Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome back to the Total profit podcast. I'm T2, your co pilot in operational sanity, and I'm here with the master of margin himself, Tally P.
Hey. Hey.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Glad to be back.
This one's going to hit home for a lot of folks.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: I hope. So today's episode is called Hope is Not a System.
And you know what I'm talking about, right? When your entire business plan just sounds like, I hope this was profitable or I hope that guy shows up tomorrow. Right.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's.
Hope is great in church. Not so much on your job sites or your profit and loss statements. If you're going to run on Hope, you're reacting, you're not leading.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: So what does Hope look like in a business?
[00:00:58] Speaker B: So that's a great question.
So with Hope running a business, it appears there's no clear processes and every job gets handled differently or key team members have tribal knowledge, but nothing's documented.
And owners make gut calls because the data isn't clean or doesn't exist.
Hoping payroll clears, hoping the job closes, hoping the supplier, supplier delivers on time. These are all out of your control, so why not take control of what you can?
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Yes, they're all within your control. You're basically flying a plane through fog with no instruments. Understand? Hoping that it all works out. Right? That is not sustainable.
So we need to talk systems. And we. We said something a few episodes ago that I just love. It has stuck with me.
Let the systems run your business and let your people run your systems. So why don't you talk me through a couple reasons why systems are your safety net?
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. That. That's such a profound statement. And so systems create predictability, they make outcomes repeatable.
They also let you scale because you can train, delegate and measure.
They reduce chaos. And chaos is expensive, but they also will give your team confidence because the expectations are clear.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: And when systems are in place, you don't need to micromanage. You just trust the playbook. Right? You've got a playbook full of standard operating procedures and system, and your team plays better because they actually know the plays.
So, yeah, I love that. What kind of assistance do you need?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah, great question. So, first of all, without sales, you're not in business. So let's start with the sales system.
And so you're not starting from scratch every time.
The next one to go with sales is pricing. So align your pricing so you're hitting your margin targets.
Also, people hiring systems in place to attract and onboard so you can retain the right people and weed out the bad actors.
Continue to use with your operations. So having operational systems with checklists, processes and workflows, it just makes everything understandable and sets the expectations. And finally, financial systems, tracking your margin, monitoring your cash flow. What are those red flag zones? And catch them early.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: And it's really important to remember not to get overwhelmed here.
You're not trying to build a NASA rocket, right? Start small and start with what's breaking the most often, or in other words, what is costing you the most time. Right?
Quick shout out to our sponsor, performance margin, their software, the system in itself. It helps you identify those profit leaks that we keep talking about.
Managing your finances with a lot of clarity and leading with data, not drama.
So an action step this week for you. Pick one area of your business where you're just kind of running on hope. You know what they are.
And this week, document a process for it. Write it down, test it, tweak it and hand it off. We talked a lot about kind of delegating and hiring the right people last week, so. And then go through and repeat, lather, rinse and repeat for the next area. Pick an area of your business where you're kind of running on hope. Document a process for it, write it down, test it, tweak it and hand it off.
So with that, remember, hope belongs in faith, not in your business model.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Oh, yes. And let's put systems in place and take control of your outcomes.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: All right?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: And always remember, take her.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Cool.
Don't get too excited.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: It's all under control and it's going to be fine.
