A Big WIN: How One SMB Grew Her Business To 7 Figures in Two Years

Sierra Chase, Founder of Next Level Services, started a boutique on-shore business process outsourcing firm in 2020 mid-pandemic.  She closed her books on December 2021 as a profitable 7-figure business.  Hear how culture, process and having a defined legacy target helped her WIN!

Your hosts:  Ian Richardson, Managing Partner of Richardson and Richardson Consulting (https://randr.consulting) and Carrie Simpson (Carrie Richardson), Founder of Managed Sales Pros - Better Sales Leads for MSPs (https://www.managedsalespros.com).

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they  have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success. 

Ian is  certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan. 

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with Carrie here!

Be a guest on WIN!  We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Transcript

I'm Ian Richardson and your host from Richardson and Richardson consulting. And I'm excited to dive in today with Sierra Chase!

Sierra is the CEO and founder of next level services. NLS is a nationwide call center focused on the IT managed services space, as well as the IT channel that supports those MSPs.

NLS specializes in setting qualified appointments for companies in the it channel space. And Sierra has been in the call center business for going on six years now and is winding up her second year as CEO of next level services. And what a wild ride it's been!

Welcome, Sierra,

Thank you. And I'm happy to be here.

We're super happy and excited to have you here. Let's go ahead and dive right in. When we, spoke before the recording you shared your mission statement with me, the mission statement at NLS is to grow businesses and people. You had mentioned a core focus of that. If you're growing, your clients are growing -- there's a focus on growth throughout everything you guys are doing there.

Tell me about that.

Well for me, it's actually personal. I started out as a waitress back in the day and I started my life over in Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada.

And I met Carrie Simpson who started me into this career as an entry-level caller. And I worked my way up from entry-level caller to office manager, to a seat on the executive team all in a four year period.

I had a very fast growth in my career. So when I talk to employees in their interviews and training, I tell them when we grow, you grow, because honestly, I don't care about their past all I care about is where they're going and where they want to go, and what they want to do with their lives.

Because for me, I would have never found a passion in telemarketing and talking to people and helping them grow their business. But it is my passion. It is my passion to see my clients grow their MRR every month and to close their first deal that we sent over to them. And it's a privilege to see my employees, buy their first car, buy their first home.

Where in their past that wouldn't have been possible. So when we talk about growth with clients and our employees, it is our main focus because the employee is the heartbeat of the company and if they're growing, they're going to help their clients grow. And I am privileged to say that I've seen people move into their first house, buy their first car, have extra money because they're hitting their bonuses to get their hair done.

And it's watching them go from callers too scared to pick up that phone, to  callers who are setting appointments left and right. It's amazing to see them become the person they want to be. And even if telemarketing isn't their end goal, we are helping them gain skills to go to their next step and we help them go to their next step.

And that is an honor to do. What a, what an amazing amazing opportunity to help enable people to recognize their potential. I remember in my former life, one of the one of the lines that I would say over and over and over again at the start of each new employee's career at that organization was, if you give me two years, I'll give you a career.

And I can tell that it's how much passion comes across when you, when you talk about it that you have the same passion for enabling people, a career in in professional sales for organizations and that's that's gotta be incredibly satisfying.

It is. I have been rewarded in many ways. When the call center in Las Vegas was sold and I moved back to my hometown, I actually bought my childhood house.

So when I talk about growth, I tell that story because five years ago, when I was visiting for Christmas, I talked to the previous owner of the house and I said, I'll be back and I'll be buying this house. And it happened five years later. So it's an amazing feeling to reach your goals and also help clients and employees reach their goals.

Yeah, that that ability to to see things come full circle is so rewarding in, in so many ways. Thinking about thinking about challenges. One of the things that we always find that is important right now to a business is the business challenge that someone's focused or working on. What's the, what's the big challenge in, in your world that you've got your your laser focus on for next level services?

What are you working through right now?

Right now, we are evolving to the new normal. A lot of companies stayed remotely and also there is in place there's staffing shortages. So we're evolving around, understanding that the owners of business can't commit to dates and times for employment. So we're evolving to a point where we're finding ways for our clients to still get the same.

And same appointment just in different passions. So if somebody wants a callback is best time maybe before hours or after hours, we're communicating and being transparent with the clients to say, Hey, here's the leads information. They said you could call it this time there'll be available. And with the short staffing, we are listening to their issues and coming up with ways on how to help them through that so that they can get these solutions to help their clients because security is a big issue right now because hackers have nothing better to do in their targeting all types of businesses.

So when we're talking to a managed service provider, you're, we're talking about that security and we understand their time is valuable because of the staffing shortages that are happening and we are accommodating to their needs and making sure they have the same availability to hear about the cybersecurity solutions or the main servers seeing offerings in different way.

So what I'm hearing through that is it, it sounds like a couple of key key skills that you're driving home with your team is around listen, listening and consistency, kind of that ability to hear in the conversation. Hey, I I've got some interest in this potentially, or there might be an opportunity here, but it has to, it has to be able to fit in.

To my world. I have to be able to have a, a post 5:00 PM or a pre 8:00 AM meeting to be able to talk about this. Cause I'm just too busy during the day. And even hearing about that busy-ness and being able to explore that pain point, would you say that listening and consistency are kind of two of your, your, your team superpowers?

Oh yes. 100%. Follow-up and follow-through that is. A big point that we're driving to our team because that pipeline is the goal. At the end of the rainbow, you have to be consistent and follow up and listen to the prospect's needs and pain points because. They are experiencing these struggles in the world right now.

And we have to be able to not be pushy and not push them to a time that there will most likely be. Because of their availability. So we listen, we make sure that we get the times that they are more available to have a conversation with us and follow up. You've got to be consistent with your pipeline, or you will fail at your job.

Got it. Yeah. Routine consistent action seems to be one of the secret sauces for most, if not all businesses do when it comes from sales to service delivery to pay, just make sure that people's paychecks show up on time, right. That that, that, that focus on on ensuring a consistent user experience and a consistent.

A consistent process really does seem to drive high performance. I agree with that. It is. And that is something my team understands fully and they want to perform well, not only so that the clients land, but also they win too because we do incentivize with money with Special awards. Like we are incentivizing them to be consistent so that their performance improve and the client, of course, again, comes back around to growing their business.

Absolutely. All of the things we like to talk about here on when it is the actual wins and by wins, I mean, achieve. You had mentioned to me when we spoke before that NLS had recently sat the highest number of appointments ever in March of this year, and that you also have helped support a seven figure growth path in the first year of business.

Tell us about that. Those are, those are huge wins. Yes. We in March it was, it was amazing to see my team really take. You know, the challenges that we were facing with appointment setting and turn that into success and hit their goals. Everyone on my team got bonused in March. They hit our bonus structure is based off of a number of KPIs and everyone hit their KPIs.

And that was the first time ever for next level services and with the revenue. It's unbelievable because I have listened to you and mop warmer are really still my mentor, Carrie Simpson, my former mentor, Tracy Risko. I listened to them and I put their suggestions to work and followed. We were attraction shop at the previous call center and I took everything.

I learned, put it into action. And if you follow it and you stay consistent, you can achieve the impossible because most businesses are not profitable in their first year. So I am proud to say I was profitable and I followed through on every commitment and every suggestion that was given to me to make sure that I was successful.

And most importantly, my team was success. Yeah. My one thing that jumps out to me as I listened aha listeners, as I listened to your statements about that achievement was that the consistency, the followup follow through that laser focus on KPIs or key performance indicators and data and slow, steady driven improvement for the team led to results.

The other thing. That really bumps out at me is profitable growth. And that's such a passion point of mine. You see in today's private equity and venture capital and just revenue driven environment. There are companies like some major taxi cab replacement organizations that come to mind that have been in business many, many.

And have not actually turned a bottom line profit while they have had revenue growth or the dollars coming in the door have grown. They're spending more money than they're making. They're actually losing money year over year. There isn't any return for the business. And at that point, that doesn't sound like a business.

To me, that sounds like a charity. Oh, trust me. I have what my husband was a former taxi driver and. Rideshare driver. And it drives me. I wanted to rip that structure down and start. I had plenty of opinions on that from what I've learned. And even though they had been in business longer than myself, I still was like, no, That is not correct way, but you know, you can't save the world as people have told me.

But I think about that as well, but I learned from those mistakes, it's consistent doing your research to looking at, you know, mistakes other companies may have made and trying to learn from that to make your processes and procedures consistent and better. And making sure that you're taking that profit and investing it into things that help your company and your people keep growing instead of growing and then declining.

So it's being smart with the profit that really helps too. And T and asking, especially if you haven't been in the business world long, or you haven't been running a business a long time, do not be. Afraid to ask people for help, because I see that as a mistake with consistency and growth is not speaking up when you're stuck.

Yeah. That's that has been one area that I that resonates so strong with me. And really one of the core strategies that I took with diving into Richardson and Richardson and some of the other. Rules that I have on my plate. Now I'm consistently reaching out to people and asking for feedback, asking for input advice, trying to learn from my peers and mentors and those who have came before me, which when I did my first rodeo in the it services space I lived in and I lived on an island for many, many, many years.

Before, seriously listening to outside parties and taking their counsel. And it did nothing but hamper me. So I I celebrate that focus on not only growing and growing profitably, but also making sure that you're growing in terms of knowledge base every day, every month, every year through, through solicitation of ideas and feedback from the community.

So, what I always like to do is always like to wind up, wind up on something. We talked about the challenge we're focused on. We talked about achievements that we have done what we've done and the natural question, the place where I always love to leave things off is what's next. What's the opportunity that you're that you were seeing, you had mentioned when we spoke that you had a five-year business plan.

A pretty big legacy item that you had shared with me that I wanted to I wanted to have you mentioned here on the podcast, what's what's the target that you have over the next five years for impact for next level service. Or in my, when I started, it was very important to, from what I learned from being on the executive team at the call center I worked at was making a Bob your plan.

And one of the items that comes in. Is in my hometown, you have to drive about 2, 3, 4, 5 hours to get help and the addiction community. So if you have an addiction to something, there's not a lot of resources in the triad area of where I live. So I am a recovering alcoholic addict, and that's why I moved to Las Vegas and the recovery.

Atmosphere out there is amazing. I mean, everywhere you turn, there is help. So when I started my business, I wanted to get back what has been given to me. And one of our Diaz, our, one of our goals is to open up a sober living house here to help with the. Opiate crisis that's happening around us and all the overdoses to have somewhere more convenient for people to get help, and also give them a second chance like I have been given and it would be, they would have an opportunity to work for me because we are a second chance company.

We, like I said, we don't care about your past smile and care about where you're going. So with the sober living house, it would give the triad a closer place for people to get help and hopefully to say more lives and to help people gain that recovery. That is so special to me. And I'll wit I want to give back to my community and give back to the.

Program and, you know, help people that want the help. So that is a big goal for us to come in the next five years. That is, that is an awesome bit of impact. And and so. Refreshing and inspiring to hear about a business ignition for a for-profit company that has nothing to do with profit and everything to do with reinvestment in the community and paying it forward.

And with that, with that with that out there, that's going to wind up our time today. Sierra, I want to thank you for being on the, being on the wind podcast from Richardson and Richardson. Those of you who have been listening. You can connect with Sierra on LinkedIn. Just find her as Sierra chase or you can visit her website at www.nextlevelservices.us.

This is Ian Richardson from Richardson Richardson consulting, and you can find us online randr.consulting. This podcast will be posted to all major platforms. Find us on LinkedIn links, subscribe, share. And invite a friend if you're interested in being on when, go ahead and visit us online and you'll find details on how to be a guest there.

Or you can just connect with me on LinkedIn and say, Hey, Ian, I want to hang out and chat. Sierra, thank you so much for being on any final thoughts as we close this. I would just like to thank you for having me on it's been a privilege and to the it channel and anyone listening, remember to pay it forward, be consistent and also remember you have an impact on this world, so don't waste it.

Thank you, Sierra, and with that. We'll see  you next time.