The Home Service Expert Podcast - Creating Maximum Efficiency by Going Lean

Episode Date: June 15, 2018

Ryan is the Director of Consortia at The Association of Manufacturing Excellence, the largest Lean membership organization in the world. His mission is to educate businesses about the power of the lean methodology, and help them harness it to achieve operational excellence. In this episode, we talked about management, organization, efficiency...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey there, folks. I'm Tommy Mello, the home service expert. And today we're going to be

talking with Ryan Meacham about lean and about systematizing your business so that you really don't have a lot of waste. Ryan, how's your day going? I'm great, Tommy. How are you doing? Great. I do want to tell everybody I already have Ryan as a consultant. He's coming in and he's transforming our whole business right now. So at the end of the day, I can tell you I trust this guy. We use him. He flies into town. He lives in Salt Lake, right? Yeah, that's correct. So, Ryan, tell us a little bit about what you've done over the past 10 years and what you're doing today.

Yeah, so, you know, I'd describe it just simply as this. It's a whole process or a whole way of thinking to eliminate things that get in your way. The most important thing about lean is really to focus on the fact, really focus on what bugs you. And if you learn the processes and learn the ways of thinking, then there's a lot of opportunity to move those things out of your way and, most importantly, to prevent them from reoccurring. So it's just a whole system of thinking. So I spent a number of years at a company here in Salt Lake called Power Blanket.

Power Blanket's a wonderful manufacturing company that makes items for heating items for anything that can be wrapped or anything that's flat or a cube or a cylinder. And when I started there, it was a great company, but there's no question we had a lot of problems with getting things through the system. I would often not be able to tell customers that at our height, two or three weeks lead time was pretty standard. And by the time we got through implementing all of the changes we had done, we had a great team that came together. And we could then produce a product within a two-hour scope of time frame, not two days or not two weeks. So fundamental transformation. And on top of that, it's fun.

We had our team members engage. The engagement went through the roof. People were excited that they could create opportunities to change things about how their business ran and what they did. So all in all, a fabulous experience. And today I worked for an organization called AME and the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. And we are a bunch of lean thinkers. So that's who we are and what we do. Yeah. So, you know, when you first started consulting us, we really didn't, I know Adam bought in a lot, but I wasn't completely till I actually saw the process. So what lean really means to me is it's not only, it's staying so organized.

There's no waste. If there's not a spot for it, you get rid of it. And everything's labeled, and it started in Japan. Can you go into kind of the definition and where it began and the history about the lean manufacturing? Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you the short version because there's tons of history behind this. It really started with one of the founders of the Toyota Motor Company, but it actually predates Toyota Motor Company. And so the Japanese version of it came from the founders of Toyota. And one of the thought processes behind it is before they were car manufacturers, they made looms. It was a family loom business. And so they created a way that would stop a loom if there was a mistake.

And the most frequent mistake was a broken thread. So this was a machine that would stop itself before making a lot of waste just when a thread broke. And that then started in Japan and came from elsewhere. But from the Toyota Motor standpoint, they really took some ideas that really started with Henry Ford. And a lot of the processes or thinking behind Lane was started with Henry Ford, but didn't really catch on here in the States. And so Toyota began a process after World War II of kind of rebuilding their company and rebuilding their country. And they went back to the fundamental principles that came from Ford, and they really took it to a whole new level. And what's happened is a

company that is constantly transforming because it is in and of itself continuous improvement. So they didn't just create it once, but they created a system to continuously learn. They're not perfect. Nobody who does this is perfect. But what they are is, I think, hands down the best learning organization in the world. And that's why certain companies have fits and starts trying to implement this, simply because it's a learning process and you have to create an environment that's people-centric. You have to create an environment where people feel like they can make improvements and there's opportunities to always improve. So that's kind of the history and how it gets us to our present day.

Yeah. So we had the opportunity to tour a plant here in Phoenix that actually does this. And it was, I think that's when I bought on 100% as I actually saw it in motion. I saw the employees, the CEO, the way they were all working, the way that everything had a label, the organization, and just the atmosphere of continuously optimizing efficiency. I mean, the cool part is, is I don't think a lot of people have adopted this in the home service industry yet. I think everybody says, yeah, that's manufacturing, kind of like the Six Sigma stuff. But tell me a little bit about how we're actually going through this and how it works in the home service industry. Yeah, that's a great question because the beauty of it is it doesn't

just apply to manufacturing. Anything that is a process, it can be applied to. And everything a business does is a process. And most frequently what happens in many businesses is when something goes wrong, the most frequent question is, well, who did that? Who do we have to blame? Why did that person do something wrong? Instead of the better question is, what in the process allowed that person to do that? Or what in the process allowed that to happen? If we start with the premise that everybody wants to come to work and do a good job, I've been with you.

I've seen your folks. I know that when they come to work every day, they want to do a good job. And so when something goes wrong, clearly there was something in that process that allowed that thing to happen. So within the home services business, it applies the same to home services and everywhere else. In your case, if you're trying to get a door from a manufacturer into your facility and then into someone's home, those are all processes. And anything that breaks down within that process, we need to understand why. And so frequently we'll go through and ask five different levels of why. Why did the door show up at the wrong time? Or why did the door is an

incorrect size? Okay, well, it was an incorrect size because it was measured wrong. Okay, why was it measured wrong? Is it an issue of training? Is it an issue of standards? So that type of process just simply goes through to understand really what happened, why it happened, and how we can keep it preventive from happening in the future. So it's been a great ride. And what I found working with A1 is that the team members are very open-minded. They come to work and they want to do a good job. And if they find a way of doing a better job, that then becomes engaging. And so from a home services industry standpoint, my question would be to everyone out there, wouldn't

you want more engaged team members? And if you had more engaged team members, how much more could you grow? How many more lives could you touch with your quality of service and with what you're able to do? I think everyone would want to do that. Yeah. Applying this way of thinking is just a way to get from point A to point B to help them with that. You know, we're working on a lot of stuff right now implementing, but the main thing about lean is the culture, but more is that there's a spot for everything.

It's organized. What foam is that called, the foam? Yeah, there's a great product that a great guy named Paul Akers makes called Kaizen Foam, and there's other versions of it out there on the marketplace, but the whole concept behind this is if you open up a drawer, you should be able to see in one glance if everything is there. And if it's not there, what exactly is missing, which also prevents extraneous things from ending up in that same drawer. So you take up the space, you define what should be there. And when you define what should be there, then by definition, there are several things that shouldn't be there. And it just makes it clear.

Well, when we went into that facility and everything had a spot, I mean, I've never seen so much productivity in my life. And, you know, the Pareto rule, the 80-20, explain how this really, how does lean apply to the 80-20? Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So Mr. Pareto years ago came up and said that almost in every scenario, you've got 80 things, 80% of something that takes up your time. And so understanding if you get into, I'll use another example, the same company that we're talking about, they have an excellent Kanban system, which simply is a fancy word that indicates when something needs to be reordered. And so if you walk up to any place in their facility and you start withdrawing products from a shelf, whatever that product might be, it has a signal or a card that says once you get to this level, pull this card, give that to your purchasing folks, that then creates the

reorder system. And so creating those kanbans or creating those signals, those visual signals, is a wonderful way, very practical way of understanding when action needs to take place. And if there's something that breaks down in that system, you have a system to go back and fix, or you have a scenario where you can go back and say, well, that reorder level was either too high or too low because we either still have items or we don't have enough. So let's go back and adjust. But that's part of the continuous learning part of this whole process. So those are great examples. And then going back to the Pareto principle, if you're tracking the errors that get made, what you'll quickly find out is that you can group your errors into certain categories. And by creating a Pareto chart, by calculating the errors or the type of error that happens, you'll very quickly see where you need to pay attention to in your process. What's breaking down? So those are very practical tools that

you can apply to increase the productivity in your business and the engagement of your folks. Yeah. So I think it's really overwhelming, okay? Because you got to get rid of everything. Well, you know what? Let's do this. Let's talk about the five S's. Let's talk about getting this implemented because I hate consultants that say this is the process, but they don't tell you where to start. And there's a lot of guys out there that don't really know how to teach properly. So if I'm a guy out there, I've got a warehouse. I know I've got stuff I haven't touched in years. Tell me about the five S's and what's step one. Yeah, great. Sort. The first thing you got to do is get into and sort through what you have. And really, you've got to make it clear that this is something, for example, a lot of companies use a criteria that if you are not going to use this in the course of the next year, then you've something that's providing any value. And so you can take that value and do something else with it.

But, you know, one way or another, you simply got to get rid of it or make it clear that the way you do so that that begins a process of really deeply considering what you have is adding value and simply what isn't adding value, which is very critical, very critical to the whole process. And so once everything is sorted, you have to straighten it, meaning that you've got to make it clear whether or not it's supposed to be there, which is the Kaizen film we were

talking about. Does it provide a clear visual way of looking at it? Is it straight? Do I know what's supposed to be there? And what isn't supposed to be there? And as we go through that process, the shining process is immensely critical because that is the cleaning process of making sure you can't just set it up once and say everything's good. You have to continuously allow time to go back in there and repeat this process so you can sort it all out. And that process really then by definition is the standardization. Once you've done the first three, then shining

everything is the process of cleaning. And then that process has to be sustained in what you're doing. And so the sustaining of that process then becomes standard and that the standardization becomes the fifth part so it's a simple way of thinking about it is you got to sort through it you have to define a place for everything and everything in a place you have to constantly clean it and if you repeat those same three things over and over you've created the process that's going to sustain you over time so it's a very simple concept people can make make it very difficult, but in reality, it's a simple process that is really the foundation of a lot of making things visible, which is what you're trying to do. You're trying to, you're trying to make it so clear that you can walk out anywhere and observe, are we doing

what's expected or are we not doing what's expected? And if not, why not? So that opens the gate to a lot of visual understanding. Yeah, and, you know, that's, I'd say, half of it. And the other half, the CEO told me, his name was Chris. Yeah. I think it was Chris. You know, we won't go into what company it is

because i didn't get his permission but he basically said he'd pull his hair out he'd go around blaming people saying this is not how it's done he'd not you know delegation is part of this but he had a lot to blame and us as ceos owners we blame a lot of people for you know nobody does it the way that i do it nobody cares and that's a huge problem for a business. So he said he was pulling his hair out for two and a half years and he's been on lean for about three years now. And he said, it's just the company runs itself. If somebody, you know, what's really cool is they got a slide that goes all the way downstairs. And, you know, they said, if you add up how many times the people go up and down, I mean, it adds up to thousands of hours a year for how many employees they had to go down a slide rather than go down the steps.

It makes it more efficient. But the coolest thing I saw is he text messages 10 people a morning. He starts his day off. He did it in his home. He's got the Kaizen foam with the shaver, with the toothbrush. So I think he took it to the next level, and that takes time. We're having a hard time going through the sorting still. Yesterday, I had to sit everybody down and go through dates, and we all agreed.

Getting all the management involved is half the battle, and then just taking a hard stance on a date. And that reminds me of Parkinson's Law. And I've been talking to you a lot about this, but work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. And everybody wants these long deadlines, but they're not going to do it till the final week. So I said, what's going to happen next week? What's going to happen the week after? So I've got all kinds of notes on what's going to happen by next week, because the proper delegation says this needs to be done by this date and it's a process. So let's go into that a little bit. Yeah, so, you know, that's absolutely true. And all of us in

the working world understand that, you know, that to be the case, the work typically will expand to the amount of time that's given to it. And so part of the opportunity here is that to clarify what to start doing, what to stop doing, and what to keep doing. And so having these conversations helps in the understanding that the reprioritization of time so that those items can get done. And so, you know, one of the main principles of lean thinking is standard work, meaning that you create standards about what needs to be done and when. I've got my standard work that I use every day. There's a series of things that I have to do on a daily basis and on a weekly basis and on a quarterly basis. And if I'm doing those important things, which tie to my goals, which tie to the outcomes that I'm trying to do, if I can maintain the discipline of following through my standard work,

and when something goes wrong or when something doesn't get met, changing that standard work, that's a big part of being able to meet these deadlines because we've got clarity on the steps we're trying to take and where to get there. And we define what success is. And that helps in the prioritization of what needs to get done. And it creates bigger clarity around deadlines about what can get done and what can get done. So to me, having a standard work of what I do and how I interact with my team members, a very critical piece to the whole puzzle. So does that kind of tie into SOP's standard operating procedures?

Yeah. So let's use a simple example. Let's use a cleaning the bathroom example. Every company has a bathroom. And when you walk into the bathroom, if the standard of work says that I, as the owner of the business, am once a week going to go in and straighten up the bathroom because it's my turn. That's what the standard work says. So I should be able to walk in and on one piece of paper, between six and eight steps should clearly tell me the steps I need to do in order to clean the bathroom. I need to get this disinfectant. I need to get this brush and I need to clean out the toilet. Then I need to wipe down the counter. Then I need to get this disinfectant. I need to get this brush and I need to clean out the toilet. Then I need to wipe down the counter. Then I need to take out the trash. Whatever steps that

we've agreed upon need to get done. That same concept that should apply throughout the organization. So when it comes to the home service industry, whatever needs to get done, you should have a very clear, simple way on one piece of paper with eight steps that I could walk up to and perform this repetitive task. But if I'm doing those continuous things, then I'm going to think of a way to do it better. Then I take that one piece of paper, I throw it away, I create a new piece of paper with some additional steps, and I figure out a way that it's not going to take me as much time. But if everybody did that same thing, then we would find a time that would be consistently safe throughout the organization. So that whole mindset of create a standard, adhere to the standard. And when things break down, go back and fix the standard,

then you've created a continuous learning organization. And that's all Toyota does. Every time they make mistakes or things that go wrong, every time something goes wrong, the team comes together, they solve the problem right away, and they engage in a, they solve the immediate problem, but then they engage in a scientific thinking process of how do we prevent this? What are we going to do to keep this from happening again? And that's a cycle that Deming created called a PDCA or a plan, do, check, adjust cycle. So once we've solved the immediate problem, now we're going to plan what we're going to do, how to keep it from happening. Then we're going to do that. But then we have to go back and check

it to see if what we, the standard we created, we're getting the results we expected. And if so, great. If not, then we need to create an adjustment. And we just keep repeating that cycle. That cycle, when everyone understands that PDCA cycle, solves the underlying root cause of problems, not just whatever happened to be the crisis of the moment. So a good example is I talked to you about a week ago and I said, when we mismeasure a door, we're keeping them so we don't keep them. We're keeping them in an area we'll get rid of them within two weeks. And then at a certain point, we recycle the metal. And you said, okay, I like

that. But you said, what do we do to stop the mismeasurements? So let's go to the root of the problem. And I think a lot of times we don't really, we don't take back. And I guess that's, in this case, it's checking and then adjusting to find out what the mistakes are. So the conclusion was, what can we do to stop mismeasurements? Well, we could, you know, verify a picture of each measurement and have the proof there, and that's solving the problem. And you said it earlier. You asked five whys to get to the root of it. Can you explain that whole process to be a little bit more clear on how to get to the root problem?

Yeah, absolutely. So let's go back to the door example. So we'll start with the problem that a door came back. All right, we got the door back. All right, why did the door not fit? Well, the door didn't fit because there was a discrepancy between the width of the door and the width of the tracks. All right, well, why was there a discrepancy? Okay, there's a discrepancy because the individual who measured it either didn't follow the standard or was

confused about the standard, but his process of measuring did not create the result. Okay, well, then let's go to the fourth why. Why was he unclear? Was it a training? Was it that he was doing it differently than the other guys? Well, let's say in this case that he thought that he was measuring the right thing. But what really needed to be measured was the distance between track A and track B. And I was, OK, so now we've got to the root cause. It was not understanding of what to measure. So now we need to create a standard. If everyone would follow the same standard about the way to measure that we knew track A, track B, run the tape from here to there, and everybody did that every single time, that would eliminate that problem, we think.

So now we create a plan to do that. That's our P. Now we're going to do that action. Now we're going to put that standard into place. But then we have to, two weeks later or whatever the case is, we need to go back and check that and ensure that it really is solving the root cause. If there are still mis-measurements after that, we need to get into those and understand why that happened. So that's the thinking, the scientific thinking behind the five whys. So one of the things we're doing with Al, Al Levy, I've had him on the podcast. He's actually, I'm a big fan of consulting.

You know, we're not a master of everything. So you came on, you're helping us implement Lean and a lot of other things. He's coming on really more on an operational standpoint. The first thing that we're doing right now after the org chart, which we had an org chart, it just wasn't up to the levels, is building manuals for every single role. And they're short, sweet, systematic, to the point on basically standard operating procedures, but there's 31 manuals and I'm adding about five more. So we're going to have a lot, but the big three are dispatchers, technicians, and call center representatives.

So it's very interesting how Lean ties into what Al teaches as well. He's a seven power contractor. So tell me a little bit about this bathroom stuff, because I think Lean starts with the bathrooms and it starts with management and the owner getting involved. You can go to YouTube and I'll just give this as an example. There's a lot of companies that have implemented the book Two Second Lean. Paul Akers and his thinking behind that. There it is right there. Paul's a great guy.

And one of the things he talks a lot about is lean starts in the bathroom, meaning that if you can just get the team to understand a standard way of caring for the bathroom, it is an important place. It's a place we all use. You think, this is crazy. Why would we want to start there? It's because it's so important. And creating the system where everyone can understand what it means to keep a place clean and orderly, then that really starts there and goes throughout your entire organization. So if you can get your head around how important the bathroom cleaning is, and he's got great

examples in his book and on YouTube videos of what that eight-step process looks like. And he went through and standardized the cleaning agents they used, the brushes they used. They weren't, you know, at one point early on on they were buying, I think he said, eight different types of cleaner because everyone had their own opinion about what the cleaner was. Well, that's a lot of waste. Just create one cleaner, one process, then everything gets ordered the same. When they may have, you know, say three cleaners on the shelf, when that second one gets pulled, they pull the Kanban or the card that says reorder. They'll reorder another couple of them and put them behind the others. So all of these concepts flow together, the standard work, being able to see, walking in there and knowing whether it has been done or hasn't been done.

And when it comes right down to it, it creates just a great feeling to know that you got a clean bathroom everybody wants a clean bathroom yeah it's a great place to start so those combine cards you know what what paul suggests and everybody has their opinion but i love having a qr code to know where we got that product from because nowadays i can take my phone scan scan it, it goes to Amazon, one button, and it arrives the next day, the cleaning supplies. So there's so many more efficient ways to run. And when you see it in action, it's just, it's a game changer. I mean, the time spent, the efficiency, I mean, I'd say we're at like 15% efficiency. If we could get to 30, that would be double.

If we could get above 50, I mean, I see right now in our call center, we don't do a lot of outbound. We're focusing on the downtimes to build the outbound. I mean, that alone, we're booking 130, 40, 50 calls a day. We could be booking 250 by just a simple little thing. So we're starting, we're making movement. And I've always hated big companies that it takes 10 years to push something through. And it's bugging me right now how long this is taking.

But it's so hard for this. This is a whole mindset. It's a whole paradigm shift. And how do you get – I think a lot of times the owners probably do buy in, but they keep hitting a wall. How do you get everybody involved and how do you really build a habit of it? Yeah, that's an excellent question. I was just talking with another friend this morning about the very same question. And I got thinking about where I've seen this work well and what they use.

So I'll use a big example and then kind of a medium-sized example. Big example, a company called Barry Waymiller. This is a company you've never heard of, but supplies a great deal of machinery to what actually makes things out in the world. So they're a company located in St. Louis. They used to be a very small company. Today, they are a multi-billion dollar company that has now taken place or they've now executed more than 100 acquisitions over the course of the last 20 years. So this is a company that not only has been growing internally, but they grow by acquisition. So they bring in these other companies. Now, most acquisitions don't work simply because you can't merge the cultures.

And in the case of Barry Waymiller, and this is Bob Chapman is the name of the CEO, and he's written a book about this called Everybody Matters. And they are experts at bringing people in and teaching them about their way of thinking and their climate, because it's very people-centric, very focused on that. The way they do that is they created what they call the Barry Waymiller University. In other words, it's a teaching program and they're a large organization. They've got tens of thousands. I think they've got about 10,000 employees. I think when he wrote the book, they had about 8,000, but worldwide, I think they've got 10,000. It's a very big

organization. They created their own learning process, but the key behind that is you can scale this. You don't have to create your own university. What you do have to create is a process to learn. If you incorporate, you have to take time to teach the team members. And so if you have 10 people or 50 people or 100 people or 1,000 people or 10,000, the principles all the same. Focus on what you want to teach. Create a process to do the teaching. Within that teaching process, then now as people onboard, they're able to participate in this onboarding teaching and learning systems. And if you create the, I don't want to call it schoolwork, but maybe the materials you're using,

whatever books, whatever system, if you're constantly going back to those and teaching them out of those same thoughts, then all of a sudden your team can speak the same language. And everybody has to speak that same language or it doesn't work. So you have to create a process to teach people as they come in and to reteach people. The other example I was thinking of as a company here in Salt Lake I just love is called O.C. Tanner. O.C. Tanner does custom jewelry. They started by making pins and almost everything they do is custom. They do the same thing. They have a handful of books that they use that really define the culture. And as people come in, and every year people have to recertify in these same classes and same ideas. And it's very healthy for the

organization because these ideals create in people's mind a little bit of an understanding of the gap, meaning that they see where they are today, but this literature, these thinking systems helps them see where they can be. Then they identify the gap. Where am I today versus where I could be? Then you can take action about how to close that gap. So that thinking process, that's the only way to get it system-wide. You have to create a system so people speak the same language.

Yeah, I think training is probably the biggest missing step in most companies. And it's not only training, it's retaining. Train, retain. So recruit, train, and retain is like so important. And I think one of the things we're working on by July is actually we're going to restructure everybody's pay pretty much in the company to where we're building a budget which incorporates a great holiday party it incorporates one year anniversary gifts it incorporates some great things for the company and a certain profit margin between 18 and 22 percent and then based on those goals comes bonuses for every single employee and some of the you know know, CSRs and I'm not going to call them smaller roles, but definitely not upper management. You know,

it's might not be as good, but everybody's working for the same goal, the same. And the more we hit above that, the more everybody gets and it builds in those margins. And it's just a better way. I've got a gal named Ellen Rohr, who's amazing at this stuff, coming in to help. And I'm one of those guys. I've got a ping pong coach. I've got a golf coach. I've got a trainer at the gym. I love it. I've got a killer ping pong game now. Yeah, it's getting better. I can beat Adam half the time. But I'm a big fan of, you know, I coach other people, but also I'm not a master of anything. So we need to, you know, there's certain things I'm good at. And I'm all about booking rates and conversion rate and sales and marketing.

Marketing I'm obsessed with. But why would you not seek help for something that you might not be so good at? You know, I think a lot of people, they're mediocre at so many things. But if they make those the great things, then they get the right help. They could have an extraordinary company. But it really starts with the people. And I talked to a guy on the podcast about leadership. This was about six months ago. And it's really about this whole mechanism of lean is about leadership. It's about the management starts it. A lot of the employees don't even know what it is till the management's actually doing it

in the workforce for a month. you lead by example and i gotta tell you my office is not perfect yet but it's it's going the right direction but i want to lead i want i told them every drawer by the end of this month has to be organized i want to be able to go or i'm i'm gonna put it in a plastic bag and they're gonna have to go through it at home i mean i don't know what else to do is that do you think that's the right approach? Well, I, you know, the invitation to make improvements is part of that culture and you do have to create time. So part of my standard work every day, the first thing I do, I have 15 minutes to do the 5S. So I need to sort. I need to straighten. I just need to do those steps every day.

But if I don't put that on my standard to take time to do it, doing it one time doesn't help. You need to do it again and again and again. So if it's part of the standard work, then you want to do this because it makes your life better your life is so much easier when you're not searching for something to get a job done so if everyone just understands it from a self-interest standpoint that if I can keep myself from wasting time looking for something just that notion itself is enough to get most people on this journey because they say wow if i can just take time a little bit of time to make an improvement every day my life is so much better

it is into the self-interest you save a lot of time i'll tell you that there's a book i'm reading which you're probably familiar with called the miracle morning it's all about taking the time to meditate living in the moment and then affirmations and then reading and then workout in the morning so it's an extra hour of the morning it's a book i recommend it changed my sister's life wow that's interesting i use this i don't know the book but i use the same system myself oh really i read i meditate the first thing i do i have a 30 minute-minute workout that I do. So just those connections, that time to think, to center yourself. And then when I start my day, I know the standards. I know where I'm going to start.

And I'm going to start with that cleaning. I'm going to make things better. And that just kind of sets me for a day that's going to be successful. You know, so there's two spectrums I see people. There's a hoarder and there's the absolute minimalist. And I think I'm moving towards this side. I'm not there yet, but you know, I got a good example and I think I might've mentioned it to you. I had a storage unit when I was like 19 or something. And, uh, I paid for it for two years. I remember I had speakers. I had some memorabilia, stuff, punching bag dressers.

One month, I think my visa had fraud on it and I didn't update it with the storage unit. I went there one day and they said, oh yeah, we auctioned all that off. I was really bummed out. Then I thought about it and I'm like, I don't really miss any of it. My phone reset. It was in my pocket. The other day I was

shooting pool and it kept trying a different pattern and after 10 times it automatically does a factory default reset oh my gosh and i looked on there and i'm like i wonder if there's anything i'm gonna miss i had to reset some passwords and i got last pass on my phone but i don't really miss it and so many people they keep this i'm just, they keep shit around their house and they keep it around the work. And, you know, I used to order a thousand if I could get 10% off. And now that's not the case.

I mean, we're dumping a lot of stuff and we're taking the calendars off the wall. There's no reason for a calendar. You got a Google calendar. There's no reason for a lot of the stuff, the little notepads everywhere. Like why why not just set either do it today you know either scan it file it or throw it out those are the three things so get rid of the paper and me and you've been talking about let's talk a little bit about the concept of getting rid of email and get going

paperless. So those are two huge projects that we want to do by the end of the year. Talk to me a little bit about those and how that's going to work. Email is the biggest time waster in business today. It's so frustrating. And what I found is that you've got to get your team members kind of on the same page of doing it differently. And again, I'll go back to Paul Akers because he's got some great videos about some of the steps that he's taken to put in place. But one of them, you know, if you just think about your phone and the number of apps that you can do on there that you can

video message back and forth, takes you way less time, is the same concept as an email, but it has the added advantage that your facial features and the inflection in your voice communicate so much. And if you could save an immense amount of time not sitting behind your computer and tapping out a blasted email i think that what you said and you've said this a million times and what's funny about human beings is i say the same damn thing i remember adam goes tommy you just regurgitate the same stuff like what's going on and i said it's the only, it's only five simple things I focus on, their main KPIs. But you said it and it really clicked is create the time and make time.

And, you know, when we went into that other company is they said, first half an hour is this, the next 15 minutes is this. And then we spend 50 minutes to clean. That time is allotted for that. And I don't think I've made enough time. And to say, stop, this is the time where we do this right now. So that's one of my goals. That's one of my big takeaways from today. Let me ask you this.

Seeing was believing for me. It really was. If somebody wants to go see a lean company at work, what would be the steps of action to really see it in their area? That's an excellent question. I'll give you a couple of resources. One, on Paul Aker's website, he has a little map and he did a little project. I forget exactly what he calls it, but it's something like lean companies or lean companies in action. But he has, some companies have put, you know, said, hey, we practice a lot of these concepts in action but he has some companies have put you know said hey we practice a lot of these concepts and so he has a map that you can go to you know another organization

that people can tap into is the one i work with the association for manufacturing excellence because we go around the country at least once a year we put on a major conference it has more than 2 000 attendees it's the largest link conference in the world. And every place we go, we line up several tours. And these tours is the going, seeing, and believing. And aside from that, we have nine regions throughout the U.S. and Canada. And within each of these regions, they also create and organize these tours for people to go and see. So you can go to ame.org and see a lot of go and see opportunities. And that's, you know, what I specialize in for the organization is creating

consortia, which are lean learning networks. It's simply a way of getting companies in a metro area together so that they can learn from one another. And we've got several of them started up throughout the U.S. and we're starting up more. So these are all opportunities to go and see, because as you said, seeing is believing. And if you want to do a simple thing, if you don't want to leave your office, I would encourage you to go to Paul Akers. And he has a 10 minute, very, very quick tour of his company called Fast Cap. And you don't even have to go anywhere. Open up YouTube, search for Paul Laker's Fast Cap Tour, and you can take a 10-minute tour of his facility.

Have you ever been to, like, an outing or an expo and you walk away energized? And, like, I had fire. I mean, everybody in this company had this fire. We came in, we started cleaning, and then it kind of just flatlines. And what is a good way? And I think the best practice is to start holding yourself accountable. Like you met with Sean from 4Energy. He wants to get together and work on this together.

And what I'm going to do after this is get on Facebook and see what I can do to get other people involved to get five or six business owners because the more you could get out here for us the better what was that website that you said to get a hold of you and to get a hold of your company ame.org we're the largest membership organization in the world so ame.org so ame.org and if somebody wants to reach out to you personally, Ryan, what would be the best way to get a hold of you? Yeah, drop me an email and simple email address are me come. So are MEC H.A.M. at AME dot org. And I'll be happy to help and point you in the right direction because you're right. It's all about, you know, there's a very emotional element to this. And the beauty of continuous improvement is you constantly reinvest

the emotion by seeing the outcomes that come from this continuous improvement. And if you can get the whole team on that same page, wow, I'm telling you what magic happens when you got everybody in the boat row in the same direction and recognizing there's rocks all over the place there's you know cliffs there's obstacles to overcome and you know that the right is not going to be smooth you're going to knock the boat on the bottom you're going to beach it sometimes but that confidence that you can go back in when the mistake happens, go back in and fix the process. It's beautiful because people get excited about being able to solve problems in their life. That's what most people want to do.

They just want to come to work, do the right thing and give them an opportunity to make it better. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people have come into my work. We've got the best team ever, but we've got firefighters. We have been a firefighter company, and we've got the best firefighters in the business, man, I'll tell you. From the top down, we can solve any problem. We go fix it. But we've got to think a little bit deeper. You know, you've met Bruce.

Bruce is a firefighter. He just deals with unhappy customers. And I've always had a rule of thumb that 1% of customers are always going to give you a headache. Well, we're serving 400 to 5,000 a month. So that's 40 to 50 fires a month. But really what we're doing now is we're building a file for each of them and saying, is it coming down to one person? Where's the system broken that that problem arose? So what happened is Bruce came to me and said, Tommy, I'm going to need an assistant. I'm going to need someone to help me with this as we grow. And it really, really struck me because I said, no, I really want to figure out how to get less

of these problems. What can we do to stop it? So, you know, we're getting a lot better and it is a continuous platform. And I love the fact of a guy like you coming on board to hold people accountable because I'm such a huge fan of accountability from me especially. I mean, it's really – when I came in here, started scrubbing the walls and repainted the bathroom. It just – you should have seen. People were coming next to me. They started mopping. They started – and it really does have to take place from the top down. And me and Adam have got to make the time to sit down with you once a week.

And I've not done a great job of that. So that's one of many of my goals and takeaways. And I really want to get several companies involved in this in the Metro Phoenix area just because of accountability and working at it together because it's crazy. The output and efficiency. If there's anybody out there listening to this podcast, I can tell you, forget everything on sales, marketing, anything else because you need to get organized. The first step is to get everything organized to get the whole team moving in the same direction. And if we could do that, this is where it all starts. And, you know, a lot of people might be thinking lean. I've heard a lean lean manufacturing

explain the difference between lean and six sigma just so people understand that that's not the same in the same hemisphere yeah sure if you know what a venn diagram is think of it in terms of circles part of the circles overlap and part of the circles don't so there's definitely some overlapping concepts the best way to think about i think Six Sigma is it's a very statistically driven process. And if you're in systems that require very tight tolerances or very high volumes of certain things, I know some folks out there who are just absolutely brilliant when it comes to the application of some statistical methods to get down. And it's really a quality-driven process. The whole Six Sigma idea, if you're familiar with statistics at all,

you're probably familiar with the curve. Curve, yeah. The inner deviation of that curve is called a sigma. And so one sigma, basically 68% is within one sigma. Then two sigma gets within 95%. By the time you get to Six Sigma, you're talking a very small, minute change or variation of what you're doing. What they're trying to do is they're trying to get down to really understanding that. So there's definitely six sigma tools that absolutely can be applied within the lean thinking as very broadly applied is simply is solving problems that bug you in a way that really tackles the root cause and really understands the different forms of

waste and going to battle against those forms of waste that's a good way so there's definitely some overlap but there's a lot of people can get by with lean thinking and don't need to get into Six Sigma. There's other operations out there that are very much reliant waste are and how to eliminate that in your process. So that's probably a short version of what those terms mean. Yeah, I really think that people get confused. Lean helps with inventory. It helps with culture. It helps moving in the right direction. It helps just clear the clutter.

And it's about creating more efficiency in everything you do. Instead of A, B, C, how do you get to C quicker? It's drawing a straight line to get to the root cause. And really about, like, for example, we use screws when we do a garage door with a double wood overlay. And the first thing I thought as I saw the guys out there taking one screw out, it was a process. So I said, we need a screw gun for a half inch screw so we're working on ordering those right now just if you can make it five seconds faster for every minute you just eliminated a huge percentage of and do that with every single task

and paul acres in the two second lean talks about how it used to take him an hour to set up a cabinet so he used to build 10 at a time and then it would just sit on the shelf. So when he hired these guys from Japan to come out, they said, no, we're going to show you. It went from an hour setup to under a minute. And you realize that you can just create these efficiencies. And I've got to tell you, it's the most exciting thing, and it's your passion. And I can tell when you talk and you get going on it that it's just amazing. what i'm going to do is we're going to build a landing page for just this podcast and i'd like to put some resources and videos on that page so the listeners will have that great idea

so we'll do that and then there's also this other book the toyota way and tell me a little bit about what they'll find in this book yeah jeff liker wrote that book and he wrote there's oh i forget there's probably five or six of them now but what he did that was kind of the first book that opened up many people's eyes to what really goes on behind toyota and he has 14 principles in there that many have come to understand from an outsider perspective he spent a lot of time with toyota understanding their processes and he came in from an outside perspective but wanted to write about it and explain it to others. So one of the great things about that book is it really has some very fundamental pieces of that. Then he took that idea

and he leveraged it into several other books about the Toyota way and explaining how they go about culture and how they go about training and how they inculcate the culture in doing that. So Jeff Leiker is extremely well respected, not only in the automotive industry, but in the lean thinking world for bringing to light a lot of how Toyota brought these to pass and apply them in their day-to-day work life. So a fun book, fun book, and it led to several others. Yeah, I think it's interesting if you walk in someone's office and they really truly are living lean, everything's kind of just, they get to have a slow conversation. They're not in a hurry.

There's time. And that's one thing that we can't get back is time and there's clutter. Clutter creates a mess and it eliminates the ability to have time. And I'm excited about it. I think that hopefully the listeners got a lot out of this. I think what I want to do now is just give you an opportunity. There's maybe something we didn't touch upon. Is there anything out there, any other books or any other notions to leave the listeners on? Yeah, start now. Start now. There is no reason that you need to create. Oftentimes,

a lot of companies talk about a burning platform. And the concept there is you're out on a platform and there's nothing underneath you and the platform behind you is burning. So you got to do something. You can't go back. You can't get off. You've got to fix where you are. You don't have to wait for something like that.

And I'm a big believer in seeing things in YouTube because going back to your principle of seeing is believing. So, you know, if you want just to see some fun stuff, what different companies are doing out there, go to YouTube and type in Two Second Lean. And you'll find a number of companies in the very short videos that are thinking about how to do this. And you'll find this in business processes. You'll find this. I found a collision company out in the middle of missouri who does this and they do business processes and and everything under the sun you

can imagine so if you don't think this applies seen as believing go to youtube type into second lane you'll find a bunch of companies that are taking these principles and running with it and if you want a fun story and a fun guy, we've mentioned him several times in this. Go to Paul Akers. He's so much fun, a way to do this. And he's been through the gamut. And he really talks about making this part of your culture and making it fun. And that's what this is. You don't need to get too wrapped up into a lot of technical processes and procedures.

Make it fun and make it people-centric. And Paul's just a great guy when it comes to teaching those principles. So anyway, those are my parting thoughts. Yeah. I mean, if you build this culture and it's something that I want, it's something that the money comes with it. You know, if you build it, the byproduct is cash in your pocket, which everybody went in to start a business to make money. I mean, at the end of the day, but it's just a by-product of running a good business, isn't it? The great thing about when you think about capitalism from a conscious perspective,

Raj Sasodia talks a lot about this in conscious capitalism and Bob Chapman. If you think about the outcome of capitalism, yes, you are certainly going to have an outcome. Your business is going to be more efficient. If you stay focused on the people, not only will you make money, you will make lives. People will become better because of your association and working together. What more could you want out of life than to touch the lives of people and making it so that they go home happier? They go home more engaged at work.

They're going to be more engaged at home. If they're more engaged at home, they're going to have a better home life. They're going to come back to work better. So if you think about all of the stakeholders, not just from a, hey, we have to have money. Yeah, we got to have money. And that process doing it right is going to improve the lives of people. I think I ordered that book. Didn't you tell me to order Everybody Matters? I wanted to show it on here, but I'll put a link to it. That was one of the books you told me about, right?

Yeah, Everybody Matters, Bob Chapman. I got it here. Great example, great story. Yeah, you know, there's also a link that if, you know, you sent me, and I'll make sure it gets on here. I'll have Gianni throw it on. But it's the guy that said, what's the thing they really got is uh the guy said uh you know when we went to lean and and we really started to listen to the employees as he goes i'm talking to my wife again and uh you know it really kind of gives me

the goosebumps because it just changes people's lives outside of work too and it's you become you know i think you got to ask yourself is what are people going to remember me as when I'm buried at six feet under? And, and I think you start thinking about that a lot deeper when you're, our company's starting to grow. We've got a couple hundred employees and, you know, I'm starting to be able to focus on the bigger picture. I think it's really tough when you've got three guys out there, you're trying to answer the phones, you know, you got kids and there's just, you know, you're, you're trying to answer the phones you know you got kids and uh there's just you know you're wondering where do i start i'm working 12 hours a day seven days a week i mean what do you say to the guys and we'll end this right now but what do you say

to those guys that are just they're running a million miles they're working in their business every day they're trying the best they can you've got to take a step back and work on it, not just in it. You know, the E-Myth Revisited talks about that quite a bit. Got to work on the business. And part of working on the business is understanding that systems and people can learn this stuff. You know, I think one of the challenges a lot of people have coming out of the gate is, you know, going back to the firefighter mentality. Yes, got it. There's no question. There are times you've got to go out and fight those fires. Don't just stop there. You have to ask yourself, what is going to prevent the fire from happening again? And, you know, you approach the business and bring people together with different mindsets.

I'm not a great firefighter out there. Honestly, fires drive me crazy. I want to understand what caused it so I can prevent it because I don't want to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. I want things to operate smoothly. And so we've got to take a step back. So don't just work in the business. You've got to take a step back and work on the business, work on those processes. Yeah, so I got to thank Aaron Evans because he introduced me to you. You used to work for Power Blanket, which he's the owner of that company. And I would say this because I wanted to leave. If you're ever in Utah and get a chance to go visit Power

Blanket and you could give them a tour, it really is fascinating some of the things that have evolved in that company. And I talked to him about a week ago, and he said they're absolutely smashing it. They're moving into different verticals and just the whole culture there. And I actually, I've been there, but I haven't been there since you've changed some of the systems. So I want to go back, hopefully within the next month or two, get out of the heat here in the summer. But Ryan, I got to say, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this today. And I think the listeners will get Ryan, I got to say, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this today. And I think the listeners will get a lot out of it. And I really believe in it. I got to tell you, every day that we're not moving that direction, I feel like is a wasted day. So thanks

again for jumping on. And hopefully, you know, we could get you back on. I really want to do a video of when the place is completely done and have you talk about some of the things we had to break through to get to that point. So we'll do that. Thank you so much. And we will chat again. Thanks, Tommy. Good to see you. Take care.

All right, buddy. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Now listen up. Do you want to dominate your market, triple the profit you make without working those long 12-hour days, seven days a week? If the answer is yes, my team and I are opening up some new time slots to help you solve your biggest business challenge. Just go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash discovery and book a free 30-minute call with our team today. I will repeat that, homeserviceexpert.com forward slash discovery and book your free call today.