Help to power through the rough spots.

My dad/business partner is sick. I expect him to pull through, but I need to plan as if he won't because this time looks to be the end of his direct involvement in the company in any event.  Unfortunately we haven't planned well for this day, and it looks like for a while I'm going have to put up a lot of hours to keep this company running. Problem is, while I can power though the mornings okay, right around the 8-hour point I get mentally tired and often, depressed.

It's one thing to put in a long day at the track, or for some such special event. Not so easy in the job that you've worked for thirty years at. I've not played my financial cards well, so am probably looking at another 5-7 years before I wind down.

How do you guys do it? 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Any chance you can bring in an intern or somebody to help you with non-critical work, if only to give you a mental breather for parts of the day?

I cringe at the idea of bringing an intern up to speed. Clearly I need help, but I'd rather pay more for someone who will stick around. It's going to take time either way. 

Try to stick to your routine, as much as possible. Don't make big sweeping changes.
 

Small changes incrementally till you get used to the load. 
 

Changing your normal too much has far reaching implications it only adds instability, and compounds stress. 
 

I don't have specific suggestions. The emergency's are usually not such a big deal, the lows are not so low, and what needs to be done gets done, I usually find this is retrospect. 

So two years ago I took over a business, shortly after my wife left her job. Things were stressful when you add in a couple kids under 3...things could have been better. I don't know what your situation is like but for me the answer was lunch. 

The single biggest change I made that increased my attitude at work was taking a lunch. I hadn't been doing it for months and it's easy to just grab a sandwich and power through but that only works so long. Taking 1/2 hour to 45minutes to sit down, eat something and do something that's not work has helped tremendously. I'm sure I've gained that 1/2 hour back in productivity and a better attitude. 

A good, mind-distracting break often helps. Take off 30 minutes, go for a walk- no devices, no interruptions. Get a big glass of water.  Enjoy nature. Then get back in and hit it. 

Can you create a finish line for this whole thing? I find that I can get through most things if I have a defined endpoint.  ie I can swim through a 50 ft underwater tunnel if I know that is the end. If I don't know how long it is and am forced to go, I would panic very quickly.

Pete

I dont know what you do so I'm going to tell you how I managed the same process last year.

I bought out my partner the 1st of January 2022. Man was I nervous. The entire load dropped in my lap. 

To keep it from being overwhelming, I concentrated on one task at a time. Be it estimating jobs or paying bills. I would pull a task out, put it on my desk, and complete it before the next task entered my thought process. While you can't forget the big picture, you can take each task one at a time. Running a business is much easier if you concentrate on one bite instead of the entire plate. 

Do you have an administrative assistant? Consider hiring one. I pretty much dumped all of the invoicing, service scheduling, material management, and collections on her. That stuff can bog your time down and keep you from doing what you need to be doing. The only clerical work I now do is payroll and paying bills.

She is also my reminder so the little things don't slip through the cracks. 

Lastly, do you have an accountant? If not get one and let them take care of the government crap like 1099s, employer tax filings, sales tax filings, as well as tracking the income and out go and such and making sure the feds won't come looking for you for some obscure form you didn't know you needed to file.

Get organized, delegate what you can, and concentrate on the task at hand and you will be surprised at what you can get done in 8 hours. 

I almost never work more than 8 hours. Also don't take work home. Separate work life and home life or you will always be at work. 

Thanks all. One thing that I used to do after lunch was some calisthenics and stretching, which helped offset the post-meal sloth. I should start doing that again.

The administrative assistant thing got me thinking. While we have QuickBooks, most of our data management is still pretty old-school.  Lots of paper and redundancy. I think that I have an adequate number of support staff. They just need to be enabled to do their work more efficiently. We don't take advantage of technology the way we could, which of course adversely effects productivity and the bottom line. We are pretty diverse - HVAC, metal fabrication and material sales, which means that some of the industry specific software solutions might not be as good a fit as it would for more specialized operations. 

So given an aging office staff, how do we get out systems and processes updated? "Management consultant" comes to mind, but the wrong consultant might spend a lot of money without having the desired results.

Thoughts?

volvoclearinghouse said:

A good, mind-distracting break often helps. Take off 30 minutes, go for a walk- no devices, no interruptions. Get a big glass of water.  Enjoy nature. Then get back in and hit it. 

I came was going to write the same. 
 

a walk. A bicycle ride. Do something. 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

I use Trello to keep up with everything and keep everyone on the same page. That was one of my first steps after my partner retired.

I have spent part of this week getting rid of the old dry erase board calendar and setting it up on the Trello app so everyone has access to it. 

I can post more about this when I get to the office. 

I agree with the comments about breaks.  I typically work 5:30am to 4:00pm every day.  I don't care if the place is on fire, I'm taking some sort of lunch break.  I often wind up taking a short cat nap during that time.  I also take a few "micro breaks", just as I'm doing now.  Jump on GRM or something.  Literally just a few minutes, but it's a nice diversion.  Now back to work I go...

I will pile on with the breaks. I usually take a few minutes between tasks to stretch my legs or check in on GRM. 5 minutes with the brain in neutral helps a lot. 

Lunch breaks are a requirement. For one, you need to feed the furnace. Second, the brain needs that time to reset and prepare for the rest of the day. I require my employees to stop for lunch. They are bad about trying to finish up what they are doing and then it's 3 pm and they still haven't stopped. They do physical and mental jobs and no one is at 100% if they don't eat. Never skip lunch. 

As to limiting the paperwork and pushing things into the 21st century, I use Trello.com. 

We started out just keeping a list of job on there so they would be easier to track instead of using a dry erase board and post-it notes. It worked so well we expanded it and now track every job as it progresses through a series of drop-down lists. 

Every job gets a card. It starts life in New Work Orders. When one of the guys goes to the job, he will move the card to the appropriate list with notes and pictures added. It may go to Completed, letting my admin know it needs to be invoiced. If it needs parts or to be quoted, it will go the admin's or my To Be Quoted List or to the Needs Parts list letting us know it needs to be quoted or have parts ordered. From there it goes to the next step, Parts Ordered or Parts Received. Eventually, all the cards end up in Invoiced or canceled and then are archived. The entire system is searchable so if you want to know what you did on a job or service call a year ago, you can find it and pull up all the notes and pictures that go with it. 

The end result is no lost notes, no lost job paperwork, and fewer return trips to check forgotten details. Job notes are photographed and uploaded along with pictures of what needs to be done. Everything the company is doing or needs to do is available at a fingertip. If a customer asked a tech a question the odds are the tech has the answers the customer wants without making a call to the office. Likewise, if a customer calls the office I know almost everything my employee does about the job and I know it immediately instead of when the truck gets back to the shop at the end of the day. 

The lists. This page is up on my computer at all times. It has all the information that everyone in the company needs to do their job, including me. No confusion, no I forgot. Any employee that goes to any job is required to update the card for the job with what they did as well as attach photos if required.  

This is a sample card. This particular job was to replace a rusted out floor closer with a surface closer and continuous hinge. Everything I needed to quote the job is in the card. Even if the employee that first looked at this job doesn't do the work, whoever shows up will know everything they need to complete the job. 

The calendar function I just added. While everything above is available for free, you need a subscription to use the calendar function. It also frees up some other options I haven't explored yet.

With that in mind, the dry erase board went in the trash and a cheap TV was installed in its place with a $100 micro PC driving it. That gives me an easily editable calendar that is visible to everyone in the company when we meet in the mornings to get the day started. They can also access this information from their phones through the Trello app to view, update, and move cards as needed. 

All in all, it has made life a good bit easier for everyone. I don't have to dig through a pile of notes or files to find information or wonder if the information was left in a truck. My employees have all of the information they need to do a job and don't have to keep up with every job note they generate. My admin knows what needs to be invoiced and when as well as the status of every job if a customer calls. And most importantly, nothing falls through the cracks. 

What's your take on using the cloud for your management tool? One thing that I've bumped into in considering service software is that most are being created to work with Quickbooks Enterprise, which is Web-based, whereas our version is still on-site. 

In reply to Toyman! :

Hey Toyman, sent you a PM.  Let me know if you don't see it.

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

I'm still using QuickBooks Contractor Edition on PC. I doubt I will make the transition to online anytime soon. There is no integration between Trello and QB at the moment and the only thing I use QB for is invoicing/accounts receivable, payroll, and estimates. Their software is too kludgy to track jobs efficiently on a daily basis. There is also the problem of limiting access. I don't want the entire company to have access to the QB company file. The Trello board, on the other hand, is information employees need to make their jobs easier and more efficient. 

To add to this. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to get away from Quickbooks. As software goes, they are the devil. It's not intuitive, it frequently screws up. All in it is a horrible bit of software. My first choice would be something like SAP but their pricing starts at about $25k.  

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Responded. 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

So given an aging office staff, how do we get out systems and processes updated? "Management consultant" comes to mind, but the wrong consultant might spend a lot of money without having the desired results.

Ask contemporaries in you industry what they use.  I have never had good lunch with those consultants that are advising me how to run a company.