Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So what we're going to do is we are going to get into your very specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats for your team, Arnold packaging, your organization. I'm going to do the same for Tagler construction and supply. And then we're going to take it a step further and say, what are the protocols, the processes? What specifically are we implementing to enhance those strengths or improve upon those weaknesses? And we are going to get super granular. So if anybody's listening, you can immediately take action if you're in the same positions.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Welcome to.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Love and Business podcast. I am Britt Arnold, president of Tagler Construction and supply.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: And I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold Packaging and Arnold Automation. We're best friends, business partners, and married.
Thank you for joining us on our journey as we talk about love, business relationships, family, industry, and everything in between.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: In today's episode, we are going to take a look under the hood of our businesses as Arnold packaging enters their 91st year in business and Tagler Construction and supply enters our 8th year in business. We're going to look at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and then we are going to talk in a very granular level about how we intend to improve on all of those.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: And I'm going to get into some things that are, quite frankly, pissing me off right now. So stick around for that, too.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Okay? So today we have decided we're going to get into the weeds of our business. And I will tell you, a lot of business owners are afraid to go here, especially when anybody in the world could be watching. And when we were with our cousins this weekend, one of the things they asked us is, what is your goal for the podcast? And I, quite frankly, have never had a great answer for that. And I was sitting down and just reflecting on that question this week, and truly, because one of their questions was, are you guys trying to be business coaches? And we were like, do you know how we feel about most business coaches?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Throw up on my own mouth.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And by the way, if we want to be business coaches, we try to get paid to be as business. And as far as I know, we're not making a dime on this.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: No.
Are you hoarding it? Because I haven't seen a dime, no. All right. Just checking.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: So, truly, I enjoy talking about this, and I could have used a resource like this, an honest resource like this when I was going through it, and I mean going through it. So that is what, if nothing else, that's what we're going to bring, is just so much honesty and so raw. And I'm not scared of anyone. And I know you aren't taking what we're putting out there and utilizing it like good. That's the goal. And if you are good at your craft and what you do and running a business, which we are confident that we are, we better be because we work at it. There is no threat. There's only opportunity to help other people. And truly, when I peel everything back, I'm like, that is why we are trying to just get some information out, engage, interact, and help other people. And I want to cry thinking about how useful it would have been when I was in the middle of it, just having a crisis.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And I would like to throw in, too, have some fun, because our weeks are long. There's a lot of funny stuff that happens throughout the course of the day. I mean, we're fortunate to be surrounded by just an amazing group of human beings. We had some customers in this morning, and it's just fun. And I think it's important that we laugh our asses off at some of these mistakes that we've made because everybody else has given us types of information in really stern formats. You must do this. You must do that. So there's some fun to be had for this, too.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Or you read it in a book, and it's so structured and truly, like, half the advice sounds good, but it's bullshit. It just is. So that's what we're going to break down in today's episode. Specifically, one of the things you came to me about was our team broke down a swot analysis. And I know what a swot analysis is. I've never done it. And I looked at you and said, not interested. I'm not going to talk about that on the podcast. That's archaic, in my opinion. Just like I thought writing down our missions and our values was stupid until we got into the weeds. And I really understood the way you were understanding and looking at it, and you're using it as a very clear metric of evaluating your team.
Once I started really understanding the swot analysis and getting into it.
Now, I'm doing this a little bit on the fly without a lot of prep, but I think it could be very useful. So what we're going to do is we are going to get into your very specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats for your team, Arnold, packaging, your organization. I'm going to do the same for tagular construction and supply. And then we're going to take it a step further and say, what are the protocols, the processes. What specifically are we implementing to enhance those strengths or improve upon those weaknesses? And we are going to get super granular. So if anybody's listening, you can immediately take action if you're in the same positions.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Does that sound good?
[00:05:28] Speaker B: It does. And just to kick it off, I mean, back to that SWAT reference, January.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: So we had a long, let's rename it because SWAT is so old school. That's fine.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: No, listen. It's just an acronym that speaks to strategic planning. So just, if you really just think about it as a methodology behind strategic planning, that acronym just helps you to identify the four components. It's that simple. And you're right, it's overplayed. And it's been overplayed for a long time, but it does have value. And we were talking about this the other day, and I think I a little frustrated in that we get wrapped around certain milestones and goalposts throughout the year, end of year. Right. But really, in going from December 31 to January 1, it just flipped another day, like June 10 flipped to June 11. But there are some important stops and starts that happen in business. And certainly January is one of those, right. The government says that tax season, regardless of what you do, right. The government says tax season starts and ends on one, one and 1231. And then if you're like us and Tegler construction, then also, and your work calendar or your fiscal calendar follows the same, then that's a pretty big event, and there's a milestone. So at least for us, when we look at, or if we're going to stop for 10 seconds, which we rarely do, like you don't either, and look backwards, that strategic planning piece acts as a great opportunity to do that and to get off of the grid for a second, we do a simple one day event where we all get together, pull the shades down, get off the grid, ask people to leave us the hell alone for a second and start to look at those four things. And really as a method to uncover ways to get better. Right. And it's a brief, backwards look at where you came from, and then you mix in expectations around the coming year and some other things, and then you go forward in the new year with some goals and initiatives that should be in the interest of getting better than you were in the past.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: So in a nutshell, this podcast episode is strategic planning for 2024 and getting into the weeds of our evaluations of our businesses and what we're going to implement in a strategic format to improve and get better.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one thing that's important to say and understand is that regardless of how long your business has been in business, right. You coming up on eight years. You'll celebrate eight years and we're celebrating 91 years.
That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all because businesses go through evolutions and because they're just big piles of people depending on who the people are at any given time and what their skill sets are and how long they've been with the business, you can have these evolutions inside of what looks like an incredibly long company. I mean, if you walked into our 91 year old business, great, we have a shingle that says 1933. But then if you drilled in just one level below to the people and their tenures here and in business in general. Right. We've talked about the idea that our teammates are on Arnold packaging side, 23 to 73. Right. I mean, you just go one click down and it's important to remember that regardless of your since or your born on date is whatever, it may or may not be aligned with where you are in a particular evolution. So you have to be paying attention to these things. Right. And you have to look at where you came from to be able to understand where you're going in the midst of business conditions and competitive influences, whatever all those other things are that would help create that structure. So I just want to take a second and say that because I feel like I talk to people. And since 1933 or celebrating 91 years old, there's almost as if we're towards the end of our evolution that we almost have it all figured out. Nothing could be further from the truth in certain spots. And then if you look at different groups inside the company, they're in different spots. So it's critical. Yeah.
The dynamics never stop and you never outgrow them. You never get to outage those components. It's not the way it works. I mean, think of some of the oldest companies, and I bet if you dropped in, depending on the length of tenure of their leadership or other things, they can have a given super old brand and you might expect to be them, to be stodgy. Right. Just broad brushing or making up stories about them. They could be one of the most progressive organizations based on leadership, based on the strategic vision that they've set. And that's the stuff that we're going to touch on today.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yes. And I want to get right into it. And you actually start breaking down your swot analysis. But before that, for any younger business owners or just younger business leaders, even if you're not running an organization.
You're in a business, in a management position.
One thing that I can really attest to that I would say do is put yourself in a position with business leaders and companies that have been around for a long time. So, for instance, because since I've met you and I've spent every waking hour with you, and then because Tagler construction and supply and Arnold packaging eventually merged into the same building, we have been able to, I, as a leader, have been able to expedite my learning process so much that I am taking so much that you guys have already figured out and implementing that way earlier than I would have. So if you are just starting a business or you're a young business or a younger business leader, put yourself in a position where people who have done it and take what they're doing, even currently, and start thinking about how you can implement that in your business. Because I can tell you what so many of the things I've done, my firing process, I mean, I hate say just so many of these things. I've learned how to, I've implemented them earlier than I were and learned how to refine them or started even practicing way before, wouldn't have even been on my radar. So it's cliche, but who you surround yourself with early could make or break your company. And I also think it's why we have a leg up on our competitors. And I'm not afraid to say that because we are progressive, because we have put ourselves in positions where we're able to be because of the people we're around.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. No, that's right. That's exactly right. And I think it's great that you drill down into it versus that big broad brush who you surround yourself with. I mean, at some point, I remember when I was a younger business person meeting some really older, I shouldn't say old, but older, more established, better word people in the industry. Lou Grasmick, we talk about a lot. He would be in and around John Pataracis and a group, and I would watch these guys operate. And in those days, I was playing golf and dicking off here or whatever, right. I mean, I was certainly working, but not with the intensity that I do now. And I would watch these guys. I was playing golf or I was doing whatever I was doing when I wasn't working. And I recognized these guys didn't have hobbies or at least extracurricular hobies. It was business. Their friends were business. And maybe that's for you, maybe that's not. And maybe if you're younger in your career, you haven't recognized it. I certainly didn't when I was 25, 26, and my roommate at the time, my roommate was in the stockbroker business, and I got exposure to those masters of business. Lou Grasmick, John.
Charlie Turchman. Yeah. That whole crew.
Ed peach of ost trucking. Right. The crew that was building out Canton and what is now the really attractive parts of Baltimore City, harbor East. And I was amazed, like, what do these guys do for fun?
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Oh, they had fun, though.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: They did, they did. My buddy Bruce was like, they run together and they.
Their fun is setting up a. This buying of that flipping of this converting of.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Right, that's right. Which is our fun.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: That's right. So I didn't understand that. In retrospect, I'm like, yes, of course. And that's what it can end up looking. But it also goes back to some other episodes of this versus that. Right. It doesn't have to be. You can have this synergistic, harmonious look where you just love all of it. Right. And the friends that we have through the business, we also get to talk to them and learn from them, too. So this whole momentum that gets started in that way, which is so valuable.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Last thing before you get into it is staying on. The same point is that I have so many words that want to come out.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: I can see it shooting in your.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Head, because if you're going and you're like, okay, I want to be better. I want to improve my life. This is the year.
Cut out the people that are not making your life better, that you are not moving towards your goals with these people and find people that you want to be in the room with. And I can tell you, so many people will be receptive. Find them, hand pick them and reach out to them. It could be that you want to stop drinking and you were in a friend group that gets Almost said you're in a friend group to drink in excess on occasion.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Fair enough.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Just get it hammered every night. Stop.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: And this is so logical, and it is hard to do, sure. But if you want to change your life and 2024 is your year, take a look at who you're with.
Write your goals down and find people that align with your goals and put yourself in the room. Persistence will get you there.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: And the other piece of that, too, is be prepared like you want to be the small fish in the big pond. Right. If you're always attracted to rooms where you're the smartest person in the room, that's the wrong room.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: You better not have an ego.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: That's right. You should go find ponds that are big and you can be the smallest fish. You better be prepared to eat a shit pile of humble pie along the way. While you're learning in the process, are you going to have to park your ego and be okay with being the smallest fish, I. E. Least experience or dumbest person in the room? I was that for a long time and then still seek out those rooms. So I am and continue to be. That's the only way to learn.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: And you can get yourself in that room by adding immediate value. So find out what that value is. We all have value. We can add and bring it to the table immediately.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Like me being pretty.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
Okay, that's our little sermon. Now.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: I like the sermon parts, though.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: I do. I had to get that out.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: So let's take a look at you sat in a meeting recently with your exec team, okay. With your executive team. And you said team.
Let's look at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats. Let's go through it. Let's identify them on a one to ten scale. One being a little different. Negative ten.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. The provocative question that we've talked about was, if you're doing a SWOT analysis of Arnold packaging right now with zero being neutral of those four. Right. I'm just going to go through them slowly. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Which one is furthest from zero? And it could be a bad thing. Like I'm really scared as a negative.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: If I'm understanding it, I'm going to.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Go through my two and it'll be clear.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Just to make it super clear, if you're the negative ten, it is. You are on the furthest end of the spectrum away from where you want to be. This is a negative, negative ten.
So if you're ten, you're right where you want to be. You're nailing it. So essentially you're 20 numbers apart.
I guess that's.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So my first answer was as a nine, as a positive. Nine is opportunity. Right. So just watching, coming out of the pandemic we've talked about, stabilize and optimize. So all of that was wrapping into what I believe is an amazing number of opportunities that we will create this year. Our sales force has more traction.
We're getting better at certain things.
We've come out of stabilized because we have those jobs filled and those individuals are now skilled at least ish in those jobs. Now we're turning the corner. So for me, nine was opportunity. Of those four letters or four categories?
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Yes, opportunities. Mrs. Arnold, again, I want to get granular. When you say opportunities, what specific opportunities do you see?
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Thank you. So if you break down the different things we do here, let's talk about sales. Right? So we have the largest sales organization that we've had in the history of the organization, and in my opinion, the most capable. From an aptitude perspective, I'm going to get into some other parts where I'm hitting on aptitude versus ability to deliver yet.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: So when you say largest, you mean in people?
[00:18:56] Speaker B: I mean in people. That's correct. We have the largest headcount in our sales organization in my history. And that's going back. I mean, there were times where we had two people in our sales organization, and I was one of them. Dave Ruck, rest in peace. Dave and I were the only two salespeople. This happened. That happened. That person left two of us.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Legend.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, legend. Absolute legend. And the only guy you'd ever want to go to war with if there was just two of you, for sure. So fast forward now, we have the largest headcount that we've ever had. So we have a lot of feet on the street, which should equate to capacity to sell. Now, there's other components of that. How effective are they? So, from a headcount, a pure volume of salespeople and aptitude. Right. So if you look at sales, I believe there are three components. Subject matter, expertise, sales process, and time and territory management. So we've hired great career salespeople. So they have two, and they have a tremendous amount of aptitude, right. They know how to sell, so they're good on process. They're good on efficiency, time, and territory management. So opportunity wise, I am very excited about going out and making those connections with prospects, about doing a better job selling into existing customers in a deeper way, because we do have a very large bag of products that we can sell as a packaging company into these customers and prospects. So, very big opportunity. If I just shift gears over to ops, for example, productivity is the biggest, right? I mean, how do we now take these people that have been here for a while? Our teammates are trained. They're starting to understand. They're actually starting to come back with suggestions about how to make the business better. Like, that's a huge deal, right? Instead of just the management team or the leadership team having to create all of the opportunities and identify everything, they're coming back and saying, we could be safer if I could get my job done easier, if whatever those things are. So now you have this feedback loop where it's not just two or three people that are leading, that are coming up with these. Our people now, with some time in the role, are coming back and saying, I think we would be better if. So that's ops, quickie touch in on finance, leveraging capital better. There's opportunities there. That group is also responsible for our purchasing activities. So working the supply chain piece, we rely heavily on inventory turns. So those are all of the different opportunities. When I look across those groups, they're a little different per group, but overall sales, selling more operations, doing it with less or with a higher level of productivity. And the accounting team, if you will, or the finance team doing a better job of managing assets and deploying capital, which I consider their two biggest responsibilities.
So that is what I suggest on the positive side.
So positive nine for opportunities for Arnold packaging in 2024.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Okay, got it.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: So that's the o. Do you want me to continue with the negative side?
[00:22:08] Speaker A: I guess my hesitation there was, I guess you got into a little bit of your weakness by talking about not necessarily having that.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Oh, no. So now I'm going to go the other way.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Or how do you want to do this? I'm going to go right in, or do you want me to jump into strength?
[00:22:24] Speaker B: So if you were to do the same thing, right, if you were to pick one of those four categories on the positive side of zero, which one would it be?
[00:22:32] Speaker A: So ours would definitely be opportunity as well. Well, I would say I have an opportunity and a strength that I would probably look at both. Our opportunity is if you could be off the scale, it would be. I mean, we have literally scratched the surface of what we're capable of. I mean, the opportunities that go in, and I don't think it's luck. I think we've created a lot of these opportunities by just doing good work, but opportunity for sure.
And the strength is we have very intentionally kept a lean team, and because of that, we are able to be very flexible and pivot quickly so we don't have these layers of bureaucracy. It's not this big engine that takes forever to change in a slight direction. We see an opportunity that's a good opportunity. We can pivot on a dime and attack it. So I would say right now that's what I'm most excited about. And to be honest, it's a little bit overwhelming at times.
It's a good problem to have, but sometimes so much comes in, I'm not sure that we are able to take it all in evaluate and assess and attack the best opportunities always.
But certainly we're trying to do that. But like I said, going on eight years in the business, I think we're just scratching the surface on everything that is available to us and everything we want to touch and get into.
And at the same time, we have to come up with the proper protocols and processes to evaluate what makes the most sense, which is something we're working on, which we can get into, which all of these ties together. So while I talk about my strength, the opportunity, then it gets into strength. Well, very quickly, I can get into where our weaknesses are and what we need to work on.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: Right. The things that would keep you from executing or leveraging those opportunities. Right, right. And I think the whole idea behind this process, too is, and really we just picked on these, if you were doing a full blown assessment or analysis or doing a one day workshop with your team, you would actually go through each of these individually, because the purpose, for example, of identifying your strengths is so that you can turn and leverage them into opportunities. Right. So that's part of the process. We're just plucking out one or two of these letters based on where our companies are now or where we are focusing all of our energy and resources in 2024.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And a couple, because I said we get granular instead of just saying we've got a ton of opportunities, like I've grilled you a little bit, just a few amongst many is we have the opportunity to become an exclusive distributor for quite a few manufacturers. So it's locking in some of those partnerships again, taking really a deep dive into the evaluation of what makes the most sense. A few years ago, we decided we're really going to go in hard on the infrastructure side. So highway, roads, even some marine. But like heavy civil, that has been our focus for many reasons. We can dig deeper and we can diversify our product lines within the infrastructure project realm. So diversifying products, we could branch out and focus on some different projects. There are just so many opportunities for us. We have identified where we want to be, and I think we know we like being in that infrastructure, heavy civil space. We have identified that we have found our niche there. Now it's figuring out where we want to create distributor partnerships and if we want to diversify our product lines or what we're offering a little bit more. And then there are several other opportunities in between that, but I see those as the major ones right in front of us right now, which we are working through. Does that make sense?
[00:26:43] Speaker B: No, it does. Yeah. No, I think you have to continue to drill down on the different elements of the company and where you are in your evolution.
I think that's the perfect spot. You just briefly touched on the segments of your business, right. And then as you grab a hold of those large segments, Dot. So roadwork and heavy civil.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: There's a lot of things, though, that come out from underneath that. If you look at all of the things that would be in that segment or in that vertical, there's many things for you to explore. Many suppliers come and you go, wait a minute, you guys do a hell of a job over there. I'm in this same vertical. Would you also consider distributing or representing for us? And that's where these things are coming from.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, like, take pipe, for instance. You've got ductile iron, you got pvc, you've got hdPe, just pipe. We're talking about the different variations of pipe. And then there's just so many other products in Atlanta. And it's interesting because you would think as well, we have all these opportunities. Well, what we've finally been able to do is narrow down enough and target and figure out where we're really successful and where we add the most value. And actually, it wasn't until the last couple of years we really narrowed our focus on that heavy civil and infrastructure work that I felt like we could capitalize on. This is our strength. And then take advantage of the opportunities because we were too broad, we were too all over the place. So it almost seems like, what's the word?
We were taking all of our opportunities and we were cutting a lot out. So it almost seems counterproductive to having these various opportunities. But until we really figured out where we belong, what we were good at, where we wanted to be, it's hard to become really good and take advantage of opportunities.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: No, absolutely.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: Which is so hard in the beginning of, like, you're so hungry, you have so many opportunities.
What do you choose? Right? You certainly don't want to starve. So then you find yourself choosing everything, and then you question, well, who are we?
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: So it just takes some time.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: What's that difference between the two words that I used in the process? How do you be diversified, right? Because you don't want to get pigeonholed into one thing. If the market shifts, if you pick beta instead of vhs, right. And then you're out. But then how do you have the diversity or the diversification without being diluted? And that's the dangerous word, right, where you end up being like a cross training shoe, not good at anything. You're trying to participate in all these different things, and you end up being diluted and not really good at anything.
Excellent. Not good. F good.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: That is what I felt like we were, and I'm being honest, that is what we were the first five years. And it really was just because. Because we were figuring. It takes that amount of time to figure. You go in with this. I didn't finish my sentence. As I always says, to figure yourself out.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: You go in with this business plan, you go in with this idea of what you want to be. Then you get up and running, you have these established relationships, and they're asking things of you, and they are good opportunities that were not part of your business plan or business plan. I did air quotes. All of a sudden you find yourself in general construction when you didn't plan on being in general construction because your contacts were certain they had opportunities for you, which they did, which meant there's the money that I need in my bank account to do anything. Talking about myself here.
It's so hard to be disciplined enough not to take those opportunities. And sometimes you shouldn't be.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Because we were in survival mode.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: So it took us every bit of long and short of it is, or long and long of it is. It took us that at least five years to figure ourselves out. In the last two years, we've been honing in on where we fit, where we want to be, what we're best at. And now I feel like we know who we are, and we want to capitalize and diversify within our niche, not all over the place, and we're not closing ourself off to other opportunities. I'm always open and have my head on a swivel, but we're looking at a more narrow, just lane.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Lane. Yeah, that's good.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: We don't want to be everything to.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Everyone, and you wouldn't have blinders on, and you would have your head on a swivel, but you wouldn't go back to the things that you knew didn't work right. You would certainly consider other things that look like they might be aligned or in the lane or maybe just a hair outside the lane that you could nudge out and say, oh, boy, I didn't know this. There's two things that came to mind as you were talking about this, and people ask me, and you started the podcast with this question is, what do you want to be when you grow up? And the answer is, whatever the customers want us to be is what you've learned and watching the business and what you just articulated, you are now becoming what the customers want you to be. But early on, you're listening to everything, right? You have all of these different inputs, customers asking, and the reason is they liked you, right? You had created these relationships in your former positions and they just wanted to do business with you. And there was a very wide range of people like, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this? And in the early going, we've said this a bunch is the answer is yes. Now what's the question? Right? My father would say, until we have an order, we don't have a problem. And we definitely created some good problems and some bad problems along the way once we had that order, and we still do that in spots. I'll kid about it and say about it, but obviously when I'm laughing, we've also done a tremendous amount of diligence, and it's not some scientific wild ass guess on what the outcome would be. But early on in that business, you have to do that, right? I mean, if you have no cash flow, you have no business. So, boy. But if you survive to the point where Tegler construction has, where you're now getting ready to celebrate year eight, you have earned the opportunity to listen to certain customers.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: So we're not that close to eight, but we're pretty far away.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Well, you know, I'm in sales, I round up.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah, we're just surpassing seven.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: So a little bit of off track, but all important points of getting here. And this strategic analysis is maybe not equal parts looking backwards as looking forwards, but if you're not looking backwards a little bit to understand where you came from, I'm not sure that you'd be doing yourself justice in charting your course going forward. I think you have to have a reasonable rear view mirror and then forward looking stance as well.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And I would say if you're in your year one through five, I'm saying one through five because that's my personal experience with it. I might have said in year one through five, our strength was that we were open to all opportunities and able to capitalize and do a good job on many different things. And I wouldn't change that period. I'm glad we didn't figure out exactly we couldn't have but what we wanted to be too early, because it really did let us test the waters and experiment. And by the way, figure out who we like to work with, who we didn't want to work with what products were easier, which ones were harder to deal with. All of these things risk, hard being risky.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: Right? One of those words inside of hard.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, all of those were such great, not great, required learning experience to get to where we are now, which is in a really good spot. So if you're in that one to five years, it's okay if you're still figuring out who you want to be, test the waters, take the calculated risks, try new things, that's the only way you're going to eventually get to the place where you're like, hell yeah, this is who we are.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Right. And also, too, just to add on to that, and you could be one to five years in your business. You also might be one to five years in a venture inside of an older business. We talk about automation a lot, right?
Everything. And I'm not going to bore the audience with everything you just said, but I could simply say ditto to every single one of every one of those. And then there are also times where you're actually doing things right.
Sometimes it just takes more repetitions, it just takes more. Or like refinement, rinsing and repeating. Or you need to bring on like, we've added to that part of our sales organization. Right. You just need more exposure. You need more accelerant, lighter fluid sales organ. People can be that accelerant in spots done correctly, where you're going out and identifying and capturing that demand in the form of prospects. So sometimes you just have to take a great process and you have to pour accelerant on it. Right. Other times, you have to realize that this is not the time to waste accelerant, which could be investment or resources. You're like, not yet. Let's get this right. Let's not pour accelerant on a smoldering and or dead fire. Let's wait till we get some heat on this thing and then blow it up. And we've made some choices like that inside of our marketing organization recently. I'm looking at Tommy because he was in the room. We made a very conscious decision, say, all right, hold on a minute. That's not ready for accelerant. Let's get it right and then let's pour some lighter fluid on this sucker and see where we go. So, good stuff. You want to go to the other side?
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Yes. So passing the ball back to you on, are you focusing on threats or weaknesses or both? I imagine it's a little bit of both, yeah.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Well, yeah, usually they're again closely aligned in that a weakness could be exploited by a competitor, let's say, for example, and become a threat if you're not looking for it. So back to the original question.
I cited opportunities first because it was farthest away from zero. But in answering that question, because I really wanted my team's attention, because I didn't want anybody getting confetti in their eyes over the nine on opportunities, it was negative. Seven as a threat on technical expertise. So what I was just blabbering about a few minutes ago, and this idea of being 91 years old, and don't just assume because the company is x number of years old that that is completely ingrained throughout the organization. It's not. And I've spoken on this podcast a lot about the turnover and the retirements and the 130 years we lost in eight people in the two years of the pandemic. We've been working our ass off to get those individuals back in. But it starts with aptitude, right? I mean, I wish I could throw up a zip stick into them and have them be subject matter experts so quickly behind. It was, all right, before we get stuck drinking our own Kool aid on opportunities, understand that we still have a lot of technical expertise, pure packaging expertise, and whether that's making wood boxes or all the things we do, that's left the organization in the last period of time, and we got to get head down on getting that subject matter expertise back. So your question is going to be, well, Mick, what the hell are you going to do about it, right? Dig in deeper.
I am getting in there. I am.
I'm egging myself on. Did you see training? Training.
And really, that could be any number of pieces. It could be hands on training in the plant. We could have individuals out there swinging hammers in spots, making the products that we make. There could be some classroom aspects of it. There's a lot of team learning and team selling that goes in. If I'm thinking about a sales organization that has four or five individuals with less than one year of experience in packaging, they're career sales professionals, but they don't have the subject matter expertise. It could be a team piece where I'm taking a rep with me into an existing customer to show them how widgets get made or show them how widgets get distributed. So that technical expertise and. Go ahead.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: I'd like to add one more thing, because you didn't mention it, and I think it's super smart for what you're doing. And I think it applied to a lot of other businesses. So if you have somebody that has been in the business for a long time, very experienced, a shit ton of knowledge like Paul. And they don't want to retire. They still want to be a part of the company. How to utilize that is an asset to your company. And so Paul is going to be in a role where he's not necessarily making the sales calls that he was, not nearly as many, but he's going to be used as a trainer to start training the other folks that are coming in. And I think Mr. Rich Sian from cow and he, while he is retired, he's still very much mentoring people.
Younger kids, I call them kids, but younger people in the company or new, not necessarily young, newer people in the company.
I think that's a really good, what is it? Transition. A really good transition plan for folks that are like, okay, I've been at this company forever.
I know everything. I know a lot. I could be an asset, but I don't want to work full time or not full time in the role that I once did, but I don't want to retire.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: And that middle ground as a trainer, wow, that's valuable.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I think you would fight like hell.
You'd fight like hell to keep tribal knowledge from leaving your organization. I know we got into a training conversation and I called that part proprietary, but let's call it tribal for this conversation.
Yes, I know you'll be excited about that. We're going to let that go at any point. Are we just going to keep eating on that indefinitely? Tommy, help me out over here.
So let's call it the tribal piece, where you have a 30 year sales professional in packaging alone, and that's before the other selling career. Right? So if you think about sales process, the other parts of being a salesperson, you'd fight like hell to keep that tribal knowledge around in some fashion. And I'll tell you one of the biggest differences, the digital world and remote component, that's something that I love, where Paul can pick up the phone, Paul can jump on a team's call if there's document share, a drawing to be reviewed. So I think the technology piece of that is if someone's going to retire from your organization before you let them go, get a job as a starter at the golf course, figure out how to keep them captive to your organization. Part time basis, short time basis, you don't have to get in the car anymore. It's changed completely where you can have that variable accessibility to those people. Don't let them go off into the sunset unless they absolutely demand to go off into the sunset. I would fight like hell to keep that tribal knowledge as available and even captive as possible for as long as you can.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: And an extension upon that is captive, but also in a way that's really rewarding for them. So, so many of these people are, they love it. It's just why they want to stick around. So it's so rewarding for them to be able to pass that knowledge along and give back. But because of the virtual piece, you're not telling them.
You could travel the world, you could be wherever you want. Do you do exactly what you want to do? And hey, you can also still have a bring in money. You can still be doing what you loved or loved for so long. You can be collaborating and working with people, but you can also do everything else you want to do with your life.
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Participating in the kill. Winning. Like winning for salespeople, right? A big driver for intrinsic versus extrinsic money motivated intrinsic. Do the right thing is the win. And if that win is tied to, well, I won because I helped a customer get where they want to go. More profitability, whatever their goals are. More safety. Then talking to people like that, I'm like, listen, I watched eight people retire. Don't underestimate how much you're going to miss. Like, some people retire or they're like, enough of this. And certainly the pandemic was one of those moments where at least two or three of the people that retired went dark, like they were exhausted from the demands of the pandemic, where it was our purchasing manager who fought supply chain battles every day, who changed prices all day, every day, exhausted. He's like, yeah, I'll tell you what you do with that. But I think some retirees underestimate how easy it will be to just shut it down. So what a great way, too, to do each other somewhat of a favor, right? And they stay in the game and feel valued, right? I mean, that's huge. Value is such an important thing for human beings, right? To be valued and feel valued. I would be really careful about turning that faucet off too quickly in any situation.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I've talked about this before. My heart is, I always think about the people that are in their sixty s, seventy s, even eighty s now that have so much vibrancy and energy and knowledge and ability to give back and want to, and that piece about value, but also purpose, and people want that. And for instance, my mom, she's in her sixty s and she works for our company, right, part time basis. But that gives her purpose, and I love that. I wish someone would start a business by working with folks like that and finding them jobs that are perfect for them, but give them that purpose, but also flexibility that they're looking for. That is a population that is not valued. You go to a place like Japan, somewhere like that, it's their most valued. The elders, people, we do not do that in the states. And those are the people that I think are so valuable. And I love that about giving those people the opportunity to have purpose, but like I said, but also live out their life the way they want. So we don't need to keep going on this. But I don't know.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: I was having the same demand thought over here too. Like there is demand for that. Because the other word is ambition. Right? You talked about value and purpose.
It would almost be to assume that once you get into a certain age, you park your ambition. That's not true. Absolutely not true. So, yeah, there's something. So we were talking about. We dovetailed this. My big challenge or concern for threat is subject matter expertise, or technical expertise. And one of the things that we're doing is making sure that as a 30 year professional decides he wants to work less hard, that we try to, that it's important to us to keep him as engaged with the organization, really all the way around. His expertise happens to be sales, but we will plug him anywhere he wants to go because that is how valuable he is.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Okay, continue.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's that. Right. So what I was talking about was my concern or not letting my executive team get confetti in their eyes with that nine rating was the negative, seven was understand that we will be in a position to get our ass kicked by competitors in certain spots. Because you've heard the old saying of good, fast and cheap. Pick two if you don't have good, which I equate to technical expertise. Right. Fast being speed of delivery, lead time, and cheap being cost effectiveness. Right.
Good in our organization is that technical expertise, the ability to design containers, design solutions, look at a customer's operation and show them, and demonstrate for them how they can be more profitable by making different choices with their packaging. Right. It's that simple. But it takes a lot of years of experience to understand which weapons and which tools you're reaching for in your toolbox to help that customer get where they don't know they want to go. That's the thing. It would be easy if the customer said, well, here's what I want to do, and I need this. I need this and I need this. It's not that easy. You go into a customer's facility, let's say they're making widgets. You have to have a certain amount of knowledge to be able to say, well, I think I see an opportunity over here because we could make more widgets if. Or we could make your widget box smaller, we could make your widget box lighter, or we could make the same widgets with fewer people that we can redeploy to a more valuable place. It takes a while. So now if you fast forward to a situation where I have a newer salesperson in front of XYZ Prospect, let's say it's a big company and the buyer is very skilled and they're competing head to head with somebody with a lot more technical expertise, they are likely to get their ass kicked. And that is one I'm most sensitive to, is not getting back on top of good as fast as we need to and being relegated to fast and cheap. That is the threat component of that that I laid out for that team and then took it directly to their directs and then took it to everybody in the organization that I have contact with. The third group is the emerging thought leaders. So took it to those, I don't know, 30 people, 25 people directly with exactly that type of urgency, and then challenge them on top of that too, to say, listen, we collectively don't have enough technical expertise and if it's available in the general public, it's your job to go get it. If this information is available on Google, YouTube, or some other platform, the expectation is that you will go get it. If it's not, then I have made it an utmost priority for the organization to identify those tribal components and get that information to you so you don't get shot dead in the field of battle, because that's what's going to happen if we don't get you those skills. How's that?
[00:48:32] Speaker A: That's great. That's great. Yeah. So for us, just as many strengths and opportunities as we have, which is a shit ton. Thanks to my team for being great. We have just as many weaknesses and threats and I could talk about a lot, but I'm going to narrow it down and talk about one because this is where my head is and where I am most focused at the moment. And I think my team knows that. We have a 2024 structured planning meeting in a couple of weeks where we'll get into it, but everything we're doing this year is really geared or focused around this one particular weakness or it's not even a weakness. It really is an opportunity for growth, improvement and improvement.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: Right?
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's only the right time now. It wasn't really something we could have proactively done. We had to grow into this.
So where my mind is, is I want to have my team in a position where I could not be there. I'm not saying forever, but for periods of time, and the business would run seamlessly without me.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: Right.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: And I'll tell you why. The reason is because we do have so many opportunities, which I've talked about, and one of them we've talked about is starting a different business venture. And there are some other opportunities we have where that is going to take all of my attention. Now, this is for the entire team, opportunity for the entire team, but it will take my full attention to get some of these new initiatives. I will call them off the ground, and I cannot do that if I am in the trenches, in the weeds of tagler construction and supply every day, as I have been to date.
[00:50:32] Speaker B: So while you will not be on a deserted island, you will be a little absent, maybe physically, but certainly from a bandwidth perspective. And this is going to put the team to the test to see what that looks like in that type of absence.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I'm going to explain this, every detail of this, and I don't want to leave them on an island, and I don't want to leave them in a position where they feel undergunned or not prepared. So my focus is what are processes and training? Can we get in place to make sure we are there once? I really need to divert more of my attention on these new initiatives, which is going to be huge for the rest of the team, but we've got to be in a position to get there. So as I'm thinking about this, the one thing we have to create in our company is redundancy, which we have not had to date. I think we are finally there. We made a great hire in accounting. One of the things, our business is very transactional, so we have to have redundancy on the accounting side of things. I am the only one in the business who knows probably how to do everything, but we're getting to a position where we are creating redundancy in project management and in accounting. The next piece of this is I need to make sure someone within the company knows how to do and understands. I'm not going to say everything because I think that's unrealistic, but almost everything that I do, and as I sit there on a day to day basis. And I do certain things, some of them executive decisions, some of them critical, some of them so trivial. But I realized, trivial or not, nobody knows how to do this shit, right? And that's on me, because part of it is not trying to hide anything from anyone, man, I'm as open as they come. I hope people realize that by now. But it's because for efficiency, and I've had to do things so quickly and keep things moving, it's just easier to do it, which.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: That's hard. What's the break between easier to do versus teach? Right? That's hard, right?
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Because so hard, that's the hardest.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: You could knock that thing out in 2 minutes, or you could take 2 hours to teach it. Now, once you're done, once you make that investment, you can decide who owns that two minute task going forward. And maybe that's how you get your 120 minutes back is in two minute increments. But to your point, I mean, you've got to get to the point where at least one other person, I'm not saying that you'll have one person that knows everything, but at least one other person knows everything. You know, we're not there, by the way. It makes you feel any better, we're not there either.
[00:53:23] Speaker A: So part of the strategy I've been thinking about, and this is theoretical right now.
I'm just starting to test it. It sounds good in theory, is my point.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: I will tell you. Theoretical, right. I'm just explaining. I'm defining theoretical for everybody is what I just said.
[00:53:44] Speaker B: For our newborn.
[00:53:46] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:53:47] Speaker B: Our newborn listeners.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to.
What's the word? Insult.
[00:53:52] Speaker B: Anybody I know, you already know. They know.
I was watching you process it.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: Okay, what I'm saying right now, I don't know that this is going to work. This is what I'm going to test. I'll report back in a few months to see if this is realistic. But every time I do something, anything, easy, hard, critical, not as critical. I'm putting it in a spreadsheet, just a one liner of what the task is. So I remember it on a weekly basis. I'm going to go through the spreadsheet. So I'll have. This week, I'll have a list.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Can I inter for a second? Because we talked about doing it for 2 minutes or teaching it for 2 hours. How excruciating is it to actually stop and put it in the spreadsheet?
[00:54:38] Speaker A: Oh, it's not. That's doable because it's like one word or two words, okay? That's all I'm doing.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: I'm learning too, because I have to do this.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: I'm not detailing at all.
[00:54:46] Speaker B: If you would have said excruciating, I would have skipped it down.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: No, it's like 5 seconds because I'm just writing word.
[00:54:52] Speaker B: All right? No excuse for me. That's what I was looking for.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to have this spreadsheet every week. It'll be on the weekends. I will go through the spreadsheet and I will do one of a few things. My number one tool will probably be loom. If you're listening to this and you're not familiar with loom, it's just a video platform where you can talk, you can show your face and you speaking so people feel like it's intimate and they're listening to you. But also in the background could be a spreadsheet or you're working through and clicking through a website or whatever it is.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: It's a screen share of your choice.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Screen share of your choice. But your face is there like you're actually interacting also on a little part of the screen. And also it has so many other features, AI generated.
Whatever you're saying will turn to script or text. It'll come up. It's really deep.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: So good. Shout out to people, tool, loom, look it up. L-O-O-M. Loom, look it up.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And we can link some of this in the show notes.
So part of that is I will go through the spreadsheet every week and I will make loom videos on how to do each thing in that spreadsheet. I have realized that some of those are just not loom worthy. So in those cases, maybe it's putting together just a quickie PDF document, maybe whatever the best tool is. Then I'm creating a shared training library and I'm putting everything in there. So the following week my spreadsheet will be clean throughout the week. I'm like, holy shit, nobody knows how to do this. Nobody knows how to do that. Come Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'm creating the docs, creating the videos more in the shared five. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. But I would think that most things that we are doing that people don't know how to do, I have to believe we're at least, maybe there are some things we're going to do annually, but a lot of it we're doing on a quarterly basis, I would think right. So it take four or five, maybe even six months, half a year to do that, which is a lot, but I'm really looking at four to five months. I think you're going to get most things.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: You're going to get at least 80% of your repetitive. So I want to back that up because, I don't know, list this for the viewers. One, identify. Right. Two, you mentioned a few things. Loom being a tool, pdfs. Right. I think you have to make, this is an important choice though. I think you have to make the choice on the type of breadcrumbs you're going to leave behind, loom being one, PDf being another, whatever that is. And then three, building out a great central repository. Right. You talked about a shared file, you can do all that awesome work and if you don't put it in a place that's easily accessible, nobody will go there and find it. And that would be a complete waste of your incredibly valuable time. Those are three really important parts.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And we've worked through all of, like, we worked through literally a year. We tried everything of what is the best shared folder platform. You got to figure those things out.
We went back to the most simple thing ever. But you do have to figure those things out. So I'm going to see if that works. And then of course there's the organizational piece. So how do you organize those videos? Or is it you're just listing them on a week to week basis? I'm sure my head and brain works in a very structured manner, so I'm sure I'll come up with something clean for structuring it. So if somebody's looking for something specific, they can find it quickly. But the other part of this is if you are like us or it could be for any, it's helpful for anybody, but particularly for a smaller company that when you onboard and you just don't have a lot of people to train. Oh, well, there's a whole library of training videos and documents. That's pretty amazing.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: Call me when you've gone through that.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: Yeah, and a lot of that again will be, I'm focusing right now on things that people know don't know. So it might not be totally relevant to somebody you're just bringing on onboarding. But I can tell you if this works, the next expansion or extension will be putting into video and documenting things that we all do every day for onboarding purposes. Sure, if it's clean and we like it.
[00:59:12] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Especially for small organizations. One of the hardest parts of training is the bandwidth loss of the person that's training. I mean, if you're a huge organization and you can afford to have full time trainers and you're like, oh, we just hired John. John, meet Jim. Jim's the trainer. See you in a month. Like small organizations like ours, that is bandwidth directly taken from somebody that's expected to be productive. We talked about interns. I mean, that's all great, but when you bring a new person on, whoever their direct report is, or somebody is going to give up their own productivity to train that person. So these are huge Productivity hacks, if you will. Right. Where there's seven folders in here, I want you to go through them. Ordered one to seven. It's about 21 hours. I'm expecting you to have that done in the first month. That's 21 working days, 1 hour per day, go to it. Right. And that 21 hours without that platform comes directly from somebody else, pound for pound, minute for minute, off of somebody else not doing what they're supposed to be doing. So that's of huge value.
[01:00:16] Speaker A: It is. And then I would say the other thing as I was talking about creating that redundancy piece, so I'll talk about accounting particularly because that's what I'm meeting with. The accounting team is meeting, and then I'm having monthly meetings with them to get more things in place, things that sound stupid, but it's just identifying every one example, identifying every vendor we have and going through. Are we getting a statement from them monthly? Every single vendor we have. Now I know that may seem really basic, but how do you make sure that no invoices have been missed? And I can tell you we probably have a quarter maybe, of our vendors that send us statements on a regular basis and just being like, okay, no, I want every vendor, if they do statements, some still don't. We need to be getting a monthly statement. And then somebody, and my mom being this person, goes through them every single month and just looks through. Do they align with invoices?
[01:01:17] Speaker B: So tell the audience why that's so critical, especially for the type of business that you run. This is a big deal. That's not as critical for Arnold packaging the way we run, but 100% critical for you.
[01:01:28] Speaker A: It's huge because a lot of our projects are AIA projects, so they're on a 30 day cycle. So what happens is if you don't, most invoices, I'll use the 20th. It's creeping up now, but it used to be we have to get our invoices in for the month. So for the month of January, we have to submit our invoices on January 20. That covers that entire month of January. If you miss that January date, you have to wait a full cycle of 30 days before you can resubmit your invoice. So essentially you're going to get paid 30 days. It's not like a day or two later. You're going to get paid 30 days later. So for us, we can't miss our vendor invoices, because what happens is when we get a vendor invoice that triggers us or a manufacturer invoice, that's the same thing as vendor that triggers us to send our customer an invoice.
[01:02:25] Speaker B: That was the point I wanted you to hit on directly, that until you get invoiced, you don't create an invoice, which means until you get a bill, you don't create a revenue generator.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: That's right. That's huge.
[01:02:36] Speaker B: So if you're a broker or someone that dropships a lot, that's the model.
[01:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we're not a broker.
[01:02:42] Speaker B: I see. You were, but those are models that have that look to them.
[01:02:45] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, exactly.
But for us, too, we want to take care of our vendors and manufacturers. That's really important to us. So we can't miss their invoices or we can't be late on that because you're holding up their pay. They're very precious pay. And all these manufacturers cash is everything. When you're manufacturing stuff, you're buying the raw materials up front, I'm sure.
And part of that process, even though it's pretty basic and elementary, it's getting checks and balances in place.
[01:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a gap. It's a gap. Right. Seems simple, but if you're not doing it, you're not doing it.
[01:03:22] Speaker A: So between the training, the redundancy, and the checks and balances, those are the three things that I am hyper focused on. And I will elaborate, and my team knows this, but on that 2024 prep meeting, that's what we're going to be focusing on. And there's so much incentive for everybody just because the opportunities. So by empowering, first of all, this is a team decision on everything we do. So you have the buy in. There's so much empowerment because I'm saying, hey, guys, there's so much opportunity and incentive for everybody because there is growth opportunity. This is everybody's opportunity to move into a new role, one of leadership, one of the ability to take on more. Like this is good for everybody, and that's important. Because to get that buy in, it's got to be good for everybody. So by freeing me up and taking more on, my team will essentially be saying, hey, britt, we got you. We got this here in Baltimore right here. Go on and chase those other initiatives and then do that. Bring those on, and then we're all going to benefit once we have a grasp of those. And then everybody gets involved and we start the same processes over.
[01:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. But closing those gaps is important because you can't move on to the next one until you've actually finished the last one. Right. What's the point?
[01:04:49] Speaker A: And I have a tendency to do that.
[01:04:50] Speaker B: Yeah. What's the point of taking a new order if you didn't stop and collect the last one? So, yes, those gaps are huge, but, boy, I would just say, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go.
[01:05:00] Speaker A: Oh, I was just going to say part of this. As we're wrapping this up, as I'm talking about this, I'm getting more and more excited for the opportunities for my team because there are so many.
And I think we get, as you said, we can get ahead of ourselves and we're jumping to the next because there are all these opportunities before we finish what we need to finish. And that is like that sentence. Yeah.
[01:05:26] Speaker B: Where does that come from? Why do you think you struggle with that?
[01:05:29] Speaker A: Oh, my God, I do that.
[01:05:30] Speaker B: Why does your organization struggle with finishing?
[01:05:32] Speaker A: Sorry, guys, I do that too often and I forget that you don't know what's going on in my head.
[01:05:37] Speaker B: The problem is I do, so I don't stop you.
[01:05:40] Speaker A: I know.
[01:05:40] Speaker B: I'm like, I can finish that sentence. I can finish that sentence. So, no reason to say it. Let's be efficient.
[01:05:45] Speaker A: This is a podcast. It's about articulating your thoughts.
[01:05:48] Speaker B: I know, but this is what our couch looks like at home, too, if anybody wants to know where we speak in half sentences and blurbs.
[01:05:55] Speaker A: Seriously.
But, yeah, so getting it right and being disciplined enough to finish that, to be able to move on to the next opportunity. And I am so excited what we have and all the opportunity for my team, which really, quite frankly, I have not explained in detail to them, which is so exciting. And I think that's important part for anyone listening to this. When you are creating your 2024 strategic plan, it's got to be exciting for you and for your people, and you have to have opportunity for everybody, because if you don't, what's the point?
[01:06:27] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Well, the first thing you could be speaking to is Wifams, right? What's in it for me. I mean, that's the thing you have to be melding. And the other thing that hit my mind, right, you just said, and my team doesn't even know it. So in our last meeting, I had talked about this already, but that chief visionary officer, I challenged everybody back to that group that I have directs, whether it's the exec side, the director side, those people, emerging thought leaders challenged them to join me as part of the chief visionary officer. And part of that is you're the lead dog of your organization. I'm the lead dog of our organization. But is encouraging them to fan out. Right. Because if you don't fan out, all you look at is a lead dog's ass all the time. And I don't want my team looking at my ass all the time. I want them to fan out and get their own vision and be able to bring back their own ideas, if nothing else, by virtue of their perspective is different than mine. And that's a value to begin with. And then we can build on top of that. So that idea of, you got to be the lead dog. But, man, you look to nudger, nudger. Other dogs in row two and three and four have more of a pyramid look to it. So they'd also be getting a glimpse and no one would be looking at the guy in front of them's ass constantly. That's not productive.
[01:07:35] Speaker A: I think that's a good wrap.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah, killed it.
No, you say three half sentences and I'll jump.
[01:07:43] Speaker A: I need to end this because I'm going to give the people what everybody's waiting for. So you go first.
[01:07:48] Speaker B: Oh, got them. Okay. So my quick comment on this is January is the Monday of the year. You have to take this time. And there is a reset component. Even though we really just flipped a day, this is the appropriate time to.
It's funny. It's January, right? Why don't you do it in May? I don't know. I didn't set this up. Just happens in January. But January is the Monday of the year. So this is the time to get things organized and aligned and take a look back and where you are in your evolution so that you can go forward in a very intentional, and I would say aggressive when I use words like aggressive and savage and kicking down doors and clearing rooms, like when I talk to our sales organization and we didn't get into what pisses me off today and I'm excited to just go right into it on our next episode. But when I talk to our sales organization about kicking down doors and clearing rooms. I mean it. I'm tired of this passive bullshit that we took out of the pandemic. Yes, I know we had supply chain problems. Yes, I know you couldn't fill an order if you wanted to because you couldn't get the material. But that shit is over, and it's back to mono Emano, hand to hand combat. And part of this reset is making sure the organization is driving that way and making sure that you have the right teammates to execute plays that look like that, because that's at least for us. I can't speak for Tegu, but that's what it's going to take. In 2024, we're coming back to the mode of hand to hand combat and competing in the market for business. Back, like, 18, 1716. Those years before, we couldn't get anything from Asia for two years. So that's all I got to say about it.
[01:09:30] Speaker A: My motto gets scrappy. So, you know, I'm on board with that. Now, lastly, what the people came for.
[01:09:39] Speaker B: That'S why I came.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: Everybody's wondering how my caffeine free journey is going.
[01:09:45] Speaker B: That's right. Now, listen, do not let them wait one more second.
[01:09:49] Speaker A: So even though we're dropping biweekly, we're recording weekly. So this is only seven days in. Okay, so I'm just having this revelation, and I told you today, I'm like, I feel amazing. My sleep scores are not indicating that. But now I have been focusing on. There's one variable also sleeping a little bit more. So it could very well be that. However, I'm wondering if caffeine, the lack of caffeine, zero caffeine is starting to help. Where later in the afternoons, I just feel the same, which is, like, off the wall.
[01:10:21] Speaker B: So your caffeine detox is in full effect, and maybe your body is kicking back its own endorphins or whatever.
[01:10:29] Speaker A: No vices, no alcohol, no caffeine. And I'm feeling amazing now. Let's wait and see. I'm not coming to any conclusions here, but we may be onto something.
[01:10:40] Speaker B: Okay, well, high of all will look for a report in the very foreseeable future.
[01:10:46] Speaker A: Yes, I have all of your backs, and I will let you know. I will report back.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, yeah, this will be a two week check in on our next one. Just so everybody knows, I believe, correct. Okay. All right, well, I will be sitting here waiting for that period of time. All right, good stuff. Please, everybody. January is the Monday of the year, so get the hell going.
[01:11:07] Speaker A: All right. That's a wrap on our 2024 strategic planning and what we plan to do about it.
[01:11:14] Speaker B: Don't forget, you can listen to our podcast on all the platforms, YouTube, Amazon, Apple. And don't forget to check out the show. Please, please hit the subscribe button. You do not know how excited we get every time we get a subscribe. So, man, just take an extra second. Hit that button for us. Always open for questions. I mean, we read them and we absolutely look to incorporate those into the podcast. We want to know what you want to know, and we're happy to tell you what we know about doing it wrong and hopefully something about doing it right.
[01:11:45] Speaker A: Thank you for listening. Most importantly, thank you to our production team. Seriously, we could not appreciate it more. Next episode will be dropping in two weeks. More details to drop on that in the very near future. Stay tuned.
[01:12:01] Speaker B: See you soon.
Whoa. Welcome to waves broadly tod for the superstars tonight. Tonight's guest, the incredible, credible, credible.
