How to Unbottleneck Your Life & Business with Natalie Gregorian

Natalie: [00:00:00] if there's nothing else that you take away from this, please have like one single source of truth for everything that you are delegating to your team. Make sure that it's in one spot. Make sure that it's sorted by priority, so that when you come to your to do list, or anyone on your team comes to their to do list, and they have 30 things on there, because startups are busy.
Natalie: You know exactly what you can do first, and no one's getting 30 things done in a day. Make sure you know what you can safely push and what actually has to be done today.
Dustin: Welcome back to the seven freely podcast. It's not often I get to welcome a guest who's literally changed my life, not to put too much pressure on Natalie, who's our guest today. She's like, Oh my gosh, this is how he's going to introduce me. But I am because, about nine months ago, something like that.
Dustin: Natalie entered my life and we'll talk about that part of the story and how it's had a big influence and. Was really a, an inflection point for seven figure leap as a business. And for me personally, and she's now part of our seven three leap mastermind. just an amazing person.
Dustin: You're going to really get to understand Natalie, [00:01:00] what she's all about, how she helps people and how she's helped me in this episode of seven figure leap. But Natalie Gregorian to give a little more official introduction is an operations expert, a ClickUp expert. And she runs a really cool company that she founded called tip top ops, which.
Dustin: It's gotta be like top 10 of company names, of founders that I know. I love it. So Natalie, thanks so much for being here. Warm welcome. And what I like to do to start is for you to kind of take the mic and just introduce yourself and you can go back, you know, wherever you want in your journey and start to the mystique of like why someone becomes an operations nerd.
Dustin: So, first of all, though, just welcome and thank you for being here.
Natalie: Yeah, thanks for having me, Dustin. It's, been a long time coming. I think like we've met every week for the last nine months and it's been a
Dustin: crazy?
Natalie: it's crazy. it's been a lot of backend conversations and now we get to have more of a forward facing conversation, which I think is really cool.
Dustin: Yes, absolutely. So, I kind of gave people a little flavor for what you do now and what we'll get much more into this deep dive. And I [00:02:00] really want a lot of our podcast interview today to be about specifically how Natalie helped me, because I think people might find that really insightful. This podcast existed throughout the time that she was helping me.
Dustin: So people that maybe are regular listeners might have a sense for like, something did change there. Like I started hearing this to talk about like. project management systems or, hiring someone for the first time. Like all of this, Natalie definitely had a part in, but so people can appreciate your background, Natalie, and a little more about what makes you tick.
Dustin: Where did you like fall in love with operations? When did you start to think about this idea of like owning your own business? Cause this is something I think that's somewhat new for you as far as being like totally on your own as a founder. Right.
Natalie: Yeah, the funny part is, me being the entrepreneur is relatively new. Like I started my business, just about the time actually that, we started working together. But I have been working with entrepreneurs for Almost 10 years now, so I've always been super ingrained in the entrepreneurial community and really, especially with [00:03:00] like these bootstrap entrepreneurs, but guess it was a matter of time.
Natalie: Just a matter of time until I business. You can only be ingrained in that community for so long without thinking. You know, I could do this. Actually,
Dustin: Yes. So, yeah, let's, dive into that. Like, when did you start working? I guess maybe a little bit like out of high school. Did you have like corporate jobs? Like when did you start working with entrepreneurs as like the focus of your professional life?
Natalie: I have never had a corporate
Dustin: Okay, cool.
Natalie: I have always worked with and for entrepreneurs. So my first job out of college was like the craziest job that I could have ever hoped for. I started
running operations for the baby bathwater Institute. some of your listeners may have heard of them. I'm maybe you've heard of them.
Natalie: They're this, mastermind community for. Entrepreneurs and we put on these like huge networking retreats all over the world. So I was responsible for getting 200 [00:04:00] entrepreneurs from all over on planes and trains and automobiles and ferries and speedboats and like getting them all at the same time to this private island off the coast of Croatia.
Natalie: And like, as soon as you can coordinate all of that, you can coordinate anything.
Dustin: Yeah, that's fair.
Natalie: I don't know if you know event planners, but they can get anything done with a walkie talkie and a roll of duct tape. So that is where I started my operational journey and I fell in love with it. And really cool part was I got to hang out for five days with these 200 entrepreneurs who are all growing their businesses.
Natalie: And I got to see behind the scenes of everything going on there. And The extra cool part on top of all of that is that, they paid a lot of money to be there and to be in those rooms and learning all this business content. And that's not a room I would ever have had access to in the first place, but it was actually my job, like, I was getting [00:05:00] paid to sit in those rooms and take notes for the attendees. I was just absorbing. I was like 21 years old, absorbing all of this incredible business content information and I don't know, acting as a sponge, soaking it all in. the thing that I noticed more and more as, the years went on is that a lot of this content was focused mainly on growing your business.
Natalie: It was very front end focused sales and marketing. There was very little content around how to sustain your business, how to make sure that the back end of your business keeps up with the front end so that your business is a car, your front tires, aren't spinning faster than your back tires that's not a knock on baby bathwater.
Natalie: That's a knock. I think it's a gap in the entrepreneurial community in general.
Dustin: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're always talking about growth and growth and leads and sales. And what's your top line revenue? And if we talk about back
end stuff, it's more like. What are your expenses to tell [00:06:00] me your profit? You know, it's like we don't really talk about operations and CRMs and project management systems.
Dustin: I think I was, I definitely wouldn't say victim. I would say I fell into that trap though. Like I was sort of a victim of that mindset we don't have to get into the growth trajectory of seven figure leaps. We've talked about that lots of other times, but in short rapid growth business.
Dustin: And that was the focus though, is like our sales and marketing sales and marketing. That's my background. That's the thing I love. Right. And so, I want to let us catch up, but I'll kind of say like me nine months ago was sort of. Really feeling the pain of that. I was not in baby bathwater Institute.
Dustin: I was not in those rooms. I can imagine though, the conversations that you absorbed and the focus of what these people were putting their energy into, because that's exactly what I was doing. And luckily you and I, you know, like
our trails intersected, last year. So baby bathwater Institute, that sounds ridiculously cool and stressful and maddening.
Dustin: So you're learned operations cause you kind of had to, and you're not only. Event planning, but you're event planning [00:07:00] for 200 entrepreneurs who I gotta imagine are procrastinating changing their plans all the time, or just hard to even, you know, get ahold of And then like the whole culture of the event is to kind of be a little wonky and, you know, it's named Baby Bathwater Institute.
Dustin: Like, it's a little weird. So yeah. Anything else you wanna share there? Like your takeaways or things that you learned there? And then we can maybe talk about the next step of your journey and then we'll, eventually get to, tip top Ops.
Natalie: Yeah, I'm super grateful for my time there. I learned so much and got to meet so many incredible entrepreneurs and got to see you know, the vulnerable sides of their business as they're learning and growing. So cannot be more grateful to have stumbled into them. And when I was sort of like, I need a break from the live event industry. Like I'm, I'm an introvert. It's really hard for me to schmooze for five days and stay up until sunrise. And, you know, in my ripe old age of 26 or whatever, when I ended up leaving Baby Bath Autos, like I, I need something quieter. So I was the head of [00:08:00] operations for an operations consulting agency, which is also where I was the head operations consultant, which is just a game of how many times I can say operations in one
Dustin: I was going to say, it sounds a little meta, right? Like you have a company that people hire for operations consulting and you're the head of operations for that company and the head consultant
Natalie: Yes.
Dustin: for the consultancy. In other words, had to be really good at operations because not only were you doing it, like you were at baby bath water, where you're a little more maybe behind the scenes, like doing stuff, but here you're actually.
Dustin: The face to clients, right? You become the face to clients, directly for the first time. And effectively you're being hired out as an operations expert, on behalf of a company and then internal to that company are also running their operations. Does that capture that? And is that true?
Natalie: Yeah, it's so meta inception, it was a lot, but it was also the most incredible training ground because I got to see behind the scenes of six, seven figure eight figure [00:09:00] businesses and what was going on with them and what I learned, the really interesting part was that the six figure businesses and the eight figure businesses, they all had the same exact issues.
Natalie: They just got really, really hairy and ugly and snowballed and compounded at eight figures. And when we could catch people at six figures and early seven figures and help them get their bottlenecks worked out, things went so much faster and smoother than with the eight figure businesses, because On the outside, they're crushing it.
Natalie: Eight figures. Wow. But on the inside, everything's on fire. Things are falling apart. Like the team is on the brink of mutiny and it's so much harder to reel people back from there.
Dustin: And I think yes, a lot of people need to, so maybe you're listening, you're like. You're starting to feel some of this pain. You're starting to like understand what Natalie's saying, but keep in mind, something that as you're talking to kind of hit me, I'm like, these are not just six, seven, eight figure businesses that you're [00:10:00] coming to help.
Dustin: These are six, seven, eight figure businesses who are deep enough in the. Oh, crap moments to go hire someone and not someone cheap, like to go hire an operation, the consultancy. So well surpassed the point of being on fire because they're like, we need help and we're willing to spend money on it.
Dustin: And that's where you insert yourself into these, businesses. So we're a lot of those businesses, like founder led sort of expert led businesses that sort of, had a essential figure who. Yeah, I started the thing and grew it, but I know that's kind of how baby bathwater was. I know the company you work for, and I know that's how it was.
Dustin: was founder led. That's what you're doing. That's what I'm doing. So I don't know if that's sort of a commonality among a lot of your experience too, is founder led companies.
Natalie: Yes, exactly. And the thing about founder led companies is like, we start these businesses to gain some level of freedom. That's why we're not going down the corporate job road. Like we often quit our corporate jobs in order to do this. And when people come talk to me, it's when [00:11:00] they finally like reach this.
Natalie: Level of business success that only too late, they realize has come at the sacrifice at the cost of some of their personal success, like their business has overshadowed these other pillars of their life that are equally as important like their family and their hobbies and their faith and their health and they, lost some degree of freedom that they were looking for when they started their business in the first place.
Natalie: Yeah.
Dustin: I love that. didn't really know where I was going with that question, but that's it. It's like, I think the vast majority of the people listening to our conversation are at some stage of that. So maybe they're in the early stages and their founder, and they've created this thing.
Dustin: They started coaching people. They're doing some consulting. They're running a small agency. And they can start to feel, think at some point this could be an issue, like right, now I'm just like trying to make money. it's all about growth. It's all about getting my first or next client.
Dustin: Then there's going to be some people on the spectrum who are really starting to feel this and they're like. Oh, I think we always kind of need sales and [00:12:00] marketing, but like that's become less of the urgent pain and it's really fulfillment. Now that's the urgent pain or client service or financial stuff, because like beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is a great self development tool, because every time you solve a problem, it creates new problems, right?
Dustin: they're new and better problems, new levels, new devils, Some people like to say, but the reality is it creates new problems and new challenges. if you embrace that, I think it's new creative work. It's like, Oh, here's a new type of thing I need to solve. And then there's some people that are like redlining, maybe the people that would have hired, your former employer.
Dustin: And, I know you would like to find people earlier in the spectrum, but there's probably, you know, some clients you work with now who are starting to redline a bit and they're like. Oh, crap, like we got all these clients. I thought that was what I wanted. And now I feel overwhelmed, stuck, burnout, you know, words that come up when people start to, realize they've exceeded their own personal capacity to do the thing that they created.
Dustin: So it's probably a good time to talk about where we intersect because kind of describing my own story. so I'll talk a little bit more about from my [00:13:00] perspective. Kind of how we got to know each other last year, Natalie, and I'd love to hear from your perspective because it sounds like you were transitioning out of one role into starting tip top ops.
Dustin: I think it was one of your first clients, I didn't know it at the time. That's good, but really proud in hindsight and like, that's really cool because now we've got to know each other. And like you said, we meet every week, multiple times a week now you're in the mastermind and I, and I still work with you.
Dustin: And we do stuff like this where we help Educate people, but real quick version for me, is January 2024. I'm speaking at two different conferences. I have a really insightful conversation, a couple of different people at podfest, which I literally just got back from at the time that we're recording this a year later.
Dustin: So a year ago, exactly. I'm kind of coming back and I'm wrestling with this idea that. Hey, like , this podcast profits accelerator program is really working. Like I've done this now for well over a year and we've had, you know, a lot of success. And for the very first time in my life, even leaving the engineering career and all this stuff, like for the very first time, I would start to [00:14:00] use the word burnout in conversations.
Dustin: Like, I think I was starting to feel burnout. Like, don't even know what this is, but there's something here and I'm like, not really wanting to show up on these zoom calls. And I'm starting to feel overwhelmed and. the sales and marketing is working like, you know, it's my thing. So we're doing a good job of creating groups and we're doing, I think a great job of fulfilling, but it's
starting to feel like there's some fractures, like the fulfillment starting to feel overwhelming.
Dustin: I'm starting to like drowned in literally like post it notes and paper. And I'm trying to manage my whole, business and all these leads, like just in my brain. And I felt like that was probably like the key thing, the symptom I would have described. January, February, March, 2024 I really felt the acute pain of trying to do it all myself and store and process and prioritize things in my own brain.
Dustin: I think that's probably the easiest way to say it. So I'm working with a great coach, Cassie Shea, who has joined me a couple of times on this podcast. we did a 2024 recap where I talked more in depth about some of these transitions, on that [00:15:00] episode, but Cassie and I went through this really impactful exercise.
Dustin: And. We were working through like an identity story, like, Hey, you've been the founder, you've been the doer, you wear all the hats and I'll say I have kind of worn that as a sense of pride and I own it. That's cool. It's time though. I'm starting to feel all this, symptoms of that.
Dustin: That's not working anymore. And so. What do I need to change? And so what we identify, we went through this whole exercise of what would a, true CEO of a 10 million company do? What's Dustin do? And we started comparing those things and saying, there's a lot of these things I shouldn't be doing, or I need to start transitioning.
Dustin: Into a smarter way of doing work. And so the number one action item coming out of that session was you would need a fractional COO. I don't really know what that meant exactly, but I know I needed help like getting the stuff out of my brain and getting into some sort of digital systems that could run without me or could run with me or whatever, but it just couldn't live in my brain.
Dustin: And so I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but Cassie did. And so Cassie was like, you got to meet Natalie. Natalie is brilliant. And she does this operations work. And I [00:16:00] think the two of you should talk about what this might look like. and I can talk next about what we actually did
over the course of three months.
Dustin: That really was a huge inflection point in my business and my life, but I'd love your perspective, Natalie. We haven't talked about this. Like that's
where I came at. Us meeting. I'd love to hear kind of where you're at and your entrepreneurial journey at the time that we met. And I don't even know if you were looking for someone like me or if it was happenstance and then, continue to work with people like me.
Dustin: And even a lot of people from our community. So what was going on with you? And we met, I guess we ended up meeting what, like March, April, something like that.
Natalie: yeah, I think that sounds about right. yeah, like you said, very early on in my own entrepreneurial journey and will always forever be grateful to Cassie for introducing us because that has opened up so many more wonderful connections from that. so I had just quit my job because I, yeah.
Natalie: knew that I wanted to start a family. I knew that I was not willing to do that, working 40 hours a week. I was like, okay, you know what? I'm an expert at what I do. I can go build a company that I can run [00:17:00] at part time capacity so that I can be the best mom that I can be. The irony is that you know, I help people like you build their businesses to run without them.
Natalie: So they're not the bottlenecks. And I am now, gosh, in month eight of pregnancy.
Dustin: I was gonna say, I wasn't gonna be the first one to say it, but the camera angle may not be so obvious to people, but yeah, you're doing it. So like you're coming to the, you're quit your, job that you really enjoyed, you're doing a great job at, because you want to have the freedom to set up your own business so that you could start a family and like.
Dustin: So now we're, you know, in, I guess it's the time of recording late January. So yeah, I mean, you know, God willing, everything goes according to timeframes. And yeah, not too far out. You'll be, an official mom, which is really cool because, you know, at the time that we were starting to, Move towards each other.
Dustin: This was one of the big drivers and goals that you had for your lifestyle.
Natalie: as an operator, I think especially it's really hard to take your own medicine and it took me a really [00:18:00] long time to take my own medicine. But here I am, very close to taking my maternity leave and my business can run without me. I have a team in place.
Natalie: I'm not the bottleneck anymore. But it all really started with helping you get out of that quick sand trap of being stuck as the, everything person and you're wearing eight different hats, especially in startup land and especially in founder led startup land, you're doing everything I could not believe Dustin when we first started working, but like you were, Holding an entire seven figure run rate business in your brain.
Natalie: And when I'm like, cool, like, how do you keep track of things? You're sending me pictures of sticky notes on your desk! And I'm like, Austin, one, this is insane. And two, I'm frankly so impressed because it just speaks to like the caliber of business person and, [00:19:00] and marketer and salesperson that you are, that you can have a seven figure run rate business, despite not having any operational infrastructure to support you on the backend.
Dustin: you know, and I, think, and maybe if people can relate, if maybe you're listening to this and you can relate to this. To a point, I kind of wore that with a badge of honor, you know, like I'm scrappy, I'm building this thing myself. And, I knew better, like you said about your own business.
Dustin: It's one thing if someone would've came to me and said, should I build my business this way? I'd be like, hell no, that's so stupid. Why would you do that? Like you're, doing it on hard mode for no reason. Like, of course you should use systems. And I even knew what systems probably I should be using, but like.
Dustin: I couldn't catch up to myself in a sense. Like it just kept going and going and going. And so it just kind of got out of control. And then I, like I already mentioned, I sort of had these. Symptoms are starting to get honest with myself. Like I really do need help. So where do I go for that? So Natalie and I met and there's more detail to this.
Dustin: But just to give people kind of a high level overview, we agreed to work together for 90 days [00:20:00] and a fractional COO position. And I don't really know what I was asking for exactly, but I just knew. Big goal number one for me was relieve my brain. I was starting to feel like overwhelmed.
Dustin: And like, the way I described this is it felt like if you had an old school computer and as it got old and the operating system kind of got out of date or got full, like the memory would get full and it would just start humming all the time. And you're like, man, this thing sounds like it's going to explode.
Dustin: It's kind of how I felt in my brain. It was like, there's always a low level and then a medium level hum. There's just too much in there. Right. And I needed some relief from that. And of course, because I'm a business owner and a marketer and all that stuff, and I help people with growth, and I think this could probably be an ROI positive engagement, meaning like this isn't just physical relief for us.
Dustin: And this is also setting us up to actually make more money and impact more people and do a better job for our clients. but I felt like it was gonna be like messy in the middle. It's like, it's gonna be a lot of work. I gotta like, take pictures, all these post it notes all this stuff and try to like.
Dustin: have another human make sense of this for me. But anyway, so sort of the 90 day plan month, one month, two months, three, the way I [00:21:00] remember it month one was let's track my time. And let's categorize that and start to understand where I could quickly get some low hanging fruit relief for like how I'm wasting my time basically.
Dustin: Right. And that's a whole story in and of itself. We can get into that a little bit, if it makes sense, because I've tried and failed this many times. I've read. Every book all of them, like 90 day year, 12 week year, buy back your time, any book. I know everything about ideal. Oh, every Michael Hyatt book.
Dustin: I read them all. I've had every planner and failed every time. So we can talk about what we did differently, but that was sort of month one And also start to extract from Dustin's brain, like what all is in there? And they're like, we're not really ready to manage it yet, but what all do you do?
Dustin: And that was very insightful. Cause I hadn't really went through that exercise before. And then what I would say like month two was more setting up a project management system. Click up was the one of choice, which I've actually fallen in love with, even though I was extremely resistant to having a tool like this.
Dustin: We can talk about how we're using that. And then sort of part and parcel with that [00:22:00] project management system with some version of a CRM. So like a customer relationship management tool. So again, I have all these. Clients and leads and partners, all this stuff. I was literally managing it through my own trying to remember stuff, making notes, putting stuff on calendars.
Dustin: We have an email list, but that's not a CRM by the email list is like we can communicate with our customers. We can say, Hey, we got seats open in the next accelerator, but that's different than I had a conversation with. Jill and Jill said this, I need to follow up with Jill on this date. Like that's managing a relationship and I didn't have that.
Dustin: So we actually did that the first version of that in ClickUp, just to keep it really simple. And then I would say kind of phase three was So now we know. Where I need to free up time and we know, we have a lot of the stuff out of my head and into, buckets where we kind of know activities I'm doing and where I can, my ability to need help then through ClickUp, Natalie created a hiring funnel.
Dustin: For me. And so really interesting timing on this is basically a three month engagement that ended, I don't know, like right the 1st of June, [00:23:00] somewhere around there. And I know that because my wife and I left for two weeks, and went to Italy, for the first overseas trip of our life.
Dustin: And so we had this goal of like, let's get this project done before you leave. and we did a little bit when we got, when I got back and this funnel was set up, this hiring funnel was set up, so it was all going by the time I left. And
then Natalie stepped in and actually helped me sort through, some of the automation and scoring and some manual work.
Dustin: I mean, like 60 something applications come in for what we call an executive assistant, like Dustin's first hiring executive assistant, and she helped me define that we create the job description. It was really, really, really useful. And in fact, we've repeated that system for other roles since then, but this is the first time using it.
Dustin: And so while I'm in Italy, Natalie is actually screening this, all this stuff coming in. And when I get back from Italy, I have three appointments on my calendar for the three finalists. It's like, how cool is that? I actually left for two weeks. Not only did my business not burn down, but this is sort of proof of how this worked, I come back and I'm ready to do [00:24:00] the final.
Dustin: Interviews for my first executive assistant. So we get back in the end of June, first of July, and we also started a cohort for the next podcast, perhaps accelerator, like a week or two after that. So a lot of stuff going on while Like literally had no laptop or, very loose internet connections while we're traveling through Italy.
Dustin: So, and then we can talk, about what we've done, sort of the maintenance since then, because now we've got a different cadence that we meet on and we talk about a little bit different things, but that's the 90 days sort of intensive transition. I went through like literally changed my life.
Dustin: Like I could get emotional about it. Like it really changed a lot, but hopefully it gives people an idea of like, what did we do? Yeah, so I don't know, Natalie, from your perspective, and you recall it the same way, because, I probably have a little different perspective on what I felt and what I was going through doing this for the first time.
Dustin: Whereas for you, this is like what you do. So you're probably like, yeah, dude, duh. Like you need a project manager system. I'm like, what is it? What should, how does this, how does this thing work? So
Natalie: Yeah, the I knew when we first started working that we needed to get data on where you were [00:25:00] actually spending your time and where that was a good high leverage use of your time and where that was a actually poor use of your time and could be better spent delegating it to someone else.
Dustin: yes,
Natalie: Before we can delegate to someone else, though, You actually have to have the tools to be a good manager and a good leader. And that really can only happen when you have a solid project management system in place. Like we can't. Tell your EA to come to your house and look over your shoulder and see what all is on your desk.
Dustin: I tried, but she, she was resistant. She lives in Georgia. So
Natalie: expect them to read your mind and pull all the things out of your mind. And so for almost all of my clients, I would say the first lowest hanging fruit that you can get operationally wise is a really good project management system. And that acts as the brain of your business. It's almost like A ringmaster for your business, like if it feels more like your business is a [00:26:00] circus and you're running this circus or the circus is running you and
Dustin: yes.
Natalie: the monkeys are loose and the jugglers are dropping balls and you have to like micromanage the clowns to make sure they show up on this circus.
Natalie: Stage on time and the audience is complaining all of that chaos goes away when you have a system to manage it all and tame that chaos and serve as the brain of your business. And so that is always. One of the first things that we put in place so that you can delegate effectively and so that you can win back your time because you have better things to be spending your time on.
Natalie: You're going to be a guest on other people's podcast. You're going to go form strategic partnerships that bring in an extra six figures to your company this year. You shouldn't be spending your time doing it all and you shouldn't be spending your time managing it all.
Dustin: Yes. Amen. Yeah. And I, feel like I should say this because I feel like. There's people listening who feel the same [00:27:00] way I knew better. It's not like I'm a doofus and like, I knew there's a reason people had executive assistants. I just honestly didn't know how to make that transition. I didn't know how to empower someone else to do this stuff.
Dustin: And so I just kept holding onto it and then carry compounding and compounding and compounding to where it almost felt like so heavy, like holding this boulder that no one else can hold. if you asked me, like, what do you need help with?
Dustin: I don't even know where to start. you know, and so I think that was the magic of our engagement, what Natalie helped me with. And I think what you said is really accurate too. don't want to discount Natalie's personal role in this really, really important. and emotionally, I think I needed that.
Dustin: I need someone I could trust to be like, this is what we should do, man. Like this is next. So I'm like, okay. But. In hindsight, now, when I look back at what we actually did, the main thing we did was this project management system. So I don't know if you want to go through what that means, why you prefer ClickUp.
Dustin: I think that might be really helpful for people listening if they're like, I don't know if I have one or not. You know, like, what does that even mean? Like, what does it do? What's its function? I think in a very general sense, what you said is accurate. I sort of digitized [00:28:00] my brain
Natalie: Mm hmm.
Dustin: as it pertains to my business, and I know you use this personally and in other places.
Dustin: I'm mostly just focused on my business, but I did, I digitized my brain. And then put it into a online system where I can access it when I need to, but also other people can access it and it can do stuff without me. And I think that's how I like very conceptually would describe it. But I would love for you to give people if they're listening to like, I don't know if I need one or not.
Dustin: I don't know if I have one or not. Like, what do you mean by project management system? And then maybe on the tail end of that, talk about ClickUp and like why you're so passionate about that as a tool.
Natalie: Yeah, the project management system serves as, and this is like so nerdy operations, but it's, actually really sexy because of what it makes possible. It's, The single source of truth for everything that goes on in your business, to fulfill on your business, there are so many moving parts happening at all times.
Natalie: And this has to go out on this day and someone has to do this ahead of time in order to get that done on that [00:29:00] day. And you want to make sure that. All of those tasks and projects are happening at the schedule that you expect them to, in the caliber that you expect them to. And if you don't have a system in place, you're stuck in this sort of endless Slack pinging back and forth with your team of, Hey, did you do this?
Natalie: Hey, what's the update? Hey, did this go out today? And you turn into a glorified babysitter of your business. And that is not what any founder has started their business to be. So the project management system takes away all of that noise while still giving you the visibility you need and still holding your team accountable to getting those things done.
Natalie: But it takes away, I would say, like 70 percent of that managerial load and just makes it automatic. And that's really sexy because now you get to spend your time in your 10 million CEO identity. As opposed to [00:30:00] glorified babysitter of your business.
Dustin: So I think that's one huge function of it is task management and task automation. but you know, I think of some other ways that we're using it to, if you ever thought, like, I know I should have S. O. P. S. Like, I know there's a
lot of things I do repeatedly that I should document so that someone else could do it.
Dustin: But, like, where do I put that? Well, like, that goes in our click top, right? Or, Yeah. We do team meetings like Tiffany, my executive assistant and I meet every week. And that's all based in ClickUp and it's really convenient
cause then it's not only like having a word doc that's like, let's talk about these five things, but it's linked to stuff in ClickUp.
Dustin: So she's like, Oh, we talked about this. Click, check this box, check this box, assign this task to Dustin bubble. And so it's like, very interactive and it's very, fluid and simple. And so I can save as a founder. As the owner of the company, I understand ClickUp enough, I know what's in there.
Dustin: If I need to find something that's very searchable, you know, that kind of stuff. But I also don't own ClickUp. And I think that was a huge mindset shift for me. So one of the things that came out [00:31:00] of Natalie's work with me, specifically because of the ClickUp system, is I started to see for the first time how other current and future Contractors and team members could own stuff, right?
Dustin: And so like what we ended up deciding, to give people a little fast forward is like click up is internal communication. It is mostly project management, task management. It's also our S. O. P. Library. It's also, when we, like, we're doing this big summit right now, as an example. And so we're interacting with a lot of people.
Dustin: We've got someone who's hired on temporarily just to help us with that. She knows exactly what to do and what we expect because it's assigned through ClickUp and she's not a ClickUp person. She doesn't need to be, but ClickUp still like communicates with her and then communicates with us. We know what's going on.
Dustin: So it is really that central brain, that central source of truth. So anyway, that's what ClickUp does. And now Tiffany owns that for me. So I hired Tiffany as an executive assistant initially to help with like email and calendar and some of those more traditional roles. And then she was also not a ClickUp expert, but [00:32:00] Natalie helped her.
Dustin: Natalie's team helped her. And it was also the way it was set up. It's very intuitive. So now she's. click up enough expert to like own that. And then I just get tasked when I need to know about stuff that I need to know. I hope that makes sense for someone listening. Like I don't see every task and click up.
Dustin: I can, but I don't want to, and I don't need to like but I know the stuff. There's a dashboard I can click boom. And I know exactly what's expected of me today from the business and in the business, I can look at. A dashboard of
like, here's my personal things that I've committed to. Here's my professional metrics that I want to measure.
Dustin: And it's all just like there on a, home screen. So if you can imagine that, like as a founder. Imagine clicking in in the morning and seeing exactly what you need to get done. It's prioritized. If you want to change the priority, you're in control. So you click it and you say, nah, I'll do this next week.
Dustin: it's all there and it's easy for you to track and anyone on your team that needs to know about it has that same visibility. that's our click up thing. And then we've chosen circle is like our client facing place. So that's where we keep our courses, community dms with clients. And we just switched to go high level.
Dustin: That's our sales and [00:33:00] marketing system. And you may be like, why are we talking about that? Well, Natalie didn't have any direct involvement in those except. The mindset shift that came from first trusting someone else with click up and saying, like, this is the first thing we need to build. And someone else needs to have responsibility.
Dustin: And they can tell me what I need to know. And we can coordinate about it. I've now transferred that same delegation muscle to client success, which is circle based. And it's got also Tiffany. went from part time to full time and took on that role. And then we've got High level, which is our sales and marketing platform, which currently I'm still the head of, but now I can easily hire someone who's like the director of sales and marketing.
Dustin: And and then there's pieces of those activities that connect back to ClickUp, which is that's kind of central brain. And so I still can see enough of what I need to see. There's dashboards and things like that, but I don't have to. In my brain, manage three different major systems. I don't have to own those systems.
Dustin: I only know what I need to know. And I think that's kind of where trying to boil this down. And that's just what I wanted out of this. And that's what we created. So I don't know, Natalie, anything [00:34:00] else to talk about with, you could talk for hours about ClickUp, but anything else, for the people listening Anything else they should know about And then I want to talk more about what you guys do in a more general sense. And then we can talk a little more about how people can get started with project management. If this is all kind of foreign to them.
Natalie: All I have left to say, Dustin, is I'm so proud of you. Dustin: Oh, well, thank you.
Natalie: Like the Dustin I met back in April would not have known how to delegate, would not have known how to trust the systems in order to delegate. this is a huge leap for you personally and in your own business. And I just. I can't wait to see like you, you were running a seven figure run rate without all of this.
Natalie: What comes next for you with all of this supporting you and like giving you that wind out your back. So I just can't wait to see what's next for you.
Dustin: Well, thank you. Yeah. The other thing I want to say, because brought this word up earlier is burnout. So what I've discovered in hindsight is I really wasn't burnout. Like, define burnout however you want to define it. I was not.
Actually, like physically [00:35:00] tired of my business or wanting to burn it down, but I was was overwhelmed in the moment.
Dustin: And I think really importantly, I was bored. So I had gotten to this point of where the business is running. And I couldn't see any vision for how to grow from there because it felt like more and more overwhelmed is the only thing that could grow the business.
Dustin: And so the freedom that came from having the project management system and having Natalie come and Unhandcuffed me from this identity. I had adopted of having to do everything, opened up an entire new chapter and my professional growth. And so again, the business is the business is really the same business.
Dustin: We're able to grow and scale more now, and I've got more help in some of the stuff you heard, but it wasn't that like. This business was bad. It was that I had set myself up in an identity and how it related to the business that actually I
was bored of it. And I didn't realize how much creative freedom came from embracing things like project management systems.
Dustin: Like if you're like me and you're like a marketer and you're like, I love the coach and do the thing. That may sound really boring, but I guess my encouragement saying that is I only realized now on the other side of it. It actually made me [00:36:00] way more creative. Like it freed up my brain to do lots of cool new stuff.
Dustin: Like expand our mastermind run the summit that we have coming up. Hire new people. And so it's like, Oh, my gosh. freed me up to do so much more creatively, whereas at the time I thought this is going to suck. This is boring. I don't want to have to, I don't want to have to like create tasks and do all that.
Dustin: But yeah, so I hope that's encouraging. If someone's feeling a little burnt out, I would challenge you to really reflect on that and journal on it and think, am I actually burnt out? Like I'm actually like done with this or am I just bored and I need the next creative chapter. And that next creative chapter may actually be.
Dustin: Being a leader and hiring some people and getting some support and getting a project management system in place and starting to get this. Business out of your own brain so that you can have true freedom and have a saleable asset that like other people can come and run profit from. So anyway, that's my little diatribe for the founders listening who think they're too cool for this.
Dustin: You're not too cool for it. It's actually super cool when you do it. So, Natalie, I know we're gonna run up on time, but. Can you share just a snapshot of what tip top ops does [00:37:00] today? And then I would love for you to close this out with maybe like a two minute summary of like, how do I get started with project management?
Dustin: If I don't yet want to commit to like hiring Natalie or doing ClickUp and that sort of thing.
Natalie: Yeah, for sure. So what I have built my team of expert project management system builders to do is go into your business and build you a custom. Click up project management system that is custom tailored to fit your unique business. So best way to get started with us and what we do for everyone is we first want to diagnose what's going on with your business.
Natalie: Like what are your current systems actually look like? What are we working with? So we come in and we look at all the nooks and crannies and dark hallways of what you got. And we give you like, here is your most vulnerable breaking points. Here is where your, systems are going to break as you get more clients, as you bring on a team.
Natalie: And also here's your highest leverage [00:38:00] opportunities for optimization. This also comes with like a custom system blueprint. For what a functional project management system could look like for you, of course, tailored to your business goals, and it's gonna include all the trackers and the
dashboards and the automations that Daphne was talking about, and we can build the thing for you because this is not your zone of genius.
Natalie: If you don't have it yet, you should not be the one building it. So we'll do that for you. If you are Okay. If you're not ready for that yet, then the easiest thing you can do for yourself. I've seen this in so many different of my clients. They start out with delegating things in Slack and voice notes and text and emails and live meetings, and their poor teams, they had to
Dustin: Hide my face. This is totally me before before we work together. So
Natalie: Their poor teams are just like frantically trying to keep up. So, if there's nothing else that you take away from this, please have like one single source of truth for [00:39:00] everything that you are delegating to your team. Make sure that it's in one spot. Make sure that it's sorted by priority, so that when you come to your to do list, or anyone on your team comes to their to do list, and they have 30 things on there, because startups are busy.
Natalie: You know exactly what you can do first, and no one's getting 30 things done in a day. Make sure you know what you can safely push and what actually has to be done today.
Dustin: I love that. So if someone's like, I just kind of get started, I want to do a trial for what it feels like to consolidate things and be able to prioritize things, even if it's just you doing it all still. That alone provides a lot of relief. So consolidate your to do list into one spot. And I think the bigger one, at least for me, is consolidate your communications into one spot or one channel, especially if you have any sort of contractors or anyone you're working with internally have one single place to communicate then have one single place to communicate with your clients.
Dustin: I think that alone will free up a lot of This fear of like I'm dropping a ball. I'm missing the communication with someone. Someone's waiting on [00:40:00] me and I can't remember where it's at or or not. So I would say at a minimum, take that action today With what Natalie just shared, and honestly, you should just talk to Natalie's team, at tip top ops, because I mean, worst case, you're going to like, have a much better understanding of where you actually are, and best case, you might find that , yeah, actually do want to have them help me get a custom project management system in place.
Dustin: If you're not familiar with ClickUp, like look it up. It's really cool. If you've ever used any sort of like cool online tool, like Notion or anything like
that, it's very. It feels kind of like that, like it's really fun and clean and easy to play with. So it's not, if you've, if you came from an engineering background like me and I heard project management system, like, oh God, no, like I, I, I have horrid those things.
Dustin: This is like, the reason I left engineering is these kind of like horrible, ugly, hard to use systems. That's not at all. What this is very lightweight. If it's set up right. Like it will be if, if you engage in Adelaide's team, like it's fun. I don't know. I mean, it sounds weird to people. Like I have lots of fun in my business.
Dustin: I would have never thought that the project management, [00:41:00] completing tasks, delegating things would be the fun part, but it has really become fun because, it's allowed me to, to, again. Have a new creative muscle to flex and I have to give Natalie all the credit for that. So Natalie, people are listening and they're like, I do actually want to talk to someone about possibly helping me with this.
Dustin: Like what's the, the call to action here for, for worship people go to do that. If they want to interact with you and your team.
Natalie: Yeah, you can get in touch with us at tiptopops. co, that's co, and we want to make it such a no brainer to like, get this piece of operational infrastructure in place in your business. Now for, for listeners of the Seven Figure Elite podcast, we're offering 400 off. Our audit blueprint. So all you have to do is reach out to us, mentioned Dustin mentioned the seven figure leap podcast, and we'll make sure you get that discount because we really do want to help you before it becomes painful.
Dustin: That's so cool. And the last thing I'll share real quick and I'll, [00:42:00] I'll let Natalie go. So she's now in the seven free lead mastermind, but actually what happened was she helped me so much. I was like, you got to come and like, just show people what's possible. And so she came and did a private training for our mastermind before she was in it.
Dustin: And she got, honestly got a lot of clients from it. Cause they're like. People like us, they're like overwhelmed, growing, scaling people, that are founders and they're like, and I've heard so many times now, since, since that started of Natalie has changed my life. Natalie is like helped our business.
Dustin: And now it's not just Natalie. He's like, she has a team, she's got a system in place. And so this can, even when she's enjoying maternity leave with
this new baby, no matter when you call, you're going to get that top level service. And I think that's so cool. So it's not, I guess what I'm trying to say, it's not just me.
Dustin: A lot of people that really. That I love and trust and are part of my inner circle and business have, have worked with Natalie's team and experienced similar relief and a similar growth as a result of making this change. And then, you know, we're very grateful. Natalie came over and joined the mastermind after she developed relationships with so many people [00:43:00] in it.
Dustin: So tip top ops. co. That's super easy. And if you talk to someone on Natalie's team or you book a call, put seven figure leap in there and, they're gonna be very generously give you a 400 discount for doing that. So Natalie, thank you again, not only for being here on the podcast, but for like literally changing my family's life.
Dustin: I know that maybe it feels heavy, but it's legit. And, I'm very grateful for you and grateful for. Who knew project management, it's like so cool. So, thank you for, helping me trust that and embrace it and, and be able to like feel the fruits of it now on the other side. So thanks again, Natalie, for being here.
Natalie: Dustin. It's been a pleasure to be here. It's been a pleasure to know you.