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- [00:01]
A
Hey, experts listeners, I want to key you into something that we do very special here at OPS Experts Club, and that's a masterclass. We have a free masterclass called Foundations that scale. And the great thing about this masterclass is it's for operation professionals who are growing businesses. One of the most dangerous things you can do as an operator is grow businesses on a foundations that's not stable. So in this particular masterclass, we take apart all of the inside pieces of your team, your tech and how they're using time, and we make sure that you're building on a foundation that's stable. So if you want to check out a great masterclass completely for free, go to foundationsthatscale.com. we'll see you there.
- [00:37]
B
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club with Aaron Taran and Savannah. This podcast will take you behind the scenes of some of the finer details of multimillion dollar companies. These ops experts have dealt with operations for scaling companies and well established businesses with anywhere from small to large teams. If you've ever been deep into the details of a major company, then you know how much it takes and these conversations are just for you. Welcome to the OPS Experts Club podcast.
- [01:09]
C
Whoo.
- [01:10]
D
Hey, Experts Club, I got a whoop for you guys in Aaron's absence. For those of you listening, you missed Aaron's whoop this week because Aaron is not on the call this week. Instead, we have fellow ops expert collab mate Ben Clatterbuck. Good day.
- [01:28]
C
Good day to you all. It's good to be here. Good to be here. Glad that I get to stand in for Aaron. I'm sure he's having a blast down in Belize right now, but it's. Yeah, it's nice to be standing for the week.
- [01:40]
D
Yeah. He's in his favorite spot with his favorite people. Not us. Unfortunately, I haven't been down.
- [01:46]
C
Let's see, we went to Belize two years ago. It was freaking. It's awesome. I love it down there. It'd be so. I would love. Except for the heat was pretty. Pretty wild. I mean, over on Coffee Experts Drew talks about all the time. We always make fun of him. Then we went down there and I was like, oh my God, it's hot down here.
- [02:04]
D
Yeah, A different feeling for sure. It's also one of those places I never even really heard anything about until Aaron started talking about it.
- [02:10]
C
No, it's true. Same here. Same here. And then he was like, yeah. And you know, everybody speaks English. English is the native tongue. I was like, wait, where is police? Is this a weird place?
- [02:20]
D
You're talking about. Yeah. Well, that's great, Aaron. Hope you are having a blast there as you listen to this in the future. But today there's us and one thing we've got going on in our world, which is a pretty usual cycle and we're just hitting one right now with a couple different clients, is migrating away, offboarding clients. Of course with our business model, we kind of lean towards this direction anyways. We don't try to be permanent solutions. We do have people that keep us for years to fill some roles. Outside of that, we like to get in there, do our thing and you know, uplift the business to be able to take on what they can do on their own at some point. So that means at some point we will be off boarding. Yeah. Kind of the end of the client journey, which be a happy sad moment for the right reason.
- [03:17]
C
Yeah. We've had such great clients over the years too.
- [03:19]
D
It's.
- [03:19]
C
It is. It, it is a little sad sometimes when, when you have to say goodbye, you forget. I mean I, I've had clients who bought, you know, when my kiddo was born, sent me like, you know, baby clothes from Amazon. Like just great clients. And then, and then at some point they're like, hey, you know what? I think we got this. You're like, oh, it's offboarding time. A sad day.
- [03:41]
D
Yep. Yeah. And so that's the, the good scenario is when they've got this and they are ready to just graduate into their own little world. And at that point we do our best to off board and set them up even better than when we started. Because how you leave a client is sometimes more important than how you started with a client. And that's going to say a lot about who you are as a company. If you work with clients and whether or not they're going to refer you to other people.
- [04:10]
C
Yeah. I mean even it's. It's a good habit to get into just doing it. Well, because I mean it always, when you're the one doing the off boarding, it's not as bad as if you're the one who's being off boarded and it's not done well. If you're the one who's saying, okay, see you later. Yeah, it's that that's not a great way to do it and it probably sucks. But if, if you're the one who's like losing a contractor or losing a vendor and they just disappear on you or don't off board, well, that's when you're like, oh shoot, this sucks.
- [04:41]
D
Yeah, I know. I've, I've worked with many clients and had to be the one to get rid of contractors. And it always goes one of two ways. It's just like, you get a reply and it's like, okay, it's radio silence and they're gone. Or you get a reply and it's like, awesome. What do I need to do to finish this out before we move on and part ways? And yeah, taking that high road, there is going to be whether or not we give that contractor a testimonial, refer them out to other people.
- [05:08]
C
Absolutely.
- [05:09]
D
It's going to say a lot. So at the collab team, that's us, we do our best. You ready to move on? Absolutely. Let's jump on a call, let's see what we're in the middle of, let's get a list going, let's see what projects we can absolutely finish in the next month. We always like to just do a 30 day, you know, give us 30 day notice just so we can finish strong. I mean, of course, you know, people can do what they want and just ask us to stop working. If it's a payment issue and they can't afford it, that's fine too. But we do the 30 days just because we want to be able to finish strong. And if we have that notice, we know what we're working towards in the next 30 days.
- [05:46]
C
Especially since typically at that point gearing more towards the end of the life cycle with a client, hopefully up to that point, we've soped out everything that we've taken on. You know, we've probably at that point hired a couple positions that will begin fulfilling what, what we were doing. The reason why we were brought in in the first place is, you know, maybe you've lost, you know, your head of finance, or maybe you've lost your head of operations, or maybe you're just growing so fast you don't have any of those, so you need some like temporary, like quick come in and help out. So ideally, you know, at that, at the point of the end of the life cycle, we've hired out those positions, we've probably onboarded them, started doing some training with them, handed over materials. So really what we're doing is just, you know, towards the end of it is just keeping those projects going or, or running a few more projects that nobody has time to do. So if you give us a little bit of time to say, okay, here's what we're working on, it's a, you know, if we're done in the third next 30 days. That should give us enough time to either wrap this project up or at least wrap it up enough to be able to hand it off to that position that we just hired for so that they can then carry forward this project if it's a quarterly rock, or if it's, you know, you know, working on maintaining some certain systems. At least that gives us the time to say, here's how you need to maintain this going forward, or here's as far as we could get in our time, and here's what you need to do to finish out this rock or this major project after we leave. But if you, I mean, if you just cut it off and just say, hey, we don't need you guys, you know, we're going to end this now, that's totally fine and doable. It's just, you kind of have to know on your end too, as the client, that you may not get that perfectly wrapped, you know, little present gifted to your team.
- [07:24]
D
It's.
- [07:24]
C
It's going to be a little bit of work with them trying to figure out what we were doing and then keep that moving forward. So that I always advocate for. Just give us a little extra time to wrap everything up for you.
- [07:35]
D
Yeah, absolutely. And they might not understand we're not just sitting around waiting for work like we might be in the middle of five, six different projects at any time or somebody. And so just being able to wrap those up, make it work, complete it, organize it, you know, get it to them is. Is a great feeling for us too. Not just for their benefit. And another thing we had to do to we. We sent off a list. Here's everything we're in the middle of. And we won't be able to finish this in the next 30 days due to our hours we have with you. So what would you like us to prioritize? So I kind of put it in their court and lets them get the choice of, okay, these are the three things I would love for you to complete by the end of the month.
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C
One thing I like to typically do too, and I think it's one of those things that you don't think of if you're not used to offboarding clients. You don't think of it until it's probably too late. But most of what we do and how we work is through Google Workspace, right? So we're creating a lot of documents, SOPs, sheets, whatever it may be, just overall assets. And if those are kept within our own works workspace or G suite, then if you offboard us, or if you, you know, if you're being offboarded, all of those files stay with us, which you as a client don't want. So I think it's super important if you're ever in the sort of space that we are, where you're an operations team, where you're helping operationally to make sure that every asset that's made by you is be. Is owned or can be transferred to the, you know, the client that you're working for. A lot of what I'll do is recommend if we do get that, hey, you know, we're going to be ending the contract in 30 days, first thing I'll do is, okay, great, awesome. Can you create a shared drive that I can transfer everything that we've created over into share with us. That way I can actually transfer ownership to you. And then when you, you know, get rid of our logins, get rid of our, you know, company emails, you don't just like, lose everything. Because I found out a long time ago that if you create something inside Google, you can't transfer ownership of it to somebody outside of your organization. So if you just cut us, all of those sops just get sent nowhere. Or, you know, you have to download folders and Excels and Word docs, zip them all up, and it just makes it a hassle. So if you're ever in our position where clients are saying, hey, we don't need you anymore, we've got it from here, make sure that shared drive is, is created. And if you're on the client side, and if you're working with an operations team or you're working with us for, for any reason, if they, if they don't recommend it, just make sure that you create a shared drive that you can share with that team that you're working with so that all of those assets can be transferred and you don't risk losing anything.
- [10:19]
D
Yep. You can also make copies. You know, it's, give them, give them a folder and say, here, make a copy of this entire folder added to your own ecosystem. You can be double sure that way. But yeah, we, we do a lot of files here, especially building out SOPs. We don't always get our own user accounts for clients.
- [10:37]
C
Yep.
- [10:38]
D
Because those kind of costs add up. So file handoff is a big one for sure. And that's a great approach to take for it. You know, another one that we'll do is the simple moles rate, moles, migration roles, migration list. And it can be real simple. The way we built it out and if you'd like a copy, I'm sure we can get you one. If you comment roles, migration or moles migration, we'll get it your way. And, and yeah, it's just, what's the task, you know, what's the frequency, how long does it take, any notes and then that's it. You can hand it off that way. Or there's another column that says who's going to do it next.
- [11:21]
C
Yep.
- [11:21]
D
There's also another column for an sop. If it's got an SOP link, you can have that in there, but it can get more complex from there. But at the very least it's just what you do and how often. And that's our starting list of, okay, here's what we're in charge of. Here's what you're going to need to get filled by the time we leave.
- [11:41]
C
Yeah, and, and typically I've seen that take off to a. Okay, I'll ask you before you go, can we do one more recruiting project? Because obviously what you guys are doing is, hasn't been quite filled yet, which is totally fine. And then, and then from there, you know, the client's usually like, okay, 30 days. Might have been a little aggressive. Maybe, maybe we end our contract at end of next quarter because obviously, you know, we've got a ton of duties that need to be tasked out and you know, if we have, you know, hired, but we're still holding a lot of routine duties, then, you know, we go back to the, the original delegate and elevate and say, okay, who, who can take these tasks on or these duties on if they can't? You know, if the collab has been holding so many tasks and duties that it then requires another position to be filled, great, we'll recruit for that and then again on board and then that's, that's the. Then you can get rid of us.
- [12:34]
D
Yep, yep. And our goal is just as always, for the client to be set up as successful as possible. So that's where we work from. That's where any good vendor contractor should work from. You know, our name is, is pretty gold in this area and in this industry, and we like to keep it that way. And we like to, of course, be available afterwards too. I get questions from people all the time. Different clients or different employees of different clients just asking for a help, a quick document, they can't find, a tip, piece of advice, anything like that. And just being available is really supportive to them in those first few months afterwards too.
- [13:15]
C
I think that's a. You bring up a really good point. Actually made me think when you, as you know, a company who's looking to hire an operations team or operational help, I think it's a really good idea to ask them about what does offboarding look like? Just like, right up front, if you ask us that, we'll say everything we've already said. But if you're looking to bring an operations team and you say, you know before you even sign the contract, what does offboarding look like? How long does the contract? What does offboarding look like? What does that look like? If I'm not happy with their services, what does that look like? If, you know, we have to extend your services and if they don't really have any answers for what does offboarding look like, I wouldn't call it a deal breaker, but I'd be a little concerned because obviously if I'm hiring you and not hiring an internal position, it means I don't want you as a permanent team member. So at some point we are going to have the conversation of, you know, okay, your services are no longer needed. And, and if you don't have an answer from me on what does offboarding look like, I would be concerned that you're going to just be, you know, okay, see you later. You know, we're not getting paid anymore. We're taking everything with us and we're gone. Hopefully, you know, teams wouldn't be like that just for reputation's sake. But I think that's, I think that's a good question to ask if you're looking to hire on any, any sort of contractor like that. Know, just be upfront and frank with them. Okay. What does it look like when, when we're done here?
- [14:32]
D
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's not a bad thing. And it's almost like, you know, what's, what's our definition of done here when we're done with you too? It's, it's something we have, you know, definition of done working with the collab team. That's why we kind of have 6 to 12 months commitment is, you know, we want there to be a definition of done. We want there to be an endpoint. And you can ask us how we're going to off board and we'll have some good answers for you. As we're discussing here, we can even point this episode and say, here's how we. Offboard. Here's what.
- [15:05]
C
No, it's true. It's. I mean, every, every company. I mean, it's great to bring in Contractors and it's great to bring in vendors to, you know, kind of snipe and, and really go after issues that you have. But again, like, you want those people in the long term internally on your team that you can work with. I mean, we've, we work with a few clients who have, who work with not only us as contractors, but other outside contractors. And they're great for, for working through tasks needed. They're great for, if, you know, you need contractors for your, for your tech stack who, who are really smart in that tech stack. Those are, they could do a lot of great work for you, but they'll never have the, the drive to make your company succeed as much as an internal team player would, you know, just, just for the very nature of, you know, they don't work for you, they work for somebody else. So it's always more beneficial to have internal team. And we'll always advocate for, you know, having, you know, bringing us on board. But that's only because we will push you to say, you know, try and push you in the direction of, hey, we're not here forever, six to 12 months. If you need us longer than that, great. Of course we're not going to say no. But our aim is to always push you in the direction of get yourself an internal team. We're here to bolster you until you can get to that point so that you have, you know, people on your team that are really, really laser focused on your company.
- [16:25]
D
Yeah, for sure. You have any horror stories from, from off boarding, any contractors? Oh man, Yeah.
- [16:33]
C
I mean I've, I've, I've had clients who in the past who, you know, just ghosted us. It wasn't the other way around. Try to communicate with them and just don't hear anything until finally an email comes across a few weeks later saying, hey, we don't need your services anymore. We won't be meeting next week. And you go, okay, then, well, here's everything I had. That's kind of that one where it's like, well, here's everything that we were in the middle of. Point me to who I can send this over to to try and get stuff done. That's been, that's been a big one. That was a big one. There are horror stories of offboarding. I think that's, that's really the, the worst one I've had. I've had clients in the past where the off boarding kind of just drags out, where it's kind of like that we're going to end our contract in 30 days. And then it's like the 30 days where we're like, okay, here's everything we're working on. And it's kind of that same one. They're like, well, actually maybe two more weeks, maybe three more weeks, maybe four more. And it kind of drags out that, like, that some point we have to go, okay, do you guys want us here or not? Just give us a set answer. Because we can't do, okay, we're done in 30 days. No, wait two more weeks. No, wait. No, wait three more weeks. No, wait, four more weeks. That just. That. That's tough to work around that because we're constantly like, okay, here's what I've been working on for two weeks and hand it off. Oh, wait, here's what I'm working on for the last three weeks and hand it off. So those are the two big ones. It's either the client just completely disappears, or the client wants to off board, but just kind of is. Is scared to, I guess, would be the essence.
- [18:06]
D
Yeah, that's a good one, I think. We had a client recently we're working with, and they stopped using a vendor. And the vendor was saying they. They were owed some payments and was keeping all of the digital files that they had.
- [18:24]
C
Oh, that's rough.
- [18:26]
D
Until the payment finished. And the headache was they did not have a clear financial system in place, so determining whether or not they were right or wrong about payments was a mystery.
- [18:36]
C
That's rough.
- [18:37]
D
Yeah.
- [18:38]
C
And the sucky thing about that is both parties are kind of in the right, and both parties could be in the wrong, too. And that's where it comes down to, like, what is that initial agreement that you signed with the vendor? You know, we own all assets. Or is it we own all assets as long as payment is fully made. Like, there's a lot of contract intricacies there that could get you in trouble if you're not careful.
- [19:03]
D
Yeah, for sure. Yep. And it resolved over time just by paying them and they got their raw footage files and everybody went their separate ways and nobody got a referral.
- [19:17]
C
That. Yeah, right. That is the kind of the. I mean, that's the. That. That's the. The dangerous game you play with with places like Fiverr these days, where it's like. It's really nice because, like, I could get a videographer in, like, 30 minutes. But the problem is, like, the marketplace on fiber is so huge that you're kind of going based off of reviews from other people who have contracted their work, but you never really know and if their contracts, you know, super different to what you're used to seeing you just sign and agree. Like it's just, it's kind. It can be a toss up and you can end up in situations like that where somebody's done, you know, a bunch of photos from one of your events or a video from one of your events, or they're, you know, creating a, an email campaign or something and, and there's a little disagreement and all of a sudden all of that, you know, if we lose all the pictures for their, for a live event we just did, that would suck. Like we have no, like all of our social marketing is just down the drain. So Fiverr and, and, and platforms are like that are great because they make picking up contractors super, super quick and easy and convenient. But again, it doesn't beat having an internal team member in that place instead.
- [20:33]
D
Yep. Yeah. So I mean, you know, we talked about how we would off board but if you're offboarding a client, make sure, you know, you go back to that contract. What did that contract say before you off board? Be clear, what's the expectation there to. They might have a 30 day notice too. Yeah. Which is fine. It's pretty standard. They might not. But at the end of the day too. What have you paid them? Are you paying them forward? Are you paying them behind? So are you paying them for work they haven't done yet or for work they did in our billing for. That's a big one too. Yeah. And on our end, you know, files, access, meetings, task list roles, migration, making sure all that's organized, sent over to the client SOPs of anything we're doing account ownership, making sure we don't own anything ourselves. You know, all that stays with the client.
- [21:26]
C
Yeah. Account migration, that's a big one too because we'll, you know, as we're working with clients, you know, and signing up for new platforms or creating new platform logins, that's a really big one that can easily slip your mind of like. Oh no, your. That's right. We, we signed up for your help desk under a collab email. Not your email. We should probably make sure that we get those logins changed and over to you.
- [21:52]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. That's a, that's an easy one to miss for sure.
- [21:56]
C
Mm.
- [21:57]
D
But you learned from that. We learned not to do that anymore. And never set up texting your own phone number.
- [22:04]
C
Two factor authentication. There's another one.
- [22:07]
D
Oh man. Oh yeah. The things you learn over the years.
- [22:12]
C
It is true.
- [22:14]
D
I get you. Well, that was good. That was a nice discussion on offboarding.
- [22:20]
C
It was fun.
- [22:21]
D
Yeah, it was nice to be here. Good. I'm glad. I think Aaron keeps traveling. We get some more guest appearances from Ben. Or you can go over to Coffee Experts Club. Check out Ben every week. Talking coffee with Drew all week.
- [22:36]
C
Every week.
- [22:37]
D
Yeah, it's fun. It's a fun little place over there, too. Kind of like Ops Experts, Just Coffee Experts, which. There's Ops and coffee, too.
- [22:45]
C
That's true. That's true. The worlds are actually much more similar than you'd think.
- [22:51]
D
Yeah. There's just a lot more hard cost of goods on that side.
- [22:55]
C
It's easier to count. Oh, yeah.
- [23:00]
D
Awesome. Well, thanks, Ben, for jumping in. We appreciate it. And Ops Experts people. We'll see you again next week.
- [23:09]
B
Thank you for tuning in to the Ops Experts Club podcast. New episodes available every week on Spotify, itunes, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. If you're curious about how some of the biggest names in entrepreneurship have scaled their businesses to the next level, check out some of our best content on this topic by going to foundations@scale.com. you can find the link in our bio and do your part to improve as an OPS Expert.