139. Eliminating Friction to Scale

Foreign. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell. I'm super pumped that you're back with me on the show. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Today we're together for episode 139, eliminating friction to Scale. And I wanted to bring you this episode and give you some Cliff Notes and snapshots. I run a quarterly, we call it Mindset Mastery Workshop for my entire membership at the Blue Collar Success group. And it's the one time a quarter we have all three levels of our growth level, our freedom level, and our empire levels of membership all get together once a quarter. And I challenge mindset. And this quarter I was talking about eliminating Friction, and I just thought I'd record an episode here for you. So those of you that are members, I'm, you're going to hear a few of the same things that we talked about when we recently had that workshop. But I, I think it's worth the reminder if you haven't, if, if you have, if you have, I should say, been on that session with me, and if not, it's just such a, a good reminder. And I, I believe that the world shows up through our lens. And I, I remember I'm, I'm in multiple coaching groups. I invest a ton of, of my own dough in, in my own personal development, my growth. I, I belong to coaching groups. I have coaches. I, I believe in personal development. It's an area that I invest in. And it's kind of, it's almost funny thinking that I, I had my six months of, quote, higher education, that I went to college and then partied my way out of that, out of that baseball team, basically. I, I, I went and played a, a semester of college ball and there happened to be school, I'll call it that way. But, but the, the reality is that I've devoted this, my life to higher education and run a higher education company now and spend time in higher education, just not through the college system. And, and they're, I, I'm not dogging the college system. I'm just saying that this is my focus. And one of the areas that, that I, in one of the coaching groups, I was in, I was in with a guy that's a, that's an op. I'll see if I get this right. Ophthalmologist, I think it is, where he works on, not just an optometrist. He's deeper than that and does surgeries and things around the eyes or whatever. But I remember the day that, that I was in a coaching breakout with him and we were talking about how you see the world in this and that. And he said, well, just remember that you don't see with your eyes, you see with your brain. And I was like, damn, that's big. You know that, like, that hit me. It's like, holy cow, like I, that, you know, you know, okay, I've got this lens and matter of fact, right now I've got one lens in this eye that's a contact because my, my eyes have, have challenged me a little bit with seeing close up. So I, I'm, I'm manipulating that lens, I guess, if you will. But my brain is what's seeing the world. And so I want you to think about when you think about scale, when you think about where we are. You know, here we are at the time of this recording. We're kind of mid December, heading into the holiday season. There's talk about a recession. We're in a full recession. Depends on who you listen to or what you think. But I just want you to think about yourself and how do you navigate moving forward? So today I'm just going to give you a simple exercise to look at eliminating friction because I think it's powerful when we realize that, you know, when you think about friction, I didn't look up the formal definition because, you know, me and formal definitions that the only definition that matters is the, the definition that I have for something, right? And the same is true for you. And so I, when I think about, you know, like what, what is something worth? Something is worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it. Like, we, we know these things, right? So I think when I, you know, I've got a house under contract right now that we're closing on in the beginning of the year. And if my past self would have looked at my current home, I would have never said that it's worth what we're getting in a number for it. But the fact of the matter is, even as the market softens, we are fortunate to have buyers that saw the value in the home. And we live in a market that supports that value, so on and so forth. And so we, we see the world through our brain. And that's why I'm so big on protecting the information, protect what gets in there, whether it's media, social media, mass media, news, the different things. And, and that's why it's important to jump on here and listen to this information or watch this information, depending on how you're digesting the content that I'm sharing with you here today. But today's all about friction. And when we think about definition of friction, you know, we're, we're being held back. I think about tension and friction, and it's just like, ah, it's a grind. You know, you, you picture the, the NFL combine or, or people that, you know, put the strap around their waist, right, and tie the weights behind them and, and you're running and this thing is just pulling on you, right? That's friction. And you have it in your life and you have it in your business. So my goal today is just to have you do a simple exercise and, and get some awareness and realize where do you have some friction? And so I'm going to paraphrase some of the work that I did with our membership a couple of weeks back when we did this quarterly session together. And I want you to take a sheet of paper and draw three lines in, or two lines in it, rather created in thirds, up and down. So just draw to where you have three columns. We'll say on this blank sheet of paper. And at the top of the first column, I want you to write time. And in the middle column at the top I want you to write money. And the right column at the top I want you to write team. And then I want you to take a few minutes. And I'm not gonna take the time now to do it because we're not in workshop form. But I, I'm just gonna explain this exercise for you and be efficient with your time. So you'll take some time to do this exercise and only give yourself 45 or 60 seconds for each of these categories. And I want you to write down some areas of friction that you have in your time category. You know, where are you being challenged with time? Are, are you being pulled in different directions? Are, are team members demanding more of your time than. Than necessary? Yes. We have a team quadrant here or a team category column here. I'm not talking about that, that for, for, for this. I'm talking about your time. So where are you feeling time? Because the, the challenge is when we don't have time, we don't have freedom. And so I'm going to record in the future and go deeper on freedoms. I believe that, you know, I have a core value around freedom. I've done so much work now and develop my own belief system around, excuse me, that I. That I feel that there's freedom from certain things and there's freedom to do certain things. So I've chunked down through different readings and different listenings and different work that I've done where I'm developing a mindset around freedom from certain things, freedom to certain things. And I know that you don't have any freedom if you don't have time. And time is one of the only things that we all share in 100% equality. And you might say, no, Kenny, you don't understand. You and Christie don't have kids. Well, we all have the same amount of time. And our choice to not have children is an allocation of time and an investment in time. And I probably wouldn't work the schedule that I work, I wouldn't do some of the things I, that I do. If I did have a family, if I a family. Christie's my family. I've got extended family. I'm saying children. If I would have had young children 10 years ago, 11 years ago now, I guess when we founded the Blue Collar Success group almost 11 years ago, we wouldn't have done what we did. The lovely and Christie lived out of hotels and suitcases. We were on the road so many, like 40, 50 weeks a year doing on sites, doing ride alongs, building content, shooting marketing videos, all those things. And that, that was part of what was necessary and it was a grind. And I probably wouldn't have done that if I had small children because I wouldn't have left him with a nanny that long. I'm not criticizing anybody that does that, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that wouldn't have been in my mo. Possibly so. But I know my lot in life, I know my calling and I know that I'm here to use my time in the right way to be able to do what I'm doing right now with you. This is unique ability activity for me. It adds value for you or you wouldn't be listening week after week. And I get value from it as well. So it's got high impact and I get energy from it. So I get to share that energy. So that that's, you know, I'm going deeper than time, but that's the reality. So in your time column, where do you find friction there? Where are you stuck a little bit? Where, where do you see that you're not delegating enough? You're saying yes to certain things that maybe they need to be hard no's. Now where is it that you are over committing? Here we are in the holiday season at the time we're recording this man. Or is there a time to over commit during holidays I gotta go to every party, I gotta go to every family event. I Gotta go to every friend event. Where are you overextended with your time? Where's that friction showing up? Then we go to the middle category money. Or you might write finance. I like using money because money is personal and I can have business money and I can have personal money, let's say, right? And, and in, in our own different, you know, in, in my own personal money, I have different money categories. I, I, I have investment, literally personal, we'll call them personal savings accounts. I have investment investment growth accounts where we keep money. Just set aside that for things that we want to and invest in. The lovely Chris and I have an, have an account that we call our life experience account where we put a portion of, of our, of our earnings in this account to where if I want to go do something that the world says is crazy or I want to go have a life experience, I'm going to pull it out of that account. And guess what? My ego doesn't get to beat me up or feel guilty about spending that money or going, oh my gosh, I could have invested it. No, I got my investment account for that and I got my life experience account for that. Right? Then we have our, our home operating account, whatever that looks like for you. But with the money thing, where is the friction? Where are you, you know, in the business? Maybe it's around a compensation plan that's not serving the business any longer. Maybe it's around not getting good clean financials. So you don't have money confidence or what I call cash confidence because you're not aware of where you are. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's simply that you need more awareness because there's friction because you're in the dark a little bit. You don't really know. I remember in my career times and I've talked to countless clients that have had this experience where you have a bad month and you know you had a bad month, but you don't really pay attention to the income statement when it comes out because you knew you had a bad month. And you know, and so your ego justifies in your mind, like I, I already know what we did wrong. I'm just gonna go. Rather than going through the income statement line by line and realizing and understanding and diving into your percentages so you know exactly what you're going to do differently moving forward. And yes, I believe in, in, you know, on time coaching and, and being mindful and paying attention as the month rolls out. Of course, I mean, that's why, for God's sake, that's the whole point of, of effective dispatching and call by call coaching and the different thing. We catch everything we can in the moment. But then don't think that because you did the best you could in the moment that you can't learn from getting those things as you go. So maybe there's friction around your process from how, how financials are shared with you. Maybe there's friction around your own cash confidence. You, you don't have the nest egg that you want and you need to commit to, to up leveling that nest egg and, and really, you know, up leveling your consciousness around your money, your money conversations in your head, your money beliefs. Maybe your, your stuck in a little bit of a fixed or scarcity mindset around money and you don't think there's enough and you think the recession is going to punish you or is supposed to punish you. Whatever that is, unpack that stuff. And then the third column being team and team members and where is there friction there? Do you have specific friction with a particular team member or somebody on your leadership team? Perhaps, or maybe maybe there's friction with a family member that just maybe it rared, it reared its head over Thanksgiving or maybe you're, you're presupposing some friction that kind of always exists and you know you're going to see them over the Christmas holiday or the New Year holiday or whatever it might be for you. Maybe it's time to look at that friction. Maybe maybe you've got lack of a, of an effective onboarding process that needs to be looked at, needs to be up leveled so when team comes on there's, there's not this, this friction of not knowing who to go to or how to go to. Maybe there's friction because you don't have an organizational chart in place with roles and responsibilities and scorecards tied to processes and, and all the, you know, all, all the things that, that we teach and coach at blue collar, whatever that looks like for you. I want you to, to be mindful of what that friction is. So take the time and I, I'm kind of talking to give you a little time here as I'm talking. If you're writing while we're doing this, if not go back and commit this time and develop what these frictions are. And before, before we get out of here, I just want you to, to draw a line under all of that and write one word for me. Write this word. Who, who can help alleviate this friction for you? You hear us talk? My, my mentor, Dan Sullivan wrote a Book called who not how. And I, I, I take it to another level where I say it's who before how but after why. Because my why has to be in place before I go find a who to do my, my what I like, you know, I, I need to know why I'm doing something and why I'm going to go engage this individual or whatever it is. So what, when you look at friction around time, money or team, who can help you alleviate that friction? Because here's one of the main things I want you to take away from our time today. Your friction is unique. Dan taught me this too. Your, your friction is unique to you. And so realize that where I feel friction, you may not. You have, for instance, we just talked about children. You have friction around trying to balance the, the team sports. And I've got clients that are, you know, kind of high fiving at the beginning of the weekend and then run in different directions because, you know, this kid's in football and this kid's in cheer and different things. And, and then you have split parenting time and you've got, you know, split household. So you have different time with kids and different, there's a lot of different things going on that's friction that you might have that I don't have. And then I have friction in other areas that you might not have. And so what I want you to realize is everybody that, let's think about the business specifically for a moment where you feel friction in the business. It's not friction for someone else. I talked about financials and so for me, I feel no friction with financials because we've built a process and a system to where I have done organized, clean audited financials by audited internally, not, not audited to buy a CPA yet. But by the 10th of every month, I absolutely have financials and I've got a pretty good snapshot by the second or third of kind of what that's going to look like. And so same with our, with our clients that really pay attention to finance, it's like, oh yeah, but you can't do that in the service business. Yes, you absolutely can. We have clients doing it all day, every day. And so when you, when you have that process, so I, you know, talking about myself, I don't have friction around it because I love my income statements and my balance sheets and my financial reports that I get every month. I love that. I love heading into what we call our million dollar meeting because we're, we're headed to a million dollar month. And Then eventually we'll have a million dollar profit month. And that's, that's where, you know, I continue to change the meaning based on the million dollars that we're tracking at that time. And so as, as we continue to rock and roll though, I think about, you know, what that looks like for me now. It's not friction. It used to be massive friction when it was Christy and I, because she doesn't love doing the books and I can do it, but I don't love it. And so I didn't like putting the. I can't stand spreadsheets other than using them. When I say using them, that means reviewing them. I don't love putting a, you know, the algorithms or There you go. I don't even the formulas. That's a word, I think that's used properly with, with Excel or Google sheets or whatever. I don't, I don't love that. But I love what they do for me. And so I have friction around spreadsheets. Other people on my team don't have any friction around spreadsheets. So I take that category and go, who can help me with this? Oh, Chelsea could help me with this. Oh, there's this specific thing around marketing. Oh, Lori could help me with this. There's this thing that I, I could see with, with doing some, some coaching. Oh, well, our, our lead coach, Jeremy could help me with it, whatever that looks like. I want you to think about these things, my friends. Think about who can help you relieve some of this friction. Because when you look at scaling in a, in an upturn market or a downturn market, it comes to how you manage friction and you've got friction in the business and you're bringing some and team's bringing some. If we don't pull it out and look at it and see what we can do with it, it's going to build and it's going to slow things down more and more. Don't allow that to happen to you. I want to thank you so much for being here. If you're watching, give us a comment. If you're listening, make sure you review this. Share this Just shoot this link to an email in an email to somebody. We want to continue to grow our following and continue to uplevel the consciousness for humanity around home services. Do me a favor and share this and until we talk, my friend, make it a better than fantastic week. This has been. Episode139 Eliminating Friction to Scale. I can't wait until I see you next week. Thanks everybody. Sat.