Discover how to transform your business’s backend from duct-taped chaos to streamlined success with Ariana Tenine, Fractional Director of Operations. Learn practical strategies for implementing systems, automation, and operations that free you from being the bottleneck in your own business.

Bio

Ariana Tenine (she/her) is a Fractional Director of Operations for powerhouse women who’ve built successful businesses- but secretly know their systems are duct-taped chaos. She specializes in streamlining operations and financial strategy so their brilliance isn’t buried under burnout.

With a background in finance and a certification as a Director of Operations, Ariana transformed her career after discovering operations was her ‘personality’ during COVID. She went from employee to full-time entrepreneur in just 6-8 months, leveraging TikTok and her newfound expertise to build a thriving practice helping business owners implement systems that scale. Ariana’s the one you call when your business is booming but your backend’s a mess. Her mission? Make the unsexy stuff the reason you scale with ease, keep more money, and finally stop being the bottleneck.

TRANSCRIPT

Bethany: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I am so excited to chat with our guest today. We are gonna be talking about all things systems and operations. And today I have Ariana Tenine, pronouns she/her. Ariana is a fractional director of operations for powerhouse women who’ve built successful businesses, but secretly know their systems are duct taped chaos. She specializes in streamlining operations and financial strategies so their brilliance isn’t buried under burnout. Ariana is the one you call when your business is booming but your back end’s a mess. Her mission, make the unsexy stuff the reason you scale with ease, keep more money, and finally stop being the bottleneck.

Welcome to the show, Ariana. I’m so happy to chat with you today.

Ariana: Good to see ya! Hi Bethany!

Bethany: We’re talking all things systems and you and I met a while back and I was just so impressed with all of your flows and how you operate and just the way your brain works. It’s impressive. So I love to hear about the first major aha moment around systems when you started to realize that the structure was a game changer for all the business owners. Like, how did you get to that moment? You’re like, this is what I need to provide for these powerhouse women.

Ariana: Well, I probably had that realization while I was still an employee. I was working for a financial firm and it was a great role, but I was always that person that was like, the way you’re handing this to me is giving me so much stress. And so I would always reverse engineer a process of like, here’s what would make my life easier. But over time, like the person I was working for was having the same realization of like, ‘Wow, this is more convenient. How do I do more of this?’ And so I was building company-wide systems.

And it really wasn’t until COVID that that aha moment happened because like, I was working in finances. So most of the business owners I was working for were like, ‘Hey, make sure I don’t run out of money now that I can’t sell anything for three years’, which we didn’t even know then. So we were busy and booming and in that window, it really helped that we were like organizing and building systems and like growing and it was great.

And then she wanted to hire more people and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t disrupt my ecosystem that I’ve perfectly built to manage only me.’ But that was the moment I kind of realized like there was a certain level of emotional regulation and stability that I needed in a company that for other business owners who are like very visionary, they were the opposite and we needed to work together. She wanted to like expand and hire new people and join new programs and I was like, ‘Why? Everything’s perfect don’t break it’- and I think that was really aha for me of if I didn’t have the systems she couldn’t even think about those things, but if she didn’t keep thinking about those things we would never grow. And so I realized it was like the foundation to scaling is having that combination of people and that was like a big moment for me- and I was like, ‘I should do this for more people.’

Bethany: Yeah, you totally should. And now here you are. So when was that to where you are now- doing this for a bunch of people? Like where did that go?

Ariana: Well, yeah, that was the beginning of making operations my entire personality. I don’t think I even defined that that was what I was doing at the time. Like, again, I was just casually like, ‘This is frustrating, let me organize it.’  And then I went on like TikTok, my very first TikTok. This was at the time where you could post one and like immediately go viral.

Bethany: That was a magical time.

Ariana: It was a magical time. So I posted my first TikTok and I was like, ‘I have been doing these things and listed out- like cleaning up Asana and setting up Calendly.’ And then I was like, ‘But now I have two more people on our team and I need tips for like how to manage them. Give me advice.’ And then everybody was like, ‘You’re not a project manager.’ That was my title. ‘You’re not a project manager. You’re an ops manager.; And I was like, ‘What the heck is that?’ I’ve been working in small businesses my whole life. I don’t know what that is. So I did a deep dive, realized what operations was, saw a pattern in my entire life and career and decided to get certified as a director of operations. And in about six to eight months, I’d gotten a certification, I’d gotten a raise at my job. I started selling clients through TikTok and started my own business. I was full time within about six to eight months of doing that.

Bethany: That’s so incredible. What a huge pivot to in like a short amount of time.

Ariana: It was fast. It was like, ‘Oh, this is me. I found it.’

Bethany: Yeah, you found it. Okay, incredible. And then how long ago was that? Like that you were like you took a full time for yourself.

Ariana: So that was probably, I’d say 2020, 2021 is probably the beginning of the journey. The years are blurry back then, you know? But I think I got, I went full time about a year and a half, almost two years now. Two years now I’ve been full time at this. Yeah.

Bethany: Two years, exciting. Okay, amazing. And in those two years, I’m sure you’ve worked with tons of different clients with different operational problems.

Ariana: Yes.

Bethany: So if someone’s coming to you with a mess, as it says in your intro bio, a mess, which part of a business would you systemize first? Like if someone’s like, ‘I just need to know where to start. It’s all kind of a mess.’ What would you say to that?

Ariana: That is what brings in the director’s side of everything. It’s not just systems, but it is a bit of strategy. And so I almost always make people strip their business, open up the doors, open up the hidden closets and tell me what’s going on in their business. And so that means a deep dive holistically on what their mission is as a whole, but then what’s going wrong everywhere. So I dig into ops, I dig into finance, I dig into marketing, and I need to see all these like six or seven different areas.

So I can figure out what’s hurting them most because some people are like really good salespeople, but they can’t possibly scale because they don’t have enough people or they’re really like, they’re really struggling in their marketing and they can’t convert. And then you realize their offers are really messy. So is it a branding issue or is it a financial framework issue or offer issue? So like, it really requires me to look at their entire business holistically and let them just be CEO for a minute. And then I can kind of go and diagnose. So this is the biggest thing and this will have the biggest impact for you before we start doing, you know, the thing you thought was the problem.

Bethany: Okay. And what is the thing they thought is the problem? Like most of the time when they’re coming to you, what are some of the things they’re saying? Because I’m just curious.

Ariana: Well, most of them are just feeling it. They don’t really know. They’re just feeling there’s a roadblock, right? They either feel like they can’t take on more. They don’t have enough time or they don’t know what’s going on. Something’s falling through the cracks. Like they’re just experiencing all of the symptoms. And so they know something needs to be cleaned up or someone needs to tell me what’s going on or ‘I’m losing money- help me find where I’m losing money.’ And that usually works backward. I don’t think most people come to me thinking they think I just need systems. And most of the time I’m like, cool, but your offers, you have seven of them. Do you want seven?

Bethany: Yeah, let’s go back to that.

Ariana: So let’s back it up. And I think that’s what makes a lot of people choose to work with me because I’m kind of asking them questions that they were like, ‘I didn’t even look over here. I just was feeling this. I was feeling overwhelmed. I’m feeling like I can’t really like hire someone because I don’t have enough time to deliver clients and also train someone else. So let me get a VA.’ Like it’s just this vicious spiral downward. And I’m usually the one that’s like, ‘Cool. What if we just didn’t do all of these things at once?’

Bethany: Yeah. Let’s put it into practice. Okay, so I know that a lot of what you do within your space is creating balance with things like automations and bringing in human creativity. I would love to hear from you. Well, actually, let me read this thread. Which I loved. Hold on. “If your onboarding process requires you to be awake, sober and emotionally regulated to send a welcome email, we really need to talk.” And I loved this. I thought this was amazing. But then I’m going to just say there’s a little bit of like, ‘Oh well, maybe that’s not personalized. We don’t have to automate anything.’ There were a little of those feelings. So I felt like that was perfectly aligned with this conversation because I think that is a common response to automating things or making things- not having your touch on them every single time. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Ariana: I think this is hilarious because everyone assumes that like you’re just getting, especially in this AI centered world that we are in right now, like everyone kind of assumes that it means that I am going to take some AI and auto-generate something or there’s no human component. But the thing is, are you really writing a fresh brand new, fresh from your brain welcome email every time you get a new client?

Bethany: Right?

Ariana: I’m pretty sure you’re not. Who’s going to… how many times do you just go through my email, find the last time I sent one and be like, ‘Oh this one sounds good. Let me tweak it and send it again.’ Like you’re not writing a fresh welcome email. The only difference between the welcome email for Michelle versus Julia is their name, right? And that can be automated. And so I like to kind of bring that up.

The other thing is they’ve never seen your email before. The first time they get your welcome email is the first time they get your welcome email. They’re not comparing it to the last time you onboarded them. It’s a welcome email. So they’re just getting to know you. It’s always going to be a good thing. So that being said, people worry that it’s going to take away this human aspect. And I have to remind them that like, it doesn’t require a human to say, ‘Thank you so much for filling out your contract. I’m so glad you’re here. The next step is going to be filling out this onboarding form. Here’s the link. And once you’re done, I’ll talk to you and we’ll schedule a kickoff call.’

That’s a beautiful welcome email that they can get at 11 o’clock at night, three in the morning, at any given point, because it doesn’t need you to send. And you don’t want to be on middle vacation, someone pays your contract and they’re not going to hear from you till you’re back on the island, you know? Or until you get back from your trip. There’s lots of different areas that are just the next step. Booking a call, sending an onboarding form that doesn’t need to be human related and still can build you up to the human one-to-one interaction. Here’s the prep work, here’s the welcome email. These are all automated, but when I meet with you, I am gonna be so prepared because you went through the flow. And now we’re having a much more positive experience, because you heard from me immediately. And we’re gonna walk into a call really prepared and get a lot done because I got the information I needed instead of having to sit on the call and ask you every single question. So this is what I see when I think of automating things and streamlining things. It’s the things that keep you from being a roadblock and from slowing you down and instead move you step to step so that you can deliver your best work.

Bethany: Mm- beautiful. I love that. And I’ll also add to that. For me, it’s like a respect for our time kind of thing. Like I respect, you know, your time and you can do this onboarding thing at any time you want to. And it came to you right away. And then our time together, like you said, is used efficiently and we can get down to what we need to get to, which I think is incredible.  There’s always a human at the like- you wrote the email or you put it together, you know? Like that sort of thing. And I think, too, like if I make a dentist appointment or hair appointment and I don’t get an email reminder or I’m not like I don’t get the like, ‘Good job, you made the appointment’ or whatever. And then I’m like, ‘Wait, did it go through?’ You know, there’s like, ‘Did it even happen?’ Kind of part of it.

Ariana: Exactly. Yeah. And if you’re selling high ticket offers and someone just paid you two, three grand to work with you and you’re telling me you’re not gonna email them until 9 a.m. when you wake up or the next time you’re at your desk- you want to have systems that work on their schedule so that you can work on yours.

Bethany: On that same note, what do you see people do? Because I feel like that’s a big mistake, like if you don’t have automations happening for basic practices that you do all the time. What would be other big mistakes you see within the systems and operations space all the time?

Ariana: Doing a lot of things manually and not writing it down. When your whole process lives rent free in your head, it’s really hard to delegate. And so what you end up creating is the entire business lives in your mind and then you’ve got to verbally explain to new people how to do things. And I think that’s why most people have probably a negative experience with like bringing on a VA or hiring that person because you’re conveying it to them verbally.

You don’t even know if you’ve written it down correctly. And so then they’re like, okay, I’m doing it the way you told me. And their job is to execute. Their job is not to rewrite it for you. And so a lot of times that causes a little bit of friction and your expectations aren’t met. So that’s probably the biggest thing. Stop- you’re coming up with ideas. You’re loving those ideas. You’re doing those ideas. But at no point are you pausing and going, ‘Let me quick write down how I’m doing this so that the next time I don’t have to reinvent this wheel.’

Bethany: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and actually pass it off or hand it off and be the CEO of your own business. Imagine that.

Ariana: Exactly.

Bethany: So how would you get buy-in for that if someone, you because you said most people come to you feeling it, but not necessarily like- maybe they’re not systems people, maybe they’re neurodivergent and being in a box is scary- how do you create buy-in for people who have like objections to that idea in general?

Ariana: Well, one, I think people have to have the self-work of understanding that you can’t do it all.

Bethany: Step one.

Ariana: Yep, that’s step one. If you can’t get past the like, ‘I have to do everything and I have to do it myself’, you probably will struggle to scale and you will struggle to expand and you’ll struggle to sell more. Because scaling doesn’t always mean, I want a team of 10. Scaling can mean, I want to sell multi-six figures while working with a team of two. Like whatever that vision is, you can’t really be 100% relying on you being awake, emotionally regulated and available, right? And so that’s gotta be really important. And I’m so sorry, I think I forgot your question.

Bethany: That’s okay. I was just asking about getting buy-in from people who, you know, come with a lot of objections or my example was like if you’re neurodivergent and don’t like a box or like something that feels rigid, you know what I mean?

Ariana: That’s a great point. So once you’ve gotten past the self work, I think that more people are surprised at how much more freedom and flexibility they get when they implement systems. Systems are a conversion of your time. Like you could send a manual email that you wrote up yourself. Great, that person will get that email and treat it the exact same way as an email sent from a system. But you would have spent an hour drafting up that email, double checking your work, auditing your spelling, right? What could you have been doing with that hour that would have been more valuable, that would have generated you revenue, that would have made you happier, could have been a restful hour, right? You have to see your time as money and then make that transition and accept that like, ‘Hey, I could automate a calendar link.’ I mean, it’s not automating everything. It could simply be, ‘Here’s my calendar link.’

Great, some follow-up emails come in saying how to prepare for your call. Like these are these things that we don’t have time to remember to send that email, but now we can elevate everyone’s experience. And you just made yourself a better onboarding or a better client experience or better sales experience all without lifting a finger, all without having to do that over and over again. Like every tweak you make in systems gives you more time, more capacity, and it’s cumulative because for every hour I save you today, I’m gonna save you every single time you do that process.

Bethany: Amazing. I love that. So other than onboarding kind of email automations, I’d love to hear like, what’s the coolest like automated thing you did that people were like, ‘I didn’t know that could be done.’ Like what’s something that you kind of revolutionized for one of your clients?

Ariana: I think one of my favorite little hacks. Okay, I’m gonna tell you my favorite one, even though it’s probably not the most revolutionary, but it was really fun. So we had a client, we were trying, we have already figured out how to like, when someone purchased something, here’s the full onboarding experience, right? But it was like a sales launch. So there was a possibility of like 90 people buying that day. We needed to prepare for 90 people to come through and that’s gonna take a lot of time. So we needed to automate the whole thing.

And one of the little tweaks I added as part of our process to just kind of help us out and keep us excited was every time a sale went through, I set up an automation to that and Slack could be like, ‘Hey girl, hey, you just made some money!’ And every time she sold during her call, during her live launch, we were getting these big notifications with dancing emojis that were like, ‘You just got a sale! Someone just joined the membership!’ And we were like, ‘Okay, time to mute that, but also yay.’ So it was like, ‘Yay, not only did we onboard, it was like 1600 tasks that were automated, but at the same time we’re over here having a dance party because we’re being notified of all the people coming through and we’re just feeling really good while these things are happening when we’re, you know, in the background.’ So that was really fun.

Bethany: That is really fun. I love that. Yeah, I was like, ‘I didn’t even know you could tie that to Slack.’ I mean, I know Slack has integrations, but that’s super fun. Cool. I love that.

One automation that was huge for me was that you could automate creating a Google Drive folder, which I had no idea you could do. Because when you work in certain systems, I was like, ‘Oh, wait, you can just have an automation for that so that it creates one automatically and shares it? Oh my god, crazy.’

Ariana: One thing I love, like right now my lead onboarding process, like my lead management process is really fun because the moment someone fills out my intake form, I get a notification in Slack with all the details. It automatically puts them into Dubsado as a new project which queues up their contract if I want to send them a proposal. And it adds them to my ClickUp so I have like the kickoff like prep call task and all of that stuff. So like from one form filled out- my calendar’s updated, my ClickUp’s updated, my Dubsado’s updated all from one zap that triggers all of these things. And so it makes it so easy where I’m like, ‘Man, I really have my life together.’

Bethany: I love that, yes.

Ariana: But that was a great place for us to start doing automated stuff. We can also take that zap or type of like, I’m making a Google Drive folder. You can also make a Google document. So whenever we do a launch event, it creates their own little workbook that we own that we can share with them. So it auto sends them, we use Airtable a lot, and it sends them their link and now they have their link but I have the workbook. So it’s a great way to collaborate with clients because I was like, ‘I created your workbook, here’s your link, I can see it, I can keep up with you as you go through the program’ and it’s so much, it makes so much easy like communication because you have their document instead of being like, ‘Share that with me when you have a chance.’

Bethany: Yeah, please, can I get that? Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. I love Airtable. I’m new to using it. But yeah, all these different pieces all fit together in such an interesting way, which I think is another thing that I hear a lot is there’s a little bit of nervousness around the tech stack part of things. Which CRM do I need? Which XYZ do I need? How do you walk people through that process? Does that just go back to like your original kind of goals or?

Ariana: Well, I have a pretty consistent framework that I work with with most of my clients. And so my personal framework work is to envision, enhance, and inspect. And the way I do that is first it’s like, gotta know the plan and I gotta look at both company-wide and your department. But then like once we have that, that turns into a 12 month plan. So now I need to pick things off that plan to get done.

So once we’ve moved to the next phase, we offer a 12 week program where we’re literally like, ‘Hey, in these first eight weeks, I’m gonna pick your brain, I’m gonna ask you questions, I’m gonna figure out what you hate, what you love, and then I’m build something for you.’

And then we spend like four weeks on training and documentation because the biggest problem is we build it, you might have it built, but then like, did you write down how you did it and how you tweaked it? So we build out all of that because that’s part that probably is the hardest is maintaining it and updating it. And so we try to create systems that are very self-managed. Like we don’t want to work for you for the rest of your life. That’s not the point of what I do.

Bethany: Yeah.

Ariana: So we work very collaboratively. Like here’s your SOP library and here’s how to update these automations and how to do this. And here’s how it works. And here’s your process map. And that makes a really big difference in helping people like to adopt it into their business and not feel overwhelmed. I mean, it’s always going to be hard but I never expect people to move as fast as I do. And I think that’s an important distinction.

Bethany: Yeah, that’s huge. As you were talking about these things, I had this thought because the other day I posted like, ‘If you’re still sending an attached PDF that people have to download, sign, either electronically, like literally like using their finger on their phone or like print it out and fax it back to you, then like, and you have a high ticket offer, you have got to reconsider.’

This isn’t even something I offer, but I have seen this numerous times with my clients working across a lot of brands that have high-end offers, high-end coaching offers. People are paying $5,000 up. High-end management offers where they are paying 10k up, and they will attach a PDF and tell people to sign it. I’m like, ‘Wait, no!’ Also, like where are you keeping track of your legal signatures? It just blows my mind that that’s like not considered and I have that conversation a lot for like, ‘Okay on your contact page do we want to embed a CRM form? Wink wink. I really hope you have one.’

I mean a lot of folks are like, ‘No, I’m not ready yet’ which is fine, but it’s an important conversation I’ve been led to in our process too because I’m like okay, ‘This looks amazing. Your brand is ready. Everything’s on point. But now someone fills out your contact form. Just make sure you have some things in place, you know, so they’re not left hanging.’ And I just think it’s kind of an afterthought sometimes.

Ariana: Well, I think it’s really valuable what you said. Like people, you know, I can look at this holistically, but one of the reasons I sit down and talk about marketing and visibility and product dev is like, where are you trying to sell? Because a high ticket offer means that you have to market a certain way, that you have to convert a certain way, it’s to sell a certain way, which means your system’s better be on point. Because if I’m putting 5-10K and I’m waiting on you to reply to me, I’m waiting on the confirmation of signatures, like that is an element of your brand. Like that’s how you present yourself, right? And so I’m the same way when I’m having these conversations, I’m glad you’re saying it too, cause it’s like, you want that intake form that’s right there. You want them to have a process of here’s your proposal, click here, sign this contract and pay me today. And then we’ll get started, right? You want that because that makes them feel like you’re high quality. Not because it’s convenient for you, which it also is. But because you want them to feel every step of the way, high quality, you want them to get that immediate email and be like, ‘Okay, cool, I’m locked in. And I have a form to fill out. I’ll do that tomorrow.’ Like you want them to have a good first impression. And it starts with CRMs and it starts with these systems and it starts with automations because that’s the only way to deliver that quickly. And represent yourself well without manually and physically having to do it yourself.

Bethany: Mm-hmm, yes, exactly. Okay, I want to ask about your thoughts on AI, just because I’ve been asking most of my guests about this recently, since it’s like the big topic. Are you using AI in any really cool ways with integrations, or how have you approached it within operations?

Ariana: Every client is custom, so it’s what they need. And I’ve got some clients that like, when we’ve set up their marketing dashboards and content creation databases, we’ve been able to integrate AI in those places like that, because, you know, sometimes they’re trying to generate captions and they’re like, ‘Here’s my content and now need to repurpose this for five more platforms and I’m running all of these places.’ So we’ve been able to integrate things into Airtable that will automatically feed their information out and repurpose it for like different platforms using their same content. The backend of ChatGPT, that’s on them to fix, but we’re able to integrate that so that maybe they’re creating captions without having to write 10 different ones. Or maybe we’ve done AI summaries where it’ll send the notes from our Fathom. Like we use Fathom for all of our recordings and we thrive on those AI summaries that come in, putting them into our systems, using them to keep track of our notes, things like that. So there’s lots of different ways, but I think every company has to analyze where AI can support them and then automate it.

I’ve even done intake, kind of like quizzes that you would use as part of your onboarding. Like, you know, we have clients who are trying to figure out their career paths and we’ve helped them build a ChatGPT where they can like go down and ask themselves some questions and figure it out. So again, it’s really custom to what a business needs, but it’s best to lean in versus shy away, but be smart about it.

Bethany: Totally. Yeah. That’s why I framed it that way, too, because I have like, mean, I have a pro like this here to stay. You know what I mean? Just like the Internet was here. So that’s why I’m just curious to see how you were. You’re integrating it for folks, which is really, really cool.

Okay, and then I want to turn this around for you and your business as your business has evolved going on year two. I don’t know about you, but like year two and three were like big moving years for me. What are some ways that you’re kind of taking your own medicine or like what are some systems that you’re changing as you evolve? Like what does that look like for you personally within your business?

Ariana: Oh wow. Well, I think for me, I have fortunately led with systems. This is not my first business. I used to be a wedding photographer. And so I remember bootstrapping all the way to getting organized. And so when I launched this business, I was very like, ‘Don’t do that again. I was like, don’t be that girl.’ So I will say I have priority systems. So what’s great about that for me is I’m always tweaking and improving and figuring out new tools and finding new ways to automate. And so as my offers evolve, as my clients evolve, as I learn new things in their business, I’m able to bring a lot of that back into mine. And so right now the business is going in the direction of, you know, we’re down to two signature offers and we’re thinking about launching a little membership and just keep keep this ecosystem of collaboration going. And it’s been really great because I’ve never been one who wanted to work long-term with clients. And yet somehow that’s where I’m at. So, it’s going great. So, we’re just trying to create really cool ways.

Operations is not the kind of thing you do once. Not one and done. So, my goal as I grow is to build an ecosystem of offers and collaboration that allows me to keep businesses sustained, keep businesses checking in and growing and routinely strategizing and not letting themself feel like, ‘Great, I built all these systems and five years later, those systems are expired. It’s time to renew them.’

Bethany: Yeah, exactly. That’s amazing. I love that. As we wrap up here, what would you say to anyone listening who’s like, ‘I’m feeling all of those feelings, but I don’t know if I’m ready to jump in with an operations manager that feels like too much for me right now.’ Like, what would you say to someone who’s kind of in that space grappling with whether this is their next step or not?

Ariana: I always feel really hard answering this question. It feels really biased to answer this, but a lot of people start from the bottom and work their way up, and that’s great. It will take you a lot longer. So it’s like I think you just have to really ask yourself, ‘Do I want to grow with a plan, with clarity, and with intention, or do I wanna just kind of grow in the most convenient way I can feel right now? Do I wanna solve a problem I have today or do I wanna prevent this problem from occurring?’ And I think that’s the big mindset shift and it’s a hard one, but I think that’s the main mindset shift. Are you trying to fix today’s problems or are you trying to prevent tomorrow’s problems?

Bethany: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it’s a big mindset shift, too. I had just shared about how, like, at certain points in your business, you need to know when you need the support versus the scaling help to actually get it done.

And I think that, like, this kind of circles around that conversation because what I have seen a lot over the past seven years and, I’m seven years in now in June, but it’s like folks choosing like the coach over and over again, which is great for support. I’m not saying to not do that, but I think there’s a point where you’re like- okay, is it the coach that you need or do you need an operations manager? Is it the coach that you need or do you need someone to build your brand and site? Like what are the pieces that are gonna remove the problem immediately rather than like more ideas or support? So I have found that that mindset shift of knowing what space your business is in to like helps with that decision a little bit too.

Ariana: And coaches are not cheap.

Bethany: Exactly.

Ariana: Like coaches are an investment. And I am often surprised that for the almost similar investment, you can get people who will build things for you.

Bethany: Yeah, they’ll do it.

Ariana: They’ll do the thing for you. A reusable thing or an automated thing or something that will prevent you from having to do it yourself.

I remember posting a thread about this like, ‘Have you ever considered how much more value a VA could give you if they were doing the work that required a brain and thoughts and planning and actual work versus just, ‘Okay, I’ll manage your calendar for you. Yes, I’ll manage your email for you’ because that’s the stuff that’s too hard to do right now.

But imagine the possibilities if you figured out how to automate some of these things or streamlining, you worked with a director of operations to revamp your business to work functionally and then brought people in. Think how much quicker you’re scaling. You put that upfront investment. You took some time, you made a plan, and now you’re bringing in people who are executing and probably making you money because you’re not having them do things that are just admin work, but they’re actually doing things like customer service level work because they’re doing the thinking, not just the automated stuff. So I think there’s just people under value going in and building systems and investing in that first before they bring on that coach because I just don’t think they realize how much more value they get if their systems were organized and they were really focusing on attitude and mindset and vibe. Like that’s a whole nother level. Imagine if you had a business that backed you up while you’re trying to do that.

Bethany: Yeah, exactly. I love that last phrase. ‘It’s going to back you up while you do that work as well.’ Yeah. And it goes up and down. And like at different times, you’ll need to invest in different things. Investing in things to get off my plate was like the biggest CEO move I’ve ever made. I actually need someone to do that thing instead of, you know, any other options. So amazing.

Well, thank you so much for sharing all of these insights. Give us where we can find you, where we can connect with you. Obviously we’ve talked about threads a couple of times here, but how can people like reach out to you and find you?

Ariana: Absolutely. Well, if you want to hang out with me, you’re going to get my best and most unhinged content on threads or over on TikTok. So please go find those links and come say hi, because that’s where I put all of my very, very, very non- what’s the word I’m looking for? Non- like I’m not going to filter. That’s it. My unfiltered truth responses about how to run your business in a way that doesn’t make you want to be sad. So yeah.

Bethany: Yes. Okay, amazing. And I’ll be sure to link those in the show notes too. So definitely connect with Ariana. I love reading all her stuff. I mean, I have systems set up. But every time I’m like, ‘Oh maybe I’ll relook at that. I’m going to put that on my Q4 list’, you know? So it’s really inspiring to be in your space. And I just appreciate your time today as well.

Ariana: Thank you, Bethany, I appreciate that. I’m so glad I got to be here.