Now let's get back to the show. There's no way you can prove the customer did that. And even if you could, they're not going to believe you. You guys don't think about these things because it doesn't happen to you on a regular basis all the time. But pick any one thing and there's 30 things that could go wrong with it. You've only experienced two things, so you think it's okay. Like I said, it doesn't matter. The customer is going to blame you no matter what. It doesn't matter what it is. You're going to get the blame and you're going to accept the responsibility and you're going to eat the cost of repairing it or replacing it. That's just how it goes. So why even open up Pandora's box and have that problem in the first place when all you have to do is say a two-letter word, no, that's it. No, I'm sorry, we don't do that. Well, then you're not going to get the job. Okay, thanks for your time. Have a great day. On to the next one. That's how it should be, by the way. That's just how it should be. You know when you're most susceptible to having those issues is when you need the work and you have a problem client, but you just, Brad, I really needed the work. And so I broke every red flag and exception. I made everything a preference. And then when the job was all said and done, I lost $10,000. Well, no shit, dummy. You just, I just told you what you did. You just broke every single protocol that you're, that you have in place because you were desperate. You can't do that. I cannot stress how disciplined you have to be in this. You have to protect the process at all costs. Every exception feels like a service. Until it becomes your problem. I'm providing a good service. I'm making my client happy. Wrong. Until it becomes your problem. And then you're pissed. Right? So the sacred process protects the customer. This is part of it. When you have a strong process, you're actually protecting the customer from themselves. They don't know that. You can't tell them that. But that's actually what you're doing. You protect the customer from the chaos. And it protects the contractor from owning the problems they did not create. That's why having a process is so important and you have to protect it. So the last part here, number three, we want to protect the process to protect the result. Okay. We'll dive into the sacred part here in a second. The process is not there to make life harder for the customer. The process exists to deliver the result they hired you for. When you, any experience you've ever had, you expect to have a certain result. They have a process. You go ride a roller coaster. They have a process for safety, right? You ride the roller coaster and have a great time because you know the thing's not going to fly open and you die, right? The process is there to protect you. You go to a restaurant, they have a process. It's there to protect you. It's there to protect the results. You have a great result. Anything you do, anything and everything you do has a process. And it's some of these things are so minor and that you've done them hundreds of times that you don't even think about it. I mean, driving down the road, having a stoplight that people follow, it's a process, right? Having a stoplight is a process and you follow it without even thinking about it. Now, occasionally somebody breaks that and guess what? They break it and then you pay the price, right? Like that's just how it happens. There's processes everywhere. Everything we do, there's a process. And so that's, we should be used to it. But for some reason, contractors, no, I'll break my process. I need this job. So a strong process protects everyone. It protects the customer, the crew, the schedule, the budget, the quality, the profit, the reputation of the company. The process gives the customer confidence because they know that you have a plan and that you execute on this plan flawlessly every time. The process gives the team clarity because they know what happens next. The process gives the owner control because the business is not going to be run by emotion or customer pressure. You know, one of the things I hear all the time too is like, what do you do whenever someone comes to you in the middle of a project and says, you know, while you're here, would you mind installing this door? It shouldn't take you very long. It should only take you about 20 minutes. Would you, would you do that? And you're like, I can't say no, Brad, because I got to make the customer happy. Bullshit. Here's what you say. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to do that. Let me get you a price real quick. That's all you got to do. Oh, a price? You mean you're not going to do it for free? I'd love to do it for free, but we didn't have that in the estimate. So you don't want me to, you wouldn't want me to lose money, would you? You wouldn't want me to pay for that, right? That's all you got to do. Yeah, no problem. Let me get you an estimate real quick. That's it. No conflict. Oh, well, in that case, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. Okay, well, if you change your mind, let us know while we're here. It'd be much cheaper to do it here while we're here than have to come back and do it. That's it. It's not hard at all. Super easy. Well, Brad, they promised I'll get more work, so I got to make this customer happy. I got to do all this extra free stuff so they're happy. Barf. The process gives the team clarity. I already said that. Yeah, so this is where the SACRED process comes in. SACRED is an acronym. All right, so S in SACRED, standardize the work. Right? Define how the job moves through the company. You should have a process of what it looks like to move through the company. Now, you may have different parts. You may have a sales process. You may have a production process. You may have a follow-up process. Or you may have a bunch of processes in between. You may have a pre-construction process. Whatever it is for you, you have to define this. You have to work on this and create this process that works great for you. Right? But you have to standardize the work. That's the first thing. Standardize the work. Two, you have to align the customer. That's the A. Make sure they understand how you work before you sell the job. This is setting expectations. They need to know that you have a process and that's why you're so good at what you do and they're not going to come in and throw a wrench in it. Too many of you think that if you're working for someone as high prestige, you're working for a judge, the highest judge in your city, or you're working for some news anchor. Or, you know, there's a, there's a, you have a professional team and you're working for an athlete, like, because they're so high social class people that you have to break a bunch of rules and make them happy, you know, cause they have all this power over you. No, no, you have a process period. Follow it. That's it. There's still people. They're still humans. They still have to go through the same process. Three, C, control the variables. Do not allow outside pieces that create chaos. Now, I was talking about like the Chick-fil-A example. You say, I don't want lettuce or whatever. Those are variables that are going to happen, but you have a process to control those variables. So, you know, they can have a variable of like what size tile, what type of pattern, right? But you have processes that accommodate those variables. If a variable that's outside of your process comes into play, then you have a choice. You either have to develop a process to handle that, or you say no. It's not hard. You don't just wing it. Winging it will screw you every single time. Stop winging it, guys. Develop the process. So we've controlled the variables, and then R is respect the sequence, right? So there's a certain sequence of things. The order of things matter. Again, you've developed this process. That's what makes you so good. That's what makes you develop and have the The same result every time. Going back to Chick-fil-A, we didn't go into the kitchen. But if you go work at Chick-fil-A, there's like 80 people working there and everyone has a job and everyone's moving like ants and it's like it's a flowing machine. There's processes for everything behind the scenes. Everything is a process, right? And the order of which things are done matter. So that matters too. So we start the job, you know, the customer really wants us to start the job, but we don't have all the materials in. You just screwed yourself because you just did something out of order. The order is materials come in, then we start the job. When you start the job before the materials come in, you broke the sequence. Now you're in trouble. No, can't do that. Enforce the boundaries. So whenever the process is being compromised, again, you have to say no, right? Halfway to the job, the customer comes to you and says, hey, Brad, you know, we've been thinking a little bit about this. I know we were going to have you, you know, do the painting, but we would like to do the painting ourselves. Uh-oh. Now we got a process, a problem, not a process, a problem. We got a boundary that we have to deal with, right? I'm not saying you can't work it out, but, you know, there may be some issues there. They're going to break some boundaries that you have to deal with. Just because the customer requests something doesn't mean you have to give it to them, right? And a lot of times, guys, they don't know, like how, they don't know that their request is actually going to deliver a bad result. And they're relying on you, the expert, to keep them in check, to be able to say, no, we can't do this because of X, Y, and Z. Too many contractors are like, well, that's what they said. They said they wanted solid hardwood floors on the steps with no runners or nothing. They just wanted everything stained, hardwood steps. That's what they said. I didn't know they were going to fall down a week later and break their hip. Well, use your expertise, guys. Just because the customer says they want something doesn't mean that you have to do it. I can tell you a perfect example of this. I was redoing a set of stairs one time for an elderly couple. They had carpeted stairs. So we were, we were replacing all those with stained, you know, uh, treads and risers, painted risers. Um, it may be a sad, I don't remember, but all wood, you know, treads and risers, which I told her, I was like, you know, I don't remember her name, but I was like, Hey, you don't really want, you know, solid slick stuff because you're going to slip and fall and probably die. I mean, I didn't say those exact words, but that's what I was alluding to. So they had a, the stairs went halfway down and then halfway down on one side, it opened up to the floor below. You had a continuation of the handrail on the other side was just one long wall, straight wall all the way down. And so they, they, she asked me specifically, do we have to put a handrail on this other side? Can we not just have the handrail on the short wall and then continue on with the, you know, the open handrail? And I told her, no, for one, it was against code. Cause they were like 48 inch wide staircases, a staircase. But beyond that, I said her no for safety. Right. And again, I don't remember her name. Let's say it was Mary. I said, Mary, unfortunately, and I use the code as a reason. I'm like, I can't because that's against code. But the real reason was because you need to have something to hold on to. Right. And I kid you not, not even like two or three weeks after we installed those stairs, she told me, I remember she texted me or I came back by there for something, whatever. But she says, thank you so much for not giving in because two or three days after weeks or whatever, after I slipped and fell and I only had that hand, I grabbed the handrail on the right side where I didn't want it. And that saved me from going all the way down the steps. And this lady was like 70-something years old. That is the perfect reinforcement of why you tell people no, and you don't just give them what they want just because they want it. They're not in control. No matter what you think, they're not in control. So you have to enforce the boundaries. And then lastly, the D is deliver the result. The process exists to produce the outcome. The process exists to produce the outcome. Right. You can't wing it every single time and get the same result, the same outcome. It has to be standardized. And even if you have a dynamic situation, right? Like you have, I mean, remodeling is dynamic. Like every time you open a wall, it's different problems, different situations, different designs, different materials, right? Different selections and stuff. It's, it's very dynamic. It's not static, right? Like if you're installing a fence. It's pretty static. You're just doing the same thing over and over. And there may be a couple of different types of fencing materials, but it's still pretty much the same process. It's a lot more static, whereas in like remodeling or bigger projects, you know, landscaping projects, it's a lot more dynamic. You can still have processes that help you with that. So you have your process, your standard operating procedure, which is your standards. So you have specific standards that apply. And then depending on the dynamic situation, you apply different standards. That makes sense. So just like with Chick-fil-A, if you want a chicken sandwich that comes with lettuce, they just hit the button and it automatically comes with lettuce. That's one type of dynamic. And then they say, I don't want any lettuce. You hit the button that says remove lettuce. That's a different dynamic. They say, I want to add ketchup because you're weird. I hit another button that adds ketchup. Like those are like three different variables, three different dynamics, but they're all controlled within the standard that you've created. So if I relate this to like being in the military, every rifleman, there's basic skills that are developed. There's basic ways of doing things, right? If you're attacking an objection, an objection, an objective, if you're attacking an objective, There's different ways of doing that. You can do a single envelopment. You can do a double envelopment. There's all these different options, right? But if you pick a single envelopment, you have a base of fire and you have a movement element. You have two different movements. One group of people say it's a squad. One squad is going to be a base of fire. They're going to be suppressing the enemy from one position. The movement element is going to move around to a right or left flank and attack from the left or right. That's a movement element. It's still... the most basic type of attacking. Right now, the environment's going to change some of that. It's going to be more variable. There may be some other things. But imagine if in the middle of doing this attack, one of your employees says, maybe we should try something else, boss. Maybe we'll let the customer do the demo. Maybe that'll produce a better result. In the middle of attack, one of your, one of your, you know, private says, Hey, Sarge, what about if we let the, let's let the, the enemy decide which direction we attack from. Let's ask them which direction they want us to attack from. And you're like, okay, because I can't say no. How does that end? It doesn't end very well. Right? So like you have these, there's very specific things that are taught. That's the process. That's the standard. You have to follow the standard. You don't deviate from the standard. And then the individual standards that you build allow you to accommodate the variations that happen, the variables that happen in the process. You should never have a variable where you don't know what to do. It's like, I have this variable. Okay, well, follow, you know, step C, step CA, or, you know, follow step one B, right? You get instructions to say, hey, if you want to install this thing this way, follow. You know, step one, if you want to do it this other way, follow step three. If you want to do this other way, follow step six. Like they give you the different ways of, you know, doing that result based on the variable. You can do that even if you have something that you're doing that has a lot of variables to it. You just can't wing it, right? You don't wing it. So when the customer asks or break the process, you explain it from the outcome, not from an ego. Don't be a dick about it. You just say, listen, the reason why we are so highly reviewed and why we have such a, you know, we're in such demand is because we've developed a process that works really well and consistently gets us the outcome that our clients want. And any time that we've broken that, it always results in disaster. So we just made a point in our business that we don't deviate from our process. Because that's what allows us to deliver consistent, you know, perfect results, whatever. That's it. That's just not how we do it. I'm sorry. I wish we could. Right? Can you warranty the faucets? No. Sorry. Not doing it. So, like I said, I just gave you a word track, but here's another one. You can say, we don't do it that way because it creates risk. It creates risk and quality and the schedule warranty and accountability. It just opens it up for too many issues to happen. So we just make sure we follow our process to a T. That's what allows us to be really good. That's it. No, can't do it. Creates too much liability and risk. So we are not protecting the process because we are difficult. We're protecting the process because we are responsible for the results. It doesn't matter how you feel about it. We're doing it because we're protecting the results. delivers consistent results. We're protecting the results. We're not doing it to be a dick. We're not doing it because we're, we have an ego or whatever. Like this is, I've spent all my blood, sweat and tears and years developing this process. We're sticking to it, to a T we're not deviating. And when you have that and you, and you promote that within your company and your culture, everybody on board should know that we don't deviate. As soon as there, as soon as there's a deviation, you have to deal with it. You know, in the airline industry, when there's a, they call them deviations. When there's an actual deviation, meaning the pilot or, you know, airline airplane did something it's not supposed to do. It's called a deviation. You immediately have to like call a number to the tower and talk to them because you're probably going to get reported. Like obviously safety in the airline industry is pretty important. That's a great indicator of like that process does not get changed. Right. You know, when the, when the idiot like refuses to sit down. Right? Boom. We're not taking off. We're not, we can't go to the next step. We can't, we can't break the process. Either you sit down and put your seatbelt on or we're not moving. Like the airline is a perfect model to, to what do you call it? Yeah. It's a perfect model to model. There you go. You just don't deviate because things happen. Right. All right. Finishing up here. Yeah. When you protect the process, you protect the promise you made to the customer. Remember when you, when you don't, protect the process, then you can't protect the promise, right? We can't deviate from it. So, you know, the process, your process is sacred because your promise depends on it and break, like I said, break the process and eventually you break the promise. Remember that. Now I have a thing that I kind of developed that it's called a three P. Did you three P it? Right. Did you three P it? Whenever something happens, did you three P it? It's called a three P like number three, then P, but it stands for protect the proven process. Protect the proven process. So you can use this with your team. You can use it, steal it, I don't care. Something goes wrong, hey, did you 3P it? Just turn it into a phrase everyone uses and understands. Did you 3P it? Did you protect the proven process? Did you do what you're supposed to do or did you deviate? I guarantee you guys, if you go back and look at all the problems in your business,90% of them or more is because you deviated from the process that you've already established. or you haven't established that process yet and you're just winging it every time. But go back and look at what stuff happens in your business. And someone, you, an employee, a sub deviated from the process. If you have the process documented, this is how we do things here. And someone deviates it, they get a call, they have to call the tower and get reported. That's you, right? You're the controller in the tower. That's what you have to do. And it's easy when you have a process that's documented. By the way, If you tell someone something, it doesn't exist. If it's not written down, it doesn't exist. You telling your employee, hey, don't do extra things for the client if they ask you. You just tell them that. And if you tell them that five times, it doesn't exist. It's not written down. It's not a documented process. If you write it down and you give them that piece of paper and it says, don't do anything extra for a customer, it has to be a change order. And then they do something and you go to me say, John, why'd you do that? Oh, I just thought it would, you know, be, it would provide good value for them. Yeah. But we have a process, right? You know, you, you saw the process. Yeah. I know we have a process, but I just thought it would be good. So you, you purposely chose to break the process, the DVA from our process, right? You it's documented. Now we can say, you can say, well, I didn't know. I don't remember you telling me that. It's a process documented. Now you can hold them accountable. If it's not written down, it doesn't exist. You telling people what to do is not a SOP. So start writing down. All right, let's close it up here. Remember the sacred process. You guys create your own sacred process. Okay. Standardize the work, align the customer, control the variables, respect the sequence, enforce the boundaries, deliver the results, and then make sure you 3P it. Protect. The proven process. You can steal those. I'll put them in the show notes, the acronym and everything. So you can see it, steal it. I don't care. Put it in your business, use it. Anything I talk on here is free game, steal it and use it. Nothing's copyrighted. So that's it guys. You have to protect the process. And if you do this, I'm telling you, your customer experience will shoot through the roof. It's so important that you protect the process. You got to delete, you got to create it first and you may have to. Fix things. Once you make a mistake, you're like, oh, I didn't think about that variable. You go back, you fix the process. You just keep perfecting the process over and over and over again. All right, guys, thanks for hanging out with me. You know where to find me on the socials. You can search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
