The Side-Hustle Dad

Ep26
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Welcome and Recap
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​[00:00:00]

Bryan Steele: Welcome back. It's good to see you again. I'm glad you're joining me for another episode. For the last couple weeks, we've been talking about The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber's book about those who have an entrepreneurial seizure and start a business, and how a single person business, even though it's one person, really still has all the roles of a large company.

It has the technicians doing the work, it has the managers overseeing that work, and it has an owner or an entrepreneur who is setting the vision and direction for the business. It just so happens ~that~ that's 100% on you as the person who's got a side hustle, as the dad who's trying [00:01:00] to create this business.

And we talked last week about the owner and their role in things, how they're setting that big vision. Where do things need to be? Why are we doing this? What's the objective? Understanding offers, things like that. And then we obviously know the technician.

Meet the Manager Role
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Bryan Steele: We talked about that role, doing the work in the business for the clients But what's the manager role?

And the manager role is primarily the one who's making the business run better, because you only have a little amount of time each week to work on your business, and if you don't figure out the systems and processes to make that as efficient as possible, you're gonna be flailing and struggle to make this work.

So, how do we do this?

Parkinsons Law Advantage
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Bryan Steele: I think one of the interesting things about this concept of operating as a manager is that you have an edge. You aren't doing [00:02:00] this full-time. You've got just a few hours a week. And there's something called Parkinson's law, right? We've all experienced it when we had a test that was happening the next day.

You cram. You get it done. You study, and you take the test the next day. Whether you gave yourself a week to prepare or two hours to prepare, you make that work because there is a clear deadline. So Parkinson's law says whatever time or space we give something, we fill it up. So if your business was a 40-hour a week business, you would find 40 hours a week of work to do.

~You would fill up that space.~ But you've only got a limited amount of time. ~You've got this specific chunk.~

Time Boundaries and Easy Ates
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Bryan Steele: We talked about it in episode three. You created boundaries. You said, "This is when I work on this business. This is when it's happening, and we're not gonna go outside that." And so even though it may be painful, you need to give the manager a couple hours to make the business [00:03:00] run well.

We talked about, in episode 23, the Easy Ates framework, or the idea that we're gonna automate, delegate, and eliminate things in our business, and that is 100% what the manager is doing. You've got this limited space of time. The business has got to function, and you've got to spend as much, and you've got to be as efficient as possible with that time so that you can serve as many people as possible as profitably as possible.

And so the manager is in the business of making the systems and processes that work for the technician, as well as provide information to the owner to make sure that the business is working well.

Systems and Admin Efficiency
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Bryan Steele: So today, I wanna give you a couple of different places, buckets, to think about what it is that the manager works on.

~So-~ The first system is the manager who figures out how the business runs. [00:04:00] It's the working on the business piece. So how does the business actually function? And these are systems like invoicing, templates that you use for proposals, scheduling, reviewing your financials, getting those reports out. So those pieces can be very tedious and manual.

I mean, if you're doing a spreadsheet of your profit and loss for a quarter versus you use a system that's online like a QuickBooks, those are two different systems. One will be much more efficient and faster than the other. The other will be manual and slower and take more time. So the manager's gonna figure out a way to do something more efficiently.

If you spend a lot of time emailing back and forth to try and figure out schedules when you can meet with a prospective client, that's time that's wasted. A calendar, scheduling for things for [00:05:00] you, like a Calendly or an Acuity Scheduler, those tools allow you to give somebody a link and say, "I would love to meet with you.

Here's my availability. Book a time that works for you." Done. Now all of that back and forth is gone. Efficiency. How you do your invoices. Are they automated? Do you have to send them out manually? All that stuff are things you think about. Do you build custom proposals for every single client and send them over?

Or do you have templates where you can drag and drop and plug things in and in, you know, five minutes you've got a proposal ready It may feel counterproductive to work on those systems, 'cause directly it's not making you

any money, but it is saving you minutes, then hours, then days down the road. So you wanna look at your systems and where are the places where you could add efficiency. Where are the things that you're doing manually that could be automated? That is what the manager looks for, [00:06:00] opportunities in those systems.

~Second place where the manag--~

Marketing and Client Onboarding
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Bryan Steele: Second place where the manager is going to find systems to improve is in your marketing, the way in which you get clients. So your pitches, do those need to be refined? ~What's the messaging?~ What's the language in your offer? How are you connecting to people? Where are you finding your clients?

~How are people finding you?~ What does your website look like? Do these things match? Do you have your Google Business Profile listing? ~Is it pointing to your website? Do you have photos?~ Do you respond to reviews? All of those pieces is for the manager, because it's absolutely imper-imperative that you're drawing in and attracting the client, and you make it as easy as possible for them to do business with you.

When you bring them in, what does that onboarding sequence look like? How do you get information you need from them in the most efficient manner possible? ~Do you send them a, you know~ Do you send them a questionnaire or a survey to fill out to get some of the information? Is there a form where they upload files to you that, that you will be working with?[00:07:00]

As much of those pieces, again, it's saving you time, but it's also looking at are things most efficient and what are the numbers behind those? Where are those clients coming from? Getting that data and reporting that data then goes up to the owner, which we talked about last week, so that you can make better decisions.

So understanding how you get and bring on your clients is another bucket of systems that can be worked on.

Streamlining Client Delivery
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Bryan Steele: And then finally, what does the client work itself look like? Are there ways to make it more efficient? I mean, it can be as simple as instead of just carrying things individually, we now have a cart to, like, load everything onto, or I've got special racks to bring my equipment in so that it's as efficient as possible.

Do I have systems on the back end for sending files to clients as efficiently as possible? ~Do,~ do they get everything timely from me? When I'm working in the tools, are there ways of [00:08:00] speeding up my workflow? Are there... ~It,~ it may not even be a software that you have to buy. It may you be documenting standard operating procedures so that you can just operate more efficiently or potentially delegate things to someone else down the road.

So those documentation, procedures, pieces of working on the business is actually a big piece of making that more efficient. If you ship product out, are you going to the mailbox every day or the post office every day to ship out product? Are there package ~s-s-services~ that could come and get those from you, from your door?

Do you do it once a week? All of those things are decisions you would have to make in your business to understand what makes this run better with less time, with less energy, with less effort than what I'm putting in right now.

Lean Tools and Wrap Up
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Bryan Steele: And it's the manager's responsibility to take that limited amount of time, to take your [00:09:00] constraints and make it the best possible outcome and take advantage of Parkinson's Law and let that be an edge for you.

If you've got that tight constraint, you might find that you really focus on the most important thing, and everything that is fluff just gets stripped away. And that's fine. That's a totally reasonable approach to have to your systems. So look for those opportunities. Lean into those. Embrace Parkinson's Law.

~Embrace that little bit of a time.~ Embrace that little bit of time where you are working on the systems and the structure that make your business run as efficiently as possible Think about lean infrastructure. We don't want to spend a lot of money on tools and software when we're scaling up, but pick those right times.

If you've set your budget appropriately, you're going to have some operating expense budget. Buy the things that get you time. If that's a scheduling [00:10:00] app, if that's a CRM that has some automations, if they're automation tools, if you use Claude or Zapier to handle things for you so that you're not having to do as much manual work, those are investments in money which buy you back time, and that is an important piece of the manager role.

So look at those tools, look at those resources. Stay lean, stay hungry. Hope this helps, and I will see you on an episode again real soon.​ [00:11:00]