Jen Goldman is the Founder of My Virtual COO, a firm helping businesses transform their operations with less stress, struggles, and missteps. She has over 30 years of experience as a business operations transformer, having helped over 1000 businesses thrive. She has taught her methods at national conferences, and her work has been published by Inc Magazine, Tech Tools for Today’s High-Margin Practice, Liberated CEO, and trade publications.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Jen Goldman explains how My Virtual COO helps people
How to improve customer experience through technology and communication
Jen discusses how she overcomes her challenges
The value of treating your employees well
Tips for employee recognition and rewards
The giver personality and its impact on customer experience
Jen shares her insights on AI and mentorship
In this episode…
Growing a business is rewarding but stressful. It entails juggling multiple business operations — expertise many leaders and teams might not possess. That's why many companies face stagnation after their initial growth spurt.
Jen Goldman, a business operations transformer, says that one of the biggest challenges businesses face is scaling their operations and teams to match their growth and deliver great customer experiences. It's not enough to add more staff or resources — cohesive and effective operations in the company are also crucial. You need a well-planned strategy that will help you grow and improve your business sustainably. She shares how she helps service businesses identify, implement, and accelerate their scalability and growth.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker sits down with Jen Goldman, Founder of My Virtual COO, to discuss how businesses can grow by transforming their operations. Jen talks about My Virtual COO, improving customer experience through technology and communication, the value of treating your employees well, and the giver personality.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"Tips for Wealth Management: An RIA Perspective With Chuck Failla" on The Customer Wins
"Have Confidence in Where You Financially Stand With Shabana Nathoo" on The Customer Wins
"How Financial Advisors Can Become Great Business Owners" on The Customer Wins
"Embracing Technology for Next-Level Wealth Management With Reed Colley" on The Customer Wins
Sponsor for this episode...
This is brought to you by Quik!
At Quik!, we provide forms automation and management solutions for companies seeking to maximize their potential productivity.
Using our FormXtract API, you can submit your completed forms and get clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate.
Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.
Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win, and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Chuck Failla of Sovereign Wealth, Shabana Nathoo of Navigo Wealth Management and Cody Foster of Advisors Excel. Today I'm excited to speak with Jen Goldman, founder of My Virtual COO. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time reviewing the forms, instead, get Quik!, using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started. All right before I introduce today's guest, I have to give a huge thank you to Mike Betz a Summit Wealth Systems for referring me to Jen, you can hear more about Summit on a previous episode of this podcast with Reed Colley or go check out their website at summitwealth.io. All right, I'm really excited to talk to Jen. Jen Goldman is a business operations transformer and a C-suite ops trainer. And she has been guiding and transforming 1000s of businesses operations for over 20 years. Her company's mission is to help three to 50-employee businesses scale up with less stress, less struggle and less missteps so they can help more consumers support their community and give to those in need. Jen, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Jen Goldman 1:45
Hey, thanks for having me.
Richard Walker 1:47
So if you haven't heard this podcast before I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. Jen, we want to understand your business better. How does your company help people?
Jen Goldman 2:02
So we actually work with the businesses to make their client experience better?
Richard Walker 2:08
I love it. So you're looking at companies who are saying to themselves, how do I give my customers a better experience? Or do they come to you with a different problem first, and you turn it to that?
Jen Goldman 2:19
They always come with a different problem. In fact, they come with a few problems. So when they come to us, usually they're either growing so fast, that their infrastructure can't handle the growth, or on the flip, they have more stagnation, because they don't feel all buttoned up and put together. Right. So either way, quite frankly, their customer the client experience is hurting, but they don't mention that first, right. They're mentioning To be frank, they're humans. They're their own pain, right? I have pain with this. I have pain with that. That's what comes first.
Richard Walker 2:53
Yeah, it's the same thing in the tech world, people come to me and say this is the solution I want. Okay, well, what's the problem you're trying to solve here? We studied customer growth. I mean, McKenzie, put out a study last year, Gartner Group, Microsoft, they've all done studies, we've done our own studies. And we've just recognized that if you focus on improving your customer experience, you actually drive growth in your business. What do you think the levers are for the types of customers you serve? And actually, who are the customers you serve?
Jen Goldman 3:21
Let's go second to first question. So the customers we serve our service businesses, so they're mainly in health, wealth, or advocacy. And by advocacy, everybody always asked me, so that could be like a nonprofit, right advocating for those in need. Or it could be a law firm that works with those that don't have a voice. So not corporate or criminal to others. So that's first and then ask the other question again, because I might answer it in two different ways.
Richard Walker 3:48
So I think I was asking is what are the key levers that people are looking at for improving their experiences?
Jen Goldman 3:55
Well, the first is the least emotional, to be honest, is the tech. So a lever is always technology, right? But the fact about it to be fair about that is they go to the tech first because to talk about how they serve their customers, how they come across to their customers, that's painful. That's hard. It's like looking yourself in the mirror and saying, Listen, I'm not doing it well, or I need to change or the people on my team that are client facing me to change. So one of the levers, if this answers your question is the technology. But once you get through the attack and kind of layer in that in then you get to the guts of the issue, right? Yeah. How are you presenting? What are you presenting? What work are you putting on the consumer or the client that maybe you shouldn't be putting on them? And that's when we get into them, I'll call it the fun that they'll call it the pain.
Richard Walker 4:48
I guess part of what I want to understand though, is if I use lever, like if they're coming to you with a technology problem. How do they know how do you know that it's a customer experience problem. Is it always a customer experience problem?
Jen Goldman 5:03
Well, usually the way we know is we're listening and mapping out, we're actually visualizing what they're saying their client experiences. Okay? So just, let's make it fun. Think about crayons and a paper, right? You don't I mean, and like you do this, and then you do that, and you dry arrows, and so forth. And then if you just listen, and this is where it's different, we can listen non-emotionally. And we're not invested in that business, right? I mean, yes, maybe we're consulting them. But we didn't grow that business. That's not our baby. So you can listen in here what isn't working. And that's when you start pulling on the lovers, lever one, tech, lever two, communication skills, lever three, online brand, lever four. I mean, like all the different places that you can do. But it's not rocket science. It's just that we're not emotionally attached. So we get to like, we get to almost put ourselves in the consumers shoes, right, when we're listening to what they're doing. And I always say this too, the client experience is also the staff experience.
Richard Walker 6:06
Oh, for sure. Right? For sure. Absolutely. I think when a customer, when a company says they're customer-centric, they're actually employee-centric. And they treat the employee as the customer. And they let the employee then treat the customer as a customer. And it's kind of like in your own household. If you don't want to swear in public, you got to stop swearing in your house. Right?
Jen Goldman 6:30
Exactly. Hence, the swear jar in our house. But yes, exactly. And yes. And it's leading by example, internally, you're totally right, and caring for your people, as you would care for the clients. Isn't that the essence of leadership, though? I mean, that's what we all struggle with. You get busy in the business, right? You get busy working with whether it's the clients or the staff and you lose sight, and then something doesn't go right, something all of a sudden stagnates. Right? Again, it's growth. Again, it might be burnout of staff, it might be turnover, whatever it is, and that's what they call you on. But to get to the source, yeah, the customer journey is always a, it tells you almost everything.
Richard Walker 7:08
So it makes me think that if a company or a business leaders listening to this, and they're saying, man, we're not doing a great job and X, Y, or Z, they might want to start with what is the customer experience, then? Because that's going to uncover things. I mean, like you said that people want to start with tech, I see tech as the last part of the solution, you have to look at the people, you have to look at the process. And if you understand those two and how they fit together, then you can apply Tech, because tech is just a tool at the end of the day.
Jen Goldman 7:35
Right. But that's you again, not being emotionally attached. Right? Yeah. So you would pick tech, I pick tech last two. But again, we're not emotionally attached. Now. I'm not going to serve with you. But ask me about my business. what's easiest for me to try to fix first, the tech, I don't have to ask my staff member to change a habit. I don't have to ask them for go to coaching or I don't have to go to coaching, right? The Tech in theory is the least. It's the smallest change even though we both know, it's it could be a big change, right? Yeah.
Richard Walker 8:07
All right. So you're doing this for others. Let's talk about how you do it for yourself. How does Jen become less emotional? And how do you actually identify where you're having challenges in your own business?
Jen Goldman 8:20
This is where, good question. I'm not a hypocrite. I actually do visualize. I found that when I whiteboard things out, and I know we were joking pre-podcast about whiteboarding. I actually went to Home Depot and bought the boards that go behind your tile in a bathroom, it happens to work as a whiteboard, and kind of noise. So yeah, so I'm constantly going to show you I'm constantly whiteboarding our customer journey. And I'm thinking about it that way. And I noticed that when I whiteboard, I don't get his emotion. I don't go into that flogging mode of oh, I can't believe we do it this way. You know what I mean? There's some detachment that uses a different part of the brain that doesn't kick into that flight or fight mode. And yeah, that's how we do it here. So my lucid boards are pretty, pretty intense. At this point,
Richard Walker 9:12
That's smart. I'm glad you're articulating it from that perspective. I love the whiteboard. The joke was always how long did it take rich to get to the whiteboard this time, two minutes, three minutes. And since we were in virtual, we don't really have a whiteboard. But I love the concept of just putting it down seeing it. I remember this one, I became a financial adviser and I joined my mentor and his business. The first thing I did just instinctively was I wrote out all the months in the year, and what stages of the financial planning process we're in with each customer. And when we're going to start doing things and we started saying, oh, let's coordinate now let's ask for all the statements in January. So we can do the plans in February and deliver them all in March, et cetera. And I think what you're getting at is just like that, right? Write it out, show it graphically if it helps you and see what's actually happening.
Jen Goldman 9:57
And when you do all have that, let me take it to the next level. When you do that, then you can almost take your marketing or your communications, let's call communications because marketing is just one. It's one form, right. And we think about all the things and all the marketing we can do as a business, right. And then we forget, well, there's an ebb and flow to what we're doing with clients, there should be an ebb and flow that kind of matches through our marketing and our communication. So you can take that same visual, with all the different pieces on the client journey, you can tap in articles and posts and information along the way, which is your marketing, right? And now you can give it, this is what I love, you can get it to a newer staff member and say, this is part of our purpose. This is what we do, and talk about how powerful of a training op type of I don't know method that is, it's just, I don't know, to me, it's exciting. I know I'm geeking out on this stuff, but it's just mind-blowing. Because then they feel that purpose, then they go in front of the client feeling more engaged, more empowered, and what does that do? I think we all know this, when we're happy and we're delivering services to a client or consumer, they feel that happiness and what do they do? They refer.
Richard Walker 11:14
So you said something really smart here, I want to point out for everybody who may not have caught it, simply by articulating it to your team member. This is not just the process. This is the purpose, that we're trying to build a better experience. They feel more engaged with it. That's what I'm hearing. Right? I love that, Jen. Because it is hard to get your team on board with new initiatives. Let me ask a slightly different question around this. Do you have customers who don't believe customer experience is the solution? They really think it's the tack or the process or the new team member or the mistakes they're making? Do you have to overcome that?
Jen Goldman 11:50
It's funny you ask, I'm rattling through my rolodex in my head. I don't think we attract that type of owner. Our owners are givers. I'm a giver. So maybe there's a bias down to itself, right? And our team that we're all givers. Now, our owners really care about the client experience. I think we're sometimes they fall short. And we all do this. So this is not, I'm holier than now or better than that. We fall short and forgetting about our team and their happiness. I just, that's all sometimes we bend over so much for our customers and our clients, we want to give them that absolute perfect journey at the detriment of our team. And I think that's where we go wrong. And then we're right back in that bad cycle of like, why are the clients not resonating? Why are the referrals not coming, and so forth. So that's the only thing I would say about that.
Richard Walker 12:44
It's good to hear that I agree with you. I mean, I work mainly in wealth management. So the financial advisors I've met, they truly care about their customers and their interest and their outcomes. And I think it's easy as a business owner to overlook your own needs, and your own company's needs in that way. So I'm wondering if you can share with us any, like tips or tricks you've seen other companies do to reward employees or recognize them or make them shine in new ways?
Jen Goldman 13:10
Oh, I have so many ideas on this and what, well, some businesses listen, there's the usual but I don't think we should not the usual like the rewarding of the top golf day. That's like been the latest. You don't I mean, they seem to be popping out everywhere. But just taking them out and not talking business. That's the difference. That's what I see a lot more in the rewarding also about the idea of just buying dinner for somebody on the team in their significant other just go out spend up to x and just get me the bill. Like I don't have to be a part of that experience for you. You just go out and have your own time. You're right. And we all love that you know and I think other the day off which again, might be something old school that we've done years ago but it really matters and you literally I'm going to be honest given them the day means electronically giving them the day like do not take home the laptop. I am not going to text you like there's nothing burning in our building. We are good other perks good education. This one I saw a lot during that lovely you know spell where we are all working remotely the idea of buying them learning classes on something they like that you so like MasterClass on cooking. Great. Go for it. You're not working for a cooking company, right. But that's what you love to do on the side. So encouraging their hobbies, which we all know energizes people, this idea of like having something else to look forward to and something else to do with your mouth or your brain. So that's another that's a big one.
Richard Walker 13:33
Also I want to ask you. Because I mean, so many of my peers are CEOs of various types of companies. They struggle with this like well, what should we do to recognize people? And I mean, look at our own company, we save our Amex points to turn them into gift cards. We give out random gift cards for exceptional behaviors. And that's just a nice reward. We try to make it public. So everybody sees it. And they see that incentive. And that's, it's trivial, right? But it's meaningful at the same time.
Jen Goldman 14:46
It's usually meaningful. I mean, I don't know about you, listen, we have good lives, I would, I would hope, right? But if somebody even gives me a 10-buck coffee card, I'm like thinking it's the best when I go get the coffee? Like, I don't know, I think that sometimes we think it has to be monetarily large, or something massive, being seen is all that people are asking for. They just want to be seen. And so acknowledging that and seeing them like that, I just think is awesome. And here's the thing, and maybe this comment will make more work for some CEOs. And I get that. But why don't you ask them what they'd like? Like, stop guessing. I mean, like, there's these tools out there. I don't know, these great apps or whatever fringe benefit. There's so many different ones, but like, just give them $1 amount, let them figure it out, right? Whether it's gift to a charity, or it's gift to themselves, who cares?
Richard Walker 16:03
That's actually one of the things I love about gift cards, because we'll just say which one do you want, and AIMEX has tons and tons to choose from. Right, including cash, basically, if that's what they wanted. I'll tell you just a fun story. Recently, I think a very rare thing happened. Somebody on my team stepped up on a Sunday or a Saturday to fix a problem for a customer who's trying to go live. And of course, I was rewarding that behavior, I was so grateful that he could step in and solve the problem, because I was the first to see the requests like, hey, help, help. And then the customer turned around and said, we are so grateful. We want to send your employee a gift card, I've never had a customer do that. It was so astounding, and just amazing. And of course, she's super happy about it, the whole team is excited about it. Nobody feels like they were slighted because she got the card. She did the work. But she made us all as a company, she made us all look amazing to that customer. So I'm glad I asked you this question. If you have any other ideas, throw them out there.
Jen Goldman 16:56
Yeah, no, but you know what that person that did that for your person probably had that done for them. And that's the whole point. Like, it's just this whole idea of to pay it forward. Right? Or to give it for it forget to pay to give it forward. So, there's so many little nuggets. And I think it's just like, when we used to go to conferences, I'm like, Oh, my God, I have like 20 million ideas. Give me one to take back. And, you know, I do think as running a business, we have to pick one or two or three, I think the secret behind the sciences three major initiatives a quarter. That's about all you can bear, and put on the purpose for him. Like live, I could give another little nugget. Yeah, please. We always talk about celebrating wins. And we forget to do that. Right? Like, we're just so busy. Next, next, next, how about just writing down the purpose of doing something? Like when you ask somebody to, could you please do X? How about right? And this is why, just get it? Especially younger. And I don't mean by age, by the way, I'm just by experience less experienced people, they want to know the end game. Even if they don't totally understand it, just respect them enough to explain that. That is hugely beneficial, because that's what we see a ton of times to that businesses come and say, well, I have these 20 things I need to do. And I'm like, why I why I feel like the four-year-old. You know what I mean? But you can't answer why you shouldn't be doing it.
Richard Walker 18:21
I think what you're pointing at is something that's kind of coming to me is that the difference between being an authoritarian leader, and a collaborative leader is being able to say why we're doing it. If you're not, you're just saying do this, do this, do this. Instead of let's bring it together. I struggled with this because I asked, okay, how do my engineers who develop the software have any impact on revenue? Oh, my gosh, they have impact on revenue? Are you kidding? They have impact because when we have fewer bugs, we have a better experience for our customer, right? When we have more bugs, we have more people turned off and then word of mouth goes down and sales can go down. That's just one example of somebody on my team having an impact. Let me ask you a really hard question, Jen. And I apologize for putting you on the spot here. Because I'm not sure what the answer would be if you asked me this question. So let's collaborate and think through this. Let me do a giver. Is it innate, was it born or did you learn spilled? Can other people be givers?
Jen Goldman 19:13
You know what, it's not a hard question for me. And I'll tell you why. So last year, when I started getting back out to network again, face to face locally, it normally network nationally, I went to networking, and I was talking and at the end of the talk I said if you're not a giver, don't talk to me, and the whole room gasps. I was not prepared. I did not can that okay, um, I have been going through. I did Simon Sinek you had to do find your why. And what you have to do is you have to go back in time and do all these timeline events. So I actually went through the exercise so I opened that Cardone book. I went to the exercise I asked a bunch of my friends to give me feedback was this whole thing. I was born a giver. My parents nurtured it by not having a lot, but still giving to helping the charities. So they didn't have the money to give to charities, they actually my mom would work in a soup kitchen, or flowers in between jobs. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think you're born to some extent with that. And then it's a question if you're nurtured or not. Yeah. And you can tell with people now, like now that I'm aware how much I care about that I can tell in a conversation.
Richard Walker 20:26
Oh, yeah. It's whether they ask you a question about yourself, right?
Jen Goldman 20:30
That's right. Think about when you're networking, right. And they just talk about themselves the whole time. Now, there's two sets of people. One is they're nervous, whatever reason, right? And they're babbling. But then the other is, they're just all landed themselves. Isn't that the biggest...
Richard Walker 20:44
I don't like to complain. But if I could have people learn one communication skill, it would be to ask questions that matter to other people. Everybody loves to talk about themselves. But you should only do that when somebody is asking you about yourself.
Jen Goldman 20:59
Right? And don't you think you learn so much more from other people and asking them about them? Oh, amazingly. Yeah. Like, the nuggets you can get from that are phenomenal. They're phenomenal. And that's the lasting impression that people walk away with. I don't know. Yeah, that's a great, I did struggle with it. I did think for a while that being a giver was something we could nurture. And I'm of the age now where I'm done thinking that?
Richard Walker 21:25
No, that's fair. That's fair.
Jen Goldman 21:28
I don't mean to say you can't nurture it, but they have to have it in them.
Richard Walker 21:32
Yeah, I think there's, well, look, anybody who wants to change has to have the desire to change first. But when you're answering your question, it made me kind of realize why I'm a giver. Because that's who I am. I've always been that way, but I haven't always been that way. I learned it through survival. I learned it because I moved every year of my life. I moved 33 times now. And I'd go to a new school. And one of the things I found out is that people like themselves the most. So if you can be like them, then they'll like you. So to learn who they are, you have to ask these questions, but then you also have to give to them in certain ways. Yeah, so I think I learned it just by survival mode. But I also believe that you can adopt it and learn to do more of it if you recognize it as a methodology for success. And I do think it's a great lead-in for success.
Jen Goldman 22:23
It is, but you have to do it. I'm going to use the wrong word. My dad, your mom, you have to do it for the right reasons. It's going to use that big 10 cent word that I can't say. Yeah. Because people will see through it, at some point, the people that you care about the people that inspire you, or you want to be inspired by they will see through it. Sal has to be real and genuine. But that but here's the secret sauce of this, if I may, on the customer journey. There is the tipping point of giving too much.
Richard Walker 22:56
There is absolutely, absolutely people values, yeah, you don't want to give away stuff for free, for example, because people value free at zero, it's worthless to them. So ultimately it's an awareness and a conscientious behavior. And I don't want people to think that giving means you give gifts, or you give out monetary things, it's honestly it's just your time, it's your interest. It's your ability to engage with people, that's a huge gift. That's a great way to give to others. But I also think behind that is you have to have a desire, or I should say, no expectation of getting back. That's the other side of it, which is hard. Oftentimes, it's really hard. Because you will give and give and give me like why am I not getting back? What am I doing wrong?
Jen Goldman 23:43
Exactly, I just went through that I was at a networking group, locally. And I'm like, What am I doing? Like I'm having meetings every couple of weeks and talking and they're all yeah, yeah, yeah,, right? And nobody asked what you do. And I'm thinking, did I pick the wrong? Did I pick the wrong group? You know what I mean? And right away, you go into, it's my fault. This is where that emotion and separating, you got to just separate. It's like, let it go. Just let it go. You know what I mean? So maybe it might have been not the right move. Maybe it was the right move, but with the wrong intent. Like who is?
Richard Walker 24:16
Yeah. So Jen, I love this part of this conversation. But I also have another type of question I want to ask and just get your input on because you're talking about customer journey mapping, customer experience and looking at that you're also talking about choosing tech and helping people evolve processes. So here comes my question. How do you think about artificial intelligence playing into this? What's the impact going to be on these processes or how you're even approaching your customers?
Jen Goldman 24:42
It goes two ways. Well, let's put it this way. It's all in moderation, kind of like eating let's just not overdo it here. I believe that AI can be used to free up the mind and the time to really delve into the client experience more to really dive into your own changes, that will help with the client experience and yourself your own personal development. So but that's as far as I'd like to see that happen. Did any mean like I don't believe I've worked with service businesses, there's nobody going to replace a human, but to support a human, do better with the clients to walk into a meeting feeling more relaxed, because they feel more prepared and it wasn't a mad dash scramble, absolutely. I'm also a softy for smaller growing businesses, they don't have the wherewithal to hire the great people that you or I might have on our teams. Right. So I do think AI is going to give them that boost of help to get them to the next level of size business to them higher than humans. So I'm gonna go with the, I'm optimistic.
Richard Walker 25:53
I'm optimistic too, frankly. And I agree that's not going to replace the creativity a human can bring. But maybe here's a business idea somebody could run with, could you build an AI that audits your customer experience and reports back to you about the customer experience in some manner? That's a difficult one.
Jen Goldman 26:09
Well, you certainly, okay, so don't you think someday that the AI could ask really intelligent questions? I mean, listen, we know AI is built in some psychology platforms, right. And I'm good for that. Because there's some people with mental health, and that's all they can afford. So, or there's just not enough psychologist, to be perfectly honest. Right. So why couldn't you parlay that into serving the clients and asking the next best question?
Richard Walker 26:35
Yeah, I wonder if you could have AI pretend to be a customer and call your customer support line and interact and buy a product and all the way through? Yeah. Well, we'll see it, it's gonna happen.
Jen Goldman 26:50
It's just a question of well in our universe, or somebody else's universe, right. Like, we already know what is happening. Sure. We're just not in our part of the world to unity mean, it's happening in the banks of who knows the big tech companies behind the scenes, who knows where it's happening, but somebody's got to be trying it. And that's okay. But as long as again, it's for the right reasons. And it's all for the customer. I'm good.
Richard Walker 27:13
Yeah. So do you recommend your customers try out new AI tools?
Jen Goldman 27:17
Well, I mean, I use one, not today. But listening to all my calls. Like I used AI. When I thought I was talking too much. And I was too negative, because we're all about change. So I put an AI bot into my Zoom calls to tell me if I was positive and shut up often enough. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And from there pinned into taking notes. And then summarizing, I don't use any of that. I use a sentiment and make sure I don't talk too much. I absolutely do recommend it. I also tell my businesses don't go nuts about it. Like don't go to the fear side, because this is where they can go. But just listen, keep an ear on this and what's going on? And take it in, in bite-sized pieces.
Richard Walker 28:01
Yeah, I actually had an AI analyze, I don't know if it's my podcast or phone calls I had. Tell me how many filler words I'm using? And what filler words I use the most. Yeah, because as a public speaker, you've got to eliminate the basically and, um, and, you know, like.
Jen Goldman 28:19
Like my son did. Like, like, like, I'm like, oh, my God, Valley girls. So how'd you do? Did it come out? Okay.
Richard Walker 28:27
I was super happy with the results. I had three filler words, which I already knew what they were. And they were used like three times four times. And that wasn't a 30-minute conversation. So that's fine. I was okay with that.
Jen Goldman 28:38
That's great. So wasn't that worth it? Right, a great use of AI, props you up? Let you know. And now you're free to do what you're going to be in. You're not going to critique yourself on that. Yeah, exactly. That's just about it. Yeah, yeah. That's so funny. That's funny.
Richard Walker 28:53
Yeah. Jen, I love talking to you about all this stuff. We're gonna have to wrap it up. And I have another question for you. But before I ask it, what's the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Jen Goldman 29:01
LinkedIn, you can actually put in my name Jennifer Goldman, and I think you're going to find me right away.
Richard Walker 29:09
I think I find you it's a Jen Goldman immediately as well. Yeah, yeah, you're findable. That's great. All right. We'll go find Jen on LinkedIn. All right. Here's my last question. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style or how you approach your role today?
Jen Goldman 29:25
In the last year or over my life?
Richard Walker 29:29
However you want to answer it?
Jen Goldman 29:31
Well, I'm going to have to give some serious credit to my coach. So just as I guide businesses, I have a guide. And Jerome you know who you are. Jerome Myers has been, he caught me in an interesting spot at a conference that you and I know of and has really shifted my mind around the value prop. So we talked about it earlier about being a giver, and when to stop, when to value your time and know what it's worth. And so yeah, so that's my shout-out to Jerome. Thanks for letting me say that actually, because he's been great.
Richard Walker 30:10
That's awesome to hear that because here you are the virtual CFO to other people, the coach the guide, and you're drinking your own Kool-Aid, you have your own coach to make yourself better. That is smart. I love it.
Jen Goldman 30:22
Thank you. Absolutely. I don't know how people can do without somebody. I don't know how you, maybe that's just it that's in them right in the end. But you know what, whether it's a coach that's paid, or a mentor or somebody, surround yourself by people that are better than you, somebody just said it the other day, I think it was Mel Robbins. And she said, You are the average of the five people you hang out the most with. And just keep that in mind. That's your coach. Right? That's the essence of it.
Richard Walker 30:47
It is, the difference between paying somebody or not, you have to have somebody in your life peer group, join a group that can help you, etc. So I totally value that. All right, I want to give a huge thank you to Jen Goldman, founder of My Virtual COO for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Jen's website at myvirtualcoo.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion, will click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channel for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Jen, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Jen Goldman 31:26
Thanks for having me.
Outro 31:28
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