TGIM!

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND GO.

This week BELIEVE.  Believe God has a plan for you.  Believe it will work out.  Believe.

****

Life is short.  AMAZINGLY SHORT.   Blink of an eye short.  That is not sad, it’s amazing.  Enjoy the ride my friends.

****

Gaps.  Talked to a builder last week.  He doesn’t leave gaps.  Goes from thing to thing.  I said, leave gaps.  That way you are relaxed.  Ready for the unexpected.  And even if you are late, you are on time.

****

Seriously, ARE YOU THE PERSON YOU WANT TO HANG AROUND?  Look in the mirror.  Ask yourself, am I that person?

****

ESSENTIALISM.  I love that term.   Priorities.  We must set priorities.  Then stay there.  Live there.  If we are overwhelmed, that is a ME thing, not a WORK THING.  If your job duties, business, work load has grown, what tasks did you give up along the way?  OH, NONE.  HA, I BE YOU ARE STRESSED.  GIVE UP TO GROW!

WE HAVE TO DO MUCH LESS.  WE HAVE TO IMPACT MUCH MORE!

*****

I was asked last week to put down 3 things that I thought we would accomplish the next 3 years and be proud of.

1.  HAPPY SALES NINJAS.   I just want our sales people HAPPY.  TRAINED ASSASSINS.  HAPPY mostly though.  I see so many stressed out, burning those around them, and for what?   It’s something I know we will accomplish.
2. Be top workplace back to back years.  Wouldn’t that be fun?

3.  Be a company where our clients business can’t thrive without us.   I like that one too.

*****

For me personally in the next 3 years, I want to have less control of the company, but influence more.  Steve Jobs said something along the lines of, you don’t hire smart people to give them a plan.  You hire smart people so they can make a plan.

My themes are always the same.  Probably almost boring if you know me.  Love, Serve, Care.  Etc.

That’s a good thing I think.

*****

For our customers, we have to do MORE.   They want our help.  Doug Berg, a rockstar in Columbus, is trying to help a builder, create value so the contractor won’t thrive without our uniqueness.  He said he is putting 4 to 5 hours a day into the last 2 weeks.  CRAMMING like it’s a college paper.  It’s wonderful.  He’s learning so much.   You must put the dedicated work in to achieve this.

We aren’t going to “try  one job” and see how it goes, we are going to “help his business”.

Prioritized work.

****

I bet you can make someone’s day brighter today.   I just know it.  And if you can’t that’s ok too.   But just don’t make it WORSE for them.

****

Here’s something odd you probably wouldn’t assume.  I love Winnie the Pooh.  Always have.

Here’s a great Pooh story I will leave you with.

It occurred to Pooh and Piglet that they hadn’t heard from Eeyore for several days, so they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.

“Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a Glum Sounding Voice.

“We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around At All, would you now.”

Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling Sad, or Alone, or Not Much Fun To Be Around At All. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” And the three of them sat there in silence, and while Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.

Because Pooh and Piglet were There.

No more; no less.

FACIL,

JOEL

TGIM!

Team,

Short one this week.

We talk at Drexel to work in our team in circles.  And work together on solutions.  I want to change that.

I prefer U’s.

Circles are closed.  Tight knit.  United.

But they don’t allow collaboration from anyone, not quick to bring in new ideas or members.

Be a U when you meet, not a circle!

SUPPLY HAPPINESS!

Facil,

Joel

TGIM!

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

HERE WE GO!

LOOK AT THE QUOTE BELOW:

1. HUMBLE HEART
2. WARRIOR SPIRIT
3. BIGGER PURPOSE

Let’s check off all 3!

Bigger purpose = SUPPLY HAPPINESS.

Humble Heart:  How can I help you?  How can I NOT help you so I am not ENABLING YOU?

WARRIOR SPIRIT!

Todd Flitter won’t say our competitors name with out saying F**kem before it.  I LOVE THAT.

We are TOO NICE.  WE have become leaders helping the industry or some crap.

WE are trying to FEED OUR FAMILY.  The COMPETITION is trying TO TAKE OUR CUSTOMERS.

FIGHT AS A WARRIOR.

HATE YOUR COMPETITION.

LOATHE THEM.

EAT EM FOR DINNER.

Does this make you uncomfortable?

THEN YOU ARE DOING THIS SHIT WRONG.  WARRIORS ARE NOT TIMID.

Some of you are going, “My God Joel, this is posted on the internet our competition will read this.”

GOOD!  BRING IT ON.

Here’s a letter TO THEM.

**************

Dear company X,

I am trying to take all of your customers away.

ESPECIALLY THE GOOD ONES.

When you come and try to take one of ours away, I feel like you came

INTO MY HOUSE AND ARE TRYING TO STEAL MY CHILDREN.

MAY GOD HAVE MERCY.

Love and Hugs,

Joel M. Fleischman

*****

PRIORITIES.

LESS IS MORE.

Team,

Our HEAD COACHES AND LEADERS met Thursday all day, AND WELL LATE INTO THE NEXT MORNING…

We had #FUN

But we also left better connected and even more importantly FOCUSED.

So, what’s our top 4 priorities we decided as a group.

100% we said these are our top 4.

1. FLOORING (more on that one)
2. PAULS, and the continuation of the Truss World.   Quick on that one.   We have invested nearly a million dollars in new equipment and manufacturing improvement.  We have went from 2 shifts with temp. help hires to WORLD CLASS one of a kind 5 shifts.  We now have more than doubled our designers. And they are phenoms.   This bus is ROCKING.  And we haven’t really even started yet!  THIS IS GONNA GET AWESOME FAST.  HANG ON.
3. SALES.  You noticed our sales suck this year?  We are FLAT as a company.  BORING.  We are going to focus on THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and (4.) TRAINING for our team to get there!
4. TRAINING.  Soft skills and product knowledge.  The best people, trained professionally will be OUR DIFFERENCE MAKER GOING FORWARD.  We have THE BEST PEOPLE, now we make em the smartest!  DOUBLE BOOM.

Ok, flooring, top priority?  They are only 7% of our business?  whaaaat?

YES.  INDEED.

Andy Rettler estimates he spent 30% of his career so far at Drexel on flooring.  I’ve been “diving back in” for a decade.

This year alone FLOORING IS ESTIMATED TO LOSE, LOSE, $500,000.

Thing is: it’s easy fixes.

It’s a bolt mentality.  We tighten the screw, it loosens.  We repeat.  Yet we never get ahead.  NO MORE.

TOMORROW WE LAUNCH THE

LOCKTITE INITIATIVE

THERE WITH ENERGY, ENTHUSIASM AND A CONTAGIOUS POSITIVE SPIRIT.

NO GOING BACK.

It’s not new systems, it’s just locktiting the systems we have.  EASY.

Starting October 1, April will get out of the engine room & lead the team going after new sales.  A big sales number fixes a lot of this!

LOCKTITE!

CAN NOT WAIT TO DO THIS.

******

LASTLY:

BERLIN GETS BLACKTOP THIS WEEK!  I WAS TOLD IT WOULDN’T BE DONE!

WARRIORS LOVE A GOOD CHALLENGE!!!!!!!!!

FACIL,

JOEL

TGIM!

Team, our mission is TO SUPPLY HAPPINESS.

AN INSPIRATIONAL thing for sure.  Making others happy.  Our team, our clients our community.

Let’s drill that down a bit.

Our Mission is to be the #1 workplace in the state.

***
Doing that will also make our clients happy (happy people buy from happy people).

***

To do that we must do a few things:

Live by the core values.

Hold each other accountable in a real way.

Work incredibly hard.

Hold and protect our margins.

Increase Sales.

Follow processes intently and completely, to alleviate the stress from others as they clean up your mess.

Be smart.

Say NO a lot.  Knowing WHO we are, what we do and simply CAN NOT DO.  A focus on that makes us happy as well.  Saying YES when it is not our comfort zone makes us stressed, not happy.  We can do this in a trusted adviser tone!

Know your role, do it well.  Not knowing your role makes your life full of anxiety.

Training.  Thank you for Justin Spuda, director of player personnel, as we become the nation’s leader on training in the building supply industry!  Period.  You will all get to know him if you don’t already.

That feeds our mission!   

Again, you can see when you focus on what is important, the rest becomes not-urgent or even less important.

****

As we work on goals, vision, future together, we must always remember our purpose.  And our mission.  Does it feed that?  Or does it just complicate things and cause more stress?

Your head coach and the leaders are meeting for a one day retreat and meetings this week.  We will stay focused on our mission as we lead us on!

— Facil,

Joel