In this insightful episode of the E-commerce Evolution Podcast, host Brett Curry sits down with Jhana Li, founder of Spyglass Ops, to tackle one of the biggest challenges holding back growing businesses: operational constraints. While many entrepreneurs excel at product development and marketing, they often hit a ceiling when it comes to building operational systems and processes. Jhana shares her expertise as a transformational operations consultant who has helped hundreds of seven and eight-figure businesses scale by creating systems that allow founders to work on their business rather than in it.

Key Takeaways

• Strategic Vision Beyond "More Growth" - Jhana reveals why simply wanting "more" isn't a strategy and how to create a meaningful vision aligned with your personal goals. She explains why many founders reach their revenue targets only to feel trapped and unfulfilled.
• Creating an Environment for A-Players to Thrive - Learn why hiring top talent isn't enough; you need systems, clear expectations, and a culture that empowers them. Discover how to transform your existing team into high performers through better leadership.
• The Four Essential HR Processes - Jhana breaks down the systematic approach to hiring, onboarding, coaching, and firing that creates a high-performance culture. Her 14-day "bootcamp" approach to onboarding new team members is particularly eye-opening.
• The Power of Radical Ownership - Find out how transferring ownership of outcomes to your team members creates accountability and allows you to step into the visionary role instead of being stuck in day-to-day operations.
• Reframing the Firing Conversation - Discover why letting someone go can be an act of service rather than something to avoid, and how to approach these difficult conversations with compassion and clarity.

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Jhana Li:

We got all these all-star athletes on our team, we're saying, why the heck are you always three steps behind me? Why are you always waiting for me to make the next decision or hand out the next task or come up with the next idea? We get so frustrated and what we realize is actually we haven't told them where they're going.

Brett Curry:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we're talking about operations, operational constraints, operational bottlenecks, issues that you need to fix if you want to scale. Because here's what I believe most agency owners like me, most brand owners like you, you're really good at product, you're really good at marketing or scale or growth, but operations, maybe that's a part of the business. You don't want to think about a whole lot, but I guarantee you, without operational systems, processes, the right people, all of that good stuff, you will hit a ceiling and we're going to bust through that ceiling on this episode today. So want to welcome to the show, Ms. Jonna Lee, she's the founder of Spy Glass Ops. More on that in a second. Jonna, how's it going? And welcome to the show.

Jhana Li:

Thanks, Brett. I'm really excited to be here. It's going fantastic. It's spring here in Salt Lake City. No complaints.

Brett Curry:

Springtime in I love.

Jhana Li:

I know. I'm ready for it. Love

Brett Curry:

Springtime. And so John and I got to hang out at an event recently hosted by one of my business partners, Tom Shipley, called Deal Con. Jonna was rocking the stage talking about how to form good integrations if you're doing m and a, but it was all around ops. And so your company, John, us, by Glass Ops, you guys help with your transformational operations company, right? So you help with consulting, recruiting, coaching. You help seven and eight figure brands and businesses get unstuck and scale from an operation standpoint. Can you talk a little more about that, a little more about your background there?

Jhana Li:

Yeah, I think you covered it beautifully. So my background is as a COO, I was in that second in command operator position for multiple different successful startups, and that's where I really learned the tools of the trade. And then I had the opportunity to be an operations coach in this coaching program that had hundreds of startup owners in it. And that was really the big unlock for me, Brett, because I had hundreds of businesses pulling back the kimono, so to speak, and just showing me the reel of what's going on behind the scenes, what's not working, what's breaking, where are they struggling as they're scaling through 7, 8, 9 figures. And so I got to just compile all this data around what are the common patterns and themes that hold startup founders back from achieving, not just the revenue and the profit goals that they have for the business, but also the lifestyle, the freedom goals, creating a version of their company that can actually run without them.

And so that is really what I became passionate about. And four years ago I started the company to help entrepreneurs go through that critical stage of growth so that the company can start to become an asset, a machine that is going to run with or without them, and they're able to take that to a successful multi eight figure nine figure exit. They're able to take that to a lifestyle business that produces passive cashflow, but ultimately it's around unlocking the founder so that they're able to achieve the best version of their business and the best version of their life.

Brett Curry:

It's so great. And yeah, allowing the founder, the visionary, you've got brilliant ideas. And again, you're a product person, a marketing person, salesperson, whatever. For me, I'm all about setting vision, forming partnerships. I like sales, I like solving interesting marketing problems. I'm not an ops guy. I can respect a good system. I can spot a good system. I'm not going to sit down and design one, and at least I'm not going to do it and enjoy

Brett Curry:

Myself.

Brett Curry:

And so I've had the privilege of working with two amazing COOs throughout the journey of OMG commerce in our path to multiple seven figures. So I see the value there and I'm really excited to unpack this and give some insights to our listeners, but would love to hear from you what are some of the mistakes, bottlenecks, issues that you see founders running into when it comes to ops?

Jhana Li:

Oh my gosh, how long we got? Okay, so I would say that statistically, right? So we start all of our client relationships with a company-wide operational audit. So we've actually looked at the data and we've run these numbers and about 80 to 90% of the time, the key and critical bottlenecks holding startup founders back fall into one of four categories. The first category is strategic vision, meaning they don't actually know where they're trying to take the company or how exactly they're going to get to their revenue

Brett Curry:

Profit goals. We want to growth is

Jhana Li:

Our vision exactly more better. That's hot strategy. Strategy doesn't offer your team a direction to run in, and it ultimately leaves the founder pretty directionless in terms of what decisions to make and what to drive towards. So a lack of strategic vision or what's an interesting one that we see, Brett, is that they'll have a strategic vision that is totally out of alignment with their personal goals. So my personal goal is that I want a lifestyle business that's going to run without me, but the version of my company that I'm building is one where the product is totally reliant on me. Nothing can move forward without me, and I want to double revenue in the next 12 months. It's like these things are at odds with each other. And so we often have to hold up the mirror and say, which do you want more?

And then let's build a roadmap to get you to that and let's adjust your business and your plan for growing your business. So it actually gets you to the goals that you have outside of just work and revenue. So that's a big one that we see fairly often. The second big one is a lack of an operator, which should not be a surprise to anyone. And this is why we layered in operations recruitment as one of our core offers because either you've got somebody who's been in that role and is now no longer cutting it, in which case we have to figure out can they grow and can the business afford the time that it's going to take for them to grow into the COO that you need, or you do not have that person. Maybe you think you do, right? Maybe it's your wife, maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's a actual COO that we hired off on LinkedIn, but are they actually the person that you need in the role? Yes or no? And we need to go out and find that person because like you said Brett, you can respect operations, but you respect it enough to not touch it and to know the value of having someone who is an expert who can actually do the work.

Brett Curry:

And if the goal is getting that building, that machine, that machine that consistently produces results and spits off cash, you got to think about ops. And I really liked the way you laid that out. And I think it's one of those scenarios where we all do want more. We all do want to grow, but what will get you there is not what got you here. What got you here won't get you there. The title of that famous book, and I think that's true both in terms of your systems or lack thereof, your processes, but also that operator, right? Yes, the COO or the operator that got you to 5 million or to 10 million is probably not the same operator that will get you to a hundred million.

And maybe because people can grow and people can change and evolve, but generally speaking, you're going to have to either upgrade that person and upskill them or find someone who can grow you to 20 million, 50 million, a hundred million and that type of thing. So really great. So I love the way you identify that. So as you kind of lay that out, where do you see people in that, let's call it 10 to 50 million range? I know it's going to be different depending on the business category, brands that can still be a pretty lean team agencies, that's a pretty big team. What are some of the hurdles that they have to overcome? What are some of the systems they need to put in place or people they need to put into place to really become that operational machine?

Jhana Li:

So this really comes down to a couple of core categories, and the big one that I see in that 10 to 50 million range is that it comes down to leadership and not just can you as a CEO founder become a bigger, better version of yourself and the leader that your company needs next from you? Can you step fully out of our executive coach calls the three levels of entrepreneurship. The first level is producer where you're just showing up, you're doing everything. Okay, we probably got out of that a while ago. We stepped out of that level. The next level is leader. Great. So now can we be a leader that is able to delegate tasks, action, align a team, drive them towards a vision, that's the leadership level. And then the third level is visionary. Can we actually hand off day-to-day leadership of our team to managers, to department heads to people who are not only able to manage tasks but actually make decisions on our behalf? And when we're able to create that, we get to step into the third level, which is visionary, where our role, our highest value work is to make decisions and set strategy on behalf of our company and to have the vision, to hold the vision, to keep the team aligned around the vision, but to then to hand off the actualization and the execution of that vision to a team that we've put in place that we trust.

Brett Curry:

So hard to do, man, so hard. As someone who I do, I am a visionary, I'm not the integrator. And so I do setting the vision, casting the vision, but giving up control the vision or delegating decision-making can be quite difficult. Before we get there though, I do want to maybe step back for a second and talk about how do you clarify, and I've got some thoughts here on what we've done as an agency and some work we've done even recently internally. But you talk about the strategic vision and the strategic vision is not more do it better, do it more. That's not it. That's not clear at all. How do you coach people or what advice do you give them to say, okay, it may be clear in your head, but the way you're saying it is not clear to your team. How do you coach people in making that vision clear?

Jhana Li:

Yeah, a hundred percent. So the first thing is that we have to clarify. Two, we have to answer two questions and how, what does success look like? What is the finish line for this business? What are the north star goals and metrics that we are going to drive towards? So what looks like revenue, looks like profit, looks like a target valuation that you want to exit at. It's the finish line of the race that you are running. If you don't have a finish line, how the heck are you going to run the race? And so what we often see challenges around the, what is that? I talked to a dude at a mastermind who exited for 50 million million. So now I want to exit for 50 million. The challenge is that's the vision, 50 million, that's the vision. I did it right? But the problem is is that 50 million means nothing. That is a totally arbitrary number. It's not attached to any deeper meaning. It's not attached to any quality of life you're trying to create. It is throwing a dart at a dartboard, picking a number and saying

Brett Curry:

That's not good or the value, value you're going to be generating and offering to the marketplace to be worth 50 million. It says nothing

Jhana Li:

A hundred percent. So we pick these arbitrary finish lines and then what happens? It gets hard to run the race. And so we end up just switching the finish line and picking a different race, and we end up just pivoting and pivoting and pivoting and creating all these different sets of goals because we don't actually have fundamental and intrinsic conviction or attachment to those goals, or even we end up hitting those goals and then we feel nothing because it didn't mean anything to begin with. And so that's the existential crisis that we have to coach our clients through where they're like, wow, I really wanted to get to seven figures. I really wanted to get to eight figures and now I'm here and I'm more trapped by my business than ever. I'm falling out of love with my business. I've never felt less free. I'm not doing any of the things that I wanted to do or that I thought I could do by the time I reached this, why the hell am I doing this and do I need you to just burn this thing down and walk away? So strategic vision again is like, let's define the what and let's define the what against what actually matters to you as a founder, as an individual, as a human, and not just as an entrepreneur. And then let's make sure that the target you're setting for your business is actually going to get you what you want. So that's the first part of strategic vision.

Brett Curry:

So good. I'll share a couple of insights from some work we've done recently here at OMG because I really believe that setting the mission and vision and things like that, it really shows the team, this is who we are and how we're going to show up. And this is very clearly where we're going. And so I'm a big fan of statements and simple statements that carry meaning and that can help make decisions and help guide you. And so a couple that we've leaned into as an agency, and then I want to talk about the thing called the V two Mom. I'm curious if you've heard of that, talk about that in a second. But the first thing that we've leaned into here over the last couple of years is we want to be the most trusted, most loved digital marketing agency that feels like an in-house team.

Now, that may seem a little bit like a strange statement, most trusted, most love that feels kind of mushy, but here's what I believe that is tied to that trust piece that ties back to competence in the agency world. People want agencies they can trust and that they trust your expertise and they feel like, Hey, if I'm getting your feedback on something, I can count on it, I can believe it, I can take it to the bank, that type of thing. The most loved piece is when I figured I would get a lot of pushback on. But actually as I've showed this to PE firms that I know and others are like, dude, I actually kind of like it because, and we've heard this, we've heard this even from clients that are leaving OMG, they're like, we love you guys. We love your team, but we're leaving for this, that, or the other. Our team is we sold or whatever, but then also feels like an in-house team. And so it feels like an extension of the team. We've had people say to us, Hey, your team feels like my team. And so we crafted that in such a way that that should guide. How are we going to respond to emails? How are we going to show up to meetings? How are we going to respond in Slack because of those things? And so that's one of the statements. Curious how that strikes you

Or anything that sparks there.

Jhana Li:

I love that so much. It is a reminiscent of an exercise that we walk our clients through EOS calls it the three uniques. We call it the golden triad. And it is the three core characteristics that you from your competitors, why would somebody choose to work with you? And the example I always give is think about McDonald's versus a five star Michelin restaurant, right? Here's the vision statement. I so often hear Brett, and especially in the agency space, oh my gosh, we want to be the best. We want to be the best agency for e-com brands, but what is the best?

Brett Curry:

That

Jhana Li:

Means nothing to me. McDonald's is the best, but STO is a Michelin star restaurant.

McDonald's is the best at being fast, cheap and easy. Those are their three uniques. A Michelin star restaurant is the best at being a luxury white glove experience, farm to table, whatever. So what are the three uniques that guide your business, that differentiate you from others? What I heard you say was loved, trusted, feels like an extension of your in-house team. Cool. What's amazing about that is that now we get to go through our entire client happiness journey and anything that does not directly drive love, trust, or seamless integration, we don't do it. We don't do it. We don't have to do it because it's not why clients choose to work with us. And we get to become the best at those three things because we're not trying to be the best at everything else. Everything. And that's where most agencies and brands get stuck is that we're too diluted in who we serve in how we serve them uniquely well. We try and be everything for everyone and then we end up being nothing for no one.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's one of those things where you can do anything. You can be anybody. Your company can be anything, but it can't be. Everything can be everything. You've got to choose. You got to select. So I'm curious. We actually went through this process. Actually our current COO is the one that turned me onto this called the V two mom vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures. So I think this was actually designed by Salesforce and marketing off there. It's really cool though. So set your vision. So this is where we're going clearly what we just talked about, your values, so this is what we believe about ourselves and what we will or won't do to get us there. Then your methods are these are the things we're going to do in all these departments, high level obstacles, these things are standing in our way and then measures.

These are clear targets that we're setting for ourselves in all these key areas. So it's been really great as we crafted that, shared that with the team, I think it's, I've already heard it sparked some interesting discussions, especially around the measures. We've got this 50% profitability target within each department and it's triggering everybody to look at like, Hey, how is that going to impact the profitability of the department, right? Because I know we got this 50% target, so I don't know that the actual structure of the strategy really matters. It's way more about do you have it? Does it make sense? And is it guiding the team?

Jhana Li:

Yes, a hundred percent. And that's such a key. That final piece is the point, right? Because what you just said, Brett, you've got this incredible vivid vision in your mind. You as the founder know exactly what that finishing line is exactly how you want to get there. But if you haven't shared it with your team in a way that they not only see it as clearly as you see it, but also understand how they can uniquely contribute towards it,

Brett Curry:

What

Jhana Li:

You end up doing is disempowering your team to be proactive. Because now again, no all-star athlete can run a race if you don't tell them where the finish line is.

And so we got all these all-star athletes on our team. We're saying, why the heck are you always three steps behind me? Why are you always waiting for me to make the next decision or hand out the next task or come up with the next idea? We get so frustrated and what we realize is actually we haven't told them where they're going. So how the heck could they help us get there? How could they walk alongside us as opposed to behind us if they have no idea what to be proactive and what to drive towards? So no, the framework really doesn't matter. EOS has a great one, V two, mom love it. We have our own right? We call it the navigational chart. It's less about whether it's the right framework and more around are you being consistent with it, and then are you repeating it and coming back to it constantly with your team? It takes the average person seven to 12 times of hearing something before it actually sinks into their brain. So we say it once and then we're like, cool, did that. Everyone's got the vision. Everyone knows where we're going. Our job becomes to be the chief repeating officer.

Brett Curry:

We

Jhana Li:

Say this again and again. We articulate the vision and the values and the goals and the metrics and all of these things again and again and again. And to us, we feel like crazy people because we've repeated ourselves a hundred times and how can they not get it? And when you feel that way, I can promise you your team is only just starting to get it. Keep going.

Brett Curry:

So good, so good. And I've heard that forever in the marketing world, just about the time you're sick of hearing an ad or hearing a message. Only then is the market even beginning to pay attention, right?

Brett Curry:

Totally.

Brett Curry:

And it's sort of similar with internal communication as well. You got to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it before people even start to get it. And so

Really great. Well, let's talk people for a minute because I'm a firm believer. This is true in the agency space, also true in the brand space. Any business, you're only as good as the people that you have on board. And I was listening to a podcast founders podcast that I love, and they were talking about Steve Jobs and maybe Elon Moss, maybe somebody else. They were talking about how they don't worry about overpaying for great talent because what they've found in certain industries may be a little bit different depending on your industry. But Steve Jobs said, Hey, the best talent, they may be two or more times, two or three times more expensive, but their work isn't two or three times better. It's 10 times better, a hundred times better, the output. And so I don't worry about that. I am getting the absolute best of my team now. Everybody's on their own journey. And so finding the right person for you isn't going to be what Steve Jobs was necessarily looking for, but how do you coach people on finding the right people when to identify that they need to hire, and then also would love to hear any hiring tips that you have. I think this is something that scaling businesses are often pretty bad at.

Jhana Li:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Oh my gosh. So this pillar of team is probably where we do the most amount of work with our clients because again, it actually becomes the deal breaker systems, not the deal breaker strategy, not the deal breaker. Do you have the right people in the right roles executing the right things and running in the right direction? Without that, your business will never be able to scale you without that. You will be that point of escalation. You'll become the system where every decision has to be yours, every idea has to be yours, every sign off and every right task needs your eyes on it and every quality assurance. If you are feeling stuck running the day-to-day of your business right now, I can almost guarantee you a root cause bottleneck is team. Now to be clear, that doesn't mean the solution is we have to go out, fire everyone and then just double all of our salaries and that will

Brett Curry:

Fix the problem. Exactly.

Jhana Li:

What we most often see is that clients will have incredible team members on the bus, but what we haven't done is created a player environment. We have a players,

But we haven't invited them to bring all that they are capable of to the table. We haven't given them a clear strategic vision that they can be proactive and innovative and creative and run towards. We haven't empowered them so that they feel confident in solving their own problems. They have the critical thinking skills to do it, and they know what they're authorized to make decisions around versus not. We haven't given them the right systems and technology so that they can be efficient and effective in their role. We're having them run around chasing down information, picking up dropped balls, putting out fires that didn't need to exist to begin with. And so we're wasting all of their time playing defense and doing all this low value work instead of doing the really high value, high leverage things that you actually paid them for. So my number one pro tip around team is that before you go out and just get better people, make sure that you have created an environment where your current people are able to bring their best to the table. And what that fundamentally comes down to is us as leaders, us as the founder, and then the leaders that we put in place to again, manage that frontline team. Do our leaders know how to build and manage a players and manage a high performance team environment?

Brett Curry:

Sometimes you don't have a players on your team, you're not ready for them. You've not done the work to make your company attractive for a players or where a players can shine. And I actually was thinking about football while you were laying that out. Honestly, I'm a chiefs football fan, longtime chiefs fan from Kansas City, and they've had several situations over recent years where they'll have a wide receiver that'll leave and go somewhere else and they don't do very good and they come back and then they're on the chiefs. They're amazing. And it's because you got Patrick Mahomes as your quarterback and you got Andy Reed who's helping call plays. You got a system that's a winning system, and so maybe a receiver that really sucks for another team. You put 'em in the chief's environment and they're going to shine because of all the things around them.

And so I think that's one of the things we got to keep in mind. It's not the key is not just paying more for talent. That just means you're guaranteed to have more money going out the door. It could work. It's not just about hiring a talent, it's about having the system where they're going to shine and the environment where they're going to shine. So what are some of the things, some of the tips you lay out there for business owners, founders to say, am I ready for A players and if not, what do I need to do to get ready?

Jhana Li:

Yeah, great question. So I would offer a reframe, which is you probably already have a players. The question is what are you lacking that's inviting them or not to bring it to the table? The

Brett Curry:

Top may be you, not the team in place.

Jhana Li:

Correct,

Brett Curry:

Correct.

Jhana Li:

Yes. So right, there are four core HR processes that I think every team needs to have to be able to consistently attract and retain a player talent. You need your hiring process, your onboarding process, which is absolutely key. Do not skip onboarding. You need your high performance management. So that's ongoing management and growth coaching for the people on your team. And then you need firing. How do we systematically either manage people up if there's underperformance or manage them out where we determine they're not the right fit and we get them off the bus? These things need to happen systematically. What I often see happen is they're happening organically. We're hiring by dropping a job description on Facebook and then hiring the first person that comes along because we needed this person three months ago and I really just need this person. And you seem smart and competent, not a proven system, not going to get you the A player.

Most of the time onboarding, we skip entirely. We just throw 'em in the deep end and we say they're an A player, they should learn how to swim. Truly a strong onboarding process will three x your average employee retention and increase your average employee productivity by 72%. And that has nothing to do with the caliber of people that you're hiring and onboarding. That just comes down to whether you are onboarding them effectively or not. Hiring, onboarding, growth, coaching, right? Managing. This is the area where we get to turn our B players into A players. This is where we're creating an environment that invites them to be their best or not. Are we tapping into their intrinsic motivators? Are we creating an environment of clearly defined accountability and radical ownership? Are we paying our people fairly with scalable compensation plans? Have we defined clear and exact roles so people know what is my job and what is not my job? There's a whole checklist, Brett, I could even send it to your group. I've got

Brett Curry:

That'd be amazing.

Jhana Li:

Eight core pillars of what goes into a high performance, a playing environment. And I'm happy to share that with everyone because just by implementing those eight things within your existing business, your existing team, you don't even have to pay them any more than you're currently paying them.

Brett Curry:

They

Jhana Li:

Promise you you will get a productivity increase of a minimum of two x because that's just how big of a deal it is when you start turning on a high performance environment.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good. And I want to go back to something I said a minute ago, just to clarify. The reason I shared the Steve Jobs of I don't care if I pay two or three x times for an employee, they're going to be

10 or a hundred times more valuable. That wasn't about salary, that was more about the right person can unlock things. But what I think is also really interesting about this environment right now is that there's a lot of A-players out there. There's a lot of great talent out there, and you can get them for a reasonable rate, like a good competitive salary. It's not the insanity that was kind of mid pandemic when everything was just off the rails. It's kind of more of a normal job market to a certain degree. And so there is good talent out there that you can find. So would love to have that checklist. We'll put in the show notes, we'll share that with everybody, but I also like the way you laid that out. So hiring, onboarding, ongoing coaching, and then firing. It's got to be systematic. That's to follow up process. But I think what most people will do are like, Hey, you're good. So come on board and figure stuff out. Watch this person. Watch that person. You'll get it.

Brett Curry:

Yes.

Brett Curry:

Imagine if going back again, going back to a football example, imagine if that happened there. That doesn't happen. You bring on a player, you get 'em indoctrinated and what you do, they immediately go to their position coach, they go to all these practices, they're watching film, they're constantly being evaluated, everything, everything is thought of. And obviously we're not quite like a professional sports team, but we need to be more like one, right? If we want a performance-based culture, we could probably learn a lot from that structure. So

Brett Curry:

Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Brett Curry:

I want to talk a little bit about hiring just because I think that's something that

Brett Curry:

It's a big one

Brett Curry:

Is intimidating to people. We screw it up so often. I can think about a couple of really bad mistakes that I've made as a business owner when it comes to hiring, but what are some of the, yeah, yeah, I mean we all do, but what are some of the hiring tips, insights, processes you recommend? Should I go with a recruiter or no recruiter? How am I going to find the right talent?

Jhana Li:

Yeah. Okay. So a couple of best practices when it comes to hiring, especially because for some positions or many positions, Brett, your clients are hiring remote team members, which is amazing. It means we get to tap into international job markets and all of these things. And also overwhelming because when we launch our average ops COO hiring funnel, we can get from 500 to a thousand applications. So how do we whittle that down? I always say that a strong hiring funnel is like a magnet. What does a magnet do? A magnet attracts, it attracts your ideal candidate avatar, right? You're a marketer. If we wanted to build a marketing funnel, what will we start with? We would start with our ideal client avatar.

Who is this person? What do they think about at night? What drives them? What motivates them? What do they want? Let's build that for our ideal candidate. I call the tool that we use for this, the job scorecard. We have to define success in the role, and then we build a hiring funnel that is messaged towards that person and is designed to be a magnet that will attract them through our process so that by the time they get to the end of our hiring process, we have COOs who have 20 years experience being like, this was the most incredible hiring process I've ever gone

Brett Curry:

Through. Wow,

Jhana Li:

I'm so excited to work with your client. When do I get to have my next interview? Do you guys have any other job opportunities available? You want them to be so excited because you have built this just for them? What else does a magnet do? A magnet repels. So this funnel should be so specific and so fine tuned that someone who is not your ideal candidate will self-select out. They literally will just stop. They'll stop going through the process. So while we may get 500 COO applications on our average job description, by the time our process is done and we're actually looking like we're looking at applications, we're looking at resumes, we're looking at the top 20 to 30 for that role because we have such a robust process that it will literally take out 95% of the candidates that apply because they're not the right fit. And it would literally be a waste of me and my team's time to have any sort of conversation with them or to spend a minute looking at their resume. So if you're going for a remote job market where you're getting overwhelmed by just sheer volume, rely on the process, let the process kick out 95% of people so that you're only focused on the 5%, that could really be that ideal candidate you're looking for.

Brett Curry:

That's so good. That's so good. I love that. The job scorecard and really thinking about how am I going to position this so they get the job done so that it meets its objectives so that I'm attracting the right person, repelling the wrong person, really good. And again, I think a lot of us that listen to us are marketers. If you own a brand, you're probably good at marketing, but you don't really put your marketing hat on when you're crafting that job scorecard or looking at attracting talent, but you kind of should be, right? There's quite a few parallels there. It's the same thing, isn't it? It's the

Jhana Li:

Same. Humans be humans, and it's a marketing funnel. Your hiring funnel is a marketing funnel for your ideal candidate.

Brett Curry:

Yeah, it's so good. So good. Any other specific tips you can give on the hiring process? What should that look like? Should you outsource it? Should you do it? How many interviews should you have? And I know there's all kinds of conditional statements there, but any other tips on the hiring process that you'd recommend?

Jhana Li:

So we have a eight step hiring process. I can walk through it very quickly if you would like, but not to get too deep into the weeds. Essentially, our proven hiring process is we launched the job description on the front end. The job description will take them directly to a written application. So the application is going to take them off of whatever job forum they're on, indeed or LinkedIn. We will drop JD into these huge, again, these huge ponds of candidates, hundreds of people. Thousands of people will see that job description, but only hundreds of them will click on the link and apply through our link. So that's a huge filtration system that kicks a lot of people out. Then we take 'em to the written application. The written application is quick. It's easy for them to fill out, but the written application takes 'em directly to a skill assessment. The skill assessment is where we generally see 80% of candidates plus stop the process. They literally just won't submit it because the skill assessment is hard. Back to marketing here, Brett. One thing we know about marketing funnels, the greater the friction in the funnel, the higher the quality of lead, right?

Yep. Same thing with hiring. So we make it hard. It shouldn't be

Brett Curry:

Hard to, what does that look like? I know sometimes, so it was one thing we do as an agency is we give them a fake project. Here's an made up client, and here's a bunch of scenarios. What are you going to do in those scenarios, right? Yes. How are you going to optimize this? And then we grade those answers. Is that what you're recommending here?

Jhana Li:

Pretty much, yep. It's two to three. I call 'em crunchy questions that again, your A player ideal candidate will have no problem answering why? Because they've done this at three other companies already. This is as natural to them as breathing, and in fact, they fucking love it. Such a nerd.

Brett Curry:

They

Jhana Li:

Get to the end of the skill assessment and they're like, oh my God, that was so fun. I cannot wait for this job. Most people, 80% of people will say, this is hard. This is going to take too long. I don't know how to do this. I don't want to do this. And they will, again, self-select apps.

Brett Curry:

Perfect.

Jhana Li:

So that's the skill assessment.

Brett Curry:

See you.

Jhana Li:

Yep. It's a big one. From there'll then start interviews. So we'll do a culture interview, a skill interview, reference interviews, and then we'll finally close them on the job.

Brett Curry:

That's amazing. That's amazing. Really, really helpful. So we've kind of set our vision, our strategic vision, and kind of mapped that out. And we're now talking about hiring. And let's talk a little bit about what that environment looks like that allows a player to shine. I know you've touched on a handful of things, but if we want a performance-based culture, what are some things we need to have in place for that to be true? So I'm assuming you got the job scorecard for when you hire somebody, probably a scorecard ongoing where you can show someone how are you doing and how can you do better type of thing.

Jhana Li:

And again, it comes back to onboarding. So we take that same exact job scorecard, and then on the very first day of that new person starting their job, I still personally do a culture onboarding call, right? How important this call is in this culture onboarding call, we cover vision, mission, right? Your V two mom, this is when you would share that this is your vision, your mission, your core values. This is the team they're going to be working with. This is the lay of the land, and this is your performance and cultural expectations. So I'll say things like show up on time to meetings and be on camera. Do I have to say that most of clients would be like, no, they're a players. I shouldn't have to say that. Set expectations. This is client. Think of your team onboarding. Again, like client onboarding. We know how important it is

Brett Curry:

For

Jhana Li:

Successful client onboarding, to have an incredible experience, to set realistic expectations and to understand, especially in a service industry like agencies, Brett, what do they need to bring to the table in order to be successful in this partnership? That is exactly what you're doing on day one. Here's us, here's what success looks like in your role, job scorecard. And then the third and critical component to this conversation is a transfer of ownership. The single greatest characteristic of high performance teams is radical ownership. So here's your job scorecard. This is yours. Now,

Brett Curry:

These

Jhana Li:

Are not my targets. These are your targets. These are not my challenges to solve my daily tasks to fix for you. These are your tasks, your challenges, your growth opportunity, your level up, and in fact that the next two weeks of training that we're about to launch into for you, that's yours as well. You are responsible for becoming the version of you for gaining the knowledge that you need to hit these targets and achieve success as measured by this job scorecard. Welcome to the

Brett Curry:

So good, so good. And some people would hate to hear that message, but the right people, it will light them up. They will love that. So even kind of you hint about some of those things, I would assume in the hiring process as well to kind of weed out the wrong people.

Jhana Li:

Yeah. Again, the hiring process is built for that ideal candidate, the person who should get lit up. When we then deliver that message in onboarding, if by some reason somebody has snuck through the hiring process and pulled a fast one on me, the onboarding is also intense from the culture call. We launch 'em into what we call the 14 day bootcamp, and I tell 'em, the first 14 days on this rollout are going to be intense. Why? Because I want to stress test you because the person that I met in the interviews is not the person I'm hiring. That is a shiny blow up version of the person that I just hired. The person I actually hired is a person who's six months from now whose kid is sick and they left the stove on and the mailman is here, and there's a client fire exploding. And how do they show up to the team meeting? That's the person I

Brett Curry:

Hired.

Jhana Li:

I want to know who that person is, and I don't want to have to wait six months to figure it out.

Brett Curry:

Tell me more about that. That is great because, well, we've made the mistake in the past of making the first two weeks month just so easy, and part of it's like we want to be a great place to work and we want to challenge people. We want to coach people. And sometimes we made it just way, way too easy, almost boring. That has since changed. But how do you stress test in those first two weeks? What does that look like?

Jhana Li:

So I want to draw a difference between hard and disorganized.

What does an A player want? An A player doesn't mind a high pressure environment. A player doesn't mind drinking out of a fire hose in terms of learning new information. An A player doesn't mind throwing themselves into something, getting their hands dirty and figuring it out. What doesn't set people up for success though, is again kicking them into the deep end. So we're just throwing you into things with no structure, with no organization, with no guidance around what you should be looking at, what you should be focused on or what success looks like. So our responsibility as leadership is to develop that structure. So that's what we call the 14 day bootcamp, and it's that blow by blow of for the first 14 days, you're going to train on these things with these people. You're going to watch these meetings, shadow these client calls, read these books.

We're going to give you all of the information that you need. We're going to front load it. And at the end of two weeks, the goal is that you are functional, not that you're exceptional, that you're functional in the role, and I'm going to download any and all information into your brain that you need in order to become functional. It will be hard, but we've got your back. Also included in that 14 day bootcamp is daily check-ins with their manager, end of week check-ins with me, a 14 day check-in around, where are you at? Where are you struggling, how are you feeling after your first two weeks? So there's structure to it, but that doesn't make it not hard. It just makes it hard with support.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah, man, it's so good. So we are running out of time a bit, but I do want to talk about the final two things. How are we coaching someone and helping them really grow and reach peak performance? And then when do we fire people as well? So let's talk about both of those. What tips or insights can you share on the coaching and helping someone level up?

Jhana Li:

So the first thing is if you want a high performance team, coach them. Every high performer has a coach. Michael Phelps has a coach, and I hear clients say a lot, if I'm hiring eight players, why should I have to manage them? Management is

Brett Curry:

Coaching the best. Want a coach? Yeah,

Jhana Li:

Correct, correct. Right. And so I have not just coaching as in an end of quarter performance review. We do active growth coaching on a weekly or biweekly basis with our team members. So every week for new team members, every other week for veterans, they are sitting down with their direct manager. And what I am working on, again, included, I'll just send Brett, I have SOP and tools and templates for literally all of this. I'm just going to give it to your people. Does that work?

Brett Curry:

Amazing. Amazing.

Jhana Li:

Thank you so much. Yeah. So that includes in there a script and a one-on-one template for how I run these meetings. But essentially I am taking the last one to two weeks of their performance in the role, and we're using it as data. Where did you do well? Where could you have done better? What are you going to do differently moving forward? What are you struggling with? What's blocking you? I have a lot of clients who have a lot of fear around giving constructive feedback,

But you're a coach. Constructive feedback is literally your job. What you're afraid of is demotivating someone. What you're afraid of is making them feel bad. But that must to do with the culture, not the feedback. If the culture says that you getting feedback means you've done something wrong, then yeah, I'm going to be afraid to give feedback or receive feedback. If instead, feedback is an act of service and coaching to help every single person on this team level up all the time. I have team members coming into those meetings being like, what could I do better? This is what I struggled with. How would you tackle this? I feel like I really botched this meeting. They're looking for it. They're leaning into

Brett Curry:

It

Jhana Li:

Because they recognize it for what it is

Better, which is an active level of service, and they want to get better. So again, this is where we get into the less tangible side of team development, which is like, what's the culture that you've built around growth and feedback and failure? How does your team respond to failure? How do you respond to failure? If we can control the cultural context, then every single day my team is showing up, looking for an opportunity to grow. My job is to just hold up the mirror and say, Hey, here's your next gap. Here's your next opportunity. Grow this way.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. Well, let's talk a little bit about the F word firing. So when is it time to fire and move on from somebody? What insights can you share with us there?

Jhana Li:

Yeah, so if we've done all the rest of this stuff correctly, then firing becomes actually a pretty easy process. We've got a job scorecard. We gave it to them on day one. We transferred ownership over those targets to them. We aligned their goals with company goals. We've coached them every single week, and we've established a regular rhythm where if there's a gap in performance, we're immediately calling it out, offering feedback and trying to correct it. What then happens if that person is still not able to perform? We have an immediate conversation, and it's a very simple conversation that says, Hey, this is the job scorecard. We covered this on day one. This is your job score card. We covered that on day one, and you're performing down here. Help me understand, what do you need for you? Again, radical ownership stays with them for you to close this gap, and what do you need for me to be successful in that?

So it's a growth coaching conversation to start where I call that the pep, the personal elevation plan. And that is, Hey, as soon as I see a gap, I'm going to call it out, and we're going to co-create a game plan for you to close that gap and take radical ownership for doing so. Then if I don't see that they've closed that gap, then we'll escalate to a pip. That's the last warning conversation of like, Hey, to be clear, you cannot have this job if you're not meeting the expectations outlined in the job scorecard. So again, help me understand why haven't I seen the change and what needs to change in order for you to be successful, because we both want you to be successful here.

Brett Curry:

So the PIP, that's the personal improvement plan, right? Correct. This is where you got to improve here else. This is going to fit. And my guess is, John, if you are a company and you're leading someone through this process after the pip, some people are going to make it a lot. People are going to be like, yeah, this price isn't right. Correct. The firing is not going to be a surprise to anybody at that point. You go through that process, it's going to be a pretty natural next step for you and for the person you're firing.

Jhana Li:

It's not a surprise. And what you'll actually see is people will just quit that phrase, manage up or manage out. Credit to Layla Hermo for teaching me that one. When you've done a great job of building a high performance, high pressure environment, people who don't like that, who don't want that, who don't want to be held accountable to constant growth and constant targets will leave. They'll literally just leave,

Brett Curry:

Which is akay even better, right? Than having to f

Jhana Li:

Fire, which is best case scenario. Exactly.

Brett Curry:

Exactly.

This is so good, and one thing I'll share too, and we've had our ups and downs as an agency when it comes to ops and hiring and firing and things like that. But what I've also found too, because I think there's this fear that business owners have too, about firing. I can't think of a single time that we fired someone at OMG where I've had outrage from the team. Almost always it's like, yeah, I saw that coming, right? Or yeah, we got that. We did have to go through a couple of rounds of layoffs as an agency about 18 months ago. That sucked, and that sucked bad. A lot of agencies and a lot of e-comm brands had to do that. So I did get pushback there. People were like, how could you let this person go? I'm like, I know. I know. It sucked. But the firing piece, I've never had anybody. How could you, I mean, maybe the person's getting fired, but everybody else was like, yep, yep. Saw that Maybe you're a little bit late.

Jhana Li:

Do you want me to offer you a reframe so that even that person,

Brett Curry:

Please, please,

Jhana Li:

Is on board with it? And guys, this is, again, this is coming from me messing this up so many times because I really care about my team. I do. And so I don't want to fire them. I don't want to hurt them. Oh my God. Maybe they're going to get better. I'll give them just another month. Just another month, and then we all know where that ends. Anyway,

Brett Curry:

Right?

Jhana Li:

Here's the reframe. I will offer you, your job as a business owner is to create a vehicle for growth. Growth for you, growth for your clients, growth for your team. People deserve to be successful in their roles. They deserve to be able to grow with your business. And if they are in a role where they cannot be successful or where their pathway for growth had diverted from yours, then it is an absolute act of love and service to let them go and find the other opportunity where they will be successful that does get them to their goals. They deserve that. It is in fact selfish to let your own emotional discomfort at the conversation, keep them in a place where they cannot be successful. So when I show up to a firing conversation, that's the lens that I bring. And guess what? I still get coffee every month with half the people I've fired because they're so grateful and I'm so grateful, and we love each other so much, and they've found another job opportunity or started a business, and they've become these incredible next level versions of themselves. And all we did when we fired them was determine that, Hey, the next version of you can't be unlocked here.

That's okay. That's so okay. But it's time for us to part ways

Brett Curry:

And understanding that people desperately want to be successful.

Jhana Li:

They do.

Brett Curry:

They know that they're not being successful with your company if they're in this position, especially if you've got

Jhana Li:

A job scorecard,

Brett Curry:

Especially if you've going through this, measur them against that process, then they really know and they really know. Right? And one story that I heard, this was in the book, radical Candor, which is one of my favorites because I'm not naturally a candid person. So that book really helped me. But I love the story between Steve Jobs and Johnny. Ive and Steve would ask Johnny like, Hey, did you give this feedback to your teammate? Did you tell them this isn't good enough? And Johnny would be like, well, I don't want to hurt their feelings or whatever. And Steve would say, no, Johnny, you don't want to be nice. You're just vain and you want people to like you, right? It's like you've got to give people the feedback. And of course, we don't have to put on our Steve Jobs and show up just the way he did, not our personalities. But it's one of those things that say like, yeah, the frame you gave, it's actually not kindness. If you are, and maybe it's actually selfish if you're holding onto somebody when you need to let them go so they can go not be miserable somewhere and be successful somewhere,

Jhana Li:

Or you're holding onto that piece of feedback that you're unwilling to tell them when it's actually just depriving them of the opportunity

Brett Curry:

To

Jhana Li:

Know what the gap is so they can do something about it.

Brett Curry:

Yeah. Yeah. So good. We could keep going. You've got me fired up for operations. I'm not even operations guy. This is amazing, John, this, I can't believe it. So good. So definitely share with us the SOPs. I'll get that out. We'll put that in the show notes. Anybody can get that. But also, I'm confident there are people listening that are just like, I don't need the SOPs. I just want to work with Jonna and her team. So how can people connect with spyglass ops? What does that look like? Who are you right for? Talk to us about working with you.

Jhana Li:

Yeah, beautiful. So guys, the best way to connect with me is actually on Instagram, and if you will add it into the show notes. But I'm just going to give you guys my entire resource vault. So DM me the code word vault, click on the link in the show notes, DM me on Instagram. It's the best way to get in touch.

Brett Curry:

What Instagram handle

Jhana Li:

That is at the Jonna Lee. So J-H-A-N-A-L-I, Jonna Lee.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. And so DM you the word vault.

Jhana Li:

Correct.

Brett Curry:

You'll get the whole thing there. The whole all the goods, man. Okay. That's amazing. Jonna, this has been fantastic. I can't wait to review this, share this with my team. Really, really good. I know this is going to create transformational change for people that listen and apply and especially those that get your details and or work with you guys, but you guys are really, you're geared to work with brands, work with agencies, work with just service-based companies. You can work with just about anybody, correct?

Jhana Li:

Yeah. We work with online based startups, right? So eCom brands, given that you're running your business off technical systems, remote team building, that's the stuff we really specialize in.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. Jonna Lee, ladies and gentlemen at the Jonna Lee on Instagram, connect with her there, DM her at the word vault and you'll get all the goods. Also put stuff in the show notes as well. So with that, Jonna, thank you so much. This was amazing. Thanks for bringing the energy. Thanks for bringing the insights.

Jhana Li:

Thank you, Brett, it

Brett Curry:

Was fantastic.

Jhana Li:

Appreciate it.

Brett Curry:

Awesome. And thank you for tuning in as always. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? If you've not done so, please leave us a review on iTunes and if you know somebody who's struggling with ops share, share with them this episode and with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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