IAM2237 – Business Consultant Helps Clients with a Process-Centric Approach to Business Success

Title: Transcript - Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:32:12 GMT

Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:32:12 GMT, Duration: [00:16:50.75]

[00:00:00.24] - Garrett Delph

But what I consistently found missing in terms of finding tools in the market to achieve goals was the how, like how do you go do it? And everywhere I looked, I couldn't find recipes or frameworks that actually had embedded process.

[00:00:19.94] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEO's, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the Imceo podcast.

[00:00:47.24] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gretch from the imceo podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Garrett Delph Garrett, excited to have you on the show.

[00:00:54.90] - Garrett Delph

Hey, Gretchen, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:57.21] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Garrett. Garrett so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Garrett stands at the forefront of business transformational solutions for the new generation of leaders. He is the founder and chief clarity officer of Clarity Ops, LLC. A serial entrepreneur and results driven pacesetter, he has established a track record of founding three successful international businesses that have collectively generated over $40 million in revenue. Garrett's new business, new generation business solutions are created for leaders who need faster, easier and more profitable play by play ways for scaling their business. And before preparing for this, before this, I was preparing, and I read a little bit more about Garrett. And he said his core strengths are in architecting finely tuned organizational cultures, developing management leaders, and driving business growth at scale. And he said he believes in a people first environment where we lift up and empower one another through a unified commitment to doing the right thing operationally and culturally. And I absolutely love all those things that Gary's doing because I think, and I say often, we forget about the human part of business. And so as he's so locked into all those things, and of course, he's going to help us on how we can better refine that. I'm super excited to have you on the show. Garrett, are you ready to speak to the Imco community?

[00:02:18.05] - Garrett Delph

I sure am, Gresham. Looking forward to it.

[00:02:20.12] - Gresham Harkless

Yes. Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched on it a little bit, but let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

[00:02:29.93] - Garrett Delph

Yeah, how I got started. So I assume, Gresham, that's in relation to clarity ops or is that how I got started as an entrepreneur?

[00:02:37.18] - Gresham Harkless

I would love to hear from the beginning. And of course, let's hear into clarity ops, if we can hear the whole gamut.

[00:02:42.96] - Garrett Delph

Sure. So I was an accidental entrepreneur. You know, I did kind of what I was taught growing up. You go to college, get a degree, go get a great job and work your way up the ladder, and that's what I did, you know, and I got just shy of about ten years into that journey and fell desperately out of love with corporate America. And it was just really frictionful against my values. At the end of the day, at least, the companies I was working in, and I had some great experiences, but at the end of the day, I woke up one morning, I was like, I just, I think I got to do my own thing. And I, I didn't even know what that was going to be, by the way. I just knew I couldn't do that, you know, working for other people. So cash in my four hundred one k. And that led me to a couple of little tiny startups. I have a big aquatics background, so I started a swim school, and we ended up, ended up leasing several facilities throughout the county. Swim school or swimming pool facilities, wrote a curriculum, hired a bunch of instructors, and then we built a, you know, to your back backyard swim program as well. Did that for four years. It was great. Built a water safety education program in tandem with that, which we sold to the school districts. That was really cool. Super fun. Along that journey, about three years in, I became fascinated with photography. So I picked up a camera and started shooting photography. That turned into a ten year journey of shooting weddings professionally and building a national brand where we had five full time wedding photographers shooting about 300 weddings a year. That was a really great experience. I learned a ton from there. In about 2005, the film died. You know, in this world of cameras, everybody was shooting film and then digital showed up and we all ended up, the film labs closed down. We all were forced to buy digital cameras. And suddenly, overnight, we became both the lab and the photography studio, which was very difficult. So that led me to solve my own problem because I couldn't, it was too much. And as a result of solving that problem, I started my next business, which was shoot, edit, and we were the first global, Internet driven digital media lab for professional photographers. That led me on a 17 and a half journey, a 17 and a half year journey of basically accidentally starting a tech company and figuring out how to serve professional photographers worldwide by transmitting data over the Internet at scale and learning how to serve a very unique Persona, which is a professional wedding photographer who is a business person. But they're mostly right brain creative and how do you do that? That led me then to also founding another international business, which was a back office service business to help businesses with their marketing, with their customer success, with their finance, with their it, etcetera, which then led me to ultimately exiting those businesses and starting clarity ops. And now I'm here and really passionate about taking everything I learned about how to lead, build and grow businesses in a new way because the new generation is actually demanding a new path because what got them here will not get them into the future.

[00:06:40.02] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more on everything that you're doing now. Could you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing, how you're making that impact and really serving the clients you work with?

[00:06:51.45] - Garrett Delph

Yeah, happy to. So one epiphany I had along my journey in scaling and building businesses, I think my, the largest business I grew, we had just over 250 employees serving the world. And in scaling, you know, when you're growth driven, I just, you know, again, being an accidental entrepreneur and having not done that before, I really sought out to try to find tools to help us accomplish our goals, which was to scale, grow and profit. And I couldn't find them. Like, there was a lot of really great resources for strategy, which is the what. What do you do? But what I consistently found missing in terms of finding tools in the market to achieve goals was the how. Like how do you go do it? And everywhere I looked, I couldn't find recipes or frameworks that actually had embedded process or guidelines for me just to follow step by step to get it done fast and sustainably. And so I resorted to just building my own tools. Grushmudo. Kind of like what? Of course, not Amazon. I'm far from that. But here's what Amazon did. They disrupted the world with the Amazon platform. But when they did that, there was nothing out there that was built for them to do it. So they had to invent their own tools. And then 20 years later, Jasky says to Bezos, hey, we just built all of these amazing tools that none of the world has. We should empower them with it. And AWS was born, right? And so basically clarity ops is sort of like that journey. I built a suite platform of tools that are pre built, that are rooted in process. They're guidelines, instructions, wrapped in frameworks that business owners, especially owner operator business owners, don't have to reinvent. They can lift and shift, plug them in and begin operating. And my big hypothesis is most businesses, we know, nine out of ten businesses fail. Most businesses fail not because necessarily of product market fit being incorrect. Most don't fail because they couldn't hire great people. They fail at the root because they didn't have process as the rebar to hold everything in place as they pursue growth. And it's where you have breakdown of process that the business really begins to hurt and fall apart. And that process integrates with culture, it integrates with activities, it integrates with core values, it integrates with output, all of these things. And that's the big thing that clarity ops is doing, is we're taking process that is instruction full and then it plugs nicely into any organization where service is primarily their focus and people, and helps them get up and going fast and then sustain that smooth ride because process governs while they pursue their goals.

[00:10:24.33] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I almost wonder if that's part of like your secret sauce could be for yourself, the business, or both, is for you to be able to see the forest for the trees, for lack of a better term, and understand that. Because I think so many times when we're trying to understand what the real issue is, the underlying issue, we can sometimes jump into, oh, just the employee X or employee Y is malcontent. They're just having issues. But if we start to really drill down, we start to see and understand, like how important the process system operations are. Do you feel like that, being able to kind of understand that and of course be able to power people with that information as part of what sets you all apart and makes you unique.

[00:11:04.70] - Garrett Delph

Yeah, that is the big differentiator. It is the converting the what a lot of great strategy out there into the how, how do you do all of this stuff? And then again, to do that in a pre built, easy to understand, easy to fall away. I think it's where the magic is, because complexity is the enemy. We know that. And I think, you know, most businesses, they don't have time for complexity. They don't want it. And so that is the, that's the differentiator Gresham. Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:39.52] - Gresham Harkless

That ends up being such a huge thing. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or even a habit that you have. But what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:11:52.39] - Garrett Delph

When there is crisis, or when there is accusation, or when there is problems? My first response should be, maybe it's me. Maybe it's me. Which is a really great lesson in humility, but also, I think, kind of neutralizing the emotions that come with crisis and problems or blame. That's been really powerful and a great hack.

[00:12:20.37] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. So what would you consider to be a little bit more CEO nugget? This could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something if you were to jump into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self or potentially tell your favorite client.

[00:12:37.21] - Garrett Delph

Let's see. I would say this. It's going to be hard. And if you are able to remember that, it'll make your life easier. There's nothing like. There's nothing worse than feeling like the weight of leading your business, growing your business, is bespoke to you. There's nothing worse than feeling like everybody else has got it easy. I'm the only one struggling. Great book by the founder of behance. It's called the Messy Middle. That book was gifted to me about 15 years ago. I think maybe a little less than that. Right around when I read Emyth, by the way, great book. And that was the first time I felt like I listened to somebody who really had made it talk about how difficult his road was. And then that began to open up my mind. I'm like, so the more I read and the more I pursued watching and listening to other business builders and entrepreneurs, the more I realized, oh, I was able to breathe. It's normal. It's freaking hard, but that's normal. And I sort of got set free. And so I'd say, I think that is a real important one. That'd be my big recommendation. And then surround yourself with great people that can help you break through to make using great decisions.

[00:14:24.63] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I love both of those nuggets. You might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition, what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote unquote CEO's on this show. So, Garrett, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:39.77] - Garrett Delph

Great founder. CEO's are tenacious. They require tenacity. They require being razor sharp, clear about where you want to go. They require humility, meaning you have to, you must know you're not the smartest person in the room. As a matter of fact, I've learned the hard way, sometimes the smartest people in the room is the new intern we just hired. You know what I mean? And I would say lastly, and there's probably many parts of this answer, but maybe the last one I'll leave with it is you need to master the art of coordination and delegation. And so with those, I think four, four or five I mentioned, that's a good little package.

[00:15:41.00] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Well, Garrett, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find about all the awesome and things you entertain working on.

[00:15:56.94] - Garrett Delph

I can be found Garrett Delph on LinkedIn or Clarityops Co. That's our site there. You can see all of our content.

[00:16:03.65] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you even more, Garrett. Of course, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well, too, so that everybody can follow up with you, find out about all the awesome things that you're doing, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:14.52] - Garrett Delph

Yeah, you too. You too. Gresham.

[00:16:16.15] - Intro

Thank you for listening to the Imceo podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo Co. Imceo is not just a phrase, it's a community. Check out the latest and greatest apps, books and habits to level up your business at CEOhacks Co. This has been the I am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness Junior. Thank you for listening.