Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / The Hidden Reason Your Business Fails With Ryan Weiss

Transcript

The Hidden Reason Your Business Fails With Ryan Weiss · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  Have you seen companies be successful without having solid
• 0:03
  processes and systems? I haven't seen it.
• 0:05
  OK. I think what often happens when
• 0:07
  you don't have clearly defined processes is you get
• 0:09
  frustration, you get tension, you start seeing conflict.
• 0:12
  How do you get people to follow a new process or a system on
• 0:15
  your team? One of the key things.
• 0:17
  Is how do you balance letting people be creative and express
• 0:21
  their creativity and then also having a well planned out
• 0:24
  process? Ryan Wiese is that the same
• 0:29
  name? Right.
• 0:29
  You're Weiss. So I have people in my life who
• 0:32
  do bait Weiss and Weiss, right? So I grew up Weiss.
• 0:34
  I converted back to Weiss. But really, is that right?
• 0:37
  That's funny, dude. What would your parents or
• 0:39
  families? Then so so in my, in my great
• 0:41
  grandparents generation, it was Weiss.
• 0:43
  Like there was German heritage. It's like, yeah, if you go back
• 0:46
  to Germany, it's Weiss, right? So they came here as Weiss.
• 0:50
  When I was growing up, I would go to family reunions and there
• 0:53
  were Weiss's and there were Weiss's and my grandfather's
• 0:55
  generation, there were Weiss's and there were Weiss's.
• 0:57
  That's fun. Just sort of the way they
• 0:58
  pronounce. They evolved.
• 0:59
  And but what I found is that most people pronounce it Weiss.
• 1:04
  Most people pronounce it Weiss of meeting the first time.
• 1:06
  And I worked for a German company for about 17 years.
• 1:09
  So like everybody called me Weiss.
• 1:12
  So even though I grew up Weiss, most people pronounce it Weiss,
• 1:16
  and I worked for a German company long enough that's
• 1:18
  Weiss, and it's a so I just went back to Weiss.
• 1:20
  Interesting. I feel like do do German
• 1:22
  companies operate differently than American companies?
• 1:24
  Because I got this mind, I got this picture in my mind of like,
• 1:28
  you know, they're very smart operational folk, like very age
• 1:31
  of Spy the but you know, probably not a ton of emotion.
• 1:34
  I could be totally off on that. 01 hundred, 100%, Very
• 1:37
  structured, very process oriented.
• 1:40
  I mean, the reality is a lot of my business has built their own
• 1:43
  process, largely because I spent a number of years in a German
• 1:47
  company that processes everything.
• 1:49
  But one of the big things for me looking back is like the the
• 1:54
  quotes that I live by are that people without process get
• 1:57
  frustrated. I think process is an enabler of
• 2:00
  people to do the things that need to get done.
• 2:04
  But then process without people is wasted.
• 2:07
  So you can create tons of processes, right?
• 2:10
  You make, back in the day it was binders.
• 2:12
  Now it's SharePoint sites, right?
• 2:13
  You can create tons of process. If nobody follows it, then it
• 2:17
  just gets wasted. So there's this corollary like
• 2:20
  both sides of the scale or people, people without process
• 2:23
  get frustrated. Process without people is wasted
• 2:25
  and. What?
• 2:27
  So maybe in a sentence or two, tell the audience what you do.
• 2:30
  Just for context. They're kind of getting into it
• 2:32
  now. And then we go back to that
• 2:33
  process. Yeah.
• 2:34
  So, yeah. So typically what we're doing is
• 2:37
  helping companies to document and understand the work streams
• 2:41
  that flow through their business enabled by the standard
• 2:44
  operating procedures that enable those work streams to flow.
• 2:48
  So a lot of companies out there build, you know, there's
• 2:51
  standard operating procedure software and things like that.
• 2:54
  What we're doing is looking at the work streams that flow
• 2:56
  through your business, the handoffs between departments,
• 2:59
  there's interactions between people, and then those are
• 3:02
  enabled by those standard operating procedures.
• 3:04
  So the way that the optic system is set up, it's identifying and
• 3:09
  understanding the work streams. We're going to go into that in a
• 3:11
  second pull on. I just, I want to give the
• 3:12
  audience a little bit of context.
• 3:13
  So just so that they're listening now, they're like,
• 3:15
  what is this guy all what is he? What's his angle?
• 3:17
  What is he, you know, so really quickly on the process thing, it
• 3:22
  feels like if you look at just successful companies, they all
• 3:25
  have like processes, right? And I, I didn't really notice
• 3:28
  this that much. I worked for a huge multi
• 3:31
  billion dollar staffing and recruiting firm.
• 3:33
  Learned a ton of great stuff from there is actually that was
• 3:35
  the job I had when I started this as a side hustle and then
• 3:37
  left there to do this full time. Learned a ton about sales
• 3:40
  people, the budget, a great experience, but it was my time
• 3:43
  to go and do this. What I noticed after I left and
• 3:46
  I started this business, which is a smaller business, is how
• 3:50
  good they were at like the Sops, the processes that coming in,
• 3:55
  going out, then this happens and this happened, then that
• 3:58
  happens. I almost didn't realize it when
• 4:00
  I was in it. I was just like this just a
• 4:02
  company that has like things that you do, but then when you
• 4:05
  start your own business, you're like, wow, if you don't have the
• 4:07
  stuff in place and then it makes you realize, I see how they got
• 4:10
  to multi billion dollars. Like there's other factors, but
• 4:14
  one of them has to be great processes.
• 4:17
  What about human beings makes us so process oriented?
• 4:21
  Like where does that come from? I don't know if anyone's asked
• 4:23
  you that, but that it seems like it's kind of an innate human
• 4:26
  thing. Or am I off on that?
• 4:28
  Well, I think it's true to a degree.
• 4:32
  So there are humans, right? There's a human side of us that
• 4:36
  rebels against process. So there are people who are, you
• 4:40
  know, they feel that what they're doing is, is an art,
• 4:44
  right? That there's that there's not a
• 4:45
  process to it, whether it's a salesperson or it's a, an
• 4:49
  operator on a production line that says, I know how to set
• 4:52
  this up. And they come in on 3rd shift
• 4:54
  and the second shift had it set up one way and they set up a
• 4:56
  different way because they feel that they know a better way,
• 4:59
  right? They feel that they've got so,
• 5:01
  so I think that there's this innate tension actually in human
• 5:05
  beings between the concept of this is scientific and it can be
• 5:11
  documented and there is a step by step process.
• 5:14
  And, and it's true for sales, it's true for manufacturing,
• 5:17
  it's true for service businesses.
• 5:18
  The there is an element of step by step.
• 5:22
  Here's the things that have to happen.
• 5:23
  Here's the handoffs that need to happen.
• 5:25
  Here's the expectations, things like that.
• 5:27
  But then there's also this human part of us that is how do I
• 5:32
  like, we like to be creators. We like to have something
• 5:35
  unique. We like to have some self belief
• 5:39
  that we've that we know better than the process.
• 5:41
  Yeah, yeah, we could. We could do something.
• 5:42
  Different. Yeah, break the rules, A.
• 5:44
  Little bit, right? So, so I think there's this
• 5:47
  innate tension in human beings between.
• 5:49
  Yeah, I agree. Process, documenting it, being
• 5:52
  structured, being rigid and being completely creative and
• 5:56
  balancing that is, is super important.
• 5:59
  And understanding that's really important.
• 6:00
  If you're doing process, you got to understand not everybody just
• 6:03
  wants to follow the steps, right.
• 6:06
  Some people are very creative and that's what they want to do.
• 6:08
  On the other hand, sometimes people want process steps when
• 6:13
  they don't exist. Yeah, totally.
• 6:15
  But it seems like as humans we, we do kind of have want routine
• 6:19
  to a certain degree, right? Don't we?
• 6:20
  Kind of it seems like people just kind of fall into a
• 6:22
  routine, most people, right? 100.
• 6:25
  Percent. How is routine different than
• 6:26
  process? Yeah.
• 6:27
  So like when I think about routines, right, there was a
• 6:30
  really powerful book I read a number of years ago, The Power
• 6:33
  of Habit. And the Power of Habit talks
• 6:35
  about this, this cycle of a trigger that that causes a
• 6:40
  routine or an action that that then ends up with some type of
• 6:43
  reward. And as humans, we do get into
• 6:46
  these habits and we do get in, and that creates behaviors in us
• 6:49
  that this is the way I do things.
• 6:52
  And every day I do get up, brush my teeth, put on my clothes,
• 6:55
  like, right. There's these routines that we
• 6:57
  do and that are inherent, I think, to us as humans in terms
• 7:01
  of the behaviors we have and the routines we have each day.
• 7:05
  But when it's someone else's promise routine.
• 7:08
  This is this is where that tension starts, right?
• 7:10
  When it's when I'm working for an employer and it's their
• 7:13
  process now all of a sudden, well, I still want some room for
• 7:16
  creativity in my life, right? And how you balance that is, is
• 7:20
  really important. So when it's my process, yeah,
• 7:22
  everybody should follow my process.
• 7:24
  Everybody should follow my routine.
• 7:25
  Right. Have you seen?
• 7:28
  Have you seen the companies be successful, wildly successful,
• 7:31
  without having solid processes and systems?
• 7:34
  Have you ever seen it? I haven't seen it.
• 7:36
  OK, I don't think I haven't either to be honest, Cuz what
• 7:39
  happens in a company? What does a company look like
• 7:41
  that doesn't have systems and processes when you come in
• 7:43
  there? What does it look like like, and
• 7:45
  maybe somebody listening right now, maybe they don't know they
• 7:48
  have this problem, right? Hearing this, like that's kind
• 7:50
  of me. He just described, you know what
• 7:51
  I mean? Yeah, so, so I think what often
• 7:54
  happens when you don't have clearly defined processes is you
• 7:57
  get you get frustration, you get tension.
• 7:59
  So between departments and between people, you start seeing
• 8:02
  conflict that can happen inside of your organization that well,
• 8:07
  even when you document processes in a department, it's like my
• 8:10
  department has a lot of times what I find in organizations is
• 8:14
  not that they don't have any processes.
• 8:16
  Most of the time they've got something and some departments
• 8:20
  are really good and other departments are disaster.
• 8:24
  And and so building off of that and helping people to start
• 8:29
  seeing it reduces that tension, reduces that conflict that
• 8:32
  happens. And to me, that's one of the
• 8:35
  most impactful things about the work that we do.
• 8:37
  And one of our core values is we want to impact people through
• 8:42
  process because without process, people get frustrated, whether
• 8:48
  that's you go into a store to return something and they don't
• 8:52
  have a good return process, the client gets upset.
• 8:56
  The person behind the counter is also upset because it's not in
• 8:58
  their control and it's right. So when you don't have
• 9:02
  processes, what you see is conflict and you see diverging
• 9:07
  paths that people are taking. So while I got trained by this
• 9:11
  person, while I got trained by this person.
• 9:12
  So so you just see this chaos and conflict is, are the two
• 9:16
  kind of things that I observe that often results in lower
• 9:20
  profits and lower cash flow and things like that.
• 9:22
  But the but the thing that I observed that's the evidence of
• 9:26
  not having good processes and people not following them is
• 9:30
  conflict. And how do you know if that's
• 9:32
  just like a culture thing or if it's really a process thing, or
• 9:35
  if it's both? Oh yeah, it's, it's often times
• 9:38
  it's both. And this is a big part of the
• 9:39
  reason that I talk about and, and communicate about the
• 9:45
  intersection of people and process.
• 9:49
  Because when you just look at just process and say, well, you
• 9:51
  know, we're just going to document all of our process, you
• 9:54
  know, people make people follow them.
• 9:55
  Well, that doesn't create a very good culture.
• 9:57
  On the other hand, if you say we're just going to hire the
• 9:59
  best people and we're going to have an amazing company because
• 10:01
  we have amazing people, well, if you don't have processes for
• 10:05
  onboarding and training and handoffs between departments and
• 10:08
  those sort of things, you could hire on the best people, You
• 10:11
  could bring in the best client, your ideal client profile.
• 10:15
  You're like, I just just landed them and six months later
• 10:18
  they're gone. You see what happened, right?
• 10:20
  So without process, you have these tensions and frustrations.
• 10:26
  Even if you're hiring the best people retain attract.
• 10:28
  The best clients attract. On the other hand, if you just
• 10:31
  create great processes, but you don't have good people, that's
• 10:34
  possible as well, right? You just have a toxic culture
• 10:37
  and you have toxic people, and even though they're following
• 10:41
  the process, right, the results aren't good.
• 10:44
  Yeah. And if there is, you got to you
• 10:46
  got to understand both of them. Right.
• 10:48
  And if there is conflict, maybe they're not talking about it the
• 10:50
  right way because of the lack of culture or communication or
• 10:53
  whatever it is. Isn't Process kind of just
• 10:55
  putting something in place to transfer knowledge from one
• 10:57
  person to the next? Maybe it's a simplified
• 11:00
  explanation of it, but it's sort of like I know this thing how it
• 11:03
  should be done now. A new person is coming in or
• 11:06
  someone's been promoted or someone left or whatever it is.
• 11:09
  I need to be able to transfer exactly that same thing this
• 11:11
  time that we do for next. Time so, so I would say at the
• 11:15
  at a micro level, I think that's that's really true.
• 11:18
  The thing that I've observed and the thing that I work on is the,
• 11:22
  it's not just about the person that I'm teaching within my
• 11:26
  department, but process. This is the work streams I was
• 11:29
  talking about earlier. It's the flow that happens
• 11:32
  between departments and having clarity around expectations.
• 11:37
  So we talk about quality, value and speed.
• 11:39
  What do I expect, right? When the sales department turns
• 11:42
  something over the operations department, what does the
• 11:44
  operations department need in terms of quality, value and
• 11:48
  speed of what they received and then who's accountable and
• 11:52
  responsible for doing what? Without those clarities, that
• 11:56
  work stream just doesn't flow well.
• 11:58
  And that's that's something that so your definition is very much
• 12:03
  like the standard operating like I might cheat somebody in my
• 12:06
  department, exactly what to do and how to do it and why it's
• 12:08
  important things like that. But the work streams that flow
• 12:11
  through your business require communication of expectations
• 12:15
  between departments and clarity of the accountability
• 12:17
  responsibility matrix. Right.
• 12:20
  So how do you get people to follow a new process or a system
• 12:23
  on your team? You lay out the perfect SOP, but
• 12:27
  the team doesn't follow it. You know, it's like.
• 12:29
  It's here. It's like, damn it, we missed it
• 12:31
  again. We didn't follow the same
• 12:32
  process that we should be following.
• 12:34
  Yeah, so, so first, you've never.
• 12:36
  See that? Never, never saw it before,
• 12:38
  never heard of that. That's Yeah, that's not even a
• 12:40
  problem. No, the one of the key things is
• 12:44
  that without a standard, you can't hold people to a process.
• 12:49
  I was, I was talking about this with one of my clients this
• 12:51
  morning that I asked them, I asked this group what happens if
• 12:56
  we don't have a standard, when you don't have a standard.
• 12:58
  And they said, well, we don't really know what the person's
• 13:03
  supposed to be doing. It's not documented anywhere.
• 13:06
  So if I approach an employee and say you're not following the the
• 13:09
  standard process, well, if there isn't one or if it's not clear,
• 13:13
  we don't know where it is, then they're not.
• 13:16
  How do you know that, right? How do you know that?
• 13:18
  So, so one thing is you've got to have a standard.
• 13:21
  If you don't have a standard, if you don't have a process, then
• 13:24
  you can't hold people accountable to it because it
• 13:26
  doesn't exist. The the other piece of it is
• 13:29
  there are times when you get people who just don't follow the
• 13:33
  process, who don't want to follow the process.
• 13:35
  Who just they're going a different and that can be a
• 13:38
  human problem or a behavioral problem or a conflict with their
• 13:42
  manager, things like that that can lead people to not feel
• 13:45
  follow process. So you really have to
• 13:47
  understand, is it because the process doesn't exist or the
• 13:50
  process as it was designed doesn't work?
• 13:53
  Or is it that this person is rebelling against the process or
• 13:57
  they weren't trained in the process.
• 13:59
  So it's really can be either one and that diagnostic of which one
• 14:04
  is it, is it 1, is it the other, is it both of them That is core
• 14:08
  to really getting people to follow process.
• 14:11
  If you treat all problems as this one or this one, you're
• 14:16
  not. You're only going to solve half
• 14:17
  of the problems. Right, right.
• 14:19
  You mentioned a little bit earlier, but how do you balance
• 14:22
  letting people be create creative and express their
• 14:25
  creativity and then also having a pretty, you know, well planned
• 14:30
  out process? Because to your point earlier,
• 14:32
  it's like humans are like, we like to be free and creative and
• 14:34
  come up with new stuff. But then it's like, but we also
• 14:36
  have this process we need you to follow, right?
• 14:38
  Otherwise, things are going to fall apart.
• 14:39
  Yeah, So I, so I learned a tool about going back probably 27
• 14:42
  years ago in my career and it's sort of a wonky name.
• 14:46
  It's called a SIPOC, but it's it's really a framework for
• 14:49
  process. It's not.
• 14:52
  So this really sort of speaks to that fact that you can have
• 14:57
  standard operating procedures which are like step by step
• 14:59
  instructions for a person. That's one type of process.
• 15:03
  The other type of process is what's our framework for how we
• 15:07
  operate, for how the work stream flows through our business, for
• 15:11
  how things are expected to happen.
• 15:13
  And, and so I think being able to understand those two things
• 15:18
  and being able to use some tools to diagnose, am I creating a
• 15:22
  framework for our team to operate in well, or am I
• 15:26
  creating a standard operating procedure for an individual to
• 15:30
  do a specific task? And if those two things aren't
• 15:33
  lined up, then you get chaos, right?
• 15:35
  If you, if you create a standard operating procedure, that's
• 15:38
  really good for the marketing team, marketing teams like,
• 15:40
  well, we got an amazing standard operating like this is our
• 15:42
  standing operating procedure. But if it doesn't work for the
• 15:45
  sales team, then that hand off doesn't work.
• 15:48
  And then people stop following it and the sales team starts
• 15:50
  complaining that the marketing team doesn't have a good process
• 15:54
  like so. So you've got to have this
• 15:56
  understanding of am I creating a step by step procedure or am I
• 16:02
  creating a framework for our team to operate in?
• 16:05
  And when you create frameworks for your team to operate in,
• 16:08
  then you can build in the flexibility for creativity.
• 16:11
  We're not telling a salesperson you have to do this, then this,
• 16:14
  then this, but we're giving them a framework in which these are
• 16:17
  the things that the operations team and the customer service
• 16:21
  team need so that we can onboard that client.
• 16:24
  If a salesperson doesn't follow that framework, then we can't
• 16:30
  service the client that they just brought on, right, Right.
• 16:32
  So, so that's where you can sort of balance.
• 16:35
  Are we doing step by step procedures that people are
• 16:37
  supposed to follow every piece of it?
• 16:40
  Or are we creating a framework with expectations of what is
• 16:43
  supposed to come out of it? Reminds me of our, our content
• 16:47
  marketing process. So it's like there's an SOP
• 16:50
  where it's like if we upload a video and automation happens, it
• 16:53
  creates a card in our project management software and then
• 16:56
  that, you know, the copy of the transcriptions there.
• 16:58
  And then this happens and then the editor leaves the feedback
• 17:00
  and then we check it. And then it's a little bit more
• 17:02
  of a process like an SOP. It's like this is kind of
• 17:04
  there's not really a ton of creativity or like freedom and
• 17:07
  that I mean, certainly people can suggest different ways to do
• 17:09
  it if we would think it's better, but it's pretty much a
• 17:11
  ABCDE, right? But then when it comes to
• 17:13
  creating content, we've got a framework called Gems framework.
• 17:16
  And let's get clear in your audience, a message, engage your
• 17:18
  audience with a strong hook, map out your key points and sum up
• 17:22
  your message and inspire action. That is a, there's a lot of
• 17:25
  freedom with them there because like how I want to engage you in
• 17:27
  the first second could be wildly different from what I think or
• 17:30
  you think or she thinks how you, you know, map out your key
• 17:34
  points or tell the story could be wildly different.
• 17:36
  But at the end of the day, we got to look back at the content
• 17:38
  and say, did we do a good job at executing on the gems framework,
• 17:42
  right? And so there's more.
• 17:45
  There's a framework there to provide consistency and to make
• 17:47
  sure the content comes out good. But there's also enough
• 17:50
  flexibility and freedom in there for people to feel like I can be
• 17:53
  creative, right? I can do my thing.
• 17:55
  Yeah, and this speaks to the word optics.
• 17:58
  I don't know if. Yeah, let's go inside next.
• 17:59
  I'll share a little bit. The word optics came to me
• 18:02
  because my background is very technical degrees in chemistry
• 18:06
  and finance, right. So, all right, the word optics
• 18:08
  is like this is there's technical stuff involved.
• 18:11
  You could think about focal points, you could think about,
• 18:14
  you know, lenses and clarity, you could think about all these
• 18:17
  things. They're very technical physics
• 18:19
  type things that the word optics implies.
• 18:23
  But there's a second definition of the word optics, and that is
• 18:26
  the perceptions of people about a situation, right?
• 18:30
  And, and that's where when I really started down this path,
• 18:35
  it's been more than eight years ago that I started the company,
• 18:38
  but when I really started evolving this concept, it's like
• 18:43
  there's technical stuff, there's scientific stuff that this is
• 18:46
  how our process has to flow. These are the ways we have to
• 18:48
  upload the, the file and like all that stuff.
• 18:51
  But there's also how do we create perceptions of people
• 18:55
  about the process? How do we, how do we understand
• 18:58
  the perceptions of people and, and what they're perceiving
• 19:01
  about the process and, and all those type of things?
• 19:04
  Both of those are equally valid in the word definition of the
• 19:07
  word optics. And they're equally valid in
• 19:10
  everything in business that if people perceive that we have a
• 19:14
  bad process, it doesn't really matter how technically good it
• 19:17
  is, right? But if people perceive we have a
• 19:20
  good one and we don't really have one, well, somehow we make
• 19:22
  it work, right? So, so it's, it's really about
• 19:25
  both and and being able to discern is is super important.
• 19:30
  So when you come into a company, what's kind of like step one,
• 19:33
  like how do you know if someone has a bad process?
• 19:36
  Are you talking to the team? Are you looking at the Sops?
• 19:38
  Are you talking to departments? Like how do you gauge it?
• 19:41
  Yeah, no. So we have we have a five step
• 19:42
  process that we take folks through.
• 19:44
  The very first thing is I ask some questions about the the
• 19:48
  purpose. So if if they if they start
• 19:50
  telling me about some type of problem that they're having or.
• 19:53
  What's a common one? Like a recent one maybe or
• 19:55
  something that they. Would.
• 19:56
  Yeah, absolutely. You know, customer service team
• 20:01
  not following the the processes, which then was causing problems
• 20:05
  for the operation manufacturing team to not be able to execute
• 20:08
  well, right. And so they just had all this
• 20:10
  back and forth, they had all this rework going on where their
• 20:13
  operations team wasn't getting well, they needed, so they were
• 20:16
  asking questions to customer service.
• 20:17
  It was like this back and forth type stuff going on.
• 20:20
  So when we define a work stream, typically what I'm doing is I'm
• 20:24
  asking the purpose, the scope, and the gaps.
• 20:27
  So, so, yeah, all right, why, why is this important?
• 20:31
  Why are we even talking about this?
• 20:33
  And if they can't define why it's a problem or why they were
• 20:38
  talking about a certain work stream or a certain type of
• 20:40
  problem, we've got to get clarity on that.
• 20:42
  If we don't understand why we're even talking if, if the
• 20:45
  leadership team can't figure it out, then I'm pretty sure the
• 20:49
  people on the floor also have no idea.
• 20:52
  Like what we're? Trying to solve like so we got
• 20:54
  to define the purpose. Why are we doing this?
• 20:56
  The scope of it, where does it start and end?
• 20:58
  So we had, we had one example where, you know, they were
• 21:03
  having all kinds of of problems. I'll give a great example.
• 21:06
  So we had a customer who had all kinds of billing issues.
• 21:09
  They said we have, we have these billing problems.
• 21:11
  We're, we're having our customer service person spending all day
• 21:14
  trying to figure out and send out invoices every day and just
• 21:18
  all kinds of errors and those problems.
• 21:20
  What we found was that their billing process wasn't even a
• 21:23
  problem. It was super simple.
• 21:25
  I went and sat down with the woman and we started looking at
• 21:28
  her process and she took about 20 invoices and about 10 of
• 21:32
  them, she would just enter it, click it, send it, done, click
• 21:37
  it, send it. And she would, but she would
• 21:38
  come across one that was like, oh, I don't know what to do with
• 21:41
  this. She would set a different pile,
• 21:43
  right? So about half of the invoices
• 21:45
  that she did that day over the course, of course, like 4 hours,
• 21:48
  about half of them took maybe 5 or 10 minutes.
• 21:51
  The other half of them that she set off to the side, we were
• 21:54
  like wandering around the manufacturing plant.
• 21:56
  We were talking, she's calling people, she's asking like what?
• 21:59
  Where's this? What happened to this?
• 22:00
  What the problem wasn't the billing process.
• 22:03
  So misdiagnosis sometimes, right?
• 22:06
  So what we found was they had four different methods of order
• 22:09
  entry. This company had evolved to the
• 22:13
  point where they had four different methods of putting
• 22:15
  orders in on the front end. One of them was a Google Sheet,
• 22:19
  one of them was an Excel sheet. We can at least merge the
• 22:22
  technology. One was Google, one was Excel, 1
• 22:25
  was their accounting software, and one of them was ACRM system
• 22:29
  that they'd implemented over time.
• 22:31
  And all of them made logical sense.
• 22:33
  Like if you looked at any one of those order entry processes that
• 22:36
  they had, every one of them had evolved in a different way as
• 22:39
  their as their company grew. The problem was that all four of
• 22:43
  those different methods of order entry then caused additional
• 22:47
  complexity in the manufacturing process.
• 22:49
  That then caused additional complexity, right?
• 22:51
  You had four times as much complexity in manufacturing
• 22:54
  because of all these different ways that things were entered at
• 22:57
  the beginning. And then that turned into four
• 23:00
  times as many problems in shipping because we got four
• 23:04
  different methods of stuff that we're handling, which then
• 23:06
  turned into four different, you know, we got to invoice all the
• 23:09
  stuff at the. So the problem, the symptom that
• 23:12
  they were feeling was we have a problem with invoicing.
• 23:15
  Once we narrowed it down and streamlined and standardizes
• 23:19
  their order entry process, they literally the owners of the
• 23:23
  company told me recently that we haven't thought about billing in
• 23:26
  years because it wasn't a billing issue.
• 23:29
  If we would have created a standard operating procedure for
• 23:31
  the billing process, we wouldn't have solved anything because
• 23:35
  they would still had all these problems going through and they
• 23:37
  are on the desk of the person doing billing.
• 23:40
  And so understanding the work streams that flow through
• 23:42
  businesses. So the purpose, why are we doing
• 23:45
  this? Because we need an efficient way
• 23:47
  of entering orders through invoicing.
• 23:50
  What's the scope of it? Order entry through invoicing,
• 23:52
  right? What are the gaps?
• 23:54
  Well, there's all these problems we're having.
• 23:56
  We're having, you know, we're having to rework a lot of
• 23:59
  invoices. We're having to go back in and
• 24:02
  fix problems after the fact, right?
• 24:05
  They'd list out all these gaps, all these problems.
• 24:08
  So then we created that SIPOC framework that I talked about
• 24:11
  and I know I haven't defined that yet.
• 24:14
  The the cool thing about the SIPOC, and I've done literally
• 24:18
  over 1000 of these in my career in the last 20 years.
• 24:21
  It's a very simple framework. It stands for suppliers, inputs,
• 24:25
  process, outputs, and customers. So two of those words that you
• 24:29
  said are people, suppliers and customers.
• 24:32
  Then you've got inputs and outputs and you got the process
• 24:35
  in the middle. And when we do that, it takes
• 24:37
  typically about an hour to get through a SIPOC.
• 24:41
  And I've built them with people from diaper manufacturers in
• 24:44
  Shanghai, China, to a librarian and a piano teacher, My
• 24:51
  sister-in-law, the piano teacher, The It's a very simple
• 24:55
  framework, but it starts getting you to understand not only what
• 24:58
  is my process, what is the framework of my process, but who
• 25:01
  cares about the outputs and who do I get the inputs from?
• 25:05
  Yeah. So you start thinking about what
• 25:07
  do people need from the process? What do I need?
• 25:09
  What do other people need from the process.
• 25:11
  That simple framework begins the transformation for so many
• 25:15
  things in businesses. Now, why do you think the
• 25:18
  company doesn't focus on this? Like why do they need to bring
• 25:21
  someone else in to help solve this problem?
• 25:24
  And also how do processes get so far off track?
• 25:27
  Because it seems like couldn't they have sat down with that
• 25:29
  person and seen the billing mistake?
• 25:30
  You know, like, and I know that's why there's experts
• 25:33
  people call us and do marketing stuff that they, you know, maybe
• 25:35
  could have looked in themselves, but they also don't have the
• 25:37
  experience and that kind of stuff too, but.
• 25:39
  I think, I think a couple of things.
• 25:41
  I think there is sort of this. I've heard it called the Curse
• 25:44
  of knowledge before where it's like I know my business really
• 25:46
  well, why would I need an outside expert?
• 25:48
  I know my business. That may be true, but you may
• 25:52
  know all kinds of details and there may be things that you're
• 25:55
  blind to, right? There may be things because of
• 25:58
  the focus that you've had on specific things and perceptions.
• 26:03
  Sometimes it's the leaders of the organization just have don't
• 26:07
  haven't sat down and observed it, right?
• 26:11
  They don't have time. They're doing all kinds of
• 26:12
  things. They're working with the sales
• 26:13
  team, they're working with the. Is that what it is you think
• 26:16
  it's a time? Thing I think, I think it's
• 26:17
  time, I think it's focus. I think there's a lot of reasons
• 26:19
  that kind of fall into that bucket, but I think it's if you
• 26:23
  think you know everything about your business and you've never
• 26:26
  had an outside perspective, you've got you probably have
• 26:29
  blind spots. I have. 100% everybody.
• 26:31
  Everyone does. I think any one of us who
• 26:32
  doesn't believe that we have any blind spots is fooling
• 26:35
  ourselves, right. So, so I think that's one
• 26:37
  reason, arguable reason for bringing in an outside expert.
• 26:40
  I think the second one is not everybody has the frameworks or
• 26:48
  the the concepts right the the gems framework that.
• 26:50
  You mentioned earlier. I don't know what the Gems
• 26:52
  framework is, right? Could that help me transform my
• 26:55
  business maybe, right. And so bringing in an expert,
• 27:00
  what you're doing is you're bringing an outsider with a
• 27:01
  different perspective and they may have knowledge or tools or a
• 27:05
  way of thinking that you haven't used before.
• 27:08
  And, and so both of those things I think can really help
• 27:11
  businesses and owners and leaders to solve problems that
• 27:15
  they may not have otherwise solved.
• 27:16
  Yeah, I agree. It does seem like too.
• 27:19
  I think it's good to know for any founder of any business,
• 27:22
  there's always an option of a customer could technically try
• 27:24
  to do it themselves, or they could hire somebody to expedite
• 27:28
  those results and probably do it a lot better and a lot faster,
• 27:30
  right. And so I think if you look at
• 27:32
  most successful companies, I mean pretty much all of them,
• 27:36
  they've hired people to solve problems.
• 27:38
  They've hired consultants, they've hired coaches, they've
• 27:40
  hired people let you know mentors.
• 27:42
  They brought people in to tell them, what do we need to do to
• 27:44
  get to the next level? And for me, early on, this was
• 27:47
  almost like, I don't know if it was an ego thing or what, but I
• 27:51
  felt like weird about hiring somebody.
• 27:52
  I was like, I should be able to. I'm the type of guy I don't need
• 27:55
  nobody to come in and tell, you know what I mean?
• 27:57
  And then I think you realize like, all right, dude, but if
• 27:59
  I'm me and I'm going and I'm in business and my competitor is
• 28:03
  me, but getting all this help from high level coaches, it's
• 28:08
  like good quality people. Who's going to win that race?
• 28:11
  Like who's going to build the Better Business?
• 28:14
  And it's just like what social groups you surround yourself
• 28:16
  with. If you surround yourself with a
• 28:17
  bunch of successful people that are going places doing things
• 28:20
  have an impact on you, can provide you, shoot you straight
• 28:22
  feedback and be honest with you, versus if you surround yourself
• 28:25
  with a bunch of people that complain aren't going anywhere,
• 28:28
  Same person, different environment, different
• 28:31
  surroundings. You guys are going to get to two
• 28:33
  different places at two different times, right?
• 28:35
  100%, And I mean, arguably I've got a good friend who's a PhD
• 28:41
  material scientist. He's got a doctorate in material
• 28:43
  science, right? So why does he have design
• 28:46
  engineers working on his team? Why does he have electrical
• 28:48
  engineers? Why does he have Mechanical
• 28:50
  Engineers? The reality is, even if those
• 28:52
  aren't consultants who are consulting him on his business,
• 28:56
  every business owner, unless you're building something that's
• 28:59
  completely AI right, that probably exists today.
• 29:02
  We'll talk about that in a second, yeah.
• 29:03
  But but the reality is that every business owner hires
• 29:06
  experts to do things, right. There's a pretty famous quote
• 29:10
  about we don't hire smart people and tell them what to do.
• 29:13
  We hire smart people and ask them to engage, right?
• 29:17
  What should we do? And whether you're hiring
• 29:21
  consultants or hiring employees, you're hiring design engineers,
• 29:25
  whatever it is that you're hiring.
• 29:27
  None of us can do everything by ourselves.
• 29:30
  If I try to be a Jack of all trades, I become a master of
• 29:33
  none. And, and so that that concept of
• 29:38
  that barrier of who am I hiring? Who do I trust to bring in,
• 29:42
  whether it's a consultant or, or full time employee, part time
• 29:45
  employee, who do I trust in my circle to help build something
• 29:50
  bigger than I could build myself.
• 29:52
  And every entrepreneur who starts hiring people is arguably
• 29:55
  doing just that. I.
• 29:57
  Remember when I started hiring coaches and consultants, I was
• 30:00
  like, why did I undo this earlier?
• 30:01
  You know, I was like, this is because I just looked at it like
• 30:05
  I hate the word. I hate to use the word shortcut,
• 30:07
  but in a lot of ways it kind of is, right?
• 30:09
  It's like I could hire people that already have been doing
• 30:12
  this for years and understand that at a very high level and
• 30:15
  can come into my business and probably be like, yeah, dude,
• 30:17
  don't do this and do this instead.
• 30:19
  And do you have a strategy for this?
• 30:20
  You don't. OK, well, you need one.
• 30:21
  Here's one, right? Hey, what's going on here?
• 30:24
  Maybe we should adjust some things here.
• 30:25
  And I think it's like that just can take you so much farther.
• 30:28
  It just compresses time. And it's like you got to kind of
• 30:30
  ask yourself, do I want to sit and let this thing just keep or
• 30:34
  keep building up and like destroying your business or even
• 30:37
  just not destroying, but just even holding your business,
• 30:38
  holding you back from the next level.
• 30:40
  Maybe you're doing fine now, but it's like I want to go to the
• 30:43
  next level. I want to improve, I want to get
• 30:45
  better, I want to grow and even some of the best athletes in the
• 30:48
  world, all of them have coaches. There's You will not meet one
• 30:53
  that doesn't have one, I guarantee you and.
• 30:55
  And not, not just a, you know, not just a like a, a golf coach
• 31:00
  looking at their form, but literally mental coaches.
• 31:04
  Yeah, they're. Thinking about helping them
• 31:06
  think about their mindset total in the course or whatever that
• 31:11
  surrounding ourselves with good people that we trust to make us
• 31:14
  better. Yeah, always a good idea.
• 31:16
  It's an amazing. Idea and it's a competitive edge
• 31:18
  and I think that's where I started looking at it was like
• 31:20
  I'd CP and I'd be like man, they're going to get all this
• 31:23
  great help not going to be at a disadvantage if I don't get
• 31:25
  this. You know that's how we see it
• 31:27
  from a marketing standpoint with a lot of the companies we work
• 31:29
  with, it's like you're going to get a major like advantage and
• 31:33
  you know upswing in the market by having us come in and do some
• 31:35
  of these things. So in the same thing with you,
• 31:38
  right? It's like you can sit on the
• 31:39
  problem for the next year and watch your company be stagnant
• 31:41
  or you can come in, have somebody jump start this damn
• 31:44
  thing and I'm pretty sure you're going to get an ROI on the back
• 31:46
  end. That's you're going to be like,
• 31:47
  why didn't we do this three years ago?
• 31:48
  You know what I mean? It's like, it's like that's
• 31:50
  always the case. You know, it's like, I should
• 31:52
  have done this earlier. So we covered optics.
• 31:54
  Was there anything we missed with optics or did that pretty
• 31:58
  much cover? No.
• 31:58
  So I think, yeah. So we, we've created a software
• 32:00
  platform and one of the ways that we help companies at the
• 32:04
  end of the day is we actually have an outsourcing team.
• 32:06
  So I lived in the Philippines for a few years and.
• 32:08
  I remember, I think we talked about that briefly.
• 32:10
  Yeah, yeah. So, so, so we actually have a
• 32:13
  team. I have a team of folks who are
• 32:15
  doing customer service support and finance, accounting
• 32:18
  technology support for our clients.
• 32:21
  And because I lived there for a few years, I got some personal
• 32:24
  relationships with hundreds of people that I'm like, if you can
• 32:29
  match, it goes back to what we've been talking about, if you
• 32:31
  can match good people with good processes to create value,
• 32:35
  anytime you can do that, you're going to start creating value.
• 32:38
  And and so that's really what we've got is a consultancy
• 32:42
  enabled by a software platform that we created that then is
• 32:45
  supported by our outsourcing team to help companies to
• 32:48
  execute. Yeah, Where'd you live in the
• 32:49
  Philippines? So we lived just South of Makati
• 32:53
  in Makati and so Manila area. So we lived in Ayala, Alaban,
• 32:57
  which is about maybe 20 miles South of Makati.
• 33:01
  And yes, we lived there for a few years really.
• 33:05
  And just our youngest daughter, our youngest daughter was born
• 33:07
  there. Wow, that's incredible.
• 33:09
  Did you move there mostly because of the business reasons
• 33:12
  or was there? It was.
• 33:13
  It was for the, yeah, the job I had at the time.
• 33:15
  So the company that I worked for straight out of college got
• 33:18
  acquired a couple of times like, but they moved to seven times in
• 33:21
  17 years. I moved my family, my wife and
• 33:24
  children seven times in 17 years.
• 33:27
  It's kind. Of fun though you got to
• 33:27
  experience a lot of different. Things We experienced a ton of
• 33:30
  different things, so it was a lot of great experiences.
• 33:32
  The Philippines was one of those places.
• 33:33
  What? Do you think of the Philippines
• 33:34
  living there? The people are amazing.
• 33:38
  Yeah, they are. I just, I genuinely appreciate,
• 33:41
  I love the people in the Philippines, the respect, the,
• 33:45
  the energy, the, the sacrifices that they're willing to make to,
• 33:49
  to make their, their lives better and their family's life's
• 33:53
  better. There's so many good things
• 33:54
  about the, the people. I, I loved the, you know, living
• 34:00
  on tropical islands. I mean, there's, there's
• 34:02
  positives to that, right? Yeah, for sure.
• 34:04
  Yeah, but it was very hot, right?
• 34:05
  They have typhoons. The the Philippines in general
• 34:08
  doesn't have great infrastructure.
• 34:10
  So flooding and they've even been in the news recently,
• 34:13
  flooding and. Water and.
• 34:14
  Power and earthquakes, and they live on volcanoes.
• 34:18
  Like there were literally volcanoes, but then you know,
• 34:23
  half hour of our house, there were a couple of volcanoes
• 34:26
  active, right? It's so there's challenges, but
• 34:29
  there's also love. The my favorite thing was the
• 34:32
  people. Yeah, I could see that.
• 34:34
  We've got some team members in the Philippines.
• 34:35
  Yeah. Oh, I've just had an amazing
• 34:37
  experience, Yeah, with everyone that we've worked with for the
• 34:39
  most part. So I mean, yeah, customer
• 34:43
  service you mentioned, don't you feel like everyone in customer
• 34:47
  service is sort of headed for being replaced by AI or do you
• 34:51
  think that's going too far over the next 5-10 years?
• 34:53
  Oh, I definitely think that most people, most people doing
• 34:59
  transactional work are going to be replaced by AII think, I
• 35:06
  think a. Lot of call centers, even call
• 35:07
  centers. I think a lot of those things
• 35:09
  are being replaced by AI. I'm not a futurist.
• 35:13
  I don't really. They can't really predict five
• 35:15
  years, 10 years, exactly what things are going to look like.
• 35:18
  The one thing that I've learned and the one place we've inserted
• 35:21
  ourselves is that a lot of companies I've, I've noticed so
• 35:25
  many companies here in North America and really around the
• 35:28
  world have lots of ad hoc processes, right?
• 35:34
  Things workarounds, right. So if I go into a manufacturing
• 35:37
  plant down the street from here, there's going to be people in
• 35:39
  the office who are doing lots of workarounds, right?
• 35:42
  They're like, well, the system doesn't actually do that.
• 35:44
  So here, we'll make this note. I'm going to hand it to this
• 35:46
  person. Yeah, right.
• 35:48
  That, that type of stuff. In order for a business to
• 35:50
  scale, you've got to minimize that type of stuff.
• 35:54
  And so the system that we've set up to enable people to
• 35:58
  streamline those operations, streamline and standardize to a
• 36:03
  point that can be documented and to a point that can be
• 36:06
  outsourced, that's a stepping stone towards artificial
• 36:10
  intelligence automation. So, So what we've done is
• 36:15
  positioned ourselves at the center of that, that we're
• 36:18
  helping companies right now with standardizing and streamlining
• 36:22
  to the extent that they will be able to use automation's AI
• 36:26
  generation to get there. So I've, I'm very clear with my
• 36:30
  team members that five years from now, they're likely not
• 36:33
  going to be doing the same thing that they're doing today.
• 36:36
  Like if you're doing order entry today, you're, you're not going
• 36:40
  to be doing order entry for that customer five years from now,
• 36:44
  highly unlikely because there's going to be automations and
• 36:47
  they're going to be generative AI.
• 36:50
  What we're going to do is we're going to position ourselves so
• 36:53
  we can help more companies to do that and standardize to the
• 36:56
  extent that we can to to go in that path.
• 36:59
  And I don't think today there's any shortage of those
• 37:01
  opportunities. Yeah, no, it doesn't sound like
• 37:04
  it. 10 years from now, there might be. 20 years ago maybe.
• 37:07
  I agree. But.
• 37:08
  What happens? We're positioning ourselves at
• 37:10
  the intersection of all that stuff to help people do that.
• 37:13
  But what happens to the customer service job?
• 37:15
  To the data entry job? To the analyst job?
• 37:18
  Where do those people go? Like how do you, and I know
• 37:20
  you're not a futurist and neither am I, but just talk and
• 37:23
  shop a little bit here. Like where do you see?
• 37:25
  Cuz it just seems like, you know, I know in the, you know,
• 37:27
  industrial revolution, it's like, all right, we got tractor
• 37:29
  now we don't need these people. But those people found jobs.
• 37:31
  They moved to the city. It just feels like this one's
• 37:34
  different though. It feels like like this is going
• 37:36
  to take a lot of jobs pretty fast.
• 37:39
  And we always had kind of the intellectual thing.
• 37:42
  It's like, all right, maybe you're not going to like move
• 37:43
  something with your hands. A machine can do that, but we
• 37:46
  still need people, like, talk to other humans and like, put stuff
• 37:49
  in the computer and make decisions.
• 37:51
  And now it's like AI can do a lot of that stuff or will do a
• 37:54
  lot of that stuff in the near future.
• 37:57
  Where does that leave all these people?
• 37:58
  Yeah, it's, it's a great question.
• 38:01
  And I don't know the, I don't know the answer to this.
• 38:03
  I mean, so, so I have two sons. We have four children.
• 38:06
  We have two sons. One of them just graduated in
• 38:08
  computer science. Wow, that's a that's a changing
• 38:11
  industry. And he is going through that
• 38:13
  right now, right of he's got friends who graduated, who can't
• 38:16
  find jobs really. And and the, the dynamics of the
• 38:20
  computer, like he was halfway through college when ChatGPT
• 38:24
  came out. Wow, right.
• 38:25
  So going into college, it's like this is the career for the
• 38:28
  future. Yeah.
• 38:29
  Oh for sure it was then. Two years in, ChatGPT comes out
• 38:31
  and it's like now here we are a few years after ChatGPT.
• 38:35
  And the CEO of Anthropic recently said this was a few
• 38:40
  months ago. He said with three to six
• 38:41
  months, about half of all code will be programmed by AI.
• 38:45
  He said within a year, within 12 months.
• 38:47
  So this was March of this year. He said within 12 months, he
• 38:50
  believed that 90% of all code would be written by AI.
• 38:53
  Really. So what would the role be of a
• 38:55
  coder? Is there something where you
• 38:57
  would oversee the AI that writes the code you need to?
• 38:59
  Is there in there some still level of like creative input or
• 39:03
  like things that needs to, you know, need a road map to
• 39:05
  success? Or no.
• 39:06
  So I think that the that one place that humans still, as far
• 39:14
  as I can tell, currently have a place is helping to create the
• 39:19
  frameworks to solve problems for humans, right?
• 39:22
  I don't know if you can go into ChatGPT and say, well, how am I
• 39:26
  going to solve this human problem?
• 39:27
  But it'll give you some answer. But understanding cultural
• 39:31
  context and things like that, I mean, humans who are at the
• 39:34
  center of that. So the thing I've encouraged my
• 39:36
  son to do is to be client side, right?
• 39:40
  There's there's something to be said like you've got to do the
• 39:42
  the programming, somebody's doing the program, somebody's
• 39:44
  working with the AI to figure out what are we going to solve?
• 39:47
  How are we going to do this? But, but being a human who's in
• 39:52
  tune with and aware of human problems so that you can
• 39:56
  translate that into all right, how are we going to, what are we
• 39:59
  going to do to solve this problem?
• 40:01
  How does he feel about that though, knowing that he started
• 40:04
  doing into college thinking this was literally the hottest thing
• 40:06
  that everyone said. If you want to be successful, go
• 40:08
  learn how to. Code there was.
• 40:10
  There was literally a book that said, though the future belongs
• 40:12
  to those who code all, all else would be left behind.
• 40:15
  That was the title of a book not that many years ago.
• 40:17
  And then, you know, a couple years into college is that, I
• 40:21
  mean, imagine those conversations you guys are
• 40:22
  obviously having, but how does he feel about that 'cause then
• 40:24
  it's like, all right, go learn the people side.
• 40:25
  But it's like, I didn't want to do the people side.
• 40:28
  Like, you know what I mean? It's like I wanted to code.
• 40:30
  Like, that's why I got into this, you know?
• 40:33
  So I'll tell you. I like the people side, but
• 40:35
  that's something I love. Yeah, so my, my dad told me many
• 40:38
  years ago, my dad taught me to not just talk to the guys my
• 40:41
  age, but talk to the older guys. That's what he taught me.
• 40:43
  I was probably 12 years old and I'll never forget, I had a
• 40:47
  great, I had a great uncle that maybe 20 years ago, he was in
• 40:52
  his 80s at the time. My wife and I went and sat down
• 40:55
  with him and his wife. We were just having dinner and
• 40:57
  talking. And he told me a story about
• 40:59
  when he was young, when he was in his early 20s, mid 20s, he
• 41:02
  had bought an ice route. He was delivering ice, right?
• 41:06
  Like he bought a distribution route.
• 41:07
  That was the thing, yeah. Right.
• 41:09
  And he was delivering ice to people to put in their ice boxes
• 41:13
  to keep their food sold. So he would go from house to
• 41:15
  house and deliver ice, right? And within a matter of years of
• 41:22
  him buying, putting his whole life savings, doing every like,
• 41:25
  putting everything into that, everybody on that route had a
• 41:28
  refrigerator. Damn.
• 41:30
  Right, exactly, exactly. So so I often go back to that.
• 41:34
  I think about that and this is actually sort of a story I
• 41:36
  relate to my son recently that, you know, my uncle Cal, my great
• 41:41
  Uncle Cal turned out to be quite a successful person in in life
• 41:46
  and business and he. Adjusted, didn't he?
• 41:48
  He. Had to figure out how to adjust
• 41:50
  right. Right.
• 41:50
  And I think that's the number one, that's one of the number
• 41:52
  one skills. Yeah, I think if we look at
• 41:55
  things through the lens of this is the way I've always done it.
• 41:57
  So I'm just going to keep doing the same thing.
• 42:00
  You're screwed. If you're screwed, you're in
• 42:02
  trouble. You're done.
• 42:03
  So you, you may have a very specific set of skills on how to
• 42:08
  program in certain languages and things like that.
• 42:11
  If that's what you're going to do for the next 45 years of your
• 42:14
  career, then you better find a really good niche that needs
• 42:18
  that, right? Because even people who learned,
• 42:24
  you know, I learned basic programming back in, you know,
• 42:28
  2530 years ago, I learned how to program in BASIC, right, or
• 42:32
  Microsoft Excel, Visual Basic, They like, I learned basic
• 42:35
  coding decades ago. Nobody's programming that today.
• 42:38
  If I would have built my career on, well, I know how to do
• 42:41
  Visual Basic programming, I wouldn't still be doing that
• 42:45
  today, right? There's virtually nobody doing
• 42:47
  that today. So somebody who learns Python
• 42:50
  today or somebody who learns, you know, whatever, whatever
• 42:53
  programming, you know, JavaScript or the, you're
• 42:56
  probably not going to be doing that 40 years from now.
• 42:59
  Right. The computer languages are going
• 43:01
  to evolve regardless of whether or not AI ever came out.
• 43:04
  Yeah. And so I think the willingness
• 43:07
  and interest in adapting to solve problems is, is super
• 43:11
  important. Yeah.
• 43:12
  So I don't know if that really answers the question of what are
• 43:14
  these people going to do? But they're going to have to
• 43:16
  evolve. They're going to have to adapt
• 43:18
  and learn different skills to do different things in the future.
• 43:21
  And I think the key is don't wait for your job to be taken by
• 43:24
  AI before you start making the adaption or the changes, the
• 43:29
  adjustments, because that's oftentimes what happens is like
• 43:32
  the jobs not here, we got laid off and there's no other jobs
• 43:36
  like this around. And it's like, all right now I
• 43:37
  got to figure out something else.
• 43:39
  And it's like, start knowing that your job is going to be
• 43:42
  taken by AI. You should start a game plan to
• 43:45
  say, what am I going to do? Not if, but when this happens
• 43:49
  and looking at what are my transferable skills that I have?
• 43:52
  What am I passionate about or interested in that I could use
• 43:54
  as that the marketplace needs. That's valuable.
• 43:57
  Who do I know that I can start connecting myself with?
• 43:59
  Like this is how people got to be thinking, man.
• 44:02
  Like you just have to. But I'll tell you kind of a
• 44:05
  quirky story, yeah, please, from years ago when I when I first
• 44:08
  started teaching about process improvement and stuff, I had
• 44:11
  this PowerPoint slide that said what's required to change what?
• 44:15
  And it was just a triangle. And it said tools, skills and
• 44:18
  mindset. That was it.
• 44:20
  There you go. All right, this, it was a slide
• 44:22
  and I used to teach what was called 6 Sigma Black belt
• 44:25
  training. Four weeks of training, right?
• 44:27
  4 full weeks in classrooms. And this was one of my slides
• 44:32
  and I would get there and I'd like it's self-explanatory.
• 44:34
  It's boring. And so that oldest are twins.
• 44:38
  One day we were at the Henry Dorley Zoo in Omaha, NE, and I
• 44:42
  saw this is a real story about an orangutan.
• 44:45
  There's this big plaque on the wall at the zoo that talked
• 44:48
  about Fu Manchu, the orangutan that used to live there.
• 44:50
  And he kept escaping from the cage.
• 44:53
  And the zookeeper, the head zookeeper was getting really
• 44:56
  ticked off at the junior zookeepers.
• 44:58
  Like, why are you guys leaving the door unlocked, right?
• 45:01
  He was accusing like the junior zookeepers, like you're being
• 45:03
  careless. But then they saw Fu Manchu by
• 45:06
  the door tinkering around with it.
• 45:08
  It popped open and Fu Manchu runs out the other orangutans
• 45:11
  after. And so I started reading this
• 45:14
  story and I was like, my kids are like watching orangutans.
• 45:17
  My wife and I'm like reading a story, thinking about a
• 45:19
  PowerPoint slide, right I. Love it, right?
• 45:23
  Yeah. So this is what I built most of
• 45:25
  my career on was this one PowerPoint slide.
• 45:27
  That was the boringest PowerPoint slide in the world
• 45:29
  because I said, all right, so Fu Manchu had to have all three of
• 45:32
  those things, right? He had to have a cool.
• 45:35
  He had to have the skills and he had to have the mindset.
• 45:38
  So the tool ended up being a piece of wire, right?
• 45:40
  The cages that they put over, like lights in the right.
• 45:43
  He had broken off a piece of wire.
• 45:45
  That was his tool. The skills, right?
• 45:47
  He had to learn to be a lock picker.
• 45:49
  Yeah, right. He had to be a lock picker.
• 45:51
  That's incredible. If you gave a key to a zebra,
• 45:54
  zebra's not getting out of the cage.
• 45:55
  No, first of all, can't even pick it up.
• 45:56
  Can't even. Pick it up, I try to eat it
• 45:57
  right? I don't know, but the orangutan
• 45:59
  had to have a tool. He had to have the skills,
• 46:02
  right? He had to be able to be a lock
• 46:04
  picker. And the the third thing he had
• 46:07
  to have was the mindset that he wanted to get out of the cage.
• 46:10
  If Fu Manchu was happy eating bananas and having somebody
• 46:13
  clean up the crap behind him, if he was happy with that, he'd be
• 46:16
  sitting in the cage. I would never read his story,
• 46:19
  right? So he had to have all three of
• 46:21
  those things, a tools, the skills, and a mindset.
• 46:23
  If any one of those three things is missing.
• 46:25
  And I would encourage any young person today who's in a job that
• 46:28
  could be replaced by AI, they think about what tools do I
• 46:32
  have? What tools do I need in the
• 46:34
  future? What skills do I have?
• 46:36
  What skills do I need in the future?
• 46:37
  What mindset do I have and what mindset do I need in the future?
• 46:41
  If any one of those three things is missing, by the way, they
• 46:43
  took away, once they freighted out, they tranquilized Fu
• 46:46
  Manchu, he's laying there. They found that he had taken
• 46:48
  that wire after he had picked the lock and he put it and hit
• 46:51
  it up by his gum line like a retainer, right?
• 46:54
  So when they tranquilized and they're like searching his body,
• 46:57
  trying to figure out how did he pick this lock?
• 46:59
  And they finally had taken this piece of wire and hit it on his
• 47:01
  gum line like a retainer. And so they took that away from
• 47:04
  him. And guess what?
• 47:06
  Fu Manchu's not getting out of the cage anymore.
• 47:08
  Wow. Right, still has the skills.
• 47:10
  What a genius. Right.
• 47:11
  He still had the skills. He still.
• 47:13
  He still. Knew how to pick a lock, right?
• 47:15
  He probably still had the mindset that he wanted to get
• 47:17
  out of the cage, right? But he no longer had that tool.
• 47:20
  Damn. So if someone takes the tool
• 47:22
  away from you, what are you going to do to adapt?
• 47:24
  You've got to have the mind. The second thing, but if you
• 47:27
  think about it, if Fu Manchu didn't have that mindset that he
• 47:29
  was going to change, that he was going to do something different,
• 47:31
  right, we never would have read his story.
• 47:33
  Yeah, wow, that's. Good.
• 47:35
  And I think anybody, anybody today in any role, not even if
• 47:39
  you're afraid of it being replaced by AI, what tools do
• 47:44
  you have, what skills do you have, and what mindset do you
• 47:46
  have about the things you're doing and what's that look like
• 47:49
  for your future? Yeah, I think, I think the same
• 47:53
  way whether your job is an immediate risk, mid term risk or
• 47:56
  long term or just anywhere in between.
• 47:59
  And it's not even about AI. It's just about continuing to
• 48:01
  level up and grow. And that's why if you look
• 48:03
  yourself in the mirror and like I need to be better than I was
• 48:05
  yesterday, that that is learning, you know, adapting
• 48:08
  maybe a new mindset or growing your mindset.
• 48:10
  That's learning new skills. That's adding the two, you know,
• 48:13
  it's all that stuff, man. If you don't do that stuff, you
• 48:15
  get stuck in Fu Manchu's cage. Yeah, that's right.
• 48:17
  You get stuck in the cage and you there's no way.
• 48:19
  Out. That's kind of impressive.
• 48:21
  The fact that he hit it is gum. Like what?
• 48:24
  A sneaky little orangutan. Brilliant.
• 48:27
  What was he doing when he got out?
• 48:28
  Was he trying to like leave the zoo or?
• 48:29
  What, or just for the orangutans would just cause chaos in the
• 48:32
  zoo? Like you can read about it.
• 48:34
  You can do a Foo Manchu the orangutan and go like you could
• 48:37
  read all about it. They would, they would get out
• 48:38
  of the cage. They like all the orangutans
• 48:40
  would fall about right, Right. They'd go out.
• 48:41
  They'd be creating chaos around the zoo just because they wanted
• 48:45
  to go explore. Yeah.
• 48:46
  You wonder, wonder if there's so there was a obviously there was
• 48:48
  a key that they, the, the zookeepers had.
• 48:50
  I wonder if they saw him put, they probably saw him put
• 48:53
  something in that little thing that we call lock.
• 48:56
  And he was like, I wonder if I could put something in there and
• 48:57
  it would make that. And he probably was like, wait a
• 48:59
  second. And then I got the thing and
• 49:00
  then came down there. Wow.
• 49:02
  You figured it out, man. And that that speaks to mindset.
• 49:05
  If our mindset is you know what, I'm just kidding.
• 49:08
  I'm. In this cage, I'm content.
• 49:10
  I like bananas, right? They're cool, but if you're
• 49:15
  going to change, you've got to have that mindset that I don't
• 49:19
  know what the future is going to hold.
• 49:20
  Yeah, but if I, but I know if I accumulate tools and I know if I
• 49:23
  accumulate skills that I'll be able to solve problems and, and,
• 49:27
  and having that mindset I think is super important.
• 49:29
  Yeah, you wrote a book last year, right?
• 49:32
  I did called Optics. Called Optics.
• 49:34
  Yeah, that story of Fu Manchu is in there.
• 49:35
  So is it cool? Amazon bestseller?
• 49:37
  Yeah, maybe it's another bestseller I don't know about,
• 49:39
  but it's at least that, yeah. What made you write a book and
• 49:42
  how is it? Is writing a book worth it?
• 49:45
  Hasn't done anything for your business that you're like, man,
• 49:47
  I'm looking back, that was so worth it.
• 49:48
  That's, that's a, that's a great question. 2 great questions.
• 49:51
  So, so I think the process of writing the book was really
• 49:56
  healthy for me. So that was actually the second
• 49:59
  book. It was an evolution of the first
• 50:00
  book. So, so it was kind of taking
• 50:03
  the, the stuff that I started writing and framing out over the
• 50:06
  course of about 10 years. The, the first book was called
• 50:09
  from orangutan, the rocket scientist included.
• 50:12
  That was the, the, the, but so optics was really an evolution
• 50:16
  of that and, and some additional ideas and concepts.
• 50:19
  So the, the process of writing the book was incredibly
• 50:22
  clarifying to me about thinking about what problem do I solve
• 50:26
  and how do we solve those problems and, and and what does
• 50:30
  my framework look like and what do I have to share with the
• 50:32
  world like so. So all the time and energy that
• 50:35
  I put into writing the book, I think was incredibly.
• 50:38
  That's what I say for creating content.
• 50:40
  It forces you to get clear on your story, your positioning,
• 50:42
  how you communicate your value prop, so many other benefits.
• 50:46
  And just, I make video, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah.
• 50:48
  Yeah, 100%. So that clarity I think was
• 50:50
  super important. The on the back end of it, you
• 50:53
  know, having an Amazon bestseller and, and having the
• 50:55
  credibility and, and being able to send it out to prospective
• 50:58
  clients or you know, things like that.
• 51:00
  I think, I think it's, it's beneficial for the business and
• 51:04
  I I think it's, I think it's good.
• 51:08
  Has it really changed all of my business and made it 10 times
• 51:14
  more successful Right I. Don't know.
• 51:16
  Yeah, maybe, maybe not, right. I definitely have clients that
• 51:20
  came as a result of being at a book talk that I did to a group
• 51:26
  of executives or whatever. I've one of the, I've got a
• 51:28
  client now for about 3 years from the first book, a really,
• 51:32
  really great client right here in the area that that came to
• 51:36
  one of my book talks and said and literally emailed me the
• 51:40
  next day and said, hey, I think you could help us.
• 51:43
  And and that's turned into a 3-4 year relationship now.
• 51:46
  Wow, that's incredible you work with companies that long.
• 51:48
  Yeah, really. So I would think you come and
• 51:51
  fix a problem that's kind of like all right.
• 51:53
  So, well, so, but there's stuff on the back end, right?
• 51:55
  So, so the outsourcing type work, I got it.
• 51:58
  So if you, if you think about that consulting at the beginning
• 52:00
  to get people aligned and on the same page, the, the, the
• 52:04
  software to enable that work streams and documentation and
• 52:07
  things like that. That's an ongoing thing that
• 52:09
  I've got some clients who paying licensing fee just monthly just
• 52:12
  to document their processes and things like that.
• 52:15
  But then the outsourcing piece of it really can turn into long.
• 52:19
  My longest term client now is for before COVID, I mean 20,
• 52:25
  2018 maybe. Wow somewhere around 2018.
• 52:28
  Then there I had a I had a call with them this morning and.
• 52:30
  One of my team members, wow, that's incredible, man.
• 52:32
  So I so you might play. I love.
• 52:34
  Long term relationships. Heck yeah, man, that's.
• 52:36
  Right. That's that's amazing.
• 52:37
  So you might put like a customer service team around them or
• 52:39
  something like that or. We might do some finance work or
• 52:43
  as they document processes, if you document them well enough
• 52:48
  that they can be outsourced, then we've got that team to to
• 52:51
  support on the back. End.
• 52:52
  Wow. That's really cool.
• 52:54
  Wow. And so, OK, so the book was a
• 52:56
  good process. It sounds like you learned a lot
• 52:58
  to that process. And it's been I think an asset
• 53:01
  on the back end too, right? 100 credibility builder.
• 53:03
  It's a good asset to have. You can give them out.
• 53:05
  You know, does I think it definitely does build
• 53:07
  credibility. Is that what's working best for
• 53:10
  you right now from a marketing lead Gen. standpoint?
• 53:12
  Is it books? Is it referrals?
• 53:14
  Is it you've been in business 8 years, you know a lot of people?
• 53:16
  Is it LinkedIn like I'm curious. Yeah.
• 53:18
  So I, I have really leaned into the referrals and, and
• 53:24
  relationships. Yeah, I think, I think
• 53:26
  relationships and referrals is, is for sure the the best thing
• 53:32
  building those relationships with clients and leaning into
• 53:34
  what else can we do for you? How do we, how do we serve you
• 53:37
  more? That's a that's a big deal.
• 53:39
  That's I would say the biggest percentage of my growth this
• 53:42
  year has come from my top three clients going to them and
• 53:45
  saying, hey, we're leaning into outsourcing, we're leaning into
• 53:49
  this, here's some things we're doing and them giving us
• 53:51
  additional projects. That's that's been our biggest
• 53:53
  growth this year. Yeah.
• 53:54
  Let me ask you something real quick on the outsourcing.
• 53:57
  Is it a lot of people management or you also like managing a
• 54:00
  customer service program and then so I imagine people quit or
• 54:02
  leave and then you got to replace them.
• 54:04
  Is it because that's why I think?
• 54:05
  There's an aspect that we. We could be doing some of that
• 54:07
  too. And then I'm like, man, it's
• 54:08
  just like a lot of people management, yeah.
• 54:10
  So, so I I'm fortunate in that I lived there and my top 2
• 54:14
  managers there, yeah, my top two people in the Philippines have
• 54:17
  been working with me since back in my corporate.
• 54:21
  Days. Wow.
• 54:22
  So, and even at that time, both of them had five to 10 years of
• 54:25
  corporate experience. So, so my top 2 managers in the,
• 54:29
  in the Philippines have 15 plus years of corporate experience
• 54:32
  working with American companies. I've got 10 years of experience
• 54:35
  with both of them. So and and they were managers.
• 54:38
  So they run the show for it, Yeah.
• 54:40
  So, so in terms of people management, they're just
• 54:42
  exceptional. And so our ability to train
• 54:46
  people and on board people, I don't have much attrition like
• 54:50
  there, there is in the outsourcing world, there can be
• 54:53
  a lot of turnover. But because everybody is using
• 54:57
  our software platform to document and train, what that
• 55:01
  means is we're also able to cross train people so that if we
• 55:03
  lose somebody, right, like I'm so focused on process, yeah,
• 55:07
  that we've got all those. You live what you teach, right?
• 55:10
  Yeah. Like we're living with, like our
• 55:12
  company runs on optics. Yeah, right.
• 55:14
  That's cool. That's, that's something that I
• 55:17
  have been incredibly adamant over the past few years as we
• 55:20
  refine the software that if we're doing things in Google
• 55:23
  Sheets and we're like, oh, but that process, we just document
• 55:27
  what that means is that our technology team needs to solve
• 55:30
  something, right? Because we need to run on
• 55:33
  optics. If we're going to teach other
• 55:34
  companies to run on optics, we need to run on optics.
• 55:37
  So all of our purpose, scope gaps, actions, all of our work
• 55:40
  streams, all of our, you know, SOP job breakdowns, we call
• 55:44
  them, all those things are documented there and they get
• 55:46
  refined. So when I do a product demo for
• 55:48
  a customer, I can, I can pull it up and show them our optics, how
• 55:53
  our company runs and and I think that brings credibility too for.
• 55:58
  Sure. Yeah, I'm not just telling you
• 55:59
  what to do. Yeah, here's I'll actually show
• 56:02
  you my company's instance. Of optics, we're the same way.
• 56:04
  We do live it. We obviously live there.
• 56:06
  You know, like I'll, I'll show you exactly.
• 56:08
  And, and when I open it up, I'll probably see something that our
• 56:11
  team can do better. Yeah.
• 56:12
  Exactly as you probably always should, There's times.
• 56:15
  When I open it up, I'm like, this person hasn't complete this
• 56:17
  action. It's been out there for a yeah,
• 56:18
  couple of months. You know, I'm willing to expose
• 56:22
  that to my clients because that's real life.
• 56:24
  And I think the transparency, the real life, this is who we
• 56:28
  are, this is how we operate and and this is how we refine.
• 56:33
  I think is is an example for our clients as well.
• 56:36
  So Ryan, what are you doing all this for?
• 56:39
  Like, what's kind of the purpose?
• 56:41
  You know, like you stop and think about that and reflect.
• 56:43
  Like, what am I doing? You know, like, why am I doing
• 56:45
  all this? You know, like, what is it?
• 56:47
  What does it mean for you? Because you as you know, as
• 56:50
  entrepreneurs, it's easy to be like the next phase and scale
• 56:52
  and this and that. It's like, what am I building
• 56:55
  though? Like, you know.
• 56:57
  Yeah, I do. I do sit and reflect on that
• 57:00
  sometimes. I bet you do, yeah.
• 57:03
  I started my first company when I was. 15 years old.
• 57:06
  Yeah, and your brother still runs it today.
• 57:08
  I I saw 2 miles from. Here.
• 57:10
  Oh, is he? That's funny.
• 57:12
  He's got about 50 trucks now. The lawn care.
• 57:14
  Lawn care company, Yeah. So they do fertilizing, you
• 57:17
  know, mosquito spraying. So it's evolved like that was
• 57:20
  not the company I built, right? So I don't take credit.
• 57:22
  Sure, right. But I started that company 30
• 57:26
  years ago. Yeah, it's over 30 years ago.
• 57:29
  Wow. And, and so I had this
• 57:31
  entrepreneurial spirit when I was young and then I went and
• 57:35
  got degrees, you know, start working this corporate role and
• 57:37
  things like that. And, and I found that it was
• 57:43
  very frustrating. I I like the creative, I like
• 57:45
  building something. Yeah, me too, right.
• 57:47
  So why, why am I doing this today?
• 57:50
  There's options, right? I left the great corporate role.
• 57:54
  I, I turned down an opportunity to move to Germany, like I was
• 57:58
  in Germany. I said yes, and I called my
• 58:00
  wife. There's other.
• 58:02
  There's there's always options in life.
• 58:03
  Yeah, for sure. So why am I doing what I'm
• 58:05
  doing? I wanted to build something.
• 58:07
  I was like, I want to build something.
• 58:09
  I've got some ideas. Let's see if we can make this
• 58:11
  work. And here we are eight years
• 58:13
  later. Wow.
• 58:15
  So I like building. I like building, right?
• 58:17
  That's that's the purpose. I think that's important too, is
• 58:19
  know, know why you're doing it and doing it for your you and
• 58:22
  your life, not because you think other people want you to.
• 58:26
  You know, you're want to be perceived as a certain way in
• 58:28
  society or you want to chase some arbitrary.
• 58:30
  It's like do it because you love to do it and it brings you
• 58:33
  fulfillment and hopefully provides a good life for
• 58:35
  yourself and your family. And that's a good enough reason,
• 58:37
  man, right there. I think the the outsourcing, so
• 58:40
  the software, the the book, all that stuff like like building
• 58:44
  something, the outsourcing piece of it.
• 58:46
  I'm I sort of alluded to this earlier.
• 58:48
  They, I love the people in the Philippines and making an impact
• 58:55
  on them and their lives and, and pouring into other people is, is
• 59:02
  important to me. And I'll give a quick example to
• 59:05
  a couple years ago on the 4th of July, they took off.
• 59:07
  They're like, and, and they asked me for some budget and
• 59:10
  they went and up into like the rural provinces and they were
• 59:15
  giving out school supplies to the kids, right?
• 59:17
  So, so the place that they went to buy the school supplies just
• 59:23
  the day before had been robbed. And so there was like, they told
• 59:27
  me this whole story about these. They come in with a budget.
• 59:29
  They're like, we're going to buy school supplies to give the
• 59:31
  kids. And the shop told them like
• 59:33
  there were employees with tears and like, we just lost all of
• 59:36
  our money yesterday and they stole all our money.
• 59:38
  And so that you can make such an impact in the world if you pour
• 59:42
  into people. And I think AI, we're going to
• 59:46
  leverage it, we're going to use it.
• 59:48
  It's there, but we got to use it as a tool to impact people if we
• 59:52
  don't impact people. That's right, man.
• 59:53
  Why do it? So I think I love building.
• 59:55
  I love the people in the Philippines.
• 59:57
  Let's let's figure something out.
• 59:58
  Well, that's the fulfillment part, right?
• 1:00:00
  Like there has to be some level of fulfillment of the things
• 1:00:02
  that you're doing. Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Or at least it's more fun when there is.
• 1:00:05
  No 100%. You know, so I can see why you
• 1:00:08
  did, you've done so well, Ryan, because you you've got the
• 1:00:10
  processes, the systems, all us up down.
• 1:00:13
  But I can see it in this conversation that you have the
• 1:00:15
  people side and the heart side and that goes a long freaking
• 1:00:18
  way. So man, I appreciate you doing
• 1:00:20
  this. Dude.
• 1:00:20
  This is a good time. I could sit and talk to you for
• 1:00:22
  a few hours. Where can people find you,
• 1:00:24
  connect with you, learn more about what you and you guys do?
• 1:00:26
  Yeah, I love connecting with people on LinkedIn, so you can
• 1:00:28
  look me up Ryan C Weiss on on LinkedIn.
• 1:00:31
  I use my middle initial in there.
• 1:00:32
  It's a little bit easier to find.
• 1:00:34
  If you go to epsoptics.com, you can find about our company and
• 1:00:38
  about what we do or send me an e-mail.
• 1:00:41
  So Ryan epszone.com and be happy to connect and chat and talk and
• 1:00:48
  see what problems we can solve together.
• 1:00:50
  Cool, we'll link all that stuff in the description notes too, so
• 1:00:53
  appreciate being on the show.