People-First Operations Powers World-Changing Work with Veronica Yanhs

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick, and I’m delighted to have a very wonderful person here with me, Veronica Yanhs. Veronica  Yanhs brings her whole unapologetic self to business.

She’s the founder of Business Laid Bare, and the creator of Orgasmic Operations Method, where she helps mission-driven businesses and nonprofits, design people first operations that power the world changing work they’re here to make. Through her work, Veronica and her team build systems that feel good to use, run with integrity and replace duct tape backends with operations that can actually support big missions so leaders can stop being the bottleneck and focus on building the world they want to live in.

The topic today is how operations power world changing work. Veronica, it is so awesome to have you here. 

Veronica Yanhs: Thank you so much for having me.

I have to say, listening to you, read, my bio I got some, the hairs kind of stood up on the back of my neck and I’m going, I, first of all I wrote that and second of all, it really does affirm why I am here doing the work that I do.

So it’s just such an interesting experience to hear this repeated back. So thank you so much for having me. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, I’m delighted. So we have not known each other long. We met a couple weeks ago at an event where you were speaking, with the benefit corporations for good.

And I was just delighted and enthralled, so I’m so glad that you are here with operations, which I understand and I’ve always, I like business as a left brain person, the creativity of it, and I know the necessity of good operations and good finance and things like that. And I’ll always thought of it as a dry topic and then I met you.

So we, this is not a dry topic at all. This is, gonna be fun and also super important. So tell us a little bit about your journey and what values and what insights led you actually to create business Laid bare, which is a great name by the way. 

Veronica Yanhs: Thank you. And I guess I should put this disclaimer out there.

Perhaps this might be an episode you listeners want to put in some earbuds on, if this is important to you, because we want to make sure that there is consent, enthusiastic consent in terms of the conversation that we’re about to have, not because business operations is anything risque or scandalous, but my branding, if this is the first time we’re meeting, my branding is very sex and kink positive.

And so I just wanna make sure that this is front and center. I’m not here to hide who I am, but sometimes people might not be ready. Or you might be in a public location and you might not be ready to share the side of you who knows, right? So I’m just putting this disclaimer out there. So back to what you were asking Kim.

My story is quite interesting. I’m not supposed to be here having this conversation with you. And I say this because I was supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a CPA, something with a path. So I am Chinese. I was the first generation to be born here in the States. And so my. Parents and extended family immigrated to Oregon in 19, I think 81, maybe 1980.

And so this journey has been very much about honoring who I am. And it’s such a weird and cliche thing to say, but the reason why I say this is because in the Asian culture there’s a lot of expectations and a lot of obligations. And the parents want what’s best for you. And I know that they do it with what they know, generational trauma and all like they do the best they can and I ultimately know they’re coming from a good place.

And sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know. So my journey from a kid to college where I absolutely deviated from the plan, the master plan to even doing what it is I’m doing now has very much about been honoring. Who I want to be. And not only that, but who I’m meant to be. So that for me, I can leave this world a better place just a little bit than how I found it.

And that’s been my calling.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Wow that’s beautiful to think about and thank you for sharing that. And in deviation what led you into business and operations specifically? 

Veronica Yanhs: It all started when I was in college. So I went to Stanford because it was the best decision for me at that time. And I joined the pre-med program.

This was years ago. I’m not freshly graduated by any means, but it all started back when I basically had my worldview just expanded because. You grow up in a neighborhood or a city or a community that is either really homogenous or you are limited to how much your worldview can expand even though the opportunities are there.

But if you can’t get to those opportunities or your family, like for instance, my family had such a tight lid on everything that I did. This is normal for Asian cultures. It’s like you don’t know what you don’t know. So I realized that as I was watching a surgery happen, and don’t get me wrong, I still think this is awesome and stuff.

When I was watching a really simple procedure, like I got to stand really close to someone’s bicep muscle being repaired in real time. What was interesting to me was that I remember in the operating room, I kept watching how much. The plastic waste was piling up in the trash bin, like that giant 55 gallon type trash bin to the side.

And as someone that was born and raised in Oregon, environmental considerations are really important. And so the fact that I was just so enamored with how much trash was being accumulated, I knew that something wasn’t right. It was really scary. And so it led me to question a lot about my identity and what it is that I wanted, and was I truly happy and fulfilled and satisfied?

And I realized that while environmental studies was a better next step from pre-med, it wasn’t my calling. And so I took leap and. The reason why I’m pausing is ’cause I’m just being drawn back to all the emotions of confusion, of feeling, a failure of shame, of like letting down my family.

And I went, oh hey, what is product design? No idea, right? Because I’m so focused on engineering, medical school, being a lawyer. So product design was something in the arts and creative side that we didn’t talk about growing up because it was not useful. And I am so glad that I discovered the product design department because I was then able to not only utilize the skills that I was meant to utilize because this was not something that was.

Supported when I was a kid, like, creative outlets and creativity was never there. And so when I joined the product design department, I also realized that it was not everything that I wanted either because there was also not environmental considerations made. So I ended up creating my own major at Stanford that combined product design, civil and environmental engineering, and like business and management.

But the major at Stanford was called Management, science and engineering. And so it basically allowed me to create the major that was the triple bottom line without me knowing it, balancing people, planet, and profit. And it was completely accidental. But I knew that that’s how my brain was.

It’s like I can’t just be in one category. I have to be like a twister board where I have all of my limbs touching the things that are important because I deem it so, and that’s how my brain works. It’s like a spider web. It’s like a mesh. And so to be able to create products and solutions that also cared and had environmental considerations of where the material was being sourced from to even end of life because things inevitably end up in the landfill, was important to me as well as if I’m gonna be designing things, I wanted to make some money from it.

So having some business management skill sets added into myself, created curriculum, made so much sense. And I remember the dean of engineering going, we have 144 majors for you to choose from. Why can’t you pick one? And we have a reputation to protect. So if you do go down this route. Stanford, they have a large, very large endowment, so I understand he’s protecting the institution.

He’s like, if you do go down this route, most likely, your major request will be declined. And I still, something about that just made me go forth anyways. Despite everybody telling me that I was throwing away my college career and education and time and money and all that stuff, something within me just kept saying, keep going, keep going.

And so shockingly, to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, it was approved in 10 calendar days, not 10 months. So clearly I had a really compelling reason right. To do this. And I got all the advisors on board. I had three advisors from three different departments. I had my curriculum because, he specifically was like, I do not want you basically majoring in underwater basket weaving.

We have a reputation to protect. That’s fair. And yeah, making the most out of that education for me meant that I had to create my own path, do things my way. And when I graduated, it was such an interesting full circle moment where I went, oh, wow. Ever since I was little, even up until college, what I realized was that I was listening to every voice, but the one that mattered, and that would be my voice. So it was a really affirming moment for me that I needed to go through life doing things my way and to honor the goodness that everyone’s intentions had for me.

Whether it be in the institution, your family, your community. It doesn’t matter, but it’s like at the end of the day, what do I want from all this? Because I’m the one that has to live my life and look myself in the mirror. So that is why I dialed it back all the way to college because that influenced why I decided to start my own business.

Because through my education, through the connections that I made, the networking and consulting, I ended up landing some pretty fun gigs with Apple and Nike on the operations consulting side. And I realized that I wasn’t just good enough anymore to make money. It wasn’t as fulfilling. So I thought to myself, how can I make a difference?

How can I work for myself, create my own schedule, and also make a difference to the types of organizations for or nonprofit that I want to make a difference for? And the only answer was to start my own thing. So it happened two months before the world shut down. I started my business January of 2020.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Spectacular timing. You didn’t know a couple months before everything started closing. What a story. And it, it resonates with me and probably so many people who are listening who have been given a path or expectations on these things and have not created their own thing. And where’s their happiness and where is, where are those feelings?

I think that speaks, it’s gonna speak to a lot of people and what a wonderful way to look at it as well. And you and I have something in common, which is ex exposure to medicine. And I worked in medicine and also in awe. Absolutely love it. And absolutely appalled by the way. There is such an incredible amount of ways and yes, sterility is very important.

That’s part of the reason. But who knows? Maybe we can. Think about designs to help change that, but I love your story and what you’re doing and the happiness shows on your face too. I think being able to fulfill a life that, that it’s created the way you see your value and the way you can contribute and it can make such a difference.

And maybe that’s why it, I love having you here too. It’s on your face and it’s so much, you’re such a joy to be with. So what are some of the problems you see and, what kind of solutions come to your mind or that you’re creating for your work and the people around you? 

Veronica Yanhs: Yeah. And I feel like I should talk a little bit about my business to answer that question.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes, 

Veronica Yanhs: indeed. When I think about the problems that are happening in our world, it feels so massive. It’s like I’m one person. It’s really intimidating because for me, integrity is one of my top core values. And to me, integrity is about doing the right thing, whatever that means for that person. And so I started this business because I wanted to help more people and help the types of clients that I wanted to work with.

I call them impact driven or mission driven, like you are creating this or running this organization or business because you want to leave the world a better place as well. And so what I learned from my product design days as a student was that the ideas are plentiful. The what’s? Why’s like why you wanna do something?

Why does this business or nonprofit exist? Easy. Very easy to answer the what’s. These are the goals, the missions, the vision, the values also easy. But what I noticed was that the how, bringing those ideas to life, bringing that mission statement to life, like actualizing the mission statement or the goals that you’ve set to make a difference in your community, was the bottleneck and is very much so the bottleneck to this day.

And so this is where operations comes in. Operations at the end of the day, when you strip down all the terms and the industry standard jargons and all that stuff, it’s really just the how. How your business takes action via the people, the software, the customers, the clients, the stakeholders, the board members.

The volunteers, it’s about how, or even, yeah, the automations, like if I didn’t call that one out, that’s important because action is what moves the work forward. You can’t wish your mission statement into reality. You can’t will it? Sure you can pay other people to do it, but again, that still requires action on people’s parts.

And so operations for me is about how do we take something from idea to reality in the most, for me, human-centric and pleasurable way. So this is where my education from Stanford has come in really well. We learn about how to design for people. Stanford’s really well known for their human centric design concept.

Meaning, yes, the engineers are, say responsible for when you’re driving a car. They’re responsible for making sure that the engine works and those things connect. But what I learned about product design was that product design pretty much stopped, and engineering started with what people stopped being able to see and feel, touch, and interact with.

So I think the steering wheel, the dashboard, how the seatbelt clicks, the sounds that they hear when they open the car door, is everything is designed, everything is intentional. Like I’ve seen documentaries where BMW spends so much time perfecting the door sound even, or the dinging sounds like none of this is accidental.

And so for me, I learned a lot about human-centered design. And then when I went to consult for Apple, Nike. All the business like this was before I started my business. What I noticed was that operations was very much still an afterthought or something organizations checked off or something that was just so arbitrary that we’ll hear lots of solopreneurs or small teams go, we’re too small for operations, so we don’t even think about it.

We’re so focused on our sales and marketing, and so for me, when you can make operations infused with your core values and humanity, because we are not robots, we’re multifaceted, complex, ever evolving, emotional being, so why not have our operations again, the how the engine that makes us go or the organizations go be the same.

So when something feels good, when there is pleasure involved, not only. Is it more likely to be sustainable? You’re gonna stick with it. It’s gonna feel like second nature, it’s like the back of your hand. So this is where efficiency naturally comes in. So you hear things like streamlining and efficiency and all that stuff, right?

That’s important, don’t get me wrong. And it has financial ramifications as well as emotional, like human ramifications about burnout and whatnot. So when things are people first and pleasure filled, that’s how I like to say it. It means that we’ve honored the people that are going to be actualizing these statements and systems so that it is sustainable and there is a sense of longevity infused in it.

And when people are taken care of, they’re not just here for a paycheck. And all of this just benefits the mission statement at the end, or the impact statement or the desire because it is easier for you to keep something up. Do the thing if it feels like the back of your hand and it feels natural and that we have honored how the people needed to build whatever it is, systems or the operations that they needed so that we can actually see the world change for the better.

Because if you one nightstand your operations, if you just check off the operational box that you quote unquote looked at your operations, that mission statement is not going to hold. Like lasting and meaningful change does take time. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, I concur with you so much. And do you get a sense that people may not even understand what the word operations means, even though it’s a common word, but it’s to each person.

It may have a different, they may have a different perception. 

Veronica Yanhs: Absolutely. So it, I feel like operations is the middle child. So to go back to your original question, which I’m so good at side questing, this is, it’s this work I see all. This is the work that I see that needs what I do and what informs my work.

Because there’s a lot of good people and organizations out there that want to leave the world a better place. Their whys and their what’s are so strong. This is where business laid bare comes in. This is where I know that I am meant to change the world with this business by helping our clients change the world and however it is that they’re looking to change the world.

So little bits add up at a time. So that then answers your question. It leads your question really nicely. Because it is such a foreign topic. Operations, I feel like we’re the middle child. Like when I talk about. What, well, what middle child, like, what are we comparing ourselves to? The other children in the family, our sales, marketing, branding, building a team, having good product market fit, go to market strategy.

Don’t get me wrong, these are all important, but the glue that holds it all together is your operations. You can think of it as like your nervous system in a way, like your body’s central nervous system where at least, let me give you an example about like how I see this and tell me if this makes sense to you.

Say, I kink my neck because I slept on my stomach and I’m not supposed to sleep on my stomach. Well, that pain in my neck oftentimes refers to the other side. So if I kink the left side of my neck, I often feel pain on my right shoulder or sometimes even down to my hip. And. This referral pain can then lead to migraines, lack of sleep, irritability, like it just all ripples, right?

Because one part of your nervous your body’s muscles and central nervous system is jammed or bottleneck. So if you look at business the same way, like if you’re so focused on sales and marketing, because that’s what brings in the money, that’s what everyone loves to do, right? That’s one of the main goals.

More profit, more revenue a higher paycheck for you, your team, or benefits. It all revolves around money, but yet if you’re so focused on money and you spend so much money bringing in new clients and customers or whatever it is you need, and you don’t have the support, your op, the operational support to actually handle all of that, it’s only going to backfire and exacerbate and you can’t keep.

Building the plane as you’re flying it and figure it out. Because if you’re already problematic as a small team, you can never out hire or out earn bad operations. It’s only going to exacerbate and be multiplied. So this is where operational education comes in. Like I am learning that people don’t pay attention to operations.

’cause it’s almost like there’s this stereotype of either you should already know it or it’s so boring, you just, it’s not even helpful. And so to go back to the analogy of the neck and the referral pain it’s the same concept. Say you get a new client or customer and then your onboarding experience isn’t as great.

Whether you’re selling a product or selling a service, it doesn’t matter, right? It’s their first interaction with you after they’ve given you money. High stakes. And if your onboarding experience isn’t good. That’s gonna refer pain elsewhere in your business because it means that not only were you inefficient and losing money, the experience wasn’t good.

And so then if the experience is not good, the likelihood of your new client or customer singing you praises to their friends, their colleagues, their family, doesn’t matter, will diminish. And so it all is this ripple effect because one area of your business was kinked, but then it often plays into multiple areas because your operations touches everything.

That’s literally what operations means. Like when you hear phrases like marketing operations or people operations or revenue operations, there’s a lot of words. And then the word operations after it, the word that the operations is tied to is really about the what, right? People or marketing. Revenue operations.

If revenue is the topic, operations is what makes the desire the strategy. The what on the revenue side come to life. So you need both. Everything is operations. ’cause operations is the how. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That makes so much sense. And do you find sometimes that people don’t realize how much money they’re losing through inefficiency?

They just it’s not easy to quantify. 

Veronica Yanhs: We can quantify it. Yeah. It’s, can I share a study? 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes, please. 

Veronica Yanhs: Okay. So the Project Management Institute, this is the PMI for short. In 2018, they ran a study on, I think it’s been a while since I looked at this. I think Fortune 1000 companies. So they’re pretty big.

Right. 1000 largest companies in the United States, they found that about 30% on average of the businesses’ top line revenue, so basically just pure money that they get paid was being lost due to inefficient operations. 30%. That’s no small chunk of change. And for organizations as large as these, in a way it feels okay because they have a lot of people, they have a lot of money, which means they have a lot of grace.

Now, on the flip side, and this is why we like to come in as soon as we can to any business or nonprofit, is we’ve seen the numbers, like we go into our clients’ backend all the time. That includes like their QuickBooks and all that stuff. We’ve seen that that number is closer to 50% for a small business, and you work so hard.

To make money every year, whether it is to make more money or to keep the profits or whatever it is, it’s always money related, right? Your top three goals are often more revenue, more profits, more benefits, or something that re relates to more money, and yet, automatically 50% of that gets lost. And the reason why it’s 50% is because smaller businesses naturally have fewer people.

So that means that those fewer people are wearing many more hats and have more irons, like multiple irons and multiple fires, which means the chances of dropping balls increases. And because you have fewer people doing more things, there’s less grace. So your mistakes or the inefficiencies cost more because of that.

And I can go into more details, but generally that’s the examples. Like you’re wearing more hats of more irons and more fires and less grace because you have less people. Fewer people. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That makes so much sense. And do y’all also find sometimes there are unrecognized sunk costs that add up, but we don’t realize it.

Every subscription at $15 a month doesn’t feel like that much until you have like 200 and then suddenly it’s thousands of dollars. And, but we don’t always recognize them because payments are automatic or they don’t hit the radar or there’s not a renewal notice. Or what are some other places where you find that people are losing money that they’re not recognizing and it’s not that important for the business, that things could be streamlined and they could still run the business well and keep the same amount of revenue or more?

Veronica Yanhs: That’s a great question and I’m going to give my two favorite examples. So I don’t know if it falls exactly in the, that it’s like a small thing, like yes. Subscription parts. Like honestly, when we go do operations audits for our clients, it’s so much, easier to save money than it is to make money.

So finding places where costs can be cut without it changing how an organization is run is always a great thing. So my two favorite examples when it comes to losing money that you may not even be thinking about is I have yet to meet a client. And we’ve been doing this a long time. Hundreds of operations audits, like we’ve spoken to thousands of employees, staff members, contractors, like the data we have, the data.

I have yet to ever meet a client that is truly ready to bring on a new employee. Whether they be a W2 or a contractor in a way that benefits everybody. And when I say this, if you don’t have good operations and you don’t know how your business is run or you do and it’s all in your head, which is just as bad, bringing on a new hire takes time.

It takes time to write the job descriptions. It takes times to interview them, to vet them, to onboard them, right? So you’re already spending time finding talent. And if you have bad operations, retaining talent is just as hard. They’re here with the best of intentions to do a really good job, but yet they’re doing this with one hand tied behind their back because they are being thrown in trial by fire.

You learn by doing, right? Sometimes people think, oh, that’s such a good thing, and I’m like, no, that’s just a dumb excuse because you don’t think about your operations. Imagine if you were a new hire, which I’ve been before, where they just gave me a giant book and said, good luck. Because they didn’t have a good process for bringing somebody on.

So not only am I being set up to fail as a new hire, more times than not the person that’s doing the hiring, ’cause maybe, oh, you’re delegating work. It could be your first hire, it could be your second hire, it could be your 20th hire. It doesn’t matter. You’re now playing glorified babysitter, and if not you, then somebody else on your team is then having to do that emotional labor because there are no standardized practices, processes, documentations.

And so it is a huge loss there. So money is being wasted without even thinking about it, because if you’re not efficient with your time, or you spend all this money to bring on a new hire, but they can. Do their job for a month or two because you don’t have the things you need to give them or be ready, you know what I mean?

That’s a really subtle, and sometimes not so subtle way businesses or nonprofits are losing money. And then the other one that I wanna share is my favorite one to talk about because, and I alluded to it earlier, it’s because we don’t, because when you think about a business or an organization, and you think about it from a sales or marketing driven standpoint, instead of being process driven, things like this happen.

I’ve spoken with so many clients who tell me that they need to focus on sales, marketing, and branding because that’s what brings in the money. We’ve had clients tell us, or leads tell us that they’re either too small for operations or, again, I am spending most of my budget this year to scale my business because I need more clients, more money, all that good stuff.

So they spend. Good chunk of change, like five figures. Like it’s not uncommon to spend 10 plus thousand if you’re a small business owner on sales and marketing help, right? Because if the more, if you hire someone to bring you leads, then you can sign on more clients and all that good stuff. So on the surface level it feels really great.

But imagine what happens if you don’t have good operations, don’t have good onboarding, and you hire somebody to launch a marketing campaign, social media campaign, Facebook ads, it doesn’t podcast tour, it doesn’t matter. And then suddenly an influx of customers and clients want to buy your products and or services.

If you don’t have the systems to be able to handle that type of demand and growth, you essentially just paid money for somebody to light it on fire. Yes. They brought you all the leads and all the. The clients and customers, but if you can’t serve them well, it doesn’t matter if you then say we’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they’re served well.

But you know, then who suffers is you and your team bending over backwards, being stressed out, burnt out, moving forward at any given cost. Sure you can do that for a short amount of time, like if you have a launch campaign coming up, right? But imagine doing that on the daily operations then just really does influence your company culture, your internal branding as I like to call it.

Are you treating your people well or are you making them work at breakneck speeds for no gain? So what I’ve seen personally, and we see this over and over, and so that’s why I’m done convincing people and trying to. Tell ’em that they need operations first. I can use that as a sense of like awareness shift.

But if I have to beg them and convince them somebody else can have that more noble of a job, I am done with it. I’ve had people tell me that they spent over $50,000 to bring new leads to their service-based agency. And what was really ironic was that they only had the capacity to onboard two to three new clients at one time, and they had about 18 really good and qualified leads.

They had no waiting queue. They had no CRM, they had nothing to capture those leads really well. And because they were also inefficient about delivering their work it, the timeline took forever to be done with those first three clients. By the time they went back to those 15 other client or leads.

Everyone else was like, no, thank you. I already am wanting to work with other people. I can wait six more months because I needed this within two months or something. So $50,000 was spent, and all they could do was bring on two clients or three clients and onboard them because you see where I’m going with this.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. And that sounds so painful. And yet we’ve seen the excitement of being able to bring on new and volumes of business without having anticipated what capacity is needed ahead of time to catch that. And if people have to wait for something that they thought would be immediately available to them, not only do they not work with the company, but they’re probably not gonna take a second look down their line.

Either they’re, they’ll find something else that’s, 

Veronica Yanhs: yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And do you see this? Often or frequently is this a trend that you see in your work 

Veronica Yanhs: that operations are being thought of as an afterthought or that we’re 

Kim Allchurch Flick: using Yes. Or that There’s been so much marketing that they’re bringing in too much business and don’t have the capacity is, yeah.

Veronica Yanhs: Is that common 

Kim Allchurch Flick: thing 

Veronica Yanhs: so common, which is why I’m on this journey to educate people. This is the awareness shift as to why not only is operations important, but doing it in the orgasmic operations method way is the difference between operations that is important and operations that’s important and sustainable and attractive because you can have good operations, right?

Quote unquote. You can have operations in your organization, but imagine if the systems are so dysfunctional or disjointed, say your project management. Project management’s one of the first few systems that we look at because it’s how everybody is able to do work in a really efficient manner. During the Olympics, when they do the baton passing and it’s so smooth, right?

When one team’s done or one person’s done, then they pass on to the next person. If you don’t have good operations for project management, I just imagine it’s like you’re all in a rowboat. Everybody has an a, an or, and you’re just spinning in, like you’re just, everybody’s rowing and paddling and you’re just like spinning in circles or basically going nowhere.

So we’ve seen things where organizations will have a project management software or system that they use, but then every single team member does their own thing. Like they don’t even use the software. Maybe one person does, and everyone else is like, oh, I put it on my own calendar, or I signed up for my own app, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I feel for the project manager, the conductor, the one who’s supposed to be orchestrating this multi-team campaign. And some of these people are outside the organization because they’ve contracted with say, like a podcasting company or what have you, and it becomes even more dysfunctional. So that’s why orgasmic operations is important because before we do any work, we have to go in and talk to people and understand who they are as people to begin with.

What are their zones of geniuses? What is important to them? How do their brains think? What makes them tick in a good way and in a bad way? How did they work? And so from there we get really curious and our curiosity thanks to, my product design training allows us to come up with solutions that really are not about us.

Yes, we have our expertise, but we honor our. Clients and their team members’ needs by coming up with solutions that actually matter to them so that they will stick to the systems, use it and actually enact change in a rather quicker way. ’cause there’s good operations and specifically this project management example.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. And what are the possibilities with, I love this, the orgasmic operations method and what does it do? And it also begs the question, and I apologize, but it just flows. Does size matter? Are you working with small companies up to corporations? Will the method work regardless?

Veronica Yanhs: Thank you for asking. And this is such, yes. Size does matter. Size does matter because the more people you have involved, the more you have to consider. And the way that we love to start is. That’s why we asked to come in as soon as possible because the fewer the amount of people involved, the easier it is.

We, we can get the information that we need to do our jobs. We’ve been brought in when someone was a solopreneur, we’ve been brought in, when there is a company of five, like a startup, we’ve been brought in where there is a company of 50, it doesn’t matter. We do our jobs because at the end of the day, we have found ways to make sure that the people that need to be heard are heard to people that are responsible for running a certain system or process, have their needs met so that they can do their job well.

Because when we see companies that are more mature, even the young ones, and when I say young, like even say a year or two. Someone will come in, they’ll hire somebody, someone will come and put in A system. So I’ll just keep using project management. They’ll sign up for say Asana or something.

It doesn’t matter. It’s because that’s what that person knows and they just threw something together. And then when they leave, it’s the next person is either forced to use that one, or they have to develop a dedicate brain space to actually create a solution that matters.

So then that, that dysfunction, the Franken systems, the duct tape systems just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. So that’s where we come in and actually do it right the first time. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And how long do you typically work with a company? 

Veronica Yanhs: This is a great question. We would like to work with our clients as long as possible because we’re the type of businesses that love friendships and relationships.

Like I would rather work with somebody for 10 years because that means that I’ve just established a rapport friendship, like I wanna be invited to their Thanksgiving dinner and vice versa kind of thing. But for. For a company that we were just starting out with, we always do an operations audit to start with because we wanna know what’s going well, what’s not going well, what are the pillars that we look at in terms of where operational efficiency inevitably breaks down.

And it usually comes down to main, these four main domains. It’s continuity, it’s knowledge transfer, it’s its capacity or its priorities and understanding what that looks like. And so the breakdown often happens between, in those four domains somewhere. So when we do the operations audit, and that includes interviewing key team members and leadership to even doing a tech stack audit to see are you using the software that you’re supposed to be using

well, and because everything is in the internet age now, we often use software as a gauge to see how their systems are translating. From strategy to actualization. So software may be just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s supposed to then actualize the plan, right? So for us, when we do the ops audit, when we interview and then we audit where the domains are not doing well versus doing well, we end up with an action plan at the end of the day.

And this action plan is often measured against a North star. Like when we call it purpose, is every single system pointed towards that North star? And if not, it’s superfluous. It’s a waste. So if your North Star is about healing racial trauma, which is one of our clients center for healing racial trauma, and the systems don’t funnel people towards that end goal or result or actively help the people we’re they’re trying to help, then that means that we need to reevaluate a lot of things.

And so for us. It takes about a month to do that audit and then afterwards, based on what the clients need we either go in and do the change for them. We mentor their, or we mentor their operations team members, or we sit as advisory roles if there’s like an ops team and they want us to be more hands off because it’s a learning moment.

So it very much varies. For us, depending on what it is our clients need, because operations is so unique to every organization. So while we have certain ways in which we work with clients, at the end of the day it’s pretty bespoke. Even though we have productized in a way, our offers and standardized so that we don’t have to start from scratch every time.

So to answer your question in a very long-winded way, it starts out with a month because that’s how long the operations audit takes. Okay. And then depending there, we step in from anywhere, from advisors to fractional COOs. So our engagements go from say, three to six months to one year and beyond, depending on what it is that our clients want us to do.

And the reason why we are not in a rush, not to say that we can’t do things fast, we actually do things so much faster than our clients are prepared for. It’s because what people don’t account for is that operations takes time, meaning. We can implement the solution in a day or two. That’s easy for us.

But it requires people, whether it be clients, customers, or even team members to actually go through the system and get the data to see, oh, is this hypothesis? Is this prototype that business lab bear just put out good? Or if not, where do we need to change things? So it takes time to use and refine.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, 

Veronica Yanhs: and that’s what people miss out on a lot. They think it’s an overnight like, oh, just write me like 25 Instagram captions for my marketing campaign. It’s not like that. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: And list out back to your original join in intention for changing your whole course of life and wanting to help businesses as a, who are wanting to be a force for good non-profit or for-profit.

And there are differences between non-profit and for-profit offer operationally, but. What does it feel like to see when they are working with you and their operations have been worked over and enhanced enough that they see the profitability has gone up and that is able to translate into what it they wanted to do in the first place, which is give more, pay more to employees, helps the environment more.

Whatever those mission, vision values might be, and to actually make them tangible. But 

Veronica Yanhs: it’s such, what is that? Like just feeling of satisfaction, like it’s like that after it’s like that glow of, so we go back. So I’ve been pretty, because we’ve, the questions that you’ve been asking have been really great.

Like our branding because it’s Sex and king positive, there’s a lot of like fun innuendos and stuff, and I’m like, it feels like the post cotus afterglow. Where you do all this work and then you’re just sitting there and you’re like, oh my gosh, that was so great. You are actually seeing team members happy.

Staff members are happy. So when we talk about measuring data as well, we both do qualitative and quantitative data measurement because sometimes it’s hard to quantify the feel good feelings or the feel bad feelings. So to see our mission statement come to life because the organization is able to sustain this change and do the work that they want to do in a way that honors the people, the CEO, the executive director, the staff members, the employees, the community that they’re affecting their ideal clients and everybody’s happy because a good customer experience also matters, right?

Because that matters for long-term, like lifetime value or referrals. It all, it brings me so much joy and satisfaction because to really be this paradigm shift of taking something that’s so historically bland and dry and formulaic and rigid and robotic, and turn it into something that’s infused with humanity, with core values, with grace, and to see the positive change that’s coming from that for me as a founder and an entrepreneur, and I guess this is a new one for me.

People are calling me a thought leader and it, I don’t know how I feel about that at this point, but to be able to enact this positive change is something that I never envisioned would be so much bigger than what I started my business out to be. It’s a really indescribable feeling that I get to wake up every day and know that my business is doing good operations for good.

Is not something I came up with right away. It’s something that took time and I guess it was just the next level progression after feeling good for people because pleasurable operations, while it’s still, orgasmic operations and pleasurable operations is still how we do things different.

What brings people to our door is about helping them build operations that power the world changing work they’re here to make. And then when they say okay, how, that’s, when we talk about the orgasmic operations method and how we’re different and so we are shifting the paradigm and how work is being looked at in an operation in an organization at a really systemic level.

And it’s not just about bandaid solutions. And I’m really proud to be doing this work and being able to champion this work and I can’t wait to do it more and more as the future goes on. ’cause I have some pretty big plans. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Ooh. And also it sounds like foundations for some really strong and long-term relationships.

And what do you see as the possibilities through your work and what makes you optimistic? 

Veronica Yanhs: What makes me optimistic is that despite how much and how problematic our world may be like, we didn’t even, there’s so many social and political issues that are happening at this time of recording. Like today is the first of the new year according to the lunar calendar, right?

So happy New Year’s to you. Year of the fire horse means lots of momentum and lots of change. After the previous year of the snake, which I was born in the year of the snake. So it was all about shedding what doesn’t serve you. And so that was very poetic for me. I’m very optimistic in what humanity is possible in able to create, like what’s possible when we center humanity.

There’s so much hate, there’s so much malice. And as someone who is a person of color, that does sometimes feel like, I feel like I’m tinfoil hatting in a way because I’m like, oh, maybe my issues aren’t that important, or it’s not that big compared to what’s happening on the global scale. But it does matter ’cause we’re all part of this collective humanity.

And I guess I’m just being, I’m just surrounded by people that are my allies and support me wholeheartedly as a person of color, as an entrepreneur, as someone who is bisexual and openly out in my personal life and in my professional life. I guess the word that I, that comes to mind is optimism because the people that I’m surrounding myself with have that.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. 

Veronica Yanhs: While we’re also realistic and it’s like we’re actually not just talking and it’s not just lip service and we’re doing the work in our own way. And like I said at the very beginning. I’m only one person and it feels so overwhelming and it feels so like why bother? I’m just one person. But then when you can surround yourself with people, your community allies it grows, and more and more people can support you, your mission, each other.

And so yeah, I think the word is optimism for me in terms of what I see. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, that’s so awesome. What more would you like to share and how can people reach you? 

Veronica Yanhs: In terms of what I would like to share, I am here to reach as many people that resonate with my message as much as possible. Yes, I am one of many people that does operations, but the flavor in which I do it is very fun.

Very entertaining and you either love me or you run away from me. My branding is very polarizing. There’s no fence sitting ’cause I imagine it’s very very painful. So what I would love is to connect with you, if you resonated with this podcast episode, I will give Kim my LinkedIn and other social handles so that we can connect like one-on-one Connections is something that I love.

Yes, the internet is here, but connecting one-on-one even through an internet platform is still something that I value. And so you can find me in all of my information at businesslaidbare.com, and I’m sure that’ll be linked in the show notes as well. There’s 

Kim Allchurch Flick: yes, 

Veronica Yanhs: free content, there’s paid content, there’s ways in which we can work together.

I’m launching a podcast in June called Operations for Good. It is very much an exciting time. And yes, there’s a book that’s been in the work, so there’s so much happening. But most importantly, all of this wouldn’t matter if there were not clients and allies and ambassadors that supported the work that we do.

’cause it’s about people. It’s not about me. It’s about the people that we’re here and what this brand is here to serve with our mission statement of operations, the power world changing work. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. And I believe that meeting people and building relationships is so important because someone said that business and relationships that are healthy and running well is a form of resistance.

It’s also a form of advocacy. And one of my taglines is I’m a mighty advocate. I’d love to advocate for, and when I heard you speak and then we chatted afterwards and I invited you to this podcast, I felt it was so critically important because I understand a lot about business, but there’s certain niches of business that I don’t have strong expertise in.

And I wanna be the best business coach, supporter advocate as possible. And part of that is connecting more relationships and catalyzing relationships. And I think you do wonderful things for business, and I know I do as well. And they’re not the same things. And to understand that can do what we all really wanna do, which is help businesses be strong, be contributors, because that helps community, and community helps a local economy.

That helps people support their families and bigger small businesses matter, and they really are a form of resistance. 

Veronica Yanhs: I couldn’t have said it any better and apparently just by being who I am, so again, I did not start my business to be this person. I’m being asked to step into some role model slash leadership title that I don’t sometimes feel comfortable with.

I’m like, you wanna hear what I have to say? You want my opinion? I started my business to do better, to do good, to do more good, and to be this person who is, like I said, outwardly, bisexual, kinky, open, all that stuff. Running a business that’s talking about pleasure. Apparently that’s already a paradigm shift and is radical.

In and of itself, like I am a walking paradigm shift because then I’m, as a woman of color, as someone who’s Chinese is, it’s not, you don’t see that a lot. And so I just, I am very fortunate to be able to be in this position of being able to be completely out, to be able to honor who I am, that allows me to look at myself in the mirror every day to know that I am making the most out of this life and what I wanna do.

And it’s for good. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And a lot of people are saying, oh, wow. It’s okay to say things like that about ourselves. That’s a big step forward too. I’d love to hear about the, your answer to this last question is if you could have dinner with up to three people who are living or deceased, who would they be and why?

Veronica Yanhs: The first thing that came to mind is I would love to have dinner with my grandfather. He passed away when I was a freshman in college. And so knowing what I know now, I think it would be such a wonderful way to be able to connect back to my ancestry and my heritage. And so this question when there’s so many celebrities and stuff I could think of, but it’s I guess I’m in the state of understanding, Hey, where did my family come from?

What is it that we’ve had to endure? What’s, while I have my origin story yes, English was actually my fourth language. I was born here, but they didn’t want me to learn English because they knew through, just by being born here, it was gonna be easy. So it’s like forcing me to learn my three, some, three and a half native languages before English.

Things like this allows me to connect back to my heritage and to just know Hey, how did we get here? Why what was life like? Back in Asia and everything. And so I bring this up because even to this day, even though my family has been here since the 1980s, it is a very hard topic to talk about.

There’s a lot of deep seated trauma that they are just not ready to even or I don’t think they ever will be ready to address. And so I have to honor that because this is where I’m very Americanized and therapy is something that is going to be lifelong for me. So my therapist has e eternal job security.

Yeah. It just goes back to wanting to have dinner with my grandfather and perhaps his father to just talk about like where we came from and why we believe what we believe as a family and what’s, what was the driving factor that like shapes how he parented and ’cause that then, trickled down to me and who I am today.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I think that’s so lovely. You’re a delight. I’m so glad that we met, even though the relationship is young and new, but we support so many interesting businesses, and I see that community is being strong and also we come from such wildly different backgrounds and I see so many ways to collaborate and help each other and help others.

So I expands my worldview and I’m always grateful for that. And it is February, 2026. It is the first day of the year of the fire horse that I think makes a lot of difference in how we move forward. And I’m not quite sure how, but I also feel optimistic somehow because of that. Everything is in the show notes.

Veronica, thank you for your time. Listeners, thank you for your time. And this is Kim Al Church flick with the True podcast signing off and be safe out there. We’ll see you soon.