Optimize & Automate The Productivity of Your HVAC, Plumbing & Electrical Contracting Business With Ari Meisel

Tersh Blissett: Hello everyone out there in Podcast World. I hope you have a wonderful day. You’re listening to or watching the Service Business Mastery Podcast and your host Tersh Blissett, sitting virtually next to my co-host, Joshua Crouch. Today we’re going to talk about something that we both kind of nerd out about. It’s very weird because when we talk about automation or anything about productivity hacking and that type of stuff and you mix that with the service businesses and home service businesses, a lot of times are like, okay, so how do I start? Yeah. And how do I do this for a business where we’re actually getting out there and touching the equipment and doing all that stuff. And so I’m super I mean, Josh and I, we’re trying our very best not to fanboy here, but our Mozilla has, has implemented, has influenced both of our businesses extremely an extreme amount. And so our business is remote, [00:01:00] virtual like we paperless all the all the good stuff and literally it would not be possible without this book that we got from is the replaceable founder that I got from Ari. And then I ended up picking up his several other books, too. And I have I actually have one on the way that won’t be here till tomorrow. But it’s been like, I guess what I got. Josh, look.

 

Josh Crouch: Oh, look at you, man. You fancy. You fancy.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yep, yep, yep. So, yeah, he signed my book. But anyways, we literally talk about automation constantly. We get asked constantly about automation, so.

 

Josh Crouch: Well, and yeah. And the thing with automation is people don’t know where to start. And I think what, what Ari’s book and some of his processes have allowed not only me to dove deeper in for my own business, but to help people with is you have to figure out what are those things that you can either delegate to a person or [00:02:00] we need to develop a process and enhance that process. There’s there’s multiple steps here in that that overall scheme of becoming more efficient, especially as the business owner like what are you wasting time on that somebody else could do for you? And if you can hand it off, do you have a process for them to follow? And I think that’s.

 

Tersh Blissett: Where the biggest things like when I was listening, I think it was just actually no, it wasn’t. It was this one. It’s productivity. It’s it’s seriously it was I failed at delegating because I was like aptitude. Oh shoot, I’m having to bring it. Anyways, I literally just handed off my delegation to someone else and.

 

Josh Crouch: Didn’t have a process for.

 

Tersh Blissett: It. It wasn’t perfected. And then Julie and I are listening to this on, on audiobook and he was like she was like, Oh, that’s why we failed at it. We should have gone through, had a VA, write it out, have [00:03:00] somebody actually do it, see the steps that were failing, then have a VA, redo the, the whole process and we’re like, Oh dang, that’s like anyways, let’s just get started with the show because we could talk about this for hours without him, but we have him sitting here waiting on us. So.

 

Announcer: Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources and so much. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.

 

Tersh Blissett: Hey, [00:04:00] Ari. Welcome to the show.

 

Ari Meisel: Man Welcome, Ari. Thank you for having me.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, absolutely. So, for those who have been living in Iraq and have no idea you. A quick introduction and share what makes you so like I mean you’ve not. So Josh and I didn’t even talk about everything that you have overcome in life to get you to where you’re at. And I think that that’s a very important story for people to understand as well.

 

Ari Meisel: Sure. So basically I was working in construction when I got out of college and in upstate New York and.

 

Ari Meisel: For a number of reasons. I was I was living a very stressful lifestyle.

 

Ari Meisel: I mean, I was young. It was my first really big real estate project. And I was sort of learning on the go and I was learning like every trade there was. And when I was.

 

Ari Meisel: 23, I got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.

 

Ari Meisel: Which is a chronic inflammatory [00:05:00] condition that affects the digestive tract. It’s considered to be incurable.

 

Ari Meisel: And long story.

 

Ari Meisel: Short, basically went from working 18 hour days to work an hour a day and. I had already racked up about $3 million in personal.

 

Ari Meisel: Debt at that point on this project.

 

Ari Meisel: At 23.

 

Ari Meisel: And I couldn’t.

 

Ari Meisel: Work. I was I was too sick. I got really, really sick very quickly.

 

Ari Meisel: And eventually I was able.

 

Ari Meisel: To overcome the illness, even though it is considered to be incurable. But I had to figure out a way to get more done in that one hour.

 

Ari Meisel: And that really has served.

 

Ari Meisel: As the basis for everything that sort of comes since then. All the coaching and books and speaking and everything is what would you do if you only had.

 

Ari Meisel: An hour a day and if you only had an hour a day, it’s really about what.

 

Ari Meisel: Would you do? What wouldn’t you do? And if the things.

 

Ari Meisel: That you still need or the things that you wouldn’t be able to do still need to get done, then who.

 

Ari Meisel: Or what is going to do them for you? And that’s where the whole framework of optimized automated outsource was born [00:06:00] and less doing began. And then since then I’ve been speaking, coaching, writing books and ended up on the Service Business Mastery Podcast.

 

Ari Meisel: That’s probably the highlight right there.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m sure it’s every day.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. So it was it was really cool. Whenever I first met Ari, it was at a SEO Warrior event and we were in New Jersey and it was a dinner event. I think where it was, it was pretty intimate. I mean, there wasn’t a lot of people there. And then we came into the room and they had like these books, The Replaceable found a book sitting down and I was like, Oh, this is cool. Like I had been, I mean, I had been dabbling in Trello and other stuff like that and trying to really figure out how to automate things. But I didn’t know what it meant to automate and I didn’t know what it meant to delegate or being a replaceable founder. And then as soon as Ari starts talking, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like [00:07:00] this is or is that like this is it? And a lot of what like the automatic the auto responses that anybody that that reaches out to us on the podcast, but they get an auto responder and it tells them, hey, look, I only I only check my email twice a day. So if this is an emergency, please call the office and all this other stuff. A lot of our inbox, getting rid of our inbox like this is like. All of this stuff is stuff that I’ve learned from Ari. But with that being said, I’ll let you talk, Ari, because this is this is about you, not me.

 

Josh Crouch: Tersh is blushing, man.

 

Tersh Blissett: No, I literally, like, am just I want people to be as excited about this as I am.

 

Ari Meisel: So do you really check your email twice a day?

 

Tersh Blissett: No, no, no, that’s not.

 

Ari Meisel: Look, his face.

 

Tersh Blissett: Is 100% to limit expectations of [00:08:00] the person that is emailing me.

 

Ari Meisel: So this is a good one. So this is a great place for us to start.

 

Ari Meisel: Become really fast friends or enemies. Your choice.

 

Ari Meisel: So one of the things I’ve often said is that whenever you get an auto responder.

 

Ari Meisel: Or somebody that says that they check their email twice a day, that they’re probably full of crap and.

 

Ari Meisel: It’s not a reasonable expectation to set anyway, because basically you’re either somebody is not going to believe you and they’re just.

 

Ari Meisel: Going to send another email or something like that.

 

Ari Meisel: Or. So I won’t go on this treaty, but email is like.

 

Ari Meisel: A really hot topic for me. So one.

 

Tersh Blissett: Oh, no, no.

 

Ari Meisel: I was approached by a.

 

Ari Meisel: Colleague, a productivity. This woman is a really excellent productivity coach, totally different system and methodology than mine.

 

Ari Meisel: But I really respect what she does and she sent me an email asking me if I could participate.

 

Ari Meisel: In her.

 

Ari Meisel: New project. And I wrote back and I got a response, an auto.

 

Ari Meisel: Responder from her saying like emails.

 

Ari Meisel: Emails not working for me.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m not going to be responding anytime soon with email or whatever. [00:09:00]

 

Ari Meisel: And immediately I was like.

 

Ari Meisel: That’s weird. She’s a productivity person.

 

Ari Meisel: And and then, of course, she emailed me back about 10 minutes later. Okay. Well, so now the whole thing is just.

 

Ari Meisel: Bs and.

 

Ari Meisel: That completely changes the conversation and the tone that happened after that. So if you do that and you tell people, you only check it twice a day, you either have to really do it, which I don’t recommend. By the way, I checked my email probably 50 or 60 times a day, which people always find.

 

Ari Meisel: Really surprising, right? That’s because I’m a productivity person.

 

Ari Meisel: But my email actually.

 

Ari Meisel: Is productive. So if you’re actually.

 

Ari Meisel: Doing email.

 

Tersh Blissett: Properly.

 

Ari Meisel: And using it for the powerful tool that is.

 

Ari Meisel: Then there’s no reason why you should only.

 

Ari Meisel: Check it twice a day.

 

Ari Meisel: And furthermore, at that point I would rather just tell.

 

Ari Meisel: People like, Hey, I don’t do email if you want to get.

 

Ari Meisel: In touch like either contact me this way or contact this person for this need.

 

Ari Meisel: This person for this name, this one for this name and just don’t use email.

 

Tersh Blissett: So, I mean, I know that you only keep about, what, ten emails in [00:10:00] your inbox every day?

 

Ari Meisel: I mean, I’ve got zero right now. Oh, okay.

 

Josh Crouch: But like, of course you have zero.

 

Tersh Blissett: Explain that process. And so here’s what I dealt with and I’ve dealt with this here recently actually, and that is creating an optional folder. Yeah, it’s the there were some, there are some communications that are ending up in optional that I’m not checking for a couple of days and so it became an issue. How do you how do you can you explain that whole the optional folder process and then hello balloon.

 

Ari Meisel: B the bald head. Yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: And then like how do you solve, how do you prevent issues like what I just kind of explained there described.

 

Ari Meisel: So can you share just like.

 

Ari Meisel: At a very high level what kind of email it was that you actually wanted to read?

 

Tersh Blissett: It was a CRM. It was for my CRM service. [00:11:00] But they did it does say manage your.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, no, that’s fine. So, look, I have I.

 

Ari Meisel: Have four kids, which means that there’s all sorts of activities, school emails, all sorts of things that have that might be in them, but I still need to get them.

 

Ari Meisel: So the unsubscribe filter.

 

Ari Meisel: Needs to has, it needs to have exceptions to it. So there’s filter and people don’t know what we’re talking about. I recommend that people have a filter in their email that says that if an email has the word unsubscribe in it, it does not go to the inbox, it skips the inbox, it goes into an optional filter, which you can check when you want to, if you want to, but you want to have doesn’t have the following words such as like your kids school or the Chrome company or whatever it is, or like my company, you know, because I want to get my newsletters, of course. So I.

 

Ari Meisel: Think that my filter probably.

 

Ari Meisel: Has like 30 or 40 exception phrases in it, which I.

 

Tersh Blissett: Just.

 

Ari Meisel: Added over time.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. Okay.

 

Josh Crouch: Do you just add them over time because you realize that this like it didn’t it [00:12:00] didn’t catch this one. So now I need to add another exclusion.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah. And I mean, generally speaking.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m in the habit enough now that if my kids take on a new activity or something like that, like I look for the email essentially. And if it’s if it’s not in my office or if it is an additional folder, then I’ll add that to the exceptions. But it’s it’s a rarity, I’d say I probably add a new exception like once a year. Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: Email. So we had a someone on the show that was an inbox, essentially an inbox assistant and to help organize because I didn’t realize all the functionality. Now I don’t use Outlook, but I use G Suite like all the functionality that exists within your inbox because I was just using it for if I’m going to save this, I’m going to put it in some folder which I never go back to and never look at it again. And it wasn’t a pro, it wasn’t a productive place. It was just like just trying to keep my head above water [00:13:00] and like within a month I’ve learned a lot of tips and different ways to label things and make sure they stand out of like required actions or do this with this thing and become a productive workplace versus just a well, it sits there because I don’t want to lose it type of thing. I don’t know if you have any resources or places for people, like if they want to learn more about how to make their inbox productive or they can go for that.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, I do. But I do want to point out.

 

Ari Meisel: Something really important to terms regarding what you just said.

 

Ari Meisel: Which for everybody.

 

Ari Meisel: To.

 

Ari Meisel: Really recognize is what you just said is really not about the email and it’s not.

 

Ari Meisel: About being.

 

Ari Meisel: More productive specifically. It’s really about having control.

 

Ari Meisel: And being.

 

Ari Meisel: More active.

 

Ari Meisel: Versus passive and the tools and the things that we use in life and in our business. So in your.

 

Ari Meisel: Case, what you’re talking about, right, is the before is basically like the inbox was like the thing that you kind of like avoid and didn’t want to really see like peeking over the desk part.

 

Ari Meisel: But and that’s [00:14:00] controlling you. Whereas the way you have it now is like you have taken control of it and taken it by the reins, essentially. And.

 

Ari Meisel: Control ultimately is the.

 

Ari Meisel: Antidote to stress and the antidote to overwhelm, because a lot of overwhelm is just because we’ve essentially been taken up by the tide and we’re just going with it, trying to, as you said.

 

Ari Meisel: Keep your head above water.

 

Ari Meisel: So we need to be able.

 

Ari Meisel: To take control. And the inbox is a great place to start. In terms of the resources, I believe.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m pretty sure on my website, unless doing dotcom, there is a free inbox zero. Of course, it’s not.

 

Ari Meisel: Very.

 

Ari Meisel: Complicated. I’m sure you’ve seen that now. It’s just that a lot of people don’t attempt it because or you.

 

Josh Crouch: Don’t know where to. You just don’t know where to go. Like, I think like once I once I started figuring out how to do these things, it became pretty. It’s not difficult. It’s just figuring out what those things are. And then what, like looking myself in the mirror when these messages come in, what kind of messages need to go into like a task to [00:15:00] click up type folder or label or keep on hand research newsletters like put stuff in kind of like an optional thing where like, hey, maybe once a week I spend an hour and I go through all the newsletters that I want to keep, but I don’t necessarily need to read today. And it’s made because otherwise I would keep passing over the I would keep scanning over the same inbox and the same emails, trying to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I was spending like hours a day in there instead of look at it, get what needs to be done, and then move on to a project or something that actually needs my attention to grow our business.

 

Ari Meisel: Well, and the other key.

 

Ari Meisel: There, which I know you guys do, because you told me about this before, is that the best way to deal with email is to rely on email less, right? So you guys are using slack and fostering and teams and whatnot and you need that. And I think.

 

Ari Meisel: That people try to do too much in.

 

Ari Meisel: Email. They want to have that be like their task manager and their calendar and the place where they do. The [00:16:00] three different businesses that they run like.

 

Ari Meisel: Email is really not.

 

Ari Meisel: Well set up for that kind of thing. You need to have multiple different types of communication tools for different types of communication.

 

Tersh Blissett: That’s a good point. And I love that you said that there. So we can kind of great segway into the the asynchronous communication. Can you explain what that is like? That’s a big thing in your world and why it’s why it’s such a big thing for you.

 

Ari Meisel: So if I was going to say like the number one productivity.

 

Ari Meisel: Weapon in my arsenal is asynchronous communication, right? So that’s the opposite of what we’re doing here right now, obviously, and maybe not obviously. Right. So for for for people who aren’t don’t want to talk about. Right. So synchronous would be like we’re in the room together, we’re having this live conversation. I talk, you respond, you talk, I make a facial expression, you react to that. We go back and forth. Right. So and.

 

Ari Meisel: There’s a time and.

 

Ari Meisel: A place for that.

 

Ari Meisel: But it’s few and far between. And too many people [00:17:00] try to make too many.

 

Ari Meisel: Interactions synchronous because that’s just the way they’ve always done it.

 

Ari Meisel: And for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which.

 

Ari Meisel: Is that different people just have different circadian rhythms and different times of the day that they do things and different.

 

Ari Meisel: Moods that they might be in. So to get to people, much less five or six in a meeting together, it’s just very, very.

 

Ari Meisel: Unlikely, if not impossible, that you’re going to get those people at their best. Whereas with asynchronous communication.

 

Ari Meisel: You’re allowing.

 

Ari Meisel: People to communicate.

 

Ari Meisel: When where is most.

 

Ari Meisel: Effective for them. Sort of naturally that’s what happens. And that could.

 

Ari Meisel: Be.

 

Ari Meisel: It could be text message or it could be email. But even though those are technically asynchronous tools, most people don’t use them that way because.

 

Ari Meisel: The way that most people are, a lot of.

 

Ari Meisel: People will text someone is they’ll write the text right with their phone and kind of like stare at the phone waiting for the three bubbles to go.

 

Ari Meisel: And that’s are they going to respond to me or what? Right. Right, exactly. And that’s taking your attention away. So that’s not whereas if you use [00:18:00] it correctly, you write the text message, you put it down, you go back to what you were doing because. You’re the master of your own time.

 

Ari Meisel: Generally, hopefully. Right. That’s all.

 

Tersh Blissett: Right. All right. That’s that’s how you get in trouble with your wife real fast.

 

Ari Meisel: My wife is not. My wife is on boxer. Oh, yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: What’s that? That whenever I do that, that’s that is literally how I’ll text and then I’ll come back to like 1000 messages on that and it’s like, Oh shoot, that’s my bad because and that’s really, that’s the point of my auto responder. And I understand and I agree with what you said. I am all about pivoting and improving on processes and everything but that I wanted. I guess I wanted my inbox to be more asynchronous, asynchronous versus it being synchronous and like requiring an immediate response from the email that’s being sent to me. [00:19:00]

 

Ari Meisel: Well, but to that extent there’s so there’s a bunch of different.

 

Ari Meisel: Ways sort of bisect. The way you communicate.

 

Ari Meisel: Urgent versus.

 

Ari Meisel: Non-urgent is certainly one asynchronous synchronous.

 

Ari Meisel: So I would you would never email 911 if somebody was breaking into your house. So why is that? The tool that people.

 

Ari Meisel: Are like this.

 

Ari Meisel: Is this is unacceptable. You need to get back to me right now. It’s like, no, those are those are the very few situations.

 

Ari Meisel: Where I will pick up a phone and call somebody and get an.

 

Ari Meisel: Immediate.

 

Ari Meisel: Response if that’s what I need.

 

Ari Meisel: But most things don’t require that.

 

Ari Meisel: And the other thing.

 

Ari Meisel: Is that it’s very rare that one person’s urgent is another person’s urgent.

 

Tersh Blissett: Exactly.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah. And to that extent, it is really important that every interaction you have with somebody over in terms of communication is a training.

 

Ari Meisel: Opportunity in terms of.

 

Ari Meisel: How they can.

 

Ari Meisel: And should communicate with you. And that’s not to say that everyone’s the boss in every situation [00:20:00] but you.

 

Ari Meisel: What? Tony Robbins. He always said he had.

 

Ari Meisel: This saying, which was like, you.

 

Ari Meisel: Don’t you don’t get what you deserve.

 

Ari Meisel: You get what you tolerate.

 

Ari Meisel: And so it’s like. So good exam. Very simple example on my voice.

 

Ari Meisel: If you call my phone, the voice mail says, Hey, it’s myself.

 

Ari Meisel: If you want to give me.

 

Ari Meisel: A message, it might be a while before I get back to you. If you want a more.

 

Ari Meisel: Immediate response or a.

 

Ari Meisel: Fast response, send me an email. Here’s the address.

 

Ari Meisel: I have had multiple people, including like. Friends who have sent me or called me. They get the voice mail, call me, get the voice mail. And and I won’t respond. And but I’m very careful about this because the second I get an email from that person, those are the times when I will interrupt something else to respond to that email. Because just like that train.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah, you train them.

 

Josh Crouch: Training how you want to be communicated.

 

Ari Meisel: With. They’ll never call you again. Interesting. [00:21:00]

 

Tersh Blissett: Good point. That is a good point.

 

Ari Meisel: So I am definitely not saying remove the human.

 

Ari Meisel: Element from your interaction with your clientele.

 

Ari Meisel: This is exactly the opposite. Everything that I’m talking about here is about getting rid of all of the other stuff that doesn’t make you.

 

Ari Meisel: More human and.

 

Ari Meisel: The stuff that prevents you. You know why? Because this is all the stuff that it’s like. I really would love to call the for example, there’s actually I’ve worked with.

 

Ari Meisel: A bunch of dentists and there is a.

 

Ari Meisel: Fairly common.

 

Ari Meisel: Practice among I don’t know why dentists as opposed to doctors, but dentists particularly.

 

Ari Meisel: Will often call.

 

Ari Meisel: Every patient that they saw that day at.

 

Ari Meisel: The end of the night.

 

Tersh Blissett: I had mine. Mine does that.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah.

 

Ari Meisel: So there actually I’ve spoken to a couple of dental mastermind groups and.

 

Ari Meisel: They really push that as a thing you should do.

 

Ari Meisel: So here’s the thing. It’s like, first of all, you can’t do that if you’re like dealing with email.

 

Ari Meisel: Till 9:00 at night, you can’t.

 

Ari Meisel: Make those calls.

 

Ari Meisel: But there’s actually a way to automate that, [00:22:00] too.

 

Ari Meisel: Which just makes it all the more human. But the point of all of this stuff is to shed away the stuff that is getting in the way of you bringing that human.

 

Ari Meisel: Element to where it really should be.

 

Ari Meisel: Because customer journey is a huge.

 

Ari Meisel: Focus of mine in everything that I do with clients, the business I interact with.

 

Tersh Blissett: So, so what I hear you saying is that you begin less doing of everything else so that you can do more of.

 

Josh Crouch: So you can focus on that journey, the customer journey and that service and that level of service so you can actually get real stuff done. Not just while I was busy today, you know, I’m not get rid of the busy work type stuff and actually get things that are really important to your business or your life done. At least that’s that’s what I’m hearing as well.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, I know. And that’s the whole point about the replacement founders is we want to be as replaceable as possible.

 

Ari Meisel: Right. We’re not I’m not I say.

 

Ari Meisel: That very clearly in the book. I’m not trying to replace people.

 

Ari Meisel: We want to make you more.

 

Ari Meisel: Replaceable by getting rid of all these other things that you can.

 

Ari Meisel: Optimize and outsource so that the.

 

Ari Meisel: Thing that you actually [00:23:00] are unique.

 

Ari Meisel: At, that you’re good at, that you like doing.

 

Ari Meisel: You can do more.

 

Ari Meisel: Of and in that way be more effective.

 

Josh Crouch: So can we go ahead.

 

Tersh Blissett: Go ahead, Josh.

 

Josh Crouch: So I was going to say, since you mentioned optimize, automate, outsource processes is something that I think in general most businesses struggle with. But contractors, especially since they’re in the truck, a lot of these guys are in the truck. They’re on a service call. They’re still doing installs. They’re taking phone calls like building processes is not what they deem the most important thing of their day. So like if they were to get started, like trying to figure out what things they could start building a process around and things that they could start delegating to somebody else, whether it’s a VA that doesn’t work full time or maybe someone that works for them in the office or something. Where would you give some tips or anything that you’d recommend starting to like internally look at so they can start figuring out what those things are.

 

Tersh Blissett: But also, would you mind going through I think it was this book, I think I [00:24:00] can’t remember because I’ve read several back to back and over again. But there was one that you that you mentioned about creating the process or the video or something and then sending it to VA. Can you go through that as well?

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, absolutely.

 

Ari Meisel: So so just to.

 

Ari Meisel: Give some sort of background context, I’ll give you a very relevant example. So as I said, I’ve worked in I think I’ve worked in just about every trade there is at this point. And I remember when I was just starting out and I was essentially apprenticing for a mason who was I want to say like late sixties maybe. And he was like third generation, like this was this guy was born with mortar in his blood, basically as employee.

 

Ari Meisel: And he taught me how to how to lay brick.

 

Ari Meisel: And how to build walls and things like that.

 

Ari Meisel: And but the way he did it was very.

 

Ari Meisel: Much like the way a lot of apprenticing is done, right? Which was like.

 

Ari Meisel: Sort of show [00:25:00] me step by step and kind of copy.

 

Ari Meisel: Him and mirror him and.

 

Ari Meisel: Do what he was doing. And there’s a problem.

 

Ari Meisel: With that.

 

Ari Meisel: Right? So. He’d been. He could do it.

 

Ari Meisel: In his sleep.

 

Ari Meisel: Which means that there’s all sorts of shortcuts and things that he uses and.

 

Ari Meisel: Does that he.

 

Ari Meisel: Can’t fully explain or even recognize that he’s using. So I was I think I was fine, but I remember very clearly, like the first time I had to build a curved brick wall. I couldn’t figure out how to do it because he hadn’t shown me right and he hadn’t shown me specifically how to do that. And also he had sort of imparted.

 

Ari Meisel: Like a sort of.

 

Ari Meisel: Implicit knowledge in.

 

Ari Meisel: Terms of how to how to.

 

Ari Meisel: Like I could snap a line that was fine, you know, and I could get that, no problem. But then to start doing a curve, like it’s a whole other ballgame. Oh, yeah. And obviously, like you. So I didn’t have the tools to figure out how to do.

 

Ari Meisel: The next step and how to innovate and things like that. So.

 

Ari Meisel: That’s how a lot of processes are done. A lot of people will say, [00:26:00] here’s, here’s me doing the thing. And that thing could be paying a bill.

 

Ari Meisel: On QuickBooks, or it could be laying brick.

 

Ari Meisel: Or.

 

Ari Meisel: Running a manufacturing plant at a car like an auto plant, which I’ve done that, too. I mean, I’ve dealt with that.

 

Ari Meisel: And I’ll show you and like, all right, this is the process. Now, now do it. Which is the same thing as somebody writing down the process and then giving it to.

 

Ari Meisel: You and say, Go ahead.

 

Ari Meisel: And do it. So that’s how it’s typically done. I reverse that, what I call my process optimization system.

 

Ari Meisel: Unfortunately, POS.

 

Ari Meisel: So it basically flips that around and basically says you do the process.

 

Ari Meisel: And show it to somebody. How are we going to show it to them?

 

Ari Meisel: But tell them to then write the.

 

Ari Meisel: Checklist that they saw.

 

Ari Meisel: Right. And once they do that, give it to ideally a third person and have them run through the process. And it will never, ever work, which.

 

Ari Meisel: Is great, because now we can start to fix at a very.

 

Ari Meisel: Granular level. So as opposed to in [00:27:00] the bricklaying example as opposed to saying like, all right, we take the mud, we do this, we do that, we do this, we do that. Go back and forth. I should have just watched him do it. Mm hmm. And then been like. All right, well, it looks like he’s taking his trowel.

 

Ari Meisel: And doing this.

 

Ari Meisel: And. And then if I were to go explain it to somebody and they went to build a wall, I’m sure that wall would have fallen over. Yeah. And that’s okay, because then that first person can look at them doing it like, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop there. You got to step to you forgot to set the line properly right? Or you got to step for the mud’s too thick, like whatever it might be, as opposed to the other way around. So now we get to fix things. They’re very granular level and what we usually see when people design.

 

Ari Meisel: Processes the sort of traditional way is.

 

Ari Meisel: That they’ll often refer to assets in a relative sense. So, for example.

 

Ari Meisel: We’re doing like a parallel process, right?

 

Ari Meisel: Mm hmm. Open the payroll. Step to open the payroll.

 

Ari Meisel: Document for November.

 

Ari Meisel: And [00:28:00] the person, this third person now doing.

 

Ari Meisel: This is like, well, it’s January right now, first of all. And where is the payroll document anyway?

 

Ari Meisel: So. Right. So where do we find it? So the person has to change that to an absolute sense, meaning like step two, open this link, right? Or here is the.

 

Ari Meisel: Document attached wherever it might be.

 

Ari Meisel: And we get down to step seven and it says, okay, well now you have to click the big red button, right?

 

Ari Meisel: And the person is like, well, I don’t I don’t have a big red button.

 

Ari Meisel: Or like, oh, right.

 

Ari Meisel: Because you’re you’re a guest. I’m an admin. I get so I have to change the permissions.

 

Ari Meisel: In the process.

 

Ari Meisel: Or give you a.

 

Ari Meisel: Password. And then the other thing that happens a lot is that we’ll refer to people in an absolute.

 

Ari Meisel: Sense, so the opposite.

 

Ari Meisel: So we get to step 20 and it’s like, all right, now we’re done with the process. Give the paperwork.

 

Ari Meisel: To Jan in accounting. Like Jan quit last week, so now.

 

Ari Meisel: You’re like, okay, so we have to make it relevant is to be a role, not a person. You want to make somebody.

 

Ari Meisel: Irreplaceable, name them in a process.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yes, [00:29:00] I love that. And so let me clarify something here to make sure that I’m hearing you correctly. The the first step there is to have the person have the person that does it all the time, do the process with someone else watching it, or because here’s what I’ve done in the past and and I might have caused myself more work by doing this. So I would have the person that normally does it create like a loom or a zoom recording screen recording of it, and then sending that recording to like a VA to transcribe like the steps out. Is that okay or do we have.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Right. You can show somebody however you want. Could be a screencast, it could be in.

 

Ari Meisel: Person, it could be.

 

Ari Meisel: In the industrial processes I’ve worked on with people.

 

Ari Meisel: You like videoing them sometimes and then.

 

Ari Meisel: But don’t give them the instruction. Just show them. Show them [00:30:00] the process.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. And then you see like so I did this one time with Dex, what used to be receipt bank and we’re capturing receipts and then exporting them to QuickBooks and all of that. And it was like. Oh, you’re missed. Like, you didn’t explain this step because now this, like, receipt just magically appeared here. So we don’t we had no idea where this stuff goes, and it’s like, wow. Like, there’s a lot of steps in here, really. And, and so, yeah, I find amazing value in that, that aspect of it. But we don’t have a whole, whole lot of time. But would you mind kind of at a high level go through like the non fundamental principles of less doing?

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah. I just have to address one thing here with Everett.

 

Ari Meisel: So I am born and raised New York.

 

Ari Meisel: I’ve been in New Jersey.

 

Ari Meisel: For a year now, so if I seem [00:31:00] like I’m from New.

 

Ari Meisel: Jersey, I don’t.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m not sure. I think probably Jersey just.

 

Ari Meisel: Adopted, I guess, pretty quickly.

 

Ari Meisel: So the nine fundamentals of less doing, that’s that’s as we want.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. Yeah. High level. I mean because we could go in deep in the weeds with it, I mean.

 

Ari Meisel: I would. Well, so. So here’s the thing. I can do that. But less doing was the original, and it was much more personal. Oh, yeah. No, not much more personal productivity focus. Whereas the replaceable founder also has nine principles. But it’s more things might be more relevant. So the three main categories are communication, project management and processes. Within those within communications we’ve got inbox.

 

Ari Meisel: Zero, right?

 

Ari Meisel: Which is inbox zero is really not about the inbox. And the email problem.

 

Ari Meisel: Is a decision making.

 

Ari Meisel: Problem. So inbox zero is actually it’s not called.

 

Ari Meisel: Out even [00:32:00] in the book. It’s called the three decisions. So three the three decisions. It’s about making more effective decisions.

 

Ari Meisel: The second one is asynchronous communication, which we talked about, and the third one is the six levels of delegation. So with that one, I’m basically teaching that a lot of people have this very binary approach to delegating meaning like, I do everything or they do.

 

Ari Meisel: Everything, and neither one is a great scenario for most of them.

 

Ari Meisel: So the six levels.

 

Ari Meisel: Is exactly that. There are six very various.

 

Ari Meisel: Deepening levels.

 

Ari Meisel: Of delegation which you can use in different settings.

 

Ari Meisel: I know project management, we get into radical transparency, which is really about.

 

Ari Meisel: Making it very clear and showing what people are working on when, where, who’s responsible for what, without requiring micromanagement and the communication that goes along with that.

 

Ari Meisel: The project management sort of schema itself. And then the third one is.

 

Tersh Blissett: Like I [00:33:00] said, you’re good, you’re good.

 

Ari Meisel: I understand. I probably should know what that third.

 

Ari Meisel: One is, but I will figure that one.

 

Ari Meisel: Out in the second. It’s been a while since I wrote the book. And then the third one is.

 

Ari Meisel: Processes, which is optimizing, automating elsewhere.

 

Ari Meisel: So optimizing in that order is really important. We have to optimize first with a look at what we have, what.

 

Ari Meisel: We’re using, the resources and whatnot.

 

Ari Meisel: And make them more effective because a lot of people will try to outsource first.

 

Ari Meisel: As a knee jerk reaction and that.

 

Josh Crouch: I’ve done that to.

 

Ari Meisel: Very common. It’s very common. I don’t want to deal with this thing like let me get somebody to deal with it and then they don’t know how to deal with it because you don’t know how.

 

Ari Meisel: To deal with it.

 

Ari Meisel: And and yet you’re expecting them to have a better.

 

Ari Meisel: Result than you would have had. It’s like a recipe for failure and then automating.

 

Ari Meisel: So we’re going to automate whatever we can before we.

 

Ari Meisel: Get to people and automation. And you guys like it. So triggers and actions, right?

 

Ari Meisel: And then the last one is outsourcing or delegating.

 

Ari Meisel: So at that point, we really want to be able to delegate effectively [00:34:00] to different people, whether they’re in the company or out of the company, to get all of these things done.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s and I know you can go really deep with a couple of these things. How? I don’t know if we can, in a fairly quick sense, go over like what? What types of things do you look to automate versus delegate and the breakdown between those two? Because I think that’s that gets confusing for people because what needs a human touch versus what doesn’t necessarily need that human touch?

 

Ari Meisel: So nothing I would say just about almost nothing needs a human touch. So that is a really important thing because because if we don’t see it that way, then it’s kind of it’s kind of limited and. There’s so many things.

 

Ari Meisel: Like that where people feel.

 

Ari Meisel: Like, Oh, it’s got to.

 

Ari Meisel: Be me, or It’s got to be a person. It’s got to be this this person with all this experience.

 

Ari Meisel: And it can’t be done. And they [00:35:00] may be somewhat right, but oftentimes they’re not. And again, if we if we seek that replace ability, ultimately what you’re going to do with that person.

 

Ari Meisel: That has all the experience and everything is you’re.

 

Ari Meisel: Going to replace them up, not out there, be able to do.

 

Ari Meisel: Better your things.

 

Ari Meisel: So. The. We I mean, the simple answer is we want to try to automate everything, really, because if we do that, whatever’s left over. That’s going to be the thing that a.

 

Ari Meisel: Person is going to need to do for now.

 

Tersh Blissett: So there’s there’s not a point to where we automate too much.

 

Ari Meisel: No, not not if you’re doing it in this way, where we’re trying to enhance the human element. Because if you look at most businesses, especially in service businesses and the word service is right there. Right. That’s the first thing that goes when people get busy. Yeah. The first thing is the customer service, the customer experience, the the the.

 

Josh Crouch: Because that takes the most time. [00:36:00] I mean, it takes the most time to be to really be thorough with your process and make sure that you’re listening and all that kind of stuff. It really takes a focus level.

 

Ari Meisel: It’s also it’s also the messiest part of it. Yeah. So, look, I’ll give you a really good example that just happened to me today. We’re getting a full.

 

Ari Meisel: Install, which has been a many month processes, which I knew that would be the case.

 

Ari Meisel: A month ago, the electrician, who is subcontracted and they were great, they came out and they put in.

 

Ari Meisel: The the wiring and all the system for the the the filter system, whatnot.

 

Ari Meisel: And they had to run an Ethernet cable in my house because.

 

Ari Meisel: There’s a wi.

 

Ari Meisel: Fi control over the thing. And the guy told me this is on February 23rd, he said.

 

Ari Meisel: The.

 

Ari Meisel: Controller or the wi fi controller.

 

Ari Meisel: Seems to be defective. Do something. It’s not. You should talk to the couple. So I. I talked to the owner of the.

 

Ari Meisel: Pool company immediately and he’s.

 

Ari Meisel: Like he’s like, yeah, can you just do me a favor to email the office because I’m not going to remember which that’s fine again. That’s delegating. Yeah.

 

Ari Meisel: I emailed the office [00:37:00] and.

 

Ari Meisel: Realized I never heard back. And so today they came to start up the pool and the guy is like, Hey, the wi fi controller is not working. Yeah. And I, I got very upset.

 

Ari Meisel: And so I contacted.

 

Ari Meisel: The project manager for the, at the pool company and I was like, this happened. I sent you this email five weeks ago letting me know this was happening.

 

Ari Meisel: And she said, like, I’ll, you know.

 

Ari Meisel: I’ll get back to you. I’ll get right back to like that.

 

Ari Meisel: And I called her about an hour later because she hadn’t.

 

Ari Meisel: Gone back to me and she was like, I need to do this. I need to she didn’t really tell me anything. And I said, look, this is this is very frustrating and I’m not happy with this.

 

Ari Meisel: And the thing is, when I do that, like, I’m coming from a place of like I’m actually going to.

 

Ari Meisel: Help you make.

 

Ari Meisel: Your business better, even though I’m pissed off at you right now. But I could hear in the background, like phones were going off, somebody else was talking to her, you know? And I get it. She got busy and maybe she’s diligently trying to figure out what the problem is right now and [00:38:00] talking to this company. But she’s not communicating any of that things to me because she’s overwhelmed.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. Or she’s afraid that you’re that you’re going to think less of her because she is overwhelmed. And. Yeah, no, I agree 100%. So I’m just going to go.

 

Ari Meisel: What kind of.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yes. All you want to keep going.

 

Ari Meisel: The the it’s very simple. The absolute worst thing that.

 

Ari Meisel: You can do from a customer experience point of view is to keep your customers in the dark. That’s it.

 

Ari Meisel: And it’s also in some people’s businesses, it is the hardest thing to stay on top.

 

Ari Meisel: Of because you’re.

 

Ari Meisel: Busy. And even if you’re calling somebody to be like, hey, the the lead time on that, we had a generator installed for our house. The lead time originally was 26 weeks because of COVID and all sorts of yeah, yeah. I believe it was like 26 weeks. I was like, we could be living in another city at that point, you know? And it’s like, but they gave [00:39:00] me an update every week, even though there was no one or like we checked with them again, still 26 weeks, check with them again. And I was happy with that and it ended up coming a lot earlier anyway. But a lot of times like, well, I didn’t want to say anything because we didn’t know anything. It’s like, Well, then I’m just going to fill in the blanks with assuming that.

 

Josh Crouch: You’re not following up, you don’t.

 

Ari Meisel: Care, right?

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. That’s something that’s that’s definitely I’ve seen that with within our team here recently where we were checking on a part that was backordered and it was an evaporator coil. It was actually for the savannah bananas and it was a they had to manufacture it at the manufacturers level. And so we were we were calling every single week, but we were not notifying the team over there every single week that we were calling them and we hadn’t heard anything back yet or they haven’t given us an update and they didn’t complain [00:40:00] to us. They’re wonderful people. But as soon as I realized we had not been communicating with them, I was like, okay, I really want you. Like, This is our process. We need to make sure we’re over communicating. If it feels like we’re over communicating, they probably feel like we’re communicating just enough.

 

Ari Meisel: Absolutely.

 

Tersh Blissett: And so we that happened. And anyways, it was exactly the same thought, like she was busy ordering parts and making sure parts were getting here. And every. Else that didn’t really take the time to include that part of the process into her daily routine, which is now part of the daily processes.

 

Ari Meisel: But I mean, a very basic level.

 

Ari Meisel: It’s just a matter of like, I don’t have a solution, but I promise you I’m going to find the solution and I’m going to let you.

 

Ari Meisel: Know.

 

Ari Meisel: What’s happening either way in X amount of time.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, that’s it.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah. So what? So we had a couple ever and Cheryl. So what, what [00:41:00] book? If somebody wanted to kind of start because you have a couple of books, is there one that you would recommend starting with.

 

Ari Meisel: Probably the replaceable founder? I mean.

 

Ari Meisel: The last one is on productivity, which.

 

Ari Meisel: Is supposed to be sort of my like. The final book on productivity. I don’t know. I want to write any more.

 

Ari Meisel: At this point.

 

Tersh Blissett: The final hurrah.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah, it’s a little it’s a little higher level. I think in some ways the replaceable.

 

Ari Meisel: Part is pretty tactical. So I would say replaceable founder slash on productivity.

 

Josh Crouch: So and that is for people that that are listening. That is an audio book I think you actually you do the audio yourself. So that is an audio book. It’s just in case that’s the way you want to listen if you don’t want to read it, because I know Tersh and I both, we would prefer to listen than read. So but we we had one more question in here somewhere. Someone on Facebook said, this is a great topic. What process can you implement to help keep your people so they’re not? I’m assuming feeling overwhelmed is what he meant to say.

 

Ari Meisel: A [00:42:00] lot of the overwhelm that people experience is just.

 

Ari Meisel: A lack of understanding of where the overall is coming from, which I know sounds very circular, but.

 

Ari Meisel: We tend to keep more in our heads than we really.

 

Ari Meisel: Should. So if we’re creating processes.

 

Ari Meisel: Where people are.

 

Ari Meisel: Offloading and sort of brain dumping.

 

Ari Meisel: Right, even in a service business, right? You finish a job, you’ve got to run to the next job. But there’s nothing wrong with there.

 

Ari Meisel: Being a 32nd or even one minute process of sort of like recapping what you just.

 

Ari Meisel: Did. And obviously, people get to fill out tickets and things like that. But if somebody is truly that busy, that overwhelm, like set it up so that they can call a phone number and leave a voicemail for a.

 

Ari Meisel: Minute, that then gets transcribed. And that’s the notes for the call debrief.

 

Ari Meisel: That’s great. So that’s the thing is we need to have processes where people can sort of.

 

Ari Meisel: Not keep things in their head. Really, that’s that’s what it is.

 

Ari Meisel: Cheryl, the second book is on productivity.

 

Ari Meisel: It’s the most recent book.

 

Tersh Blissett: This one [00:43:00] here. Yeah. And it is very good. And yeah, we learned a ton from that. So really quick to wrap things up, could you give us less on the business side, more on the the personal side? A couple of things that you would recommend someone do in their personal life to to help. You can’t. I wouldn’t say replace them. Replace. I don’t know what the best thing to say is, but just the personal productivity.

 

Ari Meisel: Yeah. I mean, so again, honestly, asynchronous communication.

 

Ari Meisel: Is the biggest one. And it’s it’s so true in personal life.

 

Tersh Blissett: Even in personal life.

 

Ari Meisel: Absolutely. 99% of my conversation, I think, at this point are done asynchronously. It’s how I keep in touch with a lot of my friends.

 

Ari Meisel: And it’s even how I talk to my my mother. And we talk more of a boxer than you through the phone call. Because I’m not [00:44:00] I wouldn’t consider myself a busy person. I have a very full life. I’m always.

 

Ari Meisel: Doing something.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m never I’m never.

 

Ari Meisel: Idle, let’s put it that.

 

Ari Meisel: Way. So stopping and getting on the phone is just it’s not something I want to be doing. All right. So more and more communication, as I said, like this, this call that we’re having right now is the only.

 

Ari Meisel: Synchronous meeting I have on my schedule the entire week.

 

Ari Meisel: That’s. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s the biggest one.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m not I’m texting.

 

Ari Meisel: With contractors that are working at.

 

Ari Meisel: The house. Like, I’m not.

 

Ari Meisel: Really I try.

 

Ari Meisel: To avoid phone calls as much as possible because.

 

Ari Meisel: I’m not going to remember things. I’m not going to keep track and I’m going to be.

 

Ari Meisel: Focused on other things.

 

Ari Meisel: So that’s a big one. But then the other one, which is really huge in personal.

 

Ari Meisel: Life, particularly two is idea capture.

 

Ari Meisel: So and that’s by the way, that was the third one in and I forgot I did capture.

 

Ari Meisel: External brain, which is.

 

Ari Meisel: What’s called.

 

Tersh Blissett: External brain. Yes, [00:45:00] Evernote. I reintroduced Evernote into my life a couple weeks or two ago and it’s like, whoa, like, why have I not had this in my life for so many years?

 

Ari Meisel: Well, so I actually use Trello for a lot of that functionality at this point. Okay, not so great, but the bigger thing is how you get the ideas.

 

Ari Meisel: In there, right? So I basically am never 20 seconds away, more than 20 seconds away from being able to capture ideas. So I’ve got Alexa devices in every stop. So if I ask her to add something to my to do list.

 

Ari Meisel: I believe it will then turn into.

 

Ari Meisel: A card in my Trello.

 

Ari Meisel: If I, if I take a screenshot on my phone, it will become a card, right? If I send a text message.

 

Ari Meisel: To a specific phone number.

 

Ari Meisel: Or a voicemail to that number.

 

Ari Meisel: Those.

 

Ari Meisel: Will. Right. So no matter where I am at any time and I even have.

 

Ari Meisel: This.

 

Ari Meisel: Person right in my car, [00:46:00] there’s the auto version. So which means that I’m never holding on to.

 

Ari Meisel: Ideas and taking up space or getting.

 

Ari Meisel: Distracted with them.

 

Ari Meisel: I offload them and then I process them later at a set time.

 

Tersh Blissett: Now, what do you what are you using to, to put that stuff into Trello from that device.

 

Josh Crouch: How are you connecting that device wheels to say to, to those different things.

 

Ari Meisel: If.

 

Ari Meisel: Tcp so if this then that it does that and so I use Zapier for most automation but it’s a. Zapier is definitely more focused on business apps and services, whereas if it actually does a lot of the Internet of Things kind of stuff, so even like light switches in the house that are like remote switches or whatnot, if you long press a certain switch like that can.

 

Ari Meisel: Trigger something in.

 

Ari Meisel: Effect, which is pretty cool. Oh yeah.

 

Ari Meisel: So there’s some really fun.

 

Ari Meisel: Really [00:47:00] useful things that you can do on the personal side of it.

 

Tersh Blissett: Now with that, it’s like we we actually put in our RSS feed from the website to go to send automatically out to, to Trello, I mean to, to Twitter as soon as any kind of new blog post or updated or anything like that. So we have a we have a lot of the stuff set up automatically now. Is there a reason why you want why you move away from Evernote towards Trello? Because the thing about Evernote that I really like is the fact that like I put a node in there and then it adds it to my to do list kind of thing.

 

Ari Meisel: No. So I was using Trello as more of a knowledge repository.

 

Ari Meisel: Less so for like active ideas and tasks. So it’d be.

 

Ari Meisel: Evernote for me was more like, here’s an interesting article that I might reference at some point. Yeah. And because the search ability.

 

Ari Meisel: In Evernote is amazing and again, it’s totally I recommend it for what you’re talking about.

 

Ari Meisel: But for me nowadays.

 

Ari Meisel: A lot of the stuff that I [00:48:00] come up with is just very, very task based. Like, I need to get this thing, I need to fix this or this, whatever it is. And for me, like Trello is just sort of a quick hit for those kinds of things.

 

Tersh Blissett: Gotcha. Now, how often those screenshot cards that you’re going through, how often are you looking at those? Like once.

 

Ari Meisel: A day. Nightly generally.

 

Ari Meisel: So for me, it’s it’s like one of my sort of night routine things is to sort my Trello cards for the day.

 

Tersh Blissett: Cool. All right. Like, we really appreciate you coming on the show and we want to respect your time. And if somebody wants to reach out to you, learn more about you. Where is it again? We need to go.

 

Ari Meisel: So everything’s at Lastminute.com, but anybody.

 

Ari Meisel: Is welcome to get in touch with me directly and go to Vox with Ecom and that will explain how to get in touch with me on Boxer. And it’s really.

 

Ari Meisel: Me. That’s cool.

 

Ari Meisel: It’s not assistant. Yeah. And that’s where I love. I love boxers. So anyone really, if you have a question, something like that, feel free to reach out.

 

Tersh Blissett: Cool, man. We really appreciate it. [00:49:00] 100%.

 

Josh Crouch: Thanks. This was.

 

Tersh Blissett: Great. Let’s see you.

 

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