Ariana (00:00:07) - Hi, Secret Ops listeners, Ariana here. So today we're gonna have a bit of a different episode because after interviewing a ton of operations specialists, I realized it was only fair if we flipped the script. And instead of me interviewing someone, I should be the one in the hot seat. I should be the one being interviewed. So that's exactly what's gonna happen. And when I thought about the person who would be the best person to interview me, there was only one name on that list. And that is Joey Cofone, the founder, and CEO of Baron Fig, the author of The Laws of Creativity, the host of the podcast, Eureka. And he also happens to be my husband. He has seen my journey in a way that no one else has in operations over the last nine years. And honestly, I just figured he would get all the juicy questions, and all the good details out of my life. So that's exactly what's gonna happen today. He's gonna ask me all those questions, and you're gonna get all the real answers. Now, this is a totally different kind of format, different questions, different style of interview, and I wanna see what you think of it. So take a listen, enjoy. And again, thanks for supporting Secret Ops.

Joey (00:01:35) - Hello. Hello. Thank you. And hello, everybody out there. I am excited to be a guest the host with the most, no the hostess with the mostess. I'll take it. Alright. Today we are gonna interview Ariana. So first, before we begin, Ariana, why don't we explain the reasoning behind this?

Ariana (00:01:56) - Well, after a dozen episodes, interviewing a ton of different operations specialists across industries and getting a peek into their lives, their motivations, we figured it was only fair to do that for me. And since number one, you know me the best. Two, you also have seen my journey. We thought that you might be the best person to actually do the interviewing. I mean, also you've done a ton of podcasting and you've got a ton of experience, yada, yada, yada. But ultimately, we figured that you could get the inside scoop in the best way possible.

Joey (00:02:32) - Alrighty, I am down with that mission. I am here to help folks understand just how awesome you are. I know you're...uncomfortable hearing this.

Ariana (00:02:42) - I'm uncomfortable hearing this. Totally

Joey (00:02:46) - Alright well, listen let's do it. Let's jump in. I of course listen to your episodes and I know some of the questions that you like to start with, and so I'm going to turn it back on you and begin with. What kind of little kid were you?

Ariana (00:03:01) - Ooh, well, I was a little kid that was an introvert, but also an extrovert. So I was the kid that did a million different activities from karate to art, to music. I always loved to try new things, was very curious. But I was also very focused as well, if that makes sense. Like I did a lot of things, but I also at the end of the day would like to hone in on particular things. We were actually watching a family video like six months ago. It was really funny. And the video like snapped into a random day in the life of me as a little kid. And I was just sitting there, organizing a box of sewing yarn. And I realized that that was kind of the little kid that I was. I loved to try different things, but I also like to make sense of what those things were, if that was an activity or if that was a new hobby. But, it could also be as simple as organizing sewing yarn.

Joey (00:04:10) - Yeah, watching that blew my mind that you were so into organizing your mom's yarn and then good for her for videotaping it. But man, I bet she was like, okay, Ariana, let's organize the kitchen. Yay! And then you would go and do all, do all these chores.

Ariana (00:04:28) - . There was a, an episode on a TV show where they paid the kids in Monopoly money to do different types of chores. And I asked my mom if she would set up a situation for me like that. So I used to do chores and get monopoly money. That was the kind of kid I was like I love doing really fun things. But I was also very structured. Oh yeah, I was like really into getting the monopoly money. I had a whole menu of services that I would offer, including like a manicure and a pedicure. I guess it was operationalizing things even from like, when I was a single digit.

Joey (00:05:03) - What would you do with the money?

Ariana (00:05:05) - Oh, I would trade it in for like real...a portion of real money. So like if I got paid a hundred dollars in Monopoly money, that would be worth maybe $10 in real life. And then I would go and get myself some ice cream or something.

Joey (00:05:20) - That's cool. All right. You mentioned karate as one of the, the activities. Would you tell our listeners a little bit, this is a sad story, but it's also an impressive story.

Ariana (00:05:32) - Okay, so when I was a kid, I love to try new things, but my parents made me a deal. They said, listen, Ariana, you can try whatever activity that you want, but the rule is that if you start an activity and we pay for it, you've gotta see it all the way through. And so I really took that to heart. So if it was an art class or guitar lessons or karate, if I signed up for it, I would, I would do the whole thing all the way through. And I was doing pretty good in karate. My teacher eventually said, Hey, do you wanna go to a state competition? I was seven years old. I figured, sure, like, I don't really know what this is, but I'll go do this thing. And a part of competing in state was doing sparring, which if you don't know what that is, it's literally you go face to face with somebody and you just fight.

Ariana (00:06:24) - Turns out I didn't really have much experience in doing that, and I didn't really know what I was doing. And I'll say, looking back, my instructors didn't really prepare me for what that was gonna be about. And I got into the ring for the sparring competition, the portion of the state competition. And the other little girl that I was facing was a head taller, like an entire head taller than me. And not only was she taller, but she just knew what she was doing, way more skilled at it. And so when, when essentially the round started, she just beat the living hell outta me and was just wailing on me. And you have all this padding on and I was just, had it covered my face and I was just trying to like, get through it and was just crying in the middle of the ring.

Ariana (00:07:18) - It just was my little mitts over my hands until the end. And, and I clearly just got beat up so, so bad. I remember my parents being almost in shock with what they had just witnessed. Like, they didn't even know what they were getting themselves into. And it was the one time that my parents said, listen, Ariana, if you wanna stop doing karate, that's cool. You can completely stop. Like we understand. But I guess there was something inside me that, that was thinking about the deal that we had made, which is like, I have to see it through. Like even if it's hard, even if I fail, I have to see it through. And so I continued with classes and I finished and I think I got the next color belt cuz you get a color belt every time that you graduate to another tier. And so once I got the next color belt, I was sort of like, okay, cool, I'm done, I'm done now I've like done my thing. But that was my really insane karate story. ,

Joey (00:08:18) - That to me is so impressive.

Joey (00:08:21) - Like I would've ran in the other direct, I would've literally jumped off the mat mid match and left the building. So like, the fact that you stuck it through and then kept going I think is extremely telling. Thank you for sharing. I have a question here that says, tell me about some of your first jobs before I knew that you got paid Monopoly money to do chores around the house. So I guess tell me about the first jobs after your at home job.

Ariana (00:08:50) - So I have truly worked every job under the sun. I did daycare, I was a nanny. I worked at the front desk at a gym at 5:00AM. I was host at a restaurant. I was a server, I was a dog walker. Aw man, I literally did so many first kind of jobs in my twenties and it, it was at a time when, you know, I graduated into a recession. So literally I was just trying to survive. And I would take any job I could find. I think my first job I was getting paid like $7.50 or $7.75 an hour. Like something very, very cheap for the labor. But I just jumped in and just, the goal was to be able to pay rent. And in working all of those jobs I did learn a ton. I believe that everybody should work in three industries, which is the food service industry, customer service, and retail. I think if you work in those three industries and I have in capacities, you just become a better human because you can empathize with others, especially those who serve us every day. So those are the first couple jobs that I did out the gate.

Joey (00:10:07) - Can you briefly explain why you named each of those? You're saying someone should work not in one of the three, but in, in all three to have like different lessons learned. Tell me about that.

Ariana (00:10:21) - I think food service industry, listen so much of what we do in our day, we have to eat three times a day, right? And on a daily basis you are most likely talking to somebody in the food service industry and there's so much that goes on behind the scenes that's out of your control, that is really difficult. And being a worker in that industry is really important to understand. I think just the workings of, I don't know, how to get food, how to be served. So when you're sitting down at a restaurant and someone is maybe a little late to the table with your meal or if they forget something, you can understand because you've been in those shoes. Being a server was one of the hardest jobs I have ever done because you have to remember so much, you have to be able to physically, you know, withstand 12 to 16 hour shifts.

Ariana (00:11:11) - It is just in a really hard job. And on top of that, in the US unfortunately we're getting paid in tips. So it's like you have to put a smile on your face and have really good customer service, which I guess gets me to the customer service part. Customer service is really about how do you put the customer first, but also how do you set up boundaries for that customer. And I was a customer service manager at a gym and that was a really difficult situation. I've had a lawyer throw my own card in my face cuz I wouldn't let him in cuz he wasn’t a member of a gym. That was really intense.

Joey (00:11:46) - He was not a member, you said?

Ariana (00:11:47) - He was not a member and I wouldn't let him in the gym. And he said, is this your card? And I said, yeah, if you wanna join, you can talk to our customer service team. And he just threw my own card in my face. I mean, I feel like you get confronted as in customer service with a lot of challenging things. And if you can withstand them, you learn a ton and you also get a thick skin, which gets me to retail. Retail is its own beast. I think you learn a lot about what something costs versus what you sell it for, what makes people buy things and just generally how you appeal to different customers. But also it's a a very hard job too. You're on your feet so much of the day and I think all of those jobs really can help inform how you really should behave as a human, and how you can have decency and empathy for others. But it also makes you see the world differently. And I believe in that trifecta.

Joey (00:12:49) - So you are a little kid enduring an ass whooping on the mat, you are getting paid monopoly money. You have all these incredible jobs that really teach you about appreciation and determination and hard work. And then you do something unexpected. You drop it all and go somewhere. What happens next?

Ariana (00:13:16) - Yeah, so in my twenties, I was living in Chicago, I was working all these jobs. I was also, acting, that's a part of my story, which is I got my degree in acting and I was doing that audition hustle and I realized that I could just see the next decade of my life doing what I was doing and I didn't wanna do that anymore. And I wanted to pursue all the different dreams that I had. And I'd seen especially a lot of actors who had stuck in the industry and I had seen how the next decade and a half had gone in their lives. And, and I didn't really want that for myself. I wanted to pursue all the dreams I had, not just this one dream. So I decided I would sell all my things and I would travel the world and backpack for as long as I could make my money work.

Ariana (00:14:03) - So I did exactly that. I backpack for I think eight months, went to 20 countries, really saw so much of the world and learned so much about culture and people and learned about myself and my ability to learn and adapt. And then I got back after that travel and it was sort of its own cultural shock, like when you're living that nomad life for so long, trying to figure out what the next steps are after that was a bit jarring, but I decided to go to New York and that's where my operations part of my life really, took a hold. And that's when I became, you know, an operations person at Pip Corn, or Pip Snacks.

Joey (00:14:50) - One thing I don't think we mentioned was that you actually rose to be the manager of the front desk at that gym. And so there seems to be a pattern here where you are organizing, whether it's organizing yarn or organizing human beings, or we'll talk a little bit about processes. You've got this in your blood. How did you go from that front desk manager at a gym to this Pip Snacks thing where you did become the COO of the, that company? What was that like and what did you learn towards the end there?

Ariana (00:15:23) - Well, logistically, the whole leap from being a customer service manager at a gym, I was 23 when I got promoted and all of a sudden was promoted into managing a staff of like 12 people that were my age or older. And so it was a big shift from just working in the front desk and swiping in people at a gym to learning how to manage a whole team of people that did that. But in doing that, I realized I did have a knack for organizing and I had asked my staff, I was like, listen, I think I might wanna be a personal organizer. Like I think this is something I'm good at. Do any of you want me to sort of come over and organize just so I can learn how to do this thing?

Ariana (00:16:03) - So I did have one of my front desk team member that said, yeah, I would love for you to come and organize. And I went over and I organized all of her paperwork and in an afternoon I sort of made sense of a bit of chaos. And that paid off because two years later when I moved to New York, I was looking at all the people that I knew in New York, which was maybe like, you know, five people . And I was reaching out them and say, Hey, like I'm moving to New York, I would love to see you. And I reached out to that, team member who I'd organized her life a little bit and she was like, Hey, do you want a job? My brother and I started this company and we could really use someone to help us.

Ariana (00:16:42) - And within a day of moving into New York, I ended up working for this company and I went and started being the Director of Operations. And literally within a year, less than a year became the Chief Operating Officer of that business. So it literally was just cuz I was interested in organizing, I'd help somebody out and they said, Hey, I would love for you to then do it for, for me. That's kinda the story of my life. Hey, I like that you did this thing. Can you do it for me now? ,

Joey (00:17:12) - You’re like oh I'm pretty good at this.

Ariana (00:17:14) - Yeah, like, maybe this is something I'm good at.

Joey (00:17:16) - So this is the first time you're like really in charge of operations. At what point did you realize that this could be your calling?

Ariana (00:17:28) - I would say five years later I thought, okay, cool, I'm really good at doing this. But maybe this is just a fluke and maybe other people who are listening think of this where they're getting certain jobs and you're like, well, maybe this is just a fluke. Like maybe this just worked out really well. You know, this happened to fall into my lap. It didn't hit me until a couple jobs later when I actively started seeking out operations roles that I realized like, oh, this is how my brain works. I'm happiest when I'm doing this thing. So it took, it took a couple years, I would say that five years after that point when I realized, oh, I'm good at this and I also really like doing this.

Joey (00:18:09) - Interesting. So yeah we've definitely all had that where we meander a little bit. I think the stat is 80% of people do not work in the field of their major. So you find your way from acting all the way to operations. How did your friends and family react at that point?

Ariana (00:18:30) - You know, I think they were just like, oh my gosh, she's surviving in New York City. Thank god! You know, being from Chicago and finding a job in New York and I was not getting paid great. I was getting actually paid less and I was getting paid in Chicago. I think everybody was just sort of relieved that I had landed on two feet and had gotten a job. So that's kind of, I think how most people felt. The shift came when that business that I was working for, the founders, Jen and Jeff, they went on Shark Tank and they pitched the company to the Sharks and got funding from Barbara Corcoran. And all of a sudden when that episode aired, then things started to shift and people started to say, oh my gosh, like what are you doing that's crazy that this happened. And that's where I think people started to see what I was doing a a little bit differently.

Joey (00:19:26) - Is there a specific instance where you maybe transcended your expectations of yourself?

Ariana (00:19:34) - This is something that I actually thought about recently. When I went on my first solo business trip, I remember thinking to myself, oh my God, I did it. I had to fly out to our co-packer and a co-packer essentially makes the product for you as an extension of your business. And so I was managing a small manufacturing facility in New York but we needed a co-packer to keep up with demand. And I remember my boss said, Hey, we gotta have you go out, we gotta test this thing. And I flew on my first flight and I rented my first car by myself and I drove the, wrong way down the street and I signed into a hotel. I think in that moment I realized a sense of accomplishment, a reality check that this is my life now. You get really stuck in the day-to-day mundane of what you're doing and sometimes you have to eject yourself out to realize where you've come. And I would say that was the first moment that I realized, hey, I'm actually doing something really different with this skillset. Cause I was ejected out of my normal environment and into something that made me wake up to where I was in my life. So it was really exciting.

Joey (00:20:55) - You're telling me this story, reminds me of something and I'm probably not gonna deliver this perfectly, but I think I wanna put it out there and and see if this is something you wanna talk about, which is, I remember you telling me back when maybe on subsequent visits to the co-packer, it was you and then the, the co-founder along with you, Jeff, I think, and you were the COO at that point and the person that you guys were speaking with kept talking to him rather than you, right? Even though you are the one running operations. Do you remember this?

Ariana (00:21:36) - I do remember this. This was brutal and yep.

Joey (00:21:39) - I want to like put it out there and see what you think or how you wanna pick that up I guess. But this is to me...you being a leader in operations, you being a leader in technology, you have mentioned this more than once, that these are a lot of male dominated industries. And so how, what's it been like being a woman blazing that trail? I'll leave it there. What's that like?

Ariana (00:22:15) - I don't think I initially realized I was doing that because the company I worked in was super diverse, just from everybody who worked there was either a woman or a person of color. And so our little bubble didn't feel like the industry at large. We sort of had this little utopia in our own world. And when I went to the co-packer, with one of the co-founders, I realized I was in an old school environment where me being a woman in operations was different because of how this particular person spoke to me. They thought I was in marketing and they kept thinking I was, in marketing and social media and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the assumption says to me, oh, like, because of how I presented myself or my gender or in some capacity, you didn't feel the need to, one, understand what I was doing in this business.

Ariana (00:23:19) - Two, why I was here, or three, give me any sort of respect in relation to why I was sitting in that room. And I will give major credit to co-founder, Jeff, who corrected the situation immediately, essentially was like, Ariana's a Chief Operating Officer, she's here to do this, she'll be coming out, you'll be wanting to talk to her about this and redirected the conversation to essentially give me me that authority and give me that weight in the room. And it's weird, it's hard not to get emotional about it because I'm very grateful for that moment cause it really could have gone in another direction and instead I had a man sort of helping to give me the space so that I could be a leader within a very male dominated industry. So that was the first taste of realizing, oh man, I've got, I'm gonna be really climbing uphill here.

Ariana (00:24:14) - Like I have got to really figure out how to do this and how to be a strong presence in my own way. And that definitely informed when I jumped into technology, I guess a quick fill in the gap after that role, I left and I went to bootcamp and I learned full stack web development and I then got ejected into the technology world. And again, it was a very male dominated industry where at the time women were I think like 7% of developers. And my role at the time as a creative technologist for the company I worked at was to go and I was to train people around the world on emerging technologies. So it wasn't just me being a woman talking about technology or doing technology. I was teaching people what technology was. And that's again when I realized, oh my gosh, there's some huge, huge boundaries here. I remember somebody saying, you know, you don't look like a developer. I was like, what does a developer look like? And trying to, field a lot of that and, and I'll say that came from not only men but but women as well. And having to correct that without ostracizing people was really tough. And it still is, but it is getting easier cuz the industry is getting more diversified.

Joey (00:25:33) - Sure. Yeah. This has been over quite a bit of time. Okay, so I like to describe your job at that time as a SWAT team for technology, for those of you listening where Ariana, and her crew would learn like the latest, latest technology super fast and then fly around the world teaching it to leaders of massive companies so that they could figure out how to integrate these technologies. So it's quite a job. And actually at that place you ended up heading operations again.

Ariana (00:26:08) - Yes.

Joey (00:26:09) - And I don't want to go too deep in here cause we could just kind of talk about how many times you basically became the boss of a place because it's in your nature to organize and people recognize just how good you are at that and you rise to the top every time. But I have a separate question before we get too deep in this whole thing. We're talking operations, operations, operations, but tell me in your words, what is operations?

Ariana (00:26:34) - So you will have heard this on other episodes. The definition for me is the fusion and harmony of people, process and technology. So as somebody in operations, I tend to organize those three factors across all the different departments. That's what I do. So I do business operations where I go into finance and I help finance connect with HR, with technology, with project management, with sales. And I make all of those things work well together. Some operators focus on just one niche of that, just finance operations, just revenue operations. And when you've listened to Secret Ops, you may have heard just specialists within a certain niche of it. I am more of a generalist across the entire business because I just enjoy connecting the dots in that way. I enjoy solving problems, which is why I've tended to create these sort of operational departments wherever I go, where I essentially say, Hey, we've got these problems, can you please fix them? Will you make me ahead of operations so I can fix them? Cool. Okay. That's sort of why I've always gravitated towards those leadership positions is because I could fix them at a point in leadership.

Joey (00:27:46) - Right? I think a lot of companies, a lot of humans, human nature I think is we really focus on what needs to be done, what are we doing, what's next and how we do things is often forgotten. And then as you get into this organizational scope at that scale, it can really clog things up. If we're not having someone responsible for how things are getting done.

Ariana (00:28:14) - There is a tipping point in any business where you've bootstrapped how you're working as much as you can because you're trying to scrape by and get as much money and revenue and customers in the door. And that's absolutely what we should be doing. But there's a tipping point at which if you do not focus and refine how you're doing things your business will not thrive and not work anymore. And every business has a different tipping point. There's a different moment when that tends to happen. And that's when I like to come in because usually that's the moment that a founder or CEO says to me, I don't know what I don't know and I don't know what I need, but I know that what we're doing is not working and we're not gonna be able to scale. What do I need to do? That's the part that I start to have fun because then I get to work back and figure out how they're doing things and make it better for not just the team, not just the the leadership but customers, it could be industries. It's interesting how you can rethink something and it really influences the way people are working.

Joey (00:29:21) - Isn't part of what you say. I think I've heard you say something like, I do people process and technology at scale. This tipping point comes from the fact that when you're starting a business, like the mantra that I believe in and I think that is accurate, is do things that don't scale. So like when you're one person shipping 10 packages a day, you don't need to make your systems operate so that they can ship a hundred or 5,000 packages a day, but then there becomes a tipping point. How do you identify that tipping point and when do you know, oh my goodness, like I'm having so many inefficiencies that are now no longer a benefit, but they're, a liability on my ability to execute.

Ariana (00:30:09) - I'm gonna flip that question on you because as a founder of a business, I think you've run into that and I obviously know the story of Baron Fig. You know, we've been together for almost like nine years, so I remember...Baron Fix started with a Kickstarter where you were selling notebooks and you had a choice when you were doing the Kickstarter where you had two options where you could fulfill the notebook orders from the office or you could outsource it to a fulfillment shipping warehouse. You had to decide between the two. So why did you decide with one over the other?

Joey (00:30:47) - Right? At that point we were gonna fulfill the packages in-house because it would've been significantly cheaper, you know, like let's say 10%, which is a lot on every package. And then someone visited us who had done a Kickstarter like a year earlier and she was sitting on our couch, it was me, her and my co-founder, Adam Cornfield, and she looked at us dead in the eye and she said, don't do it. Find a warehouse, because otherwise every order that comes in, instead of being happy about it, you're gonna groan because now you have to pack more packages. And so for us, that particular instance, it was really about, okay, how am I kind of considering my psychology in my business actions? So I didn't want orders to be a bummer. And so it made sense and we did spend the extra few bucks.

Ariana (00:31:43) - I ask you that because I think exactly what you said, the psychology of those decisions and the impact on you as a motivation factor also goes into when you realize there's a tipping point. So when I get people that come to me, they're at the point that they're really excited about their business, but they're hating the day-to-day, because they're doing all the things they don't want to be doing or they're doing all the things that just don't make sense. Everything's manual, it's in a spreadsheet. I can't track this thing. I don't know when to hire. And they, they feel a bit blind. That's, I think a tipping point where if your days are starting to become more negative because you're overwhelmed by how things are being done, that's when you need operational support. Now I will say I have some founders that I work with that they have the eye on that before that point comes, right?

Ariana (00:32:39) - They're a little more ahead of the game where they that, hey, if I don't really figure out how to do this soon, this is gonna stop being fun and they reach out to me, you know, proactively. But a lot of the times if you're just starting to get revenue with a door, if you're just wanting to sell a couple things and get customers, you just need somebody to come in who's done it a bunch of times who can shorthand it all and figure out how to get your days to be a lot better and to have your team enjoy what they're doing instead of dreading it. Cuz you don't want that.

Joey (00:33:12) - Well, let's talk about this business owner thing. So, we kind of covered how many times you've been an operations leader, and I've lost count at this point, but this past year, I guess January of 2022, it's a little over a year now. You decided to start your own business focused on operations for others. Why did you make that change? And what has that experience been like?

Ariana (00:33:40) - Well, I left my full-time job as a VP of operations for a business that I was working at for four years because I just, I wanted a break. I wanted a bit of respite from the responsibility, especially 2020 and 2021, it was just a lot going on. It was really intense two years. So when I left, I didn't really have any other goal besides maybe do some puzzles, play some video games, chill out, and then in a couple months I'll apply to another full-time job and start working at a company. And you were on the other side of that, you're the one cheering me on saying take time off. Like give yourself, give yourself the space to learn about who you are now and what you want now. And you know, a month into that break, I came to you and I was like, I can't go and work for someone else again. No pressure, I guess. How was that for you when I came to you. Cause I think I had really been thinking about it, but I hadn't been verbalizing it, so I sort of like, just threw out a bunch of thoughts at you at once to say like, I can't, I can't go back. I don't know what I wanna do, but I wanna do something.

Joey (00:34:47) - So you make this realization that you don't wanna work for someone else, but then where did you, like you could have done, now in retrospect, it's hard to say, like you could have done anything else, but at the time you weren't exploring a bunch of ideas. Where did you, I don't even know how to say this. How did it click again that operations was the, the thing for you?

Ariana (00:35:11) - It is so funny cuz it was so obvious, right? It's like right, it was right in front my face for over a decade I've been doing that kind of work, but I really was lost. I'm like, I don't know what I should be doing for people. Maybe I'll be a personal organizer and I'll like organize people's homes, right? So that was my first iteration or maybe I'll digitally organize, you know, people's Dropboxes or Google drive folders and maybe I'll go that way. And so I actually spun off a website with that being the approach and I sent to a bunch of people per year recommendation. And our neighbor, Naomi, shout out to you, she came back to me and she was like, Ariana, you have a ton of like business operations experience. Why aren't you doing that? And it was so obvious, it's like on my LinkedIn, I've been doing it for over a decade, but I hadn't really realized that, oh, people could want that skill in a consulting fashion. So I shifted my entire thinking and I went into doing operations consulting and it's so funny because it is so obvious. I think we always miss the obvious, it's like right there, you know, I had wanted to start a business that was like flaky salt company or maybe like a content development.

Joey (00:36:24) - Yeah, I was into that one.

Ariana (00:36:25) - Yeah. I had all these ideas of what kinda businesses I wanted to start, but the thing that I enjoy the most, that makes my days joyful and fun and challenging and thought provoking, all come down to how to help people build really smart, scalable, yummy operations. And that's what I started to do.

Joey (00:36:47) - Now you started as a, you, you finally made your way to operations consultant, but then this other thing came along, which is a fractional COO and I had not heard about fractional anything until 2022. So can you briefly explain what a fractional COO is and how that's become your new thing?

Ariana (00:37:08) - So, fractional Chief Operating Officer, there's a ton of fractional, you know, C-suite roles, a CFO a CMO. And what fractional C-Suite people do is they support businesses that aren't at the time that they can hire somebody full-time as a C-suite person. But they need the strategy, they need the support, they need the direction, they just can't necessarily afford a full-time person. So you reach out to a fractional, you know, Chief Operating Officer when you know you need to do something with your operations, you aren't quite sure and you just can't really invest in bringing somebody in full-time. So what a fractional person does is they come in, they give a percentage of their time a month to supporting you as a business, and then they just embed themselves in the team. So you can have, you could be working with the leadership team. For some clients, I work directly with the broader team in implementing different types of processes and and procedures. And I just work part-time for a couple of businesses to help them spin up their operations and make it really smart at the point that they need it at that tipping point.

Joey (00:38:25) - Cool. So everybody wins because you wanna help smaller companies who really need the help, but at the same time, you've been doing this a while and the salary that you can command and that you're worth is not something that many can afford at this point. And so this is a win-win where they get someone of your caliber even though they can't afford it, and you are able to across multiple clients, get your year's salary that you have earned through experience over the years. So is that kind of the gist?Ariana (00:39:03) - Yeah and I think how I realized the fractional COO work was right for me was I was doing these sort of bucketed operations projects. You know, there was a very clear start and finish to them initially and I really missed working with the team on a consistent basis. You know, I'm fully remote and I just really miss that feeling of having a team that you can lean on and rely on and grow with. And so as a fractional chief operating officer, I've now got a couple teams that I work consistently with over many months to build what they're trying to build. And scratches my itch of wanting that community and wanting that team and, and helping that team. But it also helps my clients get over that initial journey into, I know we could be doing better, but I don't know how please help. That's, the part that I step in.

Joey (00:39:53) - Totally. Okay. And that's not to say you don't also do operations consulting, but it's clearly the, the fractional COO stuff is where you get most excited. So let's keep moving forward cuz we could talk about this for hours, but today we're on Secret Ops, I'm the guest host, but normally you are the amazing and wonderful host of the Secret Ops podcast. What is Secret Ops? Like why did you do it? Was there business reasons? Was there a personal dream? Reasons is a combination of both? Talk to me about that.

Ariana (00:40:32) - Well, I essentially am trying to solve three things with Secret Ops. One I am solving the educational piece around what the heck is operations. I can't tell you how many people are like, so what does operations do? It's just a constant thing. Unless you are in operations, you don't know what it is. And that is an important piece I think everybody should understand and have that available to be able to use. So one, is just discovering what that is in different industries and in different specializations. Like that's part of the reason why Secret Ops is made. Two, it was to help my clients also understand what operations can do for them. So I've had people on that are data scientists or revenue operations, specialists or marketing specialists. And sometimes my clients, because they are a founder or they're a CEO, they don't really understand all of the tools they have at their disposal in building their business.

Ariana (00:41:33) - And I wanna show them the suite of tools that they have available within operations. And so it's been great. I've actually pointed clients, Hey, we're rolling out a new sales tracker platform. Listen to this revenue operations podcast, you'll understand why this is important. And it's been really helpful in giving my clients some awareness around why we're doing things. Not just because Ariana says so, but because this is what can be really powerful moving forward. And then the third reason is I've always wanted to have a podcast. I remember the moment I discovered podcasts. I was 21, I was sitting abroad in Italy and my roommate said, Hey, you gotta listen to This American Life. And she gave me her iPod and I just remember, you know, eating Nutella in the kitchen, listening to This American Life on repeat, just episode after episode after episode.

Ariana (00:42:28) - And I had applied to so many jobs in my twenties to be an intern at NPR because I really think in podcasts and in the radio you can just learn so much. And there's something that just makes me really excited about it. And this was before it was a whole thing. Now there's no excuse if you want to do it. And I sort of had to give myself that pep talk in the fall, which is Ariana, you wanted to do this for over a decade? Get yourself together and launch this dang podcast. And so I did. And it's been a, a life dream that has come to fruition. I'm really grateful to my friend Marc, who was the first guest who said, Hey, I'll be your first guest. Like, let's do this thing. You know, he really helped motivate me and, and keep me accountable to doing it. And now I'm just having an absolute blast.

Joey (00:43:22) - Well, I love listening. I'm honored to host and as a listener, I know that you have a bit of an outro sequence. I forget what you call it. It's the quick questions. So I'm gonna give you some quick questions now and then we can call it a wrap. So are you ready to go?

Ariana (00:43:43) - Let's do this!

Joey (00:43:45) - Okay. Are you a morning or a night person?

Ariana (00:43:48) - I used to be a night person when I was acting and now I'm a morning person because I've got our dog, Luigi. And because you are a morning person, you have converted me .

Joey (00:43:59) - Welcome to the club. What does your routine look like?

Ariana (00:44:03) - Wake up. I do have to get coffee in my system as quickly as possible. You and I usually walk Luigi, get a coffee, I hop back in, I'll do my skincare routine cause I love my skincare put on sunscreen and then-

Joey (00:44:17) - Oh my God, the bathroom is just off limits for like 20 minutes. I don't know how you can rub your face for 20 minutes.

Ariana (00:44:25) - Listen, I'm gonna be 80 and looking like I'm 30. I do my sunscreen and then I hop into whatever deep work I have for the day in the morning. My brain is best in the morning, so I try and get any sort of really tangly work done. Lunchtime, I'll have something quick and easy and then I'll hop into calls in the afternoon. Usually you and I wind down with dinner around 5:00 PM because we are senior citizens. But also like dinner at five-

Joey (00:44:55) - Mm-hmm. I'm proud of it.

Ariana (00:44:57) - It's delicious.

Joey (00:44:58) - Also, that's dinner at five. Then you get like dinner number two at 7:30.

Ariana (00:45:04) - And then you and I will either watch a TV show or I'll go and play on video games, and just wind down the day trying to unwind, which is hard for me. But, but the video games help.

Joey (00:45:17) - Totally. Well that's my next question is sort of related perhaps. What do you do for fun?

Ariana (00:45:22) - Okie. So I think because I'm on the computer all the time, my real happy place is when I get to do puzzles. Cause I get myself away from the computer, away from my phone, away from the tv, and I just can be in my puzzle land. I also love to do pottery on the wheel. So that's something I have a ton of fun with. It's really calming and also a great way to get my brain out of technology. Now, of course, I totally dig technology as well, so I will play video games. You are the amazing recommender of all video games. And I'll also watch documentaries. I'm a big documentary fan, especially docuseries. So usually I'll watch a docuseries a couple times to really digest all the information and learn new things.

Joey (00:46:12) - Besides operations and skincare, do you have any other obsessions?

Ariana (00:46:17) - Does organizing count? Okay, organizing doesn't count. Probably.

Ariana (00:46:25) - I guess I love to organize the house and make things as efficient at home as possible. Outside of that, I do love Legos, but I just don't have enough room to actually have a full on obsession with Legos. And I would say besides that, I've been really into getting physically strong. I started weightlifting last year with you and I really want my body and my mind to be as healthy as it can be. So I would say that's an obsession that some days I have a stronger obsession with and some days I have a less stronger obsession with, but I'm getting there.

Joey (00:47:01) - Last question. For folks who are listening now and who are at a point where we said earlier, man, there's some pain happening on a day-to-day basis. What, aside from going to your website and contacting you, which we of course highly recommend, what is the one piece of advice you can give them to start so that they can either start thinking about solving problems or alleviate that pain? What could someone do who said, oh damn, I'm there right now.

Ariana (00:47:35) - I think the first step is slow down. Most of the time your problems become clearer when you can slow down. it's hard, especially if you started a business and you're running a business, take a pause and make space to do some deep thinking. So once you have that space where you can really think, bring people into the business that know it as well as you know it. So that can be leaders, that can be people that just connect all the dots. And I would say you could do two things, which is one, just make sure that you know what your goals are. If you don't know what your goals are and what you're pointing towards, you don't know what decisions to make. And then the second thing that I would do, and this is more like traditional business school type of things, but I would do a SWOT analysis where you write down your strengths, your weaknesses and your opportunities and your threats. And in doing the SWOT analysis and matching that with your goals, you can see where things aren't working very quickly and you can see where you need to be putting your effort. So slow down, get people around you that know the business as well as you do, figure out and articulate your goals and then do that SWOT analysis. That'll give you a clear way of viewing the situation and then you can make some sound decisions.

Joey (00:48:53) - Mm, great advice to round us out. Well, that is a wrap for this episode of Secret Ops Ariana, I'm gonna let you do the outro. Please don't forget to tell people where they can find you on the web. And everyone out there, thank you so much for listening and for humoring a different host today.

Ariana (00:49:13) - Joey, I wanna thank you because you and I have talked about this for a while, us flipping the script and you interviewing me and you brought to life a lot of things that I probably wouldn't have shared otherwise. So I really wanna thank you for giving the space to do that. Also, thank you for your support over the many, many years, but especially in the last year as I've gotten my, my footing in consulting and being a fractional COO, you are my biggest cheerleader. So I wanna thank you for that. I also want to thank all of my listeners. If you wanna find me, you can find me on LinkedIn or you can find me at arianaphone.com. I've got all my podcasts there. I've got ways of contacting me, set up a one-on-one. I would love to meet you if you wanna listen to other episodes. Please follow us wherever you find your podcast. And check it out next time. Have a great day. Bye!