← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 541 - Brand Built COO Meghan Donnelly - How Automation Unlocks Freedom And Calm Now
01:06:26
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- [00:00]
A
If you can't measure the success of the thing that you're working on, stop working on it. Why the heck are you. Why so right, like companies create goals. Like you, we, we create three big goals. Just three. You don't need more than that. And usually one is revenue, one is ops, and one is lifestyle, because, well, that's up yet. So revenue, ops, lifestyle, those are the three big goals. If the task that you're working on right now, let's actually use this as an example. When you asked me, I said, okay, let's think about this podcast. And I was like. And then you started giving me information about the podcast and the listing, like who's, who the audience is and how many listeners you have and that kind of stuff. And I was like, yeah, this is a good opportunity. If I got one person from your listeners or two people from your audience that reach out to me to talk to me about Brand Build and what we do, what our services are. It's paid for my hour. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herald. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
- [01:38]
B
Today's guest is Megan Donnelly, the dynamic COO of Brand built. With over 15 years in digital operations, Megan has a powerful story of turning early ADHD challenges into and an unconventional path into entrepreneurial superpowers. In this episode we dive into her journey from launching the digital unicorns to leading operations at Brand Build, a peer to peer coaching platform helping founders scale through LinkedIn branding and automation. Megan shares her favorite tools every CEO should be using. The importance of clean data and quality control and why LinkedIn is one of the most underutilized growth platforms for operators today. If you are looking to systemize your back end and strengthen your brand, this episode is full of real talk, real tactics and the kind of insight that only a tech savvy operator can provide. Let's dive in. We are live with Megan. Welcome to the show.
- [02:35]
A
Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited.
- [02:38]
B
This has already been a fun conversation. We've just been chatting for the first 30 minutes. I'm like, are you good to go past the hour? Because we have a lot of cool things to talk about just from the little pieces that we've been diving into before even clicking the Record. But I am really, really excited for this.
- [02:56]
A
I, I can't wait to share my story with your audience because as we were saying before we hit record, it needs to be, it needs to be shared. And it's one of those things that I think a lot of execs and a lot of people that are in our position are either afraid to talk about, afraid to admit that they're dealing with it. So. But I'll let you, I'll let you do the intro and we'll, we'll talk about what we're talking about. Talking about what we're. Yeah, that makes sense.
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B
Well, it is too. You'll of Taco Taco bout it Tuesday.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Let's start with a little bit of background on yourself and brand built which has a really cool story. Give us a little insight into who you serve.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. So I, I have been dealing with this thing we all like to call Neurodiversity ADHD since I was 16. I was diagnosed and it was a slap in the face because I couldn't figure out how to all of my friends could like get through high school and I couldn't like, I could not sit through a 60 minute class. And they, you know, the teachers would tell my parents, oh, she has a lot of potential, you know, that kind of crap that they would hear and come to find out. You get this diagnosis and the first thing they want to do is, you know, put you on medication. And my mom was like, no, she doesn't need medication. You're not going to curve her brain. She's extremely smart. I was the jerk who could come in, not do any of your homework, not do any of her homework and get you know like a 98 on the test at the end of the, you know, quarter or whatever. And so everyone hated me for that. But fast forward, I became a mom young, which changed the entire trajectory of my life. I had my daughter when I was 19 years old and then started building my career off of that. I always had kind of a, I hate the word side hustle, the whole niche of the hustle thing. But I've always had my own thing code on the side and I started building websites and doing user experience design for applications and my early 20s, started out as a coder. I was actually hand coding HTML and CSS because I found my mentor and one of the most brilliant backend software engineers that I ever met and he said I really want to work with you, but you have to be able to code the front end like all right, teach Me? Why not? So that pushed me into the world of technology, right? So I was working alongside developers and for some really big companies. We were contact contracting with like Toshiba and some other like really big companies back in the day and totally aging myself by the way. But that's okay. Sony, Toshiba, all of these big companies we had contracts with and that kind of fizzled out. We kind of got burnt out doing that. And that was when I started working for startup companies and doing the same thing. Building websites, doing operations, Putting in systems, SOPs, all of the operational backends of the business and also dealing with their developers and working with technology. Then my corporate America stint came around which is, that was the, you know, that was. I don't even pretend to know how old you are, but when I'm in my 40s and at that point in the world the goal was you, you know, you graduated high school, you went to college, you, you know, you went into a job and like that was the stepping ladder. You're supposed to build the career you're supposed to. That's what you were told you were supposed to do. So that's what I did. And it sucks. It was awful. Being a woman in technology 20 years ago was awful. It really was, it was really hard. Um, you were left thinking that you weren't good enough or you know, and you were put into positions where because you're, you know, because of the, the woman card thing, you didn't get the same privileges, you didn't get the same pay, not even close. Right? Um, and so corporate America was really, really freaking hard. It was, I did not fit into the box. I didn't fit into the mold. Right. I am super hyperactive. I'm super all over the place all the time. I move thousand miles an hour, which could be bad or good in corporate for me it ended up really bad because I was working 75 hour weeks. I never took a vacation without my laptop. I had four kids by the time I was 30 and I was always moving, always going and burnt myself out really fast. When I was hired for my first big corporate job, I was working for the number one lifestyle manufacturing company in the world. I was the first digital person they hired. I was brought on as a digital experience leader and I led their web team. I built the UI UX team and we were doing contracts with Costco and Lowe's and Home Depot because they were selling our products and we were building microsites. Do you remember microsites? Do you know what they are? So because we were the manufacturer and we were selling. We sold blinds and shades, right? So every window is a different size. And so we built what we are calling it, we. We call the configurator. So. And then we sold the configurator to Lowe's and Home Depot so that they could put it on a website, a micro site that we created so people could order blinds and shades online. And this was like, unheard of back then because you couldn't do that because they're all so custom. You have to go to the store. Like the Home Depot guy has to help you cut and do all this stuff. Well, we made that. We blew that out of the water and it took off like crazy. And so the. When I first got hired there, I was promoted three times in a year and a half. And when I left eight years later, seven and a half years later, somewhere in that range, I was sitting just under the C suite level. And I started looking around and I said, I don't want to be here. I don't want a seat at that table. It was kind of the good old boys club, and I did not want to be the only woman as part of the good old boys club. Like, I just didn't want it. It wasn't where I wanted to be. And I kind of. I think we've all had these moments. I kind of. I gave up pretty much is what I gave up. And my favorite boss, she was still my boss at the time, and I didn't want to leave her, but I also just stopped trying. And the C suite switched. It was still privately held company, so it had switched three times during my journey there. They sold the company three times. And I don't know if you've been through an acquisition before, but it's the worst thing ever. And the third time, it just killed me. And the. The team that they brought in was not my most favorite. And I was terrified of leaving her there because we had such a great relationship and we worked so well together. And I basically let them lay me off because I didn't want to leave. And she refused to fire me. She would not fire me. She told them, I'm not firing her. And I was not meeting performance for sure. But she's like, I'm not firing her. She's damn good at her job. She's doing the job of three people. And they replaced me with three people when I left, two of them. And then the third one, the third position, they couldn't fill because nobody wanted to do that position. Whatever. We won't get into that. But, yeah, so I left. I got laid off. I went to work for a startup company building Salesforce implementations. I hate that company. I hate that product. It's awful. And so that was the worst kind of like, eight months of my life, you know, I mean, it gave me a lot of experience. It was great. And then after that, kind of after the Salesforce build out, I finally just. I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like, I don't want to work for these big companies that are making so much money, but they're not actually doing anything good. They're not giving anything back to. To the rest of the world. Right? It's all about money. It's all about the bottom line. It's all about ebitda. I hate that word, by the way. And how many times have we heard the word ebitda? And I. Like, I said, we have. I have four kids. I never saw them. I had never went to my son's, like, baseball games when he was little. My oldest son was a super athlete, and I was just never around. And so I left. I left everything. And I kind of. I took my stubbornness and I walked. And it was very amicable when I left the startup that I was working for at the time. And I just. I said, I can't do it anymore. Um. Yeah. And so I started my own thing, started digital unicorns and started contracting. I got really lucky. Like, I don't have the blood, sweat, and tears of starting my own business and having to. I got really lucky because I still had a lot of executives. You know, I spent 12 years working with these really big executives, and they still wanted to work with me, so they were contracting me, right? So I was getting these big contracts, and so that really helped get me off the ground. And then. Which you're really good at, Savannah, because I had to learn how to sell and market myself. Well, how the heck am I gonna. I don't know how to do that. I've always worked for someone else. Right. And so then you have to figure out how to market yourself as a brand and market well. That was fun. Figured that out and started working for a bunch of people and, you know, having a bunch of. So it was. It was good until it wasn't because it got really lonely. Right. So that puts us up to the last couple of years. And then, you know, Covid hit. The kids are here. There's no school. So that three teenage boys in the house trying to do school with them. That was awful. Like trying to run a business, having it was a lot. Yeah, it was like, it was insane chaos. And so I kind of changed my business model and decided that I, you know, learned the word no, started being really picky and choosy about who I was working with and only taking on. I increased my prices by, I don't know, 6%. Like they're like 6x, right? Like I skyrocketed my prices and only started working one project at a time. So I was getting big contracts and I reduced my time frame, right. Because operations and technology, six months, eight months, a year, two years. These projects take forever. And I was like, well that is a waste of time and money and people that why there's no reason that it should take that long. And so I was doing projects for bigger, like smaller companies but bigger tickets. And we were doing it in 30 to 60 days. We would have an entire back end solution for your business built out because we would work on one client, one project, one casual, that was it. And the quality was better because we were only focused on one client and task at the time. And the timeline shrunk and people were more than willing to pay because they didn't have to wait a year for the thing that they wanted. Then I met Darren and Matt. So Darren Mass and Matt Berman started a community called Brand Built and it is all things business, LinkedIn and life. It had originally started out because people have been going to Nat Berman. If you're, if you're on LinkedIn, you know who Nat Berman is. Search his name. If you don't know he is, you should follow him. He's been a big name on LinkedIn. He is, he's part of the OGs with the Jasmine elites and Luke Matthews and all these Laura Costas. Like he's up there with those guys and he's been doing this for a really long time and he's been helping people build out their LinkedIn brands. But they wanted to do more right and starting to realize that the world is changing and that LinkedIn can't be your only, it can't be your only source of talking to people. Like, you have to, you have to know how to build a business without LinkedIn. Otherwise just adding LinkedIn isn't going to help. Right. So that's kind of how that started. And Darren sold a telecom company. He started mass communications in his 20s. His name is Darren Mass and he sold that he's exited his telecompany. Telecompany telecom company for 40 million in his 40s and he retired and got bored as a lot of post exited founders to sell for that thing do. Because they're the types of guys where they need their brains to be active. Right. And so he not started this company to help smaller businesses struggling to build a brand on LinkedIn and struggling to just understand the operations of how to build a business. Right. That goes beyond LinkedIn. The systems, the tools, the mindset, the strategy, all of the things, these are all the things that we do inside the community. And now it's thriving and we have just over 200 members. We're very picky and choosy about who we let in. We're not the most expensive and we're not the cheapest. We're kind of right in the middle. But we only pick people who are actively engaged. You know, we have a pretty low turnover. Most people are still with us. Let's see, Brandon has been around for almost two years now. I'm thinking, yeah, when the date was. But yeah, and it's crazy. And we've expanded our, our products. This year they purchased my software. We were just talking about this. So I, as I was doing this, all of this operational agency stuff, right? And I was building out these people's apps, I was putting everybody on the same software and go high level, I was putting people on the same software, building them out, working with developers to build it out and customize it to what their needs were. And then I realized that I didn't have an exit strategy, things to do. And he asked me what my exit plan was and I was like, well, I don't know who thinks about that? Like I'm just building the business. He's like, well, how do you not know what your exit strategy? Where do you want to go? I don't know. Like, why are you asking me these ridiculous questions? And then I had to sit back and think about it and I was like, well crap, my kids don't want this. They're not ever going to buy my agency. What's going to happen to my customers when I decide that I don't want to do this anymore? Where are they going to go? Because let's be real. Do you really want to. Do people really want to buy agencies anymore? I don't think so. So I was like, okay, well how can I make this into something that is sellable or like transferable right to somebody else for when I decide that I'm done. So we created a SaaS software. So now we have Digital Magic CRM. It's been around for two years. Well, actually two and a half, whatever. And at the time, just, you know, putting people in, creating subscriptions and memberships, because now I have a tangible thing and my customers will be taken care of because when the software gets sold, you know, they. The customer list goes with it and they'll be taken care of. Right. Awesome. Fantastic. So the plan was, let's build this up for five years and five years we'll do a debt check and see where we are. And we want to keep doing this. We want to do something else. And when I joined Brand Built, I said to Nat, because I have my own podcast, the Digital Unicorns. And Nat said to me, I said, matt, I really want to have you on the podcast. I want to talk about what you guys are doing. I want to talk about brand building. I'm going to talk about your business and your growth and all this stuff. And he's like, okay, but you have to join my community. What do you mean you have a community? Like, where did that come from? This is before.
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B
After.
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A
This is before. This was before. So I didn't even know about the Granville community at this point. I was like, what community? What are you talking about? Like, I had been following him and talking with him through DMs, but knew that he had anyway, so I didn't know about Grandville. He's like, okay, you have to. You have to join the community. He's like, I'll give you a month for you. Cool. Okay, let's go check what this thing is about. Best thing I ever did, right? Best decision I ever made. Join the community. Meet Darren. We need a bunch of other people, like, really great people that were like the first original OG, the first 100 people that we had. And I started noticing when you're an ops person, you start noticing little inefficiencies or you can tell when founders are frustrated and you can tell. So Darren would always be really frustrated. They had built originally on school, and he was really frustrated. And you could tell there's little things. And so I started having these conversations one on one with Darren. I was like, what's going on? Because you seem, like, really annoyed with. And he would talk about things that he was annoyed with, with the platform that it couldn't do and things he wish he could do. And I was like, how about I just fix it for you? What do you mean? I was like, let me fix it for you. I was like, that's what I do. You know that? I said, let me fix it for you. And he's like, okay, but you know, we're just starting this out. I don't really have any. I'm like, I'm not asking you for money. Just let me fix it. And so I started fixing things and slowly they added me into kind of the fold and they started talking about me being an operations person and started giving me business and, like, people within the community. Because Darren's like, oh, talk to Megan. She can help you out right away. So I started getting business through the community slowly, right? And then they offered me a percentage of the company. And they're like, we really want you to just run off for us because you obviously know what you're doing and you've been really helpful. That's why you use LinkedIn people, by the way, if you're listening, like, you find people that are, you know, three or four levels above where you are and where you want to be. And if you. Obviously I'm not telling you, if you, if you are living paycheck to paycheck, don't do this because you need to eat. But if you have the means and you have the ability, find somebody that you really like their cause and what they're doing and just offer them free value. I know it's cheesy and it's niche and it's whatever, but if you can do it, this is the best way to build partnerships. And the more partnerships you build, because now it sounds bad, but the partnerships, I'm going to have profit sharing and partners for the remainder of the life of this company. So even if we decide to split ways in a year from now, which I don't think we will do, I'm having a great time. I get a percentage of the profits from now until the company decides to go away.
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B
That's something that's also, like, quite rare, I feel. I've mostly heard that profit share is while you're at the company. So you guys have arranged an agreement where even after you leave, you receive profit share.
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A
Yep.
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B
Cool.
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A
Yep.
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B
Was that something that you. Did they offer that?
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A
He offered it. They offered it, yeah. So it's one of the. It's, it's. It's a really. It's a really great relationship. But they knew what they were doing. Because I'll never leave. They treat me too good. It's. It's such a great team. And so the best part about the whole thing is to. Then after, when Darren and I were talking about digital magic CRM, you know, and he's like, so what, you know, what are you going to do with it? And I was like, well, you know, I was going to gut check it in five years. Just keep building. He's like, well, what if I buy it now? I kind of look at it. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? He's like, what if in five years you just think you're going to sell it or you can you. That's the short extra. At some point you'll sell it. He's like, what if I buy it now? Grand Built will absorb Digital Magic, will keep the two products separate. You know, the community will be Brando and the Digital Magic CRM will stay Digital Magic CRM. But because at this point, we had already started offering a CRM to these companies inside the community, because you get to that certain point and I know I'm preaching to the choir, you need a CRM. For the love of God, stop using spreadsheets anyway, we won't get it. That's a whole nother episode you can have me on and we'll talk about that. Oh, my God, stop it. Yeah. So we had already started offering the product and doing discounts and we had already set up this partnership. And so it was one of those moments, like lifeblood moments. I was like, okay, where do I sign? Sure. And then once we worked out the logistics of it, so then they increased the profit sharing. So I own a larger percentage of the company and I'm their COO for both. And now I have two business partners. I'm no longer lonely because that's the thing is you get really lonely when you're a solo entrepreneur. And I was just lonely. I just missed having partners and people. And this doesn't mean that I want to go join a 50 person team and I never want to do that again. We have five people. This is great. It is rocking and rolling. We are now able to offer the people in the community and talk about why a CRM is important. Talk about why automation is important. We do a lot of AI and OPS training. That's the side of the business for them that they didn't have. Like, Darren can talk about how to set up a business, how to scale it to, you know, millions of dollars, how to do that. Nat can talk about content and branding and writing and why that's important. But they didn't have the OPS guide. And so that's where I kind of just fit right in. And I said, all right, we need to start showing these people great. You're giving them strategy, but you're not giving them the tactical execution solutions that they Need. You can preach strategy to people all day long, but unless they actually know how to build it or set it up or who to hire to do it for them, it doesn't matter. Right. So that's kind of the piece of the puzzle that they were missing.
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B
And you fit it so perfectly, it sounds like.
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A
So Darren also has adhd. So the two of us, when we get into the. When you start asking the questions about the chief behind the chief, man, let me tell you, the two of us, Nat, sometimes, I swear. And he, he's probably sitting there like, oh my God, they're doing it again. Because our brains are like so fast. Yeah.
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B
I feel like there's a whirl in my brain constantly. Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things that you said is like, your team is consists of five people. I'm curious because you've seen the inside of so many companies with probably like you said, chaos of maybe 5,000 employees.
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A
I think, and maybe even more because we had manufacturing plants in Mexico for the big company that I worked for. Yeah, there were like 3,000 employees just here stateside. Insane. Insane.
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B
How many employees do you think your team would have if you guys were doing what you're doing but operating inefficiently or like the average company is that you're working with? Like, I'm curious how lean your team is comparatively to like the average company.
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A
Yeah, we're extremely lean. So everything is about 90% automated behind the scenes.
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B
Wow, 90.
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A
I am a automation freak. Right? Like, that's why the pod. My podcast is called the queen of automation. My business is the same way. Um, the goal is to get everything. I would say, okay, maybe 80% or that, but the goal is to get it 90%. 90, 10 or 80, 20. Is it is, is my goal for everybody that I work with when I come into my integrations. It's automate, delegate, eliminate. Those are the three things. That's my motto. Like, if you create a list of your daily tasks of all the shit that you're working on, and then you figure out and you prioritize those, I would say when you're really small, the best thing to do is prioritize those by revenue generating tasks. Right. They go to the top. Anything that is revenue generating obviously is important. And then what you have to decide is, is this a repeatable task? Is this something that you're doing every day, every week, every month? If it's repeatable, you can automate it. You can, it just is. And if it's something that you can't automate, you can delegate it to a human. Right. Like you create good sops for a reason and then do you really need that? Is that effort really providing value to your business? Nope. Well then why are you still working on it? If something that I always say, and I mean this is like a consistent thing that I. My team is probably so sick and tired of hearing this. If you can't measure the success of the thing that you're working on, stop working on it. Why the heck are you, why so. Right. Like companies create goals. Like you, we, we create three big goals. Just three. You don't need more than that. And usually one is revenue, one is ops and one is lifestyle. Because, well, we'll get that. Yeah. So revenue, ops, lifestyle, those are the three big goals. If the task that you're working on right now, let's actually use this as an example. When you asked me, I said okay, let's think about this podcast. And I was like. And then you started giving me information about the podcast and the listing, like who's, who the audience is and how many listeners you have and that kind of stuff. I was like, yeah, this good opportunity if I have one person from your listeners or two people from your audience that reach out to me to talk to, to me about brand build and what we do, what our services are, it's paid for my hour.
- [29:26]
B
It's worth your time. Yeah, well, the other thing that 100% worth your time.
- [29:37]
A
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- [29:46]
B
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- [29:48]
A
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- [29:55]
B
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- [30:02]
A
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- [30:15]
B
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- [30:16]
A
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- [30:37]
B
The other thing that can be helpful is I actually was just coaching one of my Clients on this yesterday, someone who is growing towards wanting to be a COO and really wanting to maximize their time. But currently they're paid hourly. Like there's a little bit of a difference. You're getting paid hourly because you're kind of wanting more hours versus like I actually prefer just putting people on fixed pay because get the job done, how long it takes you. But what I told them is when you're. Especially once you go on fixed pay, it's a little bit easier to do this mentally. But what I found was when I was full time at a company, I was working 60, 70 hours a week. And I just. And the money I was making too, there was this like worthiness conversation of I need to be working harder because it was like my internal, my internal self worth didn't match the funny that I was making yet. So there was this, I need to work way more to prove that I'm worthy of this amount. And then when I had my second fractional COO client, I was only doing 10 hours a week. And after doing slack messages and team calls, I only had like three hours a week of project time and doing that for 90 days, which was what the project duration was for. This client was one of the most beneficial things that I have done yet because it forced me to go from how I normally worked at 70 hours a week to three hours. And you just nix the stuff that does not matter. And it's wild how many things I was doing before that. Now I look back and I'm like, I should have totally delegated that faster, 100%.
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A
So I think one of the things that ADHD has really. So I know I get a lot of grief about this in the ADHD world and society because there's people that don't agree with the statement, but it really is my freaking superpower because I refuse to medicate. I mean, and you know what? This, if it works for people, that's awesome. You to you, right? We're all different. I just, I don't agree with the fact that people need to be put on Class 1 Narcotics to help them. Like that's not helping anyone. It really isn't. Like there are natural supplements which I use or like vitamin patches. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that I do. It's not like I don't do these things to help out, sure my brain and like how I'm dealing with it, but I just don't believe in narcotics. Like the class one stuff. Like if this can be sold on the street as A drug you're going to get arrested for. Like, no, I'm good. Right? But that's where I'm at. The technology and systems and processes and all this stuff came into play with my life because I needed that structure. But the best piece of advice goes to back to what you literally just said. The best thing that I learned was to let my brain in my health and wellness lead the way. So my team knows. Like there are mornings where I wake up and I'm like, no, not happening. Like not getting down, Ben. Like not like my brain is. It's just not having a good day. And I let them know and I like, you know, so I'm like, not happening. I'll see you when I see you. That's why my business is as automated as it is and that's why I do have a small team of people. Because I know for myself that my brain is going to have those days where I'm not showing up till maybe 2 o' clock in the afternoon. But I also work when I can and work when I don't. I have that luxury. And that's how we run our culture too. You guys work when you want to work. As long as we are getting everything done on time and we're meeting our clients expectations and we are going above and beyond and delivering quality, I don't care where you work. You want to work at 2 in the morning, go for it. Like who am I to judge? Yeah, you work when you need to.
- [34:29]
B
With the, with the adhd. Because I was kind of mentioning to you before we jumped on here, the labels for a long time. I've been very resistant to label because I was diagnosed with like severe anxiety in high school and put on the maximum amount of like the legal amount of anxiety medication and it created a bunch of issues for me. So I kind of pendulum swung to don't give me any labels. I will only use natural, natural things. And I was just sharing with you that I recently started learning more about my neurodivergency and like what my stemming is that like I've been trying to stop picking my fingers my entire life and now I realize that that's actually just like my brain's way of trying to move through the overstimulation and especially in business, like sometimes there's a lot coming in and there's now more of a curiosity that I have and just like, okay, the label doesn't, maybe the label doesn't need to mean so much that I had put on it in the past and it can just. Yeah, what if it's actually just a way of arranging a set of behaviors or characteristics that people all know what we're talking about, and people can give me solutions to some of these things. So I'm looking at more from that angle. On the ADHD topic, I literally just got this book on Kindle this last week to start learning about it for anyone that's maybe been resistant to it or they're not sure if they have it. What are some of the common signs that people could look for to know if they're adhd?
- [36:03]
A
Yeah, so I think one of the things that. So I. Again, I've been dealing with this since I was 16 years old, so it's taken me a long time to figure it out. And I had to navigate the waters really early as a mom and figure out how to deal with that. I was still a kid. I couldn't even take care of myself. Like, oh, I have a baby now. Awesome. What am I supposed to do with this? And so I had to grow up really freaking quickly. And I'm like, okay, well, I have to figure it out now. Again, I got really lucky, had amazing parents. My mom was my best friend. Now I was a horrible teenager, but she. She got me through it. Like, she was there for me every step of the way. She refused to let me quit. She refused to let me, like, not go to school. And so that helps. You need to find your support system. If it's not your parents, awesome. If it's. You have to find a. Some. Someone. If that's a therapist, awesome. Do that. Like, I did therapy when I was younger, and it was okay. It was nice to have a person that wasn't my parents to talk to, like that. Third, but you need a support system. It can be one person, but you need a person that you can vent to that you can cry on their shoulder. You really do. And it sounds cliche, but you need that. You need that. The other thing is be completely transparent and honest. I interrupt people all the time because when I have conversations like this, I get really passionate. And as you can see, I get really excited and I want to talk about it. So I tell people up front, hey, listen, I have adhd. And I'm going to get really excited about this topic of conversation because I already know that I really like what you do. So, like, when I'm interviewing people and talking to people, I tell them, I'm probably going to interrupt you. It's not because I'm trying to be rude and I apologize. In advance. It's because I'm excited and my brain thinks so fast that it thinks. I'm usually five steps, six steps ahead of everyone in the room. That's what sucked for me in corporate America. I could not sit through meetings. The people up there giving the presentations are talking. I was like, I had already figured out the solution. So I was like, I already know how to fix it. I already know how to fix it. Like, I was already there and I had to sit through the meetings. The meetings. So the biggest piece of advice for anybody who's feeling like their brain is moving 10,000 miles an hour, lean into that. That's not a bad thing, right? The other thing that you. The signs you'll notice are. So the interrupting thing is pretty common, the hyperactivity, right? You know what? Talk with your hands. It's okay. Get an object and like, right? I have. I have a remarkable. And sometimes I'll just have it down on my lap like this and I just doodle. It's okay. But I can. I learned a long time ago that I have to have movement. I have to have like. I have to tap my foot. I have to like. There has to be movement for me to even understand and comprehend what you're saying to me. That's okay. That's the thing that I was missing in high school and the reason the teachers were so frustrated because I had to be moving and they took that, that movement as me not paying attention. I have to be moving for me to. To actually hear everything that you're saying and for me to actually. For my brain to comprehend it. I have to because my brain's already moving so fast. You know, it's just. It's weird. And so there's all these different things like that that you think is something wrong with you. It's not something wrong with you. Your brain just thinks differently, right? Lean into it. Accept it. The other cool thing is when you lean into it, you're going to come into what's called hyper focus. Technology, Automations, Systems, processes. That's my hyper focus. I hyper focus and geek out on this shit like crazy, right? And so it's. The hyper focus is the thing that you're obsessed with, right? If you ever notice that you are obsessed with one thing, like a lot. Like, it is the entire, like, center of your life. No matter if you have kids or family and you're doing all these things. You have a lot of hobbies, but it's the one thing that you always come back to. That's your Hyper focus, that's the thing that you should lean into. Now, obviously the negative side of that is, you know, hyper focusing on alcohol or drugs and stuff. Like, there are unfortunately people that get sucked into hyper focusing on the wrong things, bad things, whatever. And your hyper focus will change, right? So lean into it. And when you get into these places where you're super focused, just do that thing. Lean into it. Do it. Go and just run with it. I'll tell you, I used to wake up, so sleep too. If you, if you, if you're not sleeping, it's a big thing. Melatonin works really well. If you. If you're into the whole, like, gummy, legalized thing, do that.
- [41:14]
B
I take CBD gummies every night. Sleep through the night.
- [41:19]
A
I'm telling you, I used to wake up at. And my thing is if I wake up, it's going to take me forever to go back to sleep. So what I've trained myself is I'll read a book or something now. But what I used to do is I would get up and come in my office and I started working at like 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning, like, because I couldn't sleep. Might as well get some work done. Don't do that. Okay? You need rest time. Even if you're not actually sleeping. Read a book. Like, try to find something that's not over stimulating your brain. Because if you actually do start working, your brain's gonna get up and it's gonna start moving again. So find other things. But yeah, the CBD is great. I love melatonin. Melatonin is a little weird. Like, you should take it an hour or two before you go to bed. Because if you take it, like. Like don't take it in the middle of the night. The other day I did that stupidly because I just could not fall asleep. And then I woke up super groggy because I was still, like, foggy, and I was like, you know, and it happens. The other thing is, don't beat yourself up. You're going to mess up. You're going to mess up. You're going to have shitty days. We all have shitty days. Even people who are not dealing with us have shitty days. It's okay. Like, just, all right, they suck. Move on, wake up the next day, try it again.
- [42:35]
B
Like, have, have you ever heard of the term halt? Like the acronym? Yeah. Something I just remind. My little cousin's going through her first, like, really deep heartbreak. And, you know, she's not sleeping, she's not eating well, and the Things that are coming up for her. I told her, I'm like, look, before you start overthinking all of these questions, use halt, which is if you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, your biology is off and you are just not going to be able to think straight. See things from an empowering perspective. And sleep is one of those biggest things where if I don't get good sleep, I'm like, halt, slow down, don't freak out about anything. Because I just know once I get some good sleep, things will get better. And it sounds like for you, you've really used this, like you said, as your superpower and being able to automate and systemize. And I would love to hear on the system side of things, what are some of the main, like one or two common issues when you go into a company and you're like, oh my gosh, how, how could someone not see this? What are those one or two things that are so obvious to you that other people just don't see?
- [43:48]
A
Onboarding. Onboarding is probably the, the biggest pain point that will make or break a business or a brand. Onboarding their customers, onboarding their clients. Like, oh man, it's so bad. Most onboarding experiences are awful, right? And so then it leads to higher churn rate. And it's the thing that people need to realize is you don't want buyers. It doesn't matter what you're selling. If it's a physical product, if it's a service, if it's a whatever, you don't want buyers. And what I mean by that is people like, well of course I want a buyer. No you don't. You want a customer. Well, what do you mean? A buyer is a customer. No, they're not. A buyer is somebody who comes to your brand, your product or service, whatever you are selling and they buy one time, they buy once and they never come back again. Do you really want that? No, you'd want a lifetime customer. You want a brand loyalist, right? So the onboarding experience, again, no matter what you sell, what your service or product is, onboarding will make or break and it will turn that person either into a brand loyalist and someone who is going to. And let me clarify, having a brand loyalist or a customer does not necessarily mean that the person is going to buy from you all the time or like purchase from you all the time as a customer. What? A customer in a brand loyalist is someone who has such a fantastic onboarding experience, enjoyed your product or service so much that when they go out into the world, they're going to tell 14 of their friends, oh, my God. You need to go work with Savannah. She's the coolest person I've ever met. Here's why. When I onboarded with her, she did X, Y and Z. When I did this, when I did that, when I did it. And now you really need. And as soon as they leave your little expertise area, your product, as soon as they. Whatever. As soon as they walk away, they're still thinking about it because they had such an amazing experience. And now when they meet somebody who needs the thing that they just got done purchasing, what are they gonna. Who, whose brand are they gonna recommend yours? Onboarding is. It's so many customers that I've had do such a shitty experience.
- [46:13]
B
How do you know? How do you know if it's bad? Because I think that's the thing is like, people don't wanna have shitty onboarding, but they often do and they don't realize why it's bad or how to fix it. So, like, how do you identify if it's bad?
- [46:28]
A
Talk to the customers. I mean, that's the biggest thing is ask, have a conversation. Like, I hate to go back to the COVID thing because I've been trying to just avoid the conf. You. You don't want to talk about it anymore. Covid killed it for everyone. Okay. Have a good one. We get it. The world is a messed up place. Awesome. Move on. Right? First of all, stop using that as an excuse. Oh, well, Covid. Did this work? No. You know what? It's done. It's all worth. You gotta move on to that. Right. We get it.
- [46:58]
B
Agreed.
- [46:58]
A
It's screwed up. Right? Like it's done. It's screwed up. Got it.
- [47:01]
B
Move on and off.
- [47:02]
A
The thing that I found is that most businesses and brands don't actually have a review process. They don't actually ask for feedback. They're not having conversations with their customers or their customer service teams. So if you're a larger organization, 10 million, 25 million, 50 million, like and up. I mean, okay, who are we kidding? A million, right? Top line revenue and you have a customer service team. It could be one person. I don't care if it's one person. I don't care IF it's 50 people. When was the last time you sat down and had a honest conversation with your customer service person? The person who is the front line of your company? The person who answers all the support tickets. The person who is the onboarding person. When was the last time you actually had a conversation with them? And asked, how's it going, Savannah? You would be surprised. Most of them like, oh, well, we do quarterly reviews. Nope, not good enough. The quarterly review is supposed to be about them and their performance, not about your customers. So you need to build it in. You need to either talk directly to your customers or you need to talk directly to your front line. And don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. Well, how do you support particular or put a system in place? Like I'm a data nerd. Right. Like data is my, like I love it. We have a support system database. Right. Like it's a dashboard that says how many support tickets are created, how many are answered, how long did it take us to answer them? Like on a regular basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis. And it's all automated. That's the thing, it's all automated. This doesn't have to be complicated. Yes. In the beginning, is it going to take a little bit of time to set up? Of course. Isn't everything, everything takes a little bit of time to set up in the beginning, but after it's set up and it's rocking and rolling, you're good to go. Automate your review process. Like that part is super easy. If you have a community or an e commerce store. Oh my God. The amount of e commerce stores that don't ask for feedback. How many times have you purchased something online and you loved it? It was the best thing that you ever purchased. You were super excited about it. Nick never asked.
- [49:28]
B
Pretty much all. None of the time. Yeah.
- [49:31]
A
Bingo. Right? Amazon doesn't ask for your review. Have you ever noticed that?
- [49:38]
B
Do they not? I thought they were like, no.
- [49:41]
A
Yeah. That's fascinating actually because they have now, they're now like there's so many Amazon sellers now that it's no longer Amazon's job to do it. The sellers are supposed to set up their like, you know, ask for review.
- [49:59]
B
Process like whatever, like unique to them. Yeah, yeah.
- [50:02]
A
So I, I, I'm almost, I, I haven't really purchased an actual like Amazon basic item. Right. So the, the products that Amazon itself sells. Yes. They, they have a review. They like after I think it's like 14 days or something like that, they'll like, how's it going? You know, like whatever. Do you like your product? But because there's so many third party sellers now, it's more third party sellers than it is Amazon products. Yeah.
- [50:29]
B
Let them customize their brand.
- [50:30]
A
Yeah, it's their brand, it's their business.
- [50:33]
B
Yeah. Well one of the main kind of Things that's coming up. For me, listening to this is just going back to the importance of quality control. Not just from like a client perspective, but just as an owner, as a CEO. If you're listening and you've got things breaking down in the company but you're not sure where this is. One of my biggest takeaways was learning about just even the term quality control. What is that and how do I systemize that? And for me, when I was running a recruiting team, I had all of these issues happening with clients and clients weren't happy and they weren't getting the recruits that they wanted. And Cole, the owner of the company and my boss at the time, he's like, you need to do quality control. I'm like, what is that? And it was beyond just like an end of day report and having a one on one call. Like you need to go and actually look in their slack channels, review line by line. Are they communicating to clients? You need to go look at the quality of the sales reps are being sent. And at the time I was like, oh my God, this is like so much extra work. How am I gonna have time to like do all this extra coaching? Yeah, was the one domino for so many things. I booked like a one hour call with my team. Everyone's there live three times a week. I get on and I just picked someone's random slack channel with a client and I'm reviewing it with everybody there giving live coaching, live feedback. And so much was revealed to me of where gaps were at in my SOP and my training. And then it was an opportunity for me to coach on our standards, our expectations, improving the internal team culture. And there's also something when your team knows that you're going to look at their work, they just magically start to really put in a little bit more.
- [52:16]
A
You're better. Yeah, you just mentioned something. So that's the other thing. You asked for the top things. So one is, is the onboarding of your actual customers. So P.S. nobody creates them, nobody has them. And then they wonder and then they, by the time they get to someone like yourself or myself. Oh God, I don't understand why I'm working 65 hours a week and I'm doing all the things. Have you trained anybody? Well? No. It all lives in my head. Cool. How's that working out for you?
- [52:48]
B
Yeah. What's your process for making sops? Because for me I actually hate making sops.
- [52:56]
A
Oh, I love it.
- [52:57]
B
Which most COOs really enjoy that for me it's like I Hate it. What. What's the easiest way to make an sop?
- [53:06]
A
Loom. And Loom AI. Loom AI Loom AI Loom now has. You know what loom is, right?
- [53:14]
B
I love loom.
- [53:15]
A
So loom is amazing. First of all, anytime you're doing something, just open up a loom and record yourself doing it. You don't even have to, if you don't want to talk through doing it at that time. You could do a voiceover after if you really wanted to. I. I've just gotten used to just talking to it. Like, okay, now I'm doing this. I mean, people probably think I'm talking to myself because I do it all day long, but Loom AI now will create the SOP for you. Okay, guys, so this is how every. There's the stigma. We haven't even got into the stigma of AI. We get into that. That's probably a whole nother episode. There are so many people that are still, you know, we don't use A.I. well, you should, because if you use it correctly as a tool, it should be used as a tool, not as a replacement for someone. It should be used as a tool to enhance your skills, enhance your team skills. This right now is one of those examples. Loom AI creates the SMP for you. So you create your video, right? Like it's 15, 20 minutes long, whatever. A step by step process of how you're doing it, or just the video of, like going through and you actually physically doing thing that you want to train somebody else on. AI does a summary, puts it into steps 1, 2, 3, 4, attaches the video snippet that goes with it.
- [54:35]
B
Wow.
- [54:35]
A
Into either a notion database. So we use notion.
- [54:38]
B
Epic.
- [54:40]
A
Yeah, so we. We just take that, copy that whole document, put it into notion, and we say, sop how to Blah, blah, blah, blah. Boom. Done.
- [54:50]
B
So easy, man. Like, I remember the, like doing the loom video and then sending it to someone on my team. Be like, you watch this and like, write it out for the people who aren't good at watching videos and they need written, written words. So, yeah, this is. I feel like a giant golden nugget. And before we wrap up here and we'll go into what you're excited about the next six months. Is there any others, like one. One or two tools or like must haves like Loom AI that you think every business owner needs to know about?
- [55:21]
A
So again, I'm a huge Slack person, right? I love Slack. It has. We run our entire business off of DMC Slack and like Google Workspace. So Slack is our centralized hub for everything. And now that Slack AI going back to like that what you were talking about. Now Slack is AI, right? So the biggest thing is ChatGPT and AI and all of this stuff isn't bad. You need to incorporate GPT, you need to incorporate and find tools that have AI built into them because they'll give you summaries of the things that you need. Like Slack right now will give you a summary every week. Automated summary by the way. It's automated for me. Every Monday I get a spit up summary of last week of a whole Slack channel.
- [56:15]
B
Epic.
- [56:16]
A
And then I just look through the summary and I'm like, okay, this, this, this, this and this. The team takes it, they put it on the task for. And we now do all of our project management in Slack because they have, they have a Kanban project management board, lists.
- [56:30]
B
I mean I've definitely been underutilizing Slack's capabilities. I mean every time I go in there I find something else.
- [56:37]
A
Automated workflows.
- [56:39]
B
Yep.
- [56:40]
A
Yeah, automated workflows. So everything for us is automated. I think the biggest thing that I tell everyone is if you have more than three pieces of software running your business, that's bad. You're doing something wrong because you're spending more time managing software than you are actually running business.
- [56:59]
B
Yep. I agree. It's just like people add like a band aid for this, a band aid for that, a band aid for this and then eventually you're like, where do I go for anything? Well, this has been great and I really appreciate learning your story and just all the different nuances of the way that you think about things. It's really amazing. What?
- [57:19]
A
Thank you.
- [57:20]
B
Are you most excited about in the next six months, both personally and professionally?
- [57:26]
A
Yeah. So this, this venture with Nat and Darren, this is, this has been game changing, life changing for me. We are, we are building a lifestyle that we love.
- [57:40]
B
Right.
- [57:41]
A
Each of us. We are really, I mean we're all in our 40s so we're at that point, we have families and kids and we're at that point where we want to be very conscious of the lifestyles that we build. We want to pick and choose who we work with, when we work, how we work and that's what we're doing. And so it's totally lighting us up because we are actually living that right now. I want to hang up with you and leave. I'm good because I've already, I already know what I have for the day. Right. And it's one of Those things where if you're in your 20s and you're listening to this, start doing that now. I wish I would have done that. I wish I would have known. Right. You can't go back. But if you're working on something and the business is running you instead of you running the business, that's a huge problem and it's not going to get any better. And when I say build a lifestyle, build. When you set goals for yourself. Right. Like we should all be goal setting. They need to be lifestyle goals, tangible lifestyle goals. I want to buy a beach house in X amount of years. I want to. It needs to be built around your lifestyle because you will find. Don't just do revenue, don't just. It needs to be tied to something that you actually want that's going to make your life better. When you do that, you'll be amazed at the amount of actual work that you're going to get done. And because you're motivated to make that happen. How to build a deck. I went, I mean, it's really that tangible. People are like, well, that doesn't make any sense. I said, okay, well, what are your business goals for this year? And they're, you know, and they're like, well, we want to make 5% more than last year. Why? Because it's 5% more or what? 5% more of what? Like, who cares?
- [59:32]
B
Yeah.
- [59:32]
A
And I would, I would even accept cost of living increased. That's at least an answer. But if you're telling me that you want to make 5% more over the last year just because you need to make 5% more, I'm like, well, that's stupid. Like, that's not an answer. That's not a goal. That's just you going to work for. That sounds awful.
- [59:52]
B
Yeah.
- [59:53]
A
What are you working towards?
- [59:55]
B
Cameron has a book called Vivid Vision. And the whole concept of that is for in business specifically is not just about the numbers but about the feeling. It's like, how are people going to feel when they walk into your office? How are they going to feel when they're doing that type of work? How's it going to feel when you're making this kind of impact on the world and same thing in your life. It's actually funny you bring this up because this is literally. I'm a different coaching client today who he's like telling me that he's struggling with waking up on time. He's working, he's not even starting his day till really late in the day and he wants to be more productive. But then when I started digging into, well, why, why do you want to get up early? Like, there's no, there's no clear vision of what he's really excited about. And so if you're not excited about the possibility of what you're building, you're not going to want to get up early. Like, so what? Or what? Yeah, so I totally. Yeah, so what, what is the, what's the thing that you're, what's the lifestyle piece for you that you're most excited about? Maybe I'm.
- [60:55]
A
I, I always know my. No, it's okay. So, like, my lifestyle goal right now is to retire my husband. And I say this and people are like, oh, that's funny. And I was like, no, I'm dead serious. And so he's a car salesman and he loves it. So he's a super car. He's actually really great at it. He sells like 18 to 20 cars a month. Like, he's great at it, but I don't know if anybody knows about commission based sales, but it's really fun. He has to work every Saturday and he works really long hours. And I'm like, no, I don't want to. I don't. I selfishly don't want to have to sit around my house every Saturday while I wait for you to get off work. I want to be able to travel whenever we want. Right. Our youngest is three years away from graduating. And so I'm trying to set us up so that we can have a beach house and keep this house. Right. This house is almost paid off. So it's one of those things where I think we'll probably always have it. Right? Why not? We can be snowbirds. We can go to Europe. That's my thing is wanting to be able to take the entire family and just travel and go whenever we want. And right now I can work from anywhere. I just need WI fi. He can't. And so it's not that I don't want. I mean, you know, he just, if he doesn't want to stop working, that's fine, but let's find you something else that lights you up. Write a blog about cars. Like, I don't care. That's never going to happen. But, you know, so that's kind of my main goal. And everybody laughs about that. And I, you know, we're almost there, but I don't think he's just not ready to give up work yet. So I would love to figure out a way to like, give him a new passion or a new hobby.
- [62:31]
B
Or whatever.
- [62:32]
A
Come on. Because technically, if we really had to, I could cover all the bills. But it's one of those things where he doesn't, you know, he doesn't want to give up working. So we'll see. But I always say that that's my main like life goal right now. Right. I love that you be able to just as a family, not just because right now, like we said earlier, I can pick and choose what I work and go where I want to go and do what I want to do, but he can't. Right. So that kind of leaves us here, which is not a bad thing. We love our neighborhood, we love our community and our friends. But come on.
- [63:11]
B
Yeah, I get it.
- [63:12]
A
Europe. Let's go to Japan.
- [63:14]
B
I'm holding that vision for you. That sounds incredible. Well, if anyone's listening and they want to reach out to you, maybe they're the one or two people that make this worth your time. Where can they reach out to you?
- [63:26]
A
Well, LinkedIn of course. So Megan Donnelly and you can. That's the best way to find me. It. The email is really easy. It's Megan with H M E G H A n at m e g h-a n d o n n e l l y.com Megan, that's my email. You can find the if you go to join join Brand Built. If you're interested in learning more about Brand built, do that. Thequeenofautomation.com is my podcast. You can go check that out. And I obviously have a website, megandonnelly.com so it's all very much the same, all very much branded the same across the board. So. But yeah, check out my content on LinkedIn and you'll see exactly how I run operations. I talk a lot about automations, ISO, keys, operations, all the boring things that nobody really wants to talk about, but I try to put a little bit of fun spin on it. Oh, and if you're really interested to learn about like the neurodiverse side of business and ops, we have a mini series called Chronically Automated and that goes live every Thursdays. And it's, it's a really fantastic rip the band aid off. Like here's the truth about what it's actually like running a business. I tell you about all the things that I've broken, I tell you about all my freak out moments. We talk about all of the bad things that I experience in this. That's like the good side and the bad side of my brain. Right. Because when you're adhd, you got that good side, but then there's always that ADHD side that's like pulling, pulling, pulling. So it's a really good listen if you're interested in seeing behind the scenes of how an entrepreneur with this brain works.
- [65:14]
B
So it sounds super fun and I would love to join in sometime. So I will see you there.
- [65:20]
A
It's hilarious. You can come on the show if you want. It's pretty funny. It's. Yeah, it's me. Just.
- [65:31]
B
I love your energy and enthusiasm. It's really appreciated and thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and experiences. If anyone's listening and you want to reach out, hit Megan up and we'll look forward to chatting with you next time.
- [65:45]
A
Thank you. Bye everybody. You've been listening to Second In Command, 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.