How to Increase the Company’s Capacity to Handle More Business Without Compromising Quality – In Just 7 Minutes with Alicia Butler Pierre

 Understand how you can still assure good quality and control with a high turnover and attrition Learn what is a business infrastructure and how it can make or break your business Know why specific tasks require specific people and not you Resources/Links: Want to start your journey of scaling your business without the chaos? Click here: smoothoperator.courses Summary Do you want to find out how you can cater to more clients without the stress and chaos? A business isn’t just a one-man job, so it doesn’t have to be all you! Having a solid structure and a loyal team is crucial to growing your business, but what happens if your company is unable to accommodate the high turnover? Alicia Butler Pierre is the Founder and CEO of Equilibria, Inc. and the bestselling author of Behind the Facade, the world’s first published book on business infrastructure. She hosts the weekly Business Infrastructure podcast, which ranks in the world’s top 2%. She’s an adjunct instructor of Lean Principles at Purdue University and Operations Management at Nichols College. She is a chemical engineer turned entrepreneur. She has advised, designed, and optimized processes for organizations including Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, The Library of Congress, and The Home Depot. Dive into how Alicia increases your company’s capacity to handle high turnover, sustain your business, and plan for higher scaling. Check out these episode highlights: 03:34 – Alicia’s ideal client: The ideal client for us is small businesses with less than 50 employees that have more demand than they can currently handle. That’s the ideal client for us. 03:52 – The problem she helps solve: Scale, but sustainable scale. So, the problem that we are solving is unsustainable, chaotic growth. What happens when your company is the beneficiary of great marketing and great sales campaigns and strategies? 05:02 – The symptoms of the problem: One of the number one tell-tale signs or symptoms, Tom, is the loss of employees or their staff or team members, whatever you refer to them as. So very high attrition, high turnover, increase in customer complaints. 06:21 – Clients’ common mistakes before consulting Alicia: Honestly, Tom, because of the nature of the work that I do, the number one mistake, or I’m not even sure if it’s fair to call it a mistake. Because these business owners and entrepreneurs, don’t know what they don’t know. 08:34 – Alicia’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): Using things as simple as so you like that one-pager? Well, I have something even more impressive for you, Tom. Something as simple as using stick figures, and index cards. 10:53 – Alicia’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Want to start your journey of scaling your business without the chaos? Click here! Smoothoperator.courses 11:33 – Q: What is business infrastructure, Alicia? A: So, business infrastructure is simply a system for how you link your people, your processes, like, you know, and a process could just be in the form of a checklist. Your people, your processes, and any tools or technologies that you’re using. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “Business infrastructure is simply a system for how you link your people, your processes, and any tools or technologies that you're using.” -Alicia Butler PierreClick To TweetTranscript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:10 Greetings, everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland beaming out to you from the very sunny Sunshine Coast in Australia. I’m joined today by Alicia Butler Pierre. Alicia, good day from Down Under. Welcome, and where are you hanging out? Alicia Butler Pierre 00:25 I am hanging out, Tom, in Atlanta, Georgia, which is in the south eastern part of the US. Tom Poland 00:31 Used to be home to the Braves, what is it now? Alicia Butler Pierre 00:34 It still is home to the Braves! Tom Poland 00:35 It’s still home to the Braves. Alicia Butler Pierre 00:37 Yes, it is. And home to Coca-Cola. Tom Poland 00:41 Right. Oh, that was the Cleveland Browns or something like that. Anyway, Coca-Cola. Yay! I’ve been to Atlanta. It’s a big sprawling- Alicia Butler Pierre 00:49 Oh, wow. You’ve been here? Yes, we’re growing by the day. Tom Poland 00:54 You know, I can’t say I knew the city well. You know, I got a taxi to the conference and back and forth. On one of those visits, unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to savor the highlights. But enough of where you live and where I live. Let’s get on to a very interesting subject. Folks, Alicia Butler Pierre is the founder and CEO of Equilibria. Now I stalked her around the internet, like for an hour yesterday. And my gosh, I’m impressed! Alicia has this, well, her thing is all about increasing your capacity without putting more stress on you and doing more in less time, becoming more efficient, becoming more effective, and getting more clients without compromising any quality. And she walks the talk. And not only is she process orientated, and figures out ways to do things more efficiently and more effectively, because you can do things more efficiently and stuff it up more effectively. She has this, I think quite extraordinary ability to shine the spotlight on her personality. And as I know she’s in the rumination just because but I’m still going to talk about it. So, wherever you find Alicia on the internet, you’ll see her personality shining through. So, she hasn’t templated her personality, it’s just the processes, right? I’m just knock-your-socks-off impressed. Alicia Butler Pierre 02:12 I love that. I love it, Tom. Thank you! Tom Poland 02:15 Yeah, and I know- we’re not doing an affiliate thing here, right? Alicia, you’re not paying any money to sell this? Alicia Butler Pierre 02:20 No, I’m not. But I’m thinking maybe I should. Maybe I should. We should go on a world tour together. Tom Poland 02:29 Yeah, no, I think you’re a star. And I think your star is in the center. So, let’s get going. Official bio, folks! Alicia is the bestselling author of “Behind the Facade”, which is the world’s first published book on business infrastructure. She hosts the weekly Business Infrastructure Podcast, which ranks in the world’s top 2%. She’s an adjunct instructor on Lean Principles at Purdue University, and Operations Management at Nichols College. She’s a chemical engineer, which means she’s got a hell of a brain on those shoulders, turned entrepreneur. She’s advised, designed, and optimized processes for organizations, including a few small businesses you may not have heard of, such as Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, The Library of Congress, and the Home Depot. Extraordinary! Alicia, thank you for being on the show. The title today, which we are going to hold your feet to the fire on delivering is, “How to Increase Your Company’s Capacity to Handle More Business Without Compromising Quality”. Our seven minutes start now. Question number one is who is your ideal client? Alicia Butler Pierre 03:34 The ideal client for us is small businesses with less than 50 employees that have more demand than they can currently handle. That’s the ideal client for us. Tom Poland 03:45 Right. And very well articulated. So, tell us about the problem you solve. I guess it’s something to do with scalability, is it? Alicia Butler Pierre 03:52 Absolutely, of course! Scale, but sustainable scale. So, the problem that we are solving is unsustainable, chaotic growth. What happens when your company is the beneficiary of great marketing and great sales campaigns and strategies? Well, now you might have a different type of problem. You go from not having enough customers to maybe having too many. And that’s when you might need that operational or business infrastructure in place. Tom Poland 04:19 You might! Yeah, never leave an entrepreneur in charge of their own idea unless you put the right people or processes in place, which is where you come in. So, question three has six minutes left. Question three, your target market is very growth orientated. You know, they’ve already achieved something pretty significant. It might be a mess, but they’ve got there through ideas and energy and vision and drive. What I’m saying is they’re going to be trying a bunch of things, but before we get to the mistakes they’ve made along the way, let’s talk about the symptoms that they’re going to be experiencing in their business. What’s happening? I mean, generally, there are going to be things falling through the cracks, but what else is going on in the business that would give them a heads up that they should be reaching out to someone like you? Alicia Butler Pierre 05:02 Sure, absolutely. One of the number one, tell-tale signs or symptoms, Tom, is the loss of employees or their staff or team members, whatever you refer to them as. So very high attrition, high turnover, increase in customer complaints. So many things are happening at the same time. It’s very difficult to keep up. And without the processes that you were just referencing, it’s very easy for important tasks to fall through the cracks. T...