1804 – How to Have a Smoothly Running Business with Danielle Levy

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2:09With us right now, Danielle Levy. Danielle, you are a chief of staff, business growth strategist and consultant for high-level service providers, agency owners and entrepreneurs. Danielle, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be here. Yeah, well, give us an overview of the work that you do. By the way, I should point out, Your website is DanielleCLevy.com. That's L-E-V-Y. Yeah, Danielle, in your words, I'd love to hear about the impact you have in the world. Yeah. So I came up back in the days of all brick and mortars in digital consulting and communication consulting design agencies.

2:49And I spent about 15 years doing that and made my way over to the online space to work with entrepreneurs over here. And I have this really cool background in project management, people operations, but always with a marketing lens. And so it's been absolutely fantastic to be able to get inside of businesses, see how they work, take a look at their digital footprint and figure out how we can get them to be a little more optimized, figure out how we can scale and grow them up and really, you know, help CEOs feel really confident in their roles that the business is being handled. Yeah. I noticed that you've got a few initials behind your name in MBA, but also PMP.

3:32So when we're talking about project management, someone that has that PMP designation, can you share just a bit about why that may be valuable as opposed to just a coach that wakes up one morning and says, you know what? I'm going to help people with their project management. Yeah. So I actually got it. And this is Danielle unfiltered right here, but I was given the opportunity to take the PMP exam, which at the time, and I'm sorry that I'm not up on the latest, was quite expensive to take and was many, many hours of study to take it. And I jumped at the opportunity to take it. And I was much younger in my career and I was dealing with some Fortune 100 companies and was really put in some key leadership positions within these projects.

4:16And for me, the exam in particular, and this is just my personal experience with it, the exam was incredibly broad. So I was in a real niche market and, you know, folks in manufacturing or folks in more, you know, who are project managing widgets or, you know, any project management professional could take this exam. So for me, it was a little bit broad at the onset. And what I quickly found out was these was really a core set of operating principles that even someone is junior in my career, it gave me confidence to really work with CXO level folks and say, no, these are best operating principles.

4:58This is why we should do the things that we were doing. So it really transformed my way of thinking about like, oh, this is what my gut is saying. I think this feels right about it. But no, this is what a proven set of professionals has had to say about this is the right way to run a set of projects. And it didn't matter that I was a 20-something-year-old or I didn't have as many years of experience. It was like, no, this is best practice and this is how we should do it. And so it really was less about the knowledge of studying for the exam as it was a transformation in how I was thinking about projects.

5:31Sure, sure. Okay, so the value that you bring into an organization, what might be some, I guess, pain points or business leader that's listening right now, how might they know that they could value from some guidance from you? Sure, I think there are a couple of signs. One is they're just not sure what their own role is within their company anymore. They've gotten the business to a certain point what got them here, they know isn't going to take them there. They feel like the business is consuming them instead of them being out in front of the business. That's definitely a sign. The others are, you know, with it by department, you know, they're feeling like they don't have the right team.

6:19Things are feeling stuck. Communication is feeling muddled. Things just aren't running with ease and flow the way that they should be. Yeah. And so seems like a silly question to ask, but what are the consequences of that for a business leader or a founder? Yeah. You know, I think it's a slowing down of the growth curve or essentially, I mean, and I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but the destruction of a business. You never, you know, it's, I love that book by Dan Sullivan. and I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, who not how. Oh yeah, just read it. So it's when you stop knowing how to do the things that got you to that point and how to move it forward.

7:06And it's like, who do you know that can help you take the business to that next level? What I think is really interesting about businesses is you get it to a certain point, you figure out that you have a sustainable or high growth business and you get all these processes and systems in place and then they stop working. And that's actually a sign of success in business because the things that you've built, you've actually outgrown or you've broken because you need to take them to the next level. And so when you feel that slowdown, when things aren't working like they used to work, you know, there's a problem there.

7:38Yeah. Well, let's maybe share some guidance for folks listening. I don't know if you can think of anything off the top of your head and say, listen, all right, let's fix one thing in your organization. I don't know if you can kind of give us a little mini TED talk or something on something actionable that we can all do. Sure thing. So I think being really clear on a few key priorities, not trying to get all the things done or especially, you know, we tend to set ourselves up with these mental timeframes. you know, just as you and I are talking, like we're turning the corner on the end of the calendar, right?

8:15But there's always the end of a quarter. There's always, you know, fiscal year. There's always some sort of deadline. And I always like to work with teams and say, let's narrow in on two or three key initiatives. Let's move to a sprint model. I would rather see more things get over the finish line than go too broad and not really see where the time and money is going. Yeah. One of those things that I'm just kind of looking through, by the way, you're a great follow on LinkedIn. One thing you were talking about, I wanted to ask you about this. What is process mapping and how can we do that? Sure.

8:50So process mapping in simplest terms is understanding how to get from A to B. And sometimes what we figure out is we're like, well, I should say how to get from A to C. Because sometimes what we figure out is we can only get to B and we can't actually get to C, which is over the finish line. So what are all the steps that we need to take? You know, it goes back to those days of elementary school, like, oh, gosh, I even just lost my analogy. But the shortest distance between two points is a single line, right? And that's what process mapping is, figuring out what we need to do to get from here to there.

9:26Hmm. I'm going to have a big process mapping day tomorrow with my team. You know, and we're recording this shortly before, you know, Christmas and the New Year's. So I think a lot of folks, especially now this is airing probably in January and a lot of folks are, you know, they've made plans for the year and now they need to see these things through all the way. And I think it's pretty frustrating for all of us, you know, when we set an intention, you know, and then maybe it just, we get too caught up in other minutia and or putting out the fires. So our big goal stuff maybe sometimes doesn't make it across the finish line.

10:09Any recommendations or tips that you would provide so that people can ensure that they get their things done? And again, they don't just fall victim to, oh, yeah, I know we should be working on that, but we still got to do all this stuff, you know, the day-to-day putting out fires, which is the bane, I think, of many business leaders' existence. Yeah, you know what? I think there's actually two parts to what you're saying. So one is definitely keeping an eye on that North Star and being really dedicated, or those couple of North Stars being really dedicated to revisiting them and not getting lost in all the minutiae, whether it's a regular meeting with the executive team or having someone else be the project sponsor or whatever it might be.

10:55But I also think being too laser focused on what those definitions of success are, sometimes we miss the opportunity in that. And I was meeting with a client, it was interesting, last week, and she talked about not wanting to feel like a failure because she didn't get all the things done on her list. And we really spent some time going, well, we didn't get these things done on the list, but look at all these other things that did get done just because opportunities presented themselves. So I definitely hear you with not losing track of the big goals, those giant rocks within the grains of sand of day-to-day business.

11:33But I also think being too rigid in our planning isn't really a good choice either. Yeah. One thing that you recently wrote about was decision-making fatigue as a leader. What is it? How can we be aware of that as leaders and how can we handle that? Yeah. You know, decision-making fatigue is, you know, all of those big decisions and all of those small decisions that just as leaders or the person that's always been the person that by default has made those decisions, just the volume of decisions that need to get made. And at a certain point, does the executive or the leader need to be the person that makes all of those decisions?

12:18Specifically on my team, there was a set of tasks that I was responsible for because as my own business was growing, I had always been the one that was doing them. And I have to be frank in saying the quality of what I was doing wasn't as fresh and sharp because it just didn't feel like a priority to me. So we actually bundled all of those up and passed them to a member of my team. I'm not the bottleneck anymore. I can't even tell you what a pleasure it is right now when I just see things happening in the background that I don't have to worry about. And I know that I'm making the decisions that I need to.

12:48There are certain decisions that I will not give up. There are certain decisions that, you know, except the leader, they shouldn't be made by anybody else. But it's really being aware of the volume of decisions that need to get made every day. You know, even when we were chatting, you were talking about how this discussion could be repurposed. There's a lot of decisions right in there. Am I going to use this platform, that platform? How soon are we going to schedule it? How's it conflicting? We're like, there's all of those decisions, right? And I really like to stay in the zone of the things that excite me, the things that I'm really good at and give my team the opportunity to do the things that they shine at because overall the business is just in a much better place because of it.

13:30All right. So your website is danielclevy.com. And I think you've got some good resources here or, you know, maybe things that you've content you've created. I'd love to give folks, you know, some next steps after they've heard our conversation and, you know, so that they can start tackling their own processes and systems within their own organization. Let's give them, again, I'm just so sympathetic to that business owner leader that unfortunately is doing way too much in their organization. I promise you to my friend who's in that situation listening to this, I promise you this is solvable. It is.

14:12And, you know, one thing that I would say is I have a very clear 1.0 and 2.0 in my professional journey. And when I made the switch, I knew what skills I was coming with. And there was a tremendous amount of insecurity that I had because there were all of these new terms and this new like playground that I didn't understand how it worked. And it was my network that got me through. And it was having real conversations with people that had been there before. So to your point about what is the next step that people can take, you know, even if it's as simple as I'm very, very loyal to my messages on Instagram, just send me a message.

14:50I've got a newsletter that goes out regularly. I want to be very, very approachable to people because I have just so much gratitude for the community that got me here. And if I can pay that forward in any way to other folks, I am more than happy to do that. But to your point, there are a lot of resources on there. There's delegation strategies. There's an ICE planner. ICE is in a case of emergency planner. There's a quarterly. There's a goal planning worksheet that can be used. There's all sorts of stuff. But I think at the end of the day, the most important thing is to take the step that feels most comfortable to the person that's taking the action in whatever way that makes sense and to continue to stay in motion saying, you know what, I'm feeling some friction.

15:36I know I need to do something. Even if I don't know what it is, let me reach out to Danielle. She may not be my person, but she might know my person or she might know my resource. Right. It's about us supporting each other. And how can we all move forward? Mm hmm. All right. Again, Danielle C. Levy, you are a PMP and MBA, Chief of Staff, Business Growth Strategist, and Consultant for high-level service providers, agency owners, entrepreneurs. Your website, danielclevy.com. Danielle, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. I appreciate it.

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