[00:00:07.390] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head, Heart and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.830] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.870] - Chris
I don't know what you think.
[00:00:19.230] - Brandon
It was kind of serious.
[00:00:21.170] - Chris
Should we laugh?
[00:00:25.890] - Brandon
Christopher. Christopher Nordyke
[00:00:28.970] - Chris
Yes, sir.
[00:00:30.210] - Brandon
Chris brother.
[00:00:31.970] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:00:32.480] - Brandon
You know what?
[00:00:32.860] - Brandon
You were going to talk to me about something with Matthew McConaughey.
[00:00:36.350] - Chris
What was that? Well, I don't know if you were saying something, and I pulled out the old all right.
[00:00:41.850] - Brandon
Oh, yes. That's where we were going.
[00:00:44.820] - Chris
And I asked you if you'd seen his TV show because I was totally spacing it with my 42 year old brain. It's called True Detective. You seriously have not seen that?
[00:00:55.430] - Brandon
True Detective.
[00:00:56.360] - Chris
You're a McConaughey fan.
[00:00:57.400] - Brandon
I know, but I wouldn't even
[00:00:58.260] - Chris
mr. Greenlight
[00:00:59.780] - Brandon
that was a stupid good book, by the way. I feel like Matthew McConaughey falls into the category of love or hate. Like, I talked to some people about it, and they're like, oh, yeah, he's the best. And I talked to other people. He's a dirt bag.
[00:01:12.200] - Chris
Really? Yeah.
[00:01:13.010] - Brandon
I don't know what I think the dirtbag thing is. Kind of a miss.
[00:01:15.930] - Chris
I think you need to get rid of those friends.
[00:01:17.440] - Brandon
I know, right? Yeah, I'm sure it's in my circle.
[00:01:19.650] - Chris
Who thinks McConaughey is a dirt bag? Jesus.
[00:01:22.070] - Brandon
Yeah. I think maybe they're associating his real life with some of the characters he's had because he's had some let's put it this way, he's had a few characters. I wouldn't want that persona to be introduced to my daughter.
[00:01:35.650] - Chris
That's probably the best times at Ridgemonthia. Yeah. So anyway, True Detective is an incredible I think he was the first season, they cycle through these lead characters. So if I recall correctly, it was McConaughey and I said Woody Harrelson, or Woody Harrelson was in a second season. Anyway, the True Detective fans are going to comment on her. Yeah, they'll know. But anyway, it's incredible. Yes. True Detective. You have to check it out by HBO, but I'll check it out. Jody Foster is starring in season four of True Detective, which is going to be bonkers, Jody. There we go.
[00:02:10.170] - Brandon
Is this real or this is like a series?
[00:02:13.370] - Chris
It's a series. It's like a thriller.
[00:02:14.650] - Brandon
Drama. Drama.
[00:02:15.350] - Chris
Yes. Crime drama. It's amazing. Okay.
[00:02:18.180] - Brandon
All right. Okay, dude. So it is June 16 is the date that we're recording. This particular show probably won't come out for a couple of weeks, but either way, it's going to put us in that June, maybe first week of July time frame. And here was what was on my mind today when I woke up. It's midway through the push it's midway through the year, right?
[00:02:42.770] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:02:43.320] - Brandon
And I know in our business, it's a mixed bag. Right. There's elements where we go, holy cow. We are way further along than where we thought. We're excited, we're motivated by certain aspects of our business, and then there's other parts of our business that we're a little frustrated with or maybe not quite hitting the mark that we wanted to. And I thought to myself, okay, just like, this must be a scenario that most of our listeners are in where they've established goals for 2022, and there's parts of those goals that maybe they're just destroying, and then there's other parts of their business that they certainly are seeing and saying, yeah, it's a miss. I'm not where I want to be.
[00:03:22.280] - Chris
Sure.
[00:03:22.940] - Brandon
So I wanted to tackle that a little bit today. I think my goal for it, for the most part, is a pep talk.
[00:03:28.250] - Chris
Right. Is this for our selfhelp, for the benefit of others?
[00:03:32.360] - Brandon
Yes, this is self help, and if it's helpful for somebody listening, awesome. But it's like an internal pep talk.
[00:03:41.080] - Chris
It's our podcast. We do whatever we want that's right.
[00:03:43.420] - Brandon
That maybe some folks can relate to. So my thought was with this, there's kind of a couple of camps right. Again, kind of like ours. It's kind of a mix in the same business, but I think some businesses probably have had a hell of a year.
[00:03:56.400] - Chris
Sure.
[00:03:56.980] - Brandon
That it's amazing. And I think others are frustrated. Kind of where my thought went is for those that have just been kicking ass and taking names and it's nothing but hope and momentum, there's a chance that in order to achieve that level of success you said this, that maybe we've ignored some things that may make it difficult to go six more months at that rate. And so we just kind of want to talk a little bit about, like, hey, pace yourself. What are some things you can be wary of, are aware of to make sure you can go all year right. And not burn out by September or something? And then for those might be us from time to time that are in this camp, they're frustrated. They're not where they want to be. I would say there's opportunities still. Right. We've got a whole half of the year.
[00:04:42.740] - Chris
Yeah, dude. And I think, if anything, you and I, probably in our career and I think probably some of our listeners can relate to this, too is that you're always in this not quite happy with your results, even when you're hit. I think in general, we have this somewhat positive discontent not always positive discontent of just like I think a lot of us are just wired as hard chargers where it's like, you take this one hill, and then you see the mountain beyond, you're like, all right, that's the next one up. And it's like you're always in this state of sort of semi disappointment that you feel like, okay, that could have been better. We could do more. Yeah, exactly. Right?
[00:05:19.880] - Brandon
Yeah. All right, so where do you want to hang first?
[00:05:22.700] - Chris
Let's talk about for those people. They're having a bang out here. Like, it's a breakout year. Because some of our clients are in this camp, and certainly we have colleagues and folks we've talked to, they're just while growth has really taken off in certain areas, one of the analogies that came to my mind as I was thinking about this earlier when you brought it up, I don't know, yesterday we started talking about this is this whole financial principle of rebalancing your investments. I used to be a registered investment advisor. I should correct that. I was a registered rep. I used to sell 401 KS and IRAs and stuff like that when I was a state farm agent. And one of the principles we learned is that part of being a smart investor is occasionally taking your profits off the table on one investment and reinvesting that in a different asset class, right? So you made a whole bunch of money on these stocks, but you can let it ride, or you can peel some of those profits off and reinvest it into other stocks that are down and allow them to appreciate it's. Good. Rebalancing your accounts.
[00:06:21.970] - Chris
And I think that's a principle we can use in our business where things are going really awesome. Okay. Chances are you have some underperforming stocks in your portfolio as well, right? And so peeling off some of those profits, some of that win, and transferring that energy to other classes of our business, so to speak, is usually really important. Like, you and I've seen that when we've had runaway growth nearly 100% of the time, there's some unhealth that's created in that because it's just like the adapt and overcome mindset that you get in as the work's coming in, and you're nearly always understaffed to one degree or another as you're growing fast. So it's like whether it's storm activity or it's just an underserved market you tap into that just creates a ton of growth. Chances are you have some under resourced areas of your business. It could be a process that's breaking down under the stress of the greater work, or it very well could be morale. We've been running our people too hard. We've been overclocking our production teams. But anyway, the principal came back to me from way back in my state farm days of this idea of rebalancing the accounts because it's so easy.
[00:07:37.750] - Chris
Growth is exciting for everybody until it's not. Like, until your PMS are all handling 25 files and there's no job coordinator and there's no admin support, and everybody's just grinding till eight, nine p. M. At night, trying to keep the wheels on. But there can be a temptation, I think, his senior leadership, to just keep the pedal down, like, hey, we got to make while the sun's out. And so I think that principle of way, we got to make sure we shore up our base, too. We have to catch our systems up to this level of growth. So I imagine there may be some people here that are in that position where it's like, okay, things have been really good mostly, but we're aware of some things that are not so good and maybe getting worse.
[00:08:19.640] - Brandon
Yeah, no, I think you're right on point, and I think this is a great time of the year for us to do an assessment. Right. So some folks listening are really diligent in creating performance right at the end of their previous year, and they're really doing a great job of comparing their current financials to this performance. This is that time of year. Even from that perspective. Like, if you're a bit more sophisticated and that's how you're running your operation, great job. And if that's the shoes that you're in, this is that time of year for us to really look at that and say, again, kind of staying in this. Things are really going well. Camp. We're doing great. We're killing the numbers. We're way ahead of the power curve in terms of where our performance said, okay, great. Well, what are we going to do with those resources, with those financials, with the excess right. That we've created? And is there a strategy? Is there an area of our business that we can invest in? I think this is a perfect time of year to do exactly what you're talking about and really do it from a bit of a critical eye.
[00:09:17.980] - Brandon
I think I would encourage you and I are in the state right now. We're literally doing similar things. I mean, our morning coffee walks have been focused on evaluating what we're doing. Yeah. So I think some additional areas like that we would suggest that folks are taking a look at its production manpower. Right, man woman power. Where are we at? Do we have something that's sustainable or not? And if it's not sustainable, then what can we do to invest energy and focus and prioritize initiatives? Then that will bring those pieces of the business in line? Because, again, what you're looking for here is it's exciting to grow, but what we want to encourage people to stop getting stuck in is this cycle of I grow and break all my systems. I fix them. I grow again and break all my systems. I try to fix them. You and I experienced that multiple times. There is a way, however, to prioritize growth and sustainability at the same time.
[00:10:16.780] - Chris
You know what that reminds me of, man? I think we were at Global Leadership Summit one year, and I don't remember who the figure was. It was probably, like, Patrick Lancioni or Jim Collins or one of those sort of management guru guys. But I remember them saying that the number one role of a leader, and I think you're kind of speaking to the owner of the senior leader, is building their team's capacity. And capacity is really a holistic term. It's building their professional ability. Right. There's a skill component to that, but then there's also just the capacity in terms of financial resources, staffing levels, systems, technology. That's our number one job as senior leaders, is always building the capacity of the team around us. How do we level up and prepare to do this level of business profitably moving forward? So now we have this whole new watermark, and now we're doing this many jobs per month. Whoa, this is great. The money is flowing in. The EBITDA is strong. But what needs to happen for us to be prepared to do this now forever and more?
[00:11:31.870] - Brandon
Yeah, I think another thing that we see kind of in the same category is folks that reach a certain capacity, current capacity, they're really focused on reputation and quality, which is awesome. And then you find them unwilling or afraid to continue to pursue new relationships. Right. They start not being as aggressive and follow up. Maybe they defer a meeting for a few more weeks. They inadvertently may be doing some things that actually could have a long term negative impact on their business. But it's because of the current state that they're in, they're not thinking about that far ahead. We're not really thinking about Q, one of 2023. We're just thinking about right now. And so, again, I think this still falls into that same category of in the areas that you're doing really well. Let's celebrate, let's get excited with the team. Guys, you are kicking butt. And there's these things that as a team, we need to make sure that we shore up so that we create a new level of competency and success in our business, not a cycle of success in our business. So anyways, I think that that's an area and that's challenging.
[00:12:43.290] - Brandon
Right. Because people for the right reasons are concerned, well, if I keep bringing in new work and I can't respond to it appropriately, then we could fail, we could fall down. So I guess the answer may be there or the suggestion. I wouldn't call it an answer, but the suggestion is, okay, strategically, don't get so wrapped up in going out to doing the next job that we forget as leaders, it's our job to think through capacity. How do I take on more work competently so I can continue to have my staff selling, continue to develop new relationships? And that's not always an easy answer special right now with hiring issues and struggles, but it doesn't mean that that's not a necessary part of your business to prioritize.
[00:13:29.170] - Chris
Yeah, and as we talked about this, I'm reflecting on some of our I mean, you and I've been through several really big growth seasons, and I think some of them we've handled better than others with more wisdom. And I think a flaw that we succumb to was when it's going really good as leadership, you can become the most disconnected from what's happening in the field because you're in this mode of capacity building and you're dealing with the hiring shortages, you're dealing with increased labor cost. You're dealing with all the things that come with the growth. Right. Maybe it's also you're having meetings with the bank, you're getting financing in place and all that kind of stuff. You're buying vehicles. You're doing all the things that you can lose track of where morale is at. And especially, I think you were so good at sort of building this spree decor. Like, there was this we had a high capacity for adapt and overcome in our business. And I think the thing that was a lesson for me is you can have this really powerful spree decor where you can call in anybody. It's like, you got it, boss.
[00:14:32.440] - Chris
It's just that can do attitude across the team. When it starts to break down, people.
[00:14:38.750] - Brandon
Are hesitant to say so when they hit legitimate dolls in their ability capacity.
[00:14:46.240] - Chris
Whether it's mental health, right, or physical fatigue, it's all the things we know. This stuff happens. And so that culture, that high power culture can bite you because people don't feel sometimes safe to say, boss, I'm like my marriage. Like, I haven't seen my wife for four nights in a row. She's like that kind of stuff. Like, my home life is suffering because of the load, the pressure, the timelines, and everything else. They're hesitant to bring that up. And we've had a couple of seasons like that where we realized that we probably held the pedal down too long without taking that into account. So for those of you that have been winning hard so far this year, that's a good thing to reflect on as an owner. And it's like, how do you get in touch with that? Well, certainly just by asking. And I think I think you and I discovered you have to be really deliberate about building that feedback environment. It's easy when we're developing this go go adapt and overcome culture for us to forget to also build in the culture of health sustainability. Hey, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
[00:15:56.110] - Chris
Sometimes we forget that we don't bundle that language in with it.
[00:15:59.370] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:15:59.820] - Chris
And so asking people, how are you doing? No, really, have you been having dinner with your family? Like, you getting time to manage your life. You know what I mean? Ask them those kind of questions.
[00:16:08.810] - Brandon
Yeah, because there's probably a piece of us that doesn't want to know it's.
[00:16:11.950] - Chris
Right? We don't want to be responsible for it.
[00:16:13.890] - Brandon
We don't want to slow down. We don't want to have to push, pause, or do anything that's going to slow down momentum when we feel like we're just firing on all cylinders and making progress. So, again, this is not a negative in any way. I think people need to be just absolutely on fire if they're experiencing a ton of growth and gains and momentum. And growth doesn't necessarily mean top line.
[00:16:35.540] - Chris
Sure.
[00:16:35.970] - Brandon
I mean, at the end of the day, it's about how much you keep.
[00:16:38.420] - Chris
Oh, man.
[00:16:38.920] - Brandon
And that's been a challenge. I was a leader of really challenged with. That where I was just prioritizing top line, and I needed to learn to be a better steward and keep more. At the end of the day, I think a lot of company owners, a lot of business owners, it's, like, exciting to tell somebody what your top line revenue is. But if you get honest about where the bottom line is, where that EBITDA is, it's not so sexy.
[00:17:00.850] - Chris
Yeah, we so easily right in our chats at association events and networking things like, yeah, we did 20 million last year. It's like, Yeah, but how much?
[00:17:11.470] - Brandon
What was your EBIT at five?
[00:17:12.980] - Chris
We don't talk, we don't sling around. What was your EBITDA this past year? Right?
[00:17:17.020] - Brandon
Yeah. But at the end of the day, I mean, that's a health number. So anyways, that where I was going.
[00:17:21.600] - Chris
With what's your turnover? What's your EBITDA?
[00:17:24.850] - Brandon
What are these business stats that really point towards whether or not this is sustainable? And have you grown to a point where this is a new operational capacity versus a flash in the pan? So, anyways, kudos to you guys. If you're in this zone and you're just motivated and pumped up because your business is just firing on all cylinders, great job. Continue to be excited. Those are great assessment times. Like, if you're evaluating some of the areas that you need to continue to make progress in to keep up with the growth, those are great problems, so be motivated by them. But as a reminder, don't stop looking because things look good on the top line.
[00:18:05.640] - Chris
And I think it's so important because we have so many models inside and outside of our industry to look to, is that there also is a cautionary element of too, is when we're sprinting like that, we're in the midst of a big sprint. Is that long term? That's not how we went. Like, Jim Collins in his book good grade, I think, right? Yeah. He talks about how the most legendary, enduring, great companies of our time, they led what he called the 20 miles march. Like, it's more of a plodding behavior. 1ft in front of the other. We don't skip a step. We don't miss a step. It's just 1ft in front of the other. It's like we're going for first downs here. We're not going for a touchdown.
[00:18:47.690] - Brandon
Every play, consistency compounds.
[00:18:50.210] - Chris
And I like that because I think where you and I see that what can become an error when you just have the pedal down and it's all growth, is we start to get loose with our battle rhythms.
[00:19:00.030] - Brandon
Yes. Production meetings, the works coming in.
[00:19:03.200] - Chris
Oh, guys, we can't do our production meeting this week, but we'll catch up next week. And then next week, the production meeting moves from Wednesday to a Friday afternoon, and three out of five people show up because they had vacation plans. And then all of a sudden our dashboard is dirty. We've not been managing the stuff that's making us successful.
[00:19:24.080] - Brandon
That's right. Yeah, because I think what a lot of people get twisted and again, I'm saying this more out of personal reminder than anything else. We forget, like as an example, that in order for us to have the resources that we need to hire staff appropriately spend on overhead where appropriate to sustain these new workloads, these new work cases, what we forget is if we stop doing process, the process that protects our service delivery, our customer experience, our margins, our profit, our cash flow, those are the things that we begin to skip when we get sucked up by these sprints. And inevitably what that means then is we're not going to have the resource a the work might not come again because we've tarnished our reputation or provided a poor customer experience. So it's a one and done. Right. So we exposed ourselves to all these potential referral, relationships, partnerships, clients, and we crap the bed because we were so caught up in gathering more contracts versus providing quality. Obviously there are downsides to that. You're going to feel the pain in the near future. But then also it's like if I don't have the money to put back into my business and support the growth because I let margins slip because we weren't having our production meetings, I let stuff get choked up in pre production.
[00:20:48.190] - Brandon
It felt good that we had all this labor or all this contracted revenue on the board, but we're not producing it right, because we're letting those battle rhythms slip. So anyway, it's just a word of encouragement. Like, guys, those battle rhythms are mission critical. Even more so the busier we get because it ensures that we're still providing the level of service that protects our reputation and we're still keeping enough money at the end of the day that we have something to reinvest into shoring up those areas that need our support. So again, it's very symbiotic, right? We just really no parts of our business are a silo. And man, again, hats off to you if that's the position you're in, because those are great problems.
[00:21:28.430] - Chris
But careful not to craft the bed. But don't we all have a whole unique visual here after the Amber heard and Johnny death thing, it's like that term, don't crap the bed, right? We all know what it means. But boy, is that coming to vivid color for all of us here.
[00:21:41.970] - Brandon
Superstars. Oh my goodness, you're not alone in your business hazards, I guess.
[00:21:48.970] - Chris
All right, let's take a minute to recognize and thank our MIT restauranty sponsor, Accelerate Restoration Software. And I'm fully aware by the way, that when I say those last two words, restoration software, that that instantly creates heartburn for some of you out there. Right? Because we probably all fall into one of two camps when it comes to software. We've either cobbled together kind of a version of free website tools and spreadsheets just to make our business work. Or we're in the camp where we've adopted one of these existing restoration platforms, one that has all the bells and whistles and supposedly does it all, but we can't get our team to consistently adopt it and input information to it.
[00:22:33.810] - Brandon
Yeah, and that's really where Accelerate has honed their focus. They've created a system that's simple, right? It's intuitive, and it focuses on the most mission critical information. I e, guys, your team will actually use it.
[00:22:48.780] - Chris
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[00:23:12.230] - Brandon
Yeah. Imagine, guys, how your business would change if your entire team was actually consistently using the system. Do yourself a favor. Go check these guys [email protected] MRM, and check out the special offers they're providing to MRM listeners.
[00:23:32.050] - Chris
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[00:24:12.280] - Brandon
Yeah, three of the kind of big things that stuck out to me when being introduced to AI and their team. First off is this consistently updated training. I mean, at the end of the day, these guys are the experts. They're out front all the time. They're constantly learning new trade secrets and ensuring that your team's got access to those things. A 3700 plus page database of exact amount templates. I don't know what else to say here other than don't reinvent the wheel. It's already available. Download it, copy it, use it. Bam database of commonly missed items. I think this is huge. So many of us can change the numbers by just moving the needle a couple of points, and those commonly missed items can make all the difference in the world. So go check them out at Value gitinsights.org FCG. Okay, dude, the camp that is not so excited. It's been a slog. It's been six months of uphill battle, and people are kind of looking at the business so far this year, and they've been chasing a goal. Revenue is not where they want it to be, maybe. Or just their EBITDA is atrocious something's happening and they're not very motivated by what they've experienced so far.
[00:25:27.740] - Brandon
What's kind of like the top of mind things that you would say to somebody in those shoes?
[00:25:33.080] - Chris
Well, speaking from our own experience operating in the field and also working with clients of all different company sizes, everybody has those seasons. Sometimes they come in the second half of the year, and sometimes they come as a hard slog at the beginning. But I think most often when we're not hitting the reasonable targets that we set out for ourselves, in a lot of ways, the exercise is the same as if you're winning, right. It's shoring up the other areas of your business and stepping back and saying, okay, what part of our system is unhealthy at the moment? Right. And building health back into that. But oftentimes it's legion. Like, where are we pulling the business from? That's our first step in salvaging our year. Right. It's figuring out, what's our sales problem? And when we have a client who comes to us that's got a sales problem, the very first thing we're looking at is, first of all, what are their internal systems to produce the work? Because as somebody who's been in sales b to B cells for more than 20 years, you can certainly find those sales people who can sell Ice to eskimos that whole stereotypical comment about salespeople.
[00:26:43.600] - Chris
Those people are out there and they'll sell turds in a punch bowl to somebody who's willing to buy. But the reality for most of us who are what I would consider principled salespeople, we're putting our name and our own reputation out there to rep a service brand. When there's service delivery issues, there's moral issues in your company, when there's leadership behaviors that are out of line, it is very hard for a principled sales executive to go out and rep that brand with the same energy and gusto and drive that you would want them to and that they would otherwise be willing to give. Yeah. So the very first reflection point, I think, if you're not where you're at in terms of your top line or bottom line goals or whatever other goals you may have laid out for yourself is what is the overall health of the operation of our business? Because that may very well be holding your salespeople back or salesperson or you as the owner that's doing the sales. I think sometimes we don't even realize why we have so much call reluctance to get out in the field and meet with those property managers and senior to go after the business.
[00:27:54.510] - Chris
Even as an owner, when you know your company is broke, like broken in terms of health and process and systems and stuff like that, even for you, it's hard to go out and sell, you know what I mean?
[00:28:05.740] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:28:06.420] - Chris
And so that's the first place to start 100%.
[00:28:10.040] - Brandon
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting perspective. I think you're right on there. I would encourage folks to say this is at some point you've got to stop looking backwards. And I think what happens is we look in the rear view mirror at this time of year and we go man we had a lot of misses. Okay, yes, that is true. There's nothing you can do to go backwards in time. So let's evaluate what essentially created those misses. So like if we had set out objectives for our business and we didn't hit them, what was the cause of that? So don't just look back in a woe is me but let's look back cause and effect.
[00:28:48.590] - Chris
Absolutely.
[00:28:49.280] - Brandon
Disconnect yourself personally from it reputationally and just look at the data and say well what happened? Well did we miss battle rhythms? Were we not meeting with the teams regularly? Was there no follow up or measuring of these goals that we set for ourselves? Was there a lack of resources to identify whether we were making progress or not making progress? Did we wait too long and look at everything in past versus what change can we modify now to have a positive effect tomorrow? And I would just say once you're done doing that evaluation identify the kinds of activities and behaviors that your team has to commit to to make the next six months as productive as possible. And there are times where we see businesses that are able to make up for losses from the first part of the year. Like it goes so well that they still end up at the same finish line they were anticipating because they identify what slowed them down and they go whole hog into fixing those problems.
[00:29:50.350] - Chris
We had that. I mean if anything that was maybe more our mo because we were so committed to being good. So we'd have kind of a slow rolling start and that the lack of hitting our goals was so motivational to us. Right. And I think there's a lot of people like that. I would just offer too. I think one of the best ways to get a grip on what's happening in your business or not happening if you're not exactly what you want is to rededicate yourself to grabbing time out in the field as an owner or a GM.
[00:30:21.820] - Brandon
Key leader. Key leader.
[00:30:23.190] - Chris
You're a key leader and that's the thing is whether you had a bang up here so far in terms of top line or whatever stuff you're measuring or you're behind goal or you're disappointed in your current results right. It's a great kind of pause break to say okay, am I really in touch with what's happening in the field here? Because man, I remember you took me out. We did a rely on when I first came onto the company. You took me around. We did some job size system QA visits and you have a standard as the key leader that I think unless you're inspecting that standard, it's so easy for that standard just to droop and slump. Right? And so getting out of the field helps you see things the way they really are, both in terms of how your employees are doing individually. But then where are our standards at from where we were when owners started the business, before we ever had a GM, what was my standard when I was showing up to a job site? What did I feel like? Was our differentiators that we were bringing to our customer? Is that stuff still real or is it just something that we talk about but we miss by 5% or 10% or 15% or 20%?
[00:31:31.560] - Brandon
No, right on. Yeah, because ultimately that bleeds into the other things again, that's reputation, it's getting the next referral, it's the happy client that tells somebody it's the five star.
[00:31:40.710] - Chris
Reviews, all of that.
[00:31:41.920] - Brandon
It's all those things. Yeah, I think you're right on point. I think that the piece here for folks is that we kind of run into a principle issue where it's like, for instance, let's say my Mitigation team, we're struggling. We're not hitting margins as a department. Maybe dry times have started to extend beyond where we can support it and get paid appropriately. Right. Like there's all these little things that might begin to pop up. And I think as a GM or a business owner, you're like, I hired a department head for a reason to share that load. And they are ultimately, from a performance perspective, responsible for that outcome. But I think what can happen is when we do a review and we find out things are not going the way that we want, instead of stepping in and taking, I feel like people fall into two camps. They voice their frustration, they are aggravated. They do some threatening. They bitch about it to friends and peers. Or the other camp is they get in and they start doing themselves. They show that they've lost trust. Then they divert all their attention away from these long term spaces that you should be in strategically as a leader.
[00:32:54.130] - Brandon
And they start doing fixing being the answer to this department issue. And I would just suggest that there's a place in the middle that's probably the right move. And what I mean by that is we sit down with our key leader, we evaluate the performance in very black and white terms, and we express the fact that we are frustrated and that we are nowhere near where we anticipated being. But then instead of chastising and staying in this mode of fix it or I'm going to kill you, fix it, I'm going to fire you saying this now, let's get engaged. Kind of like what you're talking about with getting out in the field is partner with that department head for a while, ask questions, go out into the field together, assess where the problems are, where the challenges are, how did we get caught off guard and partner in finding resolutions to those things instead of, again, falling in one of those two camps? Because if we take over and begin to micromanage, we're not equipping that leader to make any gains professionally. They'll never be capable of owning the role like we want them to.
[00:33:57.710] - Brandon
If we take over, if we don't sit down and partner with them and we just do that, I'm going to bitch to everybody else but the person. Again, you're not equipping them to make change. You're just going to continue to bleed on a salary of somebody that's not equipped yet to do the job at the capacity they need to. And so, again, I just encourage people, like, we even talked about this with problem solving. Sometimes AR would climb way out of control and I could get all pissed and principled about it and not reward team members for making gains or all those things. But we've always encouraged people, let's get a win. Who cares? Put your pride down. What is it going to take to get a win? Well, my team's tired too. Let's motivate them. Even though it's their job in quotes, let's give them motivation to tackle this problem. I think we need to treat our issues, our production issues, the same way when we're missing Mark, when we're not hitting the goals that we've set for ourselves.
[00:34:49.170] - Chris
Yeah. Questions like what do you feel like would need to happen? What would need to change about your day to day schedule? What would you need in terms of resources to turn a corner here? Right. What do you think needs to happen within our team for us to salvage our goal with the remainder of the year? Right. What resources do you think you would need to get the gross profit margin up to here, in your mind? What do you think the team is lacking that maybe has contributed to us coming in under goal? Yeah, those kinds of questions, and ultimately, a lot of times people know the answers and then every now and then you have kind of a bad apple or somebody that just refuses to reflect and shift gears and they want to instead transfer blame and all that kind of stuff. And then you get those people off the team. But most people want to do well. They do.
[00:35:41.740] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:35:42.240] - Chris
Most people, they're embarrassed when they don't hit Mark.
[00:35:45.490] - Brandon
Yeah. There's guilt, there's shame, there's all the things associated with it. Yes. No, I think that's right on. I think the other thing that I would encourage people is if we've missed so far this year, just adopt the discipline of consistent inspecting of what we expect. That's not a thing I made up. In fact, I think it was a franchise owner in our market that I met early on in my restoration career that made a comment like that. And I just remember how it just stuck to me of when I started to see system problems, it was normally because I had stopped inspecting what I expected. You know what I mean? I'm an optimist. So it's like, hey, we had a great conversation and set the stage for expectations. You do it now, right? And I think that we see that happen. We see business leaders get disconnected from inspecting what we expect and that's how we look back on a quarter or a half of a year and realize, oh man, that sucked. And so I would just encourage people moving forward and there's a lot of overlap right between these two camps. But I would just say moving forward, you've got to adopt that and prioritize that battle rhythm mentality of I'm going to be consistent in production meetings.
[00:36:56.320] - Brandon
We are going to be consistent in quarterly all company meetings and raw, raw sessions. We're going to be consistent in these day to day battle rhythms because when I am, it helps me prevent us from missing the mark because we see it earlier and we can still do something proactive to affect change. Whereas once you start looking in the rear view mirror, you're hosed. There's not a lot that you can do to effect change at that point. So again, I want to say this with Positivity.
[00:37:23.450] - Chris
Sure.
[00:37:23.800] - Brandon
Like, guys, you got a whole six months to turn things around, to grind hard, to affect very positive change. And if it doesn't get to the finish line that you anticipated, you can still be excited about the fact that you adopted behaviors, systems, process priorities that showed you that you could make gains over the next six months. So even if you missed the mark at the end of the year because the first six months was so, such a bummer, show yourself and your team that when you guys commit to something, you can affect positive change in your business and use that to roll right into 2023 with a ton of momentum.
[00:38:02.670] - Chris
I think we'd be remiss if we didn't circle back and talk a little bit more about sales, though, because so much like the ground is shifting in our industry when it comes to sales and really probably all the entire home services sector and the services sector, like how people buy, how much noise there is in the market, and then just some of the fundamental changes that have happened in our industry with TPAs and with centralization of claims units and just like the rewriting of claims policy and how claims are handled and adjudicated in our industry, it's really affected us. It's affected our ability to sell. And I think many of us are still to one degree or another, stuck in this promotional sales behavior where we have little or no leadership over the sales process. We're really just waving our flag. We're dropping in. We're filling candy jars. We're putting smiley, enthusiastic, attractive people out in the field talking to people knocking on doors, but we're really just promoting ourselves rather than selling. And so if you're behind goal from a top line perspective or you're just not where you want to be, that's something to consider is how are we selling?
[00:39:12.970] - Chris
Are we relying on our old strategies that for years and years made the phone ring and now it's not, I think, taking a really open minded view of do we need to shift the way we're thinking and approaching our sales? Because I think we all intuitively know that the candy and smiles route routine of just doing this rah rah kind of approach is not creating the same results that it used to. It was no doubt it was very effective. It was the only way that any of us were really playing to a large degree. But I think all of us have noticed and for some of us, it's snuck up on us with the old ways we've continued to invest in it, but maybe we haven't been monitoring our sales and the breakdown of ourselves to realize, hey, holy cow, we used to generate two and a half million from agents. And last year, boy, now that we look at it, it was only 1.6%. But we get some business from other sources and that it just kind of covers up what's really happening.
[00:40:10.130] - Brandon
Instead of adding two, we just fill the hole.
[00:40:12.700] - Chris
Exactly. We just rob Peter to pay paul right. So I think it's really important as companies, as we continue to move forward in the industry and it sounds like a broken record. You guys see this a lot from floodlight. It is so important that we tap into what's real about our customer situation, understanding, curiosity, what is their experience been with restoration in the past? Rather than just banging our drum, instead it's asking them to bang their drum. Tell me about what you got going on. Tell me what you don't like about restoration. Tell me about your last damage event. What went well in that process and what would you have changed? Right. What made that experience difficult for you and your operations team? Going through that whole thing with XYZ Restoration Company, understanding our customers situation and their past experience with our industry and frankly, even just services, it's so important.
[00:41:10.880] - Brandon
And I think you've got to follow that with a willingness to adapt operations to meet those needs. Once you know what the situation requires, you're going to have to make some changes.
[00:41:21.590] - Chris
It's true. Right. And this all fits together. And that's something that we drill on a ton with our clients. And when we're speaking and doing stuff and you hear it, those of you listen to our podcast, right? It all fits together. Right. So we talk about one of the activities we do with our clients is the Pain Solution table. And first we introduce it. It's all about the sales side of it. It's okay. What are the most common pain points that our clients are experiencing, we've encountered and we all intuitively know a lot of these. If you've been in the industry for more than a minute, we know where we fall down.
[00:41:51.540] - Brandon
Right?
[00:41:52.360] - Chris
But then the other side of that activity is creating these systems and processes and concrete solutions to that pain. That's our whole business is knowing what our customers pain is and then building our business around the solutions to that pain.
[00:42:08.160] - Brandon
That's how we win, right?
[00:42:09.500] - Chris
That's how we win. And it looks different for every business. Right. Like for the Belfours and ATI's and first on sites, a big problem they're addressing, big pain point is scale. And so they figured out scale. They know how to operate in a international level and for them, that's a massive problem they solve for some clients. We all need to know what is it that we're solving for and how anyway?
[00:42:34.370] - Brandon
And I think that that's a real tactical way for people to affect the next six months. So again, if you're sitting in this position where you're not hitting the goals, you're not making the progress that you anticipated, let's do a deep dive into I say let's you need to do a deep dive into your sales process. What are you doing? Are you repeating things that you've always done? There could lie the problem. And so I'd say maybe the wrap up. That idea is be decisive. Don't get caught up in the frustration, the pity, right. That trough for sorrows, which a lot of us do. Man, the medicating. I'm hitting three IPAs when I get home because I'm just so frustrated with my business. Now is the time to man or woman up and affect the next six months. I would say be decisive where you see issues, where you find that the problem existed and how it prevented you from succeeding this first six months, get.
[00:43:29.070] - Chris
Aggressive, be decided, be open minded too. And I think the ego thing right, man, it's really hard not to admit defeat, but I think when you're the one driving the vision and the strategy, it can feel really hard to just have that come to Jesus meeting, so to speak, with yourself and your key leaders. Because part of the process is maybe admitting I think I misdirected us. I think I missed the mark. I think the plan we laid out here's where I think it was flawed and that was me, the owner, the GM, whatever, there is a piece of that and there's a piece that also really creates builds a lot of confidence with your team. Oh, my gosh. When you're willing to humble yourself as the key leader and say, you know what? I think I sent us down the wrong path this first part of the year and here's where I think we need to go instead. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. The trust that's built the trust in the esprit decor and people's willingness to follow you for the second half and really grind on it to save the day is so much greater when the owner says, you know what, guys?
[00:44:30.060] - Chris
Here's where I think I let us in the wrong direction so far this year. Here's where I think I failed to equip you guys for the stuff that I was asking you to do. I don't think I put the resources in that you guys needed to actually be able to do this. So, listen, we all probably have ways we can be better. Here are some of those things. Let's talk about it. What needs to change?
[00:44:50.520] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:44:51.290] - Chris
I want your input, and it's positive. Totally positive.
[00:44:55.360] - Brandon
It's a positive thing. I think we can struggle with assessment and after action reviews as they are intended to be something negative. And the reality of it is that game changers make games because they're willing to assess their existing performance and adapt changes to make it better.
[00:45:12.520] - Chris
Honestly, honestly. Just get it the truth. It's like, that's how we sell. We want to know the customer's truth. We don't ever want to sell against truth. Right. They have a service provider that they love. Great. They're not a hot prospect right now. And likewise, get to the truth of what's happening in your business. Figure out what's real, not what we say about ourselves, not what we think should be. Where are we at, and then how do we get from here to the next thing?
[00:45:39.840] - Brandon
Right on, dude. Okay, guys, listen. You're six months in. Some of you are happy as a lark. And where you're at, kudos to you. Evaluate your team. Shore up the missing parts to keep up with that growth. Make sure it's a healthy trajectory that you're on, not just one adding top line. If you're behind the power curve, guys, it's okay. You got six more months to adapt. Change. You can do it. Stay motivated. Stay in the trench. Keep the pedal down. There's lots of opportunities in front of us to ensure that 2022 ends on a strong note, and we go into 23 excited about our business. So hang in there. Good luck. We'll see you next time. All right, everybody.
[00:46:22.640] - Chris
Heath.
[00:46:22.910] - Brandon
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boot.
[00:46:26.230] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show but you love this episode, please hit follow. Only known to subscribe? Write us a review, or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.