Operating Hours | A private podcast from School of Operations
School of Operations Private podcast

Operating
Hours

Five short episodes on what operations really is, why you are underpaid for it, and how to become the operator a founder cannot grow without.

  • Five episodes
  • Less than 20 minutes each
  • Listen in your own podcast app
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Operating Hours SCHOOL OF OPERATIONS PRIVATE PODCAST

Operations is one of the loneliest roles in a business.

You work behind the scenes. You are the one holding it all together. But you rarely get to talk to anyone who really understands what you do, and at events you keep your guard up, because half the room could be a potential client.

So I made this. No hype, no promises of ten thousand pound months by Friday. Just honest conversations about this work, the way I wish someone had talked to me when I was starting out. What it really means to be an operator, why it is worth far more than the industry has told you, and how you actually become great at it.

Whether you are deep in this field already, or just starting to wonder whether it might be for you, you are in the right place.

The five episodes

Best listened to in order. Each one builds on the last.

1

You've been an operator this whole time

Four years doing the work with no name for it. What operations actually is, why nobody trained you for it, and why the skill you have been underselling is one of the most in demand in the online economy.

2

Why you are underpaid

It is very rarely your rate. Small packages, general positioning, and working with businesses that are not ready for an operator yet. What to fix instead.

3

From delivery to decisions

The shift from the person who does what they are told to the person a founder thinks with. What founders actually pay a premium for, and three things you can change this week.

4

Build the engine

Removing the bottleneck is the most valuable thing you do for a business. It is also the thing most operators never do for their own.

5

AI will make it obvious

AI can only amplify what is already there. Why the operators with real foundations are about to become far more valuable, and how to stop chasing every new tool.

Your host

Sneha, founder of School of Operations

I'm Sneha. I run School of Operations, the UK's first CPD-accredited online operations certification, and a community of more than 1,000 operators.

Before that: 14 years in operations at Google, NEXT and Selfridges, then an agency that worked with over 350 businesses, which I have since walked away from. I have been part of building, scaling and exiting 14 companies. I started out as an accountant.

These days I train operations teams, run workshops, speak, and build curriculum for founders. I am not interested in hype. I am interested in how a business actually grows, and in the people doing the work that makes it happen.

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