Omnichannel - Systemize & Scale Your Business With Alexys Bartok

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

Send us a textLearn from a Queen of Systems & Operations!⚙️ The 3 core pillars every business needs to scale.⚙️ The life-changing effects of having great systems in place in a business.⚙️ Alexy’s number one advice for an overwhelmed entrepreneur who wants to implement systems.⚙️ What is the “superhero” syndrome, and how it contributes to making our business harder than it is? ⚙️ Why is simplicity key to growing your business?⚙️ How to hire/select the right team members and evaluate their performance without making it personal?Work with Alexys here: https://www.facebook.com/alexys.bartokGet a FREE Copy of the High Converting Online Events Book: https://book.dominikalegrand.com/

And I see this a lot in early stage clients where they come in and we actually do a lot of the things to fix the immediate issues and they're still working non-stop. And it's like I have to take it, take them, make them take a step back and figure out, you know, what's actually happening. And I like to call it superhero syndrome where a lot of times we will create problems in order to hop in and be the superhero and feel like, hey, we fixed this problem. We had a good day's work. We did it. But really, we just fixed a problem. We started. I have Alexis with me, who is the queen of operations. Would that be an accurate title? I don't know. I'll take it, sure. Yeah, so Alexis, today's topic is going to be about the overall entrepreneur wearing multiple hats in their businesses. And how do we find our way out of this chaos that we call our business and what are your tips and tricks of of in terms

of processes in terms of operations in terms of hiring you know in terms of letting go of that shit you know we have too much so all of that is coming for today but before we jump into the topic please tell us about yourself for those of you who don't know you. Yeah, of course. So I'm Alexis Bartok. I am the founder and CEO of Process to Profit. So we are an operations consultancy and agency where we kind of hop in and help set up the systems and operations required for growing businesses, usually multi-six and multi-seven figure companies, coaches, consultants, and agency owners. So that's kind of our bread and butter. I have a core philosophy

that the infrastructure for any operations that you need, like the three core pillars that you have to have in order to scale and not want to die or not hate your business is time, team, and systems. And so you have to have the time, you have to have the actual capacity and the bandwidth in order to enjoy what you're doing to reinvest back into the business. And then you have to have the team, right? So we're kind of talking to people that are in their solo stage, so we can dive into that a little bit. But then you also have to have the systems and processes to support you the real infrastructure to fortify the business. So that's kind of my core three, three pillars that every business that is scaling right now has.

Oh my god, thank you so much for that introduction. How did you get into this field? Like, what was your what was your, like, did you get into this field? Like, what was your, what was your, like, did you wake up one morning and like, I want to organize businesses and create offices? Like, how was it sometimes? Definitely not, I love this question. I definitely did not, did not. I actually started a few years back now

as a virtual assistant in a digital marketing agency. And within a few years I think it was about a year and a half two years I worked my way up from VA to project manager to operations manager director of operations and eventually was offered a COO role and at the time I just started like for some reason I did not love operations I did not love what I was doing and I probably should have left earlier than I did. And that's like a lesson I would have learned and would have taught people. But anyway, I ended up kind of, we ended up leaving each other.

It was a great opportunity and jumped into another business. I was kind of freelancing on the side for project management and jumped in another business as an executive assistant because it was during COVID. I wanted to be a part of a bigger team and really just wanted some stability. So then during COVID, I hopped in at a multi-seven figure business as the executive assistant to the CEO. And within four months, I had kind of been offered the COO position. So at this point, I was like, okay, I must know something about operations. But funnily enough, and I usually leave this part out of the operations, but funnily enough, and I usually leave this part out of the story, but funnily enough, I was super resistant to doing anything in operations. I thought it was really boring and it was not sexy. It was not fun. And one of my friends and mentors

at the time was like, sometimes you need to do what you're good at in order to figure it out. Right. And I was like, okay, fine. So I dove in, started doing operations. And as soon as I started getting my clients wins, I became obsessed. And I think that, you know, my, my core mission is enjoy the now. So I, from a personal standpoint, in the last seven to eight months, I've lost two family members. I lost my father and I lost my grandmother. And thank you. But it through that grief and through that experience, it has allowed me to really replay all these beautiful, happy memories, right? Like so much joy and happiness from spending time with them. And I realized that, you know, all of my clients are going to die one day day which is a really intense thing to say but it's thought of that this way right I know it's super intense like we're all it is and the thing is is

that most of my clients have either children or spouses or loved ones they want to become spouses right and I think a lot of times we get lost in why we even started this business. And we get so into the weeds of the day to day and so stressed and overwhelmed and like we must succeed that we forget that we can create memories in this moment. And that's how my mission kind of became enjoy the now. And so once I figured all of this out, it was like operations is amazing and life changing. And now I wake up excited for operations every day wow that was such a beautiful story in how you turn this you said boring or not sexy um position into like such a deep profound meaningful thing for you and and it became a mission you know essentially that's so cool yeah I mean sometimes

I think we forget how you know this day is never going to come again these moments will never come again and sometimes we get so pulled down into like oh this client did this or the system isn't working or I want more sales and we forget why we're here and so I think kind of just bringing it back to that you'll see me if you follow me hashtagging enjoy the now because it's kind of the movement I'm I believe in you don't see this but let's literally on my phone all we have is now so I love it I told you I think and commented but I have it like this is literally my reminder if like yes I don't know so connected I'm with you I love it on that um I guess you mentioned a little bit on enjoying your businesses um and how I don't know if that's

something you observe but how entrepreneurs they kind of fall into a trap of their own business you know they they want to grow it but they get so wrapped up in it that they get overwhelmed. And I don't know if I'm sure you have met that overwhelmed entrepreneur that they are like burnt out phase, losing sleep. How would you start detangling a problem, a problem like that? And kind of like, you know, just attacking that issue. Yeah. I mean, the very first thing I would do would be to tell them to take a break. And I know that sounds so counterintuitive, especially to a person that is like, I have to get it done and staying up late. But if you were to just take one weekend, I was talking to that person and they're listening in the ear. If you were to just take one weekend

where you shut everything off, turn off your slack, turn off your notifications, shut off your entire phone and just be with yourself and your thoughts and whoever, you know, your loved ones that you live with, you will come back a completely different person. And the thing is, is when you're burnt out, it's too late. We can't build on burnout. We have to let you breathe in order to rebuild and so that's the first step is to just actually take a step back and be willing to say I'm taking this weekend off hopefully not just a weekend like I would say three days take three days off let your feel the uncomfort in it by the end you'll be like oh my gosh I want this every weekend and it will change your life yeah there's it's a real thing.

I mean, addiction to chaos is really, there's a study, I think it was from the University of Queensland that came out, that most entrepreneurs have an addiction to chaos. And I see this a lot in early stage clients where they come in and we actually do a lot of the things to fix the immediate issues. And they're still working non-stop and it's like I have to take it take them make them take a step back and figure out you know what's actually happening and I like to call it superhero syndrome where a lot of times we will create

problems in order to hop in and be the superhero and feel like hey we, we fixed this problem. We had a good day's work. We did it. But really, we just fixed a problem. We started. So sometimes, you know, I think. Yeah, sorry to interrupt. No, you're fine. I love that. I love that analogy. That's so true. Like, that's so true. That's so crazy. I've never thought of it that way. Sorry. Yeah, it's no, you're good. It's pretty crazy. It's, and honestly, what changed for me was when I realized I was doing it in my personal life, like not just in the business, but if you start noticing this and be like,

oh, is that actually a problem? Is that true? And like every time something comes up, asking that and putting it through a filter, it's actually terrifying when I look back at how dramatic life was because I needed something to be going on. I needed to be saving the day and feeling important. And it's like when your worth is not attached to your outcome, like your client work, if your worth is not attached to how much money you make,

how many clients you have, how happy your clients are, life becomes really fun, like really, really fun. And that doesn't mean that you're not making good money and your clients aren't happy and you don't have a wait list. Like it doesn't mean you don't have all of this, but it means that you are not affected by it either way. Yeah. I love that you say that. And just the other day, I got into not an argument, but like not a heated exchange, but whatever, with my partner about this. And somehow I found him a simple person. And somehow that triggered me because I kind of projecting the fact that simple life, like not super super complicated one is actually something that I that I like and that I have and it's hard to balance the ego of wanting to go and be bigger and go and do stuff and travel around and and do all the you know the ego things but somehow I

realized that dude I kind of like simplicity and i kind of can adapt to any environment but i don't need a lot of things to feel good and be happy and that was a huge realization because even my partner said i think you're projecting on me first of all that's awesome you know you, you're, you're getting better. All the psychology shit that I talk about. Yay. Uh, but it was true. I, I, I had this fear of what would that mean about me if my life was quite simple and that my business was easy and that, what would that mean? Would that mean that I'm not going to achieve anything because I, am I settling? So that's, what would that mean? Would that mean that I'm not going to achieve anything? Because am I settling? So that's, I think that was something I needed to kind of think about deeply.

I love that. I really love that. And I think, you know, like in their last year, my business has like really blown up. It's very exciting in terms of what I'm doing with clients and the client load I have. But I get asked a lot, like client load I have, but I get asked a lot, like what changed? Like, was it a civic tactic? Was it anything like that? And I think the big thing that changed was I was finally able to see how simple it is to have a scalable business. Like it's so easy. And I think that's a very triggering thing to say, especially if,

um, maybe your business isn't doing super well. Because when my business wasn't doing great and people would say that, I would get so mad. I was like, it's not easy. There's so many things I have to do. I have to figure this out. I have to do all these things every day.

Like all of this stuff, right? Which I think we're all guilty of. But it's like, it's so simple. And being comfortable with that actually lets, I don't know, I think it's just fun. Like the more simple something is, the easier it is to fulfill on from a business standpoint. Or if your life is more simple, the easier you are able to run out and go travel and do things because you can. So I think that there is this level of, you know, we as a society, but especially entrepreneurs I've worked with and know,

often overcomplicate to feel worthy of the outcome. You know, if I was, like, I see this so much in people that check their emails all the time, where to procrastinate, they, like, are checking their emails multiple times a day. And the way I test this is I have an email system, give it to your assistant. If you don't have your assistant, I hire your assistant. Like literally there's no excuse. And if you are still checking your emails or uncomfortable with someone doing that, what I have found, and this is a little bit of a generalization, right? But that is one area where we are actually easily procrastinating because we're just checking, checking, checking. Oh,

I should respond to that one. When you take that away, checking, checking, oh, I should respond to that one. When you take that away, it's like, oh, I actually have to do the things I need to do. And oftentimes when we just spend time doing basically dumb stuff in order to feel like we were busy, that's when we're overwhelmed and we're burnt out and we're tired. And we do that in order to feel worthy of our success.

So a lot of times it's actually a self-worth internal thing. It's not necessarily a business thing at all. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I wanted to come back to one of the things that you said about, I mean, there were so many things, so we're going to be here forever. But one of the things that kind of stood out for me from what you said is this thing that we need to make things complicated in order to deserve success. And actually business is super simple. What do you think makes a business simple that we tend to overcomplicate aside from the checking emails and doing other things you know

that we shouldn't do yeah i think the number one place that that i've seen people get stuck on is team i think people either bring on way too many people into the team and then they are there's like actually not enough work for the level of team and their expenses are really really high and so we need to cut the cut the fat and trim the bloat. Or people do not bring on team when they should and they are really overworked and overwhelmed. They're really afraid of letting go. So I'd say in terms of overcomplication, there's a lot of confusion around who to hire, when to hire, how much to pay people. And I think that's the number one place that is also really,

really scary because the two things that can really, really harm a business is having the wrong clients and having the wrong team. Yeah. But let's talk about team because you mentioned team and, um, and we don't know who to hire and when to hire so what is your kind of framework on um on who to hire in terms of i don't know i read it on your facebook wall that you were saying if you're not happy when you have to pay your team then you need to rethink your decision can you just explain that what do you mean by that yeah that's it's so interesting so many people have asked me about that post um because I love finance like I love paying team I love running my own payroll that's just like something I enjoy doing and I made that post after I had

paid my own team and I was like so full of gratitude and excitement to be doing that and I thought it through because I have a colleague and a client who right now or previously was complaining that she feels like all of her her revenue is really going to team and she's still having to do a lot of the work and I hear that a lot and I think that that's the one of the work. And I hear that a lot. And I think that that's the, one of the quickest, you know, I think even in the most abundant mindset, we're still like, what are our expenses? What are we spending our money on as a business owner? Right. And so I think that's like the fastest way for me to see like a symptom. If you, when you are paying your team, you're like, what is this even for? It's either one, an internal issue, and it is like a money

mindset situation, or it's that maybe the team isn't set up correctly. Maybe you're giving them too much. Maybe you don't have the right people in the right seat. And so it's really just a way for us to gauge, you know, how do you really feel about your team? And a lot of times if I were to ask someone that, 90% of the time they'd be like oh yeah I have the best team they're so great they do so much but if I say how do you feel when you pay your team every two weeks someone might be like um it's okay right so then we can kind of get into the nitty-gritty of what's the actual feeling there? Is the value worth the money? And how do we fix it?

Like, for example, it's not me, but I'm going to say this. I hate to pay my team, and it's the payroll time, and I'm like, you know, it's going to be hard, but let's go for it. So how do we fix that? Do we need to fire everyone? I was like, okay, I guess it's time to fire like bye what is what is the solution yeah million dollar question right right don't fire everyone at least not yet um I think the first thing to do is most people aren't clear on what their team should be doing they They aren't clear on who's doing what, especially if they have multiple team members.

If you just have one VA, sometimes you think that they're going to do everything and you need to give them more. So the first thing I do and I run clients through if they're feeling that is really a team audit. And that starts with us breaking down, you know, what's everyone's roles and responsibilities? What are you doing on a daily, monthly quarterly annually basis and literally just have everyone on the team fill

that out including yourself and then we want to do i kind of call it a litmus test right where we send a questionnaire to the team of like what are you loving what is really not your favorite um where do you see yourself in three to five years? Like kind of gauging where everyone is at because sometimes it's you, the leader, that has not really clarified who's responsible for what, what are the expectations and the KPIs. And sometimes it's the team member and sometimes they just don't, they either are there for the paycheck, which means that you are not getting quality work, like they are not obsessed with what they're doing or they just aren't into it anymore and that happens it happens a lot for clients is that people you know I'm sure I know I have

experiences where I worked for teams before I had my own business and it was great and then I just kind of was like no I'm not I'm not loving it anymore and a lot of times people value security way more than honesty. And so in terms of action steps that you guys could easily, easily do would be to start just looking at what's everyone's scorecard. What's everyone's, I follow Alex Sharfens for our scorecard. So it's role, responsibilities, results, and requirements. And results are going to be your KPIs. So get those figured out for everyone on the team. And that level of clarity will bring so much. You'll start figuring out who actually needs to be there and who doesn't. I love that you said that because

it removes the emotions out of letting someone go because you just literally look at the data and be like oh well you know it's not nothing personal but it's just we're not a good match anymore so it's yeah a good way to kind of like not not get into a personal you know and i think that's the key i think that's really the key is that you at some point have to treat your business like a business. I say it all the time. Your business is not your baby. It's an asset. And if you are starting to treat a business as an asset, you have to make data driven decisions, especially around people. client who somebody had moved to be near their in-person office and I came in and I was like we gotta let him go like when we look at everything and it was a really hard decision because this person had uprooted their life to to work there but in the end the it was just not the right fit it was hurting both parties and I think that's something we have to remember that if it's the right decision for both the business and if it's the right decision for

the business it's going to be the right decision for that person like they will bounce back and figure out what else to do yeah that's a great way to put it and I think um it's a huge fear for a lot of entrepreneurs to be firing people and I don't think any of them likes to do it so if they could avoid it then they would probably like okay can you do it for me like can anyone else handle it but me because it's just you kind of like to go to person and you know you like them and they're around you and you know their family and it's just yeah it's not easy definitely it's not easy, definitely. It's not easy. So in your pillars that you said, I think it was time, team, and I forgot the third one. Systems.

Systems. So let's go to systems a little bit. In terms of systemizing in a business, what are your, first of all, what is the biggest mistakes that you see in your, in the industry that most entrepreneurs do? And what is your methodology on creating systems? Yeah, I think the biggest mistake is that there's no outline of what all of the systems are. So most of the time overcomplication in systems happens because no one sits down and says, okay, what is the process from A to Z? z like typically it's like let's just do this and

this and oh we could try that and so we're kind of like hodgepodging a bunch together and even if you have an sop that sop might be way too long and convoluted so what i suggest is i call it the system skeleton so basically my ideology is that the sales and marketing of a business is the blood. It's the lifeline of the business. You have to have it. But operations is the skeleton. So without operations, you basically have a limp blood bag. Like what are you going to do with that? But when you put the skeleton in, it gets to grow over time. And so really it's like you start little little little grow grow grow get bigger and now you have a fully functioning being that could

walk run jog whatever so i call it a system skeleton because we literally start from the top at marketing all the way down to fulfillment and retention and we want to see in 15 systems or less how does your company run and so basically that gives us that like roadmap an outline of what is the business super super simplified you cannot go more than 15 break those into the proper departments for the business which is typically marketing sales and fulfillment and fulfillment. And then operations fits into all of those. So that's typically what I see. And then from there, you can start doing what I call the assembly line. So I almost always start in fulfillment because marketing and sales, in order to work with me, usually has to be working well enough that you're not struggling to, you

know, pay your bills. so usually you don't need operations until that's at least dialed in enough even if it's just referrals but typically fulfillment is where people feel a lot of pain because yeah you make a sale but now you have to fulfill on it and not only that you need them to be happy because when your fulfillment isn't dialed when you don't have the team or the systems there, it can really affect your reputation. And reputation is currency and you cannot get it. It's very hard to get your reputation back. So we typically start there and we use what I call the assembly line, which obviously I did not create that. That is from Henry Ford, who I'm just going to dive into it because I love him so much, who started the assembly line

in the 1910s, like 1914-15, during the industrialization era. And basically, he had the Model Ts, and they used to take over 12 hours to create. So they were expensive, it was a lot of work. Within a couple of years by implementing the assembly line, he got it down to 90 minutes. And then he implemented the $5 workday, which was the first time there was ever a minimum wage. And then also he made, he halved the amount of time people worked. So we created the eight hour workday. So he got it down from 12 hours to under 10 seconds. So that's what we want to create for every person's business like we want to create what is that line of usually five phases to create the assembly line and who is responsible for all of them so that way production is up and quality is up but cost is down and time is down. I love how you, you know what I observed with you?

Like you have the processes of the, you have names for every process that you do. I love the skeleton analogy. I think it's so great. But that is like the true embodiment of the operator, the operator person who creates names for processes. And it's just awesome. It's just so awesome. Thank you.

Well, we have to make operations fun somehow, right? So. Yeah, you need to do that. But Henry Ford, yeah, I remember like how resilient he was, you know, and yeah, I just, he is such an awesome, incredible, you know, example of an entrepreneur. So yeah, you have some good role models right there. So in terms of fulfillment, because when you were saying that reputation is so important and it's so hard to get it back, do you also dig deep into the experience like the customer experience the client experience when

when that you know when you analyze that part of the business because what i've been seeing is that that is neglected the most you know and every you know aspect of growing a business is on sales and leads and blog closers. And the fulfillment part is, is just a drag or it's just not really that awesome. I don't know. Do you also dig into that part or this is not something that you. Yeah, I do.

Cause I think, I mean, in my opinion, a really good client experience just means that you have a solid system for it. And obviously a team member in order to do it but you can automate a lot of stuff when it comes to that too so like for instance if you're setting up you know one assembly line because there's multiple assembly lines in fulfillment

so the first one would be onboarding right so what is the couple of phases that someone has to go through in onboarding when you break that that down, it might be like, okay, what's a client gift that should get sent? What call should they go on? What's their intake form? Like there's different pieces that when you create a process, you can really hone in and just add, cool, checklist. Did we get those things done?

Did we hop on that call and get a feedback form? Like I think it's sad, but I think that the bar is actually set pretty low for a great client experience. And really, if you set up the system and you have somebody on your team, whether it's automated or a VA or a client success specialist hopping in, making sure those things are done, you will create an incredible, incredible experience. How do you think maintaining that degree of service, like is there any way, because I think, yes, if you have the onboarding and everything is smooth, there still has to be a part of like delivering on your promises

and making sure that they are happy and there's this constant you know feedback evaluation and how their experience was I think that's something that can be incorporated as well I just I don't know if there is any way that we can process that too like I'm thinking on top of my head but probably. I think it depends on the type of business, right? I mean, I have yet to find very few things that I could not systematize. So like, for instance, a agency, right? Because I usually work with coaches and agency owners.

So an agency model, if it's just like an ongoing retainer, really the thing that a lot of people are missing is just having kpis and if you have one account manager assigned to a client and they every friday send a loom video with kpis like boom is already so much better get on a call once a month and send a feedback form once a month most of that is automated except for the loom video which might take five minutes right same with like even a coaching company. Let's say it's a group model, like a group coaching model. I would suggest that you have an automated feedback form that gets sent at least once a month at the end.

And it's not just feedback, like how are we doing? It's how are you doing? You know, what did you succeed on this month? What do you wish you had succeeded on this month? What do you need help with? Um, and I really think it's just going, you know, setting up those automations of just forms and then having someone on the team to check it already makes a difference. Because then you can also say, you know, say it's a group coaching program.

Do you have any issues that you would really love to be assessed? What are they? Would you prefer this to be a one-on-one? And now you've created this incredible high-t which really it's a form and it only alerts you if they if they checked yes wow yeah you can really systemize everything see yeah i might do oh well i haven't thought of it that way i guess guess. That I guess, yeah, I mean, with high level as well. Do you have any suggestions as far as team management software goes that you'd like to recommend to clients or entrepreneurs listening to this show? Yeah, great question.

I think that's such a hot thing, right? Like what softwares? They're jumping onto like a new shit every week. Every week. Yeah. I mean, in the end, that's every week yeah i mean in the end that's the yeah in the end that's the answer right like whichever one you like and you're actually going to use that's the one i suggest if i have a client who doesn't have one which actually a lot of my clients sometimes they don't have one which is impressive i don't know how you could run your business without one but if they don't have one, I will

almost always put them on to ClickUp because I really think ClickUp is very, very, very scalable. Its automations are far superior to anything I've found anywhere else. Um, and I just love it so much that I have a ClickUp specialist on my team to help clients with it. Um, but I've tried most of them, right? I've tried Asana, I've done Trello, I've tried Monday, I've done Basecamp, like I've Notion, I've done almost all of them. And I think in the end, it's whichever one you're actually going to use. I think we have to be careful jumping to too many different, like I think every year a new project management software comes out so for me I'm like I'll make sure someone on my team knows how to use it but we don't use it internally.

Do you feel and this is something I observed but maybe you can tell me about this when we talk about complicating our businesses aside from jumping from one project manager software to another do you feel like entrepreneurs they just jump into like softwares in general like whether it's an emailing software or it's just a team chat so like there's like a newest hype and like everyone is jumping in it and just like the whole the whole team has to now adjust to a new software and like a new communication platform i don't know if this is just my clients or yours are the same but but i just like and i'm like let let him have fun with it i guess it's just something that i observed that they have this you know platform obsession

or software obsession yeah i mean i think it's actually important to have a protocol around that because as visionaries we often have so much fun jumping from thing to thing and it's exciting and it's shiny and it's new, right? Like there's nothing wrong with that. However, it can give your team extreme fatigue and it can actually really affect the culture. And that's both on softwares, that's on different ideas. Like if you're hopping from let's do a webinar to let's do a VSL to let's do organic like there's so many different ideas that pop up in our head sometimes that I think that there does need to be

some type of protocol around like for instance I use Notion but no one on my team is on my Notion. Notion is like a fun place for me to blop down ideas mess around with things have fun with it it does not touch my team and if something I'm like okay I really do love this I really want us to put this in place I would hold it up against our quarterly plan and pitch it to the team because I think that you know obviously like with clients I suggest they pitch it to the leadership team and get buy-in because I think there has to be a consistent buy-in from the whole team and if it's just one person saying now we're going to do this and then they typically change

their mind a lot which is so common we just have to set up a little bit of a barrier where it's like you have your own little playground and then you have the team and I love that you pointed out how you kind of need to introduce it to more than yourself I mean if you love it you kind of need to introduce it to more than yourself i mean if you love it you kind of need to kind of the whole team or some of the members at least buy into that you know software so it's not just you imposing it on everyone else and you're like you know do you like it no you know so that's what alexis was saying and i guess where i wanted to go after this is team culture because I think that's so important to mention as well in an organization and just want to hear your tips on building good team culture. Yeah, I think one of the main things to figure out is what you want the company

to feel like. I think sometimes we mentioned this mentioned this a little at the top, that we forget that we chose to start this business. Sometimes we get so sucked into our goals and where we're headed and what we're doing that we forget that we get to lay the groundwork, we get to decide what it is. So it's really figuring out what are your core values and what do you want not only your team, but what do you want your clients to feel when they interact with the business? How do you want to your team to feel at the end of each day? Do they want like, you don't want anyone to dread coming to work, right? Just like you don't want to dread, um, your business. So it's like, what are those core values that you feel? Like for me, one of them is resourcefulness, like, and another one is integrity. Like those are things that my business will always run on.

You have to be resourceful. You have to have integrity. I know a client has like confidence, like different things that are just, this is who I am and what the business represents. And really just having that open belief of, you know, everyone that works here will feel that way too. And it should be empowering. I think

sometimes we get stuck into this idea of like, I'm a manager and you're managing people. And I said to someone today, I was like, you're not their warden. Like your employees, your team is not your children. It should be a fun place to be where we all choose to be here. Just like you chose to start your business, your team decides to work with you and that's not a small thing you decide to work with them and so it's honoring that as well and having respect for one another how can someone work with you do you have some availability to help save salvage some some businesses and create some awesome operations yeah right now i am I think I just announced yesterday, I'm on a wait list for one-on-one, which is amazing, but I do have another offer that isn't

wait-listed. So the absolute best way to find me is on Facebook, just Alexis Bartok or the Facebook group Process to Profit. I post, I try to post every day very often um and then obviously dming me or reaching out to get some more information and i typically need to hop on a call to audit kind of what's going on in your business and see what's up okay that's awesome and so uh what are your plans for the future i don't know if that's maybe that's not a lot to cover it's a very overrated question but i just want to know what what are you planning as far as yet your five-year plan with what you do oh that's an actually i have not been asked that question in a really long time so that's super interesting um yeah so from a business perspective look at you getting me to dream or getting me to like vision cast.

Yeah. So I'm very excited about this, this offer. I'm currently bringing on someone to really build out the tech portion. I think, you know, my ideal situation is to have people come on, have a dedicated account manager to really help them, help with all of the hiring, help with all of the tech, which we already have some of it, but just my goal would for it to be so high touch that it kind of like we were talking about with client experience of how is it even possible that it's scaling and I can see it. So I'm really excited for that. One more question, which when I was asked, like, the other day when I was guesting on a show,

I was like, it was a curveball question, but let's see if we can handle it. Okay. So what would be the one advice that you would tell your younger self? Hmm. I think if I could have, well, honestly, the number one thing I would have quickly once I was able to notice that that you know you don't have to nothing has to be wrong in order to have a good life it's okay to just have a nice time and to feel good and enjoy life um which sounds so simple but so true wow I love it I love it that's such a i mean that's like literally

the arching conversation that we had is is this addiction to chaos and thank you so much for sharing that and i wish i had that wisdom where do you get that just living life you know it happens yeah all right thank you so much for your time, Alexis. And come back anytime. I'll think about if there's something else. Maybe we should, you know, have like a full on how to hire people. Like what would the qualities be? I think that would be super interesting for the listeners to know your take on it. And I think operations is something that you can talk about forever anyway it's true yes thank you so much for having me it was an absolute blast