What Are Orgasmic Operations and How to Achieve Them feat. Veronica Yanhs

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I have the pleasure today of having Veronica with me. And after I think it will take you all about five, maybe less minutes into this podcast, to be as excited about it as I am because of the topic that we are going to discuss. It’s not often it’s not often that I get to sit alongside of an operations expert, someone who specializes in extracting and mapping process for your small business success. So let me do my introduction. Before I get ahead of myself, I already feel like jumping in Veronica. So my guest today is we can say she she goes from the spreadsheets to the bedsheets. Let me say this to you see, I can’t read the bio without laughing. This is going to be the most interesting bio you’ve ever heard. All right. And this is just a foreshadowing of just how interesting our guest is. So anyway, from spreadsheets to the bedsheets Veronica yawns is completely open about who she is. Well, who is she? A co kinky and feminist creator of the orgasmic operations method? Okay, yes, you heard that right. She and her team at business labor help growth stage startups and organizations make the everyday work experience, increasing profits and creating lasting chains filled with immense pleasure and ease. And Veronica is here today to help us understand the importance of our operations, how to optimize our business, and some of the downfalls some of the downfalls that people make when they’re trying when they’re attempting to grow their business, and which areas their E erroneous ly focusing on, Veronica, welcome to the podcast.

Veronica Yanhs 2:33
Thank you so much for having me. Like before we hit record on this, and you and I have chatted a few times, like you’re my people. So the fact that I get to come on to this podcast and jam about the topics that I love most, especially with your point of view as well. I’m super excited. So thanks for having me. And to all your listeners. Yes, and kinky as fuck. And I really am just unapologetic about who I am. So there’s a lot of things we can talk about. I have a lot of icebreakers. So if you ever meet me, it’s gonna be great.

Chris Davis 3:02
Right? And I can vouch it is, I don’t think it took us but five minutes, the very first time that we were on a zoom call to just click. This is going to be amazing. And I want before we get into it let the listeners know a little bit about your your founders journey. Were you always like this, Veronica? Like as a baby? Were you organizing your Cheerios in your cereal bowl? Or did you have a coming of age moment where you’re like, Okay, this is who I am. This is what I want to do?

Veronica Yanhs 3:35
Well, not necessarily Cheerios, I do have two memories I hated absolutely hated sharing my crayons and my colored pencils with my fellow like, students like this was I’m talking about I’m in kindergarten, because I always had to use Eve every single color equally. So that there’s always that white. And I’m just like, What the heck do I do with white right? So you got to find creative ways to go with white. I always colored nicely. And everyone else just like massively took their, their poems and their fists and just push so hard, you would just see that the colors, the crayons, and the colored pencils were like jagged and not even so I’m like, I wonder if there’s just some like neuroticism that I’ve always had as a kid. And like my need for order. And the other one was that I spent one summer taking a giant bag of m&ms and I was crushing them against each other to see which color did it crack the most? And the answer was blue.

Chris Davis 4:37
Crack the most. Very interesting.

Veronica Yanhs 4:41
So I was never meant to be here it where I am today chatting with you. I was supposed to be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer and accountant, something that was stable, something that already had a path and the reason why it’s because I actually come from a very traditionally Chinese background Uh, my parents and family immigrated to the America in the early 80s. And with that mentality, that immigrant mentality, it was just like, money is important. Stability is important. And so I went to college to be a doctor. But halfway through, I was like, you know, something is just not right. Enough, nothing made sense. It was like rote memory so that we would all just pass tests so that we can go take the MCAT that like the standardized tests for medical school, and I failed like, crazy. I didn’t even take the MCAT because I dropped out. It wasn’t until one of my RAs said, Veronica, I think based on what we’ve talked about, over the years, you might actually like product design. I’m like, What’s product design? And so it made a lot of sense, because when I was a kid, I would always flip through my dad’s popular science magazines. And in the back, there was always a DIY section. And I was always really curious about that. And so when I went in, to the product design world, I was hooked. It was exactly what I needed. And it was hard because they embraced failure. So the product design program at Stanford, like they want you to fail fast, because the faster you fail, the quicker you learn, but that F word is hard for someone who’s Chinese, right? So failure is not an option. What is it excellence is standard. So for me to fail, and to also not get chastised, because if you have the wrong answer, it was actually great like Stanford believe that there was no wrong answers. Like it just helped me work my ideation muscle that much better, because I wasn’t going to suffer. It was just hey, if my idea was crazy about like outerspace spaceships beaming up our food waste, so that it’s not on earth anymore. By saying that out loud, it possibly influenced somebody else to come up with an actual real idea, which did, actually. So that was my background of all the voices that I listened to growing up. And during my college years, the one that I didn’t listen to that needed to be heard from the most was spoiler alert, mine. And so I ended up combining three majors into one product design business, and Civil Environmental Engineering. And from there, I just developed my own journey. And that just seems to be a theme for my life and business. Like, I have to do things my way. As unconventional as it may be, it makes so much sense when I’m doing it.

Chris Davis 7:35
Yeah, yeah. And it’s very helpful, right? Like you, you’ve created a space for you where you can be unapologetically and authentically you for the benefit of those who entrust their business with you, right.

Veronica Yanhs 7:52
Yeah, absolutely. And I always think that I think I was born like a project manager or something like organization process. I will say this is I gotta go talk to my therapist. Let’s, let’s see if I’m right. But like I can’t charted my wedding. So for all of you who don’t know what a Gantt chart is, it’s essentially a bar representation of work. So if you imagine left to right, a bar that says, Oh, I have to like say, write a blog post. So there’s a bar that goes Monday through Friday, if it takes you like, five days, and then whatever the next bar beneath it goes from, like Friday to like, say Monday, basically, is a visual representation of how long you have to do the work based on how much time you have, or if you’re working with a deadline. So once I get started my wedding, I was like, I actually don’t want to get married anymore. I’m good. And I did go through with the wedding. And I did have to bride Zilla because somebody didn’t follow my Gantt chart. And had they had fall follow through with it and listen to when to buy the flowers and all that stuff. Nothing would have like happened. So last minute. So project management operations organizations, process systems, like this is just who I am. Yeah, pattern spotter.

Chris Davis 9:04
Yeah. Oh, I love that pattern spotter. They get you in trouble sometimes in your relationship, but

Veronica Yanhs 9:10
Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So let me just tell you, I one day, I was talking to my partner and like, two days beforehand, like the day before, and the day before that he was putting on his right sock first both days. And then a third day he put on his left sock first. I freaked out because I was like, oh, shoot, are we breaking up like something’s happening? Like what’s going on? And he’s like, What is wrong with you?

Chris Davis 9:38
You can’t you can’t not see it, right? You just pay attention to and you’re like, Hey, why did you move that? Why didn’t you do this today? You always make this before this would happen. And you know for the other type the creative, more spontaneous person who could drive them crazy. So answer me this Veronica was business laid bare your first business venture or did you start out doing something else? And then evolved into it.

Veronica Yanhs 10:02
Yeah, I ended up trying to start a design studio because that’s where I got bit by the entrepreneurial bug. And that that failed for a lot of different reasons. And I was fresh out of college as well. So I would say maybe that was like my tester, but I would say business laid bare is my first like, fully fledged didn’t have fast this business. So yeah, I would say, Yeah, this is my first and only business so far. I have ideas for other businesses, but because I’m very much a quality over quantity person, except when it comes to food. It’s like, let’s get this one. Really well, oil doing its thing before I move on to my next like 20 ideas.

Chris Davis 10:42
Yep, yeah. All right. So so let’s get into the meat and potatoes. People have listened. They’ve heard your founders journey. They’re intrigued by the intro. What exactly are orgasmic operations? What does it

Veronica Yanhs 10:56
Yes. So operations is really just the how people often tell me, I know what I want my business to do. I know the impact I want to make. I know the mission, the purpose, the goals. But I also know I need operations, but that’s about it. And or I hate operations, because it’s so not me. And I don’t want to think about it. But I’m really passionate about what I want to do. And so if there’s anything that I’ve wanted to impart on people is that operations at the end of the day, it’s just the how you do something, but how that relates so closely to the what, which is your goals, your your vision, your mission, your purpose, all that stuff, that is the how to actualizing those ideas, to make it come to life that much faster. So operations are great and all but what’s even more pleasurable are orgasmic operations, because it means that how you do something or how the business takes action takes action is so much more pleasurable and in alignment with the people because successful operations always begins with people. So if it doesn’t feel good, it means that it’s not going to last. It means that you didn’t design your operations to be holistically in alignment and satisfying all the needs of the people touching it, including the customers is what I say people who are experiencing the systems or the operations, it’s you, your internal team, the leadership team and your buyers, customers, clients and potential buyers as well. it ripples out.

Chris Davis 12:39
Yeah, yeah. So operations becomes the how, and this is where you kind of put your magnifying glass on the how, and I understand the importance of, of operations. And I would imagine you’ve probably had a similar experience as me in the space where somebody may have a goal in mind. And they’ve already prescribed the how, hey, I need to grow my business. Can you help me run Facebook ads? Hey, I need more leads. I need to do some marketing campaign, right? When you get those types of clients who have already written a prescription, and they have come to you say, Hey, Doc, this is what I need. How does that process work with helping them understand the importance of getting the operations in place first, before to go down the marketing and advertising wonderland of magical sales that will eventually come in?

Veronica Yanhs 13:43
I love that question. Because not a lot of people think about this. So apparently, this is a hot take. But I’m like it’s actually not so hot take to me it’s a logical take. But not enough people hear this. It’s like, what happens when your Facebook Ads work? What happens when you dump 10s of 1000s of dollars into marketing campaigns, sales mechanism, sales, Team sales automation, and I’m not talking it because I love money. And what if like 20 clients want to work with you tomorrow? So operations is the difference between you going 20x tomorrow and your business. And it’s a difference between you actually celebrating it versus you crying on the inside. Because operations it’s what’s usually the bottleneck. When it comes down to marketing and sales, it’s like your sales and marketing is going to work and 20 people want to work with you or like you know you just 2x or three times plus your client or customer load. Do you have the ability to serve them with integrity without burning out without stressing out without starting over from scratch? And that’s why operations is so important before people start thinking about marketing and sales. Because I don’t want your dollars to be wasted. And I also want the service providers that you work with that are in the sales and marketing departments to actually be able to flex their muscles and work their magic to the fullest extent so that you can reap the benefits. But nine times out of 10, they can’t because their operations is what bottlenecks all that success.

Chris Davis 15:23
Yeah. And to to everyone’s defense, I was like this at one point in time. You’re on the hunt, like the average entrepreneur, I don’t care if you’re a founder, or a just a solo entrepreneur getting started, right? Everybody’s on the hunt for the same thing. leads and customers leads and customers. And sometimes you can get so tunnel visioned. Or you can lack holistic perspective of what really makes a business go that like you said, I’ve got my spear and I need to go catch a a wild boar. And then you catch it and you’re like, Oh, what do I do with it? So it’s like when the marketing actually works, and leads are pouring in. You start to realize nobody actually checked what happens

Veronica Yanhs 16:12
after that? Yes.

Chris Davis 16:14
That handled that right, yes.

Veronica Yanhs 16:17
And I liken operations to very much the foundation of your business house. And when you first start out, in any venture, you’re doing a lot of the holding up, you’re the foundation, you’re the framing, you’re the structure. But what happens when you need to step out, it’s if you don’t have a good foundation built aka operations, then your house is essentially being built straight on dirt. And instead of focusing on making sure that house is going to support you and your goals and your teams and your customers, it’s going to be rickety instead. And other people when you talk about like the Facebook ads, it’s like, Why are you picking up the paint? And the lights and all the stuff when the foundation and the framing is not even up to par? Like things are gonna crumble? Like nobody wants a house to crumble on top of them? Or their customers? Because then that’s a bad business experience and a bad customer experience.

Chris Davis 17:17
Yep. Yep. It’s, as you’re talking, I had this vision that operations is proper preparations for automations.

Veronica Yanhs 17:30
Oh, that is so good, right. And again,

Chris Davis 17:35
it literally starts with the operations, right operations are the proper preparations for your automations. And you are a critical piece to me in what I do. Because you do one thing, what you do many things, but the one thing that is the most sought after, if you ask any marketing, automation professional, I call them automation service providers. But anybody who’s worth their weight in marketing automation, they need to understand what the process is. And for me, I’m a visual person, I like to see the process, I can solve a problem much faster visually than I can audibly. You just is what it is. So you do process mapping. Explain to our listeners, what process mapping is in the power in it.

Veronica Yanhs 18:29
Yeah, it’s like a flowchart. Because we can’t we’re not we’re on video, but I can’t show you what it is. But imagine like, okay, let’s talk about the customer journey. If the first thing they do is land on the website, I draw a rectangle around that and says customer lands on website. And I also color code things so that we know what is a buyers action? What is an automation? What’s an internal team members manual action? Because Hint, hint, anything that is manual, you can turn that into probably a project based template in your project management software. If you’re like, say a service provider, yeah, right. So it’s like there are reasons why we do things. And this is us thinking like 10 steps down the line. But so a process map. And the reason why it’s so powerful is because I believe that humans are innately visual. And so when you can see like, your entire process, no matter how inefficient or efficient it is drawn out, there is such a rich conversation co creation that happens like, Oh, why are we doing a, b and c? This is not effective? We got to do double work because of that. So what if we just switched, like say C and B, the steps two and three together and flip it around? It makes it so that the work maybe down the line is not even needed or is minimized? So the power of process mapping allows you to see exactly what happens. By whom, by what mechanism and then because of that, what else happens? Yeah, and it’s also a great learning tool for new team members and as well, when you hire them,

Chris Davis 20:02
you double up. In my experience, it will cut down your onboarding time immensely. And you do you do an amazing job. Listen, everybody. I am a flowchart advocate. Some of the process maps that Veronica has showed me, I had to catch I had to catch myself is like, drew just this immediately, because I understood the value of it. Like, just like that. And as somebody who is, my space is automation. That eliminates an entire first step for me. What if you could deliver, delivering to me a process map solves all of the questions that I would have had to ask you anyway. Because if we put automation to undefined process, it’s going to create mass confusion. Right? Everybody’s gonna be lost, right?

Veronica Yanhs 20:58
Yeah. And if it’s a crappy process, and you automate it, you’re just doing the crappy thing that much faster. Yes, yes, is a waste of everybody’s time. And nobody wants to run a business that’s bloated like that. Absolutely.

Chris Davis 21:13
I’m a big basketball fan. And at the time of recording this, we’re at the start of the basketball season. And I’ve watched, I’ve got NBA League pass. So they show the halftime of the cities. So it’s not like a presentation or anything. And if you’ve ever been to a game, they load like these T shirts, and guns, and they just shoot them up to the you know, in the stadium. And that is your crappy process. Literally low, getting the good and giving it to all of these people. And it’s like, no, that is not what you want to do. You want to make sure you shore things up. Okay, make sure things are working. So it would in that respect, what I found is that speed is often the enemy of doing things. Right. So So Veronica, how do you balance it? Right? Somebody, Veronica? I, I’ve got this opportunity. We need to do this does that and you can hear the urgency. But you also know, there’s there’s some foundation, we’ve got to do some work before we can get there. How do you manage expectations? How does that look like when someone’s approaching you in that aspect?

Veronica Yanhs 22:26
Okay, I’m going to answer this in the order that I’m going to hopefully remember. But to go back. Automation is amazing when the process is really done, right. And I’m always a proponent of doing assuming that when I create the process backward the process for a client, it’s always manual. Yeah. When I say manual means I’m going to assume that we have to do everything by hand. Yes. And it sounds so unrealistic. Because it’s like, well, yeah, I want every time someone to book a console call who books a sales call with me, I want to notify the console call channel on, say, my slack account. Clearly, we know that it’s automatable. But we always make the assumption that it’s manual, because we want to account for everything. Because what if the the manual thing that we need to do doesn’t need to happen anyways, right? And I mean, I want that slack channel over to get notification. But sometimes if it’s not necessary, it allows you to trim the fat, it allows you to see like what actually is the step by step process? And then once you’ve laid that all out, then you’re like, Okay, with the fine tooth comb, what can be turned, automated, what can go from manual to automated, and your being, I think is the word that I’m always looking for is intentional. So when you work with us, operations, yes, begins with people, but it’s always very intentional. Because who has time to do things that just is like fluff. Right? We’re already all busy enough as it is. That’s not a lean business that we’re running. It’s like, we don’t have time we are wearing multiple hats. And so it’s like by doing it right from the get go. And doing it right requires understanding what your needs and requirements are. So this is my project manager have been put back on. Yeah, it’s like before we ever create a process for our clients. I’m always wanting to understand like, who are you? What turns you on? How do you think how do you work? How do you thrive? What’s your zone of genius? And then instead of pain points, like what’s your pleasure point? How do you want this process to go? You actually know more about your operations, then you you lead on? Most people are like, I know nothing about operations. But remember, operations is literally how you work how you operate. And so when someone’s like, Oh, I’m a newborn. I have a mom with a newborn. The last thing I want to do right now in this season is to take sales call because the baby could be crying. I don’t want that. So I’m like, Okay, well, what about like, say an application process? to work with you, and that’s when they’re like, Okay, well, if that’s the case, I want it like this. And like this, because I don’t have time to work all day, I want to be with my new my newborn. And so they start talking and then asking questions, gathering information, like needs and requirements are so important, something that people miss.

Chris Davis 25:19
Yeah, absolutely. This is so good. I’m sitting here thinking you just got you have my mind spinning, because I’ve seen it so many times. In so many use cases, where, you know, people just don’t know, to focus in this area like they should. And you said something, Veronica, you said, I assume every step is manual. And this is the greatest assumption you can ever make when you’re trying to scale a business. And I’ve begun explaining to people that automation is emulation of human behavior,

Veronica Yanhs 26:00
right, so many good sound bites is episode.

Chris Davis 26:04
It’s Eve radicati. So what happens is, if I don’t know how to do a thing, manually, and just in the real world, if I don’t know how to market, let me let me put it like this. If I don’t know how to go up to somebody and have a conversation, a persuasive conversation, there’s no technology that can just gloss that over, right? If I don’t know how to nurture somebody and say, Okay, let me ask this much information. Now, because I don’t want to be overbearing, then when I see him again, get some more information, like, you literally are emulating what you are supposed to be able to do manually in person. So there is no magic wand, where it’s like, oh, I just need this software, oh, I just need to do this thing, oh, I just need this course. Those are all important pieces that will help. But at the end of the day, you have to know what you’re doing. And again, working with someone like yourself and your team, you help people figure that out? Because you made a really interesting point where most people do No, because they’re doing it, they’re just not doing it well. What they’re doing something. And with you, you sit down and say, Okay, I see it now. So so give people a little preview of what, what responses have you received, when the deliverable of somebody’s process that they’ve spoken to you is given back to them in a visual way where they can see it for the first time. It’s like birthing, right, but I call it process pregnancy. It’s like, I’m giving birth to this thing, and I can see it now. Sometimes there’s some ugly babies out there. But what with a doctor like yourself, oh, babies are beautiful. Every, every birth of your process is beautiful. So what? What is that experience that you’ve seen with the business owner, because I can’t imagine they’ve gone anywhere else and got a process map or really had somebody fine tune and streamline their operations.

Veronica Yanhs 28:11
I don’t get sick, and it never gets old to hear your clients moan and groan on the other side of the camera. You know, when you take a bite of some really good food, or you’re just like, or, you know, they, they just that’s just like, oh my god that feels so delicious. That looks so simple and elegant. Because it takes a lot of hard work to make something look simple, because sometimes they’re often like, why didn’t I think of that? And I’m like, because that’s not your zone of genius, you’re focused on something else. And it takes a lot of finesse to make something as complicated as, say, a sales process. look the way we did because we have put a lot of intention and thought like we’re thinking 10 steps ahead, because when we create your solutions for you, we’re not just like solving for the now. Because what happens when you grow nobody has time to like put the brakes on and do this all over again and retrofit Windows one more time. And so, the process that we create or the systems the operations strategy, everything solves the now of course, but it will should grow with you. Unless like you change, you change from like being a SaaS company to say selling MLM stuff, the multi level marketing, right? So other than that, it should grow with you. And let me give you an example. So this is why being on this podcast, it’s really important to me because especially for startups who are getting investing in or working on getting investment and talking to investors. It’s like I had a client come to us. She did really well on her own got a lot of money. And the first thing that you do when you get a lot of money is you often dump it into hiring people your market Doing are your sales? No, my Excellent. Okay, great. Let me just get an understanding of your sales process because she just hired a team of five salespeople with this new money. Just let me get an idea of what your sales process is like. So it can be recorded and noted downs will process map but to see where things can be better. The look in her eyes in the first two seconds told me everything that I needed to know. There was no sales process. And this really drives in why operations is important because like you hire these amazing sales people. But if there’s no process, there is no way to keep track, your CRM is missing. There is no communication, who takes what kinds of sales calls is there a demo for the product, because this was a SaaS company plus done for you features in some aspects. And so we made, we did a stopper solution. So I’m not a fan of band aid solutions, but with how but with how fast things are moving, I’m just like, Okay, here’s going to be a very simplified process right now just to like, tie you over. And while you’re working on that, we’ll be on the other end putting together and that’s the process map, I ended up showing you a fully thought out as automated as possible with manual actions where she actually wanted it to be manual from A to Z. And so when you work with a team like us, it’s like, we’re able to shortcut that a lot. Because we know what we’re doing. We’ve done this before many times, it’s like, here’s a stopper solution that’s actually really, really effective for the now, but then just wait, the the main course is coming. Usually we try to do the main course all at once. But the fact that she had so many leads coming in with the sales, sales, people just twiddling their thumbs, it’s like we had to make good use of the money we had to get going. So when there are issues like that, I’m always thinking about what’s the most effective, minimum viable solution. And then whilst that’s in

Chris Davis 32:04
place, a minimal viable process. Right.

Veronica Yanhs 32:07
Right. I love that. And then work on the fully fledged thing. And, and we took that stopper solution, the MVP, and we ended up baking it back into the overall sales process. So the sales team already knew what they were doing. So I didn’t have to train them again from scratch, because they’re like, Okay, we’ve been working on this for like a month, because it took us about a month to get that revamp sales process done for them. And the learning curve was that much less. So that’s why it’s like doing it right. At the beginning is important. But sometimes if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s like the best thing you can do as well one talk to us or to ask questions like, What do I want from this? What do I need from this? What is the end result? What are some of the bottlenecks that I could solve for or maybe somebody else can take over for me?

Chris Davis 33:02
Yeah, and I, I have to echo your sentiments in your experience with the sales process. I’ve been in the in the startup space, as an employee and leadership for years, almost a decade. But as an entrepreneur and a founder of my own company in a consultative capacity. I work with startups too. And I’m seeing a trend, one of the things is that the startup space is evolving from not just dominant B to C. Startup, tech startups used to have software and you have software, you go sell it to as many consumers as possible. Well, we’re seeing a b2b shift in the startup space. And with that b2b shift comes maintaining, managing and optimizing a pipeline. And one of the main things that I see in there is the lack of sales strategy. Yeah, they don’t have the lack of willingness to hire a salesperson. They have all of that. But they have no strategy. There’s no operations for that salesperson to come in. It’s like they think I need to go find the perfect person who could just start calling and making sales. So when you mentioned what you mentioned, in terms of they didn’t have a sales strategy. I see this often. I see this, probably. I would say that your sales, of course is more important than your marketing because you can have great marketing and not know how to sell and just have a whole bunch of leads. Your sales is extremely important. But there’s some where Veronica and I don’t know where this is. There’s somewhere that people are missing entrepreneurs, business owners founders are missing the importance of understanding their sales operations. I think they’re heavy on the marketing by heavy on the advertising side, but when it comes to the traditional sales, it First off, it’s, it takes a unique skill set to sale. But then the operations and strategy to do that is often missing as well. So it’s just an observation that stood out to me as you were, as you were mentioning, the the case study and your client here. And I just wonder, you know, and I’ll continue to explore it, I know you will, where, what the, what the start of the problem is, so we can more easily insert ourselves there. Instead of them going so far along, and getting so deep in wasting money losing money, and like, oh, I shouldn’t I wish I’d known you a year ago, you know?

Veronica Yanhs 35:45
Yeah. So one of my hypothesis is that I believe that sales and operations were kind of like, the middle children were just as important, but we get passed over for other things that are shiny, pretty, like humans are one innately visual. So I wonder if that’s why like branding, and marketing, social media adverts like those things are clearly proportional to money. But then operations is like this opaque entity that people know they need. But that’s like, that’s about it. I don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Yeah. And I think it’s because it’s a lot. There’s a lot of corporate myths associated with operations, especially if you’ve had a corporate background, or you’ve gone into an organization where your operations, even if they’re crappy, are already built for you. Like, a lot of people when it comes to operations, they only know how to like, kind of massage it to make things a little bit better. They but they don’t know how to build something from nothing. They’re often used to coming into an organization where the operations are already there. Yeah. And I think kind of same thing with like sales is that it’s kind of if you’ve had a terrible sales process or been sold to in a way that you never consented to? Yeah, or like the used car salesman, I wonder if there’s just that negative association with it. And so people are just like, oh, social media is going to do solve everything for me, get me customers sell for me. But it’s like, no, you have to, you actually have to dedicate a lot of space to both sales, and operations, and marketing, branding, all of it. Like I don’t believe in just working on it, like one layer at a time. It’s like, it’s like a DNA helix. You work on one little thing at a time, and you just keep spiraling up. Yeah, but that’s my hypothesis. Yeah,

Chris Davis 37:38
yeah. And we’ll continue to explore guess what, everyone, I just made an executive decision while Veronica was talking. This won’t be Veronica first and last time on the podcast. I think there are so many layers, right that we can go into. And I want to just keep keep talking. But I want to be respectful of the our listeners. And of course, we’re at Red our time. But, Veronica, people have been listening to you for about 30 minutes here. And for that listener, who was just like, Oh, am G? Where has she been? All my life? I think this is the missing piece. I’ve been trying to tell my team. It’s not just Facebook ads. It’s not just branding. It’s not this. There’s not. There’s another element that’s missing. They heard you and they’re like, Okay, I need to get I need to figure out how to get in contact with her. I’m ready to get started. What’s the best way for somebody to get in contact with you?

Veronica Yanhs 38:30
Yeah, the easiest thing is just to book a conversation like right now I’m doing the sales for the business not because I have to, it’s actually because I want to I love meeting people. I love creating relationships. Apparently communication and strengths. Finders is like my number fifth skill. So talking is a strength of mine. So book a console call, like let’s just chat like I’m the person that if we are both not a Hell, yes. If we are both not enthusiastically consenting to wanting to work with each other, it’s an immediate No. So you never have to worry. If you’re on the fence, if it’s on the fence, it’s an immediate No. And if there’s somebody better suited, I will recommend you wholeheartedly to them. So let’s just book a chat, go to www.business laid bare.com/consult. And I’ll send you all the links, Chris. We know how to we know how to do this. That’s just the easiest way is just to start chatting because we’re here, like my mission, yes, is to get people to fall in love with their operations, but more so it’s because it’s to help people maintain their profits so that we can use that money to do good with it in the world. And that only works if you have a really tight back end. Operations increases your capacity. So when you’re hitting like revenue and operating ceilings, it’s because your operations are not giving you the spaciousness to be able to really capitalize everything that you’ve worked so hard and put money into. So let’s just chat. We’re gonna chat for 2030 minutes have a great time. And at the end of the call, you will know whether or not we’re meant to work together or not. Yep.

Chris Davis 40:11
All right, everyone will have that link in the in the show notes. If you’re on your phone, you could just click right now, go to the show notes. The link will be there. For those of you who whose thumbs couldn’t type fast enough his businesslaidbare.com For slash console. Veronica, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for agreeing to come back on the spot. I didn’t give you an option. But this has been great. And I want to continue this conversation. Veronica, in all seriousness, this is this is huge. Once you understand how to operate a business, I’m not talking about build a landing page and generate leads and all of that, how to operate a business. This is often the piece that’s missing with us. So many businesses have great ambition, great passion, great products, but they don’t have their operations in place.

Veronica Yanhs 41:08
And before you end, because we’ve worked very high level about it today, like let me just give you some examples. We’re talking about your project management, we’re talking about customer onboarding, we’re also talking about retention so that you don’t have to focus so hard on acquisition all the time. But maybe that’s my biased relationships. We’re talking about team communications. And it’s not just sign up for slack. No, it’s a lot deeper than that. Right? So all these things that go into a business, especially your customer journey systems, and processes, or systems and processes that make your team empowered, and feel confident that they can run without always having to check with you. Like these are all operations, anything that feels or anything that relates to doing like, you’re like, oh, I don’t like how I’m always like, feeling like I’m a glorified babysitter to this team member. It’s because your operations are not there. And whether that means it’s a small refinement, or we need to build from scratch. It’s like, if you feel that something isn’t done right, and it doesn’t, you don’t know why it’s always operations because it’s the how,

Chris Davis 42:17
yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Great point. Oh, man, thank you so much, Veronica. The pleasure has truly been ours. Collectively. I speak for my listeners and myself. can’t thank you enough for taking the time to come in on and blessing us with your your intellect, your and your insight. Again, everyone, the show notes, we’ll have all of the links for Annika. See you next time. And again, lastly, thank you for being you.

Veronica Yanhs 42:47
Thank you so much. I had such a fabulous time on your show today. So I can’t wait to be back.

Chris Davis 42:53
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, Veronica. We’ll see you later. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at allsystemsgopodcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of The all systems go podcast. I have the pleasure today of having Veronica with me. And after I think it will take you all about five, maybe less minutes into this podcast, to be as excited about it as I am because of the topic that we are going to discuss. It’s not often it’s not often that I get to sit alongside of an operations expert, someone who specializes in extracting and mapping process for your small business success. So let me do my introduction. Before I get ahead of myself, I already feel like jumping in Veronica. So my guest today is we can say she she goes from the spreadsheets to the bedsheets. Let me say this to you see, I can’t read the bio without laughing. This is going to be the most interesting bio you’ve ever heard. All right. And this is just a foreshadowing of just how interesting our guest is. So anyway, from spreadsheets to the bedsheets Veronica yawns is completely open about who she is. Well, who is she? A co kinky and feminist creator of the orgasmic operations method? Okay, yes, you heard that right. She and her team at business labor help growth stage startups and organizations make the everyday work experience, increasing profits and creating lasting chains filled with immense pleasure and ease. And Veronica is here today to help us understand the importance of our operations, how to optimize our business, and some of the downfalls some of the downfalls that people make when they’re trying when they’re attempting to grow their business, and which areas their E erroneous ly focusing on, Veronica, welcome to the podcast.

Veronica Yanhs 2:33
Thank you so much for having me. Like before we hit record on this, and you and I have chatted a few times, like you’re my people. So the fact that I get to come on to this podcast and jam about the topics that I love most, especially with your point of view as well. I’m super excited. So thanks for having me. And to all your listeners. Yes, and kinky as fuck. And I really am just unapologetic about who I am. So there’s a lot of things we can talk about. I have a lot of icebreakers. So if you ever meet me, it’s gonna be great.

Chris Davis 3:02
Right? And I can vouch it is, I don’t think it took us but five minutes, the very first time that we were on a zoom call to just click. This is going to be amazing. And I want before we get into it let the listeners know a little bit about your your founders journey. Were you always like this, Veronica? Like as a baby? Were you organizing your Cheerios in your cereal bowl? Or did you have a coming of age moment where you’re like, Okay, this is who I am. This is what I want to do?

Veronica Yanhs 3:35
Well, not necessarily Cheerios, I do have two memories I hated absolutely hated sharing my crayons and my colored pencils with my fellow like, students like this was I’m talking about I’m in kindergarten, because I always had to use Eve every single color equally. So that there’s always that white. And I’m just like, What the heck do I do with white right? So you got to find creative ways to go with white. I always colored nicely. And everyone else just like massively took their, their poems and their fists and just push so hard, you would just see that the colors, the crayons, and the colored pencils were like jagged and not even so I’m like, I wonder if there’s just some like neuroticism that I’ve always had as a kid. And like my need for order. And the other one was that I spent one summer taking a giant bag of m&ms and I was crushing them against each other to see which color did it crack the most? And the answer was blue.

Chris Davis 4:37
Crack the most. Very interesting.

Veronica Yanhs 4:41
So I was never meant to be here it where I am today chatting with you. I was supposed to be a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer and accountant, something that was stable, something that already had a path and the reason why it’s because I actually come from a very traditionally Chinese background Uh, my parents and family immigrated to the America in the early 80s. And with that mentality, that immigrant mentality, it was just like, money is important. Stability is important. And so I went to college to be a doctor. But halfway through, I was like, you know, something is just not right. Enough, nothing made sense. It was like rote memory so that we would all just pass tests so that we can go take the MCAT that like the standardized tests for medical school, and I failed like, crazy. I didn’t even take the MCAT because I dropped out. It wasn’t until one of my RAs said, Veronica, I think based on what we’ve talked about, over the years, you might actually like product design. I’m like, What’s product design? And so it made a lot of sense, because when I was a kid, I would always flip through my dad’s popular science magazines. And in the back, there was always a DIY section. And I was always really curious about that. And so when I went in, to the product design world, I was hooked. It was exactly what I needed. And it was hard because they embraced failure. So the product design program at Stanford, like they want you to fail fast, because the faster you fail, the quicker you learn, but that F word is hard for someone who’s Chinese, right? So failure is not an option. What is it excellence is standard. So for me to fail, and to also not get chastised, because if you have the wrong answer, it was actually great like Stanford believe that there was no wrong answers. Like it just helped me work my ideation muscle that much better, because I wasn’t going to suffer. It was just hey, if my idea was crazy about like outerspace spaceships beaming up our food waste, so that it’s not on earth anymore. By saying that out loud, it possibly influenced somebody else to come up with an actual real idea, which did, actually. So that was my background of all the voices that I listened to growing up. And during my college years, the one that I didn’t listen to that needed to be heard from the most was spoiler alert, mine. And so I ended up combining three majors into one product design business, and Civil Environmental Engineering. And from there, I just developed my own journey. And that just seems to be a theme for my life and business. Like, I have to do things my way. As unconventional as it may be, it makes so much sense when I’m doing it.

Chris Davis 7:35
Yeah, yeah. And it’s very helpful, right? Like you, you’ve created a space for you where you can be unapologetically and authentically you for the benefit of those who entrust their business with you, right.

Veronica Yanhs 7:52
Yeah, absolutely. And I always think that I think I was born like a project manager or something like organization process. I will say this is I gotta go talk to my therapist. Let’s, let’s see if I’m right. But like I can’t charted my wedding. So for all of you who don’t know what a Gantt chart is, it’s essentially a bar representation of work. So if you imagine left to right, a bar that says, Oh, I have to like say, write a blog post. So there’s a bar that goes Monday through Friday, if it takes you like, five days, and then whatever the next bar beneath it goes from, like Friday to like, say Monday, basically, is a visual representation of how long you have to do the work based on how much time you have, or if you’re working with a deadline. So once I get started my wedding, I was like, I actually don’t want to get married anymore. I’m good. And I did go through with the wedding. And I did have to bride Zilla because somebody didn’t follow my Gantt chart. And had they had fall follow through with it and listen to when to buy the flowers and all that stuff. Nothing would have like happened. So last minute. So project management operations organizations, process systems, like this is just who I am. Yeah, pattern spotter.

Chris Davis 9:04
Yeah. Oh, I love that pattern spotter. They get you in trouble sometimes in your relationship, but

Veronica Yanhs 9:10
Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. So let me just tell you, I one day, I was talking to my partner and like, two days beforehand, like the day before, and the day before that he was putting on his right sock first both days. And then a third day he put on his left sock first. I freaked out because I was like, oh, shoot, are we breaking up like something’s happening? Like what’s going on? And he’s like, What is wrong with you?

Chris Davis 9:38
You can’t you can’t not see it, right? You just pay attention to and you’re like, Hey, why did you move that? Why didn’t you do this today? You always make this before this would happen. And you know for the other type the creative, more spontaneous person who could drive them crazy. So answer me this Veronica was business laid bare your first business venture or did you start out doing something else? And then evolved into it.

Veronica Yanhs 10:02
Yeah, I ended up trying to start a design studio because that’s where I got bit by the entrepreneurial bug. And that that failed for a lot of different reasons. And I was fresh out of college as well. So I would say maybe that was like my tester, but I would say business laid bare is my first like, fully fledged didn’t have fast this business. So yeah, I would say, Yeah, this is my first and only business so far. I have ideas for other businesses, but because I’m very much a quality over quantity person, except when it comes to food. It’s like, let’s get this one. Really well, oil doing its thing before I move on to my next like 20 ideas.

Chris Davis 10:42
Yep, yeah. All right. So so let’s get into the meat and potatoes. People have listened. They’ve heard your founders journey. They’re intrigued by the intro. What exactly are orgasmic operations? What does it

Veronica Yanhs 10:56
Yes. So operations is really just the how people often tell me, I know what I want my business to do. I know the impact I want to make. I know the mission, the purpose, the goals. But I also know I need operations, but that’s about it. And or I hate operations, because it’s so not me. And I don’t want to think about it. But I’m really passionate about what I want to do. And so if there’s anything that I’ve wanted to impart on people is that operations at the end of the day, it’s just the how you do something, but how that relates so closely to the what, which is your goals, your your vision, your mission, your purpose, all that stuff, that is the how to actualizing those ideas, to make it come to life that much faster. So operations are great and all but what’s even more pleasurable are orgasmic operations, because it means that how you do something or how the business takes action takes action is so much more pleasurable and in alignment with the people because successful operations always begins with people. So if it doesn’t feel good, it means that it’s not going to last. It means that you didn’t design your operations to be holistically in alignment and satisfying all the needs of the people touching it, including the customers is what I say people who are experiencing the systems or the operations, it’s you, your internal team, the leadership team and your buyers, customers, clients and potential buyers as well. it ripples out.

Chris Davis 12:39
Yeah, yeah. So operations becomes the how, and this is where you kind of put your magnifying glass on the how, and I understand the importance of, of operations. And I would imagine you’ve probably had a similar experience as me in the space where somebody may have a goal in mind. And they’ve already prescribed the how, hey, I need to grow my business. Can you help me run Facebook ads? Hey, I need more leads. I need to do some marketing campaign, right? When you get those types of clients who have already written a prescription, and they have come to you say, Hey, Doc, this is what I need. How does that process work with helping them understand the importance of getting the operations in place first, before to go down the marketing and advertising wonderland of magical sales that will eventually come in?

Veronica Yanhs 13:43
I love that question. Because not a lot of people think about this. So apparently, this is a hot take. But I’m like it’s actually not so hot take to me it’s a logical take. But not enough people hear this. It’s like, what happens when your Facebook Ads work? What happens when you dump 10s of 1000s of dollars into marketing campaigns, sales mechanism, sales, Team sales automation, and I’m not talking it because I love money. And what if like 20 clients want to work with you tomorrow? So operations is the difference between you going 20x tomorrow and your business. And it’s a difference between you actually celebrating it versus you crying on the inside. Because operations it’s what’s usually the bottleneck. When it comes down to marketing and sales, it’s like your sales and marketing is going to work and 20 people want to work with you or like you know you just 2x or three times plus your client or customer load. Do you have the ability to serve them with integrity without burning out without stressing out without starting over from scratch? And that’s why operations is so important before people start thinking about marketing and sales. Because I don’t want your dollars to be wasted. And I also want the service providers that you work with that are in the sales and marketing departments to actually be able to flex their muscles and work their magic to the fullest extent so that you can reap the benefits. But nine times out of 10, they can’t because their operations is what bottlenecks all that success.

Chris Davis 15:23
Yeah. And to to everyone’s defense, I was like this at one point in time. You’re on the hunt, like the average entrepreneur, I don’t care if you’re a founder, or a just a solo entrepreneur getting started, right? Everybody’s on the hunt for the same thing. leads and customers leads and customers. And sometimes you can get so tunnel visioned. Or you can lack holistic perspective of what really makes a business go that like you said, I’ve got my spear and I need to go catch a a wild boar. And then you catch it and you’re like, Oh, what do I do with it? So it’s like when the marketing actually works, and leads are pouring in. You start to realize nobody actually checked what happens

Veronica Yanhs 16:12
after that? Yes.

Chris Davis 16:14
That handled that right, yes.

Veronica Yanhs 16:17
And I liken operations to very much the foundation of your business house. And when you first start out, in any venture, you’re doing a lot of the holding up, you’re the foundation, you’re the framing, you’re the structure. But what happens when you need to step out, it’s if you don’t have a good foundation built aka operations, then your house is essentially being built straight on dirt. And instead of focusing on making sure that house is going to support you and your goals and your teams and your customers, it’s going to be rickety instead. And other people when you talk about like the Facebook ads, it’s like, Why are you picking up the paint? And the lights and all the stuff when the foundation and the framing is not even up to par? Like things are gonna crumble? Like nobody wants a house to crumble on top of them? Or their customers? Because then that’s a bad business experience and a bad customer experience.

Chris Davis 17:17
Yep. Yep. It’s, as you’re talking, I had this vision that operations is proper preparations for automations.

Veronica Yanhs 17:30
Oh, that is so good, right. And again,

Chris Davis 17:35
it literally starts with the operations, right operations are the proper preparations for your automations. And you are a critical piece to me in what I do. Because you do one thing, what you do many things, but the one thing that is the most sought after, if you ask any marketing, automation professional, I call them automation service providers. But anybody who’s worth their weight in marketing automation, they need to understand what the process is. And for me, I’m a visual person, I like to see the process, I can solve a problem much faster visually than I can audibly. You just is what it is. So you do process mapping. Explain to our listeners, what process mapping is in the power in it.

Veronica Yanhs 18:29
Yeah, it’s like a flowchart. Because we can’t we’re not we’re on video, but I can’t show you what it is. But imagine like, okay, let’s talk about the customer journey. If the first thing they do is land on the website, I draw a rectangle around that and says customer lands on website. And I also color code things so that we know what is a buyers action? What is an automation? What’s an internal team members manual action? Because Hint, hint, anything that is manual, you can turn that into probably a project based template in your project management software. If you’re like, say a service provider, yeah, right. So it’s like there are reasons why we do things. And this is us thinking like 10 steps down the line. But so a process map. And the reason why it’s so powerful is because I believe that humans are innately visual. And so when you can see like, your entire process, no matter how inefficient or efficient it is drawn out, there is such a rich conversation co creation that happens like, Oh, why are we doing a, b and c? This is not effective? We got to do double work because of that. So what if we just switched, like say C and B, the steps two and three together and flip it around? It makes it so that the work maybe down the line is not even needed or is minimized? So the power of process mapping allows you to see exactly what happens. By whom, by what mechanism and then because of that, what else happens? Yeah, and it’s also a great learning tool for new team members and as well, when you hire them,

Chris Davis 20:02
you double up. In my experience, it will cut down your onboarding time immensely. And you do you do an amazing job. Listen, everybody. I am a flowchart advocate. Some of the process maps that Veronica has showed me, I had to catch I had to catch myself is like, drew just this immediately, because I understood the value of it. Like, just like that. And as somebody who is, my space is automation. That eliminates an entire first step for me. What if you could deliver, delivering to me a process map solves all of the questions that I would have had to ask you anyway. Because if we put automation to undefined process, it’s going to create mass confusion. Right? Everybody’s gonna be lost, right?

Veronica Yanhs 20:58
Yeah. And if it’s a crappy process, and you automate it, you’re just doing the crappy thing that much faster. Yes, yes, is a waste of everybody’s time. And nobody wants to run a business that’s bloated like that. Absolutely.

Chris Davis 21:13
I’m a big basketball fan. And at the time of recording this, we’re at the start of the basketball season. And I’ve watched, I’ve got NBA League pass. So they show the halftime of the cities. So it’s not like a presentation or anything. And if you’ve ever been to a game, they load like these T shirts, and guns, and they just shoot them up to the you know, in the stadium. And that is your crappy process. Literally low, getting the good and giving it to all of these people. And it’s like, no, that is not what you want to do. You want to make sure you shore things up. Okay, make sure things are working. So it would in that respect, what I found is that speed is often the enemy of doing things. Right. So So Veronica, how do you balance it? Right? Somebody, Veronica? I, I’ve got this opportunity. We need to do this does that and you can hear the urgency. But you also know, there’s there’s some foundation, we’ve got to do some work before we can get there. How do you manage expectations? How does that look like when someone’s approaching you in that aspect?

Veronica Yanhs 22:26
Okay, I’m going to answer this in the order that I’m going to hopefully remember. But to go back. Automation is amazing when the process is really done, right. And I’m always a proponent of doing assuming that when I create the process backward the process for a client, it’s always manual. Yeah. When I say manual means I’m going to assume that we have to do everything by hand. Yes. And it sounds so unrealistic. Because it’s like, well, yeah, I want every time someone to book a console call who books a sales call with me, I want to notify the console call channel on, say, my slack account. Clearly, we know that it’s automatable. But we always make the assumption that it’s manual, because we want to account for everything. Because what if the the manual thing that we need to do doesn’t need to happen anyways, right? And I mean, I want that slack channel over to get notification. But sometimes if it’s not necessary, it allows you to trim the fat, it allows you to see like what actually is the step by step process? And then once you’ve laid that all out, then you’re like, Okay, with the fine tooth comb, what can be turned, automated, what can go from manual to automated, and your being, I think is the word that I’m always looking for is intentional. So when you work with us, operations, yes, begins with people, but it’s always very intentional. Because who has time to do things that just is like fluff. Right? We’re already all busy enough as it is. That’s not a lean business that we’re running. It’s like, we don’t have time we are wearing multiple hats. And so it’s like by doing it right from the get go. And doing it right requires understanding what your needs and requirements are. So this is my project manager have been put back on. Yeah, it’s like before we ever create a process for our clients. I’m always wanting to understand like, who are you? What turns you on? How do you think how do you work? How do you thrive? What’s your zone of genius? And then instead of pain points, like what’s your pleasure point? How do you want this process to go? You actually know more about your operations, then you you lead on? Most people are like, I know nothing about operations. But remember, operations is literally how you work how you operate. And so when someone’s like, Oh, I’m a newborn. I have a mom with a newborn. The last thing I want to do right now in this season is to take sales call because the baby could be crying. I don’t want that. So I’m like, Okay, well, what about like, say an application process? to work with you, and that’s when they’re like, Okay, well, if that’s the case, I want it like this. And like this, because I don’t have time to work all day, I want to be with my new my newborn. And so they start talking and then asking questions, gathering information, like needs and requirements are so important, something that people miss.

Chris Davis 25:19
Yeah, absolutely. This is so good. I’m sitting here thinking you just got you have my mind spinning, because I’ve seen it so many times. In so many use cases, where, you know, people just don’t know, to focus in this area like they should. And you said something, Veronica, you said, I assume every step is manual. And this is the greatest assumption you can ever make when you’re trying to scale a business. And I’ve begun explaining to people that automation is emulation of human behavior,

Veronica Yanhs 26:00
right, so many good sound bites is episode.

Chris Davis 26:04
It’s Eve radicati. So what happens is, if I don’t know how to do a thing, manually, and just in the real world, if I don’t know how to market, let me let me put it like this. If I don’t know how to go up to somebody and have a conversation, a persuasive conversation, there’s no technology that can just gloss that over, right? If I don’t know how to nurture somebody and say, Okay, let me ask this much information. Now, because I don’t want to be overbearing, then when I see him again, get some more information, like, you literally are emulating what you are supposed to be able to do manually in person. So there is no magic wand, where it’s like, oh, I just need this software, oh, I just need to do this thing, oh, I just need this course. Those are all important pieces that will help. But at the end of the day, you have to know what you’re doing. And again, working with someone like yourself and your team, you help people figure that out? Because you made a really interesting point where most people do No, because they’re doing it, they’re just not doing it well. What they’re doing something. And with you, you sit down and say, Okay, I see it now. So so give people a little preview of what, what responses have you received, when the deliverable of somebody’s process that they’ve spoken to you is given back to them in a visual way where they can see it for the first time. It’s like birthing, right, but I call it process pregnancy. It’s like, I’m giving birth to this thing, and I can see it now. Sometimes there’s some ugly babies out there. But what with a doctor like yourself, oh, babies are beautiful. Every, every birth of your process is beautiful. So what? What is that experience that you’ve seen with the business owner, because I can’t imagine they’ve gone anywhere else and got a process map or really had somebody fine tune and streamline their operations.

Veronica Yanhs 28:11
I don’t get sick, and it never gets old to hear your clients moan and groan on the other side of the camera. You know, when you take a bite of some really good food, or you’re just like, or, you know, they, they just that’s just like, oh my god that feels so delicious. That looks so simple and elegant. Because it takes a lot of hard work to make something look simple, because sometimes they’re often like, why didn’t I think of that? And I’m like, because that’s not your zone of genius, you’re focused on something else. And it takes a lot of finesse to make something as complicated as, say, a sales process. look the way we did because we have put a lot of intention and thought like we’re thinking 10 steps ahead, because when we create your solutions for you, we’re not just like solving for the now. Because what happens when you grow nobody has time to like put the brakes on and do this all over again and retrofit Windows one more time. And so, the process that we create or the systems the operations strategy, everything solves the now of course, but it will should grow with you. Unless like you change, you change from like being a SaaS company to say selling MLM stuff, the multi level marketing, right? So other than that, it should grow with you. And let me give you an example. So this is why being on this podcast, it’s really important to me because especially for startups who are getting investing in or working on getting investment and talking to investors. It’s like I had a client come to us. She did really well on her own got a lot of money. And the first thing that you do when you get a lot of money is you often dump it into hiring people your market Doing are your sales? No, my Excellent. Okay, great. Let me just get an understanding of your sales process because she just hired a team of five salespeople with this new money. Just let me get an idea of what your sales process is like. So it can be recorded and noted downs will process map but to see where things can be better. The look in her eyes in the first two seconds told me everything that I needed to know. There was no sales process. And this really drives in why operations is important because like you hire these amazing sales people. But if there’s no process, there is no way to keep track, your CRM is missing. There is no communication, who takes what kinds of sales calls is there a demo for the product, because this was a SaaS company plus done for you features in some aspects. And so we made, we did a stopper solution. So I’m not a fan of band aid solutions, but with how but with how fast things are moving, I’m just like, Okay, here’s going to be a very simplified process right now just to like, tie you over. And while you’re working on that, we’ll be on the other end putting together and that’s the process map, I ended up showing you a fully thought out as automated as possible with manual actions where she actually wanted it to be manual from A to Z. And so when you work with a team like us, it’s like, we’re able to shortcut that a lot. Because we know what we’re doing. We’ve done this before many times, it’s like, here’s a stopper solution that’s actually really, really effective for the now, but then just wait, the the main course is coming. Usually we try to do the main course all at once. But the fact that she had so many leads coming in with the sales, sales, people just twiddling their thumbs, it’s like we had to make good use of the money we had to get going. So when there are issues like that, I’m always thinking about what’s the most effective, minimum viable solution. And then whilst that’s in

Chris Davis 32:04
place, a minimal viable process. Right.

Veronica Yanhs 32:07
Right. I love that. And then work on the fully fledged thing. And, and we took that stopper solution, the MVP, and we ended up baking it back into the overall sales process. So the sales team already knew what they were doing. So I didn’t have to train them again from scratch, because they’re like, Okay, we’ve been working on this for like a month, because it took us about a month to get that revamp sales process done for them. And the learning curve was that much less. So that’s why it’s like doing it right. At the beginning is important. But sometimes if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s like the best thing you can do as well one talk to us or to ask questions like, What do I want from this? What do I need from this? What is the end result? What are some of the bottlenecks that I could solve for or maybe somebody else can take over for me?

Chris Davis 33:02
Yeah, and I, I have to echo your sentiments in your experience with the sales process. I’ve been in the in the startup space, as an employee and leadership for years, almost a decade. But as an entrepreneur and a founder of my own company in a consultative capacity. I work with startups too. And I’m seeing a trend, one of the things is that the startup space is evolving from not just dominant B to C. Startup, tech startups used to have software and you have software, you go sell it to as many consumers as possible. Well, we’re seeing a b2b shift in the startup space. And with that b2b shift comes maintaining, managing and optimizing a pipeline. And one of the main things that I see in there is the lack of sales strategy. Yeah, they don’t have the lack of willingness to hire a salesperson. They have all of that. But they have no strategy. There’s no operations for that salesperson to come in. It’s like they think I need to go find the perfect person who could just start calling and making sales. So when you mentioned what you mentioned, in terms of they didn’t have a sales strategy. I see this often. I see this, probably. I would say that your sales, of course is more important than your marketing because you can have great marketing and not know how to sell and just have a whole bunch of leads. Your sales is extremely important. But there’s some where Veronica and I don’t know where this is. There’s somewhere that people are missing entrepreneurs, business owners founders are missing the importance of understanding their sales operations. I think they’re heavy on the marketing by heavy on the advertising side, but when it comes to the traditional sales, it First off, it’s, it takes a unique skill set to sale. But then the operations and strategy to do that is often missing as well. So it’s just an observation that stood out to me as you were, as you were mentioning, the the case study and your client here. And I just wonder, you know, and I’ll continue to explore it, I know you will, where, what the, what the start of the problem is, so we can more easily insert ourselves there. Instead of them going so far along, and getting so deep in wasting money losing money, and like, oh, I shouldn’t I wish I’d known you a year ago, you know?

Veronica Yanhs 35:45
Yeah. So one of my hypothesis is that I believe that sales and operations were kind of like, the middle children were just as important, but we get passed over for other things that are shiny, pretty, like humans are one innately visual. So I wonder if that’s why like branding, and marketing, social media adverts like those things are clearly proportional to money. But then operations is like this opaque entity that people know they need. But that’s like, that’s about it. I don’t want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. Yeah. And I think it’s because it’s a lot. There’s a lot of corporate myths associated with operations, especially if you’ve had a corporate background, or you’ve gone into an organization where your operations, even if they’re crappy, are already built for you. Like, a lot of people when it comes to operations, they only know how to like, kind of massage it to make things a little bit better. They but they don’t know how to build something from nothing. They’re often used to coming into an organization where the operations are already there. Yeah. And I think kind of same thing with like sales is that it’s kind of if you’ve had a terrible sales process or been sold to in a way that you never consented to? Yeah, or like the used car salesman, I wonder if there’s just that negative association with it. And so people are just like, oh, social media is going to do solve everything for me, get me customers sell for me. But it’s like, no, you have to, you actually have to dedicate a lot of space to both sales, and operations, and marketing, branding, all of it. Like I don’t believe in just working on it, like one layer at a time. It’s like, it’s like a DNA helix. You work on one little thing at a time, and you just keep spiraling up. Yeah, but that’s my hypothesis. Yeah,

Chris Davis 37:38
yeah. And we’ll continue to explore guess what, everyone, I just made an executive decision while Veronica was talking. This won’t be Veronica first and last time on the podcast. I think there are so many layers, right that we can go into. And I want to just keep keep talking. But I want to be respectful of the our listeners. And of course, we’re at Red our time. But, Veronica, people have been listening to you for about 30 minutes here. And for that listener, who was just like, Oh, am G? Where has she been? All my life? I think this is the missing piece. I’ve been trying to tell my team. It’s not just Facebook ads. It’s not just branding. It’s not this. There’s not. There’s another element that’s missing. They heard you and they’re like, Okay, I need to get I need to figure out how to get in contact with her. I’m ready to get started. What’s the best way for somebody to get in contact with you?

Veronica Yanhs 38:30
Yeah, the easiest thing is just to book a conversation like right now I’m doing the sales for the business not because I have to, it’s actually because I want to I love meeting people. I love creating relationships. Apparently communication and strengths. Finders is like my number fifth skill. So talking is a strength of mine. So book a console call, like let’s just chat like I’m the person that if we are both not a Hell, yes. If we are both not enthusiastically consenting to wanting to work with each other, it’s an immediate No. So you never have to worry. If you’re on the fence, if it’s on the fence, it’s an immediate No. And if there’s somebody better suited, I will recommend you wholeheartedly to them. So let’s just book a chat, go to www.business laid bare.com/consult. And I’ll send you all the links, Chris. We know how to we know how to do this. That’s just the easiest way is just to start chatting because we’re here, like my mission, yes, is to get people to fall in love with their operations, but more so it’s because it’s to help people maintain their profits so that we can use that money to do good with it in the world. And that only works if you have a really tight back end. Operations increases your capacity. So when you’re hitting like revenue and operating ceilings, it’s because your operations are not giving you the spaciousness to be able to really capitalize everything that you’ve worked so hard and put money into. So let’s just chat. We’re gonna chat for 2030 minutes have a great time. And at the end of the call, you will know whether or not we’re meant to work together or not. Yep.

Chris Davis 40:11
All right, everyone will have that link in the in the show notes. If you’re on your phone, you could just click right now, go to the show notes. The link will be there. For those of you who whose thumbs couldn’t type fast enough his businesslaidbare.com For slash console. Veronica, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you for agreeing to come back on the spot. I didn’t give you an option. But this has been great. And I want to continue this conversation. Veronica, in all seriousness, this is this is huge. Once you understand how to operate a business, I’m not talking about build a landing page and generate leads and all of that, how to operate a business. This is often the piece that’s missing with us. So many businesses have great ambition, great passion, great products, but they don’t have their operations in place.

Veronica Yanhs 41:08
And before you end, because we’ve worked very high level about it today, like let me just give you some examples. We’re talking about your project management, we’re talking about customer onboarding, we’re also talking about retention so that you don’t have to focus so hard on acquisition all the time. But maybe that’s my biased relationships. We’re talking about team communications. And it’s not just sign up for slack. No, it’s a lot deeper than that. Right? So all these things that go into a business, especially your customer journey systems, and processes, or systems and processes that make your team empowered, and feel confident that they can run without always having to check with you. Like these are all operations, anything that feels or anything that relates to doing like, you’re like, oh, I don’t like how I’m always like, feeling like I’m a glorified babysitter to this team member. It’s because your operations are not there. And whether that means it’s a small refinement, or we need to build from scratch. It’s like, if you feel that something isn’t done right, and it doesn’t, you don’t know why it’s always operations because it’s the how,

Chris Davis 42:17
yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Great point. Oh, man, thank you so much, Veronica. The pleasure has truly been ours. Collectively. I speak for my listeners and myself. can’t thank you enough for taking the time to come in on and blessing us with your your intellect, your and your insight. Again, everyone, the show notes, we’ll have all of the links for Annika. See you next time. And again, lastly, thank you for being you.

Veronica Yanhs 42:47
Thank you so much. I had such a fabulous time on your show today. So I can’t wait to be back.

Chris Davis 42:53
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, Veronica. We’ll see you later. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at allsystemsgopodcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends