Suzanne Chadwick
Welcome to the brand builders lab podcast. I'm your host Chadwick certified business and mindset coach, author and speaker each week we'll be talking about simple but powerful business and mindset strategies that will help you build a lean clean and profitable business so you can learn to get out of your own way and pay yourself more more. Forget average, it's time to level up. Welcome back. We are here for another week and I am speaking to one of my faves. Leanne has been a client of mine, I want to say for like a good seven years. She has been at my conferences, she was in BBA. She is in amplify. We have just been working together for a long time. And I love her. She's amazing. So I'm excited to have her on the podcast today. And she is one talented and incredible individuals. So if you do not know, Leanne Wolf, I call her the queen of Biz Ops. Yeah, she's like the queen of IBM's, Queen of business operations. She is the founder of audacious empires. She's also an online business manager and integrator. So she's got a team that work with seven, multi six, seven and eight figure business owners to be their operation team in the back end. She's also an OBM coach, and is the creator of OBMA Academy. So if you're an OBM, and you want to learn how to become an operations queen, she is an amazing person to learn from Leanne and her team have quickly become known as the empire builders, secret weapon delivering and implementing advanced and cutting edge business strategies and systems for their clients to achieve next level growth and operational excellence. Leanne is on a mission to not only transform the way online businesses are run, but she's here to support the growth skills upgrade and earning potential of OBM and the industry as a whole. So like I said, she's amazing. And did I happen to mention she's also got like, six kids. She is one person to listen to when it comes to things running smoothly, being organized, having great systems and operations, because she not only needs it in our business, but she needs it in her life as well. So today, we're going to be talking about the three core elements of building next level operational excellence in your business, she's going to share some of the things that she works with her clients on. And I think as business owners, and I am going to say it, I know that a lot of business owners struggle with this, like how to get the operations in their business working well. But the thing is, and we'll talk about this today is that when you get the operations and the system's working well, it helps you have a bigger impact, it helps you get more time back in your business, and helps you to do the things that you really want to do. So it is a skill that we need to develop. And then we also need to learn to outsource it to so that we can stay in our zone of genius and do the things that we really want. So I am excited to share this episode with you. Lian goes into a lot of different areas, while the three different areas but within that what you need to be thinking about when it comes to building a business that runs the way that you want, and does what you want so you can have the impact that you want. So listen, without further ado, let's dive into this week's episode. Leanne, welcome back to the brand builders lab podcast.

Leanne Woff
How you going?aeaaaeOh, so good. I'm so good. We were just doing a quick little search because you were our guest Episode 90, which is like 200 and something or two episodes ago, talking about creating a killer launch plan. I love it. I always do love to have my faves back on the podcast, talking about what we're talking about now, which is mastering your business operations using three core levers or levers whatever you say in your business, but listen for my audience who may not know you. Tell us a little bit about you.

A little bit about me but thanks for calling me one of your faves. Number one this is I'm gonna carry that for the rest of my life. Hello, I am behind the business scenes a mom of six children and I'm very busy. I'm very much an extrovert. I love to people people come first which then flows into what I do in the business world, which is supporting people. So whether that is CEOs who are looking to outsource their operations, or if that or whether that is online business managers and teaching them how to build wildly profitable businesses, you will find me in both bases.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, I love that. And when I think about you, I think about you're like the queen of operational excellence, that's kind of what I think about, you teach people how to be amazing at it. So like in your OBM Academy, and supporting OBMs, to run really great businesses that, you know, have operational excellence in them. And then when I think about the clients that you've worked with, which are like, you know, multi 678 figure business owners, who get you to run the back end of their business, run their operations. So I just kind of feel like when I think about ops, I think about you,

Leanne Woff
ah, that's really, really great alignment. One thing

Suzanne Chadwick
that was really interesting, I was listening to somebody the other day talking about branding, and it was, he said, Ask, like five people around you, what they think of when they think of you like, what did what did they think that your brand stands for? And and I just think that yeah, so when I think about you, I do think about operational excellence. I think that you are the mistress. I was gonna say, the master, but you're not that the mistress of managing, like lots of moving pieces. I think that operations in a business, there's so many different elements. And I know you and your team are just quite amazing at understanding it, decoding it. And, you know, I guess not simplifying, because sometimes it can be hard to simplify so much, so much that's going on. But yeah, just making it easier for people to understand how it fits together.

Leanne Woff
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that it's the difference between complicated and complex. But we don't want anything to be complicated. It's okay, if something is complex, as long as you understand it. And I think that that's where we thrive. We're great with complex. And I think that stems from having worked with so many brands, that multi brand businesses, and you know, some of the clients that we've worked with majority will have at least two brands, but some of them have four or five. And that's a lot of moving pieces.

Suzanne Chadwick
I think this is one of the biggest issues for a lot of business owners is that coming to your business, and you've got this dream of doing the thing that you do, like being, you know, being in your zone of genius, being the face of the business, you know, doing the work that you love, and there's this huge piece that sits behind it, that before you get into business, you really don't understand that you're going to have to manage. And I think that that's where a lot of people struggle in setting up something that works well, but then managing it through growth as well.

Leanne Woff
Yes, 100%. And I think too, it is one of those things that people kind of, they push it to the side, because they get into it, they want to do what they want to be doing. They want to be creating their big impact. They don't want to be doing the operations, they don't want to be doing the day to day or the admin or the things that they didn't know existed. And then it gets pushed to the side. And it's treated as kind of like just a cost impact on a business. And something that I've been thinking more about is what if people slipped it? And instead of operations being the bottom of the chain and being a cost? How can you do operations better so that it actually becomes an asset. And a lot of that starts with the positioning. So it is more seeing it as its own? It's like its own entity within your business is operations and how can we get more from this business function so that it is contributing to the growth to the finances to the people like that's what it's there for. But if you're just doing it haphazardly, because you didn't know it was a thing. You won't even know that you can do that.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, and I love that because for me, I just think if the business operations is running smoothly, if it's automated, if it's systemize, if there's processes which we're going to talk about as well, if if we've kind of got that humming then it makes the business growth easier, makes marketing easier. It makes you know, you becoming known and building your brand and all the rest of it easier, because it's working for you. I actually see operations as the machine that's working for you, as you're trying to build everything else that you're wanting to create in your business, selling your products being known all the rest making money, like if the opposite is not working, all of those things are going to be really, really hard to do.

Leanne Woff
Yes, yes. And then your audience feels it. Like when you try and sell anything. And when you try and even deliver products, if your operations aren't working the way that they should people feel the disconnect. And that actually changes the response to things you get. So it's not a big, like, nothing doesn't necessarily have to be a big fix. But the impact if it's done wrong, can be big.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah. And you're operating like the, the way that your operations and the back end of your business run is basically going to deliver your brand experience. Like that's how I think about it as a branding person. I'm just like, if I can't buy from you, if I get the wrong links, emails, like all of that is brand experience, like so while somebody is not thinking about the back end of your business, it's kind of like, I'm not feeling good as a customer. If your business doesn't work well, and it's hard for me to do what I'm trying to do with you.

Leanne Woff
Yes. And it flows through from like, you know, the start of the journey, or tweet all the way to the end, because there's someone's landing, and they're looking, and they're investigating who you are, and whether they want to work with you, or whether they want to buy from you. And they can't find what they want. They're frustrated, or if they're finding it clunky, or they don't know how to contact you, either or things that people go, okay, that's one thing. But what does that mean? It's like, they infer knowledge from it. And they go, if this is how it is, now, I haven't even paid any money. What happens when I actually enroll, and that process might be super slow. Or once I buy the product, it might be amazing, but because I've already kind of extrapolated what's happened across all of a sudden, I'm weary, and I'm waiting for something to break.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah. It sets the wrong kind of tone, I think. Yeah. And I mean, it does take time, it takes time to kind of make it all harm and that but I think, you know, I was even talking about on a coaching call this morning. It's just about Ken being somebody who's conscious of continually improving what's working in the business, and it doesn't have to be big. It's that marginal gains, it's the 1%. You know, it's like, how do we make this better? Or how do we make that flow better. And I remember years ago, I think when I started my business, one of the things I heard or whatever, from somebody that I listened to, is the onboarding experience that somebody gets when they start working with you can almost make or break or break a relationship from the start. And so when you create a really strong onboarding process, it, it really instills massive confidence in the person that they've just made a good buying decision. And so for me, that was something I spent a lot of time on where I'm like, okay, so when somebody buys, they get the email, they get the page, they then get their contract, like it's all automated, it all flows. And I've had a couple of clients that are like, Oh, my God, that's so slick, like, Can we do that in my business? And I'm like, Yeah, we did that in our business. But I think it's just I think, just don't underestimate the power of having really slick systems and back ends because it really does impact your brand experience your customers trust and confidence in you, like before you've even started working together as well. So I'm excited to dive into the three core areas that you feel can really help us to look at what we need to do better, and make some of those, you know, either bigger impact or those marginal gains to make our business run in the way that's going to help us to grow and give our customers the brand experience we want. So let's dive in Leann didn't

Leanne Woff
say when we're when we're looking at trying to get our operations to run better and to run with purpose, we have to understand what underpins it all. And the thing that really makes operations Excel is when every resource in your business is cohesively contributing to your big, big impact goals to the best of their capability. Now, what that means is you've got all different kinds of resources in your business, you've got people, you've got technology, you've got processes. You've got an audience, and you've got this big, big goal, like there is a reason that you started this business, whatever it is, and a lot of the people that I work with, it's not a financial one, they want to make some kind of change and want to make some kind of impact. And the thing that will really get the most out of your operations is if every resource understand how they contribute to that impact, because it gives them something to anchor it into. And then it also gives you the ability to measure things against. So it becomes purposeful. And then when we're looking at how do we create that? Well, we need we need our operations to run as a system, when we apply systems thinking, which is very interesting, in my opinion, but I'm a bit geeky, though, we love it. Let's go check it out. So if we're looking at things as a system, we've got school system, we've got all these cogs, so pretend you're an engineer for 57 seconds. And each one of your functions is a cog, each thing in your business is a clock, and you want all these cogs working towards your big impact. When you're applying systems thinking, you are doing two things. The first is you're looking at each clock. And the second thing is you're stepping back and you're looking at the system as a whole. So what does this what happens when this cog turns? What does it impact? What happens if it doesn't turn properly? Then what does it impact that systems thinking? If you can nail those things, and you can apply people process technology at a system level, all working towards one objective, your operations will run smoothly. And there are three main areas where you can kind of tweak to get that system running properly. And so those are your people, your technology and your processes.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yep. Before we dive in, I just want to ask you, for people who are like, I know this might sound really basic, but I also just think that I think that, you know, things are not always obvious to people. So when we talk about the systems in our business and the operations in our business, like give me the specific things like what, what are you working on? What are the things you're looking at when you're taking on a client? And you're looking at their operations? What exactly what exactly are you looking at?

Leanne Woff
So for us, we're looking at the day to day advert, we're looking at customer inquiries, we're looking at your client experience, we're looking at your marketing operations and flows, we're looking at funnels, we're looking at your text, so your CRM, your automation, what's going on in here, and we're looking to at the strategic side, so we're looking at what is the plan that, like, all of these things need to work towards, to then be able to progress them. So it's making all the touch points in your business, whether it's internal or external, smooth.

Suzanne Chadwick
That's what we're looking at. I love that. Because the other thing is, is as business owner, when this is maybe not your zone of genius, it can be hard to look at that objectively, and actually understand how it all works together. And so I think that, you know, having somebody that can help you with that, or spending time understanding and learning that, you know, especially like if you're in the first few years of your business, or whatever it is, and then you're wanting to grow. I think this is actually a really critical area for people. It's like, you've got to understand your money, you've got to understand your messaging and your marketing, all the rest of it. And Ops is like something that you've got to spend time making better or getting help with because there are so many moving pieces, especially if you're an online business. I'm just like the number of tech things that I have. Like I find it and I'm techie and I I consider myself slightly techie, I find it overwhelming.

Leanne Woff
Yeah. And I think too, it's the concept of just two little things. So if you can improve little things as you go, particularly in operations, then you're gonna end up with more cohesion. Whereas if you kind of just haphazardly shove a system in a whole system, but don't set it up quite properly, or have bits that are hanging off here, there and everywhere. You actually end up making more mess and it's harder to fix later. Whereas if you try to keep things more simple at the start and then build up Mmm. And do things well from the beginning. That won't be an issue later.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's start with so people as people are first lever,

Leanne Woff
yes, people is our first lever. That's gonna be the grand debate, is it lever? Or is the lever? But does it depend what country you're in?

Suzanne Chadwick
Tomato tomahto. All right.

Leanne Woff
All right. So when I'm looking at your people, what we're wanting to achieve here is to have the right people in the right seat at the right time. So this couldn't be one person, like, sometimes it's just you at the start, and that's fine, then you kind of look at, okay, eventually, what do we want this to look at? And we might add one person, two people. Or you might have a whole team and it's making sure that everybody there is working to the best of their ability. And so how do we achieve that? When we're looking at this, what we're wanting is to review each person and their role. And are they crystal clear about what their role is, and how it contributes to the impact we want to make in the world. Because if they have that, there's less friction in them moving through and getting the job done. They also tend to be a lot happier, because they know their place, and they know that they're working towards something that is bigger than them. So reviewing roles and responsibilities is always something that we kind of do First up, and it seems very, almost corporate, but it doesn't have to be done to this big monstrous degree. It just has to be done to a degree where people know where their zone is. So that then they have creative freedom. That's the goal here. Because with creative freedom, we get innovation.

Suzanne Chadwick
I love. Yeah, good. Yeah. But I think that, uh, you know, I think one of the things that I hear a lot is, people are scared to bring on somebody into their team, because maybe they're not great leaders, maybe they've not done it before, maybe because they don't understand exactly what needs to happen, they feel like ill equipped to bring somebody else on. And sometimes they feel like they need to know, in order to bring somebody else on which obviously, the purpose of bringing them on, is because they know more than you so that they could do a better job than you would,

Leanne Woff
yes, 100%. And it's it is 100, it is a fear that people have. But when you do have people who are invested, like your trust level will go up and you'll see what they're capable of. And it doesn't mean that the same person has to be in the same seat the whole time. Like you can move people, once that trust level grows in your art, this person is actually really capable at this type of thing. Let's give them that and watch them roll with it. It also comes hand in hand with the communication channels in your business. So who reports to who and you know, who are the people that sit alongside you that you can go and you can ask to brainstorm with or that you can ask for help or thoughts and ideas. It doesn't mean that you have to have no parameters around things like I know plenty of business owners who are with this thing. I want it to look this way. That's what you're working towards. But what we want to give people is the freedom to get there however they want. Because that's when they'll spark different ideas. And then they might come to you and go, Hey, I've been thinking, I know you want it to look this way. But what if it was this? And it might be something you've never thought of? And you just have gone? That's amazing.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, so I'll have some of that in full colors. Yeah, no, I love that. Because I think that I think that, you know, as designers is sometimes really hard to let go. Because it's our baby because we've probably been doing it ourselves for so long. And, you know, we we kind of feel like oh, for me to let this go feels really hard that but those are probably some of the most common things like here. Number one is, I don't know how to hire somebody, like how do I hire the right person, and maybe they've been burned before? And so they're like, I It's like they're telling themselves I can't do this, like I've done it before it didn't work, it failed. I you know, whatever it is, and then also, how do I let go and delegate like how do I not be a micromanager of this as well. So I think that there's a few things there that I know from my clients. Those are things that they've really struggled with finding good people, and then kind of entrusting them.

Leanne Woff
Yes, I see it all the time, it is the biggest objection when you're looking at onboarding, and OBM, or an integrator. And the way I've really found that I naturally resolve it is to explain my logic and rationality behind things. So I very much want to be yes, and people. So if a client was up to me, and they have a great idea, and it's great, and they want to do it right now, I will always say yes. And if we do that, this is what the impact will be. So the it is never a your business is not yours anymore, you are always still the top of the pyramid. But there are some things you may not be aware of. And so by sharing, hey, this is why I think we should do it this way. Or this is how I think we can get a better outcome, that reasoning, it often just gives my clients more confidence, because then they can see behind it, then they match what their logic is to my logic, and then they weigh it up. And so then it becomes still their choice. And it makes that easier, makes that trust barrier more manageable, because it's clear, there's visibility.

Suzanne Chadwick
But I also want to like touch on what you said a little while ago, which is like explaining what what the business does, what the vision is, all the rest of it, because sometimes we bring people in, and we just give them a task. And we don't actually, like tell them anything else. We don't give them the big picture. And I was listening to somebody on Tiktok, who I follow, who runs an agency, and I just really love she was talking, she said, we've got our quarterly team, like planning day. And I always start off with just reiterating what our vision is, what our mission is what we're here to do, you know, what's been going really well, what else? And I think just, you know, when you decide to take somebody on, just understanding that them feeling included, as well can really help with the cohesion and the onboarding and the and the trust building.

Leanne Woff
Yeah, yes. And because they feel like they're part of something like it's that whole human nurture piece, your people are people. And that's people when we're confused. Or when we feel like we don't have enough information, we get scared, and then we can't think properly, and then you're never gonna get the best result. Whereas if you know your place, it's like a child, when a child knows their place within a family, their confidence goes up, their security goes up, and then they develop, they don't have that they can't develop the same with your, your team. And it can be as simple as when you are briefing different people on your team, even if you're you know, outsourcing and design is giving them the context of the what and the why this is what we want done. And this is why we're doing it, because then they can see the flow on effects. And quite often when we have things like let's just pick a common scenario, if things are overdue, and we've always got somebody who never delivers on time. Usually it's because they don't understand the impact of them doing that. The second that they have that context, and you go every time you do that, it then means that we're not just one week, late were four weeks, because by the time it goes to these seven people, this is how long it takes. And you see their face change. But the second that you explain it, and it's purely because they didn't have that understanding. They didn't know their place in the system. And once they do the behavior changes.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, yeah. Love that. I think yeah, communicating to our team is something I need to do better as well.

Leanne Woff
I think we need to do it better. We get so busy and in our own heads and you know, moving through what we're doing, that we forget some of the things that are quite simple, but it's still something else that we have to do.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And people and as your business grows like people is such an important thing, like part of it that you've just got to really work out how do I become a better leader? Like, how do I become a better communicator? How can I become a better delegator? And I think even just having those thoughts, even though you may not be there yet, even though it might be something that's a work in progress, I think like anything that's like, well, how can I learn to become better at that? How can I ask them how they like to work, what motivates them, how they would like me to communicate so that they understand or those sorts of things and I think I've been curious as business owners, helps us to continuously get better as well, and

Leanne Woff
100%. And there's no shame in that, like we've added a business. And usually we're on our own. Like, this is not something that you just walk in knowing. And you want to learn and grow with them.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah. Love it. Oh, what else do we need to be thinking about?

Leanne Woff
So technology is one of my favorites, because I like to play and tinker and push things to their limits and all sorts. But I understand that majority of people are not really like that. And technology can be quite intimidating sometimes, especially when your business gets bigger and bigger. Because what you end up with is an accumulation of technology spaghetti. That was grown, if you didn't get that audible sound from Yes.

Suzanne Chadwick
It is so hard when you've got like, you've got all the different things like yes, talk to me more about this, because I'm just like, all the systems and I do love tech, I just don't like too much of it.

Leanne Woff
Yeah, yes, correct. Or you don't want to have to relearn everything all the time. Okay, so something that I teach my students in OBM Academy is to do a technology audit. And it's more about rather than looking at, what tools do I need, it's looking at the tools that we have, and why we have them. So if we can get more from the stuff we already have, our operations will run better, there will be less stuff, less spaghetti that we have to deal with. And what you want to do when you're doing this is list them all out. Like I have a spreadsheet of all my tools, and it is terrible. There is so many on there. And I know this one does this, and this one does that. And this one does that. And I've kind of accumulated them as I go. And then when I'm looking at my team, and they're saying to me, do you want to see this one or this one, when we do this one thing? Because they both do it? Like why do we have tools that do the same thing. And quite often, we just accumulate and we never reevaluate. But if we do that, we get a lot cleaner. And that's the purpose of this whole thing is look for where you have this duplication, because when there is duplication of something that a tool can do, there's then duplication of the time it takes to learn it, the amount of confusion over which tool when how who have how it connects with everything else. So it's like, the more that there are, the more complicated it gets. And we don't want complicated. Complex is okay, but not complicated. So we've got two tools don't exact same thing, mate ditch one, like, take the bullet, and migrate that over and just choose because what you'll also find is no tool is outstandingly more amazing than the other tools that do the same thing. They really, they're all built on the same premises, and there'll be different bits that you like better. And they might work a little bit better in different areas, but not enough to have two that do the same thing. So that's our first step is we want to review and kind of get rid of the noise and the cost and the costs.

Suzanne Chadwick
I think that's one of the things I think from a tech perspective, like that's especially at the end of financial year. I like I do have my spreadsheet as well with all of our tech, but from a cost perspective. So I know what my monthly charges are my monthly expenses on all that tech. And so I think at the end of last financial year, I was like, and we don't need these five things like I don't need an extra $200 coming out every single month or whatever it is, when we don't need these. So I think just staying on top of it from a just ease and declutter and also cost I think, yeah, it's so important to be on top of it.

Leanne Woff
Yeah, yeah. And then when you're looking at that, too, you've got to think about, again, your tech system as a whole. So we call it your digital ecosystem. And it's all the different tools that you have and how they connect with each other. And if there's any missing, because sometimes you can be missing one kind of tool, and it has a really big impact whether that means that other things are happening happening manually and you're losing heaps of time, whether it means you're not connecting things together properly. And then if they're not connected properly, things gonna break and you're losing efficiency. So we want to review our tools in combination with each other, to work out how they work best as a whole system. And that sometimes gives you the information of what tools you need to get input in and what ones you need to take. And remembering that our whole purpose here is to create cohesion, and ease. And if you've got a tech stack that all works together and is designed to be that way, the outcome will be a smoother process of smoother operation in general.

Suzanne Chadwick
Do you have any, I love the word tech stack, I find it so sexy. I'm like my tech stack. Like when you're in a business, and you've got quite a, like quite a few different technologies, you're doing the audits, like when things are quite close, when things are kind of really similar. How do you make decisions? Is it based on cost? Is it based on just make a decision? Just decide on which one? Like, how are you how do you write which are the best systems.

Leanne Woff
So for me, a lot of it has to do with it really depends on who I'm working with, if I'm honest, and how techie they are. So for instance, something that I know that I know about project management systems is you are either left brain or your right brain. And you're either going to want something that has lots of color and lots of boards or you're going to want to list and when you open different project management systems, depending on which one you are, you will get a certain feeling. So if you open Monday, you're gonna get absolutely amazing. And then you open asana and you start crying. I know love Asana, I love Asana. Asana is my favorite. I'm a unicorn that goes across the screen when I do something. What more could you want from life? Okay, but some people, they like Asana Get that away from me, I'm never opening it again. And the key to actually getting people to use these tools is if they feel like they can understand it, to some level when they go in. So one thing I look for is, how does this sit with you between two different tools, then yes, I will look at the cost. But I also look at the cost versus the benefit. So quite often, if you've, if you're using a certain level of tool, the costs are gonna be similar. So you don't really have to differentiate based on that. I will always say to people, but what do you actually need it to do? And what do you need it to do now? Because what I find is people accumulate tools for their potential capability, rather than what they're actually using them for. And so if you're looking at two similar ones, like if they're around the same price, it's what do you need it to do? And what is the most important thing you need it to do? Because each of these tools, some will do things a little bit better in some areas than the others will. And just because I've used so many different tools, I'm going to look at that tool and go okay, so if you want something that's going to connect with your website really easily, this one will do it, and you won't need Zapier, whereas if you stick with the other one, it's not going to, and then I know that when you you know, fast forward to email nurtures, you're going to have issues here, here and here. So looking at the functionality based on the rest, it's looking at cost compared to the comparisons, also how long the tool has been around. So a lot of people will move to a cheaper tool quite quickly, because it's Hey, it's cheap. But it doesn't have the infrastructure that you don't see, though. And what I mean by that is it's quite easy to tell if Okay, yeah, this tool, pens, emails, this tool will let me add contacts, this tool will integrate with my website. But what you don't see is the like the code that underpins that whole system, and whether it is clunky and how much effort it is to actually do those things. And so newer tools, they don't have the lead up that older tools do, because the oldest tools have been around for a long time and they've been built upon and built upon and built upon. And that's not to say that new tools are no good. It's just sometimes you have to wait for them to shop to operate as seamlessly as the other ones. So it's really dependent on what your purpose is. All that tool needs. Yes. What'd you do with it?

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, I think it's just having like that, that system in place, just to do that check in like, I just, I love digital cleanup. I love a digital audit, a digital cleanup. And I think it's just like knowing I think it's just not being ignorant to what's happening in your business and what you've got, what it does, and just maybe having those checkpoints where you're like, alright, you know, as we're planning for the year, let's actually take a look at what are we trying to do for the next 12 months? And what have we got? And is it working? Do we need to upgrade anything? Do we need to think about, like making it better? Or whatever it is, but yeah, yeah.

Leanne Woff
And I was looking for triggers. So I always look at Love Triggers, you know, different things. So what is the trigger? Leanne? Yeah, that's, that's where I was going. A trigger. So in this context, a trigger is something that provokes you to do something. So if you're aware of what your triggers are, when you're analyzing technology, it makes those checkpoints easier. So I know if my team says to me, hang on, is it this tool, this tool? That's a trigger? Why do we have two tools? And it's obviously causing confusion? What am I going to do about that? Or, Hey, we got another email from a customer saying they didn't get their order invoice. That's like the fifth one. That's a trigger? Is this still doing what we need it to do? So it's thinking about beforehand, so before you kind of get to them, listen for these kinds of things. Because you're not stuck with what you've got. And we can easily fall into, I'll just fix the problem for now. And we're good. But it's like, no, no, no, take that step back. Because the fix might be really simple. The other thing is to really look at, are you using the tools that you have to their capability? Because I know, you know, we sit kind of outside of business, but we're inside a business. So it's a fresh perspective of someone who works really closely inside your business. And when I see different tools, or and I look at the processes happening in conjunction with those tools, and the people that are using them, quite often I'll go hang on, why are we doing this, when we've got this tool that you already have that has this functionality that you could use to do that. And then that potentially means we can get rid of another tool, or it means that we can free up someone's time. So another thing to be conscious of is these tools have all these features for a reason. And if you can see the benefit for those features in your business, it's a great way to kind of explore how we can do things better, because you're paying for it anyway. So if we can kind of get more ROI from it by just that investigation. Sometimes the impact is amazing.

Suzanne Chadwick
What do you think about systems that try to do it all?

Leanne Woff
I don't think that that's the thing.

Suzanne Chadwick
Like there's there's a couple of like, I mean, it's may not be everything, but there's like ones where it's like, and where your calendar and where your courses and where your email and where you're like where it's like we basically do 52 things in one system.

Leanne Woff
Yeah. And so yes, there are there are many of those. And I really do believe there is no, there's no one room that will rule them all here in tech land, I believe that when a tool is released, usually it's released with a core function. And so let's take a CRM, there's so many different ones out there, or email marketing tools, there's so many of them. Usually, when they're first released, they do one thing, and they do it really well. And that's how they get the traction, then they start to add on other things, oh, we could do this. And we could do this. And we could do this. And so they build that out and they build that out. But it was never designed to do that in the first place. That was never the main objective. So that tool will always be really good and possibly so much better than its competitors at that central thing. And it can do the parallel things, but probably not as well as somebody else where that other thing was the main goal. So we've told that do it all. Yes, they will do it all. But some of the things inside will be amazing. And some of them will be kind of like a band aid solution. And so you've just got to be really conscious of that. And then when you're choosing a tool like that, consider what matters to you. Does how much control over when emails get sent and who to matter to you? Because some tools will let you pick exactly when how, who an email gets sent to. And some of them just says, No, we're going to send them at 11 o'clock every day regardless. So it's knowing kind of what you need from them to get the best out of them when you're choosing them. And what you're willing to settle for.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah, okay. All right, cool. What's the third lever?

Leanne Woff
The third is process, which a lot of people hear this word, and then they cry. Because it's boring. I want to kind of leave processes on its head a little bit. So everybody will talk about SOPs, standard operating procedures, and they see it as this 60 page, amazing document. And you need them you need business manuals, you need these in your business, or it's gonna die. It's a bit dramatic guys. And I actually think that, more often than not the second that you write an SOP, it's out of date. Because things move so quickly now. So what is the reason we have processes in our business? We have them so that there is an instruction on how to do certain things within the business, we do it for business continuity. So if somebody is sick, or somebody leaves, how do we replace these people. And a process is what it's the container that holds the different things that happen within your business. So whether that's automations, or a person sending emails, like the process, kind of hold that container. So how do we document something like that, without it being cumbersome, boring, and out of date, because what we don't want to do is spend a year just sitting there typing into a Word doc, what we do every day. And part of it comes from looking at processes. From that system perspective, this is when this kind of thing needs to happen. And once this thing has happened, this is what happens next. Because if you're building those linkages, the rest of it will, will fall in line. And even if you update it a little bit, it's still going to be that overarching flow that happens. And we can use all different kinds of tools to create processes that are easy to do. And so my favorite thing is saying to people, when you're doing something, if you know that it's something that you do more than once in your business, just move on while you do it. And just talk about it, like just exactly what you're doing. That's it, at least there is something there that has documented the current way of doing this thing. And then we want to have a continuous improvement mindset. So I'm really, really big on not just looking at things, when there is an issue. It's like, if you've got processes there and you kind of tweak something as you go, then put that note somewhere, hey, we're down doing that this this way. If you've got a process and you hand over the training to someone asked to watch it and ask them if that makes sense. Because quite often, too, we get so complacent. We're used to it. So we just go into autopilot. And we do it when there might be whole new ways to do things. And we've just never thought of it that way. Whereas if we can review things and improve things in a way where it's not like everybody down tools, we just do it as we go, yeah, you'll end up with really solid SOPs throughout your business, you'll end up with the clarity that people need to do their job and do it well. And then they all tie in together. Because if you've got your people your process new technology, like it fades off each other to create this system that works well and creates a seamless experience. And so that's what we want our processes to do. We want it to work with our technology and our people to get the job done and done well. And to make sure it's improving as we go. The other thing that we really need to consider when we're doing anything process wise, is particularly process design. So when we're thinking about how something should work is the human element. Because there is always this friction between the people and the technology and the level of automation that we bring in and what we don't want to do is over automate. And then you see, your clients feel that they don't feel like you're there anymore. They feel like they're just dealing with robots, or we've automated something. And although it can be automated and is good, we need to change it that often that it loses the purpose of being automated, that you should just do that manually if there's that many variations. And then what are the touch points that we need to be people centric? So how do we leverage the two together? Because then the flip side also is that we only do things manually. And then it's just not scalable. We want to use the best of both worlds. And sometimes that is just a you train. You see, it's that whole, let's let's test it and see if we, what reactions we get. What impact does it have? Does it have an impact on sales? Does it have an impact on complaints? Does all the technology break all of a sudden, there's lots of different things. And so it's finding that really nice balance between the two, and being open to the pull and tug and testing and trying that everything works together?

Suzanne Chadwick
Yeah. And I think empowering. Like if you're, if you've got somebody like in your team doing it, then empowering them to be responsible for this as well, I think is a good idea. So that it doesn't always have to sit on you. And also, you know, like, I like the continuous improvement, we use loom as well, just to record what we're doing when we're doing it. Yeah, and just having those things in place where somebody else can kind of go do that. Like, it doesn't always have to be doing that.

Leanne Woff
No, and I think too, we sometimes we don't record processes, because we think it has to be this finite thing that's going to last forever. And it's not like anything is better than nothing. And I think too, just being conscious of what you're doing it for. So at a really basic level of process can be really easy to document here is how you use Facebook scheduler. And then when you go up some more, and you kind of interject concepting and things like that into it, the more complex it gets that process planning gets longer. So how do we explain this? And in those kinds of processes, you want to explain why you've made the decisions you've made, why you think why you're doing what you're doing. It's less about what your tactic doing. Rather, it's more about the thought process behind it. And so various videos can just sound like somebody who's just jibber jabbering, but it's actually really important information for somebody then to be able to take it and do the job. Yeah, so it's knowing what the purpose of your process is to, and who is on the other end, that's going to listen to it. So that way, it's then targeted, and then that gets updated as you go to.

Suzanne Chadwick
And I think just using like, from a process perspective, I think using things like loom videos as well can be so helpful when you might be onboarding somebody new, or you're just trying to, like train up somebody to do something specific so that if they've done something, and it's not what you wanted, then also going back and instead of saying no, that's not right, you can actually then like potentially do a loan video and just saying, like, this bit here is great. But this, what I would really like is this, and this is why I want it this way. And, and so I think that, you know, within the development of processes within the business within the developing of people. You know, being a great communicator, I think that that's a really amazing tool and an amazing way to give feedback as well. So that when you're trying to get a process to where you want it to be and working well, there might be a few iterations that you have to go through. But explaining why you want it that way and explaining what you're looking for and what you expect or whatever it is. I think that's that's part of that process development as well.

Leanne Woff
100% No, I do it in my business is I'll do something and I'll record it and then I'll make notes and I'll hand it over to say club and say yeah, you do it now. And she knows that that's my lens. I've done it with my lens. And so she'll get stuck. Like usually if it's the first time we're doing something, if it's complicated, she'll get stuck and she'll say, Hey, what happened in here? And I'll say, Oh, you do this and this and she's like, okay, that's not in there. And that's because it's something that I just automatically know or do. But I haven't actually said it. And so having somebody else who's not in your head, look at it and do it helps you improve it so quickly, because you just get all of the obvious gets gone.

Suzanne Chadwick
Yes. And the first thing I thought of was like clients in the past have been like, they just didn't do it the way I wanted. And I was like, did you communicate how you wanted it? And did you go into depth? And did you actually spend time? Like explaining why and how and all the rest of it? Yeah, because when you do that work up front as well, then it saves you time, because they'll, they'll get it sooner, like they'll understand what you're trying to do sooner as well. So I think that, you know, yeah, it's just such an important thing. When everything's in our brains, when everything's in our head, to be able to document it recorded, communicate, it just kind of makes everything else work so much better.

Leanne Woff
100%. And it shows us to where our lack of clarity comes from. Sometimes we don't really know how we want it or and that's why it's not in the process.

Suzanne Chadwick
I know I feel for my VA. She's like, What do you want to do here? I'm like, I have no idea. I have no, I have not made that decision. I have not thought that through. And then I've got to like, go and figure that out, and then come back. But yeah, yeah.

Leanne Woff
But if it helps to, then I know that sometimes, you know, I'll do that and go, I don't know. And then someone will come back to me and they go, Well, you can do it this way. Or you can do it this way. Which one do you like better? That makes it easy for me? I'm good. Yep, that way. Let's try that.

Suzanne Chadwick
So good. So good. Leann. I like that I think those are three core things, the people the technology and the process. I think one of the big things that I've sort of taken away from this as well is knowing like knowing what I like what I want, and I'm trying to communicate that as well. Because unless you know what you want, then you can't decide what technology you want. And then release, you know what you want. You can't figure out what the processes are. And like, I just kind of think I know this is hard, because we're all going we don't know what we want. That's the first hurdle. Yep. But having some sort of vision or having some sort of, okay, we want our business to do this. And then you can be like, Okay, so these are the people we need, these are the systems we need. These are the processes that we need in order to achieve that goal. So I think that if we can get clear on what we're trying to achieve, I think all the rest can then work. Like we said, at the very beginning, it can be working for you to help you actually get there in the end. Yes. Love it. Amazing. Awesome. So Leann, for my listeners, if they want to come and check you out, where are the best places for them to do that?

Leanne Woff
So probably Instagram, you can add audacious empires, you can book Leanne Woff. And if you follow those handles anywhere, you'll find us anyway.

Suzanne Chadwick
Fantastic, and who are the main types of clients that you work with?

Leanne Woff
So I work with multi 678 figure CEOs who really want to capitalize on their operations and who wants to step away from those and back into their zone of genius so that they can be the growth catalyst instead of the bottleneck. And OBM's who want to really know the insights of how I built my OBM business, and become a badass OBM who can do things at the next level.

Suzanne Chadwick
Amazing. I love it. So so good. Leanne is the best in the biz. So if you need any help on those, then make sure you go and check her out. But thanks so much for coming on and getting geeky with us. We love it.

Leanne Woff
Thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Suzanne Chadwick
We will have all of the ads links in the show notes as well, and we'll see you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai