EP66: Getting Organized With Amy Payne

So for the listeners, they wouldn't know this, but you and I have known each other for quite a while since you started your business in 2011.

I think, tell me if I'm wrong here, I think I was one of your first clients.

That's awesome. I had been in business for a couple of years and I think we met at a B &I. We met at a B &I and I was like, I definitely need some help because I was two years in my business trying to floundering with files and all kinds of organization. And I was like, I definitely need to talk to this lady. And so you actually came and did a little bit of work. for me for a short period of time while you were getting started. And you helped organize all my files and systematize all that, which to this day, I still use that. So thank you very much. But yeah, so we've known each other for a while. So I appreciate you being on here, Amy.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So what is lasting order? Like what's, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you're, what. exactly what you do. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you hit it right on the head. Like 100%. So you started out pretty much just doing physical spaces for people like in their homes, right? And then you, as you, and then you, I'm guessing you can tell me, but as you're talking with people, they're probably like, hey, could you come to my office and help me do some of this stuff too?

And I mean, let's be honest, you know, businesses tend to have more money available to pay professionals to come in because it's a productivity, right? Like if their productivity is not very good, they're losing money. It's not like your house where, oh, you know, this is disorganized and I don't like it. You know what I mean? So that makes sense that you kind of graduated or gravitated towards the professional side of it. I know that early on. I helped you with some of your residential clients, you know, going in and like building shelves and hanging pictures and things like that. So here's a little hit tip. If you're a handyman or you do that types of stuff, go find some professional organizers and team up with them because they will definitely keep you busy.

Yeah, because I would imagine that like in a home, a lot of that is closet shelving organization or stuff, like stuff organization, right? Like probably, and you could tell me this, like I would assume that closets are probably like the most disorganized part of someone's home.

Yeah, this was actually, I wouldn't even plan on talking about this, but if you're dealing with home builders or even remodelers and they're remodeling someone's home, these are things that they can keep to consider too with their clients and that is the organizational aspect. So you'll appreciate this, Amy. I don't have a... like complete floor plan design because my wife and I are in, you know, not like immediately, but in the process of trying to acquire land and build a house. And one of the things that I'm going to have in my house is what I'm calling the central closet. And it's literally going to be a closet in somewhere in the middle of the house where everything will be stored. And it's not going to be a, you know, two foot little walk-in closet. I mean, it's going to be the size of a room. Like it's going to be big enough. I mean, everything, Christmas decorations, like everything will be in that. It's not going to be in an attic. It's not going to be in a basement. It's going to be right there where you can easily access everything. So what's your thoughts on that? Is that a good idea or is that just a recipe for storing more crap?

That's good things to keep in mind. So if you're listening, you're a home builder or you're remodeling, those are things that you might want to consider whenever you're helping someone is like actually designing in some storage space. And it may be worth it if you're a home builder, like if you're a custom home builder to actually bring in a professional organizer early on to help lay that out.

I mean, you know, you're talking about habits and I think that's probably the same as like behavior, right? Like we're creatures of habits rather and our behavior of how we actually do things. Like one thing that always like. frustrates me and builders. I like the mudroom idea simply because you're coming in from outside and your clothes are dirty and your laundry room's right there. Like you have a storage area and all that stuff makes sense. But then I see new homes where the laundry room is like on the other end of the house from every away from everything else. And it's like, that doesn't logically make any sense because you're going to end up throwing your clothes on the floor and they're going to sit there for a week. And you know what I mean? So just stuff like that.

Yeah, but garages are for keeping all your crap in. You don't actually park your cars in there, right? No.

I'm sure you love driving down the road and the guy's garage door is open and it's literally packed floor to ceiling and full of boxes and you can't get in there.

Sometimes you got to be polarizing, Amy. That gets the attention, right?

That's just the rain in me.

Being nice is too much hard work. So let's get into some business organization for contractors. I am a... tech nerd as well. And so I love talking about this stuff. I could talk about this all day long and technology, you know, to me, and not just in an organizational sense, but for, you know, whether it's a PM software you use, a timesheet app, whatever, like technology is what I call a force multiplier, right? So in other words, you can do more things with less people if you supplement with tech. And so a lot of I see a lot of contractors, not a lot, but they'll want to hire a marketing person or they'll want to hire an office manager or they want to hire someone just to answer the phones and they want to hire people to do these tasks. And really, some of these positions can be completely eliminated if they simply use technology. Have you seen that to be the case in your clients and your experience?

Well, yeah, I mean, that's fair. That's completely fair. But I think that in the old days, when I say old days, I mean like 20,30 years ago before technology was really widely available. I mean, you know, businesses would have multiple people. You know, you would have someone that all they did was answer the phone and then you would have somebody else that did accounts payable and accounts receivable. And I think like with QuickBooks and things like that, you don't necessarily need an accounts payable, accounts receivable person, right? Now the person answering the phone, they can spend two hours a week doing AP, you know, all that stuff. So I think that's what I mean. And I don't mean like completely replace someone. Like if you have five employees, you can put one piece of equipment or technology in and then you can eliminate all five positions. But you might be able to consolidate down to four people. you know, instead of that fifth person.

yeah. I mean, you have a lot more data available to analyze, which I think can be overwhelming too. Like the amount of reports that I can run in all my softwares, I could like literally look at reports for the rest of my life. You know what I mean? There's so many options available. And I don't think, like especially at a contractor level, you don't need to be getting that deep into the weeds on like, how can I save three minutes on my drive time each day? Like you don't need to get that micro with that type of stuff. But if you're not realizing that you're spending 45 minutes a day driving from one job to the next, and you're not calculating that time into your dollar amount, what you're charging, you're losing lots of money. Lots and lots of money.

I remember the little mileage logbooks, you know, you had to pull them out and track your mileage. I freaking hated that stuff. I absolutely hated tracking mileage. Now they have things you can like put in there and it does it all for you. That's a great example of technology, like saving you time. Right. In frustration.

So I like to use the analogy of, and this isn't so much about. technology, but really creating systems in your business. But I believe that we all have like micro frustrations throughout the day, right? We get up and there's something about our house that we don't like. We don't like where the coffee maker is. And even though it's not that big of a deal, like it's every time we use the coffee maker, we get a little bit frustrated, you know, just a tiny bit. And then as the day goes on, you have all these micro frustrations and it just overall creates this. you know, frustrated lifestyle or nothing's like how you want it. And so I see technology and I see organization as being able to eliminate, you know, if we can eliminate as many frustrations as possible, I think that leads to a much happier life. Would you agree with that?

I agree with that 100%. Are you familiar with Paul Akers and FastCap? And he has a book called Two Second Lean.

Well, he used to be a cabinet maker and he started creating products that make cabinet making easier. And now he owns a large manufacturing FastCap. And they make all kinds of tools and products for woodworkers and construction. But he got super, I'm sure you've heard of like Sigma Six and lean manufacturing. So he got like super deep into that, went down the rabbit hole, like went to Japan and learned all this stuff. And what he did is condensed all of that philosophy down into what he calls two second lean. And I love this. And I think you would appreciate it too. But what he simply does is he takes processes that frustrate you and he calls it fix what bugs you. Like if there's something that bugs you, fix it. He says, basically, try to make two-second improvements. Don't go in there and try to fix the entire process. If your estimating system doesn't work, don't go in there and try to get a whole new estimating system. You may just need to make a few little tweaks to that system. And then gradually, after you make a series of 15,20 tweaks to the system, now you have a whole system that actually works really well for you. And so that's the premise of his book. I mean, he applies it more to like manufacturing, but also, I mean, he's, he's ate up with this. Like if you go to YouTube and watch his videos, like he literally two second leans everything in his life, his house, the guy probably lives the most like frustrating free life of anyone you've ever met. Wow. And, and, and if you go to his, he has a manufacturing facility, like where they make stuff. Like you could eat off the floor in this manufacturing facility. It's super clean. Everything's organized. You could take someone that doesn't know anything. And within like a day, they know how to use everything in the entire factory.

I think you would really appreciate it. Like you would probably binge on his videos for hours because it's really amazing. And he's systematized everything. And I mean everything.

And that's a great question. And I don't think that's like a, there's a, there's an ant, like a single answer to that. Like you can be done and then next week realize, Oh, I want to organize this other thing. And I think what you're speaking to is really more of the behavior aspect of it, right? Because we talked about earlier, creatures of habit. So, well, one thing that, like with Paul was talking about is, the reason why he does two seconds is because anybody can spend a few minutes to try to make a two-second improvement. And then it builds upon that. Right. And so what's fascinating about his... plan and then I'll get off of talking about him. But the first hour, so they work an eight-hour day. The first hour of their day, all they do is 3S. They sweep, sort, and standardize. So they clean up their space, they organize everything, and then they create a system. Because if you're working in a space and you're doing a specific task, you just improve one little task. And so they do that for the first hour. And then the next seven hours, they're like twice as productive as companies that are working eight hour days. So even though they're losing an hour of production time, they're actually, you know, twice as productive.

So it's, I mean, it's, it is really, really interesting. I think you would like, like I said, I think you would probably binge on that for hours.

I mean, it does, it does kind of talk a lot more about manufacturing, but still there's lots of things that cross apply to every. every aspect.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm talking about coffee maker. We used to have our coffee maker in a spot and because it was on a small countertop area, we had one of those, it's a Keurig, so we had one of those little K-cup organizers, you know, the springs in there. Well, you had that, like, the only way it would fit was to lay it, like, vertically on its side. And it was just really, It was annoying to try and get it out. And so I literally built, I mean, being a carpenter, I built a little shelf that this would sit in and I screwed it to the bottom of the cabinet, which is right above the coffee maker. And so now all you do is reach over and grab it and put it in there. And that seems so silly. And I probably spent three hours between painting it and building it and figuring it all out. I probably spent three hours of my life. creating this solution. However, after I had that solution in place, I never had any more frustrations in the morning dealing with coffee. So for me, it was worth it.

So that brings me to a good point. When you're dealing with employees and you're trying, like I say I own a boss, I own a boss, I own a business and I have, let's say I have five employees, right? And I'm like, okay, I listened to Brad and Amy. Now I'm motivated to organize my space. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to organize my work vehicles or work bands or whatever. How much of that do you need to take into consideration your employees? Because if I go in there and create a whole system the way that I would use it, and then it's not the way my employees would use it, how do you deal with that type of situation?

Would you say it would be smart to bring them in during the initial phase and be like, hey guys, we're going to reorganize the van. What's your top three things that you want to see? And then kind of incorporate that as best as you can. Because if you have five different people, you're going to get five different responses, right?

Gotcha. And then you just crack the whip and be like, I said that we're doing it this way.

I mean, obviously you wouldn't like if an employee is like, oh, it would be nice if every van had this $5,000 piece of equipment and you're like, yeah, that's not, that's not feasible. Right.

Right, right, right, right. So let's get into technology a little bit about organizing your office, like in terms of running a construction business. What would you say are some key types of software or technology that they need to implement or that you've seen to work with some of your clients? Right.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And they do have a pretty good estimating and invoicing part of it. I didn't use that for my business because one of the things that I'll say with QuickBooks is they don't have any type of scheduling or anything like that, which makes it very difficult to try to use it. You know what I mean?

Well, I mean, like project management, like running the job, like plumber's going to be here on this day and I got to order materials on this day, like that, like kind of like a Gantt chart type of scheduling. I mean, I use QuickBooks for a long time. I mean, I still do, but I end up, what ends up happening is that once you move to like a project management type software, they usually have estimating, invoicing and all the other things built into it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you just brought up a bunch of PTSD around software selection because I've spent, I don't know how many hundreds of hours trying to find the quote, perfect. project management software, which still doesn't exist to this day. If I was a millionaire, I would create my own project management software. That literally is something I would want to do.

Oh, it would be perfect, Amy.

It would be perfect. I'm telling you it would be because I created it. Come on,

It's funny because we were emailing back and forth about some stuff before the podcast. And you're like, are we going to argue on the podcast? And I said, yes, that's what people love to hear. And we were able to incorporate it. So I'm happy now.

No, I have tried many different ones and there's a lot of them that are out there. The one that I typically recommend and by no means do anyone have to use it, but I use one called Projul. And I'll put a link in the show notes. I did work out a deal with them. Because I'm a tech nerd and I came from an IT background, so I really look at it. I'm on a first name basis with the head developer for that company. And so anytime new features come out, he'll usually email me and say, hey, can you try these out and tell me what you think? Right. So I love that part of it because I can give direct feedback. Right. Some of these larger, that have been more established, they don't really care about your opinion. It's like, I really don't like this. Can we have this feature? And then it just falls on deaf ears and they don't really care.

Yeah, and to their point, you can't make everyone happy, right? I can't add one little button right here just because you don't want to go move your mouse across the page and click the button over there. Right. Let's be real. We can't make everyone happy. Right. Okay, so software. What else? What are the QuickBooks, accounting, and then some type of PM software or something like that? What else would they need

Yeah, communication is huge.

That was one of my greatest fears was having too many leads. And I actually, I've had that problem where literally the branding worked too well. The reputation was too good. And I had so many people calling that I just, there literally wasn't enough time in the day to get back to every single person. And so I had to create systems to be able to do that, i. e. like putting a form on my website that would pre-qualify some of these people. So I wouldn't get as many calls. Right. I do want to get back to your task management, though. Is there a specific one that you like and that you recommend?

Well, I know they aren't you like a certified Evernote person.

Okay. Yeah, I know you're big in Evernote. For those that don't even know what Evernote is, why don't you real quick explain what that is?

Well, yeah, I mean, I've used all of those. I like Keep's simplicity. It's like much more easier, but it's not organized. It's nowhere near as well as Evernote. So yeah, I've used Evernote. It's a great way to keep things organized. Well, we talked about accounting. We talked about PM. We talked about task management. Is there anything like for, I mean, obviously CRM, like, you know, customer relations. If your PM software doesn't allow any type of CRM, then they would probably need to have something, right?

There's a CRM that you're also pretty fond of. Which one is that?

Yeah. And one thing why this is so important, like your services and really having like consulting with someone is, especially today, like every day there's, you know,500 new softwares that hit the market and it's literally overwhelming. I have to like, I get, I'll get stuck on soft, you know, platforms like AppSumo where they share new software and I'll like, like literally I'll like. buy or trial three different softwares and then I'm like next thing I know I have 27 softwares and I'm trying to I'm like okay stop stop stop.

Yeah, and that's going to be different for every single person because you also have to take into consideration their technology literacy, right?

Not to pick on contractors, but we're not the smartest guys out there. And some of us can barely even turn our phone on. You know what I mean? And then here you are telling them to download a software to run their whole business. And that thought right there is overwhelming. They would rather just have one of those old... calendar things that Menard sends you every year and you just write down everything in there. And it's like, that's great until you leave the office and leave it in your, sitting on your desk and you're an hour away from the office. Like that's the benefit of technology is that it's everywhere. And I think there can be a curse. There's also a curse of that, right? Like we need to disconnect and not always be reachable. My wife always tells me to turn my phone off because, you know. And sometimes it is work-related. I am responding to an email or a text or whatever. But it's such a balance. And so I think it's super critical to have someone like you to be able to consult with. But also because it can be overwhelming. As smart as I am about CRMs, as much research as I've done, and I've researched probably 20 to 30 different project management CRM type things, I've signed up for one. And six months into it, after transferring all the information and setting everything up and spending 80 to 100 man hours, I've said, I hate this. Right. This is not what I want. And then I had to switch again.

And then what I see happening is they'll... you know, they'll listen to this podcast and they'll hear you say, oh, get Evernote. And like, cool. And they go in, which Evernote's not that expensive, but it doesn't matter what it is. If it's Projo and they go and they buy this software that costs a lot of money and they try to use it for, you know, an hour one day and they get so frustrated and then they just quit using it. And then they like, especially if it's a one-time purchase where they had to spend 500 bucks or whatever, like you're just out that money. Right.

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's like perfect. I think that's the perfect way to come to bring this to a close. I think the number one takeaway that I've got from this, and I did a podcast on this earlier this year, and that is you really have to be intentional with what you're trying to accomplish, right? And so if you're listening to this podcast and you're like all excited, oh, I really need to go get a CRM or PM software or whatever. And you go home and you search it in and you, you know, even if you look at the one that I recommended and you go and you buy it and you haven't done any research and you haven't, you know, done any of that and then you try to open it and it's like, oh, this is too, this is too hard and I don't really have any intention on trying to get better. It's just going to be a waste of your time and energy.

I'm going to write that down.

A good software does not solve a bad process. Is that what you said?

I'm writing this down because I love that. A good software does not solve a bad process. Right. Or essentially.

So Amy, how can people find out more about your services or get in touch with you?

Which you could probably put them in touch with some networks that will be able to do that.

And we'll put all your links to your social media and all that stuff in the show notes. So you guys can go look in the show notes and get access to that. Amy, one last question I like to ask everybody. And that is, what's the current book you're reading or one that you really like?

That's a really good one.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Amy, I thank you so much for being on the show today. I do want to ask you one last question. I lied to you. What is the single biggest takeaway that you can give someone? Like if they're struggling with organization, like what would be your parting words to them to try and help them?

That's how we roll here, Amy.

Do something. Do something. Well, thanks so much for being on the show, Amy. This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate all your insight. And guys, you know where to find me on all the social media platforms, Hammer and Grind Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Also, don't forget about our Discord channel. That's Hammer and Grind. You can search us there. And like always, guys, until next time, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.