Maria Jones: Supporting Embryonic Entrepreneurs to Bring Innovation in Business Operations

Nerdy Industry is an operations advisory firm focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs on their quest to establish their business operations. From kidpreneurs to entrepreneurs, the firm helps business owners of all levels and ages by offering full operations assessments and by extending its support and resources to better equip them on their journey. Nerdy Industry also cultivates valued process improvement initiatives that include automation and app-integration.

Nerdy Industry's mission is to bring efficiency to its clients' business using innovative operational strategy. The company also hosts fun, educational events to share knowledge and more information on how to turn ideas into a legal business entity and how to initially build a business operations framework.

An Inspiring Leader Maximizing Business Growth

As the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Nerdy Industry, Maria Jones manages the company's operations and initial consultation for each client. It is extremely important for her to meet all the company's potential clients in the beginning so they can build a trusted relationship with Nerdy Industry's leadership team, and feel acknowledged and supported simultaneously.

Prior to starting Nerdy Industry, Maria had more than 20 years of success spanning start-ups, healthcare, financial services, real estate, and SaaS IT companies. Throughout her career, she has been responsible for reducing operations by 25%, growing revenue by 200% through new project initiatives, and increasing employee satisfaction statistics. She has a keen eye for streamlining operations, optimizing the customer experience, and maximizing customer engagement. Through this, Maria has achieved operational budget savings through process analysis, development, and re-engineering while maintaining a 98% on-time delivery rate.

An industry visionary, Maria specializes in both distressed and business-growth opportunities. She provides leadership for her clients, optimizes operations, enhances entrepreneurial vision, and leads strategic business planning. Maria consistently exceeds the company's goals and market expectations through her use of responsive leadership and her proactive approach to business development. An inspiring leader building global teams with a collaborative spirit, Maria is also the Director of the Atlanta Chapter of the COO Forum. She is a worldwide leader in consistency, customer service, operations management, goal execution, and mentoring.

Delivering Entrepreneurial Support to Build Innovative Business

Nerdy Industry works mostly with the "Incidental Entrepreneurs" who have remarkable talents and hobbies and have unexpectedly turned it into a business. The company uses its full operations assessment process to learn more about their companies and solicit information about their perceived challenges. Based on its clients' needs, Nerdy Industry provides a customized operations advisory report that includes key process improvement recommendations.

New Age Technology to Drive Business Growth Opportunities

Maria believes that with there being so many new advancements in technology over the years, it is crucial for operations executives to continue exploring how to infuse more automation and artificial intelligence into their business strategies. She says, as the industry continues to innovate, it is up to operations leaders to transform their execution of business strategies, utilize creativity with data analytics, develop non-biased algorithms and introduce machine learning to generate new and emerging business opportunities.

Remarkable Traits of Entrepreneurs

According to Maria, a transformational leader is someone who can embrace and lead change resiliently. These special types of leaders are ones who are comfortable with adapting to all situations promptly. They are able to effectively utilize emotional intelligence to support their team on their journeys as a group and as individuals.

Driving the Success

At the onset of Maria's career, she had the traditional idea that if she followed a prescribed path then opportunities would just come to her naturally. It wasn't long after she started in her field that she figured out she needed to let go of this thought. "I opened my mind to seeking more non-traditional paths to uncover new opportunities, primarily through volunteering," says Maria. She further adds that the professional connections she was able to foster through her volunteer experiences led her to found Nerdy Industry. And her former colleagues would come to her to consult on various aspects of their business.

Leading the Change

Living fearlessly has been Maria's greatest attribute to success. Throughout her career, she has taken many untraditional paths to get to her current destination. Maria acknowledges that there is no one route to success. Leaders must be free to explore lateral career moves to enhance their knowledge in various areas while continuing their quest to lead in other areas of their life. She asserts, "If you want to be a director and no opportunities exist at your organization, volunteer as a director for a non-profit organization of interest. Growth opportunities are available everywhere – you just have to be open to opportunities from non-traditional sources."

Envisioning the Future Ahead

With Nerdy Industry being an operations advisory firm, Maria sees the company to continue to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) to better process improvement initiatives. These approaches will likely bring exponentially more efficient and effective performance, thus maximizing its level of service and product delivery for clients.

Shaping Young Minds

Maria says budding and emerging women leaders to never be afraid to discover new opportunities. More often than not, people don't pursue these undiscovered paths due to their fear of taking chances. Risks are an intricate function of success. Leaders must make choices with perceived risks to advance their careers.