Is it Possible to Make More Money and Work Less? Systems Expert Connie S. Falls Has the Answer.

Transcription:

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Hi everyone. I’m Dana Thomas, Esq., And welcome to Launched & Legal where it’s my mission to help you strategize, legalize, and monetize your business. I’m so excited that you’re watching, because today, and in every show, I’ll be sharing the best practices and tips to take your business and brand to the next level. Now, one level that just about every entrepreneur wants to reach is making more, while working less. Is that even possible? It sure is. With systems in your business. My guest today is Connie S. Falls, systems guru with the goal of creating sustainable businesses for women, minorities, and veterans. Connie helps established business owners create generational wealth, scale, and retain and train talent all by using systems. Connie has helped numerous businesses reach seven figures in business revenue by teaching and implementing the well known concept of working smarter, not harder.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Affectionately known as Systems Bae, Connie is here today to share her story and how you can implement systems in your business to create your dream lifestyle. I love that Connie, because we do see the dream lifestyle being lived and you’re not just keeping it to yourself, you are sharing these tips, these tools, these systems with other business owners about how they too can be entrepreneurs, but just not be tied to their business, a computer, a desk, you can run a business with your systems and live a fantastic life. Before we get into all that, bring me back to about 10 years ago, what your life was like, or maybe it was 15, maybe it was five years ago, however long it may have been, before you became what we know and love Systems Bae.

Connie S. Falls:
Before that, I was just a girl from the country that had ADHD, that had troubles with prioritizing my own personal time. By the time it got to 15 years ago, when I first started my business, I realized the same practices that I had to put in place in my personal life with ADHD, I did that exact same thing when it came to business. Understanding what priority, because there’s no balance, there’s no life, there’s no such thing as life balance, and there’s definitely no such thing as balance.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Everyone is trying their best.

Connie S. Falls:
Yeah. It’s only priority, there’s no balance. I had to figure out how to make that same priority happen in business, as I did in my personal life.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Awesome. Were you an entrepreneur 15 years ago? Were you working a job? What was your life like?

Connie S. Falls:
Oh, I was working a job, and they were working me to death. Literally I started losing my hair and you know, once them edges came out, I was like, something’s wrong. I started developing really bad migraines, and one day I crashed my car.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Oh my God.

Connie S. Falls:
On the side of the road, not too far from here, actually coming around, and I just blacked out with a migraine, ran into the side of the divider, and before I could even call the police, I called my job and I was like, I’m never coming back, ever.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Wow.

Connie S. Falls:
I was going to work at five o’clock in the morning, I was getting off at nine o’clock at night and I was exhausted, and I realized they didn’t care anything about me personally. What I was doing, even though I was in the customer service space, because my education is in operational management. I have a master’s degree in organizational management. I walk into a company I’m like, ooh, did you know if you just did this, this, this, and here’s a plan for it. Actually in my spare time wrote a change management plan in between my actual job.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
In my spare time.

Connie S. Falls:
Would you mind? You should look at this and they would look, oh, this isn’t your job, actually, this is pretty good. From there I was like, you know what, what I’m doing makes a difference, I see them actually implementing the strategies that I came up with in my spare time, and they’re still working me to death. I was like, yeah, no, and I never went back.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s crazy. What was that like transitioning from being worked so hard as an employee to finally deciding, hey, I’m going to do this for myself, and I am going to help other entrepreneurs with systems. What was that transition like? Or that story leading into that?

Connie S. Falls:
I was broke and staying on my dad’s couch, in the living room, in front of my three siblings. One day my sister, who was 11 at the time, came to me and she was like, so you’ve been sleeping on the couch for a while, why don’t you have a job? It’s like, well, I haven’t really found anything I wanted to do. She’s like, what do you know how to do? I said I know how to write business plans. She said, well, do people pay for those? I was like, I never asked. She’s like, why don’t you call your friends? I’m the candy lady, so I ask my friends, if they want to buy candy, maybe you ask your friends if they want to buy a business plan. I was like, you know what, that’s actually not a bad idea. And that’s what I did, I started calling around asking who needed business plans, and it was everybody at the time, because that was the cool thing.

Connie S. Falls:
Business plan, not operational plan. I started from business plans, realized that everybody needed the foundational piece, started doing corporation formation and understanding that people needed to legalize their business, and they never did the documents. You remember back in the day when you had to actually go to the secretary of state office and hand fill out the paper.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I don’t remember, but I’ve heard.

Connie S. Falls:
That was me standing in line. I went from that to doing the consulting because I realized that even if they had these pieces, they never actually implemented them. I needed to understand the problem, and then, because I worked primarily with women, minorities, and veterans, I realized that most of us have never been taught how to run a business, we’ve been taught how to be employees.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
Then I have to start implementing the education and understanding the real problem was that there were no systems in place, and that’s how I started the transformation in between all of those.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Are there tools and software that you think are a part of developing a system or is that something completely different?

Connie S. Falls:
They are two totally separate things.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Okay.

Connie S. Falls:
You can have an operational system and never use a tool. When I first started, I didn’t… So now what’s cool, you can go online and you can just download a business plan. You can type in your industry, it’s going to populate this beautiful template for you, and now you have a perfect little business plan, that chances are is going to be dusty somewhere in the back of your closet. You can create a business plan without ever using a tool. I used to hand write them, literally pen paper and write them. I would sit in a park and it would take me months to write it out.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
From scratch.

Connie S. Falls:
From scratch. From the financial projections, to the marketing plan, all the way down to the regular nitty gritty part of a business plan. I didn’t use a tool, but I still had a system for how I created the business plan. Your system, when it comes to operations, is how the business runs. The tool, again, using the computer example, the operational system can run on its own, the way things happen and the way people calculate, it can run, but it makes it easier when you have a tool.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
The tool cannot run…

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Without the system.

Connie S. Falls:
Without the operational system, and if you ever opened a computer and you’ve seen that blue screen of death, like when you open it’s like, eh, kill me now, right?

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Yes.

Connie S. Falls:
When you see that it’s because your operations have shut down. Either your computer is overwhelmed, there’s a virus, there’s something that’s wrong, and it’s the same thing that happened with us as business owners. We get overwhelmed.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
Operational systems have shut down. That’s why we have to make sure this part is good before we try and automate and get this thing running, because even if you got what you asked for which most people are like, oh Lord, please just send me more clients. If you got more clients, but your operational systems weren’t together, it’s still going to take your company.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
You know what, I know that’s true because when… I talk about my story a lot, but what reminds me, is when my business was doing really well and I was booked out for consultations, three months in advance. I’m like, something is wrong here. That’s good that I’m getting clients, but something is wrong in that I’m not able to service these people faster than a three month waiting list. I figure that out though, with systems, which is great. I totally can empathize and understand what you’re talking about in terms of the difference between the tools and the system of the operational systems. I also know, Connie, that you have helped a lot of entrepreneurs go from five figures to six figures, go from six figures to seven figures and beyond.

Connie S. Falls:
Yes.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
So tell us a case study from one of your clients that you’re really proud of, where they started, what you helped them with, and where they are now.

Connie S. Falls:
For me, success looks different. I am not of the mindset of money rules everything.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s right.

Connie S. Falls:
I’m very adamant about, I don’t care how much more money you make after you work with me, I care more about your peace.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Yep, and happiness.

Connie S. Falls:
For me, that peace and happiness, and that freedom to be able to spend time with your family, with your love, and sometimes with yourself, that’s what success looks like. I use a couple of different people. Heleni, Instagram is known as Mrs. Two Weeks Out, who has the body envy, she came, overwhelmed, her husband tried to get her to come in early. She was like, it’s just a hobby. Hey, if it’s a hobby, you don’t need to work with me, you keep doing your hobby, but it’s going to be much bigger than what you think it is because of your name and your brand. A year later, she calls like, I made a million dollars on accident, could you? You Ready to put some systems in place? Yeah, I am ready.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s amazing.

Connie S. Falls:
Even though I’m happy with the amount of money that she made, I’m more excited that you’ll see her online taking more vacations. She has a autoimmune disease, which she talks about publicly, so I’m okay with sharing. She has a autoimmune disorder that can take her whole entire body where she can’t leave, she’s covered in hives. The fact that there’s some days that she cannot get out of bed, but her business still runs. She still has systems in place to move it forward. I’m happy about Alex, with Good Energy, Alex was on every single team call since the beginning of his business, every single call, every single live. He would get anxiety about not being at home because people are so used to seeing the background and his environment, and they love the peacefulness of his house and he needed his camera.

Connie S. Falls:
He would rush home, he would leave meetings early, he wouldn’t leave town because he wanted to make sure the aesthetic that he had already put out was there. Now he could take vacation, you don’t have to be on every live, you don’t have to run every single meeting, you don’t have to do that.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s right.

Connie S. Falls:
These are the stories of people being able to have peace. Now there are those that went from making low seven figures to high seven figures, like Surviving Vegan. What’s most important to me is that it took a year for them to come back and say, Connie, we get it now. They just had a beautiful little girl and being able to say, I knew the systems work and that they were important, and what you did with our company was important. And yes, we went from 1 million to 5 million, but what really affected me is that for three months I decided, Orisha who’s the CEO, along with her husband, Grizzy, in three months, I took three months off while my daughter was born, and the company didn’t fail.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Didn’t skip a beat, yeah.

Connie S. Falls:
I didn’t know that that would happen. Those are the stories, the money part is cool, but being able to have peace and spend time with your family and actually be able to be healthy mentally and take time off for yourself.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
That’s what a success looks like for me.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Ooh. I love that, because that’s what success is for me. I really believe that if people… Well, money is important, but it’s not so important, I believe that it will come. Once you honor yourself, you honor the gifts that you’ve been given, your destination is serving people and helping people and helping them to solve a problem, that will come. But in the meantime, you can’t lose yourself. In the meantime, your family can’t be missing you like crazy, where they don’t see you or you haven’t taken a vacation in five years. What I’ve been able to see, and one of the ways that, I think it’s marketing, it may not even be intentional, but I see you living the life that you enjoy, vacations, being able to work from different places. I love that, and that really is marketing. We’re the type of marketers where we show things, but we’re not salesy, but at the same time, it’s because you have systems in your business. What type of systems do you have in your business that allows you to enjoy the lifestyle that you live?

Connie S. Falls:
Everything in my business is documented. I don’t care if it’s how you answer the phone, how you manage my clients, knowing and being able to have discernment. Which one, even before getting to the SOP part, I have a brilliant, amazing team full of beautiful, amazing, kind women.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Yes to a team.

Connie S. Falls:
They are phenomenal, and I handpick them, not just based off of their skillset, but also their relationship with God. That part is important to me because there are moments on this journey, especially with the type of clients that we deal with, they’re high functioning, they’re working all the time, they’re overwhelmed. There are days where I don’t need you to be hard on them, there’s days that sometime we’re going to have to put this SOP down or we’re going to have to pick up a prayer.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s right.

Connie S. Falls:
I need the discernment for you to be able to have that when you’re talking to our clients, that part is important, so that’s one, that we blessed and covered on that side. Two, everything is documented. Whether my hands are on the business or not, whether I’m going on vacation for two weeks or not, that thing still zanging.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
You know exactly what to do.

Connie S. Falls:
It’s every single day, you know what to do. We use tools to be able to keep up with how our tasks are managed, so that helps our communication. That means that I don’t have to look at my phone all day long. There’s days I don’t look at it at all, except for scrolling on Instagram. It’s really a great team, and a great onboarding process, and a great hiring process. The person that leads with my clients, my project manager is Stephanie, I don’t have to tell her anything. She already has the mindset to know whether it’s a prayer day or a SOP day, it’s a day where I need to pull up to your house and tell you, I need my homework up off you. She has that discernment that’s there, and that came because, not only did I just do the formal training, but she had to sit on every single call with me that I did for two years before she was ever allowed to talk to a client by herself.

Connie S. Falls:
It takes my team three months, per client, to write custom standard operating procedures. Nothing we do is templated, everything is custom. I could do 15 law offices, every single one is going to be different because everybody has a different recipe for how it goes, and it takes us about 400 hours worth of time to document how your business runs, cross reference it with industry standard, and then create custom documentation for every business. It’s not easy.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
It’s not easy.

Connie S. Falls:
It’s a process.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
It really is.

Connie S. Falls:
I tell you this, once it’s done, it’s done. It’s a living document, you’ll have to update it, but once it’s done and you know the foundation is proper, it’s done. You don’t have to keep doing the whole thing over and over again, but you have to start somewhere.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely worth it.

Connie S. Falls:
Exactly.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I know that you have something called, Systems in a Day WORKshop, because I know after hearing you, everyone’s going to be thinking, how can I get a piece of her sauce? Tell us about Systems in a Day WORKshop and what happens during the workshop, and at the end of the workshop what do the attendees walk away with?

Connie S. Falls:
The workshop, we did for two years, and that was something where I was praying, and like God, why don’t people understand how important operational systems are, everybody wants to automate and they keep automating this mess, and then they’re overwhelmed, they still come to me and they’re even more overwhelmed. Why don’t they understand? And he was like, why aren’t you telling them? I was like, oh, that’s bold. Oh, you want me to, the one with anxiety and ADHD, you want me to go talk to the people? Absolutely not. He was like, you go tell them. That’s where Systems in a Day started, and because it was at the beginning of pandemic, I was like, guess what, y’all got time, haha, y’all at home.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s right.

Connie S. Falls:
You finna learn about these systems today, and we just started with probably 25 slides worth of information and here’s how you execute, here’s how you download your brain, because most of us, our business is all here. You’ve never written it out. You have to get it out. Here’s a process for how you get everything out of your head and on paper. Went from 25, and then I’d let people ask questions. I’d stay on the phone, on the call, as long as they wanted to. 25 to 35, 50, 75, 100 slides, y’all still got questions? Okay, how much more do you want to know? I would stay on the phone and literally answer these questions and then create more content to be able to help them answer whatever questions they had in real time. That workshop took them through the process of really understanding that, one, you’re not alone, you’re not the only person that’s out here overwhelmed, don’t feel bad because you haven’t created this, because again, most of us, especially when you’re looking at my demographic of women, minorities, and veterans, we were never taught how to do any of this.

Connie S. Falls:
Nobody taught us how to run a company. You just go into big box chains company and they’re already working. Chick-fil-A oh my God, my pleasure, that’s a part of company culture, which falls under policy, which falls under your operational systems. I’m more of a storyteller, especially in our community, to be able to get people to understand it before they act on it.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
If they don’t have a feeling that’s attached to it, you won’t act on it. That entire class was just about getting people to understand, one, the importance of it, and that two, you’re not alone, and three, this is the process of starting. Are you going to be able to write a whole operational manual by the end of this class? Nope. But you’re going to be able to write down one thing and then once you get it and that seed is planted and you’re like, oh I can write a SOP, here’s a template for it. I can write how I want this done, and then I can give it to somebody else, so I don’t have to do it.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Another thing that you have is, Scrambled Eggs, which I love the title.

Connie S. Falls:
Thank you.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s Connie’s book, it’s called Scrambled Eggs, it also has a subtitle. Tell us a little bit about Scrambled Eggs, how we can find that, because systems I know is something that’s new to a lot of entrepreneurs. We are doing excellent work by getting the word out there and sometimes taking a workshop or hiring to put the whole SOP together might be a big step for some people, but I love that you have your book, which can be a beginning step. Tell us about Scrambled Eggs and what the goal of the book is.

Connie S. Falls:
The book, one, I love the title of it.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Me too.

Connie S. Falls:
It actually came from my daughter. Who again, we’re ADHD family, so we literally run around and bounce off walls all day long. One day she’s just flying, kitchen, dining room, kitchen, dining room, living room, and she stops and she’s like, I have so many thoughts, so many things I want to do, I want to do them all at once, my brain feels like scrambled eggs. I was like, you know what, mine too girl. That’s literally exactly how I feel, that makes sense. That’s where the title came from. It is Scrambled Eggs, A Must Have Playbook for Organizing an Entrepreneur’s Brain. One of the struggles, again, with ADHD is prioritizing your time, and many entrepreneurs, one, suffer with it, and then two, when you wake up in the morning and you have a hundred tasks to do and all of them need to be done when? Now.

Connie S. Falls:
How do I know exactly which one I do first? It helps you, one, download everything that’s in your brain, get it on paper, because when you’re overwhelmed internally, you’ll definitely execute as a mess. As you get it out of your head, you get it on paper and then we help you prioritize. What task is first? And until that task is done, we don’t do anything else. It’s a struggle, because culturally we’re taught to multi-task. You have a baby on your hip, you’re cooking dinner, you talk on the phone to your mom, you mopping with one foot. Literally we’re taught, we’re raised, to multitask, but multitasking will scare the money away.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s true. Ooh, I love that. Multitasking will scare the money away. Yes, it’ll scare the money away.

Connie S. Falls:
Pu that on the bottom of the screen. What are you doing? Imagine if I’m paying attention to you and somebody’s standing behind me with a thousand dollars in their hand and all I’m doing is focused on you and this and this and this. I’m going to miss something behind me, and you can’t give a hundred percent to more than one thing.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
That’s right.

Connie S. Falls:
You can either give a hundred percent to this and nothing to that, or 50/50 or 75 to 25. But I can’t give a hundred, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred, that’s 400% and we don’t have that to give.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
We have to figure out how do we prioritize those tasks? The book helps you get everything out of your head, get it prioritized on paper, and then the next step, there’s worksheets and everything to come along with it.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I love that.

Connie S. Falls:
You’re able to go and download the worksheets and go through step by step by step on how to create the template for an SOP for your business, how to figure out which tasks you’re going to do and which ones are going to be delegated. It’s just a good start. I know everybody can’t start off with me on a one on one, you just have to start somewhere though.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Absolutely.

Connie S. Falls:
For me, I think the website for that is Tired Of Working So Hard.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Yeah, I knew it was something catchy.

Connie S. Falls:
It’s always ridiculous.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
TiredOfWorkingSoHard.com. Hey, that’s lots of people. Who is that?

Connie S. Falls:
Because who’s not tired of working so hard. I don’t…

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Or tired of working period.

Connie S. Falls:
That’ll be the next website, go to tired… But TiredOfWorkingSoHard.com, that’s where the eBook is. If you want a hard cover book, some people love that, you could find that on Amazon. I know people are just tired, that hustle and grind thing, especially when entrepreneurship first got sexy. I’m 15 years in, 15 years ago nobody cared about, oh you’re a business owner. Oh, okay, sure you are. Now it’s just a common thing, especially in Atlanta, Atlanta’s an unrealistic world full of entrepreneurs, especially that look like us.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Connie has all the resources for you guys. Connie, I’m so happy that you were able to share this with us, I’m glad that I know that this is a seed for many entrepreneurs that are listening and watching because systems is something that, it just can’t be ignored, when it comes to building the lifestyle that you want as an entrepreneur. Thank you so much. I know you mentioned a few websites, how we can keep in touch with you, but are there other ways that we can connect with you Connie?

Connie S. Falls:
Find me anywhere.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Anywhere.

Connie S. Falls:
As long as it’s Connie S. Falls, don’t forget the S, you don’t forget the Z in Jay-Z. Connie S. Falls on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
All that good stuff.

Connie S. Falls:
At your mama house, I’m still Connie S. Falls, and the S is for Systems.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I love it. We will see you on the beach in some islands, somewhere.

Connie S. Falls:
Oh, you definitely going to see me on the beach.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
Or on a yacht, with champagne, with your friends.

Connie S. Falls:
Yes. I can’t wait.

Dayna Thomas, Esq.:
I love it. Thank you, Connie.

Connie S. Falls:
Thank you Dayna.

Dayna Thomas Esq.:
Be sure to share today’s show with someone who can benefit and visit MyASBN.com and subscribe. If you have any questions or comments about today’s show, I would love to hear from you, send me a message or comment on Instagram at @daynathomaslaw. Remember to tune in next week and every week to make sure your business is launched and legal.