The Home Service Expert Podcast - Scaling The Right Systems That Your Team Say YES To

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

Keith Lee started his business career as a sales rep for Thompson Marking Service in 1978, worked his way up, and successfully bought the company in 1992. The systems he developed and implemented allowed the company to grow its sales from $300k to $15M per year, and earned them the recognition of being the “Best Small Business to Work For in Washington State” by Washington CEO Magazine. It eventually grew to become what we now know as American Retail Supply. In this episode, we talked about systems, hiring, management...

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 guys, this is Tommy with the Home Service Expert. We're back again today with Keith Lee.

Keith Lee has done a lot of things. He was actually nominated and won the Washington CEO and the Washington CEO mag, the best company to work for. Done a lot of stuff. I've already introduced him. But Keith, how's your day going today? Oh, well, it's still early here in the Pacific Northwest and I get to talk to you. So it's going well. Yeah, well, I got to know you a little bit earlier and you got some amazing stuff for us today. So let's just dive in. What I like to start with is letting the listeners know a little bit about who you are, what you've done over the last, you know, your career, where you started from. I know that you're kind of like me. You didn't get a whole lot handed

to you. And a lot of the people that are listening, the guys and gals, a lot of them own businesses and they want to know that you didn't grow up with a golden spoon and that you've actually learned the hard way. So if we could just dive into that, tell us about you and how you got here today. Yeah, well, no, there was no golden spoon. In fact, the address on my birth certificate is Fink Trailer Court No. 9. So that's where we started out. And then my family moved in Minot, North Dakota, and we moved out to the Seattle area. And then my dad did better than he did back there. But as I grew up, there was no question about

asking for money to go to college. That wasn't part of the deal. So I worked through college, paid for my everything myself, had a few different majors. So it took a while. Got married at 20 to my high school sweetheart. And we wanted housing was going up so fast that we decided to buy a house before I even got out of college. So working nightstock in the grocery store, sleeping for a couple hours and then going off to school and studying and then going to work in nightstock again in the grocery store. So that's kind of how I got through college. There was no golden spoon, that's for sure. And then I had a cut.

Well, I only really had the job at the grocery store, and then I ended up going to work for this company selling Thompson Marking Service, selling handheld price marking guns to retail stores. And I was a salesman, and the person that owned that business, Dick Thompson, really was not a manager. He was an entrepreneur and a salesman himself. And so I went to work there and there was one manager there and he ended up getting fired. There was another general manager that ended up getting fired. And after I'd been there for three years, Dick and I talked for a while and I came in as the general manager. And within three years, I started buying parts of the company and ended up buying the whole thing out, buying Dick out in the 1990s, early 1990s. And he retired and went up to the San Juan Islands and sailed his sailboat. So that's how I got into

the actual owning a business and running a business. And along the way, one of the things that ended up happening is that by the time the early 90s rolled around, I'd grown that business significantly. I came in with a much different marketing plan than we had in 1981. Selling handheld price marketing equipment was not the way to go. So we added a lot of different products along the way. It took some big hits. Not hits, but we financed it. We were able to grow the business significantly. But by 1992, it had grown, and we'd had probably about 12 employees in.

We call them team members. By that time, with that kind of growth, I was at my wit's end because two things were important to me in my business. And that was one of the things that I had a goal in my Zig Ziglar performance planner back then. Every year it was no cats was my goal. And that relates to, I forget the name of the guy who, but it's the song, the cats in the cradle in the silver spoon, little boy blue in the man in the moon. Well, and I determined that, and it talks about, you know, you don't have time for your son while he's growing up. And then, well, when he grows up, he doesn't have time for you because he's too busy.

And I was determined that that was never going to happen to me. If we grew up, my son and my daughter at the time grew up and didn't want to spend time with me when I was older, it certainly wasn't going to be because I didn't take time to spend with them while they were young. So I was determined to not miss anything, to be involved in everything. That, along with a business that was growing, I was nuts. I was like, I swear people would go to work and people would play pinball with my blood pressure. It'd be like, I can make his face turn red faster than you. And this other guy would say, no, I can make it stay pink longer than you can. And because every problem, every issue, typical stuff with a lot of business owners, once their business gets to a certain size, just working my tail off at work and then coming home and doing everything with the kids

and never having any time for myself to just do anything other than work and run. So in 1992, I went out and I studied Deming, W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Duran, Phil Crosby. They were all systems guys. So I went out and studied those guys. And I don't know how deep you want me to get into that right now, but I studied those guys and changed my life dramatically. I went from that guy that didn't like my job. In fact, I seriously thought about I'm going to not do this and I'm going to go back into sales. And I was a business school graduate. I mean, I'm going to not do this and I'm going to go back into sales. And I was a

business school graduate. I mean, I'm supposed to know all the answers, you know? And what's not is that, you know, what I found is what I learned in business school about management was absolutely worthless as a small business owner. It was absolutely worthless. We learn in management, in business school, we learned management by objectives. And management by objectives is all about catching people doing things wrong and fixing them. What I came up with myself in studying these guys is a management system focused on catching people doing things right and being proactive. But one of the reasons that management system that you learn in business school doesn't work is that it's designed for Fortune 500 companies, you know, and often, and it's taught mostly by professors who have never been a small business

owner, never even worked, never worked in small business, never been a small business owner. They have no idea what the stress is. And what ends up happening is that in Fortune 500 companies, that management system of MVO, it's based on getting those middle managers working like slaves and putting in all of this long hours and all this stuff in the rat race that they have to put up with so that they can get that next promotion. Well, if you're a small business owner and you're doing management by objectives, who's that person? That's you. And so all of this stuff is coming down on you. And I'm much more into a management system that gets everybody working towards the same goals. And you mentioned it in the introduction there. That's one of the

reasons we were named the best small business to work for in Washington State, is that, you know, we didn't have the best pay or the best benefits or foosball tables or childcare or any of that stuff. But what Washington CEO Magazine said that more than any other business, your frontline people can enunciate the same thing that your managers and your owners enunciate and where you're going as a company, what your goals are, what your values are, and all of those things. And that's what's critical, is that in this situation where you've got a small business, if you want to do it all by yourself, it then all comes down on you. And if you think you're King Solomon, you're King Solomon, and it's all going to come down on you. But if you

can get your team bought in to continually improving your business through the systems that we have in place, and again, systems are simple. Don't let systems scare you off here. But if you can get your team involved, it makes all the difference in the world. So let's go back in time. Let's say, you know, a lot of people here, some of them have businesses in multiple states, tens of millions of dollars. Some of them are just getting going. And I like to ask from two points of view. So I'm a guy, I got two employees right now. You know, one of the things that we talked about earlier was getting the employees buy-in. So number one, you got to sit down, you got to document everything, I think. But tell me a little bit about, I'm just getting going. Obviously, I want to know where to get started.

Everybody needs a starting point. What do I do during the next week, the next month, throughout the rest of the couple of months, this first quarter, whatever it might be, to get the ball rolling and get the employee buy-in and to build the systems? I mean, literally, take me through it as if I'm just getting going in business. Okay. Well, the first thing is to introduce a new management system to your team and to show them that they are part of the management system. And before we're done here, you know, your guys, if they want, they can go and get a book from me. It's $2.97, and that includes postage, okay? So I'm not going to want to make a bunch of money off of a book, okay? And it is described in there. But the biggest thing is the management system

that is totally different. And one of the ways that we introduce that, for instance, is in a DVD that you share with your entire team. And in that DVD, we talk about X theory management, Y theory management, and Z theory management. X theory says, I'm the boss, I'm the owner, do what I say, don't ask questions. Y theory is management by objectives. That's what we learn in business school. I'm the boss, I'm the owner, this is what I want you to do, tell me what you think, and I'll tell you what to do.

And frankly, in a lot of things in business, and maybe even the majority of things in business, especially if you already have your systems in place that your team has helped you develop, that works fine. But when you have something that's difficult, when you have something that has a lot of conflict with it, whatever, or it's an issue that we just haven't been able to take care of, or one of those really big, important decisions where if you get the stakeholders involved, the people who have to implement this involved. Then we go to the Z theory. And Z theory says, I'm the owner, I'm the boss. I know a lot about what's going on in here, but so do you. Let's decide how we're going to take care of this together. And you end up with

consensus. Now, can you do that on everything? No, you absolutely can't. But when you show your team that that's the type of management structure you want and that you want them to be involved with making things better and you do it up front with a DVD with your whole team. And then we also have a separate DVD that explains how to do that with your every new team member. Then they get bought in. And so we create this stuff. And here's a good example. I mean, I can go back. I had a distribution center, three distribution centers in three different states. And I could go back and I could tell these people what I want them to do in the warehouse.

But that doesn't make any sense. They together, you know, I can tell them the outcomes I want, but they together can come up with a better way to do it than I can. And now, am I part of that decision making process? Yeah, but maybe not either. which are these teams that work on these big issues and these complicated issues. One of them, for instance, in our business was we wanted to get a new ordering system so that we could take orders over the phone. Now, this goes back years ago, and they didn't have anything decent. And so, you know, we got our team and developed our own software. We had someone come in and develop it for us. But after we got everybody involved in making sure that we could take care of clients the best over the phone really quickly and efficiently. Now that's something that you

want your team involved with. And could I come up with that? Yeah, but it'd be terrible compared to, you know, we needed to get sales and purchasing together at times. We needed to get sales and the warehouse together at times. We needed to get the warehouse and purchasing input at times. And so when you get that kind of input and people understand that you really do want them to be the expert, it's amazing what happens. I studied Deming and Duran and Crosby and those guys, and they're systems guys. They were huge in systems. But one of the things that they all were talking about when it came to systems is in manufacturing.

And in manufacturing, when it comes to systems, you can dial in quality in manufacturing. You can buy the best machinery. You can hire the best engineers. And you can dial in quality. You can set up nowadays the best robots and dial in quality in manufacturing. But I was, and all of your guys are people businesses. We're not manufacturers. We deal with people.

And when it comes to dealing with people, you really need to get buy-in from your team in order to deliver a real quality product. And what's really cool is when we systemize things and a system is just the written documentation on how you do something. A lot of management gurus will try to tell you that systems are complicated. And the reason they tell you that systems are complicated is because they want to be around for months on months on months and getting paid thousands and thousands of dollars. A system is simply the written documentation on how you actually do something. Now, what's critically important in getting this buy-in, at the bottom of every system, every one of these written

documentations, it says, do this exactly like it says, unless it doesn't take care of the customer or internal customer, internal customer being your co-workers. So do this exactly like it says, unless it doesn't take care of the customer or internal customer, internal customer being your co-workers. So do this exactly like it says, unless it doesn't take care of the customer or internal customer. If it doesn't take care of them, take care of them and then change this to what we need it to be. So basically it says, do this just like this. If it doesn't work, do what you need to do. But now you're responsible for helping change this. That's the buy-in. Right.

That's what's really cool. And one of the things, just since we're on that right now and getting the buy-in, here's another way that we get that buy-in. And we'll probably talk about this a little later, Tom. And that's we replace performance reviews with personal development interviews. Yep. A whole different structure structure, whole different. And one of the things we ask in every single personal development interview is, since we met, what did you find that was broken or could be improved?

And what did you do to fix or improve it? That's the buy-in. You know, and we have somebody that, you know, going out and they're a painter and they have this system in place that's, you know, exactly how they're going to go around the house and paint it so that they're the most efficient at it. And one of the guys comes up with a new idea. He understands it. OK, I'm not going to do it the way it says here right now. I'm going to do it this way because I think it's better. But now I need to go back and show the supervisor exactly why I think this is better and get a change. That is so cool. That is when you have your whole team thinking in that kind of way, you all of a sudden don't have that blood pressure thing going on that I was talking about earlier when you come to work and it's like, every problem comes to you.

In fact, I can remember a number of times where after we'd gotten the headsets that were wireless, I would hear somebody, a sales rep coming by my desk and he's got an issue, a problem that he's taking care of. And I'm like sitting there and I'm just all smiles because I know that 10 years ago, that would have been on my desk and I would have had to handle it. And it's just so cool when you have your team empowered, buy in, you have systems in place so they know how to take care of issues when they happen. It's just a whole different way, a whole different way of managing. So we got systems and you get the systems.

I've seen companies say, this is how you get out of the vehicle. I mean, we talk about FedEx or U-Haul doesn't have doors. They don't have doors on the side because they realized that getting rid of a door would save them five seconds in a day, but times a million, it added up to a lot of time. So they got rid of the door. So at what point, I've seen businesses say you walk up, you turn clockwise two degrees, you smile and you hand a business card. At what point do systems become just an overload on people where it just becomes too much?

Is that possible or is that not something you're a believer in? Absolutely possible. And that's exactly why some of that stuff ends. I know that Boeing is big out here. And at one time, they were doing total quality management, which is kind of where my stuff starts from. But then that doesn't get into empowering your team and getting buy-in from your team. So that's why I didn't do that.

But Boeing was doing that. And it was, this is where your stapler goes. This is where your tape goes. This is where your pen goes. And you really got to listen to your team. I mean, you really got to listen to your team. And they will tell you when you've gone overboard on that. And it's all about that systems and empowerment where they're coming back. And you're going to hear about that in your personal development interviews because we don't wait for annual performance reviews. Well, first off, performance reviews are like trying to drive your car by looking in your rearview mirror and driving forward. It's kind of crazy.

But let me ask you this one. You had a teenage daughter. Do you think you could get the performance you want out of her by having an annual performance review or maybe even a semi-annual or quarterly. I mean, that's nuts. And that's why we have these personal development interviews. And that means we sit down with each individual 10 minutes, maybe 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, depending on their position. But we have a personal development interview and we interview them once a month at the very minimum. And in many cases, it's once it's 10 minutes is all it is, but it gives them the opportunity for you to hear the feedback. And, and yeah, when you get to be really big and you have a lot of

levels of management, that could be difficult. In most cases, I think with the people we're talking here, you know, a couple, three levels of management, you got to be willing to listen to that. And when their team is coming back, then you go up another level of management. And that person at that first level of management needs to bring those objections back and reel it in. And it all becomes from, again, having the personal development interviews and meeting with people once a month and asking them four questions we ask in every personal development interview is, one is, what went well since we last met? And because we want to get it off to a good start. And if they come back with, well, nothing went well, then you ask, well,

what went wrong? And what did you learn from it? Oh, okay, great. So we learned from that. That's good. So we turn this negative into a positive. And then when we do the summary of the personal development interview, we say, yeah, this didn't go well for you, but you learned this from it. So that's good. So again, we turn that negative into a positive. Another thing that we ask in every personal development interview is, what did you find that was broken or could be improved? And what did you do to fix or improve it? So again, we want them, especially when we don't have this huge hierarchy, to actually

fix and improve things on the run. And then another thing we ask is, what did you do to help create a motivating environment? Who did you catch doing something right? And so again, we're being very positive. And then the last thing that we ask in every personal development interview is, what else would you like to talk about? And that's where hopefully, if you haven't covered it before, they're going to come back with, you know, this whole idea of turning left before, of having to turn left instead of right if we're going to do a circle. That's crazy. Where did that come from? But if you have this dialogue and this open communication going on,

you're going to hear those things. Now, we use what's called benchmarking. And I use a guy named Grant Robinson. And every time I've not hired based on what his system tells me to do, I've regretted it. And the huge majority of times when I do use it, it works out great. And now, for instance, I hired a guy here a while back, but I told him, too. He needed a job. And through a sure-tail relative, we had a warehouse position open. And so I interviewed him, or we brought him in. We had him go through the benchmark, and then we found out he was a terrible fit for the warehouse.

And we actually told him that when we hired him. But then we also told him that you are a perfect fit for some other positions here, and we don't think you're going to end up in the warehouse that long. So as long as you can go back there and perform great, there's a great chance that you may move into something else here before too long. And that was because we found out that, hey, he can do a ton of other things, but he's going to get bored to death in the warehouse quickly. But we hired him. He ended up going into purchasing after three months, worked out great because he learned the products better. And then he ended up being my assistant.

I did a bunch of the marketing. But then he became my marketing assistant three months later after that. And when I sold the business, he became the VP of marketing. And that's from the hiring that we did there. And if I can get – is it all right to give a website here? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's called Hiring – it's all together, of course. that we did there. And if I can get, is it all right to give a website here that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's called hiring. It's all together, of course, hiringbestpractices.com,

www.hiringbestpractices.com. It's a guy named Grant Robinson. And when we use his stuff, a lot of my friends and business associates use him also. And it's a fabulous system. So I'm going to put these resources on our site too. And a lot of stuff about you, but we'll get to that at the end. But, you know, I got a Christmas light installation business. And what I did this morning before we talked is I had the foreman come in and I created a couple new roles because this is a new business we're probably going to do about a million to a million and a half and I don't know how much you know but Christmas is just seasonal you got to get all these people you got to get them trained there's a lot to it but my buddy who's helping out and who's my partner I got two partners in this

business I have none in the garage which is having no partners is kind of nice in some businesses you know so he's like tommy you know i'm running around like a madman how do you do it he goes i'm working 14 hours a day and i had to go to home depot then i gotta go to lowe's and i then i had to pick up lunch for the guys and i said dude i could pay somebody ten dollars an hour to go to home depot i could pay anybody to go get lunch. I go, you should be training people to replicate what you know how to do. But of course, I threw this on you. You were doing 30 houses last year. Now we're going to do 1,200.

So I got to help out. But I said, write down everything you do during the day and let me look at it for two days. And one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the 80-20 rule because so many people, they waste their time. Their time is so much valuable. I talked to a guy yesterday and he said, Tommy, we get in and I get all my managers and we just sit down for 10 minutes, no more than 10 minutes, sometimes only five. And we say, what's the one biggest thing we're going to get accomplished today? And then we talk the first five minutes about what we said yesterday and the next five minutes of what we're going to get done today.

And we hold each other accountable. So tell me your thoughts on the 80-20 principle and how it applies to small business and some of the stuff that you've learned over the years with that. Well, the biggest thing that, again, for me in that is that, now it's tough when you're first starting out and you're growing to that degree. You do not have things systemized. So yeah, it comes down to teaching people on the run. Now, as you're teaching people on the run, in this instance, you need to be jotting a note, making a note in your audio recorder on your phone. I mean, there's apps for that all over

that is like, okay, for next year, I need to have this process written down in how we do it. And this process written down in this process written down in that process written down. One of the very first people that got into my management system was a painter. And he trained everybody one on one, you know, his best people would help train new people, or he would train new people. And it was all one-on-one and it was retraining all the time over and over and over again. Well, imagine in this lighting business, you're going to have new people coming in every year to work seasonal. And similar to this, where for the next person coming in.

And once you systemize that all, once you put it in writing, it's a big job. There's no doubt about it. It's a job to get that done. But once you do that, then bringing in that next person and getting them up to speed is really very, very simple. And again, for instance, you know, we have receptionists and we have 30 duties that the receptionist does. If they're all documented, they're all in writing. They're all, everything that they do is in writing. So when the receptionist leaves and the next one comes in how hard is it to get that person up to speed and the same thing can happen in your lighting business or in any other business if everything is documented on

and exactly how you do it again but not getting nitpicky to where the stapler is going to be on your desk if If everything is documented, that becomes so much easier to bring that next person in. I'll give you an example of that too. When I've still had my distribution business before I left, I think the last person that quit before we left was our warehouse manager in Honolulu. We're in Seattle. And so Mary, our operations manager, I go to her and I say, gosh, Mary, that's too bad. Martine's really good. And she says to me, Keith, it always works out for the best. And here's what happens is that if that next person, so now you have everything documented

and that person leaves, the new person comes in, everything is documented. That new person comes in with a new set of eyes and that new person sees ways to make things even better at times. And if you have this process, if you have it in place that you're having your personal development interviews and they know you want to listen to them, that's when you get that input and feedback. And in most of your businesses there, you're going to have a personal development interview, for instance, is going to be once a month, and it's going to be about 10 minutes per person.

But you're giving them that opportunity to give you that feedback. And then, again, like in the lighting business, my suggestion for your guy that's running that now is that he just, he's got his recorder out there and he's recording everything. And then in the off season, he's starting to put these things into systems. We call them MJRs. We call them make you happy job requirements because it makes everybody happy. He starts putting these into the MJRs

so that they're ready next year for the people coming on. Yeah, I think that that's going to be huge. And, you know, he was telling me, Tommy, interestingly enough, he realized that he was leaving ladders and staple guns and everything else. And I said, we need to create a checklist. And I'm working on a software right now that not only creates a checklist, but it's a checklist that you create for anything. How to close out the building at night.

If you own a vehicle company, it's a vehicle checklist, but it puts video. So for example, I have a Airbnb. I got some rentals and VRBO and, you know, the cleaning lady, the cleaning lady never fricking puts the stuff where it needs to be. She doesn't put the towels out right. She doesn't make sure there's soap. And so we've made a video for every single thing she needs to do, as well as it could take a quick video and pictures to make sure this is how we started the place. You know, I got a small apartment complex for my technicians when they train and we go through and we take a video and pictures of everything and say, this is how we gave it to you. We're going to do a follow through when you leave. And this is going to tell us how you're going to be as an employee. So it's just a checklist.

And I think checklists are so important for closing out the end of the night. Did you set the alarm? Did you lock the windows? Did you lower the thermostats? Did you lock the back door? Did you do this? Did you do that? And I know this is a newer book that a lot of people have taught about, but in the E-Myth, the guy walks in a hotel room and he says, it smells like lavender, my favorite, the Wall Street Journal, my favorite chocolate, my favorite coffee. How did they know? And he said, well, when you filled out your survey, we built this book for you. It's our customer book and they go through each room and we know exactly what to leave for you. And so many people, they try to go off a memory and they say,

I've got a great memory. You know what pisses me off the most keith is when a service does not write stuff down and you know most of the time they nail it and it's impressive but it's the one time they come out and it's the wrong freaking i didn't say medium well i said medium rare and i wish you would have wrote it down yeah exactly exactly well i did that and i have a vrbo rental too and one of the things that i've seen in other rentals that i've had and it's like we need to do this and that is they'll take a picture they'll open you know of the open cupboard and they take a picture of it and then they actually put that picture inside the door of the cupboard so then both the cleaning lady knows where everything's supposed to go but then also i'm pretty sure it helps the people that are actually in,

that are using the place to put them back where they found them. I've got to believe that. One of the first things my wife does when we have one of the houses that we're at quite a bit over in Montana, and one of the first things she does is she spends an hour putting everything back exactly where she wanted it. I'm like, why don't you train her to do this? And it's like, well, no, no, no. So it's OK. OK, go ahead.

I think I'm going to take a picture of my refrigerator full of beer and take it all out and leave it for him. Yeah, exactly. So it's great stuff we're talking about. You know, a lot of times I'm a big fan of people do what you inspect, not what you expect. I like to give people freedom and I don't like to stalk them. I like to make it a good atmosphere. But what I've learned is people create what I call creative justification of why they do things. They say, well, I didn't take a break yesterday, so I'm going to take a two hour break today or this or that.

And if you don't have systems that actually create the expectations of what you need and the checks and balances, they tend to fail. So a lot of people can build systems, but they have no way of making sure of the proper delegation and system. So talk to me a little bit about, because for every system I create, I spend an even longer time. So let's say I take an hour to create a system. I will spend two hours to create the checks and balances to make sure that system's getting done proficiently. And I make sure the one thing that I make sure of, even if I have to double the length of the time of the system, if I could double the time it takes that employee, but I can make it five minutes for me to check instead of an hour, I'll do it. Because I believe I want to have a glimpse

of my business that I could say, everything's perfect. I've got a great user interface. I know it's good because of the system I created in order to check those systems. So talk to me a little bit about that. Well, one of the things that we do, for instance, when it comes to that, is that's really critical in the personal development interview, is that, again, you said what gets inspected is what gets done. So you take those maybe eight things that are critical for someone to improve on or get done. And when you ask about them once a month in the personal development interview, that's where you get the results you want. Now, and one of the things that, for instance, it's critical to understand when you're measuring the performance of someone is that you can't expect the outcome without the measurements that lead to that outcome. So, for instance, if you're – and I'll use a salesperson in this case.

You know, you can't tell them to go out and create X amount of sales and then be of any good in actually helping them get that. But it's much better to say the activities that they need to do to create those sales. How many phone calls do you need to make? How many emails do you need to send? How many new contacts do you need to have? So it's critical that you have the measurements that you need that lead to the outcome that you want. And does that answer the question a little bit? Yeah, yeah, I do. I think that really knowing how to get there is half the battle. And I got to tell you, it's just I love trust. And people say I'm not a detective. I'm not going to spy on my guys. But I have GPS is on every guy, not only because I want to know if they're driving on Saturday nights, but number two, I want to be more efficient for them. So if they're at a job still, I could see that.

And if I can move around the dispatch board and say, this guy's took a little longer than we thought, let's move this job to this guy and put this next job that just called into this guy. Windshield time makes nobody money. I always say we're not trying to punish guys by making them drive. Unfortunately, we can't control when a garage door breaks or a new quote comes in. So, you know, these checks and balances are it's good to check, but it's also makes you way more efficient. So I think that it's important to talk to your people and just tell them you trust them, tell them you have faith in them, make them believers in you and be a good leader. But also really make sure that you have those checks and balances. So, you know, you talked a lot about Grant Robinson and I know that everybody's going

to go there. I'm going to go there. I've already bought your book. I did that when we first started because, and it's funny because you started, it came on real quick where, you know, you got a little video afterwards and I was like, oh, pause that. But yeah, I think that's awesome. Tell me, I think the number one thing I get is- Before we get off that, Tom, let me- Go ahead. Because I think this is really critically important and I don't care what kind of business you're in. And that is to make sure your customers know that you have really high expectations for the customer service that they get and for the job that's going to get done. I think that's absolutely critical and that they know that before they even

come out, if you can. Now, if it's a one-off garage door and you've never been there before, it may be a little bit more difficult, but I don't think it's that more difficult. I think when they're making that appointment that somehow you're telling them that, hey, you should expect the very best service you've ever had in a garage door. And if you don't get it, I want to hear from you. That's one of the things that I had. I like that. I like that. When I sold my business, I think this is critical. And because to me, it ends up making a lot of the other measurements. You don't have to be as much of the detective and following. You know, you and I both follow a guy named Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy is a guy that put a video camera and he put body cams on every employee looking back at him, actually, if he

could. I mean, that's the way he thinks. But one of the things also that he says is that, for instance, what I did at American Retail Supply with my customer expectations was almost as good as that body camera. Because what I did is that we had 10,000 clients a year buying from us. And we delivered around almost close, just under 50,000 orders a year to 10,000 clients. Every one of those clients got a message from me many, many times a year through every way we could do it. If they're on hold, when they call in, if they go to our website, in any way that they can. In my newsletter, I tell them, if we ever let you down, call 800-426-5708 right away so we can make it right. If you're still not happy, call me on my direct line, 253-859-7310, so I can fix it for you. Now, two things happen there. Number one, do you want to know if a customer is unhappy?

Of course you do. Okay, so that you can make that customer happy and you can maybe fix the system. We always look at systems before we look at people. If it's not a system problem, that's fine. Go back and look at the person. But we look so that we can find out what's wrong, number one. We can fix the system. And here's another thing that happens.

When your team knows that you've told that to the customer many, many times a year, how are they going to try and take care of that customer? You know, they know that that customer has my direct line to call me if they're not taken care of. And that's, in many cases, that video that I have out there is my customer's eyes knowing that I want to hear from that. Now, here's what ends up happening with that. So 10,000 customers, 50,000 orders a year almost. I would get maybe two calls every four months or so because of the systems we had in place and the empowerment we had for our team to fix things.

But yet we also had guidelines so that, you know, we didn't just throw money at fixing everything also. You have to have the guidelines on what they can do before they have to go up the chain and get better and get more authority to fix something if it needs to be done. But the main thing is, is that we didn't have hardly any problems in the first place because everything was documented that they were supposed to do and they knew how to do it. And let's say there's something that you have. I'm going to use this example. I hope you guys can all look at something in your own business like this.

But for instance, in the distribution business, we have call tags. And a call tag is, let's say we sent something out and it was broken when it got there. We do a UPS call tag. And basically, all they had to do is put it back in the box. UPS would come and slap a label on it and they'd send back to us. When we first hired somebody, we told them what call tags were used for and when you'd want to do it, but we didn't even train the process then because by the time they had to do one of these things, they would have forgotten the process anyhow. So we

just said, okay, when you have to do your call tag, go into the computer in Explorer and type in call tag, and it'll come up, and that's how you actually do your call tag. So if there's something that isn't done all the time, but you want them to know how to do it when it comes up, you just tell them, hey, this is in your procedures manual that we call our make you happy job requirements manual. This is in there. We're not going to train you on it right now because you're going to forget by the time you use it, but this is in there. And so go find it when you need it. Okay. So that's one of the things that happens too, is that we could have trained them with the call tags, but they would have forgotten by the time they used it. And then they'd have to get retrained again, then they'd forget again and

everything else. But if you have everything documented, you have much, much less of that having to train and retrain. Yeah. And I want to add one thing. I love the tag system. Any good CRM should have a tagging system. But one of the things that I really highly, highly, highly recommend is a simple software called Snagit. And you can create your own videos with a desktop when you're controlling the mouse and you got a cheap microphone you can pick up for eight bucks. And you can make videos within the CRM or your mapping tool or whatever it might be your how to log into your alarm system, maybe how to log into your vehicle fleet system. But the quickest, easiest thing is to come up with a simple library

and videos, because I'll tell you what, YouTube is one of the most powerful websites on the planet. It's the second to Google. And I know Facebook's up there too, but people love to watch short, simple, concise videos. And if you could get the video library along with everything written down in a handbook. But I'll tell you what, if I could type into a little bubble of booking customer and watch a quick three minute video on it, man, that resource tool is unbelievable. And, you know, I know this is a little bit newer technology, but the people out there that are listening, I mean, you've got to start embracing this technology because it's just so powerful and people learn so much more effectively through videos now. So I'm a huge fan of documenting videos and making sure. Today, I delegated to my assistant.

I said, I need you to do this, this, this and this. And I went through it item by item. And then I said, repeat back to me exactly what we're doing here. And she said, okay, I'm going to do this, this, this, and this. And I said, no, this is the part I think you're confused on. So now I know that you understand. Am I correct? And she said, yep, this is what you're going for. Because half the time we don't do our jobs and we got to look in the mirror and say, she's not a mind reader. She doesn't know exactly what I want. Maybe I said it to her wrong. So I think the biggest mistake we make as owners is sometimes we go ahead and just expect people to understand, you know, but you

can't fit a circle down a box and you can't make sure somebody just doesn't read your mind. And I just feel like a lot of the times we make that mistake and we really just, the biggest thing that we got to do is learn and realize a lot of it might be our fault. We might not train that employee good enough. We might not really understood, like you said, that they might not be the right person for that job role, like the guy that you hired that ended up being a purchaser. So I really think that that's huge and it's important to talk about. So I couldn't agree more on the videos and that it is easy to do them. And, you know, for those of you listening, you know, if you're lost on how to do something, could just go YouTube it and you're going to find it.

And now you're going to see, oh, that's what I need to do for my team. I need to create a video like this that they can go and take a look at. And I just wrote down Snagit.com, I'm assuming. Yeah, Snagit. And then if you want a free version of it, it's called, it's by TechSmith. And it's called Jing, J-I-N-G. And there's a couple of ways to use it. Jing, and it captures your screen.

And you can either download the video or you can share it online and just send the person the link. And it gives you a lot of free space, just like Dropbox. It's super simple to use and Jing is free. So definitely check that out. What I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, too, is we talk about systems. And some of the times me and you've created so many systems. I mean, I can pretty much teach this stuff in my sleep because I've done it so many times.

But if I really have to dumb it down, the first thing I do is grab all the people I need that are going to be involved in that system. I don't care if it's a janitor. I don't care what it is. Number one. Number two is I got a whiteboard. I am going to get in front of a whiteboard because I love to write down ideas when I'm creating a system and really cross stuff off and just scribble and write down ideas. But then I write down the pain points of what the system needs to accomplish. And tell me a little bit about what you do when you're creating a system around something that you might not already have a system in place and you're creating a new one. Maybe it's a new

business. Maybe it's just a new venture for you. Maybe it's as simple as a VRBO, but tell me a little bit about that. The first thing is for simple things, often it's just the manager writing it up, sharing it with the people that need to use it, and then it's a go. It's just that simple. Now, in the more complicated things, I do exactly, and we call them make you happy action teams. And for that, we do the exact same thing. We get the team holders and the stakeholders who are going to be involved, and we get them in a room. I use the flip chart, not a whiteboard.

And we do the exact kind of thing. What are some of the positives of this? What are the negatives of it? And then as we get into the individual things, we again maybe do the Ben Franklin balance sheet, you know, positive things on one side, negative things on another, but then come up with consensus on how we're going to get it solved. And consensus doesn't mean that everybody agrees with everything, every single thing. But what it means is that we all agree that this is a good way to do it.

And can it be improved down the road? Yep, and that's why on the bottom of every single one, we put do it like it says here, unless it doesn't work, then do what works, and then get this fixed. So it's very much that same kind of idea of bringing in stakeholders. And sometimes when you're working on something, all of the stakeholders don't have to be there. So, for instance, again, going back to

entering orders while we're online on the phone, this goes back like 15 years ago before there were really good programs on it. So we did it ourselves. Sometimes it'd be the salespeople alone in that with one, a facilitator. And then at other times it'd be salespeople with purchasing other times salespeople with accounting, because you know because if somebody's on hold, what do we want the system to do? If we're placing a custom order, what do we want the system to do? Once we hit send and it goes back to the warehouse or print and it goes back to the warehouse, is this exactly how we want it? And so you get the stakeholders involved and you sit down and you hash it out. It's really that simple.

And then with a facilitator who knows that one of the guidelines is that we get everybody's input too. And some people are quieter than others and some people are going to be more outgoing than others. But it's the facilitator's job to make sure that we get the input from some of those quieter people that sometimes they're really thoughtful. I mean, sometimes they're really thoughtful. Yeah, you get the right people and there needs to be a system about getting the right people. I think a lot of us, we make the mistake of saying it's all people, people, people. I believe in people. I do. But I also believe in the right system to get the right people.

And creating a system to where you're a magnet for the best people in the world is half the battle and you know people always say how do i get the good people that how do you get so many of them well there's a lot of levers we can pull we can talk about benefits like you talked about or we could talk about a really really great culture to where people are growing word of mouth and people say man it's, it's stress-free, it's drama-free. It's not even like going to work. I'm going to see friends. Yeah, I have to be there.

It's become a job for me, but I enjoy it. I'm really close to a lot of the people. We work hard. We work on goals. We know what's expected of us. And we celebrate a lot. And there's a lot of wins for us. Culture is far more important.

Benefits, et cetera. That's that whole thing that we were talking about when we were named the best business to work for in Washington State. The reality is when you have everything systemized and it's easy to get people up and trained and to come in, you're not held hostage by anyone wanting more pay. Because in almost every case, you can replace them quickly and easily because you have the systems involved. And we did not have the best pay when it came to being named the best business to work for. But people want to be listened to. People want to know that they're important and that you're listening to them, and that's the culture. And that's when everybody is looking to make things better.

Now, does every single person need to be as involved as every other person? Absolutely not. One of our very, well, probably top salesperson, I think it probably took a few years for him to get on board, when I started managing. So probably 30 years at American Retail Supply. He was probably top salesperson 27 out of 30 years. He's not a guy we wanted on our make you happy action teams. He's like, I don't have time for this. I got to go sell. He's not the guy to get in on that. So you need to know who you're bringing in. And it really needs to be a situation that either you and or the facilitator are asking people that you know

are going to have good input and not be the pain in the butt person that comes in there and is just looking for all of the reasons things can't work. We all have. Right. We all run across that person. So when you're having your make you happy action team, the facilitator is choosing people that really want to make things better. And you know those. And again, Mark, the salesman, he wanted to make things better all the time too. But it's like to try and nail him down is trying to like nail Joe.

You know, I'm going. I'm selling. You guys do whatever you want. Yeah. So let me ask you this. So how do I take an average person, a B b or c player and really get them to buy in and really have that where actually where they do care i think starbucks does a great job of this because they really hit them outside of work too and work on them and their family but tell me how

do i get that customer satisfaction rate to where when my guys show up the people are like wow we are in love with your company the way that that gal there talks about you guys is just amazing. She's proud to work for this company. We're proud to have you out at our home. How do we get the buy-in to that level? Yeah, and people are different, too. I mean, people are just different. Mark, that sales rep that was go, go, go, go, he would get clients to love him for way different reasons than Ariane did.

One of the things in my book that I talk about, and this is in the Happy Customer Handbook that I have, and by the way, you guys can get that for $2.97 too, including postage and shipping. It's called thehappycustomerhandbook.com, thehappycustomerhandbook.com. But what I talk about in there and what we train is we train our people to put you into every customer experience. And Arianne is not the same you as Mark, but it is putting your personality in there and making sure that every single person knows that the minimum level of customer service is sincere appreciation for that person. And that they need to know that and they need to have that drilled into their head. And so this gets me on to customer service.

One of the things that we teach is we have that DVD, if you will, that shows everybody what your customer service should look like. And we have that available for our clients to use. And then we also have a different DVD that is used for every new team member that comes on board watches this DVD along with their supervisor. And that DVD starts with, hey, welcome, you're our next customer service superstar. Why do we know you're our next customer service superstar? Because while we were interviewing you and talking with you, we determined you had just that perfect attitude to be our next customer service superstar. So we set that expectation on day one, number one, day one. It's also in the interviews. And when we talk about customer service, we're talking front end, back end, everywhere end, okay? It's not just the person that's out there in front of them. Customer service for the accounts receivable

person is also answering questions great for the salesperson that needs an answer or any other co-worker that you have. So we talk about the internal customers. It is as important, not quite, but almost as important as the external customer. So we put that expectation right up front and then we train for it. And here's what happens in almost all customer service training. It's what we did for years. We would say, oh man, we need a refresher on customer service. And I'd go out and buy somebody's DVD. Now I have my own that we created, but we'd go buy somebody's DVD or videotape or whatever, and we'd have a meeting on customer service, and everything would get better for two or three weeks. And then we'd be right back where we were before.

What needs to happen is that consistent and persistent reminders, and a lot of it is just the same damn thing. You know, I'll bet one of the things that we do, for instance, with our clients is we send out weekly emails that go to the manager. It arrives Monday morning and it would go to you, for instance, Tom, and you'd send it to all your managers also. And it says, here's the tip that I'm going to be sharing with your team tomorrow. And it's a tip on customer service. It's just a reminder because they need these constant reminders. And then they really understand that you believe in it. You know, this whole thing of having a rah-rah meeting and that's supposed to fix everything and da-da-da-da-da, it doesn't happen. But if you're reminding them every week of what's expected, all of a sudden the customer service is up at that level that nobody, they don't get from

anybody else they deal with. For instance, one of the things we talk about in that is that Disney looks at their competition as anyone who deals with their customers in any way. So for instance, Disney, when they look at people answering their telephones, they look at people like FedEx and LL Bean and all of these really good people at answering the telephone and they say, they're our competition. And we share that kind of thing so that your team, and we say then with your team, hey, who do you see out there that does something really good and how could we use that in our business? So that's the kind of emails that we send to your team every week.

And then, again, the bottom of that email that comes every Monday is then a little tip for the manager themselves. And then on Tuesday morning, we send the tip that does go out to the entire team. Now, if you got everybody on email, great. If not, a lot of our clients end up just printing it out and putting it in their bins. But they're reminded every single week of a little customer service tidbit. And it makes a huge, huge difference. And then twice a month, we send out videos of, again, really short, 90-second videos.

And these are fun. I'll give you an example of one of them. I got back from a business trip at 1.15 in the morning here a couple weeks ago and this guy, the parking guy, the shuttle guy where I was parking, he was great. He greeted me with a smile. He said, welcome back to Seattle, Mr. Lee. Did you have a great trip? 1.15 in the morning. And he's smiling. He's got this great smile on his face. And he's greeting me. And so what I did for the video then is I said, hey, Levi, I got to video you for just one second and talk about you. So I videotaped this guy and talked about the customer service that he gave and how he greeted me with this great smile and everything else.

And that ends up being a 90- second video that I send out. And then you would drive your team to that, to watch that too. So you get these couple different ways. You get the email you can read, you get the video you can read, but people expect, gosh, it's just crazy to me. Well, when you go get my book, the Happy Cab Customer Handbook, you're going to be asked this question, you know, about what should your customer service training look like? And the last one on there is E. Everyone is trained in our customer service when they start and they're consistently and persistently reminded of that. Only 2% of the people that get my book say that's what happens in their business. But yet when I go out and I- I put that when I buy your book, just so you know. Good. But when I go out and speak, I ask, so 2% say that. But when I go out

and speak, I'll ask that same thing. I say, what should your customer service look like? And it starts out with, you know, we expect people to know what great customer service is. And then it goes something like, well, we give them some ideas, but nothing formal. And then it says, well, they're all trained in our customer service expectations, nothing about ongoing training. Bottom line is there's five different things there. When I ask them what should it look like, everybody says E. But yet when I ask them what does it look like when they come and get a book, only 2% say E.

So we all know it should happen that way. But what happens is we're busy business owners. We don't get it done. And that's why we do that for our clients. And we send them that reminders that can just get sent out via just forwarding the email or copying or just printing it out or whatever the case may be. Yeah, there's a guy named Chet Holmes. He passed away, but he wrote The Ultimate Sales Machine. And he said the number one thing that makes an entrepreneur is pig-headed discipline.

And it's pig-headed discipline. It's doing the same thing. It's not doing a million things. It's just doing a few simple principles right. And the principles, you know, he's got 12, different people have six, different people have eight. The thing is, you got to know what you're looking for and you need to consistently and always remind. And one of the things he talks about in his book is if you were to hire, if you were to bring in an amount of people, whatever that amount might be, could you handle it? So he said his top student could bring in over 100 new employees a week and they'd be superstars. It kind of makes me think about whatever it might be,

Target, Starbucks, Disney World, whatever it might be. But some people that don't know a lot about business go here and they go, I just don't understand how they find these great people. And it goes back to the same thing that salespeople aren't born, they're taught. And if people aren't taught and they know they're being not maybe watched, but we'd set up things like I've got secret shoppers, I've got customer reviews on every single thing I do, a survey for every customer. And if you're having a bad day, don't bring it to work. It drops off when you walk out your front door or your garage door. So I think that that's so important to learn. And I've talked to some of

the most successful human beings in the world and I get the same answer. It's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of hours and it's not easy. It's not easy. Nothing ever comes. Very few people hit oil and strike oil or find gold. I mean, nothing is super simple, but you're 100% right. If we stick to systems and we build systems and we constantly are perfecting the systems and just that pig-headed discipline of reinforcing all the time, we can get a desired outcome and an expected outcome. So I'm 100%. Keith, you've got so many great things that I want the listeners to have access to. So I'm going to do something. I'm going to put us the home service expert dot com forward slash happy customer. And we're going to put every resource you have. We're going to put a little bit about your companies. We're going to talk about the customer service book. We're going to talk about the happy customer book. We're going to give the resources for Grant Robinson. I'm going to order all your DVDs. Anything I can get my hands on of yours, I'm going to study it. I want to get you back on here, but I always like to do a couple of things at the end of the show if you're okay with it.

So the first one was, tell me something in closing that we might've not talked about that you're passionate about. It doesn't even need to be about business and the next one is a couple books passionate about would be would be to get your team involved you can do it yourself you can try to be the guru you can try to be the king solomon but it really i'm gonna i'm gonna tell a little story here this is going back five years ago now i think i'm I'm a big skier. We do a lot of skiing. And I hit a tree. I had my helmet on. I hit a tree. I had a level four concussion. That's a bad concussion. I was almost useless for six months, but useless for about four months. And yet, when I came back, I even signed away my rights to make any decisions for the company

because it just wasn't there. When I came back, the business was running better than when I left and the reason it was doing that was because of the people and the systems because of, and a couple of the little things that ended up, that happened, that are in place, there's more than just the two, but a couple of them are, again, the make you happy job requirements that say do this exactly like it says or help change it. And the other one was in personal development interviews, what did you find that was broken or could be fixed and what'd you do to fix or improve it? And those two things along with everything else made it so that the business was actually running better than when I left. And if you can't do that in your business, if you couldn't be gone for four months in your business and come back and it's still doing fine, you've got problems. The other thing is, it's really cool, is that when you have those systems in place, I just, I told you I sold my business

for a couple years ago, I got way premium price because I had the systems in place, because I had personal development interviews in place. We had, first off, I went in and I talked to a guy, I actually went in to talk to him about a five-year plan to sell my business. And he said, you don't need a five-year plan. You've done what everybody has to do in that five-year plan, and that is implementing all the systems that you need so that you can sell your business and get a premium price for it rather than a low price because somebody sees all the issues that they're going to have in trying to come in and learn the business themselves.

Well, you left a turnkey. It's a turnkey business and that's what people want to buy. Absolutely. And they want to come in with their own ideas of what else they could add, but they don't want to come in and have to learn the business from scratch. So, I mean, I had people from outside of the industry totally coming in, making full price offers, got the multiple full price offers, bid the price up. Then when it came time to start talking about value of inventory and everything else, which there was some back there that wasn't too good, I knew I had something to go back on, and I could go back to another offer if I wanted, if they didn't want to pay me what I wanted on the inventory, et cetera. So it's the systems that you have in place, the people that

you have in place that allow your business to continue to get better, whether you're there or not. And then what you can sell it for a premium price when it comes time. So that's the big thing I would leave with a couple books. Influence, I'm not good at remembering authors at all. It's actually Robert Cialdini. Yeah, Okay, good. You're good at authors. That's a fabulous book. That's really good. And I'm going to go back a ways on my second one that I'm going to recommend. And if you haven't read it, and if you haven't taken it to heart, it's an older book. It can change your life in so many ways is, is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Carnegie. Yeah. Dale Carnegie. Yeah. Dale Carnegie. Yep. How to Win Friends and Influence People by... Carnegie. Dale Carnegie. Yeah, Dale Carnegie.

How to Win Friends and Influence People is another one that I would go back on. Great. And then a little book, a little book which is kind of fun. It's not that I just got done reading Be Our Guest. It's actually done by the Disney Institute. It doesn't have an author on the cover or anything. It's a short book, but I think it's really cool. It's fun.

I love customer service stuff. Yeah, you know, another book that I've never talked about on the podcast, but I really love for people that I buy a lot of the time for people is Who Moved My Cheese? And it's a short, simple book and it's a good book as well. Listen, Keith, I think what I need to do is just touch base with you. I need to make sure I get everything on the site. Everybody that listens got a lot out of it. And once again, you've got a lot of things, the customer service book, the happy customer book I ordered. I'm going to find out, I'm going to email you and get the rest of the stuff and then we'll figure out a time to get you back on and discuss them each in detail. Is that okay? That's great. That's great. Let me, if I might close with one

real quick thing, going back to the cats in the cradle. You know, I knew I did it right when my son was a senior in college and spring break came around. And his buddies were going to Mexico and whatever. And he comes and says, hey, Dad, can you and I go skiing for spring break? Wow. That just gave me the goosebumps. I have a hard time saying this because it was so cool.

And then, oh, sorry. How stupid is that? And then I knew I had it right when my daughter came back two years later and asked for the same thing

when she graduated from college. So, you know, you can either make this really hard or you can make it a lot simpler by getting your systems

in place and getting your people involved. So, that's the end I've got, Tom. Thanks. Thank you so much, Keith. That was amazing. And it was my pleasure. We'll get you back on here. Okay. Good enough. Thank you, sir. Have a great day. Bye. Bye-bye. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Remember to subscribe to my show so that you're the first one to know when there's a new episode. If you're a subscriber, awesome. Leave us a review and tell us what you like and, most importantly, what you don't like so we can continue to improve the show.

And if you're ready to scale your business like I did, check out my free mini course right now at homeserviceexpert.com forward slash mini course. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.