EP 215 Stop Struggling Alone: Join Us to Elevate Your Operations Skills

Are you ready to dive deep into the strategies and mindset to help you optimize your business, prioritize your family and stay true to your vision? Get ready to transform your life and business one episode at a time. This is the Align your True north podcast and I'm your host, Brooke Elder.

Do you want to know what really separates operations directors, operations professionals that are thriving, from those who are staying stuck? It's not another certification, it's not knowing another tech stack. It's nothing like that. When I talked with our past clients, really 92% of them said that the thing that made the biggest difference was having a community. And not just any community, a community that speaks their language.

I don't know if you have ever worked with a client and you're trying to explain to them something and they're just not getting it and sometimes you feel like you're not speaking that same language. There's like a business owner type language and then there is an operator type language. And sometimes those things just don't mesh. I remember working with a client once and when I was working with them, I, they had given me some things to like, some problems to solve.

So I was working through these problems and as I was going through things I was, there's like two ways that I could do it and I'm like, ah, I just wish that there was someone that I could talk, talk to and kind of brainstorm this and talk through the different solutions to see which one would be the best. But there was no one in the, the whole company that really was like a systems person and would really even understand what it is that I was even talking about.

And I really wish that I had some sort of community where I could talk with people who understood systems, who understood processes and that could help me start thinking through different ways of doing this.

That was one of the biggest reasons that led me to starting True north and also starting the yacht club and the OPS network is I wanted to have a place where I could create this community for operations professionals just like you. So having a community is really, really important.

There is this isolation trap that sometimes we get into as operators and when you are really thinking with systems and processes and everything like that, or if you are maybe even just like a freelancer and you're trying to get things done. I remember when I very first started my web design business, there were things that I would get stuck on and I had no one else to ask. Like I had to just figure it out. And back then, like YouTube really wasn't around and Google would kind of help sometimes.

And it was really, really difficult because it was just like trial and error trying to fix things. And when you get stuck in that place, it makes it so it takes way, way longer to solve a problem. And so if it's taking you longer to solve a problem, it's going to be a lot harder to make the kind of money that you want because things are taking you so much time.

When you have a community that you can come in, you can ask questions, you can say, hey, this is the problem that I solve and or this is the problem that I'm having. Do you have a solution for that? When you start doing that and you have this community to talk to, then you can get answers much, much faster. And you have other people's input on that. So now what you have not just your own input, you have what we call the mind hive.

So you have all of these other professionals that they may have their strengths in something especially. We were talking about shrinks yesterday and I've loved seeing everybod strengths because you can start seeing like, oh, this person's really good at this. They could help me with that and oh, I'm really good at this, and this is how I could help and serve this person.

And when you create a community that is like that, that's serving all these, these different areas in someone's business or helping you and your business, that that really makes it so you can earn more money because you have this support system behind you.

So it really is the, there's this value behind community. Another thing that community helps you with is it helps you to start seeing outside of the box. I know in different, like masterminds and things like that that I have been in, that when you get around people who are maybe a little further ahead of you in a community or maybe they, they have just done a little bit more than you have, you can really learn from them, especially on like coaching calls and stuff.

So if you have never done any sort of coaching program, anything like that, one of the things that is most beneficial is being able to learn from others, learn from their experiences. And you can start gleaning some of those things so now you don't have to go through it. So it, it will start to speed up the progress of your business exponentially. And I always love to be around people that they challenge me and they also bring me to a whole new level.

You know, you've heard like you are the average of the five people that you hang out with. And so if you Think about professionally, who are five people that you are learning from and that are helping you along in your business. And if you don't have five people, that's where you really do need a community. Because that community is going to help you to start thinking higher level, start solving higher level problems.

And when we start looking at like, let's just look at problems that we solve and the amount of money that we make. So if you are solving low level problems, like you know, I'm serving someone's email, that's a low level problem. If that's the problem that you're solving, then that means that the pay for that is also low when you start solving higher level problems. So for example, I had a company, company hire me to help them figure out how to bring in $1 million in revenue in a year.

That was a high level problem. So because it was a high level problem that I could solve for them, which we did it in nine months by the way. But if it's a high level problem, it's a higher level in pay. And so if you're looking at, you're making $10 an hour or $15 an hour, or maybe it's even like 20, $30 an hour and you want to be able to double your rates, you, the whole thing of being able to do that is you just need to be able to solve higher level problems.

And we've talked a lot about solutions and how when we're looking at problems that business owners have, that we talk about the problem and the solution and the outcome that all of those things all play into this. Because if we're, like I said, if we're solving those lower level problems we need to look at how can we now solve higher level problems? Because that's going to bring higher level pay.

So how do you learn how to solve higher level problems? Well, you get around people who are solving higher level problems. When you get into those rooms, even if it's virtually you get into those rooms, you start listening to those kind of people, your brain is going to start having things click. You're going to start seeing, seeing things like, oh, I didn't even think about that.

And I've seen that just by you attending and listening to these trainings, when you're listening to these trainings and you're starting to like piece things together. I've seen people reach out to me and comment and say things like, I never even thought about this. And now I can start seeing how I can step into this new level in my business.

And it's all because you're hanging out, you're getting information from people who are ahead of you and they are helping you to be able to step it up in your business. And that's what community is all about. That's exactly what we're going to be going through when we talk about our training that we have tomorrow as well. So when we go through the 90 day blueprint, you are going to be in a room, a zoom room of a bunch of people. They're going to be people that maybe you can help and rise.

And they're also going to be people that are going to help you rise. And that's the magic of getting together in a room like that. Even if it is virtually a zoom room, it doesn't have to be like an in person room.

And so that was a big part of why I created the Optimist Network. Because yes, it is great that we have these built in solutions for you. It is great that we have these projects where you can start learning and really up leveling your skills. All those things are important. But getting inside a community where you can help each other all rise. There's the saying that the rising tide raises all ships.

That's exactly what we're we're creating inside the OPS network is we want to create this community where we all are rising together and we're elevating the whole operations profession.

So that's really the mission of the OPS Network. Now if you have not taken us up on our awesome deal that we have going on right now, there is still time. You can go to the optimized network.com 2025 and you can get an annual membership for just 6.97 our normal price. If you just go to the optimized network.com you can go and check it and make sure that I'm not lying or anything like that. The the ant or the monthly price is 147.

So you can pay $150 a month if you want or you can say I should figure out what the the savings is on it. You can save a lot of money by doing the annual for 697. That will give you an entire year of the community access to all of the projects, all of the solutions and really just one of those solutions you can then sell to one of your clients, implement into your client's business. You could charge them 697 for it and it will pay for your entire year of being inside the OPS Network.