Cold Open And Core Beliefs

Ty Cobb Backer 0:01

Episode 330. How to know what problem to solve first in your business.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

We have a kind of a belief system that either we're gonna push you up, we're gonna push you out.

Ty Cobb Backer 0:13

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.

The Monday With 99 Problems

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Compensation follows contribution always. This is true. Authenticity is the truth. Every week, this is our story. We share with you our journey, we share with you our scars. Please welcome your host, Tycombacker.

Reaction Mode And Wrong Fixes

The Five-Level Priority Pyramid

Level One Sales And Cash Collection

Level Two Profit Over Revenue Ego

Level Three Order Without Owner Bottlenecks

Level Four Impact And Meaningful Work

Level Five Legacy Beyond The Founder

How To Diagnose The Next Fix

Ty Cobb Backer 0:35

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Happy Wednesday. Had a little bit of rain this morning, but uh looks like the sun's coming out on this wonderful Wednesday today. And today we have another banger for you. And I I'm still in love with our intro. I really am. Vic, you did such a great job of of pulling some some pieces out of some of my thoughts, I guess, when during interviews with with people and stuff like that. And and you know, the live raw and uncut, and you know, pushing people up and and me being around people who who push me up. And it's so true. It stands so true still today, you know, just that's who I want to be around, people that are pushing me up, and and I hope that I can help elevate other people as well too. So anyhow, again, today we are gonna talk about some live raw and uncut experiences that that I've experienced, things that I'll continuously probably experience my past, present, and future stuff. And just give it to you the way that I see it and and just my opinion, and and I'm sure that will evolve eventually too over time. So I don't know. This one's gonna be probably more for business owners and and you know, managers, leaders, anybody, anybody who shit that walks walks in the door, you know, Monday morning of of their place of work or their business or whatever, and and has had that thought of I got 99 problems, and I honestly don't know which one to solve first, then this episode will be for you if you've ever thought that. Because I know there's been quite a few Mondays over the years that I've actually thought that and still think that. And I used to hate Mondays, and it's definitely something I've had to work on over the years of resetting my mind to look at Mondays as a new reset, as a new beginning, as a new week, new day. And a lot of that has to do with how I prepared myself over the weekend for Monday, or or even on Friday, start preparing myself for Monday. So then Mondays, I don't necessarily walk into 99 problems, but but the truth is that most business owners aren't, they're not stuck because they're lazy. Okay. They're they're stuck because they're they're fixing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And and today I want to break down from what I've learned, you know, this far on my journey, and and I'm gonna I'm gonna try to talk about how to identify the right things, you know, the right moves in your business so you can stop spinning your wheels, stop chasing noise, and start building a company that actually works. And so welcome, welcome to to Behind the Toolbell, episode 330. You know, and I'm your host. And so, so if you've ever felt like your business is busy but not healthy, growing, but not profitable, or dependent on on you way more than it should, then I'm pretty sure that this conversation's gonna hit home because one of the hardest things, one of the hardest parts of running a business is not knowing that is is knowing, is, is knowing that something is wrong. And and most of us know something is wrong. We can feel it. It wakes us up in the middle of the night. It affects every aspect of our life. And and and we see it in the bank account, right? We see it, we see it in the stress in the company, we see it in the chaos, we see it in the miscommunication, the missed opportunities. I don't know how many opportunities I've missed because of just being so stressed and fixated on, I don't even know, just so overwhelmed and don't even know where to start or where to begin. And, you know, you're having you know, team member issues, customer complaints, the long hours, and the fact that no matter how hard we work, right, it still feels like, you know, we're we're one bad month away from from another problem, right? And the real challenge is this, right? Like what do we fix fix first, right? Do do like do we fix the lead generation? Do we do we need to hire more help? Do we need to tighten up operations, improve our systems, create a mission, build a culture, focus on delegation, pay off debt, improve customer experience? And all of these things, you have heard me. If you've been hanging out for a while, these are all things that I've experienced and that I've shared with you on a day-to-day, week to week. And anybody who's been on my team long enough knows these are things that we have worked on continuously, and it's not static. Each one of these things that I'm going to review today with you, I can't say that I've ever a hundred percent fixed, done, closed the door, walked away, and knew that it wouldn't come back at some point in time. I can't say that. I can't, it I can't, I can't say I've always had to circle back and tighten things up. So, so don't think that whatever I explained to you guys today that like, you know, once you get something fixed, like the sales process or the profit process or or the operational process, don't it, it's it's it, it's it's very fluid. Okay. So every one of these things matter. Okay, every single one of them are just as important. The big idea is that not every problem deserves your attention right now. And this is the trap that I've falled into. So today I I want to do I want to do three things. First, I want to explain the core framework, okay, of trying how to identify what to work on first. Okay, second thing is I want to talk through the five levels of business needs, right? And then the third thing I want to talk about is how to use the framework in real world practical ways that we've used, okay. Damn it, I don't know what's going on in my throat here. So whether you're running a plumbing company, HVAC shop, a roofing business, electrical company, a remodeling company, cleaning business, does not matter, landscaping, any service at all, anything, okay? Because this can change the way that you make decisions. I know it's really helped me out, especially here lately. So I want to start with the central problem, I guess. Right? Most business owners operate in reaction mode. I know that for a fact. I've done it, I've experienced it, I've watched it, right? We fix whatever fires there, we fix whatever is loudest, whatever embarrasses us. Okay, whatever the customers are yelling about, whatever employee just left, bills that bounce, social media guru told us to take care of this week. And because of that, a lot of us owners stay busy, but the company's not getting any healthier. We become expert problem solvers, but terrible prioritizers, and that's dangerous. Fenner did that still do that shit. And that's why it's so important for me to talk about this today, after I was able to jot down some of my thoughts. Because when you solve a second-level problem while a first level problem is still broken, you usually create more frustration and not less. So I want to give you an example. Let's just say you own a small remodeling company and you're frustrated because your team is disorganized. So you go and buy a project management software. You spend tons of money on it, you train the team, you build the boards, you do the checklist, you create the workflows, but three months later, you're still freaking stressed out. Why? Because the real issue was not project management software. Okay, the real issue was that your business didn't have enough profitable work coming in consistently. So everyone was jumping between jobs, not necessarily finishing any of them, have five unmade beds and can't get paid on any of them. Sales are discounting work, which is squeezing margins, operations is in a panic. And in that case, you tried to fix order before you fix sales or profit. Wrong level, working, focusing on the wrong level. And it's easy to do. I've done it. Okay. Or maybe you own a service company and you're focused on building culture. You want buy-in. Who doesn't want buy-in, right? I do. I want people who bought it. I want, I want to sell people, right? Especially those that work here. We want we want a mission. We want to create a mission statement. You want a stronger team. We all want a stronger freaking team. So, so we have the meetings and values and the leadership books, but payroll is still feeling shaky and the company is carrying debt and the margins are thin. Okay. Your people are not struggling because the mission statement isn't polished. They're struggling because the foundation is unstable. And again, wrong level. All right. Business has a hierarchy of needs, similar to how people have a hierarchy of needs. Until the lower needs are met, the higher needs won't stick. And basically think of it as a business priority pyramid, which I stole from a book called Fix Fix This Next. Can't think of the author's name, but I was turned on to the book. Man, I don't know. Profit first. I read that and then I read Profit First for Contractors. And ironically enough, about two years ago, my friend Eric Brewer asked me if I read, I asked him a question about something, and he asked me if I read the book uh Profit First. And however, I I did read both Profit First and Profit First for Contractors. So they talk about the business priority pyramid. And there's five levels to it. And the foundation to it is sales. Second is profit, third is order, fourth is impact, and fifth is legacy. And the rule, the rule is very simple, right? You fix the lowest level unmet need first. Okay. Not the sexiest problem, not the one that you enjoy the most. And I get caught up in that trap too. Not the one that makes you feel sophisticated, but the lowest unmet need. That is the next thing that needs fixed. So I want to walk through the pyramid one level at a time. Okay. So, so level level one, which is the foundational level. Okay. Level one's on the bottom. It's your foundation. Just like building a house, you got to have a strong foundation, right? At the bottom of the pyramid is sales. Okay. And I think this is where a lot of us owners in the trades either get ignorant or we get confused because they say we have sales, we're busy. But busy is not the same as healthy sales. Healthy sales means you have a reliable way to attract work, convert work, deliver work, and collect money for the work. All four or five of those stages are different stages of the process in which all of them have to be met in order to have a successful business, especially the last one, collect the money for the work. It means you are not depending on luck or intuition. Okay. It means your pipeline is not built on random referrals alone. Although referrals are very important. It means you know where business is going to come from. And fortunately for us, we've been able to create monthly recurring revenue. We've been very fortunate. We have many different facets of streams of revenue that come into business. And it's taken many years to have developed that. So if one area is lacking, the other areas pick it up. We can talk about that on a whole nother freaking podcast later. It means you know, it means you know where your business is coming from. It means the right customers are finding you. And I'm talking more so in the retail space. It means that your closing rate makes sense. Okay. It means you are not bleeding opportunities. It means you are actually getting paid. At the sales level, the questions are are basic. The questions we should be basically asking is, do we know how many sales you need? We have a freaking weekly meeting. We talk about this. Okay. We know how many sales we need for Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. And if we and we we know what levers we need to pull, okay, if our projected revenue is XYZ for next year, okay. Do we have enough leads for that? Are we converting well? Or are we delivering on what we sold? Are we collecting the cash? Okay, that's huge. Because a company can look busy and still be starving. Ben there did that. Hate it, don't like it. I've seen this a thousand freaking times within our own organization. The phones are ringing, the schedule is full, trucks are moving, crews are running, but I'm still anxious. Okay, million-dollar question. Why? Because this is not predictable. Okay, it's not predictability. There is no sales target. Ben there did that, just threw random numbers out there and said, Yep, we're gonna do it because of I felt like we can do it. Okay. There's no, there was no intentional lead generation strategy. There was no discipline in the follow-up process, there was no clear conversion system. Okay. There are no jobs sold. Okay, there are there there were jobs sold at at very weak margins. I didn't I didn't know the numbers. Sometimes it gets very fuzzy, sometimes it gets very confusing, and I understand that. Right? And and there's no real confidence in where the next month's work is coming from. Because we didn't have a matrix to follow. We didn't know what matrix to follow. We didn't know what matrix to make to follow. Why? Because nobody was telling us, and I was too naive to ask questions or ignorant or scared. So that's half the reason why I want to sit here and talk to you guys about what I've identified in our business with that that kept us stuck. It wasn't because I was lazy, it's because I was scared. I didn't know what questions to ask, right? It's it's taken me 18 years to finally come to this conclusion, this realization to come up with these ideas from, I'm sure I got them from somebody else out of a book that I read or a conference that I went to and and uh paid attention, wrote notes, brought it home and applied it, but but didn't have any real direction, which order, right? So so that that's a sales problem. Okay, and and and notice something important here, okay? So sales is not just marketing. Okay, that's a trap that I've fallen into before. Sales is marketing, yes, but it is also estimating, follow-up, proposal quality, speed to lead, customer communication, is the customer a right fit for us, and collections. I and I'm gonna emphasize collections, okay, because cash flow is huge. If you're sending quotes and never hearing back, that's sales. If leads are coming in but but they're a terrible fit, that's sales. If if your team is great at work but weak at asking for the job, that's sales. If your invoicing is delayed and cash collection is sloppy, that's sales too. So if you're looking at your business and you don't have confidence in the flow of work or cash coming in, don't skip ahead to to like the fancy leadership topics. Okay. Fix sales first. That's the foundational piece to this whole operation here. Okay. And then I have to ask myself the question do I know my weekly and monthly sales targets? Do I know how many leads I need to hit that number? Right. Do I know my close rate? We do. Do I know where my best leads come from? We do. Do I constantly follow up on old unsold estimates? I hope the freaking God we do. Okay. Do I have an outstanding invoice that's that's too old? These are all questions I have to ask myself as a business owner. That is my job today, okay, is to make sure that the company is healthy and thriving. Okay. Am I selling the right work at the right price to the right customer? You know, I know when I first got into business, man, I was just throwing shit on the wall and I wanted to see what's stuck. I didn't know my margins. I didn't know, I just knew how much my materials cost and I figured out how long it would take me to do it. And that's where I stayed stuck for the longest time. Then when you become, when you transform from a solopreneur to an entrepreneur, then you got to take into consideration all of your overhead and that there's other people involved, and they also need to get paid, not just yourself. Okay. So the answer is, you know, to answer several several of those is is is likely it's a it's a sales thing and making sure that you're you're selling at the right at the right price, and not overpricing things either. And we'll discuss some of that if I remember. I'll talk about that a little later. So here's the message don't feel embarrassed, okay? Don't be afraid. Feel relieved right now, okay, because now you know where to focus. Breathing. Now I know where to focus, okay? Level two, second level, right above sales. It's profit. This is especially important because a lot of businesses, business owners think revenue solves everything, it doesn't. Revenue covers up problems. Revenue covers up problems, okay. Profit solves them. Okay, you can have a million-dollar business that is broke, you can have a packed schedule with no cash, you can have crews running every day and still feel constant pressure. Why? Why? Because money is coming through the business, but no money is staying in the business. Been there, did that, still have seasons of that. Okay. Profit means the company generates enough surplus to reduce the stress, not just on the owners, but also as team members and on the entire company itself. Okay. Build reserves, handle surplus, invest strategically, and reward ownership. Okay. If you're not profitable, you can't do any of those things. Believe me, trust me. Okay. At this level, the question becomes things like this. Okay. Are we carrying too much debt? Very possible. Okay. Are our margins strong enough? Are we charging our customers enough? Are customers buying from us again or referring us to others? Okay. Are we using resources effectively enough to improve profitability? Are we building cash reserves? Think about how many owners hit a revenue milestone and still don't feel free. Benaire did that, lived that nightmare for many years. They hit$500,000, then$2 million, and somehow they're still the most stressed out person in the company. That usually means profit is weak. Maybe pricing is off. Maybe labor is too heavy. Maybe overhead is creeping up. Maybe callbacks are killing the margins. Ben there did that. Maybe change orders are being missed. Maybe the company is financing customers with. Realizing it. And I know we do that shit too. Maybe, maybe we keep hiring ahead of stable demand. I've I've tried to get out in front of things. We've hired too many people. And then what I thought was going to happen never happened. And maybe our debt payments are draining our very good months. Okay. But what I have learned is to stop obsessing over top line ego and start focusing on bottom line health. Okay. And that's very important. Okay. Obsessing. I had to stop obsessing over top line ego. Okay. And that's that's that's your revenue you're generating. But I needed to start focusing on the bottom line health. And this and this this really matters in the trades because a lot of us owners are talented technicians and mechanics who started businesses. We're not finance people who wanted to pick a trade. Okay. I would say for the most part. I'm not saying there's not a lot of paper contractors out there where a lot of smart people have are getting into our space right now. However, most of us were technicians. Okay. So we can be very good at at producing work and very underdeveloped at measuring what the work actually leaves behind. Okay, the revenue that we generate. If if that's you, okay, here's the gut check. Okay, if sales went up 20% last year, did your stress go down? Did the cash reserves improve? Did your debt shrink? Did your personal take home get stronger in a healthy way? Did our company become more stable? If you can answer no, then growth may not have increased activity without increasing the profit. Okay, and that means profit is our next fix. So what I've had to do. That's right, Mike. Keep more revenue, buddy. That's the name of the game, brother. Been working on that ship for years. Navigating this shit. So practical action. Okay. We could raise our prices. Okay. We can tighten it, tighten up our estimating process. We can track our job costing better. Eliminating low margin services, reduce callbacks, reduce rework, you know, things like that. Improve our purchasing power. Okay. I know for the longest time when we got into the retail game, we didn't require deposits. We do today. We require deposits and shortened our receivables, you know, or implementing a true profit distribution system. Okay, because the point is is not just to be busy, the point is to build a business that that financially works, right? So moving on to order, okay, the third level of the pyramid. Now, now once that that sales are healthy and there's enough profit and it's becoming real, we move to the third level, and that's order. Okay. This is where many of us owners finally admit my my business depends on me too much. All right. Order is about operational stability. Okay. It's about making the business more organized, more consistent, me learning how to delegate more and trying to make it less fragile. Okay. And at this level, we're we're looking at questions like, are we wasting effort? Do we have the right people in the right roles? Can I delegate outcomes instead of micromanaging tasks? Is the business over dependent on one person? Are we are we are we known for consistent excellence? You know, this is the stage where where you know chaos can become the enemy. And honestly, a lot of trade businesses live here for years. I know we have, okay. Where, you know, I was the estimator, I was the sales manager, I was the production manager, I was the chief problem solver. I I was the the culture carrier, I was the final decision maker on everything from pricing to scheduling to customer issues to payroll questions. Okay. That works until it doesn't. Okay. Then I became the bottleneck. The business can only grow to the level of the owner's bandwidth. God, I feel like I was smashing my head against the wall there for a second. The team waits for direction. Okay. Standards vary by who is leaving the job. Customers get different experiences depending on who shows up, right? Training is inconsistent. Communication falls through the cracks. When one key person leaves, the whole business shakes. Okay. This is an order problem. And the solution is not just more hustle, because you know, when I hear people say I'll outwork anybody, and I will, and I can, but I've also worked on the wrong damn things. Right. So I got to figure out when to hustle and where to hustle harder than anyone else. And the solution is structure. Okay. The solution is SOPs, documenting everything. The solution is KPIs. The solution is creating the matrix and knowing when and how often to inspect them. Okay. This is where you start documenting the repeatable processes. This is where roles become clear. Okay. This is where accountability matters. This is where you build the scoreboards. Okay. This is where you define how work gets handed off from sales to production. This is where you create the estimating standards, customer communication standards, quality control standards, and the follow-up standards. Okay. This is where you cross-train. And we do this all the time, especially upstairs. This is where you cross-train. So not one person doesn't hold the entire company hostage if they go on vacation or if they leave. Okay. So if we're a contractor, okay, the order might mean this. Okay. Every league gets entered in the same way. Every estimate follows the same pricing logic. Every sold job gets defined kickoff. Every project has a milestone communications or workflow. Okay. Every invoice goes out on schedule. Every callback gets logged and analyzed. Why did we get a call back? Was it a good one? Was it a bad one? Did we take care of it? Was it something we forgot? Was it something we missed? Or did we just freaking crush the job and knocked it out of the park and they want us to do more work? And why was that? What did we do that time that we didn't do the other times, right? Analyze that shit. Talk about it. Have conversations, have the uncomfortable conversations and have the good conversations, right? Celebrate the wins, right? And stop pointing the finger and blaming everybody else for your problems. And every team member knows what winning looks like, okay? When you share the wins. Order is where you move from the the heroic effort to the repeatable execution. Okay. And and this is this is important. Okay. The goal is not bureaucracy, the goal is reliability. The owner should not have to rescue the business every single freaking day. Okay. I've been there. I'm just sharing my experience with you. If you if you feel like your company runs only because you were constantly patching holes, translating, reminding, approving, stepping in, then you may be at the order level. Okay. Level three. And the next thing to do is to is is not fix more leads. It's it's it's a system problem. So one of my favorite levels we're going to move on to here is impact. And I tend to uh I tend to run to impact. That's the fourth level. Okay. This is where we rise above basic business mechanics and start asking, you know, some deeper questions. What what meaningful change does your business create for customers? Okay. Team members and partners. At this point, the company is not just surviving. Okay. It is not just making money. It's not just becoming organized. It's it's now has the ability to matter at a higher level. This is where the business starts becoming transformational, okay, for customers. And that and that means that means we are not just selling services, we are improving lives. Okay. So for an example, if I was an HVAC company and and we're replacing equipment, okay, we're creating comfort, safety, health, and peace of mind. And if if I was if you're a remodeler, you're not just renovating somebody's kitchen. You're actually improving the way that the family lives every day in their kitchen. And if you're a roofer like we are, we're not just installing shingles, we're protecting what matters most. Okay. And if you're a cleaner, you're not just cleaning, you're restoring order, you're creating calm and giving trust. Okay. So it also means our team members understand the the transformation and what it is that we're doing. That's our mission. Okay. This is where the mission starts to matter more. All right. This is where culture gets depth. It gets deep. Okay. This is where people are not just collecting paychecks, but feeling connected to meaningful work. This is where feedback improves because trust improves. Okay. This is where partnerships become stronger because the company stands for something. I pride myself in that. And a lot of owners try to jump there too soon. Ben Nair did that, and I tend to jump to it, especially when there's other problems, but I feel like sometimes you just got to give more than you have. So we want purpose, okay? We all want a purpose, right? But we can't put that before profit, okay? We want culture retreats before we have the order. I've seen people do that. It's like they're going on these company freaking retreats, and it's like, I know what state everything else is in. It's like I just don't even know how they can afford that. But you know, we want mission statements before payroll is stable. That usually feels pretty hollow to me, and I hate living in that space. So, but when you lower the levels, okay. Let me regroup here for a second. When the lower levels are healthy, impact can become more powerful. And I think this one is is probably the most beautiful idea ever. Okay. Your business should not just extract money from the marketplace. Okay. It should create measurable positive change. That change that changes the way you market, that changes the way you hire, the way that we onboard, the way that we sell. That changes the pride your team feels in the work. Okay. So if your company is functioning well operationally, but it feels disconnected, flat, or purely transactional, then our next fix would be the impact level. Okay. You may need to clarify the promise of transformation that we bring. Okay. We may need to communicate why the work matters. We may need to align our team members' goals with the company's goals. We may need to create stronger client feedback loops. We may need to become more intentional about the way that we mark our company, you know, and and how we leave that impression on people. Okay. And then that leads us to the the very top of the peak of of the pyramid. Okay. And that's legacy. And legacy. The spear, the pyramid. Top of the pyramid. Okay. Legacy is about building something that outlasts our direct daily effort. This is where the business becomes bigger than the founder's hustle. Okay. Legacy means that the company can adapt, continue, and contribute over time. Okay. It includes things like developing leaders, planning for secession, creating advocates inside and outside the company, giving back to the community, and continually evolving the vision as the market changes. And we've been going through a lot of that stuff. And in plain terms, legacy ask, if I stepped away, what remains? Would the business continue? Would the values continue? Would the quality, the team, the mission survive? Okay. Would customers still talk about the company with trust and admiration? Okay. This is especially important for owner-led businesses in the trades, because many of us are deeply tied to the the personality, the the reputation, the work ethic and of of of one person. Okay. And while that we may may be how we may be how the business started, it cannot be how the business survives or or finishes if we want something enduring, if that makes any sense. Legacy is where you think about leadership bench strength, right? If you know anything about baseball, who like who who who do we have on the bench next? Okay, our leadership strength on the bench. Okay. And I know for myself personally, this is something we've worked on for a long freaking time. Okay. We want strong leadership at every facet of our business. Okay. It's where we think about ownership trans transformation. It's where we think about community reputation. It's where we think about whether your business is building promoters, not just customers. Okay. It's it's where we think about whether we are adapting with the times instead of protecting bad old habits, right? And these are all things that we have to think about. So so here's the key. Okay. Legacy is is not the the the first thing that we fix. Okay. We don't even know what that, we shouldn't even know what the hell that is. Okay. But but it's it's the highest thing to fix. Okay. It's the highest thing on the pyramid. Okay. And and that distinction matters because too many owners, I think, want to operate the top of the pyramid while the bottom is unsustainable. It's unstable. Okay. You do not build legacy on a foundation of weak sales, weak profit, and constant chaos. Okay. You build legacy after the essentials are in place. So now the obvious question would be: how do you actually use this? Everything that I've already talked about today. Okay. And I know I'm kind of going fast here because I'm pretty pumped about this topic. I'm sure you guys can catch me on a replay. Hopefully you're taking notes. Because I know I am. I hope this helps somebody out there as much as it's helped me. Okay, so how do we actually use this freaking thing? Okay. Step one. I have to be brutally honest about the lowest level that is weak. Okay. Not the level that I enjoy, not the level that sounds impressive. The lowest level. Okay. If sales are inconsistent, I need to start there. All right. If sales are unstable, but but profit is weak, then I need to work on the profit. Okay. If sales and profit are okay, but the business is chaotic and it's owner dependent, I need to fix order. Okay. If those are solid and the business feels soulless or disconnected, we need to work on impact. Okay. If all of that is strong, now we can start thinking about endurance and secession. Work on legacy. Okay. Step two, we need to identify one vital need inside. Inside the level, not 10. Just one. I need to identify one vital need inside.

unknown 41:02

Okay.

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Common Priority Mistakes To Avoid

Ty Cobb Backer 41:03

Because that's where I'll get overwhelmed. I'll try to fix everything at one time. Okay. I just need to identify one at each at the level that I think we're struggling at. Okay. Just one thing. Okay. And this is where I think a lot of us get lost. They hear framework, they get excited. I've gotten home from a conference. I'm ready to take on the world. We need to fix everything. Okay. And we try to overhaul everything. That defeats the point. So we need to choose one thing. Okay. At the sales level, maybe one thing is just follow-up on unsold estimates. Okay. I don't know how many of us leave that on the table out there like that. At the profit level, maybe, maybe the one thing is pricing discipline. Okay. We need we need to get pricing discipline. At the at the order level, maybe the one thing is creating a handoff process, which we've done most recently. We had to revamp our our handoff process from from sales to to production. Okay. And at the impact level, maybe maybe the one thing is defining the transformation you promised to the customers. I don't know. And at the legacy level, maybe maybe the one thing is identifying and developing a second later layer of leadership. Okay. And making it clear and empowering and holding people accountable. And this can be measured by what do they call it? The acronym. OMEN. O M E N. And I stole this from the book, I think. Objective, which would be what exactly are we trying to improve? The objective. Measurement. How will how we measure the progress evaluation? How often will we review it? Okay. And then nurture it. Okay. O objective. M measurement. E evaluation. N nurture. Okay. And how will we adjust if the first fix doesn't fully work? Okay. That matters because vague goals create vague results. If you say we need better sales, that's too fuzzy. I've done it, did there? Dick and I just had a brief conversation how we need to explain things better, more thoroughly. Okay. Fuzzy. Okay. Over over explain. Okay. If you say we will follow up with every unsold estimate within 48 hours and we'll track the close rate every Friday, now you have something real. Okay. We have when we're going to do it, how we're going to do it, and how often we're going to do it. And if you say we need more profit, how are we going to do that? I don't know. It's too fuzzy. I just want it to happen. Just make it happen. Okay. But if we say we're increasing gross margin on install jobs by five points over the next 90 days, through tighter pricing, better buying power, and change order discipline, now we have a true target. Okay. And if we let's just say we need a better system, again, what exactly what does that mean? But if we say by the end of the next month, every sold job will have a standard kickoff checklist and documented handoff from estimator to project manager, that becomes actionable. Okay. The framework only works when it leaves theory and becomes behavior. Okay. So I'll give you a real world example here. Um okay. Okay. Imagine, imagine that I'm a a painting contractor, okay, doing one and a half million dollars a year in revenue. And from the outside, things look great. The schedule's full, the trucks look great, the owner is respected, but behind the scenes cash is tight. Okay. The the owner is always frustrated. Estimates are inconsistent. Some jobs are underbid. Collections are slow. The production team feels rushed. The owner wants to hire an operations manager because life feels chaotic. Now, the temptation would be to say, we need order, we need management, we need systems. Maybe, but maybe not. If the real problem is weak profits caused by inconsistent estimates and thin margins, then hiring an operations manager too soon could just add more overhead to our business than stabilizing our financial goals, right? So in that case, the next fix would be profit, right? Because I've done that. I thought, man, it because I read the book, shoot, who not how. I used to always think, how the heck am I going to do this? And then I started switching my mindset to who am I going to get to do all of this. And a lot of times it's not the who, it's it's an internal thing that needs fixed before we can even think about hiring the who. So I just wanted to point that out. So specifically, maybe the vital need is job costing, accuracy, and pricing discipline. And once that gets stronger, the company creates breathing room. Okay. I can breathe a little bit. Like then it then then it can build order, right? Then it can create deeper impact. And then we can think about legacy. And then that is the power of sequence. Okay. The right fix at the wrong time still feels wrong. All right. Common mistakes most of us make. All right. Let me let me give you a few mistakes. Hopefully, we can try to avoid here. Again, mistake number one, right? Can confusing activity with progress. I freaking have done this a lot. Just because we're working hard does not mean we're fixing the right thing.

SPEAKER_03 48:20

You know, I'm gonna outwork everybody.

Weekly Challenge And Closing Calls To Action

Ty Cobb Backer 48:25

Not if I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to be working on, right? So make sure I identify that we're working on the right things. That's that's huge, all right. Don't try to solve everything at once. Okay, I've done that. This creates anxiety overwhelmingly. It it scatters leadership and and just makes a complete mess, right? And don't try to copy other business businesses' priorities, okay. What what your friend's company needs next may not be what your company needs next, okay? And then skipping the the financial foundation because it feels less fun than working on branding, culture, or vision, foundation first, always. All right. And and if you guys remember anything that I was talking about, your foundation is your sales. Second piece to that is profit on that. Okay. So root out, root out the the pain and start working on it. Get gut gut level honest with yourself, okay? You know, admit, admit that we still have sales issues, admit that profit is is still weak. And if if you don't know if it is or not, I mean, ask somebody. If you're listening to this right now and you're thinking to yourself, I don't even know where to start, DM me. Freaking DM me. Trust me, I'm not gonna judge you. I'm only sharing my experience with you guys right now because I've gone through all this and will continue to probably go through all of this. And just because I feel like today we have our sales under control, that doesn't mean in six months from now it won't. I mean, AI is coming out. I don't know if the phone's gonna continue to keep ringing. I know I'm gonna try to stay out in front of it. I know I'm gonna try to adapt when I feel or the data is showing me, not necessarily always intuition. But when the data shows me we need to pivot and dump more in time and effort into whatever resources at the time, or you know, I'm asking other business owners and different markets, what they're doing, you know, it's just DM me if you're having any issues. But anyhow, let's I'm gonna give you guys a closing challenge here. So, so here's my challenge for the week. All right, take take take 30 minutes, sit down with a notebook, okay, and ask yourself these questions. What is the lowest level unmet need in your business right now? Not what annoys me the most, not what I talk about the most, but and and not what I wish I had already mastered. Okay, what is the actual lowest level unmet need? Is it sales? Is it profit? Is it order? Is it impact? Is it legacy? Then ask yourself this what is the one vital need inside that level that I can improve next? And then put a number on it, put a deadline on it, put a review rhythm on it. How often am I going to review it? Okay, because business owners don't actually fail from the lack of effort. We pride ourselves on outworking everybody, but sometimes we just don't know what where and what we should be working on, and stop trying to fix everything at once, okay? We fail from diffused effort, and focus is is is a is a force multiplier. So, anyhow, your business grows when you stop fixing random problems and start fixing the most fundamental problems first. That's the lesson, okay? Sales before profit, profit before order, order before impact, impact before legacy, sequence matters, diagnostics matters, and know your next move, your next move matters. So thanks for spending your Wednesday afternoon with me. This is Beyond a Toolbelt. If this episode helped you differently or helped you think differently, I guess, about your business as much as it's helped me, share it with another business owner who who you think is in the thick of things right now. Okay. Someone who is is working hard, carrying a lot, and trying to figure out what to fix first. Okay. And more than anything, don't just listen to this episode and move on. Use it. Open the notebook, have the meeting, review the numbers, choose the one thing. I'll see you next episode. This is Behind a Tool Belt episode 333. 330. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_03 53:56

Thanks to our sponsors, TC Backer Construction, Hook Roofing Marketing, Roofal, and Project Map It. And thank you for watching. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook. We are streaming on all major platforms. See you next week for another episode of Behind the Tool Belt.