Ezra McCarthy
Welcome back to the Lawn Care Blueprint. Have you ever felt like your business just can’t move forward without you saying yes? Well, if so, today we’re going to dig into a topic that may be of help to you and talk about bottlenecks in your company, how to stop it, and how to help your business grow. So we’re going to unpack control, delegation, and why learning to let go might be the most productive move you’ve ever made.
So, Wena is here with us today. We’re gonna begin to unpack this topic that probably all of us face from time to time.
Wena
Before we dive in, let’s start with the moment of realization to that point when it hits you when things might be slowing down. So when do most business owners start realizing they’re the ones who become the bottleneck?
Ezra McCarthy
Yeah, it’s really easy to hit this point when you feel like everything has to go through you. Now that may sound like a good idea, like you’re keeping control and you’re making sure, okay, we’re making sure our quality is 100% all the time, which obviously we’re all about doing a good job. But yet, if every single point of contact with the customer, every single point of contact with those you’re reaching out to, has to go through you, a couple things are gonna happen. One, things are gonna slow down or you’re going to get burnt out. Sometimes everything doesn’t work perfectly.
I’ll share an example. We were reaching out to some podcast guests and I’ll kind of throw Wena under the bus here. She actually made a mistake in the email. Now there’s a couple different options that you can do. You can say, okay, I’m never going to have, well, in this case, Wena email people again, or you could just say, hey, this is part of learning. We’re going to learn from it and go on.
The problem was sometimes in businesses people learn the wrong lessons from mistakes. They say, well, I tried to delegate before and it didn’t work, or maybe what they mean by delegation is I tried to throw these tasks on my team members without helping them learn how and it doesn’t work and there’s a really good book that Jaco, and I’m gonna try to pronounce his last name, I think most people know his name, but Willink, although I feel like I’m not saying that right, and he has some really good books. One of the really good ones I like is called Extreme Ownership. And it basically is just taking responsibility for everything. I mean everything.
So if a team member gets it wrong, say, hey, I didn’t explain it right. Let’s go back and figure out, okay, be more careful. And then if it keeps happening, then you’re to have to take responsibility and say, I have the wrong team member. But basically saying, hey, there’s a problem here. The problem ultimately goes to the top. And if you ever think of those old glass Coke bottles, of course it’s wider at the bottom. And then as it goes up, it gets thinner.
And that’s where the phrase bottleneck comes from. Because if you ever tried to pour it out, maybe it’s some water or whatever is in there, it’s constrained by that top part of the bottle. And in our business, oftentimes, most people listening to this are probably business owners. And our business is constrained by you and I.
Ezra McCarthy
And so realizing that, as John Maxwell talks about the law of the lid, basically saying our businesses are stopped by normally one thing, by probably our knowledge, our execution or our skills. And so how can we understand that and then use that to help our businesses grow as well?
Wena
That part is quite challenging dealing to the lid. So when you let go of control, why do so many owners struggle in that aspect?
Ezra McCarthy
I heard this before and literally people say no one can do it like I can or I hired someone and they did a bad job and that could be the case. You know, I had an interesting experience. The first business that ever owned I was actually doing a painting company and I’d started actually when I was in college and one thing I didn’t realize it, but there’s, I don’t know how many people I taught how to paint, because I get a job and I get one of my college buddies and I’d say I could, I guess I could do it all myself, but if you were painted you got somebody cutting in and that’s basically when you have the paintbrush and you’re doing the top and then around the trim. It takes a little more practice, a little more skill and then rolling where you got the paint roller.
We didn’t really do a whole lot of spraying. I have done some but not a whole lot. So oftentimes I teach him, okay, this is how you hold the roller. This is how you apply it. And I’d learned that it really wasn’t that hard, but you had to teach him. And in business so many times we just kind of instead of showing them, hey, this is how you hold it, this is how you position your body, this is how you make sure you back roll to make sure there’s no lines of the paint. If you are trying to paint, you know what I’m talking about and if not, it’s good to learn.
But instead people will just say, hey, there’s the paint, there’s the roller, get it done. It doesn’t work like that. But what I found is that if I explained it to them, just like I tried to illustrate here a little bit, most people could figure it out.
It really wasn’t that hard, but I had to take the time to explain it to them and then they could get it. And in our business, so many times people just feel like, well, I want it to be perfect, so I’m to do everything. But really, our business is capped. They’re constrained unless we learn how to effectively let go of a task. And there’s some tasks that owners just really hold on for too long.
Maybe they’re tasks that they enjoy and I’m guilty of this. I love doing things fast. I would actually, in high school and actually earlier, but I did strawberry picking. And so we would race. We would go and I would pick gallons. One day I got like 42 gallons of strawberries just out there picking away.
Or I guess it was college in high school. I also did some concrete and if you’ve ever done concrete you’ve seen those rebar that you put in and we are making the base of these huge grain silos like 90, 100 feet across, so they would call them pig’s tails and there’d be a little handle and a little curly cue at the end and you take this mesh wire and you tie the rebar together and then after they pour the concrete. So I love doing things fast and so my boss, he was probably 30 to 40, he was really good at concrete. And I’d race him and this other guy. And I would try to beat them both. And once I got practice, I could do it. I would just go, go, go.
And in business, there’s times there are things that we’re good at. We can do maybe twice as fast as others. And if we’re not careful, what we’ll do is we’ll say, this, I can do faster than them. So why would I take twice as long just to explain them? And it feels like they’re not going to do it as good. So I don’t want to let go. And it feels comfortable. But yet, if we are always stuck there, we’re never going to be able to upscale or increase what we’re doing to help our business grow if we’re not letting go of some of those things. If we’re just stuck tying rebar, in that illustration, we’re not going to be able to sell work. We’re not going to be about helping other team members.
And in our lawn and landscape industry, you may say, no one can lead a crew like I can and no one can landscape like I can. And in all reality, that’s probably not the case. With the right training, with the right care, you’re gonna be surprised before long, they’re probably gonna do it better than you can. And so learning to let go and redefine our role in the business is really gonna help us grow.
Wena
You can never buy back your time, right? If you’re just going to hold on to these tasks. I’m really glad you gave me the task of writing newsletters because I do enjoy them a lot. So.
Ezra McCarthy
Yep. You know, I really don’t. And so that’s where something that doesn’t fire you up saying, hey, how can I give this to someone who would enjoy it and probably do a better job?
Wena
This one’s a bit tricky, because how can owners tell it’s time to delegate something?
Ezra McCarthy
So if something every time you do it, it just starts taking longer and longer and you don’t rush to it. You’re not quick to get to it. It just really drains your energy. And then you know, hey, this is something someone could probably do better because they have energy to do it. Maybe it’s checking your emails. Maybe it’s getting those quotes back out. Maybe it’s mowing the lawns. Maybe it’s landscaping. Then you know, hey, this is time I need to start looking for someone to delegate.
Perhaps you realize, hey, one of my team members. Maybe they’re not at 100 percent. Maybe they’re not quite 100 percent as good as you. Maybe they’re 90 percent. Maybe they’re 80 percent. Maybe you keep telling yourself, hey, I’m going to get to that tomorrow. And then tomorrow you realize it’s been two weeks since I’ve done this and I’m just, maybe it’s billing and you hate billing. So you say, okay, what is one thing that I can get a team member I can delegate and give it to them?
And so that’s when you know it’s really time to get delegate. And it was funny. I was talking to one of my customers and when we had hired a team member, he said, yeah, I realized you’re starting to get busy and you weren’t getting back to my emails as quick. But I noticed when you hired that team member, your responses were way quicker. And that’s really what delegating should be when it’s taking those things that really just drain it, those things that you say, hey, I’ll do it later. Maybe it’s accounting that you’re supposed to be doing every month and you find yourself at the end of the year doing that. Those are some of the things that you realize, this is not working. And that’s when you know, this is something that I can delegate.
Wena
What about the difference between taking ownership and micromanagement?
Ezra McCarthy
This is really good as well. Ownership basically gives our team members and not just shoving it off on them saying do it. It’s not something that suffocates them, which micromanaging really does, but it helps them say, this is your ownership. Here’s a great way to describe it. Ownership says, here’s my goal. Micromanagement says, do it my way. And ownership trusts people with the how not just the what.
What I mean by that is ownership says, hey, how can we do this, this is the result we’re trying to get. And then micromanagement is this is step one two three step three point five three point six three point seven. I think you get the point where you’re over someone’s shoulder and that’s a terrible way no one likes to work that way and that’s where you have to trust our team members. I guess that goes into hiring in the sense of who we are hiring, what kind of team members, character, et cetera, which that’s a whole different podcast. But having the right team members that are willing to take responsibility really makes a difference.
Wena
So what if you mentioned that micromanagement is something that you don’t want to end up doing, right? But what if delegation would go wrong? Like what if a team member would do something wrong? What should be done?
Ezra McCarthy
This goes back to that. Yeah, this goes back to the principle that Jaco talked about, extreme ownership. It’s really easy to get fresher with a team member and say, man. And the easy out is they’re just lazy. They might be. Sadly, some might be. But maybe you didn’t train them right. Maybe you weren’t clear enough. Maybe they don’t have enough knowledge. Maybe they need more experience.
And so, saying, first of all, that’s my problem and then say, mistakes are part of growth. Now, if they make the same mistake every day for five days and you taught them every day, that’s probably a discussion on when to promote them onto another job. But that’s not probably what most people are dealing with. Sometimes the issue is unclear expectations and it might not be bad team members. So don’t take the task back and just say, well, I’ll just do it myself. Fix the process, maybe make a checklist. Maybe show the team member, this is where you do it. Go through a couple examples, show them clearly. This is what success looks like on this task. And then run through it a couple of times.
Maybe you’re going to do, if it’s a landscaping project, maybe the next two, we’re going to do a ride along. Maybe it’s on the properties. We’re going to ride along and then make sure you get out of the truck after explaining or putting the different crew leader with them. Because delegation is not abdication or basically just throwing that on them, but it’s showing them how and then giving them the ownership.
Wena
From a team member’s perspective, the usual mistake would be taking things too fast. So, the remedy there is double check, triple check everything before sending. So that’s the reason the email blundered.
So how can you rebuild trust after a mistake, whether it’s a minor or major mistake?
Ezra McCarthy
Start with ownership, not, what a bad job you did, et cetera, et cetera, but saying, hey, like I said, ownership. That means you and I as business owners take ownership and then follow up. If someone’s not getting something done, maybe they just forgot. Follow up and say, hey, how are things going? And I think building trust. And then if someone does make an honest mistake, not jumping on their case, obviously, if this is the 10th time, maybe you need to, well, it should never get to the 10th time, but I think you know what I’m saying.
That’s a different conversation. But a mistake saying, hey, how can we fix this? Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen again. And then if we have the right team members with the attitude of learning, of growth, which hopefully that is what your team members have, then we’re as we continually help the team members grow in their role, then we’re not going to see these same mistakes again.
Wena
What if you’re the type of leader who after a mistake has been made, you would do everything yourself? What’s the cost of that?
Ezra McCarthy
What you’re going to see is a lot of opportunities you just can’t get to because at a certain point your business is going to be capped at how much you can work. And I have no interest and hopefully you don’t either of working 80 hours for the next 30 years. That sounds like a horrible life. And I don’t think anyone gets into business saying, I want to work insanely hard, not make much money, have no time for my family, no time for activities. That’s not a great life.
And if we’re doing everything ourselves, our business is going to cap at our personal bandwidth or how much we can just shove into a week. And we have no time for things in life. And obviously, I think everyone listening would agree money is not the most important thing. We get into our business for time and financial freedom. And no one’s going to look back at the end of your life at your funeral and say, you know, they were such an amazing person. They had so much money. I have been to, unfortunately, quite a few funerals.
And in all reality, no one cares. No one cares how much money you have. In all reality, your business, people really don’t care about that either. But who you were as a person, your character, your legacy. And if we’re just working insane all the time for the rest of our life, that’s a terrible goal, in my opinion. And I think it’s the right one. But I digress there. Unless we’re delegating, our business is going to be capped. And the amount of people that we can influence in a positive way is going to be capped as well.
But if we bring on those team members and allow ourselves to have margin in our business, you think of a page that college ruled on both sides, there’s kind of that space. And so many times in people’s lives and business, they just allow the business to crowd out the whole page. And so there’s no margin. And so when that customer comes out and they needs to talk to you or you’re just so rushing from job to job, trying to keep your margins higher that you have no time to stop and do that great job you need that you’re turning to customers and we could just stay here the whole podcast and I won’t but we need to have margin and only we’re gonna get that is by delegating to our team members.
Wena
Have you ever felt that guilt of letting go of a task whenever you delegate and how can owners, business owners, overcome that guilt of letting go?
Ezra McCarthy
Yeah, and this is real. And oftentimes, most of us grew up probably on the lower end of the blue collar spectrum. And we can think, hey, hiring someone to do this, that’s lazy or to have time to think about where a business is going and sit there and try to plan. Is that unproductive? Am I letting go too much? But really letting go is leadership. It’s not laziness. And we’re empowering others to do a great job, to grow in their role.
And that’s what it’s for trying to say, hey, I can do this myself. In some senses it is good, but there comes a point where it’s too much. And once we learn the principle of buying back your time and how valuable delegation is, letting go, you’re never going to want to go back.
Wena
What tools or systems make delegation work?
Ezra McCarthy
One of my favorite books is called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. Actually, Wena listened to it as well. And he goes into basically the importance of checklists. And I know what you’re thinking. We’re in the lawn and landscape industry. Do we really need checklists? For everything, probably not. We’re not going to need a checklist for every lawn. But for some things, we will. And something like simple processes using Google Docs that you can access from anywhere, you can share with your team, having regular one on ones that you can go through and say, this is our process. Literally have a checklist internally at green frog. Have checklists for a lot and we probably need it for even more because it’s so powerful.
Even using things as simple as an app that we use is called Trello. It’s really simple. You can put checklists there and then have team members, even for a job, saying, hey, when we show up to the job, this is what we do. When we, at the end of the day, this is the checklist that we go through. When we leave a job, this is what we say to the customer. We make sure we send that review link. And I even heard a great example actually of the home service millionaire.
He talks about Tommy Mello and he owns one garage door. When they go to a quote, they’ll call ahead and they’ll say, hey, I’m almost there. I’m stopping by 7-Eleven or whatever gas station you have there. Can I get you a drink? Maybe I’m stopping by Starbucks. Can I get you a coffee? Now, that sounds super minute. I meant, I got a couple bucks. It’s not going to cost you a whole lot. But what have any of you? I have never had this happen. Have you had a contractor ask you, do you want something on the way? I never have.
Now literally that’s before you ever get to the job. You’re putting into their mind that we care about them. And remember we talked about recently the experience that you’re giving your customer. Talk about a great way to blow them away. Now imagine that a customer has two quotes for a landscaping job. They were both professional, but one took the time to do that simple gesture before they got there. I have a feeling I know which one they’re going to take. And it’s going to be your quote because you’re showing you care about them. You’re considerate. And we can systematize or put these in a checklist and delegate these to this to a team member.
And then when the job’s done asking, how do we serve you? Did we send that Google business profile review at the end of every job? And we can put this in a checklist or even delegate this to a team member, automate it. We recommend that we use that for customers automating that process. And you’d be surprised what simple things like that to delegate can really help.
Wena
Like sending jerky beef orders, beef jerky orders. Yeah, I also remember that book, Giftology about customer experience. When the author spent, I think that was like finding us that $7000 for buying an entire set of wardrobe. But that’s over the top, right? But yeah, that’s customer experience.
Ezra McCarthy
Yeah, and let me tell that story real quick that you reminded me. So this was, his name is John Ruhl and it’s a great book. Unfortunately, he’s passed away, but book is tremendous, called Giftology. And in there, he talks about, he really wanted to get to know, I believe it was Cameron Harreld. He was one of the, I guess he wasn’t a founder, but he was high up in management in the business 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and he really wanted to connect with him.
And he found out that Cameron Harreld really liked this certain brand of suit. I believe it was Brooks Brothers and he was going to meet with him and he found out what his size was. So what happened was he had an invite for him. Cameron Harold had just come in from a long day flying and he had gone and bought their whole collection Brooks Brothers. Now if you’ve ever been to a Brooks Brothers for suits they are not the cheap ones, but he bought a huge collection and he went to the hotel and he told the manager, hey, this is what I’m trying to do for Cameron Harrold. Can you let me go into his room? So he went into Cameron Harrold’s hotel room before he got there and laid out all these suits in his size. Well, you can imagine what happened. Cameron Harrold came in. He was just exhausted. He was weary.
In all reality, John said he really looked like he didn’t want to go out to eat and do whatever with him. Well, he went up to his room and he said half an hour later he came down. He was just so blown away that he said, whatever you want to talk about for however long I’m game. He was just blown away because John had taken the time to care about Cameron in that instance.
And I’ll give you another true example. So I love Seth Godin’s books. I’ve talked about him on the pod before. And Seth Godin has a huge marketing blog. I went on there I emailed him and I said hey Seth I just I love your books looking forward to reading this most recent one you came out with, just that was basically it what is set to he goes and stocks me online finds my mailing address ships me this really neat I guess you call it a wall decoration and signs because I tease him.
He had you know way back and I tease him I said hey I told my wife I’m going to print this off and put this on my wall I was just so shocked to email me back and he laughed saying back and I actually did print out that evil, but he mails me that with a nice wall piece and then he signed here. I signed it for you here. I signed something like that. I’ve got it on my wall and he signed it and sent me this neat thing.
I didn’t ask him for it was just something he had thought of and now, some of these things, he didn’t delegate that. Customer experience, and I got off on a tangent here, but customer experience is so valuable. I don’t know how many times I’ve told that to people. And you’re not going to have time to do some of these simple things if we’re doing everything. We’re not going to have the time to think about what our customer experience is. How can we serve them better? How can we make sure every touch point is the best when we’re doing everything ourselves? So learning to delegate, learning how to give some of these lower level tasks to our team members are really going to free up our time to serve our customers better to think about customer experience.
So that’s it for today’s podcast. I really appreciate you turning in. Remember to think about customer experience and how we can delegate so we are not the bottleneck in our business. And hope you appreciate this podcast. If you did, be sure to hit that subscribe button and share it with another lawn and landscaping pro and we’ll catch you on the next one.