“I understood the process. I understood the workflow. I understood systems. I understood the need to take these things and bring them all together. That was what became my competitive advantage. Over time, I realized I had to drop the description of professional organizing and replace it with business infrastructure.”
Alicia Butler Pierre is a chemical engineer-turned-entrepreneur. She is now the CEO of Equilibria, providing aspiring entrepreneurs with contemporary business infrastructure tools, which are essential to achieving growth and scaling a business. She is also the author of the world’s first published book on business infrastructure for small businesses—Behind the Facade, How to Structure Company Operation for Sustainable Success.
Join Alicia as she shares her entrepreneurship journey and her vision of helping others transform their day-to-day operations to boost business efficacy.
Website: https://aliciabutlerpierre.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciabutlerpierre/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alicia_B_Pierre
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicia_b_pierre/
John: Thank you for tuning into the business sphere. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode. My guest today is the CEO of Equilibria. I think I said it right. You can clarify that. And the author of words first book on business infrastructure, Alicia Butler Pier, her firm specializes in operations management, and increasing bandwidth for fast-growing small businesses. Thanks for being on the show, Alicia.
Alicia: Thank you so much, John, for having me.
John: So I do apologize. I know I.
Alicia: It’s Okay, you know what I always tell people, as long as you don’t just say a completely different name, like Ashley or Alison, we’re good.
John: For all the listeners that don’t know who you are, if you don’t mind, sharing with them how you became the CEO author, but maybe take them through that journey on how you became who you are today?
Alicia: Sure, well, I can, I won’t go too far back in time, maybe I can start with my decision to become an engineer. And that started John when I was a senior in high school. And I had a chemistry teacher who, coincidentally is actually Ukrainian. And you know, considering everything going on in the world right now. But it was my Ukrainian chemistry teacher who took a particular interest in what I was going to become as an adult. And truthfully, John, my very first passion was journalism. So I originally wanted to go to college or university to become a journalist. But I also discovered this love that I had for chemistry as a student in high school. And by the time I was in my last year of high school, and, you know, you start filling out applications to go on to university. So I was going through that stage, and this particular teacher, Mrs. Cables is her name, she just had this, this interest in what I was going to do, I said, you know, I think I’m going to switch my major from journalism to chemistry. And she said, Well, why don’t you think about chemical engineering, because as a chemist, you’re going to have to go all the way up to the Ph.D. level before you start to make any real money. But as a chemical engineer, you can come out of school, you know, just four or five years later, and you can make a lot of really good money. So the motivation, John, was to make money. I didn’t know a thing about chemical engineering. So I start university, finish five years later, and I started working at a company called Monsanto. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. And I always preface I should preface that by saying, you know, don’t judge me. But I will say this when I was at Monsanto, it, I worked as a process engineer. And what that means, John, for your listeners who may not know what that means, I’ve literally was responsible as a process engineer for figuring out anytime we made a particular batch of Roundup, which is the weed killer, that that was the product that I was making. So let’s say if we produced a certain batch of that Roundup, and for whatever reason, it didn’t meet specification, I, as the process engineer, had to figure out what went wrong in the production of that particular batch, to cause it to not meet the specification. So, so these skills of being investigative analyzing, troubleshooting, those are just naturally kind of in my blood, but it really became ingrained when I worked as an engineer. And something else. really pivotal happened to me during my time at Monsanto, and that is, that discovery that I didn’t understand business, I didn’t understand the language of business, which is accounting. So, John, we would have these accountants who would come and visit us every month, whatever unit you worked in, within this particular chemical plant, and they would produce these really thick reports and talk to us about things like equity and liabilities and Profit Loss, accounts receivable accounts payable, and it was as though they were speaking of foreign language. which I didn’t understand it. I knew the technical aspect of my job. But I didn’t understand the business aspect. And so I decided to go back to school, I was working full time during the day, going to business school at night. And I’m going to speed up this story, I promise. But eventually, I pursued my MBA. And I graduated in December of 2004. Abruptly relocated, I was in New Orleans, Louisiana, I’m originally from Louisiana here in the States. And I relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, didn’t know anyone knew one person to be exact. But I saw Atlanta as a land of milk and honey in comparison to New Orleans. And six months later, Hurricane Katrina happened. So it was a good time to make a move, even though it seemed absolutely insane. And that’s one of the things that I’m hoping those who are listening to my story right now will pick up on is, sometimes you have these gut feelings, those intuitive thoughts, it doesn’t seem rational, you can’t make sense of it. And when you share your ideas with other people, they’re going to think you’re absolutely insane. But if that intuitive thought or feeling just won’t go away, you probably need to act on it. And thankfully, I acted on mine. And it led to me relocating to a new city, and meeting new people. And what started off as an initial job search John, after about 60 days of either getting an endless stream of rejections or just not hearing anything at all, I decided to start my company equilibria. Because I figured, you know, for the same amount of time, effort and energy that I’m spending, trying to get a job working for someone else, I could redirect that same time, effort and energy into creating an opportunity for myself, something that I’m truly passionate about built around my natural skills, talents, and abilities. And that’s what led me to initially starting my company equilibria. And here we are 16 years later, which is so hard to believe. But it’s been a wild, crazy, wacky ride, but I would not trade it for anything.
John: Wow!
Alicia: I know, that was a lot.
John: But that’s very interesting. Because, you know, you started a business, not because of, again, it’s like when you’re forced to make a decision, right? And you either go get a job, and you know, you either start entry-level or whatever, and you do your, I guess experience your credentials, allow and your expectations were at a certain point. And when you’re not met with satisfactory opportunities, you have to make decisions. And like you mentioned, you moved from Louisiana to Atlanta. And that was a huge moment in your life as well. career shift, not knowing people, new culture, even though US it’s still in the US. Yes, completely different region, how people live in a big city versus coastal. I mean, it’s, I’m sure I’m in Toronto, Canada. So yes, it’s even a little bit more different. But again, large city like Chicago, New York, LA, you know, now it’s Atlanta, right? It’s like, really big. So, I would love to ask you a couple things, okay. Because my entire family, like three siblings of them went for engineering, and wow, are also you know, they got their stamp, they got whatever it is pursuing their thing, right. And they enjoyed it. But they never pivoted to becoming an owner, entrepreneur. And it’s, it takes a different mindset, because you’ve been trained in, you know, science, engineering, chemistry, whatever, like that whole science background to think differently, like, they always are very cautious kind of individuals versus business are risk-takers, or not uncertain, like there’s no reliance on stable income. You have to learn it. And it’s a new language altogether, right? Like I went to school for business, and I stuck with sales, marketing, business and etc. But even from your career, you also work at Monsanto, Monsanto, and I read a ton of book on it. And I knew how, you know different it is to work in it than what it’s perceived on the outside. Yes, so judge It all at all, but it’s more about, you know, it’s like pharma companies, right? I know there’s good and bad to it all day. Is it good for humans? At what level? Right? Right, depending on where you’re at, in the organization and company, you’re doing it for survival usually right? Like paycheck shelter, food needs necessity. So like, if you’re a family, you need to survive. But when you take a step back, and then align it to your values, I mean, it’s completely different. So how was the experience working there? And maybe share with listeners what that company did? And you know how you kind of pivoted away from it and why?
Alicia: Oh, wow, I’m so glad you’re asking that question. Because no one ever really asked me about, what did you actually do at Monsanto? What was what were your experiences like? So thank you for that, John, my very first position when I worked there, and I was really young, I was like, 22 years old, fresh out of university. And I worked. So whenever you are in a production facility, is very rare that you work from the raw materials, or whatever the source materials are all the way to the finished product, we have what we call units. So one unit might just be handling a very small portion of the overall production process, the part of the production that I first worked in, and again, remember, we’re talking about Roundup, and for your listeners who may not be familiar with what it is, it’s an herbicide or a weed killer. So I was making poison. And to your point, John, I was so excited to have a job number one, and I was paid very well. I graduated from school without any debt. I had a very nice apartment, I had a very good life. And there was no reason for me to challenge anything. And there’s something else really important that you said that sometimes you can be inside of these large companies. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are privy to everything that goes on. And that certainly was the case. For me. Everything was still very much siloed. I learned more about Monsanto. Once I left the company than when I was actually there, I started watching these different documentaries. And as you said, there’s all kinds of books out there and anything around pharmacy, pharmaceuticals or just environmental issues.
Genetic genetically modified foods, Monsanto is usually almost always a part of that conversation. But getting back to your original question. So my very first job there was working in one of the production units and literally working as that process engineer. So whenever things you’re you’re kind of you’re in maintenance mode for the most part. But the minute something goes wrong, you have to step up and figure out what happened. And so in a unit, you can have a process engineer, you can have a mechanical engineer, because there’s so many mechanical pieces, right? We’re talking about equipment. And there’s usually also an electrical engineer because there are electrical, there’s electrical wires that are communicating that connect the equipment to the monitors in the control room, so that you can literally know what’s going on outside without having to necessarily be outside. So when things go wrong, we all kind of band together to figure out well, well, what was it? Was it something mechanically related? Was it a lick electon type of an electrical wiring issue? Was it truly process related? Was there a chemical imbalance somewhere? And if so, why? And then eventually, I started working in different part, different units. But ultimately, I landed in the environmental engineering group. And the reason John was because I hated being in the actual day-to-day production. It was I’ll just say this, it was no place for a young lady. And unfortunately, these aren’t things that you’re taught when you’re in school. It’s not until you actually get out there and you realize how harsh of an environment it really is. Just the working conditions themselves and the things that you have to deal with, you know, again, I’m a young single woman in a very male-dominated environment. And it was very challenging. So there’s the challenge of dealing with the aspects of your actual job, but then also the challenges of navigating a work culture like that. So when I finally landed in the environmental engineer Hearing group, I’ll tell you what my. My personal breaking point was, there was a community in Anniston, Alabama. And they were suing the company, Monsanto. For things that happened back in, I believe it was like the 1960s, 1970s, a large swath of that population of children who were born during that time, were born with birth defects, or very rare forms of certain diseases like cancer. And it was it took them a really long time to prove this point. But it was attributed to chemicals that were being illegally dumped into their water strings. And at the time, Monsanto owned the company that was doing this illegal dumping, although they didn’t own it at the time that the lawsuit was being brought. So I just remember, get kind of getting into it with one of my co-workers, she was basically asking me, Hey, you know, if the media stars calling, lie, based, literally just say, we, you don’t know anything about it. And I told her, I wasn’t, I was not going to do that. And so she got really frustrated with me, and asked that I just start to forward the phone calls to her directly so that she could deal with it. But I knew John that I didn’t have a future there. But I did learn a lot. And eventually, I left Monsanto and I started working at a small family-owned engineering consulting firm. And that’s what gave me that taste of entrepreneurship small business. Because I went from being in this very large corporate environment where I was in a silo to being a very small family-owned business, there was no hierarchy, there wasn’t the kind of drama that you go through. Sometimes in a corporate setting where people are kind of a lot of backstabbing, trying to climb up the quote, unquote, corporate ladder, there is no ladder, usually, in a small business, especially a family-owned business, because it’s more than likely going to be a family member who, who holds some of the higher positions in the company. But the reason I bring up my experience working at that smaller consulting firm is that really gave me a taste of the interconnectedness of all of the departments that make up a company. So accounting, technology, you know, it technology, there’s the day to day operations, the engineering group, the HR piece, I was able to see how all that the sales and marketing as you deal with, I was able to see how all of those different aspects of business come together to make things function and happen on a day to day basis.
John: That’s amazing. I mean, I love that story of you just explaining to the listeners about Monsanto, and that culture, blue-collar work environment, if you’ve ever worked in a factory trades job, or different industries, it’s pretty rough out there. It’s like getting book smart if you’re reading school smart, they’re street smart. But it’s also like the corporate manufacturing smart as well, you have to navigate it until you have it, you cannot explain how it is. And you have to really figure out if this is going to be suitable for you or not, if you can endure the kind of harshness that comes with it. And that’s reality, right. And then you were able to then figure out your values right on Weinman. Because if anyone you know, if you were raised, you know, as a any individual, you should be truthful, honest, and try to do things that are right. But certain situations and circumstances, you have to make decisions, right? You’re forced to figure out if a job career, livelihood, this income, is something you will continue doing for that money and kind of move away from your values. Because usually people have good morals and they want to be able to sleep at night and do the right thing. But I know in society, there are people out there that will do whatever it takes for monetary rewards, right? Yes. So these are things that it’s great that you’re sharing this because I worked at a large corporation, which was yellow pages. And it was again, it was trig, absolutely a great work environment, not like Monsanto. We never got sued lawsuit. It was a legitimate business. Everything was great. It was more like the transition was happening because Google was kind of taking. So for me, it was like learning about the corporate environment, on sales marketing, HR, everything that goes on production, operations, fulfillment, everything that you’re talking about IT. And then all the software included. So I was able to then work with small business owners and understand the corporate environment to start my own agency. But even for yourself, this is where you saw there was a gap, because you worked in the SMB family-run businesses, then you were then able to figure out where the gaps are, because you saw what a large corporation did. And now it comes to know starting this business of yours. Was it for the first couple of years? Because, again, it’s different for every individual. But I’m sure you know, to get the ball rolling to get it off the ground. If you don’t mind sharing with the listeners? Sure, absolutely. How did you survive? Because I think it was, you know, 80% of businesses don’t make it past what, three or five years? Yes, no, how are you continually smiling and loving what you’re doing? After 16 years?
Alicia: Because I’m a little crazy, John, now, but seriously, you know, I love I’m looking at your background, and you’re surrounded by all of these amazing books. And I recognize many of them. And truthfully, that’s where my entrepreneurial journey started is with books reading. And it’s back in 2005. John, it just so happened that everything I happen to read, and sometimes watch, because I’m a huge documentary buff as well. But all of those things that I was reading, and maybe even watching, all started talking about the fact that we’re all blessed with these natural skills, talents, and abilities. But when you think about it, through our quote, unquote, educational system, we’re really being groomed to go and work for someone else, right? We’re not taught to capitalize on our natural skills, talents, and abilities. So as I’m reading all of these things, I start to reflect and think to myself, well, what is it that I’m naturally really good at? And for me, it was organizing, I started to notice that as the common thread, no matter whether I was flipping burgers at a fast-food restaurant as a teenager or working as an engineer, what was it that I was what made me good at my jobs, it wasn’t because I was the smartest person in the room, it was because I was very organized. So equal equilibrium, my company actually began as a professional organizing company. And here’s what happened, John, back in 2005, I started noticing that now here’s the engineer in me. You know, I started analyzing Well, of all of the clients that I’ve worked with, in my first year of business. They were all home-based entrepreneurs. And it wasn’t that these were people who were chronically disorganized, and they certainly by no means would be considered hoarders, but they were operating businesses from their home. And they just needed systems and processes in place to keep things in order, because they had everything else going on, going on in their homes. But then they had to have that one dedicated space, where they could keep things pertaining to the business, in order and sometimes, you know, chaos ensues. And it’s difficult to figure that piece out. So it wasn’t necessarily that I was I did organize a few closets and maybe even a garage or two. But for the most part, I was organizing home offices. And I realized, John, my, competitive advantage was the fact that I have that engineering background was the fact that I understood process. I understood workflow, I understood systems, I understood the need to take all of these what seemingly seems to be disparate things, and bring them all together. That was what became my competitive advantage. And over time, I realized I had to drop the description of professional organizing, and replace it with business infrastructure, because we’re talking about building a solid foundation upon which you can continue to grow and ultimately scale your business. I remember listening to one of your previous episodes. I think with her, her name is Eleanor, Beatson. I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. And I love that episode so much because you all talked a lot about what it takes to scale and the importance of having that infrastructure. And it just warms my heart to even hear you all say the word infrastructure. But that is how I began. equilibria is as that professional organizing company. And the reason I can still smile, the reason I can, the reason I’ve survived, truthfully, John, is from listening. And putting my ego aside. You know, it’s so tempting when we first start anything new. We think we know what other people want, we think we know who our customers are going to be and what they want. But it’s not until you actually get it out there your product or your service. And you let them tell you what they want, and how they want to use your product or service. And if you don’t continue to listen to them, you’ll be out of business real fast. And I think was so brilliant about the example you brought up about your time at the Yellow Pages, just think if they had been paying attention, they wouldn’t have been caught off guard, maybe by a Google right, or a Yahoo or I even think about the story of blockbuster, right, and how Netflix just completely demolished them. But if they had been paying attention to the trends and really listening, and paying attention to changes in consumer preferences, they may not have they may still be around. So that’s what I by and large attribute my longevity of business to is just listening and putting ego aside.
John: That’s amazing that you’re sharing this. I wanted to also ask you, I know early days of running a business, you know, there’s times that you probably had to sit down and say, Should I continue? Or should I just get a job because of what you will pay being paid prior? You have you went to school, you’re educated, smart, you have some experience, and you know what you’re worth trying to go out and learn sales and marketing, try to get customer service and do the work? Like how challenging was that at that time? And looking back? What could you have done differently? Or would you have changed anything?
Alicia: It’s incredibly challenging. And I’ll tell you a big part of it. For me, aside from the occasional feelings of self-doubt, and questioning yourself, like, Have I gone mad? You know, am I crazy? Why would I leave behind this plush lifestyle that I had this very comfortable lifestyle to intentionally venture into the unknown. And it wasn’t as though John, I created a business where there was already a blueprint, it wasn’t like I started an accounting firm, I didn’t start a law practice, or medical clinic, or, or a typical consulting firm, that with the service that people are already familiar with. I was creating something truly from scratch, there was no blueprint, I’ll tell you one of the most challenging things in the beginning. Which is something that is really difficult to grapple with, for any entrepreneur probably is the chatter from other people. Friends, family, what are you doing, John? Have you lost your mind? You had this great job at Yellow Pages? Why do you want to start this business? What the hell is SEO? What are you even talking about? How do you know that it’s going to work? What if it doesn’t? What if it doesn’t work? What if it fails, and you just these are people that love you, and they care about you, but they’re projecting their fear onto you. And John I had to learn how to keep quiet. As you know, I hate to say it, but you can’t share your dreams with everyone. Because some people they allow their fear for you to kind of creep out and if you aren’t careful, you can completely absorb all of that negative energy and, and those feelings of self-doubt. And the fear starts to creep in. And you start to say, well, you know what, if everybody is questioning me, then it must maybe I can’t do this. Maybe I do I am having illusions of grandeur. I don’t know. So I had to learn how to navigate around that. And for many, many, many years, John whenever family members would ask me so house businesses, great. My answer was always the same. Great. How many cuts Oh, you know, everything’s fine. It’s lovely. It’s wonderful. I never went into detail because I just, I didn’t ever want to make space, mentally and emotionally for any doubt and fear to creep in. I hope that makes sense.
John: It totally does, because I get it after running my agency for nine years. First couple years were challenging, to say the least. But it was only entrepreneurs that have made it past five years to really understand. So yes a couple questions there, I wanted to ask you, so it’s great that you’re sharing that there were a lot of people that love you dearly, that will want to support you no matter what, that you trust, that are in your inner circle but they’re gonna, try to help you but they don’t really understand what you’re going through, because they’ve never endured it themselves. Were there people instrumental in your life at those moments, those years, early years because I know you’re a big content absorber right? Reading books, watching videos, but were there people, coaches, mentors, conferences, speakers, communities people that you kind of gravitate towards, because if you, if I look back there were only a couple people that I actually let in during those times because they were supporting me and they kind of saw what I was envisioning in terms of my true vision right? and my goals aspirations but a lot of these other people, I mean yes they love you they will do whatever for you, but they don’t really understand what you’re doing right, that is so true were there people in your life at that moment because you kind of left everything behind.
Alicia: I know, I sure did I left everything behind. And when I first relocated I remember I looked I, speaking of the yellow pages there was still a phone book, at that time and I literally remember opening the phone book going to the yellow pages, and looking up different business organizations. And I just started going to these meetings, and john I remember going to office depot and buying one of those avery template packs for business cars I had a tiny desk jet printer. I whipped up some business cards, I knew enough to go to a business function with business cards in hand, and just to let you know how bad it was now remember. I’m an engineer right ? or I had been an engineer for many years up to that point, I didn’t own a business suit, so I had sticker shock, when I went to the department store trying to buy a business suit, and I just couldn’t the engineer in me just couldn’t bring myself to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a brand new business suit, so I actually went to a goodwill or thrift store, and that’s how I got my first set of business suits, and I took them to the dry cleaners and got them all really nice, and you know and I started going to these different business organizations, their networking events and I just started meeting people. And eventually, I think it’s important to share this part of the story, as I started meeting and talking with different people, I started finding my people right? People who were right at the same stage as me kind of just starting out trying to figure things out, we’re navigating, we’re both in you know, we’re both new to the city. One of my dear friends her name is Kimba Mogulski, Kimball was that person for me, when I first started out and we still communicate to this very day we were just starting around the same time, and we actually met at a chamber of commerce meeting, we just happened to sit at we happened to attend the same event one day, we sat at the same table, and we just struck up a conversation, and we understood each other, and we looked out for each other, we shared resources with each other, we checked in with each other, because to your point John your family and your close friends, unless they’ve gone through this they, it would be very difficult for them to understand what you’re going through, but when you have people around you who are also, especially if they’re at that same point in their journey as you, as you are it just makes it that much more powerful, because now you have a buddy to kind of go through this journey with. But also you mentioned mentors absolutely as, I started networking I also met older people, I met people who may have been around my age, but still have been in business much longer, I just built up this network of people. But I’ll tell you one of the most important organizations that I joined, was Toastmasters and for those of you who are listening Toastmasters is an international organization. That organization and it’s when you look at the membership fees, it’s so you know, it’s so inexpensive compared to other professional organizations that you may join, but when I think about the value that I’ve gotten out of Toastmasters, it’s a professional speaking organization but their whole purpose, is to help build up your leadership skills and when you think about it great leaders are great communicators. And when you, you know so I just joined Toastmasters met great friends through Toastmasters, and what’s interesting about toastmasters is not all of my friends from that organization are also entrepreneurs, but they understand that importance of being able to communicate. So that’s something else that kind of binds us together, but absolutely join those organizations network you’re gonna kiss a lot of frogs, proverbial frogs before you meet that quote-unquote prince or princess, but you have to that’s just part of the game right ? you’re playing the numbers and eventually you will find your tribe, that trusted community of people that you can rely on, to just bounce out ideas off of literally cry on their on each other’s shoulders, and just kind of go through this entrepreneurial journey together.
John: That’s amazing that you’re sharing this, because at least you’re showing you know that the reality of how it is when you’re starting off. And it’s challenging to find people at the right? stages similar to yours going through the same challenges of starting their business, and wanting to survive and scroll and scale because you were living a comfortable kind of job before, but you took this risk and hopefully it was a calculated risk, to really fulfill a need in the marketplace to put yourself out there and you acknowledge your gaps which were leadership skills speaking, going out there and networking you know the marketing aspects, going out there getting a business suit, going out there getting a business card, all these things you know for a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, they don’t have that skill set and they don’t even know where to start and how to start, but you got out there learned read a ton of content, met a lot of people learn from doing taking action right ? and that’s what I mean about entrepreneurs, because we will continue going as long as we know that there’s survival like, it’s a survival point at the beginning but as you continue doing it you get smarter, faster you become more efficient productive you get everything, becomes easier, yes, just like what you do right now for smbs which is trying to optimize the structure of the business right ? By creating standard operating procedures understanding, where the gaps are for all the different pillars within the organization where are things that we can improve to become more efficient productive, how can we streamline efficiencies, cost, structure understand p&l or hire an accountant understand hr or hire someone that manages people really well right? yes, so now let’s talk about your business, because I know we talked about the journey. What exactly is it that you do in your organization and how has it evolved over the years, because you kept talking about listening, and trying to figure out who you wanted to? you know offer services to, and you kind of figured out it was more for the businesses versus the individuals.
Alicia: Right, and thank you so much for that question, and I’m going to refer back to again another interview, it was such a great interview that you did with Eleanor, because I remember at another point she talked about, productizing her services into programs and I had to do something very similar. John when I first started you’re just so happy to get anyone who’s interested in what you have to offer, that you pretty much take on anything and that was certainly the case for me, there was absolutely no discernment, whatsoever oh you wanna, can I do this? can I develop a project plan for you? Yes sure I can do that, can you come organize my home office? Yep, I can do that too. I was a jack of all trades and a master of none, and I was quickly wearing myself thin, and a very another friend of mine, that I came to be that has become a very good friend, also met her she was one of the first people that I met when I relocated here her name, is Louisa. Louisa had a heart-to-heart conversation with me one day and she said, you have got to figure out how to package your services, you’re all over the place. And I knew she wasn’t saying it to be hurtful, she was coming from a place of love because she saw what it was doing to me, and I was trying my best to keep up with everything and I was running myself into the ground, I really was so, what I did, I live here in Atlanta Georgia, and in the northern part of the state there are, it’s very mountainous. so what I did I live here in Atlanta Georgia and in the northern part of the state there are it’s very mountainous and because I was in the mountains there was no cellular service no internet whatsoever so it’s just you and your thoughts and I took a bunch of index cards john and I wrote down the name of every service I had ever provided up to that point onto individual index cards and I started to group them together and there were some outliers but I ended up with seven distinct groups of services that I had provided across a number of different types of industries different sizes of organizations but it all kind of distilled down to these seven unique services so I then had my package so to speak my package of seven services well now I needed a name for it so those seven package services officially became a framework for creating business infrastructure and the name that I gave it originally was clonos which is Greek for clone because the idea is once you figure out all of these distinct seven elements or seven services you in essence can now replicate your business over and over and over again and that’s how you can ultimately scale it but Clonos was too close to uh the name of an existing software out there called Kronos which is Greek for time so I thought how can I come up with a really distinct name so I tapped into my love of ancient civilizations the ancient Egyptian civilization being one of many that I am very fond of and I reached out to an Egyptologist and I asked for if he could help me come up with um an ancient Egyptian word for clone or something that to indicate duplication or replication and he told me sinew s-e-n-n-u and so I took the word ka I already knew the ancient Egyptian word ka which is which means spirit and so I said okay I’m going to call this framework casino so the idea is to replicate the spirit or the essence of what makes your business so great in the first place so now i have the this this packaged service offering this packaged framework then it became a matter of how do I market this and why didn’t i know you john when I first when I first started putting this out there because you know there’s there’s sales and marketing and business development is so layered there’s so many things that you can try and truthfully I was using the spaghetti throwing the spaghetti at the wall approach and seeing what would stick but ultimately what what ended up happening is after 13 years I finally wrote a book and that’s when everything changed in my business up to then I was doing projects I was doing work here and there and there were some really dark moments there were moments when I just decided to go and do contract work for a larger company I still kept the business going on the side but that contract with that much larger organization is what was paying the bills okay but I still never let the business die I still never let the dream die I just had to temporarily work a contract here and there to keep the lights on so to speak um but it was it wasn’t until I wrote the book in 2018 that things really started to that was the tipping point but I’m sure you have that book somewhere in your collection by Malcolm Gladwell the tipping point that was my tipping point was writing the book
John: That’s amazing! I mean I am so inspired by your dedication because going through so many years of trial and error on figuring out how to productize your business through a framework figure out who your personal ideal type of client is and then that sales and marketing piece all together understand how you’re going to be that authority figure or expert and whatever it is and then get it out there because there’s so much noise out there there’s so many different formats content there’s so many different ways to market yourself and then navigating through all that to figure out what’s best for you to then go after the right type of clients that will pay the bills and then hopefully grow right and scale and survive not only survive but then eventually hire more people and scale your business right and throughout that it still sounds like you’re having fun because even though some moments I’m sure as an entrepreneur you kind of reflect and say why don’t i just go get a job why don’t I get that stability of what it was before which is you know 60 80 100k job paycheck every two weeks less worries you tap it at eight leave at five you know all the stress removed but you took on this journey of and these are moments that I kind of look at before as well and I’m like no one understands why yes but then there’s a bigger reason why you’re doing it which is hopefully to impact more people to give more value to others letting people know that there’s people out there that wants to help them survive become more efficient acknowledge their gaps right understand like like seo is a very complex industry altogether so i try to simplify it for a lot of people um but that’s you know for you it’s trying to simplify for the smbs uh that entire infrastructure that you learn in a large organization corporation to then make sure that they can streamline their costs and be more productive end of the day so that their p l’s are much more profitable for you know whatever it is like they can take home more they can give more they can make more of an impact etc.
Alicia: you said that so well john i want to just i want to package that up and use that as my uh a selling tool in some capacity you said that so well um [Music] just talking about the complexities of search engine optimization you’re right the same is true with just bringing up the topic of operations because unfortunately, operations takes in operations when i say operations I mean literally what’s going on behind the scenes what’s going on underneath the hood of that car behind the proverbial curtain operations, unfortunately, takes a back seat to sales and marketing related activities and obviously, of course, no one would ever argue that sales and marketing don’t matter it absolutely matters but what happens john when your what your customers they’re working with with you in local search engine you know local seo the name of your company and then all of a sudden they go from not having enough business to having too much what if as a result of the work that your company is doing for your clients all of a sudden they have so much traffic going to their websites that their websites run the risk of crashing that tells me you haven’t taken a look at your operations you’ve spent so much time focusing on attracting the customers that once they come to you you don’t you literally aren’t able to supply the demand so I would never say don’t focus on sales and marketing you absolutely have to but show operations some love also because I it’s funny you know in Toronto I love Toronto by the way I’ve had some of my best working experiences in Toronto and I remember there was a client I worked with once out there and she was she was getting frustrated with the sales team she said you know they sell the dream but we deal with the nightmare and that’s kind of how the relationship typically goes between sales and operations but it doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship you can break down those silos and and talk together and figure out okay hey if I’m going to go out and sell this do we truly have the operational capacity if this thing really takes off what if it does go viral you know can we handle it and that is the question that I pose and that is why I say a focus on working with fast-growing small businesses john because those are the companies who are usually more receptive to the things that you and i are talking about right now but if we were to go to a typical startup they don’t care about process and workflow and systems no they care about the stuff that you do and and rightfully so and understandably so but what we want to put out there in the world is this idea that once you start to build up that strong customer base and the businesses is coming fast and furious do you have the operational structure the business infrastructure in place to support that growth businesses can fail not only from not having enough customers they can also fail from having too many and I want to bring up this point also because there was something really important that you said and that is you know how do you keep yourself motivated how do you keep yourself going during those moment where you’re just down and you’re out and you’re having you don’t just have a bad day you might have a bad month a bad year I watch a lot of documentaries about other entrepreneurs I read you know I have tons of books and I’m sure you do too written about or by other entrepreneurs just biographies autobiographies and as you start to read these stories and it doesn’t even have to be about other entrepreneurs it could be about just other famous people in general there’s almost always a struggle of some sort and I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with this but um Joseph Campbell he wrote the the hero’s journey that’s you look at any any hero in any story and I always like to position us as entrepreneurs as the heroes of our own stories you’re gonna have that those cycles of pain and and serious discomfort but if you just keep going if you are tenacious enough and you are persistent enough you will come out on the other side and on the other side as its things are flowing it works seamlessly it’s not perfect it will never be perfect but the struggle that you had initially goes away and then when moments of chaos start to creep in again you at least know how to prepare for it because you’ve been through it already.
John: oh I mean this is a great conversation because you know i i understand so much about your struggles uh I’m not as many years into business ownership but i understand how challenging it is for small medium-sized businesses or fast-growing businesses to not have that bandwidth operationally to fulfill the dreams because if if you have segmented workforce from sales marketing operations production you know in-house or outsource a lot of departments right and they’re not in alignment and they’re promising the world but then there’s gaps because retention is low customer service complaints are out the door like you don’t have a sustainable business all together so everything has to be in equilibrium they have to really be in alignment more than anything so that you can take yourself to the next level whatever that may be because if you’re too heavily weighted on sales and marketing and you’re not in alignment because capacity bandwidth or whatever it is is not efficient the workflows are out of line there’s always backlogs it’s not running operationally there’s going to be problems and the client may not see it but eventually they will and then there’s going to be gaps there’s going to be complaints there’s going to be backlogs there’s going to be major problems um and it depends on what you want out of your business because a lot of people started their business through vc angel investors or you know tech startups or or if it’s a bootstrap kind of in business like the smbs what makes them happy what are they really wanting to be successful not everyone wants to be fast growing but they just want a stable income to support their livelihood family and friends to then be able to have a little bit of freedom and choice to do things when they want how they want you know where they want so depending on what kind of business you want to run operate and you know sustain for many years you have to make decisions right and that’s where I know this has been a great conversation um but I know we’ve been going for quite a bit and i wanted to ask you just the last final question so where do you see your business who is your ideal avatar persona right now and where do you see yourself in the next couple years five years 10 years down the road ?
Alicia: really quickly where I see the company going is hopefully I can sell it that is my end game because I recognize that i can only get it to a certain point and that I don’t have the skills necessary to get it to that next level I recognize that in myself I’ve accepted that and I’m okay with that um so we are packaging speaking of packaging again we are packaging that knowledge and actually creating courses so one of the things we’ve done we’ve just literally completed it is an audio master class that is available wherever you listen to podcasts so it’s completely free but after that we’re going to start launching some online courses john and we already have a small college in Massachusetts right outside of Boston that has expressed an interest in licensing the course and so we want to start to introduce it to other universities around the world even incubator type programs for entrepreneurs again all over the world so that is the direction that equilibria is going in is actually teaching other people this methodology so that they too can start to work with their respective clients um there was another part to your question I’m sorry what was it
John: Yeah so you’re you’re growing through aggregators or people that are selling horses and then your exit strategy is really to um sell the business right yes um yes and how has it been for like the marketing piece because that’s probably the hardest piece
Alicia : It is oh my gosh and you you of all people you know that better than anyone i always tell people i mean very similar to your podcast right it’s one thing to there’s the pre-production there’s a production but then there’s the post-production and that that’s where all the marketing goes into to play because marketing never stops it’s ongoing and the the to your point john the world is a very noisy place it’s only getting noisier how do you get people’s attention it’s very challenging and you have to meet people where they are so i have an entire team built that you know there’s there’s a team that focuses just on our YouTube channel there’s a team that focuses on the social media aspects so the the Instagram and twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook we have newsletters that we do we have PR my PR agent is actually the person who connected me to your show there’s there’s a whole little not a sweatshop but there’s a whole team behind me that’s really the marketing muscle of equilibria’s operation because without it i mean we’d be dead in the water truthfully and you have to meet people where they are I can’t tell you that most of my clients are on one particular platform because that’s not necessarily true they may be spread out over several platforms nor can i tell you well they only want to read their content that’s not true either some people prefer to listen to their content they want to listen to a podcast you have those who might want to read a book then there are others who say I want to see it I need to see that YouTube video so we have to be open and receptive to all of these different modes of communication and become truly omnichannel right in our delivery of our marketing content it is more challenging than ever but I’m up for the challenge and we have this again we have a team everybody kind of has his or her super superhero or super heroine strength and that’s we just come together on a weekly basis and we just make it happen.
John: that’s amazing to hear it sounds like you’re still having fun and that’s what.
Alicia: We are because we’re still learning.
John: Yes and as long as you’re growing learning yes there’s going to be a lot of pivots there’s going to be change there’s going to be some failure regret but that’s learning experiences and don’t let it get to you right so um it’s fun it’s a part of it all that journey um but it’s been a pleasure i mean there’s been great nuggets there that a lot of listeners can uh grasp and absorb and utilize for their own organizations um so what’s the best way people can reach out to you check you out if you don’t mind sharing some of your handles social handles or your information your book et cetera.
Alicia: Sure the best way and it serves as a hub for everything is my personal website which is Alicia butler pierre.com and when you get there if you want to check out more about my podcast and the audio master class that I just mentioned you can find out that information there if you want to know more about my company equilibria it will link you to that you can find out more about my book and all of my social handles are on that website as well.
John: Amazing this has been a lot of fun Alicia great to meet you and you brought a lot of energy too thank you you know and it was great to learn about your journey um and that’s more important right because 16 years of running a business it’s not easy to get past five years so you still have that energy and you still are passionate doing what you onset even though it’s changed a couple of times I’m sure but you’re still motivated to continue pursuing your dreams.
Alicia: you know what i love if i may say this really really quickly what i love about the name of your show and what you what you’re doing with your show the business sphere so right it’s a circle and when you think about it i’ve kind of come full circle because remember i started off saying i wanted to be a journalist i liked writing and then i went into engineering well now you know with marketing so much of marketing these days deals with content marketing right so i’m tapping back into those old journalism skills as well so i just thought i’d mention that because again i love the name of your show i love what you’re doing with your show and i just thought it was interesting you know how hmm this has almost come full circle in my life I’m almost back where i started.
John: exactly and it might take you back to Louisiana as well you never know who knows well thanks a lot Alicia this has been a lot of fun I’m ultra grateful for you um being on the show spending a lot of time committing to the show and adding a lot of value for the listeners thank you.
Alicia: Thank you so much thank you john i appreciate it.
