Ever feel like your marketing efforts are getting lost in a sea of tech tools and automation jargon? Let's cut through the noise and get back to basics with systems that actually work for you!

In this episode, Nikki McKnight joins me to dive into the often overlooked side of marketing automation—what we need to consider before getting lost in the tech and tools. We'll explore the foundational elements of systems and operations, breaking down the essentials that ensure your business runs smoothly and effectively.

Nikki shares her journey from a curious kid fascinated by how things work to a seasoned systems and ops expert. We discuss the critical questions to ask before choosing tools, the difference between automated and automatic systems, and how to make decisions that keep your business flexible and resilient.

In this episode of the podcast, we talk about:

  • Understanding the difference between systems and operations
  • Key questions to ask before choosing project management tools
  • Why striving for automatic over automated systems can make a difference
  • How to avoid being overly reliant on a single person or platform
  • Real-life examples of simplifying processes to improve efficiency
  • Insights into selecting the best tech tools to support your business goals

This Episode Was Made Possible By:

Sked Social
Sked Social champions the power of automation to elevate your social media marketing game.

Stop wasting hours posting manually and instead claim back your work/life balance with advanced auto-post tech that even lets you post Instagram stories with link stickers.

Riverside All-in-One Podcast & Video Platform
Visit Riverside and use the code DREA to get 15% off any Riverside individual plan. We use it to record all our podcast interviews!

Digital Brain PowerPack
Your past content has stories, insights, and value that deserves another day in the spotlight.

The Digital Brain PowerPack guides you in the tools and methods I use for my done-for-you clients to resurface your content treasures, allowing you to tell richer, deeper stories without the constant pressure of starting from scratch.

About the Guest:

Nikki McKnight is the operations and systems strategist behind the success of founders driven to build businesses beyond themselves.

With over 15 years of experience in operations and logistics, Nikki has honed her craft in optimizing operations, enhancing communication, and nurturing high-performing teams across diverse business landscapes.

Driven by a fascination for the magic behind the scenes of film and TV, Nikki sees herself as the director of the unseen processes. She believes that true admiration for success lies not just in the spotlight but in understanding the backstage mechanics that make it possible.

Outside of ops, Nikki is a speed reader of queer romance novels, a connoisseur of stand-up comedy, a devotee of feminist movie podcasts, and an enthusiastic consumer of all things caffeinated.

Website
Instagram
LinkedIn

Resources mentioned:

Hire better with Nikki's Free 28 Questions to Ask Your Next Hire resource

Check out Nikki's podcast, First Dates & Soulmates Podcast

Watch the Episode Below:

Transcript

Andréa Jones (00:00):
Wasting too much time, manually posting could literally be costing you money, time your sanity. So today I am excited to introduce you to Sked Social. They are champions in the power of automation. Sked Social is here to help you elevate your social media game. One of the things I love about their advanced auto post technology is that they let you schedule everything, including Instagram stories with the clickable link. Try them out today at skedsocial.com. That's skedsocial.com.

(00:36):
Sometimes when we think about marketing automations, we go straight into the tech and the tools of it all, and today's guest, Nikki McKnight, is going to give us some perspective on what we should think about before we dive into the tech and the tools of it all. So that's what we're going to get into in this conversation. Let's dive in. You are listening to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm Andréa Jones.

(01:07):
I've recorded over 300 podcast episodes. Yeah, it's a lot of podcast episodes and I've tried a lot of different virtual recording studios, but my favorite has been Riverside. Riverside makes their virtual recording studio look so profess. My guests love it. Plus I also low key love recording YouTube videos in here as well because it's so easy to use. My team also loves Riverside because it spits out separate audio video tracks making editing easy, breezy, lemon squeezy. And if you want a little magic, they've got this tool called Magic Clips, which uses AI to take your video and turn it into perfect social media sized videos. I'm talking vertical videos for TikTok and Instagram, Facebook reels, all the places you can post these videos with the captions included, and you don't have to hunt and search for that perfect clip. So if you want to try this out for yourself, click the link that goes with this video. Or if you're listening to the audio on the podcast, it's in the show notes. Okay, click that link. Use the 15% off coupon code. It's Drea, DREA and try Riverside for yourself. Thank you Riverside.

(02:18):
Nikki, welcome to the show.

Nikki McKnight (02:20):
Thank you. Super pumped to talk about the stuff that people don't think is sexy, but I actually really enjoy.

Andréa Jones (02:26):
Yeah, me too. I love it and I love how your brain works about this. But before we dive into the how of it all, give us a little background. How did you get into the systems and ops world?

Nikki McKnight (02:38):
I have been fascinated since I was a very young kid on how things work and how things get put together. I loved Lego, I loved building things, but I also love film and TV production. How does what we as an audience see actually happen and who are the people and the processes and the things that none of us see but that exist and are so intrinsically linked to the result that we see? How does that happen? How movie magic, green screens, all those things. But I just love understanding what happens behind the curtain as it were. So when I started working professionally, it was really on that figure it side. How do we organize things? How do we make things happen smoothly, quickly, the way that they're supposed to do? And that has kind of been the recurring theme through most of my career. Even as I've changed industries, changed jobs, my resume is like a pastiche of so many different things. But at the end of the day, you have something you want to do. I want to help you figure out how does it actually happen so that you get to see the pretty thing out front and everybody else gets to see and go, oh, that looks real cool. I wonder how they did that. That's what I do.

Andréa Jones (03:55):
Yeah. Oh, I love that description. It feels a lot like when you're looking at someone do hand stitching in the front of it. You see the stitch and on the back you see all the strings that have gone into it. Maybe that's how it feels to me for marketing systems and automation. And they're both beautiful in their own ways, but in different ways. So when we think about systems operations, give us some definitions. What does this even mean?

Nikki McKnight (04:25):
I love this because as professionals we struggle to work on our elevator pitch. And how the heck do I describe what I do in a sentence? I'm like, I don't know. I come in, I make things better. You pay me, it's great. I don't know. What do you want from me? Or we get really focused on specific tools. We'll go in and say, I need this software. It's like, do you really need it? So the way that I like to think, or my own kind of personal definition of systems and operations is a system is not software. A system is a vehicle for you to make a decision about something or how other people can make decisions. And then operations is how do all of those decisions come together to create the lifestyle, the results, the impact, the revenue, whatever it is. But at the end of the day, software helps us make decisions.

(05:14):
People within our business make decisions. I make decisions. Our clients have to make decisions. Everything has to start with a decision. And if that entry point into everything else isn't clear or it isn't right, it isn't relevant, then it does not matter how much time, money, energy and resources you put into this software versus this software or to automate or not to automate. It's not going to function the way that you want it to or it's going to take a hell of a lot of oversight and effort. It's the thinky stuff, not necessarily the Dewey stuff as I've come to talk about it.

Andréa Jones (05:47):
Yeah, I think that thinky stuff is so much harder to define sometimes too as business owners because the tech feels like a simpler yes, right? Do I need Asana or do I need clickup? Right? We're thinking about the end result basically when we need to take it back a few steps and think about what we're trying to even do in the first place. So let's take something like a project management tool. How should we, as business owners, as marketers think about the different tools? What questions should we ask ourselves before deciding on, for example, Asana versus a clickup?

Nikki McKnight (06:25):
Yeah. So one of the things I always start off with is trying to figure out the answers to three very distinct questions. So the question number one is ultimately the success of my business is dependent on if I am doing the right and relevant thing now, right? And relevant is going to be very business or individual dependent, but at the end of the day, we want to know that what we are doing is the right thing for us and where we want to go and the things that I'm doing are relevant to those goals. I'm not off in a flower patch somewhere doing something, but it's not actually relevant to what I have going on and vice versa. So ultimately a tool or a person or a platform or a piece of software needs to be able to help me figure out what is right and relevant initially, but also to make sure that as I continue moving through time and space, the things that I'm doing or thinking about continue to be right and relevant.

(07:16):
So that's kind of number one. The second question I always ask is if I know what is right and relevant, I need to know am I being effective? Is it working? And again, what is working is going to be individual and business dependent, but I ultimately want to know that the things I'm spending time, money, energy, and resources on are doing what I want them to do. Are they effective or am I just spinning my wheels and wasting money or spending a lot of time on things that are way too granular that don't actually have the impact business wide that I need? So when I'm choosing a software, how do I know if things are working? What do I want to be able to see? What do I need to see, have or understand to feel like cool things are doing what they're supposed to be doing?

(08:05):
And then the third question I will ponder as I choose these things, is this thing or is this business? Is this process, is this decision? Is this whatever it is reliant on a single person or channel? And I say person or channel, because if I am responsible for all of it, we're going to have a problem if I want to take a holiday. But if we think about marketing, if my marketing is solely reliant on Instagram to bring in business, I'm going to have a problem. So the idea is as we think about the decisions we're making, we want to be able to also see am I creating an environment, an ecosystem that is reliant on only one person or one channel that could potentially blow up in my face? So ultimately it comes back to is this right and relevant? Is it effective and is it overly reliant on one person or one channel?

(08:57):
I need to understand that in my business at the big macro level, but also at the individual task or process level and then figure out, great, these are big questions. I might not know the answers to them, but what form does that information have to take for me to understand it? And then in this case, choose a project management system that best fits that. If you're highly visual, you're going to go with one over the other. If you love integrations, automations and seeing a bunch of data that you can filter out very specifically, you're probably going to choose another one. But you need to kind of understand what the overlying thought process or decision system is around a particular piece of software before you pick one. Otherwise you're going to strain against it or you're not going to use it. And then what was the point in the first place? You're not even going to use it.

Andréa Jones (09:45):
Yeah, I feel the same way about social media platforms. Some people are all LinkedIn all day or nothing but Instagram. And if I tell you you got to be on LinkedIn and you log in and you're like, this doesn't work for my brain, I don't like it here, then you're not going to spend time there. And I think that goes the same for any system or any tool that you use. It's just one tool in the toolbox. You don't have to use that one. But I love that you also pointed out being overly reliant on one as well, which we're seeing right now with frankly platforms like Instagram where that algorithm, Instagram's fighting for its life with their algorithm and it's just not working out for well for everybody. And Instagram's really trying to twist it into something great, but the fact of the matter is just it's not really working that well. And so if those people who are overly reliant on Instagram are looking at other options right now, and that could be something to look at as well. So I love that. I love the breakdown of how we should think about these questions, how we should approach our systems before we start choosing tech and tools. But one of the things that I think that we get confused as just humans is we think every single system is an automatic thing, and that's not necessarily true, right? Systems don't have to all be automated.

Nikki McKnight (11:10):
And I think this brings up an interesting difference again between automated versus automatic. I strive for automatic not automated. So automated is what most folks think of when we talk about this idea of it's an automation, something happens which triggers an action or a notification that leads to this thing. We think about programs like Zapier to link certain things, and that's automated so that whenever someone books a call with me from my website, this email goes out, I get this notification, there's, there's all these things, right? Same thing with your podcast. I get an invitation, I fill it out, I fill out an intake form. Someone on your team probably gets notified that, Hey, Nikki completed that intake form for the podcast. I get reminders. And then it goes through all the rest of this process, audio gets downloaded, it gets moved to a different place, et cetera.

(11:59):
So that's automated, which is fine, but I prefer things to be automatic. So automatic is when this little triangle of people process and platform or software comes together, and all three of those units or all three of those pieces understand the goal, the steps that it's going to take to get there, and the handoff of information and effort happens automatically because no process can really be fully automated when you work with humans, right? There's always going to be something that's going to have to be manual. So if we strive just for automated, we're going to have things where we create bottlenecks or where things are going to stop or they're going to have to be manual, and people are like, ah, it's I got to do this. They got to do this. That takes the human component out of it, whereas automatic highlights that people are still going to be involved, but the goal is to have that those people know exactly when they need to step up, how they need to step up and how it gets moved to the next point.

(12:58):
We think we react automatically, right? If you ever done martial arts, I have my black belt in karate from many years ago when we were training self-defense. The idea was that if something happened, muscle memory would kick in and we would just automatically respond. A machine is not going to do that for me. But if I know and can recognize a certain situation or a certain thing has happened and I can respond automatically and hand that over to either a human or to an automated technological thing, I'm still winning. But there is a human component in this that I don't think we can forget or ignore. And it's when we do that, that's when things break and you end up on Zapier for hours going, I don't know why this is happening.

Andréa Jones (13:39):
Wait, are you in my office? I feel like that was literally the yesterday.

Nikki McKnight (13:43):
That was me two days ago. It's fine.

Andréa Jones (13:45):
I love it. And just like you said, there's a human component that for a lot of things we just can't take away. So I think this is super important when we start looking at our marketing, yes, we can have systems that are automated. One that comes to mind right now is this new ManyChat DM comment system where someone leaves a comment and there's an automatic link sent out and a response and a reply. Great, that's automated. But there are some things that just need the human component, and I think we're seeing that now more than ever because of artificial intelligence. We don't want to always talk to the robots when I'm dialing a number and it says, I just wait, zero operator give me someone to talk to. I don't want person, I don't want the system, I don't want the robot. And so I do think there's something to that, like the human element that we all crave,

Nikki McKnight (14:42):
And I think it's fun to just keep that in there. We are not assembly lines. We are not a computer chip. We work in business with humans. We ourselves are human. And there's certainly things that you can automate to take certain things off of your desk to give you more space to exist and connect with humans and as a human, but it, it's not a silo type of thing. When we start thinking about operations, as I said at the beginning, a system is a vehicle for decision making and operations are a combination of decisions. So automation or being automatic in your business is the same thing. If we get really focused on, oh, well, if this happens when X happens, cool. But how does that impact the rest of the experience? How does that affect the rest of the flow and the movement of information and resources within your business? I think it is so important to have that more holistic view of things so that you can get your finger on the pulse of are we doing right and relevant? Are we effective? Are things overly reliant somewhere? And if all we're looking at is one part of that grid or one singular function, I'm sure that function will be beautiful. But do I care if only one thing is beautiful? Not particularly. I want the whole thing.

Andréa Jones (15:59):
Yeah. Yeah. The whole picture. The whole picture. I love it. We're going to take a quick break for our sponsors and then we'll be right back.

(16:07):
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(17:11):
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(18:19):
And we're back. So I have a follow-up question to this idea of creating a holistic system. How do we know when it's time to start building the system? Do we need to do some things first in our business or before we even have a customer or client, we can build out a system? What's your opinion on that?

Nikki McKnight (18:41):
This is always a fun one because again, for the most part, when you read about these types of situations that people find themselves in, the overwhelming narrative is like get SOPs, start documenting things. Do hire this. And it's like, honestly, I had a joke with a mutual friend of ours last week. I was like, an SOP is a 2% solution. It's not the be all end all. So the way that I like to think about this is it's almost like an Aura Boros or the snake eating its own butt. It just kind of circles around, right? Yes. So the way that I think about it is things come in phases, and these phases apply to your business. They apply to individuals, they apply with individual structures within the business, like offers for example. So the first idea is we just want to experiment and gain experience in something.

(19:31):
So at that stage, I'm more worried about launching quickly and just implementing quickly and not worrying about if it's pretty or not. If I try to operationalize or systematize that too early, I'm probably going to go through a lot of wasted time and effort because I haven't decided yet if it's worth it, if I like it, if it's working, I need to let it out into the world. That first stage of this or Boros is always experiences and experiments. I'm a fuck around, find out. I don't know. We're just going to see what happens. Only after you've done that should you start looking at things like operationalizing it. And again, that does not necessarily mean let's get right into a fully documented SOPI have a very visceral reaction when people start talking about SOPs. I get annoyed. It's my soapbox, I chance to go there today.

(20:15):
But this idea that, okay, now we can say this is the thing that we want to do. Let's say it's an offer. For example, I need to know what its goal is. I need to know what are the moving pieces, what do I expect it to do, how do I want to interact with it? And then I can start mapping that out. And then we do start getting a little bit linear in our thinking of if A, then B, if X, then Y, and then if this happens, so you can kind of start operationalizing it and making it smoother. And still at this point, nothing has to be automatic or automated or in a fully documented SOP. It's just about organizing things. How does the flow of information, resources and people move? And then once you start keep experimenting and experiencing with this and we've operationalized it, cool, okay, now we're going to start to solidify that over time we're going to give ourselves certain times a year that we refresh it and review it to make sure we're always touching base on it.

(21:10):
We don't want to be fine tuned on a daily, daily basis. Then we're going to get stuck in the weeds and that's not great. But once we get out of operationalizing, is that a word? Operationalizing? Let's make a word we're going to go with it. It's a word. Once you've done that, you kind go into the third stage of this or Boros, which is like, great, now we know what we like because we've experienced and experimented it. We've made it happen more easily and more consistently. Now let's do it at scale. Now let's see what happens if we increase volume. Let's see what happens if we increase scale. It shouldn't break if we do that. And if it does, we got to go back to that previous step and operationalize a little bit more. But we go into that phase. And then once we've proved that we can do it at scale, that's when you get into the last stage of the AORs, which is all about diversification.

(21:53):
Maybe I add in another offer, maybe I add in a new business, maybe I sell the business and I go off and do my own thing. And then the AORs begins again, experiences and experiments, operationalize it, grow it and scale it, diversify. And we go around and around and around. So what I often see with this aspect of people's businesses is they jump that first phase and they try to go right into sing something. They try to systematize things too early, and it's a wasted effort because they don't know if they like that thing. So I think it's really important to give yourself some grace and permission to launch things quickly, do it dirty. You're probably going to have to work a little bit harder at the beginning because nothing exists yet. Try things out. And then over time you start looking at individual actions and say, okay, what would make this a little bit easier? Would it be more valuable to the client if I did this instead? And you slowly start updating individual steps and looking at how it impacts the whole.

Andréa Jones (22:52):
Yeah, you know what I love too outside of fuck around and find out, because I think that that's just starting a business point blank period. We just got to try some stuff and see if it works. But I think the question that a lot of people can ask themselves is they're thinking about how to build a system is what can I do to make this easier? I love that you said that because sometimes we start off with trying to make things way too complicated because it's a system, it's a tool, it's shiny, it's new when the real question is, okay, just do it and then start asking yourself, how can I make this easier? And I feel like that's a really great place to start. So I'll give a personal example. I like to use Calendly for booking my meetings, and Calendly has an embedded feature.

(23:48):
So for some reason I decided I wanted to embed it on my website and it doesn't load properly when it's embedded on my website. Could be user error. I'm not a website developer, so I don't know. But I kept getting clients saying like, Hey, your form isn't loading. And so I was like, how can I make this easier? I just did a URL redirect, same URL, but now it just goes straight to Calendly. Is it in my pretty website branding? No, but it's easier for everybody because it's in Calendly in the end result is the exact same. The meeting is booked. That's what we want.

Nikki McKnight (24:26):
Exactly. I think at the end of the day, obviously I always go back to those three questions of right, relevant, reliant, and effective. But what I'm also seeking, the outcome I'm ultimately seeking from those questions and from my operations and from my systems, is one, I want things to be predictable as much as possible. And two, I want things to be consistent. And that doesn't necessarily mean the same each day, and I know exactly what's going to happen. It just means that I very rarely want to be taken by surprise in such a way that it's bad. Good surprise is fine. So something like that. Exactly. To your point, what would make this easier is if I didn't have to answer emails or messages about my embed being broken. At the end of the day, the goal is to have the call happen. I don't particularly care how that happens, as long as it's easy for everyone and there's not a ton of redundancies, and I'm not answering these emails anymore. So when I look at how are we automating or systematizing or creating more streamlined processes that allow us to get our work done, when I start looking at these individual points, I'm also looking at this and going, okay, is this useful to me or to the client? Is this a profitable way for me to spend my time? Is it valuable to them? Is it integral to their results or their experience? And does this fit within what my business should be doing?

(25:53):
And you kind of look at that and make a judgment call. You tick off your little boxes and go, oh, you know what? This step actually isn't useful. Guess what? We're not doing it anymore. It's not impacting anything. I'm going to remove it. Great. One less complexity in the machine. I don't even have to think about it anymore. It's gone give myself permission to drop it off and go, off you go. Yes, it's wonderful.

Andréa Jones (26:11):
Yes, and not get caught up in everything we quote should be doing in our business. Well, on that note, I would love to know, are there any tech tools that you are liking right now? So after we have answered all the questions and we know what we're looking at marketing specific or not, what automations are you loving right now?

Nikki McKnight (26:35):
I'd say a big switch I made recently in my business is I switched everything over to thrivecart because I went, thank you. Dama, you love? Yes, love her. I buy everything she puts out. She's my new business bestie. She just doesn't know it yet.

Andréa Jones (26:47):
Yes, so she's on the episode right before this. Oh,

Nikki McKnight (26:51):
Love her. I'm an affiliate of hers is how much I love her. But big impact because I was looking at all of my processes that I had kind of been put together over time, and I was working with software and processes that work for an older version of my business, and I was like, you know what? Why am I here? This is an open loop in my brain. It's not really integrated with anything else in my business. It's expensive for what I'm using it for. Ultimately. I don't want to be doing X, Y, and z. I just need something that does A, B, C. And then Dama was like, have you looked at thrivecart? And I was like, I've heard of it. I haven't really used it. I looked at it and I went, done moved everything over within a week. And that just makes everything in that world so much easier.

(27:34):
So that's been a big one. And then I'd say the second thing I've been playing around with is substack, not for my business. Andrea knows this. I have a podcast that's just for fun, and we've really been experimenting with Substack. It's been interesting to see how that has been coming up in the world and how it originally started. And now I think it's faster growing or has more readers than medium.com, which I did not think would happen this early, but there it is. So it's been fun to kind of learn those new ones and see again, at the end of the day, people want to be accessible and they want there to be a human component in things. And I think both of those platforms allow me to do that in a way that does not take a lot of oversight from me, which is awesome. And I'm here for it.

Andréa Jones (28:20):
A hundred percent. Huge fan of Dama. I downloaded her Thrive Cart templates last year when we switched over and I have not looked back even with all of the little bumps in the road, it's still better than what I was using before and I'm here for it. I love that. And I love the Substack exploration. I will put the link to the podcast in the show notes as well because I'm a fan girl of it. But if anyone listening to this loves romance novels, which we know you do, we know you do,

Nikki McKnight (28:51):
Please join us.

Andréa Jones (28:51):
It's a huge industry. Join us, join them. I sang us. It's my show, but I'm just a huge

Nikki McKnight (28:57):
Fan. Very much in it. No. So the show is called First Dates and Soulmates. Shameless plug. But again, that is one of the reasons for doing system and operations work is I am a millennial who wants to have hobbies. I had hobbies when I was a kid. I know very few millennials who are entrepreneurs and still have hobbies. So me and my co-host me. We met at Andrea's retreat last year, immediately started talking about ensembles. But at the end of the day, that's one of the reasons why I've set up the business that I have, that I have the automations and systems that I have, is to give me time to do passion projects. And for me right now, that is a podcast all about romance novels. That is the point,

Andréa Jones (29:40):
Yes of it all.

Nikki McKnight (29:42):
Yes, I have hobbies. I'm making Lego sets, I've got Lego sets all over this office. I've got one behind me that's on video right now, and I want a podcast where I can just talk about romance novels and the weird stuff that's on my Kindle. That's the purpose of it. At the end of the day, I'll make money no matter what happens. I'll have a career no matter what happens. But the reason I focus on this work is so that I can be a millennial with hobbies. Again,

Andréa Jones (30:06):
I love how our goals are, just have hobbies and have fun in our own little way. But it's so true. That's all I want to do. It's true. And I'm right there with you. I read over a hundred books last year, which I know is nowhere near what you read, but it was a huge goal accomplishment for me. I'm usually 30, 40 books a year girly. And the only difference was I didn't scroll as much on social media. That's the only thing I changed. I was like, social media scrolling is my job. It's not my hobby. So I carve out time now to scroll on social media during workdays, and guess what happens at the end of the day now I can just go down my little rabbit hole of romance novels, which make me feel so good inside, and I left them.

Nikki McKnight (30:50):
It's such a great feeling. And I just quick sidebar, I was on holiday one year and I was in Hawaii and I was like, I felt this sense of anxiety as I was sitting poolside drinking like my fourth ma tie of the day, don't let me near swim up bars. It's dangerous. But I felt this anxiety and I really had to sit with myself and go, what is this? And I said, I'm not doing anything right now and I don't have to.

(31:14):
I should be patting myself on the back right now that my business is surviving without me. But instead it's actually creating anxiety because things are going well, what do I do? And honestly, it takes time to kind of even feel that mental shift. I came from corporate, I came from supply chain logistics, which is very much a seven days a week, 365 per year type of industry, like being on call at three in the morning. But the beauty of this is when you spend work on this stuff and not just the sexy stuff of the sales and marketing, we must intrinsically be linked is you get to sit back in some ways mentally or physically and let things do what they're supposed to do, that you don't even have the burden of thinking about it or making a decision about it. Because the people process and platforms that make up your operations are doing what they're supposed to do. That is freaky me crying now poolside in Hawaii with my time. I was like, I'm doing a good job.

Andréa Jones (32:12):
That's all our goals to cry into my ties. Same. I'm doing a good job. But that is so true and it really feels like a great kind of goal at the end of this episode to say, I know systems operations saying the word SOP makes our skin crawl. However, when we start thinking about the bigger picture, what are we doing with all this? Why are we trying to do this? How can we make it easier? Then we can have that full circle moment of crying in my tie at the end of the day because it's working, because that's what we're going for. Because we want to have time to read the novels and build the Legos, and I don't want to walk our dogs and do all the things that we do. I love it. Thank you, Nikki. Thank you. Thank you.

Nikki McKnight (32:55):
So thank you for indulging me. So

Andréa Jones (32:58):
For the people who are listening who they're like, yes, I want more of Nikki in my world, I know that you have a really cool new freebie that's all about how to find more support the right way, right? Tell us about this 28 questions, delio.

Nikki McKnight (33:17):
So one of the things I have had a ton of experience in over the last couple of years is hiring and building teams. I do a lot of it because going back to that initial triangle that I was talking about, every problem in your business can be solved with one part of that triangle. It's either going to be a person, it's going to be a process, or it's going to be a platform. And in the case of people, that's one that a lot of us default to first is, and usually it's because of skillset or timing. I just don't know how to do X. So we go and hire, and I think a lot of us are doing it wrong. I'm just going to say it because we go into things thinking, I just need to get stuff off of my plate. So you start hiring for tasks, just do this task, do this task, do this task.

(33:59):
And ultimately what happens in my experience in that of most of my clients is they actually feel like they are doing more work than less because they are checking in on things. They're having to do things. So ultimately when I hire, it goes back to the very first thing we started this off with. I want to offload decision making, and then someone else can figure out what tasks have to be done. That's their job. I don't even want to think about it. So when I think about hiring questions, I very rarely ask people what they can do. Your resume will tell me that. I can see that from, you can give me check boxes on an application form. I know how to use Thrive Card, I know how to use ConvertKit. I can do Google. I'm not going to ask you about that. Because ultimately what I want to know from folks is do you understand how to make decisions?

(34:48):
What is your thought process around that? And does that fit with how I think about decision making? And do you understand the value that I would like for you to bring to the business and the value that you as an expert can bring to my business? So all my questions are there tasks almost irrelevant to me in an interview process? So when I developed this 28 hiring questions guide in there, there's questions that for general culture fit questions, there's also questions for specific roles. If you think you want to hire someone to do social media, if you think you want to hire someone to do your tech and funnels, if you're thinking about hiring someone to do paid ads or to help take care of your clients, how do we ask better questions that will more quickly allow us to offload decisions so that I don't even have to worry about the tasks that you're doing because they are irrelevant to how I go about my day. That is the goal of that little asset there.

Andréa Jones (35:39):
Yes, y'all get this. It's in the show notes online, dre.com/ 3 1 6. It's something I wish I had when I call 2019 for me, the year of hiring because I did not ask those culture fit questions and I had to learn this the hard way. They're so important

Nikki McKnight (35:57):
And it's really the questions you ask ultimately get you free time quicker to do the reading and the Lego and the fun stuff. The reason I can have a podcast is I ask questions this way instead of, can you do this stuff for me? What can you take off my brain, not just my keyboard, take things out of my brain, please.

Andréa Jones (36:22):
I love that. Take it out of my brain, not just my keyboard. I'm

Nikki McKnight (36:25):
Writing that down. I'm writing

Andréa Jones (36:27):
This down. Put it on the sales page. Nikki, this has been such a good conversation. Thanks for having us on the show. Outside of the questions, where else can people connect with you online?

Nikki McKnight (36:40):
You can find my website at theopsshop.biz. We are your one-stop shop for ops, I'm on Instagram at I am Nikki mick, I-A-M-N-I-K-K-I-M-C-K. And please check out my podcast First Dates and soulmates. It's on Apple, Spotify, and all the big platforms there. It's a ton of fun. And the reason I get to do that podcast is because of this type of work.

Andréa Jones (37:03):
As a number one fan of the podcast, I highly recommend it and I'll, I'll put all those links in the show notes as well onlinedrea.com/ 3 1 6. Thank y'all for hanging out with this podcast we just ranked again, top Marketing Podcast. We were number 86 at the time of recording this. Yes, yes, that's course. All. Thanks to our listeners. Make sure you give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We help, it helps support the show. We love that support. I'll be back at you soon with another episode. Bye for now.