Today I want to talk about the number one reason you need a COO. You need a COO to keep things organized and running. They are the driving force behind the dreams and visions of the Founder and COO. They make things happen so that you can focus on creating the vision of where you want to go and grow.
In this episode, we’ll cover:
- What is the role of a COO
- When to hire a COO
- What skills are required
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The Legalpreneur Podcast is advertising/marketing material. It is not legal advice. Please consult with your attorney on these topics. Copyright Legalpreneur Inc 2022
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Episode 186: The Number One Reason You Need a COO Transcript
Andrea: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Legalpreneur Podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Sager, founder and CEO of Legalpreneur, Inc. As a serial entrepreneur and someone that works exclusively with small business owners legally protecting their business, I’m dedicated to covering common legal issues faced by business owners, providing you with the business knowledge you need to catapult your businesses growth and showing you just how some of the world’s most elite entrepreneurs have handled these legal and business issues themselves in true attorney fashion. The information in this episode is not legal advice. This is for informational purposes only, and you should always consult with your attorney before implementing any of the information in the show.
Andrea: [00:00:46] Hey there. Welcome back to another episode of the Legalpreneur podcast.
Andrea: [00:00:50] Today’s episode is.
Andrea: [00:00:51] All about hiring a CEO. The number one reason why you need one, and I’m going to give you a little background about my personal COO, Kayla. Andy But before we get into it, don’t forget about Legalpreneur live. Legalpreneur live.
[00:01:07] You guys, we have a special offer for the rest of the month of June, 50% off of general and VIP tickets. Plus you guys, so many people are like, what’s the number one draw?
Andrea: [00:01:19] And besides the fact that we have Allie Webb, founder of Drybar, Danielle Canty, co-founder of Boss, Babe and Pauleanna Reid, and so many other speakers. You guys free childcare. And we just started really like telling people because I was like, oh, like of course it’s going to be included. And so many people are blown away by the fact that we’re going to have free childcare, like, Hey, my kids are coming, I want everybody else to be able to bring their kids. I don’t I don’t want anybody to not come because they don’t know what to do with their children. Hey, I want my kids to see me at work. If you want to bring your kids and let them see you at work, bring them like, let’s do this. So use code. LPlive50 for 50% off general admission and VIP tickets. VIP so many perks but number one is the VIP mixer.
Andrea: [00:02:05] With all of our speakers and you guys, you’re going to get free breakfast, you get lunch like it’s all included. Get there, get your ticket. Phenix, Arizona, October 5th to 7th.
Andrea: [00:02:17] I’ll see you there. So for those of you that don’t know, Kayla Bandy is my Chief Operating Officer. She did not start out in that role, but personally, she has been my best friend for many years. She was actually the maid of honor in my wedding. You know, the wedding that I’m no longer part of, the marriage that I’m no longer part of. She was my maid of honor and we met in college. We both went to college on a bowling scholarship. I don’t know if you guys knew that about me. I was a college bowler. Not very good. Not compared to Kayla. And I mean, she was she’s the best of the best. And she’s now professional, like part time professional bowler. And she was coaching an NCAA team, one of the best programs in the country. And when COVID hit, she called me one day and she’s like, Andrea, our season just got canceled. I don’t know if I’m going to have a job, like I don’t even know what to do. And at that time we were blowing up, the law firm was going crazy. And that’s when I was getting ready to launch the Legalpreneur brand. And I was like, Hey, like I have some work. Like, I would definitely be able to pay you to do some stuff for us. She’s like, Okay, great. And initially I hired her as our affiliate manager because the plan was to have like this huge affiliate program and yeah, all the things.
Andrea: [00:03:34] So she came in, did that killed it started just doing more and more and she just like ran with the position. So now she is our CEO literally like my everything and our core team right now. I just, I mean, I couldn’t function without many people, but my core team right now seriously, like I don’t know what I would do without them. But Kayla Bandy specifically, she’s our CEO, also known as an integrator. So the number one reason is because they keep things organized and they keep things happening. So I’m the visionary and you as the CEO, you as the CEO should be the visionary, the dreamer, the one that has the vision for the company. And that’s me. That’s my role. And I tell Kayla, I’m like, Hey, I want to do this or I want to do this. And she’s like, Okay, let’s do it. And she makes it happen. So she’s in there in WordPress, like designing the things, like putting the things together on the website. Like she’s become a designer, she’s become like a tech person over the past two years like that. She’s done everything in the company and she has really just ran with the role, but she has been very, very integral in our growth and there’s no way that we would be where we are today without her.
Andrea: [00:04:52] And I don’t think a CEO should be your first hire. Now, I recently talked about Cassie, my assistant. She was my first hire, and luckily she’s still with us today and she’s another person that I could not function without. But I always think that you probably need an assistant first to take off like some of the low hanging fruit things, the things that are repetitive, things that you shouldn’t be doing in your business because somebody else can get them done. And I heard from Danny Morrell. He came and talked to Chris Carter’s mastermind a couple of years ago. And I remember him saying, only do what only you can do. And whenever he came and talk to us, that was literally the time that I was hiring Kayla. She was starting with us, and that’s how I determined, okay, what more can I hand off to her? Because at that time, we had Kasey. We had a bigger team because we were doing more than the law firm. And Cassie very much like she’s in my email. She’s doing this and that. But Kayla, she’s more doing the back end things to make things work and function in the business. And I think she’s very, very like necessary and integral. It’s an very necessary role for many companies. But when you’re just starting, I don’t think it’s a necessary position because you as the CEO, that’s you’re like everything you are doing, all the roles typically when you’re just starting and.
Andrea: [00:06:23] As you are doing more day to day things, that’s when you need to bring in a CEO. So we started to branch off and have more than one brand. We had Andrea Sager, the law firm, then we were launching Legalpreneur and it was more building with both companies. So when you first launch, you may have an offer, a couple of offers like one or two things here, but then we started branching out and just growing to do so much more. It wasn’t just like, Oh, we’re offering these legal services. Oh, we’re offering legal services, and we have this other brand, we’re doing these other DIY products, these courses, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. So it’s once you start to branch out and grow as far as what offers you have, that’s when I think you need to bring in a CEO role and it doesn’t have to be full time right away. There’s many fractional CEOs. There’s like online business managers. There are like many different types of roles to fill this position. And Kayla started part time like she wasn’t full time with us, but she kept growing. And then finally it was like, okay, I need you, like, 100%. And she was down for it and 100% like we would not be where we are today without her because she has been.
Andrea: [00:07:38] Just very pivotal in our growth and making things happen because I’m I literally tell her, hey, I want to do this in the company. And she’s like, okay, done, let’s do it. Like, she built our app. You guys are Legalpreneur app. She fucking built that thing on her own. It’s done inside of Bubble, which is a no code app, so she’s not like a coder. I was pitching all these VCs and they were like, Oh, we want to see the app, we want to see the app. And I knew that we wanted to get it built in bubble because nothing in the app is it’s not proprietary to us. Everything already exists. And that’s why I told her. I said nothing’s like crazy special about our app. We just want everything we want in one place and it doesn’t currently exist. So. I was like, Kayla, I think you can just build it yourself, like start looking into it. And so she did and she figured it out and got it done and she built the fucking Legalpreneur app by herself. Like, she’s amazing. She’s my best friend, she’s everything. And I don’t always think that friends should work together, but Kayla and I just. We have very open communication, and we’re not. We’re not afraid to tell each other like this or that.
Andrea: [00:08:47] And sometimes I know I annoy the hell out of her because we literally call each other 20 times a day. I should check how many times we’ve talked on the phone today because her boyfriend or her life partner, sometimes he’s like, again, because I’ll like when I I’ll take the kids to school in the mornings and I usually drop them off between eight and 830. And then immediately on my way home, I just call her and we talk about the day we’re talking on the phone from like 8 to 830 in the morning. And then last week, actually, I called her normally I don’t call her at night at all, but like some stuff was going on in my personal life. And so I called her and her and her beau were out to dinner and he’s like, Damn, even at 8:00 at night, 8 a.m., 8 p.m., I was like, I’m sorry, but yeah, she’s great. He’s great. And I think you need to have a CEO that. Is a figure outer. So you need somebody that you can say, hey, I want this is the end goal. And they just figure out how to make it happen. That’s what a CEO is. And that’s the type of person that you need to fill that role. If you have questions, wondering like, Oh, should I hire a CEO? Or What do I need in my business? Reach out on Instagram like let me know where you are in your business, what’s going on, why you think you need to hire SEO? Or if you’re like, I don’t even know what I should hire, this is where I am.
Andrea: [00:10:19] Let me know. Like I’m happy to help. I This is the whole part of legal preneur that I was wanting to focus on this year was not just the legal stuff like. People lean on us and rely on us for so much more than the legal stuff. So feel free to reach out on Instagram. Let me know what your questions are because I’m happy to help give you some guidance and my $0.02 on what I think your next hire should be. And you’ll never feel. Probably never feel safe enough to make that hire. You just got to do it to free up your own time. So if I didn’t have Kayla, I mean, I would be stuck making landing pages and setting up email sequences and writing copy and setting up webinars and doing all that stuff. But luckily, I can just be the brains and the vision and she can just get the shit done. So. I hope that helps. Let me know if you have questions. Reach out on Instagram and don’t forget about Legalpreneur live. Tickets are 50% off for the rest of June. Just use code LPLIVE50.
[00:11:27] Links in the show notes and make friends here at Legalpreneur. We’re committed to providing a supportive legal community for all business owners. I know how scary the legal stuff can be. If you found this information helpful. I would be so grateful if you could share it with a fellow business owner. And quite frankly, it doesn’t cost anything to write, review or subscribe to the show. Your support helps me reach more listeners, which allows me to support more business owners in their entrepreneurial journey. Have any questions or comments about the show? Feel free to drop me a line on Instagram, I promise. I read all of the messages and comments and if you want to be a guest on the show or know someone that would make a great guest, simply fill out our application form and a team member will reach out if we think it’s a good fit. I’ll see you in the next episode.
