← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 482 - Scale It Simply Co-Founder, Polina Mireau
01:02:48
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- [00:00]
Cameron Herold
Hey, it's Cameron Herald, the host of the Second in Command podcast. Before we dive in, there's something you need to know. If you're a coo, VP Operations or you're in any role where you're the second in command to the CEO, the COO alliance is the place for you. If you're the integrator to the visionary, you're going to want to join us. The COO alliance is the world's leading community for the second in command. We've had over 500 members like you join from 17 countries to grow their skills, connections and confidence. You'll get the tools, friendships and a 10x guarantee to ensure that you get your money's worth. Go to cooalliance.com to learn more and see if you qualify. You can even book a free call with our team to ask questions. Now let's jump into this week's episode.
- [00:44]
Savannah Brewer
You don't even know, you know, am I going the right direction? Am I focusing on the right things? Or maybe there was an unspoken expectation that you might miss because it, it was never, it was never communicated. And so I like to dig deep into that. And then we, we look at, okay, we have a goal, we have the clear results in the first 90 days. Now what are the three biggest problems that Founder is focusing on solving right now? What are the three biggest problems on your plate? And I look at trying to understand that first to see where, where are they focused and where are they oriented and how can I contribute to their three biggest challenges and because that's where you can bring the most immediate value.
- [01:31]
Paulina Moreau
Welcome to the Second in Command podcast.
- [01:33]
Savannah Brewer
Produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold.
- [01:38]
Paulina Moreau
In the second in command podcast we talk to top COOs who share the.
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Savannah Brewer
Insights, strategies and tactics that made them.
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Paulina Moreau
The chief behind the chief. And now here's your co host, former.
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Savannah Brewer
COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
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Paulina Moreau
Today's guest is Paulina Moreau. She is a powerhouse COO behind multiple companies in the online education industry, including most recently the Land Geek, specializing in land investing education. She's also the founder of Scale Expert and co founder of Scale It Simply where she's brought her COO expertise to even more companies. And in this episode we dive into the importance of transparent team communication. The nuances between fractional project based and full time COO roles and what to prioritize in your first 90 days stepping into a leadership position specifically like COO. We also explore how she's reshaping the client feedback process, a better way of doing NPS systems, if you will, and what it means to lead as a young woman in an executive role. She also happens to be a friend of mine and is just a really, really incredible human. So I really enjoyed this conversation. And if you are ready to simplify, scale, and lead more effectively, this is an episode that you are going to love. We are here live with Paulina. Welcome to the show.
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Savannah Brewer
Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
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Paulina Moreau
Absolutely. And this one's a really exciting one for me because we actually met maybe two years ago at a conference that my friend brought me to that you were currently the COO working with. And then we became friends and WhatsApp buddies as you've traveled around the world. And I've gotten to hear about all of the cool things that you've been up to, and this moment in time, we get to talk about all the lessons and takeaways from so many incredible experiences that you've had. So I'm really excited about this.
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Savannah Brewer
Me too. And I think in that moment we met, it's it. It was that connection we had of, oh, there's another female doing this that's young, around my age, and that was really special for me. And I feel like we really hit it off and connected. So I'm really glad that we have the opportunity today to talk about cooing this role. I know that we've had previous conversations, and I've learned a lot from you, and so I'm just really excited to get into it and get into the magic of this role.
- [04:20]
Paulina Moreau
Likewise. Yeah. Actually, you saying that. I'm remembering specifically the moment was we were in a group of maybe four to five people talking about what are some of the challenges that the company was facing, and we're all giving solutions back and forth. And I remember giving a solution to something, and then you followed up with a way better solution. And I was like, who is this girl? I must know her. And then from there, here we are. So why don't you give us a little bit of a background on yourself? How did you end up moving into the role of coo?
- [04:58]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, so I'm originally Canadian, and I have always been kind of an intrapreneur in everything that I did. From a very young age, I was taught, you know, you have to work hard, you have to get good grades, you have to be smart, you have to be organized. So I think, like, where it all started was, you know, when you have those boxes of stuff from your childhood that your parents kind of keep. And you go through it and you go, oh my gosh. Like I had journals of myself in third grade. Time blocking, I kid you not. Time blocking. When I'm going to do my homework, when I'm going to take my nap, when I'm going to do certain things in the day, when I'm going to wash the dishes, like third grade. And so I think maybe that's where it started is it's a little bit of nature, a little bit of nurture of, you know, single mom. I had to be organized. My mom was working and I had to kind of learn how to be independent, mature from a young age. And I was taught, you know, go to school, get good grades, work really hard. So that's what I did. And I followed the path fast forward. I was working in a large organization, multiple thousands of employees, more of a corporate structure. And I was on the track from, I think there must have been like 22, 23. And I was on the track of like, okay, you're going management, you're going to grow fast in this organization. The company was investing me and my training and I just took a complete left turn. I saw this other opportunity that my mom actually introduced me to of this other industry, this online business world where people were growing companies, building remote teams and selling things online. And so I kind of pivoted completely and I went from this corporate role that people highly sought after. You will work your whole life trying to get into this organization so that you can retire, have the pension be taken care of for the rest of your life and the security and I don't know what it was, but that was never really me and I felt like I wanted more and that wasn't what was going to drive me. And then I saw this opportunity of my mom growing her consulting business at the time and taking her online and getting into all the fun like marketing and sales and funnels and things that I had never done before, but then started learning. So that became my, you know, if I had my nine to five, that became my five to nine. And from there this whole other world opened up to me where I started learning business and sales and how to hire and work with contractors and do projects. And I had an opportunity to join one of these companies that was really big at the time, still is, and work at an entry level position and work my way. And I went, okay, which one do I want? Do I want the stable? You know, I'm going to have a pension and I Have a very clear career trajectory. But honestly, like, it's not going to be as challenging or boring, as exciting, but you have the stability or because I'm in my early to mid-20s, let's do something that's exciting and challenging and get more into the business of business. And so I did that. Left the stable thing that was going to set me up for the rest of my life into the great unknown of not even employee, like independent contractor, 1099, no safety, no security, no benefits, nothing. Let's do it. And so from there, I really worked my way up into every single company that I worked with and saw opportunities and always jumped in and thought, okay, I'm hired to solve a certain problem or do a certain job. But I always think big picture and have the foresight to think, see around the corners and think, what is the bigger opportunity here? What, how can this be better? What are we missing? And I've always been that kind of person of thinking, like, how do we make the company work better as a whole? And that might mean working with different departments and stakeholders and really going above and beyond and expanding. So fast forward, I had been working with companies in this capacity of kind of coming in for one thing and then realizing, oh, there's actually a problem over here, and then just really pulling in the team together and being an intrapreneur. And not because I was given that job, not because I was given that title, not because anyone really gave me permission or like gave me the mic, but because I knew and I could see there's an opportunity here for the business. And then let's have those conversations, let's bring in the right people, have a conversation with the owner, the founder, the CEO. Here's what you're missing, is the big opportunity in front of you. And that's really how I operated in everything that I did. And so when I had that official, kind of like formalized, let's say formalized, okay, COO role, by that point I had already been working in that kind of capacity and performing CEO roles. And then I was actually referred to the company where I made my, you know, full time, let's say full time COO debut. I was referred to that company and the owner and founder at the time was looking for somebody to really take his company to the next level. They were experiencing some challenges which we can get into, and they were looking for somebody with my skillset and experience, but also somebody that was going to look at things from a new perspective and bring kind of like a new young energy, someone that has been there and seen that and done that, but also somebody that's not afraid to. How do we think about this differently? So that's really how it started.
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Paulina Moreau
Amazing. Yeah. Lots of windy paths and unexpected doors and just sounds like really following those. And here you are now where you're working with multiple companies and the experience that you had at this last company, the Land Geek, which we're going to pull from today, really amazing because it sounds like when you came in, they were having a quite low month, it sounds like, and trending down. So could you tell us a little bit about what was the state of the company when you came in? What were some of the problems that they were experiencing?
- [11:19]
Savannah Brewer
Absolutely, yeah. So I would say it was interesting, the transition because I first started working with them in a fractional capacity of very kind of normal coo things of the founder identified. Okay, we need to get more organized. We want to shift from a lifestyle company to a company company, a real business where we're going to like real business. People are going to have a scorecard and we're going to track data and we're going to have accountability and managers and leaders. And so he had gotten to that point at a very high revenue level without those things. And it had worked for a while. And then, you know, you hit, you hit a ceiling in your business and that's where you really need to look for, okay, what do we need to put in place? We can break through that ceiling and grow. And in that time, it was more of the structure of the business in place, and they also needed more support in the product side and up, leveling that and improving that. And that's really what my experience was. So I came in for product, for delivery, systems, for operations, introducing structures, leadership, accountability operations. And then fast forward a few months later when we kind of had this inflection point of, okay, let's bring you in full time. This is a bigger job than a fractional position would allow, which I know you had some questions about that, so we could talk about what's fractional versus full time and that difference. But when we came to this inflection point of, hey, we really need you here full time, because this is more than what we even thought coincidentally. And this is how fate works and the universe works or whatever you believe it. Coincidentally, in that same month, the revenue had been trailing down and we had learned that the main ADS source and the main lead source was completely turned off for three months. So you saw a decline, a natural decline in revenue, and the company Basically had lost their sales and marketing teams at the same time. There's a couple reasons why, but I think that, you know, the founder was looking at, let's bring in these two functions internally because they were external agencies at the time where, you know, it's great, it's all taken care of, it's hands off and it's good. But there comes a point in the, in the organization, in this company that the founder said, let's bring this in house. So we have better quality control, we have more visibility on metrics, and we can also have a better profit margin. Right. And have control over the team and the profit margin and quality. So that happened all at the same time that, you know, had to rebuild the marketing team from scratch, rebuild sales team from scratch. Ads and leads had been turned off. And that was really the moment that I came in into full force. And so what became what started as a let's install an operating system and formalize this thing became a, okay, we have no leads coming in. We've had our worst quarter in a year and a half. We're trailing downwards and hey, we have no leads coming in, so what do we do? So that was the moment that I came in.
- [14:38]
Paulina Moreau
Got it. What was the state or the energy like of the team when you came in, when all of that was happening?
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Savannah Brewer
It was really interesting because I think that, and this was part of the issue was there wasn't a lot of awareness. There was, you know, obviously a sense of panic on from the founder side of, hey, you know, we're not in a good place and we're looking at the bank account and the numbers and it's not headed in a good direction. I think there's also confusion around lack of numbers because these were all trailing indicators of, okay, there's no money in the bank or less than we thought. Okay, well, what were the leading indicators and metrics that could have shown us that those were not present and the systems weren't built to even see that or determine that ahead of time, which was part of my job. And so from the owner side, it was not a great feeling and definitely a sense of panic. And then from the team side, it was actually the reverse of they saw, you know, they saw things were changing, they saw the sales weren't coming in like they were they used to. But there was a lot of silos and isolation. And I'll never forget this. I come on and I log into Slack and it's right before a big launch or promotion and there's nothing going on. Like Slack is just dead and quiet. And I'm thinking, what is happening? Like we have this big launch, we have an event coming up in a couple of weeks and nobody's talking, you know, this, something's not right. And then I pulled up the Slack data and you can actually see, I don't know if you've ever done this, but if you haven't, for those of you listening, if you haven't, you can go and see the Slack analytics and see who in the team is most active and who is least active. And you can see the average conversations and you can kind of really quickly at a glance see the conversational and communication patterns. And the pattern that I was seeing was that there was no communication and most of the conversation was happening in private one on one DMs and that's how the work was getting done. And when you see like 80% of the work and 80% of the team communication is happening in private one on one Slack messages, there's something off. And that's where I started digging in.
- [17:03]
Paulina Moreau
Can you tell us? Because I'm very similar, I've had similar experiences where come in. Slack is dead and yet the work is still getting done in some way. So a lot of it is happening in these one on one DMs. And I did this in our last company where I had to get the team on board to put everything in the group channels to bring visibility to what's happening and conversations. Because otherwise there's multiple lines of communication that have to happen if we're doing them all separately, which probably creates the silos like you're mentioning. So I would love if you could share, for anyone who hasn't really been thinking about that with their team, what are some of the cons of having your team having those more siloed communications where you're not seeing them in group channels?
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Savannah Brewer
Absolutely. From a, from a very tactical perspective and viewpoint, if everybody is doing their own thing and they're not communicating, how many balls are being dropped when we have, when we have things cross over departments. Because while internally and depending on the size team that you have, you have people that only do this, the specific role, they only do sales or they only do customer success. And if they don't know what's going on in the other departments, just think of how the balls might be getting dropped between when if you think from the other perspective of the customer journey, you have somebody out there that doesn't know you, your marketing, your marketing team is doing their job. They become a lead okay, they've joined your email list. Then they're passed off into sales. Well, that's. It's like a relay race. There's a baton that's passed. So what is that handoff like? And now they're talking to the salesperson. And let's say they're interested in your product or service or program and they're having this great conversation. And then from the salesperson, what happens? Well, they want to sign up, they want to buy your thing. And then again, there's a baton that needs to be passed to the delivery or customer support team. Okay, so then what is that experience like when they're in. When they're an active client or customer? Okay. Then they have that connection with the customer support team. There may or may not be a ton of communication. But if you have any sort of product or service that has a retention moment, okay, maybe they're passed off into another team. That's the retention team. And so what is that handoff like? And throughout all of these handoffs, there's key information that you need to know about this person or this company that you're working with as a customer or client. That is key information that is pat needs to be passed off. And so when you don't have that connectivity inside the organization, that's when balls are dropped. That's when you have multiple people on your team trying to learn all the same things, all the same information about the person. Now the person or the company's repeating themselves, and they're feeling like, does company even know who I am? Do they care? They're not listening. Every time I get on the phone, I talk to a new person and I have to re. Explain myself, who I am, who my business is, what I need. And so it, it's. It's not a good look and it's not a good experience for them. And so I'm always thinking about what is the customer journey? Because that is who we're here to serve. So, you know, from a very tactical perspective of you're. You're leaving money on the table. If you're not creating good experience for people and people. That's when people don't want to refer you. That's when people don't feel like they've been treated well or they've been heard or listened to or have received a good service or that they're. They're just a number. They're just a customer. They don't have a connection with you. And then from an internal perspective, culturally, when you come on, it's almost like there's a fear of doing your work publicly, of asking questions publicly. In Slack, you know, we have the channels. You have your customer success channel and your sales channel and leadership channels. And there's almost like this. You come into this fear that people have that they're exposing themselves, that they don't know something or that they are unclear and they're exposing themselves when they put something in a group communication. But the reality is, and from a leadership perspective as a CEO, and I'm sure you've experienced this before, Savannah, if one person on your team has a question that there's so many other people having that same question, and that question probably impacts more than likely more than one department. And so why would you not tackle things out in public, in the public channels where everybody can see and understand and learn from a situation or learn from, like, here's best practice, here's how we do things. But the culture that I came into was the opposite of fear. And so it's when you have fear and when you have people that are afraid to show up, to show, ask, to ask questions, then they're not growing, they're not improving in their role. And they also don't have that connection with other people on their team and other teams. And so then they don't have a connection to what they're doing. They might not have a connection with the overall purpose of the company and the vision and the founder. And if they don't have a connection, chances are they probably don't care or they don't care as much as you want them to care and certainly not as much as the owner and the founder wants them to care. So there's a really big. It's a. It's a very small symptom that you can kind of pass off as, oh, like, that's just not the culture. Like, that's not the kind of place this is. But it's easy to write it off, but it's actually a symptom of something that has a massive ripple effect to how we serve our customers and clients and how we connect with the rest of the team and how we create a place where people actually want to be and work and show up and not where people are afraid to show up and ask questions and do their best job.
- [22:56]
Paulina Moreau
That was so well said. Really well said. I love how you took it. Like you said this really small. What seems to be like, oh, yeah, let's just move, get everyone to talk in the public Slack channel. But it's so much bigger than that. And even from a data you were talking about earlier with tracking data is if you've got everything spread out everywhere, there's no one place to see. Especially I just experienced this with a client journey where I was trying to figure out what has this client gone through. One of these companies I was working with, because there wasn't one place that everyone was just putting the client journey steps or what had happened. And so then if you lose a team member or some other transition happens, you've just lost all of the information that maybe your team member had that was kept in these back channels. And so there's having it in one place from an internal team perspective from the client journey, like you said, creating a really amazing experience. And the ripple effect of all of the causes is so big. So I love how you just expanded that for me and kind of zooming out, talking about expanding, zooming out in the first 90 days when you came into this company or any of the other companies that you've been in, when there's more than maybe you were expecting, where you came in thinking I'm going to put in some accountability, maybe some end of day reports or you're going to get people talking in Slack, but then you realize, oh shoot, like there's actually a lot of pieces here, people that maybe need to be switched out. There's big culture issues, there's departments falling apart. Where do you begin?
- [24:36]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, I, I love, I love new challenges and solving new problems. That's just my personality. So for some people, the first kind of 30, 60, 90 days might be the most overwhelming or stressful or uncertain. But for me, I like get really excited and jump in. And so how I approach working with a company, how I approach working with this company where I was full time SEO and in fractional situations, it's a very similar process. The first thing is obviously establishing that connection with the owner and founder and saying, what is your goal? What is your vision of what you want to happen? What is the financial goal so that you understand what the growth of the company needs to be that they're anticipating, obviously understanding where they are now, where they've been maybe the last trailing 12 months. And then what's the vision that's not specifically financial? And so in the CEO role I really do believe, and Cameron actually talks a lot about this. It's like it's, it's this pairing and this partnership between the CEO and the CEO or the CEO and the founder and owner of the company. And you, you really need to operate as a unit. And as a CEO, your job is to support that founder vision. And you need to understand that there's financial goals, but then there's also the vision of the founder and maybe like what they want to do and what their role needs to be and how their role wants to change as a result of you coming in. So it's not just about you. And okay, we have these goals and let's fix the company and here's all our problems. But also how does the founder or CEO want to operate and what do they hope to gain as a result of working with you? And that may be, okay, I want to hand off certain departments or hand off certain things that I was doing, or I want to focus over here, be more front facing. And so it's almost like asking yourself, kind of like, why does the company exist and how do I contribute to that? But also what is, what is me coming in supposed to create for the company and the CEO or the founder? So understanding the goal number two is the result. So what do you hope to see in the first 90 days? And I think that's really critical because anytime that you're starting anything new and you're maybe in a new role as a COO or you're hiring new leaders, onboarding new people, bringing on new team, you want to make sure you're clear on what is the results or the ROI that you want to see in that person in that role that maybe you're hiring or for yourself. And make sure that the expectations are very clear out the gate. Because if you miss this, the mistake that people make is, okay, we're going to hit the ground running, I'm going to do all these things, but you don't even know, you know, am I going the right direction, am I focusing on the right things? Or maybe there was an unspoken expectation that you might miss because it was never, it was never communicated. And so I like to dig deep into that. And then we, we look at, okay, we have a goal, we have the clear results in the first 90 days. Now, what are the three biggest problems that founder is focusing on solving right now? What are the three biggest problems on your plate? And I look at trying to understand that first to see where, where are they focused and where are they oriented and how can I contribute to their three biggest challenges? Because that's where you can bring the most immediate value. And the last thing is the constraints. What is the immediate constraint in the business growth? And this is going to be that ceiling. What is the ceiling that is preventing us from Solving all these other things. And there's usually one or two big constraints that are preventing us from moving forward into the next phase of the business. So that's the framework that I go through. What's the goal, what are the results, what are the problems that you're solving right now? And then what are the biggest constraints in the business to the business growth? And then from there, once we get really clear on that, it's a lot of meetings and engagement and conversation, understanding all the different players in the team and the stakeholders, the leadership team, if there is one, and then customer interviews. I feel like this is missed a lot is when somebody comes into the company, there's, there's like the switch that, okay, we're here, we're hired by the founder, we have to build out this team or we have to fit into this team. And the focus is very internal. But ultimately the only reason we all exist in business is to serve the customers or the clients and create value. And so I do see that a lot of leaders come in and they kind of miss that. They almost jump ahead to, okay, I'm expected to, you know, have my 90 day plan and my KPIs. And there's a lot of focus internally on yourself and on your team and the relationship in internally. But we miss having those conversations with the customers and understanding what are they seeing, what is their perspective. And that's how you really get to learn the culture, the brand that you have within externally to the organization. And that's where you uncover some of the challenges that may be missed. So that's, that's just the first 30 days. You're laughing, but it, you know, it's, it's a really big, it's a really big thing, depending on the size of the organization to come in and to really quickly be able to understand the current problems and constraints. You cannot do that without having conversations and understanding where everything is currently at.
- [30:30]
Paulina Moreau
That was awesome. And I have multiple different questions that we can kind of spin off of. Let's start here because one of the things you were talking about was the matchmaking of ultimately the role of the COO is to be the yin and yang to the CEO. And there's multiple different types of that. Cameron talks about this in his book the Second in Command. If you're hiring a CMO, most CMOs can go and work at different companies and be put into the same lane and still accomplish good results. But not every COO can get transferred to a different company and have extraordinary results because it's so customized to who you're working with and what is actually needed in the business, which is why you're mentioning getting really clear big ultimate wins is what are the top three things that the owner really wants to get off their plate and stepping into that and are you the best fit for that? So speaking about fits, it sounds like you were kind of hired maybe fractionally at first, and then you realized there was more that you needed to step into. So for anyone that's listening and maybe they're thinking about hiring a CEO, going through that matchmaking process, maybe they need someone fractionally. Could you give us an idea of what's the difference between a fractional coo, a full time coo, and how to go through making sure that you hire the right fit?
- [31:51]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that there's a use case for both and it takes, it probably takes a slightly different skill set to do fractional versus full time just because you have less.
- [32:12]
Cameron Herold
Hey, it's Cameron. I hope you're loving today's episode. Quick question for you. Does your company have a strong leadership training program in place to grow the skills of everyone who manages people? If you want to help yourself and your company grow, get everyone who manages people learning from my invest in your leaders online training program. There are 12 core leadership skills that I cover online and they're all going to really grow. CEOs pay me $78,000 a year to coach them one on one and now you can all benefit for 1% of what they pay me. These are the same leadership skills that I created and certified everyone in at 1-800-got junk when I was there as COO. Go to investinyourleaders.com today and use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month to get 10% off each manager you sign up. Now back to the show.
- [33:08]
Savannah Brewer
Time to do what it is that you want to do. But it, I think it, it also works both ways from the owner's perspective of if you hire somebody and you're trying to make a decision about fractional versus full time, fractional probably means that you have a specific challenge or a couple of specific challenges in your business that you've probably already identified and you don't have somebody internally that can address those challenges and you need somebody that been there before, that has seen this and almost is like coming in with a playbook on. Here's what I would do. Here's what you need to do. And with fractional as the owner or founder, you're most likely still doing a lot of the heavy lifting and the work because fractional, anything fractional, coo, cmo, you just aren't as in the weeds because you don't have the time. And I think that's a mistake that some founders make when they do look for fractional is they think, well, I can get someone really smart for a fraction of the price. So it's like you're saving, it's more of a budget thing, like I can't afford this person or this role full time, so let's do this fractionally and I still get all of the things I want from this person, but I'm, I can't afford to pay for it. It's not actually like that. It's a different relationship where I believe that frac anything fractional is more project based and you better be really clear as the owner of what are the problems that we're solving and you're tackling those specific problems. And then if you're a CEO listening to this and you're thinking about fractional, it's more you, you get into more of a consultative type role and maybe there's more coaching conversations and consultation and there's certain things that you're going to be more hands on, but you're going to need either your own team or you're going to need access to the owner's team in order to execute some of the things and deliver some of the projects. But boundaries are going to be key of where you know, this is what I am going to do, this is what I'm not going to do or that isn't in the scope. Whereas if you're full time coo, I think you have the opportunity to just get in there, roll up your sleeves and was like any, whatever you need to do to make this happen, like let's make it happen, let's go. And the guide rails aren't as specific because you have more time, you're fully embedded into the organization. I think if you're thinking about hiring someone fractionally or full time and trying to make a decision, I think it really is, you know, do you have, do you have the personal skill set in time to be able to execute on some of the things that the fractional COO might be guiding you towards because they may not be able to or do you really just need someone to come in and fully own that role and you not have to be as integrated with that in the day to day? Maybe you don't have the time or you don't have the interest and that's not your priority or skill set and that that's totally fine. And then you realize I need to, I need to hire someone full time to really own that long term, rather just on a per project basis.
- [36:39]
Paulina Moreau
Right? Yes, you made such a good point on I think a lot of people hiring proximal because of the budget cost and I know one of my first fractional roles that I came in as it being one of my first times doing fractional there was, oh man, there's a lot of expectations here for me to be running all of the client fulfillment and fixing culture and hiring people and I just simply don't have the time for that. So that's a piece that we could get over to here in a second. But one of the other things I wanted to mention, I know that you've been through the invest in your leaders course that Cameron has, but if you are in a position position right now where you're really needing someone to up level in their COO or their leadership type skills, but you don't have the budget to hire a full time COO and you're not ready to be doing more of the projects, then think about who on your team could potentially step into taking on more responsibility and use that budget that maybe you would spend on a fractional COO into your key team members that you already have and get them into investing your leaders or maybe COO alliance. Is that something that you would also recommend being that you've been through the course?
- [37:52]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, absolutely. I think if you're in a position where you don't have the budget but you need somebody to fill more of a COO type role, then maybe you look at okay, who on my team can be trained and nurtured up into more of a leadership role and that doesn't have to be COO right away. I know Cameron talks about this all the time where we almost over promote and give someone too big of a title and they have nowhere to go either. And maybe your organization's really small. So if you don't have a leadership team then maybe CEO doesn't make sense and isn't the right title. But you look at okay, are they operations manager, director of operations or something that makes sense within the org structure and you develop them that way. And you're absolutely right. I did invest in your leaders and it's a great jam packed course. I think Cameron did a ton of put a ton of things into it that could have been really huge topics on their own and just gave you like here are the highlights of what you need to know. And he really thought about, okay, if you don't have a lot of time, how do I teach this in a most efficient way possible? So I think that's really great. And I did that and I recommend that for any, anyone in a leadership position. If you don't have that person, that's where as a founder or coo, then you, you start to look at, okay, where, how do I, where do I need to move around or allocate budget so that I can bring in somebody that has been there and done that that isn't me. And maybe you haven't even been there and done that. And so it's really important to know when you're hiring what is the problems that I'm trying to solve and do I need somebody that's already solved these problems or do I just need to bring in someone that's highly competent and is really sharp and has a lot of tenacity and is willing to learn and be coachable and I can teach them. But if you can't teach them, then it's the blind leading the blind. So if you don't know or if you can't teach them, then you need to bring in somebody who's been there, which, where's the fractional co might come into play here. And then the expectations just need to be really clear from both sides of, okay, we're going to tackle one thing at a time. And then as budget opens up and as some of these problems are solved, I can start to look at bringing in somebody to really own that role or department, hopefully full time.
- [40:22]
Paulina Moreau
Yeah, I love that. Kind of going back to something that you had mentioned in the first 90 days of getting clear on kind of like the one domino, which there was language that you used that made me think of the difference between monumental versus incremental change, which is something that I try to think about constantly and teach my team. Because when you're just in the day to day of the business, it's so easy to be like, well, this one problem, this is happening, so let's just put a band aid on it, let's download this plugin and let's add on this extra column in the spreadsheet and then you start doing these little band aid fixes and then you end up later down the road with just all these weird complex systems or steps that don't actually, they're not effective anymore. And so I always like to think, what is the one key thing kind of going back to slack. This is a recent example that comes to mind with a company that I was working with where I interviewed the whole team, looked at client data and I got really clear on all of these different problems and a lot of those challenges could have been solved with different types of things. But then there was one main thing that would make the difference which was getting all of the clients from email into Slack. Let's just migrate everyone and have all clients, we're communicating with them because this was a design agency. Let's get them all communicating in Slack. And it solves so many problems. And so I'm curious, what are some examples if you can come up with maybe one or two ideas or things that you've noticed were these monumental changes that you could make or that people could look out for that make a really big difference in team?
- [42:06]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I'm always looking for what is that one thing, like you said, the domino that's going to impact everything else. And sometimes you don't know, but then you have to work backwards and you look at what are the symptoms and what are the things that I can see and that I can perceive or what other smart people on the team can see and perceive and then work backwards. So for instance, when I came in into the full COO role with a business training education company and they had ended up basically losing their sales and marketing seemingly overnight, ads were turned off. It was right before a big event and they it just at the time it felt like hey, we have nowhere to go and meaning to do a full reorg here and almost start from scratch. And we went from that to me rebuilding the sales and marketing team department, rebuilding the whole leadership team and we went from, I think our lowest month was 133k a month. That was a real dipping point. They, that was about a 60% revenue drop and we went from that to a million dollar month. Amazing in seven months. And so like how do you do that? And it is the strategy is what is the biggest constraint. And as a coo, I believe our job is to look at and solve the biggest constraint in this situation. You know, it seems like it was clear, okay, well sales and marketing is, isn't here anymore and we need new sales and marketing. But that's very surface level and I believe that's a symptom because when you go, when I went in and I said okay, but what's really happening here? Why were ads turned off? I looked at the symptoms, I talked to the stakeholders, I talked to the owner and tried to really understand like what is happening. What I found is that the real problem underneath the surface was that the numbers and the data and the tracking mechanisms were not put in place. And then some of the ones that were there were gone because they were outsourced to agencies that if you don't work with an agency anymore, you don't get access to their internal data and their systems. That's part of the deal. That's what it means to be, you know, hands off and outsourced. And so when we brought that all in house, what was clear was the team didn't know what was working. They didn't know. They didn't understand the decisions that went into, well, why were the ads turned off? Well, then you start peeling back the layers, and your job as coo, I believe, is to ask those questions of, okay, well, what was happening? Why was that decision made? What were the numbers to support that? Okay, and then we find out, well, there were no numbers. So then what are we looking at here? Right? So that's where in that example, it really was the numbers and the lack of tracking that led to poor decision making, or let's say uninformed decision making. And they made decisions that were pretty, you know, damaging at the time to the organization that could have been. Could have been avoided if there was proper data in place and that there was data visibility, but also that the owner could see and understand that data and that it wasn't just left kind of hands off to the owner of that department like, okay, Bob's got it. Bob is telling me it's all good and he's got it. But, okay, why is it good? What's good? Let's break it down into the numbers. So that was. That was a key and pivotal point where that domino was actually, we need better tracking in order to make decisions and make sure that mistakes like this don't happen again. Where suddenly our lead flow is down for three months, which has a direct correlation to the sales pipeline 30, 60 days from now. Right. So that's one example of peeling back the layers and as a coo, asking really good and smart questions and understanding what went into certain decisions, especially if you're coming in new to an organization, understand what is the problem underneath the problem.
- [46:15]
Paulina Moreau
I love that you bring that up as an example. This is actually a recent conversation I was having with someone about one of the biggest things that I wish that I would have done early on when I was building closers was I got to this point where we needed to make some decisions and I didn't have I really needed data to make the decisions. And I just remember kicking myself like, I cannot believe we have not been tracking those numbers. And the best time to plant a tree is right now, I suppose. And so you can start today with whatever it is that you can. But one of the things that I like to tell my team is, hey, when you start thinking about the direction we're going, especially when you're really clear on the vision of everyone should be on the same page with the direction of the company, having your team think, is there any data that I may want to have one to five years from now? Because unless you're really thinking in the future about what are some of those problems that are going to happen? It's the same way with Customer Journey. What are the problems that you're going to want to solve for your clients after you solve this first one so you can have retention? It's the same way, how do we retain the health and the function of the company as it's growing? Is future forecasting the data that you may need and start tracking it now? I promise you it'll save you a lot of headaches. And the other thing that I wanted to get your thoughts on was the kind of customer interview side of things where that's a different form of data collection on its own. You've got NPS scores, you can just call clients, get feedback in multiple different ways. But I'm curious, what is your process for collecting customer feedback? And I'm sure that is different from an e comm company or brick and mortar company versus your space of being in the online education space. But for you or any other industries that might be a little bit outside of your scope, what do you feel is the best approach for gaining customer feedback?
- [48:19]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, absolutely. I think that that is one of the most overlooked levers in the organization. And I think that over time, as a company matures, you know, sales are coming in, you feel like you've kind of gotten the product side figured out and then you lose sight of the people and what's most important and you, you kind of run it on autopilot and. And so I think companies go in waves and cycles of.
- [48:52]
Cameron Herold
If you haven't read my newest book, the Second in Command, go grab a copy right now on Amazon and you'll learn how to unleash the power of a coo. And if you already are a coo, you'll learn how to really build an incredible partnership with your CEO.
- [49:08]
Savannah Brewer
Product is good. So we're not focused on that. We're focused on solving other things. And then the product side kind of drops and. And then you realize, oh, people are starting to complain or there's, there's challenges happening, and then you, you need to jump back in. So I think it's all cyclical. But what I do when I approach product and services or programs, whatever it is that you sell, is first, I seek to have the conversations directly with the people. I think that we overemphasize, emphasize. We overemphasize NPS surveys and we under emphasize the real human connection and real actual experiences. And so it's really easy to say, oh, well, the NPS score this quarter was, I don't know, 70. And so it's fine and we don't need to talk about that anymore. I think there's always instances of real stories of human experiences that our customers or clients have that we can learn from and grow from. And if we don't have those real conversations, it's not going to be things that are going to come into an NPS survey. And also, let's be real, as a consumer, myself or yourself, when do you put in your NPS scores when you're really pissed off and you have some bad things to say, or maybe, maybe you had a special connection with someone and they're like, hey, can you do me a favor? And it'd be really good for me and my job if you left this NPS review and put my name into the company survey. Okay, great. And you did it for Janice because Janice treated you well. But I don't know if it's 100% representative of the general experience. And so I think it is our job to speak directly with our customers, and that goes all the way up to the founder. And so how do I approach that? I get on a phone and I call and I reach out and I email and I position it as, hey, I'm so and so at this company and organization, and I just really want to hear your feedback on what it is like working with us or what your experience with, with this product is. And it would mean a lot if you would take a few minutes out of your day to share in certain. Depending on what your product or service is, it may be appropriate to offer some kind of incentive and say, hey, you know, if, if you're willing to take the time, you know, we're doing this for the first 20 people that respond or something like that. But I think more often than not, you just want to come across as genuine and human and not just a scripted kind of Robot AI thing that is just programmed to, like, we would really genuinely appreciate your feedback. And, like, just scrap the corporate speak. And just as if you were calling a friend, hey, I noticed that you bought make it personal. Hey, I noticed that you subscribed to such and such service last week, and I'd really love to know how it's going for you. I saw that you connected in with it a couple of times, and I really want to make sure that what you're getting is something that's meeting your expectations. And if it isn't, I'd love to hear why and how we can improve it. Would you be open to having a quick conversation? You know, just make it more human? And then when you get on that conversation, that call with the person, just don't make it like you're this company that's coming in and they're the customer. Like, just make it human to human and take the pressure off and be like, hey, Savannah, how's your day? Build rapport, right? We think about this with sales, but do we think about this with customer success? It's like, hey, Savannah, where are you calling in from? Hope you're having a great day. I noticed that you've used our product or service X amount of times, and I'd love to hear, like, what are you getting out of it? What do you love? What do you not love? And I just want you to give me the real feedback. Like, just give it to me straight. Like, I can take it. I can take feedback. And it's just. It's just gonna mean a lot to me and to the organization because your feedback makes us better. And just be real about it and be a human. And you'll be surprised at how many people were wanting and hoping that somebody would care enough to hear about what people. What they think. Because a lot of us, we just want to feel seen and heard, you know, and it's when somebody actually takes the time to sit down and look you in the eyes and actually care, and not because it's part of their job or they're following a checklist, but, like, actually care, you'll be surprised at the kind of response that you get.
- [53:58]
Paulina Moreau
That's beautiful. I can. Like, Even just hearing and being here and you sharing that, there's a genuineness and, yeah, real heartfelt connection about caring about their experience. And I think that coming through on the phone, it does make a really big difference. And I actually use this laundry company here in Austin that has the most incredible customer support that I've ever experienced. They're so friendly. Every time I message them about my laundry and they go above and beyond and every time that one of them drops off my laundry, they pick it up. They're genuinely so excited and asking me about my day. And I left a Google review for them just because I felt so compelled by how much care their team puts into my laundry. It's just so simple. Just the energy and that ripple affecting through your culture I think is so important. So thank you for sharing that. I know that we only have a couple minutes here, but one last thing that I would really be curious to hear your thoughts on is kind of the. And we were talking about at the very beginning when we met and we're like, oh, another young woman who's doing this. Because it is really rare. I don't know exactly how old you are, but I'm assuming we're probably pretty similar. I'm 27. So when I first got into this space, when I got the title of COO, I was 23, 22 or 23. And I happened to be working in a really young company at the time. But I've experienced other situations where there's definitely a, you know, kind of feeling like I in some way, like, how do I rep. How do I show that I have enough experience, enough knowledge that makes me worthwhile bringing on versus someone that might be 40, 45 and may have more experience in some other way. So I would just love to hear what's been your experience being a young woman in this industry. And you know, I think that there's becoming more and more female leaders in this type of work, but it's still probably, I would say mostly men in the cool role. So, yeah, just curious to hear what your experience has been in that.
- [56:13]
Savannah Brewer
I love that you're asking this question and it's, I mean, we could do a whole podcast about just this. So I'll, I'll give kind of like my high level. It's hard, you know, it's hard. And if you're young and you're a female and you're in a leadership role, or maybe it's your first COO role, or maybe you just remember what it's like. Maybe you are a bit older, you've been around the block a few times, but you remember what it's like. You know, I think you mentioned something like, like, how do I show, you know, how do I demonstrate that I almost, like you didn't say this, but like, almost deserve this. And I think that's the, I think that's A bit of a difference between kind of female energy and psychology. And male psychology is. I think it's. It's more common for women to feel like we have something that we need to show and to prove. And I. And I. My observation is that maybe men don't feel that way as often or it doesn't come across that way where they, like, they're hired for a job and they're like, yeah, like, I'm the best, and I'm just gonna do this and run with it. And then as women, we. We get hired for a job and a leadership role, and suddenly you're, you know, the boss, and it's like, okay, now I have to, like, show that I'm the boss and that I'm, you know, these things. Like, I didn't. It's not that you've got the job and you've got it. It's like, I've got the job, and I have to show that I. I've earned the job and that I get to keep this job. And I think, like, the energy is different, you know, and it's not necessarily men and women. I think there's men that also feel that way, but there's a different energy, right? Like, you get the contrast, and the energy is like, I didn't just get the job. I, like, now have to earn and prove it. And so I think that my strategy has been. And what I've learned is that I don't make it about. I don't make it about me, and that I have to prove something, because you have to remember you were hired for a reason. That means that you've already done something that has demonstrated to the owner that I want you here, and I believe you can solve these things. And then the only thing you have to do is actually do the things that you were hired to do. And then everything else is relationships. And I boil it down to no matter who you are, what your age is, it's about the relationships that you build in the company and actually giving a shit about the people that you work with. It's that simple. And I believe that when I came in and I'm, you know, a young woman, I. I look young. I. I'm not trying to come across as masculine and gur. And I don't think I do. And so I think some people and the company skewed older. And I think some people, maybe older men that have been around, they're like, you know, like, maybe more dismissive of young women. But once you start to build those relationships, and you show that you actually care and you give a shit about the people in the company, same as with your clients and customers. It's the exact same thing. Ultimately, people want to feel seen and heard and safe in an environment. If you can create that safety and help people feel seen and heard, it doesn't matter what gender you are, what age you are, because there's a connection. And you start to build relationships and rapport. With some people, it will take longer because they have assumptions, but that's the opportunity is for you to look past those assumptions and form those relationships and connections and make it about them. Because if you're focused on how you're showing up and how you're appearing a certain way or how you need to be a different way, or I need to be more masculine or show up as more of the leader, what are you doing? You're focused on you. You're not focused on them. And that's where we get it wrong. So if you focus on the people and you just show up as yourself, who is. If you are in a COO role, you are smart, you are competent, you're in that position for a reason, make no mistake. And you focus on the relationship, people will change their mind and change their perspective and they don't think of you as, oh, this young, 27, 28 year old hotshot that, you know, thinks she's all that. They see Savannah, who has a life, who has relationships, who has hobbies, who cares about me as an employee, who's going to be there for me if I drop the ball. I know that Savannah's got my back and we're going to have a hard conversation and she's going to be gentle, but firm and kind. You know, I think all of those relationship things really surpass the initial assumptions that some people might have about age or gender.
- [61:12]
Paulina Moreau
Yeah, thanks for sharing all of that. And I think there's also just a, a level of recognizing just that that can be the case. And it's okay, it's okay for people to have their ideas or their perceptions about you. And the only thing that you can focus on is how you show up. And it actually made me think about, I was staffing this leadership program that I've gone through and graduated from, and I was the only staff member that got put with a group of all men. Not only all men, but I think the youngest was probably 35. They're all much older than me. And four of the six ran their own companies. And when I got put with this group, like man, this was an edge. This was even stretchy for me. Having been working with a lot of very male dominated companies, it still was like, okay, I'm here to really impact them. And there's this quote that one of the, I guess captain coaches of our leadership team gave me, which was, when in doubt, focus out. Stop thinking about yourself, focus out. How can you support and serve the people that you're with? And just doing that all weekend. I actually had two of them at the very end of the weekend come up and they were honest. They were like, when you walked over to our group, we were like, why are they giving us this young girl? This doesn't make any sense. But the feedback that I got from this group was really amazing and for me even helped me rebuild some of my confidence in areas that I got to really have reflected back. And so just being able to, if you're a woman in the situation, using it as an opportunity, awesome, Cool. Like when you're put in those situations, it's a mirror to reflect back to you. Where is your insecurity still existing? And how can you continue focusing out? Believe in yourself and like you said, build relationship deeper and over time a lot of those doubts just fade away and then you build the trust in kind of the opposite direction. So that being said, if someone wants to build a relationship with you and they're interested in connecting or asking a question, is there anywhere that people could reach out and connect with you?
- [63:26]
Savannah Brewer
Absolutely. LinkedIn Paulina Moreau if you are thinking about, you know, do I do fractional or do I do full time or strategies to work well with a CEO and founder, or if you're thinking about, hey, I'm really looking to scale and this journey of going, you know, say from 130k months to a million months is interest and interesting to you and you're looking at scaling team or just being better as a leader in your organization. Yeah, reach out. I love to talk, I love to jam on these things and yeah, that's the best way.
- [64:03]
Paulina Moreau
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. This is awesome.
- [64:06]
Savannah Brewer
Thank you, Savannah. So good to see you.
- [64:09]
Paulina Moreau
So fun. All right, see ya.
- [64:14]
Savannah Brewer
You've been listening to Second in Command.
- [64:16]
Paulina Moreau
Brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.