← 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 onto the episode.
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B
Hit it.
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C
Ops Experts Club. Taryn Turner, excellent to see you. This fine post holiday. We're kind of in the in between though, right? It's kind of like post holiday, almost holiday. We're in that vortex. We're in the in between. This is like junior high for like between. You're not a kid, you're not quite a high schooler yet. That monkey in the middle. Christmas good. Did you have a good one?
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B
Yes, sir.
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C
Awesome. New Year's. Are you feeling good about New Year's coming? How are you feeling about 2026?
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B
Feel great.
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C
Another year, another day, another dollar.
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B
Tarant Turner, sir. It's like, you know, if we were still in school, we'd, we'd, we'd be off still, you know, that's kind of the in between, right? And kid still off. Adults get to go back to work for a little bit.
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C
We're in Christmas vacation for kids. That's what we're in. But I mean, not really for us. But I will say this. Do you see Jerick turned 40? What, the hands. Christian Anderson? No, Jarrick Gillum's 40.
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B
How would I see that?
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C
I just saw it on Facebook. I thought maybe you're still friends with him or something.
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B
Not online.
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C
Well, through Lauren's account. Like maybe not through yours. But you do kind of creep using the bride's account, which is fine. Dude, some of them still do that. I understand that. Not a big deal.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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C
Awesome. Anyway, hey, Ops Experts, thanks for joining us today. Operops Experts Club, this is your one stop shop for you who are operators trying to run online businesses. For a visionary, that's crazy. A little bit hair on fire. And they need you to keep them sane, right? They need you to be the one that's holding down the framework. Don't point at me. Point at like our list of clients, you know, we carry. I think we have like 28 clients right now. And I will say the common thread for most visionaries is they're a little bit hair on fire. They've got a bunch of ideas and they need you as the operator to help them hone in, you know. And so we teach at Ops Experts Club here the tricks of the craft, things we've been learning over the last 11 years, being in business. Getting to do it for a lot of the biggest names in the business. You know, the Brandon Turner's and the John Acuffs and the Pace Morbi's and Pete Vargas and Pedro Adele. Pedro Adeo has his big 31 days of wisdom challenge coming up this month. Coming up. And let me tell you what I remember. Taran running those wisdom challenges and it just being freaking crazy. Absolute crazy. What do you remember about the Pedro Adeo days? Because I think it was fun and exciting and exhausting and overwhelming all at the same time.
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B
Yeah, I remember it's, you know, obviously 31 days every day in January that. That includes weekends, holidays. January 1st.
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C
Right.
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B
I remember doing everything you possibly can to try to prepare and automate and make sure those weekends come by and you can just sit back idly and not have to work. But you always end up having to work something, right?
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C
Always. And I think everybody's silence starts out super ambitious, right? Everybody starts out super excited about it. And then, man, you get like two weeks in and, man, people just start getting so burned out. And by the end, everybody's like, dear God. Right? But by the end, push, right? Because the offer. There's an offer strategy around it, right? So by the end, it's like, no, no, no. That's when offer drop is happening. That's when, like, people are trying to get to close cart. And then you've got fulfillment. Right. Right on the back of those 31 days. And it just makes it feel like the craziest marathon ever.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. And as soon as you're done fulfilling and onboarding and you think you're good, February's past, that's when you start prepping for the conference, right?
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C
Yes. Oh, man. God bless every Pedro Adeo worker out there. And I think Pedro is an amazing dude, though, man. Guy grew from, like, zero I was looking at. You know, we ran ops for Pedro from 2019 to 2022. And the amount of growth we 6x is growth. From the beginning when we started with him all the way up, I mean, I think. I think by the time we ended, it was like 20 million or something like that that Pedro had had really built up to. And I know he went on to build even further, but just impressive stuff. But it does come with some crazy. There's just no way around. Nobody builds. No visionary that I know builds. Just like slow and steady wins the race. Like, they're all just like, bam. And they're falling up off, off the platform. And it's like, how do we keep all the balls in the air. How do we damage control anybody that might be unhappy with how this is impacting other products that are being sold or other things they've given their yes to. And I think it, it can be a lot. And today I thought we could talk a little bit about Taran as we're in the monkey in the middle. We're in the between the junior high phase, between elementary school and high school between these holidays and as Pedro gets ready to go out to another hundred thousand people, 100,000 person challenge, people going, coming on to see what's going on. Some of the biggest names in America doing incredible things. 31 days a different leader. But I thought we could talk today about the difference for maybe some of the new operators that are joining, that are tuning in for wisdom on how do I move from just being a task taker to actually owning operations. Because I think there's a big difference between it and I think honestly that's really what visionaries want. What do you think about that term?
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B
I think that's great. I mean that's a perfect timing for it too.
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C
Yeah, right. Beginning of the year, right? There are new op everybody, everybody that's anybody. I think that December was a little quiet, right. Unless you're in a brick and mortar that's trying to push retail. Right. It's probably pretty quiet for a lot of the online visionaries, but they come out of the gates punching hard for January. You know, a lot of the folks that were thinking about joining Pedro as an affiliate actually asked me, hey, how much is he going to make me promote? Because I actually have things I want to promote in January. Everybody's teaming up for something coming in January. You know, whether you're an affiliate or you have your own product, you're probably going to go live launching something. And so I think it's good for operations based people to lean in and to say, hey, how do I manage the crazy of my visionary? Because I know he or she is going to come at me hot coming out of vacation. That's if they left you alone on vacation. I had, I had Pedro text me. This is the best. Classic Pedro Dale texting me at 9am on Christmas morning. This is not a joke. Text me 9:00am Christmas morning. Hey, did you get the affiliate stuff? I sent you an email. Will you take a look at it and make sure it looks good? And I'm like, brother, come on, I know you have all adult kids. You didn't Open presents at 6am like we used to when the kids Were all small, like get back in there, enjoy breakfast and presents with the kids. But I told them, no problem, I'll take a look at that. But like you have these visionaries that are just chomping at the bit. They're trying to be good and be part of family, but at the same time their mind is always going. And if you're an operator, you're. You're probably the collector of all the ideas. Right. They're blowing you up the most. So then how do I become, how do I graduate from being just a task taker to actually thinking about things operationally? Taran, what would you say you're like a good piece of wisdom? I know there's probably a bunch of different things we could talk about today, but what would be a good way for people to move out of just taking tasks from visionary and begin to be more of like a global operator?
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B
Yeah. I think one of the biggest pitfalls you fall into is taking a task and doing the task when you don't have to be the one doing it. So once you can identify the team, the strengths, who's in there, you can take the task and delegate the task. They still need to be somebody. If they don't have dedicated, you know, executive assistant or admin support or anything like that, there still has to be somebody they can go to to take the task. And so that could still end up being you, but do whatever you can to automate the task and delegate the task from there so that you can free up your time to be global thinker. Because if you start being the one to do the task, people will always be looking for you and at you about the task and to do the task. But if you can just be the filter and somebody else ends up being the knowledge in the, in the hands of that request, then they can start owning it as well.
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C
You know, I think that one of the smartest things we ever did for Pedro, it's funny, we're talking all about Pedro today. I think one of the smartest things we ever did for Pedro was when we took you out of the seat of doing all the doing for the conferences and just allowed you to be at the conferences to help with troubleshooting. Right. Because before you're such an automations genius, you're so good at automations, Right? So your natural cog that a lot of times you get stuck in is CRM management and making sure everything's running the right way and make sure there's no breakages and making sure like you, you are all in the middle of it. But you know, a lot of times at conference or at different things, there are new things that come up. And it was really easy to say, well, Taren's there, Taren will just handle that. But the danger of putting Taren in that seat or letting Taran run registration or let Taran doing some of the automations that may be happening behind the scenes during presentations, that you could do all those things. The danger was though, when there was trouble, Taran was already committed to a gear like you were already doing the dang deal, you know, instead of. No, no, no. As the operator, Taryn needs to float above it all and like you said, be orchestrating it. He needs to know which levers to push and pull when for the sake of creating a smoothness. And I do think that that's something that might most operators need to recognize is you're the peace in the storm. The visionary is going to cause plenty of storm pleasant, plenty of chaos. If they're a good visionary, they're out there like breaking the waves and pushing the work behind them. But it's important for you not to become the choking point of as that work comes back, you probably can do all of it. But how do you decide? No, no, this is what I do and this is what I don't do and this is what I task down, this is what I delegate down and this is what I keep to myself.
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B
Yeah, I mean it was great once you, once you get somebody else who can do that and once I had somebody off site, like you said, at an event, specifically somebody off site that can be diligently doing the work and I can just be checking in on it and testing it, poking holes in it, but still able to do my normal duties at an event. It was a big difference.
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C
You know, I think that when it comes down to operations, for those of you operators that are turning it, tuning in, maybe visionaries push this, push this one out to your operators for them to be listening to. Cause I think really the things that operators should be responsible for are systems decisions, speed, which is efficiency, right. And then margin, profit margin. Right. Those are the things that we all as operators should be really monitoring. And a lot of that comes down to I make this decision to shift into this system because that's how we triage pain, right. Like so I think that creating buckets for each one of the pain points that you come into of as this problem comes at me, how do I shift that into the bucket that we've allocated to be able to handle that when it comes to systems and people and how they manage that task. Taran, you want to talk a little bit about that, on how you feel like we at the Colab team help people with that, help other operators do that. Creating buckets, creating systems, making decisions, and then tasking down to the people who should be owning that sop, that standard operating procedure for that problem, that pain point.
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B
Yeah, and what you described there, it's something easily implemented across anybody we've worked with, no matter what they're implementing or what they're selling or where they're selling or what they're doing. So it's not like it's going to be brand specific. It's basically just a framework. It's just how to operate with teams, how to operate with small teams with an entrepreneur who's also probably used to being a CEO as well as an entrepreneur. So somebody who has to have the ideas and make the decisions. So really it's just about getting somebody else in there in the middle to help just create that flow, you know, and that's using anything that's using communication apps, project management tools, accountability, L10 meetings, of course, all these small little things you implement just help create that new flow, that new process of, you know, entrepreneur ideas, action, decisions, accountability, ownership across the org chart, follow through with what people said they're going to be doing and then, you know, trying to hopefully at some point, by being clear on what people are actually doing, freeing up time that could be wasted on things we don't want people to be doing and what they should be doing instead.
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C
I found the two things that I think that most visionaries are looking for in an operator is number one, somebody that's willing just to manage team. Most visionaries do not want to manage team, right? So like who's the go to? Who's the person that if anybody asks questions, they roll up to this operator and that operator is able to make decisions. I think that some visionaries can struggle with that sometimes, you know, where they keep themselves too central into too many of the things they don't want to deal with anyways, like deputize your person that's going to be able to make decisions and realize there's going to be, there's going to be consequences, right? There's going to be part of that where sometimes they're not always going to make the decision that you like. Sometimes it's not always going to go the way that you had initially wanted to, but that becomes a teaching moment, right? Not for you to fly off the handle and, and get upset with the person that's doing the thing. Right. But being grateful as a visionary that I have somebody that's actually doing the thing and tasking down to the people underneath them and keeping them on track and like rounding up all the questions and all the answers. So it's like one person that's managing the people, but the other one, a lot of times it's somebody that's going to also make sure that things get done right. And I think that sometimes that's where operators can fall into the pain point of becoming the task doers. I mean I do think that any good operator is probably going to have tasks they do, but nobody can do everything right. And so the key point of efficiency for an operator for best bang for the buck is how do I make sure the right people are doing the right things based upon their pay scale. Right. So it's okay to have VAs overseas doing work, but how do I make sure that the VAs overseas are doing the type of work that makes sense commensurate to their pay? And then there's probably going to be some things that are maybe a little bit higher level that have some nuance to them, but some, some things that are going to take some like maybe higher level understanding of the organization where. No, no, that's going to need to be elevated to a different person and then probably up to you, like how can you create some different tiers and different levels of. This is very task based. I'm going to task that down. This is very thought based. So maybe I'll push it to another thinker that can one three one it. Right? Like this is the one pain point. These are the three solutions. This is the one solution that they suggest and they bring it back to you. You can help make those decisions. But I think that that's what keeps systems moving efficiently at speed and also creating the right kind of margin. Right? Because if you're not careful, you can have base level tasks that sure, that person could be doing it. But is that best bang for the buck for you? Is that best bang for the buck for the people that are working underneath you? For the visionary, right. The visionary is knocking down the dollars. They want to know as that dollar flows down the that we're getting the best bang for the buck for every dollar that's made. I remember Keith Yacki used to tell me he would always say, hey, it's a hundred dollars we could have made right there if we had just saved that. You know, a hundred dollars saves A hundred dollars made. And I think it's really true. Like if they pay, they're paying the wrong person, then that was $100. That could be parceled out over a lot of other people rather than lost in maybe just one high paid executive. So how are you doing the right kind of work? How are you making the decisions for the work to funnel down and then how are they managed? So I think management and decision making, critical decision making I think are two of the biggest operator traits that you're going to need. And that's what turns you from being just a task taker to no, no, no, what's the pain point? And then how do I funnel it down?
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B
Yeah, well said, Taren.
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C
Something I watch you do all the time that I think is really smart as an operator as well is, yeah, but what's the pain point? Because I think a lot of times people start treating symptoms rather than getting to the root. Yeah, no, no, no, for sure. We can handle that. We'll handle it. And I watch you this all the time and it's, I feel like it's so brilliant on your part because you recognize that you're leading the leader.
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B
Right?
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C
It's like the leader tasks you down something and he's frustrated. A visionary is frustrated. She's frustrated at why is this thing not getting done or why is this, why did this just happen? Why is that link broken? Why weren't people able to transact to get there? Why didn't fulfillment go out the way it was supposed to? Why aren't people being answered in the timeline that they're supposed to? Yeah, those are all problems and we'll, we'll source that. But like, what was the root? Like, where did that come from and how can we fix the root? Because if we fix the root, it's also going to fix the chain of events that happen downstream. And so I love how a lot of times you'll, you'll begin to lead the leader, lead the visionary on. Yeah, no problem, we can handle that. But like, what caused that? Where did that start from? Like, what was the origin of that? And sometimes that's something to work through with a visionary, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes they just need to hear you say, yes, Roger, I've got that. I'll make sure I get back to you when it's done right. Cause they want to know that it's been tied off. But as you step away beginning to ask yourself, where did that breakage happen? A lot of times, A lot of times it's in communication, would you agree with that? Like what was communicated to who and what wasn't?
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B
Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, on the, on kind of the opposite end of that, a good thing to ask is, you know, what's the end goal? Like if you're at starting point of something, they're asking, hey, is this possible? You know, it's like, yeah, but what's the end goal? Fill me in a little bit here. Yeah, I can do this one small function.
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C
Sure.
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B
But why, you know, what are we getting towards? And once you find what you're getting towards, you realize, well, the thing you wanted me to do isn't going to work in the context it's going to work for that one thing you asked me to do. But then what? This next step isn't going to work. So you got to, you got to kind of determine what the whole process is before you can make some decisions.
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C
And I remember when Pedro was going to push into Brazil, he was pushing, he was going to push down into Brazil. He had an affiliate partner down there, big guy who had a lot of influence in the country. You know, they, they spoke Portuguese, you know what I mean? Which had some crossover to. He's, he's Portuguese, you know, so there was some crossover in the different things. He was really excited about it. And this, this guy came in and he said, yeah, we need to move to this affiliate platform because that's going to be the best for my people. Because with a two tier affiliate system, we needed a better two, two tier system. And Pedro got super psyched on it and he brought it to us and he said, hey, I think, I think we need to move to this, this is what this guy's doing. In fact, he didn't say think. He said, hey, we need to move this, I need you to start this account, need you to start going this direction. And I remember us saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. Realize that if we move to that, they're going to control the cart. I mean, like, if we, we're going to move the cart and is no longer going to be in our direct control, it's going to be in the hands of this new affiliate platform because that's how they're dictating how it's going to be piped down. I know they've changed some things, you know, in the last several years, but I remember that was the big pain point there. And that was one of those things where it was like Pedro came to us and he was like, hey, go and do. And you were like, yeah, I can do that. But have we thought through the implications? Like, if we move the car away from the CRM, there's going to be pain points around that we're going to have to zap all the information back. There's going to be a break in the chain of communication. Like, it would be better if we could do that a different way. And we hadn't thought through how that all was going to work. And the percentages, and what was their percentage once we moved the car to them and now they become the vehicle of transacting and we had to move away from stripe. It was going to be this whole new rollout, and we thought it was just Pedro. I thought initially it was just an affiliate play, but it wasn't just an affiliate play. It was a bigger play than that. And so I think it's one of those things where Visionary, a lot of times can talk to their friends and get super psyched up on some new solution, and they just roll it at you. And if you're just a task taker, you're just going to take it and you're just going to do it. And a lot of people do that. But what Visionary is paying you for as an operator is honestly, for some humble pushback, because they're not thinking through the end game. And visionaries are great at getting it to first base, but they're not thinking about round and home. You know, I mean, they're. They're thinking about getting that thing done, get it to there. Because typically, according, according to the Colby scores, like, Visionary is high, quick start low, follow through. Right? So they're. They're able to get the initiative going, but they're not the guy that's going to be thinking through what's that going to do to cost, you know, with. With credit card percentages and transactions, and how much of a percentage are we giving this new company? What. What's that going to do to deliverability? What's that going to do to access points of giving people what they purchased in fulfillment, or all the different moving pieces that you, as the operator need to globally think of and then come back to he or she and say, hey, I'll do whatever you want me to do. This is your business. Here are some of the pain points I'm nervous about, you know, and then I think if they're. If they're good at what they do, which Pedro's great at what he does, I think it'll cause them to take pause and say, no, thank you for catching that for me, that's super smart. No, I don't want to break everything downstream by making that big shift. We'll find out a different way to do it.
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B
Yeah. You know, and that fortunately can happen when you just want to be able to say yes to people too quickly. Yeah. Especially if, if they appear to be, you know, more bigger name in the space than you are and you just want to be able to please them.
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C
Very tough. Because a lot of operators I do think are people pleasers. Like they want. They want to say yes, they want you to be happy as a visionary. They want. But the danger can be is. And all of us that have been doing this very long know the very next step at taking a step like that of being a people pleaser and telling them yes is when it goes wrong, you're the guy they blame. Right. Because they're expecting you to think through those things. They don't think through those things. Right. So they feel good at the front when you tell them yes. But they're not going to feel good very long if you haven't thought about the downstream because they're not thinking through the downstream. Their job is to line it all up for you to be able to think through the through line. And I think that taking that deep breath and a pause, you know, I'll always tell all the folks that work for the Colab team as we work with clients, you know, we're carrying, I think we have 28 clients right now, 22 people working for the Colab team. Something that I'll always really try and build into people as they're starting with onboarding is, hey, I don't expect you to know everything. Nobody in fact expects you to know everything. It's very, very important for you just to tell people if you don't know, hey, let me do some research on that and get back to you by this time. Right. Because nobody expects you to be out of pocket brilliant at everything they throw at you. Real time. That's not real. Right. So hey, could I do some research on that? Could I get back to you by this afternoon at five with some, with some action forward? No problem. We'll take that on. I'll own that. But I don't. Let me go back and talk to Taryn. Let me go back and talk to Ben. Let me talk to leadership team. Let me bring that back and make some better decisions than just me in the moment giving you a yes without thinking through the pain point implications. I think sometimes just taking a pause, taking a breath and saying Give me just a minute to sort that out and I'll bring something back to you by later this afternoon. Jaron, we covered some good topics today. So also if you've never heard about Ops Experts Academy, I'd encourage you to check it out. Opsexpertsacademy.com we cover all this kind of stuff, especially week one. It's where we start and really build up on the whole idea of moving out of just busy work and starting thinking like a systems level operator. So opsexpertsacademy.com is a great place to start if you're just looking for some basis and just basic basic knowledge. I think there's 35 modules, level one, level two, level three, where you can kind of work your way up. So maybe you get in the middle of and you're like, no, that's basic. I know that stuff. Let me move up to intermediate or no, no, no, I know basically intermediate. Let me move up to advanced. So some good knowledge, some good jewels. So if you like the things we're just dropping here for free in Ops Experts Club, make sure you take the next step to the Academy.
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B
And if you like listening to us talk, you get to hear a lot more of that.
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C
Hours of that there's incredible. We bring in great guests, we give you tons of free tools. Every module comes with a free tool, something we've developed for some of the big guys out there. They paid a bunch of money to develop it and we give that to you for free for being part of the the academies. Taryn Turner, thank you so much for joining me again for Ops Experts Club. This fine monkey in the middle right between the holidays. I hope you have an amazing New Year's and we'll see you on the backside in the new year here at Ops Experts Club.