Exploring Operational Excellence

Episode 149

Are your life and business chaotic? Maybe your business is out of hand because you haven’t aligned it with your life. If you are torn between a job and your wellness, this episode is for you!

Gwendolyn Young is the founder and CEO of Your Virtual Admin Expert, a results-driven agency of professional administrative problem solvers. She and her team help you replace overwhelm with operational excellence and ease. Gwendolyn works with multiple six-figure and seven-figure business owners who are coaches, consultants, and micro businesses and help them stay in their zone of genius by managing their entire backend operations. She loves what she gets to do because she helps entrepreneurs scale sooner. They focus on what they can do and let go of all the other tasks.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the complete episode:

1. 1. You will learn more about how an autoimmune disorder helped Gwendolyn get started on her entrepreneurial journey.
   2. Gwendolyn explains how she helps businesses virtually.
   3. Find out how you can use assessments to improve yourself and your team. 
      
      

Episode Highlights

Who is Gwendolyn Young

• • Gwendolyn is the founder and CEO of Your Virtual Admin Expert, a results-driven agency of professional administrative problem solvers.
  • Gwendolyn is a secret weapon for getting you out of the weeds in your business and back into what you love so that you can focus on growth, innovation, and profits. 
  • In 2013, she was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus and had to retire from her corporate job. 
  • She transformed her life and business, and today she’s a business operations expert who gets excited about everything on the back of your business. 

How Gwendolyn got started

• • She had no desire to be an entrepreneur. 
  • She was in corporate America, loved her job, and would be the girl who rose the corporate ladder.
  • Gwendolyn had to step back and focus on her health and recovery. 

Systemic Lupus in Gwendolyn’s life

• • While on vacation in Florida, she had no energy to do anything and slept the entire vacation.
  • A year later, she got up one morning to go to work, and her body would not move, and she knew something was wrong.
  • After going to her doctor, the doctor called her and told her to see a rheumatologist.

What made Gwendolyn realize she couldn’t go back to her old job

• • After her diagnosis, her manager called to talk about work but had not asked how she was doing.
  • Gwendolyn decided she would not be asking for permission to take care of herself.
  • Her business has allowed her to care for herself while still working and doing what she loves.

The pillars of Gwendolyn’s confidence

• • Her number one support is her faith.
  • Her husband has fully supported her, doing whatever she needs to care for her health. 
  • Gwendolyn was already dabbling in entrepreneurship as she and her mom had started a nonprofit foundation.

The scariest parts of running her own business

• • She asked herself where she would find people who wanted to work with her.
  • Gwendolyn wondered if business owners would even trust her with everything on the internet.
  • She was anxious about finding clients and making enough money to replace her income.

Getting into business operations

• • Taking on her role in her business was organic because she was in administration and operations in her corporate career. 
  • Gwendolyn had experience in everything from executive support to chief nursing officers to administrative supervisors and managing three ambulatory care centers.
  • She worked with physicians, doctors, medical records, and front desk staff. Overseeing all this is where her love for operations came into play.

Understanding the Myers Briggs

• • Gwendolyn is an ESTJ, and her rocket fuel is being an Integrator.
  • Her Myers Briggs Personality confirmed what she already knew about herself.
  • It helped her understand how to communicate with her team and helped them understand how to communicate with her.

Understanding the Kolbe

• • Gwendolyn’s Kolbe results gave her insight into how she makes decisions and operates.
  • She felt empowered and realized she wasn’t broken.
  • They helped her with her team because she realized she was also looking for people who were a lot like her, which isn’t ideal in business.

Being an executer 

• • Gwendolyn takes a big idea and can chunk it down into phases of how it needs to be done and make sure that it becomes a reality.
  • She can also push back on her clients to remind them of all the other great ideas they had before the 95th great idea and why it may not be the time to do it right now.
  • As a harmonizer, she is the person who maintains harmony among the different pieces that are happening in your business.

The top area of a business Gwendolyn has to harmonize

• • First, she looks at your processes to understand why you have chaos and where your chaos is.
  • If you don’t have processes, she helps you create them. 
  • She then assesses your systems and enables you to get those in order. 

Working with a client virtually

• • The first step is to have an intake call to determine the top priorities for the first 90 days.
  • Each client has a project manager and project management system.
  • The clients don’t know the teams are in separate locations because they communicate through the same email servers. 

Leading Behind the Scene

• • Leading Behind the Scene is your weekly dose of inspiration to help equip you to excel in business and life.
  • If the business owner isn’t well, the business isn’t, and Gwendolyn wants to talk about that because nobody’s talking about it. 
  • She interviews small businesses and entrepreneurs who are not necessarily influencers or big companies, but they’re doing amazing things on their level.

What Gwendolyn would like to be remembered for

• • Gwendolyn wants to be remembered for making an impact in someone’s life. Whether making a business easier or making someone’s life more fun, she wants to add some joy to the world. 
    
    

3 Powerful Quotes from this Episode

19:34 – “I have no idea how this will work, but I’m about to test it and see.“

20:50 – “That’s where my love for operations came in because I knew if we don’t all get it right and do our part and make sure this is as seamless as possible, it’s the patient that’s going to suffer in the end. Nothing else matters.”

42:59– “If I’m not well, the business isn’t well, and I want to talk about some of that stuff because nobody’s talking about it.“

About Gwendolyn Young

Gwendolyn is a Business Operations Expert who gets super excited about everything in the backend of your business. In 2013, she was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus and had to retire from her corporate job. 

Since then, she and her team have helped dozens of professional service providers, coaches, and consultants with everything from calendar management, client onboarding, speaker management, social media management, systems implementation, billing & invoicing, and so on. Operations, it’s their jam!

She is recognized as one of the most influential women in business by the Daily Herald Business Ledger in partnership with the National Association of Women Business Owners – Chicago Chapter and the Women’s Innovation Network. Gwendolyn also received the Elizabeth Timpton’s Girls Mentoring Award for her work in the community by Passages Alternative Living, Inc. She was one of twenty emerging leaders in the US selected as the recipient of the 2012 Judith O’Connor Scholar Award for Emerging Nonprofit Leaders by BoardSource.

Connect with Gwendolyn Young

Website

Schedule a call!

LinkedIn

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Thanks for listening,

Darrell