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Our guest today is COO Alliance Member and Enertech’s COO, Karina Mikhli.
Karina Mikhli is a remote COO (former fractional one) and workflow consultant located in NYC. She excels at optimizing systems and focusing teams, loves to help companies and teams run efficiently and scale smartly, and is currently doing all of this and more for Enertech Search Partners.
When not working, Karina is either reading, automating, since it’s fun for her, or sometimes doing audio improv, because zoomprov is not that fun after a while.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- What a workflow consultant does
- How the right tools can leverage your business
- Why do some companies not make progress with the automation of workflows
- Making a decision to self-implement versus hiring someone to help with implementing
Resources:
Connect with Karina Mikhli: LinkedIn
Enertech Search – https://enertechsearch.com
Connect with Cameron: Website | LinkedIn
Get Cameron’s latest book: The Second in Command – Unleash the Power of Your COO
Subscribe to our YouTube channel – Second in Command Podcast on YouTube
Get Cameron’s online course – Invest In Your Leaders
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In this episode, our guest is Enertech COO Karina Mikhli. Karina is a remote COO, a former fractional one, and a workflow consultant located in New York City. She excels at optimizing systems and focusing teams, loves to help companies and teams run efficiently and scale smartly, and is doing all of this and more for Enertech Search Partners. When not working, Karina is either reading, automating because it’s fun for her, or sometimes doing audio improv because zoomprov is not that fun after a while. Karina, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
We are 230-ish episodes into the show and no one has had improv down on their bio. I don’t think I’ve even had a COO who has been a teacher before. You mentioned that to me briefly. Let’s start with the improv first because it’s the most fun, and then we’ll get back into some of your career stuff. How did you get into improv? What is improv? Why did you fall so deep into it?
A few years ago, I was reading a book called Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. It’s on my shelf. I was working long hours. This was pre-COVID, but I was already working from home. Back then, I was still consulting so I was juggling I don’t know how many clients. I desperately needed a hobby because all I was doing was working, sleeping, and eating.
He’s got a whole chapter in that book about finding a hobby that gets you into a creative flow and uses different muscles than you do at work. I had finished reading this book on a Sabbath. I was brainstorming with my husband. My son, who was back then still at home at seventeen, he’s now at the University of Michigan. He was like, “Ma, you don’t have any hobbies. All you do is work.” I’m like, “No. I read this, that, and the other.”
Long story short, my husband remembered I had taken an improv class at the new school when we first started dating. Apparently, I enjoyed it a lot. Thinking about it, my face lit up and they’re like, “Do this thing.” Since I’m lucky to live in New York, I was able to do a free class at the Magnet Theater on a Sunday. I loved it. I started taking more classes there in the pit and all across New York. I discovered and started dramatic improv groups because I’m not funny but I still love getting up there and making things up.
For me, the joy of improv is that it was the exact opposite of the rest of my life. I have to pre-plan and be super organized. There’s always homework. In improv, you just show up. There’s no such thing as a mistake. Everything is a gift. You can’t be checking email or doing anything. You have to be in the moment having fun, giving, and talking with your partner. It was amazing. I did it even through the first year of COVID. I had created a bunch of teams. I was practically performing every Sunday with one of my teams, mostly dramatic improv because that’s what I enjoyed, and then COVID happened.
Most of the improv went on to Zoom because you couldn’t do it in person. At first, it was fun because I got to study with dramatic improv theaters in California and Chicago. All these things, I never would’ve done because this is not what I do professionally. I’m not going to travel and take off a week or a month or two to study. I was able to do all of this online but then after a while, this is where I am for work. I cannot check things when I’m sitting in front of you and I’m not presenting or performing. After a while, it stopped being fun because it was where I do work.
I love the whole doing something that takes you away from work and challenges another part of your brain. I also love that you end up with this amazing energy that you bring back into the rest of your life too and the workforce. What do you think were some of the skills that you pulled out of doing improv that you carry with you today in the business world?
There has been a couple of business books on how improv helps business and I agree with them. The biggest is the whole concept of yes-and, which are you never want to negate what your partner gifts you. That’s the way they talk about it. Everything is a gift. If you say no or you negated, you can’t go anywhere. You block them, but if you say yes-and, it doesn’t mean you have to agree totally but you’re collaborating and building something together. Culture-wise and communication team-wise, it’s so much better to do yes-and rather than yes-but or no.
In terms of networking and building relationships with others, and building not consensus but more collaboration with other executives can be powerful. There is something out of improv that can be brought into the business world for sure. Victoria Labalme studied under Marcel Marceau, who is a famous mime. She’s a business speaker but she has all these incredible hand motions and body movements.
She could say nothing and be on stage for an hour. You’d learn business lessons from her. She’s that good. I remember seeing that and going, “She has honed her craft as a speaker.” You probably have pulled stuff in. Have you taught improv with any of your teams or the employees? Have you brought it into the business that way at all?
We did a team retreat back at the end of March 2022 and I prepared some improv games. They told me after the fact that they had no idea what to expect but it was a lot of fun and everyone loved it. I thought another good thing improv teaches you is to listen and be present. We all have a tendency to be in 100 things and checking 100 things. You can’t be a good partner and you can’t perform if you’re not listening.
You’re playing off what the other person says.
You can even bring something back later, which is called a callback, but you have to be paying attention in the present for any of that to work.
Improv is almost something that all business coaches should do as well because it would help them in listening to their clients, weaving a conversation, and not just moving to, “I wasn’t paying attention so I’ll ask you some other random questions.” If you know someone who would be good at this, I would love to have someone come and run an improv session for our COO Alliance and all of our COO members. I’ll talk to you offline to ask for an intro. If you know anybody, that would be cool or maybe we’ll get you to run a session for us.
One of my favorite coaches does corporate training so I can make a recommendation. He would do it way better than me.
I’ll introduce you to someone better. That’s awesome. I want you to walk us through a little bit about what you’re doing with Enertech, and then I want to go back into your journey to what got you to the COO. Tell us what Enertech is. I’m going to go backward and then we’ll come back again to Enertech Search.
Enertech Search Partners is a niche recruiting and talent advisory agency. We work primarily with funded startups in the climate tech space. We have a sister company, Sea Change, that does more of the advisory in the larger companies. I’m one of the few non-recruiters on the team so everything non-recruiting falls to me. I wear many hats in EOS per month.
It’s great. The CEO and I have a great working relationship. We decided we were going to roll out EOS. I’m reading and signing up for Basecamp because we’re going to do self-implementation. She’s the typical visionary. Every time I take that test, I’m 98% integrator. We’ve come a long way from a year and a half that I was with them. We’ve doubled the team. We still have some scaling issues on the tool side that I’m building out and working on.
The economy has been a little bit challenging but not as much as you would think. Luckily, in our space, there’s still a lot of hiring going on, although it’s taking a little longer sometimes to close. It’s a great team. Everyone is very entrepreneurial. Everyone is remote. A funny story is that when I joined, everybody was 1099, including the founders.
Back in early 2022, we decided we need to grow up, have some real employees, and start making that transition. As the integrator/COO/only non-recruiter, I was the one who registered us in New York, Pennsylvania, and California, which I swear are the three hardest states to register an employer. I had to send myself an offer letter, which was very amusing. You do what you got to do.
Have you ever worked in the recruiting space before? Do you have any recruiting experience or was this a new industry for you?
I’ve done a lot of internal recruiting. I did one very short stint as an external recruiter. It’s not a new industry but it’s not one I’m very familiar with. As they say in Rocket Fuel, which I reread, a good integrator doesn’t have to know the industry. You learn. It’s more about the people and resources. Since I’ve been with them, I’ve picked things up. I wasn’t a recruiter. I’ve never managed a recruiting business before this.
Thank you. You were one of the proofreaders for some of my newest books coming out in January 2023 called The Second in Command. It’s how to unleash the power of a COO. That was something that I talked about in there as well. The COO doesn’t have to have a strong functional ability. We have to understand it enough to be able to not sound like a complete idiot when we’re talking to the heads of those areas. How did you end up there? How did they find you or how did you find them? What do you think the fit was? What did they see in you that they liked other than the obvious that you are 98% integrator?
The Second in Command: Unleash the Power of Your COO
I had been a workflow consultant and fractional COO. Paige, the CEO, first hired me as a workflow consultant. She felt they had way too many tools. They weren’t communicating with each other and weren’t integrated. There was chaos. I came on board first in that limited capacity. I rolled out ClickUp and did some integrations and automation.
I mentioned to her in passing one day, “By the way, I do fractional COO work.” Within a week or two, she started to refer to me as her COO. That happened, meaning more and more of my time, which I was happy to give her. In March, I became full-time. Unlike some of my other clients, Paige and I was the visionary and integrator. More so, she’s happy that she has a partner who can deal with the day-to-day stuff she doesn’t want to.
I wasn’t always technical but I’m fairly technical when it comes to automating, integrating, and setting up these things myself. She’s happy to hand that off and I appreciate that because I’ve had some micromanagers and other COO or CEO that did not work that well. I had already worked with her for a year plus and we knew each other’s styles so we work well together. She respects what I bring to the table. I respect what she brings to the table. We collaborate on a lot of things, especially recruiting ops. I felt comfortable and happy to make this switch for her, which I wouldn’t necessarily do for any other clients.
Talk to us about what a workflow consultant does. I have a vision in my mind of what this is but can you give us the specifics? There are a lot of companies out there that could benefit from this instead of just throwing more bodies at a problem. It’s like the optimization of things but what do you do?
There were three different kinds of jobs. One is to help design a tool, whether it’s project management or CRM. What tool do we need? I would take in the requirements. For instance, a small CPA firm hired me to find a workflow management tool for them, which is specific to their industry. No one was out there. I knew ClickUp and Monday which are robust enough that they can become anything but I did a bunch more research. They ended up with ClickUp because it’s cheaper and more flexible than the ones specific to their space, which were ten times more stupidly expensive. One project is helping them decide on the best tool for their needs.
The second is if they already have a tool and they don’t know how to set it up. They picked a tool and tried to use it but it’s not set up right. They don’t know how to use it. No one is trained. It’s not doing what they want to do. I can come in. Especially for the flexible ones like the ClickUps and Codas, you need to have a systems mind, be able to look at it, set up the structure, and then train people. The third is automating and optimizing connecting tools like HubSpot and ClickUp, or HubSpot and Monday. Also, other things like emails to whatever project management to Slack, and that kind of thing.
Why do some companies seem to get bogged down in this and not make progress? It feels to me that some companies do well with the optimization and automation of workflows. They can remove people, streamline, and get more done with fewer people. Others tend to overcomplicate things for them. What are they doing wrong?
My first exposure to this was many years ago. I was at Microsoft being trained in project management by the Head of Projects at Microsoft. They had banned Microsoft projects for all employees. I couldn’t believe it. I’m not even kidding. Microsoft employees were not allowed to use Microsoft Project. They only used Excel to manage all their projects. How do companies go wrong? What are they doing wrong that takes them to over complicating things instead of streamlining?
There are probably a couple of reasons. The first one is that there isn’t one person to own that or the right person to own that. For a tool like that to work, it needs to be cross-functional. It can’t just be siloed. It can’t be just finance or just marketing. There needs to be something cross-functional. If that’s the case, you need someone to whom everybody can report to for project purposes. Even if they have a functional role, in terms of the project, their job is connecting and seeing the bigger picture.
If you go in there and start throwing things at it, it’s a mess. It’s almost worth than everyone writing things down for themselves because you won’t know how to find them. The worst thing I see so often with people is they hear great things about a tool. They sign up and jump in. You know how first impressions are hard to break. They mess it up for themselves and then it’s like this uphill battle to try to convince them that it’s not the tool. It’s just the way you were using it so let me show you a better way.
I heard a great saying years ago from Simon Sinek who was on our board back in 2004 or 2005, way before he did his famous book and TED Talks. He said, “A shovel doesn’t dig a hole.” A shovel is merely a tool and if you don’t know how to use it, you could bang people over the head with a shovel. It’s not what it’s meant for. A lot of people don’t get the training in the tools. You mentioned that they don’t have one person that owns that project or the tool.
I love that you chose ClickUp because of its simplicity. I think of two software programs, Salesforce and Infusionsoft. They’re horrible. People use Salesforce and then they have to hire full-time people to defunct their organization. Infusionsoft has gained the nickname Confusionsoft. It’s so complicated to use something that shouldn’t be that complicated. Let’s say that companies are not hiring a workplace consultant and they want to do it internally. How do they choose the right software or should they get a software consultant or a workflow consultant to come in and help them?
A lot of these software like ClickUp, Coda, and Monday have a lot of educational material. If you give someone like, “This is part of your job. Make a recommendation, spend the time, put up an MVP so that a few key people can play around with, and then start bringing in more people,” that’s the way I would do it. You have to do it simultaneously. Don’t shut down what you’re doing. The business has to go on. Test this out on the side. When you have enough buy-in, create a plan of how to migrate most of those modern tools and make it easy. You export, import, and then structure. That’s what I would recommend.
I found a tool years ago called Capterra. It compares all the different software products against each other. Are there any tools out there that you like that are software comparisons or workflow comparisons?
There are Capterra and a few other comparison websites. I genuinely going and playing around with it myself. You don’t know it until you’re in there playing with it.
I do love going on YouTube and watching some of the videos because it’s almost like if you watch the videos and they’re teaching, you’re going to see if it does work for you, and if it’s simple or complicated from what you see. That makes a lot of sense.
Most of these tools also have free trials and a lot of templates. ClickUp has a whole template library. You can sign up for a free trial account, download a template that’s not exactly what you need close, then watch the videos, learn a little bit about how to update it and test it that way.
It’s also the training component. I’m astounded at the number of companies that will try to implement some software and then they won’t train the people to use it. It’s like your iPhone. Most people have never had any training or watched the tips that come up. They have no idea how to even use it. It’s like, “What are you buying it for? It is just a fancy camera.” It doesn’t make any sense. These tools can leverage. What are you focusing on in the day-to-day for you? Where is your leverage?
We decided to roll out EOS so that’s going to be a big focus in the next couple of months. I had recommended ClickUp and we’ve been using it for a year and a half. It’s flexible and powerful. We have this one database we call The Transaction List, which is all the relevant information on each search, like everything. That was the go-to place. The problem is ClickUp isn’t a true database. It’s very flexible and powerful. You can even do dashboards and rollups, but I couldn’t give my CEO the rollups and dashboards she wanted, so I used Integromat to push data from ClickUp to Coda.
Coda is a competitor to Airtable or Notion. It’s super powerful. I was able to give her all of that. I even built a commission system on top of that, and a bunch of other things. I knew it was a little bit like Frankenstein. Going into it, I didn’t know the end result so I kept banding it and adding more features to it. A few weeks ago, I was ready to jump out the window because I was updating something in Make. The way it works is you have fields from one and you map it to fields to the other. I had the Coda fields and then I was mapping them to the ClickUp fields.
Every time I hit saving one pack in, all my map fields disappeared. This was one of the major automation scenarios that was bringing in every new search and all the information I needed. I tried it in a second browser, Incognito. I was going to jump out of the window. I did not know what to do with myself. I posted in some of the no code and automation communities with anyone else. I submitted a ticket to Make Support, and then walked away from my computer because I couldn’t deal anymore.
Long story short, they still haven’t fixed the bug. They recognize it’s a major bug. That was a wake-up call for me because I hadn’t wanted to take the time in moving the transaction list from ClickUp to Coda for several reasons. One was it was a big job. Two, the CEO and others are finally using ClickUp so I didn’t want to reign on that and stop that progress. Those were the two main reasons.
I sent a message to my CEO in Slack making a case that it is time to bite the bullets. We can keep using ClickUp for task management. We use it also for client pipelines because our ATS doesn’t allow us to invite external people. We share the pipelines through ClickUp. Anything external and task-oriented, we can keep in ClickUp for now but for the transaction list, we’ve moved to Coda.
This has been a big project. We’re finally going to make the switch. I’m just reconnecting and re-automating a few things. There are going to be other things I have to build on it. I am relieved that we’re doing this. I hadn’t even realized how many workarounds I had to create in ClickUp and push through Coda to do what I wanted. This is going to be way more efficient and scalable because there isn’t this handoff. It’s not as vulnerable because I’m relying on a third party to push all this information.
How do you work with the CEO to know whether what they’re asking for is what they need versus what they think they need? What I mean by that is when they’re asking you to create some custom thing that could be done just using the software if they knew how to use it.
If it’s something that can be done, I usually record on Loom or if I can’t, I get on Zoom and show them how to do it. She has come a long way in learning how to use ClickUp and wants to know how to use the tools. That’s also a reason why I didn’t want to sunset ClickUp because I want them to use it and feel all the time invested was worth it.
Honestly, the transaction list dashboards and all that are mainly for her and me. We’re the main users of this. I embedded the Coda transaction list into a ClickUp dashboard so they can view it there and not have to sign into a third tool or another tool. That’s something I hear all the time, “Not another tool.” This way, they don’t have to go to another tool.
I love that you mentioned that you’re going to be implementing traction. I would say that about 30% or 40% of our COO Alliance members use traction. I was intrigued to hear you say that you’re going to self-implement as well. You’re not going to work with an implementer. Why is that? How did you make the discussion to self-implement versus hiring an implementer to help you with it? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong. I’m just more curious about the thought process.
One is because as a previous workflow consultant, I’ve implemented GTD and other systems. I never implemented EOS but it has come up. I feel comfortable that I can do it. The Basecamp was like, what other tools do they have to give me a little bit of direction because this is the first EOS full-on implementation I’ve done. Honestly, we’re small. If it’s something I can do, there are other places to use that money. One day, we won’t care but now, we still have to care.
In some ways, it can be better to self-implement because it forces the team to learn the systems. In the US, I always call it traction by mistake. The Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS is what’s covered in the book, Traction. When you implement EOS, it’s better for the management team to learn each of the systems, and then also to give them the ability to tweak them a little bit to make them your own.
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
Whereas if it’s an implementer coming in, it’s no, “Fill out this form in this way,” versus you already understand your business and you can tweak it a little bit. You can take the DOS and tweak it. You can take the Level 10 meeting, tweak it and make it your own. That’s powerful. You implemented GTD, Getting Things Done. What did you like about that system and anything that you still use from that in your day to day?
Indirectly, I sometimes still use GTD. I like the idea of there’s an inbox. Get everything in one place, and then split it between today and the long-term and focus on today. I’ve used a version of that, whether it’s in ClickUp or wherever I put my tasks. Otherwise, it gets overwhelming. You don’t want to keep it in your head so have an easy way to keep adding things to your inbox. The idea of a project versus a task and everything going on the schedule resonates with me. There’s a reason it’s still around.
He has done a good job in marketing. David Allen was his name. How else have you grown your skills? You are smart and you’re a reader. You used to be a teacher. Where are you working on your skills? What are you working on, not to stay relevant, but all of us every day have to keep working on our skills to stay ahead and get ahead. What are you focusing on for your growth?
It’s threefold. I joined a bunch of communities including the COO Alliance. Ironically, I’m networking more now through all these groups than I did in person because it’s hard when you have to go places. I love Slack for that. It’s so easy to ask a question, get an answer, and learn from other’s questions and answers. That has been amazing.
I still read a lot. I’m more selective about which business books I read because I find that when you’ve read the great ones on a topic or two. Everything else feels like a weak copy or imitator. I take online courses. I did Rocket Fuel 101 for the integrator online. I’m doing Make Simplified Accelerator, which is more learnable because Integromat went from Integromat to Make, and there are some changes. It’s like this online course to learn more of the nuances and higher-level automation.
If something comes up that I don’t know in the business, I research it, take a class, and read something about it. My husband always says that one of my superpowers is change. I went from a teacher to a publishing operations professional. In between, I was a personal trainer for a while, and then I reinvented myself as a consultant. I went through too many reorgs and layoffs, and I was done.
That was the hardest because I loved being in the industry that made the books that I loved. You can love books and not be in publishing so I had to come to terms with that. If you have even asked me ten years ago, I wouldn’t have predicted that this is where I am but I’m happy with it. You have to be open to what life and the universe send and be open to learning and opportunities.
Have you ever dug into any of the Harvard Business Review compilation books?
Yeah.
I had a CEO that I used to coach years ago. Let’s say he was working on a quarterly planning meeting that was coming up next week. He would grab the HBR book on quarterly planning meetings or planning meetings and read the ten articles related to it. If he was firing somebody, he would grab the HBR book on firing. It was intriguing. Instead of reading a book for the sake of reading, it was always attached to something he was working on that month or quarter. I thought it was relevant.
I find that so many executives create more work for themselves, especially entrepreneurs. Visionaries and entrepreneurs are horribly distracting to themselves. They’re reading the next thing, the one that someone mentioned, or the big shiny object, which doesn’t necessarily have any relevance to what they’re working on at all. They could just spend their time learning about what they’re working on instead of stuff that then distracts the whole organization.
I also like even rereading it as well, like going back and rereading Good to Great for the fourth time. It can be powerful. It’s like, “The hedgehog concept, that makes sense right now. We need to go back and obsess about the flywheel.” There are some good nuggets in there too. What about your team and your people? Do you focus on growing their skills at all? I launched a course called Invest in Your Leaders so I’m obsessed with growing my people skills. Do you do that at all and do you focus on that?
I have a very small team. I was the only non-recruiter on the team. I have a part-time assistant who’s in the Philippines. We have a marketing/HR team member who works hand-in-hand with both me and Paige. Paige is on the marketing side and me in the HR. We also outsource her to some of our clients who need interim HR services. She’s not an employee. She’s one of the ones and there are some other team members who are probably going to convert to employees within the next quarter or two, which is a part of also the EOS rollout.
Once we do that, it will be easier to do so but generally, yes. I have managed up to 40 people in 4 departments. Paige and I were talking about this. The one thing I miss in a small company is I love developing my team and my people. One of my past moments was when someone made a lateral move to join my team because they loved the culture I had built. Someday, I’ll be able to do that again but we’re small. It’s hard to do that when people are part-time and 1099. As we convert and grow, I look forward to doing more of that.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you work with an executive assistant who is a remote or fractional executive assistant who is remote? What kinds of things do you offload to them or how do you get them to help you?
Slack and ClickUp are super helpful. We communicate through Slack. I assign things to her in ClickUp. She’s got some recurring tasks. There were some checks and balances that needed to happen in ClickUp because it was the ClickUp to Coda, which those are going to go to waste with a new direct Coda system. I needed her to fill in things or anything manual, which doesn’t need to be me but needs to have someone pay attention, double check, and make sure it doesn’t break.
We are using Outlaw for contract management. Part of what we need to do is upload all our previous contracts and add metadata to them. I’ve tasked her with that. Anything administrative and repetitive, I teach her how to do it. I’ll do a Loom for her. I’ll ask her to document it. I hate documenting but I know it’s important. My trick is that I teach people. I have a person doing it and documenting it. It’s documented, I see if they got it right, and it’s theirs. They feel more vested.
Part of their job is to keep it updated. It has been great. We do a weekly check-in. I’m big on weekly check-ins with all my direct reports. They know I’m available more than that but at least there’s one time a week when they can bring longer discussion items. She has been great and I was lucky to find her. She worked for another climate-based recruiting company and trained in digital marketing and wants to do digital marketing for recruiters. I couldn’t have written a better description of someone I wanted, and she’s amazing.
I want to ask you one final question before we do a wrap. Can you give us some advice for companies that are working with recruiters? What can the companies do so that it’s like, “Help me to help you?” It’s a Jerry Maguire thing. What can companies do to set up the recruiter for the best success to help recruit for them? How can companies select which recruiters to work for because they’re not all the same?
To answer your first question first, be very frank about what it is you need, like the job description, geography, experience, and everything. Do that and kick-off so that they’re not spinning their wheels and wasting time giving you candidates that are not what you wanted, needed, or stated. The flip side is also to be open to their input. They’re the experts. They know what’s out there, who’s out there, and what is competitive or not. If you’ve hired them to help you, let them help you.
You are going to be working with a person and there has to be a good fit. There have been a couple of times when people lost great candidates because they were stubborn like, “No. This is what we consider competitive.” The person left because it’s not. Be clear on what you need and be open to feedback on what’s out in the market so that you can get to where you want as quickly as possible.
As to how to find the right recruiter, we’re different because we’re very niche. Someone isn’t going to come to us unless they’re a funded climate tech startup. There are maybe a few others in our space. We’re lucky that Paige has been in the business for fifteen-plus years. She’s a known name and some of her recruiters. If you’re a SaaS, I don’t know if that matters. You need a recruiter who understands technology and can get you someone with the right deck. If you’re in a niche where there needs to be an understanding of the environment, the context, the products, and all of that, see if there’s someone in your niche because you’re going to have a leg up. You don’t have to explain that.
It does make a lot of sense for sure. People miss that and they go with the one that somebody else recommended to them too. It’s a horrible starting point. I want to go back to the 21 or 22-year-old Karina. I want you to give yourself some advice. The 22-year-old starting off in your career, what advice would you give yourself back then that you know to be true now?
Go for that MBA in publishing out of the gate. You can still love the books and do other things but you don’t necessarily have to start in publishing as the production editor. Do the things like finance and BizOps that are cross-industry so that when things turn topsy-turvy, you don’t have to retrain to improve yourself. It’s easier to make that leap from industry to industry.
You’ve done it because you’ve proven to be able to go in a COO role and fractional COO. You can certainly industry hop but it sounds like you found a great one with Enertech Search. Karina Mikhli, the COO for Enertech, thank you so much for sharing with us on the show.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Important Links
- Enertech
- Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
- Sea Change
- EOS
- Rocket Fuel
- The Second in Command
- Capterra
- ClickUp
- Integromat
- Coda
- GTD
- Traction
- Slack
- Rocket Fuel 101
- Good to Great
- Invest in Your Leaders
- Outlaw
- LinkedIn – Cameron Herold
- Meetings Suck: Turning One of The Most Loathed Elements of Business into One of the Most Valuable
- LinkedIn – Karina Mikhli
