We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brooke Scott. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brooke below.
Brooke, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?
When I first got started, the fear of the unknown is what really held me back from taking any sort of next steps whether that was deciding to take on a new client, raising my prices, or investing in my business (platforms, systems, or professional development). I ran my business under a lot more stress than I could have for the first nine months because I was too scared to take the leap into things full time. I held myself back in the first year and a half of business because I took so long to take that next step out of fear. So, if I were to start over, I would lead with confidence and let that fear guide me. I am where I am today because of finally letting that energy guide my flow. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in entrepreneurship it’s that when those moments of fear or hesitation come up, it’s usually an indicator of change and how you approach change is how you will handle it actually happening. While there are times when change isn’t ideal, more often than not it’s a sign of upcoming shifts and growth. Anything that is worth it, wouldn’t be scary. So, I would tell myself that it’s okay to embrace that change and be comfortable with change, because that’s the one thing in between you and the next level.
Brooke, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m Brooke Scott, COO, Integrator & Online Business Owner. I serve women entrepreneurs, coaches, course creators, consultants, and women owned agencies across various industries in the online space by creating the swoon-worthy, efficient business systems and processes of their dreams. Long story short, I manage my clients internal and external operations in their business so that they can get back to operating in their zone of genius and get out of the overwhelm that is keeping them from doing what they love.
My mission is to help my clients optimize and restore their business operations foundation without wasting time and money. My approach to completing projects is centered around lean fundamentals and the overall goal to keep things streamlined from A to Z while cutting out wasted steps so that everything that is happening, is adding value to the process.
My clients typically come to me looking for help streamlining their business operations or to help clean up, fix, audit, and automate the processes that once served them, but now after they have scaled their business, no longer serve them. In this period of time they have rapidly grown their business and their team and aren’t in the position to pause what they have going on now to troubleshoot and repair what is happening behind the scenes. The cost of halting their operations to fix it is much greater and that’s where I step in.
I got started in the online space in September of 2020 and began my entrepreneurial journey as a virtual assistant. Over the course of the last near 3 years in business, I’ve expanded my business and transitioned into and out of various roles: from a virtual assistant to an online business manager, a launch manager, a funnel specialist, an operations manager, and now a COO and integrator (or an operations and integration specialist). While it may seem like hopping around from one role to the next, it was actually a quick but smooth period of growth from mastering one focus to wanting to learn and develop skills in other areas that complimented each other. I think that most entrepreneurs struggle with that definition of what they are, what they do and what “title” can express that, and I’ve definitely experienced that to where I wasn’t sure at times. But, I knew that in entrepreneurship that I can sit with whatever definition or “title” and gauge how that feels and is aligned to what I actually do. From my first day until now, I’ve truly leaned into allowing the flow guide me in finding where I’m truly aligned, and I’m happy to say that I feel more aligned in what I do each day. With that being said, the “title” of things changed over the course of the time in my business but the way I showed up and provided service to my clients only grew while leaning into those “titles”. What I call myself now is the most aligned with what I do because it encompasses all the titles in one.
After finishing college with a bachelors degree in finance and a masters degree in business administration in 2019, the moment I found this world and the possibilities that came with it, I knew that I was in the right place. Now, 4 years later I’ve grown from being a solo part-time entrepreneur (while still full-time in the corporate world) to running a business full-time at home, bringing my husband on the team full-time, and recently hiring our first contractor to start expanding the business in more ways. It’s been a rollercoaster of success and failures but the most rewarding journey.
I’m most proud of what I’ve accomplished to get to where I am now. I don’t think I would be in this position without really getting in tune with how I show up as a person outside of entrepreneurship. One thing that really helped me be able to grow, change, shift, and succeed in business was taking various personality assessments. You see these different assessments you can take and they give you the answer that matches up with how you answered things but I think most people stop there. At first I took them and was like, “Cool. So what?”, like it was “neat” to know but I didn’t know how that could impact me. Once I started talking to other entrepreneurs, I realized how much it played a part of knowing how you’re hard wired to show up. Once you take the time to explore those results you can start gaining deeper insight about your work style and strengths in a way that can help you perform better. Taking various personality assessments helped me better understand my natural inclinations and abilities, allowing me to bring my best self to the table when collaborating with clients. Exploring the personality types of others is not only fascinating but also provides valuable insight into how that person is hardwired to show up. Understanding their personality type can help you gauge your compatibility and build stronger relationships. (Some personality assessments I recommend to help you start understanding these things are: Gallup CliftonStrengths, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), The Enneagram, and The Kolbe Index.)
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Jumping into entrepreneurship, I thought it was going to be more black-and-white and structured like the corporate world. When you’re in a corporate setting there really isn’t much flexibility to what you do, where you physically work, what times you work, what you wear, and who you work with, all the way to the way you do things, being able to implement something new or not and even making real change. One of the hardest lessons for me was unlearning that. I wasn’t unlearning all the skills I developed over the time in the corporate world, but unlearning the toxic hustle culture and negative connotations that came with “working” in general.
In my time in the corporate world I was a young woman in college and in between getting a second degree. Once I got to the level I thought I wanted as my long-term career during that time (after working in the same industry since I was 19), for some reason I thought it would be “more” than it was or feel more successful in general. But what I experienced was it was just a higher role title in a place that didn’t support change, didn’t listen or address concerns, and didn’t encourage a productive environment. Especially being a young woman in grad school at the time, I wasn’t taken seriously in the role where everyone else at the level was in their late 30s and older. It didn’t take me long to have the realization that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I wanted to be happy and enjoy my life. We spend most of our lives working and I didn’t want to be stuck in that same place.
With that being said, jumping into entrepreneurship was challenging because I had to unlearn those habits of: things being by the book or you’re punished, punctuality and time requirements that is tied to what it perceived as your performance, and the never ending repetitive cycle that didn’t encourage anything of actual benefit. It was absolutely hard to get out of those habits but once I realized that all of those things so negatively tied to whether you are a good employee or not, are just reasons for management to scold you and hold money over your head and didn’t actually have anything to do with performance, I started understanding what things actually did matter. And as an entrepreneur I can focus on what actually matters for my business and my clients without focusing so heavily on what I wear, or if I started work 3 minutes late. The moment I started focusing on the things that made me individually show up better (like the personality assessments or a specific morning routine) was the moment my business started to take off. Because I was showing up happy and as the best me.
The beauty of the entrepreneurial world is that you’re allowed to make those shifts, operate a life-first business, and redefine success for yourself. The moment I let go of the corporate world and stress that came with it was the first time I felt space and ease and found it possible to actually enjoy what I do for a living. We only live once, so why not do it while chasing what you love in a way that feels good to you?
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
This is one of the things that can hold people back from becoming an entrepreneur. Figuring out where your clients will come from and then being able to convert them into a client in general. When I first started out in my business, I was fortunate enough to be in a program that helped me get started as an entrepreneur and came with a source of leads who were actively looking for people like me to help them. After getting my first couple of clients from that source and since leaving that container that provided those leads, I was terrified that I wouldn’t know what to do about getting clients moving forward and didn’t know if I needed to result to advertising or how I would secure that next person.
What actually came from that was referrals. Over the course of my business, I’m very happy to say the majority of my clients come from referrals of past clients or colleagues of mine in the online space. The most effective strategy for growing my client base has been creating those relationships with clients and those who are like minded around me. It’s one of those other things that I’ve had to unlearn from the corporate world. I don’t just wake up and work with these people and clock out and go about my life. These people are my life. I make friendships with them. I talk about their family and get to know them on a personal level. Nurturing those relationships and focusing my life-first business on treating clients like actual humans who have actual lives outside of “work” has been the tether to amazing transformational relationships who refer others to me for that relationship we had and for the work we did. You can 100% hire someone for cheap to “just get something done.” But, I focus on getting it done while caring and making a difference larger than just completing a task.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.agencytwentythree.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ops.analyst.brooke/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ops.analyst.brooke/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookeascott/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/opsanalystmba
Image Credits
Haley D. Photography