Ep 217 - How to Move Your Bottleneck

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of Electricpreneur Secrets. This is episode 216, how to Move your Bottle Neck. What the hell's a bottle neck? How are we going to move it? All of that and more coming up. First, let me introduce you to this show. I'm your coach, clay Neumeier. With me, as always, my esteemed co-host, joseph Lucani. We're the Electricpreneurs just two master electricians with business addictions here to help you out again with our freemium daily coach call. The investment for this is for you to sit back in your hot seat, take everything we give, just promise to take action and report those wins back, and we'll be so pleased to keep helping you with this, joseph. How are you doing today, brother?

I'm feeling blessed today, like, truly like down to my bones. I am feeling blessed. It has been a good day, it's been a great week. The intention was set when we first started on Monday all the way through, and I'm just, I'm feeling in my bones, I'm so happy to do with things we do.

I appreciate that man. I'm feeling fired up too, especially having Zach on the show. It's such a fiery moment Just got some people blazed up. I'm sure if you haven't got the value piece yet for Zach's top three that's ZBE top three you can post that now here if you're engaging with us, live in the Facebook group or reach out through the contact forums on serviceloopelectricalcom to grab it there. Guys, if you know someone who needs to hear that interview or some pieces of the things we've talked about this week, please share the show. It helps us, it helps them as we try to help all electricians rise in the service industry. Joe, this topic today's also got me fired up, following up when a Zach's top three from yesterday where he talked about how his CSR really changed the game, which is kind of nice to hear after we did that whole CSR week, wasn't it?

Yeah, no, it definitely is helpful, and I'm just really glad that he brought that up, because I feel like CSRs don't get nearly the attention that they're credited, because when you have the right person in that chair, oh my God, the amount of weight that can be taken off, the amount of mental equity that can be bought back, it's just a night and day difference.

Totally, man. I really couldn't agree more, and I kind of have this theory in my own head, just kind of and it's just a little bit in my head and a lot in our program too. We are constantly pushing people to find their next day player and we're constantly pushing people and maybe pushing is the wrong word encouraging, motivating, influencing people, whether you're with us in an Afremian program or with us at our bronze or silver or gold or platinum levels, we're constantly at the throat of this thing, trying to help you define what is it that's holding us back right now and honestly, I mean I'm not one to blow my own horn too much, but I think we do a pretty good job. What we've been able to do by specifically helping just electricians, is identify these bottlenecks really freaking well, and help electricians overcome them. Would you say that's accurate, joe?

I 100% would, and you can tell I'm just. I'm all smiles today, man. It's just one of those things where you're right and when you find that A player, like everyone, looks for it, but I feel like they're looking under the wrong rocks. If that makes sense, they exist, they're out there and when you find them through our process that we help initiate, it can really really help move balance.

Yeah, I think a big piece of this, to start with the CSR bottleneck, is how many electricians are out there right now? Maybe you're watching us live and maybe, since we talked about this last in like October, september time, I want to say, in one of a week of our episodes, actually, how many of you are still, even after reflecting in that, spending hours a day on office stuff that you yourself don't need to be doing. And you might even be asking yourself this question I don't know why I'm protecting this stuff. I really don't. I'm just uncomfortable giving it to someone. I'm just not taking the steps. How many people are feeling that way right now. Let us know for sure, because that in itself is actually protecting you from your next level. Joe, were you going to speak to that brother?

Yeah, I was going to say and I've been the other guy too where being in that situation. I remember answering the phone while working in a panel because I kept a headset on all day and it was exhausting. They're just emotionally and physically exhausting. So the thought of being able to have someone else that can support you, really why are you trying to protect it? The only thing you're protecting is your lack of mental equity.

Yeah, I think there's this proprietary thing that happens. I mean, there's certain things I kind of guard the plate on too right. You finally get your CRM down and you feel like, well, if I hire someone, I have to train them and that takes effort and that's a bit of friction I'm feeling. But ultimately, that's what this episode is really about recognizing the key components to moving a bottleneck. And there's something so satisfying about this because it's really just a few key steps. I need the right person, I need the right process, and then I need the right attitude and leadership to back off and let this start to happen without me. Like, that's kind of just it. And I want to be very, very cautious when I use the word right, because I don't want you guys to sit around and think about this any longer. In fact, there's a saying that comes to mind. We've talked through this many times Complexity is the enemy of execution, and in many cases we're just, we're getting too perfectionist, we're just looking at too big of a picture or we're packaging problems as we say. You know how it's good to package options so that people can actually consume and choose them on a menu. When we do that with our problems it's actually defeating, and it's very difficult to even understand our next steps, because the problem itself is much bigger.

Now that it's all packaged up, please jump in, brother, so I have a visual that I think would be very helpful for people when they understand an issue with packaging or problems. Right, have you ever tried to untie like a knot that had just been so overworked that it became like this ball and you're trying to find the end of it? Or like you're trying to find an extension cord and someone tangled it up and you're trying to undo and find the ends. That's the same thing with finding the problem where they were packaging our problems. When you look at the bundle and you start just trying to tug at random things, you can make it worse or tighter where it doesn't need to be. But when you look and say what is the first thing I can find, that's you finding the equivalent of the end of the string, Saying, okay, I at least know where the problem is. It starts here. It could get worse, but I don't start here. It starts here. So I'll fix this now and then I'll fix that next.

Totally man. And I want to give you a very real example. That has also happened to many electricians out there and it's more around cash flow instead of the CSR. And so right in our, with our good neighbor program and our service leads. Now we actually use this little methodology it says it right up top little acronym of ACDC Attract, convert, deliver, collect. Attract, convert, deliver, collect. Now, that's not perfect. It's a general formula because of course we're also taking a 50% deposit to offset the cost of goods sold. But in this service world we're still aiming to get these jobs done in a reasonable time frame and be able to collect the cash so that we can also pay the fixed expenses of the business. You following me so far here, joe 100%, yeah, and I really agree.

Once again, I insist that everyone collects a 50% deposit, because if you're not, you could end up being a situation where you have a job you think you've sold, but hasn't actually been sold on you yet 100%.

Yeah, I love that. In fact, before we really track the wins that in our program for this year now 11 months, in 11 complete months we're at 3.75 million reported wins. Even before we'll register those, we want to hear that the deposit was collected on that amount. So, same philosophy 100%. Now, that said, getting back to this, if you were stuck in a situation where you're ACD, acd, without that last collection point, if you're not able to complete and close out a project and collect the remaining 50%, then you could find yourself with more month at the end of the money than money at the end of the month has this ever happened to you, Joe.

Yeah, I mean I'd be lying if I said that there weren't always situations, whether it's personally or professionally, that you know what You're like. I'm a little short this month and where's it going to come from? And there's no shame in that. But the fact is is that if there is too much month at the end of the money, what steps can I take at the beginning of the month to prevent it from next month? That's the main goal. I'm willing to take it on the chin, but I'm not willing to take it twice. What can I fix?

I love where you're going with this and so, to use our own expression here, in that packaged problem we can be looking at our AR accounts receivable as holy cow. Here's a bunch of people. They owe me money, or here's a few key projects that we're not getting done. They owe us money and we're packaging all that up to just look at it as okay. Well, we're owed $20,000, and we owe still $5,000 in expenses for the month. So not a great month, but still. We should be cash flowing better than this. And yet here we are. And because that's all packaged up, you might start to think well, what's the quickest way to cash? I could lay someone off for a bit, I could take a pay cut myself. I could ask the supply house for some 30 days, forgiveness or not get the 5% or 10% incentive to pay early. Go ahead, men, jump in.

There was a quote that I heard I'm not quite sure where I heard it from, but it makes sense in this situation which is you cannot save your way to success, and it's the concept of you can't make enough cuts to replicate cash flow. Instead, if you focus on the acquisition, it will naturally override your expenses. So, instead of saying how can I save more money, Start thinking how can I make more money?

Love it, man, love it, love it. And I love your prior suggestion. And this is all going to come together with my thoughts now too, because really what we're talking about is two different profit loss statements. Let's say, cash versus accrual, where your cash is a representation of what you're probably seeing come into your bank account actual cash collected. So your cash statement would reflect that 50% deposit and that you're missing the other 50%. In this case, let's say you've got 40K in cash but there's still 20K outstanding. The cash P&L would reflect the 40K, whereas an accrual is like a measurement of your sales. It's also going to reflect the other 20K. And so you could be looking at a profit loss statement ignoring balance sheet, ignoring cash flow statement and see that, oh, we did 60K in sales this month, our expenses are 40. Everything's paid, we're good, and yet you look at your bank account balance and it's crickets and it's like uh-oh, where's our money? And, so to speak, to your prior note, joe, this would be a huge cash flow bottleneck and maybe all that's missing are a couple little integrations between, let's say, installer and dispatch, or CSR dispatching CSR. Well, what integrations, you might ask. Well, okay, we've scheduled you for XYZ installs for four days this week. We expect the job to be complete on the fourth day. If there were reasons the job was incomplete, we would need you to communicate that back to us so that we can make schedule amendments to get the job done so we can get paid. Now to the sales tech side of things. Let's say this is just a three-person operation for simplified use. Here We've got an installer tech, we've got a CSR, we've got a sales tech out there. That dispatch could now reprioritize the sales tech as well, because that accrual system is a lagging need for your business. Sales are great and that tells us great stuff, but if you don't have cash, you're in the shitter right.

Well, you can have $100,000 owed to you. I remember there were there sometimes where we took on federal projects and they promised big money, but it's a net 90 if you ask nicely. So it doesn't help anyone in those situations.

instead focus on, you know. So, unpackaging this problem and whittling it down to the narrowest, smallest, simplest little actions could your CSR dispatch, reprioritize sales to go help finish an installation in time or to get whatever constraints are out of the way so that you can collect your $20,000 and move on? And now, how much better is your business for having that system in place and the people trained, learning to run that system and cause those changes in that situation? That is a huge piece right there and that's how you move your bottleneck. Because what just happened? When that's run efficiently I mean, even you're with me right now what do we think could be in the way of that cash? That's probably inspection or materials, maybe a third party. If we're talking about, like, a platinum sale and you're relying on a painter and the painter got sick, okay, we can need a backup plan here, right, but the next question just becomes well, how do we respond to this in a way that gets us cash as fast as possible? Get creative.

Yeah. I was gonna say, I got a couple ideas that come top of mine where let's go through it. Because, literally, my first thought came down to me as I was saying what situations were I in that caused the lack of cash? And one of those things that really came to mind was when you're trying to over leverage your top options before you've properly allocated for what they cost as an investment. So you say to yourself like, okay, I need to make sure I have a painter. Do you know what your painter cost? Am I going to do my landscaping? I know what my landscaper cost? But at the end of the day, these are all learning experiences as well, because you've priced yourself profitably. Even if you end up having to take a loss on one of those things, you having a 50% deposit upfront allows you to front that to where you're not having to liquidate your own assets in order to front the material for a job. So, no matter what situation you can find yourself in, looking back at it, I see that everything gets solved with that 50% deposit that you insist on every single time.

And appreciating what you said there. The only reason this becomes dangerous, I feel, is actually because if you're not collecting within that month and the fixed expenses now come around and are due, again your memberships, your shop rent, your, your payments on your vehicle leases, insurance, etc. Management salaries would be another one right. So those things are the things that could bleed out if you're not on top of that cash flow. Now, that said, if you could solve that problem, now, what's in the way of this business? Well, nothing. We're now free to operate. We're now free to reach our capacities again, our thresholds for what a salesperson can sell and what an installer can install and what a CSR can handle for incoming lead flow and outgoing marketing awareness messaging. So the next bottleneck becomes well, either we're going to increase sales or we're going to increase installs, or both. And then, just like you did, adding people to the office and every time we hit the stage, and train and delegate, and train and delegate you yourself as an owner, or reaching another level. Just to point this out, joe, you don't have to add more sales, you don't have to add more installers. You've just built a nice little machine, but if you're the person who's the owner and the sales tech, I would still highly recommend finishing off this first floor by training someone to do it in lieu of you, so that you can pass that fishing test and ultimately remove that bottleneck altogether. There's a lot of ways to grow here and create meaningful jobs without needing to be a 2040 van company, and that comes down to your vision, and it just really comes down to you and your ability on how to move your bottleneck. Huge, huge lesson here, brother. Anything to add, joe, that we feel we've missed here today?

I actually have one particular statement that I remember seeing the other day that I think is really relative here, which was you mentioned. Like you know, you don't need to necessarily add more money, and at the same time some people are like, well, money is a root of all happiness or root of all evil. I actually just saw on the other day that money itself doesn't equate to happiness. But when you know that your bills are paid, when you know that your techs have their salary for the next week covered we know the materials are all squashed it's a lot easier to be happy because you don't have those mental burdens on you. So money cannot buy happiness, but it can buy the base essentials that allow happiness to thrive.

I love that. That's really good. You know what, as you were talking, man, I'm thinking of a bottleneck we didn't address. But we have many times and it's like, okay, well, what if I'm not getting enough sales? That bottleneck comes back to. What's my conversion rate? How many leads are we serving? Are we in a shoulder season, Not a slow season? I wouldn't dare call it that. What could I do in the coming time? What systems could I set up? Have I really exhausted every effort? Did I run the service leads? Now the feedback we've heard, for instance, from the service leads now just talking to Dorian this week, is that his pipelines fat Call volume came back, plus all the actions he took to have the 58K in sales resulted in about a 72K November. Even in a shoulder season where call volume slowed, guy still had a record month in sales. Isn't that remarkable, Joe? It really is. You know what?

If anything, dorian, I got nothing but love for you. Man, my preferably hat is tipping towards you. The best thing about it is that when people say it's the economy, it's the season, it's whatever it is, and then someone goes out of the way to trump that thought, it really just makes you wonder what else is possible. How else have we been holding ourselves back?

It's huge man. It's huge. If Dorian can do it, you can too. You can take control, you can take action, as we say. Take everything we give, just promise to take action. You guys, speaking of action, let's crank out a couple of action items. Let me start this off by just saying step one to any bottleneck we got to unpackage. You guys, that is defeating us right now. Is it that cash flow is weak? Then ask yourself well, why Is AR high or are sales low? If your AR is high, then how can I focus or create systems, how can I fix this breakdown to get more cash in through our doors? Because it actually comes down to probably finishing a project or talking to a person about paying you. All those are reasonable, right, if it's your time and your sales, well, if I'm converting. Well, I just can't be in the field enough. Why am I spending so much time in the office? Still Might be a good question to ask. Break this down, unpackage these problems, find the root cause and just prioritize your actions against them. Couldn't be said simpler than that, joe. I mean, that's a base, maybe an all-star too. You tell me, brother, you got something else.

I got one for us it comes down to, because you started off by talking about packaging, the problems and the thought of collecting and everything. I don't know whether this is going to be an all-star or a basic, because, depending on where you stand on the line, it could be both. That is when you recognize that you look at your bank statement or you look at your cash statement and you realize that I'm owed money. If the first thought you have is and I need to call and collect this today, my question is a challenge to you and say do you feel that you've earned that money? Do you feel like it's currently already yours? Because if you're asking for something that's yours, it's a lot easier to do and say hey, you know the thing that I lent you, I need to have that back, versus hey, you know that thing that I did for you that we need to have an exchange for. It'd be really nice if you could send me that money now. Right, it's a very different experience. The very first thought is if you feel that you've already earned it and you feel that it's already yours and you see that it's owed, why aren't you picking up the phone? 100%.

If you need more leads, go back and listen to our Multipliers episode why you Won't Run the Good Neighbor program and everything like it. Guys, this has been another week of Electricpreneur Secrets. This one we went a bit extra long to help you kick the week off or get it done, rather wrap the week up, I should say this has been episode 216 of Electricpreneur Secrets, the Electricians podcast, where we help you master your sales, simplify your pricing and deliver premium-level electrical service. Again, guys, if you know someone who needs to hear this, please hit that share button where you heard it first and send it there away as we help all electricians rise up in this industry. Have a great weekend. We'll see you guys again next week. Looking forward to it, thank you.