117. Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Summary

The Ops Experts Club Podcast | Episode 117: "Are You Asking the Right Questions?" Published: June 11, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this compelling episode, The Collab Team (Aaron, Terryn, Savannah, and others) dives into a topic fundamental to sustainable business growth: the power and necessity of asking the right questions within your organization. The group shares personal stories, strategic frameworks, and operational tactics they've used to help 7 and 8-figure businesses run more efficiently by regularly auditing people, processes, and technology. They focus on challenging assumptions, eliminating wasted effort, and leveraging tools like AI and their in-house Gap Analyzer to maximize productivity and profitability.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Evaluating and Auditing Your Team: Making It Routine

• Businesses often overlook regular, structured evaluations, letting inefficiencies creep in—much like the "grass season" analogy Terryn uses, where lack of attention leads to unmanageable overgrowth.
  • Quote: “If you're not putting time and attention into it, things can migrate and shift quickly, especially in a fast moving company.” — Terryn, [02:43]
• The hosts emphasize the importance of taking an intentional inventory of tasks and responsibilities to avoid unnecessary "grind" or expensive assumptions.

2. Challenging Established Business Models

• Using real client examples (e.g., Pete Vargas' Advanced Reach), they highlight how businesses often assume their current way of working is the best, even when profitability stagnates or declines.
  • Quote: “They made a shift and the shift was: let's get away from the lower ticketed stuff and let's try and lean into higher ticketed things. Fewer customers.” — Host, [03:38]
• Regularly questioning your service or product mix can unveil opportunities to either "do less for more" or "expand with lighter expectations."

3. Leveraging Tech and Automations: The Human Touchpoint Audit

• Teams often hang on to manual tasks that could be automated, wasting precious labor dollars and employee energy.
  • Quote: “I always end up seeing when I'm reviewing gap analyzer results are some human touch points that don't need to be human touch points anymore...Why are you spending an hour on this every day? We can easily cut that down to spend 30 minutes a week just checking on it, not doing it.” — Terryn, [05:19]
• The team outlines practical know-how by hosting internal "show & tell" channels (using Voxer) for sharing automation and AI wins.
• Examples included Asana bi-weekly report automations and custom finance apps for handling image-based expense records.

4. Real-World Automation Case Studies

• Faith, a team member, builds a custom app to streamline expense photo uploads for QuickBooks, slashing manual work (and errors).
• Terryn shares tips for integrating APIs in Google Sheets to automate business workflows without expensive token fees.
  • Quote: “I've been doing a lot of APIs built directly into Google sheets because they'll do your API calls for you with scripts for free...” — Terryn, [09:04]

5. The "Gap Analyzer" Framework and the Power of Inventory

• Auditing people’s time with tools like the Gap Analyzer uncovers:
  • Duplicate or unnecessary tasks
  • Opportunities to consolidate roles
  • Over- or under-utilized assets in the team
• The team recommends running regular, quick audits (their tool takes just 15 minutes per person) to spot gaps and overlaps, then “delegate and elevate” people accordingly.
  • Quote: “If you're not consistently taking inventory, asking the questions, then I think it's easy just to fall into the trap of year over year, we do the same thing, and then it just becomes a grind. I think that innovation is what keeps people inspired.” — Host, [10:39]

6. Rethinking Hiring and Overwhelm

• Not all overwhelm is a hiring problem; often, it’s a “wrong task” problem.
  • Quote: “Everybody's like, I'm super overwhelmed. But what if they're overwhelmed doing a bunch of things that you don't want them doing anymore?” — Host, [11:39]
• Consider whether current tasks should be stopped or reassigned before growing headcount.

7. Using AI for Quality Control and People Management

• The team references Chandler Bolt’s use of AI to review and score sales calls, freeing up managers for high-value coaching instead of repetitive auditing.
• Modern AI tools provide real-time feedback and scores, helping managers focus on performance trends rather than isolated mistakes.
  • Quote: “Let's take the mind numbing stuff off there. Let's put it through something that the machine can help with the lift. And then you can be the one that motivates the people based upon their scorecard that's dished out and it can be happening in real time.” — Host, [13:34]
• Auditing should be honest and balanced to prevent negative cultures based on occasional mistakes.
  • Quote: “That's dangerous. Then your whole culture becomes one of like, why are you not...instead of celebrating the good.” — Host, [14:32]

8. Free Tools and Calls to Action

• The Gap Analyzer (full and quiz versions) is available for teams to quickly assess where efficiencies can be gained:
  • Full version: GapAnalyzer.com
  • Free quiz: GapAnalyzer.com/gapquiz
• The tool measures your business fitness on a “red light/yellow light/green light” scale, providing actionable tips based on team input.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:26] – Framing the episode: The importance of asking the right questions
• [02:31] – The “grass growing” analogy for business process neglect
• [03:34] – Pete Vargas example: Challenging business model assumptions
• [05:19] – Identifying and automating unnecessary human touch points
• [06:00] – Creating an internal “AI show and tell” for sharing wins
• [08:15] – Real-life automation case: Photos to QuickBooks
• [09:04] – Using free Google Sheets API scripting
• [10:14] – How the Gap Analyzer works and its impact on teams
• [11:30] – Discussing KPIs and whether employees are doing the right jobs
• [12:24] – The hiring paradox: Task audits might negate new hires
• [12:58] – Chandler Bolt’s AI use case for sales management
• [14:32] – Building a positive performance audit culture
• [15:00] – Where to access Gap Analyzer and free tools

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Are you asking the right questions?" – the central theme, repeated for emphasis across the episode.
• "Why are you spending an hour on this every day? We can easily cut that down…" – [05:19], on identifying inefficient work.
• "If you're not consistently taking inventory, asking the questions, then I think it's easy just to fall into the trap of year over year, we do the same thing, and then it just becomes a grind." – [10:39], on the risk of complacency.
• "I always feel like you end up in a situation where you had like nine great sales calls, and the one they decided to audit was the one that didn't really go very well. And so you just get reprimanded instead of congratulated." – [14:20], on the pitfalls of biased performance reviews.
• "Two different ways to make money, right, is by actually doing more in sales or in cutting your costs. Both of them are going to grow your bank account." – [12:24], on dual strategies for profitability.

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Summary

Episode 117 is a masterclass for both operators and owners, reinforcing that scaling a business isn’t just about more sales—it’s about introspection, asking better questions, and systematically removing waste. The Collab Team urges listeners to make auditing routine, embrace technology, reconsider traditional hiring responses to “overwhelm,” and leverage tools like their Gap Analyzer. Honest assessments and a willingness to challenge norms can transform not only profitability but team engagement and culture.

Recommended Next Steps: Audit your own processes, check out the team’s free Gap Quiz, and never stop asking: am I asking the right questions?

Transcript

[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.

[B]

Or if you just want to know

[A]

more about us, click the links below. Now onto the episode.

[B]

Yes. Darren Turner, OPS Experts Club. How we doing, brother? How's the day?

[C]

Going strong, Darren.

[B]

So seriously, something cool from the farm. Something that people like. Like most people listen to these shows. Do they work in the farm? Like Taren's out there working the farm. Like, give us some good trivia, some good things, some fun TAs, some cool duties, late chores. Like some good, dude, bring us some good from the farm.

[C]

It's. It's grass season. I hate grass. You, like, close your eyes for a minute and you just got grass six feet tall everywhere and you got to take care of it.

[B]

You turn into hay. Is it that kind of grass? No, just mowing. Just mowing grass. Do you have a big mower that you ride or did you use the tractor?

[C]

Both.

[D]

Dude, I know it. Dude, I knew it.

[B]

Dude, I could tell by the way you said it that you were at least excited that you got to ride the tractor. Yeah, Taryn Turner too. Like firefighter. Like, that's something our people don't know yet. Dude, it's just like volunteer firefighter Taryn Turner. That's what he does.

[C]

Yep, yep, Almost there.

[D]

I just want to know what can Taryn Turner not do?

[B]

AI expert. Just digging into stuff, creating cool automations, mowing fields with a tractor and getting his EMT fallen. Volunteer firefighter. What?

[D]

I'm impressed.

[C]

Social media. That's still on my no list.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. I want you to do more social media tiktoks.

[B]

Okay. So, Taryn, today I thought we could talk about the benefits of evaluating your people for the sake of asking the right questions. I think that today's show should probably

[D]

be called are you asking the right questions?

[B]

I think a lot of times in our businesses, a lot of times with the clients that we serve, you know, we're under the hood of so many different kinds of businesses. You know, we've got attorney clients, we've got brewery clients, we've got online marketer clients. You know, we've got, we just picked

[D]

up a, a septic company.

[B]

Like, I mean, we're, we're doing all kinds of operations for the craziest stuff, red light therapy. Like, we, we've got, I mean, we've got so many different people. We do ops for so many different kinds of things. But the, one of the biggest aha moments I watch people come to when they go through the gap analyzer especially, you know, because we take all of our clients to the gap analyzer to help take an inventory of their people. And how are people using their time and is this the way that you want your people to use their time? I think that one of the best gifts that gives people is asking questions that they've stopped thinking about or may, maybe they just haven't thought about. You know, they just assumed this is always gonna be the business and it's not necessarily there. There are good challenges that can come from taking inventory and asking the hard questions. What are your thoughts on that?

[C]

Yeah, I think it's one of those things, it just gets fatigued or one of those things you don't look at it every so often and before you know it, you got six foot tall grass. You just.

[B]

That's it. Good analogy.

[C]

If, if you're not putting time and attention into it, things can migrate and shift quickly, especially in a fast moving company.

[B]

Think something I watched Pete do years ago, Pete Vargas with Advanced Reach, you know, he's doing all these workshops, all these workshops and assuming like this is the way that you make money. This is the, this how, you know, they had been doing really well. They were, you know, just killing it at these workshops, teaching people how to like craft their message and then get that message in onto stage and then from the stage, being able to scale beyond the stage. And they have these, all these workshops. But workshops take a lot of manpower and workshops take a lot of commitment. With hotels, you know, like you're, you're a lot of reservation costs and like it. There are a lot of things that come alongside with a lot of assumptions from the people that come to these events on what should be included. And so, you know, they, this was their business model and yeah, they were making great top line money from it,

[D]

but bottom line, I think they just

[B]

assumed this way they'd always do it

[D]

and it just wasn't as profitable as they thought it was. And they made a shift and the shift was let's get away from the lower ticketed stuff and let's try and lean into higher ticketed things. Fewer customers.

[B]

And I think that's something a lot

[D]

of people just assume.

[B]

Like whatever our offering is right now, it's just an example. Not everybody can do that. But thinking through, as commodities rise, as things rise, are we at a time for a price check? Are we at a time to challenge our business model on would it Be better for us if we had fewer clients that paid us more. Or maybe it's the reverse. Maybe your clients pay you a lot and you're like, but would it make better sense for us to shrink down the expectations and expand up, like the number of clients? But a lot of those questions. It's really hard to see the forest for the trees when you're just out there running and gunning. And so I think that doing an audit, doing some sort of opportunity where

[D]

you take an inventory of. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. One of our biggest line items on our P and L is labor. How are we using that labor instead

[B]

of just always carrying the anxiety of,

[D]

dude, it's payday, man.

[B]

How are the bank accounts looking? That's such a big bite out of

[D]

our monthly annual budget. Like, I think it's really important to do, really important to ask yourself, are there big shifts? Are there big changes? Could there be things that we could alter for the sake of making things more profitable?

[C]

Yeah, it's a great way to look at it.

[B]

Taran. I know we're also in an era

[D]

right now where AI is obviously taking more and more ground. And we've talked about several times in the last several weeks worth of shows, different topics. You know, we talked about it with it from an accounting perspective with Tabby a few weeks back. You know, we talked about it, it. Some of the things you and Ben have been developing. I think that's also an opportunity where you take a gap analyzer and if you're inventorying how much time things take people, a good opportunity to also battle test.

[B]

Is this someplace that we should plug in automations? Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

[C]

Yeah. I always end up seeing when I'm reviewing gap analyzer results are some human touch points that don't need to be human touch points anymore. Experienced a lot of situations where people are manually filling out, you know, customer service records or customer databases or fulfillment steps. There's just way too many human touch points. And that becomes very clear when we're. We're reviewing their gap analyzer. Like, why are you spending an hour on this every day? We can easily cut that down to spend 30 minutes a week just checking on it, not doing it. So, yeah, we do end up seeing a lot of places that can be streamlined.

[D]

Yeah, I think that I was just

[B]

watching Ben, you know, we've got this channel. If you haven't done something like this,

[D]

I think it's a really good thing to do with your team is you know, we started this channel in Voxer where we.

[B]

And we invited all the team, hey, any of you that are out there playing with AI within the company, do me a favor. I'm going to start this Voxer. We'll drop you in it if you want to be a part of it. But this is just like a show and tell. Show us some of the stuff you've been doing. Like, show us ways that you're actually cutting down and making more efficient and taking the burden off of you to produce something and putting that into an automated sequence, putting that into a way that AI could help you. And I know Ben just pushed us

[D]

over in that channel just today. A way that he does a bi weekly report for me in Asana where he has to show me profitability on the accounts he's responsible for. And he had allowed AI to build the code, to be able to pull it from the sheets that he has to populate it into the Asana task and, you know, tell me all the things I want to know without him having to get involved. He just has to run, you know,

[B]

run the AI on that particular function, run that on the task. Are there cool things that you've been doing that you feel like, you know, it would be a benefit to share here of things that you've seen working lately? I know you're always working on cool stuff with the tech world and AI. I think it's good just to inspire people for some of the things you've seen work recently.

[C]

Yeah, I think a lot of the things I've been working on or seen other people work on is just quicker results with sheets and formulas, which I think has been pretty cool. Used to take a long time to try to handwrite all these formulas in sheets to do what you need to do. And so just being able to tell it what you want it to do and it just puts out the formulas for you, telling it to insert test data and double check itself too to make sure there's no issues or errors. You can have something done pretty quickly where you used to have to put things in and then find errors and then change everything and all this stuff. So it's been a fun one. I feel like we're all turning into Excel wizards because of that. Outside of that, I've been seeing a lot of custom builds utilizing code builders. So whatever you're using to build chat, Claude, Google Studio, there's different things people are using. It's allowing you to do cool things with code, which is pretty neat because there's a Lot of little things that can be done if you knew just a little amount of code. And now you don't need to know a little about a code. You just need to know that you want it to be done and that it can be done and how to implement it.

[B]

I know Faith created something pretty cool

[D]

recently that, from the finance world for

[B]

her where she, you know, Faith is on our team and she has a copy client that still sends in a lot of pictures for them to be like processing the right way. You know, I think probably anything like expensify, something like that usually is picture oriented at some level, but sometimes it can take a long time. So these folks just like load it into WhatsApp and then it's the accounting team's job to grab that, populate it

[D]

the right way and bring it into QuickBooks.

[B]

And she created a little app that

[D]

will drop all those pictures in, pull out exactly the things they want it to, that she needs for, or the report that she needs to be able to generate every single month and, you know, can just drop pictures in and it, just process it all for her. Something that she created herself, something that, you know, has, has saved her a ton of time. And so I think even creating apps, creating things that actually help with the lift is cool as well.

[C]

Yeah, I like seeing that. I've been doing a lot of APIs built directly into Google sheets because they'll do your API calls for you with scripts for free. You get, if you're a Google business user, you get a lot of API usage for free included with your account, so you don't have to go and pay for API tokens and API credits somewhere else.

[D]

I love it, but I think all

[B]

these things, right, all the things we're talking about, mindless tasks, things that take a lot of time, a lot of hunting, pecking, filling in spreadsheets, all the things we're talking about. Obviously you have to identify that those

[D]

things are still being done.

[B]

And a lot of times you may just forget that they're being done. I can't tell you how many people have been filling out reports for people that nobody has been looking at for a long time. But until you start taking an inventory of how your people are using their

[D]

time, it's easy for you just to

[B]

assume, oh yeah, I know what they do. But a lot of times your memory of what they do is, it's atrophied. Like things have progressed, things have moved on, other people have asked them to do things that are outside of your purview. You Know what I mean? And so they've just begun doing the thing, assuming that, well, this person was above me that asked me to do it. So I assume this, I'm doing a good job at what I'm doing.

[D]

And then it's not until you send

[B]

to the gap analyzer, which is great. The tool that we built literally just takes 15 minutes, your people's time in it categorically ask them, hey, how are you using your time on the daily, on the weekly, and on the monthly? And it rolls all time up together on your entire team to show you where there are gaps or overlaps on team? And then you can click in on the different areas of business and say, do I this many people working on this kind of a task, or would it be better for me to combine these two roles into this person and then roll this person out and use them for a more.

[D]

More efficient way of being able to be applied to the business? And I think that if you're not consistently taking inventory, asking the questions, then I think it's easy just to fall into the trap of year over year, we do the same thing, and then it just becomes a grind. I think that innovation is what keeps people inspired. And if you're not innovating, if it's always just the same thing over and over again, not only is the market going to get tired, you know, and changes and tech, but I think also your people, you know, they need to see themselves expanding into roles. And the only way you do that is take an inventory like the gap analyzer, and then do a delegate and elevate like delegate down the things that no longer require that person's brilliance. That's just send them up into best bang for the buck out of our people. And then let's create some KPIs around. What are the things that we want our people to be doing? What are our key performance indicators that tell me, is this person doing a good job? And let your people feel like, oh,

[B]

I'm doing a good job, but are they really?

[D]

Are they.

[B]

Are they even doing the right job?

[D]

Are we asking the right questions?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely.

[B]

When it comes to determining even what hiring should be done, I feel like that's another part of it, right? Like a lot of times everybody's like, I'm super overwhelmed. But what if they're overwhelmed doing a bunch of things that you don't want them doing anymore? Or if we had just taken it, like, we don't even need to hire, we don't even need them to do that anymore. Let alone go and go and find somebody else to do it. So I think that a lot of times we found that people are in some hiring craze thinking that all the

[D]

people are burning that one.

[B]

Really?

[D]

People just need to refocus.

[C]

Yeah. It's just like cutting your expenses, going through your old apps, your ghost apps you're still paying for but never using. It's one of the things you've told people to do and they're doing it because they're faithful employees that you meant for them to stop doing, but nobody ever told them to stop doing.

[B]

Right.

[D]

That's a good one. Yeah. Two different ways to make money, right, is by actually doing more in sales

[B]

or in cutting your costs. Both of them are going to grow your bank account. So either you can go knock down more sales, I'd encourage you to do that. But an equal way is how do I cut my cogs, how do I cut my cost of goods? And a lot of that can be like you said, technology.

[D]

But there also can be huge amounts of labor where it's like if we reposition things, could we use different. I was watching a podcast that Chandler Bolt did just last night. Chandler Bolt has a publishing company, self publishing.com that is amazing, does great with helping people get their books out there into the world.

[B]

But he was talking about how the way that they've been implementing AI by getting away from managers of sales managers, getting away from the function of them, like having to review sales calls because they've created actually their AI in such a way that they can drop in recordings. It'll assess like are these seven or eight points being hit? Give them a score based on these seven or eight things and then coach them up on things that they missed. And then the manager's job can now be. Can be elevated up from having to spot check a bunch of different sales calls because how many, how many of your salespeople are you going to actually be able to listen to their whole call and actually evaluate them?

[D]

Right.

[B]

Let's take the mind numbing stuff off there. Let's put it through, in through something that the machine can help with the lift. And then you can be the one that motivates the people based upon their scorecard that's dished out and it can be happening in real time. You know, he pulled up his screen and he showed how real time calls are going on right now. And he can say, Brian, right now is just did great on this and

[D]

didn't do great on this.

[B]

And he's able to pull it all apart in a way that it actually elevates the people that are overseeing our

[D]

doers to be able to coach them in the right ways. I thought that was genius, too.

[B]

Cause that's another one of those time sucks. It's just like listening to sales calls and trying to evaluate them, even coach people up. And then how frequent is that happening? And how long do we allow people

[D]

to stick around that they should have really been let go a long time ago because they're not doing a good

[B]

job and they're not performing well.

[C]

Yeah. I always feel like you end up in a situation where you had like nine great sales calls, and the one they decided to audit was the one that didn't really go very well. And so you just get reprimanded instead of congratulated.

[B]

That's right. Which is. That's dangerous. Right. Then your whole culture becomes one of like, why are you not. Instead of celebrating the good and allowing the proportions to be equitable. I mean, like, if you take an honest audit, that's all that's doing that. All that tool is doing is auditing calls. Take an honest audit, let them tell you what the scores are, and then coach them up.

[D]

And what you'll find is like, these.

[B]

This probably is a lot more good than bad, but a lot of times

[D]

we as people can focus on the

[B]

bad and especially if that's all you're seeing.

[D]

So I think thinking through things we created.

[B]

So gap analyzer.com is great if you

[D]

want to go check that out. You can purchase Gap Analyzer there if you just want it for free. We created an abbreviated test that's called gap analyzer.com forward slash, gapquiz that you can go ahead and take on your own.

[B]

That'll actually tell you where you're at in your growth cycle. Will tell you, hey, you. You really need to pour on the gas because you're doing amazing. There's the middle. Like, it's a red light, green light, yellow light. Right. The. As far as, like, probably red light, yellow light, green light is the three. And it shows you, like, your trend of red light. Hey, stop. You don't pour in any more gas. Like, we need to fix what's broken. Yellow is, hey, you're doing pretty good, but not too bad.

[D]

But we.

[B]

There are some things we need to fix. And then green lights, like, no pour on the gas. And so it'll score you based upon how you fill out.

[D]

And I think it's like a mean part question.

[B]

So if you want to check that out the gap was awesome. You know, we're in the middle of three gaps right now for three different

[D]

clients, all different kinds of businesses. But if you just want to take the quiz for free before, you know, you make a purchase, then we created that for you there so that you can get a pulse. The evaluation that comes out of the backside of that is very similar to what you're going to get out of the gap analyzer. Except for the gap analyzer is going to be a much more robust built out evaluation. But it'll tell you the fixes of people in that particular area of business who are scoring similar numbers as you and it'll give you some tips on how to get better. So Gap Analyzer.com GapQuiz is where you can find that. Other than that, I would strongly encourage if you have not audited your team recently, man, just put them through a simple audit. You know, like be thinking of ways that you can ask yourself, am I asking the right questions? Am I still? Is what I'm doing still relevant?

[B]

Are there things I need to shift

[D]

and tweak for the sake of saving more money instead of always thinking I have to grow more money? Because I think in the end that really is going to benefit you as a business owner more than you realize.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Karen Turner, thank you for joining me today for another episode of OP Experts Club. Thanks for joining us for another episode. We'll see you back here in the same place next week. ROPS Experts Club.