Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to H. Romney. Rodney talks for the superstars.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Love and Business.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: I am Britt Arnold, president of Tagler Construction and supply.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: And I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold packaging and Arnold Automation.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: And today we are going to be getting into big life transformations and how to navigate them when they seem to be all happening at the same time. And I like the idea of silver linings and finding growth and opportunity in these challenges. And why we decided to do this topic is because it's very relevant right now. And we are in the middle of quite a few big transitions and transformations. Even in that, obviously, we've talked many times about having a 14 week old as of today at home, and then also going through some major business transitions. And it seems like a lot is happening all at once, both very good things. And then also seems like we're taking punches, as you said, from every angle. And we were, you know, sometimes I think it looks like these are a bit rehearsed. We've thought about these topics. We're coming here all Cheerio and everything's great. And we have all this figured out as we talk about it today. We don't have any of this planned. We're talking about, as I said, because it's relevant, it's smacking us in the face real time. And we're gonna. This is gonna be a bit of a riff. Not rehearsed, not that any of them are rehearsed, but they're a little bit more structured. So I just wanna really, this is some therapy for us, some therapeutic time and to work through it live. So you are going to probably see some, some pauses, some things that don't come out grammatically correct. Cause I'm trying to process, literally some things that have happened just in the last 2 hours.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: So likewise. But I do think the one thing I'll say, I do think you and I do a pretty good job of when we're going through some really big transitions and challenges of being able to identify what's happening and turn them into something positive. And I do feel like we do that, and I'm hoping we can continue to do that as we work through some of these stuff. So, anyway, any thoughts on that very long introduction?
[00:02:32] Speaker A: No, no. I think just to echo what you said today, which is a little atypical for how limited to no prep, I mean, coming straight into the podcast room, but with the idea of the show must go on, you know, like it would have been easy to quit and or not shoot this episode today. And say, we'll catch it another day. But instead we said, you know what this is? This is part of what being an entrepreneur looks like. This is what part of running a small business looks like, and we need to get our ass in that podcast room and share exactly what's going on right this second.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny you said that, because one of the things I have on here is abandonment, as I was just jotting some things down right when we sat down, because when things, a lot of things are happening at one especially big life transitions, and I would talk to, say, having a 14 week old big life transition, and then some of the things that are happening in our businesses are potentially really big transitions. It's easy to get cloudy as we talk about and also make really rash decisions and abandon everything and every routine and everything you're committed to. And that could have been today, like you said, or it could be just, you know, the structure you have at home or the healthy habits. It's like, okay, I've got to eliminate everything right now and just tend to all these little challenges. And that's so easy to do. And I'm reminding myself, like, just stay the course, do what you always do. And, yeah, we're gonna have to spend some extra time on these things, for sure, that we're working through, but I don't have to abandon all ships and change course dramatically. Which is your initial reaction to, like, let me solve this now. But I'm like, take a breath, like, and it's gonna be okay. We're gonna figure this out.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah. I think what happens in, certainly in our organization, and I would imagine other organizations, organizations, too, there are times when you are going through stress, and for whatever reason, your organization fails the stress test, you just fail. And I'll give you some very specific examples.
Our manufacturing division right now is failing a stress test, and it's for a favorable reason. And that reason is that we are 30% ahead of what we had forecasted to do. And if there's a bad part of that, it's that we had forecasted to slide, to actually lose business or do less revenue in 2024 than we did 2023, which sucks. Like, no one ever wants to do that. But when you're running a manufacturing business, you have to be honest about it, because you have to plan your capacity accordingly. So you don't just hope that it comes in and have capacity. And for us, that means headcount and payroll costs and hope that it comes in. But in a situation where you're wrong, you know, you forecasted light and all of a sudden you have business coming in that was unanticipated. It wasn't on the radar because you tapped into some opportunities that you hadn't seen when you did your forecasting, that they had a very short duration in sales cycle. And you winden, and no one saw those wins coming. And in a business like our manufacturing, it's pretty nutsy boltsy, but might as well tell everybody what we're talking about. It takes a while to add that capacity. There's training. We don't just turn a dial on the machine and we make more widgets. It's a much more manual process.
If it happens to be new designs, they can take longer to assimilate into the plant to make sure we're making them correctly. And in this moment, we are failing a stress test. And what made me think about that is you talking about abandoned, right?
And I promise you, I tell lots of stories about young Mc Arnold who would have been very tempted to abandon certain things or run head on into the fire, and I would have just gotten burned instead of falling back on. The first thing we look at is process, and then we look at training, and then we look at execution. And in this situation, we realized that our process was broken, or at least it wasn't capable of standing up to this type of stress. I didn't even have to get to training and execution. We had to go work on the process and make sure that we had that correct. But it takes time. It takes so much time. And the thing that is most stressful is your lead times go out, you start to let customers down.
If you are bringing on new people to try to rally to the demand and you're trying to create capacity, you experience quality problems, especially for what we do, which is rather manual, unfortunately. Probably too much tribal knowledge embedded into it. So then you throw in some quality problems and you didn't have time to make it the first time. You definitely didn't have time to make it twice. And it just starts to snowball and, you know, then the customers are stressed out because when you're in packaging, your customers don't ship their widgets. If you don't give them the box, they gotta have the widget box. And no one, none of our customers, and certainly the people in the corner office at our customers want to find out that they didn't make a revenue goal because of a box. They just don't. Nobody has any tolerance for that whatsoever. It can have this snowball effect that puts extreme pressure on the organization and all of the people involved who are showing up every day and busting their ass and working hard with all the best intentions, and next thing you know, you're just. You know, the water has come in, and it's up to your neck, and you are trying to figure out how to swim and deploy more lifeboats at the same time and grab your buddy, and it's challenging.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
So in these moments when there are so many moving pieces and you're working through all these challenges that you didn't foresee and that you didn't plan for, you said, I take a step back instead of running to the fire and getting burnt.
When you say take a step back, what does that actually mean? Like. Cause there's so many people that are going through these, like, really big challenges, and I think it would be helpful to identify, like, how you're navigating it or how you have in the past to get through these.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So, in this case, taking a step back is exactly what I just articulated for a second, which was looking at the process first. It's, you know, I think a lot of people would assume that when you're 91 years old that all of your processes are solid and maybe even bulletproof, and they're not. The world changes too fast. There's far too many things that are dynamic, including the humans that work in those processes and the turnover that happens inside of businesses and that whole part. So the first thing is to step back and look at the process. And we quickly identified that our process was never really built to handle a 30%. I say miss in a good way. Right. We missed our. We under forecasted by 30% and applied or assigned those resources. And part of those resources was the process that we were going to run and the resources we were going to make available. And the first thing is to just start looking at the process and probably going to be some athletic references today. So I apologize. But really looking at the playbook and the players and the plays, and that's exactly how we refer to it, I tend to borrow a number of things in moments like this that are very relatable. So the first thing I said to our team is, look, our patient, our manufacturing division right now is in intensive care. And when you have. And that means something to everybody. If I say that, it means what it means that you pay a lot of attention to it. It means that your communication around the patient goes up. Right. You know, nurses don't just walk by each other. They stop and they articulate what's going on with the patient. And they do it in a way that is far more intentional than if you are stable. You know, it wouldn't have not. So the first thing we do is we, you know, we declared the patient in a state of emergency in intensive care, and then we started to communicate around it. And then as we started to look at the symptoms and we got to process and started to realize that some of our symptoms were being caused by faulty process, which either means that our playbook was off a little bit of. And in this case, we realized that we didn't have our players in the right positions. The good thing was we had the players. I mean, sometimes you recognize a position that's unfilled and you don't have a player, and that's hard because now you got to go find a player and you've got to develop the role. Fortunately for us, we had players. We just didn't have them running the right place. So that slow down piece there is, okay, let's assess where we are and let's get the patient into intensive care. And that means a high level of scrutiny. So what that means for us is we already have a Monday operations meeting. So that now is woven into. We have check ins Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 730 to 08:05. And we go through an agenda that is timed to the minute seven to 07:05. We talk about 07:05 to 710. And I'm telling you, we stay on point with this schedule. And early, it was a mess. 45 minutes, hour. It was a mess. And now we have this cadence going where we are hitting those marks in those conversations with some of which are five minutes. So it was everything you would do to keep a patient that was in intensive care from dying and not. Yeah. And that's the key, too, right? The cure can't kill the patient. Right. You're working on the cure. You can't kill the patient. And what that would look like is losing a massive customer because you let them down or losing an incredibly valuable teammate because you wore them out or burned them out, or you were unreasonable or unrealistic with expectations because you were trying to. It's like we didn't get here in a second, but many people would try to solve for it in a second. And that's when you start to stress the organization more than it already is. And you can have pieces of it just falling off if you're not careful. And that could be customers or valuable employees.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: So how. And this is a question for you, and I'm wondering for myself in. Cause I'm in a different but similar situation in that we're both in the same situation. We just had a child, and that's. We're adjusting to schedule, and that's obviously Moxxi is a priority and the other girls as well, but she's the new part of the situation and the adjustment of that schedule, by the way, which we just started getting into some kind of schedule, I feel. But now you have unforeseen challenges to work through in your business that inevitably require a lot of your time as the owner and the president. So now you're taking care of what your normal job responsibilities are, a new child, and other challenges on top of that that require more time in your business.
How are you figuring out this? I mean, there's only so much time in the day. How are you allotting that time during this critical period? Because in my head, I'm just thinking about everything that I've now have to solve inside my business, on top of adjusting to a new schedule at home, in our household right now, and how that's all going to pan out and work and, yeah, I'll stop there because I. I'll just drag on.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: I mean, it's a shame we didn't pull our couch in here. We could. This is a conversation we'd have on the couch right as we were talking through this and sharing challenges, or I, you know, you called me out of the back and said, you're not going to believe this, but. And I wish we could get into some specifics, and we will differently.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: We can. We can't now.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: We can't now. But I think one of the things you said that just hit me is how would. How would you go about it when you're sitting there thinking, I have to solve for all of this. And I think one of the things is to realize that you may not have to solve for it. So what I have done in any number of situations, especially recently, is really leaned on my trusted advisors and leaned on my war room. And what does that mean? Let's just say that we have, and this has not happened, thank goodness. But let's say we did stress one of our teammates out, and they said, yeah, you know what? Enough is enough. I'm out. I just, you know, this is not for me anymore. I'm tired, and I'm going to go try something different. Just make something up.
You know, then I might. While I'm generally reluctant to use headhunters or staffing agencies of some kind, that might be something that I would reach for in that moment. Is it my preference? No. Am I even loath at times to spend that money? I am, but when I stack it all up and I look at the amount of bandwidth that I have, that's maybe a choice that I would make. Then the next thing I do is I reach out to my two or three most trusted advisors in that space, whatever that space is. And for me, it can be a lot of different spaces. We have a financial space and we have a manufacturing space, and I have two to three people that I trust in each one of those disciplines, and I call them immediately. And I was on the phone last night with both of them working through different challenges. It sounded like this, right? You're not gonna believe this, but, and that's how I felt. I mean, some of the things we've worked on blindsided me. Shame on me. Should try to never be blindsided in your own organization. But as you get larger and you have more people and you're trusting processes and responsibilities to a larger group, then you don't watch everything. You don't have.
I had my direct fingerprints on so many things for so long, and that changes as you grow. And I would say, shame on me for not seeing it. It's not reasonable that you would see everything. I mean, you're going to get surprised. You have to miss the bombs. You can't get surprised by a bomb. But what I've done is look at and say, all right, the very first thing I do too, is I try to understand timing wise where the end game is. And sometimes if, say, an employee decides to leave you, they say, I'm leaving on the third. Right. And, you know. Right. I've got, you know, Tommy's decided that he's, you know, gonna pursue other things and he told, not really, no, this is, this is not what we're talking about today. I use Tommy because he's stuck with us, but at least that from a milestoning perspective. I know specifically what I have to do. And I have x number of calendar days, and it's calendar days. Sunday night, Saturday night, Monday at two in the morning, you know, this morning I wakened with things on my mind and got out of bed at 145 and just leveraged that time.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: I created additional bandwidth by working while everybody was sleeping.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: So lack of sleep.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah, sure, absolutely. Yeah, that is, yeah, absolutely. That, that is one of the things that will get sacrificed in these moments without question.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: And that I'm trying, I'm trying to figure it out because the one thing we talked about abandonment and what I. What's really important to me, too, because I will get a. Burnt out's not the word, but even more stress if I abandon everything. Like, and I'm specifically talking about, like, if I stop my workouts or stop running, that would cause even more stress for me. And, like, I don't want to abandon the things that are really important to me and make. I feel, make me better. And I'm sure you have certain things, too, that you like, that's important not to abandon. Cause you could say, we'll easily just cut it out of that. Like, there are certain things I want, I rely on, I need, but it's going to have to come from somewhere, certainly. I don't want it to come from my time with Moxxi, but you've got, and it will. Some of it will be pulled from sleep, for sure. That's always the first to go for us, but that's not enough for where I am right now. So I think one of the discussions we were having right before this in my office was that, like, listen, this is gonna be an ebb and flow, and not that you're gonna be. There might be more time that you get to spend with Moxie in some phases, and the business might need a little bit more here and there, and that's okay. Like, it's never going to be this perfect equation where you have x amount of time at home spending with moxie or doing whatever with her, and you're spending this amount of time in the business. Like, that is not reality. That's not how it works. And sometimes one of them requires. Not that they're equal. I'm not trying to say they're equal, because they're not to me. But family will always be first and more important. However, sometimes each of them require more time and more effort. And in this particular phase, in the next few months, like, the business is going to require just more time of me being in it in the trenches. And I know that, and I need to mentally be okay and accept the fact that that is going to be pulled from other things that are very important to me, and that's okay. And I think accepting that, like, that's okay, and that's part of, you know, life and, like, reality, everything we think, like everything else, is theoretical, but in that adjustment, and then how can I make those shifts in my time and where that time's allocated in a way that gets me to a point where I'm not only adjusting, but I'm thriving, and I'm coming out better for it. So in the time where I'm dedicating the extra time and hours in the business, how am I making it better than it was during this challenging moment? And I think that I always want to come out better through the struggle, come out better. The silver lining, as we're calling this.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I will tell you the other thing that. So with the older girls, here's an example. I actually will lean on them a little bit in spots where, while I might be missing some time to spend with them directly when we both get into these situations, but I'll call them. I'll call them more. I'll send a text. I'll send a text that I might not have because I had seen them and I actually tell them what's going on. Right. And that's something that can be beneficial. I mean, there are times, as a business owner, that things are sensitive and you can't just share them openly because there's timing around them or you're trying to work on a strategy because something's happened that could be destabilizing to the organization, whatever that might be. And you need to have a certain amount of it figured out before you socialize it.
The girls are in a cool spot because I can socialize almost anything with them. And at this age, now they're starting to get it. And I think it's, wow, dad, we'd love to have lunch with you, but that really sounds important and critical, and we're not going anywhere, and we'll be here on the other side, and that's been helpful. So I would just say, when appropriate, share those challenges.
Share them with trusted advisors.
I don't think anyone expects you to be perfect. And that it's certainly reasonable that in 91 years and as a startup and then into the eight year realm and the evolution that you're in, that's going to suck at times. And I think, I wasn't raised this way, certainly my father would probably be strongly against this, but it's okay to tell your trusted advisors it sucks right now. This sucks, guys. My buddies I was on the phone with last night, I told him, I said, man, it's been a little bit of a grind around here lately. We're going to get through it. And I will tell you, I have called a lot on our refuse to lose episode. That one, yeah. And that one has reminded me a lot of things where it's just like, you know, I'd really prefer not to dig into this personally right now. I don't know. I feel like my time is spent better elsewhere. But those weren't that moments. I mean, I am dirty. Every day I come home, I am on the plant floor, and I am putting boxes together, and I'm checking tolerances, and I am swinging a hammer where appropriate, and I am training and teaching. If I see two new employees working on something and it looks like they're a little off with their. Their craftsmanship or how they're approaching, I will stop and introduce myself at times. I mean, some of them are so new, I haven't passed them in the plant yet. I will stop and introduce myself and say, let me show you a couple things about box making. Here's what we've done historically and been very successful. And this will probably save you a little time, have a better outcome, and could even be a little bit safer for you. So I have been in the weeds to that level for the last 30 days.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And so much of this is about just as we always get into aligning expectations and just framework. So, for me, we already talked about in the last two episodes, I believe. I think it's already hard enough being a mom and a parent general, but I think more for a mom that owns a business. We already have an au pair during the day, and it's just like that guilt of not being home with her, not as much. And now it's not only that we're going to have help during the day. So now it's like, okay, well, during that seven to five, that's going to be the normal hours I work. Well, now I need all the extra hours that are going to be required. So are we going to have to bring in additional help beyond those hours? Probably.
And that's, to me, very hard to get around. Like, that's as a new mom already adjusting and feeling guilt here and there, which every new mom will, and then saying, and now I've got to even take more time. But if I reframe it in my mind, this is real time as I'm going through it. Okay, well, what does that look like? Maybe that looks like more time with our support system, which is family. So, okay. It's just more time for Moxxi to spend with her aunt and her grandparents. That's amazing time. So just trying to shift that in my head and really, for me, as I'm sure everybody can pick up on it, it's like reassurance that this is okay and that this is required. I also know having stable, thriving business is very important for her and for our family, and that's an important financial stability and just stability in general.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: So your mental health, right? I mean, you thrive on being in the business world and competing in the business world. So as hard as it is, at times, your mental health is benefited by being in the game.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Versus out of the game.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: And, you know, I've talked about having other, like, wanting to run an ultra marathon and like, like, I don't want to change the goals and everything, but I have to figure out how to make it all work and do it in a way that is beneficial for everybody and that I can without feeling, like, tremendous guilt in doing it. And that's what I'm working towards. And I don't know how it's all gonna shake out and I don't know how it's all gonna get done. But I know that we will make the adjustments together as a team. And that's why it's great for you and I to be in similar positions at all times, or at least understanding very, very intimately of what each are going through and our businesses and our home life, that we can work together through it and make sure we come out on top in the end.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: The thing that I think, too, that I struggled with early, too, when it dawned on me, and listen, there was noise, I'll stay on the manufacturing piece because I hope the guys listen to this, because we've been living it together.
And I think one, I had to really reset myself on one of our values here is positivity. And I promise you I was not positive for any parts of that. And I think I showed up, maybe the word is maybe a little bratty. And I'll put it into context where I was doing the parts of my job that I'm really good at and really like, you know, the things you like, you generally tend to be good at. I was in the field, I was with customers, and, I don't know, felt like I was yanked out of that. To come back inside, if you will, and deal with an issue that I thought either was under control or should have been under control. And as we were going through the process and we were figuring out why we weren't being successful, my frustration at times went up even higher, because my mentality was, we're better than this. We've been doing this long enough that we shouldn't be subject to these types of shortfalls. But if I look at the team and I look at the collective experience and the low end and the high end and the average, who gives a shit how old you are. It doesn't matter if you're 91 years. There's companies that could be there 91 months that have more tenure than we do at any moment, and they are out of executing us and their processes are better. And I had to really dial myself in on the positivity because I was, I was a bit of a brutal asshole in spots. And, you know, our teams are pretty tough and they're pretty resilient and. But they were feeling it. They didn't want to suck. You know, they weren't, they weren't trying to get it wrong or put the business or certain customers in jeopardy. So piling on at that moment was the exact wrong response. So it's a, you know, in this moment, just have to get stay positive. And I don't mean Pollyanna positive. Like, if, you know, like, hope is a strategy, it's not. Hope is not a strategy, but at the same time, it's going to be hard to be the type of leader that you need to be. If you constantly show up, toxic or negative, that definitely won't work. So that was something else. I just sharing out loud something else. I caught myself in the middle of those moments doing or, you know, coming onto a call and, you know, the data was terrible early. We just started the process, and I kept coming in to a patient whose oxygen levels were low and whose blood pressure was low, and all of the stats and all of the vital signs that we were looking at sucked. Well, of course they sucked. We only been working on the patient for two minutes or two days or whatever it was, and that was frustrating to me.
I was expecting revolutionary change.
That's wrong. You know, I mean, and I finally said, you know what, guys? We didn't get here in a second, and we're not going to fix it in a second. And I need to. I need to change my outlook around this, and. And we're going to do this together. I think it was so bad, I gotten so bad that, that some of the teammates felt like their jobs were in jeopardy and they weren't to me, like, they weren't. But if I were to fly on the wall and listen to the conversations, I would have said, hmm, I wonder. I wonder who could be. Without a doubt, I a job in the foreseeable future. And then I finally said to everybody in the room, we're going to fix this, and we're doing with this exact team, period. End of story. And then I, like, I felt this collective sigh or collective unburdening in the room, and then with that weight off. We were able, actually, to get to work and do stuff, and so just sharing things that I. That I had been away from for a while, you know, this. This was a little unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. I haven't had to dig back into this level, but, you know, the team needed help. They were struggling. They were, they. We'd gotten off track a little bit, and, man, kudos to them. They have gotten back on track, and there's still a lot of work to do. We've identified, we're going to rally resources and spots things that weren't on the radar. You know, we, until we really did this soul searching of why we sucked, we didn't realize that we needed more vitamin D and that we needed some more, and we needed some more. And now we at least we identified it and we have the resources to infuse it, and that's what we're working on, and that all of a sudden becomes exciting. That's the opposite of where we were before.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's really important, too, to emphasize that, not Pollyanna, because you have to be realistic. I think you have to be honest and realistic at what you are trying to. The diagnosis and what you're trying to fix. However, we have, every person on the planet has the ability to stay positive. Some situations and people have way harder circumstances than others, but that's in our control. And I'm reminding myself in this moment that to stay positive, and I will, and I think I tend to do that. And what I'm thinking about right now is how can I make this outcome better than we are right now?
And I'm excited to actually get, even though it's gonna be so much more work to get back into the trenches in some of the things that I'm going to need to do, because I think it's going to be bringing back and I'm probably going to identify a lot of things that we can change that I just have been a little bit removed from and that I just didn't even know were happening. It might be that opportunity to get.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Back into it, or you will identify opportunities, for sure. You absolutely will.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: And I think that's identify opportunities. Turn this into an opportunity.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: That's right. Because there are things. There are certain things that, from a visionary perspective, that it sucks, but only the founder will find.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: And it's an opportunity, I know right now to cut away some of the fat, for sure.
And that's relevant to many different things going on inside the business, but cut out some of the fat, get a little bit leaner and hold on to what's really good and then just enhance that and then add to where, where we need to. But, you know, it's going to be a challenge, but that's what I'm looking at. How can we get better? And this is going to force that. And sometimes it is the hardest situations where you get into it and unfortunately, like, you don't want to, you don't want to get into these situations, but it's the only way you can get better. Sometimes it's like, it's like the forced challenge and discomfort, but we've got, it's just the reality of being a business owner and being in a small business or any business, but particularly a small business where we have so much more responsibility and just a lot more accountability.
So what I'm going to be doing is really looking at our, as you said, the war room and the support system and trying to wrap my, you know, just wrap my arms around that team and for this moment in time. Because as you always refer to the old MC Arnold, the old Brit would just say, listen, I'm gonna figure this out all myself and it would take me forever and I would get it wrong. Instead of bringing in the right people that can help and help expedite this thing where it needs to go quicker and in the right direction. And so that will be my first, I think, like, my immediate move is to bring in that support system, explain what's going on and use the resources that we've worked so hard to have and to create.
And then, you know, that communication piece, just be very open and very honest. And that's hard. That's hard when you're going through challenges because sometimes it can feel like you are, you are. What's the word? I I don't know. It's like you're explaining some of your shortcomings or where you failed or your weaknesses, and that is all part of it. Sure.
That's a part of it. But the second you can do that and explain, I think that's the only way you can get real help because you have to let other people in.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Look, let's go back to one of, let's go back to our athletic stuff because we both get it right. I mean, if you missed a trap that allow the other team to score the game winning goal, you'd be going back and working on trapping the ball, right. That would be akin to standing in front of your soccer team and saying, you know, my, my trapping skills aren't good enough. And I thought I knew how to trap. And I realized in that moment, I actually don't know how to trap. And I'm going to go seek out someone who's better at it than I am and they're going to teach me the proper form and then I'm going to go work my ass off at it. Like there's an easy comparison. It's funny, I just wrote down a note. I just figured out a problem I had while we were having this conversation and I'm going to get past it.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Well, explain. Can you explain?
[00:34:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I will.
So one of the process problems that we have in manufacturing is we don't have a good scheduling software system. And by the way, that wasn't new. We knew that it was always a problem that our main, our main software system only does so much to support the manufacturing business. And when it comes time to schedule that we go to excel. And we tried many, many times to solve for it, but there wasn't a product that plugged in the way we need it to. I mean, if you look at our manufacturing business, we are low volume, high mix, discrete manufacturing. Like that's nerdy as shit. But if you're a manufacturer, you know what I mean?
That's what we are.
There just wasn't, and I know through exhaustive search, there wasn't a software product that plugged into there correctly. Were there software systems? Yes. They either were wildly expensive. We're going to having us hire people to watch it work. So just the cost of the software alone, then the headcount we had, or they wanted to manage our inventory, which we didn't need. It had features and functionality that we couldn't turn off and didn't need and would have been redundant. So any number of reasons that our needs in the industry wasn't aligned. Now we think we found a product that is aligned, but my patient is on the intensive care table. I can't take any.
I don't have anybody to give the patient vitamin D, right? But I know what I need. It's vitamin D called a scheduling system. But I don't have anybody available. A, first of all, I don't really have quite the expertise in house yet as a master of that software, nor do I have the bandwidth.
I'm missing skill and time.
And my first thought was who at the software company knows somebody that I can pay to help us bring this live and get it off the ground? So I'm not just sitting here going, well, I've got problems in the plant because I can't schedule. And I can't schedule because I've got problems in the plant. You know, how do I get over that hump? And the answer is going to be, I'm going to ask the person from the software company who they have as a consultant or somebody that has extra time that will come into our building either actually or remotely, and help us get our 150 most important and most frequent jobs documented so we can get off the ground and get going. So that's the note that I made of, who can I call that? I know. And somehow I hadn't gotten there. I'd be like, well, Jesus, Mick, that's pretty stupid. Software companies have consultants. I hadn't gotten there. Mick was going to take it on at one, like at 230 this morning, I was looking at the software and, but part of it is, in the trial, we have to still make sure and validate that it's right. But when it's time to go and go live, I look around the organization. I don't have anybody with, with skill and time to be able to get us where we need to go. So I would just sit and spin. You know, I won't get the scheduling piece figured out because of bandwidth, and I can't create any new bandwidth because I can't automate that process called scheduling. So that's what I was writing down over here.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: One of the notes I have written down is boundaries. And I wrote that down. And now I'm trying to think to myself, I know that's an important part of this process, but I don't really, I don't really exactly know why I wrote it down, but I know it's important part of this process because we knowing exactly like these are so critical right now, they have to have our utmost priority and attention. And thus, because we have limited time and bandwidth, we have to have boundaries around other things to be able to get this done in the speed it needs to get done and the quality it needs to get done. How do you, and this is almost like an interview, but I'm asking you to help me. How do you establish those boundaries while you're going through stuff? Do you, and if you do, what does that look like? And what are the other things that you cut out to say? Like, this is what I need to focus on, because otherwise, I mean, we just, I'm trying to again and reiterate, like, how am I going to get this all done? And one of the things that comes to mind is like, boundaries, like saying, setting boundaries like this is not going to get touched. I'm not taking on this. This is a hard no. What does that look like for you?
[00:39:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so can I is just so I am on point here. Is boundary and priority relatively similar in this moment.
[00:39:23] Speaker B: You make it what you want it.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Okay? Yeah. So for me it would be. I would just use the word priority, but maybe boundaries. The same thing is, you know, with time as the ultimate finite resource. It is the ultimate finite resource. No matter what we do, nobody is making anymore.
It becomes about priority. And I'll give you an example. Right. We've talked. I have shared my singing adventure on our podcast. Well, I have not been to a singing lesson for a very long period of time. And it was because, you know, mox was. Was getting ready to be born. Summer was coming. I wanted to be able to, you know, the girls were getting out of school for the year in college and I wanted to spend. Be able to spend time with them. And I wasn't. I just wasn't willing to spend 2 hours, 30 minutes drive each way plus an hour there. I just wasn't willing to take that 2 hours. As much as I enjoyed it, there were things that I enjoyed more and were way more important. So that's an example of something that went to the sideline. Maybe it comes back at some point, maybe it doesn't. It's going to depend on my availability of disposable time and something that doesn't look as finite as my time right now. So that's one thing.
There are certain things like you bring up the point about things you have to do that are so critical to your mental health. Whatever those are. For me, I might decrease them a little bit. While if, you know, with all the time in the world, I'd like to do it for 2 hours, I'll just make something up. It might become an hour. It might become an hour and a half. I will change that. Or I will do something to create bandwidth. Sleep will go. We've talked about alcohol. Something on here as one where it's certainly wonderful and a great way for us to blow off steam.
We are not at our highest level of productivity on Saturday after a really fun Friday and, you know, part of that's age and whatever else. So that's a choice that we. That, you know, that I might make on Friday to make sure that I am absolutely at my sharpest on Saturday. Either I get up at the same time I do on a weekday, or I'm not foggy or hazy or not dozing off or feel the need to take that nap. So those are all the types of things that will come under a very high level of scrutiny. And the ones that are below the value line will get cut out for sure or significantly reduced. And I think that value line becomes the piece. Right. Everybody's got their own value line of what they're willing to invest for their return. And for me right now, just pick singing. Right. That's an easy one. The time investment isn't anywhere remotely near the return as the other things that I have choices to make around.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: Right something.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: And I do.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: There's no wrong answer. I mean, that's your strategy and your approach.
And for me, you know, I'm thinking through maybe a possible way to attack this would be from a scheduling, almost batching standpoint. It's like from, you know, I sleep from this time to this time, it's not going to be perfect, but, and from this time to this time, I'm working out. And then from this time to this time, I am working on this specific challenge and I'm not answering emails. And then from this time, this time, it's in the projects and my business is so real time and there are orders going in and quotes that are due and very deadline heavy. So it's, that's not going to work out perfect. But I think from a scheduling perspective, I mean, I love structure. I thrive off of it. I like having a schedule. And if I don't do that, I'm not sure things are getting the amount of times that they should be as quickly as they need to. So that might be something to try. I've never really done. Have you ever done batching?
That's never really worked for me. I've always attempted and it's never worked.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: I would say that, but not intentionally. Where I just, you know where I use the word siloed, right? Where I siloed off blocks of time and dedicated them to very specific tasks.
What I do know is that email is incredibly disruptive. So for an example, if you just want to, if you want to call batching, I'll go the other way. Instead of doing this, I'm going to say not doing that. If you want to say batching is not looking at email like, I don't have the thing that pops up. Right. But man, it only takes me a second. If I'm swinging back by the inbox and I see one thing and there's a second, I could lose an hour of really good, productive time because a squirrel ran by called inbox. So, I mean, batching for me would look like not doing something or, you know, intentionally.
[00:44:11] Speaker B: That's it. That's it.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: There are times where I will leave my door closed when it's certainly closed, when I'm on meetings, but there are times when after the meeting, I will leave it closed. And that's just a kind and gentle reminder to people walking by that I just don't have time to talk about it. So either get me another time or preferably go figure it out. That would be my preference would be that they would go figure it out. I've always said it's easier to ask than think, and I don't mean that in a mean way, but it's amazing to me when I'm not in the office for periods of time, things get done and they get done really well. So I know the skill set's there that when my door was closed and I was in another state, it's like, well, Mick's not here. I guess I'll just go ahead and make a choice. And they generally nail it.
So the batching thing, that's my commentary around it. The other word I heard along the way from a trust advisor was he would call it churning. He'd close the door and go head down and block out the world. He would call it churning, which I think that maybe just be a different word for batching to.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I hear a lot of people say they do, you know, seven to ten. I'm making this up, seven to ten meetings, and then ten to one is their deep, creative work, and then blah, blah, blah. And like I've tried, that doesn't work for the type of business I'm in, but I can set up for sure, like, a structure, the morning routine, not work related, like what time you wake up, what time you work out, what time, all that. But what I have done that recently worked, and this wasn't batching like a day to day schedule, but it was saying, I told my team. So as we're trying to get up this DC business, which is going to take a major hit right now with everything that needs to happen inside Tigler construction supply, but as I've been working through getting all the certification documentation together, the reapplication, or everything that needs to be fixed, I said to them, consider me out of office from Monday to Wednesday. I'm going to be a part of the critical meetings that we have. But other than that, don't bother me in the nicest way.
It's my team knows I'm kidding. And when I say don't bother me, but not kidding, like, figure it out like you said. And just setting those Monday through Wednesday are really going to be dedicated to working on DC stuff. I got so much DC stuff done now. I worked on way more stuff for Tagler construction and supply than I said I was going to. And I was doing a lot more, even stuff that was not totally necessary, but just that, making everyone aware, calling it out and calling it out to myself. I got more done in those three days for the DC office than I had in a month, a month and a half's time. So that I think, you know, knowing, like you said, almost backpedaling into, well, this is the drop dead date I need to backpedal into when this needs to get done. And for X amount of weeks, just know, like, my dedication is here.
That may work well. And just making it known to everybody too, like, this is what. And because of that, other people, I think, are more likely to pick up additional pieces or not come to you when they would normally because they can figure it out. And then that comes back to that very honest communication piece to the people that you trust the most, because people will come in and help or help pick up the pieces while you're working on this thing over here.
[00:47:31] Speaker A: Yeah, very true.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: So that's, you know, setting those expectations and intentions.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah, well, our audience has gotten to watch us figure this out real time because so much of what we're talking has happened in the last, you know, hour or two or ten. Right. I mean, for both of us. And the other thing I will say is what I've gotten, I do a much better job of letting things marinate now, too.
I love, actually, you know, you came up with the idea of responding versus reacting, and that was, I mean, or you brought that idea into our podcast, and that's something that's been super value lately. I would have called it marinating or whatever, but in those moments, it's okay, you know, let me get my head around this, let me get some clarity, which also, for me, means call a trusted advisor. And a lot of times those trusted advisors will listen to me, talk to me, and they're, and they're sitting over going, mm hmm, mm hmm.
And I'm just yakin away. And then, and then, and then, and I thought, and then we have the option to. And they will have said twelve words, and I've just figured it out on my own, or they'll nudge me in a direction or ask a question. Have you considered or when last time when you tried that, did you, whatever that could be. So that's been super helpful, too. Is just calming it for a second. And that doesn't mean procrastinate, that doesn't mean calm it forever or that you don't have milestones are very critical deadlines. But 12 hours is okay, you know, and whatever emotion there could be in there, frustration is one that I mentioned early or shock, surprise at, you know, whatever could, whatever information could be delivered to you or dropped on you, I think it's smart to let those emotions, anger, frustration, surprise, you know, any emotion that sounds like that, but that should simmer for a second, especially because, you know, quickie nerd thing. But if you think about how the human brain works and how you survive, you know, the back of your head is everything that, you know, keeps you going, breathing, goosebumps, right? All of the stuff that must happen in the middle is the stuff that protects you. Fear, flight, all of that. And then finally, all the way in the front is your executive functions, time, scheduling, organization. In those moments when you have something dropped on you that triggers those emotions. It's middle brain, it's fear. It's all of those things that will keep your executive brain from kicking in and doing what it needs to do. I think that marinade process is really just calming the middle part of the brain so the executive piece can reengage and run the ship is critical.
[00:50:14] Speaker B: I didn't know you became a scientist.
[00:50:18] Speaker A: Sometimes you have to.
Sometimes when you're. When you're. When you're desperate enough, you will go seek out things that you did not know to try to understand, but that.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: You could be wrong. But it sounded right to me, so I'm going with it.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: I actually do have it to know. It's right there.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: I know, and I do love that. And the first thing I did today said I asked to take a second and think about this. And now I only find peace, actually in being able to take that time and come up with, like, once I take the time, I can come up with a very clear plan, almost anything, even if it's the most unpredictable and chaotic thing. And I'm not really sure how we're going to get from a to b, but I can usually come up with, like, a plan of at least the initial steps or how I think we're going to get there. And that is what I find peace. Because once you have that, take a step back, come with a plan, then you can execute. So that's exactly, you know, that's what I'm doing now. I'm taking that time, taking a step back. We're going to come up with what I think the plan will be and then bring in all the resources and the people and the communication and we'll figure it out and we're going to stay positive.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:51:32] Speaker B: And we will communicate real time how we do on all this.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: And you and I will do it together like we always do.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: We absolutely will.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: Cheers to that.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Cheers to that.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: Look at my cheesy ass plastic bottle. Good Lord. Terrible effort on me. Yeah, I told you I ran in here last minute, though.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Well, again, this is all real time and real life.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: More to come. Everybody was always, thank you for joining us for another episode of love and business. Hope you got as much out of that as I did because that was, that was part rollercoaster and fully, fully therapeutic. So thanks for coming along.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And as I just told you, I was feeling very stressed and stress can make me feel depleted and tired. And I am coming out of this episode truly with a new energy. So I'm hoping that you guys, when you join us in this conversation, you can pull away some of that good energy because that's truly how I'm feeling right now. And I'm like, I'm ready to go. Needed this. So thank you so much for, for joining us in this conversation. If you got something out of it, please do us a favor and subscribe. It means a lot to us and it makes a real impact on the show. We appreciate you.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: We're going to go do all this and come back and tell you about it. So we'll see you soon.
Welcome to H. Romney. Rodney talks for the superstars tonight. Tonight, incredible, credible.
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