Sep 24, 2019
Good morning everyone Marcel Martens and welcome back to the Cloud Secrets podcast.
On the earlier episode, we talked about me getting to my three day work week and how I've created the time that I need for my family to be able to provide. The most important ingredient of that solution was to systematize all processes that are involved in migrating or how to install the "Always Safe In Business Suite" for companies so we literally documented and made checklists for every single item that is possible that you need to do in order to migrate customers successfully. So none is left out, not even our administration tasks, our financial tasks, our planning tasks, our project manager tasks, every single step is documented and we used Trello for it. I'll put a link down below. If you like it you can use it and it saves us a ton of time, a ton of mistakes because it...
In the Netherlands, we have a saying that's literally 'monks work' because people don't like to just follow a checklist because it makes them feel stupid or I don't know, but we focus on every single employee for most of his job, not the support tasks of course because those are usually a bit variable. We document them in our knowledge base, but we don't create a Trello checklist for every single support call, it's insane. But for all our projects and migrations we have these Trello checklists. Even for installing new PCs or laptops or whatever it is, we use checklists and every single time we can guarantee that the outcome will be the same because none is forgotten, none is left out, everything is checked and if it's more complex, we assign a project manager who can manage the project of course, but also make sure certain deadlines are met at certain times and then milestones are finished on time so we can go on further with the next step.
That's the main aspect of how I was able to create my three day work week because we systematized all of the processes and that just gives us a ton of time. In the early days...I'm laughing about it now, but if you think back of it, it was not that professional at all. For me, it was all clear because all the steps were in my head and I could even do them in my sleep if I have to, you know?
For our engineers, to me, it feels like they don't have the complete overview of all the tasks that are at hand so I've struggled a lot with coaching, training, to learn and delegate all the tasks so that I can have my time off. It's not just off but to be able to take care of our family. This way, it was a long route, a long journey towards the result, but now it's finally there and everybody is using them and everybody is eager and happy to use them because it gives good feeling when every single time a migration succeeds without any failures or things forgotten or left out or without any mistakes. That's good and even now every single migration we do an evaluation with the engineer who migrates the new customer and I always asked him if you are doing any steps that aren't in the checklist, please write them down in the notes so I can add them to the checklist if they're important. Better have something in there and not needed than left out and forgotten during the migration.
Back in the old days, maybe five years ago, you can understand that a lot of tasks on those migrations, were actually forgotten or skipped and now we have a fixed prize for the set up of the suite and the migration we just charge by the hour. If the project is finished and we send all the invoices to the customer, if we, for example, forgot two things to set up during the implementation process, you can't send an invoice afterwards because it just looks stupid to me. If you spend like eight hours on setting up everything, you can't send an invoice for a half an hour or an hour afterwards because you forgot two or three things. That's also financially and cash flow technically speaking, it's better because you have everything finished up in one run. You don't have to need go back and make adjustments and, "Oh shit, I need to revisit an order. I need to do that. Oh crap I forgot this one," and that saves not only a ton of time, but it's..., every single customer we also ask for a case study. If we can create a case study. I wouldn't say we use them all, but it gives me feedback on how the migration went and, from the customer's perspective, if there were things that we could do better. Every single migration we learn, and we learn, and we keep learning, and keep making it better, but don't wait until it's perfect. Just get started and improve it on the go, you know? Nothing is perfect the first time even Edison with his light bulb. I think you know the story. His teachers told him he wasn't be able to do anything and here he is, the inventor of the light bulb.The experience... It Took him a thousand times before he figured it out, how to create the light bulb. The electric light bulb. But he didn't see his nine hundred ninty-nine trials as a failure. He looked at it as, "I just needed a thousand steps to get to the results I was looking for".
That's what I try to teach my employees, coach my employees with. I don't see mistakes or whatever as a failure. You'll always have an opportunity to correct them, but if you just see them as steps of the process it gives ease of mind, less stress, more satisfaction because if everything goes well, you'll always have a good feeling about it. You have a feeling that you actually contributed to the project or the business or whatever. That's what makes people run for you. If you can give them a good feeling every single day they are most loyal employees you'll veer get.
That's it for now. I'm back at the office and going to start today. Just dropped off the kids. School started again this week so back to a normal. We've got a lot of tasks at hand today. Yesterday I setup the YouTube channel. I'll uploaded the first videos and added them to the blog.
I'm also looking for an SEO. engineer who can optimize all my blogs and that's why I posted a UpWork job last night. I'm going to have a look at the reaction and hopefully there are some good ones in there so I can pick one and get started today. Yesterday also I had a meeting with my web developer and he started on the members area on the training site to set up the framework for our course. Lots of stuff done yesterday. We're gonna kill it day today as well. Pretty busy day so maybe I'll get back to you tonight or otherwise tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye-bye.
If you like this podcast, please rate and subscribe. Rating is very important not only to me, but in general. If you like it, rate it with a three to a five star on iTunes so we'll be found more and I can help more IT guys to become an entrepreneur or just give the last push they need to start their own business. It's what everybody needs. Most of us don't just throw in the towels at our job and start your own business, but this way you can start alongside your current business and set up everything, learn all the steps you need, and then when its ready and when your first euros are coming in, then you can leave your job and go at it full time or three days like I am. Please rate, subscribe, and leave any feedback if you got any questions or things we need to talk about, just drop them in the comments and I'll have a look at them.
Thank you very much. Have a nice one. Bye-bye.