Listen in on this enlightening conversation with Natalie Gingrich, the creator of The Ops Authority, a director of operations certification program.  In this episode, we will explore, step-by-step, the journey of developing a certification program, from ideation to implementation.

In this episode we will learn:

• How Natalie transitioned from doing to teaching
• The “scalable and saleable” aspects of certification programs
• The difference between selling a course and offering a certification
• The three critical steps to creating a certification program
•  As a bonus, we learn how CEOs and DOOs can work together for organizational success

Natalie Gingrich is the founder of The Ops Authority, where she certifies and mentors women who leverage their natural skillset of operations and administration. She's driven to help women earn an income with ease while doing what comes most naturally to them. She spent 15 years in corporate operations and leadership. Her entire professional life has been built around human resources, project management, process development, and people leadership. Natalie ended her corporate career as the Chief of Staff for a Fortune 150 CEO. With legacy being her driver and her kids getting older, Natalie left corporate America in search of balance. She matched her drive, leadership, and operational skills to create her own business. In her first 3 years of business, Natalie scaled dozens of online and small businesses to 7 and 8 figures, worked alongside industry icons, and developed diverse teams. She merged her corporate career with her entrepreneurial learnings to create the Director of Operations Certification Program, the only strategic operations certification for leaders. She continuously pours into operations experts on her weekly podcast, The Ops Authority.

We would love you to consider supporting Natalie’s favorite charity: https://kinetickidstx.org/

Connect with Natalie:

directorofops.com -- Director of Operations Certification Program: The next step for female project managers, human resource professionals, and operations managers who want to build a career that leverages their gifts and brings them ease.

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-gingrich/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/opsinsiders

Connect with Erin and find the resources mentioned in this episode at hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

All right.

Welcome to the hourly to exit podcast.

I'm your host, Erin and I am so happy to have Natalie Gingrich with me today.

Hello, Natalie.

Thank you for joining me.

Hi Erin.

It's awesome to be here.

I am so happy to have you with the it's gonna be a great

episode talking about certification licensing programs, something we talk

about all the time here, and I'm really looking forward to digging into it.

But before we get started, can you please introduce yourself?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, of course, I'm Natalie and something that's always fun to

know is where these people live.

Right.

Because we hear them, but we don't know all the background

and all the dirt on them.

So, um, a little bit about me.

From San Antonio, Texas, and have spent the last seven years in my

own entrepreneurial journey, really honing in and using the gifts

that I innately have, but also

on top of that, really coupled with the experience that I had in my 15

year corporate experience as well.

So, all that means that I got here by leveraging my operational skills, which

sounds super nerdy and unattractive, but believe it or not, they're desirable.

And there's a large contingency, specifically of females, who have

the opportunity to use these as well.

So I've taken all of those experiences and I've spent seven years in this

phase of my, I call it Natalie 3.0.

Ooh, nice.

Yeah.

And in getting to the point where I was able to take that intellectual

property, boil it down and create a certification program.

We certify train and mentor directors of operations to really build a career and

a business around those skill sets that they likely have taken for granted for a

whole, maybe even many, many professions before this, so that brings us to today.

Yeah, I can sympathize with trying to make what we talk about sexy.

I have that licensing is sexy.

Yes.

But it can be.

So tell me, you mentioned DOO, director of operations.

What is a director of operations?

Like what do they do?

Yeah.

Awesome.

Let's just start at what operations is.

Sometimes that's a term that not a lot of people have heard.

And even for myself, in my 15 years of corporate experience, operations was

a little different than the way that we are seeing it being used today.

Operations was very logistical in the corporate organization that I came from.

And when you kind of zoom out and, and maybe you have a different understanding

of it from what my corporate experience was, but when I came into small business

operations, again, for small business, you're running leaner teams, you're

running smaller operations, and sometimes even more meaningful and passionate

filled operations and businesses,

your operations are a lot wider than just logistics and some of those pieces

that I had attached to them beforehand.

But when we look at operations today, we're really looking at five disciplines

specific to small and online businesses.

And that's the operational strategy, you're looking at human resources,

which is a huge discipline underneath, but we'll just summarize it there.

Project management, data and financial.

So those five disciplines fall underneath operations and all five of

those are desperately and significantly needed in any size of business.

If you are a solo entrepreneur, or if you are, you know, in corporate America,

those are all disciplines that have to be a part of what you do and how you

perform, how your business is stood up.

When I came into the online space, I was really helping businesses in all of

those and Erin, I didn't know that I had anything different than the next person.

I have a background in my corporate experience, afforded me

the opportunity to work in human resources and project management for

that time period.

But even those were very silo disciplines inside of corporate

America, because frankly, you just have a lot more resources

in large organizations like that.

When I translated that into small businesses,

I started to see how, we can't afford in businesses like mine and yours, we could

not afford somebody to be a disciplined owner of those five disciplines, because

you still have another whole side of your business, which is marketing, right.

Right.

So, you know, I, I boiled all of that into one

role, an incredibly impactful role,

and I started out as a project manager managing one project and businesses

would keep me on and I would give them value in their entire organization.

And I just was doing what I always did, and I apprised that and really pulled

that back into my corporate experience because, you know, even though I was

working in one discipline, they were all very cross-functional and the skills of

an operator are all very cross-functional.

Getting to, to answer the question of what is a director of operations, they

leverage those five skill sets and hard skill training areas and pull them

into one person come and sit next to, from a strategic level and a strategic

partnership, they sit next to the CEO and the visionary to help the visionary and

the business to scale faster, to be more

profitable, to optimize, to find efficiencies.

That's what a director of operations does.

There's many different levels of an operator and arguably

they're all very, very important.

You know, you can have an operations coordinator and operations manager.

And honestly, there are so many different terms for what these people do.

I have landed on a director of operations to show the significance at the strategic

level, but also the breadth of not just being a project manager and not just

being an HR manager, pulling all of that together at the strategic level.

That's what makes a director of operations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I can, confirm to the audience.

I mean, I have a brilliant head of operations that Natalie brought

to me who is DOO trained and certified by The Ops Authority.

And I never imagined that all those aspects would come like in as a

solo entrepreneur that I would need, but it is absolutely true that all

these pieces are very important.

You, you really don't even think about how much more value and ease

you can get out of your business when you have all these pieces in place.

You know, I like venue lawyers.

we don't think in terms of systems, you know, we kind of think in terms of, you

know, what we know and, and our precedent, things like that, but systems are not

kind of at the forefront of what we do.

And so having someone to help put those pieces in place is

made, made a huge difference.

I can say in my business, and we are gonna talk a little bit later about the

value of DOOs in businesses, but I wanna start with talking about your business.

First from kind of a high level perspective about like

why you started your business.

There's a couple of things that I have noticed.

I mean, you did mention that you mostly work with women.

And so one, and that was my experience all the dos that come across are women.

Now, was that intentional?

Is there something inherently

feminine about DOOs, and do you see any shifts around that?

Excellent question.

And I cannot wait to go into this cuz no one's really ever asked me that.

But when I left corporate, there was just a lot of internal work.

I had the opportunity to restart work on my terms.

And when I had that opportunity, I dug deep and I really looked to see like what

would it look like for me to be fulfilled?

And when I had the opportunity to restart, I did it purely from a place of legacy.

I didn't have a big, you know, significant dollar amount that equated success to me.

I really wanted to be able to be available for my children in a different

way, and still at the same time contribute financially to our household.

But I did not have crazy expectations of making 5 billion or six figures

or any of the things that we are commonly equating to success.

I wanted to do this in the way that was most authentic to me, and you

don't have those opportunities when you work for a larger institution.

And so I wanted to do it different.

And I initially was attracted to working with women who were course

creators in the online space.

And that was completely foreign to me.

I didn't even know that this was an opportunity or a

business that was just booming.

I had no idea when I was in corporate that this was happening.

And so I fell into working alongside and being a partner to people.

When I was doing this in a one to one capacity, the people who leveraged

me best and most often were females.

And so, you know, I think that's where it organically was created.

You know, some people will say, oh, I bet you were just sick and tired of the

male, energy that happens in corporate and

to no surprise, it was actually the females that made it way

harder than the males, but we'll save that for a different day.

So that's who I was working with and, in the online space in general, I was finding

that It was easier for me to talk to, and to educate and to partner with women.

And so I work with people for a long time and I was not

exclusive to working with females.

I just found that there was better energy and, and ease about it when

I was working with other females.

And over time, when it came time for me to take my intellectual property

and do something with it again, I got to redefine what, what looked good

and felt good to me at that moment.

And I continued down the path of working with females, and here is why.

It's not because males cannot be operators.

Actually, in my corporate experience, most of my peers were males.

They weren't females.

But I will say that when I started to stand this up myself, I loved the

community aspect of what we were doing.

And I don't wanna get super woo here, but there was energetically something

about the way that I knew I was going to build this business around community,

around support, around mentorship, and if I was gonna be let's call it

the chief mentor, the head mentor, I knew who I mentored easiest and best.

And so I put some parameters on myself, which, you know, I'm sure every coach

I've ever had is like, why do you do that?

You could make so much more money, blah, blah, blah.

And maybe that's the case, and we've had so many men who apply,

who want to join us and they would possibly be phenomenal fits.

It

just breaks the energy and the confidence and the leadership training that we're

providing when we, you know, when we, when we distract ourselves with that.

So anyway, that's, that's the long story as to why we have

built this around females.

I also know that from my own, really like heart to heart,

it is the females and my peers

in our gender that don't see the value that they can bring to other people.

Mm-hmm.

They also don't see their innate gifts as easily.

And I'm not here to figure that whole psychological piece out.

But I know that it's been a tremendous, I mean, the success that we have

brought people and brought women who just didn't see themselves, um,

or hold themselves in the same way has been just life changing for us

Yeah, that is fantastic.

I mean, we share that very much.

I mean, part of my purpose and my journey with working with female founders of

service based businesses is because so often, like they're not thinking about

building that value in their business.

I mean, we can make a very comfortable income just selling our time,

right.

But we're not building anything.

And so educating women, I mean, I don't, too many times, you know, I

am in groups of women who are like, I never even thought about that.

I never thought about, I could build a business to sell.

I never thought that there could be assets in my business.

Mm-hmm.

And so, yeah.

And there is an education around that, and empowerment around that, which is part

of why we do what we do, which is great.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

So let us talk about your certification program.

So what was happening in your business when you decided to do this?

I hear you were doing the one on one work.

You had a framework, like how did you decide, this is

where the next level would be?

I had, built a framework early.

I mean, as soon as I left corporate and started kind of working with these

businesses, I came in as a project manager working on one project.

So I was really just utilizing the project management skills and, I had already

mentioned businesses would be like, well, wait, you're doing this so well, like

you're actually looking at a budget.

We've never had a budget for anything in my business and you're

managing the team so well, like, do you think that you could take on

another project and another project?

And so before you knew it, I was fully encompassed into the business

and really at the driver's seat.

And so there's a whole lot of lessons that went into this because

I didn't initially position myself as a director of operations.

I was really just like a bleeding heart showing up to serve clients,

which I love about the core of me, but at the same time, it took some time

to get to the place where I even saw that I had intellectual property, that

would be valuable to somebody else.

So, there's a lot of coaching that I'm sure you could look back on

my journey and be like, yes, NAD

But, so then I came in at this higher level and I got to work with, I

mean, dozens and dozens of phenomenal businesses and those people, those leaders

that I was working with, were having conferences and masterminds and whatnot.

And so as organic networking traditionally happens, you know, I found myself

having the opportunity to be able to speak to large groups, being on stages.

This is pre pandemic.

So travel was a totally different, you know, actually business was

quite different at that point, too.

Marketing was very different too.

So I think in 2019 I spoke on 19 stages and that, yes, I mean,

life was completely different.

Now I think I've spoke on three in the last so many years,

so...

but when I had the opportunity to do that, it really opened up the

floodgate of helping women or business owners to see that they could use this

support and then where to find it.

Well, that generated an, just a plethora of leads for me.

However, there was a capacity thing and remember I was doing

this from a legacy perspective.

My very busy kid's sports life does not lend me to having just a ton of clients.

So, I started to think, you know what?

I'm gonna put this into a course because people are coming to me and they're

asking me, Natalie, I need a Natalie.

Where do I find a Natalie?

And I hadn't run across a lot of people who had a super similar background to

me or the same skill sets that I have,

but I did find a lot of people who were eager to use parts and pieces of it.

So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna solve the problem.

I'm gonna create a course.

And I'm an operator.

I am not a marketer.

And so when it came down to it, I did a lot of work into figuring out

how I could put this into a course.

And that's a fun experience that we could probably jam on for another hour.

But I put that into a course and had an absolute beast of a time trying to sell

the thing because I'm not a marketer.

We had a couple people buy it and I received great feedback.

The hard part was that I would then.

Like connect people and say, oh, Erin, you're looking for somebody?

Well, here's this person who has purchased this course.

And I had, never interacted.

It was truly a quote unquote passive product.

So I didn't know the people that were coming in there was no

qualifications for them to come in here.

And so Erin, who is trusting me as a peer to say, Hey, Nat, who do you have?

I wouldn't necessarily match y'all, but I would say, Hey,

Erin's looking for somebody.

Hey, here are these five people, Erin.

Y'all go figure it out.

So I wouldn't necessarily have massive ownership, but I was

making a recommendation in jest and I have a very empathetic soul.

So Erin as a peer would come back and say, you know what?

You matched me with Sally.

And at the end of the day, Sally didn't do this.

She didn't know this.

She was whatever.

Well, I felt terrible for both Sally and Erin who are now in this partnership or

trying to unwind outta this partnership.

And, you know, money is spent,

heart, time, you know, all that stuff is really valuable and even

more so valuable in a small business when resources are very thin.

So, I went to work with again, how to solve that problem because people

are still coming to me at this point.

And I'm thinking, how am I gonna do this?

So the course model didn't feel good to me, both from an experience

perspective, a sales mechanism, and also it didn't solve the problem of

how can I recommend strong people to this contingency of women and people

who want an operator in their business?

So that's when a very wise friend of mine said, have you

ever considered certification?

We were at an event and I was sitting on a bus.

We were going to dinner and I, my mind exploded.

I could barely think for the next two days at the conference, because I

knew that that was when I say ticket, I don't mean in a financial way.

I knew that I was actually going to solve the problem that had been, just

itching me for the last two years.

And it allowed me to have qualifications up front

to really present a curriculum that I could control and then provide an

experience where people could really have a transformation so that they could stand

up and utilize this information in a way that could be transformational and, and

helpful for them and their legacies, which ultimately is, the biggest driver I have.

Wow.

That is amazing.

I did not realize you started with a course, although that doesn't surprise me.

So one of the problems that, you know, we hear about courses is

just, it's not only, you know, the ultimate client who has the problem,

but the person who buys the course.

Like, getting through it, really understanding it when it's

complicated and long, were you having troubles also just with people

being able to comprehend the material much less the issues that

the ultimate clients were having?

This is a great interview because I don't

get asked these questions very often, but I come from corporate.

And so when you just said that, something that triggered me was people would

come back to me and say, I loved it,

however, I didn't understand a lot of it.

And I really boil it down to having that corporate strategic

think and brain and speak.

And that wasn't common for the people that were joining me.

And it really came down again to I wasn't looking at who was joining me.

So I had, there was no qualification of this is gonna be right for

you, or this is gonna be wrong for you, which, from a transaction

perspective, felt really bad for me.

I was like, Natalie, I'm taking people's money and they can't use it.

But then on the other side, when they're coming back to me, it's like, well,

now I almost needed like a mastermind or coaching sessions to actually

help them to bring that to neutral.

And honestly, I wasn't really a good course creator either.

I didn't really know how to teach people.

I didn't know how to break this material down.

I was really downloading this, you know, 15 years of experience and

four degrees into something that

I just didn't have the instructional design to be able to deliver it in a

way that was going to be best used.

Just so everybody knows, that course has come off the market as soon as possible.

I think we sold it 16 times and tied that baby up.

Well, no doubt it's informed your certification

program, so it wasn't, uh, for naut.

Mm-hmm

So I am going to ask you to kind of go step by step from,

you know, that two days.

Was it that you said you couldn't think about anything else?

To where you get to today, like kind of just, how did it happen?

Yeah, so the course itself was really

just one very small piece.

It's what we have licensed as our strategic mapping model.

That's all I was teaching in the course.

And so that, you know, through time, I was like, when we stood up the

certification, that was not enough.

That was not going to give my students or the end user, which is you, which is the

employer, really exactly what I was doing.

And so we built out that curriculum and we added on the strategic

mapping model is the very first part.

Which has now become eight other modules that support this.

And so we start looking at those hard disciplines, the

HR, the project management, data, financials, all of those.

I went to building out the curriculum in, you know, a really in depth way

and we've never stopped adding to it.

We won't stop adding and refining to it.

And we started with our first, with our beta round and that was in 2018.

And you know, that informed a lot of what we would be doing moving forward

that, from there, we do this in a cohort style, so it's not an evergreen product.

That is something that doesn't authentically feel good to me.

I love having controlled sizes of groups.

I never anticipate being in business without having a one-to-one

connection with the students, because I really value that.

I know I would make a lot more money doing it in a different way, but it wouldn't

feel good to me and that that's, what's

most important to me.

So we have delivered this, we've built out a full team around it, Erin.

There's a delivery team and an operations team that does a lot of the program

coordination, but our delivery team, we have coaches in addition to myself

that are discipline experts in all of the areas that we've talked about today.

We also have a support team, accountability advisors, and

that's been an evolution.

Like we didn't pop out with all of that.

I didn't have the financial means to do that either.

So,

So what was your first step?

What was step number 1?

Yeah, I built the curriculum and I delivered everything.

I supported every student individually.

It was very organic.

I mean, we actually taught some of this live for the first time.

It wasn't in a beautiful studio and all of that.

We went to curriculum and I, I did everything myself, like, like you

do when you're first starting out.

Did you already have an audience who's ready for this?

Waiting for this maybe?

Mm, I still don't really have a very big audience to be honest.

Definitely smaller than most people would anticipate, but, you know,

it's, it's a hard audience to get a hold of because the, you know,

the VA market, the BM market is, is very big, much bigger than mine.

But I'm really looking for the tip top of those audiences.

And so, you know, we have lots of connections with them, but no, I did

not have a very big audience at all.

I think my email list was like 700 people at that time, which I had

already poured five years into.

But you know, my audience had changed several times because I went from being

a one-to-one service provider, right,

to looking for my peers of service providers.

And so that shift was interesting and something we

still put a lot of effort into.

And well, you mentioned control.

So how much control do you have regarding, I mean, obviously you have requirements in

order to qualify for certification at all.

Mm-hmm plus, some standards that they must meet, I assume to continue

to be certified after they finish.

Like how much control do you have over them?

Legally, through my legal journey of getting to certification,

getting some of the trademarks, getting the license set up, for us,

there had to be some pieces that were set in place.

And we look at graduation requirements, and that really didn't come along, Erin,

until probably the third or fourth round.

We're now at round 15, so it feels like a long time ago, but it isn't.

But it took us some time.

It took us a few iterations to kind of get a grasp of what success looked like.

We know some of the stats of, you know, percentage of completion in

courses and stuff, but this was a whole different experience because

we were walking students through.

We continue to walk students through every single step.

And so we put some graduation requirements in place.

We have actually expanded those

with more cohorts that have gone through.

We continue to look back and to see what that looks like.

The other piece that I have spent a significant amount of time and passion

around is the acceptance requirements, the application requirements, because

there's actually a lot of metrics that go into who is right for this.

I wanna make sure the people who are joining me are going to be qualified DOOs.

I don't want them giving me money and me feeling bad about them not having success.

And so the way for me to protect myself is, and this is the emotional

part, not legally, but was to put some requirements in place up

front from the application so that I could do as good of a job as I know, to attract

the right people, and to when I say repel, to guide them on a different path, anyone

who doesn't qualify, we have some partner programs that we can refer them to.

But we continue to do a lot of work to see who is the best person and seeing

what kind of data we can get from them, to get them to qualify to come in.

And then we have graduation requirements.

Over time, looking at those graduation requirements, we have looked at milestones

and so we have put some milestones in place to help us as a coaching team to

direct and coach them to the path which we see as the greatest success for them.

And, all of that has been really valuable, and I believe helps us to

have really high success rates, too.

And that's super important.

I mean, whether it is, you know, uh, application requirements or

the way that we vet our clients, if we're, you know, a service provider,

making sure it's a good fit.

Mm-hmm like, if it's not a good fit, no one's gonna be happy.

The client's not gonna be happy.

Student's not gonna be happy.

It will just be, a poor result all around, so that makes a lot of sense.

And so does community make a big part of it?

Like after they graduate, are they continue to be part of a community?

And, and I know Annie who who's working for me, like she always has

a resources that she can pull on.

Uh, when we have questions.

Yes.

That's, I mean, community is such a big piece going through

it and they're with their cohort.

It's about a six month program.

So when they graduate, we move them into their alumni group, which kind

of re sparks the energy for community again, because now they're, you know,

going from, you know, 20 to 40 into a group of, you know, 2, 3, 400 people,

which is awesome because now they have that many more eyes and resources

and, you know, experiences to lean on.

So mm-hmm yeah, that's a, that's a huge piece.

So if someone is looking at starting their own certification

program, what are some tips like what would be a sign that they're ready?

You know, I.

I get this question so much.

So again, thank you for asking because number one, it's not

as easy as people think it is.

Mm-hmm.

Number two, my first thing is, do you

have intellectual property?

Is this yours or is this somebody else's?

And it's hard.

That's a hard thing to ask because, I've learned bits and

pieces of this along my journey.

And I, I can't go back in my mind and figure out who was the first person.

Like, that was a really hard exercise for me, was getting clear on is this Natalie's

intellectual property, knowing that many pieces of this are learned along the way.

And so, first of all, do you have intellectual property?

Secondly, have you protected the intellectual property

and third now start thinking

about what that looks like for you.

And, you know, there's a lot of different certification models out there, and it's,

it's a really small subset of the course kind of market, but figuring out what

works best for you and how you and the curriculum that you're teaching and the

market that you're teaching to, how you set and design that up it's step three.

And most people come to me.

With that in mind and I'm thinking, no, no, no, no, no, it's not about that.

You have to go back to step one, which is my advice has been the IP

and making sure that you've got it.

Number two, that you protect it and then start looking at the way that

you're gonna set this up and design it.

Because the design and the program coordination is the fun part.

Like, that's the fun creative part and I get that.

None of it will matter if you don't have the first two.

I found a lot of resistance in really getting very, very niche

in my marketing until I had done all the IP work that I did.

Mm-hmm right.

Yeah.

You're you're talking my language.

Uh, I will, uh, actually link in the show notes.

I did a LinkedIn.

Last month called do you own what you think you own,

which is basically step one.

Which is doing that legal due diligence to make sure you own your,

your intellectual property rights.

Mm-hmm.

Cause there's, it's tricky and into not intuitive, and,

I think that's so important because like, for me, the

responsibility of having a certification company or an educational company in

general was people are trusting me For this, we'll call it a diploma or this

certification or the designation, whatever that looks like for you and your company.

Like they're trusting me and my brand.

I wanna make sure that this truly is backed and sound.

The last thing I wanna do is give somebody like a false,

that's not what this is about.

I'm not about volume.

I'm definitely about impact.

And so these were just critical steps to helping me stay in alignment

with who I am and what I want.

Yeah, I wanna revisit something you said.

One, about when you wanna start your own, it's not easy.

And also what I've, uh, emphasized is that it's not a passive revenue stream.

It's not set it and forget it.

And you mention like that you are always adding and refining.

It's not a little thing.

So, so to speak to like the fact that it's not a passive revenue stream.

You have to stay on top of your game.

Keep, keep moving forward.

Especially for those visionaries that are out there.

And trust me, I've worked with them and I've supported them, actually,

my entire professional journey, whether it was in corporate or now,

they can move very, very quickly.

So they can have an idea for a course on Wednesday,

and by next Wednesday, they could have it recorded and it could actually be done.

The majority of the people that I hang out with can't really work in that kind of a

quick start mentality, but it can be done.

A certification is, is way more thoughtful to me.

It's super deep, and I don't think that that's unique to me.

I think that that's the way that it should be because when they're buying

that certificate, the hope of that certificate, it just has to be a lot

deeper that, you know, I, I think that there's just a lot more mental energy that

goes into a certification than it does

a course.

Also the one to one or the one to many interaction in a certification

is just so different than a course.

I mean, even if people sell that support as a part of a course, there's a different

level of transformation and responsibility that take place in a certification.

And I hope that that's the way for every other, you know,

certification company out there.

Yeah.

And to keep the value attached that certification, you have to make

sure that it is keeping up with the changes in the marketplace.

Oh.

Um, otherwise it loses, it loses its value, like yep.

You know, that was a good thing to have five years ago,

but you know, hasn't yeah.

Hasn't progressed.

So yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of work there.

We have taken down every single question that has ever

come into us since the very beginning.

It's just something that we have done.

We are actually now rerecording everything.

It's huge project, over 120 lessons, but

it's through all of those questions that all of these 300 plus

students have asked that are really informing where our gaps are.

And so, in essence, it's never really done.

Mm-hmm, right.

And we've had some really thoughtful questions

that have come up in the meantime.

And because I didn't have time or resources to rerecord and pull all of

this together, we would add trainings.

You know, it'd almost be like a mini podcast episode.

If they had a question that really fit or there was a theme that was coming up, we

would answer it and give access to all of our past students and current students.

Because the market is going to change.

I mean, what the pandemic has done to us has opened up a lot of HR

questions that never were even thought.

I mean, we didn't even think about these my 15 years in corporate,

mm-hmm.

Much less now.

Right, right.

So many of the listeners may be thinking, you know, they may.

Wanna be a DOO, but they're thinking I need one.

Mm-hmm.

So what would a sign be in a business that they are ready for a DOO?

Cause I know you do actually provide DOOs to clients.

So what kinds of issues do they come to you with?

Like what are their pain points that they're like, oh my goodness, Natalie.

Help me out.

Right.

So if your business is scaling at a place, I mean, I think that we as independent,

like solo entrepreneur businesses, we can only do so much for so long.

And you know that the greatest pain point for a solo entrepreneur is overwhelmed.

There are what we have defined as seven different, you know, pockets of

your business, and as one person or even three people, it's very, very,

very difficult to own all seven.

I mean, it's like being seven CEOs to one business and I've done it.

It's a really hard place to be.

Um, and so eventually you reach kind of that tipping point.

And I, I refrain from saying a breaking point because, while that happens, an

operator can come into your business and it may not be a doo, but an operator at

some level can come into your business and offload the back end of your business.

And so, um, being able to partner with you in those areas that are

likely either being avoided, which is what happens when you're trying

to be seven CEOs at one time.

There are some of those that just don't

get any attention and you just kind of cross your fingers and your toes and

you hope nothing pops up or bubbles up.

Those areas are likely in the area of financial or project

management, you know, those things.

Yes.

Finding efficiencies is not important because the main driver, the place

that we put the majority of our emphasis is on the marketing side,

generating sales, finding clients, you know, looking for your audience.

That's what a business owner does naturally.

And so I tell people that when you feel like you're reaching the point of

just capacity, we'll call it capacity more so than stress, which is likely

a capacity issue, you know, that's a good time to look for an operator.

And the second really good indicator is if your passion is on the sales

part or in the brand identity part.

Just be honest with yourself from the very beginning that when you have

resources, time, you know, energy investment to place somewhere, you are

always, and you should always place it on the opposite side of your strength.

So if marketing and attracting people is the number one place,

then start looking for an operator.

Now, if doing client work, you know, I've worked with plenty of attorneys too.

If client work is your passionate area, then you need to do the opposite.

You need to start looking for people to help generate leads for you

mm-hmm and in the marketing space.

So knowing where your strength is and hiring for the opposite is where we

see the, the biggest value for us as operators entering into businesses.

Oh, that's great advice.

I not heard it put that way, but it makes a ton of sense to me.

Absolutely.

I, I just know generally, you know, I'm, I'm known as the anti DIYer.

Like, I don't wanna know how to do anything, like I know what I know.

I don't wanna learn else.

And if there's so other skill that needs to be, uh, I need, then that's when

it's time for someone who knows how to do that stuff to, to come forward.

So, yeah, so this is the hourly to exit podcast, you know, where we

talk about building a scalable and saleable expertise based business.

And so part of that is, uh, two pieces building exclusivity into your business.

Intellectual property, which we've talked about.

Proprietary, processes, things that you own exclusively, as well as

having a unique marketing position.

And then also having predictability in your business, independence from

the owner, which means having systems.

So where in the hourly to exit journey does having a DOO fit in?

You know, when we're scaling like that whole

scaling piece is that's what really stands out to me, you know.

And every business has a different vision and a different mission,

which is, is what they should have.

You can't see this, but I'm like drawing this continuum.

Yeah.

That, you know, kind of goes up over time and people scale differently.

They scale with different vigor.

Some people have resources to scale faster.

Some people have investors, some people are doing this themselves.

And so that timeline is very different from business to business.

But as soon as you start to experience scale, I believe that someone can stand

up a business and operate it independently of any labor for as long as they want to.

Mm-hmm.

Something catches, whether their fire gets ignited

a little bit more, whether their marketplace opens up and, you

know, they start finding conversion easier, whatever it is for them.

But as soon as you start that uphill ramp, you have to ask yourself, is this the

kind of business that I want for myself?

And if so, you're on the path to continuing to scale, knowing that team has

to be a part of it, whether you'll like leading people or whether you don't right,

that's just going to be a part of it.

So when you start to feel like you're on that uphill, uh, momentum.

Giving yourself the grace and space to time out and looking for support, that's

gonna be way better timed than making yourself crazy, stressed out, when you

get to the top of that hill and you look backwards and you say, you know what,

I'm just ready to burn it all down.

This is way too much for me.

Yes.

We've all been there.

Oh, I think that a lot of us have been there and that's

not a comfortable place to be.

That is awesome.

Yes.

So at continuing on our meta podcast here, you know, I'm a female founder

of an expertise based business that I'm growing to hopefully sell some day.

You are the female founder of a service based business.

So are you building your business to sell some day?

I never even considered that when I started.

And, you know, I, I actually have old podcast episodes of me talking about the

benefits of a lifestyle business, and we are currently building this business

to move from a lifestyle business, which remember I started under the

guise of legacy and with the drive of being able to have a flexible business.

Well, seven years later, my kids aren't babies anymore.

If they don't need me to drive them anywhere and I start to see, you know,

at least the age of retirement coming a lot faster than I did seven years ago.

And so through my we'll call it aging journey or experience, I have looked at

this and have been affirmed and confirmed that this actually is a sellable asset.

There are actually several sellable assets inside of this business.

And I think that that's just the maturity of myself, the maturity of me growing

as a business owner and having wise people like you to, to learn from.

We're absolutely in the process of taking this from a lifestyle

business, to selling either the whole thing or different pieces of it.

And I am avidly learning about the different ways of being able

to do that and different assets that are available to sell.

And, um, I, I believe that, you know, I was talking to my team recently in

the next, you know, 10 to 12 years.

I.

Probably be hopefully at that exit point.

Right.

Mm-hmm that's fantastic.

I love to hear that.

Mm-hmm well, yeah.

Keep listening.

Yes.

So while we wrap up a couple things, one, you know, we believe in

creating a more equitable economy here.

And in particular, we believe that wealth in the hands of

women can change the world.

And so I am wondering if there is a personal organization that

you admire, who is helping us build a more equitable world.

Yes.

So I have been involved with lots and lots of nonprofits, both from,

a volunteer capacity, as well as financially supporting them.

But here locally in our area, we choose to partner most frequently with

an organization called kinetic kids.

And that is not necessarily financially giving to the next

generation, but we partner with

kids of all abilities, so mostly kids with disabilities, and we help

to give them an opportunity in the space of sports and recreation.

So, I almost get choked up every single time.

I talk about them.

It's such a dear community that is available everywhere, right?

I mean, there are kids that have these challenges and who never get the

opportunities that our kids have had to grow up in sport and recreation.

And it's, you know, mostly for the kids, but secondarily,

those parents who actually find a community of people as well.

So that's our nonprofit of choice and where we spend a lot of time as a family.

That's beautiful.

Thank you for sharing that, that will absolutely be in the show notes.

So, I'm sure.

Lots of exciting things happening at the ops authority.

Is there something that you'd like to share with the audience

about how they can work with you?

Yeah.

So

I would say mostly right now, our capacity is spent on rerecording this content,

but at the same time upholding the standard that we have of, of excellence

and, um, delivery to our students that are continuing to come to us.

But about four times a year.

We host an opportunity for people to learn more about us and we.

Are always doing that.

You can learn more at the directorofops.com.

That's where you can see a little bit more about the certification process.

And then on the other side, we have another company called the

hiring authority, which is actually how you and I had come into

contact, which is where we help

businesses who are growing their talent.

We help them to resource and staff on from a full service perspective.

But that's, that's an area of our business that is really, really growing.

And, you know, another place that, that your listeners may be interested in.

Fantastic.

Thank you for that.

And so, in addition to the director of ops and the hiring

authority, there are any place else online where people can find you.

Yeah,

so we are on most social platforms.

You can find us on LinkedIn.

You can find us on Facebook, all at the ops authority.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

It has been a pleasure.

Lots of great information, shared.

Love it.

Thanks Erin.