[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name's Jay Aigner. Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Olivia Parkes. She's the CEO of The Systems Boss. she's over in Chicago and she's a transplant from the UK. We'll have to talk about that a little bit. Olivia,
how are you?
[00:00:43] Olivia: for having me, Jay.
[00:00:48] Jay: So you're in Chicago. How long have you
[00:00:50] Olivia: Since August, 2022. So like just over a year now. Yeah.
[00:00:57] Jay: Okay. And what brought you to Chicago?
[00:01:00] Olivia: Chicago in particular is an interesting journey, I guess. I kind of always had this idea since I was 17, that I wanted to move to the States, but that was like before I even thought about like starting a business. And I just remember that I was like, Googling apartments in Dallas and like jobs I could get in Dallas.
I had like, This thing about Dallas. I don't know. I'd heard of like successful people that lived there. So I was like, if I just moved to Dallas, I'll be successful. And then I tried to, I kind of embarked on this path of like figuring out how the hell I would ever like get a visa and how I would even get to move here.
I went to college. Started some businesses in college and then ended up working with someone because I wasn't very good at sales. Like I started my first business. It was a Facebook ads agency. I wasn't good at sales. I was like really nervous and shy and whatever. And I was doing all these cold calls and it wasn't good.
So I had a friend who was really good at sales. I paid him. I asked him who coached you. And like, could you put me in contact with them? And I did. And it was this guy who lived in San Diego and I paid him to coach me. I ended up getting really good at sales. He asked me if I wanted to work with him and like help him with his company.
He had a sales training and recruiting company and he'd been a sales rep for over a decade and then like transition to building out sales teams, which was some really big names. And I was like, Oh, I could learn a lot from this guy. And. He's in America, like I could maybe get to move to America. So I was like, okay, let's start working with him.
And I did. And then it became apparent that he was really good at sales, but nothing that really happened after the sale. So I just started like teaching myself. Operations and like filling in the blanks because it just came quite naturally to me. I could obviously see like what we were missing and what needed to be done.
So I just stepped in and did it. And yeah, I started working with him like midway through university. By the time I graduated, I was like, okay, let's go out to San Diego and see if this is like viable to keep working with him. So I went out to San Diego and I was like, would this be a good place to live?
I was still in the process of figuring out. What would be the best visa? And I figured out the best visa for me to get would be like to run my own business because that would get me, it would get me here the fastest and it would give me like a lot more autonomy. So I already knew like that was a path I was going in.
And even though I worked with him, like I was, Technically running my own business. Cause like I was an independent contractor and stuff. so yeah, I went to San Diego. I loved it, but I felt like it was too chill for me. Like the pace of life was really chill for like what I'm trying to do right now.
So I was like, I need to go back there when I've like made all my money. so I did really like it there, but he was also moving to Miami. So at the end of. The San Diego trip, he moved to Miami. I went there for a week. Then when I came back to the States, like in the new year, I lived in Miami for two months.
But how did Chicago get into the mix when? I was on the way to San Diego. I hired someone to work for us and this girl lived in Chicago. And at that point in the business, the guy I was working for, he got COVID and he lost his voice and essentially basically couldn't work for a month. So I took over the entire business.
I. I hired all the team members. I trained everyone. I did all the one on one meetings with them. I did all the sales calls, literally everything. So I ended up like, you know, virtually spending a lot of time with this girl and we became really good friends. And so I was like, well, let me go out to Chicago and visit her.
So I went to Chicago while I was living in San Diego and I was like, I really like it here. It kind of reminds me of London in many ways. And then I was thinking, okay, when it got to the following year, after I'd lived in Miami and I was like a few months away from getting my visa, I was like, where do I actually want to live?
Miami just isn't my vibe. These are all the things I want in a city. Like, I want major sports teams, even if they're not very good at Chicago. I want high rise apartments, a nice skyline, a big body of water, good food, good people. Chicago ticks all the boxes, even though it's cold right now. so I was like, yeah, gonna move here.
So, yeah, that was a really long answer to your question, but
[00:05:31] Jay: Well, you answered all the follow up questions during that. So that's fine. that's good. yeah, I think I've never actually been in Chicago, but I just know it's cold and, it's interesting that you did not want to move to San Diego.
[00:05:43] Olivia: I would have, I really liked it there, but there's just a few mitigating factors, like everyone I knew that I was moving away, the time difference between that and the UK, like those extra two hours, like makes a big difference, like makes the difference between if I got to talk to my mom that day or not, you know, like she'll be going out for dinner and I'll be starting work.
So then like we miss each other, you know. So, and then taxes and just general cost of living.
[00:06:17] Jay: Yes, I was gonna say. That's probably the number one reason why most people are moving away from there. so I mean, tell me about your company specifically. Is this the one that you started? Is this the one you took over? Like what is systems boss? and is that your baby? Or is that when you,
like I said, you took over from someone else.
[00:06:39] Olivia: is mine. from the beginning. So yeah, after I was working with that guy and like, I went to Miami, I kind of realized like I didn't align with him anymore, I didn't agree with his values. I felt like he lacked integrity. And he would expect a certain standard from the team, but he wasn't upholding that standard himself.
And he was like changing everything every few minutes. And it became really hard to get consistent traction and it was kind of driving me insane. And I felt like. I had the tools to go and build a business because like I had run that month when he was ill, like we doubled the business with me just running everything.
So I knew I could do it. And I also met a lot of other entrepreneurs in that time. And I realized like the operation stuff, That i'm helping this guy with and everything i've learned over the past couple years Is not an isolated problem like a lot of people a lot of business owners have this problem because they're very visionary They want to do sales and marketing like they're focusing on other bits of the business, but they're not very good at systems and operations Building their business in a scalable way So they can actually, you know, scale it, get out the day to day, get everything they wanted out of that business.
So I decided to stop working with him and start my own company, which is the systems boss. And so been doing this for almost two years now. And, We have a few different services, but the main one is, we have fractional COO. So I'm a fractional COO for a few different companies that are looking to like reach eight plus figures.
And so essentially first thing I'll do is I'll audit their entire business, everything across marketing, sales, operations, finance, fulfillment, their team, everything, and I'll pick out where they're Not as efficient as they could be where they're losing money. That team structure is not in the most efficient way.
They're not like managing that team appropriately. They don't have KPIs, bonuses, all of that stuff is very deep. So anyway, I do the audit and then we essentially create a plan of how we're going to get them to their goals and like. And so that's a long term way that I work with people. If you want to just do the audit, I just do an audit with some people.
And then by the end of it, they have a full project plan on what they need to do to execute these. But what I find is that, you know, most people are somewhat aware of some of the issues that they have, but they lack the time and the resources. To fix them themselves, which is why they work with someone like me.
And then, we have some. Offers. We have a zero touch onboarding offer. So if you're a service based business and you want to completely automate everything that happens in your onboarding, from the moment someone pays, you want to just send them a link and everything else takes care of itself. They have a contract and that contract magically appears uploaded in your Google drive.
Any project plans and tasks that your fulfillment team needs to carry out gets created in your project management tool. Literally everything that you could think of that needs to happen. You want that all automated, then that's what we do in zero touch on boarding. And then we also build out project management systems for companies, for like all of their services and, all the different aspects of their business.
And we do a lot of like no code, low code automations as well.
[00:10:11] Jay: so a couple questions out of that, number one, we talked about this, earlier, I think, you're young and, how does somebody without a ton of, you know, not going to say experience. I don't think that's that frames it correctly, but maybe, you know, the years under your belt in the industry, let's put it that way. How do you combat that question? Because I'm sure that comes up, right? It's like, well, how, you know, you're young and like, how have you done this before? Like, how many times have you done this? Like, what do you draw on to like, really convince people that you're the
[00:10:44] Olivia: Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, sometimes it doesn't really. I would say more often than not, it doesn't really come up directly because I'm able to so much to show so much credibility in like my sales process. Right. So I'm able to show specific case studies. I'm able to show client results. I'm able to actually speak to the problems that they're having and show a deep understanding of it on a sales call.
So even though I'm not old. They understand like the depth of my knowledge and then I actually do understand their problems, unlike some of the other people that they talk to. So I would say that's really the first thing. I think that you can't really, you know, like. outfight a lack of basic experience in things.
I think I had a lot of experience in a condensed period of time, like an intense period of experience in a condensed period of time, because like that, the guy that I worked with as well and helped him grow his business, like he, Was so well connected to a lot of other big business owners, like seven, eight, multiple eight figure business owners.
And so I got to be on zoom calls with these CEOs and I got to see the problems they were dealing with. They would screenshot, literally show all the issues that they had because this guy was just so good at becoming friends with them. So I got to be exposed to the insides of a lot of different businesses.
Not just his business. And so that was collapse my period of time to gain experience. I think it also helps that my brain is just wired in this way to understand operations and systems, you know, like
[00:12:30] Jay: How do you,how do you apply what you know, implement at your clients to your own business? And is that a struggle, right? I mean, you're the, you know, this fractional COO for a bunch of different companies. Like, are you cognizant that you were going to run out of time to be that, you know, that resource for everybody and that you're going to have to push things downstream at some point?
Like, how are you kind of addressing that, same problem that you're fixing for your clients for
your
[00:12:59] Olivia: mean like that I'll cap out on being able to take on COO clients, or do you just mean like generally.
[00:13:10] Jay: I mean, for both, like for your own operations, you know, how do you make sure that you're not falling into the same traps that your clients are, but also how are you starting to think forward, you know, because you, there's only so much Olivia that can go around as a fractional
COO. So how are you kind of getting in front of that
[00:13:29] Olivia: So first of all, I try to be really hyper aware of it because I know like this is what I help clients with it with. So I want to be an example. I want to be an example that you know, my business practices what it preaches and I want to I truly believe when you have really good operations, you don't actually have to work as much as you think that you do.
Things can be more efficient. And that's what I want for myself. Like, I don't want to have to work crazy hours. So I'm pretty strict about implementing things. I. Make sure that everything is documented. And whenever I hire a new team member, then I already have like all of the processes to give them. And then when I'm thinking, like when I just hired someone recently and like I'm already thinking, okay, I've hired this person.
I need to like turn them into like they're gonna be the person that trains like the next person. Do you know what I mean? So like I'm distilling that knowledge into them, but also teaching them how to consistently improve things as they go along. So I'm like putting that ethos into them and then I'm showing them this standard, showing them the benchmarks, showing them how to document things.
And so really my goal is with everyone I hire, they are going to like magnify the results I can have. Cause if I put that time into them, they're going to then, you know, do the same. I think if you ask anyone on my team, they'll tell you that we're actually like very organized. Like we have all the project management systems for ourselves.
And like, I even decided like. Up until this end of the year that I want to just improve everything that we're currently doing internally, like our project management processes for all of our offers and stuff. Cause I want it to be really clean, really sleek. And I want to know that next year I want to like put more of a focus on marketing and sales.
I need those foundations to be in place. So it is something I'm constantly thinking about. And, yeah, and then in terms of a capacity thing, yeah, you're totally right. There is a cap on how many fractional COO clients I can take on, which is why we have the other offers. So like zero touch on boarding project management, I can fully delegate that.
I don't actually implement that, like, My, I'm still doing the onboarding calls for now, but my new team member is going to take that over. And she also implements everything. so that's why I've built those scalable offers. And then in terms of the fractional COO, I'm still deciding whether I want to be the one that just has a few of those clients because I enjoy it.
And I actually find it as a, I find it. You know, like you were saying with the experience thing, it helps me sharpen my tools and it helps me better what I'm doing. And as you said, like, I'm still young, there's still a lot for me to learn. And so I actually would quite like to be in the trenches in some capacity doing that stuff.
But it's not like, you know, I'm in the weeds of all of that businesses because I have a team I'm building. Right. So let's say if I have a professional COO client. And then I'll have meetings with them every week, but then I'll be like, okay, we need to improve your sales CRM. Right. So I would create that project and I would delegate it to someone on my team.
So it's almost like we're the in house operations department, but I have considered the possibility of, bringing on other people like similar to me that would want to be fractional COOs. And I can essentially like place them with the business owner. I have considered that, but I think ultimately our fractional COO services aren't going to be like, super, super scalable one is more of a way that I can work intensely with businesses and like give really good value and it helps us figure out what our scalable offers are going to be like zero touch on boarding.
Came from a project that I did with a fractional COO client. So we built it for them. And then I was like, we built it so well. I was like, this can be a standalone offer. Like, let me productize this. So that's kind of what I'm thinking is like. Every time I'm working with a fresh COO client, like a CRM build, a project management build, essentially everything that I do for them can be standalone offers and can be productized and systemized.
So that's kind of where we're going with it.
[00:17:52] Jay: I love that. I think it's a really smart forward thinking, approach. A lot of people, I think I need to myself included at certain times, think that having a scalable business means that every offering is scalable. But I like that you are saying some are and some aren't, right? It's like there's some things that make sense to, to try to have a thousand clients for, and there's some that make sense to have 10 clients for.
So I think that is, that's plenty of strengths in your own, availability and you're like, your wants and like what you want to do with the business and stuff. So I think that's a cool idea. how do you like being a sales person today? I mean, you are a salesperson. You said you weren't a salesperson earlier.
And when you said that, I laughed in my head thinking we're going to get to the point where we talk about the fact that you are a salesperson. how do you like being a salesperson now compared to when you went to get your training or toolage from your
[00:18:46] Olivia: Well, I like it now because I feel confident and that I can actually do it. Right. Like I've proven that I can do it and have results. And so I would say I'm a very strong believer that like, you know, Sales really should be the first skill that you learn if you're planning on becoming a business owner.
Some people think marketing, but you need to have the skill of sales. If you have the skill of sales, no matter what the state is, you know, if your Instagram got shut down or whatever, you can find leads somewhere you can negotiate, you can close a deal. Right. And I kind of came to that realization because.
Like at the beginning of college and stuff, I was reading all these autobiographies of successful people and like seeing commonalities. And I was like, they all like went through a situation where they were forced to learn sales. Like they either like. Ended up getting a job as like a door to door sales rep or like some kind of sales rep.
And they were forced to learn sales. So I was like, well, I guess I just have to do this. I guess this is just like the thing you have to do. So I kind of sought it out. And so I was like, I need to learn this. And, it was hard and it was confronting and it was honestly kind of scary, but then once you do enough sales calls, you break through it.
And now you're like, Oh, I can actually talk to anyone and make it happen. So it's good. I like,
[00:20:10] Jay: I think confidence is the key word there. I think that's, yeah, I totally agree. and somebody told me once like, You know, same thing you just said, basically, which is like getting training in sales or understanding sales. And I, unfortunately I didn't get training in sales, like some sort of official thing.
It was just kind of, you know, kind of like you, I think where you've learned from some people, but also probably learned more about being a salesman from trying to sell your own stuff. Then, you know, anything else is going to teach you because you at least have yourself to fall back on, because you know that you're going to be the one delivering the product or the value or whatever.
So it's like, you know, what you're selling is legit. You're not like selling like car insurance or something. You're selling like something that you can back up and like the confidence grows and then, you know, it's a cool process. It's a cool process. And I'm glad you've had success there. all right.
So, I'm going to ask you one final question here. Non business related. so growing the business, the biggest, you know, COE agency is not an acceptable answer. So, if you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:21:25] Olivia: interesting question.I would probably.
[00:21:35] Jay: Multiple things. Can I have multiple answers? Is that allowed?Sure. Go for it. This is your episode. You can say whatever you
[00:21:42] Olivia: so I kind of always wanted to be a chef, so I would be a chef and have some like kind of culinary empire. But I think I would also, like start a nonprofit that helps like women that don't have like access to, you know, like. Things women need in like less developed countries as well like fighting human trafficking and sexual assault, I would do that and, like make sure like it's as eradicated as it can be, you know, you said I can't fail, so if I
[00:22:19] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:22:20] Olivia: can't fail then I want to eradicate it, that would be good.
[00:22:26] Jay: Beautiful. There you go. I love it. all right, Olivia, if you want to find you, if they want to find Systems Boss,
[00:22:31] Olivia: so they can go to the website, which is the systemsboss. io and also find me on Instagram, which is itsoliviaparkes.
[00:22:44] Jay: It's Olivia Parkes. All right, we'll link everything in the, description. Olivia, you are, very cool, very inspirational, very cool story. kind of, You know, you're like a modern day explorer, you know, you left where you're from, you went and bounced around somewhere else and found somewhere to be successful and started your own thing.
So good for you. I think you should be proud of that and keep up the good work and we'll catch up
with you.
soon and see how it's going. All right. Thanks for being on Olivia. I'll talk to you. See ya.