Using Systems to Drive Business Growth

51:29

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, systems, process, business, shop floor, talking, owner, simple, point, sales, document, erp, running, manufacturing, step, setting, damon, delegate, build, conversation

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, David Crysler

Damon Pistulka  00:04

All right, that worked. Welcome once again to the face of business. I’m your host, Damon Pistulka. If you were on our feed before, something happened in stream yard didn’t want to connect to LinkedIn. So we reset and came back again. So hopefully you’re hearing us now. But with me today on the faces of business, I’ve got David Chrysler David, thanks for being here today, man.

David Crysler  00:24

Yeah, thanks so much, Damon excited to have this conversation and excited to get into it with you’re glad that we are now live.

Damon Pistulka  00:31

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. So great to have you here. It’s been a long time coming. And I’m really excited to do it. Because, you know, today we’re going to be talking about using systems to drive business growth. And, man, when I get to talk to systems guy like you, I enjoy it, because, you know, you’ve you’ve been through the the real work of turning companies around with systems and seeing the importance of that happening. And and really how, by taking those systems, putting simple systems in place, I can change a business change a business owners life. I really think it’s gonna be fun talking today.

David Crysler  01:08

Yeah, absolutely. I feel the exact same way, man, you know, brother from another mother? I think they’re the is the phrase go? Yeah, yeah, completely agree. And it’s exciting. And the transformation that you see, you know, I say, I’m on both sides, right. On the leadership side. So ownership leadership team, management team, and at the shop floor level, right, if we’re talking about a manufacturing setting, I mean, it’s the transformation is, is, you know, it’s really what gets me kind of supercharged about all of it, in both sides of it, because I think that’s really important.

Damon Pistulka  01:45

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So, David, what really brought you to, hey, I want to work on systems?

David Crysler  01:57

That’s a great question. And, you know, the phrase trial by fire comes to mind, when I really think about it. You know, I spent nearly 20 years in a corporate setting working for a publicly traded company that grew through acquisition. And I was kind of fortunate to have had people around me, that really saw something in me and continue to give me opportunities continued to support me continued to, you know, teach me and let me learn. And here’s the Trial by Fire continued to put me in situations that allowed me to learn and grow and to practice, you know, yeah, as I say, like, I grew up in a family run business, right?

My parents owned multiple manufacturing companies when I was a little kid. And so kind of growing up in that environment, yeah, obviously, you know, got a great work ethic instilled in me from a very young age, I saw how my parents built their businesses, how they were able to get it to a certain point, but how also, they kind of, you know, plateaued at some point, because they, they weren’t sure, okay, well, you know, where else do I go from here? How else do I continue to, you know, leverage systems, processes, people? Technology, how do I leverage all that stuff to go from, you know, 5 million to 10 million, 10 million to 20 million.

And, you know, so kind of transitioning into a corporate setting, and seeing, you know, not only the the kind of firepower that they bring, but it was really the the kind of the thought process, the methodologies that they would use at each one of these acquisitions to go through and say, okay, you know, what are we doing from a people standpoint? How is that working? What are we doing from a planning standpoint? How is that working? How do we need to get into a better planning cycle? What are we doing from a process standpoint? What processes do we have in place? Are they documented? When’s the last time we’ve reviewed them?

What kind of technology do we have at this plant today? And what kind of technology are we going to have to put into this plant to ultimately be able to, you know, drive, operational improvements, so it was kind of this culmination of seeing how my parents did things, seeing how it worked in the corporate setting, and for me, personally, kind of coming into the entrepreneurial world. I really wanted to tie all that together, because I saw the frustration whether it was an acquisition facility that was a, you know, second generation family that was running that facility and, you know, kind of all of their frustrations of well, you know, so and so doesn’t do this and, you know, we can’t get this done.

And you know, I’m dealing with this problem over here on the sales side, or, you know, fill in the blank, right, like you kind of have a lot of those conversations and I would see that time and time again and you know, there was a system that as a from a corporate standpoint, there’s a system that we would go through to identify those problems, and start to walk forward and solve them.

So as for me, that’s what this whole thing has been about, you know, seeing it time and time again. And like I said, kind of getting thrown into the, you know, thrown into the fire or thrown into the deep end of the pool. Yeah, and having to figure it out, you know, how do you sell more? How do you make more with what you sold? All that good stuff?

Damon Pistulka  05:25

Yeah. Well, he hit on a lot of good stuff here. And I go back to a couple of these. So when you really do there are there there are natural plateau points that will happen in a business and there are some business owners and and their, their teams are able to push farther than others, because of industry because of their their knowledge, their and quite honestly, their willingness to work harder than most other people would ever think that they would, in a lot of cases, because the systems aren’t, aren’t supporting them.

But as you see these plateau points, and you brought into these situations, what do you really think you’ve learned about that? Is it is it really difficult to get past these points? Or is it just applying the fundamentals of putting systems in place will get you past those plateau points?

David Crysler  06:23

I mean, I think that’s kind of a two fold answer. And one, it mostly depends on the mindset of, you know, the owner and leadership. And, you know, if they are in the right mindset, and they are ready to recognize, you know, as I say, kind of look in the mirror first, right? Because typically what happens, as you’re growing your business, you start your business, because you’re really good at the thing, doesn’t matter what the thing is, but you’re good at it, right?

And before you know it, you’ve got people around you, you’ve got customers, clients, you’ve got people, you know, support people, your team, all of that. And so typically, what happens is you have to figure out as an owner, as your leadership team, how do you get out of your own way. And what I mean by that is, if you’re not ready to kind of recognize that you are part of the bottleneck, if not, you’re the entire bottleneck, I’m just gonna say one of those two is, is more than likely true.

And if you’re not ready to recognize that, then it doesn’t matter what systems that we recommend, it doesn’t matter how we document processes, it doesn’t matter what we do from a kind of people culture planning standpoint, because it’s not gonna, it’s not going to get you to that next level. So for me, it’s both one recognizing that you’ve got to have got to be in the right mindset and kind of, you know, take a look in the mirror to see how you’ve contributed to the bottlenecks within your business. And then to once you’re to that point, it really is the fundamentals of taking a look at, you know, kind of the core four, right?

Planning people process technology. For me, it’s it’s looking at those four categories and connecting those four things, to build systems that solve the problems. And the problem can be something literally as simple as, you know, a solid onboarding process, job descriptions, training, manual, HR documentation, right? It could be something as rudimentary as that, because what happens is, if you bring somebody in, you don’t have a really solid hiring and onboarding process, if you don’t even have a written job description, you know, you’re kind of setting that person up for failure.

And so it’s all of those little opportunities throughout your entire operation, that you have the ability to systemize. And the more you do it, the more things you get out of your head and onto paper, the easier it becomes to get more people involved to take advantage of the creativity that new people bring into the mix. You know, I used to say, it would drive me crazy. When I’d go to a new facility, we’d acquire a facility, I’d go there.

And everybody just wanted to be in agreement. You know, everybody is we used to call it everybody wanted to be a bobblehead. You know, yes, yes. Okay, I’ll do this. It’s like, no, that’s not what I want. I want your input. I want to know, you know, what you’re struggling with, I want to know why it’s taking you, you know, twice as long to do this particular part of your process or this particular task. I want to know why we’re struggling to meet, you know, delivery dates or quality requirements or fill in the blank, you know, it’s like, I could literally go on forever. So

Damon Pistulka  09:33

yeah, no, it’s good. It’s good because I was thinking about some things and I think really, you’re we’re bringing to light two things. The the plateau points in business, they are natural, they will happen. And if you’re an owner in the business now, and you’re just business, you’re stuck. You’ve been there for a couple years, you’ve hit a plateau point. Don’t think about it any longer. You gotta change start changing stuff, but what you talked about I think is really one of the keys to taking that next step.

And it is when you put simple things in place a system system. And in onboarding an employee for some, for an example, what you just did is if I wrote that down these three steps to onboard an employee is, you know, shake their hand, give them a job description, give them a, you know, their their name, tag their hardhat, whatever the heck you’re giving them, and say, go out and talk to Susan, your, your supervisor out there in the factory, you know, that might be your onboarding process.

But by doing that, you’ve just taken the tribal knowledge out of it. And no longer does Damon have to do it, because Damon’s the only one that knows how to do it, but I can have somebody else do it. And, and I can, I see how the process results are the other out the other end, if we do it, right. And then we have a system to start with. And we start to do this, but what it allows these owners to do is to leverage, as you said, the creativity, the knowledge, and the capacity of others in their business.

David Crysler  11:13

Yeah, I mean, you know, to two points to kind of tack on to that, number one, the first thing that I always hear, it doesn’t matter what we’re talking about, when we start talking about documented processes, I don’t have the time, I don’t have time to sit down, I get all these fires, I’m running back and forth from you know, the office to the shop floor spinning plates, that’s what I’m doing all day hoping none of them fall down and break. And the reality of it is, it can literally be that first pass, it can literally be that high of a level.

Because your start, what people don’t understand is like, you know, you’re starting, you’re starting to get it out of your head and onto paper, it doesn’t matter what the format is. Yes. Could you bring somebody into, you know, give you the perfect work instruction template? Yes, you could. But it doesn’t have to be that complex. Yes, you know, let’s get it out of your head onto paper. The other thing that I tell people, especially in leadership, that starts to say, you know, what, we don’t have the time, I don’t have the time to sit down and do this.

Anybody that has a team around them, one of the most powerful things you can do to harness other people’s creativity is to say, Damon, I’m going to, I’m going to train you to help me get this process out of my head, okay. And what that means is I’m going to articulate what I think the process should be, I want you to document it, I want you to run it through two, or three, or five or 10, depending on how big your team is, other people that have already gone through this, and I want you to add to it, I want you to be able to then draft the document, come back to me, let me look over it, let me revise it, let me have some input, but I want you to be the owner of that particular process.

And so that’s one of the most powerful things you can do is to delegate something that’s simple, because you’re giving people on your team, the power to impact what happens, you know, throughout your organization, and the more you do that, the more again, you get out of people’s way and you give them the bounds, you give them the goal, you’re just going to be blown away at the level of energy. And the amount of you know kind of Fleury that you start to see the amount of buzz you start to see around your around your business.

Damon Pistulka  13:28

That’s a great, that’s a I’m glad you shared that because as a great way for a business owner to really allow others to step up a little bit to contribute and really be a part of it. Because we all as as we’re in business today, having everyone feel a part of that business is more important than ever, I believe.

And allowing someone to do that does make them feel a part of it. They’ve built that process. They were training others on the process, they got feedback and reviewed it. And then you as the maybe the owner, they’re the the CEO, whatever you want to call it, you you can they will be better because of it. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff on that because that that is and it is it is when you see business businesses that have hit a plateau.

I mean, across the board the owner, first of all is is doing way too many things and doesn’t have ways to offload that work or delegate that work shouldn’t say offload but get it to the right people. So you find the owners that are the salesperson, the accountant and that oh the shop foreman to or the the main delivery driver or whatever you got going on in our small business and they just need to be able to put things in place so that they can leverage the like we said before the talent, the capacity and the the energy from the others involved because that’s It’s really the key to scaling and growing your business.

David Crysler  15:03

Yeah, I mean, you can’t, you know, you can’t do it all yourself. That was really the lesson for me, you know, is one thing, when I had a facility that I was responsible for that was doing, you know, a couple million dollars, and I had 20 people, yes. Another thing when we had, you know, 100 people doing 20 plus million a year. I mean, you can’t be everywhere and doing everything.

And the other thing I would add about that kind of delegation portion, is, you know, it’s part of the reason I see business owners and leadership fail in that delegation, and having to be that everybody to everything is because they don’t get, they don’t start to engage in practice, right? That is a skill that takes time, you’re not going to go from not being a good delegator, and not being a good trainer, and not being a good document or processes to being amazing at it all in one file.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, you’re gonna have some setbacks along the way, you’re gonna make some mistakes. So it’s just that process of starting and practicing and being open with your people, you know, I used to go into to, when I had my corporate job, you know, I get thrown into the deep end of the pool, I’d go in there and kind of say, like, because I don’t know, this, you, you guys are gonna have to train me on some of this, I need to learn it from you, because you guys are the ones that are doing it every day.

And you know, having those kind of open dialogues with people, I think, buys you a lot of credibility in in, you know, tell owners, hey, if you’ve been a particular way, for a long time, you’ve never been able to let go, you never been able to delegate. Have that conversation. Say, guys, I know, I’ve been bad at this. But I really want to try to do this. Because I know this is the only way to get us from where we are today to where we want to be. And I really want to go on that journey. I want you guys to be on that journey with me.

And I need you to kind of call me out. I need you to support me, because I’m gonna make some mistakes here. Yeah. And so let’s, you know, let’s do this, you know. So just a couple extra things. I wanted to add to that, because I find that that’s really a struggle for a lot of owners that that do wear all the hats, right? That first step of engaging people in delegating to them. And again, from my standpoint, from my experience, it’s all about those kind of initial startup conversations around it. And then that support conversations and just being real with people, you know, like, just be a person.

Damon Pistulka  17:28

Yeah, well, you you brought up one thing, and I was thinking about this, and you look at ego, people that are my age over 50, right? We were taught you don’t show weakness, you don’t show I mean, in business, it’s always that and really, I can’t stress the importance of what you said, of just sharing with people honestly, what is going on, because that is so important, because people people want where they work, they want it to succeed, they want it to be a place where they can come and be happy about coming to work and all that other stuff. And it’s not, it’s not a sign of weakness, it’s just a sign of, hey, I’m human.

That’s the way it is. I’ve acknowledged it, let’s move on. Let’s let’s work on it and figure things out. And and you’ll see other people do that, too, they’ll they’ll will begin to adopt and try to grow themselves as well, because they see that you’re doing it. Because a lot of times, you know, people look at themselves as the owner as Hey, yeah, in the end, yes, the decisions come to fall down on you and all that stuff. You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to be the one. And there was one simple question.

And I think someone I don’t remember who told me many years ago, when I was starting out to be a manager, and talking about delegating and talking about, you know, really, because as someone that grew up knowing how to do something, well, you’re also then an expert in doing that, which is also your downfall. Because it’s easy for you to solve other people’s problems when they should be solving them in business. And I forget who it was, but they said the simple thing you ask of people that you’re managing, when they come to you and ask a question that they should be answering themselves, you say, Well, what do you think?

And then agree with them, and say that’s a good idea. Go do it. Yeah. And they see you know, something that’s simple in the way that we the way that we manage can change the way that a business runs and the way we do do things and and by doing that, then you’ve put those people in a situation like you talked about like okay, Dave, now you’re ready to go out and you’re running this production department, you’re running this production line, document how the stuffs built. You know how it is, you know how to do it, what happens at each step in the process.

And if it takes scratching on a piece of paper that that takes you taking 10 pictures with your cell phone at the different things and we stick it out on a piece of paper. That’s what we’re starting with. Yeah. And and, you know, you just and then they become a part of it, like you said, I think because I think tying it back to what you said earlier about letting them build that it’s it’s really simple elegance and brilliance in building systems in your, in your company around that stuff.

Now, when we look at systems to and we’re talking about using systems to drive business growth, people think of systems, they think ERP systems and stuff like that, when you look at businesses that have systems problems, how many times is it let they’ve got a big system problem, like their ERP system is just a duck and they got a, you know, it’s a it’s a boat anchor, they need to dump it? Or is it the stuff around it in their business? That that is more needs more attention than that?

David Crysler  20:58

Yeah, it’s a great question. And, you know, the simple way to answer it is more times than not, it’s the stuff around it. More times than not, it is not something Ultra complex in terms of, you know, an ERP implementation disaster. But I will tell you, in that specific scenario, the times that I have seen ERP implementation disasters, it’s a direct result of not one, understanding your business as crazy as that sounds, but not understanding the processes within your business.

And or, you know, recreating poor processes within that ERP environment. So but you know, as I tell people, you know, when we talk about systems, a lot of times, to your point, a lot of times, oh, that, you know, must be CRM, oh, you must be talking about ERP?

Well, yes, but you have to get to a certain point before you’re, you’re ready to even entertain that level of technology within your business, because the amount of data that that will provide, you will overwhelm you very quickly, if you are not prepared to receive that and prepared to run your business based on the data. And the other thing that you know, can really get you into the weeds is the fact that, you know, bad data in is going to give you bad data out. So again, if you don’t have the processes, if you don’t understand and have the processes documented, well, going into something as complex as an ERP implementation is really going to do you a disservice.

So I always start, you know, my kind of core four, right, we start planning, then we start talking about people, then we start talking about process, then finally, as technology, it goes in that order every time because I want to find out, you know, what are we doing on the planning cycle side of things, you know, how are we looking at our business? Do we have, you know, are we implementing standard cost? Do we need to talk about that? Do we have, you know, product and service costing requirements that need to be reviewed? You know, how often are we reviewing, you know, our revenue cycle and our profitability?

I mean, I go into some businesses that don’t even look at their financial statements on any given, you know, monthly basis. You know, and that can be scary. That’s, you know, that’s blind leading the blind in terms of what’s happening inside of your business. You should never wait. You know, as I say, you should never fully wait to just have your accountant or CPA or somebody deliver financial results for you. You need to understand that as a business owner, what’s happening inside of your business, because you can Yeah, you can severely impact you know, many lives by not having handle on that stuff. So

Damon Pistulka  23:52

Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s one of the one of the first things that we do when when we when we go in as is and Gail’s with us here today. Hey, Gail, glad Glad we could find this after our LinkedIn technical glitch where it wouldn’t go live. But glad to see you here. Yeah. Glad you could join Gail. Yeah. Yeah.

But that’s one of the things that we really and I was was drilled into my head running businesses for investors is, is the fact that you really can’t if you are aggressively and I shouldn’t say aggressively, but if you’re really desiring to make fundamental change in your business, the waiting for the cycle of a monthly financial statement is too long. You’ve missed your opportunity to change and depending on your business, and depending on the sophistication of your business, the complexity, all different kinds of things.

You know, some people it’s really, really good that they should be measuring it on a daily basis. Some people can do it on a weekly basis. But that more frequent basis gives you the feedback to be able to go on Okay, my it could be as simple as my dollars produced per labor hour this this week or my my total sales for the, for the day, you know, it could be as simple as that, you know, you look at a restaurant sitting situation, you know, I know I’ve got five people working. And if I sell X amount of money of food today, or drinks and food, whatever the combination is, I’m doing well.

And just knowing those simple things on that frequent basis allows you to adjust because a financial statement is done. Not at the end of the month on the 31st, it’s done, probably a week, maybe two weeks after that you’re not good at it, it might be the next month. And that is really way too long, you’re two weeks after something or two months after something happened six weeks after something happened. And this more frequent review of not necessarily financials but good indicators. Yeah, really where you give the management teams the power to do what they can do

David Crysler  26:07

100% I mean, I define, you know, kind of putting those KPIs and doesn’t matter, again, what we’re talking about, it could be your financial reports, it could be, you know, some of the other things that you brought out, but, but basically having lead indicators and lagging indicators, right? lead indicators are going to be stuff that’s happening or forecasting, right? How many how many sales leads do I have in my pipeline? How many, you know, work in process orders do I have out on the shop floor today, you know, all those types of things.

And the other thing I would add to what you just said, is, I know, again, both from the corporate setting, and from family owned businesses, it can be sometimes you know, the corporate setting, it was more of a, you know, a compliance issue and family run zoning, it’s more of a, I don’t want to tell people issue, you know, but my point is, the more information about those KPIs that you can share down to the floor level, you know, the more impact ultimately in the long run, it’s not going to happen overnight.

But in the long run that you will have. I remember having a conversation with a shop floor manager and it was like, you know, why? Why are we posting all this information out here because you know, none of the people on the floor understand it.

And you know, they don’t ever come up here and read. But what was interesting is that over the course of time, the more conversations that you had, the more times you referenced those data points and talked about them, you know, tying those data points to what the company goals were, the more people that got interested all the way down to the shop floor. And yeah, they might not have the same level of comprehension as somebody else. But at the end of the day, what you’re really trying to do is communicate to people, where are we going? How are we doing on that journey?

Are we are we winning? Are we losing? Are we just treading water? What are we doing? And if you don’t communicate that stuff to people, you can’t get upset as an owner, as a leader that, you know, well, these guys, you know, these girls, right? How many times have you walked into a shop and heard you know, leadership say something along those lines, you know, so and so isn’t, you know, pulling their weight, so and so isn’t doing this, or, you know, none of these guys, none of these girls want to work? You know, it’s It blows my mind, you know?

Damon Pistulka  28:21

That. Exactly, exactly. And when you flip that around, and you’re given those people that information and you use systems, again, we’re talking about systems using systems to drive business girl, I go back many, many years to when Kaizen and five s and those kinds of things started to really come in vogue in manufacturing with it.

Well, why do you why do you do this? Why do you do that? It was implementing systems is all it was implementing systems that keep the place organized, implementing systems to be more efficient, and then documenting those systems so that you can continue to do that. And that in the end, drives efficiency. And when you can tie those together with KPIs, the good systems and and a way to improve them over time, because they all need to be adjusted and those kind of things.

The the power is, you begin to have all these people in the business that are helping to improve the performance of the business. And it’s a beautiful thing. And I remember this many, many years ago now that I had a person that that ran a portion of a manufacturing facility for me. And when we could begin to share what his labor costs were in a week, and the output of the area in a week and we said Listen, don’t don’t I mean, a we don’t want anybody unsafe.

All we want to do is you maximize the efficiency of your area not only from I’m walking around trying to help people do it, but think about it from a monetary standpoint to try to be efficient with the money that’s spent because The people that are here can get paid more for more efficient, right. And in this factory, it was 200 people. So in this factory, over the course of about two years, we raised the ranges by over a third, to the everybody, and, and we made more money, definitely made a lot more money.

And it was because that information was in the hands of people. And when I looked at the person that was doing this step, and in a process on an assembly and I under something, they knew that if if they worked at it, and they got better at something, or change something around to get it better, and could go a little faster, they can make more money. Yep. And but they also knew he had quality and in those kind of things, but the power of all the minds, that’s what I’m trying to get back to when the systems that you put in place allow you I think, to harness more people’s minds and creativity.

David Crysler  30:55

Yeah, I agree with that. 100%. I mean, and getting back to kind of the earlier point about how systems can be so simple. Yeah, I think I think I think people often think systems have to be complex, that they have to be ERP level, complex. And while they can be, they can literally be as simple as you know, a five s project, they can literally be as simple, you know, as you know, doing some quick changeover studies or doing, you know, doing a workflow process map, or a Value Stream Map, you know, any of those types of things.

So, yeah, it’s very much, you know, one point I wanted to get back to, to in terms of, you know, a lot of businesses that I’ve been into not not quite being ready to go to the ERP stage. The reason that I say that is because more times than not, they have some ability to deliver the KPIs, the data in some form or fashion. So, you know, let’s utilize what we have, first, let’s get all of that done.

First, let’s go through and document our processes first, and make sure we understand our, you know, all of that first, and then we can start to layer in the complexity that, you know, ERP brings into the mix, and all of the other kind of, you know, what I would say, is when it gets really fun, because then you can really start to fine tune in dial in on, you know, almost a real time basis, and in some cases, a real time basis, how your entire operation is running. I mean, it’s, it’s the amount of detail that you can get into is, it’s amazing. So, um,

Damon Pistulka  32:35

well, and you make you made a great point. And, you know, Sam Gupta brings us up to when he when he talks about ERP, and one of the biggest problems that you see is they don’t have a documented process before they start implementing an ERP. So they don’t know what they’re implementing. You know, and you brought that point up, I think that is gold right there for for some of us, considering either revamp and how they do it, or, or upgrading into a new ERP system is a document what you’re doing now. So you at least got a starting point. Yeah,

David Crysler  33:06

I mean, then you can take it even to, you know, if we’re talking about a smaller, let’s say, we’re talking about a, you know, single digit million dollar manufacturing operation, right, you can tie that all the way into somebody that’s just running QuickBooks, right? A bloated Chart of Accounts, a really, you know, terrible process to generate invoices or, you know, you can expand that a bunch of different ways.

It doesn’t just have to be, as we’re talking about an ERP implementation. So I encourage people, again, kind of no matter what type of systems you have, from a technology standpoint, there are opportunities to look for ways to improve what you’re doing to fully understand, you know, what I say is kind of, you know, what’s the ideal process?

Right? Don’t don’t let’s not talk about what we do today. We can talk about that as like current state, but what would be in an ideal perfect world? What would that process look like? And then let’s compare those two and figure out, are there things that we can do today with what we have in place, right people technology process that we can make that thing happen? Or is there some small bolt on that we need to add into the mix to be able to make that happen? But you know, what’s kind of the least amount of lift to get us to that ideal process state? And I bring that up?

Because, again, I feel too often we say it goes back to almost the delegation comment. Just because we’ve always done it this way does not mean that that’s the way we should be doing it. So I always encourage people to push the envelope and say, Is there a better way? In an ideal world? Could we do this faster? Could we do this with less material? Could we do this with less labor? What else could we do to you know, and fill in the blank, right? We can keep going down that path, but I wanted to bring that up. up?

Damon Pistulka  35:00

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s, it’s awesome. It’s awesome. Because it is. Yeah. Good it Yeah, it’s just good stuff because it’s, it all comes back to just knowing how you’re going to do two things. And like you said it’s around the system and, and things like that one of the things that I really have learned in the last four or five years is the almost necessity for systems and sales now. And this is much different. I think a lot of manufacturers and a lot of businesses general struggling with this, because the sales process has changed so much.

And you know, COVID, change it, and I’m not even talking about that, just forget that it even happened if you want to win the sales process, because the different the different ways we’re bombarded with all kinds of information, and you’re trying to, to, to make, really, you know, make relations and build relationships, find contacts and do these things and, and then nurture those relationships until the right point where a sale could happen.

I just look at that. And they go, it’s a whole new plethora of things for you to help companies with, because that’s, yeah, you don’t have to be a sales expert to do to put might help. But a simple sales process is a process, like any other from the standpoint of I have steps in it, and I need to make sure I’m following them.

David Crysler  36:32

Yeah, I mean, it’s a perfect point. It’s interesting, I’ll tell you a quick story about a conversation I had earlier this week with a client. And, you know, is interesting, because I feel like it’s telling of what you’re saying, and kind of this bigger picture, you know, thought process, right? Like, the sales process, the prospecting process, you know, even even some of the just ongoing kind of relationship portion is all different today. And the conversation that I had with a client earlier this week centered around a thank you a touchpoint.

Right, and after the fact touch point, and, you know, they came to me and said, You know, I really I need you know, do you know anybody that can help me with copy because I really need to, here’s what I’m trying to do, or we want to send out these thank yous after the sale, you know, and I want to put a really nice message in there for people. And I just, I stopped a mid track because I said, Look, I said, that’s the worst thing you can do. I said, this, this company does a lot of sales in person.

And so they have the salespeople have a relationship that’s building and that happens in person with the sale. And so I said to him, I said, Look, I said in that thank you, what you need to tell people is connect the some aspect of that sale, some aspect about what their pain point was, how your product is going to impact that and what you you know, think is going to be the result or kind of like that next part of the step, I said, be genuine.

Say that in two sentences, and my guess is, you’re probably going to get either additional Referrals Out of that, or additional business coming back your way. Because, to me, it’s all about just being a person. It’s all about saying, like, that’s what people are dying for, in my opinion, today, because you’ve got, you know, so many things happening happening virtual where you don’t have a real connection to real people.

And you’ve got, you know, kind of that, you know, comparison culture where you can see, oh, you know, everybody’s perfect image of what life is and all of those different things. I think people are just, they really just want to connect with somebody and so to me being genuine and say, Hey, Damon, I really appreciate you, you know, stopping by and seeing me on, you know, Friday and, you know, I really appreciate you purchasing this product for me, I hope it helps you with you know, XYZ that’s, you know, that’s it that’s all you got to do handwrite two sentences.

Yeah, take five minutes, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s so worth the investment. So again, back to not making things complex, you don’t need to automate all of that and yes, there’s companies that you can find out there that will take your database and take your you know, sales and they’ll merge all of that and look create custom cards and make it look like you hand wrote it and all of that yes, there is all of that stuff. But do we really need to do that in this situation? No, we don’t yeah, you know,

Damon Pistulka  39:34

well, it’s especially in something like a manufacturing type setting with most your you know, as razor Gato the manufacturing unicorn out of Chicago I was love him he says you know, you don’t need you don’t need 100 clients in manufacturing, you probably need three more good clients and you’re done. It’s true, you know, when you look at, but coming back to process again and using systems and those kind of things.

I one of the things I love about the sale system and Wessling Greer does an awesome job talking about sales systems you ever look her up on LinkedIn well worth your time to talk with her about that. But the the, the sales process doesn’t have, it’s not all electronic, it never is all electronic. And the process just needs to lay out step A, B, C, D, however many steps it is and you need to follow it.

It’s it’s, it’s just those things that you have to do and then it but by doing the process, putting the process in place, and it could be Damon, you need to make a phone call, you need to send an email, you need to write that that two sentence letter to them. And then you need to call them again. It’s that simple. It’s a process. It’s a system, we put in place that now I can show another salesperson how we sell here at XYZ. And the the thing, the beauty of this and the systems that you’re doing that you talk about is the simplicity in that. And the the scalability of of these simple things.

David Crysler  41:09

Yeah, I mean, you can for that, you know, exact instance, right? I think about a checklist. That’s the That’s the simplest way to do it. And there’s some there’s some tools that are available. Like, again, there’s tools that are available, but you can literally just create something as simple. I mean, I’ve seen people make copies of checklists, it could be that simple. Yeah, right. So it does not have to be complex, what I would add into, you know, your example.

And I think it was a good one is, as we’re thinking about something like the sales process, making sure that if you do implore some tools, CRM, or you know, some other types of tools that connect leads, that you are adding that into your checklist into your written documentation so that people understand. And the other thing I would throw out there, when we’re talking about training on processes, one of the tools I really love using in a training setting is loom.

And I, you know, I don’t get paid by them, right, yeah, a tool that I happen to love. But there’s a bunch of different ones. So you pick one that you like, but it’s a screen recorder. And it puts your face in a little bubble in the corner of the screen. And you can move your face around if you want. But the coolest part about it is that you could walk somebody through, let’s say you’re training somebody on a CRM.

And you know, to your point that there are a couple of, you know, very important steps that you want people to make sure that they follow in that process, you can walk through that entire thing. In one five minute video, you can host it on, you know, Google or Microsoft, or whatever your favorite platform, you know, internal server doesn’t matter. Again, all that stuff doesn’t matter. But then it becomes a library, then you can start building your video process library where now you’ve got new training videos, you can have follow up training for people. Yeah, again, it’s literally this simple stuff, right? That

Damon Pistulka  43:04

you just did it, you hit it so well, there. That’s gold. Among the goal. That’s something that people should think about. Because I’ve actually got a client that that we in the in the next quarter, we’re going to start helping document processes. And we’re going to do that same thing. And it’s going to be like you said, a loom screen video going on as this is what we do, do this step to this step, do this step.

That’s all we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing for documenting processes. And it’s that simple. If we need to write them, we need to do beyond that need to something else that will be done. But that will capture 80 90% of the information you need right there. And that’s, that’s so good for people that want to develop a process that they can train people on.

David Crysler  43:48

The other cool thing you can do with that is because you know, a lot of the companies I go into don’t have, you know, big IT infrastructure, right. So another really cool thing you can do is create a private YouTube channel. And then you can, you know, create QR codes out on your workstations, boom scan, because who doesn’t have a smartphone these days?

Right? Yeah, you scan the QR code, it drops you write to the YouTube channel, the private YouTube channel, and that way you’ve got process documentation where you need it throughout your entire organization. You don’t have to create some, you know, crazy separate library. Yeah, you can tag videos. So you can create tags for customer service. You can create tags for, you know, whatever shop floor, you can create tags for warehouse, you can create tags for shipping, all of that stuff.

It’s just another way to kind of take advantage of getting this information to the right people. And then again, go back to what I started with encouraging people to get involved and say how can we improve this? What parts missing? Is there some key aspect of this that I didn’t touch on that we should be adding? Is there anything else we need to cover? Is there something that happens regularly that we need to address Just start having those types of conversations. And again, I almost guarantee that you will be blown away by how quickly your business starts to pick up steam.

Damon Pistulka  45:12

That’s incredible. Awesome. It’s just awesome advice I made all the way you started talking in the private YouTube channel. And I was thinking of this working in a visit myself, and I was just soaking it in man. Oh, great. So great.

David Crysler  45:26

I mean, thank you. But again, my point is, it doesn’t have to be complex, let’s not make this stuff complex in in, we can build the complexity in as it comes down the road, right, let’s Yeah, started with it. Because just starting is going to be better than where you’re at today. You know, and we continue to take steps forward. So that I think that’s, you know, part of the roadblock for a lot of people, though, they look at systems as being intimidating, because, again, you talk systems, it’s like, oh, we don’t need an ERP, oh, we don’t, you know, we don’t need to do that.

We don’t need any, you know, automation within our, you know, manufacturing environment, it’s like, well, at some point, you will, right, if you want to go from, you know, 15 million to 30 million, at some point, you’re gonna have to start, you know, deploying some of this stuff, because there’s only so much that people can do, until you get to, again, that another plateau. So you’ve got to, at some point, start implementing, you know, more complexity into your operation. But to get started to get started, wherever you’re at today, just simplest path, quickest path, because then you can change then you can see what’s working, what’s not, change, continue to change.

Damon Pistulka  46:39

Good stuff. You said one thing that is just rolling through my mind, there’s about a gazillion things that are going through my head right now, I’m really excited because this is good stuff, because I’m writing a lot of notes, because there’s things that I’m going to use out of here too. And it’s always awesome, just to just hear things from from people as as, as really as talented you in this.

Because I was thinking if if a system is intimidating, somebody, just simply write down the steps that you think you need to go through. And I’m thinking of I’ve been working with clients on some sales stuff, and we’re looking at Multiset sales processes. And as you were talking about just putting the steps down, I was thinking to myself, well, why the heck haven’t we done that? Just write the step, step? 1-234-567-8910. Yes, we need a system. Yes, we’re gonna need that. But once you write that down, and you start, like you said, put what you know about each step. And then keep building on that, and then follow the process. So it’s so easy.

David Crysler  47:37

You can get yourself into the weeds like I you know, I love spreadsheets and PowerPoints. And yeah, no flowcharts. And I mean, you name it, and I love all of that stuff. But honestly, the best place to start ink and paper, pencil and paper, get it there first. And then you can transfer it to let’s say, a Google Doc, where you could share it amongst your leadership team. And then you let them have some input.

And then you can share it out to the shop floor and let them have some, right like, you can take small steps to it because again, it’s the you know, how do you eat an elephant? Right? And when we look at some of this stuff, sometimes that’s what we see, we see a big elephant and then what happens? I’ll get to that. I’ll get to that. We don’t have time to deal with that right now. It’s too big. That never happens. You know, that never happens. So there’s always something else that gets put in front of it.

Damon Pistulka  48:29

Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. David, it’s been awesome having you on today. And we could talk for a long time on this. And we may have to come back again, because there’s some some of these things that, that it would be really fun to have you come back and talk about some specifics.

But I just want to say I appreciate you stopping by and, and sharing a little bit more and, and is talking about this. So hopefully, we can break down the maybe a little bit of the fear factor the intimidation of systems. And maybe we’ve inspired some people today to take that first step and start to really do the things that will build a business that will go past those plateaus.

David Crysler  49:10

Yeah, well, I appreciate you having me on Daymond it’s always fun to chat with you. And yeah, always happy to jump back on another one of these because, yeah, it’s, it’s I love this stuff. I’m really passionate about it. I really enjoy it. This is the stuff that gets me going. And again, kind of you know, wrapping how I started.

For me. It’s it’s seeing the transformation of you know, the leadership and the shop floor coming together and really moving the needle for people’s businesses. It’s just that transformation is just kind of so magical. There’s just really no way to articulate it for me, but that’s really the thing that that does it for me every time and it’s what keeps me coming back. So I appreciate you letting me be be a guest on here.

Damon Pistulka  49:53

Yeah. Well, thanks so much and what you’re doing is actually helping, you know when I’m working with owners and we’re trying to To get their business to the size they want, and then making a business that they can actually sell and then get it sold for them.

You know what you’re talking about the system and stuff takes this really addresses one of the key problems and that is ownership involvement in a business, if the owner is that the heart, the soul of everything of a business, it’s worth nothing without that owner and it takes systems like yours, that you’re helping people to put in place to really allow that owner to multiply their value and spread that value of the business into everyone that works there.

David Crysler  50:31

Yeah, 100% man, reclaim your life and grow your business. That’s why you can

Damon Pistulka  50:37

go Reclaim Your Life and grow your business. Awesome. Well, Dave, thanks so much for being here today. We will be back again next week with another guest on the faces of business. But we’re just finishing up here with Dave Kreisler from the Chrysler club. And we’ll be back again. I was gonna I was gonna say something Dave about if you look at the spelling of Dave’s last name. Dave, his last name is spelled Chrysler C R y without an H like the auto company. And he’s from Detroit. So I was just I bet you’ve had to spell that a few times

David Crysler  51:14

once or twice once or twice.

Damon Pistulka  51:16

Yes, well over the last name like Pustaka. I’ve spelled mine a few times as well. Absolutely. Have a great night, everyone. And we’ll be back again next week.

David Crysler  51:27

Thanks Damon.

51:28

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