Business Talk: Planning, Process Management & What Does Tom Do Here In The Morning? July 2018

I think the question comes up all the time when you own a business what do you actually do and I say that because it was a curiosity I had you know I worked in different levels of management and I worked in you know of course at the base level when I worked at a pizza place where I was just a delivery guy one of the few jobs outside of tech I've ever had and it's always interesting I was like well what do they do why is there middle management why is there you know all this structure and as you own a business you kind of learn why there's an infrastructure and it's sometimes because people don't structure themselves and we're gonna start with what I actually do want to come in in the mornings so a lot of its coming up with an idea for a video and getting like morning coffee and it's also what time is it 8:30 is when I used to do this because I've already done I got here at 7:00 and I finished all kinds of the little things that roll uphill to me now I'm the anti micromanager to many business owners drive me nuts and I work for only a couple of them like that but they just think they need to be involved in everything and the world revolves around them I am is far from that as possible I managed to make all of my people very independent including and I've talked about this in our workflows before when it comes to invoicing so an example is going to be each tech does their own invoicing and when you decentralize your invoicing it actually happens a whole lot faster we actually had one of the lofts as we support they said they wish they could build as fast as we do I thought that was kind of funny they loved our service and I was just kind of anecdotal but it was like yeah you guys just as soon as they're done we've got the invoice and they pay very relatively fast so the process and flow of everything works really well but part of the reason I'm making this video is I decided it's 8:30 and people aren't here now they don't have to be here but I have questions and if they leave unanswered questions I have to figure out where they're at so the first things I like to do is what time are you getting here and those people are getting messages right now as we speak to take 30 sometimes you just show up and it's not there's different types of job assignments we have a store that has to be open from 10:00 to 7:00 so there's people assigned to be here from 10:00 to 7:00 the other people because they work from home they work remotely they don't have to necessarily be here unless they leave me with questions that are unanswered now sometimes I'll throw it on slack but I actually want them out here today because I want some inventory done by Corey what time you be here today we need to make sure you have all the parts for next week's show it's spelled job wrong it said shop that's alright maybe I slur my words probably so there's my first one to Cory next one is to Marvin and the kind of the same thing so I have the paperwork notarized who do I give it to and what time will you be here that one went perfect these are some of the things that I do so I had to Marvin did of all the invoicing for that really big job we did that now requires some notary because the bank funded the job and because of the amount of money that they paid us there were changes that had to be made so even though the invoicing was done by them they have to have the owner notarized the changes so I had to work with the other vendor the other owner the bank and then get a notary done to make sure we can get paid because the quoted amount change because they change the scope of the project good news and change of much but they change it enough that the bank if there's a dollar change they want to change it that's only it we were only about six thousand more than originally quoted so that job was pretty big overalls is that's actually a small change in the size to that job for what they added but it worked out really well but those are things that do roll up to me another thing that rolled up to me is a client that had a billing issue because we sent the bill they they wanted it separate because they have separate property it's a new property management client so we separated the bills sometimes those are things are all to me they said hey can you create more than one bill to a my Steve when he did the job has created one bill too and created it because that's no one told them not to you know we looked at it as one entity but they like separate invoices for each of their properties so for the most part I stay out of a lot of that and it's kind of funny because sometimes people ask me well you know the price on this I'm like I actually don't and part of that's because I don't want to be in the middle of everything because if you put yourself in the middle of everything as a business owner the business can't run without you and you don't have a business you have a job and I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding that they think it's oh it's my baby so I have to do everything with it and I'm actually going to be doing a speaking event in about two hours over at I'm talking about this to our my channel woman sax small business graduate from their program and because I like to do public speaking I eat YouTube to me looks like a public speaking event one of the things I do is come back and coach people on this and talk about business and more this is a little bit more focused on social media but I also hang out for some of the roundtables there's another one's gonna go on afterwards and I thought it'd bring any camera there to talk about this like it's difficult though because it's hard to say hey I'm gonna put you case on film and ask any questions that's not as accepted so you know I applaud people like Casey nice dad who owned it who can take a camera everywhere but between with what I do it's hard because we go into secure buildings we have to sign NDA's occasionally and we're you can't reveal technical details of things and some people just gonna you can't film my meetings so as much as I'd like to talk about more I can talk about more of what I do I just can't take you with me everyone on the camera here but it will talk about a little bit is going what else is going on in shop tell always I come in here in the mornings and Kelly hey what's going on and we've been doing a lot of custom built work this is cool this is CV because people I had someone messaged me and they're like I'm looking for the best gaming da-da-da-da-da you know I love your youtube channel I should thank you for the love but I have no recommendation there but you've talked about oh no I'm clueless um I don't know what the latest graphics card is I hardly play games but don't worry I have a solution and I just redirect them over to Steve and Steve talk to the person and we built them a really cool custom computer and here's another this is some other these are just some of the parts I know it's a cool master make it yours cooler but maybe I'll do some videos yeah I do like this stuff I'm just not a real hardware geek anymore I like some of the server stuff I like that is pretty cool memory that's in this box here and this is also a little bit of our business process of how we do this so cool core i7 8700 k maybe we'll do some videos on this build because it's kind of a nice build we work with a lot of local peoples who they bring in the parts this was all purchase from Newegg and not by us they purchased well a lot of times we'll just provide the labor and I'm perfectly fine doing that this actually solves her problems and if you ever want to get into the custom-building market where you have them get all the parts and they'll take care of all the warranty and that and then you don't have that negotiation problem of all I can get a cheaper here go ahead and get a cheaper there you weren't yellow parts we just do the labor we will help you with a recommended by list kind of as a consultant and then we do the build and we make the money on that and everybody wins you get a cool new computer and there's some assembly done by us so you know it's done by professionals who know how to do this well and it's not me Dory's it's Steve and Kyle they you know how to assemble it you don't want time assembling it by the way just you know that's a it's not a deflection so we really here's the flex things you don't want to talk I'm like no I seriously I own a business but I'm also very technically involved in architecture of the jobs I'm involved at the high levels because that I have a passion for and enjoy that's an important aspect to me that I have a technical understanding cuz I know some business owners and even in a technical world I've known one didn't fact the guy I worked for it would have been in 1996 one of my first tech jobs he had zero interest in technology he just knew that was money by employing a bunch of technical people and I'm fine if you want to be that person if you want to make a bunch of money in a tech business that's cool I'm way more of a geek and a nerd I'm just not a hardware nerd it plays a lot of games I'm more of a hey what can we do with this networking and everything else and open source projects and setting up servers that's why there's so many more videos on that than there are on gaming builds but we're trying to think about putting some more videos together about that talking about the hardware is it does become interesting I you know I talked about maybe we can get some sponsors to do that so that's kind of an update for that that's another thing you have to think about when you're owning a business is what are you going to do next so processes are in place that when I go and disappear for the day doing my goldman sachs thing and hanging out with a bunch of people talking business and generally i'm gonna have a good times I really enjoy the all the people there because it's gonna be over at the Wayne State University and I have fun hanging out with all the teachers and the professors there at all there's a lot of really smart people who just I have a good time with and but the business can completely run without me and that's part of the aspect of it it's important to structure it that way so I'm involved when there's a new plan or direction I'm taking a business in like hey we're gonna do this YouTube thing which actually got a lot of pushback they think it's a big waste of space having a studio over there that was when we first built it now the attitude is hey this YouTube thing is really cool so it's it's one of those things you have to make decisions as a business owner of the direction of the company but you have to set up processes for people to follow so you don't become deeply involved in everything and I heard my phone go off so let's see what time will Marvin be here I think that goes to Kevin I'll find out for sure and I'll be there by 9:30 this is just a little coordination and it stills only those little exceptions that come up to me and that's kind of the important part another exception that came up to me and we're gonna talk about this maybe next week I'm gonna find some time to really focus on some of these job planning videos because I was thinking wow there's a lot that goes involved in there and I've been doing it for so long it's kind of just fluid like how do you plan how did you scale this well we're doing another big job for Chrysler right now the car company dealerships and this recall acquires you know equipment man lifts to be rented and everything else we don't own man lifts and it's actually because it's actually cheaper to rent them because we don't need them very often most of our jobs are like this building drop ceiling easy to get in so that's not a big deal but let me walk your own to show you something else I'm working on so I'm here in a studio and this is where my other ideas come in so you know I get stuff going out there make sure everyone's doing their thing and in the shop area and this is kind of well this sides my area and the kitchen is behind the camera and you've seen plenty of videos if you watch this channel in the kitchen area so that's where mostly they hang out and then this is all the things I'm working on so there's been a lot of questions and a lot of confusion if piers based on what I read in forums this is where I get my ideas sometimes I'm I spent some time and read it I need to post more on reddit I mostly just read Alex I love reading and I see what people are asking about so we have here a couple 10 gig network cards I picked up for cheap so this is some videos I have coming to where I can walk you through setting up your ten gigabit at home and one of my things I'm we deal a lot with commercial meant that I can't you know I can't take the camera in a datacenter at all of in fact some places kind of weird they don't need much you're bringing your phone or like just leave it over here but this stuff's become very affordable and if you're a tech going how do I get started in its business this is kind of how you get started once you have some of the concepts of how things interconnect it just scales upwards when you go into the data center so yeah cool there's some old cards I think I paid $17 on eBay for this one I know I paid even less for this I think this one is a dual fiber card and we're I'm gonna break some details on this and that's kind of my idea is to spark some passions I like to see more people getting in technology because as reality is there's just not enough people that's one of the things I think about like how do we get more people when I talk about some of these things that happen like the military disaster recently of all those documents getting suddenly tweeted about it was because someone didn't know what they were doing and I'm not here to pick on anyone I'm not here to say oh they're just a bunch of idiots or whatever no no someone who didn't have a firm grasp on technology turned on a consumer router and a what should have been a secure environment and then they turned on FTP and by doing that they didn't bother changing a default password and if they would have taken the time to learn more about technology they would have understood better why it's a bad idea versus the retrospect of the government lost a bunch of documents over this and are you hoping and I don't know I'm not I don't know if I'll change the world here or not but I'm hoping more people get inspired and start thinking about security and technology and that's a part of my passion for driving that drives me the same reason I'm gonna be talking these business owners about concepts and business and concepts in social media which is kind of the focus of the talk today it's the same thing on YouTube where I want to talk about you know how you can get involved in all this how you can go find some of these things on eBay for very reasonable prices and start tinkering with technology start playing with it and you know the hardest part is getting starting people don't know where even to begin and that's why I started doing and I have a bunch more plan I've been playing a lot with a new version of FreeNAS that's what this server is over here and I'm going to do like a whole getting started with FreeNAS 11 to kind of a start to finish video that seemed to go really well with my pfSense video I have a whole start to finish video and that they start to finish video I'm getting started with ten gigabit networking and fiber and what are the different types of fiber and what does this connector called and what does that connector called and why do I use this and why does this thing slide out like this that's an SFP+ versus what is this it's on the floor you know so these are those other things I spend my time thinking about and like I said I plan to do some more built planning videos I think of how to organize it because when you do something all the time it kind of becomes very fluid and I have to think about how do i structure it into a video with loading software it becomes really easy because it's less fuzzy it's start with the USB Drive flash the USB Drive step through Hardware no problem I'm going to show you how to do a nice because he can actor no problem here's step 1 step 2 step 3 problem is how did I plan the Wi-Fi for the marina that we just finished well there was a lot of bidding there's a lot of phone calls there was a lot of debate back and forth of people turning that into a structure is a little bit harder the placement of the Wi-Fi is actually easier people overthink the hell out of that go ahead and pull an overhead map figure out how the distance on the wi-fi's and prop drop them in that part that part's not rocket science we have next week and I'll see if he'll let me film there we're doing another very wealthy person's house putting more Wi-Fi on their property a state has if you want to call it people ask how you the Wi-Fi playing well the house was built 1912 I think it's right around turn-of-the-century house beautiful brick mansion a lot of stonework the problem is there's everything from rebar or whatever they use to build it just zap salt Wi-Fi so we're adding spots for dead zones now people go oh there's this Wi-Fi planning utility necessarily is unfortunately I have not found any of them that seem to can visibly see in walls you can make assumptions about construction and kind of get an idea but when it comes to actually deploying the Wi-Fi take the way I'm gonna go there is take some units and we've already done some Wi-Fi there with unify take two a couple units add them and say all right does this cover the area where you work because what really matters to the owner of that building all that house is that the Wi-Fi works where he wants it to work not so I can say I blanketed a whole house if I missed one corner he could care less about all those he only cares that it works the spots where he wants to be and apparently one of those spots is they have a gym in the house and the gym it does not work in not properly he has a weak signal on his iPad so we will go there to fix it and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring a Wi-Fi in that area and it's not easy to drill through anything in his house like I said they built it the turn of the century so it's not like it's just any project with this house when it comes to running lawyers is simple so if they look at the path see if there is a path and maybe use a repeater or a mesh they don't care about speed they care about being able to check his stocks each morning that is literally the request I want to be able to go anywhere in my house or stand in my workout program with my iPad and understand my stocks that's important to them and that's the solution we will provide so you have to think about it differently you don't just come in there selling it I'm just gonna put Wi-Fi everywhere and it'll make you happy talk about the use case talk to the client I want to be able check my stocks while I do my workout and right now that does not work fix it no problem we fix it we'll be there and so that's gonna be a fun meeting buddy I'm actually get involved in doing that because the guy is on the board of another organization that we take care of so I do stopped out there for myself more I won't probably be the one doing any the Wi-Fi installs I never am they don't do the cabling and act that's why people ask see Tom what's your favorite brand of cable I'm like I don't know whatever Cory orders Cory will actually do the placement so I'll make a note of this is where it's gonna go in the house and then Cory will schedule and coordinate getting that done so that's kind of how those jobs so I do get involved a little bit in the jobs because it's come back to that technical planning side I enjoy doing that aspect I enjoy a lot less asking people when they're gonna be here and why there's paperwork that I don't know where it belongs my to get it notarized but what do you mean update that's kind of what I do and dealing a lot with that stuff you know I try to delegate as much as possible but just think of that if you're going to own a business or you know how you're gonna get there that's important I think the last notes is I'm going to do a video soon on how to hire people maybe it's really hard to hire people it's become it's kind of a challenge the other side of that is directly related I know a lot of you are starting out as a single business one-man show as they may call it and how do you get to more employees well there's kind of a tipping point where you have to get to know more employees or you don't have a business you have a job I said earlier so going into that level of it is really difficult because you're going okay I'm gonna commit to a payroll and I have to have X dollars available every month for this person this is a lot of times my business start as partnerships because then you and your partner both have a vested in growing the business so you'll also have a vested interest in keeping your payment's very very low of money you take out to work together to invest into the business to build it this is why a lot of companies start out that way but I did not start out as a partnership of I've had a partnership with a completely different company I had called suburban computers that I owned in parallel to this one and that didn't work out partners are you have to find the right one it's not that partnership don't work out they do if you have the right partner I did not I think I may have talked about that somewhere I don't I don't remember it's not a good story it didn't end well this is a pain in the butt but when you want to go into hiring people and get that you you have to make the commitment at some point and once you free yourself up to having someone do all that other work and you can delegate to them all the tasks possible then you can start thinking more and doing more things to build the business so it is important to get there I I don't know if there's an easy steps I wasn't I think everyone's looking for that step to do it like hey Tom there's a secret I'm missing like I read 20 business books and none of them told me that secret I'm like the thing I can tell you after being in business for 15 years now so I opened a company in 20 2003 Wow and I've worked for myself longer than I worked for any one company or had even employed at all I've worked for myself longer than I've ever had a job anywhere it's not easy there's not a secret to business it's just a lot of hustling a lot of get out there you know what each sales knocking on doors and things like that and being able to deliver on your promises and things like that that's it's it's really kind of that simple and the business plan stuff is yeah where I'll do a whole business planning one because I think people over emphasize that people like oh can I see your business plan I'm like I don't really have one you know I'm like I was gonna go fix computers and charge people money and I've talked about this before that's how you make money it's it's not a lot more complicated than that so alright well that's about it that's me a messages from people messaging me back now saying I just woke up 8:45 I just woke up alright cool well he stays up late he worked late so uh I'm gonna pass on that I'm pretty relaxed like I say he doesn't have a time he has to be here so I'll get my pass on that and he'll message me back and we'll figure out make sure he's got all the parts so we have everything ready for that job next week it's pretty big on site luring jobs gonna require a few people to get done and maybe I'll do some videos on that it's not as easy to film at a car dealership I don't know if I've ever film we've done a lot of car dealerships because we have a connection with them and are so happy with our work we've been working now for a few years and that it's been a great relationship because it turns out wait car dealerships work one guy owns I think there's nine dealerships or ten dealerships I can't remember that we're doing work for because they keep buying more dealership so you tend to buy a dealership we get to rewire it because they want everything new we're actually running all cat6a that's the level of new they they want like the new way there's not a there's a budget of course but the budgets like doesn't matter cat6 a full runs even redundant runs they want everything done double which would they did that before when we did one of their other buildings and now this one they're like alright we decide we're gonna go cat6a on these three new buildings so we had to order that's why I gotta make sure we don't stock a lot of cat6a there's not like a big demand for it there's people weren't cat6 a lot of people still want cat5e because it's adequate and people rarely need to go over you give it speeds or even bother with it so cat5e still does gigabit it's cheaper but we do cat6 installs and we do cat6a installs not much for cats of it I don't see much a demand for that right now that's also really pricey well leave you with that and that's me done babble but this is as a owner of the business this is another kind of day and life stuff I do maybe if I get more skilled I can vlog my day like Casey nice Dada he's like I kind of like the his style it's funny because he doesn't if you really watch Casey die set and he's a very interesting person he's got like a really cool style that he does it but if you watched his video count the words he actually doesn't say a whole lot but he just gives you a lot of wonderful cinematography which i think is also really interesting but you don't need a lot of words I've used way too many words I think already so hopefully you didn't get bored listening to me thanks thanks for watching if you like this video go ahead and click the thumbs up leave us some feedback below to let us know any details what you liked and didn't like as well because we love hearing the feedback or if you just want to say thanks leave a comment if you wanted to be notified of new videos as they come out go ahead and to subscribe and the Bell icon that lets YouTube know that you're interested in notifications hopefully they send them as we've learned with YouTube anyways if you want to contract us for consulting services you go ahead and hit Lauren systems comm and you can reach out to us for all the projects that we can do and help you we work with a lot of small businesses IT companies even some large companies and you can farm different work out to us or just hire us as a consultant to help design your network also if you want to help the channel in other ways we have a patreon we have affiliate links you'll find them in a description you'll also find recommendations to other affiliate links and things you can sign up for on Lauren systems comm once again thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Lawrence Systems

Views: 15,219

Keywords:

Id: OS_BBKMqQTI

Length: 24min 2sec (1442 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018