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Fullerton Unfiltered
937. Document Everything: The SOP System That Builds Real Business Value
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You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on filtered. Grow your business, grow your life. Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton. Hey, what's going on guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton here hanging with you guys and good morning. Well guys, today's podcast episode I wanted to talk to you for just a couple of minutes. Fun topic here today that I know is going to piggyback off of a great discussion from last week's spring kickoff conversation that we had with Sam Gamble, yours truly, Jason Cromley, Kevin Scott, Denver with Legacy. And who else do we have? Gosh, just a whole host of people that were part of the spring kickoff webinar series with Element Granum team last week, Tuesday through Friday. Hopefully you guys joined us on that webinar. If you didn't see see it, the replay will be available here very soon on probably the YouTube channel for LMN, but then also you'll be getting those email replays. And it was basically a whole conversation about how to kick off and kickstart spring. Now real time recording this. It is 70 degrees in Michigan for the next day, day and a half, it's going to be about 60, then 55, then plummet back down to mid-30s shortly thereafter for probably another week or so in the 10 day and then we'll see where it kind of goes from there. It's one of those things in Michigan where it can either plummet back down to the 30s and you know, say they're in the 40s for, you know, late March into early April, or we get that, you know, once every five year spring kickoff and we have those temperatures hover in the 50s, go up to the 60s, and we might even start cutting grass by mid April. So it really is that fork in the road here on the 10 day. But what I wanted to share with you guys today is the conversation that we had from last week and just give you some suggestions. If you haven't been thinking about this before, you haven't done it already. And that is the topic of writing down every thing that you're doing in your business, literally writing every single thing down that you're doing in your business as you continue to grow and scale that way you have a rolling 12 months history and an ongoing history of what you do, when you do it, how you do it and why you do it in your business. Now I'm going to approach this from One or two different angles here. The first one is I wanted to say that, boy, I have not done this at all until the last 12 months in my life, in my business career. And what a absolute shame. Now, to be completely honest with you guys, the first like 12, 13 years of my business career were pretty much scrimmage. Next four or five years, I was like, okay, let's start getting a little bit more serious, a little bit more focused on this. But you know, day to day we're just talking about operations and not necessarily like the documenting of operations. It was just, hey, let's talk about ways to be better. Let's improve productivity, efficiency, operations, raise our rates, raise our prices, right? And a lot of that's high level. But that was kind of like the last three or four years until the last 12 or 18 months. And then I decided, hey, I want to grow a bigger business that's going to require us to scale up and flex up. And that also means we're going to have to rely on more team members to grow this business as we want to reach a million dollar plus business and beyond. Well, what I've realized in the last 12, 18 months is to do that, we're going to have to document everything we're doing and start duplicating our efforts, duplicating thought process and duplicating behaviors that we want to see replicated in the business. Well, you know, you're honestly, honestly. Well, honestly, I never did that along the way, you know, so when we started going around the Mark Bradley leanscaper and LMN events over the last 12, 18 months, I noticed a lot of teaching and training, Talking about documenting SOPs, building systems, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason I say this is twofold. One, maybe you've never done it before, or two, you're looking to grow and scale. I would just tell you like the, the sooner that you start doing this, the better. Now, inside Baseball, in about another week or two, we're going to be releasing the prey option for the SOP bundle and again, more on that later. But I'm very, very excited about that and a lot of you guys are super interested in that bundle. We're going to have about 50 or 60 infield training SOP videos, another 15 to 20 office admin type SOP videos, plus documents, great workflow, how to how to do bids, how to do estimates, newsletters, get Google reviews, run payroll, how to take attentive takeoffs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right? And there will Also be another probably 30 or 40 documents, including our employee handbook that will all be part of the SOP plus bundle. Now it's probably going to launch for about 1500 bucks. There'll be a couple coupon codes flying around, especially if you get the whole ball of wax or have bought from Launchpader Academy before. And that whole bundle is going to be designed for people that are growing a business north of 4 or 500 grand and want to start teaching folks in the field and teaching folks in the office how to run a big business and how you can start duplicating your efforts through those folks on board and on ramp them very quickly. Well, okay, look a little inside baseball. Maybe you don't want to spend 1500 bucks on that bundle. In my opinion, there's probably about 200 hours of thought process, you know, SOP building, video recording and editing going into that Bundle. So for 10001500 bucks, not a bad deal by April 20th once we finally publish the content. And we'll have the last call if you want to pick it up by you know, mid to late April. But by the end of April, the bundle price is going to go up by another 500 to 1,000 bucks and it'll still be a steal at $2,500. But here's the deal. Maybe you are like, you know what, I'm a grassroots kind of guy. I'm a sweat equity kind of guy. I'm going to build my own. I'm going to build my own documents, my own SOPs. I've got Lana with leanscaper, I've got Chad, GPT. Hey, I don't need Brian's Law Maintenance, Launchpreneur Academy, you know, SOP bundle. I'm going to build my own. Dude, that's awesome. Like I'm all for that. I am right there with you. I'm talking to the busy bees that are trying to grow their business. They're trying to do sales. They don't have all the time in the world to build a 17 page document and record a 30 minute zoom loom or you know, clips, video with zoom to, you know, train an office personnel staff. These folks want to hire a VA, you know, from Ninja VA with code Brian's 100. Just kidding. And you know, they want to just get the job done, hire somebody, put somebody in that seat, teach them, train them, make sure that they're effective in a, you know, good six to eight week onboarding process. Okay, like that's who that's for. But let's say you're in year three, you're doing 375,000 bucks. It's you and three guys. You got a little bit of time. Maybe you're 26 and single and you don't have like a ton going on with your life other than the business, then you don't have to buy a bundle like that. You do have time. You can save some money, quote, unquote, and you can start building this all out on your own. And that is totally fine. Like, that's what I'm going to encourage you to do. Whether you want to grow to a $5 million company or even a half a million dollar company. I want to just help everybody listening into this show to start looking at their business a little differently with building enterprise value. I want you to start thinking about what, what breaks if I stop performing it in my business, right? Think about that. What breaks if I stop performing it in my business. In fact, like, if I went away from a week or two for my business, what's the first thing that breaks, right? Like, who's running this operation outside of just me? In fact, if I'm gone for three days, do the lawns get cut? Do the parking lots get plowed? And that is stuff that I'm really starting to think about more and more in a lot of different fashions, right? As I get older, as I have a family, you know, as I want to maybe leave a legacy, if I want to pass the business forward, if I ever wanted to sell it, can this business run without me, right? Like, is an investor going to look at this and say, oh, nope, the owner's involved. Instead of a 4 to 6x multiple, they're going to get a 2x multiple on a 100 grand EBITDA with an owner salary for, you know, 70,000 bucks, he's going to get 350,000 cash on the way out. Or does this business run without him and he's looking at a cool million dollars, you know, with a couple multiples and some strong EBITDA and it's going to be worth 2,3x that, because the business doesn't run without him because he's systematized, documented, and this thing's running without him. With his team of, you know, even 18 people. He's got an office manager, he's got an operations manager, he's got a great quality bookkeeper. He's got four or five strong crew leaders. You know, he's got a, you know, a sales estimator kind of an individual. He's got a good team of, you know, 15 or 18 people. It's a $1.8 million business like that could be worth a lot of money. And as Sam Gamble says, like everybody listening into this podcast, everybody listening into this show can absolutely do that and absolutely build that. But here's the deal. You do have to document it. You do have to start building structure. You do have to start building systems and processes. Now here's the deal. I'm going to piggyback off of this. We're here from today's show sponsors. We're going to hear a little bit more about this thought process here in a quick second because what Sam and I and all the great leaders on the go LMN, well that's the golmn.com website, but on the Element Granum webinar last week talked about was, you know, starting this whole process. But it doesn't mean like you're finished or it doesn't mean you have to be finished. It doesn't even mean you have to be started on this process to start now, right? To start from day one, you know, we're all going to be a year or two older, you know, shocker. And a year or two. Follow me for other great thought process on a, on a podcast like this, right? But why not start now? Why not start today? And as you go into the spring rush, take advantage of the most important 90 days in your business and start documenting everything that you're doing. That way you have it documented and you don't have to worry about redocumenting it this same time next spring. And so I want to talk about that for a couple quick more minutes here. It was just an eye opening conversation that we're having on the webinar last week. It really this entire process I've been doing for almost a year to date as I was challenged to do this this same time last year in March in Nashville at the operations intensive at leanscaper, which is where I'm at this week, which is why my voice sounds a little different on the podcast because this is a mobile roadshow podcast. So I'm going to talk about this for a couple more minutes. Let's do this really quick. Let's hear from today's show sponsors and announcements. Hang tight, don't miss it. I got some good stuff when we come on back. And we'll be right back here in just a quick second. Hey, what's up, guys? Brian here and I've got something brand new to help you level up your lawn and landscaping business. If you guys have ever struggled to figure out how to bid commercial work, like really bid it with confidence. Then you got to check out a brand new commercial bidding program now available@launchpreneuracademy.com inside you'll get our know your numbers calculator, a full snow takeoff and bid, a lawn takeoff and bid, and even see a live webinar replay where we walk you through the mindset about how to be successful with commercial bidding and how to crack the code to finally get your proposals accepted. Not only we get access to the webinar, the two takeoffs and how we actually price and bid inside element, of course, the webinar replay, you'll also get access to one takeoff with yours truly. I'm going to help you bid quote in price these sites that you guys have. So if you're in a residential mowing business kind of a setup and maybe get your first commercial bid across your desk and you don't know what to do, we're going to give you one free takeoff. We're going to price it together and I'm going to share my notes with you and we're going to email exchange back and forth to make sure that you get that commercial bid. Check it all out today, guys. Stop guessing and stop leaving money on the table and start winning these big jobs. Check it out today at launchpreneuracademy.com under the store section with the commercial bidding program and let's grow that business big together.
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Bid is good for one takeoff, lawn or snow.
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Attentive price, takeoff capped at $75. More expensive takeoffs will require a supplementary invoice. These takeoffs and estimates are designed for commercial sites, 1 to 5 acres in size for lawn mowing or snow removal. All right, well, let's keep this conversation going here for a few more minutes. Again, I do want to just do a quick tease on that SOP bundle, folks. It will be available here by, I think March 25, Wednesday is when we're looking to have the pre order. And again, it'll be on sale for 1500 bucks. There'll be a couple of coupon codes floating around. We definitely want to help you guys save some money. If you've already bought the whole ball of wax, make sure you check your email before you buy it because we're going to give you a significant discount towards it. Trust me, I want to take care of my whole ball of wax people. So we got you. And then number two, all the content is going to publish mid to late April where you can get access to everything that we've built. And by the way, like I've said before, lifetime updates, lifetime upgrades on this bundle as well. So we're actually going to include a Google submission type form part of this bundle. And that way, if you guys want a future SOP video in the office or in the field, as long as it's within, you know, my wheelhouse, I will absolutely film that video and add it to that course and that program and that bundle for you guys. And telling you what, like within a year or two, folks, I'm expecting there to be about two or 300 videos and about 20 to 50 office admin, SOP type videos and, and another 50 to 100 documents built. Wow. Getting all that out, that is a mouthful. All right, I'm really, really excited about all that. So stay tuned. Tell a friend, tell a bro. I'm telling you what, you do not want to miss it because when we do publish the content by mid to late April and probably by end of month April, we're going to have that bundle probably retail instead for the $2,500 price point. So for all of you guys that were like, man, I wish I bought the whole bottle of wax when it was half the price or a third of the price, this is that moment, especially for all of you guys that are looking to grow and scale and you want to think long term and you're like, yeah, I'm definitely taking this thing to a million, 2 million, 5 million. This is going to be the bundle for you. Let's go back to the top. I want to talk about this. Same time last year I was at the March operations intensive with Mark Bradley and leanscaper and a little shout out and plug for those guys. And at the time there was probably about 80 people, maybe 90 people in that room. And. And jokingly, Mark Bradley had said, I don't know if it was at that conference or the next one, but he said at Nashville he goes, probably about 20 people out of the 70 paid to be there, if you know what I'm saying, because he gave a bunch of free tickets to everyone. And that doesn't even count the staff that was there. And leanscaper, I think was, you know, 60 or 90 days old at that time because Mark sold LMM in October. November is he kind of sunset to start leanscaper January 1st and took a couple people from the old mothership over because there's some dupes. And so he took some of his executive team, they started leanscaper and by the time we were down in Nashville, I think the paint was still wet, and there might have been 90 to 100 people in that room. Well, at that time, we started what I would only call and only could quantify. Like, we actually started to build our businesses. And I guess I can only really talk about me in this example, but at that time, I had no such thing. Hear me now. This is actually really cool and really important stuff. Like, at that time, I had no documented processes. Now we had like a mental SOP or mental checklist or a hey, here's how I normally hire somebody, or here's how we cut grass. And maybe like one or two SOP training videos, I guess, because we had Those available for LaunchPreneur Academy, but nobody on my team had ever saw them. They were more for teaching and training folks that were just getting started in the industry. The how to plow snow, you know, training program, the how to professionally cut grass training program. Right, like those kind of videos. But nobody on my team had ever seen a documented anything ever. One time, ever. And as I say that out loud, like, I'm trying to think if that's actually like 100% airtight, because I don't think we actually documented a single thing ever. Now, here's the deal. In Nashville, Mark Bradley was like, hey, if your business still revolves around you, if this whole system and process moves around just because of you, if you actually want to grow in scale and you want to start duplicating your efforts and duplicating thought process, like, you have to start writing it down. You do have to start taking time and getting it out of your brain and putting it out in pen and paper. And I'm embarrassed to tell you guys, but like I said, Sec. 16, 17, 18 plus years in the business, never once wrote down anything, ever. Now some of you guys are two years into this thing and you have this all, you know, licked and figured out, and, man, I'm so proud of you. I commend you. That's incredible. I did not. I did not have a Google Drive. I did not have a Google sheets. In fact, this same time last year, I finally switched over from At Gmail to finally at, you know, at Brian's lm. Like, we were still rocking a Gmail. In fact, Sam Gamble, one of my buds and bros and coaches, he said, he goes, I know you want to go to 5 million. You'll be the first company that I know to do it with an AT Gmail address. I was like, ooh. Like, that kind of stung, but that felt Right. Like he's, he. He is, right? And so we switch it up and we got a Google workspaces and we started to build out our Google suite and all my crew leads got their, you know, own personal email and we went to the rebrand and we updated our website and all this stuff. Right? Well, the one thing that we finally did with our G drive was our Google accounts was create our drive or, you know, Google Drive account. And we started building documents and SOPs in Nashville. Like I can't even begin to describe. We started to build out email drip campaigns and how to reach out to customers and how to create newsletters and what our ideal customer profile was and what our sales process was and you know, we call value stream mapping. Like what does our sales process look like? What's the customer journey look like? You guys heard that from Kristen Kiley, you know, about three weeks ago. Please go back to that show and listen to it. Like it was fantastic. You guys have heard from so many great folks like Tommy Cole from leanscaper on my podcast and other great guys podcast. This was like some of the most honestly ground floor groundbreaking information that I had ever heard about quantifying, like what the heck we actually do around here. And so the reason I encourage you guys to write everything down is because this same time last year, I probably created about 20 or 30 documents. Sops, wrote stuff down, quantified a whole bunch of stuff coming off of five of the six element masterminds. I showed my team the eight or nine, whatever attendance of Lean, how revenue is generated, profit, gross profit is generated, what labor is available to be allocated towards wages. You know, the golden hammer conversation, like all these things and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you got to plug in and I'm telling you like you're missing out. But all these things were finally conversations that I finally started to share and then document with my entire team. And I'll tell you what, you want to like know where the rubber meets the road. In 2024, we had about 14 or so percent, you know, gross revenue growth and we were running about a 1% true net that year. Now some of that was slushed because of the barn and the shop build and just expenses in general. So if you did some add backs, we're probably around 6, 7, 8% net. Fast forward into 20, 25, 15% growth and 15% true net. Okay, like so if we didn't grow as much and buy new trucks, probably 21, 22% net, if we would have hit a little bit harder. Maybe we could have some higher growth and a little bit less cash, you know, true net because growth sucks. Cash growth is expensive. You guys know if you know. But 15 and 15 is not too bad. But here's the deal. We've finally started to get our feet underneath us. But by building a real business, by systematizing the business. We actually went to the employee handbook. We finally really, actually updated. We started to adhere to it and I had to as we had about seven or eight team members through summer and we had to enforce things like late, you know, tardiness and write ups and absences and PTO and sick days and uniform policies and no smoking or drinking type stuff. You know, the basics that you guys get to deal with. Now, thankfully it wasn't a lot of like big challenges or significant issues, but it all started to come together as we're forming up a real team with real standards. And here's the thing your folks crave. They want clarity, they want consistency and they want to understand what good looks like. And if it's not hit, the owner and the management team can start to have accountability and enforce consequences. Does that make sense? And so the biggest thing I'd say is what an opportunity we have going into the spring rush. Here's my challenge to you and we'll just land the plane if you can start documenting every single thing you do, how you do it, why you do it. And boy, will you start to enjoy dumping your freaking brain out about what you're actually doing around here on Google Docs, on pages, on notes, whatever it is, whatever, however you do it. And you can start documenting your actual business. The Brian's Law Maintenance way, the Diaz way, the Riley, you know, landscaping way, the you know, whatever your business name is way. And when you start bringing in new team members, you can start saying, this is how we do it here. And there's a, there's a formula, there's a system, there's a process, right? And that is what eventually that system is, is what becomes valuable. Whether you sell it to your team, you sell it to your kids, you sell it to a strategic partner, you sell it to private equity, right? Like that is what is going to give you that big upside long term. And believe me, begin with the end in mind. I know you guys like, I'm just cutting grass. It's me and five guys. I don't really, you know, know where this thing can go. I will assure you, neither did I. But things change, right? And your dreams will get bigger. And the more you accomplish, the more you might want to accomplish more. And I will tell you what, building this library of documents and sops and workflow is incredibly, incredibly important. So as you go through the spring rush here, start writing down everything you're doing. We'll give you some suggestions along the way over the next couple weeks and months. You've already heard me talk about a lot of this along the way. Again, we're documenting every single thing we've done. And we've got quite an army, quite a library of documents, tools, resources and videos to boot. And eventually, when somebody wants to look at making an investment into or buying Brian's Law Maintenance, there is going to be a system and a process and a way we do things here that has got us to where we're at today and where we're going tomorrow. All right, and so that's my challenge for you guys today. I know it sounds kind of like an outlier, kind of a podcast and a weird topic. Write stuff down. Like, what does even mean? Folks, I'm telling you what, what an opportunity we have over the next 60 to 90 days to start documenting every single thing that we're doing. And this same time next year, we'll have a rolling 12 month calendar again. It would be nice if we planted a tree 20 years ago to enjoy its shade, but if what's the next best day to plant a tree today? And for the long term, thinkers, the trees that we plant today you might never enjoy the shade of, but the next generation will. All right, so that's what I'm going to leave you guys today. Start documenting everything you have and everything that you're trying to do. I appreciate you guys listening in and we look forward to catching up with all of you guys here. On the next one.
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Tired of chasing new customers? Good news. You don't have to figure it all out alone. Postcard marketing is a simple, powerful way to grow your business and reach people who actually want your services. At Launchpreneur Academy, we've created postcard templates that are easy to use. Just add your logo, contact info and message. We've got you covered with seasonal themes and service specific designs for patio, sod, irrigation and so much more. Need printing and mailing help. That's where postcard mania comes in. Brian's go to printer. They make it easy. They'll handle the whole process and give you special pricing plus design help just for being a part of the Lawntrepreneur community. You can even track your results with QR codes and call tracking. Skip the guesswork and visit launchpreneuracademy.com to grab your postcards and then head over to Postcard Mania using the link provided in the show description. Remember to mention Brian to get your deal and let's get the phone ringing again with the right kind of leads.
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Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast with Bryan Fullerton. We hope you enjoyed this production. If so, please consider leaving us a five star review for the show. While the techniques and ideas presented here are designed to help you grow a more successful and profitable business, no one can create guarantee these results for you. We want to emphasize that entrepreneurship is not easy and the ideas presented here are just the opinions of Brian Fullerton and his respective guests. No one can guarantee success for you. That being said, we hope the ideas presented here help you and motivate you to go on out there and crush it with your own business.
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Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast thanks for listening and
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we hope to see you on the next episode.
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This has been a Bryan Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.