Ep #289: Life Proof Your Business

Stacey Brown Randall: I don’t know your reaction when you read the title of this episode, Life Proof Your Business. I don’t know your reaction to it. I don’t know if you got excited, you got nervous, you’re like, oh no, and there was a filling sense of dread. But this is one episode you don’t want to skip.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 289 of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast, a show about helping you build a referable business. I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall. My journey from business failure to a successful business now 10 years in, I know generating referrals naturally and consistently has made all the difference. Working with clients around the world, we leverage the science of referrals, protect relationships above all else, and help you build a referable business.

I am very excited for you guys to hear this interview that I do with Chelsea for today’s show. Now, here’s the thing. I know you may think, oh my gosh, life proof my business. Like that sounds scary or that sounds like a lot of work or that sounds like, oh my goodness.

But guys, you’re a business owner. Sometimes we got to act like grownups. And sometimes we have to decide we need to adult today. We can’t skip it, right? And they’re just things we need to have in place that make our business run better, smoother, but most importantly, can continue if we need to focus on another aspect of our life.

Now, this isn’t something I have talked that much about publicly on the podcast or out there in the world. I mean, I think my email list, you guys probably heard about it once. And of course, my clients know about it. And most of them were surprised because I didn’t tell them until after the fact.

But I actually had back surgery earlier this year, back in August. I know what you’re thinking. Stacey, you’re so young. You’re just like a baby. How could you possibly need back surgery? At least that’s what I hope you’re thinking, and that’s what I’m telling myself you’re thinking, because that makes me feel better. I don’t know why. I guess I’m vain.

But the truth is, I did need back surgery. And I thought I could solve that issue with a whole bunch of other solutions before I finally got to the place where a friend of mine, who was also a doctor, was like, dude, you need to have the surgery. Grow up. He didn’t say it like that, but I’m sure he wanted to. Basically, his exact response was, you cannot prone press up your way out of this, Stacey. You’re having surgery.

And if you don’t know what prone press up is, I mean, you do if you have back problems. It’s an exercise. And you do it because you’re trying to get that slipped, protruding, herniated disc, whatever word you want to use to describe it, off your sciatic nerve. That is literally making it so that standing up and movement is terrible. And definitely sitting and standing and all the things. Nothing feels good unless you’re laying down.

And I got myself to a place where I couldn’t really avoid it, and I had to have back surgery. And I was nervous about it. I also had to go on two vacations prior to the surgery because they couldn’t get it done and have me like, you know, get back together. I mean, get back healing, like get back together. That’s not what I meant. It’s not like I fell apart. Well, I guess I kind of did.

But, you know, they couldn’t get the surgery and then have me recover before either of my two trips. So I had to deal with this through two trips, one to the family camp we always go to every year. And then the other one to a 10-day Pacific Northwest adventure in Seattle, Alaska cruise, and Vancouver. And I did it. I muscled through it. You know how sometimes you just got to find it from within and make it happen even when you don’t feel like it? Yeah, that was me for 10 straight days.

And so for me, it was like my business looked a little bit different in terms of how I was able to show up for a couple of months. I pretty much put myself on self-prescribed bed rest for a majority of it.

There was a lot of, me having calls with people and doing things that I would do normally within my business with my camera off, because I was laying down on the floor of my office. And that’s not a good look, right?

So the idea here is that I experienced a little bit this year of knowing what it looked like to have things in place that allow your business to function, even when you need to be focused on something that isn’t always your business. And that’s life-proofing your business.

And not only did I go on a 10-day vacation in August before having surgery, I also came home for a week and then went in to have surgery and was kind of out of commission for a week as well. And August, until October rolled around, was my best month of the year.

Because you have systems and processes and procedures in place that allow your business to function even when you have to step away and tend to other things going on in your life. And that should be the goal of every business owner who’s creating a business.

Now, here’s the thing. I do this without employees. Yes, I have an army of contractors. I have an army of 1099s. I have an army of people who step in, other companies that I hire to help me run my business. I am not doing all this by myself.

But I actually don’t have anybody on payroll except myself. So that just because you’re a solopreneur doesn’t mean that you can’t life-proof your business and your business cannot continue. It doesn’t mean your business won’t continue to like, do amazing, even when you have to step away and focus on other things.

My business proved to me this year that I had put the right things in place, and I could make that happen. And there was a lot of space that my business allowed for my healing, my dealing with the pain and then healing.

And of course, now, you know, I feel like I could go run a marathon. I won’t. I’ll never run again, which is actually not a problem for me because I think running is terrible. But I feel amazing and I’m very, very thankful that everything went well, maybe even better than it was according to plan. But your business needs to survive. Your business needs to thrive, even when you have to focus on other things going on in your world.

I talked to a friend in business who was like, I basically just had to fire my entire team and start over. I was like, oh, gosh, that sounds painful.

But if you’ve got processes and procedures and things in place that when you’re bringing on new people, it’s like, here, here’s what it looks like to make your business survive. Here’s what it looks like to make your business get back to where it needs to be as fast as possible. That stuff’s really important. And so that’s why this episode was so important to me.

Usually, I would probably end the year talking about something goal setting related, reflection related, or referral related. But we’re not going to do that because of what I experienced this year and what I went through this year and how my business made me feel going through it, which was very, very comfortable and very, very blessed.

And I want to share a little bit of that with you. And some of that comes from conversations that I have had with this lady you guys are about to hear from. And that’s Chelsea Brinkley.

She’s amazing. She’s like an operations Jedi master, as a lot of other things, too. And I want you guys to hear from her. And I want you guys to hear this conversation that she and I have about life-proofing your business. So let’s get to it. Welcome, Chelsea.

Stacey Brown Randall: Chelsea, I’m so glad that we have this opportunity to hang out together and that you are the final episode of 2023 for this podcast. I cannot think of a better way to spend the last episode of the year. It’s crazy. I’m gonna hit 300 episodes like January or February next year. So it’s a lot.

And when I get to have amazing people like you on it, it is such, a nice change for me and I’m sure it’s a nice change for the listeners than them listening to me, like, you know, get on a soapbox every week, week after week. And I’m really excited about the topic that we are going to be talking about. So thank you for joining me.

Chelsea Brinkley: Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to get to chat with you.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So I gave like the official bio before, you know, I brought on for the interview, but why don’t you just tell us a little bit about your business.

Chelsea Brinkley: Absolutely. So I help entrepreneurs and especially like small business owners create more organized and efficient businesses so that they can gain their freedom and their flexibility back. And really so that they can start to enjoy life offline as well as everything that they do online.

So I do this in two really specific ways. One by, you know, helping them put better systems, processes, procedures, workflows, SOPs galore in place. And then the second way is helping them to find remote team members to join their team so that they can start to delegate things so that they can finally step into a place of doing what only they can do in their business.

Stacey Brown Randall: So I love how you used two of my favorite F words, which are appropriate F words, which is freedom and flexibility, not the inappropriate words.

But then you followed it up with processes and SOPs. And I’m like, oh, you just took all the fun out of it. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. But those things are so very important.

So let me set the stage for our audience so they can kind of put our conversation in context. Because I’m really hoping that when you guys listen to this episode, what I really want you guys to take away is, you’re going to do something. Like do something, right? Chelsea’s going to give you a ton of things that we can think about and we’re going to talk about a lot of stuff. But I want you to think about the action that you’re going to take in first quarter of the next year.

So Chelsea and I actually met in a mastermind. So we were in a mastermind together. That’s how we got to know each other. And she mentioned, I don’t know if it was like in a conversation we had or I just heard it as an offhanded comment, but she said something about life proofing your business. And it totally resonated with me.

But before we kind of dive into what we’ll talk about, the why and the how and all that good stuff, I want to make sure that our listeners understand, that you guys understand that I’m not talking about life proofing, and Chelsea’s not going to talk about life proofing and the means that it only means hiring a bunch of employees to run your business for you. Obviously, Chelsea just talked about that. There are the remote workers that you can bring onto your team to help you grow, help you scale, help you do less, whatever it is you want to do.

But I really want to be clear for my solopreneurs in particular who are listening, don’t confuse life-proofing your business with hiring a bunch of people. It could mean that, but it doesn’t have to mean that, which is why I wanted Chelsea to talk to you guys about this. So Chelsea, tell us some of the other misconceptions you see business owners have when you start talking about life proofing their business.

Chelsea Brinkley: I see them a lot of time just being like, like you said, just delegating a bunch of stuff to everyone, right? But then they don’t have proper procedures or workflows in place. And that’s just, it’s not life proofing your business.

Life proofing your business is putting the proper processes, procedures, workflows, those systems and the SOPs, especially standard operating procedures, in place in order to life proof your business because life will just happen. I promise you people are going to get sick.

Even your team members that you delegated this stuff to, if you don’t have a standard operating procedure that you have like handed off and delegated to them, which is typically, a document of the standard operating procedure you walk through step by step to accomplish a particular task or goal.

If that person gets ill, you know, I mean, we went through the times of COVID and everything. What if someone gets really sick and they’re just like, I’m out for the next four weeks, six weeks, whatever. That stuff is just not getting done. And that’s not going to fly. I have a feeling that’s not going to fly. Right?

And so people do get sick. Life happens. People take vacations. People get into accidents, unfortunately. People go out like they have babies, and they go on maternity leave. And so having the proper SOPs and systems in place will life-proof that.

You’ll be able to take, you know, when, if a team member goes on maternity leave for three months, you just don’t want those tasks to not get accomplished. Like what if you could hand that SOP document off to another team member to handle those duties while this person is out, you know? And so that’s really life-proofing your business.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, and you know what I think about this from the perspective as, you know, a solopreneur myself, it’s not like I have W-2 or like full-time or even part-time employees in my business. But let’s be honest, I run my business with a team of contractors that make everything happen. And so I know the solopreneurs can totally resonate with this, as well as our business owners who have teams can totally resonate with this.

There’s also nothing worse than having someone, whether it’s a contractor or it’s a part-timer or a full-timer, leave. And then you’ve got to bring somebody else on and you’re like, oh my gosh, I have to start from the bottom again and train this person in all the different things they need to know because nothing’s documented. There is nothing worse than that.

Chelsea Brinkley: And nobody’s got time either. I don’t have time to retrain this whole new person and do all these videos. There’s just not time for that, unfortunately.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah. I think that the other thing when I first heard you say life-proofing your business, this was just a little tiny aside that made me think about, it made me think about something that I’ve always had. I had it with my first business that failed after a couple of years, and then I have it with this business.

So as I say, this probably needs to be updated because we’ve changed some things in the business. But I actually have like a memo to my husband of like what to do if I kick the bucket.

Chelsea Brinkley: That’s fantastic.

Stacey Brown Randall: Fantastic and morbid all at the same time. Like, here’s who you call about this and this is where you go for this. And this is like, you know, cause the bank that I use for my business is actually different from the bank that we use for our personal. And so like nobody knows him at my business bank. Right?

Like, so it’s like all the things like he would need to know to be able to allow my business to function. and more so for peace of mind for him, but also because some of my clients, like they pay in advance. And so like, if I’m not there to do the thing and there’s nobody else who can do it for me, then they need their money back.

You know, like there’s all those kinds of things to think through and kind of think about. Though, I mean, obviously thinking about me kicking the bucket is a terrible, terrible thing to think about and to talk about. But I think that it’s, it’s one of those things that’s like, yeah, like it was a weird memo to write. Like, it was like, hello, I am now gone. Here’s what you do.

Chelsea Brinkley: Contact this person if you, yes. Honestly, that’s super helpful, though, to have that. I mean, like, and you can even just put together, you know, like a memo, like you said, or a Google Doc or something like that, that’s like, hey, this is the name of my bookkeeper. And this is how you get in touch with her. This is this, this is like the bank that I use. Here’s, you know, I wouldn’t in a Google Doc share account information. I would do that in a different way. But, you know, that’s such a wonderful idea.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah. And I think that, yeah, to your point, it’s also like, here’s who you need to reach out to who knows where lots of stuff, you know what I mean? It’s like all the things, because at some point, and I think every solopreneur, and I can imagine that every business attorney that’s listening to this podcast is like shaking their head. Yes, this is necessary.

Because at some point, if you are in a partnership, and not even like a business partnership, but just a life partnership, that other person is going to eventually have someone show up and be like, hey, how do we get to what we need to get to? Or how do we do what we need to do? Like, you know, it’s kind of all those things that kind of come into play. So okay, let’s move on to more fun topics about life proofing our business.

Stacey Brown Randall: Hey there. Real quick, did you know I have a VIP option to work with me where I custom build your referral strategy for you and your business, and then I spend two days with you and your team implementing the plan? It’s called VIP Referrals in a Day, and it’s the fastest way to get all of my information executed and implemented within your business.

Now, here’s the thing. I only work with three to four people each quarter, and two spots are already gone for first quarter of 2024. I can’t wait to be working with an interior designer and her team, and then, of course, a group of attorneys at a law firm as well first quarter of next year. But there’s still space for one, maybe two more folks.

So to work with me as a VIP, you have to first complete an application. And if you’re accepted after submitting your application, then we’ll schedule a call so I can walk you through exactly how the VIP Referrals in a Day process works. To learn more, go to StaceyBrownRandall.com/VIP. Now, back to the episode.

Stacey Brown Randall: Tell us why you think I mean, so we’ve talked about it, but like kind of give me that like the boiled down answer to really why a business owner should care about life proofing their business.

Chelsea Brinkley: It will ultimately help set you up for success now and later down the road, again because life does just happen. I actually have a team member that’s going to be out on maternity leave starting in December and so it’s super exciting for her right but also, I was like, I wasn’t terrified about like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do without Sadie? You know, I was like, okay, no big deal. Let’s bring someone in temporarily for the three months, four months, however long you’re comfortable being out Sadie. And we have all these SOPs just to hand off to this person. We’ve set them up for success.

And then also it really helps your team as well. Like, because if you don’t have these processes, these systems in place, and you’re bringing on a new team member, really, you’re just inviting someone else that’s new into your mess. I’m just going to be honest.

Otherwise, they join the team and they’re like, okay, so what do you want me to do? How do we do X, Y, and Z? Or like, how does this operate in your business? Because we know everyone’s business operates differently. And how, you know, how do you like things done? What are your preferences?

If that’s not documented, written down, you don’t have a loom video showing or anything like that, you’re really just going to overwhelm this new person, cause them confusion, and it’s just like, you’re starting the relationship off with friction rather than setting them up for success.

Stacey Brown Randall: That’s so important. That reminds me, when I had to take my little W-2 job in between my first business when it failed, and then of course, the one I have now, I had to go back to corporate America, or like, you know, get the W-2 job when my first business failed.

And I will never forget showing up and like, they were like, okay, here’s your computer, here’s your business cards, right? Here’s your computer. And yeah, like I turned it on, they’re like, okay, and here’s your email. And I’m like, okay, so like, where are the documents that is, like no one ever told me where to find the documents the person in the role before me had done. And it wasn’t even mentioned for me to even think that there were any.

So I spent six stinking months. recreating every single PowerPoint, document, this, that, like all the things. It was six months in when someone’s like, why don’t you just get that from the share drive? And I was like, did somebody want to tell me that all those things were on the share drive? I mean, hello?

Chelsea Brinkley: Oh, my goodness.

Stacey Brown Randall: Right? I was like, how ineffective was I for everybody in that timeframe? Can you imagine?

Chelsea Brinkley: Yeah, that would be so frustrating.

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh my gosh, it was. It felt like I had wasted so much time, more than anything. It was like, wow, I feel like I’m so behind. I’m so behind, which was fine. I wasn’t there long. I had other things I needed to do, like start this business. So it was all good.

Okay. So let’s say that someone’s listening and they said to you, hey, there’s a lot of things I should do. There’s a lot of things I could do. But the reality is I’m probably only going to do a couple of things.

So can you give us the top three things that as a business owner we should be doing if we want to at least maybe not get all the way to life proofing our business, but be on the right path and have critical things done? What would be those couple of things you would recommend?

Chelsea Brinkley: Absolutely. Okay, so the first thing is file organization. So using a cloud software. I have seen so many different clients where they have just like files on their desktop, some are in Google Drive, some are Dropbox, they’re just all over the place, right? Sometimes they’re stored in Slack. And I’m just like, oh, my goodness.

So like, if you were to tell someone where to find a particular document, where would they go? And then they always struggle with like, I don’t know, they have to spend quite a bit of time finding it.

So my rule of thumb is you need to be able to find a document or file that you’re looking for in two minutes or less. Otherwise, you’re just wasting precious time, like just searching for files. So use a good file organization system.

I prefer and I particularly love Google Drive and you can break it up into different folders and segments of the business, everything like that. And then, I definitely feel like it needs to be a cloud software. So even if you like Dropbox better, that’s great, whatever, but choose a cloud software program for your file organization. That is huge.

And then keep that rule in your mind of two minutes or less. So that means you need to name your files accordingly so that you can just search, you know, Google Drive and they should pop up. Like if you’re not sure exactly what folder you put them in, you need to be able to just like use some keywords to, you know, maybe search a client’s name or something. And naming files is really huge as well.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay.

Chelsea Brinkley: So that’s one. So file organization.

Stacey Brown Randall: So naming files isn’t two, it is a part of our file document organization.

Chelsea Brinkley: Absolutely.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay, got it. All right. What’s number two then?

Chelsea Brinkley: It’s a whole thing. File organization and then the file naming is part of your file organization system that you’ve got going on. So that’s one.

The second thing that I would really focus on is password management and security. Okay, so we cannot have passwords y’all, and logins to our bank accounts or anything like that stored on a piece of paper, physically.

And we also cannot have it like in a Google document or a Word document or something like that. It’s just not very safe. So use a password management and security system. So that’s huge. And I know it will take some time to get that in place, but I promise you it’s so worth it. You will be so much more safe and secure.

So my favorite to use, there’s two that I really like. One is 1Password, and my favorite is LastPass, just because I feel like it’s really user-friendly and everything like that. but you can create folders.

And I use it for my business and all my business, like passwords, accounts, everything is securely in there, as well as personally. All of our home stuff is in there. Our Wi-Fi password, our password to our utility website that we log in, everything is like personally, all passwords, logins, all of that is located in our LastPass. So that’s the second thing. Password security is huge.

Okay. And then the third thing that I would really focus on, let’s see, as far as a process that I would put in place is goodness, maybe your project management system. I think that’s the third that I would really focus on.

What I mean by that is like how you organize your different clients, and your different customers, just your project management. So many people just keep their to-do list in their head, or they’re like, oh, tomorrow I need to do X, Y, and Z. I don’t need to forget. I’ll put it on a Post-it note, right?

But having a great project management system in place of what needs to be done, you can even have checklists in there. You can drop files from that Google Drive in there. Everything. It’s super helpful. My favorite is Trello. So I think a project management system, and that will take a lot of weight off of your shoulders of trying to keep up with all the to do’s and what happens next and everything like that.

Stacey Brown Randall: You know it’s really interesting. I brought on, I guess it was last year though it may have even been the year before. I don’t know, like when I start working with people, like contractors in my business. The idea is to go for years and years and years. Like I don’t like, I want them to work out, I want us to work well together, I want them to do good work and I want them to stay with me forever. ‘Cause I don’t want to have to worry about bringing somebody else on.

So I don’t know how long Kathy’s been with me doing some of my virtual assistant stuff for social media. But I remember one time she sent me, I was like, hey, when you create these posts for me, can you also send me the images that are going to go along with it, so I can look at them at the same time? And she like magically sent me the links to it right there in Canva.

And I was like, you can do that? And I think she probably thought, what are you like 80 years old? Like seriously? And probably sometimes when you talk about me and technology, you would think, yes, Stacey’s like 80 years old in tech brain. But I was like, oh my God, like just all of it right there. And it was like, oh, this is like heaven.

So I think that whole idea of that project, I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily say we’re using project management software in the way that we’re supposed to, or a system that we’re supposed to, but just her bringing that piece of organization to our process for doing just social media has been a game changer. And the fact that I don’t have to do it and she’s doing it for me, and it makes it easy on me. Obviously, it’s great as well.

So okay, so those are three really good things. I mean you talked about file organization, along with also naming your files. So keeping your files, your documents organized with the right names. You talked about password protection. And you talked about project management system. But I know there’s more that you talk about, and I know you have more ideas for folks who are interested in learning more.

Can you just real quick take a minute and I’ll put this link in the show notes for this episode too, but can you take a quick minute and just tell them where they can find your 10 systems document that you have?

Chelsea Brinkley: Oh, absolutely. Okay, so I have a document. It’s a freebie of the 10 systems and processes that you must have in place in order to grow your business. So you can go to www.chelseabrinkley.com, and it’s literally right there. And I can give Stacey also a direct link to it, and she can pop it in the show notes and all of that kind of stuff.

But no matter what kind of business you have, these are the must-have 10 systems that you need to start getting in place and have procedures and workflows, all of that. So that’s really where I would start to start one by one putting those systems in place in your business.

And I know that like, and Stacey and I, we talk about this, but I know it’s going to take time. This is not like a quick fix kind of thing. I mean, you just look, it’s a domino effect or a snowball. One by one, start conquering it, and then you’ll eventually get there.

So start with your file organization system. All right, great. Let’s get that in place. We’ll get it all conquered, and then let’s move on to the next. So it’s kind of a one by one type of thing. rather than trying to do everything all at once because then you’ll just start to feel overwhelmed and kind of shut down. So one by one.

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh my gosh, definitely. Because we’ve been having this conversation for over a year on some of the things that I need to be doing. And it’s like, just take one tiny bite. And then the truth is, it’s like with anything we teach, right? You take that first step, you take that first bite, you do that first thing on the project list, and then everything starts moving forward and it rolls.

But gosh, we do create these visions of like, you know, terror and massive amounts of work in our minds when we’re tackling something new. But on the back end, we always love that we went through the process and that we got whatever we needed done.

Chelsea Brinkley: Absolutely. It takes time, but it’s so worth it.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, it totally is. Okay, so I think it would be kind of crazy if I didn’t at least ask about, are there other tips that you have to like encourage people to get started? I mean, I feel like if you kind of don’t, I feel like everybody understands the why.

Now there’s a difference between knowing why life proofing your business is important versus actually taking the time to do it so. So I just really feel like it’s important for people to be like, okay, great. I know I need to do it. I got the why. I’ve been thinking about this too. Like, is there another tip you can give to make someone take the first step to just like, is there something they can do that you’ve seen other clients do that just make it easier?

Chelsea Brinkley: Yes. Okay. So I think the first thing that you can do, a lot of people just kind of do things, you know, and it just kind of happens. It’s like the whole social media process you talked about, like it just kind of happens.

But I think something that you can truly do, like a step or action you can take is put a standard operating procedure in place. And so this is like a document of like step-by-step of what needs to happen.

Now, I know it takes like writing the standard operating procedure, right? And that’s not sexy. That’s not fun. I know it. I enjoy it because I’m a nerd, but like, writing a standard operating procedure, I know isn’t fun, but it is a huge step like you can take.

And if you are going, okay, I know I need to put maybe a standard operating procedure in place for my social media process. You know, you working with your team member and handing things off, and here’s the episode, can she create the images, all of that kind of stuff.

One thing that can be done to make your SOP easier is just record yourself doing it. Use Loom. It’s a free tool and you can record your screen of your process of exactly what you’re doing.

And so even if you don’t have the time to properly write a whole standard operating procedure document, you know, for your process that whatever comes to mind for you, just record yourself doing it on your screen and file that away. And I think that’s one thing that you can do to quickly get SOPs in place.

Stacey Brown Randall: I love that tip because the truth is, if we’re telling everybody, and we’re talking to me too at the same time, like you have got to sit down and bullet point out, do this, then do this, then do this, and then go pull screenshots of each thing as I’m typing it out of what to do, most of us are like, and I’m out. Which is why a lot of businesses don’t have their SOPs.

But the fact that you can just record it, Like, hey, I go here, I go here, I go here, and I’m doing it as the video. Like, that’s why I love Loom. Like, it’s recording it as you’re doing it. I mean, I would say that when I think about all the processes that we have in place in our business, I really would say that the majority of the how to do them is in video.

And I kind of made it a rule that when I hired a contractor, or I hired another business that’s going to come in and do a part of my business with me is that when you do something that I ask you to do, you’ve got to record it while you’re doing it.

Not because I’m going to do it and not pay you to do it anymore, but if you go on vacation and I need to know how to do it, I’ve got to find the video to go watch it.

Chelsea Brinkley: Absolutely.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah. I make that kind of like standard. Like when I work with folks, I’m like, I need a video of you doing that. And I would say that the contractors that are like, no, I’m not doing that. Probably aren’t the best contractors. Just going to throw that out there.

But those that will definitely give you those processes that they’re doing for your business. And it’s usually when they’re doing something in my own accounts, like they’re in my email platform, right? They’re in my social media. They’re in my, like they’re in my website. It’s not like they’re doing things for other clients and recording it for me.

Chelsea Brinkley: Oh, absolutely.

Stacey Brown Randall: Yeah, I think that stuff is so good.

Chelsea Brinkley: I will also say like every SOP, and video walkthroughs are so important because people learn differently. And some people are audio, some people like to read, some people like to watch.

And I am a very visual learner myself. And so even if I were to read, and I think it’s good and helpful to have an SOP document of like the step-by-step of what to work through. Every SOP document I have, and I require for myself and also do for clients is you have to have a video walkthrough embedded or linked in there as well from Loom because it’s a game changer.

Because if I’m reading the SOP document and I’m like, wait, I’m not quite sure what is meant by this, I can just watch the video and watch the person do it. And so like you said, gosh, Loom video walkthrough is a complete game changer and is so helpful. So even if you just do that and file those videos away, that’s one step towards progress.

Stacey Brown Randall: Oh my gosh. And it’s an easy one.

Chelsea Brinkley: Oh, it’s so easy.

Stacey Brown Randall: Okay. Everybody can do this. I mean, let’s not, maybe not do it this week. ‘Cause you know, we’re all celebrating and relaxing and oh, hopefully we’re celebrating and relaxing and not having to work. Um, so maybe next week we can dive into that when the new year starts.

Okay. So this has been so helpful and I feel like to your point, the doing this, maybe the thinking about doing this, and the doing this of the life proofing projects and tasks that you need to do to have a business that is life proof, it’s not fun. Like you said it’s not sexy. It’s not probably going to be the most enjoyable thing you do unless you’re you right, because you love this stuff, but when it’s done, yeah, my gosh, it’s going to feel amazing.

So the other thing that feels amazing is when you identify things you need to do in your business and then you’re like, I just wonder if there’s someone I can hire who will just do this for me so I don’t have to be bothered with it. And Chelsea, that is where you and your team come in as well. So if any of my listeners want help with implementation, where can they learn more about connecting with you?

Chelsea Brinkley: Yeah. So if you, I mean, www.ChelseaBrinkley.com, there’s like a whole contact page there. You can go there, find out more information, but we also do like implementation, like you said.

So if you are like, okay, I know that these are the systems and the processes that I need to put in place, but that is the last thing I want to do. I don’t have time to do it, et cetera. You can hire our team. We’ll jump in, implement it for you, train you and your team on how to use the new system, where everything lives, and all of that kind of stuff.

So yeah, just reach out. I’m happy to help do that. We are, I mean, I lovingly say we’re a bunch of nerds who love this stuff, and it’s true. I totally geek out about systems. So yeah, so if you don’t have time to do it, don’t want to do it, it’s not fun, we can do it for you.

Stacey Brown Randall: Perfect. Yes, you geek out about processes and systems. I geek out about referrals. We all have our thing, right?

Chelsea Brinkley: Yes. I love it.

Stacey Brown Randall: We all have our thing. Yeah. So of course, guys, I will put Chelsea’s, all of her contact information, you can even connect with her on Instagram as well. But I will put the link to her website and her contact information in the show notes page for this episode, so you guys won’t want to miss that. Well, Chelsea, is there any final words of encouragement or advice or thoughts that you want to share with my listeners before I let you go?

Chelsea Brinkley: Yeah, I think just overall, don’t feel like you have to do everything all at once. I think, you know, myself included, I get very ambitious and I’m like, all right, I get motivated, I’m like, let’s do it all. Let’s clean up all of our systems. But really just remind yourself it is a snowball and do one thing at a time and you’ll get there.

Stacey Brown Randall: Absolutely. I think that is great advice with everything, in life as well. So thank you for being with me today.

Chelsea Brinkley: Thank you so much for having me. You’re such a joy to chat with.

Stacey Brown Randall: I hope you guys enjoyed that episode as much as I did. There’s always those moments of ahas that you have, or for me it was more like, you know you need to do this Stacey, go get to work. Like just listening to Chelsea talk about things.

So I’m so glad she took some time out of her schedule to join us on the podcast and that you guys have this conversation that you can really hopefully use to be motivating to you to maybe jot down maybe one thing that will help move your business forward in terms of life-proofing in 2024, and you can start tackling that ASAP.

Now, the resources mentioned in this episode, like how to get in touch with Chelsea or to apply for my VIP Referrals in a Day program, can be found on the show notes page at StaceyBrownRandall.com/289.

All right, we are back with another great episode next week, which is also next year, created with you and your needs in mind. Until then, you know what to do, my friend. Take control of your referrals and build a referable business. Bye for now.