050. How to Create a Strong Foundation for Growth w/ Jessica Millhiser

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Hello everybody. Thank you for joining me. Joining us, I have a very special treat for you today. I am joined today by Jessica Millhiser and we're going to talk all about systems and business, foundation and organization, all that awesome stuff. So I can't wait to hear from her. But before we get started, I just want to have Jessica introduce herself and I'm going to ask you to tell us about your story, how you got into business, all that fun stuff. So, Jessica, welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Hi Melissa, I'm so happy to be here and join you on this amazing podcast that you're doing. My name is Jessica Millheiser and I am a business consultant. My business is J. Mills Consulting, and I kind of found myself here very organically. So throughout kind of my working years, I've always been in kind of the operations, administrative, management, leadership types of roles with all of the jobs I've held and companies that I've worked for. So it's just a skill set that I think I naturally had and kind of just developed over the years. I am from Vermont originally, born and raised, went to undergrad there. I moved to D.C. area for three years and worked for an international nonprofit, which was my first, like official real job. And it was very cool working with people kind of all over the world and I learned a lot there. And then I moved to Los Angeles and lived there for about nine years and and now we are in Denver and have been here for about a couple years now. And I learned a lot about myself in all the places that I lived. I like to tell myself that I had very different lives in each of the places. And I learned a lot about myself personally. I learned a lot about myself professionally. And I was able to kind of zero in on what I was actually really passionate about. And I've always been the type of person that didn't want to settle for just any old job and I didn't want to just work a 9 to 5 because that's what everybody was supposed to do. And it took me a while to kind of figure out what that was. And I ended up going back for my master's in California and I got it in coaching and administration. And that was very cool because it was very in tune with what I was passionate about, but also very in tune with my skill set. So that was kind of an interesting journey for me professionally. And then when I got here, I was like, you know what? I'm ready to take the leap. I'm ready to make it official. Why don't I just go off and kind of make my own consulting business with a focus in business operations and helping women in particular build their business foundation and, or navigate a business growth phase. So here we are today.

Nice. So when did you get started?

Officially, I started this year, January 2022. But unofficially I've been doing it for the past, I don't know, three or four years. But in California, having an LLC is very expensive. So I kind of have been doing it unofficially for a while, but decided to take the full, the full blown leap this year.

Nice. That's exciting. So how's it going so far?

You know, it's been a journey, it's been a very interesting journey to kind of make that actual commitment of, okay, I'm legit doing it. I'm doing all the things, getting the llc, you know, getting those bank accounts and getting like my business official, working on my own content and marketing and all that stuff and learning how to network and learning what networking really means and how to network in a proactive, positive, fruitful way. So that's been kind of an interesting journey. I think that's what I've probably learned the most this year. Confident in like my skill set and what I offer, but kind of learning the networking and collaboration aspect of being an entrepreneur has been interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. So I love this, that your work is all around. Well, part of it is around setting business foundations and that's what you've been doing yourself. So maybe talk a little bit about that. Like how what this work has been like for you in setting up your own business and then also how you turn around and help your clients with that.

Yeah, so that's a great, that's a great kind of introductory question because I really am building my business in the same way. I try to advise my clients to build the business. And I'm very much, I want to practice what I preach. So I am very much. Okay, like, how am I organized? What is my time management look like? What is my structure? What is my workflow? And I've developed a system for myself that works for me, that I follow pretty, pretty methodically. Maybe for you or works for anybody that I work with. It's going to be a little different. But at the end of the day. Creating that structure and creating that organization is going to be key in how you manage your time and how you move through your work, which ultimately I think is one of the biggest setting, like foundation setting, things you want to set up for yourself, is how you use your time. Because time is finite. And that's, I think, what I work with my clients with on the most is having them understand that time is finite. And you have to make sure that your priorities and your values are aligning with how you're using your time. So that's been a really big part. I'm a big component that I've been working on and helping my clients work on. Then I also work a lot on documentation. So here's how. Here are the tasks that I do on the daily, weekly, monthly. Here's how I complete those tasks. Let me write them down. Let me get them out step by step. Because you kind of want to be thinking ahead. Right. If my business grows, if I really get to a place where I'm thriving, you're going to want to eventually bring some help on. Probably not necessarily, but. And you want to have the ability to kind of plug and play whatever that help looks like for you.

Yeah, yeah. And I think. I know for me, having been a solopreneur for so many years, I never really thought about documenting anything. Right. Because it's like, oh, it's just me. Who. Who cares? And I might do it different every time. Who knows?

Yeah.

But it is important, I guess, from what you're saying, to start thinking about that from the very beginning.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, in my opinion, I think it's really important because once you. And it might take you some time to kind of figure out, like, how you like to do things, what your way of moving through your businesses. But once you find that way, you want to write it down. Because ultimately, if you write it down, even if you're a solopreneur, even if you're not planning to necessarily grow, maybe in the next year or two, you might. And you might need that help early, or it might just be you. But ultimately it comes down to saving you time, keeping you consistent, keeping you efficient, reducing errors, and kind of protecting you from any potential liabilities or risks along the way.

Yeah, yeah. So I love the discussion around time, too, because like you said, that is the one thing that we. It's a very finite resource. Right. We can't create more. But so what do you see are like the top few mistakes that. That we make the most often in these early stages of our business or in growing a business that you work on with your clients.

So what I would say is, well, a, it kind of depends on what stage of business you're in. But the thing that is most common is not time blocking. So like, let's say you need CEO time or you need COO time, or you need CFO time, whatever those, like, hats are that entrepreneurs notoriously have to wear at some point, you need to time block those hours for yourself because that needs to be scheduled. That can't be continuously kicked. So I think time blocking, strategic hours for you to focus on your business, whether that's sales and revenue, whether that's figuring out your operations, whether that's just admin duties, whether that's working on social media, newsletters, or content, you need that time blocked and reserved. I also always suggest color coding because for me, if you're looking at your week or your month at a glance on a digital calendar, if you know what each color is, you can see at a quick glance, okay, here's what I have going on. Here's what I have going on today, this week, this month. So just really being able to take a look at your schedule and your calendar and quickly identifying what you have going on and then prioritizing, like what has to get done this week. What would you like to get done this week? And then maybe what is not urgent, that either you take off your plate completely or you kind of push to maybe next week or next month. So figuring out what those priorities are is, is. Is huge as well.

Yeah. Yeah. So I am notorious for like having a task list of like 20 things and saying I'm gonna get it all done today and then it doesn't get done. Right.

So.

Right.

And that doesn't feel good either, does it?

No, it feels horrible. So we'd love some. So what advice you would have for those of us that are task overloaders.

So what I would say is if you have like a long list, if it's more than, I don't know, let's say you've got 15 to 20 tasks on your list, I would take a look at that list and be like a break it down into how long the tasks are going to take. If it's quick, if it's kind of okay, I can knock this out in five or ten minutes. It's just one of those annoying, tedious tasks. Or if it's a little more time sensitive. So it's like, okay, this might take me 30 minutes. Or if it's really kind of an intensive brain power time function item that's going to take an hour plus take a look at what the time constraints are and then prioritize those. And then I would say try to knock off two or three a day. You can do two or three a day and then assign yourself days. Be like, okay, on Monday I'm going to do these two or three tasks. Tuesday I'm going to do these two or three tasks, et cetera, et cetera. Because my thing is people get very overwhelmed. Well, here are all the things I have to do. Here's all the stuff that has to get done. I'm feeling backlogged. I don't have enough time. That's so easy to get caught up in. And then you just kind of lose motivation or you deflate, or you're just like, oh, it'll never get done. So you just keep kicking it. But if you break it down piece by piece and just pick two or three things a day, it'll get done over time and you'll feel more accomplished as you move through the days.

Yeah, I love that. That's a great idea. Yeah. Because that's, I think what a lot of times is the resistance of like a big project or something. It's like, it seems so big, so impossible. I don't have time to, you know, a huge block of time. But if we chunk it down into exactly sized pieces and yeah. It's eating an elephant. Yeah.

Even if it's like one big project that maybe you have a deadline that's two weeks out, be like, okay, like, let's make a list of all the things that need to be done to complete this project and then just assign them to days. So you're kind of taking it off piece by piece.

Nice. Awesome. So I want to switch gears a little bit to talking about vision and why vision matters. I know this is part of the foundational work that you do, so maybe talk about that a little bit. I've been working on this in my own business, thinking about mission and vision and values. We just had a retreat, women's retreat last weekend. And this was the work, a lot of the work that we. So it's very fresh in my mind. So maybe talk a little bit about the importance of a vision and why that matters.

Awesome. I mean, vision is something that I've really started to zero in on with some people that I've been working with. Because again, if you think about overwhelm. Right. Oh my gosh. All the things. But what I like about focusing on your vision Is you can't figure out how to get where you're going if you don't actually know where you're going. So I used to be of the mindset and this was probably pre pandemic, but like, oh, okay, like where do you see yourself in two, three or five years, maybe 10 years? You know, what does that timeline look like for you? And I think everybody has learned throughout the last couple of years that things can change quickly, things can change in a minute, priorities can shift, all the things. So what I like to say instead now is in a perfect world, if you had everything you wanted, if you had everything you needed, if you were doing everything you wanted to be doing, what does that picture look like? Where are you? What is your business doing? Are you speaking? Are you working at conferences? Are you full to capacity with your client list? Are you giving educational seminars? Whatever that looks like for you and your business, write that down and that's your vision. And then you can kind of take piece by piece and break that down into more of the timeline aspect of what the vision is so you can be like, okay, in a year, I want to be giving monthly talks and I want to be full like 10 or 20 people per talk. Okay, what do I need to be doing this week, this month, this quarter, to start making moves on getting there. So again, kind of taking the overall big picture of where you're trying to go and then thinking backwards and breaking it down into more tangible, bite sized timelines.

Nice. So what does that kind of vision creation process look like for you? Is that like, you know, do you, how do you walk your clients through that?

Well, I basically have them do a brain dump. And I'm like, let's just take whether we do it together or whether they do it kind of outside our time. I'm like, you just sit down and either write in a journal or type on the computer whatever way suits you best and just brain dump. What does your vision look like? If you could have every single thing you wanted, what does that look like? And then we kind of come back together and we sort of try to break it down into segments because a lot of times there's going to be a few different components to whatever that vision looks like. And we take each different component and we break it down into, okay, like let's take this component. If we broke that down, what needs to happen to get us there? Do you need a certification? Do you need a training? Do you need more practice hours? Do you need to increase your client load? Do you need to Start doing webinars so that you're getting practice as a public speaker. So we try to break each segment down and work backwards and figure out, okay, what's our focus point for step number one for this section? And we do that for each section as appropriate.

And so when you're doing this work, you're having them think about personal and business life.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Nice.

Because that's important. I mean, if you're a business owner, especially if you're a solopreneur, it's really difficult to separate personal from professional because your business is kind of your life, and maybe you have a family or maybe you don't, and who you are as an individual gets represented in how your business is put out into the world.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's so much more of a feminine approach and thinking. Like, we think very holistically when we're planning. And I feel like the masculine is very linear. Like, you know, I'm here at work or I'm here at home. It's like, for us, it's like it's all together.

Yeah. I would 100% agree with that. And I don't know if that's just the nature of gender or not, but I feel like women really internalize the work they do. And especially if it's our own, we're super passionate about it, and we want to do well, and we are driven, and we are ambitious, and we want to just flourish in all the ways that we can to make sure that this business succeeds.

Yeah, yeah. So would you be willing to share your vision?

Oh, goodness, yeah. All right. So I guess I want to say one thing about the vision and, like, one thing about a business journey. Right. So a business journey can go two different ways. So I like to say that for some people, your business journey is you want to be a lifestyle business. You want to make enough money to kind of sustain yourself, to be busy, to help others, but you want to still be able to have personal time, and you don't want to have to be working all the time. Maybe that keeps you a solopreneur. Maybe that keeps you with one or two staff. There are other people that really want to flourish, really want to thrive, Want some brick and mortars, want some, you know, educational seminars, things like that. So it kind of really depends on which route you're thinking about taking. So for me, personally, I have been thinking a lot about this over the last few months, and I think I'm more in the lifestyle camp. I think, like, I am very passionate about what I do and I love what I'm doing, but I want to be able to have personal time. I don't want to have to be working all the time. I want a certain number of clients that I'm working with and helping on a continuing basis. And I want to provide good work. I want to create a beautifully collaborative relationship where I'm helping them flourish. And I want to be moving into, I think, more of an educational aspect, like doing webinars, doing speaking engagements, giving educational talks. I think that's really the route that I'm planning to focus on.

Nice.

And if I have a part time virtual assistant or something along the way, then even better.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. And I just want to, like. Because I don't want, like, I feel like sometimes women or not women, but any business owner can get caught up in like, well, how do I know if I'm succeeding or how do I know if, like, I'm hitting, you know, what society tells me I should be doing? And I want people to know that success is individual. Success is what you think success is. It's what makes you happy and it's the goals that you're setting for yourself. So if you're happy with a more relaxed lifestyle business and that is suiting your personal needs, then be proud of that and be happy with that and go all in on that. And if you're happy going for like a brick and mortar and, you know, trying to hit Fortune 500 or whatever that looks like, then that is success to you and go get that. So I want to help you get what you want and whatever that looks like for you.

Yeah, I totally get that. I've. I was ashamed, I feel like for so many years of my business, because in the early years, I've been in business for 17 years, but the early years, because I was measuring my success against like corporate success. Right. Like having. Yeah. A big staff or investors or whatever it was. But, you know, I feel like over the last, like five to seven years, I've allowed myself to be proud of the fact that I started my business before I had kids. I. And before I was married, I went through the whole phases of life, of getting married and having kids and keeping my business going and was profitable that whole time and able to stay home, attend to my children and my family and still have clients and make money. And like, for me, that's what success is.

And that is incredible.

Yeah.

And so.

But you're totally right that it is individual and that, you know, that's why we go into business. Right. So we get to run the show, we get to decide what success means.

Exactly. And I think I would include that. Like that's sort of part of the vision making process is what does success look like to you? And whatever that is, zero in. Be proud and go get it. And don't be ashamed. Because societal society, I think norms are shifting. I think, you know, most, I mean, it depends on the sector. But you know, if in terms of business, in terms of being authentic, in terms of going after what truly makes you happy, because at the end of the day you want to be happy doing what you're doing.

Yeah.

So just really feeling comfortable with understanding and recognizing whatever that actually looks like to you.

Yeah, totally. So what do you define as success in your business?

I think success for me is maintaining joy in what I'm doing because above all else, I want to feel joy and happy in the work that I'm doing. It is hitting a certain financial number, obviously, because at the end of the day, you've got to make money. And I think just knowing that I'm helping some really kick ass women with their business.

Yeah, that's awesome. I love it.

Yeah.

So think of talk about staff and hiring and your thoughts around that. I know for me it was for many years I was like, I will never hire anybody, but I have a team of contractors now that I work with that have just like completely changed my life and I love them and I can't imagine having a business without their support. So talk about that transition and kind of how you walk your clients through. When is it time to hire? How do I know I'm ready to hire financially? I know it's a huge mindset shift of when you feel like people are depending on you. So talk us through that a little bit.

Yeah. So that's definitely a tricky area to navigate, especially for somebody who's a solopreneur. Especially for somebody who's very hesitant to relinquish some control. And it's funny, I mean, I get it, I get it. This is your baby and you want to make sure that it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. And it's funny, I just worked with somebody who was literally in that position. She was like, I've been in business 20 years, it's always been just me. But I'm at a point where I really need help and I just need to figure out how to do it the right way. And I think again, what it comes down to is your business identity. That's going to help you a lot in terms of helping you navigate what you're looking for and who you're looking for. So your business identity is like, who you are, what you're about and where you're going. So you need to figure out what you're putting out into the world, what matters to you, what's your mission statement? What are your core values so that you kind of have a solid understanding of what that is, and you can use that to help sift through candidates as you start to work through them. Do these people, you know, mirror what your. What your values are? What are their thoughts on your values and your mission statement? Do you guys resonate? So that's one way to kind of start tackling that.

Yeah.

The other way is to figure out, you know, what are you actually hiring for? Like, what does that look like to you? What's the position, what are the hours, what's the schedule, what are the parameters, roles, responsibilities, all that stuff. And then what qualifications and background experience are you looking for? So you really kind of need to create your internal hiring and training manual first, which is essentially your guide to finding, training and onboarding whatever help you're looking for. And then secondarily to that would be making your employee manual. You know, roles and responsibilities, pay, benefits, certifications, all that stuff. And I say internal hiring and training manual, and I say employee handbook. And some people are like, oh, my gosh, that sounds so massive. That sounds so big. Is it overwhelming? And I want to say, first and foremost, it is not. It can be five pages if that's all you need it to be. It can be 20 pages or 70 pages. It can be however big these manuals need to be to convey the appropriate information, to make sure that you and your new staff are set up for success. So try not to get overwhelmed. It doesn't have to be this huge, elaborate, scary thing.

Yeah. That. I mean, just as you're talking about manuals, I just imagine like 3 inches binders. Right. That I have to fill with stuff.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be that big. It can be as big as you need it to be. As long as all the appropriate information is in there.

Yeah. And so it's basically just like thinking about how can I set up this person for success in my organization. Right.

Yeah.

And. And then we can. I mean, those are living documents. Like, we can continue to be adding and learn along the way, like how much detail it has to be or whatever. Because I feel like that that could be a barrier. You know, because usually I just. In my experience, usually we don't hire until it's too late. Right. Where we're having. Where we're like, oh, crap, I need help and I need it now, and I don't have time to write big, you know, binders.

So then you're kind of scrambling.

Yeah. So maybe it doesn't have to be, you know, how can we keep it simple? I think would be a question and in a way of setting up this person for success.

Yeah. So I guess what I would say, if we rock it back for just a hot second, if you're. What you're describing is essentially a growth phase.

Right.

If you're unfamiliar with that term or what that looks like, a growth phase is essentially you're seeing an increase in demand in your service or product. You're having a difficult time managing this increase in demand. And so maybe you're getting overwhelmed, maybe things are getting missed. Maybe the quality of work has slipped. You're starting to struggle to kind of keep up with the increase. That's going to be a big flag for you. That's like, okay, I think it's time for me to start thinking about some help. And that could be maybe social media help. That could be admin help or a virtual assistant. That could be. Maybe you have somebody in as a contractor to take some clients off your plate, whatever that looks like for you. Those are some flags. If you're seeing an increase and it's hard for you to kind of manage, and then you can start simple. Maybe you're still in the early phase, maybe you're not quite in the growth phase yet, and you're just like, okay, if I were to hire some help, what are some things I want to delegate? What are some things I would like to take off of my plate and potentially have somebody else do? So you could start there. If you're not. Potentially, if you're not exactly ready to hire yet, just start writing down some things that, like, I would really like to not have to do this anymore. I would really like to not have to do this anymore. And just start that list. Just start that checklist. And then if you're starting to see that influx, come back to it, come back to that list and start to flesh that out a little bit and be a little bit more strategic and detailed in what that help would potentially look like.

Yeah, I love that. And so it's really practicing that awareness that I'm starting to feel like there's too much going on and not enough of me. So Putting on our CEO hat and like, okay, how are we going to solve for that issue? Rather than, I mean, yeah, we could work more hours, but maybe that's not, that doesn't align with our vision. Right. Because we have this vision for our business. So I know for me, I had to, I got to that point and it was like, all right, well, I dipped my toe in the water of, you know, hiring a VA for like five hours or something like that. And then you see, so you don't have to like think to yourself, well, you know, I have to be able to afford and occupy someone for 40 hours a week. Like that. You can start much smaller.

Right, Exactly.

Just dip your toe in the water five hours, you know, with an assistant or whatever and then just see how it goes from there. Or have a plan. I guess you don't want to. An organizational person doesn't want to see how it goes. You kind of have a plan.

Well, I mean, you have to start somewhere though, right? Like you're probably are not going to have the revenue ready to bring on somebody full time. If you're just starting out with a new hire. Odds are they're going to be part time. So whether that's five hours a week or 10 hours a week, it's going to kind of depend on the needs and what you can afford because budget matters. So I think starting small with some of the virtual assistant or administrative tasks that you would like to delegate elsewhere, see how that goes. But have in your mind, okay, if this goes well, I'd like to either increase their hours or I'd like to think about getting help in this department as well. So just kind of knowing that you're starting small with the intention to possibly scale.

Yeah. Awesome. So since we have mainly service based businesses and women that are listening to us here, what would you suggest as like the order, the type of people that you normally see hire, like kind of the order of hiring. Does that make sense?

Yes. So I think, I think a little bit of it is going to depend on what type of service based. But my assumption is that you're probably going to start with administrative help. So whether that's an admin person or a virtual assistant that kind of takes care of those email inquiries, phone calls, scheduling, bookings, cancellations, any kind of, you know, administrative logistical tasks or, and, or possibly a social media person, because I know a lot of people don't really have the bandwidth or interest in getting the social media content that apparently is necessary in today's world. So those would be my probably two initial thoughts. A VA or admin person and or a social media helper. Because those are tasks that you're going to eventually move beyond. Right. Because as the owner, your idea, your main function is to see through to the vision, reach the vision, be strategic, have time to focus on your business and grow it. You don't necessarily want to be tied down into the daily minutia of some of the admin logistics or social media content creation. Once you get to a place where maybe you go to VA or admin person, maybe you're thinking about hiring a contractor or a not contractor to help with some of the workload. If you get to a place where you feel like you are now the director of operations and no longer the CEO or owner, you're going to need to think about hiring an actual manager. That won't be necessary right away. You'd probably have a few people working as either part time or full time staff already. But eventually the idea is to train people and make your systems efficient enough to replace yourself. So you kind of want to keep moving up in scale and then maybe so you've got like, I don't know, let's say four to 10 staff in some capacity. At that point you're probably going to need a manager. So the idea is that somebody can run the company while you actually focus on the future of the company.

Nice. I like that.

How big you want to get, you know what I mean? So it kind of depends on where that, how that aligns with your vision.

Yeah. So I'd love to hear you talk about that a little bit like planning for your growth, like how you walk your clients through that process of planning for growth.

So in terms of like as like getting ready to scale.

Yeah, yeah.

So I guess a, it would be, you know, kind of circling back to the vision. What is your vision? Are you in a place where. Because I actually talked with a, spoke with a client this morning and she was like, hey, listen, like I love that I'm starting to hire some part time help and I'm feeling really good about the flow of the business right now, but I don't want to grow so big that I'm no longer having any freedom to do anything else. So she's like, I want to be mindful of how big I get so that I don't get too big that I then sort of lose the freedom to be an independent owner. And basically what I said to her was if you feel like you are moving to a place where you can't sustain the Capacity, your current business and you are going to either need to hire some more help, then that's going to tell us that you've grown too big. So I think coming back to what is your vision, what are you looking for? And then I think if you're looking to maybe hire, if you're looking to scale in any capacity, it doesn't have to be in six figure capacity, it just can be scale in whatever capacity that looks like for you. Thinking about getting organized. So have you found a time management system and a workflow structure that works for you? Do you feel good about that routine? How does any potential part time staff person, how are they managing their workflow and time management? So getting organized, feeling really good about that structure. Next is going to be documentation. So have you started documenting your policies and procedures? Have you started documenting your daily sops, your policies? Is all of that easily and readily accessible to you as well as any other people that you bring on? So getting organized and getting documented are going to be the two main prongs that are going to get you started and kind of in tangent, as you're getting organized. I always tell my clients to start creating folders. So have a universal documentation system, usually that's Gmail for a lot of people. Create a universal folder that you and any other staff members can access. And within that folder I want you to create a policies file, I want you to create a procedures file, I want you to create an inventory file or a services file or whatever your business does. I want you to have a file folder for all of that. And within each folder is going to be the documented, step by steps, of how to perform those responsibilities.

Nice. Yeah.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think so. And just it helps as far as thinking about as I'm growing, what I need to have in place so that I can bring other people in and they can feel supported and set up for success.

Yeah. Because ultimately it is your job as the owner to make sure that your team has the tools they need to perform their jobs well and up to standard. And a lot of that is going to be able to find information quickly and easily and you want to keep it efficient and you want to be able to kind of move through those daily tasks quickly so that you can focus on more revenue generating activities.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the greatest part I think about having a team is that does allow you to focus on your revenue generating activities.

Exactly.

Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so is there any other, anything else that I haven't asked that you wanted to Mention or talk about or important points for us as we're growing and getting organized and setting strong foundations for our businesses.

I think we covered a lot of it. I guess the one thing I would just leave people with is this sounds like a lot, right? Like this kind of aspect of running your business sounds like a lot. And it can be overwhelming. But I would encourage you to start early and understand that these are living documents. So let's say you have a way to do things right now. Annually, I encourage my clients to look at their operating procedures and just kind of review what policies and procedures are we running with? Are they still up to date? Do they still make sense? So you can constantly edit and adjust as you grow your business, because nothing is static. It's always fluid. So just start small. Start with just documentation. Start with getting organized. Just start with writing things down piece by piece and try to break it down and not get overwhelmed with, holy moly. There's so much stuff. Just pick one task a week and write it down.

Yeah. And maybe we can just like, keep notes as we're doing it. Right. Like, we don't have to find a big block of time to create a binder. It's like, just keep note of things as you're doing them.

Yep. And save it in your digital folder and then just refer back to it later.

Nice. Yeah. I think what's helped me too, is as I'm bringing on team members and training team members, having them, you know, I'm imparting the process to them and then having them create the procedures from that. It's almost 100% a good way for them to internalize what they're learning from me and.

Absolutely. And if you have a team that's kind of taking over certain responsibilities, lean on them. Hey, how do you do this task now? Hey, what edits do we need to make for this task? How can we make this more efficient? Ask them, you know, because if they're the ones in the day to day, ask their opinion. They're going to be the experts on it. And then I think, also thinking about your vision, like, your vision can change too. So just, I would say every six or 12 months, just kind of reflect back on your business identity, on your operating procedures, and just review it. How does this feel to me right now? Am I still in alignment with this direction? Does this still feel good to me? And make edits or adjustments as appropriate.

That's awesome. I love it.

So good.

Thank you so much, Jessica, for being here.

Hey, you're so welcome.

Yeah, and so tell us about the work that you're doing, how we can work with you and how we can keep in touch with you. All the things.

Yeah. So My website is jmillsconsulting.com and I've got a bunch of resources there and you can contact me there. I'm also on Instagram, jmillsconsulting. I'm also on Facebook and I'm on LinkedIn. As Jessica Millhiser, I do offer a free consultation if any of this resonates with you. I'd love to chat and figure out where you're at and how to help you get where you're going. And I just, I wish you well. And I'm so grateful to have been on here with you, Melissa, and to chat about this stuff. And I hope it's given some interesting insight and some tips for folks.

Oh, I'm sure it has. For sure. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and I wish you all the best of luck in building your business. And we have to stay in touch and I'm sure I'll see you around. We're both in Colorado, so yes, we'd love to. I'll see you around. All right. Thank you. If you like this podcast, then you have got to sign up for my free on demand video training, Grow youw Sales Doing what yout Love, Where I teach you in depth my simple process that you can implement right away to harness your mindset and your skills to grow your sales to whatever level you want. So go grab that now. The link is in the show notes and I'll see you next time.