The Fastest Way to Find Bottlenecks in Your Business

Laid up and out of action, my unexpected stint away from the daily flow threw me a curveball that turned into a masterclass in identifying business bottlenecks. As I share my personal ordeal of being bedridden, it becomes clear that sometimes life's interruptions are the perfect catalyst for uncovering the hidden hiccups in our work systems. We often overlook the importance of integrating new team members effectively until we're forced to pass the baton in haste. Listen up as I peel back the layers on the pitfalls of task delegation and tease an upcoming episode where we'll get to the nitty-gritty of a more efficient team integration strategy.

This week's narrative doesn't just end with my recovery tale; it serves as your prompt to conduct your own operations audit. With the dawn of a new quarter, I'm walking you through the steps to smooth out your business processes and prepare for sustainable growth. I'm extending an open invite – let's grab a virtual coffee and chat about optimizing your team's workflow. By the end of our time together, you'll walk away with actionable insights, ready to fortify your business against whatever curveballs life might throw your way.

Grab your DIY Operations Audit here: theproductivityimpact.com/landing/operations-audit

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Chapters

• 0:52 Finding Business Bottlenecks Through Unexpected Leave
• 8:27 Streamlining Operations and Team Growth

Transcript

Karalee: 0:52

Alrighty guys, welcome back. So I technically have a little bit of a doozy of an episode for you today, because this, in like real life, just happened last week. Let's just say I have found the fastest way to find bottlenecks in your business. Okay, you want to hear how I did this. I'm not necessarily recommending it, but I felt that you should totally hear the story. So I hadn't been feeling well all of March. It's literally been an energy roller coaster, as I was getting behind on work, but I was also streamlining workflows, I was making changes to client processes, I was delegating to my team. There's a lot of transitions going on here behind the scenes. The productivity impact, okay. So there's a lot going on. So then we throw this energy rollercoaster into it. I don't know. We're going to see where this goes right. So before I do that though before I follow this, I want to also make one little tiny thing here. You can't throw a bunch of tasks at a VA and expect them to excel right away, so how I like to do things is a little more comfortable for all that's involved. Okay, that's what next week's episode is going to be all about bringing on a team member and how best to actually do that, because I feel like a lot of people think that it's okay to throw a bunch of tasks at a VA and expect them to do really well, when in reality there can be a much smoother, more comfortable process for the CEO or the business owner along with that VA, or, however, honestly, there's a lot of variables. But that's for next week. We're going to be jumping in to that next week.

Karalee: 2:30

But here back to this week's episode. I got sick. Okay, like I'm talking, I was in bed for three days doing nothing except resting and sleeping. Like my husband was taking care of me. He took off, work, like he was, um, he was working through or I was working through so many different things. Literally, I was in bed. I have never I haven't been literally just sitting in bed doing nothing since I had my kids over 10 years ago. Okay, like, I have been running, running, running since the moment I had kids or before that, all the things like right, I've always been doing something moving toward that next goal. So having to sit in bed for three days and having my husband there, sitting there, going like, no, I'm going to do everything for you because, like you, when you get sick. You do it good, so you're doing a really good right now, and so we're going to make sure that you get the rest that you need, because you've already been exhausted all year.

Karalee: 3:21

So the business did keep running, but not quite as efficiently as I would have liked, okay. So this three days showed me a lot about the bottlenecks in my business, and bottlenecks are where things slow down significantly in your business. Okay, now, to be fair to myself, because we want to be fair, my business hasn't. It has not been streamlined or set up yet to allow itself to run without me. So this very unexpected test run was was nice, though, okay, cause it fared better than I thought it would. So you know, we're going to celebrate that as a win. Um, if you can't see me on the screen, I'm literally celebrating in my seat. Um, so there's totally a win.

Karalee: 4:05

So, if you want to have all of the bottlenecks in your business really fast, if you want to see all of these, okay, um, and unexpectedly leave for three days or more. That's what I found out. I don't recommend it, though, but that's what I found out. It's the fastest way to see what's going to crumble, what's going to stand and what got stuck. Okay, just leave for three days, or more or less. All right, so that's the fastest way to find the bottlenecks in your business is to just unexpectedly leave and walk back and go oh my God, what did I do? Okay, so I have a list of things. I have a list of things that need to be made more efficient. Now I have lists of tasks that probably shouldn't rest only on my shoulders. My VAs are ready to take on more. Right, I'm going to talk more about VAs and teams and all that next week, and so the fastest way to find those may have been let's just take three days off, even though it was unexpected. Right, you can plan for a vacation of days off, but when things are unexpected, that's when you really truly can find all of these things Okay.

Karalee: 5:10

So, although this might be, taking three days off unexpectedly might be the fastest way to find bottlenecks in your business, it's probably not the most business friendly or the most nervous system regulation friendly. Let me tell you it was. It was quite the ride. Not only was I sick, my brain was like OMG, are things okay? Are things okay? I don't know, I'm just sitting here dying, not literally. Okay, guys, I'm not. I'm okay, like I'm literally recording this the day before it goes live, because I finally feel good and you can tell my voice and I'm feeling much better. But those three days were not Okay.

Karalee: 5:49

So I actually suggest, for actually figuring out these bottlenecks, I actually suggest a more tender touch that is completely in your hands. Completely okay, this is completely in your hands, not in whatever happens hands. Okay, right, I even have a DIY operations audit already made for you to make this even easier, so you can actually do this work behind the scenes. So when you do inevitably get sick, you're more prepared than you thought. So I do this actual audit on my business once a quarter. It's ironically it was going to happen again in quarter two. Well, apparently it happened a week before quarter two and we're just we're going to go with it. But now we have the list and now we have all these different things.

Karalee: 6:36

I do this once a quarter. I really go through and I do this audit on my business and walk myself through these five questions and then a little bit more as we add to it. But the five questions get you started and really get your brain thinking and working through things. Okay, because I want you to be prepared, because it's inevitable you're going to get sick Okay, it really is. And I want your team, I want you, I want your business, I want your clients, I want everyone feeling really good about like things are handled when you're not there.

Karalee: 7:03

And if that's not how you feel right now, then we get to talk about what it would look like to be able to have those types of operations in place, to where you can leave for three days, whether that's expected or not expected, and only a few things need to be put into place, all right. So I also want to point out here in the DIY operations audit it's free and it goes through the five bottlenecks I see in every single business Well, not every single business, but the most common I see in businesses, the top five and it even allows you to get personalized feedback from me free of charge. Okay, so that means you fill out the audit and then you submit it to me and then I get to tell you like some some awesome feedback about how you can actually plug some of those bottlenecks or how you can actually streamline that process a little bit more in your business, because that's just my give back. Okay, that's just how I want to get you moving in the right path to get these things taken care of. And don't worry, I actually walk you through every single step of the process. I don't just kind of like throw a bunch of things at you, I actually walk you through it, kind of like I do on this podcast Um, hint, there will be a private podcast coming for the audit soon.

Karalee: 8:09

Um, throwing that out there for accountability. But not April. We will get there. So I'm going to leave you with your action step today. The action step today is kind of big, but it can help you so much in this year and years to come.

Karalee: 8:27

So head to the show notes, grab the DIY operations audit and take this week or even you can dedicate this entire month to this, if that feels good to you and really reflect on how your operations are running, especially as we start quarter two here of 2024. Like, how are we feeling? How are we doing? Do we have any of these bottlenecks? Do we need to figure out ways to streamline them and all those things.

Karalee: 8:51

So, as always, my DMs are open, my email inbox is open. I want to connect with you and, if you'd like to connect via, like Zoom of some sort. Do like a little coffee chat. You can always head to the DMs or send me an email and we can connect that way too. So have an amazing rest of your day and I hope that you don't inevitably get sick anytime here in the near future, where you get to figure out what the fastest way is to find bottlenecks in your business. So I'll be back next week. We're going to talk about how you can streamline your team and bring on a team member and do it in a more comfortable way for both of you. All right Bye for now.