Hiring operations help for your small business is harder than it should be — and most founders are looking at the wrong things when they do it.
Ashley Connell, CEO of Prowess Project, has spent seven years matching small business owners with operations partners. She's learned that the skills on a resume tell you almost nothing about whether someone can actually run your business alongside you.
In this episode:
- Why hiring for tech stack and job titles fails service-based business owners
- How to find the right operations partner for your small business
- The four-step framework Ashley's ops partners use from day one
- Why delegating outcomes doesn't work — and what to communicate instead
- How to know if you need an operations partner or if your processes need fixing first
- What a two-week time study reveals that no hiring process can
00:00 The Need for Management
00:41 Welcome to Can We Not
01:41 Meet Ashley Connell
02:22 What is an Ops Partner
04:46 Meeting Leah
05:42 Flexible and Fulfilling Careers
06:59 The 97 Percent Statistic
07:38 The Matching Algorithm
10:47 Proven Results and Success Stories
13:14 Overcomplicating the Journey
15:38 Niching Down to Accounting Firms
17:22 Testing and Experimentation
19:22 Naming the Ops Partner
21:20 Experimentation With Intent
22:35 Accountability and Feedback
26:06 Four Step Delivery Method
29:03 Setting Clear Expectations
32:24 Behaviors Over Outcomes
34:28 Practical AI Integration
36:29 Time Study to Simplify
38:40 Closing Thoughts