From Perfectionism to Progress | E15 – Hard Refresh – An ISSA Podcast

Sa.

We are at Issa headquarters here doing hard refresh recording in person. This is our first time ever doing this.

I really thought you were going to start with what's up, everybody? This is Kaden. We're here.

We're in a different environment, so I.

Had to choose a different intro.

And I was teasing you, so you probably were like, I can't do the same. But we're super excited because we have a really amazing guest and Channing is here being so gracious to hang out with us today.

So, Channing, I'll let you take it away real quick on an introduction, but I want you to move directly into our classic Two truths and a lie.

Yeah.

Okay. My name is Channing. I am the president of KP Building Services. We do commercial janitorial in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. We also have our own custom software called Simon Serve. And then as my side hustles, if you will, I also have a company that's called what's the Stuck? That is consulting, where we turn stocks into solutions, working with various different companies individually as well as, like, departments to solve things. And then also cart. Yeah. Where we are creating efficient, innovative ways to make bath carts and trash brutes and all those different types of things more user friendly so that we can save time when we're loading and unloading in buildings.

So amazing. I love Simon Serve specifically because Chani was telling me about the emails that they get, and it says, simon says, that's perfect. Oh, my gosh.

I will.

I've literally told probably like 20 people since we talked last week. I'm like, that is the most clever thing I've ever heard. So cute.

It's fun because it's like, in my office and in the field, the jargon is people refer to him as Simon, like a person, even if it's not a person. Which is kind of cool.

I love it.

Yeah. So two truths and a lie. That's what I'm supposed to do. Okay. So this is the only real job I've ever had since college.

Okay.

My name comes from a reality TV show.

Okay.

And I fall asleep watching Friends every single night.

The only way I said two truths and a lie.

Lie.

I figured, you know, being in person, I would read.

I know, I know. It was. It's actually harder.

It was much easier virtually, I think so actually, it wasn't because we're not good virtually.

You not.

And last week we spent some time together, and I think you told me that out of college you went and started working with kbs. Right. Don't okay. You don't answer that.

Yeah, you can't.

Sorry, I can't do follow up questions. Okay. TV building. Okay. All right, so maybe. So that one's true, I think.

Okay, so. Well, now you got me thinking about, like, what? To clarify, what's the reality TV show?

I don't know.

Questions.

I don't know what it is because I was not born. It's the show I watched.

Okay. And then Friends every night. Is Friends even streaming right now? Is that even possible 24 7? I don't know.

I think they make a million dollars each just on streaming.

Okay. All right. I think that her name does come from a reality TV show. So the. The Friends is the lie. Don't disappoint me. Don't do it.

I think you've been. I think number one's truth. Number two, I'm like, yeah, friend. Like, my wife falls asleep through every show we watch. So I'm gonna go with the third one.

Okay. Third one's the lie. Okay. Which one's the lie?

Nope. The second one's the lie.

Good job.

I was born in 87. No reality TV existed. It's from a soap opera.

Oh, dang it.

It's from a soap opera.

You look so young. I could have been.

I try. Listen.

Dang it.

Good try, though.

We really are bad at this.

Yeah.

I feel like we need to get a different icebreaker because, Brutal, we introduced.

The, you know, roasting by AI. We won't do that one in this episode. So to dive in, you want to do some quick control?

Yes. Okay. So we're obviously at the Business Growth Strategies in Chicago. So awesome to be here with the Issa team. We've got some pretty cool workshops lined up, but for the future, we have the CLX coming, which is on robotics. Very hot topic right now. Check that out. It's, like, live. The link is live, and it is June 24th, and that's it. Right There's. I should have, like, printed out some sort of, like, cheat sheet for all of the things I'm supposed to say, but that really is the biggest one.

We're good.

We'll.

We'll go into clearing the cash on today's episode with Channing. So, Channing, we're gonna. We're gonna dive into a few questions, just kind of converse about how KB is doing things in your experience, and we'll take the conversation however we want to. But what's one thing you believed would drive growth, but looking back, it actually stalled things?

I would say, honestly Myself and my own perfectionism and fear of failure, if that makes sense. So, obviously, I've been doing this for. It'll be, what, 16 years in July, I think. And when our company started, it was way smaller, right. Sixteen years ago than it is today. And along the way, I mean, I started as a college, post college kid, right. I was just learning and trying to figure it out and doing marketing things and, you know, kind of sponging life. And along the way, I think I learned that I was impeding our ability to grow externally, but also for my team to grow professionally and personally. Because I was so worried about making sure that every single document was branded perfectly. There wasn't a typo. I was trying to control every single decision. I felt like if. If I did it, I couldn't be mad at myself if something went wrong. Right? Like, I felt like it was just me and I could figure it out, but then that impeded other people's ability to grow, and then it built up this, you know, just major resentment for me. My team just was kind of like, I basically created by proxy, like a culture of status quo, right? Like nobody wanted to do anything else. The notion was, I'm not going to do it as good as her or it's not going to be as great of a decision as her, so why even try? So I think really getting clean with myself and focusing on that and realizing that, like, it's way better to have, you know, trust but verify things in place, but allow people to be in a culture of empowerment and accountability. And ever since, that's kind of been the focus since probably about 20. I started in 2009. I want to say probably 20, 15, 2016 is where we really started to make the shift. And it was like they wanted to take on more. They wanted to do things, and it was. It's been awesome ever since. But I would say that's probably the biggest thing that held us back.

I feel like that is okay. I feel very heard right now because I struggle and I associate perfectionism with the. For me, specifically, the inability to delegate because I'm very controlling. And I, like. ChatGPT, told me that instead of being a CPO, I'm actually chief perfection officer. So not cheap product. I was like, ouch. But also. Yes. So my question to you is so interesting. How. How did you change that mindset of, like, being okay that things are not perfect? Like, how did you shift that? Because that's a huge.

Yeah, I would say a lot of business coaching. I got a business coach. I Think the statement of, like, it's lonely at the top is accurate. Right. It's like, you don't want to. What you consider wanting to vent in that moment is not healthy to be doing to your employees and team. And so trying to define, like, a line there, but then having somebody else that I could vent to, but also was my biggest cheerleader. Right. And could talk things through. So I would say the business coaching and then I would also say my EO group. I'm in a group called Entrepreneurs Organization, and we've been together for. I think we're going to go on our ninth retreat together as this core group.

Amazing.

So at least nine years. And it's just been the most gratifying because it's. We're all in different industries, right. We're all running companies, but it's the ability to share in an authentic way without judgment that I think allows you to grow personally. So that's honestly what changed the game for me. And then I think also just asking them, spending more time with my team and saying, you know, what do you want to do? What do you love about your job? Right. What's the. Stuck in your world and really trying to foster relationships with them where I can put them in a place where they're doing things that they love. Right. How do we work smarter so have more fun instead of working so hard and trying to be, you know, reactive, reactionary towards things. Wow.

You. You said something that I. I've said all the time to my team, trust but verify. And sometimes people think of that as, like, what you're not trusting because you have to, like, double check things. It's like, no, there is quality in relationships when we verify that things are getting done. It's the accountability piece of trust. So I absolutely love that.

But what's that mean? Trust verify.

The idea, like, if you go out and you blindly trust that something's getting done, but you didn't set up parameters for, like, accountability back in to check in. It's like, I'm gonna trust you to lead out. I'm gonna trust you to get this done. But I'm just gonna set up verification.

Okay.

And reporting back.

I see it, like, gives me the peace of mind that I. Yeah, right. It makes me. It forces me not to tell myself a story and like, future truck, that this person's not doing this, this, and I need to jump in.

Right.

It gives me the peace of mind where then it's like, nope, they got it. It's fine.

Right.

And I feel better about the Situation.

Yeah.

What a.

So to go a little bit deeper on that, there was a moment when you realized you needed a coach. How did you seek out a coach? Was there a moment where it was just like, slap in the face kind of moment, or like, no, I'm not doing this good. I'm going to go find someone or someone just, like, showed up in your life?

I think it was a little bit organic. So I knew through one of the owners of our company and through the just like, going to EO things as like a guest back in the day of a person who had written a book. And I also had been involved in annual strategic planning with kind of like a different business coach. And so I had a little bit of understanding of, like, what that could potentially do for you, but more on, like, a group setting level.

Okay.

So organically, I met his name, Scott Anderson, and I've been working with him for, like, I said, nine, 10 years now. And he started as a marketing person and had his own, like, advertising firm and everything like that. And then realized throughout his life, just, like, I kind of realized that, like, he needed. That wasn't what his love was. Right. He loved building relationships with people and helping in that regard. So he kind of organically entered my life. And then we kind of just decided to work together. And then way back in the day when we first started and when one of the owners of our company was more involved back when I first started, like, we're very different. And so Scott also relationship coached us. Okay. So it was very much like it wasn't coaching him and it wasn't coaching me individually. It was coaching our relationship and how what we said or didn't say or did or didn't do affected each other.

Oh, that's.

I think that also stemmed into me making some changes to other relationships I had in a professional setting.

Wow, that's super cool.

Yeah.

It just reminded me of. I was back east at a hospital one time. We were doing a walkthrough, helping them analyze some things. There was tension that was palpable. I mean, it was just. You knew it was there between a boss and another senior leader. And as we're walking around, just like the comments, the stabbing. Oh, no, just they were. They were constantly calling each other out, but they did in a way that eventually, I mean, that other senior leader, like, three months later, was like, hey, we've had a role transition. We need a new admin for your product. And I was like, okay, yeah. And so it's like that moment, but to be Able to work on that relationship side of things. But that's life, right? Communication, the ability, the emotional intelligence of relationship. And the coolest part about when. When you're a leader, that could be your downfall, or it can be the thing that propels you. And that was like your pivotal moment, right? From Friends pivots. So but that. That pivot moment is when you take the charge and you're just like, I'm gonna lead out in this. I'm gonna go level up. One of the things that I've always told my employees is I will not. Be. The first time I ever said this was like, I will not be the CEO that Clean Tel or OTUV needs in two years from now. They were like, what? I was just like, because if I just stay stagnant as a leader, then in two years from now, I'm not going to be the person that needed to become. It's kind of like this. I'm going to be out of a job in two years unless I grow. Because a leader responsible, they always say.

Change what you say or change what you do. Yeah, one or the other.

Wow. Okay. So let me bring it back, because we're talking about scale, right? And you were talking about what impeded the progress of scaling. You talked through the. This concept like perfection. So once you change that mindset from a timing perspective, when did you see, like, oh, my gosh, like, we're rocking and rolling now? Like, I. Was it immediate?

Was it almost immediate?

Really?

I mean, it was almost immediate. I remember one of the things we also did in that kind of transition was kind of eliminated. We base. I basically said, okay, we're either going to be like everyone else and say we have mission, vision, values, and look at them on a wall and be like, oh, those are so pretty, or we're actually going to hire and fire based off of them. Right. So we did end up making some internal changes. And in doing so, part of what I had to do and the existing team that remained that was, you know, on board to grow in the direction we were going to take it was we needed to kind of eliminate the past. So we had a whole burial situation in the front office in Omaha. There's a headstone.

Oh, my gosh.

I literally took, like, 20 pieces of paper, and I was like, just profanity, like, everything I was mad at, and we buried it, and we all talked about it. And so I would say for after that, like, something about having the closure, physical, visual, engulfed, team activity allowed it to be a little bit more Light bulb, I think. Light in the sand. And then there were a couple of times that, like, for probably the next six months or so where I would feel myself wanting to complain about this or be irritated about this. And everybody did a really good job of being like, go take that to the grave. And then you come back in. So it's like probably 20 times I walked out, I said my piece to the grave, and then I came back in and started over.

Kidding. That's awesome. I love that.

Yeah. And so every. I mean, it's still there in our office. It's literally a headstone to the left of our door, front door. And it's. It's a good reminder every single day since now that's been nine years or so later.

Wow.

So we got to do like in cleaning industry retreat.

Yes.

Yeah.

Go to your office, go do this activity. And then everyone adds their own headstones.

Yes, exactly.

But I mean that. I mean, that is a different way to look at hard refresh. But yeah, that is a refresh. Right. A burial and, you know, born again kind of moment. That's really, really cool. So let's transition maybe a little bit into what that did. Obviously, Simon's is a technology that you're building in house. What led to that decision? Obviously there was vision involved in growing and saying, hey, we want to be able to grow our processes and scale in a certain way. We had an episode on. Yes.

I was telling her we had, we.

Need to have her in house versus shelf. What's the word? And it's. There's. There's no right or wrong. There's just differences. And I've always said, like, whatever you choose, a hundred percent commit. I was saying this at dinner last night. 100% clarity, 100% time on 100%. This is the decision. And just like move forward. Tell us that story and that transition to do that.

Yeah, I think it was probably so we had used two different off the shelf, you know, off the rack software systems. I found myself, you know, it would work 60% or this module would work 30% for us, and it was fine and it was whatever. But there was still so much manual that we had to do. And one of the things we do in our office or in our company is an MTI monthly trending items meeting. I observed from afar that it was taking people two, three days just to gather the data they needed to create it and information to bring to this meeting, which I was like, that doesn't make any sense. Right. And then I think I started to Pay for customizations through these. And then it's like you pay for customizations and then. And that goes to everyone, right? And then one of them called and said, hey, we'd love for you to be on our advisory board. And I was like, that's the moment I gotta just. I'm not crazy for thinking that, like, the ideas we have and the way we want it to function make sense. And so that's the moment I said, okay, we're gonna move forward with this. And then Covid, basically. And I remember just thinking to myself, if I have to go through this again and I don't have a way to automate, like people are not. There's not an endless amount of people, right? People that fit our culture, fit our mold, all that kind of stuff. And so that was really the driving force of saying, like, I need to be able to create something that does a lot of the work that we're doing manually in order to scale into other cities. And I thought to myself, if we purchase other, you know, if the goal here is to buy other smaller companies, engulf them at ours. That's the common factor, right? That's the piece that binds us together. And so that was really what my kind of thought process was.

I love that. So I always say, because specifically the journey with Pioneer and Quora, right? I always attribute that there's a timeline of this platform, proprietary platform or not, right? And it's the very first thing, and I think you alluded to it, is do you want to go away from the paper and pen, do you want to digitalize, do you want to streamline operations, improve productivity? So if that answers yes, then you go to the next bucket and it's UA wanting to create accountability, transparency. And I think I also attribute to Covid, right? That's where we really saw proof of service reports, we saw cleanca, we got sought a lot more confirmation that you were there and you were doing specifically cleaning and disinfected based on the requirements. And then you transitioned to a time where it's data influenced environments. And you're looking at data, you're looking at experience, you're looking at education. And then I think I specifically went to the concept of UDIs, which was unified data integration systems and strategies, connecting all the outsert out outside platforms that you're using and making them all talk to each other. And so from your perspective, where would you say you guys are at? From a build perspective, from a vision perspective? Like, where do you see Simon sort of going?

I see the next pieces of it being finishing a couple of the modules and enhancing them now that we've gotten like, you know, I think it 20, 21 is when I really engulfed in it. And then I think we rolled out the timekeeping portion of it and the payroll portion kind of in phases. So we know more now than we knew back then. And obviously the landscape of life is different. And I think I've also spent more time with other people in our industry so understanding more of what makes us unique but what also stands out in the service industry. And so I would say finishing those couple of things, fine tuning those I think then incorporating it to work with a couple of other systems and then I think multi tenancy becomes the next piece of the puzzle. So it's mostly set up, I would say half of is set up to be multi tenancy. There's just probably half of it that needs to be on the back end where we can have different lists and different things like that. But we built it for any type of service industry. So it's not janitorial cleaning specific. It's very much what does a company need to manage and take care of and have data for and be able to turn that data into usable information in any service industry. Right. So there's an equipment module, there's a supply module, there's quality control inspections, there's safety inspection, you know, all those types of different things. So I would say that's kind of the next piece of the puzzle for.

Right.

If that makes sense when you touched.

On something and this is especially since we're talking about scale and expansion, mergers, acquisitions. And so you're thinking through buying these companies, how important is it to evaluate their tech stack and think you now have a platform that can integrate. But talk me through like that decision or that thought process of like okay, I'm going to think about this company, what about their tech.

Yeah. I think I don't have any experience in mergers and acquisitions. And so I think one of the things from my very limited knowledge was I don't want to rely on someone else and what they have and expect that that's going to be seamless. Right. One of the things that I constantly hear from our existing customers and we're very long term customer focused. Right. We have some of the same customers we've had for 20 years and that's kind of our fastball down the middle. And one of the things I consistently hear from them is like you don't have a salesperson come in here and promise me the world and then I Never see them again. And it gets transitioned to an operations person and then it's just chaos. One of the things that you guys always do is that it's a seamless situation and the pain of change. Janitorial is kind of eliminated. We figured out a way to eliminate that. And so in my eyes, I'm like, when I go to purchase some other companies, I don't want that pain of change to be there. So I would rather have some sort of a baseline where we can integrate right into it, even if that means they are using paper and that's fine. Like. Right. This is just an easier way to integrate. I honestly think that might be easier than trying to maneuver their technology into ours. So that's really, I think, what my mindset would be.

Yeah, I mean, we'll kind of. We'll end on this. These are supposed to be like miniseries.

I know. We just get going. I love it.

I know.

I have so many more questions, but.

Maybe, maybe to close out on this question. So tomorrow we're presenting the R method. The premise behind the R method is that technology just sits on top of good or bad. Right. So when it comes to foundational standard operating procedures, what were things that you did to initiate across that? You obviously wanted to go from automation on a level for software. But before that, what was the, the evaluation process of what are we doing? What are operating procedures? Was there anything there that you had to like, pull out throughout? We're not doing that anymore.

Yeah. One of the things that I did is I looked at every role in our organization before you got to like the field employees. I had in my mind, I sat down and I said, okay, the employee concierge role, in my mind, I envision that being 80% strategic, high level, and 20% tactical. So I kind of created that vision based on our org chart in my mind of what I it should be for that role. And then we spent about probably six months where I had each person in those roles keep track of what they did every day and how much time. And so the reality is, is what came up from that was what I thought should be 80, 20 ended up being the opposite of that. And then it was like, okay, let's then look at every tactical piece that this person is doing in this role. Figure out what just needs to be gone. Right. What just isn't, doesn't make sense. And then figure out how do we say, find a way to make this automated. Where they don't have to do this anymore. Something does it for them. Right. We have over 350 employees. And what used to take someone eight hours a day to go through timekeeping and punches. Simon literally pulls it back, makes it, tells you, approves punches based on certain parameters. And now it takes somebody 35 minutes maximum a day to look at it because you're only looking at the ones that need to that need review.

Right?

Yeah.

And so that's really how we started process because I also. It was a huge expense to our company. It will continue to be a huge expense to our company. Right. It's technology. It's ever evolving. It's ever changing. But I wanted everyone else to be bought in on it too. I didn't want it to be that anybody on our team felt like this is what I wanted to do and it didn't make sense for our company. I wanted everyone to feel like they won in it. And so that's been the really cool part for me as the conversation is, you know, my life is so much easier now that we have silent. Right. Oh, it takes me five minutes to do this now instead of at least take me six hours. Right. That's the gratifying part to me. And then it's allowed me personally to be able to do more things like. What's the stocking cart? Yeah. Things that I enjoy doing. Building something from nothing, which is my favorite thing to do. Finding efficiencies. And I just didn't really get to do that when I was trying to do so many manual things with the team. So.

What a thoughtful baseline assessment. Like, so I think that. And this is why I love being able to do the technology innovation committee Shameless plug. No big deal. But because what an incredible story. What an incredible, like, case study that you've presented. This is exactly why having someone like you, Channing, is so important. Because what you're doing is not only from my problem solving perspective. There's so many BSDs out there, they're having similar problems. To be able to have you and come to you and ask you the questions is just so incredibly powerful. I think what you guys are leading with from a technology perspective, from a customer service and vertical perspective perspective, we didn't even get into that. And I like, we need to do another episode. But I'm so grateful to have you on the show. Seriously, I'm so proud of all the things that you're doing. It's like, I love this. So get the stuck out. What's the. What's the name? It's.

What's the stuff?

What's the stuff? So you're Providing coaching resources.

Yeah. So basically working with either a department at a company or an individual that's kind of like almost C suite or some C suite where it's like, we have this stuck. We cannot figure out how to solve it. It's taking the outside of it. Right. Somebody from an outside perspective who has experience and different things and saying, if anything's possible, what's possible, and then working together. So I'm not actually doing anything and creating it, but we're brainstorming and figuring out how to turn those stocks into solutions. I mean, it's been so, A, so fun for me. But B, also, like, watching, I mean, the light bulb go off. It's like they came up with the idea, they just needed something, and then all of a sudden, I've got one client that all of a sudden now has turned their unit, turn cost. They do multifamily housing. And so it, you know, you sit with something empty for how long? Right. And we need it to be at least five days to turn this unit in order for someone else to lease it. And they couldn't get in their mind, like, what's the big deal about five days? Because their owner was like, five days.

Right.

And all of a sudden, when I broke it down and peeled back the layers, it was like, like, oh, I get it. We spend $490,000 a day, a year if everything was empty. Right. And so it was like coming back and saying, oh, if we got that to three days, this is what it would look like. And it's the light bulb, the game changer. And that's what I think is fun. You know what I mean? So that's the gist of.

I love that sometimes outside perspective and outside voice is so powerful.

Business coach.

Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely amazing, Channing. This has been such a fun conversation.

So awesome.

Thank you. And thank you to Issa for hosting the podcast at their facilities this time.

Yeah, I wish you could see. Can we see she hadding shoes? Because I think we can. I'm obsessed with the shoes. I've commented them multiple times, and I want the shoes, so I hope everyone can see the shoes. And there's a little bit of purple on the dress, which matches the suit shoes, in case you're not getting that. Yeah, 100%, guys, I'm here for the shoes. Thank you so much.

Thanks, everyone. Join us on the next episode. And it's been a blast.