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Success Came From Humble Beginnings
Several years ago, I was an active remodeler. I was doing what most remodelers do. I was working 60-70 hours a week, with paperwork taking up most of my evenings and weekends. I was consumed with all of the day-to-day details of running a successful remodeling company. I was the owner, the manager, the salesman, the purchasing agent, the bill payer and the onsite remodeler. There was little time to do anything else.
Then something happened that changed my life. My wife and I had our first child. My son was born, and had colic. Do you know what colic is? What that means is that he cried almost 24 hours a day. He seldom slept, and he seldom ate. But he did cry. He cried regularly, and often. After 6 weeks of living with a colicky baby, my wife was exhausted. She needed help.
We arrived at a plan to let my wife get some rest. I agreed to care for the baby between 4 and 5 am, and keep him until 9 am, so that my wife could get 5 or 6 hours of uninterrupted rest. What this meant was that I could no longer go to work at 7 am. I was now responsible for childcare from around 4 am to 9 am. To make this work, I needed to document all my early morning job procedures so that my project manager could now open the office, retrieve messages, confirm material deliveries, and make sure everyone got to the right job. Because I couldn’t get to the office before 9 am, my project manager became responsible for opening the office and getting the morning set-up done for every job we were working on.
Now, I was lucky. I had a great project manager, but I also had the benefit of working with a local remodeler who understood “systems”. This local remodeler became my mentor, and showed me how to run a successful remodeling business. Everything in his business was organized and efficient. Best of all, because his business ran with clearly defined “systems”, he was free to work “on the business”, and allow his employees to work “in the business”. His company “systems” managed all of his day-to-day details.
Working with my mentor, I put into place “morning procedures” so that my project manager could successfully open the office every morning without my being there. The good news is that it worked! Even though I wasn’t coming into the office until 9:30 or 10 am, the office was functioning smoothly, and jobs were running on schedule
After working with him, I came to an amazing realization. I wasn’t running my remodeling business... my business was running me! It made perfect sense. If your business is reliant on you showing up to manage everything – you’ve done nothing more than buy yourself a 70-hour a week, stressful job. Harsh. But true. This is why so many small business owners experience “burn out” after several years of owning their own business.
Now, something interesting happened after 7 months, when my son grew out of the colic and became a regular kid. I discovered I liked being at home with him in the morning. I liked getting him up in the morning and giving him breakfast and getting him dressed. I liked doing “daddy duty”. My son had helped “wean” me off of 12 to 15 hours workdays. I liked being a DAD!
Next, I came to a very clear conclusion: I didn’t want to spend the next 10 years like I’d spent the last 10 years. I wanted to be available to watch my son grow up, and I wanted to be there to care for him. To do this, I needed to “re-engineer” my day-to-day business operations. I became totally committed to developing and using a “system” to run everything in my business – the office work, the sales, all the field work, marketing, everything. It took three solid years to develop, fine-tune, and perfect the systems. But the results have been amazing.
The Benefits of a Turnkey Business
What Having The Right Systems In Place Will Do For You...
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