The Huddle - Episode 161 - The Cost of Chaos: Why Organization Can Make or Break Your Business
Disorganization might be costing you more than you realize—lost tools, missed deadlines, miscommunication, and major stress. In this episode of The Huddle, Paul, Daniel, and Jose dive into how lack of structure can drain profits, kill momentum, and wear down even the best teams.
They’ll cover:
🔧 The real cost of chaos on the job
📋 Easy systems to streamline your day
💼 Organization habits from top pros
⚠️ How to turn confusion into clarity—fast
If your crew is overwhelmed, scattered, or just stuck, this one’s for you. Learn how to take back control and create a business that runs smoother, faster, and more profitably.
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What is up, guys? Welcome back to the Huddle, your weekly playbook helping you gain forward progress in your career.
Simply put, we're here to help you win. With me as always, Mr. Daniel and Jose
Gonzalez. Although mobile, they're with us. What's up, fellas?
How's it going? I think this dude lost connection because if you don't put it on do not
disturb your it loses your camera. Ah. Oh, there we go.
No, I was sharing it on on socials. All right. Share away.
Well, I think Daniel's out uh kid collecting and Jose's trying to fix a vehicle. So, you've got me in studio and
our two podcast host extraordinaire on the road.
They can they can do it anywhere. Flipping, brother. They're so good. They can do it anyway. They can be flipping. I don't know.
All right. Well, uh we're going to give a second for everybody to start joining. Uh reminder to everybody to like and
subscribe on our socials and on our YouTube channel. We could use some love
over there. Uh this episode is sponsored by Shag Tools. We want to thank them and
give them a extra special shout out for sponsoring this episode.
And uh thank you Shag. We appreciate you. Yeah, we'll uh you guys are going to be able to hear
me, but I got to open up a door real quick. Sorry, I'm on the road. Fair enough. Well, today's episode
is why organization can make or break your business. That's kind of a a um
one a very true statement, but we just I I uh I can't wait to hear your guys's uh
take on this because I know you guys started a very similar to me kind of
just some flooring guys going out and starting a business and getting going and then you learned how important
systems are and processes are and that you cannot duplicate yourself. So,
uh I want to be clear. This is um maybe a little more on
uh on business, but it can also apply to your installation. One of the reasons
when I was installing daily, uh, I was considered fast and good, uh, it had
more to do with me organizing and setting up my job site than it had to do
with me being faster at trial and glue or cutting seams or heat welding. In
fact, you can't really rush heat welding. It is going to go as fast as it's going to go. But it was all about
the way I set a job up. But I know you're very similar to that and familiar with that too, Daniel. So, uh, this
episode, uh, kind of even though it's about business, and I'll talk, we'll all
kind of chime in about that because I know we all learned some lessons that we're hoping to help you get uh, maybe
shortcut us, shortcut some of these things. So, what's happening?
Becoming more new. Yes.
So, I think when we're talking about it, it's just like uh
looking back at the early days, it was a lot of it was did I text this person?
Did I email them? How did I even get a hold of them?
And then trying to search for search for that means of information
like just contact information. just keeping the contact list.
Yeah. So, when when I first got started, I was uh I've told the story several
times, but um it's worth uh repeating. I I just was a flooring guy, worked by the
hour, decided to go start subbing, and uh I did mo a lot of the stuff right. uh
did most of it wrong, but get past all that stuff because we've
done a lot of episodes about setting up your accounts and, you know, starting your business. And we're going to be
doing a webinar series on a front to back on the four major uh parts of
starting and building a successful flooring company. um from our years of
experience, but we're also bringing in experts everything from, you know, legal, which has to do with the setup of
your business. So, um you know, you set your company up the most advantageous
way for yourself and to meet your goals. We got um accounting which is very
important that as you keep start making money that you uh allocate it in the right uh areas and track your expenses
and how to do that and some cool tools on on that operations, how to actually run the
business so that uh you can uh continue to grow and thrive and then technical.
So the actual kind of hand skills uh musthaves in the business uh some of
it's going to be uh a little bit of business uh stuff but also you know
technically how do you set up a job? How do you do that kind of stuff so we're going to be coming out with a webinar series on that. Uh so keep an eye out.
But one of the things that I learned quickly as I grew my business was I if I
did something really good but I did not like write it down or log it somewhere.
It was never duplicatable like no one else could do it and then I couldn't do it again in the future because I forgot
how I did it so well. And so I wrote down one of my most important notes for
this topic is systems, systems, systems. Yeah, dude. And procedures.
I know you guys been through a lot of that stuff, too. Um when when was the first time you're
like, "Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna log how I
went from A to B on whatever that was." Do you remember?
I don't even remember the first time we we we decided to do I think it was a little
backwards, right? I I think we come to the realization that we were
missing um systems, right? like and then through
the network of meeting other installers and going to other events and talking with people
realize that yep we didn't record anything that we probably should have
like you take it for granted like oh I remember I remember how to do that and and then you
you teach it and every time you teach it you add a little something you change it a little bit so you're not only you do know how
to do it but as you evolve your teaching evolves and next thing you know you have
30 people that you've trained and everybody knows how to do it a little bit different based off of your skill
set at the time you taught them. Um and I think yeah but even that's better than just
like at least you're you have some confluence in the way you taught. When I first I'll get one of the big things
that when this came to be like a major problem was my first uh when I first
opened I had a partner. Well, me and my partner ended up splitting and he quit
coming into the office and I had no idea. I was the field guy. I
set up the jobs. I ran the projects. I installed. I had no idea how to run
payroll. I had no idea how to write a check. I didn't know how to send a PO. I
mean, I didn't know any of the office stuff. Well, all that could have been logged
into today and even probably then into an Excel spreadsheet. Today, it can be
on a Google spreadsheet uh like Google Sheets and just the process for how to
run payroll. And we now have everything we do in some process sheet. and then
load it into our training platform. Uh that's you grow into some of that but
logging it doesn't you can hand write on a piece of paper put it in a file and name it processes
that it can be that simple but logging your process for doing things. So, uh, no matter what it is, so that if you got
sick, if like my, uh, example, my partner and I, you know, we split, he
didn't wish me to go out of business or anything. So, he he would have wanted me to know how to do the thing,
but didn't even think about that kind of stuff. We just did our jobs. We did them good. Did them, I would say, well,
that's a some bad vocabulary there, but we did them well. But it wasn't like we
logged anything. And organizing your processes in in some type of form where
somebody can go, "Oh, payroll. This is how I go into QuickBooks. Log in,
password, this, that, the other." Boom, boom, boom. And just be able to do the thing by following a step-by-step
guideline. I I will say that um the first time that we realized that we were missing a lot
of information was when we decided to go into sales, right? Um and start that
portion and and that Daniel put said, you know, you're in the office full-time now. And that is when we came to the
realization that we were missing a lot. And then especially when Daniel came in the office, started working more and more. Um you know, everybody know
Daniel's the tech guy. He knows how to do the computer stuff way better than I do, right? Um,
but forcing myself to learn, we were missing a lot. And to be honest, it wasn't I didn't realize how much we were
missing until a good friend of ours happens to be on this podcast allow
allowed us to look at some of the documents that he has in place and and it's like,
damn, we uh So, what was it? spec what specifically
were you uh having issue with like what was some given give an example
um just even basic simple stuff like you mentioned a purchase order we didn't have any systems in place to dup
duplicate it to have a duplication of a standard purchase order Daniels would be
different than mine um you know the the way we submitted it to if we submitted
it to the same distributor or manufacturer his would look different than mine. He'd
format it differently. Um things would look depending on who was the first one to do it. It would look out of order if
he or I did it did one to the next person. We're missing um account information. Like we can send them a
purchase orders, but we don't include our account number. You know that we're not really giving them
the information they need. Um that's just a simple little easy one. Uh, I
would say yeah, down to the way we were submitting bids or
proposals. I would say if you're watching this, anything that you do every day or has a
daily thing should be in a pro written down. Yep. Written down into a process and
organized in a file, whether that's a digital file or a a a paper file.
loading out your trucks. Uh we have processes now for everything. We have
estimators checklists and how we get a bid invite. We have a system for how we
qualify a bid whether or not we should even look at it. We built the formula
for that. And so you'll always do this and you'll always do it a little bit better and better. But I can tell you
our overhead versus revenue is so much better every time we do get better at
this part. Meaning we need less people to do the same amount of work or we it's
not like you know you necessarily you're able to do more with the same
people is a better way to put that. and more. I think that that Go ahead, Daniel.
The issue that uh we're running into is I started doing what you said, right?
And then it's just some people are so literal with everything where it's like, I make a how-to video and then they have
to follow that how-to video and they're like, "Hey, I can't find this file." Okay, well, where'd you go? I went
exactly where it told me on the how-to. Then it's like, dude, you you have to go to the the project that you're working
on. You don't follow the the same the same thing. You don't it's if you did
that, it would be the same thing every single time. And that's just not how things work. So, it's like
then it's like now I got to go through and then put another description on there where it's like do not go to this
file. Go to the job you're working on. Yeah. Yeah. That's um that's probably a little
bit of you know, nothing solves everything. So,
you got a little extra training to do. But that that thought process would be like if you're telling somebody, you
have a written process to on how to cut a cut carpet in and you're like, "Okay,
grab the carpet knife and you hold it at this angle and Yeah. Yes. And they drive to your house to grab
your carpet knife." Now, that that's like the equivalent of what you just explained. Obviously, I'm saying go to
your carpet knife. As bad as it sounds, um
some people just don't want to or I don't know if they're incapable of or don't want to, but right as it's hard to
decipher who's going to be able to um do some of the troubleshooting on their own and figure out, all right, this is this
is mine. This is where I got to start this. And that's why you hire people with experience on certain things
especially with well people who learn well I mean this is a different uh different topic but in
the same vein one of the things about hiring is hiring someone who learns well
who shows the ability and wants to learn. Yeah, that's more important to me than you
knowing anything. As long as I you if you can convince me,
if you want a job here, convince me that you learn well and that you can uh
understand instruction. Like that to me is more important than anything else.
And you can you can cuz sometimes with
really experienced people, they can get used to doing it their way and it's hard
to repro. You're almost reprogramming them or like when I what the the the
tech lingo uh for our application is refactoring. Well, sometimes it's easier
to just tear it down and rebuild or build new. Um,
that is, uh, you know, one of them things. And I, and it's that time of this podcast to bring up, uh, Shag Tools
as our sponsor. We're going to play you a quick short video here from Shag Tools. We want to
thank those fellas for sponsoring the huddle and, uh, bringing you guys great deals. Remember, remember the promo code
huddle 10
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All right. Well, uh Rod brought up what about individual job descriptions.
I'm not uh from a organization standpoint, we we have the first part of
our job descriptions, almost all of them are the same. Uh it's more company
culture, talking about learning, talking about that stuff. the key points that you have to have or the key skills you
have to have to work at our company period. And then individ
specific job description, the skills that you need to do that uh and what
your actual daily description of work is. So, not sure if that is answering
Rod's question or not, but that's kind of how we deal with it from an organization standpoint.
Well, maybe like if you think about it in terms of on the installation side where you know there's not a bunch of
job descriptions. Everyone is just you're either you know it's installer or
they call themselves mechanic or technician. It's like there's no
standardized thing on the installation side and that is pretty chaotic if you
ask me. Yeah. I mean, I think we all understand the the main
the main words that we use. Uh we it's been one of those deals in our industry
for a long time. What a what to call a high quality installer. Uh and you know,
mechanic is the most used uh mechanic and helper. uh it doesn't, you know,
necessarily uh speak highly of the helper at least, but but um that is that
is kind of the um Daniel gets it. He always does, Rod.
Um that is uh you know
what we are starting to really leverage frankly is uh the score the skill score
um and putting in there the we're we're going to start this year with uh
specific uh promotion tied to that score uh promotion to from
subs in pay to in-house guys uh in
salary or uh you know hourly pay and um
but as far as what to call them we still call them mechanics um uh technicians
sometimes but technicians I I know that that's been dis discussed
um in in pretty good detail over the years but that's also what they
uh people who clean your carpet is floor techs, floor technicians. So, I mean,
it's it's hard to get there. Apprentice, technician. I I think Yeah, Rod says that you know,
job descriptions help to clarify expectations. And, you know, he's right, but I think
uh we're all just looking at you, Paul, to come up with some names and
standardize this across the board. Well, I uh I've come up with a score that can
help standardize the the uh levels, but you know, effectively
being a you know, what's known in the industry right now as a one-ame guy, that's a proficient installer. Um so
detail, there's a difference in what we call them versus what they can actually
do. Um, yeah, that's that's uh we'll have to keep our thinking caps though uh
caps on there, Daniel, for that one. But when he says jobs descriptions help clarify expectations, that's why the
first part of ours is company expectations. I don't care if you're the CEO or you're an installer. We have the
expectations of what we need you to do. We also have a company culture and
expectation statement that we send out to everybody and um that is like hey we
expect you to be on time we expect this this that and the other and it's all based of our off of our review system.
So that's like you know that was years before we started doing that e that
depth of organization but all of that is what you need to be able to run a
company. um efficiently where your overhead is not out of out of bounds
with your revenue. And that happens to a lot of companies and I speak from experience because it
happened to us where we got overhead heavy because we had so many roles doing so many different things and it's like
you don't if you have good systems and you have good processes you don't need so many roles to do that level of
revenue. That's uh and that's the thing is when when you're when you're smaller, right, you you're
right. There's people that wear so many hats, it's hard to give just one job description when you're basically doing
10 jobs and it sucks, but I mean that's the name of the game when it when you're
looking at a small company. I'm not just an estimator, you know, I'm
doing everything. So, yeah. And you can still create those job descriptions though based off of what
you found. That's what I'm saying. It is it's beneficial to have those created
and you know you can have multiple job descriptions that you're doing. That way
when it comes time to you know get rid of some of this chaos you're like all right I'm going to start delegating and
this portion is what I'm delegating. And there, you know, there's some people that that ask me, um, especially lately,
they're talking about social media and stuff like that. It's like, I honestly I
haven't even seen that yet because I'm not in charge of it. So, I'm gonna have to go check that out.
Yeah, it's having good job description is um something I undervalued for so
long and then we just got better and better at it. um and decided that
regardless of role there's a certain amount of things you expect we expect I should say employees to do
at our firm regardless of your role and th and a lot of times those are the most important like being a learner being a
consmate learner. Yeah. Knowing being resourceful is another one where like if you don't know
about a product, get in there, dig into it, find out what it's about and how it's installed and tag some of your
other teammates and find that stuff out. That's resourcefulness. If you were to write a too detailed of a
job description, like everything that thing would be a book, you know, it' be
a job book. And some people need that and that's where some of the difficulty
well that's where your training uh platform should come in if you have one. If you don't have one create something
uh in Google Sheets or I'm sure Microsoft has something similar where
you can put processes down at least. We've just taken those processes and
putting them put them in talent LMS which is the training platform that we use and then we have videos with uh the
ones that need video. Sometimes it's just a checklist like an estimator's checklist. Hey, did you check for epoxy
gr the stuff that we from experience would miss. Did you check for epoxy grout? Did you check for you know
waterproofing membrane? Did uncoupling membrane? These types of things. So just a checklist that they can go down and
use. Uh but those things if you if you put everything in one spot
it won't get consumed well. It's almost like stairstepping into it. So having a
good job description sets expectations and job duties for that specific job and
then have a training platform or a training process in some manner um to
back that up. And I think the one thing especially in
in this conversation anyways when we're talking about it is having that culture in your company, right? And we've talked
about EOS in the past and they get a a it's huge in in there where like you
said, uh you know, they say you you can't hire for a talent. You have to
hire for the culture because if they don't share the same culture as you, they're never going to work. Yeah. It's real tough. They can be
talented as all get out, but if uh if they don't care about other people and
you got this really, you know, uh familyoriented business, then it can get
it can get tough. Um you know, you're always there's always problems. These
are just things that help to um kind of uh limit them limit the the issues you
have from the problems. But yeah, like
the basic organization from the topic basic organization is like it's one of
the things that is the simplest thing to do. It's just not easy at all. You know
what I mean? And that's it's it's not even getting into the deeper parts that
we were just talking about. It's like file systems and things of that nature,
understanding how to use a computer and and have a proper filing system uh or
even a paper filing system. Anything you can do to organize yourself is going to
be that next step. If you're an installer out there and you're going to you're you're
subbing, just having a a file for receipts that you would, you know, code
off as what it is, uh what account it needs to go to. Um and properly expense
that purchase. Uh that by itself is something worthwhile.
um and and baby steps into this stuff. But starting early is something that I
can tell you from my side. I think you guys can probably back this up. Starting sooner than later is better.
Like going back and and trying to create this all at one time was uh something we
ended up doing years and years ago, but it was, you know, we've been in business for 25 years. So like way back when we
started doing that, it was still like a grind to get it all done, you know?
So if you Yeah. And that's that's about the same boat we're in right now. It's where you have to create this stuff, but you
have you're wearing so many hats and you have so much other stuff to do. We just need to hire someone to do it is really what it amounts to. It just
this is what we have. help us organize it, get it together, and then it's got
to be it's gota and with everybody. It's gota everyone has got to be able to understand it and utilize it. And that's
I think that that's the hardest part. Daniel speaks a different language than I do when it comes to some tech. We just
need to make sure that moving forward it's something that that everyone can
cipher. It's not too confusing. It's not not too um technical in a language that
is easily recognizable. Yeah. Um
we we ended up having somebody that would sit with each person. We actually
did a screen record on a lot of stuff. I was like, "If it's something we do every day, just turn on the screen record.
And if you don't have a screen record, just put a freaking phone behind you and record your c your computer when you're
doing the thing. Record it, title it in your training platform, how
to xyz and upload the video. And you can do that in Google Sheets as well with
Google and then put it in your Google Drive. Put the video in Google Drive and put the link in your Google Sheets. How
to create a purchase order. Click here. Boom. and it plays the video. So, you can hack through in a very effective,
efficient way. Um, and record and do the stuff as you're actually producing these
stuff. It's turning on a camera, set up the camera behind your computer, and
just record yourself doing the work that you're doing. Uh, if you want to take that a step further, you can, um, just
record a whole day and have somebody clip out the parts and name it. Um,
those are two I I personally prefer just turning on my screen record on my
computer, recording when I'm doing the thing, and that I'm still doing the thing that I have to do because it's on
my shoulders. But if it's something I'm going to be passing on or somebody else should know how to do if I'm sick or
gone or decide to, you know, go on vacation that they have the access to be
able to go to the thing and do the thing. And one of the easiest ways is Google because everybody if you have a
phone, it's either Google or I think Microsoft probably does have another
one, but you can put videos in your Google Drive. Put the link to that video in your
Google sheet and put a title right above it. How to XYZ. Boom. We even have it how to answer
the phone. We don't have a receptionist anymore. We have a phone system that does it, but we still have a process for
how to answer the phone correctly. Rollins says that he has a sign hanging
in his office area. 10 things that require zero talent. One, being on time. Two, making an effort. Three, being high
energy. Four, having a positive attitude. Five, being passionate. Six,
using good body language. Seven, being coachable. Eight, doing a little extra.
Nine, being prepared. 10, having strong work ethic. Yeah, that's um
that's actually I like that. I like that a lot. R there's a um there there's another deal
that Mike Row came up with and it's called uh I forget what it's called and we've we uh we have it. H
I'm gonna look like a fool because I don't remember the name of it, but it's it's essentially like things that don't
require it's the in the same vein as uh Rand just said, it's things that don't
require much, right? Uh like you acknowledge that YouTube is a great
place to learn. So if you need to learn something, Google it, find it, see what
you can find. Um, but being I thought it was pretty funny when he said being
prepared is one of our core values, but he also said being passionate. Uh, yeah,
there's a saying that, you know, a lot of people want to work in their passion or whatever. And
there's a counter saying to that that says, I bring my passion to work with me. And I think that's what Rollins uh
talking about, which is pretty cool. Right? Because that attitude one is huge
because that will dictate your entire day and then when you're working with a team, your attitude is going to reflect
others people's attitude. So if you're not and you're no one's going to be positive 100% of the time, right? But
you have to be able to look at yourself and be like, you know what, I am having a bad day. I'm sorry, guys. I'm just
letting you guys know like right now. This attitude has nothing to do with you guys, but I'm just dealing with some
stuff. So I'm sorry if I come off a certain way. And I think people are just don't
communicate that and it just affects everyone. So positive attitude is huge.
Well, and there's you if you got to do it anyway, why not try to do it with a great
attitude? What even if you're having a bad day and you got to continue on, you it can just continue to get worse and
worse and worse. So positive attitude's great. Rollins's a good example of that, too. Honestly, Kendall says his personal
opinion is talking about personal roles from an installer standpoint. He's
talking about three guys working together and everybody knows their role
on his crew is what he is what I got from that and that it works great for
them. Yep. So knowing that and that's what that setting up a job when I was talking
about being fast and efficient and doing still still doing good quality work that
is man we'd walk onto a job I' I had two helpers they both knew exactly what to
do first and we always did commercial so it's like man one guy is cleaning out saw joints before I mean before the rest
of the stuff's out of the truck he's pulling out his five in one or his screwdriver and cleaning out saw joints
like automatically starting to get the saw joints prepped and then we're taking
measurements and then me and another guy are running and going and cutting carpet and this is back when broad was a big
thing and uh yeah so that that uh everybody knowing their role and
clicking together is important. I agree. So I and and I think one of the
I was say I have a scenario for you on that, right? Like say the skill set of a crew
is very similar, right? And what
what uh what issues an individual that role is it uh the hierarchy that's
created or is it the like they're working with the the same team all the time? like if they can all do the same
things, what what dictates what role an individual picks up uh per job? I'm going to say per per project, right?
Because typically once you adopt a role on a project, that's your role unless someone gives you additional
instructions. But now you go day one or week one is this project, week two,
you're at another project, but you can you have a group of people that all that can do all the same things. Who adopts
what role and what dictates that? Um, well, we in our hourly crew, I can tell
you that we have a lot of guys that used to be what what you'd call helpers that
have gotten pretty good. And a lot of times those guys are working together on the same job. One guy is always going to
be our crew lead and our contact on the project. And that's usually picked by
the project manager, whoever's, you know, assigning it. And it's just like
the selection is always made based off of that person who's got the best skill set to run the job. And if we have I can
tell you like if we have a occupied facility that may be a different person
just because of the way they communicate versus a construction project. Not that one guy's
better at cutting seams than the other guy or whatever the the skill is. It's
the skill of communication that this guy cont communicates with,
you know, superintendent and foreman really well and this guy is just better at talking to doctors, you know, and
we'll flip-flop those, right? And I think, you know, we have talks about this uh pretty frequently in
our meetings because a lot of you do you have a lot of people that you know their skill level is growing. So they're like,
"Well, I don't want to do this. I only want to do this." And I said, "What you guys need to realize is that, you know,
if if I go help on a project and someone's already leading it, I don't just step in and say, hey, I'm here now.
I'm going to I'm the lead on this project." I'm like, "No, I I will go on, you know, I'll get there and everyone's
doing something." And it's all, oh, everyone's doing something. Let me go take the trash. Let me go organize some tools. I said, no one is too big for
any little thing that has to be done. We if we're all on the same team, but you're you're right, and we talked about
this previously, you know, and it's like sometimes, you know, that second man or second person on that project sometimes
it could be the best installer because no, you're horrible at talking to
people. Go do this. or or you know they're they're really good at delegating to where you know the lead is handling the
the higher stuff up here you know the high level stuff and then it's like hey I'm going to go be doing all this stuff
making sure we're all good can you tell them what to do so you just have to to
put people to where their strengths are. Yeah, that's where that's the ex that's exactly the
the way we do it. Just exactly like you said. It it's like try to figure out
while this guy's going and checking with the the superintendent who's sitting in the job trailer, what areas are next and
how we're going to attack the area. This the second command is like m getting the crew to do the things and he's doing the
things that need to be done on that. when you were talking about roles uh and
like you'll go on a job uh or a hire uh installer go on a job and and assume the
highest position on that project or something. That's not how we run either. I look at it like and building a
building software kind of helped me look at it this way, but I look at it like
like when you're logged into a role on a computer, you can't do any more than
that role. And it doesn't matter if you're the president of the United States, if you are logged into that that
user role, that's all you can do. So, if you're logged in as a user versus an
admin or a super admin on a piece of software, you're only able to do what
that software allow you to do for that role. That's kind of how I operate when I'm
doing because I still project manage some jobs. When I'm acting as a project manager, I have to sit in the scheduling
meetings with my guys. I have to schedule right with them on crews and and placement. It's not like I just say,
"I'm the president. we're putting this guy here and that guy there. Now, I don't act as president when I am a
project manager. And um so that's also
how we try to have our crews act. And it sounds like that's exactly what you were just describing, Daniel.
That's like um the the old Matchtail commercial, right, where they put their dots everywhere and
the dude comes in. He's like, "Hey, don't agitate my dots." Like he's got them all in systematic order, right?
Don't agitate my dots. they're right where they need to be. You come in and do that, you're going to mess the whole system up. And
maybe that's the uh importance of and maybe that's what we're missing too. We're missing you just explained it in a
different manner that that I've never really looked at it, Paul, where you know that you're capable of doing
certain roles, but you know that there is a cap on your role when you're in a
certain situation and when you're logged into that role. Yeah. when you check into that role, when you
go into the day and you are the warehouse guy, you're the warehouse guy. You don't get to go all of a sudden be
something else. Uh the role just doesn't allow it. And so it's kind of role operations.
Um it helps. It seems to help with, you know, our crew is gets along really,
really well. No matter what configuration we have, one of the guys, uh I think there's 10 of them. and
having them in different, you know, with diff each other in different jobs based
on their skill set. So, Jose or uh Hey Sue says, "We need to do
a podcast talking about work comp and umbrellas." We did do one uh Ashlin
could probably email you the uh episode, but uh I don't know if it was
specifically about work comp and umbrellas, but it was on insurance and stuff like that. I remember that. No,
but I think that's something that we can do again that might be like a a webinar thing though where it's like get super
indepth so people actually understand what they're purchasing. Yeah, that is certainly part of the um
the webinar series. I mean, insurance is part of legal. And in that business
uh webinar, frontto back uh business webinar, we're we're going to be talking
about everything from, you know, corporate setup or business setup, whether you're a sole proprietor, an
LLC, an S corp, a CC corp, or anything in in there. Um and just the pros and
cons of each one, and so you can decide which one's best for you. And then talking about work comp and and and the
importance of that and and um insurance. I'm not sure if we hit on umbrellas, but
that's a that's a funny one because you'll always fight that. We had to go
up to an $8 million umbrella for one project and cost us 8,000 bucks for the year. You know, it just kind of depends.
We're now right around we had to we got a lot of contracts that have have require us to have a $5 million
umbrella. That was about 3,800 extra a year from our 2 million which is
typical. Right. And that's what we're dealing with right now too. It's like all these
projects are coming out that they want to have the five million. I haven't seen an $8 million one. So talking about just
every little bit helps right here with Manny Zip Ziploc bags to separate
everything, all the receipts and stuff, but you can take it a step further and just get a business bank account and then everything is tracked on your
business bank account. Well, that's true. Although um
you you uh categorizing it if it's a separate person categorizing it into your accounting system, if it's just
you, that works great because you'll recognize charges and log them in their
appropriate chart of accounts. Uh when you have somebody else doing all
your accounting, uh the way he does it, I mean, my controller would love me to do that.
I've got, you know, she has to beat all of us up to make sure she gets her receipts. So, um, you know, there's
always a struggle. Uh, Kendall says he agrees with you, Daniel, that train, uh,
train do all technical. I train to do all he does all the he
goes I do all the uh the technical work and get things organized but I have other another guy
um that does the taping and uh tapping talking to the customer normally because
he's way better communicating. That's cool man that you can recognize that. That's another great um
uh like feel of a leader. Not telling the truth right now, you
guys. And I'm going to call him out. What he's doing is he's just listing the responsibilities of all of his other
personalities. He's not really telling us about a crew.
And then says that, you know, just to move to an
escort or he said, you know, the pros and cons. I'm trying to pull this one up. Pros and cons of a LLC and escort.
Yeah, that'll would be would be great. But that's also sounds like that dude needs some answers.
Something Well, not really. I think he he moved to an escorp, right? where you can do that
and then it depends on how everything is set up. And then you want to also make sure that you
that you need that setup, right? And that's talking to an accountant 100% to they'll let you know.
Yeah. That's why on our webinar series, we'll have an accountant uh that's going to be presenting the information and uh
giving you the the pros and cons. But in short, an LLC is a is a membership.
So you have members. Uh you don't have shares that so you don't have
shareholders, you have members. Um there's different tax liability things
that go into each one of these. Uh I'm most familiar with S Corp and CC Corp
and essentially, but each one of these change. So this is not financial advice.
Wait for a webinar series where a actual accountant will be giving you the information but essentially on an escorp
the profits of your company the income from that flow to the shareholders. And
so if you own 100% of your escorp all of the profit and the income flows to you
even though you didn't pay yourself that and you are liable personally for those taxes. Now most people
have their company pay for the the income tax uh burden there but um again
these are all accounting questions. Um and then a CC corp is the co the
corporation itself is liable for the um for the uh uh income taxes. Whereas an
escorp, like if you pay yourself as the owner a W2, you know, you pay yourself a
salary and you keep out taxes on yourself every week, that goes to that overall tax burden. Um, where on your CC
corp, if you pay yourself a salary, that's your personal income tax and your corporation owes taxes itself. So, it's
kind of double taxation on a CC corp. Uh but there it's absolutely necessary for
some companies to be a CC corp and absolutely necessary for some companies to be S corp. And so that's where
getting with an accountant or uh watching our webinar series that's coming up will uh really benefit you.
You'll really understand the difference. It'll help you understand. Well, let's
uh and let's get back to the topic at hand about where where we were supposed to be at um
the organization. But, you know, a lot of this always ends up there because when you talk about organizing,
you're t then you get into where does that stop? You're organizing your company and that's where I think Jose or
Jesus was uh kind of getting to, right? Right. I mean,
go ahead. There's just different different types of organization or not different types but different segments
because you can go all the way down to like Lanny was saying organizing receipts,
organizing the van, organizing the tools on a project, organizing the people on
that project. It's so much that that needs to happen. But one thing is is
that once you do start getting organized, things do start getting easier. They do get easier. Yeah. John says he's Mr. fly by the seat
of my pants. And that's that's where we want to help
John and others to go from fly by the seat of my pants to having a process for
for each thing or being organized under those uh items and then making sure that your people
adopt those processes and understand them too, right? Like there's I I don't think that the learning and training
part ever really ends because of that. Um, never you have a vision, you have a process. And and no process,
no procedure ever really works without the team understanding
the process of the procedure. Like they have to abide by it. And sometimes it does.
Daniel would probably tell you to listen to Simon Synynic. You got to go to the why. They have to understand why they're
doing it. Yeah. They have to understand that because
some sometimes the process is longer and harder. Uh we have a guy at one of our
offices that didn't quite understand why he had to do something a specific way. And I'm not
going to call him out, but it's because downstream somebody else has to pick up the ball. So certain things have to be
done for that person downstream to be able to pick up the ball effectively. And if you took your little part of the
entire process, it takes you more time. But if you took the whole process and
the person picking up the the the ball later, then it's much more efficient.
And and that's where the wearing many hats comes into play, right? Like where do you stop and where did your hat
start and stop, right? And then who's got to come behind you to to they have to understand
exactly where you started and where you stopped so that way they can continue where otherwise things get missed. And
that's where um you know going back to to add on to what Kendall
has said about what works for them, right? That works for them too because of the amount of people he's used to working with. And he knows where one
person starts and one person stops. They understand that because they're used to it. Now you times his crew times five.
Um, and you have to have clear definitions defining roles, defining start starting points, stopping points
on labor. Um, as well as the office side, like where do you start? Where do
you stop? And where you stop has to make sense on somebody else's start. They're
going to start at your stop. And where do they stop? Um, yeah, there's
that you'll find when you start writing down stuff and you or you you start
documenting your processes that you're going to have gaps and you'll always be
kind of filling in the gaps. Yes. But but people eventually the process
gets pretty dog on clear. Um, I mean, when we we get a contract in our office,
it it everyone knows exactly where that contract what the next step is. It came through the mail or it came through an
email. What's the first thing? All right. It goes to coordinator to to open up a job file in our on our server.
Okay. Then it goes to Paul to review with the PM and sign the contract. And
then it goes like it everything's written down in a process.
It was the only way for us um that we found that we could get things to happen
when somebody may not be there and other people could pick up the ball. That doesn't mean that one person has to do
that role. The processes are for the role and then you can plug people in to
that role. Uh, one thing uh that I would say is I've seen a lot of people try to
write job descriptions or write processes for a person for this person.
This is how they do it. Well, if that's if somebody else can't step in
and do it, then you're writing the process for a individual and not for the role. So, you want your processes to be
for the role so that anybody can step in and pick up the the the the ball and run
with it. Yeah. Uh Rod says organization and the
ability to stay on track is what creates efficient. And then I think he was meant
to put systems maybe efficiency I think. Oh, efficiency.
But yeah, it's you gotta you just have to start, man. And then
things constantly evolve, right? It's not going to stay the same way. Yeah, these are and that's what people need to realize.
These are just like ideas. I think what you just said is the most important part. Just start. You're going
to find stuff that like, oh, if I do this, then that's going to make my life a little easier and you're going to do
it. Like, you just have to start the process yourself. The first process that
has to start is you writing down and documenting your process, getting started.
Yeah, 100%. I And that's the first step in in organizing anything, whether you're going to reorganize your office or your
room, you got to start it. So like, yeah, no matter what you do, you're gonna have surprises. And you
know, it's funny is um so go going into the the the installation side, right,
and working in the field and doing installs. And that's what I realized a couple times is going into the field and
helping the guys when uh when we were a little overwhelmed and we just had a lot of work is I realized that
just getting started for some people is the hardest thing. Like they're going over 20 different ways on how to do
something, right? It's like stop talking about it, just get started, right? like you know that you have to do this
anyway. We're going to go to a job and get started every time first day of the
job. What we got to do? We got to bring the stuff in to do the floors. Got to clean, scrape, demo. Like that's all
just get started on that. The rest of it's going to start falling into place. But getting started is uh
that is the most important thing. You can't get anything done when everybody's sitting there leaning on the wall or on
a broom talking about what oh if we just get to this point we'll be good. But
nobody's starting the process to get to that point. Well, that's where writing down the
stuff. Uh even like I I want to bring up as a last point like safety processes
and being organized around safety. Uh we we use what's called Slack. It's just a
inner office communication tool. And we have a installer channel for week uh
weekly and daily safety items. And even that was like just getting that put
together. Who puts the thing on there? Who makes sure that everybody acknowledges it? Like even that is a
process. It seems easy, but it's actually, you know, probably 10 steps in
that thing. finding the relevant topic, posting it on Slack to the to the uh
installer channel, making sure that the installers acknowledge it and read it and understand it and what how do you
check and and um I wouldn't say test but verify that they understand the
information like all of that. Um so being organized around and remembering
safety and all this is important in our field. So keep that in mind. kind of want to thank everybody um for joining
us today and thank you for all the comments. If you have not done so yet, give us a subscribe on our socials,
follow us, uh like our stuff, don't like our stuff, whatever. Just interact with
us. Let us know if there's any topics in particular. Thank you, Jesus, for those topic uh suggestions. We really
encourage that on the podcast. If you want us to cover a specific topic, type it in the chat. we'll log it and we
will uh we'll get that in if we don't already have the topic planned. Um again, just a quick shout out to Shag
Tools for sponsoring this episode. Remember, HUD10 is your promo code when you go and buy stuff from shagtools.com.
And uh that'll get you 10% off of your purchases at shagtools. So uh any any
last words, my man? Go ahead, Daniel. Many small times make
big time. Amen. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for uh always joining us here.
If you want to sponsor us, uh reach out. Uh quick here's a some of our sponsors
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