SNS 150: Saturday Night Special – Interview with author of That's It I'm Fired! Jeff Finney

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 150 of tonight's Saturday night special.

[00:00:06] Jeff Finney: I'm Jeff Vinny, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talents and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to fire yourself and find freedom in your calling is key.

[00:00:21] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:27] if you implement something that massive it's gonna fail and that's just all there is to it. So you have to start with baby steps. I'll give you the perfect example. We automate a lot of stuff around our office. We automate everything we can, but generally speaking, it starts out with a piece of.

[00:00:45] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your [00:01:00] true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact.

[00:01:11] and tonight, Saturday night special. I interviewed Jeff. I asked Jeff about why he wrote his book. That's it I'm fired. I also asked Jeff why so many business owners turn their dreams of owning a business into a nightmare. And Jeff also shares with you some of the best things to do when you first start out in business to set it up.

[00:01:31] Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really. I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, [00:02:00] not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done.

[00:02:05] What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personnel. Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type.

[00:02:23] But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion. Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash law. Jeff Finney is the owner and CEO of the ultimate cabinets and push through LLC with over 15 years in the woodworking manufacturing.

[00:02:50] Starting out in a small garage. Jeff independently grew his company into a business of 60 employees with a combined 55,000 square feet of [00:03:00] manufacturing space. He guides other entrepreneurs to fire themselves and work on their businesses, not in it to regain control in their business and in life in 2018, Jeff was honored as a woodwork networking 40 under 40 in the woods.

[00:03:15] And he is a featured writer for the woodworking network and has also published articles and surface and panel magazine and FGMC magazine. He co-hosts the push through podcast. Jeff lives in Oklahoma with his wife and their three children where he enjoys playing golf in between his kid's sporting event.

[00:03:33] Welcome to the show, Jeff. Hey,

[00:03:34] Jeff Finney: thanks for having me glad to be here.

[00:03:37] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So we talked a little bit in the intro about this new book. That's it. I'm fired. Can you talk a little bit about how the idea for the book came about and how your journey led you to writing a book called that's, it I'm fired.

[00:03:52] Jeff Finney: Yeah, you bet. I've been in the woodworking industry since the early two thousands starting my own business in oh five. [00:04:00] And slowly but surely grew it into what it is today. We've got between 15, 16 employees and to two facilities and we just slowly have grown this business into what it is today.

[00:04:14] And those experiences have led me to the spot where Started firing myself out of positions and getting the business Tory it'll run without not without my every second of being there, and that's the. The cliff notes as to how we got into the book.

[00:04:33] And the book was the result of several blog articles that I've written over the years. And I combined them into longer stories and just turned my experiences into something that was like a tactical guide for owners that are stuck in their business.

[00:04:46] That basically they're not living their business dream. They're a slave to their business.

[00:04:50] Scott Maderer: So with that in mind does this really just apply to woodworking business or do you think it's broader than.

[00:04:59] Jeff Finney: Oh, no, not at all. [00:05:00] That's obviously my industry, so there's a lot of examples in there that what we did in my company and we are a manufacturer, so that's different than some industries, but it still applies across the board because it I've talked to many different business owners in several different industries and it seems like it's the same story over and over they have this ideal business in their head and that's probably what made them start it.

[00:05:23] But in the end they ended up getting some of those completely. There are slave to it. Every day they're having to just battle to make payroll or pay bills or collect money and all that stuff. And that's really what I wrote the book for. It was just so for those kinds of people.

[00:05:42] Scott Maderer: So that's a little bit about kind of the business background, but how about your personal journey and challenges that you've faced in your own life? How does business and personal as a small business, Personal and business aren't that different in some

[00:05:57] Jeff Finney: way? That's right. And it used to [00:06:00] use to, it was just a blended thing.

[00:06:01] It didn't there was no line between personal and business because I didn't have any personal time. Basically when the business called I had to be. All the time. And so now the difference is I've got options. I still go to work. I still love what I do. I'm still passionate about my job, but I've got options to where I can go enjoy all my kids' activities and not worry about the phone ringing.

[00:06:25] And I can take a vacation. I can if I need to take some time off just for mental health I've got the option to do it. So that's probably the big difference between the way it was before. And the way it is now is I've actually. The option to do things personally.

[00:06:42] Scott Maderer: So w with the way it was before there.

[00:06:46] Were there precipitating events that made you realize Hey, I've got to give this up. What's missing the kids events. What was it?

[00:06:55] Jeff Finney: It wasn't so much that it was some, it was more of just, I was [00:07:00] getting to the spot in our business. When I started thinking about this idea, we probably had about 10 to 12 employees somewhere around there.

[00:07:08] I'm not sure the exact number, but basically we were stuck. And what we was stuck on was the fact that I was. I was out of town time. I was wearing so many hats. I was so busy with all these activities and I was given just a half effort to all these activities rather than being good at anything, and I was just spread too thin and I found that every single year there for a few years, I just kept peeking at this same sales number. I just never could seem to get over it. And it turns out the reason I couldn't get over, it was just because I was the one that was in the way. So I started figuring out slowly that something had to change.

[00:07:45] And I'll be honest. You don't know what you don't know, so I didn't know what to change. So I I went and hired a business coach executive business coach. He happens to be in Oklahoma. He coaches people all over the. Fantastic guy. I've been with him for [00:08:00] almost six years now. And and I'm still with him talk to him every week and because I'm still finding value out of it.

[00:08:07] And that's been great because as a entrepreneur and an owner, You could probably relate that you don't always have people to talk to about your business, either issues or successes or ideas somebody to kick it around, some of that's on your side, but that also played devil's advocate and that's kinda what you need as a business owner, somebody to hold you accountable, because a lot of times you don't have anybody to hold you accountable.

[00:08:33] Scott Maderer: When you think about that I, you've mentioned several times that people when they start a business, they have a dream, they have an idea.

[00:08:41] They have an idealized version of it. And yet I think a lot of small business owners will relate to the idea of not, this has not turned into what I dreamed of. What do you see as the biggest reason that kind of happens?

[00:08:55] Jeff Finney: I don't know. I think it's the with me [00:09:00] personally, I don't know about it.

[00:09:01] This is everybody with me personally. I'm the eternal optimist and and I've noticed that a lot of other business owners or that way they've got. Glass half full, no matter what oh yeah. This activity can be done in 15 minutes and really it's an all day deal or and it's just this eternal optimism about what they're doing.

[00:09:21] So they, they find something, they enjoy it for me, it was woodworking I used to do it in my garage building furniture and then I just took that hobby to a full-time job and that's exactly what I saw on it. It wasn't. About the potential money that I can make. It was just the fact that I can do something I enjoy and make money doing it.

[00:09:39] And so it's kinda like we a lot of times. Especially startups like myself they, we kid ourselves into thinking that, oh, this is going to be great. This is going to be all rosy from day one give me a few months of hard time and then I'm going to be fine.

[00:09:55] It's, that's not at all how it is. It's just [00:10:00] it's years of grinding and getting it's where it needs to be. And then. And then eventually there's something there. If you do grind it out, if you do the right things and you make the right choices and you keep after it.

[00:10:09] Yeah. You're gonna, you're gonna reap the rewards at the end, but there's a long journey between there that if you don't watch it, you can get stuck in that

[00:10:18] Scott Maderer: permanent. Let's dive into the book a little bit if someone is hearing this and hearing themselves, Hey, yeah, that's me right now.

[00:10:30] What are what is the process or the steps, or what should they do first to begin, figuring out where they need to be and what they need to do next.

[00:10:39] Jeff Finney: It all starts as, as silly as it sounds. And if everybody's heard this before, but it's a super important step is creating a vision and by a vision something that's so far out in the distance that it's not achievable it's too big and you'll never actually reach it.

[00:10:56] And that's a great vision because you can never actually [00:11:00] accomplish it, which means that you can always be moving towards. And I view it like a visual kind of like a lighthouse you bid something way up of this and so you can see it, so you know which direction to go, but you're never actually going to get there.

[00:11:14] And for us w what a great vision does is. It guides every major or minor decision that the company makes. So for example we was looking at buying a company of two or three years ago. That was a similar business to ours that use similar tools, use similar equipment, similar techniques, but it was a different business that meant.

[00:11:40] A completely different product than we may have just happened to use the same machines. And they were about to shut down and we could have got it on the cheap. I had done all the engineering on it, run the numbers, and I've been working on this deal for probably about a month and a half.

[00:11:53] And finally, my my lead guy in my business said, Hey, quick question. I know you're getting pretty close on this deal, [00:12:00] but is this thing aligned to our vision? Is this going to take us. And he was asking me as a question. He was like, is this good? Does this keep us on our line on our path? And I looked at him and kinda chuckled and I was like it doesn't align to our path.

[00:12:13] And it was dead the next morning we was done with it. It was, the answer was no, and we moved. Immediately just never even looked back. And of course they were a little upset I failed to ask that question to myself is, does this align to our vision? And that's the other great thing about it is your your company can buy into that vision and they can hold the company and me even accountable to it.

[00:12:40] So that's definitely step one. And then once you get that. You moved to the delegation phase where you start delegating these things that are holding you back, holding your business back because you, as an owner is in the way for me, it was at the time, my first big thing I delegated was the shop floor.

[00:12:56] Getting the shop floor off of my plate. And there's probably some [00:13:00] activity like that in the, in every business, even retail working on the retail floor when you should be doing inventory or ordering stuff, or I don't know what the activity is, but.

[00:13:08] There's always some activity there that you should probably not be doing as an owner because it's not helping your business. And the key to delegation is SLPs. And this is regardless of any business that you're in is having standard procedures. So SLPs are standard operating procedures, and these were very simple written procedures that basically put out how you want things done.

[00:13:32] But it leaves enough gray area where the employee can figure it out. It doesn't detail it out towards start with your left foot, then move your right foot. It's more of go from a to B and you just tell them the major points along the way. And then you tell them what the end product's supposed to look like.

[00:13:50] And for us, we do this just with eight, with a simple eight step template. My, my employees do their own SOP is now. They do their own SOP, [00:14:00] so they can actually learn other areas in the shop and that's how they gain more wage and things like that. So it becomes a thing that feeds on itself after a while.

[00:14:09] And then from that, you're quite a ways down the road. You've already been firing yourself. So now you're down to the point where you need to start automating activities. So you're, you as an owner will start having time on your plate to, to tackle some of these business things. And that you've been putting off for your, so you can start automating things like payroll and invoicing collections.

[00:14:30] For me, there's tons of things to automate because we're in manufacturing so we can automate processes and we can automate. Things that we built repetitively and all that stuff. So every business has got things that can be automated. And then the kind of the last step is once you started, once you got all these three really honed in the last step is knowing the value of your business.

[00:14:51] And the reason that's important is because. As a business owner, we always want to make sure that our business has valued beyond us. So [00:15:00] the perfect question to ask yourself is how much is my business worth without me in it? And if the answer is it's just worth the value of the assets, then that means you've still got work to do.

[00:15:11] Does that make sense? So if it's only worth the value of the assets now, you still got work to do because of. Provide value for somebody beyond yourself. So if you can get your business to where it has value beyond yourself, about you in it, then all of a sudden you've got a company that's sellable beyond you.

[00:15:29] And not saying that you want to sell your company. You just want to have it in a position where it could be sold. If a situation ever arises.

[00:15:38] Scott Maderer: So w let's back up a step two and go a different direction. That's I, first off, I agree with all of that. I think one of the things that happens is a lot of times we try to automate too early.

[00:15:49] But I know people that start trying to automate before they actually have any processes and it's no, you, that's the wrong time. You gotta figure out what you're doing first.

[00:15:57] Jeff Finney: That's a great point, so [00:16:00] that's that's a. Great point because automation can't happen first. And it depends on the business on how you do your automation, but you can't.

[00:16:10] I know too many companies that go from zero to a hundred miles an hour on automation, and they think it's going to work. And it doesn't perfect examples, like an ERP system, an enterprise system that runs your whole organization. If you implement something that massive it's going to fail and that's just all there is to it.

[00:16:27] So you have to start with baby steps. I'll give you the perfect example. We automate a lot of stuff around our office. We automate everything we can, but generally speaking. It starts out with a piece of paper. It starts out with a perfect examples right now. Me and my one of the ladies in my office are redoing the way the end goal is we're going to automate our calendar.

[00:16:50] We're going to automate our our deliveries. We're going to automate our schedules with our customers. We're going to automate that whole thing, but right now and I can send a [00:17:00] picture if anybody would like it. But basically. It's a magnetic board that has a bunch of little magnetic strips for each little job, and it's got a calendar written on it and we manually every day match it to the production, Neo match it to the production schedule and move all these magnets.

[00:17:15] And it's a bit cumbersome, but we're learning the problems in it. We're learning what the problems are before we automate it. So here in probably. I don't know, 60 to 90 days after we have it down, pat, I'm going to be able to go and sit down and just automate this. Online and everybody in our company will have this schedule on their phones or their iPads or whatever, but right now, yeah, it's manual and we literally snap a picture of it every morning.

[00:17:42] It takes, it's all salespeople it's very manual but I'm convinced that you have to do it that way because you have to find the flaws in it. The problem with automation is that it works every single time. And the great thing about automation is it works every single time.

[00:17:59] So if you don't have. [00:18:00] If you don't have it, if you have a flow in it, it's going to have that flaw every single time. So that's just the kind of a cautionary tale to automating

[00:18:09] Scott Maderer: it's the garbage in garbage out. Sometimes. Plus sometimes you end up making very automated, something that isn't very efficient or is this really something you want to even automate?

[00:18:22] Jeff Finney: You can automate. Just as easily as you can automate efficiency. And it's really hard to spot the difference if you haven't got it figured out ahead of time. That's right.

[00:18:33] Scott Maderer: That's right. So let's talk about somebody who's getting started. Maybe they haven't got this business yet, but they've got that dream in their head and they've got that fire in their belly of, Hey, this is something I really.

[00:18:44] Want to do and what could they do different to set it up from the beginning so that they're less likely to have to go through that fire themselves

[00:18:54] Jeff Finney: more than that's. If I was starting all over again from zero, from scratch, [00:19:00] with the knowledge that I have now, though, I would build back a lot differently.

[00:19:05] And I would pay a lot more attention to. My vision early, I would pay attention to where I'm going, like very early on. And knowing that vision is going to change over time, because I'm so young, but I would learn how to say no to things a lot earlier and I would throw through no.

[00:19:23] And just meaning that I would be a little more selective, whereas if. I think I lost several years in my business just by saying yes to everything. And everything's

[00:19:33] Scott Maderer: an opportunity

[00:19:34] when

[00:19:34] Jeff Finney: you don't know where it had no, sometimes it had no bearing on cabinets. It just put a little more volume on our top line.

[00:19:41] I said yes. And it would just deter us from where we was really needing to go. So I think I would definitely focus on a vision early on and stick to it. And then I think. I would also start writing processes early from day one. Even knowing that those processes are going to be old and out of date, by the time you [00:20:00] grow and maybe get a new process or a new machine or whatever it is you're going to have to redo them continuously.

[00:20:04] But if you make that a part of your business, your employees will start to take that habit over for. Towards you don't have to ride them all. So when you've got one or two employees and every time you hire an employee, you explained to you the process of how you do this. It just becomes something that feeds itself and those SLPs are highly undervalued in business, mainly because they're most people over-complicate them.

[00:20:31] So if you can have simple SOP. That take my SLPs, literally take less than 10 minutes to write. They're so simple. We snap a picture. We printed out on a little printer that we have all around the shop floor. We stick it to a piece of paper and rewrap hand, write a caption underneath it, and we send it through a laminator and that's it.

[00:20:50] That's it. And we hang it in the area that it goes. It literally takes less than 10 minutes to make an SOP so that as a young woman I would grow through, no, [00:21:00] I would establish a vision and I would create a soapy from day one. You do that. And you're already in the top 5% of businesses.

[00:21:07] Scott Maderer: So before I kind move on to a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests what else from the book do you think is really important to share?

[00:21:14] Jeff Finney: There's a lot of there's a lot of anecdotal stuff from my business that that's in there that's that makes it turns it into kind of a tactical guide about how you can apply it to yours.

[00:21:24] Things like lean, how lean manufacturing techniques apply in everyday business, not just manufacturing and if people have never gotten into lean, I would highly encourage everybody to take a few minutes. And listen to an audio book or get the book called two second lane. And it's a guy that owns a company called fast cat.

[00:21:45] They just sell off the shelf, retail stuff for woodworking and other businesses, but they're really in the lean and the owner that has written that book. And it's, it literally is. I don't know, it's maybe a hundred page book. I read it on a Sunday afternoon.[00:22:00] I've read it three times to listen to the audio book twice and always get something out of it.

[00:22:05] But there's some very simple things there that you can learn. That applied to any business, they apply to your life at home, just how you run your house things like that. So it's a very relatable book. I would highly encourage that. And then there's some other things in the book in, in that's it I'm fired that things about marketing and automating those kinds of tasks and learning the basics of marketing and how that can help grow your business beyond yourself.

[00:22:32] Without. Hiring a bunch more people. Some of the tools that I used in marketing to grow my business to scale it I put it in the book as well. And then there's several stories. One of the main ones that I, that comes to mind that probably ultimately led to me getting reinvigorated about the book was several years ago, I got diagnosed with young onset Parkinson's disease and that That definitely lit my fire [00:23:00] again.

[00:23:00] And I've always been a passionate guy who has been busy that took it to a different level because essentially it in a way it put an expiration date on my working days. And because it will come to a point where I can't work anymore Easily. So it made it to where it put this half to on this whole project of firing myself.

[00:23:24] And then now that I've got down the road several years and I've actually done it, it made the book a lot easier because for me, I was like, you know what? This really has value. And I didn't write the book to make money. I wrote the book to educate other people and hopefully they get one little nugget out of my story.

[00:23:43] That'll help them. And I love nothing more. In fact, the book has only been out for a couple of weeks now, but I got an email from a, just a random guy out of North Carolina that bought it. And he said, Hey, about halfway through your book, really enjoyed this story about the vision and how it applied to his business.

[00:23:57] And he's man, I'm just really digging it. And [00:24:00] that, that right there made the whole two years of writing the book worth it. It was. Awesome.

[00:24:06] Scott Maderer: So one of the questions I like to ask all of my guests my brand is inspired stewardship, but I run things through that filter of stewardship, but like leadership and other words, I've found that different people hear and think different things when they hear the words.

[00:24:19] So for you, what does the word stewardship mean? And how has its impact been on your life?

[00:24:25] Jeff Finney: Yeah, that's that's a great question. Is this stewardship. I don't know what the technical definition is. If I talk, typed it in Google and said define stewardship to me there's different kinds of stewardship.

[00:24:36] There's financial stewardship. And that is if I go to the bank and I take out a loan for a vehicle, I'm going to be a good steward of that money and I'm going to take care of it. And I'm going to return the favor by paying it back with interest, and that's, so that's financial stewardship, or if you have an investor.

[00:24:50] It's your responsibility to not squander that money and go buy you a new RV it's your right. Your obligation to take [00:25:00] care of that money and grow your business with it. So that's how financial stewardship looks to me. But overall, I think to me, stewardship really applies to business in general, meaning that I feel it's my responsibility to provide a business where.

[00:25:18] My employees have a great place to work. They have opportunity to grow themselves. They're happy in what they're doing which ultimately will create value for my customer. So to me, stewardship is just taking care of my business and facilitating a place where my employees can come we're profitable.

[00:25:35] So we have money to return to. The employees at the end of the year in the form of bonuses and more wages. And then ultimately they're happy. So they're providing the best value to our customers as they possibly.

[00:25:47] Scott Maderer: This is my favorite question. Let's say I invented a magic machine. I could grab you out of the seat where you're sitting today and transport you into the future.

[00:25:57] Maybe a hundred to 150 years. [00:26:00] And through the magic of this machine, you were able to look back on your entire life and see all of the ripples and the impacts and the influences you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left on the world?

[00:26:12] Jeff Finney: I just that's a good question.

[00:26:15] I think me at the me individually at the surface, I enjoy I never feel better than when I'm giving. And sometimes it's giving through my experiences by helping somebody through their tough times or whatever it is through my experiences. Maybe it's helping somebody financially because they're in a rough spot and not asking them to pay me back maybe it's I just, I think that for me any kind of giving just makes me feel good. And and I would hope that when I look back. I see a bunch of people that I've helped because I do we spend so much time at work and the people that were around at work are,

[00:26:55] Scott Maderer: are

[00:26:56] Jeff Finney: very important to me.

[00:26:58] And I would want to affect [00:27:00] people that way positively in that they look back and they say I enjoyed working for him. I enjoyed being part of that operation because it made me a better person, made me a better father or mother or whatever. I that's, when I looked back at. It's less about money and it's more about just impact individual people.

[00:27:17] Scott Maderer: So what's coming next for you as you continue on this journey, what's on the roadmap for the second half of the

[00:27:23] Jeff Finney: year. For us we've got a lot of irons in the fire right now. Fortunately we are in an industry with all this COVID stuff, going around, as some people are not busy, some people are really busy and we're fortunately we're really busy right now being tied to the home.

[00:27:37] So for us, we've got a lot of plans we're looking to absorb another company in a town that's about 90 miles from us right now and expand that way. We're looking at like right now, me personally, I've got about three things on my plate that I'm trying to fire myself. I'm trying to get myself out of the accounting altogether by the end of the year.

[00:27:58] And because I do all my own [00:28:00] accounting, I do all my own taxes. That's a little bit of a burden steel and part of that's just me not wanting to let that. But that's one thing that's holding me back, which means it's holding my company back. So I've got to stay true to my mantra of I've got to fire myself from it.

[00:28:12] So that's my big personal goal for the year. And then, or about personal business goal. My, some of my big business personal goals for the year is I want to get to the spot in the business where it is pretty much running itself without me. And it already is to a certain extent, but I want to get to the point where.

[00:28:31] If I need to take a month away from the business to go explore other opportunities, then I can do it comfortably. I could say that right now I could escape from the business for two or three weeks. No problem. Five or six weeks or a month I can't do that just because of my, mainly because my tip, my activities and accounting.

[00:28:49] So yeah we've got a lot of goals for this year and then they're not just all financial goals. We do have financial goals, but we've also got some. Personal growth goals [00:29:00] for the year as well.

[00:29:01] So

[00:29:01] Scott Maderer: you can find out more about Jeff Finney over on Instagram or Twitter as push through podcast. And that's through spelled T H R U podcast, or find out more about the book and just podcast and other services on his website, the push through Jeff. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:29:23] Jeff Finney: Now, Hey, thanks for having me on today. I really enjoyed it. Just enjoy having these conversations, that kind of challenge you a little bit about what you've done, what's where you're at. And I'll just encourage everybody out there to if you don't go get the book, just start how busy and for your company that's unattainable.

[00:29:40] Start there and just keep moving in the direction that, that.

[00:29:42] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you [00:30:00] enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.

[00:30:10] All one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out. Until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.