Ep 111 - "The Power Of Standards"

0:08 Welcome back to the Head, Heart & Boots podcast. I'm Chris. And I'm Brennan. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. Man, I love this industry. Christopher Nordyke. There's only a couple of people in my life that call me Christopher. Well, I wanted to get formal because I've missed you. I've recorded alone. I think you've recorded alone. It's been just a crazy start to the year already, which is both fun and intimidating. It's pretty wild. We still got ice and slush. Oh, gosh, dude. Outside all over the streets. Yeah, it really was. We had our own little Icemageddon here in the Pacific Northwest, joining with, of course, many others that some people are really making some hay out of this.

0:52 Polar Vortex, which is exciting. We always get so stoked for our clients. Anytime we got some ice action. Hey, move this way just a hair, dude. You don't have to lean out of the camera. Bring it in, bro. I don't have BO. I'm dialed in. You're good. Yes, we've got some upgrades coming to the studio. People are going to get some close-up views of Nordic and Reese here in the near future. So it's totally going to make your day. Yeah. So I wanted to get... You and I were talking... You're telling me I like people looking at me? No, I'm saying for the listeners. Oh, it's going to make their way. Not that you don't. You do that as well, but... Oh, geez. So we're going to get a little more tactical today. You know, we've spent, I think, the last several episodes kind of going through a lot of soft skills stuff. I think we've been hanging in kind of the mental health pocket So you and I talked kind of in preparation for batching some episodes, we wanted to get tactical.

1:40 And so I've got kind of an interesting thing that I want to walk through. It ended up coming up a lot as part of the closing year strategic planning we were doing with a lot of clients in 2023. And it ended up just becoming like one of those things where you describe something enough times, you realize, you know what? I haven't made this as clear in the past as we could have. And so I want to dig into it. I think people will get a ton of value at it. And it's a great time of year because it's so early in the season that if this makes sense and lands well with people, I think it's stuff they'll leverage the rest of the year in their favor. It's good, man. The only thing I would say is, can you lead out? Because I can't read your handwriting. Yeah. Yes. So I will lead out. But you know how the only thing I recognize there is what appears to be KPI.

2:23 I can read that part. Yes. I apparently I need very little readable notes to stay on track. That's what that's a test. The modern age, none of us write anymore. That's right. Let's get in some sponsors, my man. Yeah. So answerforce.com forward slash floodlight. Answerforce, you know, it's interesting. Yeah. I had some preparation for this ad read yesterday, actually. I called... We have a prospective client that completed a business opportunity audit. And I was reaching out to them to follow up. I actually... Which I almost never do, but I called their office line. And I realized because of time change, I was like, Oh, yeah, they're closed. And I wait and I... I waited. It rings four, five, six times.

3:04 Here we go. Then this voicemail kicks on and it's like, you know, elevator music. Yeah. For like a couple minutes. Oh, wow. Then finally a monotone, what I would, what sounded like, this is my mental profile, middle-aged monotone dude. Okay. Like I think, you know, the math professor or the physics professor or whatever chemistry guy in The Wonder Years? Yeah. Remember that character? Yeah. That teacher who's like drones on. Yeah. I can't even replicate it. I'm not a... Oh, no. It was like that. And anyway, he kind of semi-confidently took my information. It was not good. Uh-oh.

3:44 It was not good. And listen, we've actually talked to... We know the answer for people. Like we've had a lot... They're high energy. They're youthful. They're techie. They're like on point. And this kind of stuff matters. It's like, how important is your call intake? Like, do you want your customer that you potentially literally paid hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to get that call? Yeah. Yeah. Do you want them getting the middle-aged, monotone, doesn't seem like he knows what the heck he's doing guy that has no connection to your business? Okay. You owe it to yourself to call and get a demo set up with AnswerForce. One, the price point... Look, I mean, we need quality redundancy in our call-in.

4:27 Yeah, we do. We do. Your receptionist is out on lunch. Do you really want to just rando forward to somebody else on your team that hasn't been trained in the intake process? That's not going to capture all the information, maybe isn't going to put it in Dash or Accelerator, PSA or WorkCenter the way it should be put in. Like, of course you don't. You need some redundancy. You need a call partner, a call intake partner that's going to follow your intake process and do it with energy and leverage the financial tools to make it easy to turn that on, turn that off. Price packages start at less than $370 a month. What restoration company that's serious about their business can't afford that? Yeah. That's a tool you need in your tool belt. For a first impression. Of course. In many cases. Yeah.

5:08 100% answerforce.com forward slash floodlight. And if you've got an experience with them, please let us know. And we'll integrate that into our ad reads. We'd love to share testimonials. Yeah, you bet. All right. Liftify, you guys know, there are our brothers in the trenches. Man, we dig that team. I can't even tell you how many stories, reviews, referrals we get, people talking about what Liftify has done for the business in regard to their five-star Google reviews. It's massive. And again, I think it's similar to an answer force type relationship where we have these partners that we can bolt into our business that alleviate one of the many stressors or complexities that we have to manage on a consistent basis, right?

5:50 And this is a fire and forget, really. There's elements where they're going to facilitate this to the nth degree. They're going to make sure it's consistent. They're going to ensure you're getting 20, 25 plus percent participation rate, which is dumb numbers compared to anything else we've ever experienced. Yeah. And again, it's at the end of the day, this is a tech-driven team. They are already adding so many elements and tools to the kit. AI obviously being incorporated in a high rate. That will only continue to climb. But anyways, Liftify. Guys, get your Google reviews skyrocketing because it does everything to propel your business. And it's silly to ignore it. So at least do a demo. Liftify.com forward slash plug life.

6:30 And then last but not least, CNR Magazine. We really enjoy Michelle and her team, Jeff, Sarah, and it's growing. So he's probably even team members we haven't met yet, but just a wonderful team of people. And I think as you grow your business and you develop more vendor relationships and stuff over the years, you just realize how valuable it is when you can have a vendor partner that has a particular scope of work you need as a business. They're providing an essential need for you. But then there's also this friendship layer. There's trust. Yeah. There's all this other added value. And Michelle and her team are like that. We're advertisers on CNR. We're also consumers of their content. And we've collaborated with Michelle and the team on industry content and stuff like that.

7:14 In fact, we just found out, I'm going to end up being on stage with Michelle at the RIA convention. That's super exciting. But she's a mover and shaker of the industry. If you're not following CNR, you're not following Michelle on LinkedIn, do that now. Take a moment, navigate to your LinkedIn app. Follow both CNR Magazine, follow Michelle for a whole variety of reasons, but you want to be connected to them. CNRmagazine.com. And you spell and instead of the and versus and, you spell and. CNRmagazine.com. Okay, one last piece, guys, and then we're going to get into the switch. Oh, we've got this thing coming up. Yeah, we got something coming up. I think it's going to be really fun. We actually communicated to our own internal client base and just let them know that this opportunity is coming up.

7:59 So Cape Canaveral, Florida. If you haven't been there, this is not a bad place to spend some time. It's funny, except at 4 p.m. every day, for some reason, they get a Noah-like flood, like a deluge that happens, and then it's over. And then it's sun and palm trees again. That's right. That's right. And you're not terribly far away from the Kennedy Space Center and all the amazing things that NASA and Tesla, or I mean, excuse me, SpaceX is doing out there, which I'm kind of geeking out on. Yes. So we are going to be partnering with Large Loss Mastery's Thomas McGuire. And it's going to be a four-day event. It's the 20th through the 23rd. So February 20th through February 23rd, Cape Canaveral.

8:39 This is what we're calling the Apex Restorer. So this is 100% focused on commercial large loss cat response. It's essentially an estimating, scoping, securing, and then sales and marketing all combined into four days. So it's really about developing the kinds of relationships that'll give us the kind of business that really rings the register. Yeah, how to steward those and develop those relationships. How to steward them, build the pipeline, manage those, onboard them correctly, right? Build them into an ERP or a priority response type relationship. And then of course, Thomas just going to town delivering on, how do we show up to a large loss or a cat environment and maximize the way that we scope and establish our protocols and what we plan to do with that job to produce it at a high efficient level.

9:29 So I really think this is going to be a fun opportunity. Again, we even shared it with our internal client base because I think there's going to be unique things here that they'll experience firsthand that they aren't necessarily... There's some really high caliber restorers that are coming. Like we've talked to some of the folks that have registered and we have, like you said, we have some clients that are sending people down. It's really going to be a neat thing. And people that have been following Head Heart and Boots for a while, we're bringing that juice. It's going to be a fun combo between Thomas with all his, oh my gosh, his stories, his background experience. And to mash that up with, we're just, we're stoked. We've been waiting to partner with this guy for a long time. So yeah. I think it'll be fun. You guys still have enough time. Get your travel arrangements ready to go.

10:09 Get out of wherever you are. I'm sure everybody's been hammered by winterness. So get down to Florida and hang out with us for a few days. You know, what we're seeing is a lot of owners, GMs, are prioritizing that time. They're going down to participate. And then a lot of teams are going to use those few days to do some strategic planning. I just talked to an executive salesperson in our industry and he said, Hey, I'm really wanting to understand better the large loss and the estimatic side, like the initial response. Like, I think it'll help me in the relationship I'm developing. And absolutely. And so he's going to be coming and attending, even though his primary focus is in estimatics and large loss project management. There's a lot of opportunity here for a variety of different roles.

10:51 So... Okay. So where are you going to go? So go to floodlightgrp.com. So floodlightgroup.com forward slash training dash cape dash Navarro. Okay. Or just DM or give us a ring. We should have made that forward slash apex. I know. I know. Guys, next time. I don't know. I don't know what happened. Okay. Topic. All right. Here's where I want to go today. So, as part of our strategic planning last year with a lot of our clients at the close of the year, one of these ideas or one of these topics kept coming up over and over. And I think what it really does is it sets the stage for a few different things. One, I believe that when we at least rally around the way that you and I break this up or define these three terms, hang with me, guys, is it allows us to unify our entire organization behind a centralized group of high priority things that we're going to measure and monitor on a consistent basis that tell us exactly the health of our business.

11:54 How are we doing? What is the health status for our company? I think in addition to that, it allows us or prepares us to create clarity for our people in terms of what winning in their position looks like. And finally, it gives key leaders the ability to manage something that then contributes to those two things. And because I think often what we get confused is that we manage numbers and we don't. We manage attitudes and behaviors and those things affect our numbers. And so, okay, to begin with, I want to talk about KPIs. So we break these things. There's three categories, KPIs, standards, leading activities and behaviors.

12:36 Now, when we talk KPIs, I'm cheating a little bit and I'm going off base. And here's what I mean. By definition, key performance indicators are ultimately things that allow you to define what winning in a specific role looks like. I understand by generic definition, that's what a KPI is. How would you differentiate that from KPMs, e-performance measurements? Same diff? I think it's for our purposes. I think it's same thing, right? So here's where I like to go with KPI. Because we drill into standards... my KPIs are not necessarily defined by role. The way I leverage a KPI is I think of it more like core numbers that our entire organization is rallied behind and ensuring that we're winning on.

13:20 Sure. Okay. So for me, like what I would place in that category are things like revenue to revenue goal. Like we're always should be measuring how we're doing against our project. Yeah. Yeah. How are we doing with AR? So are AR aging, the timeframes, the function? I think it's actually the wording sort of matters based on what you just said is revenue against pro forma. Because having a pro forma that we're performing against is different than... Our goal is 4 million this year. Yes. Right? We should talk about that. We should break that down, right? No, you're 100% right. You're 100% right. And I think maybe the best way, and we'll see how this goes, but I think the idea is break them up and then let's get into them and kind of tear them up a little bit so people can get a good view.

14:06 I'll stop interrupting your phone. Would you shut up? So we've got revenue. And again, I think you're right, Chris. It always has to be looked at in context to what we said we would be doing. Otherwise, that number is irrelevant. A plan is different than a goal. Exactly. Exactly. Where are we? AR, and we're going to talk about what that means. Gross profit margins. Okay. And then finally, our closing conversions. Mm-hmm. Now, for some businesses that I just oversimplified just absolute myriads of stuff. Sure. But in our world, where I start from is I want to identify the universal numbers in my business that regardless if you're a mitigation team, recon team, you're part of my admin staff, my finance staff, your jobs, your roles, your functions somehow contribute to these numbers and we're all ultimately responsible.

14:57 Right. So that's how we use the term KPI. Again, I understand I'm going off script a bit from a generic definition. Well, based on what you just said, right? A KPI could also be a standard. It could. And a standard could be one of our KPIs. Yeah. Like I would like to like basically wrap these in this package of these are the core things that are non-negotiable period and they're universal in nature. Yeah. Yeah. Meaning regardless of the role that you have, somehow your function contributes directly to these items. Yeah. These things have a critical impact on the business. And they're unifying. And that was one of the things that came up during this year or during this last year was...

15:37 And it sounds silly sometimes, but there was a bit of an epiphany that would go off where it's like, oh, now I understand why we could all be unified behind a mission. Not your mission statement, but it's this idea of how do I get a recon department manager? For instance, to prioritize the same things in a partnership, in a unified front, as my mitigation department manager. Well, it's these KPIs. Because their niche focus or function might be a little bit different, but they're all ultimately caring about these four really critical non-negotiable numbers. So that's how we look at KPIs. And again, I know it's not by true definition, but that's what we mean.

16:17 The second category, and you started to hint at this, are the standards, okay? What is it that your job, by definition, needs to deliver on? What are the standards, the deliverables? When I do X, so an example would be, estimating or we upload estimates after job site first inspected or whatever the case may be. First aid job inspected. That doesn't tell me enough. But if I stay in my standard is within 24 hours of site inspected, we upload a completed estimate. Now I've got a standard. That's concrete. That for me as an estimator, as an example... I know I have a deliverable and a standard that I commit to.

17:00 And the likelihood then, if I do that consistently, there's a really strong chance though my core KPIs are where I need them to be. Right? Yes. So here's another behavioral standard. I think the thing that feels so important about building standards into our business is... So there's standards that are sort of related to these numbers, metrics that drive our business, our profitability, everything else. But then there's also behavior standards that I think we could spend two hours on this podcast. But one standard that I think about that's so important... From a customer experience standpoint, which is what drives our retention of our clients and repeat business and all of that kind of stuff, the 24-hour job update standard.

17:48 Yep. The other types of behavior standards across our customer experience chain They create a consistent experience for our customers. Unless something is a standard and people have been trained to be able to perform that behavior and it's been inspected and everything else, we're always going to have a huge amount of inconsistency in what our customers actually experience from us. 100%. And where this shows up is you have a different experience with different salespeople. Yep. That you're based on their personality and their charisma. And the same thing happens too in the other customer-facing roles in our business like job file coordinators, estimators, and PMs that are all carrying our brand.

18:34 You could also say that the same thing about AR. Our AR professionals on our team. Any of these customer-facing roles having some standardized behaviors where it's like, hey, no, this is the normal thing that everybody does. So critical. It's massive. And it really is what gives people clarity on how to succeed in their role. Because at the end of the day, if it's not concrete, then what does a win look like? Yeah. What does winning look like on our team? Yeah. Yeah. And so that's where I really like to go with this idea with standards is sitting in that position long enough to really clearly define what is the deliverable. So an example would be, right?

19:15 We like to promote this idea of creating a workflow for your core functions of your business. A little bit different than an SOP. Standard operating procedures tend to be really granular and really step by step. Meaning, click on this drop down menu, choose X, right? Stuff like that. What we're talking about with a workflow is it's actually kind of a process map. It's showing what phase of the project are we in and what role is doing what at this current time in the project lifecycle. And I think the reason we like that model so much is that it really unifies the team so that they can see and understand how their part contributes to the bigger puzzle. Yeah. And they can also see why each step is so important because it ultimately, in many cases, sets the next person up to succeed.

20:00 Yeah. And so we like these kinds of workflows. So one of the things that we talk about when we're teaching how to use these and deploy these is we talk very specifically on this idea that when there's a task description, you might get something from us, for instance, that's a little bit more open-handed So that you can customize it for your particular company. But the goal, what we're going to try to coach the team on is be very concrete and specific. So again, we do the estimator piece. Or let's say we say, in your job flow, there's an element in there about communication with the client. Well, then that's where you put very specifically. Every 24-hour project manager commits to using, right?

20:41 Or provides 24-hour job update. Whatever it is, right? We're very clear and specific. What are you doing? How often, right? Or what's the timeframe in which that's required to be completed? Concrete, right? And I think the other really important thing, is attaching the why. Whenever we lay out standards, it's so important that people understand the why. And right now, here's just something that's very present for me. You know, Wayne, our new business manager. Yeah. Man, there's a lot to love here. Wayne has just been really revolutionizing our business in a number of ways. He's an accountability beast. But one of the things I really love is that when Wayne is building systems or new standards for us in terms of behavior standards, ways we do things, ways we put things in the system, all that kind of stuff.

21:30 Like one of the things I appreciate is he's like a, I almost said like a Nazi. I'm sure there's some bad thing about me using that term. But he's just, he's incredibly rigid from a principle standpoint of Don't ever create a standard that isn't absolutely necessary. Right. Don't ever create... Don't do anything in your business that isn't absolutely necessary. If it's not absolutely necessary, just get rid of it. Don't manage it. Don't lead to it. Don't incentivize it. Don't do anything with it. Just carve out everything that's non-essential. And so it's... Anytime we're creating a standard, it's important. There is a why behind every standard. Yep. And it's important to explain it because that's part of what drives compliance.

22:11 Like, do people understand why it's so important for us to hit this number or to do this behavior every single time? And the 24-hour job update is just an obvious one. Yeah. You know, in terms of commercial service, but... Well, and I think part of what you have the opportunity to do in that why, again, is point up, right? Upstream. KPIs is where we started. And so if people can see, oh, when I deliver on this specific concrete deliverable, this standard... it again contributes in a healthy way towards these core elements that we're measuring and monitoring on a consistent basis. It benefits me, the team, and the company in this specific way. That's it.

22:52 Like the dots all line up. They all connect. Yeah. And I think that's what's so important about trying to break up these concepts a little bit so people can see how they ultimately roll in to support each other. These aren't separated from each other. They're not different initiatives. They support each other. So again, with the standards, this is where we need to take our time. Because I think so often, if we look at our business right now, many of you probably are monitoring the KPIs that we've talked about. Again, AR, aging, okay? Revenue to revenue goal, i.e. against your pro forma, our GPs, across the board, and then our closing conversion, okay? Oh, yeah. So then we get down into the standards.

23:32 When we get down to the standards and we're talking about each person's position on the team and their core function during the project lifecycle... The more clear, the more concrete we can be. And here's the added piece. We've got to have an actual consistent way of capturing whether or not that's happening. So just like, it's essentially what you just said. Don't establish a standard, a concrete deliverable if you have no way to validate or track that it's happening. Yeah. Right? So one of the things that we encourage teams is really leverage your project management software suite. Whoever it is that you're using, use the tasking cycles or workflows in those programs to to help identify and lay out these standards.

24:13 Yeah. Right? And again, if it's not something you can track, don't make it a standard. Yeah. Or you're going to have to take the time to determine what it is that you have to put into place so that you can track that deliverable. Okay? Yeah. If there's no way to track it, you really got to ask yourself, is this really an essential attribute to my business? Or should I be focusing my attention on something somewhere else more important? And when you create that behavior of, hey, this is really important. You do X, but then we don't really have a way to inspect what we expect. You're really setting the stage for failure. Yeah. I mean, you're going to burn your people's energy out on the wrong spend, right? All right, Head, Heart & Boots listeners. Wanted to stop here just a moment and thank our underwriting sponsor, Bloodlight Consulting Group.

24:59 As all of you know, right? You know, Brandon and I, this is our passion project, Head, Heart & Boots is. But it's also a way of more and more that our consulting clients find us. And in effect, they interview us, right? Those of you who've been listening to the show for a while, you get to know who we are, right? What we're about. So if Head, Heart & Boots is valuable to you, one of the best things you can do is share it with your friends. And it's been incredible to watch just the audience grow. And we still get text messages from many of you about shows that you really like and impacted you. So that's number one. And please keep doing that. Many of you have been huge advocates of the show. We also just want to remind you too, if you're a restoration company owner and you're interested in a partner in your growth, you want some help building out systems, developing your leadership teams, helping set up the infrastructure for you to scale and grow into the company that you're trying to build.

25:49 That's what we do. That's what we do is we come alongside restoration company leaders. We help equip them and we help support them in that growth trajectory. So if you're looking for that, go to floodlightgrp.com. Potentially we could be a great match for each other. Another way that we really do serve our client base and our sphere of influence is through our premier partners. We work really hard to vet those folks that we believe bring a level of value to the industry, that it can really be leveraged in a way to have a sincere, positive impact on your business. We take that very seriously. The folks that we create those kind of ongoing partnerships, that's not a check-the-box kind of scenario. We really see strategic alignment in the value that they bring.

26:29 We see value in the way that their leadership teams and their partners are developed. And we've done very sincere work of ensuring that these folks that we introduce our clients and our sphere to can actually create vetted value. So go check out floodlightgrp.com forward slash premier slash partners and see if there's some folks on there that you can connect with and begin developing some other resources to support your growth and your business. Dude, with this whole topic on standards, we do run into a fair bit of friction with teams when we first start having this conversation with them. Sure. An example that comes to mind immediately is with recon teams. One of the standards we talk about is production lifecycle, right?

27:10 Like 5,000 a week. This is one of the standards that we suggest to people. It could be 7,500 a week. It could be 2,000 a week. It doesn't matter. In our experience, 5,000 is a very rough number when it comes to recon production. And every time we ring this up, almost every time. Per PM, by the way. Yeah, per PM. But whenever we bring this up, it's funny because our recon folks, they bristle at this. They're like, well, and they kind of hem and haw. And they're like, well, is it a commercial? Is it, you know, because we do 70% commercial, 30% and does that apply? And it's like, in some ways, the standard doesn't matter. And in other ways, it matters a whole lot.

27:51 What that standard is, the importance of the standard is that we have this unwavering true north Yes. That is, it draws attention when anything comes outside of that standard, it forces a spotlight on it. That's right. Whereas if we don't have any standard established, then it's just, we're sort of navigating by the compass on our wrist. And it's just like, we're reacting to every single job. It's like, how do you effectively focus your whip review every week without a standard? Right. And production time is just one of those things that you can dial in. But what happens is without a standard for GP, without a standard for life cycle and all these things, you end up going through your entire whip every week.

28:38 And you're burning three hours processing through an entire list of projects where really maybe 10% of them were out of alignment with what we want to see those jobs looking like. Yeah. Only 10% are outside of standard. But if you haven't identified the standards, you're forced to go through every job. Like, what's the status? What's the vitals on this job? Get all the nuance and all the story and all the things, right? Exactly. Yeah, that's a really good example. So just for the sake of clarity, because I know I've got some math heads that were listening and they're trying to figure out what we're talking about. So we're talking about per PM per job. So if I put a recon job into production tomorrow, that job, whatever, Smith dash, blah, blah, blah.

29:20 The idea is I should be able to, on that job, produce at least $5,000 a week in production on that specific job. So we're not talking about in totality for that PM per week. I'm saying for that job. Here's what we mean by that. $20,000 bathroom job. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So you're going to knock it out in four weeks. Okay. It's done. Now, many of you are going, oh yeah, but what about cabinets being back or what happens with this, the floor? I get it. I get all of that. And what Chris just really put nicely was, but when we have a standard, it forces our staff because they know what the standard is to proactively communicate why that would be outside of the standard. Because it could happen. We could find out that it's a, you know, it's a bathroom and it's a bathroom cabinet that's six weeks back.

30:03 Well, we're obviously not going to hit our timeline. But if my PM knows the standard, he or she is going to walk into the meeting and say, Hey, look, took a look at Smith job. Just so we know it should only take about four weeks. But because of the cabinet, this is going to be a seven week project. Yeah. I'm going to plan accordingly. Okay, great. Like we know. Yeah. And in 20 seconds, everybody's clear on that job. We move on. Yeah. And we're not going to repeat the same cycle over and over on every job. That's the power of standards, right? And in terms of how we like, where do we memorialize these? Because if there are not some kind of writing or accountability aspect to it, then they're not really anything like verbal commitments to things don't change behavior. Yeah. So when we talk about these concrete standards and deliverables, again, we point to this.

30:46 It's got to be something that you can measure and track somewhere. You've got to be able to also provide potentially tools and resources to make it easier for said person to do those things. It's like the analogy that just came to my mind is, It's kind of like the Ten Commandments. Yeah. In your business. Yeah. Right? Because here's the funny thing. Are there exceptions to every standard? Of course there are. Thou shalt not murder. Well, we've sort of... We've identified some edge cases as, you know, humanity... Yeah. Where, you know, sometimes it makes sense for us to kill others, right? And it's a short list, but there's exceptions, right? Yeah. And likewise with standards, there are absolutely exceptions.

31:29 But I think what we're pointing towards with that, you know, timeline example and whatnot is 75% of the time, maybe 80, maybe 85, maybe 90% of the time, that $20,000 bathroom job is going to take four weeks. Yeah. They're going to bang it out. Done deal. Drywall repairs. Throw in some floor. Yeah. We're out of there. Yeah. That's how it's supposed to go. Yeah. But again, it's the 20%. It's the exceptions to that that create the requirement for us to have a standard. So we know to look. So we know to deal with something when it falls outside of that. Well, and I think one of the added benefits when it comes to establishing these really clear standards for our people is they're no longer using any of their mental or emotional energy to solve that problem.

32:13 And I think we underestimate how often we put our people in a position where they're expending all this energy just today. What's the plan? They stay in this constant state of reactivity because almost everything's negotiable. Yeah. And so it needs to be memorialized. So a handful of different places or a couple different places, think about this. If you have workflows like we teach our clients, then those standards are embedded as part of that. If you're a know-how user, that tool is becoming super popular, has a ton of momentum and opportunity behind it. then that's where, again, a know-how tool or platform would be another place you memorialize the standards there.

32:54 SOPs, do it there. Any place where we're talking about performance against the role or anywhere where we're outlining what are the actions that you take, what's those descriptors, that's where we memorialize those standards. Another place then that we... Well, let's go into behaviors and attitudes and we can talk about how you inspect these things. So keep recapping as we go. KPIs, by definition, we're using it slightly different. And that is, what are the four or five key things company-wide that we're keyed in on that tell us the health of our business? Okay. Standards are those things that we do at the individual role. What is the concrete deliverable that I'm responsible for at this phase of the project based on my role?

33:37 Okay. Standards. Standards. And then that final group is, what do we manage? Because you don't manage KPIs. You don't manage standards. What you manage is attitudes and behaviors or what we call leading activities. Okay. When you get really honed in as a management team on asking yourself this question, like running everything through this filter of what would have the leading activity or behavior been had I monitored that would have given me the highest chance of getting the deliverable that I wanted from that person or that role? So then that's what we manage. That's where we need to be spending our cadence. Yeah, you don't manage the cake that comes out of the oven. You manage the ingredients, how long you put it in the oven, right?

34:18 All that stuff. That's right. Exactly. That's a great way to put it. So when we're talking about these behaviors, it's interesting because where do those things show up? Like where do we have the most consistent place to be monitoring attitudes and behaviors that ultimately feed these other numbers, these concrete things that we measure? Well, think about your meeting cadence. We won't go into all of them. But our consistency in our meeting cadence is one of those places that we monitor and manage leading activity and behavior. A morning stand to, as an example. If you have a MIT team, EMS crew, every morning, there should be this routine where there's an agenda that they adhere to.

34:59 And let's just walk through those as an example really quickly. As an example, part of your morning routine is your tech ones, tech twos, whatever, load up all our vehicles, line them all up, and they start a pre-trip check. Meaning they go to their loadout. They ensure that the vehicle is loaded and topped off on all meeting our standard loadout. They're doing their fluid and oil checks, right? They're reporting mileage. They're checking lights. They're doing all that miscellaneous stuff. Loading up special equipment based on that day's assignments. Getting their work orders for the day. Productivity follow-up from the day before. Inspecting our uniforms before our teams leave for the day.

35:39 All of those kinds of behaviors I can manage during my morning stand-to routine. And when I do that, I set the stage then for profitability, consistency, and customer experience. experience, right? Because I'm not going to have a team leave and then go sit in line at Home Depot for four hours, right? Or they're not going to get to a job and only do part of the job and figure out they didn't have what they need to, right? Like those behaviors, when we manage them well, again, it gives us this highest likelihood that then the trackable measurable deliverables on that job, we're going to get it, right? And so we manage leading activities and behaviors, We help deploy and memorialize standards at each key position.

36:21 And then all of that should be feeding these core elements that we measure about our business to ensure that we're on track and our company's healthy and heading in the right direction. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's so many. I'm, my head's sort of spinning with all this stuff relative to our sales operation in our businesses, right? Standards are so important. One of the things that's coming to mind for me, I had a conversation with one of our owners yesterday. They're 15 million bucks a year on their way to 20. They have a key sales rep on their team that does millions and millions of dollars worth of work. And, which is great.

37:03 It's like everybody listening to this, like, oh my gosh, they have a single sales rep that does millions. Yeah, several. Wouldn't that be awesome? Well, yes, it is awesome. But it's also not without its problems. Because if you have one sales rep that does 30 or 40% of your revenue... Well, you can't build a business around them because at some point they tap out. Most sales reps, there's a ceiling to that. They only have so much time to steward so many customer relationships. And so you can't build a business around a single figure. But if you fail to create standards of behavior of how are we documenting these things in a CRM, I can't tell you how many times you and I've seen this.

37:47 You have a prima donna salesperson. They know how valuable they are. They've documented nothing. They have their way of doing things. And then ultimately over time, what transpires is you've got a sales rep that has the entire company by the hair. Yeah. The you know what? Where they are really controlling... all those customer relationships, and there's tyranny in your business. And you may... There can be tyranny in your business while you're succeeding because you failed to put standards in place. And so now it's not your company.

38:28 There's an element where it's their company and they're controlling those customer relationships. And even if it's not malicious intent. No, no, no. And I'm not even saying that. That's exactly right. And that's, I think, that is the thing we can just fall asleep to. Yeah. Is when we're, it's the paradox of success. Whenever we're having success, We're not necessarily looking at what's creating that success and also what's not. That's right. Like what behaviors are we allowing to happen in the midst of our success that are ultimately going to eat our success or prevent us from getting to the next level? That's a really huge problem. problem. You and I see it all the time where we get lulled to sleep by our success.

39:09 We're like, whatever we're doing, it's working. And no, no, no, no, no. Some of the things you're doing are working. And some of the things actually might be fighting against your success and eroding it over time. That's right. Yeah. Well, and I think it's a disservice to that person because at the end of the day, again, we alluded, it's not malicious intent. That salesperson, and many of us have them on our team, where they legitimately believe they've got a lot of market penetration. If we're talking about senior citizen or senior living in their particular market, they're like, I've got the lockdown. They're all mine. Well, the reality of it is they've hit that human potential limit and they can't consistently be following up or leveraging or making new relationships.

39:49 Yeah. But it's the thought. And because we didn't document standards and behaviors like that, we have no way to help them see that they don't have everything under grips and that we do need that second or third or fourth or fifth person. And without question, every time you and I see a high flyer like that. And it's so fun. I mean, it's so fun when that's your team and you've got one of those rock stars. Don't get me wrong. Like, it's so awesome when you get an alpha player like that on your team. But I think in almost every case, we can look at their performance and the ways that they aren't meeting, like what standards we would suggest in terms of standards of behavior, system process, documentation, all that kind of stuff, where you can tell that the absence of those standards is limiting their potential.

40:35 100%. Every single time, that person who does $5 million in work for you, inevitably, if they implemented certain standards and practices of monitoring and documentation and behaviors and had a consistent cadence in their behaviors, maybe that person's a $10 million person. It's totally feasible. Right? That's right. I mean, that's the thing that we see over and over and over again is people that are Like systematically, if they put standards in place, it would almost certainly amplify and accelerate the results. It's like morph. I mean, isn't that fair to say? Yeah. It's almost 100%. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be a weird case if that wasn't true. Yeah. I think. Okay.

41:15 Let's land the plane here. I think the goal with this kind of topic is that you may not use these terms the same way. But I think the principle of what we're trying to communicate in terms of how you think about these numbers and how we think about our people. So again, come up with a term, whether it be core KPIs or pillar KPIs or whatever. It's this idea of what are those four or five key numbers that really when they're rocking and rolling, summarize a ton of sub-measurables that tell us exactly where our business sits. So I'll just walk through them again. AR, okay, you're aging. AR. your gross profit margins, your revenue to goal.

41:56 And for us, another non-negotiable is that closing and conversion rate. And I think we'll probably talk about more on that in a later episode. But those are those core things. Again, whatever you choose to call them, I don't really care, but help be in a position where you can systematically and concisely communicate to your downline team members what those things are and why they're so critically important to your business and how it is that those numbers unify everyone else's activities, right? Because we're all heading in the same direction. Standards. Those are those things at the individual's level that you determine are the concrete deliverables they're responsible for. I.e., when I do these things under these standards, I will be winning.

42:40 I know it. My team knows it. My owner and employers know it. And then finally, asking yourself the question as a group. What are the activities and the behaviors that we can manage on a day-to-day basis that will most likely give us the measurables that we want later, right? Yeah. So big numbers unify us. Standards give me clarity on what it looks like to win at my job level by title. And then finally, as leaders, identify the activities and behaviors that most likely give you the outcome you want to measure or give you the number that you'd... And I wish, man, I wish I was one of those people. I know certain leaders and public speakers and whatnot, where they're just, they have this deep library of quotable quotes that they have.

43:28 And they're like, and then Benjamin Franklin said, you know, he once said about this. And I like, I am so terrible at that. But one of the quotes that comes to my mind, I think it was a wartime general said that the standard that you walk past is the standard you accept. Man, big time. And I think that is the hardest part about this whole conversation is you can establish KPIs in your business. You can create standards of, we always do this. We never do that. This is always our target. You can create those and you can create standardized behaviors of, this is always the way we behave and this is in these environments. This is our process, all that kind of stuff.

44:08 But the moment you walk past it, Right? Yeah. And somebody's not abiding by that standard is the moment you erode the standard. That's right. So the hard work, and it is very hard work. I was telling you about an example where Wayne, he's creating standards in our company. And you know, for a long time... for the first couple of years, it was on a day-to-day basis, it was primarily you and I running the operations of Floodlight. And now we have a much bigger team and we need it. And so Wayne's creating these things. Well, he had to call me out on a standard and it was not a big one. And good for him. And good for him, 100%. But this is, I think, important. Wayne, he and I have a weekly meeting we've been doing. And he's so rad.

44:49 He's like, he texts me the day before and says, Hey, make sure you click on our calendar event because I have our agenda. I have a lot of things planned for our time. I just want to make sure you're prepared and ready for our meeting. I love it. I love it. But anyway, when I showed up, I could tell that Wayne was, in a very professional sense, he had something he had to talk to. We were going to have a serious conversation. I said, dude, are you disappointed with me? He said, actually, I am disappointed because I had laid out some guidelines for you. He has a system. We have a project management software that we're leveraging. And I had not been following the guidelines of updating my dates, my due dates on these things that I'd been assigned. And he called me out on it.

45:30 Now, some of you, like in the context of this conversation would be like, okay, well, that's a little nitty gritty. And it is. And at the same time, if he lets that slip... Well, I'm never going to have accurate dates in my timeline. I'm never going to update them. If nobody ever calls me on it, but when he called me on it, I'm like, you know what? It's a new behavior. I'm sorry, man. I totally understand the purpose behind that. I'll course correct. That's right. And then because everything builds on everything else. 100%. It's like if we allow certain details to slip, it is ultimately going to affect bigger outcomes and bigger processes. And then when we erode those processes, then the big picture starts to erode with things.

46:10 You can't let the details slip. If something matters, it matters. And I'm one of those guys saying this, by the way, that I have created excuses for myself for most of my career. Details. I have created a culture for myself for many, many years where I'm like, I'm not a details guy. I'm a macro guy. And I'm at a stage now and I love it. Wayne is really helping me with this just to recognize, no, no, no, no, no. If the details don't matter, then scrap the thing. Why is it even something that I'm putting energy into? If it does matter, then let's treat it as such. And I just, I love that, man. I mean, he's leveling all of us up on the team.

46:52 But I think this is such a good message for everybody on the team. is, look, if you're going to create a process, don't create a process unless it matters. That's right. And if it matters, don't walk past somebody shortcutting that process. That's right. Yeah, that's right. 100%. So guys, listen, I mean, it's kind of like a mini cheat sheet. I mean... I know we didn't blow anybody's hair back with rocket science, but these are some core principles that if we can get a grip on them in our businesses and we get really good at communicating what these mean as a core function to our company, you will see a ton of unification with your downline leaders. And you're going to see a lot of people building trust with one another because they know what the standard is and they're delivering on it on a regular basis.

47:36 It is so much easier to manage and lead an organization out of trust. Hmm. than it is being in a constant state of looking over your shoulder because you're not confident your team's doing what they're supposed to do. All right, guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. And one last thing before we let you go. Guys, we really want to grow the show this year. We had an absolute blast last year in 2023. Great guests. Great experiences being invited as the head, heart, and boots to some really great industry events. It's just been just an absolute blast for us, for Chris and I. And we want to continue to do it. We want to continue to prioritize the show. And we want to continue to reach a larger audience so that we can continue to reach or talk to folks about the whole Restore.

48:21 So if you get value from our show, if you guys consistently jump into an episode and you can walk away with one or two bullet points that you can hang on and leverage in your favor, will you please do us a favor and help us grow this year? Would you be willing to share it with a friend, a fellow Restorer, Your internal team. Yeah. Pay the piper. Yeah. This is the cost. And listen, I actually, The Knowledge Project and Sam Harris has a waking up podcast. I have two podcasts that I pay for. Yeah. I pay $10 a month to The Knowledge. I think it's $8 or $10 a month to The Knowledge Project. Another $6 or $8 a month I pay to Sam Harris for his Waking Up podcast. I value both of those. I listen to them regularly.

49:02 And they have, I pay for their premium subscriptions. We don't do that. And I think we want to be more aggressive this year. It's like, hey, if you like Head Heart and Boots, if it's valuable to you in any way, personally or professionally, Pay us by telling your friends or, you know, there's a way right inside the app. If you're, if you got an episode, you're like, oh my gosh, this is really useful. Hit the, hit the share link, copy the link to it and text it to other owner buddies of yours or downline employees. Like we've had a lot of people, the, the changing our project manager mindset, I think continues to be our number one. Yeah. And we've had, we've had many, many owners and GMs tell us that they've sent that to their whole PM team.

49:42 Yep. and made it mandatory listening. And so do that, whatever way you share, publicly or through text message. That's all we're asking for. Yeah. It's the whole like, subscribe, and share. Right? So if you guys can leave us a review, if you guys can be permanent listeners, that would be awesome. And share it with some friends. Let's see where we can go this year. We're pretty pumped. Wayne's doing a lot to help us even layer a level up in terms of guests. We'll begin seeing some of those. We got some visions, yeah. Over this next quarter, it's going to be a great year. So, all right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see you on the next one. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart & Boots.

50:25 And if you're enjoying the show, but you love this episode, please hit follow, formerly known as 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.