Navigating Small Business Growth.

• You earned a BA in Speech Communication. What did you think you wanted to be when you grew up?
• After an early career in the wine making industry, please briefly share the story of what led you to start your first business (photography).
• What led you to launch Clarity Ops? Who do you work with and how do you help them? (“…we excel in guiding businesses through the complexities of expansion.”)
• What are the most common challenges (related to growth and managing chaos) your clients face, and how does Clarity Ops help address them?
• What do most small business owners misunderstand about employee retention?
• Why is scaling leadership so difficult and how do we fix it?
• How can growth minded businesses speed up process development and deployment?
• How can small business owners begin to integrate data-driven insights into their process improvement strategies? Please share an example of how a small business has done this.
• What do you mean by “sustainable growth?”
• In my experience and observation the founders, or a key leader in the organization, may be the source of the chaos. What are your thoughts on this?
• How do we begin to minimize the chaos?
• What’s one key practice that helps to develop a foster a strong culture? How does your approach to performance management help businesses balance efficiency with maintaining a strong company culture?
• Garrett explains how navigating small business growth while minimizing chaos requires People, Process and Performance.

More about minimizing chaos in your small business:
Garrett Delph advises that minimizing chaos in a small business requires mindful planning, clear role definitions, and effective delegation. He stresses that chaos often results from disorganization, reactive decision-making, and the lack of proper operational structures. To combat this, business owners should create clear job descriptions, define values that guide decision-making, and establish processes that support growth without overloading employees. He highlights the importance of hiring the right talent, creating growth paths for employees, and ensuring responsibilities are balanced. Garrett also emphasizes that chaos is not inevitable and can be managed with the right frameworks and proactive leadership.

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:15):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez, and my guest today is Garrett Delph. Garrett, welcome to the show.

Garrett Delph (00:24):

Hey, thanks, Henry. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Henry Lopez (00:26):

Absolutely. Looking forward to this conversation. On this episode, we’re going to explore briefly, Garrett’s very interesting entrepreneurial journey, how he got to where he is today as an entrepreneur, and then there’s so many different topics he can talk about based on his experiences. But we’re going to focus in on what I’m calling, how to navigate growth while maintaining, or rather while minimizing the chaos in your small business. And I think that resonates with a lot of us. How do we grow and at the same time, how do we manage the chaos that can ensue people, chaos, transactional chaos, all of that stuff that can happen in a business.

Henry Lopez (01:25):

So let me tell you a little bit more about Garrett and then we’ll get into the conversation. Garrett Delf is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and chief Clarity Officer at Clarity Ops LLC, clarity Ops LLC, or provides rather process and performance consulting for medium to large businesses that are experiencing operational challenges. And they help them by streamlining their operations, improving efficiency and supporting growth. Garrett has founded three successful international businesses that have collectively generated over $40 million in revenues. I can go on and on about Garrett, but you’ll get to understand more about his successes here as we get into the conversation. Garrett lives in the San Diego, California area. So once again, Garrett Delf, welcome to the episode.

Garrett Delph (02:17):

Awesome. Thanks so much Henry. Excited to be here.

Henry Lopez (02:20):

Alright, so I’d like to start at the beginning. I’m always curious, when I look at, I do the research and I look at what you studied in school, which if I got it right, as with speech communication, you had a bachelor’s in speech communication. So the question I always like to ask, what did you think you wanted to be when you grew up back when you were in university?

Garrett Delph (02:38):

Yeah. Well I went into college wanting to be an actor. Interesting. And that didn’t turn out so well. I got into my freshman year of college and it hit me like a ton of bricks. If I ever wanted to make money, being an actor probably would not be the path. Interesting. But part of being on stage and loving playing roles in characters, I simultaneously fell in love with communicating both writing and oratory. And so that led me to speech Calm and I didn’t really know what that meant actually. I just know I love to speak and love to write and went for it.

Henry Lopez (03:22):

And so then after school, you went into the winemaking industry. Was that just an opportunity that was presented to yourself? Did you seek that out purposely? How did you end up?

Garrett Delph (03:35):

I appreciate the question. I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me that. Out of college, I had a little bit of an entrepreneur bug. I went to school in la, came back to San Diego, joined a startup. I was out on a sales call turning left at an intersection and got sideswiped, totaled my car. It was dirt poor, no money. The next day I reached out to a friend in LA and I said, do you know anybody in your network that will hire me but will also give me a car?

Henry Lopez (04:13):

What were you doing for that startup? What was your role there?

Garrett Delph (04:15):

Yeah, we were selling this new form of advertising to the local colleges, which basically it was door hangers. That’s not a new form of advertising, but to the colleges it was.

Speaker 4 (04:28):

I see.

Garrett Delph (04:29):

So we were going to sell advertisements on the door hangers, and then the door hangers had benefits to the college students with things they needed to know in their dorms. That

Henry Lopez (04:39):

Was it because you lost your transportation, you essentially lost your job, if you will, or ability?

Garrett Delph (04:44):

Pretty much. I had no money and to buy a car. And so that was it. And the person that I knew said, you know what? My uncle leads hiring at Gall Wine and they give you a car if they hire you. I was like, let’s do it. So I had a friend drive me up to la, took the interview, they hired me and within a week I was driving a brand new white truck for gall wine, selling wine

Henry Lopez (05:15):

As a sales, who were you calling on? Did wine distributors or retailers or, I’m

Garrett Delph (05:21):

Assuming so I had the San Fernando Valley was my region and I had all of the Vons and the Stater Brothers, kind of those department stores, grocery stores rather. And it was really fantastic in hindsight, one of the best experiences I could have had. They’re the largest winery in the world and they are serious about marketing and selling.

Garrett Delph (05:50):

I got just top class five star sales and marketing training out of the gate and had a really good run with them for a couple of years.

Henry Lopez (06:02):

Alright, so then that’s what leads into you starting your first business, is that correct?

Garrett Delph (06:07):

Not quite.

Henry Lopez (06:08):

Okay.

Garrett Delph (06:09):

While I was with Gallo, I ended up getting drafted by a great company out of Boston called Nantucket Nectars. A couple of founders, Tom and Tom started this really great juice company, so I went to work for them and worked for them for about five years.

Garrett Delph (06:27):

Yeah, another really great run tour of duty in learning about scaling a national beverage brand and all of the logistic and operational parts that go into selling to distributors and then distributing to the local markets. It was really, really fascinating and great. But after five years I fell out of love with it and I actually at that point didn’t know what I wanted to do. All I knew was what I didn’t want to do. So I gave my notice, cashed in my 401k. Wow. This is back,

Henry Lopez (07:11):

Were you single at the time? Married around this time?

Garrett Delph (07:14):

Very single. Very single. I think at that point I was 26 maybe 26 or 27. And my 401k was 13,000 bucks, Henry. But I thought I was the richest guy in the world.

Henry Lopez (07:34):

Oh, I hear you. I did the same thing in my late twenties, so I understand.

Garrett Delph (07:40):

But what it did afford me is a chance just to kind of think and dream, which I, in hindsight again, really coveted that. And so I had two loves. One was aquatic, I have a pretty extensive aquatic background and I had a passion, sorry, not a passion, a love and appreciation for photography, although I had never owned a camera. Interesting. So here’s what I did. After a couple of months I decided, alright, I’m going to start a swim school. I know that sounds crazy, but I started a swim school, I wrote my own proprietary curriculum and just started out of the gate putting up signs everywhere, at least a local athletic pool and started a swim lessons that grew into a really fun thing. But I also bought a camera. And in my off time I was taking pictures of everyone everywhere all the time for free.

Garrett Delph (08:36):

I was like, you want pictures, you want pictures, you want pictures. And funny enough, after some time people would say, Hey, will you take my picture? And that’s when I started charging. Long story short, although the swim school had some good growth and a good run, it was the photography that really took off. And so that led me into a decade of shooting what turned into professional wedding and portrait photography and grew a fairly large studio with multiple photographers. And over the course of that time, I think we shot like 400 weddings and that was up till that stage. That’s how things went along.

Henry Lopez (09:22):

Why did you exit that business?

Garrett Delph (09:25):

Yeah, so in 2005 there was a digital inflection point. So basically overnight film died

Garrett Delph (09:37):

And quickly this idea of digital cameras showed up on the market for the professionals and we all needed to transition. When that happened, there literally were no solutions for digital photographers to have a professional service process, all of their digital media, the way they would process film. And so suddenly we were both the photography studio and the lab. So it was double the work and it was almost just wipe me out. It was too much. So what I did is I found somebody hired them, paid Adobe to train them to do what’s called post-production in basically what’s now called Lightroom a Lightroom application. And that saved me literally after three months of training and all that, that whole lab thing went away. I had a full-time employee and that’s all they did. And then being in the industry, I could see this is going to be an epidemic. I could already see everybody complaining and distraught and overworked. So I co-founded a company called Shoot Edit, which ended up being the first digital media post-production lab to the world. At that time, the internet was really getting going and you could send large data packets over the internet to anywhere in the world. We were internet driven.

Garrett Delph (11:15):

After two years of that, which was just a side business, it really had explosive growth because the demand was so high. So I went ahead and shut down my photography business and focused on that business full time.

Henry Lopez (11:29):

And then how long did you run that business?

Garrett Delph (11:31):

So ran that business for 17 years. It’s still operating today, but it’s being operated by c-suite leaders. So I’m more at the board level.

Henry Lopez (11:45):

Interesting. So one of the common threads I’m starting to hear is you’ve had the wherewithal, the ability and the vision to know when to pivot and when to either get out or move or take a lateral. That’s not an easy thing for people to do. I find that a lot of people will get stuck and go down with the ship sometimes. Where do you think that came from for you? Why do you think you had that ability to say, okay, this market has changed as every market eventually does I need to shift to something else?

Henry Lopez (12:23):

You had an ability to let go, right? Yeah, I think that’s part of it. Yeah, because I think often what happens to people is we might see that as a failure as opposed to what’s next? Where do I go next?

Garrett Delph (12:37):

Yes. I only have one answer to that, Henry. And the only obvious answer to me is it had to have been, God, honestly, I can’t come up. There was nothing in me that could take credit for having the conscious wherewithal to make those choices.

Henry Lopez (12:59):

But did you have innate but innate in you though is looking at the opportunity. And it’s interesting how you phrased it about the photography. You didn’t say so much that you were passionate about it, but you had, I forget the words that you used. In other words, it seems like you’ve looked at business as where is the business opportunity? Certainly I want to enjoy what I’m doing, but it’s about where is that opportunity and shifting and adjusting accordingly to what the market is giving you. Is that fair?

Garrett Delph (13:26):

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that is a part and parcel to the processing of it. Even though I think at the time I was not aware. And that is, I think always being mindful that I’m here to make money. That’s why I work and to simultaneously do something that I love. And both of those have to play together. And I think in hindsight now, to your point, I realized that I always need to be on my toes and always being mindful of what got me here won’t get me there ever. Exactly, exactly right.

Henry Lopez (14:03):

So then what leads to clarity ops? Why did you start Clarity Ops? What was the opportunity that you identified that you addressed with Clarity Ops?

Garrett Delph (14:13):

Great question. Building sheet taught edit hands down was the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life. Very rewarding, but also full of turmoil, battle scars and failure

Henry Lopez (14:29):

On the people side, the technology side or both or

Garrett Delph (14:33):

All of it on the people on the process, on the performance, on the scale. It really was tumultuous because we were bushwhacking, we were kind of Las Lewis and Clark going west, and there was no path. Nobody had done it before. You know what I mean?

Henry Lopez (14:51):

The pioneers often die on the trail, don’t they?

Garrett Delph (14:53):

True, true, yes. And those guys almost died many times along the way. Fortunately by God’s grace we made it. But in doing that also, I had no experience. And so every time we would hit this sort of roadblock or what felt like an insurmountable mountain, I just couldn’t find solutions for our bespoke problems. And so my gut reaction was build my own solutions, build my own solutions, build my own solutions. And by hook or crook we would break through. And after 15 years of that, what I ended up with is this suite of frameworks, assessments, systems, tools, techniques that all had been proven and tested to success. And I had an epiphany one day I was thinking about the AWS story where Jasky, who was kind of underneath Bezos, went to Jeff and he said, Hey, we have built all of these proprietary technology to build Amazon, but I really think that a ton of businesses worldwide could use our technologies.

Garrett Delph (16:34):

We should sell it to them. And that was the birth of AWS and I. One day it occurred to me, wow, I have all the same thing. I have all of these tools that I’ve built and I really believe that businesses could benefit by using them, but primarily because there’s nothing to build. All they have to do is plug them in to their business and they’ll be up and running and they’ll be able to work. And the thing I was motivated by mostly is these tools don’t exist because most businesses don’t focus on operational frameworks, they focus on sales and marketing.

Henry Lopez (17:17):

And so now you, through Clarity Ops, you deliver these tools and frameworks through service engagements, or how do you offer it to your clients?

Garrett Delph (17:29):

So we have a hybrid and the hybrid is SaaS and manual consulting, one-on-one or one

Henry Lopez (17:39):

On. So SaaS for the technologies, the framework tools that they use on a repeated basis and then consulting or hands to help them implement or apply these tools.

Garrett Delph (17:51):

Yeah, typically it’s either done with them as we call it, done with you, or for organizations that are just going too fast, we’ll go in and just do it for them.

Henry Lopez (18:04):

Got it.

Henry Lopez (18:06):

And in particular, the couple areas, as I mentioned at the outset that I wanted to explore, which I think are at a high level here, is it’s supporting growth with growth, especially hypergrowth comes chaos that typically those come hand in hand. Or maybe it existed before, at least that’s the way I’ve observed it. But some of the issues with navigating growth, one of the first areas I wanted to explore because I know you have some deep thoughts on this, is employee retention, developing that team and then keeping them, what have you observed, especially if we apply it to a small business owner that perhaps you see that we misunderstand as business owners about keeping our best talent?

Garrett Delph (18:48):

Yeah, it’s such a great question, Henry. Well, I think the first challenge is at least my experience has been including me, chief center here, if you want to call it center or naivety, is what I know now that I did not know then is that it is through great people that businesses build great business. Let’s be honest, businesses are driven by people. And so to the degree a founder, a business owner understands and defines what great is will be the degree to which they get great talent. And of course there’s the outliers where they luck out and just stumble upon somebody that’s freaking amazing and helps them get their act together. And so I’d say first thing, seek to define what great means to you and how that permeates into values. And the reason I think that a next really important step once you define great in terms of what great looks like in your people is the next thing that sort of gives rails to those great people is what you value about people and how they will operate. Because those values typically determine how leadership will make decisions and how those decisions will convert into process and performance to ultimately achieve the output of the business.

Henry Lopez (20:30):

I’m hearing a couple of things there. One that makes sense to me obviously is making sure that I know what our values are for our business and that I’ve communicated that clearly and that we’re in alignment, that we’re actually behaving according to those values. But am I also hearing, because I’ve also found that I’ve always believed that especially great talent, they want to make sure that they’re clear on to put it crudely, what the rules of the game are here, how are we measured in what it is that we’re trying to achieve? Is that part of what you’re talking about here or am I missing it?

Garrett Delph (21:04):

No, you’re exactly right. I’d say that those components are a little further down river,

Garrett Delph (21:12):

Absolutely essential.

Henry Lopez (21:13):

Yeah. Okay. Alright. At a higher level then, bringing it back to that, what else have you observed that lets or keeps great people, that keeps them wanting to stay with that organization? What else do they have to see at a high level?

Garrett Delph (21:31):

So if we just say just people in the business in general, I think there are three key elements. There’s compensation, there’s growth paths, and then there’s laying a foundation for a cultures that supports those both. So when you get into compensation, I think one of the things I would recommend if it’s within budget, is be mindful of the market benchmarks for the different titles you’re looking to hire for. Otherwise you’re going to waste a ton of time trying to find great people that won’t even look at your ad because your monetary compensation is out of whack. So understand the market as it relates to a bespoke role. The other thing, our benefits, and I’m not necessarily referring to healthcare and time off, of course these are important, but things like shift flexibility and perhaps a hybrid work from home work at the office, perhaps it’s a stipend for healthcare, sorry for childcare. There’s a whole host of plays you can run when it comes to benefits for people that are really powerful that a lot of business owners, especially in the startup phase, don’t think about. So compensation stuff are really important. And then the next one is the growth. I still to this day, even at medium to large size businesses, forget about architecting growth paths for those great people.

Garrett Delph (23:16):

Great people are ambitious, they want to grow and they want to earn, let’s be honest, they

Henry Lopez (23:21):

Want to make money, they want to know where can I go here? What’s my next step? How do I keep growing here?

Garrett Delph (23:28):

That’s right, that’s right.

Henry Lopez (23:29):

But for so many of us as small business owners, we are not thinking that far ahead. We need to, but we’re so bogged down with, listen, let’s just get done what we need to get done today. But that’s a missing piece. We must invest in defining for these talented people, great people in our organization, a growth path.

Garrett Delph (23:48):

Yep, yep. That’s right. And I think perhaps a misunderstanding even for a startup is to think you have to think 10 years down the road you don’t.

Garrett Delph (23:59):

You could think 12 to 18 months down the road and still put something in place because what you do as a leader is you say to them, you demonstrate with your planning. I care about you and I know you probably want to grow and I’m going to make sure you know that. I know that

Henry Lopez (24:15):

I’ve also found it. And especially when you’re smaller, allowing them to play a role in defining that path is always powerful. What do you think about that?

Garrett Delph (24:24):

Yes, I totally agree. I totally agree. We have a clay we use, it’s called a Foursquare principle. And the idea is constantly moving people into quadrant one, where their loves their skills, their passions are supported simultaneously in the role they’re hired to do. And as a business and at the leadership level, if leaders continue to try their best to keep teammates in quadrant one, happiness and happiness especially goes way up. And then if you supplement that with career paths and learning and development sponsorships, your retention rate really begins to hockey stick in the right direction. And also you have this vested interest in people to continue to give and lean in and grow with.

Henry Lopez (25:22):

This is Henry Lopez briefly pausing this episode to invite you to schedule a free coaching consultation with me. I welcome the opportunity to chat with you about your business plans and offer the guidance and accountability that we all need to achieve success. As an experienced small business owner myself, I understand the challenges you’re experiencing and often it’s about helping you ask the right questions to help you make progress towards achieving your goals. Whether it’s getting started with your first business or growing and maybe exiting your existing small business, I can help you get there. To find out more about my business coaching services and to schedule your free coaching consultation, please visit the how of business.com. Take that next step today towards finally realizing your business ownership dreams. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Henry Lopez (26:13):

So that’s interesting. I think I understand what you’re saying. I mean, it might be similar to what others might express being in the right seat on the bus kind of thing. It’s interesting though to explore that. Just another moment further, Garrett, are you saying that you have found that if I continuously keep people in an uncomfortable state, either because we have so much growth going on, I got a movie here, I got to move you there, I got to give you these other responsibilities that might be good in the short term, but long-term that’s disruptive. Is that making sense? Am I making sense there?

Garrett Delph (26:46):

So thank you for clarifying, Henry. I’m actually saying the contrary.

Henry Lopez (26:51):

Okay. Okay.

Garrett Delph (26:52):

What I’m suggesting is what a lot of us business owners tend to do is we go right butts in right seats, meaning we pay attention to skills only and then we ignore passions and happiness and we also ignore other strengths that might be living in there that we did not explore during the interview process. So the quadrant one is the collective. It is not only being great in the current seat that you’re in, but constantly on behalf of the teammate, evaluating are your strengths, your true strengths and your entire suite of skills best suited in the role that you’re currently in. And being mindful of that, whether that’s quarterly, once a year, twice a year, whatever, being mindful of that.

Garrett Delph (27:52):

Then when you have that mindset and it’s connected to a defined career path, meaning the next opportunity for you is right there because of this alignment. That’s what I’m suggesting. And then one other thing I want to comment on is your thought regarding moving people around or putting things on them because the business needs needs it. I think this is a catastrophic mistake that businesses make regarding people.

Henry Lopez (28:24):

It’s a huge mistake that we make in growth or what you refer to as sustainable growth because, and let me just, sorry to interrupt, but I think the reason we do it is we’re going about growth the wrong way and we have limited budgets. And so we figure, well, let’s keep growing, but I’ll just throw more on my employees, give them more responsibility, right?

Garrett Delph (28:48):

That’s right.

Henry Lopez (28:48):

And that’s catastrophic because?

Garrett Delph (28:52):

Yeah. Well that’s catastrophic because typically it’s reactive, not proactive, meaning it’s not planned for. It’s in a frantic, desperate mode, number one. Number two, it’s not load balanced. So what you end up, what leaders end up doing is dumping or overloading on these people rather than strategically load balancing. And when you overload people and you didn’t plan for it, typically you ask them and expect them to do things they’re not trained in, they’re not good at or not skilled in natively or otherwise. And it all becomes this downward spiral of destruction.

Henry Lopez (29:38):

Yeah, no, I see it. It is funny when you’re mentioning this, picturing a particular organization that I’m familiar with, it’s the classic high growth, but they’re trying to do more and more with the same number of people and the culture has become just do more, just do more. And so what has happened is the boundaries of blur, even though they pretend to take care of their people, and I think they honestly want to, they’re not exhibiting that because expecting their people to work ridiculous hours to work even during their planned time off, no boundaries whatsoever. And that’s what ends up happening. And that’s not sustainable in my observation.

Garrett Delph (30:21):

I mean, listen, I’m with you a hundred percent. I mean the stats support this behavior. Nine in 10 businesses fail. And you and I both know there, and many of us out there, we know there are a ton of reasons why 90 plus percent of businesses fail and that is cascading across from one year to 10 years. But I think it is mostly due to everything you just mentioned, it’s reactive IT leadership approach that’s not based on prudent planning and architecting good rails and frameworks for people, process and performance. But instead you get into this or we get into this reactive mode in business, which tends to be standard. And anytime you’re trying to drive business in the rear view mirror, you’re going to put people through hell.

Henry Lopez (31:19):

Yeah. Okay. So then from a small business owner’s perspective, usually the way I see it, I’ve got several constraints to growth. One is lack of capital that I might need to facilitate this growth to fund this growth. Obviously we’re going to assume the market is there, that there’s a market for me to address that allows me to expand and grow. But it could be that I don’t have the money, but usually it’s that I don’t have the people. But again, that comes in the challenge of when do I invest in more people so we don’t end up in the scenario that we just described. And so where’s the balance there? Is this what you refer to as sustainable growth or is that related to this?

Garrett Delph (32:02):

So in part, I mean sustainable growth always has constraints and depending on where a business is in their A RR and or in their growth lifecycle will determine what rails or infrastructure are needed for that state. But maybe we’ll talk about the avatar a hundred grand to a million in revenue per year. A lot of times at that stage you have business owners, owner operators that are wearing a ton of hats more than they should, and they are still struggling to or haven’t learned how to either delegate or say no. And so I think for that stage, looking to grow into multimillion in revenue or a 5 million a year revenue position, I think the best thing they can be doing is saying no to the things that matter least

Henry Lopez (33:13):

Focusing on what you do best and well. And that has to be part of your path to growth.

Garrett Delph (33:21):

Yeah, that’s right. And I would supplement that with focusing on what either your advisors or you believe are the most valuable things to do for the business to achieve its goals, whatever they are.

Garrett Delph (33:37):

Then as the business owner figuring out what are the essential most important things that only you can do and should do. By the way, side note, when I was growing businesses, I realized quickly I should delegate finance to other people, not my sweet spot. I’m a scale guy, I’m a process guy, I’m a culture guy. And so that’s where I was going to bring the most value. But for a while I didn’t know that and I thought I was supposed to do finances. I was the founder and I caused a lot of harm. So back to your point, focus. Yes, but primary focus is what does the business need to achieve its goals and then align the skills accordingly.

Henry Lopez (34:22):

Understood. Okay. Alright. Let’s touch on the chaos. I have a lot of thoughts on the chaos that occurs in smaller organizations. In fact, I recently did an episode on this because what I have found curious to your thoughts is that often we meaning the founders, the business owner for all kinds of different reasons can be the source of the chaos.

Henry Lopez (34:45):

And in part it’s because we grow up as business owners being the firefighter in chief, we’re the problem solver. And we get up in the morning looking for what is it that I got to solve today? And it’s almost like if I don’t have those problems to solve, then what is my value? And there are other ways in which we manifested. You touched on not delegating effectively, so creating an environment that has to come through me, but what are your thoughts? What are your observations as to what in smaller organizations in particular, what feeds or fuels the chaos?

Garrett Delph (35:22):

Yeah, I think the things that fuel chaos are disorganization and bad planning. It is not having rails for the rollercoaster, not having rules, instructions at guidelines that are load balanced across the org or the business and then evenly distributed so that there are controls within each function to move forward. And so I think here is the root of it out of the gate. Most business owners don’t go, okay, what are my job descriptions for every single role? And how do those job descriptions cascade into collectively achieving the business goal? Most business owners don’t think about that. I sure I know now how vital that is if you want to avoid chaos and you also want to scale fast. So I’d say it’s just that’s the root of it, Henry.

Henry Lopez (36:33):

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Makes perfect sense. As you were saying that, that was exactly what I was thinking. And I find that I would say nine out of 10 small businesses that have that chaos, there’s a lack of definition of who’s supposed to do what. Part of it I think is fueled by the owner or owners or key employees wanting to have control over everything. So nobody’s empowered. But yeah, there’s that lack of clarity as to who’s responsible for what.

Garrett Delph (37:01):

Yeah, that’s right. What’s the old adage? If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know when you get there.

Garrett Delph (37:07):

So if we are a team, hockey, baseball, football, rugby, whatever, and as a coach you are not clear on your plays and you’re not able to articulate to each of the players how they will participate in each play, you are not going to win. You’re not going to win.

Henry Lopez (37:34):

All of these things. Also, of course, then determine what your culture is going to be. Either undermines or fosters a strong culture. Last question I have for you though, on culture, we could talk about it for hours, but

Garrett Delph (37:49):

I know right, probably days, right?

Henry Lopez (37:51):

Exactly. But as the owner, as the CEO of a small business, what do you think is one of the principle responsibilities that I have for the culture of my business? What does that look like? What is my role as the CEO? And let’s say it’s a fairly one run organization, people know their roles. I’ve empowered my team, right? I am somewhat separated from the day to day, but now as the leader, what is my role in culture?

Garrett Delph (38:21):

Jeff Weiner, the ex CEO at LinkedIn, he said something that I’ll never forget, and that was his primary role is to be the chief reminder officer. And that is regarding culture, which permeates into operations. And so I’d say, I think that’s it. We’re assuming that the founder has defined rules, responsibilities across functions within the org. All of that’s clear. And let’s assume they also have defined values that govern decision-making and behaviors. And let’s also assume that accountability is being upheld by all of the leaders. The drive change. Then I’d say that CEO’s job or that founder’s job is to remind everybody all the time constantly about those things and about where they’re going,

Henry Lopez (39:19):

Here’s where we’re going, here’s how we do it, here’s how we behave here. And then I got to imagine also I have a responsibility for measuring that, for listening to make sure that we are performing at that level.

Garrett Delph (39:32):

Without a doubt, you cannot manage what you cannot measure totally with you critical. And I think also a founder should not be afraid to correct. Part of accountability is being able to say to, well, sorry. Part of accountability is number one, acknowledging the wins in their leaders and their people, fanning them to flames when they do great stuff. Doing that public, I think that’s really important. But just as important, any good parent would do is being steadfast about correcting and calling out stuff that is done incorrectly or done in a way that’s harmful and making sure that the team also is reminded, hey, that kind of thing we just can’t do, won’t do because it’s too destructive. And so there’s balancing both of those I think is critical to the reminder.

Henry Lopez (40:27):

Agreed. Agreed. Excellent. Alright. Obviously I explained it at the beginning and we’ve touched on it, but give me the summary again of what Clarity Ops does. And one way I always like to hear it is tell me also who’s an ideal client for you? What type of challenges do they have that you guys help with very specifically?

Garrett Delph (40:47):

Yeah, thanks Henry. So Clarity Ops is designed to help small and medium sized businesses mindfully design their workplace for maximized people, process and performance. And it takes this suite of what we call fast operational tools and makes them available immediately to implement without having to slow down or stop and have to figure it out on your own, which most businesses can’t. So that’s kind of our differentiator in our value prop. And then, forgive me, Henry, what was the second part of that question?

Henry Lopez (41:26):

Yeah, obviously you’ve kind of defined it already, but an ideal client comes to you looking like, what do they already have in place? Or they may be missing that then they would get the most out of what you offer.

Garrett Delph (41:41):

So generally, businesses that come to us are in one of two stages. They obviously have product market fit, and they’ve experienced some good growth. They’re happy with their growth, but they’ve stagnated and they had at one time operational infrastructure, but they outgrew it and it’s no longer relevant and things have broken and they can’t break through.

Henry Lopez (42:06):

I see.

Garrett Delph (42:06):

So that’s where we will come in and help them restructure for sustainable gain.

Henry Lopez (42:12):

To scale that business to that next level for them. Yeah?

Garrett Delph (42:15):

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And like I said, generally businesses don’t have time to slow down. And so our goal is to help them do this in a fast and meaningful way that sustains the other avatar is businesses that they got it going, they hit their revenue thresholds, but they never ever invested in governance and infrastructure and rules and guidelines. And so they’re a mess.

Henry Lopez (42:45):

And that’s be, I got to think are pretty common, right? Because it seems to me like it’s more common to say growth at all costs, and then we will clean it up.

Garrett Delph (42:55):

Yep. That is the main play. I’m with you, Henry.

Henry Lopez (42:58):

Yeah. Excellent. Alright. I’m always looking for a book recommendation. Is there a book that comes to mind that you’ve read recently or in the past that you would recommend?

Garrett Delph (43:07):

Yeah, great book called The Trillion Dollar Coach, bill Campbell. He was the Go-to guy for the Googles, the Apples of the World. And he’s just got some really wonderful insights in that book. And by the way, written by Eric Schmidt, ex CEO of Google.

Garrett Delph (43:30):

And I think my biggest takeaway from that book, and there were many, but my biggest takeaway was in his very stout opinion, you cannot be a great leader without first being a great manager because it is the manager who upholds this acronym I call pi. They’re professional, they have integrity, and they have eq and they prove their worth through their ability to manage people, which earns the respect of those people. Interesting. And it’s only when you earn the respect of the people that you lead, that they will follow you, which makes you a leader.

Henry Lopez (44:13):

It’s interesting. So as a business owner, obviously I, I’m already typically in place when people come in, if people join the organization as I’m growing and by then I’m CEO, I’ve got people in place, how do I make that happen? And how do they see me? How do I earn my stripes as a manager in that scenario?

Garrett Delph (44:35):

Yeah, it’s great. So I think if a business is hiring, let’s say a leader, and I guess we’re all leaders in one aspect, but if the business needs a managing leader to come in and they need them to already have strong management capability, then I would highly recommend that business vet and test their management capabilities, find out what they value, find out how they manage, see if they can do some third party interviews, especially if it’s a high level leader to vet and prove before they join the force.

Henry Lopez (45:29):

Got it, got it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Understood. Understood. Alright, excellent. Thank you for that book of recommendation. I have not read that, but I’ll put it on the list. I appreciate

Garrett Delph (45:38):

That. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. You bet, Henry.

Henry Lopez (45:40):

Alright, we’ll wrap it up here. Garrett, last question I always ask is, what’s one thing you want us to tick away? In particular, as I was framing this conversation, for a small business owner that wants to grow and minimize the chaos, what would be one thing you’d want us to take away from this conversation?

Garrett Delph (45:55):

I would say I think that the status quo in business is that chaos is just something you have to live with. You have to live in reactive mode. Fighting fires is just standard. And I would encourage anybody listening that has bought that lie, I think it’s a big fat lie. And there is a better way, a mindful way to build business with proper thinking and proper structure. And then with that, I would say if you’re confused about it, don’t feel like you have to do it alone. Go find advice, go find somebody that can help you think through these things. It will probably be one of the best investments you ever make for yourself, for your people, and for your business.

Henry Lopez (46:55):

Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And I’m glad you mentioned that because what I was trying to express earlier when I said that we’re the source of the chaos,

Henry Lopez (47:03):

That’s exactly what I was getting at, is that I think we sometimes come to that particular point in our business growth thinking that’s the only way it can work. That’s the only way it can happen.

Garrett Delph (47:14):

Yeah. Yeah.

Henry Lopez (47:15):

Excellent. Where do you want us to go online to learn more about Clarity Ops?

Garrett Delph (47:19):

Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. My handle is Garrett stealth. And then of course there’s our site Clarity ops.co.

Henry Lopez (47:29):

Got it. And again, it’s Garrett with two Rs, two Ts, and Delph is D-E-L-P-H.

Garrett Delph (47:34):

Yeah, that’s right, Henry. Yeah. Thank

Henry Lopez (47:36):

You. Alright, wonderful conversation Garrett. Thank you so much for sharing and for taking the time to be with me today.

Garrett Delph (47:44):

Yeah, I sure appreciate it. It was really great to be here, Henry. Thank you.