Christy Belt Grossman - From Real Estate COO to Nationwide Coaching Leader: Transforming Lives and Businesses through Ops Boss Coaching

Ever wondered how combining business and life coaching can transform your professional journey? Join us in a captivating conversation with Christy Belt Grossman, the dynamic founder and CEO of Ops Boss Coaching. Christy takes us through her transition from a successful COO in the real estate industry to building a nationwide coaching empire. We'll uncover how her team expertly blends education, coaching, and community support across various fields, such as real estate, med spas, and veterinary services, to enhance both personal well-being and professional success.

Learn the secrets to building a thriving business through strong interpersonal relationships and structured meetings. Christy emphasizes the importance of weekly goal-setting sessions and decision-making meetings between business owners and their operations personnel. Discover how simple actions like monthly coffee dates can inject a personal touch into virtual workspaces, creating cohesive and motivated teams. Hear an inspiring story of a client who shattered their self-imposed limitations, achieving remarkable personal and financial milestones through Christy’s guidance.

Finally, understand the power of a solid business foundation rooted in mission, vision, and values. Christy shares insights on slow, intentional hiring and the impact of incremental changes on work-life balance. Be touched by the story of a client who reignited her passion for competitive horse riding through coaching, illustrating the profound effect of quality over quantity. Embrace the concept of dreaming with eyes wide open, as Christy reflects on her own journey of living vibrantly and boldly, reminding us all of the value of a supportive community in pursuing our dreams.

Transcript

Operations Coaching for Entrepreneurs

Speaker 1 0:31

I'm Christy Belt Grossman and I'm the founder and CEO of Ops Boss Coaching, and we coach mainly operations, people of entrepreneurial businesses, but also business owners around the country, and I've got a team of 12.

Speaker 2 0:45

Oh wonderful. Where are you guys based out of?

Speaker 1 0:47

All over the country. We all work virtually, so I'm local. We have coaches in Idaho and Rhode Island and New Jersey and all over the place.

Speaker 2 0:57

My assistant's in Georgia.

Speaker 1 0:59

Yeah, and how did you get into this? So my background is real estate, but not being a realtor, I was an operations person. I was a COO for one of the very first real estate teams to do a billion dollars in sales nationwide which happens to be a local team in this area and I did that for 23 years and I loved it. And then I turned 50 and I started thinking about why am I here and what am I meant to do and what impact do I want to have in the world. And I decided at the age of 56 to become self-employed for the first time. So I started teaching and coaching people that were doing what I was doing before, and then I was like I'm doing two things and I'm not doing either one. Well, and I needed to choose. So I opened my company six years ago.

Speaker 2 1:44

Wow, and how was that starting a company?

Speaker 1 1:47

Crazy, fun, awesome, hard all the things. It was wonderful. You know I had a huge blessing of being able to run our business the business I was a part of prior to this for 23 years without having all the risk of being the owner, so I was more of an entrepreneur building the business from within. So I had a lot of leg ahead but still, of course, stumbling blocks and learning and all the fun things of being in business for yourself and COVID and all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 2:20

And how are you guys helping businesses? Tell me specifically about the services that you do and how a new business comes to you looking for help.

Speaker 1 2:30

So we do education, coaching and community. It's kind of a three-pillared system that we work with and mainly focused on operations leadership, so director of operations of a business or office manager, or there's lots of titles. I call them lion tamers, right. And we do classes. We do virtual classes, in-person classes. We have group coaching where people can be surrounded with other people doing what they're doing, but they need help from people who have kind of walked that path before them. And then we also do one-on-one coaching. And we have an annual retreat in the DC area that we do once a year in October, where people come in from all around the country. So we do a lot of pieces. And then we have a Facebook community, slack channel community, all kinds of things, because we found in that role that you really need other people to be successful. It can be very like you're on a desert island when you're the admin in a business and it's all about the sales.

Speaker 1 3:31

So it's nice for people to have others that do what they do to kind of level up and grow with.

Speaker 2 3:36

So that's how we do that, what kind of companies are you helping?

Speaker 1 3:40

So mainly real estate teams, but I have clients in all different businesses. We have people who are working in med spas. We have people who I have a veterinarian who is a coaching client. We combine business and life coaching kind of together. It's our philosophy that you can't we can work with you and coach you to be better in your business, but if you're struggling with your health or your finances, it's obviously going to affect how you do in your work, right, and vice versa right. So we kind of coach them together. So I have people. Some people are working with us on work-life balance and other people are working with us on their systems, which I loved when I came in here today.

Speaker 2 4:22

You guys have fabulous systems here.

Speaker 1 4:25

So, yeah, it's a variety. What we know is entrepreneurial world, as I call it. It's the same everywhere. It's different businesses of what we do day to day, but the behind the scenes is the same it's how are we getting clients? How are we onboarding new team members? How are we doing our marketing? What is our system for follow-up right? It's the same, no matter what entrepreneurial business you're in.

Speaker 2 4:51

Yeah, that translates into so many different businesses, right.

Speaker 1 4:55

And how do you deal with people and how do I be a better leader, how do I communicate with my team and inspire my team better and hold them accountable? The pieces are kind of similar.

Speaker 2 5:07

What are the biggest challenges that you're seeing from businesses that are coming to you?

Speaker 1 5:14

I think right now we're seeing a lot more challenges. Actually, on the personal side. We've been through four years of COVID post-COVID. Many businesses, especially real estate, had a huge boom during COVID and then a boom after COVID and now a struggle with low inventory in the market. So sales are down. People have been working really, really hard, so we're seeing a lot of. I need work-life balance. I want to retain my employees. I don't want to have to hire new employees. How can I be motivated? How can I grow my business even though the economy is having some struggles right now? So there's a lot of. We really focus on systems With a lot of our people. We're teaching them to go from being an expense to being an investment. So, instead of building systems that just make your life easier, which is good, right.

Speaker 2 6:11

We also want systems Works harder.

Speaker 1 6:12

Not harder Exactly, but we want systems that are also going to add and grow the business Right. We also want systems Exactly, but we want systems that are also going to add and grow the business right. They're going to bring business in or they're going to take enough off someone else's plate that they can bring more business in. So, that's a lot of what we're focusing on right now.

Speaker 2 6:27

Yeah, and you probably have some good go-to things that you can implement quickly for them right that are tried and tested. It's interesting.

Speaker 1 6:37

We are very custom oriented. I have an amazing team with really in-depth and different business experiences. So we have some people on our team. They're all in operations, but some are in real estate, some are in other businesses. Some have their MBA, some have their coaching certificate, some specialize in sales. They're all different things. So we really work custom with people. The operations brain is a different brain than the business owner brain, so we have some people that like to work with the directors of operation. We have some people that really like to work with the entrepreneur themselves, and then we have some that work on how to integrate them together and help them to work better as a team. Sometimes we have the right people in the right seats on the bus, but they don't know how to work together because they're really wired differently.

Building Relationships to Drive Success

Speaker 2 7:28

Yeah, what advice do you have for business owners that have employees like that? How do you get them to? What's the tools to get them to work together a little bit better?

Speaker 1 7:40

I think, for me what has really helped. So what I know is usually your business owner is the driver, the type A, the I move fast, I have lots of ideas, I'm going a million miles an hour and your admin or operations person is the steady Eddie, get everything taken care of. People, pleaser, which are two totally different things and different personalities. Different personalities hard to. They need each other, they thrive off of each other and yet we operate so differently. So if we can coach our business owners to slow down enough to just have two meetings a week with their ops person, one meeting is on goal setting, Okay, which is their personal and business goals of the ops person.

Speaker 1 8:24

And then one meeting is a business meeting where the ops person says I need your input on this, I need a decision on that. I want to know what you're thinking about this. If you can slow down the business owner enough for 90 minutes of those meetings which sounds like eternity when you're a high, fast-paced mover, Ideas coming at you last night but if we can do that, it actually accelerates things getting implemented. So that I think that and the other thing I think I just did this yesterday with my ops person is we have coffee dates once a month, which sounds like the silliest, most trivial thing, but we work virtually, so we're not in an office together and a lot of people are doing that now, Right, Um, and we lose that personal touch and knowing what's going on in each other's lives. So we do a coffee date once a month and just no business allowed 30 minutes. Yesterday we went through some questions from a book that somebody had shared with us. We've done like what are you eating? What are you addicted to? What are you, you know, excited?

Speaker 2 9:31

about.

Speaker 1 9:33

And we get to know each other. And it's you know, we talk all day but we don't talk in depth, right, and so I get to learn about like the garden and her chickens, and she lives out in the boonies in Atlanta and I live in Vienna, Virginia, like totally big city.

Speaker 2 9:50

you know, I'm like I don't know about that, but doesn't that help you to understand her personality type better and how to work with her better?

Speaker 1 9:56

And what's important to her and what she values, and to understand how important her family is to her and what's going on in her life. Because we don't operate in silos, right, and I've learned as a business owner if I can help her reach her goals, then by default, my goals will be reached. But really I do care about the people I work with, so I want to know as much as I can, and that's a recipe for success, versus everybody just coming in and doing your job in a little silo and going home. Right, and that's a recipe for success, versus everybody just coming in and doing your job in a little silo and going home.

Speaker 2 10:28

Right, and everyone's just staying in their path. Right, yeah, yeah. What do you find most rewarding about what you do?

Speaker 1 10:36

You know, I was reflecting about that a little bit, knowing I was coming here yesterday and I was thinking back and I'm probably older than most of the people that you interview, but not at all. I was thinking when and I'm probably older than most of the people that you interview, but not at all I was thinking when I came out of college. I went to a really competitive college. I went to William and Mary and most people came out with super high power jobs Like I. If I named a billion people, you, you would know people in government or in whatever owning businesses.

Speaker 1 11:06

One of my college friends is one of the people that invented the first at home COVID test.

Speaker 2 11:12

Like these are really bright people.

Speaker 1 11:14

But I remember coming out at the time and I'm like I'm not into the money thing, I just want to have a job, I don't want to have a career. That's what I used to say and what I realized over time is that business is actually, yes, it's about the money, because the more money you make, the more people you can impact. But business is a vehicle so that I can impact people's lives, and I loved doing that as, behind the scenes in real estate, we got to help people at the most critical times of their life. They maybe lost a spouse or they had a baby or they got a new job and they're transferring. They're really important life moments and to be able to support people during that was really rewarding. Now I get to work much more directly with clients and impact. Yes, we impact their businesses, but we get to impact them and their families and their friends, and so it's incredibly rewarding.

Speaker 1 12:08

I had a client one of my favorite stories. I just talked to her the other day and she's a business owner. She came to us to grow her business. She kind of defaulted into becoming a business owner didn't necessarily set out to do that and then she was like, oh my gosh, I need help. And I coached her for five years and one of the things that I think was most impactful had nothing to do with her business, and that was that she put a ceiling on herself and on her business because she didn't go to college. And so in her mind, the story she told herself was I'm never going to be successful in business because I didn't go to college.

Speaker 1 12:45

Told herself was I'm never going to be successful in business because I didn't go to college. And so one day I got a text from her and she said oh my God, look what I just got. And it was a picture of a ring on her finger. And I'm like, oh, that's so beautiful. Like, tell me about that. And she said I never told you, but I had a secret goal to have a hundred thousand dollars in savings and when I got to that goal that I would buy myself a ring. But I never told anyone that because I never thought it could come true.

Speaker 1 13:10

And so I sent her a pink.

Speaker 2 13:15

My brand colors are pink.

Speaker 1 13:17

I sent her a pink cap and gown and I'm like you've graduated. And I talked to her the other day and she just started a new adventure and she's like I keep that hanging where I can see it. So I remember that I graduated, that I'm like, oh sorry, I'll cry. Those are the stories I love. Every client has their own story. That's completely different and most of our calls were about business, but that was really when you get down to it, those things are integrated.

Speaker 2 13:46

Absolutely, and you were able to help her get to where she wanted to be.

Speaker 1 13:49

She did all the hard work. I have the blessing to just kind of almost be a mirror. Have you ever gone somewhere and you went out all day and you had something in your teeth? And you had no idea that you had something in your teeth until somebody finally told you or you looked in a mirror, somebody finally told you or you looked in a mirror. So I get to look in the mirror and I get to look back to people and they can actually do the work themselves. But once they see what I see, I often have the gift of being able to see what's in someone that they don't see is in themselves, just because I'm the objective person, and then they can grow into who they really are. They're the ones doing all the work.

Speaker 2 14:28

Sometimes it just takes someone believing in you to kind of get you to the next step and giving you some guidance, and I think for a lot of small business owners or new business owners it's overwhelming. It's leadership lonely and they don't have mentors to reach out to or don't have anybody guiding them through that process right?

Speaker 1 14:48

Absolutely, and I'm so blessed to have friends that are so smart. But one of the first things that I did when I went out on my own my last day, I think, on my job being an employee was May 30th, and on May 15th, before I even started my being self-employed, I hired a coach.

Speaker 2 15:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1 15:11

Because I just knew I needed somebody to walk along with me, because this was a new thing.

Speaker 1 15:17

So a coach gets you into the coaching business, no, just a coach to coach me on my business to do the same thing that we do for other people. To coach me on my business to be do the same thing that we do for other people. I had already been coaching um as a secondary thing for two years at that point. So I knew how to coach and I knew all the things, but I'd never I'd built someone else's business. I'd never built my business.

Speaker 2 15:40

Yeah, and it's totally different. Yeah, right, yeah. What are you doing for advertising and marketing these days? What's working for you? What's not working for you?

Speaker 1 15:48

Um, we do a lot of social media Um, so we're Facebook, instagram, youtube, all of that stuff we always have. I've always been passionate about that. I was an early adopter way more than a decade ago, um. And then I do a lot of speaking, um, and then I do a lot of speaking. So I speak to small groups of 10 people and I've spoken to 10,000 people, wow, um, so a lot of it comes from that. Um, networking, networking, yeah.

Speaker 2 16:19

Yeah, and just relationships. Yeah, and are there particular types of businesses that you're looking for as far as size-wise?

Speaker 1 16:28

We've worked with all different businesses, I will say that the smaller to medium kind of businesses are more probably our niche. Could we work with the government? Big, huge government contractors, things like that? Absolutely we could. It's very translatable. Government contractors, things like that Absolutely we could. It's very translatable. But I think an entrepreneurial mindset is the type of business. So any sort of sales type businesses, small businesses, retail attorneys, I mean you can think of a million small businesses we all kind of operate in that same entrepreneurial mentality where the admin and operations people kind of have to be ready to do anything because it's a smaller business and they actually like that, because then they get to learn and grow right.

Speaker 1 17:15

So it's a little bit of a different mindset. Very much, I guess our philosophy is to help our operations. People think like business owners, so that they're operating their side of the business as if they owned the business and taking great ownership in that versus. I think in a government job you don't have as much control or ability to do that.

Speaker 2 17:37

Yeah because I feel like there's not as much ownership in those positions.

Building Solid Foundation for Success

Speaker 1 17:40

There's not as much ownership in the position and there's not as much responsibility or authority in the position to be able to own it. Even if you wanted to Right you know, yeah, yeah, all the cogs in the yeah.

Speaker 2 17:51

Yeah, Well, it sounds like you've grown a lot in these past. Did you say 12 years that you've been doing?

Speaker 1 17:57

it Eight years, eight years of doing it.

Speaker 2 17:59

Yeah, and that you have employees all over the country. Where do you see the future going? Are you looking to bring on more people?

Speaker 1 18:12

Where do you see the future going? Are you looking to bring on more people? Where do you see yourself going? You know we've been really slow and purposeful about who we've brought on. I made a real point when we built this business. I made a lot of mistakes as the builder in the previous business. I mean there was a lot of successes, right.

Speaker 2 18:22

Oh, for sure, For sure, a lot of successes. You have to have some failures to learn Right. It's the fastest way to learn right?

Speaker 1 18:26

Oh for sure, you have to have some failures to learn. It's the fastest way to learn right. But one of those things that I learned that I've been very purposeful about this time is to have my foundation be very solid in terms of people being united in mission vision and values. And you hear a lot of people talk about mission vision values, but it's like if I walk into a business and say what are your mission vision values, and you have to like turn and look at the wall, then they're not alive, right? They're not living.

Speaker 1 18:54

They're not real. They're not really a part of who everyone is, so we've been very slow to bring people on. Most of the people that are part of our team I knew for three to five years before they became part of our team and it was almost like a natural evolution that they would be part of our team because we were already so connected and united in our mission vision values Right now we're really focusing on. We want to impact more people. Our vision is one by one, by one by one, we change the world, so we're not always focused on big numbers One by one, by one by one.

Speaker 2 19:29

I like that.

Speaker 1 19:30

Because you know people get real focused on numbers and we're very focused on impact and you can impact one person, who impacts another, who impacts another, and now you've got a whole lot of people with changed lives versus oh, we have to get 2000 people in the room today to help. So we're just we're. We're focused because every person is important to us. They're not numbers. I intimately know not only my clients but all the clients that my coaches are coaching. I know about them, I know about their families, I know about their businesses, I care about them. But I think we've been slowly expanding outside of real estate. So that's really our focus right now is working with other businesses. I'm excited I have a client who's on one of the support teams going to the Olympics and a whole different business outside of real estate, and we've had all kinds of different business owners.

Speaker 2 20:25

So, yeah, yeah, that's amazing. What, um, uh, I know you talked about the person that you helped a little bit, that how rewarding that was for you to help her with her business and made her feel like she graduated even when she didn't have her college education. Is there another story that you have like that? That was super rewarding to you.

Speaker 1 20:53

In the early days, I would think one of them that jumps into my mind. She'll probably hear me tell this, because I think she listens to your podcast.

Speaker 1 20:59

Good, I was coaching someone and we were working on business and she has an amazing business and she's an amazing person who gives incredible service, and she would never use this word and I would use this word kindly she's a workaholic and so I challenged her and pushed her on. Where else do you find joy? And that was a really hard question for her at the time, like, where do where do you find your joy? Cause she really is joyful in her business, right, and there's more to life than just business, right. Um. So she had previously ridden competitively um horses and had taken a bad fall and had to sell her horse and was not, did not have a horse at the time, was not riding anymore, and so, through our coaching and conversations, she decided to get another horse and start competing again, and now she's still, to this day. She's had a couple of horses since then, but it was just a joy to see her find her joy.

Speaker 1 22:04

Yeah, you know have a coaching call. We had a coaching call one day and she said oh my God, my horse got out and was running down the highway yesterday. I was like so I get to learn all the news Not too long ago.

Speaker 2 22:16

I saw that and I sent it to her, Did you? I was like remember this.

Speaker 1 22:19

That sounds familiar yeah.

Speaker 2 22:22

Well, amazing that you were able to help her get back up on the horse. I feel like that's an expression too, yeah, and again, right when you fall, get back right back on.

Speaker 1 22:30

Exactly, and she didn't have any fear around it, I think. I think she was just really mired in. It wasn't about, oh, I'm afraid, to ride again. She really was working from 5 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock at night and didn't have time.

Speaker 2 22:47

So she prioritized it.

Speaker 1 22:48

So we worked. You know, it was interesting when she got she moved and then she was getting another horse after having a break and I said, well, this is where we're kind of flexible. We don't have like a oh, do this checklist and then your life's going to be good. But I was like, let's pretend you're a horse pregnant. And she's like, what does that mean? And I said, well, you know that you're going to get a horse. It's going to take a while.

Dreaming With Eyes Wide Open

Speaker 1 23:10

Her horse came from Germany actually, and I'm like we're going to pretend you're a horse pregnant and during the months between now and when you get the horse each day, you're going to start with 30 minutes and we're going to work our way up to two hours, cause it would take her two hours to go to the barn, ride the horse, come back and get back to work. And I'm like I want you to not be stressed when the horse comes, so you can enjoy those two hours when you're with your horse. So we worked from 30 minutes and that was her horse pregnancy was practicing going to the barn and not working during those times.

Speaker 2 23:42

Smart advice I like that and taking little baby steps. I love baby steps. Baby steps are everything. Well, as we kind of wrap up here, are there any words of advice you'd like to leave us with, maybe a mantra that you live your life by?

Speaker 1 23:57

I would say don't just dream with your eyes closed. You know, a lot of us have dreams and we think about them at night or when we have our time off, or when we're sleeping. Dream with your eyes wide open.

Speaker 2 24:12

Live in color.

Speaker 1 24:15

Like you see me here today, I love all your color. The first time I ever got my hair colored was this year, at the age of 62. Like I'm like, it's never too late to do it. So dream with your eyes wide open, put people around you that are going to help you make those dreams come true, and just go for it.

Speaker 2 24:33

I love that Surrounding yourself by a good tribe is it is everything.

Speaker 1 24:38

That's why I'm sitting here today.

Speaker 2 24:40

Yeah, everything. Well, thank you for being here today and thank you for sharing your story with us. I loved hearing it.

Speaker 1 24:46

Thanks for having me and I loved seeing your systems here. Good job.

Speaker 2 24:50

Yes, good to get A plus on the system.

Speaker 1 24:51

Yes, A plus 100% Love it.

Speaker 2 24:54

Thank you so much, thank you.