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From Mayhem to Mastery: My Journey to Operations Management

• Karalee Gault • Season 1 • Episode 41

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Embark on an odyssey through the entrepreneurial labyrinth with me, Karalee, as I recount the trials and triumphs that shaped my venture into operations management. My narrative begins amidst the chaos of an MLM scheme and morphs into a tale of discovery, as I navigate through the murky waters of mentorship and emerge with a compass pointing towards my true north. The journey is laced with candid confessions of the lessons learned from trusting my instincts and the eureka moment that business systems were the key to unlocking my problem-solving prowess.

This episode isn't just my introspective saga; it's an open invitation for you to join in and add your voice to our growing chorus of listeners. I unveil my metamorphosis from coaching neurodivergent entrepreneurs to a seasoned consultant, highlighting the personal milestones that revolutionized my confidence and financial outlook. As we traverse this landscape together, I welcome your stories, your questions, your insights. Reach out, let's connect on Instagram, and kindle the fires of collaboration and collective growth. Your journey has a home here, and I'm all ears, ready to explore the profound interplay of personal development and business innovation.

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Karalee:

Hello, hello, amazing humans, and welcome back to Neurodivergent Bytes. I am your host, Karalee, and today we're going to be talking about how in the world I even got into operations management. So I'm going to be digging deep into basically the past three years, all right. So I know a lot of people struggle with figuring out what they want to do for their business, plain and simple, let alone how they're going to actually make it happen. Right, if that's you, you're absolutely not alone, and this was absolutely me for at least the first year of entrepreneurship for myself. Okay. So I'm going to dig into a little bit of my story and, you know, take you along this journey and basically this is going to be an encouragement to not give up, because something is going to happen for you. You are going to find your groove, you are going to find those people, you're going to find your passion and what really works for you and ultimately brings in money, so that you can have those ultimate goals and desired outcomes fulfilled, right? So I started out with as an in an MLM, okay, I feel like a lot of us do this, and it didn't feel so good to me, okay, but it was a lot harder than I thought, which was the biggest thing? And being in the wellness space just just wasn't for me, right? I decided that an MLM type of business was not the business that I wanted. So after I realized that I had invested in a mentor Okay, I've been doing that, promised a lot yet didn't deliver about one-tenth of it. And there's a lot of those out there, all right, so I understand that you're, you're, you're not really sure if you should invest in a coach or service provider, whatever you know. It's the same as if you buy something on Amazon. Are you sure you're going to get what you want to get what you are expecting, right? We never know. So you know, take it how you wish, right? You do your research, you look into them, you follow them for a long time. You see if they're actually doing what they're teaching, right, you know you're going to get a lot of things right.

Karalee:

But this was the straw with this particular mentor. Not only was she not delivering on what she said that she was going to deliver on. When I became a virtual assistant because that's actually how I started out after the I decided MLM wasn't for me she basically said that you should absolutely hire a VA overseas for like $6 an hour when she was talking to her audience. Now I'm in her audience and I'm a VA and I do not charge $6 an hour. You know, granted, in the U S, if you're in the U S, that's actually illegal. You have to have at least minimum wage of shorts, right, but that didn't feel really good to have a mentor tell me and tell their own audience not to hire me. But more than that, what really irritated me was that she was suggesting that you underpay VAs that are overseas, because I have met with some VAs that are overseas in different interactions and they are worse, so much more. Just like you and me, if you're in the U S, wherever you are, it doesn't matter, you deserve way more than $6 an hour or whatever, right, just way more than that.

Karalee:

So, new list to say after that interaction, I removed myself from anything related to this person, except for I got something really beautiful from this experience, okay, and that was connecting and networking with amazing entrepreneurs that I become friends with over the time that I was in that sort of that network, right? So some of these same people also didn't have very good experiences, and so we have something that we could talk about, but also like we were so excited or like it was all worth it just to meet you. And this happens in other masterminds and networking groups and things that I'm always a part of, and even if it's just having amazing communications and networks and creating friends from these networking groups, it's amazing, right. So I know it's hard to know when to invest in a coach or mentor and sometimes like who you know all the things? Right? I say in this now you know, four and a half or so years into running some sort of business, is that you really have to know how to regulate your nervous system and really get into touch with that gut feeling. Your gut feeling can be a little off if you're not in tune with your own body. So when people are like, oh, my gut feeling is wrong, okay, I personally, my gut feeling is spot on. If I have a gut feeling, I 100% wrong with it. So that's after I learned about nervous system regulation and really getting into what my body is saying to me. All right.

Karalee:

So not only did I have this experience with my first mentor, the bottom fell out of my business shortly after and at the time I had no idea why. All right. So I hired another mentor and learned all about social media systems, all the things that I'd actually been missing from the very beginning. So, yeah, I realized I had a lot to learn. I Realized at that point that I didn't have systems in place to begin with, and that was why the bottom fell out of my business.

Karalee:

I dug into all the things systems and I actually found them freaking fascinating, so very fascinating, and I actually realized that I had a lot of systems in my life that I was following and Constantly finding solutions for right, the problems that solutions would fix. But I didn't realize that that's what I was doing. And so when I found systems in business, I was like OMG, this is like totally my thing. So, so in the bottom there, as I found them super fascinating, and that is that was like my first touch into Systems for real as a virtual assistant, there were kind of like not really working for me, right, I didn't have enough information, but I had a base, but not a firm face. But then I also learned something else, not long after I had hired that mentor, that I was actually diagnosed with ADHD and I was able to go OMG, now it makes way more sense. My whole life makes a lot more sense. I understand why some systems work really well and some don't, why some work for short periods of time and some, like, just don't work at all Right.

Karalee:

So I dug into a lot of research and learned a lot more about ADHD and then how I could actually tailor these systems that I was already falling in love with and that I knew could help other people, especially entrepreneurs. That was when I was able to dig really far deep into into that and became Moving my closer to an operations specialist. Right, but not quite there. Yet. We're not there. We're like two years in the business and we're not quite to. I am confident in being an operations manager, all right, but we are getting there. We're building the foundation to be able to actually launch this operations management business and feel really good about it. So everything that I've gone through and we're only two years in and we we still got two years to go here Help me be the person I am today.

Karalee:

So there was a little bit of a segue here in the next part. I didn't want to be a virtual assistant, exactly so I actually specialize in setting up systems for neurodivergent entrepreneurs as well as coaching them to do it for themselves for about two years. Okay, operations management is new. As I'm recording this podcast, I've been in operations management for about four months as that being my core Service. Right, I've done setting up systems for this entire time, but this is a very different specialty.

Karalee:

Okay, but during this time when I was being basically a coach and a mentor for neurodivergent entrepreneurs and helping them set up their systems, I was actually in the other mastermind and I was a support coach in there and I helped support them with Overwhelm and things like that and getting things organized, which was literally a specialty of mine. So this is actually where I experienced my first retreat and I Freakin love retreats. So Retreats are amazing. People think that their business conferences and things like that. No, I'm talking intimate retreats and I had my first retreat here and with this mentor and it was amazing. So I'm gonna like here's a side note who wants to hear about the amazing things I've learned on retreats, right, and why I love them and why I go on at least one a year? All right, so if you wanna hear about that, I want you to head over to Instagram and I want you to send me a DM and you can start a conversation or just send me a DM with retreat and I'm gonna count that as you want to hear about the things I've learned on retreats and why I go on one once a year at least, okay, so next part of this is I wasn't making the money I needed and I wasn't getting mentally what I needed either.

Karalee:

Okay, I wasn't being fulfilled, all right, and I realized at this point that I'm a great coach, but I'm even better at consulting and actually performing the services for these business owners. I was way better at getting myself to do the things and making sure that they were done on deadlines and all that stuff that comes with being a service provider, but I wasn't near as good at making sure the other people actually did the things. I could give them all the resources, but then taking action on it was where I was like you know, this isn't ultimately what I wanna do long-term. So I had to make a pivot right, and so I had my current mentor and my past mentor guide me into where I am now. Okay, I have gotten amazing things from all of these mentors that I've had. I had the one in the beginning where I didn't have a great experience in the next three. When I joined their masterminds, I have had amazing experiences in their own ways, okay. So it's how I got connected to my current mentor, which is actually one of my clients as well. It's the power of networking, referrals, masterminds, and there's so much more here. Okay, I've learned something from each one of these mentors, each mastermind member and each course I've followed through with and I'm gonna put that as an asterisk of each course I've followed through with. Okay, because we all know we might have a vault of courses sitting there getting a little like not being used, but each one I actually followed through with were the ones that I really truly needed to buy and because I knew I'd actually do it and get something very particular from it. Right, so I wouldn't be an operation specialist if it wasn't for every single one of these things, every single one of them.

Karalee:

Okay, and some of the things I've learned along the way and how I landed here is I had my own confidence to build up. Okay, I was not a confident person. If you are listening to this podcast or if you see the video or any of the reels or anything, I might seem very confident, very energetic, all the things. This was built over time. If you go back to some of my first YouTube videos or even some of my first reels or speaking anything, I do not look confident at all. At least I didn't feel it. Whether or not I looked it I guess that's up to your opinion here, but building up confidence is super important in figuring out what you want to offer and where you wanna stay and what you wanna do long term right.

Karalee:

Another really important thing is breaking through money blocks. I didn't realize, I didn't even know what money blocks were until I met one of my mentors and I was like what in the world is going on here? But I knew I had a problem with money. I also have ADHD, so like that's a common thing that ADHDers have a lot harder time with money, and so breaking through these money blocks over the last year and a half has been game changer for me because I've been able to look at money in a completely different way. I in so many other things, but building up your confidence, breaking through those money blocks.

Karalee:

I also took a trauma certification that I am in the process of finishing up to actually have the certification, but getting my trauma things all sorted out, the things that have been impacting the way I see myself, the way I see others, the way I go about money, the way I communicate all those things. It all comes from somewhere. Experiences, different things like that, okay. So getting working through those things all of 2023 was, I'm going to say it's traumatizing, but it wasn't, but it was. But I was able to do it in a safe space with people that really cared and loved you and were able to take the time to be able to help you work through things that you need to work through, and so having that that space was also very powerful. So I've had these very powerful spaces to be able to process and build up in these places. Okay, and I also, along the way, learned a lot. Remember, emphasis on a lot about business in general Okay, social media, marketing, you know how to do branding, all these other things. So I learned a lot along the way, and so I truly honestly think that all of those things helped me be able to figure out what I was really good at All the way.

Karalee:

From an MLM, I'm not great at reaching out to people. Now I know that it was because I wasn't very confident. It wasn't that I didn't believe in what I was doing, it was that I wasn't confident and I didn't want to feel salesy, right? Those are the reasons. And then when I went into that first mastermind and it was I really dug into systems and social media and it was because I wasn't confident in my abilities to be able to put anything out there, which meant I didn't know what would work and what wouldn't. Right, but I knew I was really good at doing tasks and communicating with people for the most part right at that time.

Karalee:

So then, when I joined the third mastermind right, or the last two really. But I really figured out like, what am I really good at? I am really good at being either an executive assistant or an operations manager Period. I'm really good at seeing high level. I'm really good at taking visionary what is it called? Entrepreneurs, who are visionaries. There we go and bringing their ideas to life, keeping them organized. They can fire things at me so fast and I'm going to be like, okay, good, we're going to keep things organized and that is something I super, I excel at. And so I realized that I'm really good at working one on one with the CEO and but with the team as well. So you know, when we landed in supporting six figure business owners to where they weren't the bottlenecks anymore, right where things slowed down significantly, to where they could actually really focus on what they needed to focus on, and that was their clients and serving and using their visionary skills and things like that, right. So that is where I seriously excel, and so we are working on really expanding this operations management business and being able to really support all of you and even if you don't have a team or you're not at six figures that we also have a lot of or I say we, but I mean I have a virtual assistant we can say we, we also have some other lower one on one partnership still that we can totally talk about that. Allow you to still get those systems integrated and implemented so that you can scale to where you and then be able to, you know, start bringing on a virtual assistant or a team or, you know, just really start outsourcing things in general, so we can really get those foundations set up for you.

Karalee:

And I'm going to end this episode with this Okay, you must work on your own personal development, among other things. I had no idea when I decided I wanted to start my own business, to have more time to homeschool my kids, that I was signing up for this personal development journey. I am who I am today because of this journey. I'm super proud of it. Okay, I'm ending it with that, because you are gonna do amazing things, no matter where you are in your business, and you are going to find that passion and you're gonna land on something and it's gonna all make so much sense when you look back on it and you're gonna be like I don't necessarily wanna go through that entire journey again, but if I had to to get where I am today, I would do it, and that's truly how I feel about where I am. I love what I do, even sometimes when it's stressful, I still love what I do and that's how I know I found something that I really truly love and wanna do long time. So I honestly I shared my story, basically a very high level story.

Karalee:

There are so many more details, but I'd love to connect and hear your story.

Karalee:

Okay, I love to go deep.

Karalee:

I love to have fun conversations, but also I love to get to know people that are listening to this podcast and that are in my world.

Karalee:

I wanna know what you do, right? I wanna hear your story, what you do, and in case you don't know what to do here you're normally you would go over to Instagram and you could send me a DM and you can just say connect and I'm gonna know exactly what you wanna do. I wanna hear your story. You wanna open this up. You want someone to listen, but also we can see how we can work together as well, if that makes sense, all right. So if you have any questions at all, you can always head over to Instagram and you can send me a DM with your questions. But I would love to hear from you as to how you like this podcast. You can always give it a review and share it with your friends, share it on social media, whatever that looks like, as I'm gonna continue creating these episodes in order to be able to support you and your business, and so so, yeah, that's what we have for now. Have an amazing rest of your day and we will chat next week.