1863 – Business Flow and Efficiency with Goaldi Coaching & Consulting’s Traci Bermingham

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2:14With us right now, it's Tracy Birmingham. Tracy, you are a business flow and efficiency expert, and you are the founder of Goldie. The way it's spelled, it looks like GoAldi. If you're familiar with the chain, it's G-O-A-L-D-I.com. Tracy, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Well, give us an overview of what does a business flow and efficiency expert do? In a nutshell, I get stuff done. So in saying that, I get it done in a smart way. So, you know, a lot of times what I see with clients is that they think that someday they're going to build their business and then they're just going to be able to relax right after they've they've gotten there, wherever there is.

3:02But there never comes and they just they're not building the systems. They're not building the structures. They're not putting things into place in order to give them that freedom that they're looking for, both financially, both time freedom, the impact that they're looking to make. And so what I do is I come in and I actually build the flow state into their business. And so I smooth everything out. I make everything. I say I take you from a hot mess to a hell yes. And so I help you to actually smooth out your business, create some efficiency so that you have time freedom ongoing. Yeah. Wow. That sounds like something to aspire to, certainly as a founder.

3:42So what are the first steps to getting there? The first steps to getting there are being really honest with yourself. For the most part, I work with business owners and I hate to say it, but it's your fault, right? So you are the leader of the business. And if your business is not operating efficiently, if things are happening, a lot of times that is because of the systems that you've put into place. And I get it. It's your fault and it's not your fault, right? Because you're not taught how to do this. We have so many gurus and books and everything saying 10x your business in the next two days, right?

4:20And all of these, we've got so many shiny objects happening, yet the actual running of the business, the actual managing of a team, delegating effectively to a team, creating the flow and the systems of your business, the actual delivery, we're not taught that. And the people that are teaching it, it's so boring. like I love this stuff and I geek out at this stuff. And sometimes it's hard to follow through with because it's just not practical for real life and a business that's evolving and changing all the time. Yeah. So can you, before we continue, I want to talk a little bit more about like structurally how we can create this.

5:03How do you, you know, address that issue of maybe someone that's coming in and just, you know, they still believe that the way to get what they want is to work outwork everybody. You can certainly try. Right. So my thing is, if you're not doing the right things, I say I work harder than anyone I know. I don't think it's hard work anymore. It's inspired work. Right. So I'm working on the things that I want to be working on that I love working on. I have aligned my team so that they are working on things that they love working on, that they're good at working on. And what that does is that aligns your business so that you are able to effectively and efficiently move forward.

5:44So you don't have to work hard anymore. You can work a lot, but what you're going to do with that is. So for example, I had a client who had a digital marketing agency and he was working between 60 to 80 hours a week in his business, doing everything. And he was making a good income, but he just was burning out because of everything that he had to do. And so I came in and just worked with him. And it was just a short time that I worked with him. It was only maybe a month or two that I worked with him. And we did a couple of things for him. We created a, he was managing almost his entire business out of email with him and his team coordinating and delegating everything, communicating with the team, communicating with clients.

6:30We put together a work management tool for him. I love monday.com. I totally, I have no affiliation. I love the great tool. The teams use it. So we created a work management system. We added some automations in there to make it really easy. And then we created an onboarding process for him. Fast forward about six months later, he's working 30 hours a week from only those two things adding in there. But because he aligned with working with his team in the work management system. And because he aligned everything, put everything together, you know, got his onboarding going, it was insane what actually happened.

7:09So he cut his time in half, literally in half just by doing that. And with the onboarding process and the flow that he created in his business, his client retention went through the roof. He had been losing clients because things were falling through the cracks and there were bottlenecks and fire drills and everything else happening. So all of a sudden his client retention was there and was solid. And so he kept his clients and his clients were happier. And then they started recommending and referring people to him. And so his business grew by like 30 % in six months while his time was cut in half, just simply by putting some processes and some systems in there.

7:47So instead of working so hard and putting out the fires all the time. He was actually, he streamlined all of the lower level tasks and he was starting to work on higher level tasks that he could then flow with and that were actually increasing his business and decreasing his time. Yeah. Well, you know, if someone's listening to us right now and they know that they are working way too many hours, I suspect that they might have some initial objections or at least beliefs, right? That, well, I can't do that because of X. What are some of those most common maybe pushbacks or objections that you might find a client at the very beginning believes that they can't do X because of Y?

8:36I think a lot of business owners have been burned in the past. they have delegated to their team members and their team members did not follow through. It's almost like it's that it's easier just to do it myself and do it right than to have someone else do it. I see that a lot. I see a lot of business owners who say, I quote, should know how to do these things. And I laugh. I have been doing this for 25 years. I have studied this. I've worked with the big guys, you know, the V says the Charles Schwab's, the Damani Foods, the Gap, Banana Republic, Williams-Sonoma, like you should not know this, right?

9:16You should not know how to create these efficiencies. You should know how to run your business, right? And you should know how to serve your clients and you should, that's what you should be working on. And so actually with me, I think that that's one of the things that they, a lot of times, there are different levels of inefficiencies within business. Sometimes they're a hot mess and sometimes they're not so bad, right? But when they are a hot mess, a lot of times they're embarrassed by how bad it is, what it actually looks like because on the outside, they need to project like they have everything together.

9:50And on the back end though, they're struggling to keep their head above water. A lot of times. So those are some of the objections in why they don't reach out or issues that they might have ongoing. Yeah. So once you get in and they say, yes, no, Because I completely can identify with that. We delegate something, try to spit out an SOP as best as possible. And then you kind of still look at what happened. You're like, oh, that's disappointing. Yeah, there was actually something I think internally we were working on yesterday. And yeah, our team member. And I don't blame them, right? They only know what they know.

10:32They're only as good as what they are. And for me to have misaligned expectations is not helpful for anyone, but it's still frustrating, right? How can we do a better job of when we do delegate that we empower our team to come closer to what we as a founder may envision? Really good question. So you want me to share a simple technique that literally gives me amazing results? So let's say, for example, you have a blog post that you need to go out and you need to show, let's say your virtual assistant, how to do that and how you want that blog post to go out, where you, what buttons to click, everything to do.

11:18I use loom.com, a screen sharing software, again, no affiliation, but just whatever you use. So I don't take extra time. I just, the next time I'm going to do a blog post, I record myself doing it and I explain what I'm doing and why I'm doing it as I'm doing that task. And then what I do is I go into my work management software and I create a reoccurring task and I pop that video into that reoccurring task so that anytime that task, like weekly, that task pops up, the how-to video is included with that task. So even if that person were sick were to switch jobs, I would still have the how to video on exact like literally it is exactly what I want to be done.

12:05And so what I do is I have them go through, follow my video on the next time a blog post needs to go out. I have them go through it. They send it to me. I review. I make another video with feedback on here, the slight changes that are needed. I give that to them. And about, I would say, depending on the person, two or three feedbacks in over a couple of weeks, and they do it exactly how I want it done, ongoing, forevermore. I love that, Tracy. Yeah, I think that's a really simple thing. I think anyone listening to our conversation right now can start doing, rather than just using a handful of words, which, you know, it can be much easier to be misinterpreted if it's not complete.

12:49Like if you're visually showing them and then, you know, again, you're just, just in my experience, it's much easier to record a video than like, okay, let me think about all this. Let me type all this out. And in fact, there's a lot of things you could do using AI. I'm sure you've used some or you've seen some pretty genius uses of AI. Anything come to mind? Yeah, I use ChatGPT. I've actually named ChatGPT Linda. So Linda is now a team member. on our team. And, you know, we will have Linda say, okay, so give us blog post example again, right? Give us the process for how to get a blog post out with, you know, we've got a copywriter, we've got a graphic designer, and we've got, you know, the tech that's needed.

13:37And Linda, she can actually go through and give us line items of what we need to do. And we can literally copy and paste that in. And we now have a process to follow. You tweak it a little bit for your nuances and you're good to go. And so we use her all the time, every day. Brilliant. Yeah, no, there's, it's amazing. SOPs, just, you know, nothing else. Like if someone's listening to us and you are not actively using ChatGPT or, you know, whatever Google's calling their solution to this week, you know, there's so much time to be saved. And again, it's going to empower everybody so you can get better results.

14:19You know, one final thing I want to talk about is, you know, kind of this loop of getting feedback as well, right? So, you know, obviously within a culture, what you don't want is people too afraid to make mistakes if they don't ask questions or, you know, you delegate something to a team member and they don't feel that they can give you feedback that, man, there's a much better way of doing this. Or that they can't push back and say, you know, I listen, I got to be honest with you. I really don't like this task. Could we say, you know, just say, you know, how can we, and there's just a couple of examples, but how can we as leaders give more space, I guess, for, you know, that feedback loop or that cycle or just kind of more of that, you know, back and forth communication at the very least?

15:07You know, in all honesty, I think it literally is just get out ahead of it. Give yourself the time. So what I see a lot is that we assign a task and it's due tomorrow or it's due within the next hour or like we don't have enough time to have an effective feedback loop. I welcome feedback, but I'm also so far ahead. Let's say we've got a monthly blog post. We started at the beginning of the month so that we can get it out at the end of the month. But what that does is it actually makes it so that we can have the feedback back and forth. And literally when I say feedback, it's 30 seconds worth of feedback.

15:42It's not an hour meeting or whatever to go, right? It's yes, I like that. No, I don't keep working on that. It's not quite right. You know, those sorts of things. It also gives them the opportunity to say, I think that we could actually get more clicks if we had this button instead of that button. When you're behind, when you're trying to get stuff done immediately and you don't get out ahead of it, you don't have time to think about what the optimized button is or the call to action or, you know, whatever that may be. And so it's actually getting out ahead of everything and giving yourself the time to actually welcome the feedback and to get it right and get it optimized before it even goes out.

16:26Yeah. All right. Your website is goldie.com to a friend that's been listening to our conversation, Tracy, and they're like, I need help. I at least like, I want some more clarity around here. What might be some examples of how someone might be saying, this is where it hurts. And that would indicate they need to get on goldie.com immediately and grab some time with you. Yeah, so the best way to go, literally at the top of my website, goldie.com, I have a business alignment assessment. And so you can see on a scale from hot mess to hell yes, where you stand. And the outcome will actually give you some practical tips and some practical guidance based off of your answers on where you might need some support and where you might need some help.

17:14Again, your website, Goldie.com. I'd also like to compliment you on your blog. You have some really great articles that I was kind of looking at. Flow over hustle, the audacity of just not wanting to work so hard anymore, how to get your time back, the delegation do's and don'ts. That's a really good article. Freedom is in the systems. How to Achieve Time Freedom, a Three-Step Rescue Plan. Tracy Birmingham, this is great. Again, you're a business flow and efficiency expert and the founder of Goldie. Your website, again, is goldie.com. And right on the website, it says, is your business aligned?

17:49Will you take the free business alignment assessment? Just click on Get Started and you can start going through that. Tracy, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for having me.

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