Valerie Hayes is a fractional COO and EOS integrator, on a mission to help overburdened entrepreneurs, small business owners, and CEOs, establish their businesses as industry leaders without working every day of the year. Valerie worked for three Fortune 500 companies and then started her own business. In the process of running her own business, she kept meeting people who had great ideas and worked very hard, but they didn’t know how to run their businesses well, which was holding back their business.
She decided to take her skills as a business owner and help other people with actionable insights on how to balance their day-to-day operations with implementing ideas and grow their business, uncover the roadblocks, identify the root causes, and smooth out the friction points. Valerie will amplify the strengths of your business, diagnose problematic solutions, and break through the bottlenecks. Because, if you don’t integrate all aspects of the business into one cohesive, moving-forward entity, you’re not going to be successful.
A CMO is an important job, as chief marketing officer, having the responsibility for all of the marketing activities of the business. Identifying the strategy, identifying resources, what the overall goal is, how to move forward, and may or may not also have responsibilities for the sales organization as well. A lot of business owners just focus on sales and marketing, especially entrepreneurs and small business owners because they feel like their greatest opportunity for growth comes from increased sales and marketing.
Marketing is good, obviously, but the challenge is to make running your business your number one priority. Your sales may increase, and you might in fact reach your goal, but if your sales continue to grow without nurturing and developing the infrastructure necessary to support those sales, you’re going to implode, fall back and you won’t know what happened. You have to have the right people in the right jobs, and the right processes and procedures in place.
Other companies need a COO, but may not need a full-time COO because maybe they don’t want to pay that full-time salary. They can get the benefits of the experience and knowledge necessary to move their business forward, but not have the downside of the big executive salary. Adjust the need for processes and procedures based on the organization and the personality style. Growth comes with established processes and procedures.
When you have incredibly detailed processes and procedures, it can demotivate employees because they may have the impression that you don’t trust them to do the job. It doesn’t offer them opportunities to make any decisions about anything, functioning as robots. Rather train them during the process and even have them document it in a way that it can pass the stupid test, then you can test your theories about the process and adjust them along the way.
The hallmark of a great leader is hiring people to work within their zone of genius. Recognizing and understanding that, will move your business forward faster if you encourage them to spend 80 to 90% of their time in their zone of genius, this shows that you are thinking of the people in your company. Create an environment where everyone knows what they’re doing and functions as a team cohesively.
Make use of the EOS resources, which is a structured program with templates for meetings, standard operating procedures, job descriptions, goals, and strategic plans, already written and developed. The philosophy, the approach, and the things that you’re supposed to include in your documentation because of the EOS list may look like you’re teaching your organization processes and procedures, but what you’re really doing is teaching proactive leadership and communication so that everybody’s headed in the right direction.
In this episode:
[02:57] Vanessa explains the role of a CMO
- How CMOs are responsible for all of the marketing activities of the business
- Make nurturing and developing the infrastructure to run your business, your number-one priority
[05:19] A breakdown of the functions of a COO
- Businesses and organizations that are growing rapidly need the experience and background of a COO
- Get the benefits of the experience and knowledge to move your business forward
[07:46] Discussion of clients on opposite ends of the spectrum using processes and procedures
- Checking a box and demotivating your employees
- Having no communication and functioning in silos
[11:52] Finding equilibrium in a significantly documented process with a significantly trained person
- Testing your theories about the process to adjust the process
- Have members document the process to pass the stupid test
[14:42] Being the hallmark of a great leader
- Recognizing and encouraging people’s zone of genius
- Personally and professionally fulfilling virtual assistance and team members
[19:23] EOS looks like it’s about processes and procedures, but it’s really about leadership and communication
- The philosophy, the approach, and the things that you’re supposed to include
- Any problem in business can be traced to a breakdown in the process
Watch the Interview:
Learn more and reach out:
- LinkedIn: Valerie Hayes
- Website: https://valeriehayes.com/
