The title of that book comes from this idea: "Most businesses are started by entrepreneurs." is a myth. Most businesses are actually started by "technicians having an entrepreneurial seizure". Then they generally grow in nightmares for the technician. Why? Because business is much more than the work to provide the service.
Since I digested the book, my work-life's ambition became to create systems to deliver world-class service and to create the ultimate career path for my teammates. I feel like I have failed miserably there.
We have put out world-class work. But I can't say that's because of the systems I made. I frankly feel like a terrible failure when I look at how incomplete our systems are. By the Grace of God, we have attracted great people that can deliver good service despite our lack of orchestrated best practices, automated verification and feedback, etc. I have let them be "Easy Buttons" and have not stayed grinding like I should have though.
What may be worse, is though I intended to put 100 people into business as franchisees, I have spawned 4 or so lousy little companies. That is, 5 guys responded to being fired by doing "side work" full time. This week 2 more will leave to "go do it on our own". The problem is, the only way one takes home more money without creating more value is to just not step up and do the right thing when things go wrong. Otherwise, I am pretty sure my top artisans actually take home more $/hr. than most owner-operators do. The 2 guys leaving this week made over $110,000 combined this year with 2-3 weeks paid time off, paid holidays, free uniforms, and gobs of other perks. I've gone into business out of my garage, and I can tell you it is not as good of a deal.
Sadly, this behavior pervades the decorative concrete industry. The vast majority of installers are guys working out of their garages and trucks that simple quit answering the phone when a customer is upset. Very few companies truly try to build a brand and put themselves in a position to never hide.
Element7concrete is clearly the opposite. We supplanted the ugliest building with the best building on the busiest highway in our town. We built a multi-million dollar enterprise in a town of 5000 (>60% of which live below the poverty line) without an advertising budget. We simply worked very hard to make raving fans of everyone we had a chance to serve.
Now though, I find myself writing with a heavy heart because yet another fool is going to try to leverage our brand for his personal gain. He will doubtlessly try to steal the builders we have put him in front of. He will likely not carry insurance, not pay taxes properly, and not do anything to help set up owners of the floors he installs for sustained service.
Worst of all, it is totally my fault. I have been theoretically working on the back-end systems of scalability for years now, but we are still missing key components. I have assembled a great "support team", but I have not held them accountable to their deliverables. I have not even delivered all of mine on time. Too many days I have let myself off the hook. I have been disciplined and excellent in many areas, but I have not pushed in key areas to drive this to victory. I have failed my team.
The good news? I get another chance on Monday morning. I have the ability and the will to fix all of this. I will not let my team lose. I am way to grateful for everyone who has believed in this to back off at all. It is pure love that powers me through and I almost can't wait to get up and get after it. Thank you for reading.
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