Episode Transcript

What’s up? What’s up? What’s up everybody? Welcome back to five minute rants. welcome back to THE a.m, I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome back to the show predicated on the journey of life and business.

So guys, last episode, I talked about franchising, the company building processes, and the directions to run the company. I want to talk about one of the reasons to look well, not one of the reasons but I think one of the bigger red flags to look out for if you’re going to build processes. And Andrew and I have the same in our company, no superheroes, there are no superheroes. And What does that mean? That means that we don’t want to entrust all the processes and production to one individual. In other words, like, if Andrew is running, you know, 50% of a project or an offering, we need to pull it out of his brain, and be able to transfer it to the rest of the team members so that way if Andrew, ever, you know, leaves the company, or if he’s ever got to do something else, the work still gets done.

A lot of people refer to this as hit by bus syndrome. But the way that Andrew and I look at it is a little bit different. We look at as superheroes like, Oh, I’m here to save the day, I’m the smart guy, I’ve got all the knowledge, because that’s normally how this occurs, What happens is, is we start getting, I would say, confident in our skill sets or our knowledge, and then there’s arrogance involved along the way. And then What happens is, is we actually take pride in being the person who’s always putting out the fire. And the thing is, is we don’t, we don’t want to put out fires, we want to prevent fires. And so if you’re building, and if you’re creating part of the job, and the role is to have fire prevention within the company, you don’t want to be firefighters. Firefighting, really, honestly, is horrible. And it is anti work, because instead of actually creating or building something for tomorrow, firefighting now has us in a place of, oh, I’m actually trying to make up for yesterday’s failures and mistakes today. And I’m not able now, and I do not have the time anymore now to build and create for tomorrow.

And so now you’re in this perpetual cycle of I’m behind, you’re in this perpetual cycle of negative work. And What I mean by negative is this, there’s three levels, in my opinion, to measure positive, neutral, negative, just kind of universally, right? Negative is where it actually hurts me, or takes away from the future takes away from forward momentum, takes away from journey takes away from the process takes away from me achieving my goals. Neutral is cool, I’m just right in the middle, I’m not really moving backwards, I’m not moving forwards. Positive is I’m actually have positive forward momentum with where I need to go and What I need to do. And when you have fires in a company, that is anti work, right? That’s anti work, it actually takes twice as much effort and energy to correct. And then to solve that issue than it does to actually just create a process that prevents it. And then that it does to let normal workflow.

And I think it’s important to see that when we have fires, we actually have negative production. Because not only do we have to stop What just happened in production, we have to now take that work. back pedal it up that chain of production up the flow of work, right or whatever’s in whip and backpedal. And now it’s got to run back through and now it’s stopping. Right. And so you have to think about the negative work and the negative effects of just being a firefighter and superheroes love firefighting. There’s no need for superheroes if there weren’t ever any fires, or if there weren’t any buildings on fire that people need to be rescued from.

And so our saying is no superheroes. And the reason why is we want to be fire preventers, we want to stop and not not actually build a place where it facilitates the superhero ideology towards like, awesome. I’m the smart guy, I get to get up, I put all the fires to the company needs me. And it’s like, I don’t want to be needed by the company. Andrew doesn’t want to be needed by the company. I want to be wanted by the team and company in being wanted is radically different than being needed.

We want our employees and team members, right? We want them to be wanted not needed. There’s a radical difference. And there’s a radical difference between building something where people are wanted and appreciated versus needed, because you’ll love somebody who’s needed as long as they’re putting out the fire. But once that fire is put out, cool, What kind of relationship do you have with them? Right? And it’s like, we’re not looking to create that. And I think that it’s healthy to create a place that is forward thinking. And it is healthy to actually create a culture predicated on fire prevention, and without the need of superheroes right? where we can be a team and not one person is better than the other because they put out more fires or not.

Anyways, just some food for thought. While I’m out of time, guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace