Rebecca Kallaus - From Chaos to Clarity: The 5 Engine System That Scales Any Business Without Breaking You

Rebecca Kallaus  0:00  
Any business, solopreneur enterprise, you always have five engines to your business, revenue, brand, client, success, operations and leadership. I say that in a particular order because you do always want to start with revenue. If you don't have revenue coming in, you don't really have

David Bush  0:17  
business Welcome to the Business Builders playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind Predictable Revenue Growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. Hey,

David Bush  0:46  
welcome everybody. This is David bush with bdr.ai and today I get the honor and privilege of hanging out with Rebecca Callis. And Rebecca is the founder of business done better, and she is a practical behind the scenes, absolute genius. I've had a chance to talk with her previously to this particular session, and it just inspired me to level up my operational game. And really, opportunities are just endless with what she's going to share with you today. She's got so much experience and so much background. I'm going to have her introduce herself in just a little bit, but I want to just tell you she got 15 years. 15 years of experience working with organizations, including solopreneurs to multi million dollar organizations. She specializes in simplifying complexity

David Bush  1:33  
that, in itself, is a

David Bush  1:35  
wonder skill, and we're so excited to jump into how you're doing that she installs practical operating cadences, and she builds execution ready teams, which is so valuable in today's economy, when speed is absolutely crucial to go to market and scaling. She's passionate about helping entrepreneurs with reclaiming their time living better lives because of all that extra time that they have because they're not doing the things that they hate or they're not good at. They're streamlining their operations. They're leveraging invisible AI to scale faster while keeping a personal touch. So Rebecca, so excited to jump in today. So welcome to the webinar.

Rebecca Kallaus  2:13  
Thank you so much. David. Pleasure to be here. So

David Bush  2:15  
let's just get a little bit of background of who Rebecca is and what brought us to where you are today?

Rebecca Kallaus  2:22  
Yeah, so I I realized that I just love business, but my original background is actually in holistic health. So funny enough, that was actually how I figured out that I loved business as much as I do. I found myself running a small Wellness Center and realized that I had a natural acumen for business, and that a lot of holistic practitioners did not, so I just found myself helping a lot of people with all the same things, and then everything kind of just snowballed from there, and then now we have a amazing team, or currently a team of 20, but operations has really become our specialty.

David Bush  2:57  
Fantastic. Well, I know that there's so many people out there that are dying for simplicity, and I've heard somebody say that complexity lies just or simplicity lies just beyond complexity. And I don't know if you agree with that or not, but there is a certain amount of complexity that we have to kind of navigate our way through. And it's not very complex. It's oftentimes very simple, but we have to take those steps, and you do a great job of helping people through that step, through those steps. So let's talk about, if you want to build a business that doesn't run you, what does that actually look like in real life?

Rebecca Kallaus  3:31  
Yeah, well, a lot of things in life don't usually feel simple or straightforward. In life and business both, there's not a real just, you know, operating manual, not not technically, at least for business or life, either one. So, you know, it oftentimes we're just kind of overloaded with all different directions that we could go in just informational data points, and we're just kind of on overwhelmed. It's not like there's not all the answers out there on what you should do or how you should do it, but just to decide and decipher through all the different, you know, just decision overload that's out there. What, how do I navigate my business? What does that actually look like? So, you know, running a business is one of the hardest things that anybody can do. So, you know, I've talked to so many people over the years and like, I want to start a business, and I'm like, and what do you want to do? They're like, I don't know. I just want to be a business on it. I'm like, respectfully I say this with all the love in the world, maybe don't not the best career path if you don't have a really strong why? But for those of us that do run a business, it's usually because we can't imagine doing anything else. So that's definitely the case for me and so many founders that we work with. And when that's the case, then it's like, Okay, I can't imagine not running a business. But how in the world do I actually do that in a way that isn't just, you know, why work for somebody else 40 hours a week when you can work your for yourself for 90 hours a week, as the saying goes. So, you know, with all. Risk in the world on top of that. So you know, so when it comes to running a business that doesn't run you, the secret is really operations. So most people say that nation focus on operations until you start scaling your business. Technically, that's true. So you always need to start with revenue when it comes to running your business, because without revenue, you just have a nice hobby. But for you to actually build a business that doesn't collapse on top of you, for you to scale, for you to actually have the life that you wanted to have when you started that business, everything comes down to operations. So a lot of people don't understand what an operating system actually is. It's not software. It does include how you use your optimal tech stack, but it's really more about frameworks and processes, more about how, like, what's your what's the methodology, what's the cadence, and all sorts of other components, your execution, flow, all of those things wrap up into your business operating system.

David Bush  5:54  
So, yeah, yeah. Let's just take, let's take an example. I know that you specialize in working with coaches and agencies and small business operations, but let's just take all of those combined over the last, you know, decade and a half that you've been really focusing in on this, what are the common bottlenecks that you're finding, and what are the ones that you go to fix first?

Rebecca Kallaus  6:16  
Yeah, so I love that question, because there there's some consistencies, but oftentimes, a lot of people have a lot of different things that trip them up. The two most common things are over complement, over complicating tech and also running a team. So if I had to pick two, I would say it's it's that most people are not good at running a team. So that's definitely a commonality for sure. You know, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you're good at delegating for other people to do something. And then usually you start bringing on a team, thinking that's going to save you time, and you really end up just doing twice as much with at least twice the frustration. So yeah, yeah.

David Bush  6:54  
Well, you talk a lot about scaling smart through systems. So what does that simple operating cadence look like? I mean, is that something that people can pick up in 30 days, or is it three months? What does the process look like? Yeah.

Rebecca Kallaus  7:06  
So with there's lots of business operating systems out there, and oftentimes they're very they're very rigid, they're not fully scalable. They're complex. You have to hire somebody to come in and just do a whole overhaul on your whole business, and that can be really helpful. But there's also just certain components that you can take on that help you just move the needle in one area forward. So can you move some things forward in 30 days? Absolutely. Can you install an entire business operating system in 30 days? Not necessarily. So it's always good to have realistic expectations on that. So especially when you're start, when you're small and you don't have a lot of mess to clean up, it's a lot easier. So when it comes to tech or operations, I always tell people to always think things through and start implementing those good practices on the early side, before you have a big team and everything's a mess. Nothing has a correct home. You're you're balancing between multiple two CRMs, two project management systems, your communications channels are all over the place. You have no naming standard, you know. So it's, oh, it's always better to know how you're building that, because it's a lot easier to build it right than to untangle a lot of mess. Yeah.

David Bush  8:19  
So when you have an organization or an individual that comes to you, you obviously start with some form of an audit to see where you could end up helping them the most. And then are you giving them like stepping stones on how they can begin to address these issues on a step by step basis, or is it kind of like a complete package? I'm just curious of how you structure your support

Rebecca Kallaus  8:40  
absolutely so the first thing that we always do anytime we're doing any kind of operational work, whether it's our standard program or full scale custom operational implementation, we always start with a operations assessment. So that usually is something that we do with the client. We run through them on a zoom call over an hour, and that spits out a whole stoplight report that tells them where their operational strengths and gaps are in 15 different areas throughout their business. So it covers different aspects of their tech stack, their SOP, their file organization, how they're structuring their team, clarity of roles and cadence on their team, how's your execution flow? Where are your SOPs? You know, other growth opportunities on your team? Do you have all key roles placed on your team? Visibility reporting? So we really dive into all of those things to get a real visibility for us. That way we know where are the starting points? Because with operations, there's so many different aspects of it, and that's something that we never want to make assumptions on where somebody's falling short, just with any you know, good, good business service. You always want to really get under the hood and see what's really going on there, and then figure out the right direction from there. Then we do have a three month program, or full scale. Custom operations, where we actually walk people through and do it done with you. It always has to be done with you. It's not something that you can't ever expect anybody to come in and, you know, do everything for somebody, especially with operations, because at the end of the day, the most important thing is extracting everything from the CEO visionary. So that's something that the visionary doesn't need to be involved or do a lot of things, except for extracting their vision and communicating that I like to tell people, don't worry about how it comes out. Vomit it on the table. That's totally okay. Just dump it all on there. We'll sort it out. That's our job. But we need to really extract that vision. So the next step that we do after an assessment call, is we do a blueprinting where. Then we take that vision in every aspect that's important with their business, business operations, and we build out a full road map blueprint. So then they actually have a Okay, now where? Now I have, I know what's wrong, and then what do I do about

David Bush  10:57  
it? Yeah, so, and then on Upon execution, what are the I know that you've got a team of 20 people. So is there specific areas that you're diving into and you're saying, Okay, we're going to take this particular problem and we're going to solve this with this group over here, and then we're going to solve this problem with this group over here. Or is it more kind of like, I guess I would say chronological, that you just take one thing at a time.

Rebecca Kallaus  11:22  
So there's a couple of things that we do that are standard. We want to make sure that the company has core values. So if they don't have those nailed down, that's always the first thing that we do. Your core values are the North Star of how of how you make decisions as a company. So a lot of people have a, you know, misunderstanding of the purpose of core values. It's not just a couple of nice words that you put on a wall or a website, but it's really how you make decisions. So and if you don't have that nailed down, then you're you're not operating with consistency, and both you your team. So we want to make sure that those are clear first, so those aren't established, then we always do them. They're not doesn't take too long to do those However, I did hear of somebody else, not somebody that we worked with. I wish we had met them first, but I had a client tell us a story of somebody who spent, I believe it was, $50,000 over like, six months to establish core values. And I was like, that's That's insane. So that's not us.

David Bush  12:25  
Yeah, for us, we value their resources very much. Maybe, if they're giving you thing now, Allison to come up with those, or maybe they just really have a whole bunch of hidden values that they needed time to uncover.

Rebecca Kallaus  12:36  
I can promise that that is never the case. So I'm sure it was a nine or a 10 figure company, in which case they're like, Oh, well, we can dump a bunch of resources to this. And so why not? But that's not necessarily going to get you the right results just because you put more money behind it. It's about making sure that your resources are going to the right place, which is definitely part of operations as well. So after an

David Bush  12:55  
example that you could compare up like a company that had to clarify their values, and once they clarified their values. The operational piece just sped up and just worked better because those values are in place.

Rebecca Kallaus  13:06  
Yeah, so it's fine, because I've talked to a couple founders who they, you know, usually people have been in business for at least a couple years before they come to us. So you know that they'd had, they have a team. They've been in business for a little while. You know, they're doing at least half a million dollars in gross revenue, maybe seven figures somewhere in there. And they're like, yeah, we've, we've kind of tossed these around, but, like, we kind of didn't think it was that important, so we've just been doing everything else. But there was a couple key decisions that they were trying to figure out that I was like, well, that's why we need to do your core values, because your core values are going to answer those questions for you. So for this, this just came up the other week, I'm trying to remember the exact scenario. Oh, it was they were trying to figure out they had what I would describe as an integrity problem with some of their some of their team that worked with them, they were more in a consultant capacity, but it was still but it was still a key part of the business. And they're like, yeah, like, they keep showing up late, and it's impacting our clients. It's not that, it's only like, a couple minutes, but it's something that, you know, then the client is reaching out to us. They're like, are we still on what's happening? And they're like, Oh, just kidding. Like, the guy's here, it's fine, but it's like, that should never happen because the person who's facilitating should be there early and and they realized that they hadn't set those boundaries, those guidelines, and they'd kind of like gone around it in other ways, he hadn't really nailed that down. And I was like, Okay, well if, if we fix that problem, then there's your answer. So if it immediately clarified everything just in a 15 minute conversation. Yeah.

David Bush  14:45  
Well, I know that you also talk a lot about the idea of core engines of a business. And so I can kind of imagine, like, one of those boats that has those, you know, four or five engines in the back that just make it really go fast. And so what are the core. Engines of a business, and how do you decide which engine to tune first

Rebecca Kallaus  15:03  
Absolutely? So I actually created a proprietary business operating system called the Five engine operating system, because I realized that there really wasn't an operating system that was scalable from solopreneur to enterprise and industry agnostic. And I was like, Okay, well, then we need to create that framework, because that that should be how any business should run is fluid, flexible, scalable. So I realized that any business, solopreneur, enterprise doesn't matter. You always have five engines to your business, revenue, brand, client, success, operations and leadership. So I say that in a particular order, because you do always want to start with revenue. If you don't have revenue coming in, you don't really have business. But then you grow that by growing your brand. Your brand is the magnetic that attracts everyone to you and keeps those revenue streams alive. And you always want to make sure that you're giving the highest quality of client success. Then your operations is how you scale, and then your leadership is kind of that invisible magic that just helps everything run, you know, from top to bottom.

David Bush  16:08  
Yeah, that's great. Well, I know that there's a lot of people out there right now that are just feeling like where they've gotten to the point where they've kind of had the subscription creep, or the tech creep, where they've just signed up for tools. And, you know, because somebody said this one was better, or this one was shiny, and they're just under utilizing them, or just not using them at all. So talk a little bit about, you know, the core four, and what you feel like that every business should utilize as a tech stack, absolutely.

Rebecca Kallaus  16:37  
So tech is not one of the engines, because it infiltrates every aspect, so it's interconnected throughout your entire business. We like to say core four, because for most businesses, you have your CRM system, your project management. It's where all tasks get done, your communication tool and file repository. So you most likely have other tools in your tech stack, but those are really the four things that are the most important that your whole business is really structured on, and for those ones, and any other ones that your business is really reliant on, I always tell founders, is really important to look at the trajectory of the company behind that tech stack. So oftentimes people don't do their full due diligence. I can't remember was it? Was it you? You might have been there was two people that I've ever had asked for our CRM software, our agency of high level. I had two people in six years ask me, What happens if something happens to you? What happens to my account? Yeah, so I did ask that question. It was you. I thought it was

David Bush  17:39  
I'm one of one. I'm not one of one.

Rebecca Kallaus  17:41  
I'm one of two. Hey, this is still a really tiny, tiny percentage, but it's something that I think everybody should ask, because that's something that you want to make sure you know, if we are working with a small company, what happens to your your business is relying on that tech? What happens is something happens to that tech company, to anybody on the team, to the company, there's, there's stories of, you know, tech companies where they go under, and all of a sudden people are locked out of their accounts, and you're like, oh, shoot, I can. There was a big company this happened to in the last like, year and a half. I'm trying to remember who it was, but, but like, you know, it's not just these can be medium sized companies that this happens to, you know, people can go belly up, and they don't tell it, they don't talk about it until they close the doors. So you want to make sure that you're really, really looking behind and looking at the trajectory of where that company is going. So, you know, for for CRM software's, you know, we're big fans of high level and that's something that they're pretty much a billion dollar company. They have a couple 1000 team members. They're in their seventh year. Their trajectory has not slowed down since they first started. So that's something that they already can do, everything pretty much that HubSpot can do. HubSpot and Salesforce are the two biggest in the industry, but they're already, like, just about at HubSpot level, from a you know, feature functionality standpoint, and decimating on the price, price standpoint, that part's just an insane parallel. But then they're actually really gunning for Salesforce. Is their next goal, so somebody that you want to really hook your wagon to as a company.

David Bush  19:10  
So you said CRM education, project management. Now some CRMs have project management tools built inside of it. Is there a reason why you separate them?

Rebecca Kallaus  19:24  
Yeah, great question. So a lot of companies try to be an all in one, and I think that high level has done the best of being a true all in I say true all in one, but I still say that loosely, because there's never anything that's going to truly be one software for every single thing that you need, high level covers where they're definitely the best CRM, they're rated the number one marketing automation tool, software on the market, for very good reasons. And that's even before some updates have launched that are launching in the next two weeks. So we have special beta access to a lot of things, but they also all of your websites. Funnels form. Quizzes, surveys, batch posting to social, your pipelines, your Course Builder, online communities and affiliate manager. I mean, the list goes on and on. As far as a feature standpoint, they actually do a really good job at most of those things. So there's other software, and any software, there's always something as a primary and then they try to stack in all of these other things to keep you on the software. But because the more integrated you are, the more sticky you are as a client, more like you you're never going to leave. But so high level does the best job for all of those kinds of features. They do have task management. So you can do that on a light level, nothing holds a candle to click up. So that's something that you know you can manage that as a team of one to three. Maybe if, as far as like task management, you're using high level for something like that, that could work just fine, fine enough. But for a team of 20 and for the level of complex operations that we run, click up is easily the only software that we could possibly leverage for what we do.

David Bush  21:02  
That's great. Well, let's talk a little bit more about delegation versus abdication. So how do you transfer ownership of outcomes to a team without losing visibility or control Absolutely?

Rebecca Kallaus  21:13  
So that's part of the five engine operating system. So the execution flow, we call it the five phase build cycle. Anytime you're executing, you have five phases, ideation, architect, execution, test and optimize. Now, the key for those things is actually a baton handoff for how you're passing things between ideation phase to architect to execution. So oftentimes, especially early stage founders and they just kind of, they're like, I need a thing done. Here's how I want it done. Go. And then they're confused why it doesn't get done, how they saw it in their head. But when you spend a lot of time, there's the saying goes, measure twice, cut once. So you want to really spend a lot of time on that forefront of making sure that you've really put everything down in writing, make sure it's really, really clear. Depending on the size of the project, maybe have some meetings around it too. So we have a specific format. In ideation phase, we have what we call a concept brief, so a specific form, we have a template that we use on clickup, so it's all stuff that we've designed, and so whoever's doing the ideation fills out that concept brief. And then depending on the size of the project, we have a specific standardization. So we like to standardize as much as can be standardized, is the rule. If it can't be standardized, the answer is yes. So we have different qualifications for the size of the project, and depending on that, you know, really tiny projects, they not. They won't need a zoom call for clarification, clarifying, but a medium to large size project will require, and we have a certain like, is it 30 minute call? Is it a couple calls? You know, what does that actually look like to go over that concept brief, to then turn that over to whoever's doing the architecting phase, and then they fill out a build plan in that phase. So the concept brief usually doesn't take too long. Can take couple minutes, maybe 30 minutes, to really take that idea and put that fill out those fields. But then the architecting phase, depending on the size of the project, could take weeks to architect because you want to make sure that you have every single detail really clearly laid out, maybe clarifying a handful of things with whoever did the ideation phase. So that way, when you hand it to execution, they have no questions, just about no questions, as few as possible to do everything that they need to do. And they're just the focused on the doing side. And then, of course, you want to have testing phase to make sure. Okay, execution teams, like I did the thing, it's done. Awesome. Cool. Then you have your, you know, QA team come in and test everything, and they're like, Okay, well, you know, this was missed. We're missing a link over here. There's a typo here. We need to re architect this piece over here. If anything pops in the testing phase, then they do basically a small build plan. So it's like the architecting phase, just smaller. Pass it back to probably the same person who did the architecting phase. So that way, because their project manager usually who does the architecting phase, because they're wired a different way. So I have one project manager on my team who's, oh, she's just a dream and a half, so her ability to hear my vision, and so then be able to architect it in a way that the execution team is like, totally clear, no questions. It is magical, but there's a specific way to do that well, that most teams that's it's usually somewhere in there that they get stuck.

David Bush  24:36  
And you've, you've really had a lot of experience in being able to vet, onboard and integrate a players into workflows that are globally sourced. So talk a little bit more about how you're able to extend capacity by outsourcing and bringing in people that are very talented and have lots of really good skills and experiences all around the world. Yeah.

Rebecca Kallaus  25:00  
So I am very particular about who I bring on to the team. I generally don't hire in the Philippines, we do have one exception on our team. He's not, not the norm. I could get a lot of flack for saying what I'm about to say, but, you know, I have a lot of years behind why I'm saying this, so I'll just, I'll use a couple of cultures just as reference point. So Filipino culture is very dutiful, naturally. As a culture, they're very good at doing what they're told. They're not proactive and innovative. They're not going to as an average, there's always exceptions. But just as a country, just the person, every place, city, country, has a personality type, there's always exceptions to the rule, but on average, they're very good with things that are monotonous, more data entry stuff, things that they're following SOPs. But if they don't have exact instructions of what to do, usually they'll get more tripped up. So I hire a lot from Latin America. So my Latin America team, they are so proactive innovative, we have a rule to always look for, how can you optimize anything in front of you? To always you know, if it's external with a client, listen to what the client is saying. But if you know, if you can think of a way to do something better, then suggest that to the client, make sure that they feel heard. But our company is business done better. So better doesn't always mean that we know better, but it means that better can be done than we do that. So we're always looking for how to innovate and optimize in every single corner. So I've raised a team that thinks that way. And so, you know, I've had team members multiple, not not just one or two that have been with me for less than a year, and they come to me. And they're like, hey, you know, we were having a sidebar, and we were like, you know, this can be optimized over here. Here's our proposal for exactly how to do it. I'm like, great. This one tweak over here, run it go. That's how I raised my team. I have couple in the US, one in Canada. So, you know, we definitely span a handful of different areas. We always have a standard, we speak in est as a team. So if you have a multicultural team, make sure that you have a standard of one you always speak in one time zone, so there's never any any miscommunications there definitely as a hard one on one rule, for sure. Yeah, but Americans, I probably, probably shouldn't say that Americans on average, are, I'm not a fan of hiring us right now. It's just, it's just a really hard thing. They're usually inflated on how much people want to charge, and they do a lot less work than my Latin team. So my Latin team, they're so driven, committed, loyal, like they will jump in without hesitation. I mean, just the our our company culture and team dynamics are so strong, it's really the most fulfilled I've ever been in my entire life is because of my team, and it's real. Yeah, I love my non Latin team too, but it's, it's just, but everyone who's outside of Latin America all fits to that same cultural Mo, regardless of where they are. But it's, that's something that we have a lot of work to do culturally in the US and we get there. But it's, it's, it's not the most ideal at the moment.

David Bush  28:17  
That's great. I appreciate the transparency. And you know, let's, let's jump into something that's a little bit different on the topic of organizational tips. So, you know, we all know chaos kill speed. So when there's chaos that's prevalent inside your organization, you're not going to be the fast, the fastest in terms of getting things to market, or more productivity or more profitability. So what are a couple of tips that you could give organizations that are kind of dealing with a little bit of chaos, whether it's in, you know, files, assets, or just communication, to really help them to eliminate confusion and scale? Sure.

Rebecca Kallaus  28:55  
So two things jump to mind on there. One, just from an internal operations perspective, one thing that a lot of people don't mention is naming structure. So when it comes to just organization and knowing where and how to find things, to make sure that you have a standard for how everything is titled. So we have, you know, any different arm in our company, we have a three letter acronym for for what that for each for each part of our company, and we have, you know, certain categories for then a subsection from there. So no matter if it's in Google Drive, if it's in Canva, if it's in clickup, if it's fathom, it doesn't matter where it is, like everything is always titled the exact same way. So that way, it doesn't matter the search capabilities of the tech stack that we're using. We know that if we search for something or we're looking for it in a certain place, we always know where to find it. So anytime that's ever not the case with my team, we have also how you structure your Slack channels. So that's something for we have very specific place for where we communicate. Create any internal issues, so I'll immediately put it to our help internal issues channel, and the team will get on that, usually in like three minutes flat. So and then the second one is not necessarily operations, but it's general business advice. You mentioned, just speed to market and things like that. One key aspect of running a business is, how fast do you make decisions? So that's something that there's a lot of founders that I well, they don't usually become our clients, honestly, because they're too slow to make decisions and they just deliberate on things for a really long time. But founders who really grow and go far in business are people who were able to process a lot of information and make decisions very quickly. So I was just having this conversation with somebody on my team who's a manager, and I was trying to get him to identify there was something that I caught with very little information, and I noticed there was a couple things that he had kind of he wasn't making the right to sit the right judgment call on something. And I was like, okay, like, I'm seeing it with this much information. You're getting this much information, and you're still not seeing what I'm seeing with this much and that's what makes a good CEO, is you need to be able to extrapolate data points and see trajectories where with just this much information you know with at least a pretty good precision what the right call is. You're not always going to be right, but at least with high probability. And you have to have the confidence to be able to run on that, and then, if you're wrong, to know how to pivot quickly.

David Bush  31:37  
So with the rise of AI, how much of that do you see where AI is going to be leveraged to fulfill certain roles without compromising the customer experience? I mean, do you see, I mean, I don't know how much you guys are using AI, obviously, bdr.ai, is an AI company, but what are you seeing on the back end of the operational side of things, sure.

Rebecca Kallaus  32:02  
So my role with the team is use AI as much as possible. Never let me know it. So we always stress a human rollover for any time we're doing any kind of AI. So whether it's copywriting or it's summarizing something, whatever it is. Oh, never, ever. And like, I've called my team out on it in early days where, like, they would send something. I'm like, I know you use AI, which is no problem. That's always great, but I can tell there's things that, here's why. So it's not just the em dash, you know, it's usually a giveaway. Most people, I'll think most people, except for, like, really seasoned copywriters, knew what that was until AI, and now it's, you know, ruined, ruined for people, even though there technically is proper grammar to use that in certain circumstances. But there's just a certain way that AI writes that it doesn't quite feel like a human a lot of times. And sometimes it misses information too, and also with tools like GPT, or, you know, other AIs. It can be completely wrong as well. It can be delusional. It could totally imagine things, and it can convince you of things that are totally off base. And if you're not paying attention, then you'll just start to run with it, and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we'll run that back. So that's my rule. So I always stress keeping my team really sharp on the human side. We're very, very big on that, and that will never change. So there are certain things that AI can mean that I don't have to have as big of a team as I initially imagined. I was like, you know, I probably have like, 100 person team at some point, but, you know, now we might be able to do what used to take a one to 200 person team on a team of 3040 so it definitely can make the team size smaller. But there's a lot of things that it's never going to replace humans altogether, but it's all about having sharp humans that know how to leverage AI properly.

David Bush  33:57  
Yeah, I love that high touch, high tech combo. I think that that's really where the magic is happening for us, is that we're not just, you know, giving people AI agents that do everything for them. Because somebody said the other day, it says, you know, AI is not to the point of Waymo or the self driving car, you know, that's that's a much more developed where most AI is, is just not at that point where it can be emotionally intelligent enough to create the kind of quality that a combination of Ai plus personal touch. So I like that. So let's I want to land the plane here, and I want to talk a little bit more about what is the cost of not having a real operating system. And then I want to dive in a little bit more to what it is that you guys are doing and really helping organizations to not just save save cost and save a lot of pain and heartache and actually grow their organizations. So cost of not having a real operating system is what I'm asking.

Rebecca Kallaus  34:54  
Sure. Well, I'll start with the non monetary, the non monetary cost and. There's when you don't have a business operating system, it's so much unnecessary stress on the founder and the team both. There's just so many things that aren't running as smoothly, things that are getting dropped, things that aren't executing with the proper, you know, flow and timing, and that can just cause so many problems, including burning out good team members. So you know that alone, just that the cost of of finding good team members that that's so it's so difficult to find it, you know, we've, we've done really well there, but it's, it's not easy to do. And the last thing that you want is to over stress somebody who's just absolutely amazing, because there's just so many unnecessary things that are just cluttering up their whole work day. So, and then on the financial side, you know, that's something that first off, you can't scale without an operating system. So we usually like to work with businesses who are doing around seven figures. You know, anywhere in that seven figure range, that's usually kind of the sweet spot where operations becomes your number one problem. So you some people can scale to, you know, around 10 mil, if you're lucky to get past to get to 10 mil, and especially past it without an operating system, you are probably really, really good on the front end, but it means everything is going to collapse at some point, and you're just out running that inevitable. So, you know, that alone is is huge, but just the amount of money month over month that can be saved once you have an operating system, you know, usually, if you are doing, you know, seven figures, you have a decent team. So the amount of payroll that you're paying every single month on inefficiencies. You know, let's say you have, let's say you have a team of 20. So you're probably having, what, 100 hours a week across your team, I'd say that from a conservative level, that can be better utilized. So you're talking a couple 100 hours at a minimum per month, on average, that can be actually leveraged towards bringing in more revenue or doing something else that's growing the business. So you're having whatever dollar amount is attached to that in wasted money every single month. That's just as an average, what the financial cost is without having an operating system.

David Bush  37:24  
Yeah, so how does the company know whether or not that they need to reach out to Rebecca calus and talk to business done better? How would they know whether it's a right fit for them?

Rebecca Kallaus  37:37  
If there's anything that is confusing, stressful, not going the way you want it to. You don't need to know why. But if there's anything that's not how you want it to be, you're hitting ceilings. You're having turnover with team, with churn, with clients, anything behind that door is all going to be an operations problem. And even if somebody is on on the earlier side, we have solutions for smaller companies as well, all the way through eight figures. So anywhere in that range, especially if somebody is a virtual company, that's really our specialty, is coaches and agencies. Anything in that realm is our sweet spot. We have other clients outside of those industries as well, but that's where we really shine the most. So anything in that range, we can definitely help. Can make your life so much easier.

David Bush  38:24  
Would you call yourself a fractional coo? I mean in terms of how you bring resources and expertise, or is it something that's more like, What category would you put yourself into?

Rebecca Kallaus  38:35  
So we haven't used that term. We've acquainted ourselves to a fractional coo. So someone who's a, well, I think a good fractional is maybe a little bit more involved inside your business. How our pro, like our standard Operations Program, works, is we work with the owner's right hand person. So title agnostic, whoever your right hand Doer person is where they could be an executive assistant admin project manager. Can be a COO, or do or an ops manager. If it's a COO, we're going to have a conversation that if you need our help with operations, there's probably something misaligned with the COO, or they could just be new and over their head. And that's totally fine, too, but we like to just make sure we set those expectations properly, so we always work with that person for our program, where the visionary CEO is involved in the beginning with the assessment, with the blueprinting, and then most of everything else is handled with their right hand person. Because the visionary CEO, CEO is usually not the most organized. They're not the best at doing or they shouldn't be the one that's doing things. And if they're usually your your first hire is usually that right hand Doer person most of the time, not always, but then that's a person that knows your business really well, so they're fully inside your business, and then wheeling on them as the bridge to know all the nuance, things that we won't know from an outside perspective of. I've done overhaul works with companies that are, you know, in the $20 million range. I've done that a couple times and but I it was just me as a contractor coming into a business, and it was a very standard timeline where there's things that the, you know, founder and manager and executive team would always tell me at the beginning, and then there'd be a couple other things that would come up, like maybe six weeks in, and then I'd find all the skeletons by the end of the third month that they didn't want me to find, or they didn't think were that important, but were actually the real problems. And that only happened when I was fully inside their business, and I could really, you know, turn over every stone, uncover everything, ask all the right questions to all the team members directly, because I'm fully in the business. When that's not the case, there's just too much of a gap. So we don't use the term fractional COO, but we absolutely can. We can usually make more progress than a fractional because we have so much standardization for our program. We've done this work in so many different ways, and we're doing that work with somebody who knows your business fully,

David Bush  41:07  
right? So best next steps would be to visit business done better.co. Yes. And assessment, register for an assessment, contact you and get that assessment scheduled. Is that the progressive next steps?

Rebecca Kallaus  41:21  
Yeah, absolutely. So we have three different buckets on you know of our company, and you can find them all at business done better.co. So you'll see the operations right there. So you can just go to that page and fill out the assessment, or get schedule an appointment to fill out an assessment from there. Or you can just go to our contact page if you have any questions, or there's a link to book a discovery call any of those ways you'll get to us, and we look forward to helping you out.

David Bush  41:45  
Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Rebecca, it was such a joy talking to you and just learning from you all these amazing things that you're organizing and putting together for people. And super excited to introduce you to many more of the people that we come into contact that are interested in scaling their business and simplifying it. So thanks so much for your time.

Rebecca Kallaus  42:03  
Absolutely a pleasure. David, thanks for having me.

David Bush  42:08  
Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline. Grind building Predictable Revenue isn't something you figure out alone. Whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai, or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's Highest Paid Prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai until next time, let's keep building you.