment, 45, 50 an hour, and they tend to charge in at an hourly rate. They also usually will do retainers where they’ll package up a bunch of hours and then you’ll get a little bit of a discount because you’re buying hours of their time in advance.

Some will then niche down into certain services. So they might have a particular skill. Let’s say [00:15:00] they are in general admin, but they have a flair for design. And so they might then use that as an add on to their service. Hey, if you want me to do design stuff as well, this is how much it will cost.

If you’re working with an online business manager, it’s a little bit of a different structure. OBMs will be shifting away from charging an hourly rate because when you charge an hourly rate, you are putting all of the onus on the client. If I charge you an hourly rate, I’m saying to you how good I am at my job will impact how much you then pay for.

So if I take longer to do something because I haven’t bothered. To increase my training, increase my skills, you’re paying for that. If you need a certain job done and it takes me longer and then you’ve run out of [00:16:00] hours, well guess what? That job ain’t getting finished. Or you have to pay me more for it.

If we flip that and we look at the outcome, hey, I need someone who’s going to do this for me. I want this complete and OBM will then come back to you with that. This is how much that will cost, not a, this is how much time it will take. Therefore, this is how much it will cost. They’re factoring in if something goes wrong, if everything goes smoothly, if there’s additional costs or they’re going to have to work, different hours or whatever that might be.

They’re taking the responsibility for the outcome. Not you. So you know when you work with an OBM, you’re going to get the result that you’re wanting. You’re going to get that thing finished or things happening the way they should without the price fluctuating. The other thing that you need to think about with [00:17:00] OBMs is that when they are packaging up their services, they’re packaging up the level of knowledge and understanding they have about businesses, operations, management, and the level of responsibility and ownership that goes into that kind of role.

They are there to make the whole business run, to achieve the end goals, and that includes consistently reviewing what’s happening and keeping their eyes. And then we tweak and we change and we address things when we need to, that’s what you’re paying for. So it is very hard to then say, Oh, you spent four hours thinking about my business.

So I’m going to charge you this. That just seems silly. So this is why you’ll find online business [00:18:00] managers packaging and doing value based pricing versus an hourly rate. If you are really pushing for that hourly rate, and I would encourage you not to do this. What you would be looking at though, is online business managers in Australia, who are entry, that entry level into being an OBM, you’re looking at 70 to 75 for a fresh OBM.

If you want someone who’s got some experience, You’re looking closer to the 100 mark. If you’re looking for someone who can integrate a whole business and be a strategic partner and see the gaps that you might be missing and hold a lot of the responsibility, you’re looking higher. So now you’ve got a little bit of a ballpark.

Number five, the level of understanding of business. Virtual assistants have a great understanding of their role. Whatever it is [00:19:00] that their, the service that they’re offering you is, they have an understanding of that task, of that process, of what looks good there and what doesn’t, but that’s where it kind of stops.

They have a general understanding from running their own business. But they’re not investing on bigger principles or learning how to make the business machine run to achieve objectives. OBMs have the understanding of running their business, but they also fully immerse themselves in your business. They need to know how businesses run and run well and what makes them fall over, what makes them better in business land as a whole.

They’re never just looking at one little piece of the puzzle. We understand the pieces that make up a business machine. Because if you don’t fully understand all the [00:20:00] different components that go into running a business to make it smooth. To make it easy, to have consistency in brand and delivery, to build an audience, to market, to have profitable services, to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

If you don’t understand the different things that all work together in a business, to be successful, you are not going to be able to run that very well. And so as online business managers, they’re the things that we invest in. They’re the things that we’re constantly looking at. And we’re looking at how each piece of the system is working with the rest and making sure that any change that’s made isn’t going to negatively impact the things that are around it.

We want everything to work cohesively in that bigger system. And then any changes, we [00:21:00] anticipate what the impact will be. And we make different decisions based on that, those things that we’re anticipating.

Depth of involvement. If you look at how involved in your business as a whole, a virtual assistant or an online business manager is, a virtual assistant will be ankle deep. So, thinking that, let’s say, your foot is the task. That’s the level. They are exceptional at staying at the foot level in their zone of genius and nailing that.

They will come back to you and they will talk to you and they will improve everything within that task. They’re looking at that aspect. They are ankle deep and they’re communicating with you for things at that level. And so when we’re focused on one piece Or, you know, not. If you look at a whole cake versus just a slice, they don’t need to check [00:22:00] in with you as much about one slice as it in comparison to if they were to be talking to you about all of the slices.

That’s the difference here. VAs will check in and have touch points and be involved to the level of their tasks, but they don’t need to consider all the pieces around them. OBMs.

We’re in the depths of that ocean with you, and yeah, we’ve got an air tank in case something goes wrong. We’re ready for the disaster, we’re prepared for the future, and we’re exploring with you. So we’re down, down deep, head underwater, fully immersed. If you think about it. OBM needs to understand your business really, really well.

If you want to improve something at that level, you have to invest the time and the energy and have an understanding of what makes [00:23:00] your business work. What does this look like? What are the known factors? What are the unknown factors? What are the things that make us amazing and what are the things that we need to improve?

We need to be in it and in it every day. We need to have that head underwater level of involvement. We need the frequency. We need the lots of touch points because all of that builds into our understanding of how to improve this thing and how to give you as the business owner, more time, more space, more freedom, the ability to create new revenue streams, to grow, to expand.

The ability to go on holiday if you want to without everything falling over. That can’t happen if someone isn’t fully immersed and dedicated. We need to get a full understanding of what happens, but also of the people, also of the resources, also of the audience, all the different pieces of that business, [00:24:00] because then we can do our job better.

So online business managers will have a far deeper level of involvement in your business. We are key players here. Your success is our success. We get very tied to what’s happening and things improving because we do invest a lot of our time and energy. into your business. Number seven, the relationships within your business.

So a virtual assistant will generally build a relationship with either the business owner or the person that they’re working with. So whoever is managing the virtual assistant within that business, sometimes it’s not the business owner because they don’t need to really work with anybody else. If they’re performing general admin services, they don’t need to know the ins and outs of every other team role.

With an OBM, we have to build relationships with the business owner and with all the stakeholders. If we’re going to have this level of involvement in this business and [00:25:00] get really immersed in it, then we become a known quantity. We have to, we need to know who all the team members are. We need to get to know your audience and who they are, the customers and who they are, the suppliers and who they are.

The team, we become a really sticky. point in your business and we start to cultivate a different culture within your business. So instead of you as the business owner, as the CEO, having to be the touch point for everything, you’ve got somebody else who can do that. And to achieve that, we get sticky with everybody.

And we’re good at that. And then people feel safe and secure when they see our face or see our name. They know who we are. They know that we’re close to you. They know that we’re as invested in this as you are. So there isn’t this, oh, I’m getting, palmed off to some random person. [00:26:00] We’re a known quantity.

Plus, we do build a really solid relationship with you. Because we have to. If we’re wanting to make sure the business is going in the right direction, in the direction that you imagine, if you’re able to achieve what you want to achieve, that relationship has to be good and it has to be tight,

which brings us to number eight, which is the level of initiative. A virtual assistant is proactive and has initiative within they’re contracted services within their specialty, and usually if they have a specialty, they already know what’s gonna play out. That’s their specialty. They’ve done this over and over again.

And so they’ll know if there’s gonna be sticking points that are co going to come up because they’ll be similar sticking points to what happens in other situations. So they’re proactive and have initiative within their scope. An online business manager has to have [00:27:00] hyper proactivity across the entire business.

So if we are taking ownership of a business as a whole, and our role at keeping all of the wheels spinning and keeping the business moving in the right direction, the level of initiative that we have is paramount. We have to be able to think about. How to keep that business moving, how to be strategic in our thinking, the things that we’re doing, the opportunities that are there, and then being able to present them back.

We need to be able to make decisions on the fly. We need to be able to troubleshoot. We need to be able to proactively anticipate where some of those cogs in your system might stop working. What’s going to happen if this falls over? Is it likely to fall over? If so, What are we going to do about that? Or should we be doing this a completely different [00:28:00] way?

An online business manager should be coming to you with solutions and coming to you with, Hey, we’ve had this problem. This is what we’re going to do about it. Hey, there’s this opportunity. Have you thought about doing it this way? Rather than waiting for you to lead them. It is that level of initiative and investment that really makes a rockstar OBM.

That level of commitment, debt, understanding, be able to think strategically at that big picture level. There is the value in an online business manager. Someone who can partner with you to grow the business, change the business, who can look at multiple pieces moving all together and be able to get them all to gel better to get a better result.

And our final one is personal atention So when you look at the capacity of virtual assistants [00:29:00] versus online business managers, virtual assistants will generally have more capacity. They do smaller jobs, so they need more clients. The client base is bigger, so your interaction with them is smaller because that’s all that’s needed.

An online business manager, we have to choose our clients very carefully. And we have to make sure that we can align with them, that we get along, that we have the skills and the relationship with you to be able to get the business where it’s going and for it to be enjoyable for you and for me because I’m going to invest a lot of time in this.

The other thing you want to think about here too is if I’m going to be this level of committed, I can’t do that with lots of people. I can’t run 20 different [00:30:00] businesses, at that level of commitment on my own. I can’t do it. I would never be able to understand those businesses as well as what’s needed for you to get the value.

So I have to limit the amount of people I work with. And if I’m going to do that. I want it to be the right people. I want it to be the people that are going to be able to get the result, that we’re going to be able to bounce off each other, that we’re going to have complementary skills, that we’re going to have opposing skills, so where you’re incredible at something, the opposite, I’ve got covered.

So that you can be you and use your inspiration, follow your vision, be the leader and the CEO. And then I can do the things that I’m fantastic at and keep everything driving towards [00:31:00] that vision. There are times where there will be a need for different skills. There will be times where there is a need for people who operate in a similar manner.

There will be personality factors that come into it. You do not want to work with an OBM who you can’t communicate well with or who it would do your head in if you had to talk to them every day. There’s nothing wrong with them, but the way that people communicate and the different personalities we have, these things matter to a successful business relationship with an OBM and a good OBM knows that you don’t want this constant friction that’s not based on two people being wrong or not knowing what they’re doing.

It’s just personality matches. When we’re working with our clients, we want to build happy, easy, fun relationships, people we are stoked to be aligned with, because we are going [00:32:00] to spend a lot of time together.

When OBMs are looking at their client base, we’re really looking for people who are in that next phase. They don’t want somebody who just needs a task done and needs it done well. They want someone who is in it with them, who is capable, highly skilled, has initiative and marketing mouse, who can get fully involved in their business, in their team, who can help create strategic plans and provide objective opinions.

You want the sounding board. All of these things are what an OBM will do and do well. But to do that, you have to have a really good relationship with them. And it can take time to build that, but it all starts with that initial, Hey, do we actually like each other? [00:33:00] Can I actually do what you need me to do?

Do we understand each other? Does this feel good? Because otherwise it will all fall over. And then all of a sudden your key player is somebody that you can’t stand. And really. Nobody wants that.

So how do you know what you need? And if I put it very simply, and yes, I’m simplifying, so do not hold me to this is, the ultimate rule. It’s just a quick indication. Do you want someone who is going to come in and do a job and do it well? A virtual assistant. Or do you want a fully immersed growth partner?

An online business manager. One sentence, a quick easy way to differentiate a virtual assistant and an online business manager. And if you are looking for a highly capable experience OBM, come and check [00:34:00] out me and my team at audaciousempires. com. I would love to talk to you. We work with six, seven, eight figure business owners who are ready to step out of the day to day and to take the mantle of CEO and to work on inspiration and growth and let somebody else take care of the daily operations.

Thanks. So that you’ve got the space, time and freedom to be who you are. I hope that this episode has given you some clarity on the different things that define a virtual assistant and an online business manager. There are more, but what I wanted to do was give you a solid picture with enough information so that if you need to make decisions about where you are and what you need, you have now the knowledge and if you’re grappling with this, use everything I’ve said as a quick checklist. Go through that [00:35:00] and use it as an evaluation. Do I want this or do I want this? Do I want this or do I want that? And it’ll tell you what type of support is available to you. Have a great day, everyone. I’ll see you next week.

 [00:36:00] [00:37:00] [00:38:00] [00:39:00] [00:40:00] 

Ep 5 The one thing you need to implement right now if you want a business that runs without you

Hey, hey, hey Rockstar. Today we are talking the number one thing you need to implement right now if you want a business that runs without you. Okay, so recently I was invited to speak at Do It Day in Melbourne and it was all about setting up your plans for the year and getting some things done in that day that were really going to move the needle.

In your business for that year. And so my presentation was titled how to get twice as much done with half the amount of time, which, you know, it sounds very elusive and it sounds very attractive who doesn’t want to do that. Is it in preparation of this day. And knowing that I wanted the audience to walk away with something that was true and something that they could [00:02:00] implement and use immediately.

I didn’t want it to be super complex, I didn’t want it to feel hard, and I wanted it to actually give that impact. Of super productivity. I was thinking and thinking, what is it then? What are the core things that people really need to embrace to get more done with less , all my time as an ops manager, as an OBM, as an integrator.

I’ve seen a lot of different tactics. I’ve seen a lot of different theories. I’ve tried lots of things and I’ve been behind many a seven figure business. The one concept. That has become my favorite and that I think is the most effective when trying to be productive and build a culture of productivity is the notion of systems thinking.

Now, I thought [00:03:00] this was quite funny when I first heard it because my brain went straight to computers and really complex maps, computer diagrams, systems, blinking lights. That’s where my brain went. Okay. But When applied to productivity and made slightly less geeky, it actually really works. So what is this notion of systems thinking?

If you were to imagine your business As an entire system, as an entire machine. Picture all of these cogs all connected in together. Now we know you spin one cog and it makes the other cog spin. Okay, so hopefully you’ve got this, awesome visual in your head. All these cogs, that’s your business.

The whole thing. And systems thinking is when you do two things. One approach[00:04:00] is when you take the approach of looking at all of the cogs at once from a big picture view, as well as looking at the individual cogs in a micro view when you’re trying to implement something new, create processes, make decisions. What this means is that any one cog only has good, productive, effective as the cogs around it.

Something that I’ve seen many, many business owners do is we fall into the trap of coming up with quick solutions and fixing a problem based on one cog. So we’re in the cog. Now the cog can be a person, can be a process. It can be an objective it can just be a problem that’s occurred. There are all these cogs, right?

So if we’re looking at something in [00:05:00] micro, we’re looking at a cog and let’s say something has gone wrong in this process. Part of this process is broken. And so we decide, okay, looking at this cog, this process I can say, for example, that my new members aren’t getting their second follow up. Let’s say that’s the piece that’s falling over.

Now that’s not great, because what is the impact that has, that has? It’s going to increase our churn rate, which we don’t want. So in my haste of, okay, how come we haven’t followed our process here and people are leaving or people, our members are getting less engaged because we don’t have that second follow up.

So something’s wrong with the process. What can we do to fix that? I know. I am going to get Susie. From the admin team to change this process and to start calling people. And I’m going to make sure that on the second of every month that every [00:06:00] person is checked and people who haven’t been called get called instant solution.

Problem fixed, looks good, sounds good, let’s go with it. But I’ve looked at that in isolation. What I haven’t considered are the cogs around it. So what is the impact? On Suzy. Suzy is already at capacity. So adding in this to her plate means she’s not going to be able to do something else, which will have a flow on effect.

100 percent guarantee. It’s okay, we’ll work that out when we get to it. What else is going to happen? Okay, on the second of every month, we’re going to start making all of these calls. But also on the second of every month is when our membership team pulls all of our members to do a planning session.

Let’s say this is what’s going to happen for the month. This is what you can expect. Is there anything we need to do to help you? Let’s say that happens on the second of every month. [00:07:00] Now your members, some of them, not all of them are going to get two calls. They’re going to get one from Susie saying, Hey, just checking in, making sure you’ve joined the group.

Do you know what we’ve got going on this month? Then they’re going to get a call from your member team. Saying, hey, let’s do a check in, let’s see, a 15 minute blitz of what you want to achieve this month and see if you’re available to attend any of the calls that are happening, two calls in one day, and then nothing the rest of the month.

Now, we’ve impacted the member team. Because imagine the backlash that they’re going to get when people start saying, I’m confused, I already spoke to you today. We’ve impacted Susie. We’ve impacted the other cogs that will have to bear the weight of Susie not doing what Susie was meant to do because she’s now calling people.

We’ve impacted the members, which all in all, is going to do the reverse of what we wanted. We did this. [00:08:00] So that we could reduce our churn rate and keep our members engaged. The solution that we’ve implemented, although it seems good on the surface, when you look at the things surrounding it, we start to see these holes and the impact is actually the opposite of what we are wanting.

Two calls in one day and nothing for the rest of the month is going to increase that churn rate. It is not going to decrease it. People are not going to like it and it’s going to feel clunky and the business doesn’t really know what they’re doing. So it has the opposite impact. And this is where systems thinking, like that’s a very niched down example, but I wanted one that you could follow along and understand, but it can apply to so many different things.

So systems thinking is about when we come up with the solution, it’s looking at, okay, here’s the different solutions we could have. Now, what is the impact [00:09:00] of these solutions, of this plan, of this process, on the system? And then you start to look at all the cogs around. So we’re looking at our one cog, the cogs that are next to it, and the big picture as a whole.

So it’s a layered approach. And although it can seem quite complex when you’re going, Oh, I’m going to have to make all these considerations and I’m going to have to be, write really extensive processes around things. This is going to take ages. It actually doesn’t. So it is a mindset shift and it is something where when you start doing it, it gets quite quick.

And depending on the complexity of what you’re doing at the time, that impacts how much investment time you need. So for a task, at a task level, sometimes at a process level, that’ll take you five minutes to do this thought process. It is just getting in the habit of doing it. It’s a bit different when we’re looking at a business vision or setting, yearly goals and looking at the impact on the system and the [00:10:00] resources, the process that are needed.

But in an everyday operational capacity, the cost is nowhere near as high as the benefit it will bring. Okay, so hopefully that explains to you what systems thinking is. Now you might be wondering, why should I invest my time, effort, energy into trying to understand this concept and then implement it?

Okay when we’re looking at systems thinking, We are creating a business that is not reliant on any one person, process, task. It is creating a business that has considerations of multiple pieces. In that comes position. So let’s take documenting processes, for example. When I document [00:11:00] processes and create SOPs, And this is the same thing that my team does, is we look at that process and the context of that process.

So the context is everything and that’s where the systems thinking comes in. Why do we do this process? When do we do this process? Who is it that is impacted by this process? What do we want to achieve by doing this process? And what are the steps? And we want to think about things as we’re documenting from that system perspective.

So when we’re creating things, we’re not creating them for one person. We’re not creating a process with these five steps, because we know that’s the way that Jane likes to do it. We’re creating it from the perspective of, okay, Jane’s role, let’s say, is customer service representative. What is the best approach for the [00:12:00] customer service representative to take?

To execute this process with the knowledge, experience, and understanding that a customer service representative has, what is the process they would take? What is the knowledge they might be missing? And who else does this process impact? Hey, customer service rep, if you see these four things, you might want to go and talk to the accounts payable team, and they’ll be able to help you with the next piece.

So what we’re doing before someone’s even picked up that process to do that job, they will know if this is the process they’re meant to use, they’ll be able to track what they’re trying to achieve with it, they’ll be able to see the scope, the start and finish, they’ll already be able to identify the next steps that are needed or how to troubleshoot if needed, because they know the flow and effect.

They can see the impact if they don’t do their piece correctly. [00:13:00] Okay, if I don’t do my bit, it means that accounts payable is going to be impacted. And all of a sudden, the way that I view this task and the way that I view my role in completing this task has changed. I have become part of that system.

It’s not just me working away to my standard, it’s me helping the business achieve a bigger goal

The other thing that it allows us to do, by looking at things as part of the system and not being customised for any one piece, it allows our processes to grow and to contract. And so it is super scale friendly. If we’re always considering the things and the impact that happens on a system, it doesn’t matter who is in what role.

Doesn’t matter if Jane takes time off and Peter replaces [00:14:00] her. Because we would expect Peter to have the knowledge and understanding of that role. And when we’re designing things like that, there isn’t this overhead of, but where’s all the information I need to actually do this? Because the knowledge, the understanding, and the context is built into the way it has been designed to operate.

And so we start to get all of these efficiencies happening. It reduces the number of questions that people need to ask because they’re answered already. That’s what context gives. And , you’ll see big businesses all the time. And what they will do, is they’ll have these big, massive organisation charts.

Now, have they always been that way? No. Do they stay that way? Also no. Organisation charts in big businesses are something that grows big and then they look at it and go, right, this isn’t working for us anymore. So they cull, contract, refine, and [00:15:00] get smaller. Then they build it back up. Then they cull, contract, refine, get smaller.

And part of the reason that they’re able to do this is because big organisations do not operate based on one human. They very much need people to be able to come in and out without the quality of what they’re doing being impacted. So they have to operate in a way where they’re offering. A consistent service, consistent product, maintaining their reputation, despite what the internal workings or internal structure of that business is.

It’s all systems thinking. Alright, so if we have, if I’ve sold you on systems thinking, and you’re like, okay, I can see why I might be interested in this, or why it might be worth exploring. What impact does it actually have? So the long term impact of [00:16:00] systems thinking is increased productivity.

Which, time is money. So the more efficient we are, the more effective we are, the more productive we are with purpose, we’re more profitable. We have less sunk time costs. So all of the training and retraining and the friction that gets caused by clunky processes or things not moving in a smooth manner.

Plans getting made that then overlap with other things that are already in place. And then you have to rework things. That all gets eliminated when you look at things in a systems lens, you’ll get less spot fires because. We’re not just solving one tiny cog’s problem at a time. When that has a problem, we already are proactively thinking about how it’s going to impact the rest of the system and the solution that we pick [00:17:00] is likely to be very different than if we were just focused on that one cog.

And that’s not saying that solution is going to take longer to concept or to implement. It’s just a different way of thinking. So it’s a different choice. Therefore, there’s less spot fires that occur once that’s implemented because we’ve already factored in some of the other things that we might not have thought about before.

And there are less mistakes. When we’re building in context, when we’re giving people what they need to excel, thrive, and know what they’re trying to achieve, know where to go if they get stuck. If this process breaks, what’s the backup? There’s going to be less mistakes. We’re giving the solutions before there’s even an issue.

And then if we’re looking at, okay, that all sounds great. How much is this actually going to cost me to do though? What is the cost to [00:18:00] implement this in my business? Really, there’s a few things. One, there’s a conversation cost. Systems thinking and operating in a systems manner with a systems approach is not achievable by just one person.

It is a team approach. The business has to do it together and you have to get your team on board. There is a conversation that needs to happen. There’s an explanation. There’s a, hey, this is why we’re doing this. This is why it matters to you. This is how you can operate in this new way. So there’s that conversation and then the hand holding that goes with it to kind of lead people through what it looks like on a day to day basis.

There’s the mindset shift. So systems thinking, its biggest piece is the mindset shift. And quite often when there’s a mindset shift, we shy away because it’s [00:19:00] something we have to consistently commit to until it becomes a habit. So it’s a cost that is worth mentioning, in my opinion. And then there is the time to implement it.

Now, if I was to look at someone and say, Okay, let’s come to your business and let’s implement, a systems approach. I would not be saying to them, Let’s rewrite all your processes in one go. And let’s do this audit, and that audit, and then completely overhaul everything. This is not what you want to do.

That is going to end up in a massive cost of time and money to whoever is going to help you do this. But do it as you go. So if you can get your team on board and explain it to them, whoever does that next piece of their job, ask them to look at it through a systems lens. Ask them to upgrade that process, ask them to think about where the gaps are in the [00:20:00] way things are operating and start to build in these systems on the fly.

Do it as you go. And then it’s easier to catch everything that’s left and fix those as standalone.

So when I say that this is a whole business approach, what does that actually mean? And it means There’s lots of things that make up a business. There’s lots of things that contribute to business operations and to operating efficiently and effectively, and to have things feel good and have a culture that isn’t stressful or filled with pressure or making many mistakes.

But when we’re talking about a whole business approach for systems, we want to look at the process level. We want to look at a task level. How do I do this task? Where does this task fit within the entire process? We want to look at a project planning level. [00:21:00] So when we’re looking at, let’s say, a quarterly project, can be a big beast.

What’s the systems approach for this project? What should get considered? What shouldn’t be considered? What’s the impact? Where does it fit? What’s the priority? What are the resources? Where what strain is this going to put in other areas of the business? Where does this project plan fit in the whole scheme of my end goal for the business, of where we’re going for the year?

Are we on track? How is that consistent? We want it to be part of the system. And at the end of the day, once this project is complete, is it something I’m going to do again? How can I build it in a way that it’s very easily repeated? And then, the same with business goals. You know where you want to get your business to.

And when you’re determining business goals I’m going to set this goal, but what is the impact of that goal? What [00:22:00] does that mean? What does that mean for all of my cogs? Are my cogs in the right places? Do I have the right resources? Is something missing? Is something going to get stuck somewhere and I’m never going to be able to achieve that goal?

If we look at all the pieces throughout the business, as you come across them with a systems lens, you start to make better decisions and you start to become more productive and you give your team what they need so that they can be more productive. Without it being hard, and that is the beauty of systems thinking.

 If there is one thing you want to implement today, to have a business that’s not reliant on any one person, including you, Google it. Look it up. Come and talk to me. Send me and my team an email. Helpme at AudaciousEmpireHeads. com I would love to chat to you. I would love to come and boost your operations.

But ultimately I’d love you to explore what systems [00:23:00] thinking and a systems approach might look like for your business. Hope you found this helpful. See you next week.​ 

Ep 3 How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

 [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello. [00:01:00] Thanks for joining me this week on the next episode of the Audacious Empires podcast. I am Leanne Woff and I am super excited to be talking to you about outsourcing. Today we are chatting all things how can outsourcing your operations help you grow your business. Let’s get stuck 

Firstly, We need to set some context around what we mean by outsourcing. So there’s lots of different ways that you can outsource and everything that I talk about in this episode can also be applied to an internal team, if you’ve got an internal team. But when we’re looking at outsourcing, I am not talking about outsourcing to a junior assistant.

I’m talking about outsourcing to an online business manager, a business integrator, an operations consultant, an ops manager, someone who is highly skilled and highly trained.[00:02:00] Because the things that I’m going to talk to you about, a junior will not be able to support you in. So I just wanted to give you that context first.

Alright, the second thing. Is. A question that I get asked a lot is can you really outsource your operations? It’s a day to day function. There are lots of moving parts. How can somebody who is external to a business be that involved in the business? The answer is yes. And I know that it’s possible because I’ve been in that role so many times and there’s not been an issue.

It just might seem a little bit unfamiliar if you’ve not done it before. So, I Want to tell you a little story. I was chatting with a new lead a few weeks ago, and they said to me, I know that I need help, but I just [00:03:00] can’t wrap my head around how you can outsource operations. And so we had a conversation about what it could look like, and what the term operations means.

And how everybody has their own definition. There are a lot of things that happen within a business and majority of them fall into operations. If it is the process of getting something done, usually it’s an operational thing. And when you haven’t seen it as an isolated piece, It can be hard for you to picture what it really means.

And so I spoke to this lead and I explained, you know, when we work with businesses, we come in, we set up all of the systems because we are virtual. So although you might not know how it would work communication wise, we do. And so we do things like we use project management tools and we [00:04:00] have set meetings and we have.

 Different ways that we can chat for different things. So whether that’s WhatsApp or Slack or Voxer to remove roadblocks quickly, we set up the reporting and the job distribution in a certain way so that we can see when things are on track, off track, at risk, like really clearly, all based on what the business’s goals are.

So when you’re treating operations as its own thing, it then has a whole new goal. It’s not just something that happens by accident because it has to happen in your business. And after that When I was chatting to this lead, they were very much okay, got it. I think I’ve wrapped my head around it.

She believed me. It could actually be done. Total one. And then she said, I think it is just, I’m scared. I’ve not done it before and I just need to start somewhere. And so [00:05:00] if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, that’s me. By the end of this episode, I hope that you have a little bit more understanding.

On why that risk is worth taking, because I know it’s not one that you can make lightly. It’s your business and you’re invested. I’m going to walk you through three main ways outsourcing your operations helps grow your business. The three ways are space, time and money. No matter how many conversations I have with people.

When they’re looking at outsourcing anything, it always comes down to, at the root of it all, they need more space, they need more time, or they need more money. Or maybe they don’t need it, but that’s what they want. It’s about growth in those areas. And outsourcing your operations will give you those.

 Let’s break each one down. So how can outsourcing your operations give you more space? When you are running operations [00:06:00] yourself, It can be very overwhelming. Now, like I said before, managing operations, there is a lot going on. It does not, it’s no small feat managing a, seven figure business.

There’s never just a handful of components and we’re good. Things tend to be complex. They might not be complicated, but complex. And that is okay. But it means it takes a lot of energy and Thought to keep operations going, let alone to improve them. And so when you’re in this space of running around and keeping things turning and just giving your team what they need so they can keep going so that you’re not the bottleneck, you lose your space.

You lose Your air and your freedom. And can I tell you, when you’re in a state of overwhelm or lots of things coming at you from all different directions, your [00:07:00] brain can’t process properly. I’ve seen that time and time again, when clients are overloaded and they actually can’t process what I’m saying.

And I will end a call and then I’ll talk to my team and say, we’re going to have this conversation again in a couple of days, because there’s no way. That they’re going to remember that we just had that conversation and that’s the decision that they make. And I’m right. Every time. Because that’s what overwhelm does.

If you’re stretched too thin, your brain just can’t keep up. That’s just being a human. And that’s okay. But the consequence of that is, you lose. All of the ooey gooey good stuff, the reasons that you started this business, the ideas that you have, the goals that now seem so far away because you just cannot reach them.

 You keep getting bogged down by everybody else and having to keep the day to day moving forward. How does outsourcing your operations give you more space? Outsourcing your operations removes that overwhelm.[00:08:00] There is somebody else now who becomes that pivotal person where everybody will come to that person and throw things at them.

They become, the first point of contact, the first person when there is a problem, the fixer, the gatekeeper. That’s what your ops person becomes. So it’s not you anymore. And it creates brain space. Now brain space breathes.  Creativity, which is where the magic happens. It’s that space that allows you to innovate.

It’s that space that allows you to do the deep thinking and build your business. To be able to differentiate from composition, to be able to reach those goals, to remember the impact that you want to make, and create plans to get there. That’s what space gives you. And so outsourcing your operations removes all the noise so that you can have that space.

Okay, so the next thing. Outsourcing your operations will give you back more [00:09:00] time. Time is a little bit different to space. And something that you may know is that operations are a massive time suck. And I say that because quite often we don’t see the direct outcome. From operations as a whole. We might spend X amount of time answering 5 customer enquiries.

You answer them because it’s part of the process and it has to be done. You don’t want to ignore people. But right then, when you’re doing it, all you’re thinking about is, I need to get this done. And you don’t then correlate that to the 3 sales that you make in a month because you sent those 5 emails.

So we don’t see that immediate response, or the benefit, we see it as admin and a cost. Which it is a cost, but it’s a cost with a benefit. And there is, like, there’s measurable benefit from that. Okay, 

if you have some time back let’s take away All of that coordination, tasking. So when you’re [00:10:00] looking at your business as a whole and you’re trying to make sure the machine is running in all of the right areas, there’s two components. One is you’re trying to make sure it’s humming along. So that means every area has what it’s, what it needs to do its job and is progressing along the right pathway.

So that’s the first thing. Let’s think about how much time that might take us. And then the second thing is the troubleshooting. I guarantee you all of those cogs are not going to spin with a zero issues, 100 percent of the time. The cogs will not spin with zero issues, 100 percent of the time. It’s not possible because you’re relying on technology.

You’re relying on people and neither of those things are 100 percent perfect.

When we’re looking at operations and the amount of time it takes, you’ve now got two massive jobs to [00:11:00] do. Let’s pull that away. What if there was somebody else who was monitoring your operations, all of those cogs, all of the tools, all of the people, all of the resources, and making sure They’re running as they should and tracking to their goals.

I think what you’d find is you get a whole lot more time back. And it might be time that you don’t even realise you’re spending right now. I know when we were working with one client, we started working with them and we calculated how much time they were spending in operations. And it was like five hours a day or something ridiculous.

Like it was so big and it was all of the haphazard, oh gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. They had a big business and They just felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. Their business was successful, but they were working hard. And when we came in and we saw that, we reduced that down to [00:12:00] their admin time being half an hour a day.

From five hours a day to half an hour. Purely because that’s what we do every day. And there was somebody else who could deal with a lot of those things. It did not have to be them. What happened with that time? This is the beauty of getting time back, right? You get to focus on high value tasks. You get to be CEO.

You get to innovate. You get to go and speak more. You get to be on more podcasts. Or you get to create your own podcast. All of those things that you’ve been wanting to tick off that you never have enough time for, you get to have back. And it might not even be business related. It might be picking kids up from school or going on the excursion to the zoo.

Or it might be, I just want to sit on my own and read a book. Outsourcing your operations gives you back that time. 

And then the final thing that we’re going to look at Is [00:13:00] outsourcing your operations increases revenue. It gives you more money. Now it’s a little bit backwards because hang on, I have to pay somebody to run my operations.

So how is that making me more money? It sounds like it’s just costing me money, but it is about the kind of person that you bring in. So not only will you be saving time and you’ve got space, but what you do with that space and time generally is going to grow your business. Because even if you don’t make anything new, you’re going to be refreshed.

You’re going to have a whole new outlook on things. It’s not going to be a drag. You’ll start to remember why you did this. You’ll have more ideas. You’ll have more joy. That breeds revenue. 

But aside from that, you also have someone who is highly skilled, who can see the gaps. So when I was saying before, that if you’re running your own operations in a big business, it’s a [00:14:00] little bit haphazard.

There’s a lot going on and you’re just trying to get through it all so that you can get to do what you really want to do. You’re not looking at operations. As a strategically. Looking at operations strategically means looking at the system as a whole. Looking at what’s actually happening and the way that it happens and if it’s happening to the best of its ability.

And It’s identifying any gaps or any opportunities. So if you think about someone whose role is only operations, if they’re good at their job and they enjoy what they’re doing, they are going to start seeing ways to improve. They are going to start seeing things that you will have missed. Hey, we have customers that always ask this question.

Maybe we can send them a video once they buy this product and it explains it. And then maybe We can, instead of following people up when it’s time [00:15:00] to reorder, we can set up automations. Or, at this point in time, this is when people drop off and we stop hearing from them. Maybe we can put something in place.

To get them back to being engaged. Oh, I’ve noticed that when we do this kind of promotion, we get lots of inquiries. I’m getting lots of emails. so There’s all these things that can happen because somebody is in it. And when you’re in something every day and you can see it, you start, you notice when something changes.

If something is different, even if it’s little, you’ll see it because that Is your responsibility. That’s what you’re saying. It’s what you live and you breathe. That’s your role in that organisation. It is not just something where you tick the box and you move on. You tick the box and you move on. It becomes its own goal in a way.

And that’s what gets missed when you’re trying to do operations with everything else. And so you miss the opportunities. To increase client experience, [00:16:00] to make recurring sales, to see gaps in your market that are quite obvious if you’re doing it. To create new systems and build in better efficiency.

You can’t do all of that when operations is just a little bit of your job and the thing you need to get through. I also had a client and they said, no, no, we’ll just give, all the admin stuff to this person. And I was just dumbfounded. I was just like, but how? That person already has a full time role.

They are already stretched so thin. How are they going to take all of this stuff on? And from the client’s perspective, it was just admin stuff. It’s fine. Handed it all over to the person and I got a phone call saying, How am I meant to do all of this stuff? There’s heaps. And I said, I know. And I don’t know how you’re going to do it, because the expectation was unrealistic.

Because even though we can see something as just [00:17:00] admin, it doesn’t end up being that. And if you treat it as just admin, with no objectives around it, and you don’t fully see the role of it within the system. It does become just admin, and it gets done poorly, or not at all. But do it right, and have someone being the glue of everything that happens, and you’ll actually start to get benefit.

And you’ll start to see the revenue from it.

That is how outsourcing your operations. can help you grow your business. It will help you, it will help give you space, time and money. I really hope you’re enjoying this content. If you are, please hop over to whatever platform you are listening to this on and leave me a five star review. That is how other people find this podcast and how I know you’re actually enjoying it.

And if you’ve got questions, send them through. You will find us at [00:18:00] Audacious Empires pretty much everywhere. You can go to audaciousempires.com. And send your questions through, and I will answer it. Thanks so much, everybody. 

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Ep 3 How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

 [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello. [00:01:00] Thanks for joining me this week on the next episode of the Audacious Empires podcast. I am Leanne Woff and I am super excited to be talking to you about outsourcing. Today we are chatting all things how can outsourcing your operations help you grow your business. Let’s get stuck 

Firstly, We need to set some context around what we mean by outsourcing. So there’s lots of different ways that you can outsource and everything that I talk about in this episode can also be applied to an internal team, if you’ve got an internal team. But when we’re looking at outsourcing, I am not talking about outsourcing to a junior assistant.

I’m talking about outsourcing to an online business manager, a business integrator, an operations consultant, an ops manager, someone who is highly skilled and highly trained.[00:02:00] Because the things that I’m going to talk to you about, a junior will not be able to support you in. So I just wanted to give you that context first.

Alright, the second thing. Is. A question that I get asked a lot is can you really outsource your operations? It’s a day to day function. There are lots of moving parts. How can somebody who is external to a business be that involved in the business? The answer is yes. And I know that it’s possible because I’ve been in that role so many times and there’s not been an issue.

It just might seem a little bit unfamiliar if you’ve not done it before. So, I Want to tell you a little story. I was chatting with a new lead a few weeks ago, and they said to me, I know that I need help, but I just [00:03:00] can’t wrap my head around how you can outsource operations. And so we had a conversation about what it could look like, and what the term operations means.

And how everybody has their own definition. There are a lot of things that happen within a business and majority of them fall into operations. If it is the process of getting something done, usually it’s an operational thing. And when you haven’t seen it as an isolated piece, It can be hard for you to picture what it really means.

And so I spoke to this lead and I explained, you know, when we work with businesses, we come in, we set up all of the systems because we are virtual. So although you might not know how it would work communication wise, we do. And so we do things like we use project management tools and we [00:04:00] have set meetings and we have.

 Different ways that we can chat for different things. So whether that’s WhatsApp or Slack or Voxer to remove roadblocks quickly, we set up the reporting and the job distribution in a certain way so that we can see when things are on track, off track, at risk, like really clearly, all based on what the business’s goals are.

So when you’re treating operations as its own thing, it then has a whole new goal. It’s not just something that happens by accident because it has to happen in your business. And after that When I was chatting to this lead, they were very much okay, got it. I think I’ve wrapped my head around it.

She believed me. It could actually be done. Total one. And then she said, I think it is just, I’m scared. I’ve not done it before and I just need to start somewhere. And so [00:05:00] if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, that’s me. By the end of this episode, I hope that you have a little bit more understanding.

On why that risk is worth taking, because I know it’s not one that you can make lightly. It’s your business and you’re invested. I’m going to walk you through three main ways outsourcing your operations helps grow your business. The three ways are space, time and money. No matter how many conversations I have with people.

When they’re looking at outsourcing anything, it always comes down to, at the root of it all, they need more space, they need more time, or they need more money. Or maybe they don’t need it, but that’s what they want. It’s about growth in those areas. And outsourcing your operations will give you those.

 Let’s break each one down. So how can outsourcing your operations give you more space? When you are running operations [00:06:00] yourself, It can be very overwhelming. Now, like I said before, managing operations, there is a lot going on. It does not, it’s no small feat managing a, seven figure business.

There’s never just a handful of components and we’re good. Things tend to be complex. They might not be complicated, but complex. And that is okay. But it means it takes a lot of energy and Thought to keep operations going, let alone to improve them. And so when you’re in this space of running around and keeping things turning and just giving your team what they need so they can keep going so that you’re not the bottleneck, you lose your space.

You lose Your air and your freedom. And can I tell you, when you’re in a state of overwhelm or lots of things coming at you from all different directions, your [00:07:00] brain can’t process properly. I’ve seen that time and time again, when clients are overloaded and they actually can’t process what I’m saying.

And I will end a call and then I’ll talk to my team and say, we’re going to have this conversation again in a couple of days, because there’s no way. That they’re going to remember that we just had that conversation and that’s the decision that they make. And I’m right. Every time. Because that’s what overwhelm does.

If you’re stretched too thin, your brain just can’t keep up. That’s just being a human. And that’s okay. But the consequence of that is, you lose. All of the ooey gooey good stuff, the reasons that you started this business, the ideas that you have, the goals that now seem so far away because you just cannot reach them.

 You keep getting bogged down by everybody else and having to keep the day to day moving forward. How does outsourcing your operations give you more space? Outsourcing your operations removes that overwhelm.[00:08:00] There is somebody else now who becomes that pivotal person where everybody will come to that person and throw things at them.

They become, the first point of contact, the first person when there is a problem, the fixer, the gatekeeper. That’s what your ops person becomes. So it’s not you anymore. And it creates brain space. Now brain space breathes.  Creativity, which is where the magic happens. It’s that space that allows you to innovate.

It’s that space that allows you to do the deep thinking and build your business. To be able to differentiate from composition, to be able to reach those goals, to remember the impact that you want to make, and create plans to get there. That’s what space gives you. And so outsourcing your operations removes all the noise so that you can have that space.

Okay, so the next thing. Outsourcing your operations will give you back more [00:09:00] time. Time is a little bit different to space. And something that you may know is that operations are a massive time suck. And I say that because quite often we don’t see the direct outcome. From operations as a whole. We might spend X amount of time answering 5 customer enquiries.

You answer them because it’s part of the process and it has to be done. You don’t want to ignore people. But right then, when you’re doing it, all you’re thinking about is, I need to get this done. And you don’t then correlate that to the 3 sales that you make in a month because you sent those 5 emails.

So we don’t see that immediate response, or the benefit, we see it as admin and a cost. Which it is a cost, but it’s a cost with a benefit. And there is, like, there’s measurable benefit from that. Okay, 

if you have some time back let’s take away All of that coordination, tasking. So when you’re [00:10:00] looking at your business as a whole and you’re trying to make sure the machine is running in all of the right areas, there’s two components. One is you’re trying to make sure it’s humming along. So that means every area has what it’s, what it needs to do its job and is progressing along the right pathway.

So that’s the first thing. Let’s think about how much time that might take us. And then the second thing is the troubleshooting. I guarantee you all of those cogs are not going to spin with a zero issues, 100 percent of the time. The cogs will not spin with zero issues, 100 percent of the time. It’s not possible because you’re relying on technology.

You’re relying on people and neither of those things are 100 percent perfect.

When we’re looking at operations and the amount of time it takes, you’ve now got two massive jobs to [00:11:00] do. Let’s pull that away. What if there was somebody else who was monitoring your operations, all of those cogs, all of the tools, all of the people, all of the resources, and making sure They’re running as they should and tracking to their goals.

I think what you’d find is you get a whole lot more time back. And it might be time that you don’t even realise you’re spending right now. I know when we were working with one client, we started working with them and we calculated how much time they were spending in operations. And it was like five hours a day or something ridiculous.

Like it was so big and it was all of the haphazard, oh gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. They had a big business and They just felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. Their business was successful, but they were working hard. And when we came in and we saw that, we reduced that down to [00:12:00] their admin time being half an hour a day.

From five hours a day to half an hour. Purely because that’s what we do every day. And there was somebody else who could deal with a lot of those things. It did not have to be them. What happened with that time? This is the beauty of getting time back, right? You get to focus on high value tasks. You get to be CEO.

You get to innovate. You get to go and speak more. You get to be on more podcasts. Or you get to create your own podcast. All of those things that you’ve been wanting to tick off that you never have enough time for, you get to have back. And it might not even be business related. It might be picking kids up from school or going on the excursion to the zoo.

Or it might be, I just want to sit on my own and read a book. Outsourcing your operations gives you back that time. 

And then the final thing that we’re going to look at Is [00:13:00] outsourcing your operations increases revenue. It gives you more money. Now it’s a little bit backwards because hang on, I have to pay somebody to run my operations.

So how is that making me more money? It sounds like it’s just costing me money, but it is about the kind of person that you bring in. So not only will you be saving time and you’ve got space, but what you do with that space and time generally is going to grow your business. Because even if you don’t make anything new, you’re going to be refreshed.

You’re going to have a whole new outlook on things. It’s not going to be a drag. You’ll start to remember why you did this. You’ll have more ideas. You’ll have more joy. That breeds revenue. 

But aside from that, you also have someone who is highly skilled, who can see the gaps. So when I was saying before, that if you’re running your own operations in a big business, it’s a [00:14:00] little bit haphazard.

There’s a lot going on and you’re just trying to get through it all so that you can get to do what you really want to do. You’re not looking at operations. As a strategically. Looking at operations strategically means looking at the system as a whole. Looking at what’s actually happening and the way that it happens and if it’s happening to the best of its ability.

And It’s identifying any gaps or any opportunities. So if you think about someone whose role is only operations, if they’re good at their job and they enjoy what they’re doing, they are going to start seeing ways to improve. They are going to start seeing things that you will have missed. Hey, we have customers that always ask this question.

Maybe we can send them a video once they buy this product and it explains it. And then maybe We can, instead of following people up when it’s time [00:15:00] to reorder, we can set up automations. Or, at this point in time, this is when people drop off and we stop hearing from them. Maybe we can put something in place.

To get them back to being engaged. Oh, I’ve noticed that when we do this kind of promotion, we get lots of inquiries. I’m getting lots of emails. so There’s all these things that can happen because somebody is in it. And when you’re in something every day and you can see it, you start, you notice when something changes.

If something is different, even if it’s little, you’ll see it because that Is your responsibility. That’s what you’re saying. It’s what you live and you breathe. That’s your role in that organisation. It is not just something where you tick the box and you move on. You tick the box and you move on. It becomes its own goal in a way.

And that’s what gets missed when you’re trying to do operations with everything else. And so you miss the opportunities. To increase client experience, [00:16:00] to make recurring sales, to see gaps in your market that are quite obvious if you’re doing it. To create new systems and build in better efficiency.

You can’t do all of that when operations is just a little bit of your job and the thing you need to get through. I also had a client and they said, no, no, we’ll just give, all the admin stuff to this person. And I was just dumbfounded. I was just like, but how? That person already has a full time role.

They are already stretched so thin. How are they going to take all of this stuff on? And from the client’s perspective, it was just admin stuff. It’s fine. Handed it all over to the person and I got a phone call saying, How am I meant to do all of this stuff? There’s heaps. And I said, I know. And I don’t know how you’re going to do it, because the expectation was unrealistic.

Because even though we can see something as just [00:17:00] admin, it doesn’t end up being that. And if you treat it as just admin, with no objectives around it, and you don’t fully see the role of it within the system. It does become just admin, and it gets done poorly, or not at all. But do it right, and have someone being the glue of everything that happens, and you’ll actually start to get benefit.

And you’ll start to see the revenue from it.

That is how outsourcing your operations. can help you grow your business. It will help you, it will help give you space, time and money. I really hope you’re enjoying this content. If you are, please hop over to whatever platform you are listening to this on and leave me a five star review. That is how other people find this podcast and how I know you’re actually enjoying it.

And if you’ve got questions, send them through. You will find us at [00:18:00] Audacious Empires pretty much everywhere. You can go to audaciousempires.com. And send your questions through, and I will answer it. Thanks so much, everybody. 

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