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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 chair. Maybe we should trade. Maybe we should take turns doing that. Because now, like, I feel like I piloted it and now, I mean, I could delegate. Elevated. Dumb.
- [00:25]
B
That sounds great. You know, I'd love that. I think I'm getting it down. My pitch is not quite as beautiful as yours, but I can do my best.
- [00:33]
A
Wow. That man. That's not the way I feel about it. So I'm glad you verbalized that because I just want to affirm you. Your pitch is beautiful. I think it's amazing.
- [00:39]
B
Is it Pitch Perfect?
- [00:41]
A
It is. Which is an amazing movie. Taren, I don't know how much you watch rom coms, but I'm telling you what, Pitch Perfect is one of those ones where it's. I could watch that over and over again. Those girls kick butt and take names. Now, Pitch Perfect three, was it as good as one and two? It wasn't quite. And did they lose a little speed, everyone? They added on to number one. They did, but it still is amazing.
- [00:59]
B
I've never seen it.
- [01:00]
A
Well, Taryn, do yourself a favor. You and Lauren would love it. All right, Ops Experts, we're here today to talk to you about annual planning retrospective Taryn and I were talking about before the show, how, you know, we just got back from annual planning a little over a week ago, and we talked about annual planning a couple weeks ago, coming into it. But sometimes it can be really theoretical, right? And maybe you have a hard time visualizing what's that going to look like? And what kind of things do we even talk about? And do I have enough content? Is that just going to put a bunch of pressure on me to have to come up with content? We thought it would be great to pull back the veil a little bit, show you what our annual planning topics were, some of the things that came out of it, and some of the retrospective on what we can really appreciate of how that lined out for quarter four and tees us up into quarter one and on throughout 2026. Terence, that sounds good to you?
- [01:45]
B
That sounds great to me. And I think it's a. It's a good caveat to say you can do your annual planning whenever you want. We choose to do it now just because sometimes our calendar fills up in quarter four. Helping out with clients, annual plannings. But you can do it now. You can do it November, December. We've done them in January. Anytime you want.
- [02:02]
A
Yep. So I think that. And just a shameless plug on. If you're looking for resources for your own annual planning and how that should look, you can just go to planning 2026 and I give you all of our resources for free. So planning2026.com will give you all of our resources for free. So as we met, we take our team up to Montana. We talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago, how it started, just me and Taran. Taran. Just very early collab team days came here to my house, and we spent a half day, and then it turned into a full day, and then it turned into the. Well, let's bring the rest of the leadership team into it and just do it by Zoom. And we did it for a half day on Zoom. And then, you know, it has morphed into. Now we do an off site. And so we went up to Montana. Dad's got a vacation home up there right on the river. And we got to go spend some time. And I think in retrospective, I mean, it was just so good. I think first of all, to put everybody in the same space. If you're an online team, if you're a virtual team, it's just nice to get in the same room. I think sometimes you can take that for granted, you know, So I had never met one of the ladies on our leadership team. She just added. We just added her this past year onto leadership team. And even though I've known her for several years now and she's worked with the collab team for several years, I had never met her face to face, which is crazy. In the virtual world that we live in, that. That would be a thing. But it is a thing. And so that was really cool. And it was just great to share meals and laugh and joke and talk and just take in some movies together. We got to see the new Tron. I mean, just some fun stuff, you know. So I think that just giving you it from a retrospective perspective. That's cool. Taren. Retrospective perspective. I think that. Man, that. That could be a song anyway. What? It's a. It's a. Yeah, well, you know, it's like looking back with that perspective. How about that? A retrospective perspective.
- [03:42]
B
That.
- [03:42]
A
I like that. Anyway, long story, it was. It was. Not to take apart the etymology of the words. I'm just saying that it was great to get everybody in a common space. And the weather was good and we took some walks and we shared some meals and we took in a couple movies. And just that in and of itself was beautiful. But I think there were some good topics that came out of it that we thought we'd just like to pull back the veil a little bit on collab team and show you so that you can visualize and think through. No, I could see how that would be really valuable. So, Taryn, what was one of the take homes that you felt like we came out of annual planning with? That you're like, that was really unique. Probably something we wouldn't have done if we hadn't been all together in the same space.
- [04:18]
B
I mean, first off, I'll start with I'm a simple man and you know, I work hard, I grind, I do a lot for clients. And Aaron wants to invite me out to Montana for two days. It feels good, you know, it's a fun little trip. It feels rewarding. You know, it's a good incentive to your team just to do something. You know, we catch a couple dinners, we have fun. So that right there just kind of puts you in a happy headspace just to get to do that, you know. Note it's not every day I get to wake up at 2am and drive to the airport and jump on a flight.
- [04:47]
A
I knew it. Knew you were going to throw me under the bus in a public setting. I knew that was going to happen. Dang it.
- [04:52]
B
But I mean, so that, that gets you all started, right? You know, you just get to hang out, do something fun for a week and go somewhere you wouldn't choose to go on your own. I'm not going to take a weekend trip to Great Falls, although I will in the future. Yeah, that's an option. But that, that starts it off right? You know, just feeling valued and important and just loved enough to. To get to share in your space with you. Because you do take us somewhere intimate to yourself. Not just to a resort, but somewhere that's yours. That's a good place to start from. And then, you know, after that, we're all virtual. So you get to meet people you haven't met in person. You get to see how tall or how short each other are. You get to see whether people wear pants or not in public because we don't know what they're doing on video. But outside of that, yeah, it's great to meet everybody. And then you get to collaborate in person, which is a little bit different than collaborating on video. And just all of that together. I Mean, it really just adds up to a great time for us in the collab team to be able to. To plan for our future and the clients we can help in the future.
- [05:54]
A
Yeah. And you know, I think probably just. Thank you for saying that, Taran. I think obviously I love taking you guys. Montana is my very favorite place. I mean, I love Belize a lot. I have business down in Belize. We have first drive through coffee in the country. Belize. I love doing that. I love going down there. But Montana is really sacred to me and someplace, you know, that I love going. And so I do think that's a good point of it's cool to take your people someplace that's special to you too. You know, I mean, like that's. It's me giving myself a gift. I love being in Montana, but also being me and being able to take people that are really special to me someplace really special to me. And I think that that just adds to the collective experience. And I know for me, something that I've done and something maybe you as leaders need to consider is if you have a special place like that that you have some control over. I've made it available to the collab team leadership team to go up and use my dad's vacation house up in Montana for free. I mean, just as it doesn't cost me anything, it's not that big of a give for me. Like it house just sits there. If they want to go use it, like go use it. It's beautiful. It's on a river. If you want to fish, use all the fishing stuff there. Just enjoy your time. Or if you just want it. Like for me, I just spend when I go up there, a lot of times, me just getting downtime, taking walks, taking naps, reading books, like just getting downtime. And if I could give that as a gift to my people, why wouldn't I? Right. That it's such an easy thing for me to give and it could be such a blessing for them. So I think that think about if you have someplace special that you could take your people and then maybe gift your people to be able to go up and use. So that's one of them. I was going to cut you off. What was your take home? We talked about a couple of things I felt like that were unique, this annual planning different than even annual plannings we've done in the past. And that's why I love too is the evolution of it. Maybe share some of the things that you had as like aha's or take homes.
- [07:25]
B
Yeah. So I think getting to do our own delegate elevate exercise as leadership team was pretty eye opening, something we haven't done before. And I think it's something that's going to be great for us to come back to, you know, because as we help different clients with different things, the core of what we do can, you know, be the same across who we're helping. But sometimes it does change based on what kind of industry or space they're in and we end up learning new things and learning new things about us and about what we like to do and what we don't like to do. And you know, I'm in the middle of a client where I'm doing QuickBooks, QuickBooks invoice approvals. I mean, I've been doing finance stuff with clients for a long time, but we've never been, I've never been the one to do QuickBooks invoice approval. That's not something I would have known two years ago, but I'm doing it now. So it's small skills like that over time that you're going to pick up and learn whether you like or not. So getting to do that exercise really refreshes into us, you know, what we want to be doing and the gaps in our own leadership team and what we can't do or shouldn't do.
- [08:23]
A
Yeah, no, I think that was, that was a real big aha for me. And you know, one of those things where, Jared, I know when you and I first started doing annual planning, a lot of that was us saying, hey, we probably should be drinking our own Kool Aid, you know, I mean, like we tell all these businesses that we work with that they should be doing annual plannings and then what Colab team doesn't do annual plannings like, like that. That feels wrong when it comes to delegate and elevate exercise. It's a tool from eos. It's one that we bring into every one of our clients here. Usually we'll take them through our gap analyzer to identify how people are using their time and then from there the next thing we take to is delegate and elevate. Like, is this what they should be using their time on? You know, I mean, how, how can we give people back more real estate so that you get the best bang for your buck out of your people is to make sure they're doing the things they love and they're great at and that in the four quadrants of that tool, if you've never seen that tool, I'd love to send it to you, you're more than welcome to reach out to us on any of the socials and I'll push it out to you for free. But the greatest part about that is there's a bottom quadrant of that tool that says what do I dislike or I hate? Like what do I not want to be doing anymore? You know, and essentially sometimes that's things that we just don't. Aren't good at, but other times it's like, no, no, this doesn't require my expertise anymore. That's the first thing I should be delegating off so that I can now realize more time. And we've gone over that on the show, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse with that. But we had never really done that as a leadership team. You know, I mean, I've just always assumed, well, as leadership team, this is what we do and this is how this, the services that we offer and this is how we do it. And so, and we follow a really strong, you know, like, project plan anytime we roll out a new retainer for a client. So we're operating to a plan. But within that there are going to be things that Taryn's like, I love doing this part of that and I freaking hate doing this part. You know what I mean? So how can I start as. Because I'm, I'm the sharp end of the spear with bringing in new work. Right. So as I bring on a client and I realize they have a strength or they have a greatest need of this area. Well, now that I've done a delegate and elevate and determined, what does Taran love when he's assigned? Well, I'm going to push Taren, those kinds of clients, you know. And one of the things that came out of it that was really eye opening to me was you and Ben, Taryn both, I would say, are the top of our food chain when it comes to tech. So anybody that has a big tech issue, we're switching over CRM. We're rolling out some new piece of technology that, that are like, we're vetting somebody's mess. Like I'm like Ben or Taryn. Like that's one of their, my top two guys. Well, Ben talked about how he hates new tech build. Like he's great at maintenance, he's great at cleanups, but he just does not want to be building. Like he doesn't want to come in to a new piece of software, a new, a new platform and have to build from scratch. Taryn loves building like Taran loves The architecture, loves thinking it through, loves problem solving it. So it was a great delineation of. Here are two guys that have a very similar skill set, but they have two very different ends of the pond they like to play in. So let me then like feed Taryn the stuff. We've got new stuff. And let me feed to Ben things that are generational. You know, I mean, that's just like a maintenance or a cleanup, but not brand new. And so I thought that was. Was really eye opening to me.
- [11:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, sometimes as leaders, we do end up just saying yes to the. To some things because we're leaders. And so it does end up being pretty eye opening, though. Wow. There are things that we actually don't like doing and we can have a say in and find other people that maybe enjoy that much better, which leads to probably the next best part. And that's team development. That's a great section of our annual planning is always looking into our team, how we can build them up, you know, internally and externally and just reevaluating them and what kind of tools they need.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah, so I think that that's exactly right. So we came out of annual planning thinking we should probably put all the Go Lab team through the delegate and elevate. Like, we probably ask everybody some very similar questions on. Let's make sure everybody's doing the kind of work and not just presume that because they don't tell us no or don't complain about it that they actually like doing it. I mean, and like, let's feed people the things they enjoy doing. And I think that it led me as the leader to a place of realizing I want Colab team to be someplace where people enjoy, like, doing what they do for us, for us here at the collab team. Like, all these people are contractors that come underneath the banner of the collab team. That's the way that we're wired, you know, so when it comes to. But everybody's traveling underneath the collab team banner and I'm feeding them the kind of work that they want to do. Well, let's make sure I'm feeding them the kind of work they want to do. You know, I mean, like that let's make this someplace fun and enjoyable where people are like, yes, I want to do more of this stuff. Instead of reluctantly saying, I guess I need the hours or I guess I need some projects, I guess Mandrel maybe just push that over to me. So for me, I think that that was something that was very eye opening as well. Of not just leadership team but let's make sure we're pushing that down to the rest of the team and identifying what are the kinds of things they want to be taken in and how can we create. For me at the co op team, I'm not looking to 10x our size. I mean like if growth happens organically, I'm okay with organic growth. But it's not like I'm like my 2026 vision is I want to X our our top line revenue, I want to X our 30 clients that we're carrying. Like that's not my goal. My goal is I want to 10x the enjoyment of the people that are working here and fill them up with as much work as they want and then if we continue to grow beyond that, then I'll continue to go find more people to do this kind of work. But I think it was a good clarity moment for me. I think one of the other things Taryn that was really eye opening for me was just us coming to terms with and leadership team calling me on, hey, let's make sure Aaron, that's true for you too. And I hate marketing. Like that's just the truth. Like and really I collab team. I love being able to tell clients to come as we come into it. We don't do the sexy side of marketing. You know, I mean if you want like marketing automations, if you want us to look at like quality controlling, like if they're operations heavy side of marketing, there is that side of things. I think we really compliment marketing agencies well because typically marketing agencies don't love that side of the job and we do. So we clip in really well and it lets marketing focus on the things that they're really good at which is making things beautiful, making sure the wording of it is punchy and powerful. But I think that we identified that we don't have much of a marketing arm within the COLAB team. And so I always feel like I'm the one that has to come up with the marketing ideas and I hate it. So we identified well Aaron, if you hate it, let's solve for that. And so we actually, I mean we just did it two weeks ago and I've already hired in somebody that's going to come in as a fractional CMO that's going to take that lift off of me. She's going to come and help us develop out our Sam plan, our sales and marketing plan and then she can push it to people on our team where we can execute it. I just don't want to carry the burden of what should we promoting? How should we promoting like where we should be putting our energies from a marketing perspective. And that wouldn't have come out unless we had spent some time really looking at it honestly and challenging the norm. Because every, every year we come up with a marketing plan and every year I'm like quarter one we're doing this and quarter two we're doing this and. And I'm such a creature of habit. A lot of times it just becomes what we did last year because that's what we did last year. But it's because it doesn't inspire me. So let's find somebody that it inspires.
- [14:55]
B
Yeah. And because we figured out what we don't want to be doing, it really led to us figuring out what we are doing is coming year with our rocks a lot easier. Yep.
- [15:04]
A
And I think it another thing that I really enjoy out of the annual planning that I really enjoyed this year was talking about like done wells do betters, you know, quit or cut like let's talk through what we feel like we did well in 2020 from October 2024 to October October 2025 because that's when we do our annual plannings. That that's call that a true year. And to see like the. I think we're. We were like 26% growth at the collab team and we picked up two new players at the collab team and we grew our client load, you know at the collab team by several clients this year and year over year and getting to give the atta boys and add a girls where that is due on the stuff that we've done really well and then just being really honest on hey you know we could have done better. You know for me like I felt like I had a come to Jesus moment with the team of we tried some new stuff this year in 2025 that just didn't work. You know I tried moving us out a little bit of our steady retainer proven model to some joint venture stuff where I tried to come in as partner and would take a partner percentage for trade of time and energy and expertise and it just didn't work out very well. And I had to apologize to the leadership team. I felt like it was kind of a distraction because I got pulled back into a lot of like daily operator functions that really that's just not where we exist anymore. And it takes my eye off of the ball of what I really need to be doing for colab team and that is like make giving the feel goods for clients. Right. If Taren's carrying a client as a primary and there's a secondary on the team, they've got the lift. But Aaron adding in some extra magic actually is a feel good for the client. Makes them feel like they're extra supported. And then Aaron going out after new clients, like, I'm the one that's winning new clientele. So if I'm distracted underneath some operational load on a joint venture, that it took some momentum off of where I felt like my time should be given. And it was a good come to Jesus that at the end of this year, I'll tie off quarter four and I'll serve these clients well. And then I'm going to tie that off because it just, it wasn't a good thing. But sometimes you got to try stuff. Sometimes you have to fail at stuff. But being able to own that in front of your team and say, hey, we're making a decision together. We're going to cut this thing loose. I think it was good.
- [17:07]
B
Yeah. Fail forward. Is that what they say?
- [17:09]
A
Yeah. That's actually a John. John Maxwell book, I think. Was it? Yeah. And which was really cool. We had John Maxwell come and speak at the Wellspring, Pete Vargas's mastermind that I run operations for this past week. And he actually spoke on it. He's got a new book coming out in March called Return on Failure. We talk about return on investment, return on time. What about return on failure? So I do think you're right, Taryn. Failing forward. And the best thing you can do is fail and learn from your failures. The worst thing you can do is fail and just keep repeating the idiosyncrasy of failure over and over and over again. Instead of like, no, no, no, like, I suck at marketing. Why am I doing marketing? Like, let's get somebody in that does marketing. Like, we tried a new thing. It didn't work. It failed. Let's change that. So the thing is, as you think about doing annual planning, I hope some of these examples maybe triggered some things in your brain, maybe gave you, like, some challenges. Go take those free tools, planning. Take those free tools on that page. You'll see if you want us to run your annual planning, we'd love to do that for you. So you can see that there on the page as well. Otherwise, Taran Turner, such a pleasure to be with you today at Ops Experts Club. Ops Experts, I hope you enjoyed today's show and we'll see you next week here on Ops Experts Club.
- [18:15]
B
Yes. And we'll see you next year, Aaron.
- [18:17]
A
See you.