The Operators Playbook - Rebecca Klaus from Business Done Better

Hey, how's it going?

Hey, buddy. Just letting everybody in now. Rebecca's not here yet, but she should be. Her AI is here. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, everybody. Yo, Manolo, you crack me up with that avatar, bro. That is hilarious. Mr. Clay, what's happening? How you doing, man? Good to see you, dude. You killed it on the on the on the summit. You were there. You were participating. I saw you in the chat. Hey, man. How'd you find it a week later?

Ah, it was so much, man. I just I I couldn't believe all the information they were giving up, you know. And I was like I couldn't sleep because all the possibilities, you know. I just had to you know. What's the word I'm looking for? Keep it simple.

And, and that's the thing that most people do. They say, hey, it's— this is too simple, there's got to be better, there's got to be a more complicated way, and they try and complicate things. So yeah, like, um, you know, my, my wife says, hey, if, if everything crashed and burned, what would you do? I'd be like, dude, just go sell review systems to restaurants, use White Label Suite to find them all, and just send them an email saying, hey, do you want a review system? I'll set it up for you. And $300 a month. So simple, so easy. But people just go, no, we've got to— you've got to be the best copywriter in the world and all that kind of stuff. What about the SMS campaign? What are you going to send them?

It really just clarified a lot of stuff for me. And I went, oh my God, because I got some stuff that's been festering for 3 years. And you guys, you know, in a short way answered all of it and gave me a blueprint. And I just went,

Fantastic.

What's up, Mr. Walt? How you doing, man?

Getting started, man. Brand new day. Let's go. Let's go.

Let's go.

How we doing, everyone?

I mean, dude, I mean, I haven't seen you in a long, long time. It's so good to have you here.

Great to see you, man. Fantastic. And Manolo's here as well. Kyle's in the house. Mike Kwok just joined us as well. Super cool. So, Mr. Johann, I think we have just an open Q&A call today. We were going to feature Rebecca, but I'm not sure if she's—

Yeah, Rebecca's not here right now. So yeah, it's all good. We can do Q&A.

Yeah.

Yeah, she's just having trouble getting on the Zoom for some reason. Technical difficulties.

Oh, right. Okay. Okay. Does she Does she have the link? I mean,

yeah, yeah, she's got it.

Okay, cool. Awesome. Alright. Well, we can, we can hang out. So, Clay, thanks so much for telling us that you got the information from the summit. I know Mark, Mark Ippowitz, you were working on a big deal this week as well. How did that go?

I mean, I've got so many big deals on the go at the moment. Long story short, I went to an event called Dreamfest on the Gold Coast. It was a 2-day entrepreneurial summit. A mate of mine just said, I've got a ticket, just fly up. I was like, yeah, I'll come up. And it was just really, really awesome. And so I got back on Sunday night and from Monday this week, I have the old Johann and Walt technique. It's like your next business lead is in your phone. So I started from A. I've been working through every potential business contact in my phone. By end of day Wednesday, I was still only at E. And I literally have so many hot leads. It is outrageous. It's literally outrageous. I can't believe how simple it is. You boys have said it time and time again, and I've just taken massive action and I literally had to stop. I had to stop. I'm like, all right, I'm at E, stop, recalibrate. I've got massive deals, AI agent builds, demos with white label suite. Like I'm talking the whole works.

That's fantastic. Well done, mate. Geez, bottle that up. That is priceless. Great job.

Congratulations, man. That just puts a smile on our faces.

It's so good.

It's coming, boys. Don't worry.

That's amazing.

Amazing. Amazing. I was talking to Johann yesterday about one of our members who's taken White Label Suite, obviously, which, you know, if you're a part of our team, you have White Label Suite, you have the leads tool itself, and has built the leads tool, just the leads tool, into a $10,000 a month business in 4 months. And it's like, wow, that's just, it's so incredible. And I think we ran through what they did, Johann. It was like 2 webinars, an email out to their database and run some ads and they were at $10,000 a month. And it's just like, that is just incredible. I love that.

So good. I said to Walt, I said, how many houses do you need to make that passively? You

know what I mean? What do you need to have to have $10,000 a month coming in? Like investment in real estate, even if you're, you know, you know, I don't know, one of the big dogs doing real estate developments and that kind of stuff, you have to have millions on the line to get $10,000 a month in revenue coming in. And especially with a software tool that's white labeled, you've got zero dev costs. You don't have to carry the back expenses of that software program. It's, man, I'm just so thrilled that we've got people doing this for real. It's so good. So great to see. Mark coming in the room as well. Amazing. Very, very cool.

Cool. So I mean, is she going to be much longer? Otherwise, we're just going to kick off into Q&A.

Yeah, shouldn't be. Just never had this problem with Zoom before. I don't know what, what's going on. So sorry about that, guys. Feel free to jump into that.

Yep.

If you like.

Let's see that. Mr. Manolo, dude, I love your avatar. Let's go. What you

been up to? Manolo's always the happy cartoon character on the Island, by the way. We're gonna say, how you doing, man?

Is, is he gonna talk in the avatar?

Nope. It's a mute. It's a mute avatar. Manolo, say hi if you can, man. Jump in. Just see Mark pop in there as well. Great to see you, Kevin. Kevin in the house. All right. Rebecca's just jumping in right now.

Sweet. All right. Hey, Amit, do you wanna do the introduction to Rebecca? Because you, you, you sold it to me. You're like, damn, she's doing this amazing stuff. I've got a great write-up on her right in front of me. But yeah, would you like to do the honors?

I mean, you seem much more, uh, you know what you're talking about a little bit more than I do.

So guys, I'm so excited to introduce Rebecca Klaus. Rebecca is a vision architect. She's the founder of Business Done Better and the creator of the 5 Engine Operating System. She's gonna reveal to us how to run a business that doesn't run you. I would love that, right? And simple systems to reclaim your time, structure, and that scales without sacrificing your soul, and tools to grow profits while reducing chaos. Rebecca, welcome to the room. We've been waiting.

I'm so sorry. Thanks so much. That's, uh, we always have tech issues. Unplug, replug for the win.

It's all good. I'm gonna mute you. So, uh, not mute you. I'm gonna spotlight you. Sorry. There you go. You are big.

Fantastic. Well, absolutely a pleasure to be here. Give me just 1 second. Let me pull this up and I'll be good to go.

Awesome. So, well, today while Rebecca's getting that up, we've got our VIP day. How cool is that?

Yeah, kicking off tonight. Yeah. So for those of you who picked up the VIP on the, on the unofficial summit, we are kicking off with our Our first speaker. It's 11 PM tonight for our time, so that makes it— is it 11 or 11:30? It makes it,

uh, it's, it's, it's, it's around that time. Yeah, I'll check.

Yeah, so, but it's Mark who sold his company for $1.1 billion, so we can't wait to jump into that. So if you didn't pick up VIP, or if you know your friends who want to be there, make sure that they've got their VIP tickets. Cool. Rebecca.

Awesome. Well, pleasure to be here. Yeah, thanks. Good if I get going? Awesome. Fantastic. Well, I'd love to hear what kind of businesses everybody has in the chat. That'd be fantastic. The name of your business, how long you've been in business, how many team members you have, any other details you'd like. Would love to see that in the chat. But I'm gonna go ahead and get going. So today we're talking about how to run a business that doesn't run you. So building your foundation before you scale. My name is Rebecca Sonnenkaluus. My company is called Business Done Better. And today we're gonna cover why systems matter, the 5 engines that run every business, some key hiring tips, the core 4 tech tools that are important for your business, and some CRM guidelines at the end. So most people talk about freedom when they start a business where, you know, work from anywhere, set your own hours, be your own boss, design your own life. But part that not everyone mentions is that running a business is one of the hardest things that you can possibly do. So you guys are all business owners. I'm curious for how long, but you guys all have had moments where I'm sure everyone's questioned, why am I doing this again? Because you just signed up to be 17 people. So on paper, business sounds— running your own business sounds fantastic, but you're wearing all the hats. So from legal to at least when you're starting. So that's why I want to see, you know, just how long everyone has been in business. So I know exactly who I'm talking to here. But when you first start, You're, you're everything. You're legal, you're finance, marketing, sales, fulfillment. You might say, well, I can just hire people to do my fulfillment or sales or marketing. And great, we're gonna cover a few things there. But when you have a team, then you also become the therapist, office manager, HR, and so much more from there. So be your own boss sounds sexy until it's not. Until before you have your first cup of coffee in the morning, you have a client that's freaking out. You forgot to— you have your, your CPA is, is trying to get in touch with you. You have 3 team members pinging you. Can I hop on a quick Zoom? I got a question really quick, all before you really get your day going. So, more people don't solve chaos, they multiply it. So I want to dive in by why simply just growing your team isn't always the solution. Most people think that they can just hire help and those people will solve all their problems, but that's generally not true for a few reasons. Without clear structure for delegation, more people only multiply everything into more chaos or new chaos. Okay, not only will you find yourself doing just as much as you were previously, but now you're also managing and delegating, which is not a skill set most people have. If you think you have that skill set, I'd love to hear in the comments. Alright, but the good news is that there is a way out. It's not pushing harder, grinding more. It's by creating systems that provide clarity to both you, your team, and your whole business. So think about your business in terms of gears and levers that all coordinate together. It's possible to structure your business in a way that operates just as smoothly, but you have humans to account for, and that isn't as straightforward as a Zapier automation. So when you first start your business, you do need to start your focus with sales and marketing. If you aren't making money, you just have a nice hobby. So you do need money to sustain your growth, but just having more money come in will not solve all your problems. Great sales skills definitely make life easier, but without operations, it's like having a bucket that you're great at putting water in, but your bucket's full of holes that just keep getting bigger. Bigger, the more water you put in your bucket. OK, so great sales skill and hustle, if you're really good, might get you to 6 figures, maybe even 7, but most won't even be able to get that far, and I promise won't be able to scale further without real systems. So it's really around the 7-figure mark that operations becomes the number one problem. So, and whatever you do manage to build, if you don't have operations, it's at risk of crashing faster than you realize unless real systems are implemented to put your business on a solid foundation. Right. So a lot of people think that better tech tools will solve all their answers. Screw ClickFunnels, switch to HighLevel, for example. So, well, the reality check is if you don't implement real systems into your business, it doesn't matter what tech you're using. Okay, so what is the real fix? Every successful business that's scaled and proven sustainability has a business operating system. Okay, great. But what is that? A business operating system. It's not software. It's not just SOPs. Your operating system is a blueprint for how to take everything in your brain, your ideas, your vision, and make it run without you. So the definition that we like to say is that a business operating system is a practical framework of methods and practices that help you manage your business effectively, align your team, and consistently move towards your business goals. So it's not software, but it does include how you use your optimal tech stack. So this is essentially your framework for maintaining sanity within your business. So most people, they think they have a time problem, but if you think you have a time problem, I promise you actually have a systems problem. If everything still depends on you, your business does not have a real operating system. Once you have a real system, then your system does all the work and can do the heavy lifting for you. An operating system is the difference between a business that grows with you and one that collapses on you. All right, so last reality check before we get into some action steps. So this one's really important and too many business owners don't properly prepare for it. So I like to be really direct and I call it the got hit by a bus rule. So a bit blunt, but what that means is any of us could get into an accident this afternoon, something that was not expected, no warning, and you're out of commission, you or anyone else on your team. So there's so many horror stories of people being unscrupulous, holding assets hostage. But what about when everybody did have the best intentions, but something unexpected still happened to you, someone else. What happens to your business if you don't have a backup plan for all essential actions within your business that you could plug in on a moment's notice? Then you're at risk and your operations are not complete. So a key takeaway here is to build a system that ensures your business can operate smoothly, even in your absence or any other key man on your team. This is not about surrendering control, but empowering your team and ensuring stability. All right, so think about it this way. You can't fly a plane without a dashboard, right? So no, no car, or a car with a windshield blocked out, no mirrors or speedometer. That'd be really stressful, right? So why would you want to do that in your business? Chaos doesn't mean you suck. It means that you don't have data or structure telling you where the problems are. All right, so I want to hear in the chat, so any fires that you're always the one to fix, bottlenecks that no one else seems to be able to handle, things that you repeat over and over even though they should delegated, anything else that's hurting your growth, delivery, or sanity that you can think of. So we have Amit looking at things in the chat. I'm going to take questions at the end. I know I had a little bit of a late start, so I'm just going to run through these. All right, so hopefully by now you get my point. I can get off my soapbox. You understand that systems solve everything. Okay, but what does that mean more specifically? There's lots of operating systems out there. EOS is one of the most commonly known ones, Empire, Clockwork, and more. They all have pros, they all have limitations, but one thing that kept me up at night was how no other operating system out there was truly scalable from solopreneur to enterprise and industry agnostic. So I also believe that a good operating system should be diagnostic, meaning it should tell you what's going wrong, why, and what to do about it. So just like the vehicle dashboard we just went over. So I decided to build one that could do all of this. I call it the 5 Engine Operating System. I'm not going to go into the weeds on this. I'm just going to cover a few key things that added a lot of clarity to our business, our clients, and I hope for you as well. All right, so the 5 Engine Operating System, it's called that because there's 5 engines. I'm not very creative with names, guys. Sorry. Doesn't matter if you're a solopreneur wearing all the hats or an enterprise company with 35 departments and 3,000 employees, every business still wraps up into 5 engines. First is your revenue engine. This is the lifeblood of any organization focused on generating income. Then you have brand engine, all about how the world perceives you. Identity, reputation, market positioning. It's crucial to make sure that you're not just known, but known for the right reasons. Then you have client success. It's essential to keep our clients satisfied and ensure that they're achieving their desired outcomes. Happy clients lead to repeat, repeat business and referrals. And then operations engine. This is where all the magic happens behind the scenes, ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently. Lots of things like tech and admin wrap up under here as well. And then finally, leadership. So this engine drives the vision and empowers the team. Strong leadership sets the tone and direction for all the other engines. Okay, now anything that you wrote down earlier, curious what engine you would put it under. So do me a favor, feel free to share that in the chat. I promise Every problem, every fire, every bottleneck lives somewhere in one of these 5 engines. Once you see it, you'll understand not just what's breaking, but why and what to do about it. And feel free to take screen grabs of any of these guys. All right, so I'm gonna go a little, just a touch deeper onto each of these. So I wanna point out that no one is great at all 5. So you'll scale faster if you identify where your weak spots are and hire someone else to lead in those areas. All right, so a little bit deeper into the revenue engine. So this is essentially the oxygen of your business. This is critical because if you don't have any money, you can't solve anything else in your business. That's also why I say this one first. It's very important. So this is always ideal to get up and running as a primary focus. Now, the other thing about each engine, each has a governing law and 5 drivers. So there's 5 specific drivers for each engine. Each one creating predictable outcomes that drive the success of that engine. The governing law for the revenue engine is stack revenue drivers until profitable growth becomes unstoppable. This rule— this law rules the flywheel for the revenue engine, which creates predictable offers, predictable leads generated, predictable sales conversions, predictable revenue collected, and cash flow. So this is the engine. Like I said, you always want to launch first, but you'll have to keep pumping everything here Without the brand engine. So that's why brand engine is next. So brand engine is the bridge between invisibility and influence. This is how your market perceives your value. Governing law here is build trust until your authority pulls the market towards you. Okay, you want this to be a machine that just is in like a magnet. So remember that the drivers, what drives the success of each engine, is what creates the predictable flywheel for each engine. So here it's market positioning, social proof, authority, audience, and assets. Brand reputation is the leverage that compounds over time, becoming a powerful multiplier for visibility. All right, so questions to ask yourself about the brand engine. How do people actually know you? And more importantly, what is it that they know? Okay, so feel free to ask yourselves those. You can put it in the chat if you want, but consider whether their perception aligns with what you want them to know and feel about you. If not, then there's something to look at in this engine. So think about your business as a story being told both by you and those who experience it. Are you in control of that narrative? Do you consistently communicate who you are and what you represent? These questions are crucial in shaping your brand's identity and reputation. Client success engine. Program and product are synonymous depending on your business type here. The governing law is deliver so well they never want to leave. This engine is making sure that you have predictable program or product experience, client onboarding, fulfillment execution, so that all your clients say the same thing, increasing retention. So make sure you set up clients for early wins and consistent experiences. Alright, so it's just another chewing question for, for client success engine. Take a moment to reflect on a client you lost. Maybe one who should not have left. What went wrong? Was it the onboarding process, the delivery, or maybe the communication? Or do you even know? Were there feedback loops in place? So I'd love to hear those in the chat if you'd like. All right, now operations engine. You'd think this one is my favorite based on what we're talking about today, but it's actually my second favorite. The governing law here is optimize until friction disappears. Any operators on the call might have just had a wave of ease wash over them with that sentence. My theory is that whichever engine you most align with, you probably have that sense. So operations is strong for me, so I feel it like that for operations engine, but you might have felt it for a previous one. A lot falls under this engine as you grow, but everything always falls under the same drivers, which for operations engine is process, tech stack, Team efficiency, resource management, and risk management. So success with these drivers creates predictable execution systems, capacity, resources, and protection. Remember, it's not just about the tools that we have, it's about how everything flows together. So I also want to point out something with operations, that your engines are not other things that operate in a silo. Okay, each engine connects to other engines, and specifically with operations, it powers the performance of every other engine. If your operations are weak, revenue stalls because follow-up and fulfillment break. Brand feels scattered because execution doesn't match positioning. Client success suffers because delivery is inconsistent, and leadership gets overwhelmed trying to triage everything manually. When operations works, the whole business breathes. When it doesn't, everything like feels like pushing a broken cart uphill. All right, so love to hear in the chat anything that's coming up for you, any specific friction points that you've tolerated for too long because you didn't want to or didn't know how to deal with it. It, and what engine was it impacting? So people often let small issues persist thinking that they'll resolve themselves or fearing the effort required to address them. But addressing these friction points is crucial for smoother business, which always comes back to financial impact one way or another. All right, 5th engine. This one's actually my favorite, and as a founder, it should be yours too. The governing law here is to develop until leaders at every level create more leaders. This engine is all about your vision, human development, culture, org chart, and greater impact. Who are the people in your business, and how are you as a leader creating a business that people want to be a part of? Your core values live in this engine, for example. So I'm curious in the chat, who does or does not have core values written for their business? If you have them, feel free to put them in the chat. I'd love to see what everyone's core values are. I'm going to share ours in a second. I want to mention here that core values are a part of your business operating system and are not just nice words that you put on a wall or a website, but actual values that should be seen and felt throughout your entire business by your clients, your team, your community. They're actually how you make decisions. Okay, so think of it as the North Star for how you process things in your business. When we do operational overhauls with companies, this is always the first thing that we look at, as these shape everything else. So we have a certain format for how we do our core values with ourselves and with clients. So I'm just gonna read these to you guys. So we always do a 2-word title and a really rich one sentence. So uncompromising integrity, radical transparency, purpose-driven passion, a compassionate humanity, and disruptive innovation. So feel free to take a screenshot of this if you're like, oh, I need to either do or redo my core values. feel free to use this as a template.

Rebecca, can I just, can I ask you, can you go back on that one? Yeah, absolutely. How did you workshop that? How did you come up with these? Like, what was your process for putting these together?

Yeah. So we, for our company in particular, so with clients, we do it a little bit different. But for us, we just like a lot of businesses didn't have these when we started. And so we were maybe like a year year and a half into the business. And that was something that I was curious. I just did a poll with my whole team and I was like, what do you think our core values are? We kind of tossed a few things around. Like our team always felt very aligned. We were very big on company culture, always hire for culture first. And, and that was something that I took what everyone said, what I felt leadership was feeling, and then kind of tossed that around and then consolidated it to this. So with clients, we basically, you know, do that same process minus the polling the team. And, and then we just distill it down. So it's something that I talk to the founder and their operator usually as well. And we kind of just toss a bunch of things where I just want to ask, what is it that you want to be known for? What are the things that mean the most to you, for your clients, for the community, for your team, for you as a founder? And we just kind of dump all of that on the table.

I am.

Just muting Mark there, I think. Sorry.

I'm sorry.

Thanks.

Sorry, Rebecca. Keep going.

Yeah. So, so we just dump all that on the table and then just distill it down from there. So with clients, we're usually able to do this in usually like 30 to 45 minutes. We usually kind of distill it down really quick and then I make them sit on it for a day, a week, whatever it takes for them to just feel like that gut feeling where they're like, This is it. I feel really good about this. I'm proud to say that these are our core values. And that's when, like, I like to go by very analytical, but I like to go by that gut check where you're like, I love this. Yeah, that's the stopping point.

Rebecca, I'm going to interrupt you as well. Sorry, I know we're interrupting your flow, but it's because we're so excited. What you're presenting here is, is every business needs it. Most businesses don't have it, but the businesses that succeed do have it. One of my friends just spent $20,000 just on a workshop to get their core values of their of their company done.

Just for their core values?

Just for the core values, and it took six weeks for them to agree on what their core values are. There are how many people there? There are about sixty people in their organization.

And how many in the leadership? Was it was

it too many

in the

There's, there's 5 and yeah, there's 5 and they're all at different stages of, um, they want to grow and double the business. And then the next, uh, yeah, you know, everything that you're going through, I'm like, man, this guy explained to me how much money he spent on that. Like the $20 grand was just for the core values part. You don't want to know how much he spent on everything else. And so he's like, yeah, we're revitalizing.

Anything more for him to do? Can you just send him our way? We'll absolutely take him over the line.

Yeah, for sure. Like, he's, he's over here in Australia. But what I just want to emphasize, what you are going through, uh, the 5 engines— my mind is blown because I know that everything that you've shown so far, if we spent a day working, just a day, but more likely this looks like a 3, 4, 5 day workshop, that if you actually do it properly, the, the outcomes are going to be epic. I, I don't know anything about your program or how you work, but I'm just looking at it with the big smile on my face going, you are brilliant. And to have distilled it down into these 5 engines, which every business needs, I'm super impressed. I just wanted to give you some kudos halfway through the presentation. So sorry.

I'm screenshotting and sending to Johann going, yep, absolutely, 100%, big tick. It's great.

Well, I really appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I want to— I try to— I definitely have trouble sometimes of keeping things too top level versus going deep on things. I, you know, I can, I can do it short version or long version, whatever people want. But, um, yeah, I wanna— I can stay longer than just our hour here. I don't know what the, the format here is, but I always block out plenty of time after these kinds of workshops. So, um, I wanna, I wanna get through the rest of the material here, but I'm happy to stay on it as late as people want.

Thank you.

Amazing.

Yeah, cool. All right, well, glad you guys are loving this so much. All right, so hopefully now you're more clear on the 5 different engines. But one more thing I want to clarify here is that every seat on your team also falls somewhere on each engine, where the more seats you have in an engine, the stronger it is. But no amount of seats can make up for an engine lead, someone strong enough in that engine to actually drive it, to make decisions without you or with very little of you. So you also want— so Johann, that was interesting. You said they have 5 on their leadership team. I'm very curious what those 5 positions are and if they actually stack up with the 5 engines or if there's an imbalance there. That'd be super curious. I'm curious on the, on the brand, on the brand and leadership side. I mean, your core values live on leadership, but it has influence on the brand side. So I'm curious. That's where my brain goes on.

They spent so much money rebranding and coming

up

Tagline. And yep, let's just say this has been more than a $500,000 exercise for them with everything you've gone through. And I'm gonna— I don't know, I'm tempted. I'm like, do I send him this recording afterwards? Or do I just—

There's no winning.

Maybe just introduce him on it. I'll do a 30-minute just connection call. And let's just see what happens.

It might cause him too much pain. It's okay.

I love getting to people before they go through all of that. I would say that's on the higher end of the pain that I've heard that have I've definitely heard some horror stories. $500K is definitely a lot to not have all that built out.

Oh no, no, no. Cool. Continue. Continue.

Okay. So you want one person driving each engine. The sooner you have this, the better. If you have one solid person driving each engine and you're a 5-person team, you will outshine someone with a 20-person team and no one clearly qualified to run each engine. Okay, so identifying who you want in each of those seats and engine leads is always on you as the founder until you grow big enough to hire a CEO. Because yes, if you scale to 9 figures, you will probably want to hire a CEO instead of yourself. But that's probably not— I don't know who that is. I don't know exactly who my audience here. So until then, you are in charge of the leadership engine. So you set the cadence here, and that's that. You are the ship captain that guides every other engine. and success. Okay. So leadership is not just about filling roles. It's about steering the ship with clarity and purpose. Okay. All right. And then, um, I want to just mention on role descriptions. So this is something that I don't care how big or small your company is. Uh, you have to have this for everyone on your team. So in the 5 Engine Operating System, we have a very specific role description template that covers a lot of things and ties team members' roles to multiple other aspects of the operating system. But something here is always better than nothing. But part of the template is that we identify everyone's superpower versus their secondary or tertiary expectations. Superpower meaning anything that they— we have a certain process that we call the thrive versus— sorry, fuel versus friction matrix. And then secondary things are things that they're still expected to do, but they're probably just capable in those things versus something that really lights them up. And then tertiary are things that they're draining for them. They could be draining potentially, but they're only expected occasionally or on temporary or a temporary basis. So while you look for someone else to fill that need, so that's just kind of a way to communicate both to the team member and to leadership that it's temporary. Okay. So one other aspect that we cover here is what actions do they own versus lead versus support? So this is something that, you know, we can always. I like to dive in more to this, but just to give you guys kind of the short version here, I'll just say that someone owns something, they're responsible for creating it from scratch, including the idea. Okay, no one told them to do a thing in that domain. Lead means that they oversee, they oversee the expect— sorry, the execution. Support means they're actually doing the execution. Sorry, those are 2 very different things. So if anyone's familiar with EOS, they have lead, manage, hold accountable. So we took that and changed it to make it a lot more clear to the team. Alright. So curious what you guys feel your strengths are. So if you can pin it to an engine that you feel the strongest with, that'd be awesome. And then I'd love to hear one thing that you could just wave a magic wand at to change in your business, what that one thing would be. Love to hear that in the chat.

Johann, Johann, like my fingers, I was, I looked up and Johann had already typed it. We Yeah, we constantly get mistaken for the wrong thing in our industry. So this is definitely for us.

I love that. I'm trying to, trying to not pay attention to the chat so I can stay focused here, but I'm gonna look at all of them in a few. All right. So we, we have a checklist here. So I don't know which of the engines are your biggest strengths, or, but if you want to know the main complementary support that you need to give your business a strong boost, we have a free resource here to help out. So if you could drop this one in the chat. So this is businessdonebetter.co/founderschecklist.

Nice. Thanks, Rebecca. That's awesome.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So we have one more section and that's tech. So we're not going to do any deep dives on tech. Just going to go over some basics and how to keep it simple and cost effective. So hopefully this section can get some people some quick wins. So just to kick us off, I want everyone to think through these questions. What tools are you paying for right now? Are they really needed? And have you proven product market fit? So let's see, let me pull up my— yeah, for anyone on the newer side to things, you always have to make sure that you've proven that people can actually buy what you're selling. If you don't have clients, then it doesn't matter what tech you're using. So it's always the first step before putting any money into a business concept. I've had to— I had I feel like I have to pop people's bubbles so often, but it's always the best thing we could do for somebody. So anyone— people come at you and they're like, I have this thing and I'm paying for all these things and they haven't proven product market fit, then you can share this with them. So yeah, if you don't know what people will buy, what you need, then your idea might not be as good as you think. So always good to bridge that gap first or you'll never see an ROI. All right, so once you have proven product market fit, then, um, you don't need to spend a lot of money on tech at early stages. So I don't care what someone says, unless you like spending money on things long before you need them, um, then that's just not necessary. So, um, this is where your core values also come into play, where uncompromising integrity is one of ours and radical transparency. So I'm always very direct with everything. I don't want you to spend money on things that you don't need to. So If I don't feel like we're the right fit, then I'll tell you you're not. I don't want to take your money. But back to starting simple. So it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the tools that are available, but early stages, you just need the basics: Google Drive, Google Sheets, Gmail with your domain. Side note on that, never have anyone do a business with a Gmail account, please. I saw some, I've seen 2 this week. That's, you can't send newsletters. With anything but a domain email. And that's something that not only will you not be taken seriously, but you're putting in a lot of work only for emails to not hit people's inboxes because regulations, they've been changing on average every 6 months for the last couple years, and they're very strict these days. So it's not just a domain email, there's a lot of other things as well. All right, so getting deeper into tech though. So we call this the core 4 of tech essentials for your business. So file repository, communications platform, project management, and CRM system. All right, so file management repository, it's always the first thing to have because you can always just start with a basic Google Drive account and think of this as your digital filing cabinet. So it's essential to have one place where all of your files are stored and easily accessible to your team. I repeat, that's one place, not Google Drive and Dropbox and other things as well. One. So whether it's spreadsheets, PDFs, multimedia files, have them all in one place simplifies your work life and makes it easier for adding other people onto your team. Next is internal communication. Whether it's just— when it's just you, you don't have to worry about much, but when you add just one other person onto your team, you need to have a centralized place for communication. Please, and I cannot stress this enough, do not be using text messages and email to communicate with your team. For regular platforms. Okay. Slack has a monopoly where it's really the only real platform once you have a fully fledged business, but with a couple person team, there are plenty of other tools like Basecamp or other things that have internal communication that works just fine as long as it's a work-specific platform. So not only does having one place for that keep everything consolidated in one place, but it also provides good personal work-life balance for your team so you don't make them want to bash their heads against a wall. All right, Slack is also free when you're just using it within your own team and for simple purposes. So project management, this is something that you don't need until you have a full team doing regular tasks. With a good project management tool, you can track time, status of tasks, and so much more. But while you're under 3 people, this may not be needed. So however, when you start adding to your team, this is absolutely necessary for clarity on execution reporting, and it's also great to leverage for new hire trainings and other internal things like SOPs. Okay, we're massive advocates of ClickUp, which I want to emphasize is not a beginner project management tool. Through our operations program, we support people to get ClickUp implemented properly. But for people who are newer with operations, or that's not their strength, ClickUp can be very overwhelming. It's not the place to start unless you're working with somebody who's going to set it all up for you. So just using us as an example, it took us 2 years and 5 different people to get it set up properly, but we're now top 10% of power users. on ClickUp, and I would say we, we know it at a true mastery level. If you're looking for a beginner project management tool, Monday is great, or Trello. Just know that with most businesses, you will hit limitations and will need to leave it eventually into something more robust like ClickUp unless you plan on remaining small. So if you have scaling plans, it's always good to move into the right tech stack versus changing out of it down the line. So you want to do these things when things aren't chaotic versus waiting until you have a huge mess. And it's very painful to leave a platform. All right. And then the last of the core 4 is CRM software, aka customer relations management system. So this one we're going to do a little bit of a deeper dive before we talk recommended platforms, as there's so many options here and I want to just get a few essentials clear. So CRM software at a basic level helps you manage your interactions with customers and potential clients effectively as it creates a central hub for all your customer-related information. Making it accessible and manageable. I also want to pause for a moment and mention that there's actually a whole bunch of other things that you also need for your business tech stack. In addition to contact management, you need websites and funnels to share your services, email newsletter, SMS marketing, calendar scheduling tool, payments, and so many other things. Course builder, uh, potentially, and automations to tie everything together and make them function properly. So. You have email and so many different tools for that. Okay, awesome. That's a lot of choices. And then for websites, there's so many different things here. I'm not a fan of WordPress. I feel like most companies shouldn't be using WordPress these days. But there are some exceptions. And then great, that's a whole bunch more options. And then if you have anything with course builders, that's a whole other list there. So how do you know which one to pick? And then once you have all those, then you have to glue them all together with tools like Zapier or Make, which is just another cost and headache. So it's not easy deciding the right fit for your tech stack, and especially when you're trying to minimize costs as well. And a lot of things come with license payment per license. So the more you grow your team, it's crazy how much your tech, your tech costs begin to build as well. So this creates what we call a tool gap. So, so many tools. Too many choices, decision overload. How much will it all cost? How do they all connect to each other? How long will it take to set it all up? This is all overwhelming. That's just too much. I'm not a wizard. Okay. So I wanna just jump into a platform that in all my years of business systems, the best truly all-in-one platform out there, HighLevel. So, sure.

The community, the community here, like 99.9% have all come through.

Perfect.

We just ran the unofficial high-level summit just so we had. Okay, sorry. No, no, no, don't be sorry. Like you're singing the same song. It's like, okay, like there's a heap out there, guys. You got the best one. You're good.

Are they mostly agencies? Yeah, I mean, I'll just I'll just tell that.

Yeah. So Rebecca, they're they're all they're all go high-level agencies. We had four. We had four hundred of them online for three days straight last week. So they're they're a bit like whoa, like Clay was there, then Marcus. So people were there, and so Walt was just messaging me going. going, man, everyone needs to see this. So we are going to get this replay out to everybody because it is epic. So continue. But I just wanted— yeah, they're all going.

I'll give you, I'll give you that to use for something else then, the whole list. I'll just skip through it. But yeah, I'm curious, for those of you who haven't been to Level Up or at least weren't there last year, I don't know how many of you saw this t-shirt or how many are confused still about GHL HighLevel versus GoHighLevel. This is my swag that came out last year at Level Up. This was Robin's idea. Um,

yeah, so we're gonna, we're gonna keep calling it GHL.

So, so

because we wrote the

book,

because we wrote the—

Wait, what is that? What does the book say?

It says The Unofficial Playbook for GHL Agencies. That's what we launched.

Oh yeah, no, no, then it's always GHL or HighLevel. Anyone who calls it anything else, we know you're not OG. That's, that's

always Hey, are you going to be there this October?

I hope so. I'm waiting for one more thing to figure out for sure.

Yeah, we will be there.

I've been the last 2 years. Yeah, missed the first one, unfortunately. But yeah, this was my favorite one. So for those of you who don't know the story, they couldn't get the domain highlevel.com, and so they got gohighlevel.com. And so ever since then, it's— is it HighLevel? Is it GoHighLevel? So the answer to that is it's GHL or HighLevel. HighLevel is the correct answer. So yeah, you guys could just, if anyone is curious why HighLevel, you guys can use this for your agencies as well. Just, you know, why people should sign up with your agency and also just how to make sure that you're positioning your agency well. So you can take a screenshot, just, you know, make sure that these are all the things that you're consolidating and saving for people. And then also how I always explain it to clients is that That's, you have working with an agency with HighLevel, you have the benefit of a, they're just about a unicorn company. They're technically their last funding round put them just under billion-dollar status, but their next funding round, they'll be definitely over that. So you have the backing of a just about unicorn company. It's been around for 7 years with a company that has had a trajectory of the fastest innovation of like iteration of any company I've ever seen. So that means that it's a company that if it makes sense to do, they'll do it. If it needs to be fixed, they'll fix it. So working with smaller tech companies, that's something that like a lot of founders don't always think through these things when they're picking the right tech stack for their business. But people working with you guys as agency owners, they're getting the backing of this level of caliber of a company with the personal touch of you guys. So it's the absolute best of both worlds. Um, with a company that's, um, you know, has everything for them. And then why not HighLevel direct? HighLevel is designed for agency owners. So you guys, so that's something that they're not designed to work with the end business owner. And then specifically, I always tell business owners that are not agencies, you want to work with a HighLevel agency that's, that's white labeling in your niche. So somebody who's really specialized in whatever that industry is. And then things— this is what I always tell business owners to look for. So for you guys, these are the things to always make sure that you're really optimizing within your company. So you know how to speak to your audience, you're building solutions specifically for that niche, you have 24/7 chat support, tutorials, guided tour. Your onboarding is really important, making sure that you're getting customers feeling like they're integrated on the platform as soon as possible. To, you know, a lot of people, HighLevel can be very overwhelming unless your onboarding is really on point. Make sure that you have a human touch element to it at some point. Don't have it be all automated, just so people can always ask the right questions. We always hold people's hands for all phone and email setup as well. Those regulations are always changing roughly every 6 months for both email and phone. So that's a, you know, we just had the whole Texas thing roll out. the other Monday. So that's something that, you know, clients are never going to keep up with. And technically, you don't have to be on top of those things. But that's just my moral compass is that it's an obligation that I feel is the right thing to do for your clients.

Just on the whole Texas thing, because that is very, very concerning. I just want to shine some light on it for those who don't know. Can you share a little bit about that and what Because I've been reading about it going, dude, do we need to shut down all of our marketing?

No, no, not shut down. So here's the thing is that if you're doing— so I don't know how much is all in Australia too. Like, if you guys are only doing business in Australia, like, don't worry about this at all. But if you're doing any— what?

They're all American.

Okay. Anyone, so anyone who's doing business in the US, This is what I told my team and the support that we're— the advice that we're giving to our clients now is, um, the technical thing is it's only for any time you're sending marketing, not like appointment reminder things, but marketing messaging to anybody who's in Texas. But you might not know that they're in Texas. And what if, what if that's not listed, that that's not communicated somehow? And then somebody just, you know, we live in a litigious world where people, they want to make us think about something, they're going to. So, and also Texas, it's just Texas right now. We don't know if that trend is going to continue and other states are going to pick that up as well. So what I recommend to all of our clients is that if you are doing any marketing messaging at all, still go through that process. It's kind of complex. You have to do a $10,000 bond, but that's— it's like $100 to $200 a year. So some entity is going to make a lot of money. I think it's a racket personally, but it's a legal one that we all have to comply with or get hit with a whole bunch of fines that can tank a business really fast. So just anybody who's thinking these things are like, you know, oh, it probably won't happen to me. Everyone thinks that until it happens to them. So there's— They're always looking for businesses to make examples of. So you don't have to be a big fish to, to have to get in trouble for these things. My philosophy is always just better safe than sorry. Yeah, that helps.

I saw them say, you know, hey, it's $10,000 bonds. And now they're just going to build up this brand new bank with everybody putting in $10,000 so that they can send out SMSes and reminders. And yeah, right. Crazy. It's crazy.

I'll keep the rest of my opinions to myself.

Yep. Politics. Let's not bother talking about it.

No. But yeah, so that's, that's— and as far as pricing goes, whatever is best for like your niche. I think there's a whole range on that. For us, we work with coaches. So we charge $199 for the whole system and no setup fee. That's, you know, a lot lower than a lot of people. But But the one thing that you have to keep in mind from a price point standpoint is just how popular HighLevel is. So you have to be able to properly explain why working with your agency versus HighLevel for $97 a month and to justify against other competitors that are in your niche. So just selling HighLevel out of the box, I don't recommend. So making sure that what is it that you are bringing into the equation that keeps people wanting to join with you and stay with you and keeps them happy for a long time. So that's my, that's my agency spiel.

Well, we're all on board.

Cool. All right. Well, then what we covered today. So why systems without— sorry, hustle without systems just leads to chaos, not freedom. The 5 engines that run every business, key hiring tips, how to uncover your founder strengths, Core 4 Tools That Actually Support Your Growth, and How to Win with Your High-Level Agency. So, um, just some links to leave you with. So there's the Founder's Checklist again and a link for any— how to reach me. And then for anything else, you can visit us at businessdonebetter.co.

Amazing. Super cool. Thanks, Rebecca. I think the, um, the, the, the understanding of those 5 engines is a really cool thing to be able to break that down and to look at each one diagnostically and just go, okay, cool, where are we sitting? What's going on? And Clay, I'd love to hear from you actually, if I put you on the spot for a moment. So Clay's one of our amazing people who just spent 3 full days with us going through the HighLevel Summit. And before you jumped on, we were saying he's like just so much and it's just like, oh my God, I've got so much to do. But there was some good clarification there. So Clay, the reason I'm picking on you, Johann and I have a multi-team business. So we've got amazing people like Kyle on the team and Ebony. We've got people in charge of those engines as we highlight. The one engine we're struggling with is brand. People just mistake us for what we do. But Clay, I'm curious to hear from you, man, because a solo operator, as you said in the chat, how do you feel when you look at those 5 different engines and think to yourself, okay, which one should I be turning first? Like, how's your feeling and your understanding as Rebecca was going through that?

Well, all of those are very important. I mean, like she said, you wear 17 hats and You know, just speaks to me as we all multitask. But I know that, you know, there's a system, but, you know, with your clients, you have, you know, scope creep. It, it happens,

right?

You know, and you have a hard time saying no because you want to make sure that they're being serviced. So just me looking at this, you know, it gives you structure and everything. And like you said, you know, this is your baby, this is what you're trying to grow, but You know, people have done it before and this is a great blueprint to look at. So it kind of, you know, answered more questions for me. So that's what I got out of it.

Love it. Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

I can ask a deeper question if you— if that's okay.

Go for it. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Um, so, so Clay, I'm curious. So what, what's the main focus for your agency and where do you see scope creep the most?

Well, if we're being totally, uh, transparent, Um, I lost my one good client last week, so I'm starting from scratch.

Hmm.

Started from scratch.

Was that your only client, or was it like what percentage?

Well, I had, I had a few other ones, but they kind of, you know, fell off and everything, which, which was okay, you know. But right now I'm starting from scratch. So with going to the GHO Summit and everything and listening to you today, I definitely feel that I could be more effective with, you know, fulfillment and all those different things and taking that structure so I can hand it off. So I really need to be very diligent about my process so I'm able to, you know, hand it off so I could be the revenue engine. Because I spoke to Johann before, I like to be out front, and that's how people know me. But, you know, in the background, the ship still needs to sail without me actually having to row, you know. So that's, that's the way I'm looking at it. So I guess, does that answer your question?

Um, answer some aspects, and that's always good to like first identify, are you more, do you more lean front end or back end of business? Most people are more front end. Um, I'm an exception. I, I actually like to be in my business. Um, but so for you, uh, what do you know why you lost that client?

Um, it was more of a better fit. I am still handling their social media, but for what they had me doing, which was community outreach and the marketing. It just wasn't a fit.

Okay.

And it took up about 30 hours of time, so I'm kind of free now. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. Um, yeah, I guess, um, I could go in so many different directions with that. I want to be— I want to be most helpful to you and anyone else on the call here. Um, so, you know, I could— I can hot seat with you further, or if you want to ask me any specific questions, or if anyone else wants to, has a burning question, I'm happy to go any direction.

I'm here.

I'd love to. Yeah, I'd love to just ask from the 5 Engines point of view. So you were talking, Rebecca, about the revenue being the first engine, right? So as you're looking at a business and, you know, getting started, as a couple of our people here are single founders, as Clay, you know, Mark yourself as well, like I always feel like, and this has come from like years of experience, I always feel like if I ask a founder, what are you best at? They always say, I'm the best at sales. Like there's There's difference between that. But if you put me across the table from my ideal prospect, I can make the deal. So generating the sales is not necessarily the biggest problem. But as you look at those engines, what would you say is the focus? Where should people focus their time? Like, how should they actually delegate? Okay, I've got, here's 100% of my hours. I'm gonna put 80% to which engine and then, you know, the next one's in sequence and in order.

As a solopreneur,

As a solopreneur. Yeah.

Yeah. So as a solopreneur, I mean, that's the thing because you're in charge until you have somebody else to lead those engines. You're in charge of all of them. Okay. So you have to focus on revenue first. You know, if you don't have the money coming in, then you don't have a business. So your sales channels, you know, your sales process, everything there. And, but you have to keep hunting without brand. Okay, so brand is something that you kind of build in the background. So while, you know, in between your sales calls, you have to always be like, take some space. Um, I guess that's one of the best things that I can say is that especially as a solopreneur, we always think like, okay, I have to do all the things and I have to, you know, run an 80-hour week or whatever it is, and I'm just, I'm so busy and I have no, no time for anything. But that's something that finding that space taking a pause is often the best thing that you can possibly do. Okay, so there's a philosophy of measure twice, cut once. Okay, it's the same thing in business. You have your, you know, how many people have their best ideas in the shower while they're brushing their teeth or while they're doing something where their brain's not on? Okay. There's a reason for that, psychologically speaking. So when you're not just in the weeds on everything, your brain has the space to process deeper. And when you're just do, do, do, do, do, you don't have that space to actually step away from the canvas for a minute and be like, okay, how do I see on top of my business what's really going on here? Where do I need to be going? Okay, that's also good to know where your goalposts are. Where are you driving the ship? Where are you going? What do you want? Where do you want things to go? So I always look at your goalposts, your end goal, Okay, do you want to remain a, you know, 8? Like, what, what size do you want to grow to? What team size? You know, what is it? What does it look like when you're like, I did the thing, I'm happy, this is where I want to stay? What does that picture look like? So those are your goalposts. Okay, and then maybe a couple milestones in between, but then you want to focus on what's my immediate next 1 to 3 steps. Okay, so depending on how your brain best processes, Um, but something in there, that's where you want to be thinking of things. And that only comes to you when you take that space. So brand, anything on the creative side, that's only going to come in space. Client success engine, that's something that you're just going to constantly be refining. Things are going to be messy when you're in early stages and you have to just learn to be okay with that, um, until you can do better. Okay. And then your operations, your operations are going to be very loose at the beginning because you don't have anybody else to be supporting you. So you want to always think MVP. What's the minimal viable process, whatever you want to call it, of whatever it is that you're doing? Okay. MVP for everything. Everything. Keep it simple, stupid simple. And then your leadership. I mean, when it's just you, that's always good for you, for you to just make sure that you're in a good headspace, making sure that you're taking care of yourself because you are your business. But it's also just how you grow everything, the impact on your clients, that's determined by how well you're taking care of yourself. So think of leadership when you're a solopreneur as just self-care.

That's a good thought. Somebody once said to me, first you need to lead yourself, then you need to be able to lead your family, then you can lead your business, then you can lead your community, that kind of stuff. So yeah, amazing. So guys, give it up for Rebecca. Thank you, Rebecca, for jumping in. We've got those links. So Amit, thank you for posting those higher up. Businessdonebetter.co and of course businessdonebetter.co/rebecca and founderschecklist. Awesome there. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you jumping on and spending time and we'll make sure that this replay gets out to everybody because, and you know, again, coming straight from our summit there, I think the same song is consistent and you guys can start to see that it's not just a one and done thing like that. Everybody that's building this map of success has that same platform kind of same thought pattern about how that's going to transition through. So Rebecca, thank you so much for jumping in and sharing with us. And again, we'll make sure that this is out on replay to everybody. Really appreciate your time.

Absolutely my pleasure.

Awesome, guys. Thank you so much, guys. We are just about to kick into the VIPs today tonight. And again, Rebecca Kalouse, thank you so much for jumping in. Guys, stick with us. Invite anybody who's in your team that should have been here to get up early or stay up later or whatever it takes to get to here. And we look forward to catching up with you guys in the group. And in our, in our upcoming sessions real soon. So, Johann, signing off as well.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate you. I mean, thank you for bringing Rebecca into our world. It's epic.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you guys for having us.

We'll connect offline. Thanks, guys.

Yeah.

Bye-bye.

See you guys.

See you soon. Bye.