Blue Collar Nation
Eric and Larry of Super Tech University, supertechu.com, have years of blue collar service business ownership. They know, all too well, that running a blue collar business is not for the faint of heart. For that reason, the Blue Collar Nation Podcast is dedicated to making the lives blue collar service business better. With humor and an unfailing optimism, Larry and Eric invite guests from all areas to the blue collar world to share ideas and help owners run their businesses more effectively.
Blue Collar Nation
Operations Isn’t Paperwork — It’s the experience your customer feels.
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of the Blue Collar Nation Podcast, Eric from Super Tech University takes the mic solo while Larry is off traveling. Eric dives deep into one of the most overlooked drivers of success in home service businesses—operations.
Drawing from decades in the trades, Eric shares why consistent systems often outperform raw talent and how the lack of written processes can quietly sabotage growth. He explains the dangers of “tribal knowledge,” where training gets diluted as it passes from technician to technician, and outlines why documenting your company’s way of doing things is critical for scalability, performance, and customer satisfaction.
If you’re a home service owner or leader looking to improve execution, build stronger teams, and create repeatable results, this episode delivers practical insights you can start using immediately.
👉 Tune in to learn how better systems create better technicians—and a more profitable business.
TITLE SPONSOR:
Super Tech University
Dramatically improve your team's performance with a system of short daily video lessons training your team in soft skills. When you invest in your team and teach them soft skills, your team can make you more profit. Go to https://supertechu.com/ for more info.
Click here for a discount: https://supertechu.com/register/podcastoffer/.
Here is an entrepreneur's story you will relate to.
SPONSOR: C&R Magazine
C&R magazine is the leading periodical in the Cleaning and Restoration industry. Owner and editor Michelle Blevins has brought printed copies back from the dead to increase reader experience. Go to www.candrmagazine.com to get your free copy sent directly to your home or business.
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Welcome to the Blue Collar Nation podcast,
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the podcast dedicated to making the lives
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of home service professionals better now join Eric
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and Larry to talk about all things home service.
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Welcome Eric with Super Tech University.
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Larry is not here today. Larry's on an airplane.
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So he just left me all to my lonesome.
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We are here on Facebook Live
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and we have some of our friends here in the zoom room,
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and we are gonna get into it today.
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So today we're gonna talk about operations a little bit.
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Um, this is something that's near and dear to my heart
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because I'm an operations person at heart
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and obviously owning a business I've had to sell
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and I've had to manage, uh, um, sales forces
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and business development reps and all that stuff.
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But today we're really gonna do is talk about operations
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for about the next 15 minutes or so.
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So, you know, uh, operations are really the heart of,
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of every home service company.
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Yes, of course, we need sales of, we, we need
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to make sure we're getting the phone to ring,
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but at the end of the day, what's gonna keep the phone
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ringing, what's gonna keep the sales going is our ability
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to perform the work in a timely and good manner, right?
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So, um, you know what I've learned over the years,
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I've been in home service since I was 15.
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Uh, I was a technician for decades
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and you know, I've, I've seen a lot of techs come and go.
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I've worked at a lot of different places
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and what I noticed is, is that I've seen a lot
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of technicians of very average ability
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beat out people who were super talented
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because they worked the systems that the company gave,
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and they were consistent in doing so, right?
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I was probably one of those people myself, right?
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I was maybe not the most gifted technician,
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but when a company had a way of doing things and,
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and the bosses had figured out what works
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and what doesn't, I just did what works.
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I did what they told me to do.
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And if I kept doing that well,
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and I got good at that, I could do well over
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and over and over, right?
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The problem is in most of our companies,
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and I owned this company too, right?
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There aren't many written systems.
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A lot of it comes from between the boss's ears, right?
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And then what happens?
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Well, you know, I start a company
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and then I hire a technician, and what do I do?
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That person's my helper
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and I kind of verbally teach them what to do
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as, as we're going.
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And now that person becomes a good technician.
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I was with that person every single day.
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They're, they're doing it how I like to do it.
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And then they get a helper
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and then they teach that helper that way.
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And every single person
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that keeps coming into the company is now getting a
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different version of
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what I had originally trained the initial
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person to do, right?
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So what is that? That's tribal knowledge in a way.
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So instead of having processes
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and systems, now I'm relying on tribal knowledge
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for the way to do it.
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Well, the thing is, is that people will say like, oh,
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you know, I don't have any systems.
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Yes you do. You have, you know,
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however many people in your company.
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If you have 20 people, then you have 20 sets of systems at
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that point because you've created a vacuum for people
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to interpret what the original system was to be, right?
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So I learned later on in life that I needed
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to fill the gap and I needed to make sure
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that everybody was doing it the way that we all want
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to do it as a best practices.
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And we'll talk about that in a second.
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So if you think about it, a system is just a group
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of working parts that we put together in some sort
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of order, right?
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And we can figure out like, well, what does that look like?
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How is the best way to put them together?
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And really it's just a process flow. What do we do first?
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What do we do second? What do we do
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third, what do we do fourth?
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Do we keep moving and moving and moving forth, right?
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So, you know, I was
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way too far into my business than I cared to admit
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before I started building systems.
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And I think a lot of other people can relate
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to this too, excuse me.
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But I think
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by the time I started really getting serious about building
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systems, I probably had somewhere between 17
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and 20 employees.
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And the problem with that is then it's much easier
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to build systems when it's just you
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and you write everything down,
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or you have just a couple people.
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And the more people you get,
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the more habits I have to break, right?
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So what I did was I realized I couldn't just impose my will
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on everybody, right?
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I couldn't just tell them like, this is how we do it.
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You know, because this is how I did it when I
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was in the field or whatever.
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By this point, I have all these people working there,
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so now I have to up with systems.
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So let me tell a quick story about
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how I built the first system.
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In our cleaning and restoration company.
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We used to take a dump trailer
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to the dump every day from all of the water damage jobs
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that we had done the day before.
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We had a dump trailer full of bags
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of wet drywall and it had to go to the dump.
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And every single day nobody wanted to go to the dump.
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Especially my older technicians,
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they thought it was kind of beneath them.
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So they would always pick some new person
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and I could hear them saying, oh,
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bangle left at the seven 11
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and go over here, and this and that.
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And every day it was drama.
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And finally I got fed up
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and I asked my office manager, Leslie, if she would then
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just go take her phone and take videos and take pictures
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and a notebook and write all of it down
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and let's build a system.
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So the next day she went to the dump
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and with, you know, my number one technician, the person
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who had been with me the longest, I said, okay,
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can you please take Leslie through the best way
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to do a dump run with a dump trailer?
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So Leslie went,
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and the following afternoon she came in
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with this nice three ring binder.
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It had a map, it had which truck you take
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and how to, it had, you know, a video and,
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and then pictures of how to hitch up the trailer
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and how to get there and how to pay and how to come back.
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And then we took that
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and I said, okay, well we'll take whoever's the newest
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or most inexperienced, give them the binder
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and have them do a dump run with nobody's help.
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And sure enough, this young gentleman who I think had been
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with us for like two weeks was back in 30 minutes,
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no phone calls, no drama, no nothing.
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And I realized I can do this over and over
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and over and over,
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and if I do that, everything in my business gets easier.
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And most of us, it just takes us way too long
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to figure this out, right?
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And once I had built that first system, I was hooked.
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I was like, if, if, if I can make majority
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of the things in my life easier by doing this, then I need
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to invest my time, energy,
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and effort into doing that, right?
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So then what I had to do is what I, I gotta get buy-in.
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I gotta get buy-in from the rest of the team who's used
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to doing things how they want to do it.
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So because I had so many people, not that 20 people's a ton,
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but it's enough that it's, you know, hard to get everybody
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to wanna do the same thing.
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I started having meetings about individual things.
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So I started, I started trying to, at first I, I was like,
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okay, I'm gonna like take post-it notes
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and go all over this whole wall of like
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every single thing we do in our business
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and have it in perfect order.
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And I realized like, number one, I'm probably way too a DD
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to ever pull this off.
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Two, I'm getting paralyzed
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'cause this just seems impossible to me.
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So then I came up with a system where I was like, okay,
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this is how I'm gonna build systems, two criteria,
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whatever's causing me the most grief.
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So whatever's p*****g us off the most,
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or whatever's costing us the most money,
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we go fix those things first.
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So then after the dump trailer,
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dump trailer is causing me grief,
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it was just irritating me every day.
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So we fixed that. So now I looked at the next thing, okay,
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what's the next thing that's either costing me the most
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money or making me the, all of us the most upset?
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Then we sat it down, sat everybody down
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who would be involved in this job
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and say, okay, we're gonna try to come up
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with the best practices within our company
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to build a system to do this, right?
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So at the end of the day, everybody's gonna have input,
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but that doesn't mean that exactly the way
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that you do it will be the way that we're all gonna do it.
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In the end, we're going to come to a consensus,
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but at the end of the day, I'm the final decision maker.
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So sure enough, we go
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and we've kind of had a meeting, we built what we,
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a rudimentary system,
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and everybody went out in the field for the next two weeks
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and try to do it that way over and over and over.
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And then we'd have a meeting once a week to make tweaks.
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And then once we had come to a consensus,
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meaning the majority of us believed
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that this was the best practice, then we put
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that system in play.
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Here's the hard part. Excuse me guys, I'm a cold.
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Um, just
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because you've built the system doesn't mean the system's
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gonna get got done every day.
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The hardest part of building systems is implementing them.
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And the hardest part of that is being patient enough
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to not move on to building the next system until
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every single person in your company does that system
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the same way every single time.
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That first year that I decided to build systems,
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I believe we put in roughly
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eight systems in the first year.
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So we fully integrated into our company
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only eight things over a 12 month period.
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And that sounds so slow, right?
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That sounds so incredibly slow.
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But because we had used the criteria of
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what makes us the angriest
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or what costs us the most money, those eight things
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that we implemented, so what are we looking at?
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Like six, seven weeks per per implementation.
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Um, they fixed like 70
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or 80% of the drama that we had, right?
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They, they fixed, it's that like Pareto's principle, right?
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80 20, they, they fixed like almost 80% of the problems
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that were in our business.
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And then all of a sudden what happens?
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Everybody's happier clients are getting a better experience
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because we're offering a better service.
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Everybody's doing it the same way so
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that we can actually get better at it, right?
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We can actually improve because we're all working off the
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same script basically,
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and all of a sudden we're getting buy-in.
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Now, the issue is, is most of us are impatient.
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I'm a super impatient person by nature.
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Uh, I like things to be done like right now or,
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or ideally yesterday, but I had to slow down.
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Sometimes it's that whole saying like, slow is smooth
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and smooth is fast, right?
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I just kept going out in the field.
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I kept checking on, I was doing ride-alongs.
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I'm checking on people to make sure
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that they're working the system.
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I'm, I'm creating process flows that are going in vans
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and going on phones so
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that they can work the system them, excuse me.
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And then I had to be patient.
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But the thing is, for us as operators,
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if we wanna be really good at what we do,
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that's what we, that's what it takes.
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And, and the reality is, for a lot of us,
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this is a huge opportunity
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for a whole bunch of different reasons.
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Number one is most
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of our competitors probably aren't taking the time
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or energy to build out systems this way.
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So they're creating inconsistent results
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which show up in your Google review,
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show up in your Yelp review,
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show up in your average ticket show up in
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employee turnover, right?
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It shows up in all these different ways in our business
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that usually are negative.
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The other thing is, is that I'm actually building a business
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that me as an owner
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or maybe even as a, a general manager, that a,
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it's less dramatic, right?
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So I, I have time to actually work on trying
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to build the business opposed to putting up fires all day.
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But also I'm creating something that if I ever do want
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to sell or if I ever want to just get more free time,
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that I'm, I'm creating systems so that everybody can kind
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of run that business without me.
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And that was my goal. I mean, look, I'll be fully honest,
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the only reason I ever started home service business is
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because I'm a ski bum at heart
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and I just wanted to ski during the day.
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I wanted people to go do the work and make money
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and, you know, I could kind of run it from afar
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and I just wanted to like live out my dream of, you know,
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not ski every single day.
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But like, if I wanted to leave on a Tuesday for three hours
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to go skiing, I, that was my goal, right?
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That was really the whole impetus for taking the risk.
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And look, it took me years
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and years to ever be able to leave and go do that.
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But that was, to be honest, really my goal
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and how many of us start a business
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and we never reached that goal.
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You know, by the time we sold, I was only working,
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I don't know, a couple hours a day, maybe,
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maybe five hours a week, an hour a day,
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I'd go into a morning meeting,
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make sure everybody was doing well.
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I did spend a lot of time on the phone
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and stuff with managers and, and I would come in and train,
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but, um, it took me a every way too
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long to get to that point.
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But most of us never get to that point, right?
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So, you know, it,
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and it served everybody, it made it better
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for the technicians because they knew
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what was expected of them, right?
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When once we systematize our operation, they know that
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as long as they work the system,
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they can't get in trouble, right?
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It's when they deviate from the system,
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that's when the problems start, right?
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So they know how to win at work now,
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which makes them more comfortable.
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We all know that when they get frustrated
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or they feel like they're under appreciated
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or things are hard every day at work,
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they start thinking like, maybe I wanna work somewhere else.
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And we don't want that.
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It's hard to get good technicians in any trade right now.
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So I wanna, I wanna try to create an environment where
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they can thrive and feel like they're winning at work
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and wanna stick with me longer
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or hopefully for a very long time.
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The next thing is the client wins.
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The client feels, especially clients who are having
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same service done over
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and over, like we, we had a carpet cleaning division.
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So when every year
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or every six months when they're getting their carpets
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cleaned, and I'm sending people over
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who aren't the same people,
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but they're doing it the same way,
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and the the result is the same
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and the service experience is the same,
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that feels good to them.
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Right now I'm creating that.
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So look, you know, as far as operations goes,
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all of us say that we're too busy or too overwhelmed
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or don't have the time or don't have the resources
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or whatever to start systematizing our business.
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And look, I did that for years.
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I always had an excuse not to start building out systems.
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But once I started doing it,
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and I started to see some progress
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and started to see like why people talk about this.
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Look, I had read the E-Myth like four times
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before I ever built my first system.
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00:16:07.225 --> 00:16:09.665
I was in a coaching group with Howard Partridge
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where he had been preaching building systems forever.
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And I just always had an excuse why I couldn't or didn't.
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And once I experienced enough pain, I started doing it.
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And then all of a sudden I was like,
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this is the best thing ever, right?
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And, and I saw that it wasn't just helping me,
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it was helping everybody
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that had anything to do with our company.
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So, look, I don't wanna go on and on and on
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and on about the virtues of systems,
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but I would say everybody on this,
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on this podcast today
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or on this Facebook live,
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like start taking a look at your business
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and asking yourself, like, do I have enough systems?
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Can I take a, you know, could I take a three week vacation
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and have everything go pretty smooth, right?
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Not perfect, but could I leave, could I, you know,
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could I get injured
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and then my business still run without me?
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Because everybody knows how to do
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what the same things I know how to do.
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Like, those are the things
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that make a business much more bulletproof
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and much more fun to work in, to be honest.
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So if, if you're like me
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and you spent, you've spent way too many years
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or way too much time not doing these things, just
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sit down for a moment and say like, what is the one thing
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00:17:30.385 --> 00:17:32.045
that's costing me the most money?
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00:17:32.935 --> 00:17:36.315
And just go build one system, right? It's easy.
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Like just build one, right?
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What if you fix that one problem, the one thing
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00:17:41.155 --> 00:17:43.705
that costs you the most money, all
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00:17:43.705 --> 00:17:46.345
of a sudden you're just like, that wasn't so bad.
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00:17:46.485 --> 00:17:48.985
And yeah, okay, that took me a month to get that done.
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00:17:49.265 --> 00:17:52.045
But like, now look at the result like, we're saving money.
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00:17:52.935 --> 00:17:54.985
Okay, well then what's the next thing
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that's either costing you the most money
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00:17:56.685 --> 00:17:58.345
or causing everybody grief?
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00:17:58.895 --> 00:18:02.105
Then fix that one thing. Like there's no timeline for this.
397
00:18:02.105 --> 00:18:06.105
There's no, there's no, like, you have to do this.
398
00:18:06.585 --> 00:18:08.585
'cause obviously most of us have operated
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00:18:08.725 --> 00:18:12.565
for years without doing it at all, but it becomes addictive.
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00:18:12.835 --> 00:18:17.585
Like once we see the result of just that one action
401
00:18:17.585 --> 00:18:20.705
that we took, everything starts to improve,
402
00:18:21.355 --> 00:18:22.825
everything starts to get better.
403
00:18:22.885 --> 00:18:24.305
And yeah, it requires patience
404
00:18:24.305 --> 00:18:25.865
and it's a pain in the butt to do it.
405
00:18:26.925 --> 00:18:31.135
But the thing is, is that once we get some momentum,
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00:18:31.925 --> 00:18:33.455
then we wanna do another one,
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00:18:33.675 --> 00:18:35.215
and then we wanna do another one.
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00:18:35.235 --> 00:18:37.055
And then when we see that our people
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00:18:37.995 --> 00:18:39.335
are liking the structure,
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00:18:39.335 --> 00:18:41.335
people always push against new things.
411
00:18:41.715 --> 00:18:44.815
We know that like people don't like change, people like
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00:18:44.815 --> 00:18:46.335
to do things the way they were doing.
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00:18:46.885 --> 00:18:48.175
Look, a big part
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00:18:48.195 --> 00:18:51.295
of employing systems when you have people already is you
415
00:18:51.295 --> 00:18:52.575
have to sell them on it.
416
00:18:52.915 --> 00:18:54.975
You have to sell them on why it's necessary.
417
00:18:55.475 --> 00:18:58.495
You have to sell them on what the benefits are for changing,
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00:18:58.965 --> 00:19:01.295
because if they're just used to doing it their way,
419
00:19:01.885 --> 00:19:04.215
they're gonna push back on you, right?
420
00:19:04.835 --> 00:19:06.815
So yes, you're gonna have to do a bit
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00:19:06.815 --> 00:19:09.615
of a sales job internally to get people doing it,
422
00:19:09.675 --> 00:19:10.935
but once they're doing it,
423
00:19:10.935 --> 00:19:13.175
and once they get adapted to the new way
424
00:19:13.435 --> 00:19:17.045
and it, it makes their life easier, they're all on board.
425
00:19:17.065 --> 00:19:19.645
And now you start selling 'em on, Hey, now that we fix that,
426
00:19:20.135 --> 00:19:22.285
we're gonna start fixing the next thing.
427
00:19:22.865 --> 00:19:25.925
So look, these Facebook lives aren't meant to be an hour
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00:19:25.985 --> 00:19:28.605
of me, me ranting on one topic for,
429
00:19:28.905 --> 00:19:30.885
you know, on and on and on.
430
00:19:31.635 --> 00:19:33.935
But what I would say is take a moment
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00:19:33.945 --> 00:19:37.535
after this sometime today, sometime tomorrow, and sit down
432
00:19:37.555 --> 00:19:40.255
and, and if you're not completely systematized,
433
00:19:40.275 --> 00:19:41.935
or even if you are systematized,
434
00:19:41.955 --> 00:19:43.695
but there are still things in your business
435
00:19:43.695 --> 00:19:47.175
that aren't ideal, start asking yourself,
436
00:19:48.165 --> 00:19:49.455
what could I do to fix it?
437
00:19:49.565 --> 00:19:50.895
What could I do to change it?
438
00:19:51.275 --> 00:19:53.415
And look, you might not be a systems person,
439
00:19:53.555 --> 00:19:55.895
but I bet you there's somebody in your office
440
00:19:56.465 --> 00:19:58.015
who's better at it than you, right?
441
00:19:58.255 --> 00:20:02.495
I pulled in Leslie, Leslie had the makeup
442
00:20:03.355 --> 00:20:05.535
to be super detail oriented.
443
00:20:05.915 --> 00:20:07.135
I'm a big picture person.
444
00:20:07.355 --> 00:20:09.695
So building systems for me was not easy
445
00:20:09.695 --> 00:20:13.135
because I just wanted to think in big terms.
446
00:20:14.165 --> 00:20:17.545
She would sit there and go nitty gritty step by step.
447
00:20:18.045 --> 00:20:19.625
So I would come up with the idea
448
00:20:19.845 --> 00:20:22.425
and then she would facilitate making that happen,
449
00:20:22.525 --> 00:20:24.625
and then I would start selling the team on it.
450
00:20:25.085 --> 00:20:27.065
So it doesn't have to be you either.
451
00:20:27.165 --> 00:20:29.625
If it's not your skillset, if it's not the thing
452
00:20:29.625 --> 00:20:31.265
that you are awesome at,
453
00:20:32.175 --> 00:20:34.065
there's probably somebody in your
454
00:20:34.065 --> 00:20:35.225
company that could help you.
455
00:20:35.945 --> 00:20:37.635
There's probably somebody there
456
00:20:37.635 --> 00:20:39.155
that loves these kind of details.
457
00:20:39.255 --> 00:20:43.705
So guys, um, I would just say kind of a,
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00:20:43.785 --> 00:20:45.345
a shout out to everybody today
459
00:20:46.005 --> 00:20:47.605
as you leave this Facebook Live
460
00:20:47.605 --> 00:20:50.985
or this podcast, think about one thing
461
00:20:50.985 --> 00:20:52.825
that isn't going ideal in your company
462
00:20:53.685 --> 00:20:56.865
and start working on building a system to improve it.
463
00:20:57.285 --> 00:21:00.385
And then hopefully everybody sees the benefits of that
464
00:21:00.885 --> 00:21:02.105
and then move on to the next one.
465
00:21:02.285 --> 00:21:03.505
So everybody, thank you
466
00:21:03.505 --> 00:21:05.145
for giving me 20 minutes of your time.
467
00:21:05.905 --> 00:21:07.265
I hope that added some value.
468
00:21:07.425 --> 00:21:09.865
I hope if nothing else, it at least got you thinking about
469
00:21:09.865 --> 00:21:13.025
your business and how your operations could get better.
470
00:21:13.765 --> 00:21:17.905
And, uh, I just, I wish for everybody to just see the vision
471
00:21:17.925 --> 00:21:19.545
of what systems can do for you
472
00:21:20.045 --> 00:21:22.385
and then just start slowly working on them.
473
00:21:22.485 --> 00:21:25.225
So anyway, thanks everybody. Appreciate it.
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00:21:25.225 --> 00:21:26.705
Have a wonderful week and we'll
475
00:21:26.705 --> 00:21:27.945
we'll see you back here next week.
476
00:21:29.245 --> 00:21:32.315
Thank you for listening to the Blue Colon Nation podcast.
477
00:21:33.095 --> 00:21:35.595
For more information about Eric and Larry
478
00:21:35.735 --> 00:21:37.235
and Super Tech University,
479
00:21:37.615 --> 00:21:40.635
please visit us at super tech u com.
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00:21:40.865 --> 00:21:44.035
That is Super Tech U, the letter U.