Must-Have Software For Any Contracting/Trades Business

You have to work on your business, not in your business. The E myth revisited changed my life. I reread the E Myth literally three times per hour minimum. Delegation is the key to growth. You must part with the technician mindset. Processes, procedures. Michael Gerber. Run a business based on process. Michael Gerber, can you hear me back there?

Can anybody hear me? Working on the system. Not just in the system.

Okay, but like, what are you doing about it, though? What's going on, everybody? It's Richard Cobberger, the blue collar nerd. And in this video, we're going to be talking about a software that I consider to be one of the top three most important softwares when it comes to running a home services business. The number one most important, I'd say, is Service Titan. The second slot, I'd say, goes to Slack. Slack has had a pretty major impact on how my company communicates. And then number three. Number three is the topic of today's video. So let me ask you this. Where do you store and maintain your company's standard operating procedures? Is it nowhere? It's nowhere, isn't it? Well, if it's not nowhere, then congratulations. You're way ahead of most companies. And maybe you're using something like Google Docs or something like that, which is okay. It's better than nothing. But the software we're talking about today is made specifically for. For this purpose. It's made to write, store and maintain company standard operating procedure. And that software is called Suite process. Having Suite Process or something like it, to store and maintain company operating procedures is an absolute game changer because it saves you so much time, keeps you from explaining the same things over and over, and it prevents so much finger pointing. The saying is that if it's not written, it's not real, and it's true. If something goes wrong and the right thing to do isn't written down anywhere, then it's just a game of he said, she said. Well, I told you to do it this way. Well, no, you didn't. You told me to do it that way. Who knows? Plus, it eliminates a ton of unnecessary questions because there's a database now. You have your own company knowledge base with most of the answers. For example, okay, we're hiring a new technician. Now, what all accounts do I need to make for him? What things do I need to buy? Where do I need to send him for a drug test? All sorts of things. It's all in suite Process. Just look it up and follow the checklist. You're also able to put in screenshots and videos and you're able to draw on those screenshots. And you can even link to other processes within a process. You can say, then you do this and if you're not sure how to do that, then link to other process where you can go learn how to do that thing. Enough of me just telling you about it. Let's go take a look. So this is what it looks like now. Suite process breaks out processes into procedures and processes. It classifies a process as a collection of procedures. So the procedure is the most granular version. For example, I can click this process here of CSR dispatchertraining and then it will open up this list of procedures. And if I click here, this is introduction to office phones. And then we get this procedure here. So you can see here I'm utilizing a lot of links. There's no need to duplicate work. So for things like an introduction to the office phones that we use, I can just put in links in suite process that sends them to the website to the appropriate documentation, and I can also embed videos. So for example, if you were going to be putting Service Titan documentation in here, I would definitely recommend just linking to Knowledge base articles versus trying to write out the processes yourself. Because one, that work is already done for you, it's in the Service Titan knowledge base. And two, things change. Service Titan gets updated, other softwares get updated, and so they're going to update their own documentation. You are going to have a harder time keeping up. Here's another example. This is the field employee onboarding process. And you can see on the side here, it kind of gives you a more graphical representation. Again, we're utilizing links wherever I can. So step one is ensure that background checks have been completed. And then there's a link right there to take you to the place that we go and get background checks. Same thing with the drug testing. Send a job offer letter. And here's the job offer letter template linked right there within the process. And this procedure in particular is pretty long. Let's see if I scroll all the way to the bottom. 33 steps. So a lot of steps, but literally everything they need to get this done is housed within this procedure already. So unless there's some anomaly where something unusual goes wrong, nobody has any questions. What's also great is at the top of the page here you see the start button. So you can start a run of this and name it. Okay, we're onboarding Phil. And then you as a manager or an owner can keep track of the progress and make sure that things are getting checked off. Now, another excellent feature of Suite Process is that you're able to break everybody out into teams and, and you can assign certain processes and procedures to certain teams that way, not everybody has to see all of the processes of the entire company. That can be helpful because one, it would just muddy the waters. Not everybody needs to see all of them. It would just be irrelevant to them. And two, there may be certain processes and procedures that you'd rather keep a little bit more discreet. Maybe you want to keep compensation plans in here, but you don't want everybody to see all of the compensation plans for the entire company. Well, you can just separate them out into teams, and then only the relevant team can see that compensation plan. Now, other than processes and procedures, Suite Process also has a third category called policies, and these are more company just umbrella policies. For example, I have here a bad weather policy that breaks down how weather correlates to whether or not we're going to be rescheduling jobs. I also just have a link to the full employee handbook in here. No smoking in the vans. You get it? Just. Just umbrella policies that kind of apply to the whole company. Another great feature is that should you choose to allow it, employees can leave comments on processes and procedures, and they can also suggest edits. So that helps the whole team kind of keep everything up to date. So if somebody spots something that's out of date, they can suggest an edit, and then you as a manager can choose to approve or deny that edit. You're also offered an audit trail to see who's been visiting it and who's made edits and suggested edits. Once you start documenting these processes and procedures, you'll blow your own mind with how much actually goes into making the wheels turn at your own company. And it'll really be like, wow, I can't believe that I didn't have any of this written down. Call scripts, CSR training, handling negative reviews. It's all in here. Now, when you start with something like this, it can be very overwhelming because like I just said, you'll quickly realize how many processes and procedures there truly are. Don't get overwhelmed. Just take it slow. Write them one at a time. Try to give as much detail as possible, but at the same time know that you're probably going to leave something out and somebody's going to come to you and say, hey, it says to do this, but I don't know how.

And.

And then you'll have to go back and revise that process. That's fine. That's how it's supposed to work. Over time you'll build something that's more and more robust and gets really bulletproof. Having suite process or something like it helps you truly fulfill what most business owners agree on, which is that your time is better spent working on your company, not in your company. Answering the same questions you've answered a million times, putting out day to day fires. That is not the best use of your time. Now I'm gonna export this procedure to a PDF and put a link to it in the description down below. This is one for you guys to have to kind of get you and I think it's a really good procedure for any company to have. It's my decision making guidelines and it's kind of just the mindset that I want everybody to have when making any decision. Check it out, give it a read. I think you'll like it. But I am going to read you number four because I think number four is very relevant to what we're talking about here today. It's how we handle mistakes. As long as all team members are following in detail our in house documentation and instructions. All mistakes are blamed on system weakness. Mistakes aren't encouraged, but we do embrace them when they happen. We work as a team to figure out the system weakness and fix it once and for all. We do not repeat mistakes. If a mistake occurs, put out the fire immediately, fix the system weakness that caused the fire in the first place and then once approved by a supervisor, distribute the new best practice to the affected team members. And that's really it. I mean that's really the value behind this. You know exactly whether this was an individual's fault or or a procedure's fault because you have everything written down. So if something goes wrong, you can go back to the process and if the individual followed everything in the process and something still went wrong, well, you know, you have a procedure weakness and no individual needs to get blamed for a procedure weakness. Just fix the procedure that way. You're being very deliberate and very exact in identifying your company's holes and filling them systematically. By the way, I guess I should point out suite process isn't free. There is a cost associated here on the pricing page I'm seeing it is $99 a month for a team with up to 20 active members and then additional $5 a month for every active member after that. Or you can pay annually and then it breaks down to 82.50amonth plus 417 for anybody after 20 active members. I think it's well worth it. But I mean, your call. I'm not associated with this company in any way. It's just something that I use and that I really like. Anyways, that's all I got for today. Hey, if you got some value out of today's video, do me a huge favor and hit that like button. Also, be sure to subscribe to this YouTube channel if you've not done that already. And hit that bell icon so that YouTube notifies you anytime I upload a new video. Appreciate it. Peace.

Working on the system, not just in the system. Can you imagine this stupid idiot listening to that premise? Where you're doing what you do and where you're doing what you're doing? Improving how you do what you really can do? Tens upon tense upon tense upon tens upon tense.