EP8: Systematizing Your Business

That would be awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Don't you sing it for us, like do it.

This might be like a four-hour podcast. I love talking about systems. I want to give you the Cliff Notes version of it just to spare the listeners. They'd be going to sleep here probably in about 10 minutes. No, listen, one of my first... official businesses that I started was actually a computer networking business. Out of the military, out of the Marines, I went to a local community college, got a certificate program type thing in information technology, got A-plus certified that I could build and repair computers. I mean, we were learning like Windows 3.1 and how to manually change the IRQ settings on the computer. If you know what I'm talking about, then that kind of dates how old I am. So I started a business building computers and that stuff. So I've always been in technology. And I ended up going and working for a telecommunications company. And they were one of the first companies in the world that offered telephone, cable, and Internet as a package. Cable modems, if you remember what that is when they first started. But that was the new technology. So I was like one of... Two out of 20-something people that had enough computer background, whenever we would go install these computer modems in people's homes, nobody knew how to hook them up because you had to go in and change the network settings in the computer and deal with all this stuff. That's a long story of basically saying that I've had a computer background and I've always seen what computers have done for technology and for the advancement of businesses, right? The internet. The fact that you and I are talking right now is all technology based. So that is the computer version of systems. And I just I love systems. I love technology in that capacity. And being in the military, they have systems. Everything is systematized. You know how you wear your equipment, where you put your med pack. Like everybody has their med pack on the same place on their belts or on their on their kit. The reason is you get into a firefight, your buddy gets shot, you go over there, you always take the med pack off the person that gets hit. You don't use your own, you use theirs. And you know that it's always on the left side of their belt or wherever it's at, right? So systems has been driven into my head for like most of my adult life. And that's the long-winded version of I love systems.

It is. However, it's interesting that you say that because I still like writing on paper. I like the feel of writing on paper. I like that whole aspect of it. That's why what I use is a Remarkable tablet. It's not an advertisement for Remarkable.

Not yet. Yeah. Hit us up. But the reason I got that was because it's literally the closest thing to writing on paper that you can get. It does feel like paper. And here's the reason why I systematize this. So I would write all my notes in a notepad, right? For a call. Like say I'm talking to a customer, I'm taking notes down on a piece of paper, I get done. And then I'm going to go out and meet with them a week later or whatever it is, a few days later. And I get out there. And I left the stupid paper on my desk.

That's true. I agree with you.

But not anymore. Because everything I write down is on my tablet. And because of this is connected to the internet, I have all that information anywhere I go. So I fixed that system. I got you speechless. Can you believe? It's like the first time ever. Eric is speechless.

Look, there's different types of systems. And this is one of the things that I want to talk about today. There are people systems, right? The way you deal with people. There are technology, softwares you use to run your business. There's SOPs, manuals of how you do things. So there are all different types of systems, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, we can do that. But look, when I started my business, it was all on paper. I had my leads when I got a new lead. It was on a three by five note card and I would write it down, started off just writing it down. And then I put it into this box that had a filing system. And then I had cards made up that had. their name, address, email, whatever information I wanted. I had cards made up. So I've never stopped developing the system. You know, if I come up with a form, let's say I create a form for a certain type of service I'm going to offer. Let's just say gutter guards, because we sell and install gutter guards. So I'll create a process form for gutter guards, right? Well, I'll use it for two weeks, a month, whatever. And realize, oh, I really need to have this extra information. I really need to find out like if it's a one or two story house because I didn't have that on there before. So I go back and I change that form and I add the two stories on there. How many stories is it? And I use it for another month or two and realize, oh, I should have put on there what color. Whatever it is, I'm just making stuff up. But what color is the gutters? Are they white? Are they clay? Whatever. I go in there and I add that. And so I'm just I'm constantly updating this stuff. And after six months or a year, I may be on the eighth revision.

So that's creating the system, the paper, and then refining the system as you go. So there is no you're not going to wake up and be like, I want to create a system. And then by the end of the day, you have the perfect system to run your business. That doesn't that doesn't happen.

Yeah, the need drives the system for sure. Like when you first start out, you have that one a week. I mean, yeah, you could literally just have a college bound spiral notebook and you just write everything down in there and you get your schedule in there and everything. And that's all you need. Right. Fast forward five years and you're getting 20 leads a day managing two crews and all the payment and all that. There's no way you could do it out of a spiral notebook. Yeah.

Well, here's the thing. Technology. Specifically technology, but when it applies to systems, technology is a force multiplier. So what you can do by yourself, answering the phone, taking notes, doing work orders, all this stuff, right? You can only do X, right? You can only do, let's just say you can only do 20 orders a week because you have to manually type out all this stuff. Right now you get a system, a computer technology system, a software. Now what took you an entire week to produce 20 work orders, you can now do in one day and do the exact same amount of work. So it's a force multiplier. It actually allows you to do more stuff in half the time or less. That's why technology and systems, in my opinion, are so important. For

I disagree 100%.

I hear this a lot, Eric. And I don't want to like, I'm not trying to say you're old. I am. But generally older people are the ones that don't like to embrace technology. I'm embracing it. No, I know. But I mean fully embrace it, like diving head deep into it, like in loving it. Like you're doing it. You're embracing it. But you're also like, you got your hand on the kitchen sink and somebody is trying to pull you out and you're like, no, I want to hold on. Like that's kind of how you're embracing it.

Yeah, well, listen, I, as you mentioned before, I use Jobber, which is and again, this isn't like advertisements for all not

Yet. Hit us up. No, I use Jobber for like six years. Because it was the best thing that I found. And then I got frustrated with there were so many gaps like you're talking about. Like it, I wanted to do this one feature and it doesn't do that. I get frustrated and frustrated and frustrated. So I'm using, and Jobber was created for landscaping and lawn care companies. That's what it was created for. I'm using another one now that's created for the heating and air industry. Has nothing to do with remodel or handyman. However, the reason I went with that is because it had the most features. that I wanted for what I was trying to do. There's still things I hate about it. There's still things I get frustrated about, but it was like a step up in terms of providing more things that I needed to grow my business.

That's what I would actually tell people to do. If someone asked me my. They came to me and said, hey, what's the best way to implement a new system? I would say shut down your business for two, three days, whatever it takes, and fully implement it. Because if you try to do it over time, you will drag it out for six months, you will drag it out for a year, or you'll just never fully do it. You'll get frustrated and cancel it and go back to your old ways.

Yeah. Well, I don't want to get into like how you got to implement stuff.

Yeah. So what I would say is you have to have the desire. to want to systematize your business. If you don't want to systematize your business, then it's probably not going to work at all. It's the same thing with having a learning mentality, you know, having a desire to learn and get better on a journey to self-mastery. So, you know, we have to learn stuff. We buy a new tool, it comes out, they come out with a multi-tool. It's just the new revolutionary, you know, cutting tool. And you have to like learn how to use it. I mean, I'm not saying it takes days or weeks, but. You know, it may take you 45 minutes to an hour to figure out how to use it effectively. So anytime we're doing something new, we have to learn it. And there's if you don't like learning, you're just going to be frustrated the whole time. And if you don't like technology, you're just going to be frustrated the whole time.

Yeah, a hundred percent. I get it. I would probably have done it differently than if I was running your business and I don't know what all the different like positions that you have are, but I would, what I would probably have done is I would have picked one, whether it's a project manager or account manager or some kind of manager of some sort, I would have said, okay, Chris. you're going to take tomorrow off for the next two days off and you're going to learn how to do this system from the management's perspective. And then I would, after he learns that, then I would pick one of my teams. I got team A, team B. Then I would implement team A. Like team A, you're going to implement this. And I mean, I would slowly phase it in, but I would do it like that. I would break it up. So you don't have to shut down completely. Yeah.

But this is interesting, though, because this is what people do. It's like, I don't have time. I don't have time. I can't shut down. I can't put my business on pause. But what's happening is, you know, over a long period of time, you're actually it's actually costing you more money. It's lost opportunity cost because it's taken longer to fully implement that, you know, all that time savings by using technology. You would have recouped that longer earlier. I mean, you would have recouped that earlier on. If you were able to fully implement it sooner. Does that make sense at all?

Absolutely. But that's not what most people do.

So, you know, I would say the first system when you, if you start, like, let's just say you're a carpenter and you decide I'm going to start my own business. Probably the first system you want to do is you want to get your tool bag or tool belt in order. Right. I like my hammer to be in the same spot everywhere. I like my screwdriver to be in the same spot and all my chisels and all that stuff. I want them to be in the same spot so that every time I go into my bag or my tool belt, it's always there. I'm not spending a minute looking for it. Right. That's a system. Yeah. You've created a system of tool storage.

Yeah. And that, well, yeah, most craftsmen. Yeah.

Not most people in the trades.

When I was doing telecommunications, I was a service technician for the cable company. I had my own van and we were able to take it home. Like we could take our vans home for night. I would organize my van. Like I literally knew where every fitting, every single thing, Scotch lock, all the tools that we use, I knew where every single thing in that van was. So if I was up on a ladder, working on a line and a guy was coming over i would say hey eric go in my van open the side door second shelf down pull it out first tray on the left there's some scotch locks in there grab three of them for me

then you go to lowe's and you see these trucks parked out there that have 4 000 receipts on their dashboards and cups and you know everything

bags and you look in the tailgate and they have you know two by fours on the bottom and they got tools stacked on top of that and they got tarps on top of that and they got you know there's sawzalls on i mean it's just crazy like i i literally get like anxiety when i see that i'm like how in the hell do you work how can you work out of your truck

well i guess i'm smart then no

Well, that must, maybe I'm dumb then. Maybe that's what's wrong with me.

We're trying to get as many sponsorships out of this one podcast that we possibly can.

You're talking about Ford, Henry Ford?

It was pretty new. Yeah, it was pretty. I mean, they act they literally implementing ideas that I had. I was like, you guys need to do this. And they implement. Right.

I'm going to challenge you on that, Eric. I want to challenge you on that.

Do you think when they built the pyramids that it was just mass chaos and they didn't have any systems whatsoever to do that?

What systems are you talking about in the 40s? In business.

What specifically – I believe you. I don't know, like, the history of when it started. What specifically did they create? Like, what was the whole theory behind it?

Well, I would agree with that. You know, and one of the problems of technology is that it, because it changes and this is like one of my Achilles heels. It really is my office manager, like several months ago, she's like, okay, you're not allowed to get a new system. Because like every week I'm like, hey, we need to try this new system. We got this new software. We got to try this app. We got to do this. We got to do that. And truthfully, I'm just trying to find something that works. You know what I mean? Because I'm frustrated. But I do need to take a step back often and just say, you know what? Yes, it's not 100%, but it's going to get us to the next milestone, maybe a year or whatever it is until something does come better. That truly changes it and makes a huge percentage jump. You know, my problem is like I want to switch softwares to get a 5% gain in production. And that's probably not great. I mean, that's not necessarily a good thing to do. But if you can make a 30 or 40% jump in production by implementing a system, you need to take a hard look at that for sure.

I have to, I do that a lot. I seriously do that. I'm like, I want to, I mean, I don't want to tell you this because we just started implementing a new system today.

No, I had her looking at it. Oh, shoot. So why would someone want to implement systems? To

I mean, I would say that you don't even have to be that much. I mean, that's one of the things that I did wrong in my business is I did spend money on systems early on that I didn't need to, and it did hurt my cashflow. So it did prolong a lot of growth because I was trying to implement too much, you know, too many systems. and just paying for stuff. So a lot of it was purposely done and I knew that, but looking back on it, I probably could have waited a year, two years, three years before I fully implemented everything. And I would have had a little extra cash flow during the early on years. But what I see often, very rarely do I run across someone who like over systematizes their business or spends too much. Like I'm probably one of the few that probably spends way too much money on systems. But most of the time, they don't have any systems. They're literally waking up every day, reacting to the day. You know, they go to the shop. They're like, okay, what tools do I need today? Let's see. I'm doing this job. I'm probably going to need this tool and this tool and this and this and this. Let's load them up in the truck. We go work for seven hours. We come back. We got to unload everything because You know, we don't have anywhere to keep the tools overnight. We don't want to get stolen or rained on. So, you know, that right there, like you're losing an hour a day of production or it's causing you to work nine or 10 hour days because in order to get an eight hours of fillable time, you're working nine,10 hours of, you know, load up and tear down and all that stuff. And I see that a lot. And that stuff can be avoided completely by, you know, a little bit of systematizing how you do things. You know, whether it's buying a trailer, right? You buy a trailer and you load your tools in your trailer. You just created a better system than loading them up every day.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's never, it's, it's not a once and done thing. It always changes. It always changes.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting because there's different types of personalities, right? There's different types of management styles. There's different types of businessmen. whatever you want to call it. I I'm in a Facebook group, a free Facebook group for handyman. And there's a guy in there a couple of weeks ago, he posted a picture of a new van, uh, like a Ford transit type van. And he had the back open and it had metal, you know, uh, parts bins in there. It was a, it was called a Ranger system. It's just a particular brand of racking van racking systems. And I was curious and I commented on his post and I said, And he's like, this is number 17,18 is coming along. Now he's, he owns a handyman business and he's like on his 17th vehicle. Okay. And I said, how do you like the Ranger shelving? Because I was curious, like that's, I maybe want to invest in heels. What are you talking about? I said, there's shelving in your van. It's made by Ranger. Oh, I had no idea. That's just what they put in there when I buy the van.

So he doesn't care about that. He's not looking at it from an efficiency standpoint or working out of the vehicle standpoint. All he cares about is the revenue of putting another vehicle on the road and putting a guy in the vehicle. And I'm not saying that's good or bad.

don't know. I'm just saying, and it doesn't matter what brand it is, but his focus is not on producing. making a vehicle that's going to be easy to work out of. Like for me, it's important. I've shown, I've sent you videos, you know, I bought a, a transit van last year to a second van. And, uh, you know, I was doing custom. I, I was going to buy metal racking because I'm like, I don't want to spend the time building these out because every time I buy a new van, I'm going to have to build them out. Yeah. Whereas if I just buy metal racking, it's easy because it is easy. But then I started thinking about it more and more and more and more. And I'm like, yeah, but it's not going to be what we want. It's not it's every time we work out of that van, it's going to be we're going to settle. You know what I mean? We're going to have toolboxes that don't fit in the rack and there's crap on the ground. It's rattling and banging all over the place and you got to move stuff out of the way. So my OCDness and my recovering perfectionism, I'm like, no, I'm going to I went and had custom metal. you know, racking made for my DeWalt boxes. So the point of it is, is that you can't overdo it, but you can also underdo it. Like, sure. You can have a van that has racking that works, but the guy working out of that van, you may not give a crap because you're the owner and you're not working out of that van, but the craftsman that you hire that's working out of that van, he may care. He may want something better. And if he has to deal with that frustration every day of piling through crap and not having stuff where he wants, eventually he's going to quit.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And we've even created systems like that where we've taken a laminated piece of paper or laminated sheets and hung it up in the van. And it's like, dude, if you're on the job site and use the last screw, write on that piece of paper, hey, we're out of screws. That way, when you get back to the shop. You get out, you see it right there. We're out of screws. Now we may have some in the shop or we may need to go to the store and buy some more. So that's a system. And it doesn't have to be complicated. It's just literally a laminated sheet with a dry erase marker on it.

Let's hear it.

If only there was a sales system out there that allowed you to do that, Eric.

Yeah, not only that, does it save up? I mean, once you learn how to systematize that and I don't want to say shortcut the process because you're not shortcutting it, you're making it better. But in a sense, it's shortcutting the time that you're spending. When you do that, it like totally it's a game changer. When you free up 10 to 15 hours a week of your time selling jobs. Now you could spend that extra 10 hours implementing Jobber. You could spend that extra time riding out an SOP or whatever it is. That in and of itself is more valuable than actually selling the job, in my opinion, because time is the most precious thing we have.

A friend of mine owns a landscaping company, and I don't know if he listens or not. I wish he would. But like three years ago, I was talking to him and I was like, dude, you need to get on Jobber. You need to get something. And I sent him a referral code so I could get a free month and all that stuff. And they joined and they used it for about two months and then quit. And I said, what'd you quit for? I just didn't have time. Like literally what you said, I didn't have time to really get into it and implement it. So I just really that was code for I didn't want to learn how to do something new. And I talked to him last Sunday. This is important. I talked to him last Sunday and his shop is right down from mine. And I ran into him and he's like, man, we are so busy. I went and looked at 30 jobs this last week. Oh my

I said, you went and looked at 30 jobs? He's like, yeah. I had to tell my wife, like, honey, you just got to, you got to schedule these further out because I can't do, you know,10 a day. And I was just like. It literally just blew my mind.

Yeah, but Eric, that sounds great and all, but I don't have time to implement a new sales process.

He says it's pretty high. I think it's because he doesn't charge enough. But he's the type of guy that always complains about being too busy, but doesn't want to pay his guys. good wages. So he has high turnover rate and

Yeah. And so I just don't think he's one of those guys. It's like, I want to make as much money as I can. And so I cheat the business so I can put more money in my pocket and cheat the employees. You know what I'm talking about? Cheat

Yeah. And I've told him about that. I was like, dude, you need at least start charging for estimates. If you want to go out there, that's fine. That's your business. But heck, charge for them at least. Oh, I can never do that.

Yeah, I mean, basically what we do is we ask for pictures so we can have an understanding of what's at least what we're looking at. And they don't have to be detailed pictures. We don't need to have 27 pictures from every angle. It's just one to four pictures depending on what it is. We get some pictures. We schedule a phone call with them. We talk through that. We have a four-step sales process where we discover what's important to them, what's motivating them, why they want to do this. That allows us to get an idea of what they're wanting done. Then we can give them kind of a ballpark estimate based on the pictures. And the purpose of that is just to figure out what their budget is, right? We always say we give our number to get their number. We're not trying to do exact estimates over the phone. I mean, that wouldn't be smart to do that. Although there are some things that you can do that over the phone. And I do it in my business. But generally, it's not like a big project. It's not going to be a $20,000, $30,000, $80,000 project. But we give them the number so that we can get their budget. We talk about any objections that they may have. And then we can try to get a commitment out of them all while on the phone. And these calls can take anywhere from seven minutes to 45 minutes, depending on what it is. But I would say the average is probably about 20 minutes for a phone call. And I don't know if you heard from one of the guys in our group. I think it was yesterday he had this call. He said he was on the phone for seven minutes. He was timing it. Seven minutes. And it was a, you know,80,000 to 100,000 plus project, a remodel. And he said after seven minutes, he can kind of tell that the guy was a straight shooter, just want to get to the point. And he said, you know what? You seem like you're a straight shooter. Would it make sense if I just kind of share with you what a project like this or what we can do? And the guy said, yep. And he said, well, why don't we just set up a consultation? It's $1,500. The guy said, all right, let's do it. And so literally in less than seven minutes, he set up a consultation, a $1,500 consultation to go bid on a job or to give an estimate on a job for $80,000 to $100,000 plus job.

A seven minute phone call.

Well, the profit sales system is designed to reveal that stuff. It's designed to reveal if they're tire kicking. It's designed to reveal if they're just trying to get a budget number because they actually want to do the project next year and they need to save up money in order to do the project. It's designed to reveal what their timeline is. It's designed to reveal all this information that you need to know on the phone so that you can see, one, if you can service them. And then two, if it's a good fit, right? This is all designed to do this.

Or you might not be a good fit for what they want.

Yep. And after you do that a few times, you're like, you know what? I don't think that I want to do this anymore.

I don't want to get punched in the face.

Yeah, and we uncover what's important for them and then we can tap into their emotions. It's totally different, guys. I mean. If you came into our group and started learning this stuff, it would probably shock you. I mean, literally shock you how different it is. We learn how to talk. We teach people how to talk to customers, how to listen to the customer, how to hear what they want, how to understand what's important to them. Because we joke around and we say that a lot of times contractors like to throw up all over the customer. You start asking them a question and we go, you know, they may say, well, you know, how do you how can you know how much it's going to cost? Well, I've been doing this for 20 years and, you know, I'm a better business bureau, a plus plus rated contractor. And I won the house best contractor of the year, the last three years in a row. And I got high reviews. And I mean, we just go down this, you know, down our pedigree of everything that we have. And the customer doesn't give a crap about that. All they want to know is, well, they may, they may have, they probably already social proof. Yeah. But what I'm saying is they want to know is that when you come there, you're not going to act inappropriate around their 13 year old daughter. Like, cause that's, what's important to them. Right. They had a bad experience with another contractor where a guy said some inappropriate things and now they're scared to death of contractors.

Yeah. But. I'm just saying like, that's what they care about. They don't care about your pedigree. They want to know that you're going to come in there and treat their house with respect and do what they want. And then when you start understanding that, you can literally change your entire business.

I do have a final thought and then I'll close it out with our at least let them know where they can learn more. But I want to challenge everyone listening tomorrow or the next today, today or tomorrow, within 24 hours of listening to this. I want you to identify one thing in your business that drives you nuts. Just one thing. And it can be super easy, super simple. I just want you to find one thing that drives you nuts or is a complete time waster. or causes a time waster. Like you always forget whenever you do this type of work, you always forget to get this tool out of your house or whatever you're doing. But I want you to identify one thing and put a system, you know, it can literally just be a checklist. Just figure out a system to solve that problem. Just one. It'd take you probably five minutes.

So the profit sales system that we're talking about, you can find more information about it at our website, hammerandgrind. com forward slash the profit club, or just go to hammerandgrind. com and click on the profit club. Now I will say that we don't necessarily have a description of what the sales system entails on our website. But we teach that within our profit club, which is a private mastermind community that you have to pay that access to. So, but you can learn more about that on our website, hammerandgrind. com, the profit club.

That's it. Take it out. Take us out of here.