Beyond The Chaos®: Enjoying Your Time Freedom by Streamlining Your Teams Delegation Process for Increased Profit with Speaker and CEO Susan Fennema

Hi, this is Susan Finnema of BeyondTheChaos Biz. And you're listening to EA Interviews.

EA Interviews, episode 307, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Business is fun. Business is a lot of fun. But business can be a giant pain also. If you have a business. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, let's grow, let's go. Bring in those new sales leads, gen and new profits. It's all great and everything until you realize the team that you have, if you have a team, might not be supporting you the right way. That's why I'm excited to have Susan Fenema on the show today. Chief organization for your company, helping you structure everything, create processes, create structure to all this. I'm gonna bring her up right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishing method book dot com.

Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Susan Fenema. Susan, how are you feeling today?

Hi, I'm great today. Mario, thanks so much for having me.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I think what you're doing is fantastic. There's so many businesses out there that just have chaos going everywhere. And as the chaos eradicating officer, what do you do to help them grow their profits and have a more enjoyable business?

So the enjoyable part is a big key to how we help. We help small business owners who are overwhelmed figure out how to streamline and simplify their operations and then also better manage their projects so that they are able to focus on that visionary stuff that CEOs should be focusing on and doing the things that they love. Many of the people we work with started their business because they were great at their trade and they don't even get to do that anymore. And so we help them figure out how to get to what they want to do, how to make time for that, how to build processes so everything else is running around them much more or much less, I should say chaotically.

Why would you say it's so important to have a standard operating procedure in your business?

There are so many reasons to be able to delegate properly. That's one, to be able to share your vision of how you want your company to be perceived outside of, you know, your head, so to speak. You know, you can't always get what you want unless you're setting that expectation for your team of how you want them to do it. So being able to be clear, the other is having team members be able to meet your expectations. Because if they are trying to figure it out all the time, how do they know when they're meeting them? I've worked with a lot of business owners that are just frustrated that they can't get anybody to help them. And it turns out that there's no process around what they're doing. So it's going to continue to be failure after failure. Of all the people that let you down, you. And I would suggest that if that's the case, start looking in the mirror a little bit. Might be you.

I love that you're saying that. So I want to ask you a little bit deeper here because you're saying they're having a hard time finding the right people because there's no processes in place. But if they don't have the right person, that person would never see the processes internally with the company because it's private. So the two part question would be, obviously once you have the right person, you need the process in place. So that way they have that leadership, the trajectory, and they know what the heck to do. However, do you feel that there's a subconscious deeper reason that once you know the process and you know what the heck you're talking about, it's easier to communicate and you actually will attract them?

I think that that's absolutely true because those people can see when you're, when you're speaking to them in an interview. They can tell if you're structured or not. They can tell whether or not you're talking about our team's process, the way we do things. That kind of thing is so important and it comes out even just in a networking conversation, let alone a job interview.

Okay, I appreciate that because I've heard people say that and I've experienced it myself. When I'm hiring people, it's like, oh, I need so and so. And it's like 10, 10 plus 15 plus years ago. Oh, did I say that out loud? I should have said like decades ago or a time at whatever, even 20 years in some cases when I was looking for the right people, it's like, was I being the right person? No, I just was like 10 years ahead and I'm like, here's where I want to go. So the Fact that you were like, take a look in the mirror. I believe 100% it starts with you. But also you need to be able to communicate it because maybe you do have that sop. You just don't know how to communicate it. So if someone does, they have the vision, they do know they've done a little bit of work on themselves, do know they need someone. They're just having a hard time finding them. What would you suggest in that communication piece to be able to say, hey, here's some things to say, or here's some ways to communicate it better? Because maybe that's not their strength.

I think it's important in that, in that world to be being really clear about your expectation. You know, the other thing they're going to pick up is, are you open? Are you transparent? You know, if you are somebody who's working on your process, here's a great way to say it. We have developed some processes, and what we're really looking for is our team's input into how to make them better. So if you say something like that, right, if you say something like that, not only are you establishing that there is a structure, you're also establishing that you expect them to be part of the growing structure. Because process doesn't just exist in time, in one moment. It evolves and grows with your business as it grows.

That is hot.

Jules. We need to make sure that's in a quote in the show notes. And.

Wow. I'm thinking of my own team right now. And they're fantastic, every one of them. Because the ones who aren't, I already fired.

But that is so important because you got me thinking I could do a better job at communicating the vision and where I want to go for the show and the book publishing and a lot of different things. Because I really do want everyone on my team going, hey, here's some ideas, and bringing them up to me, because everyone, you know has great thoughts and ideas. Do you suggest.

What do you. Like, I'm on Jeopardy. What do you suggest?

How often should a company be doing that, do you believe?

Constantly. Constantly.

Once you establish a process, this is how I believe we're going to do it. The first thing that you're going to run into is somebody's going to not do it that way.

What you need to figure out as you're implementing those processes is, is what do I do to fix that? And I have the approach of stop blaming the person, start blaming the process. And now you're on the same team to fix the process. So you are working together to make it more clear. You say, hey, Sheri, I saw that you did xyz, but I expected abc. And I think the process says ABC in my mind. Can you tell me how to make that more clear so we don't do that again? And now you have not blamed Sherry for a mistake. That's the first thing. And you've improved the process so that Sherry, or potentially even one, if Sherry just is always going to do xyz, you have also made the ability to make it more clear for the next person.

And it sounds like you would suggest updating the process, not only fixing it, but rolling it out, not just keeping it between them.

Right. There should be a. We have a process of the process. So if you have an update or if you have a change, how do you communicate that to the team? Where is it stored? How you know, how do you update it so that somebody doesn't have to go read through, they know what actually changed? And so having that, as well as establishing a way over time to constantly be reviewing them so, you know, every six months, if you're not growing that fast, it could be every month. If you are. All of those things are important to make sure that they are alive and breathing and growing with your company.

That way you realize it's the process that's the issue. And you don't think Sherry's a troublemaker, right?

Or maybe she is. But now, you know.

What types of processes should people start with when they go, there's all these different bottles, nooks and crannies, things, areas, whatever the word is. There's all these different things you can do within the company. And one of my favorite commercials from, let's just say yesteryear, it was from QuickBooks and it was like.

And it showed this pet shop, the birds chirp and all these different things. And it's like the phone annoying when it rings, but even worse when it doesn't. I'm like, oh, my gosh. And it's just like, there's all these things you can do within the company. Where would you say someone should start? Because I would venture to say there's.

At least a dozen or two that I can think of off the top of my head.

Well, I would say if you're just starting, if you don't have anything, start where the biggest pain is, whatever that pain that is rearing its ugliest head. If it is that you run projects and none of your projects are finishing on time, you need to put some work into your project. Management and fulfillment structure. If you are dropping leads and your sales never close and you don't know how to get from a first call to a paid invoice, maybe your sales process needs some work onboarding new clients. Ah, we sold it. When do we start? What do we do now? You know, that's another area that you want to focus on, I would say later, working on how you're going to close out a client. So off boarding, how do you get that testimonial? How do you get that permission to use their website or the creative you built for your portfolio? How do you get a case study? Is that part of your process when you end a project? So if you really look at taking a client from. They have first contacted us to, they are giving us an amazing case study, what is the process? What path are they going through? And you obviously can break it down into those little sections. But I would deal with the thing that hurts the most right now first.

That's a great expert authority insight. Because for everyone it's different. It might, like you said, it might be the leads, it might be the sales, it might be, hey, that's not a problem at all. But the internal process is. There's no communication. I can't tell you how many people. As a matter of fact, one of my good friends today, while we were talking about CRMs for her business, and I was like, which one are you using? Because sometimes people are using one that's not adequate or they're not using anything at all, or they think the spreadsheet is a CRM, which I'm gonna say it's not in.

But don't get me started on. Don't get me started on spreadsheets.

Do tell. I want to get you started on spreadsheets.

Okay.

What do you hate about spreadsheets and or love about them?

Spreadsheets are not a tool that can help you be proactive. They are a tool to help you measure something. So if you're looking at numbers that you need to pull out and you need to manipulate and you need to figure out that data, that's what it's for. But it can't tell you, oh, what's due in two weeks, what's due in one week.

Who haven't I called in three months? Maybe if you sort it, but it's not proactively pushing you. So I'm anti spreadsheets unless you're doing something that they were built to do.

Okay, I like that. Yeah, We've been using pipedrive for a while now. And there's another one we were using before that. Both of them are really great. It just depends on what your company needs. But I've been a huge proponent of CRMs and.

Basecamp project collaboration. Whether you got three people on your team, 30 or 300, some of the stuff we're talking about here, I've been using well over a decade now, and it's been a game changer because at least I've never said it that way with the proactiveness, but it's just like, yeah, it tracks the data, but, you know, if you. You can't organize it in a way where it's useful. I mean, unless you're making a list, it's better than a kick in the throat or post it notes. I'll give it that. But I mean, when you're. When you get to the point where you get so many leads coming in and you're just every day taking phone calls is somewhere in the company and it's like, who do we talk to this week and where did it end up?

Yeah, I don't know. And your data is not really relational, you know, it's harder to find out. Ooh, are there three people in the company that I'm talking to?

Yeah. Or even if you want to follow up with them with the email, where are you going to get their email? So you go to one and then you have to go back to the email to find.

And there's no way. All these CRMs that you're talking about, the ones I love, the project management tools, Basecamp, I love teamwork. Asana is a good one as well. All of them capture the emails and communications with that outside party too. So you're looking at the source of truth in one place instead of trying to figure it out in a bunch of other places.

Yeah. And also I will add this in, is the.

Compliance rate and how quick getting people to actually use it. You can have all the bells and the whistles in the world. If no one's using it, it doesn't matter. And I love the pipedrive mobile app because when I started the show, there were times I'd be at the computer here typing stuff in, brainstorming, and I'm like, I need a break. I go get food. And literally 10 seconds later, I'm walking down the steps or I'm in the kitchen or something, and it was like, something hits me and I could just go.

Instead of like, oh, I'll add it when I get back. No, you're not going to that.

You're never going to remember if you're.

Out and about in the field, you don't have, you know, oh, I'm going to WI fi in from the backseat with my laptop and satellite uplink and. No, no, no, no, you're not going to. So that's where I see a huge barrier, because people are all over the place now, and it's like, you need to be able to capture that. Same thing with Basecamp. They both have apps that can communicate with the team.

Right. And you're not wondering what version it is. Right. You always have the most recent data. You don't email it to someone and then wonder, oh, did they make a change? Do I need to get it from them? Where did it go? Now I have multiple copies of my source of truth. It's just not a good one. I would not use Excel for either of those. Project management or for CRM.

What about Google Sheets?

It's the same thing. It's just not as. Does it have as many enhancements? I should say? No, it's not good either.

Well, you clearly know what you're talking about, and I love what you're sharing here. Tell me, with all the people you've helped, who would you say is your biggest success story and biggest transformation?

So we had. And this ties into what we're talking about at the beginning, about whether or not people actually stay and what happens. So we had a group that built software.

They had some good communication, they had some good things. They were doing really well. But the accountability and the communication between their teams was just a huge challenge. Things kept falling through big cracks. So we started working with them to create a little. A little bit more clarity on where the single view of their customers should be. Where did they go for that source of truth like I'm talking about? It turned out that the customer support area was really the biggest challenge. And all of us that work with customers know that's not an area you want to have challenges with. So we started hammering down on that. We evaluated a bunch of different software options for them and what they should consider, you know, what they're using, how they tie together. The beauty of working with a software development company is that you can get them to tie them together, do all that. That backend API stuff.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that.

Yeah, so that was helpful. And then we established a very clear process to set expectations for that support team. When you get a request, how long until you have to respond to it? Who's in charge of making sure everybody's responding to it and those types of things. And so they. All of a sudden, they got it, and they understood, oh, this is what I need to do. We gave them some canned responses for when they needed that stuff, that type of thing, and their lead support person ended up resigning over this whole thing, and.

Really?

Yeah. And it was the best thing that ever happened to that company and that business.

Why? Why did they resign? Just because they felt.

Was it their fault or something? And they just. Or they felt that way.

They were now being held accountable to handling it and to handling it the way it should be handled, and they weren't interested in that part.

They imagine that doing your job at a business.

Right. And so once they. Once that came to light, it was amazing how quickly.

They were like, no, I'll just leave. Okay. That's easier than that owner having to fire you. That's for sure. And they were able to bring somebody that worked for him up. And, man, she did fantastic. She took the reins, and it turned out over time that all sorts of things turned up about how he was managing them and how he was limiting them. Things that the owner would have never known if we had not dug into that process to figure out how to solve that problem.

Oh, that's fantastic to hear. I love hearing that people about the promotion. And it sounds like the woman that was promoted, good for her. And she actually cared.

She did. She did. She doing a great job still, as far as I know. I haven't checked on that lately.

Yeah. I sincerely really wish more people just realized that component of it because there's so many skilled people out there. Communication, I would say globally. Most people don't really learn a high level of it. It's just they may or may not learn it, but it takes exactly $0 to care. If you don't care. Not interested.

I'm with you there for sure.

Well, thank you for that. I have one more thing before we thank our sponsor, and it is the love it wheel of whatever.

So we're gonna spin it, and you tell me if you. That was a good one. You tell me if you want yellow or black.

Yellow.

How come you want yellow?

Do we have to talk about that? Because it's taken so long to spin. I like the bright, bold color of yellow.

Okay, here we go. It's. You know, when I'm hitting it here, I gotta make sure it's like, right on the. There we go. So I got to aim right there. It was interesting because one week everyone did yellow, then everyone did black. I'm like. And no One knew each other is so interesting. So my question. Oh yeah. My question for you on the yellow is who is a company you would love to work with that you know you can help?

Oh gosh, it's probably somebody in our pipeline right now. There is a, a client who is an advertising agency and not gonna name names and they are struggling with a lot of, a lot of back, back end chaos. They don't really have any processes. The owner is working almost 247 all weekends. He can't sell, they can't, they can't get. He or he can't spend his time selling. I should say they can't get more clients in the loop because they're having to wait so long because they're not finished with everything else. It's just a mess. And after my 10 years of working in advertising, what we're doing now with the processes, my team has a lot of advertising experience. I'm like, this is just a perfect client for us to help and we can make huge difference for them and their team pretty quickly.

That's fantastic to hear because it sounds like sales and Legion is not their problem.

No, no, they, they could do that all day but it doesn't matter. If you can't fulfill it, you can't sell it.

Yeah, I know a lot of companies that, and personally I prefer the front end of working with people, you know, showing them results and all of that and. But I have a great team in place for the fulfillment and I realized that years ago. But there's a lot of companies I think are great at the sales and maybe even the fulfillment. But it's the whole, like you said on the back end. You look in there and you know, I remember years ago I'd go into these huge businesses and I'm starting off and I'm like, wow. I get inside there, I'm like, this looks worse than.

Anything I'm doing.

And then the flip side is there's companies that are running so efficiently on the back end, but that's all their head is in. It's just in the back end stuff. They never do any additional sales or marketing, but the things run like a well oiled machine.

You do find a lot of people succeeding in spite of themselves.

And they don't always realize how much easier and how much more relaxing of a workplace they could have if they just put some of that structure in place, get that stuff out of the way. There's always going to be emergencies. There will always be some chaos raising its ugly head. But if you are not operating in that state all the time. It's much easier to handle those things when they arise.

Well, I'm so glad you're helping people do it because it's very much needed and.

Excuse me, it's very much needed. And I know what I've seen on the back end of companies and you'd never see it from the front.

Well, that's the other. You know, as you create these processes, you can grow, you can scale. And what you have to remember is that this process, this process that your team works, that it is reflecting to the outside world as part of your brand. So they see that your client can tell if you're organized or not. Even if you somehow miraculously make a deadline, they can tell if you're frantic, they can tell you might be good at putting on a face, but you can't do it all the time.

Oh, I like that.

Well, thank you for what you've shared. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.

Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your Transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Susan, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I think I'm ready.

All right, I got three questions, 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path is to make sure that you are not dropping your leads. It's that straightforward. Make sure you have a sales process that includes a following up even with those people who might have passed initially, that you're keeping them in your.

Follow.

Up plan and that you have a follow up plan. Stay in touch with those people. You never know when they're going to change their minds.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

They believe they have to do everything because they're the small business owner and they can't trust it or they can't share it. So the biggest, fastest solution to that is you have to delegate. And the only way you can delegate is, is if you have a clear process of what you're expecting.

Excellent. Number two. No, no, no, no. Number three, he's doing good. He caught that. What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Serve them well. That's, that's the bottom line. Make sure that what you are doing is in their best interest even if sometimes it's not in yours. So sometimes you have to take that hard path and say we're going to give you this extra deal for free because we messed up. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you have to take extra care with them because that specific customer just needs a little bit more figuring out that communication and how that can flow. It's all in the mindset of being a servant to your client as opposed to, you know, taking their money and running. It's all in the attitude.

Excellent. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Well, I like Traction a lot. That's the eos, an entrepreneurial operating system book that is usually for teams that are larger than what I work with. But man, it's a great jumping off place. You can pick and choose things from that even for a smaller team and run with it. I also Love Steve and Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That's just a great one. Old school I know, but I love it.

Can't go wrong with that. Both great recommendations. Thank you for those. It's been an absolute pleasure. Susan, thank you so much for sharing.

Thanks. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24? 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book. Eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview, video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.