WEBVTT
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.410
The mindset we're building is continuous improvement-a mindset of plan, do, check, act. I execute, learn, execute, learn, execute, learn. Never arrive. If you feel like you've arrived, that's not it.
00:00:13.439 --> 00:00:48.674
Welcome to Builders Budgets and Beers. I'm Reece Barnes, and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money and the building industry, the wins, the mistakes, and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible.
00:00:35.969 --> 00:00:52.965
Let's get into it. righty, Andrew. Mike's are hot. Here we are again. Thanks for coming back on the pod, dude.
00:00:53.229 --> 00:00:55.869
Oh, love it, man. Love to be here. Appreciate you having me back.
00:00:56.200 --> 00:01:01.200
It's like we never left. It's like we never left. Although I, I, I left to the beach.
00:01:01.770 --> 00:01:09.959
You did. You headed to the beach, which is quite common for. I mean, specifically precision SME customers. Their life is like on a beach.
00:01:10.890 --> 00:01:13.709
I mean, hey, we're in Florida.
00:01:10.890 --> 00:01:31.099
Why not, right now? I'm I'm still in my podcast studio, otherwise known as closet, the laundry room. Yeah, but but you can't tell because it looks like I'm at the beach, and your mic is incredible. Just dude, dude, I loved your mic.
00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:49.780
I've been listening to your podcast. I'm like, dude, I got to get that mic, dude. It's money well spent. And you do, and you shared the secret sauce with me. I I thought for sure you might you might reply and say I can't tell you that, but you you told me so. I'm channeling my inner Reese. I got got the mic, got the sounding good.
00:01:50.590 --> 00:02:11.580
I'm a I'm a knowledge transfer guy. That is a righteous beard. I cannot grow a beard like that, but it is it's cool. It is righteous. I've been working on it for a while. It needs to get trimmed, okay. I'm so glad you have a Boston hat on. By the way, not a Yankees fan. Sorry for the audience. Boston all the way. Now Phillies, Phillies first, but Boston's a close second.
00:02:12.030 --> 00:02:25.069
There we go. There we go. I love it. Okay, so we've obviously done an episode together before, but that doesn't mean the audience has listened to it, so let's go ahead and start. And you just reintroduce yourself.
00:02:25.699 --> 00:02:31.789
Well, since my podcast, you've you've done lots of awesome podcasts, so I think the audience has doubled.
00:02:32.599 --> 00:02:42.009
Yes, let's let's believe that the the audience has completely doubled since then. So yeah, yeah. Okay, so let us hear who who are you? You're obviously morning.
00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:52.270
Yes, thank you. So Andrew Amrine, born in Richmond, Virginia. No, just kidding. Been in consulting for over 20 years.
00:02:52.599 --> 00:03:15.870
Grew up in the trades. My father worked in the trades. Then he actually did switched and was doing mortgage origination in the trades. Uncle worked in the trades. Father in law works in the trades. So affinity for the trades got started. My career got started at Pella Windows. So was doing sales for Pella Windows.
00:03:16.289 --> 00:03:16.590
Love that.
00:03:17.610 --> 00:03:23.449
Loved that. Found Sandler sales.
00:03:17.610 --> 00:03:23.449
Changed my life. Love Sandler.
00:03:23.930 --> 00:03:44.860
Then got into consulting. Did some. I did a lot of learning, and just fell in love with helping people improve the the idea of continuous improvement.
00:03:37.340 --> 00:04:11.729
The the what's the the funny phrase? Oh, people that can't do teach. So maybe I I can't do. So I teach. Yeah, there you go. No, I just since college when when I was in college, the fraternity I was in, the pledges would always interview the brothers, and one of the questions was, is you know what do you want to do and I would always say I want to spend my life helping people, so now I'm spending my life helping people in the construction trades, which I love.
00:04:13.949 --> 00:04:32.959
Totally, and yeah, so been doing it for 20 years. Hard to believe you're a servant leader to your core, trying to be, and you've got a long bloodline of defined contractors of America. So servant leader, long lineage of construction audience. That's why he's here.
00:04:33.230 --> 00:04:53.199
Love, love that. Love that. I did now. I did have a stint before changing companies. I had a stint for a year and a half. I was a controller at a large commercial renovation company, more concerned. So they asked me to come in and help them. So direct experience, you know, not just academic from the outside in, but actually doing it.
00:04:53.860 --> 00:05:09.600
Yeah, yeah. I think your comment of those though those that can't do teach comment. I don't know if that's like. Overly applicable to you because you've certainly done. You've that's kind of you to say. Yes, yes, I appreciate, and that's why that's why we brought you in.
00:05:06.779 --> 00:05:18.269
Um, so on our last episode, we talked a lot about like the continuous improvement. We talked about a lot of that stuff, but today we're going to be talking about planning, business planning. Why are we talking about business planning, Andrew?
00:05:19.139 --> 00:05:22.910
Yeah, this is a tough one, man.
00:05:19.139 --> 00:05:27.709
I mean, there's so many stats out there, and it it's a it's a bit of a conundrum of an issue.
00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:49.839
So, you know, this was after a couple years of of starting in consulting, so that maybe 18 years of helping people plan, helping people set goals. Just naturally, for a consultant, you sort of naturally do it because you're trying to figure out the business and how you can help them, as opposed to like just take this cookie cutter stamp and put it on you, right?
00:05:50.800 --> 00:06:16.889
And so I I brought some stats, so things that sort of reaffirm me that I look up and I'm are we you know the sort of the change the world type things? So sure, the stats. This is a Gallup poll, and this is kind of stuff I I I look up periodically. But 71% of owners have no business plan. So 71% This is business owners across verticals, not specific to construction, but just in general.
00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:24.079
Right, just in general, small small businesses, small medium sized Businesses, crazy 71% Okay, keep going. Have no plan.
00:06:25.069 --> 00:06:42.730
Yep, but but of businesses that do have a plan, 65% reported better results. So beautiful, not just a majority, but a super majority. We're in that.
00:06:42.790 --> 00:06:42.970
Correct.
00:06:44.139 --> 00:07:17.639
I'll I'll I'll pad the number by a percent and a half. We'll make it that 66. The the two thirds majority. Yeah, we're pretty close to that two thirds. So we're pretty close to the two thirds majority experience better results. Okay, of the people that plan, 65% have better results. Of that 65% 37% so more than half, had an informal plan. So the plan doesn't even have to be a great plan.
00:07:19.050 --> 00:07:37.040
Yeah, in order to show better results, now you could you could also extrapolate from that. So of that 65% 37, the other 28% had a formal plan. So you could say, well, that's evidence that maybe people can get lost in the plan, right?
00:07:37.579 --> 00:07:46.420
And that hurts your don't get lost in the plan. So it doesn't even have to be that formal. It can let's define informal, but yeah, any kind of plan.
00:07:47.019 --> 00:07:47.230
Yes.
00:07:48.670 --> 00:08:13.860
All right. So, so I think at this point, a lot of people, it's kind of obvious. Like having a plan is good. Not having a plan is not as good. I can't say it's bad, but the data doesn't support that, but because people still do it, but correct having a plan is better. Okay, so why the 71% These are the the things that run through my head at three in the morning when my four-year-old and two-year-old want to make my bed their bed.
00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:20.129
So, 33% said they didn't know.
00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:20.129
They didn't know how to plan.
00:08:21.089 --> 00:08:24.500
Okay, that's legit. I, you know, had like, how do I even do this?
00:08:24.589 --> 00:08:28.730
What's important? 25% or no?
00:08:24.589 --> 00:08:28.730
Excuse me, I said that wrong.
00:08:29.089 --> 00:08:51.970
33% don't know what their plan is, so they're operating day to day, and that makes a lot of sense. It's busy. We're working hard. Everything we're everything's going. I'm going job to job or crew to crew, and it like I'm just managing the day to day. 25% said they didn't know how to write it, which which okay that makes sense.
00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:58.990
Yeah, 18% said there was uncertainty.
00:08:52.779 --> 00:09:03.240
They weren't sure about their direction. Okay, and then or uncertainty in the marketplace.
00:09:03.750 --> 00:09:21.049
Okay, and then 8% poor poor business status. So things weren't going well, and I I just don't have time. I don't you know I don't I don't know where. So about 50% are essentially making excuses. Is that yeah, just about yeah. You know I don't know how you did. I'm not sure where the economy's going.
00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:32.269
Yeah, poor business status. 33% a third, are just working. They don't even. I don't even know where I'm going. I'm just the next phone call, the next ring.
00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.269
Totally, just doing the work.
00:09:33.080 --> 00:10:54.340
Totally. And go ahead. I was going to make a comment in terms of like with like the reason I call it an excuse is because like I think it's to that very first stat of 71% don't even have a plan, right? And then we start to go into like the reasons why, and I think they're all valid reasons, especially when you really understand like the SMB small to medium business ecosystem, right? You don't have the resources, you don't have all the team members, you don't have all this stuff. Right, so I would. The reason I call it an excuse is because, frankly, like I do view it as one. And I think first off, there's such a huge gap of people that aren't even doing it that like the most important exercise would, in theory, be start. Like even if like you do build the plan, but then you get lost in the plan, at least you have the plan. So now we can start progressing on how do we not get lost in the plan, yeah, yeah, and now you're automatically in that 29% Just anything, like just put, throw a dart on the board and see if you can go there. And we'll we'll hit this. We'll hit this a little later, but I do think that's part of the part of the discomfort is I'm not. We can let perfect get in the way of good enough, but or I I feel like I don't know enough to get started. That's or I don't know whether this is going to be effective or not. So why it's going to be different in a year?
00:10:54.490 --> 00:11:09.240
So why do it? Everything's going to change. So that that leads me to my another point I wrote down. So now distilling those reasons into sort of all right.
00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:53.440
So, but like, but what do I observe? What do I see? So, 18 years of of helping helping people, and part of that is like, well, if I'm going to help you, we got to have a plan. So, what like what's the why? If you if you pull back the hood and look underneath. I think. I think being in business and being busy. Um. We value doing over assessing, but I want to do. I like. What am I doing? I learn by doing personally. I I learn by doing. Trying to learn these AI agents thing, and so I'm like reading a reading about it is interesting, but I got to go do it to figure out this eight these AI eight this AI agent thing, like changing the world.
00:11:53.980 --> 00:11:54.279
Totally.
00:11:55.809 --> 00:12:13.799
On the flip side of that, I think in an in an effort to be productive, and helpful, and effective, we become maybe not the the friendliest term, but solution monsters.
00:12:14.789 --> 00:12:22.759
Sure, you know, for for me, consultants and and my team, we were very careful not to become advice monsters.
00:12:23.480 --> 00:12:23.629
Right.
00:12:23.690 --> 00:12:27.019
We hear half of what people say and immediately start offering advice.
00:12:27.529 --> 00:12:28.159
Right. Right.
00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:30.950
Like that's bad. Do not be an advice monster.
00:12:31.610 --> 00:12:31.669
Yeah.
00:12:31.940 --> 00:12:44.110
Well, you know, and even when I was controller at the construction company, it's very easy to become a solution monster. I hear half of the problem. My brain says, "Oh, I've seen this movie before. I know the answer. Here it is.
00:12:44.289 --> 00:13:00.009
Let's do it. It's done. No more talking. We can go do now. I heard this, seen this movie before. This is it. We're done. What accent was that? The bears. The bears. Yeah, RIP. The bears. RIP. Problem solved.
00:13:00.070 --> 00:13:09.090
We're going with that bar, to the bar, and you know. So we we value the doing and the acting over the assessing.
00:13:09.570 --> 00:13:16.649
Correct. Okay. Great planning. Effective planning requires reflection. I have.
00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:16.740
Yeah.
00:13:16.830 --> 00:13:43.600
I got to step back. I got to reflect on what's happening. Try to find a root cause, and that that's a change from the day to day. And so I think, out of honest experiences and the real work that needs to get done, I think those. I I think I I'll I give credence to the I don't know how to. I don't know. I don't know where to start. I don't know how. What's too big?
00:13:43.659 --> 00:13:55.389
What's too small? We've so I don't know how I value doing over assessing, and I've gotten myself into this habit of solution monstering.
00:13:56.169 --> 00:14:41.799
Yes, that I halfway through the meeting we've solved world peace. Let's go. Let's get back to the doing. You know. Yeah, totally. Well, and I think the reflection, the reflection piece, is important. Reflection is a broad term. Like, do you have any like areas that like the audience would focus on when they're saying, "Yeah, I'm the I'm the 71% I'm gonna start taking more action towards the planning, but I need to be reflective of like what what's happening in the business, what's happening around me, for me to establish a plan that's going to move us forward. Again, reflection. What do you typically tell people to focus on when it comes to reflecting on the business? Is it just broad? Like, say with yourself, is it focusing on different buckets of the business? And I don't want to derail, but that's a question.
00:14:43.059 --> 00:14:48.429
Yeah, so we're probably going to bounce back and forth between a lot of things. So that's cool.
00:14:46.090 --> 00:14:51.340
First thing I say is go somewhere else, like physically.
00:14:51.970 --> 00:14:56.320
Like, do not go to your office.
00:14:51.970 --> 00:15:42.309
Do not if you're if you really want to do this, go go. More quiet. Bring people with you. Go by yourself, but go somewhere else. At the the company within doing this with other people, and then yes, at the at the construction company that I worked at, I I don't want to say I I didn't well I did kind of insist it was like go somewhere else I insisted let's go find a local you know whatever embassy suites or hotel or conference room that's got a nice view and start there yeah start your reflection in some other place interesting why is that? Just distance you from the business.
00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:45.340
Yeah, like eliminate work distractions. Why?
00:15:46.210 --> 00:16:11.490
Yeah, I. You're gonna get interrupted at work. So, so like in a concrete way, you're gonna get interrupted. Things are gonna happen. Your phone's gonna ring. It's easy. Oh, I'll just do this, and and 30 seconds becomes 10 minutes. I don't mean to. I don't want to overlay psychoanalyze it, but we're doing different work, and that makes sense.
00:16:11.759 --> 00:16:19.830
I want to take myself out of the place where I do this type of work, and I want to put myself in a place where I do this other type of work.
00:16:21.210 --> 00:16:21.620
That makes sense.
00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:46.750
So it's so to that extent, it's it's psychological, but well, yeah. But I mean, I think we can get we can get psychological, go somewhere else. But I think like that is like by removing yourself from the business, like going to the Embassy Suites conference room, right, or whatever, and just sitting there and like thinking or whatever we get into, right, is important because it's the work tasks.
00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:59.919
It's the little things that come up that need my attention, that need my action, that need me to be reactive. That is creating the 71% and that might that might be too broad of a term, right? But that's a huge component of this, right?
00:16:57.669 --> 00:17:39.348
There's a lot of people is like I can't see the forest because all the trees are in the way. I can't ever plan because I've got all this stuff going on. And you had mentioned a couple of those examples, so I think that's concrete. I'll let you get back to it. What you what you just said it made me think of that scene from Princess Bride where he finally tells her that he he's the the pirate, and and he rolls down the hill. I don't know why I thought of this, but you you said forest for all the trees, and I thought, yeah, you you've got to get yourself out of the forest and go up on the hill, yes, where you can see the forest. So so physically get yourself out. Just don't let anyone, you know, as you if if anyone says as you wish, just run.
00:17:40.009 --> 00:17:41.769
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.
00:17:40.009 --> 00:17:41.769
Okay, cool.
00:17:42.730 --> 00:17:49.450
Have you have you seen the movie? Did you? It's been probably bits and chunks.
00:17:45.819 --> 00:18:00.009
I'm not. I would be totally lying if I said I'm a big Princess Bride guy, but I haven't seen it. I got four girls, so we're all Princess Bride. Yeah, it makes no sense.
00:17:56.619 --> 00:18:02.880
Okay, keep going. Keep Wesley. Wesley was his name.
00:18:00.099 --> 00:18:08.910
Anyway, people in the audience just laughed. So, if we're going to reflect, yes, get at get out of get into a different place.
00:18:09.509 --> 00:18:37.339
Yes, yes. And that was my question. I'm like the reflection being a big piece of this before you can actually start planning. That was my curiosity because reflection is a big word, and I think like in terms of tactical and like application for the audience is like even just those little things is like that's action that I think is important to take like just try it like just go somewhere else in the office and give yourself a day or an afternoon or whatever to just decompress, be out of the motion, and think about the business.
00:18:39.559 --> 00:19:06.779
Totally. So now, what do I do when I'm there? So let let's now we've put ourselves in a different place. I would ask the audience write down these three things. So when it comes to reflect, hit what's how what the remember the old training videos. Pause here and have your discussion. Like pause here, write write this down.
00:19:02.069 --> 00:19:26.150
Successes, challenges, already thinking. So another psychological-I don't want to say trick, but like another psychological thing is start with successes. Successes force us to pull back and look big picture, what have our successes been? Start with what's working.
00:19:26.450 --> 00:19:39.440
You can you can say you can rephrase that as what's working, what's not working, what am I already thinking? So start with you're in a different place.
00:19:34.490 --> 00:19:45.339
Where are we winning? Because chances are you're winning in a lot more places than you're not.
00:19:45.849 --> 00:19:52.690
Totally, unless things are super dire, which is that 8% that things aren't going well, so they're they're not planning at all.
00:19:53.349 --> 00:19:53.500
Right.
00:19:53.589 --> 00:20:04.170
I would say it's needed more, but your chances are you're winning in more places than you're not. And acknowledging them, I think we we have a tendency to discount positives.
00:20:04.259 --> 00:20:10.890
Well, we're supposed to do good work. Like, what do you want a cookie? Like, you're you're supposed to do these things.
00:20:11.009 --> 00:20:24.319
Well, well, I mean, a lot of effort goes in to successes, and it and don't take the successes for granted. It goes back to the same thing of like the eight, like your world.
00:20:24.859 --> 00:21:09.930
The we're supposed to do good work. Work. What do you want a cookie? That 8% wishes they could say that. Yeah, what I mean. So it's like this is like it's like I totally agree. Like start with the successes, start with the wins, and start your reflection there, so that now it's not this big negative association with all the things we're doing wrong and all the things we need to fix and all of this to now go into a negative association with the planning side of things. Focus on the good stuff. Give yourself a chance to be like to feel blessed and be like, "Hey, look, we're doing a lot of things really good. Here's what they are, and then we can keep going completely. And I'm to walk that forward a little bit, probably one of one of the more effective exercises I've done with people is why are things going so well?
00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:45.730
Yeah, we we analyze stuff when they're not going well. Analyze it when it is going well. What what is happening here that's making things go so well so that when they don't, we can come back to this checklist and say, "Oh, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. Like now, we know what we need to get back to. Why is it going so well? Um. So, what? What's start with what's working? Yep. The successes, then the challenges. Acknowledge the challenges. Here's here's what we're not not try your hardest not to get to solutions.
00:21:42.339 --> 00:21:49.059
Just what's the challenge? But then third, so what solutions are you already thinking about?
00:21:50.200 --> 00:22:19.890
And just put them on the table and come back to them. Let let's not go to let's not be a solution monster, yes, or an advice monster. But let's acknowledge that I am living this every day, and I've got I've already got solutions or projects that I'm thinking about. So write them down, set them aside. If you're with a group, three to five people, share them with each other. Make make this the opening to your meeting. So what's working?
00:22:16.289 --> 00:22:21.559
What's not working? Successes, challenges. What am I already thinking?
00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:24.259
Beautiful.
00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:36.410
I think now is a good time to look at some financials. I mean, we're we're here to make money.
00:22:33.619 --> 00:23:35.180
We need to make money in order to pay people. So, what is our current State of of the business. How much revenue are we doing? How many people do we have in the field? Just a an accounting, a reporting. Here's what our here's what our gross profit is. Here's what our profit is. Best project for the year, current state, and and that's what I was going to say. Is it important to almost like view the financials in this exercise through just like a very matter of fact, or would you start to introduce the this is where we are today and this is where we thought we would be, or yeah, you just like keep it. This is what the numbers are. We're just looking at the numbers. We're just doing a financial audit. We're just looking at what we have. How would you How would you talk about that? Yeah, you. We can definitely looking backwards. What we want to be careful of is not to go forwards too quick.
00:23:35.900 --> 00:24:10.230
Okay, leave leave the announce. We're not analyzing yet. So the I guess maybe I'll I'll preview it, but the five steps I'll talk about are reflect, affirm, measure, commit, review. So another press pause moment. So in the audience, write write these down. We've talked we're talking about reflect, but the whole process I'm going to talk about is reflect, affirm, measure, commit, review.
00:24:12.150 --> 00:24:12.390
Got it.
00:24:12.539 --> 00:24:36.619
And for those of you in the audience, there's a lot of lean thinking influence on that. Some six sigma in that six sigma guy. Yeah, you'll those people will recognize those five things as being very similar. But so yes, we can look backwards. You know, we we thought we were going to be here. Here's where we're actually at.
00:24:37.009 --> 00:24:37.130
Okay.
00:24:38.150 --> 00:24:58.750
What are the challenges? I think there are. There's, I think four main questions. This is also a very lean-oriented thing. How are we doing? So current state.
00:24:53.829 --> 00:24:59.950
How are we doing preventing and catching defects?
00:25:00.900 --> 00:25:26.690
Okay, how good are we doing making problems visual, not buried in a in a report somewhere? Are we are we comfortable with making problems visual? Are we are we doing something that's causing people to hide problems? Thank people when someone brings you a problem. Thank them because we we need problems. We we we need.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:29.450
I I should say that differently.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:29.450
We need to uncover the problems.
00:25:29.480 --> 00:25:37.460
So how are we doing making problems visual? We're not making people think about it.
00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:41.680
It's not buried in a report. How are we doing with lead times?
00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:46.660
Not just lead times on work, but lead times between departments.
00:25:41.769 --> 00:25:57.609
Are are we are we doing a good job not making successive departments wait for stuff or rework? And then fourth is work clarity. Is is everybody clear?
00:25:58.240 --> 00:26:05.519
Is there is there any rating scale of one to 10, one being nobody knows what they're doing, and 10 being it's crystal clear.
00:26:06.750 --> 00:26:13.470
Call me frozen because it's because it's crystal. Is is work clear?
00:26:14.039 --> 00:26:14.099
Yeah.
00:26:15.059 --> 00:26:22.250
Just how are we doing? Good, bad? Really resist, resist, resist, resist the urge to solution monster.
00:26:23.329 --> 00:26:50.680
Yes, and then look back on those things and say, "Okay, do we have more wins? Are we are we winning? And I think most people will say, at least in my experience, most most companies, the vast majority, say, "Yeah, you know what? We we are winning. It's not perfect, but I think we're winning. Okay, that's a that's a good reflection. At this point, we move to the next step.
00:26:51.309 --> 00:27:00.309
Okay, and a lot of people go right again. Go right to solutions, dude. I was literally I'm sitting here and I'm like, I do.
00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:04.829
How do you solve all these problems? I literally want to do that. Okay, keep going.
00:27:05.849 --> 00:27:24.980
So, on the last podcast, we talked about prioritizing, and managers never never force your people to prioritize on their own. If they can, fine, but never force people to prioritize on their own. That's part of the value you bring as a manager, so we need to prioritize, right?
00:27:21.859 --> 00:27:31.400
Because there's too many things to fix. So I call this a firm.
00:27:25.069 --> 00:27:52.809
What's the vision? Where are we going? What what's what what every owner has a distant shoreline. I'll I'll go with the beach analogy because I have the head the beach like out there, right at right out there on the horizon. Like I'm pointing, like you can see my finger. Yeah, that cloud out there on the horizon. Like, what is that?
00:27:54.069 --> 00:28:08.460
What does actually mean? Yeah, yeah. Like I mean, it's is it more commercial work? Is it more residential work? So again, go back to the 37% of people that were experiencing great results.
00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:09.539
It was a, it was an informal plan, right?
00:28:09.720 --> 00:28:11.700
We don't need specifics to win.
00:28:12.210 --> 00:28:14.009
Yeah, we just need a general direction.
00:28:14.579 --> 00:28:23.750
Yeah, like you know, Captain Kirk at Star Trek. I don't know. Have you ever seen the old Star Trek episode? There's too much of a generation gap here.
00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:29.630
There is way too much. Okay, I don't mind dating myself. I'm I'm old enough to date myself.
00:28:27.380 --> 00:28:49.359
But you know, at the end of the original series, the end of the show, Captain Kirk would say,"Go that way. They they would solve the problem or conquer the you know or or fix the issue, and the show would be ending, and he would say, "Let's go, let's go that way. So where's that way?
00:28:50.170 --> 00:28:50.589
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:51.609 --> 00:28:56.289
So here's another write it down thing. So here's five questions.
00:28:56.380 --> 00:29:26.029
This is from many many years ago. This is from a. A a white paper, an article by the University of Virginia School of Business for for vision. It's it's a it's a great exple. So the 5c's, a great format for a vision. So a vision it needs to be clear, concise, incredible.
00:29:17.490 --> 00:29:29.000
Okay. so but what? What are we talking about? Okay, so first, write this down. Context.
00:29:30.049 --> 00:29:30.200
Okay.
00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:34.099
How how big do we want to be?
00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:52.900
Yeah. How how many how many employees are we comfortable with? What kind of work are we comfortable with? So in in three to five years, what do you what do you see yourself doing? Maybe 10 years is a little too far off. That's like Jim Collins.
00:29:49.839 --> 00:30:00.269
That's like the BHAG, the the one big like big hairy audacious goal. But three to five years that can be maybe it's one year.
00:29:56.230 --> 00:30:02.309
Maybe maybe for per. People that aren't real sure. Let's just like in one year.
00:30:02.819 --> 00:30:02.880
Yeah.
00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:16.769
What's the context? So, your how big are you? How many employees do you have? What are you known for? What's your culture like? A paragraph, less than a paragraph. Bullet points. Big fan of bullet points.
00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:18.059
Yeah.
00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:22.490
Second is customer.
00:30:23.329 --> 00:30:44.500
Okay, so context is first, then customer. Who's your ideal customer profile? Not your only customer profile, and maybe you can have two or maybe three ideal customer profiles. But here's here's who I know when I'm talking to these people.
00:30:44.920 --> 00:30:49.900
We're going to get this job when I know someone on the board.
00:30:49.960 --> 00:31:20.220
When I know the engineer. When we, you know, we've we're first to give the presentation. You know, I know we're going to get that work. Or it's it's a certain type of work or a certain geography for the residential contractors, a certain neighborhood. Yeah, what do they say about you? So the so the voice of the customer. What do what do they really want?
00:31:21.269 --> 00:31:29.000
Are are your sales teams really finding out what customers really want? Why are you buying from us? Right?
00:31:30.440 --> 00:31:34.339
How are you reaching them? Not a not a Charles Dickens novel.
00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:50.650
Just bullet points. Typically, how are we reaching people? Is it business development? Like we we take, you know, a lot of people these days are familiar with the candy box. You get a box, you fill it with candy.
00:31:48.069 --> 00:31:55.119
It's got your logo on it. You take it to the office. Right.
00:31:50.680 --> 00:32:04.980
Some people find out what they customize it for each person, but you're going out. You're doing outreach or community events or or whatever it is, or social media, or whatever it is.
00:32:02.549 --> 00:32:04.980
How do we typically reach them?
00:32:06.539 --> 00:33:07.619
Okay, so the third C we we've talked about context, customers, capabilities. In three to five years, what do you want to be capable of? I want to be capable of doing a bigger size work, I want to be capable of running jobs from start to finish. I want to. I want to do like a vertical. I want to go design work. I want to go all the way from design to implementation. I want to be capable of so in in the work of the work, you know, I want to be capable of of estimating faster. Yeah, maybe we're not using estimating technology, which that that could also be the next one. But what what are we as a team, as a company, we are we're capable of complex work. We're capable of doing simple work really quick.
00:33:02.369 --> 00:33:35.299
We we are capable of doing military work or work for the work for the government. We've built systems that we can we can deal with getting on a military base. So bigger work oriented things. So now the fourth is control. So we've had context, customer capabilities, controls.
00:33:36.470 --> 00:34:14.760
How are we preventing errors, catching defects, monitoring results. So, job costing is is is a first thought. Here's where that estimating system might come back. We control the quality of our estimates by implementing a new or or better or enhanced estimating process, we do performance reviews. We control the quality of our team.
00:34:11.070 --> 00:34:51.760
So this is this is very much the the quality control. We have documented processes. We have visual management. We make problems visual. We don't make people search and search for issues. We we reward people. We thank people when they bring problems to the table, so that problems don't persist. If if 111. poke, I think, sort of that I saw recently. If if problems aren't solved above, mistakes will will keep going below.
00:34:52.809 --> 00:34:53.048
Totally.
00:34:54.699 --> 00:35:25.099
So if if how do we escalate problems? How how how is there a pathway? That things happening in the field, whether it's sales or I mean, I ran accounting, but I used all these same principles in accounting. Have I made it easy for problems to get escalated? I think hiring practices, onboarding. How are we putting guardrails to things?
00:35:25.550 --> 00:35:26.000
The controls.
00:35:26.750 --> 00:35:49.780
Yeah. What controls do we have in place? The fifth is coordination. So we've said context, customer capabilities, control, coordination. Great things are done by teams, not individuals. So that that's not Mike. I'm pretty sure that's Steve Jobs. He would know.
00:35:49.929 --> 00:35:51.820
Wait, who's Steve Jobs? Who's that guy?
00:35:52.539 --> 00:35:52.840
Yeah, right.
00:35:53.199 --> 00:35:53.260
Yeah.
00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:06.570
I heard in Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech. I love this quote. He he said it was text winners who was the assistant coach said, "There's Michael.
00:36:03.929 --> 00:36:25.760
There's no I in team. And he said, "Yeah, but there is an M and an E. Yeah. So there's no there's there's no I in team, and great things are done by teams. We've got to do this together. So what is our scheduled routine? Let's formalize that. How are we? How are we going to coordinate each other so our roles clear?
00:36:26.510 --> 00:36:36.139
Yeah, our meetings clear. Our meetings different. Are we having the same meeting over and over again, or or do these meetings actually do different things?
00:36:32.958 --> 00:37:01.139
Are the right people at the meetings? How how are we delegating? Coordination requires delegation. This is a big one, especially for the the smaller businesses. You know, under 10 million, maybe under five. The owner getting out of the bottleneck. The the the owner becomes the bottleneck when everything runs through the owner, totally.
00:37:01.710 --> 00:37:41.170
So, how are we delegating, and are we are we actually giving real authority to somebody as we coordinate things? How do I, as the owner, how do I, as a manager or a leader, how do I get 10 hours of work done with my one hour. Am I delegating out? I would argue that as a if you're if you're doing more than 10 million in revenue or you have more than 50 employees, the the leaders of that organization need to be getting a 500 to one return.
00:37:42.099 --> 00:37:47.619
Wow! If I one hour of my work, I can get 500 hours of work done.
00:37:48.489 --> 00:37:51.190
Crazy because I've delegated, right?
00:37:52.030 --> 00:37:55.510
And if if it keeps coming back to me, then it isn't really delegated, right?
00:37:56.650 --> 00:38:13.739
So you you let you let the rope out slowly. We could. That's a whole other podcast on on delegating. So that's the vision. If you can answer those five things, if you can sit down and say five years from now, here here's where I need to be.
00:38:16.409 --> 00:38:18.929
Um. So what do you think about that?
00:38:20.340 --> 00:38:54.130
I think I'll reverse the interview. I'm I'm going to interview you. No, what do you think I was? I was I was asking questions before, and I just I found myself. I was like, this is. I just need to pay attention and listen. First off, I think it's awesome, like massively applicable. But my first question is, is like this seems like maybe lack of a better term, too fluffy. Like it sounds great in theory, but I'm curious. Like, what have you seen companies that apply this see as an outcome of that?
00:38:54.760 --> 00:39:26.119
Because, like, I I'm looking at all these different things, and I'm like, I again on paper it sounds great, but for the person that's trying to get into planning, and like this seems like a lot of alignment, like a lot of things that come through, I would want to know like what is the outcome, or like what is the like what are some of the success stories that you see your clients, what you've seen in the past, and organizations you've worked with that run these types of concepts, like what could you expect by committing and investing in these types of concepts and exercise. Yeah, keep it tangible. I think you're right. Like one of the goals is to keep these things tangible.
00:39:26.780 --> 00:39:26.840
Yeah.
00:39:28.489 --> 00:39:34.039
Don't get too pie in the sky with it. Make it real. Make it realistic. Make it relative to your environment.
00:39:34.429 --> 00:39:34.489
Yeah.
00:39:36.079 --> 00:39:36.860
Make it achievable.
00:39:37.460 --> 00:39:37.519
Yeah.
00:39:38.630 --> 00:39:47.980
Try to prevent yourself from one try, although although part of me would say part of it is dreaming. What is your dream in
00:39:48.010 --> 00:39:53.050
context, customer capabilities, controls, coordination? What's your dream?
00:39:53.500 --> 00:40:47.800
Yeah. Let me throw this back as like I totally agree. And you were when you were discussing these examples, you. Saying like three to five, maybe one year, 10 year might be too deep, right? But it's like, could the dream for the 29% or the rather 71% that aren't doing this at all, like could the dream just be like, I want to build an organization that is like emphasizing the business planning for us to then start moving towards like a three to five year, because that's where I'm like I think like an entry point on this is like just like it could be I want to have this boat, this car, this house, this lifestyle, this outcome, employees paid, equity owners, whatever the big dream is out there, but like could the goal, the dream, just simply be like I want to run an extremely dialed business that follows these types of practices.
00:40:47.980 --> 00:40:53.409
It's one one of my favorite things to plan is I want to do exactly what we did this year a little better.
00:40:53.949 --> 00:40:55.869
Yeah, that's fine.
00:40:56.530 --> 00:41:02.730
Yeah, three year three years from now, I want to be doing. Some people have hit a place where they need to rest. They've made changes.
00:41:02.820 --> 00:41:07.889
We've implemented new software.
00:41:02.820 --> 00:41:24.980
We've done X, Y, Z. And if I'm doing a one-year plan, I just want to repeat this year. If I can repeat this year, and you know, Tiger Woods talked about doing the reps. Is he's you know making a swing change? I got to do the reps. Well, we just need one more year of doing it this way before we grow. Let's let's let's get our systems honed in.
00:41:25.670 --> 00:41:40.190
Yes, there's a little too much variability in our results. You know, we go from we've we've done jobs at 60% GP and we've done jobs at 20% GP. Let's let's focus this year on just being more consistent. I love that.
00:41:40.610 --> 00:42:09.690
Yeah, love that, and that, and totally. And then when you even make the comment of like, like I just want to get better one year, and then people need breaks. They're looking back, and they've they've established this, they've exercised it, they've accomplished it in their business, and then they're looking back and they're like, I need a break. Like this, this whole this whole business planning thing certainly works, but I take that as a sign that we we need to ingrain the implementation.
00:42:10.349 --> 00:42:32.150
That it it we now need to stabilize. So in in you could say stabilize, standardize, improve, control. So we're we've we've improved something. Now we need to control it and stabilize it. It's like rolling a rolling a rock uphill, and you put a chuck underneath the rock. Like that's where we're at. We need to chuck the rock so it doesn't come back.
00:42:32.630 --> 00:42:54.579
Yes, and even the other point here too is like give yourself some room, and like I think this goes kind of back to the reflection part. Actually, there's way back at the beginning, is like give yourself the space to reflect and then honestly answer the question if the direction that you thought you wanted to go in as a leader or as a business owner is actually where you want to go.
00:42:51.789 --> 00:43:18.360
And I'll say this: like it's not necessarily as like as tactical and specific as what you're going over, but even just in like passing conversations with clients of ours, we had one client that they were going to go out and they were going to go from doing like 10 units to like 150 units, and they were marching down that path. And then as they were like 18, two years into that into that goal, they were like, "Dude, I didn't.
00:43:14.730 --> 00:43:48.909
I had those goals when we started, but like now that I'm here and I'm looking at this like I don't really know why I need to keep doing that. Like, why can't I just build like an extremely stable? I'm glad you brought that up because we we talked about that earlier. The not knowing how to plan part, embrace change as part of the process. Okay, embrace getting better as part of what the planning is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be great the first time you do it, but every time you do it, you get a little bit better at it. So don't let perfect get in the way of of learning.
00:43:49.510 --> 00:43:49.570
Yeah.
00:43:50.530 --> 00:43:52.750
So the next three steps, I I talked about the other three
00:43:52.869 --> 00:43:56.590
measure, commit, review.
00:43:52.869 --> 00:44:17.429
So the the steps in planning reflect, affirm, which we just did. Measure this. It it gets a little simpler going forward if you spend enough time on reflect and affirm. Measure is okay. So how far are we going to go this year? Here's here's the the edge of the horizon on my on my picture. Here's here's what the edge of the horizon looks like.
00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:23.869
Okay, how far are we going to go this year? How far? How what's comfortable? What do I think is possible this year?
00:44:24.409 --> 00:44:24.530
Yep.
00:44:25.219 --> 00:44:28.670
I don't want to go too far outside of my comfort zone because then I'll quit. What's doable?
00:44:29.210 --> 00:44:29.360
Yes.
00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:36.110
write down easier, better, faster, cheaper. Start with easier.
00:44:36.710 --> 00:44:36.769
Yeah.
00:44:37.099 --> 00:44:48.760
What's going to make your life easier? So so don't don't try to chew the elephant all at one time. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. So measure how far are we going to go this year?
00:44:50.139 --> 00:44:54.789
What's that going to take?
00:44:50.139 --> 00:44:59.409
Here's where you take things back to your team and you involve the team and you say, what's this going to take? If we're gonna if we're gonna.
00:45:00.150 --> 00:45:58.210
Stay. We're going to do the same amount of jobs, same revenue, but we're going to we're going to reduce the variability of our gross profit. What's that going to take? Get your team's feedback. Build a budget. You know, people make budgets and then they sit on a shelf and collect dust. We'll talk about that, but build a budget that makes sense, that helps people see, like here, here are the numbers that affect me in my life, and what's going to have to change in order to get to where we need to be. That drives the next step, which is commitment. Commit. What specifically are we committing to? Don't just write down to dues. A commitment involves time. When when does this need to get done? So take a piece, take a piece of flip chart paper, make four columns, and q1, q2, q3, q4, and schedule it.
00:45:53.500 --> 00:46:03.030
What are we going to work on each quarter? Make sure that the quarters aren't overloaded.
00:46:04.440 --> 00:46:22.969
Assign it to somebody, and that drives the commitment. They've participated in the discussion, but the best way to reduce commitment is do something for someone. So, in the measure step, how far are we going to go this year? Let people participate.
00:46:23.960 --> 00:46:37.789
Yeah, and give their feedback. And often, I find I know it's shocking. Some people in the audience maybe are are struggling with this, but when I ask people these questions, they often want to go farther than the team does. The the managers do.
00:46:38.269 --> 00:46:43.719
Yeah, not everybody, but there are people on your team that are like, "That'd be easy. Why are we doing that?
00:46:44.139 --> 00:46:45.519
Yeah, like let's go farther.
00:46:45.969 --> 00:46:46.030
Yeah.
00:46:46.570 --> 00:46:49.900
So how far are we going to go this year? Commit to a timeline.
00:46:50.289 --> 00:46:56.769
Schedule things. Put it on. I'm a big fan of Kanban boards. I don't know if you've ever heard of a totally Conbon board.
00:46:57.219 --> 00:46:57.340
Yep.
00:46:57.519 --> 00:47:13.440
So put your sticky notes. Take take a a nice piece of a whiteboard, a four foot by three foot whiteboard. Turn it wideways, make four columns, and just take sticky notes. And don't let the doing column so backlog up next doing done.
00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:15.869
Don't let the doing column get too full.
00:47:16.440 --> 00:47:16.500
Yeah.
00:47:17.909 --> 00:47:23.539
So that's that's an example of visual management. I know what we're working on. I can see it.
00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:30.440
It's not buried in a business plan somewhere, a piece of paper. It's right there. It's on the kanban. It's here's what we're doing: visual management.
00:47:30.440 --> 00:48:35.269
I can get engaged and I can make sure that we're not working on too many things at one time. The last step is review, and here's here's the last stat that I'll throw out there, and that is teams that regularly review the plan and progress are achieve 25% better results than teams that don't. So just getting get getting together to review an incomplete plan will make you better. It was it was 67% better. An incompete plan, and just get together and review it, and you you're one of you're likely going to have a 68 or was 65 65% chance of having better results. Yeah, it's not that hard. Part of part of it is we make business planning So hard, yeah, difficult, right? So review it weekly. Make it make your commitments visual. I'm a huge fan of of kan bonds. Everybody in the audience, look up a kan bond board. Go K A N B A N.
00:48:36.019 --> 00:48:39.199
Yes, thank you. Oh, you know it.
00:48:36.019 --> 00:48:58.659
Nice. Yeah, yeah. Con bonds with a K. K a n b a n. Get different color sticky notes for different people or different departments, and only let one sticky note be in the doing at a time, and work that one thing throughout the quarter. Review at least quarterly. Now, here's the thing
00:48:58.750 --> 00:49:10.949
a mistake, a challenge is to not rehash the entire plan. We made the plan.
00:49:06.539 --> 00:49:16.739
The plan is done. I'm reviewing progress. What did we do? What have I done? What's up next?
00:49:16.829 --> 00:49:48.460
Where am I stuck? It's those three things. That's it. When you get together, the quarterly review. I mean, I'm ideally, I'd love a management team to get together weekly to simply ask the question. It's it could be a 15 minute meeting. What have we done? What's up next? What am I doing next? Where am I stuck? So the the what's up next is what am I going to do for the next meeting, and I'm just managing what's my to do between meetings.
00:49:49.090 --> 00:49:56.349
Love it, and it and yeah, your comment is great. Keep it simple. Make it make it the first time you do it. Make it easy.
00:49:57.579 --> 00:50:47.860
Totally. I I even want to shed some light on this because. I, you're totally right. Make it easy. Make it like as fun as you can. But like I like I I'm feeling what the audience or that 71% likely feels with like you're telling me make it easy, and I'm listening to this, and I'm like this seems like a lot, right? Of course, it's like digesting, and it's like kind of like understanding how do we put this together. Who do you? Where is this exercise applicable from like a size of business standpoint? Like, how would if you're starting a construction company or you own a construction company? What revenue, team size, customer, whatever it is, whatever threshold you determine size on when should you really start being yeah. Let me change the paradigm a little bit because of course my answer is going to be everyone.
00:50:48.130 --> 00:50:48.579
Yeah, yeah.
00:50:48.849 --> 00:50:55.360
From a from a one person or or two person lawn mowing business.
00:50:56.530 --> 00:51:01.809
Yeah, to $40 million drywall contract.
00:51:02.019 --> 00:51:04.199
Commercial. Yeah, whatever.
00:51:02.019 --> 00:51:06.929
Commercial, commercial company, yeah. The answers change, yeah.
00:51:08.159 --> 00:51:28.340
The smaller the business, probably the more straightforward and less complex the answers are going to be. As you grow, it's going to get more and more complex. So just because it's simple doesn't make it not important, right? And yeah, you know, there's a lot of steps here. There, and and that's part. I agree with you.
00:51:25.250 --> 00:51:33.019
That's part of the intimidating part. There's a lot of steps.
00:51:28.429 --> 00:51:33.710
That's why guys like me, we make checklists.
00:51:34.250 --> 00:51:51.579
Yes, right. So the audience, write write these things down real quick. Reflect, affirm, measure, commit, review, reflect, write, successes, challenges, already thinking.
00:51:52.420 --> 00:51:52.539
Yep.
00:51:53.829 --> 00:51:56.380
Affirm. You got the 5c's.
00:51:57.190 --> 00:51:57.340
Okay.
00:51:58.510 --> 00:52:12.090
Context, customer, Capabilities, controls, coordination. That that could that's a lot, but if I put it in a checklist, it could take an hour.
00:52:13.079 --> 00:52:14.909
Yeah, doesn't have to take long.
00:52:16.230 --> 00:52:26.329
Okay, wait. Do you have do you like? Did you write these down like just over all your years, or do you have like a document that you're following? Like, do you have like a doc that people ask you for?
00:52:26.690 --> 00:52:40.849
I've got notes here. I almost wanted to just like, but yeah, totally. I was just going to say, even if you have like a doc, that might be interesting for people to like. If you're interested in this checklist or even learning more, like, can we can we add that to the YouTube video, or is there a way to put that in? Oh, I'll send that to you.
00:52:41.329 --> 00:53:18.059
I can talk to our. I'll send you a checklist on it. Yeah, I think that, or even yeah, we can talk about it offline. But the reason I'm saying this is because I'm totally picking up what you're putting down, and I don't want this to come off, or like at least my questions or curiosities coming off as like, like it's impossible. I just I think from like the audience standpoints are sitting here and they're like, okay, like how, like how do I actually apply this? And I think the visual, the comment, the open line to you-I think that would be helpful because even on my first question of like what size of business should be doing this, based on your answer, like my general takeaway is is like really has nothing to do with the size of the business.
00:53:15.329 --> 00:53:27.829
Arguably, would be harder to apply this at a larger company because there's more people that need to get bought into, totally wrong. Because it's like you are starting with complexity, right?
00:53:24.110 --> 00:53:36.289
So it's almost like it's it's more about applying the exercise of business planning, right? And it's like just getting. It's not about the plan. It's about the exercise.
00:53:36.530 --> 00:54:43.840
It's getting the reps at the exercise of business planning, and then like you're either going to grow or you're not, right? And like with business planning, the stats say you're going to grow, right? But the point is, if that just becomes more and more a part of your culture, your business, this is the expectation. It was me and my buddy mowing yards, and we listened to this podcast, and we started ripping reflect a firm measure, commit, review, and all the sub bullets underneath it, right? And we were and we applied it, and then we hired our first guy, and now it's a part of his adoption. This is what we do at XYZ Lawnmowing, right? The point being is like now you start to compound and grow. It's really like an adopted mindset of business planning, and that's what I think maybe creates some of the like friction or the hesitation might be the wrong word, but it creates that friction enough for people to be like, "Fuck it, I'm not going to do it. I'm not business planning. Like I'm just going to keep ripping what I've been doing. Like I'll figure it out later, right? So I think for the audience to be clear, and I hope I didn't make this yeah. In the outside, in the absence of a checklist, yeah, it can be very intimidating because it is big, yeah.
00:54:44.170 --> 00:56:07.139
But but yeah, I'll send you a checklist, yeah. And I I think it applies to everybody, and and everybody can do it. You're gonna have to sit down for maybe a little longer than you want to, but I mean this is this is stuff I I've been doing it for 18 years. I mean I've. I've seen small paint contractors with one crew do this in one day. They can they can get it done in a couple hours. Most teams, if you're over a million dollars in revenue or you're over 20 employees, I would say you're probably going to do it in two meetings. You're going to meet beginning of November to go through the reflect, affirm, and measure. How far are we going to get? Then you're going to break, and you're going to meet with the team. You're going to confirm. Like, is this really how far we can get? You're going to talk to your sale. If you have a sales rep, you're going to talk to some some key guys in the field. You know, here's what we're thinking. What do you think? Because this, I'm prepping the battlefield. Then you're going to get together again the week after Thanksgiving and finalize the Kanban board. We're going to commit to the Kanban board and we're going to schedule our reviews. I mean, yeah, there's there's a lot of work to do in between, but honestly, it it's like that's it. It's not that hard. It's not like it's. It doesn't, and you're going to get better and better at putting more and more meaningful things.
00:56:03.960 --> 00:56:17.909
Some people are going to be frustrated because, like, dude, we got our whole year done in like two months. Like, what what were we thinking? Like, okay, well, now you learned your team can handle more. I have proof that my team can handle more than I gave them.
00:56:18.329 --> 00:56:52.414
Yes, yes, I have to guess. Or like, wow, dude, we had like 18 things on the list, and we've only done two. Like, hmm, I we have evidence now that you or your team are a little ambitious. Yeah, yeah. Like that's that's part of the process. So, so the mindset we're building is continuous improvement. A mindset of plan, do, check, act. I I execute, learn, execute, learn, execute, learn. Never arrive, Reece.
00:56:47.164 --> 00:56:54.244
Never arrive. If you feel like you've arrived, that's not it.
00:56:54.639 --> 00:56:54.699
Yeah.
00:56:54.940 --> 00:56:55.690
Never arrive.
00:56:56.110 --> 00:56:56.170
Yeah.
00:56:56.860 --> 00:56:58.630
Execute, learn. Execute, learn.
00:56:59.019 --> 00:57:02.579
Yes, yes. I'm inspired.
00:57:03.929 --> 00:57:06.929
Yeah, nice man. Truly, thank you for that. I appreciate that.
00:57:07.500 --> 00:57:26.150
No, I think again, like it. I would urge the audience to like you. We kind of need to joke about it, but seriously, like, do the pause, like pause the episode, write it down, think about it seriously, and then like pick it back up. Listen to the episode maybe a couple times. Maybe send it to like your like the people in your office. Be like, hey, what do you guys read on this?
00:57:26.929 --> 00:57:51.070
And I'm I'm not begging for downloads. Trust me, it's about collaboration. It's about getting the ball turning and going. And also, like just like going back to the very beginning before we wrap this up here. Um, yeah, you mentioned like just like the first, the actionable thing is like just remove yourself from the business and start to reflect on this. And you mentioned the embassy suites. Do they still do the walnut chocolate chip warm cookies, or that's DoubleTree?
00:57:51.730 --> 00:57:53.440
That's not the embassy. That's the DoubleTree.
00:57:54.070 --> 00:57:56.079
Yeah, that's one of them. No, I know what you're talking about.
00:57:56.110 --> 00:58:09.929
The cookies. Yeah, instead of the embassy, hit up the DoubleTree, get some free warm cookies out of the deal, and just reflect, and just go somewhere nice. Don't go to the motel. Go like the the don't don't go to the Holiday Inn down the street. Go go somewhere nice.
00:58:10.170 --> 00:58:14.880
Yeah, treat yourself. Get yourself in the headspace. The the dreaming headspace. Maybe it's the Adirondack on the beach.
00:58:16.769 --> 00:58:21.530
There you go, right there, like that. That's my that's my happy place.
00:58:21.769 --> 00:58:28.550
That's your happy place. I love it. Okay, Andrew, I certainly don't want to cut. Have we have we covered what you wanted to get ripped through?
00:58:29.269 --> 00:59:40.670
Yeah, this this was great conversation, man. I really appreciate the opportunity coming back and love these. I love your interview style and the way you do things and just riffing the conversation. And I I hope yeah I mean I just hope the people in the audience got real value out of it and totally it's actionable so hopefully part of this was actionable they can take away and and and do it and yeah you know if there's any questions let me know yeah totally and that was the one piece I was going to say here is like first I always appreciate you having me on the phone because I think your perspective is just like wildly applicable and you don't like you don't press the agenda you suggest what works right and like there's a lot of grace in what you suggest so I think that is basically frankly I get feedback from the audience in terms of just like how we do these things is like just a conversation I hopefully I'm asking the questions that the audience is feeling, so that they have the shot to hear you talk. But if they, if I'm not asking the questions, do not be shy. Andrew is awesome, and Andrew, if you want to read your contact information, yeah, we'll work on we'll work on getting like a document put together or something. We can we can offline that, and we'll include it in the show notes. But how do they?
00:59:38.570 --> 00:59:46.510
That's a great suggestion. I didn't think about that, but yeah, I'd love to get you a checklist. And here's you know here's how to do it.
00:59:46.570 --> 00:59:53.679
Do you ever be sick if we like built like a clot agent to help with build with building planning? No, no. Up next, new planning app.
00:59:54.190 --> 00:59:56.050
Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, okay, but how do they find you?
00:59:56.800 --> 01:00:28.369
Yes, thank you. Precision dash s m e. Dot com sme is strategy management execution small to medium enterprise all kinds of fun stuff with SME but precision dash sme.com Andrew at precision dash sme.com name in town name in town name in town if you wish to opine if you wish to opine, we'll we'll see who gets that reference. A lot of lot of references in this. No, there's only the electric.
01:00:28.460 --> 01:00:33.349
This is the electric. Yeah, yeah. Teach by association, right? That's right. That's right. Okay.
01:00:34.070 --> 01:00:34.280
Go ahead.
01:00:34.639 --> 01:00:37.880
Yeah, yeah. Just thank you for having me out. It's great to be with you, man.
01:00:37.969 --> 01:00:43.090
Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Um, we'll see you next week at CFMA, yes, sir, you got it.
01:00:43.210 --> 01:00:45.159
Beautiful. All right, Andrew, I appreciate the time as always.
01:00:45.309 --> 01:00:48.280
Your wealth of knowledge. We'll stay in touch as always.
01:00:48.909 --> 01:00:52.030
Yeah, appreciate it, man. We we went kind of long. I hope that's okay.
01:00:53.050 --> 01:01:14.460
I haven't done an hour long banger in a while. This was good. That's good. All right. I got some feedback from the audience that they get a little too long, but I think this one with the start, pause, start, pause, extremely tactical. I think it was totally worth the hour. Yeah, no sweat. Do you feel like it was it was tangible enough? I mean, they are big topics, but there, I think there was a lot of meat there for people to.
01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:25.550
And there's, I think it was 1,000% tangible. There's a lot here, but like again, to your point, like you listen to the episode, you strip it down. It's really not that big of a deal.
01:01:25.849 --> 01:01:45.699
And frankly, I think it's probably like the like doing intentional reflection and realistic visions so powerful. It's gonna help you get through this process instead of your. I want to be a billion dollar construction company and compete. Like yes, like let's just chill out here, and like, what do we reflect on? Where do we actually want to take this thing? That's gonna help you.
01:01:45.699 --> 01:01:48.070
You're winning in more places than you're not.
01:01:48.639 --> 01:01:53.800
Yeah, and it's so hard to feel that way when the problems are mounting.
01:01:54.849 --> 01:01:58.119
But, dude, we all know it. Society.
01:01:55.539 --> 01:01:58.239
Sorry, I cut you off. Yeah, go, go.
01:01:58.869 --> 01:02:01.469
Well, yeah. I mean, just yeah. I mean you're winning.
01:02:02.130 --> 01:02:04.469
People are winning, and just everyone feels it, right?
01:02:04.650 --> 01:02:39.860
Generally in society, like people are hard on themselves, right? Chalk it up to whatever new flavor of the day we're getting spun. It's like just take a beat, just yeah, just take a beat. Call yourself a winner. Think about why you're winning? Look at the things. It could be small wins, but it's not all. The business is failing. This sucks. We're not doing thing. We can't hit profit margin. We can't do this. We can't do that. Think of the good stuff. Focus on that. Highlight the challenges. What are we actually working? Oddly, it's it's the negative stuff that's emotional. The positive stuff is is more factual.
01:02:40.639 --> 01:02:40.699
Yeah.
01:02:41.360 --> 01:03:07.650
So it's like it's sort of this positivity. People mistake it for oh, you're just being touchy feely, and it's like well, if you think about it, the negativity you're experiencing is emotional reaction to problems. So you're when you think positively, usually you got to search for it. You got like there's there's a fact behind it, so it's much more reasonable and logical to to review your positives and what's working.
01:03:08.190 --> 01:03:22.760
I love it. Yeah, and that's again, it's like the it's it's reactive. It's like you're. It's more like a like a it's a it's a personal digestion of what the situation is rather than okay, is it really that bad or like what's going on here? Yeah, yeah.
01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:28.190
All right, I digress. Thank you again, sir. You got it. Thank you. Tell the team I said, hey.
01:03:28.730 --> 01:03:31.639
Of course, always will. We'll see. All right. Peace. See ya.
01:03:31.730 --> 01:03:31.849
Yep.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.410
The mindset we're building is continuous improvement-a mindset of plan, do, check, act. I execute, learn, execute, learn, execute, learn. Never arrive. If you feel like you've arrived, that's not it.
00:00:13.439 --> 00:00:48.674
Welcome to Builders Budgets and Beers. I'm Reece Barnes, and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money and the building industry, the wins, the mistakes, and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible.
00:00:35.969 --> 00:00:52.965
Let's get into it. righty, Andrew. Mike's are hot. Here we are again. Thanks for coming back on the pod, dude.
00:00:53.229 --> 00:00:55.869
Oh, love it, man. Love to be here. Appreciate you having me back.
00:00:56.200 --> 00:01:01.200
It's like we never left. It's like we never left. Although I, I, I left to the beach.
00:01:01.770 --> 00:01:09.959
You did. You headed to the beach, which is quite common for. I mean, specifically precision SME customers. Their life is like on a beach.
00:01:10.890 --> 00:01:13.709
I mean, hey, we're in Florida.
00:01:10.890 --> 00:01:31.099
Why not, right now? I'm I'm still in my podcast studio, otherwise known as closet, the laundry room. Yeah, but but you can't tell because it looks like I'm at the beach, and your mic is incredible. Just dude, dude, I loved your mic.
00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:49.780
I've been listening to your podcast. I'm like, dude, I got to get that mic, dude. It's money well spent. And you do, and you shared the secret sauce with me. I I thought for sure you might you might reply and say I can't tell you that, but you you told me so. I'm channeling my inner Reese. I got got the mic, got the sounding good.
00:01:50.590 --> 00:02:11.580
I'm a I'm a knowledge transfer guy. That is a righteous beard. I cannot grow a beard like that, but it is it's cool. It is righteous. I've been working on it for a while. It needs to get trimmed, okay. I'm so glad you have a Boston hat on. By the way, not a Yankees fan. Sorry for the audience. Boston all the way. Now Phillies, Phillies first, but Boston's a close second.
00:02:12.030 --> 00:02:25.069
There we go. There we go. I love it. Okay, so we've obviously done an episode together before, but that doesn't mean the audience has listened to it, so let's go ahead and start. And you just reintroduce yourself.
00:02:25.699 --> 00:02:31.789
Well, since my podcast, you've you've done lots of awesome podcasts, so I think the audience has doubled.
00:02:32.599 --> 00:02:42.009
Yes, let's let's believe that the the audience has completely doubled since then. So yeah, yeah. Okay, so let us hear who who are you? You're obviously morning.
00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:52.270
Yes, thank you. So Andrew Amrine, born in Richmond, Virginia. No, just kidding. Been in consulting for over 20 years.
00:02:52.599 --> 00:03:15.870
Grew up in the trades. My father worked in the trades. Then he actually did switched and was doing mortgage origination in the trades. Uncle worked in the trades. Father in law works in the trades. So affinity for the trades got started. My career got started at Pella Windows. So was doing sales for Pella Windows.
00:03:16.289 --> 00:03:16.590
Love that.
00:03:17.610 --> 00:03:23.449
Loved that. Found Sandler sales.
00:03:17.610 --> 00:03:23.449
Changed my life. Love Sandler.
00:03:23.930 --> 00:03:44.860
Then got into consulting. Did some. I did a lot of learning, and just fell in love with helping people improve the the idea of continuous improvement.
00:03:37.340 --> 00:04:11.729
The the what's the the funny phrase? Oh, people that can't do teach. So maybe I I can't do. So I teach. Yeah, there you go. No, I just since college when when I was in college, the fraternity I was in, the pledges would always interview the brothers, and one of the questions was, is you know what do you want to do and I would always say I want to spend my life helping people, so now I'm spending my life helping people in the construction trades, which I love.
00:04:13.949 --> 00:04:32.959
Totally, and yeah, so been doing it for 20 years. Hard to believe you're a servant leader to your core, trying to be, and you've got a long bloodline of defined contractors of America. So servant leader, long lineage of construction audience. That's why he's here.
00:04:33.230 --> 00:04:53.199
Love, love that. Love that. I did now. I did have a stint before changing companies. I had a stint for a year and a half. I was a controller at a large commercial renovation company, more concerned. So they asked me to come in and help them. So direct experience, you know, not just academic from the outside in, but actually doing it.
00:04:53.860 --> 00:05:09.600
Yeah, yeah. I think your comment of those though those that can't do teach comment. I don't know if that's like. Overly applicable to you because you've certainly done. You've that's kind of you to say. Yes, yes, I appreciate, and that's why that's why we brought you in.
00:05:06.779 --> 00:05:18.269
Um, so on our last episode, we talked a lot about like the continuous improvement. We talked about a lot of that stuff, but today we're going to be talking about planning, business planning. Why are we talking about business planning, Andrew?
00:05:19.139 --> 00:05:22.910
Yeah, this is a tough one, man.
00:05:19.139 --> 00:05:27.709
I mean, there's so many stats out there, and it it's a it's a bit of a conundrum of an issue.
00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:49.839
So, you know, this was after a couple years of of starting in consulting, so that maybe 18 years of helping people plan, helping people set goals. Just naturally, for a consultant, you sort of naturally do it because you're trying to figure out the business and how you can help them, as opposed to like just take this cookie cutter stamp and put it on you, right?
00:05:50.800 --> 00:06:16.889
And so I I brought some stats, so things that sort of reaffirm me that I look up and I'm are we you know the sort of the change the world type things? So sure, the stats. This is a Gallup poll, and this is kind of stuff I I I look up periodically. But 71% of owners have no business plan. So 71% This is business owners across verticals, not specific to construction, but just in general.
00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:24.079
Right, just in general, small small businesses, small medium sized Businesses, crazy 71% Okay, keep going. Have no plan.
00:06:25.069 --> 00:06:42.730
Yep, but but of businesses that do have a plan, 65% reported better results. So beautiful, not just a majority, but a super majority. We're in that.
00:06:42.790 --> 00:06:42.970
Correct.
00:06:44.139 --> 00:07:17.639
I'll I'll I'll pad the number by a percent and a half. We'll make it that 66. The the two thirds majority. Yeah, we're pretty close to that two thirds. So we're pretty close to the two thirds majority experience better results. Okay, of the people that plan, 65% have better results. Of that 65% 37% so more than half, had an informal plan. So the plan doesn't even have to be a great plan.
00:07:19.050 --> 00:07:37.040
Yeah, in order to show better results, now you could you could also extrapolate from that. So of that 65% 37, the other 28% had a formal plan. So you could say, well, that's evidence that maybe people can get lost in the plan, right?
00:07:37.579 --> 00:07:46.420
And that hurts your don't get lost in the plan. So it doesn't even have to be that formal. It can let's define informal, but yeah, any kind of plan.
00:07:47.019 --> 00:07:47.230
Yes.
00:07:48.670 --> 00:08:13.860
All right. So, so I think at this point, a lot of people, it's kind of obvious. Like having a plan is good. Not having a plan is not as good. I can't say it's bad, but the data doesn't support that, but because people still do it, but correct having a plan is better. Okay, so why the 71% These are the the things that run through my head at three in the morning when my four-year-old and two-year-old want to make my bed their bed.
00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:20.129
So, 33% said they didn't know.
00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:20.129
They didn't know how to plan.
00:08:21.089 --> 00:08:24.500
Okay, that's legit. I, you know, had like, how do I even do this?
00:08:24.589 --> 00:08:28.730
What's important? 25% or no?
00:08:24.589 --> 00:08:28.730
Excuse me, I said that wrong.
00:08:29.089 --> 00:08:51.970
33% don't know what their plan is, so they're operating day to day, and that makes a lot of sense. It's busy. We're working hard. Everything we're everything's going. I'm going job to job or crew to crew, and it like I'm just managing the day to day. 25% said they didn't know how to write it, which which okay that makes sense.
00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:58.990
Yeah, 18% said there was uncertainty.
00:08:52.779 --> 00:09:03.240
They weren't sure about their direction. Okay, and then or uncertainty in the marketplace.
00:09:03.750 --> 00:09:21.049
Okay, and then 8% poor poor business status. So things weren't going well, and I I just don't have time. I don't you know I don't I don't know where. So about 50% are essentially making excuses. Is that yeah, just about yeah. You know I don't know how you did. I'm not sure where the economy's going.
00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:32.269
Yeah, poor business status. 33% a third, are just working. They don't even. I don't even know where I'm going. I'm just the next phone call, the next ring.
00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.269
Totally, just doing the work.
00:09:33.080 --> 00:10:54.340
Totally. And go ahead. I was going to make a comment in terms of like with like the reason I call it an excuse is because like I think it's to that very first stat of 71% don't even have a plan, right? And then we start to go into like the reasons why, and I think they're all valid reasons, especially when you really understand like the SMB small to medium business ecosystem, right? You don't have the resources, you don't have all the team members, you don't have all this stuff. Right, so I would. The reason I call it an excuse is because, frankly, like I do view it as one. And I think first off, there's such a huge gap of people that aren't even doing it that like the most important exercise would, in theory, be start. Like even if like you do build the plan, but then you get lost in the plan, at least you have the plan. So now we can start progressing on how do we not get lost in the plan, yeah, yeah, and now you're automatically in that 29% Just anything, like just put, throw a dart on the board and see if you can go there. And we'll we'll hit this. We'll hit this a little later, but I do think that's part of the part of the discomfort is I'm not. We can let perfect get in the way of good enough, but or I I feel like I don't know enough to get started. That's or I don't know whether this is going to be effective or not. So why it's going to be different in a year?
00:10:54.490 --> 00:11:09.240
So why do it? Everything's going to change. So that that leads me to my another point I wrote down. So now distilling those reasons into sort of all right.
00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:53.440
So, but like, but what do I observe? What do I see? So, 18 years of of helping helping people, and part of that is like, well, if I'm going to help you, we got to have a plan. So, what like what's the why? If you if you pull back the hood and look underneath. I think. I think being in business and being busy. Um. We value doing over assessing, but I want to do. I like. What am I doing? I learn by doing personally. I I learn by doing. Trying to learn these AI agents thing, and so I'm like reading a reading about it is interesting, but I got to go do it to figure out this eight these AI eight this AI agent thing, like changing the world.
00:11:53.980 --> 00:11:54.279
Totally.
00:11:55.809 --> 00:12:13.799
On the flip side of that, I think in an in an effort to be productive, and helpful, and effective, we become maybe not the the friendliest term, but solution monsters.
00:12:14.789 --> 00:12:22.759
Sure, you know, for for me, consultants and and my team, we were very careful not to become advice monsters.
00:12:23.480 --> 00:12:23.629
Right.
00:12:23.690 --> 00:12:27.019
We hear half of what people say and immediately start offering advice.
00:12:27.529 --> 00:12:28.159
Right. Right.
00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:30.950
Like that's bad. Do not be an advice monster.
00:12:31.610 --> 00:12:31.669
Yeah.
00:12:31.940 --> 00:12:44.110
Well, you know, and even when I was controller at the construction company, it's very easy to become a solution monster. I hear half of the problem. My brain says, "Oh, I've seen this movie before. I know the answer. Here it is.
00:12:44.289 --> 00:13:00.009
Let's do it. It's done. No more talking. We can go do now. I heard this, seen this movie before. This is it. We're done. What accent was that? The bears. The bears. Yeah, RIP. The bears. RIP. Problem solved.
00:13:00.070 --> 00:13:09.090
We're going with that bar, to the bar, and you know. So we we value the doing and the acting over the assessing.
00:13:09.570 --> 00:13:16.649
Correct. Okay. Great planning. Effective planning requires reflection. I have.
00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:16.740
Yeah.
00:13:16.830 --> 00:13:43.600
I got to step back. I got to reflect on what's happening. Try to find a root cause, and that that's a change from the day to day. And so I think, out of honest experiences and the real work that needs to get done, I think those. I I think I I'll I give credence to the I don't know how to. I don't know. I don't know where to start. I don't know how. What's too big?
00:13:43.659 --> 00:13:55.389
What's too small? We've so I don't know how I value doing over assessing, and I've gotten myself into this habit of solution monstering.
00:13:56.169 --> 00:14:41.799
Yes, that I halfway through the meeting we've solved world peace. Let's go. Let's get back to the doing. You know. Yeah, totally. Well, and I think the reflection, the reflection piece, is important. Reflection is a broad term. Like, do you have any like areas that like the audience would focus on when they're saying, "Yeah, I'm the I'm the 71% I'm gonna start taking more action towards the planning, but I need to be reflective of like what what's happening in the business, what's happening around me, for me to establish a plan that's going to move us forward. Again, reflection. What do you typically tell people to focus on when it comes to reflecting on the business? Is it just broad? Like, say with yourself, is it focusing on different buckets of the business? And I don't want to derail, but that's a question.
00:14:43.059 --> 00:14:48.429
Yeah, so we're probably going to bounce back and forth between a lot of things. So that's cool.
00:14:46.090 --> 00:14:51.340
First thing I say is go somewhere else, like physically.
00:14:51.970 --> 00:14:56.320
Like, do not go to your office.
00:14:51.970 --> 00:15:42.309
Do not if you're if you really want to do this, go go. More quiet. Bring people with you. Go by yourself, but go somewhere else. At the the company within doing this with other people, and then yes, at the at the construction company that I worked at, I I don't want to say I I didn't well I did kind of insist it was like go somewhere else I insisted let's go find a local you know whatever embassy suites or hotel or conference room that's got a nice view and start there yeah start your reflection in some other place interesting why is that? Just distance you from the business.
00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:45.340
Yeah, like eliminate work distractions. Why?
00:15:46.210 --> 00:16:11.490
Yeah, I. You're gonna get interrupted at work. So, so like in a concrete way, you're gonna get interrupted. Things are gonna happen. Your phone's gonna ring. It's easy. Oh, I'll just do this, and and 30 seconds becomes 10 minutes. I don't mean to. I don't want to overlay psychoanalyze it, but we're doing different work, and that makes sense.
00:16:11.759 --> 00:16:19.830
I want to take myself out of the place where I do this type of work, and I want to put myself in a place where I do this other type of work.
00:16:21.210 --> 00:16:21.620
That makes sense.
00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:46.750
So it's so to that extent, it's it's psychological, but well, yeah. But I mean, I think we can get we can get psychological, go somewhere else. But I think like that is like by removing yourself from the business, like going to the Embassy Suites conference room, right, or whatever, and just sitting there and like thinking or whatever we get into, right, is important because it's the work tasks.
00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:59.919
It's the little things that come up that need my attention, that need my action, that need me to be reactive. That is creating the 71% and that might that might be too broad of a term, right? But that's a huge component of this, right?
00:16:57.669 --> 00:17:39.348
There's a lot of people is like I can't see the forest because all the trees are in the way. I can't ever plan because I've got all this stuff going on. And you had mentioned a couple of those examples, so I think that's concrete. I'll let you get back to it. What you what you just said it made me think of that scene from Princess Bride where he finally tells her that he he's the the pirate, and and he rolls down the hill. I don't know why I thought of this, but you you said forest for all the trees, and I thought, yeah, you you've got to get yourself out of the forest and go up on the hill, yes, where you can see the forest. So so physically get yourself out. Just don't let anyone, you know, as you if if anyone says as you wish, just run.
00:17:40.009 --> 00:17:41.769
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure.
00:17:40.009 --> 00:17:41.769
Okay, cool.
00:17:42.730 --> 00:17:49.450
Have you have you seen the movie? Did you? It's been probably bits and chunks.
00:17:45.819 --> 00:18:00.009
I'm not. I would be totally lying if I said I'm a big Princess Bride guy, but I haven't seen it. I got four girls, so we're all Princess Bride. Yeah, it makes no sense.
00:17:56.619 --> 00:18:02.880
Okay, keep going. Keep Wesley. Wesley was his name.
00:18:00.099 --> 00:18:08.910
Anyway, people in the audience just laughed. So, if we're going to reflect, yes, get at get out of get into a different place.
00:18:09.509 --> 00:18:37.339
Yes, yes. And that was my question. I'm like the reflection being a big piece of this before you can actually start planning. That was my curiosity because reflection is a big word, and I think like in terms of tactical and like application for the audience is like even just those little things is like that's action that I think is important to take like just try it like just go somewhere else in the office and give yourself a day or an afternoon or whatever to just decompress, be out of the motion, and think about the business.
00:18:39.559 --> 00:19:06.779
Totally. So now, what do I do when I'm there? So let let's now we've put ourselves in a different place. I would ask the audience write down these three things. So when it comes to reflect, hit what's how what the remember the old training videos. Pause here and have your discussion. Like pause here, write write this down.
00:19:02.069 --> 00:19:26.150
Successes, challenges, already thinking. So another psychological-I don't want to say trick, but like another psychological thing is start with successes. Successes force us to pull back and look big picture, what have our successes been? Start with what's working.
00:19:26.450 --> 00:19:39.440
You can you can say you can rephrase that as what's working, what's not working, what am I already thinking? So start with you're in a different place.
00:19:34.490 --> 00:19:45.339
Where are we winning? Because chances are you're winning in a lot more places than you're not.
00:19:45.849 --> 00:19:52.690
Totally, unless things are super dire, which is that 8% that things aren't going well, so they're they're not planning at all.
00:19:53.349 --> 00:19:53.500
Right.
00:19:53.589 --> 00:20:04.170
I would say it's needed more, but your chances are you're winning in more places than you're not. And acknowledging them, I think we we have a tendency to discount positives.
00:20:04.259 --> 00:20:10.890
Well, we're supposed to do good work. Like, what do you want a cookie? Like, you're you're supposed to do these things.
00:20:11.009 --> 00:20:24.319
Well, well, I mean, a lot of effort goes in to successes, and it and don't take the successes for granted. It goes back to the same thing of like the eight, like your world.
00:20:24.859 --> 00:21:09.930
The we're supposed to do good work. Work. What do you want a cookie? That 8% wishes they could say that. Yeah, what I mean. So it's like this is like it's like I totally agree. Like start with the successes, start with the wins, and start your reflection there, so that now it's not this big negative association with all the things we're doing wrong and all the things we need to fix and all of this to now go into a negative association with the planning side of things. Focus on the good stuff. Give yourself a chance to be like to feel blessed and be like, "Hey, look, we're doing a lot of things really good. Here's what they are, and then we can keep going completely. And I'm to walk that forward a little bit, probably one of one of the more effective exercises I've done with people is why are things going so well?
00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:45.730
Yeah, we we analyze stuff when they're not going well. Analyze it when it is going well. What what is happening here that's making things go so well so that when they don't, we can come back to this checklist and say, "Oh, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. Like now, we know what we need to get back to. Why is it going so well? Um. So, what? What's start with what's working? Yep. The successes, then the challenges. Acknowledge the challenges. Here's here's what we're not not try your hardest not to get to solutions.
00:21:42.339 --> 00:21:49.059
Just what's the challenge? But then third, so what solutions are you already thinking about?
00:21:50.200 --> 00:22:19.890
And just put them on the table and come back to them. Let let's not go to let's not be a solution monster, yes, or an advice monster. But let's acknowledge that I am living this every day, and I've got I've already got solutions or projects that I'm thinking about. So write them down, set them aside. If you're with a group, three to five people, share them with each other. Make make this the opening to your meeting. So what's working?
00:22:16.289 --> 00:22:21.559
What's not working? Successes, challenges. What am I already thinking?
00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:24.259
Beautiful.
00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:36.410
I think now is a good time to look at some financials. I mean, we're we're here to make money.
00:22:33.619 --> 00:23:35.180
We need to make money in order to pay people. So, what is our current State of of the business. How much revenue are we doing? How many people do we have in the field? Just a an accounting, a reporting. Here's what our here's what our gross profit is. Here's what our profit is. Best project for the year, current state, and and that's what I was going to say. Is it important to almost like view the financials in this exercise through just like a very matter of fact, or would you start to introduce the this is where we are today and this is where we thought we would be, or yeah, you just like keep it. This is what the numbers are. We're just looking at the numbers. We're just doing a financial audit. We're just looking at what we have. How would you How would you talk about that? Yeah, you. We can definitely looking backwards. What we want to be careful of is not to go forwards too quick.
00:23:35.900 --> 00:24:10.230
Okay, leave leave the announce. We're not analyzing yet. So the I guess maybe I'll I'll preview it, but the five steps I'll talk about are reflect, affirm, measure, commit, review. So another press pause moment. So in the audience, write write these down. We've talked we're talking about reflect, but the whole process I'm going to talk about is reflect, affirm, measure, commit, review.
00:24:12.150 --> 00:24:12.390
Got it.
00:24:12.539 --> 00:24:36.619
And for those of you in the audience, there's a lot of lean thinking influence on that. Some six sigma in that six sigma guy. Yeah, you'll those people will recognize those five things as being very similar. But so yes, we can look backwards. You know, we we thought we were going to be here. Here's where we're actually at.
00:24:37.009 --> 00:24:37.130
Okay.
00:24:38.150 --> 00:24:58.750
What are the challenges? I think there are. There's, I think four main questions. This is also a very lean-oriented thing. How are we doing? So current state.
00:24:53.829 --> 00:24:59.950
How are we doing preventing and catching defects?
00:25:00.900 --> 00:25:26.690
Okay, how good are we doing making problems visual, not buried in a in a report somewhere? Are we are we comfortable with making problems visual? Are we are we doing something that's causing people to hide problems? Thank people when someone brings you a problem. Thank them because we we need problems. We we we need.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:29.450
I I should say that differently.
00:25:26.720 --> 00:25:29.450
We need to uncover the problems.
00:25:29.480 --> 00:25:37.460
So how are we doing making problems visual? We're not making people think about it.
00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:41.680
It's not buried in a report. How are we doing with lead times?
00:25:37.460 --> 00:25:46.660
Not just lead times on work, but lead times between departments.
00:25:41.769 --> 00:25:57.609
Are are we are we doing a good job not making successive departments wait for stuff or rework? And then fourth is work clarity. Is is everybody clear?
00:25:58.240 --> 00:26:05.519
Is there is there any rating scale of one to 10, one being nobody knows what they're doing, and 10 being it's crystal clear.
00:26:06.750 --> 00:26:13.470
Call me frozen because it's because it's crystal. Is is work clear?
00:26:14.039 --> 00:26:14.099
Yeah.
00:26:15.059 --> 00:26:22.250
Just how are we doing? Good, bad? Really resist, resist, resist, resist the urge to solution monster.
00:26:23.329 --> 00:26:50.680
Yes, and then look back on those things and say, "Okay, do we have more wins? Are we are we winning? And I think most people will say, at least in my experience, most most companies, the vast majority, say, "Yeah, you know what? We we are winning. It's not perfect, but I think we're winning. Okay, that's a that's a good reflection. At this point, we move to the next step.
00:26:51.309 --> 00:27:00.309
Okay, and a lot of people go right again. Go right to solutions, dude. I was literally I'm sitting here and I'm like, I do.
00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:04.829
How do you solve all these problems? I literally want to do that. Okay, keep going.
00:27:05.849 --> 00:27:24.980
So, on the last podcast, we talked about prioritizing, and managers never never force your people to prioritize on their own. If they can, fine, but never force people to prioritize on their own. That's part of the value you bring as a manager, so we need to prioritize, right?
00:27:21.859 --> 00:27:31.400
Because there's too many things to fix. So I call this a firm.
00:27:25.069 --> 00:27:52.809
What's the vision? Where are we going? What what's what what every owner has a distant shoreline. I'll I'll go with the beach analogy because I have the head the beach like out there, right at right out there on the horizon. Like I'm pointing, like you can see my finger. Yeah, that cloud out there on the horizon. Like, what is that?
00:27:54.069 --> 00:28:08.460
What does actually mean? Yeah, yeah. Like I mean, it's is it more commercial work? Is it more residential work? So again, go back to the 37% of people that were experiencing great results.
00:28:04.920 --> 00:28:09.539
It was a, it was an informal plan, right?
00:28:09.720 --> 00:28:11.700
We don't need specifics to win.
00:28:12.210 --> 00:28:14.009
Yeah, we just need a general direction.
00:28:14.579 --> 00:28:23.750
Yeah, like you know, Captain Kirk at Star Trek. I don't know. Have you ever seen the old Star Trek episode? There's too much of a generation gap here.
00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:29.630
There is way too much. Okay, I don't mind dating myself. I'm I'm old enough to date myself.
00:28:27.380 --> 00:28:49.359
But you know, at the end of the original series, the end of the show, Captain Kirk would say,"Go that way. They they would solve the problem or conquer the you know or or fix the issue, and the show would be ending, and he would say, "Let's go, let's go that way. So where's that way?
00:28:50.170 --> 00:28:50.589
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:51.609 --> 00:28:56.289
So here's another write it down thing. So here's five questions.
00:28:56.380 --> 00:29:26.029
This is from many many years ago. This is from a. A a white paper, an article by the University of Virginia School of Business for for vision. It's it's a it's a great exple. So the 5c's, a great format for a vision. So a vision it needs to be clear, concise, incredible.
00:29:17.490 --> 00:29:29.000
Okay. so but what? What are we talking about? Okay, so first, write this down. Context.
00:29:30.049 --> 00:29:30.200
Okay.
00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:34.099
How how big do we want to be?
00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:52.900
Yeah. How how many how many employees are we comfortable with? What kind of work are we comfortable with? So in in three to five years, what do you what do you see yourself doing? Maybe 10 years is a little too far off. That's like Jim Collins.
00:29:49.839 --> 00:30:00.269
That's like the BHAG, the the one big like big hairy audacious goal. But three to five years that can be maybe it's one year.
00:29:56.230 --> 00:30:02.309
Maybe maybe for per. People that aren't real sure. Let's just like in one year.
00:30:02.819 --> 00:30:02.880
Yeah.
00:30:03.599 --> 00:30:16.769
What's the context? So, your how big are you? How many employees do you have? What are you known for? What's your culture like? A paragraph, less than a paragraph. Bullet points. Big fan of bullet points.
00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:18.059
Yeah.
00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:22.490
Second is customer.
00:30:23.329 --> 00:30:44.500
Okay, so context is first, then customer. Who's your ideal customer profile? Not your only customer profile, and maybe you can have two or maybe three ideal customer profiles. But here's here's who I know when I'm talking to these people.
00:30:44.920 --> 00:30:49.900
We're going to get this job when I know someone on the board.
00:30:49.960 --> 00:31:20.220
When I know the engineer. When we, you know, we've we're first to give the presentation. You know, I know we're going to get that work. Or it's it's a certain type of work or a certain geography for the residential contractors, a certain neighborhood. Yeah, what do they say about you? So the so the voice of the customer. What do what do they really want?
00:31:21.269 --> 00:31:29.000
Are are your sales teams really finding out what customers really want? Why are you buying from us? Right?
00:31:30.440 --> 00:31:34.339
How are you reaching them? Not a not a Charles Dickens novel.
00:31:34.640 --> 00:31:50.650
Just bullet points. Typically, how are we reaching people? Is it business development? Like we we take, you know, a lot of people these days are familiar with the candy box. You get a box, you fill it with candy.
00:31:48.069 --> 00:31:55.119
It's got your logo on it. You take it to the office. Right.
00:31:50.680 --> 00:32:04.980
Some people find out what they customize it for each person, but you're going out. You're doing outreach or community events or or whatever it is, or social media, or whatever it is.
00:32:02.549 --> 00:32:04.980
How do we typically reach them?
00:32:06.539 --> 00:33:07.619
Okay, so the third C we we've talked about context, customers, capabilities. In three to five years, what do you want to be capable of? I want to be capable of doing a bigger size work, I want to be capable of running jobs from start to finish. I want to. I want to do like a vertical. I want to go design work. I want to go all the way from design to implementation. I want to be capable of so in in the work of the work, you know, I want to be capable of of estimating faster. Yeah, maybe we're not using estimating technology, which that that could also be the next one. But what what are we as a team, as a company, we are we're capable of complex work. We're capable of doing simple work really quick.
00:33:02.369 --> 00:33:35.299
We we are capable of doing military work or work for the work for the government. We've built systems that we can we can deal with getting on a military base. So bigger work oriented things. So now the fourth is control. So we've had context, customer capabilities, controls.
00:33:36.470 --> 00:34:14.760
How are we preventing errors, catching defects, monitoring results. So, job costing is is is a first thought. Here's where that estimating system might come back. We control the quality of our estimates by implementing a new or or better or enhanced estimating process, we do performance reviews. We control the quality of our team.
00:34:11.070 --> 00:34:51.760
So this is this is very much the the quality control. We have documented processes. We have visual management. We make problems visual. We don't make people search and search for issues. We we reward people. We thank people when they bring problems to the table, so that problems don't persist. If if 111. poke, I think, sort of that I saw recently. If if problems aren't solved above, mistakes will will keep going below.
00:34:52.809 --> 00:34:53.048
Totally.
00:34:54.699 --> 00:35:25.099
So if if how do we escalate problems? How how how is there a pathway? That things happening in the field, whether it's sales or I mean, I ran accounting, but I used all these same principles in accounting. Have I made it easy for problems to get escalated? I think hiring practices, onboarding. How are we putting guardrails to things?
00:35:25.550 --> 00:35:26.000
The controls.
00:35:26.750 --> 00:35:49.780
Yeah. What controls do we have in place? The fifth is coordination. So we've said context, customer capabilities, control, coordination. Great things are done by teams, not individuals. So that that's not Mike. I'm pretty sure that's Steve Jobs. He would know.
00:35:49.929 --> 00:35:51.820
Wait, who's Steve Jobs? Who's that guy?
00:35:52.539 --> 00:35:52.840
Yeah, right.
00:35:53.199 --> 00:35:53.260
Yeah.
00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:06.570
I heard in Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech. I love this quote. He he said it was text winners who was the assistant coach said, "There's Michael.
00:36:03.929 --> 00:36:25.760
There's no I in team. And he said, "Yeah, but there is an M and an E. Yeah. So there's no there's there's no I in team, and great things are done by teams. We've got to do this together. So what is our scheduled routine? Let's formalize that. How are we? How are we going to coordinate each other so our roles clear?
00:36:26.510 --> 00:36:36.139
Yeah, our meetings clear. Our meetings different. Are we having the same meeting over and over again, or or do these meetings actually do different things?
00:36:32.958 --> 00:37:01.139
Are the right people at the meetings? How how are we delegating? Coordination requires delegation. This is a big one, especially for the the smaller businesses. You know, under 10 million, maybe under five. The owner getting out of the bottleneck. The the the owner becomes the bottleneck when everything runs through the owner, totally.
00:37:01.710 --> 00:37:41.170
So, how are we delegating, and are we are we actually giving real authority to somebody as we coordinate things? How do I, as the owner, how do I, as a manager or a leader, how do I get 10 hours of work done with my one hour. Am I delegating out? I would argue that as a if you're if you're doing more than 10 million in revenue or you have more than 50 employees, the the leaders of that organization need to be getting a 500 to one return.
00:37:42.099 --> 00:37:47.619
Wow! If I one hour of my work, I can get 500 hours of work done.
00:37:48.489 --> 00:37:51.190
Crazy because I've delegated, right?
00:37:52.030 --> 00:37:55.510
And if if it keeps coming back to me, then it isn't really delegated, right?
00:37:56.650 --> 00:38:13.739
So you you let you let the rope out slowly. We could. That's a whole other podcast on on delegating. So that's the vision. If you can answer those five things, if you can sit down and say five years from now, here here's where I need to be.
00:38:16.409 --> 00:38:18.929
Um. So what do you think about that?
00:38:20.340 --> 00:38:54.130
I think I'll reverse the interview. I'm I'm going to interview you. No, what do you think I was? I was I was asking questions before, and I just I found myself. I was like, this is. I just need to pay attention and listen. First off, I think it's awesome, like massively applicable. But my first question is, is like this seems like maybe lack of a better term, too fluffy. Like it sounds great in theory, but I'm curious. Like, what have you seen companies that apply this see as an outcome of that?
00:38:54.760 --> 00:39:26.119
Because, like, I I'm looking at all these different things, and I'm like, I again on paper it sounds great, but for the person that's trying to get into planning, and like this seems like a lot of alignment, like a lot of things that come through, I would want to know like what is the outcome, or like what is the like what are some of the success stories that you see your clients, what you've seen in the past, and organizations you've worked with that run these types of concepts, like what could you expect by committing and investing in these types of concepts and exercise. Yeah, keep it tangible. I think you're right. Like one of the goals is to keep these things tangible.
00:39:26.780 --> 00:39:26.840
Yeah.
00:39:28.489 --> 00:39:34.039
Don't get too pie in the sky with it. Make it real. Make it realistic. Make it relative to your environment.
00:39:34.429 --> 00:39:34.489
Yeah.
00:39:36.079 --> 00:39:36.860
Make it achievable.
00:39:37.460 --> 00:39:37.519
Yeah.
00:39:38.630 --> 00:39:47.980
Try to prevent yourself from one try, although although part of me would say part of it is dreaming. What is your dream in
00:39:48.010 --> 00:39:53.050
context, customer capabilities, controls, coordination? What's your dream?
00:39:53.500 --> 00:40:47.800
Yeah. Let me throw this back as like I totally agree. And you were when you were discussing these examples, you. Saying like three to five, maybe one year, 10 year might be too deep, right? But it's like, could the dream for the 29% or the rather 71% that aren't doing this at all, like could the dream just be like, I want to build an organization that is like emphasizing the business planning for us to then start moving towards like a three to five year, because that's where I'm like I think like an entry point on this is like just like it could be I want to have this boat, this car, this house, this lifestyle, this outcome, employees paid, equity owners, whatever the big dream is out there, but like could the goal, the dream, just simply be like I want to run an extremely dialed business that follows these types of practices.
00:40:47.980 --> 00:40:53.409
It's one one of my favorite things to plan is I want to do exactly what we did this year a little better.
00:40:53.949 --> 00:40:55.869
Yeah, that's fine.
00:40:56.530 --> 00:41:02.730
Yeah, three year three years from now, I want to be doing. Some people have hit a place where they need to rest. They've made changes.
00:41:02.820 --> 00:41:07.889
We've implemented new software.
00:41:02.820 --> 00:41:24.980
We've done X, Y, Z. And if I'm doing a one-year plan, I just want to repeat this year. If I can repeat this year, and you know, Tiger Woods talked about doing the reps. Is he's you know making a swing change? I got to do the reps. Well, we just need one more year of doing it this way before we grow. Let's let's let's get our systems honed in.
00:41:25.670 --> 00:41:40.190
Yes, there's a little too much variability in our results. You know, we go from we've we've done jobs at 60% GP and we've done jobs at 20% GP. Let's let's focus this year on just being more consistent. I love that.
00:41:40.610 --> 00:42:09.690
Yeah, love that, and that, and totally. And then when you even make the comment of like, like I just want to get better one year, and then people need breaks. They're looking back, and they've they've established this, they've exercised it, they've accomplished it in their business, and then they're looking back and they're like, I need a break. Like this, this whole this whole business planning thing certainly works, but I take that as a sign that we we need to ingrain the implementation.
00:42:10.349 --> 00:42:32.150
That it it we now need to stabilize. So in in you could say stabilize, standardize, improve, control. So we're we've we've improved something. Now we need to control it and stabilize it. It's like rolling a rolling a rock uphill, and you put a chuck underneath the rock. Like that's where we're at. We need to chuck the rock so it doesn't come back.
00:42:32.630 --> 00:42:54.579
Yes, and even the other point here too is like give yourself some room, and like I think this goes kind of back to the reflection part. Actually, there's way back at the beginning, is like give yourself the space to reflect and then honestly answer the question if the direction that you thought you wanted to go in as a leader or as a business owner is actually where you want to go.
00:42:51.789 --> 00:43:18.360
And I'll say this: like it's not necessarily as like as tactical and specific as what you're going over, but even just in like passing conversations with clients of ours, we had one client that they were going to go out and they were going to go from doing like 10 units to like 150 units, and they were marching down that path. And then as they were like 18, two years into that into that goal, they were like, "Dude, I didn't.
00:43:14.730 --> 00:43:48.909
I had those goals when we started, but like now that I'm here and I'm looking at this like I don't really know why I need to keep doing that. Like, why can't I just build like an extremely stable? I'm glad you brought that up because we we talked about that earlier. The not knowing how to plan part, embrace change as part of the process. Okay, embrace getting better as part of what the planning is supposed to do. It's not supposed to be great the first time you do it, but every time you do it, you get a little bit better at it. So don't let perfect get in the way of of learning.
00:43:49.510 --> 00:43:49.570
Yeah.
00:43:50.530 --> 00:43:52.750
So the next three steps, I I talked about the other three
00:43:52.869 --> 00:43:56.590
measure, commit, review.
00:43:52.869 --> 00:44:17.429
So the the steps in planning reflect, affirm, which we just did. Measure this. It it gets a little simpler going forward if you spend enough time on reflect and affirm. Measure is okay. So how far are we going to go this year? Here's here's the the edge of the horizon on my on my picture. Here's here's what the edge of the horizon looks like.
00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:23.869
Okay, how far are we going to go this year? How far? How what's comfortable? What do I think is possible this year?
00:44:24.409 --> 00:44:24.530
Yep.
00:44:25.219 --> 00:44:28.670
I don't want to go too far outside of my comfort zone because then I'll quit. What's doable?
00:44:29.210 --> 00:44:29.360
Yes.
00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:36.110
write down easier, better, faster, cheaper. Start with easier.
00:44:36.710 --> 00:44:36.769
Yeah.
00:44:37.099 --> 00:44:48.760
What's going to make your life easier? So so don't don't try to chew the elephant all at one time. Eat the elephant one bite at a time. So measure how far are we going to go this year?
00:44:50.139 --> 00:44:54.789
What's that going to take?
00:44:50.139 --> 00:44:59.409
Here's where you take things back to your team and you involve the team and you say, what's this going to take? If we're gonna if we're gonna.
00:45:00.150 --> 00:45:58.210
Stay. We're going to do the same amount of jobs, same revenue, but we're going to we're going to reduce the variability of our gross profit. What's that going to take? Get your team's feedback. Build a budget. You know, people make budgets and then they sit on a shelf and collect dust. We'll talk about that, but build a budget that makes sense, that helps people see, like here, here are the numbers that affect me in my life, and what's going to have to change in order to get to where we need to be. That drives the next step, which is commitment. Commit. What specifically are we committing to? Don't just write down to dues. A commitment involves time. When when does this need to get done? So take a piece, take a piece of flip chart paper, make four columns, and q1, q2, q3, q4, and schedule it.
00:45:53.500 --> 00:46:03.030
What are we going to work on each quarter? Make sure that the quarters aren't overloaded.
00:46:04.440 --> 00:46:22.969
Assign it to somebody, and that drives the commitment. They've participated in the discussion, but the best way to reduce commitment is do something for someone. So, in the measure step, how far are we going to go this year? Let people participate.
00:46:23.960 --> 00:46:37.789
Yeah, and give their feedback. And often, I find I know it's shocking. Some people in the audience maybe are are struggling with this, but when I ask people these questions, they often want to go farther than the team does. The the managers do.
00:46:38.269 --> 00:46:43.719
Yeah, not everybody, but there are people on your team that are like, "That'd be easy. Why are we doing that?
00:46:44.139 --> 00:46:45.519
Yeah, like let's go farther.
00:46:45.969 --> 00:46:46.030
Yeah.
00:46:46.570 --> 00:46:49.900
So how far are we going to go this year? Commit to a timeline.
00:46:50.289 --> 00:46:56.769
Schedule things. Put it on. I'm a big fan of Kanban boards. I don't know if you've ever heard of a totally Conbon board.
00:46:57.219 --> 00:46:57.340
Yep.
00:46:57.519 --> 00:47:13.440
So put your sticky notes. Take take a a nice piece of a whiteboard, a four foot by three foot whiteboard. Turn it wideways, make four columns, and just take sticky notes. And don't let the doing column so backlog up next doing done.
00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:15.869
Don't let the doing column get too full.
00:47:16.440 --> 00:47:16.500
Yeah.
00:47:17.909 --> 00:47:23.539
So that's that's an example of visual management. I know what we're working on. I can see it.
00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:30.440
It's not buried in a business plan somewhere, a piece of paper. It's right there. It's on the kanban. It's here's what we're doing: visual management.
00:47:30.440 --> 00:48:35.269
I can get engaged and I can make sure that we're not working on too many things at one time. The last step is review, and here's here's the last stat that I'll throw out there, and that is teams that regularly review the plan and progress are achieve 25% better results than teams that don't. So just getting get getting together to review an incomplete plan will make you better. It was it was 67% better. An incompete plan, and just get together and review it, and you you're one of you're likely going to have a 68 or was 65 65% chance of having better results. Yeah, it's not that hard. Part of part of it is we make business planning So hard, yeah, difficult, right? So review it weekly. Make it make your commitments visual. I'm a huge fan of of kan bonds. Everybody in the audience, look up a kan bond board. Go K A N B A N.
00:48:36.019 --> 00:48:39.199
Yes, thank you. Oh, you know it.
00:48:36.019 --> 00:48:58.659
Nice. Yeah, yeah. Con bonds with a K. K a n b a n. Get different color sticky notes for different people or different departments, and only let one sticky note be in the doing at a time, and work that one thing throughout the quarter. Review at least quarterly. Now, here's the thing
00:48:58.750 --> 00:49:10.949
a mistake, a challenge is to not rehash the entire plan. We made the plan.
00:49:06.539 --> 00:49:16.739
The plan is done. I'm reviewing progress. What did we do? What have I done? What's up next?
00:49:16.829 --> 00:49:48.460
Where am I stuck? It's those three things. That's it. When you get together, the quarterly review. I mean, I'm ideally, I'd love a management team to get together weekly to simply ask the question. It's it could be a 15 minute meeting. What have we done? What's up next? What am I doing next? Where am I stuck? So the the what's up next is what am I going to do for the next meeting, and I'm just managing what's my to do between meetings.
00:49:49.090 --> 00:49:56.349
Love it, and it and yeah, your comment is great. Keep it simple. Make it make it the first time you do it. Make it easy.
00:49:57.579 --> 00:50:47.860
Totally. I I even want to shed some light on this because. I, you're totally right. Make it easy. Make it like as fun as you can. But like I like I I'm feeling what the audience or that 71% likely feels with like you're telling me make it easy, and I'm listening to this, and I'm like this seems like a lot, right? Of course, it's like digesting, and it's like kind of like understanding how do we put this together. Who do you? Where is this exercise applicable from like a size of business standpoint? Like, how would if you're starting a construction company or you own a construction company? What revenue, team size, customer, whatever it is, whatever threshold you determine size on when should you really start being yeah. Let me change the paradigm a little bit because of course my answer is going to be everyone.
00:50:48.130 --> 00:50:48.579
Yeah, yeah.
00:50:48.849 --> 00:50:55.360
From a from a one person or or two person lawn mowing business.
00:50:56.530 --> 00:51:01.809
Yeah, to $40 million drywall contract.
00:51:02.019 --> 00:51:04.199
Commercial. Yeah, whatever.
00:51:02.019 --> 00:51:06.929
Commercial, commercial company, yeah. The answers change, yeah.
00:51:08.159 --> 00:51:28.340
The smaller the business, probably the more straightforward and less complex the answers are going to be. As you grow, it's going to get more and more complex. So just because it's simple doesn't make it not important, right? And yeah, you know, there's a lot of steps here. There, and and that's part. I agree with you.
00:51:25.250 --> 00:51:33.019
That's part of the intimidating part. There's a lot of steps.
00:51:28.429 --> 00:51:33.710
That's why guys like me, we make checklists.
00:51:34.250 --> 00:51:51.579
Yes, right. So the audience, write write these things down real quick. Reflect, affirm, measure, commit, review, reflect, write, successes, challenges, already thinking.
00:51:52.420 --> 00:51:52.539
Yep.
00:51:53.829 --> 00:51:56.380
Affirm. You got the 5c's.
00:51:57.190 --> 00:51:57.340
Okay.
00:51:58.510 --> 00:52:12.090
Context, customer, Capabilities, controls, coordination. That that could that's a lot, but if I put it in a checklist, it could take an hour.
00:52:13.079 --> 00:52:14.909
Yeah, doesn't have to take long.
00:52:16.230 --> 00:52:26.329
Okay, wait. Do you have do you like? Did you write these down like just over all your years, or do you have like a document that you're following? Like, do you have like a doc that people ask you for?
00:52:26.690 --> 00:52:40.849
I've got notes here. I almost wanted to just like, but yeah, totally. I was just going to say, even if you have like a doc, that might be interesting for people to like. If you're interested in this checklist or even learning more, like, can we can we add that to the YouTube video, or is there a way to put that in? Oh, I'll send that to you.
00:52:41.329 --> 00:53:18.059
I can talk to our. I'll send you a checklist on it. Yeah, I think that, or even yeah, we can talk about it offline. But the reason I'm saying this is because I'm totally picking up what you're putting down, and I don't want this to come off, or like at least my questions or curiosities coming off as like, like it's impossible. I just I think from like the audience standpoints are sitting here and they're like, okay, like how, like how do I actually apply this? And I think the visual, the comment, the open line to you-I think that would be helpful because even on my first question of like what size of business should be doing this, based on your answer, like my general takeaway is is like really has nothing to do with the size of the business.
00:53:15.329 --> 00:53:27.829
Arguably, would be harder to apply this at a larger company because there's more people that need to get bought into, totally wrong. Because it's like you are starting with complexity, right?
00:53:24.110 --> 00:53:36.289
So it's almost like it's it's more about applying the exercise of business planning, right? And it's like just getting. It's not about the plan. It's about the exercise.
00:53:36.530 --> 00:54:43.840
It's getting the reps at the exercise of business planning, and then like you're either going to grow or you're not, right? And like with business planning, the stats say you're going to grow, right? But the point is, if that just becomes more and more a part of your culture, your business, this is the expectation. It was me and my buddy mowing yards, and we listened to this podcast, and we started ripping reflect a firm measure, commit, review, and all the sub bullets underneath it, right? And we were and we applied it, and then we hired our first guy, and now it's a part of his adoption. This is what we do at XYZ Lawnmowing, right? The point being is like now you start to compound and grow. It's really like an adopted mindset of business planning, and that's what I think maybe creates some of the like friction or the hesitation might be the wrong word, but it creates that friction enough for people to be like, "Fuck it, I'm not going to do it. I'm not business planning. Like I'm just going to keep ripping what I've been doing. Like I'll figure it out later, right? So I think for the audience to be clear, and I hope I didn't make this yeah. In the outside, in the absence of a checklist, yeah, it can be very intimidating because it is big, yeah.
00:54:44.170 --> 00:56:07.139
But but yeah, I'll send you a checklist, yeah. And I I think it applies to everybody, and and everybody can do it. You're gonna have to sit down for maybe a little longer than you want to, but I mean this is this is stuff I I've been doing it for 18 years. I mean I've. I've seen small paint contractors with one crew do this in one day. They can they can get it done in a couple hours. Most teams, if you're over a million dollars in revenue or you're over 20 employees, I would say you're probably going to do it in two meetings. You're going to meet beginning of November to go through the reflect, affirm, and measure. How far are we going to get? Then you're going to break, and you're going to meet with the team. You're going to confirm. Like, is this really how far we can get? You're going to talk to your sale. If you have a sales rep, you're going to talk to some some key guys in the field. You know, here's what we're thinking. What do you think? Because this, I'm prepping the battlefield. Then you're going to get together again the week after Thanksgiving and finalize the Kanban board. We're going to commit to the Kanban board and we're going to schedule our reviews. I mean, yeah, there's there's a lot of work to do in between, but honestly, it it's like that's it. It's not that hard. It's not like it's. It doesn't, and you're going to get better and better at putting more and more meaningful things.
00:56:03.960 --> 00:56:17.909
Some people are going to be frustrated because, like, dude, we got our whole year done in like two months. Like, what what were we thinking? Like, okay, well, now you learned your team can handle more. I have proof that my team can handle more than I gave them.
00:56:18.329 --> 00:56:52.414
Yes, yes, I have to guess. Or like, wow, dude, we had like 18 things on the list, and we've only done two. Like, hmm, I we have evidence now that you or your team are a little ambitious. Yeah, yeah. Like that's that's part of the process. So, so the mindset we're building is continuous improvement. A mindset of plan, do, check, act. I I execute, learn, execute, learn, execute, learn. Never arrive, Reece.
00:56:47.164 --> 00:56:54.244
Never arrive. If you feel like you've arrived, that's not it.
00:56:54.639 --> 00:56:54.699
Yeah.
00:56:54.940 --> 00:56:55.690
Never arrive.
00:56:56.110 --> 00:56:56.170
Yeah.
00:56:56.860 --> 00:56:58.630
Execute, learn. Execute, learn.
00:56:59.019 --> 00:57:02.579
Yes, yes. I'm inspired.
00:57:03.929 --> 00:57:06.929
Yeah, nice man. Truly, thank you for that. I appreciate that.
00:57:07.500 --> 00:57:26.150
No, I think again, like it. I would urge the audience to like you. We kind of need to joke about it, but seriously, like, do the pause, like pause the episode, write it down, think about it seriously, and then like pick it back up. Listen to the episode maybe a couple times. Maybe send it to like your like the people in your office. Be like, hey, what do you guys read on this?
00:57:26.929 --> 00:57:51.070
And I'm I'm not begging for downloads. Trust me, it's about collaboration. It's about getting the ball turning and going. And also, like just like going back to the very beginning before we wrap this up here. Um, yeah, you mentioned like just like the first, the actionable thing is like just remove yourself from the business and start to reflect on this. And you mentioned the embassy suites. Do they still do the walnut chocolate chip warm cookies, or that's DoubleTree?
00:57:51.730 --> 00:57:53.440
That's not the embassy. That's the DoubleTree.
00:57:54.070 --> 00:57:56.079
Yeah, that's one of them. No, I know what you're talking about.
00:57:56.110 --> 00:58:09.929
The cookies. Yeah, instead of the embassy, hit up the DoubleTree, get some free warm cookies out of the deal, and just reflect, and just go somewhere nice. Don't go to the motel. Go like the the don't don't go to the Holiday Inn down the street. Go go somewhere nice.
00:58:10.170 --> 00:58:14.880
Yeah, treat yourself. Get yourself in the headspace. The the dreaming headspace. Maybe it's the Adirondack on the beach.
00:58:16.769 --> 00:58:21.530
There you go, right there, like that. That's my that's my happy place.
00:58:21.769 --> 00:58:28.550
That's your happy place. I love it. Okay, Andrew, I certainly don't want to cut. Have we have we covered what you wanted to get ripped through?
00:58:29.269 --> 00:59:40.670
Yeah, this this was great conversation, man. I really appreciate the opportunity coming back and love these. I love your interview style and the way you do things and just riffing the conversation. And I I hope yeah I mean I just hope the people in the audience got real value out of it and totally it's actionable so hopefully part of this was actionable they can take away and and and do it and yeah you know if there's any questions let me know yeah totally and that was the one piece I was going to say here is like first I always appreciate you having me on the phone because I think your perspective is just like wildly applicable and you don't like you don't press the agenda you suggest what works right and like there's a lot of grace in what you suggest so I think that is basically frankly I get feedback from the audience in terms of just like how we do these things is like just a conversation I hopefully I'm asking the questions that the audience is feeling, so that they have the shot to hear you talk. But if they, if I'm not asking the questions, do not be shy. Andrew is awesome, and Andrew, if you want to read your contact information, yeah, we'll work on we'll work on getting like a document put together or something. We can we can offline that, and we'll include it in the show notes. But how do they?
00:59:38.570 --> 00:59:46.510
That's a great suggestion. I didn't think about that, but yeah, I'd love to get you a checklist. And here's you know here's how to do it.
00:59:46.570 --> 00:59:53.679
Do you ever be sick if we like built like a clot agent to help with build with building planning? No, no. Up next, new planning app.
00:59:54.190 --> 00:59:56.050
Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, okay, but how do they find you?
00:59:56.800 --> 01:00:28.369
Yes, thank you. Precision dash s m e. Dot com sme is strategy management execution small to medium enterprise all kinds of fun stuff with SME but precision dash sme.com Andrew at precision dash sme.com name in town name in town name in town if you wish to opine if you wish to opine, we'll we'll see who gets that reference. A lot of lot of references in this. No, there's only the electric.
01:00:28.460 --> 01:00:33.349
This is the electric. Yeah, yeah. Teach by association, right? That's right. That's right. Okay.
01:00:34.070 --> 01:00:34.280
Go ahead.
01:00:34.639 --> 01:00:37.880
Yeah, yeah. Just thank you for having me out. It's great to be with you, man.
01:00:37.969 --> 01:00:43.090
Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Um, we'll see you next week at CFMA, yes, sir, you got it.
01:00:43.210 --> 01:00:45.159
Beautiful. All right, Andrew, I appreciate the time as always.
01:00:45.309 --> 01:00:48.280
Your wealth of knowledge. We'll stay in touch as always.
01:00:48.909 --> 01:00:52.030
Yeah, appreciate it, man. We we went kind of long. I hope that's okay.
01:00:53.050 --> 01:01:14.460
I haven't done an hour long banger in a while. This was good. That's good. All right. I got some feedback from the audience that they get a little too long, but I think this one with the start, pause, start, pause, extremely tactical. I think it was totally worth the hour. Yeah, no sweat. Do you feel like it was it was tangible enough? I mean, they are big topics, but there, I think there was a lot of meat there for people to.
01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:25.550
And there's, I think it was 1,000% tangible. There's a lot here, but like again, to your point, like you listen to the episode, you strip it down. It's really not that big of a deal.
01:01:25.849 --> 01:01:45.699
And frankly, I think it's probably like the like doing intentional reflection and realistic visions so powerful. It's gonna help you get through this process instead of your. I want to be a billion dollar construction company and compete. Like yes, like let's just chill out here, and like, what do we reflect on? Where do we actually want to take this thing? That's gonna help you.
01:01:45.699 --> 01:01:48.070
You're winning in more places than you're not.
01:01:48.639 --> 01:01:53.800
Yeah, and it's so hard to feel that way when the problems are mounting.
01:01:54.849 --> 01:01:58.119
But, dude, we all know it. Society.
01:01:55.539 --> 01:01:58.239
Sorry, I cut you off. Yeah, go, go.
01:01:58.869 --> 01:02:01.469
Well, yeah. I mean, just yeah. I mean you're winning.
01:02:02.130 --> 01:02:04.469
People are winning, and just everyone feels it, right?
01:02:04.650 --> 01:02:39.860
Generally in society, like people are hard on themselves, right? Chalk it up to whatever new flavor of the day we're getting spun. It's like just take a beat, just yeah, just take a beat. Call yourself a winner. Think about why you're winning? Look at the things. It could be small wins, but it's not all. The business is failing. This sucks. We're not doing thing. We can't hit profit margin. We can't do this. We can't do that. Think of the good stuff. Focus on that. Highlight the challenges. What are we actually working? Oddly, it's it's the negative stuff that's emotional. The positive stuff is is more factual.
01:02:40.639 --> 01:02:40.699
Yeah.
01:02:41.360 --> 01:03:07.650
So it's like it's sort of this positivity. People mistake it for oh, you're just being touchy feely, and it's like well, if you think about it, the negativity you're experiencing is emotional reaction to problems. So you're when you think positively, usually you got to search for it. You got like there's there's a fact behind it, so it's much more reasonable and logical to to review your positives and what's working.
01:03:08.190 --> 01:03:22.760
I love it. Yeah, and that's again, it's like the it's it's reactive. It's like you're. It's more like a like a it's a it's a personal digestion of what the situation is rather than okay, is it really that bad or like what's going on here? Yeah, yeah.
01:03:23.360 --> 01:03:28.190
All right, I digress. Thank you again, sir. You got it. Thank you. Tell the team I said, hey.
01:03:28.730 --> 01:03:31.639
Of course, always will. We'll see. All right. Peace. See ya.
01:03:31.730 --> 01:03:31.849
Yep.
