Ever wondered how to completely organize your small business for success? Learn all about how to organize your small business for success and build your business from the ground up with Denise O’Berry in this week’s episode of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast!

 

 

This week’s episode of Good Girls Get Rich is brought to you by Uplevel Media CEO and LinkedIn expert, Karen Yankovich. In this episode, Karen interviews Denise O’Berry, President of The Small Business Edge Corporation. As a small business owner since 1996, Denise understands the challenges facing small business. She’s lived them herself and helped hundreds of clients work through the frustrations, fears, and joys of owning a small business. 

The enthusiasm and ability of small business owners to overcome huge obstacles inspires her. She is continually amazed by all the things small business owners manage to accomplish. Over the years, her advice has been featured in numerous publications such as The New York Times, Inc, Entrepreneur, the Wall Street Journal, and American Express OPEN to name a few. In 2011, Denise was named a Small Business Influencer Champion by Small Business Trends. 

Denise is known to many as the “action lady.” (It’s no coincidence her initials are DO!) A problem solver who helps small business owners get from stuck to done, Denise is also the author of “Small Business Cash Flow: Strategies for Making Your Business a Financial Success,” a practical book about making and keeping cash in your business – where it belongs. 

 

#GoodGirlsGetRich

We want to hear your thoughts on this episode! Leave us a message on Speakpipe or email us at info@karenyankovich.com.

 

 

About the Episode:

 

Most entrepreneurs aren’t quite sure where to start when it comes to the operations and structure of their small businesses. Denise O’Berry gives us her top tips on how to organize your small business for success in this episode of the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast. In order to start organizing your small business, you need to start with these 3 buckets in the hierarchy of your small business:  

 

System

 

  A system is something in your business, that helps you achieve your business objectives. These can consist of:  

 

  • Sales and marketing
  • Finance
  • Customer service
  • Operations
  • Administration etc.

 

Every small business is going to be different, so you could have more or less “systems” in your business. However, each system you have should encompass sort of a “department” that fits into your overall business structure.   If you are a solo-preneur then I know what you’re thinking… YES your name belongs to every single system, listed above, however Denise gave us some great tips on when to start hiring for your business that we’ll discuss later. But for NOW, let’s move on to bucket #2 on how to organize your small business for success:  

 

Processes

 

Processes are related activities that help make the system function. There can be one or a group to make them work and most likely, these are the things you intuitively know how to do, but you still need to put them on paper (trust me on this one!)  

 

An example of a process under your sales and marketing budget:  

  • Sales and marketing:
    • What you are going to sell and when
    • How to sell your product
    • Ways to sell your product

 

These are things you may already know how to do but need to get them down on paper incase you hire someone. This way, they can come into your business, see your processes and be able to pick up where you need help. This can eliminate some of the gap between bucket #2 and bucket #3:  

 

Workflows

 

Workflows are the steps that have to be taken to accomplish a successful outcome of the process. This of these as “what to do first, second and third, etc.”  Another example from our sales and marketing bucket:  

  1. How to sell your product
    1. Identify your target audience and the key market
    2. Build a sales plan for Q1 and Q2
    3. List out all of your top selling points to your target audience
    4. Create a campaign to run on social, PR and content

 

These things take time, but are necessary for your business. So where do you start?   

 

Start at whatever’s most important to you. The key is to START. Until you get these systems and processes out of your head, there’s no way you will be able to grow to where you want to grow. If it’s in your head, there’s no one else that can learn it and you won’t be able to organize your small business for success.   

Speaking of someone else that can learn it, Denise offered some amazing tips for hiring:  

 

When hiring someone, 

 

Don’t waste your time! Document the processes. That way, when you are ready to hire someone, you will know exactly how to do it, where to start, and most importantly, who you want to hire. And remember:   It’s not just skills, it’s culture  

  • Do they fit with the way you want to present your business to the outside world?
  • Do they fit with the way you want to run your business?

  In addition to the skills, articulate what you really need so you don’t get the wrong person every time.     

 

 

Episode Spotlights:

 

  • Where to find everything for this week’s episode: karenyankovich.com/087
  • Shout out for our review of the week (2:10)
  • Introduction to the episode with Denise O’Berry (2:40)
  • Background on Denise O’Berry (3:59)
  • What inspired Denise to be a “champion” for small business owners (9:23)
  • The difference between processes and workflows, automation and outsourcing (11:30)
  • How to get started with systems (15:27)
  • Explanation on processes within your business (17:37)
  • Explanation on workflows within your business (18:40)
  • Where to start with your business organization and hiring (19:12)
  • How to place tasks in your system (24:38)
  • Example of hiring processes for your business to select the right person (24:51)
  • How to be a CEO of your own business (27:39)
  • The importance of hiring for the culture of your business (33:13)
  • How Denise helps small business owners to start building their business (37:22)
  • Where to find Denise on social media (39:42)
  • Recap of the episode (40:37)

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

 

 

Help Us Spread The Word!

 

It would be awesome if you shared the Good Girls Get Rich Podcast with your fellow entrepreneurs on twitter. Click here to tweet some love!   If this episode has taught you just one thing, I would love if you could head on over to Apple Podcasts and SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW! And if you’re moved to, kindly leave us a rating and review. Maybe you’ll get a shout out on the show!  

 

Ways to Subscribe to Good Girls Get Rich:

 

Read the Transcript

Intro  0:06  

Welcome to the girls get rich podcast with your host, Karen Yankovich. This is where we embrace how good you are girl, stop being the best kept secret in town, learn how to use simple LinkedIn and social media strategies and make the big bucks.

 

Karen Yankovich  0:23  

Hi, I’m Karen Yankovich. And I am the host of the Good Girls Get Rich podcast. And it is brought to you by Uplevel Media, the proud sponsor of the simplest and relationship heart based LinkedIn marketing system that gets you on the phone consistently with your perfect people, people who you can’t wait to have the opportunity to chat with. We teach digital marketing with the human touch, we like you to actually be talking to people. Because when you talk to people, that’s when you make those high ticket sales. That’s what we specialize in; getting you on the phone with the exact right people and actually speaking to them, even better if you can meet them in person. 

 

And I’d love to meet you and person. If you go to karenyankovich.com/events, you can see what’s coming up where I’ll be and maybe you can join me at one of the conferences I’ll be at in the next few months. I’d love to meet you in person, maybe take a selfie, right and actually connect human to human, not just be social media connections. 

 

So if you’ve listened before, if you love what you hear today, you know, we love hearing from you. So, so you don’t miss an episode, make sure you subscribe to Good Girls Get Rich on Apple podcasts or whatever the pod catcher is that you listen to your podcast on. leave us a review. And if you leave us a review, whether you leave it on your on your on the app, you’re listening to the set. Or if you go to the blog for this episode, karenyankovich.com/087. There will be a link for speak pipe and in speak pipe, you can leave us an audio review. And then we can play that audio review on the podcast which is fun as well. Make sure you take a screenshot of listening to this episode, share it on social media, use the hashtag good girls get rich or tag me at Karen Yankovich. And I’ll be sure to share your posts with my audience. And that’s how we all get more visibility right. 

 

So I want to shout out our reviewer of the week. And then our review of the week is Jackie fig. And Jackie says Karen is to the point. Her LinkedIn tips are easy to implement. And her guests are fantastic. I binge watched several episodes the first day I found her thank you for all you do for business owners. Jackie, I love doing this. And I love getting your feedback, it helps us know exactly what kinds of content to be able to share with you. So thanks for being a reviewer of the week, Jackie. 

 

So this week on the show, we’ve got Denise O’Berry and I’m going to just jump right into it because we’ve done a couple shows in the last couple months about productivity. Because you know what I want you to be using LinkedIn to get the high ticket clients to be building relationships. There’s a business behind this, right? There’s a business behind this that we all have to be paying attention to. So the system that are behind the strategy calls that you get on from LinkedIn, that’s what makes or breaks how profitable your business can be. 

 

You can be bringing in $10,000 clients on a consistent basis. And it sounds like that’s great, right? If you’re getting to $10,000 clients a month, it’s a quarter million dollars a year, right? Well, who would who doesn’t want that? But if you don’t know what to do with those people, once you get them, and how to keep track of them and how to organize what you owe them. And, you know, what do you do with the money and all that all this stuff as business owners have to do if we want to be able to continue to serve at that level? Then you’re not going to want to continue to do it. So that’s why I brought I bring people on like Denise O’Berry, who’s going to be on today. She talks a little bit about hiring and systems for that and I think you’re going to love this episode. I know I loved this episode. I am watching and downloading all her freebies and making sure that I am dialing in what I do because it’s definitely an area that I need support with as well. So without any further babbling for me, let’s jump into and meet Denise.

 

Karen Yankovich  3:59  

So we are here today with Denise O’Berry. Denise is the president of the Small Business edge Corporation, a small business owner since 1996. Denise understands the challenge facing small businesses. She’s lived them herself and have helped thousands of clients work through the frustrations, fears and joys of owning a small business. The enthusiasm and ability of small business owners to overcome huge obstacles inspires her. She’s continually amazed by all of the things small business owners managed to accomplish. Amen to that, Denise. 

 

Over the years, her advice has been featured in numerous publications such as the New York Times, Inc, entrepreneur, The Wall Street Journal and American Express open just to name a few. And in 2011, Denise was named small business influencer champion by small business trends. Denise is known to many as the action lady, it’s no coincidence her initials are do a problem solver who helps small business owners get from stuff to done. He’s also the author of small business cash flow, strategies for making your business a financial success, a practical book about making and keeping cash in your business where it belongs. 

 

Denise, I’m so happy to have you here today. And I’ve you know, we’ve been in each other’s world for so many years. And just when I got this information from you read your bio, I learned more new things about you. 

 

Denise O’Berry: 

 

Oh, well, thanks, Karen. It’s so great to be here. It’s always wonderful to really connect on a different level with somebody you’ve known for so long. 

 

Karen Yankovich: 

 

Yeah. And you know, one of the reasons I wanted to have Denise here is you know, Denise and I are I mean, you guys have heard me talk about Marie for Leo’s B school program. So many of our guests have been people that I met through B school. But you know, there’s this gigantic Facebook group that’s associated with B school and you’ve been around what did you do at school? 

 

Denise O’Berry: 

I did in 2012. So I feel like you’ve been around almost that long. Yep!

 

Karen Yankovich  5:49  

So the interesting thing is you with a group of 20 plus thousand people, there’s all kinds of crazy responses that sometimes I look at and go, Yeah, probably not so much. But I handle it that way. But you stay out of it. Whenever you post something I’m like, that’s exactly what I would say. Right. So I love and maybe I should have people under that different have differing opinions. Right. But I love that, that you just have really good practical advice, and that you understand and champion, the small business owners that are that do have a million things that they have to do, right. As small business owners, we just have, there’s just so many hats that we that we wear.

 

Denise O’Berry:  6:29  

No Yeah, for sure. And, and it’s crazy. And so many people in B school and any anybody starting a new business, a lot of them are coming from, like the corporate world up but a different world than what they’re jumping into. And I don’t know about you, but I know when I first started my business, it was like, Oh, I know exactly what I’m going to do. And then I jumped into it. And I went, Oh, my gosh, this isn’t exactly what I thought,

 

Karen Yankovich  6:56  

So true. That’s so true. And you know, it’s funny, I recently had read to get involved with this organization that was started by somebody that retired from corporate and most of the people that are on the board and part of the organization are all retired from corporate, and that’s their focus. And in my head, I’m thinking, you all need an entrepreneur in that group. Because you don’t understand that you don’t have the WordPress, you don’t have a tech support guy, you know, like, you can pick up the phone and call tech support. And you know that right? intelligently, we’re all intelligent enough to know that, but when it starts to happen, and you have to look at your printer and go, Okay, do I want to spend $500 on a new printer? Or do I want to keep spending a half hour once a week, trying to get it to work? Right? Like, those are decisions that as a small business owner, we have to make, and it seems like we’ll just fix it. But yeah, but those house hours add up to that, fix the printer and all of the other millions of things that we have to do as small business owners.

 

Denise O’Berry:   7:55  

For sure. And you know, one of the things we all have a finite amount of is our time. So it really, as a small business owner, you really do put the emphasis on your time because you’re either making money in your business or doing things that cost your business money. So it’s really important the way that you know, you look at that approach with the printer. And look at everything in your business that way because it matters at the end on your bottom line.

 

Karen Yankovich  8:24  

Yeah, it does. And I love that the last line of your bio is keeping cash in your business where where belongs, you been that is so powerful, because so many of us so many people that I speak to, especially, and this is a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, especially people that say I want to be a six figure entrepreneur, I’m like, if you want it, if that’s that you’re gonna have as much money in your bank account as if you worked at McDonald’s. If you’re a six figure entrepreneur, you know, by the time you pay for all of the things you need to pay for, at the end of the day, that’s not keeping money in your business. That’s, that’s turning money. Right now, multiple six figures, and I’m not trying to scare anybody off by this, I’m not at all but the reality is, you know, that’s a churn, right? You need enough money to pay yourself, you need enough money to pay your assistant and your tools and you know, your taxes, right, and all of the things that we need to pay as, as business owners, that’s just a lot of churn, that’s not really keeping money in your business very often, at least from what I can see. And so what inspired you to start to, to be the champion for the small business owners?

 

Denise O’Berry:  9:27  

Oh, gosh, well, when I jumped in with both feet, of course, I got, I got the rude awakening and I, I learned things really fast, luckily. But I saw I joined a lot of different small business owner groups, you know, to get my name out there that type. Of course, that was, this is back in the old days now, before we had all this social media where you could get, you know, amplify your exposure. And so it was all face to face them. And I saw so many small business owners struggling. And I knew I had the skills and expertise from my corporate days, and the skills that I had acquired and starting my own business to help them. And so my objective, my big objective is to help as many small business owners as I can be successful, whatever that success looks like for them.

 

Karen Yankovich  10:20  

Okay, so that’s so cool. That’s how I started. Did you read? Did you still feel Thomas’s book children or? No, I have not read it yet. You should. It’s a good book. And it talks a lot about things anywhere to talk about today. But one of the things she talks about, there’s a couple things she talks about in that book, and I have a reason for bringing it up. But one of the things she talks about is I am the goose that lays the golden egg. If I am doing all of this busy work all day long, there is nobody laying the golden eggs. Right? Like, like, and without the golden eggs. We don’t have a business. So. So she talks a lot about what you need to do yourself, what you need to outsource and what you need to automate. Right? So people talk about people, not in all these entrepreneur groups that you’re on and on. And they talk a lot about systems and processes and workflows. As especially as we’re growing, right? When we hit like most many of my clients are, they hit six figures. And they’re like, Huh, why do I not have any money in my bank? Right? Like, that’s really the people that come to me, because that’s what I say, right? Let’s look at getting you some solid income foundation using LinkedIn to find the clients that can build a solid financial foundation. But can you explain a little bit to our listeners the difference between, you know, a system and a process and a workflow and automation? And and, you know, outsourcing?

 

Denise O’Berry:   11:39  

Sure, sure. And those three terms are used interchangeably by a lot of different people. And these are my definitions of them from, from my history, my background. And so let me just start so that people can get grounded in what those things are. We all have systems and processes and, and workflows that we use to get through our life. So we just don’t even think about how those things work in our life. And typically, what we do is we call these things our routine, you know, we have a routine, when we get ready for the day, we have a routine when we go to the grocery store, we have a routine when we’re making dinner. But we don’t have those things written down so that we can check them every day and say, What am I supposed to be doing this very minute? Or what do I have to do in order to accomplish this thing I want to accomplish. But we just intuitively use those types of things, because that’s how we learned how to get things done in our life. But when you take that and look at it from a business perspective, what typically happens is, most small business owners eyes just glaze over and go, Oh my gosh, I don’t know what this stuff is. But that’s all it is. It’s it’s the routine things because the routine things in your business are things that you know how to do. And if you’re going to grow your business, you’re going to have to bring on health. And in order to bring on help, there’s no way you can transfer that knowledge to somebody by osmosis, or, you know, brain to brain transmission, you’ve got to have the way that things are done in your business written down so that somebody reaches the objectives that you want them to reach. So what happens is within your business with systems, processes and workflows, it’s like a hierarchy. A system is a function within your business, that helps you accomplish your business objectives. That could be functions like sales and marketing, finance, customer service, administration operations, those are just some of the systems that you can having your business. Now not everybody’s businesses the same. So somebody might have a different system, or different way to set it up. The thing that’s cool about being our own business owners, is that we can set it up the way we want to it, this is just a side note, but it always cracks me up a little bit when people ask the question, you know, is it okay? If I call my something this, right, and I, and I say to so many of them, I say this response in Facebook groups a lot, I say, this is your business, you can set it up any way you want. And systems are exactly like that. You don’t have to follow anybody else’s prescribed thing. Like when you worked for somebody else, and they had, you know, a set of rules that you had to follow, you can make up your own rules. And that’s what’s really cool about it. So systems are like the top level of the hierarchy of your your different things that you do in your business. And the next level.

 

Karen Yankovich  15:02  

Hang on just one second, I want to address systems there for a second because I have to say, I completely agree with you and understand what you’re saying. But I think that many of us get caught up in busy work. And we don’t implement the systems, right? Like we don’t do the most important things in our business. So, how do you get started with systems? Because I know like there’s people that I say, Well, do you water your plants every day? And they’re like, Of course I do or they’re going to die? but yet you tell me you don’t have time to do outreach on LinkedIn. Right? Are you doing in your business? That’s more important than client getting stuff? Yeah, like so. So let’s take a step back a little bit. How do you get started by creating this system?

 

Denise O’Berry:   15:50  

Well, the first thing that I recommend that people do is create an organization chart. Now a lot of people laugh at this and the goal, I’m a one person business, I don’t need an organization names on every single space. Exactly. Well, yes, of course it is because you haven’t hired anybody yet. But you know, it’s a chicken and egg thing. When you get to the point you need help. If you don’t have your foundational things defined in your business, and one of those things is your primary system areas, then you’re not going to be able to hire the right person. So you need to have this foundational stuff done. So what I tell people is, your primary system areas are the same as your organization chart. So you would go through and create an organization chart with you at the top. And you would identify the different department groupings for lack of a better word as your systems you know, so you’d have set your sales and marketing system or your sales and marketing department, your finance system, your finance department, your customers service system, your customer service department, your operations systems, which would be your operations department and your administration systems, which would be you know, your administration department. And when you’re first starting out, you’re absolutely right, your name goes on every single one of those. But it you’ve got to start somewhere, and that’s your baseline. Got it. So those would be your primary system areas.

 

Karen Yankovich  17:27  

Okay, okay.

 

Denise O’Berry:   17:28  

And so once you have that stuff defined, then you have to identify the next step in the hierarchy. And that’s your processes. And processes are just related activities, or parts within a system that work together to make the system function, there could be one process within a system, or a group of processes within a system in order to make that system work. So I’m, for example, in sales and marketing processes, what you sell how you sell it, things you do for exposure, those kinds of things could fall under your sales and marketing system under your finance system. receivables and payables, financial reporting payroll, those types of things would be your process groupings underneath your finance system.

 

Karen Yankovich 18:26  

And you’re kind of you’re just getting started. That’s probably bookkeeping. Yeah, like bookkeeping and your account, you know, how often do you send your taxes to your accountant? Who’s your accountant? Right?

 

Denise O’Berry:   18:35  

Yep, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And then the next step in the hierarchy is what’s called workflows. And workflows are just the steps that have to be taken to accomplish a successful outcome of the process. What do you do first, what do you do next? What do you do third, all those types of things. It’s exactly what it’s called workflow. However, the workflow in order to accomplish the objective of the process, so those three things work together, in order to make your system function. So it’s pretty, it’s pretty detailed in order to go through and do it the first time. So I recommend it, you know, pretty much people don’t try to bite off all of this at the same time, mainly, because it does take your time. And as we talked about earlier, time is your most precious asset. So you would start at whatever’s most important to you. But the key is to start and to document things. Because until you get them out of your head, how your business runs, how your business functions, what your systems, processes and workflows are, there’s no way you’re going to be able to grow to the place you want to grow. Because if the all in your head, there’s nobody else that knows it.

 

Karen Yankovich  20:04  

Oh, that’s so true. That’s so true. I heard you very loud and clear, when you said there’s no brain to brain transference of his information. I kind of wish there was. So if you can invent that, let me know. Um, but so. So if I am an entrepreneur, small business owner, and I am bringing on help, right, so I’m bringing on a virtual assistant, you recommend that I do this, this org chart, and system plan first, even if it’s just on a very minimal level? Yes, or, or like, like, what comes first the chicken or the egg?

 

Denise O’Berry:  20:40  

Yeah, what the very first thing is do an org chart. All right, do an org chart, define your different departments, your departments will become your systems, and then focus on one department to break down. And where I would put hiring, it would be like under administration in my particular company. So hiring would be like a group of processes in order to get that done. And that’s where I would document at first, you know, what happens way too many times? Gosh, I see it almost every single day. And it’s not just in the B school group. It’s in all the entrepreneurial groups that I participate in on on Facebook, people come in and they say, I’m ready to hire an assistant. Does anybody recommend somebody? Well, you know what, we all have an opinion. And we can recommend somebody, but is that going to meet their needs, we don’t know what kind of an assistant they want. We don’t know what they want help with. We don’t know if they have anything to find. We don’t know what their budget is. We don’t know if they’re looking for contract. We don’t know if they’re looking for an employee. So what happens is, a person who puts that kind of a request in a group gets all sorts of wonderful answers. People are just so happy to recommend people they’ve worked with, and people that they know that do a good job. But the problem is, today, there’s really no such thing. If we’re talking contractors, there’s really no such thing as a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant is an industry. Because think about it, almost everybody online entrepreneurs work with these days are virtual, right? Yeah, some of them work as assistant, some of them work in customer service. Some of them focus on email, some of them focus on social media, some of them focus even further down, not Pinterest, Facebook ads, Twitter and LinkedIn, you know, where we’re all virtual assistants these days. So when somebody asks a question like that, nobody knows what answer to give, because they don’t know what’s in that person’s head. That person probably doesn’t know really what’s in their head, either. Because they haven’t written it down. 

 

Karen Yankovich  23:05  

Yeah. And that’s, that’s a little bit of a challenge, right, as somebody that has been running an online business for, you know, a few years now, like, I don’t know, however, however many years, I always get caught up in that a little bit. And I’ll you know, because I feel like I, you know, I love the idea of having people specialized in a platform, because I think that really helps you dive in. But then you have multiple people. So you’re managing multiple people. And then you have one goal, right? Which might be in my case, you know, podcast downloads, or people to, you know, opt into my free webinars or workshops, or, you know, whatever those upfront visibility goals are for me. So, it sounds, it’s always sounds kind of sexy, like, I gotta hire a new assistant, but it really is an important decision to to spend some time really thinking about how is this going to best work for me? And do they have, you know, do they have the skills I remember having a virtual assistant years ago, who I love, and she didn’t, she went on to other things, but she’s not doing it anymore. But I remember at one point, I was like, I really need you to take over this email account. She’s like, Yeah, I don’t I don’t like people. I can’t do that. I was like, Okay, well, then in my head thinking, how does? How do I accomplish this? Now? You know what I mean? Like, I know, I don’t have time to do it, right. But as the business owner, those are things that you’re faced with all the time, right? How is how is this going to get accomplished? And and I love that you’re, you know, putting these. So do you put tasks in your org? Like, once you’ve created these, these org charts, do you put tasks behind them? like where do the tasks come in?

 

Denise O’Berry:   24:44  

Actually, the tasks come in, in the workflows, okay, we’ve got, we’ve got the processes. For example, if we’re hiring, we’ve got the hiring process group, underneath our administration department and our org chart. And for hiring, you would have all different processes. And now, don’t get scared away by this, a lot of people would. But here’s just a sample of the processes that would come into play. When you’re hiring, prepare job descriptions, prepare job applications, determine where to advertise, post the job add clothes, applications, conduct initial application review, conduct interviews, select candidate and onboard new team member who that sounds like a lot because it is.

 

Karen Yankovich  25:34  

But those a lot more if you don’t do all that you hire the wrong person. 

 

Denise O’Berry  25:39  

Oh, no kidding. Yeah. And that’s the problem. Because if if you don’t take the time to document these processes, what ends up happening is yes, you waste all that time, yours and the other person’s hiring somebody who’s not a good fit for the job. And it’s not just skills, its culture. Do they fit with the way you want to run your business? Do they fit with the way you want to present your company to the outside world? So that’s important to you know, so many times, in addition to the requests for help, people will say, you know, I’ve been through two or three vas, and I’m not having any luck. Well, yeah. because nothing’s written down, you’re not articulating what you really need. So you’re going to get the wrong person every single time. And every hour you have spent hiring that person trying to get them that round peg to fit in a square hole is time that you’re taking away from your business, that you’re not spending, growing your business and making more money. So you know, people go, Oh, my gosh, I don’t really want to do all this work. Okay. So do you want to continue hiring and properly? Do you want to continue with the frustration? You know, it’s a trade off. You can’t it’s not magic? You can’t make it happen.

 

Karen Yankovich  27:01  

Right, so true.

 

Denise O’Berry  27:02  

Yeah, it just won’t work. And, you know, it’s not just that, some of us, I’ve been here done that, but some of us are like, real control freaks, right? 

 

Karen Yankovich  27:15  

Really? I don’t know, anyone. Feel free? That I think my team has that. I think they all have crystal balls. Yeah. Like, I want it done this way. But then I don’t tell them I want how I want it done. They’re like, Okay, well, I’m not sure how we’re supposed to know that. But All right, we’ll do that way.

 

Denise O’Berry  27:32  

Exactly. I mean, I get it, right. Yeah. But we, you know, some people say, Well, I like to control this. Part of stepping up to being a leader and being the actual CEO of your company, is, you know, hiring the right people, but also having the faith in them and the decision you made to hire them to know that they’re going to do the right thing there. And they’re going to get to the right outcomes. Because, seriously, most of the time, it doesn’t matter how the work is done, as long as the objective is met. So if somebody doesn’t do it exactly like you do it, you know, they might do step one, three and five first, and you do 12345, but it still comes up with the same outcome, then that’s an okay thing. So there’s a lot of shifting that has to take place, when you grow your business to and documenting your processes and the workflows that go through that helps you understand how you function and how you want it to function. So that you can reach the ultimate objective. And yeah, so other But otherwise, you know, you just end up with a mishmash of nothing, throw your hands up in the air and say, I’m never going to grow this business.

 

Karen Yankovich   28:53  

And you know, you’ve said this a few times. And I want to just address this for a second, you’ve talked about, like being the CEO of your business. And I talking about that a lot, too, I think that that’s really important. And here’s the deal. If you love teaching yoga, and you want to teach a couple yoga classes a week, you can probably do that without doing a lot of the things we’re talking about today. For sure, if you want to hire if you want to get a studio that’s going to require you to have rent and overhead and insurance, and maybe other people will work there. So now you’re going to have payroll and a few other things. I don’t care how good you are, as a yoga teacher, you have got to understand that you’re also the CEO. Yes. And you have to learn this stuff. And, you know, there’s lots and that’s why I do this podcast, right to help people to bring people like you on to help the people that that don’t have, you know, the a team behind them to just say, do this for me, you know, so building that strategically building that team is really one of the most important ways to get there. And, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, corporate people coming from corporate that don’t under and they don’t have the IT guy, well, that goes for, you know, the stay at home mom that decides she wants to make $2,000 a month now teaching yoga, or whatever it goes for them to, like we have to understand. So there’s no right or wrong decision as to, I want to teach three yoga classes in a week or month or I want to run a yoga studio. That’s a completely personal decision. But you need to understand that if you want to grow that and be a business owner, that you’re taking on some of these other challenges, and they can feel scary, but they don’t have to be because thankfully, there’s people like you that can help them understand how to do that.

 

Denise O’Berry  30:38  

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, and you have to be willing to put in the time in order to get it done. Just because it won’t work if you don’t. So it’s you know, it’s really the trade off, you have to be ready to do it. So just remember, if you don’t take the time to, to get this ultra important thing, Dr. Then you’re going to waste the time making a bad hire or wrong fit or whatever. And you made a point earlier about the folks that work for you, you know, reading your mind. I you know, a lot of us do that we we expect people to just know, you know, because I hear people say you may not have to tell this person What to do? Well, yeah.

 

Karen Yankovich  31:26  

I know. I know. And sometimes I’m like, like I thought I already took like you see an email, you read the email it you know, you woke up at two o’clock in the morning, which you should never do. But I do sometimes an open my email, and then you say, Okay, I got that. And then the next day completely forget about it. And then you’re like, wait, that didn’t happen, what happened, you didn’t tell anybody to do anything with it. Right? So it’s the same, it’s the same kind of concept that we have to put those systems in place to, to have for our people to have most success, I think, in the end what they they’re doing for us and they want to have access, we want them to have achievable milestones as employees for us, right?

 

Denise O’Berry  32:06  

Right, nobody comes to work for you to do a bad job. You know, I mean, I really believe that, that people wake up in the morning wanting to do good things. And so nobody, nobody would come to work for you to not do a good thing for your business. So you know, it’s all comes down to that whole, this is all part of the whole communication thing. You know, and if you can get the foundational things in place, then as you see other things that need to be done, you can you can document those along the way. And if things are not static, either. technology changes, things get automated, so that you can interject automated activities into your workflows and your processes. And so it’s a continue continual process improvement, you know, iteration after iteration, because you don’t want to just keep doing things the same way when you could improve upon them, because that’s going to save time, that’s going to bring you more money into your business.

 

Karen Yankovich  33:12  

Yep, yep. So there’s one other thing that you said that I’d like to dive into a little bit too, and that is, you’re also hiring for culture. And, and that, you know, I’ve made mistakes around that I’m thinking back to somebody that I hired as an assistant years ago. And I did all the other things you talked about, right? I had a process in place, I even had, you know, somebody else that I worked with bet them and, but one of the things she and this was a personal assistant. So she was going to be doing things like scheduling my private clients, and me with my calendar, and email and things like that. But one of the things that she said early on was that she really wasn’t into social media and my head, I’m like, I don’t need to be, you’re not doing that part of the job. You know, like, that’s not important. But it is important. It is important. I didn’t know it at the time. But it is important because my business is social media. And I need I need to know that people are going to be regardless of what your role is, for me, you’re going to be sending me an article you read about LinkedIn and encountered you see this, oh, my God, this is so cool. Maybe you can implement this here or there. You know, because I think that it’s really important. And I’m this, I can think of a few people that I’ve hired over the year that I didn’t make loves social media as a as a requirement for the job, regardless of whether they’re the bookkeeper, or whatever they do. I now know, I now make that a requirement. Because we are a social media digital marketing company, even though we focus on LinkedIn, and we, you know, focus on different things. Not not understanding, the biggest piece of culture in our business was such a huge mistake for me to make to hire people that didn’t understand that piece of it.

 

Denise O’Berry  34:49  

Yeah, congratulations to you for recognizing that, you know, we’ve all made those blunders, but that that’s perfect. And that’s where when you prepare a job district, for any role in your company, that’s one of those things you would put in every single job description. And that’s the things that you would interview for, you know, it plays a part in your whole process of hiring. And you discovered it, you know, by accident, but what’s really cool is

 

Karen Yankovich  35:19  

Everybody making mistakes, doing it wrong, you know, like, and those are expensive mistakes, like you said, like, those are expensive mistakes.

 

Denise O’Berry  35:26  

Yeah, for sure. But once you have that army of people, you know, even if their contractors, not direct employees, and they are focusing on helping you build your company, and you’ve made that requirement before hiring and and abetted it before bringing them on board, then you’ve got all of those eyes and ears out there. Like you said, that can channel things back to you and article or, or something else that you want to be aware of.

 

Karen Yankovich  35:57  

You know, it’s funny, I might type of this on the podcast before, I don’t remember. But back in my it days, I remember, aerosol shoes was one of my clients. And they’re based out of New Jersey, and I used to go and we were building, we were building their data network, you wouldn’t be like we were doing had nothing to do with shoes. We’re building a data network. But the admission from the very top person in the company to the guy that parks your car is we sell shoes. And every single person, the first and foremost thing on their job description is sell a pair of shoes. When you walked in that door, you weren’t allowed to go to a single office without walking through the shoe warehouse. Like you never went home from that office without a pair of shoes. You know, because every single person understood that the mission for the company was selling shoes. And that has stuck with me over the years. Because that was so clear. Right? It was so clear. I know that you’re bringing Karen and to talk about what area networks. But Steve, she needs a pair of shoes while she’s here.

 

Denise O’Berry  37:00  

A great story. And that is so very, very true. Because I don’t know about you, but think back into your into my corporate days. You know, it’s like, oh, I don’t do that. That’s such as Yes. You know, yeah. And we don’t want to build those kind of cultures in our small businesses.

 

Karen Yankovich 

Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. I love it. So okay, so if you if I’m a small business, and I’m listening, and I’m like, okay, Denise, I’m in what’s my first step towards creating us, you know, a system and a process. 

 

Denise O’Berry  37:33  

Okay, your first step is create your org chart. Okay? Identify your departments, which will ultimately become your systems. And then focus in on the one, the one department, okay, that you want to build right now that you feel is going to help you take that next step to make money in your business. And it’s probably how,

 

Karen Yankovich  38:01  

okay, Hey, you, how do you help people with this? Can? How can people get some information? If they want a little Okay, like how it will help to get started? Is this how can you help them?

 

Denise O’Berry  38:13  

Oh, okay. Well, I, as a matter of fact, I have a really cool, free on demand webinar that people can take, they don’t have to, you know, sign up and wait, they can go watch it and go through it. It’s called the three secrets to hiring your dream team to boldly grow into the business you deserve, minus stress, overwhelm, and drama. So they can go and they can, they can sign up for that not sign up, but they can watch that webinar. And what it’s going to do is it’s going to cover with for them, why hiring help when you need it is too late. How to make the hiring process a breeze, and how you can hire even if you think you can’t afford it.

 

Karen Yankovich  38:58  

So important. Those are three great, great topics. Okay, we’ll put a link in the blog and in the show notes, so people can grab that and watch that webinar. And this is such important topics. Honestly, everybody listening needs to watch the webinar, even if you think you don’t need this help. Because I spent a lot of years thinking I didn’t need this help. And I’ve hired a lot of the wrong people over the years. And it is an expensive mistake to make. And I’ve said that a few times. But that is because I have learned that the hard way. And I’m a little battle scarred from and I’m not gonna lie, but I’m getting better at it. And that’s why I love having people like Denise on the show, because it helps me learn as well as providing her as a resource to to you guys. Right? So that’s awesome. And tell it give a website or what was the best way to follow you on social media?

 

Karen Yankovich  39:46  

Oh, okay. They can follow me on most sites. I’m Denise O’Berry on LinkedIn. I am Denise O’Berry. On Twitter. I’m Denise O’Berry, on Facebook. My page is small business cash flow

 

Denise O’Berry  40:01  

Cool. Yeah.

 

Karen Yankovich  40:03  

This is awesome. Denise, thank you so much for helping us with this today. This is really an important topic for for those of us that want to, you know, make more than a couple bucks in our business. We really want to run sustainable, profitable businesses. We can’t overlook this. We can’t close our eyes and hope that this stuff’s going to just work out for us, or wave. Our magic ones are looking our crystal balls, we have to take control of it. And and thanks for being there for those of us that need help with this because I am surely one of those people.

 

Denise O’Berry  40:32  

I thanks so much for having me, Karen, it’s been really fun talking with you today. You too, Denise. Thanks so much.

 

Karen Yankovich  40:37  

So I hope that you love Denise as much as I did, I totally think and I said this in the show that we all should be downloading and watching her webinar. Because I think that it’s just the stuff you need. If you get one tip from something like that, that simplifies the back end of what you do, it gives you more time to do the things you love to do, right. So totally take advantage of Denise’s offer for free workshop. Because at the end of the day, my goal is to help you reduce your overwhelm, right? I don’t want this, I don’t want everything I teach you here to be another thing on your to do list, right? I want this to be simple. And you know that I want to support you in this as well. That’s why I do this podcast. We’ve got a free Facebook group that I’m in all the time, we do pop up live strategy sessions, and so much more can join us in the Facebook group. The link is in the show notes and the blog. Or you can go to Karen yankovich.com slash Facebook group. And join us over there. We’d love to have you there. You can ask me your questions about this. And you know anything else that we talked about other podcasts and we’re happy to chat about that there. And remember that I made this offer the last couple of episodes. If you want my help with this. We do take a limited number of private clients and I do run kind of like the invitation only small masterminds, or three month masterminds on six month masterminds, if you want to know a little bit more about all of that or just have like a fit conversation to see if there’s an opportunity to get some support around what this doing what we’re doing with all of this, go to Karen yankovich.com slash apply and just send us an application will you know if we think there’s a fit as well, we’ll get on the phone with you. There’s no obligation whatsoever in that. And let’s just have a little conversation and see if there’s more to chat about. Before you go one more reminder to help me out. Take a quick screenshot of this episode on your phone and share that on your social media and tag me so that I can share it with my audience and get us both more visibility. The bottom line is I want this to be simple for you. So let’s let this be simple. I will see you back here again next week.