From Essential to Optional with Lindsey Korell | DFS 394

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi and I have a new friend at Lindsay corral

lives in the Austin area, and guess what? I'm going to Austin

soon. We might actually meet in person, which makes it even

funner to do this podcast interview today. Lindsay is the

daily principal, and that's principal, because principals

are your pals, P, a, l, just like the principal in school.

She's an operations strategist and former coo who helps

successful business owners stop running their business like a

personal endurance sport. And I said, Oh, wow, I needed to talk

to you today. Today's talk is from essential to optional. I

can't wait to get into this. Thanks for being on the show.

Lindsey, oh, Jennifer,

I it is my pleasure. I am so excited to be

here, and we have so many things in common, and I can't believe

that you're actually coming down in the next couple months, and

we can meet in person and tell all sorts of good stories.

I know it's going to be great. I love people

criticize about I'm so sick of being on a zoom call, blah,

blah, blah. I have met some amazing people, and then when I

meet them in person, it's like, oh my gosh, we're already

friends because we spent so much time in this box together. And

the other thing is, I don't know who needs to hear this, but I'm

just throwing it out there. I call it being hair and makeup

camera ready. And I'm hair and makeup camera ready every single

day. And at the beginning of covid, I had friends say this

company called and wanted to have a zoom call, and I

couldn't, because I wasn't I was in my pajamas, and I was like,

Girl, I am hair and makeup, camera ready every single day.

It doesn't really matter what's going on. I get up and do my

hair makeup. I don't have to do a lot to my hair, because it's

just a hot mess. But like, that's just who I am. That's

what I do. And you should never turn down an opportunity because

you were too lazy to get whatever you consider ready,

ready for you might be a t shirt and you brush your teeth

perfect. That's your look, right, like so, whatever it is.

So, yeah, I don't know how that tangent came about, but I love

being because then you really can be friends. You meet in

person, and it's like a family reunion, a good one, not a bad.

I have

to say I am in my shorts most of the time,

because I am in Austin, Texas, but hopefully you will never

know that I'm just in my shorts. But I did see a great video of

Mr. Wonderful, you know, the finance, the Shark Tank, Mr.

Wonderful, and he is in a suit jacket and a shirt, and he is in

the wildest pajama pants. So it's not just us now.

See waist up. Nobody cares. I actually have on

sweat pants today. I'm in Oklahoma. I don't know how cold

it is today, but there's still snow in my yard, which is

irritating. It shouldn't stay that long, but, yeah, but from

the waist up, you know, I can hop on a call just about

anytime, so that's part of being a business owner, right? You

have to be ready, and you have to be prepared for the next

thing. So I love that you want me to go from, you know,

essential to optional. Because, like, I'm like, I don't want to

do that.

Well, tell me, did you build this business to

be the chief everything officer?

No, actually, I was on a, oh, my God. I've never

told this story. It's so cute. I there was some website, I can't

remember what it was, or some link to a platform, and you

could build a website for free. Like, everything was free. And

like, in minutes, I built this beautiful website, and in the

middle there was a circle for your picture, and I had a

picture, so I put a picture on it, and underneath it said I was

the chief entertaining officer. And I was like, I'll take it.

I'm the CEO, but I could be the chief entertaining officer, but,

yeah, we have to do all these things. And when you get

started, you're like, oh, I don't have any money. I can't

hire that. I can't hire that. And then what happens? I'm going

to let you tell us,

Oh, and we all start that way. I mean, we start

businesses because, usually, because we're really good at

something, and we want to give our gift to the rest of the

world. And we start doing that, and and most a lot of people are

really good at it, and they get going with that business, and

then they start hiring people. And they they see just the one

offs, what? What happens? Oh, I need an assistant. We all need

assistance. And then you hire your next person that can

probably do what you you're doing. So one operator hires

another operator might be a consultant and might be a w2,

employee, whatever it is. As you grow, you start piecing out into

the different departments of your business, and then one day,

you finally realize that, yes, you have a whole team. You might

even have five or six people, but they're still coming to you

for everything. And. And I get it. I love to be in control. I

love to be the center and the the power. But that is not why

you started your business. You started your business to have

time freedom and hopefully the money to do anything that you

wanted to do. So that's why you started, right?

Well, it is, and I I actually started, I was

in the federal government for many years. I was in housing,

and then housing in the federal government, and I always did

training for people like I just was always called in, I missed,

naturally, was good at it. And when I left, I had the

opportunity to leave early or relocate, and I was like, Oh,

I'm out the door. And one of the things I figured out very

quickly, actually, even before I left, leading up to the day I

left, was there's so many things as a leader that I wish I had

known. I wish they had taught me. And so my podcast actually

started out being new manager. Media managed right from the

start, because people didn't have the tools and skills. And

then it morphed as I, you know, went down this journey and now

destined for success, because now I can talk totally woo airy

fairy stuff, or let's get into strategic business things. And

they like, they marry together, which is like, how I do my

business now, but like, you don't know what to do. I

literally went to Chamber of Commerce event and tripped into

a woman and she introduced herself as a business coach. I

didn't even know what that was. I didn't even know that was a

thing. So then they're like, oh, hire this VA. Oh, hire this

person. And the next thing you know, it's like, I feel just

like I was at work. I told you what to do, and you do it. And

now what? Now I have to fire you. I never fired anybody in my

life. And now I've got a VA that won't do what I ask when I ask.

I do have a great one now, but it's that trial and error. It's

hard.

It is hard, and so many people don't think about

when they're first starting out, building the business in a

structured way. You know franchises. You buy a franchise

because it is completely structured, and it is built for

you to come in, put your money in it, hire the people, and then

hopefully step back out. That that is what a franchise is. It

has a process and it has a system, and if you follow it,

you will most likely succeed, and that's why people pay big

moneys for franchise. So when you're first starting your

business, yes, of course, it's all you, but as you start

growing, you need to think about the structure that you're going

to put into your business, so that you will have that

opportunity to either take more time for yourself, be with your

kids, if, God forbid, you're in the sandwich generation and your

parents need more time, you have that opportunity that you can do

that.

So hear people say, Oh, I'm an entrepreneur. I

can't be gone. I can't be gone. Well, if you're saying that an

80 hour a week job instead of their 40 hour a week, well, let

me

tell you, when I first started building this

business, and I have worked for several companies, startups to

big corporate, and I have always been in a position where people

come to me for for answers. So of course, I feel like I can run

my own business. Everybody comes to me for answers, but I did

build my business that way, and then I had a heart attack. And

when you have a heart attack, you stop. And if your business

isn't set up or structured to move on, move forward without

you, your business stops to and that's exactly what happened to

mind, because my I was in the hospital for two days staring at

that ceiling tile, wondering what the heck just happened, and

was my life or my business worth the 80 hours a week that I was

putting in? That answer is no, absolutely not. That's a hard

stop. No, it's not worth it. You know, when God taps you on the

shoulder and says, slow down, it's time to slow down. So it's

it helped me solidify that what I'm doing for business owners is

the right path, because I no longer work 6050, hours a week,

there's it's not good for me and it's not good for my business.

So I started putting structures into place, delegating stuff,

and when I delegate, I actually give the authority to people to

do, do the tasks that I've given him to. Because if you delegate,

and you don't give authority, you're you pretty much just gave

yourself another task, because that person is just going to

come back to you to make sure that they've done it right again

and again and again. Yeah, I was, I was in a

position, and that helped solidify. My choice to leave. I

had a boss, and she'd give me something, and I'd get started,

and she was right in the hot middle of it, and it was like,

Lady, I have been here way longer than you. I'm pretty sure

how to do and it makes it really hard, but you have to, and you

have to let them, I'm going to say it's a little bit of trial

and error, but you have to give it to him and give the

authority. But we all have those moments. And fortunately, I did

not have that moment of a actual physical heart attack like you

did, which, thank goodness, you recovered. But you have that

moment of, what do I want this to be? And years ago, a coach

said, if you want to be off Mondays and Fridays, you need to

start building your business with you being off Mondays and

Fridays. And I can remember thinking, Yeah, I'm going to do

that. Yeah, I'm going to do that. I never did that. And the

next thing I knew, I was working till five and six on a Friday

afternoon, and I was like, I left my career that I have for

many years, so I can leave early every Friday. This is stupid.

And so now nobody can get on my calendar on a Monday or Friday

unless I specifically put them on it. But that's one of those

structures, those boundaries that you have to put in place.

What do you want your business to look like? I'm I'm guessing

that's part of your strategy is, why do you like this?

What do you want and are did you build this

business to be added 60 hours a week? I didn't. I did not,

absolutely I didn't do that. So it's like we look at, I look at,

when I come into businesses, I look at, you know, where are the

dependencies? Where does this business depend on you? Do do

you have to be the final decision maker? Are you the only

person that talks to clients? Or are your employees start with

the clients and they send them to you to finish it off, to do

the final sale? Are you the closer? Or are you like me? I

love numbers, I love finance and accounting, and I keep those

pieces for myself because they're fun. I love the first

part. You know, we're all guilty of that. We find the things that

we really love to do, and we keep them. We keep them to

ourselves. We might not even write them down. You know, I'm

going to ask, do you have SOPs, standard operating procedures.

Oh, that's no saw it in your face.

Ask me that question.

You know the standard operating procedures

are a pain, painful to write. Yes, I know. But with AI,

they're getting easier and easier to write, and the whole

point is to actually have them available to the person that

needs to do that task if, for some reason, you can't do it, or

if you're bringing on a new person, you can train them up

faster. If you can hire and it's so easy with AI right now, you

don't even have to do the old painful process that we used to

have to do, where you wrote down every single thing that you did.

I was asked I worked for the federal

government, and I was asked to go to Washington, DC for the

summer to work on this project. And I was like, No, I'm not

doing that. No, it's summer. No, I go late. No, I'm not doing

that. Which, of course, I did do it like, right? You can't really

say no. You just pretend say no. And we had funding, and there

was it come to I mean, like, I kind of knew this, but then when

I got in the middle of it, I really knew it. There was one

person in the entire country who knew how to process funds, to

get them when they came from the Treasury to HUD and then get

out. She had a team, and each person on the team had one

piece, but she was the only one who had the overall what you do,

like how this works. And I was there four solid weeks working

with a brand new team who didn't know any more than I did to

figure out how to get the first little block of money moved to

the right place. And then once we did that, then it moved very

quickly, and I was able to accomplish the goal and

whatever. But like at the very end, I'm talking to one of my

bosses, and I was like, Oh my God, this was the hardest summer

of my life. And she said, why? And I said, nobody knew how to

do this. And she goes, Jennifer, we brought you in all the way

from Oklahoma City, because you know it. And I went, No, I knew

how to use it when it got to my level, but I didn't know how to

do it from that level to get it down to my level. And she was

really and I said, Yes, that one person was the only person in

the entire country how to do it. So you we did. And, I mean, the

goal was I had to have written instructions screenshots, so

that when I left, it would still go and I'm I'm just assuming

somebody took my screenshotted 70 page document and made it

look prettier. But there, I mean, the process is the same

unless I did. Computers. It happens in every small business,

everyone like and that was the federal government and it was

going on. So you imagine when you get down, you know, to the

microcosm of us, right?

And when you hire as a small business owner,

it's like, okay, I don't want to do accounting anymore, so you

hire an accountant, or I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah,

and that's and you, and you hire that person, and you kind of

silo them when you first, when you first hire them, because

you're not thinking about, how does this structure all build

together? So it's building that structure together, making sure

you have SOPs in place, and then hopefully, you know you're the

dependence on you won't compound quietly, because when when

everything is siloed, or when you're not paying attention to

how you build it, that pressure builds quietly, and it will keep

you trapped in your business if you don't actually take the

steps to put your structure in place. So we all know how to do

it. Well, if you don't know how to do it, I can help you with

it, but it's if you're starting a new if you're starting a new

business. Now, great, start putting that structure into

place. Now you can think about where you want to be in two

years, five years, 10 years, the Monday and Friday off, and start

putting that structure into place. I think the biggest thing

is, is let people, if you hire people, let them make decisions

and give them the authority to do it. And I would ask, if

you're a business owner, ask yourself if that person that you

just delegated to, that you gave the authority to, if they screw

up, what is the worst thing that could happen, and what are you

going to do? How are you going to react to it?

I love this, and

I kept receiving guidance because I needed help, like I

was not getting some things done. I do. I did start with a

bookkeeper, CPA immediately, because I don't want to do that.

Could I do it? Probably do I want to, absolutely not. So I

just send it all to them, let them figure it out, because I

don't want to. That is not my forte, but I would hire VAs to

help with some of I'm going to call them clerical type tasks. I

put together my social media post, put together the emails,

get them set up in systems, and things kept not going well. And

one of my friends, slash mentors, said, Well, you need to

go on to zoom and record yourself doing the task so they

have something to look at. And then you're building your

library of training. And that sounded great. And I looked at

her, and I went, I have go high level. I don't know how to do

it. Like I don't know how to do it. And the problem is, I'm, I

mean, I can do a lot, don't get me wrong, I can do a lot and go

high level, but then there's this one tipping point of the

automations, of getting everything connected and the

right triggers that I fall off a cliff, and I'm like, Oh, screw

it. I can't do this. But I kept hiring these VAs and the and,

and they're like, Oh yeah, I can do it. And they couldn't, but

they were the lower price. And I met a woman online briefly, and

I was like, do you do VA work? And she was like, yes. And after

a couple of minutes, I reached out and said, Okay, how do I

hire you? What do you charge? How do I make this happen? And

she was substantially higher than in cost than like the

foreign VAs in the Philippines or Brazil or wherever, if you

know how to train those people do it good like yes, I said I

need to send this email. Here it is. Here's the link to it in the

Google Doc. And I wanted to go this date, blah, blah, blah. It

was perfect and beautiful. Was she more expensive? Yes, did she

spend substantially less time doing the work. Yes, yes. Like,

when I get her invoices, I feel almost a little guilty, because

I'm like, holy crap, holy like, I spent way more than that on

these VAs that couldn't get it done. And let's be clear, it was

my fault. I didn't know how to do a video to show them how to

use the platform, like, because that was not my deal. So I think

it's very important just to reiterate your point. Pick the

things you don't want to do at all, and then find the

appropriate person to get that done for you.

And in this digital economy, you can find

that person, and you can find the level that you want it to

pay. You can find them down the street in Oklahoma. You can find

them in the Philippines. They are out there, and there are so

many small business owner groups. Ask in your groups, I

will guarantee you somebody in there has an excellent VA that.

That they will be happy to refer to for you too, unless, of

course, that is their secret sauce, and then maybe not,

like if they're a full time permanent employee,

maybe not, but yeah, I love that. So as I'm okay, let, let's

say I'm going to start over. I don't want to start over, but

Lindsay, let's say I want to start over. And I've got my

magic I want to bring to the world, whether I'm a speaker, a

trainer, an author, whatever it is that I want to share with the

world. Do you have a recommendation of like, what

that foundational piece would be that I really need to consider

so that I can stay in my lane and I can just be my magical

self, and I don't have to do these other things.

I work mostly with companies that have already

been in business for seven to 10 years, and they normally have

five to 1520 employees, and work with the owner to identify what

their dependencies are. And if you're just starting out, I

think this would be great. I have a quiz that you can see

where your dependencies are. It's takes about three minutes.

It's eight questions. It at, it's at independent snapshot.com

but it'll kind of give you the high level areas of where the

big dependencies are. You can start there and look at, oh, do

I need? What is my structure? What is my business structure?

Where do I want to be? Let's say one year from now, two years

from now, I'm not working Mondays. I'm not working

Fridays. Or if I'm working Friday, it's, you know, eight to

12, and then I'm off. So you already know what you're going

to do. You can structure your business within those three and

a half days of you know, where's your sales, where's your

marketing, what are you what is your first hire going to do?

Each company is a little bit different depending on what the

skills of the business owner are. So your first hire is going

to have skills that will complement yours, that will be

different than yours, but will complement what's the business

is doing. I love that. So your structure is there. You can

easily put that structure in place and start, if you can

start from the beginning, doing your processes and your

procedures, they'll change. Of course, they'll change. Every

once you have doubt, of course they're going to change again.

But that way, if you think, oh my gosh, I have this opportunity

for me to focus on and if I could hire somebody immediately,

you already have that process that you can hand them so it's

already there. You don't have to spend that much more time doing

it.

Then I can decide, is this essential, that

I'm the only one that does this, or is it optional that that I do

it?

Yeah. And if we take the long term view, if

you're to the point where you're finally selling your company,

the buyers that are looking at your company are going to look

at how much time you spend in your company, and if you are the

key person in your company, the value of your company has just

gone down significantly. So I love to think about like the end

in mind, if I'm thinking, I'm going to build this with 1015,

employees that I and I want to sell it, I cannot be the

linchpin. I may be the the name or the face, but I cannot be the

one that is doing all the work, or that means my business isn't

worth that much in the end.

And so when you do, how do people find you like

i Let's I'm never going to have that many employees, because

that's like a lot, but a lot of people want that like that is

their vision, and we've got to stay within our vision, right?

Or it's not going to work very well. So I've got those 10

employees, and now I'm like, Ooh, what if I want to leave? I

have, I have a friend who actually helps companies get

ready to sell, and she likes to go in five years ahead of time,

which, I mean, that's a beautiful niche. One of my

favorite restaurants that have been around since I was in

college, shut down last summer. They were like, we're tired, we

want to retire. And it was like, Holy crap, you had a beautiful

location and a lovely menu, and the college kids liked you, and

the older people, after they're out of college, still go back,

and they literally just shut the doors because they had no future

plan. So I think one of the things I would push out to the

audience is, when you decide you don't want to do this anymore,

are you okay with just closing the doors? That's a lot of work.

And if you don't want to just close the doors again, now, you

need to make it profitable so that you can sell it and make it

desirable

to somebody, it needs to have a process. It

needs to have a plan. Again, that's why franchises sell so

easily, and that's why they're so popular, because they have a

plan. You know, step by step by step, what you're going to do to

make money, and if you can franchise your business so that

you have the process. And the structure in there that makes

you more sellable, saleable. And to your friend's point, you

know, minimum two years, you're going to need to make sure your

business is saleable. Five That's That's great. That's a

great place to start. And sometimes you don't have five

years to sell I ran into a business where it was a husband

and wife, and they had two contractors, and the husband got

sick. And when the husband and wife team runs the base of the

business, the finance and the sales part, and you have

contractors doing the work, there has to be a lot of

structure there so that you can hand it off, so that both people

can leave at the same time. Unfortunately, they didn't have

the structure, and their business just wasn't worth that

much because they needed to sell within six months.

And I've heard on a lot of those husband and

wife couples, one of them passes away, and the other one doesn't

know all the ins and outs, and I'll just throw out there the

show land man Dru watching that with Billy Bob Thornton, when

Demi Moore's husband John ham dies, a spoiler alert, that was

what happens. Like she doesn't know anything about the

business. She doesn't know what the financial pieces are, and

then she steps in and decides she's going to run this

business. And it's like, Wait, that's not right, my husband's a

realtor, and he's he, he has a broker, but his business is his

own, and, God forbid, something would have happened to him. I'm

going to be like, calling everybody, saying, Okay, you

need to find another realtor. Like he's I'm not doing it like

we're not in each other's businesses. I probably should

have that conversation with him. What are you going to do?

Yeah, what? And what does he want to do? What?

What is his vision for it? Because at least Demi Moore

Cammy had a couple lawyers and a president and people that

already knew how to run that company. She She at the very

least had that you are going to have a hard time stepping in to

be the broker, yeah,

because I don't want to. I mean, let's be clear.

I was in housing for 30 years. I don't want to go into real

estate like I don't want to do that. But yeah, in mind,

somebody asked me, What are you going to do with your business?

I do leadership development, but I'm also an energy healer and a

high performance coach, and I'm like, it's really just me, and

I'm happy with it being me, and I don't want it bigger than me.

And when I decide I'm done, I will just, you know, as my

clients get to the end of the term of their contracts, I will

just be, I'm not renewing. Let me refer you to somebody else.

Because I don't. I don't need it to be a legacy or to go on,

like, I'm not going to train people and certify people,

because that's what I would have to do to keep my business going.

You know, I don't. I don't need that. I can refer people out.

Maybe that would be selling it. I'm going to refer you all my

clients, you know, like, like, that could be my path.

You could do that. And if, if you have an

online program that that you created, maybe you could even

sell that.

Ah, that. Oh, so let me write that down in my

list of notes. So online, per i do have a few online programs,

and let's be fair, if they're they're running

and they're making money, you can continue to run an online

program, even even with an assistant.

Well, I mean, I love this, because we're going

to be together in Austin soon. Yes, we are. We can. We can dive

into what's personally important to me. Yes, we can. That'll be

fun. It's all about me. It's all about me. So okay, if I have a

small business up to 20 employees, and I'm listening to

this episode going, Holy crap, holy like I'm doing way more

than I should, like I am paying these people and what this may

not be the structure I want and they want to reach out to you,

Lindsay, and say, Can we have a conversation? How does that?

What does that look like? How can we facilitate that?

I'm at my website is daily principle, as

we talked about your pal, principal.com. You can reach me

there. You can take the independent snapshot, which is

independent snapshot.com. That will also give you just a real

quick, down and dirty about where your dependencies are, and

if you are serious about finding what your dependencies are,

right at this point in time, I have a very assessment called

the owner, Independence readiness assessment, and that

is 26 pieces, and it'll take a deep dive into where you are

most dependent, and then it'll give your top three, top three

ways or paths to start working on those dependencies, so you

can start stepping out of your business. But that's all at

daily principle.com.

I love that daily principle, and we were

joking at the beginning. Me this. I was like, Do you know

how you like, really know how to spell principal, P, A L versus

P, L, E, because I learn in elementary school, your

principal is your pal, P, A L and a principal is not a

principal,

and I am your pal in structure, because I

build by structure, not by sacrifice.

Oh, that's like a tagline, build by structure,

not by sacrifice. I love that well. And I literally have had

this conversation with a couple of people about, what are you

going to do when you decide that you want to be, like, officially

retired, retired. And it was like, Oh my gosh, what am I

going to do? Like, what am I going to do with my team? So I

have somebody I'm going to be referring to you, like, as soon

as we hang up. So, like, I

would love to talk to them, because, yes, now

is the time to think about it. There. There are a lot of people

out there that are thinking about it. It's time well, and

you, you put your blood, sweat and tears, and

I will say I did have a year where I cried a lot because I

was working with a coach, and the word just became a complete

trigger word for me. She'd say, just do this. Then that will

happen. Just do that. And I spent hours and hours and hours

just doing this and just doing that. And guess what happened?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. And I was like, oh my god, like this

just is like weighing me down. So I finally got over that

hurdle and that coach and like you put your blood, sweat and

tears and your heart and soul into your business so you should

be able to enjoy the freedom. Because most of us, who are

entrepreneurs, we went in this for the freedom not to have

another w2 type job where we're working 80 hours a week instead

of 20 or 30.

It and it does. It will wear you down if you're

working 6070 hours a week as you get older, that could lead to

things that you don't want to think about, like tap on the

shoulder and small heart attack.

You're going to be laying in that hospital,

staring at that ceiling, counting those dots in that in

that scene. Do it? You know, if anything else,

put some structure in your business so you have more space

for your health.

Oh, yeah, because that, I mean, that's the

one thing we do have more control over. We pretend we

don't, but we have way more control over that than we think.

Yes, we do. Oh gosh, Lindsey, this has been delightful getting

to know you. So as we wrap up any final words for our

audience. Well, as

I said before, please jump in and take that

independent snapshot that will give you a quick taste of where

you are super dependent in your business, and that is

independent snapshot, com. And I am Lindsay Carell with the daily

principle, and I look forward to speaking to you.

I'm Jennifer Takagi with destin for success,

and I look forward to connecting with you soon. Thanks, Jennifer.

Thank you.