β π I need someone to manage me. I need someone to tell me what π to do. I, I make decisions all day. I just π need someone to help me who β π π understands all of the context, understands business, and can help me make those decisions
βSomewhere along the way in your entrepreneurial journey, running a business got way more complicated than it needed to be. Between the advice that's built for eight figure companies, systems that felt unnecessarily heavy, and strategies that sounded smart, but didn't actually fit the way you work, you probably ended up putting in a whole lot of effort without getting better results.
Listen, business is hard enough. Can we not make it harder? So welcome to the Can We Not Business podcast. I'm Sam and I'm all about uncomplicating the strategies and work of running a business so it can not only be profitable, but also enjoyable At Oxo Business Services. I work with visionary doers who like to be busy.
But want that effort to create momentum instead of more noise. We're a back office agency that helps founders build support systems that actually work through US-based virtual assistants, recruiting for key roles and tough love strategies that turn ideas into execution. Now, this show is. Founder led businesses with small teams, or even no team at all.
Yet we're gonna talk about the behind the scenes decisions and real day-to-day work that shape your business so you can stop chasing the shiny objects, get out of second guessing spirals, and simply be more profitable. So let's get into it.
β π All right guys. Today's guest , I only get to see her a few times a year. We have done many a things together as podcasts and online summits.
She was part of my online summit once where I introduced her as the Barbie Ashley, 'cause I had a brunette Ashley, whose last name also started with a C, and she just rolls with the punches with me. But today I'm sitting with Ashley Connell, CEO of the Prowess Project. Hi Ashley. How's it
Hello. I completely forgot about Barbie. Ashley. Like that makes me cringe. That makes me want to like, I mean, we love Barbie for all the things, but Hmm.
Step into your Margot Robbie era. Okay? Like,
So true. So true. Yep.
So at PROWESS project you do two really cool things. You trade up people to become ops partners, and then you also pair those really cool ops partners with growing scaling companies, specifically accounting firms. So give us. insight into this story and really what an ops partner is like. Just break that down for us. We wanna know.
For sure. I was starting prowess and my goal in prowess was to help women in the workforce have flexible jobs so they can spend time with both their family, but then also have a fulfilling career. Um. I started doing this and I immediately stalled. I immediately burnt myself out.
I immediately was like, oh my gosh. I am the sales, the marketing, the relationships person. I know nothing about systems, about tech, about data, nothing. β π And so. Luckily I met Leah and things completely changed. Leah was my operations person at the very beginning, who's now our COO. She. Loved systems. She thinks in data, she thinks in logic.
She is just such the yin to my yang. And what we realized is starting to work together, we were really getting momentum. And I had all these other CEOs of small businesses who are starting up being like, Ashley, how are you doing it? How are you growing so fast? And I was like, oh, it's Leah. And they're like, huh?
And they're like, I need a Leah. And it was just a light bulb moment. We are going to train women who want flexible, fulfilling careers to do operations for small businesses. β π And when I say small businesses, I mean like 250 k to 3 million. And then. As they're going through their training, we gather data on them, um, and we build out a match.com, like matching system where we take the operations ops partner is what we call them, all of their data, and then data from the CEO who needs that right hand operations brain and put it into our algorithm and send them the top three matches.
Wow. That is such a fast matching process though, and I love all the light bulb moments and like
Oh gosh.
of how this all developed. How did you even meet Leah in the first place?
So I had a marketing agency before this and um, my business partner was her husband. And she came in and was doing all the backend office for us. She was basically our operations person. And I asked her, I was like, well, you are brilliant. Why are you not doing this for a Fortune 500 and taking home kus kus of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And she was like, Ashley, I. I can't work 60 hours a week. I can't work 80 hours a week. I have kids at home. And that was a light bulb moment when I was like, oh, okay, we can do this for other women, but position it in a way and position it, but then also set them up for success where they can make six figures doing this and have a flexible lifestyle for their family.
So that's what we do now.
you, I mean, you've got. Two F's of flexible and fulfillment. I don't know how we're gonna turn that into a tagline, but can your next campaign just be the two F's of Power's project?
Yes.
but I love that because, I mean, my Auxo started as. Like a COVID baby. So I had
Yep.
my oldest was born, end of 2019, ready to go back to work march.
Everything's shutting down. Cool. Stay at home mom for a bit. Losing my mind like blessed b to set day at home. Moms not my vibe. Could not do it like I need to do something else. So I started Auxo and I was, I always had these kind of guardrails up of like, okay, this is what I'm not willing to sacrifice to build this business.
Like I will not get into the trap of like entrepreneurs that. Work 60, 70 hours a week. Which is interesting 'cause a lot of my clients are that where like, they like to be busy and I like to be busy too, but like, I'm not gonna sacrifice all this great family quality time in order to build this empire. So the fact that you, you had these light bulb moments and then also had the guardrails and the structure to help these women find jobs.
And I think in some of your content. So you have some data points around this. That's gonna be a theme for us, I think is data points, but it's something like 97% of women, right? That leave and then wanna come back but don't, or something like, what was that point?
Yeah, so this was the light bulb moment for me. According to Harvard Business Review, 43% of educated, experienced professional women leave the workforce to raise children. When they are out for just three years, they lose then 37% of their compensation power forever, and 97% of them would return to the workforce.
If they had access to flexible jobs, and it's that 97% where it's like, then why aren't we helping them create flexible jobs? Duh. And here we're,
Hey now here we're, look at what we've done. Like, that's awesome. Okay. then, okay, let's, let me go back to something you said earlier as well. As far as data points, you kind of have like this match.com
yeah.
on, and so what are some of those key points that you're evaluating these, these women on?
And then also then on the flip side, what are the key points you're evaluating the CEOs on to then be like, this is why you're a great match.
Yes, so
the CEO and whatever you wanna call it. Operations Mini COO, online business manager, operations manager, right hand person. That relationship needs to be ultimately so compatible because the CEO is going to grow the business, scale, the business, and they are handing off essentially their baby to this operations person.
So we knew that the traditional recruiting methods of hey. I am. I'm the CEO. I am looking for someone who knows this technology, this technology, this technology, and has done X, Y, and Z isn't enough. It's not enough. We have to look at the work style. We have to look at behaviors. We have to look at communication style, emotional intelligence, team management style, and find a partner, an operations partner who is compatible, not same compatible.
And that's when you really get this perfect marriage or perfect duo, and you start seeing the momentum happening and the results happening in the business starting to scale in a measured, profitable way. And so we have a hundreds of different indicators, but those are the big. Overarching themes that we really look at that typically aren't looked at when you, you go to a LinkedIn,
Like knowing if this person has worked in HubSpot before is
who cares?
if you enjoy their weekly check-ins. Like, or if you're gonna dread talking to them. Like, I actually, I just hired new ops assistant for Auxo and like in the interview process I was so intentional about like. Do I like genuinely care about this person in the sense of like, I. For the
No, I get what you mean.
all people. But like, can I care for them? Like will I, will we get along? Can I joke with them? Like, 'cause that also is gonna dictate how much I trust them with stuff, even if I trust their competency to go do something. Like can I trust them to do it in the way I want them to do it?
And like all those bits and pieces, right? And your traditional stuff, like you said, is not gonna tell you that at all. So. You also on your awesome. This is like all my cyberstalking coming into play
I love it.
some great stats too from your clients as far as like how many of them are like, wow, this algorithm actually works.
Because, you know, sometimes we meet those alpha bros. They don't wanna talk numbers and KPIs and I'm like, but you don't got the, the magic to really back this up, right? So we're talking algorithms and fancy data points, but like tell us what are the results? Like why does that even matter? Has it been proven to work?
Without a doubt. So I'll give you some data and then I'll give you some like funny things about it too. Funny stories. Um, so we match people in four business days. That is a huge KPI for us. So it is quality and speed is huge. Um, we have a 94% satisfaction rate, meaning 94% of the time they. Stick with the person that they decide to move forward with in the other 6%.
We just match them with someone else. Um, and we, all of them had said that this is making, hiring the hiring experience easier, some. One, one-off story that I always think is so funny is, um, we were going through the whole process with A CEO and we did all of the analysis on behavior style, and we sent him over three candidates and he calls me immediately, I think I may have shared this story with you before.
And, um, he was like, Hey, we're gonna have to take candidate B out of the selection. And I was like, well, why? And he goes, because we dated.
Okay, so, oh, oh, I thought I told you this. It was, yeah, I was dying. I was like, okay. So if this does not work out as like in the CEO Ops matching, this can absolutely work out for dating.
I love that that is also like, yeah, we're the match.com. You
Yeah.
like, I know someone who, um, when we went to find his new assistant, he was like, just meet my wife. She used to be my assistant. And like, just copy her, you know? I was like, okay, like that's the profile.
Yes.
off of
Yes.
need a little Donna to our Harvey for any Suits fans out there.
Okay, so
Love it.
now all, all of this sounds. I think super simple when you explain it, but it it almost because it, it's simply powerful. It almost dismisses like the amount of work that I know you put into it to get to a 94% satisfaction rate. So I'm also curious on the journey to get there. How, 'cause on the show we also wanna say like, this is how we're gonna grow simply.
Right. So on your journey to a 94% satisfaction rate, how were things maybe a little over complicated along the way, even after Leah joined and you know, there was this symbiotic relationship happening.
How much time do you have? Um, I am the queen of overcomplicating. Queen, queen, queen, queen, queen. Like I want to help. Everyone. And what I quickly realized is when I'm helping everyone, I'm helping no one. And so we, the two main shifts that we had to make in this business that have proven both times to be astronomically profitable.
Or when we focused on one avatar on both sides of the business. So when, and so I'll, I'll explain a little bit more. When Leah came to me at that very, pretty close to the beginning, we were trying to be the um, LinkedIn for moms. So you needed any sort of role. If she was a mom, she could come here and we would, we would match you with her.
If you wanted a marketer, we would have a marketer. If you wanted a, I don't know, text X, Y, and ZQRP, we had her, it didn't scale. It just didn't scale. It just, it did not make sense. And so that's when, that was probably about three years ago, we decided, okay, we are just focusing on operations and we are just focusing for operation focused on operations for small professional services businesses.
And we thought we had it. We thought that was like niched enough, like, okay, we are focus focused, focused. False turns out, um, trying to market to someone who runs a recruiting business is wildly different than trying to attract someone who has an accounting business.
And so we had to for the second time, and this was last fall, um, really focus on what type of CEOs is all of our outbound marketing going to be targeted to, to, so I'm a mom. Everyone in our business is a parent, and I know that every minute that I'm spending working on prowess, though I love it, I'm not spending with my two girls.
So I needed to feel very confident that every moment was focused on the right thing. And what I realized in the seven years of building prowess is understanding the, who is the hardest part. So in the past three months, we have decided to. Instead of, um, marketing towards all professional services businesses that we can help find their operations partner.
All of our outbound will be accounting firm owners, tax strategists, fractional CFOs. But one thing that I highly recommend if you're considering niching, is use that strategy as a magnet, not a filter. So all of our outbound will be towards that audience. If you are a recruiting firm, if you are a cybersecurity and you need someone to help you with ops, yes, we can still help you with ops, but we're not actively, yes, yes, we are not actively going after that.
That audience.
Man, I think, oh, like I don't wanna skip over something. 'cause sometimes, you know, people are like, wow, they're doing great. Overnight success. We just convinced ourselves of that. Even like, we know it's not true, but we convinced ourselves of it. Right. You started power seven years ago and last year, so six, six and a half years in is when you're like, oh. This is what we're meant to do. Like the light bulb moments don't always come overnight or like as easy as we want them to. Right.
at all. Not at all. And like, let me be really clear. You, you never really know you. Like we are testing for 365 days this accounting. Niche. We have some great early indicators including like clients and publications and all of that, that this could be a great direction for us. We don't know. I mean, we could crash and burn and I think, I think that's what is incredibly stress stressful, but also really fun about business.
Like you don't have those challenges in a, I don't know, when I was working at my corporate. Gig, like it was nothing like that. I was never testing this much. I was never, um, getting to understand people's problems at such a like primitive level to really be able to solve them and then be like, wow, I can now go solve this for this exact profile.
I didn't have the ability or rank to make those decisions, and now I do.
Yeah. It sounds though like there's a little bit of like a mad scientist in your Barbie ISS here that like you like to test and experiment, which
I do.
founders, like they come from a corporate life and just their personality in general also is maybe a little bit more rigid. Right? And so they don't appreciate the experimentation that happens in in a business as you scale. That sounds like that's one of your favorite parts of running a business.
Favorite part? Absolute favorite part. So we, my goal is to speak to, um, 50 different accounting firm owners, uh, so that I can put together this brief, this like market research brief. And I love it 'cause all it is and is. Understanding, getting a better understanding of this audience. But it's research like what is your problem?
What does success actually look for, you look like for you? If you had your, you know, ideal operations person, what, what technology do they know? What are they doing on the day-to-day? It's so fascinating. It's so fascinating. So you get all that data and then you sell that to them,
Like it's easy guys. This, here we go. I just made business
it's hard.
out. Like, like find the gold at the end of the rainbow guys. Okay. Um, okay, so let me also go back to you, you niched down on, on. Niched, niched, all the things on both sides of the business. You talked about how you didn't just start, you stopped attracting like Ev any and every mom on LinkedIn and focused on the ops part, but then also earlier you listed like six or seven different possible job titles that people could be looking for. And so I think this is an interesting way of how we also. Overcomplicate things because while someone might be trying to figure out their ICP and their avatar and all the things, and you're chat p teeing to shortcut your market research, instead of talking to the 50 companies, making assumptions about pain points.
And in those assumptions you're using how you speak about a problem instead of how that client speaks about a problem. So I don't wanna know like, how did we get to even calling them as as an ops partner? How did you even discover that that was jargon for, for your industry?
The issue is. I could call it whatever I want. And every single firm owner would call it something different. And that's something that I just had to realize and understand. Like, hey, this is part of this. I mean, it's like that in any department. Like talk about like marketing the difference.
Bet someone will say, Hey, I'm looking for a marketing coordinator, and that means something wildly different to the 10 people that you speak to. And so that's why we even went with like an ops partner versus like director of ops, because ops partner gives a, it feels like this person's really in it with you, which that is our goal.
But then also, um, it's not a role where you, you come in with all of these preconceived notions of what this person is going to do or what they can't do or what they can do. And again, candidly, we're still figuring it out. That may crash and burn with this audience. We may change it again, but it's all part of it.
Here we go.
Here we go.
That's how I approached my, my, one of my old podcasts, uh, of Construction Trailblazers. I was like, okay, we're just gonna see how it goes in the construction industry. At the time, I was going after a. A lot of like construction companies for process improvement. And then I was like, oh, wait, all the consultants that serve the construction industry that I'm talking to need virtual assistance.
And like, I love that side of my business. Like in 2024, I pretty much killed that off. And I was like, why? Like, I love my people on that side. Let's bring it back. And so it is, it's one big hodgepodge of experimentation, but when you can experiment with intentionality, that's when you bring the profit, right?
That's what I was just about to say. There's this fine line between experimenting and then, um, bright shiny object syndrome. And that's another thing as a like having that operations person with you to keep you accountable to, Hey Ashley, we said we were gonna test this for a full year. And by testing this, this is what it means.
These are the actions that you said, Ashley, you are going to go do, to give this the, the shot that it deserves to see if we're gonna prove this right or wrong. And so, I mean, half of Leah's role in all of our, our talent is keeping teams accountable.
Wow. I was gonna ask in that of like, in your mad scientist-y days, like how do you actually keep yourself in check and how, I guess we know the answer is ultimately Leah, but like, how has that relationship evolved when like, you know, oh actually I'm gonna push back. Like I know she's trying to hold me accountable, but I'm gonna push back, like as the visionary I, I see where I, my idea can go versus when you kind of relent and let her like keep you in check.
I think that's part of the chemistry, but also, um, it is why the communication compatibility is so important. I'm gonna put words in her mouth here, but she can probably tell when I'm just being lazy or bored and, and don't wanna go do something versus, oh wait, Ashley uncovered something that is against our hypothesis.
We do need to pivot.
I'm very obvious when I'm being one way or the other, and so I, I think she could sense that, and I think most CEOs are like that. And so you just need to, at the very beginning, make sure that the communication is clear. And one of the very first things that I highly recommend all of our CEOs and ops partner do is talk about how you like getting feedback, getting and receiving feedback.
So huge.
That's interesting 'cause I, you usually think about like how the CEO might give the ops partner feedback, but then there's also like the, the two-way communication there. So what types of feedback, is it really like accountable feedback or what are the other types of feedback that an ops partner might be responsible for with their CEO?
I think it's a lot of. β π It's accountability, but then also looking at the entire relationship. The ops partner will look at the entire relationship and be like, Hey, this part feels bumpy. I believe it's because you are saying X, Y, Z. I think you mean A, B, C. Can I help you make this communication a little bit clearer?
It's those type of things, not like, Hey, do this differently. It's more of being that mirror back to the CEO and saying, you hired me to keep you accountable. You hired me to manage you. You hired me to make sure that the business is profitable and I'm not serving you as the individual. I'm serving the business.
β π This is what is right for the business.
It's all the tough love. And it sounds like going back to like remembering who these people are, they're the moms. Like I am just thinking
Totally.
the emotional intelligence that they have learned from being a mom and that, you know, like not saying that the CEO is your baby, but there's a little bit of babysitting that happens in
Yes.
right.
That's the first thing that A CEO asks me. They're like, Ashley, I need someone to manage me. I need someone to tell me what to do. I, I make decisions all day. I just need someone to help me who understands all of the context, understands business, and can help me make those decisions.
Babysitting
Yes,
my brain.
yes.
I can have meta glasses and then just like have my. Operator, like embedded in my glasses with me just
Be fabulous.
things. That's all. Yeah, that's all I need.
Yes.
make it happen. Please patent the idea. But, um, okay. So let's, we talked a little bit about how you have aimed to simplify in
Mm-hmm.
Bringing on Leah, understanding your ICP, also understanding like the mom avatar as well that you're looking for. I want to also really look at, okay, the results that these people are making for your clients. Right? So it's, it's, yeah, it's a 94% satisfaction rate of like they're happy with who they're paired with, but then really what are the results of being paired with this really awesome person?
And on top of that, like. What are some of the common things that then those operators are discovering that your clients have overcomplicated? Like, let's, let's focus on those accounting firms a little bit.
You're such a good interviewer. Like I, I'm serious and I did not receive these questions beforehand, but this was exactly where I wanted to go with this conversation because I was like, oh, this is another thing I overcomplicated and then we simplified and then I could share this. Um, so. You're exactly right.
We did this. Of course, Leah was like, Hey, we need to simplify what the outcomes are for the CEOs that the ops partner will be delivering. And I was like, you're right, again. Um, so we've looked at the data of the hundreds of, uh, clients that we have worked with, CEOs that we have worked with thus far, and we looked at what are the top things they all needed.
And we realized that it was a four step method. It starts with an audit. So the ops partner comes in, audits the entire business to understand what is there, what is not there. They then look at all of their systems, processes, and. Wrap the tech and automation and AI around it. They then look at all of the project task and team management.
And then the final step is dashboard reporting so that the CEO has the right data and insights to make decisions moving forward. So as soon as we got really clear that these are the four things that our ops partner are going to deliver, then it made. Everything easier expectations on the CEO side, the ops partner knew exactly what to go tackle.
Um, the results are pretty clear. The sales conversations are clear. I mean, it's just simplifying. That has been great for our sales conversion. Exactly.
And if, if you as a listener are struggling with that, I would read, I think I, I've, I, I've just been bringing this book up a lot, but like, really dive into EOS and traction and they kind of break down figuring out your proven framework and method as part of like your marketing strategy. So if you're struggling with that and you're like, wow, I wanna be able to explain it as well as Ashley did for her own business.
Like, go read that book and start there now. One of you said a few buzzwords that I'm gonna pick on a little
Please.
one of those is the word expectations, which I think is where a lot of people, whether they're delegating to an ops partner or VA or you know, A CMO, whomever, like expectations is where things get muddy and they don't know how to communicate.
Clearly on that and that's where things like can then overcomplicate the relationship, the scope of work and all of those things. And so I'm, I'm curious for your guys' side, even with a proven framework, could, those founders could still struggle and overcomplicate their expectations.
So how do you navigate that?
Okay. So I'm gonna answer this in a couple different ways. So first and foremost, we absolutely had this problem and the expectation that was not clear was what from the CEO hat was. What is the ops person doing? Each week, like what are they getting done? That was the expectation that was not clear.
So what we started was after the audit, the ops partner gives a project plan. So then the next 90 days of all of the different work that they're doing, the systems, the tech, the project management, the dashboard, blah, blah blah, is um, broken out into two week sprints. So two week deliverables of what is going to be delivered when, and then we use.
Agile for all the agile project management nerds out there. And so that it can be flexible too, but that's a whole other rabbit hole that I'm gonna spare you. Um, so there's that one. And then also what we talk a lot about is for expectations is, the CEO talk about behaviors, not adjectives. And so. If you describe the behaviors you want someone to do, then you can start talking about the input that you want someone to do, and therefore they will probably get the results of in the output.
So this is easier to think about with sales, right? Behaviors. I want you to call 10 leads. Let's see then what happens in those 10 leads, right? The input, but talking about the behavior versus the the, I want one sale at the end of those 10 calls. So absolutely talk about the behaviors. And then the last thing is Brene Brown has a four C approach to any project where.
We highly recommend our ops partners ask the four Cs and I'm gonna butcher them. But it's like clarity and color and consequence and connective tissue, which that's my favorite. 'cause that's like all the different things that are connected to this.
If it doesn't happen. Um.
your mad scientist gets all like
Girls. Yes, of course it does. Um, so yeah, but it's just asking those questions and creating a framework for the CEO to react to, to get the information that you need. And then you're just constantly going to be talking about, Hey, this project, what went well?
What went poorly? Okay, let's solve for the what went poorly next time.
Yeah, but I, I love the focus on behaviors there. It reminds me of, I did this, like when I first got introduced to Lean, I. Was working at an oil and gas company and we were doing this like Lean Six Sigma training and they talked about the difference between KPIs and KBIs. So key performance indicators versus key behavior indicators.
And you know, this isn't gonna be relevant for every service based business. But you know, the example that was given to me, 'cause it was oil and gas, was like, well, A KPI would be like zero, zero OSHA recordings. Right. Well that doesn't drive the behavior you want, the behavior you want. I see you getting excited.
Yes,
Yes. Yes.
yes, yes, yes, yes. Keep going. I love it. No, no, no.
the va, the behavior you want there is people being more safe. Right. But the kp what the KPI that you've set would actually draw it is people not recording that an injury has happened. And so we've gotta like ignore the KPI for a second. And this goes to like your sales, right?
Of like what you want is more. Action happening on like the lead outreach or outbound stuff, not just like a sale being made. So think about your goals and like what's the actual actions and, and the behaviors that need to happen to achieve those goals. And like, let's communicate that. That's what I heard from, from your example.
Yes. It, it's what you're exactly right. It's what can that person control? What can they control? They cannot control the sale. They can't, as much as you would love them to. And again, we're using sales. I could come up with a different one for ops if you want, but like, they can't control that. They can control how many people they call.
They can control how many, um, LinkedIn people they connect with.
Yeah, well like you, if we, we wanna bring it into the ops world, then like, okay, they can't control if a client is gonna actually email back and schedule their check-in meeting or something, but they can control that they are staying on top of it and following up and reaching out and like looking at the deadlines of things right now, I know we're coming up on time, so I wanna hit to one of the other buzzword that I always love to pick and prod your brain about, because you talked about in step two of your framework, how after the audit, they then they're looking at processes and the tech stack and automation.
So then you said. A lovely little word if they wrap it in ai. And so that's another place where we overcomplicate and we get scared or like we overcommit and we don't know what we're doing sometimes as founders. So how are your lovely ops partners wrapping and putting a pretty little bow on how they're integrating AI with their clients?
Completely depends on the client because I am not one to cram AI down someone's throat if they don't want it or need it. Um, yes, yes. So first thing. You have to make sure that the systems are working, the processes are working manually. All that happens when you wrap technology around it or automation around it is you speed up whatever that process is.
So if the process is broken, you are going to speed up a bunch of broken inputs and it's not gonna work. Also people hear AI and get very scared. AI can be, Hey, I'm using Clickup, the project management tool, and they have some AI features in here that would really integrate well with my CRM go high level.
So I am going to use their I AI tools to save my team. Three hours a week. So it's not this like a mad scientist creating all these GPTs, though they can like it. It doesn't have to be that. It can really just be utilizing the AI features in the existing tools to make sure that you're getting the most out of your dollars and saving the most time.
I love when someone says something simple. I'm like, this is how we make business sexy. Simplify the stuff that feels abstract and over complicated, you know? And, and so I, I loved that point of like, why would you wanna scale brokenness? Like get your stuff together first. Then figure out, okay, like how can I optimize this?
But okay. Coming up on time. So our last question that I love to ask people is if you, you know, just wrapping up our conversation, we talked about so many different things.
So if there is someone that, there's a founder, they know their stuff is over complicated, they're, they might want an ops partner, they don't know, like, what is your first piece of advice to them of like how they can take a baby step towards simplification in their business?
A great question. Uh, I love a good time study. I love a good time study. And so what I mean by that, and I'm currently doing them now, which is probably why it's top of mind, is I take at least two weeks and I go through in every 15 minutes I document what I just did and.
a bit intense though.
Oh yeah, girl. But you would be, yeah.
Uh, you mad scientist. Gotta have the data. Um, you will be shocked at how much time you waste, how much time you, um, could delegate to someone else. How much time you are doing stuff you hate doing. And from there you have all of this data to be like, okay, I am going to simplify my life. What part of what I just did for the past two weeks didn't move the needle at all for me.
And I know, I mean, we could dive into what move the needle means, but and then look at all of that and decide, okay, what am I gonna delete? What am I gonna delegate? And where is my zone of genius and where is it in alignment?
Wow. Do you get Leah to ping you every 15 minutes to be like, did you write down
No, but I did get a,
babysitting
yeah. Oh, I got a slack message at, um, 7:00 AM on Monday morning saying, don't forget it's time study week. Yes, ma'am.
our Leah's of
Oh, love.
our brains together. Like if we didn't have the Leah's of the world, we'd all just be mushy applesauce brains. Like if we're being honest with ourselves.
Oh my gosh, you've said it perfectly. Applesauce brains.
Um, okay, Ashley, I have, I always enjoy our conversations and
too.
much for taking the time to break down the things and, and just chat it up with me today.
Yes. Oh, pleasure was all mine. This was awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.