December 24, 2024 • 55 mins
On this episode of the Small Business Safari we welcome Rich Sheridan! While his focus has always been around technology, his passion is actually process, teamwork and organizational design, with one inordinately popular goal: the Business Value of Joy! Rich goes in-depth on how he achieved these goals. So take a listen. I am sure any entrepreneur will learn something from this episode! Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!
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Rich’s Links:
• https://menloinnovations.com/
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GOLD NUGGETS:
(03:00) - Rich’s Bio
(07:50) - Tackling the Biggest Problem in the Tech Industry
(21:40) - How to Tell Your Wife You’re an Entrepreneur
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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!
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If you loved this episode try these!
• How to Launch Your Business to the Stratosphere with Chris Hanks
• Does your Online Reputation Reflect Your Offline Reputation? - Tracy Moore
• Corporate Quitter To Entrepreneurial Meteor - Gabby Ianniello
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Have any questions or comments? Connect with me here!
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so what happens here is a lot of people who are
thinking they've heard aboutMenlo, they want to come see it.
They're not sure, of course.
Well, they'll come on a tour,because we do tours all the time
.
Now you can imagine you show upon a tour you don't have to
tell us why you're here, justcurious about Menlo.
But now they're looking around,they're hearing the stories,
(00:22):
they're seeing the people andmaybe something in their head
says maybe.
So they send in a resume.
Then we invite them in for acrazy interview process.
We don't ask any questionsduring interview.
We not only tore down thetraditional way of writing
software, we jettisoned theentire standard HR practice book
.
We have interview process withno questions whatsoever.
(00:43):
It's completely on audition.
You come in in a group withother candidates, we pair you
with another candidate and thenwe give you the weirdest
instructions you'll ever hear inan interview.
Your job is to help the personsitting next to you get a second
interview.
Make your pair partner lookgood, demonstrate good
kindergarten skills.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Show us you can help another human being and then we
will have more interest in you.
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari where I help guide you to
avoid those traps, pitfalls anddangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
(01:24):
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Welcome back, adventure Team,to the Small Business Safari.
(01:50):
Chris is going solo todaybecause Alan's out there closing
deals, making business happen,doing what everybody should be
doing anyway, and that's makingmoney doing this thing that he
loves to do.
He loves being here, but thisis, of course, his passion
project and my lead project.
But today we have an excitingguest on, somebody who I feel is
a kindred spirit.
We have Rich Sheridan fromMenlo Innovations on.
(02:11):
We actually come from the samegreat state of Michigan, which
is why I wish Alan could be hereso we could talk about how
great Michigan is compared toOregon, but he's going to have
to miss out on that.
But, rich, thanks for joiningus today.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Great to be here, chris.
I think we figured out when wetalked the first time.
You and I grew up about fourmiles away from one another,
because I was in ClintonTownship, you were in Harrison
Township.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
That's right Pretty close by and look at this.
And then, when we started totalk about parallels in our
business world and our journeysthrough corporate America, I was
like holy crap, it is almostidentical to me, just in a
completely different industry.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I lived different lives.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, so Rich, you're author of two books.
We'll go ahead and talk aboutthose books a little bit later,
but go out there and take a lookat that.
But why don't you just give useverybody just the thumbnail
version of kind of who you are,where the hell you came from and
where you are today?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, chris, I am the CEO, co-founder, chief
storyteller here at MenloInnovations.
I'll probably get a chance toshare some stories.
Menlo Innovations itself justturned 21 years old this past
summer and we are a softwaredesign and development firm that
is really well known for theculture we've built here, and
(03:29):
people come from all over theworld just to see how we do what
we do, because it's sodifferent.
We typically non-pandemic years, of course have gotten between
3,000 and 4,000 visitors a yearto travel from all over the
planet just to spend a day to aweek with.
We have a group from GeneralMotors here for two days
studying us, learning from usand so on.
But our primary business, whatwe do the people in the room
(03:52):
behind me there are designingand developing custom software
on behalf of our businessclients.
It is the approach that we use.
That's so different.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So your approach is so different and let's go jump
into that Just what makes youguys so unique?
Because, if you're listeningand again, we've been a very
home services focused podcastbut, as you know, we've had a
lot of different industries onbecause we can always learn from
others.
But we're talking aboutprogramming and if you know
anything about computerprogrammers, those guys are the
epitome of lone wolves.
They want to sit there in frontof their computer, interface
(04:24):
with that computer and pleasedon't make me interface with too
many humans.
That's the typical programmerthat's out there, but you guys
have come up with a differentmodel.
Can you explain a little bitmore about how you do it?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
We have.
You know, chris, just to givean ounce more of my background
because the rest of the storywill make a little bit more
sense.
I grew up as a programmer.
I actually started programmingat my high school back in 1971
and launched a career aftergoing to the University of
(04:56):
Michigan and, quite frankly, Ithink I was pretty good at it.
But the results me, or theteams I was part of, or the
teams later as I rose themanagerial ladders the results
they were producing were justterrible and I thought, man,
maybe I'm not as good at this asI thought I was.
Maybe I have to get out and godo home services versus
programming.
(05:16):
I don't know.
But at that moment I decidedyou know what?
I think there's a better way todo this than my industry has
typically done it.
And you're absolutely right.
Our industry is just largelycomprised of these lone wolf
programmers, largely introverts.
(05:36):
No surprise there, stuck insensory deprivation chambers,
you know cubicles, headphones on, coming in at weird hours that
don't overlap with other humanbeings, and everybody later
laments that they lackinterpersonal skills.
Shockingly, when would theyhave a chance to practice such
things?
But the real challenge is evenfor the people who do the work
(06:00):
if you don't end up delightingthe people you intended to serve
, which is our goal.
It is a very hollow career.
You end up doing work, you getpaid for it, that's okay, but
there is no sense ofaccomplishment of purpose,
there's no sense of servingothers, and that's really what
(06:21):
was driving me is look, I wantto delight the people who one
day use the work of our hearts,our hands and our minds.
And in order to do that, we hadto change everything about the
way software is designed anddeveloped.
So, as opposed to a libraryquiet space, we have a noisy big
room, and we've been in personin the noise for we'll call it
19 and a half of our 21 years.
We had a little interruptionthrough COVID, of course, and
(06:43):
we're starting to.
You know, we're pretty much 80%back into the office now.
All of our programmers work twopeople, one computer.
They share a keyboard and amouse.
All day long, every single day.
Those pairs are workingtogether to solve a problem and
we switch those pairs every fiveworking days so that you're
(07:05):
getting a chance to actuallywork through things with another
human being who thinksdifferently than you do.
You have to talk about thosethings with one another and you
have to learn to listen to theother person.
And then, of course, five dayslater, new pair partner, you
might be continuing the work youdid the previous five days that
you did with your other pairpartner, and now you have to
(07:27):
explain to this new person whatyou and your previous pair
partner were working on.
And in doing that explanationyou're getting smarter about
what you just built.
And so by doing this sort ofbusiness corporate square dance
with our team every single week,you end up with teamwork,
collaboration, trust,communication and an avoidance
(07:50):
of one of the biggest problemsin the software industry, this
lone wolf tower of knowledgeproblem, where there's only one
person in your team that knowsanything about a particular
system and nobody else knowswhat they know, and that person
feels trapped or the companyfeels held hostage by that
person, and it's not a pleasantsituation for either of them and
(08:11):
those hero-based systems.
The only way to scale them isto scale the heroes.
The only way to scale heroes isovertime, and the trouble with
software is tired people makebad software and we don't want
to make bad software.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
There are so many things there that I just
obviously you just resonatedwith so many vibes that I have
going.
I just got to go back to thebeginning.
So you started in 1971programming.
So that was punch cards.
Yeah, Actually it was teletypes.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
teletypes paper tape dial up modems to a central
computer at the McCormick schooldistrict Nice.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, so there you go .
Now you talk about.
That's one I just want to gothrough.
You know they talk aboutMoore's law of scaling computing
.
You talk about where we aretoday and you want to talk about
what you've seen.
You have definitely seen thatcurve and the hockey stick.
That is that Moore's law, whichis the power computing power
doubles every year.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I'm pretty sure this little device in my pocket has
more computing power than theentire world had in 1971.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Exactly, I love that.
So let's keep going down thatjourney of that storytelling of
what you did.
So you did.
What typically we all do inevery industry is we follow with
a model that has been put forthbefore us, and in your case it
was sit there and interface withthat computer, because I do not
want to interface with humans.
And I got to do this and youstarted to realize that maybe
(09:33):
those results weren't there.
And I know you had that ahamoment when you were the manager
that you didn't want to be andyou told me that offline before
we started.
And that's what started thisculture.
And that's why we'll jump backto that story in a sec, because
I know everybody is dying tohear a number of these things,
but let's just take this out forjust a minute.
So he just said he puts twopeople on one computer and he
(09:55):
just makes two people worktogether to do on one computer.
Now you know why people arecoming to see this, because if
you're listening to this podcast, you're probably sitting there
going.
How does that work?
Because there's only onekeyboard.
That can't possibly be.
And now you know why GeneralMotors is sitting in your office
today going.
There's no way this ishappening.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So they're like, I can't believe it.
I hear you, Rich, I hear thestory man, but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And Chris, you can imagine instinctively.
Everybody looks at it and goesbut wait, isn't this cutting
productivity in half?
Couldn't you take those twopeople, put them on separate
computers and have them typingaway by themselves?
And of course you'd be back tothe same way of doing things
that everybody else does.
And the challenge isprogramming.
(10:42):
And there's a lot of otherindustries that could take
lessons from this, but I applyit to the programming industry.
Programming was never abouttyping speed.
It was always about how fastcan you solve a problem well,
and two heads are always betterthan one at solving difficult
problems.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'm part of a mastermind group and one of the
things we talk about as we issueprocesses what is the right
question.
And you just hit on that.
What is the right question?
The question is what's thequickest way to solve a problem?
Not the quickest way to typeout programming code, because
you don't get paid by the amount.
You get paid by the solutionyou provide.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, and does it work?
Is it robust?
Let's just reflect.
This will put a little bit of atimestamp on our podcast today,
but just yesterday the entireflight system of the United
States was shut down for hoursbecause of a computer error.
It's a big deal when computersdon't work these days.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's a big deal when computers don't work these days.
You hit on that and you'reright to put a pin on this one.
So timeline it's beginning ofJanuary 23 when you listen to
this, and what happened was thesafety system in the FAA went
down because, as the way I heardit, one corrupted file and it
took them a long time to reboot.
Identify and then re-put theplanes back in the air, and that
(12:04):
took them out of business.
Identify and then re-put theplanes back in the air, and that
took them out of business.
I've heard anywhere that itcould take between 36 and 48
hours just to recover from thisand get all the planes back in a
program and a system that getsback to the flow we expect, and
think about the disruption thatjust happened.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Oh, you know, there's people who missed family events
or weddings or whatever.
You know I mean it'scatastrophic.
And you know, look, when Istarted programming computers in
1971, it wouldn't have beenthat big a deal if the computer
didn't work right for a day ortwo.
Now our very lives depend onthose computers working.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, you're right, that's an astounding, just to
drink that in for a minute.
You also said something.
You alluded to it.
It's an astounding, just todrink that in for a minute.
You also said something.
You alluded to it.
It's one of my favorite phrases.
I use it in my own company and,yeah, I found it from.
St Francis of Assisi back in the1500s said if you work with
your hands, you're a laborer.
If you work with your head inyour hands, you're a carpenter.
But if you work with your heart, your head in your hands,
(13:02):
you're an artist.
And my challenge to my guysevery day is go out there and be
an artist today, because wework in people's homes and can
produce magical andextraordinary things.
If we think like an artist andyou actually said that the same
way is that you're challengingyour programmers not to sit
there and work in a silo andcreate a code, but go out there
and work with your heart, yourhead and your hands and you can
produce something that isextraordinary that most people
(13:25):
would probably say, oh my gosh,that's voodoo.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, absolutely, and we are magicians in our industry
.
The people who don't know whatwe know marvel at what we can
accomplish.
Unfortunately, most of what weaccomplish sucks, and we didn't
want to do that.
We wanted our team to be proudof what they created.
Deming said it best once upon atime.
He said all anyone asks for isa chance to work with pride, to
(13:51):
feel good about the labor youdid today, to feel like you made
a difference, to feel like youhad a chance to do high quality
work to delight the people youintended to serve.
Everything that we do is laserbeam focused on this really
funny word in business.
We call it joy, and that becamethe subject of two of my books.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I love that and I'm glad you brought up Deming,
because I was going to say Iwonder how he would react to the
fact that you said you have twoguys working on one computer,
because I think a lot of thepremise around Deming was also
efficiencies.
But I think you'd have to sitthere and really have to argue
with them and show, hey look,I'm solving a problem faster and
my team is actually reactingand getting more joy out of what
(14:37):
they're doing.
So I would love that debate.
I would love to hear thatdebate.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Oh, obviously I never had the chance to meet Deming.
That would have been delightfulbecause in fact he passed away
before our company was born.
I've had a lot of Demingexperiences, devotees, even
people who work directly withthem.
Come and study us and I willsay I think we would have had a
(15:04):
great discussion.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, I love that one because it's just obviously two
sides of the same coin andyou'll find out that both are
probably right.
But in this case, obviouslyit's winning because you have
developed a culture, and that'salso the thing I really want to
talk about for a minute.
The culture that you havecreated is against the culture
of almost every otherprogramming company out there
(15:27):
and the way that they'redeveloped and done, and you
started with that when you firstset out into your business and
doing this when you started dayone.
Was this the culture that youhad in your head then, or is
this something that has evolvedover time?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, certainly most of it was in place on day one.
So if you had seen Menlo on thevery first day, you would still
see most of the elements onthat first day here present
today.
Obviously, we've continued toevolve and adapt and things like
that as we grew, that sort ofthing.
(16:01):
But it was mainly, chris,because I had had a delightful
opportunity, that I didn't thinkof it as this when it was
happening, but two years beforethat I was a VP at a tired old
public company and I reinventedthat company from my VP of R&D
position into something thatlooks like Menlo does today.
(16:23):
I got two years to run thatexperiment inside of that tired
old public company and then in2001,.
Boom, the internet bubble burst.
All of us were laid off andwhile I lost job, title,
authority, paycheck, stockoptions, all went to zero.
They couldn't take away what Ihad learned in those two years
with my co-founder Jamescouldn't take away what I had
learned in those two years withmy co-founder James, who was a
(16:44):
consultant I'd brought in tohelp me with that transformation
.
And so we started on day onewith almost everything in place
already, because we'd had twoyears to experiment with these
practices at my old company.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I think that's a big gold nugget for everybody to
hear on this one is that he wasso in my case, I jumped
completely out of industry andstarted a handyman company with
no experience running a handymanor remodeling company at all.
But you had two years todevelop your processes and to
see some things that worked, andyou got to do it in a safe
environment that didn't cost youthousands or tens of thousands
(17:20):
or, in my case, a lot ofthousands of dollars, making
mistakes.
You get to do it before and Ithink that's a big gold nugget.
If you haven't made that leap,start it now.
I always talk about businessplan, business plan, business
plan.
But in this case, how aboutpractice?
How about working in that world, putting yourself in it,
because you get to do it forfree and you actually might be
getting paid for it at the sametime.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Well and honestly, Chris, I wasn't prototyping.
A business I was imaginingstarted, I was trying to do the
thing I thought would work andit did.
It worked remarkably well.
It was a tremendoustransformation of that old
company.
And then the company was takenaway from me and you know, it's
just one of those one doorcloses, the other door opens
(18:02):
moments, and I realized, wait aminute, they can't take away
what I had learned.
That was profound.
So I like to say sometimes Ibuilt a really great engine room
.
Just the first time I built itwas inside the Titanic.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's a great line.
The first time I built myengine was in the Titanic.
That's a great line.
The first time I built myengine was in the Titanic, but
you got the opportunity to gobuild it again and you hit on a
thing that I hear the same it'sa common theme in a lot of our
podcasts is that a lot ofentrepreneurs a door closes, you
get laid off of a job or youfailed at that one.
(18:39):
But if you're always looking forthat opportunity, guess what's
going to find you thatopportunity?
And if you're open for it andyou're ready to receive it, it's
good.
And whether it's a good mentorof yours or something like that,
I don't think a lot of peoplehave ever set out from the time
they were born saying this iswhere I'm going to be at age X
through an entrepreneurialventure, because we all go all
over the board, spaghettieverywhere rolling through
(19:01):
things.
So I love how you were able tograsp that opportunity.
Did that opportunity idea hityou day one, or was there some?
Oh my gosh, what just happenedto me.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Actually, the story will get even stranger now.
I had come together with JamesGoebel, who was a consultant
when I was a VP, and it was loveat first sight.
At that point, james had nevermet anyone like me who was
willing to try crazy newexperiments.
Now the reason I was willing totry some of these crazy new
(19:36):
experiments was becauseeverything else was working so
poorly and I could see thesensibility of some of the
things he was suggesting to me.
So he pulled me aside one dayand he said you don't understand
how this consulting thing works.
I said what do you mean?
He says you have to say no atleast once, or you'll be able to
hold me accountable for theresults we get out of this
(19:57):
experiment.
And I said, james, I'm notinterested in holding you
accountable, I want to succeed.
And he looked at me I've nevermet a client like you.
And I said, well, I've nevermet a consultant like you.
And so we started workingtogether, just like the first
pair almost, and I think we bleweach other away.
(20:17):
You know in terms of just whatwe accomplished, how far we went
, how fast we got there.
It was incredible.
And then my company was boughtand they kicked all the
consultants out, including James, and I was so frustrated.
This was, you know, he was mypartner in making all this stuff
happen.
And now he's gone and I can'thire him because our business
(20:40):
contract with his firm preventedit and he couldn't come work
for me because his consultingcontract with his company
prevented it, and so we werelocked out from each other and
this became a big problem for meand I started noodling on how
will I ever work with Jamesagain?
How will I ever work with Jamesagain?
And then one night I sat boltright up in bed and I said to my
(21:04):
wife I said I've got it.
And she's like what, what areyou talking about?
I said I know how I'll workwith James again.
She says what do you mean?
I said well, I can't hire him,but I can quit, start my own
company.
He and I will be co-founders.
We can do everything we'redoing at Interface Systems in a
new company.
And she looked at me becauselet me tell you, chris, that was
(21:25):
an insane idea.
I was this big deal six-figureVP with stock options galore
that were going through the roof.
There was no way she kind oflooked at me like whatever go
back to sleep.
And then, of course, six monthslater, when everything
collapsed, looked at me likewhatever, go back to sleep.
And then, of course, six monthslater, when everything
collapsed, I went home and toldmy wife I'd lost my job, and she
(21:47):
looked at me with tears in hereyes.
She said you're unemployed.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And I said no, honey, I'm an entrepreneur.
Now I'm going to use that onetoo.
Are you unemployed?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
No, I'm an entrepreneur, especially those
first couple years for me,because it was now in the spirit
of your book, uh, on the wild,uh, I will say that I and now I
am officially unemployablebecause I've been out in the
wild way too long I just metwith a guy earlier this week who
had come from corporate america.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Now he's a consultant a typical story for many people
who want to get into theentrepreneurial world and he
said you know, I really enjoythe corporate world.
I said that's funny.
I said I probably can't haveyou on my podcast because I said
I sit there and make fun of itall the time and, yes, I am
completely unemployable at thispoint.
So either I make this a successor I got to go find another one
.
So we got to keep on rolling.
(22:38):
It's true.
It's true, so you jumped in.
I want to come back a littlebit to the culture Again.
When you think about the wolvesthat you are hiring and I talk
about my lone wolves can Iinvite them into a wolf pack
here at my company?
Because they got to have thatmentality.
They're skilled trades, they'regoing to go out there.
They got to be an artist everyday, but they still like to take
care of all that great stuffthat they're doing by the way
(23:01):
there's two mucking behind meright there.
Oh, there he went.
Hey, you guys are back together, the band is back.
I love it, so all right.
So we'll have to say hi toJames.
So shout out, love that one.
So when you go to hire thesepeople into this culture and
you're hiring them are youfinding some people are just
opting out or not reallybelieving you have that culture
and that they're going to get todo the thing they were supposed
(23:21):
to be doing, that they weretrained to do, which is sit in
their silo and work at twoo'clock in the morning?
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, safe to say, Chris, no one in my industry I
mean, it's safe enough to say noone there might be some tiny,
tiny little percentage isprepared for what we're going
the way we're going to work here, is prepared for what we're
going the way we're going towork here.
You know they've all gone thetraditional route, the
traditional education route, thetraditional work route, and all
(23:48):
of a sudden they encounter usand look, I think anytime you
decide to create an intentionalculture like we have, and you
can describe it as clearly as wecan and show it as clearly as
we can um, there's going to be.
People are like there's no wayI could work like that.
There's no way that would workfor me.
(24:08):
That's okay, we're not tryingto solve people.
Um, what we are is we are veryclear and we set what we believe
are very reasonable, rationalexpectations for, and it's
amazing how many can adapt oncethey see the reasonableness and
the rationality of what we'redoing.
And so what happens here is alot of people who are thinking
(24:33):
they've heard about Menlo, theywant to come see it.
They're not sure, of course.
Well, they'll come on a tour,because we do tours all the time
.
Now you can imagine you show upon a tour.
You don't have to tell us whyyou're here, just, you know,
just curious about men law.
But now they're looking around,they're hearing the stories,
they're seeing the people andmaybe something in their head
says maybe.
(24:53):
So they send in a resume andthen we invite them in for a
crazy interview process.
We don't ask any questionsduring interview.
We not only tore down thetraditional way of writing
software, we jettisoned theentire standard HR practice book
.
We have interview process withno questions whatsoever.
It's completely on audition.
You come in in a group withother candidates, we pair you
(25:17):
with another candidate and thenwe give you the weirdest
instructions you'll ever hear inan interview.
Your job is to help the personsitting next to you get a second
interview.
Make your pair partner lookgood, demonstrate good
kindergarten skills.
Show us you can help anotherhuman being and then we will
have more interest in you.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Wow, that is something to talk about breaking
the mold and trying something.
If you're listening to this andyou're going, ah, that can't
ever work, that can't ever workIf you haven't gone out, go out
to the YouTube.
We got the Small BusinessSafari channel out there.
Go out there.
Listen to this, watch this oneand you look behind Rich, and
you're going to see a beehive ofactivity and you're not seeing
them open around and you're notseeing people not in their seats
(25:57):
.
You see people in their seatsmaking things happen.
So obviously you have thatculture.
So once you get them hired,tell us a little bit more about
the onboarding and how much I'massuming a lot of emphasis goes
on onboarding.
Tell us a little bit about howthat works.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
You know, onboarding is literally in every minute of
every day, for the entire timeyou're here, no matter whether
it's three weeks or 13 years.
Because what happens, chris, iswe start onboarding you during
the interview process.
So this is another weird aspectof our interview process Most
(26:33):
interviews I've heard aboutpeople are trying to weed people
out.
We're trying to weed people in.
So our interview process issuccess oriented.
We expect you to succeed andwe're going to give you every
chance you possibly can.
Now still might not work.
We get probably about 50% ofpeople washing out during the
(26:54):
process.
But after that first massinterview where we paired you
with three different people, 20minutes each watching your
behaviors with other humans, thefirst day of work is actually
the second interview.
We pay you, we invite you infor a full day.
You do real work on a realclient project.
For one day give you a smallstipend.
You pair in the morning withone and you pair in the
(27:16):
afternoon with another one.
We start teaching you how tofill out a timesheet.
We teach you how to writeautomated unit tests.
We're putting your hands on thekeyboard and mouse, teaching
you through your ears and yourfingertips.
So we're already investing inyou, even though we haven't
decided to hire you, and we'regiving you a chance to ask us
questions during this time andif that one day works out, we
(27:36):
invite you in for a paidthree-week trial where the
onboarding continues.
Now you're turning intimesheets every week because
we're going to pay you.
Now you're pairing withdifferent people on different
projects.
You're learning how work isassigned.
You will present at client showand tells during this interview
process.
You will get a chance tointeract with actual customers
(27:59):
along the way.
You will do real work for threeweeks and again, if that trial
works out, you're in.
You're a full-time employeehere and you're running ahead,
but we're continuing to build onthat tradition of every week.
What does Chris need to learn?
Where is he struggling?
Who would be a good teacher forhim?
What are the things that Chrisknows that he could teach
(28:20):
somebody else?
So within a few weeks here,you're already becoming teacher
to other people.
So we're teaching you how toteach as well.
What an amazing thing.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I think you just take it away that basically what
you've done is shorten thetimeline of.
You know, there's always thatphrase that says hire slowly,
fire quickly.
But um, what I talk about,especially in my business, is
that people either select in orselect out pretty quickly.
Now, with the way we onboard,we explain our culture, we show
culture, we have them work withpeople, bring them in after two
(28:51):
weeks, talk about how they'redoing, and then we usually find
out right then whether or notthese people are going to stick.
And I have a high turnover worldthat I'm working in and a lot
of us do, whether it's therestaurant business or in the
handyman, and how to get peopleto stick.
We just actually celebrated aninth and an eighth year
anniversary at my company and II I posted that out and people
are like, are you kidding me?
Really?
(29:11):
You were able to.
I'm like, yeah, and why?
Well, the culture right, andhow we, how we do, continually
invest back in training.
It sounds like that's whatyou've done, but for any
industry, just showing you, yougot to get these folks on board
with what your culture is andthen they'll start to see where
they fit in and they always wantto be part of something bigger,
and if they feel like they'repart of it, man, they're going
to do great things for you andthemselves.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
In my old managerial life, when I hired this standard
way, when I onboarded thetypical way, this standard way,
when I onboarded the typical way, I used to say that my job was
to try and get you productivebefore I demoralized you, and it
was about a three-week tothree-month race that I
typically lost and then youeither quit on me in those early
(29:56):
days which was actually betterthan what happened with most of
them, where they quit, but theystill came to work every day.
They were just, you know, overat the water cooler pissing and
moaning with everybody else.
Why can't I hire good people?
And you know and the fact ofthe matter is they were good
people when they came in thedoor and I did it to them I had
(30:16):
a bad system for getting peopleinto the work world here, you
know, not at Menlo, of course,but in my old company, and so
for me, I just knew that thatpart had to change as well.
And I don't think you can createan intentional culture in the
way we describe it here, anintentionally joyful culture,
(30:36):
without taking a hard look atevery single step of the HR
process.
How do you recruit, how do youinterview?
How do you select?
How do you onboard, how do yougive feedback, how do you
promote, how do you give raises,how do you give bonuses?
How do you fire people?
I mean, all of those thingsbetter align exactly with the
(30:59):
cultural intention, or yourcultural intention is just a
poster on the wall.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I'm continually learning.
You actually said somethingthat I think everybody needs to
understand, and that'sespecially as an entrepreneur.
The problem usually starts withyou, and if you got to, you got
to solve you first, and ifyou're starting to blame others,
you're starting to look thewrong way and you've got to
really look at you.
And we did that at the end oflast year 22, and we're actually
overhauling our HR process aswell.
(31:25):
Just because I went.
It's just not as good.
It's good.
I especially compared to otherpeople in my business and in my
industry, when I compare howlong I've been able to keep
people.
It's good, but it's just notgreat.
And we're actually going throughthat right now.
And and we're actually goingthrough that right now and I've
uh, created an initiative whereI'm just kind of involved in it
but I'm not leading it and I'mletting the people who have to
deal with everybody, day in andday out, lead how it's going to
(31:47):
change, and I just actually getto provide some advice and
listen to what they got going on.
And so far, uh, we're one weekinto it and, uh, we've already
created something and had a guytext back saying, wow, this is
the first company I've ever beeninvolved with or worked around,
because a lot of my guys havenever worked for anybody else.
They've already worked on theirown.
That actually shows they careabout us.
(32:08):
I'm like, well, that's prettycool, and it wasn't me, it was
those guys.
So that's always a nice win.
So, uh, you know, we're coming,we're coming towards the.
We're kind of like at halftime,maybe even third quarter now
talking about this.
There's so many more things Iwant to talk about with you.
Let's talk about the scalingObviously a very successful
(32:29):
company where people actuallywant to come see you.
We've already kind of outlinedwhat it looks like and you've
got to go check this out againon the YouTube channel.
Was there ever a time where youjust went nope, this isn't
working?
I can't believe I just did this.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I'm an entrepreneur, but this isn't working.
I'm done, I'm out of here.
You know, the only time Iremember feeling that way and it
wasn't so much like I'm done,it was like I felt the whole
thing just slip out of my handswas the week of March 16th of
2020.
When we sent everybody home.
We have this special group ofpeople on our team called
(33:07):
high-tech anthropologists.
It's a whole other discussionwe could have about going out in
the world and studying thepeople you intend to serve.
So whatever software you builtwill actually work for real
people, not just the programmerswho built it.
There was no place for them togo, because they couldn't get on
airplanes.
They couldn't go visit peoplein their native environment
because those people were stuckat home as well.
(33:28):
I couldn't go out and speak,which was typically what I would
be doing is getting onairplanes once a week, going
around the world speaking aboutthis culture, and it was like
every single tool I had that wehad built so carefully over 19
years had suddenly been takenaway from me.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
So that must have been a tough day.
So your day of, I guess, thethree phases of truth First you
ignore it, then you vehementlydeny it, and then you accept it
as intuitively obvious.
And so when did you accept thisCOVID shutdown as intuitively
obvious?
And that sounds like it was onMarch 16th.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, it was that week, you know, and I remember
looking at Erica because we were, as we were, filing out of the
office that week.
I looked at her and I said whatis today?
She said it's Tuesday.
I said no, no.
What day of the week is it?
She said Tuesday.
I said no, no, no, like Monday,tuesday, wednesday, thursday,
what day it's?
She swings her head around,looks at James and he says oh,
(34:29):
don't worry, he's just panicking, he'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Oh boy, we were all there.
So you went home and senteverybody home, um, and
basically staring at zerorevenue coming in, expenses
still going out, still trying totake care of employees probably
doing a skeleton thing, how'dyou react?
Let's talk about the basicallystaring at zero revenue coming
in, expenses still going out,still trying to take care of
employees, probably doing askeleton thing How'd you react?
Let's talk about the COVIDresponse that you had.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
So, number one we gathered the team together and
we said tsunami's coming.
We don't know how big, we don'tknow how long, but we know it's
huge and it's probably not likeanything we've ever seen before
.
And and it wasn't our revenuesdropped by 60 that year.
So we said, guys, we're makingsome drastic changes.
Right now and it was a biggroup meeting we didn't think a
(35:14):
lot about it we said owners aregoing to zero.
We're cutting all of you toyour base level pay.
We're going to cut hours, whichmeans they're going to cut
their pay any sooner, evensooner.
And we said any money we sendout of you, for God's sakes, put
it in the bank, because wedon't know how long we'll be
able to do this.
And you know and that was thatwas like day one, that was that
Monday of that week that we'vegathered the whole team together
(35:37):
and told them what we weregoing to do.
And we said we're going to tryand hang on to you.
We're going to keep healthcarebenefits in place because,
goodness knows, we're going toneed those if this thing is as
bad as everybody says it is.
And so we did everything wecould and fortunately, we'd come
off our best year ever.
So we had lots of cash in thebank, so it wasn't like we had
to panic, but, boy, we had torespond quickly.
(36:00):
And then I remember, you know,as everybody had filtered out, I
was one of the last peoplestanding in the office and all I
thought at that point was youknow what this might be it?
Wow, it might have been a goodrun.
You know, 19 years in, youaccomplished what you set out to
do, and you couldn't haveanticipated this.
(36:20):
And then, shortly into thistime where we're all apart and
we're starting to get togetheron Zoom calls, like you and I
are right now, and one of oursenior high-tech anthropologists
was trying to figure out howare they going to do their work
from a Zoom call rather than bein person, and of course, my
(36:41):
brain is like that's impossible.
They have to be observingpeople in their native
environment.
And Molly leans in and she goesthis will be so exciting to
figure out how to do this.
You know remotely and I'm like,oh my God, we're going to be
okay.
The culture we built at thisvery basic level knows how to
run experiments, knows how toadapt experiments, knows how to
(37:03):
adapt.
And at that point, chris, Ijust let them leave.
I stepped back because, as Iopened my eyes to what was
actually happening, the team,without me leading, was figuring
it out, and figuring it out waybetter than I would have, and
(37:25):
so I just thought you know whatjust let them go you.
Yes, I gave little bits ofguidance here and there.
I didn't step out of leadershipentirely, but I knew I didn't
have to lead in this adaptationof what was happening in the
business.
And that's hard, I do feel like.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
I can let go at times .
People have asked me that, butwhen that happened, I felt like
I had to step in even furtherand get a hold on things even
further to figure out what wasabout to happen.
Because I did, I ignored it.
I heard from a guy on March 9ththat this is going to end all
(37:59):
his business and I asked him howhe could help, how he could
help him, and he said you can'thelp me, you're going down too.
I'm like oh man, you're likechicken little bro.
Slow down, man.
It's no big deal.
And on March 16th, which is mybirthday, I had two big things
happen to me.
One my son got accepted to alocal public school as opposed
to going off to a big highpaying private school.
So I just realized I got araise and I also realized I had
(38:21):
I had to basically not shut downmy business.
But I did.
I cut drastically, I laid peopleoff.
I said you're going to makemore money on unemployment than
you would with me.
I'm going to go ahead and layyou guys off.
I'm going to keep you guys.
I'll keep you guys as busy as Ican, because we were deemed
essential and we were able towork around houses.
And I sat there with my numberone and I said I think he goes.
(38:41):
Oh, the first one you're goingto fire is me.
And I went, oh, and so I did.
I gathered people in the officeand I'm crying he's the one who
had me on the back going.
It's okay, it's okay.
It's kind of like that episodefrom Norm from cheers, where he
was the firing guy would go inand cry for everybody.
And I'm sitting here crying infront of everybody Like I just
cause.
I felt I felt like I couldwrite it back down.
(39:02):
I had ridden my company back, Ihad ridden my company up, I
could ride it back down to meand a handful of people.
But how long?
How long was this going to last?
And nobody had that answer.
You're just staring at option Ain the face and it was hard to
pivot and go for option B and C.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
It sounds like your employees helped you get that
pivot in your head and make ithappen.
And my contribution during thattime was once once I regulated
my own emotions, which didn'ttake too long.
Um, I said, guys, we are goingto thrive again and here's the
way we're going to get there.
We're going to go through afive-step process.
First, we're going to survive,and that's what we're doing
right now.
We're doing everything we canjust to guarantee simple
survival and we are going to tryand keep you all together as
(39:50):
long as we possibly can.
Number two we're going to haveto adapt.
I'm watching you do it already.
We're going to have to continueto do that.
Then, three at a certain pointwe have to get to a point where
we can convince ourselves we cansustain whatever level of
business we're doing, because wedon't know how long this storm
(40:11):
is going to last.
And I actually use the metaphorof we got tossed out of our
little good ship Menlo and adesert island, and it was kind
of like Swiss family Robinson.
We're figuring things out again, right, and I said but number
four is going to be the mostimportant part, and I actually
learned this from PatrickLencioni, the business book
author.
He had a conference at thistime and I just loved what he
said.
He said look, in times likethis, yes, there's going to be a
(40:34):
lot of companies that die Justis but those that survive face a
fundamental leadership choice.
You can choose to emergestronger and if you don't, you
will emerge weaker.
And when we get back tothriving again, the strongest
companies will take off.
And I told the team that's whatwe're going to do.
(40:54):
I don't know how we're going todo it, but we are going to
emerge stronger from this andwhen we do these four things
over and over again, enough wewill get back to thriving again.
And I'm delighted to say, chris, we just finished 2022, our
best year ever.
We are absolutely awesomeamazing about the biggest checks
(41:16):
we've ever given out in ourhistory.
Uh, and the team, the team didit.
They, they, literally.
We made big changes to emergestronger and we will never look
back.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah, I think, um, I've been on a number of
podcasts as well.
People ask me about, uh, myexperience and I was in home
services and you know one thingthat happened was the home
services space was a great spaceto be in.
I, uh I remember saying afterwe got through that first period
uh of uh despair for me andthen going I'm going to ride
this ship back down.
I just the mental image of SlimPickens going down and Dr
(41:50):
Strangelove going down with thebig bomb.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I think I said it was one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Well, that that's how I was feeling on March 16th, as
I went back and had to do whatI did, but I started to see it.
You know, at the time we talkedabout it here in Georgia.
I figured I had a two monthdown, but by Memorial day I was
hoping, of course.
What do we all know at thattime?
You know we I was watching the.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Eight weeks, man.
I was going to last eight weeks.
That was my mindset.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, so.
And so we were good.
And our governor here inGeorgia opened up and said far
be it for me to call anybodyessential.
As long as you follow theseguidelines, we'll start opening
up.
And he said that on MemorialDay, right before the week
before Memorial Day.
And sure enough, our phonesstarted ringing.
And I remember getting on apodcast in August, going for the
first time ever.
I felt like I was in the rightspot, I was in the right
(42:39):
business.
And then what hits me?
I can't find people to work.
And then what hits me again, oh, there's that supply chain
thing.
So now I can't put materials inpeople's houses and I'm like
you know what, as anentrepreneur and a business
owner, you're always solvingproblems.
Your job is to be proactive andtrying to see which ones are
coming, but sometimes you got tobe reactive and get after it.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
It certainly has been a few years of one thing after
another, after another.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah, yeah, you know that's.
It's funny because you know wegrew up in probably the same
time periods where you wouldhear from grandmas and grandpas
about the great depression andyou'd hear from your parents
about going through the missilecrisis or the Vietnam war or
whatever.
And you look at now what ourkids and we will say we went
through and you know I'm I'mthinking if I can live long
enough, I'm going to tell peoplejust how bad it was, because
(43:28):
you've seen the dot-com crash,you've seen the great recession
in 2008, then you've seen thepandemic, then everything that's
fallen out from there, and thenand then again, a stupid war in
europe the stupidest thing ever.
But uh, but.
So you know we're coming to theend.
We got just a few more minutesleft.
So one of the things youmentioned before is that you're
out there speaking and doingthat, and so obviously you've
(43:50):
had enough time to and peopletalk about having that financial
freedom, or you know what'syour exit strategy Brace.
Something that a lot of peopleare interested in is that you're
out there speaking and talkingabout different things.
You're talking about yourbusiness.
You're actually not working inthe business.
You're out there doing this.
(44:11):
When did you start to make thatpivot.
And how do you split your timenow a week.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, you know I'm still CEO of the company and
they still need me.
I think Although you knowthere'll be a line of people
outside the door waiting for meto make 14 decisions because the
team is very, very capablewithout me.
But early on in the history ofthe business, way back in 2001,
(44:38):
they were already the team wassaying Rich, we need a public
face for the company.
Get out there, meet people.
I started doing talks back then.
We had decided we were going toopen our doors and share what we
learned with the world, so wewere doing classes and tours
even back in our earliest days,and so I ended up finding that
(44:59):
there was one part of thebusiness that I just absolutely
loved to do was to go out and dopublic speaking about what we
do, why we're doing it, whatwe're trying to accomplish, what
is the culture that we'rebuilding to do this leading
tours and writing and so youknow that's largely my
contribution.
(45:19):
Now, of course, that naturallyleads to the things you might
expect a CEO like me to beinvolved in in a company our
size, where I'm building newrelationships with people who
want to do business with us, butmy tip of the spear keeps
getting shorter and shorter,where I could just so
effortlessly hand it off to therest of the team and go out and
(45:41):
build new relationships.
So I would say the majority ofmy time is spent out there in
the world building newrelationships, speaking about
what we do and writing.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
That's genius marketing and I'm a big
marketing fan.
I love this stuff.
I mean, that is incredible.
You talk about being arelatively low cost advertising
source.
It's your time and you'regetting to do something you love
too.
And people ask me you know, Iget out and do a lot of
networking.
That's how I was able to buildmy business early.
And people say how can you dothat?
I say you know I get moreenergy going to those meetings
(46:15):
than I do sitting there inQuickBooks trying to figure out
why the books aren't justexactly right, and that really
just drains the-.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I had Emily over there looking at quick books and
she'll, you know, she'll tellme if something's going wrong I
need to take a look at.
But um, you know, chris, I willhear some broad advice to to
anybody, no matter where theyare in their business, but
especially the ones that arejust starting out.
Uh, when we had our firstoffice in downtown Ann Arbor, um
, it was right next door to acoffee shop.
(46:42):
We were at, we were in astorefront, a tiny little
storefront.
We were right next door to acoffee shop.
We were in a storefront, a tinylittle storefront.
We were right next door to acoffee shop.
So every morning I'd get intothe office, I'd go next door to
the coffee shop get my cup ofcoffee, and invariably because
Ann Arbor is a pretty cool town.
It's a small town but a lot offamous people walk through here.
In fact, the vice president ofthe United States was literally
(47:08):
about a block away from ouroffice just about a half an hour
ago.
I would run into these reallyinteresting people who could
potentially be future customers.
And then one day it dawned onme Rich, stop carrying your
coffee back to the office, justbring your laptop to the coffee
shop and hang out in the coffeeshop while you check your
morning email, and it wasremarkable, all of a sudden, all
these people who had come in.
(47:28):
You see somebody the first time.
You greet them, you say hello.
They're like oh, aren't yourunning the company next door?
And then, next time you see themit's a little friendlier and by
the third or fourth time you'relong lost friends.
At that point You're askingabout family members, about
vacation plans and you'rebuilding relationships.
And I would say that's probablya big mistake a lot of
companies make is everybody'sfocused on landing the next
(47:52):
piece of business, everybody'sfocusing on the inside of the
company.
But there is a great benefit togetting out in the community,
building those relationships,even if you don't know where
they're going to go, becausethey end up paying off in really
, really weird ways later on,with somebody saying, yeah, I
was at this party and they weretalking about this problem and I
said, oh, I know a guy right,and you never know where those
(48:14):
things come from.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
You're exactly right.
I can't.
I can't stress that enough.
That's great advice.
Everybody take that in.
That's a gold nugget droppinghard, Loving that one.
That's awesome, Rich.
Thank you so much for your timetoday.
How can people find you?
We're going to put all theinformation in the show notes,
but just go ahead and telleverybody how we can find you.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I am really, really good at keeping up on LinkedIn.
It took me a while to get there, but I am all caught up on my
networking requests and I'm allcaught up on my messages there.
So if you want to reach me,just look for Richard Sheridan
at menloinnovationscom onLinkedIn.
Reference this podcast becauseI don't accept every networking
(48:54):
request I get, but if somebody'sout there and says, hey, I
heard you on Chris's show, I'dreally love to connect with you.
I've got a couple of questionsfrom what you guys talked about.
I'm always open to doing thatAwesome.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thank you again.
We're going to go ahead and putthe books in there.
You can always get Rich to comespeak I know he's out there
doing that and to network, butgo check these guys out.
I mean, we didn't even get thechance to talk about where Menlo
came from and he the first timeI met him.
I'm like I know exactly We'vegot three more podcasts coming,
Chris, oh my gosh, you know what, be careful, I might take you
(49:27):
up on that and bring you backeventually, because I'd love to
have you talk some more.
But before we leave, I've justgot to ask you my favorite three
questions.
I ask everybody when they comeon, because I love these topics.
I love hearing the answers andI've had some great ones.
But the first thing is what isthe favorite feature of your
house?
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Favorite feature of your house, Favorite feature of
my house.
We built this delightful littleupstairs den.
After we bought the house weactually went up and it's got
this great gas log fireplace andthe TV that we watch the
football games on and it is justso cozy up there.
It is absolutely my favoritething inside the house and then
(50:07):
outside I have this nice littlewater feature in the backyard.
I call it the Accurate Gardenbecause it was one of our
customers' successes thatallowed me to do this wonderful
little garden outside and it'sjust heavenly out there.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
You know what?
That's a great idea.
I think next time I get a bigsuccess.
I might name part of my house afeature based on the customer
that we had.
That's awesome.
Number two when you're outthere and you're not working in
your business but you're gettingserved by others, what is a
customer service pet peeve ofyours?
Speaker 1 (50:37):
You know, I think my biggest pet peeve is when they
make a promise to you that theyknow that it can't keep and they
never come back and apologize.
They always try and equivocateum and uh.
You know, I I had that happenwith one guy who's just trying
to service my bike and they raninto all the supply chain
problems and and they kept mybike for like six months.
(51:00):
I lost the whole bike ridingseason.
I'm like, guys, just be honestabout it.
You know, and the thing wasthey had set up an appointment
for me to come in and then youknow I missed it because they
never sent me a notificationabout it.
And you know, and they're like,oh well, we can't go through,
we can't let every customer knowwhen your appointments are, and
(51:23):
I'm like come on.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, exactly right, you know, especially at a home
services business, that I'm inyou don't want to make that call
that, hey, I can't get your tubfiller.
And that happened to us.
We had a $60,000 bathroom allbut finished except for one tub
filler, and I got an email froma customer saying you know, I'd
really like to pay you guys,because I said how come we
(51:46):
aren't getting paid, but youguys haven't finished.
So I got my project manager.
I was like what's going on?
He said well, we're all done.
But I said no, no, you're notdone.
And I said did you tell himwhat's going on?
Well, no, well, they were goingto yell at me.
I'm like no, they wouldn't haveyelled at you if you just would
have said look, the tub filleris coming from overseas and we
can't get it because it's stuckin a shipping container and I
(52:09):
don't know anything.
But I will let you know and allyou do is just keep telling
them every week.
Still don't know, still don'tknow.
Hopefully you're enjoying theshower.
Just communicate with me,especially if it's bad news.
It doesn't happen so bad if youcome clean quick, all right.
The third thing give us a diynightmare story.
I love open houses and I lovefire, we love water, we love
(52:30):
really bad things hey, um gosh,uh, diy nightmare story.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
Um, oh gosh.
I've done so much on my house,on my daughter's house is plural
, all three of them, in fact.
I'm helping my daughter.
I'll tell you the one DIY storythat has been going on for six
months now.
My daughter had, in her lovelyhome, had a drain line break on
(53:00):
her dishwasher and it floodedunderneath all of the wood, the
laminate wood floors, anddestroyed them all, went into
the house to the other and we'vebeen working six months.
These hands are callous.
My computer can't even read myfingerprint anymore.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
That's a good one.
It's been.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
There's a lot of professionals that are helping
too, but there's a lot of stuffI'm doing along the way with her
and of course it's an old house.
None of the walls are squareand none of the none of the
lines are straight and all thatkind of stuff.
But we're creating a beautifulhome.
But oh my gosh, what a ton ofwork it is.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Six months.
Yep, that would be one Yep.
That's a great story.
Well, rich, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
Hopefully you had some fun, andeverybody out there adventure
team keep.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
Hopefully you had some fun, andeverybody out there adventure
team, keep going up thatmountaintop of success.
You define what it looks like,but you got to develop those
habits.
Keep learning from listening tothis podcast, keep learning
from listening to other peopleand get out there and make it
happen each and every day.
Let's go solve some problems.
(53:57):
We're out of here.
And so what happens here is a lot of people who are
thinking they've heard aboutMenlo, they want to come see it.
They're not sure, of course.
Well, they'll come on a tour,because we do tours all the time
.
Now you can imagine you show upon a tour you don't have to
tell us why you're here, justcurious about Menlo.
But now they're looking around,they're hearing the stories,
(00:22):
they're seeing the people andmaybe something in their head
says maybe.
So they send in a resume.
Then we invite them in for acrazy interview process.
We don't ask any questionsduring interview.
We not only tore down thetraditional way of writing
software, we jettisoned theentire standard HR practice book
.
We have interview process withno questions whatsoever.
(00:43):
It's completely on audition.
You come in in a group withother candidates, we pair you
with another candidate and thenwe give you the weirdest
instructions you'll ever hear inan interview.
Your job is to help the personsitting next to you get a second
interview.
Make your pair partner lookgood, demonstrate good
kindergarten skills.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Show us you can help another human being and then we
will have more interest in you.
Welcome to the Small BusinessSafari where I help guide you to
avoid those traps, pitfalls anddangers that lurk when
navigating the wild world ofsmall business ownership.
I'll share those gold nuggetsof information and invite guests
to help accelerate your ascentto that mountaintop of success.
(01:24):
It's a jungle out there and Iwant to help you traverse
through the levels of owningyour own business that can get
you bogged down and distract youfrom hitting your own personal
and professional goals.
So strap in Adventure Team andlet's take a ride through the
safari and get you to themountaintop.
Welcome back, adventure Team,to the Small Business Safari.
(01:50):
Chris is going solo todaybecause Alan's out there closing
deals, making business happen,doing what everybody should be
doing anyway, and that's makingmoney doing this thing that he
loves to do.
He loves being here, but thisis, of course, his passion
project and my lead project.
But today we have an excitingguest on, somebody who I feel is
a kindred spirit.
We have Rich Sheridan fromMenlo Innovations on.
(02:11):
We actually come from the samegreat state of Michigan, which
is why I wish Alan could be hereso we could talk about how
great Michigan is compared toOregon, but he's going to have
to miss out on that.
But, rich, thanks for joiningus today.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Great to be here, chris.
I think we figured out when wetalked the first time.
You and I grew up about fourmiles away from one another,
because I was in ClintonTownship, you were in Harrison
Township.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
That's right Pretty close by and look at this.
And then, when we started totalk about parallels in our
business world and our journeysthrough corporate America, I was
like holy crap, it is almostidentical to me, just in a
completely different industry.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I lived different lives.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, so Rich, you're author of two books.
We'll go ahead and talk aboutthose books a little bit later,
but go out there and take a lookat that.
But why don't you just give useverybody just the thumbnail
version of kind of who you are,where the hell you came from and
where you are today?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, chris, I am the CEO, co-founder, chief
storyteller here at MenloInnovations.
I'll probably get a chance toshare some stories.
Menlo Innovations itself justturned 21 years old this past
summer and we are a softwaredesign and development firm that
is really well known for theculture we've built here, and
(03:29):
people come from all over theworld just to see how we do what
we do, because it's sodifferent.
We typically non-pandemic years, of course have gotten between
3,000 and 4,000 visitors a yearto travel from all over the
planet just to spend a day to aweek with.
We have a group from GeneralMotors here for two days
studying us, learning from usand so on.
But our primary business, whatwe do the people in the room
(03:52):
behind me there are designingand developing custom software
on behalf of our businessclients.
It is the approach that we use.
That's so different.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
So your approach is so different and let's go jump
into that Just what makes youguys so unique?
Because, if you're listeningand again, we've been a very
home services focused podcastbut, as you know, we've had a
lot of different industries onbecause we can always learn from
others.
But we're talking aboutprogramming and if you know
anything about computerprogrammers, those guys are the
epitome of lone wolves.
They want to sit there in frontof their computer, interface
(04:24):
with that computer and pleasedon't make me interface with too
many humans.
That's the typical programmerthat's out there, but you guys
have come up with a differentmodel.
Can you explain a little bitmore about how you do it?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
We have.
You know, chris, just to givean ounce more of my background
because the rest of the storywill make a little bit more
sense.
I grew up as a programmer.
I actually started programmingat my high school back in 1971
and launched a career aftergoing to the University of
(04:56):
Michigan and, quite frankly, Ithink I was pretty good at it.
But the results me, or theteams I was part of, or the
teams later as I rose themanagerial ladders the results
they were producing were justterrible and I thought, man,
maybe I'm not as good at this asI thought I was.
Maybe I have to get out and godo home services versus
programming.
(05:16):
I don't know.
But at that moment I decidedyou know what?
I think there's a better way todo this than my industry has
typically done it.
And you're absolutely right.
Our industry is just largelycomprised of these lone wolf
programmers, largely introverts.
(05:36):
No surprise there, stuck insensory deprivation chambers,
you know cubicles, headphones on, coming in at weird hours that
don't overlap with other humanbeings, and everybody later
laments that they lackinterpersonal skills.
Shockingly, when would theyhave a chance to practice such
things?
But the real challenge is evenfor the people who do the work
(06:00):
if you don't end up delightingthe people you intended to serve
, which is our goal.
It is a very hollow career.
You end up doing work, you getpaid for it, that's okay, but
there is no sense ofaccomplishment of purpose,
there's no sense of servingothers, and that's really what
(06:21):
was driving me is look, I wantto delight the people who one
day use the work of our hearts,our hands and our minds.
And in order to do that, we hadto change everything about the
way software is designed anddeveloped.
So, as opposed to a libraryquiet space, we have a noisy big
room, and we've been in personin the noise for we'll call it
19 and a half of our 21 years.
We had a little interruptionthrough COVID, of course, and
(06:43):
we're starting to.
You know, we're pretty much 80%back into the office now.
All of our programmers work twopeople, one computer.
They share a keyboard and amouse.
All day long, every single day.
Those pairs are workingtogether to solve a problem and
we switch those pairs every fiveworking days so that you're
(07:05):
getting a chance to actuallywork through things with another
human being who thinksdifferently than you do.
You have to talk about thosethings with one another and you
have to learn to listen to theother person.
And then, of course, five dayslater, new pair partner, you
might be continuing the work youdid the previous five days that
you did with your other pairpartner, and now you have to
(07:27):
explain to this new person whatyou and your previous pair
partner were working on.
And in doing that explanationyou're getting smarter about
what you just built.
And so by doing this sort ofbusiness corporate square dance
with our team every single week,you end up with teamwork,
collaboration, trust,communication and an avoidance
(07:50):
of one of the biggest problemsin the software industry, this
lone wolf tower of knowledgeproblem, where there's only one
person in your team that knowsanything about a particular
system and nobody else knowswhat they know, and that person
feels trapped or the companyfeels held hostage by that
person, and it's not a pleasantsituation for either of them and
(08:11):
those hero-based systems.
The only way to scale them isto scale the heroes.
The only way to scale heroes isovertime, and the trouble with
software is tired people makebad software and we don't want
to make bad software.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
There are so many things there that I just
obviously you just resonatedwith so many vibes that I have
going.
I just got to go back to thebeginning.
So you started in 1971programming.
So that was punch cards.
Yeah, Actually it was teletypes.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
teletypes paper tape dial up modems to a central
computer at the McCormick schooldistrict Nice.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, so there you go .
Now you talk about.
That's one I just want to gothrough.
You know they talk aboutMoore's law of scaling computing
.
You talk about where we aretoday and you want to talk about
what you've seen.
You have definitely seen thatcurve and the hockey stick.
That is that Moore's law, whichis the power computing power
doubles every year.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I'm pretty sure this little device in my pocket has
more computing power than theentire world had in 1971.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Exactly, I love that.
So let's keep going down thatjourney of that storytelling of
what you did.
So you did.
What typically we all do inevery industry is we follow with
a model that has been put forthbefore us, and in your case it
was sit there and interface withthat computer, because I do not
want to interface with humans.
And I got to do this and youstarted to realize that maybe
(09:33):
those results weren't there.
And I know you had that ahamoment when you were the manager
that you didn't want to be andyou told me that offline before
we started.
And that's what started thisculture.
And that's why we'll jump backto that story in a sec, because
I know everybody is dying tohear a number of these things,
but let's just take this out forjust a minute.
So he just said he puts twopeople on one computer and he
(09:55):
just makes two people worktogether to do on one computer.
Now you know why people arecoming to see this, because if
you're listening to this podcast, you're probably sitting there
going.
How does that work?
Because there's only onekeyboard.
That can't possibly be.
And now you know why GeneralMotors is sitting in your office
today going.
There's no way this ishappening.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
So they're like, I can't believe it.
I hear you, Rich, I hear thestory man, but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And Chris, you can imagine instinctively.
Everybody looks at it and goesbut wait, isn't this cutting
productivity in half?
Couldn't you take those twopeople, put them on separate
computers and have them typingaway by themselves?
And of course you'd be back tothe same way of doing things
that everybody else does.
And the challenge isprogramming.
(10:42):
And there's a lot of otherindustries that could take
lessons from this, but I applyit to the programming industry.
Programming was never abouttyping speed.
It was always about how fastcan you solve a problem well,
and two heads are always betterthan one at solving difficult
problems.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I'm part of a mastermind group and one of the
things we talk about as we issueprocesses what is the right
question.
And you just hit on that.
What is the right question?
The question is what's thequickest way to solve a problem?
Not the quickest way to typeout programming code, because
you don't get paid by the amount.
You get paid by the solutionyou provide.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah, and does it work?
Is it robust?
Let's just reflect.
This will put a little bit of atimestamp on our podcast today,
but just yesterday the entireflight system of the United
States was shut down for hoursbecause of a computer error.
It's a big deal when computersdon't work these days.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's a big deal when computers don't work these days.
You hit on that and you'reright to put a pin on this one.
So timeline it's beginning ofJanuary 23 when you listen to
this, and what happened was thesafety system in the FAA went
down because, as the way I heardit, one corrupted file and it
took them a long time to reboot.
Identify and then re-put theplanes back in the air, and that
(12:04):
took them out of business.
Identify and then re-put theplanes back in the air, and that
took them out of business.
I've heard anywhere that itcould take between 36 and 48
hours just to recover from thisand get all the planes back in a
program and a system that getsback to the flow we expect, and
think about the disruption thatjust happened.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Oh, you know, there's people who missed family events
or weddings or whatever.
You know I mean it'scatastrophic.
And you know, look, when Istarted programming computers in
1971, it wouldn't have beenthat big a deal if the computer
didn't work right for a day ortwo.
Now our very lives depend onthose computers working.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, you're right, that's an astounding, just to
drink that in for a minute.
You also said something.
You alluded to it.
It's an astounding, just todrink that in for a minute.
You also said something.
You alluded to it.
It's one of my favorite phrases.
I use it in my own company and,yeah, I found it from.
St Francis of Assisi back in the1500s said if you work with
your hands, you're a laborer.
If you work with your head inyour hands, you're a carpenter.
But if you work with your heart, your head in your hands,
(13:02):
you're an artist.
And my challenge to my guysevery day is go out there and be
an artist today, because wework in people's homes and can
produce magical andextraordinary things.
If we think like an artist andyou actually said that the same
way is that you're challengingyour programmers not to sit
there and work in a silo andcreate a code, but go out there
and work with your heart, yourhead and your hands and you can
produce something that isextraordinary that most people
(13:25):
would probably say, oh my gosh,that's voodoo.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, absolutely, and we are magicians in our industry
.
The people who don't know whatwe know marvel at what we can
accomplish.
Unfortunately, most of what weaccomplish sucks, and we didn't
want to do that.
We wanted our team to be proudof what they created.
Deming said it best once upon atime.
He said all anyone asks for isa chance to work with pride, to
(13:51):
feel good about the labor youdid today, to feel like you made
a difference, to feel like youhad a chance to do high quality
work to delight the people youintended to serve.
Everything that we do is laserbeam focused on this really
funny word in business.
We call it joy, and that becamethe subject of two of my books.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I love that and I'm glad you brought up Deming,
because I was going to say Iwonder how he would react to the
fact that you said you have twoguys working on one computer,
because I think a lot of thepremise around Deming was also
efficiencies.
But I think you'd have to sitthere and really have to argue
with them and show, hey look,I'm solving a problem faster and
my team is actually reactingand getting more joy out of what
(14:37):
they're doing.
So I would love that debate.
I would love to hear thatdebate.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Oh, obviously I never had the chance to meet Deming.
That would have been delightfulbecause in fact he passed away
before our company was born.
I've had a lot of Demingexperiences, devotees, even
people who work directly withthem.
Come and study us and I willsay I think we would have had a
(15:04):
great discussion.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah, I love that one because it's just obviously two
sides of the same coin andyou'll find out that both are
probably right.
But in this case, obviouslyit's winning because you have
developed a culture, and that'salso the thing I really want to
talk about for a minute.
The culture that you havecreated is against the culture
of almost every otherprogramming company out there
(15:27):
and the way that they'redeveloped and done, and you
started with that when you firstset out into your business and
doing this when you started dayone.
Was this the culture that youhad in your head then, or is
this something that has evolvedover time?
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, certainly most of it was in place on day one.
So if you had seen Menlo on thevery first day, you would still
see most of the elements onthat first day here present
today.
Obviously, we've continued toevolve and adapt and things like
that as we grew, that sort ofthing.
(16:01):
But it was mainly, chris,because I had had a delightful
opportunity, that I didn't thinkof it as this when it was
happening, but two years beforethat I was a VP at a tired old
public company and I reinventedthat company from my VP of R&D
position into something thatlooks like Menlo does today.
(16:23):
I got two years to run thatexperiment inside of that tired
old public company and then in2001,.
Boom, the internet bubble burst.
All of us were laid off andwhile I lost job, title,
authority, paycheck, stockoptions, all went to zero.
They couldn't take away what Ihad learned in those two years
with my co-founder Jamescouldn't take away what I had
learned in those two years withmy co-founder James, who was a
(16:44):
consultant I'd brought in tohelp me with that transformation
.
And so we started on day onewith almost everything in place
already, because we'd had twoyears to experiment with these
practices at my old company.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I think that's a big gold nugget for everybody to
hear on this one is that he wasso in my case, I jumped
completely out of industry andstarted a handyman company with
no experience running a handymanor remodeling company at all.
But you had two years todevelop your processes and to
see some things that worked, andyou got to do it in a safe
environment that didn't cost youthousands or tens of thousands
(17:20):
or, in my case, a lot ofthousands of dollars, making
mistakes.
You get to do it before and Ithink that's a big gold nugget.
If you haven't made that leap,start it now.
I always talk about businessplan, business plan, business
plan.
But in this case, how aboutpractice?
How about working in that world, putting yourself in it,
because you get to do it forfree and you actually might be
getting paid for it at the sametime.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Well and honestly, Chris, I wasn't prototyping.
A business I was imaginingstarted, I was trying to do the
thing I thought would work andit did.
It worked remarkably well.
It was a tremendoustransformation of that old
company.
And then the company was takenaway from me and you know, it's
just one of those one doorcloses, the other door opens
(18:02):
moments, and I realized, wait aminute, they can't take away
what I had learned.
That was profound.
So I like to say sometimes Ibuilt a really great engine room
.
Just the first time I built itwas inside the Titanic.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's a great line.
The first time I built myengine was in the Titanic.
That's a great line.
The first time I built myengine was in the Titanic, but
you got the opportunity to gobuild it again and you hit on a
thing that I hear the same it'sa common theme in a lot of our
podcasts is that a lot ofentrepreneurs a door closes, you
get laid off of a job or youfailed at that one.
(18:39):
But if you're always looking forthat opportunity, guess what's
going to find you thatopportunity?
And if you're open for it andyou're ready to receive it, it's
good.
And whether it's a good mentorof yours or something like that,
I don't think a lot of peoplehave ever set out from the time
they were born saying this iswhere I'm going to be at age X
through an entrepreneurialventure, because we all go all
over the board, spaghettieverywhere rolling through
(19:01):
things.
So I love how you were able tograsp that opportunity.
Did that opportunity idea hityou day one, or was there some?
Oh my gosh, what just happenedto me.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Actually, the story will get even stranger now.
I had come together with JamesGoebel, who was a consultant
when I was a VP, and it was loveat first sight.
At that point, james had nevermet anyone like me who was
willing to try crazy newexperiments.
Now the reason I was willing totry some of these crazy new
(19:36):
experiments was becauseeverything else was working so
poorly and I could see thesensibility of some of the
things he was suggesting to me.
So he pulled me aside one dayand he said you don't understand
how this consulting thing works.
I said what do you mean?
He says you have to say no atleast once, or you'll be able to
hold me accountable for theresults we get out of this
(19:57):
experiment.
And I said, james, I'm notinterested in holding you
accountable, I want to succeed.
And he looked at me I've nevermet a client like you.
And I said, well, I've nevermet a consultant like you.
And so we started workingtogether, just like the first
pair almost, and I think we bleweach other away.
(20:17):
You know in terms of just whatwe accomplished, how far we went
, how fast we got there.
It was incredible.
And then my company was boughtand they kicked all the
consultants out, including James, and I was so frustrated.
This was, you know, he was mypartner in making all this stuff
happen.
And now he's gone and I can'thire him because our business
(20:40):
contract with his firm preventedit and he couldn't come work
for me because his consultingcontract with his company
prevented it, and so we werelocked out from each other and
this became a big problem for meand I started noodling on how
will I ever work with Jamesagain?
How will I ever work with Jamesagain?
And then one night I sat boltright up in bed and I said to my
(21:04):
wife I said I've got it.
And she's like what, what areyou talking about?
I said I know how I'll workwith James again.
She says what do you mean?
I said well, I can't hire him,but I can quit, start my own
company.
He and I will be co-founders.
We can do everything we'redoing at Interface Systems in a
new company.
And she looked at me becauselet me tell you, chris, that was
(21:25):
an insane idea.
I was this big deal six-figureVP with stock options galore
that were going through the roof.
There was no way she kind oflooked at me like whatever go
back to sleep.
And then, of course, six monthslater, when everything
collapsed, looked at me likewhatever, go back to sleep.
And then, of course, six monthslater, when everything
collapsed, I went home and toldmy wife I'd lost my job, and she
(21:47):
looked at me with tears in hereyes.
She said you're unemployed.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
And I said no, honey, I'm an entrepreneur.
Now I'm going to use that onetoo.
Are you unemployed?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
No, I'm an entrepreneur, especially those
first couple years for me,because it was now in the spirit
of your book, uh, on the wild,uh, I will say that I and now I
am officially unemployablebecause I've been out in the
wild way too long I just metwith a guy earlier this week who
had come from corporate america.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Now he's a consultant a typical story for many people
who want to get into theentrepreneurial world and he
said you know, I really enjoythe corporate world.
I said that's funny.
I said I probably can't haveyou on my podcast because I said
I sit there and make fun of itall the time and, yes, I am
completely unemployable at thispoint.
So either I make this a successor I got to go find another one
.
So we got to keep on rolling.
(22:38):
It's true.
It's true, so you jumped in.
I want to come back a littlebit to the culture Again.
When you think about the wolvesthat you are hiring and I talk
about my lone wolves can Iinvite them into a wolf pack
here at my company?
Because they got to have thatmentality.
They're skilled trades, they'regoing to go out there.
They got to be an artist everyday, but they still like to take
care of all that great stuffthat they're doing by the way
(23:01):
there's two mucking behind meright there.
Oh, there he went.
Hey, you guys are back together, the band is back.
I love it, so all right.
So we'll have to say hi toJames.
So shout out, love that one.
So when you go to hire thesepeople into this culture and
you're hiring them are youfinding some people are just
opting out or not reallybelieving you have that culture
and that they're going to get todo the thing they were supposed
(23:21):
to be doing, that they weretrained to do, which is sit in
their silo and work at twoo'clock in the morning?
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, safe to say, Chris, no one in my industry I
mean, it's safe enough to say noone there might be some tiny,
tiny little percentage isprepared for what we're going
the way we're going to work here, is prepared for what we're
going the way we're going towork here.
You know they've all gone thetraditional route, the
traditional education route, thetraditional work route, and all
(23:48):
of a sudden they encounter usand look, I think anytime you
decide to create an intentionalculture like we have, and you
can describe it as clearly as wecan and show it as clearly as
we can um, there's going to be.
People are like there's no wayI could work like that.
There's no way that would workfor me.
(24:08):
That's okay, we're not tryingto solve people.
Um, what we are is we are veryclear and we set what we believe
are very reasonable, rationalexpectations for, and it's
amazing how many can adapt oncethey see the reasonableness and
the rationality of what we'redoing.
And so what happens here is alot of people who are thinking
(24:33):
they've heard about Menlo, theywant to come see it.
They're not sure, of course.
Well, they'll come on a tour,because we do tours all the time
.
Now you can imagine you show upon a tour.
You don't have to tell us whyyou're here, just, you know,
just curious about men law.
But now they're looking around,they're hearing the stories,
they're seeing the people andmaybe something in their head
says maybe.
(24:53):
So they send in a resume andthen we invite them in for a
crazy interview process.
We don't ask any questionsduring interview.
We not only tore down thetraditional way of writing
software, we jettisoned theentire standard HR practice book
.
We have interview process withno questions whatsoever.
It's completely on audition.
You come in in a group withother candidates, we pair you
(25:17):
with another candidate and thenwe give you the weirdest
instructions you'll ever hear inan interview.
Your job is to help the personsitting next to you get a second
interview.
Make your pair partner lookgood, demonstrate good
kindergarten skills.
Show us you can help anotherhuman being and then we will
have more interest in you.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Wow, that is something to talk about breaking
the mold and trying something.
If you're listening to this andyou're going, ah, that can't
ever work, that can't ever workIf you haven't gone out, go out
to the YouTube.
We got the Small BusinessSafari channel out there.
Go out there.
Listen to this, watch this oneand you look behind Rich, and
you're going to see a beehive ofactivity and you're not seeing
them open around and you're notseeing people not in their seats
(25:57):
.
You see people in their seatsmaking things happen.
So obviously you have thatculture.
So once you get them hired,tell us a little bit more about
the onboarding and how much I'massuming a lot of emphasis goes
on onboarding.
Tell us a little bit about howthat works.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
You know, onboarding is literally in every minute of
every day, for the entire timeyou're here, no matter whether
it's three weeks or 13 years.
Because what happens, chris, iswe start onboarding you during
the interview process.
So this is another weird aspectof our interview process Most
(26:33):
interviews I've heard aboutpeople are trying to weed people
out.
We're trying to weed people in.
So our interview process issuccess oriented.
We expect you to succeed andwe're going to give you every
chance you possibly can.
Now still might not work.
We get probably about 50% ofpeople washing out during the
(26:54):
process.
But after that first massinterview where we paired you
with three different people, 20minutes each watching your
behaviors with other humans, thefirst day of work is actually
the second interview.
We pay you, we invite you infor a full day.
You do real work on a realclient project.
For one day give you a smallstipend.
You pair in the morning withone and you pair in the
(27:16):
afternoon with another one.
We start teaching you how tofill out a timesheet.
We teach you how to writeautomated unit tests.
We're putting your hands on thekeyboard and mouse, teaching
you through your ears and yourfingertips.
So we're already investing inyou, even though we haven't
decided to hire you, and we'regiving you a chance to ask us
questions during this time andif that one day works out, we
(27:36):
invite you in for a paidthree-week trial where the
onboarding continues.
Now you're turning intimesheets every week because
we're going to pay you.
Now you're pairing withdifferent people on different
projects.
You're learning how work isassigned.
You will present at client showand tells during this interview
process.
You will get a chance tointeract with actual customers
(27:59):
along the way.
You will do real work for threeweeks and again, if that trial
works out, you're in.
You're a full-time employeehere and you're running ahead,
but we're continuing to build onthat tradition of every week.
What does Chris need to learn?
Where is he struggling?
Who would be a good teacher forhim?
What are the things that Chrisknows that he could teach
(28:20):
somebody else?
So within a few weeks here,you're already becoming teacher
to other people.
So we're teaching you how toteach as well.
What an amazing thing.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
I think you just take it away that basically what
you've done is shorten thetimeline of.
You know, there's always thatphrase that says hire slowly,
fire quickly.
But um, what I talk about,especially in my business, is
that people either select in orselect out pretty quickly.
Now, with the way we onboard,we explain our culture, we show
culture, we have them work withpeople, bring them in after two
(28:51):
weeks, talk about how they'redoing, and then we usually find
out right then whether or notthese people are going to stick.
And I have a high turnover worldthat I'm working in and a lot
of us do, whether it's therestaurant business or in the
handyman, and how to get peopleto stick.
We just actually celebrated aninth and an eighth year
anniversary at my company and II I posted that out and people
are like, are you kidding me?
Really?
(29:11):
You were able to.
I'm like, yeah, and why?
Well, the culture right, andhow we, how we do, continually
invest back in training.
It sounds like that's whatyou've done, but for any
industry, just showing you, yougot to get these folks on board
with what your culture is andthen they'll start to see where
they fit in and they always wantto be part of something bigger,
and if they feel like they'repart of it, man, they're going
to do great things for you andthemselves.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
In my old managerial life, when I hired this standard
way, when I onboarded thetypical way, this standard way,
when I onboarded the typical way, I used to say that my job was
to try and get you productivebefore I demoralized you, and it
was about a three-week tothree-month race that I
typically lost and then youeither quit on me in those early
(29:56):
days which was actually betterthan what happened with most of
them, where they quit, but theystill came to work every day.
They were just, you know, overat the water cooler pissing and
moaning with everybody else.
Why can't I hire good people?
And you know and the fact ofthe matter is they were good
people when they came in thedoor and I did it to them I had
(30:16):
a bad system for getting peopleinto the work world here, you
know, not at Menlo, of course,but in my old company, and so
for me, I just knew that thatpart had to change as well.
And I don't think you can createan intentional culture in the
way we describe it here, anintentionally joyful culture,
(30:36):
without taking a hard look atevery single step of the HR
process.
How do you recruit, how do youinterview?
How do you select?
How do you onboard, how do yougive feedback, how do you
promote, how do you give raises,how do you give bonuses?
How do you fire people?
I mean, all of those thingsbetter align exactly with the
(30:59):
cultural intention, or yourcultural intention is just a
poster on the wall.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I'm continually learning.
You actually said somethingthat I think everybody needs to
understand, and that'sespecially as an entrepreneur.
The problem usually starts withyou, and if you got to, you got
to solve you first, and ifyou're starting to blame others,
you're starting to look thewrong way and you've got to
really look at you.
And we did that at the end oflast year 22, and we're actually
overhauling our HR process aswell.
(31:25):
Just because I went.
It's just not as good.
It's good.
I especially compared to otherpeople in my business and in my
industry, when I compare howlong I've been able to keep
people.
It's good, but it's just notgreat.
And we're actually going throughthat right now.
And and we're actually goingthrough that right now and I've
uh, created an initiative whereI'm just kind of involved in it
but I'm not leading it and I'mletting the people who have to
deal with everybody, day in andday out, lead how it's going to
(31:47):
change, and I just actually getto provide some advice and
listen to what they got going on.
And so far, uh, we're one weekinto it and, uh, we've already
created something and had a guytext back saying, wow, this is
the first company I've ever beeninvolved with or worked around,
because a lot of my guys havenever worked for anybody else.
They've already worked on theirown.
That actually shows they careabout us.
(32:08):
I'm like, well, that's prettycool, and it wasn't me, it was
those guys.
So that's always a nice win.
So, uh, you know, we're coming,we're coming towards the.
We're kind of like at halftime,maybe even third quarter now
talking about this.
There's so many more things Iwant to talk about with you.
Let's talk about the scalingObviously a very successful
(32:29):
company where people actuallywant to come see you.
We've already kind of outlinedwhat it looks like and you've
got to go check this out againon the YouTube channel.
Was there ever a time where youjust went nope, this isn't
working?
I can't believe I just did this.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I'm an entrepreneur, but this isn't working.
I'm done, I'm out of here.
You know, the only time Iremember feeling that way and it
wasn't so much like I'm done,it was like I felt the whole
thing just slip out of my handswas the week of March 16th of
2020.
When we sent everybody home.
We have this special group ofpeople on our team called
(33:07):
high-tech anthropologists.
It's a whole other discussionwe could have about going out in
the world and studying thepeople you intend to serve.
So whatever software you builtwill actually work for real
people, not just the programmerswho built it.
There was no place for them togo, because they couldn't get on
airplanes.
They couldn't go visit peoplein their native environment
because those people were stuckat home as well.
(33:28):
I couldn't go out and speak,which was typically what I would
be doing is getting onairplanes once a week, going
around the world speaking aboutthis culture, and it was like
every single tool I had that wehad built so carefully over 19
years had suddenly been takenaway from me.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
So that must have been a tough day.
So your day of, I guess, thethree phases of truth First you
ignore it, then you vehementlydeny it, and then you accept it
as intuitively obvious.
And so when did you accept thisCOVID shutdown as intuitively
obvious?
And that sounds like it was onMarch 16th.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Yeah, it was that week, you know, and I remember
looking at Erica because we were, as we were, filing out of the
office that week.
I looked at her and I said whatis today?
She said it's Tuesday.
I said no, no.
What day of the week is it?
She said Tuesday.
I said no, no, no, like Monday,tuesday, wednesday, thursday,
what day it's?
She swings her head around,looks at James and he says oh,
(34:29):
don't worry, he's just panicking, he'll be fine.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Oh boy, we were all there.
So you went home and senteverybody home, um, and
basically staring at zerorevenue coming in, expenses
still going out, still trying totake care of employees probably
doing a skeleton thing, how'dyou react?
Let's talk about the basicallystaring at zero revenue coming
in, expenses still going out,still trying to take care of
employees, probably doing askeleton thing How'd you react?
Let's talk about the COVIDresponse that you had.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
So, number one we gathered the team together and
we said tsunami's coming.
We don't know how big, we don'tknow how long, but we know it's
huge and it's probably not likeanything we've ever seen before
.
And and it wasn't our revenuesdropped by 60 that year.
So we said, guys, we're makingsome drastic changes.
Right now and it was a biggroup meeting we didn't think a
(35:14):
lot about it we said owners aregoing to zero.
We're cutting all of you toyour base level pay.
We're going to cut hours, whichmeans they're going to cut
their pay any sooner, evensooner.
And we said any money we sendout of you, for God's sakes, put
it in the bank, because wedon't know how long we'll be
able to do this.
And you know and that was thatwas like day one, that was that
Monday of that week that we'vegathered the whole team together
(35:37):
and told them what we weregoing to do.
And we said we're going to tryand hang on to you.
We're going to keep healthcarebenefits in place because,
goodness knows, we're going toneed those if this thing is as
bad as everybody says it is.
And so we did everything wecould and fortunately, we'd come
off our best year ever.
So we had lots of cash in thebank, so it wasn't like we had
to panic, but, boy, we had torespond quickly.
(36:00):
And then I remember, you know,as everybody had filtered out, I
was one of the last peoplestanding in the office and all I
thought at that point was youknow what this might be it?
Wow, it might have been a goodrun.
You know, 19 years in, youaccomplished what you set out to
do, and you couldn't haveanticipated this.
(36:20):
And then, shortly into thistime where we're all apart and
we're starting to get togetheron Zoom calls, like you and I
are right now, and one of oursenior high-tech anthropologists
was trying to figure out howare they going to do their work
from a Zoom call rather than bein person, and of course, my
(36:41):
brain is like that's impossible.
They have to be observingpeople in their native
environment.
And Molly leans in and she goesthis will be so exciting to
figure out how to do this.
You know remotely and I'm like,oh my God, we're going to be
okay.
The culture we built at thisvery basic level knows how to
run experiments, knows how toadapt experiments, knows how to
(37:03):
adapt.
And at that point, chris, Ijust let them leave.
I stepped back because, as Iopened my eyes to what was
actually happening, the team,without me leading, was figuring
it out, and figuring it out waybetter than I would have, and
(37:25):
so I just thought you know whatjust let them go you.
Yes, I gave little bits ofguidance here and there.
I didn't step out of leadershipentirely, but I knew I didn't
have to lead in this adaptationof what was happening in the
business.
And that's hard, I do feel like.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
I can let go at times .
People have asked me that, butwhen that happened, I felt like
I had to step in even furtherand get a hold on things even
further to figure out what wasabout to happen.
Because I did, I ignored it.
I heard from a guy on March 9ththat this is going to end all
(37:59):
his business and I asked him howhe could help, how he could
help him, and he said you can'thelp me, you're going down too.
I'm like oh man, you're likechicken little bro.
Slow down, man.
It's no big deal.
And on March 16th, which is mybirthday, I had two big things
happen to me.
One my son got accepted to alocal public school as opposed
to going off to a big highpaying private school.
So I just realized I got araise and I also realized I had
(38:21):
I had to basically not shut downmy business.
But I did.
I cut drastically, I laid peopleoff.
I said you're going to makemore money on unemployment than
you would with me.
I'm going to go ahead and layyou guys off.
I'm going to keep you guys.
I'll keep you guys as busy as Ican, because we were deemed
essential and we were able towork around houses.
And I sat there with my numberone and I said I think he goes.
(38:41):
Oh, the first one you're goingto fire is me.
And I went, oh, and so I did.
I gathered people in the officeand I'm crying he's the one who
had me on the back going.
It's okay, it's okay.
It's kind of like that episodefrom Norm from cheers, where he
was the firing guy would go inand cry for everybody.
And I'm sitting here crying infront of everybody Like I just
cause.
I felt I felt like I couldwrite it back down.
(39:02):
I had ridden my company back, Ihad ridden my company up, I
could ride it back down to meand a handful of people.
But how long?
How long was this going to last?
And nobody had that answer.
You're just staring at option Ain the face and it was hard to
pivot and go for option B and C.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
It sounds like your employees helped you get that
pivot in your head and make ithappen.
And my contribution during thattime was once once I regulated
my own emotions, which didn'ttake too long.
Um, I said, guys, we are goingto thrive again and here's the
way we're going to get there.
We're going to go through afive-step process.
First, we're going to survive,and that's what we're doing
right now.
We're doing everything we canjust to guarantee simple
survival and we are going to tryand keep you all together as
(39:50):
long as we possibly can.
Number two we're going to haveto adapt.
I'm watching you do it already.
We're going to have to continueto do that.
Then, three at a certain pointwe have to get to a point where
we can convince ourselves we cansustain whatever level of
business we're doing, because wedon't know how long this storm
(40:11):
is going to last.
And I actually use the metaphorof we got tossed out of our
little good ship Menlo and adesert island, and it was kind
of like Swiss family Robinson.
We're figuring things out again, right, and I said but number
four is going to be the mostimportant part, and I actually
learned this from PatrickLencioni, the business book
author.
He had a conference at thistime and I just loved what he
said.
He said look, in times likethis, yes, there's going to be a
(40:34):
lot of companies that die Justis but those that survive face a
fundamental leadership choice.
You can choose to emergestronger and if you don't, you
will emerge weaker.
And when we get back tothriving again, the strongest
companies will take off.
And I told the team that's whatwe're going to do.
(40:54):
I don't know how we're going todo it, but we are going to
emerge stronger from this andwhen we do these four things
over and over again, enough wewill get back to thriving again.
And I'm delighted to say, chris, we just finished 2022, our
best year ever.
We are absolutely awesomeamazing about the biggest checks
(41:16):
we've ever given out in ourhistory.
Uh, and the team, the team didit.
They, they, literally.
We made big changes to emergestronger and we will never look
back.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah, I think, um, I've been on a number of
podcasts as well.
People ask me about, uh, myexperience and I was in home
services and you know one thingthat happened was the home
services space was a great spaceto be in.
I, uh I remember saying afterwe got through that first period
uh of uh despair for me andthen going I'm going to ride
this ship back down.
I just the mental image of SlimPickens going down and Dr
(41:50):
Strangelove going down with thebig bomb.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I think I said it was one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
Well, that that's how I was feeling on March 16th, as
I went back and had to do whatI did, but I started to see it.
You know, at the time we talkedabout it here in Georgia.
I figured I had a two monthdown, but by Memorial day I was
hoping, of course.
What do we all know at thattime?
You know we I was watching the.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Eight weeks, man.
I was going to last eight weeks.
That was my mindset.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, so.
And so we were good.
And our governor here inGeorgia opened up and said far
be it for me to call anybodyessential.
As long as you follow theseguidelines, we'll start opening
up.
And he said that on MemorialDay, right before the week
before Memorial Day.
And sure enough, our phonesstarted ringing.
And I remember getting on apodcast in August, going for the
first time ever.
I felt like I was in the rightspot, I was in the right
(42:39):
business.
And then what hits me?
I can't find people to work.
And then what hits me again, oh, there's that supply chain
thing.
So now I can't put materials inpeople's houses and I'm like
you know what, as anentrepreneur and a business
owner, you're always solvingproblems.
Your job is to be proactive andtrying to see which ones are
coming, but sometimes you got tobe reactive and get after it.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
It certainly has been a few years of one thing after
another, after another.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah, yeah, you know that's.
It's funny because you know wegrew up in probably the same
time periods where you wouldhear from grandmas and grandpas
about the great depression andyou'd hear from your parents
about going through the missilecrisis or the Vietnam war or
whatever.
And you look at now what ourkids and we will say we went
through and you know I'm I'mthinking if I can live long
enough, I'm going to tell peoplejust how bad it was, because
(43:28):
you've seen the dot-com crash,you've seen the great recession
in 2008, then you've seen thepandemic, then everything that's
fallen out from there, and thenand then again, a stupid war in
europe the stupidest thing ever.
But uh, but.
So you know we're coming to theend.
We got just a few more minutesleft.
So one of the things youmentioned before is that you're
out there speaking and doingthat, and so obviously you've
(43:50):
had enough time to and peopletalk about having that financial
freedom, or you know what'syour exit strategy Brace.
Something that a lot of peopleare interested in is that you're
out there speaking and talkingabout different things.
You're talking about yourbusiness.
You're actually not working inthe business.
You're out there doing this.
(44:11):
When did you start to make thatpivot.
And how do you split your timenow a week.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, you know I'm still CEO of the company and
they still need me.
I think Although you knowthere'll be a line of people
outside the door waiting for meto make 14 decisions because the
team is very, very capablewithout me.
But early on in the history ofthe business, way back in 2001,
(44:38):
they were already the team wassaying Rich, we need a public
face for the company.
Get out there, meet people.
I started doing talks back then.
We had decided we were going toopen our doors and share what we
learned with the world, so wewere doing classes and tours
even back in our earliest days,and so I ended up finding that
(44:59):
there was one part of thebusiness that I just absolutely
loved to do was to go out and dopublic speaking about what we
do, why we're doing it, whatwe're trying to accomplish, what
is the culture that we'rebuilding to do this leading
tours and writing and so youknow that's largely my
contribution.
(45:19):
Now, of course, that naturallyleads to the things you might
expect a CEO like me to beinvolved in in a company our
size, where I'm building newrelationships with people who
want to do business with us, butmy tip of the spear keeps
getting shorter and shorter,where I could just so
effortlessly hand it off to therest of the team and go out and
(45:41):
build new relationships.
So I would say the majority ofmy time is spent out there in
the world building newrelationships, speaking about
what we do and writing.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
That's genius marketing and I'm a big
marketing fan.
I love this stuff.
I mean, that is incredible.
You talk about being arelatively low cost advertising
source.
It's your time and you'regetting to do something you love
too.
And people ask me you know, Iget out and do a lot of
networking.
That's how I was able to buildmy business early.
And people say how can you dothat?
I say you know I get moreenergy going to those meetings
(46:15):
than I do sitting there inQuickBooks trying to figure out
why the books aren't justexactly right, and that really
just drains the-.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
I had Emily over there looking at quick books and
she'll, you know, she'll tellme if something's going wrong I
need to take a look at.
But um, you know, chris, I willhear some broad advice to to
anybody, no matter where theyare in their business, but
especially the ones that arejust starting out.
Uh, when we had our firstoffice in downtown Ann Arbor, um
, it was right next door to acoffee shop.
(46:42):
We were at, we were in astorefront, a tiny little
storefront.
We were right next door to acoffee shop.
We were in a storefront, a tinylittle storefront.
We were right next door to acoffee shop.
So every morning I'd get intothe office, I'd go next door to
the coffee shop get my cup ofcoffee, and invariably because
Ann Arbor is a pretty cool town.
It's a small town but a lot offamous people walk through here.
In fact, the vice president ofthe United States was literally
(47:08):
about a block away from ouroffice just about a half an hour
ago.
I would run into these reallyinteresting people who could
potentially be future customers.
And then one day it dawned onme Rich, stop carrying your
coffee back to the office, justbring your laptop to the coffee
shop and hang out in the coffeeshop while you check your
morning email, and it wasremarkable, all of a sudden, all
these people who had come in.
(47:28):
You see somebody the first time.
You greet them, you say hello.
They're like oh, aren't yourunning the company next door?
And then, next time you see themit's a little friendlier and by
the third or fourth time you'relong lost friends.
At that point You're askingabout family members, about
vacation plans and you'rebuilding relationships.
And I would say that's probablya big mistake a lot of
companies make is everybody'sfocused on landing the next
(47:52):
piece of business, everybody'sfocusing on the inside of the
company.
But there is a great benefit togetting out in the community,
building those relationships,even if you don't know where
they're going to go, becausethey end up paying off in really
, really weird ways later on,with somebody saying, yeah, I
was at this party and they weretalking about this problem and I
said, oh, I know a guy right,and you never know where those
(48:14):
things come from.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
You're exactly right.
I can't.
I can't stress that enough.
That's great advice.
Everybody take that in.
That's a gold nugget droppinghard, Loving that one.
That's awesome, Rich.
Thank you so much for your timetoday.
How can people find you?
We're going to put all theinformation in the show notes,
but just go ahead and telleverybody how we can find you.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I am really, really good at keeping up on LinkedIn.
It took me a while to get there, but I am all caught up on my
networking requests and I'm allcaught up on my messages there.
So if you want to reach me,just look for Richard Sheridan
at menloinnovationscom onLinkedIn.
Reference this podcast becauseI don't accept every networking
(48:54):
request I get, but if somebody'sout there and says, hey, I
heard you on Chris's show, I'dreally love to connect with you.
I've got a couple of questionsfrom what you guys talked about.
I'm always open to doing thatAwesome.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Thank you again.
We're going to go ahead and putthe books in there.
You can always get Rich to comespeak I know he's out there
doing that and to network, butgo check these guys out.
I mean, we didn't even get thechance to talk about where Menlo
came from and he the first timeI met him.
I'm like I know exactly We'vegot three more podcasts coming,
Chris, oh my gosh, you know what, be careful, I might take you
(49:27):
up on that and bring you backeventually, because I'd love to
have you talk some more.
But before we leave, I've justgot to ask you my favorite three
questions.
I ask everybody when they comeon, because I love these topics.
I love hearing the answers andI've had some great ones.
But the first thing is what isthe favorite feature of your
house?
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Favorite feature of your house, Favorite feature of
my house.
We built this delightful littleupstairs den.
After we bought the house weactually went up and it's got
this great gas log fireplace andthe TV that we watch the
football games on and it is justso cozy up there.
It is absolutely my favoritething inside the house and then
(50:07):
outside I have this nice littlewater feature in the backyard.
I call it the Accurate Gardenbecause it was one of our
customers' successes thatallowed me to do this wonderful
little garden outside and it'sjust heavenly out there.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
You know what?
That's a great idea.
I think next time I get a bigsuccess.
I might name part of my house afeature based on the customer
that we had.
That's awesome.
Number two when you're outthere and you're not working in
your business but you're gettingserved by others, what is a
customer service pet peeve ofyours?
Speaker 1 (50:37):
You know, I think my biggest pet peeve is when they
make a promise to you that theyknow that it can't keep and they
never come back and apologize.
They always try and equivocateum and uh.
You know, I I had that happenwith one guy who's just trying
to service my bike and they raninto all the supply chain
problems and and they kept mybike for like six months.
(51:00):
I lost the whole bike ridingseason.
I'm like, guys, just be honestabout it.
You know, and the thing wasthey had set up an appointment
for me to come in and then youknow I missed it because they
never sent me a notificationabout it.
And you know, and they're like,oh well, we can't go through,
we can't let every customer knowwhen your appointments are, and
(51:23):
I'm like come on.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, exactly right, you know, especially at a home
services business, that I'm inyou don't want to make that call
that, hey, I can't get your tubfiller.
And that happened to us.
We had a $60,000 bathroom allbut finished except for one tub
filler, and I got an email froma customer saying you know, I'd
really like to pay you guys,because I said how come we
(51:46):
aren't getting paid, but youguys haven't finished.
So I got my project manager.
I was like what's going on?
He said well, we're all done.
But I said no, no, you're notdone.
And I said did you tell himwhat's going on?
Well, no, well, they were goingto yell at me.
I'm like no, they wouldn't haveyelled at you if you just would
have said look, the tub filleris coming from overseas and we
can't get it because it's stuckin a shipping container and I
(52:09):
don't know anything.
But I will let you know and allyou do is just keep telling
them every week.
Still don't know, still don'tknow.
Hopefully you're enjoying theshower.
Just communicate with me,especially if it's bad news.
It doesn't happen so bad if youcome clean quick, all right.
The third thing give us a diynightmare story.
I love open houses and I lovefire, we love water, we love
(52:30):
really bad things hey, um gosh,uh, diy nightmare story.
Speaker 1 (52:37):
Um, oh gosh.
I've done so much on my house,on my daughter's house is plural
, all three of them, in fact.
I'm helping my daughter.
I'll tell you the one DIY storythat has been going on for six
months now.
My daughter had, in her lovelyhome, had a drain line break on
(53:00):
her dishwasher and it floodedunderneath all of the wood, the
laminate wood floors, anddestroyed them all, went into
the house to the other and we'vebeen working six months.
These hands are callous.
My computer can't even read myfingerprint anymore.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
That's a good one.
It's been.
Speaker 1 (53:18):
There's a lot of professionals that are helping
too, but there's a lot of stuffI'm doing along the way with her
and of course it's an old house.
None of the walls are squareand none of the none of the
lines are straight and all thatkind of stuff.
But we're creating a beautifulhome.
But oh my gosh, what a ton ofwork it is.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Six months.
Yep, that would be one Yep.
That's a great story.
Well, rich, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
Hopefully you had some fun, andeverybody out there adventure
team keep.
Thank you so much for joiningus today.
Hopefully you had some fun, andeverybody out there adventure
team, keep going up thatmountaintop of success.
You define what it looks like,but you got to develop those
habits.
Keep learning from listening tothis podcast, keep learning
from listening to other peopleand get out there and make it
happen each and every day.
Let's go solve some problems.
(53:57):
We're out of here.
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