← The Ops Experts Club Podcast
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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. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode Ops Experts Club. Ops Experts Club. Like the Pink Pony Club? It is a little bit like the Pink Ops Experts Club. We could get a sick beat off of that if we just follow that one in Taryn Turner. Only if you dance like that though. If you dance like that, that's what's going to make the. That's the music video, bro. Have you ever noticed how many awful these videos with white guys who don't know how to dance? I mean the 80s were filled with them. It's crazy.
- [00:38]
B
It's a little too close to home.
- [00:40]
A
Taren, I think you're an incredible dancer. Okay, so Ops Experts, great to have you here. Love it. Today we're going to talk about a topic and we've got a topic expert here on it and I'm excited to have him. I'll introduce him here momentarily. We're going to talk about a topic today. Is the on your side. That way he's on this side. For me there is two experts so video that only makes sense for watching the video. So Ops Experts, you know when I used to work at the credit union before I started co lab team I was a project manager at a large credit union in our area and I did an internal projects for the credit union itself and then I did construction project management as well. It was kind of a wed will. A role. A wed will. And what I saw being in the underbelly of this machine, you know they had I think like a dozen branches. They had this one gal, her name was Shauna and she was amazing but she was an internal auditor and she would roll up on the branches. You never knew she was coming. But man, let me tell you what it was never a happy day. And when she rolled up, sweetest lady in the world. But she had a checklist of things that she went through like the tellers accounts, what does the safe look like? Making sure all these different moving pieces were actually working the way they were supposed to. And that's how you know the FDIC insures banks is because they have standards and those standards are being held to and you need an internal auditor that do it. So like when it comes to entrepreneurs and our businesses here on this side, small to medium sized businesses, I think we could really serve to learn something from that when it comes to audits, because I don't think we ever do it. I don't, I don't think we like it. I don't think we like being told to do things right. That's what gives you the entrepreneurial spirit. So that probably means it's gone. Something like this. You were really good at something, you didn't want to do that anymore, or you weren't really good at it, but you knew it needed to be done, so you started doing it. And so then you found somebody, hired him to give him all the stuff he didn't want to do anymore. And then you just start stacking on that person. And then you realize, I'm probably going to burn that person out. We need to ad maybe another person. And there was, there wasn't a whole lot of thought to how are we building this thing. And so it becomes really hard to do an internal audit. Which is what leads us to our topic today, Taren. Thanks for asking. Taren, what are we talking about today?
- [02:39]
B
Uh, I think we're talking about surfing and scoring.
- [02:43]
A
Surfing the waves. Scoring the. Scoring the points. That's a good one, Terence. So today we're going to talk about a tool that we developed called the Gap Analyzer to solve this question of auditing. And it, it does help you to be a better surfer and you can get points. I'm going to show you a way you're going to get good points on it as you listen to the show. But if you're feeling that angst as I start talking about this, you're like, holy sugarfoot. I don't have something like that in place. It's okay. We're here to give you solutions. I'm not here to make you feel dumb. Brandon Turley works for the co Lab team and he is in and out of Gap Analyzers all the time for businesses. You know, this is something that we offer to companies all the time, is to come in and help them with an internal audit done by a tool that we, we created called the Gap Analyzer. It's a platform that people plug all of their information into. You know, we send it out to each individual on your team and they document. It's a conversation about time. Like, how are they using their time? And it breaks up into four different areas of the business. Sales, marketing, customer service and ops. And across your, your whole team, what percentage of their time is given to what sector. And then it'll identify for you where there are gaps in your team and where there's Overlaps in your team. The beauty of that though, is that we can start having a conversation about the things we assume people are doing and the things they're actually doing. Because there are a lot of times business owners we see don't really know. Taryn, you want to talk about that a little bit? I know you run a lot of accounts and you'll invite Brandon in to help with gap analyzers on all of our high level retainer accounts. Maybe talk about a little bit. When you roll up on. On an account, what's something that you usually see and why you appreciate some sort of audit of time being done of team.
- [04:13]
B
Yeah, I'll say it's the quickest way for me to see players on the team, see what they're doing from their own point of view. I can sit with the owner and go through the org chart and he can show me positions. But when was that updated? Are people really doing what they're supposed to be doing? But you roll out a gap analyzer and it's going to be from their own mouth. Okay, here's actually where my time is going. Not just my roles and responsibilities, but what I'm actually doing daily, weekly, and monthly. So I can get an intake of a team of 30 people really quickly rather than having to meet with everybody and learning more about them and hearing about their dog and hearing about their fish and. And just, you know, meetings can be a little nervous too. So I love the part where it's just like document your time, tell us about what you're doing and move on with your day.
- [05:02]
A
Thing I love about gap analyzer is that it's apples for apples across the board. We're asking the same things of every single person. Right. So like you're saying Taryn doesn't turn into a narrative, a story that they're starting to tell you about everything. And it's mom and their dog and it's fish. It's. No, no. This is asking very specific questions and let people answer. So, Brandon, that's usually where you're introduced into a relationship. I love it. It sounds like we're on a dating app. Like that's usually where you're introduced into like getting to know people. And the thing that I love about what you do is Karen makes the intro to you. We give our clients copy to be able to introduce your role to the team and then you take it from there and then it's your job to keep everybody on track. Right. Cause sometimes it's a little bit like herding cats.
- [05:46]
C
Would you Say, yeah, no, most definitely. Sometimes it takes a lot of little nudges to get the team to be rolling in and starting the application. It's 15 minutes. But a lot of people are really reluctant to go in and do it because sometimes they're feeling like they're trying to justify their time because sometimes they can't even like put a notate like they do daily, weekly, monthly. And so it's interesting. I always see the different businesses.
- [06:09]
A
I think for me, something that strikes me every time I look at a gap analyzer is how hard it is for people sometimes to document what they do. And they come up with every reason why I can't, why I don't always do everything. I don't always do the same thing every day. That's okay. The gap analyzer is designed to brace for that. Do the things that are end over end every day, and then in the weekly section, just drop in what you think you do on a weekly basis. Those things that random. Well, I don't always do something on a weekly, but awesome. Well, there's another section for a monthly basis, like throw it in there if you're not sure where it fits. But the tool's smart enough that it's going to do all the math for you and determine all those things considered how many hours do you work? But I, you know, I do think you're right, Brandon. Sometimes, like, people get afraid. Like, are they trying to cut my role? Are they suspicious about what I'm doing? But it also does start having some conversations with people who are honest about like, I don't really have a set order of how I do things. I just kind of, as urgency arises, that's what I attack. And the problem is, is there are end over end things that usually are neglected for urgency. And it's the end over end things. Those incremental like 1%, 2%, 10% that add up to things really being missed.
- [07:11]
C
Well, not only that, like when, sometimes when you connect with the business owner, they're like, they can't be spending that much time, like on what, what tasks are they doing. And it's just like, well, no, this is, this is like after having clarity call with some of them, you jump in, you dive in deeper, you, you go through and you're like, all right, explain to me your day, week, month and really get like a good visibility. Like, oh, okay. So I can adjust some of the numbers just to make it more make sense, but sometimes the business owner is, shouldn't be spending that much time doing that. Like we gotta re look at that.
- [07:40]
A
Or I. What I found is a lot of times people are like, wait a minute, they're still doing that? No, I don't want them doing that. Like, we don't even look at that anymore. We're not even using that anymore. Taren, how many times has that happened where you're just like, this person feels like they're doing a really good job at what they're doing and nobody cares. Nobody even looks at that.
- [07:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, we. It happens on our team too, where we come in, we hear from an entrepreneur, business owner, something they want solved. We do it, we implement it, we have somebody doing it weekly. Takes them 30 minutes to an hour. Four months down the road, they're like, wait, they're still doing that? And it's like, that was important to you four months ago. It was a requirement. Yeah, they're still doing it because we do what we say we're going to do.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah. I think it's no shade thrown on the entrepreneur. They shouldn't have to know everything. Everybody does. But I will say you probably should be in the pattern of consistent check in. And the thing I love about gap analyzer is it's the front end of the spear. Right. You need a spot check. Let's go. Spot check. What is everybody doing right now? Right. And then from there, hold it up against their job description. Is that what we think they're supposed to be doing? Because a lot of times people have become catch all. They start doing a bunch of things that were not in their job description. So now we have a scoping problem. Right. And like typically entrepreneurs feeling frustrated, they're like, why is this person never getting the stuff done? That's important to me. Why isn't these things happening? What do my people doing with all of their time? Well, we can't know what they're doing with their time until we actually take an inventory of how they're using their time and then look at how they're using their time and then ask Visionary, hey, is this what you want Sheila working on? And I think that a lot of times what we find is visionary has asked a couple of people to do something like that. So what we often find is that there's things that two people might be doing that are very close cousins, you know, and you don't be marrying your cousin. Like, that's not a healthy thing. That's not a good idea. You know what I'm saying? So, like, how can we pull like these things out of Sheila's role and hand them over to Sally. And therefore this whole role now makes better sense. And that opens up opportunities for Sheila to ascend up and we get more full bang for the buck out of each one of our employees. But you can't even have those kind of conversations until for sure, for sure, we're clear that everybody's doing what we expect them to be doing for the pay that's commensurate. So it's like gap analyzer held against job description, then challenged by pay grade, then asking, what are the three to five key things that are part of each one of these roles? All of that comes out of just a very simple. Let's, let's take a screenshot.
- [09:57]
C
And I think sometimes you'll run into businesses where we won't even have like job descriptions or anything like that. They, you know, they grew really fast or they, you know, lost some people. So all the roles like scrambled around. So we get to sit there and be like, okay, go through. We have good, like receipt at the end to hand off to, you know, do a delegate elevate later on, or, you know, just to really build out the job descriptions later on with the information that we'll be able to look at there.
- [10:23]
A
I'd say, Taren, correct me if I'm wrong. Keep me honest. I would say probably 8 out of 10 businesses that we work with either have no job description or have out of date job descriptions. Almost every call I'm on, when I'm, when I'm starting a contract, they're like, yeah, either they say, no, we don't have job descriptions, like period, full stop. Or they'll say, yeah, we have a job descriptions, but they're pretty outdated. Very, very rarely do I walk into a room where they're like, oh, yeah, here are the job descriptions. They're all this. And we actually hold quarterly evals where we hold them accountable to these KPIs associated with these three to five duties. And that's how we know that they're actually doing good at their job. Taren, I don't, I don't know that we've ever rolled into a company like that. What would you say to that?
- [11:01]
B
Yeah, yeah, probably just two or three. I can think of.
- [11:05]
A
So of all the dozens of businesses we work through. So if you're listening to this and you're feeling guilty or feeling bad, don't feel bad. Like, we all have things we need to work on. This is a good place to work on it. In fact, we'll give you a score. We'll let you know how you're doing. We'll give you a score on how you're doing with this kind of stuff. If you go to gap analyzer.com forward/score or gap analyzer with a Z.com score, you can take a free test. And I'll tell you, this is where we think you are when it comes to team, when it comes to operation, when it comes to effectiveness of your operations. And it tees you up to answer those questions. It's kind of a first pass at what a gap analyzer tool would do for you. But it's free, so if you want to check it out, I'd encourage you to check it out. Brandon helped us develop it, being inside of so many different gap analyzers. And we came up with a this is where you really need some help. This is where you're doing okay and this is where you're doing pretty awesome pour on the gas. So I think it's, it's a pretty cool tool.comforward/score. Brandon, you also work with the Colab team a lot on our AI stuff, places where we're sticking AI into businesses to try and help things be more effective, efficient. And you do a lot of it too. You both use a little bit different tools. You know, I mean I know Taran, you've been in GRO or Brandon, you've been in Grok a lot. Taryn, you've been in Cloud a lot. And I know we have different people that are different experts at different tools off Colab team. Brandon, you and I had a really great conversation yesterday about AI is only as good as the information that you feed it. Like if you feed AI like half baked bunch of stuff, you're going to get some kooky. I was listening to a guy present on it yesterday. He talked about hallucinations. You're going to get some kooky AI hallucinations. Whereas like, where did you pull that from? Like they're not even in the ballpark of what we're supposed to be talking about right now, but it's because of what you feed them. Maybe talk a little bit about the data that comes out of gap analyzer that you actually feed into AI because you actually feed into AI and you're actually. That helps you sift down the, the fine points of this is what you should attack first.
- [12:53]
C
Yeah. So one of the things that we've had so many gap analyzers that we, I've taken all the results from countless different gaps and really put it into like AI and say hey, this is like what we're seeing. Like, help me on the next one. And it just helps me filter through the information and like, it recognizes the pain points that I was like, hey. Because manually I spend a lot of time going through each individual one, taking my notes, revamping everything. And with AI, I can just be like, here's, here's the report. Let's compare it to the other reports. What are you seeing? And then I still go through manually and like really recognize everything. But to one point of our conversation yesterday is, you know, as you go through and you have these, your team go through the gap and say, hey, this is what I'm spending my time on. It's like, okay, when you really SOP stuff out and you really get clarity on what they're doing, you can take some of the key things that they're doing and put it into AI and say, hey, this is the sop. Can you do that? Because when you have a clear sop, you'll get a lot better result and better information given out than if you just say, hey, can you like go review this client and tell me, like, what about this person? It'll give you random information. But if you're like, I want you to start here and I want you to look at these, I want you to go through this steps and at the end, this is how I want you to present the information. You're gonna get a nine day difference for the result.
- [14:16]
A
I think a lot of times I know, for me, sometimes when I know, AI is a really big conversation piece right now and people are showing how crazy things they can do with it. But I feel like the longer I dig into it, the more I hear about it. The realization of there's a pretty good lift on the front end of information you have to have for it to be able to do sizable amount of work and help with efficiencies. Like they. It just needs the data and it needs you to guide it. And I think that one of the cool things for me about the gap analyzer is just that in 15 minutes of your team's time, like it collects all the data you need and then swings in behind and he's like, hey, I noticed you filled it out like this, this and this. Do you mean this when you say this? And does this mean this when you say this? So then Brandon reorients, it re plugs the information back in. So the gap analyzer is clean. We give you something out of the back, the backside of the results that is a clean presentation. I Love the gap analyzer because it shows in one single page where all your team is using its time, how it all rolls up into company wide and then breaks out each individual by the week of how they're using their time. And then you can ask questions on do I want people to use time like that or not? But once you've got that all cleaned up, then you feed it, like Brandon saying, into, you know, a platform, an AI platform, and ask it for specific help. You know, that you have the right data that you're working from. Rather than. I think she's doing this. I think these are the tools she's using. I think it takes her about this much time. No, no, let's cut out all the things. Let's just get down to the core answers, and then we can get some good results on efficiencies of. Does that still need to be a human job? Can we hand that off? Do we have an SOP associated with it? Could AI help with the lift so that we could give Suzy back some more of her time? Because ultimately, that's what we all want. Right? Best bang for the buck out of every player that we're paying. I don't want to think that Susie's just. I talked to a lady today who was telling me she would charge commission based on every line item that she had to rekey back into another spreadsheet just to be able to determine the commission that they could then bill out to the client, and she would do it for hours every day. Well, I mean, obviously, nobody. Nobody wants to have to do that. I mean, like, could we make a system that's smart enough that could do that for people so that that person's smarts can be used for something that's not so mind grinding, you know, I mean, like, I don't want to grind somebody's mind, you know, like, how can we use the smarts of machinery to be able to do that? You know, Taryn, there's another part of the gap analyzer that you like a lot that we talked about, and it's the bonus, really, to the. To the gap more than just what they're doing with their time.
- [16:34]
B
Yes. It's kind of like. I don't know what you'd call them. Review questions or. Yeah. And it's just, you know, what are we doing? Great. I actually don't remember all of them.
- [16:43]
A
Yeah, I know.
- [16:44]
C
Yeah. Biggest pain point, greatest inefficiency and the biggest win.
- [16:48]
B
So pain points and inefficiencies, huge. You can definitely start seeing some Trends with those questions. So it's, it's kind of like we just sneak it in there as a feedback for us as we're helping out with companies, those tend to be the biggest places that we can start working on things in is we start hearing the same biggest pain point or inefficiency from five different people. We're like, oh, okay, that's a, that's a problem we can help you solve. Most likely.
- [17:12]
A
I love it because I feel like boots on the ground. Ask the people doing the work, like, what is the biggest pain point in their role? What's the greatest inefficiency from your perspective in the company? And then what would be the biggest win if we could fix it? I mean, like, how, what, what are these three things? And when you hear that from all of your people, boots on the ground, then you, as the decision maker, as the visionary, can make good decisions about what are the strategy shifts that need to happen. Or maybe it's just that they're confused on what those things do and how that works. So then it's an education opportunity, right? I can explain to my people why that's important, but without getting that kind of feedback, which I would say most visionaries do not ask for feedback from their team. A lot of times they take feedback as their complaint instead of, no, no, this isn't a complaint. This is an opportunity for us to expose how people are feeling so that we can make something better for all of us, because we all. There are two ways you can grow cash in your business, and that's making more sales and that's saving more money. Like, how do I become more efficient? How can I make my people most efficient? That's going to lean down your team to the leanest, greenest fighting machine that you could ever fight in. Tarant Turner. And so, like, I feel like asking for feedback is so important, even though it might hurt, even though you don't like seeing it. Sometimes I think when you can see a trend from all the feedback from across team, and that's all on that same one page. So as you, your people fill this out, it turns into a one sheet for you. And this is where the time is used for all of your company. And these are your gaps. This is how all of your team is using their time on a weekly basis, spread out across those four areas of business. And then this is the feedback they're giving you. And so I think it's great, you know, take it out and go get a cup of coffee at a coffee shop, read it Top to bottom, and then write down the questions that you have and ways you can make it better from your perspective, and then empower a team, whether it's the collab team or your internal team or another consultant that you might find that can come in and help you hotspot those pain points you have. But like they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And I find so many visionaries just live in this frustration cycle that they never shake out of because they're not really addressing root issues. They're addressing the things that they cherry pick and feel like they can fix instead of like, oh no, let's get down to the root, let's solve this thing. So any final words from you gentlemen? Brandon, I know you've been in a lot of different companies. You've been in a lot of different kinds of companies. Any common things that you can maybe speak to visionaries of? This is where I consistently see people get stuck.
- [19:25]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the biggest things is the three questions that we ask at the end. I think the biggest wins. I love that one. Because we wanted to know like what, like what wins could we help you with? But a lot of people will show you what their motivations are. Like, hey, like we, we freaking redid this one thing. And you can see what the individual is passionate about and really how, like what, what's their spark? And so we can really tailor and get in with them and be like, okay, like tell me, tell me more. You can see what lights them up and what they're passionate about and why they love their job. Because a lot of people, I feel like they, they get in the grind and they're doing all the things, but you know, to see the spark and why someone enjoys what they do is really, really key.
- [20:07]
A
I think that Dan Martell, you know, who's a, a big thought leader in the space, I think recently wrote a book called Buy Back youk Time or something. Like, I don't know if you guys remember that book title off top of your head. But anyway, he wrote a great book about how to get back time. But he's very well respected in the online coaching space especially. So he's developed SaaS products, he growing company. He did this thing that I thought was so smart and he said, hey, what's your five year goal? Like where do you want to get to in five years? Do yourself a favor, put that picture on your screen. Put a picture of whatever that five year goal is that you want to get to put it on your screensaver on your phone because that's going to be a continual reminder every time you open up your phone where you want to be in five years. And then he said he'll walk by, he'll walk through the office and when people aren't paying attention, they'll touch their screen on their phone so he can kind of scope what they're doing five year goals are or whatever and like it keeps a tab on like what motivates people. Maybe it's this really nice car. Maybe it's this house on, on the cliffs. Maybe it's whatever it is that's motivating them. And then Dan said he'll meet with his people and he'll say, talk to me about what your five year goal is. Awesome. If you'll give me five years of your time here, I'll help you get to that goal. Like I'll give you whatever power I can offer to get you to that goal. And I realize you're not going to be with me forever. How can I motivate you to perform well over the next five years and let me help you get to your goal too. So I think you're right. Brandon, like hearing what makes what light people up, what makes people feel like it's a win. Super important. Ops Experts, hope you enjoyed our show today. Brandon, thanks for joining us. Taryn, thanks always for being amazing. Wearing another one of my favorite sweaters and one of my favorite hats and give me some dance move topics and really just teaching at the beginning and Ops Experts, we'll see you here next week on Ops Experts Club.
- [21:43]
B
I I push stop.
- [21:44]
A
It's saying no.
- [21:45]
B
It's just not stopping. I think it's we got some lag.
- [21:47]
A
Says Taran Turner's too good for that. I love it that we're all trapped here. None of us can leave either because we're all still uploading.
- [21:53]
C
Is that 99% mine too?
- [21:56]
A
We've never had this problem before. Taran.
- [21:58]
B
No.
- [21:58]
C
Do I click the leave button?
- [21:59]
A
Does it let you try hitting leave and see what it'll do? Brandon's gone. Do you want me to try and leave?
- [22:04]
B
Are you Safe?
- [22:04]
A
I'm at 9. 99%. It'll warn me if I try and leave. It'll tell me to come back. I'm going to leave and I'll come back.