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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the OPS Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there.
- [00:09]
B
Or if you just want to know
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A
more about us, click the links below. Now onto the episode.
- [00:17]
B
There was no countdown and Steph, here's the thing is you don't know this or not, but usually Taren does this cool little like dance thing and then we talk about his farm animals at the beginning of the show. So welcome to OPS Experts Club. Stephanie Blodgetz.
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C
Blodge it, but thank you.
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B
I mean, wait, I thought it was. I've heard Stefani.
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C
Yeah, Stefani too.
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B
Yeah, that's true. Taren, excellent save. Thank you for that. Stephanie. Thanks for joining us on the show today. Taran Turner, you know, you just play games with my heart when you wear sweaters like that because that is just some legit sweater wearing today.
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D
Thanks. Double collars.
- [00:51]
B
Double. And that's what I was going to say. I was going to call that out. Awesome Sexperts. I am excited to have our guest on the show today because you may have watched previous episodes but this lady is powerful when it comes to all things finance. So here at the co lab team we do a lot of different things with operations, but one of the biggest things we do is help with the financial side of the shop. I mean, a lot of times we'll come into businesses and we're there, they think to fix a certain problem, be it around tech or customer support or one of the area recruiting. Maybe that's what they thought they hired us for, only to get in there and realize, holy hell, the back end of your business on the finance side of things is, is a total dumpster fire. And we need to get in the middle of that because you're burning way too many hours. You're burning way too much time. There's a lot of frustration on people getting paid, on paying people, on getting money into the right accounts to fund payroll, getting paid all kinds of pains points and that is Stephanie's world. So Stephanie works for the Colab team. She's one of our finance experts here at the Colab team and we're super excited to have her on the show. So Stephanie, thanks for joining us.
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C
Absolutely. I'm excited to be here.
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B
Yeah. Karen, you as a, as a primary on accounts, when you come in and you're there to help operators, right. This whole show is around how can we give free content away? How can we give free value away to solving Operational pain points. Right. So a lot of times you'll come in, this is what you do day in, day out, and you'll run into problems on the finance side of things. And that's usually when we'll tag in Tabby, we'll tag in Stephanie, we'll tag in, you know, one of the gals, Rachel Faith, one of the gals that handles finance. Stephanie's just one of them that has us particular especially, especially around disputes and a lot of the processes around that side of things. But she also does a ton of accounts payable and processes around that. What are your thoughts, Taren, when you walk in and you see a pain point when it comes to accounts payable and how people are handling it, especially when there's no standard operating procedures. No SOPs.
- [02:41]
D
Yes, great question. When I step in, a lot of the times I turn into the fractional ops person. And so I am there to field anything and everything that used to have nowhere to go or went to the entrepreneurial owners, owner, operators. And so now they come to me right away. I can tell there's no finance process. If I start getting asked every single day by anybody I've ever met and never met or this company, what's the status of their payment, where they send their payment, how do they get paid, what are they getting paid? And then that right away just always becomes the number one point of communication with that company is people about their payments. That's when you know, all right, we gotta get something set up here. Looks like it's just the Wild West. Yeah.
- [03:25]
B
So, Steph, a lot of times that that will lead to a conversation that comes straight to you, and it'll be typically about, like, what are the platforms we should use? Like, do you have any kind of workflow that's established here? Are you just like, they're just sending their bill to either the main person or some other poor soul that is just their inbox just getting destroyed by everybody sending in payments and even like payment platforms. Right. Sending reminder emails that they're not getting paid. So poor person is just choking underneath the volume of email around something so simple, like, how do we get people paid? Do you want to talk about just a little bit some of the, like, just basics that you'll cover with people when it comes to standard, standard operating procedures, like consistent bill dates. Do we have a platform? Have we created, like a central email system? You want to talk about some of that? Because you do these things so well.
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C
I do, and I think just to sort of piggyback what Taryn was saying the biggest thing is everybody wondering when they're going to be paid. Biggest red flag. So that tells me right then and there that you don't have a pay schedule first of all. Or if you do, you haven't communicated it at all to any sort of contractors or vendors to on when they're going to be expecting their payments, right? So usually the process for me is to say, okay, well step one, let's figure out a good pay schedule, right? But that also keeps like budgets and payroll budgets on your books. So you can expect to when you're going to be paying. Because if you start just paying whenever, that could really cause some budget issues and cash flow issues. So at least in the double positive for that is people can expect when to get paid. So you're not getting bogged up in your accounting inboxes or even if the CEO is getting them. And then you're also going to expect how much you're going to be paying out every. If you do it biweekly or semi monthly, however you wanna set it up. And there's all kinds of bonuses and benefits to having a schedule. So, and then with that being said, what platforms are you using? How much money are you spending?
- [05:30]
B
Let me cut you off there because then we'll go into platforms. I think that's another thing. Like, let's drill down on this one really quick because I think some people underestimate how much pain it will save them by something as simple as just establish a schedule of who gets paid when. Right? Because I think, number one, if people aren't receiving payments in what their expected timeframe is, that starts to communicate things to your people, right? Does my boss have money? Is my job safe? Like, do they not value me? Do they not care that I have bills? Right. All these things start welling up in your people. Whereas if you just give them an expectation, what I found is maybe they don't always like what that expectation is right out of the can, but typically that starts to make them feel safe, right? They're oh wait, there are rules to this thing right there. Oh, so I can expect on every other Friday I see the money hit my bank account, or on the 1st and the 15th I see money hit my bank account. Whatever the cadence is, whether it's a bi monthly or if it's bi weekly, however you do it, I think that just giving people an expectation begins to take the stress off of your people, but also stress off you as a leader. Right? Because most visionaries don't keep a ton of cash in their operating bank account. Right. So it's not even like you don't have money. It's that you're trying to grow your money and you probably have it in an account where more money is being grown faster that you need to fund your operating account to do payables. That's the budgeting thing that you were talking right about, Steph, is that so then visionaries being pulled at and pulled at and pulled at to fund, to fund, to fund. And then it's like you're losing all kinds of time and whoever has to be the one that's pushing go to pay people is frustrated as heck. Right. Because if you haven't transferred it in time, then we're bouncing checks or we're getting platforms that are pushing back on us saying, hey, you have insufficient funds in there. Now we're going to push out your days of approval to even longer, which makes the whole process more frustrating. So something so simple as a daily, like a, a consistent schedule on just when you pay people saves so much pain and time. So if you haven't committed to that, just commit to that. Hey, your, your invoices have to be turned in by this day so that I can get approval by this day so that I can fund them and pay them by this day. Very, very simple and is a great standard operating procedure to set up. It's a good one. Steph, talk to me a little bit about platforms, platforms.
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C
I've seen some clients pay out in multiple different platforms, which again becomes an expense issue as well. Right. If you're using multiple different platforms, you're basically throwing money away while you're paying people. And so if you don't have an established like payable platform and there's so many out there that are really great that we could always recommend, you know, you get billed month, like once a month or however it works, you know what fees you can budget for, how much your platform is going to cost. And it keeps everything in one place too to keep it organized and keep those expectations to be more streamlined. Right. So everybody gets paid through this platform. This is how it works. And it's also another little benefit to making sure you have one place for everybody's payments is that you can create an actual standard operating procedure on how this is done. So if something were to happen to whoever normally processes it, there's one place, one place, one sop, one area that you can get it done instead of having multiple different platforms and costing more money and more time to be able to process Payments, Darren, that's something that
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B
you deal with a lot, right? The technology piece of it. And we've started as simple as, hey, we drop everything into Google sheets so that we can fund them on whatever platform they choose to fund in. Right. And then from that we usually say, hey, let's graduate a little bit and let's press into some software. And then we probably have different layers of software based upon expense and complexity. But maybe. Do you want to talk about that a minute? Just like committing to software. And when should people commit to software? And kind of maybe what the cadence of ascending that you would recommend that they move from just a regular payment processing platform, like what Steph is describing, to maybe even a PEO where it's like, this is actually an enterprise level. They do a bunch of different things here. Like some of the platforms we've worked with just works. Or others.
- [09:28]
D
Yeah, I always just comes down to cost benefit analysis. A lot of these platforms are pretty pricey. And so people usually don't want to start out there. They want to start out with a process. And then you graduate from there, especially as a process frees up for more opportunities and you start seeing other areas. Oh, maybe we need two approvers. Maybe we need a department approver and a master approver. Oh, maybe we need better reporting. Maybe we want automated 1099s. Maybe we want all these other things. So then you start to realize the cost is actually a benefit. And then you can move into these. So it's not like I jump in there and recommend one right away. I work with them where they're at. It's like, all right, we can get this started in a Google sheet. That works. Done it before, we'll do it again. We can get into Bill.com, we can get into Beanworks.
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B
Yeah, Beanworks.
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D
So it really just depends.
- [10:19]
B
And Steph, I think that one of the coolest things and as you listeners are listening realize, let's break it down to simplest form. Like Taren said, it all starts with an sop, right? A standard operating procedure. Let's commit to a schedule. And then how are you doing it now? Right. And then frame it out how you're doing it now and then make it more efficient. And how could we make it more efficient? And maybe that is like Tara suggested. Maybe we start with free and then we level up. Build.com is a great one where it's not super expensive, but they give you your own email address. Everybody can email into that one email address. We can process it if you want to add a secondary person. So it's not just one person that takes them, approves them, then pays you on a dual. Dual zone. It's you pay for a couple seats, not super expensive. You don't have to graduate up into some of the other ones out there like the Ripplings of the World or justworks or beanworks or whatever it is that you're going to use that a lot of times come with a much bigger price tag. But I think Steph, even as I was listening to Taryn rattle those things off, I just thought, how cool is it that Stephanie's actually created SOP for everything? Every single step of that process, that's something that you do consistently, right? Like helping people come alongside people, sit down and have meetings with people, right. And say, hey, well just walk me through what are you doing now? And then helping them build out SOPs.
- [11:23]
C
Oh yeah. I mean, sometimes it's not quite their process or their platform or it's not quite their platform that's the problem. Sometimes it is the process. Sometimes it's just mixed and not really organized or, you know, they're kind of wishy washy on things. You know, sometimes even just allowing people to get paid outside of your platform when there's really no reason to allow, allow for it. I know that sometimes you get, you know, international contractors and that can be a bit of a pain point, but sometimes if you are consistently using a platform and they can be using that and there really is no reason for them other than maybe they don't want to, you just kind of have to say, well, this is how, this is how you get paid if you want to be paid by us. So I think it's just sort of holding hands and walking through. This is the process. Here's how we can make it better. I can make suggestions on making it more efficient with maybe this platform or this kind of thing. But you know, there's, there's always ways you can work around people's current processes to make it better. So it's. Yeah, we've seen that time and time again.
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B
Like what you said, when it comes to scale. Right, right. Right now most people are probably just doing whatever it takes to get done what they have to do. Right. But are we thinking with the end in mind, like if you want to continue to grow and scale, that means probably more and more, you're going to have more and more finance based duties and then we don't really even know is this a full time job yet until we get this thing nice and Lined out and how efficient is it? And once we skinny this thing up, is it a full time job? Is it a part time job? Is it something they could contract with the Colab team? Because our finance department handles that fractionally for a lot of different people. You don't even know what way to go until you really get down to, are my systems working? Are they the most efficient? Could I collateralize a platform for 50 bucks a month? That's going to be way cheaper than any employee that I try and employ or any vendor I try and hire. Right. So what are some things I can put into place where it's like free and then like, like low cost of barrier of entry? Then once I've got all of my processes dialed, what kind of worker am I looking for? I, I don't think that's the way most people do it. I think most people do it like this visionary says, I freaking hate finance. I feel super stupid around finance. It makes me insecure every time we talk about finance. Let's just find somebody that does this and then they hire somebody. But they don't even know the caliber of the hire they just made because that person comes in speaking a language they don't speak. But if, and if they're not truly good at something, it's really hard to tell that until you get them into the wrong. So I think some of the best gift we offer to people is, hey, we've done this a lot. We've done this for a lot of different verticals. A lot of companies you're meeting with a construction company right after this where that's their exact pain point is they've got a finance problem and a piece of technology that's having a hard time communicating all the complexity. But they know they want to scale from 10 to 15 projects a week to like a hundred projects a week. So if they don't solve this now and they continue to grow, it's going to compound and make it exponentially more messy. So let's get in front of it. So I think everything that you're lining out, how do we make sure our process is tight? Then how do we make the decision into the right piece of software? Then how do we make the right hire based upon now what we're doing? Or if you're like, Aaron, all that sounds super overwhelming. Do you guys just do that for people? Yeah, we love doing that for people. In fact, we have a lead magnet, something that you could go check out that would just lead you straight into talking to conversations about us with that and us giving you some free value@sop.opsexpertsacademy.com and if you go there, it'll show you exactly how we create SOPs. So you can start maybe pushing that to your people and have at least a uniform way that you bring these things together and can line out tarant Turner, I've done a lot of talking. What do you think about all those things?
- [14:52]
D
I'll tell you one of my favorite parts about putting in a policy. And kind of the policy is a little different than the sop. Policy is something you can send out to people. So it's a little more contractor facing. Once you've got all your stuff together and you've created a nice policy, you can put it in your contracts that people are signing. And I just love putting in at least a net 15 on our contracts, which means you do not get to ask me anything about your payment, your due date, which is 15 days after you've created your invoice. So you have to Send invoices with Net15, which means we have 15 days to get our end in order, which is uploaded, assign approvals paid out. So get a. Get a good process in place, put it in your contracts that they're signing to.
- [15:34]
B
And Steph, you're. I feel like. And what you just said, too, was so brilliant, so smart when you talked about if you don't have an sop, a standard operating procedure lined out, nobody ever gets to go on vacation, ever. I mean, because it's like, well, the finance lady can never leave on a finance week. But we just had. It was great. I love that Rachel dropped a box to us this morning, like on the Colab team internal side. She's like, hey, so Chris, my husband, just got excited and he said, we're going on spring break to Florida. And I'm like, well, let me ask Stephanie if she can fulfill it. And Rachel was able to bounce out, like, with very little notice because she has all of her things lined out in a very tight order for a very large vendor client of ours that has over 100 people, they're paying out on this particular payroll. I mean, like, and a lot of moving pieces. But because everything is soped out, she can ask Stephanie. And we know relatively how much time it takes because we know the process is tight. But when we stepped into this particular client, it was so messy, so messy. And I think we've been able to bring a lot of order and it enables you to actually go on vacation and empower other people to do your Job. So, Steph, thanks for taking on extra work this week for Rachel so she get a vacation. But thank you also for being a queen and helping her build out all those SOPs, because I know that you were on a lot of that project, building out the back end.
- [16:45]
C
Oh, yeah, no, we've been very busy making sure that everything runs really smoothly without too many incidents. So this, like you said, they have a lot of people, they pay out. Things get missed so easily. Yeah. Having, having those processes. Yeah. Easy to hand off. So, you know, even if they're ready to hand, hand off to somebody else, boom, we have it, no problem.
- [17:06]
B
You know, I think that's, I mean, that's a lot of what we do anyway. Right. Is that we're not intended to be around forever. We're intended to help people get organized, dialed in, and then we'll help with the recruiting to go find them their forever person, like bring them in, like do all the interviews, give them their best choices, top two, three or choices, let them decide. Then the best part is we can help with the onboarding and then we exit and they've got processes. We know work because we've been doing it for the last set of months. So I think it's, it's something that we really love doing here is empowering visionaries and business owners to make their business strong. Yep. So we've talked a lot about ar. You also help out a lot with dispute and that's really built around process. Right. Because a lot of times people don't realize if you don't turn in the evidence for a dispute the right way, the customer's gonna win every single time. You wanna speak to that for just a couple minutes.
- [17:53]
C
Sure. Yeah. I find too that a lot of people that tend to lose a lot of their disputes either aren't responding, they're not responding in a timely manner, or they're not responding correctly. So when I say correctly, I mean they need to actually put something more than just a screenshot. You actually do need to have a process of responding to disputes. You're not always going to win them. Sometimes banks just want to side with their customer and that's just the way the cookie grumbles. But you always want to give it your 110%. Right. And so when I see that the way to really increase your win rate is not just submitting evidence, but submitting evidence with details and a letter, I feel like people miss out on a letter so much. You need to be able to explain your side of things. You know, sometimes People will do everything they're supposed to, which is agree to terms of service. They have signatures on contracts, they have everything that says this person got what they paid for. But they lose these chargebacks because they just don't submit their side of the story. You would be surprised how much, how much more you could win just by typing out a simple letter, being like, here is the contract, here is the terms of service they agreed to. Here is the service that we provided for them. You know, everything that you could possibly show, that letter makes a huge difference because you also have to look at it as if you were just to submit a screenshot. The bank's going to look at that and go, what does this mean? What does that mean? That doesn't tell a story. So I do find that there is processes to be built with chargebacks and disputes and a lot of people don't think so or they don't want to put in the time. And I get it, if it's like low cost stuff, maybe you don't want to put in the time or the effort. But it does add up. You know, even if it's a $50 charge, if people just keep getting away with that, suddenly you're at a thousand dollars in a month.
- [19:40]
B
It adds up. And it actually is hurting your business because your credit card processor paying attention, like if you're getting a bunch of chargeback requests, it starts damaging your score for how much they're going to allow you to continue to process on their platform. And then I know, Taryn, you've seen this happen before where no, no credit card processor just froze your account because you're making them nervous. Your risk ratio is too high. So now they're going to hold onto your funds, a certain amount of your funds so that they're always safe. If there's a chargeback stripe doesn't want to come out of its pocket for your money or your bad processes on how you're, you know, disputing your chargebacks. And so there's so much to be said for man, don't lose money, don't leave money on the table. Have a solid process. Just know what you're doing and then it assign it to somebody. I know, Steph, you do dispute processing for a lot of our customers because you've gotten it to a point where it doesn't take a bunch of time. You just pop into their account, you know what you're doing, you fill it out for the five or six people that have disputed and then you move on to the next account. You do the next thing. So I, I think just a tight, once again, tight system. Good. S.O.P. something that you can budget time and then determine is this a full time role? I know the person I've been hiring or the person I keep pushing it to tells me it's full time. But they're also overwhelmed and they become kind of a collector and they do a bunch of different stuff. And it's probably just that they don't have the right amount of time to give it the right amount of attention. So they're not winning, they're overwhelmed by it. But if I could just get the right things happening in the right order, I could make it more efficient and decide how much time should this take and then who should be owning the whole process. So, Stephanie, you have been amazing. Thank you for being an incredible finance ops expert here at the lab team and without so many of our clients, great clients out there. Dr. Darius Daniels, I know that you're on the account for Nehemiah Davis, you're on the account for, you know, I think like a half a dozen other people that you serve here at the co lab team. So thank you for how you serve. And Taryn Turner, it is an honor always to be with you and your amazing sweaters on the show. So I hope you guys have an amazing day. Ops Experts, thanks for joining us today. And we'll see you next week here on Ops Experts Club.
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C
Bye. Bye.
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B
Man, I hope.