EP128 – How to Turn Bad Day Into a Great Day with Ian Luckett

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we're going to help you turn a bad day into a great day.

Welcome to IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to £1 million. And if it's already there gets to £5 million and go faster. At the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

So good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. And in this episode, we're going to help you turn those horrible, mundane, drab, boring, stressful days into great days. And how we're going to do this is we're going to reflect back on a couple of conversations we've been having recently in the Growth Hub. So the reason for the show today is to help you basically get the best out of your day. And the fact that you know, if you the purpose of the show today, is to help you too, just to remind ourselves really that, you know, if you think you're right, and you think you're wrong, then you're probably right, our mindset is the thing that's really going to determine the level of success we have, whether personally, or whether that be in business. And I want to reflect back on some conversations, as I said, that we've been having in the Growth Hub recently, where we had a bit of a roundtable about what was a bad day? And what does a good day look like? And kind of what's in the middle and what makes it a bad day. And what makes it a good day sort of thing. So we asked this question. And we said to the guys, you know, when you're having a really bad day, when you've got a dude art hit the fan, and everything's in a mess, and people aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. And your clients are rubbing you up the wrong way your team aren't doing exactly what they're doing as well. What does that look like and some of the words that we had come out. And this is the amazing thing I just love about working in the IT channel is that people are just so vulnerable and so honest and open, really, because when you're honest and open with things, what happens all of a sudden is people try to help you. And people come up with things. So hey, I've been there, I've done that. And this is, you know, this is basically why Stuart and I get up in the morning. But anyway, getting back to the point I'm talking about here, that red days, some of the words that were associated with that is I feel really isolated, I feel like I'm on my own in business or, you know, this is a flat structure, I started as a tech and now all of a sudden, I'm running a 1.1 million pound business with with 10 people, but it's still me and everyone's looking at me to making decisions. And I kind of do what I do know what I'm doing but feel a little bit kind of like a bit of an impostor sometimes because it's kind of just happened through monthly recurring revenue and the fact that we've been busy, we've got another tick busy, get another tick, busy, get another tick, busy. Oh crikey need some admin, you know, so felt a bit isolated, lack of accountability is another red word that came up quite a bit. And this was in relating to the fact that the team just didn't do what they were told, and many structures in MSPs, that we see are quite flat. And what that means is that, you know, everybody reports to the owner. And that is not really very scalable, because you just add more and more people. And there's more and more people for you to deal with. And if you listened to the last podcast, it was all about bottlenecks. And it was all about you getting out of your own way as well. So lack of accountability and people understanding what they what they're doing. If you're busy being busy, you probably haven't sat down and got proper clear roles, responsibilities accountabilities, what does winning look like? What's the expectation exchange look like with your team. And that was a another thing that came up, felt a bit lost didn't really have a lot of direction, that was quite a key one didn't really have a plan was working to a plan. But you know, when things don't go right, and when we talk about flow, and you doing natural things, you know, you want to just jump back into the techie side of things again, and if you don't know that the plan will go to the side. And you'll start to you know, because it won't be something that you'll find in your happy place, you'll get back on with a tech and you know, the plan will go back in the drawer feels really stressful, just blocked really busy. That comes down to being bottlenecked. And not leveraging and delegating to your teams. And peoples are all in silo they're all working in their own teams are not working across, they're not being innovative. And you know, the difficult thing with this is that no one's going to care about your business as much as you do. Let's be frank about it. Even your A players, your best people in your organization will probably only care about your business about 80%, the further 10% will be left to you. So when we recognize that and we build ourselves structures and processes around that it does help us to to make it you know, more scalable and more efficient because we recognize that not everybody is going to do the same thing that you know that we're going to put these many hours in put the effort and the energy in too much to do is another red word. It's just like crazy, crazy busy. Again, that's probably due to bottlenecks due to taking on too much work, not having the correct efficient structure in our experience. Everyone is busy. No one's got time. And there's lack of priorities. You know, it all goes back down to that horrible to do list again, the one that's that kind of give you the endorphin hit because you're going to knock them off first, but in actual fact, if you ate the frog, great Brian Tracy book and if you actually did some of the tasks Some of the horrible tasks that you've been putting off for so long, you'll probably end up with a better position. And you'll end up achieving more. Because really what we should be doing when we're going in the office in the mornings is making sure our first star should be making sure that the rest of the team know what they're doing. And the rest of the team are, you know, you can then leverage that time, because then you're gonna work on work stuff that's on your own, that you can controlling on your own, rather than having teams sitting around waiting for you to make decisions. So there's some red words. So I have a little think about see if any of those resonate with you. And more importantly, we're going to cover off some of the strategies that help you go from the red to the green. So we then added a second discussion with this was about What does green look like when it's a great day in the office? What is it absolute? What does that feel like? The first one was we're together as a team, everybody's working really, really well. Laughter going on, one of the guys said, and you know, if you're listening to this podcast, who are see more teeth, see more smiling going on in the office, it was progress feels like things were progressing, the world was moving forward, new clients were coming on board, new team members were coming on board, and it was a great place to be we felt like we were achieving something great sense of achievement, you can feel the growth in the numbers, you can feel the growth in the amount of you know, not only on the balance sheet, but also with the you know, the amount of work going through the ticketing system and solving clients problems, real positive change, real happy place to be real settled, people are getting into flow, people were relaxed. But a business as usual, you know, we're just getting on with it, we're just fixing what we do. We're having a good crack revenue, laugh, we might be having a few pizzas on a Friday or something. I mean, as I mentioned, yeah, people are kind of getting into flow. So you know, when we look at this, and we look at the fact that, you know, many of you guys didn't set out to run a business to start with, and we can get carried away with it. But you know, it's just not enjoyable sometimes, if you spend too much time on the read, and it's our choice to where we spend our time, who we spend our time with, and how we spend our time. And I think at this time, it's a case of saying, you know, self awareness is really going to be the biggest thing is one of the leaders and how do we move from red to the green? How do we go from having a bad day to having a great day. So we connected them together. And we came up with some strategies and some things that people were talking about that would help them either move from red to green days, or they've done and they've kind of worked forwards in, in that kind of matter of fact, one of the things that we don't do, if you're in the UK, because you're terribly English is we don't reflect on our wins very much. And this is really, really important. Because while we shouldn't live our life, looking in the rearview mirror, we should look at our life, you know, thinking forward, but also reflecting back and having a look and go now that was really good. How can we build on that? How can we deliver that project quicker, more efficiently, more on time? How can we deliver more projects like that having

lessons learned processes and reflecting on wins, but not only reflecting on wins, you know, with the business owner in your senior leadership team, but also reflected on wins with your team as well. And sharing with them the great things that are going with going on and sharing with them how the New Client Onboarding is going, and the progress and, and all of this kind of good stuff. And even personally, some wins. If people are doing some things for charity or fitness or whatever it might be, is you know, don't just reflect the wins all the way back to the business bring them back to the personal side as well. So have a reflect on the wins. That will make everybody feel a bit better and feel that they're they're progressing really well. Second one kind of train of thought was around just stopping for a sec. And let's reprioritize reposition and regain perspective, if we've ever feel like we're on a runaway train them and rattling down the runway rattling down the railway tracks and we're feeling out of control. Well, you've got the control and you've got the ability to just say stop for a minute, just say stop and hang on a sec. Right? Is what we're all working on a priority. What are we got? Let's go back to you know, the one year plan. What are we trying to achieve this year? Let's go back to our 90 day plan or however you do it. We do it in 16 week chunks at the Growth Hub. But let's go back to our plan because when you sit down and you go through your business plan and you go for your goals and objectives and what you want to achieve at that moment in time that is the most important thing in your life. That is the most important thing in your life. So when things get in the way, and we the railway tracks come along and we kind of go scuttling off in a different direction. This is the problem that we have. So go back reprioritize is what we had a year ago, is what we had a year ago still, the key thing for us is what we had in our 90 day plan still a key thing for us let's we gain the perspective. If the if the plans got a change, change the plan, you know I'm not saying go to your 12 month plan and stick to it. If things have moved, things have changed, people have left tight might have left a big tech might have left, the most important person in the organization, you know, from a technical point of view might have left, but reposition yourself. Take the time to take yourself out of the business and find out why is it feeling stressful? Why is it feeling all read, people are in silos too much to do, everyone's really busy. No one's got any time because they're all focusing on different things. The football team are all fighting with different goals, they're all going in different ways. So just stop for a minute reprioritize reposition and regain that perspective. The next one was to try and understand the behaviors of the people, whether it be your clients, or whether it be your people within the organization, and have a look and see if you can identify the triggers. So does it get really busy at the end of a project, when you're stealing staff from your professional services team from from Help Desk into the professional services, what's it end of the month, when you're trying to get the numbers in is at the end of the year, when you're really trying to get everything all invoiced and get those last few sales in have a look at some of the behaviors that are going on in the in the business and have a look at some of the triggers that are going on and see if you can map them between, you know, people being bad and you know, having a bad attitude in the office is it a particular person, you might have one person who's quite negative, you might have one person who's quite open and friendly. And just have a have a have a think about that. But really, the key thing that kind of boils out of this one here is around the shadow of the leader. And what we mean by this is as a business leader, how you show up every day, how you behave, how you talk, how you your body languages, and all of that kind of great stuff, is how the rest of your business will operate. Basically, if you had a really bad day, and if you had a really bad morning, and the cat's thrown up all over your new shoes, and you go in the office, and someone bangs your car in the way in the office, and you walk through the office at kickoff and start screaming and shouting everyone because you're in a bad mood, guess what everyone else is going to start to do. They're the children, you're the parent, they're going to think, Hey, this is alright to behave like this. I remember working with one organization, and it was just chaos, to be quite frank. And when I got under the hood of it, it was all down to the senior leader, it was all down to the way that this guy come in the office and scream and shout and bang the table and do this and do that didn't follow any processes. And then wonder why no one else followed any processes afterwards. What is because how you behave and how you teach and train your kids. And that's no different on how you know your tonality, your body language, your dress sense your attitude, your communication style, your nonverbal, nonverbal communication, all of those great things are really important for the shadow of the leader. So many of these situations that we're talking about here, lack of accountability might be because you haven't set accountability, well, how on earth are the rest of your team supposed to know what they're doing, if you haven't set them down, good job description and some targets, if you haven't set right timescales, and then tell everybody that you need it quicker and faster and cheaper. This can get quite stressful, you know, if you don't direct your team, and if you don't direct your staff into a certain position where they know clearly what their departmental goals are. People are going to work in silos, you know, and if people have been busy been too busy, because you haven't had time to have communication, you haven't had time to have team meetings, and you haven't had time to sit down and let everybody know where the business is going and what our priorities are for this day, week, month, whatever it is, people will be busy, and they will fill in their holes in their time, and they will be busy doing stuff that they want to do so. So that's a little bit about the shadow of the leader. And it's actually wonderful to work in the Growth Hub, because people are so honest and open in the channel about some of these great things. And when you're open and honest with things and when you've got it off your chest and you realize that you're not alone, then all of a sudden, you know, people help you out they come out with and sort of say, hey, look, we you should try this, we should I used to be like that. And I used to be like, you know, before we before we started working and all of those kinds of great things. So the opportunity here is to identify your red days operator, think about the situation that you're in. Think about self awareness, think about stepping back as a leader. Think about the shadow, the lead that you're casting, think about the shadow of the leader that the rest of your leadership team in your senior people are casting. And if you look around and you see things that are a little bit out of control, and a little bit Oh, hang on a minute, this doesn't quite look right, or that doesn't quite look right. Before too long, you could probably see a trait where that's come from where that learned behaviors come from. Because at the end of the day isn't it's all about, you know, having fun, having more time being more efficient, enjoying what we do, living our best life and helping other people. So what I want to do is I just want to bring you back to a couple of other episodes of the podcast I think you'll find really useful if this is if this is a tickles your fancy. You're kind of got you got your juices flowing a little bit. The first one is episode 79 And it's MSP success stories with a great friend of the Growth Hub Chris Ward from Vermont Systems. Now, Chris reduced his business down, he reduced his staff down considerably because he knew he needed to go back to go forwards. And his story is so inspiring. It's so it's a wonderful story. It's heartfelt, I encourage you to go and listen to her because it's a really, really great episode. And I know that there's gonna be a bucket load of stuff in there that's going to resonate with you. And then the second one, I want you to go and have a listen to as well as episode 86. Mindset magic with Richard Tubb, great friend, again, Richard all about really getting your head in the right space really getting out of your own way and how mental health can get in and affect some of these things to keep those decisions. And you know, when we need to look at the triggers reflect reprioritize we position you know what gets in the way that stops us from doing that? And how can we you know, be better versions of ourselves to create ourselves some amazing businesses out here? Isn't that what this is all about? So that's about it for me for this episode, we got some really amazing events coming up soon at the MSP Growth Hub, go and check them out at the MSP growth hub.com forward slash events. And you will see what's going on we got an amazing one about strategy. We've had some previous ones around leadership and sales and marketing, and always giving a bucketload of value loads of coaching and training in all of those sessions there to help you get to a million and if you're already there, help me get to five go faster. So that's it for me today. You go and enjoy the rest of your day. And I look forward to catching up with you guys soon. Look after yourselves. So I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, I'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to learn more about how to take your MSP to a million or if you're already there, go faster. Then come and join Stuart, Warwick and myself in the scale of confidence Facebook group, the link is in the show notes. You can enjoy the rest of your day and I look forward to connecting with you soon.