How to Scale Your Business, Part 2
You’re ready to scale your business, now all you need is a list of priorities. What’s first? Thankfully, there are three crucial categories you need to organize around in order to simplify your growth plans.
In this episode of Cracking the Code, industry experts (and HVAC business owners) Weldon Long and Gary Elekes continue their discussion on how to scale your business. They’ll share that important 3-step checklist and how you can prioritize through situational analysis.
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Audio Transcription (in beta, please be wary of mistakes)
00:00:00:00 – 00:00:09:24
On today’s show, we continue to learn the ins and outs of scaling your business.
00:00:09:27 – 00:00:27:09
All right, let’s get going with today’s show starring the one and only Mr. Gary Elekes. I’m going to join him for a little bit. We’re going to continue our conversation around how to scale your business. Take it away. Me and Gary, I guess. Take it away, guys. I want to take you through the process. So we talked about, well, like, how to eat the elephant, one bite at a time.
00:00:27:09 – 00:00:43:27
So that when we say that all the time, that’s easy to do when you’re operating a business, there’s a million fires coming at you all at once. That sounds like a really good idea until you know the service that comes in and says, I’m not coming to work tomorrow, I’m quitting. So, you know, that sort of changes your priorities.
00:00:43:27 – 00:01:13:28
So I get all that. But I think what we’re talking about is thinking about your business in the future. You have to be you have to carve out time to do that. So the very first thing that we’re always going to talk about is what we call a situational analysis. And and what is that? Well, I’m going to send you guys a file, through Jessica and through EEG and, let’s call it 375, questions that essentially look at processes in any given business.
00:01:13:28 – 00:01:31:12
So, the interesting thing that Wally said is his business is at a particular evolution. His business is at a place. And that places is, you know, it’s a it’s a three, three and a half year old entity. And there’s a lot of good stuff going on inside of that business over the last three years. And now he wants to scale it.
00:01:31:13 – 00:01:54:10
When we talk about scaling, that’s different for Wally than it might be for a company that’s a startup. Three years ago he was a startup, but now that also could be a company that’s 50 years old with a really great brand name. And, maybe mom and dad didn’t want to grow the business that much. And, maybe the next generation is now in and they want to double it and grow it, and they haven’t made their mark on the community.
00:01:54:18 – 00:02:12:23
Or maybe you want to take over the world. Maybe you want to become, you know, the Walmart of either way, what that’s going to lead to is that’s going to lead to, you know, a series of what we call gaps or what we call a gap analysis, meaning that we don’t care, how many or what the gaps are.
00:02:12:25 – 00:02:35:21
That’s not the relevant topic at this point. What’s relevant is that you’ve identified what are the potential opportunities. This is all about looking at where the priorities are going to live. So over here remember, you know we’ve got this dream okay. So my dream over here is we think we can be a $50 million business. The stop on the way is 30.
00:02:35:23 – 00:02:58:09
And so we’re thinking about our gaps in relationship to that. So again back to the original example. The Sarasota business is 3 million in new construction. We want to be 10 million to 12 million in replacement service in maintenance. So it’s we’ve got to transition out of the first 3 million of new construction and find a way to get into the replacement business, which we’ve done.
00:02:58:12 – 00:03:24:10
So now it’s about 3.5 million this year, year end, second year, next year it’s going to be about 5 million in replacement. So we’ve we’ve made a change, you know, of about $6 million. Delta from 3 million construction into, you know, what is now 3.2 million replacement. That was done because we ask some questions about what what is the situation and what are the big gaps, the opportunity.
00:03:24:10 – 00:03:52:23
So that what that does is that creates this framework. Where are the opportunities? Yes. And so I don’t know what opportunities you have in your business. I know we all have them. So example again, in a real life business we now are changing our vision. We’re changing our brand promise. We’re changing the customer bill of rights because we’re now a full service business that has products that we didn’t have last year.
00:03:52:26 – 00:04:12:14
So if you’re thinking about that. So we’re adding structure. We’re adding capabilities. Well, that’s going to require us to rethink what we’re doing, where we’re spending money, where we’re spending time, etc.. So that’s an opportunity for growth. It helps us look at this set of numbers and say, we can probably get there faster if we have this set of products.
00:04:12:14 – 00:04:36:15
So imagine McDonald’s sitting in a room going, man, should we sell salads? Yeah, we probably should. Can we, can we sell some coffee? When do people buy coffee with breakfast? Well, yeah, most people drink coffee with their egg McMuffin, you know, and and if you think about it, every once in a while they come out with this McRib and and even though I don’t eat McRib and never had a McRib, I mean, they bring it out and they take it away and they bring it out and they take it away.
00:04:36:15 – 00:05:04:12
And so it’s part of their product portfolio. It’s helping them sell, ancillary products to their customer base. So when I think about the future of IRA CO2, they’re going to the prices are going up at the supplier level. You’re giving me an opportunity to raise my prices. My organic growth is happening from 3.2 million to probably 3.8 million, just because of price increases, not because I did anything smart just because we’re going to have to raise prices.
00:05:04:12 – 00:05:19:27
So thank you to the suppliers and manufacturers. Thank you to the federal government. Thank you for the state governments. Thank you for that. You probably won’t hear me say that too often, but you heard me say it. And I believe that it’s something that’s a benefit. It’s a good thing for us. So it’s an opportunity. So pricing becomes part of that gap analysis.
00:05:20:05 – 00:05:40:20
Are we priced correctly. Well maybe we are maybe we are. So as we deal with the opportunities what we want to do is we want to categorize these, you know, into our buckets. And we talk about this all the time, our must do items. We have certainly things that we know we need to do. And there are items that are what we would consider to be nice to do.
00:05:40:22 – 00:06:00:22
And, and we’re good with all those, so nothing is minimized. Every idea that’s on the gap analysis here that, pops out of this conversation has to be placed somewhere in this matrix. Why do we do it? That way? Well, it’s very simple, because the technician did quit today, and he said, I’m not going to come to work for you.
00:06:00:22 – 00:06:28:23
I’m going to go work for somebody else for additional money. You lost that capacity and that’s a crisis. And so you got to deal with that. That’s real life. But that segments our time is what it does. In other words, it starts putting pressure on our ability to actually work to on the on the key items. So I don’t really think that it’s a good idea to have any more than one through five major initiatives, what you would consider and, scaling up or in some of the nomenclature, what they call major thrust factors.
00:06:28:25 – 00:06:50:05
So one of our major thrust factors for a market is we’re getting into the traditional media space okay. So that’s a big that’s a very big item that checks the box. Right. You know, the second thing we’re doing in that company is we’re changing our data structure. We think that marketing really is, all about becoming a data driven analytics type business.
00:06:50:05 – 00:07:08:16
We don’t see it as just a messaging business. It’s an analytics business. I have to be able to tell people where to spend, how to spend. What’s the smartest been if they want to grow, what’s the best course to do that? That’s analytics and data. So that’s another box that we’re checking over here. So these are changes. These are process driven changes.
00:07:08:18 – 00:07:35:09
So we got lots of need to do items. There’s you know in here we’ll say this is six through 15 and we’ll say this is 16 plus. So let’s go back to Wally’s business. Let’s go back to your business. We don’t know what the evolution of your business is. We don’t know where you exist. You do. And that’s part of what this process is about, is for you to ask the question, what is it that I aspire to, you know, what’s my why?
00:07:35:11 – 00:07:53:15
Simon Sinek and then the how we’re doing a little bit of how right now, which is okay, what exactly do I have today? Where do I think I’m functioning? Well, you know, in terms of operations and sales and marketing etc.? And then where are the opportunities for my gaps were I mean, I’m going to say, okay, great.
00:07:53:17 – 00:08:15:26
This is where I’m going to spend most of my time. So I’ve already identified for you and I market, you know, a third one that we talked about is onboarding and train you all. And being able to document our processes so that as we hire these additional 14 bodies coming into the next year, we’re not just hiring people that are going to do the work in a sloppy fashion, and execution suffers.
00:08:15:29 – 00:08:37:24
We’ve identified that as a major constraint that needs to be dealt with, that if we hire 14 people, how do we get them to be onboarded and efficient and capable and up to standard? So that’s a real thing and it’s a real problem. It’s a real pain point. But so it goes on the must do list. So what we’re doing here is we’re talking about categorization of prioritization.
00:08:37:26 – 00:08:59:16
And that’s really the biggest challenge I see in contracting. I think if you talk with people that do consulting, you know, one of the best there is is Drew Cameron. And while he obviously is in that space on the sales, marketing and leadership side. So, you know, you ask people those questions and what they’re going to tell you is there’s opportunities to improve, and you have to choose your priorities.
00:08:59:16 – 00:09:20:02
And that’s where the game is played. So if I spend all my time over here, do a nice to do tasks, then it doesn’t get to it doesn’t become what it could become. So I’m going to take you back to, 1991, my very first managerial job. And, I’ve told this story in different boot camps before, and people are like, they shake their head, they’re like, no way.
00:09:20:06 – 00:09:42:01
That can’t possibly be. It couldn’t have happened that way. And the answer is yes. We really are that stupid sometimes. So you go, no, nobody can be that stupid. So. Well, but we are sometimes like. And it’s not that we’re dumb, it’s there. We’re spending our time in the wrong places. Okay. So that’s the issue is that those really smart people can get stuck in nice to do tasks less because of comfort zones.
00:09:42:04 – 00:10:01:05
So they sent me out to this branch. It’s losing money. It’s in Detroit, Michigan, and I go up to Detroit. I take my wife up there and it’s February like 12th, and my boss is like, go up there, check it out, see if you like it. You know, you’re going to be the youngest branch manager in the history of the company.
00:10:01:05 – 00:10:20:20
Everybody else is in their 50s. You’re going to be in your 20s. Nobody’s going to relate to you. You got to decide. But I need you to go up there and bring new ideas. And I’m like, so I go up there, it’s a blizzard, Wally. It’s a freaking blizzard. Okay, can we get off the airplane? We get on the, you know, the I-90, which is, you know, we’re Ann Arbor area is this way.
00:10:20:20 – 00:10:39:27
I can’t even believe I said those words being a high state guy, but. And then Detroit this way we don’t even know which direction we’re going. So it’s it’s that much snow. So we start tracking towards Detroit and, and there’s like 9 or 10in of snow that there’s they haven’t cleaned the roads. I mean it’s just it’s a war zone out there.
00:10:40:00 – 00:11:01:18
And so we finally get up north and if you go up north of the city, Rochester Hills, which is where Madonna is from, and that’s where the Lenox branch was, it’s beautiful up there. I mean, it’s just gorgeous country. Michigan is a beautiful state. And so, you know, we get up there and Christy, my wife is like, you know, it’s really pretty up here.
00:11:01:20 – 00:11:17:08
I could live here. So okay. So now I got the hall pass right. So anyway, I go back to my boss and I’m like, dude. Like it’s it’s like Dallas, Texas. It’s I got a pool. I got a great house, I got a, I got this job. I’m like, it’s snowing. It’s crazy. He’s like, if you like it in February, you’re going to love it in August.
00:11:17:13 – 00:11:38:04
And so we went up there and I get up there and what I, what I see if you look at this chart okay, what I see is nobody has really identified what the major opportunities or priorities are like. It’s just been a business. Now remember, this is a big company. You’re talking about a $6 billion company. So it’s not a scale.
00:11:38:07 – 00:11:58:25
And size has nothing to do with competency. Let’s let’s get that out on the table. So what you see is a group of people that are very, very hardworking, very talented individuals that were all living in the nice to do quadrants. And what I mean by that is the sales revenue of that branch at the time was about $17 million.
00:11:58:25 – 00:12:19:08
The average Lenox branch at that time was closer to 30 million. The market share in that market was about 3.4%. The average market share in Lenox was about eight. That branch was one branch out of 36 branches in the United States. It’s the only one that was losing money. You could begin to see the analytics like they don’t have enough revenue to cover up the sins of the costs.
00:12:19:10 – 00:12:40:02
So I asked the question, what are the priorities here? Like, what are you guys spending your time on? And the answer was they were spending all their time working with existing customers, basically trying to teach them how to sell better, sell more high efficiency products and you know, how to use financing. You know, this is back. And remember, we’re talking about the early 90s.
00:12:40:04 – 00:13:06:02
And I said, okay, that’s fine. Those are not bad priorities. But what about the bigger priorities? Where’s your new business acquisition strategy? How are you creating an opportunity for the customer to love us so much that Wally, as a contractor who’s doing business with us, actually wants to buy all of his parts and supplies from us. He wants to buy all of his equipment from us, and he doesn’t want to buy it from Goodman or York or somebody else, you know, multiple line dealerships.
00:13:06:05 – 00:13:24:21
And so they didn’t have any answers to those questions. So digging into the gap analysis, what I found was they were in their comfort zone. They liked to call on new customers. They were in what we call the cloverleaf route. So they would go here. They would go here, they would go here, and they would just hit their existing customers, and they just drove past new business opportunities.
00:13:24:23 – 00:13:47:07
And I’m like, well, time out. We’re at 3.4% market share. The average is eight. If we just average eight and we just make it average, are we are we going to get where we need to go so we don’t hit the dream, but at least we wouldn’t lose $1 million and Lenox would be happy about that. So and in the conversations, what I identified was they did not have the skill sets.
00:13:47:09 – 00:14:06:00
We did not have the personnel training plan. They did not understand the marketplace. They did not understand what the priorities were. So what I did is I went over here and I said, okay, I’m going to train you and we’re going to reorganize the operation. I want you to listen very carefully to what I just said. We’re going to reorganize the operation, okay?
00:14:06:02 – 00:14:29:17
Not change the personnel. We’re going to reorganize the strategy. Okay. So I want you to write some things down for me, okay? The first word is culture. Okay? Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Then I want you to write down strategy. Then I want you to write down, tactics, meaning what we do and how we do it. And then we’re going to measure, okay?
00:14:29:17 – 00:14:51:02
We’re going to figure it out. We’re going to start measuring it. So I ask the question, why are we so bad at acquisition? Because nobody is doing any acquisitions. They’re all calling on their existing customers because that’s their comfort zone. All right. And they said, well, we don’t really know how to do it okay. So that’s that’s not a no.
00:14:51:08 – 00:15:13:28
That’s a I don’t have the skill sets. So what we did is I said your priority 1 to 3, four and five, our new business acquisition. There are no other priorities like I don’t care what you’re doing over here is no longer. Okay. So I did reorganize the business. I’m telling you this story because it’s the same story that you’re going to hear about in Sarasota.
00:15:14:05 – 00:15:34:25
It’s the same story you’re going to hear about at peak. It’s the same story you’re going to hear about in any business. Okay. That’s not prioritized, right? Meaning if I don’t have departmental financial statements, it’s tough to make good decisions. You heard Wally say, I got financial statements. Now there are departmental. I can look directly at them. We had a conversation before we came on the air, and he’s making good decisions.
00:15:34:25 – 00:15:54:09
He’s focused. He’s got laser KPIs now, and he’s like, I got it. All right. So that makes a singular focus happen. So now you have the ability to make better decisions. So what I did is I said okay fine. You got 50 accounts on your account lists. You now have only 15 to 20. You no longer have 50.
00:15:54:09 – 00:16:14:13
So I took 30 accounts away from every one of my sales professionals. And I gave them to an inside sales professional who did not exist yet. So I hired an inside sales position and I took the accounts and I gave the existing accounts to the inside sales professional, Wally. And everybody went, oh my God, this is going to it’s going to be a disaster.
00:16:14:16 – 00:16:34:26
Absolute disaster. And I said, maybe so, but you are already losing $1 million. They didn’t send me up here to sit around and do it the same way we’re doing it, guys. Like we’re on the radar. Okay. Everybody’s looking at this branch going 36 branches and we got one. That’s not very good. They didn’t send me up there to sit around and, you know, basically blatantly winks.
00:16:34:29 – 00:16:58:05
So we created the inside sales position. I took away the accounts and I said, you now have time. You have time. Do you have blocks of time now available? And they said, but we don’t know how to do acquisition. I said, no problem, we’re going to train. So we did. So we trained on it. And so the first year that branch hit $27 million, the second year it hit $42 million, and by the third year it was $50 million.
00:16:58:05 – 00:17:23:00
It was number one in every single metric, in every category, on every analytic that Lenox had. There were 30 analytics. We were number one for five straight years, five straight branch of the year awards got hung in that branch. What changed? What changed was this process, what we were behaving to. We said, no, this is not a set of priorities that’s going to get us to the dream.
00:17:23:03 – 00:17:45:01
Okay, so the dream is what shapes the discussion, the dream, the vision, the what we’re trying to accomplish shapes the decision making process. The analytics in the in the evaluation of that starts telling you how to make better decisions. But the culture of that business was it was okay to be me too. And we organized that and said, no, it’s not okay to be me too.
00:17:45:02 – 00:18:01:18
It’s not okay at all. That’s not going to get you where you want to go. The carrier, the good men, the train franchises that were in that marketplace, they were killing Lenox in those days. And so we said, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to go through the situational analysis. We’re going to ask all the questions.
00:18:01:21 – 00:18:18:19
You know, do we know how to serve a customer? Do we have the right inventory? Are we priced right? Do we know how to sell? How can we acquire new business? Can we do all those things? What what does the gap analysis tell us? What are the opportunities? Okay, so one market share point in that operation up there back in those days.
00:18:18:19 – 00:18:41:29
And I’m again, we’re going back in the early 90s, one percentage point was about $1.2 million. So I map that analytic out. And I said fine, if we’re at 3.4, our target, our dream is 15%. We’re not going to be happy until we’re at 15. We get to 15. We can start rethinking whether or not we want to go to 20 and how that works.
00:18:42:01 – 00:19:07:10
So years ago, Goodman was sitting in a market penetration of 35% in Georgia. And I remember working with the senior executive team there and asking the question, Wally, how much do you want to get to? And they said 50%. And I said, well, if you’re going to get to 50%, you can’t keep doing the same things that you’re doing that got you from 0 to 10, from 10 to 20 20 to 25, 25 to 35.
00:19:07:12 – 00:19:25:01
Of course, the organization, the culture of the business, people are saying, well, you can’t be 50%. Well, you got to rethink that. You’ve got to use you have to start working on the vision. You have to start working on the belief systems. You have to start working on the mindset, and you have to start changing the paradigm about getting everybody aligned.
00:19:25:01 – 00:19:43:16
I want you to write that word down alignment. That’s what this is. This is creating alignment. So the situational analysis tells me what I have. The gap analysis tells me what my problems are, what my pain points are, maybe even what I’m doing. Well, the opportunities filter from that. And then we have to prioritize must do items again.
00:19:43:16 – 00:20:03:23
I went one through five in Detroit, in the state of Michigan, in Toledo because we weren’t very good at that skill set. And I said I re invented the organization. There was a position that didn’t exist. You know, Wally, I’m going to look over here at you. You created a rehash position inside. You’ve got an app and you’ve got an entire business around this.
00:20:03:23 – 00:20:30:25
And the rehashed position exists in your organization that maybe a few years ago and this industry didn’t exist. Right. And you so you have reinvented the idea of the comfort advisor or the selling tech, maybe not actually closing the transaction, and maybe it’s not in the best interest from a time prioritization point of view, to have them keep pecking at that, go get the next opportunity, but move that into a different version of how that’s going to work.
00:20:31:02 – 00:20:49:17
Then you move that over to the inside sales position, which is the rehashed position. Yeah. And those transactions are closing. And so the other week we were in Nashville and while he pulled up a report for me and he showed me, his tracking reports for his inside sales rehash, and he showed me his closing percentages and the influence that that’s had.
00:20:49:19 – 00:21:13:23
And so he can create more productivity, more sales, more growth by doing it that way versus doing it the old way. Yeah. Talk about that. Well, there’s so much that that you’ve covered there and so many really important points for people that want to grow their business without having attended chaos. And so I’m just going to kind of kind of start and go through a couple of things that really occurred to me and give you some examples of how what Gary is talking about has helped us in our business.
00:21:13:23 – 00:21:29:18
So the first thing I want to talk about is, a few years back, I wrote a book called The Power of Consistency. And in the introduction of that book, I talk about one of the biggest challenges for people in business. It’s not a lack of talent, lack of desire or lack of ability. It’s a lack of focusing on the right things.
00:21:29:18 – 00:21:53:25
People tend to get distracted with the wrong things. And what Gary’s talking about here is I get distracted with the nice to do’s, but they’re not focusing on the need to do’s now. Do grow our business to improve our business. The example we gave with that branch in Detroit. You’ve got to know what the problem is and and that requires having data to tell you where the problem is.
00:21:53:27 – 00:22:10:09
When Gary, for example, starts talking about departmental sizing and better organizing your your financial statements, right when you start having that conversation and you start getting way better. Dad and I want to give you an example because it’s something we’ve worked on a lot the last couple of months to get them to analyze and really get them, I mean, just super, super tight.
00:22:10:09 – 00:22:35:16
So we can look at them now. We had a finance meeting yesterday and we’re going over October. Financial statements. The PNL and I noticed a one of our install departments. Labor was perfect. It was just under 8% install labor. It’s perfect just for Jack. We wanted another install department. It had 11%, 3% more. And so we’re able to look at these things and we started having a discussion with the managers.
00:22:35:19 – 00:23:05:25
Why? Why would it be that labor and this department is running an 11% and 8% here. And the first thing I want to say is we would never have had that question to ask. We wouldn’t even known to ask that question if we didn’t have these things organized the way they’re supposed to be organized. So when Gary starts talking about prioritization and getting this one, two, three, 4 or 5, you know, have to do is one of those is probably going to be organizing your financial statements, because, again, everything he’s talking about, it comes as a consequence of finding the problems.
00:23:05:29 – 00:23:21:02
But you got to find the problems before you can fix them. And so we start having a discussion and we came up with some theories about why it happens to be that there’s a couple of crews that tend to do this other work in the other departments. So those crews are the ones causing the problem, right? The overtime in those crews.
00:23:21:04 – 00:23:38:14
But again, if it’s all jumbled together, because here’s the crazy part. When you take the two install departments and you average them, it was just about eight and a half 9%. Labor is a little bit high, but nothing to get too alarmed about. But when you have one that’s under 8% and one does that 11%, that will get your attention.
00:23:38:17 – 00:23:54:07
So I think it’s really important as we move through this and know we’re just kind of the introductory stage of all this content that Gary is going to go through. But the point I think he’s trying to make is, you know, you got to focus on the right things and you got to prioritize the things that need to be done first.
00:23:54:07 – 00:24:16:09
He mentioned the B hag, the big hairy audacious goals, and four disciplines of execution. They call them wigs, wildly important goals. But it’s the same thing. It’s about looking at what needs to be done. And we spend so much time sometimes in this nice to do that. We got to get we got to get uncomfortable and focus on the need to do’s.
00:24:16:11 – 00:24:38:29
And I just think there’s so much stuff there. It’s going to be about organizing your business. And most of that’s going to come down to giving you data to look at. And data isn’t there just to look at. It’s there to tell you where the problems are. But until you get the information organized, you’re just looking at a just look like a bunch of paint that there’s no there’s no definition to it.
00:24:39:01 – 00:24:58:03
And I’m just blown away by how many. We had another another situation, in yesterday’s meeting where we’re looking at financing not being used enough in a particular, install division. Right. So our finance charges were super, super low and people might say, well, that’s great. You have any financing. But I know that because they’re not using finance and not selling as much as they can.
00:24:58:06 – 00:25:18:27
So it tells me that we we need more financing charges because that’s going to drive revenue. So it teaches us what to train these guys on. So I just think in terms of that, of your whole thing is about you got to fix problems, but you can’t fix problems that you don’t know, and you won’t know what those problems are until you prioritize these things Gary’s talking about and start chopping the wood.
00:25:19:00 – 00:25:35:07
I guess that’s what I’m saying. I disagreed with him in a very long, complicated, long winded way. I got it, I got a I got to show you this, Wally, and I’m going to show this to the camera. Okay. So this this is, a picture, and I’ll try to download this and get this onto a PowerPoint slide.
00:25:35:07 – 00:25:59:21
But, this is a picture of our, company. Yesterday, we finished our exercise. And what that is, is that’s a that’s a sheet. I actually took a sheet, and I had everybody write a magic marker on the sheet. The initiatives that they were going to be responsible for driving inside of the company, that are going to execute, to be able to help us achieve that scaled process next year.
00:25:59:21 – 00:26:18:15
So there’s, there’s 15 items on that list, right? One through five, six, three, 15. And so we all unified and aligned together on that 15 item. So this is this is our process that we use to make it fun, which is the gap analysis is no fun. Trust me. When you do the gap analysis you’ve you’ve gone through that process.
00:26:18:17 – 00:26:31:29
You sit there and you go lots of gap okay. You know we got a gap here. We’re not doing this well here and so forth. And so, you know, so we we hosted the annual planning and we said, okay, great. You know, what are our must do’s? What are our need to do? What are our nice do’s?
00:26:31:29 – 00:26:48:23
And so great, let’s put the must do’s and they need to do is on a sheet. And we’re going to take a picture of that. We sent that to everybody today. Just you just came out. And so it’s relevant to this conversation right here, which is the vision of the business I said has to change like that. Companies vision has to adapt.
00:26:48:25 – 00:27:20:00
How we’re going to adapt it is going to be a group exercise. But we know at this point that we also have to have a common purpose. And the purpose of this is about alignment, alignment. And I apologize for that messy handwriting. But alignment means that if Wally and I are rowing the canoe together and we’re trying to get across the lake that we are paddling in, you know, good sequence together, and he’s not paddling a different direction than I am, or the canoe will spin.
00:27:20:03 – 00:27:37:03
So purpose is about creating alignment. So now so we got a team together that basically had the 15 items and they all had the signature. They had to put their name on it. Yes I agree with this. And so now it’s hang it is going to hang in the building. So we’re going to we’re going to frame it.
00:27:37:11 – 00:27:58:09
And and so we’re also going to obviously turn it into, you know, a digital sequence, what’s called an infographic. And so as we start every meeting from now on in our company, that’s going to be the very first slide in every single meeting now. So we’re just we’re making alignment and focus. Here it is. They’re putting it in your face.
00:27:58:15 – 00:28:22:10
These are the 15 things that we said one through five 6 to 15. So we’re creating purpose in alignment. But that commonality then moves to this issue here which is okay great. Well what are my core values. What do I care about. And so obviously we’re going to move that into a series of strategies. And so that’s kind of the one through 15 that we’re talking about from the strategies.
00:28:22:10 – 00:28:46:19
Okay. All of this stuff right here is kind of the, the, the big mindset, the why, the how. Wally, you want to be $150 million businesses in the Colorado marketplace? I mean, that’s a that’s a dream. Okay? We’re not at 150 million yet, but that’s the opportunity. In my case, if you go back to the Lennox and Detroit operation, you know, we’re sitting at 17 million.
00:28:46:19 – 00:29:03:03
And I said we should be 50 million if we’re if we’re at 15%, we should be at 50 million. That’s the number we should be at. So that’s we. So we catalog the analytics based on what the opportunity was. So the purpose what are we doing? Why are we doing it. Well man we’re all about helping people succeed in their businesses.
00:29:03:03 – 00:29:21:04
That’s what we do. And our value structure is that this is how we’re going to behave and treat each other. And then the strategies. So all right. Great. We’re getting into, you know, traditional media now okay. Great. If we’re an Hvac company and you’re talking about Sarasota, we’re going into add on replaced mint and we’re going into maintenance.
00:29:21:04 – 00:29:43:26
Those are big core items that were strategy was going to deal with. We’re also looking at like commercial maintenance agreements, great opportunity for that marketplace, great opportunity that business. These are big strategies that we’re saying, okay, we don’t know how to do this stuff. We have no airplane. We have no standard operating procedure. We have no map. But we know we want to do that stuff because that helps us start attaining this dream.
00:29:44:02 – 00:30:09:09
So scalability starts with the base principle that you have a dream, you have a vision, you have an understanding of what you’re trying to achieve. So again, why I started off, if you’re a half million, you want to go to a million. That’s a dream. That’s that’s yeah. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re a $20 million company and you want to take over Colorado, that’s also okay, scalable bility is not just how well you have to be a big machine.
00:30:09:15 – 00:30:32:13
Scalability is how do I build a company step by step that repeats the processes, that continues to grow, that supports the employees, the community, your family, etc. we got to be counting properly so that we’re we’re speaking the same language. So that’s an another that’s an example of a strategy. We have to have a common language. Awesome content right there from the G-Man as always.
00:30:32:13 – 00:31:12:26
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