STP 40 | Scaling Your Therapy Practice with Automation and Delegation, with Brook Borup
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[00:00:00] James Marland: Hello listeners, this is James Marland, host of the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is the show where we help you take intentional steps towards sustainable growth. I'm really happy to have on the episode today Brooke Burrup. She's a automation and delegation expert and She's going to teach us some things about onboarding a new VA and how to train things and, her webpage is about cloning yourself.
[00:00:38] James Marland: as you think about wanting to do more, you run out of time, you run out of time to do all the things and wear all the hats and you just can't cram anything more in. But you can delegate, you can automate, and you can create some time for yourself by giving away the things you're not good at or the things you don't like to do.
[00:01:01] James Marland: I really hope you enjoy this episode and that you take, if you're feeling frustrated with your time, if you're feeling stuff, frustrated with all the hats you wear and you're just trying to figure out how to get get the important things done that only you can do, because as a business owner, there are things that you can do.
[00:01:19] James Marland: You can do pretty much. Everything in your business at some level, but should you be doing everything in your business? Are you the captain of the ship? Or do you find yourself going down to the the engine and checking the oil or shoveling coal into the furnace if you're on a coal ship? You know, are you captain?
[00:01:42] James Marland: Are you guiding your ship? Are you directing your ship? Or you're doing some of the things that you could do, but you can hire, pay, or delegate to somebody else. I hope you enjoy the episode. We're coming up soon. One or two episodes. We have one more episode left of Scaling for Every Practice Season 1.
[00:02:03] James Marland: And then we're going to move into Season 2. Where it's going to be a panel episode. We've recorded our first episode. That was a hoot. Just all the the people we had Don and Don from Soul Care for Therapists. We had Steve Bissot. From Find Your Way Through Therapy, or Finding Your Way Through Therapy, and of course, Lisa Mustard she is the, the therapy show with Lisa Mustard.
[00:02:35] James Marland: We have those podcast guests, and we're gonna talk about marketing your therapy practice. For the next several episodes the next season, 12, 12 episodes on marketing. Our first one's going to be on SEO and we have a special guest. That you know, you're just gonna have to wait to find out who that is.
[00:02:52] James Marland: But all the, all the members are from the Psycraft Network and it's just a wonderful network to belong to, to get some encouragement, support, ideas, and just to tell stories, just to tell. Where we're what we've done where we're going and what how we're trying to scale our own businesses and go forward So I think you're really gonna enjoy that that's gonna be in a week or two I have one more episode to record and then we're gonna move on to season two Hope you join us for that.
[00:03:24] James Marland: If you have any questions about marketing or if you want us to dive deeper into a, a topic, you know, we're going to cover SEO in the first one, but if questions came up from that, or if you want us to have some followup questions, you know, we record every Monday at 2 PM. So, if you are, if you get your question in before that, I'll bring it to the panel and be happy to do that.
[00:03:48] James Marland: The 2nd episode in season 2 is going to be on lead magnets and adding value before making a sale. So if you have questions on lead magnets, please get that into me just get it into me. We'll probably be recording by the time this episode launches, but I can do the follow up questions in a future episode.
[00:04:08] James Marland: We'd love to have some audience participation. Okay. Well, now we're going to go into our, our main episode. Scaling your therapy practice with automation and delegation featuring Brooke Burup. Please take these things to heart this is a wonderful episode that's going to help you free up time and do the things that only you The business owner can do.
[00:04:29] James Marland: All right on with the show
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[00:04:32] James Marland: Hello. This is James Marland with the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is the show where we ask you to take small steps towards big growth. This week I have a special guest, Brooke Borup. Welcome to the show, Brooke.
[00:04:52] Brook Borup: Thanks for having me, James. Glad to be here.
[00:04:54] James Marland: And I'm going to let her introduce herself in just a second, but I saw her on in on the Internet like you do. And she was talking about automations and assistance and getting things done quicker. And I'm like, that is exactly up our alley on this show to help therapists get their work done quicker. So, Brooke, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?
[00:05:19] Brook Borup: Sure. So, of course, like you said, my name is Brooke Borup and I own a company called My Clone Solution. We have been in business now for 10 years and we've been helping small business owners scale. Exit all of the things that you need to do to make your business successful. And that includes automation and delegation and using the tools that are available to you to make sure that you're not doing the redundant tasks that something else can do for you.
[00:05:45] Brook Borup: So I'm excited to be able to talk about that today.
[00:05:48] James Marland: Awesome. That that's, that's incredible because time is a, is a precious resource for everyone and you can't recreate it or duplicate it, but you can. Focus your energies on things that only you can do. And so how do you, how do you find that time? Well, you get some support.
[00:06:07] James Marland: So we'll be talking, talking about that in just a little bit. Let's start with a tool tip or tech of the week. I have a, I'll start. And my tip is get, get good equipment. I don't know if that's a great way to say it, but have the right equipment for the job. Recently I keep running out of a hard drive space because I do video and audio and all this.
[00:06:30] James Marland: Social media stuff. And so my, my teeny hard drive, well, teeny it's like 500 gigabytes, which when I was a teenager was like 500 gigabytes, you don't need that much. It's too much, but now it's like tiny. And so on prime day, which was just a couple of weeks ago. Now I bought a new hard drive for my computer, so now I won't have to uninstall things and I'll be able to just download things and it will take less time and it's just a simple.
[00:06:59] James Marland: You know, it costs maybe a hundred dollars, but it's gonna be the right tool for the job. And there's probably hundreds of those examples, like the right tool for the job. I know I once did a my, my dad was trying to teach me to do breaks and something broke inside the break thing. And we didn't have the right tool.
[00:07:20] James Marland: It was something about a spring. And we, we, we, we struggled with it for like two hours and then eventually we drove to the store 15 minutes away, drove back, bam, had the right tool and fixed it right away. So that's the same thing for business have the right tool. So that's my tip of the week. Brooke, do you got a tip?
[00:07:42] Brook Borup: Always. So I love your tip because having the right tool can make or break everything. And especially for those of us who trade time for money that is a huge thing. So tip of the week from me is going to go along with that for you. So if you are struggling with not having enough time, start Even when you're not with clients, start writing down everything you do in 15 minute, minute increments, as if you were with a client.
[00:08:14] Brook Borup: Then you'll know exactly what you do during your day, during your week, during your month, so that you can start to learn to delegate it.
[00:08:24] James Marland: That's a great tip, because if you don't know where your time is going, it just goes away. There was a, I went through a budgeting class like that. And they're like, Oh, even if no matter what you spend, write it down, because you would be surprised how much money goes to like sodas and candy bars and just things at the, at the grocery store that you didn't even know you were buying.
[00:08:51] James Marland: And it's the same for time. What are you doing. You know, I know I use social media a lot, but every time I do something on social media, am I spending extra time, you know, just five minutes here, five minutes there, checking up on things, scrolling through things over the course of a day, that's 30 minutes over the course of a week, you know, that's two and a half hours.
[00:09:13] James Marland: Did I really want to spend my time there? So yeah information is very powerful. So I love that tip. Okay. So, we're going to get into our topic, which is finding that time, you know, and the, the, we're going to start with automation and then I'll have some other questions for Brooke, but. What, what really got me interested was this automation, like doing things in a way that you, you personally, you set it up once or you set it up and you check on it and it just continues to produce results.
[00:09:46] James Marland: And so, Brooke, you, you said you do that in your company. So let's, let's start there. What what is a way you can help people with automation in their
[00:09:55] Brook Borup: small business? Sure. So it really starts with what we were just talking about and make and knowing what it is that you do. The, when you ask people what they need in their business, any single day, they're like more clients, right?
[00:10:09] Brook Borup: Usually it's more clients, right? That's the thing. Unless of course you are so busy that you don't have any more time. Then the answer is more time. Right. Because we're all trading time for money in some way, shape or form. So depending on where you are at in your business, either you don't have enough time or you don't have enough clients, or maybe it's both.
[00:10:30] Brook Borup: And if it's both, then we really have to work on it. So, act as a personal trainer to yourself, right. And, you know, anytime you've ever gone to do some sort of. Person or training something right there. Like you need to write down everything that goes into your mouth, right? Oh, yeah, the whole thing. So you need to have that person first.
[00:10:51] Brook Borup: Now, some of my clients can't do it for themselves. So they hire me to be their personal trainer, right? I make them do it. Just so that we can get that that week long. I want you to do. You know, 10 days of it is so that we know where your time is going. So we know what's priority for you. Right. And what we need to be able to do or have someone else do for you.
[00:11:15] Brook Borup: Or better yet, put automation in place to do that. When we're working with our clients and we go through that whole list that's number one, because we want to know where your time is going. But number two is we want to optimize how your practice runs, right? So how much of your time is spent on marketing?
[00:11:35] Brook Borup: Can we automate those things, right? That's number one. Then how much time is spent on onboarding clients, right? That's a whole process. Every time you get a new client, there's a, there's a set of things that need to be accomplished.
[00:11:50] James Marland: Definitely procedures and forms and payment forms and release forms and it's a process.
[00:11:59] Brook Borup: It is a process. Well, and then after every session, you had your notes and you have, you know, all of the stuff that you do in your practice to make your practice practice successful, right? You are unique in some way, shape or form, or else you wouldn't be getting clients. So we want to make sure that we look at that process that makes you unique and makes people keep coming back to you so that that can be streamlined.
[00:12:28] Brook Borup: Then the loyalty piece, are people referring people to you? Are they giving you ratings on whatever platforms you want to be rated on so that other people find you to help in the marketing circle, right? So from there, we say, okay. Let's I'm going to interview you and we're going to go through all of these pieces in your business and we're going to write it all down as if.
[00:12:51] Brook Borup: We were bringing in somebody new, and then I'm going to go through and poke holes in it and say, Well, what happens when somebody cancels and doesn't rebook? Do you have a process for that? You know, what happens when somebody no shows or what happens when somebody has to be Baker acted, right? That's a whole nother thing.
[00:13:11] Brook Borup: So all of the things that go into your practice, we want to. Document so that we can come up with a system where all you have to do is put in a tag or put in a word into your into your software and it automatically starts other stuff. Now, this doesn't just have to be communication externally to the client, but it's also tasks and things that happen internally.
[00:13:38] Brook Borup: So as we're planning for automation, we're also planning for delegation. So from day one, if you don't have someone, we're delegating everything to you, but as you, as you find, all right, I have. 50 tasks over the course of the month or 10 tasks a day that get delegated to the marketing role of me, right?
[00:14:03] Brook Borup: Now I know how much time that should be taking, what needs to be done, because I'm doing it all myself right now. Now I can actually have a job description of what that marketing role is. So I can hire someone to do that marketing role for me and take that all away. Yes.
[00:14:19] James Marland: And without the written documentation that that delegation pieces is sales difficult.
[00:14:29] James Marland: So I wanted to let's I'll get back to the delegation. Just a second. You talked about some automation and some systems. Do you do you put things in like a project management board you use like Monday or ClickUp or Trello? How do you Zapier like what are the programs that you're throwing this into?
[00:14:48] Brook Borup: It really depends on the individual business.
[00:14:52] Brook Borup: and the owner and if they have a team already. So yes, I'm a click up girl. I love for project management. We use that as an agency. As far as CRMs go, active campaign and go high level are my go tos for CRMs. And those really, like I said, I will never say you must use X. I always have a conversation with people to make sure that what I'm suggesting fits into their business structure already.
[00:15:23] Brook Borup: That could be based on what web, what type of a website you have. And how it integrates what other softwares you're using. I typically will, the very first, one of the first questions that I ask a new client is list all of your softwares that you're currently paying for and when they're due and how much you're paying.
[00:15:45] Brook Borup: In most cases, I will find that there are so many redundancies that I will pay for my first, first month of service, just in taking away software and the costs of those. So I, you know, I have from as little as a 300 a month savings. And I had one client, a 2, 500 per month savings because she had gone through like six different coaching programs.
[00:16:12] Brook Borup: Every single one of them said, you must have this service in order to be in our coaching program. And so she had like seven CRMs and she wasn't using any of them effectively. Yeah,
[00:16:24] James Marland: I mean, that's easy to do. I mean, you think, Oh, how could that happen? Well, it happens because you buy things and you start using it and it has a piece of something you want.
[00:16:35] James Marland: And it kind of just sits there. Yeah, I can definitely see that. I, I moved from ClickUp to Trello just because Trello is a little easier for me. ClickUp was, ClickUp, that's one of my big failures. I want to use ClickUp because it is so awesome. But it was also, I was getting lost in the lists, I guess, and it was easier for me to keep track of all my tasks on a Trello board than a ClickUp board.
[00:17:03] James Marland: So I, that's why I moved back to Trello. So just to
[00:17:07] Brook Borup: let you know, and all of your folks know better in that same position, a click up has a CanBan style view. So if you like the ease and the view of using click up in the In the stages columns. Yeah. Yep. You can do the exact same thing inside of Click Up.
[00:17:25] Brook Borup: You just need to use CanBan versus list.
[00:17:29] James Marland: Don't don't try to like, I got a system that's working. I don't want to be swayed to change everything right now. I have several clients on Trello. We're going to stick with Trello, but someday I might go back to ClickUp just because it was, I thought it was a superior product.
[00:17:45] James Marland: It just was harder to stick with it because I got confused a little bit and they never really got confused with Trello. So
[00:17:53] Brook Borup: anyways, all CRMs and project management systems, they are really, they're like the human brain, right? We only use 10 percent of the human brain. And as most people are using these different softwares, no matter what they're paying for them.
[00:18:07] Brook Borup: They're really only using about 10 percent only the amount that somebody taught them to do. And I, but they're using 10 percent of this one and 10 percent of this one and 10 percent of this one, where if one software can do all of that. Still leave room for growth. And that is my big caveat because there are a lot of all in one softwares out in the world.
[00:18:32] Brook Borup: And unfortunately, all in one doesn't mean they do all in one. Well, so, I always make sure that if I'm going to use a software that considers itself an all in one, that it plays well in the sandbox and it works with Zapier or other integrating tools so that I make sure that if A client says to me, I want to be able to do this now and that all in one software can't do it.
[00:18:58] Brook Borup: I can do it by integrating another product. I hate telling people no, and I hate wasting people's money. I don't like, you know, going through and having a big build and then have them never use it. So I want to make sure that they're comfortable and it is an uncomfortable. process because it's a lot of hard work.
[00:19:16] Brook Borup: You have to do a lot of thinking. You have to do a lot of planning and people aren't necessarily hardwired to do that. So that's where I spend the majority of my time is literally walking people through every step in their business as if they Aren't going to be in their business tomorrow. Right. And that's my entire goal is to make your business duplicatable.
[00:19:38] Brook Borup: It makes it scalable and it makes it exitable, right? So if at some point you wanted to sell your practice, I want all the work that we've done to make your practice more valuable. So you could literally hand it over to someone else or. Bring on an associate that could then start taking over your clients or building their own business under yours.
[00:20:00] Brook Borup: So your business has a higher valuation. So your exit strategy is easier with a better payoff at the end. Great.
[00:20:08] James Marland: So one, one of that is the writing out the SO, well, standard operating procedures of the documents. Just briefly can you talk about the importance of that and how do you, how do you like record them and where do you store them?
[00:20:21] James Marland: How do people access them? How do you update them? That's a lot of questions, but just talk about your your debt that that writing out the process process.
[00:20:32] Brook Borup: So, because I do this kind of in tandem with automation, I like to build in all of the tasks and all of the redundancies into the automation.
[00:20:43] Brook Borup: So, for instance, with onboarding, right? Onboarding a new client, you have intake forms. Those forms can be put into a software Preferably inside of whatever it is that you're using, and then those forms can be signed, they can be paid, they can have all of the different things. Well then someone has to go through and check those, right?
[00:21:02] Brook Borup: Because software can't always check it for you. Sometimes it can, sometimes you need humans, and that's where we put in a task that says, Hey, this person has completed all of these forms. Please go and check them to make sure that we have everything we need. And we can actually do a video. We can use a plug in like Scribe where you go through and you record the video and then it actually does it in screenshot.
[00:21:31] Brook Borup: And and for the people who want to read, right? So you have the people who are visual, who want video, you have the people who want to read. So we have both of those and we have software that can take care of that. Scribe is
[00:21:42] James Marland: awesome, by the way, if you haven't tried it out. It is, it is perfect for recording something that you're doing on the computer.
[00:21:50] James Marland: I, I like it. I like it a lot.
[00:21:53] Brook Borup: Well, and we use those in tandem. So you can literally record with something like zoom or loom or any of the other ones that are out there. So you record the video, you do scribe at the same time. So when you come out on the other side, You have both the written and the visual, and then we take those and put those in our preferred storage platform.
[00:22:13] Brook Borup: So, with whether that's a Google Drive or a Dropbox, Dropbox is HIPAA compliant. Google Drive Business is also HIPAA compliant. And then wherever it is that you are going to store your stuff, we create a file structure so it has it all there. And then the tasks actually link to the training. So if you were to bring on a staff member in your office to answer the phone or a virtual assistant that is going to do a set number of things for you, you can, we role based delegate.
[00:22:47] Brook Borup: So like this is an admin task. So it would be admin at your domain. com and then marketing at your domain. com. So right now, admin at goes to you. But when you get. Enough stuff put together. Like I was saying, you now have a job description. And so the admin is going to do these things. When admin comes on, they then get delegated that email address.
[00:23:10] Brook Borup: All the training is already done. All they have to do is get the task in the CRM and then watch the video or read the document and do the task, right? So instead of spending three to six weeks training someone to find out this isn't going to work or this is great you don't have to do that anymore.
[00:23:31] Brook Borup: You don't have to worry about turnover because You already have all of the training already there. Someone just has to come in and watch the overview video of how to use your CRM and all of the tasks come to them every day. And then they're opened or free time. There's always an I wish list, right? We all have those I wish lists.
[00:23:53] Brook Borup: And so there's like, my team has that too. We have a list that's an I wish list. So if they get done with client work and they'll ask me, is there anything I need to have done today? Or anything extra I need to have done today. And I'll say, Nope, not today. All right, I'm going to the I wish list. Right. So now all of these things get done and delegated, and it's because you put in the pre planning work to make that happen.
[00:24:17] Brook Borup: And now you don't have to worry about onboarding people. You just have to worry about managing people at that point. Yeah, that
[00:24:25] James Marland: that was a key concern when I was doing the virtual assistant businesses is turnover because even inside our company people people last a year to 2 years. And then, then the, the, they would turn over, but what often found like hiring a virtual assistant from a company was better because there's no guarantee that even if you have an employee or a contractor that you hire yourself, that they're going to stay for long term.
[00:24:53] James Marland: That was one of the big complaints people would have is like, I hired somebody they stayed for 6 months. And then, you know, now we got to redo all this training again. And when they came with our company, we had policies and procedures in place that the transition was easier because we would find them a staff and do most of the training.
[00:25:13] James Marland: But there was still some of that, you know, nitty gritty training for individual practices that your, your system would certainly take care of is if it's all documented, it's all out there and it's, it's automated and. So the practice owner wouldn't have to, you know, sit with them or, you know, you know, babysit them through some training materials.
[00:25:37] James Marland: They would give them the training materials and then have follow up meetings and track, track some, some data on how things went. That sounds like a. A great process. So how does how does delegation work then in the system? Cause we, we were talking a little bit off, you know, in the pre show about how important delegation was.
[00:25:57] James Marland: So how do you help practice owners with delegation?
[00:26:01] Brook Borup: So that's all part of it. So when we plan and we plan for automation, there are delegation tasks that happen. They have to be done by a human. But they don't necessarily need to be done by you, the owner, right? Or the therapist you, you have to, we'll have to decide what doesn't need to be done by you and then train somebody else to do it in that video or that written.
[00:26:25] Brook Borup: And then that goes inside of the task and that task gets put onto a schedule based on the business or based on the individual client. Right. And then there's. on both. So the, when you bring in that new role, they have a task list that they can take over right then and there and all of the training is already completed for them.
[00:26:47] Brook Borup: So it's just the learning curve of how long it takes them to pick up each of those individual tasks. Not how long you have to sit there and talk them through it, right? Because if you don't have these, these processes in place, you can have SLPs written out, but you literally have to say, do this, do this, do this, do this, go here, do this, because you had to learn it, right?
[00:27:10] Brook Borup: So if you have the planning done and the processes put into tasks and they're all built into your business. So they are done when they need to get done, then you can easily deal with turnover. You can easily deal with any of the training or the time or anything like that. And you don't have to dread it as much.
[00:27:29] Brook Borup: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the dread of oh my gosh, I'm going to lose three weeks of productivity because I have to sit with somebody and train somebody new that is re is horrible. I still go through that because I am bringing on new people and new types of people all the time, but I run 60 businesses in an average month, right, in some way, shape or form.
[00:27:50] Brook Borup: And so we're, you know, I'm constantly building these systems and processes for not only my agency, but for all of our clients as well, you know, but for you. Especially in your practice, you're, you're not changing things all the time, right? You kind of have a set way. It's really easy to put the piece in place and then just make tweaks to it here and there.
[00:28:13] Brook Borup: And as long as you understand what your whole process looks like, then you have the ability to really tweak when you feel like something isn't isn't working, you know, or add something new but in most cases your practice you're not adding service line. Okay. Where in a lot of other businesses, they're like, I have 19 products.
[00:28:35] Brook Borup: You usually in your practice, you usually specialize in one or two different things. And you know, like I have a therapy practice that we work with that, that only specializes in kids from three to six and six to 16 like that's it. So there's two different intake processes because once primarily the parents and once primarily the kids.
[00:28:59] Brook Borup: Right. So, we have to change up the intake practice because the kids need to fill out some things. When they're six to 16, that sort of thing so there's just a different way of. Onboarding them and talking to them and doing their notes and, you know, the different homework assignments and the different things that they have to do, right?
[00:29:20] Brook Borup: But there's only two service lines. Most businesses most practices are only going to have a few. Most, a lot of businesses, like I'm working on one right now, they have 17 service lines. That's a much bigger process because we need to have a process for every single line and how we market and how we have loyalty inside of that deliverable, right?
[00:29:43] Brook Borup: So that's really when we're talking about automating, we want to put, we want to organize everything, make sure that it's the best, right? The best that we can do from an automation and delegation customer service standpoint. And then we need to put it into play and see what else we might need to tweak in the future.
[00:30:04] Brook Borup: This is where you hear, test and measure, test and measure, right, the metrics of it. If I, if we put this in place, do you actually get 80 percent of your time back, right? 80 percent of your non client time back. If you have 80 percent of your non client time back, then how many more clients could you add in order to be able to hire more people to do more things, right?
[00:30:32] Brook Borup: To make more clients. So this is where we started out this interview with. Time heavy or money heavy or client heavy, right? Where are you at in your practice and what do we need to be able to scale in order for your business to be more profitable? And ultimately at the end of the day, that's what we're looking to do.
[00:30:55] James Marland: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's not like you're saying this step doesn't take time. Like, it's not like you're saying, Oh, this doesn't take work or thought. And it's just like, you know, snap your fingers and it's all there. But I think the benefit of what you're saying is you do it, you do it once you get it working, and then you don't have to recreate the wheel every time something changes.
[00:31:18] James Marland: And because therapists generally have You know, they offer maybe some testing and some therapy and maybe one other thing for different groups. Their service line, the services they offer, you're not going to have 10, you're going to have 2, 3, 4. And once you get them spelled out. You're, you're not going to be changing the system that much, so get it spelled out, get it working, and then you can scale by removing some of those tasks from you, delegating them, and you get to do things that earn your company money.
[00:31:53] Brook Borup: Exactly, exactly. And you get to become a manager or a leader versus a doer. Right. And that's ultimately, that's what business what's what entrepreneurship is all about is being able to do what it is you love and the other stuff can be taken care of. And you know that the money is there because the money is coming in to be able to do those things.
[00:32:16] Brook Borup: Right. And that's That's the continuum.
[00:32:20] James Marland: So how do you handle the objection that I'm sure you've heard a hundred times? No one can do it like me, or they're not going to do it as good as me. How do you handle
[00:32:28] Brook Borup: that? Absolutely right. You're absolutely right. No one is going to do it as good as you, especially the first time.
[00:32:36] Brook Borup: Right. So if you are teaching them via video or via screenshot software like scribe, if you are teaching them the way you want it done, then as long as somebody can follow directions, they can do it just as good as you. If they can't follow directions, then that becomes a problem. Or if you're trying to bring somebody on and you're not giving them any sort of direction, or any time, then yes they are going to fail.
[00:33:03] Brook Borup: Because they are not you. You know, it only takes if it takes you one time to teach somebody to do it on video, then you can now have once you have that person in place, you can now have all of that time back. So even if it takes you five minutes times 15 times a week, somebody else could be doing that 15, that five times 15.
[00:33:28] Brook Borup: And now you don't have to, you can be doing something else. I guarantee you that you will not scale and you will not grow if you are doing it all yourself. 100%. If you want to make more money, you need to be able to rely on other people and that starts with relying on yourself to create a successful environment for those people that you bring in.
[00:33:51] Brook Borup: I will tell you, you know, you were talking about, you know, I had, I started my company as a VA agency, right. Where I was hiring out VAs. I was essentially a human resources person and I was placing VAs with companies. I did that for about 14 months and with. My clients were like, this isn't working. It would be like two months in six months in.
[00:34:16] Brook Borup: And I found it was because they didn't know what they wanted. They were trying to off offload tasks that they just didn't want to do. So they didn't offer any support to their team. The management there's, there's a reason why there's a crap ton of leadership coaches. It's because people lack the leadership skills in our world.
[00:34:36] Brook Borup: Right. Especially in the U S. There are plenty of people all over the world that just want to work. They just want to make money. They want to be treated fairly. They want to be treated well. They don't want to be yelled at every single day. They don't want a toxic work environment. And this is what is causing the, the influx of people to go freelance.
[00:35:01] Brook Borup: Because they don't want to deal with someone just because that person controls their paycheck. And I was the exact same way. I used to work in hospitality. And hospitality is by far one of the most toxic work environments. Because everything is about the customer and the client that is standing there in front of you.
[00:35:22] Brook Borup: And it doesn't matter. What anybody is feeling or thinking or whatever it, it doesn't matter. If the client is not happy, the client's going to yell at you. Your boss is going to yell at you. The boss ahead of them is going to yell at you. You're going to get screamed at all day long because the client didn't pay right.
[00:35:41] Brook Borup: Or the client wanted their money back. And that is. The client is always right in the hospitality industry, and therefore everybody else is always wrong, especially if there's any sort of a conflict. And so, with that, that's where leadership comes from my team. It's actually really exciting my very first VA that I ever hired just opened up her own VR, well she's had her own VA agency now for about six years.
[00:36:11] Brook Borup: She runs, she's got 90 some VA, she's trained over 200, and she just opened a co working space in the Philippines. Wow. And I'm so proud of her, because when she started with me, her one, the one thing that she said she wanted to accomplish as her goal was to have her own VA agency. And I hired her because of that.
[00:36:30] Brook Borup: And now she has surpassed me. And I love that she has surpassed me. And that she's super successful and she's helping people. And she's... The people that she has working for her have worked for her for years. The people that are working for me are going, you know, I have people who are going on eight years working for me.
[00:36:49] Brook Borup: And really that longevity comes from the environment in which they're working. If they love the, the way that you work and who you are, then they will give you everything. I have people begging me to give them work, right? And like, do you have anything for me today? I want to work. Where do you have stuff for me?
[00:37:08] Brook Borup: And their salary. So it's not like they're, they're not making money, even if I don't have anything for them, but they, they genuinely want to make an impact. And if you can foster that type of environment in your practice, one, by setting up them, setting them up for success and to being a great leader, that is what is going to make your business, what you wanted it to be and what you set out to be.
[00:37:35] Brook Borup: And some people just want a small practice and maybe one person just to help them with the time. And some people want to grow to a big practice where there are multiple people multiple therapists and multiple things going on. And that takes a lot more, but start with baby steps. The,
[00:37:54] James Marland: the environment I think where people work is incredibly important and My, my philosophy was people want to win.
[00:38:05] James Marland: You know, people want to do a good job. People want to see the scoreboard and see something they did. And then the numbers go up and the fireworks go off. And if you can kind of create an environment where it's They're in the right place. They know they can win. They know they can do a good job. They get, they get recognition for that, those types of things.
[00:38:24] James Marland: They're going to want to do those things for you. And even as you said you, the their salary, they wouldn't get extra money for doing these things, but they just feel so connected. With the company and the mission and the vision and what you're trying to do, that they are going to go above and beyond.
[00:38:43] James Marland: And the other way to do that is sort of like believe people are lazy and they don't want to do anything. And you got to like micromanage them and watch them. And in that type of environment, people feel like, you know, unimportant and cogs in the machine. And so they will not give you that last little bit of effort, you know, the, the things that the other, the other management system will do.
[00:39:10] James Marland: So, I guess, I guess that leads to my last question before we get to where people can find you on the internet. How do you help leaders get out of their own way? You know, how do you stop them from being, like, trusting the system? As Jim Collins said, it was like, trust but verify. You know, you're still responsible for things, but you gotta trust the system that's gonna work out.
[00:39:33] James Marland: Because I've, I've heard stories where, You know, the VA goes into a system and the owner like is right there watching everything they do because you can now with the internet and systems. And it, it creates this environment of like, they don't trust me or they, they read the emails and they answer the emails.
[00:39:52] James Marland: And then the owner comes back in and like redoes things and re answers them and like is redoing the work. And then things are confused. Was this work done? Wasn't it done? Like, how do you, how do you help owners get out of their own way? And let, let the VAs or let the people that it's delegated the system take over.
[00:40:11] James Marland: So
[00:40:13] Brook Borup: there are two, two types of people. You have the micromanagers that are going to do that. And then you have the people who are like, I just want you to do it. Just take it, run with it. Right. So, cause they're two very different schools of people. So we're going to talk about the micromanaging one first.
[00:40:30] Brook Borup: If you have set up the system. Right. And this can be in conjunction with me or someone like me. If you have set up the system, you know how the system works, you know what you've built into it. And we have already put those redundancies. Now you can see how many tasks your team members have open. You know, you can have a process for checking the tasks.
[00:40:54] Brook Borup: We have what I call PM review. So everything that our team does, they do the work, it goes into PM review, their project manager checks it, and it goes on to the next stage or onto the client. It's the same thing. If you build those redundancies, people Your team that you bring on know that those redundancies are there in the first place, right?
[00:41:16] Brook Borup: They're not surprised by them. And you have your checks and balances to help with the head game because that's really what micromanaging is. It's a head game. Because you have to feel like you have control. There's no reason if you have a staff to do the work that you should be controlling them.
[00:41:37] Brook Borup: Other than managing them, because why even have them, if you're going to micromanage and you're going to have to redo everything they do that there's no point, right? You just, you just have to know that you're not going to grow and you're not going to be able to scale your business because you haven't worked on yourself to be able to do that.
[00:41:55] Brook Borup: Now in that whole process, as long as you understand what's going on, what's going to happen, what the expectations are, and you set them up for success. Then you should not have to micromanage them because you're going to have your own set of controls in the dashboard. Now, as you're bringing on new people, trust is earned, right?
[00:42:18] Brook Borup: So you're going to do more project manager review on the tasks that they do. They're going to run a lot more stuff by you. But then as they understand what they're doing and how they're doing it. They're gonna get faster, they're gonna get better, and they're gonna have to have less oversight. And so you as that pro, as that that manager, as that micromanager that will hopefully help you work out of that, along with maybe some help from a therapist yourself if you can't do it yourself, right?
[00:42:49] Brook Borup: Mm-hmm. so. You need to then for the other side, the business owner that just thinks that one virtual assistant or one staff member can do everything in their business because they were, they are never going to be you. They are never going to have the passion that you have. That is not their business.
[00:43:07] Brook Borup: They are not directly getting anything other than a paycheck from the business. So if you don't work with them to their strengths and their weaknesses, and you have to stay in your business, you can't just hand it off to one other person and say, this is the end all be all, because that person doesn't have ties to it like you.
[00:43:28] Brook Borup: So even if you wore 50 hats. You can't give 50 hats to one person. 50 hats might need to go to 50 people, right? In order to take them all off of you so you can be an absentee owner. And that's where we're all trying to go. I've been 10 years in business. I have clients in over nine time zones. I have staff in 11 time zones and all of my staff has have their own hats.
[00:43:54] Brook Borup: They have the things that they came in that they were good at, and then they took over other things because they directly were related and they wanted to branch out. They grew because they wanted to grow in the hats that they whip, they wore, right? I just now, 10 years later, have found myself a person who can help me onboard new clients.
[00:44:18] Brook Borup: That is the piece that I've been trying to off load off of my head for years. Like my company is called my clone solution, right? I've been trying to clone that piece of me for a very long time But it takes a very specialized person and a specialized budget in order to be able to make that happen And I finally after 10 years just found it So i've been taking hats off in my own agency for a for a long time at different stages And this was that piece that i'm like, yes Yes, I can finally take a vacation, right?
[00:44:55] Brook Borup: And that's what I want all business owners to get to. And and that's, it all starts with the little baby steps to put in the systems and the processes that you understand that you know how it works, or at least you know how it flows. And you understand that you are building a scalable business that Ideally, you can get to where you want to get to as far as your goals are concerned.
[00:45:22] James Marland: Awesome. I love two, two things you said in there for the person who struggles with trust and micromanagement, you can still manage, but you got to build in, build in those checks. You know, you, you build in the steps that make it a normal part of management where it gets reviewed or it gets checked or.
[00:45:43] James Marland: You have a check in, so you're not hovering over somebody and everybody knows the process and people aren't surprised. Oh, they're checking up on me. Do they not? And then all the questions started and I trust me. Do they not think I can do my job? Just make it a part of the process and you're going to want to do that anyways, whether you're the person who loves to check in on things and you or the person that.
[00:46:05] James Marland: You want to check out, you're still responsible for checking. So I thought that was. Real, real key. You can still have some, some semblance of control. You want to keep control, just standardize it, just make it so nobody's surprised about those things. And then the, the other, the other thing was. And we found this when I was doing the virtual assistant company is people would want 1 VA to do like their social media.
[00:46:33] James Marland: They're scheduling their insurance, their web page, their laundry. Well, maybe not their laundry, but, you know, schedule daycare and stuff that could that's a unicorn. Like somebody who is great in marketing and great with people and great with tasks and great with numbers. They're out there, but they're hard to find.
[00:46:54] James Marland: So
[00:46:54] Brook Borup: they're charging like I'm charging. Yeah,
[00:46:57] James Marland: they're charging like a lot. So dividing up some of those tasks that you're doing and maybe you're not doing well, but you're getting them done. Find the specialist in that area or find somebody who's great at scheduling and find somebody who's great at social media and then maybe find a third person who's great at, like, you wouldn't want them on the phone, but you would trust them with your, your checkbook, you know, you trust them with your, your your, your accounting and insurance stuff.
[00:47:28] James Marland: There, there, you don't have to have all the solutions, but I think circling all the way back and we're getting ready to end here, but circling all the way back. That's why it's so important to have your. Processes figured out and written down, because if you have to do that, every time. You're, you're, you're going to, it will be very hard to delegate.
[00:47:50] James Marland: I mean, it will be really hard because there's that pain of, oh, I'm going to be not productive for 3 weeks. So I'm going to have to go through this and will they even stay. I think having those systems spelled out is, is key. All right, do you want to wrap up before we get to our one
[00:48:08] Brook Borup: thing? Sure. I mean, really the, well, and I, I actually, let's just wrap up with the one thing.
[00:48:15] Brook Borup: Are you good with that?
[00:48:16] James Marland: So what's your, do you have a one thing that you want people to remember from the episode?
[00:48:21] Brook Borup: Absolutely. So I want, I want everyone to make sure that they understand that your exit strategy starts on day one of your business. Even if you're late and you're in 10 years in your business, you can still start, go for an exit strategy.
[00:48:37] Brook Borup: Your scaling strategy and your exit strategy are the exact same thing. It's documented systems and processes that are delegatable. That's it. That's all. I mean, of course, money, but on the, on the, the operation side, that's all it is. So understand that you need people and you need software and you need clients.
[00:48:59] Brook Borup: And those three things in your business are what keep your business either very small or the, you'd have the ability to go very large. That's my one
[00:49:07] James Marland: thing. Perfect. Document systems and processes. You can delegate document systems and processes you can delegate that. I mean, that sounds like a bumper sticker, a t shirt, not super entertaining, but so true.
[00:49:23] Brook Borup: Nobody likes what I do, like people
[00:49:26] James Marland: don't do it. That's right. My one thing is something you said is you won't scale and grow if you're doing it all yourself. I think that is just a key diamond there that if you if you want to grow your you can't do it all yourself so thank you for that. So Brooke, where can people find you and your services on the internet?
[00:49:50] James Marland: And do you have anything you want to offer
[00:49:52] Brook Borup: people? Absolutely. Well, you can pretty much find me everywhere. If you Google my name, I come up on the first three pages of Google and I'm out in about in the media everywhere, but you can visit me at my clone solution. com or your favorite social media. I'm on pretty much all of them.
[00:50:10] Brook Borup: And then I have a free call. It's called my ask anything call. And really it's. 22 minutes where you get to just come on and ask me whatever you want to ask me. And I'm happy to listen and I'm happy to give my recommendations. I promise you that that ask anything call will be worth its weight in gold.
[00:50:29] Brook Borup: Because I will either save you money or I will save you time or you will decide that you are ready to have help. And implementing the systems and processes because you can't do it yourself. So that is a free call it. You can get that at call. myclonesolution. com or if you go to my website, it's the very first thing you see, to, to book that free call and be able to have that time where we just talk or you talk and I listen and you will have a plan of attack once we come out of that call.
[00:51:00] Brook Borup: Perfect.
[00:51:00] James Marland: And yeah, I recommend listeners take advantage of that call. I've learned a lot from this call, Brooke, and just talking with you and I didn't even come with a problem. So imagine what would happen if you had a problem and you would, you could talk to Brooke. Awesome. Thanks for offering that.
[00:51:15] James Marland: Well, this is James Marland with my guest, Brooke Burrup. Did I say that right? No, but it's okay. I told you I'm terrible with names. All right. Well, this is James Marland with the scaling therapy practice with my special guest, Brooke. And I, we encourage you to take small steps that lead to big growth.
[00:51:35] James Marland: We will see you next time.
[00:52:37] James Marland: Thank you for listening to the scaling therapy practice I hope you enjoyed the show I want to remind you that the content shared today is for general information and entertainment purposes only It shouldn't be considered as legal or tax advice If you need a professional advice in those areas please consult with a licensed attorney or accountant but thank you so much for listening The scaling therapy practice is part of the psych craft network
