Designing a Business That Doesn’t Depend on You ft. Fractional COO Jessica Frigon
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Listen to Victoria's episode on the At Home With Founders Podcast
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Listen to the At Home With Founders Podcast
Have you ever felt like your entire business lives in your head? Do you know you need to start outsourcing, but worry about being the bottleneck? Jessica Frigon is a Fractional COO and Strategic Operations Architect. She’s the founder of HavenOaks, a full-service operational partnership for creative women who are ready for their business to match the standard of the work they deliver.
In this episode, Victoria and Jessica have a conversation about what it looks like to get operational support in your business, and why it’s so important as you grow. They cover signs your business could be founder-dependent and step-by-step how to build a strong business architecture.
If you don’t know where to start when it comes to streamlining your business operations, this episode is for you. After listening, you’ll be able to identify which systems your business is missing in order to scale—without being the bottleneck. Put your feet up, pour yourself a hot cup of coffee or tea, and get out your notepad for this one, because Jessica is bringing you a crash course on business operations.
Meet Jessica Frigon, Fractional COO and Strategic Operations Architect
Jessica Frigon is a Fractional COO and Strategic Operations Architect. She’s the founder of HavenOaks, a full-service operational partnership for creative women who are ready for their business to match the standard of the work they deliver.
Jessica has nearly two decades of experience building operational foundations from the ground up, fully architecting their systems, team structures, and leadership infrastructure to allow founders to step into their roles as the CEO without losing themselves in the process. She also hosts the podcast At Home with Founders, all about the human side of building a business.
Founding HavenOaks
Prior to running her business, Jessica did similar work in corporate. She managed multi-million dollar projects, building startups from the ground up. Then, she was exposed to the online space and how the work she did offline could translate really well for online businesses.
Many corporate companies actually don’t have strong operations. Often the operational side is trying to catch up with growth. What Jessica wanted to do differently with HavenOaks was have a partnership with the founder, because they’re the one pouring their heart and soul into the business. She wanted to create a safe space to build out the systems together and be really embedded into the business.
VA vs. OBM vs. Fractional COO
A virtual assistant (VA) is someone you bring in during the early stages of business, when you’re making roughly $100K-$200K per year. They execute on tasks, whether that’s admin work, scheduling, sending out proposals, etc.
An online business manager (OBM) becomes the right choice when you have contractors or a team in place, but coordinating them becomes a job in and of itself. You have too many moving parts, so the OBM takes the project management and team coordination from your plate. This usually makes the most sense for businesses in the mid to late six figures.
A Fractional COO is the best hire when you have operational complexities, such as more full-time team members than contractors. The client base is strong, there are multiple services, and the founder needs someone to come in from a strategic perspective and build out the entire operational foundation. They redesign how the business runs across marketing, operations, finance, branding, team oversight, etc. This is typically for seven to eight-figure business owners.
Business Evolution Over the Years
In the early days of business, Jessica was doing more one-off partnerships. From there, she learned about the OBM role, which seemed more aligned to what she did in corporate. She didn’t like being an OBM, as she didn’t want to run the business for founders. Becoming a Fractional COO was a natural evolution for her to make the most impact with her clients.
Signs a Business is Founder Dependent
Eventually in business, you get to a point where it’s not just about the revenue. You want your work to have meaning, impact other people’s lives, and give you time and space for what matters most. In order to have that, you must build a business that isn’t so dependent on you alone. Here are some signs that your business is founder dependent (even if it’s successful).
Every Decision Goes to You
Whether it’s big or small, everything comes back to you. You know where everything is, but your team does not.
Nothing is Systematized
Everything lives in your head, and your team isn’t aware unless you tell them. You don’t have SOPs or systems in place in order for work to happen independently.
You’re the Bottleneck
You may have a team, but you’re more involved in your business because now you need to manage them. You double check work, answer questions, and internally feel unable to take a day off or a step back because you know things will be paused when you’re out of office.
“I Need to Be Involved” vs. “I’ve Trained My Team to Need Me”
If you were to step back as the founder, does your team pause or business slow down? And is that because your expertise is genuinely needed, or is it because your team and the business haven’t been given the processes, tools, clarity, or even ownership to move without you? If it’s the first, your involvement is strategic. If it’s the second, that’s because you’ve trained a team to always depend on you because you haven't built the structure for them to own their roles independently.
How to Build a Strong Business Architecture
Here are the different areas of your business to optimize in order to avoid becoming the bottleneck later on.
Client Experience
Build out your client experience first because that is the biggest aspect of your business. Map out your client journey from end to end. This includes inquiry, onboarding, proposal, follow up, delivery, offboarding, post partnership, etc.
Templates
Build out all the templates you need, even if they require some level of personalization. This includes emails, contracts, invoices, proposals, intake forms, offboarding forms, etc. From there, that should tell you what tech you need.
CRM
For client experience, you need a CRM. This ensures no leads slip through the cracks.
Project Management Tool
Clickup is a project management tool that your business can grow into. It’s complex with many features, but you won’t have to switch down the line.
Automations and Delegation
Once you have your CRM and project management tool, you can identify what to automate with those tech tools. Implement your workflows and any automations you’re able to do.
From there, you can look at delegation. Don’t delegate to someone unless it requires a human touch; that can be automated instead. Ask yourself what you honestly need to be doing as the founder, and what you can easily offload to a team member. Once you have that in place, you have the space to start looking at different areas of your business.
Marketing
Look at your marketing ecosystem, strategy, and content creation process. Include a library of resources that your team can pull from, with graphics, images, and a content bank so they aren’t always coming back to you for that.
KPIs
Identify exactly what you need to track for your business and team so you can make data-informed decisions.
Team Onboarding and Management
As your team grows, ensure you have team oversight in place. This includes a hiring strategy and candidate management. Clearly define all of the roles and the KPIs measured against each role within the company. Review performance on a regular basis, and treat your team with the same level of the standard that you set for your clients.
What to Have in Place Before Hiring
Before you hire, be sure to document your processes. Start off with the client experience, and then work through the different areas. Any process that lives in your head must be documented, so you can truly pass it on to someone else and get it off your plate.
Clearly define your roles—not just job titles, but a genuine understanding of what each team member is going to own, what decisions they are empowered to make, and what success looks like within their role.
Next, you need an onboarding system. Most founders onboard by themselves, answering questions as they come up, but that's really hard to follow for someone who doesn't have the full context of the entire business. A real onboarding system means that a new team member can get caught up to speed, understanding what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and what sets you apart in your industry. With those in place, your capacity compounds, but without them, it redistributes the chaos amongst a bigger group of people.
Character Traits of Success
Resilience is the top character trait Jessica sees in her most successful clients. When they hit low moments personally or professionally, they bounce back and keep moving forward.
Decisiveness and being able to quickly make decisions backed by data and intuition is another important trait they share. That’s why it’s crucial to track your KPIs to understand what’s working and what’s not. They view failure as information and data, not anything to take personally.
Lastly, they are coachable and don’t think they know it all. They’re open to being challenged by their team or by experts brought into their business. They care more about building something that functions, more than about being the smartest person in the room.
To connect with Jessica and learn more about HavenOaks, you can browse her website here or send her a DM on Instagram.
Key Quotes
“Being the business owner, your role is not to be executing the day to day. Your role is to be in the strategic, visionary role, working on business development.”
Jessica Frigon
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