stay focused on the goals. One of the things that like I did way back in my business is even just repeat our mission every single meeting that we had as a team because the team just doesn't live and breathe it the way we did as a business owner and it's the same when we talk about numbers is like I want to be on task and I don't want it changing I want to be focused and not emotionally making decisions but making real decisions that's going to get to you where you're going.
Welcome to the Managing Made Simple Podcast. Where I bring a decade of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech to help you navigate the ins and outs of being a people manager. From conflicts, to feedback, to delegating and more, we will leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it, and everything in between.
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Best thing is... There's no long-term commitment and you can hop in and out anytime. Sign up today at liagarvin.com/hub and I cannot wait to see you in our next live q and a session. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited to have Stacey Millard with me today. Stacey is a fractional C F O and business mentor for entrepreneurs who wanna leave behind survival mode mentality, and thrive in their small businesses.
She grew and sold her first seven figure business before she was 35 while raising her two daughters. She prides herself not only in her experience growing her own business, but also the thousands of small business owners that she's helped over the past 15 years. Stacy and I met in one of Chris Harder's business roundtables a few months ago and instantly hit it off around our passion for supporting entrepreneurs and small business owners in scaling their businesses and teams.
I could not be more excited to have Stacy on the show with us today. Welcome. Thanks, Lea. I'm so excited. Yay. Well, you know, I love, love connecting with CFOs because there's so many synergies with the COO or, you know, Chief Financial Officers with the synergies around Chief Operating Officers. So the CFO and COO kind of work that I do.
And you know, with that said, let's talk about scaling teams and businesses. Okay. This is one of, I know both of our favorite topics and just got to ask, , where is one of the biggest places you see leaders get stuck when it comes to scaling? Yeah, I think that there's, you know, multiple levels. I'm a big believer in that we have these different stages of business and we face different challenges at every stage.
But in terms of scaling early on, the biggest thing I see is this mentality of having to do it on our own because we're really in this stage of , Figuring things out is this gonna work and we kind of come at it with a little bit of fear of like, Well, I don't know if i'm gonna keep all those clients like, you know, how do I hire who should I hire?
So we end up just waiting through the discomfort so long that when we make that first hire It's not a great experience. And then we we spend a lot of time there trying to figure it out But usually what happens at that stage is we hire You know, doers, people who do a little bit more of the workload, but not necessarily strategic thinkers.
So at a later stage in business, all of a sudden, we get to that next level. And we're like, okay, we keep hiring these people to do things more. But then we get that stress and that , okay, this isn't working. And why not? Well, you need somebody who's a higher level thinker, more strategy behind things instead of just, you know, doing.
And so there's, there's multiple levels, but it's really based on where you're at. And it's always because you've. Made decisions to that point not thinking about where you're going in the future. You're thinking of , what do I need right now? Yeah, I love that. And I see managers in the corporate world wrestle with a very similar thing.
I think sometimes there's a lot of hiring of, you know, junior folks who are hungry and in our full execution mode. And then that that leaders kind of stuck with navigating the strategy and priorities are kind of the vision of the team or vice versa. I've been in a lot of teams where It's very top heavy and there's a lot of ideas, a lot of vision, a lot of stuff there, but really nobody to implement.
So I love your call out that you really have to think about what stage are you in the evolution of, you know, as a team of a business, wherever you're at, because if you think about, you know, who you need today, it's not going to get you to where you want to be. And I think even if we have a really, really burning need right now, We do have to think about what is that roadmap so that we don't get somewhere and we're not equipped with the people that we have.
The other thing that I'd like to point out is that I see sometimes where we are almost a hundred steps ahead of where we're going, where we're like, you know, we're a six figure business and we're like, okay, we're going to be seven, but I mean low six and seven, there's a big difference in between.
So we're like, well, I want to be a seven figure business. I'm going to hire this manager, I'm going to use all my extra cash to do that. And then there's almost nothing for them to do. And then it doesn't work out because you can't utilize their skills at that level. So really we're needing to think a few steps ahead, not blocks ahead.
Yes. I love that distinction. I mean, it's so true because who is going to do that work? We always have to have someone that's implementing someone that's executing and. I think, and I'm sure you see every day, I know one thing that I experience as a business owner is wrestling with the stuff I do because I can or kind of like doing, but what should I be doing?
And funny enough, Stacy and I were talking before we hit record about, I was like, you know, I'm, I'm definitely busy, but am I always focused on the right things? And I think this is something that we, we always wrestle with and have to find that right. equation. And we're bringing on people, I think a big, a tough thing that managers and business have to have to reconcile is letting go of a lot of the work they like doing or find comfortable because you know, that's the stuff that could really be, you know, that's going to help you scale.
But when you like doing it, that can easily slip into micromanager mode where you think it should be done your way or you're kind of halfway still, and really delegating and letting go and stepping away is such an important thing to be doing. Yeah, for sure. And can I tell you, I think the secret sauce in deciding what position to hire next, a lot of the times I get asked that.
I love the concept of painting a very vivid vision of what your business will look like at the stage that you're dreaming of. So if I pick something that's three, four steps ahead of where I'm at now, creating the vision of what that looks like. So yeah, I think that's You know, something as simple as closing our eyes, imagining what the day to day looks like, getting into the weeds of , okay, you know, who's doing what, who's handling what, and then I apply numbers to it.
So that's where I love coming at things from a financial standpoint, because usually we forget the numbers. So we're like, okay, that's what it looks like. That's great. That's going to be off my plate. I'm not going to have to do this anymore. We're going to grow. It's all going to be fantastic. But we don't necessarily know if we have the cash runway to get there.
How many clients do you have to pick up to pay that wage if you can't already afford it? You know, how long of a runway do you have? Do you have two months? Do you have six months? Are you going to have to hire somebody else? Is the person that you're hiring now needed admin assistant because they're not going to handle some of their own stuff?
What are all the changes that happen? And when you put the numbers to it, That's when it's like, you really get perspective. People are always scared of the numbers. But honestly, that's where the perspective comes in when they're like, Oh, , well, I can't do that. Okay, well, then maybe your plan has to wait two months.
So what are you going to do in the, you know, two months in between, maybe you need to save up a little bit more, maybe you need to find an interim solution. But it's In the math that we're like, we really get that , aha moment. Oh, I love that. And it's so concrete. Like you say, I mean, now it's not a guess, not a whim.
It's not some, I'm not going to look at it. And so I guess, how do you help people overcome that fear of looking at their numbers or really getting that insight? Because I'm sure people sometimes avoid it way too long and then it is the mess that they were scared of seeing, but how do you get people through that?
Yeah. Well, the one thing I want to say is I feel this is almost like a culture thing and that culturally the narrative often is that they're scared of numbers because we weren't really taught that. We weren't. It's a skill. I'm not good at cutting my own hair and I'm not scared of that. I don't know why.
If people aren't good with numbers, we just hire out the things we're not great at. I mean, you know, , I use the analogy, , everybody should know about their health, but we're not all doctors. , it's okay. Let's just move on. So, the biggest thing for me is I work with the people who are willing to make a change or who are uncomfortable enough to make a change.
And then the more stories that we have. Every single person is always like, Oh, my God, that was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. Thank you so much. So the more stories that I have like that, then the more stories I can share. And also people , Oh, just it does make me sad that there's so many stories where they're like, well, 10 years into my business, I finally started paying attention to my numbers and everything changed.
I'm like, well, let's try to make that two or three. Do it with less. But yeah. I just approach it like, I don't know that I can necessarily change culture. I think that takes a long time. So , let me help who I can. But I take every chance that I get, , whether it's your podcast or my podcast or whoever I can talk to.
I'm like, guys, it doesn't have to be scary. And it's not about shame. I don't know about others. But for me, it's not about shaming you from for the decisions you've made. It's literally like Let's try to just get you to where you want to go. I'm going to ask you where you've been so we know what we're working with and let's focus on the goal.
I love that creating a baseline. I mean, I think with anything that I talk about in this show, whether it's numbers or feedback or you know, whatever, setting, setting your teams up for clear expectations. It's not about , Oh, all the times you got it wrong or didn't do it. It's what saying, Hey, this is something I could get better at.
So I'm going to listen to some tools and strategies for getting there. And I think it's . Like you say, we don't have to wait till it gets so out of control. And this is something I talk a lot about with my clients that I work with the Ops Playbook around small business owners is, you know, we don't have to be hemorrhaging money every single month before we realize the power that having clear expectations would be, or roles and responsibilities, or really understanding what decisions and tasks we're delegating so that we can spend our own time, you know, on those higher leverage things.
And I use a savings calculator as well as in the summer capacity to really show people. Those, you know, where this stuff really adds up from a time and money perspective and I encourage folks, you know, the earlier you deal with this even as it feeds into your hiring strategy or as it feeds into You know growing or expanding that goal to double your revenue Whatever the earlier you get some of those nuts and bolts around how work gets done on your team the easier all of the growth becomes.
So it sounds like we have a very similar philosophy around that. Well, for sure. And I think it's kind of funny, I have a little bit easier time because we all notice how much money we do or don't have in our bank account at the end of the month. So there's that, whereas your industry, specifically the ops, I think you can actually go, it goes undetected how much you're losing, or it's the little pain points.
You know, all add up and people just become used to it. What's that frog boiling analogy? You know, it just keeps getting worse and worse and you don't notice it. And then you're wondering why. And then there's this whole culture that lives and you're like, this isn't what I wanted for my business.
So I think for you, it's a little bit harder to , really wave the flag to people and be like, hey, like, work can be fun. People can know what they're doing. They can be responsible for their jobs. , it gets to be really good. And people are like, just have this assumption , oh, employees.
Yeah. Well, and it's funny because, you know, if you really set clear, I know I talk about this a lot on the show, really, really clear priorities that are very tangible. And you connect at work expectations to that, like what, how does my job fit into that? So if your priority is doubling your revenue and I say, okay, here's how every single roles expectations fit in that.
, let's say, I am a social media manager. Well, I need to drive this amount of campaigns in order to support growing the revenue. And then you connect performance to that. So you connect priorities, expectations, and performance to say. Okay, based on this, if you hit these targets, that's how you grow.
When you paint that picture, now you have literally all of your employees on the ground level of your company building the business. So you can create an ownership mindset. You can actually be quickly scaling and growing your revenue based on having everybody feeling accountable to it. So , that's money on the table if we're not communicating that, but like you say, I think it can feel abstract.
So that's why I love having these kinds of conversations because the more tangible we can make it, the more people see, oh, it's, I have a lower baseline than I have to. I can actually be operating from this level where Everybody's collectively bought in and then that's game changing.
Yeah. I want to share a little bit of a story with you. So I grew and sold an accounting firm. That means I , I went to business school, I deal with numbers. And it was funny because early in my business, I felt I was so dedicated to serving the customers and serving my team. That was all that was important to me.
And so I never looked at. The numbers, but it wasn't like business was not easy. And finally, it got to a point where I was like, I don't know, , I'm just gonna have to look at the finances and figure this out. And when I started doing that, it started showing weaknesses in my operations, not necessarily about any customers, but in my ops.
And so I started making changes to deal with the numbers and make sure everybody was happy. I wanted to pay my team more and you know, a financial aspect, but it actually led to way better. Employee satisfaction and better customer satisfaction. We hone down what we did in the business.
It was the best experience. And not only did we win financially, my team was so much happier. Our customers we never paid for any advertising because we were so busy with referrals. And , that's what honing in on numbers and ops. Really, honestly does for you. So that was my personal seven figure lesson.
And I mean, the cost of unhappy employees, whether it's kind of bringing down all the morale really affecting each other or leaving, I mean, this is something that's really hard. It's hard enough to, like you talked about figuring out who to hire, then go looking for folks interviewing, finding the right ramped up.
So, when, when we're doing something that's counterproductive, that sort of breeds people feeling a little bit unsettled, not really happy, not seeing their, you know, their place in the team and company, not seeing that career path, when we're contributing to that, , we're creating a problem for ourselves that could be solved.
The other thing I think from a leadership perspective is we think that if we have to hone in on our ops that we're not great leaders and we're not doing something and I don't think it's that. That I think that it. As small business owners, we come with a skill set in whatever industry or whatever trade we're in.
We are literally, unless you work for Disney, nobody has leadership school. Even in business school, we weren't taught real leadership. It's something you have to learn, but you don't really know how to delegate properly unless you've really sought out to learn from a professional or a book or really want to learn how to do it right.
And so. I think there can be some shame with , Oh, well, I'm, I'm inefficiently managing my company, but it's like, it's not bad. It's just that , you got to learn how to walk. Yeah. Got to bring in the right roles to do that. So I fully agree. I mean, I think recognizing where you need support, hiring the people that do the thing that you don't do, that's actually the real leadership.
Right. Okay. And that has me thinking of this thing. I work with so many clients who hire within and they promote within. And I don't know what your thought is on this, but a lot of the time I'm like, this is the worst decision. You're killing your business because that person was great at what they did.
And then now you're promoting them, but , they're not really a manager. They were really good at producing. So now you've lost that really good producer and revenues, revenue generation. And now you've got somebody who's so good and you're going to lose them in their business because you're not, they're not happy.
Yeah, Do you work with people to really come up with a plan of , this is what you need in this position. And , here's how to get people there and then be able to make smart moves on bringing people in properly. Absolutely. And this is an issue that really exists in the corporate world.
I think a lot of, you know, Gallup data shows that the two biggest reasons people become managers is tenure in their role and , you know, and, and seniority, not because they were wanting to be a manager or were good at it or trained. And I think like you called out, just putting someone to a manager role because they, there was an opening for it, or like you said, with a small business, because there's a need for this role sort of to be shifting in this thing.
So I've seen, um, in some cases , you know, an admin assistant morph into maybe an ops person or a social media person. There's actually very, very specific skills to all of those areas. And you know, someone that might be great at one thing isn't great at all the organizational details or isn't great at social media or isn't great at the administrative things.
And so I think to believe someone because they know the team or the business or the company, they can kind of wear any hat. Like you say, I think it's miscalculating a need. I've heard it come up a lot on sales teams actually specifically that, you know, it's a really becomes a setback for the team or company or business when you take a really, you know, stellar salesperson and you put them in a manager role.
All of that quota that they were hitting, all that revenue they were bringing in, that's now not there. They may coach and develop people and really amplify over time, provided they're good at that coaching and managing skill. So I think when you're going to move someone that's a 10 X or a star player into another role.
Exactly. As you called out, really looking at, well, what's the cost of that? Knowing your numbers in that capacity too, and seeing, okay, what am I, this does not change overnight and to really, really help this person excel. They're going to need training. They're going to need coaching. They're going to need to build up this new skill and there might be a dip.
And in the spirit of knowing numbers, planning for that too, that you may not recoup that, you know, investment right away. And I think it's critical to be developing and growing people, but doing that consciously and saying, you know, is this the right role for that person? Should it be external? I think a lot of times hiring with from within sometimes create a very homogenous company.
It's not great for having, you know, diverse backgrounds and, and more, you know, diversity inclusion belonging that can become an issue as well. So I think really looking at, you know, what do I want for, for my company in the bigger picture and my team and not just going to the friend or the person you already have there to fill every role.
Yeah. Oh, it's so important. Well, financially, scale wise, I think it comes back to you use this word. I'm like, I got to write this down, but conscious decision making, right? So instead of just being reactionary thinking, okay, so if I'm going to create this, you know, new position, or I'm going to hire into this position, what does that look like?
What's the role look like? You know, going back to your ops, , how does it all fit in what's needed here to succeed? And then who fits that position? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I'm curious, you know, what are some of the tools that you use to help folks understand the financial bigger picture? Either what are the ways that you support them or what are the tools that you leave them with to kind of unpack this for themselves?
Yeah. So whether I have a client who's , I come with a bookkeeper or I want a bookkeeping done, I don't want to touch this no matter how that looks. The most important part to me is really understanding your deliverables. So that comes back. Hopefully they have an kind of playbook. We know what their mission is.
We understand.
And then we can start using the financials to target that if not we create a CEO dashboard that's the number one non negotiable tool for me to really help us stay focused on the goals. One of the things that I did way back in my business is even just repeat our mission every single meeting that we had as a team because the team just doesn't live and breathe it the way we did as a business owner.
And it's the same when we talk about numbers is I want to be on task and I don't want it changing. I want to be focused and not emotionally making decisions, but making real decisions that's going to get to you where you're going. So that's the first thing. And then depending on the size of business, I have options that.
Really help people out wherever they're at. One of them is a self led course. It's called the Business Blueprint and it's really for the small business owner who's more of a solopreneur talking about how you do it all starting out and moving all the way up to one to one CFO coaching and really helping you manage your money and hit those goals.
Yeah. And what would you say is the threshold for when folks really do need hands on support? Yeah. So I want to just be clear because I, one of the things that I tell people all the time is like, I really, really tailor my packages to every single business and not everybody does that. It's funny because I also own a product based business that came with an accountant and I was like, you pay what a little bit of a meltdown.
So I really focus on making sure there's an ROI. So if anybody doesn't know what that means, what is the return on your investment? Most of the times it's financial, it could be time, but , how are you benefiting from this? So because I think that way, that's how I tailor my packages. And so I would say you can at 100, 000, you need to start paying attention to how you're investing your money.
And that is where a CFO, a fractional CFO can come into place, whether it's maybe getting in a group where you can talk about money or getting that one to one advice. It's, it's a six figure mark where you need to start making. Decisions about scaling, definitely a 200, 000. You know, I'm curious, like right now, I think a lot of my listeners are in the corporate world.
Maybe they have a side hustle or they're kind of figuring out, , is this something that, you know, is going to turn into something bigger? What advice or tools you have for folks that are just starting out and kind of thinking, , is this something that's going to be generating money? , is this something I should be paying a lot of attention to?
Okay, this is so fun. This is something that comes up so often for me when I'm talking to people about side hustles because they're always looking to quit their jobs. They're always like, I want out of my job. But what I have seen massive success with is when people Are determined to stick with their job a year or two years because they really start to leverage their team, whereas if they're like, how do I get out of my job?
They literally just create a new job for themselves and then scaling becomes harder because all of the money that the business is generating is strapped into paying their own personal bills. And it's like, it's hard to invest then in the next level, the next person. So , I actually love it if you can continue to scale the team and find people who are , you know, strategy and thinkers and doers.
And you're getting those level of people in your business without you managing it full time. I think that is , that is incredible. I am always in awe of people who do that. I love watching them do it. So that's one thing financially, the next piece is, you know, really assessing your financial situation.
What do you need to make from the business and how do you find a comfort level of the business is making enough that I can continue to scale it. I can continue to take care of my needs because the one thing that I know is that our bodies, we all know we have our nervous system and fight flight.
But when we're making decisions out of that, fearful, scared state, we're not making great decisions. We've all seen those business owners. Like one of them, we've got a children's indoor play park close by, and this owner talks about how she hasn't taken a single day off in seven months, and we're like, we know, you yell at our children, and you're lucky you're the only one in town, otherwise we would never be here, so you don't want to be that business owner, you want to be the person who's forward thinking and seeing opportunities.
So you do not want to get yourself backed into a corner financially. You want to have space to breathe and grow. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think the first point around, you know, being able to scale your team, I could see that also working on the day job piece too. If you're focusing on maybe stepping away and building, think of how much more you could be delegating leadership responsibilities, really empowering your team to step up, really kind of like, you know, getting your number two in place.
Because. Um, if you are planning your exit strategy, why not make sure everybody's set up for success there? That's, that's been supporting you and, and to figure out, , give this leadership opportunity to somebody else. So I think you can do that on both sides of the equation. And And the second piece you call it, , you can burn out so quickly when you're doing two jobs, maybe a third having a family, whatever, maybe a fourth if you are just going to, right?
I think a lot of us are no stranger to having multiple kind of full time obligations. Can you challenge yourself? Because , here's an example is like, we think that we need to do everything ourselves when we're doing a side hustle. So instead of maybe paying somebody to create a playbook or your idea or outline a course or maybe going to your job and saying, can I do this part time?
Is there another option for me to show up but fewer hours? We all think it's black and white. It's like, I have to do the side hustle and I have to do the job. I'm not saying it was this way in every situation. I think lots of times, you know, that's the reality. But I think we miss the fact that we don't challenge , well, what if could there be another option?
And we think , that's it. Yeah. I'm in this job. I'm not. I mean, yeah, I agree. And I think you're calling out investing in the support, investing in experts. In setting boundaries in either place and I think a lot of times we don't even think that's an option and we're like, well, yeah, of course I have to wake up at four in the morning and do this for three hours and then do it all night.
Like, what else? I think that's true. We haven't sort of expanded to the infinite possibilities. Maybe we did narrow down and yes, right now because of financial whatever else, but I do wonder, , I know for me, I didn't go like. I didn't think that I could, you know, sort of have a team at the outset of building, of leaving the corporate world and how that , and yet, you know, there was a lot of stuff that could have easily been outsourced from social media to my website development, a lot of stuff that, but you're right, I think.
We can get in this trap of it's this or that and not start to get creative with the ways that could make it a lot easier. And I'm sure as you've seen, scale way, way faster when we're not just kind of struggling through tasks and responsibilities we don't actually know how to do or are good at.
Yeah, and the reality as well, the first couple years in business, we're doing so much learning. So I don't necessarily know that being full time in the business speeds up that learning. I think it's just like you kind of need a couple years if you're actually dedicated to doing it. So it's like, I don't know.
I kind of like the idea of not being as Like when you have team, they're giving you feedback when you're not as financially committed. You're maybe looking at different options. Like there's so much advantage that you could get from it. I never did things that way. So , don't get me wrong. I've seen it all the ways.
I just think that there could be a lot of value in it. So if you're thinking , should I quit my day job? I just want to say , you know, maybe expand your horizons of what it could look like. Yeah, I love that. So as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear, you know, something you're working on that you're excited to share with our listeners.
Yeah, there's so many things. I am very excited about bringing profit on purpose back. That'll be coming in the fall It really is a course that also includes one on one time. So trying to maximize everybody's dollars and Really teach you about how to use your financials to understand how your business makes money and how you can use that to scale so that is something I'm really excited about and One of the other things I'd love to add is if you're buying courses right now, my biggest motto is you would never invest in a university course without access to the professor.
It's one of the worst investments I see businesses making is access to courses that have no access to the person teaching it. And like you're really relying on yourself to learn. So if you're interested in learning, get something that also includes some one on one time with people. I love that. Okay.
Great piece of advice. And anything you want to leave folks with before we wrap? I really want to stress the point we talked about at the start that money does not have to be hard. It's, I understand the scariness and the way that our culture looks at it, but I can tell you that everybody, once they really dive into the financial aspect, you can see how even our conversation about Ops really could also tie into the financial piece.
And when you start using those numbers, it really gives you this just clear picture of where you are. So if you've had any fear, I really encourage you to just take the dive, jump in. And I promise you it's not nearly as scary as you think. Awesome. Well, perfect place to wrap up. I will include your information and everything you talked about in the show notes.
And thank you so much for being here today. Thanks, Leah. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at LiaGarvin.Com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.
