EP226: How Systems Can Transform Your Business Operations | Lessons from David Forster

Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So I'm a Midwest farm kid that just couldn't stop playing in the dirt. Over the last 23 years, I am in along with my wife have built. seven businesses. This is our eighth. We've exited four of those over the years, two of those being landscape companies. And this systems over sweat, SOS came out of kind of a play on words, like systems are better than just grinding it out, but it's also the systems are what's going to take that, the night sweats away, take away the stress, take away the things, just kind of help things operate smooth. And so after banging my head against the wall and learning things the hard way over 23 years, I decided that The best thing I could do was help other owners avoid some of those pitfalls and mistakes. And I'm a huge mental health advocate. Stress and anxiety stuff has affected a lot of people around me, including myself. So that's my big passion behind it.

Exited four, but we've built seven before this one.

Yeah, that's a great point to make because nowadays systems, it kind of gets just thrown in the bucket with automations and AI and my CRM and stuff like that. And those are all hugely valuable tools to leverage. More on the operations side on the day-to-day is going to be, you know, how do you recruit, hire, and onboard somebody? What does that system look like? What's that process? Is it clear as a bell and they know exactly what their life is going to be for the first 30 days? Or is it, are you still operating in that? Hey, let's just get out there and figure this thing out. And if you could do this today while I'm doing that, we'll see how this plays out. That's kind of the lack of a system, but it's very common, right? It's a system. It's just kind of broken. Checklists, KPIs. measuring stuff of the performance and holding people accountable. Those are the things that on a day-to-day basis are going to really pay dividends.

So, yeah, I mean, when you say no real systems, like I like to tell anybody that I'm working with, you have systems. Sure. It's just, what do they look like? A lot of them just live in your head. Right. And you just don't have them on paper. So you're having to remember them every day. And so really as a contractor, that first step is just getting the stuff that's in your head that happens repeatedly. If you do the same process every morning for load out, load up, like getting your crews out and getting your trucks set up and looking through your schedule and whatever, that's a system. That's your scheduling and morning load out schedule or whatever you want to call it. Getting that out of your head is that first step. and putting that on paper so that, you know, the easy analogy is if you're sick tomorrow or you're in the hospital, your business can still run. Somebody can pick it up and look at it and they don't need to be calling you and asking you. It's just, it's there.

Right. Yeah. It's going to be a, I mean, a living, it's a living document too. Yeah. Right. Like, uh, it's ever growing. You're not just going to like, you can't download it off the internet, put it in a three ring binder and boom, now you have a business system. It's, it's going to be something that you're going to manipulate, change, evaluate on a regular basis, see what's working. Yeah.

Just execute the process.

To kind of give a real, real world example. I'm working with a client right now who has a landscape construction company. They do beautiful backyards. He's been doing this for years and has kind of hit that plateau where he normally gets to, just can't kind of get beyond it. And it's because everything's living in his head and he's running everything and everybody's answering to him. We are in the process now of literally this week, we're building the process and the SOP around how to properly prep soil and install sod. That's one of the things we're putting together this week. Right. And so our goal isn't like, hey, in the next 30 days, we're just going to like vacuum everything out of your head. Right. And try to put it on paper because then you could try to do that, but it's just it's just going to be a mess. Right. So over the next, you know, three to six to maybe 12 months, we're going to continue. week by week, two or three of these things, if not, you know, whatever we can actually get accomplished and clear, and then use those to implement and train, use the team to give us feedback on, is it clear enough? Does this make sense? How are you perceiving it? And it's just continue to do that. And then as the team grows, we'll be able to break those down into different levels and different roles, who, how you train each level, those kinds of things.

Yeah. And, and just to clarify for the listener, if they're like, I used to be like SOP is standard operating procedure. I was just, uh, it was thrown around so much. And so, yeah, no, it just, it's fun thinking back on like, you know, all these terminologies and stuff that get thrown around and there's so many acronyms for stuff these days. It's like, I don't, TLDR. Like, what does that do? Oh, too long. Didn't read. Got it. Okay. So. What he and I are doing, he's a very, he's a verbal processor. We'll get on our, we do, we're doing some daily chats just to kind of hear the pain points and, and get some things going as he's onboarding. And he would, he'll start rattling stuff off. And I'm like, Whoa, I like, I'm not, this is just on the phone. I'm not recording this one. Like give me a voice memo with all of that. And he's like, Oh yeah, okay. I can do that. So he'll send me a voice memo with just a step-by-step breakdown of what it takes to do this process. And then I can. I can pause and rewind or I can plug it into something that'll just take a summary of it for me. That'll get us started. And we can use that as our draft to then go back and massage it and figure that out. And then that next step was telling him also, hey, we're not going to come out and do like some professional photography. When you're on the site or when one of your crew leaders is on site, every time you change to a new phase of that process, just take a picture on your phone. We don't have to be fancy in the beginning. Take a picture with your phone of what it looks like before you rough grade. And then once you've rough graded, what does that look like? And then once you've top dressed, what does that look like? And then once you started laying sod, you know, what does it look like? What do you mean by pin the edges? Take a picture of what it means to pin the edge of the sod. What does it mean to cut the edge? What does it mean? How do you cut sod? What's the right way to do it? And just get some snaps, just some quick, easy iPhone photos. Then we can use those in the SOPs for visual learners. So when you hand it to somebody and say, hey, I need you to go out and rough grade this, top dress it. That's all we're going to get done today on this size of a jar or whatever. They know when they get there, if they get there and it's like, this looks really good. I'm supposed to rough. grade, if they're not quite sure what the final is supposed to look like, or they can look at the picture and go, oh, this has already been top dressed. Am I at the right property? And they can start asking the right questions. So it's that those little details can really make a huge difference. Absolutely.

Depends on where they're at. You know, if they've are, if they're already using, you know, something. Service Titan, Jobber, Home, whatever. There's several options out there that are fantastic. If there's a tool within something they're already using, let's use it. Like if their guys are already carrying tablets that they can get stuff on. If they're not yet, that's like a whole nother learning process in itself to try to bring in a new CRM that has those tools. So you can start as simple as just a Google Doc. Most people have a Gmail workspace for their company or at least a Gmail account or something like that. And whether you put it in a... you know, a Google doc that has pictures in it and then share it or send them a PDF of it. That's the easy, simple way. But I love once we're to that point, if we can bring it all into one system, one ecosystem of a CRM that can hold all of the, all of that stuff, that's the nice way. Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, we as business owners, you know, we're usually fast paced and high autonomy type people. We wanted to do this. That's why we're owners, right? We do it our way and I'm going to do it real fast. I'll rip the bandaid off. Let's fix it. Yesterday was this way and today is different. Let's roll. And most of our team, if we have a well-balanced team for us that has skill sets that we don't, they're not wired that way. They may be fast paced, but they're not super high autonomy. They need to be told what to do or whatever those dynamics might be. And so it's really been helpful to approach it in that little bit more nuanced way, a little slower, introducing one step at a time. Hey, I'm not going to just totally rip the duct tape off your mouth here. totally change your life. And now your job is upside down and different. You're getting totally retrained after three years of, you know, being in your role or something. It's, Hey, we're going to add this in. We're going to kind of stress test it. We're going to field test it. Let's see how this works. We need to do this to improve, show them the value on the other end of it, why it's going to help them. either be better at their job, have more career opportunity, better pay, whatever those things might add up to. I think it's going to make us more efficient. We'll be able to get more jobs done. And then because of that, I'll be able to pay you better or we'll work in some different bonuses or depending on your team and what they're inspired and motivated by and introduce it a little bit at a time. And that's why, that's also why we don't necessarily dive into giving a CRM or like a software system right away. If your day is full of putting out fires. And now I'm telling you, you know, Hey, we still got to keep doing that, but I'm going to make you learn this thing that has 47 modules and all these things. And I'm like, it's like, we're here to de-stress, not to add stress.

We got a measure

Right. Yeah.

We're not having to make return warranty trips because we made sure it was all done. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. If they're going to be the one executing it. Yeah. You want that feedback. And like you said, that buy-in, if, if you create something, it's your idea, then you're much more likely to stick with it. We learned that with my dad when I was a kid, right? It's like, all right, we got to like plant this seed. Cause dad's going to say no, like we know that. So if we plant the seed the right way and we make him think it was his idea here in a couple of days, he'll turn around. Right. So it's kind of that same tactic, you know, it's bring your team in together. If they help create it, they're going to take ownership of it. And then there's going to be a lot more resistance to that shrug off too. If another teammate is like, uh, you'll have the other team that was part of that creation. That's like, Hey man, I put a lot of effort into this. Go doing it. Yeah.

Uh, I've seen it, but not in a long time.

Just as another quick little fun analogy that all of listeners will probably have heard this before, but I have a different approach to it. that I've had since I've had kids, you know, a lot of analogies in business is like your employees are like your kids or, you know, or your business is like your kid. Right. And I used to resist that. And I, I was just like, that's, you know, that's disrespectful. They're not children, they're adults. And a lot of people say, you know, these aren't my, these aren't kids, they're adults. They need to understand and respect and know how to do this and have some common sense. And then I realized like, Hmm, like as a parent, you don't expect your one kid to understand and handle your other kids. athletic schedule, school grades, all that stuff. They just focus on their, you want them to know their sports schedule and their activities and their grades and their stuff. And they know kind of what's going on in their brother or sister's life, but, and they're supportive of it and they know, okay, how does that affect my life? Right. But they're not thinking about groceries and paying the bills and you don't expect them to. Right. So why would you expect your team to be thinking through all of that stuff and understand how that impacts their life when all they know is. I don't know. I trust mom or dad to just dinner's going to be here. Right. So if you approach it in that way, you love your kids. You love seeing them develop. You have that like that investment in handling the parental duties. Being a business owner is very similar if you approach it from that mentality. And it gives you a lot more respect and just a different viewpoint of some of those frustrations that can come up.

Right.

I mean, I love leaning toward the, you know, putting everything at kind of a 10 year old, you know, kind of fourth, fifth grade level. Then, you know, the people who understand the more sophisticated part of it. are going to understand it. And the people who don't are still going to understand it. Usually when you can simplify things, that shows your ability and your understanding of it at a higher level. The more simple you can make it shows your understanding of it, right? Your intellect level of the better, the farther down you can bring it and make it a complex thing simple for your team just shows your leadership ability. And so I would highly say the more simple, the better. Simplifying, the more the merrier. I love the E-Myth. That's a great book. Talks a lot about that. You know, you should make it so simple a monkey can do it and then you won't have to worry as much about your recruiting. I'm kind of somewhere in between on, you know, that and some other options.

That's the fun part. Cause I am like, I'm an efficiency, like I literally. we would train our guys how to move a wheelbarrow because if you're using too much arms and not using your shoulders and doing this or like six hours into a day, when you're going in a tight area, you're going to be toast. So, you know, maybe the, maybe the wheelbarrowing is its own separate SOP and training. And so that should already be known at a base level before you get to this or something. But I like those details. You don't have to start there. And if it's not something that's holding your business back, it may not be. super crucial right now. Okay. If you're a million, you know, doing a million in revenue, you've got six or eight guys on your team and they've all been in the industry for 10 plus years. And they just all naturally know, like, this is how you shovel without killing yourself. And this is the most efficient way. And you got that going. Maybe you don't need to go ahead and do that yet. But then when you hire on a new apprentice kid and you see him destroying himself in the first hour and he's just going for it and you're like, Hey man. Then you say, hey, you know what? This could be good for him. Let's build that one this week. Let's use him as an example and let's build that one. And that's where that living document comes in. Do what you need. Do what's going to solve those problems now. What's going to make the business healthier now? And then something's going to come up where you're going to be like, oh yeah, we should probably have, because I used to joke, if you need an SOP on how to go to the bathroom, you're probably going too far. But sometimes there might be a condition where it's like, hey, just make sure you tell somebody. There's the SOP. Right.

And inevitably over, you know, the next, how long do you plan on being in business? Right. It's, it's not something you just, you're going to launch this thing for two years and then get out of here. That may happen, whatever that happens time to time. And it's, it's more talked about these days, but. If you plan on being in business 10,15,20,25 years from now, different things are going to be needed and you're going to continue to change those things a little bit at a time. And it's nothing to be afraid of. And it's nothing to try to schedule an entire week around this stuff all the time. It's just build it.

Yeah, simple is always better in all aspects, getting those little wins. So just finding, next time something pops up that you're like, why am I doing this again? Why am I explaining this again? There you go. Start with that one. And it's probably going to be something simple. You got a text message. Hey, what do you want us to do on this? Here's the five questions I would ask myself if I was in this situation. Ask yourself those five questions. Come up with a couple of options. And then call me back. Get that thinking thing going for your team. That's a great one to start with. But just find those pain points that whenever you're just, you want to throw your phone at the wall or something, there's probably a good place to start.

And if you're like me, all 10 of those times were slightly different. It sounded slightly different. You used different words just depending on the mood you were in and what you were thinking about before that. Oh,

Well, that was because this one was...

Yeah. Like that's a, I'm going to take a deep breath real quick. Cause that's the, like, that's the hardest thing, right? I mean, we, as the owner, like we've just got usually so much experience and we started out as a good, a really good technician. that did the job well. And so it's, so it's, it's just like your kids. Like, you know, if you had a two year old, that's learning how to do something like I do right now, like you don't get frustrated with them, you know, just like, well, she's about to, yep, there it went. Okay. It's just, and you're just waiting for those things to happen for teaching opportunities versus getting mad about it. So approaching it that way is really helpful, but it's. You learned by making a bunch of mistakes. So, yeah.

I mean, as soon as you started saying that, you're like, I need you to execute perfectly every time. Otherwise we can't be profitable. The immediate thought was like something's wrong in the pricing structure or in something somewhere because. Then that, you know, you, you mentioned, uh, some stuff before we got on and a little bit ago about estimating and the estimating process and how detailed it is. And that's huge. And that's a totally different subject, but like understanding that properly to have your right price structure that gives your team leeway, understanding how to build in those buffers, right. To allow for those mistakes to happen. Like if the mistake is we didn't bring enough material or we got too much material, like We would build in, we would build in a material buffer. Like you can estimate certain things to a certain degree, but you never know what's underground. You know, you don't know what you're going to get into under a slab or if you're, you know, remodeling a house and you take the drywall off and you're like, Whoa, here we go. So building in those buffers that you can kind of under promise and over deliver. We do that for our customers. Let's do it for our team. Right. If you expect that you could, this job should take 80 man hours. Well then, you know, Let's give it 90 or 95 because there's something that we're missing. Like almost every, there's going to be some little detail or just a conversational customer that's going to be there every day. That's going to take a little more time as polite as you can be. You just can't get away or whatever it is. And that allows for training for new guys. Cause if you don't allow it in there for bringing on new guys, then you feel like you just lost money because of the new guy. And then you're frustrated building that in there is, is, uh, it's a huge. advantage.

Yeah. And so I don't think I did. I didn't either. Not like in a true sense.

Yeah. And even, you know, taking that a step further, like the, the job costing from like field perspective. versus the job costing of the overhead perspective. I had it down to the minute when we were operating, and I had it down to, like, I knew on a three-quarter ton truck, we're going to replace the tires every this many miles. The tires cost this, so that truck runs this many miles a week or this many miles a month, so that truck's going to need tires at this date, and we would just, like, track all of that. And then... spreadsheet that out to, okay, what's our annual cost, including tires, oil changes, shop rags, utilities, you know, like every belts on the motor. That's all, you know, maybe that's only every however many thousand miles. So that's twice once every other year or something. And once we knew something, it went on the list. As soon as we had to spend money on something, it was like, okay, when's the next time we have to spend money on that? And, and where do we put that in the list? And let's get that in there. So then, you know, Okay, well, daily to maintain our equipment and keep operating, it costs us, you know, this much money a day. So if we do that in revenue, we broke even. Right. So like, okay, how do we make sure? Because when I was just starting out, I'm like, cool, we did like $2,500 today. Like, that's awesome. So yeah, but that's one day and there's six other days this week. Are they all that way? And how much did it cost you just to in the morning, like for your business? So it's important to know. that whole foundation of stuff.

I'm just doing the, the, the pictures right there in the SOP on the doc is the best way to start. And it depends on where your technical, your, your team and your own like technical savvy is at. Right. So if you got your own little YouTube channel, and you can shoot a video and then title it right and put that QR code next to that SOP and the guys can scan that and run over and then watch a video, that's better. Video is always better than pictures because it's more real world. It's more real time. You can get your voice mixed in with it as well. If it's any kind of paperwork, super easy tool is like Loom or... scribe or any of those that you can screenshot and have your little video of you talking through as you're screenshotting you doing the document. There's not a ton of those in, you know, the trade worlds, but any of the check sheets, any of the walkthroughs, any of the documentation that you're going to need to have, that's a huge tool. That's super easy and simple. So, yeah.

And that could be, they didn't even talk to you on the way in the door. Right. Right. Hey, I need you to pack these boxes. And each of the boxes next to you could be labeled, you know, ABCD. And on that ABCD or whatever, like there's. Yeah. That's great.

So yeah, it's your business.

And if she moves on to something else and you need to hire somebody else or she's sick and you need to have somebody else come in temporarily and do that real quick or one of your kids or your wife or somebody else is going to come in and do something real quick. It's just, it doesn't stress you out. Yeah. Read

Yeah. That's, I love that idea in the right scenario. If you. If you trust them to do that and they have the experience and the aptitude and giving them simple process on what an SOP looks like to you is a great place to start. If you just say, you know, Hey, you guys, you guys build this. Yeah.

Yep, absolutely. You know, just had delegate as much as you can to an experienced and somebody that can put the real process and value in it.

Yeah. I had my wife be the same. She was running the office for us. And I said, Hey, if, and when we have kids, you know, or if you, if you know, if we want to go do something or you decide, we decide you don't want to be here anymore, whatever. Like I need, I need to know what you do so that I can easily train.

Yeah. Can I approach that from a slightly different perspective too that's getting more popular to talk about?

What if you want to sell your business?

Like if I'm coming in to buy your business and you got nothing in place and you're just like, well, Jan's worked here for 37 years. I'm thinking to myself,37 years, I maybe have two left. Yeah. If I don't know what Jan does, now you're putting the burden on me to figure out what all Jan has done in 37 years to make this thing float smooth as the new buyer. So the value just went, because I have more work to do to make it. And a lot of guys, they're not in it to sell the business necessarily, at least not right now.

I was going to say, shift that just a slight bit more. You wake up tomorrow morning and you get a phone call that totally rocks your world. If you're looking for freedom in owning a business. To wake up, get that phone call and know, dang it, I need large sum of money in order to take care of this problem. Or it's a health issue or somebody passes or something happens, right? And there's a total life shift to know that I can either step away for a long period of time and my business is fine, my family is fine, my team is fine, everybody's taken care of. Or if I need to sell this thing tomorrow, I'd have people knocking down the door. That's an amazing feeling of freedom that these systems will put in place for you. That's just a different perspective that I had shifted a while back. Because I know a lot of my clients don't, I didn't start this thing to sell it. I'm not even thinking about it. Maybe I want to give it to my kids. Like, well, what do you want to give to your kids? A mess? Or do you want to give them something where they can truly have a valuable asset and lead something, right?

Or just gives you a lifestyle that you love running your business. You love doing it. But if, you know, you have something happening, you need to be gone for a week or a month or whatever. It's not even a question. It's just, yeah, this is fine. Yeah,

Yeah. And I have, I have lots of templates that we use and they're mostly loaded with the right question to ask to get the answer that that section needs. Role descriptions, asking yourself, how is this person going to be measured? What's their performance measured by? And what are the things that they own? What are their responsibilities and what skill sets do they really need? And those things. Versus like a crew leader or a, you know, a superintendent, boom, this is what it is. This is what a superintendent does. And it's like, well, Virginia.

Yeah, exactly. So asking the right questions to fill in what you need, being able to pull the information out without just saying like, hey, write all this down. Like, I don't even know where to start. Like, ask me something, get me started. Yeah,

that's not a CPA. I had a CPA when I had my first landscape business that. came in to show me how to use QuickBooks. And all he did was move all the tiles around on the home screen. And because he saw he got this set up all wrong and he moves it all around. He didn't show me how to use anything. And then he leaves. And I was like, I don't know how to use it any better than I did when he got here. And now I don't know how to find anything because he just moved all the stuff that I knew where it was like crap. So now it's worse. And I paid money for this.

Yeah. Especially if I just hired him to just do all the bookkeeping. Right. So yeah.

So I enjoy finding all of the problems to solve efficiencies, building this stuff out with my clients. I wouldn't, I'm, I don't like to, fall into the normal consultant bucket, I'm going to be right there with you shoulder to shoulder and building alongside you. And so if that's something you need, you kind of need that second in command to kind of make sure the wheels don't fall off and you're, but you don't necessarily have that ready for that person full time and in place yet or how to get that person in place, then we can definitely work on some solutions for that. The best place to find me is systemsoversweat. com is the website. You can schedule something with me there or just email me. df at df scales. com. And you can always find me on Facebook or LinkedIn. David Forster.

Yeah. I'm getting ready to dive back into atomic habits for like the fifth time, which relates really well to how we were talking about things. It's that's how you build habits in your life. That's how you can build systems into your business is just those, those little things that remove resistance. Start. doing that and then you'll start building that flywheel of momentum and yeah

Take that first step, make some sort of action. Action brings a little bit of progress that builds confidence. And next thing you know, you're building.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. I appreciate the time.