[00:00:27] Jay: Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner today. I'm lucky enough to be joined by Alyson Caffrey. She's the COO, CMO, CEO, everything O, of Operations Agency. that was a lot. That was a mouthful. Alyson. Hello. How are you?
[00:00:43] Alyson: Great. Jay. How are you?
[00:00:45] Jay: I'm great. Great. We're just talking it's fall time.
The weather's nice and crisp and it's, all sorts of fun stuff. So, we'll get into what Operations Agency is and who you serve and all that sort of stuff. where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?
[00:01:00] Alyson: You know, I grew up on the East coast. we, my husband and I both grew up in New Jersey and I was on the kind of South side, outside of Philadelphia, you know, close to, I think where you are from as well, kind of just chatting before we hit record.
and, my husband grew up kind of in the North Jersey area. And, you know, we always joked when we moved away, when we were first married, we lived in Colorado for a time. We lived in Nashville, Tennessee for a time. And we always joke that the Northeast hustle kind of gives you something else, right?
some kind of edge. you know, really standing out and, you know, you can walk down the street and see nine pizza parlors because that is true in his hometown, nine places to go and grab a slice of pizza, but everybody has their one because they really distinguish themselves as the best blank or, you know, Kind of cater to that specific, you know, need inside of that area.
So we always joke that Northeast hustle really bred something, you know, in us. And I don't come from an entrepreneurial family. I never really considered to be an entrepreneur. I actually kind of consider myself an accidental entrepreneur. When I left my nine to five as an operations manager, about six years ago, what ended up happening is within the first 30 days of leaving that organization, I was full with a book of business of people who were like, I have operations issues and I need you to solve them.
And so I just kind of leapt into it. I was actually considering going back to school and studying law. And so I was actually in an LSAT prep course when I sent my first invoice to my first customer.
[00:02:27] Jay: Are you glad that you did not do that?
[00:02:30] Alyson: You know, yes, I really am. I think that entrepreneurship teaches you a lot of things about you that you don't know.
And I think when you are in a position where you are the first and final stop, in this thing that you've created, you have to be the forward facing customer, you know, customer facing person, and you have to be, you know, the last defense behind the scenes at the same time. And I think it tells you a lot about what you're capable of.
It builds a confidence that I don't think any other experience can possibly do, besides maybe giving birth to children that builds a ton of confidence, but. You know, really, it's unique in its own way. And yes, I'm really grateful for taking the leap or as soft as it was, right? The leap of being an entrepreneur and just really taking that step out and believing in myself.
And I think over the years of growing Operations Agency, it's now six years old, if you can believe that. you know, just there have been so many micro commitments and micro leaps that I've had to make into new markets or launching new services or stepping out there and doing workshops and stepping on stage and delivering keynotes.
So it's been a wild experience and I think it's ever evolving. It's one of the most, incredible personal development journeys you can ever go on
[00:03:42] Jay: really is. Isn't it? It's yeah, it's not on purpose either. You don't go in thinking like, I'm going to grow as a person and you're like, I'm going to go.
Not work for someone else and just try this thing. And, you learn a lot about yourself and about the limits of your time and, you know, family and everything else. So, tell me, how do you balance your personal brand? You mentioned doing keynotes and doing a bunch of other stuff. How do you manage that versus.
Operations Agency brand, like, how do you differentiate the 2 or do you
[00:04:13] Alyson: a question? I do differentiate them and that is probably how do I put this? The most developing frontier that I currently have in kind of my suite of businesses, because I technically run 2 businesses and then I have a personal brand that kind of mends or mold them all together.
And, you know, I think my biggest thing, in kind of developing all of the things that I'm doing is really just figuring out my why. And I think over the years that has been developing, right? So you start out because you're like, Hey, I have this really great skill and I can offer it to people at a premium or I can get people on stock really fast.
And I can, you know, work with a lot of folks and whatever that specific, circumstance is for you, then all of a sudden you kind of need to pause and say, okay, what got me from there to here won't get me from here to over here where I want to be. And so a lot of that is developing, you know, what is the core reason behind a lot of the things that we're doing, right?
I like developing systems in people's businesses and people's lives. Bring them more time back to the things that matter, right? Like your family, your personal relationships, your hobbies, the things that actually fill up your cup and allow you to step into the best possible leadership position you can be in your organization, whether that's leading a team of 50 or leading a team of three, right?
So systems, I believe, do that for business owners and. That's one of the big whys behind what I do. And that's how I've been able to kind of, differentiate a little bit between the different business lines and the different things that I'm doing is because that why is centered right behind everything.
So if you find yourself with your hand in a lot of pots or iron in a lot of fires, proverbially, like whatever it is that you're working on, really center that why around what you're doing. And I personally believe building a personal brand is one of the best investments that you can make into yourself as an entrepreneur, whether you're running.
I mean, myself. business Operations Agency has been completely built to not rely on me entirely. And it's very much a team focused, team centered effort. my face is on some stuff, but it's really about the results that my team brings to our clients. And, the coolest thing about that is now being in a position to have the Allison Caffrey brand kind of live as the umbrella above a lot of the things that we're doing.
[00:06:19] Jay: How does someone go get a personal brand? Like, you know what I mean? Cause that's the question, right? Like some, somebody's maybe even people who own, I mean, I still work on it myself. how did you purposefully develop a personal brand? Like, how did you, and when did that happen?
[00:06:36] Alyson: Yeah, it's interesting. It was kind of on accident. So, I had my business for about three years when I became a mom. So I had my son, Frank, in August of 2020, Operations Agency was about to turn three years old and with the resources, the revenue, all the things that we had inside of the business, I really couldn't afford a team to really step in and take over all the things that I was doing.
And so it was a really interestingly confronting experience because I was sitting in the hospital with my newborn son. My husband snaps this photo of me and him in kind of the hospital bed, and then he had fallen asleep, and the next frame that he didn't take the photo of was me setting him down on the side of the hospital bed to sleep in the bassinet while I jumped on my phone to answer emails and Slack threads.
And the challenge there, especially in the very beginning was, well, I'm the systems girl, right? I should have this figured out. And it was really confronting for me. And I realized, you know, kind of after several self talk of, Oh, look how, you know, look how dedicated you are to your business. And I'm wearing this like the badge of honor.
And then the back of my mind, I'm like, no, you idiot. Like this is the worst. You shouldn't start this relationship off this way. And that was kind of my big bonk on the head to create something with my time that was a little bit more sustainable. In the beginning of the business, I was a little bit of the sweaty generalist of operations, like I like to say.
And through the process of two maternity leaves in two years with my two boys, I really crystallized this curriculum. for business owners called master maternity leave. It's four moms who are expecting and running their own business with a small team. And they're like, how on earth am I going to be able to do this?
I can't afford to lose 30 percent of my staff. And I take on the brunt of the work. Right. So After creating that curriculum and really that kind of splinter offer in systems, right, with kind of a really new, interesting avatar, I realized I needed that umbrella, right? I needed, because people would get confused, right, in the marketplace.
I would be like, Hey, listen, I do maternity leave planning, but I also do systems development and I also do sabbatical planning, right? Those things all kind of needed a home under one thing, which I've termed Alyson Caffrey systems for life, right? Like that is, Life as a business owner, right? You can't really detangle you from the business, right?
your personal development is directly correlated with all the success that you see in business. And so I consider that creating systems in business and in life, right? They both kind of, you know, share the same weight in terms of like getting the founder of the time back and all of that stuff.
So that was when I knew I needed a personal brand. So it didn't come until. Way later. Like I'm pretty sure I launched this year with our personal brand over the summer. So it's only just fresh for a few months. So you can always launch a personal brand. It doesn't need to always be there. It doesn't need to be super well thought out and intentional.
I was just like, Nope, this is what I believe in. This is my why I did some, you know, kind of inner work on that. And, everything's kind of nested really nicely underneath.
[00:09:32] Jay: No, I like that. and it's a great point too. I think, it's easy to talk yourself out of, like, I know a lot of really great agency on our business owners that don't want to have a personal brand.
They don't want, and they don't quite, I think, appreciate that gives you and what that kind of allows you to do as a business owner, like having that and having a business. so it's great. It sounds like you figured that out of the umbrella,kind of tying those things together. That's great. so who, you mentioned you had a book of business.
that came with you, who was your first customer and how did that, how did you actually make, you know, the sale happen?
[00:10:07] Alyson: Yeah, totally. So, my very first customer was a colleague of mine who I had known and worked with for several years and my nine to five, just for years prior, he went out on his own, and left the organization shortly before I did probably about six or eight months before I did and built an agency specifically focused on Facebook advertising.
It was just him and two other team members at the time. At the time one built websites, the other ran the traffic and he hired me in as kind of a fractional COO to make sure that all of our systems were dialed in and I was account managing and all of that stuff. And so he reached out to me, he just called me and he was like, I know that your contract is coming to an end with this company and I'm going to pay you 40 an hour.
to come in and run my operations. And at the time I was like, well, great. I was on salary at this company. I was like, this is really great. I can just work a few hours here and there while I'm doing my LSAT courses. And I remember, that being the kind of indicator that maybe I was gonna maybe go out on my own a little bit.
So I said, yes, and I sent him a proposal. I sent, I prepared an invoice. And then I, for whatever reason, thought I needed a website like overnight, and I whipped together a WordPress website in like a couple of hours and I was just, you know, this is my new professionalism. So I actually got my first two customers back to back.
The first invoice was paid by my friend Cody, and both were actually paid on my birthday, just a few short weeks after I had decided to kind of start to do some freelancing on the side. So that was really exciting.
[00:11:45] Jay: And did you have, I mean, any real, you know, plan and I plan, but did you think this was a possibility?
Like, it's such a, it makes me wonder what makes people make the right choice, which you made, which is like, yes, dive in and like, just try it versus like, I know people who have gotten those offers and like, ah, I've got a job. Like, I'm just going to stay here. Like, what made you different?
What do you think kind of let you take that leap of faith?
[00:12:13] Alyson: Yeah, the timing was fairly divine. I think my husband was in the military at the time and I think the transitional move, we were moving from Colorado to Nashville and I remember giving my notice at the company I was working for and he asked me for a 90 day transition period because I was operations manager.
Everything flowed through me. I was a really solid linchpin in the work. And It was confronting for him, I think, to really admit like, Hey, you know, I can't see you go out of this organization in the two week timeframe. I really need you to help us kind of systematize things and make sure that the new team is trained and your replacement is trained and all of that.
And of course I abided, right? I mean, you don't want to leave anybody in the lurch. So I did the 90 day transition period. So I think coupled with the physical moving, right? Like I literally was in a completely different area. I had this proverbial clean slate. I was leaving an organization with a ton of notice, right?
I had 90 days to consider how I'm applying my skill set in this business. So it was actually kind of perfect, breeding ground for me to practice taking on these companies and like reorganizing their entire operation structure. Right? So when I left that company, everyone was like, Oh my goodness, wait, you're not working there anymore.
And. Everyone was asking me what is next? What is next? What is next? And naturally those offers came out. They said, well, can you help me do what you were doing over there? And so it really became the, I said yes to everything in the beginning, which was excellent, right? It was a huge opportunity for me. And then it kind of started to feel a little bit overwhelming because I think a lot of freelancers can kind of relate to this is you start to do some freelance work and then all of a sudden you're full with a book of business and you're like, oh my goodness, every single project.
Is different because I just said yes. And so now I'm trading my time for money and that became, you know, a whole new level, you know, new level, new devil, as they say, that I needed to kind of figure out, okay, what is our core offer and who do we help and what is the timeline like for that? So I had no idea about any of that.
And I do firmly believe that the map appears when the car is in motion, right? Like you have to kind of move in the direction that you think is right. And only in that. Are you able to actually tell like where you're even going? yeah, so that was me with no plan.
[00:14:32] Jay: I love new level, new devil. I haven't heard that before.
So that may be my new favorite phrase. how is, how has it changed from then when you started to figure it out till today? Like how has Your service offering matured. Like, what did you, who did you think your customer was then versus who do you think your customer is now?
[00:14:50] Alyson: Yeah. Back then I worked with a lot of coaches and folks who had personal brands and it was a lot of coaches with like a service add on or a service component to the business.
And it was really great. Do not get me wrong. I really love working with folks, coaches specifically on like creating some structure cause it really can make or break the success of a really great mastermind or a really great program. But what I realized as I was working with folks is I loved the services side of things because I loved being able to tie clear, tangible results internally with the team, right?
Your team is really just craving that specifically and as I dug deeper into the work that we were doing over about a four year time frame, we've had our core, you know, a service for about two years. And what we used to do is we used to go in, it was kind of like extreme makeover home addition when they would have this really crummy home and then they would tell us, Hey, Alyson, our operations are a mess.
And I would say, great, I'm going to get it to this better state in a 90 day period. So I literally just rinsed and repeat the same process that I did at my nine to five. And that worked out for a while. And transparently, I still do take on one projects in that capacity. I'm completely full until March and we have a wait list for something.
something like that. And it's amazing. But at the end of the day, I don't want to be in a position where I can't help people where they're at now. So what we did was we decided as a team, what is the thing that brings our clients the most results? And for us, it was documenting their SOPs, right? It was getting all of the company knowledge down onto paper, centralized for the team.
That way they understood where were the checkouts. list. Where were their resources? Where are the procedures? When a new team member on boards, they can use that information to help supplement any training effort. And that was what was getting folks to scale really frictionlessly. We also have prepped several businesses for sale over the years.
So someone will come and tap me on the shoulder and say, Hey, listen, we're looking to exit. Can you just prep, you know, all of the standard operating procedures? So that was clearly a need. And let's just totally face it. Nobody wants to write those, but he wants to sit down and like actually put together standard operating procedures that are worth looking at and actually effective.
So we've even partnered with folks who have really thriving ops departments. And they're in a position where they just don't want to write the processes, right? They just don't have the time or the bandwidth. And so they outsource it to somebody like us, who really feels like a partner. We can strategically advise as well in the right direction.
And so that was really where we landed, you know, the last Two years we've been running this program and it's incredible. I mean, it really is. I think at a baseline, the thing that would have probably had us accelerate a little bit faster in the beginning is me realizing that I needed to define one thing and not 10 things that I could help with.
Right.
[00:17:44] Jay: Yep, no, that answers another of my questions. I always like to ask, you know, if you had to start again tomorrow, what would you do? But it sounds like maybe that was it. so who is your target persona today? Who are you going after? Who's a great fit for Operations Agency?
[00:18:00] Alyson: yeah, we work a lot with digital marketing agencies.
We also work a lot with creative agencies. measuring the process around creativity is somewhat slippery, right? for a creative or for an agency. And so we focus on highly technical processes as well. Things that, you know, folks do all the time, right? Digital marketing, there's a ton of different of agencies out there and there's kind of one way to set up a Facebook ad campaign, but there's a way to do it in a specific process that an agency has that has helped them scale, you know, their clients add the budget to millions of dollars or whatever.
Right. So I really focus on unearthing proprietary process inside of digital agencies and then helping them nest their standard operating procedures to train their team underneath.
[00:18:43] Jay: Wow. So how are you, I mean, you said you're booked out until whenever, how are you continuing to prospect and lead generate? Do you do advertising? Do you, is it all referral based? Like what is the main method for bringing in business?
[00:18:58] Alyson: Yeah, we have an excellent referral stream, by the way. Our clients love us and they send us so many folks. So for a really long time, we operated that way. And it wasn't until the beginning of the year, this year, when I was like, Hey, listen, we have really great growth goals for 2023.
Let's start to consider how it might look to invest more formally into marketing. And what we actually did was I invested first and foremost in my partner relationships. So over the years, I have done so many workshops and so many free trainings to other agency communities, software as a service communities.
And I remember thinking to myself, I was like, actually, those went pretty well, and I really enjoyed doing them. What if we kind of put a ring on it? What would it look like to partner with somebody long term and have them send us clients in a referral capacity? Right? So I basically just doubled down on that referral partner relationship, you know, either from our clients or from our partners.
And so what we would do is we would invest in partnering and sponsoring, different, you know, community events and things like that. We've done that pretty significantly this year and it's helped us 3X our revenue. I'm really happy with the results that it's given us. And, you know, we're not going to be investing in a ton of things.
paid advertising like on Facebook or anything like that. I have a lot of organic content, which I love. I do lots of shows like this one and I love teaching workshops and you know, doing some guest blogs and some other communities. so earned media has been a really fantastic source for us. And I got some advice from an SEO client of mine years ago.
He was like, only invest in pay per click or. Paid Google traffic. If you have a really strong organic presence, he said, it'll make your dollar go so much farther. And so he said, take a year interview everywhere and make sure that you're adding as much value as possible and turning that information into more content.
I have a fun YouTube channel called 3 Minute Ops Tips that we're going to plan to run some traffic behind in 2024. So 2023 has been a really fun building year for marketing because transparently that's never been a directed. Function of Operations Agency. We've been able to eat from the folks who have really joined us and gotten amazing results with us.
so yeah, marketing's going to look a little bit different next year, but I'm kind of excited. I've been told that I'm not like a normal operations person. I'm like a little bit creative. So it's funny when folks come into the business, they're like, Oh, I thought you'd be kind of dry, operational.
[00:21:25] Jay: Thank you very much. I appreciate your vote of confidence.So, I mean, that's great. I love the organic. I love, I agree. I think, I feel like it's the pay paid. Advertising is tough, when you're a small business, right? Just, it just is like, it's, you're not going to get the keywords you want. And if it's not local, then it's like a whole thing.
So it's,it's a tough game to play. but no, I love all those ideas. all right. One more question for you. If in non business related, I always have to stipulate non business related. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:22:00] Alyson: Hmm. It's an interesting non business related?
[00:22:05] Jay: Yeah, you can't have the best business in the world or, you know, that would be everybody's answer. It was their answer for a while until I banned that response.
[00:22:14] Alyson: Yeah, I think I would want to hike. The Camino in South America and by failing, it would just right be I would for sure finish and whatever I wouldn't die.
I wouldn't die
[00:22:30] Jay: like, yeah, anything.
[00:22:31] Alyson: Yeah, I would for sure do that. I would need access to some resources and some time and all of that stuff. But. Going to South America and doing like a hiking trip, whether that's even with my family, that would be excellent. Our boys, I feel like in a future state of their ages and whatnot would be like super down to go and do like a couple month long trip.
something like that. Yeah. That's what I would want to do.
[00:22:56] Jay: All right. that's a good one. I do like that. I love to hike and, I've never been South America, so I would love that. all right. If you want to find more about you, Alyson, how do they reach out? What's the best way?
[00:23:06] Alyson: Yeah, Operations Agency, dot com is my website.
there's a ton of resources on there for small businesses who are trying to professionalize their operations. if you've got a question specifically about what you're working on, you can always send me a DM at Operations Agency on Instagram. I'm super active and it's actually me. It's not a bot. I love chatting with folks.
[00:23:27] Jay: That's a very novel, you know, these days, talking to a real human being. well, you're awesome, Alyson. really just a cool story. and just laser guided focus. And, you know, I think we could all use a little more of that, especially existing business owners. Like I need to find that more every day.
So, very inspirational, a lot of things to look up to keep doing awesome. And, we'll catch up again soon. All right.
[00:23:49] Alyson: Appreciate it. Jay.