Long Jumps

When growing a business, entrepreneurs face many hurdles. At some points in that journey the growth challenges are amplified. That is what I am experiencing right now.

Going from a Company of One to a team of 2 or three is one of the first hurdles a business needs to leap over to expand its reach. This is not easy to do because how do you manage the workload when there is not enough work to go around for 2 people but there’s too much for just one person? And what about payroll (and all the fancy deductions and WCB that come with it)? All at once, productivity has to more than double in order for the second person to take home a really good paycheque. Once a core team of 2 or three people is established, adding several more people is no big deal. The infrastructure is already in place, and an incremental work increase can be handled by adding one person at a time. This is very different than from going from one person to two people where you are literally doing a 2x.

Our business is currently at 10-11 people. I love this size. It feels manageable and I can get around to everyone. But with our current workload and rate of throughput, we need to add several more guys. All at once. Here’s how the shed building and delivery hamster wheel looks with the spray foam component added to it:

1. Add a paint and trim person.

2. Ensure our current framers are cranking.

3. More buildings through the shop means hiring another delivery driver.

4. Hire a high drive sales guy.

5. Frees up our current sales guy to optimize current sales locations and sell more spray foam projects.

6. Ensure we have the people in place to get the spray foam projects done in a timely manner.

And all at once, we’re bringing in 3-4 people, which feels like a massive leap. To me it feels like we either take a run at this and do the long jump, or stay at our current size. Here’s the kicker. In order for us to sustain a payroll increase of 30-50% more, we also need to sustain sales that drive overall revenue at a higher level than before, because work doesn’t just materialize out of thin air.

Taking the leap will bring all sorts of challenges. I suspect that the most significant challenges will be organization and communication. A group of 14-15 people is not a small, tight team anymore. This will likely require departmental leaders and communication between the departments to be the glue that syncs us together. Personally, I hope that my leadership is at high enough of a level to take the organization to the next level without too much pain. The reality is that I will be stretched and will need to grow. Probably, a lot. At the end of the day, an organization can only become as great as its leader(s).

Charlie

This week, I want to tell you about Charlie, an employee at our business (fake name, but real person).

Charlie is young and energetic. I’d say he is fairly confident in his ability to learn new skills. When he first joined our team several years ago, he came to us timid and always second guessing himself. The current Charlie compared to the Charlie of two years ago are different in a good way.

He’s the kind of guy that takes extreme ownership. If he breaks something on the tractor, he doesn’t hesitate to offer his hard earned money to fix it. If he gets something wrong in the shed building process, he assumes it’s his job to fix his own mistake.

Like most of us, Charlie enjoys certain tasks more than others. He is not a huge fan of being switched from one department to the other. But Charlie is part of a rare breed of people that show up to work and ask “What do you want me to do today?” He understands that in a small business, every person sometimes wears more than one hat.

Charlie works hard and energizes everyone around him. He shows up at work in the morning with a big bag of fun which he hauls into the shop. When I pop my head into the shop during the day, I am often greeting with shouting or playful arguing: Charlie is challenging one of his coworkers to a race of who can work the fastest. When Charlie is around, more work gets done. And there’s more fun.

Driven to win, Charlie thrives on competition. He’s not one to sit still—he wants the work done, and done well. He doesn’t like to sit around and do nothing.

Charlie also wants to improve his soft skills. He’s always very open to feedback and coaching.

Charlie is special—but he’s not the only one. Our team is built on people who care, compete, and bring energy to the work we do. We’re growing, and we’re looking for more people like Charlie. If that sounds like you, we’d love to meet.

Childish Liberty

Yesterday, I picked up a package from the post office in town. It contained a supplement Lydia and I use, a fitting to get Lydia’s freeze dryer running, Trevor’s birthday gift, and what I assumed to be another fitting. When I got home, I promptly stashed Trevor’s birthday gift (a pail of Lego blocks) out of reach. Trevor opened the little box, which I assumed to be another fitting. Turns out, a battery charger and three batteries showed up that I had ordered and forgotten about. Trevor discovered part of his birthday gift early.

Trevor immediately recognized the batteries as his camera batteries. He’s been playing with a non functioning camera that Lydia used in bygone years. I figured that perhaps the camera was not working simply because the existing battery was dead.

I plugged in a battery and hit the power button. The camera came alive! The lens opens and closes properly. Even the pop out flash works!

Instead of make belief play at taking pictures or videos, Trevor now has a real camera and he knows how to operate the lens zoom and take real pictures. He’s learned how to play back pictures and even how to do delete pictures.

He spent at least an hour or two taking pictures. Everything from outside landscape pictures to interior pictures of a mustard bottle on the floor. What impressed me was his unbounded liberty in experimentation. With no pressure to get good quality pictures, he bounces from scene to scene snapping lots of pictures.

I’m thinking about all the times I’ve thought of experimenting with something new, but feel boxed in by expectations. These expectations may be my own or expectations from others. This ends up holding me back from getting going and enjoying the process when I am terrible at it. Instead of embracing the terrible early results and pushing through to eventual success, I sometimes never even give it a try.

Trevor has the liberty to play and experiment without fear or worry. I’ll try to learn to be like my little boy.

Here’s a couple of pictures from his second day of taking pictures:

Trevor’s piggybank

A picture of a puffin in one of Trevor’s picture books.

Picture of part of the book cover of “On the Banks of Plum Creek”

Here’s to a week of learning something new or experimenting again,

— Simon

The Carpenter

Flying home from Ontario last week, I started listening to “The Carpenter” by Jon Gordon. The book presents a simple and powerful framework built around three key pillars that the Carpenter in the book lives by:

1. Love

• Love what you do.

• Show love to the people you serve.

• Let love drive your actions, relationships, and leadership.

The idea is that when you infuse your work and relationships with love, it creates passion, energy, and deep connection. It turns tasks into meaningful contributions.

2. Serve

• Focus on serving others, not just on your own success.

• Help people grow and feel valued.

• Serve your team, customers, family—anyone you interact with.

The message here is that greatness comes from giving, not taking. When you serve well, success often follows as a byproduct.

3. Care

• Care about the work, the people, and the outcome.

• Pay attention to detail.

• Go the extra mile.

Caring shows up in excellence, in the effort you put in, and in the integrity of how you show up daily.

Together, Love, Serve, and Care form the foundation of the Carpenter’s approach to building a successful life, business, and relationships.

We try to put these three things to work with our customers and our customers love us for it. People can feel when they are being loved, served, and cared for. Our employees feel it too. So does my family.

It’s a quick read or listen and a wonderful reminder that success in life is not tied to some complicated formula that is difficult to get right. It really is simple. However, simple is not always easy.

Business is Tough

Our spring show season is over. Two shows we set up ourselves, and two shows were sponsored by two of our dealers. Spring shows and spring sales mark the beginning of our very busy season. While a show is in action, I find myself checking our dashboard several times a day, just to check if new sales have been made. Every sale feels like another win, which it is (in a small way). Every sale also means we need to produce and successfully deliver another building. That is our business.

Lately I’ve been reflecting on the emotional ride our small business has taken me on. There have been and continue to be tons of challenges to tackle. I knew this would be the case when we purchased the business almost two years ago, but this is now my lived experience. And it is visceral.

Week follows week where I experience the whole spectrum of emotion. Great sales feel great. A valued employee goes to work elsewhere - feels way less than great. Our mule breaks down 5 hours away, and pulling an all nighter to supply parts and make the delivery possible - doesn’t feel great. Being gone from my little family because of business training - doesn’t feel great. Eating a 12 oz. New York Striploin steak for supper today because I am away from home tasted very good.

There are days when business is more than it was supposed to be. Other days there are real perks that come with the pain. Like having a heartfelt conversation with one of our guys. In about a month from now I get to go to the Entreleadership Summit. If you would have told me I would get to go 10 years ago, I probably would not have believed you. It is about to become a reality!

Last week I properly discovered the Shark Tank on YouTube. While the Sharks act like sharks at times, the reality of business is laid bare. The marketplace is not an easy place to thrive.

One more thing. The bigger the business, the bigger the potential for greater success and more problems. As the business grows, everything is amplified. Both the good and the bad.

At times I think about divorcing my feelings from the experience. But that is no recipe for caring. Each experience must be felt, experienced, and then given not too much or too little space. How much space and time is allotted should be directly proportional to the magnitude of what is happening. The challenge? Keeping level headed and staying the course even when times feel tough and my heart is heavy.

To Experiment or Not?

I am still reading the book Range, which is a book that has challenged some of my ideas and affirmed others. In the book, David Epstein weighs whether or not experimentation in life is a positive thing. From children learning to play a sport (or several sports) or other children learning to play an instrument (or experiment with a range of instruments), to adults trying to find their way life’s calling by either picking one path, or sampling for an extended period of time before settling….

Society tends to look more favourable on the people that pick early. Learn to play the violin and master it by playing it for 10,000 hours by the time you’re 18 and you garner the respect of others. Or, pick a career path as a sales guy who then becomes a sales manager who then becomes CSO (chief sales officer) at a multi-million dollar enterprise and you are looked on as having it figured out.

This linear pathway seems to be the most efficient pathway. And certainly the neatest. Early pickers tend to eat their lunches first.

But David Epstein makes a very compelling case for experimenting early and lots. Sure, you’ll find yourself behind your peers early on, but you are building a set of skills that can overlap widely which can then be utilized across multiple domains throughout life.

Before reading this book, I have observed this experimental behaviour in my own life; (I am a sampler by nature). I’ve often wondered whether it is a negative or positive trait. I’ve lost money because of it. Quite a bit of money. I’ve often wondered whether the skill set picked up along this meandering path will make up for the, well, meandering path?

Plenty of my peers have worked at one or two jobs in the last 10 years while I have done many things. While some job moves couldn’t be helped much, others were certainly by my own choosing. Like going from one perfectly fine job to another, which was precisely the case in my last job move in 2021. The last 4 years have been the longest I have ever held down a job.

I still don’t have things figured out. But I have found that my broad (but not always deep) skill set has come in handy many times in running a business. These days, being a generalist is a skillset unto itself.

What do you think?

Disruptive Week

Last week was a crazy week. It started out with an overnight, tandem driver delivery up to Pikangikum First Nation community in Ontario which includes spending several hours on winter roads. Here is a google maps link to Pikangikum in case you are curious about it’s location. Winter roads are, as the name implies, only passable when it is sufficiently cold and frozen. We left for Pikangikum Monday morning, and returned to our stomping grounds almost 24 hours later. I then slept till a little after noon, and then took the rest of the day easy, spending a couple hours on website development.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I did not hear my alarm go off in the morning, which means I clocked in at work at 11 a.m. and 9:20 a.m., respectively. Sounds lazy, I know.

On Friday, I got home from the Cottage Country’s Lake & Cabin Show at around 10 p.m. and took Saturday off only to man the show from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. After the show closed on Sunday, we spent an hour tearing down and cleaning out, getting me home closer to 7:45 in the evening.

Here is what I noticed: a disruptive schedule disrupted my habits. I did not take my health supplements for half the week. I did not spend some time reading nearly every day (as I did for the previous 6 weeks), and I did not get to work at a consistent time.

The delivery to Pikangikum needed to be done, and the show needed to be manned. Both were a success for which I am grateful. And I am thankful that this week is back to normal. It’s Tuesday now, and I get to reflect on last week, and hopefully get some reading in after I’m done with this note. I took my supplements at the 10 a.m. break this morning and got to eat supper with my dear wifey and two kiddos.

Normalcy is wonderful. Especially after a disruptive week.

P.S. If you are curious what I’m reading right now: Range by David Epstein. So far it’s fascinating. It is making me reconsider education for Trevor and Heidi (my sweet children) in a fundamental way. I’ll probably share more thoughts once I am further along with it.

Have a great week!

— Simon

Feeling Trapped

Productivity Debt

While on the road last week, I listened to an episode from the Big Think YouTube channel.

One of the concepts that resonated with me was the idea that I have a productivity debt to work off. When I get up in the morning, I feel like I need to be at work at a certain time. Then I feel like I need to get a certain amount of work done—though this is more of a feeling than something actually quantifiable, given that I’m mostly a knowledge worker who works in an office. Last week, there were several days when I had less to do than usual, yet I still felt like I needed to be in the office and get work done.

While using less busy days to work ahead is beneficial (which I did to some extent), feeling like I have to work just to pay off my daily productivity debt is not a healthy mindset. As Oliver Burkeman puts it:

“…that is hugely self-sabotaging… because the standard for how much stuff would be enough just drifts upwards, so it gets harder and harder to meet—because the amount of things we could do is infinite.”

He suggests starting with the idea that you don’t need to accomplish anything in a day to feel adequate. Sure, you may need to work to earn a living, but there’s no reason to feel less than because you aren’t meeting a self-imposed productivity standard.

Burkeman also recommends using a “Done List” to keep track of what you accomplish—and I love this idea. Starting at a zero balance instead of a debt ledger is a much more positive approach. Completing tasks becomes a credit to your productivity account rather than a constant attempt to pay off self-imposed debt.

Positive Distractions?

Burkeman touched on the idea that not all distractions are negative. When trying to be productive, I try to focus. One way to achieve this, is by shutting out distractions. This is important if you want to get anything of significance done. But it is possible to go to far.

For instance, in February, I tried to cultivate the habit of reading books. I set aside 30 minutes per day to read, often on the living room couch in the evening. Heidi, my 1-year-old, or Trevor, my almost-4-year-old, would sometimes ask for my attention—“Look, Daddy!” or Heidi asking for attention in a less dignified manner by simply pouting away.

My response was often, “Please be quiet, I’m reading.” While focused learning is valuable, taking a moment to stop and give my full attention to my two sweet kiddos would have been a better approach. In my quest to meet my own rules, I sometimes fall into a rigid, self-imposed box that doesn’t give me any room to breathe. This short video was a healthy reminder, and my mind has returned to it several times over the past few days.

P.S.

In case you want to watch or listen to this 8-minute, 4-second video, here’s the link: Big Think – Oliver Burkeman.