Ever found yourself aboard the 'hot mess express' of business operations? Fear not, because I'm here to guide you through the wilderness of workflow chaos with actionable insights and personal tales from the trenches of entrepreneurship. Today, we delve into the transformative power of streamlining your company's inner workings, highlighting the critical role that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) play in reclaiming the time and freedom that fueled your entrepreneurial fire. Join me as I recount the tale of my own podcast production journey – a path fraught with bottlenecks and blunders – and the game-changing impact of tools like Buzzsprout and Riverside that helped me turn the page.
Strap in for an episode that's all about proactive planning for growth and the smart application of software that can revolutionize the way you do business. Plus, I'm handing out a comprehensive operations audit, absolutely free, to help you perform a DIY audit that might just be the intervention your business needs. If words like 'efficiency' and 'optimization' get your heart racing, or if you're simply seeking a lifeline out of operational anarchy, you're in the right place. I'm ready to be your ally in this quest for seamless operations, so don't hesitate to reach out if you need some personalized guidance or if your own process puzzles seem insurmountable. Together, let's turn your business operations from a daunting maze into a well-oiled machine.
Ever found yourself aboard the 'hot mess express' of business operations? Fear not, because I'm here to guide you through the wilderness of workflow chaos with actionable insights and personal tales from the trenches of entrepreneurship. Today, we delve into the transformative power of streamlining your company's inner workings, highlighting the critical role that Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) play in reclaiming the time and freedom that fueled your entrepreneurial fire. Join me as I recount the tale of my own podcast production journey – a path fraught with bottlenecks and blunders – and the game-changing impact of tools like Buzzsprout and Riverside that helped me turn the page.
Strap in for an episode that's all about proactive planning for growth and the smart application of software that can revolutionize the way you do business. Plus, I'm handing out a comprehensive operations audit, absolutely free, to help you perform a DIY audit that might just be the intervention your business needs. If words like 'efficiency' and 'optimization' get your heart racing, or if you're simply seeking a lifeline out of operational anarchy, you're in the right place. I'm ready to be your ally in this quest for seamless operations, so don't hesitate to reach out if you need some personalized guidance or if your own process puzzles seem insurmountable. Together, let's turn your business operations from a daunting maze into a well-oiled machine.
Hello, hello, amazing humans, welcome back to neurodivergent bites. I am your host, Karalee, and today we're going to be talking about operations. Okay, operations are essentially systems, all right, but I'm going to give you a definition of operations because that makes it so much easier to understand. Before I do that, though, are you someone that's literally like, in order to answer that question properly, to know if I know what it is like, can I know the definition? So, like you're Googling the definition to try to figure it out, or like you know which one sounds better, you're like why do you know the definitions, right? Okay, so if that's to you, that's so, totally me. Hello, nice to meet you, but anyway, the definition for operations that makes sense, okay, is the work of managing the inner workings of your business so it runs as efficiently as possible. So that's essentially what I'm thinking is called streamlined operations because it says it runs as efficiently as possible, and so we want our systems, the inner workings, all the things that we have going in our business that are moving pieces, to be running as efficiently as possible. Right, because when they're running as efficiently as possible, that means we're saving time, we're saving energy and we're able to do whatever the hell we want, right, and that's our goal.
Karalee Gault:
That's probably why you started your business, right? You wanted time and freedom, or financial freedom or you know whatever it is. Then there's more time and energy, right? So what happens in operations? Right, those are streamlined operations. That's ideally what happens is, when there are streamlined, right, we have that time and that freedom that we desire. Right, things are moving well, things are automated, everything feels good, right. But maybe that's not you, maybe that's not what the case is right now. Maybe things are a hot mess and you're like it's a hot mess express over here. I need to do something. I need to do something right, and that's okay.
Karalee Gault:
I have my first business, or I should say, when I first started my business, I started out as a virtual assistant and my business literally grew so fast. I grew to a small agency. There were three of us, and the bottom had fallen out of it because there were no systems. The operations were running on all. Everything was going through me, I was double checking everything, I was training everyone, I was doing everything, and so bringing on that virtual assistant to help actually just overloaded me. I could have probably gotten everything done faster had I done it myself, and so that's where having SOPs which I did a previous episode on that that's when having your operations, like actual softwares and different things figured out. That's when having all these things in place already before we start growing super fast or expanding our team, all right. So that is super important.
Karalee Gault:
When it comes to operations, so let's say, for example, your operations, like, there's certain spaces where they just things slow down significantly and you can see it. You're not really sure how to remedy it. I mean, you might know how, but, like right now, you're just like, this just takes forever. It's so slow, whatever that looks like, right. So this is going to be called a bottleneck, all right.
Karalee Gault:
And the definition of a bottleneck is a part of the process where things slow down significantly, okay. So a lot of times a bottleneck is a person, okay, and other times a bottleneck is parts of a process. There's a bottleneck in a part of the process. It means that we're seeing slow down significantly. So, for example, let's take this podcast recording as an example, right. So recording is super simple for me. I have to do it. You have to hear my voice, you have to see my face If you're on YouTube, right, like you see these things right. So I have to do this part and honestly, it's the fastest part of the entire process because it's a lot of fun and I like to do it right.
Karalee Gault:
But then let's say, like things start slowing down significantly in the editing process, in the uploading process. Why? Why do those things slow down? It could be a person, that's the reason they slow down, or it could be the software. So what has happened is because that's what was happening to me. I'm giving you a real life. Let's streamline an operation. That's what was happening to me.
Karalee Gault:
Things were slowing down significantly just from recording, because I didn't have the proper software to record it. It kept cutting things off, it wasn't clear audio, like you name it, all those things Okay, it just was not working efficiently. So I was like I am, I've got to figure out something else. Buzzsprout is what I use for hosting. I've had no problems with that, works perfectly. It's amazing. Okay, if you are still looking at starting a podcast, I totally recommend Buzzsprout. You can grab my affiliate link below if you choose to.
Karalee Gault:
And the other thing that I did find, thanks to my friend Holly, was Riverside, which is what I am literally recording on right now because it's simple to share, simple to organize, and there was my Alexa. Anyway, so hashtag real life right here. So basically, I was able to streamline the process by figuring out what is the problem right now. At its base, it was that the recording process was taking too long because it kept cutting things out, or I'd have to go back when I was editing it to like figure out what in the world was cut out for some reason. Right, so I was able to fix that problem by investing in Riverside, which is totally affordable, and you can grab my affiliate link below too if you want to.
Karalee Gault:
Those are the two softwares I recommend when starting a podcast. Right, because it makes it super streamlined. If you have a team member or a VA, they're able to easily hop into both of those softwares to be able to support you in getting those things done. And so hopefully here I am hiring a virtual assistant to be able to help me with this part of the process, because I have all the software, so I'll have to do a record and then they edit and help me with the finished product. Right, because someone else can do that.
Karalee Gault:
My energy and my time can be used to do things like where my face needs to be shown, or with my higher executive assistant clients, where you know they're a higher level of client, right? So that is where you start streamlining things. Do I need to bring in a person to help with it? Do I need to figure out better software, right? Do I need to set aside specific time? These are the questions that you walk yourself through when you're trying to figure out. I need to stream on my operations where the bottle next, right? So that is an example in a podcast process, right, and I didn't even go into detail like super detail, that was like high-level detail. But that is what we do. You figure out where the gaps are. So I also want to highlight just one more thing is that when you are, when you're working on, like when you're working on trying to figure out what your next step is when it comes to streamlining your operations, it's not, it's literally reflecting.
Karalee Gault:
But I also made things even simpler for you and I put together the five most common bottlenecks that I have found in working with six, six plus bigger businesses, or even businesses that are under six figures. But the what I'm sharing with you is more geared towards someone that already has a team or, at the very least, is looking to bring on a team. But you can also use these questions to go. This is what I need to look for, this is what I need to have in place. These are the questions that need to have answered before I even bring on someone, so you can start laying the foundation right from the beginning, which is something, if you've been around for a hot minute, that I've shared with you multiple times.
Karalee Gault:
Setting up the systems, which is streamlining your operations from right, from the very beginning, before you have a team, it's just you, is going to save you a lot of time. It's going to help you not have to bring on a team member as soon, and it's also going to help you have that energy that you need to put it where it needs to go, while still being a solo Prenuer right, but then it's also going to allow you to go like today I don't have, I'm a solo Prenuer right. Today I'm a solo Prenuer. Tomorrow you can have a team member and you have the systems in place and the SOPs and all that stuff in place to be able to bring on a team member Very seamlessly. Right, and that is what I try to do with clients that don't already have like a VA or a team, right, those are different things. And then you have, obviously, the level where you already have a VA and then you have like a full team of multiple members Right, so I have been a part of a team that has multiple members. I have had a VA, I have been a VA, I have done all these different dynamics. Okay, so I have a few different things that I talked about.
Karalee Gault:
All right, so, but I want to share with you today, if you haven't grabbed it already, the operations audit. This is a DIY, so do it yourself. Operations audit and addresses the five most common Reasons there are bottlenecks in your business. Okay, and this is complete with journaling space, because we need to get all those things on the paper, we need to work through it. So we're going to go. I walk you through in the DIY oh, my goodness, I can't speak today In the DIY operations audit, I walk you through those five questions, breaking them down and up completely with like a workbook, essentially, right, a guide, and then in the emails, I break it down even more for you and you can go through it one day at a time.
Karalee Gault:
It's almost like a mini course and it's completely free. And so then there's even a bonus at the very end, because I want to reward you for making it through this workbook, because there's a guide I don't know what I'm calling it, but making it through this guide and actually doing the work, because it's hard. Doing this stuff is hard. Putting in place these systems, following these systems. You're making sure things are running smoothly.
Karalee Gault:
It is hard, and because I know that it is hard, I want to make sure that I reward you with something awesome. So the bonus for actually filling out this guide and submitting it into me. So I will actually, in return, give you two personalized recommendations as to how you can make the most difference the fastest in your business, based off of what you put down for your answers to the questions and some potential brainstorming solutions as well, and I will be able to narrow down like this is what you should start with. This will make the most difference, or it might be like something completely different, and I'll be like this is really what I'm seeing, based off of what you have gathered here, and this is really what would be my personal recommendation, and that's 100% for free. Now you can go farther and I can do a full scale operations assessment on your entire business. We go super in depth with that. But, just right from the beginning, diy operations audit is 100% free, along with that bonus of two personalized recommendations to really get you started and really get you thinking about what you need to do to be able to plug those bottlenecks.
Karalee Gault:
Right, to get rid of those bottlenecks where things slow down significantly in your business. Right, because when things slow down significantly right Now, the not as much like a limited amount of time that we have to work on our business now just got a far less things done on that to-do list. Right, let's say we're experiencing some executive dysfunction for the day. Right, our neurodivergent friends here, like what are we gonna do? Right, we need to have things like a pick up and go like this is on the list, this is what we need to do, or I have a whole system for that, but this is on the list Now, what feels good to do? What am I feeling called to do? Right, that's more of the switch there, but right, so I don't want to overwhelm you in this episode here, but we need to get things, we need to identify where things are slowing down significantly in your operations, and then we need to figure out solutions on how to rid those your business of those bottlenecks whether that's different software, different humans, whatever that looks like and be able to really work through that.
Karalee Gault:
So, if you have any questions, head to the show notes. You can grab Buzzsprout or Riverside if you choose to record podcasts and things and host podcasts, and you can absolutely send me a DM if you have any questions about what this operations audit is, and you can also grab it down there in the show notes as well. Like I said, it's completely free and I walk you through step by step, with plenty of opportunities for you to ask questions and get some input back if you need any clarity, all right. So I want to tell you that you're amazing and you're gonna do great things, and I sincerely hope that your start of 2024 has been amazing and that you are seriously looking at really streamlining your operations this year, and if I could be a part of your support system in being able to do that, I would love to. So send me a DM and we can talk about options as well. Thanks for now.
