Lauren: You’re a high opt-in business owner. You got a team on paper. It looks like you’re rolling in success, but there’s a voice inside of you. Whisper screaming best isn’t sustainable, something feels, and I’m going to lose it.
Sound familiar? That’s where I come in. My name is Lauren Goldstein, and I’m the CEO at Golden Key Partnership. I help top-level executives like you avoid burning out and burning down as you’re scaling up. How? By harnessing your superpowers, finding and hiring your ideal team, and then simplifying the heck out of your business operations. It’s my mission and the mission of this podcast to help you see operations in a whole new light, to help you diagnose the real root cause of your company’s challenges, and to bring your business back to a healthy flow. And they call me the Business Doctor.
Hello? Welcome to this show. I’m Lauren, here with my co-host Erin. Hey, Erin. How are you?
Erin: I am great. How are you? I am excited because the doctor is in the house, the Biz Doctor. This is your first podcast episode, so congratulations. I’m so excited that you’re doing this because you and I have been talking about, first of all, your brilliance for a very long time. But the first question I have for you is why did we decide to call this show The Biz Doctor Podcast? Because I think it’s hilarious, but also really poignant and a great way to start this conversation.
Lauren: It is. And the reason we decided to call it that is because that is what my clients lovingly call me, the Business Doctor.
Erin: And it’s because of what you do. And we’re going to talk about this throughout the next four episodes, by the way. But what you do is effectively dig into the bits and pieces, all the moving parts of businesses. You know, to put a fine point on this analogy of a doctor, you diagnose what’s going wrong and how to make it go right. Is that too broad of an explanation?
Lauren: No, not at all. I mean, that’s exactly what I do. I feel like one of my superpowers is coming into a business, asking deep questions about how all the things are connected in the business, and finding those two, maybe three things that are, you know, not to be graphic, but could be like the thing, the cancerous thing that’s stopping you from scaling or preventing your team from working better together or is breaking your operations. And so it’s all about diagnosing what the root thing is of the symptoms that you’re seeing in your business, whether it’s your people or your processes or anything like that.
Erin: Do you think that business owners in general tend to either misunderstand or underestimate even the concept of business operations? Is it something that we understand, or are we missing the point most of the time?
Lauren: Great question. I think it’s one of those things most people feel overwhelmed by, or don’t understand, or put last because they’re like, “Oh, it’s fine. We’ve got to do these other things.” And you do need to have a proven product and a flow of revenue and business. But there was a great analogy that someone told me many, many years ago that I’ve adopted about. When you build a house, you put in plumbing, you put in water, but you don’t actually know where the leaks are until you turn on the water, until you turn on the lights and all of that. And so that’s a lot of what operations is—understanding the flow of your business and where you’re leaking time and profitability and revenue and personnel, so that you can shore it up. Because if you don’t shore up the foundation, all operations of your business before you actually really scale, then you risk blowing up your business, blowing up your team, like just losing all the hard-earned money that you’ve worked for. So it’s definitely something that I see being critical to your business that a lot of business owners kind of put off until the last minute, like when they’re like, “Oh, I think it’s an emergency. Now we need it.” And then it’s almost like it’s reactive instead of proactive.
Erin: Can you describe the average emotional state of a business owner who comes to you? Are they on the brink of blowing it up, or have they blown it up and are like, “Oh no, what do I do?”
Lauren: They’re there. Or my favorite is, they’re just, “Oh, I’m so burned out by my business, and I feel like I can’t take a vacation or step away from it. Like, it’s just creating so much stress that I think about it all the time. And I worry, like, how am I actually going to have a work-life balance at any point in my life?”
Erin: When we were talking off mic just before this, we were talking, and you like to use analogies, which I think is really apropos because operations is such a big thing that when we talk in analogies, it helps bring it to ground level for business owners who maybe can’t wrap their head around all of the nuance of the actual operations. But you said something to me that kind of stuck. When you talk about the stress and all of the energy that goes into building a business, it’s like operations and paying attention to it, keeping your finger on the pulse of the operations of your business is like putting your plane on autopilot and intending to land in Paris, but instead landing in Tokyo, right? Like if you don’t have those small tweaks, your business is going to end up in a place you didn’t expect and not always a good place. Right? Can you explore that a little bit, like, tell me about that analogy? Give me more of that.
Lauren: Yeah, that’s actually one of my favorite analogies to use with clients because, you know, the misnomer is like you set operations and forget them, which, you know, there are certain things you can automate in your business that you absolutely should, and then there are certain things, no matter what you do, they’re going to have a human touch. But the autopilot—why that’s really important is because operations is like the lifeblood of your business. And it tells you a lot about the health of your business in what I really look at is not front-end revenue, which is, you know, sales and marketing. I look at backend revenue, which is profitability, cash flow, things like that. And so if you set and forget operations—because a plane on autopilot, if you don’t know that it’s not set it and forget it—like you leave from New York and you end up in Paris. It’s actually making tiny microscopic adjustments the entire way, which I didn’t know. Because if you don’t make those adjustments, then to your point, you could end up in Tokyo instead of Paris or Dubai. And so with operations, you want to have those certain metrics or check-in points, whether it’s a quarterly review, whether it’s a monthly review, whether it’s, you know, customer surveys, whatever, like, there’s a lot of different options there, but you need to have those touchpoints to make sure that what you think you’re seeing in your business is the truth. Because revenue is a lagging metric. And so I can look at a business and see trouble on the horizon for many other things. And I almost never look at revenue. Revenue’s one of the first questions because I like to see where your revenue goals are, but operations and what operations is will tell you a lot more about the life of your business. And you want to check in with those because it’ll tell you those little things you need to do to adjust to make sure that you do stay on a positive course to your destination or if you’re getting off track. And so, yeah, operations has a lot of data that you can look at to really stay on track, but if you’re setting it and forgetting it, you’re like, “Oh, we’ve set up the automations. We’ve done that. We’ve done that.” And then you could actually be in trouble because you’ll look at it and go, “Oh my gosh, how did we end up in this situation where we’re upside down or our profitability is down or people are leaving?” When in reality, you could have seen that if you’d known what you were looking for or measuring against.
Erin: You just dropped so many knowledge bombs. So I want to start breaking this down for those who are listening. And we talk about the three Ps. You said the three Ps—so there’s people, process, product. Does each of these individually have a separate diagnosis process that you go through to look at whether they’re working? Like, how are you diagnosing people versus process versus product when you’re looking at a business?
Lauren: Love that question. So I am not a sales and marketing expert. That is somebody else’s game. So I ask about product just to make sure that I understand what you’re delivering to your customers or what your growth plans are. But I really set that aside because as long as you have a proven product and the flow of revenue through your business, you know, again, we can see where the cracks are, then that’s all I need. When it comes to process and people, a lot of what that comes down to is understanding the team you have based on your unique CEO profile. And we use a tool to actually profile you, and it spits out eight different profiles, and it has a really awesome formula that will actually show you what your greatest strengths are as well as your weaknesses and the team that is best going to complement that. Because a lot of times I see entrepreneurs make the cardinal mistake of when they first hire someone, they make the statement, “I just need to clone myself.” And so then they try and go find somebody that’s them. But in reality, you need somebody whose strengths are your weaknesses. And we talk about players and work bees, but I’m not going to get too much into that today. But understanding what your team is and how they’re really functioning based on what you need, what you’re looking for, is critical. And then, of course, processes. A lot of people will say, “Oh, we just need to get systems in place,” and that’s great, but it’s also looking at your processes from end to end. So let’s say, for example, you have a sales process. You need to understand how many handoffs there are from when a lead comes in all the way to when it’s converted into a sale and what’s happening in between. If there’s a lot of handoffs, that means there’s a lot of opportunity for something to fall through the cracks. And so I’m big on analyzing processes from end to end to see where they’re breaking down and how we can streamline them and simplify them. So, yeah, each of those P’s has a different diagnostic approach. And, of course, I have my framework that I use to analyze all of it.
Erin: You’re saying some really great stuff, and you’re also using terms that I think would be good to break down for people who might not be familiar with them. The three Ps that you’re talking about, people, process, and product, are really critical to making sure that a business is operating smoothly. So when you’re saying “product,” you’re not referring to the actual product, you’re referring to the flow of revenue through the business. Can you say a little more about that?
Lauren: Sure. So a lot of times when people talk about products, they think about like the physical product or the service they provide. I look at the flow of revenue because that’s really what determines whether or not your product or service is actually working for your business. If you’re not making money off of it, then that means there’s something in the system that’s broken. So I use that term to make sure that the product or service you have, whatever you’re delivering to your clients, has a proven track record of success in the market. Because if it doesn’t, it’s going to be hard to diagnose any of the other pieces. So it’s really all about understanding that flow of revenue and making sure that the product or service you have is aligned with that flow.
Erin: I think this is a great starting place for us to wrap up this episode. I know you and I are going to be talking more about this in upcoming episodes, but this idea of operations as a diagnostic tool for how healthy your business is, is something that we’re going to keep unpacking in the episodes to come.
Lauren: Absolutely. I’m excited for where this is going to take us. Thanks so much for joining us, Erin.
Erin: Thank you, Lauren.
Lauren: Thank you all for tuning in. This is The Biz Doctor Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast on your favorite platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and bring you more valuable content. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We’ll see you next time!
