The Overlooked Strategy Behind Scalable Businesses: Planning + Invisible Teams with Guest Expert Lynne Roe

Welcome to The Scalable Expert, the podcast where we unlock the secrets to building a business that grows with you, not around you. I'm your host, Tara Bryan, business strategist, mentor, and creator of the INFINITE SCALE Method. If you're a coach, consultant, or service provider who's maxed out with one on one work, overwhelmed by the grind, and ready to scale your expertise into a business that works for you, then you're in the right place. Each week I'll share actionable tips, inspiring success stories, and proven strategies to help you reclaim your time, grow your income, and create a business that delivers results without sacrificing quality. Let's dive in and make your business INFINITELY SCALABLE. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week's episode. I am thrilled that you're here, and I would love to welcome Lynne Roe to the show today. Lynne, welcome. We are so excited to hear from you today. To get us started, tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us a little bit about your story, your business, and all of the things.

Thank you so much for having me today. So I am a business coach. I work with small business owners who are growing their businesses very rapidly. Mostly they are making six figures and growing to seven figures. And I do that by helping them develop a strategic plan for how to get there and then staying accountable for getting there. And the way that I got to doing strategic planning with my clients is when I first started the business, I had, my daughter was away at college and she called me up. She had fallen down the stairs and she had a concussion. And of course I went to pick her up and bring her home and they said, Oh, she'll be better in two weeks, maybe two months, two months went by and she was not better. And she was actually really bad. It was a severe concussion. not able to walk without assistance. She'd bump into walls, she'd fall down. It was very bad. And here I was trying to launch a business. And how do you do that while you are also trying to care for someone? So I I had spent years in, in Corporations and not for profits doing strategic planning. And so I thought, okay, let me just do strategic planning for how to grow this business. And that's what I did. I developed a strategic plan for my business and followed that. And it was great. And my clients heard about it and they said, Oh, let's do that with me. I want to know how I can launch my business. So that's what I do. And it took, honestly, my daughter was After two years, she still wasn't better. It was eight years before she was able to function again and ten, after ten years, she went back to college as a 28 year old freshman and she just graduated. We were very excited.

Oh, that's so exciting. I love that. Like how I have. I have two teenagers and a younger one, but I am just about to send my oldest off to college. So that that's where I'm like, Oh, I have to pick her up. That'd be terrible. Yeah.

How do you manage? Anyway so that's how I got into strategic planning. And now I do strategic planning with all of my clients. That's how I start our engagement. And We always start with the same first question, and that is, what is the lifestyle you want to be living? So for me, I needed a lifestyle where I could be flexible and be home to care for my daughter. And how was I going to grow a business and do that at the same time for other people, some clients may wanna have, they wanna own a jet and jet set around the world. They need a different kind of business than I needed, right? To be able to do that. So it's a question I always start with my clients is what do you want to be doing with your life because our lives are not here to devote our whole life to our business. Our business should be supporting our life. So when we're going to design how we want our business to be, what we want it to grow into. We think about what is it that we want to be living? What is the lifestyle we want to be living? That's awesome. All right. So I there's so many things to unpack there. So I thank you for sharing your story. So when you started, you had a background in strategic planning. I did, yes. And you, did you overlook it at first when you were starting your business? I did. Yeah. I never, it never, I thought, oh, this is just a small little business. I don't need a plan. The thing is that if you don't have a plan, then you don't know which things you're doing when and the new idea comes along and you think, oh, let me go try that. And then you also have these ideas in the back of your head. Okay, I should be doing this and I should be doing that. And it gets overwhelming, right? As a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur, it gets overwhelming trying to do everything you think you're supposed to do. But if you have a strategic plan that says this month, I'm focusing on these things. And next month, I'm focusing on these things and that other thing that sounds like a great idea. It's scheduled for me to do it in July or August, right? So you can forget about it. You don't have to be thinking, oh my God, I have to get to that. No it's already there. So it's freeing. It's freeing to have a plan and know what you're doing when.

And what's so great about it is that, so that's what you were doing your job, right? You were doing strategic planning were you working in a corporation?

One of many things that I did, but yes.

Yeah. And so then you start your own business and you're like, oh yeah, this is going to be great. I'm going to do all these things. And then you go, oh wait, I need a plan. Wow. Isn't that like a novel concept? And I say that with love because that's how I was too. I was like, Oh yeah. Yeah. No problem. Yeah, I got this, right? And then you're all over the place doing all the things when you first get started. And then you need a plan. And then. You actually can execute on the plan instead of doing all of the things. And so I love that because you took your expertise, you applied it to what you were doing and you were almost forced to, which to be honest, most of the time, until people are forced into some sort of constraint, they're not disciplined enough to do it and they just kind of go off and do all the things and then you realized the power of that and then started helping other people do that, which then is really what helped you build your business, which is, sort of like a full circular moment, isn't it? Where it's like, oh my gosh. And so my question for you, around this and, I am a, I am a strategist. I love it. All things strategy. Especially strategic plans, but one of the biggest challenges, especially with working with entrepreneurs is that it's not easy to help other people. It's easy to maybe help them create the plan, determine what their lifestyle is super hard to keep them on plan and on track. So is that one of the things that you do as one of your offers in your business model?

Yes, it is. Absolutely. Absolutely. So. You know, I do that through private coaching. I do that through some masterminds and I do that through groups as well. But the idea is to help people stay on task with what they had planned to do. If you follow it, it's amazing how much you can actually accomplish. And what happens for the people who are already doing fairly well, you know, they're making six figures, they've got a business, it's, they've got a proof of concept, they've got some clients but then they get to this point where they're still doing it all themselves and they can't. And so part of the plan is how do we get these things done so that I'm not doing it myself, and I say we, we need to have two things. You need to have an invisible team and a human team.

Hmm. I like that. Yeah. So I don't call it an invisible team, but I may now. I like that. So tell our audience what that means.

Yeah, the invisible team is the automations that you can set up in the background. It's the processes and procedures about how you do things so that you're not trying to figure it out every time it is, the standard operating procedures that you set up for you to have. So it's all of those things to make sure everything runs smoothly in the background and also so that you don't have to do it yourself so that you can take those processes, procedures and things and have somebody else do them. So that's kind of your invisible team.

Okay, wait a minute. I gotta stop you before you go to the other team. Okay, so do you have this trademarked? Because that is a fabulous, like you just turned all of that stuff super sexy by calling it the Invisible Team. Do you? Do you like do you use that?

No, I probably should, but no, I don't...

Oh my. You should use that. That's sexy. That's good. Yeah. I love, I call it the Invisible Team though. Yeah, all the time. I love that. Okay, I'll stop. But that's amazing. You should trademark that and have that be your thing. Building an Invisible Team. Or we could partner because that's what I do all that invisible team, but it is interesting, like total sidebar, but it is interesting when you're like, you need to have processing, you need to have SOPs and you need to actually have a plan for what you're doing. People go, Oh yeah, that's the boring stuff. I don't know how to do that. Yeah. That's boring. Right? You're like, Oh, you need an invisible team. They're like, Whoa, tell me more. Okay. So I like that. Okay. So then talk about now the regular team.

So then we have a human team and the human team, it's it's the people are like, Oh my God, I don't want to hire somebody. But the thing is that if you are doing everything yourself, you're doing the 20 an hour jobs, you're doing the 30 an hour jobs. And once in a while, when you have time, you're doing the 500 an hour jobs, right? 1, 000 an hour jobs. But if you have somebody else, if you're spending, let's say 10 or 20 hours a week, which is what most people spend on the 20 an hour jobs, you're not spending it on those jobs that are worth a whole lot more, right? If you just paid somebody else to do that, those jobs, 20 an hour jobs, now you have time to do the jobs that are worth a whole lot more. And that's what actually grows your business very quickly, otherwise you're stuck. You've got, you're wearing every hat. You're trying to do everything and you just can't, you just can't do it all. So finding that human team and that human team does not have to be I'm hiring a full time person. It doesn't have to be. You can hire a part time person who is overseas sometimes, it depends on your business what you need, right? Sometimes that's a solution but sometimes the best solution is to hire an expert in the field. So for example, you could build your own website, but unless you're a website developer. You're not going to do it nearly as quickly as the website developer can do it, and you're not going to do it as well. You'll have something that's okay, but you won't have something that's great. And for you to spend, I was talking to one gentleman who spent probably 100 hours trying to develop his website. And he was getting paid 500 an hour by his clients. He was able to hire, he got, he did the website, he got it done, it was okay. It wasn't great. It was okay. It worked. Then he talked to a website developer who said, I can do it for two to three thousand. I could do the website for you and you'll have it in two weeks. This guy spent months trying to develop a website. So much time that he could have been spending doing more valuable work. And not that the website designer isn't valuable, it's that they're experienced and they can do it faster and better. So their time, they get paid more per hour because they can do it faster and they can do it better. So sometimes that's the way to go.

Yeah. Awesome. All right. Good. Okay. I love all of that. So tell us a little bit, like what advice would you have for my audience around, um, some of the techniques that you use to teach your people how to go from where they are today to where they want to go.

So aside from starting with a strategic plan, another thing I. Work with my clients on is instead of saying to themselves, how do I do this? They start saying to themselves, who can do this for me, or who can I find to do this for me. And just that little shift makes a big difference if you start thinking who instead of how. Now you're thinking, okay, do I hire someone on my team, or do I get somebody on the team that I already have, or do I hire it out, pay someone else to do it? And when you start thinking that way, that's when you start to move from being an entrepreneur to being a CEO of a business. Before that, you're an entrepreneur, you're doing it all. But once you start thinking, who else can do this? That's when you start to become the CEO.

Yes. So powerful. Awesome. All right. What's one tool resource or book or whatever that you use in your business that you couldn't live without?

My favorite business book is Traction by Gina Wickman. I think it's an amazing book. It's great for any new entrepreneur. It's also great for bigger businesses that are existing, but it's a great book. So that's, I can't live without with that one.

Yeah, that's amazing. Do you have the the supplement, the actual story? I can't remember what it's called. I have it here. Do you know what I'm Get A Grip? Yes. I've read that one? Yes. Yeah. Where it's the story. So Traction is amazing as the how to book, right? Get A Grip is an illustrated story of a company implementing and using Traction. Yeah. So those two together are what I think is like the secret sauce because then you can actually follow along with a company who's implementing it. So it it's the holistic picture. So we will put both of those in the show notes, but I agree. I love I love that book. So let's talk about your business model for just a second, because I would be remiss as, the host of The Scalable Expert podcast. If we didn't talk a little bit about scalable offers, so tell me a little bit about, so you said you do one on one work, you do masterminds and you do group, coaching, do you have any offers that are available without your time and attention?

I do. But I'm finding that people really don't, you know, I have a course that's available online. I find that people really don't want that anymore because there's so many education resources out there, right? People really want live in person, the ability to have a conversation. So, all of the things that I'm building now have something built in where I'm involved.

Yeah, but you have the foundation is like the training where they're learning and then they get to interact with you. Correct. Kind of for the application piece. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah, because I agree. I mean, I think that's sort of the way that things are going, right? Like, you know, a lot of courses that are out there. Some of them are good, but a lot of them. Don't drive towards that transformation and there's not a personalized element to them. Very few people know how to add that personalization in where you're inserting yourself into the conversation In a scalable, almost automated fashion, but putting that together where you're not teaching and repeating yourself 40 million times, right? Like I call it 50 first dates. If you've seen that movie, where you're not doing that, but yet, then you get to come in at your highest level and help people. And it's more of a combination aspect of it. Yeah. So that's amazing. That's what you're doing. So you're offering that to people, so that they get both and you're able to maximize your time. Awesome. Very cool. All right. So what are some final words of advice that you have for my audience?

I really think that the average person spends 15 hours planning a one week vacation. It's very rare that I find a business owner who spends that kind of time planning for the growth of their business and the business pays for the vacation. So spend the time to plan for how you're going to grow your business.

That is powerful. You're totally right. People spend more time doing that than they do planning their business. I love it. All right. Well, you heard the final word from Lynne today. So thank you Lynne for being on the podcast. It was a pleasure to have you on and for everyone listening go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. Give us a like, do all the different things wherever you're watching or listening and until next time, have a great week.