2022 Year in Review

What has 2022 looked like behind the scenes at The Ops Authority?

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Today, I am going to give you a behind the scenes view of my business from the perspective of the CEO of The Ops Authority. 

I’ve traveled through all types of business models through the years, starting as a on-to-one service provider, to a one-to-many model, and finally to the CEO of the Ops Authority. I’ve taken all of the info that I’ve used to work with my clients and put it into a large container that is The Director of Operations (DOO) certification program.

If you are looking for a way to review what you have done this year, I have a framework for you called the reflection framework. 

Just take a piece of paper and divide it into four quadrants: 

• What is working
• What is not working
• What is missing
• What is confusing

I look at my business through all of those lenses, and use it for my business, my team, my offers and products… use it for anything that you are trying to solve for.

2022 Year in Review

I had anticipated that this year would be a stabilization year. I felt that the market was going to change, and that the economy was going to catch up with us after all the alterations we had made over the pandemic years. 

Altogether we have seen inflation, a recession, and a shift in the way buyers are spending money. I wanted to do what I could to protect the profit margins that we had seen in 2021.

If you started your business in 2020 or 2021, you saw unprecedented growth.

“I believe that 2022 is representative of what businesses are going to look like in the next 3-5 years.”

If you came in at that euphoric time where profit margins were really high, that opportunity has really shifted. Business is harder, and you have to be able to meet the customer and deliver on what you say… but this is what business really looks like.

Wins

Luckily for us we have been able to see some strong wins. 

• Our greatest wins was to serve 167 students through the DOO certification program. 
• We also successfully launched 5 different cohorts of DOOs this year, and have just launched round 17!
• In July, we had 100,000 downloads of this podcast!
• Our benefits package added a mental health day for all of our team members.
• We were able to give one of our dear employees a paid maternity leave.

We had such a great year, and I am so grateful for my team who focuses on our mission to focus on our students.

This year included the biggest project that we have ever undertaken, where we completely reworked our certification program (called DOO 2.0.)

We compiled 17 rounds of feedback and critique, added to everything we learned ourselves and completely redesigned the content. It has taken thousands of hours, and about $70,000 but it gave us an opportunity to make sure we are serving our students in the best way we can. 

Insights gained

Marketing

Something that became apparent was that putting our organic marketing efforts and our launch efforts underneath the same person felt very difficult to balance. To get a stronger ROI, we decided we are ready to separate these two factions. 

“The stronger the organic (marketing) part of our business, the greater number of leads come in for our launches.”

Data

We collect feedback and data from anyone who encounters our brand. With all of that data, one thing that I learned this year is that we should be forecasting based on our actuals, instead of our averages from the year before. 

Previously, we would look at the enrollments we had the year before and divide it by 4 or 5 launches, but the math just doesn’t work like that. Our business is cyclical and based on launches so we tend to launch at the same times each year. We now have enough data to see the trends over the different times of year that we launch, and to get more accurate predictions.

“You want to make sure you are looking for those trends so that you can create something that is actually dependable.” 

Certification Program Tracks

Our certification program has both an employee track, and a business builder track. When the certification started, 99% of our students were building their own businesses. As our student population grows, we have seen that we are gaining more interest from people who are serving in a full time capacity as an operator to another business. 

We have included a few special tracks and trainings in our redesign that are geared towards these students who are currently serving as an operator inside of a business.

I’m very proud of how much impact we have been able to make, and the success of our students despite the changes in the economy. We are looking forward to 2023, and more opportunities for innovation. 

Innovation and Agility

My words of the year for 2023 are innovation and agility. To remain competitive we have to continuously innovate, get the feedback, and do something with it. 

We have put some systems in place to be able to take action on the feedback we receive. We are going to have a focus on innovating, and because we are operators we do not have problems getting things done! We will have to prioritize and be agile with the decisions we are making, but my team has been able to step in and help me in this process.

What’s Ahead

We have some great products on the horizon! 

• We are going to be hosting our first conference in April
• We are planning more products to serve our service providers 
• We are going to get more innovative with the way we do launches

I hope you have a wonderful New Years, and hope to see you back here in 2023!

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