Build to Enough | The Value of an Operations Person

In this episode, Keila discusses the often-overlooked benefits of hiring an operations person in a small business. She shares her personal experience of how hiring an operations director transformed her company, and outlines six key benefits of bringing operations expertise into a growing business. Keila emphasizes how an operations professional can drive efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and contribute to strategic growth, making a compelling case for why this role is a valuable investment even for businesses focused on billable hours.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Build to Enough
• (00:57) - The Value of an Operations Person
• (01:29) - Hiring Based on Vibes: A Case Study
• (03:53) - Six Benefits of Hiring an Ops Person
• (04:02) - Streamlined Processes and Efficiency Gains
• (05:52) - Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
• (07:54) - Data-Driven Decision Making
• (10:39) - Scalability and Growth
• (12:56) - Enhanced Collaboration and Communication
• (14:50) - Cost Savings
• (16:08) - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Connect with Keila!
LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/keilahilltrawick
Website - www.krht.co

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Creators & Guests

Host

Keila Hill-Trawick, CPA, MBA

Helping entrepreneurs create and maintain the business they want | Building to Enough | LinkedIn Top Voice | Intuit Partner Council | Accounting Firm Owner

What is Build to Enough ?

Little Fish Accounting presents Build To Enough. The pursuit of endless growth and scaling can leave entrepreneurs feeling burned out and unfulfilled. This podcast explores how to build sustainable, purpose-driven businesses that align with your lifestyle and values, rather than defined by rapid expansion alone. On this show, we’ll reframe definitions of success, provide strategies for structuring companies around desired lifestyles, and share stories of entrepreneurs finding deeper fulfillment by focusing on “enough.” Join us as we discuss moving off the hamster wheel and building businesses with balance and meaning.

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Hello. You're listening to Build to Enough, a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to scale at their own pace. I'm your host, Keyla Hill Traywick, and I'll be your chief storyteller and cheerleader in a world that glorifies endless expansion, we're tuning out the noise and discussing the beauty of enough. Each episode will dive into inspiring stories, practical insights, and strategies to cultivate sustainable success on your [00:00:30] own terms. So whether you're a solopreneur, small business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur, get ready for a refreshing take on the entrepreneurial journey. This is build to enough. Hello and welcome back to Build to Enough. So we talk a lot about billable employees in this industry. Right. So and this is all small businesses. We are constantly looking for people to join the team who can directly make us more money. But today I want to talk about the hidden [00:01:00] opportunities with hiring an operations person. So this is not going to be a person that directly makes you sales, or goes out and earns money for you, or even someone that you can see a direct correlation between hiring them and earning more in the business. But there are so many things that this person can offer that this person can do for your business. Um, and so I want to talk about that today and a bit of behind the scenes about how we have handled that at Little Fish. So let's get started. So [00:01:30] years ago, if you all have heard me talk about hiring before, you know that I was hiring off vibes for a very long time, which means we hired our now operations director, Jess, as a part time admin.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Back then, I didn't know really what her job would be. I wasn't sure what I really needed an admin or an assistant to do, but there were a lot of task based things that I needed to get off my plate. Fast forward a few years and just more than proved her worth by really going beyond just the [00:02:00] task to be able to help us scale differently, to give us some operational efficiencies, and then also to looking at some KPIs, some data driven decisions that we could make in order to improve the company. It was really difficult early on, as one coach put it, as I was laying track while the train was still running right. I am trying to build out the behind the scenes, the foundation of how the firm runs while we are actually using what's already in place in order to build and move [00:02:30] forward. And so hiring Jess not only allowed her to take on a lot of those task based and data driven opportunities, but also allowed me to delegate some of those liaison things that we needed. So getting it involved when we outsource that, when we got HR involved, um, to help us hire that all didn't have to be dependent on me. I didn't always have to be the point of contact for those, because she knows just as much about the business as I do, and can really act [00:03:00] as that go between to make sure that we're getting what we need in order to support both the team and our clients.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So what I found was that beyond just those task based things that I had her doing and even the up level things that she does now, I was able to see an increase in revenue, things like following up on invoices with a personal touch, not just using the reminders, um, following up with potential leads or people who had ghosted us to see what happens so that we had feedback in order to [00:03:30] either improve our messaging or clarify items that might have made us lose that client. And instead, we were able to get more information to be able to provide what they needed. If that had remained falling on me, it could have fallen between the cracks and been something that we weren't actually able to use to improve. Not only, like I said, our client experience and efficiencies, but also make us more money in the process. So today, let's dig into six benefits quickly, as always, that we have found that [00:04:00] has been beneficial from hiring an ops person. And the first thing is streamline processes and efficiency gains. So I mentioned a bit about this shortly ago. But when we are able to identify and eliminate inefficiencies, we can analyze workflows, we can pinpoint bottlenecks, we can make sure that we're automating repetitive tasks.

Keila Hill-Trawick: All of those typically live on the CEO when you're relatively small, right. Because who else is going to do that job? And sometimes it turns out that an admin doesn't necessarily have [00:04:30] the capacity or resource or experience to be able to take those up to the next level and point those out to us. And so having somebody in operations has really allowed us to say the business as a whole, what could it use to get better behind the scenes? How can we move this forward in a way that doesn't necessarily require more hands, but just requires a better use of the tools that we already have? So an example that I have is that we needed to automate things like proposals [00:05:00] early on, and I had a system to do that, but there were still. A lot of like manual touch points that were happening behind the scenes. To be honest, mostly because I just didn't have the time to learn how to do that better. So once she got more fully, you know, engrossed in her role, she was able to see, hey, this is how leads come in. This is how we ultimately get on a call with them. This is how they get onboarded into the system. Where am I seeing those manual points that we could automate in a way that doesn't require that I am doing those tasks [00:05:30] and also trying to make them better? So I will say, now we've gotten that down to a really like pinpointed, almost science of how we bring people in, but also making sure that then it left time for both of us to be able to provide that human touch that we know is so important in our firm to be able to give that white glove service from the very beginning of somebody signing up with us, the next thing is enhanced customer satisfaction.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So obviously when we get more efficient and we can automate more, we also create a [00:06:00] more smooth and consistent customer experience. And that is top of the list for little fish. Like, we want to make sure that it is always easy to work with and for us. So internally, we want to make sure that team members are able to get to what they need to relatively quickly. And then externally, we want to make sure that clients are seeing what they mean to see. So when we are onboarding them, we talked about how some of those steps look, but also when we're offboarding are we getting feedback and information that tells us what we did well and what we could [00:06:30] have done better? What can happen throughout the year that she can take in as information from everybody on the team who's doing client delivery in order to take that back kind of to her workshop and figure out, hey, based on this, what are some of the things that I know about the tools and processes that I could potentially improve, or maybe introduce a new way of doing so that it doesn't feel so manual for the team.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So an example is when we, you know, we talked about having more timely responses to client inquiries. This [00:07:00] also includes things like I can't log into the system or I need to figure out where to update my bank information. We don't want this falling on the account managers, or worse yet, on me to give them instructions on how to do that. So she's really able to be able to stay integrated within the process with clients, even after that initial, um, interaction with her to make sure that they're getting what they need throughout that isn't directly client related. This also because, as some of you might have found, [00:07:30] whether you are an accountant like us or you're running a different kind of small business clients who are unable to upload files or access files, how can we make sure that that doesn't get in the way of us actually doing the work? So making sure that we do that quickly and with care improves customer satisfaction for everybody that works with us, which is always just a really important part of how we deliver our service. Number three. So let's talk about data driven decision making. I was hiring on vibes. I was making a lot [00:08:00] of decisions, all fives, a lot of the things that we were doing were really starting from this place of like, what do I think we need? And it was because not only was I not capturing information that would help me make those decisions, I also realized that even if I captured it, I really didn't have the time or capacity to analyze that information.

Keila Hill-Trawick: And so in this way, we've been able to use our ops director to use that data to inform strategic decisions. She has time to collect all of it from the various places where it lives, and the various [00:08:30] resources or people on the team who can provide it. And then she can use those details to identify trends, forecast where we're headed, point out places that are not working, you know, are we? I don't know, spending on ads. Does she see an increase in, um, applications based on that? If not, she can make some real time talks about whether we need to change our approach. She can also make decisions that align with the company's strategic goals. So one of the things that [00:09:00] we really wanted to make sure at Little Fish is that we were taking on the right clients and, um, I can have a soft heart. And so there are there are companies and organizations that are near and dear to my heart, but not being the person that carries out client, uh, delivery probably would not be the best fit for what we do. They might have too many partners or e-commerce sales tax that we don't really deal with. And so as much as I as Chela would like to take you on, there needs to be a buffer in [00:09:30] between that makes sure that that's actually a good fit for little fish, not just for my heart's desires.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So one of the things that we handed off is that our operations director looks at applications and really make the determination of whether they should be approved to go forward to a discovery call. She knows what the team can do and what we do best. She also doesn't want to waste anybody's time, right? We don't want people getting on the call and realizing that they can't afford us, or that the services that we offer aren't necessarily what they're looking [00:10:00] for. She's able to read between the lines and say, hey, this is a. Good, fit or not. She's also doing the follow up with clients after our discovery call to find out why some didn't come on right, what could we do differently or explain differently? Or was this even our fault? Did they just decide that another provider was in better alignment with what they were looking for? So again, being able to take information that we are getting at various points throughout the process and use it to inform how we do things differently or [00:10:30] more cleanly communicating to the team what needs to happen, so that what we are putting out into the world aligns with strategic decisions that we want to make internally. Next up is scalability and growth. Um, we talk a lot about growth and it being intentional here on the podcast. And part of that intentionality means that you've got to have somebody who is keeping those steps in order for you, right? As you your business grows, whether it's growing from you by yourself to you with a contractor [00:11:00] or you with a team of five or even ten, complexity is going to increase along the way, right? There are things that you didn't need when it was just you, because you're the person that's doing all of it.

Keila Hill-Trawick: And now that you have somebody working with you, you need a way to check in. You need a way to handle more volume. You need a way to see the status of where everything lives that no longer is just in your head. And having someone who can take over that process has been a game changer for us. So an example. At the very, very [00:11:30] beginning, we didn't have applications. People would just book a call and I would talk to them, and then I would take on who I thought we should take on. Right. And not only do I think that we didn't necessarily take on clients every time, that should have been a good fit for the business. We also didn't have a whole lot of automation. I would just stay up and make sure that it was done. We didn't need a whole process that same way because I was the only person in the pipeline. But as the team has grown, as our business has grown, [00:12:00] it has become more important that we have those automations in place and that we have somebody who is constantly checking in to make sure that that scalability is working.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Are we growing too fast and need to put up a wait list, which we did? Are we going to slow? And actually, if we just made two, you know, very specific tweaks, we could actually start taking people on faster. What are the gaps that we're seeing that we already need to fix that she can actually get involved in because she can handle the, you know, client [00:12:30] onboarding, the setting them up to making sure that good, even though she's not an accountant, that's going to review their tax returns or send out financials. So when we talk about scalability and growth, we want to have the difference between people who are on the team and actually interacting and making sure that clients get their deliverables. And those ops and behind the scenes people who are just making sure that it's a smooth experience, even when they're not talking to anyone directly. Now we're coming up on the last two, the first being enhanced collaboration [00:13:00] and communication. So alongside scalability and growth, we really need to have easy ways for us to talk to each other on the team and to talk to clients. And again, we want to make sure that that's efficient. You don't want to have conversations that are half in an email, half in slack, half within your project. That's that's a lot of halves. Ignore that math. But you know what I'm trying to say? You basically want to make sure that there are some consistencies in how you communicate with each other and how clients can expect to be communicated [00:13:30] from you.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Now, operations professionals are usually the glue for that, right? They are making sure that all of the departments are being held together, so that you have an ecosystem that is working properly, and the way that they need to be able to do that is to make sure that communication is happening effectively, efficiently, efficiently and consistently across the board. Right. Do we have clear communication channels? Do we have collaborative work environments? Does everybody know where to find things and where to ask for things? [00:14:00] This is also, and especially important for small teams who are growing their team some. Right. We want to make sure that they're not acting in silos, that this department is just not talking to this department. And that ops person can really make sure that there is some cohesion between everybody that this one department A doesn't know, something that affects the business that is not being translated to Department B. So an example of this is that, you know, Jess [00:14:30] helps us to track progress towards strategic goals. And because of that, she is interacting with everybody on the team to make sure that their piece in that goal is on track, that they're following and completing the right item, and that they're focusing on what will get us all to the final result that we're trying to end up with.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Finally, cost savings. So the last reason that an operations person can be helpful is that they can take a bird's eye view of figuring out [00:15:00] how we can reduce unnecessary expenses. So they can see everything, right? She can see all of the things that I pay for for little fish. She can see all of my travel. She can see the payroll. So what is coming out to pay the team? She knows exactly where our expenses are going. And so not only can she kind of identify where we could be saving, and cause she's also able to call out whether she needs to talk to a supplier or a vendor about cost [00:15:30] saving opportunities. Where can we get rid of unnecessary systems? Where can we optimize resources so we're not paying for duplicative software? So an example on our side is that Jess conducted an audit of all the tools we were paying for. And then she worked with the team to say, like, are we still using this? What functions are you using on it? Should we go to a lower plan? Are you sure that you want to keep this? And maybe we could save money by paying for it annually instead of monthly? What are some ways that we can [00:16:00] kind of reduce what we're paying for, and still keep the team on track to run this efficient machine that we're building? All right, so I listed out a bunch of reasons that we should really be open to hiring people who aren't going to be a direct connection to revenue, streamline process and efficiency gain.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So they're going to optimize workflows and eliminate a lot of those inefficiencies that would rest with us as owners generally enhanced customer satisfaction, like, how can we encourage and ensure a smooth and [00:16:30] consistent client experience, data driven decision making? So taking that operational data that is coming in from all of these different resources in order to inform strategic decisions about how the company moves forward, scalability and growth. So you're preparing your business operations so that it can sustainably scale. We're building those things out at the beginning that help us to go from the level that we are now to the level that we're trying to get to enhance communication. So making sure that we have better interdepartmental communication [00:17:00] and that that communication, um, process and efficiency is extending externally to both our clients and other parties that we might be in communication with and then cost savings. How can we identify and reduce unnecessary expenses with the help of an operations person? Listen, a lot of people don't want to pay for this person, right? There can be hesitation about investing in what they see as administrative tasks. Also, we think that us doing it is free, which newsflash it is not. It is never free. [00:17:30] We are spending our time and likely what would be considered our billable hours on tasks that we shouldn't be doing because they're not our highest and best use.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So as we've talked about today, it extends beyond those admin tasks, right? It goes across the entire organization. And that way we can drive and foster long term growth or maintenance depending on what your goals are. So hopefully, I hope that you see how transformative hiring this position could be and again, how it can go beyond the basics. This can really [00:18:00] be your right hand in the business so that everything doesn't fall on you. I hope that you found this episode insightful, that it gave you some insight as to how you might be able to change up what your org chart looks like in the business to ensure that you have this role available to really support you, the team, and your clients, and really free you up for the things that you're passionate about. Until next time, understand this the right investments in your team can make all the difference, and that can go beyond just the [00:18:30] client delivery. I need you to help me do a task to how can I make this business better with the hire of an operations person? Talk to you next week. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Build to Enough. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate and share the love with your fellow entrepreneur friends, and make sure to sign up for the Build to Enough newsletter. The link is in the show notes. Stay tuned for more episodes as we continue to redefine success one intentional step at a [00:19:00] time.