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Business, Bourbon & Cigars
How a Full Year of Fixes Can Leave Your Business Worth Nothing More
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The most expensive document in your company is your to do list. I'm not talking about your lease or your biggest vendor contract or even your payroll file. I'm talking about the to do list. This is the one that you trust, the one that runs your week and organizes your team. It gives you that feel good sense of accomplishment at the end of the week when your open item list is lower than it was at the start of the week. Every item on that list is legitimate, you know, and I want to be clear about that up front because this isn't an episode that about you working on the wrong things. I'm talking about all the things that pop up on our to do list, right? Like fixing the proposal tablet, resolving the billing dispute, replacing the service tech who might have quit patching, the handoff between sales and operations. All the details that get dropped in that handoff, right? Every one of those is a real issue with a real cost. And there are hard reasons you should close them. You close enough of them in your weeks, your month, your year, it feels productive. It looks productive from every angle. Whether it's to your team, you know, to your spouse, to, to the version of you. When you start reviewing what gets executed and completed every from week to week, month to month, year to year, you can close every item on the fix it list, you know, and at the end of the year end with a business that is less broken. But the problem is it's not $1 more valuable. That sentence is the whole episode. And most owners have never once measured a year that way because the companies pull away, outshine their competitors. They're not the ones with the cleanest to do list. They're run by people who keep a second list, a short one, where nothing ever feels urgen. And that second list is the only one that changes what the business is worth. Today is about that second list. By the end of this conversation, you're going to have the exact distinction between a fixed list and what I call a build list. And you're going to understand why the difference never shows up in your week, but absolutely shows up in your valuation. I'm going to give you three filters. You got to apply them in order for choosing the one mechanic that's worth a full quarter of construction. What you focus on what you build, not five projects, not a theme. For the year one mechanic, then I'll give you the discipline that protects it. Once you've chosen it, there's one more piece and it might be maybe the most valuable thing that we talk about today. It's this. You're going to have explicit permission to let two or three things in your business stay broken for 90 days. Nobody gives an owner that permission. You're going to leave with it starting today. We're also going to be very intentional and I'm starting here on purpose with every conversation we're going to have between now and the end of the year. Year. And all of it hangs on one question and this episode installs it. What are you actually building this quarter? Talk about building, not managing, not fixing, building. Hold that question, all right, because we're going to come back to it in a second. I'm Scott Joseph. This is business. Bourbon and cigars. If you're new here. You know, I have spent over three decades building and running companies. I built J and L marketing into a serious national operation, acquired dealerships. I built me Plus Ultra, a mastermind setting for experienced operators who've outgrown the groups that they started in. The reason I can talk about the fixed list with a straight face is that I ran entire years on it. And I used to call those years leadership. Some of the most productive stretches of my career when I was measuring by items closed and problem solved, people that I kind of unhandcuffed, unblocked, they added almost nothing to what the company was worth. And it took an uncomfortable December conversation for me to really see it. And that conversation didn't happen in my business. It happened in someone else's. And that's where I want to start. So here's how today's show going to run. First, I'm going to take you inside a year end review where an owner who had an objectively excellent year found out what the year was actually worth. Then I'll tell you about a moment from my own J and L years where I deliberately left something broken for a full quarter. I did it on purpose in front of my whole team. And from there I'm going to give you the three filters that you can use for choosing your one build. And I'll close with the discipline that protects it, including the permission to let something slide. So let's get into it. So an operator that I've known for years, he runs a light industrial services company. We're talking about equipment, maintenance contracts, field crews, you know, somewhere around 12 million in revenue. This is a business with real complexity. You know, about 18 months ago he came out of that year, you know, and by every weekly measure that he at least tracked it was one of the best operational years the company had ever had. And I want to walk you through what he closed that year because it's pretty impressive list. He hired an operations manager and he finally fixed, you know, a scheduling problem that had been burning his dispatchers out for two years. He migrated off, you know, a CRM, the way he put it, the team hated it to the point they barely used it. And he cleaned up years of bad client data in the process. He cleared a billing dispute backlog that was quietly poisoning three client relationships. He restructured comp plans for his field crews and cut his technician turnover almost in half. He personally ran the service recovery on two major accounts that were one bad quarter, you know, away from leaving. He was able to save both of them. It's a big year when you're looking back. He ended closing on like 40 some odd significant items across the year. And these are just the ones he documented because we all know we handle more than that, right? Escalations to his desk drop month after month, and his team ended the year less exhausted than when it had started. Which, you know, if you've ever run a field services business, you know, that almost never happens. So in December, he's, you know, he's having a credit line conversation with his bank, and his bank ran an updated valuation on the company. The number came back basically at the same amount where it had been to start the year. So he pushes back hard as he should. You know, he had to list all these things that real improvements that got done, and he documented them. So the banker walked him through how the business actually gets valued. Revenue is roughly flat. Margins were flat. He hadn't added a single new revenue mechanism all year, and he hadn't added one transferable system that produces results without him standing in the middle of it. The business depended on him exactly as much in December as it did in January. Everything on his list had re, you know, restored the company to spec, but nothing on the list had added something that produces. You know, he tells me later that the drive home after that meeting was horrible. He had spent a whole year making the business easier to run and not one week making it worth more to own. His team had a great year by the only scoreboard he'd ever given them, you know, and that was that to do list. And that's when he realized the list was the problem. What makes this dangerous is that nothing about this year was a mistake. Every fix on that list was worth doing. The trap is in the nature of the fixed list itself. It never ends. Every fix you close exposes the next one underneath it. It's like fixing if you ever had an old deck, you know, on your house, every board you replace, it just shows you two more that need it. Hell, you don't even write the list. The business writes it for you every single day. And it feels good. You know, that list hands you closure at the end of, you know, every week, every month, at the end of the year. But by comparison, construction, what I call the build list, that gives you none of that. A real build spends weeks underwater, usually producing nothing that you can see. And the whole time the fixed list is whispering at you, telling you how you're neglecting real problems. For a project that isn't even broken yet, the fixed list always feels more urgent. That's why it usually gets all the attention. It never has to be more valuable. It only has to be louder. And it always is. I've lived the other side of this at jnl, and I want to tell you what it actually felt like. Because the feeling is the part that nobody warns you about. For two straight quarters, our internal campaign reporting process sat near the top of our fixed list. You know, and the way it was originally created wasn't built for the scale that we had grown to. So it became clunky. You know, we were doing manual data pools, you know, a spreadsheet, a team member updated by hand every few weeks. A moment on a client call where there'd be someone would ask a sharp, pretty sharp question and we couldn't answer it as fast as we should have. And to me that I, I get embarrassed by that type of stuff. My team would bring it up constantly and had every right to do so, and I'm glad I invited that. I left it broken for one more quarter and I did it on purpose because that quarter we were building a repeatable follow up program for our dealer, clients, customers, and it was a mechanic that, you know, once we got it finished, would generate revenue on its own clock, campaign after campaign. Whether I was paying attention to it or not, the reporting problem was costing us some polish. You know, the follow up program, once it existed, would produce for years. What I remember most is having to remake that decision out loud almost weekly, you know, someone would raise the reporting issue. We operate on eos, right? So our level 10, it's always coming up. It's a legitimate issue. And I'd have to say again in front of everyone, not now, not this quarter, the efficiency of our reporting is annoying. The follow up program is our quarter. That's our rock. I won't pretend that it was comfortable when an owner publicly declines to fix a known problem that never feels right. And it wasn't long before that time where every fix to a problem, at least for me, everything they used to joke everything to me was a top priority. It took most of that quarter before the team stopped testing the decision and started protecting it with me. The reporting process eventually got fixed. It only took us about a half a day to fix it. It was just came down to making room for it. The follow up program ran for years and produced revenue the whole time. One of those two things changed what the company was worth and it was never the one that was yelling the loudest have you ever felt stuck trying to solve your toughest business challenges? Maybe you're juggling too many priorities. You're struggling to scale or you're trying to grow without clarity. It's frustrating to work hard and to feel like nothing is moving the needle. The Business Bourbon and Cigars workbook gives you access to the same tools, frameworks and processes that Me plus Ultra members use at our retreats to tackle real business challenges. You're going to learn how to use SMAC mastermind style collaboration techniques and structured problem solving methods to identify critical obstacles, create actionable plans and drive smarter growth. Even if you're not attending the retreat, this workbook lets you experience the same high level thinking and frameworks that top entrepreneurs use to accelerate results. Download your free copy today at me+rainra.com workbook and start applying the exact strategies that help businesses to scale smarter, solve complex challenges, and make faster, more informed decisions. So the obvious question is what actually earns a spot on the build list? And before I walk you through the filters, I want to save you from the mistake that almost everybody makes. The second they get excited about this idea, they end up taking the build list and all they end up doing is turn into a second to do list. They loaded up with five or six projects and now you know at the end of the quarter they haven't built anything. Nothing ever gets completed. If you do this, all you'll do is put a hard hat on your fix list. You have to walk before you can run. So start with one build per quarter. One choosing the one. That's where the real work is. Because your instincts are going to fight you on this. They're going to keep pulling you back towards whatever's making the most noise. That squeaky wheel the fixed list is the most respectable hiding place in business. Nobody ever questions an operator who's busy repairing things that's worth sitting with because the business leaders I'm talking To right now. They're not lazy people. It's the opposite. Ambitious people hide from construction inside repair work precisely because repair work is endless, defensible visibly. It looks productive. No one has ever been challenged at a leadership table for fixing too many problems. Think about that. The filters are how you walk out of the hiding place. You got to run them in order because each one is going to assume the rock or project candidate that we're talking about survived the one before it. So here's the first filter. It's the compounding test. When this is finished, does it keep producing without, you know, my weekly push hold every rock candidate up against that one question. A documented onboarding system that protects margin on every new account you ever sign that keeps producing, right? Maybe it's a referral mechanic that has some type of defined trigger moment and the fine to ask that keeps producing. A hiring pipeline that surfaces qualified candidates before you have a vacancy that keeps producing. Now I want you to compare that to the things that feel like builds but aren't. You know, a rebrand produces once. Clearing a backlog doesn't produce anything. It just gets you back to zero. A price increase. That's a decision, not a mechanic. Could be valuable, sure, but it's one afternoon of you know of courage, not a quarter of construction or build. The test is not whether the potential project is worth doing. Almost everything on your list is worth doing. The test is whether it continues to produce after you take your hands off of it. The second filter is the constraint test. Does this attack the constraint that caps the business or the one that irritates it the most? These are almost never the same thing. And irritation nearly always wins the argument. Because irritation's loud. The cap's usually silent. I'm talking about the thing that annoys you every single day. It could be the messy report that you know deep down the data is not accurate and it really needs to be right. Or the clunky tool that gets used half ass meetings that run long. You know, these types of problems are usually never the thing that limits the size of your company. But that the things we keep working on those to do list, right? The fixed list. If you want to find what's actually capping your company, you have to ask better questions. If your lead flow double tomorrow, what breaks first? That's a cap. If your best person resigned Friday, what stops moving entirely? That's a cap. When the gross stalls in your business, where does it stall? Is it in demand? Is it, you know, conversion, capacity, delivery, whatever your honest answer is Your one build should move that number, even if it's the least annoying item in the entire building. Especially then. A quarter of construction aimed at an irritation buys you comfort. A quarter aimed at the cap buys you a different company. You know, the third filter is what I call the ownership test. Can I name the person who runs this mechanic once it's built? I'm talking about an actual name, not a role that you're planning to hire someday and not the team. A specific person that you can picture running at 12 months from now. If your honest answer is me, meaning you, stop. It's not a build. All that is is a new, permanent job you're about to assign yourself. And it fails the first filter, too, because a mechanic that needs the owner's weekly push isn't compounding, it's consuming. You know what's great about this filter? Sometimes it shows you something more useful than a no. You realize the mechanic is buildable, but the person doesn't exist yet. No, that's fine, because then maybe the person is the build developing or hiring the one who's going to own it. That's a legitimate quarter. What's not legitimate is constructing one more system that revolves around you. Because you already know how that story goes. You've already built several of that crap. So there are three filters. Just to recap here, compounding constraint and ownership. Run your potential build projects. List your rocks, whatever you guys call them. Through them, in order and most quarters, you'll find exactly one survivor, maybe two. And usually it's not the project that you would have picked on instinct. That's a good sign, because it means the filters did their job. You know, choosing the right build list, that's only half the job. Protecting, it's the other half. And the protection's what I call mechanical. It's not motivational. Let me give you the pieces. Write the build down as one sentence with a finish line a stranger could verify, not give you an example of what not to do. Not improve our referral process. It's horrible. You have to be specific. Something like, by September 30th, a referral ask fires within seven days of every completed project. And Dana owns the cadence. If a stranger can't tell whether it got built. You didn't define a build. You defined a hope in and hopes usually end up just another thing you start and never gets completed. Then I want you to put one construction block on your calendar every week and defend it like a client meeting. I want you to think about, you know, what that standard actually means. When a client meeting is on your calendar and something operational flares up, you don't cancel the client. You handle the flare up around the commitment that you made to the client. The construction block on your counter gets the same status, same hours, same day every week, and the business is not allowed to take it back. One protected block honored for 13 weeks finishes a real mechanic. I've watched this over and over, you know, 12 scattered bursts of effort squeezed in. When things are calm, that finishes nothing. Because when are things calm with you? Now, for the permission that I mentioned at the start of the show, and I want to be careful here, because this is the part that owners usually don't give themselves, I want you to choose two or three items from your fixed list by name that are allowed to stay broken for the next 90 days. Write them down next to the build, tell your team you've made that trade in those words. So nobody spends the quarter wondering why you've stopped reacting to those, you know, particular problems. They're not forgotten, they're priced. Letting two things stay broken for 90 days, that's the price of building one thing that pays you for 10 years. If that trade makes you flinch, look at the items you'd be naming a lot of them. They've been broken for months already. They survived. They'll survive one more quarter. And this time leaving them broken will be a decision instead of a backlog. And there's a real difference in how that feels to lead. A backlog accuses you, a decision doesn't. One more thing, you know, before we close. I told you at the top. There's one question I want you to carry out, you know, of this episode. At any point in the next 90 days when another operator or business leader asks you what you're working on, the answer should include something that does not exist yet. If every answer you give describes maintaining or repairing what already exists, the fixed list has you, no matter how impressive the answers sound. So here's the question, and I generally write it somewhere that you're going to see this. What are you actually building this quarter? We're going to keep coming back to that question all season, you know, in different territory every week. It only works if you have an answer if the one build decision feels right. But you want to pressure test your pick, you know, before you commit a quarter to it. I built something for exactly this. The Business Bourbon and Cigars workbook. This is the same tool me+Ultra members use at our leadership retreats. And at its core is the smack planning process, which maps directly onto what we just did. You define the situation honestly, which is the constraint test on paper. You're going to name your mission the one mechanic written as a sentence with a finish line. Then you're going to lay out the actions with owners and timelines attached, which forces the ownership test. Whether you like the answer or not, sing is free. I want you to go to me+Ultra.comworkbook or you can grab the link in the show notes. Make sure you download this. Run your build list decision through it this week before the quarter gets loud. Don't read it, fill it out. The exercises are where the thinking happens and the operators who work them on paper make a noticeably sharper choice than the ones who run the filters in their head between meetings. I'll leave you with the December test. I want you to picture two operators having that year end banking conversation 12 months from now. One of those operators closed 40 plus you know, fixes and added nothing that produces the other business leader closed 20 to 30 fixes, let a few things stay broken on purpose and finished one mechanic that now runs without them. Same effort, same hours. One of them owns a more valuable company and it's not even close. The fixed list protects the business you have. The build list creates the business you don't have yet. You need both, but only one of them ever changes your year end number. I'm Scott Joseph. This has been business. Bourbon and cigars. I'll see you on the next one. Cheers everyone.