Alyson Caffrey, founder of Operations Agency knows what clear operations framework does for a service based business. She has served as a fractional COO to many high growth businesses. Through her expertise, businesses enjoy streamlined operations that result in higher performing teams, more clients, and improved profitability. As a business owner and mom of two young boys, she is passionate about helping business owner parents create a sustainable system that allows for taking true parental leave.
We discuss a slew of engaging topics with Alyson, tapping into her expertise surrounding hiring strategy, key items to address as you scale your business, and how a company's accounting can tell an interesting story.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to our YouTube page to be notified with new content. In the meantime, feel free to explore more accounting and business resources. If you think your entrepreneurial story is a perfect fit for an Accountfully Chat, reach out to the marketing team to talk more.
Alyson Caffrey, founder of Operations Agency knows what clear operations framework does for a service based business. She has served as a fractional COO to many high growth businesses. Through her expertise, businesses enjoy streamlined operations that result in higher performing teams, more clients, and improved profitability. As a business owner and mom of two young boys, she is passionate about helping business owner parents create a sustainable system that allows for taking true parental leave.
We discuss a slew of engaging topics with Alyson, tapping into her expertise surrounding hiring strategy, key items to address as you scale your business, and how a company's accounting can tell an interesting story.
Thank you for listening! Subscribe to our YouTube page to be notified with new content. In the meantime, feel free to explore more accounting and business resources. If you think your entrepreneurial story is a perfect fit for an Accountfully Chat, reach out to the marketing team to talk more.
Welcome to the Accountfully Chat with Alyson Caffrey. of Operations Agency. How you doing today, Alyson?
Alyson Caffrey:Good, Brad. Thanks so much for having me.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the chat here to discuss a slew of topics operational finance, accounting, managing your business, maternity leaves, paternity leaves, everything, you know, from an aspect of your company name Operations Agency, it always kinda like, makes me laugh when I see you because it's like, You're a cop and operations agent or whatever. And you're like that gatekeeper for that aspect. But anyways, everything operational. Accountfully loves to talk about. So looking forward to the chat.
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah. Likewise, likewise, I always feel like the name Operations Agency is so meta, because we've always like served agencies and service providers. And we are technically a full service agency by like model and design. And so every time I tell somebody that they're like,"Huh, that's kind of brilliant, but also really confusing".
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Yes. I love it, though. But it's very easy to say operations agency. So good stuff. So all right, well, let's just start with what is operation agency? What do you guys do?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, we really help streamline back end operations for service based businesses, right, we take a look at standard operating procedures for how they market convert and fulfill on projects for their for their business. And it's pretty simple. I think that overall, right? When we start a service based business, or at least with the clients I've worked with, in the past, they you know, are really, really good at something and then someone starts to raise their hand or a multitude of people start to raise their hand and say, hey, I want that result, and so they just kind of fall into entrepreneurship, at least often, with with smaller service based businesses. And you know, they're not operators, they're not, you know, business owner, you know, serial business owners, they don't have some of the formal training. And so I'm not saying that we are the end all be all there on formal training, but we definitely can, you know, kind of come in partner alongside them and really help drill down on okay, what are the things inside of the business that make the most impact? Right, what brings you the most value to your clients? What brings you the most revenue, you know, in terms of like marketing initiatives and conversion mechanisms, and that sort of stuff. So we help paint the picture of what's working well in the business, what we can amplify and what we can take away.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Awesome. How long have you been around?
Alyson Caffrey:Five years. Five beautiful years.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Awesome. Why did you start the company, I was like, hearing that background story pre-you know...
Alyson Caffrey:It's very similar to the one I just kind of metaphorically walked through, I was an operations manager at a high growth company–a service based company. We did all the things we did like PR, marketing, coaching, and we had events and we like launched several different things. And I quickly rose into an operations manager position. And we were really, really growing and scaling fast. I moved because my husband was in the military at the time. And so I had a really honest conversation with the owner, I was like, Hey, man, I don't know if I could do this job remotely. Like we have a lot of in person team, we do our in person events. And he was like, Could you please for the love of God? Give me a three month transition period. And I was like, ah, what must it feel like for somebody who has started their own thing and has all this freedom and everything just to feel so attached right to one person on their team and feel like everything's gonna go out the door with that one person. And so I very graciously absolutely supported him through that 90 Day transition period. I was like, Man, I have no interest in leaving you in the lurch. I really believe in your business, I really believe in you. And I really helped him through that process. And then when I stopped, I was like, Well, what am I doing next? Right? Like, what am I what's gonna happen? And I got two phone calls within the first 30 days departing from that business. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll do some of these projects. And then within two months, I was booked solid. I was like, absolutely, completely flabbergasted right, as any person is who just like falls into entrepreneurship, you like wonder if you can do it, you wonder if you can, like, actually enroll clients and all the things and so I found myself running a business within 60 days of kind of leaving my prior
Brad Ebenhoeh:Kudos to you and yeah, it's it's fascinating job. seeing the although slew clients that we work with, in terms of who's really the the main point of contact within the organization that knows everything. Yeah, they, you know, they, I think, at some point, somebody who was a client mentioned they call it the damn bus file. I was like, What is this file? They're like, it's the damn bus file. And I'm like, what does that mean? They said, Well, if I get hit by the damn damn bus, like this is where–the document need to go to to understand what's going on here. Like passwords, logins, like that was like, Oh, that's good to know. But who's the damn bus person, I guess is always a key aspect of understanding but anyways, so what I guess who's your customer like? What like, I guess I guess let's see. Not even your customer. Let's step back a little bit. So service based company, architect, go ahead and start business start growing, designing architect great stuff, right? All sudden, they're hiring people they're selling, they're doing everything right. Like they're making $500,000 in revenue, like I guess, what is your intended start to raise in terms of what are the things that they need to be worried about and concerned about as they keep growing and scaling their business? And then we can kind of discuss kind of the life cycle businesses and how you help them?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, totally, I think, you know, there's a couple of big things that I usually try to caution my owners toward, right, if we want to scale something past just us, right, we all have the same amount of hours in the day. So when you start to invite team into the picture to get results on your behalf, that's usually a big one, right? A big indicator that maybe we need to start writing some of the things that we're doing down, right. The second big indicator is if we started having clients like falling out, like if you have a retention rate, that's like absolute crap, and you're in a position where maybe the input into your business isn't exactly consistent, we might need to start thinking through like, what are the habits that you have? Right, that's operations, right? The things that you're responsible for every single day? I know, it doesn't seem like operations. And I know a lot of people are like, Oh, well, that's just having a good project management tool or whatever. And I'm like, no, there are actually ways you know, just like any relationship in your life, what you put into it, right, there's an equal and opposite, or sometimes 10x value of what comes out on the other side. And so my opinion is, is that if we start to lose a lot of clients, if we start to be in a position where we're doing like feast or famine months, right, where you're spending time on sales, spending time on fulfillment, spending time on sales, planning, Time fulfillment, not scalable, not like it's just not working out. And then additionally, right, as you're enlisting help, so those are really the three big things that I start to look at. When someone comes to me and they're like, man, things feel really hectic. And I'm like, Okay, well, if you're experiencing one of these three things, it's probably time to start drilling down on like how things operate in your business.
Brad Ebenhoeh:So then, in terms of identifying and drilling down, like what the, the entrepreneur or the owner or the founder can do, is that that's specific to their skill set their interest, right?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, yes. And no, I think like, we want to obviously make sure that their expertise is, is being translated as much as possible in the business, right, because that's going to be the highest value, right? For the most part that have input. But additionally, what we want to take a look at is like, what is bringing us joy and what isn't. And I think overall, that is something to that is, I think, missed early on in the business, especially in a lifecycle of growing to multiple six figures, you got to ask yourself, if you're ready to scale this thing, and you're ready to get to a million plus, you know, 3 million those, those are those growing pains in a business, you have to invest a lot of time you have to invest a lot of money, you have to have good marketplace awareness. And if you're doing something that just like isn't aligned with you, or isn't feeling good, I personally have seen a lot of business owners lose more money than they probably should, in a position like that, where they just feel dragged into the day to day or dragged into a piece of fulfillment or what have you. And so just being really intentional about where do I bring the most value and input and skill set, like raw skill set? And then additionally, where do I feel most aligned in terms of how do I want to spend my time because I think if you are in a position where you're contributing habits into your life and your business that actually make you feel really good, good clients and money will follow. That's my opinion.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So then. So where do you see somebody like yourself coming in to a business, like at a revenue point at a employee headcount point, like what is when's the best, like timing for somebody that maybe look externally for support versus just internally? Yeah, great question.
Alyson Caffrey:And honestly, this is probably the number one question that I always get. Because I think that ultimately, what we want to do is we want to take a look at operations as keeping a healthy lifestyle or staying fit, right? If you have maybe let the wheels fall off for a little while, there's like an on ramp thing, right? There's like kind of a, I need to get back in shape, or I need to start small, and then there's like this kind of on ramping period, and then there's a plateau of maintenance, right? And then maybe you have another goal, maybe you want to summit Everest, right? And then you put an another plan in place, and you get to kind of like that maintenance level of being able to do some of those things. And so I think operations and partnering with somebody like me isn't just a one time thing. It's a multiple time thing, depending on what you're going after in your business, right. So like somebody who's just starting and trying to work themselves out of the core functions of fulfillment, might be experiencing the exact same financial, operational and team headaches as somebody who's trying to grow their agency from one to 3 million right and take on more director level or management level employees and really hold those people to key performance indicators and keep you know costs very similar and margins very similar. It's it's very similar. It's just different stages in the game. And so my opinion is, is that anytime you're in a position where you really want to start to operate a little bit better start to think through, okay? Can somebody else get this result? Or can my business function, make money and deliver me profits without me? At any point? If that answer is no, you probably need some operational help.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Have you ever had to like have a tough conversation with the actual entrepreneur who hired you of like, maybe you're not the best fit for this business?
Alyson Caffrey:Oh, totally. Yeah. So I think like, you know, it's hard because we want to believe it's just like, like with kids, right, and I'm a recent mom, my oldest is two and a half, and I have a nine month old at home, right. And I want to believe that I'm the best solution to teach my children every single thing that they're ever going to learn in their life, I want to be there, I want to support them, I want to do that. But there is going to be a time and that time, maybe soon, where I need to raise my hand and be like, I'm not the best person to get my child this result or teach them this lesson or do this thing. And so I really do challenge owners to be objective about that as much as humanly possible. Because if they want to remain sole owner of their business, they may need to trade money for time, and I'll be at time of someone who can do something better than they can do it.
Brad Ebenhoeh:So then, you know, operationally speaking here, a lot of a lot of this conversations around time, right? And energy and time is definitely a finite resource talents and finite resource. Money is a finite resource. Right? So like really analyzing, understanding that individually for an entrepreneur as hard as you kind of juggle things. So clearly, yeah, you're cutting through them with that from an aspect of, you know, I guess number one, like, let's say hiring, right? Like, what are some best practices that an entrepreneur or founder can use for like hiring the best talent when they're getting ready to delegate the operational role or delegate the finance role or delegate the sales and marketing role at their organization?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, so I think first and foremost, routing anything that you're going to offload in results, right. So What results do we want this to create for the business? I think so many people make a list of responsibilities. So like input metrics versus output metrics. And that's a really huge challenge, when you start to communicate expectations to pretty much anything, right, whether it's a piece of software, and you've decided to automate a task, or whether it's a person and you've decided to pull them into the organization to help you get a specific result. It's really, really important to route this and like, what does the input that I'm currently doing generate in terms of results? And then how, what's the Delta? How do we want to see that change? Right? Do you want to see things get cheaper? Do we want to see, you know, things get more efficient? You know, how does that how do we want that person to change, and then really just kind of solve for the other side of the equation. Another really solid piece of advice that I always give my entrepreneur friends and current clients and colleagues and everybody is don't be afraid to offload a portion of the task and not the entire task on the first brush. I know so many people who have hired a person and have given them 910 15 responsibilities, all 100% ownership on them from the first jump, and they get burned, they get disappointed. There's friction there, they're not super clear on what exactly they're looking for. And instead, what if we decided to say, Alright, I'm gonna get 20% of this piece off my plate, let's see how someone does with that. I get 20% time back from doing this task. And then we start to make incremental shifts in the right direction. I think so many issues in hiring come from going too quick. To pull somebody into the business. That's my total and honest opinion.
Brad Ebenhoeh:I think that makes a lot of sense. Just from our experience here of hiring people, especially hiring talent for roles that may not exist, it's really hard to like, Hey, do this and then you know, you have this handled and then without properly quality control, oversight, check ins and things like that it can go off the rails quickly. And, and definitely we've had we've gotten burned just with that aspect as well. And then you learn, you figure out like, what do you really need? It's, I think, one of Accountfully these things are, as we've grown to almost 70 people and then through the, everything you're talking about, right? It's just like, it's like you think you need something in full when maybe you don't need the 100% You need the 20% So how do you feel the 20%? Can you feel it internally? Can you spread it out amongst people that were so I think really taking that pragmatic view of that versus like I need an HR person? Well, what is really the goal here? What do you need it for? What are they going to do for you and and identifying kind of the overall output plus like input and how to solve those problems?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, it's easier to manage people to based on output, right? You're like, this is what I expect you to generate. And every time I've ever had like a performance review or sat in on those with my clients, and we've had a number or a metric, or an expectation put out in front of a team member, that you've always come to the meeting, already solving the problem that we have, right. So we move fast or past some of these obstacles and these roadblocks, whereas like any other time I've had, and poor performance reviews in my past where I've had to give terrible feedback to, you know, employees of mine or employees of others. And anytime I didn't have that metric, I would tell them, hey, listen, sales targets came in, under this month, our sales targets came in under this quarter, they immediately get on the defensive, right? They're like, No, you know, I did all this, or I did all that. It just flips the mindset of how you come to the table with solutions and manager teams. So I've always found that rooting things in outcomes is really helpful for management, because not only do they help us find better solutions, but also they're less a little bit chained to their desk, right? Like they don't have to do like the 40 hours of input to get some nebulous, you know, outcome and all the things right, they can say, Hey, listen, if I can get this result in 10 hours, it saves me time, it saves the company money, and we're on the right page.
Brad Ebenhoeh:I love it. I think it's definitely a very interesting kind of topic or weight, a way to look at things and like how you apply to your specific business or your deliverables or your service to your clients as well, internally. Mmm. Interesting. So next question I have so managing leaves, I really wanted to ask this task topic because you're really focusing on you know, you said a baby, we have a nine month old, nine and a half month old as well. So very similar in age where we have twin five year olds as well. So my wife and I own the company. So we facilitated all of this through everything the last kind of decade, right, but okay, so maternity leaves, managing leaves expectations and just like backfilling work, right, so kind of just high level of where we're at, we basically the shared Accountfully, have probably had three maternity leaves three or four maternity leaves, plus two or three paternity leaves where we get like two weeks off at any point. So I know everybody else is going through this across this, listen to this. So what's some best practices to think of to plan for leaves? Like, what do you what do you do to help people plan for leaves? Just kind of give me a little highlight with that?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, great, great question. And also amazing that you guys offer those types of benefits to your employees. Because my opinion is, is that small businesses wait a little bit too long to offer some of these more competitive packages, and they end up losing really capable parents to this transition. And so I just appreciate you for doing that. And your wife for doing that. Because I'm sure you guys know, after having twins, that it's hard, right? And oftentimes, we can offer competitive packages to our employees, but who's sitting here saying, Oh, the business owner, right, like, how do we take our time? How do we do that? How do we budget for that? And so what we really take a look at on the team management side of things, right is real allocation of responsibilities and accountabilities. Right. So first and foremost, what are the team member? Who's going out? What are they responsible for? What are they looking at in terms of accountability and responsibility? And what I mean by that is, what are they doing to push buttons and pull levers? Right, the actual results are generating and then accountabilities might be, if they're leading a team, right? If they're in a management or leadership position, how are they checking in? How are they fostering results within the team that they manage? And so being super, you know, inclusive about that, and making sure to take a really solid inventory of what the responsibilities they do have? And then start to ask ourselves, how accessible is that information? Right? What kind of training exists? What kind of procedures exist around some of that stuff? And is there even an opportunity to cross train some of those things? And have the team members who are staying in the organization really pick up that load? And kind of help us through some of that transition? And can we do that in a way that makes financial sense to the business, right, we can't completely train, let's just say, you know, a customer service representative to get on the phone and start closing some deals, but Well, we could probably do is look internally and say, Alright, if we front load this in a way that makes sense. And if we can cross train in a way that makes sense, we could be able to prop you know, some of these people up in their absence and really support them through this time versus making them feel like they're just kind of dumping their work on somebody's plate with no context are spending hours and hours and hours of valuable company time training somebody one on one to get the results that they get. So one of the biggest things that we focus on when we start to take a look at this transition is how visible is company training and how centralized is the information on how to get results inside of the business. And so that's one of the biggest things that I didn't when I prep for my maternity leave as I was like, How can I help people get the results that I'm getting for the business and where am I taking input and so when we shift over to the owner, right, we need to start taking a look at some of those things I mentioned before, right? What am I putting in what am I getting out what delivers the most value and what brings me the most joy because I'm sure you and Meredith know. Having the babies is just the first part but like growing a business with A family is not for the faint of heart, and transparently like it probably changed. I'm sure for you it changed for me several times after becoming a mom, my oldest is only two and a half. And it just is constant state of refining, you know, what we're doing, how we're spending time away from our family, what time we're spending in the business. And so we really help, you know, business owners, just take take a tally there and be able to make some really solid decisions on you know, what's next for them?
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yeah, no. It's great, great information. I think from our end, like I a couple of things, I think, what is what's helped us through the transition of these leaves with us Plus, our team, as at number one is like, we're very systematic, systematic, we have documentation and standard operating procedures and tasks built out like an asana and different tools. So there's, there's there's things out there that exists that just aren't in everybody's head, right? I think that's just step one of that just helps this whole process. You're saying number two is, like talent, I'm telling you about, like, after we started hiring really good people, like probably near five, like, we're about almost 11 years. So like before, we had our twins that we started hiring really good talent, like, wow, I see why. It literally that the ROI on great talent and identifying what you need, whether it's like for us, we do accounting, billable work, or whether it's pure internal marketing, HR operations, I've worked right like it that those people can leverage so much, and really create so much opportunity for you, the business owner to do something else, or to take the lead or somebody else. And I think the third thing is really just opportunity. When people leave in 90 days, there's a huge opportunity to cross train, to identify like, if that person's role is really needed, not to eliminate them, but to say, hey, maybe we can enhance their role or what do we really need the next step of the next iteration of Accountfully, or whatever it is, right? So taking somebody into leaving, leveraging up the next person and that person comes back, maybe there's a different function or whatever it going. I really like identifying the opportunity that exists when somebody's gone to say, really, do we need that role in a the exact existence? It does? Or is that more of a fractional? Because we've just spread it out among amongst multiple people, and can that person then help in different functions of the business? So it's really interesting when you like, it's very scary. I guess the business owner, when people take leaves are like, Oh, no, but then it always works out. And then when the day they come back, you have like a highly functional brand new employee, basically, who knows what's going on is like backup and running right away. So it's pretty cool. But it all works out? Well.
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, no doubt, I love that shift. And I've been encouraging a lot of the folks that I'm working with in this vein to approach Matt leave as an opportunity, right. I mean, it really is such a great opportunity. Because like I said, when I left, the organization I was ops manager for right, he was like, I need 90 days from you. But some people do not give that type of notice and aren't willing to put in that type of time. And all of a sudden, you could be faced with a situation where somebody walks out of your organization, and what a great way to kind of demo that is let them go out on leave. Let them spend the time with their family refreshed go through the transition of being a parent, because you know, it's a rocky one. And come back, like you mentioned, refreshed and ready to make some waves at the organization.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yeah, I mean, I know like, you know, it was up this morning at 430 Hanging out with two kids. It was great. So anyways, a couple other topics as we kind of move forward here and wrap this up. Number one is we're accountants that focus on accounting, bookkeeping, finance, you know, money, like what are a couple things that you touch base on from your, you know, operational agency consulting to your clients, specifically around money, accounting, you know, all that type of stuff?
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, money tells a good story, right. So usually, if you're in a position where you can follow the cache and show where it's going, and how much time you know, because time equals money, especially when you're hiring a team, you know, you can really tell a good operational story from where your money is going. So if you kind of start there at the base level, and you can say, Okay, this is taking me X amount of time equaling X amount of money, you can make some really core decisions from there operationally, meaning, here's how much margin I have to potentially hire a new person, here's how much time this might take me and how I might need to, quote future projects or how I might need to raise my prices. And I've always said and frequently experienced with my clients after we start to kind of, you know, crack and crack things open and you know, start to take a look at what's involved in their services. I know so many entrepreneurs and service providers who have raised their prices as a result of conversations with me because they're like, oh, yeah, I didn't realize all of that time and money and effort went into that thing. And I'm only charging five grand for it. I'm going to charge 10 grand for it. And I'm like, Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Right? If as long as we know, right? So I think finance provides us with a platform refer knowing right so knowing how much time something takes me knowing how much cost, something takes me. And the more visibility you can have into your finances in your operations. In my opinion, the better decisions you can make as an owner, right in terms of direction in terms of hiring somebody. So trying to decrease the friction around making decisions will ultimately allow us to net up a lot faster and allow us to serve more people more easily. And so just having that visibility, I know so many service providers and early stages of their business that are either like doing their own books or completely ignoring it. And I'm like you are doing yourself such a disservice from not being able to have that visibility in your business. And the same is true with operations, just like you would do a chart of accounts for your finances, you should also probably be charting your accounts for operations. Here's how long it takes us to deliver on something, here's how long it takes us to onboard somebody, you know, those types of things are super crucial when it comes to running a business.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Love it couldn't agree more on on that aspect. I think you need to have good data to make the best decisions you can. You know one thing about pricing, which I always tell people, like it's easier to consistently adjust pricing up over time annually or consistently versus doing nothing. And then five years later, tripling your your prices and irritating everybody. And at the end of the day, your labor costs money, they get raises and increases every year, they're adding more value to your clients, your consistent clients. There should be like a reflective aspect of that going on. And I think people really hesitate because they're either scared or they just don't know and don't even understand all the inputs that go into that aspect. Yeah, but I mean,
Alyson Caffrey:as you become more transparent with your ops, and how much things are costing you and you want to raise your prices, then you also know in terms of input, like what more value can I give my client that's not necessarily super expensive for my agency sale on that will really bring them I don't know, maybe justification, right? If that's how you want to see it, like justification for raising your prices, whether that's you know, better financial acumen or delivery acumen from your team, specifically who's working directly with them. Now, this person has another year of knowledge working with X amount of clients, it's really great to be able to position value, I think in front of your clients that way.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yes, yes. I couldn't agree more on all that aspects. So I'm kind of one random questions is what is the most interesting situation you've ever seen good or bad from a client. And clearly you can take this wherever you want. I'm just very interested by this
Alyson Caffrey:interesting situation
Brad Ebenhoeh:craziest, or the way they are running their business or like this mind blowing thing that you've seen.
Alyson Caffrey:So I have to I service based one, and then I actually like 10%, like a small sliver of my business I like to leave for just taking on wild stuff. I'm like, I just want to be challenged, you know. So traditional agency issue I was hired in to help someone do project management streamlining inside of their agency, they were trying to grow from one and a half to 3 million. And so actually earlier this year, and I swear to goodness, gracious. I was like, Hey, listen, here are some of the things you really need to do. We need to start to build this culture in your business around project management rules of engagement and how often projects are updated and tracking time. And I kid you not I know this sounds really scary. And it might actually make me lose customers for anyone who's listening. But they I kid you not lost five team members, like two days later. I kid you not they left. They just they were like we're done. Sorry, I can't deal with this, whatever else. And as I started kind of unpacking a little bit more of maybe why that happened. It was just a it was just a practice of they were like I'm like this, this entrepreneur specifically had been like, you know, shiny object syndrome, and probably all over them all year long. And so I started to see him lose interest in our project. And I was like, they probably thought this wasn't gonna stick and this isn't gonna work and all of those things. So I ended up going to him and I was like, Hey, listen, dude, I can help you fractionally because I know you really need it. But you've got to like commit to being able to do this or else there is no way you're making it from one and a half to three. I mean, that is one of the hardest leaps in service businesses that I have you ever seen in my five years of working with folks operationally and so I kid you not, he called me and we was like, so bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla quit today. And I was like, oh my goodness, Krej because I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. So that was the craziest story. And I think I think the biggest takeaway again, for me, and for anybody listening isn't that if you tell your team that things are going to operate better, they're all just going to walk off site. It's that if you commit to doing something, as an agency owner, it does trickle down into your team, especially if you keep similar habits and you keep operations and finance top of mind and you really are committed to doing those things to grow the longevity of your company over time. Like I said, it's like health. It's not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. And everybody would have a six pack. And everybody would have a, you know, multimillion dollar business. But my encouragement there is just to, you know, be the leader for your team that shows them, hey, listen, it's important to operate well and write things down. And it'll keep, you know, kind of things moving forward in a positive direction is the second crazy ones. We've been working with this client for a while. And they are, they have their medical imaging company, so like totally outside of my realm of expertise. But they had a super interesting model. And they have just been acquiring centers left and right for the last two years. And so we've been working with them, we've opened 60 new centers with them with a standard operating procedure and, you know, training manual for each of the new centers, we like plug and play it. And we actually opened a location in Jefferson in July like Jefferson health hospital, it was a brutal, crazy, legal thing. And I kind of wanted to tell you guys this, because I think like, there's like two ends of the spectrum, right? There's like the crazy friction based like high lawyers, everybody's involved in breathing down everybody's necks to like open a new location. And then there's like a really simple way to inject operations into a business that like just helps everything flow a little bit better. And so I personally think that folks approach some of these topics, like there's going to be a ton of red tape all over my business, and nobody's going to be able to do anything and taking time off, it's gonna take 900 steps and 600 points of approval, and I'm gonna have to overpay people and bloat and all that stuff. But in reality, it's really just transparency, right? So as long as we know what we're going after we know what's expected, and we know how to do it, then, for the most part, right? We're going to be doing really well.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Love it. I was always love hearing those types of stories and real life examples there. All right, so last two kinds of questions would, as we've kind of wrap up this kind of podcast and chat number one is what is one service space business do? What is one recommendation for a business owner no matter the size for them to do and to implement on their business? Operationally, anything? Anything where you want to talk?
Alyson Caffrey:Oh, my goodness, yeah, do what makes you happy. Like, I mean, I know that sounds so cheesy, but I think so many times in a day, and this, I'm a victim of this as well, right? You like follow what's going to make you more money or what someone else told you, you should do or whatever. And I think that like, especially after becoming a parent to like, your intuition is a really, really valuable thing. And as you start to take notice of what brings you joy, and what doesn't, the thing that's going to sustain a business over time is going to be consistency and joy, right, being able to double down on the things that you really want to be doing. And I know so many business owners who say that, you know, the only reason why someone's not successful is because they just didn't stick with it long enough. And I think the reason why people don't stick with it long enough, is because they don't like it, they don't want to do it. And so really as objective as you can be about assessing that on a regular basis absolutely is going to be the key to helping you live a more fulfilled life and grow a thriving business.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Couldn't agree more than then what is one Don't? Don't
Unknown:let me say,
Alyson Caffrey:Oh, I have a good one. Don't overcomplicate things. So usually the simplest answer is the best one. And even though I talked to so many owners who are like, this seems too easy, or this seems whatever. And I'm like, Yeah, I mean, if it's easy, that probably means it comes easy to you, you can conceptually kind of get through it pretty simply. And my opinion is is the simpler, the better. So what whether that comes to operations, whether that comes to channels in your marketing, whether that comes to conversion mechanisms, the simpler the better, right? Usually it takes about let's just say 2500 to 3k. I don't know if that's a ball, it's just a ballpark figure for it to be worth like getting on the phone to close in an agency, right? So like, lifetime value wise. And so like, perhaps we need to just be like, if that's the simplest way to do it, I should just offer a $3,000 package that gets a specific result. Get on the phone with people, if it converts, well, that's great. Just keep doing that thing. You don't need to overcomplicate it, like multi channel marketing. And so just keep things simple, keep things consistent. And again, it'll probably pan out.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yeah, no, I agree with that. Like the services you sell. Keep them simple and tangible. So they're easily understandable. decisions you make internally how you pay people how you communicate, make it simple. If it's complex, you have to over over analyze it or over define it then it's wasting people's times. It's and it's frustrating for everybody so awesome. Allison, this was great. Love the chat Um, where can we find you? What are you promoting? Give us the rundown here as we kind of in the chat.
Alyson Caffrey:Yeah, totally. I'm super excited for next year. So my big thing is operations agency.com You can find most of my goodies there and a little bit more about me. We're actually kind of redoing a lot of our front end offers. So be on the lookout for those. I'm launching a toolkit in 2023 which is super exciting. So that'll be live here in a little bit. And if you're looking to you know, get some support and some free resources on planning, maternity leave, whether for yourself from your business or with your team, Master maternity leave a.com is where to find me on that.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Awesome. Thanks so much, Alison. I enjoyed the chat Overbury out there that listens enjoys the chat. Again. This is the Accountfully chat with Alison Catherine from operations agency. Thanks, Alison. Thanks, Brad. Appreciate it.