Super Joe Pardo’s Processes Playbook

Excellent. Excellency expected. The inspirational business advice podcast. Hey, hey, hey, welcome to Excellency Expected with me and Mr.

Mark Asmith from Bullya in Good Old England. Now, can you guys remember episodes 14 and 15? They were entitled, become the ultimate business person through systemization. And it's actually a two-parter with a good friend of mine, Mr.

Ben Bowman, where we took apart his systems and the importance that those systems had on his business. It were really two fun episodes and actually two episodes that remained consistently some of the highest-listened in terms of numbers throughout the entire show. So a really, really interesting topic. We are actually going to revisit that topic today.

We are going to dig deep into how you can create specific processes in your company and how they will help you to Excell. It's a really important topic to get your head around. It's something that I personally have struggled with all my career. I'm one of those guys.

I'm like a winging guy. And I mean, that's not always good. I don't want to be winging things. So, processes are so, so important, but this sounds so dull.

I always say to the guys at Hacksaw, we need a process for this and you can see their eyes rolling. Yeah, sure. We'll just, just got to leave. I'll be back soon.

You know, that's the reaction that processes get. But honestly, guys, they are so, so important. So we're going to define challenge and conquer processes and the impact they can have on your business and joining me today is someone that I actually met over at podcast movement earlier in 2015. Podcast movement was just such a fantastic week for me.

I met so many fantastic people out there and this chap was no exception. So it gives me great, great pleasure to welcome to the show. Mr. Joe Pardo.

How you doing, sir? Oh, what's up, man? It's all good. We're in England as we speak.

We're talking about the time difference and we've been rambling on for about 35 minutes prior to recording. It's amazing. Like we just spend our nights talking, podcasting, all things geek. This is just a fantastic way to spend the night, man.

Well, night for you. It's only two 30 here. But yeah, man, you know, the time difference really stinks. We were talking about that, like you said before the show about like trying to do live streaming on the internet and how in the mornings on Fridays, I get your business, your power business lunch, small business lunch.

Yes, small business lunch. Okay. So when does that come through like seven AM or something? Yeah, something like that.

It's like right around the time that I wake up and I'm like, it's too early for me to be doing this. Yeah, it's not much time. No, it's not. But you know, I should try.

I'm going to try to make an effort to swipe in off my phone. I'll forgive you though. The first thing that you see when you wake up does not want to be my face. That is not good.

I don't know why she'll tell you that. She will tell you that. So we're going to talk about process as that way. Before we do what I'd like to do is just tell the guys listening a little bit about you.

Obviously we know each other through podcasting in the world of audio goodness. But tell the rest of the guys. Listen, a little bit about you. What is it that you do?

Where do you come from and how do you help people? Well, I help from South Jersey and that's Southern New Jersey, not Jersey in England, right outside of that place called Philadelphia, you know, birthplace of America. So I love it here. It's the suburbs.

I grew up in the house I live in. I bought it from my dad about five years ago. I wouldn't change. I moved changed quite a bit in the house, but I don't want to ever really move.

I love it here. I owned part of my family's business going. It was 30 plus years. I'm trying to remember off top of my head.

It was in the truck parts industry. So like big heavy duty trucks. But then over the over the last like 10 years it expanded into repairing trucks and broke into the packaging of like freight loads and as well as an actual trucking company where my dad started buying up trucks and shipping stuff from left to right and right to left. So I left that about a year and a half ago to pursue my own career.

I've always had a passion for art and writing and just doing all this other stuff DJing. So I started with a project called a ventrittorial and it took off and I loved doing it so much. I loved working on it so much. And then podcasting fell into my lap and it opened my eyes to this idea of building an audience for all my stuff rather than just building product like building like music and stuff like that and then not having an audience for it.

And that's when Dreamers podcast was born. And since then I have six shows. I actually host my own podcast conference here in South Jersey. I've written two books in the last year.

I started my own school to teach people online business because of my heavy business background as well as my heavy tech background. I've been doing computers since I was just a little lad as you would say over there in England. I'm not Scottish Joe. Oh, is that?

Oh, is that? I suppose I could get away with I am from Yorkshire. You know, in the grand scheme of things when you were just following the new laugh. So we're all out of it.

And yeah, so I just started turning everything that I love into my job and only doing things that I really wanted to do and do it the way that I want to do it. And so far it's been really good. I mean, I'm about to finish and I hate talking about money, but you know, so many people have beaten me up for the fact that I passed up on, you know, it was a $20 million enterprise. And okay, this year I've made $12,000.

But only in the last since really since April since I wrote my first book or put out my first book, have I really tried to make money. But even even with that, it's only really been in the last like three or four months. And now I'm recording in December. So that I've really tried pushing to make money.

You know, building a platform has really been all what I've been trying to do. I think it's something that so many people moving into now that people have seen the benefit of building an audience before selling to them. And I think, you know, one of the big things that comes out of this generation at the minute, Joe, is that we need to earn the right to sell to people. It's not like it used to be.

We can't just, you know, one way communicate and broadcast, shouting ball at people, you know, we need to earn the right because frankly, they've got more choice and it's much easier to get to multiples off choice than it's ever been. So I think that's an admirable way to build a business, just build the platform, get the audience and at the end of the day, they're going to trust you. So they want to buy what you're selling. Definitely.

Yeah. I mean, unless you have something that they need or they really want, and I talk about that in one of my first book, actually, about everything pays rent. So it has to be a necessity or it has to be facilitating a need that you have. So entertainment value or something that you need and has to be in relation to how much space it takes up.

So, you know, people really, really want what you have, then you're going to have a much easier time of not building an audience because the audience is going to come to you based around using other people's platforms. It still comes back to platform building. That's the whole thing is how big is the platform or, you know, and at the end of the day, if you build your own, then you're controlling your destiny there. Yeah.

That's huge. If you build your own controlling your destiny, you can't build on rented land. That's the big thing from like, that's a big takeaway, especially if you build something on Facebook or one of the social networks that dictates how people get to your content. So I see the value in that completely.

And let's talk about processes then. You know, it's obviously you've been in business for a long time and obviously very specifically online business. What led you down the path to realizing that you really need kick-ass solid processes, something that you can rely on that you can fall back on. Talk about that journey.

What impact does it have? How did you actually come to that understanding? So 10 years of being at the top of the company, you know, you start to realize that people are just do whatever they want. They just do whatever they want.

And they'll do the path of least resistance is for them. And you know, they just, they're just, a lot of people are just there to collect a paycheck. And while they might care to a certain extent, when they leave, they're not going to care. And when they come back on Monday from being away on the weekend, if there isn't a set process, then they develop their own processes without even realizing it.

And a lot of times those are inefficient. So that means they cost money to the company. They can cost time just on their part. It can also make a lot of people mad if they're, if they're processing way of doing it is way different than what everybody else is doing.

So as much as I'm all for like, you know, independent thinking and all that, I really feel that there needs to be a process. And with that said, with all I said, goes back to independent thinking, you can break the rules and you should break the rules. But at the end of the day, there has to be rules. There has to be a way of doing things.

And you can make exceptions and stuff like that, as long as that's not the norm. Because otherwise, everyone's always breaking the rules. They're always doing whatever it is that they feel is the best to do. And that creates a headache for so many people.

And hopefully, hopefully, it's not causing a headache for your customers. Because if those, you know, these employees are doing whatever they feel is the best way, well, I've been doing it this way for so and so long. And we can get into that working with people to try to get them to do something else. I have one of the last big things I did at the company before I departed was revitalize the inventory control and took power away from, to a certain extent, took it away from the managers and the employees and gave it to the computer.

Because computer knows when somebody bought something last. A person doesn't have a great representation of time. So things slip away. Oh, yeah, I saw Mark last month.

Well, actually, according to the computer, he was here three or four months ago. Where's he been? Why isn't the customer come back in and so on and so forth? I hope I'm not bouncing around too much, Mark.

No, I like that. I mean, that idea of taking the control away from, you know, obviously, people are the fall guys in that story. But the idea behind it is very, very sound. And that is keeping a very rigid look at what keeps the company moving, what keeps the company moving forward and keeps it running and keeps it more importantly.

Running profitably and effectively and efficiently. Because I think, you know, it's like, we all have businesses that we've built. And especially for you guys, listen, you know, you may be a owner, manager, you may be a solo printer, you may be a two to three person operation. How many of those processes, how many of those customers do you know and everything about them is you're stored in the head when someone says, how do you know that?

You just tap on your temple with a knowing glance. And you know, that's just the way it is. It's just the way we operate. So I'm not jot.

I think the examples are perfect. And the idea is that, you know, you can, you can automate things, you can create processes for things that you don't always feel you can. You know, that idea that all this stuff that we take for granted, we can still probably make better. And I think that's the power process of something you spot where things aren't perhaps as good as they could be.

When you start to implement that, so when you implement to, you know, that change from the human side into the more automated computer side, what effect did it have on the business? Well, it was, we were running about $5.8 million in inventory across the company. And within a year, we were down to about $3 million in inventory. The old school way of thinking was, oh, if you have inventory, it always looks good.

You know, the shelves are full and, you know, the bank is happy because you have inventory. And my idea, you know, to me is like, yeah, that's great. But if the inventory doesn't sell, if you're not getting a return on investment, if you're not turning the inventory over, that's not good. And we were still cranking out, like, you know, lots of dollars in sales and all that stuff.

But we were running into a really real problem of like, well, we have a lot of stuff that's just sitting around not selling. And the cash flow was choking because of the trucking industry at the time. Because everybody had bought new trucks. And I think it was 2012 or 2013, there was a new regulation and everybody had to, sorry, buying these new trucks.

So they were buying new trucks. They had very little reasons to go by as many parts to fix those trucks. And we were just, you know, everything was just bad, right? Plus 2012 wasn't a great year financial wise either, like in the US economy.

So this is still rebounding from 2008. But the point is, is you can look like you have, I guess it's like the appearance of like kind of like faking it so you make it. Oh, I have a lot of inventory. But like how much of it is just sitting on the shelf, it's gathering dust, the boxes are way outdated.

Like, you know, the boxes fall in part or yellowing. The parts that work just fine because it's steel, but you know, it's like it hasn't sold. So what we were able to do was we worked off a hub and spoke system. So the hub was the central warehouse to nine locations that we would ship out out to from the hub from the hub warehouse.

And the problem was nobody would ever send any inventory back. They would do, they would do these these returns, but the problems with returns were based on what people at the company at that store or at the main location of the hub thought they should have based on their minimum, the minimum they should have in stock, the maximum they should have on the shelf in each of those locations. Well, the way we were doing it was we would print out hundreds of sheets of paper with the numbers and the stats for the year and all that. And we would make these these changes manually on paper and then go into the computer and fix each one by hand.

And some of these lines had, you know, 10,000, 20,000 part numbers. Now we didn't sell or stock every single of those part numbers, but it was what would print out. And I think there was a way to do it where we didn't have to print out ones that showed in stock, but I think there was a compromise where if it didn't, if it showed it in stock, but it had sales, there was some kind of complex way where it's like, it wasn't giving you just what you wanted. It was always giving you more than what you wanted or too little versus too much.

So a long time ago, like 10 years ago, I talked to my grandfather, I said, Hey, why don't you know, the computer system we have has a minmax built into it, like a changing system where it could calculate all that stuff for you. And he was always like, Well, you know, you need to wipe your blades, right? You're not going to do very good if you only, you know, because the way the numbers break down, you only have one wiper blade on the shelf when the customer comes in for two or two, you know, you need you should have at least two headlight bulbs, but there was no way to like program that in the system. Well, with my background in computers and understanding how how code works and all that, I was able to sit down with my with our computer company and say, okay, here's what we were looking for.

And here's the changes that I need made to this program. They hadn't updated it in a long time. But we were able to make that change. And I was able to run the program so that it was updating those minmaxes automatically.

And then we sent out returns to those, those spoke stores. And what they what happened is they sent, they would send our inventory back. And I can talk about this a little bit afterwards, but they would send our inventory back and then we recycled that inventory back out to the stores that actually needed that inventory, that those specific partners where they, you know, maybe their minmax wasn't set high enough, or maybe it was set, you know, too high and it brought it down. So then they returned some, but they kept some on the shelf because they still had a need for it, but they didn't eat ten of them on the shelf.

There's only something maybe one a month. Why do we need 10, you know, and every funishing based upon that, that number as well. So it was a lot of nights spent here at the how in my house, working out the best numbers, you know, the best numbers to put into the algorithm to figure all this out. And then on the on the flip side, that's when the, I was like, okay, look, because obviously we're getting a lot of pushback because the managers like, well, I've been working here 20 years.

I know what sells. I know, you know, I love a lot of computer doesn't know. And my argument was that numbers don't lie when it comes to how many have you sold. So the note we had to, I had to work pretty hard to figure out that to get the right combination of numbers to put into the algorithm to get the right answers.

But at the end of the day, and this is what I mean by you can break the rules is I told them like, hey, look, if it's asking for a whole bunch of these back and you want to at least keep one on your shelf, even though the computer saying that you shouldn't keep anyone yourself, keep one on yourself. I was like, just send me the nine back. Keep one. You don't need 10 to sell one, maybe every two or three or four months.

That was one of the interesting points you mentioned there about the buying, about the buying of the staff of the team of the people around you with a smaller business and you start working with code directors, whatever that might be. That buying is vital. You've got to present the fact, present the figures almost pitch that. And I want to talk about that a bit further.

How did you go about, yes, in that example, obviously you got the fact you got the figures, but let's talk culture. Let's talk, you know, a little bit more long term. How do you ensure that process is maintained? And number two, how do you, how do you ensure that the next time you want to roll something out, you're not met with the same type of resistance?

How do you keep that longevity across? That's why I bundled the two questions together. How do you keep that longevity? Oh, man, you know, I learned a lot from that experience.

And I mean, I'm not very, I mean, I'm 29 now. And when I was going through this, I was, you know, 26 trying to tell people that were, you know, 45, 50 years old, like what to do. And, and to me, it's, it's about doing what's right versus doing, you know, like, hey, I'm going to come in and change the system. And it's going to be awesome because it's me and it's, it's what I want to do because I'm going to put my footprint on, you know, on this new territory that we're, we're exploring.

Um, you know, it was, it was met with a lot of, a lot of backlash. Um, and, and rightfully so, some of the backlash, you, you, what you need to do, there's two things you need to do. One is, you know, turn it up slowly. Um, in my case, I, I did not feel that we had the time to be, to be slow because our ideal and inventory value should have been around two and a half million.

And we were at 5.8 and it was, it was crippling our company. Um, so to me, I was like, okay, this, I see the right way. I see what's going on. I know that it's not perfect, but I have to offer yet.

It's going to, you know, it's going to take time to play out, but let's go hard and fast with it. And, and, you know, it was met with a lot of yelling on both ends of it. Now, keep in mind, even though it was a 20 million dollar year enterprise made up of five companies, it's still a family owned business. So this isn't corporate culture.

Uh, that, that's some of you may be where, where if you yelled or they yelled, uh, people would just be fired. That's, that wouldn't, that's not going to happen there. That's not going to happen there. Um, so it's a little bit different.

And, and I think, you know, so what you need to do is you need to turn it off slowly, uh, and, and make changes as you go along. But the other thing is, it's really listen. One of the most important things that came out of it, uh, was, was trying to figure out how to go about incorporating that whole, um, you know, we need a minimum of this, because you can't sell one wiper blade, you know, you need to have at least two, uh, in stock. So, and obviously I don't care, like even if they were only selling one because that was my argument was, well, you only sold one here, one here, one here, one here.

Why are you telling me that you only sell it in pairs? Um, that was my big argument against doing anything like that. Cause I was trying to get it as lean as possible. Um, and that, you know, but at the end of the day, even if we had two in the shelf, it still was a huge improvement over what we were doing before.

So keeping in mind, I mean, I preach a lot about perspective and being able to view it from other people's perspective, but, but one of the main, uh, detractors, you know, really helped me in that sense where he, you know, he put his foot down to the point where it's like, okay, well, we can't move forward without this because we don't want to lose this person, uh, in our company. And, and it really pushed me to, to go and figure out, okay, like, let's, let's go back to the drawing board on this algorithm and how do we go about adding in like a, you know, a white if statement into it, if that makes sense to people who aren't programmers, but, uh, you know, it's important to listen to those people and, uh, they might not always be right, but you might be able to use some of what they have to say. Cause they are on the first, especially they're on the front line and not just, um, dictating from their memory or their experience. One of the big things that I took from that particular, well, the two things actually that stood out to me, the first one was pragmatism.

You know, I've been really pragmatic on this and your approach of going in there and saying, well, listen guys, the facts tell me this. And then marrying that with the real life, the experience, that's where you hit the real gold, you know, that's where you hit the perfection, because you've seen things as you mentioned from all sorts of different angles and perspectives. But not only that, what you're doing is you're allowing yourself to optimize this. So yes, of course you put process in place, but actually these things have got to be flexible, the day to serve the business, you aren't there to serve them.

The business is not there to serve them. And then the other thing that you said, which really stood out and it was this idea of baselines, you know, what, what do we need from this? What actually, what are we trying to achieve? Cause it's very easy to come up with processes and almost become a little bit too addicted to efficiency and really want to push that forward and get it out and optimize, you know, quote, unquote, optimize, absolutely everything.

And you mentioned, as I said, the baselines, the idea of, okay, here's what we need. This is what we need to be able to run this. And we must have that. And I think that personally, I feel that's the key to success with, with any kind of process you mentioned around the what is statement, you know, you don't have to be a programmer.

Actually, when you consider that it can be a simple sales process, you know, to really small grocery, but what happens if the customer gives me five, when I'm not going to change what happens if I get a 10, you know, that this, this kind of contingency and the way that you've structured these things, this is what I really like about process is that they could scale using the same principles all the time. You don't have to be a Microsoft or an Apple. You can implement process right at the lowest level. And I feel that that personally, I think that's one of the biggest problems small business owners have is that if they're three to four to five people as an organization, we're too small for processes.

We don't need processes. We, you know, John over there knows this and Lucy over there's knows that. That's fantastic. What if they're sick, you have to be able to plug people in.

And that's one of those things where it's like, you know, some of our stores only had one or two people working inside the store. I mean, we might have a driver and like a delivery driver and a sales guy, but like there might only be one or two people on the counter interacting with the customer. And like our vice president would have to go or one of our other, you know, managers would have to go to these other stores and it's like, OK, well, I don't, you know, then the customer would say, well, did they order this? You know, did I, did they have my order?

Like they said, it was going to be here Tuesday. Well, it's Tuesday. Well, Bob's not here on Tuesday because he's sick. OK, so yeah, you got Jimmy at the counter and Jim's like, well, hold on.

And he's like rummaging through, you know, papers and all this stuff. And, you know, there was no, that was another big process that I put in was and with my tech background is I like to find cheap or free ways of doing things. So there was a program shout out to this program called Task Freak, which we kind of manipulated a code a little bit to it's a totally free. It's a task, task manager.

And I manipulated the code so that we could track our orders within the company. So like, again, if Jim's out, then, you know, Bill can go in there and say, OK, yeah, I go right on this on the system and boom, that's what your order is. Actually won't be here till tomorrow because something they didn't, I didn't get the confirmation until a day later. So so something to that effect.

I mean, that kind of stuff is really important because like, you know, people were clinging to those P.O. books. Oh, God, I have the P.O. books.

And I'm like, do P.O. books are like, I don't know, I'm just making up like $10 a piece. And there isn't that many pages in them and they're not very effective if you're just like, shoving them into your, you know, into your drawer or something like that for someone to go like, Oh, Jim's sick today. So I've got to go in like rummage through his drawer to find out what the heck he, you know, ordered for this customer.

Where is it? You know, what manufacturer did he use when he placed the order because you might have to be a form of different manufacturers, he got to place it with all that information should be in one place. And that's why I was like, Oh, well, let's let's get it now getting people to use it was a whole nother, you know, a whole nother thing. But I like your example of the cashier with about the $5, you know, oh, I need change for a five or I need a $5 bill for change.

Um, if if there's no process, then, you know, whoever's taking that money is like, Oh, let me just ask the next five people online. Hey, who has changed for a 10 versus? Okay. Well, what's the process?

Okay. Well, I'm supposed to go back to customer service customer service. I have it. Okay.

Customer service doesn't have it. Then maybe there's a third, you know, a second step, if not, then you just are asking people who's got changed for a 10. Well, they did the great thing with process. Well, I often feel is that you mentioned about plugging people in, but when you turn that around, the people that you plug in, it empowers them, you know, the first six months of a new job, frankly, you know, very difficult.

You know, they can be sort of you assimilating into a new group of people picking out a bit for them. Yeah, exactly completely completely. And it becomes really tough at times. And the process is there to be a parachute, there to be a safety net.

You can fall back on them. And if you do fall them, if you stick to them, you can achieve very complex things, very well to a very high standard, which that's going to make you feel good, you know, competence that comes through confidence. And the only way to get confidence in so many things like this is to know exactly what you're doing and when you're doing it. So I think there's a lot to be said about even the most simplest of process.

I discovered a tool recently called Process Street, which is much more around small business and very specific, you know, kind of a process book. If you like, you know, you walk up to the shelf and here's my customer attention process when someone wants to cancel or here's my new sales process. If someone has this type of card payment, you know, it's for that kind of process. But man, it can change your life.

Just having a process book is such a powerful thing. Oh, I greatly can employee handbook, but not everybody wants to take the time to write that employee handbook. You know, what's the steps of what they should be doing or could be doing and defining the job, you know, again, people can break the rules. You know, if Sally in accounting isn't supposed to be doing stuff for, if she's only supposed to be doing accounts payable stuff and all of a sudden accounts receivable is out for like a week or something like that, they need to know, she needs to know how to step into the role.

And again, you can break the rules that now be breaking the rules because you're breaking that that job title because you very specifically put out like, okay, this is what your job is. But, you know, everybody has to sometimes pitch in more, but you got to have the you got to have the rules to start. You can't break rules, but there's no rules to break. Well, that's a very good point, actually.

Yeah, that is a very good point. And you know, the word rules comes with connotations of all sorts of Machia brilliant practices and, you know, that whole kind of, you know, traditional, I know what traditional, but that kind of quote unquote traditional appearance of a boss. But at the end of the day, businesses need to do business and then need to do it efficiently and then need to keep optimizing that. So I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping that moving forward, you know, with continually moving the process and shifting them and optimizing them.

And even if you're the creator, this is a big thing. Even if you're the creator of the process, not letting that dictate your attitude to change because, you know, it's my baby. I created it this way. It's the best way to do it.

You really got to be open to that conversation, haven't you? Yeah, you got to constantly be questioning everything you do when it comes to business. And now it's actually one of my videos I just put out recently was, you know, you can't fear change in business, but you, you know, you just question everything. Like when people are like, so many times, not just in the businesses that I've worked in, but with other businesses, I always ask questions like, well, wait, why is it that you're doing it that way?

Like, why are you printing out every, you know, every single email and then, like, or every single invoice? Have you thought of it? Is why are you doing that? What are you doing with the paperwork afterwards?

Can you just maybe print them to a PDF file, have them and then sort them later? What's the step that you're, you know, why is it that you have, like, why is it that you have to print them out right on them and then file them or rescan them? Maybe there's, you know, say that's why staying on top of technology and questioning what, what's the, you know, capabilities that you have with what you have in front of you is important. You know, maybe you can use a program to write what you were going to write after you printed it out.

So you're not wasting paper. You're not. And that's as an IT guy, paper, ink and paper and ink being wasted is just crawls up my skin. Are you, you want to go to that guy's operates a paperless office, Steve, fabled, paperless office close?

You know, I try to be close to it. I really didn't print anything. I didn't have to print absolutely have to print. If I can print it to a PDF or print it to a text file, make the edits and then re re-print it as a PDF file, like straight to a PDF file, then I would.

And that's, you know, to me, that's really, because we would spend a ton of money on paper. And I know that I'm not over there. I know that they're printing everything, you know, and it's the greatest thing. And it's all the business owners, you know, I get this from HR, get this from other people.

And I was like, why do you print this email? And they're like, paper trail, got to paper trail, everything. And I'm like, that's great. Until Mr.

Fire comes along, it takes away your paper trail. I was like, so why don't we work on ways to make it so that everything's already back up, boss, like anyway, why don't we work on concentrating on not creating that quote unquote paper trail and instead maybe we have a better local way. And by local, I mean, on the computer, on the server, like on a computer server relation of accessing that type of information rather than Mr. Paper trail that could just burn up tomorrow.

You realize when he doesn't secure it? We need to make a video of Mr. Paper trail and Mr. Fire fighting it out.

Yes. Yes. And again, this is this is the kind of stuff that I think about when because I marry that that technology background with the business background and and not in a way that like, you know, I'm a tech startup or something like that. It's just, you know, building processes for everything to make, you know, utilizing technology to the fullest and the cheapest because you don't have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to make these kinds of technical processes.

Well, that's the beauty of the world. We're living. That's the thing. Everything has become so cheap in terms of, you know, IT infrastructure cloud and everything that everything that people take for granted and see as buzzwords, genuine to do make life easier.

That's the kind of catch all statement for that one. I think so. Joe, fantastic chat. Really, really good chat.

So what we're going to do now is switch gear a second. We're going to move into the famous excellence, expect an actionable takeaway section. So for people who, you know, maybe like myself a few years ago, see processes that big bad rules, you know, creating them, they're reserved for people that are much bigger than we are. Let's talk about how to get these guys kick started with process.

So I know you've put together three super actionable tips. So let's dig into actionable tip number one, please, sir. Let's see, identify inefficiencies. You know, like another thing to go along with the printer example we were just using was everybody saying, I got to have a printer in my office.

There has to be one at my desk. Like, OK, well, how many in cartridges we had to buy and then they're, you know, how often are those just sitting there idly versus if we just have one or two or even three printers for the whole office to use at a central location? Because God forbid somebody has to get up off the desk for, you know, 10 seconds. Now, if they have a ton of printing to do, like that's, you know, if it's unavoidable for their job, then maybe you should get, you know, a smaller printer for them.

Like one of those HP, like, I think the older number was like 20 50s or something. 20 55s or something like that. Laser jets versus like having the big behemoth ones. I think now it's like M4O ones.

But yeah, but versus having the big behemoth one, like, oh, we don't have to get a big one. Now if you're going to do that, maybe get the same smaller printer for everyone. Like in our case, I had the set smaller one that I bought for all of the locations to print their invoices and then at the, and as well as the warehouse and as well as one or two people who have the print like checks, right? They're desperate.

They didn't want to be printing those checks out, you know, out in the main office. So, you know, figuring out the best way and the most cohesive way. And I guess cohesive, I don't know if that's the right word, but the best way to keep the experience the same. And in that case, you're buying one in cartridge and then for all the smaller printers.

So you're buying, you know, 10 of the same and then you're buying one or two for the bigger, you know, the bigger ones that you have in the office. I think you got to be quite open and honest with that as well. It actually be very when it comes down to process inefficiencies, you know, when things could just be better and save money, then something that's a little less tangible. You got to be really honest with that.

You got to, you got to step up and identify them, but also be really frank with yourself and say, you know what, guys, actually, we could do this a little better. And I think that's a difficult thing when it's not a physical process, you know, it's not something that is put the printer on the desk when it's something that is, you know, what, guys, if we just got back to people six hours earlier, you realize that we'd save ourselves three emails later because of people complaining, you know, those kind of theoretical inefficiencies that you don't always see, that becomes really, really difficult. So I find that quite a challenge in small business. So yeah, really interesting point, identify inefficiencies.

Super less than two actionable tip number two. Be fearless to put a plan into action and adjust as needed. So, you know, like, like in the example with the inventory thing, like I thought that, you know, I'd hit a home run right out of the gate and it took a while to get to that point. But then, you know, as much as I fought people on the idea that, you know, well, maybe, you know, if you're saying that you sell two all the time, you know, as a pair, maybe you're not.

And according to the computer, you're not, you're only selling one, you know, how did you sell three that month if you, you know, stuff like that. So you need to be, you need to be fearless in going and putting that plan into action. But at the same time, you need to be willing to adjust. And that's something that I personally had learned as a young, you know, as a young man in business and trying to push everybody into one, you know, into the system.

But at the end of the day, the system worked. It worked really well to the point where some people weren't so upset about their inventory. And now, and this is, this is the fun part is a year and a half later now that that specific part of the company, the parts company has been bought by a bigger conglomerate. They're like a Walmart of truck parts.

The complaints are like, I get a lot more complaints that I hear from friends than I'm, you know, people I'm still friends with from the company about their inventory issues, even though they're a multi-billion dollar company and we were, you know, nowhere near a billion. That's very curious. That is very, very curious. Now, there's something that you said about, about being flexible, I got the point about being a young man in business.

Now, I remember being 26 and, you know, that I was right, man. I was right. Screw the world. I knew what I was doing.

And that is a very humbling experience when you finally see that what you, what you put out there with the input of other people is often better. And, you know, I'm talking very often better than what you could put out there yourself. That is a very humbling experience. And I think when it comes to processes, there's something quite important in that in Sepharas.

If you're, if you're in small business, you're very often take certain things for granted. So these little bits of detail that you just pass off as completely unimportant because you just do them. You, these are just things that you do. It's very difficult to actually get these things down.

The reason I know that I'm going to take this right down to grass roots level. I actually, I actually put together a process for my podcast publishing so that when I'm away, someone can help me do it. You will not believe how much I took for granted. Like it took me, it takes me about 45 minutes to publish one episode.

It took me about three hours to do it whilst I was writing it all down because it was all of the little bits of detail that I took for granted. But now I'm pretty confident that anyone could come in and do that. So I would say that that kind of the humility around being honest about what you skip over the humility and getting other people involved. I think that's an important lesson to learn for everyone.

And I think the youth, the youth that you mentioned there is quite interesting. So I'd say I'd be, I'd piss over and people off being a young upstairs. When I look back now and the people that I still know that I did piss off, they're like, well, you've, you've grown. And I'm like, yeah, that you don't have to be kind anymore, you know, to say that you've grown is the same as saying, you don't piss me off anymore.

Thank you. You know, so it's kind of, it's kind of cool to see that. And the idea of adjusting and tweaking and changing and optimizing, I think it's important to just stay on top of that. So a bit of a digression into a tale of world there, but I think it's a good point.

So super stuff. Right. So let's dig into the third and final actionable tip, please. Give people a little more time than you would normally give them of your time.

And I think that goes really well into what we've been talking about and being able to listen, not only, you know, and with passionate people, we, you know, sometimes it's hard to want to hear other people, other people's input and stuff like that and not even necessarily critiquing or being mean about it. But just, you know, it's like, hey, they're not always trying to just down you or down your idea, especially if they're coming at it from a place where they're giving you the, you know, some of the answers that they, that you don't realize you're necessarily, like you don't even realize you're looking for. Um, so it's, you know, being able to listen to those people, but getting them more time, too, like in general, being, you know, nicer to people and giving them just a little bit more time than you would, uh, you would think to or, or normally would is, is important. You know, getting to hear other people's background, you know, background stories or, or just stories in general, you learn so much.

I mean, it's how I've learned so much. And while obviously I'm not perfect because I had the experience that I had that, that led to, uh, ultimately me leaving the company, um, you know, it's, it can be difficult to, to listen to other people when, when you're, when you're wearing your, uh, heart on your sleeve, as they say, as I've done, uh, pretty much all of my life. Yeah. I'm with you on that one again.

I'm the same kind of person. It's often the people that you work most closely with, you know, you, you sort of just take for granted that they'll be there the next day to listen to you and to kind of take, you know, take what you're saying about. But do you know what the thing that gets me with this, the interesting point that you make is that it sounds really odd to say, but it's kind of weird because you often don't think of people as people with experiences. You see them as obstacles to what you want to get out of this conversation.

And it's really bizarre because you then discount what they say before you've even heard what they've said. And that's a real big lesson to be able to just say, well, again, it's back to humility, you know, and people, you guys out there may be thinking, well, why does this link to the process? Well, the key thing is that everyone has that input and the more time you give people, the more you'll discover about the skills or experience, their expertise, their desires, the needs, you know, what drives them. The why?

Yeah. Why they want the why they did it the way they did for so long. Exactly. Just like, I want to rip that away from you.

And it's like, no, that's what makes it comfortable. And it's like, yeah, I get that. But we all want a job tomorrow, right? If we all if we fail at this, at the, you know, at changing the company, changing the culture for the right reasons and not just because I want two reasons, then we don't have a company to go tomorrow and then then that's a real big problem.

You know, that's a bigger problem than, you know, oh, I don't get to, you know, set my own min-maxes anymore. Well, no, but you can keep whatever you want. You can order whatever you want. Hell, you can order more of what you want now because all the other stuff we're ripping from you.

That's a really good point. You know, the idea of what you really back to what you said earlier about that whole culture, you know, you mentioned the way culture and the way that people perceive processes, the way that people often dive into things. You see very often in kind of middle management and especially in the UK, kind of public bodies where people come in and just want to change things because they want to put the stamp on them. The cultural impact that that has, you know, when you think about yourself, creating a process across the world that actually, you know, genuinely changes someone's day, either in a very small way or in a very significant way, but you're actually changing that person's day.

And that day, it may have been like that for the last 20 years. And they're very, very happy with that. So that the way that you see things, it's not always as black and white as it appears at first glance. And I think, you know, the why that you mentioned earlier on, the, you mentioned on, in the pre-interview chit chat that we were talking about, you like to see things as a whole, you know, seeing things as a whole, not just this isolated process is huge because just this one ripple here can change things over this.

So so so profoundly that you've got no idea that you've changed something. So unbelievable to kind of sit in this silo, isn't it? It is. And you have to be willing to get out of the tower, you know, and come down.

And one of the things I didn't mention when we were doing all that inventory change, you know, changeover to a leaner inventory was the reason I was doing all these numbers and crunching and all this stuff and analytics at night was because during the day I was in the warehouse, putting the stuff back on the shelf and then helping pull it off the shelf to go and some of it to be returned to the manufacturers, which was something that my grandfather didn't believe in because his idea was, well, if I have it on the shelf and there's a picture of him staring at me from my wall right behind the camera here, if he had it on the shelf and it cost him, you know, $20 when he bought it and then he had on the shelf for three years and the price had gone up to $27. The part, you know, his price had gone up to he made more money on it, but he didn't, I guess what he didn't understand was that everything, you know, in my, in my book I talk about is everything pays rent and it's really important for it to be a need or a, you know, paying and entertainment. And in this case, the need would be for it to make money is so it get on the shelf to get it off the shelf. Otherwise, it's just taking up space that could be, you know, something else that's paying rent could be could be there instead.

Yeah, it's a great. Good way to think about it as well, you know, the work that we do in manufacturing companies at the agency, we often see, we work alongside people that are in there trying to do the same kind of thing. And it is just a mindset thing. It's just a, you know, maybe a generational thing.

It's certainly a mindset issue that just crops up so so often. But that is a super, just to opinion this actually, I could talk to you all day, sir, could talk to you all day. The, the Mississippi would go crazy if I did do that. I think she wants to watch Jessica Jones tonight.

Have you been watching that? No, that's the Marvel thing. Pretty cool. It's like I'm a comic book, you guys listen, you know, I'm a DC guy, but I don't, please don't tell them I'm watching a Marvel TV show and loving it.

No, I don't know why it's on TV, man. I, I, there's like a handful, it's one of them being Shark Tank and, and South Park and Tosh. Point. Oh, we're pretty much the three, the three shows that I'll watch and I download them after the fact.

Yeah. And I'm like, I'm thinking is like, we completely got rid of the TV. You know, you buy the TV packages like Sky TV. I don't know what you guys have.

I can't hear man. Yeah, calm. Yeah. That's a similar sort of thing.

You know, I, well, we wound it all down because of Netflix and so on. We don't want the same as you. We watch like three shows, but I had a reflection point yesterday, because I turned on my TV and it was the things that I watched. So I had like it shows on the Apple TV, the covers of things and it was Jessica Jones by Marvel.

It was Arrow, the Flash, Supergirl and then Smallville. And I just looked at the misses and just said, I think you've married a bit of a geek loser. I'm sorry to break this deal right now. And yeah, it's unbelievable.

But this is another thing like this is just, I know we're digressing, but this is something that is changing the world. It's all on demand culture. I all the heck deal with that in the, in everything. It's changing the way we work.

It's changing everything. You know, it's funny. I just ordered to be mentioned that I just ordered my groceries and they were just delivered to me for the first time today. Oh, man, you're living the life, dude.

I know. I know. And I was talking to the guy that was here and I was like, you know, my dad was ordering groceries online back in like 2004. And then I guess they, it's not very profitable.

So they just stopped doing it. But a couple of the supermarkets around here have decided to keep it going. And reason and he was telling me is this because the owner, or I guess the son of the owner is coming up and he sees the future of having groceries delivered to now it is like a $16 charge to do that. But when you're ordering $150 worth of stuff anyway, you know, what's what's another $15, $16 for the convenience of not having to go to the store, not spend the gas, not spend that time, the effort, all that.

So, you know, my wife was worried because she's like, Oh, well, you know, the produce, you know, how do I know they're going to pick the right looking apples or the right looking lemons or excuse me, anything like that. And I was like, I don't know, let's give it three chances. We'll see how it goes. And, you know, if the average of the three isn't good enough, then we'll go back.

But, you know, between that and wearing on Amazon, like, I was like, you know, we can probably say, oh, and the other good thing is ordering online, they put all the sale items right at the top. So she was able to save a bunch of money that she wanted to probably save otherwise. It's the way to crush Christmas shopping as well. You don't have to cope with the crowd.

You just do it all on my mind. I love it. I love the age that we live in. Love the age.

Now, no, wait, I have to say this though, before we get off it is, you know, it's important. It's important. Like, I love we all love all my shopping. The benefit is obvious, right?

But there's still a lot to be said for going out to a store. And the reason is, is if I stop going out, if you have Home Depot over there, yeah, we've got similar kind of things. OK, so if I don't go to Home Depot, if I ordered everything, I would probably order almost everything I would order on home at Home Depot. If I were just ordered on Amazon, the problem is I'm ripping sales away from my local economy because it's just like one town over and be the convenience of when I actually need something today right now.

Now, once Amazon gets on their whole, or drone, you know, dropping thing and it's seeing day delivery everywhere or at least in my area, that's going to be a game changer. But for right now, like I still do, excuse me, like going out to the store because I like to support that store being in my backyard for those times when I need it now, not a day or two days from now. Yeah, that's a good point. And you mentioned drones.

I think you mistakenly said droids, but now I want droids to be delivering everything. It's the week of Star Wars. So we're recording this 14th of December 2015 and it's the week of Star Wars. So the force awakens, droids are on our minds.

Yes. I've got a bit nice showing for that. You know? Oh, sweet, man.

I, you know, honestly, I, and this is going to make me sound like a shudded, but I don't like going out to the movies anymore. And I might go see Star Wars out in theaters. We only go to maybe two or three movies a year at this point because we have a really awesome movie theater right in our, well, it should be like a family room. I don't know if you have the equivalent of a family room in your, in England.

We have kind of like, no, we just call that like a small little living room. Well, we have a living room. We have a living room, but then we have like a separate, it used to be a pool table room. My dad left the pool table in there.

I got, I was like, we never play with it. It's, it's this room. It's got hardwood floors in it. It's always cold in there.

I was like, I don't, it's not warm. It's not inviting. And the pool table takes up almost the whole room anyway. So I was like, you know, let's, let's put a movie theater room together.

So I, you know, put together a really awesome movie theater room and, you know, being able to pause the movie, especially with my wife being pregnant, you know, being able to pause the movie to go to the bathroom is kind of important. Oh man, you become spoiled. That's it. You'll never leave the house again.

We had to do the drones kick in. Man, you will never leave the house. I love it. I'm worried.

I don't want to be the old man. That's like it off my lawn and I'm not going anywhere. That's an unsafe, you know, I don't want to start watching Fox News. Well, I'm not able to be able to watch Fox News, but, you know, I don't want to be scared.

I'm not scared of the world at all, but at the same time, like the whole goal is to be home or, you know, with the, and that's one of the things for, for going back into actual business talk. Uh, one of the important things to me was, and I, you hear a lot of people talk about, you know, you don't want to trade dollars for hours or hours for dollars. And in some cases, I do, but, you know, it's important to realize why you're doing something, right? So, so to me, it's like, Hey, I want to be a speaker.

I want to write books. I want to, you know, produce DJ albums. I like I have, um, I want to do all these creatives. I'm creating a next year, 2016 is the year of my card game.

I have a party card game. I'm going to be developing. So, Oh, man, we should change an end to Joe Carter. Well, we'll see when the game gets done.

That's a free one. That's a free one. Thank you. Thank you.

I appreciate that, Mark. But, you know, the goal is to be home, especially with, with our first order on the way. Um, I know a lot of these, these speakers and stuff like that, and they're, they're traveling all over the world and doing all this stuff, but I'm like, like, I want to travel over the world, but I don't want to be away from my family. Like the whole reason I'm doing what I'm doing is so that I could spend more time, have a more flexible schedule.

I mean, right now I work between 10 and 15 hours a day, pretty much seven days a week. You know, some days I'll take a couple hours off, usually like something nice to watch American football, not European football. Uh, and, and, but other than that, like on Saturdays, I'm working at least half a day. Um, but point is, is I'm building towards what I, building what I want, how I want it on my terms versus, you know, hustling to get clients, like lots and lots and lots of clients or hustling to get a bunch of talks.

Like, you know, when you're trying to get into this online space, uh, you need to be able to do multiple things. You know, you can focus in on one, uh, and hopefully you'll crush it at that one thing and bake enough money that that's all you have to do. But I don't, like I don't want to be stuck in an airport. I don't want to have to be like, well, I know it's our baby, our baby's name is going to be Ava.

I know it's Davis birthday coming up, uh, but I have to go speak. I have to, I have to go speak. So I have to travel, uh, you know, three or four days to envy away. Yeah.

I don't have a choice. It's doing you a lot. It's doing it. Yeah.

I mean, cause it's, you know, it's like, okay, that's, you know, yeah, I'm probably going to make a lot of money to do that. And maybe that day will come where I have to make that concession. But, uh, the goal really is to, to not have to do that. And what's a friend of mine was like going on about Tim Ferriss.

He always goes on about Tim Ferriss and is a friend I know locally and he's like, well, you know, you should listen to this episode with Jamie Foxx if you have like an hour or two in a car ride. And I was like, dude, the goal is to not have to drive an hour or two. Like I don't have an hour. Like I don't really listen to a lot of podcasts.

How do you say that online as well? You just send yourself. We can create a Joe droid. Just pick me up and drop it off wherever I need to be.

And like Uber. Well, if I lived in the city, I probably wouldn't even have a car and, and I, honestly, I'd probably might go outside more often. Well, you know, it's funny. It's because my neighbors here, I'm sorry.

No, that's cool. I'm saying you'd have to in the city because that's where all the cool stuff happens outside. But yeah, sorry. You're saying you're neighbor.

No. Oh, yeah. It's funny because my neighbors are all retired around me. And it's pretty much all them.

They probably think you are as well because you never leave the house. Well actually before we got on the call I was looking across the street because my neighbors they always sit down on their porch and I go and talk They're like my grandparents and you know, it's great, but they don't they don't understand They got pensions. They've been retired for like 15 years already, and they're not even like 70 brilliant They do they do and I'm gonna get there. I'm gonna get there.

I'm getting there man Like I said, I haven't made a ton of money yet, but we're now I'm focusing on making the money part because that's that's what's especially with with evil in the way It's important so congratulations on that we said it on the pre-interview chat about congratulations on that it was when when David you Thank you in March March 15 is the official. Oh excellent. Well, congratulations get the last Christmas out of the way without child And then it gets really fun. So yeah, congratulations.

I love that Yeah, if you want to follow that me. I actually taught Melissa into doing a podcast. We have a podcast based around it's called birth It's an documentary we've recorded the conversations between ourselves and recorder conversations with our family members and friends And then we interview it into like a like a what's that like this American life type story? Oh nice You're like the start for the cereal of parenthood.

Yes. Yes. It's called birth. You get a birth podcast.com to check out There's a I think it's like episode 17 comes out tomorrow or comes out Wednesday.

Oh, that's good ball Oh, usually it comes out every Wednesday. Oh, nice sweet. I know check that out That's a good place to ask you now. Where is the best place for everyone else to connect online with you?

Super show parto calm. Obviously. I should have known that take your part of stick the word super on it boom I feel like I you know, it's one of those things where it's like I wouldn't say if I didn't feel that I deserved it or that I worked hard enough to do that. I love that man.

I love things like that So it's important one of my friends down who's been on the show he you guys listening all knowing from Hacks He's got a URL fancy done. I just think that's amazing. Just go for it super. Jive I need something a superior mark like superior spider-man.

I might get something like that. You're Yeah, they come in Well, just get super mark. Oh super. I'll see you imagine that though.

Missy say imagine the ribbon that I'd get for that I'd get so much grief and comedic humor a subie was so getting super map.com But maybe I create a website and then release it and then tell her afterwards. So she can't stop me. That's it There you go. You already in process.

Well, that's my time. That's my time. I was just doing Super stuff. Well, man, this is amazing.

We don't know. We leave it recording so long. So I've really enjoyed this we Covered a heck of a lot. So thanks so much.

I really really enjoyed that. Thank you mark And if anybody wants to reach out talk about process for business or anything like that I have the school you can get the school from there. I do five other podcasts other than birth all that stuff So yeah, I would love to reach out Facebook Facebook message me. I'm out there awesome.

Well, man. Thank you so much guys We've left it running for a lot longer, which has been amazing I've really enjoyed that so give us some feedback on that if you like the format We'll perhaps throw a few more of those in and everything that you'll mention and I have spoken about will be available at excellence dash Expected dot com so check it out. There's a lot of freebies over there as well coming up to Christmas as we're recording this so we're Gonna check out a pile of free bits. We've got ebooks.

We've got videos. We've got all sorts of excellence dash expected comm So that's spending this time with us and don't forget guys the more you expect from yourself the more you will excel