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(Cont.) The Cost Of Almost Right

Ty Cobb Backer 0:00

And we are back. Episode 326. The cost of almost right. How small, misses, destroy trust, margins, and momentum. We have a kind of a belief system that either we're gonna push you up or gonna push you out. I don't want to be around five other people that aren't pushing themselves to succeed. Success isn't about taking, but giving value first. Compensation follows contribution always. This is true. Authenticity, it's the truth. Every week, this is our story. We share with you our journey, we share with you our scars. Please welcome your host, Ty Cobb Backer. 326 weeks in a row. And there has been a couple few weeks there over the years where I was like, screw this, screw that, and screw everyone because I am not up for the challenge. But we did her, we've done it. 326 of these buggers, and then something, and then some. So, anyhow, uh today's uh title would be the cost of almost right, where uh good enough sometimes just isn't good enough, and that's that's uh part of one of our core values, and we've we've been getting ramped up and geared up for this roofing season, and we've been having a lot of a lot of meetings and stuff, and uh I've noticed a lot of things, especially over the past several months, which I've shared with you guys, and and not just necessarily over the last couple few months, but over the years of of trying to perfect this thing, and it's virtually impossible. What worked last year is not going to work this year. It's it's it's already obvious, and and I've experienced that many, many, many times in my career where you know nothing nothing seems to be very static. Uh, it's very fluid, and you have to learn how to adapt, change, adjust, uh, improve, grow, stretch, bend, please, and uh sometimes even step on people's toes to make these things happen. But heavy is the head that wears the crown, and uh we all know that. But uh I I think uh most roofing companies don't lose because of some giant catastrophe. I think they lose because of a thousand little things, right? The the almost right, almost got it, you know, and the you know, where the the estimate, the estimate is, you know, almost clear, the timeline is almost communicated, the crew is almost prepared, the customer is almost confident, and and almost is where you know profit leaks, trust erodes, and momentum dies, right? So today I want to talk about something that hurts more companies than big failures ever will. Okay, and that is the cost of being almost right. Most businesses are watching for disasters, you know. From my experience, I'm like, I constantly have my head on swivel looking for these huge disasters, right? But but they're obvious. The the big, huge disasters for me are obvious. But what has snuck up on me is is the small misses and the accumulation of all these small misses, right? The the vague scopes, the the half-ass handoffs, the the text message that never got sent, the the expectations that you know were were never clear or clarified. The homeowner who is not mad enough to complain, but not not happy enough to refer us. Almost almost right feels safe in the moment, but over time almost gets very expensive. So today I want to break down where almost right shows up, what what it actually costs, and and how great operators eliminate them. Not only eliminate them, but collaborate on them, find out what we've learned. We had a meeting yesterday. My one of my questions during that meeting was so okay, we had a little taste, little dose last week of of what this season's gonna be like. And I was like, so what did what did we learn? And I had to ask the question three or four times because I don't think they were picking up what I was putting down, but but what what of what are we learning here? Every day is is a learning experience. What can I do better today? Where did I drop the ball yesterday? Where did I drop the ball last week? And and where can I where can I pick up the pace? Where can I show up five minutes earlier? Where can I get a week out in front of my schedule for you know next week? You know, all of those things. And it's like we we have to define those almost moments. Okay, those almost right moments, you know, and and my main point is almost right is is is not total incompetence. It is the it's the it's actually the the dangerous middle ground where things look good enough on the surface, but but but they're not clean enough to scale, right? And if you know anything about me, I'm all about scale. And and you know, just for an example, okay, um the estimate was sent, but the stone the the homeowner still asked questions. Um salesperson closed the deal, but production did not get a clean handoff. And I'm speaking from experience, like none of this shit is is made up. Um crew shows up, but the customer did not know they were coming. Um, and and one of the areas that we've lacked was is not having enough communication with the homeowner, not letting them know when we're coming. Um, job gets finished up, but final follow-up never happens. Um, that can hold up money. COC doesn't get signed. Uh, we don't even know if the the customer's happy. We send the pay per click. We're wondering for a month why they haven't clicked off on the thing, and we're thinking everybody has taken care of it, but no one actually suited up, showed up, and took accountability of following the next step. Um, you know, supplements uh was submitted, but but no one owned the next step. The office assumed sales handled it. Uh production assumed uh the the homeowner understood. Um, you know, almost right creates almost trust, almost profit, almost loyalty. If if if you have ever looked back, okay, and I've done this, if you've ever looked back at a problem and thought, man, that should not have turned out into such a frickin' mess. None of that drama should ever happen. Chances are it started out almost right. You know, you you you didn't have the color selection sheet, you didn't follow up with the homeowners to close the deal enough, like whatever. And that's where I say, like all of these little things, okay, add up. And and it's this this is why it's a dangerous problem. Okay, big mistakes get attention, okay. They they're glaring, they stand out, they they usually get fixed pretty quickly, but small mistakes get repeated. Okay, big failures cause us to have meetings, make make uh changes, retraining, policy changes, but small failures get rationalized. People say things like, I've done it, I've said it's fine. Um we got through it. It only happened once. That customer was difficult, anyways. We've all said it, we've all heard it, it's all BS, literally at the end of the day. But that same pattern keeps happening in small ways, right? And what that creates, right, that our margins erode, team frustration, rework, customer confusion, more callbacks, slower cash flow, bad reviews, fewer referrals, leadership fatigue. I get burnt out. I know my team does. And almost right is expensive because it rarely shows up on one line item. It shows up everywhere. You don't feel the full cost of almost right in one job. You feel it across 50 jobs where almost right shows up in our company, and and I would say in probably most roofing companies. Okay. That's that's what I have most um experience in. That's what I'm gonna talk about today. Is uh roofing companies. Is I'm gonna I'm gonna start with sales. That's pretty good shit. Okay, so sales. Sales. Um rep goes out, he builds uh rapport, but does not fully set the expectations of the process. Okay, they promised fast timelines without checking uh reality. Okay, they sell the job, but not the process. Notes are incomplete, scope is not airtight, photos are missing, the homeowner feels sold but not led. A sold customer is not always a secure customer, okay. And then what that does, that trickles out into uh production. So crew goes, does good work, but um the arrival communication is weak. Okay, materials are almost correct, but not fully verified. Cleanup was decent, but not memorable. Okay. Small details get missed because everyone is moving fast. I get it. I get it. Production does not lose trust only by doing bad work, it loses trust by creating uncertainty. I've seen it, I've watched it, I've been involved with it, I'm guilty of it. And that's why I want to discuss this today. Um, because these are all things that we have and will probably continue to to uh experience, but being aware of it, I believe, is is 80% of the battle. Knowing that we there are things that we need to improve upon. Um, and like I had mentioned earlier, what happened what worked last year is not gonna work for us this year. I know that for a fact because I know for a fact that that what we did last year um is not we're not replicating what we did last year. It's not gonna be the same company, it's not we're not gonna be the same people. Um our are um there's a few different individuals on our team. We actually have more people on our team. Why? Because we're preparing for a better year this year, because we want to scale, and that's why we're having this conversation today. Okay. Then that bleeds out into um, you know, the office, the admin side of stuff. Um, insurance paperwork is is mostly handled by um um mishandled, misplaced. No one knows what the scope of work is. Uh scheduling is is mostly correct, but um changes do not get clearly relayed. Um invoices go out, but follow-up is inconsistent. Okay, that's probably one of the biggest things that we suffer from. Silence creates stories. Okay, customers usually write the wrong story in their heads, just like we do. Okay. Leadership sees issues, but do not correct them early enough. That's that's something that I've I've been guilty of myself. I see my team do it. Um, and it's it's again, we we start co-signing these these little deficiencies, right? Nobody got hurt, we got through it. It only happened once. They were a difficult client, yada, yada, yada. Standards are implied, not documented, right? And that's where you have to document everything. Document the process, document the the steps, document everybody's role. So that way everything is clear on what everybody's job is supposed to supposed to be and what happens when. And accountability depends on mood. Okay. Um, and I'm guilty of that. I'll hold myself to a higher standard, the days that I feel good, and it's definitely more difficult on the days that I don't feel so good. And I think that's human nature. Okay, so when the standard is fuzzy, almost right becomes normal. When we continuously allow these little things to continue to slip through the cracks, um, the message becomes very unclear. So what almost right actually cost, right? Now moving from uh concept to to consequences, um, first off, it's gonna cost profit. Rework costs money, okay? Callbacks cost money, miscommunication cost money, scope confusion costs money, delays cost money, bad handoffs cost money, discounts to calm upset customers cost money. Sometimes you do not lose money because the job was hard, you lose money because the process was sloppy. Okay, then trust homeowners do not judge only the roof, they judge the clarity, they judge the responsiveness, they judge the confidence. If if they ever feel confused, okay, they start wondering what else we're missing. What what else what else is being missed? Okay, customers rarely say they were almost great. They either trust you or they don't trust you. That's the bottom line. Okay, I never got a five-star review stating that uh they were only three days late. Uh they put the wrong color shingles on, but they made it right. Um, my sales rep never got back to me. I reached out to him 15 times, but the roof was great. Five star. Nope, not happening. Not happening, okay. Then it starts to affect um the team morale. Okay, small breakdowns create blame because nobody wants to get in trouble. Why? I don't know. Nobody wants to take the fall, nobody wants to be held accountable, nobody wants to admit they're wrong, which is BS. Right? So these small breakdowns start to create blame. Okay, sales blames production, production blames the office, office blames sales, leadership gets pulled into preventable drama. Okay, confusion is expensive, but blame is even more expensive. Okay, and then it messes with the momentum. Every little mess steals attention, every little bit, every little detail that you're missing, you're messing up, and that you don't feel is a very big deal, steals my attention, steals leadership's attention, steals the service department attention. And then how about the guy that's got to run around and pick up all this stuff? If he's going back to the same job 15 different times because we got the wrong color, this and the and short that, and and things are just very unclear. Almost right will keep the company busy, but not necessarily better. And I I feel that, I felt that, I've done that, I've created that myself. And I'm gonna tell you why teams fall into this trap. Okay. Speed. Everyone is moving fast. I get it. I get it. I expect them to. We need to have that sense of urgency. Everybody needs to be catered to at all times. We deal with the general public. I get it. We have things going on in home. Kids are sick, half days of school, all these things that life just happens, right? And then we're at work most of the time, but we're also trying to maintain, you know, our our home life as well, too, and keep our significant other um, you know, happy and satisfied and present, and all those things that we've talked about, right? And and fast feels productive, but speed without clarity creates we rework. And that's that's why I'm talking about, you know, it these few simple little things that we miss that add up. And it's usually the first five things that I mentioned, right? We get very familiar, you know. Um, we we know our process so well that that we assume I think other people know it becomes trivial. We we we think um the people that we work with or or that we're in charge of should know how things go, and we lack on details because we think it's obvious. Well, I told you to go over there and cut the trees. Well, that's what I did. I went over and cut the trees. Yeah, well, but you didn't rake up all the dead branches and the leaves and then leaf blow it and make it look better than it was when you got there. You gotta write the whole story out. You have to write out your expectations, okay? And and you start to skip steps because you feel like these things are should just be obvious. Unfortunately, it's called work, and a lot of times you got to put a lot of work into the details if you want the job to go off without a hitch. Okay. Tolerance teams slowly normalize mess. Okay, it drives me crazy and it starts at the shop. How that shop looks drives me up the freaking wall. Okay, and it starts there, trickles out into the work vehicles, and then it trickles out into on to the job sites. It does, I don't care what anybody says. What used to bother you no longer gets addressed. Okay. I'm assuming the shop being a mess no longer bothers anybody else but me. So it just becomes normal. You step over stuff, the donuts sit there for three weeks that was there, ordered. Just I it's just it's a mess. Drives me freaking crazy that that's become normal. Okay, people stop taking um ownership. It's a lack of ownership. Everyone touches it, no one wants to take full responsibility over it. Nobody wants to most process problems are not intelligent problems, they are ownership problems. People just need to take ownership. This whole it's not my job thing, it's BS. It's everyone's job to clean the shop. It's everyone's job to make sure that the the customer's happy. It's everyone's job to make sure everyone gets home safely. It's everyone's job. Unfortunately, you have to. Okay. And this is the thing. No one measures the hidden cost, right? The the we count, we count uh revenue, we count closing rates, we count the jobs, we we track our KPIs, right? But but no one counts uh confusion, no one counts preventable callbacks. Um do we count jobs that finish without creating a referral? You know, um do we do we count the preventable um callbacks? No, but these are things that we that we we we probably should start counting. Um you know, and what gets there's an old saying, what is it? What what gets tolerated gets repeated? And what gets repeated becomes culture. So a shithole shop is our culture. That's all the better we are. How to fix it? I don't know. Move from almost right to operational progress. I wanted To say excellence, but let's face it, no one or nothing is perfect. And I think if we're all kind of rowing in the right direction and and we're trying to progress and we're meeting each other halfway and we're helping out, I think I could I could settle for you know progress. So what does done right actually mean? Um I don't know. I guess I can give a couple examples here. So um every sole job gets a uh same-day handoff note, every homeowner gets a pre uh production walk or at least a call. Every job has an arrival expectation um set, every change order gets documented, every final walkthrough includes one clear ask for a review and a referral. Excellence or progress, rather, is not a vibe, should be the standard. Progress is the standard, right? So we got to tighten up the handoffs. You know, most pain lives between departments. I see it, I watch it, we have a meeting every week between pros and ops. You know, what what actually does sales, you know, owe production? Like what is production, what is production's expectations from the sales department? What exactly does production owe the office? You know, what is that process defining these processes? What exactly does the office owe the customer? You know, and a lot of these things aren't written down, a lot of these things, and for us it is, okay. And through trial and error and not painting the picture clear enough of like what job descriptions are, you know, and the one thing that kind of irritates me sometimes, like when you ask someone to actually write out their job description and they take offense to that, they have no idea what it is that we're trying to do here. Not trying to say that um you're not doing enough. What I'm trying to say is so I can write it down so we all have a clear idea of what it is that you do on a day-to-base, day-to-day basis, and where your job overlaps. So then the other departments next to you that you overlap with will actually know what to expect from you. So um, what exactly does the leader inspect? Right? That is one of the biggest things. People come to expect what you inspect. Okay. Great companies do not just do work well, do not just do great work, they they transfer work well, and that's the whole point. That's the whole point of what it is I'm trying to say. We got to remove assumptions, okay? Never assume the customer understands. The rep has to communicate it. The crew needs to know, the office needs to know. Someone else, you know. Um, I think that's the thing like, well, I thought you were gonna take care of it. Um, I thought you explained that well. Well, they've worked for us before, but not every job's the same. So we got to write out, we got to send pictures, we got to take photos, we got to write notes, we gotta, we gotta share these things, you know, because and I'm guilty of this. I am so guilty of thinking things are trivial because we do it all the time. We do it all the time. Assumption is one of the most expensive habits in business, from my experience. Okay. So what we have to do sometimes, and we haven't talked about this for a while, but it's like auditing the customer journey, walk the job as if you are the homeowner, okay? And ask yourself the question. What did they hear first? What did the homeowner hear first? What did they know after signing? Do they know what to expect after they sign with us? Sam's gonna send this out. You're gonna click on this, we'll get your deposit, materials will be ordered, and then in three days, we'll call you to schedule a job. Okay, and then what happens while they wait? Okay, what happens on build day? Who shows up? Who's the first face on job site? Is it your crew? Is it your leadership? You know, they need to know this. We need to know this. Okay, and what happens when the job's finished? Who's there? Who's the last face on the job? Who's collecting final payment? Right? And it needs to be the same, not like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I don't feel like doing it today, so I'm just gonna send it to Sam. Sam's just gonna send the pay-per-click thing and da da da da da da. Okay, with that comes uncertainty. Uncertainty for the homeowner. If we change our process up all the time because we just didn't feel like doing it based upon feelings for that day. Um, admin becomes uncertain. Uh, our field team becomes uncertain. We got to make it clear, we need to stick to it. Okay, if I'm not here for a week and things need to change up, that's fine. I got a plan B put in place, right? But the customer experience is not what you meant, it is what they felt. Okay. Biggest thing is you got to fix recurring friction fast. If the same issue happens more than twice, it's not a rant, it's not random anymore. It's a system issue. And I'd like to say it's either a system issue, process issue, or personnel issue. Okay, if it happens twice. Typically, you can find out really quick either one, but you gotta have a system, you gotta have a process, you have SOPs, you gotta have KPIs to identify if it's a personnel issue or if it's a process issue. Okay, reoccurring friction is usually a process trying to tell you something, and that's why you have systems and processes put in place, right? Because when something's not going according to plan, is because the system usually wasn't followed. It becomes personnel issue. Okay, so I think a lot of good companies stay stuck, okay. I know we have, because they keep giving themselves credit for almost right. And I get it, I freaking get it, right? Everybody's busy, everybody's under pressure, everybody is trying to move a hundred million freaking miles an hour. But if you want to really scale, if if you if you want real margins, you want real referrals, real peace in business, okay, you have to stop celebrating survival and start demanding clarity. We need clarity. If there's someone in the organization right now that doesn't understand something, they need to they need to speak up. Okay. So I've asked myself this question, I've asked our team members this question, okay. And if you're out there and you're listening and you're a business owner, okay, where is your company, right? Where in your company are you tolerating almost right? Okay, whether you own the company or you manage the department, or if you're just sitting there at your computer right now, you don't manage anything. That's yourself. Where in the company am I tolering, tolerating almost right? What steps get skipped? And it could be a coworker you're sitting next to right now, you know for a fact that they're skipping steps. Okay. When they get busy, you know what, you already know it's gonna happen. You already know it. And I think everyone's afraid to step on other people's toes, but I think sometimes we need not necessarily, you don't need to tell anybody, but you yourself need to confront that person. Like, look, you're going to affect me, and not only me, but the entire company because you continuously skip these steps when I know you get busy all the time. Okay. And typically your coworkers see these things a lot sooner than um your leadership team. Okay. Where does your team have to fill in the blanks? Okay. What problem keeps reappearing, okay, that you still call a one-off? I know you know it. Okay. The future of your company is hiding inside the little things you keep excusing. Okay, I've done it. Okay. So know this because I've tried. You don't have to fix every little thing today. Okay. But you do need to stop pretending that small misses are harmless. Okay. Big companies are not built by avoiding disaster alone. Okay. They are built by eliminating drag. They are built by making the handoff cleaner, the communication tighter. Not even large company, any company. The expectations are clearer, the follow-up is stronger. They are built by refusing to live in almost right. Okay? So pick one place in your business this week where almost right has become normal and fix it. Not someday, this week, today. Okay. Because every time you tighten one week's bot, you buy back profit, trust, and momentum. Okay. That is the cost of almost right. And that is why details matter more than people think. Okay? So it may not look like failure in the moment, but over time it steals trust, profit, and momentum. So this week, I know I'm going to find one area in your business where good enough has become normal and fix it. Thanks for listening to Behind the Tool Belt. Share this with your teammates, and I'll see you next week.

Speaker 32:54

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