Kate Guillen is the Founder of Simplicity Ops, a firm on a mission to help advisors grow and scale their businesses while delivering exceptional client service experience. She is an accomplished operations expert with over ten years in the investment management industry. Kate simplifies systems and standardizes operations to improve the service experience and support growth for financial advisors and their teams. With her deep passion for technology optimization in client service, she has partnered with over 50 firms, instilling efficient practices for increased profitability. Kate leverages powerful tools like CRMs to transform business operations and enhance scalability.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:06] Kate Guillen talks about Simplicity Ops and the importance of CRM optimization in delivering exceptional client service
[3:18] The importance of moving past technology to interpersonal client interactions
[4:12] The journey from using a CRM as a mere database to a robust operational hub
[6:02] Kate explains how to overcome the challenges of adapting a CRM to meet specific business needs
[7:39] Why automation is the next level in CRM mastery and client service
[9:08] The stages of CRM evolution from a basic tool to a comprehensive workflow system
[17:22] The impact of clear internal expectations on the client experience
[30:34] Why loving your customer is paramount to achieving their satisfaction and loyalty
In this episode…
In many businesses, operations and client service are interconnected in ways that can be easily overlooked. Is there a specific process to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction by making internal system adjustments?
Kate Guillen, an expert in refining operations and enhancing the client experience for financial advisory firms, delves deeply into CRM systems and how leveraging them properly can be a game-changer for businesses. She breaks down her approach, emphasizing the significance of standardizing operations, automating processes, and focusing on client service as the cornerstone of business growth. Kate also asserts that a well-designed CRM system can elevate a company's operations while fostering team confidence and client trust.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Kate Guillen, Founder of Simplicity Ops, about fine-tuning the operational heart of financial services. Kate talks about Simplicity Ops and the importance of CRM optimization in delivering exceptional client service, overcoming the challenges of adapting a CRM to meet specific business needs, and the stages of CRM evolution from a basic tool to a comprehensive workflow system.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"Maximizing Customer Success Through Intelligent Cash Management With Michael Halloran" on The Customer Wins
"Improving Customer Experience and Growth Through Operations With Jen Goldman" on The Customer Wins
"Scaling Business Through Community as an RIA With Joe Moss" on The Customer Wins
"[AI Series] Thriving as a Financial Advisor Using AI-Powered Tools With Gabe Rissman" on The Customer Wins
Quotable Moments:
"All that dream client service experience needs to live somewhere outside of the business owner's head."
"Amazing client service is highly personalized and proactive."
"By using the CRM with triggering events, we create a really streamlined system."
"If you want your team to pour into your clients, you must pour into your team."
"Knowing your value is as important as delivering it."
Action Steps:
Establish a CRM as your operational hub: Focusing on centralizing all operational aspects leads to improved organizational efficiency.
Standardize communication and processes through the CRM: This helps streamline client interactions and ensures consistency, enhancing the customer experience.
Use automation to enhance the capabilities of your CRM: Automation saves time and effort, enabling businesses to allocate more resources towards growth and client engagement.
Involve your team in the workflow design process: This boosts team engagement and buy-in, resulting in better adherence to processes and heightened service delivery.
Prioritize an exceptional experience for both your team and clients: This creates an environment where satisfied employees are more likely to provide superior service to clients, fostering loyalty.
Sponsor for this episode...
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win, and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included Michael Halloran of Max My Interest, Jen Goldman of My Virtual COO, Joe Moss of Pro Advisor Suite, and Gabe Risman of YourStake. Today, I get to speak with Kate Guillen, founder of Simplicity Ops and today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik!, using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context, rich data that reduces manual reviews to one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
All right, I've really been looking forward to talking to Kate. Kate is a seasoned operations professional with over a decade of experience in the investment management industry. She has a passion for optimizing firms systems and technology to deliver excellent client service, support, growth and increase profitability in 2020 she founded Simplicity Ops with a mission to improve the lives of financial advisors and the teams that support them by simplifying their systems and standardizing operations. Today, the Simplicity Ops team has partnered with over 50 firms to build out their operational hub. Kate, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Kate Guillen 1:44
Hey, thanks so much for having me. I've been looking forward to the conversation.
Richard Walker 1:47
Well, you guys, you and I think are kindred spirits. We're gonna have a lot to talk about. And for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenges to growing their own company. Kate, I wanna understand your business better. How does your company help people?
Kate Guillen 2:06
Yeah, good question. So we are a client experience focused business, and so we partner with RIAs that have the same mission to deliver an amazing client service experience with as much efficiency as possible. And so we have found that the best way to do that is starting with your client relationship management software, your CRM. And so we partner with RIAs to optimize their CRM as like the operational hub or like the one stop shop for managing their practice to help them, really, like, cut down on the unnecessary external places that they're currently going to manage their business, to help them become more efficient so that they can better serve their clients and spend more time with the people that are most important to them.
Richard Walker 2:56
I know why you're doing it that way, but I still find it really intriguing why you would start with the technology and not start with how is your first interaction with your customer? How's your second interaction? How do you keep the communication flowing, et cetera? I mean, I get it. You're saying the efficiency leads to more time with the client, but why not start with some of those softer things that happen first?
Kate Guillen 3:18
Yeah, that's a really great question. We get into the soft stuff, but all that dream client service experience needs to live somewhere outside of the business owner's head. And the best place to do that is in your CRM by building out systems and processes to standardize communication and build out an amazing prospect onboarding, journey, and simplify and standardize all of the required things that we're responsible for doing, for managing these relationships. And I've just found that the CRM is the best place to start doing that.
Richard Walker 3:52
Yeah, I think the industry has argued that the CRM should be the hub for a long time. But a lot of people don't treat it that way. They treat it as this data thing, and they just, yeah, I need to go look up somebody's record. You are taking it to a whole another level. You're actually building the operational procedures with the CRM. Is that right?
Kate Guillen 4:12
Yeah. And it's treated as just like, a database, because to really get the most out of the tool. Like, literally, like, what I mean by like, using the CRM as the hub is, it becomes the place for contacts, tasks, your sales pipeline, your calendar, your client service experience, and then workflows to deliver those services at scale. That is hard to do. Takes a long time. When I started at a firm, we were using it as, just like a Rolodex, and we were going through the big transition, growing our team, leaving our tamp, consolidating assets that custodians, okay, like, way too many goals in the air, and we needed a centralized place for managing our team's responsibilities to, I mean, selfishly, I just was peppered all day long about, like, where do I go to find this? What do I need to do next?
I'm like, man, if I could just, like, get all these processes out of my brain and dump them somewhere to, like, help my team be more independent, like, we are going to win here. And so in the brief little research that I did, I figured out that your CRM is a heck of a lot more than just a database, if someone takes the time to figure it out. But it took me like, three and a half years to figure it out and develop systems for tasks and contacts in your in your sales pipeline, okay? And like, ultimately, it helped us achieve that goal and deliver, like a super high touch, personalized, wonderful client service experience far more efficiently. But it took me years and years and years to figure it out. And so, like our whole mission is, like we went through that painful process so that our clients don't have to.
Richard Walker 5:46
So that's gonna be my question. Does you taking three years to figure it out imply that it's hard, and therefore it's gonna take somebody else three years? You sort of answered it, but give me a better answer in terms of how you approach somebody and help them go faster to get past that three year market one year instead, or something.
Kate Guillen 6:02
It is hard. It's hard because you have to, like, adapt the system to make sense for your business. Like red tailed wealth box, they've got great training material available online. But what took me so long is it wasn't like a linear sequence telling me, hey, from start to finish, here's how you optimize this tool to run your business. It was like, okay, here's how they suggest you manage contacts. Here's how they suggest you manage tasks. And it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle that I had to, like, piece together. I did it wrong a lot of times I did it really inefficiently a lot of times, there's a lot of doing to undoing late nights, lots of tears, like just making terrible mistakes.
Richard Walker 6:48
Are you an entrepreneur by chance?
Kate Guillen 6:51
Exactly. So if that's why it takes so long. Also, I had a full time job. I was helping run a firm as the operations manager. I had other responsibilities other than just like deep diving into the CRM but there's just a lot to uncover there. Both of those CRMs do like a good job. I don't think either one of them are like a plus CRMs. I don't really think there is one on the market. I think both Redtail and Wealthbox do a very good job. But you have to get kind of creative with the systems to make them work for what you're trying to achieve. So manipulate them a little bit.
Richard Walker 7:30
Yeah. I mean, really, what you're saying is it's a tool set, and you have to know what you're trying to achieve in order to use the right tools in the right manner.
Kate Guillen 7:39
That's more succinct way of saying that. Yes, it took me a long time to figure that out, and just making a lot of terrible mistakes. And so yeah, now we have figured it out, and we've gotten really good at implementing the tool for firms, so we can do it a heck of a lot faster than someone trying to figure it out themselves.
Richard Walker 7:57
Yeah, so okay, I don't know a lot of people know this about me, because in the 2000s when we were building up Quik!, we built 35 data integrations. So it was every CRM out there, plus Excel and Outlook and text files, etc. We had Goldmine, we had Act, we had everything. And so I had this very common question people would ask Rich, what CRM do you recommend? What's the best CRM out there? And I had the same conclusion you had, which is, what is your business process? What are your needs? What are your requirements? How many users do you have? Etc, because there is no perfect solution that doesn't exist. It's just like there's no perfect clothing that fits.
You find some that work better than others. You hire a tailor to tailor it for you. So I think that's actually a really good way to look at it. In fact, I had a custom suit maker on this show, Rocky, and he was awesome, because he was like, the human body is not the same for everybody. Some people have broader shoulders. Some longer torsos, etc. And that's kind of what I think you're advocating, is that people have different needs, different approaches to how they do similar processes, and you're going in and helping them figure out how to use the tool to accomplish that. Is that right?
Kate Guillen 9:08
Oh yeah, absolutely. In order for the tool to do, like a lot of people come to us and say, we're just really unhappy with the CRM, or it just really isn't doing what we want it to do, and it's like, well, you have to put the love into it that it needs to, like, customize it and tailor it to your specific body type, or your practice, or the type of business that you run. So I think that's where people are maybe misled during the sales process, or just don't totally understand that the CRM is not a one size fits all thing, like you actually have to modify it and develop systems and processes that work for your practice.
Richard Walker 9:45
I think in my company, we use HubSpot as our CRM, and obviously we're a tech company, so we don't have the same processes as the one you're talking about with financial advisement. But I think there's this kind of turning point you hit after you first get the implementation of your CRM in. You start to use it, you start to ask, can it do this? Can it do that? And then you build those things, and you start to realize, wait a minute, this can do pretty much everything I can dream of. I'll give you an example. In our sales process, we have various stages, qualification, idea meeting, sandbox, proposal, negotiation, et cetera. We finally built a trigger that when we put somebody into the sandbox category, they've got an account, they're trying it out, it triggers an entirely different set of tickets and workflow.
So the customer success team goes from sales to CS, they start looking at it differently, like we got to manage the sandbox, we got to make sure somebody is using it and following through or turn it off. And now we've got this feedback, but it was triggered automatically. We didn't have that until a year ago, and we've been using HubSpot for five years. So I think that's also why it's hard, right?
Kate Guillen 10:50
Yeah, and I love that you brought that up, because, when I first started this business in 2020, 90% of the people that I spoke to on like, our initial consultation call we're like, hey, your story resonated. We're really only using the CRM as, like, a glorified Rolodex. How else should we be using it? That's what I used to hear. Okay, it's been almost five years now, and now what I'm hearing is like, okay, we know that it's more than a Rolodex. We're using it for contacts. We're using it for tasks. We got our calendar integrated. We're even, like, loosely using workflows, but like, how do we take it to the next level? And that's what people need. They need to learn how to use it to automate things. Because one of, like, the keys to getting adoption of new technology, especially something like your CRM for managing workflows and managing your business, has been automating things.
He was like, oh, my advisor, he's never going to use the CRM. It's just too much to ask of him. Like, well, if we make it really simple for him, there's no reason why he can't adopt the system. And they found that by using the CRM with, like, some triggering events to trigger workflows that tell the service team how to change a Benny, it just creates a really streamlined system. And that's kind of like the next level of getting the most out of your CRM tool.
Richard Walker 12:06
Yeah. So if you were to kind of describe this as stages, like, get a tool, start centering your business around it, create some customization that matches your needs. Then it's workflows, then it's automations. How would you structure that?
Kate Guillen 12:20
You nailed it. You're hired. So, you need to figure out which tool is best for you. Do a little pros and cons list, teach chart, evaluate the two tools. Do a little trial, see which one you like best. Like I said, I think they both do fine, I think. And I'm talking specifically about Redtail and Wealthbox. Those are the industry leading CRMs, and the two that I'm most familiar with, evaluate them. Figure which one you like best, get all your contacts into it, start doing some of the free training and things that are available on our website, on Wealthbox's website, RedTail's website, whatever you need to get clear like, in its simplest form, like we were talking about, the CRM is a database.
So in order for workflows and automations and integrations to be effective, the data has to be trustworthy, which means it needs to be clean, consistent, organized, all right? And so, like, I like to think of it as, like a contact hierarchy. Like, who are these contacts in your database? How should they be organized for reporting purposes. One of the reasons why we preach that your CRM should be the hub of your practice, so that you have a single place to find all of the things that you're looking for and make the data more accessible.
Richard Walker 13:33
One of the things we call that in tech, is a system of record. You just want one record, that's the master record. You don't want to replicate this data over and over and over again, and therefore you can create integrations and workflows, but keep going.
Kate Guillen 13:47
So yes, and I say source of truth, so data needs to be organized, clean and consistent. The next thing is, this is like the operational hub that I'm talking about is now your team. Everybody needs to be fully on board with utilizing the CRM for contacts, tasks, your sales pipeline, your calendar, your client accounts for reporting purposes. Okay? So that means, like, no more post it notes, no more legal pads. We're going to integrate our Outlook calendar. We're going to have a single calendar that's linked to our client's contact record, so we have a historical timeline in a single place of what has transpired in these client relationships. You can see where I'm getting at here. So there's like a transition period getting people out of like, slacking or DMing or texting or emailing when something needs to get done, and migrating all of that into the CRM, all right, and then figuring out, like, what are you doing often? How can we standardize communication y templating the heck out of it?
All right, creating like, activity and task templates. Okay, so once everybody is, like, off of the external places where you're going to manage all that stuff and everything is centralized, then the next two phases, I think, are really fun. And this is like the lovey dovey stuff, the soft stuff we were talking about. Figuring out your service experience, and this is how you get that ideal dream experience out of the business owner's head and documented in something as simple as, like a spreadsheet, just articulating like, who are these people that you serve? What are the services you provide, and what do you want this to feel like? Segmenting your book into like, four segments based on I took this from Michael Kitz, AUM, advocacy and attitude figure out. Like, what are the qualifying factors like AUM, obviously, and then the emotional component, when we evaluate these relationships, scale it down. You know, what does the Ritz Carlton experience look like versus like the tier four, the D experience? Like, how many times a year are we meeting with people? Are we celebrating birthdays? What does that feel like? What does that look like? Do we do client events?
You get what I'm getting at, but like, this is how we can, like, build out and like whiteboard our dream experience for the purpose of not only like documenting it so we have, like, clear standards for the team, but to take that and build out systems in your CRM to deliver those services proactively. I believe that amazing client service is highly personalized and proactive, and in an effort not to reinvent the wheel, every single time we go to like, acknowledge someone's birthday or schedule our annual reviews or whatever it is like, I want to build out systems with workflows and automations and email templates and calendar, online calendar tools like totally streamline that process. And once you have a clear vision of the services that you provide, we can use workflows to deliver those services at scale. Okay? And so workflow is like anything that's repeatable. And I say like anything that is done more than three times and has more than three steps, that's going to be our workflow.
And I talk to people and they're like, okay, yeah, I'm great. I've got, like, my standard operating procedures. I've got my checklist my team know, like how the review meeting flows, or like how we change a bending like, that's all great, but we need to centralize it in the CRM and use workflows to articulate, like, how we execute those various responsibilities.
Richard Walker 17:02
Which is also a form of accountability. It ensures you get the process done right. You finish all the steps. One of the things I learned in business is when something works, you need to keep doing it. And it's easy to forget it because you're trying something else. So you've got to document it and say, at this point in time, to do this in the stage of sales, or whatever this works. Keep doing that.
Kate Guillen 17:22
I love that you said that. I want to take you back up on that for a second, because people ask this all the time, like, hey, can I get your templated workflows? You just have, like, workflow templates I can have. And I'm like, yeah, sure, you can use these as baseline. But like, the best time to write a workflow is when you're in the thick of it. When you just processed, let's say someone passes away. Okay, that's a lengthy process to, like, update the accounts and update the custodian, update records, and just like, that is a lengthy process, and one that you want to do with confidence and empathy.
You don't want it to be like a Herky jerky, friction filled process, right? For obvious reasons, and so the next time someone passes away, is a good time to start documenting what went well, what didn't go well, and write your workflow to eliminate any nigos or eliminate any unnecessary back and forth or any friction that was part of that process, so that the next time that someone passes away, we have a very clean, fluid, empathetic process to follow.
Richard Walker 18:28
Hey, I'm totally cringing inside of the thought that one person on the team asked for the death certificate and saved it on their hard drive, didn't share it with anybody else, and somebody else had to ask for it again, and they're like, why are you asking me for this twice or three times? I mean, like the worst time in their lives. You don't need to be pushing them, pushing their buttons over and over again, right? So I want to summarize or distill down something that you were talking about with all these different stages of building out the workflows, etc. And it really comes back down to something that I believe, and I used to have this on my whiteboard in my old office, which was efficiency stems from good design.
And everything you described is about thinking through the design of the tool, the process, the people, the tech, all those things, the workflows, all the stages, and then taking that design and codifying it, putting it into a process, into a system that everybody can understand. And I think a lot of people, small business owners, especially, have to understand this. If you want to build your business beyond being dependent on you and you want to scale it, that's what you do. You sit down and think through the design of these steps, and then you put it into procedures that others can follow, and then, better than that, you empower them to improve upon it and make it even better.
So let's switch gears a little bit, because you're going into a company and helping them look at a tool set. But what about their people? Because doesn't that impact the client experience too?
Kate Guillen 19:53
Absolutely, and I'm so glad you brought this up, because you were talking about some of the benefits of workflows and the importance of empowering people. Just like workflows and processes, alone don't work. You actually have to get buy in and adoption. So in the workflow process, we need a very clear role delineation, right? We need to be very clear on the roles that our people fill. And what I have found is the best way to get adoption is to empower them in the decision making process. Have them part of that workflow, whiteboarding process, where we're like rough drafting the process, have the key people that are part of that involved in the conversation, to give them a sense of ownership. Give them a sense of pride in the process. I have found that to be beyond important in getting adoption of these systems. And I just want to touch on this.
Not only are workflows extremely helpful for delegating, for delivering service at scale, they're a huge confidence builder, both, like, internally, with your team. At least for me, like, when I walk into a job, I want to, like, do a really good job. I want to impress my boss. I want to go above and beyond what was expected of me. And that is very hard to do if there are unclear expectations, right? And so by having workflows in place really clarifies, like, hey, what is expected of me. How do I need to operate? And that confidence that I have now, because it's very clear to me, what I need to do is passed on to our clients. Our clients have so much confidence in us and our processes and know that they're going to be taken care of by whoever on our team, because it is very clear to them that we have guidelines and expectations in place to deliver this amazing experience.
Richard Walker 21:49
Yeah, so my mom, she had an enclosure built on her pool. It took two and a half years, in large part because the person that was doing the construction, the general contractor she really liked and trusted, handed her off to his assistant. Turns out to be his girlfriend, and she was terrible to work with, dropped the ball on everything, kept putting things back on my mom to solve instead, and yet, he was making the promises, and she was delivering the worst possible experience. And imagine if a financial advisement office did that because they didn't have their process together, they didn't have their data in the right place, and they didn't understand what's expected of them, right? And I really like that you framed it about expectations. Because, I mean, even yesterday, I was in a conversation with somebody who had a little bit of a tension, and I realized we just had mismatched expectations.
And so being clear on that is really amazing, and my team does the same with me. Like, Rich, what is the expectation of this? What is the time frame for this? Is this what you wanted us to be doing, or is this the right message, etc? And being able to have those moments to clarify that with your team is super important. But like you said, building a structure that does it automatically is amazing, because now they can build on that and grow and grow and grow in their roles. Right?
Kate Guillen 23:04
Absolutely. There's so much value to be taken from that. And we were talking about like, why does this take so long? Why did it take me three years to figure it out? Well, it's sitting down with the owner of the organization, letting him brain dump and really thinking through, like, what was an amazing client service experience that you have had. How can we replicate that in our business? How can we make everybody feel as special as we did the one time we stayed at RIT Carlton in New Orleans? I'll never forget. I'll never forget it was the most amazing experience of my life. And like, how can we take that feeling and make that happen in our advisory firm, right?
And so like we had to sit and we had to collaborate, and some of the clients that we work with have already done that brain dump. They already know what they wanted to feel like. They already know who their ideal client is. They already know who on their team should be doing what, because of their natural God given abilities. But some of the clients that we work with have no idea. They built these amazing businesses just doing what they're best at, being themselves. But they have no process for their client onboarding. They have no process for anything. And so we have to share with them like, hey, if I were you, here's what I would do. This is how we think other really successful people do this, let's take things that you like, things that we like, let's create your best practice.
So if people are going to go try to do this themselves, you got to give yourself a little bit of grace and know that this isn't like an overnight fix. This is not something like snap our fingers. Everybody's on board. Everybody's using workflows. We know what integrations we should be looking into and incorporating into our practice like you got to do it slowly and methodically. You don't completely overwhelm everybody.
Richard Walker 24:49
I think it's important to have that kind of idea in your head when you're approaching this problem, that this is not a fast turnaround problem. This is an evolutionary process, and you're going to keep adding value along the way? I mean, honestly, that's how software is built. We do what's called the minimum viable product, the very least amount of features needed to go to market, and then we add another feature, and then another feature. We launched with Redtail, then we added Wealthbox, then we added Salesforce. We didn't launch with all three. And I think it's important for people to hear that and understand it. But also, know, like, lifting weights or losing weight, it's a process, and it takes time, and you're going to build it the right way, doing it the right way.
Kate Guillen 25:27
Yeah, oh, I'm so glad you said that. And it goes back to what you were saying. You had a conversation this week, there's a little bit of friction. It was because there were unclear expectations. I learned that over and over and over again, yeah, the more that we can set expectations, the better off everybody's going to be. So anybody that's trying to do this or improve operations, just in general, needs to know that it's not an easy task, and you need to give yourself a little bit of grace and allow yourself to make some mistakes.
Richard Walker 25:56
So you've hinted at a few things in what you've talked about today, and I want to bring some openness to this hint, which is that all of this is to improve how the team operates. Yes. And what is the impact on the client then, like, how does that translate to client experience being better? And what does it mean to the team as a result of that better experience of the client that circle? What is that like?
Kate Guillen 26:19
Yeah, I'm so glad you brought this up, because I were saying this earlier today. This keeps coming up like the client is number one, right? It is our number one mission to serve and exceed the expectations of our clients. Okay, deliver an amazing, personalized experience, and I believe that the way you do that is by empowering a wonderful team of advisors and service people to deliver that experience, which starts with empowering them, giving them the skill set, giving them the framework, giving them the systems to be able to deliver that experience, giving them the confidence that they need to deliver that amazing experience, because that confidence is the trickle-down effect.
And when you deliver an amazing experience, your clients feel it. They tell other people about it. It just has a complete snowball effect, but it starts and ends with everybody believing in the same mission. The client experience is the first and foremost, most important thing, even before investments, even before portfolio management, even before anything else, our people come first and then that empowering and taking care of our advisors and administrative team is the only way that that works.
Richard Walker 27:40
So I want to add to this, and I've learned this through the podcast, by the way, talking to others, which is, you have to deliver an excellent experience for your own team if you want them to deliver a great experience for your client. I mean, think about this. You've been to the DMV right, who works at the DMV and likes that job? Because apparently, the way they treat us as customers, they don't like their job, and how much paperwork, how many stamps, how many staples, how much filing, copies, et cetera. It's such an arduous, tedious, boring job that they couldn't possibly thoroughly enjoy it and therefore give great service.
As a result, I'm going to tell you, being in Texas, I feel differently about the DMV here, the people are amazing versus the California DMV. I know you're in California, but I've lived there, but I mean seriously, if you don't like your job, you don't like the tasks you have to do, how are you expecting that person to give great service and great energy to your client?
Kate Guillen 28:35
It's a direct reflection of what they've been given and what I've been learning in my own business and partnering with other advisors is, if you want your team to pour into your clients, you must pour into your team. If you want your team to know your clients, spouses, names, kids, names, parents, names, dog names, hobbies, interests and like, go deep with these people, you better damn well know the same thing about your team.
Richard Walker 29:03
Nice. I like that. I like that. You're right. There's something else I kind of say to people about behaviors, and I kind of use a crass analogy. If you want to stop using swear words and cursing outside in the public, you have to stop swearing at home. You can't expect to have it in one place and not the other, right? It has to be the same truth everywhere. But you're also really pointing to something that I think should be part of company culture, which is to make sure your employees are happier. And if they're happier in what they do, I think they end up doing their best work. If they're doing their best work, you get the best results possible if you're empowering them to do their best work.
They're happy, fulfilled and want to stay there, and what's the result to the client, they feel like they're getting the best of the people they work with, even when there's a mistake right now, they know I trust them. They're going to do a good job even if they made the mistake, they're going to be accountable to it and come back and say, we're sorry we misfiled it, we didn't do it on time, whatever, and they're going to make it right because they care.
Kate Guillen 30:07
Yeah, there's more grace given because there's a there's a personal relationship that's been built because the team genuinely enjoys coming to work. So the clients genuinely enjoy coming to work with the team. Like, same thing we're talking about with the DMV. You know, if when those people show up with like, oh, what was me? I work at the DMV, attitude, you show up with a, what was me? I've got to come to the DMV. Like, there's the law of attraction.
Richard Walker 30:34
Exactly, exactly. Kate, we're gonna have to wrap this up. I really enjoy talking to you. And I have another question, but before I get there, what's the best way for people to connect and find with you, or find and connect with you?
Kate Guillen 30:46
Yeah, no good question. Our website, obviously it's simplicityopperations.com, if you want to take a deep dive into your business, I'd be happy to talk with you. You can book a call on our website. There's also a link on our website to join our free community of RIA owners and operators, we can all get together and collaborate together and solve the operational efficient, issues affecting the industry, or on LinkedIn search my name, Kate Guillen, I'd love to connect with anybody who wants to geek out on ops like I do.
Richard Walker 31:15
Is your community free? Does there anybody have a feeling like, oh, I can't join because I don't want to pay for something or be part of it.
Kate Guillen 31:22
It's free. Yeah, I believe deeply in giving away absolutely everything for free and charging for implementation. So if you've got questions, I'm an open book.
Richard Walker 31:30
That is awesome. I love that attitude. This actually goes back to something else I've learned, that you have to love your customer if you want to give them the great experience. And it's so obvious you love your customer.
Kate Guillen 31:41
Yeah, well, and I just remember being in their shoes, and having to try to figure this out myself, because I didn't have resources like, me five years later, 10 years later, available. So I would love to help anybody trying to figure this thing out.
Richard Walker 31:54
Nice. All right, here's my last question. Who has been a big inspiration to you and your business?
Kate Guillen 32:00
Yeah, I love this question. I would say recently, I think Stephanie Bogan, the content she's been putting out, the message that she has been delivering, is just really hit home and really resonated. And she has been an inspiration for years, but most recently, man, I just think her content is hitting home. So shout out.
Richard Walker 32:18
That's awesome. What's her content about?
Kate Guillen 32:22
Leverage.
Richard Walker 32:24
Leveraging other people's time?
Kate Guillen 32:25
Time resources, people money, being more confident in delivering your message, being firm on your price, knowing your value, it's all good stuff.
Richard Walker 32:39
Oh, I have to look her up. That is a great recommendation. Thank you. You're very welcome. All right. I want to give a huge thank you to Kate Guillen, founder of Simplicity Ops, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Kate's website at simplicityoperations.com and don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the Like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Thank you so much for joining me today, Kate,
Kate Guillen 33:09
Thank you so much for having me Rich. I appreciate it.
Outro 33:13
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