[00:00:01] Speaker A: I'm willing to bet that you've had days where you feel like you're drowning in tasks, you're not sure what to prioritise, and you're feeling like you could really use some organizational help. Well, you're in for a treat today. I'm here with Sandra Booker. She's the Chief Operations Officer to many of the brightest stars in the copywriting industry. She specialises in helping overworked, overwhelmed, multi hatted entrepreneurs become the CEOs of sustainably scalable and powerfully profitable businesses. So. So she's an organizational whiz. She knows exactly how to structure your back end operations, identify the key performance indicators that you need to really accelerate your business growth, and figure out all the systems and resources that you'll need to ease you through any growing pains. She describes business like a dance where she brings the choreography. I love that. And her goal is to get your business moving in perfect time, handling those lifts as if they were nothing. She's really skilled at taking businesses of all shapes and sizes to the next level. All you need is an ambitious growth plan and the desire to scale from five to six or maybe seven or multiple seven figures in your business. So in this episode I'm talking with Sandra about what that looks like and where is a good place to stop floundering and start growing steadily towards owning the scalable grown up business of your dreams.
Cracking Copy is a marketing and copywriting podcast where we lift the lid on writing for business and read between the lines of Effective copy. This is a podcast for creative entrepreneurs and savvy business owners like you who understand the value that great copy can bring to their bottom line. We dive into a different aspect of writing for business in each episode. Debunk the myths about how we should write and explore the ways that writing can be fun, conversational and creative while also being high impact for serious results.
So listen, laugh and learn with us, Ella hoyos and Minnie McBride as we share our words and wisdom in each snack sized episode. Expect some light bulb moments, interesting guests and practical takeaways as we crack the copy code together.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Foreign.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of Cracking Copy with me, Ella Hoyos. And today I'm joined by Sandra Booker, who is the COO sidekick.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: That's correct. Yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Perfect. Tell me a little bit about about yourself just to kick things off.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so I live in Canada, Ontario, just a little outside of Niagara Falls. Uh, I'm in the heart of wine country, so we have like a hundred wineries near us, which is really lovely, lots of green space. And I work primarily as a fractional COO for online service providers. And that just means going into somebody's business, really assessing where they are right now, outlining where they're trying to get to and finding all those gaps for them like figuring out what are the things that they need to put in place to get from what, where they are here to where they want to go. So that's my, my main role and I live with my husband and my two dogs and two cats and yeah, that's about it.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: So I know you through Tarzan K. Who's another copywriter, a big name copywriter, I would almost argue a celebrity copywriter. And I have done many of her programs in the past from Copy caboose to Email stars. And I know that you're kind of Tarzan's engine room. You're the woman behind she, she waxes ly you and your services and how you support her and her business. And I believe you've been with her from, from the early days.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we've been together since 2016 is when we started together. I like to say that our businesses grew up together. Hers hit puberty a bit quicker than mine did. But we, we, we both have been been working together for, for a long, long time. She, I started working with her when I was just getting online, working as a virtual assistant. And then we've kind of, as things progressed in her business, we've redefined my role and as I've progressed in, in my confidence and my skills, then we've also reassessed where we're going together. So yeah, it's been a really great adventure with her from the beginning to now today.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: I would really love to talk to you from a copywriter's perspective. I know you work with, with lots of copywriters amongst other people, but I'm really interested in, I mean you're such a systems person so I'm really interested in how we as copywriters or small businesses or freelance business owners and service providers can best start documenting our workflows and processes. But you know, firstly, you know why it's important to do that.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it's important to have things documented so that you can. One, you're not constantly reinventing the wheel. So especially if it's something that you're not necessarily doing every single day, you might be doing it every month, every quarter and you don't have to think about it so hard. You can just follow your process.
And then two, more importantly is it makes it really easy to hand things off when you actually are ready to get support in your business.
And everybody needs some sort of support at some point in their business. So having things documented, I'd say you don't necessarily have to document absolutely everything and you don't have to be the person to like put it into a standard sop. Sop, Standard Operating Procedure format. You don't have to have all that simply just like starting loom, starting a loom video or some sort of screen recording software as you are doing things just to document how it is working or like what the steps that you're doing. And then especially now with AI, like you can use AI to actually create any type of walkthrough for it from that video. There is actually an AI screen recording software called guide with 2ds, so G U I D D E. And it will basically screen record what you're doing and then take that recording. It adds an AI voice to it if you want to like walk through the steps. And it will also create a visual documentation. So you have the video, you also have a visual documentation and you have a short form step. So it has all three kinds of scenarios for what you might want for your. For your sop. It makes it so easy to do. So you don't really have to overthink everything.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's quite wild. And I did hear about another AI tool. I think it's called Komodo. Quote me on that. I'll have to check and put it in the show notes. But it sounds like a similar thing that documents your process, that screen records. Because I think, you know, for me it feels like going an extra level deeper into. When you're a sort of scrappy startup and you're doing things for the first time you can, you're barely thinking about, you know, what your next step is, never mind what the chain of events is or what the sequence is, or reverse engineering that to create your essay SOP first. I think sometimes it's quite hard to visualize a whole process when, when you're new to something or just starting out, if you've been in business for a while or you're starting to create a repeatable process or do the same type of work for a client over and over. Perhaps at that point it, it sort of, you know, you start to put the jigsaw puzzle together. So yeah, that really helps to give that, that advice on how you can use simple, simple things like just recording a loom of your. You at work. So presumably that's you going about your business, but just Having the loom on in the background, recording it.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Or just like when you're going to do specific things, starting a loom, when you go to. To do something specific, especially anything that you know you're going to want to pass off to somebody.
I've seen a lot of people, copywriters for sure, but online service providers in general, business owners in general, who get to a point where they're kind of desperate for help, and then they start thinking about help and then they start thinking they have to document like every single process in their business before they can get help. And I'd say, like, you don't really have to do that. It's. You document what you can and just at when you bring somebody on to help, you can certainly, anytime you go to pass something off to them, you go in. The next time you do it, just record a loom and then you give it to them to say here, going forward, can you take this on? It happens every month or whatever it is. Rather than trying to, like, capture everything in advance and then getting somebody to come in and help.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm presumably getting very overwhelmed in the process. And the, you know, panic mode, trying to get it all sorted.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Is this. Yeah. Because you're likely already overwhelmed, like just preparing to get somebody. So you're kind of adding to that stress by thinking that you have to have it all perfect before somebody comes on board.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So you would document your processes, create SOPs, not only to make it easier every time you take on a new client and to make it quicker because you know what you do, but also thinking ahead to the growth of your business and to making your first hire or second hire or whatever, having things in place. So it's easy for a new person just to get to grips with how you do things around here, for sure. And is this something that you help your clients with? Is this something they ask of you?
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Not anymore. Now that I work as a fractional CEO, I'm not the one that's necessarily documenting things. I will highlight for them things that need to be documented. We might kind of go through an assessment of what's missing, but then they usually have a team member who actually does the documentation.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: So now you said that you don't need to document everything. So how do you prioritize what is the most important thing to systematize in your business?
[00:10:43] Speaker B: So the things that make you money is, are the things to kind of look around and document how that happens and see where you might streamline, automate or delegate to help Facilitate the scalability of that. That would be the first step because, as you know, online service providers in, like, most of the people that I have worked with in the past, they're anywhere between, you know, just hitting six figures or just hitting seven figures. And when you're in that kind of space and you're in that kind of revenue area, you really do focus mainly on your revenue. There's other things you need to focus on too, but, like, that's the primary driver in your business is focusing on that. So documenting, like, where are leads coming in? How does that happen? What has to happen when a lead, you know, comes into the business? Like, what steps have to be taken, what tools are involved, how does that convert to funds into the business? Like, and documenting that whole process would be the kind of first step.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And how much detail do you record? Every detail. Does that make things easier to rinse and repeat?
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Yeah, trying to get as much detail as possible so that potentially you could just hand it off to somebody who's coming in for the first time and they'll have, like, all the details that they need. But, you know, done is better than perfect in most things. So just do, you know, do your best with it.
And, like, you can always, if there was a piece missing, you can always record another loom to kind of COVID that piece, really, with SOPs, like, a lot of people think, okay, I've done it and I never have to do it again. But SOPs are a constant thing because as your business grows, as your team grows, as new technology comes into play, as new features come up in the tools that you're using, all of those things are going to make changes to how things are running. So you really want to be kind of somebody should be looking at those SOPs, at least on a yearly basis to make sure that they're up to date.
It really should be that whoever is doing the process should be kind of looking at that SOP every time they do the process. But that's kind of hard to get people to do. But having a schedule of reviewing the documentation so that it is up to date would be really important to have.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Yeah. And presumably that little and often approach does make it easier in the long term if you can spend a little bit of time after every project, just that sort of debrief stage, just saying, did this process work? Could it be updated? Could it be tweaked? Could it be made more efficient? So it was a living, breathing, evolving thing. So annually is okay. Quarterly is probably best, and per project is probably Better than that.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. If you have somebody, at least if somebody's making changes to a process, that they document it, you know, at the time.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: So that, yeah, I guess, you know, with our hectic schedule sometimes, and we're doing one thing, moving on to the next, crossing it off the list, moving on to the next, it is easy to overlook those little details. And then when it comes back to it, it's like, oh, what, what did I do exactly again?
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: So if you don't track it as you go, then you are likely to forget.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Then you come across the same stumbling block that caused the change. And then you're like, how did I resolve this last time? And then, then you're basically, you're spending time and energy at, at any point. It's just like one is documenting something you just learned. The other is dealing with a frustration and trying to resolve a problem. So I would rather spend the time documenting the solution I already found rather than next year or next month coming up against that same frustration.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: So it's like trying to remove friction from the process and become a more efficient operation. You know, you're oiling the wheels of your business processes really, aren't you?
[00:14:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: What I'm curious to know now, you've worked with a lot of companies now and you say, you know, most of your clients are at transition between six to seven figures or seven figures and beyond in annual revenue. When do you know if the time is right to. To make the transition from being a freelance solo copywriter or solopreneur to something bigger? Are there any, you know, what are the key signs that you need to start to grow and expand and make your first hire?
[00:15:26] Speaker B: So I'd say first is really getting clear on what you want your business to be. So a lot of people start their business mostly because they want financial freedom or time freedom or both, or they're good at something they, they can bring to the world, or they have a passion around something that they want to do. That doesn't necessarily mean that you need to grow and scale your business.
Some people are very, very happy just making a really good wage for themselves.
So one kind of get clear on where you want your business to go and know that it. You don't have to scale it if you don't want to, but if you're going to, then working out a budget for your business early on where you can start saving before you get overwhelmed. So that as soon as you get to a point where you're like, okay, so I'M currently at capacity. I can't take on any more clients. And I'm also like, all of the stuff that I'm doing for my business, for my business, like, done, like, I can't put any more hours in and, or I don't want to put any more hours in. As soon as you get close to that, then that's when you need to start looking for somebody to help you if you're looking to grow and expand your. Your business. And before you look for that person, you need to figure out what would the role be that you're hiring for. And a lot of the time people will get a virtual assistant, but that's not always the right choice for a business owner. And I've worked with a lot of different businesses, a lot of copywriters. I kind of started collecting amazing copywriters. Like, started with Tarzan, got Shanti Zach for a while, had Laura Belgray, currently still working with Laura Belgrave from Talking Shrimp. Lots and lots of copywriters. But all of their businesses were very, very different. And what they wanted to do was very different. So how they went about things was also different. And that's a really important thing to note that just because you're a copywriter doesn't mean that you're going to follow the same path as, you know, Tarzan or like the Robin Kira or Rye Schwartz or anybody like that. You're. You have to figure out what you want your business to be, what you want out of your business, what impact you're looking to make, if any. Like, some people just want to make a good living. And that is. So that is totally okay. So when you get to the point where you're looking to hire, the first thing you need to do is figure out what do you and your business need support in. And the best way to do that is with a time study. So you just, for two weeks, every 15 minutes, write down what it is that you do, what, what you. What it was that you just did. And I used to just tell people, like one week, you know, you can just document for one week during your business hours. But then I was listening to Alex Charfen and he suggested doing two weeks from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed. And super smart, because yeah, like, as a business owner, you don't necessarily work strictly 9 to 5 to 4. You're thinking about business or doing business outside of your regular hours. But also sometimes the help you need is not in your business. Sometimes the help you need is outside of Your business. I once spoke to a woman who can't remember how many kids she had. She had like three or four kids. They were all very picky eaters. She was making, she was meal prepping and shopping and making meals for like all of like all of these kids every single day. She was spending hours and hours and hours and I suggested maybe she get some help there. And at first she was like, oh, but this is, this is like I'm providing for my kids and it's like they're going to remember this. I'm like, they're not going to remember all of these meals. They're going to remember the special meals that you do with them or for them. They're not going to remember all of this day to day meal prep and planning and cooking, you know, so not until they're 30 and realize what it was you did for them, you know.
So I said like, figure out like how you can get some of that off your plate. And she did. And it saved her like so many hours a week just getting help inside the home rather than focusing on the business first.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, yeah, that's really interesting. And actually I have to say I've done your time study and I'll recommend that we'll put that in the show notes because that's something that you offer.
I, I was amazed that I was able to stick to it because two weeks, even that doesn't seem like a long time. It kind of feels like a long time when you're actually every minutes recording. The way I managed to make it work was using my phone and literally setting an alarm. I didn't have a sound alarm. I just had it on vibrate every 15 minutes. And it just was a reminder, write it down, you know, so that I logged it and that in that way I was able to stick to time tracking. And the results were very illuminating. I thought I was spending hours in my business, but like your example there, I've actually spending quite a lot of time, more time than I realized on domestic stuff, meal planning and whatnot, because I work from home. And the danger, of course, working from home, the flexibility and freedom is wonderful. But you know, you, you then get distracted by laundry and things and yeah, all those other things and pets and things that you perhaps wouldn't be, have anything to do with if you were away in the office somewhere. So.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I had to do the same thing. I had to set an alarm to do it because like, I will tell people that time studies are hard to do a lot of people hate doing them and they can be tricky to keep on doing it. But just remember that you're doing it for you and to help you in your business. So just do the best you can with it. But yeah, you're gonna find, and try not to like judge yourself as you go because you're gonna find things. Like a lot of people think, oh, you know, I only really watch, you know, an hour TV a day or a week or whatever. And then they're really struck by like how often they are watching TV or watching or like, you know, scrolling Instagram or anything like that. And I'm not a believer in cutting any of that out necessarily. But you know, if you find that you're spending three hours on tv, what does it look like if you only spend two hours on TV and give yourself an extra hour to do stuff for your business or whatever you want to do?
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think just having that awareness as a first step is really powerful because then, then it's like data. You know, we talk about data driven marketing, data driven decisions in our businesses. Just having that information available to us, we can then we then have some little bit more element of control. We can choose to do something else because we're aware of it, but if we're not aware of it because we've mindlessly scrolling and all of a sudden we've lost an app that's not particularly efficient. So.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Exactly. And all the things that you really love to do, you're, when you try and think back about how long you you spend, it's always going to feel shorter. You're always going to estimate shorter. So you can't just estimate your time. You have to really record it. Because if, you know, you know, if you love copywriting, if you love writing copy or you love doing research, you're going to think that that takes you a lot less time than it does. And if there's something that you hate doing or really stresses you out to do it, you're going to think that it takes you way longer than it does. So I've had people who think that they need an administrative assistant to come in and when they did it, they realized that actually they don't have very much admin at all. They, they wouldn't save much time. And what they actually needed was social media person or a content developer or junior copywriter or something like that.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's interesting. So this can really help you in terms of planning out that organ org chart in the beginning. Who do you need in your team to, to grow and scale. Having that time data and that information based on your time study can really inform that process as well. Yeah, and a coach that I work with sometimes is very much an advocate of get help right from the beginning in your business, which feels very hard when you're not making a lot of money. But the premise is you will look more professional, you will achieve more if you make that first hire sooner. Just interested to know your thoughts on that. You've talked about when you think actually the right time to grow and scale is.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say like sooner rather than later is good. You don't want to wait until you're too stressed out because if you're already overwhelmed, it's going to be way more overwhelming to bring somebody in and you're going to, I don't want to say do it wrong, but you're going to cut corners and you're going to not do all of the things you need to do in order to make sure that that person is successful in the role. Or you're just going to hire the first person somebody recommends, which is never a good thing to do. So I don't know about like right at the very beginning, you know, when you're not making any money, I don't know how much sense it makes to bring somebody on and pay them necessarily, but it really depends on you and like your financial status. Like where are you? Like do you have the money to do that? And a lot of people starting a business don't have the money to do that. So I wouldn't personally hire somebody right off the bat. But as soon as you can afford to bring somebody on, it makes way more sense to bring them on early than late.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: And you know, it doesn't have to be a full time person. It doesn't even need to be part time. There are, there are people you can hire by the hour or by the project. So yeah, you make that for your own situation. But then of course the other solution that is a potential solution to helping you delegate, speed up things, be efficient, is to use software that automates, you know, things like having a CRM customer relationship management tool. Like I think that's the right name for it, like something like Dubsado or Honeybook. Would you say that's a sort of interim step that you could take before making your first hire that will help you systematize your business processes a bit more?
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say anytime you're looking to free up some time in your business and to get it a little bit more systematized and streamlined is to look for areas where you can certainly where you can delegate, as we discussed, but also where you can streamline and automate. So streamlining might look like, you know, do you have to do four, four revisions or four reviews of something before it goes out the door? Maybe you only need to do two reviews. Or does, you know, do you have to be manually moving everything around? Can, is there any way that you can streamline that, like removing steps from a process and making it a little, a little more concise and then automating obviously through some sort of software, any repetitive manual things that you're doing. So an example that I'll give is when I was running my YouTube channel, when I was doing it regularly at first it would be like I would record the, the episode and then I would put it in a Google Drive, like upload it to Google Drive, let my video editor know that it was there. He would then do an edit. He would then let me know that the edit was there for me to review. I would then review it and double check to make sure it was good. And then let him know, okay, it's good to go.
And then. Or he would upload it to YouTube and then I would, my VA would like get the show notes on the blog or whatever. So it was all this like a lot of kind of steps involved manual process. So then I created a system where I would just put it into a folder and, and a notification would automatically go to him. So I had a zapier set up so that when something new went into that folder, he automatically got notified when the review was ready. He didn't have to manually tell me about it. It would just automatically let me know that it was there. And then when it was final, we would just put it into the final folder and then that would trigger his app that would send it to.
Into my searchy now membership IO. Yep. So that it could get transcribed, it would go into a draft into YouTube and it would get sent automatically to my VA who would draft show notes from the transcription. So like a lot more of automated. And it's not like it's saving hours a day, but it was certainly saving hours a month. Doing it.
And finding all those little ways to save yourself time is really, really key. All those little moments add up as much as the big moments do.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: They absolutely do. And they save your brain capacity. It's just mental space that it's clearing up. It's sweeping the dust away. You know, the little itty bitty things that over time do Build up seconds, minutes, hours. There is a learning curve, of course, with all of that stuff. And I have to say I haven't mastered zap or zapier, however we call it. I haven't mastered how to use that myself, even though I think I believe it's straightforward. But again, that's where I could hire, help somebody to actually like help me set up all that stuff.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it can be tricky to know like what's possible, but I think like documenting, starting to document where your manual processes are. And that's something that when you do your two weeks time study too, like at the end you can review it, you can use that information to say, okay, so this is maybe the role that I want to hire for first. But you can also look at it and say, where were all the manual processes? Where was I just like pushing the rock uphill rather than. And that like documenting those and being able to say, okay, you know, there's an opportunity to potentially streamline or automate and then you can bring somebody in who's, you know, expert at automation. You can ask them, how could we automate this?
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Yeah, one of the things that I do use now is canned emails and you know, for repetitive emails, even DMS on Instagram and things like that, you can use boards and things to set up messages that can go out automatically so you're not constantly typing the same thing every time you've got the template there. So these are all great things. So thank you very much, Sandra for walking me through all that systemitization stuff and, and helping us see how it can work for our businesses. I'm curious to know or to let people know how they can best get in touch with you.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Yeah, you can always find
[email protected] and on Instagram @sidekick coo. Same with Facebook, same with YouTube.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Great. Okay, and can we link to your time study in the. I believe it's a lead magnet. Is it something that definitely.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we can definitely link to that.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Okay, love to do that. Thanks so much for your time, Sandra. I really appreciate it.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It was so good.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: You have been listening to the Cracking Copy podcast with Ella Hoyoth and Minnie McBride. Don't miss out on future episodes by making sure you hit subscribe down below to keep up with all our podcasts and more details and resources are in our show notes. So we'll see you next time.
