Audit and Implementation w/ Taja Graham | Ep. 216

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we talk with Taja Graham, founder of OpsIQ, about what starts to break inside a business as it grows.

Taja works with founder-led companies that have traction but are beginning to feel the strain of it. Execution slows, everything runs through the founder, and adding people or tools doesn’t fix the underlying issues.

We get into why growth often outpaces operations, how to identify where work is leaking across a business, and what it takes to build systems that actually support scale.

Along the way, we also touch on system integration and how founders can step out of the middle of everything without losing visibility or control.

Taja on LinkedIn

OpsIQ Website

Free Assessment Link

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Taja: You know what? I will be honest with you. I'm pretty basic. Siri on my phone is probably by far my most used, form of technology. It is my companion on the go all the time. ....... This is what happens when you have your phone sitting right next to you.

[00:00:16] Gary: She's chiming in. She's like, yep, That's right. 

[00:00:18] Christie: be the sizzle reel. That's the sizzle reel for this. 

[00:00:20] Taja: There you go.

[00:00:24] Gary: Hello and welcome to the BizDev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business, and I'm your host. This week Gary Voight and David is gone again. It's a bye-bye. Baxter Holiday better without Baxter. But we're joined as usual, when I'm host with our marketing director, Kristi Pronto.

[00:00:42] Christie: Hello everyone. Hello.

[00:00:45] Gary: More important than that, we are joined today by our guest, Taja Graham. And Taja is the founder of Ops iq. So Taja, before we get into Ops IQ and we talk all about your business, we do have a couple of quick questions to get to know you better and break the ice. They're in a this or that format.

So tell me, what do you think between movies, TV, and books? What's your more frequent form of entertainment.

[00:01:13] Taja: Hands down books. I am a bookworm.

[00:01:16] Gary: Are you

a physical book or an audio book or like tablet?

[00:01:21] Taja: physical book. I need

[00:01:22] Christie: Oh.

[00:01:22] Taja: and feel it. Yeah,

[00:01:23] Gary: Yeah, me too. I'm the same

way. I just, holding the paper is just different.

Plus for me, I guess a little bit of a DHD or just, I can't focus too much on screens for, an entire 24 hours a day. So

Something I can hold that I actually know I have to. Move with my fingers back and forth in order to

pay attention. 

[00:01:42] Taja: Yep, 

[00:01:43] Gary: What about you, Christie? 

[00:01:44] Christie: When I was younger, I used to be a bookworm. Absolutely. It was like how I would spend my days in my room, like reading and and then real life happened and I got into marketing, and so now it's more of like podcasts and listening to things in my earbuds 24 7 constantly.

[00:01:59] Gary: All right.

[00:02:01] Taja: Okay.

[00:02:01] Gary: right. So then a

little bit different. When it's snack time, do you prefer salty or sweet, 

and do you have any favorites?

[00:02:08] Christie: Deep questions we ask here. 

[00:02:10] Taja: Oh my goodness. I have a natural sweet tooth, but I do like a salty treat a chip every now and then. It probably is my weakness. Yeah.

[00:02:21] Gary: Kristy.

[00:02:22] Christie: Oh man, I think my answer's gonna be the same as a couple weeks ago. I'm like, sweet. I'm definitely into Sour Patch kids right now, which are like the most horrific thing you can put in your body. But they're great. But yeah, a chip every now and then, or more than every now and then is yeah, my favorite thing for sure.

[00:02:40] Gary: Okay, you guys are both wrong 'cause

you, you need to combine 

[00:02:43] Christie: Absolutely. 

[00:02:44] Gary: have to have 

[00:02:44] Taja: combined.

[00:02:45] Gary: chocolate and peanut butter.

just, it's the perfect combination.

[00:02:49] Christie: That is really 

[00:02:50] Taja: good. combination. 

[00:02:51] Christie: Yeah.

[00:02:52] Gary: now back into the world of, business and tech, what we do, Taja, what is your most favorite piece of tech or software or some sort of equipment that you've gotten recently?

[00:03:05] Christie: Hmm. 

[00:03:06] Taja: You know what? I will be honest with you. I'm pretty basic. Siri on my phone is probably by far my most used, form of technology. It is my companion on the go all the time. ....... This is what happens when you have your phone sitting right next to you.

[00:03:22] Gary: She's chiming in. She's like, yep, That's right. 

[00:03:24] Christie: be the sizzle reel. That's the sizzle reel for this. 

[00:03:27] Taja: There you go. 

[00:03:28] Christie: Yeah.

[00:03:30] Taja: But with modern technology and the ability to have quick access to resources and things that has just become my go-to it. It definitely saves me on time. As I love to live in efficiencies that bys far is my best one.

[00:03:45] Gary: well hopefully Siri's gonna be getting a lot better soon with the integration from the new LLMs that Apple's adding. But have

you

Using Claude or Perplexity as your. Assistant with the voice mode.

[00:03:57] Taja: Oh, absolutely. Even within our platform we utilize those op options to helping us to build efficiencies within the platform itself. So I'm very accustomed and adapt to using what is the open ai to support both myself personally, but also just in the business.

[00:04:15] Christie: Yeah.

[00:04:16] Taja: Yeah.

[00:04:17] Gary: Yeah. You can't avoid it nowadays, no matter what you do. 

[00:04:20] Christie: No, 

[00:04:21] Taja: I've gotten really good at writing emails now.

[00:04:23] Gary: yeah,

[00:04:24] Christie: that's really funny. Yeah.

[00:04:26] Gary: I've got really good at half writing and then clicking proofread for me.

Finish the draft. 

[00:04:31] Taja: absolutely.

[00:04:32] Christie: Make better with ai, I.

[00:04:34] Gary: All right, Tasha I promise we would wrap back around to it. So please tell us a little bit about Ops IQ and what you guys do.

[00:04:42] Taja: Yeah, so Ops IQ was a creation of mine and working with a lot of founders that find themselves stuck in this place of, I want the growth, but I don't have the structure, or my team doesn't understand the expectations to delivering to the growth that I want to. See happen. So they oftentimes come to us to help bring clarity and structure in that sometimes you think of it as just as simple as a, a standard operating procedure, but really what it is that we bring full scope clarity into how they look at prioritizing. Growth over time. And so it's not just about having the resources and the documentation as much as it is having a curated c-suite of advisors, everyone from finance to legal, HR that work within the platform and helping you provide. Give that guidance in the right way so that, you can prioritize it and really start to see that scaling both in capacity as well as revenue growth is what we ultimately provide within the platform. 

[00:05:45] Gary: Yeah we talk to a lot of startups and founders that are just still in the beginning stages of their business. So they're still small trying to scale, and we hear it all the time that, yeah, recognize what you're not good at and then bring someone else in who is, or also there's a lot of talk about focusing in the business instead of on the business.

[00:06:07] Taja: Yes.

[00:06:07] Gary: And it sounds like you have solutions for all of that, but I was wondering as far as the size of a business or how big a company is or what their revenue is, when is it a good time for a founder to bring in someone like you?

[00:06:21] Taja: So I look at it in two ways, right? You could look at it in the fact of where you want to go, what you hope to see

happening in the next 30, 60, 90 days. Or you can express it to, Hey, I'm at that break point right now that if I don't do something we lose, we're gonna lose ground and momentum. So ideally the platform is built for a growth minded founder.

So it is definitely that CEO that's. Probably very dependent. The business is dependent upon them in operations, but they're probably somewhere in that sweet spot of 500,000 to 5 million in gross revenues. Some want to start earlier than that, and so we open the platform to allow for that as well. But ideally, that's what I call the missing middle. The they are. Just big enough where they know they need that infrastructure, but they're not big enough where they can actually build out their own fractional c-suite of advisors or, even just that independent fractional that can help them along the way.

[00:07:23] Gary: Yeah, that seems to be another I'm not gonna call it a buzzword, but I will say it's definitely a trend is more of the fractional components

of, Businesses, especially for startups and smaller. Now, when you offer fractional services, do you have different tiers? Do you have just okay, if you're a small business and you only need a couple of things. We can provide you this, and this. But then, if you're just stuck and you need to know where to go from here and you need a lot more, then you know there's more we offer with this and this

[00:07:52] Taja: Yeah. So within Ops iq, the platform itself, it is a little bit more of a DIY approach with some accountabilities and advisement within the platform with those advisors that I referenced earlier. If they're needing a little bit more nuance of detail, customization specific to their business, then we do offer them what I call some referral partners.

A lot of times those advisors that can come outside of the platform at whatever their price point. Is to supporting you in that. So if you need a full fractional CFO for instance working with Omar Ritter, who's our advisor in the platform and finance, he then can come out and support you at whatever that level is that you're in need of.

We don't then create a hindrance or a roadblock for those founders to get the support that they need. It just will not always be specific within the platform, if that makes sense for you. 

[00:08:48] Christie: Yeah.

[00:08:49] Gary: Yeah, no, that seems like a good option.

[00:08:51] Christie: Yeah, I was going to ask, do you have a lot of people, I can imagine there's the certain types of people or businesses that come to you and they say, this is what we need. I know we need this, and this. It's not working well, it's not moving. There's bottlenecks. But I could also imagine too, that you have some businesses come to you where maybe they are closer to that 5 million.

They've been a year or two under their belts, and it's just not. Their propulsion isn't where they want it to be, but they're just not sure what the issue really is. Where are those bottlenecks? And so do you find those people coming to you, and if you do, what are some of those signals that you see from them when you come in there?

How do you see, oh, this is really where we need to step in here.

[00:09:32] Taja: Yeah, absolutely. So we always start with an assessment. It's an 11 question assessment against basically seven to eight different disciplines of operation.

And based on the assessment to which that founder would get a summary report first and then of. Full report that gives them complete focus guidance on here's where you should start, this is where you should pay the most attention, prioritize these things and then streamline it out from there.

So it really helps them to identify really where those pain points are. Currently, and then looking ahead, where, based on your industry standard, competitive landscape, here's where you should look ahead over the next 12 months to three years even.

[00:10:15] Christie: What would you say is the biggest, I'm only thinking of this 'cause I'm thinking of ourselves a little bit and the conversations we've had internally is, do you find it that the bigger issue is that people cannot come up with the plan, but then they can execute it well, or that they can come up with a plan but can't execute it well?

Is it one or the other? Which do you think is the biggest hurdle that people have? The planning or the executing 

[00:10:38] Taja: You,

it's a, it is a combination really, of both. Unfortunately, you would wanna say it's all about the execution, but oftentimes the execution, the inability to successfully deliver on the execution is because the plan wasn't well drafted. We

really don't know what those gaps are.

We haven't really identified them. There is this, what I would say, pretext of what the problem is. But what you need is someone, or a process that will allow you to dig deeper so that you can get clarity around what that is, right? And

once you have that, then that plan can be executed upon. But oftentimes it's really lack of understanding of what the issue truly is First.

[00:11:20] Christie: That's 

[00:11:20] Gary: Yeah, I can totally see that like everybody has the greatest intentions coming up with the processes and sometimes I know. In the past with big pixels, we'll come up with ideas of processes, and sometimes we'll just go off the rails with processes that are way too elaborate for anybody to follow,

or they're just way too, um, I guess succinct and concise, that it's almost like, why is this even a process?

because it's too dependent on someone just doing one thing over and over instead of the group of everybody working towards the same goal with the processes.

Saying processes is a lot, but

[00:11:56] Christie: favorite word, processes. Yeah. I love it. I love it. One of my.

[00:11:59] Gary: it did take a little bit of time, but you eventually do morph into a system that works and now if a company doesn't have that time or they're just not getting it to where it is, morphing the way they want, I'm sure something like. What you guys provide is probably the way to go. Have you also taken cues from I guess popular business books and stuff? 'cause I know one of the business books that, uh, Mr. Baxter, who's not here, bye bye. Baxter made us read was traction

and he tried to take a lot I guess that's one of the

[00:12:31] Taja: is one of the fundamental books that I have and resource all the time, uh,

As a part of any of my consul consultations that I've given to clients over the years.

But yeah I read a lot of different books business books. And believe it or not, I read a lot that are centered around the human capital of your business the talents that you have within the business.

Because oftentimes it's not just about the process, right? You

can lay down the best process, but if the talent isn't aligned right in the right seat to pro providing the execution of it, then that's the bigger problem. And oftentimes, I talk to clients all the time, are you really hiring for a very. Technical discipline or are you hiring for an impact outcome? They are very different. And

That oftentimes gets lost. And so I do a lot of that human capital resourcing training that aligns in supports as well. I look at it in three buckets really. I look at it in the technical aspects of the business, so what the tech stack looks like, how it then functions into the process, and how the people alignment also supports that. So it really has to be fundamentally all three of those things at the same time.

[00:13:45] Christie: Yeah. It's so funny that you say that in the tech stack part of it because in doing some reading for this episode, I had seen some post that you had posted. I think it was maybe in one of your scale, smart. Go lives, which is that the more tools you add to a process, perhaps the more friction comes with that process.

And so it just made me think now with the way things are in this day and age where AI tools are like in every which way, shape, and form and all processes, are you seeing more companies coming to you saying that's our biggest pain point right now is like this AI and how we integrate our team in with it?

Or are you finding that it's. Helping you amplify their strengths in certain ways. I can imagine hey, we have this hole and we need this staff member. Right now almost, you might not even need to hire a staff member. You could find a tool that might do that work for you. So I find I can imagine that it makes your type of position and your whole holistic way that you're doing things very interesting.

[00:14:45] Taja: no, absolutely correct. Oftentimes the biggest pain point is I have. Upwards 10 plus different tech stack

[00:14:55] Christie: Yeah.

[00:14:55] Taja: touch points.

None of them are integrated.

I don't understand how to make use of any of them. And this is

coming from the owner, right? I

made this purchase because such and such back in print, needed it

and we don't understand then how to make sure it talks to production

or vice versa.

So it, it's first and foremost that, way too many tools that they're using and not resourcing them the right way. And then to your point, you're correct. A lot of this could be automated. With technology specifically, we know this, right?

It

[00:15:27] Christie: Especially this year. Yeah. 

[00:15:28] Taja: That you should be really testing yourself against processes and systems more frequently. 

[00:15:35] Christie: Totally agree.

[00:15:36] Gary: that's the cycle of

audit and imple implementation.

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[00:16:41] Gary: So Taja, how long ago did you actually start this business? I.

[00:16:47] Taja: Yeah, so it's interesting enough when you're 

[00:16:50] Christie: I saw you transitioned. It was like TMG consulting and then it became like Ops IQ and your socials like blew up and I was like, oh my gosh. Like you've got the smart scale execute. You've got your live, you've got your team. I was like, this is zipped up and on point. I really, I was like, oh, this is great.

[00:17:06] Taja: I appreciate that. And so I built Ops iq, believe it or not. Something that I consult with founders about often is, what's the exit? What's your

plan? Is it that this will be legacy? Is it that you intend to sell? What do you

really want it to be? And so I wanted to challenge myself to thinking differently about how I showed up in business. So yeah, it started in consultancy and it still does TMG Solutions Advisors, which is the division that Ops IQ or Ops IQ sits as a division of TMG. It's still a consultancy and I still have clients that I work with in fractional space and have, continue to do that work. But I wanted to challenge myself with something that I could build that would be an exit strategy that I would look to sell. And so I built the plan backwards for

that. So that is how Ops IQ really functions. People say to me all the time, yeah, I go and look at Ops iq, but I don't see you anywhere. Represented on the platform. And I'm like, that's by design.

I did it that way because I intend to sell it at some point.

Because I believe in the concept. I believe it solves a pain point. It has a viable marketplace. And if you look

at the trajectory of business, small business will continue to grow over time. Just for ma, many of factors. So that's why you see what is now Ops iq. Believe it or not, it is still in its infancy stage.

We launched it really back in January and it continues to grow both in

individual subscribers, 

[00:18:40] Christie: That's impressive. Yeah.

[00:18:41] Taja: Thank you. Thank you. Now we were under development for quite a while in tech. That is to be expected.

But yeah, so this is the first of two platforms we will hope to launch under TMG Solutions advisors. The second one we are going under currently under development with. Will be a compliment in all things sales and marketing.

I 

[00:19:01] Christie: Ooh.

[00:19:01] Taja: it important to pull that out of what is Ops iq and make it a

standalone product of itself. So I'm really looking forward to that as, as a founder now that being able to develop yet again another platform. So I reside here in the Queen City, Charlotte, North Carolina. And it was important to me for two reasons. One if you looked at my socials, you'll see that a great deal of my time had been spent in my home state of Indiana. I'm originally from Indianapolis, Indiana. And I use my social space to be able to build my community relevant also now in Charlotte. More so importantly worldwide because Ops

IQ is such a a national platform, right?

So I knew I needed to scale up my presence there. And that's

been important to me. Doing my podcast Scale Smart Live was another way for us to demonstrate thought leadership, not

only just about myself, but the. Different guests that I would have on the show. Mostly those being the advisors that serve in the ops IQ platform. But then I would have on different talk talking points also just relevant in business overall. But I do spend a lot of time, I'm grateful that you noted in the socials, building thought leadership, giving a

space for founders to be able to express their concerns, what they're challenged with.

It's a good testing ground for us, as we then pull it back into to Ops iq, our capital readiness campaign. Right now, as founders are looking to get a series funding or lending helps to equip Omar in coming up with good content in the platform. So I'm grateful that we were able to create such an ecosystem. Utilizing LinkedIn primarily, but we're also on

Facebook and YouTube and Instagram as well

[00:20:42] Christie: Very cool. Yeah. It builds the trust there with your audience before they even come because you have all your advisors on there. I loved it.

[00:20:48] Taja: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. 

[00:20:49] Christie: You are

[00:20:50] Gary: two things I'm noticing. It's Ops IQ is gonna lead the way. For other businesses to be successful. You seem to have jumped in here pretty quick without any stumbling blocks. Like you had your socials already done, you had, that can't be a hundred percent true. There's probably a couple of blind spots that you hit, or a few bumps in

the as the development happened.

What have you learned about yourself as a founder 

when This?

[00:21:17] Taja: So what I have learned quickly about myself is I'm highly competitive. 

And I set very aggressive goals both for

myself and for the team. And even as we were under development of the product of the platform I was really pushing for a deadline that I thought, I was like, surely you can deliver at this time. And quickly, Terry who is the developer and her team were like. If you want it done right, we need to slow it down.

And so I had to be willing to be patient in the process. And as we look ahead to this next development of the, our next platform, I'm being mindful of that and just, setting the right expectations for myself. And not being so competitive in it is one thing, one of the biggest things that I have learned. The other thing that I've learned very quickly obviously, is that you gotta practice what you preach. And so as we were building out OpsIQ and starting to standardize processes, right from how subscribers come into the platform, how they are welcomed, what it looks like amongst the engagement with the advisors, I had to quickly start to address. The process, the systems we would use

internally, right.

In that, so building out SOPs right away so that everyone knew exactly how to work within the platform, from the advisors to the developers, to, to our content people. All of it has to work in a seamless. Process as much as possible. And I have to be, again, flexible that things need to change. So we change a process so that it helps us to make certain we don't run into roadblocks. Yeah.

[00:23:01] Christie: Yeah, I've been feeling that a little bit. I think Gary and I collectively have been feeling that a bit big pixel and with our new product, Tela that we're launching are both going into huge growth trajectories over the next three months. And so we have, big plans for all of that. And so because we're such a small group, we do share what we're working on a lot.

But we are siloed in. Sense where it's, you're doing your work in your corner and you're getting it done and bringing it to the team and all of that. And so because of the systems that we're trying to build to move forward and get these things off the ground, we've had to come together and merge those processes a bit.

And Gary and I laugh all the time, like Gary, like lives and dies in Clickup and loves it. I don't know if he loves it, but he lives and dies in it. And he

is yeah, 

[00:23:43] Gary: I use that as my 

source for letting me know everything I have to do. I

don't love it,

[00:23:49] Christie: And so I am like, not that at all. Like I have a checklist for checklists and post-it notes for Post-It notes and like everything.

But we both are very productive and efficient and we get everything done that we need to get done and so merging that has been really interesting and very humbling in that it's not so much that we aren't leading ourselves. Towards the same process or that we have the same process, is that we also need to be respectful and mindful of each other's processes and melding those together so that things actually move forward.

And so of all of the we've been moving at a very fast pace recently. And that's one of the things when I reflect back, I'm like, of all of the things that I had to learn for myself is yeah, you just not everything can be the way it works for you, right? It has to be the same.

And you would think that would be something that you would just know off the cuff, but it's not. And then you don't want yourself to be a bottleneck to someone else's effectiveness and productivity either. So that's been, those processes have been very interesting to implement. But now that I've got the hang of it, and what he needs and what I need, and we are well to communicate with one another and have that respect there, you can feel the momentum and then that momentum is very infectious.

And then you can move towards that. I don't know if that was a question, but 

[00:25:01] Taja: No,

no I share this all the time. It's a team dynamic, right? In any

sports, I use sports analogies all the time. You build a play, right?

You're sketching out a play. You're putting the right players on the floor in the right places for them to be able

to make impact.

That is no different than in business, right?

The play is the SOP or the process.

You're gonna get the right team members in the right place on the floor so that they can make impact. And it does build momentum, right? People

get excited 'cause they see the wins, they see

the shots being made and they're like, okay, I wanna do it again. But

you also have to give space.

And if you ever pay attention to coaches, they're going to give space. For that quarterback or that point guard to make a decision in real time, right.

here's the play we drafted. But if you see something happen on the floor

that would, demonstrate. Don't take that play. Think about that.

Don't feel that you gotta do it that way. At the end of the day, score, that's what we want. We want you to score, so I say that to teams all the time, 

[00:26:05] Christie: It's harder said than done. It's definitely harder said than done. There's a humility in that team dynamic. I think people think it's all, part of also what you had on your socials too is like people think it's just like the processes and processes. Now we have it, now we got it. There's a plan.

1, 2, 3, 4, now we're going to succeed. And yet you hit a wall and it's that's because the team dynamic is not there. You're both working very hard, but you're working at opposing dynamics. You're not working towards that together. And I think that's something that can get lost a lot in translation of business success is that.

Grace, humility and respect of not just the process, but of the humans within that process.

[00:26:39] Taja: Absolutely agree. That founder and it, it's gonna be important to your point it Christie readdress and be flexible that

next person who comes to fill the seat

might not do it a hundred percent the way that Gary does. 

[00:26:53] Christie: Really the reason that we're doing that is because we have other outside teams coming in, taking a peek at what we're doing right, and we've just never held ourselves accountable to those processes that we do ourselves, so that you can even demonstrate the enormity of work. When we tell people, yeah, it's one person doing this and one person doing that, they're like.

What? And we're like, yeah, because it's just, an engine that keeps moving. And so it's been a very interesting process to then break all of that down into the minutia of what makes that engine move forward, which I think is really fun and interesting and part of what you do as well.

[00:27:25] Taja: Yeah, I love that. Absolutely.

And giving you guys the autonomy to making it your own. I think

as a founder, that is a huge benefit because then you have more buy-in to the process. You.

[00:27:39] Christie: And that's exactly with your, with yourself. I can see how people would think I don't want a fractional person to come in and tell me what's wrong with my company or what needs to get fixed. But then in the end, what you have is so much more power within what you're being given. You're giving them the opportunity to then take it to the next level and own that, productivity and efficiency.

All you're doing is just, you're like that tool that's coming in and amplifying or, editing, what they have. So it's definitely a huge value add. What you bring.

[00:28:08] Taja: Yeah, the, in the fractional space, my whole goal is to get the vision out of the head of that founder

and what they do, the secret sauce of how they've made the business work

so that it can be delivered at the hands of those that they have employed at the end of the day, and that we make the right decisions in who those next hires will

be. That is the goal, that, that's the confidence that I look for the founder to have in me when they bring

me on board. 

And it's no different than what we provide in Ops iq. 

It's all bringing that out Of their minds and getting it in a place where it can be very structured and functioning. 

[00:28:47] Gary: Taja. Now you've helped founders, you've built a platform to help founders and you

are a founder. So I need from you three pieces of advice that you would give a founder.

[00:29:01] Taja: We've talked about some of these.

[00:29:02] Gary: did already, but. 

[00:29:03] Taja: Yeah. One is the moment you see a process happening, write it down. Don't let it

live in your head. Write it down. As minuscule as it might be when you get this email, you respond this way.

You follow up in that, write that down. So that a way you start to document

[00:29:26] Christie: writing that down right now actually. That's a good, that's a good tip.

[00:29:29] Taja: Oftentimes founders, I just, funny enough and I won't take too much time, I was talking to someone yesterday that was referring me about someone who's in the mortuary business and when you go to the bomb, I know it sounds very death dark, but But the process of involvement had never been written down and they were relying

on two elderly gentlemen to be the ones performing the process.

Unfortunately, both of them passed away.

[00:29:57] Christie: Good Lord.

[00:29:58] Taja: So who's going to do the embalmment now? 

[00:30:00] Christie: Whoops, 

[00:30:01] Taja: no, 

it's not drafted. And so I just was stuck on stupid when I heard that yesterday. I was

like of course you gotta have that right.

[00:30:08] Christie: Yeah. 

[00:30:08] Taja: Write it down immediately. That's my

first number two is be open to discovery. You asked me about reading books. You asked me about, certain books that I've read, but I

also find a lot of discovery in different groups that I'm a part of. Or different socials that I read, on LinkedIn or other platforms because it gives me a diverse understanding

and that's important in business.

Although I'm in the tech business and I've been in the consulting business, there might be another business dynamic that I look at and say. I can draw from that and

make what it is I do in tech even better because of what I see in that business. So be open and diverse to discovery and where you find that at, I think are, is another point that I would say.

And the last one, and I've learned this early on, is you gotta know your cash. You gotta know the cash is king.

So a lot of times we talk about. Gross revenues, or we're talking about cash flows or we're talk, but you should know exactly how much cash you have on hand in your business at all times, be it good or bad, live in the reality of it, because that is then what's going to help you

to move forward in how you want that business to grow. When you don't know it and you hide from it, chances are your business is really not fundamentally sound as you would think.

[00:31:34] Christie: Right.

[00:31:35] Gary: Solid pieces of advice. Okay, 

[00:31:38] Christie: Yeah. I love 

[00:31:39] Gary: Now

if anybody wants to learn more about you or learn more about Ops iq, where's the best places to find you?

[00:31:46] Taja: Find us on LinkedIn. That's definitely the first and foremost. You can find me there on LinkedIn Taja m Graham easily found. And then Ops IQ has a company page also on

LinkedIn, but also feel free to visit us@opsiq.biz. And if you are a founder that really is looking to grow and wanting to find out where those hurdles are for you, take the free assessment. It's going to give you a baseline so that you can see exactly where you are and what you might need to do to quickly get the results you're looking for.

[00:32:19] Gary: Awesome, and we'll make sure that those links are put in the show notes as well so you guys don't miss 'em.

[00:32:24] Taja: Thank you for having me. 

[00:32:25] Christie: You are very welcome. 

Thank you. 

[00:32:27] Gary: much for joining us. 

[00:32:28] Christie: about this. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:30] Gary: And I guess that's all we have for this week, but thanks again, Tasha, and to everyone else. We will see you next week.

[00:32:38] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's Wife. Yep. I finally took the mic or rusted it away from David. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software. This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel.

Want to connect, shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.