Stories of Scaling with Ariana Rodriguez

In this episode of Stories of Scaling, Lissette Calverio, of Influence with Impact, shares her experience working with AR&Co on systems and operations for her scaling Influencer management and education agency.

In this episode, you'll hear

• What Influence with Impact is and Lisette's mission
• How Lisette continues to use her process map and audit in her business even long after working with AR&Co
• How AR&Co helped create a map for Lisette's team and improve the work her contractors and employees could do.
• How a systems and operations support is different that hiring admin or virtual assistants.
• How systems helped Lisette be able to take more time off and prevent burn out as a business owner.
• How cleaner and more clarified processes have helped Lisette's business grow in revenue and profit.

Are your workflows, tech, and process breaking down? Good! It means you are growing and evolving your business. This is a great sign. In this episode, I walk you through the phases of iteration my clients go through no matter their revenue or team size.

You'll learn:

• Which systems you can expect to break and when.
• How to include iteration in your process.
• How to normalize systems breaking and start to learn from it.
• How working with AR&Co can help make your growth process smoother and less stressful.

If you're afraid to get honest client feedback, this episode is for you.

You will inevitably get negative feedback as your business grows, it's expected. You need to know how to respond and how to evaluate and apply that feedback in your business.

So, today, you'll learn what to do after you receive negative feedback so you can use it to make your business better.

You'll learn:

• The steps you need to take right after your receive negative feedback.
• How to deal with your disappointment and frustration.
• How to evaluate the feedback and decide to apply it.
• How you can prevent the same mistakes from happening.

Did you recently hire someone? Did you expect them to make your business so much easier but instead feel like they're unhelpful? Are you wondering if these contractor and employees just suck?

I promise it's not because they suck, it's not because everyone is out to get you, and it's not because no one can do it like you do. In this episode you'll learn why your hires aren't as helpful as you hoped they'd be and how you can change things around.

You'll learn:

• The most common reasons hires don't feel helpful
• How proper onboarding can make your hires more effective.
• How SOPs, trainings, and walk throughs should be structured to set your team up for success.
• How improving your overall systems can help you feel more confident delegation and growing your team.

A couple extra emails a year could make you thousands more in your business. Today we're talking all about how to reengage your clients after offboarding to stay top of mind. We will cover the four emails you need to send so your client is more likely to hire you again and refer you.

You'll learn:

• What the four emails to send your clients are.
• Where you're leaving money on the table.
• How you can encourage resigns and upsells in your business.
• How to ask for referrals from your favorite clients.
• How a simple birthday message can increase brand loyalty
• How you can add this to your systems in a simple and automated way.

We hear a lot about the business benefits of delegating to tech and how much time you're going to save - but today, Ariana Rodriguez talks about some of the intangible benefits her clients have experienced after their tech and their systems are set up the RIGHT WAY.

You'll learn:

• How better systems can help your boundaries
• How improving your business tech can help reduce stress
• How stronger business systems help you feel safe to scale
• How you can start to claim these benefits for yourself.

When Isa came to AR&Co, she was still doing custom packages for every client and stressing out about capacity. She did not have repeatable processes or automation which meant her client experience was amazing sometimes and lack luster other times.

Through working with AR&Co, Isa has been able to level up her entire business thanks to rock solid systems. Her client experience is standardized, which has led to more referrals and repeat clients.

UberEats has nailed the ability to anticipate client questions and provide answers to create a smoother client experience, and today, I'm going to walk you through how you can steal some of those practices and do the same for your business.

You'll learn:

• What UberEats has done well in their client communication
• How you can improve client updates in your business
• How regularly updating clients can enhance client experience
• How you can anticipate client questions at every stage of the process

Great software and tech costs money. There's no way around it, but folks try anyway. So, in this episode, I am breaking down the FIVE ways that trying to save a hundred dollars in the short term will cost you WAY more in the long run.

You'll learn:

• How penny-pinching on tech costs you bigger opportunities.
• How not paying for software upgrades creates more headaches for you and your team.
• How you end up leaving money on the table by trying to save money on tech.
• How investing in the right tech can improve your client experience.
• How improving and paying for automation in your business can help you lower your team cost.

What if you aren't bad at making decisions? Maybe you just haven't created a standard decision-making process. In this episode, we talk about feeling safe enough to standardize your decision-making and holding standards in your business. I'm going to lay out the three most common decision-making phases I see entrepreneurs of all sizes go through regularly.

You'll learn:

• The three decision-making phases of entrepreneurship
• How to speed up the decision-making process.
• How working on feeling safe and trusting yourself will help you make better decisions.
• Why it feels scary to make decisions in your business.
• How we at AR&Co help our clients through the decision-making process more smoothly.

You can transform your business with a well-developed and robust process map. That's why at AR&Co, the first step we take to update your systems is to create a process map. In this episode, I walk you through exactly how we create your business' process map and why it is key to improving your client experience and team experience and reducing stress levels.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What a process map is and why it matters.
• The questions we ask you to develop your process map.
• How a process map can help you see the gaps in your current business.
• How we use the process map on a monthly basis as a Jefa de Technologia client.

In this week's Stories of Scaling, you will hear the story of a side-hustling photographer who's completely manual system was causing her way too much stress and preventing her from growing. You'll hear how we took her onboarding from a completely manual start-from-scratch process to a highly supportive automated workflow.  

"Your brain is not broken and you do not suck for not following up on emails; your tech is just not supporting you the right way."

In this episode, you will be able to: 

1. Understand how streamlining your CRM systems will help save you time and energy 
2. Improve client communication and experience by employing customizable email templates for routine exchanges. 
3. Increase your customer's life time value with a super high touch and supportive onboarding process.  

Resources:

This week's Story of Scaling is about a CEO who was ready to go from bringing in contractors to finally onboarding full-time team members. Before she could do that, though, she needed to make sure she had the systems in place to actually communicate and delegate effectively, because if she didn't, she ran the risk of becoming a micromanager and dropping the ball on her client delivery.

In this episode, you will learn the following:

1. How to strategically hire a full time team member without becoming a micromanager.

2. What processes should be implemented to ensure that any new hires are set up for success.

3. How can mapping out the ideal client journey, deliverables and timeline help reduce overwhelm and burnout.

This week's Story of Scaling is a real-time recap of how I am strategically bringing in new team members as my own agency is in a season of growth. A big mistake growing agencies make is hiring for the sake of hiring and taking advice on hiring without the right operational context. In this episode, I walk through how to avoid these common trappings with process mapping, gap analysis, and smooth onboarding.

You will learn:

1. Why hiring just to hire is not the answer when scaling an agency?

2. How can you strategically hire people to avoid creating more work for yourself?

3. How can process mapping help you identify who to hire and what tasks they should be in charge of?

Resources:

This week's Stories of Scaling is focused on a business and leadership coach who wanted to start a one-to-many offer but was bottlenecked by her manual onboarding process. I walk you through how my tech agnosticism was the key to using the systems that she already felt comfortable with to create a high-touch automated process that still felt true to her.

In this episode you will learn:

1. How to easily launch a new one-to-many offer, and how tech agnosticism supports my clients.

2. How to create a high-touch and automated system to streamline the onboarding process and save thousands of dollars.

3. How to use Air Table, Kajabi, and Flow Desk to create a custom CRM process that will scale with a business.

Resources:

This week I'm sharing with you my experience on the Netflix Documentary Get Smart With Money! I'll share how I got on it, how I was managing my money before, and how automating my financial systems changed the game for me.

In this episode, you will hear:

1. How I got chosen for Get Smart With Money. 

2. How automating my financial systems was the key to getting a handle on my money. 

3. How learning these systems for my personal life helps me understand your business systems. 

In this episode, you'll hear the story of when I worked with an agency owner using Google Drive to manage half a million dollars worth of deals. We experimented with different platforms and eventually found a tool that was robust and effective enough for them to use to manage their clients, invoicing, deadlines, and more. With the help of the systems, my client was able to become the CEO of their company and be in control of their business instead of being overwhelmed by the chaos. Listen to the episode to hear more about how we did it and how we can do the same for you.

"Create systems that will carry your business forward - step into the CEO role and truly scale!"

In this episode, you will learn about:

1. How this talent manager went from using spreadsheets to manage half a million dollars worth of deals to a system that allowed her to triple the number of accounts she was working on.

2. The systems enabled this agency owner to step into the role of CEO and take control of her business.

3. How agency owners use systems to reduce the hours spent in front of a computer and streamline communications.

Resources:

As a busy mom and business owner, I always struggled to find a system that worked for me. I tried color coding, carrying around a heavy agenda, and using multiple calendars and to-do list apps, but nothing seemed to stick. After plenty of trial and error, I finally found a system that worked for me. It simplified my life and gave me the support I needed to focus on my business and my family. That's what you'll hear about in this episode.

Now, I'm able to help other business owners find their own systems to streamline and simplify their lives, without ever pushing a system on you.

In this episode, you will learn:

1. What unique system did Ariana develop to organize her life as a busy mom and business owner?

2. How did Ariana use systems to replace dozens of notebooks and agendas, and how has it become her system for everything?

3. What strategies does Ariana use to help her clients find, create, and optimize a system that supports their brains and businesses?

Ready to EASE into your systems?