Based on Trust

Last week I was on a video call with our CPA. Part of our conversation covered the topic of business banking and how business bankers rely heavily on trust. A CPA with a great reputation introducing us to a banker potentially changes how the banker views us. We are not just someone looking for the services he offers, but rather this is the start of a relationship that has an element of rapport built in right from the start. Business bankers that like you will advocate for you. If they don't like you, tough.

An employee that feels like he is not being treated fairly will typically not stick around. My job as a boss is to be above board in all my interactions with my employees. I do not need to do as they think, but I do need to respectfully listen to and consider their arguments. I believe that an open exchange of ideas (without the fear of penalization) forms part of the basis of trust. Fair compensation reinforces our relationship. Try to hand your employees the short end of the stick and you have a recipe for disaster.

God entrusts us with so many things:

• relationships

• resources such as time and money

• natural talents

• spiritual gifts (for the Christian)

This is truly impressive. He tells us what He expects us to do, and gives us the parameters within which to accomplish the task. This is true delegation and based on immense trust. God's level of delegation is something I aspire to.

The Worst Employee

I started working my first full time job when I was 16 years old. I loved school and finished high school early with the dream of studying medicine one day and becoming a medical doctor.

I went to work for a carpentry crew. My starting wage: $12/hr. I felt good about my starting wage as the minimum wage at the time was $10/hr., and I was new to the trade, and not yet 17 at that.

I did not enjoy carpentry. The first project I helped build was a 3 story apartment building with 18 suites per floor (if my memory serves me right). It was hot. Very hot. Guzzling down a gallon of water during work was not unheard of. I detested physical labour, thinking that I wanted to work with my brain "doing work that matters". Like helping people in an emergency room or intensive care unit.

When I had been with the company for approximately one year, I was earning $14 and some dollars/hr. We had wrapped up the big framing project close to home, requiring me to commute further. The 40 minute commute was too far a drive for my $14/hr. wage. Or so I thought. The "long drive" combined with my detestation of any physical labour put me in an ugly frame of mind.

I complained about the long drive and that the commute cost me too much money. In the meantime, my work ethic was pathetic. One task, in particular, comes to mind. I was assigned the task of fastening styrofoam to the underside of a bay window cantilever on a new house construction. What now would take me 15 minutes to accomplish, took several hours of time. Clocked in time.

One Friday I told my boss that I was going to quit early that day to go job hunting. What a brat! I deserved to be fired. My job hunt proved to be useless. Not surprising, given my arrogance.

My bosses didn't complain or scold me. They should've fired me or given me an ultimatum: to shape up or to be fired.

I eventually did leave the company to go study at the University of Manitoba, where I took most of the prerequisite courses I needed to get admitted into the College of Nursing. I did enjoy school, hard as some of the courses were (anatomy and physiology, especially). But after a year of university, I emerged with a different attitude towards work. What had changed?

My perspective on life.

Fast forward 10 years. I now co-own Pine View Buildings with my brother, and get to hire people. It's been 10 years since my first job. The roles are reversed. In retrospect, I marvel at the patience the owners of Summit Contracting had with me.

And I get to do work that matters.

Peddle, then Balance

It is difficult to balance a bike that is not moving. It is also difficult to optimize a product or service without market response or feedback. Building a great product or service before it sees the light of day is a great idea. To build a product or service just to hide it on a shelf because of fear of failure or fear of it not being perfect... this is a sad outcome.

Some people carry product or service ideas in their heads and never actually test their ideas in real life. Turn that diamond in the rough over in your brain and it may get slightly more polished. But if it never gets the chance to interact with other people and hopefully improve their lives, how will you know what features to tweak or improve?

As obvious as it may seem, here are the steps:

• Ideate

• Build a prototype

• Improve on the prototype (several times if necessary)

• Give yourself a pep talk (that feeling in your stomach that your product or service isn't fully optimized is correct).

• Ignore the above feeling for now.

• Launch your thing.

• Listen carefully when customers make suggestions.

• Improve

• Get more feedback.

• Improve even more.

• Repeat the cycle.

Once your thing is launched, and your first customers' lives are actually improved, that knot in your stomach will likely leave. Let's shorten the above list:

1. Get on the bike.

2. Start peddling with one leg.

3. Then peddle for all you're worth, with both legs.

4. Balance the bike. Unlike balancing a real bike, which feels like second nature once you've done it once, balancing a business requires many skills. These can be acquired through learning, practicing, and/or hiring.

My team and I have been working on a new brand and e-commerce store. We are expecting to launch miniShed.ca around March 15, 2024. There is a little bug in my stomach that questions whether or not it will be a success. We will never know if we don't give it a go. So a go we'll give it. Peddle, then balance.

2 x Normal

If my compensation would be directly tied to the value I produce throughout my working day, my pay graph would look like this:

Actually, if you average my earnings across the above graph, I would earn $40/hr. See below:

I am not arguing that employees should demand more money from their employers. The above simply shows when my most valuable work happens. This is how my day may look:

8:15 am. Walk into the office and open the Notion Calendar app to check what is on my to-do from the previous day. Add tasks that are not in the list that need to be tackled today. Organize my tasks within the day to optimize efficiency.

8:30 am. I am on a roll. Knock out several tasks that take 15 min., or so, each.

9:00 am. Start tackling a bigger, more critical project. For example, this morning, my assistant and I started to tackle the books on a new company we started to manage recently.

10 am. Morning coffee with the crew.

10:20 am. Back at the above project.

11:00 am. Still at it.

12:00 am. Tackle several emails and other smaller tasks.

12:30 pm. Lunch at the office.

1:00 pm. - 5:00 pm. Complete all sorts of tasks and work on longer term projects.

My brain is the perkiest in the morning. Using peak brain performance for the most demanding and critical projects means I work on those projects in the morning. Also, mornings tend to carry fewer interruptions as small problem and technical questions tend to arise later in the day.

On a typical day, my time at 9:00 am is easily worth many times what it is at 4:00 pm. By 2:30, I can feel my focus and energy start to decrease. In my experience, focus on critical projects burns through tons of energy.

(I am starting to wonder if I should start my day at 7 am. to get an extra hour of power time, and go home an hour earlier?)

I feel like the above connection between time and work-value is more acute for people tackling complex projects, or those who manage people or operations. A truck driver who drive 13 hours per day will not experience the time/work value relationship the same way that an operations or department manager does.

I am writing this at 9:38 pm. I find that creative work flows well in the evening. Even with a head that hurts a little. But, if I work on the most neuron-intensive projects in the mornings, then, maybe... my writing isn't my brightest output. Just keep in mind that the above analysis may be worth exactly what you paid for it. 😀

Less Than Busy

To-do lists are wonderful. Especially when they are connected to a calendar in real time. They help me organize my months, weeks, days, and hours. I need to organize a new product launch with a deadline for March 15th? Break the project down into many individual tasks:

• build the prototypes

• build out the new website

  • home page

  • delivery

  • products

• figure out how to package the product

• do photoshoot

• create assembly manual

The above list represents a project that potentially can take up a month or more. Assigning some tasks to each week and then down to the day allows me to check whether I am on track or not, and helps me double down on the tasks that are falling behind.

As wonderful as these to-do lists with calendar integrations are, they do not create work out of thin air when work is slow. In our business, we experience seasonal sales, with winter months being the slowest. While it is nice to have a little pause after the crazy fall rush, I feel a little frustrated when my daily to-do list isn't a little too long. Perhaps I am addicted to action, but the feeling of being less than productive does set in when I find myself wondering what I should be tackling next.

Here are several strategies to do work that adds value in the long term when I feel like my to-do list is too short:

• Work on getting systems and processes in place ahead of when those will be needed. This may be one of the best ways to effectively make good use of those slower weeks or months. This only works if the need for the systems and processes can we predicted accurately.

• Work on new products or product variations. This helps keep employees busy and helps minimize other more cash intensive production of inventory (if you are in a manufacturing business where inventory is required to operate).

• Go outside of my daily norm of tasks and work on new opportunities. This may include brainstorming possible new business relations and making some cold calls to see if there are holes in our coverage of the market that we may be able to fill.

• Work shorter days, where I work as efficiently as possible to get the necessary tasks done and then go home to relax or work on projects that have been waiting.

Personally, I still prefer being a little "too busy". There is nothing like being the middle of intense action, where we work towards tackling BHAGS (big hairy audacious goals). You agree?

When My Head Hurts

Today, at the 10 A.M. coffee break, I commented that my head hurts. One of my guys responded with, "that's what most people call a headache." I just about never have headaches. But my head does ache – probably at the rate of several times per week.

I find that certain conditions need to be met for my head to be in a stressed state. Some contributing factors are:

• Multiple tasks piling up at the same time

• Time pressure on at least one of the tasks

• Trying to figure out a complex set of problems (such as learning to manage a new set of books as part of managing a company for an external owner)

• An external stressor (such as personal finances or health, etc.)

• An emergency situation (a semi truck getting stuck on the road side 4 hours away from headquarters)

Usually it will take a combination of at least two or three of these to trigger that feeling in my head. I can still function effectively. But it does signal to me that I am burning more calories than normal, and I will likely feel more tired than usual at the end of the day. Also, I realize that this sort of stress affects the quantity of grey hair on my head and may also effect my overall health.

Here are several tips to help manage stress in a stressful and busy business environment:

• Create a weekly to-do list.

• Break down the weekly to-do list into daily tasks.

• If tasks emerge that were not anticipated, jot them down immediately into your master to-do list, instead of trying to hold that to-do in your memory. Your stressed mind is bound to forget and feel even more taxed trying to remember what you're supposed to remember...

• Taking a break does wonders for clearing my mind. After today's stressful morning, I spent more than half the day arranging 9 miniSheds in preparation for a photoshoot. A creative outlet like that puts me in my "happy zone", helping me destress.

• Stepping outside for fresh air. Kick that up a notch, and do a little jog under God's open sky.

• Take natural supplements that support your adrenals and/or your cognitive function.

• Go home. This holds true when it's quitting time and my head hurts, but I want to get my project done. Sometimes pushing through is the way to go. Often, the better choice is to go home to my dear family for supper and wrap up that project the following day when I'm well rested.

If you work for an employer and don't carry a big load of responsibility, be blessed. Sometimes, I dream of a work arrangement like this.

If you are in a management position with two tons of responsibility, manage your stress, and realize that the degree of fulfillment you experience at work tends to be tied to the responsibility that is the cause of the mental load you carry. This responsibility turns into a stressed blessing.

If you own and operate a business, be very stressed and very blessed. Somehow, this has been my experience. The interactions with my team, customers, and other business owners in the community are wonderful. Knowing that I get to directly contribute to putting food on the table and building a local, Christian community – this is the mileage I get from the many gallons of stress.

At the moment, this seems like a good trade.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

Let me tell you a tale from my life. When I was approximately 12 years old, I single handedly made the yeast dough, braided the Challah bread, baked it, and then packaged it into large brown paper bags. Then I walked down our southern Manitoban paved village street and knocked on doors. I remember selling a large, fresh loaf for $9.00 – and this is 16 years ago. There, I've dated myself. I even sold half loaves to folks that didn't need a whole loaf. Our village was small. The village several miles west of us had way more people. So I enlisted one of my older siblings to give me a car ride over where I employed the same sales pitch: "Fresh bread that my mother taught me to make."

Would you buy bread from a 12 year old boy?

The following summer, we signed up for the farmer's market in the small city of Winkler, MB. I baked and sold many loaves of bread that summer.

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I wonder if the making of an entrepreneur begins early in life. For the sake of this article, an entrepreneur is simply a person who organizes and operates a business.

My parents could have stopped me from trying. They didn't. Would they have purchased bread from a 12 year old neighbour kid peddling it on the street? Probably not. But I never heard them knock my entrepreneurial idea. This, I think, is impressive.

I learned that I can act on an idea, "market" it to people who need what I create, and trade my creation for money. Ideas are worth a dime a dozen. I still produce a ton of them. But actually acting on an entrepreneurial idea. As a twelve year old boy. How does that experience not impact a person for life?

How I will respond to the entrepreneurial whims of my growing boy – that test is in the making.

On Creativity

What exactly is creativity? We notice children play with things that aren't toys and say: "Boy, he's being creative." Trevor, our 2.5 year old boy is happy to haul a spent thread spool on his John Deere tractor and trailer. Why this combination? To his credit, the spool does sort-of resemble a hay bale. Just sort-of though. And we (adults) think: "Thats neat, the spool fits inside the trailer really well." Likely though, we would not think of said combo. What is it that children tend to have and adults tend to lack?

Is it perhaps simply the willingness to try things without the fear of being different or criticized or even critiqued? Children simply are. They live in their mostly carefree world, happy to follow the happy whims of their productive minds.

You may counter with: "Well, that's childish". It is, but does being a grown-up require us to lose our sense of exploration to the mundane pursuits of "what adults do"? Perhaps this world would benefit from us relooking at things from a vantage point of fresh childlike curiosity.

I, certainly, would benefit.