Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hello and welcome back to the Total Profit podcast. Today we're going to be talking about systems. And when you as the business owner are the system.
When you are the system.
Let me phrase this a different way. If your business falls apart every time that you step away, it's not a business. It is, it's a circus.
And guess what, you're the ringleader. So let's talk about building a system that doesn't depend on you being in every single ring, every single tent of the circus. Okay? So welcome Tommy P T2.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: We're now in our home bases so it was great to catch up with you and be in person in duth there. So thank you.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: That was fun. That was fun to do it in person. A little bit different format for a while but you're off on the road again and so here we are back online. But that's all right. I love technology and yeah, we get to connect this way.
So I go ahead.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: So yeah, people, people hear circus and they think fun. But this isn't, this is not a fun circus.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: That's not exactly.
What do you, what do we mean when we say that you are the system?
What does that mean exactly?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: That's a great question. So most small businesses are designed, they start small with the owner intent and they grow. So as the, the owner brings on new employees, he doesn't always transfer those responsibilities and those knowledges out systematically. So there's always that hooked back to the owner that needs to be there to complete a task, to, to do something a certain way. So basically you are just creating an extension of yourself.
So what we're encouraging you, and we have in past podcasts are systems, standard operating procedures, whatever you want to call them. And everybody rolls their eyes when they talk about procedures and they're going to die in a, in a file somewhere. But it's, you have to be responsible as, as the owner to make sure these systems are followed and their training mechanisms, you know, and that's how you buy back your time, is teach people how you want them to do your work.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: When you're doing the estimating the pricing and the follow up, including the hiring, I mean every, when you're doing everything, that's not a system that, that becomes a single point of failure.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: It's gonna break. It's not a matter of will it break, it's when it's gonna break. So it might feel like leadership, but it's a, it's a dependency and it's, it's not fair to your employees because you you hire people with skills so you can grow and, and trust them, and this isn't how you.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Exactly.
So why do. Why do people do that, Tommy? Why do so many owners create that chaos instead of building their company the right way?
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we see it so many times. It's sometimes it's proving to the employees of how smart or talented the owner is.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: It's an ego thing, right?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: It's an ego thing. 100%.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: It's.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: It was once about that.
Yes, it was once said, you can do every.
Anything, but you can't do everything. I almost messed that up. I put a lot of. A lot of thought into that.
And I think.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Speak. I've told females that I've mentored over the years that you can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: This is true.
And the owners think that speed is success, so they bypass a process. Well, there's another term, slow down to speed up. Let's make sure it's methodical in what we do. Get those and take the time to build repetition and let the employees grow and blossom. And it's always amazing what an employee will do with trust and encouragement. It's. It's like fertilizer and water to a plant.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: So.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: But then they go ahead.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: I was going to say chaos. It just. It feels like control sometimes, but it's. It's not. It. It feels like you're in charge of everything, but you're really not. When you're in constant reactive mode, it is absolutely exhausting. You need to be proactive, have those systems in place and get ahead of the speeding train and. And start pulling that train yourself as the leader of the company. If you're not doing that, you're not building freedom. You're building a cage to live in. And your business is very quickly going to lead you to burnout.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: And that. That's a great analogy with the cage. And again, it's. They confuse busy with being effective. And I. I would rather be effective than busy any day.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Tell me about some of the signs that your business is running like a circus. What are some of the things that are kind of red flags for those business owners to, you know, indicate to them that they're not doing it quite right.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Well, if the business stops moving when you're not there, that, that should be a red flag. Like, you're. You shouldn't be like the extension cord or the fuel stick that goes into your company.
They should be able to move independently and be there doing when you're not there. There's constant react activity of you're going here, then you go here and you hear there's no, there's no rhythm, there's no plan, there's no standard way of doing things. So it's, you know these things. Again, be aware of self reflection to see if this is happening to you. And your phone rings non stop. You're constantly answering questions. Very strong leaders have their customers talk to their employees.
They let, they entrust them to skip you and go right to the people that are boots on the ground or running the project. So those are kind of keys to strive for and watch for sure.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: And systems don't have to be fancy, you guys, they just have to be repeatable. So I would really emphasize to keep it simple. Start with three core processes in your company and get this down on paper. How you bid, how you deliver and how you collect your money.
If you could just start with those three things and make sure that those are very well defined and easy to repeat, you'll be miles ahead.
You'll be mild ahead.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Yeah, we had one client that they had to recharge their phone three times in one day because their phone never stopped ringing. And the people would come into their, their office, come into their shop and he didn't have time to talk to him. So that money is just bleeding with non billable hours, non productive hours. So these are just things that happen. And again we, we talk about profit leaks and all of these, these are things that you empower your people. You're like duplicating yourself.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: You know. I worked for a tech company for 20 years, worked my way up into executive level and it was over our retail channel nationwide.
And I, I ran the retail stores in Alaska and in Hawaii.
And retail is an interesting animal because it's not an eight hour day. You know, you open at 9 or 10am, you're open until 9 or 8 or 9 o' clock at night. And so as a leader you feel like you need to be available for your people 24, 7 or at least you know, the 12 hours a day that, that the stores are open.
And it took me a long time, just very humbly, it took me a long time to learn that's not being a good leader.
It, nobody aspired toward my position. They did not want to move up in the world because they thought that that's what it required. And I was a living, breathing, walking example of that. And I had to learn a very hard lesson that being available 247 is not being a good leader. It communicated to my team that I don't trust you.
I don't trust you to run the business when I'm not here, if I take your call, when I'm on vacation, or when I'm at a birthday party for my kid, I'm not trusting you. And I just need to.
That was a really. That was a really hard lesson for me, Tommy.
Preventing my team from, from growing up and from developing and standing on their own two legs. And so, yeah, and the burnout was real. The burnout.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: And it comes down to two points.
Have a conversation, figure it out the best you can early on as you bring employees in and trust what their outcomes are going to be and use them as coaching opportunities and learning opportunities instead of criticisms. We're back to outcomes at the end of the day. Exactly.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we're back to outcomes.
We talked about that in a previous podcast where you define the job based on the outcomes, not necessarily based on a list of responsibilities. And that is a really critical difference in the way that you structure your organization.
We won't go down that rabbit hole. You can go listen to that podcast. But one more question. What is the difference between being in control and being controlled by your.
So let's kind of differentiate between the two.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: These, these questions just keep building and they, they become more. More encouraging and more passionate. You know, in control of us is you're building systems that run without your micromanagement. You can literally go on vacation and you're not monitoring your phone. You're spending time with your family, your friends. And it's not a distraction.
A controlled business is. You have to be there or it falls apart.
You know, real leadership is creating independence, not dependence.
It's really a, it's a trust thing. And you hire good people. So you have that trust that's critical.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: You got to hire good people and they need to know what done looks like. We talked about that too. I love that phrase.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: So how do you shift from that personality based chaos to a system based freedom like that? Transition can be really hard for people, and I think it does require some humility. But talk to me about some of the practical steps.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Well, then it can be a daunting task looking at it from the starting point, but just take it in little steps. Document key processes, even if they're messy. Just get into those details and then run by the employees to see if it makes sense. Because if you interpret it one way, they may interpret it another. You know, another one is building a rhythm. Daily huddles, weekly scorecards, monthly reviews, however that looks, get out there and and communicate what that's trying to do. Everything is repetition and practice and it's going to take some time, but it's worth the investment of your time. At the end of the day, delegate outcomes, not just tasks. So let people own the results as we just talked about.
Let them make decisions and don't critique, but teach.
I would have maybe added this component here or did you ever think about this? You know, asking things in the form of a question has a different approach of why did you do it that way? And then we've been blessed with the performance margin software and that tracks these systematic processes when it comes to your finances. So all of this links together. It comes down to your bottom line, how much do you get to keep at the end of the day?
[00:12:33] Speaker A: And that software gives the owner of the business the visibility that they need to manage and run the business without actually having to babysit all of the processes, all of the people, all of the dollars and everything. So it sort of gets you away from that reactive mode and more into pulling the train and being proactive. So some great software.
And so, yeah, we help by providing that real time visibility. It means fewer conversations with your team saying, where are we at? Give me an update, I need a status. So you're having fewer of those conversations because you'll always know it is real time visibility. We have templates and job data build that provide those repeatable processes over time and it pulls the knowledge out of your head and into the business business. You can train somebody up who you know, whatever your exit strategy is, train somebody up into the business very, very easily using the processes that we help with. So again, like Tommy said, just start with a few core processes, keep it very simple, but start with how you bid. Start with how you deliver, what you promise on and how you collect your money. Just start with those three. So your challenge for the week, this week is to pick one thing that only you know how to do, just one thing that only you know how to do, and document it. All right? Train one team member to take it over and then congratulate yourself and go get yourself a beer or a massage or something because you just stepped out of the circus ring.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: It starts with the first step. It sure does.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: At the end of the day, take cool.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Take a cool. It's all going to be okay.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: It's going to be fine.
