Jun 28, 2021
How to Create the Optimal Business Infrastructure for Growth and Success with Kristen McAlister
Are you a fast-growing company that needs an executive bridge till you can afford to hire a full-time position? Will you have to fill a gap while someone is on medical or maternity leave? Maybe you have a project that needs special attention and implementation? You are in luck, look to an interim or fractional executive to fill the gap.
About Kristen
Kristen McAlister is co-owner of Cerius Executives. Kristen has spent most of her career helping companies establish and improve their infrastructure for high growth. She has grown companies and created optimal infrastructure from both an operational and client management perspective. Kristen has spent the last ten years teaching companies how to leverage executives for transitional situations such as high growth and turnarounds. She is a national speaker and is published on topics ranging from operations and productivity to talent management and the contingent workforce. Kristen is a mother, Ironman, and Marine wife.
Here is a quiz that will help a CEO identify which area is stalling them right now – Strategy, Planning, Execution
Quiz – Is Your Company Set up for Success
Kristen is co-author of two books:
The New Executive Search: How Smart Companies are Using Interim Executives
How I Fired My Boss and Made More Money
www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com
Full Transcript Below
How to Create the Optimal Business Infrastructure for Growth and Success with Kristen McAlister
00:00:01
Roy
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Business of Business
Podcast. This is your host Roy. Of course we are the podcasts that
we bring you a wide variety of guests that can talk about a lot of
diverse topics sometimes because we don't know what we don't know.
The other is sometimes that we do know where we're lacking. We're
just looking for some help. We try to bring you a lot of
professionals and experts. And, we're fortunate enough today to
have another expert with us, Kristen McAlister. She is the co-owner
of Cerius Executives. She has spent most of her career helping
companies establish and improve their infrastructure for high
growth. She has grown companies and created optimal infrastructure
from both an operational and client management perspective. Kristen
has spent the last 10 years teaching companies how to leverage
executives for transition situations, such as high growth and
turnarounds.
00:00:57
Roy
She is a national speaker and is published on topics ranging from
operations and productivity to talent management and the contingent
workforce. Kristen is a mother, an iron man and a Marine wife. So
Kristen, welcome to the show.
00:01:13
Kristen
Thank you, Roy.
00:01:15
Roy
And, just going to mention you are the co author of two books, The
New Executive Search, How Smart Companies are Using Interim
Executives and also How I Fired My Boss and Made More Money. So,
and, I guess that was one reason that I was interested in getting
you on here. First off, before we jump into it, I've been looking
forward to this conversation for a couple of weeks now, so, but
kind of tell us, how did you find yourself here? I mean, you worked
for some companies and just figured out where that those pain
points were and just been able to help others.
00:01:52
Kristen
A lot of it was just happenstance and accidents back in 2008 from
myself the same with so many individuals as laid off from companies
I'd worked for 15 years and wasn't sure what to do. I started
consulting and thought I would help companies in that way. The
biggest problem with that was they didn't need to be told what to
do. They needed help doing.
00:02:14
Roy
It. Exactly, exactly. That's where.
00:02:16
Kristen
I came across the interim executive model, where step in for a
period of time and help them actually get it done.
00:02:25
Roy
Yeah. I can't tell you how many, people that, how many customers
I've worked for in the past that, they just wanted the analysis and
the report they'll implement it. A year or two, three later, when
you end up going back to work for them again, you find that report,
CA gathering dusk on a bookshelf somewhere that nobody's opened it
up or looked at it. You're riding, we can have the best plan ever
laid out, but if we don't execute it, then it's worthless or just
like having no plan at all.
00:02:54
Kristen
Yep. And that's exactly. I had a client, we laid everything out. We
came up with all these and every month I'd get a call from the CEO
saying, we've got a problem. Can you help? And I say, we already
solved that problem. Go open up the materials, but there was no one
there to help affect the change and help guide everyone to join
things the new way. Yeah.
00:03:15
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. That I was, kind of, jumped off to a fast start. I
guess what I was going to say earlier is that a lot of business
owners, entrepreneurs, they have the belief that the only way that
you fail is by not having enough customers, but, as we've talked.
What I would like to talk about more tonight is that, sometimes we
can actually fail because we are very successful, but we don't have
the infrastructure to actually handle the customers. If you're a
local, especially you get a bad name and, I'll just use an example.
There was a fairly new, a pizza joint that just opened up not too
far. I was reading on next door about all the poor reviews. I mean,
they had one or two bad nights and they got slammed and it's
because, they were just so busy. They couldn't handle it, but, as a
customer, I don't really want to hear that.
00:04:14
Roy
Not only, not only for my pizza, but if you're building me a, a
piece of machinery or if you're doing work for me, your poor
planning, shouldn't become my emergency.
00:04:27
Kristen
And those reviews are critical. We're finding, you look at the
infrastructure, it's now not just your customers, it's the talent
you want to attract. One of the first things they're doing is going
to glass door and looking at what other employees are saying about
the company.
00:04:42
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. Good point. An employee, I deal a lot with employee
turnover and that's one of the biggest things that I always talk
about is let's be an employer of choice, not an employer of last
resort because people read all these troubles are when you have
high turnover. The first thing they think is, wow, I don't need to
get caught up in all of those problems.
00:05:06
Kristen
Yeah. It's interesting. Especially what we've seen, over the past
year. In any times where we say don't hire or don't expand or don't
invest until you absolutely have to, especially if you're a small
growing company, you don't want to see that cash go out the door
until you absolutely have to. More so nowadays we're seeing that as
that'll kill a company, right. Because if they wait and tell, then
it's too late and they're on the verge of imploding.
00:05:36
Roy
Yeah. I'll get you to talk just about that. The lead up to that,
some things off the top of my head are, well, we have to hire
talent. We have to acclimate them because just because you're a
great representative sales or customer service for another company,
you need to learn my ways. And that takes some time. Just talk
about, what are all those things that make that lag time for
us?
00:06:03
Kristen
I, first of all, it's finding the right people that you need to
bring in. Especially you've got people, you've got technology and
you've got your systems and tools and all of those need to work in
unison. You can go higher next month, 3, 4, 10 additional
individuals to help you. If they're coming in, they don't have the
technology and the systems to do it. They're going to come in and
do it five different ways, right. They're going to be wrong on the
boat and all different directions. Now those five were really only
producing really effectively to what two people would be using.
00:06:40
Roy
Yeah. And I've heard that. I've heard that before is, small company
started in a very small space. All of a sudden they find themselves
needing help and they didn't even have a place to put those five
people. They couldn't even get them in their current offices to set
them down, to get them a phone line, to get them a computer, ? And
then you talk about having to expand space and moving, or either
having your space and then a space with other workers, working
remotely it's, it can lead to a disaster in a hurry.
00:07:13
Kristen
Yup. Right. One of the smallest, easiest steps, especially nowadays
with all the technology that's, there is documenting how things
should be done. Otherwise, as you add people, it's going to be done
all different ways and everyone's going to figure it out. Or if you
lose someone and that's what you really see in a lot of small
businesses is if they lose that one person with the brain trust,
they lose how everything is done. Right. We're starting to get away
from that. Tell someone to sit down and type up a 10 page SOP. It's
just never going to get done. And won't be kept updated. First
says, if you tell someone to video how they do something or do a
screen share, that's much easier training keep up, or when you
bring on the next person, especially if you're training them
virtually record that and recording every single training session
that you do.
00:08:07
Kristen
And you'll build up that library quickly.
00:08:10
Roy
No, you make a good point about that is, the other thing is not
only knowing what this person is or what you're supposed to do, if
you're in the seat new seat, but, also as you go through time, you
may not do everything that you have to do the very first day. Two
weeks from now, you're trying to remember now, what did that guy
tell me how to handle this situation? And then either you have to
go get up and find somebody where if you have it written down and
I'm a big fan of, like, a flow chart that coincides with some kind
of a standard work or some other kind of, more detailed in steps
where it's like, if the flow chart doesn't give me enough
information, or it can lead me back to the place where I need to go
in order, find out exactly what that, what I should be doing.
00:08:59
Kristen
That's that we call it one source of truth. Okay. You go to one
place that is the starting point. All the information you have is
linked to that one place. You don't have to remember 10 different
locations to go to Azure. We also, we tend to want to brain dump
and train everything and give you individuals everything from day
one of the biggest, hiring trends we're seeing right now is new
salespeople. On day one through day 30, do they need to know the
sales process once they're onboarding a new client or do they need
to understand the value proposition and how to go get clients.
00:09:38
Roy
Train is exactly, and the other thing would just kind of talk about
onboarding for just a minute. I just happened to finish writing a
piece the other day about onboarding. I found that's a lost art.
It's like, because we needed to hire this guy a month ago. We don't
have time to go through this, onboarding. And, one thing, I try to
recommend is we don't have to tell them every piece of information,
that the first morning on the job, I mean, let's acclimate, let's
give them enough to get them started, but you can on board over the
next two or three weeks, some things that need to be done
immediately, that's for sure. Some of this it's like, and it's, you
have to also put yourself in the candidates position, all the stuff
about your company. It's like top of mind, but here's this guy
brand new setting, in a new office, new job, new everything.
00:10:35
Roy
We just have this huge information dump on them.
00:10:39
Kristen
Okay. When you look at onboarding, let's take the legal outside of
it, day one, if they walk away with nothing other than what is our
company culture, because that's going to guide every other thing
that they get trained on and all their interactions, right. That's
possible first day.
00:10:56
Roy
Right? Exactly. So, I don't want to skip over any good information,
any pertinent information if you have it, but one thing we think
about during that high period of growth, and your, one of your
books is talks about using interim executives. So, there are ways
that we can use these fractional executives to help us through
those rough periods, too. We get people in place the right per
cause. That's the other thing I think too, is we get in a rush,
hire the wrong person. Now we have just really messed ourselves
because we got somebody in a job that either can't do it, won't do
it, whatever their problem is. Now we've got to stop rehire and
restart. To me, it makes, it always just looks very sketchy to me
as a customer when I go to the same business. It's just different
person, every time.
00:11:55
Roy
Let's talk about how the, how can we use interim executives to kind
of help us over the hump.
00:12:03
Kristen
In a number of ways. Think of expertise and executive talent and
leadership as a whole, it's now a puzzle piece it's you don't get
have to necessarily look at the entire picture and say, I'm going
to go and purchase this individual for $250,000. I can't afford
that and say, I want this expertise here for the next three months,
but I just need it one to two days a week. Or as you mentioned to
get over this hiring, we need to hire 10 people. Why don't I bring
in an HR expert, who's done that kind of ramp up and onboarding and
put everything in place and bring them in for the next three
months. It's no longer a one size fits all. In any way that you
need at each step, and really one of the biggest things, whether
you're even at $2 million, and at that size of the company, if the
CEO is wearing the CFO hat and still doing all the accounting, the
bookkeeping, the financials, it's not the highest and best use of
time.
00:13:04
Kristen
They're really great for growth by doing that. It's a great way to
step up the talent and the leadership, whether it's to bridge a gap
or to take that off of you as the owner.
00:13:18
Roy
Yeah. And, a lot of times we talk about this kind of gets back to
knowing yourself and your skills that if you started this company
and you're an awesome salesperson, then, why do we want to take
that talent away from the frontline? And have you make an entries
into, a ledger or journal or typing them in a computer, however, we
need you should be on the front helping train and teach our
salespeople not doing the accounting.
00:13:50
Kristen
Absolutely. Right. I am, I will say, as a business owner, I am an
absolute victim of doing that myself to where I love working with
our clients. That's where I started. When I bought the business. I
enjoy solving problems. I enjoy being here and doing things like
this with you and evangelizing what we do. If I'm being the CFO or
finding the COO, and I'm doing that, it's not serving the company
and it's not serving our team, the banks. Being able to pull that
off and ring, part-time individuals into do that for me, I, I've
never heard a CEO say, I, I, I, every time they do that, it's I
waited too long. I've never heard anyone say, gosh, I should have
waited another six months before. Always I should've done it. It's
expensive.
00:14:42
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. And, I'm going to use a three letter word here that
gets in our way too, is sometimes it's our egos that we, this is
our baby. We don't really want anybody touching it, or we know
what's best, or there's a million reasons that we can use, but we
have got to put that aside and say, for the better of this
business, we need some help in specific areas. Not that we couldn't
figure it out, even it's just, is it worth the time and effort? It
takes to try to figure this out when we could get an, you could
carry on with your job and let somebody else come in and take over
that.
00:15:19
Kristen
I you're absolutely. Right. We really see it's the flip side, it's
the ego. It's also the flip side of, I don't want anyone to know or
realize how much I was trying to figure out that I was struggling.
It's that insecurity of, I don't want anyone to know that I need
the help. I will say that right now is such a great pivotal time
where we're seeing leadership in companies reach out more than
average saying I don't have all the answers and I don't have to
have.
00:15:50
Roy
The answer yet. Yeah. Yeah. That was one reason why I started this
show two years ago is because, we could talk about another third
component of that is sometimes we just don't know what we don't
know. Why I love this show is because I will guarantee you, I have
never had a guest come on that I didn't learn something for myself.
Sometimes it's simple things that you may have thought that you may
have known or even practiced in the past that you got away from it.
And, you're having a conversation like this and the light bulb goes
off that, oh, wow. I really need to pay more attention to that. So,
that also just the education of what are we doing or what could we
do different? What could we do better?
00:16:36
Kristen
Exactly. It's listening to things like this and the realization and
being able to, not everyone can go and talk to five other
individuals. Their situation is business owners being able to
listen and hear and say, gosh, I thought I was the only one that
had that issue. Exactly. Yeah.
00:16:56
Roy
So let's take a step back. We've talked about a lot of good things,
but, want to go back to the beginning. We'll say that if you're a
one man show, and if you're a five man person, five person
business, you really need to give some thought on the front end to
your strategy overall strategy, we need to look, what are you going
to do for Mar you shouldn't wake up tomorrow and say, I'm marketing
today. Where do I want to start? What do I want to do? So, we need
to have this plan or this roadmap, but we also need to, maybe
extrapolate that and do a proforma for like two or three, five
years, because what are the triggers? And that, we can talk I'll
let you jump in there, but it's like, we need to know, okay, what
is going to be our trigger that we need to hire that next
salesperson or what, we need to buy a piece of equipment.
00:17:50
Roy
What triggers that? So it's already thought out it's not in the
heat of the moment, or it's not a, we're so busy now that we can't
give that any thought,
00:18:01
Kristen
Aye, that's always a tough one because you just don't know what you
don't know. You can plan for two years down the road and that plan
changed two months into it. I see. When you look at, I'm glad that
you mentioned marketing's me sketching out a business plan and what
does it look like? And at least starting with some kind of a
compass, even if it changes in two months, we've worked with a lot
of startups. I've seen a lot of business plans and performance, and
it will say the number one area that is with out doubt
underestimated is marketing, right. You hit the nail on the head,
right. Whatever that budget is, double, triple, quadruple it,
especially your one to five person company. You want to grow, never
underestimate the value of marketing.
00:18:44
Roy
Yeah. I even go so far as to, it needs to be stepped out, like,
what are we going to do every day? And, you're right. Some days
change and we don't get it done. But, I always like to have that
plan. I wake up in the morning, it's not a surprise or I don't
spend half the day thinking about what do we need to do? It's like,
we've got that plan already set out. It's just wake up and take a
step by step through that. We can talk about, solo preneurs there
in that, because, they typically get into a boom and bust cycle.
It's like, I've got no business today, market. You get a couple of
jobs and it's fulfill. Then, three, six months later, it's like,
where'd all of our business go market. So you get this whole thing.
And, we could talk about, but like automation and things that we
can do to keep that pipeline full, we may have to take our
attention off of it a little more, but again, we can hire
interims.
00:19:52
Roy
We can outsource some of it. We can get temporary help. There's a
lot of things that we can do to help ourself, even that cycle
out.
00:20:00
Kristen
Yeah. From a solopreneur standpoint, I know a lot of independent
individuals out there, whether they're executives, they're starting
a pool service business, whatever it is, not being the one to do it
all is one of the best ways to avoid that boom or bust and weather
hacks that we say is Upwork.com. It's a great place to find talent.
Project-based, reasonable rates for marketing, for lead gen for
just about anything that you might need setting up your website,
that's cost effective for you to be able to not be the one who's
doing it all.
00:20:43
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. It takes of work, but, it is a great tool. I've used it
myself. I've used it from writing to editing to some graphic art,
even, used it for a ton of stuff, but it's worth well worth going
through because the nice thing is, especially the, some people I
had writing for me or editing, once you build a relationship and
have of rapport, they were, a defacto employee because I could call
them up and say, Hey, I've got some stuff. They would put other
things aside because they knew number one, I had more work coming
and number two, they knew I paid my bills and that's, you gotta
take that into account when you have, when you're freelancing like
that is, did the work, am I really gonna get paid? So they
appreciate that when you can pay on time. And, like I said, they
will, a lot of times they'll put you for at the head of the line
when you call back for another job.
00:21:46
Kristen
Never underestimate, interns and not necessarily even college
interns, but high school interns. How many individuals do either
near you or far away with the virtual nature and things where they
can do some of that, they can do build your website. They can do
marketing campaign for you, or it'll take them a couple of hours to
figure it out, and then they're wrong running within for some of us
probably get it figured out a lot quicker than we would. It gives
them an opportunity to learn and grow.
00:22:23
Roy
Exactly. Yeah. Again, I've implored that as well and has some
really good young people that come through that. Again, I learned
something from them, they were innovative. Maybe they learned
something in school that they were able to teach me, but, sometimes
just being around fresh ideas is kind of nice for the business
owner as well.
00:22:45
Kristen
I, more and more where we're seeing, we talked about that ego or
that, self-esteem not wanting people to know that you don't have
all the answers that seems to be diminishing more and more as we're
seeing, businesses bringing advisors who are working, we're working
with a client 1.5 million in revenue and works with an advisor a
couple hours a month. It's just helping him actually did some other
research on Upwork. I think they got a new logo for $50 and quite a
few different things to be able to those business growth hacks,
right? Well, those to make quicker decisions and think outside the
box, because we're so mired inside of our business on a day to day
basis. Just having that advisor there to hold you accountable, to
move the needle, it can be a tremendous benefit.
00:23:44
Roy
Surrounding ourselves with people who we trust and who have our
best interest at heart, and also who are successful because, off
topic but if we surround ourselves with people that just suck the
life out of us, then that's kind of where we're going to end up,
where if we can find these other people that really want to help us
on are upbeat and positive, it can make a huge influence on the way
that we carry out our days as well.
00:24:13
Kristen
Why do you think people tend into your podcast, right?
00:24:18
Roy
Yeah. Well, thank I would hope that we can for sure, another, a
great tactic that I've heard more about is in, we used to have a
round table of industry people. Now, were a little different, were
all in different disciplines, but we would meet about once a month
and, just talk about what do we see in our business? it was
complimentary. If you had a customer that you couldn't fulfill
their needs, then we could work together. So, there's that, but
there's also even round tables of like business people that they
just meet and they say, what? I've got this employee, that's doing
this. I've never seen it before. Don't know how to break it. What's
the best. This other guy that sat in two chairs from, he was like,
what I had that happened last year, and this is how we worked it
out. You can get a lot of, free advice at that way as well.
00:25:19
Roy
You have to be willing to open up about it. If you find people that
you trust that trust you, and it's a tight group, it works very
well.
00:25:28
Kristen
Whether it's from your industry is similar industry where we're all
members of associations and similar industry, but noncompeting,
you'd be surprised at picking up the phone and saying, Hey, you
want to get together for an hour and talk, everyone can sign an
NDA, right. You meet price, how quickly people then want to
join.
00:25:49
Roy
Right. Right. Well, that's great. Do you have any other tips for,
high growth either? Well, one thing we really haven't touched about
is that client, the client management perspective. Let's talk about
that for just a minute, if we could, what are some hacks or tips or
tricks for, putting in, cause the other thing is that's, to me,
it's an integral piece. That's tough because I know how I talk to
my clients and I know how I want them treat enough finding somebody
that can mirror that or that we can train. It may take a little
bit. What are some things that we can do in the interim there?
00:26:29
Kristen
I would bring it back to culture and your value system. Right? One
of the first values that we have at Sirius reteach is we treat our
clients business as the, and so every day we don't have train on
how do you make decisions that guides the decision-making, you make
the decision that's in the best interest of the client. That will
feed in through, out the organization. As you and I both know,
that's probably one of the biggest areas to focus on because it is
so much better to do business with clients you've already done
business with, right versus, and we're seeing, at the management
level and the executive level, one of the biggest growth areas is
they're calling it client success and their clients, director of
client success or client success managers. What they're doing is
they're the steward for clients from the first moment we start
meeting with them or to, I'm sorry, reaching out to them.
00:27:29
Kristen
You have marketing to when they're working with us and they finish
up and then keeping in touch with them. Ongoing has the biggest
opportunity for growth and easy, profitable growth is working with
clients that you already do business.
00:27:45
Roy
With. Yeah. The acquisition cost of clients, depending on your
business, it can be astronomical where that repeat business costs.
You virtually nothing. We do need to follow up, be mindful with
them, for sure. That's a, a place that I see people give away a lot
of money is that if they're like a one-off purchases, the client
bought and they're gone out of sight out of mind, instead of
following up, staying in touch, giving them a phone call and
seeing, what else you can do for them. And then kind of building on
that. The other thing is I asked for referrals, we do not ask. If
you're providing a good product, good service, good cost at good
customer service, why wouldn't somebody want to refer you to their
friends?
00:28:31
Kristen
It's sometimes it's just the way that we ask and it's not, do
anyone else who could use my service or can you refer me to someone
it's, I'm glad I was able to help you. Do anyone else that I can
help? And it's a bit more of a soft approach to it. A lot of people
just don't like to ask for business. Yeah.
00:28:52
Roy
Yep. Yeah. And it's, people want to brag too. I mean, just like me,
we have, it was an old, mom and pop restaurant that had closed
down. Actually my mother called me, I think she called me Friday
and or yeah, she called me Friday night and said, Hey, did you see
that place opened back up new management? And I said, no. We got
some breakfast tank out Saturday. It was awesome. I just posted it
on, next door because, I want them to succeed. They're very nice
people with very good food. I said, y'all need to give them a try.
Well, so today a guy posts back and said, I had a client lunch with
56 orders that I went up there for because he saw this, he saw that
they were open. He's like, these guys need to advertise. You said
they handled it. Food was good, everything went smooth.
00:29:45
Roy
So, that's just of a domino effect of about what happens if we can
start getting the word out and everybody wants to brag about who
they know. So, if you provide a good service, of course, people are
going to want to refer you because they're going to want to brag
about what a find that they had.
00:30:03
Kristen
That's going back to that, round tables that you mentioned and just
asking, who did you use for mark and who did you use for that? This
and that. We all want to feel good that we found a great person and
they're so great that other people want to use them.
00:30:21
Roy
Exactly. Exactly. Well, Kristen, I want to thank you for taking
time out of your day. I've got a couple things before we wrap up,
but one is what is a tool that you use tool or a habit that you
feel like really adds value to your life? Either professional or
personal?
00:30:41
Kristen
I, for me, it's a mantra and I think that it's so valuable because
it took me so long to learn. It was probably one of the hardest
things to learn. So I'm that person who's guilty of. I can do what
I can do at all. I can probably do it quicker than anyone else.
It's that mantra highest and best use of time. What is my highest
and best use of time, whether it's in business or even personally,
I was complaining to my husband and I, I don't get to spend as much
time with my son. He said, well, then why aren't you cleaning the
house, hire a housekeeper, the highest and best use of your time.
We say, go through a list of everything that you're doing and look
at what's everything that I can, and maybe someone else should be
doing it. What's the cost, put a line item there.
00:31:26
Kristen
What am I paying myself versus what would I pay someone else to do
that? And you'd be amazed at how quickly that cost structure comes
down.
00:31:34
Roy
Yeah. That's one thing, that I've done in the past is, when you
hire people to do things, do chores for you, I guess, as you look
at well, if I'm, I can spend an hour doing whatever this task is
that I can pay $20 in order to get it done. In that same hour, I
can do some marketing or do some other client work that makes me,
somewhere way above the $20 an hour figure. It's really, if you sit
down and put pencil to paper, it's really a no brainer.
00:32:05
Kristen
Right? The mental block that we run into is doing something new for
the first time it's going out and finding that housekeeper. It's
finding someone who can run a marketing campaign. Yeah. Look
through the longterm one year from now, where do you want to be?
And continuing on this path is not going to get you there.
Sometimes you got to extend that little extra effort. Or as you
mentioned, I love the referral go out to Facebook, LinkedIn, any
number and ask, who do ? Who would you recommend?
00:32:35
Roy
Yeah. Yeah. I think we have to think about of pain in the short is
gonna, bring us, I guess, just relieve a lot of pressure on us as
we go through the long-term and, we may have some false starts
hiring people. I've done it before, even as much work as I put into
it. Sometimes you just, it's not a good fit for whatever reason,
but if you keep trying long enough, you will find the right fit for
sure. Tell us I know that you have a CEO quiz that, basically is
your company set up for success and what that does? It helps CEOs
identify what areas that might be stalling them,
00:33:18
Kristen
But yeah, it is. My apologies, I actually am going to need to give
you the website link to put in the notes. One of those, as we're
growing our business, we don't always know what do we need to work
on? Is it the planning part of it is that the execution is that the
strategy. We're always trying to work on all three of them at one
time. Going through and just answering a few questions, this will
help you pinpoint where you're getting stalled or where you need to
start, because you really just want to work one at a time. Where in
that process is, holding on that growth and holding up that key to
success.
00:34:00
Roy
Yeah. Awesome. Well, we will put that link in the show notes so
people can go over there and it'll be a, it would be a good start
and, that way it puts you in touch with Kristen to, maybe help you
out. Yeah. You bet. Tell us, who is your client? What can you do
for them? And of course, how they can reach out and get ahold of
you.
00:34:23
Kristen
Absolutely. Like our client is any small to mid-size business owner
CEO. We do a lot with privately held businesses and especially
family-owned businesses on a providing think of it as we help you
date leadership. Rather than hiring someone on a full-time
longer-term basis, you just need them in the short term, or maybe
just part time. We help that matchmaking process. We ease it
through it, and then we stay on and make sure that everything is
accomplished. We can be reached at ceriusexecutives.com. That's C E
R I U S executives.com.
00:35:01
Roy
All right, well, awesome. Well, y'all reach out, put Kristen to
work for you. Let her help you. If you're going through some
growing pains or even it's even better, if you just don't wait
until there's pain. If you go ahead and just get out front of this,
let's put a strategy together, that can help you before you
actually get into some trouble. So, all right, well, that's going
to do it for another episode of the business of business podcast.
We appreciate all of our listeners very much. Of course, you can
find us on all the major podcast platforms, iTunes, Google,
Stitcher, Spotify, we're on www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com
plus all the social media channels. So, until next time, take care
of yourself and take care of your business.
www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com