If you’re an operations pro hustling 50 hours a week and still barely scraping by, boy, do we have some juicy insights for you! Today, we’re diving into the big ol’ world of operations and revealing how you can transform your game from trading time for pennies to raking in the big bucks—think $5,000 to $15,000 a month! You see, the secret sauce isn’t just hard work; it’s all about how you position yourself and the value you bring to the table. We’re talking about ditching that hourly grind and instead showcasing your strategic thinking skills that business owners are absolutely craving. Stick around, because I’m spilling the beans on how to fix those pesky mistakes that keep you from cashing in and stepping into your true worth—no more staying broke on the hamster wheel of hourly rates!
Ever felt like you’re stuck in a hamster wheel of working 50 hours a week, yet your bank account is not reflecting your hustle? I hear ya! It’s a real drag when you see fellow operations pros cashing in big bucks while you’re just scraping by. But don’t throw in the towel just yet! We’re diving into the nitty-gritty of how to flip that script. By the time we wrap things up, you’ll be armed with all the juicy tips to transform your operations game from mundane to magnificent!
First up, let’s chat about the classic blunder: trading your time for money. It’s like trying to fill a bathtub with the drain open – it’s just not gonna work out! Instead of getting paid for every hour you clock in, it’s high time you start charging for the value you bring to the table. Think about it! When you position yourself as a strategic thinker, the cash flow starts to pour in like a fountain of gold! I mean, who wouldn’t want to pay for brainpower over just manual labor, right? And trust me, it’s not just about doing tasks but about creating transformations that keep your clients coming back for more.
Now, let’s not forget about the importance of language. Words have power, my friend! Swap out boring phrases like ‘I can update your CRM’ for something that makes business owners perk up like a kid in a candy store. How about ‘I can optimize your sales process to increase conversions by 20%’? Now that’s what I call painting a picture with your words! So, if you’re ready to ditch the low-paying gigs and become a strategic partner in the operations world, stick around because we’ve got loads of tips coming your way. Stay tuned and let’s make that bank account as happy as we are!
Takeaways:
- Many operations professionals are stuck trading time for money, which keeps them broke.
- The key to success is positioning yourself as a strategic thinker instead of just a doer.
- Business owners crave strategic insights, and they’ll pay more for your brainpower than your hands.
- Using outcome-based language when discussing services can drastically increase your perceived value.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
If you're working 50 hours a week as an operations professional and you're still not being able to make ends meet and you're seeing all these other people in operations being able to charge 5, 10, $15,000 a month and you're not really sure why and how it is that you can get there, well, by the end of this video, you're going to see exactly how you can do that too.
Speaker A:Maybe some of the mistakes that you are making and how to fix it.
Speaker A:My name is Brooke Elder and I'm the founder of True North.
Speaker A:We help operations professionals up level their business to go from doing to strategic thinking.
Speaker A:And I'm so excited that you are here.
Speaker A:Really the brutal truth of what I see so many operations professionals struggle with is that they are trading time for money instead of charging for the things that they actually provide that end transformation.
Speaker A:They are just paying for their getting paid for their time.
Speaker A:And this is the biggest mistake that I see that especially when you're first getting started, that you don't really understand what the end goal is.
Speaker A:So we are going to walk through some steps of how to fix that in this video today.
Speaker A:And you want to make sure to stay to the end because I'm going to show you how you can actually fix these things and change them real quick in your business so that way you're not going to stay broke.
Speaker A:There are real operations professionals out there that are charging 25, maybe $35 an hour.
Speaker A:And then there's those operation professionals out there that are charging 5 to $10,000 per month for pretty much doing the same thing.
Speaker A:So what's the difference between the two?
Speaker A:It really is in the way that you position yourself.
Speaker A:I remember I learned this a long time ago when I very first got started in the operations field and I started building websites and I was doing websites, I didn't really know what I was doing when I first got started.
Speaker A:And so I was just charging per hour because I didn't know how long it was going to take me.
Speaker A:And I thought at first I threw out it was going to be like $500 to do a website.
Speaker A:And then I saw how many hours really went into working with this client and I was like, this is not worth it.
Speaker A:So so I went to charging hourly because then I was at least getting paid a decent amount per hour.
Speaker A:But when I started charging hourly, I realized that I only have so many hours that I can work and I am going to cap myself out.
Speaker A:So that's when I started looking at how can I change the way that I position not only what I offer, but also change my pricing in doing so, making the switch made all the difference for me.
Speaker A:And those that don't make this switch are the ones that stay broke.
Speaker A:There are really three reasons why operations professionals stay broke.
Speaker A:The first is that you're selling your hands, not your brain.
Speaker A:This is where you're trading time for money, you're doing tasks and you're getting paid for them.
Speaker A:This is not that high level strategic thinking that business owners actually now are craving.
Speaker A:Since:Speaker A:We've been seeing this over the last five years and it's really been a big game changer.
Speaker A:But what now business owners are realizing is that they need more than just someone to just do.
Speaker A:They need some help with strategic thinking.
Speaker A:And that's really where you can come in.
Speaker A:The great news is that business owners are going to pay more for your thinking and they pay less for the doing.
Speaker A:Which I know at first kind of sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but I have seen this time and time again.
Speaker A:The more strategic that you get, the more higher level and using your brain that you get in your business and doing less of just the doing, you actually are going to be able to be paid more for the services that you have to offer.
Speaker A:The second mistake that I see operations professionals make is that they don't understand their real value.
Speaker A:Yes, you can get a lot of things done.
Speaker A:You can get things done in a quick amount of time.
Speaker A:And I know that rush that it brings when you're like, oh, I did everything on my to do list, but, but you're not really helping the business owner showcase what value you are actually bringing to the table.
Speaker A:One of the biggest things that operations professionals bring to the table is that they can see gaps that business owners and entrepreneurs can't see because they are way too close to the business and they're way too close to really their baby that they built.
Speaker A:Where you can come in from an outsider's perspective and you're able to see all, all of the holes and all of the gaps of what can really make their business great.
Speaker A:And for those of you have worked with a lot of clients, I'm sure that you've experienced this, that you come into a business and you can just see, oh, if we change this process or if we do this the different way, it's actually going to make the business run better and smoothly.
Speaker A:This is you using your strategic thinking and this is what business owners really are looking for.
Speaker A:They want to have a business that is streamlined.
Speaker A:They want to have a business that someday could run without them.
Speaker A:And you know how to come in and build that.
Speaker A:But if you are just charging per hour, then you're not actually showing the value that you could be bringing.
Speaker A:When you come at a problem and you say, oh yeah, I can do that, it'll take me a few hours and you just charge for that, the business owner's like, hey, great, that's awesome.
Speaker A:But if you come at a problem and you say this is what the solution can bring and you really future pace it of a year from now, this is what your business is going to look like because this problem has been fixed.
Speaker A:That is really where the true value lies and that is worth way more to the entrepreneur or the business owner than it is to just pay you for the five hours of work that it's going to take to do.
Speaker A:Third mistake that I see operations professionals make is that they're using the wrong language.
Speaker A:Instead of saying I can update your CRM and you could say something like I can optimize your sales process and your sales pipeline to increase conversions by 20%.
Speaker A:That's much more specific and it's much more outcome based.
Speaker A:And it's something that's going to paint that picture again for your entrepreneurs that they're going to be like, ooh, I can see exactly what it is that you're going to do for me.
Speaker A:And they're going to pay more for that because they can see what the result is versus I'll buy a 20 hour package and you can just update my CRM, can you see the difference of what your language makes?
Speaker A:So when you're looking at the way that you are talking about your offers, if you are talking on a discovery call or you're doing posts on social media, I want you to start paying attention to are you using language of I just update CRMs or are you really painting the picture of the outcome that you can create for the people you're working with?
Speaker A:As you're working on changing your language and starting to up level to become more of that strategic thinker and more of a leader in operations versus just a doer?
Speaker A:There are three things that you can start implementing right now that is going to start fixing this problem for you.
Speaker A:The very first is to start thinking like a strategic partner.
Speaker A:And this is all in the different kinds of questions that you ask.
Speaker A:So when you're working with a Business owner.
Speaker A:Instead of saying, what is it that needs to be done, you, you ask what are the biggest challenges that you're facing right now?
Speaker A:You want to start thinking like a detective and you start creating a plan of how to solve those problems and how to fill in those gaps.
Speaker A:You want to position yourself as a, as an advisor and not just an executor.
Speaker A:The second thing that you can do is you can learn how to conduct strategic business plans and create a strategic business assessment for businesses.
Speaker A:This is the exact way that I went from charging $25 an hour to making $25,000 a month.
Speaker A:I would charge $5,000 for a strategic business plan and it would walk through exactly all the different pieces that a business needs and where all the gaps are of what they are going through right now.
Speaker A:So we talk through all the different obstacles that they have, we talk through the things that they are wanting to achieve and we create a plan of how we're actually going to ach.
Speaker A:And I promise I will go in more in depth into a strategic business plan in a different video.
Speaker A:But for today, just know that offering some sort of way that you can help strategically in a business is really going to be game changer.
Speaker A:And that's a way that you can increase the income that you're making right now by offering something like that.
Speaker A:The third thing you can do is master the tools that are really going to make you indispensable.
Speaker A:That does not mean that you have to know every single tool, but I would highly suggest picking maybe the top five that you really, really love and learn how to do those really, really well.
Speaker A:I find that a lot of business owners are looking for people who have knowledge of their tech stack and that really, if you know one CRM and you know it really, really well, it's pretty easy to take that knowledge and transfer into a different CRM.
Speaker A:But you have to know one really, really well to be able to transfer that knowledge to the next.
Speaker A:So pick some of these tools that you are going to get really, really good at and then it's going to be a slam dunk for business owners that are using that tool.
Speaker A:But if they're using something that is similar, you'll be able to take that knowledge and transfer it to another tool.
Speaker A:And we're going to be going through a lot of different tools and how you can start implementing those into your business, start using them for you.
Speaker A:Because if you know how to use it for yourself and your business, it is way easier to go and use that tool for someone else's.
Speaker A:Business.
Speaker A:So in future videos we are going to be going through things like go high level, Click up other CRMs, how to transfer some of this knowledge, especially with all the advancements in AI, how you can start using AI and be more of this AI generalist of I know how to implement AI into different systems into your business and that's really the thing that business owners are looking for.
Speaker A:So if you are ready to stop being undervalued and starting to be seen as a strategic asset in someone's business, make sure that you click subscribe because that's all the things that we are going to be talking about and helping you through all of our content here on this channel.
Speaker A:If you want to further the conversation and you want to be a part of our community, we do have a free community that you could join us@theopsyachtclub.com the link is going to be in the description.
Speaker A:We would love to have you as one of our members.
Speaker A:We have a lot of templates and trainings and more than just what we can do on this channel, they're inside that community.
Speaker A:We would love to have you be a part of that and check out some other videos that we have that can help you.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker A:If you're looking to change the way that you talk about things or the way that you think about your business, there are tons of other videos that can help you with that.
Speaker A:Keep thinking strategically and we'll see you in the next video.