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Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
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On today's episode, we discuss how to know when you need an operations leader, and what the process of bringing one on board looks like. Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life? Me too. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. Kara Barnes is a certified Director of Operations devoted to helping creatives optimize their backstage business operations, so they can stay inspired while scaling their ventures. With over a decade streamlining systems for marketing agencies, coaches and speakers, she leverages strategic mapping and EOS to put operations in order. Tara, welcome, Don. Ben,
0:47
thank you so much, Chris. I'm excited to be chatting with you.
0:49
I am excited for it as well. And I would love to dive into your origin story. Sounds
0:55
good. Yeah. So I got into the online business space in college as a virtual assistant working at a firm and I am so grateful for that experience. Because as a virtual assistant, you get thrown into all different kinds of software, all different kinds of businesses, different kinds of leaders, and folks, and you have to learn how to be part of multiple teams. And it was it was a really valuable, wonderful introduction. And allowed me really quickly to figure out what I wanted to spend that time doing and where my my gifts were and where they weren't so. So over time, I fell in love with the marketing piece of things. And I spent a few years really focusing and honing my marketing skills and started strategic marketing abilities, and then ran a marketing agency with a friend of mine for three years. And then through that experience, found that I was really using marketing as a vehicle to do operations. I love building systems and making sure that there's consistency and clear expectations and team members feel supported. And marketing is one of the most operations, heavy parts of the business, a lot of times getting the content put together and distributed, you know, day in day out can be a lot of work. So the more that you can create consistent sustainable systems for everybody who participates, I have seen the way that that not only transforms businesses, but makes people enjoy their work more to just know what's coming and what's expected and it becomes more methodical so. So now that I figured out how to do purely operations, that's what I do I work with speakers and their business to, to build the infrastructure and get the software right, and then make sure the right folks are in the right seats and, and start to skill, just like you said,
2:35
awesome. So I'd actually never thought about that from the just which kind of departments within a company are the most operationally heavy. And it probably is marketing, just from the sense that everyone else is almost on like a rinse and repeat cycle, or like sales, right, you're gonna do the same sales call, you're gonna jump on the same conversations. But marketing campaign to campaign is gonna keep shifting. And so yeah, interesting, interesting lens, I guess, to look at the business from. So let's dive right in to what you think are some of the warning signs that creative businesses need or are facing that requires them to bring on like an integrator operation specialist? Yeah.
3:17
I'm so excited to be talking with you about this, because I love this stuff. I think this question of sort of the readiness, like when is it the right time for me to bring someone in to support me with this is it's my favorite question. It's really what I talked about all day long with folks because because it's hard to know, when you're in the business owner seat where to invest your time and energy, it's there's everything is, you know, pulling you in different directions, and each conversation you come away from, you know, different focus and strategy and recommendation from somebody. And so, I think this is, this is the question is, when is this the right thing for my business. So I will say, some of the warning signs have to do with, with the business owners mentality. So I'll say, for a lot of business owners that want to go big, and they have the vision, they have the they have the magnetic personality and the you know, the energy that they can bring out on a stage and get people excited about what it is that they that they want to put into the world. A lot of times, I find that people have that good stuff. But if you can't also back it up with strong consistent communication or clarity of what you're offering that you're not going to get very far, you're not going to have the impact you want to have. So even you know, you can dazzle people from a stage but if they don't know how to get in touch with you or sign up for a newsletter or stay, you know, stay in tune with what you have going on. It really isn't going to last beyond that one hour on a stage so so I really enjoy having conversations with people who who are starting to understand that and maybe they've been in business for you know, even some folks have been in business for 12 years and are just sort of realizing that the dazzle from the stage isn't enough or you know, being able to have the vision and the impact, like the idea is about the impact they want to have. That's not enough that, that you really have to have a strategic comprehensive approach to the to what you're doing in your business, or you're going to end up taking three steps in this direction and three steps in that direction. And you're really not going to feel like you're making the progress you want to make for having the impact you want to have. So in terms of specific warning signs, I would say, people starting to burn out and lose their ability to dazzle and bring good energy and magnetize people, that's, that's a huge one that I'm always concerned about. Because I I want our visionaries and people with big ideas in this world to be able to do something with it. So that's a big one is burnout. feeling like they they know they need help, and they're investing in people, they're starting to bring on team members, but they don't really feel like they're good at getting good ROI, or they don't know how to leverage the people who are there to support them. That's a huge one that people need more operational infrastructure. And I think the other one is, in a similar way, they're investing in a lot of technology, same thing, they sort of come to terms with like, Yeah, I'm gonna have to invest a little bit to get to where I want to go, ultimately, but they don't really feel good about the software they're investing in, or they feel like, you know, I think this is the right thing, but then it kind of fell off, and I never look at it, and I don't you know that that's a, that's a big indicator that you need someone who has more of an operations brain to come in and help you think through strategically if that's a sensible expense. So, so really being able to help people feel good about their ROI that really drives me and if leaders are, are, if I'm talking to a leader, and I hear them having a lot of doubt, and a lack of confidence in the things that they're investing in. That that probably has to do with not having that operations brain in their business, who's able to look at the big picture and help them kind of pull everything together. Does that make sense?
6:54
Yeah. A lot of the businesses that I've worked with, it's like, they don't even know what metrics they should be looking at to know if they're being operationally efficient. And so it's comes down to this, like, gut instinct of like, I feel like it could be better. I guess. I'm sure you're picking that up on like your initial calls with with prospects and stuff. But I guess, what are some of the things you're looking at with, you know, as you come into a business, metric wise, right, to be able to help them identify the right areas of focus that you can help with? Yeah,
7:27
great question. So the very first work that I do with folks is a lot of crystallizing their vision, and really clarifying the end goal. And I, you know, I think people can either be good at one or the other, they're really good at doing and digging in and getting a lot of things done day to day, or they're good at their big vision. And they have a lot of excitement about these big numbers. And they're they're big company they want to grow. And a lot of times, what I'm doing is helping people bridge the two that, you know, whatever, how, regardless of how you're approaching your business, now, we need to make sure that you and the team have a clear big picture vision that we're working towards. And we also have what you're describing Chris, which are the day to day KPIs that are grounded in day to day activity. So so being able to, before we really start doing anything else have a few documents that exist that everyone on the team can reference. There's full transparency about where we're going and when everybody's contributing to. And then a scorecard that grounds it in week in week out, what are we what are we actually doing here? And then you mentioned, you know, kind of what am I looking for, when I'm when I'm coming into coming into those spaces and seeing like what kinds of KPIs exist and such, I noticed that a lot of people focus on the outputs. And the end goal of you know, we want to have this many people will convert it. And we want to get this many people on our email list. And there aren't as many inputs A lot of times and so one of the things that I help people do, when they're first getting used to having a scorecard and being more metric driven, is I'll give them permission to do more inputs and say, you know, outputs can feel can feel so out of our control. And they can often feel disheartening, like nobody likes going into a scorecard week after week and putting a zero or we're not, you know, the font is always red. We're not, we're never quite making it. So a lot of times I'll meet with people and bring them ideas, like how can we have inputs that we control? And so we make this many cold phone calls, we have this many posts going out, like what are some of the easy wins that we can that we can give ourselves a you know, more control over the metrics and say we are doing the input, let's like how do we now make sure that it's having the output that'll be the second piece of it. But I know that this is also a big driver for the team. And it also forces specificity and accountability for team members who, you know, instead of saying you're in charge of social media, we'll make it look good. Instead, we say you're in charge of getting three posts out a week, or you're in charge of getting this many impressions throughout the month or whatever that number is going to be. And ideally that starts to really be a motivator for the team instead of just sort of an afterthought that we're checking to see We made our mark, it's not just that it is driving or activity
10:06
like that you differentiate the inputs, outputs. And then like the outcomes with this, because I do find a lot of my clients anyways will focus on the outcome. And that's the big, big picture target. But for a lot of it, you don't necessarily have control over the outcome itself, you do have full control over the inputs, what are you doing in order to make it happen, and then outputs by nature, you can have some reasonable like, expectancy of what you're going to produce based off the inputs. And that's just finding the right inputs to get that outcome. Right. So
10:38
and yeah, both are important. You know, I think we take that big picture vision. And if you want to have 20,000, on your email list in a year, then that gives us a sense, we can work back from that map and say, here's the output we need to be seeing. And then ask what the input is that allows us to start to see that result. So I do, I do think it's a it's an empowering way to approach your metrics to be thinking about both and, and ultimately, the outputs don't matter if you don't have clarity on the inputs, it forces a lot of it forces a lot of good conversation about what are we actually doing to achieve that, instead of just waiting for the numbers to go up? Yeah,
11:12
I guess what kind of like, weekly battle rhythm? Are you setting up as far as like looking at those things, making sure you're doing the right inputs? Right, so that it's not so far out that you kind of lose touch with bigger pictures or or even the daily activities?
11:27
Yeah, great question. So the the post that I put in place with folks, which is sort of loosely based on Eos, I kind of do my own flavor of some of the things that they have there. I encourage people to look at their weekly scorecard at the start of each week during like a leadership level 10 meeting that would be on a Monday or Tuesday and it for those of you who know Eos, that's, that's that level 10 language, which is essentially an effective templated meeting structure where we really go into that meeting with focus, right? So at the start of each week, sitting down with folks that you would consider leadership and you know, in a small business, this might even just be it might be a business coach for you know, solopreneur kinds of folks, for businesses that are a little bit bigger, it kind of again, forces that question like, Who are you inviting into that space to look at those numbers and hold you accountable and start to think of yourself as having a leadership team, even as a small business. So that would be weekly. And then I'll say, typically, when I do a scorecard, I try to map out weekly metrics, and then some monthly metrics for specific departments in the business. So often marketing is one where we don't need to be tracking how many followers we have, every single week, we don't need to be tracking a lot of the email or website visitor information every single week, those are more things that we should keep a monthly pulse on, right. So for things that are department specific, I typically encourage people to do a monthly level 10 specific for that department. So, you know, once a month, anybody on the team, even again, in the small businesses, anybody who touches marketing initiatives, is invited to come together for one hour, including the graphic designer who just touches things here and there, web designer, people that you might think of as kind of peripheral, you're gonna get a lot more out of those people and a lot more buy in from the things that are happening with your marketing, if everyone is in a room together once a month looking at metrics that everyone is responsible for, right, it sort of creates this expectation that like, you know, that we're all being held accountable to these agreed upon metrics we've, we've identified so. So both, I think the you know, get really clear on what things really need to be checked weekly. And I think, typically, those are like 1520 Max, things that you need to keep a close eye on, you know, on a weekly basis. And maybe even that is kind of a lot to start. I think for people who haven't done this before, start with three to five, right? Just give yourself the the easiest, most attainable stuff that you can start to put in there until it feels motivating, then you can always add more. But getting in there every single week. And then and then for things that are monthly making sure that you're you're designing a space for those the people come in the right people are in the room when those metrics are pulled up. And that again, like it's all for me, it's all about making it meaningful. I don't want to work cards to be like archival reporting that we're going to like look at yours on the road, like I want it to drive activity, I'm going to I'll get that over the head because I think there's just so much opportunity that that gets missed and small businesses when they feel like it's kind of like a check. We did our homework. There's a lot of opportunity there to get buy in from your team and have it be more motivating than that. If that's how you're feeling about it. If you if it's feeling like check, you know.
14:38
Yeah. So let's shift gears now. Talking about finding the right integrator, I guess what are some of the skills values like experience that you would be looking for? If as you're bringing someone on?
14:53
Yeah, great question. I so I have a an agency model where I have a consult thing team. So I do a lot of this kind of thing myself recruiting people who have the right kinds of skill sets. Some of the things that I all say in terms of having a successful relationship, when you're the business owner, bringing someone in, a lot of it has to do with your ability to articulate and, and verbalize and get down on paper, what you're really looking for and what you need from that person. And setting a clear precedent about what's actually being asked. And then as far as what you're looking for, when you go to recruit that person, a couple of big things that I that I'm watching for, I want someone who value so I want someone for my team who values their their personal life and has good boundaries. And not only do I want that, because that's going to, that's going to be someone who is much more likely to be a long term fit than somebody who might burn out or not be honest with me about what they want to do or don't want to do. So that's like, that's just a good hiring rule across the board. But I think especially when you're looking to bring someone in, who is a role model in the business, and that is a an important player when it comes to developing a healthy culture and, and a culture of accountability and self responsibility and self ownership, self leadership. That's one of the things that I think is critical. Especially because the business owner typically is not that person who is good at modeling, you know, good work life balance. So if you can have someone in the business who can help to hold everyone accountable, that we've got good work practices in place, so that we're respecting each other's time and energy and accessing flow, and strong systems that, that encourage flow instead of sort of sporadic communication or, you know, like everybody's working in the evenings or working on weekends. That's one of the things that I think a strong integrator will do is help to role model those kinds of healthy behaviors. And I'll be honest, like, that's, that's definitely my bias, that's something that I think is going to allow for a strong long term relationship with your integrator and, and supportive, you know, the most impactful integrators and businesses I think, have good boundaries that way. And then I'll say, somebody who can facilitate conversation really effectively. So for example, being able to being able to notice when a conversation shifts from, from a strategic decision down to the nitty gritty, and being able to notice, like, you know, we're kind of, we're talking about this thing over here, but the person who owns that thing isn't even in this room with us. So let's pause this conversation and make sure that this conversation happens with the right people at the right time. I think that kind of awareness and facilitation is really, really valuable to have in a business. Otherwise, I think, oftentimes, we're ending up like, you know, we hear the term organization whiplash from small business owners, especially that integrator having that skill set to make sure that everybody in the business starts to think that way, like who owns this and is now really the appropriate time to be solving this problem or talking about this, I think that's incredibly valuable to have someone mindful in your business that way. And then I think one other thing I'll just mention is the ability to the ability to manage with patients. So I think, in the same way that person is responsible for seeing the big picture and being able to, you know, hold everyone accountable to strategic decisions versus nitty gritty and, you know, thinking thinking that way in the business, I also think it's critical to have someone who can build trust with the people on your team, and not only to leverage talent, but to help people stick around and retain good people who are excited about what you're doing. I think oftentimes, business owners when they're kind of shifting from, you know, me managing and, and trying to do everything all the time to really wanting to lead and step away from the management piece and really go into the thought leadership piece. Having somebody in here who can manage really effectively is is what makes it realistic, right? So it's not just about like, it's there's some like building rapport with the team that that integrator needs to be able to do. But I also think it's it's holding people accountable to their roles and sort of balancing that that strong, hands on manager role where we we get tighter accountability than we've had before. But with good diplomacy and care of the people, and protecting the leaders time and helping everyone sort of manage up and manage themselves more effectively. And those are all those are all really particular skill sets. And I'm like, it's kind of it's hard to find somebody who can do all of that. So I'll pause for a second FONSI was that with us?
19:55
No, I liked that you you have a much longer term vision for what this world All should entail where I find a lot of people are looking to hire for someone who can get the job done right now, right let's we got targets to hit, right maybe we got investors or we just, we want to be able to do X, Y and Z. And so they're just driving as hard as they can. So usually you'll see, you know, an integrator coming in, who's a workhorse, they're just, they're going to figure it out, even if they have to do it themselves. Until they get the right people in, like, they're gonna figure it out. But yeah, they do burnout. And they do kind of lose some of that efficiency from the team. And then they end up having turnover with the team and everything. So I can very much appreciate that perspective of the long term thinking, I think that's a very different than where most of the industry goes. That's,
20:42
yeah, I think you're right. And I'll say like, one of the conversations I've been having with my team lately is, like, when we talk about our job being to execute the vision, I think, sometimes we do fall too hard into that bucket of doers and get it done. We, you know, we like we're craving like showing our value, and we can't get it done. So we will get it done. But how often does an integrator come back and say, Okay, here's the thing, I put it together for you just like you asked, and the visionary says, well, we're not doing it like that anymore. Right or that's not that doesn't fit well, with we're doing it. So I think your integrator has a responsibility to be really strategic and poke at things and be the strategic partner and the leader needs to make space for that before you just have an integrator. Who does? Because I think I think I think both are critical to having an effective integrator in your business.
21:27
Right. And so, so with that, I'm guessing the, on the continuum of like, skills, I guess, operational skills versus industry experience, your you would want someone with more of those skills to be able to operationalize whatever kind of figure out the industry on the fly, is absolutely, yeah. So that does open up a lot of people for being able to find focus on just working in themselves, right, build the skills rather than just niching themselves into being the the E commerce something something specialist. Yeah, yeah. All right. That's a good tip. For anyone out there listening for that, that specifically, there's hope for you. So I guess what are what are some of the things that you'll notice as like a misalignment between like a visionary and integrator that kind of raises some flags that either we have to do something? Or maybe we part ways and bring someone else in? Yeah,
22:25
absolutely. One of the things that, that my team members do anytime that they start working with a new leader is what we call designing and alliances. I think this is, you know, not an uncommon thing. But I think I think it's a I think it's not an uncommon idea. But I think in practice, it doesn't happen that often that when a new team member joins, people take time, and say, let's set aside an hour to just talk about how we work together, like instead of jumping into the project, and really, you know, focusing on whatever it is that we brought you in for, let's take a little bit of time to focus on the relationship and have a conversation about, you know, like, how do you show up when things aren't going well, for you? Or when you're overwhelmed? What is that gonna look like? And how can I support you? And especially with this type of relationship, where, you know, an integrator is so involved in that visionaries life. Because for a lot of visionaries, the businesses their life, and it's emotional, and it is personal, you know, so. So I do think that I do think that taking time to design the lines up front and make sure that there's a lot of precedent set for hard conversations, I think is critical. And in terms of your question of where's their misalignment? I think the result of that not happening that would result in misalignment is that people stop saying the honest thing I as your integrator, if I don't feel like you're a safe person for me to disagree with or if you you know, you have an attitude, if you just want me to do you don't necessarily want my strategic input, then I'm going to be less likely to say, hey, I don't think that's a good use of your resources, or I don't you know, I don't agree with this or that, can we can we talk through it a little bit. And that's, I think that's the case for a lot of people who are used to calling all the shots in their business that it takes some time to, to create space for that and to create that relationship. And of course, there's a natural aspect of trust building that just will take time and it will take you know, working together for a while and that sort of thing. But if you don't have the ability to disagree and have meaningful conversation about what's best for the business and what feels strategic, given all the all the things in the mix that's going to result in frustration and misalignment. Another thing is, I think often with personnel. I think that I think that visionaries can struggle sometimes to can struggle to know when to build a roll around a person versus let's just make sure we know what the business needs and then fill the seats, right. That's a very common experience. Um, And I think sometimes the integrator can come in and see like, That person doesn't feel it quite the right fit. But the visionary might have the relationship, you know, like, I think that the visionary might have a relationship with that person where they're not able to, they're not able to have a hard conversation about changing that person's role or letting them go or, you know, getting shifting the dynamics, I think that can be very sensitive. And if the visionary and integrator aren't, again, having heard honest conversations about what the need is and what the goal is, and, and what's really needed, if the integrator feels like, they have to kind of tiptoe around, whatever was there, before they came in, you're gonna get so much less out of that person, and they probably aren't likely to stick around, because they're not going to feel like they can bring their value and their strategic lens to support things, you know. So those are the biggest ones that I see.
25:48
Awesome. Okay, you dropped a lot of insights. In this episode, a lot of good nuggets. Within the content here. I want to go into our final three questions. With the first being, what book do you recommend everyone should read? No, gosh,
26:03
um, my, my go to book would be nonviolent communication. Have you read? Have you read that? No, not. So I read nonviolent communication, as as part of some personal coaching that I was doing. And the way it is transformed. My ability to show up in all my relationships, and especially work relationships is great. This conversation we've been having about effective visionary, integrator relationships, nonviolent communication is all about being able to name in a really honest way, what you're feeling what your needs are, and what your requests might be. And it takes a lot of the emotion out of it, and allows you to be a stronger communicator. And if you're if you're familiar with radical candor, it's a similar, a similar kind of book that just gives you some really good tools for for hard conversations, which I think is what good business is often about.
26:54
Yeah, I think majority of our, our goals and desires are on the other side of those hard conversations. And so if we would just have them faster and do better with them. Yeah, we'd get there. That's a good recommendation, I'm gonna pick that one up. Next one, what is next for you professionally,
27:14
next to me professionally. I want to I want to see the people that I work with, free up their time and energy in such a way that they like I want, I want more case studies of transformation. I've been able to do this in a few businesses. But I want to be able to show the way that having an integrator and operationalizing your business can allow you as a person to enjoy what your business gives back to you so much more and that your business shouldn't be about. It shouldn't necessarily always be the thing that consumed your life that ideally you built the business, to have the freedom to be able to go on a two week vacation and not have to worry and feel like you come back to the business falling apart. Right? I want more case studies of people who were able to step away and really, like reach their bigger potential because their business is operationalized. So my that's my focus for the next couple of years is really building detailed case studies of that that experience.
28:09
Awesome. Again, your long term vision with Yeah, most people would say like, that's what I'm doing this month. Awesome. Finally, where can people find you? Yeah,
28:23
so my company name is backstage up so you can find me at backstage ops.com I'm on Instagram and all the all the socials or on LinkedIn, Kara Barnes K ra dar NES. I have a newsletter on there that that seems to be getting lots of lots of attention. And that seemed to be a good thing I tried to give really tangible things like one of the things I didn't really speak much to is that often an integrator operations brain is also one of the best techie people in your business. And so I tried to give a lot of like techie tips for small business owners who just want their work data and their their technology stuff to flow a little bit smoother. So I tried to give really tangible tips for those kinds of things. And that that seems to be something people enjoy following you on LinkedIn.
29:06
Awesome. All right. Well, Kara, thank you for joining me.
29:09
Thank you for your time, Chris. This is great.
29:14
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