Becoming the COO of Your Own Business with Christa Spear
36 min
Most founders are busy. Far fewer are operationally sound. Christa Spear, founder of Iris Partnering, joins the show to talk about what it actually means to operationalize a business -- and why that same mindset applies to running your career and your life like you're your own COO. We get into the warning signs your systems have been outgrown, and the one fix that sounds boring but changes everything. If you're not managing your business, it's managing you -- through the fires you're putting out, the deadlines that sneak up, and the decisions that only live in your head. In this episode, I sit down with Christa Spear, founder of Iris Partnering, to talk about what it really means to "operationalize," a word that gets thrown around a lot, but rarely gets defined in a way that's actually useful. We dig into the difference between a founder who's busy and a founder who's operationally sound, the earliest signs a business has outgrown its systems (or its lack of them), and where to start this week if you're running everything in your head with no documented process at all. We also go beyond the business: Christa makes the case that the same operational thinking that keeps a company from running on chaos can be applied to how you run your own career and your own life: becoming, in effect, the COO of your own business, career, and life. We close with the one shift she'd want every listener to walk away with, and what she's most looking forward to at the Evolve Women's Summit this November. Interested in joining? Reserve your spot at The Evolve Summit on November 6th in Denver, CO. About Christa: Christa Spear is the founder of Iris Partnering, where she helps founders build the operations, systems, and decision-making structure behind their business — so growth doesn't rely on any one person holding it all together.
