Transitioning from firefighting to forward-thinking is no easy feat. Tune in as I explore the frustrations and lessons learned when your intense efforts don't always translate into immediate sales or visible momentum. There's a peculiar balance to strike between the hands-on hustle of the early days and stepping back to focus on the bigger picture. I'll discuss the importance of operationalizing downtime, delegating effectively, and embracing strategic thinking to propel a venture to the next level. Join me as I shed light on these nuanced stages of entrepreneurship—those crucial moments that could very well define the future success of any business endeavor.
Transitioning from firefighting to forward-thinking is no easy feat. Tune in as I explore the frustrations and lessons learned when your intense efforts don't always translate into immediate sales or visible momentum. There's a peculiar balance to strike between the hands-on hustle of the early days and stepping back to focus on the bigger picture. I'll discuss the importance of operationalizing downtime, delegating effectively, and embracing strategic thinking to propel a venture to the next level. Join me as I shed light on these nuanced stages of entrepreneurship—those crucial moments that could very well define the future success of any business endeavor.
What's going on everybody. So in this episode I want to talk about something that I think plagues a lot of entrepreneurs after they've been running their business for a little while. And, like I said, this podcast part of it is just a bit of a diary and documenting the process. So we're into the new year. This will be our second year officially in business and up until this point it has just been go, go, go, whether it's been dealing with client issues, dealing with rep issues, dealing with in, dealing with install issues, dealing with a myriad of different logistical issues, operational issues, basically everything that you can imagine to try to get the business up and running, you know, from getting CRM implementation to lead flow to marketing, all kinds of stuff. So really, starting at 9am every day, I am on the phone or dealing with something or driving somewhere and is busy and it's nonstop and it is literally like running at a million miles an hour and you really do get used to that kind of momentum Well, not really momentum, but you really do get used to that kind of craziness in your life.
Speaker 1:
And yesterday was one of the first days, and today as well, where I didn't have to do any of that and instead I actually had a full day of just doing checklist stuff, getting rid of all my administrative things that I just haven't been able to get to in the last literally seven or eight months, and, ironically enough, I knocked all that stuff out within probably three hours and I had a whole day in front of me and nothing to really do. Not to say there wasn't things that could get done, but I had nothing on the checklist. I had no immediate things that needed to get finished and for probably that whole day I felt pretty damn lost. And what was frustrating and I think this is where it will get a lot of entrepreneurs kind of hung up is you did all this work and I did all this work and I made all these phone calls and I reached out to leads that day and I just went through my whole list and I look up and there had been no movement. Nothing really had happened. No extra sales were on the board, no extra appointments were on the board. There is what appeared to have been no Ford momentum in the business from that one to two days of just intense head down work, which then you look around and you see your team not doing anything else to push that needle forward and you're just like what the hell? And it feels in the moment very overwhelming. It feels like you didn't actually do anything and that's kind of what business feels like.
Speaker 1:
There is a long periods of time, especially in the startup phase, where you do all these actions and you really don't get any return. You don't see an immediate oh, I did this. Now this happens. I called all these leads to try to get them booked. I left 100 voicemails but no one answered. I just sent an email campaign out to my entire list but no one responded. Did all this training yet no one's closing at a high rate yet and then they start to eventually right.
Speaker 1:
That's kind of the game and I think that's where it can get pretty disheartening at times is you put in loads and loads and loads and loads of work, hours and hours and hours of work, but that doesn't actually guarantee anything's going to happen. If you work at normal W2 job or you have a. If you work at W2 job or you have an employer, normally, if you're working and you're putting hours in, you will get a return. That is not the case in entrepreneurial land and it's when you can actually start getting used to this downtime and actually be able to operationalize it. You can then actually move the business forward, because these are the moments where you can actually think of strategy, you can think of brand, you can think of things where, if you can have a team start doing the things that you know would take too much of your time, then these down times are times where you can actually come through and push the business forward. So that's kind of the phase I'm at. Now is a lot of the day to day small stuff of actually being on the doors and driving the van everywhere and doing pickups is slowly going away. So that will free me up to do more business growth, growth actions. I'll be able to reach out to more B2B clients, do some more federal government contract applications and try to grow the business that way, as well as maybe make some more ads, make some more contents and actually put the business on the map in front of more people.
Speaker 1:
With that being said, we have a new plumber that we are training right now. That has been the biggest pain in our side Up until this point. It's been really draining us as far as finances go, because we've been overpaying on installation for literally the better part of the last nine months. So we're hoping the new guy we have will stick with us. We're hoping he'll be able to do the job correctly. Up to this point we have yet to have a plumber that's been able to do the job up to our standards, but we have him training up with our master plumber for the last couple of days, so I'm confident this guy will be really good. He's got some experience and that will definitely help us go into the new year, save some money, keep our quarterlies down and get those profit margins back up, which will allow us to do more marketing, higher level stuff.
Speaker 1:
And hopefully you guys will listen to this podcast. Or maybe, if you come to this podcast from us, this would be a cool little thing for you to listen to, because maybe you're listening to this podcast after seeing myself or my company reaching a certain milestone and you're just coming back through these podcasts and listening to them. That would be. That'd be kind of cool. But if you're listening already, I always would love to reference this back and be like hey, I was there when you guys were still growing and scrapping, so had a great, you know, first last year. We're starting off this month strong, but I'm hoping to break some records Hope and hit 70 K this month. That's the goal and we'll see how it goes. All right, guys, thanks for listening.