Are you looking to uplevel your skills as a Director of Operations (DOO)? Have you dug deep into an area of specialization so you can fully capitalize on your expertise?
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Today our special guest is LaToya Russell, who is going to talk about her background, her specialty, and the ways that she (and you!) can specialize in an area of competency.
Meet LaToya
LaToya Russell is the owner of The OBM Office LLC, an agency that curates custom automation strategies, automates processes for entrepreneurs and corporations, and provides automation training for teams and clients. She is also the founder of the Quitting Corporate™ online training school and the course Anatomy of Automation, and has helped over 5000 students to start virtual, work from anywhere businesses and over 250 to specialize in tech and automation.
Latoya’s background
- Latoya is from Barbados and she worked in a corporate setting in an administration capacity (managerial)
- she also did virtual assisting on the side
- She transitioned into the online space because she was looking for freedom, flexibility, and wanted to get away from a problematic boss
- She realize she needed a niche and settled on automations, and training others in this area
“The words ‘administration’ and ‘operations’ are interchangeable.” – Natalie Gingrich
Why are automations so important?
- As long as you understand this service, you can help your clients:
- Grow
- Understand where a team is being overwhelmed
- Stop hiring additional people who are unnecessary
- Often when she does assessments and trainings, she finds that clients can eliminate roles by implementing automations that she recommends
- As you continue to make these recommendations, business owners will recognize the value that you bring
- Automations help businesses increase income and streamline, and they are a value-add to a business
- The best way to show value to a business is to increase their profit margin
“We often recognize that a lot of things that are being done manually by people… don’t need to be” – LaToya Russell
“Automations are going to help them grow their business and stop team overwhelm.” – LaToya Russell
How do you talk about the value of automations to a potential customer?
- It depends on if they understand what happens behind the scenes or not
- I like to draw on a practical example (such as a podcast), and attach money to it so they understand what it would cost if someone was manually doing the work vs. automating the process
Can you give some examples of common automations that you often see?
- Many people don’t have failed payment automations in place
- Even checking in the system for failed payments is wasting time
- Abandon cart: you are losing a lot of opportunities not checking in with people, especially if the client uses WooCommerce
- Automations that will allow you to send special offers to customers
- Quickbooks and not setting it up to upload automatically to the system
- Onboarding processes
“If your clients are happy and getting the best experience possible, they are going to stay with you longer…” – Natalie Gingrich
Tell us a little about your course “The Anatomy of Automation”
- This is something that is coming from the ground up, even if you’ve never done it before
- People have come up in this program even if you have never worked online before
- It is also structured in a way in which if you want to skip the basics, you can also do that
- It helps you understand how/why to build a strategy and also being able to do the work
- It is both strategic and skill: she teaches how to use any platform even if you’ve never seen it before
Connect with LaToya:
Instagram
Website
Facebook Group
Weekly Ops Activity
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